These volumes have, through many hindrances, got completed at last. The copious Index, without which a book of this kind is almost useless, forms a keystone to the structure, which has been, in this case, a somewhat laborious task; but the labour has been mitigated through the help contributed by some friends, whom I here heartily thank without naming them.

At the end of the Preface to Vol. II, it was mentioned that Mr. Scharf, C.B., had recently identified at Chevening a portrait of Thomas Pitt's wife, Jane Innes. I have now to thank that generous friend for a sketch of the picture by his own accomplished hand, of which a reduction is presented opposite page clviii. My thanks to Lord Stanhope are also due for the permission to publish this drawing.

Just as the sheets of Index have been passing through the press, I have obtained, through the kind effort of Dr. John Anderson, a photograph from the portrait of Elihu Yale at Yale College, U.S.A., which affords another most interesting illustration of these documents.

This completes four entirely unpublished portraits of Anglo-Indian notables of the seventeenth century, with which I have been enabled, through the kindness of various friends, to add value to this compilation, viz., those of Thomas Pitt and of his wife, of Sir Streynsham Master, and of Elihu Yale.

In the Diary of William Hedges we find repeated reference to a Captain Pitt or Pitts (as he is called indiscriminately), a prominent and notorious interloper who pressed his commercial adventures iu defiance of the Company's claims to exclusive trade, and was only too successful in seducing from their fidelity, and involving in his own quasi-contraband business, a number of the Company's servants in “the Bay”.

I think it well to begin by bringing together here, either in abstract or extract, the chief passages in which Hedges takes notice of this adventurer.

On the outward voyage of Hedges and his party, on the Defence, when eleven weeks from the Downs, they speak a ship proving to be the Crown (Capt. Dorrel), which had left home some three weeks after them, an interloper bound for Húglí, and carrying, with other passengers, “Mr. Pitts” (p. 20).

On the arrival of Hedges at Balasore they see a ship in the roads:

“They told us the Ship we saw in Port was the Crown, Capt. Dorrel, with Mr. Pitts, who had been here 11 days before. That Mr. Pitts had hired a great house at Ballasore, carried divers Chests of money ashore, and was very busy in buying of goods” (p. 31).

The original of the following document, which I print as the first of these miscellaneous papers, reached my hands after a great part of the preceding matter, including the biographical notice of Sir Streynsham Master, was in type. The original, which was kindly put at my disposal by the owner, the Rev. G. S. Master–to whom I have already been so much indebted–is a draft in the unquestionable handwriting of Sir Streynsham Master aforesaid. Though bearing no signature and no address, abounding as it does in corrections and interpolations in the same handwriting, it must have necessarily been his own composition: whilst some expressions seem to intimate that the person addressed was a member of the Court in Leadenhall Street. As Streynsham Master returned to England, after his early sojourn in Western India, in the summer of 1672, the date of the letter (Jany. 1671, i.e. N. S. 1672) implies that it must have been written when he was on the eve of departure for Europe.

The letter is creditable, both in knowledge and composition, to one who had left England when under sixteen years of age; though I confess to have been a little disappointed in its contents. Any narrative that should bring before us in lively detail the real life and occupations of the Company's servants in India during the reign of Charles II would be very interesting.