Early English adventurers in the East (1917)/Chapter 11
CHAPTER XI
A Group of English Adventurers in India
Robert Trully, the cornet player—William Hemsell, the Great Mogul's coachman—Richard Steele—His Agra waterworks scheme—Thomas Coryat, "the Odcombe Leg Stretcher"—Coryat's early career at the Court of James I—Coryat's Crudities—Croyat's journey overland to India— Coryat's audience with Jehangir—The Emperor and a Christian convert—Coryat prepares to return home—He dies and is buried at Surat—Roe's last days in India—He secures an agreement from the Mogul government permitting the English to trade—He returns to England
FOR the present we may leave Roe resting on his hard-won laurels, and turn to the doings of some of the subsidiary characters who were playing their part in this interlude of what in the end was to prove the great drama of British influence in India.
From time to time in the ambassador's diary and in the correspondence of the period, we come across allusions to men of English birth who strutted and fretted their hour upon the ample stage of Indian life, and then were heard of no more. Some there were who were no credit to their race, who to ingratiate themselves with the native potentates "turned Moors," and disappeared from view under a cloud of infamy. Of this class was Robert Trully, a musician, who was brought out to charm the Mogul by his comet playing, and who, having acquitted himself of this duty indifferently well, went off to the Court of the King of the Deccan, where having abjured his faith and undergone circumcision, he was given "great honours," which he enjoyed until the inevitable day of reckoning came, when he fell out of favour. A more honourable type of the humble adventurer was Wlliam Hemsell, the English coachman of Jehangir, who found such favour in his imperial master's sight that he was given a handsome income and a position of considerable honour at Court. In the end, the Rev. Edward Terry says, he might have risen "to very great estate, had not death prevented it and that immediately after he was settled in that great service." Belonging to yet another category was Richard Steele, the young official of the Company who took the famous pearls from Surat to Mandu, as related in an earlier part of the narrative.
Steele was a man of ideas, who had been induced to enter upon an Indian career by the expectation that he would find a lucrative market for them in the Mogul's dominions. One of his enterprises was a scheme for the construction of waterworks at Agra. The success of a project undertaken in the City of London at the close of the sixteenth century, by which the Thames' water was conveyed to houses by means of pipes, suggested to Steele's fertile mind that a similar undertaking in the Mogul capital would be profitable. He accordingly elaborated proposals by which the waters of the Jumna would be intercepted and passed through lead pipes to the different parts of the City, to the great saving of labour. It was quite a feasible scheme, as history has proved, but unhappily for Steele, he was born two or three centuries too soon.
Roe, when he heard of the project, dismissed it as practicable, but Steele declined to accept his verdict and intrigued to secure a private audience of the Mogul. Eventually, through the agency of an English artist who had been brought out for Jehangir's service, he was admitted to the interior of the palace. As soon as he had entered the sacred precincts the chief eunuch "put a cloth over his head that he should not see the women," and he missed what would, no doubt, have been an interesting spectacle, though he heard the fair ones as they passed close to him. On another occasion the attendant, in an obliging mood, used a very thin cloth to blind Steele, and he was enabled to obtain a glimpse of the ladies, "there being of them some hundreds." Possessing a knowledge of Persian—the Court language—Steele was able to prosecute his suit independently, but the project did not appeal to Jehangir, and he was given to understand that it would not be entertained. His wife, who had come out as a maid to Mrs. Towerson, was befriended by a great lady who was Jehangir's hostess at Ahmedabad, and through her influence he secured such a strong position that Roe became seriously alarmed for his own prestige. But his fickle Court patrons eventually abandoned him, as they had done others, and he was glad to take passage with Roe when he returned to England in 1619. He did not again set foot in the country, though he was employed for a time under the Company in Java.
Strangest of this band of English adventurers who kept Roe in countenance in his days of exile at the Mogul Court was that amusing, eccentric Thomas Coryat, "the Odcombe leg stretcher," who is famous in English literature as the author of Coryat's Crudities, the most whimsical book on Continental travel that was probably ever penned.
Coryat, who was the son of a Rector of Odcombe, in Somerset, in early life gained an unenviable kind of distinction as a sort of bufoon at the Court of James I. Physical peculiarities, a peaked sugar-loaf formation of head perched upon an ungainly frame, were added to mental gifts of the kind which were effective in one who filled the role of a wit. Not the least of his attainments was a power of pungent repartee which was exercised at times with deadly effect when some Court favourite ventured to enter into an encounter with him. In 1608 he commenced a prolonged series of wanderings, which took him into every comer of Europe. On his return he brought out his work with the aid of patrons, whose support he secured by "unwearied pertinacity and unblushing importunity." The volume was issued with some mock heroic verses by Ben Jonson, in which the author is treated with solemn ridicule.
Sighing for more worlds to conquer, Coryat in 1612 started again on his travels, this time directing his face towards the East. Having had a preliminary peep at Egypt and the Pyramids, he proceeded to Joppa and from that port tramped through the Holy Land, thence on to Nineveh and Babylon, down the Euphrates valley to Baghdad, thence through Persia to Kandahar, and so to India. He turned up at Agra in 1615, to find an old friend in Roe, who had known him at James's Court. The ambassador, of course, could not do less than befriend the wanderer.
