George, though some fastidious stockholders protested. This 'roughling immoral man,' as one of the objectors called him, governed with a high and strong hand from 1698 to 1709; when the Company, finding the burden of him intolerable, summarily dismissed him. He was, no doubt, like his grandson, a difficult servant; and in his career we see the source of that energy, haughtiness, and self-reliance which were so conspicuous in both. Lord Camelford, his great-grandson, though a relentless critic of his family, gives, in the grateful character of an heir, a leniently appreciative account of the Governor; and says that 'he amassed a fortune which was reckoned prodigious in those times without the smallest stain on his reputation. I have heard (but at what exact period of his life I know not) that, having accomplished such a sum as he thought would enable him to pass the remainder of his days in peace, he was taken prisoner, together with the greatest part of his effects, on his return to England, and released at the intercession of the Duchess of Portsmouth, who was then in France. He went back to India and made in a shorter time a much larger fortune from the credit he had established and the experience he had acquired.' [Sidenote: 1710] However that may be, he now returned promptly to England, by way of Bergen, having shipped on a Danish vessel, and having sent before him in the heel of his son's shoe[5] the precious chattel which made his name famous, until, under his descendants, it acquired a different lustre. This was a prodigious diamond, to which he alludes in his correspondence as his 'grand concern,' which he bought for 48,000_l._, and sold, after keeping it for some sixteen years, to the Regent of Orleans for the French Crown. It was rather a sonorous than a profitable bargain, for though he sold it for 133,000_l._, he was never paid in full. He received 40,000_l._ and three boxes of jewels, but the balance, calculated at 20,000_l._, was never discharged. He and his descendants reckoned, indeed, that on the whole he was the poorer by the possession of this gem. A tradition remains that the bargain might have fallen through at the last moment but for the shrewdness of the Governor's second son, Lord Londonderry. When Rondet, the royal jeweller, came from Paris to receive it, he criticised the water of the stone. 'His lordship, who was quick enough in business, understood him, and putting a bank-note into his hands, bid him go to the window to see it in a better light. It was then decided to be in all respects perfect.'[6]