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Pressure from Leadenhall: The East India Company Lobby, 1660–1678*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  11 June 2012

Arnold A. Sherman
Arnold A. Sherman
Affiliation:
Assistant Professor of History, Virginia Polytechnic Institute
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Abstract

Dramatic evidence of the vital role played by the British East India Company in Britain's rise to preeminence in world trade is revealed in the intimate relations between the Company, Parliament, and Charles II. Britain needed an agency for pressing the struggle against the resourceful Dutch, and the King needed revenue. The Company needed assurance in the form of a charter that its existence would be continuous; Navigation Acts to give meaning to its trading monopoly; laws against “interlopers” in its trading areas; and relief from mercantilist prejudices so that it could buy for cash where British goods were not in demand. Government and Company provided each other with all these, in a pragmatic arrangement that overrode prejudices and political sensitivities.

Type
Articles
Information
Business History Review , Volume 50 , Issue 3 , Autumn 1976 , pp. 329 - 355
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1976

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References

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6 Ashley, M. P., Financial and Commercial Policy under the Cromwellian Protectorate (London, 1934), 113–115Google Scholar; Krishna, Commercial Relations, 67–69; Sainsbury, Ethel Bruce, ed., A Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India Company, 1650–1654 (Oxford, 1913), xxii–xxiv, 6, 340, 346, 349–350Google Scholar, and Court Minutes, 1655–1659, 123–129. [Hereafter cited as Sainsbury, Court Minutes, with the inclusive dates for each volume.] One of the more interesting criticisms of the Company's bullion exports is contained in Henry Peacham's, The Worth of a Penny, published in London at least eight times between 1647 and 1695. The Company defended the practice in such works as Mun's England's Treasure by Forraign Trade; The Petition and Remonstrance of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London Trading to the East-Indies, Exhibited to … Parliament (London, 1641); Fortrey, Samuel, England's Interest and Improvement (London, 1673)Google Scholar; and Papillon, Thomas, The East-India Trade A Most Profitable Trade to the Kingdom (London, 1677).Google Scholar On the size of the Company's bullion exports, Chaudhuri, K. N., “Treasure and Trade Balances: The East India Company's Export Trade, 1660–1720,” Economic History Review, Second Series, XXI, 3 (December, 1968), 480–502.Google Scholar On the corruption of the Company's factors, Grey, Charles, The Merchant Venturers of London (London, 1932), 25–29.Google Scholar For complaints about working for the Company, there is an interesting, anonymous letter sent to Sir Edward Dering in 1673 in Great Britain. British Museum. Stowe MSS, 745. Dering Correspondence, Jas. I-Geo. II. Vol. III, 1667–1677, fol. 69.

7 On the “Amboyna Massacre,” Gardner, Brian, The East India Company (London, 1971), 38–40Google Scholar; Anon, . A True Declaration of the News that came out of the East Indies (London, 1651)Google Scholar; Dryden, John, Amboyna: Or The Cruelties of the Dutch to the English Merchants (London, 1673).Google Scholar On Dutch expansion and its costs, Krishna, Commercial Relations, 64–66; Ogg, England in the Reign of Charles II, 246–250, 314; Bastin, John S. and Benda, Harry J., A History of Modern Southeast Asia (Englewood Clics, N.J., 1968), 23–24Google Scholar; Dodwell, H. H., ed., The Cambridge History of the British Empire (New York, 1929), IV, 45–51, 84–87Google Scholar; Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1664–1667, v–x. Pularoon or Pulo Run was an important spice-producing island in the Bandas, south of Ceram.

8 Krishna, Commercial Relations, 92–105, 139–144, 150–158, 199; Bastin and Benda, History of Modern Southeast Asia, 23–24; Dodwell, Cambridge History, IV, 45–51, 84–87. English anger at Dutch aggression is evident from Dryden's play (cited in Footnote 7); Clarke, Samuel, A Geographical Description of all the Countries in the Known World (London, 1671), 37Google Scholar; and Stubbs, Henry, A Further Justification of the Present War Against the United Netherlands (London, 1673), 67–68.Google Scholar While men like Dryden and Stubbs often exaggerated in their claims about Dutch outrages, their writings suggest that incidents such as Amboyna were still inflammatory fifty years after they occurred.

9 Donnan, Elizabeth, ed., Documents Illustrative of the History of the Slave Trade to America, 4 vols. (Washington, D.C., 1930–1935), I, 83–84, 126–133Google Scholar; Ashley, Financial and Commercial Policy, 115–116.

