# Early English adventurers in the East (1917)/Chapter 17

CHAPTER XVII
The English secure a Permanent Foothold in India
Joint English and Dutch attack on Bombay—A Dutch iconoclast—Effect of the cruelties of the Inquisition at Goa on the English and the Dutch—English attack on the Portuguese at Surat—Sir William Courten's association—Acquisition by the English of territory on the Coromandel coast— Foundation of Fort St. George (Madras)—Occupation of Bombay proposed to the East India Company—Importance of the position—Bombay forms part of the dower of Charles II's Queen, Catherine of Braganza—Sir George Oxenden's mission to Western India—Royal expedition for the occupation of Bombay—Portuguese Viceroy declines to surrender the island—English troops landed at Angediva, near Goa—Bombay handed over and occupied by the English—Dutch and French opposition—The island ceded by Charles II to the East India Company—Oxenden defends the Surat factory against an attack by Sivaji—Death of Oxenden—Gerald Aungier's successful administration of Bombay—Present grandeur of the city
NOT the least singular feature of the great struggle for predominancy in the East which marked the first half of the seventeenth century, was the relations maintained between the three chief protagonists. While, as we have seen, there was a bitter enmity, verging on open warfare, between the English and the Dutch in the Eastern Archipelago, the forces of the two nations were united in opposition to the Portuguese. The alliance grew out of the Treaty of Defence, which provided that each party ​should maintain a fleet for joint operations in furtherance of the interests of the two companies. In its earliest stage, the combination was directed against the Portuguese and Spanish settlements in the Far East, but later the venue of the struggle was changed to the Indian Ocean, where successive attempts were made by the Dutch, at first with English assistance, and later unaided, to strike a blow at the heart of the Portuguese Indian Empire.
No two powers could have been more unhappily mated than were the English and the Dutch at this juncture. Incompatibility of temper was visible from the very outset of their association, and with the progress of time the tragic events which occurred at Amboina and elsewhere served to widen the inevitable divisions. In both the English and the Dutch records there is vivacious evidence of the burning animosities which were engendered on these voyages between the commanders of the two fleets. Charges of cowardice were bandied about; reams of paper were covered with polemics over tactics and sea manners, and the atmosphere was thick with protests and counter protests, written in the strain of hot indignation which was appropriate to so profound a quarrel. "All in all," wrote the Dutch Governor-General Carpentier. in summing up a series of these controversies, "a disagreeable wife is bestowed on us, and we do not know how it is possible to keep you out of disputes and quarrels, if we at least shall properly maintain your rights." This observation not inaccurately reflects the position at the period. It was a mariage de convenance, and like most such unions it lacked the spirit of harmony absolutely indispensable to success.
Still, stern necessity kept these strange bed-fellows together for a time. The Portuguese power, though sorely ​crippled, was yet capable of inflicting nasty wounds. From Goa might sally forth galleons which would take at a serious disadvantage ships of either English or Dutch origin sailing up or down the coast. A defensive arrangement by which the vessels of the two nations would render mutual assistance was, therefore, most useful to both; and it became more serviceable in the period following the capture of Ormuz, when the Portuguese, rendered desperate by the losses they had sustained, sought to retrieve their laurels under the direction of Ruy Freire, who had managed to escape from English custody at Surat, and had made his way to Goa within a short period after the return of the triumphant English fleet from the Persian Gulf.
Towards the close of 1626, stirred to vigorous action by the reprisals of the Portuguese upon English and Dutch shipping, a combined fleet, consisting of six English and eight Dutch ships, sailed out of Swally roads to deal, if possible, a crushing blow at the enemy. The immediate objective of the squadron was Bombay, where it was known that the principal Portuguese fleet had for some time been anchored. At this period where is now a proud city—"the gate of India"—was merely a squalid Portuguese settlement, with a population of 10,000, mostly poor Mohammedans and low-caste Indians, who obtained a precarious living by fishing and rice cultivation. The close proximity of the place to Goa probably accounts for the comparative insignificance of the Portuguese town. Nevertheless, it is remarkable that with their keen instinct for a good strategic position on a sea-board the Portuguese should have allowed the superb harbour of Bombay to drop into a quite inferior place in their chain of settlements in the East.
