As soon as it was plain that the new men of the new Council were hostile to Hastings, Hastings's enemies were eager enough to come forward and help in the work. One of Hastings's oldest and bitterest enemies was the Brahmin Nand Kumar. Nand Kumar had always been hostile to Hastings. Now, when Hastings was in danger, was {261} threatened with defeat and with disgrace, Nand Kumar came forward with a whole string of accusations against him, accusations to which Francis, Clavering, and Monson listened eagerly. Nand Kumar accused Hastings of many acts of shameless bribery, declared that he himself had bribed him in large sums, and produced a letter from a native princess in which she avowed that she had bribed Hastings in large sums. The three councillors appear to have accepted every word uttered by Nand Kumar as gospel truth. Hastings, on his side, refused to be arraigned at his own Council-board by a man whom he alleged to be of notoriously infamous character, though he and Barwell were perfectly willing that the whole matter should be referred to the Supreme Court. At last Hastings withdrew from the Council, followed by Barwell. The others immediately voted Clavering into the chair, summoned Nand Kumar before them, listened to all that he had to say, and on that evidence, in the absence of the accused man, the self-constituted tribunal found Hastings guilty of taking bribes from the princess, and ordered him to repay the sum of thirty-five thousand pounds to the public treasury. For the moment it seemed as if Francis and his party had carried the day. Hastings had his back to the wall, he seemed to be well-nigh friendless. The triumvirate declared that there was no form of peculation from which Hastings had thought it reasonable to abstain, and they formally charged him with having acquired by peculation a fortune of no less than forty lakhs of rupees in two years and a half. Suddenly, when the position of Hastings appeared to be at its worst, it changed. Nand Kumar and two Englishmen named Fowke, who had been very zealous against Hastings, were charged before the Supreme Court with conspiracy, in having compelled a native revenue farmer to bear false witness against Hastings. The Chief Justice of the Supreme Court was Elijah Impey, Hastings's old and attached friend, a circumstance of which much has been made. While Nand Kumar was bound over for trial on the charge of conspiracy, another and more serious charge was brought against him by a native attorney, who {262} accused him of forging and publishing a bond. On this charge Nand Kumar was arrested, and after a lengthy hearing of the case committed to the common jail.