PART II
INDIA
‘God of our fathers, known of old.
.....
Beneath Whose awful hand we hold
Dominion over palm and pine.’
John, the second youngest son of David and Martha Inglis, was born in 1820. His mother being English, there entered with her some of the douce Saxon disposition and ways. Though the call of the blood was to cast his lot in India, John, or as he was generally called David, appears first as a student. His tutor, the Rev. Dr. Niblock, wrote a report of him as he was passing out of his hands to Haileybury. Mrs. Inglis notes on the letter: ‘Dr. Niblock is esteemed one of the best Greek scholars in England, and his Greek Grammar is the one in use in Eton.’
‘Of Master David Inglis I can speak with pleasure and pride almost unmixed. I can only loudly express how I regret that I have not the finishing of such a boy, for I feel, and shall ever feel, that he is mine. He has long begun to do what few boys do till they are leaving, or have left, school, viz. to think. I shall long cherish the hope, that as I laid the foundation, so shall I have the power and pleasure of crowning my own and other’s labours. He will make a fine fellow and be a comfort to his parents, and an honour to his tutor.’
John Inglis received a nomination for Haileybury College from one of the directors of the East India Company, and went there as a student in 1839. There he was noted as a cricketer and a good horseman, and also for his reading. He knew Shakespeare almost by heart, and could tell where to find any quotation from his works. On leaving Haileybury he sailed for Calcutta, and was there for two years learning the language. He went as assistant magistrate to Agra. He married in 1846, and in 1847 he was transferred to the newly-acquired province of the Punjab. He was sent as magistrate to Sealkote, remaining there till 1856. He then brought his family home on three years’ furlough. With the outbreak of the Mutiny all civilians were recalled, and he returned to India in 1858. He was sent to Bareilly to take part in the suppression of the Mutiny, and was attached to the force under General Jones. He was present at the action at Najibabad, with the recapture of Bareilly, and the pacification of the province of Rohilcund. He remained in the province ten years till 1868, and during those years he rose to be Commissioner of Rohilcund. In 1868 he was made a member of the Board of Revenue in the North-West Provinces. As a member of the Legislative Council of India, he moved, in 1873, to Calcutta. From 1875 to 1877 he was Chief Commissioner of Oude.
The position Inglis made for himself in India, in yet early life, is to be gauged by a letter written in 1846 by Sir Frederick Currie, who was then Commissioner of Lahore. He had married Mrs. Inglis’ sister Katherine.