RELEASE
How Lord Chandos would have acquitted himself of his delicate
mission, had he been left to his own resources, it is impossible to
say. As it was, the unaccountable Power which, for want of a better
term, we call “luck” seconded him beyond his own or any one else’s
most sanguine hopes. Just as he arrived on the scene, the strain
between France and Turkey ripened to a crisis.
Besides her grievances against the pashas on the Bosphorus, France
had many scores to settle with the pirates of Barbary. Louis had
put up with their depredations for eight years--so long, that
is, as his war against Holland, Denmark, Spain, and Germany tied
his hands. But the pacification of the West had set him free for
action in the East. The monarch who had humbled all the Powers
of Europe would no longer brook humiliation at the hands of the
petty principalities of Africa. He decided to deal with them
summarily and, at the same time, with their patron in Stambul:
the combination, in truth, was unavoidable, for the corsairs were
permitted to prey upon the French even in the ports--nay, in the
very towns--that lay directly under the Grand Signor’s rule. Only a
few months ago the French Consul at Cyprus and a French merchant
were carried out of their houses during the night aboard a Tripoli
man-of-war, and after being soundly drubbed were forced to ransom
themselves. M. de Guilleragues could obtain from the Grand Vizir
no satisfaction for this outrage; and the pirates improved the
occasion by taking a French ship worth 100,000 dollars as it sailed
from Smyrna.[290]
So the famous Admiral Duquesne was sent with a squadron to scour
the Mediterranean. His orders were to seek and destroy the pirates
wheresoever he found them. After sweeping everything before him
farther west, Duquesne entered the Archipelago. The Grand Signor’s
Capitan Pasha met him with his Fleet and asked what he came into
these seas for. The Frenchman quoted his orders. “Nay,” said the
Turk, “the Grand Signor will never allow the Tripolines to be
attacked in his own ports.” “We shall see about that,” replied
Duquesne, and made for Chios, where four Tripoli men-of-war and
four petaches lay careening with their guns all ashore. The Admiral
sailed into the port (July 13, 1681) and, without any ceremony,
went for the disarmed pirates. They fled into the Grand Signor’s
Castle, which fired two guns. Duquesne retorted with thirty, and a
message that, if the Grand Signor’s Castle protected them, he would
knock it down about the ears of the Grand Signor’s garrison. The
Turks, terrified, desisted from further acts of hostility, turned
the Tripolines out, and sent word to the Admiral that they would
remain neutral. Duquesne then set to work: in four hours, and at
the expense of 8000 shots, he disabled the Tripoline vessels (how
he managed not to destroy them does not appear), slaying about 300
of their crews and, incidentally, doing some damage to the town.
Some of his shots battered down several buildings, among them a
minaret, and killed some of the inhabitants. Whereupon loud uproar
in Stambul: it was the greatest affront the Ottoman Empire had
ever received since its foundation! Rumour added that Duquesne had
sailed to the Dardanelles, whence he had addressed, through the
Turkish commander of the Castles at the Straits, a message to the
Vizir demanding to know how the French Ambassador would be treated
as to the Soffah and stating that he would shape his conduct
accordingly! Cause enough for uproar.
At the Porte all is confusion. Councils are held in quick
succession; orders are despatched to the Capitan Pasha to put his
Fleet in a place of safety; couriers fly in different directions on
secret errands. Until their return, what steps Kara Mustafa will
take, no man can tell, he least of all.
Among the French residents all is consternation. M. de
Guilleragues, after repeated demands and denials, had only a week
before obtained leave for his wife and daughter to depart on the
plea of ill-health: now, fearing lest the Porte should cancel the
permission, he hastens to send them away; but he is not quick
enough: the vessel has fallen down the Sea of Marmara some leagues,
the ladies are on the very point of following in a boat, when a
peremptory command from the Vizir stops them and compels the vessel
to turn back. Simultaneously the Ambassador is summoned to give an
account of what was done at Chios; but before he has set out, a
countermand comes, ordering him to hold himself ready for another
summons. While waiting for this summons, M. de Guilleragues gives
out that, when he appears before the Vizir, he will not utter one
word, unless he has his seat on the Soffah: he will only hand
to him the King’s letters--which all these months still remain
undelivered--and, let him do his worst, Kara Mustafa shall have no
other answer. Very fine--but the French merchants, in great alarm,
apply to the various foreign Ministers to save the best of their
effects.
The English await developments with tense interest: “Every day is
like to produce great matters,” writes Sir John, and the writing,
much larger and with wider spaces between the lines than usual,
illustrates his excitement. “The result of these resolute orders
of His Most Christian Majesty can end in nothing mean.” France,
he thinks, has gone too far to draw back: she must either come to
an absolute breach with the Porte, or “make the Proud Heads of
this place to stoop”--in which case all Christendom will reap the
benefit: “If the Turk once finds that things are not tamely putt
up, transactions here will be more easy, and I hope My Lord Chandos
will find the good effect of this passe.”[291]
The anticipation was abundantly verified. Chandos made the most
of this fortunate conjuncture. During the weeks he remained
incognito waiting for the _Oxford_, he prepared the ground, and
in his audience with Kara Mustafa he delivered the sterner letter
from the King: the Vizir read it through most carefully and bade
the Ambassador welcome, without any allusion to its contents.
But it was obvious that he had been deeply impressed; and the
Ambassador did not fail to strike while the iron was hot. He
struck so vigorously and skilfully that by the 5th of September
he had obtained full satisfaction on the two main points: The
money extorted from Finch for the Capitulations was refunded to
the Treasurer of the Levant Company by Kara Mustafa’s Jew, who, to
save the Grand Vizir’s face, pretended that it came out of the dead
Kehayah’s hoard. This was a triumph of which Chandos might well
be proud--restitution of money had never yet been procured from a
Turk; and it was followed by another, not less pleasant: in his
own words, “the false demand upon his Excellency for a prodigious
sum of money by the Pasha of Tunis is also for ever damn’d by the
most valid way in their Law we could desire without parting with
one asper.” And even that was not all: “We are also now promised
several other Articles of considerable benefit to trade in these
parts and shall have them in our custody in a few days.” On one
point only the Ambassador found the Vizir adamant and was forced by
the haste which the Company’s interests required not to lose time
in disputing it, but to accept his “parole of honour that if any
prince in the world ever had the priviledge of the Suffra we should
have it the first”--a promise which the Vizir had no difficulty
in making, as he went on to add that “heaven should be earth and
earth heaven before any such thing should be condescended to by
them!”[292] That a man, while parting with solid cash, should cling
so passionately to an empty form, is but another manifestation of
the mysterious workings of the official mind. However, we were
more than satisfied with a liberality which would have been more
meritorious, but could not have been more welcome, had it been
voluntary.
