Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 3.djvu/356

 350

NOTES AND QUERIES. [12 s. m. JULY, 1917.

so, you may dispose of them to any friend ; the rest Shall order to be made lesse. Excu[se] me to Mr Bagnold [Unsigned] for not writing. [Endorsed] To Mr Vickers

Augt. 2d: 1670

LETTER L.

John Vickers to Richard Edwards. (O.C. 3459.)

Hugly the 13th August 1670 Dear friend

Yours of the 2d Current Received the 5th do: and am sorry to hea[r]* are soe troubled with boiles, which may occasion your wanting more plaister, Wherefore have given the pe[on] a little ps. in paper, two thirds of my remaines.

I returne. you many thanks for the enclosed not[e of] prices, and likewise for your procuring the Slippers [which] I have given you Credit for, they being very well f[or] length but a great Deall to big.

Mr Nurse desires you to procure him tw[o prs.] of Cot stringsf of the same fasshion those you sent me. Per the N[ex]t Con- veigh[ance] shall [write] you more at la[rge], having little newes at present and much writing. My humble Service to Mr March and Mr Vincen[t], my most Candid love to your Self and respects to Mr Pea[cock] Conclude and Remaine Your Reall and affectionate Loving Friend

JNO. VICKERS [Endorsed] from Mr Vickers 13th Augt.. 70.

LETTER LI.

Valentine Nurse to Richard Edwards. (O.C. 3460.)

[Valentine Nurse appears to have made his voyage to India in 1655, and to have served th e Company for eleven years at Surat before pro- ceeding to the Coromandel Coast in 1668. In March, 1658, he was appointed fourth of the factory at Ahmadabad, in Gujarat, at a salary of 20L per annum. Five years later, in April, 1663, he was sent in the Vine, with Nathaniel Scrivener, on a trading voyage from Surat to Achin, in Sumatra. In 1666 his name appears as one of the Company's servants at Surat, but " not of Council." He seems to have


 * " You " is omitted.

t There seems to be some looseness in the use of the term " cot strings." In Letter XXVI. it indicates the webbing (niivdr) which formed the seat of the bedstead, while here it is obviously used for strings to tie back mosquito curtains.

returned to England towards the end of 1666, for in April, 1667, the Court of Committees ordered his account to be " examined and allowed." In November of the same year he was elected factor for the " Coast and Bay," at a salary of 301. per annum, his securities being " Richard Nurse of Cambridge, gent., and William Nurse of the Inner Temple, gent." He sailed to Masulipatam in the Unicorn, one of the fleet of ships which took out Edwards, Smith, Vickers, &c.

In accordance with the orders of the Court, contained in the letters of December, 1669, Nurse was sent to Patna towards the end of 1670, and was there in the following year, when (as John Marshall notes in his ' Observations'), on Aug. 9, he counted one hundred and fifty- two " dead Corps," victims of famine, " in the Gaut \ffhdt, landing-place] by our Factory." In their letter of Dec. 18, 1671, however, the Court acknowledged themselves to have " bin mistaken in the preferment of Mr. Nurse," and left it to the discretion of the Bengal Council " to dispose of him as his sobriety and good carriage shall merritt." Before the arrival of these directions Nurse had been recalled from. Patna and appointed third at Hugli, where his " disorderly courses " rendered him unpopular with the authorities. On June 19, 1672, when at Balasor, he had a violent quarrel with Joseph Hall, another unruly factor. Hall alleged that Nurse threatened his life and made a personal attack on him, whereupon he, as acting Chief in ClavelFs absence, turned him out of the factory. Nurse's story was that, the Council having appointed him to keep the " D/ary of all transactions of buying and selling," he demanded of Hall " an exact insight into the Company's affa-yres." He was denied access to the books with " many scullilous [sic] pro- vocations," and was then, by Hall's orders, seized by peons, while " reading upon a cott, and conveighed," bound, out of the factory "all bloody."

Nurse wrote a long representation of his case to the Company. In this address he accused, his fellow factors of cheating their employers, was especially bitter against Walter Clavell, and declared that " Malice and uncharitablenesse was an Epidemicall disease here in the Bay of Bengallah." For four years, pending orders from England, he received allowances for board and lodging, but was not " admitted to act in the Company's business." In February, 1676, Major William Puckle, sent out by the Company to inspect and regulate their sub- ordinate factories, was furnished with papers in order to inquire into the charges of drunken- ness brought against Nurse and also into the rights of his quarrel with Hall. Puckle's find- ing is not recorded, but as Nurse was not re- instated, the Bengal Council's decision against him seems to have been confirmed. In Decem- ber, 1676, the Court returned his complaint for examination, and in the following year they wrote that the allowance granted him was " extravagant," that if " reclaimed " he was to be readmitted into the service at a reduced salary, but " if he continue disorderly let him be sent home." When this letter arrived, Nurse was at Fort St. George, whither he had gone to petition the Council against the treat- ment he had received in Bengal. In July,