The wise regulations of Pen soon drew to him industrious
settlers; but the commerce in which they engaged did not become so
considerable as to demand our notice.
III. The commercial intercourse of England with India, which has now grown
to such extent and importance, and from which has sprung the anomaly of
merchant-sovereigns over one of the richest and most populous districts of
the globe, began in the reign of Elizabeth. The English Levant Company, in
their attempts to extend their trade with the East, seem first to have
reached Hindostan, in 1584, with English merchandize. About the same time
the queen granted introductory letters to some adventurers to the king of
Cambaya; these men travelled through Bengal to Pegu and Malacca, but do not
seem to have reached China. They, however, obtained much useful information
respecting the best mode of conducting the trade to the East.
The first English ship sailed to the East Indies in the year 1591; but the
voyage was rather a warlike than a commercial one, the object being to
attack the Portuguese; and even in this respect it was very unfortunate. A
similar enterprize, undertaken in 1593, seems, by its success, to have
contributed very materially to the commercial intercourse between England
and India; for a fleet of the queen's ships and some merchant ships having
captured a very large East India carrack belonging to the Spaniards or
Portuguese, brought her into Dartmouth:
