Extracts from
"Madras in the Olden Time", vol. I., 1639-1702
by James Talboys Wheeler, pub. 1861
Chapters 1-3 only
Update: 7 June 2015
Governors of the Madras Presidency
| 1661 | Sir Edward Winter appointed
Imprisoned Mr. Foxcroft 1665-1668, governed in his stead; subsequently recalled | |
| 1665 | Mr. Foxcroft apointed
Imprisoned 3 years, released, served 1 year; recalled | |
| 1670-1677 | Sir William Langhorn; recalled | |
| 1677-1681 | Mr. Streynsham Master; recalled | |
| 1681-1687 | Mr. William Gyfford; recalled | |
| 1687-1692 | Mr. Elihu Yale | |
| 1692-1698 | Mr. Nathaniel Higginson | |
| 1698-1702 | Mr. Thomas Pitt |
Chapter I.
The Founding of Fort St. George.
Old Madras! What a multitude of associations are called up by the simple words; what curious pictures of the past flash before our eyes. Those who are old themselves will recall the days of their youth; the good old times of Elliot, of Munro, or of Lushington, when Hotels and Clubs were not, but when boundless hospitality, aristocratic exclusiveness, choice scandal, and occasional duels were the order of the day. But our present object would rather be to recall Madras in an age long antecedent to these comparatively tranquil times. We would endeavour to picture Madras as it was some two centuries ago; when Members of Council rode about in bullock bandies, and the guards of the President were armed with bows and arrows, swords and shields; when gentlemen wore large hose, "peasecod bellied" doublets, preposterous breeehes, and hats with conical crowns and bunches of feathers; when the ladies, very few in number, wore long waisted stomachers and powerfully starched ruffs; when the Fort was nothing more than a fortified Factory, in which the Factors and Merchants bought and sold, gave their orders, and made their payments, just like any merchant firms of modern date; when all took their meals together, attended daily prayers, and lived like a little brotherhood, who were all kept under by a strict discipline, and who, but for the attractions of burnt wine, punch, native beauty, and occasional quarrels, may be said to have lived as sober and God fearing lives in this Presidency, as were led by their brethren in Leadenhall Street or Cheapside. Whether we shall continue our task in future issues, and bring our familiar sketches of Madras down to the days of our grandfathers, will depend very much upon the degree of success which may attend our early efforts. For the present we shall content ourselves with endeavouring to paint a picture of the little Presidency, with all its hopes, joys, and fears, as it was about the time of Charles II. and his immediate successors. In a word, to furnish a few gossipping chapters upon our early Colonial life, during the first century of our settlement in Madras; a period which is full of interest, but which at present is almost a blank page in the annals of India.
Before however we begin to depict the little world within, we must endeavour to describe the great world without. Our readers need not be alarmed. Our history shall not be very formidable. We shall follow the true Macaulay method of only dwelling on what is interesting, and then striding with the speed of seven leagued boots over all that is dry and dull.
From time immemorial the rich productions of India had been eagerly desired by the civilised world. Her cottons, spices, jewels, and perfumes had been carried up the Red Sea to the Courts of Solomon, of Ahasuerus, and of the Caesars; and during the Middle Ages, many of her choicest productious were conveyed by the Venetian merchants from the ports of Egypt to the Courts of the European kings. But the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries saw a vast revolution in commercial enterprise. Spain had discovered and conquered Mexico and Peru. Portugal had discovered the route round the Cape, and opened the trade with India. For nearly a century, that is from about 1500 to 1600, the Portuguese enjoyed the monopoly of the Indian seas, and possessed rich and extensive settlements on both sides of the Indian peninsula. Indeed, not content with being merchants, they claimed to be kings; but instead of conciliating the natives, they rendered themselves hated by their haughtiness, their arrogance, their religious intolerance, and their dissolute lives. But still they continued to monopolize the trade, and all merchants from other European countries, and even shipwrecked mariners, were treated with the utmost severity, if not with cruel barbarity.
In Europe the great merchants were the Dutch. In other words they had become the great carriers of Europe, and their country had become the emporium of trade. In a former century they had obtained the products of India from the Italians; but now the rich traders of Amsterdam, proceeded every year to Lisbon to purchase spices from the Portuguese. In 1580 the Dutch threw off the yoke of Spain and formed themselves into the United Provinces. That very year the famous Don Sebastian, King of Portugal, either fell or disappeared during an expedition against the Moors. He vanished without leaving any children, and Philip II of Spain obtained the Portuguese crown. Philip was a spiteful man. He thought to punish the Dutch for their revolt, by excluding them from his dominions. This policy proved most suicidal. The Dutch, instead of being good customers, became formidable rivals; instead of purchasing Indian commodities in the Lisbon market, they pushed on bravely to the Indian seas, and soon became ruinous competitors with Philip’s Portuguese subjects for the Indian trade. They commenced with caution. They did not attempt to interfere with the Portuguese trade on the coasts of the Indian continent, but they directed their attention to that portion of the Malay Archipelago, which is known by the name of Spice Islands. In 1600 they had already erected a factory at Bantam in Java, and commenced a trade with the large island of Sumatra and the small Spice Islands. Subsequently, the factory in Java, swelled out into the great but unhealthy city of Batavia; which henceforth became the seat of the Dutch Government in the East, and the centre of their trade. Meantime the power of the Portuguese declined. The annexation to Spain proved their ruin. They received no further reinforcements from Europe, and their more enterprising rivals soon began to establish factories on the continent. In 1610 the Dutch erected the fort at Pulicat, about twenty-three miles to the northward of the place where Madras now stands. In 1660, they took Negapatam from the Portuguese. In 1663, they took Cochin in like manner. Thus they became the great merchant princes of the East, possessing important settlements both on the coast of Coromaudel and the coast of Malabar. The seventeenth century was indeed the golden period of Dutch commerce. Without any native produce to export, and without even a piece of timber fit for ship building, the foreign trade of Holland was at this period greater than that of all Europe besides.
Meantime the merchants of London had been equally yearning for a share in the riches of the Indian trade. Throughout the reign of the great Elizabeth, their longing for the gold of Ophir had been stimulated to the highest pitch by the successes of Spain and Portugal. They tried in vain to cut out new routes by the north-west and the north-east, and even attempted to open an overland trade; the successive circumnavigations of the world by Drake and Cavendish still giving additional stimulus to the spirit of enterprise. They next sent some ships round the Cape, but the experiment failed in consequence of disease and shipwreck. But soon all London was ringing with the successes of the Dutch, and the British merchant was almost mad with exasperation. At last in 1599 an association was formed under the title of "Merchant Adventurers." A fund was subscribed, and the subscribers petitioned the Virgin Queen to allow them to fit out three ships, to export bullion, and to be exempted from payment of customs for six voyages. At that very moment a peace was pending between England and Spain. The Spanish Armada had been utterly destroyed; Cadiz had been taken by Effingham and Essex; but still the English Government was anxious not to imperil the peace, giving countenance to an expedition, which might be supposed to threaten the Indian possessions of Portugal. In vain the Merchant Adventurers petitioned for an immediate warrant. The Privy Council maintained that a peace with Spain would prove more beneficial to England than even the Indian trade. But the ardour of the Merchent Adventurers could not brook delay. They presented another Memorial in which they enumerated first all the Indian settlements belonging to Spain and Portugal; and secondly, all the kingdoms and islands which were wholly out of their dominions; and they concluded by challenging the Spanish Commissioners to show any just and lawful reasons why Her Majesty, and all other Christian princes and states, should be barred from the Indian seas, and from the dominions of so many free potentates in which neither Spain nor Portugal possessed the shadow of authority. The memorial was referred to the celebrated Sir Foulkes Greville, who returned another long and curious report on the limits of the Portuguese jurisdiction in the East Indies. The royal consent to the project of the Adventurers was then freely granted. The Association entrusted the management of the business to twenty-four Directors; and on the 23rd September 1600, the first Court of Directors of the East India Association was held at "Founder’s Hall."
The geographical information furnished by the Merchant Adventurers and Sir Foulkes Greville, is very interesting. It was derived from various authors, - Portuguese, Spamsh, Italians, Dutch, and English, - whose names are now only known to the antiquarian; and it contains a flood of information which shows how rapidly geographical science had progressed in that age of enterprise. Of course most of the marvellous stories of Sir John Mandeville were popularly believed; but still a large amount of faithful description had reached Europe, and every day the torch of truth was carried further and further into the regions of fable. As regards India, much geographical information respecting the coast of Malabar had already been published; and the maids of honour in the Court of Elizabeth, had long been giggling over the stories of a country where the ladies had as many husbands as they pleased; or else were denouncing the cruel law which compelled a beloved wife to burn herself with the body of her deceased husband.
Even the Coast of Coromandel was known. The Portuguese had already penetrated to Bengal; whilst a century before the country had been a term incognita, and the country now called Orissa was believed by many intelllgent Englishmen to be peopled by men who had horses' heads and fed on human flesh.
We are not reviewing the history of the late Company, and therefore shall content ourselves with saying, that in 1601 the first fleet set sail, not for the Indian continent, but, like the Dutch, for the Indian Archipelago. At that time the English and Dutch nations were on the best of terms, for Elizabeth had nobly supported the Dutch against Spain. Again the English did not want to come into collision with the Portuguese. Above all the cloves, nutmegs, and mace of the Molucca and Banda isles, the pepper and camphor of Sumatra, and the endless productions of Java, would furnish as valuable a cargo as any which could be carried to Europe. One little incident may be mentioned as strikingly illustrative of the character of the Adventurers that went on the voyage. The Lord Treasurer requested the Directors to employ Sir Edward Michelbourne on the expedition. But it seems that the business qualifications of gentlemen of the court are rarely appreciated by the commercial community; and the dashing gallants of the Elizabethan era, adventurous and brave as they doubtless were, appear to have enjoyed but little favour in the eyes of the trading citizens of London. Accordingly the Directors resolved on consultation, "not to employ any gentleman in any place of charge;" and they requested "that they might be allowed to sort their business with men of their own qualitye, lest the suspicion of the employment of gentlemen being taken hold uppon by the generalitie, do dryve a greate number of the Adventurers to withdraw their contributions."
