Page 262 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

262 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

tended to carry to the mind of the Portuguese the convic­
tion 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
i. 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
•i appeared on the scene in an association of traders headed
by Sir Wm. Courten, who in flagrant contempt of the East
l 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
i 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 Com­
pany.
.
, Under the accumulating weight of its misfortunes, the
Company in 1640 seriously contemplated the abandonment

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