248

HISTORY OF FA-GLAND.

CHAP.XVIII.

1691.

themselves a severe persecution by their zeal against Popery- and arbitrary power.* Child had been originally brought intothe direction by these men: he had long acted in concert withthem; and he was supposed to hold their political opinions.He had, during many years, stood high in the esteem of thechiefs of the parliamentary opposition, and had been especiallyobnoxious to the Duke of York.** The interlopers thereforedetermined to affect the character of loyal men, who weredetermined to stand by the throne against the insolent tribunesof the City. They spread, at all the factories in the East,reports that England was in confusion, that the sword had beendrawn or would immediately be drawn, and that the Companywas forward in the rebellion against the Crown. These rumours,which, in truth, -were not improbable, easily found credit amongpeople separated from London by what was then a voyage oftwelve months. Some servants of the Company who were in illhumour with their employers, and others who were zealousroyalists, joined the private traders. At Bombay, the garrisonand the great body of the English inhabitants declared that theywould no longer obey any body who did not obey the King:they imprisoned the Deputy Governor; and they proclaimedthat they held the island for the Crown. At Saint Helenathere was a rising. The insurgents took the name of King’smen, and displayed the royal standard. They were, not with-out difficulty, put down; and some of them were executed bymartial law.***

If the Company had still been a Whig Company when thenews of these commotions reached England, it is probablethat the government would have approved of the conduct ofthe mutineers, and that the charter on which the monopoly

* See the State Trials.

** Pepys’s Diary, April 2. anil May 10. 1000.

*** Tench's Modest and Just Apology for tho East India Company, 1000