Honourable Company: A History of The English East India Company

by John Keay

  Unlike in the Spice Islands, in Japan there was of course no question of Europeans dictating their own terms. Here foreigners prospered or languished at the Shogun’s pleasure; they came as petitioners and they stayed on sufferance. A martial and self-sufficient state, Japan was ruled by warlords who tolerated Europeans only so long as they were an irrelevance. Hirado buzzed with rumours of distant campaigns and sacked cities while the Europeans doled out presents and paraded their wares in an atmosphere of friendship tinged with menace. Saris and his seventy-odd followers were in for a number of surprises.

  As the Clove dropped anchor some forty boats ‘some with tenne, some with fifteen oars a side’ raced forth to meet them. From one the ‘king’ (governor) of Hirado and his grandson came aboard. They were dressed in silk with long swords by their sides and ‘the forepartes of their heads were shaven to the crowne, and the rest of their hair, which was very long, was gathered together and bound up in a knot behind’. The ‘king’ was about seventy. Both seemed friendly and saluted Saris ‘after their manner which is this’:

  First…they put off their shoes (stockings they weare none), and then clapping their right hand with their left, they put them downe towards their knees, and so wagging or moving of their hands a little to and fro, they stooping steppe with small steps sideling from the party saluted, and crie ‘Augh, Augh’.

  Sadly Saris fails to mention whether he returned this salute. ‘I led them into my cabbin where I had prepared a banquet for them and a good consorte of musicke.’ Saris was fond of music and had managed to purloin a viol, flute and tabor from the Trades Increase, Henry Middleton’s ill-starred flagship that was now rotting at Bantam. Being ‘much delighted’ with the madrigals, the ‘king’ next day returned the compliment, coming aboard with four female musicians. Although ‘somewhat bashfull’ they soon recognized Saris as a connoisseur and ‘became frolicke’. ‘They were well faced, headed and footed, clear skinned and white but wanting colour which they amended by arte.’ Their hair was long and tied up ‘in a comely fashion’ and he could not but notice that beneath gowns of silk their legs were bare.

  Between these official exchanges the ship became overrun with such a multitude of visitors that it was impossible to move on deck. All, ‘boath men and women’, had produce to sell and services to offer. It was the sort of landfall sailors dreamt of and soon the entire crew would be absconding ashore. Not that Saris himself was setting much of an example. Singling out ‘divers of the better sort of women’ he enticed them into his cabin ‘where a picture of Venus hung, most lasciviously sett out’. Pin-ups and pornography were destined to cause him some embarrassment, but in this instance they were simply misunderstood. For ‘with showes of great devotion’ the ladies ‘fell down and worshipped the picture [mistaking it] for Our Ladye…whereby we perceaved them to be of the Portingall-made papists’.

  Tainting pleasure with business, Saris wrote to summon Adams, rented a house and store-room, and began to unload his cargo. Trade was far from brisk. His journal for the period, while less exercised over the catering, is taken up with a succession of disciplinary actions. The gunner’s mate, one Christopher Evans, was the worst offender, habitually staying ashore without leave and refusing to come even when summoned. ‘In most lewd fashion’ he persisted in ‘spending his time in most base bawdy places.’

  For which cause I gave order to sett him in the bilbowes [stocks] where, before the boatswain and most of the company, he did most deepelye swear to be the destruction of Jack Saris, for so it pleased him to call me.

  Fearing Evans quite capable of breaking loose and making good his threat, Saris ordered a double guard. He still broke loose and when, a month later, he was dragged reluctantly from a Hirado whorehouse, he had to be chained to the masthead, ‘the bilbowes by one of his crew having been throwne overboard’. Other commanders might have sentenced him to the lash or the near fatal ordeal of being dragged underneath the ship’s keel. Perhaps Saris, usually far from lenient, had a sneaking admiration for the incorrigible Evans whose best defence had been ‘to stand boldly in it that he was a man and would have a woman if he could get her’.

