CROMWELL AIDS THE COMPANY AGAINST HOLLAND 261 £50,000, and the negotiations had broken down only as the Dutch demanded the relinquishment of its rights in the island of Pularoon. It now produced a swollen bill of two and one-half millions sterling for Dutch injuries perpetrated from 1611 to 1652. The Dutch gravely replied by counter-claims amounting to nearly three millions. But the Protector was not to be trifled with, and had resolved that any questions left open at the end of three months should be referred for* arbitration to the Protestant Swiss Cantons. So the commissioners made short work of the huge totals, and, striking a balance, declared that the Dutch Company must pay £85,000 to the London Company, besides £3615 to the heirs or executors of the Amboyna victims, and must restore Pularoon to the English. The sum thus awarded to the London Company was more than half as much again as that for which it would, in its des- pondency, have settled privately with the Dutch in 1642. Oliver sternly let it know, however, that it held Pularoon only in trust, and must " plant and manage the island so that it may not be lost to the nation/ ' In the same summer of 1654, Cromwell put an end for ever to the exclusive claims of Portugal in the East —claims based on the Papal Bull of 1493, but embodied during a century and a half in the public law of Eu- rope. With regard to this matter also the Company had tried to accomplish by private negotiation what royal diplomacy had failed to effect. The commercial convention between its president at Surat and the Goa
