100 



THE PREDECESSORS OF THE 



The Court of Directors repudiated these claims, and insisted 

 upon the Court's making or passing a formal declaration or 

 Act under their seal that the Town Hall was the property of 

 the Company, upon which the Court of Directors would 

 indemnify them against any demands of the suitors of the 

 late Court, as far as the amount of the cash which had been 

 paid into the Company's Treasury on account of those suitors, 

 and also the amount of the before-mentioned 2,000 pagodas 

 and the interest thereof, and would take upon themselves the 

 expense of repairing and maintaining the Court-house, and of 

 the Mayor's Court; and they further desired and directed 

 that the Commissioners of the Court of Request and their 

 officers might have proper places to sit and do their business 

 in, and that the Court of Request should not be considered 

 as subordinate to or under the direction of the Mayor's Court. 63 



This was communicated by the Grovernment to the Mayor's 

 Court on the 27th October 1762, and was answered by a letter 

 from the Registrar of the Mayor's Court, dated 15th December 

 1863, expressed in a style which Grovernment considered very 

 unsuitable to the circumstances the Mayor's Court was in with 

 respect to the Honorable Company. In reply the Grovern- 

 ment, after pointing out that the first Corporation was empow- 

 ered to purchase, inherit, levy duties, &c, in order to enable 

 them to erect public buildings and support the expenses neces- 

 sary to the execution of their powers as a Mayor's Court and 

 Corporation, and that it was from this grant of the Company 

 that the Corporation first laid the foundation of a property, 

 but that when it was afterwards found that the revenues of 

 the Corporation were insufficient to answer these purposes, the 

 whole was relinquished to the Company, who in consequence 

 undertook to maintain the Court and Corporation, informed 

 the Mayor's Court that the Grovernment must persist in the 



General Letter to Madras, 27th January 1762, para, 64. 



