Page 256 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

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CHAPTER XVII
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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 IPs Queen, Catherine of Braganza—
Sir George Oxenden’s mission to Western India—Royal ex­
pedition 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—Oxonden defends the
Surat factory against an attack by Sivaji—Death of Oxenden—
Gerald Aungier’s successful administration of Bombay—Present
grandeur of the city
\TOT the least singular feature of the great struggle
1 i for predominancy in the East which marked the
first half of the seventeenth century, was the relations main­ 3
tained 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 i
the Treaty of Defence, which provided that each party
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