ALLEY, Captain. A noted interloper from 1679, or perhaps from 1676, onwards; very persistent, defiant, and obnoxious to the Company.

No private traders, interfering with the Company's privileges of exclusive trade, had appeared in the field for many years after the renewal of the Charter by King Charles II in 1661. They reappeared in the latter part of next decade, and Alley was the most prominent in this renewal of “interloping” adventure. Alley's project was to load a ship at Cadiz with European wares, and to bring back Eastern produce for sale in continental markets.

I give some extracts regarding this adventurer, but I have not come upon notices of him of later date than those in Hedges. He is more than once spoken of by the Court as “the late interloper Alley”, which at first I took as indicating his death; but as the phrase occurs once in a letter quoted under Bridger (below), which is dated 1681, when we know that Alley was alive and active, this can only mean “the interloper who lately went out to India”.

Three voyages of Alley's are traced in the passages which we have observed, viz., in 1675-6; in 1679-80; and in 1682-3.