An English Ambassador at the Court of the Great Moghul
While the Pilgrim Fathers were drawing up plans for sailing to America, writes Iris Macfarlane, Thomas Roe in India was laying the foundations in a very different form of British Empire.
“Toward the end of this present yeere 1614, viz. in the beginning of January, His Majesty at the request of the East India Company, sent Sir Thomas Roe, Knight, ambassadour to the Great Moghoore, whome some corruptly call Mogall...”
Thus began for Roe an Indian adventure of three years, an appointment that came in the nick of time both for him and for the “factors” or merchants of the East India Company at Surat, who were in imminent danger of being pushed into the sea. Sir Thomas, an Esquire at the court of Queen Elizabeth and companion of Ralegh on his search for Eldorado in 1610, found the winds of favour blowing elsewhere in the middle of James I’s reign.
He had been the friend and confidant of Prince Henry and his beautiful sisrer, but death and marriage had removed them and left him without prospects in a court grown chilly towards him. He had also married—a fact he wished, for reasons not explained, to keep secret—and being in need of steady money, the offer of a tour as Ambassador at the court of the Great Moghul of India came at a most opportune moment.
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