At the same time Lord Chandos obtained leave for Sir John to depart
when he pleased. But alas! the boon which a little while ago
would have filled Sir John with joy found him now unable to enjoy
anything. On the 22nd of August his friend Baines had been seized
with a malignant double tertian, of which he was very certain that
he would die, in accordance with the method of Providence. “For,”
he told Finch, “God had under many diseases preserved him so long
as he could be any wayes usefull or serviceable to me, but that
now, returning into England where my friends were all so well in
their severall posts, he could no longer be of any use to me, and
therefore God would putt a period to that life which he onely
wished for my sake.”
His comrade’s condition, reacting upon Finch’s own system through
the subtle laws of sympathy, “cutt off the thread of all my
worldly happinesse and application to business,” so much so that
he himself fell ill of a tertian. Then, on September 5th, the very
day on which the leave to depart was brought to him, Baines died:
the friend from whom during thirty-six years he had never been
separated for more than a week or two at a time--“the best friend
the world ever had, for prudence, learning, integrity of life and
affection”--was taken away from him.
For this calamity Sir John’s mind ought to have been prepared.
About a year before, while he and Sir Thomas were sitting in
their gallery after supper, there came upon the table a “loud
knocking.” Such was the first warning. The second was not less
significant. A few days before Sir Thomas’s illness one of Sir
John’s teeth dropped out of his head without any pain whilst they
dined together: “which,” notes the ex-Professor of Anatomy, “seemes
to confirm the interpretation of those who make the dreaming
of the losse of a tooth to be the prediction of the losse of a
friend.”[293]
These reflections, however, came to poor Sir John afterwards.
At the moment he was not in a state for coherent thought of any
kind. The blow fell upon him with all the stupefying force of an
unforeseen catastrophe: it prostrated him: his tertian rose to a
double continual tertian, which reduced him to such weakness that
he was given over by his physician and all others. Thus he lay,
forlorn, desolate, broken in mind and body, for about a fortnight.
By September 22nd, however, he had recovered sufficiently to indite
a lengthy despatch, in which, after touching upon his bereavement,
he gives the sequel of the French Admiral’s exploit.
So far the only outcome of the debates held at the Porte had been
an embargo imposed on French ships and men throughout the Empire.
The Turks did not find themselves in a condition to express greater
resentment; for Duquesne’s squadron, small as it was, was “more
than doubly able to fight all the force the Ottoman Empire is able
to make appear at sea. So that, contrary to the bilious and proud
procedure of this Court, they go on with Spanish phlegm. The Porte
are very sensible that France can doe them all manner of mischief,
both by its power and its vicinity, and that they can take no other
but the small, pitifull revenge of exercising their indignation
upon the French Ambassadour and as many of the King’s subjects as
reside in the Empire.” The Tripolines, left in the lurch, sued for
peace. But “Mons. de Quesne refusd’ to treat with such a company
of rascalls.” Some fruitless negotiations between the Admiral and
the Capitan Pasha ensued. Then, Sir John adds three weeks later, a
courier from the Capitan Pasha came with the news that the Admiral
had blocked up his whole Fleet in the port of Chios. On receipt
of this fresh instance of the Giaour’s temerity, “the heat of the
Gran Signor was such that he ordred the Gran Visir to send for
Mons. de Guilleragues and send him to the Seven Towers. The Visir
sent for the Ambassadour using great threats towards him; but his
Excellency carry’d himselfe with great courage, not onely refusing
to sit below the Saffa, but being pressd’ to doe it, kickd’ his
stool down with his feet, and then delivring the Letter from the
King his master, which for more than 8 moneths the Visir had
refusd’ to receive.” When Kara Mustafa urged reparation for the
affront and damage done to the Grand Signor’s port of Chios, M. de
Guilleragues retorted that the King of France had received none for
the affront and damage done to his Consul and subjects at Cyprus,
concluding that, “it was as lawfull for the King his Master to set
upon his enemy’s in the Gran Signor’s ports, as for them to attack
the French.” Thanks to his “dexterous and resolute prudence,” the
French Ambassador was only detained in custody of the Chaoush-bashi
for a while, and then, on signing a paper to acquaint his Most
Christian Majesty with the Grand Signor’s desires, was released;
and it was thought now that in the agreement the point of the
Soffah would be included. “Certainly Mons. de Guilleragues has
shown himselfe in this a Great Minister.”[294]
This is Sir John’s last official report from Pera. While penning
it, he was busy with his preparations for leaving a spot to which
he was now bound by nothing save memories of suffering. Every hour
he passed in that house only accented his sense of desolation. With
Sir Thomas Baines all that had made Turkey bearable had vanished.
He was no longer there to support him. The hapless bachelor,
physically and mentally worn out, and relieved of all public
concerns, had now nothing to do but brood over his personal grief.
He was like a shipwrecked mariner stranded on an alien and hostile
shore. His one desire was to hasten home. It is much to his credit
that of all this inner misery the only hint we have is contained
in a paragraph of unwonted self-restraint: “I with some impatience
attend the recovery of my health that I may be once freed from
the commands of a Goverment so irregular that they are wholely
irreconcilable to all methods of reason and honour and return into
my native soyl.”[295]
It was with the same wish, expressed in the same words, that
Sir John had left his “native soyl” in 1673. Eight years had
passed--had he known what lay at the end of it all, would he
have had the strength to persevere? And now, more than ever, he
languishes for home: the longing grows, as the days go by. At last,
in November 1681, he set sail in the _Oxford_, carrying with him
the body of his friend embalmed. But he was destined to have one
more experience of Kara Mustafa’s “irregular goverment” at Smyrna,
where the _Oxford_ put in that she might take under her escort four
English merchantmen which lay there richly freighted. The convoy
was ready for its homeward voyage, when a command from the Porte
forbade it to sail. Why, oh why had he not departed two months ago?
Why had he waited to recover: will accidents never cease to dog his
steps? Without sharing Sir John’s superstition, no one that studies
his life can help being struck by the continuity of his bad luck:
everything seems to go wrong with him--not always through any wrong
calculation of his own; and when something lucky happens, it is not
he that reaps the gain and the glory, but his successor.
The causes of this latest check were as follows:
The panic into which Duquesne’s feat had thrown the Porte had
subsided. The French admiral was still cruising about the Levant
coasts, but did nothing. Kara Mustafa saw that he had little to
fear from France. Nor had he much to fear from England. Scarcely
had Lord Chandos received satisfaction for past injuries, and he
had not yet received the additional privileges promised to him,
when news reached Constantinople that English ships laden with
a vast estate were on their way to Turkey. For this injudicious
precipitancy the Levant Company was not to blame, but only some
members of it, our old friend Dudley North chief among them. For
reasons of his own he had from the first opposed the suspension
of trade, and now, by representing the scheme to the King and
the Privy Council, through his brother the Lord Keeper, as a
treacherous design inspired by the Opposition with a view to
hurting the Royal Exchequer, he got the Government to force the
merchants to rescind all they had done.[296] The result was such as
might have been foreseen. Kara Mustafa, concluding that the English
were anxious for trade at any price, decided to make them pay for
the blow they had dealt at his purse and his pride. All that he
needed was a specious pretext; and he had not far to look for one.
