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church folk held private meetings, they were expelled from the country
and subject to execution if they returned.  The next items of the
control programme were included in the Navigation Acts of 1660 and
1663: according to these, all British commerce was subject to the
strictest regulation.  No ship could sail the seas unless two-thirds of
its crew were British sailors. No sugar or tabacco from any of the
plantations might be sold to other than English merchants, who demanded
and enjoyed a monopoly of the home market; and His Majesty laid taxes
on these colonial imports two or four times as high as the returns paid
the original producers.  French wines and silks might not go to any
American colonists except through English hands; no Dutch slave ship
might enter plantation harbors.  No one was allowed to take money out
of England, except a few travelers; and no colonials might buy or sell
commodities to French or Spanish neighbors, who paid them in silver or
gold.  In 1662 the African Slave Company began its efforts to drive
Dutch slave traders off the West Coast of Africa (1). And to complete
the process and
 
 
1. Beer, George Lewis: 
 The Old Colonial System, 1660-1754
, Vol. I, gives full account of laws of trade and navigation.