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The clergy were in consternation, and made an appeal before they published the Bishop's letter to their flocks; but they found his mind made up, and yielded. The lesser stations complied without much difficulty; but at Trichinopoly, Vepery, and Tanjore, there were many Soodras, the soldier-caste, professing to have come from Brahma's shoulders, and second only to the Brahmins.
Three hundred years ago, Madras, under the name of 'Madraspatnam' was a tiny rural village on the Coromandel Coast. Scattered about in the neighbourhood there were other rural villages, such as Egmore, Vepery, and Triplicane, which are crowded districts in the great city of Madras to-day.
They were desperately offended. At Trichinopoly, only seven Soodra families continued to attend the services, although the seceders behaved quietly, and offered no insults either to the clergy or the pariahs. At Vepery, on the reading of the Bishop's letter, the whole Soodra population walked out en masse, except one catechist, who joined them afterwards.
For example, the 'Naval Hospital Road' is still the name of a thoroughfare which leads from the Poonamallee Road, opposite the School of Arts, to Vepery, and it is a reminder of the fact that there were once upon a time sufficient naval men in Madras to make a hospital for sick seamen a necessity.
The Emperor's officers argued that the rent ought to have been larger, but the Company, conforming to the spirit of corruption that was in fashion, were wily enough to send by a Brahman and a Mohammedan conjointly a sum of Rs. 700 'to be distributed amongst the King's officers who keep the Records, in order to settle this matter. The village of Vepery variously called in olden documents Ipere, Ypere, Vipery, and Vapery lay between Egmore and Pursewaukam; and the Company, being naturally desirous of consolidating their territory, proceeded at once to try to obtain a grant of the place; but successive efforts on the part of Governor Elihu Yale came to naught; and it was not till much later when the Nawab of Arcot was lord of the soil, that Vepery was acquired from the Nawab.
The education of girls shared in the development; for in 1842 the first party of Nuns of the Presentation Order was brought out from Ireland, and a convent, with a boarding school and an orphanage, the 'Georgetown Convent' of to-day was established in Black Town. The 'Vepery Convent School' and some of the other successful convent schools in Madras are controlled by nuns of the same Order.
Of large high schools still existing, the Harris High School in Royapettah was founded by the Church Missionary Society in 1856, for the education of Mohammedan boys, and was named after Lord Harris, who was Governor of Madras at the time; and the Hindu High School, in Triplicane, was founded in 1857. Doveton College, Vepery, for Anglo-Indian boys was opened in 1855.
With the danger of French aggression removed for good, the Company were less intolerant of the religion which Frenchmen professed; and a few years later they paid the Capuchin priests some Rs. 50,000 as compensation for the destruction of the church in White Town and of the chapel in Vepery.
Twice he preached at Vepery, and the Soodras attended; but he asked no questions, and let them place themselves as they chose, and take precedence, intending to fight out the question at Tanjore.
At Madras, he was lodged in the house of Sir Thomas Munro, the governor, who had done much by the help of his excellent wife to promote all that was good. At Vepery, close at hand, the Bishop found, nearly finished, the first church built in the Gothic style in India.
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