Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company Read online

  I trusting upon his [Jehangir’s] promise and seeing it was beneficial both to my nation and myself, being dispossessed of that benefite I should have reaped if I had gone to Bantam, and [seeing] that after halfe a dozen yeeres Your Worships would send another man of sort to my place, in the meane time I should feather my neast and doe you service; and further perceaving great injuries offered us by reason the king is so farre from the ports, I did not think it amiss to yeeld unto this request.

  Nor, a few weeks later, did he think it amiss to yield to another imperial request. Jehangir, ever considerate, was insistent that he ‘take a whyte mayden out of his palace’. It was simply a precaution, of course; the girl could oversee the preparation of his victuals and thus frustrate attempts to poison him. Jehangir would supply her dowry and her servants and, if the ‘Inglis Khan’ so wished, she might turn Christian. Hawkins, feigning strong religious scruples, claims to have refused unless the white maiden were already baptized. ‘I little thought’, he writes, ‘that a Christian’s daughter could be found.’ But lo, Jehangir knew just the person. She was the daughter of an Armenian Christian who had been high in Akbar’s favour but had since died leaving her ‘only a few jewels’. To the Emperor’s solicitude were now added the dictates of compassion. ‘I, seeing she was of so honest descent and having passed [i.e. given] my worde to the king, could not withstand my fortune.’ They were duly married by his English servant and ‘for ever after I lived content and without feare, she being willing to go where I went and live as I lived’.

  When Hawkins prevaricates he is at his most transparent. Subtlety was never his strongest suit but for six months he had successfully consolidated his position and was now one of the Emperor’s closest companions. Matters began to change as soon as news reached Agra that another Company vessel was approaching the ‘bar’ at Surat. At first the change was in Hawkins’ favour. In expectation of at last receiving worthy tokens of English esteem, Jehangir issued the desired trading rights. When word came that the ship had in fact been wrecked on the Gujarat coast he even issued orders for the reception of the castaways and their cargo.

  But such favours aroused the jealousy of Jehangir’s ministers ‘for it went against their hearts that a Christian should be so great and neere the king’. Additionally the threat of more English shipping activated the Portuguese at court. And, to cap it all, ‘that dogge’ Mukarrab Khan put in another appearance. Officially he was in disgrace for having appropriated Hawkins’s cargo but, with an ingenuity one can only admire, he managed to turn an imperial order to reimburse Hawkins into the means of disgracing him. He did this by undervaluing the goods in question and then representing Hawkins’s refusal to accept payment at this questionable valuation as an act of disobedience to the Emperor. It was a complex dispute but with so many anxious to discredit the Englishman, and with Hawkins himself exhibiting a pugnacious stubbornness, his reputation plummeted.

  The arrival of ‘unrulie’ English hordes from the wrecked Ascension contributed to his discomfiture. In Surat they had already disgraced themselves ‘with palmita drinke (toddy) and raisin wine’. According to Finch they ‘made themselves beasts and soe fell to lewd women that in shorte time manie fell sicke’. Worse still, one Thomas Tucker, perhaps tired of singing for his supper, butchered a calf which Finch rightly described as ‘a slaughter more than murther in India’. Local Brahmins organized a lynch mob and Tucker was saved only when the English themselves were seen to whip him into insensibility. To Finch’s immense relief the officers and men of the Ascension at last set off for Agra. Many never arrived but amongst those who did was the factor, John Jourdain, who was to figure so prominently at Bantam.

  Hawkins, Jourdain reported, was ‘in some disgrace with the kinge’. The factor had taken an instant dislike to the Captain and, not without gloating, he proceeded to list the reasons for Hawkins’s disgrace. Amongst them occurs the oft-quoted reference to Hawkins’s drunkenness. According to Jourdain he had been publicly reprimanded for appearing at court after ‘filling his head with stronge drinke’. Perhaps he had. But Jehangir was not noted for his abstinence and Hawkins mentions having passed many paralytic hours in the Emperor’s company. Even if the Emperor had undergone some conscience-stricken reformation it seems unlikely that he would have objected to Hawkins drinking in his own home. More probably this was simply another instance of the Captain’s many enemies trying to engineer his disgrace.