  On 29 July the long-awaited Adams at last made his appearance. Saris ordered a nine-gun salute and ‘received him in the best manner I could for his better grace’. But Adams seemed not to notice. He was more inscrutable than the Japanese. He evinced no discernible pleasure at meeting some of his long lost countrymen, and when quizzed about trading prospects, became infuriatingly vague. ‘He said it [trade] was not always alike, but sometimes better and sometimes worse, yet doubted not that we should doe as well as others and saying he would doe his best.’ He then talked, with some enthusiasm, about the delights of Japan and prepared to take his leave. This was not at all what Saris had in mind. Rooms in the house were ready for him and Mr Cocks, Saris’s senior merchant, was looking forward to showing him round the town. ‘Praying him to remember that I was alone and that I should be glad to enjoy his most acceptable company which I had long expected’, Saris prevailed on him to stay for dinner. But there was no moving him in the matter of accommodation. He had hoisted his colours – ‘a St George made of coarse cloth’ – over a run-down house on the other side of town and there he would stay, refusing entry to his fellow countrymen and not even permitting them to walk home with him, ‘which unto us was very strange’. The men of the Clove, ‘thinking that he thought them not good enoffe to walk with him’, concluded that Adams was already ‘a naturalised Japanner’.

  Dealing with such a man was never going to be easy; but in fairness to Adams it may be noted that he had far more to lose than Saris and could ill afford to identify himself too closely with the truculent crew of the Clove. As an intermediary and patron he would prove as good as his word and, two weeks later, he was ready to accompany Saris on the long journey to Yedo (Tokyo) where presents and a letter from King James must be delivered as a preliminary to any grant of trading privileges.

  The first leg of this journey was from Hirado off the island of Kyushu to Osaka on that of Honshu. They passed a mammoth junk, ‘much like Noah’s ark’, of 1000 tons (the Clove was a mere 500) and found both Fukuoka and Osaka ‘as bigge as London is within the walls’. The latter boasted ‘a marvellous large and strong castle’ with walls seven yards thick and bristling with drawbridges. Thence they continued overland, riding in palanquins with a pike-bearer jogging in front to clear the way. Shizuoka (Sampu) was even larger than Osaka, ‘as bigge as London with all the suburbs’, and Yedo larger still and of dazzling magnificence with its gilded roofs and lintels. The whole country was an eye-opener and Saris marvelled unreservedly at the roads, the people, the towns and the temples. (James I would not be impressed; on reading one of Saris’s letters he pronounced its observations ‘the loudest lies I have ever scene’.)

  By contrast the audiences with Iyeyasu and his son, the latter the Shogun but the former still the power in the land, were somewhat disappointing. The gilt basin and ewer, standard centrepieces in any Company presentation to an Eastern potentate, were received without comment; so were the assorted lengths of finest cambric, lawn, and kersey, and the ornate looking-glass. Evidently the Japanese regarded such things as nothing wonderful; they accepted them out of a sense of obligation. But trading rights were granted and Saris returned towards Hirado well pleased. He even signified his gratitude to Adams by sending presents to Mrs Adams and the children.

  It was November (1613) by the time the Yedo party put into Hirado and right glad was Richard Cocks, Saris’s second in command, to see them. ‘The honest Mr Cocks’, as Saris always called him, was an elderly and endearing figure already much attached to his vegetable garden and his pigeons. He was not cut out for authority and had made heavy weather of his stewardship. A Hirado brothel owner had threatened to kill him if he came calling for his men again, and Cocks had twice had to make official apologies for their drunken assaults on the townsfolk. Finally indiscipline had become mutiny when seven men, the womanizin
g Evans amongst them, had made off with one of the Clove’s boats; they were now said to be living it up with the ‘Portingalls’ in Nagasaki. Additionally a typhoon had demolished part of the English factory, several fires had almost consumed it, and trade was at a standstill. Even news of the privileges granted by the Shogun was making little difference. The Dutch had evidently resolved to dispose of their new rivals by undercutting them, and in effect, dumping on to the Japanese market all the woollens they could obtain.

  That, at least, was the official reason. Saris, though, thought there might be another.

