confinement, lost their temper and wrote in disrespectful and abusive terms to the President and Council at Surat, charging the latter with making no exertion for their release. The reply of the Surat Council was a stern but well-merited rebuke (dated 10th March, 1662): "How you came in prison you know very well. 'Twas not for defending the Company's goods, 'twas for going to the siege of Panhala and tossing balls with a flag that was known to be the English's. None but what [is] rehearsed is the cause of your imprisonment." (Ibid, also Surat to the Prisoners in Rairi castle, 10 March, 1662, F. R. Surat, Vol. 85.)
It seems that the four Englishmen made an attempt to escape from Songarh, but were caught and sent off to Raigarh to be kept in "closer confinement." Towards the middle of 1662, when their captivity had lasted a year and a half, the Council at Surat, finding all appeals to Shivaji and his suzerain fruitless, commissioned some of the English ships to make reprisals by capturing on the high seas Deccani vessels, whether belonging to the king of Bijapur or Shivaji or any merchant of the country, especially the one bringing the Dowager Queen Bari Sahiba back from Mecca. They hoped that such a success would compel the Bijapur Government to put pressure on Shivaji to release the Englishmen. But no good prize offered itself to the English privateers. The Surat Council also influenced the Mughal governor of Surat to write to Shaista
