imployment of their servants, I therefore humbly beseech your Hon>- to receive me as a Factor, and to give me what imployment you shall think suitable for me, wherein I shall behave and deport myself w^h that fidellity care and delhgence that my future services shall approve themselves not unworthy of this your great favour & liindness, and as I am in duty bound to be a faithful servant to my Honble Masters, soe I lie under no less Obligation to your selves as my benefactors, then of approving myself with all gratitude and thankfulness. Honble Your most humble'& Obed^' Servant, John Heathfield —Fort St. George, 20th May, 1685."
Heathfield died on 2nd April, 1688, aged 43 years 5 months and 27 days, and was buried in the graveyard round St. Mary's Church, where his tombstone may still be seen. The Cons. of 15th April, 1679,[1] note that he had married, at Masulipatam, the widow of Mr. Robert Fleetwood, a servant of the Company, who had died there insolvent. Fleetwood had taken for three years a lease of the town of Narsapuram, a proceeding contrary to the orders of the Company. Heathfield was ordered to give up the farm, which he promised to do, the lease expiring in the following month. His wife, Margery, was godmother to Job Charnock's children born at Madras. In a table showing the quit-rents of houses in Madras, in the Cons, of 2nd Aug., 1688, the "widdow Heathfield" is shown as occupying a house in Middle Street, at a quit-rent of two pagodas a year. She must have been left weU off, as the only higher quit-rent is that of the President's house in the same street, three pagodas. Besides this house in Whitetown, she also owned a garden house in Peddanaikpetta, which she sold to the weavers of Madras in 1707. She survived her husband for thirty-five years, dying in 1723. In the lists of inhabitants of Madras for Dec, 1701, and Dec, 1702, the name of Theophila Heathfield appears in the list of young women unmarried. Another daughter, Corneha, married Charles Bugden, a civilian of 1692, and after his death became the wife, in 1713, of another civilian, Richard Horden, who joined in 1702.
Other Surgeons on the Coast during the later years of the seventeenth century, whose names have been preserved in the Fort St. George Cons. and elsewhere, are—
1. Edward Bulkley, see below.
2. Isaac Dunn, Surgeon at Masulipatam, 12th Oct., 1682; at Madapollam 17th Nov., 1687.
- ↑ Colin Mackenzie MSS., Vol. LII.