We need scarcely say that the early voyages of the East India Company were very successful, realising from a hundred to two hundred per cent. on the capital expended. For the first few years, the English merchants and factors apparently lived on friendly terms with the Dutch; and this continued so long as the English were satisfied with the goods they could obtain in Sumatra and Java, and refrained from trading at the small Spice Islands, now known as the Moluccas and Bandas. These Islands, as we shall presently see, were regarded by the Dutch as their peculiar property; and they alone produced the finer spices, such as nutmegs, for which fabulous prices could be obtained in the markets at home.
Thus the English established two principal factories; one at Acheen in the Island of Sumatra, and the other at Bantam in the Island of Java. The goods they brought out consisted partly of British staples, such as cloth, lead, and tin; partly of British manufactures, such as cutlery and glass; and partly of foreign merchandise, such as quicksilver and Russian hides. In return they obtained cargoes of raw silk, indigo, pepper, cloves, and mace; articles which, together with even the more precious nutmegs, are now to be found in every cottager’s cupboard in Great Britain, but which in the days of the Stuarts and early Georges, fetched prices which would strike terror into the hearts of modern housekeepers. But a great event was at hand, no less than the establishment of an English Factory on the Indian continent. As early as 1608, the Factors in Java reported home that there was a great demand in the Islands for the cloths and calicoes manufactured on the Indian peninsula. About the same time, as we have already seen, the heavy but enterprising Dutchmen had begun to entertain the same notions. They however directed their attention more to the Coast of Coromandel, whilst the English were more attracted by the Coast of Malabar. As early as 1610 the Dutch began to build a square fort on the Pulicat lake. The English found more difiiculty in establishing themselves. The Portuguese were as yet the lords of the continental trade; but whilst they possessed settlements at St. Thomé and other spots on the Coromandel Coast as far as the mouths of the Ganges and Straits of Malacca, yet their chief trade was on the Coast of Malabar. For nearly a century, the town and fort of Goa, about halfway down the Malabar side, had been the centre of their commerce and the seat of their power. There they had led a life of intolerance and luxury, of piety and oppression. They also possessed another important settlement at the ancient town of Surat; near the top of the same coast, and about 400 miles northward of Goa, Surat, which is mentioned in the Ramayana, has been famous for its commercial wealth from time immemorial. Swarthy traders from Jerusalem and Sidon, from Memphis and Aden, from the Aegean Sea and the Persian Gulf, - had anchored in the river Taptee and crowded the narrow streets of Surat - had sunned themselves in the smiles of Surat beauty, and laid their offerings upon her idol shrines, - when Priam yet reigned in Troy, when Solomon held the sceptre of Judah from his golden throne and golden footstool, and long ere the stern old Romans had built their rocky nest on the Palatine hill. For countless ages the coasting trade had been carried on over the Erythraean; and now when the adventurous Portuguese had opened the route round the Cape, the "white faces" were bearing away the gold, the pearls, the diamonds, and the ambergnis, the silks, the cottons, the fragrant woods, and the brilliant dyes, - just as had been done by the Phoenicians of olden time. The gems which would have sparkled on the necks of Solomon’s queens, were now lighting up every court in Europe; the incense which would have been offered on the altar of Jehovah, or on the shrines of Zeus or Apollo, was now being burnt in the censers of Christendom, and stimulating the devotions of every people who acknowledged the authority of the Holy See.
In 1612 the English first obtained a settlement in Surat; but they only succeeded after some desperate conflicts with the Portuguese; just as the Portuguese themselves had fought their way against the Arab merchants, who had previously monopolised the Red Sea trade, and carried Indian goods to Alexandria for the Venetians to bear away to the west. The successes of the English over the Portuguese, excited the admiration, the respect, and even the gratitude of the Native authorities; and an imperial firman was actually obtained from the Great Mogul, authorizing the English to establish a factory on payment of a duty on all goods of 3½ per cent.
Thus the "English House," as it was called, was opened at Surat. The native Surat merchants readily bought our broadcloths, kersies, quicksilver, lead, vermillion, sword blades, knives, and looking glasses; whilst the English Factors obtained calico, cotton yarn, indigo, and drugs. The latter articles were sent home, but the calicoes and cottons were carried to Java, and exchanged with the utmost advantage for pepper and spices. At Surat the object of the English Agent was to extend the trade to the inland markets as well as to the adjoining sea ports. At Java the object was to open a trade with China, Japan, and Siam; and above all to put a foot into the little but precious Spice Islands. In both directions the English had to contend against formidable rivals. In Western India they had to encounter the hostilities and intrigues of the Portuguese. In the Islands they had to encounter the growing animosity of the Dutch. The principles of Free Trade were totally unknown. The object of one and all of the three nations of English, Dutch, and Portuguese, was to oblain and secure a monopoly of the trade in the Indian seas. But the immediate cause of the deadly quarrel between the English and Dutch was the nutmegs!
Having thus fairly landed our countrymen on the shores of India, it will be necessary to glance at the state of Hindustan at the time of our story. From time immemorial India has been a conquered country. Wave after wave of the great Tartar or Turanian races of Central Asia, have poured in from the North, bringing with them noble languages, but rites so utterly barbarous as to be almost beyond belief; - horrible institutions in which human sacrifices were offered to appease the wrath of ghosts and demons, and in which men and women herded together like cattle. The Brahmins next appeared upon the scene; a people altogether different, and belonging, not to the Tartar, or Turanian race, but to the same great Arian race, as the Greeks, the Romans, and our noble selves. These Brahmins gradually civilised the Tartar inhabitants, divided them into castes, taught them the worship of Vishnoo and Siva, and made themselves the priestly sovereigns of the country. Subsequently the priest was compelled to give way to the soldier, - the Brahmin to the Kshetrya, - and India fell under the dominion of Rajahs. Such was the state of things when the Mussulmans, - Turks and Mongols, - poured in successive eruptions over the valley of the Punjab, and at last established a throne at Delhi.
The history of the Mahommedan Empire in India is about the driest in the world. Even in the hands of a writer like Mountstuart Elphinstone, it is as heavy as lead; and until some historical romancer can be found with sufficient boldness to leave out all the wars, all the geography, and all the proper names, and confine himself to "Arabian Nights" - like stories of love adventures and court scandal, combined with a few operatic plots of murder, suicide, royal peasants, and peasant kings, - the history of Delhi will be a blank to the general reader.
Our narrative therefore shall be very brief. The first Mahommcdan conqueror who invaded India was Mahmoud the Ghaznavide. Every one who has read "Lalla Rookh" knows the story of Mahmoud, who flourished about the time of William the Conqueror:
Land of the Sun! what foot invades
Thy Pagoda and thy pillar‘d shades -
Thy cavern shrines, and Idol stones,
Thy Monarchs and their thousand Thrones!
'Tis he of Gazna - fierce in wrath
He comes, and India's diadems
Lie scatter’d in his ruinous path.
His bloodhounds he adorns with gems,
Torn from the violated necks
0f many a young and lov’d Sultana;
Maidens, within their pure Zenana,
Priests in the very fane he slaughters,
And choaks up with the glittering wrecks
0f golden shrines the sacred waters!
Mahmoud of Ghazna was thus the tyrant, who slew the youthful patriot, whose last drop of blood the Peri carried to the angel at heaven’s gate, but which, alas, proved not to be "the gift that is most dear to heaven," and therefore would not open the crystal gates of Paradise to the wandering Peri. Mahmoud was also, like a true follower of the Prophet, a great destroyer of Idols. He piously plundered the great temple of Somnaut, a feat which has been since immortalized by the proclamation of Lord Ellenborough. The story goes that he found a tremendous idol at Somnaut, which he prepared to break in pieces. The Brahmins vainly offered immense sums for the ransom of their god; he declared that he was a breaker and not a seller of idols. The deity was smashed forthwith, and an immense store of diamonds and pearls were found concealed in the belly of the idol.
But to our story of India. Successive dynasties reigned first at Ghiznee, and afterwards at Delhi; and gradually extended their conquests over Hindustan and a large part of the Dekkan. The Ghaznavide dynasty was succeeded by an Afghan dynasty; and then followed the Slave kings, the house of Khilji, and the house of Toghlak. The history of their reigns is nothing more than the annals of conquest, of disputed successions, of assassinations, of massacres, and of rebellions and their suppression. It extends over the usual period of four centuries, namely from A.D. 1000 to A.D. 1400; a period which commences with the invasions of Mahmoud, and closes with the still more terrible invasion of Timour the Tartar, and the sack, the conflagration, and massacre at Delhi. During the anarchy which attended this last event, many of the Hindoo powers in Southern India recovered their independence; but subsequently, after a lapse of a century or so, they were again overthrown by Mahommedan adventurers, and their territories formed into Mahommedan kingdoms. Two of these kingdoms are worthy of especial mention from their connection with the subsequent history of Madras; namely, the two great kingdoms of the Dekkan, - Bijapoor and Golconda. Both were established about A.D. 1500; and neither were overthrown until the reign of Aurungzebe, and about half a century after the first foundation of Fort St. George.
But we must now return to Delhi; for notwithstanding the anarchy which prevailed, and the retirement of Timour from India, the descendants of the famous Tartar were destined to hold the sceptre of India, and reign at Delhi under the title of "Great Moguls." The first monarch of this new dynasty was Baber, the son of a great-grandson of Timour; who, after a series of adventures which have stamped him the knight-errant of Asia, obtained the throne of Delhi about 1525. The last of the "Great Moguls" was the miserable wretch, who, after reaching an advanced old age in the enjoyment of the splendid bounty of the great company, treacherously gave his countenance to the great mutiny of 1857, and now expiates his offence in imprisonment at Rangoon.
The reigns of Babel, of Humayoon, and of Akbar, extended over the whole of the sixteenth century. They thus corresponded to the period of Portuguese dominion in India, - to the period of the Reformation, - and to the reigns of Henry VIII, Edward VI, Mary, and Elizabeth. The name of Akbar occupies a considerable place in Oriental history; but in the present article we only care to review such portions of Oriental history as will illustrate our own. He died whilst the English and Dutch were just beginning to quarrel over the pepper and nutmegs in Java and the Spice Islands; and he was succeeded in 1605 by his son Jehangir.
