Page:History of India Vol 7.djvu/38

 16 THE "SEPARATE VOYAGES » OF THE COMPANY they could. The system of " candle-auctions," by pub- lic notice hung up at the Royal Exchange, afterwards relieved them of this burden. According to that system, the Company offered the commodities brought home by the ships at its London mart, with an inch of lighted candle on the desk. As long as the candle burned, fresh offers could be received, and the goods were knocked down to the highest bidder before the wick guttered out. At such auctions, even before 1622, a hundred thousand pounds' worth of silk, indigo, or spices was sometimes disposed of in a single parcel. The candle-auction became the regular method for the East India Company's sales. Before it opened, " a black list " of defaulters or others who had wronged the Brethren was read out, and the persons thus named were not allowed " to bid at the candle." At one sale in 1667 over four hundred lots were disposed of, and the carpenter's bill " for setting up and taking down the scaffolds in the Great Hall " shows that the auctions were attended with some ceremony. But the govern- ment preferred to deal more privately with the Com- pany. Thus in 1669, when the Lords Commissioners of his Majesty's Ordnance wanted four hundred pounds of saltpetre, they declared " it was not honourable nor decent for the King to buy at the candle as other com- mon persons did . . . and therefore insisted to buy it by contract." Before this system fully developed, the divided interests arising out of the Separate Voyages led to a delay of six or eight years before the accounts of