When Charles I. ascended the throne he commenced putting into execution one of those doubtful prerogatives of the crown which, pushed too far, led to a fatal revolution. Either under the pretence or conviction that the government of the transatlantic colonies could be more advantageously carried on by himself and his council, through the intervention of a governor resident on the spot and appointed by the Crown, he assumed the direct government of Virginia, and not only treated the charter of the Company as annulled, but broadly declared that colonies founded by adventurers, or occupied by British subjects, were essentially part and parcel of the dominion of the mother country.[164] The Company very justly complained that they had expended 200,000_l._ in the Virginian undertaking alone, and as yet had not received any returns. Nevertheless the whole of that province, as also the West India Islands not previously taken possession of and colonised, were occupied, under the authority of the Crown of England, within a few years afterwards. About that period also the Bahama Islands were appropriated, together with North and South Carolina, Georgia, Tennessee, and the southern part of Louisiana. This immense territory was granted to Robert Heath and his heirs, and afterwards conveyed by him to the Earl of Arundel. In like manner Maryland, previously considered a part of Virginia, became the property of Lord Baltimore, a Roman Catholic, a grant afterwards productive of deep religious animosities, when the Puritans were driven to Virginia. In 1641 Lord Willoughby made a settlement at Surinam on the southern continent of America. The commercial results of these colonisation schemes were at first slow and unsatisfactory, but they eventually exercised a vast influence on merchant shipping, and contributed essentially to the gradual consolidation and greatness of England. The French, whose commercial navy was now beginning to emerge from obscurity and insignificance, formed settlements in Acadia, the present Nova Scotia, and extended their dominion into the territory now known as the New England States. But in 1620 both they and the Dutch, who had founded the town of New Amsterdam (now the city of New York and capital of the province), were dislodged by English adventurers.[165] [Sidenote: English shipowners resist the demand for ship-money.]