The East Indian adventures were, at length, attended by circumstances still more complex than those pertaining to the fishery business at home, or to the trading in Holland. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxxiii, p. 58; vol. cccxliii, § 19.| For, in the former, English rivalry had to be encountered, as well as Dutch rivalry. And the rivalry took such a shape as to make the carrying on of trade extremely like the carrying on of war. But, as if the care of these varied interests, in addition to all the toils and anxieties of ordinary commerce on an extraordinary scale, were all too little to occupy the mind of a man who had now reached his sixty-sixth year, we find Sir William Courten taking, just at the close of life, a new and leading part in the business of redeeming captives who had been taken by the pirates of Morocco and Algiers. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxv, § 16; vol. ccclxviii, § 82.| Nor was this merely an affair of the provision of money and the conduct of correspondence. It involved an intimate acquaintance with the circumstances and the needs of the Barbary States, being carried on, in part, on the principle of barter.
But all these far-spread activities were now fast approaching their natural close. Courten’s career had been, as a whole, wonderfully prosperous, until very near its close. Already it contained, indeed, the germ of a series of reverses, hardly less remarkable; but the growth of that germ was to depend on the as yet unseen course of public events. His ambition to ‘found a family’ had also been gratified by the marriage of his only surviving son[[40]]—William Courten, third of his name—with the Lady Katherine Egerton, daughter of John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515.| On that son and his heirs, Sir William Courten settled landed estates amounting to nearly seven thousand pounds a year.
Sir William Courten died in June, 1636. The commercial enterprises of all kinds which were in full activity at the time of his death were continued by his son, who inherited large claims, large responsibilities, and large perils. And it was of the perils that—after his succession—he had earliest experience.
The third William Courten.
Just before the father’s death, a complaint had been made to the Privy Council that certain ships which he had sent to Surat and other places had committed acts of ‘piracy near the mouth of the Red Sea.’ |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxliii, § 19.| It appeared afterwards that the ships which had given cause, or pretext, of complaint were not Courten’s ships, but the accusation entailed trouble, and was, to the heir, the beginning of troubles to come. The opposition of the East India Company to the Indian trading of ‘interlopers’ (as they were called already) was unremitting and bitter. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515, p. 38.| In June, 1637, William Courten, with a view to arm himself for the encounter, obtained from the Crown letters patent which empowered himself and his associates to trade with all parts of the East, ‘wheresoever the East India Company had not settled factories or trade before the twelfth day of December, 1635.’ One of his chief associates under the new grant was Endymion Porter, and it appears that it was partly by Porter’s influence at Court that the grant had been procured.
Renewed activity was now shown in prosecuting the Eastern trade; new and large ventures were made in it. On some occasions as many as seven well-appointed ships were sent out by Courten and his associates at one time. Instructions are still extant which were given to the chief agents, supercargoes, and factors, for the settlement of English factories at many important places where none had heretofore existed. They are marked by great sagacity and breadth of view, and, in several points, contrast advantageously with contemporary documents of a like kind.
Seizure by the Dutch of the Bona Esperanza and Henry Bonadventure in the Indian Seas.
The enterprise was pursued, as it seems, with satisfactory results until the year 1643, when, in the Straits of Malacca, two richly-laden vessels of the Courten fleet were seized by the Dutch. Subsequent proceedings show that the value of the ships and their cargoes, with the contingent losses, exceeded £150,000. Along with this severe blow came the interruptions and injuries to trade at home, which were the inevitable accompaniment of the Civil War. Soon after it, there came indications that the loss to Sir William Courten’s representatives by the misconduct of Peter Boudaen at Middleburgh would but too probably prove to be a loss without present remedy. It appears to have been established by the evidence adduced in the course of the almost interminable litigation which ensued that there was due from Boudaen to his partners a sum of £122,000; none of which, it may be added, seems ever to have been recovered. And the debt which had been contracted by James the First and his successor, though less grievous in amount, was at this time even more hopeless.
Under the pressure of such a combination of misfortunes, William Courten found himself practically and suddenly insolvent. He met some of the most pressing claims upon him by the sale of available portions of his landed property. He assigned other portions of his estates to trustees, and became himself an exile. He survived the ruin of the brilliant hopes and expectations to which he had been born about ten years; dying at Florence in the year 1655. He left, by his marriage with Lady Katherine Egerton, one son and one daughter.
William Courten, Founder of the Sloane Museum.