§9. From the very first there were jealous suspicions in the Council between the two gentlemen in the service of the Company and the three gentlemen appointed by the Crown. In one direction Warren Hastings had laid himself open to an attack. In an evil hour he had lent the services of a British brigade to the Nawab Vizier of Oudh, and the Nawab Vizier had employed the brigade against the Rohilla Afghans on the north-west in a quarrel with which the British had no concern. The Rohilla Afghans were defeated by the British brigade, and then plundered and brutally ill-treated by the cowardly troops of the Nawab Vizier. Warren Hastings could only defend himself by saying that money was urgently required by the East India Company, and that the Nawab Vizier had paid heavily for the brigade. [Sidenote: Charges against Hastings.] Whilst Philip Francis and his two independent colleagues were denouncing this transaction, the idea spread amongst the Bengalis that the three new members of Council had been sent by the King of Great Britain to redress the wrongs of natives. Petitions against Warren Hastings were poured into the Calcutta Council, and seriously investigated by Philip Francis and his two colleagues, whilst Hastings and Barwell formed a minority and could not override their proceedings. Hastings was charged with having taken a bribe of 100,000_l._ from the Nawab Vizier of Oudh. Then it was said that the public auctions of zemindaries were shams; that the native servants of Hastings and others had succeeded in getting large estates at low leases, and that Hastings had shared in the gains. Finally, a Brahman, named Nundcomar, a man of notoriously bad character, charged Hastings with having taken bribes for certain lucrative appointments in the household of the Nawab at Murshedabad. [Sidenote: Nundcomar executed.] Warren Hastings might have rebutted the charges by producing his accounts, and allowing his steward and other servants to be examined before the Council. But he preferred standing on his dignity and refusing to answer the charges brought forward by Nundcomar, who was notorious for perjury, for forging other people's seals, and for carrying on secret correspondence with the enemies of the British. Suddenly Nundcomar was arrested on a charge of forgery, and tried in the Supreme Court by a full bench, comprising Chief Justice Impey and the three puisne judges, and, after a fair summing up, was found guilty by a British jury, and hanged accordingly. [Sidenote: Inaction of Hastings: extenuating circumstances.]