  The natives were now more backward to buy than before because they saw that we ourselves were no forwarder in wearing the thing which we recommended to them. ‘For’, said they, ‘you commend your cloth unto us but you yourselves wear least thereof, the better sort of you wearing silken garments, the meaner fustians’. Wherefore I wish our nation would be more forward to use and spend this natural commoditye of our own countrey; so shal we better encourage and allure others to the entertainment and expence thereof.

  It would seem that this advice was ignored. The market for broadcloth remained sluggish and of that famous Japanese silver little found its way into the Clove’s coffers. There were, however, other reasons for the factory which Saris devoted his last few weeks to setting up. Adams still maintained that cloth would sell, if not in Kyushu and Honshu then certainly in Hokkaido, the northernmost of the islands. He also urged that from there there was a real prospect of discovering the western end of the north-west passage (i.e. in the vicinity of the Bering Strait). In this view he no doubt received some encouragement from the youngest of the Hirado factors, Richard Hudson, whose father, Henry, had perished in the search for the eastern end. To assist in this and other projected ventures, Adams was taken into the employ of the Company as second in command to ‘the honest Mr Cocks’ as Chief Factor.

  For their part, Cocks and Saris pinned their hopes on the China trade. Disappointingly the Shogun had specifically refused their request to land any goods taken from Chinese junks by force. But Chinese silks and satins were in great demand and there were other ways of obtaining them. Hirado, facing the Chinese mainland, was ideally sited for contacts with China and Cocks would soon be engaged in delicate and protracted negotiations for direct access to this forbidden market. Yet another possibility was that of trading with the fleets of Chinese junks which annually coasted the South China Sea to Siam (Thailand) via Cochin China (south Vietnam) and Cambodia. In 1614 Adams was dispatched to Siam to intercept this Chinese trade and buy local dyes and leathers; and in the same year two other Hirado factors would be sent to Cochin China. What made the first of these ventures especially attractive was the news that two English factories had just been established in Siam.

  But the future of Far Eastern trade would be of no concern to Saris himself. To take advantage of the winds the Clove sailed from Hirado on 5 December (1613) leaving Cocks and Adams to handle affairs in Japan. After some bitterness with Jourdain at Bantam over a loading of pepper, Saris continued homewards and reached Plymouth in September 1614. There, for several weeks, the Clove stayed, much to the fury of the Company’s directors who assumed that any ship which put into a Channel port must be up to no good. The interception of a letter from Saris to his brother bidding him to meet him off Gravesend with a barge added substance to these suspicions; for ‘they gave the Company great cause to suspect that Capn Saris had used very great trade for himself and proposed to convey away his goods out of the ship’. To the inevitable hue and cry that followed over Saris’s private trade were added the wrath of his crew’s womenfolk for that meanness over the rations and the indignation of all right-minded shareholders when tipped off about his ‘lascivious bookes and pictures’. Soon after his arrival in London a bonfire was lit in the courtyard of Sir Thomas Smythe’s house and, with a crowd of indignant shareholders acting as official witnesses, Saris’s entire collection of pictures and books was dumped in the flames ‘where they continewed till they burnt and turned to ashes’. The row over his personal trade lasted longer; he was never again employed by the Company.

  ii

  Like other commanders, Saris would attempt to justify his personal trade on the grounds that it was common practice. So it was and so, in spite of repeated proscriptions, it would remain. There were a few exceptions, a few men of extraordinary probity like ‘the honest Mr Cocks’ who never ventured a penny on their own account; but, as will be seen, they rarely made effective factors. It stood to reason that any man willing to gamble his life on a voyage to the Indies would think nothing of gambling his wages on a few diamonds or a sack of cloves.

  Even the Dutch Company was finding it impossible to suppress the entrepreneurial spirit of its merchants. In 1609 two Dutchmen, lately returned from the East with a handsome profit of £600, offered to invest their nest egg in the London Company. From the uncertainty over their real identities it may be assumed that the V.O.C. had refused to re-employ them and that they were keen to cover their tracks. To the directors of the London Company they were ‘Peter Floris’ and ‘Lucas Antheuniss’ and their offer was in the nature of a rather intriguing proposal.

