gether without foundation.
It is certain that one of the most pertinacious enemies of the Childs
went up to the Court of Aurengzebe, took his station at the palace gate,
stopped the Great King who was in the act of mounting on horseback, and,
lifting a petition high in the air, demanded justice in the name of the
common God of Christians and Mussulmans. [169] Whether Aurengzebe paid
much attention to the charges brought by infidel Franks against each
other may be doubted. But it is certain that a complete rupture took
place between his deputies and the servants of the Company. On the
sea the ships of his subjects were seized by the English. On land the
English settlements were taken and plundered. The trade was suspended;
and, though great annual dividends were still paid in London, they were
no longer paid out of annual profits.

Just at this conjuncture, while every Indiaman that arrived in the
Thames was bringing unwelcome news from the East, all the politics of
Sir Josiah were utterly confounded by the Revolution. He had flattered
himself that he had secured the body of which he was the chief against
the machinations of interlopers, by uniting it closely with the
strongest government that had existed within his memory. That government
had fallen; and whatever had leaned on the ruined fabric began to
totter. The bribes had been thrown away. The connections which had been
the strength and boast of the corporation were now its weakness and its
shame. The King who had been one of its members was an exile. The
judge by whom all its most exorbitant pretensions had been pronounced
legitimate was a prisoner. All the old enemies of the Company,
reinforced by those great Whig merchants whom Child had expelled from
the direction, demanded justice and vengeance from the Whig House of
Commons, which had just placed William and Mary on the throne. No voice
was louder in accusation than that of Papillon, who had, some years
before, been more zealous for the charter than any man in London. [170]
The Commons censured in severe terms the persons who had inflicted death
by martial law at Saint Helena, and even resolved that some of those
offenders should be excluded from the Act of Indemnity. [171] The great
question, how the trade with the East should for the future be carried
on, was referred to a Committee. The report was to have been made on
the twenty-seventh of January 1690; but on that very day the Parliament
ceased to exist.