Mission to a Distant Land

By Robert H. G. Charles

The protagonists of "Skeleton in the Sope House" have carried out numerous missions for the royal intelligence service. In 1527 they are sent on a mission to the court of the Mughal emperor Babur in Delhi. They are ordered by KIng Henry VIII to obtain a trade agreement which will weaken the Portuguese trade monopoly in the East.
They travel across north India and obtain the agreement. Before they can get it home they are betrayed by Babur's son Kamran. They are captured by the Portuguese and condemned to slavery for life on a pepper plantation. With the help of their servants they escape in a native boat and eventually return to England.
Once home they discover that Wolsey is dead and replaced by Thomas Cromwell. They are shocked by the corruption associated with the King's divorce and the dissolution of the monasteries; they resign from the royal service.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse UK
• Release date: Jun 21, 2013
• ISBN: 9781481798419

Robert H. G. Charles

The author is a retired doctor living in London. After his retirement he had time for historical research and foreign travel. This provided the material for this book

Book preview

MISSION

TO A

DISTANT LAND

ROBERT H. G. CHARLES

US%26UKLogoB%26Wnew.ai

AuthorHouse™ UK Ltd.

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© 2013 by Robert H. G. Charles. All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author.

Published by AuthorHouse 06/18/2013

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9840-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4817-9841-9 (e)

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CONTENTS

Editor’s Foreword

Prologue

Chapter 1

Introduction

Chapter 2

The Mission

Chapter 3

Venice

Chapter 4

Egypt

Chapter 5

The Red Sea

Chapter 6

The Indus

Chapter 7

Lahore

Chapter 8

Delhi

Chapter 9

Poisoned Arrows

Chapter 10

Akbarabad (Modern Agra)

Chapter 11

The Dancer

Chapter 12

Night Attack

Chapter 13

The Ganges

Chapter 14

Bay of Bengal

Chapter 15

Koilum

Chapter 16

The Prahu

Chapter 17

Car Nicobar

Chapter 18

The Wang Hong

Chapter 19

Jidda

Chapter 20

Alexandria

Chapter 21

Home

Chapter 22

Retirement

Acknowledgements

Dedicated to my son

EDITOR’S FOREWORD

One June a few of years ago I was on a trout fishing holiday in the Cotswolds. On the third day the weather was too bad for even the most enthusiastic fisherman, so, to pass the time, I went to an auction at Burford in Oxfordshire. My eye was caught by a small, iron-bound, but much battered, wooden box, which appeared to be of considerable antiquity. I thought could be made quite attractive if cleaned and polished and it would be convenient for holding a notepads and pencils on the telephone-table in the hall. It was filled with an assortment of rusty late Victorian kitchen implements of no value, except perhaps as scrap metal. Nobody else had any interest in it so I bought it for five pounds.

When I was back at my hotel I emptied the box and in the bottom found a thick bundle of sheets of manuscript. I flattened it out and found there were several hundred yellowed, musty-smelling sheets of paper covered with closely spaced writing in a very old-fashioned hand. I deciphered the first few pages, with considerable difficulty and found it was an account of his life, written in 1550 AD by one William of Widford. It fell into three parts, namely, his early life, education and service as an intelligence agent for the Crown; a mission to India on royal service; and, finally his retirement to his country estate in West Oxfordshire and an account of how he investigated some strange and mysterious incidents, which occurred then.

My attention was quickly snared by William’s account of his education at Westminster School in the early 16th Century, which shed light on one of my own great interests, the pre-reformation history of that august establishment. I then became enthralled by the rest of his story and the picture that it gave of the activities of the King’s intelligencers, and their contributions to the policies and the diplomatic and military strategies of the first two Tudor kings of England, in their relationships both with their subjects and with foreign powers.

I took the manuscript to the British Museum, where the experts confirmed that the paper, ink, style of writing, spelling and vocabulary were consistent with the mid 16th Century. At first I was particularly interested in the William’s account of his education at Westminster School, which shed light on one of my interests, the pre-reformation history of that august establishment. I then became enthralled by the rest of his story and the picture that it gave of the activities of the royal agents, the King’s intelligencers, and their contributions to the strategies and diplomacy of the first two Tudor kings of England. Searches in the Oxfordshire archives enabled me to identify William of Widford as a wealthy local land-owner, who had lived at that time.

I have published the first part under the title of Skeleton in the Sope House. This story is the second part of William’s tale, about his journey to India in the service of the Crown.

Though the historical background plays a considerable part in the setting of this narrative, as far as possible, I have tried to avoid writing a textbook of history. References to current events do, of course, have to be mentioned to paint in the background and must, of necessity, crop up in the dialogue; I hope that my readers will bear with me.

