Page:History of India Vol 4.djvu/96

70 sired me not to take yt in ill part: it was done in Frendship. I called for a Case of Pistolls, and hanging them at my saddle I replyed those were my Frendes, in them I would trust. It was a Custome to be usd to rouges and theeves and not to free men: I was resolved not to return to my Country with shame; I would rather dye there with Honor."

Roe was certainly no meek-tempered man. His journal is full of similar scenes. But he did well to be angry, and his defiant and punctilious assertion of his dignity as the mirror of his sovereign, his insistence upon every necessary point of courtesy, and his stately refusal to unbend a jot of his proud bearing, had their due effect. When he came to India, the English were very nearly on the point of being driven out of even their slight hold at Surat; the influence of the Portuguese at court threatened to oust the scanty merchant colony which, in deep humiliation, was unconsciously laying the foundations of an empire; the Moghul authorities were accustomed to treat the English as beggars to be spurned. All this was changed before he left. Despite the opposition of the prince, afterwards Shah Jahan, who almost ruled his father, and who, as governor of Surat, had the means of making his enmity felt; in spite of the intrigues of the empress, the prime minister, and the Jesuits, Roe not merely asserted his countrymen's rights, but won a series of important diplomatic victories. He compelled the court favourite to refund his illegal exactions, and "recovered all bribes, extortions, debts made and taken before my