1667, handed over Bombay to the East India Company as the surest means of ridding himself of a troublesome and somewhat expensive appanage. On September 21, in the same year the formal transfer took place with some little ceremony, one of the features of the programme being the exchange of the soldiers from the King's to the Company's service.
Oxenden's skilful hand is to be discovered in all the devious negotiations which led up to this consummation of the long cherished hope of founding a settlement on the Western Coast of India. At Surat in the years which succeeded his arrival he had completely restored the tarnished English prestige by a bold and judicious policy. Fortune put in his way a happy opportunity of bringing the English once more into favour at the Mogul Court. In 1663 Sivaji, the renowned Mahratta leader, who was soon to create a power which was to shake the Mogul Empire to its foundations, conceived the idea of raiding the port of Surat whose wealth offered a tempting bait to his adventurous mind. With four thousand of his famous light horsemen he descended like a flood on the Western India port. The governor promptly shut himself up in his castle and the inhabitants fled in terror to the wilds. Only a little handful of Englishmen under Oxenden and a few Dutchmen remained to stem the devastating torrent. So bold a front was presented by these sturdy defenders that Sivaji's men not only spared the foreign factories, but left intact a greater part of the town—for them an extraordinary act of restraint. Aurungzebe, who at this time was on the Imperial throne, regarded the action of the Englishmen with such satisfaction that he granted the East India Company new privileges, and issued an edict exempting all
