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6 toms for six voyages. At that very moment a peace was pending between England and Spain. The Spanish Armada had been utterly destroyed; Cadiz had been taken by Effingham and Essex; but still the English Government was anxious not to imperil the peace, by giving countenance to an expedition, which might be supposed to threaten the Indian possessions of Portugal. In vain the Merchant Adventurers petitioned for an immediate warrant. The Privy Council maintained that a peace with Spain would prove more beneficial to England than even the Indian trade. But the ardour of the Merchant Adventurers could not brook delay. They presented another Memorial in which they enumerated first all the Indian settlements belonging to Spain and Portugal; and secondly, all the kingdoms and islands which were wholly out of their dominions; and they concluded by challenging the Spanish Commissioners to show any just and lawful reasons why Her Majesty, and all other Christian princes and states, should be barred from the Indian seas, and from the dominions of so many free potentates in which neither Spain nor Portugal possessed the shadow of authority. The memorial was referred to the celebrated Sir Foulkes Greville, who returned another long and curious report on the limits of the Portuguese jurisdiction in the East Indies. The royal consent to the project of the Adventurers was then freely granted. The Association entrusted the management of the business to twenty-four Directors; and on the 23rd September 1600, the