Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/156

 118 THE END OF THE STRUGGLE seized our chief agent, Towerson, and the other fac- tors at Amboyna, put them in irons, and swept in the whole English from the four outlying factories between February 15th and 23d— just eighteen men all told. Of the extraordinary proceedings that followed we have six accounts by eye-witnesses. First, the minutes of the court, kept by the Greffier or secretary: min- utes so irregular and incomplete as to call forth the censure of the Dutch governor-general, and to invali- date them as a judicial record under the Dutch law. Second, the solemn dying messages of the victims writ- ten on the pages of their prayer-books or other furtive scraps of paper. Third, the statements of certain mem- bers of the Dutch Council at Amboyna who formed the court, when called to account by the governor-general at Batavia two and a half years later (October, 1625). These latter admit the use of torture, passed over in silence by the minutes, but state that it was slight. Fourth, the depositions of six Englishmen who sur- vived, taken on oath before Sir Henry Marten, Judge of the Admiralty, in 1624. Fifth, the answers of certain of the Amboyna judges to interrogatories in 1628. Sixth, the statement of the steward of the Dutch fac- tory, who also acted as interpreter during the trial. It was laid before Lord Dorchester and Secretary Coke in 1629. This man, George Forbis or Forbisher, a na- tive of Aberdeen, and little likely to favour the English Company which persuaded James to cancel the charter granted to the Scotch, had long served the Dutch in