Home › The Pigott › The Pigott: Madras

The Pigott: Madras

The surrender of Cossimbazar was not known to Mr. Pigott, the Governor of Madras, till the 15th of July, and it was two months before he and his council could make up their minds to send aid to their brethren at Calcutta, and then it was due to Mr. Orme that Colonel Clive was nominated to command the expedition against the Nabob, which Mr. Manningham, being one of the runaway council at Cossimbazar, very naturally opposed. Clive, small as was the force at his command, soon recovered Calcutta for the company, and followed up this success by the total overthrow of Sooraj-oo-Doulah, his army and his kingdom. The successes of Clive were partially unavailing, because the Governor of Madras, Mr. Pigott, failed to protect "Fort St. David," which capitulated to the French. In the siege of Madras Mr. Pigott shewed some courage, and the coming up of a fleet, under Admiral Pocock, preserved the town from being taken. The French were driven beyond the Kistna, and the English gained an extended line of eighty miles along the coast, and twenty miles inland. In these successes Clive had the master hand and the lion's share. Mr. Pigott, at Madras, after coquetting for possession of the Northern Circass (conceded both by Nizam Ali and Basalat Jung), found he had plunged the whole possessions of the Company on the Coromandel coast into most serious difficulties. He returned to England, and was created an Irish Peer, in consequence of having prudently given up his design to lead the Madras forces to re-conquer Calcutta, in favour of Colonel Clive; and Sir John Lindsay arrived at Madras as governor in quick succession to him. Sir Robert Hartland assumed the high powers with which he was invested, and forthwith Madras and Tanjore were involved in hostilities. Sir Robert Fletcher was restored to the chief command, and Mr. Warren Hastings was brought from Madras, and succeeded to the chair of the Council of Bengal, 1772. The attack on the Rohillas followed.

The conquest of Tanjore was condemned at home by the Court of Directors, who removed Mr. Wynch, the Governor of Madras, and re-appointed Lord Pigott. But Lord Pigott, determining to rule without, and in despite of his Council, was put under confinement by his own Council; and the governor, weakened by the climate and irritated by the opposition, died the prisoner of those over whom he had been appointed to preside, 1776.

How Lord Pigott obtained possession of this gem called the "Pigott" is not clear, and when any ray of light is attempted to be thrown upon its acquisition, the less " luminious" it becomes. It is pretty certain, however, that he brought this rare diamond to England somewhere about the year 1775. There is no record of the source whence he procured it, but it probably came to him either from his friend, the Rajah of Tanjore, or from the Nabob of Arcot, from whom he admitted, in a letter to the Court of Directors, that he had accepted a few presents "of a trifling value." If this diamond was amongst the gifts, it was certainly no "trifle," for it has been valued by Mawe at no less a sum than pound 40,000. At any rate it fetched pound 30,000 in the year 1801, when it fell in a public lottery to a young man, who afterwards sold it for a low price. It passed, in the year 1818, into the hands of Messrs. Rundell and Bridge, the city jewellers, and from them it was soon afterwards purchased, also for pound 30,000, by Ali Pasha, who forwarded a special messenger to receive it. Murray tells us that its new owner, "always wore it in a green silk purse attached to his girdle. When Ali Pasha was mortally wounded by Reshid Pasha, he immediately retired to his divan, and desired that his favourite wife, Vasilika, should be poisoned. He then gave the diamond to Captain D'Anglas, with an order that it should be crushed to powder in his presence, which was forthwith obeyed, and the beautiful gem utterly destroyed. Vasilika still lives, but the model of the diamond alone remains. The too obedient officer bitterly regretted his folly; and the destroyed diamond haunted him in his dreams for months afterwards."