In the English mind before this period there had dawned ​a glimmering perception of the value of this splendid site. Prior to the visit of the fleet, to which we are about to refer, the Directors, writing out from home, had urged upon their representatives at Surat the advisability of establishing a fortified settlement on the island of Bombay or some other suitable spot in its vicinity. Mr. William Foster, in his introduction to one of the volumes of his transcripts of the Indian Records, suggests that the Court were prompted to make this proposal by Jeronimo de Pavia, a converted Portuguese Jesuit, who was taken to England in one of the Company's ships in 1625. Whether this was the case or not, the suggestion came to nothing, for the excellent reason that the Surat factors had no means at their disposal to carry out such a bold policy as was implied in the virtual conquest of a Portuguese possession within easy striking distance of Goa. In the communication in which the proposition was shown to be impracticable the Company's representatives mentioned that they had proposed to the Dutch a joint scheme of fortified posts but had received an unsympathetic reply. As far as the special object of the Company's attentions was concerned, the Surat functionaries agreed that the position was a desirable one. "Bombay," they wrote, "is noe ill ayre, but a pleasant, fruitful soyle and excellent harbour."
When about the middle of October, 1626, the combined fleet sailed into Bombay harbour, they found that the Portuguese Admiral, Botelho, had escaped them. He had probably heard of the approach of the formidable force of the enemy and had taken shelter under the guns of the Goa fortifications where the English and Dutch could not safely assail him. In their exasperation at being robbed of their anticipated prey, the two commanders decided to lay waste ​the settlement. It proved a poor sort of satisfaction, for the Portuguese had removed their more valuable possessions and stores, and a quantity of inferior rice was about all that was secured in the way of loot.
If the Portuguese historian, Faria y Sousa, is to be trusted, the Dutch performed their part of the work of destruction with a special display of religious fanaticism. According to this writer a Dutch captain, entering the Church of Our Lady of Hope, hewed in pieces a crucifix which he found there. The story goes that Botelho, when he heard of the outrage, secured a fragment of the mutilated emblem and swore upon it that he would continue the war until the insult to the Faith was avenged. The Portuguese admiral was true to his vow. He died some time afterwards in a fight with a Dutch ship, the commander of which, who is believed to have been the brutal iconoclast of Bombay, was slain.
Incidents of this character were common in the long-sustained fight between the Dutch and the Portuguese. They grew out of the cruelties practised in the name of religion by the Inquisition at Goa upon the unfortunate Dutch and English captives who fell into the hands of the Goa government. Amongst the Dutch records is preserved a veritable human document in the shape of a diary of a Dutchman, one John van der Berg, who was imprisoned at Goa for four years, ending with April, 1624, two years before the occurrence related in the Bombay church. Van der Berg tells of his confinement for long months in heavy fetters, weighing 58½lb., in a dark dungeon "called by many people, Encenceye, or also Inferno." Here he underwent horrible tortures. One day his condition became so insupportable that he begged the jailor to put him to death. ​"Ah!" replied the ruffian, "you would like to die a nobleman's death, you dog!" Food was now withheld, and Van der Berg had to live on the fish-bones and other garbage which he found on the floor of his cell. He ultimately managed to escape from his life in death. Apart from the record of the writer's own sufferings, Van der Berg's diary throws a lurid light on the relations of the Portuguese and the Dutch. Here is one striking passage: "I will write you what an Englishman told me on oath, that they cut the nose and ears of some Dutchmen and then drowned them: yea, some of them were flayed before they were drowned and died as martyrs through the Inquisition." It is in these and similar chronicles of horror of the period that we may look for the explanation of the ruthlessness with which the Dutch carried on the war against Portugal.
