212 FIRST SETTLEMENTS ON THE BOMBAY COAST their protestations of innocence) never again to molest a Moghul ship. As in 1623 the Moghul government had held the Company's servants responsible for the piracy of their public enemies the Dutch, so in 1636 it punished them for the piracy of Courten's interlopers. " Wee must beare the burthen,' ' says a sorrowful despatch quoted by Anderson, " and with patience sitt still, until we may find these frowning tymes more auspicious to us and to our affayres." A still heavier blow was about to fall on the poor prisoners at Surat. While the piracies of Courten's Association brought them into disgrace with the Mo- ghul government, the ablest captain of the interlopers, Weddell, resolved to snatch the fruits of the Surat president's convention with the Portuguese viceroy. He sailed to Goa, and, on the strength of a letter from King Charles, got leave in 1637-1638 to hire a house and to land his goods. After forcing himself, by the same authority, on the Company's struggling factories from the Bay of Bengal to near the Straits of Malacca, he fixed his headquarters at Rajapur on the Bombay coast. The site was well chosen. It lay up a long tidal creek, in the independent kingdom of Bijapur, about half-way between Goa and the modern city of Bombay. It thus cut in two the Company's line of communication between Surat and Goa, as the Company's settlement at Surat had cut in two the Portuguese line of com- munication between Goa and Diu. The Moghul Empire had not then advanced so far down the coast, and Raja-
