Patna Factory
Charnock was entrusted with the duty of procuring the Company's saltpetre and appointed to the centre of the trade, Patna in Bihar, on 2 February 1659. After four years at the factory he contemplated returning to England, but the court of directors in London were keen to retain his services, and won him over by promoting him to the position of chief factor in 1664.
About 1663 Charnock took a Hindu widow as his common-law wife. A Company servant, Alexander Hamilton, later wrote that she had been a sati and that Charnock, smitten by her beauty, had rescued her from her husband's funeral pyre by the Ganges in Bihar. She was said to be a fifteen-year-old Rajput princess. Charnock renamed her Maria, and soon after he was accused of converting to Hinduism. Though he remained a devout Christian, the story of his conversion and moral laxity was so widely believed that it became a cautionary tale in a more puritanical age.
Charnock was promoted to the rank of senior merchant by 1666, and became third in the Bengal hierarchy in 1676. He was now the Company's longest-serving servant in Bengal, and applied for a transfer to a more senior post. After some haggling due to difficulties with resentful colleagues who hoped to see him sent away to Madras, on 3 January 1679 the directors promoted him to the position of head at Cossimbazar, second in charge of the Company's operations in Bengal.
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