Nathaniel's nutmeg

by Giles Milton

  The spice race had by now been under way for more than ten years; time enough to judge who had gained the upper hand. Although London's merchant adventurers were flushed with success after Middleton's return, they had a nagging suspicion that they were steadily losing the race. They had so far despatched three fleets to the East (including the ships of Lancaster's maiden voyage) with a combined total of twelve vessels. Of these, one in three had either sunk or simply disappeared without trace. The loss in men was an even greater cause for concern. Of the approximately twelve hundred men who had sailed on these expeditions, some eight hundred had died either of scurvy, typhoid or the 'blody flux'.Two captains had been lost — one accidentally shot by his crew — and only one ship, the Ascension, had reached the distant Banda Islands. The profits, of course, had been enormous, even given the difficulties of disposing of Lancaster's cargo of pepper; and the Company warehouses were currently filled with sweet- smelling nutmeg and cloves. But the report that Middleton had submitted on his return suggested that it might be the last cargo they received. For the Dutch, latecomers to the spice race, were proving formidable rivals. Within a few years of Houtman's return they had managed to despatch a staggering fourteen fleets comprising sixty-five ships. Unlike the English commanders, who preferred 'a quiet trafficke', the Dutch had entered the race with cannons blazing. They had achieved a remarkable success against the Portuguese, ousting them from virtually all the 'spiceries' in which they had an interest. Now they were turning their attentions to the Banda Islands and seemed poised to capture these by force.

  Faced with such a threat the Company took the view that they needed to expand their activities with all possible haste. They still had only one 'factory' or warehouse in the East, at Bantam in Java, and this was on a much smaller scale than those belonging to either the Dutch or Portuguese. If they were going to compete successfully against their rivals this factory needed to be expanded and new factories established right across the region.

  There was a good case for expansion. One of England's most important exports, woollens, was understandably unpopular in the stifling climate of the Spice Islands. Instead of cloaks and blankets, the natives wanted cottons and calicoes which could be picked up cheaply in the ports along India's west coast. Already there was a brisk trade in these cottons and local ships regularly plied their trade between Gujarat and Bantam. Since India was believed to present a more favourable market for English woollens (as well as lead, iron and tin), the London merchants reasoned that if they could exchange these goods for cottons, then barter cottons for spices, they would have established a triangle of trade which would benefit everyone. Better still, they would be able to dramatically reduce the amount of gold being exported from England.

  But there was a problem with trade with India. Much of the subcontinent was under the control of the mighty Moghul Emperor, Jehangir, the self-styled 'Conqueror of the World' who had already granted extensive and exclusive trading rights to the Portuguese — rights which they jealously guarded. Since a military assault on their fortified factories was out of the question, the only solution was to send an ambassador to Jehangir and beg his permission to build a factory on the western coast of India. If the Emperor agreed, the Portuguese would be powerless to intervene.

  The governors began to search around for a suitable candidate to bear their petition to the Moghul Emperor. There were, they soon realised, few men qualified for the task and after several weeks of searching, their shortlist still contained only one name, William Hawkins, a sea captain whose background remains obscure but whose name links him to one of the most distinguished seafaring families of the Elizabethan age. He may have been the Hawkins who travelled across the Atlantic with Edward Fenton; he may also have put to sea in the Griffin against the Spanish Armada. But there were so many of the Hawkins family at sea during this period — including four named William — that it is not possible to untangle their exploits. Why the Company alighted on this particular Hawkins is easier to ascertain. Having spent some years trading in the Levant he was able to speak Turkish, an invaluable aid in any eastern country. He was also familiar with the customs and manners of the Orient and would be able to make an impression on the Moghul Emperor.

  Hawkins set sail in the Hector in 1607 and arrived at Surat on India's north-western coastline some sixteen months later. The journey was apparently uneventful for Hawkins makes scant mention of the storms, hunger and sickness that invariably afflicted the Company's voyages. Even the first sighting of the lush Gujarat coast, watered by the recent monsoons, failed to move him.

  The town of Surat lay some twenty miles up the River Tapti and was reached by way of a muddy estuary which was only navigable by the smallest of vessels. The Hector therefore anchored off the sandy bar that blocked the estuary's mouth and Hawkins — accompanied by several of his crew - rowed upstream towards the town, watched by a crowd who had gathered to stare at these new and unfamiliar faces. The town's governor was too drunk to speak with Hawkins so he and his companions made his way to the Custom House where their personal possessions were 'searched and tumbled to our great dislike'.

  While Hawkins explained that he wanted to establish a trading base his companion, Will Finch, set off to explore. The city, he discovered, was a pleasant one and home to a large number of merchants. Keeping a look-out for a suitable residence Finch noted that the finest houses were those fronting the river and those next to the castle where, to his surprise, he stumbled across 'a pleasant green, in the midst of which is a maypole'.

  The customs' official spoke kindly to the English but was wary. He informed them that he was powerless to grant trading rights - that was the prerogative of the Moghul official in overall charge of the Gujarat ports - but assured Hawkins he would make their stay as comfortable as possible. Assigning them sleeping quarters in the porter s lodge of the Custom House, a room that Finch considered rather 'poore lodging', he then secured them an invitation to dinner at the home of one of the richer merchants in town.

