21 



thereupon issued in 17 17, which, inclusive of other immunities, 

 not only confirmed all former grants to the Company, but allowed 

 them liberty to trade free of customs, to construct new fortifications, 

 to coin money (in the same manner as they had been permitted 

 in 1 69 1 to purchase Calcutta), thirty-seven villages, so as to 

 give them a district extending ten miles from that factory 

 on each side of the river Hooghly; and with that decreee, 

 the beneficial effects of which have been experienced by the 

 English to this day, the mission took leave of the Emperor, 

 and returned to Calcutta. On the death of Henry Hankland on 

 the 28th August, 1728, Mr. Stephenson, as the oldest member in 

 Council, was by his colleagues chosen president, an appellation first 

 given to the chief executive oi^icer of the factory in 1700, that of 

 agent only having been previously used, and the title of Governor 

 not having been conferred until 1758, when the celebrated Colonel 

 Robert Clive, afterwards elevated to the peerage as Lord Clive, 

 was appointed first Governor of Bengal ; for so humble were the 

 views of the Company in Mr. Stephenson's days, and so little 

 resemblance did its chief servant bear to a Governor General in 

 later times, that the outlay of a httle more than one hundred pounds 

 in the purchase of a chaise and pair of horses for the President of 

 Calcutta, was refused as a reprehensible piece of extravagance, 

 and the amount ordered (7th January, 1725,) to be repaid, the 

 Court of Directors observing that, if their servants 7aoiild have 

 such superfluities, they must pay for them themselves. The 

 presidency of the factory at Calcutta was accordingly held by 

 Mr. Stephenson until the arrival from England, on the 18th Sep- 

 tember, 1728, of John Dean with the Company's commission as 

 president. 



Upon his return to England, Mr. Stephenson took up his abode 

 at Keswick, having built the large house near the entrance to the 

 town on the Ambleside road, called Governor's House, which 

 though now stripped of much of its former respectability, was then 

 the only mansion of any consequence in his native place. There 

 he lived for many years, during which he bought not only 

 Holme Cultram Manor and Abbey, with Brecon Hill Tower, and 



