Part 3 (1/2)

In 1746, when the French were besieging Fort St. George, the British defenders lodged their wives and children and their domestic servants in the bomb-proof church, and they took refuge there themselves in the intervals of military duty. During the three years that they occupied Madras, the French, fearing that they might be besieged in their turn, used the bomb-proof church as a storehouse for grain and as a reservoir for drinking-water. The church organ they sent off to Pondicherry as one of the spoils of war.

At the end of the war Madras was restored to the Company, but a few years later the Fort was besieged by the French again. During the interval, some of the houses had been made bomb-proof, and in these the women and children were lodged, but St. Mary's Church was used as a barrack, and its steeple as a watch-tower. Lally, the French commander, failing to capture Madras, had to march away with his hopes baffled; but, notwithstanding its bomb-proof roof, the church, as also its steeple, had been badly damaged during the destructive siege, and the necessary repairs were considerable.

A few years later the English had their revenge. They captured Pondicherry, and they destroyed its fortifications. They recovered, with other things, the organ that had been looted from St. Mary's; but, as a new one had in the meanwhile been obtained for St. Mary's, the recovered instrument was sent to a church up-country. According to accounts, moreover, they took toll for the Frenchmen's loot by sending to St. Mary's from one of the churches in Pondicherry the large and well-executed painting of the 'Last Supper,' which is still to be seen in the church. The origin of the picture is not known for certain; but it is believed with reason to be a fact that it was a spoil of war from Pondicherry on one or another of the three occasions on which that town was captured by the British.

The stray visitor who wanders round St. Mary's without a guide is apt to be astonished at what he sees in the churchyard. A mult.i.tude of old tomb-stones, of various ages and with inscriptions in various tongues, lie flat on the ground, as close to one another as paving-stones, in such fas.h.i.+on that the visitor must wonder how there can be sufficient room for coffins below. As a matter of fact, the coffins and their contents are not there, and the inscriptions of 'Here lyeth' and 'Hic jacet' are not statements of facts. The explanation is an interesting story, which is worth the telling.

In the Company's early days, the 'English Burying Place,' (_vide_ Map, p. 10) lay a little way outside the walls of White Town, in an area which is now occupied by the Madras Law College with its immediate precincts. Later, when a wall was built round old Black Town, the Burial Ground was included within the enclosure of the wall. An English cemetery in a corner of an Indian town was not likely to be treated with any particular respect; and on various counts the 'English Burying Place' was a sadly neglected spot. Nearly every Englishman that died in Madras was an employee of the Company, and was a bachelor, without any relatives in India to mourn his loss. His colleagues gave him a grand funeral; but his death meant promotion for some of those selfsame colleagues, and his place in the Company's service was filled up by an official 'Order' on the following day. A big monument in the old-fas.h.i.+oned brick-and-mortar ugliness was piously built over his remains, and possibly there was genuine regret at a good fellow's loss; but water is less thick than blood, and there was no near one or dear one in India to take affectionate care of the big tomb; so it was left to itself to be taken care of by the people of Black Town. An unofficial description of Madras dated 1711 speaks of the 'stately Tombs' in the English cemetery, and an official Record of the same year speaks of the unhallowed uses to which the stately tombs were put. The Record says that ”Excesses are Comitted on hallowed ground,” and that the arcaded monuments were ”turned into receptacles for Beggars and Buffaloes.” We have seen in a previous chapter that the French, when they captured Madras, demolished the greater part of old Black Town together with its wall, and that the English, when they were back in Madras, completed the work of demolition. In the two-fold destruction, both French and English had sufficient respect for the dead to leave the tombs alone. But, now that Black Town was gone, the big tombs were the nearest buildings to the walls of White Town and Fort St. George; and when the French under Lally besieged Madras a few years later, they used the 'stately Tombs'

as convenient cover for their attack on the city. The cemetery now was a receptacle not for beggars and buffaloes but for soldiers and guns.

The siege lasted sixty-seven days, during which the cemetery was a vantage ground for successive French batteries. It is therefore not to be wondered at that when Count Lally had raised the unsuccessful siege, the authorities at Fort St. George decided that the 'stately tombs' were to disappear. The tombs themselves were accordingly destroyed, but the slabs that bore the inscriptions were laid in St.

