to thank King James for the part he had taken in bringing the Synod of Dort to a successful termination of its labours, but in reality to settle several threatening trade disputes.  Almost the only result of the prolonged conferences was an agreement (June 2, 1619) by which the East India Companies were for twenty years to be virtually amalgamated.  The English were to have half the pepper crop in Java and one-third of the spices in the Moluccas, Amboina and the Banda islands.  Forts and posts were to remain in their present hands, but there was to be a joint council for defence, four members from each company, the president to be appointed alternately month by month.  Such a scheme was a paper scheme, devised by those who had no personal acquaintance with the actual situation.  There was no similarity between a great military and naval organisation like the Dutch Company and a body of traders like the English, whose capital was small, and who were entirely dependent on the political vagaries of an impecunious sovereign, whose dearest wish at the time was to cultivate close relations with the very power in defiance of whose prohibition the East India Company’s trade was carried on.  The agreement received indeed a fresh sanction at another conference held in London (1622-23), but it never was a working arrangement.  The bitter ill-feeling that had arisen between the Dutch and English traders was not to be allayed by the diplomatic subterfuge of crying peace when there was no peace.  Events were speedily to prove that this was so.

The trade in spices had proved the most lucrative of all, and measures had been taken to prevent any undue lowering of the price by a glut in the market.  The quantity of spices grown was carefully regulated, suitable spots being selected, and the trees elsewhere destroyed.  Thus cloves were specially cultivated at Amboina; nutmegs in the Banda islands.  Into this strictly guarded monopoly, from which the English had been expelled by the energy of Koen, they were now by the new treaty to be admitted to a share.

It was only with difficulty that the Dutch were induced to acquiesce sullenly in the presence of the intruders.  A fatal collision took place almost immediately after the convention between the Companies, about the trade in the spice islands, had been renewed in London, 1622-3.

In 1623 Koen was succeeded, as governor-general, by Pieter Carpentier, whose name is still perpetuated by the Gulf of Carpentaria on the north of Australia.  At this time of transition the Governor of Amboina, Van Speult, professed to have discovered a conspiracy of the English settlers, headed by Gabriel Towerson, to make themselves masters of the Dutch fort.  Eighteen Englishmen were seized, and though there was no evidence against them, except what was extorted by torture and afterwards solemnly denied, twelve, including Towerson, were executed.  Carpentier admitted that the proceedings were irregular, and they