Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/132

 bitterness of Rogers' denunciations of the old commander the trouble might be assumed to be serious if we did not know from other sources the reverend gentleman's temperament. In a letter home he stated that Downton "delights not to stir much in the mud of his hypocritical courses," and he (the writer) had intended "in charity to pass by many gross abuses he hath offered me," yet "since this by God's Providence is timely come to light of that old soaked humour of his, of inveterate hatred and continuance where he once takes dislike" he felt bound to inform the Company that "the general is not the man you take him to be touching religion: he always illtreats his ministers; he neglects prayer on the week days, and very often on the Sabbath the exercises of religion, to the great offence and discouragement of many. He is much given to backbiting, and he has answered my fatherly remonstrances by saying scornfully that he could tell his duty better than I could advise him and such like demonstrances of pride and hypocrisy."

We may probably with safety regard this as the mere venomous outpouring of an ill-balanced mind. Downton doubtless had his faults, but that he was the hypocritical humbug that the irate chaplain would have us believe is contradicted by his whole career, the details of which are laid bare in documents emanating from sources independent of him. It seems likely that Downton had to exercise his disciplinary powers very sharply during his sojourn at Surat and that Rogers some time or other came under his lash. The commander's instructions to Aldworth on leaving Surat, quoted in an earlier chapter, at all events, are highly suggestive of friction.

That Rogers was not exactly a pattern of propriety is