Robert Palk - Career

Career

Palk was ordained as a deacon in 1739 at Exeter Cathedral by Bishop Weston and held two curacies in Cornwall at Egloskerry and Launcells, before going to London in 1741.

During his spell in London he attracted the attention and favour of Sir Robert Walpole, generally regarded as the first Prime Minister of Great Britain, under whose auspices he was sent to India.

In 1747 he was appointed naval chaplain to Admiral Edward Boscawen on the Namura, bound for India. He arrived at Fort St David in 1748, at the time when the French were in control of Fort St George in Madras. Trade supremacy was the order of the day, with the French and British both vying for the major share of the market. For a time it was merely a trade war, with a minimal presence of armed troops, whose task it was to guard the warehouses. Soon the situation evolved into armed fighting between the French and British, and eventually the British Government recognised they were in fact, now at war with France over who controlled India. General Stringer Lawrence was given the task of forming an army, and history now remembers him as the ‘Father of the Indian Army’. An Act of Parliament was passed in 1773, which effectively took control of Indian interests away from the Company and its shareholders and placed it into the hands of The Crown.