Coryat boasted that he had made his way through Asia at a cost which worked out at no more than twopence per day, and it would seem from his own confessions that the bulk of this modest expenditure was covered by benefactions which he received en route. At the Mogul capital he speedily made himself at home. A natural linguist he quickly acquired such proficiency in Hindustani that it is recorded of him that by his generous use of appropriate native expletives he reduced to silence within an hour a native virago who was employed by Roe as washerwoman, and who had given much trouble to the ambassador's household by her extreme volubility.
A more questionable and dangerous use of his knowledge of the native language was made one evening at the time of Mohammedan prayer, when in response to the muezzin's cry, "There is no God but Allah, and Mohammed is his Prophet," he shouted in Hindustani that the assertion was a lie, that the true Prophet was Jesus. It says much for the toleration which prevailed at the Mogul capital that the insult was overlooked as the indiscretion of the half-witted "English fakir." Coryat, however, was no fool, as he showed when, having sought and obtained an audience of Jehangir, he launched at him a highly-flattering eulogy in the Persian tongue.
In the flowery periods for which that language is famous, he recalled the episode of the Queen of Sheba and Solomon, and assured him that as the famous Queen had found Solomon greatly to surpass the expectation she had formed of him, so he had discovered in the dazzling glory of the Great Mogul a picture far beyond the range of his utmost imaginings. Jehangir seems to have been pleased with this barefaced flattery and possibly also amused by the spectacle of the quaint Englishman fluently declaiming the flowery Persian sentences. At the close he said some kindly words to Coryat and dismissed him with a gift of a hundred rupees.
The "leg stretcher" had gone off to the palace without communicating his intention to Roe, and the ambassador, when he heard of the incident, was furious. At the earliest moment he told Coryat that he had degraded the credit of his nation by appearing before the Emperor "out of an insinuating humour to crave money of him."
"But," said Coryat, in describing the encounter, "I answered our ambassador in that stout and resolute manner that he ceased nibling at me."
A more crushing blow was dealt the eccentric later when Steele, whom he had met in Persia, told him that on reaching England and informing James I of the meeting the monarch said by way of comment: "Is that old fool still alive?" Coryat was reduced for a time to silence by this "unkindest cut of all "from" the Wisest Fool in Europe," in whom he must have recognized a certain kinship.
In his whimsical fashion Coryat made a study of Jehangir. He apparently thought that the Emperor did not recognize his talents to the full extent that they deserved, but on the whole his verdict was a favourable one. One phase of the Mogul's character of which Coryat approved was that he "loved not shifters of religion."
A propos he tells a characteristic story. One day Jehangir inquired of a prominent Armenian in his employ whether he thought that "either he or the padres had converted one Moor to be a true Christian . . . for conscience' sake."
The Armenian replied with confidence that he could produce such a man. Jehangir's curiosity prompted him to send forthwith for the convert. When the man arrived he was asked by the Emperor why he had become a Christian, and he replied with "certain feeble, implicate Jesuitical reasons," declaring that he would never be other than a Christian. Upon this Jehangir endeavoured first by reasoning and then by threats "to draw the man to the folly of Mohammed." But he remained steadfast in his opinions, even under the pain of a severe chastisement. Seeing that the man was not to be moved, the Mogul commended his constancy, and sent him back to his master with the intimation that he would receive henceforth a pension of one rupee a day from the imperial exchequer,
Some little time after this Jehangir, on returning from a hunting expedition, sent the Armenian a present of a wild hog that formed a part of the spoils of the chase. The duty of removing the gift devolved upon the convert, and as he was conveying it through the streets he was hooted at by a crowd of Mohammedans, who were angry that one who had been numbered amongst the faithful should handle the unclean beast. In mingled terror and shame the man cast his burden into a ditch and went home. Some days later, on an inquiry being made by the imperial donor as to how the Armenian enjoyed the hog, the whole story came out.
Jehangir again had the man up before him. A frown darkened his countenance as he lectured the culprit, in this style—
"By your law there is no difference of meats, and yet you are ashamed of your laws and to flatter Mohammedans forsake them. Now, I say thou art neither good Christian nor good Mohammedan, but a dissembling knave with both. While I found thee sincere I gave thee a pension which I now take from thee, and for thy dissimulation do command thee to have 100 stripes."
The punishment was forthwith administered, and the unfortunate man was dismissed with a comment by the Emperor that all men should take warning by his example, and should understand that "as he gave liberty to al religions, that which they chose and professed they must stick unto."
The time came when Coryat, having exhausted the financial possibilities of the Mogul capital, prepared to return home. Not, we may suppose, without a sigh of satisfaction at the prospect of ridding himself of so equivocal a guest. Roe gave the wanderer a letter of introduction to the English Consul at Aleppo, asking him to receive Coryat with courtesy, "for you shall find him a very honest poor wretch," and further requesting him to pay the bearer £10.
