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Rh resolved to send Warren off to Bengal as a 'writer' in the Company's service. Dr. Nichols strongly remonstrated against such a step. 'What! Lose my favourite pupil, the best scholar of his year! In vain he offered to keep Warren at school and send him afterwards to college at his own charge. In 1749 Chiswick took the youth away from Westminster, that he might learn accounts and book-keeping from a competent teacher. In the following January Warren Hastings sailed off in the London for Calcutta. The voyage lasted far beyond the average limit of six months. October had set in before Hastings landed on the scene of his future trials and imperishable renown.

At this time the East India Company were taking breath after one of those momentous crises which marked every stage in their career. 'Merses profundo, pulchrior evenit,' sums up the tale of their fortunes during the past hundred years. Towards the end of the seventeenth century they had wellnigh been driven out of Western India and Bengal. The Peace of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1748 alone saved them from losing all their settlements in Southern India. It was mainly in their youngest settlement of Calcutta, with its offshoots up the Ganges, that they drove a prosperous trade, under the wing of a Mughal Viceroy who knew how to protect the foreigner from all exactions save his own. During the recent fight for supremacy