ABSTRACT
Warren Hastings had been steadily rising in the hierarchy of the Company. He had been in charge of the English factory at Cossimbazaar, when hostilities broke out between the nawab and the Company in 1756. He had been taken prisoner, but, thanks to the intervention of the governor of the Dutch factory, George Louis Vernet, he was treated with indulgence. Hastings was unattached at the time, his first wife Mary Buchanan having died in 1760. He had had an affair subsequently with Philadelphia Hancock, the wife of a surgeon, Tysoe, with whom he had been friendly in Murshidabad, and on whom he had probably fathered a daughter, but Philadelphia had been left behind in England. The court of St. James in London, was then still very much a German court, specially under the first three Georges of the house of Brunswick-Hanover. The link was Mme. Schwellenburg, Mistress of the Robes to Queen Charlotte, who was born a princess of Mecklenburg. Wa.