  Unfortunately what should have been a jovial meal proved to be painfully embarrassing. The merchant was none other than the owner of one of the ships that Sir Edward Michelborne had seized a couple of years earlier. Although he was gracious when he noticed their embarrassment and tactfully pointed out that 'there were thieves in all countries', Hawkins and Finch could not help but feel their mission had got off to a poor start.

  It was soon to take a turn for the worse. While the two Englishmen awaited the return of the Moghul official whose permission they sought, the Portuguese took matters into their own hands. They were most upset when they heard of Hawkins' request to set up shop in the town and, seizing an English skiff packed with crew from the Hector, they arrested the men and threatened to pack them off to Goa to be dealt with by the Portuguese Viceroy.

  Hawkins was annoyed but placed his trust in tact and diplomacy. He sent a polite but firm letter to the Portuguese commander reminding him that their two countries were at peace and asking that 'he release my men and goods, for that we were Englishmen.' The commander was in no mood to be lenient and sent Hawkins a return letter 'vilely abusing His Majesty [King James I] terming him King of Fishermen, and of an island of no import'. Worse still, he described Hawkins as 'a fart for his commission'. Hawkins exploded when he read that last insult. Labelling him a 'base villain and a traitor to his king', he immediately challenged 'the proud rascal' to a duel. The commander ignored the challenge and promptly despatched the English prisoners to Goa.

  The Hector had by now sailed for Bantam leaving Hawkins and Finch in a particularly vulnerable position, the more so when Finch fell 'extreme sick of the blody flux'.'After the departure of my ship,'wrote Hawkins,'I was so misused that it was insuferable. [I was] environed with so many enemies, who daily did nothing else but plot to murther me and cosen me of my goods.' The arrival of the Moghul official, Mukarrab Khan, did little to further his cause. Proud, arrogant and avaricious, Mukarrab had originally entered the emperor's servi
ce as court physician, only to be elevated to the governorship after curing the Emperor of a particularly nasty disorder. With the lucrative port of Surat now under his control, he proceeded to milk any arriving trader. Hawkins was not exempt from this policy - Mukarrab impounded the Company's wares, pocketed the choicest articles that had been brought ashore, and listened attentively to the lies and deceits told him by the Portuguese. 'He outwardly disembled and flattered with me almost three moneths,' wrote Hawkins, 'feeding me with faire promises and kindnesses. In the meantime he came to my house three times, sweeping me cleane of all things that were good so that when he saw that I had no more good things left, he likewise by little and little degraded me of his good looks.'

  With enemies in every camp the two Englishmen were now in the gravest of dangers. 'I could not peep out of doors for fear of the Portugals,' records Hawkins, 'who in troops lay lurking in by-ways to give me assault to murder me.' Soon, they chose more direct action. Learning that the English captain had been invited to dinner with a friendly Moghul official they hatched a plot to murder him. While a company of Portuguese troops fanned out along the shoreline, three soldiers bristling with weapons stormed the marquee. Hawkins reacted quickly, grabbing his musket and stopping them in their tracks. The Moghul official then shouted to his followers and the Portuguese, suddenly outgunned, fled from the scene.

  It was not long before they tried again. A band of forty men, egged on by Portuguese monks, tried to storm Hawkins' home, 'but I was always wary, having a strong house with good doores'.The man engineering the attacks was a Jesuit priest called Father Peneiro. Fanatically anti- English and a close friend of 'the dogge Mocreb [Mukarrab]' he did everything he could to whip up hatred against Hawkins and Finch throughout their stay in India.

  By February 1609, Hawkins realised he would achieve nothing by staying in Surat and set out for Agra, the imperial capital, leaving behind a much-recovered Finch. To protect him during the ten-week journey he hired fifty Pathan horsemen, 'a people very much feared in these parts', though not so feared as to stop two more attempts on his life before he reached the capital. News of his arrival had preceded him, causing quite a stir at court. The Emperor wished to meet this curiosity immediately and 'presently charged both horsemen and footmen in many troupes, not to leave before I was found, commanding his knight marshall to accompany me with great state to the Court as an ambassador of a king ought to be'. So keen were they to bring Hawkins to his audience with the Emperor that he was scarcely given time to change into clean clothes. He was unprepared in another respect. It was well known that Jehangir expected anyone to whom he gave an audience to arrive with a large bag of presents. Paintings, toys and trinkets were his favourites, but he had a keen eye and did not take kindly to gifts of an inferior quality. Hawkins had arrived in India with half a cartload of presents but all had been stolen by 'the dogge' in Surat.

  Rummaging through his baggage for a gift, the only item he could find was a small bundle of cloth; 'a slight present,' he admitted later, 'and not esteemed'.

