Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 10.djvu/251

 cution and anxiety to better his position led him in 1682 to publish ‘A Second Argument for a more Full and Firm Union amongst all good Protestants,’ in which he argued against dissent from the church of England and ‘slandered his brethren.’ He appears to have published an earlier book of the same character, but neither of his pamphlets has been discovered by the writer of this notice. The idea that he had acted the part of a traitor preyed upon his mind. He fell into religious mania, and hanged himself in his house on the night of 3 Oct. 1684. A broadside was published the same year on the subject of his death, and after the declaration of indulgence and the subsequent increase in strength of the dissenting interest, pamphlets on Child’s ‘fearful estate' obtained a large circulation.

 CHILD, JOHN (d. 1690), governor of Bombay, was a brother of Sir Josiah Child [q.v.] Child appears to have been sent to India before he was ten years old, and to have spent the following eight years of his life at Rajahpur under the charge of an uncle named Goodshaw, then superintendent of the East India Company’s factory at Rajahpur. Child is said to have subsequently been instrumental in procuring the dismissalof his uncle from his appointment for dishonesty, and to have succeeded him as superintendent of the factory. In 1680 he was appointed agent of the company at Surat, at that time their principal facto in Western India. Surat had previously been a presidency, and was restored to that position in 1681, when Child was appointed president, with a council of eight, one of whom he was authorised to a point deputy governor of Bombay. In 1618 a somewhat serious insurrection occurred atBombay, a Captain Richard Keigwin, the commander of the troops and a member of the council, seizing the deputy-governor and those councillors who adhered to him, and proclaiming that the authority of the company in the island of Bombay was annulled, and that the island was placed immediately under the protection of the king of England. Child proceeded to Bombay and endeavoured unsuccessfully to bring the rebels to reason by negotiation. Eventually the matter was settled by the despatch of a king's ship to Bombay, Keigwin surrendering under promise of a pardon. In August 1684 Child was appointed captain-general and admiral of the company's sea and land forces. He was made a baronet in February 1684-5, and in 1685 the seat of government was transferred from Surat to Bombay. In 1686 Child was vested with supreme authority over all the company’s possessions in India, with instructions to proceed to Fort St. George, and, if necessary, to Bengal, ‘to bring the whole under a regulated administration.’ The island of Bombay havin been made over to the company by Charles II, who had received it from the crown of Portugal as part of his wife’s dowry, the court of directors in 1689 determined to constitute Bombay the chief seat of their trade and power, and at the same time to ‘consolidate their position in India on the basis of territorial sovereignty in order to acquire the political status of an independent power in their relations with the ughals and Mahrattas’ (, Report on the Miscellaneous Old Records of the India Office, 1 Nov. 1878). It was in pursuance of this policy, which, though not proclaimed, had been resolved on some years previously, that Child engaged in hostilities with the emperor of Delhi, which involved the company in serious difficulties, and resulted in their having to pay an indemnity of 150,000 rupees. One of the stipulations made by the emperor, Arangzib, on this occasion was that Child should be removed from India. While the question was pending, Child died at Bombay on 4 Feb. 1680.

Of Child’s character and conduct as a public man the accounts vary very much. Bruce, the annalist of the company, writes of him in terms of the highest praise. According to him ‘the precaution and public principles on which Sir John Child acted under critical circumstances discover a high sense of duty and a provident concern for the interests of the company.’ He describes Child as havin been for many years, ‘by his firmness and integrity, the real support of the company’s interests in India,’ and ‘alone capable of extricating them from the difficulties in which they were involved.’ Hamilton, on the other hand, in his ‘New Account 