10 The list of subscribers for 1663 is in Carr, Cecil T., Select Charters of the Trading Companies, 1530–1707 (London, 1913), 178–179Google Scholar and Donnan, Documents, I, 169–170. The list for 1672 is in Carr, Select Charters, 187–189. The information about the East India investors is based on materials from Sainsbury, Court Minutes, volumes for 1655–1659, 1660–1663, and 1671–1673. For the reasons why peers are not generally significant in the commercial activities of these trading companies, see Letwin, William, Sir Josiah Child; Merchant Economist, Kress Library of Business and Economics, No. 14 (Boston, 1959), 14.Google Scholar

11 Coleman, D. C., Sir John Banks: Baronet and Businessman (Oxford, 1963), 58.Google Scholar

12 Chaudhuri, “Treasure and Trade Balances,” passim.

13 Khan, Shafaat Ahmad, East India Trade in the XVIIth Century (London, 1923), 149–150.Google Scholar

14 Macaulay, Thomas Babington, The History of England from the Accession of James 11 (New York, [1879]), IV, 230–231Google Scholar; Letwin, Josiah Child, 18, 21–23; Khan, East India Trade, 150.

15 This information is based on manuscript biographies prepared by the staff of the History of Parliament in London for inclusion in a forthcoming volume, The History of Parliament, 1660–1690, Basil Duke Henning, editor. I am grateful to Dr. Henning and the staff of the History of Parliament for allowing me to use these biographies before their publication.

16 MacauIay, History of England, IV, 230–231; Letwin, Josiah Child, 18, 23.

17 MS biography of Dashwood prepared for Henning, History of Parliament. The Company's records also make it clear that long before Child's rise to power, the leaders of the Company had seen to it that friends and supporters were rewarded financially for their support. If the Lord High Treasurer, Thomas Wriothesley, was reluctant to accept “gifts” himself, the presents could be given to his wife. Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1660–1663, vii, 31, 52, 117, 137, 226.

18 The same kind of pattern emerges if one looks at the Company's role in the formation of English colonial policy and its influence on the Council of Foreign Plantations, themes that I hope to explore in subsequent publications. I have already dealt with some of these ideas in “Commerce, Colonies, and Competition: Special Interest Groups and English Commercial and Colonial Policy, 1660–1673” (doctoral dissertation, Yale University, 1972), 100–140, 210–267. It should be clear that some of these men in the East India interest also had ties to other commercial interests and other trading companies. I have taken them to be part of the Asia lobby if I could find no apparent conflicts among their loyalties. Certainly men who were Company officers in the early 1660s were more than casually concerned about the well-being of the Asia trade, because of the demands that these offices made on their time, and because they received very little compensation for holding these positions.

19 On the organization and functioning of these committees and councils, see Andrews, Charles M., British Committees, Commissions, and Councils of Trade and Plantations, 1622–1675, Johns Hopkins Studies in Historical and Political Sciences, Series XXVI, Nos. 1–3 (Baltimore, 1908)Google Scholar; Bieber, Ralph Paul, The Lords of Trade and Plantations, 1675–1696 (Allentown, Pa., 1919)Google Scholar and Bieber's, article, “British Plantation Councils of 1670–4,” English Historical Review, XL, (January, 1925), 93–106.CrossRefGoogle Scholar As indications that the crown generally accepted the recommendations of these bodies, see the volumes for Charles II's reign of Great Britain. Public Record Office. Privy Council Office Register. [Hereafter cited as P.R.O., Privy Council Register, with the volume and dates added. The seventeenth-century pagination will be followed in all references to the Register.]

20 P.R.O. Privy Council Register, Chas II Vol. 1, P.C. 2/54, 1649–1660, 168 and Chas IX Vol. 2, P.C. 2/55, 1660–1662, 5, 74. Great Britain. British Museum. Mercurius Publicus, No. 49, November 29-December 6, 1660, 781–783. The list of members is also in The Parliamentary Intelligencer, No. 49, November 26-December 3, 1660.

21 The King's letter is in the Guildhall Library. London. Remembrancia. Letters from the King and Council, IX, 1660–1664. Item 5, fol. 4a and b. There is a draft of the letter in P.R.O., Privy Council Register, Chas II Vol. 1, P.C. 2/54, 1649–1660, 131–132.

22 The Company affiliations of Council members are based on the MS biographies for Henning, History of Parliament and Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1660–1663. The four men nominated by the Company are in Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1660–1663, 32.

23 Sainsbury, Court Minutes, volumes for 1653–1663. Members of Parliament were determined from Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons, Members of Parliament, 4 vols., (London, 1878–1891).Google Scholar

24 Andrews, British Committees, 75–96; Letwin, Josiah Child, 14–16. (Professor Letwin reaches some different conclusions than I have about the make-up of the Council of 1668.) Relationships to the Company are based on Sainsbury, Court Minutes, volumes for 1660–1673, and biographies prepared for Henning, History of Parliament.

25 The presence of these men in the House of Commons is based on the printed election returns (cited in Footnote 23.) The kinship ties are based on the merged list obtained by sorting together the names of men returned to the Parliament of 1660 and 1661, and the names of all Company officers elected between 1660 and 1678. The totals do not include Thomas Littleton, John Shorter, or Henry Blount, whose ties to the Company were tenuous.

26 The names of the Company's officers who sat in Parliament are given in the Appendix. I wish to thank Dr. Richard Nance, Head of the Computer Science Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute, for helping me with this part of the study. Our final, merged list contained the names of all men who were Company officers between 1660 and 1678 and all men elected to the Parliament of 1660 and the Cavalier Parliament of 1661–1678.

