Sir Charles Eyre (died 1729) was an administrator of the
British East India Company and founder of
Fort William,
Calcutta. He was a
President of Fort William.
Career
While in office, Eyre started work on
Fort William,
Calcutta in 1696. On 10 November 1698, Eyre signed the document legalizing the British occupation of three small villages that formed the basis of the Fort William settlement; his signature, and not that of his father-in-law
Job Charnock
Job Charnock (; –1692/1693) was an English administrator with the East India Company. He is commonly regarded as the founder of the city of Kolkata (formerly Calcutta); however, this view is challenged, and in 2003 the Calcutta High Court de ...
(who died in 1692) appears on the document signed with the original landlords, the
Sabarna Roy Choudhury family. In December 1699, Eyre was appointed president and governor of
Fort William in
Bengal, and Bengal was at the same time constituted a presidency. He was the first governor appointed by the Company to Bengal since
William Hedges (agent and governor) in 1681 and
William Gyfford (president and governor) in December 1683 (after which the title of governor had been temporarily dropped in favour of agent and chief of the bay of Bengal, Bengal having again been subordinated to
Madras
Chennai (, ), formerly known as Madras ( the official name until 1996), is the capital city of Tamil Nadu, the southernmost Indian state. The largest city of the state in area and population, Chennai is located on the Coromandel Coast of th ...
).
As a merchant, Eyre amassed a fortune of 23,000
Pagodas, which through the ingenuity of
Thomas Pitt he converted into diamonds to take back with him to England in 1702, having first been ensured a sum of £13,800 through a bill of exchange. His will was proved on 23 October 1729.
Personal life
Eyre was from
Kew, Richmond, Surrey. Eyre was married to Mary, eldest daughter of Job Charnock. Eyre was a sometime resident of Kew, where he leased a house within the
Kew Palace grounds from Sir
Richard Levett,
Lord Mayor of London who owned the palace as well as the house he leased to Eyre and the estate surrounding them. Levett was a powerful early London merchant who was a merchant adventurer in the
Honourable East India Company and one of the first governors of the new
Bank of England
The Bank of England is the central bank of the United Kingdom and the model on which most modern central banks have been based. Established in 1694 to act as the English Government's banker, and still one of the bankers for the Government of ...
.
A Pilgrimage in Surrey, James S. Ogilvy, E. P. Dutton, New York, 1914
/ref> He was a knight. Eyre was also one of the contributors to the founding of St Anne's Church in Kew in 1714.
See also
* List of rulers of Bengal
* List of governors of Bengal Presidency
The Governor was the chief colonial administrator in the Bengal presidency, originally the "Presidency of Fort William" and later "Bengal province".
In 1644, Gabriel Boughton procured privileges for the East India Company which permitted them t ...
* History of Bengal
* History of Bangladesh
* History of India
According to consensus in modern genetics, anatomically modern humans first arrived on the Indian subcontinent from Africa between 73,000 and 55,000 years ago. Quote: "Y-Chromosome and Mt-DNA data support the colonization of South Asia by m ...
References
{{DEFAULTSORT:Eyre, Charles
Presidents of Bengal
English businesspeople
17th-century births
1729 deaths
British governors of Bengal