Page:A History of the Indian Medical Service, 1600-1913 Vol 1.djvu/27



CHAPTER I

THE FIRST BEGINNINGS "The spacious times of great Elizabeth." , A Dream of Fair Women.

East India Company may be said to have come into existence on the first day of the seventeenth century, for the Association of Merchant Adventurers, formed in 1599, received a charter from Queen EHzabeth on 31st Dec., 1600. This charter is given at length in The First Letterbook of the East India Company, 1600-19, edited by Sir George Birdwood and William Foster, where it fills twenty-six pages (pp. 163-189). Only four years later we hear of the first interloper. Sir Edward Michelborne, who sailed to the East under a hcence from King James I. in 1604. On 31st May, 1609, the King granted a second charter to the Company.

Nearly twenty years before the formal incorporation of the Company, an attempt was made by London merchants to trade with the East. In 1582 four ships were fitted out for a voyage to Cathay and the East Indies, the Leicester galleon, commanded by Luke Fenton, who as Admiral led the whole expedition, with William Hawkins as chief officer; the Edward Bonaventure, commanded by Luke Ward, Vice-Admiral; the Francis, and a small vessel called the Elizabeth. This expedition was a faiku'e, and never got further than the Atlantic, returning to England in May, 1583. Luke Ward's journal is published by Hakluyt.*