Scotland and the Indian Empire

Politics, Scholarship and the Military in Making British India

Alan Tritton

• Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781786726551
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Modern British History
• Index: History

This is the story of two Scotsmen, Baillie and Edmonstone, who went out to India in 1782 and 1791 respectively, to earn their fortune. Neil Edmonstone rose through the ranks to be appointed the Acting Governor-General of India, Secretary of the Secret, Foreign and Political Department and for more than 20 years the Chief Intelligence Officer of the Company. John Baillie was appointed the Political Agent, aged 30, for Bundelkhand, which he brought successfully under British control, before his appointment as British Resident at Lucknow in 1807. Both men had no less than 21 Anglo-Scottish and Scottish-Indian children, 9 of whom were all sent back to Inverness in Scotland to be educated and brought up by John's sister Margaret Baillie. This book tells us their stories as well as those of their parents.

Chapter 1

Setting the scene

Neil Edmonstone was born on 6 December 1765, the year of the significant battle of Buxar, about which more later, and it will also be recalled that it was during that year that Robert Clive attained the Diwani of Bengal, which conferred the right of the Company to collect the revenues of that State and to administer, therefore, one of the most fertile and, therefore, richest regions of India, technically for the Mughal Emperors but in reality for the Company. Importantly, this revenue replaced the requirement to finance the Company’s Indian trade from London.

The following year, the British Government in London conceived of the bright idea of abolishing the Company and taking control of its Indian possessions, which included the £2 million a year in estimated tax revenues from the Diwani of Bengal – this with the laudable intention of paying off the National Debt. This attempt was partly successful, because in 1767, the Company, in order to avoid being taken over, reluctantly agreed to pay the huge annual amount of £400,000 to retain its independence. However, there was, needless to say, a significant desire for the reform of the Company on the part of the Government, and young Edmonstone might just have been familiar with all this, given his father’s, Sir Archibald’s, part in the process. The 1773 Regulating Act had given the Government, for the first time, considerable powers of control over the Company and this mainly arose as a result of the Company requiring a significant loan, which was needed to pay its debts to the Crown. For this, the quid pro quo was the Government’s power to nominate the Governor General and Members of the Supreme Council, which would take precedence over the Governments in Calcutta, Bombay and Madras.

It was hoped that this would result in a more effective supervision over the Company and put an end to its now well-known abuses. However, it then became clear that more measures were required and these were again supported by Sir Archibald. This resulted in the East India Bill of 1783, which was initially resisted by King George 111, who thought that the Council should be appointed by himself and not by the Parliament. The King managed to persuade the House of Lords to throw the Bill out, but William Pitt’s compromise Bill, supported by Sir Archibald, became law as the East India Act of 1784.

Under this Act, the Company retained the right to appoint the civil and Military officers sent out to India and to set out its major policies – however, a Board of Control composed of Members of Parliament was given powers of overall supervision. Despite, however, the provision in this Act calling for a cession of Company interference, there was a strong feeling of imperialist sentiment, resulting from the loss of America, which, so to speak, fed into the system. Henry Dundas, who was the President of the Board of Control from 1788 to 1801, and who was Pitt’s great imperialist ally, strongly favoured the extension of the Company’s sphere of control by whatever means were necessary.

