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 have parted from his wife in India, after an abortive attempt to trade privately there, and later to have settled down as one of the Company's representatives at Bantam. When he took up his duties at Amboina he had had almost twenty years' continuous service in the East and was one of the Company's most experienced officials. The impression we gather of him from the records is that of an easy-going free-living Englishman who was not at all of the material of which dangerous innovators are made. He evidently, from his letters, shared to the full his countrymen's distrust and dislike of Dutch methods. But that he bore no malice—that he even had no feeling of actual antagonism to his rivals is shown by a request he preferred to his superiors at Batavia that they should recognize the good offices of the Dutch Governor, Herman Van Speult, in providing the English with a house to reside in at Amboina, by making him a present. This suggestion, put forward as late as the closing days of 1622, came to nothing because the English Council thought that Towerson had made too much of the "dissembled friendship "of Van Speult who was designated "a subtle man." But the mere fact that the proposal was made is of great significance in view of what was to follow.

Van Speult, the Dutch Governor, was an official trained in the school of Coen, and, indeed, directly appointed by him for the special service of safeguarding the sanctity of the Dutch monopoly in the Eastern Islands. He was a worthy disciple of the great creator of Dutch ascendancy. In him were united those dour qualities which have made the Hollander in all periods so formidable a foe. Stern of visage and taciturn of disposition his whole energies were absorbed in the task which patriotic duty had