Jehangir is celebrated for his passionate attachment to the beautiful Nourmahal, the "Light of the Harem;" and the story of his loves has been duly sung by that love making Irish bard, Tom Moore:
If woman can make the worst wilderness dear,
Think, think what a heav'n she must make of Cashmere!
So felt the magnificent Son of Akbar,
When from power and pomp and the tropjoes pf war
He flew to that Valley, forgetting them all
With the light of the Haram, his young Nourmahal.
When free and uncrown’d as the Conqueror rov‘d
By the banks of that Lake, with his only belov’d,
He saw, in the wreaths she would playfully snatch
From the hedges, a glory his crown could not match,
And preferr’d in his heart the least ringlet that curl'd
Down her exquisite neck to the throne of the world.
Sir Thomas Roe was sent as an ambassador from James I to the great Jahangir; and presented his Imperial Majesty with some English bulldogs, some famous red wine, and above all with some English pictures. Our story strips off much of the sentiment which attaches to the name of the lover of Nourmahal. Jehangir was much such a hero as our own George IV. He approved mightily of the bulldogs. He drank so much of the red wine, that in the warmth of his heart he vowed that he would make no distinctions between Christians, Moors, and Jews, but that he would love them all; but then alas! it was discovered that his Majesty was crying drunk, and "sighs stole out and tears began to flow." The pictures proved less successful in pleasing his taste. He drew out a painting of a beautiful Venus leading a dark coloured Satyr by the nose; and not being familiar with classical story, he unfortunately supposed it to be a representation of himself being led by the nose by the beautiful Nourmahal. That unhappy interpretation had well nigh mined the success of Roe’s embassy; but we believe that another beaker of red wine washed away the angry suspicions of the tipsy Mogul. Moreover, the bard of Erin did not tell the whole truth of Nourmahal. Jehangir had put her husband to death in order to marry her; and this was the cause of their early estrangement, and not, as Moore represents it,
A something, light as air - a look,
A word unkind or wrongly taken.
Shah Jehan was the son and successor of the sentimental and convivial Jehangir. He constructed the famous peacock’s throne, and the splendid mausoleum of white marble decorated with mosaics, known as the Taj Mahal. His reign, which almost exactly corresponded to the reigns of Charles I and Oliver Cromwell, is chiefly remarkable for the rebellion of his sons. It terminated in the accession of the crafty Aurungzebe in 1658, the very year that Cromwell died.
Our story of the events which led to the first foundation of Madras is now drawing to a close. The settlement took place in the reign of Shah Jehan. There had been a tremendous quarrel between the Dutch and English about the nutmegs. Attempts were vainly made to arrange matters by a treaty, in which the trade and expenses in Java, and even in Pulicat, were to be alike shared. The Dutch were far the stronger, and the English were like lambs endeavouring to live in terms of amity with wolves. As early as 1620, the English had been compelled to leave Pulicat, but had managed to effect a settlement at Masulipatam. At last the quarrel reached a climax in the massacre of the English in one of the Spice Island[s]; an event which is still remembered with horror as the "massacre of Amboyna."
For many a generation afterwards the English and Dutch continued to be at deadly enmity in the East; but meantime the English managed to effect a permanent settlement on the Coromandel Coast. In 1625 the English obtained a piece of ground at Armaghaum, about forty miles to the north of Pulicat, and made it a subordinate station to Masulipatam. It was well for them that they did so; for three years afterwards they were all compelled to retire from Masulipatam to Armaghaum in consequence of the oppressions of the Native Governor. Subsequently some of them returned to Masulipatam, but still the oppressions and embarrassments went on; and it was apparent, both to the Factors out here and to the Court of Directors at home, that if a trade was to be carried on in these seas, some spot must be obtained more favourable to trade, and offering more security to the Company’s servants and property. Accordingly Mr. Francis Day, member of the Council at Masulipatam, was dispatched to examine the country in the neighbourhood of the Portuguese settlement at St. Thomé.
Mr. Day met with unexpected success. He found that though the surf was heavy and dangerous, yet that the locality was favourably situated for obtaining coast goods. Moreover he received great encouragement both from the native powers and the Portuguese. The Naick of the district promoted his views to the utmost, and procured for him a grant of land, with permission to build a fort, from the Rajah of Chandragheri; whilst the Portuguese at St. Thomé behaved to him in the most friendly manner, and offered to give him every assistance in forming the new establishment. The territory granted extended five miles along shore and one inland.
Thus was formed the first establishment in Madraspatnam in 1639, in the reign of his Majesty Charles I, and just before the breaking out of the great civil war. In the present number we have confined ourselves to sketching the circumstances which led to our first settlement in Madras, and describing the previous condition of India. In a future issue we hope to resume our story, and furnish our readers with a sketch of the early history and condition of the infant Presidency, and the nature and character of its relations with the native powers.
Chapter II.
Early Years of Fort St. George.
At last then we have alighted at old Madras. In our previous issue we carried our readers from London to the Spice Islands, and from the Spice Islands to Surat and Fort Saint George; lingering however upon our way to gossip anent the Great Moguls who reigned at Delhi. But now that we have fairly crossed the surf, we will take the opportunity, - whilst Mr. Day is building up his Fort for the protection of the Agency, - to take a rapid glance at the world around us; and above all, to tell the story of that Rajah of Chandragheri, from whom the grant of territory was originally obtained.
The present generation will not submit to much geographical detail. Otherwise we might descant lovingly on the Tamul country which extended from Comorin to Pulicat; on the Canarese country to the west; on the Telugu country to the north; and on the strange old land of Orissa, or Urya country, still further away. The history however may not be thus scurvily treated; and indeed some knowledge of it is absolutely necessary, before we can understand the peculiar position in which the little colony of our countrymen found themselves two hundred years ago.*
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* We are afraid that some of our readers will consider the present article to be rather too historical. But in the first place the sketch of Native history will be found absolutely necessary to enable us to understand the early relations of Madras with the Native powers. Secondly, no Records of any description appear to have been preserved in this Presidency to throw light upon the internal manners and mode of life during the Governments of Sir Edward Winter and Mr. Foxcroft. After the year 1670 we tread upon new ground.
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In times primeval, when the gods danced on alternate legs and gave milk to little pigs,** and when the curses of Brahmins and the prayers of sages were sufficient to overthrow the deities and convulse the spheres, - in those days a large portion of Southern India was occupied by the two old Hindoo kingdoms of Chola and Pandya, whose relative positions may be indicated by the position of their respective capitals.
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** Some of our readers may require to be informed that these are allusions to genuine Tamul legends, and that the circumstances are gravely related as amongst the sacred amusements of the gods!
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The capital of the Chola kingdom was Conjeveram; the capital of the Pandya kingdom was Madura. Both cities are still celebrated for their magnificent pagodas, in which sculptures and architecture alike exhibit the struggle of the old material religion of the Tartar races, with the more spiritual and philosophic tenets taught by the fair complexioned Brahmin. In olden time the sovereign of Pandya had sent ambassadors to the Court of Augustus Caesar; whilst the kings of Chola had ruled Tamuls and Telugus as far as the banks of the Godaveri. But when Mr. Day first landed on these shores, these two kingdoms only existed as relics of the past. Their power and dignity had been battered down by the conquering Mussulman. They had shrunk, like withered beauty, almost into nothingness; and their last hour was fast drawing nigh.
The early wars in the Dekkan between Mussulmans and Hindoos, resembled the conflict of an advancing flood against a strong head wind. Sometimes the wave of Mahomedan invasion dashed on to Cape Comorin; sometimes, as its force subsided, the weakened tide was flung back to the Nerbudda river. Early in the fourteenth century, - whilst the Mussulman power at Delhi was torn to pieces by internal dissensions, and the invasion of Timour was already looming in the distance, - the famous old Hindoo family, afterwards known as the Sree Bung Rayeel, established a throne at Bijanagur in the Canarese country. Bijanagur, or "city of victory" was seated on one of the tributaries of the Kistna, and about thirty miles from Bellary. In a few years the new Hindoo kingdom became the most powerful state in Southern India. Its conquests extended over the greater part of Chola and Pandya, and thus included the country in which Madras now stands; and it was one of its later Kings, named Nursing Rajah, who erected the forts of Chandragheri and More. Whilst this Kingdom of Bijanagur was extending its dominions, a successful revolt against the imperial power at Delhi led to the establishment of an independent Mussulman dynasty in the country now called Hyderabad, known to historians as the Bahminee kings of the Dekkan. For a century and a half, the Hindoo house of Bijanagur, and the Bahminee kings of the Dekkan, were at constant war. About the end of the fifteenth century, and about the time of the first appearance of the Portuguese on the Coast of Malabar, the power of the Bahminee kings was broken up, and five independent Mussulman monarchies were erected upon the ruins. Terrible wars still continued to desolate the Dekkan; sometimes between the Mussulman kings themselves, and sometimes between the Mussulmans and the Hindoos. At last, in l564 the Mussulman kings combined to overthrow the Hindoo dynasty at Bijanagur. A great battle took place on the Kistna. The Hindoos were utterly defeated. Their brave old Rajah was taken prisoner and put to death in cold blood; and until very lately his head was still kept as a trophy at Bijapoor.
But notwithstanding this decisive overthrow, the family of the Sree Bung Rayeel was not extinct. The next heir still retained the name of Rajah; and he and his descendants were allowed to retain several districts in Jaghire for some generations. The brother of the deceased Rajah removed to the Fort of Chandragheri, about seventy miles south west of Madras; and there seems to have become Rajah of the country, and to have maintained a rule more or less nominal over the Naiks of the surrounding districts, and amongst others over the Naik of Chingleput. It was either this very brother, or else one of his descendants, that gave the grant of land to Mr. Francis Day, with permission to erect the Fort, which, in honour of the guardian Saint of England, was named Fort St. George.
A melancholy incident, illustrative of that anxious desire possessed by every Hindoo, of having his family name handed down to future ages, is connected with this grant. The old Rajah of Chandragheri, who still retained the name of Sree Bung Bayeel, had expressly stipulated that the new town, which was expected to spring up in the neighbourhood of the Fort, should be called by his name "Sreemngaraja-patanam." But before the grant had been fairly executed, another name had been given to the town, which has continued down to our own time. The Naik of Chingleput had previously intimated that the new settlement would be founded in the name of his own father, Chennapa; and the name of "Chenna-patanam," or "city of Chennapa" having been once applied to the confused assemblage of bamboo huts which sprang up near the Fort, was never afterwards superseded, and still continues to be the name by which Madras is known amongst the Natives. Meantime the poor old Rajah was fast losing his power. The petty Naiks and Poligars refused to pay him any allegiance, and even invited the advance of the Mussulman. At last, in 1646 he fled away to Mysore, and his name seems to have died gradually out of the land.
