31 G HISTORY OF INDIA. [Book II.
A.D. 1664. however, the failure of tlie Bombay expedition ])roved rather a gain than a lo.ss to the Company, as it was doubtless one main cause of tlie transfer which the crown afterwards made to them of all the rights in India conferred by tlie marriage treaty. Indeed, Sir Abraham Shipman, wliile liis rnen were wasting away at Anjedivah, made a voluntary offer of Bombay to the Company. In this he undoubtedly exceeded his powers ; and Sir George Oxinden, to whom the offer was made, was too prudent to accept a grant to which, even if the Company had approved, legal effect could not be given. At the same time, it might have been foreseen that the acceptance was only postponed, and that the crown, burdened with the expense which the possession of tlie island could not but entail, would ere long require little inducement to part with it. Company During scvcral subsequent years the transactions of the Company are veiy
aUvetothe imperfectly recorded. The reason may have been because they were compara- of^Bei^gir^ tively insignificant. The same fleet which had brought Sir George Oxinden as president to Surat, had carried Sir Edward Winter as agent to Fort St. George. Besides that locality and the stations connected with it, all the agencies and factories in Bengal were placed under his immediate superintendence ; and he had exerted himself apparently with good effect in adjusting the quarrel with Mir Jumla. Still, no idea appears to have been entei-tained of the vast ex- pansion which the Company's traffic was destined to assume in that quarter ; and hence, while distant outposts were eagerly sought after, and the English monarch was importuned for letters to his roj^al brother of Bantam, whenever retrenchment became expedient, and a contraction of the sphere of operations was proposed, Bengal is almost invariably brought forward as the quarter where the experiment might be made with the least risk of injurious conse- quences. In accordance with this view orders were given, in 1663, to discon- tinue the factories which had been established at Patna, Cossimbazar, and Balasore, in order that all sales and purchases on the Company's account in Bengal might in future be made only at Hooghly. When the Company are seen thus voluntarily withdrawing from the province within w^hich the capital of their Indian empire was afterwards to be established, it is difficult to refrain from observing how little they are entitled to take credit for foresight. In fact, they were not so much the architects as the unconscious instruments of their future fortune. i^urat The year after the Company had thus begun, as it were, to turn their backs
pillaged by
sevajee. ou Bengal, an event took place which produced general consternation. The Mahratta chieftain Sevajee, dexterously out-manoeuT.-ing the troops of Aurung- zebe in the manner which has already been described, had advanced within fifteen mUes of Surat on the 5th of January, 1664-, before any tidings of his movements had been obtained. The town was then surrounded, not as at present by a brick, but by a mud wall ; and hence no effectual resistance could be made when Sevajee entered it at the head of -1000 horse. The inhabitants