The English by their Capitulations were obliged to pay a 3 per
cent export duty on silk. But the Turks, to avoid fraud--an art
in which foreigners surpassed the natives--preferred to collect
this duty from the native seller, who charged it to the foreign
buyer and handed over to him together with the goods the official
receipt. Such had been the established practice for over thirty
years. Nevertheless, the letter of the law remained unaltered;
and it was in this pure technicality that Kara Mustafa found his
pretext. Suddenly our merchants were called upon to pay the duty
on all silk they had exported for five years past, a sum amounting
to over 100,000 dollars, and it was suspected that this was only a
beginning, the intention being to extort ultimately the duty for
the whole thirty years. On their refusal to comply, the Customer of
Smyrna stopped the ships which the _Oxford_ was to convoy.
Lord Chandos was summoned by the Grand Vizir to the Divan and asked
if his Nation ought not, in accordance with their Capitulations,
to pay a 3 per cent duty. He replied in the affirmative. “But,”
said the Vizir, “do you?” Chandos naturally answered that the
duty was paid by the sellers on account of the buyers. “Oh,” said
Kara Mustafa, “that shall not serve your turn. The sellers are
the Grand Signor’s subjects, and he may lay what he pleases on
them. What they paid was on their own account, but you must pay
for yourselves,” and, without further argument, he gave a kind
of sentence against the English. The Ambassador protested, but
was told that, if he did not obey, he should be put in irons, and
was sent away to think about it. What a clap of thunder to our
merchants: their victory turned suddenly into a ruinous disaster!
Chandos thought of nothing less than submitting; but Finch,
who itched to see the last of Turkey, positively declared that
he would not stay more than a few days: if the matter was not
settled quickly, he would sail in the _Oxford_, leaving the four
merchantmen behind. Chandos considered what this would mean: an
indefinite detention of the ships, to the great loss of freighters
and owners, not to mention the danger of confiscation. He therefore
offered the Vizir 25,000, 40,000, 55,000 dollars. But all these
offers were rejected. Thereupon the English had recourse to “other
means, wherein by a marvellous Providence we succeeded.” This
providential intervention consisted of a bribe of 12 purses, or
6000 dollars, administered to the Smyrna authorities. It acted like
a charm: the vessels were suffered to slip away, and Sir John was
able to pursue his voyage in peace.[297]
The shores of Turkey gradually merged in the sea-mists. That harsh
Eastern world lay hushed behind him. Before him, ready to welcome
the exile, friendly Italy; and beyond, England, dear relatives, and
leisure, and rest.
On January 18th, 1682, we hear of the ex-Ambassador’s arrival at
Argostoli on the island of Cephalonia, where he was treated by
the Venetian Governor very courteously.[298] On March 11th he was
at Leghorn, purchasing Italian pictures, statues, and wines. From
Marseilles he intended to travel overland to Calais in a litter;
but he changed his mind and continued his journey by sea, visiting
Seville on the way and purchasing Spanish wines. By the time he
reached the Downs he had with him, besides some sixty trunks,
nineteen enormous chests of books, twenty-three of Italian pictures
and statues, fifteen of Florence wine, a butt of Smyrna wine, and
six of Saragossa. From the _Oxford_ he wrote to his nephew, giving
him minute directions about this baggage: “I believe a barge will
be most convenient as I can put three or four trunks upon it which
cannot well be left for any other passage.” The chests of books and
pictures and statues “will require a hoy or vessell that hath a dry
hold to keepe them from rain above and sea water below.” “If wine
in bottles pay no custome, I will have 50 dozen bought for me with
good corks.”[299]
That a man who had suffered such a bereavement should have any
thoughts left for pictures and statues; that he should, to the sad
cargo of his friend’s coffin, be adding chests of wine and ordering
corks, may to the impercipient seem strange, and to the cynical
convey a suggestion of insincerity. But those acquainted with the
psychology of grief will understand. In reality it was distraction
from thought which these thoughts brought him. Sir John sought
some antidote--he felt the need, which certain natures under the
stress of intolerable sorrow feel, of turning to commonplace
occupations, of busying himself with trivial details, as the only
means of reducing the dreary melancholy which else would crush him
utterly.
His attempt was rewarded by a measure of success. Although during
the early part of the voyage he had been so depressed that he
made his will, in July he landed on his “native soyl” in much
better spirits than he could have hoped “after so much weaknesse
and sicknesse and sorrow.” But the rally was only temporary: the
anxieties, the mortifications, the apprehensions he had endured
at Constantinople had undermined his delicate constitution: the
worm of grief had gnawed too far into his heart for anything to be
remedial now; and after laying the remains of Sir Thomas in the
chapel of Christ’s College, Cambridge, as if the last frail tie
that held him to life had snapped, Finch himself succumbed to an
attack of pleurisy on the 18th of November 1682.
His body was conveyed to Cambridge and buried, as he had desired,
beside his friend’s under the tomb which is still visible: a marble
monument, the laboured elegance of which reflects the Italian
tastes of the age and of the men in whose joint memory it stands.
It is adorned with a Latin epitaph from the pen of Henry More--the
tutor who had first introduced the two friends to each other. Thus
years that were far asunder were bound together, and the hand which
had started Sir John and Sir Thomas on their common course rounded
off its common end.
Beneath that stone the Ambassador whose doings and sufferings we
have witnessed sleeps quietly--the sleep of clay and dust. Of all
those agonies and vanities: emotions once so real and vibrant--of
that personality so impulsive, so susceptible to flattery, so prone
to anger and fear--remains only a pale reflection in the letters
we have deciphered. Out of those fussy despatches he who cares may
still call up the phantom of Sir John Finch: there, if anywhere, he
still lives--a soul infinitely pathetic.
For Sir John was nowise great; and such elements of greatness
as may have been in him were frustrated by his one life-long
attachment. From the time he met Baines, Finch lost every chance
of self-development and self-realisation. Tied, heart and mind, to
that monotonous, masterful pedagogue, he never used his own powers.
The universe had contracted round him to the narrow circle limited
by that pedant’s exiguous vision. How completely Baines kept the
world, its inhabitants, and its interests from Finch may be seen
from the fact that, after seven years’ residence, our Ambassador
knew almost as little of Turkey as on the day of his landing.
During all those years the realities about him took a second
place in his thoughts: the first place was filled by abstractions
according to Sir Thomas: on Sundays the twain composed essays on
Theology, and on week-days they talked what Sir Thomas imagined
to be Philosophy. Life-long tutelage must have a debilitating,
devitalising effect; and it can hardly be questioned that the
benignant Baines exercised over his friend a most malignant
influence. Not intentionally, of course: Baines, we are persuaded,
meant well; but much of the mischief done on this planet is done by
people who mean well.
