proceeded to Algiers with an armament consisting of eight ships, four of them carrying forty cannon each, besides twelve armed merchantmen, the whole having on board a force of nearly 2700 men. But, after making an attempt to burn the ships in the mole, which did not succeed, it was deemed prudent to return home, under the conviction that nothing further could be done. It is said that the corsairs, as soon as Maunsell had turned his back, picked up nearly forty good English ships, and infested the Spanish coasts with greater fury than ever. Two years after we find complaints made both by foreign powers and by English merchants, that sundry subjects of England were in the habit of supplying the rovers of Algiers and Tunis with ammunition, military weapons, and provisions, whereby they were enabled to disturb our own commerce as well as that of other Christian nations; on which James issued a proclamation strictly prohibiting all his subjects from offending for the future in that sort.
We have sketched in the preceding Chapter the history of the several attempts which were made, in the latter part of the reign of Elizabeth, to effect settlements in the newly discovered world of North America, principally by Sir Walter Raleigh and his relations, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and Sir Richard Grenville, and which all terminated so unsuccessfully or disastrously. A considerable intercourse had, however, been kept up with the Indians on the coasts of Virginia and the more northern part of the American continent by the merchants both of London and Bristol, who found it very profitable to purchase their furs and skins with beads, knives, combs, and other such trinkets or articles of little value, ever since a Captain Gosnold, in the year 1602, had for the first time made the voyage to those parts by a direct course, without sailing round about to the West Indies and through the Gulf of Florida, as had always been done by preceding navigators. At length, in 1606, James chartered two companies, the first called that of the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, who were authorised to plant all the American coast comprehended between the 34th and 41st degrees of north latitude, or
