Like Bombay and Calcutta later, Madras had an improbable start. Unprepossessing the site may have been, but by the time Francis Day resolved this was to be the first permanent settlement of the Company, he found receptive audiences in London and Bantam. Despite costs which troubled the court, work began immediately to fortify the town, and when population levels soared through the migration and settlement of native artisans and their families, it was surveyed, ordered, segregated and taxed. Importantly also, the experience of Madras threw into sharp relief the urgent need for a legitimacy grounded in jurisdictional power. Madras thus provided the means of addressing the manifold complexities associated with imposing a foreign administration of justice on a population which for the most part inhabited indigenous systems. The process was messy, pragmatic and incomplete, but by the early years of the eighteenth century, a court system was installed. Although based exclusively on an English model of municipal and legal reform, this was a system that helped to assert the sovereign authority of the Company and shaped the experiences of Bombay and Calcutta.