History is more than a mere record of
events; and I shall be satisfied if the reader gets from these pages an
idea, however imperfect, of the conditions of life under which all empire
builders labored in India a hundred and fifty years ago.
Herbert Strang
Chapter 1: In which the Court Leet of Market Drayton entertains Colonel
Robert Clive; and our hero makes an acquaintance.
One fine autumn evening, in the year 1754, a country cart jogged
eastwards into Market Drayton at the heels of a thick-set,
shaggy-fetlocked and broken-winded cob. The low tilt, worn and ill
fitting, swayed widely with the motion, scarcely avoiding the hats of the
two men who sat side by side on the front seat, and who, to a person
watching their approach, would have appeared as dark figures in a
tottering archway, against a background of crimson sky.
As the vehicle jolted through Shropshire Street, the creakings of its
unsteady wheels mingled with a deep humming, as of innumerable bees,
proceeding from the heart of the town. Turning the corner by the
butchers' bulks into the High Street, the cart came to an abrupt stop. In
front, from the corn market, a large wooden structure in the center of
the street, to the Talbot Inn, stretched a dense mass of people; partly
townfolk, as might be discerned by their dress, partly country folk who,
having come in from outlying villages to market, had presumably been kept
in the town by their curiosity or the fair weather.
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