Part 3 (2/2)

A site for a church, as also for a priest's house, was provided in White Town, within the Fort St. George of to-day, and a small church, dedicated to St. Andrew, was built; and for a good many years it was the only church of any kind in the settlement.

The Portuguese ecclesiastics of Mylapore were never reconciled to this ecclesiastical separation of Madras, and when Father Ephraim went by invitation to Mylapore to discuss certain ecclesiastical business, he was forthwith arrested, clapped in irons, and s.h.i.+pped off to Goa and lodged in the prison of the Inquisition. The Governor of Fort St.

George took the matter in hand, but Father Ephraim was in prison more than two years before he was eventually released and sent back to Madras.

Later, Father Ephraim rebuilt St. Andrew's Church on a larger plan, and the building was opened with ceremony; and Master Patrick Warner, the Company's Protestant Chaplain at Fort St. George, complained indignantly to the Directors in England that Governor Langhorn had celebrated the popish occasion with the 'firing of great guns' and with 'volleys of small shot by all the soldiers in garrison.'

Father Ephraim had already built a church in old Black Town, which seems to have stood somewhere within what is now the site of the High Court. Another French Capuchin had meanwhile come to Madras to help him in his ministrations to his ever-increasing flock; so the church in Black Town had its regular pastor.

After more than fifty years of self-sacrificing work in Madras, Father Ephraim died of old age, sincerely esteemed by all who knew him.

Some years after his death St. Andrew's was again rebuilt, and it was now a large edifice, with a high bell-tower, and a small churchyard around. In the suburban district of Muthialpet there was also a 'Portuguese Burying Place,' which is now the 'compound' of the Roman Catholic Cathedral and its a.s.sociated buildings in Armenian Street; and a small church stood within this enclosure. Adjoining the Portuguese Burying Place was the 'Armenian Burying Place,' which is now the enclosure of the Armenian church; and it was the Armenian Burying Place that gave the name to the street.

When Madras was captured by the French, there were people who said that the French priests in Madras had given information to their countrymen; and three years later, when Madras was restored to the Company, the Governor in Council confiscated St. Andrew's church. A reference to the Directors in England as to what they were to do with the confiscated building brought back the very decisive reply that they were ”immediately on the receipt of this, without fail to demolish the Portuguese Church in the White Town at Madras, and not suffer it to stand.” The church was demolished accordingly, as also a Roman Catholic chapel in Vepery. The church in old Black Town had already been demolished by the French when they destroyed the greater part of old Black Town itself; and, in accordance with another edict of the Directors in England, by which the Company's representatives in Madras were ”absolutely forbid suffering any Romish Church within the bounds, or even to suffer the public profession of the Romish religion,” Roman Catholicism was altogether scouted in Madras.

Twenty-five years later, the English troops, after defeating the French in various engagements, captured Pondicherry and demolished its fortifications; and the peace of Paris left the French in India powerless. With the danger of French aggression removed for good, the Company were less intolerant of the religion which Frenchmen professed; and a few years later they paid the Capuchin priests some Rs. 50,000 as compensation for the destruction of the church in White Town and of the chapel in Vepery.

With funds thus in their hands, the Capuchin fathers set about building a new church in the 'Burying Place.' This new church, which they built in 1775, was the edifice which is now the Roman Catholic Cathedral in Armenian Street. On the gate-posts appears the date 1642, but this was the year in which the Company made a grant of the land for a Roman Catholic Cemetery and in which Father Ephraim arrived and the Madras Mission began, and is not the date of the building of the present church or of its predecessor. The Capuchin missionaries continued in charge of Roman Catholic affairs in Madras until 1832, in which year they were put under episcopal jurisdiction.

Reference has been made in this chapter and elsewhere to the churches that were already in existence in Mylapore when the English first settled in Madras. According to local tradition, the Apostle St.

Thomas made his way to the East, and, after preaching in various parts of India, settled down in the ancient Hindu town of Mylapore, where he made numerous converts. The Hindu priests, indignant at the loss of so many of their clients, sought the missionary's life. The Apostle, according to the tradition, lived in a small cave on a small hill--the 'Little Mount'--fed by birds and drinking the water of a spring that bubbled up miraculously within the cave. Driven from the cave, he fled to another hill, a mile or so away--'St. Thomas's Mount'--where he was killed with a lance. The dead body was buried at Mylapore. Such is the story; and in the present-day church on the Little Mount the visitor is shown a cave which is said to have been the Apostle's hiding-place; and within the nave of the cathedral at Mylapore he is shown a hole in the ground--now lined with marble--in which the Martyr's remains are said to have been buried.

When the Portuguese came to Mylapore in the early part of the sixteenth century, they built a church upon the ruins of an ancient church that had enclosed the tomb; and the new church became eventually the Cathedral of San Thome. The sixteenth century building was pulled down in 1893, and the present Cathedral--a handsome Gothic structure--was built. Mylapore is now a suburb of Madras, and is within British dominion; but the bishopric, which was originally supported by the King of Portugal, who had the right of nominating the bishop, is still supported by the Portuguese Government.

