CHAPTER XVII
The English secure a Permanent Foothold in India
Joint English and Dutch attack on Bombay—A Dutch iconoclast—Effect of the cruelties of the Inquisition at Goa on the English and the Dutch—English attack on the Portuguese at Surat—Sir William Courten's association—Acquisition by the English of territory on the Coromandel coast— Foundation of Fort St. George (Madras)—Occupation of Bombay proposed to the East India Company—Importance of the position—Bombay forms part of the dower of Charles II's Queen, Catherine of Braganza—Sir George Oxenden's mission to Western India—Royal expedition for the occupation of Bombay—Portuguese Viceroy declines to surrender the island—English troops landed at Angediva, near Goa—Bombay handed over and occupied by the English—Dutch and French opposition—The island ceded by Charles II to the East India Company—Oxenden defends the Surat factory against an attack by Sivaji—Death of Oxenden—Gerald Aungier's successful administration of Bombay—Present grandeur of the city
NOT the least singular feature of the great struggle for predominancy in the East which marked the first half of the seventeenth century, was the relations maintained between the three chief protagonists. While, as we have seen, there was a bitter enmity, verging on open warfare, between the English and the Dutch in the Eastern Archipelago, the forces of the two nations were united in opposition to the Portuguese. The alliance grew out of the Treaty of Defence, which provided that each party
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