It was a sound instinct that made Finch shy at public life. As
a diplomat he displayed all the faults of one to whom zeal and
judgment had not been given in equal proportions. He was not
born for diplomacy: certainly not for Turkish diplomacy. In all
those oscillations of mood and fluctuations of the will which he
so naïvely betrayed when wrought up by his feelings, we see a
temperament very ill adapted to a profession which requires above
all things coolness and firmness. That he failed at Constantinople
cannot be disguised. But, despite his foibles and his friend, he
would have done as well as any average ambassador, if he had had
no exceptional difficulties to contend with. So much is clear
from his history: as long as the sun shines and the waters are
smooth, we see him steering on, happily enough; as soon as the
tempest bursts, the helm slips from his hold and he flounders on
in thick darkness, inward and outward--a fair-weather pilot, like
many another. To drop metaphor, the man--everything reckoned--was
essentially a victim of circumstances: chief among them the death
of Ahmed Kuprili. Even more mediocre natures would have succeeded
under that Grand Vizir; under Kara Mustafa only talents of the very
first order could have availed. And it is poignant to reflect what
a trifle would have turned Sir John’s failure into a success: had
he accepted the Turkish Embassy when it was first offered to him,
in 1668, his career at Constantinople would have terminated before
the death of Ahmed--on such little ironies hang the destinies of
poor mortals.
FOOTNOTES:
[290] Finch to Sunderland, Nov. 6-16, 1680.
[291] Finch to Jenkins, July 25, 27, 1681.
[292] Chandos to Jenkins, Sept. 23, St. Vet. 1681.
[293] Malloch’s _Finch and Baines_, p. 72.
[294] Finch to Jenkins, Sept. 22, Oct. 14-24.
[295] _Ibid._
[296] _Life of Dudley North_, pp. 171-2.
[297] Chandos to Jenkins, April 17-27, 1682; Petition of the Levant
Company to the King in _Register_, pp. 114-17; _Life of Dudley
North_, p. 98.
[298] Sir Clement Harby to Jenkins, Zante, Feb. 10, 1681-82, _S.P.
Turkey_, 19.
[299] Malloch’s _Finch and Baines_, p. 77.
CONCLUSION
The death of Sir John Finch forms so fitting an end to the drama
in which he bore a principal, if not a leading, part that, in a
work of the imagination, any further addition would have been
an artistic crime. But in a book like the present the claims of
artistic fitness must yield to those of historic completeness.
After getting their ships out of the Vizir’s clutches, the English
endeavoured to come to an arrangement with him on the basis of
their original offer of 55,000 dollars, in which the sum paid
at Smyrna should be included; but they failed. Kara Mustafa,
infuriated, meant to have his revenge; and a few days later he
summoned the merchants to the Porte--the merchants only, for his
policy now was to treat the matter as a quarrel between them and
the Customer--a purely commercial lawsuit in which neither the King
of England nor his representative had any concern. But Lord Chandos
would have none of these fictitious distinctions. He assembled all
the merchants in the Embassy, and when the Chaoush came to fetch
them, he positively refused to let them go without him. After a
day’s parley, he carried his point; and so, on Sunday morning,
January 15th, 1682, Ambassador and merchants went together. They
were shown into the Kehayah’s room, where they found, besides
that officer, the Chaoush-bashi, the Customer, and three or four
other dignitaries. The discussion soon degenerated into a violent
altercation, until the Kehayah, proceeding from words to deeds,
ordered a Chaoush to seize the two chief merchants, Montagu North
and Mr. Hyet. Chandos at once interposed and, getting hold of
them, declared that he would go to prison in their place: he was
there to act as surety for the Nation under his protection. “No,
no,” said the Kehayah, “the King of England and the Grand Signor
are good friends, and you shall be treated accordingly: this is a
mere matter of trade, in which the merchants are the only parties
concerned,”--and he asked his Lordship to sit down and drink his
coffee and sherbet! His Lordship hung on to the prisoners, as the
Chaoush dragged them out--he hung on to them across the courtyard:
the Chaoush pushed him off, but he still hung on with true bull-dog
tenacity: so that the Chaoush had to resort to a ruse: he carried
the prisoners back into the house, shut Lord Chandos out, and got
them off by a back-door.
Baulked, angered, thoroughly disgusted, the Ambassador mounts his
horse and returns home--to plan such measures as the situation
demands. That afternoon he seals up all the English warehouses
at Constantinople and despatches to the Smyrna Factory notice to
provide against the worst. During the following days he plies
the Vizir with memorials, messages, petitions for audience--“too
tedious to relate”; to all of which he receives but one answer:
the Vizir has given him an audience on his arrival, he has also
seen him since about the business in dispute, and has heard all
that could be said on that subject: the Grand Signor will soon be
back: His Excellency will have an audience of him then, and an
opportunity of saying anything he has to say. An appeal to the
Mufti falls equally flat: the Mufti stands in too much awe of Kara
Mustafa. And meanwhile our merchants remain in custody: for a month
and a week they keep in tolerable health, but on the thirty-ninth
day one of them sickens: he seizes the chance of a visit from
the Ambassador’s Dragoman to say in Turkish that he will not die
there--if he owes any man anything, he is ready to pay; if he has
committed any crime, let his head fly. All he demands is justice:
since the Ambassador cannot free him, he has slaves in his house,
and he will send one of them to the Grand Signor with a pot of
fire on his head![300] This threat, it was thought, reported to
the Vizir by one of his spies, produced, or contributed towards
producing, the desired effect. Soon afterwards Kara Mustafa agreed
to Chandos’s original proposal that, for 55,000 dollars, he should
condemn his own sentence and absolve the English from all such
claims, past and future. The bargain struck, our prisoners, after
forty-two days’ confinement, were released, and the Ambassador
reported home:
“Thus are we restored to free commerce with these unrightuous
people once again, how long it may continue is past my guess for
never was there a people more false and ficle in theyr words then
I have found thos here I have had to doe with ... but I consider’d
it the duty of a faithfull servant to his master to avoid all is
possible the necessity of pushing disputes to such extremities as
to bring a war or great dishonor on his master and for this reason
in the first place and secondly in regard to trade which would
infallibly have receiv’d a deadly blow had their violence byn a
little more provok’d for ’tis most certain that we have stuck many
days at the pit’s brink.... I had my _ar’s_ ready to have gone in
person to the Visier and G: Signor but was overcome and prevented
by the merchants reasons and intreaties and I hope all is for the
best for there is not one instance of any one’s having ever got any
good by wrangling with this Visier.”[301]
In adjusting this avania Lord Chandos had hoped, as he tells
us, to find “some faire quarter” in other matters; but he soon
found that “there is no peace with the wicked.” When he applied
for his Audience of the Grand Signor, Kara Mustafa demanded an
extraordinary present--not, he explained, as a price for the
Audience, but as a recognition of the great favour he had done
us by letting us off the silk claim on such easy terms. Chandos
replied that all he had parted with was to purchase the Vizir’s
goodwill, and he was willing to strain yet further to give him
satisfaction; only he entreated his patience till the Audience was
over, lest it should be said that he had paid money for it: which,
being an alteration of the ancient practice between the Crowns,
imported much more than his head was worth. This reply, in spite
of its urbanity, set the Vizir in a mighty passion: he doubled his
demand, and, as the Ambassador took no notice, he refused to let
him deliver his Credentials. Moreover, every time an Englishman
was sued before the Divan, Kara Mustafa condemned him out of hand;
and, in short, missed no chance of showing his malice against
us. Not that we enjoyed the exclusive monopoly of his rancour.
