who harassed the position of the English by levying duties, and impeding the passage of supplies, while they gave asylum to deserters and runaways of all kinds.  By the treaty, toleration for the exercise of the Roman Catholic religion had been secured; and there had remained in Bombay a large establishment of Franciscan friars, who made no efforts to conceal their hostility to the Company’s government.  In addition to other treacherous acts, Boone had to complain of the friars tampering with his soldiers and slaves, and encouraging them to desert.  In order to put an end to the evil, he banished all the Portuguese friars, and installed in their place an Italian bishop and some Italian Carmelite friars.  This was held by the Goa authorities to be an infringement of the rights of the King of Portugal.  In retaliation, all Roman Catholics in Bombay were forbidden to recognize the authority of the Italian bishop and friars, and the Portuguese General of the North was ordered to prohibit all intercourse with Bombay, and to inflict the severest penalties on all persons attempting to go there or to leave it.

“Those who are captured shall be whipped and put in the galleys for five years, and, if of noble birth, they shall pay the sum of one thousand xeraphims in lieu of working in the galleys, and shall be transported for five years to the fortress of Diu."[1]

It seemed as if Boone was to have a Portuguese war added to his other troubles.  Fortunately, more moderate counsels prevailed, and, in September, a conciliatory letter was written to Boone by the Viceroy, announcing his approaching departure.  A few days later, the new Viceroy, Francisco Jose de Sampaio e Castro, arrived in Goa.  While the quarrel was in progress, a native ship from Surat, bound for Jeddah, was captured off Bassein by a European pirate ship.  This was probably England’s ship, Victory, of which we shall hear more directly.  The ship and cargo, valued at twelve lakhs, were carried off, and the passengers and crew put ashore at Malabar Hill.

A month later, Boone received intelligence of a serious loss to the Company’s trade from the Madagascar pirates.  On the 7th August, the Greenwich, Captain Kirby, and the Cassandra, Captain James Macrae, bringing the usual yearly investment for Bombay and Surat, were in Johanna roads, engaged in watering.  At anchor, near them, was an Ostend ship that had called for the same purpose.  A few days before, they had received intelligence that a French pirate, Oliver la Bouche,[2] had run on a reef off Mayotta, and lost his ship, and was engaged in building a new one.  Thinking that the opportunity of catching the pirates at a disadvantage should not be lost, Macrae and Kirby agreed to go in search of them and attack them.  They had just completed their arrangements when two strange sails hove in sight.  They proved to be the Victory, a French-built ship of forty-six guns, commanded by the well-known pirate, Edward England,