In March 1752, the East India Company’s rising star Robert Clive called on his friend Edmund Maskelyne in Madras. After casting a surreptitious glance at one of his host’s family portraits, not for the first time, he then cajoled him into reading aloud his letters from home, interrupting one in particular to ask who had written it.

On learning that the letter was from Maskelyne’s sister, Margaret, Clive lost no time in asking his friend if the lady might be persuaded to come out to India and marry him. Maskelyne gladly passed on Clive’s proposal, and within weeks Miss Maskelyne was India-bound. The following January, Robert and Margaret were married in Madras.

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