If She Excited Astonishment At Her Size, Being Of The Burthen Of 1600 Tons, With 700 Men, And 36 Brass Cannon, She In An Equal Degree Stimulated And Enlarged The Commercial Desires And Hopes Of The English By Her Cargo.

This consisted of the richest spices, calicoes, silks, gold, pearls, drugs, China ware, ebony wood, &c., and was valued at 150,000_l_.

The increasing commercial spirit of the nation, which led it to look forward to a regular intercourse with India, was gratified in the first year of the seventeenth century, when the queen granted the first charter to an East India Company. She seems to have been directly led to grant this in consequence of the complaints among her subjects of the scarcity and high price of pepper; this was occasioned by the monopoly of it being in the power of the Turkey merchants and the Dutch, and from the circumstance that by our war with Portugal, we could not procure any from Lisbon. The immediate and principal object of this Company, therefore, was to obtain pepper and other spices; accordingly their ships, on their first voyage, sailed to Bantam, where they took in pepper, to the Banda isles; where they took in nutmeg and mace, and to Amboyna, where they took in cloves. On this expedition the English established a factory at Bantam. In 1610, this Company having obtained a new charter from James I., built the largest merchant ship that had ever been built in England, of the burthen of 1100 tons, which with three others they sent to India.

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