Off the mainland, Newfoundland, which had contained an English fishing population for at least twenty years, was not neglected; and, beyond the bounds of any of the North-American Colonies or Plantations that were definitely named and recognised, there may have been stragglers knowing themselves to be subjects of the Protectorate.[2] III.

THE WEST INDIES.

The _Bermudas_ or _Summer Islands_ had been English since 1612, and had now a considerable population of opulent settlers, attracted by their beauty and the salubrity of the climate; _Barbadoes_, English since 1605, and with a population of more than 50,000, had been a refuge of Royalists, but had been taken for the Commonwealth in 1652, and had been much used of late for the reception of banished prisoners; such other Islands of the Lesser Antilles as _Antigua_, _Nevis_, _Montserrat_, and the _Virgin Islands_, together with _The Bahamas_, to the north of Cuba, had been colonised in the late reign; and _Jamaica_ had been Cromwell's own conquest from the Spaniards, by Penn's blunder, in 1655.

The war with Spain had given new importance to those West India possessions of the Protectorate.

They had become war-stations for ships, with considerable armed forces on some of them; and some of Cromwell's best officers had been sent out, or were to be sent out, to command in them.