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The Yale connection...
Elihu Yale
A CONNECTION that began in this city in 1672 with the arrival of a Company Writer called Elihu Yale and which ended in 1699 after his return to England as a Governor (1687-92) under a cloud that had passed, was revived again with the University named after him recently forging links with the city. How Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, took its name after an Anglo-Welshman who made a fortune in Madras is a story too well known to bear repetition. But what struck me about the recent visit of the president of Yale and a high-powered team was a lack of interest in the relics Elihu Yale had left behind in the city and moffusil to which the famed university owes at least a little.
One of them is the Hynmers' Obelisk that occasionally makes its presence visible when it emerges from the overgrowth of the Law College Hostel campus. Joseph Hynmers, twice acting Governor of Madras in the 1670s, died in 1680, leaving behind his wife Catherine and four children. Governor Streynsham Master, who was responsible for the building of St. Mary's in the Fort, which celebrates the 325th anniversary of its consecration on October 28 this year, Hynmers and Yale were all close friends during Hynmers' decade in Madras. Six months after Hynmers died, Yale married Catherine Hynmers, Governor Master giving away the bride on November 4, 1680, in the first wedding to be celebrated in the church. Their son David was baptised in 1684. When he died in 1688, he was buried next to Hynmers whose tomb had been marked by an obelisk. A plaque at the base of the pillar remembers David Yale.
Whether it was after his son or the patron saint of Wales that he named the fort near Cuddalore he successfully negotiated for with a Mughal governor, is not known, but Fort St. David was one of the issues that led to Yale's removal from the governorship to face charges. The fort, purchased for 30,000 pagodas (about Rs. 2 million today) was renovated, adding to the expenditure. Ironically, all this proved money well spent when it became the last English bolthole in South India when the French captured Madras in 1746. It was from here that in 1749 the English began their march to empire. So Yale's purchase proved not such a bad thing after all for the British. The village where the fort was situated was in the news more recently for more tragic reasons. Tengapatam (or Old Cuddalore) was one of the worst hit places by the tsunami.
Between his connection with St. Mary's and Fort St. David, Yale marked his being made Governor with a silver alms-dish for the church and a symbol of overlordship in Fort St. George. On one of Fort St. George's bastions he raised in 1687 a 150-ft tall teakwood flagstaff, which remained the tallest in India till it was taken down in 1994 and replaced with a metal one. The flagstaff, believed to have been from a ship battered by a cyclone in Madras Roads, was brought down in what looked like 5-ft lengths. These pieces were, when I last saw them about a year ago, still lying around the Fort. I've long been suggesting the alumni of Yale rescue them and restore them in New Haven. Yale's president, however, had no time to look at them - so they'll no doubt vanish one of these days, if they haven't already.
S. MUTHIAH
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