THE NEW COMPANY IN THE EAST 289 lem disunion and Hindu confederate force which, during the next fifty years, broke up the empire. The new Company went courageously to work. It decided that Surat, then in the grip of civil war, should be its sole presidency in India, and that the factories at Madras, Bengal, Bantam, and the Persian Gulf should be distinct agencies subordinate thereto. All these settlements were destitute alike of money and men. On the Persian Gulf the bare subsistence of the factory consumed the customs of Gombroon and the whole profits of the trade. The late Company had ordered the establishment at Madras to be reduced to two factors with a guard of ten soldiers, and to a single factor at Masulipatam. From every English settlement in the East came the same story of decay. The new Company at once resolved to send out such a staff as never had sailed to India. In January, 1658, it selected seventeen of the late Company's most likely stations in the East, from China to the Persian Gulf, and appointed to them ninety-one factors and assistants, well supplied with goods and bullion for the re-establishment of the trade. When an adventurer, under plea of a license from the Common- wealth, shipped mortars and shells for one of the rival claimants to the Moghul throne, the Company firmly remonstrated with Cromwell, and at the same time despatched a consignment to undersell the interloper. On the west coast of Africa it bought up Fort Coman- tine, together with the charter, rights, and trade of the Guinea Company, for the modest sum of £1300. In
