330 A TROPICAL DEPENDENCY affairs. At the same time it was represented by Ministers to the King that his American Colonies were languishing for want of labour. The King himself, therefore, "for the purpose," as a contemporary account informs us, ''of supplying those plantations with blacks," publicly invited subscriptions for the formation of a joint-stock company, of which the object was to be the recovery and carrying on of the trade to Africa. The new company was formed under the title of "the Royal Adventurers of England," and received a charter in 1662. But it had no better luck than its predecessors. War broke out with Holland in 1664. t was during this war that the Dutch Admiral de Ruyter swept the African coast, ravaged the English settlements, destroyed their factories, containing goods valued at ;200,ooo, and took their ships. The fort known now as Cape Coast Castle, taken by the English from the Dutch, was alone, as has been said, successfully held, and remained in English hands on the conclusion of the peace. This was the third Chartered Company ruined in the West African trade.

On the conclusion of the war. King Charles again invited subscriptions for the formation of a new company.

His appeal was responded to, and in 1672 a company, of which the name and fame have lingered in the history of English trade, was formed under the title of "the Royal African Company." Where so many others had been foiled this company at last succeeded, and the permanent establishment of English influence on the West African coast was effected by it in the latter part of the seventeenth century. The new company opened and developed a valuable export trade of English goods to the West Coast of Africa. It also, according to its own statement, presented at a later date to Parliament, "furnished the new American Colonies with frequent supplies of considerable numbers of slaves at very moderate rates, and that in so encouraging a manner that it sometimes I