  Despite all the setbacks Hawkins found himself heartily welcomed by Jehangir and chatted to him for two hours in Turkish, informing him of all the problems he had faced in Surat. Despite their different stations in life, the two men struck up an instant friendship and the Emperor 'spake unto mee in the kindest manner that could be [and] with a most kind and smiling countenance'. Jehangir loved curiosities and an Englishman at his court was something truly exotic. Hawkins was given lodging and instructed to appear before the emperor every morning.

  Each day Hawkins questioned him about the possibility of opening an English factory in Surat. Each day Jehangir stalled for time and urged him to be patient until, tiring of the constant petitions, he suggested that England would be best served if Hawkins stayed at his court on a semi­-permanent basis. As an inducement he offered an annual pension of £3,200 a year, four hundred horses and the title of Inglis Khan: 'the title for a Duke'. It was a tempting offer and the captain-turned-duke weighed up the options. Eventually he agreed to stay for 'halfe a doozen yeeres', deciding it would be foolish to turn down this opportunity to 'feather my nest'.

  He now became an intimate member of the Emperor's inner circle. Not only did he take part in the ceremonial duties that accompanied the daily durbar, where he sat in the little railed enclosure reserved for the highest nobility, but he also became a regular guest at the nightly wassails that filled the inner recesses of the palace with debauched laughter. It was at one of these drinking binges that Jehangir was struck by a brilliant idea. 'He was very earnest with me to take a white maiden out of his palace' — not as a mistress, but as a wife. For a free spirit like Hawkins the idea of settling down to a life of domesticity was far from appealing but he knew that he would have to be diplomatic when refusing the Emperor's kind offer. Quick-thinking as ever, he told Jehangir he was theologically opposed to marrying a Muslim, but jested that if the Emperor found him a good Christian girl, why, he would be up the aisle in a trice. 'At which speech,' says Hawkins, 'I little thought a Christian's daughter could be found.' Nor did he realise that he had thrown down the gauntlet. It became a matter of honour for the Emperor to find Hawkins a wife and after much searching he learned of an Armenian Christian who had recently lost her father and was all alone in the world. Hawkins found himself unable to refuse. 'Therefore I took her,' he writes, 'and for want of a Minister, before Christian witnesses, I married her.' He later discovered that such a marriage was unlawful, 'upon which news I was new married again'. Surprisingly, the couple fell head over heels in love and 'for ever after I lived content and without feare, she being willing to goe where I went and live as I lived.'

  Throughout his time in Agra, Hawkins gives almost no description of the place, save to mention that it was 'one of the biggest cities in the world'. Although the Taj Mahal had yet to be built, the city was nonetheless adorned with outlandish public monuments, none of which was more beautiful than Jehangir's palace built inside the walls of Agra Fort. From here, richly caparisoned elephants would carry the imperial court up into the hills for numerous hunting expeditions. Here, too, a steady stream of courtiers, sycophants and imperial flatterers from all over India would arrive to pay homage to the Emperor. And as word got around of the influence of the Englishman at court - and as jealousies flared — the web of intrigue grew ever more complex.

  'The Jesuits and Portugalls slept not,' recorded Hawkins with evident relish, 'but by all means sought my overthrow; and to say the truth, the principal Moslems near the king were exceeding envious that a Christian should be so close unto him.' Hawkins was shrewd enough to hold his own against men like Mukarrab Khan and the Portuguese Jesuits, and this latter group received a stern warning from the emperor that if Hawkins 'died by any extraordinary casualty, they should rue for it'.

  He was fortunate to be invited to partake in the numerous daily drinking binges at court for they brought him ever closer to the Emperor. Jehangir liked to spend the greater part of every day completely drunk and was quite open about his love of alcohol, stating in his memoirs that he began to drink wine at the age of eighteen and increased his consumption day by day until it no longer intoxicated him. Then he moved on to spirits until, by the end of his life, his hand shook so much that he could no longer drink from his cup.

  The imbibing would begin as soon as the day's official business was over. Jehangir would eat his main meal of the day, then retire to his private quarters with a few of his closest friends. These invariably included Hawkins, who describes how the Emperor would drink himself into a stupor. Then, after consuming a large quantity of opium to heighten his sense of well being, he 'layeth him down to sleep, every man departing to his own home'.

  Hawkins knew that if he was ever to acquire the elusive trading privileges so desperately sought by the East India Company he needed to have a constant supply of novelties and trinkets to present to the Emperor. He wrote several letters to London urging them to send high-quality presents, a call
that repeatedly fell on deaf ears. Several times the directors sent paintings of inferior quality and letters had to be despatched to London warning them 'to be very wary what they send'. In the end Jehangir took matters into his own hands, writing a list of his favourite presents which included 'any figures of beasts, birds, or other similes made of glass, or hard plaster, or silver, brass, wood, iron, stone or ivory'.

  It was the expectation of more gifts that at long last led Jehangir to grant Hawkins his request for an English factory in Surat. Learning of the imminent arrival of the Ascension, he gave his approval for the establishment of an English trading base and allowed Hawkins to send a message to William Finch with the good news. Finch was most impressed with Hawkins' work and was duly deferential in his reply, addressing him as 'my Lord' and 'my Worship', rather than 'the captain'.