Prime Minister Giovanni Octavius Goldtimbers

"I shall not… think the demands of the people a rule of conduct, nor shall I ever fear to incur their resentment in the prosecution of their interest. I shall never flatter their passions to obtain their favour, or gratify their revenge for fear of their contempt."  ~Lord NewcastlePrime Minister Giovanni Octavius Goldtimbers (also known as Johnny Goldtimbers), 1st Duke of Newcastle upon Tyne and 1st Duke of Newcastle-under-Lyne, KG, KB, KT, PC, FRS (born 21 July 1693 (Official British Record)) is a British Whig statesman, whose official life extends throughout the Whig supremacy of the first half of the 18th century. He is the current Prime Minister of Great Britain under George II and Leader of the House of Lords. He is commonly known as the Duke of Newcastle or Edinburgh. He is the first Prime Minister from Scotland following the Acts of Union in 1707. He is the grandfather of King Ferdinand Clemente VI, Archduchess Hannah Maria Theresa Clemente, King Benjamin Squidskull of France, Prince Ezequiel Clemente of Spain, and Princess Halle Clemente of Spain.
== Biography ==
=== Early Life and Reign Over France ===
John Goldtimbers more commonly known as Louis XIV prior to his appearance in British society just after his apparent death in 1715 was born on 5 September 1638 in the Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, to Louis XIII and Anne of Austria. He was named Louis Dieudonné (Louis the God-given)and bore the traditional title of French heirs apparent: Dauphin. At the time of his birth, his parents had been married for 23 years. His mother had experienced four stillbirths between 1619 and 1631. Leading contemporaries thus regarded him as a divine gift and his birth a miracle of God.
He succeeded his father on May 14, 1643. At the age of four years and eight months, he was, according to the laws of the kingdom, not only the master but the owner of the bodies and property of 19 million subjects. Although he was saluted as “a visible divinity,” he was, nonetheless, a neglected child given over to the care of servants. He once narrowly escaped drowning in a pond because no one was watching him. Anne of Austria, who was to blame for this negligence, inspired him with a lasting fear of “crimes committed against God.”
Louis was nine years old when the nobles and the Paris Parlement (a powerful law court), driven by hatred of the prime minister Jules Cardinal Mazarin, rose against the crown in 1648. This marked the beginning of the long civil war known as the Fronde, in the course of which Louis suffered poverty, misfortune, fear, humiliation, cold, and hunger. These trials shaped the future character, behaviour, and mode of thought of the young king. He would never forgive either Paris, the nobles, or the common people.
In 1653 Mazarin was victorious over the rebels and then proceeded to construct an extraordinary administrative apparatus with Louis as his pupil. The young king also acquired Mazarin’s partiality for the arts, elegance, and display. Although he had been proclaimed of age, the king did not dream of disputing the cardinal’s absolute power.
The war begun in 1635 between France and Spain was then entering its last phase. The outcome of the war would transfer European hegemony from the Habsburgs to the Bourbons. A French king had to be a soldier, and so Louis served his apprenticeship on the battlefield.
In 1658 Louis faced the great conflict between love and duty, a familiar one for princes of that period. He struggled with himself for two years over his love for Mazarin’s niece, Marie Mancini. He finally submitted to the exigencies of politics and in 1660 married Marie-Thérèse of Austria, daughter of King Philip IV of Spain, in order to ratify peace between their two countries.
Mazarin died on March 9, 1661. The dramatic blow came on March 10. The king informed his astonished ministers that he intended to assume all responsibility for ruling the kingdom. This had not occurred since the reign of Henry IV. It cannot be overemphasized that Louis XIV’s action was not in accordance with tradition; his concept of a dictatorship by divine right was his own. In genuine faith, Louis viewed himself as God’s representative on earth and considered all disobedience and rebellion to be sinful. From this conviction he gained not only a dangerous feeling of infallibility but also considerable serenity and moderation.
He was backed up first by the great ministers Jean-Baptiste Colbert, marquis de Louvois, and Hugues de Lionne, among whom he fostered dissension, and later by men of lesser capacity. For 54 years Louis devoted himself to his task eight hours a day; not the smallest detail escaped his attention. He wanted to control everything from court etiquette to troop movements, from road building to theological disputes. He succeeded because he faithfully reflected the mood of a France overflowing with youth and vigour and enamoured of grandeur.
