Rivalry With William Hedges
Cossimbazar was notorious as a smugglers' den, and when Charnock assumed his new post on Christmas Day 1680 it was over the objections of Streynsham Master, president at Madras, who oversaw the Company's operations in the whole bay of Bengal. Master received a reprimand from the directors for his interference, but although they agreed to free Bengal from oversight by the Madras presidency, Charnock's hopes of promotion to the top Bengal post at Hooghly were dashed when in 1681 the directors sent out one of their own, William Hedges, as agent of the bay and governor of Bengal.
On Hedges's arrival at Hooghly Charnock found him to be an officious neophyte. The rivalry between the Company's two most senior servants in Bengal was aggravated by the intrigues of Company servants and interlopers keen to undermine Charnock's authority and resume their smuggling operations on the side. Charnock was further irritated by the fact that members of Hedges's staff from Hooghly were regularly sabotaging their colleagues' work in Cossimbazar by poaching the local commodities. In 1684 the exasperated directors restored supervisory control over Bengal to the new president at Madras, William Gyfford, and replaced Hedges in Bengal with John Beard, the elder.
Read more about this topic: Job Charnock
Famous quotes containing the words rivalry and/or hedges:
“Sisters define their rivalry in terms of competition for the gold cup of parental love. It is never perceived as a cup which runneth over, rather a finite vessel from which the more one sister drinks, the less is left for the others.”
—Elizabeth Fishel (20th century)
“Here tulips bloom as they are told;
Unkempt about those hedges blows
An English unofficial rose;”
—Rupert Brooke (18871915)