Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/276

 224 FIKST SETTLEMENTS ON THE MADRAS COAST In Masulipatam the English found a half-way mart between the West and the Far East, scarcely less lucra- tive than the Portuguese seats of the Indo-European trade on the Malabar coast. We thus turned the east- ern flank of the Portuguese in Southern India, as our Surat factory had turned the western flank of the Por- tuguese in Northern India and the Persian Gulf. But from the first, or almost from the first, our captains had to struggle with the Dutch for Masulipatam. The inland court of Golkonda, however, knew the advan- tages of keeping the port open to all comers, and here as at Surat the English seem to have understood the greater game of Indian politics better than their Dutch rivals accustomed to trample upon island chiefs. In 1613 the English obtained a grant for a fortified fac- tory, " written on a leaf of gold," from the Hindu authorities in the interior— although not yet from the Golkonda kings; while the Dutch made the local gov- ernor their friend. Next year the English felt strong enough to give a severe lesson to this petty magnate, who seems to have been unpopular in his own city. As he refused to pay a sum of money due to them, they seized his son and, in their own words, " carried him aboard our ship prisoner in spite of one thousand of his people, to the Company's benefit, the honour of our king and country, and to the great content of all the Moors." Soon afterwards the local governor was dis- missed and heavily fined, while the English obtained leave to trade at Masulipatam as freely as the Dutch or any other nation. u No factory in India," says