Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/88

 Few details can be found among the records of Calcutta as to the different buildings and their condition after the siege, but there can be no doubt that the town was in a deplorable state, owing to the wholesale and wanton destruction of property. The presence of the large body of troops added greatly to the difficulties of providing accommodation for the returned British, and for several years following the siege and recovery of Calcutta every building that could be rendered habitable was occupied to its utmost capacity.

The English church of St. Anne had been the scene of much fighting during the attack on the Fort, and was completely destroyed, but the two other churches in Calcutta, that of the Armenians, St. Nazareth, and a small Roman Catholic Church on the site of the Moorgehatta Cathedral, had both escaped uninjured. The Armenians continued to be an important section of the community, but the Roman Catholics had fallen into great disfavour. Clive, in one of his earliest reports to the court, states that the Government, immediately on their return to Calcutta, had interdicted "the public exercise of the Roman Catholic religion, and forbid the residence of their priests in our bounds." He gives as the reason for this step—