The Dutch underwent a fresh fleecing on the same pretext as the
English--silk export duties--and were glad enough to compound for
25,000 dollars; the Venetians were forced to pay ten times that
sum by way of reparation for an affray between their own and some
Turkish subjects in Dalmatia--it was, in truth, reparation for
wrongs suffered rather than inflicted, but that made no difference:
the Bailo, finding reason useless, had to employ “the rhetorick
of chequins”--’twas the only means “to make faire weather with a
Visier who is of a temper to doe anything for mony and nothing
without it.” When describing to the Secretary of State how he and
his colleagues fared at the hands “of this greivous oppressor of
all Christians,” Chandos ventured to drop a hint that His Majesty
might, “if the intolerable tyranny of this vile Minister receiv’s
not a speedy check,” find “some other way to make him sensible of
His iust indignation”--some way more “becoming His great wisedome
and high honor.” But what could poor, lazy Charles do, where the
haughty and energetic Louis was content to eat humble pie by the
plateful? It was, indeed, the “submission,” as the Turks very
correctly called it, of the French Padishah that had raised Kara
Mustafa’s rapacious insolence to its present pitch. This brings us
to the conclusion of the Chios exploit in which the Franco-Turkish
quarrel had culminated.
Nothing more humiliating for Christendom, nothing better calculated
to inflate Ottoman arrogance, could be imagined. The French
Admiral, after hovering aimlessly about the Dardanelles with his
squadron for nine months, sailed away leaving the French Ambassador
to pay for his feat. It was no longer a question of exacting
satisfaction for past insults, but of averting imminent calamities:
M. de Guilleragues had to fight not for a stool, but for safety.
A three days’ struggle ensued--the French gazettes of the time
styled it an “audience.” The first day, when the Ambassador was
brought before the Vizir, he spoke and acted with spirit; but
Kara Mustafa, unimpressed by what he knew to be empty bluster,
ordered him to be locked up. Three days’ confinement brought M. de
Guilleragues to reason: he signed a bond to pay within six months
an indemnity thinly veiled under the euphemism of a “galantaria”
emanating from his private pocket--“a present of such value as
became a Chivaliere.” When the six months expired, the “present”
was duly tendered, but was rejected as falling short of what became
a Chevalier in distress to give or a victorious Pasha to receive.
After some kicking against the pricks, the Ambassador submitted
to a valuation of his “galantaria” by experts appointed by Kara
Mustafa, with the result that he was “screw’d up to 100 purses,
that is, 50,000 Dollars.” This was for the Grand Signor. “What
he paid the Visier himself and his inferior officers, by his own
confession, came to between 15,000 and 20,000 Dollars and most of
this mony was taken up at 18 or 20, and some at 22 per cent.”
Thus the long-drawn-out duel between the wig and the turban ended
in a decisive victory for the turban. It was not pleasant to
witness “the barbarous triumphing of the Turks over all Christians
upon this their success against the French, for the Turks judge
all things by the event and impute all that hitts right to the
great wisedome and conduct of their Visier, for in this business
they say (according to their proverb) the Visier _caught a hare
with a cart_, and the French who are the loosers have nothing to
say, which is hard according to our English proverb.” Nothing to
say--they who a few months before “made many high brags of great
wonders they resolv’d to doe.”[302]
But in ascribing their triumph to Kara Mustafa’s genius the Turks
paid him a tribute to which he was not entitled. The causes of the
French defeat lay in Paris rather than in Stambul. Louis was a
calculating politician as well as an arrogant prince. His arrogance
prompted him to beard the Turks, his policy forbade him to break
with them. It was essential for the success of his ambition in the
West that the German Empire should be engaged in the East; and
he did not hesitate to purchase the co-operation of Kara Mustafa
at any price. Kara Mustafa, on his part, had long nourished the
wish to attack Austria, and he had a good opportunity of doing so
in the first two years of his Vizirate, when the French harassed
the Emperor on one side and the Magyars on the other; but, with
characteristic acumen, he had chosen to go to a profitless war with
Russia and to postpone the realisation of his favourite dream to a
less convenient moment. However, Louis thought, better late than
never.
In the meantime, while these machinations were maturing, Kara
Mustafa sharpened his sword. Chandos heard of “nothing soe much as
the drawing togeather of great forces from all parts of this vast
Empire,”[303] and, though he prayed “God defend all Christians
from the violence of Turks,” he could not help feeling that in
a long-protracted war lay his only hope of escaping further
molestation. It was therefore with profound relief that he saw
the Vizir make his stately exit from Constantinople: “nor doe we
dispair of God’s mercy either to convert him from or confound him
in his malice against us before his returne.”
Of the two contingencies it was the more probable that came
to pass; and, if the English had good reason to attribute the
aggravation of their woes to the Machiavellian policy of Louis, it
was to that same policy that they owed their final deliverance.
Kara Mustafa, in the spring of 1683, marched north at the head of
as numerous an army as ever Grand Vizir led--the whole strength
of the Ottoman Empire was bent against Austria. With this host,
augmented, too, by Hungarian rebels, he crossed the frontier,
traversed Hungary performing miracles of ferocity and perfidy, and,
not finding in his way either fortified towns or armies capable to
arrest his progress, penetrated to the very gates of Vienna (July
14, N.S.). At the approach of the enemy the Emperor Leopold fled
with precipitation, leaving the Duke of Lorraine with a small force
to defend his capital.
The unhappy citizens, isolated and abandoned by their natural
protector, presented to the world a memorable example of courage
and initiative. But hunger and disease soon began to decimate them.
Of succour there was no sign. The beleaguered city seemed doomed,
and with it the whole of Central Europe. Only a combination of
chances could save Vienna.
Such a combination was provided by Kara Mustafa’s multiform
imbecility. Eager to secure the treasures of the Hapsburg capital
for himself, he declined to stimulate the ardour of his soldiers
with the promise of plunder and avoided a general assault which
could have reduced the town before the arrival of relief, hoping
to take it intact by capitulation. Being as arrogant as he was
greedy, he disdained to keep himself informed of the movements of
the enemy, took no measures to prevent their passage of the Danube,
and allowed them to concentrate close behind his camp without the
slightest opposition. At the very moment when Vienna seemed ready
to succumb, John Sobieski joined the Imperial forces under the Duke
of Lorraine on the neighbouring heights.
