national administration, where they exerted a directive influence in imperial control, and they ruled the city and port of London to their own advantage.[1] On the Board of Customs were Sir Dudley North, Sir John Buckworth, Sir Patience Ward, and Sir Robert Clayton, great in the directorates of trading and merchant companies and in the municipality of London.[2] The board included also such able and active officials as Sir George Downing and Sir Richard Temple, members of former select boards of trade. Sir John Werden, for a long time agent for the Duke of York's colony on the Hudson, and Sir Robert Southwell, the first industrious secretary to the plantation committee.[3] Clayton was a factor in the colony of Bermuda.[4] Downing, Werden, and Southwell were experienced diplomats. Temple and North were the authors of notable economic tracts.[5] Above all rises the strong personality of Downing, abiding through nearly a quarter-century. Although educated at Harvard and a nephew of John Winthrop, the elder, he became a thorough imperialist. He was an active agent in the drafting and passage of the acts of trade; as a diplomat he was influential in shaping Anglo-Dutch relations in the interest of English merchants; and as a member of the Board of Customs and in frequent conference with the Lords of Trade he was a determining force in imperial administration.[6] In conclusion, its powers as an administrative body, its place as an advisory board, and the political and commercial weight of its important members, enabled the Board of
- ↑ L. T. J., I.–III., passim. Sir Edward Deering, subgovernor of the Hudson's Bay Company, and Sir Dudley North, a director of the Royal African and Levant companies, were commissioners of the treasury; Sir John Houblon (Dict. Nat. Biog., XXVII. 417), master of the Grocers Company, first governor of the Bank of England, was a commissioner of the Admiralty, 1694–1699. For North's influence in colonial control, see Beer, Old Col. System, pt. I., vol. I., p. 160.
- ↑ Buckworth was high in the councils of the Royal African and Levant companies; Clayton was a member of the Royal African and Drapers' companies, and a director of the Bank of England (Dict. Nat. Biog., XI. 17); [Ward was master of the Merchant Taylors Company of London (ibid., LIX. 329).
- ↑ Ibid., LVI. 37 (Temple); LIII. 299 (Southwell); LX. 295 (Werden). Downing, Buckworth, and Temple had served as members of former select councils of trade. Andrews, Brit. Comm., pp. 93, 97. For Warden's activities as agent for New York, see Cal. St. P., Col., vols. for 1675–1685, index under his name.
- ↑ The governor of Bermuda declared that the colonists believed Clayton "orders and disposes of everything here, even to the putting in and turning out of Governors". Cal. St. P., Col., 1689–1692, § 1843.
- ↑ North, Discourses on Trade (1691); Temple, Essay on Taxes (1693).
- ↑ Dict. Nat. Biog., XV. 401; Beer, Old Col. System, pt. I., vol. I., pp. 9–11; Andrews, Col. Self-Govt., pp. 14–17, 312; L. T. J., I. 84, 116, 249, 258–260, 277–278; III. 118, 119, 128–130, 149–150. 302, 317, 324–325.
