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there in 1640. This being a purchase, no objection was made 

 to the circumvallation. And from this small beginning arose the 

 extensive dominions now belonging to the East India Company, 

 under the Presidency of Madras, or Fort St. George. 



In less than thirty years after these petty establishments in 

 Bengal and Coromandel, the island of Bombay was ceded to the 

 English, on the marriage of Charles the Second with the princess 

 Catherine of Portugal: this was the foundation of the Bombay 

 government, and all its subsequent appendages on the western 

 side of the Indian peninsula. The whole of these settlements, 

 and every other British factory in India (including those retained 

 in the eastern islands after the cruel massacre of the Company's 

 servants at Amboyna, by the Dutch) were subordinate to the 

 Governor and Council at Sural; established there, with a supreme 

 authority, by the East India Company in England. 



It would be foreign to these memoirs to enter on a detail of 

 the- history of the English East India Company, or the aggran- 

 disement of the British nation, in the remote regions of Hindos- 

 tan. This history became generally interesting about the middle 

 of the eighteenth century, in consequence of the unparalleled 

 cruelty of the nabob of Bengal, and the sufferings of the English 

 in the Black Hole at Calcutta, an event which was soon followed 

 by the memorable battle of Plassey, and other gallant exploits in 

 Bengal, by Robert, Lord Clive, the first of that title; which not 

 only amply revenged the perfidious cruelty of the Mahomedan 

 despot, but gave the Company power, wealth, and territory, in the 

 finest provinces of India, where from a set of licensed foreign 

 merchants they became sovereigns of the country. 



