Page:Early English adventurers in the East (1917).djvu/133

From Wikisource
Jump to navigation Jump to search
This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST
129

only too clear from the correspondence of the period. He was one of a rather common type of those early Indian chaplains who gave the authorities considerable trouble by their inability to adapt themselves to the necessary discipline of the Company's factories. A contemporary of Rogers, a "preacher" named Gouldinge, greatly disturbed the harmony of the Indian establishment three years after the period with which we are dealing, by his very unclerical conduct at Surat. When a request which he had preferred to accompany Mrs. Hawkins and her English maid—the wife of Richard Steele—to Ahmedabad had been refused, he disguised himself in "Moor's apparel" and surreptitiously joined the ship in which the ladies were sailing. His vagaries and the attendant complications did much to harden the hearts of the directors against the appeals made by their servants in India to permit their wives to join them.

Whatever feelings may have been entertained against Downton he was soon to pass beyond the influence of his enemies. At Surat there were signs that his health had been seriously undermined by the hardships he had undergone in previous voyages. As the voyage progressed he became feebler day by day until in the unsavoury precincts of Bantam he was stricken with mortal illness and expired in 1615. Orme, the Indian historian, says that he died "lamented, admired and unequalled." That verdict may be accepted as the just record of posterity. There was something very attractive about the man. "His disposition," says Purchas, "savoured the true heroic, piety and valour being in him seasoned with gravity and modesty." He was essentially staunch and true, one who made no great fuss about his actions, but who