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THE TAKING OF ORMUZ.

BY DAVID HANNAY.

WHEN the "generals, generals" of the East India Company took hold of Swalley Hole in 1610 and kept it against repeated Portuguese attacks, they began to mark out the foundations of the British Empire in India. When they took the castle of Ormuz in April 1622 they went a step forward, and a long one. They ended an old song, and they began another which is sounding to-day.

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From their headquarters at Surat the Company's factors had a very distinct view of Ormuz, the waterless rocky island of Gombroon, where the Portuguese tyrannised over the trade of the Persian Gulf. It was an everlasting obstacle and menace. A Portuguese squadron lay there, to enforce the exclusive right of the King of Portugal to the "conquest and trade of India. By 1616 the factors had grown to a fairly numerous body. Some forty of them, between factors and" attendants," were planted at Surat, Ahmedabad, Agra, Ajmeer, and Burhampore. All was not so well for them as they could have wished. They would generally have agreed with Mr John Browne, who wrote to the Company from Swalley, that the people of Surat were faithless, incon

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stant, and covetous; that the extortions of Mogul officials were hard to bear, and were to be met on all hands, at Cambaya, Ahmedabad, and Broach - and, indeed, where not? Trade did not extend on the desired scale. Which of them would not wish to go farther afield and take fresh markets? And Persia was inviting them. Between them and this, to their hopeful calculations, promising market, lay Ormuz and its squadron. They did not bar the road entirely, but they menaced all who came and went to the coasts of Persia. Moreover, Portuguese agents, mostly friars, were intriguing at the Court of the Shah. An ambassador from the King of Spain, who was then also King of Portugal, was at Goa on his way to Persia. His purpose could not be friendly to English ambitions. The factors felt that they must act quickly, and with effect.

Ever since the first appearance of the Sufi dynasty at the end of the fifteenth century, Persia had been much in the minds of the rulers of Europe. Persian trade was of considerable importance, and was well known to Venice, and after the foundation of the

Levant Company in 1580, to nowned Shirley
those English merchants who
were the founders and first
governors of the East India
Company. It reached the ports
of Syria by the caravan routes.
Intercourse between Europe
and Guzerat by the caravans
to the Gulf of Persia was even
active. Men of several Euro-
pean nations, particularly
Venetians, went to and fro.
There was a regular, and even
trustworthy, overland mail from
Bussorah by Bagdad to Aleppo,
where the Levant Company had
a consulate, and thence to
Scanderoon, where letters were
shipped for Venice or Mar-
seilles. It was slow enough.
A letter to the Company sent
by the overland route took
nine months to reach London,
but it came to hand. The
Portuguese sent despatches
home in duplicate one copy
by long sea and another over-
land.

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brothers, who had been sent out by the Earl of Essex in pursuit of one of the inquiries he undertook as part of the work of the private Foreign Office Europe Office which he maintained. Their adventures are too well known, and were too confused, to be dwelt on in this place. Nor are they or the tales told of them to be implicitly trusted. They stimulated the production of much copy, and gave employment to diplomatists. On the whole, one has to agree with the uncharitable judgment of Abbot, the puritanically inclined Archbishop of Canterbury, who told Sir Thomas Roe that "Sir Thomas Sherley's children have all been shifters, venturing on great matters, carrying high shows, and in the end coming to beggary." So it was with them, but none the less they did not a little to persuade the Company's servants in the East, and also the King of Spain, whose favour they sought, that much of a profitable kind was to be found in Persia.

Casual adventurers who knew their way about all along and on both sides of the route were naturally not lacking. Before ever a factor of the Company was sent to Persia, an Englishman by the name of William Robbins, a jeweller, was prospering at Ispahan, and in favour with Shah Abbas. In short, there was no lack of witnesses, truthful and untruthful, to speak as much knowledge of Persia as sufficed to persuade the Company's factors that they knew far more about the country than they really did. The most persuasive and best known of all were the re

The factors at Surat were ready to serve their masters, and withal far from unwilling to promote their own private trade. Therefore they were predisposed to undertake the venture, when Pepwell, bearing, still green, the cruel wounds given him in the fight with the great carrack in the Mozambique Channel, anchored his fleet at Swalley. He indeed showed no alacrity in falling

in with their views; nor did Roe, the Lord Ambassador, who was following the Court of Jehanghir up-country. Sir Thomas was not indifferent to Persia.

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He had entered into correspondence with Shah Abbas, and had approved of sending Mr Steele, a man of many wild projects and corresponding misfortunes, together with Mr Crowther, described by Roe as a gentle, quiet, and sufficient fellow," into Persia to report. He had the express authority of King James to make a treaty with the Shah. This is the course which he would have preferred to follow. Standing well above the factors, and (we may say it without injustice to them) not being influenced by hopes of private trade, he judged the problem more coolly, and saw it whole. He could not believe that the best way to open trade was to send commercial agents with goods to try for what they could get. It must also be allowed that he had but little confidence that any great good was to be found in Persian trade. Judging by what he could learn from Steele and Crowther, from Robbins at Ispahan, with whom he corresponded, weighing all the evidence he could obtain in the balance of a sound judgment, the Lord Ambassador came to a substantially correct conclusion. He saw that the products of Persia were drawn from the interior and the north. Both are shut off from the Strait and the Gulf of Oman