Despite the use of pensions and punishments, the monarchy had been unable to subdue the nobles, who had started 11 civil wars in 40 years. Louis lured them to his court, corrupted them with gambling, exhausted them with dissipation, and made their destinies dependent on their capacity to please him. Etiquette became a means of governing. From that time, the nobility ceased to be an important factor in French politics, which in some respects weakened the nation.
Louis’s great fortune was in having among his subjects an extraordinary group of men in every area of activity. He knew well how to make use of them. He was the protector of writers, notably Molière and Jean Racine, whom he ordered to sing his praises, and he imposed his own visions of beauty and nature on artists. France’s appearance and way of life were changed; the great towns underwent a metamorphosis, the landscape was altered, and monuments arose everywhere. The king energetically devoted himself to building new residences. Little remains of his splendid palaces at Saint-Germain and Marly, but Versailles—cursed as extravagant even as it was under construction and accused of having ruined the nation—still stands.
Versailles was approximately the price of a modern airport; it was an object of universal admiration and enhanced French prestige. All the power of the government was brought to bear in the construction of Versailles. Louis XIV was not wrong, as some have claimed, to remove himself from unhealthful and tumultuous Paris, but he erred in breaking with the wandering tradition of his ancestors. The monarchy became increasingly isolated from the people and thereby assumed a decidedly mythical quality.
While Louis watched his buildings going up, Colbert, who supervised the construction, obtained from him the means to carry out an economic revolution aimed at making France economically self-sufficient while maximizing exports. Manufacturers, the navy and merchant marine, a modern police organization, roads, ports, and canals all emerged at about the same time. Louis attended to every detail, while at the same time giving dazzling entertainment and carrying on a tumultuous love affair with Louise de La Vallière.
In 1667 he invaded the Spanish Netherlands, which he regarded as his wife’s inheritance, thus beginning a series of wars that lasted for a good part of his reign. Louis himself on his deathbed said, “I have loved war too much,” but his subjects, who often complained of his prudence and moderation, would not have understood had he not used force to strengthen the frontiers of France. After a brilliant campaign, the king had to retreat (1668) in the face of English and especially Dutch pressure. He never forgave the Dutch and swore to destroy their Protestant mercantile republic. To this end he allied himself with his cousin Charles II of England and invaded the Netherlands in 1672. The long war that ensued ended in 1678, in the first treaty of Nijmegen with Louis triumphant.
The Sun King was at his zenith. Almost alone he had defeated a formidable coalition (Spain and the Holy Roman emperor had joined the Dutch against him) and dictated terms to the enemy. He had extended the frontier of France in the north by annexing part of Flanders and in the east by seizing Lorraine and Franche-Comté. His fleet equaled those of England and Holland. Paris called him “the Great.” In his court he was an object of adoration, and as he approached age 40 he could view himself as far surpassing all other men.
The Sun King was at his zenith. Almost alone he had defeated a formidable coalition (Spain and the Holy Roman emperor had joined the Dutch against him) and dictated terms to the enemy. He had extended the frontier of France in the north by annexing part of Flanders and in the east by seizing Lorraine and Franche-Comté. His fleet equaled those of England and Holland. Paris called him “the Great.” In his court he was an object of adoration, and as he approached age 40 he could view himself as far surpassing all other men.
In 1682 the seat of government was transferred to Versailles. The following year marked a turning point in the life and reign of Louis XIV. The queen died, and the king secretly married Mme de Maintenon, who imperceptibly gained in political influence. He remained devoted to her; even at age 70 she was being exhorted by her confessor to continue to fulfill her conjugal duties, according to letters still extant.
Colbert also died, leaving the way free for the bellicose Louvois. The repulse of a Turkish invasion of his Austrian domains left the emperor free to oppose France in the west. In 1688–89 the fall of the Stuarts and William of Orange’s accession to the throne of England further reversed the situation to the detriment of France.
