Page:Calcutta, Past and Present.djvu/213

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CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT

When, in the following year, Calcutta was recaptured by the English, and a temporary peace arranged between them and Suraj-ud-Dowlah, Mr. Watts returned to Murshedabad as Resident, and ran considerable risks from the nawab's ungovernable temper while negotiations were proceeding between him and Clive. In the end, Mr. Watts escaped secretly from Murshedabad, the nawab marched to meet Clive, and the Battle of Plassey swept away all the old order, and ushered in a new era. In 1760, Mr. Watts with his wife and children left India, and returned to England, where some years later he died. Mrs. Watts, who during her long residence in India had no doubt acquired many Eastern habits, and must have missed the luxury and authority of

the old life, returned to India in 1769. Her daughters had both married, and her son was provided for, and in 1774 she once again entered the married state, and took for her fourth husband the Rev. William Johnson, the second, not the principal, presidency chaplain, as the epitaph states. The marriage does not appear to have been a success, for when he left India, some years later, his wife elected to remain behind, and lived on in Calcutta, "in a style of dignified hospitality," in her house "to the northward of the Old Fort," where she died on the 3rd of

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