Arnold Wright

“ The slow wheels of diplomacy revolving in England have ground out with many checks and much creaking that famous instrument known as the Treaty of Defence which was designed to set at rest the vexed controversies that for so long had disturbed the harmony of the representatives of the two races in the East. ”

“ The reader also will remember that torture was even practised in cases of theft on the vessels of the English East India Company. In fact the system was too general to make any specific instance a certain indication of unbridled brutality on the part of those who practised it. Still, remembering in what relation the English stood to the Dutch, recalling the age of several of them and having regard also to the source from whence the accusations against them emanated, it must be considered that these cruelties at Amboina carried with them a sense of indelible infamy. ”

“ He would not (he said) have want of people for all of them were willing. Moreover the said Price confessed he had been used voluntarily to persuade the Japanese and others, and that the Japanese to the number of twelve at the time the plot would have been acted upon, would first have murdered the guard and the governor if he was there; and then Captain Towerson and the merchants and all their people (whom he would have ordered from the factory for that purpose) would have come to the rescue. . . . They also agreed that all Dutchmen who would not agree with them should be murdered. ”

“ A placid opalescent sea washes a palm- fringed shore, from which rise lofty verdure-clad hills suffused in the violet haze of the strong tropical sun, In the waters around like satellites about a star of the first magnitude are other isles equally beautiful though not so favoured in situation. ”

“ So enormous was the strength of the position that it could have been held almost independently even without the support of the shipping that was nearly always in the roads against any enemy that could be brought against it. The actual tragedy of Amboina opened with dramatic fitness with a very simple scene. One evening as the garrison were at prayers a Japanese mercenary in the employ of the Dutch, wandering apparently aimlessly about the castle, on the ramparts came upon a young Dutch soldier acting as sentinel. ”

“ Towerson appears to have parted from his wife in India, after an abortive attempt to trade privately there, and later to have settled down as one of the Company's representatives at Bantam. When he took up his duties at Amboina he had had almost twenty years' continuous service in the East and was one of the Company's most experienced officials. The impression we gather of him from the records is that of an easy-going free-living Englishman who was not at all of the material of which dangerous innovators are made. ”

“ Captain Fitzherbert, who visited the place just before the occurrence, in a letter home said, "Amboina sitteth as a Queen between the Isles of Banda and the Moluccas. She b beautified with the fruits of several factories and dearly beloved of the Dutch." That sailor's impression vividly suggests the natural charms of this famous island. Over it all is the glamour of the East in its most fascinating form. ”

“ As soon as the examination of all the prisoners was complete Towerson was called in "deeply protesting his innocence." Coulson was brought to confront him and there was a painful moment of silence. At length on being told that he would be taken to the torture again if he did not speak Coulson "coldly re-affirmed" his confession. Griggs and Fardo were next ushered in. A dramatic scene followed. Towerson "seriously charged them as they should answer at the dreadful day of Judgment they should speak nothing but the truth. ”

“ But that he bore no malice—that he even had no feeling of actual antagonism to his rivals is shown by a request he preferred to his superiors at Batavia that they should recognize the good offices of the Dutch Governor, Herman Van Speult, in providing the English with a house to reside in at Amboina, by making him a present. This suggestion, put forward as late as the closing days of 1622, came to nothing because the English Council thought that Towerson had made too much of the "dissembled friendship "of Van Speult who was designated "a subtle man." ”

“ Once more the terrors of the torture chamber were exposed. Then, unable to bear the situation longer he declared that the English were his accomplices and that he had acted at the direct instigation of another Japanese, Cevice Michick by name, who had originally been in the pay of the English Company, but was now in the Dutch service.
"I was extremely surprised when I heard of this conspiracy," wrote Van Speult in his dispatch dealing with the episode. Well he might have been. The Japanese were an insignificant element of the population ”

“ Price is described in the records as a "Chirurgeon," and presumably was a man of education though evidently not of exalted morals. The council had him brought before them to see what light he could throw upon this conspiracy which had been so providentially brought to light.
Price, dragged forth from his dungeon possibly with the effects of alcoholic excess still upon him, cut a poor figure. He "after little or no torture," to adopt the curious phraseology of the Dutch record, "instantly confessed, saying that on New Year's Day (their style) Captain Towerson had called them together, viz. ”

“ The version given of them is the English one, but there is no reason to doubt its substantial accuracy. Though afterwards Van Speult and his associates challenged the truth of the allegations that the confessions were extorted by torture they admitted that torture was used in a minor degree and the circumstance, in modern eyes at least, will be held to vitiate the whole proceedings more especially as even in the Dutch records there is not a scintilla of direct evidence, apart from the confessions, to bring guilt home to the prisoners. ”

“ The only possible way in which such a scheme could have been made feasible was by the association of a wide reaching native rebellion with the conspiracy, and even then it would have been a most desperate venture.
Dutch fears, however, saw in the concocted nonsense a full confirmation of their own excited imaginings. Orders were forthwith issued for the apprehension of the whole of the English within the jurisdiction of the Government. Towerson was first seized at the English factory and kept a prisoner there. The other members of the staff, John Beomont, Edward Collings, Emanuel Thomson, Wm. ”