Though I have translated William’s account into modern English, I have retained some dialect and archaic terms to try to give a flavour of the period. I have also kept a number of Latin tags that William included in his text; these would have been in common use by educated men of the time and it was clearly important to him to show that he had had a good education. These were most profusely used in the first section of his work and became rarer in his later writing. Like all travellers to remote parts he introduced foreign words into his narrative; these are explained in the text.

For convenience I have converted all dates to Anno Domini.

Robert Charles, Hampstead Garden Suburb, 18thJanuary 2013

PROLOGUE

In the 14th Century Marco Polo twice travelled to Cathay and back, mostly overland by the millennia-old Silk Road. In the year of our Lord 1487 a Portuguese sailor named Bartolemeu Dias was the first European to navigate the waters off the southern tip of Africa, which he named the Cape of Storms. King John II of Portugal, realising that it was the gateway to unexplored oceans and rich distant lands and not wishing to discourage other explorers, renamed it the Cape of Good Hope.

On 20th May in the year of our Lord 1498 Hussain, a Muslim Arab boy, was playing by the harbour of the city of Calicut on the Malabar Coast of south-west India. His father was a successful merchant so Hussain was interested in ships and their cargoes. His family was originally from Oman, but had lived in Calicut for three generations. Suddenly a strange ship sailed into view. Hussain was accustomed to lateen-sailed Arab dhows, twin-hulled Malay prahus and massive Chinese junks; indeed the harbour was full of them, all busy unloading rice and wheat and loading cloth, lac, cherry plums, pepper, ginger and other spices., He often went aboard to assist with the loading and unloading and had learnt fragments of a mixture of languages. However, this ship was totally unfamiliar: it was built up fore and aft and had four masts. Three of the masts carried the lateen sails, familiar from the dhows, but the foremast was raked forward and was rigged with square sails. It was quickly followed by a three similar vessels. The ships anchored and the leading vessel launched a boat. Standing in the bows of the boat was large man holding a strange standard bearing a device of a blue cross with a crowned red and blue shield in the centre. The man’s appearance was equally unfamiliar, being paler skinned than Hussain, as far as could be seen behind a grizzled red beard, and dressed in the strangest clothes. Despite the heat he wore garments of heavy cloth with a stiff white frill at the neck. He made some announcement in an unknown tongue; he was accompanied by a man with the top of his head shaven and wearing a long white robe covered with a black cloak. As they came ashore the second man muttered a few words an unknown tongue and made a strange cross shaped movement with his right hand. He then translated his leader’s words into the vernacular, though not very well.

The leader identified himself as Admiral Vasco da Gama, envoy from the King of Portugal, and demanded to be taken to the King of Calicut. The King of Calicut was a Hindu, as was the majority of the population, though there were many Muslim traders, mainly Arabs, who had been established in the ports for a long time. At the time the King was at his second capital, Poonani. As soon as he heard of the Portuguese visitors the King returned to greet them and gave them leave to barter their trade goods. The natives were unimpressed with the offer of hats, scarlet hoods, coral, sugar and oil. They had expected goods worthy of a representative of a king, such as gold, silver and jewels. Da Gama was only able to exchange a small proportion of his trade goods for spices. Angered by this, he refused to pay customs duty and left abruptly, carrying off a few natives by force. However, when he returned to Portugal he brought a large enough cargo of spices, to whet the appetite of the Portuguese for more.

Two years later another Portuguese fleet sailed into Calicut, under Admiral Cabral, who established a station for trading. The friars, who had accompanied Cabral, used the station as a base for converting the natives to Christianity. This soon led to disputes with the local Muslim traders and their priests, leading to a riot in which all the Portuguese in the trading post were killed. In revenge Cabral bombarded Calicut and left it in flames. Hussain watched as his parents died in the fire; he wondered what authority was possessed by the foreigners which allowed them to behave like this. He, poor ignorant savage, was not to know that Pope Alexander VI, with his heaven-sent authority and wisdom, had issued a Bull decreeing that all land to the east of Europe was reserved for Portugal for trade, colonisation and eventually the enforcement of Christianity. Of course, this Papal Bull disregarded the rights or the religion of the existing inhabitants; after all, to the Pope and the Portuguese, they were only ignorant heathens and little better than savages.

Hussain fled south through the jungle to Canannore only to find that Cabral had already reached there, setting up new, well fortified trading stations along the coast. By now Cabral was penetrating further south, as far as Cochin, where he built another strong fort. There were no further massacres and Hussain had found work with a small family of Arab fishermen in a village near Cochin. They had lost their only son in a storm a year previously and were having difficulty making a living. With Hussain’s help, their fortune improved.