We must now return to the proceedings of Mr. Day. The grant obtained from the Rajah of Chandragheri was dated 1st March 1639; and the station was considered to be so important by the Agency at Masulipatam, that they directed Mr. Day to building the Fort at the Company’s expense, without waiting for the orders of the Court of Directors. This proceeding however was not approved at home. The first General Letter sent by the little Agency at Fort St. George to the Court of Directors, is dated 5th November 1642, and contains many arguments to show that a fort for the protection of the Carnatic trade was as necessary on the Coast of Coromandel as at Surat or Bantam; and that the Dutch had acquired a large share of the Coromandel trade entirely through the fortifications which they had erected at Pulicat. In 1644, the sum expended on the Fort amounted to £2,300; and it was computed that the expenditure of £2,000 more, and a garrison of a hundred soldiers, would render the place impregnable. But all this sort of thing was much objected to by the Court of Directors. In 1652 the garrison only consisted of twenty-six soldiers. In 1653 the Agency was raised to the rank of a Presidency, and henceforth maintained a supremacy over the Factories on the Coast of Coromandel and in Bengal. But in 1654 the new Presidency was ordered to reduce its civil establishment to two Factors, and its garrison to ten soldiers only. We know very little of the internal history of the settlement at this early time. No records have been preserved in this Presidency of an earlier date than 1670; and our information concerning Madras at this period, has been obtained from "Bruce’s Annals" and other antiquated volumes. The first President whose name is preserved and whose acts are celebrated, was Sir Edward Winter, who was appointed in February, 1661.
The Factory at Fort St. George had now been established more than twenty years. But the times were bad. Trade had been very bad at home, as well as on the Coast of Coromandel. England had been distracted by the great Civil War, between Charles and his Parliament, and business was almost at a stand still. The Company had also suffered in another way. When king Charles returned from his war against the Scots, he was in such pressing want of money, that he was compelled to resort to the most extraordinary means for obtaining it. Amongst other things he bought from the Company six hundred thousand lbs. of pepper, on credit, at two shillings and a penny per lb. amounting in all to £68,000. For this sum four bonds were given by the farmers of the customs, of which only one appears to have been ultimately paid. The pepper was sold for ready money at one shilling and eight pence per 1b.; and thus the king realised a sum of £50,000. During the Civil War, and especially during the reign of the Puritans, no articles would command a sale, excepting those of intrinsic value. Silks and pearls were an abomination in the eyes of Presbyterians and Independents; who for generations had been denouncing the luxuries of the age, with all the energy with which the Hebrew Prophets of old time denounced the chains, the bracelets, the earrings, the nose jewels, and the changeable suits of apparel of the mincing beauties of Palestine.
At Fort Saint George, the Factors had as many difficulties as the Directors at home. The Native wars were frequent and threatening. Sometimes it was the Mussulmans fighting with the Hindoos, sometimes there were terrible struggles for supremacy between the two great Mahomedsn kingdoms of the Dekkan - Bijapoor and Golconda. Madras, after the flight of the Rajah of Chandragheri, had become dependent upon the King of Golconda, and had obtained from him a cowle for the fort and town of Chennspatanam. Meantime Aurungzebe had been appointed by his father Shah Jehan to the command of the Mogul army in the Dekkan. Another terrible war ensued, which filled the country with bloodshed up to the very walls of Fort St. George. All this time the Dutch were opposing the English in every possible way. They endeavoured to drive the latter out of the market by selling cheaper and buying dearer than there was any occasion. This however would be considered fair play in these days of free trade. But the Dutch went much farther. The English having obtained possession of one of the precious little Spice Islands, the Dutch sent a number of people every year to cut down the nutmeg trees. The English coasting trade was almost stopped by the Dutch cruisers, who swarmed in the Indian seas, and who were as ready to commit acts of piracy, as to purchase native merchandise. Sad tales might be told of that time. Besides the horrible massacres at Aznboyna, in which Englishmen were subjected by the Dutch to tortures rivalling those of the Inquisition, stores and houses had been burnt down in Java, and it would almost seem that murders as well as robberies were committed, during that terrible period of commercial rivalry. The Dutch were even said to have committed piracies under the English flag against ships belonging to the native powers, and for which the English Company had themselves to pay a hundred thousand rials of eight. But in 1652, matters became even more threatening. Cromwell declared war against Holland, and the Factors in the Fort were now in imminent peril. They prayed to the Directors to increase their little garrison, and permit them to complete their fortifications; and above all to be allowed to construct a curtain towards the sea. But all to no purpose. The little Agency in Fort St. George thus felt that they were in constant danger, not only from some plundering native chief on land, but from a cannonading from the Dutch on the side facing the sea.
Meantime the English at Fort St. George and the Portuguese at St. Thomé, seem to have lived together on the best of terms; but the Portuguese had not unfrequently embroiled themselves with the natives, in consequence of their improvident zeal to make converts to the Roman Catholic faith. In 1650 the Portuguese nearly endangered the permanency of their establishments at St. Thomé. A Padre had refused to allow a Hindoo religious procession to pass his church, and a terrible uproar was the result. The English at the Fort wisely avoided interfering in the dispute; but they reported the matter to the Court of Directors at home, and expressed the following opinion upon the impracticabllity of overcoming the religious prejudices of the Natives:-
"By this you may judge of the lyon by his paw, and plainly discerne what small hopes, and how much danger we have of converting these people, that are not lyke the naket and brut Americans, but a most subtle and pollitique nation, who are so zealous in their religions, or rather superstitions, that even amongst their owne differing casts, is grounded an irreconciliable hatred, which often produceth very bloodie effects."
At the same time there was no lack of religious zeal on the part of the English, as we shall presently see; but still there was a larger amount of religious toleration than we should have expected in that age, and certainly far more than was approved by the Directors at home.
The friendship between the Portuguese and English was probably cemented by their common enmity towards the Dutch. Indeed the Dutch possessed so powerful a force in the Indian seas, that it seemed as though no nation could stand against them. They took Ceylon and excluded the Portuguese from the Island. They blockaded the Portuguese capital of Goa; they blockaded the English settlement at Bantam; and it was fully expected that if Goa fell, the Dutch would blockade the Surat river, and thus put themselves in possession of the whole of the trade on the Coast of Malabar.
In 1654, a treaty was at length concluded between the English and Dutch, known as the treaty of Westminster. Four Commissioners from each nation were appointed to adjust the rival claims for injuries received during the previous forty years. The English Company brought in a little bill of £2,700,000. But the Dutch company was fully prepared for such a contingency, and brought in a bill of nearly £3,000,000! The award of the Commissioners proved that they considered that most of the transactions upon which the accounts were based were purely mythical, or at any rate that they belonged to a mythical period. It was decided that the Dutch Company should pay to the English Company £85,000; that they should also pay £3,600 to the heirs or executors of the sufferers at Amboyna; and that all past injuries and losses should be buried in oblivion by both parties.
But whilst peaceful relations were thus concluded between the English and Dutch, the infant settlement at Madras continued to suffer from the badness of trade, the interference of interlopers, the appearance of the Mahrattas, and the bloody Civil war between the four sons of Shah John for the throne of the Great Mogul. The two latter events, and their bearings upon the condition of the Colony we shall discuss in a future number. For the present we will simply follow the history of Fort St. George.
We have already noticed the appointment of Sir Edward Winter to the Presidency of Madras in 1661. At home the whole kingdom was mad with joy and excitement at the downfall of the Commonwealth and restoration of Charles II. The reign of the puritans, - of sad coloured gentlemen, and pinched up sombre ladies, - was gone at a bound. Silks and taffeties, brilliant jewels and gay apparel, once more sparkled at Whitehall; whilst French licentiousness, worse than the most Puritanical tyranny, spread from the Court to all parts of the kingdom, and even to the colonies abroad. But meantime trade revived. Fresh consignments of bullion were dispatched to Fort St. George, and coined into Pagodas in the Fort mint; and whilst part of the money was sent to Java and Sumatra for the purchase of pepper and spices, a large proportion was sent to Bengal for the purchase of silks and muslins to set off the exuberant charms of the gay young ladies of the Court of merry king Charles.
The appointmet of Sir Edward Winter marks a new period in the history of Madras. Hitherto the Factors had been plain business men, trying to keep on good terms with every one, and especially with the Native Powers. Their principal vice appears to have been a strong tendency to trade on their own account, rather than on account of the Company. This itching for private trade Sir Edward Winter was especially called upon to put down by all the means in his power. The Factories in Bengal and on the Coast of Coromandel*** were all placed under his immediate superintendence, and were ordered to transmit to him regular accounts of their proceedings.
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*** A Factory had been established at Balasore in Orisea, by the same Mr. Day who had founded the Factory at Fort St. George. This was in 1642, but another Factory had been previously founded at Piply as early as 1635. The Factories at Masulipatam an Armaghaum have already been noticed.
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He was empowered to dismiss from the service any of the Company’s servants who should be found to have engaged in private trade, and to send them back to England. Moreover, a warrant under the Privy Seal was obtained from king Charles, authorising the new President to seize and send to England, all other persons not in the Company’s service, who had engaged in the private trade of the country, or in navigating the vessels of the country powers.
Sir Edward Winter held the government from 1661 to 1665 by right, and from 1665 to 1668 by usurpation. His name is barely mentioned by the historians of India; and the opinion which the Directors had been first led to adopt, in consequence of the representations made to them by the other members of council at Fort St. George, is also adopted without question by Mill and others, namely, that he was recalled in consequence of his being implicated in private trade. We must confess that we have arrived at a very different opinion. To us Sir Edward Winter appears to have been a brave and loyal subject of his Majesty; who had excited the enmity of his subordinates by his vigorous correction of abuses, and aroused their fears by his manly efforts to teach the Natives that Englishmen were their equals and not their slaves; but who at last fell a victim to a hot headed zeal which we may sincerely deplore, but which we must not too hastily condemn.
