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.