ARMS OF THE BAST INDIA COMPANY. CHAPTER V THE COMPANY AND THE KING 1623 - 1649 A. D. IN 1628, while the Petition of Right was giving shape to the conflict between the king and the Commons, the fortunes of the Company reached a low ebb. Dur- ing the preceding five years one blow after another had fallen upon it, at home and abroad. In the Far East its servants saved their lives only by abandoning their settlements in Japan. In the Spice Archipelago we have seen them tortured and slain at Amboyna, and driven forth from the Clove Isles. In the Javanese Straits they had been decimated by disease at their ocean-refuge of Lagundy, and were brought back by the clemency of the Dutch to Batavia, only to quit it again after a further struggle with misery. On the Bay of Bengal, the native governor was inflicting on them the " foul injuries " which were to force them out of Masulipatam. On the opposite, or western, coast of India, their warehouses were ransacked and their 164
