22 RELIGION, COLONISING AND TRADE 
the other hand the duty of religious observance among 
their own people was strongly felt and consistently 
recognised. So it was in the following century, at 
any rate prior to the Restoration. On the face of it, 
it would not have been expected that a company 
formed not for planting but for trading only would 
have paid much attention, as a company, to the things 
of the spirit; but from the first the directors of the 
East India Company were at pains to keep religion in 
evidence among their employees, prescribing morning 
and evening prayers on their ships and providing 
chaplains for their factories. Sir Thomas Roe, on 
his memorable mission on the Company’s behalf to 
the Court of the Mogul Emperor, took with him a 
chaplain—a minister as he called him. The chaplain 
died in August 1616, and Roe entered in his diary 
“Thus it pleased God to lay a great affliction on me 
and my family for our sins, taking from us the means 
of His Blessed Word and Sacraments for our neglect 
of so heavenly benefits, which was to me (God knows 
my heart) the heaviest punishment I did feel or fear 
in this country.” He wrote forthwith to the factory 
at Sutat, to send him another chaplain, ¢ for I will not 
abide in this place destitute of the comfort of God’s 
Word and heavenly Sacraments.’ ? It may have been 
that Roe was an exceptionally devout churchman, but 
inany case, it is clear that the Company did what could 
be done to encourage the outward practice of religion. 
In this same year, 1616, the indefatigable John Smith, 
! The Embassy of Sir Thomas Roe to the Court of the Great Mogul, 
1615-1619. Edited in two volumes for the Hakluyt Society by 
William Foster (1899), vol. i, pp. 245-6 and note.