CHAPTER I
THE FOUNDERS OF FORT ST. GEORGE
So much has been published regarding the genesis of Fort St. George, Madras, that it may be thought that there is no occasion for further light to be thrown upon the subject; yet Mr. William Foster has gleaned among the records at the India Office some information[1] regarding the founding of the Fort, and its early history, that is particularly instructive. The records preserved in the Fort have from time to time been subjected to painstaking examination by Captain A. W. Rawlins, Mr. W. Hudleston, M.C.S., Mr. Talboys Wheeler, U.C.S., Mr. A. P. Pringle, U.C.S., Mrs. Frank Penny, and Mr. D. Leighton, not to speak of less conspicuous labourers in the same field ; but, as Mr. Foster says, the researches of these authors were unavoidably restricted to the records available in Madras, which commence only in 1670. Consequently, recourse was had to works of questionable reliability, compiled and published in England, for particulars about the history of the settlement during the immediately preceding thirty years. It has been Mr. Foster's aim to supply materials in his present monograph for such a first chapter of the history of Madras as seems to him to be needed. There are aching voids in the records at Whitehall, as there are also in those that white ants have spared in the Fort. “Many important letters have perished entirely ; of others, only portions survive, often in very unlikely quarters; while several events of the first importance are merely referred to obliquely in the contemporary correspondence.” But such papers as are available at the India
- ↑ The Founding of Fort St. George, Madras. By William Foster, B.A. (of the Registry and Record Department, India Office). Published by Order of H.M.'s Secretary of State for India in Council. London: Eyre and Spottiswoode, 1902.