Da Gama, now appointed Admiral of the Eastern Seas, returned to Calicut in the year of our Lord 1502. He had been ordered to banish all Muslim traders from Calicut. Therefore, on his arrival he immediately ordered the Hindu King to expel all Muslims. The King was unwilling to agree and sent his high priest to negotiate. Da Gama refused to listen to the priest and accused him of being a spy; he cut off the priest’s lips and ears, sewed on donkey’s ears and sent him back to the King. As the King still would not give in, da Gama seized some merchant vessels in the harbour. He hanged their crews and cut off their hands, ears and noses, which were piled into a boat. The boat was left to drift ashore with a cruel message that the severed parts would make a good Indian curry. He then bombarded the town and slaughtered many of the inhabitants. Having destroyed all resistance in Calicut, da Gama sailed down the Malabar Coast entering the ports and seizing spices from the terrified inhabitants. He reached Cochin, which was a small vassal kingdom of Calicut. At first the Cochinese were pleased to be liberated from the domination of Calicut and welcomed da Gama warmly. None-the-less he abused and robbed them. He then turned north into the northern Indian Ocean hoping to intercept a wealthy pilgrim ship returning from Mecca.

The fishermen whom Hussain had joined were all devout Muslims and this year they decided that they could afford to take the hajj, the pilgrimage to Mecca, which is a duty for all devout Muslims. They bought places on a pilgrim ship for the whole family; they could not afford to take Hussain as well and, anyway, wanted to leave someone to keep an eye on the business. He therefore remained in the cottage. The family’s return passage was made on a ship called the Miri. In October they were near the coast of Malabar, when they encountered Vasco da Gama and his fleet. On their return to Portugal, da Gama’s men reported proudly that they had looted the Miri, taking over twelve thousand ducats and goods worth another ten thousand. They then, they bragged, had locked the captain, crew and all the passengers in the hold. This included the Egyptian ambassador and eighty women, many with children. Da Gama had ordered the ship to be packed with gunpowder which he set alight; later he was to boast proudly that he had sent a crowd of heathen to hell with his own hand. There were no survivors out of three hundred and eighty passengers and crew. After this da Gama’s ships engaged in piratical attacks on Arab merchant vessels. Later da Gama was to declare that he was acting as a privateer rather than a pirate, as he was sailing under letter of marque from the King of Portugal and that this justified all his actions.

Da Gama was unaware that the massacre on the Miri had been witnessed by a Guajarati fisherman, who carried the horrifying news back to the mainland. Gradually the news of da Gama’s crimes spread down the coast to Cochin. That was when Hussain discovered that he was alone again.

The brutality exhibited by da Gama and Cabral and their successors left a continuing legacy of enmity towards all European traders, but the Portuguese maintained their trading posts by overwhelming force of arms. They sent numerous heavily armed expeditions to India. Admiral Albuquerque defeated a large native force at Cochin and built a strong fort of wood and mud brick, garrisoned with one hundred and fifty well trained and well armed soldiers.

The Portuguese then declared the Indian Ocean their Mare Clausum or Closed Sea, and sent a navy which defeated the combined fleets of the Ottomans, Mamluks, Gujaratis and Calicutis. After this they expelled or destroyed ships of all other nations which ventured into what they claimed as Portuguese waters, even the vessels of the Turks and the Arabs, who had traded there since time immemorial. They built a string of strong fortresses along the coasts to protect their trading posts, provide bases for their ship and to maintain their monopoly.

Hussain wanted only to get away from the territory dominated by the Portuguese. He wandered north up the west coast. He supported himself by assisting fishermen, helping with the harvest and carrying goods for merchants and ship owners. For several years he stayed in Gomanta, until in the year of our Lord 1510 the Portuguese invaded in force. They made it their principal settlement, naming it Goa. Then they moved remorselessly north and captured Diu in Gujarat. Hussain wandered rather aimlessly further up the coast until he reached Sindh, where he built himself a hut on the edge of a fishing village near the mouth of the Indus. During his travels up the coast, to add to his Arabic, he had picked up a working knowledge of Gujarati and other local languages from the traders, whose dhows he had helped to load and unload, from the fishermen and from the peasant farmers. Having twice lost his family and friends, he did not risk forming another close relationship and did not marry. He continued to nourish a burning hatred of the Portuguese, who to him typified all Europeans.

CHAPTER 1

INTRODUCTION

I was born in the year of our Lord 1490, five years after the Battle of Bosworth Field, which had ended the Civil Wars between the Yorkists and the Lancastrians and put His Grace King Henry VII on the throne of England. The King was a Lancastrian and a Tudor; he married Elizabeth of York and it was hoped that England would now have peace. On the surface the country was peaceful, prospering and free from involvement in foreign wars, but there were numerous plots to bring back a Yorkist king, who would revive the Plantagenet dynasty. These plots were often supported by foreign monarchs. In order to identify and to suppress these plotters, the King had to establish a service of agents, known as intelligencers. I eventually became one of these; I shall now describe briefly how this occurred.