=== Revocation of the Edict of Nantes ===
To his traditional enemies Louis now added the entire Protestant world. His mother had inculcated in him a narrow and simplistic religion, and he understood nothing of the Reformation. He viewed French Protestants as potential rebels. After having tried to convert them by force, he revoked the Edict of Nantes, which had guaranteed their freedom of worship, in 1685. The revocation, which was accompanied by a pitiless persecution, drove many artisans from France and caused endless misfortune. Thus began the decline.
England, the Dutch, and the emperor united in the Grand Alliance to resist Louis’s expansionism. The resulting war lasted from 1688 to 1697. Despite many victories, Louis gave up part of his territorial acquisitions when he signed the Treaty of Rijswijk, for which the public judged him harshly. He reconciled himself to another painful sacrifice when he recognized William of Orange as William III of England, in violation of his belief in the divine right of the Stuart king James II to William’s throne.
Three years later, in 1700, Charles II, the last Habsburg king of Spain, died, bequeathing his kingdoms to Louis’s grandson, Philip of Anjou (Philip V). Louis, who desired nothing more than peace, hesitated but finally accepted the inheritance. He has been strongly criticized for his decision, but he had no alternative. With England against him, he had to try to prevent Spain from falling into the hands of the equally hostile Holy Roman Emperor Leopold I, who disputed Philip’s claim.
=== Final Years ===
In the War of the Spanish Succession the anti-French alliance was reactivated by William of Orange before his death. The disasters of the war were so great that, in 1709, France came close to losing all the advantages gained over the preceding century. Private griefs were added to Louis’s public calamities. Almost simultaneously he lost his son, the grand dauphin; two of his grandsons, the dukes de Bourgogne and Berry; his great grandson, the duke de Bretagne; and his granddaughter-in-law, the duchess de Bourgogne, who had been the consolation of his declining years.
An excess of flattery from within and an excess of malediction from without had created an artificial image of the king. He was viewed as an idol who would collapse under the blows of ill fortune, but the opposite occurred. Having first been the embodiment of a triumphant nation, Louis surpassed himself by bearing his own suffering and that of his people with unceasing resolution.
Finally, a palace revolution in London, bringing the pacific Tories to power, and a French victory over the imperial forces at the Battle of Denain combined to end the war. The Treaties of Utrecht, and of Rastatt and Baden, signed in 1713–14, cost France its hegemony but left its territory intact. It retained its recent conquests in Flanders and on the Rhine, which were so much in the order of things that neither later defeats nor revolutions would cause it to lose them.
Louis XIV died in 1715, at age 77. His body was borne, amid the jeers of the populace, to the Saint-Denis basilica. His heir, the last son of the duke de Bourgogne, was a five-year-old child who was not expected to live. Louis had distrusted his nephew, the duke d’Orléans, and wanted to leave actual power in the hands of the duke du Maine, his son by Mme de Montespan.
=== England ===
Upon his apparent death in France, the once great French king became a humble English citizen, taking up a history and heritage of both an Englishman and a Scot. Through his connections he fabricated a whole new life and entered British society as Thomas Pelham-Holles, more commonly known as Johnathan Goldtimbers.
He increasingly identified with Whig politics, like his fictional father and uncle – but whereas they had been moderate in their views, he grew increasingly more partisan and militant in his views. Britain at the time was very divided between Whigs who favoured the succession of George of Hanover after Queen Anne's death and Tories who supported the return of the Jacobite James Stuart, known later as the 'old pretender'. This issue dominated British politics during the last few years of Queen Anne's reign, leading up to her death in 1714 – and had a profound impact on the future career of the young Duke of Newcastle. He joined the Hannover Club and the Kit Kat Club, both leading centres of Whig thinking and organisation. Newcastle House in London became his premier residence.
=== Early Political Career ===
His services were too great to be neglected by the new Hanoverian King, and in according to record in 1714 he was created Earl of Clare, and in 1715 (the same year of his apparent death) Duke of Newcastle-upon-Tyne two titles previously held by his late uncle John Holles. He also became Lord-Lieutenant of the Counties of Middlesex and Nottingham and a Knight of the Garter. In his new position he was in charge of suppressing Jacobitism in the counties under his control. In Middlesex he arrested and questioned eight hundred people, and then drew up a Voluntary Defence Association to defend the county.
