CALCUTTA: PAST AND PRESENT
in their midst with his half-dozen fellow-factors and guard of thirty soldiers. It may be well to recall that the Company's earlier factory had been established in Hughly, but, in 1686, owing to various causes, the English traders had come to an open rupture with the Mohammedan Governor, and had been driven away and their property confiscated. Great confusion followed, and for five years there was a constant succession of friendly overtures from one side or the other, continually thwarted by personal prejudice or violence, or by belated orders from England on the one hand and Dacca on the other, inducing fresh friction and renewing disputes which had been arranged in the interval. During the continuance of this comedy of errors, Charnock, who was the Company's principal agent in Bengal, had twice stayed at Chuttanutty while conducting negotiations with the Hughly authorities. On the second occasion, he had stayed for the best part of a year, and had erected some buildings: it is to these the entry in the diary already quoted alludes as having been "burned or carried away, nothing being left for our present accommodation."
In spite of adverse conditions, the English set themselves to work in earnest, and the minutes of the first meeting of the "Bengal
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