Chapter 2

Edmonstone’s family: His voyage to and arrival at Calcutta

Neil Edmonstone was the fifth and youngest son of Sir Archibald. The Edmonstones’ family life centred round a large greystone house in the central Highlands called Duntreath Castle. Sir Archibald was fascinated to the point of obsession with his ancestry, and his one major ambition was to restore the family’s fortunes to their apparent past glory. He noted, ‘I own that I felt from the beginning that my family fortune was inferior to its Rank,’ and went on to say that ‘the Purse has often become the Pedigree especially about London’. His wife was half-French – her name, Susanna Mary Harene. The Harenes were an ancient French noble family from Normandy, who had moved to England in 1720. The family had prospered in England and, when his daughter married Sir Archibald, her father was able to provide her with a dowry of £10,000 – a significant sum in the value of money at that time. When she died in 1776, Sir Archibald remarried a certain Hester, the daughter of Sir John Heathcote and young Neil Edmonstone became unusually very fond of his stepmother. When he left for India, she gave him a gold watch and this remained one of his most treasured possessions all his life. In 1783, Sir Archibald was 66 years old and a portrait of him shows a grim old man wearing a wig and a tri-cornered hat. He had a long somewhat sagging face that appears devoid of humour, and on his finger is a heavy signet ring with the family motto inscribed thereon: Virtus Auget Honorum. He was always short of capital; his standard of living was too high for his income, and this was because he felt that he was obliged to support his ‘Rank and Station in every respect’. Perhaps, one could say that he particularly wanted his sons to succeed financially, so that he could continue to live in the style to which he thought he and his family should be accustomed. Thus, the East India Company beckoned.

The eldest son, like his father, was called Archibald and it was reported that he was the apple of his father’s eye. Indeed, he described him as the ‘Pride, the Glory and the Comfort of my Heart’. In his case, he joined the Guards and was sent out to fight in America. He served there as ADC to General Riediesel, who was commanding the German division of the Army under General Burgoyne. Very sadly, he went down with consumption there and died two years later, aged 25.

Following the death of Archibald, his father turned to his next son William in the hope that he would be able to contribute something towards the financial support of the Edmonstone family. He went out to India in 1776 with instructions from his father to make a ‘competent fortune’. However, whereas Archibald was, somewhat surprisingly, described by his father as ‘modest and docile’, he described William as ‘secretive and reserved’. William had no wish to go out to India and once he was there, he hardly ever wrote home. He never felt well in India – he did not make much progress up the Company ladder and never went home, dying in India. Of the two remaining brothers, Charles was called to the Bar and appointed one of the six Clerks in Chancery, while George took Holy Orders and then became the curate in the Wiltshire parish of Pollerne. There were three daughters – the youngest Sarah was still at home at that time, while the other two daughters were married with families.

Neil Edmonstone went out to India on the East Indiaman, the Stormont, of 723 tons, sailing from Portsmouth in March 1783, reaching Madras in July and by September, the Hooghly River and then Calcutta’s Diamond Harbour, in those days one of the world’s most famous and busiest ports. On board the Stormont were 42 ‘Writers’, all aged between 16 and 17. There the ship stopped, meaning that the last 41 miles had to be undertaken by a vessel called a budgerow, which was little more than a barge with a flat-roofed cabin. These last 41 miles were not particularly pleasant as the monsoon rains had not yet stopped and the passengers were assailed by hordes of mosquitoes. They also passed that island, where the son of Sir Hector Munro, who had commanded the Company’s army at the famous battle of Buxar already mentioned, went ashore to have a picnic lunch only to have his head bitten off by a tiger, just as he was sitting down to eat his lunch. The remains of his body were never discovered.

As the budgerow neared Calcutta itself, the jungle gave way to garden houses, as they were called, with beautiful manicured lawns studded with roses, scarlet geraniums and mango trees and now, with Calcutta itself in full view, perhaps Neil could never have thought that this was to be his home for the next thirty-four years.

Edmonstone arrived in Calcutta close to a hundred years after it had been founded by Job Charnock and let us read the latter’s opening words, which appeared in the first volume of the Fort William Factory Records: ‘This day at Sankraul ordered Captain Brooke come up with his vessel to Chutanutte, where we arrived at noon, but found ye place in a deplorable condition, nothing being left for our present accommodation and ye rains falling day and night. We were forced to take ourselves to boats, which, considering the season of the year is very unhealthy.’