The whole story of Sir Edward’s administration is so illustrative of the times, as well as intrinsically interesting, that we must tell it at full length.
On his first arrival at Fort St. George, he found that the country trade was still much depressed by the constant wars in the Carnatic. On one occasion the Fort itself seems to have been beseiged, though unsuccessfully, by Neknam Khan, nabob of Golconda, or rather Commander-in-Chief of the army of Abou Hassan, king of Golconda or Hyderabad. Accordingly the new President directed his attention to improving the sea trade with Bengal, and Bantam; and at the same time proposed to retaliate on Native vessels at sea for the depredations committed by the Native powers on land. It was plain indeed that without some such strong measures the trade never could be expected to revive; and it was by such measures alone that the Dutch had been able to keep the Native powers in awe as regarded themselves. Mere remonstrances were utterly useless. Sir Edward Winter had himself represented to a Naik, that goods passing from the up-country towns to Madras were plundered by his followers; and that duties were levied by mere arbitrary will, without any regular scale. The Naik significantly replied that "when the English horns and teeth grew, then he would free them from the duties."
But the little trading body in Fort St. George refused to support the spirited policy of their President. Such open hostilities might indeed have protected the public trade of the Company, but would have sadly interfered with the nice little private speculations, without which the Coast of Coromandel was no more profitable than Tower Street or the Cheap. Accordingly they thwarted him in every way; until at last he sent home his resignation; in the expectation that his public services would have been so highly valued by the Directors, that they would have requested him to continue in the Government, and at the same time would have increased his powers. But meanwhile the other members of council had contrived to set the Court of Directors against him. They secretly charged him with private trade, and with exciting the hostility of the Native Chiefs. The latter complaint tallied with the recommendations which Sir Edward Winter had already sent home, respecting the necessity of assuming a bold front at sea. Accordingly, the resignation of the Governor was accepted, and Mr George Foxcroft was appointed to reign in his stead.
We have now to record a very curious incident in the early annals of the Presidency; but before doing so it will be necessary to glance at what seems to have been the difference between the character of the old President and the new. Sir Edward Winter appears to have been a loyal Cavalier, in those days when loyalty to Church and King was ranked as the highest virtue under heaven. Nor are we inclined to depreciate the sentiment. The single minded and generous fidelty of the gentlemen of England two centuries ago, were the salvation of the Church, and,'but for the utter faithlessness of the reigning sovereign, might have been the salvation of their king. But during the wearisome period which succeeded the struggle, the high chivalric devotion of the old Cavalier degenerated into a bitter hatred and contempt for the opposite party, and had led to a readiness to draw the sword upon hearing the slightest depreciation of the Lord’s anointed. Mr. Foxcroft, on the other hand, was evidently a plain business citizen from Leadenhall Street; and, like most of the commercial community of that day, was probably a sober God fearing man, who may have been a regular attendant at his parish Church, but who would not shut his eyes to the vulgar debaucheries that disgraced the Court of the Second Charles. It might easily have been foreseen that matters would not pass pleasantly between such a trader from the city, and such a cavalier from Whitehall; even supposing that there had been no such subject for secret exasperation as the supercesslon of the latter in the command.
Mr. Foxcroft arrived at Fort St. George in June 1665. He presented his Commission, and was received by his predecessor with respect; and Sir Edward Winter was allowed to act as second in council, until he should take his departure for England. Three months passed away, when on one memorable day, Sir Edward Winter, assisted by a few others, suddenly made an attack on Mr. Foxcroft and his son, and a Mr. Sambroke; and after a desperate conflict, in which one man was killed and several were wounded, Mr. Foxcroft, his son, and Mr. Sambroke were put into confinement, under an accusation of having uttered seditious and treasonable expressions against His Majesty’s Government. Sir Edward Winter then assumed the administration, assisted by one of the Merchants, and the Lieutenant of the troops in garrison; and, in reporting the matter home to the Court of Directors, he explained that he could bring living proofs of the disloyalty of Mr. Foxcroft, on the affidavits of the Chaplain and one of the Factors.
We have not the slightest doubt but that Mr. Foxcroft uttered some imprudent expressions, which Sir Edward Winter, carried away by his hot zeal, interpreted to signify sedition and treason of the blackest dye. But at home suspicions were excited that the accusations were not true. Sir Edward Winter was not content with merely reporting the matter to the Court of Directors, but he actually addressed letters both to the king himself, and to the Archbishop of Canterbury; declaring that loyalty to his most gracious sovereign had been his only motive for arresting and imprisoning his successor in the Presidency of Fort St. George. Moreover, he dispatched the letters direct, without allowing them to pass through the hands of his honourable masters; and without reflecting that such letters were calculated to awaken suspicions at Whitehall, that a spirit of disloyalty prevailed amongst the servants in the Company’s Factories in India.
Meantime Mr. Foxcroft applied for assistance to the Agent at the subordinate Factory at Masulipatam, and through him to the President at Surat. Both expressed themselves satisfied that he had been excluded from the Presidency of Fort St. George on a frivolous pretext; and both remonstrated with the persons who had assisted Sir Edward Winter, and assured them that the matter could only end in the Fort falling into the hands of the Mussulmans, the Dutch, or the Portuguese.
It was only natural that under these circumstances, the fears, as well as the suspicions of the Directors should be powerfully excited. The King was persuaded to interpose his authority; but still a considerable time necessarily elapsed before anything could be done. The year 1666 passed away, and Sir Edward Winter still maintained his authority, and kept Mr. Foxcroft in confinement. It was reported that he intended to deliver up the Fort to the Dutch Governor of Ceylon, and that the latter had prepared a vessel for him to make his escape. But such a report was wholly untrue; or certainly so far untrue that no thought of such disloyalty seems ever to have crossed the mind of Sir Edward Winter. Another year passed away. In 1667 the treaty of Breda was concluded with the Dutch, on the principle of the "Uti Possidetis," which was to take place on the 10th May 1668. Warlike preparations were now made at home for the recovery of the Fort of Saint George. Five ships were consigned to the Fort, equipped for war as well as for trade. The Directors seem to have made up their minds that the place had been delivered up to the Dutch, and sent general orders accordingly. If Madras had been given up before the 10th May, then the Agent at Masulipatam was to apply to the nabob of Golconda to order the place to be restored to the English; if it had been delivered up after the 10th May, then a protest was to be entered that the Dutch had refused to give it up in accordance with the treaty of Breda. If however Sir Edward Winter still continued in possession of the Fort, one or more of the Company’s ships was to stand off in the Roads, and blockade Madras so as to prevent the entrance or departure of any vessels whatever. If the blockade failed, then the Agent at Masulipatam, and the Commanders of the Company’s ships were to hold a consultation, and offer five thousand pagodas to the nabob of Golconda for the cession of St. Thomé to the Company. Supposing St. Thomé were thus obtained, they were to land ordnance and military stores, and fortify themselves in it until further instructions should arrive from England. If however all these plans proved ineffectual, and St. Thomé could not be obtained, then Fort St. George was to be abandoned altogether; and the Agent at Masulipatam, in consultation with the Commanders of the ships, was to endeavour to form a new establishment on some other part of the Coromandel Coast, at which goods suited to the Bantam and Europe markets could be obtained.
In addition to these general orders, a commission from the king was directed to the Captains of the ships, empowering them to form the soldiers and seamen into five Companies, and to train them in the use of ordnance and small arms, in order that on arriving at the Coast they might make an attack upon the Fort by sea and land. Secret instructions were also sent to promise an establishment for those soldiers and seamen who should be active in recovering the place, and a provision for the wives and families of those who might suffer in the action. Pardon and reward was also to be promised to any of the adherents of Sir Edward Winter, who would return to their duty and assist in the recovery of Fort St. George.
Meantime Sir Edward Winter continued in possession of the Fort, fully convinced that by so doing he was manifesting his loyalty towards the king. The Agent at Masulipatam sent him certain propositions founded on the King’s commission, but he treated the commission as a forgery intended to seduce him from his duty. At last on the 21st May 1668 two of the Company’s ships arrived in the Madras Roads. Mr. Proby and Mr. Locke, members of council, went on board, but were at once detained as prisoners. Mr. Proby was directed to write a letter informing Sir Edward Winter that he had seen the king’s Commission and the Company’s orders to the Commissioners; and that the Commissioners would come on shore and take possession of the Fort in His Majesty’s name. Sir Edward Winter in reply, demanded that Mr. Proby should be first set at liberty, and that personal safety and protection of property should be guaranteed. The Commissioners were only too glad to accede to these terms; and on the 22nd August they took possession of the Fort, and released Mr. Foxcroft from his three years imprisonment, and reinstated him in the Presidency.
Such was the end for the time of this extraordinary proceeding, and the expensive armament which it entailed. Imprudent language on the part of Mr. Foxcroft, and intemperatc zeal on the part of Sir Edward Winter, had thus led to a train of circumstances which are not the least interesting in the old annals of Madras. Subsequently the opinion of the Court of Directors as regarded the two men underwent a material change. Sir William Langhorne and six other Commissioners were appointed to investigate the whole of the transaction; and Mr. Foxcroft was to be allowed to continue as Agent for only one year, and then was to be succeeded by Sir William Langhorne. Mr. Foxcroft the younger was sent home; Sir Edward Winter was allowed to remain at Madras to dispose of his property and recover his debts; and the Court expressly ordered that he should be treated with every respect and allowed a passage to England. The inquiry ended in the recall of both Winter and Foxcroft, and the return of both to England about the year 1670.
Chapter III.
Madras in the Reign of Merry King Charles - A Picture.
