for one summer, undertaking to continue the payment annually. This personal bribe to the King did not, however, render the proceedings of the Dutch more palatable to the parties who conceived themselves damnified.
Increase of English shipping.
Struggles of the East India Company.
Sir William Monson states that the shipping of
the port of London had so augmented during the first
fifteen years of the reign of Charles I. that it was
now able to supply a hundred sail of stout vessels
capable of being converted into men-of-war; while
ten large ships had during that period been added to
the effective force of the Royal Navy; but that, so far
as regards the East India Company, there was no improvement.
Their commanders in the Indian seas
had still to fight their way harassed and outraged
by the Dutch and the Portuguese at every point.
Whatever may have been the state of the relations of
the sovereigns of the various European subjects who
trafficked in India, it was the proverb of the sailors
of those days, "that there was no peace beyond the
line." Sanguinary encounters were constantly taking
place, and the trade of the English to India at the
period to which we refer had become so precarious that
the most enterprising of her capitalists could hardly be
induced to embark in it. Even in 1646, when the
Company obtained possession of Madras,[1] which for a
long period was the chief seat of their commerce and
power, only 105,000l. was subscribed for the new
stock rendered necessary by this acquisition. It was
feared that the Company would not, in their commer-*
- ↑ The rajah of Bijnagar built, in 1646, for the English the original Fort St. George, at Madras, to mount twelve guns (Meadows Taylor, p. 389).
