Thomas Curgenven, who was afterwards Rector of Folke, a pretty little country parish in Dorsetshire. Thomas Curgenven married Dorothy Pitt, the sister of Thomas Pitt, Governor of Fort St. George (1698-1709), and great-aunt of Lord Chatham. This connexion with India was sufficient to find employment for members of the Curgenven family, and Peter entered the service of the Company when he was seventeen years old. Five years later he became a free merchant, and by and by settled in Fort St. George. After the manner of free merchants, he was often away for months or even years 'seafaring,' as it was then familiarly termed, trading at Eastern ports and bringing indigo, saltpetre, silk, sugar, rice, and other commodities, which were purchased and sent to England by the Company. He named his ship the Sherborne, after his old school, and she was commanded by Captain Henry Cornwall.
It was on this ship, when he was passing down from Surat to Bombay, that he was attacked and taken prisoner. The story is told on his monument, a marble tablet on the south wall of the church at Walthamstow in Essex. The inscription is as follows :
'Near this place lyeth the body of Peter Curgenven. Erected by his widow. He was sent in his youth to the East Indies, where, attaining a thorough knowledge of the India trade in all its branches, he acquired a plentiful fortune, and, withal, what is more valuable, the universal character of a man of great honour and honesty, of inviolable faith and integrity, which virtues he adorned with an uncommon affability and politeness. Preparing after a twenty-five years' absence to return to his native country, he unfortunately fell into the hands of Connajee Angria, Admiral to the Sou Raja, then at war with the English at Bombay, and remained in a miserable captivity about five years, during which time with an
