ADVANCE OF ENGLISH TRADE WITH INDIA 205 William Monson's Naval Tracts, she sent a mission to the Emperor of Morocco, with the result that the Eng- lish merchants secured a firm footing and gradually ousted the Portuguese from the trade. In 1579 her envoy to the Ottoman Sultan obtained permission for English merchants to resort freely to the Levant, and in 1581 she granted a charter of incorporation to the Turkey Company. After the joint Armada of Spain and Portugal against England perished in 1588, Eliz- abeth extended the scope of this corporation in 1593 to India, under the title of the Governor and Company of the Merchants of the Levant. The union of the Spanish and Portuguese crowns in 1580 was to the Protestant sea-powers of the six- teenth century what the closing of the Eastern land routes by the Turks had been to Christendom in the fifteenth. Again a great necessity arose for a new departure in Indo-European commerce. Portugal was dragged at the heels of Spain into her suicidal grapple with the Reformation; and the Catholic monopoly of the Indian trade went down with the Armada in the English Channel and North Sea. From the moment that Philip IE added Portugal to the Spanish monarchy, the English and Flemish adventurers foresaw the end. In 1580 divers London traders petitioned the Council for Elizabeth's consent to an expedition direct to India; a year later the Dutch made a similar application to William I. The life-and-death struggle which followed, by uniced Spain and Portugal on the one hand against England and the Netherlands on the other, was fought
