Sir William Monson states that the shipping of the port of London had so augmented during the first fifteen years of the reign of Charles I. that it was now able to supply a hundred sail of stout vessels capable of being converted into men-of-war; while ten large ships had during that period been added to the effective force of the Royal Navy; but that, so far as regards the East India Company, there was no improvement. Their commanders in the Indian seas had still to fight their way harassed and outraged by the Dutch and the Portuguese at every point. Whatever may have been the state of the relations of the sovereigns of the various European subjects who trafficked in India, it was the proverb of the sailors of those days, “that there was no peace beyond the line.” Sanguinary encounters were constantly taking place, and the trade of the English to India at the period to which we refer had become so precarious that the most enterprising of her capitalists could hardly be induced to embark in it. Even in 1646, when the Company obtained possession of Madras,[168] which for a long period was the chief seat of their commerce and power, only 105,000_l._ was subscribed for the new stock rendered necessary by this acquisition. It was feared that the Company would not, in their commercial operations, be able to contend successfully with the formidable Dutch and Portuguese monopolies which had been established in the East, and, though Portugal and Spain were then beginning to decline from the exalted position they had so long held, Holland, in possession of public liberty and a wise system of commerce, was in the zenith of her commercial and maritime greatness, and proved a rival whom the most enterprising of English merchants might well hesitate to encounter. [Sidenote: Decline of the Portuguese power in India.] But by this time the rapacious extortions of the Portuguese, combined with their cruelties, had so excited the natives of India against them, that there was great rejoicing when the overwhelming naval power of the Dutch dealt a fatal blow to their ascendency in the East. When, however, the Dutch power predominated, the people of India, in shaking off the yoke of their former tyrants, found that they had only changed their oppressors. In 1638 the Dutch expelled the Portuguese from the trade of Japan, and in 1656 Ceylon was surrendered to them. Their settlements at the Cape of Good Hope formed from an early period a convenient point whence they could direct their shipping eastwards; and the most common vessels they then employed in the trade (as may be seen from the imperfect sketch on next page) were so much in advance of even the best vessels then in the service of the English East India Company, that it is not, for these and other reasons, surprising that the Company should have had considerable difficulties in competing successfully with the Dutch, and at times in raising capital sufficient for their purposes. [Illustration]