Early in 1715, Newcastle began a military career. In December, he obtained a captaincy in a regiment of foot he was raised for the purpose of expelling the Jacobites from England. This regiment was later sent to India following his employment in the East India Company. During 1715 he became involved in a riot that ended with two men being killed, and Newcastle fleeing along rooftops. The succession of George I was secured in late 1715 by the defeat of a Jacobite army at the Battle of Preston where his regiment saw action and the subsequent flight of the Old Pretender.
Newcastle had abandoned his original plan to place a Catholic on the English and had decided to place a Catholic at the head of the English government. The Catholic would be himself, but it would acclaimed by the public that Newcastle would be "Catholic" in name only and uphold many protestant ideals which would later help him bridge the religious schism that had plagued the British isles for centuries.
The victory of the Hanoverians over the Jacobites marked the beginning of the Whig Ascendancy which lasted for much of the 18th century. Because the Tory opposition had been tainted, in the eyes of George I, by their support of the Jacobite pretenders, he did not trust them, and drew all his ministers and officials from the Whig faction. Following their victory, the Whigs split with one group forming the government for George I, while the other dissident Whigs became the effective opposition in Parliament. After a period of political manoeuvring, during which time he was for a while associated with a Whig faction led by James Stanhope, from 1720 Newcastle began to identify strongly with the Government Whigs, who had quickly come to be dominated by Sir Robert Walpole.
Walpole (Robert McRoberts) gladly welcomed the young Newcastle into his coterie, firstly because he believed he could easily control him, and secondly because it would strengthen his hand against the rival Whig factions. Newcastle joined with Walpole because he, correctly, believed that he was going to dominate British politics for a generation. From 1721 Walpole began to serve as Britain's first official Prime Minister, a position he would hold for the next 21 years. He was related to Walpole's leading ally Charles Townshend, strengthening his bond with the leader of the new administration.
In 1717, at the age of twenty three (appearance only), Newcastle first attained high political office as Lord Chamberlain of the Household, and was given the responsibility of overseeing theatres. Plays at the time were often extremely political, and Newcastle was tasked with suppressing any plays or playwrights believed to be too critical of the Hanoverian succession or the Whig government. During this time Newcastle clashed repeatedly with Sir Richard Steele, a leading playwright. In 1719 he was one of the three main investors in George Frideric Handel's new opera company, the Royal Academy of Music. The Duke ordered Handel in May 1719 to go to the continent and contract singers for as long as possible.
He survived in the office during the turmoil in the Whig party between 1717 and 1721 and his switch of allegiance to Walpole secured his position thereafter. Walpole had overseen a brief end to the rift between the Whig factions, following the collapse of the South Sea Company, which had left thousands ruined. Newcastle himself had lost £4,000 he had invested when the South Sea Bubble was at its height. He would have lost it all if it was not for the fact that both he and Walpole shared the same banker, Robert Jacomb to whom saved both of them from complete financial disaster. Newcastle had saved himself from blame by carrying out Walpole's dirty work to secure both their positions in the new government and to ensure their reputation was not tarnished. Nevertheless, he like many others were still in debt, but Newcastle had the reputation of always paying his debts regardless of how large they may be. His credit was only damaged slightly with the aftermath of the financial collapse. He instead sought to invest what funds he had left in shares of the Honourable East India Company to which he could be expected to make a profit as long as the East India ships returned back with tangible goods from the orient.
During his time in the office, Newcastle and his new English wife had become famous for throwing lavish parties, which were attended by much of London society including many of his political opponents. He was also prodigiously fond of hunting and often went down to Bishopstone, one of his Sussex properties, expressly for this purpose. During his time as Lord Chamberlain he oversaw a major overhaul of public buildings, many of which had fallen into very poor repair. It reminded him of when he was a Cæsar turning that city of brick into marble.
Political life was expensive and it became obvious he needed more currency to influence the realm in his favour. He would hand over the duties of Lord Chamberlain into the care of his wife while he left to secure their future elsewhere.