by a difficult mountain country. All the south-east part of the Shah's dominions were full of nomad tribes of Lars and Beluchs. A caravan must march for five hundred miles or more from the sea-coast to Ispahan. It would be in danger of attack by brigands and raiding tribesmen for all the first part of its journey, and must be protected by a strong escort. Could the trade bear the cost of transport and guard? He thought not, or at least not permanently. The economic outlet for the commerce of Persia was by the caravans to the coast of Syria. While Roe was in India, and as both immediately before and after his embassy the overland route by Aleppo was cut because war was raging between the Shah and the Sultan, Abbas was seemingly disposed to turn to the alternative way across the mountains to Gombroon (the Bunder Abbas of later times), or Jask, and from thence oversea. As he hated the Portuguese, who had done nothing to secure his favours, and made counter-claims on him, he was for the time being prepared to welcome the co-operation of the English as a bad second best. But when the wars with Turkey were over (and they could not last for ever), trade would go back to its natural course. Therefore Roe could not share the high expectations of the factors.

They on their side were exasperated by the cold water poured on their schemes by

the Lord Ambassador. It was their determination to go on, and they claimed to be entitled to disregard his opposition ; and here their position was strong. The Company, which paid the expenses of the embassy, had expressly provided that Sir Thomas was to have no control over the conduct of their trade. He candidly allowed that this was the case, adding with truth that he was not the man to make trouble by standing on small points of dignity. He stood aside, and let the factors fare forth unmolested by him. In Kerridge, the head factor in Surat, he had to deal with a disputant who was, on subjects of a commercial kind, more than his match. When Roe propounded the ancient fallacy that the export of coined money and bullion to buy foreign goods was a pure loss, Kerridge put him right in a truly superior manner.

Their decision was taken, and on the 2nd October 1616 it was put on record at a meeting held on board the Charles in Swalley Road. A formal document was drawn up, and signed by all present, with one exception. The captain and commander of the fleet, Henry Pepwell, did not sign. He is named first, and would as a matter of course take the chair at a council sitting in the great cabin of his Admiral — i.e., the flagship. Pepwell was inclined to agree with Roe, but he had no authority to speak in matters

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of trade, being there for occasions only. Since the factors were the authors of a grave matter, their names should stand well out. And they were Edward Connock, Thomas Rastell, George Pley, Thomas Mittford, William Methwold, Thomas Kerridge, and Thomas Barker. They were just average Englishmen, good, bad, and middling, intent on the "trade of merchandise," who may not so much as have given a thought to the question whether they were or were not dictating the course of war and conquest; and as they breathed the inspiration of the age of the makers of the authorised version, these men, who were no scholars, could say their say with force, in telling words, and even with a lofty courtesy :

"Then was debated whether a speedy determination of this said Persian employment were fitting, or whether more convenient, that as yet it were deferred, in regard of a late letter written from the Right Honourable Sir Thomas Roe, Lord Ambassador, to the commander of this fleet, which letter, being by the said captain or commander there produced and read, for many pretended unanswerable reasons did earnestly persuade to desist.

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deed, if the purpose was to set the undertaking well going, they could hardly have found a better head for their mission than the man they appointed. Edward Connock (or Connok, or, once at least, Connaught) had come out with General Joseph, and had taken his part in the fight with the carrack, though he disapproved strongly of the attack. It was alleged by his enemies, who were malicious and active, that he was

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for many reasons alleged, but no better than they did. Inprincipally for these here registered; that in regard his Lordship in other particulars of his said letter is far transported (in error of opinion) concerning merchandising and merchants' affairs in these parts, makes us assured that he is no less transported from, and concerning, this Persian employment, assuring ourselves it is the great devotion and zeal of his Lordship to the benefit of the Honourable Company (without relation had or at least to him known of the necessity of our trade) that truth, and now doth altogether guide him both in the past and in this at present; but more especially it was thought expedient that in a matter of this consequence we the then assembled merchants (being in this place the prime and supposed ablest servants of our worthy masters) should be all present, which not without much inconvenience could so fitly be done in after times, being some of us here to be dispersed into other factories for assistance of the common service, there to remain till the end of these our ships' despatches."

When the factors at Surat had resolved to begin, they had something even more pressing to provide for than the selection of the goods to be chosen for sale and as samples. They had to pick the men who were to form the factory about to be set up at Ispahan. Small choice was offered them, and probably they could have done

a Papist." As he did avow himself a Roman Catholic on his deathbed, it is clear that he must have practised an "occasional conformity" of his own, as, indeed, did many gentlemen of more distinction than Connock in that age. But Papist or no Papist, he was loyal to the Company, and was far less dishonest in the pursuit of his own advantage by private trade than some of those who abused him. His great merit was his invincible hopefulness. However bad the prospect might be, however hard his case for the time being, however miserable and unfit for trade the country about him, so long as health and life lasted, Connock never let go of the faith that the Happy Valley lay a day's ride ahead, or three at the very outside. Now, when there is a Happy Valley to get to, this is the kind of man who is most likely to get there.

His whole mission, himself included, amounted to six: Thomas Barker, as second fac

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