He married his daughter to the eldest son of the Duke of Beaufort, and paid down with her a portion of fifty thousand pounds.

[161] But this wonderful prosperity was not uninterrupted.

Towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second the Company began to be fiercely attacked from without, and to be at the same time distracted by internal dissensions.

The profits of the Indian trade were so tempting, that private adventurers had often, in defiance of the royal charter, fitted out ships for the Eastern seas.

But the competition of these interlopers did not become really formidable till the year 1680.