Terry says that the eccentric "liked the gift well," but that he could not get over the terms in which he was commended: "Honest, poor wretch!" "To say no more of him was to say nothing."
Coryat contrasted Roe's grudging recommendation with a letter he had received from Sir Henry Wotton, the English minister at Venice, which was in these terms—
"My Lord, good wine needs no bush, neither a worthy man letters commendatory, because whithersoever he comes he is his own epistle."
Poor Coryat seems to have missed the irony of this model letter. There was a vein of simplicity in him which rendered him proof against the ordinary shafts of satire. But that very quality laid him open to dangers which a man of better balance might have avoided. After quitting Ajmere he made for Surat, and on reaching that port was hospitably received by the members of the English factory. In course of conversation mention was made of some sack which had just been imported from England. The poor wanderer's eyes glistened at the mention of his favourite drink, to which he had so long, perforce, been a stranger.
"Sack! Sack!" he exclaimed. "Is there any such thing as sack? I pray you, give me more sack," "and drinking it though moderately," says Terry, "it increased his flux which he had then upon him, and this caused his death in December, 1617."
In a grave afterwards covered with a modest stone like those in the old churchyards at home, Coryat's remains were laid to rest in the English God's Acre at Surat. Time has obliterated the evidence of the exact whereabouts of the grave, but the memory of the strange creature's irruption into the India of the Great Moguls with its whimsical features must always have a fascination for all who take pleasure in noting the lights and shades of human character.
Roe was too deeply engaged with matters of importance to give his quaint friend's death more than a passing tribute of regret. The old trouble about the delivery of the presents had come up in a new and rather menacing form. On the arrival of the consignment at Surat, Prince Khumim caused his seals to be put upon the articles with the intent that nothing should be opened without his cognizance. Roe's independent spirit chafed under this new assertion of the prince's power. He forwarded to the Emperor a request that the ban should be removed, and, when after a delay of twenty days no reply had been received, he proceeded to break the seals. His offence was an enormous one in the light of Mogul tradition. It brought him for the first time under the displeasure of Jehangir. When Roe attended him the Emperor " set on it an angrie countenance: told mee I had broken my word: that hee would trust me no more." Roe in reply calmly maintained that he had done no wrong, and said that if he had acted unlawfully he had sinned in ignorance.
In the end the storm, which at one time threatened to have really serious consequences for Roe, blew over, and he was able to give his thoughts to arrangements for his departure from India. The directors had written out asking him to extend his service by another year, but Roe was altogether disinclined to prolong an exile which had already become almost unbearable. His thoughts of home were given a sharper turn as the year 1618 wore on by a terrible outbreak of plague at Ahmedabad, which affected everybody in the English factory but Roe, and which carried off the greater part of the staff.
In resolute fashion the ambassador approached once more the question of permanent facilities for trade, and by a persistent course of advocacy, with the exercise of strict moderation in his demands, he at length in September, 1618, obtained a satisfactory arrangement. The chief points in the agreement were: (1) that the English should be well treated; (2) that they should have free trade on payment of Customs dues; (3) that their presents to the Emperor should not be subject to search at Surat; (4) that the effects of any Englishman who died should be handed over to Englishmen. A supplementary agreement made with Prince Khurrum stipulated (1) that the governor of Surat should lend ships to the English in the event of an attack by the Portuguese; (2) that resident English merchants might wear arms; (3) that the English might be allowed to build a house in Surat; (4) that they should have free exercise of their religion; (5) that they should be allowed to settle disputes amongst themselves.
Such, in brief, were the terms of this concordat, which thoroughly regularized the position of the English in India for the first time. It was not a treaty, but only a firman, such as Roe, at the outset of his mission, declared he would not accept. Limited, however, as was its diplomatic character, it served the main purpose of giving the East India Company a definite status and a basis of self-government which saved its representatives from the worst effects of local oppression.
His work completed, and tired in mind and body. Roe quitted India on February 17, 1619, arriving home in the following September. The King received him at Hampton Court in private audience, and the Company showed their appreciation of his work by making him a grant of £1,500 and electing him for a year an extra member of the Committee, with an emolument of £200 a year. During the remainder of his life, which was protracted to 1644, Roe kept in touch with Indian affairs, but he was not again prominently identified with the peninsula. His remains rest in Woodford Church, Essex.
The question has sometimes been discussed whether Roe's mission accomplished anything beyond what the Company's representatives could have obtained in the ordinary way. It is impossible, of course, to say definitely what might have happened if Roe had never gone to India, but if the facts are looked at in the light of history, it is difficult to avoid the conclusion that to his personal influence was due the priority of opportunity given to the English amongst the nations of the West in the Mogul's territory. By his strong, intelligent diplomacy the barrier which blocked the path of English trade was surmounted and at the same time a tradition of English thoroughness and integrity was established which secured for the nation the honourable treatment that it would not otherwise have obtained, at that early period at all events. His is the glory that he was the chief pioneer of that wonderful influence which has overspread India and permeated Asia and won for Britain a place such as no other country has occupied in the world's history.