the subsequent expulsion of the English company's people by their late associates, but now declared enemies, out of all the other Spice Islands. A long course of hostilities, into the detail of which we cannot enter, took place between the two nations, the effects of which were so disastrous to the interests of the English company, that, notwithstanding a valuable establishment they had gained, in 1622, in the Persian Gulf, by the capture, in conjunction with the forces of the Shah of Persia, of the island of Ormus from the Portuguese, they found themselves, two or three years later, in debt to the amount of 200,000l., and, about the close of the reign of James, were seriously thinking of disposing of whatever they possessed in India, and relinquishing the trade. They had, before this, abandoned their factory in Japan, notwithstanding the concession to them, by the emperor, in 1616, of a second and still more liberal charter; and they had also withdrawn from a field of enterprise upon which they had somewhat strangely entered a few years before,—the Greenland whale fishery,—after attempting it first by themselves, and then, with no better success, in conjunction with the Russian Company. They had in 1616, in the height of their reputed prosperity, raised a new stock of 1,629,040l., which was eagerly subscribed by 954 individuals, including fifteen dukes and earls, thirteen countesses and other titled ladies, eighty-two knights, judges, and privy councillors, eighteen widows and maiden ladies, and twenty-six clergymen and physicians, besides mercantile men and others. Now, when a further subscription was proposed, it was found that the money could not be obtained; and the stock, which in 1617, sold at 203 per cent., had now fallen to considerably less than the half of that price.[1]
The operations of the other incorporated trading companies in this reign demand little notice. In 1605 James granted a perpetual charter to a new company, that of "The Merchants of England trading to the Levant Seas,"
- ↑ Macpherson's European Commerce with India, pp. 81—111.