Mary's churchyard. At a later date some of them were taken up and were removed to the ramparts, for the extraordinary purpose of 'building platforms for the guns,'[2] but eventually they were restored to the churchyard and were relaid as we see them to-day.

[Footnote 2: Rev. F. Penny's _Church in Madras_, vol. i, p. 366.]

When the burying ground was dismantled, two of its monuments were allowed to remain. They are still to be seen on the Esplanade, outside the Law College, and the inscriptions can still be read; and the two tombs are interesting memorials of the past. One is a tall, steeple-like structure, which represents a woman's grief for her first husband, and for her child by her second. Her first husband was Joseph Hynmers, Senior Member of Council, who died in 1680, her second was Elihu Yale, Governor of Madras, whom she married six months after the death of her first. When her little son David died at the age of four, she had him buried in her first husband's grave. The other monument covers a vault which holds the remains of various members of the Powney family, a name which figured freely in the list of the Company's employees throughout the eighteenth century. When the cemetery was dismantled, members of the Powney family were still in the Madras service, and it was doubtless in respect for their feelings that the vault was not disturbed.

It may be added that amongst the gravestones that pave the ground outside St. Mary's Church there are several that record the death of Roman Catholics. It is supposed that they were taken from the graveyard of the Roman Catholic church in White Town, which was demolished by the Company when they recovered Madras after the French occupation.

Although the gravestones around St. Mary's Church bear the names of persons who were buried elsewhere, there are memorials within the church itself which mark the actual resting-place of mortal remains.

Most of the monuments in St. Mary's are of historic interest, and it is fascinating indeed to stroll round the building and study

Storied urn or animated bust;

but it is noteworthy that no inscription records the very first burial within the walls of the church. It is noteworthy too that the forgotten grave was not the grave of an obscure person, but of Lord Pigot, Governor of Madras; and, in view of the extraordinary circ.u.mstances of his death, the first burial is the most notable of all.

George Pigot was sent out to Madras as a lad of eighteen, to take up the post of a writer in the Company's service. He worked so well that he rose rapidly, and at the early age of thirty-six he was appointed Governor of Madras. It was in the middle of his eight years'

governors.h.i.+p that the French under Lally besieged Madras for sixty-five days; and Governor Pigot's untiring energy and skilful measures were prime factors in the successful defence. After the war he did great things for the development of Madras; and when he resigned office at the age of forty-five and went to England, the strenuous upholder of British honour in the East was rewarded with an Irish peerage. Well would it have been for Lord Pigot if he had settled down for good on his Irish estate! But twelve years later he accepted the offer of a second term of office as Governor of Madras.

It is not infrequently the case that a man who has been eminently successful in office at one time of his career fails badly if after a long interval he accepts the same office again. Times have altered and methods that were successful before are now out of date. In Lord Pigot's case the conditions at the time of his second appointment were very different from those at the time of the first. On the first occasion he had risen to office with colleagues who had been his companions in the service. On the second occasion he was sent out to Madras as an elderly n.o.bleman selected for the job, and as a stranger to his colleagues, who moreover were particularly given to factious disputes. It is not unlikely too that Lord Pigot himself had become touchy and overbearing in his declining years. Any way, he quarrelled with his Councillors almost immediately, and within six or seven months there had been some very angry scenes. He had been accustomed to being obeyed, and in his wrath at being obstinately resisted he went to the length of ordering the arrest not only of some of the leading members of Council but also of the Commander-in-Chief. The Councillors check-mated the Governor's order by arresting the Governor! It was a daring proceeding. He was arrested one night after dark, while driving along a suburban road on his imagined way to a friendly supper, and he was sent as a prisoner to a house at St.

Thomas's Mount. He was in captivity for some nine months, while the triumphant Councillors were representing their case to the Directors in England; and then he died, in Government House, Madras, to which when he fell ill he had been transferred. It is on record that his remains were specially honoured with burial within St. Mary's Church--the first burial within the building--but no permanent memorial was raised to the unhappy Governor's memory; and the particular spot where he was buried is only a matter of conjecture.

