Page 211 - A History of Siam

A HISTORY OF SIAM 199
Before White left Phaulkon
Ayut'ia. Siam, bought
with his a small called the He took
savings ship Mary.
command of this vessel himself, but was twice driven
back from the mouth of the Menam by bad weather, and
the third time was wrecked and cast ashore. He managed,

however, to save two thousand crowns out of the wreck,
He fell in with another who turned out to be
castaway,
a Siamese ambassador to Persia, who had chanced to
suffer in the same Phaulkon used his
shipwreck place.
two thousand crowns to another in which
purchase ship,
he took the ambassador back to The
Ayut'ia. grateful
ambassador introduced Phaulkon to P'ya Kosa T'ibodi,
who had become The
lately P'rak'lang. P'rak'lang
took him into his service, and before long he became
Superintendent of foreign trade, with the title of Luang
Wijaiyen.
The appointment of Phaulkon to this position did not
at all suit the East India Company. The one thing which
with hatred and detestation was
they regarded special
"
what called an an
they interloper," meaning thereby
trader who carried on business in the Far East
English
of the White
independently Company. Captain George
"
and his brother Samuel were noted interlopers."
Phaulkon had imbibed from the Whites senti-
perhaps
ments none too to the East India
friendly Company,
and to the end of his career he no attention to the
paid
Company's claims to monopolise the English trade in
"
Siam, but encouraged many of the detested inter-
lopers" to come and do business at Ayut'ia.
" "
Phaulkon's of led
policy encouraging interlopers
to constant between him and the servants of
ill-feeling
the East India and this tended, as time went
Company,
on, to throw him more and more into the arms of the
French.