peculiarly attached to their ancestral creeds. Such views, however, were already growing out of date, and the Charter Act of that year threw open the trade with India, gave interlopers a limited right of settlement, and opened a way for the endowment of an Anglican bishop in Calcutta.
Some weeks later Hastings underwent at Oxford the ordeal of receiving his Doctor's degree, amidst the cheers of admiring undergraduates. In the following year he was made a Privy Councillor, and was graciously received in private audience by the Prince Regent, who afterwards presented him to the allied sovereigns of Russia and Prussia, as 'the most deserving and one of the worst-used men in the Empire.' In their train he attended the banquet at the Guildhall, the great Thanksgiving at St. Paul's, and the Prince Regent's brilliant fête at Carlton House. Before returning to Daylesford, he took the chair at a dinner given by old Indians to the Duke of Wellington.
About this time his pension was secured to him for the remainder of his life. But the Court of Directors refused to make any sort of provision for his wife. Four years later the dying statesman dictated a last appeal to the Directors for the extension of his annuity to 'the dearest object of all his mortal concerns.' But they gave no more heed to his dying entreaties than they would have given to the whine of a self-convicted beggar[1].
The old man's last years were spent at Daylesford
- ↑ Gleig.
