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The Moghul

Page 72

by Thomas Hoover


  So it is His Majesty King James may now desire to dispatch anotherAmbassador to Agra, to petition this new Moghul to grant English trade.If a Petition is to be sent, know that before taking the Throne thisSon was called by the name Prince Jadar, though doubtless he is now tobe addressed formally as The Moghul.

  I have as yet been unable to discover whether the Mission of Capt.Hawksworth to Agra, authorized by Your Worship in your Wisdom, metsuccess. (Though his Mission will no longer assist the Company in anyinstance, since he would not be known to this new Moghul, Jadar.)However, the Hollanders have advised that an English seaman namedHawksworth was taken from an Indian vessel off Malabar one month past,in company with a Moorish woman, by a Frigate of theirs that later wascaught by a Storm off the same Malabar Coast. Her mainmast split inthat Storm, and the vessel was lost sight of soon after, leaving theHollanders to lament it may have sunk or gone aground on the Coast,together with over five hundred ton of their Malabar pepper. If thiswas our former Captain-General, he is either gone to God or is nowagain in India (if the vessel haply made landfall and saved theHollanders' pepper).

 

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