Chutanutte was situated on the east bank of the river, while somewhat further to the east was situated the well-known and extensive Salt Lake. This lake, unfortunately, overflowed during the months of September and October and this brought to it, as our old friend Captain Alexander Hamilton reported, ‘prodigious numbers of fishes, but in November and December, when the floods receded, these fishes were left stranded high and dry with the result that their putrefaction affected the air with stinking vapours, which the north east winds bring to Fort William, so that they cause a yearly mortality’. The Captain reckoned that, when he was there one August, there were 460 burials registered in the Clerk’s Book of Mortality, out of a total population of about 1,200 Englishmen then residing in Calcutta. The Captain was well known for a certain amount of exaggeration and embellishment, but he could not really have made up this figure, given his access to this Book of Mortality.

The Captain then went on to say,

Mr Charnock in choosing the ground for the colony, where it now is, reigned more absolutely than a Rajah, only he wanted much for their humanity, for when any poor ignorant native transgressed his laws, they were sure to undergo a severe whipping for a penalty and this penalty was carried out near to his dining room, so that the groans and cries of these poor delinquents served him for music at dinner. The custom of wives being burnt alive with their deceased husbands is also practised. Before the Moghul’s war, Mr Charnock went out one day with his ordinary bodyguard to see a young widow act out that tragic catastrophe, but he was so smitten with her beauty, that he sent his guards to take her by force from the funeral fire and conduct her to his lodgings. They lived together for many years and had several children. He made no effort to try and convert her to Christianity and after she died, on the anniversary of her death, he always sacrificed a cock on her tomb after the pagan manner.’

Chapter 3

Baillie’s family: His voyage to and arrival in Calcutta

The Baillie family originally came from Flanders and then branched out into four main lines, all of which were in Scotland. These were the Lamington Baillies, the Leys Baillies, the Dunain Baillies and, finally, the Dochfour Baillies, from whom my mother Iris Mary Baillie was descended.

John Baillie, the joint subject of this book, was born in Inverness, Scotland, in 1772 in a house by the River Ness. His father was a practising doctor there and it is interesting to note how many Baillies took up medical as well as Military careers, both in this country and also in India.

John Baillie’s father George was born in 1727 and died in 1795. He married another Baillie, by the name of Annie, and she was the daughter of Alexander Baillie of Dunain – the small Baillie estate situated more or less between the Dochfour and Leys Baillie estates. Annie Baillie was a sister of Colonel William Baillie of Dunain, who joined the 89th Highland Regiment of Foot, then, when that Regiment returned to Scotland, transferred to the Coromandel Coast Army, which metamorphosed into the Madras Army. Why did he transfer to the Coast Army? The answer is that he had not made any money and, as it happens, never did. As, perhaps, some readers may know, this Colonel William Baillie was the subject of an earlier book of mine entitled When the Tiger Fought the Thistle – the Tragedy of Colonel William Baillie of the Madras Army – the Tiger being Tipu Sultan and the Thistle the Scots in the shape of William Baillie. He and his Brigade were defeated by the combined forces of Haidar Ali and his son Tipu Sultan at the battle of Pollilur near Conjeveram, now Kanchipuram, on 10 September 1780 – Conjeveram being situated approximately 50 miles or so west of Madras and well worth a visit to see its temples and its textile industry. He was captured, forced to watch his brother officers being decapitated by Tipu and then marched to his Fortress Palace of Seringapatam, where he was thrown into a dungeon, manacled to a wall and, denied medical help, died there two years later. At Seringapatam, his nephew Colonel John Baillie, the joint subject of this book, erected a magnificent Memorial to him in 1816 – his final year as the British Resident of Lucknow. This Memorial has recently been restored.

John Baillie’s parents had seven children – the eldest of whom was Margaret Baillie, who was born in 1761 and died seventy years later in 1831. She never married but, as the Chatelaine of Leys Castle, which John Baillie had bought from his brother Alexander Baillie, she brought up not only John’s four Scottish Indian children, all of whom had been born in Calcutta, as well as his three children born in Lucknow, but also two of Neil Edmonstone’s Scottish Indian boys, born in Calcutta. The youngest of the Edmonstone sons was sent to a boarding school in London, as Margaret was by then probably too old to manage yet another boy – she had nine to bring up already, while John’s daughter Eliza stayed behind in Calcutta. The surname of Edmonstone’s Scottish Indian children was changed to Elmore, but whether or not his father Archibald influenced this decision is not known.

