ABSTRACT
The English had looked on at these affairs without intervening. In the middle of the year a dispatch had been received from England dismissing the President, Charles Floyer, ostensibly for gaming, really for the extravagance of his administration and the little care which he bestowed on the investment. He was succeeded by Thomas Saunders, who arrived at St. David’s on September 30. 1 He was a man of far more than common capacity, yet singularly lacking in the gift of self-expression. No portrait of him is known to exist; none of his private letters have survived; even the mansion which he built for himself after his return to England has long been demolished; his very family has died out. At Madras no vestige remains of him except the official papers which he composed or approved; at Vizagapatam, where he once was chief, his successors have ignorantly commemorated him by inscribing his family motto—Mors janua vitae—over the gateway of their cemetery.
