Page:Notes and Queries - Series 12 - Volume 5.djvu/178

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NOTES AND QUERIES.

[12 S. V. JULY, 19191

compelled to deposit for safety in the hold when the time came for action. Hence we see that the East Londoner, John Browne, King's Gun-founder, gained a reward of 200Z. for casting lighter pieces than had been previously made. Maurice Thomson, the very adaptable Puritan merchant-trader, by the by, had interests in this important matter of armament, and his deals with the necessary saltpetre (prepared in what is now St. George's East) were very much on twentieth -century lines when operating for a government. Moreover, his enemies and trade rivals used to more than whisper that in years agone he had traded in muskets with the Red Indians for ever threatening the young and struggling English settle- ments in North America. It was Maurice Thomson who sold (how got is perhaps a story of the Lord Protector) the land upon which the Old Stepney Meeting House was erected ; and he dwelt close by in Worcester House on Stepney Green and Stepney High Street ; and he figured with signal unction at the opening service in 1654 of the Old Poplar Chapel, which extended the means of grace to Old Stepney seamen who had roved all over the lawless Indian Ocean. And, withal, he usefully officiated on the ancient Stepney Vestry (for Commonwealth or for Royal interests as occasion served, for events in his career showed that in mere politics he was no bigot and worshipped no fetish catechism) as a representative for the principal Maritime Hamlet of Rat cliff. But Capt. John Weddell, who is first seen on records as Master's Mate of the East India Company's Thames-built Dragon, died obscurely on the homeward voyage from India in 1639, after a life of evidently great vicissitudes in various service in the East, in the Persian Gulf, in the Indian Ocean, and in the more distant China Seas ; and no peerage came to his family, as in the case of Maurice Thomson's.

On Dec. 4, 1623, John Weddell, then described as " of Ratcliffe, in Middlesex, gent., aged 40 or thereabouts," was ex- amined before the Judge of the High Court of Admiralty, and gave a detailed account of his voyage when he was Commodore of a Thames fleet that joined in the attack on the Portuguese in the Persian Gulf, and the consequent sack of Ormuz, which appears to have yielded so little plunder to the adventurers and so very much disappointed the Duke of Buckingham, Lord High Admiral, who greedily clamoured for his tenths of the spoil. In 1634 John Weddell held the commission of Admiral of the

East India Company's Fleet, given to him. by the President and Council at Surat, despite the Court of Directors having, timidly called him home to London. And the Surat Council testified in April, 1634 r. that he was

"a gentleman of valour and resolution, and second to no man that the Company ever employed in the care of his charge, especially at sea ; and his trac- tability far exceeds that of many of the churlish Commanders who conceive themselves only created for the sole good of the fleets they command that they desire no better, or other, way to con the fleet."

At Canton (owing to the Portuguese in- trigues) he had "a difficulty " with the Chinese as before mentioned, but, after having battered one of the forts, he was compelled to return to Macao, to India, and so to England, in 1640, before petition- ing for a new commission. J. K. Laughton, the naval historian, thought that such of Weddell's property as was not lost in his various adventures and mishaps was swal- lowed up in the insolvency of Sir William- Courten, who was conspicuous in the en- deavour to establish a trade to the East Indies independent of the East India- Company. But Capt. Weddell when he sailed from the Thames under the Courten patronage flew the King's colours on his- fleet of six vessels The Dragon, The Sun, The Katharine, The Planter, The Anne, and The Discovery which had cost the then great sum of 120,000 to equip ; and the charter which had been obtained somehow from the crooked and needy King was valid enough.

However, these things are rather of the very mixed story of the doings of the English in Asia ; all that is here sought to emphasize is that it was no unusual thing that a seaman of Capt. John Weddell's quality and capacity for command should have been resident in what is now one of the most unlovely historical spots in all Eng- land, with nothing whatever as yet to indicate the nature of its unique record. For generations the ancient Hamlet was & common place of residence or lodging of the officers and mariners in the service of the Companies and the Associations laying down, more or less intuitively, the founda- tions of the wide -flung British Empire ; and 1 adventurers, exploiters, Asian wanderers, were always to be found on the local Rialto- by Ratcliff Cross, to be used, at any rate, by Daniel Defoe and the pamphleteers and balladists. The first fleets of the East India- Company are set down frequently as having- " sailed from Woolwich," " from Blackwall,"