Storia do Mogor 13.3
Storia do Mogor (Irvine) 13.3
- Language
- English
13.3.153
This house and garden lay to the north of Madras, and just north of it again was a piece of ground known as the Elephant Garden (entry of May 7, 1706). The plot was 657 feet from north to south, and from east to west (at the north end) 353 feet and (at the south end) 482 feet. The boundaries were : North, the garden of Force Moortepan ; south, the Black Town wall ; east, Mantangaura's garden and some Pariah houses ; west, the highway from Tom Clarke's gate to the Company's old garden. The term granted was for twenty-one years from March 25, 1703, at a yearly rent of one pagoda (see Madras Consultations, January 15, 1705, Range 239, vol. lxxxiii., pp. 19-22, and 691).
The perpetual grant of January 14, 1712, was made under the following circumstances : On November 1, 1711, Mr. Charles Boon, a free merchant, appeared before the Madras Council (Edward Harrison, president) with a petition from Senhor Nichola Manuch, ' formerly inhabitant of this place but now in Pondicherry.' The petition recites the lease of ground near Tom Clarke's gate, in which by mistake a piece of ground for which he (Nichola Manuch) held a bill of sale was wrongly included, and he prays for a rectification. On November 6, 1711, H. Davenport, B. Binyon, and W. Warre reported. The terms of the report are not entered, but apparently it was adverse to the application.
But on January 14, 1712, the president revived the matter in council. He informed the Board that a special order had come to Pondicherry calling for Manucci's attendance at Shah 'Alam's court [then at Lahor]. Manucci was about to set out for Arkat to see the diwan, who had orders to supply all his necessities and forward him to Dihli. The president reverts to the refusal on November 6, 1711, to admit a higher title than that of leaseholder; and now for the following reasons: (1) As the land is of very small value; (2) as 'the said Manuch during his residence here was very serviceable to the Company's affairs by his perfect knowledge of the Persian language and the customs among the Moors, having been often employ'd between Governor Pitt and Nabob Doud Caun; (3) but yet more in consideration that he may be very usefull in our present circumstances by assisting those that go to court with the Present from Bengal; (4) and likewise representing our quarrel with Surup Sing with advantage on our side'; he proposes a new resolution in supersession of the former one. It is to the effect that in consideration of the good service done by Señor Nichola Manuch, they confirm to him and his heirs for ever that piece of ground which Thomas Drinkwater bought of Charles and Ann Ryly on September 26, 1674, since sold to Thomas Clarke on April 19, 1675, and by the said Thomas Clarke to Nicholas Manuch.
While on the subject of Manucci's houses, it seems to be tolerably clear that he had a second house or country retreat at Big Mount or St. Thomas's Mount, eight miles from Fort St. George. This property is mentioned distinctly in Part V., folios 101, 102, and elsewhere. It must be the place where Manucci entertained Da,ud Khan. The late Mr. A. T. Pringle objected that in those disturbed times Europeans would not have lived so far away from Madras; and for the same reason doubted Manucci's story about a theft of fruit from the governor's garden at the same place on December 15, 1705 (Part V., folio 55). But the entry of December 1, 1705, ordering the destruction of the Mount House and the building of another there for invalids, shows that Manucci was quite right, and (for once) Mr. Pringle was wrong. There was a governor's house at St. Thomas's Mount in 1705 (Public Consultations, Fort St. George, vol. xxxv., pp. 269, 270).
The first mention of obtaining a farman through Zu,lfiqar Khan, the new governor of the Dakhin, is in a letter from Fort St. George of December 16, 1711 (List of Old Records, No. 807); and under date December 1, 1711, the Surat Council speak of 'their' embassy (idem, No. 794). The Madras Council anticipated difficulties, owing to their having employed Ziya-ud-din Khan as their go-between, to the displeasure of Zu,lfiqar Khan, whose new office of viceroy made him all-powerful in the Dakhin. However, the emperor Shah 'Alam died at Lahor on February 27, and the report thereof reached Madras in April, 1712; thus, no doubt, Manucci did not start for the court, while the English for the time abandoned their project of an embassy. It was not until some years afterwards that John Surman was sent to Dihli from Calcutta.
I have failed to trace Manucci farther at Madras or Pondicherry, and the only date for his death is a vague intimation in the work 'Della Litteratura Veneziana . . .' (4to., Venice, 1854), by the Doge Marco Nicolo Foscarini (b. February, 1695, d. March, 1763; Librarian of San Marco from 1742 to 1762), which was originally published in one volume, folio, at Padua in 1752. On p. 441 of the 4th edition (1854) it is said that Manucci died in India in 1717 as an octogenarian, 'as he [Foscarini] had heard.' Father Doyle of San Thome informs me that there are no records there previous to 1784, when Tippu's cavalry plundered and burnt everything. I have not been able to search the Pondicherry archives, and some entry may be found there. As would seem, Manucci left an estate of 30,000 pagodas (about £10,000), judging by the entry taken from Padre Saverini Capuchin's accounts, as printed in the 'Madras Catholic Directory' for 1867, p. 153.
13.3.p2
Although 1742, the date of Saverini's appointment as superior (Penny, 'Church in Madras,' p. 240), is rather late for administration to the estate of a man dying in 1717, it is almost impossible of belief that there could have been in that part of the world, in the first half of the eighteenth century, any other 'Mr. Nicholas Manook' than Nicolao Manucci, the author of the 'Storia do Mogor.' The only possible argument against this identification is the fact that twice Manucci made himself out a poor man. Once was when the fine on the renewal of his lease was remitted by the Madras Council; the other instance was the non-payment in 1706 of a death-bed bequest by his wife of two hundred pagodas to the Bishop of San Thome. Father Michael Angelo, the Madras chaplain, urged him to pay it. Manucci said he had no money; the Father suggested borrowing, and to that Manucci replied that his debts were already too heavy for him to wish to add to them (V., f. 279).
A search at the India Office in the copies of the Madras Records up to 1719, which are there preserved, has produced nothing bearing upon the question of our author's death or his estate. The reason of this is probably the fact, communicated to me by the Rev. Frank Penny, that for many years the estates of Roman Catholics were left in the hands of the priests for administration, and were not dealt with by the English officials.