During this period, too, the Incorporated Companies--Turkey Merchants, or the Levant Company; the Company of Merchant Adventurers, trading to Holland and Germany; the Muscovy Company, trading to Russia and the North, where they prosecuted also the whale fishery--were in active operation, besides a great general trade with Spain, Portugal, and other countries. The Turkey Merchants carried to the Mediterranean English cloths, lead, tin, spices, indigo, calicoes, and other Indian produce brought home by the East India Company; and they imported thence the raw silks of Persia and Syria, galls from Aleppo, cotton and cotton yarn from Cyprus and Smyrna; drugs, oils, and camlets, grograms, and mohairs of Angora. In 1652 we find coffee first introduced from Turkey, and a coffee-house set up in Cornhill. On the breaking out of the Civil War, the Muscovy Company were deprived of their charter by the Czar, because they took part with the Parliament against their king, and the Dutch adroitly came in for the trade. These great monopolies of foreign trade were supposed to be necessary to stimulate and protect commerce; but the system of domestic monopolies which were most destructive to enterprise at home, and which had arrived at such a height under Elizabeth, was continued by both James and Charles to the last, notwithstanding the constant outcries against them, and their being compelled, ever and anon, by public spirit to make temporary concessions. The commerce of England was now beginning to receive a sensible increase by the colonies which she had established in America and the West Indies. One of the earliest measures of James was the founding of two chartered companies to settle on the coasts of North America. One, called the London Adventurers, or South Virginia Company, was empowered to plant the coast from the 34th to the 41st degree of north latitude, which now includes Maryland, Virginia, and North and South Carolina. The other, the company of Plymouth Adventurers, was authorised to plant all from the 41st degree to the 45th, which now includes the States of Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, and New England. In 1612 a settlement was made in Bermuda. The State of New England was founded by the planting of New Plymouth in 1620, and about the same time the French were driven out of Nova Scotia, and the island of Barbadoes was taken possession of; and within a few years various other West India islands were secured and planted. James granted all the Caribbee Isles to James Hay, Earl of Carlisle, and the grant was confirmed by Charles, who also granted to Robert Heath and his heirs the Bahama Isles and the vast territory of Carolina, including the present North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the south of Louisiana. In 1632 Charles granted the present Maryland to Lord Baltimore, a Catholic (the charter being also renewed in favour of Cecil, the second Lord Baltimore), which became the refuge of the persecuted Catholics in