Next day (Sept. 11, N.S.) this army of only 77,000 men descended to
the plain like an irresistible avalanche and beat Kara Mustafa’s
host into confusion, defeat, destruction. Some ten thousand Turks
remained dead on the field of battle. The rest, including the Grand
Vizir, fled leaving behind them their guns, their tents, their
archives, and all their colours except the sacred standard of
the Prophet. Not the least notable item in the long list of loot
was the Grand Vizir’s pavilion: a miniature palace surrounded
by baths, gardens, and fountains: which that night afforded a
luxurious resting-place to the happy King of Poland--the King whose
ambassadors Kara Mustafa had treated as we have seen. And so in a
few hours the cloud that had hung over Central Europe for months
melted away.
This rout, aggravated by some other disasters which overtook
shortly afterwards the demoralised Ottoman army, exhausted the
Grand Signor’s favour for his Vizir. Kara Mustafa’s enemies at
Court fanned the Imperial wrath to a white heat, and an Aga was
sent to Belgrade, where the would-be conqueror had retired, with
orders to relieve him of his head. The Aga arrived on December
25th (N.S.) after sunset; and before sunrise he had fulfilled his
mission. Thus perished, in the height of his pride, one of the
most wicked Ministers, and one of the weakest-minded, that ever
tyrannised over a country. His death was lamented only by those few
who had had no cause to regret his birth.
Kara Mustafa’s disappearance brought comparative peace and
contentment to foreign residents in Turkey. Not long afterwards
Lord Chandos had the Audience from which he had been debarred for
three years, and after a prosperous career this shrewd and sturdy
Englishman retired, in 1687, with a full purse.[304]
But for Kara Mustafa’s country there was neither peace nor
contentment. The discomfiture before Vienna afforded a revelation
of Turkey’s weakness which tempted Russia and Venice to join
Austria and Poland in what they called a “Holy League.” As we
have seen, they all had many scores to settle with the Porte.
They settled them now with a vengeance. From 1684 on to 1699 this
struggle for dominion and plunder raged under the name of religion.
The religious fervour of the Moslems was not less holy than that
of the Christians, but Allah fought on the side of the majority.
Misfortune followed misfortune and loss came on the top of loss.
In 1687 the Turks thought to change their luck by changing their
Sultan. But to no purpose: the cycle of their misfortunes went on
unbroken. Famine, fires, and insurrections at home heightened the
dismay caused by defeats abroad, until at last the mighty Ottoman
Empire, stripped of vast territories, distracted, and utterly
spent, had to seek the mediation of the Maritime Powers--England
and Holland. Lord Pagett and Jakob Collyer, the successors of the
diplomats whom Kara Mustafa had outraged so grievously, tried in
1699 to rescue what was possible from the wreck Kara Mustafa had
wrought. (Peace of Carlowitz, Jan. 26.)
Not long after this remarkable instance of historic retribution,
one of Kara Mustafa’s victims reappeared upon the stage. Mrs.
Pentlow had, on his fall, endeavoured to obtain reparation for
the injury done to her, and the new Grand Vizir, our old friend
Soliman, Ahmed Kuprili’s suave Kehayah, was very willing to see
both that and our other claims settled out of his enemy’s estate.
But the Grand Signor, who had confiscated that estate, demanded due
proofs, which was demanding the impossible. Avanias were always so
conducted that hardly any one besides the persons concerned knew
the details: the Turks concerned were Kara Mustafa’s creatures
who, on his death, were dispersed; the evidence of his Jew and
of our Dragomans was inadmissible against True Believers; the
only witness who could have helped us was the Chief Customer; but
Hussein Aga would not, for prudential reasons, come forward.[305]
So the matter dropped, and Mrs. Pentlow went away to England, where
she married a member of the St. John family, apparently resigned
to her loss. But she had not abandoned all hope, and in the autumn
of 1700, when our Ambassador was basking in the sun of popularity,
she arrived at Constantinople with her daughter, now grown into a
fine young “Mrs. Susanna Pentlow,” and a letter from the Earl of
Jersey, Secretary of State, to Lord Pagett, requesting him to use
his influence for the recovery of the Smyrna estate.
Lord Pagett enjoyed among the English in the Levant the reputation
of a diplomat who made “no great figure at Court, contenting
himself with being feared by his own nation.”[306] And in this
case he did precisely as the unfortunate Sir John Finch would have
done. He indited a lengthy despatch in which he gave five different
reasons why he could do nothing. The records of the Porte had been
lost before Vienna, and without them no claim would be considered.
The widow had no documents to prove her case. By the Turkish law
all debts for which no demand had been made for fifteen years were
invalid. The Vizir then in power was the son of Kara Mustafa’s
sister who was still alive, and there was nobody in the whole of
the Ottoman Empire who respected the memory of that “unfortunate
great man” so much or who showed a stronger devotion to his family.
Lastly, the Turkish Government had no money to pay off its soldiers
and sailors, all of whom were clamouring for their long overdue
stipends: “and while pressing, clear, just debts can’t be got in,
there’s little hopes of recovering an old, doubtfull, litigious
pretence, pursued upon a very cold scent.”[307] His Lordship
therefore advised that the matter should be allowed to rest till
some favourable opportunity turned up. Such an opportunity, to the
best of the present writer’s knowledge, has not yet turned up. And
so we may part for ever with Mrs. Pentlow, _alias_ Mrs. St. John,
and direct our attention to some of the other characters that have
figured in our story--those three distinguished Englishmen who, it
is hoped, did in Turkey enough to inspire the reader with a wish to
know what became of them afterwards.
The subsequent career of Paul Rycaut need not detain us long. On
missing the Constantinople appointment, our late Consul entreated
the King to cast a gracious eye upon him, when any office which
His Majesty’s wisdom should judge most agreeable to his talents
and experience became vacant; and in 1685 he obtained the post
of Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon who had recently been made
Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. At the same time he was knighted and
sworn of the Privy Council and judge of the Admiralty in Ireland.
In this employment the ex-Consul earned his Chief’s commendations
for integrity and, among the Irish Catholics, the character of an
extortionate official. Whichever of these two opinions was correct,
Sir Paul did not hold that office long. At the beginning of 1688
he returned to England, and about the middle of the following year
he was transferred at last to a sphere for which his linguistic
attainments and his diplomatic and commercial experience really
fitted him--that of English Resident in Hamburgh and the Hanse
Towns. He filled that position almost till his death, which
occurred in 1700, a few months after his recall. As in Turkey,
so in Europe, Rycaut devoted much of his time to literary work,
publishing _The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches_
(1678); _The History of the Turkish Empire from 1623 to 1677_,
including his _Memoirs_ (1680); and some translations from the
Spanish and the Latin. Of these productions the _History_ was
long considered one of the best works of its kind in the English
language; and the _Memoirs_ part of it, at least, can still be read
with profit and not without pleasure.