27 The four men and their terms of service are indicated in the Appendix. Coleman, Sir John Banks, 69–95.

28 Based on biographies prepared for Henning, History of Parliament, and Sainsbury, Court Minutes, volumes for 1660–1670. Downing had long worked to protect English interests in the East. Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1655–1659, 205, 219, 229–231, 254, 257, 276, 316–323. He continued to do so after he became Charles II's ambassador to the United Provinces, and he was eventually given the power of attorney to act on the Company's behalf. Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1664–1667, 45, 48, 51. His dislike of the Dutch, and their dislike of him, is evident from C. H. Firth's biography in Stephen, Leslie and Lee, Sidney, eds., The Dictionary of National Biography (New York, 1908), V, 1304–1306.Google Scholar

29 These kinship ties are based on examination of the merged list referred to in Footnote 26.

30 Great Britain. Parliament. Journals of the House of Commons ([London] 1803), VIII, 48, 99. 177. [Hereafter cited as Commons Journals.]

31 Ibid., VIII, 191.

32 Ibid., VIII, 492; IX, 15, 61. The Company officers on the 1663 wool committee were Thomson, Ford, and Frederick.

33 Based on Sainsbury, Court Minutes, volumes for 1655–1659 and 1660–1663. The names of the committee members for the Act of 1660 are given in Commons Journals, VIII, 104, 120–129 and Stock, Leo F., ed., Proceedings and Debates of the British Parliaments respecting North America (Washington, D.C., 1924; reprint ed., New York, 1966), I, 277–278.Google Scholar The members of the Commons committee discussing the Acts of 1663 and 1673 are given in Ibid., I, 310–312, 399 and Commons Journals, VIII, 447–448, 467–468, 480; IX, 273.

34 Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1655–1659, 123–129.

35 The charter of 1661 is contained in Great Britain. Charters Granted to the East-India Company, From 1601; Also the Treaties and Grants, Made with, or Obtained from the Princes and Powers in India, From the Year 1756 to 1772 ([London] n.d.), 54–79.

36 Ibid., 76–78.

37 The charters printed in the volume cited in Footnote 35 make it clear how the Company's powers increased steadily in the thirty years after the Restoration.

38 See the pamphlet titles cited in Footnote 6, above.

39 P.R.O., Board of Trade, Commercial. Entry Books, Vol. I, CO. 389/1, fols. 11–13. There is a copy of the document in British Museum. Stowe MSS, 325, fols. 167–171.

40 P.R.O., Privy Council Register, Chas II Vol. 2, P.C. 2/55, 1660–1662, 429, 512, 552–553; East India Charters, 64–74 and list of charters not printed in the volume, 9.

41 Commons Journals, VIII, 39, 398.

42 This act is printed in Great Britain. Laws, Statutes, etc. The Statutes at Large (London: 1798), II, 737–740.Google Scholar [Hereafter cited as Statutes at Large.]

43 Statutes at Large, II, 658–661, 677–680, 720–722, 737–740; Commons Journals, VIII, 107–108, 120–121, 149; IX, 92; Stock, Proceedings and Debates, I, 314–319, 332–338.

44 P.R.O., Board of Trade, Commercial. Entry Books, Vol. 1, CO. 389/1, fols 24–29 and P.R.O, Privy Council Register, Chas II Vol. 2, P.C. 2/55, 1660–1662, 170, 350, 403, 414 and Chas II Vol. 3, P.C. 2/56, 1662–1664, 6, 184, 586.

45 Commons Journals, VIII, 107–108, 120–121, 149. There were many pamphlets published about the success of the Dutch fishing trade and how England could best respond to it. Two of the more interesting ones were Evelyn's, JohnNavigation and Commerce, Their Original and Progress (London, 1674)Google Scholar and SirBurroughs, John, The Sovereignty of the British Seas (London, 1651).Google Scholar

46 Commons Journals, VIII, 548; Stock, Proceedings and Debates, I, 322; Cobbett, William, Parliamentary History of England (London, 1808), IV, 292.Google Scholar

47 Stock, Proceedings and Debates, I, 323, 332; Cobbett, Parliamentary History, IV, 293, 296–303, 308–309; Commons Journals, VIII, 549–553, 560, 568; P.R.O., Privy Council Register, Chas II Vol. 5, P.C. 2/58, 1665–1666, 52–53.

48 The anonymous author of Britannia Languens, or a Discourse of Trade (London, 1680) clearly regarded the 1650s as an era of free trade far more desirable than the Company's monopolistic power and the already discernible growth of Child's power over England's Eastern trade.

49 Commons Journals, IX, 92; Statutes at Large, II, 844; Grey, Anchitell, Debates of the House of Commons, From the Year 1667 to the Year 1694 (London, 1769), I, 360.Google Scholar

50 Commons Journals, VIII, 179; Sainsbury, Courts Minutes, 1660–1663, 113.

51 Sainsbury, Court Minutes, 1660–1663, 115–116.