Edward Michelborne

Indulging in piracy as well as seeking out trade, his activities upset the EIC who complained to the Privy Council about his interloping, following his return to England in 1606.

[2] Nevertheless, the East India Company thought it a favourable opportunity to get rid of him, particularly as he had failed to pay the subscription owing for the first voyage.

As a result, on 6 July 1601 the EIC resolved that he was 'disfranchised out of the freedom and privileges of the fellowship, and utterly disabled from taking any benefit or profit thereby'.

[3] Meanwhile, by 1603, King James I, anxious to capture the spice trade, was concerned that since the original granting of the EIC charter only two voyages had been made out of what should have been six.

[5] At Bantam, between 28 October and 2 November 1605, he put a summary check on the ambitions of the Dutch, but the service which he thus rendered the English merchants was more than counterbalanced by his plundering a richly laden China ship on her way to Java.

[7] The sad death of Davis, the representations of the merchants, and the improbability of further gain, led to his return to England, where he arrived on 9 July 1606.

[4] Three years after Michelborne's departure from Bantam the agent of the company still wrote of the bad effects of his voyage; the position of the English there would be very dangerous, he said, if 'any more such as he be permitted to do as he did'.

[9] In his will, dated 22 March 1609 he left a total of £55 to the poor of the Sussex parishes of Clayton, Penshurst and Lickfold, Lodsworth.