Brightly before the imagination rises up the Fort of St. George and the straggling town of Madraspatanam, under the presidency of the Honorable Sir William Langhorne, Baronet, in the middle of the reign of merry king Charles. The same surf is rolling heavily upon the beach, and almost the same naked boatmen are labouring at the oar, amidst the deafening cling-clang of some old Tamul refrain; but only two, or perhaps three old fashioned ships, are lying in the roads, with old fashioned cannon peeping from their decks, and a still stranger old fashioned crew dropping the anchor or taking in the sails. We will suppose them to be new arrivals from England, and that all is bustle and excitement. The sun is just rising over the bay of Bengal, and flashing its early rays over the dark blue billows. Two or three sedate members of council have just taken their morning draught, according to the fashion of the time, and are being pushed off from the beach. They are arrayed in their best Sunday attire of gay doublets and enormous hose, and are endeavouring to assume courtly airs, which sit but ungainly on those rough and unpolished traders. Beside them is seated the Captain of the little garrison, in his best uniform, somewhat the worse for wear, and stained may be with spots that might have been blood, but are far some likely to have been the droppings from a flask of red wine. He too is brushed and buckled as if for parade, and carries as swaggering an air as a man may do who is being tossed and rolled about by a still Coromandel surf. All seems to betoken the arrival of some extraordinary person or personages, who must be welcomed with unusual pomp to the Factory in Fort St. George.
Such indeed we may assume to be the case on that early morning. Not only had more gold and silver ingots, woollen cloths, looking glasses, cutlery, and various other sorts of home manufactures arrived for the Factory; not only had some reckless recruits and unwieldy fire arms arrived for the Fort; not only had the second part of the works of the learned Dr. Hammond, and the fourth volume of Mr. Pool’s famous Synopsis, been sent by the honorable Directors for the use of the Chaplain and of all readers of the ponderous theological literature of that period; - but due advices had been received that certain ladies had been allowed to go out from England to Fort St. George; and such an incident in those days was well calculated to excite the liveliest emotions in the breasts of every unmarried European in the Factory, from the Apprentices who helped to sort the goods, up to the Senior Merchants who sat in the Council and determined what to buy and what to sell.
The relations of the colonists as regards the fair sex, were certainly peculiar in those odd old times. Shut out from the world of Europeans, and of course shut out from the companionship of their own fair countrywomen, excepting perhaps that of one or two hardy sun-burnt matrons, who had bravely followed their husbands to the Indies; we cannot feel surprised that our predecessors in this burning settlement, should have been often seduced, like the Israelites of old, who yielded their hearts to the women of Moab and Midian. As for the dusky beauties of the country, they seem to have been ever willing to smile on those who courted their charms. In some cases such connections were looked upon as real marriages. When Captain Hawkins carried a letter from James I. to the Great Mogul in 1609, Jehangir, who at that time reigned at Delhi, was anxious to engage his services and keep him in the country, and accordingly offered him a pension and a wife. Hawkins yielded to both temptations. Though an English ambassador he did not scruple to accept a salary; and as the imperial harem contained a large assortment of ladies, he was provided with a maiden bride, who not only took his fancy, but who succeeded in gaining his affections. (She is said to have been an Armenian Christian.) Subsequently he retired from court and fairly carried away his wife to Europe, though not without a desperate conflict with her brothers. Stories illustrative of less moral connections crowd the pages of the old travellers, who frequently tell us how, at the courts of native princes, and even at the houses of European Factors, dancers of surpassing loveliness were pressed upon their attention and invariably refused! Such stories may be partly true and partly false; but if we may only believe the tales which such travellers tell of each other rather than of themselves, we can only come to the conclusion that there were more Don Juans than Josephs in those free and easy times.
The early English settlements were peculiarly situated in this respect. The Dutch Company encouraged the matrimonial desires of their servants, and invested husbands and fathers with peculiar privileges; and to this day the effigies of many a rare old Dutch vrow may still be seen in the strange antiquated burying ground at Pulicat. The Portuguese were even more fortunate, for their king had been long in the habit of sending out small cargoes of orphan girls, well born and indifferently well portioned, to become wives to his subjects of India; and a good story is told how a Portuguese ship, with three of these maidens on board, was captured by the Dutch and carried in triumph to Surat, where the young ladies were promptly married to three of the most eminent Dutch merchants in the settlement, to the everlasting despair and desolation of the amorous Portuguese. For a long time, however, scarcely a single English lady was to be found at the English Factories; the thing was altogether discouraged by the Directors, and the result may be easily inferred:-
The heart, like a tendril, accustomed to cling,
Let it grow where it will, cannot flourish alone,
But will lean to the nearest, and loveliest thing,
It can twine with itself, and make closely its own.
Within the Fort all was outwardly fair enough, and the morals of the Apprentices and Writers were tolerably well seen after, for Sir William Langhorne was somewhat of a martinet in that direction. But still if walls had ears and tongues they might tell strange tales; and there were very many goings on in Black town which we care not to record. In the outstations, such as Masulipatam and Armaghaum, there would seem to have been no restraint whatever. Sometimes, as we have already indicated, connections were formed which were as sacred in the eyes of the parties themselves as the marriage tie could have made them. Sometimes, and there is no denying it, the household of a Factor bore a stronger resemblance to the harem of some Mussulman voluptuary than to the household of a Christian trader.
As for the soldiers of the garrison, they lived much as soldiers might be expected to do. Many of them actually married the women of the country; not indeed the poor heathen girls, but the Native Portuguese women, who were Roman Catholics. Accordingly such marriages were celebrated by the Portuguese padres; and in process of time, marriages, baptisms and buryings were conducted by the same priesthood, and the children were educated in the Roman Catholic religion. Those who are familiar with the history of the seventeenth century, are well aware of the suspicious enmity which was then felt by every Protestant communion towards the Roman Catholic body. The discovery of the gunpowder plot in the reign of James, the terrible "Thirty Years War," the knowledge that the mother of Charles II was a Roman Catholic, and that the next heir to the throne was himself a Roman Catholic, had culminated about this time in the pretended discovery of a Popish plot, and the English nation was literally driven mad with the vile perjuries of Oates and Bedloe. It is not therefore surprising that the wrath of good Master Patrick Warner, the chaplain at Fort St. George, should have been powerfully kindled. He wrote a long letter home to the Directors, complaining of the backslidings of the soldiers, the drinking and dicing of Writers and Factors, and the sinful toleration of Sir William Langhorne, who had actually fired a salute in honour of the foundation of a Roman Catholic Church within the walls of White town. We reprint the letter at full length, at the end of the present article. We have corrected the spelling, but have left the reverend gentleman’s language untouched. There may be a word or two which modern decorum would prompt us to cut out, but not one which may not be found in the authorised version of the Bible; and therefore we do not see any necessity for adapting the plain speaking of a divine of the seventeenth century, to the tastes of our more polite times.
The honest merchants in Leadenhall Street seem to have been powerfully affected by the letter from their God-fearing Chaplain; and they adopted extraordinary means for preserving the orthodoxy of Fort St. George. They sent out strict orders that if any man was married by a Roman Catholic priest, or allowed his children to be baptised by a Roman Catholic priest, or did not have his children educated in the Protestant religion, he was to be sent home without delay. Moreover they sent out both to Bombay and Fort St. George, a few Protestant women for the soldiers to marry, and even permitted certain ladies to come out under restrictions, but on something very like matrimonial speculation.
Thus it was that three or four English ladies first arrived in Madras; plain honest women enough, and no doubt tolerably educated for those times, when the Protestant Manual and the Housekeeper’s receipt book were the principal subjects of study. Seven or eight months had probably passed away since they had been wished "God speed" by the worthy gentlemen of the Court of Directors, and had fairly set sail down the silver Thames, for the hot country of Indians and idolaters. Poor souls! they must have had strange thoughts as they gazed out from the anchorage, and pondered upon the curious world they were soon to enter. But stranger still they must have felt, when the two members of Council, and the Captain of the garrison, climbed up the sides of the ship and welcomed them to Madraspatanam. But upon this part of the picture we need not dwell, but will simply imagine them to have been carried over the surf with many displays of gallantry, and finally landed in safety upon the beach in front of Fort St. George.
A strange old fort it was even to the English gentlewomen of that time; but it would seem more strange to us; whilst our extensive buildings would have seemed stranger still to that simple minded generation. There was the Warehouse piled high with goods of all descriptions; some which seemed fresh from Aldersgate Street or the Cheap; others, - silks, muslins, coloured calicoes, and other choice articles, - which had been brought from mysterious towns far inland. Then there was the little Chapel, where every man in the Agency, from the youngest Apprentice up to the Honorable Governor himself, was compelled to attend the daily reading of Morning and Evening Prayers, besides two sermons on Sundays, and something extra on Wednesdays. There was the Refection Room, where all the members of the Agency took their dinners and supper at times which very nearly corresponded to our tiffins and dinners; and where on certain afternoons in the week the younger men were taught some one or other of the languages of the country, being stimulated thereunto by the promise of large rewards for proficiency, - twenty pounds being given for the knowledge of an Indian language, and ten pounds for a knowledge of Persian. There was the School room where all the children of the soldiers, and others were taught to read and cypher, and above all were imbued with the principles of the Protestant religion; and be it told to the credit of the merchants of London in the godless reign of king Charles, that they constantly sent over supplies of Bibles and Catechisms for the use of this school, and directed that "when any shall be able to repeat the Catechisms by heart, you may give to each of them two rupees for their encouragement."
Other rooms there were, adorned with the heavy old fashioned furniture of the time, but still looking mighty bare and plain and rough. Last of all we must mention the Council Chamber, where all the members of council were summoned to attend on every Monday and Thursday morning, at eight o'clock, either by the Secretary himself, or by one of the Writers and Factors under him. It was also the Secretary’s duty to enter all their Consultations in the book appointed for that purpose, together with all other occurrences and observations after the manner of a Diary; and to take care that a duplicate copy was fairly written out by the Factors and Writers appointed to that duty, so that one copy might be retained by the Secretary, and the other be sent home to the Directors. And from that day to the present, from the Governorship of the Honorable Sir William Langhorne in 1670 to the Governorship of the Honorable William Morehead in 1860, all these "Consultations" have been preserved in thousands of volumes; and it is from these original Records that we are now writing the history of the Madras Presidency.
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The editor takes this opportunity of acknowledging the liberality of the Madras Government in granting him access to those volumes of the earlier Records, which may be expected to throw light on the ancient history of this Presidency. The labour of examining the old Records is very like that of a gold digger in Australia. Sometimes days of weary reading will pass away, without obtaining a single fact available for the purposes of history. Sometimes however four or five lines of crabbed writing will prove as valuable as a nugget, and enrich a whole column. We hope toleave all the dross in happy obscurity, and present our readers with nothing but the gold. Fortunately our labours during the first ten years have been much lightened by the previous labours of a gentleman who wishes to remain unnamed, but who has laboriously collected a number of extracts from the oldest records, which have proved to be of the highest possible value as historical material.
