Page:History of India Vol 8.djvu/59

Rh terially affected our commercial system. The Company wanted more extensive powers, and Charles II wanted to obliterate from their existing charter the name of Cromwell; so he gave them a new charter, authorizing them to make peace and war with any non-Christian people, although in fact their only troublesome enemies belonged to Christendom.

BOMBAY IN 1773. From an old print.

Portugal now sought the English alliance in the hope of recovering some of her Eastern possessions that she had lost while under the Spanish yoke, or at least of defending against the Dutch what she had been able to retain. These negotiations brought us the valuable acquisition of the island of Bombay, which was ceded to England in 1661 as the pledge of an arrangement for a kind of defensive war against the Dutch in Asia. But since the Portuguese were as jealous of the English as they were afraid of the Dutch, some years passed before the English found themselves in quiet possession of the island; nor was it until 1669 that Bombay