Captain Henry Gary was an English governor of

Bombay Mumbai ( ; ), also known as Bombay ( ; its official name until 1995), is the capital city of the Indian States and union territories of India, state of Maharashtra. Mumbai is the financial centre, financial capital and the list of cities i ...

during the period that Bombay was a Crown Colony of England prior to the rule of the

East India Company The East India Company (EIC) was an English, and later British, joint-stock company that was founded in 1600 and dissolved in 1874. It was formed to Indian Ocean trade, trade in the Indian Ocean region, initially with the East Indies (South A ...

Life

He assumed office as governor of Bombay on 22 May 1667 and left office on 23 September 1668. He raised the general revenues of Bombay island, enlarged its land-forces, mounted artillery on substantial carriages, and improved the fortifications of the island. Some claimed Gary was of either Venetian or

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origin. He became governor on the death of his predecessor Sir Gervase Lucas. Gary had a house in

Goa Goa (; ; ) is a state on the southwestern coast of India within the Konkan region, geographically separated from the Deccan highlands by the Western Ghats. It is bound by the Indian states of Maharashtra to the north, and Karnataka to the ...

. Gary was replaced as governor by George Oxenden, the first East India Company governor of Bombay. Gary was unusual in staying in Bombay with his family after passing on the Governorship. No other prominent Englishman did so in this period. He later came into conflict with Governor Gerald Aungier, which eventually led to Gary's arrest on 27 June and trial on 6 July 1674. Despite this, he continued to live in Bombay and eventually was restored in the company's favour. In 1678 he was made Chief Justice of Bombay. He was still alive in 1689 during Yakut Khan's invasion of Bombay. After the invasion he was accused of assisting the enemy and his lands were seized by the company. He was dead by 1695, when his son was petitioning for the return of the seized lands.Bombay Council to London, 3 December 1695 (British Library, IOR/G/3/11), part 4, p. 5.

References

Sources

John Keay John Stanley Melville Keay FRGS (born 1941) is a British historian, journalist, radio presenter and lecturer specialising in popular histories of India, the Far East and China, often with a particular focus on their colonisation and explora ...

. ''The Honorable Company: A History of the English East India Company''. New York: Macmillan, 1991. p. 133-136. *British Library, Bombay Factory Records, G/3/1 {{DEFAULTSORT:Gary, Henry Governors of Bombay Year of birth missing Year of death missing