ABSTRACT
T H E Revolution of 1688 brought evil days to the East India Company which under Charles II and James II had been strongly united to the crown by the policy of its governor, Sir Josiah Child. The deposition of the House of Stuart robbed the Company of its most powerful support, and encouraged its numerous opponents to group themselves into an informal society and clamour for the incorporation of a wider Company to control the India trade. In the ranks of this 'new Company' as the association was calledthough it had no legal existence-there were many of the Levant merchants who had suffered from the past competition of the East India Company's silk imports and had already petitioned in 1681 to be allowed to trade round Africa into regions which the India Company claimed to be covered by its monopoly. In the autumn of 1693 a similar petition was again put forward. In September Sir John Somers, then lord keeper, wrote to the king concerning the proposed grant of a new charter to the East India Company 'another thing which is stood upon is that, except by act of parliament, the sole trade of the Indies cannot be granted to a few of your subjects exclusive of all the rest; and most of the Turkey merchants as well as other merchants of the great estates being joined in opposing the charter, they press very importunately that in such an unhappy juncture, when they are deprived of the Mediterranean trade and are such losers everywhere, the queen would not exclude them from the trade of so great a part of the world. At the same time they press by petition to be permitted to send out five ships to the Indies undertaking to export in these ships to the value of above £100,000 worth of cloth and other English commodities, and they likewise urge in this petition that by law they cannot be hindered.'1
