168 
C. R. Wilson — An unrecorded Governor of Bengal. [No. 2, 
On the 3rd November, 1708, the Court of Directors of the East 
India Company read a petition from Edward Stephenson, then seventeen 
years old “ praying to be entertained a writer in the Bay or elsewhere,” 
and ordered the Committee of Accounts to examine the petitioner’s 
qualifications. 1 On the 24th November Edward Stephenson was elected 
a writer in the Company’s service. 2 On the 17th December following, 
Mr. Samuel and Mr. Jonathan Winder were accepted as securities for 
Edward Stephenson in £500. 3 Edward Stephenson arrived in Bengal 
on the 2nd February, 1710. 4 In the seventy-fifth paragraph of a letter 
from Bengal to the Court of Directors dated the 10th December, 1712, 
he was specially commended. 5 On this account he was advanced one 
year in service and accordingly became a Factor on the 2nd February, 
1714. 6 In a list of the Company’s servants drawn up in November, 
1711, he appears as Sub-Accountant. 
On the 5th January, 1714, he was elected third in the embassy to 
Delhi. 7 On the 26th February he was given two hundred and fifty 
rupees to provide himself with clothes and necessaries. 8 In April the 
boats which carried the present for Farrukhsiyar were sent up the 
river to Patna, and Stephenson must have left Calcutta at the same 
time or soon after. 9 When the Surman Diary opens in August, 
1714, we find him with John Surman in Patna preparing to start 
for the Mogul Court. On the 6th April, 1715, the embassy actually 
began its journey. On the 7fh July it made its entry into Delhi. 10 
The next two years were spent in long, tedious, but successful 
negotiations. After many disappointments Farrukhsiyar and his 
vizier, Sayyid ‘Abdu-llali Khan, were prevailed upon to issue a 
number of imperial rescripts and orders increasing and securing the 
commercial privileges of the English in every part of India. In his 
1 See Court Book XLIII., p. 231. 
2 See Court Book XLIII., p. 275. 
8 See Court Book XLIII., p. 344. 
4 See the lists of the Company’s servants which come at the end of the 
volumes of Consultations in the India Office Records. 
5 This letter is lost, but an abstract of it will be found in the Correspondence 
Papers, Yol. I., 1713 to 1715. 
6 See Bengal General, dated 13th January, 1713 ( i.e ., 1714), para. S8. 
1 See Bengal Public Consultations of that date. On further discussion, Khojah 
Sarhad being appointed second, John Pratt became third, and Stephenson, Secre¬ 
tary. Finally Pratt withdrew and on the 4th March Stephenson was ayain appointed 
third. 
8 See Bengal Public Consultations of that date. 
9 lb. 
1° See the Surman Diary under the dates given. 