  After five wasted months Jourdain and most of his followers returned towards Surat in the hopes of being rescued by another English vessel. Hawkins remained at Agra and briefly his fortunes revived. ‘Againe I was afloat’, he writes. Jehangir seemed disposed to make Mukarrab Khan settle with him and to grant the cherished farman for an English factory. Hawkins also had high hopes of receiving back payment of his promised salary. Then once again his enemies rallied and the Portuguese outbid him for the Emperor’s favour. He applied for leave to depart from Agra and, instead of being detained with fair promises as expected, he found himself dismissed. With Mrs Hawkins, her few jewels and her many relatives, he left Agra in November 1611. His plan was to head for Goa and with the help of the Portuguese, only too pleased to hasten his retreat, to sail from there to Europe. In the event he changed his plans and headed for Surat. An English vessel, indeed a most impressive fleet, was off the ‘bar’ and its commander was adopting a radically different approach to both Moghul officialdom and the Portuguese.

  ii

  While English attempts to establish themselves at Surat were getting nowhere very slowly, events on the other side of the Arabian Sea had overtaken them. Although Keeling and Hawkins had failed to reach the Red Sea ports the Ascension, before running aground on the coast of Gujarat, had made good this omission. By chance she had also discovered the Seychelle Islands. ‘They seemed to us’, opined the ship’s boatswain, ‘an earthly paradise.’ But they were as yet uninhabited save for giant turtles and even the most pie-eyed of factors could see no commercial potential for turtle flesh ‘because they did look so uglie before they were boyled’.

  Aden, ‘that famous and stronge place’, could hardly compare with the Seychelles. ‘A most uncomfortable place’, thought Jourdain, ‘for within the walls there is not any green thing growing, onlie your delight must be in the cragged rocks and decayed houses.’ The city was still in ruins following its conquest by the Turks in 1538. Small quantities of gum arabic, frankincense and myrrh were obtainable but the main terminus for oceanic shipping was now round the coast at Mocha in the Red Sea itself.

  While the Ascension made for Mocha through the straits of Bab-el-Mandeb, Jourdain, with the usual royal letter of introduction, journeyed inland to Sana’a, the capital. Yemen was a land of picturesque surprises; high passes gave way to fertile valleys in one of which he identified extensive plantations of what he called ‘cohoo. ‘The seeds of this cohoo is a great marchandise for it is carried to Grand Cairo and all other places of Turkey and the Indias.’ ‘Kahwa’ was the word used by the Arabs; in English it was sometimes rendered as ‘coughe’ and eventually ‘coffee’. Nowhere else in the world was it to be found and as yet there was no market for it in Europe. But by the 1660s coffee would become the staple export of the Red Sea ports.

  At Sana’a Jourdain obtained permission to trade from the Turkish Pasha, or governor, and then proceeded on to Mocha. Thence a letter was sent via Cairo to London representing the potential of Mocha in highly favourable but misleading terms. In fact the town proved ‘unreasonable hott’; the Pasha’s permission was for the Ascension’s trade only, not for the establishment of a factory; and a profitable sale for the ship’s ballast, mostly iron, was lost through her commander ‘bursting out in anger saying that the merchants of Mocha mocked him to offer so little’.

  But the Company knew nothing of this and in 1609, believing Hawkins favourably established in India and the Red Sea trade already wide open to them, the directors instructed the ships of their Sixth Voyage to concentrate on the Arabian Sea. Af
ter much deliberation James I had just granted the Company that new and enlarged charter; thanks largely to David Middleton’s success in the Spice Islands, confidence in the profitability of Eastern trade was growing; peers of the realm and ministers of state were willing to invest. To discredit the arguments of its critics and to capitalize on this spirit of optimism, it was vital that the Company be seen to be making the most of its eastern monopoly and to be doing its utmost for English exports. At £82,000 the subscription raised for this voyage was the highest yet. Two of its three ships – the wishfully named Trades Increase and the Peppercorn were brand new and the total tonnage for the voyage was second only to that of Lancaster’s fleet. English manufactures, mostly woollens, made up half the value of its trading stock. And Henry Middleton, now Sir Henry, was appointed commander. It was the sort of fleet of which a man of quality need not feel ashamed.

