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 CHAPTER VIII

Rout of Philip Francis

1776-1778

During this period the news that reached Hastings from England would have driven him to the verge of despair, if he had been the 'timid, desperate, distracted being' that Francis painted him. On many of the points at issue between him and his colleagues, the Court of Directors had justified the latter, and reserved their censures for himself. They had begun to side with the perverse majority against the best and faithfullest of their own servants. While Hastings was still looking to Lord North for mere justice, if nothing more, that Minister was exerting all his influence with the Directors, in order to bring about the recall of Hastings and the appointment of Clavering in his stead. Macleane's letters to his patron reveal the progress of a plot which, but for Hastings' firmness and the loyalty of friends outside the Directorate, would have been crowned with full success. Lord North's first attempt to secure a hostile vote from the India House came to nothing; but in May, 1776,