=== The East India ===
Ending his very public lifestyle in 1720, Newcastle procured newly allocated funds from shares to buy a position in the Honourable East India Trading Company. With his ties with Walpole he was able to infiltrate and successfully befriend many directors on the court of directors while working as an over glorified secretary in the London EITC Office proving himself to be both a shrewd military tactician and an overly efficient bureaucrat. His superiors assigned him to a tour of duty starting in assessing the EITC office on Gibraltar, England's newly acquired Mediterranean headquarters. Walpole pulled strings at the Admiralty and procured the young Newcastle with a commission in the Royal Navy simultaneously with his business venture to provide him with the proper authority in the remote regions he would be visiting. In return, Newcastle would act as the Walpole's tax collector for these factories to whom would keep a portion as a form of payment for his service to the crown surveying the hundreds of East India factories that lined the coasts of Africa, India, and the rest of the orient. It had become obvious that the merchants spread across the King's domain has been evading their dues. It was up to Newcastle to refill the His Majesty's Treasury. He was given the HMS Lion or Lyon, a 60-gun fourth rate ship of the line of the Royal Navy to use throughout his travels from 1720 to 1734. The ship had been captained previously by Galfridus Walpole, the youngest son of Sir Robert Walpole.
=== Le Grand Tour ===
Just as Newcastle had done during the Renaissance with Europe, he embarked upon his government sanctioned quest to levy funds from the British EITC provinces for Walpole and the crown. Weeks after his departure from Gibraltar he arrived in Calabar where he met Cutler Beckett, the young and calculating Director of West African Imports and Exports for the East India Trading Company. Beckett became a close confidant of Newcastle providing him exclusive ownership of several factories in British West Africa in exchange for political favours to better his position with the Whig party which had became the predominant governing party in Britain.
Continuing this trend of good business, Newcastle would reestablish factories and modernise them in order to maximise their production whilst emptying their storehouses of goods, he would in turn sell them for profit at the next port of call on his journey and then repeat the process. Newcastle started to endow responsibilities to merchants he has hired to care for these factories that he could not oversee personally offering them positions within the East India Company to secure their own financial futures.
Lord Newcastle with his new funds had commissioned seven East Indiaman that had been in the region of West Africa trading to accompany his frigate to India to ensure his safety from pirates.
Storms off the coast of the Cape Colony had caused two of Newcastle's supply ships to have been separated from the rest of the fleet. Without enough food and water to reach India, Newcastle decided to board one of his faster East Indiaman and venture ahead at full sail to reach the archipelago of Comoros before the fleet to hasten their resupply. While aboard the Cassandra captained by the Scottish EITC seaman James Macrae, they encountered the fabled pirate Edward England near the Comoros on August 17, 1720. At this time the rest of the fleet was several weeks behind them. Macrae and another EIC captain named Robert Kirtby were supposed to establish a camp along the coast of Comoros and be ready to resupply the fleet with fresh provisions before their final leap onto India. Unfortunately, both Captain Kirtby and a Dutch vessel assigned to assist Macrae and Newcastle fled the scene, Macrae single-handedly engaged England. Newcastle decided to abandon his uniform and done that of a regular sailor to avoid capture and being singled out as an officer to shoot while on deck. During the naval battle which lasted over three hours, Newcastle, Macrae and his men killed about a hundred of England's pirates who numbered about 500. However, seven more hours later, they faced heavy reverses and were forced to abandon ship. This naval battle was later described by Newcastle as the "bloodiest engagement and killing of pirates along the African coast".
With Newcastle's diplomatic skills, Macrae enlisted the support of the king of the island and engaged the pirates once more. But injured in his head and with a price upon him set by Edward England, Macrae was forced to escape. Ten days later, however, Macrae and Newcastle (in disguise) surrendered to England. Macrae pleaded with the pirates to spare his companions after they attempted to slit Newcastle's throat because one pirate had recalled him shooting several of his mates from the foremast during the battle. Newcastle was tortured but later ferried to a distant sandbar to be marooned without Edward England's permission. Newcastle told them he was a Duke of England and he was worth more alive. The pirates laughed at him and threw down a rusty sabre and told "His Grace" to fall on his sword as he was not worth the powder, shot or pistol. Newcastle claimed they would rue the day and he would see them hanged.
