them, under the agony of those infernal machines, confessed to certain words which their tormentors put into their mouths. No sooner were they released from the rack than they retracted the words which their agonies had forced from them. They were again racked by their merciless persecutors, and again repeated the confession which had been thus drawn from them. The end of this brutal specimen of Dutch justice was that Captain Towerson and nine other English were put to death, while the remaining eight were pardoned by the pretended magnanimity of their torturers. The Portuguese and nine natives of Japan were slaughtered at the same time as accomplices with the English, though all of them solemnly protested in their dying hour that they knew nothing whatever of the imputed plot.

After the occurrence of this frightful massacre at Amboyna in 1623, which excited as much horror as the tragedy of the Black Hole at Calcutta, which happened upwards of a century later, or the crimes connected with the Sepoy mutiny of 1857, the English abandoned the commerce of the Spice Islands to their unworthy rivals; and when, nearly two centuries later, they were captured by the gallantry of British sailors, during the French revolutionary war, it was one of the great errors of Lord Castlereagh and the British Government to consent to their restoration to the Dutch. Although the indignation with which the news of the massacre was received in England was immense, James I., with the characteristic indifference of his race to the sufferings of others, made no attempt to obtain redress or to punish these Dutch murderers;

Establishment of the Madras Presidency. 15

and the trade of the East India Company with the Spice Islands came to an end.

In the meantime, however, the East India Company had obtained some important privileges from the Shah of Persia for commencing a trade at Gambroon, in the Persian Gulf; and two years later, in 1634, the Emperor Shah Jehán granted a firman, by which the trade of the whole of Bengal was opened to the English; and the origin of the famous city of Calcutta may be discovered in the humble factory then erected at Pepley, near the mouth of the river Hooghly. Charles I. had, however, some cause of dissatisfaction with the Company, on account of their attempt at independence from the royal control; though the only charge which he could bring against them was that in their trade they had never established permanent forts, and could not be depended on, as he said, for augmenting the glory of his kingdom. This shallow accusation only proved the insincerity of the king. Charles had got into trouble with his Parliament, and needed money; and so, in one of the many instances by which he endeavoured to enrich himself illegally at the expense of his plundered subjects, he granted a new charter to a new company, under the presidency of Sir Thomas Courten, who was rich enough to bribe high for what the king did not disdain to give. No time was lost by the new company, and before the factory at Surat could be informed of the transaction that had taken place in England, the Philistines were upon them, and they found their rivals at their doors.

About this period an interesting episode in the court of the Great Mogul led to the more secure

establishment of the British trade on the eastern coast of India. A princess of the family of the Emperor Shah Jehán had been nearly burnt to death by her dress having accidentally caught fire, and her life being despaired of, an English physician was sent for from Surat, and Mr. Gabriel Boughton, the surgeon of an East Indiaman, was despatched to the emperor's court. His treatment of the princess was successful, and the emperor, in gratitude, desired him to name his reward; when, in the most disinterested and patriotic spirit, he declared he would accept nothing for himself, but instead requested an extension of privileges for his countrymen in the province of Bengal. "Let my nation trade with yours," was his generous reply; and having obtained this, he was sent across India, at the emperor's charge, to carry the compact out." While thus engaged he visited Ráj Mahal, where the emperor's son, Prince Shujah, had established his court; and was fortunate enough to render a second medical service of high value, for which he obtained permission to establish English factories at Balasore and Hooghly, and thus another step was acquired in the progress and growth of the British Empire in India.

*

* The late Sir Henry Halford, when President of the Royal College of Physicians, in an address delivered before the college on the "Results of the Successful Practice of Physic," mentioned this incident as "the circumstance most flattering to the medical profession in the establishment of the East India Company's power on the coast of Coromandel, for the efficient help of Dr. Gabriel Boughton in a case of great distress." And Sir Henry justly added, "This happy result of the successful interposition of one of our medical brethren suggests to my mind the question of the expediency of educating missionaries in the medical art."