Mylapore has a history of its own that is outside the scope of the 'Story of Madras;' but a few words about the glories of a city that is now a suburb of Madras will not be out of place.

Mylapore and Madras, standing side by side, are a conjunction of the old and the young. Mylapore, or Meliapore, the 'Peac.o.c.k City' of the ancient Hindu world, has existed for twenty centuries, and perhaps a great many more; Madras has existed less than three. It was at Mylapore that, according to tradition, the body of the martyred Apostle St. Thomas was buried; Mylapore was the birth-place of Tiruvalluvar, an old and ill.u.s.trious Tamil author who belonged to the down-trodden cla.s.s, and of Peyalvar, an eminent Vaishnavite saint and writer; it was here that a company of Saivaite saints, Appar and his fellows, a.s.sembled together and wrote their well-known hymns; and it was here also that Mastan, a renowned Mohammedan scholar, lived and wrote and died.

Of the ancient glories of Mylapore no vestige remains; but several of the churches of the Mylapore diocese belong to the sixteenth century, including the celebrated 'Luz' Church, the Church of the Madre-de-Deus at San Thome and the little Church of Our Lady of Refuge between Mylapore and Saidapet, besides the churches at the Little Mount and St. Thomas's Mount, of which the latter is a sixteenth-century development of an old chapel that existed there before the coming of the Portuguese.

It is of interest to note that there are those who say that a Mylapore church gave its name to the city of Madras. They say--not, I believe, without evidence--that the rural village of Madraspatam, where Mr.

Francis Day selected a site for the Company's settlement, had been colonized by fisherfolk from the parish of the Madre-de-Deus Church--the Church of the Mother of G.o.d--and that the emigrant fisherfolk called their village by the name of their parish, and that the name was eventually corrupted into 'Madras.' The origin of the name 'Madras' is uncertain; and the explanation is at any rate interesting and not unlikely to be true.

CHAPTER X

CHEPAUK PALACE

Among the interesting buildings in Madras must be included Chepauk Palace, which was built about a century and a half ago as a residence for the Nawab of the Carnatic, and which is now the office of the Board of Revenue. The high wall that enclosed the s.p.a.cious Saracenic structure in its palace days has been pulled down, and the public can now gaze at a building that was once carefully screened from the public eye, and can enter at will without having to satisfy the scrutiny of armed men at the gate. A change indeed--from the sleepy residence of a Muhammadan ruler, with his harem and his idle crowd of retainers, to bustling offices where a mult.i.tude of officials and clerks are working out the cash accounts of the Government of Madras!

The 'Carnatic' was a dominion that extended over the territory that is now included in the Collectorates of Nellore, North Arcot, South Arcot, Trichinopoly, and Tinnevelly. The town of Arcot was the capital of the dominion, and the Nawab of the Carnatic was sometimes spoken of as the Nawab of Arcot. Chepauk Palace belongs to the history of the Carnatic, and a few historical notes will make things clear.

In our first chapter we intimated that Madras, when Mr. Francis Day acquired it, was within the domain of the disappearing Hindu Empire of Vijianagar, of which the living representative at the time was the Raja of Chandragiri, from whom Mr. Francis Day accordingly obtained a deed of possession. Seven years afterwards, the Raja of Chandragiri was a refugee in Mysore, driven from his throne by the Muhammadan Sultan of Golconda, who a.s.sumed the sovereignty of Hyderabad and the Carnatic. The Sultan of Golconda thus became the recognized overlord of Madras; and the Company were careful to secure from their new sovereign a confirmation of their possession. But the power of the Sultan was destined to fall in its turn; for Aurangzeb, the Moghul Emperor at Delhi, being desirous of uniting all India under Moghul rule, waged war against the Sultan of Golconda--who, as a s.h.i.+ah Mohammedan, was a heretic in Aurangzeb's eyes--and defeated him.

Aurangzeb put Hyderabad under a Nizam whom he named 'Viceroy of the Deccan' and the Carnatic under a Nawab who was to be subordinate to the Viceroy. But the Emperor who succeeded Aurangzeb had none of their predecessors' greatness; and soon after Aurangzeb's death the Nizam of Hyderabad a.s.sumed independence, with the Nawab of the Carnatic as his va.s.sal.

In 1749 there was a quarrel for the Nawabs.h.i.+p. The French at Pondicherry supported one claimant, and the English at Madras supported the other. This was the gallant Clive's opportunity.

Exchanging the clerk's pen for the officer's sword, the youthful 'writer' marched with a small force to Arcot and captured it on behalf of the Company's nominee, and then sustained most heroically a lengthy siege. Clive triumphed; and Mohammed Ali, otherwise known as Nawab Walajah, became undisputed Nawab of the Carnatic. Later, with British support, the Nawab renounced his allegiance to Hyderabad, and reigned as an independent prince.

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