Newcastle swam several miles to reach the shore and was reunited with Macrae after he spotted the bonfire he had constructed to signal for help. Macrae would later tell Newcastle that after a heated debate on his own fate, the pirates finally pardoned him and left the island on September 3, 1720. Macrae and Newcastle would leave five days later when the fleet was signaled to their position by the same bonfire that had saved Newcastle from potentially drowning. Newcastle and the fleet would reach Bombay on October 26, 1720.
=== India ===
Newcastle immediately manned some ships and set sail from the harbor of Bombay against the pirates he has just escaped from. He rallied his crews with fiery speeches of rewards and plunder and certainly did not hide that he intended to risk every man's life to achieve the personal satisfaction of keeping to his word, even if he had sworn that "noble" word to the lowest scum that infested Edward England's motley crew. Inspired with shock and excitement that a duke of England had employed them to hunt down the very pirates that had coincidentally pillaged and attacked ships that many seamen had served on only seeking honest work and pay for their services, undoubtedly to have their livelihoods stolen from them by a renegade. Newcastle's presence hastened their fleet to reach the island of Comoros, but they were forced to hop island to island across the Indian Ocean due to the unforgiving currents. It would be weeks until Newcastle got lucky and found the pirates off the coast of Madagascar, lying at anchor off the island still proudly striking their black flag to signal all who approached the horizon that they ruled the waves. Newcastle ordered his ships to approach single file or in a line of battle. The pirates did not react. Their sails remained furled and allowed Newcastle to surround their ships and he captured nearly all of them. Newcastle had the pirates chained like slaves in the cargo holds of his ships as he sought to find their captain and recover the stolen goods. The cargo that was stolen was mostly returned but Edward England was nowhere to be found. Newcastle had the pirates chained and brought to the decks of his ships and had nooses tied to the lower yard of the fore-masts and personally shoved each pirate that had marooned him previously from the forecastle to the main deck, snapping their neck with the fall just as he promised. He hanged 150 individuals that day that he had deemed guilty and not by a jury of peers. He rewarded his crews with the cargo of the Cassandra and returned to Bombay to carry on his original mission ordained by king and country.
Newcastle established new factories and set forth new regulations and reforms to ensure production would increase substantially over the next ten years. 1 September 1722, Newcastle arrived at York Fort in Bencoolen in Sumatra and was subsequently appointed Governor. He built a new fort and restored order in war-ridden Sumatra, further establishing British rule over a small area and sought to increase the company's influence in the region. British Bencoolen would later be used as a staging ground for expeditions further into the South East Indies and assisted the EITC in acquiring the port of Singapore in late 1740s.
In 1722, Newcastle moved his residence to the newly constructed Fort Marlborough on the west coast of Sumatra. Newcastle was appointed President of Madras in 1722 and took office on 8 January 1723.
Immediately after his assumption of the Presidential chair, Newcastle was entrusted with the responsibility of tackling an irksome situation. The last days of Elwick's Presidency had seen some intense communal clashes between the Komatis and the Chetties. A settlement had been reached but the terms of the settlement weren't kept and the Chetties deserted the British and moved out of Madras in large numbers. When Newcastle took over as President, he was faced with the task of curbing the exodus. Accordingly, he ordered that the belongings of the deserted Chetties be confiscated. At the same time, he issued a proclamation which forbade individuals from the left-hand castes to worship in temples belonging to those of the right-hand castes and those from the right-hand castes in temples belonging to the left-hand castes.
On 24 July 1723, the issue of a firman in the name of the British East India Company was celebrated with an elaborate ceremony. As per the terms of the firman, the Presidency of Madras occupied Divy Island off the coast of Masulipatnam.
Meanwhile, the British once again sought the Nawab of the Carnatic demanding that he hand over the village of Tiruvottiyur under his occupation to the British as per the Imperial firman issued by the Mughal Emperor Farrukh Siyar. However, the Nawab refused to yield stating that he had no faith in the words of the President as he had not seen the provisions of the firman. However, a compromise was agreed upon and the President wrote back informing the Nawab that he intended to take over Tiruvottiyur by 23 September 1723. In return, he promised to gift the Nawab 500 pagodas and a piece of fine scarlet cloth and 200 pagodas to his son-in-law Dakha Roy. On 23 September, as per the plan, Newcastle travelled to Tiruvottiyur and took possession of the place apart from two other villages. But, on 29 September, the Nawab's representative at Poonamallee blockaded the road to Fort St George advising the British that the Nawab would not accept anything less than 1,000 pagodas in return for Tiruvottiyur. Fresh threats soon arose to the British occupation of Divy Island. Struck by financial crisis, Newcastle decided to rent five villages obtained by the firman at the rate of 1,200 per annum each for 12 years.
