Twice the Crown broke faith with them, and granted charters to rival associations.

As the stability of the Company became assured, the conduct of its servants improved.
It is not intended in these pages to give an exhaustive account of all the pirates who haunted the Indian seas, but to present some idea of the perils that beset the Indian trade--perils that have so entirely passed away that their existence is forgotten.
Scattered among the monotonous records of the Company's trade are many touches of human interest.

Along with the details relating to sugar, pepper, and shipping, personal matters affecting the Company's servants are set down; treating of their quarrels, their debts, and, too often, of their misconduct, as ordinary incidents in the general course of administration.

At times a bright light is turned on some individual, who relapses into obscurity and is heard of no more, while the names of others emerge again and again, like a coloured thread woven in the canvas; showing how much romance there was in the lives of the early traders.

One such thread I have followed in the account of Mrs.Gyfford, from her first arrival in India till her final disappearance in the Court of Chancery, showing the vicissitudes and dangers to which an Englishwoman in India was exposed two hundred years ago.
To Mr.William Foster, of the India Office, I am especially indebted for aid in directing my attention to old documents that would otherwise have escaped notice, and who has generously placed at my disposal some of the results of his own researches into the history of the Company in the seventeenth century, as yet unpublished.
My thanks are also due to Sir Ernest Robinson for permitting me to use his picture of an engagement with Mahratta ships, as a frontispiece.
J.B.
CONTENTS CHAPTER I RISE OF EUROPEAN PIRACY IN THE EAST Portuguese pirates--Vincente Sodre--Dutch pirates--Royal filibustering--Endymion Porter's venture--The Courten Association--The Indian Red Sea fleet--John Hand--Odium excited against the English in Surat--The _Caesar_ attacked by French pirates--Danish depredations--West Indian pirates--Ovington's narrative--Interlopers and permission ships--Embargo placed on English trade--Rovers trapped at Mungrole--John Steel--Every seizes the _Charles the Second_ and turns pirate--His letter to English commanders--The Madagascar settlements--Libertatia--Fate of Sawbridge--Capture of the _Gunj Suwaie_--Immense booty--Danger of the English at Surat--Bombay threatened--Friendly behaviour of the Surat Governor--Embargo on European trade--Every sails for America--His reputed end--Great increase of piracy--Mutiny of the _Mocha_ and _Josiah_ crews--Culliford in the _Resolution_--The _London_ seized by Imaum of Muscat..