St. Mary's Church is less than 250 years old. Compared with hundreds of the grey-walled or ivy-covered churches in England, St. Mary's at Madras is prosaically new; but it is of exceeding interest nevertheless. Madras itself is a great and historic city, which owes its existence to British enterprise, with Indian co-operation, and St.

Mary's Church, as the oldest British building therein, is the earliest milestone of progress. It is not a church that is best visited, like Melrose Abbey, 'in the pale moonlight,' but in the bright daylight, when the inscriptions on the tomb-stones without and on the monuments within can be clearly read.

CHAPTER IX

ROMAN CATHOLIC, MADRAS

When the English first came to Madras, there were numerous Roman Catholic churches in the neighbouring Portuguese settlement of San Thome, but there were none within the tract of land that Mr. Francis Day acquired in the Company's behalf. When, therefore, at the Company's invitation, a number of Portuguese from San Thome, both pure-blooded and mixed, came and settled down in the Company's White Town, they were necessarily compelled to resort to the ministrations of Portuguese priests who belonged to the San Thome Mission; and within a year of the foundation of Fort St. George, the Portuguese missionaries built a church in the outskirts of the British settlement. This was the Church of the a.s.sumption, which stands in what is still called 'Portuguese Street' in Georgetown, and is therefore a building of historic note. To the Company's representatives the ministrations of Portuguese priests to residents of Madras were objectionable; for the relations between Madras and San Thome were by no means friendly. It is true that when Mr. Francis Day was treating for the acquisition of a site, the Portuguese at Mylapore had furthered his efforts; but such a mark of apparent good will was no more than the outcome of Portuguese hostility to the Dutch; for they hoped that the English at Madras would be powerful allies with themselves against the aggressive Hollanders. As soon, however, as Madras had begun to be built and English trade to be actively pushed, jealousies arose and disagreements occurred; and the Company's representatives chafed at the idea that Portuguese priests should be the spiritual advisers of residents of Madras.

In 1642, when Madras was in its third year, a certain Father Ephraim, a French Capuchin, chanced to set foot in Madras. Father Ephraim had been sent out from Paris as a missionary to Pegu; and he had travelled across India from Surat to Masulipatam, where, according to his instructions, he was to have secured a pa.s.sage to Pegu in one of the Company's s.h.i.+ps. His information was out of date; for the Agency had lately been transferred from Masulipatam to Madras, and the Company's s.h.i.+ps for Pegu were sailing now from Madras instead of from Masulipatam; so Father Ephraim journeyed southward from Masulipatam to look for a vessel at the new settlement. At Madras no vessel was starting immediately, and Father Ephraim had to bide his time.

Meanwhile he made himself useful by ministering to the Roman Catholics of the place. Official and other doc.u.ments show that Father Ephraim was a very devout and a very able man. He was 'an earnest Christian,'

'a polished linguist,' able to converse in English, Portuguese and Dutch, besides his own French, and he was conversant with Persian and Arabic. He had the charm of attractive friendliness, which is so common with Frenchmen, and he captivated all with whom he conversed.

The Portuguese and other Roman Catholic inhabitants of Madras, to whom the Company's disapproval of the ministrations of Portuguese priests had been a frequent source of trouble, formally pet.i.tioned Father Ephraim to settle down in the city; and the Governor in Council, greatly preferring a French priest to a Portuguese and thoroughly approving of Father Ephraim personally, supported the pet.i.tion with a formal order that, if the priest would stay, a site would be provided on which he might build a church for his flock. Father Ephraim himself was not unwilling to stay, but he was under orders for Pegu, and, furthermore, Madras was within the diocese of San Thome, and the Bishop was not likely to approve of a scheme in which the ministrations of his own priests would be set at naught in favour of a stranger. The Company, however, was influential. A reference was made to Father Ephraim's Capuchin superiors in Paris, and they approved of his remaining in Madras; another reference was made to Rome, asking that the British territory of Madras should be ecclesiastically separated from the Portuguese diocese of Mylapore, and the Pope issued a decree to that effect.