CHAPTER XI
A Group of English Adventurers in India
Robert Trully, the cornet player—William Hemsell, the Great Mogul's coachman—Richard Steele—His Agra waterworks scheme—Thomas Coryat, "the Odcombe Leg Stretcher"—Coryat's early career at the Court of James I—Coryat's Crudities—Croyat's journey overland to India— Coryat's audience with Jehangir—The Emperor and a Christian convert—Coryat prepares to return home—He dies and is buried at Surat—Roe's last days in India—He secures an agreement from the Mogul government permitting the English to trade—He returns to England
FOR the present we may leave Roe resting on his hard-won laurels, and turn to the doings of some of the subsidiary characters who were playing their part in this interlude of what in the end was to prove the great drama of British influence in India.
From time to time in the ambassador's diary and in the correspondence of the period, we come across allusions to men of English birth who strutted and fretted their hour upon the ample stage of Indian life, and then were heard of no more. Some there were who were no credit to their race, who to ingratiate themselves with the native potentates "turned Moors," and disappeared from view under a cloud of infamy. Of this class was Robert Trully, a musician, who was brought out to charm the Mogul by his comet playing, and who, having acquitted himself of this duty
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