The Company had been popularly considered as a Whig body. Among the members of the directing committee had been found some of the most vehement exclusionists in the City, that is to say, those who had voted for the exclusion of James, Duke of York, from any claim to the crown of England on the decease of Charles II. This was an affront James was not likely to forget and forgive. Indeed two of them, Sir Samuel Barnardiston and Thomas Papillon, drew on themselves a severe persecution by their zeal against Popery and arbitrary power. The wonderful prosperity of the Company had excited, as already intimated, the envy of the merchants in London and Bristol; moreover, the people suffered from the monopoly being in the hands of a few stockholders, who controlled the market. The Company was fiercely attacked from without at the same time that it was distracted by internal dissensions. Captain Keigwin now called upon the inhabitants of Bombay to take an oath of allegiance to the Crown, and to renounce the Company and submission to its commands. With this the whole of the garrison, militia and inhabitants, complied; the troops from expectation of relief from the grievances of which they had complained, and the inhabitants from anticipating relief from taxation. Captain Keigwin and his associates then addressed a letter to His Majesty and to the Duke of York, expressing their determination to maintain the island for the King till his pleasure should be known, and enumerating the causes which had impelled them to revolt--the principal being to prevent Bombay from being seized by the Siddee, or Admiral of the Mogul, who with a numerous fleet was lying near, or else by the Sambhajee, the Mahratta rajah, who was watching his opportunity to descend on Bombay and annex it. Captain Keigwin and the conspirators next represented to the Court of Committee that the selfish scheme of Josiah Child in England, and of his brother John Child of Surat, had been at the bottom of the whole mischief which caused the disaffection, and added that both the garrison and inhabitants were determined to continue in allegiance to the Crown alone till the King's pleasure should be made known to them. But Keigwin was no match for the subtle and unprincipled Sir Josiah Child and his brother John. Josiah had been originally brought into the direction of the Company by Barnardiston and Papillon, and was supposed, and he allowed it to be supposed, that he was as ardent a Whig as were they. He had for years stood high in the opinion of the chiefs of the Parliamentary opposition, and had been especially obnoxious to the Duke of York.