Page:The life and letters of Sir John Henniker Heaton bt. (IA lifelettersofsi00port).pdf/110

 of the murder of Mr James Woodford Birch, the British Resident of Perak. A full account of the assassination is given in Sir Frank Swettenham's book "Malay Sketches." The Sultan Abdullah and others were banished as accomplices, while the three chiefs who actually planned the murder were sentenced to death.

H. H. was firmly convinced of the innocence of the Sultan Abdullah, and interested himself greatly in trying to secure his pardon, and partly as a result of his representations Abdulla’s term of banishment in the Seychelles was considerably reduced; but as Mahé, the capital of the Seychelles, is locally supposed to be the original Garden of Eden, Adam and Eve would have considered this a strange form of punishment.

The ex-Sultan wrote the following letters to H. H.:

It is my melancholy duty to have to announce you the lamented death of my wife which took place on Easter day at 8 a.m.; she leaves behind her several children to bewail her loss. This is to me all additional sorrow. Before this sad event I have been deploring my situation as an exiled man ; now I have to deplore the loss of my wife. I think it is the will of the Almighty, and I therefore resign myself to Him, bearing in mind the Latin maxim "Per ardua libertas."