Indian Antiquary Vol 62

Author(s): Richard Carnac Temple, Charles E A W Oldham, S Krishnaswami Aiyangar, Devadatta Ramkrishna Bhandarka
Publisher: Swati Publications

Page 397

Max, 1933)
THE SCATTERGOODS AND THE EAST INDIA COMPANY
227
[118]
London
19th October 1720. MR. JOHN SCATTERGOOD, SIR,
I am favor'd with yours by Mr. Trenchfield and of the 29th of December by the Sunderland(1) for which I give you thanks and am very much obliged to you for your kind present by your brother Trenchfeild, as also for what you sent by Captain Hunter; and those cups and saucers you sent me for Messrs. Houblon and Chamberlayn shall be deliverd them according to your directions, as also what you sent your Lady, 80 soon as they are sold and I can get them out of the warehouse. We shall this year send four large ships for China vizt. the Morrice, Captain Peacock, the Cadogan, Captain Hill and one new ship Captain Hudson, and another new ship, Captain Newsham Commander,(?) who is lately married to Mr. Woolleys younger daughter.()
You may bless God you was not in England for these last six months, for if you had, I am sure you would have been ruined by reason of South Sea Stock, which has been at £118 and come up to one thousand pounds and fifty; that has been a lamentable case; to many it has been their ruin. Messrs. Atwill and Hammond, Mr. Martin, Cox and Cleeve and many more broke,(*) such as Sir Justus Bock. It has been worse than all the last war(6) and has don great mischiefs to many of your East India friends, such as Phipps, who has petition'd the Company to go abroad again but can't tell if its for China or any other place.) I say its well you was in India, or otherwise, had you been concern'd in this Stock, you would have been ruin'd.......
This comes by the Dartmouth and Addison, who are design'd to retake Bencoolen, if its not already don by Mr. Pyke who is gon on the Cragge Frigot with 40 men for that purpose.(")..............
We shall not have any great sale this September by reason of the scarcity of money, occasion'd by this wicked South Sea Company. Yet we must send out a number of ships to disappoint our enemye.....
(Signed) R. NIGHTINGALE. P.S. The 25th of May last Sir Gregory Page(8) dy'd of vomitting and looseness. R. N.
[NOTES ON DOCUMENT No. 118.) (1) The Sunderland, Captain William Hutchinson, arrived in England from China on 25 August 1720. Scattergood's letter to Sir Robert Nightingale of 29 December 1719 is to be found among the Papers but has not been reproduced.
(3) The two "new" ships spent to China in December 1720 were the Macclesfield, Captain Robert Hudson, and the Frances, Captain Thomas Newsham (Letter Book, vol. xvii, p. 390).
(3) Thomas Woolley, secretary to the E. I. Co. (*) Made bankrupt. (6) The War of the Spanish Succession, begun in 1702 and ended by the Peace of Utrecht in 1713. (6) See above (p. 226) for the appointment of Phipps to Bombay.
(1) The Dartmouth, Captain Roger Carter, and the Addison, Captain Henry Wilson, followed the Cragge in which sailed Isaac Pyke, late Governor of St. Helena, appointed Deputy Governor of the West Coast with powers to retake the Company's settlement of Fort Marlborough at Bencoolen, Sumatra, captur. ed by the natives in 1719 (Letter Book, vol. xvii, p. 339).
(8) Sir Gregory Page, a Director of the E. I. Co. He had been much "chagrin'd" by the report of his supposed complicity in the attempt to lade silver secretly in the Bonita in 1718 (800 p. 181).
Other letters addressed to Scattergood from England at the close of the year 1720 were from his Aunt Elizabeth Scattergood, his sister-in-law Sarah Pownall and his friends the Godfreys, all of whom sent him their news. His Aunt complained of the damaged state in