English and Dutch co-operation, on an extensive scale at all events, ended with the expedition of 1626. After this each fought the Portuguese in its own way. The Dutch sent an annual fleet to blockade Goa; the English offered a sturdy resistance at Surat. In the latter case, the operations were facilitated by the grant of a firman by the Emperor, authorizing the English to wage war on the Portuguese in Mogul territory if necessary. Acting on this permit, a body of men from the English ships was landed on the shore near Swally and made a successful attack on a Portuguese force encountered in the vicinity. As the first fight in which an organized body of Englishmen was concerned in India, this skirmish, amid the sandhills of the Guzerat coast, has an historic significance. In its immediate influence on the relations of the two races, it was also not devoid of importance, for the contest ​tended to carry to the mind of the Portuguese the conviction that the English had better be left alone.
On their part, the English continued to keep their eyes open to the possibility of being able to do something at Bombay. In the early part of 1628 we find Captain John Hall writing from "aboard the Mary at Swally" to his employers in England to say that he had sounded "the Bay of Bumbaye." "In my opinion," he wrote, "it is a wonderful fit place for our shipping to harbour in, and may be made so strong that all the Portugals in India (we) being once situated (there) are not able to do us wrong."
An opinion so decided must have carried weight with the Court of Directors who at the time were groping their way to a new policy in which fortified posts would take the place of the old unprotected factories. But the times for the Company were decidedly out of joint. Dutch rivalry in India had taken the aggravated form of the sale of goods at rates below cost price. The Company was in too strong a position to be driven out by these tactics, but for the time being its finances were reduced to a very low ebb. To make matters worse, a formidable new English competitor appeared on the scene in an association of traders headed by Sir Wm. Courten, who in flagrant contempt of the East India Company's monopoly, had been granted a right to send ships to India for commercial purposes. One of Courten's ships, which visited India in 1639, distinguished itself by a series of acts of piracy in the Indian Ocean with the consequence that the Mogul became greatly incensed against the English and threatened reprisals on the Company.
Under the accumulating weight of its misfortunes, the Company in 1640 seriously contemplated the abandonment ​of its factory at Surat and the establishment in its place of a post at Rajapur on the Konkan coast to the South. Nothing came of the idea, and two years later affairs took such a prosperous turn that the factory regained all its old prestige. Meanwhile, the Company on the Coromandel coast had effected at last that permanent acquisition of territory without which all the clearest minds in the Company recognized no lasting progress could be made. In 1639, Francis Day, the chief factor at Armagon, one of the Company's establishments in Southern India, obtained from the last representative of the old Vizayanagar dynasty, whose territory it was, a grant of a site on the East Coast. Upon this ground was subsequently built Fort St. George, the citadel around which ultimately grew the great city of Madras. It was the first land held in full sovereignty by the English East of Suez, the germ from which the mighty British dominion in the East finally developed.
The acquisition of the Coromandel coast territory was a step which events were not slow to justify. For the first time, the Company's officers were able to maintain an attitude of independence in their dealings with the native authorities with whom they came in contact in prosecuting their trade. What had been accomplished in the East again suggested the desirability of securing a permanent foothold on the West Coast. Additional experience confirmed the earlier impression that on the whole extent of the Malabar coast there was no more eligible spot than Bombay to locate a factory. In 1652, a strong recommendation was sent home by the Surat council that negotiations should be opened up for the purchase of the island. As peace had been concluded with the Portuguese in 1634 and the relations between the two nations had become more ​friendly, it was hoped that the proposal might meet with favourable consideration. But the Company's representatives in India had reckoned without the war which broke out between England and Holland in 1653, and which for a time completely interrupted the Indian trade. When hostilities ceased, the position had so changed that the undertaking of any new responsibilities by the Company was out of the question. The directors had a difficult task to hold their own in the face of a competition which had become the fiercer owing to the action of Cromwell in freeing the Indian trade. Events, however, were shaping for a realization of the far-seeing aims of the Surat factors.
While English and Portuguese had agreed after a fashion to sink their differences, the old feud between the Dutch and the Portuguese existed in undiminished force. An armistice for ten years had been concluded between the two nations in 1641, but it was never very carefully observed and as soon as the period for which the arrangement was made terminated, the fight was renewed on the part of the Dutch with increased determination. In 1656 a strong Dutch force after a protracted siege captured Colombo, which, next to Goa, was the most important place which the Portuguese then occupied in the East. Two years later the conquest of the entire Portuguese territory on the island of Ceylon was made effective by a successful assault upon Jaffnapatam. These successes paved the way for the further triumph of Dutch arms in Southern India where in due course the important towns of Cochin and Cannanore, the last named of which had been in Portuguese hands for 170 years, were transferred to the sovereignity of the conquering Hollanders.
