In the preceding chapter, we have seen the constantly increasing importance of porcelain in the Dutch home. In England there was quite as great a demand for this ware among the wealthy classes; but the London East India Company could not supply the demand, and the reason is not far to seek. The Dutch were more energetic, or, at least, more successful in ousting and supplanting the Portuguese, and the Stores of the Indies in Amsterdam became recognized as the headquarters of distribution of Oriental ceramics. In all probability, the English company was not able to import wares of such superior quality as were the Dutch. The Dutch made themselves masters in the Eastern Seas, and British trade had a hard uphill fight there for a century and a half. The Dutch carried things with a very high hand, and the laws of neither God nor man were respected on the course of Vanderdecken from Cape Verde to Japan. The massacre of a few inoffensive English traders at Amboyna aroused quite a coolness in England towards Holland, and caused a good deal of embarrassment to the Government early in the reign of Charles I, which was too busy with home affairs to insist on reparation. However, the Dutch were only carrying on the traditions of “the spacious times of great Elizabeth,” when the methods of the great navigators were frankly piratical. England became well acquainted with Eastern wares when Hawkins, Drake, or Cumberland sailed into Plymouth with the rich freight of Portuguese carracks which they had waylaid around the Azores. The Dutch love of porcelain was very real: it appears in many a diary, letter and anecdote. In every home, the humble rectory and the house of the rich burgher-master alike, the same desire to own porcelain is found. When one Pastor Arnold Moonen was asked how much he would charge for his translation of Cicero’s _Epistolæ ad familiares_, he answered: “_Mijnheer! Ik mij in geenen staet bevindende om iet voor mijnen arbeit te kunnen eischen, als diergelijken handel ongewoon, zal enelijk van UEd. verzoeke te voldoen, de raet van die vrouwe volgen, die de Heer mij tot een hulpe gegeven heeft. Deze eischt van mij een nooteboomen kabinet met een stelsel in porselein, als zijn toebehooren, om daarop te setten, zoo als de vrinden kunnen goetvinden._” (“Sir! not being in a position to charge anything for my labour, as this is not an habitual thing, I should take heed of my wife, whom the Lord hath given me for a helpmate. She wishes to possess a nutwood cabinet with a set of porcelain to go with it, and to place ornaments on the top, if the consistory will grant this!”) Such a set of porcelain as the good lady required to decorate the top and fill the shelves within, cost at that time as much as 300 double ducats (equal to about £136); but the ladies of that period had desires for fine furniture, dress and fashion that their husbands were often unable to gratify.