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POLITICAL HISTORY. intended to take any further notice of past proceedings. This assurance however was regarded by the parties concerned as too vague to be satisfactory. The Governor, Sir Charles Oakeley, accordingly sent an engagement under his own hand, dated 20th August 1794, promising that Náráyana Rázu and all the late Rája's family, dependents and adherents should be taken under the Company's protection provided that they returned within thirty days, but warning them that if they still held aloof they would be ' considered to be contumacious and disobedient 'and' to have forfeited all claim to the Company's future favour or countenance.'

To this, the boy's friends replied that they would return at an early date. The more ambitious zamindars by whom he was surrounded were however by no means pleased at this decision. It was their object to protract the disturbances until they could make advantageous terms for themselves with the Company, and they consequently loudly protested against the surrender and redoubled their hostilities against the Company's detachments. Colonel Prendergast applied for a reinforcement of three battalions, but the Chief replied that it was better to negotiate than to depend upon force against people who could not be followed into their hill fastnesses; and at length the Jeypore Rája was induced to hold aloof from the insurgents and Náráyana Rázu, escaping from the other zamindars, came to Ándra on the 21st September. A proclamation calling on the other chiefs to return to their estates, and guaranteeing them possession, resulted in their also coming in; and a most difficult and dangerous situation ended happily. The Jeypore Rája was rewarded for his behaviour with a sanad for his estate, and in 1796 cowles were granted to the other zamindars reinstating them during their good behaviour in the properties of which they had been dispossessed by Vizianagram. Náráyana Rázu was given a cowle for three years for his estate on a peshkash of six lakhs, but the property was curtailed not only by the severance from it of the zamindaris which had been restored to their original proprietors, but by the absorption into the havili land of the Anakápalle taluk and some adjacent areas. By the Permanent Settlement of 1802 (see p. 169) all these ancient zamindaris were handed over to their owners in perpetuity on a fixed peshkash and a number of other proprietary estates were also called into being by parcelling out the havíli land into a series of properties and selling these by auction subject to the payment of a permanent, peshkash. 55