Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 50.djvu/457

 under Schwartz's direction. In 1776 the reinstatement of the rajah added largely to Schwartz's influence, and in 1778, leaving Trichinopoly in charge of a new chaplain, Pohlé, he took up his residence, by the rajah's own request, at Tanjore. He set to work to provide a stone church. A few months later he was summoned to Madras, and ordered to undertake a secret mission to Hyder Ali, so as ‘to prevent the effusion of blood.’ His knowledge of Hindustani enabled him to dispense with the services of an interpreter. During the journey of eight weeks he preached at every place of halt. Arrived at Seringapatam, he was received by Hyder in a courteous audience, and was dismissed with a present of three hundred rupees. Schwartz's report was not published. He gave the governor of Madras the three hundred rupees, and, when desired to retain them, made them the nucleus of a fund for an English orphan school at Tanjore. From the government he declined to receive anything beyond his expenses, but he secured to Pohlé, the missionary at Trichinopoly, a salary of 100l. a year.

The church in the fort at Tanjore, capable of holding five hundred people, was completed on 16 April 1780. At the same time a house in the suburbs was converted into a Tamil church for the use of the native converts, and other mission buildings grew up around it. When Hyder's troops overran the Carnatic nearly to the gates of Madras, Schwartz busily tended the sick and wounded. Hyder allowed him to pass unmolested even among his own troops. ‘He is a holy man,’ he is reported to have said, ‘and means no harm to my government.’ When at last negotiations for peace began, Schwartz twice agreed to be interpreter to the commissioners at Tippoo Sahib's court; but on his first journey he was stopped at Tippoo's outposts, and on the second a scorbutic eruption in the legs made travelling impossible. Colonel Fullarton, the commander-in-chief of the Madras army, declared at the time: ‘The integrity of this irreproachable missionary has retrieved the character of Europeans from imputations of general depravity.’

To Schwartz, at the suggestion of Mr. Sullivan, the resident of Tanjore, was apparently due the first scheme of government schools. He induced the princes of Ramnad, Tanjore, and Shevagunga to initiate them; and they were afterwards subsidised from Madras. In these schools the teaching of Christianity was a conspicuous element. Subsequently he was instrumental in founding the greatest native church in India in Tinnevelly. A Brahmin woman, resident at Palamcottah, in this district, who was cohabiting with an English officer, learnt from him the doctrines of Christianity, but when she applied to Schwartz for baptism, she was of course refused. In 1778, after the officer's death, she applied again; and Schwartz, having satisfied himself as to her sincerity, baptised her at Palamcottah under the name of Chlorinda. There she caused a church to be built; the congregation grew rapidly, and Schwartz placed a resident catechist, Sattianadan, in the place. In 1790 he ordained this catechist as the native pastor of Palamcottah.

The war left Tanjore in terrible distress, which was aggravated by the oppression and avarice of the rajah. Thousands fled the country and left it waste. Schwartz was nominated a member of a committee of investigation. Through his means the rajah was induced without coercion to do his people justice; seven thousand of them returned to cultivate the fields on the faith of Schwartz's pledges. For this service the government appointed him interpreter at a salary of 100l. a year. Later on, the rapacity of a new rajah demanded his interference. He drew up an able state paper on the subject of the administration of justice, and for a time was entrusted with the superintendence of the courts. When the rajah lay dying (1787) he adopted Serfojee, a cousin of ten years old, as his heir, and begged Schwartz to be the boy's guardian; Schwartz, however, then declined the office. The boy was set aside, and a brother of the rajah, Ameer Sing, was placed on the throne by the English. He began to ill-use Serfojee, keeping him in a dark room and refusing him education. Thereon Schwartz appealed to the government, and was appointed the boy's guardian. He caused his removal to another house, where he lived under a guard of sepoys, and provided for his instruction; when Ameer threatened a renewal of persecution in 1793, he obtained his transference, along with two widows of the late rajah, to Madras, and procured a rehearing there of the boy's claim to the throne, which issued in his favour. The East India Company in England did not formally sanction the enthronement till Schwartz was dead. In his last illness Schwartz gave the young man his blessing, bidding him to rule justly, be kind to the Christians, and forsake his idols for the true God.

Schwartz died on 13 Feb. 1798. Serfojee was present at the funeral, and wrote some touching English doggerel for his grave in the mission church. In the church in the fort he placed a monument by Flaxman, in which the old man is represented on his