An immense effect was produced in Portugal by these ​misfortunes. At the end of 1658, before the full tale of disaster was accomplished, the Portuguese Viceroy at Goa sent home a despairing letter, in which he predicted that the whole of the country's possessions in the East would be lost if aid was not sent. The Queen of Portugal, writing in reply to this or some similar missive, buoyed up the depressed official with the prospect of marriages between the daughter of Cromwell and her son, Don Alfonso, on the one hand, and the Princess Infanta and the King of France on the other. It was suggested that out of these unions might develop an alliance which would free Portugal from the clutches of her remorseless enemy. As we know, these marriages, if they were ever seriously considered, came to naught; but it is equally a familiar piece of history that the design which was unfolded in the communication to the Viceroy at Goa of seeking a potential alliance through a dynastic union was carried out three years later when Charles II took as his wife the Infanta of Portugal. In this marriage we have another of the stepping-stones of British Indian history, for part of the dower of the bride was the Island of Bombay.
Few men at the careless period of the Restoration either knew or cared what a tremendous advantage had been conferred by this marriage arrangement. It was not an age of extensive geographical knowledge, and outside a very select circle the name of Bombay was probably quite unknown. The East India Company, however, were quick to understand the importance to their interests of the acquisition. With business-like acumen they prepared for the new era which they saw was opening up by sending to India as their special representative one of the most capable men they could find in Sir George Oxenden, a member ​of an old Kentish family, who in his youth had seen some service in India. Oxenden after receiving from the King the honour of knighthood at Whitehall proceeded to India in March, 1662, charged with the principal direction of the Company's affairs in the East.
It was well that at this juncture the chief control of affairs in India was in capable hands. A position of extraordinary difficulty had been created which only a man of sound judgment, wide experience, and abounding courage could cope with successfully. Apart from the weakness incidental to a decayed factory and a lowered prestige at Surat, the new President had to meet a formidable hostile combination which had been brought about by the cession of Bombay. The Dutch bitterly opposed the measure on the general principle that England must not be allowed to secure a permanent lodgment in the East. They had as allies the French, who, having entered into the Indian trade, were not disposed to see a rival obtain an important advantage in the principal sphere of operations. The Mogul authorities, too, were none too friendly to an arrangement which promised to enhance the naval power of the English while at the same time it made it possible for them to withdraw from the control of the native government on land.
Here was material enough to make the transfer of Bombay a source of great anxiety without any complication associated with the change. But it was speedily made apparent that the island was not to be given over with the readiness which the English had ventured to anticipate on the strength of the specific grant which had been made under the Royal marriage settlement. When James Ley, the Earl of Marlborough, who was entrusted with the King's Commission to take over the assigned territory, ​presented himself at Goa about the middle of 1662, he found the Portuguese Viceroy altogether disinclined to surrender the island. This functionary at first questioned the validity of the envoy's credentials, and when convincing evidence had been supplied as to their genuineness and sufficiency he raised fresh difficulties. Nor was he to be moved by any arguments that could be adduced to sanction the fulfilment of the treaty.
The position for the English was most embarrassing. The Royal expedition which had gone out was an imposing one, consisting of five ships and a considerable military force, the latter under the command of Sir Abraham Shipman. To keep these vessels in Indian waters while the difficulty was referred to Europe was out of the question; on the other hand, to send home the force intended for the occupation would have the most serious effect on the situation at Surat in that it would appear in the guise of a confession of failure. After due deliberation, the decision was come to to land the military on Angediva, an island not far from Goa, and to send the ships home with the Earl of Marlborough, who would be able personally to report the facts to the Government. This course was pursued, with the result that imperative orders were sent out from Europe to the obstinate Viceroy at Goa to hand over Bombay. It was, however, not until the middle of 1664 that the English in India were able to take advantage of the new situation. In the meantime, disease had played havoc with the force at Angediva. Sir Abraham Shipman and every one of his officers had died, and failing a suitable military successor the command had devolved upon Shipman's secretary, Humphrey Cooke. Cooke, however, seems to have been a man of resource. He had no sooner been put ​in possession of the island than he set about fortifying the position as best he could to ward off any attack by a raiding force. That there was urgent necessity for defensive measures was made clear by every boat that came into port. The Dutch, flushed with their successes against the Portuguese, were throughout the Indian Ocean carrying things with a strong hand, and they made a special boast that when the opportunity offered they would wipe out the newly formed English settlement.
