Francis Day ( – between 1666 and 1673) was an administrator associated with the East India Company. He served as a factor of the company's factory at Masulipatnam from 1632 to 1639. In 1639, he negotiated the purchase of a strip of land south of the Dutch factory at Pulicat from the Raja of Chandragiri, where the town of Madras was built. He served as the second Agent of Madras from 1643 to 1644. Along with Andrew Cogan, he is regarded as the founder of Madras.
Early life and Company service Francis Day was born to William Day of Bray and his wife Helen Wentworth, the daughter of a member of the House of Commons. He is believed to be the grandson of William Day, who was appointed Bishop of Winchester in 1595. Francis completed his education from Eton College and joined the services of the East India Company in 1632.
Establishment of Madras
In 1637, Francis Day, then a member of the Masulipatnam Council and Chief of the Armagon Factory, undertook a voyage of exploration down the Coromandel Coast, as far as Pondicherry. At that time, the Coromandel Coast was ruled by the Raja of Chandragiri through a local chief or Nayak, Damarla Venkatappa Nayak, who ruled the coast from Pulicat up to Santhome. He had his seat at Vandavasi (then anglicised as Wandiwash) and his brother, Ayyappa Nayak resided at Poonamallee.
Ayyappa Nayak, who administered the coastal region from Poonamallee, encouraged Day to examine Madraspatnam as a possible English settlement. Day inspected the site and found its trading prospects favourable, particularly because locally woven calicoes could be obtained more cheaply than at Armagaon. He subsequently secured from Damarla Venkatadri Nayak a grant permitting the East India Company to establish itself at Madraspatnam, construct a fort and exercise administrative and commercial privileges there. Day returned to Masulipatam with the grant and his report, and the English factors there approved the proposal while awaiting confirmation from the Company's presidency at Bantam. Day and his superior, Andrew Cogan, investigated the proposed site and examined trading possibilities. The results were favorable and Day secured a grant offering the village of Madraspatnam to the English for a period of two years. The Grant was dated August 1639, and after obtaining the approval of the Factory at Masulipatnam and the Presidency of Bantam (in Java), the settlement of Madraspatnam was begun.
Day also had other reasons to choose Madras for a factory: the availability of cotton, and at a much cheaper rate, as acknowledged by the prosperous Portuguese settlement of Sao Tôme, the nearness of the Portuguese, upon whom could be counted as neutral spectators if not active supporters in times of war, particularly influenced the English in their choice, the land allocated under the grant to the English in 1639, was a piece of land lying between the river Cooum, almost at the point at which it enters the sea and another river known as Egmore river, also a factor of safety important in those turbulent times.
Day was, however, sorely criticised by captains of men-of-war, for his choice of the location of the fort, due to immense difficulties in anchoring ships in Madras Roads. This meant that at various important junctures in the Carnatic Wars, the powerful English fleet was rendered useless, having to weigh anchor and move out to sea at low tide. Merchantmen too found the same flaw, though for different reasons – they would have to wait until high tide to bring goods and passengers ashore or risk wetting them in the majula boats used as ferries between the fort and Madras Roads.
The chief difficulty, as usual with the English in those days, was lack of money. At last, in February 1640, Day and Cogan accompanied by a few factors and writers, a garrison of about 25 European soldiers and a few other European artificers, besides a Hindu powder-maker by name Naga Battan, proceeded to Madras and started the English factory. They reached Madraspatnam on 20 February; and this date is important because it marks the first actual settlement of the English at the place.
Construction of Fort St George Day and Andrew Cogan were responsible for the initial planning and establishment of Fort St George. Although the local Nayak had undertaken to provide a fortification, the proposed structure amounted to little more than a stockade, and the English decided to construct a permanent work themselves. Building expenditure began on 1 March 1640.
The original fort was laid out as an approximately square enclosure, measuring about 108 yards (99 m) from north to south and 100 yards (91 m) from east to west, with a bastion at each corner and the Factory House near its centre. The south-eastern bastion was completed and armed during 1640; a second followed in 1641, while a third was built in earth in 1642 and faced with stone the following year. The curtain walls progressed more slowly as money became available. The remaining works continued under Day and Cogan's successors, with the eastern curtain completed in 1653, about fourteen years after construction began.
The traditional explanation that the fort received its name because part of it was completed on St George's Day, 23 April 1640, is uncertain. Love considered the date too early for any substantial portion of the fort to have been completed, but noted that contemporary evidence suggests that the name Fort St George was adopted from the beginning of the settlement.
The protection of the new fort rapidly attracted settlers. Portuguese and Eurasian residents from San Thome were among those encouraged to move there, while artisans and textile workers were drawn by the Company's demand for cloth. By early 1641 Dutch observers reported that the handful of fishermen's huts near the site had been replaced by about seventy or eighty houses, and Company records indicate that between 300 and 400 families of weavers had settled at Madraspatnam before the end of 1640. The European and Indian quarters initially developed alongside one another; the terms later rendered as White Town and Black Town became established only as the settlement expanded and its residential quarters became more clearly separated.
Day was also personally involved in financing the undertaking. The early building expenditure was met partly through borrowing, and he undertook responsibility for the interest on the loans. The growing cost of the settlement subsequently became a matter of dispute within the Company.
Agent of Fort St George and later life Day returned to Fort St George and succeeded Cogan as Agent on 27 August 1643. His administration lasted approximately twelve months and coincided with political instability in the surrounding Carnatic and increasing commercial competition from the Dutch East India Company. He requested to be relieved of the position and was succeeded by Thomas Ivie on 4 August 1644. On 7 September he sailed for Bantam via Masulipatnam.
Day was back in England by 1646, when the East India Company fined him £500 for unauthorised private trading. He appeared again in Company records in 1652 as a witness before a Court of Committees. He subsequently became a prominent resident of Wallingford, where he owned a substantial property known as Stone Hall, and by 1665 was living at Great Haseley in Oxfordshire. His exact date of death is uncertain; modern biographical research places it between 1666 and 1673.
Legacy Day's historical significance rests principally on his identification of Madraspatnam as a suitable commercial settlement and his negotiation of the agreement that enabled the East India Company to establish itself there. Contemporary Company records show that he promoted the site largely because of the availability and price of textiles and the favourable terms offered by the local authorities.
Historians generally distinguish Day's role from that of Cogan: Day explored the coast, selected the site and conducted the preliminary negotiations, while Cogan, as his superior, directed much of the early construction and organisation of the settlement. The settlement nevertheless expanded rapidly; East India Company deliberations in 1649 estimated its population at about 15,000. Fort St George subsequently became the Company's principal centre on the Coromandel Coast and formed the nucleus around which Madras, later Chennai, developed.
Fort St George remains an administrative centre of Tamil Nadu and houses the state Secretariat and Legislative Assembly. Day's association with the foundation of the settlement, together with Cogan's role in establishing the fort, has consequently remained their principal historical legacy.
See also History of Chennai Fort St George Armagaon Madras Presidency Governors of Madras
References
External links
History of Madras