Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/90

64 emperor, weary of the squabble. But Hawkins knew the way to mend the matter, and on his giving Jahangir a fresh present, this order was rescinded: "so this time againe I was afloate." Then the Portuguese plied the emperor with bribes, and Hawkins fell out of favour. Nur Jahan reversed this state of things for the moment, but Hawkins found it impossible to pin the emperor to his promises, and retired from court in disgust on November 2, 1611. He sailed for Bantam in the following January in Sir Henry Middleton's fleet, and died a couple of years later on his voyage home.

Hawkins's intimacy with the Great Moghul gave him unrivalled opportunities for observation, but he was not an educated or penetrating observer. A good deal of his information is obviously based upon hearsay, but there is a large amount of first-hand evidence which no historian of Mohammedan India can afford to neglect. He describes the life-peers, or "men of Livings or Lordships" as he calls them, in their several ranks, from those "of the Fame of twelve thousand Horsemen" down to those of twenty horse, and says there were altogether three thousand in receipt of such grants. The army raised by these mansabdars amounted to three hundred thousand horsemen, who were maintained out of the income allowed to their rank. On their death, all their property went to the emperor, and "all the lands belong to him," but "commonly he dealeth well" with their children. The king's yearly income he estimated at fifty crores of rupees, or over fifty millions of pounds. The royal treasury