Archibald Seton (1758 – 30 March 1818) was a Scottish

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (the Indian subcontinent and Southea ...

colonial administrator,

Resident Resident may refer to: People and functions * Resident minister, a representative of a government in a foreign country * Resident (medicine), a stage of postgraduate medical training * Resident (pharmacy), a stage of postgraduate pharmaceuti ...

and Civil servant.

Bengal Service

Seton was the son of Hugh Smith who, on marrying Elizabeth Seton of

Touch In physiology, the somatosensory system is the network of neural structures in the brain and body that produce the perception of touch (haptic perception), as well as temperature (thermoception), body position (proprioception), and pain. It is ...

in 1745, had taken his wife's surname and by doing so inherited her estate. In 1780 Seton went to work for the

's administration in Bengal, India.The Gentleman's Magazine, August 1818, Published by F. Jefferies, 1818; Item notes: v.88 pt.2 1818; p. 184 After passing through the routine of early service in India with much credit to himself, Mr. Seton was successively entrusted with the charge of the collection of the Revenue, and the administration of Civil and Criminal Justice, in the Districts of Bhangolpore and Behar. He was then promoted to a seat in the Provincial Court of Justice in the Province of Behar ; and on the occasion of the cession of a portion of the dominions of the Nabob Vizier to the East India Company, in 1801, be was removed to the same station in the ceded provinces, and was one of the Gentlemen selected by Marquis Wellesley to assist Sir Henry Wellesley in the discharge of the trust of the office of Lieutenant governor of those Provinces.

Seton, Fitzroy And The Seyud of Bareilly, 1804

During the first few months of Britain's governance at Bareilly in 1804, a magistrate, Fitzroy, in a dispute concerning a garden, struck a Sayud and a cry went up, "A Seyud has been insulted and struck; our houses are about to be demolished..." Archibold Seton, the Governor-General's agent at Bareilly fearing an uprising would overcome the small British occupying force made his way to the Mosque of the popular and respected Moftee Mahomed Ewuz. Seton was first barred entry as he removed his shoes to enter the mosque but was subsequently let go as he said to the guards, "Do you not see, my friends, that I am prepared to approach a sacred place, and meet a holy man."

The Court At Delhi, 1806-1811

In 1806, Seton was appointed to the office of President at the Court of

Shah Alam II Shah Alam II (; 25 June 1728 – 19 November 1806), also known by his birth name Ali Gohar (or Ali Gauhar), was the seventeenth Mughal Emperor and the son of Alamgir II. Shah Alam II became the emperor of a crumbling Mughal empire. His powe ...

, at

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

, and after Alam's death to that of his successor,

Akbar Shah II Akbar II (; 22 April 1760 – 28 September 1837), also known as Akbar Shah II, was the Nineteenth Mughal emperor of India. He reigned from 1806 to 1837. He was the second son of Shah Alam II and the father of Bahadur Shah II Akbar had littl ...

. During Seton's time in Delhi the East India Company consolidated their rule of parts of the disintegrating

Mughal Empire The Mughal Empire was an early-modern empire that controlled much of South Asia between the 16th and 19th centuries. Quote: "Although the first two Timurid emperors and many of their noblemen were recent migrants to the subcontinent, the d ...

eventually dispensing with the illusion of ruling in the name of the Mughal monarch and removed his name from the Persian texts that appeared on the coins struck by the company in the areas under their control. The East India Company exiled

's preferred choice of heir, Mirza Jahangir, after he attacked their Seton with a rifle in the Red Fort.

Governor of the Prince of Wales' Island, 1811

On 9 May 1811, Seton was appointed Governor of Prince of Wales's Island (present day

Penang Penang ( ms, Pulau Pinang, is a Malaysian state located on the northwest coast of Peninsular Malaysia, by the Malacca Strait. It has two parts: Penang Island, where the capital city, George Town, is located, and Seberang Perai on the Malay ...

). Seton was barely in the colony when he joined the invasion of Java leaving his eventual successor

William Petrie William Petrie (1747 – 27 October 1816) was a British officer of the East India Company in Chennai (formerly Madras) during the 1780s, and was Governor of Prince of Wales Island (Penang Island) from 1812 to 1816. An amateur astronomer, Petrie he ...

as acting Governor.Journal of the Malayan Branch of the Royal Asiatic Society (Vol. 3, pt. 2 comprises a monograph entitled: British Malaya, 1864-1867, by L.A. Mills, with appendix by C. O. Blagden, 1925. Issued also separately) By Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland Malayan Branch Published by The Branch, 1923; p. 10

Supreme Council, Fort William, Bengal 1812

From Lieutenant-Governor of the Prince of Wales' Island, he was promoted, in 1812, by the

Court of Directors A board of directors (commonly referred simply as the board) is an Committee#Executive committee, executive committee that jointly supervises the activities of an organization, which can be either a for-profit or a nonprofit organization such a ...

of the

, as the reward of his long services, to a seat in the

Supreme Council of Bengal The Supreme Council of Bengal was the highest level of executive government in British India from 1774 until 1833: the period in which the East India Company, a private company, exercised political control of British colonies in India. It was for ...

, which he filled with much credit for five years, and was on his return to his native country in 1818, at the period of his death.

Death

Archibald Seton died on 30 March 1818 whilst aboard the East India Company ship ''William Pitt'' on the passage from St. Helena to England, aged 60.

Epilogue

During the long period of Mr. Seton's services, he had the happiness to possess in succession, and in the fullest extent, the well-merited confidence of every Government under which he served — that of Marquis Cornwallis, Lord Teignmouth, Marquis Wellesley, Sir George Barlow, and the Earl of Minto : and the friend by whom this faint tribute is paid to his memory, and by whom his virtues will ever, be revered, can assert, from an intimate knowledge for a period of nearly forty years, that his desire to promote the happiness of others was uniformly enthusiastic, and that the virtues of his heart were pure, and unmixed with any tincture of alloy.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Seton, Archibald 1758 births 1818 deaths History of Penang Administrators in British Penang