The blow, though anticipated with apprehensive feelings by Oxenden and his fellows at Surat, never fell. It is not easy to understand why the Hollanders held their hand. They had both in 1665 and 1666 powerful fleets at Surat and could have made short work of the small garrison of about one hundred men which Cooke had under his charge if they had gone seriously into the business. The advantages to them of the possession of Bombay at the time would have been enormous. The occupation of the place would have ensured the downfall of Goa and have completed a chain of stations which would have stretched from the northern confines of the Indian Ocean to the Far East. It would also probably have turned the scale so markedly in favour of Dutch supremacy that the English could never have secured a substantial foothold in India. But Providence ordained matters otherwise, and so this little handful of men, lodged in the ruins of the old Portuguese town at Bombay, became a nucleus around which gathered in due course a flourishing settlement, the progenitor of mighty interests on the adjacent continent of India.
Charles II, who had never been greatly interested in the Eastern portion of the dower of his unhappy bride, in March, ​1667, handed over Bombay to the East India Company as the surest means of ridding himself of a troublesome and somewhat expensive appanage. On September 21, in the same year the formal transfer took place with some little ceremony, one of the features of the programme being the exchange of the soldiers from the King's to the Company's service.
Oxenden's skilful hand is to be discovered in all the devious negotiations which led up to this consummation of the long cherished hope of founding a settlement on the Western Coast of India. At Surat in the years which succeeded his arrival he had completely restored the tarnished English prestige by a bold and judicious policy. Fortune put in his way a happy opportunity of bringing the English once more into favour at the Mogul Court. In 1663 Sivaji, the renowned Mahratta leader, who was soon to create a power which was to shake the Mogul Empire to its foundations, conceived the idea of raiding the port of Surat whose wealth offered a tempting bait to his adventurous mind. With four thousand of his famous light horsemen he descended like a flood on the Western India port. The governor promptly shut himself up in his castle and the inhabitants fled in terror to the wilds. Only a little handful of Englishmen under Oxenden and a few Dutchmen remained to stem the devastating torrent. So bold a front was presented by these sturdy defenders that Sivaji's men not only spared the foreign factories, but left intact a greater part of the town—for them an extraordinary act of restraint. Aurungzebe, who at this time was on the Imperial throne, regarded the action of the Englishmen with such satisfaction that he granted the East India Company new privileges, and issued an edict exempting all ​English goods from customs dues for the period of a twelve-month.
It was Oxdenen's lot, like that of many of his countrymen who went to India at this time, to leave his bones in the country. He died on July 14, 1669, at Surat, too early to see the full fruits of his labours, but yet at a sufficiently advanced period to be able to appreciate the momentous character of the change which was coming over the Company's operations. He sleeps with his well-beloved brother -Christopher, who was an official of the Company and died at Surat in 1659, in the graveyard at Surat. Over the remains of the two is a magnificent monument, part of which was provided by George Oxenden on the death of his brother and part by the Company, in gratitude for the latter's services. On the older part of the tomb is the following epitaph penned by George Oxenden, which may surely be ranked amongst the most felicitous of such tributes to the dead:—
"Here is laid Christopher Oxenden, in his life a pattern of fair dealing, in his death a proof of the frailty of life. He comes and he is gone. Here he ended his ventures and his life. Days only, not years, could he enter in his accounts; for of a sudden death called him to a reckoning. Do you ask, my masters, what is your loss and what your gain? You have lost a servant, we a companion, by his life; but against this he can write 'Death to me is gain.'"