I was born and brought up in Swinbrook near Burford in West Oxfordshire. I was christened William after my grandfather. My father, John of Widford, was a wealthy land owner, farming his own land, and a successful wool merchant; my mother was the daughter of an impoverished knightly family. I had an elder brother, John, and two sisters, Mary and Christine. I commenced my education with Father Edgar, the priest of St. Oswald’s Church, Widford, and then went to the Abbey of St. Kenelm at Winchcombe. When I was eight years old I was sent to the Grammar School of the Abbey of St. Peter at Westminster. I resided with the School Master, William Baker, his wife and his daughter Joan, at his house in the Sanctuary.

The Royal Treasury in the Crypt of the Chapter House had been robbed two centuries earlier, and not all the contents had been recovered. In the year of our Lord 1504 I accidentally discovered a skeleton behind the panelling of the School Room wall, which led me and Joan to search for the stolen treasure. We deduced that it had been hidden in a house now occupied by the Steward of Westminster Abbey, Peter of Rye. The money was also being sought by a group of conspirators wishing to use it to finance a rebellion. This group was led by Sir John Kendall, the previous Grand Prior in England of the Hospitaller Order of St. John of Jerusalem. Joan was abducted and taken to a manor house owned by the Hospitallers in Thorpe-le-Soken, East Essex, but I was able to rescue her.

With the assistance of Master Baker, Peter of Rye and the Justice of the Peace we found a considerable sum of money in the wall of the Steward’s cellar. We returned this money to the Treasury. The Lord Treasurer, Thomas Howard, Earl of Surrey, showed his gratitude by sponsoring my entry to King’s Hall at Cambridge.

I had fallen in love with Joan. I went home to Swinbrook to obtain my father’s consent to my marrying her, which consent was readily forthcoming. I returned to Westminster and before I left for Cambridge I was formally betrothed to Joan.

I had looked forward to three uninterrupted years of study at Cambridge, but my plans were disrupted by Sir John Kendall’s wish for revenge and by the malice of Nicholas FitzEdwin, an old enemy from school. I had been at King’s Hall for little over a year when I was abducted by servants of Sir John Kendall, assisted by Nicholas FitzEdwin, and taken to the Hospitallers’ Citadel at Rhodes. Nicholas was taken with me as my abductors did not wish to leave any witnesses in England. On the voyage to Rhodes, Nicholas repented of what he had done and asked my forgiveness, which I gave readily. We agreed to work together to gain our freedom.

Sir John was at Rhodes to meet us, but before he could put any further plan of revenge into operation, we were taken under the protection of the Grand Master of the Order. The Grand Master objected to Sir John’s involvement in English politics as being severely detrimental to the wellbeing of the Order.

Sir John was degraded in rank to man-at-arms, but we were not released. We were informed that, to prevent the incident’s becoming known, either we must join the Order and take a vow of secrecy and obedience, or we would be kept prisoners indefinitely. We chose the latter, but made plans to escape. This we achieved and were being taken in a fishing boat to Greece, when we were captured by Tunisian Corsairs and sold as slaves.

We were lucky that we were sold to a kind master, who made use of our clerical skills. Soon we became trusted servants allowed to perform errands in the city. After two years we were able to contrive our escape to Sicily. We took with us Fatima, one of our master’s daughters, with whom Nick had fallen in love. We reached Sicily where Fatima was baptised in the Abbey Church of Monreale, taking the name of Theodosia. She and Nick were then married by the same priest. We made our way back to England, arriving at Westminster on the 13th August in the year of our Lord 1509. His Grace King Henry VII had died earlier that year and His Majesty King Henry VIII was now on the throne.

When I returned to my house in Westminster I found that I had a three year old son, John-William, whom I had not yet seen. My wife Joan was soon pregnant again.

Nick and I studied hard and in May the following year we sat successfully for our Tripos examination. We then met Sir Robert Curzon, baron of the Holy Roman Empire and one of the King’s intelligencers, who assisted us to obtain pupillage at Lincoln’s Inn with Serjeant Gascoyne, a senior barrister. Curzon said, however, that he might need our services from time to time. He made increasing use of our services and our law studies were more and more interrupted. As well as investigations in England we went on missions to Scotland, France and Italy. Serjeant Gascoyne was very tolerant; fortunately he was an old friend of Bob Curzon. Eventually we passed our examinations, were called to the bar and entered the serjeant’s chambers as fully fledged barristers. We found ourselves, however, working increasingly for Bob Curzon and through him for the Crown. Most of our missions were concerned with threats to the Crown, from conspiracies at home as well as from abroad, though one, to Sweden, was concerned with trade.

My elder brother John had been a curate at St Mary’s Swinbrook since the year of our Lord 1512; he had become rector when my father had bought the advowson in the year of our Lord 1525. It was a prosperous living and John had two or three assistant priests, who, he ensured, were well educated, assiduous and adequately paid. He naturally preferred to employ alumni