(a). The rank and style of the junior grade of covenanted civil servants of the E.I. Company. Technically it has been obsolete since the abolition of the old grades in 1833. The term no doubt originally described the duty of these young men; they were the clerks of the factories.
(b). A copying clerk in an office, native or European.
a.—
1673.—"The whole Mass of the Company's Servants may be comprehended in those Classes, viz., Merchants, Factors, and Writers."—Fryer, 84.
[1675-6.—See under [FACTOR].]
1676.—"There are some of the Writers who by their lives are not a little scandalous."—Letter from a Chaplain, in Wheeler, i. 64.
1683.—"Mr. Richard More, one that came out a Writer on ye Herbert, left this World for a better. Ye Lord prepare us all to follow him!"—Hedges, Diary, Aug. 22; [Hak. Soc. i. 105].
1747.—"82. Mr. Robert Clive, Writer in the Service, being of a Martial Disposition, and having acted as a Volunteer in our late Engagements, We have granted him an Ensign's Commission, upon his Application for the same."—Letter from the Council at Ft. St. David to the Honble. Court of Directors, dd. 2d. May, 1747 (MS. in India Office).
1758.—"As we are sensible that our junior servants of the rank of Writers at Bengal are not upon the whole on so good a footing as elsewhere, we do hereby direct that the future appointments to a Writer for salary, diet money, and all allowances whatever, be 400 Rupees per annum, which mark of our favour and attention, properly attended to, must prevent their reflections on what we shall further order in regard to them as having any other object or foundation than their particular interest and happiness."—Court's Letter, March 3, in Long, 129. (The 'further order' is the prohibition of palankins, &c.—see [PALANKEEN].)
c. 1760.—"It was in the station of a covenant servant and writer, to the East India Company, that in the month of March, 1750, I embarked."—Grose, i. 1.