Chait Singh

Chait Singh became the first Raja of Benares in 1770, and was recognized by the Nawab as a zamindar in 1773. In 1775, when the Nawab transferred control of the domain to the East India Company under the authority of the Governor-General of India, Warren Hastings, Chait Singh was required to provide and maintain a cavalry for the Company's sepoy battalions and to pay a certain amount of tribute to the Company. The amount was higher than he had previously paid and, accordingly, he refused, which infuriated Hastings. Singh began to consort with enemies of the Company in an effort to break this new arrangement and weaken Hastings’s power. Singh’s activities were uncovered and he was removed from power and placed under arrest in September 1781. As he was awaiting a hearing with Hastings, Singh escaped and gathered his forces together; unfortunately, his appeal for help from the local rulers was rejected. Singh's troops were defeated by the Company’s forces and his zamindari given to his nephew. Chait Singh escaped again, this time to Awadh and then to Gwalior, where he was granted a small domain, only to have it taken from him later. He died in Gwalior on 29 March 1810. His treatment by Hastings seriously tarnished the governor’s image and became one of the leading causes of his eventual impeachment by the Company in 1787, the year Maria Grace Andrews composed her poem.  Accounts of the trial and the history of Singh filled the newspapers in London and the provinces, providing Maria Grace Andrews with plenty of material for her poem, Cheyt Sing, which was published in 1790. She was fifteen when the trial began, and she makes no attempt to hide her dislike of Hastings and her desire for his conviction and the adoption of more humane policies toward the people of India by the East India Company and the British army. Maria Grace Saffery, when only 15, turned this story into verse in Cheyt Sing (1790). As the poem reveals, she based her argument both on Christian virtue and compassion as well as British ideals of liberty and equal justice.