Page:History of India Vol 6.djvu/282

 222 THE FIRST ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY Indian expeditions, seemed to spring out of the embar- rassments of our Mediterranean trade. Among its most active promoters were Richard Staper and Thomas Smythe, two of the original founders of the Levant Company. Richard Staper is described in the first charter to the Levant Company in 1581 as having, with Sir Edward Osborn, " at their own great cost and charges found out and opened a trade to Turkey," " whereby many good offices may be done for the peace of Christendom, relief of Christian slaves, and good vent for the commodities of the realm." At the begin- ning of 1599, Richard Staper and his associates in the Levant Company " engaged Mr. Mildenhall, a merchant of London, to go to the court of the Great Mogul," with a view to open up the Indian trade. In Septem- ber of the same year Staper appears in the first list of subscribers to the East India voyage, in the first list of committees or directors, and as constant in his at- tendance at their meetings or " courts." Thomas Smythe, also named as a founder of the Levant Company in its charter of 1581, was appointed the first governor of the East India Company by its charter of 1600. Many other directors or servants of the East India Company were, or had been, engaged in the affairs of the Levant Company. Indeed it ap- pears that the new company at first entered its proceed- ings in one of the record books of the old, and " that the book originally belonged to the Levant Company, but was afterwards used by both companies in com- mon." If this statement goes a little too far, the evi-