  Having taken seven months over a voyage which took Keeling eighteen, all three ships were off the coast of Socotra by 18 October 1609. They ‘sheathed their pinis’ and learnt from the sultan of the island that the Ascension ‘had sold all her goods’ at Mocha. ‘This newes gave mee good content,’ noted Middleton. In expectation of doing as well if not better he headed for the Red Sea. The Peppercorn was left at Aden and on 13 November the other two ships came to rest off Mocha. In the case of the Trades Increase anchors were unnecessary. The enormous ship was in fact aground and had to be almost entirely unloaded before she could be refloated. This was contrary to the Company’s instructions which insisted that, where there was no factory, goods should never be landed until sold. Under the circumstances Middleton had little choice; but the landing of his cargo undoubtedly weakened his bargaining position and aroused the cupidity – and suspicions – of Mocha’s officials.

  The Turkish official in charge of the port had the title of Aga and for two weeks the English could find no fault with the warmth of his welcome. They were given an extensive property, Middleton was honoured with a robe of crimson silk embroidered with silver thread, and every day presents arrived from the castle. On the evening of 28 November, records Middleton, ‘according to my wonted custom I caused stooles to be sett at the doore where myself, Master Femmel and Master Pemberton [the principal factors] sat to take the fresh aire’. The red sun slid, orb-like, into the Red Sea; the muezzin sounded from the city’s mosques; contentment reigned. An emissary from the Aga dropped by and Middleton sent his servant to fetch the interpreter. The man burbled on in Arabic. ‘As he was aboute to say somewhat else, my man returned in great feare telling us wee were all betrayed, for that the Turkes and my people were by the eares at the backe of the house.’

  I myself ranne after them, calling upon them as loud as I could to return backe and make good our house. But whiles I was thus speaking I was strooke upon the head downe to the grounde by one that came behinde mee.

  Consciousness returned with the ‘extreame paine’ of having his hands tightly bound. He was immediately jerked to his feet and dragged off to prison. On the way he was robbed of all his money and of his three gold rings. ‘Then beganne they to put us in irons, myself with seven men being chained by the neckes all together.’ Eight of his men had been killed in the fighting, fourteen were badly wounded, and the remaining forty-eight were in chains. The only ray of hope was that a simultaneous assault on the ships had failed. But there too blood had been spilt and three Englishmen killed.

  Why the Aga had so abruptly changed his tune was something of a mystery. In the interrogations that followed he accused the English of having broken a long-standing embargo against any Christian shipping calling at the pilgrim ports of the Red Sea. This was nonsense, although Islamic sensibilities could easily be aroused so near the sacred cities of Medina and Mecca and particularly so when, as now, fanaticism was heightened by the pangs of Ramadan. The Aga claimed to be acting on the orders of the Pasha at Sana’a; but the sight of Middleton and his men brazenly quaffing their madeira outside their house would have constituted a powerful provocation.

  There was also, of course, the incentive of loot. To persuade Middleton to order the surrender of his shipping was now the Aga’s top priority. He tried bargaining – life and liberty for his captives in return for their ships’ cargoes – and he tried intimidation.

  They stowed me all that day in a dirty dogge’s kennell under a paire of stairs…my lodging was upon the hard grounde, my pillow a stone, and my companions to keep me waking were griefe of heart and multitude of rats which, if I chanced to sleepe, would awake me with running over me.

  For three weeks Sir Henry languished in his kennel daily expecting to be led away for execution. Instead he and all the rest were ordered up to Sana’a. ‘Our irons were knockt off our legges’ and a string of donkeys was provided for their conveyance. So was a guard of soldiers.

  At Ta’iz, four days from Mocha, they were ‘marshalled into the citie two by two in a ranke as they doe at Stamboul with captives taken in the warres’. The townsfolk stood, stared and jeered and a sickly youth in Master Pemberton’s employ fell by the wayside. It was Christmas Day.

  I kept no journal from this time forward [writes Middleton] but this I remember: we found it very colde all the way from Ta’iz to Sana’a, our lodging being the colde grounde covered with horie frost. In Sana’a we had ice a finger thicke in one night, which I could hardly have beleeved had I not seene it. I bought most of our men furred gowns to keep them from the colde; otherwise I think they would have starved.

  They were fifteen days on the road and at Sana’a, ‘a citie somewhat bigger than Bristoll’, they were again paraded ignominiously through the streets. Then they were ‘clapt in waightie irons’ and consigned to prison.

