Proposed removal from Delhi.
Meanwhile the status of the so-called king of Delhi, the relic of the Great Mogul, was under consideration. For more than half a century the family had lived in a palace at Delhi on a yearly pension from the British government. There was much marrying and giving in marriage, and the palace was a hive of princes and princesses without any apparent occupation save that of petitioning for increased pensions. Lord Ellenborough contemplated removing the family from Delhi, but the measure was postponed. At last Lord Dalhousie took action. The so-called king was very old, and could not live many years. Lord Dalhousie recognised a grandson as successor to the pageant throne, on the condition that when the old king died, the whole family should clear out of Delhi and take up their abode in a royal residence some miles off, known as the Kutub.
Palace intrigues.
This design was frustrated. The old king had married a young wife, and she had a son, and she determined that her son should be king. The grandson, who had been recognised by Lord Dalhousie, died suddenly; it was said that she had poisoned him. Lord Canning ignored her son, and recognised a brother of the dead prince as heir to the title, on the same conditions. Henceforth the queen, like the princess of Jhansi, bottled up her wrath and waited for revenge.
Land settlement in Oudh.
Lord Canning, however, was somewhat uneasy about Oudh. A British administration had been introduced under a chief commissioner, with commissioners of divisions and deputy commissioners of districts, but nothing was done to reconcile the talukdars in the provinces to the change of rule. On the contrary, a land settlement was introduced corresponding to that which had been effected in the North-West Provinces. But half a century had elapsed since the acquisition of the North-West Provinces. Meanwhile the talukdars of Oudh had ceased to be mere middle men, and had grown into landed proprietors; whilst the rights of village proprietors, individual or joint, had been ignored or stamped out by the new landlords.
Disaffection of talukdars.
The early British administrators settled the revenue direct with the villagers, and told the talukdars that their claims to proprietorship, if they had any, would be considered hereafter, or might be settled in the law courts. Under such cool treatment the talukdars of Oudh might well be disaffected towards their new British rulers. Rightly or wrongly, by long possession, or by recent usurpation, they had become de facto landlords, and under the new system they saw their estates transferred to their tenants. Early in 1857, however, Sir Henry Lawrence was appointed chief commissioner of Oudh, and he was expected to reconcile all parties.
Imagined wrongs of Oudh villagers.
Strange to say, the villagers of Oudh, who had profited so much by the new land settlement, had a secret grievance of their own which no one seems to have suspected. They held their lands on better terms than their fathers or grandfathers, but many families had lost position in the eyes of their neighbours. For generations Oudh had been the chief recruiting ground for the Asiatic soldiery of the Bengal army; and under Mohammedan rule every sepoy was the great man of his family, and indeed the patron of his native village. If any villager had a grievance, he applied to the sepoy, and the sepoy applied to his British officer, and his petition was forwarded to the British Resident at Lucknow; and the Mohammedan court was too anxious to please the Resident to make any difficulty about redressing wrongs so strongly supported, whatever might have been the abstract merits of the case. When, however, the king was replaced by a chief commissioner, the sepoy was referred to a British court for justice, and was no better off than his neighbours. This loss of privilege and prestige rankled in the heart of sepoys from Oudh, and they began to look upon annexation as a wrong done to themselves, although they had not, and could not have, any sympathies for the deposed king.