in Northern Malabar to have helped the East India Company consistently in the war with Mysore. Vira Varma Raja, on the one hand, undertook to collect tax in Kottayam directly, but on the other hand, he encouraged Pazhassi Raja to oppose the Company's domination. Moreover, the tax imposed by the Company was beyond the peasants' capacity to pay. They resisted attempts to collect these taxes by the agents of the East India Company, and Pazhassi Raja took up their cause. In 1793 Pazhassi Raja made sure that no tax was collected in Kottayam by the EIC – as a mark of his protest. He also threatened that if Company officials did not give up their enumeration of pepper vines, he would have the vines destroyed. Local Company authorities, however, debated with Raja and soon both discovered Vira Varma's deceptions. The East India Company put forward a solution acceptable to the Raja by which 20 percent of gross revenue would go to Raja and another 20 percent would go for temple expenses. No tax would be imposed on temple property in the immediate future. In 1793 Tipu's Vakils protested to the Company that Pazhassi Raja, who was an EIC subsidiary, had overrun most of Wayanad. Soon the Raja was supreme in the Wayanad Plateau. But the Governor General unwisely revoked the agreement in 1794 and gave Kottayam to Kurumbranad Raja on a five-year lease. The Raja was very angry at this decision and decided to retaliate by ruling his country as per customary law. The year before the lease was concluded the Raja had provided asylum to a Nayar noble, Narangoli Nambiar of the Iruvazinad royal clan, who had been declared an outlaw by the East India Company for the murder of three men who had killed his kinsman. The Raja's kind treatment of Nambiar irritated the EIC. The EIC also became angry that the Raja had executed by impalement two robbers as per customary law. The Company planned to arrest Raja 'for murder' but gave up the idea as the Raja had a bodyguard of 500 well-armed Wayanad Nayars. In 1795, after a year, Vira Varma Raja got Kottayam on lease but was not able to collect tax there due to the efforts of his nephew Raja. So East India Company troops arrived in Kottayam to help Vira Varma's tax collectors, but Pazhassi Raja's men resisted them with success. In