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Our readers however may possibly be getting anxious for the welfare of the ladies to whom we introduced them at the commencement of this article. But alas, having brought them prominently forward on their first appearance in Madras, we have but little further to say respecting them; though that little may as well be said at once. There is nothing further about them in the Records, saving that some years afterwards, two of them still remained unmarried, and were living in the Fort on a small allowance granted by the Company. Thus we can only infer that the connubial speculation had failed, as we know that it failed at this very time in the new settlement at Bombay. We shall no doubt have to return to this subject in a future chapter.
But though we are thus compelled, from want of a better acquaintance, to turn our backs upon the ladies, we have much pleasure in introducing our readers to the other members of the society of Fort St. George. The English servants of the Company, exclusive of Apprentices and Soldiers, seem to have only been about twenty-four in number. First of all there was the Honorable Agent, and Governor, Sir William Langhorne, who was first member of council, but who only received the modest salary of three hundred pounds a year. Next came the "Book‘ keeper," who kept all the establishment accounts, such as salaries and contingencies, as well as the general commercial accounts; and who, in virtue of his financial powers, was second member of council, and received a salary of a hundred a year. After him came the "Warehouse-keeper," whose duties are tolerably well indicated by his name, and who occupied the third seat in council, with a salary of seventy a year. The fourth member of council was called the "Customer," and a curious customer he was. He seems to have been the chief buyer of native merchandize, and the receiver of the rents and customs for the Company’s town of Madras; and above all he practised in the Choultry as a sort of justice of the peace. For these duties he was paid the magnificent sum of fifty pounds per annum. In all there generally appears to have been five or six members of council, each receiving a salary rarely exceeding a hundred a year, though with occasional gratuities as rewards for good service. One and all however, appear to have engaged more or less in some private trade; from which far better profits were to be reaped than from the gratitude of the Directors. In vain were these proceedings denounced in the strongest terms by the honest gentlemen of Leadenhall Street; private trade continued to be carried on to a considerable extent until a much later period in the history of the Presidency. Commissioners of inquiry and sentences of dismissal were of no avail. Occasionally a "black sheep" was sent home on the charge; but we are led to believe that, whatever might have been the ostensible accusation, other circumstances must have excited the enmity of his brethren beyond a little private dabbling in the trade.
The members of council were denominated "Merchants" and "Senior Merchants," a rank to which all the servants of the Company might aspire. Sometimes the young men came out as "Writers"; sometimes as "Apprentices" only. Every "Apprentice" seems to have served the customary period of seven years before he was promoted to a higher rank; a rule which was rigidly adhered to in all trades throughout Europe until a very recent period, and which seems to have had its origin in the mystic period during which Jacob served an enthusiastic apprenticeship to Laban, in order to gain the hand of the fair Rachel. During the first five years, the aspiring youths in the Company’s service seem to have been allowed five pounds a year for the purchase of clothes. During the last two years of that time, whilst panting for the termination of apprenticeship, they were allowed Writer’s salary of ten pounds a year. At the end of that period they were raised to the rank of "Writers," and after one year more, or eight years service in all, they became "Factors;" after which they rose in due time to the rank of "Merchants" and members of Council.
Besides these servants of the Company, there were others whose duties may be easily inferred from their names. There was the "Chaplain" who had a hundred a year, and who must have had a hard time of it with daily prayers, and Sunday’s preaching and expounding. There was the "Schoolmaster," at a salary of fifty pounds a year, who had been sent out to teach all the children of English parents to read, write, cypher, and hate the Roman Catholics. Any parents whatever, - Portuguese, Hindoo, or Mussulman, - might likewise send their children to be similarly taught; but only on the condition that they should also be instructed in the principles of the Protestant religion.
Some of our readers will probably ask how many of these gentlemen were married. In January 1678-9 it appears that out of the whole twenty-four gentlemen, only six were married, and only five had their wives with them; whilst five unmarried ladies were also dwelling in the Fort, two of whom were our lady friends still unwedded, and the remaining three were widows. Besides the civilians mentioned, there were sixteen other Europeans dwelling either in White Town or in Black Town, and who got a living by keeping houses of entertainment or other similar means. Of these only six were married, namely, two to English women, one to a Dutch woman, one to an English half-caste, and two to Portuguese halfcastes.
The military portion of the population was more numerous. The number of European soldiers varied with the times, or with the fears of the Directors at home. Sometimes, as we have seen, they were reduced to a very small number; but during the reign of Charles II. trade was rapidly increasing, and the garrison of Fort St. George increased to two companies of eighty or a hundred men each. In addition to these were a number of native peons, armed with swords and bucklers, bows and arrows, and other primitive weapons of the country.
Our readers will now find but little difficulty in realising the inside of Fort St. George, as it was some two centuries ago. They will hear the gun fired at early morning, and they will see the gradual stir of the inhabitants, - the measured tramp of the European soldier, - the little stately peon with his sword and buckler, - the rush of noisy naked coolies, - the appearance of Apprentices, Writers, Factors, and Merchants in half Hindoo costume, - the assembly for morning prayers in the little chapel, with good Master Patrick Warner officiating in his gown and bands, and indignant at the smallness of his congregation, - the opening of the Factory and jabbering crowd of Native traders, - the grand displays of European goods for sale, and the packing up of Native merchandize for export home, - the little school room and long array of different shades of little boys and girls, - the orderly dinner shortly after noon, where all are assembled at the general table from the Apprentices to the Honorable Governor himself; - the return to the labours of the desk and warehouse, until the joyous hour of closing has arrived, and the jaded Europeans recruit their exhausted spirits with the pleasures of punch, tobacco, and other pursuits which we need not and cannot name. If it is Sunday, all would be changed; for in old times English Sundays were rigidly observed as little festivals. Then the Europeans, civilians as well as soldiers, dropped their half native attire, and were apparelled in the European fashion of the time. Then for a brief hour or two the Chaplain would be a greater man than the Governor. Then he could denounce vice and popery to his heart’s content, and expound the Scriptures by the light of a theological learning, which was almost general in those days when the Church was a living reality, but which is fast passing away now. Then the Church could boast of literary giants, such as Walton, Lightfoot, Selden, Stillingfleet, Beveridge, Pearson, Bull, and a thousand time honoured names. She has few men to boast about now. Perchance however our readers would like to step out of the Fort, and see a little of the country around. They must not go far, for the Company’s dominion only extends about a mile inland, and no man is allowed to go more than three miles from the Fort without permission of the Governor. Possibly however they may merely wish to go and peep into the gardens, where Writers and Factors occasionally assembled to drink down the sun, and sing such jolly ballads as "Ho Cavaliers," "Brandy nosed Noll," "Cherry Ripe," or "Chevy Chase" according to the humour of the times. But even then we should advise them not to go too far. What they are likely to see will not do them much good. They had better stay with us, and look out upon the country around from the old ramparts of Fort St. George.
We wish we could present an exact picture of that scene to modern eyes. Unfortunately no plan appears to have been preserved of an earlier date than 1737, or more than sixty years after the period we have been describing. But still by comparing this plan with certain topographical notices in the earliest records, we think we may convey a general idea of the Fort and the neighbourhood.
The district which the Company had obtained, first from the Rajah of Chandragheri, and afterwards from Golconda, stretched five miles along the sea, but only one inland. On the south it extended along the road to St. Thomé some little distance beyond the Triplicane river. On the north it extended a similar distance along the road to Trivatore. Inland it was bounded by the river, which still runs parallel with the sea, and which in former times used to run right through the part now occupied by the centre of the present Fort, but was diverted from that course when the Fort was enlarged in the succeeding century. The old Fort being thus bounded by the river on the inland side, was only half the size of the modern Fort, but still it included the European houses known for many generations afterwards as White-town.
Fort St. George and White town were thus synonymous terms. In Europe the quarter was known as Fort St. George; but in India it was called White town, from its being occupied by Europeans. It extended about 400 yards in length from north to south, and about 100 yards in breadth from the sea to the old channel of the river already mentioned. The fortified Factory which had been constructed in the first instance by Mr. Day, was a very different thing from the Fort which existed in the time of the Honorable Sir William Langhorne. The Fort in the first instance must have somewhat resembled some of those old Forts which were knocked about during the Civil War. The first thing that was required was a population; and accordingly Mr. Day, and the Agents who immediately preceded him, invited the Portuguese and Indo-Portuguese to settle in the neighbourhood; and even lent them money to build upon the open sand under the protection of the Fort guns. Subsequently these foreigners had become naturalized Madrasees. As the fortifications progressed, their houses were walled in, and thus formed a part of White town; whilst they themselves did the duty of trained bands in watching and warding upon the outworks in time of trouble. Of course under these circumstances they neither paid nor were expected to pay any rent or acknowledgment for the land they occupied, and they never took out any leases. But during the Governorship of Sir William Langhorne, the White town was found to be too much crowded; and, many of the married servants of the Company were obliged to take houses in Black town, receiving an allowance for the extra expenses of board and lodging which they thereby incurred. Of this arrangement the Directors frequently complained, but still such were the existing difficulties in the way of expelling the Portuguese, that no alteration could be made. But even with the addition of the Portuguese, White town for nearly a century afterwards, never contained more than fifty houses, in addition to the Factory and other buildings of the Company. It was surrounded with a slender wall, defended with four bastions and as many batteries; but these were slight and defective, and undefended by outworks.
To the north of White town was the much larger quarter which was occupied by the Natives, and which for the sake of distinction was called Black town. Here the houses and population had rapidly increased in numbers; and the streets bore a very different appearance from the collection of bamboo huts which rose up during the earlier days of the colony. In the Choultry Plain to the southward of the Fort, the weavers and painters in the employment of the Factory, appear to have erected a little village for themselves; whilst the fishermen at the mouth of the Triplicane river were living, marrying, and dying, - catching fish, making nets, and celebrating their own peculiar festivals, - just as they had done in the old days of the kings of Chola and Pandya, and in all probability just as they will still be doing some thousand years hence, when Lord Macaulay’s New Zealander comes poking about our tombs, and wondering what manner of people we have been. Two or three miles off were the little Native villages of Nungumbaukum, Egmore, Persewaukum, and Perambore, which were too far off to be often visited by the Europeans of that day.