Bombay in its earliest years was happy in the possession of a governor who carried forward the public-spirited traditions of Oxenden and laid broad and deep the foundations of the city. Gerald Aungier, by name, he was a serious minded and practical patriot who brought to his charge those sound personal qualities which never fail to secure the confidence and even regard of Oriental people amongst ​whom they are practised. When he went to Bombay he found there a population of a few thousands and an insignificant revenue, derived largely from taxes upon rice-land and upon palm trees, from which the native drink known as toddy was distilled. He then vowed "by God's help" to make the place a more worthy centre of English influence, and he was as good as his word. Before his term of service closed in 1677, the population had grown to 50,000, an important revenue had been created, the defences had been strengthened, and the beginnings had been made of a judicial system.
Not the least of Aungier's achievements was that he attracted by his measures a class of settlers of the very best type. The Banians, who are the salt of the Hindu trading community in Western India, were numerously represented, and there was a considerable number of Armenians, also excellent traders, and a distinctly law-abiding class. But the most interesting element in the immigration was the Parsee. Of all the varied races which go to make up the Indian community there is none which possesses in a higher degree the genius for commerce than this body of followers of Zoroaster.
Driven out of Persia by persecution in the sixth century, the Parsees landed on the coast of Western India near Surat, and were granted an asylum by the native authorities. There they lived in comparative peace and contentment for centuries, but they did not greatly prosper owing doubtless to the racial restrictions which prevented them from taking part in the larger life of India. The period of their real prosperity dates from their settlement in Borabay. Entering into the life of the town without the religious and caste prejudices which hampered the Hindus, ​and to a less extent the Mahommedans, they quickly made themselves a force in the community. That position has been consolidated and extended, until to-day they are the backbone of Bombay's commercial and professional life, and a factor in the larger field of Indian political and economic development.
As an idle speculation we may wonder what the excellent Gerald Aungier would think if he were permitted to revisit the earth and see what kind of city has developed out of the modest town of 50,000 inhabitants of which he was so justly proud. Nowhere in the East, perhaps, are the marks of British genius more vividly impressed than upon that wonderful port at which the stranger from the West usually gets his first glimpse of India.
Thy towers, Bombay, gleam bright they say Across the dark blue sea,
sang the saintly Heber in anticipation of a meeting with his wife in the city. But even in his time Bombay, though a picturesque spot, was a sleepy and insignificant place, vastly different to the city of to-day. A population of over a million drawn from the four quarters of Asia and from most of the countries of Europe is now crowded upon the island. Its streets palpitate with a life more picturesque and varied than that of any populous centre under the sun. In and out of its docks passes annually a volume of shipping which places Bombay amongst the largest ports of the world. Public buildings, vast in size and of imposing architectural features, crowd the European quarter,and from its central railway station—the most magnificent structure of its kind in the East—are daily dispatched trains which cover the journey across the continent in fewer days than it took Heber months to traverse the distance. ​Ornate mosques and temples minister to the religious needs of the polyglot native population, and in the outskirts of the city, on the breezy altitudes of Malabar Hill, and the wave-washed strand of Oumballa, are noble mansions in which amid all the refinements and luxuries of the West the merchant princes of Bombay, European and native, secure a well-earned relaxation from the strain and stress of the mart and the counting house in the hot and dusty confines of the far-away fort where Gerald Aungier mused on the possibilities of greatness that were inherent in this matchless situation. And over these manifestations of man's activity is the glamour of a tropical environment of surpassing charm. All around are the sparkling waters of the Indian Ocean dotted on the harbour side with craft of every imaginable description and of every size from the leviathan liner, or stately cruiser, to the tiny canoe which a bronzed little native boy is navigating with his hands as paddles. Across the broad expanse of the harbour rise from the water the low-lying Butcher's Island and beyond the loftier outlines of classic Elephanta, while away in the distance on the landward side, seen through a shimmering violet haze, are the irregular peaks of the Western Ghauts, a glorious background to a superb picture. Truly it is a city "full of goodly prospect," whether it is viewed from the standpoint of material development or of natural beauty.