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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY
[SEPTEMBER, 1911.
"This extract from Stewart," says Yule, "furnishes the earliest version that I have been able to find of this story in its completeness, and it has become the staple of the popular historians, but I cannot trace it to any accessible authority"; and after pointing out the impossibility of Boughton's deputation having had any connexion with the accident to the Princess Jahânârâ, he concludes: "If it be allowable to form a conjecture, mine would be that one of Stewart's native authorities may have combined the information' as to the lady's accident and Boughton's mission (the latter derived from some European source), and that Stewart had adopted this without inquiry."
Apparently Yule had not noticed that much the same account had been given by Orme in the second volume of his History of the Military Transactions of the British Nation in Indostan, published in 1778. Here (p. 8), speaking of Bengal, Orme says:
"The trade of this country was opened to the English by means of a surgeon named Boughton, who in 1636 was sent from Surat to Agra to attend a daughter of the Emperor Shaw Jehan, whom he cured, and the Emperor, besides other favours, granted him a patent to trade free of customs throughout his dominions, with which Boughton proceeded to Bengal, intending to purchase goods in this province and to carry them by sea to Surat. His patent would probably have been little regarded, if the Nabob of the province had not wanted his assistance to cure one of his favourite women, whom he likewise recovered; on which the Nabob prevailed on him. to remain in his service, giving him an ample stipend, and confirming the privilege of trade which he had obtained at Agra, with a promise to extend it to all others of the English nation who should come to Bengal. Boughton wrote an account of his influence to the English governor at Surat, by whose advice the Company in 1640 sent two ships from England to Bengal, the agents of which, being introduced to the Nabob by Boughton, were received with courtesy and assisted in their mercantile transactions; and the advantages gained by this trial gave encouragement to prosecute the trade, "
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Clearly, Stewart did not take his version from this, for his is the more detailed account; but the resemblance between the two is sufficiently close to warrant our concluding that both made use of the same authority. What then was this common source? We are guided to an answer by an examination of the Orme MSS. in the India Office Library, where, among the materials used by the historian, will be found two copies (India, Vol. VII, p. 1726, and O. V. 12, p. 13) of an unsigned memorandum, dated February, 1685, on the origin of the East India Company's privileges in Bengal, To one of these Orme has prefixed a note that it was copied from a document "by an uncertain hand, who appears to have been one of the Company's agents in Bengal during the Agency of Job Chanock; which I, R. O., first discovered in the East India House, in a book intitled Fort St. George Letters Received, from the 28th July, 1687, to 18th February, 1687-88. "
This reference is precise enough to enable us to trace the memorandum among the India Office records, in what is now Factory Records: Fort St. George, Vol, XXX (p. 35). The volume containing it is one sent home from Madras in 1688 for the information of the Company, and comprises (as noted by Orme) copies of letters received at that Presidency between July, 1687, and the following February. The document in question, though dated in 1685, is entered without comment among letters received in September, 1687; but there is a possible explanation of this. It follows a letter from Thomas Davies, the interloper, protesting against his being kept a prisoner; and, as it contains an accusation against him of being partly responsible for the troubles experienced
3. I am indebted to Mr. S. C. Hill for this reference. My attention had, however, been previously drawn by Miss Anstey to the early copy among the records relating to Fort St. George from which Orme's transcript were made.
