1898.] Annual Address.. 89 



John's Church. In 1726 arrived a Chaplain who was destined to set 

 the climate for 30 years at defiance, and then to perish not by any 

 Indian sickness but by suffocation in the Black Hole ; his name was 

 Gervase Bellamy. He saw the old Court House, which occupied the^ 

 site of the present St. Andrew's Kirk, built in about 1729. The build- 

 ing was first intended as a school house, but soon gave shelter to the 

 Mayor's Court, and became the Calcutta Town Hall. Eventually Govern- 

 ment took it over and still pay over the monthly rent of 800 sicca 

 rupees on account of it to the Select Yes try of St. John's and the other 

 Governors of the Free School. Bellamy witnessed also the furious 

 cyclone of 1737, which, it appears, was not accompanied by an earthquake 

 as is generally supposed, but in which the tall spire of St. Anne's was 

 blown off. The traditions of this celebrated storm, as Mr. Hyde has 

 shown, are much exaggerated. In 1743, Bellamy received a junior 

 colleague in the Chaplaincy, the third successor of whom was Robert 

 Mapletoft, who arrived in 1749. In the siege of 1756, this man was 

 appointed a Captain-Lieuteuant, and did good work on the defences. 

 He perished among the refugees at Fulta, while Bellamy was found 

 lying suffocated hand in hand with his son in the Black Hole. On 

 the recovery of Calcutta from the Nawab Siraju-d-daulah, the first 

 incumbent of the Chaplaincy was Richard Cobbe, R.N., who 

 had accompanied Admiral Watson to Calcutta. He died after a 

 few months' service. During his brief incumbency the Portuguese 

 Church in Moorgihatta was taken over for English use and remained the 

 presKh^ncy church until 1760. Cobbe was succeeded by Butler who in 

 1758 welcomed into the settlement the celebrated S. P. C. K. Missionary 

 John Zachary Kiernander. He survived to see St. John's Chapel built 

 in the ruins of the old Fort in 1760. In January 1762, a month 

 after his death, he was succeeded by Sainuel Stavely, R.W., who 

 died nine months later. His colleague, William Hirst, R.N., 

 F.R.S., was one of the most accomplished men who ever belonged 

 to the Bengal Ecclesiastical Establishment. A long communication of 

 his, respecting the great earthquake of 1762 and also an eclipse of the 

 sun in the same year, is to be found in the Transactions of the Royal 

 Society. Following Hirst, William Parry succeeded as Senior Chaplain 

 in 1765, and Thomas Yate iu 1769. The latter had a singular ex- 

 perience in being taken prisoner by the French and confined on board a 

 French frigate and at the Mauritius. In both situations he suffered horri- 

 ble hardships, and in the latter imprisonment he even prayed " that one 

 of the soldiers might be permitted to shoot him through the head." He 

 survived all his misfortunes, however, and died as first Garrison Chaplain 

 of Calcutta in 1782. William Johnson became Senior Presidency Chap- 



