History of the Parsis : including their manners, customs, religion and present position : with coloured and other illustrations : in two volumes

CHAP, I.] RASTAM MANAK. II

Manak for assistance. Rastam at once went with his accustomed boldness to Goa, and appealed for justice to the Portuguese Governor-General Sefior Vizrael, and the outcome of his effort was satisfactory to both himself and his client. His relations with the English factory remained friendly till 1690, when a circumstance arose which led to his retirement from the office of broker to that factory. This was through a disagreement with Sir Nicholas Waite, formerly head of the English factory at Surat and then Governor of Bombay. The heads of the Surat factory, however,

were not in favour of his dismissal.?

1 « While he (Sir Nicholas Waite) was President at Surat, Rastam, whom, from his first arrival, he had employed as broker, continued, from interested motives, attached to his views ; but after he assumed the office of General at Bombay, this cautious native, discovering that his object was to make that island the centre of trade, explained to Mr. Bonnel and Mr. Proby, the English Company’s servants at Surat, that Sir Nicholas Waite had promised to give him fifty thousand rupees to use his influence with the Governor to keep Sir John Gayer confined, which sum was to be paid to him individually, by advances on the prices of the Company’s goods to that amount. When Siz Nicholas Waite was informed of this conduct of Rastam, he dismissed him from the English Company’s employment, notwithstanding the United Trade was then indebted to him 140,000 rupees, and the separate Companies 550,000 rupees ; and if the Surat council had not prevailed on the merchants to take their bills, the whole property of the English would have been seized,

“This state of affairs, between Sir Nicholas Waite and Mr. Proby, could not but produce animosities :—the former began with protesting against the conduct of the latter and of Mr. Bonnel, and they retaliated by declaring in their letters to th@geart that it was impracticable to procure regular investments under ‘the. contradictory orders which Sir Nicholas Waite sent to them ; and, in fact, it was impossible to execute them ; and therefore, unless Rastam should be restored, they neither