Thomas Sandys (merchant)
Thomas Sandys was an English merchant.
Sandys traded in India, returning with a shipload of cloth which arrived in the English Channel in January 1682. When the ship sailed up the River Thames, officials of the East India Company, which held a monopoly on trading in the East Indies, seized the ship and attempted to levy a fine. Sandys was the respondent in the resulting legal case, East India Company v. Sandys, heard in 1683. Lord Chief Justice Lord Jeffreys ruled for the East India Company, citing the Statute of Monopolies of 1624 and finding that, as the interloping merchants had never been possession of the East India trade, they had suffered no loss of freedom or restraint of liberty. He thus upheld the East India Company charter, and the royal prerogative over foreign trade.