  The Pasha, like the Aga, claimed that he was only following orders. But it now emerged that the orders came from Istanbul and were in fact based on sound commercial considerations. In outbidding local merchants for the cargoes of Indian vessels reaching Mocha, the Ascension’s factors had unwittingly stirred up a hornets’ nest of resentment. From Mecca, Cairo and Damascus had come complaints about the consequent dearth of Indian goods; additionally Mocha had been deprived of its customary import duties. Not so long ago the Arabs and the Turks had seen the bulk of their transit trade in spices diverted round the Cape by the Portuguese; now the remaining trickle of spices plus the valuable trade in Indian cottons and indigo were being threatened on their own doorstep by the English. English trade in the Red Sea was clearly detrimental to that of Arabia and Egypt; the English must therefore be discouraged from ever again entering the region.

  Middleton took the point. While still fuming over the treacherous manner in which he had been treated, he had no answer to the Pasha’s logic and agreed that English ships would in future steer clear of the area. The way was now open for negotiations over the release of the hostages. In these Middleton relied heavily on the intercession of other merchants, especially the powerful Indian community. The Gujaratis had welcomed the English as trading partners and were not without blame in dislocating Arabian trade. They were also fearful of English retribution – and with good reason.

  For by the time Middleton and his men had been authorized to trail back to Mocha, it was March and the season for the arrival of shipping from India. April saw the port fill with dhows from Cambay, Surat and Dabhol, from the Malabar coast, Socotra, Sri Lanka and the Maldives. They were met by enormous camel caravans from Damascus, Suez and Mecca. This was the ancient exchange on which the prosperity of Arabia had subsisted and which the advent of English shipping threatened. There was no chance of Middleton being allowed to open shop but there was every chance that if the bullish Englishman were to regain his ships he would come amongst the dhows to wreak vengeance. The Aga therefore prevaricated over actually dismissing the English and saw to it that their commander was closely guarded.

  On 11 May Middleton smuggled a note out to his fleet. The Turks were feasting their Indian guests, his guards were drunk, and ‘God had put into my head a devise.’
The ‘devise’ was a plan of escape. He instructed his men to saunter, ever so casually, to two pre-arranged embarkation points and await a boat. He himself climbed into an empty water butt; the butt was then sealed and floated out to sea. After what, even by seventeenth-century standards, must have been a cramped voyage, he was taken in tow by a tender from the English fleet, ‘which being done, I forced out the heade of the caske and came aboord’. His men fared less well, half of them being taken before they could be embarked’. But Middleton was free and once back on the heavily armed Trades Increase he gave his anger full rein. ‘I sent the Aga word that if he did not send me all my people with those provisions of the ships which he detained…I would fire the [Indian] ships in the road and do my best to batter the towne about his eares.’ To show he meant business he blockaded the port, interposing his own ships between the dhows and the shore.

  The Aga ‘began to sing a new song’ – but at the same tempo; he was still playing for time. It was 28 May before all the English were released and 2 July before a final settlement was reached about the cargo. Middleton still hankered after revenge and for a whole month more he lay in wait for a richly laden vessel that was expected from Suez. Both the Pasha and the Aga supposedly had shares in her. ‘Yett she escaped us in the night.’ On 9 August, to catch the last of the westerly monsoon, Middleton ordered his ships to sail for Surat. The Aga must have breathed a long Turkish sigh of relief. It seemed reasonable to suppose that he had seen the last of the English and the last of Sir Henry Middleton.

  iii

  In India Middleton’s appraisal of the English position was inevitably coloured by his recent experiences at Mocha. He had hoped to find a factory at Surat, Hawkins in high favour at Agra, and the Ascension’s factors manfully extending English trade. In the event he found no factory and no factors. His letters ashore were answered by a ship’s carpenter (the well named Nicholas Bangham who had absconded from the Hector in 1607) who reported that Jourdain and his followers were even now straggling back from Agra and that a disgraced Hawkins with his family were not far behind. Worse still, Middleton could not even get ashore to ascertain matters. A small armada of Portuguese frigates was blocking the mouth of the Tapti and both on land and sea Portuguese patrols lay in wait for his men. Under the circumstances trade seemed out of the question. Another rescue mission was the most he could hope to achieve. Accordingly he positioned his fleet alongside three Gujarati vessels that were anchored off the ‘bar’ and announced in a now familiar ultimatum that they ‘should not depart till I had all the Englishmen aboord of me’.