Going back to the children of Dr George and Annie Baillie: a son John was born in 1765 but died shortly afterwards; another son Alexander went out to India, where he rose through the ranks to command his Regiment as Colonel. Alexander had several Scottish Indian children, and it seems that these children were sent back to Scotland from India, but not to Leys. A daughter Anna was born in 1768; a son William, who was born in 1770 and tried his luck in the West Indies plantations, but died there; then John the joint subject of this book and then two more girls.

In 1786, Annie died and the widower married a certain Margaret Cummings, by whom he had one son George, who was born in 1787. He, like his father, qualified as a doctor, then, as an Assistant Surgeon, he seems to have joined the Bengal Army and took part in the capture of Java from the French in 1811, when Lord Minto was Governor General. In 1827, he was appointed the Personal Physician to the then Nawab of Oudh, but then resigned four years later, when his salary, which was paid by the Company, was reduced from 2,500 rupees a month to 1,000 rupees.

It is interesting to note that as Personal Physician to the Nawab, he had succeeded Dr John Gibson, who had died mysteriously. His wife, who also seems to have mysteriously died, was Ann. She was no less a person than Ann Baillie, the only surviving child of Colonel William Baillie by his Indian lady in Madras. She had been sent back to England by her father, to be brought up there, and we find just one single letter written by her to her father, which ends as follows: ‘I remain with duty to Mama and Love to Brother, Dear Papa, Your Most Affectionate and ever Dutiful daughter, Ann Baillie’. It is sad to say that there were no children of that Gibson marriage – it is also sad to say that not many children, if any, would nowadays end their letters, if indeed they wrote them at all, to ...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half-title Page
• Title Page
• Contents
• Illustrations
• Acknowledgements
• Maps
• Introduction
• Chapter 1 Setting the scene
• Chapter 2 Edmonstone’s family: His voyage to and arrival at Calcutta
• Chapter 3 Baillie’s family: His voyage to and arrival in Calcutta
• Chapter 4 Descriptions of late-eighteenth-century Calcutta
• Chapter 5 Marriages and mistresses
• Chapter 6 Baillie’s and Edmonstone’s bibis and their eight Scottish Indian children
• Chapter 7 Edmonstone’s early days in Calcutta
• Chapter 8 The Kennaway Embassy to Hyderabad
• Chapter 9 Sir John Shore, Governor General
• Chapter 10 Two missions to Lucknow
• Chapter 11 Baillie’s academic prowess: Sir Richard Wellesley, Governor General
• Chapter 12 Fort William College, Calcutta
• Chapter 13 The Treaty of Bassein: The Second Anglo-Mahratta War
• Chapter 14 The story of General De Boigne
• Chapter 15 The capture of Agra: The Second Anglo-Mahratta War continued
• Chapter 16 Bundelkhand Affairs
• Chapter 17 The Jhansi Treaty and Anupgiri’s death
• Chapter 18 The return of Lord Cornwallis, Holkar, the Vellore Mutiny
• Chapter 19 Sir George Barlow and the White Mutiny
• Chapter 20 Captain Baillie: Lucknow Resident
• Chapter 21 Lucknow
• Chapter 22 A very short history of Oudh
• Chapter 23 Captain Baillie’s Lucknow family
• Chapter 24 Two downfalls
• Chapter 25 The capture of Bourbon, Mauritius, Amboyna, the Dutch Spice Islands and Java
• Chapter 26 Lord Moira, Governor General, and the Oudh loans
• Chapter 27 Edmonstone leaves Calcutta: A summary of his Indian career
• Chapter 28 Colonel Baillie leaves India; His Early Death
• Appendix
• Glossary
• Further Reading
• Index
• Plates Section
• Copyright Page