To turn to the Rev. John Covel. Thanks to his trip to Adrianople,
supplemented just before he left Turkey by some swift excursions
to Nicomedia, Nicaea, and the islands of the Sea of Marmara, and
by a passing view of such classic spots as the homeward bound ship
touched at, our Chaplain returned home with his fame as “a great
Oriental traveller” firmly established.[308] Soon afterwards he
was made Doctor of Divinity by royal warrant, instituted to two
sinecure rectories, and, in 1681, was appointed Chaplain to the
Princess of Orange at the Hague. He was now forty-three. With his
faculties unimpaired and patronage from high quarters flowing
in, he seemed to have the ball fairly at his feet. For about
four years he flowered in the sun of princely favour; and then,
suddenly, the fair prospect became overcast. Dr. Covel would never
speak of the cause which brought his residence at the Hague to an
abrupt close--it was, perhaps, the one subject on which he ever
succeeded in holding his tongue. But we know it. Among the various
and, doubtless, useful functions a divine had to perform in the
Orange household, that of gossip and newsagent was not included.
Dr. Covel, however, unable to break himself of an old habit,
continued his investigations into other people’s affairs with
unabated ardour. To put it plainly, he became one of the spies and
tale-bearers who were encouraged, if not actually employed, by King
James to make mischief between his daughter and his son-in-law. A
letter from the Chaplain giving the English Ambassador an account
of the way in which William treated Mary was intercepted--and Dr.
Covel had to pack at three hours’ notice.
King James tried to console the dismissed cleric with the
Chancellorship of York during its vacancy (Nov. 9, 1687); and
the Mastership of Christ’s College falling vacant, the Fellows,
to avoid having a certain Smithson thrust upon them by the King,
hastily chose (July 7, 1688) Dr. Covel: “a choice,” it has been
guessed, “they probably would not have made, had they had more
time.”[309] But the Rev. John was not to be consoled for the
loss of his place in the princely sun. He denied the accusation,
denounced his accusers, did everything possible to regain the
Paradise Lost. But all in vain. That William neither believed
nor forgave him became painfully obvious when, soon after the
Revolution, he visited Cambridge. That year (1689) Dr. Covel was
Vice-Chancellor of the University, and since he could not avoid
coming into personal contact with the King he had offended as a
Prince, he anxiously inquired how His Majesty would be pleased
to receive him. The answer must have made him wince: His Majesty
could distinguish between Dr. Covel and the Vice-Chancellor of the
University. Curt, caustic Majesty!
His garrulity had ruined Dr. Covel’s chances of ecclesiastical
preferment; but it did not stand in the way of his academic career.
He retained the Mastership of Christ’s all his life, and spent
much of his leisure in transcribing, expanding, correcting, and
every way spoiling the notes he had made at Constantinople: to the
satisfaction of himself, though not of others. No publisher could
be found courageous enough to undertake the publication of these
masses of immense discursiveness and laborious irrelevance. It was
only in our own time that a learned society ventured to print a
selection from them. But Dr. Covel was not fortunate even in this
tardy and partial emergence. To the author’s minute inaccuracies
the editor has added a multitude of absurdities of his own; the
upshot being the most bewildering bundle of blunders that ever
issued from the press of any country in the guise of a book.[310]
So much concerning Dr. Covel’s Travels. His _magnum opus_ on the
Greek Church, after nearly fifty years’ incubation, came out at
last when it was least wanted, in 1722--more than a generation
after the question with which it deals had lost its actuality. It
came out in folio, with a florid dedication to the Duke of Chandos,
son of our late Ambassador and at the time Governor of the Levant
Company: the author hints that, had he been made a Bishop, he would
have had time to finish his book sooner. The delay, indeed, had
its advantages: _non cito, hoc est, non cito ac cursim agere; vel
non temere et inconsulte_. Yet, despite fifty years’ revisions and
manipulations, he fears “some few things may yet appear Defective,
and others Confus’d and Indigested.” The fear is well founded.
Its diffused and confused style, and still more its creator’s
fundamental inability to take an objective view of things, render
this _Account of the Greek Church_ one of the best illustrations
extant of the aphorism _mega biblion, mega kakon_.
But, after all, it is not Dr. Covel the bad writer, but John the
good fellow we care most about. In course of time he left off
hoping for royal favours and episcopal mitres, and settled down to
a mechanical routine of existence such as good dons lead. Whether
he knew it or not, Dr. Covel was happy; the jollity which had made
the Papas popular with the Factors of Constantinople helped to
make the Master popular with the Fellows of Cambridge. This placid
existence lasted till December 19th, 1722, when the Rev. John, in
the 85th year of his age, went to join Finch and Baines under the
pavement of Christ’s College chapel.
An inscription commemorates the virtues of Dr. Covel. A good
portrait of him, in his congregational robes, preserves the
features of his countenance. His voluminous journals and letters,
stored in the British Museum, supply an ample and by far the most
trustworthy testimony to the traits of his mind and character; they
exhibit him as an amiable man rather than one of a very superior
understanding.
[Illustration: DR. JOHN COVEL.
From the Portrait by Valentine Ritz at Christ’s College, Cambridge.
_To face p. 372._]
Much more exciting were the fortunes of the Honourable Dudley
North. We saw him in Turkey a shrewd merchant, keen and
unscrupulous in his pursuit of wealth. We find him in England a
shrewd politician, keen and, some said, remorseless in his pursuit
of power. He returned at a moment when the feud between Whig and
Tory--to give the factions their new-fangled designations--was at
its fiercest. By that infamous fiction, the Popish Plot, the Whigs
had for a time driven the nation to madness and their principal
opponents to an ignominious death. The public was just beginning
to find out how it had been duped, and the Tories, profiting by
the reaction, were getting ready to pay the Whigs back in their
own false coin; the same gang of spies, witnesses, informers, and
suborners who had hounded innocent Tories to the gallows, were
now employed to hound innocent Whigs. North had come home a firm
believer in Titus Oates’s murderous myth. He was undeceived--all
the sooner because he was not slow to perceive that his interest
lay on the same side as the truth: the Tory side. At the instance
of his brother, then Lord Chief Justice, he was called to serve
the King’s party as Sheriff of London and Middlesex: an expensive
office which conferred the power of packing juries and securing
convictions. Dudley performed the services expected from him
with more energy than scruple. He considered it, indeed, very
unfortunate that so many trials for high treason and executions
should happen in his year of office; but business is business.
