20 



and that his father, Edward Stephenson, settled at Keswick in the 

 seventeenth century. Governor Stephenson was born in the year 

 1688, and dying intestate in 1765, aged seventy-seven, his only 

 brother Tohn, succeeded to his estates, which in default of issue of 

 his only son Edward, John devised to Rowland Stephenson, a 

 distant collateral relative, who subsequently sat in Parliament as 

 Member for Carlisle, and in 1782 became sized of them on the 

 death without children of the last-named Edward. Upon Row- 

 land's decease in 1807, his only son, likewise named Edward, 

 inherited; and on his decease, the estates devolved upon R. E. W. P. 

 Standish, Esq., of Farley Hill, Berkshire. 



Having entered upon a commercial life, the subject of this notice 

 embarked for Calcutta in the year 1707, then nineteen years of 

 age, in the service of the United Company of Merchants trading 

 to the East Indies, where he rose to eminence as a factor or 

 merchant in the English factory, and in that vocation gathered 

 the nabob's fortune, with which, after many years, he acquired 

 many valuable estates in the north of England. 



In 1 7 15, Mr. Stephenson, with two others of the ablest factors, 

 was deputed by his brother traders to proceed to Delhi, with a 

 memorial which humbly stated their claims upon the Mogul 

 Government for protection, enumerated the hardships under which 

 they laboured, and prayed not only for relief, but for the enlarge- 

 ment of their juridicial authority within the precincts of Calcutta, 

 as well as for the grant and assurance of ample privileges in the 

 rich traffic in which they dealt. Innumerable obstacles retarded 

 the progress of the mission ; but at length, after the lapse of nearly 

 two years, its objects were fully attained, but not, indeed, through 

 the art of diplomacy, but out of the Mogul Emperor's gratitude to 

 a medical gentleman of the name of Hamilton, who accompanied 

 the party, and who had the good fortune to cure that potentate of 

 a disease which had baffled the skill of his own Indian physicians. 

 On being commanded by his imperial patient to name his reward, 

 the generous doctor, with the virtue of a public-spirited man, who 

 preferred the Company's interest to his own, solicited as his only 

 recompense the advantages sought for by them, A firman was 