  Evidently both men had served at Dutch establishments on the east, or Coromandel, coast of India. This was an area of considerable interest to the London Company as a principal source of those Indian cottons so beloved of the Javanese. Keeling had been instructed to call there on the Company’s Third Voyage (1607) but had failed to do so. Now Floris and Antheuniss were proposing to take up the challenge on the Company’s behalf and open trade not only on the Coromandel coast but also in the Gulf of Siam. They asked no wages, they would venture their own £600 towards the capital, and they would be happy with a share of the returns which they confidently predicted at 300 per cent.

  After due consideration and some careful vetting of the Dutchmen’s characters, their proposal was accepted by the Court of Committees. A subscription book was opened and a single ship, the Globe of about 300 tons, was made ready. She sailed, the Company’s Seventh Voyage, in January 1611 (so three months ahead of Saris).

  Apart from its casual inception the voyage of the Globe was unusual in that it afforded clear evidence of the Company’s interest in Asia’s internal carrying trade. The original proposal envisaged an absence of four years during which the ship would ply back and forth between the Coromandel coast, Bantam and Siam. In the event some of this shuttling had to be curtailed; but the Globe would still be away some four and a half years and for most of that time would be carrying, or awaiting, cargoes that were never intended for European consumption. The two Dutchmen knew the eastern markets and the trading seasons and they had done their sums carefully. While English commanders like Saris or the Middletons were making speculative calls and optimistic assessments at any port that would entertain them, Floris and Antheuniss had a definite plan of investment.

  The total subscription for the voyage came to some £15,000 of which perhaps £7,000 was available as trading capital (after equipping and provisioning the ship). Most of this sum was in pieces of eight. By repeatedly investing them in Indian cottons and then reinvesting them in Thai and Chinese products, and eventually buying pepper and Chinese silks for the homeward voyage, they aimed to raise the value of their trading stock to over £45,000, thus giving the desired return of 300 per cent on the original £15,000. Other voyages of the period operated on a similar cumulative principle; but in this case because there was only one ship, because its commanders had a high stake in its success, and because they were in no position to engage in any political posturing, the bare commercial realities are more pronounced. It is significant that the Court of Committees when faced with such a juicy proposal allowed no reservations about the proposers’ nationality to cloud their judgement.

  With all possible speed the Globe made straight for the Bay of Bengal. By late August 1611 its factors were ashore at Petapoli and Masulipatnam, ports within the independent kingdom of Golconda (later Hyderab
ad, now Andhra Pradesh) at which the Dutch were already established. Cottons suitable for the eastern market were ordered and monies advanced to the weavers and dyers. There was the usual wrangling over customs dues but by February they had acquired a good loading ‘without having made any penny in bad dettes or leaving any remnants behind us on shoare’. Profits on the sale of their few English exports had more than covered all duties and gifts, and ‘having yett a good monsoon to performe our voyage’ Floris was pleased to report that ‘our estate is att this present in verye good being’.

  In April 1612 they called at Bantam and landed part of their Indian cargo plus a factor who was to sell the cottons and buy pepper whenever the markets were favourable. The Globe then sailed north and thereafter matters went less smoothly. The plan had been for a quick turn-round in Siam so that the ship could catch the south-east monsoon back to India at the end of the year. This proved over-optimistic, and the Globe was to remain in the Gulf of Siam until the autumn of the following year, 1613.

  Floris and Antheuniss had miscalculated on three counts. The first was the attitude of their countrymen. At both Patani and Ayuthia, the two Siamese cities at which the Globe attempted to trade, Dutch factories were already in existence. Not without reason would Coen complain that the English fed off Dutch enterprise. Relations between the two nations were rapidly deteriorating and, as in Japan, the Dutch did their utmost to flood the local markets. They also agreed to exorbitant customs dues and other restrictions that might discourage their would-be competitors. Floris was frankly nonplussed. Four years earlier he had seen ‘such a vente [sale]’ at Patani that ‘it seemed the whole world had not clothings enough to provyde this place as was needful’. Now it was so ‘overcloyed’ that instead of a 400 per cent profit ‘I cannot at this present make 5 per cento’. He would happily have abandoned the Siamese trade altogether were it not for the fact that his remaining stock of Indian cottons had been specially ordered for the Siamese market and would not sell elsewhere.