Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/215

 ROYAL HOSTILITY TO THE COMPANY 169 as " loud as before," " the only remedy " being " to put down this trade." Nor could the Company hope much from the king, to whose act of prerogative it owed its existence. The Crown had commenced anew the encroachments which James had on more than one occasion effusively relin- quished. How far the royal aggression can be excused we shall presently examine. To the despondent adven- turers it seemed to threaten the finishing stroke. It was bad enough that their interests should be the sport of an evasive foreign policy: thrown over in favour of Portugal when his Majesty sought a Spanish marriage; and sacrificed to a Dutch alliance when Prince Charles returned angry and sore from his wooing at Madrid. It also rankled that the Company should be bidden by a courtier, Sir William Heydon, and Endymion Porter, the groom of the prince's bedchamber, to carry to India two emissaries whom it believed to be rivals in trade. But when King James arrested its ships and stigma- tized the directors as * pirates " because, under legal advice, they refused to comply with certain demands of the Crown, the situation grew well-nigh intolerable. The end came when Charles was found conniving at the opposition within the Company's own courts, and encouraging the " battulated " member, Smethwike, to raise the whole question of the Indian trade before his Majesty's Council. Meanwhile the Company, on the flood-tide of popular feeling which bore forward the Petition of Right, appealed in 1628 to Parliament. Its " Remonstrance " begins almost in the language