Page:English Historical Review Volume 37.djvu/137

 1922 ' REVIEWS OF BOOKS 129 In the end Cromwell granted the Company a charter, but in the mean- time the court of committees were almost in despair ; they reduced the number of their factories, they cut down every possible expense, they even advertised their privileges for sale to the highest bidder. It was only a certain patriotic stubbornness that made them persist. Had wee not some hope that before much time will be runn out, the trade to India would be againe setled in some way of honour and profitt to the nation, wee had at this time sent you our positive order for dissolving of all, both your and other, our factories. . . . Our worke is now only to contrive to ease our charge and draw home what estate wee have in your partes and all other our factories in India. The grant of the charter and the subsequent raising of the new general stock, which, unlike those that had preceded it, was never wound up but became the permanent capital of the Company, was followed by a vigorous attempt to restaff the factories and recover the lost trade. The home dispatches end with the bright hopes that centred in the Restoration : It having pleased the Almightie, by His good and gratious providence to restore our Soveraigne, Charles the Second, to his native and just rights, and setled him most miraculously in the government of his kingdomes in peace and honour, to the great joy of all his loyall subjects, even without any the least shedding of blood (for which we blesse his holy name). . . wee have very great hopes that wee here shall not only bee happy in the injoying of soe pious and good a prince, but that the lost honnor and repute of our English nation in all parts will be restored to its former lustre and glorie. In Indian politics the times were also troubled. The old emperor Shah Jahan was falling into ill health, and the Company's servants were ' distracted with feare and expectation of what miseries might happen uppon the ould king's decease, through the ambitious discencion of his four sonnes ', though they at the same time foresaw that there might be ' good fishing ... in these troubled waters'. The two southern Muhammadan kingdoms Bijapur and Golconda, with which Surat and Madras had come into closer relations than with their nominal suzerain, the Mughal emperor, were approaching the end of their existence menaced alike by the hostility of Aurungzeb and the rise of the Marathas. Though Madras was subjected in 1658 to a perfunctory blockade, it was not the existence but the trade of the Company's servants that was endangered. ' We for our parts ', they wrote, ' hitherto enjoy all freedome and quietnesse, though the noyse of war and thundering of ordinance are day and night within our hearing.' P. E. ROBERTS. Under the Turk in Constantinople. By Gr. F. ABBOTT. (London : Mac- millan, 1920.) THE main subject of Mr. Abbott's book, as he indicates in its sub-title, is the embassy of Sir John Finch to Turkey, which lasted from 1674 to 1681. Finch, as the author points out, was not a great ambassador. ' After seven years' residence our ambassador knew almost as little of Turkey as on the day of his landing. ... As a diplomat he displayed all the faults of one to whom zeal and judgment had not been given in equal proportions. . . . That he failed at Constantinople cannot be disguised ' (pp. 353-4). Finch had not to deal with great international questions, and his dispatches throw little light on European politics. ' God direct me ', says he, ' in VOL. XXXVII. NO. CXLV. K