The intercourse of England with India had as yet given little promise of the great fortunes which awaited it. It was not till the close of Elizabeth's reign, a century after Vasco de Gama had crept round the Cape of Good Hope and founded the Portuguese settlement on the Goa Coast, that an East India Company was founded in London. The trade, profitable as it was, remained small in extent; and the three early factories of the Company were only gradually acquired during the century which followed. The first, that of Madras, consisted of but six fishermen's houses beneath Fort St. George; that of Bombay was ceded by the Portuguese as part of the dowry of Catharine of Braganza; while Fort William, with the mean village which has since grown into Calcutta, owes its origin to the reign of William the Third. Each of these forts was built simply for the protection of the Company's warehouses, and guarded by a few "sepahis," sepoys, or paid native soldiers; while the clerks and traders of each establishment were under the direction of a President and a Council. One of these clerks in the middle of the eighteenth century was Robert Clive, the son of a small proprietor near Market Drayton in Shropshire, an idle daredevil of a boy whom his friends had been glad to get rid of by packing him off in the Company's service as a writer to Madras. His early days there were days of wretchedness and despair. He was poor and cut off from his fellows by the haughty shyness of his temper, weary of desk-work, and haunted by home-sickness. Twice he attempted suicide; and it was only on the failure of his second attempt that he flung down the pistol which baffled him, with a conviction that he was reserved for higher things. [Sidenote: Dupleix.]