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 THE FOUNDING OF MADRAS 229 council realized the advantages of a stronghold on the Bay of Bengal as a half-way house for the trade with Java, and gave their sanction. But six years later the Company at home had not forgiven its servants at Madras for the new expenses into which they had plunged. In 1645 it summoned one of them before its court " to answer the charge of the building of Fort St. George.' ' It let him off only on the ground that " it was the joint act of all the factors; " and "if it should not prove so advantageous for the Company hereafter, it can be charged upon no man more justly than upon Mr. Day." The little isolated group of Englishmen meanwhile pushed on the tvorks, and, in spite of their Honourable Masters, founded the future capital of Southern India. The first General Letter from Fort St. George, dated November 5, 1642, announced that the chief settlement on the Coromandel coast had been transferred from Masulipatam to Madras. It humbly tried to argue away the displeasure of the Company at home, but with little success, for by 1644 the cost of the fortifications had mounted up to £2294; and it was found that an- other £2000 with a garrison of a hundred men would be required. The Madras grant gave us our first piece of Indian soil, apart from the mere plots on which our factories were built. It was but a narrow strip running about a mile inland for six miles up the shore, north of the Portuguese monastic village that clustered around the shrine of Saint Thome, or Saint Thomas, referred to