Enraged when the demands were not met, on 18 October, Dayaram, the Head Renter of the territory who was subordinate to the Nawab of Carnatic, marched to Tiruvottiyur with an army of 250 horse and 1000 foot, removed the British flag and took possession of the village. A consultation was held according to which the members of the Board pressed the President to remove Dayaram and his troops by force.
On 19 October, one of Newcastle's subordinates; Lieutenant John Roach marched into Tiruvottiyur at the head of 150 men and drove away Dayaram and his men. Dayaram's men resisted but ROach inflicted a crushing defeat upon them and pursued them in their flight to the plains surrounding Madras. A fresh body of 500 men were sent by the Nawab to attack the Company's troops from the north. But Lieutenant Roach and his men were saved by the arrival of timely reinforcements from Madras personally led by Newcastle himself. Another one of Newcastle's subordinates, Lieutenant Fullerton arrived on the scene with 100 men and the combined forces defeated Dayaram and pursued the fleeing troops up to Sattangodu. Their mission accomplished, the Company troops made a quick retreat to Fort St George.
When Lieutenant Roach arrived at Madras, the Muslim inhabitants of the town rose in rebellion against the British. After a battle lasting six hours, the forces of the Carnatic and supporters of the Nawab were flushed out from the city and its environs. This was an overwhelming victory for the heavily outnumbered forces of the British East India Company against a much superior power. Lieutenant Roach who had commanded the operations to the letter that Newcastle had transcribed him during the battle in Fort St David as well as Tiruvottiyur was rewarded with increase of pay.
The Nawab proposed peace to President Newcastle and accordingly, on 15 December 1724, peace was concluded between the Nawab of the Carnatic and the British East India Company. Newcastle agreed to pay 2,000 pagodas to the Nawab and 1,000 pagodas to Dakhna Roy in return for the outlying villages.
Since the conclusion of peace, cordial relations existed between the Nawab of Carnatic and the British East India Company. When Dakhna Roy, the Prime Minister to the Nawab visited Madras in February 1725, he was given a grand reception and was allotted a fine house in Black Town for his stay. Newcastle would later report this to parliament and the East India in London and be recognised for his efforts abroad.
On 27 May 1724, a proposal for the inauguration of two Charity schools for slaves of the English inhabitants of Madras, one in Black Town and another in White Town was approved by Newcastle. In April 1724, Lord Newcastle issued a proclamation authorizing the protection of the Portuguese Roman Catholics of St. Thome marrying Protestants in Madras. On 25 May 1724, Newcastle recruited one George Foriano to translate Portuguese documents into English and vice versa making him the first translator in the Company's service at Madras. On 9 July 1724, the Honorable Court of Directors voted to reduce the garrison at Fort St George to 360 and the garrison at Fort St David to 340.
In November 1724, Newcastle issued a proclamation changing tax laws on the registration of land and slaves. In the very same month, registration of all houses and gardens in Black Town were made compulsory by another proclamation. However, when the extreme poor complained to the President regarding their inability to pay such high rates for registration, Newcastle issued an amendment by which all houses valued at less than 50 pagodas were exempted from taxation.
Newcastle founded a new colony for weavers and painters of cloth near Tiruvottiyur. This village was called Pelham-pettah in his honor. According to a report submitted by Newcastle to the Directors on 28 December 1724, the hamlet had a population of 489 inhabiting 105 houses.
In October 1724, Lord Newcastle proposed to resign and carry out a diplomatic mission to China expressing his inability to bear the harsh clime of the city during the previous month. He proposed the name of James Macrae as successor. The Court grumbly accepted his request. Accordingly, Newcastle resigned and almost immediately set out for China. He was replaced with James Macrae, to whom had saved Newcastle from death during their run in with pirates years earlier.
Category:Characters