Page:The English Historical Review Volume 36.djvu/212

 At the same time the court wished to 'encourage them in all good wayes', and for that purpose

This proposal seems sufficiently liberal, even in our eyes, unaccustomed as we are to all forms of private trade in competition with the trade of employers.

Some of the East India Company's ships belonged to themselves, while others were chartered, and the conditions under which the latter were managed were sometimes affected by the terms of the charterparty. The allowance for private trade made for the ship Eaton, chartered by the Company for China in 1699, and the limitations placed on it, may serve as an example of the privileges granted to such ships, over and above the remuneration to the supercargoes.

Such generous terms were not always given to the owners of chartered ships, but the officers of all ships were treated at first in what seems to be a liberal fashion. In time this was found to work to the disadvantage of the Company, and this branch of the private trade was strictly regulated, until, by 1720, the captains and officers, who in 1714 had brought 20,000 lb. of tea