Empires of the Atlantic World: Britain and Spain in America 1492-1830 by John H. Elliott

crown to arrange for its allocation, in order to attach settlers to the soil. There were various ways in which this could be done. One was to give commanders and colonizers powers to distribute plots of land once possession had been taken. In 1523, for instance, the Spanish crown, in capitulating with Vazquez de Ayllon for the exploration of Florida, authorized him to distribute `water, lands, and building lots (solares)'.42 Similarly, on his Newfoundland expedition of 1583, Sir Humphrey Gilbert, in conformity with his letters patent issued by the queen by virtue of her royal authority, `granted in fee farm divers parcels of land lying by the waterside' at St John's harbour .41
    An alternative method, to which the British crown several times resorted, was to issue charters to groups of interested individuals who constituted themselves into companies, like the Massachusetts Bay Company of 1629. The nearest to company colonization in Spanish America was the authorization given in 1528 to two Sevillian agents of the German commercial house of the Welser for the discovery, conquest and settlement of Venezuela, but the name of the Welser seems to have been carefully kept out of the agreement, allowing them to disclaim responsibility for the actions of their company agents and representatives.44 More frequently the British crown, less concerned than the Spanish crown with the retention of close control over its American possessions, would make proprietary grants to chosen patentees, like George Calvert, Lord Baltimore, whose son Cecilius received the seals and charter for the colonization of Maryland in 1632.41 Proprietors in turn would proceed to allocate land on the terms most likely to prove attractive to settlers, while conserving as many rights to themselves as they could. But the process of land acquisition and settlement remained considerably more haphazard in British than in Spanish America. Some English colonies - Plymouth, Connecticut and Rhode Island - received no royal charters, and this only enhanced the ambiguities surrounding their rights to settle in Indian territory. At least in the initial stages of settlement, these New England colonists sought to resolve their legal and moral dilemmas by negotiating land purchases from the Indians.46
    There could, however, be no lasting settlement of American land without the establishment and acceptance of some form of civil authority. On landing on the coast of Mexico in June 1519, Cortes's first action was to found the town of Vera Cruz. His purpose in doing this was to establish a civil authority, which would both legitimate his past and future actions, and lay the foundations for permanent Spanish settlement in Montezuma's realms. `The new alcaldes [mayors] and officers', writes Gomara, `accepted their wands of authority and took possession of their offices, and at once met in council, as is customary in the villages and towns of Castile.'47 A similar process was at work when the Mayflower dropped anchor off Provincetown in November 1620. In this instance the Pilgrims before going ashore agreed to `covenant and combine ourselves together into a civil body politic, for our better ordering and preservation'.48 They went on to elect John Carver as their Governor, just as the town council of Vera Cruz went on to elect Cortes as Captain and Justicia Mayor.
    Spaniards and Englishmen therefore regarded the reconstitution of European civil society in an alien environment as the essential preliminary to their permanent occupation of the land. As participants in the same western tradition, both these colonizing peoples took it for granted that the patriarchal family, ownership of property, and a social ordering that as nearly as possible patterned the divine were the essential elements of any properly constituted civil society. But both were to find that American conditions were not always conducive to their re-creation on the farther shores of the Atlantic in the forms to which they