Such then were the White town and Black town of Madraspatanam in the reign of merry king Charles, when trade was flourishing, and when the nation in general was increasing in wealth, and but for the Gallic tendencies of the Stuarts might have taken a high place amongst the European powers. The period was one in which there was much loyalty, much religion, but much loose living and debauchery. The times were rough, and the distance from Europe, and the absence of such female society as would have polished manners, rendered the little settlement rather tumultuous. Drunkenness, duelling, gaming, and licentiousness were, as we have already indicated, only too common, although the strictest rules were laid down. Sir William Langhorne had issued express orders, - and certainly his views were liberal, - that no one person was to be allowed to drink above half a pint of arrack or brandy and one quart of wine at one time, under a penalty of one pagoda upon the housekeeper that supplied it, and twelve fanams upon every guest that had exceeded that modest allowance. Drunkenness was to be punished by a fine and the stocks. All persons addicted in any way to the social evil were to be imprisoned at the discretion of the Governor, and if not reclaimed were to be sent back to England. All persons telling a lie, or absenting themselves from morning or evening prayers, were to be fined four fanams for each offence. Persons being out of the Fort after eight o’clock, would be punished; and any one committing the heinous offence of getting over the walls of the Fort upon any pretence whatever, was to be kept in irons until the arrival of the ships, and then to be sent to England to receive further condign punishment on his arrival. It was also ordained that all persons swearing, cursing, banning, or blaspheming the sacred name of Almighty God should pay a fine of four fanams for each offence; that any two persons who should go out into the fields to decide a quarrel between them by the sword or fire arms should be imprisoned for two months on nothing but rice and water; that any soldier giving another the lie should be made fast to a gun, and there receive ten small blows with a rattan, well laid on by the man to whom he had given the lie; and that any Ofiicer who should in any way connive at the offence, or at any mitigation of the punishment, should forfeit a month’s wages. But notwithstanding these and other similar rules, public decorum was frequently outraged, as the letter of the Chaplain recorded below abundantly proves. Brawlings were not unfrequent, and were by no means confined to the Barracks, the Punch shops, or the Warehouse, but even were to be occasionally heard in the Council Chamber itself. One little circumstance which took place during the meeting of council on 6th June 1676, is singularly illustrative of the disturbances which occasionally arose. Nathaniel Keeble, buyer of jewels, uttered some provocative words concerning the wife of Mr. Herries, a member of council. Herries was of course present, and a fight took place in the Council Chamher. The combatants were soon parted by the Governor and Council; but Keehle had received a bloody nose from the clenched fist of the indignant husband, and swore to be revenged upon him though he were hanged for it. Herries then swore the peace against Keeble, and the Governor ordered the latter to be confined to his chamber until he had furnished security that he would keep the peace for the future. The same day however Keeble broke from his arrest, leaped down the Fort walls, and sprained his leg; and was accordingly ordered to be confined in the "Lock house" until the arrival of the ships, when he could be dispatched to England. The next day however the whole matter was arranged. Natheniel Keeble sent in his humble submission and promised amendment, and the Government mercifully forgave him. Incidents such as these are sufficient to prove that however strict rules might be laid down, yet the times were as lawless in Fort St. George as they were in Covent Garden or the Strand. That they were not worse is abundantly proved by the character of the literature and condition of the people of England during the reign of the second Charles.
Here then we close our picture of the Fort and Factory of St. George, about the middle of the reign of king Charles. In a future issue we shall return to the history, which we trust will be found of deeper interest, now that we have given to the reader a glimpse of the society in which the events transpired.
Appendix to Chapter III.
Letter of the Reverend Patrick Warner, Company’s Chaplain at Fort St. George, addressed to the Court of Directors on the 31st January, 1676, bringing to their notice the vicious lives of the Soldiers and some of the Writers in the Fort.
Right Worshipfuls,
It is my trouble that I have so little acquaintance with your Worships, because of this I could not take the confidence of writing to you, nor had I anything worth the writing, having then remained so short a while in this place; but now having been a servant under you in the ministry of the Gospel some considerable time, I have to my grief met with that which maketh me, contrary to my inclination, break of my silence, and give you the trouble of these lines.
I have the charity to believe that most of you have so much zeal for God, and for the credit of religion, that your heads would be fountains of waters, and eyes rivers of tears, did you really know how much God is dishonoured, his name blasphemed, religion reproached amongst the Gentiles, by the vicious lives of many of your servants. Did I not therefore complain of them, I should not be faithful either to God or you, or to their own souls. And if it be not a desire to approve myself in some measure faithful unto all those, God the searcher of hearts and tryer of reins will one day discover, if it be not, I say, such a desire that moves me to the present undertaking.
It may be for a lamentation to hear and see the horrid swearing and profanation of the name of God, the woful and abminable drunkenness and uncleanness that so much reign and rage among the soldiery; and these not secretly or covertly, but as it were in the sight of the sun, and men refuse therein to be ashamed, neither can they blush. Some, after they have lived a long time in uncleanness, their whores persuade them to marry them, and several such have been married, who within a little time have found them treacherous and adulterous, and thereupon have either run away from them, or carried them along with them and sold them to the Infidels and Moores. Some unmarried persons keep whores in their houses, and some married whose wives are in England do the same. Most of those whores are popish Christians; and if those that marry them do not fall into the former inconveniences, they hardly escape being seduced by their wives and wives’ families into popery. There have not been wanting instances of this also. Since I entered into this place, I have constantly refused to celebrate any such marriages except one that I was urged into, and this not before she had solemnly and before several witnesses renounced popery, and promised to attend upon ordinances with us; but she had not been many weeks married when at the instigation of some popish priests here she perfidiously fell from those promises.
I wish your Worships may consider it be not requisite to inhibit such marriages, for the children turn either infidels or popish. I do also earnestly wish there may be more inspection taken what persons you send over into these places; for there come hither some thousand murderers, some men stealers, some popish, some come over under the notion of single persons and unmarried, who yet have their wives in England, and here have been married to others, with whom they have lived in adultery; and some on the other hand have come over as married persons, of whom there are strange suspicions they were never married. These and other aliases there are among the soldiery. There are also some of the Writers who by their lives are not a little scandalous to the Christian religion, so sinful in their drunkenness that some of them play at cards and dice for wine that they may drink, and afterwards throwing the dice which shall pay all, and sometimes who shall drink all, by which some are forced to drink until they be worse than beasts. Others pride themselves in making others drink till they be insensible, and then strip them naked and in that posture (horresco referens) cause them to be carried through the streets to their dwelling place. Some of them, with other persons whom they invited, once went abroad to a garden not far off, and there continued a whole day and night drinking most excessively, and in so much that one of the number died within a very few days after, and confessed he had contracted his sickness by that excess. A person worthy of credit having occasion to go the next day into the same garden could number by the heads 36 bottles, and the best of his judgment they were all pottles, for it is their frequent custom to break bottles as soon as they have drunk the wine, and this they have done sometimes within the walls of the Fort, and withal, sin and carouse at very unseasonable hours. And this their drunkenness is not alone, but in some attended with its ordinary concomitant uncleanness, for some have been found breaking open in the night time doors where they suspected whores to be, others have been whole nights in the room with another man's wife alone. They can find time and leisure for these things but cannot find any time or leisure for the worship of God, which is exceedingy neglected by all, notwithstanding your orders to the contrary. I have sometimes, having waited long enough, been forced at length to begin duty with only three or four persons present, and when we have done there are not an above twelve or thirteen in all; but who amongst the writers are most guilty in this, your Worships may know by the enclosed list of their absence taken by me indifferently, some appointed thereunto by the Governors; of others no account is taken.
But because it is no less a sin to condemn the just than to justify the wicked, I must bear witness for most of the young men, that they cannot, to the best of my knowledge, be accused of the former enormities. There are but a few of them that are guilty in the manner before described; whose names I would have inserted, that so I might clear the others, but that they have been lately sick, and some small hopes there are that they may amend; they have given some ground to expect it. But if they shall return with the dog to the vomit, I will, if it please God to spare me so long, give your Worships a more full account thereof by word of mouth, upon my arrival with the next ships; for as you have already been informed, I intend to return with them, and hope with your good leave so to do. Therefore what I have written may in charity be supposed, not to proceed from expectation of any advantage to myself, but from respect to the glory of God, and their good and the encouragement of succeeding ministers.
I did write, what the last year's ships give an account, in a letter to Captain Broockman, upon the civil usage I met with from the Governor and others of Council, and indeed generally from all as to mine own person, which I do not now retract, only I could wish they were more zealous. When I have complained of those former abuses, I have been told by several that persons here are a good deal more civilised than formerly they have been. If it be so, there is great cause to admire the patience and long suffering of God, but withal cause to fear that if those things be not reformed he will not always keep silence. The Governor I understand hath refused to listen to any that would prevent his firing of great guns, and then vollies of small shot by all the soldiers in garrison, at the consecration of a popish church within the walls; if he be therein acquitted by you I have no more to say, but pray that God himself would discountenance that idolatry and superstition so much countenanced by others, and prevent the hurt that may redound to the place and to your interests thereby.
One Mr. Mallory, formerly Surgeon’s mate in the President, and now Surgeon’s mate in this place, and another, Barnes, who formerly went to sea as master of some small vessel, but having wasted the money entrusted to him, lives now idly and out of any employment. These two are constant companions with any of the young men in whatever debaucherie they were guilty of, and it gives ground for suspicion that they may be guilty of enticing them thereunto.
There are some other things that I would humbly have remonstrated to your worships, but because I intend, if it shall so please God, to see you with the next ships, at which time if it be acceptable it may more conveniently be done. I do therefore at present forbear, only praying that God would continue to prosper your undertaking, and enable you faithfully to design his glory therein, and lead you to the reasonable means that may conduce to his glory, in the encouragement of godliness, and restraint of sin in these places where your power reacheth. I am or desire to be
Right worshipfuls,
Your faithful servant,
According to my station.
PATRICK WARNER.
Maddrass.
Jany. 31st 1676.
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