In our orders dated the 12th of April, 1775, we declared our determination to replace the Rajah upon the throne of his ancestors, upon certain terms and conditions, to be agreed upon for the mutual benefit of himself and the Company, without infringing the rights of the Nabob. We declared that our faith stood pledged by the treaty of 1762 to obtain payment of the Rajah’s tribute to the Nabob, and that for the insuring such payment the fort of Tanjore should be garrisoned by our troops. We directed that you should pay no regard to the article of the treaty of 1771 which respected the alienation of part of the Rajah’s dominions; and we declared, that, if the Nabob had not a just title to those territories before the conclusion of the treaty, we denied that he obtained any right thereby, except such temporary sovereignty, for securing the payment of his expenses, as is therein mentioned.
These instructions appear to have been executed in the month of April, 1776; and by your letter of the 14th May following you certified to us that the Rajah had been put into the possession of the whole country his father held in 1762, when the treaty was concluded with the Nabob; but we do not find that you came to any resolution, either antecedent or subsequent to this advice, either for questioning or impeaching the right of the Nabob to the sovereignty of Arnee, or expressive of any doubt of his title to it. Nevertheless, we find, that, although the Board passed no such resolution, yet your President, in his letter to the Nabob of the 30th July and 24th August, called upon his Highness to give up the possession of Arnee to the Rajah; and the Rajah himself, in several letters to us, particularly in those of 21st October, 1776, and the 7th of June, 1777, expressed his expectation of our orders for delivering up that fort and district to him; and so recently as the 15th of October, 1783, he reminds us of his former application, and states, that the country of Arnee being guarantied to him by the Company, it of course is his right, but that it has not been given up to him, and he therefore earnestly entreats our orders for putting him into the possession of it. We also observe by your letter of the 14th of October, 1779, that the Rajah had not then accounted for the Nabob’s peshcush since his restoration, but had assigned as a reason for his withdrawing it, that the Nabob had retained from him the district of Arnee, with a certain other district, (Hanamantagoody,) which is made the subject of another part of our present dispatches.