In the midst of all this sanguinary work, he found time to court a
wealthy widow, Lady Gunning, and, in spite of her father, to marry
her. She loved him, admired him, idolised him, and presided over
the splendid banquets he gave in his Basinghall Street mansion. He
returned her affection fully, and it was partly that she might not
remain, were it only in name, separate from him, but become Lady
North, that he accepted the honour of knighthood which a grateful
Court bestowed upon him. Thus happy both in his private and public
affairs, Sir Dudley climbed from height to height, becoming in
quick succession an Alderman, a Commissioner of the Customs, a
Commissioner of the Treasury, a Member of Parliament, and the chief
advocate for the Crown in all questions of revenue that came before
the House of Commons. In this last capacity North shone with a pure
light.
Men who spend their lives in making money are usually the least
competent to understand the abstract principles that govern the
accumulation and distribution of wealth. The distant views and
ultimate conclusions which make up the science of Political Economy
are beyond their vision. All the progress achieved in that most
important field of knowledge has been achieved by philosophers, to
whose discoveries our merchants and manufacturers were the last to
be converted. North, by a most rare gift of nature, combined in his
mental constitution the contradictory qualities of the practical
trader and the speculative thinker. Together with a large fortune,
he had brought from the Levant a large fund of original deductions
from his experience.[311] Withal, he possessed a faculty of
expressing himself, at once homely and forcible, which arrested
attention and carried conviction. As a speaker on financial topics
the Member for Banbury had no rival.
How much higher a man of so many gifts and so few scruples might
have climbed must remain matter of speculation. The Revolution of
1688 pulled the ladder from under him. The day which witnessed
the victory of the Whigs was a day of reckoning for the Tories.
Forgetting the wrongs they had inflicted and remembering only
the injuries they had suffered, the victors were grimly set on
revenge. Parliamentary Committees were appointed to inquire into
the late judicial proceedings, to punish all persons concerned in
them, and to indemnify the victims out of their estates. Among the
rest, Sir Dudley North had to stand his trial. Great sport was
expected from his baiting. The galleries and benches of the House
of Commons were crowded with spectators; but they got very little
satisfaction. To all the questions put to him as to the manner in
which he had obtained his Shrievalty and his conduct therein, North
gave fearless and, apparently, full and frank answers. This was
not well! After much whispering into the Chairman’s ear, one of
the members of the Committee moved that the ex-Sheriff should be
asked to name the Aldermen who, as he pretended, had assisted at
his election. The Chairman nodded. That was Sir Dudley’s supreme
moment. He turned quietly round and with his cane pointed to five
Aldermen present, who since the Revolution had gone over to the
Whigs, naming them one after another with deadly distinctness.
This was worse than ever! To prevent further sensations, a cunning
Parliamentarian stood up hastily, and “Mr. Foley,” he said,
addressing the Chairman, “you had best have a care: you have an
honourable gentleman before you: that you do not ask him, etc.”
Having thus turned the tables upon his prosecutors, the clever
Dudley left the House with colours flying, sped away by the very
persons who had dragged him there.
For a time he continued in the Commission of the Customs. But,
presently, that and his other offices were taken from him; and Sir
Dudley relapsed to his original status of a Turkey Merchant. He
went back to the buying and selling of cloth with the resignation
of a philosopher and the spirit of a veteran trader. But even
there luck had at the last rounded upon him. The War with France
just begun (1689) hit North as hard as it did most of the other
merchants of England trading into the Levant Seas. Their trade
was attacked by the enemy both in Turkey and on the way to it.
These calamities abated North’s mettle and affected his health.
He decided to give up the perilous business and turn country
gentleman--a quiet rural life, he thought, would restore to him the
health of body and peace of mind of which the bustle of the world
had robbed him: he would beat his clothyard into a ploughshare; he
would raise crops with as much pleasure as he had raised dollars or
cut off heads. Alas! even here his good fortune failed him. After
inspecting several great estates and offering great prices for them
in vain, he succeeded at last in finding a home in Norfolk; the
date was fixed for him to go down to sign the agreement; but on
the day before, he was seized with the disease which killed him.
He died on the last day of 1691, at the comparatively early age of
fifty.
However his character may be appraised, Dudley North will always
be remembered as one of the outstanding figures of his time: the
most brilliant of those seventeenth century merchant-adventurers
who were the founders of our national prosperity and commercial
pre-eminence.
So with all our actors off the stage, we may ring the curtain down.
_La commedia è finita._
[Illustration: The Hon.^{ble} S.^r DUDLEY NORTH K.^t Commissioner
of the Treasury to King Charles the Second.
From an Engraving by G. Vertue, 1743.
_To face p. 376._]
FOOTNOTES:
[300] As a rule, all petitions to the Sultan had to pass through
the Vizir’s hands; but in cases where the Vizir himself was
involved a direct appeal was possible through the above formality:
which secured to the petitioner access to the throne, but entailed,
if his complaint proved false, loss of his head. See Rycaut’s
_Present State_, p. 84; _Life of Dudley North_, p. 100.
[301] Chandos to Jenkins, April 17-27, 1682; cp. Sir John
Buckworth’s “Narrative of the Distresses of our Turkey Merchants at
C.P.,” Jan. 22, 1681-82, _S.P. Turkey_, 19.
[302] Chandos to Jenkins, Oct. 11, st. vet. 1682. _The Turk
catches the hare with a cart_ still is a common proverb among the
inhabitants of the Near East. It conveys an appreciation of Turkish
tactics: slow and blundering in appearance, yet forming parts of a
strategic plan, based on the principle that the ultimate outcome of
a struggle depends on which side can show the greatest endurance
and shall have most reserves when it comes to the final tussle.
[303] Chandos to Jenkins, March 29, 1683.
[304] “Few have made more of the place than he hath. He has
doubtless raised his estate considerably by it.”--Nathaniel Harley
to Sir Edward Harley, Aleppo, Oct. 29, 1687, _Hist. MSS. Com.
Thirteenth Report_, Part II. p. 242.
[305] _Life of Dudley North_, pp. 102-3.
[306] Nathaniel Harley to Sir Edward Harley, Aleppo, July 20, 1694,
_Hist. MSS. Com. Thirteenth Report_, Part II. p. 245.
[307] Pagett to Vernon, Jan. 17, O.S. 1700-1, _S.P. Turkey_, 21.
[308] Evelyn’s _Diary_, Nov. 23, 1695.
[309] _Dictionary of National Biography._
[310] It would be invidious to single out particular pearls,
but one is too precious to be passed over. Dr. Covel wrote in
his Diary: “Just at two o’clock Antonio called us to go to the
Alloy.” Now, as the reader may remember, “Alloy” was the name for
the ceremonial march-out of the Army. The editor, mistaking this
Turkish word for the name of an English ship, and then drawing upon
his imagination, evolves a pretty myth: “Dr. Covel and Sir John
Finch, the ambassador, started together on the _Alloy_, and the new
Grand Vizier, Kara Mustapha, came to see them off, and brought them
large quantities of presents.” He goes on to describe the voyage
of the phantom vessel as far as Venice (pp. 282 foll.). The only
parallel instance of an editor’s mythopoeic faculty working upon a
verbal misapprehension known to me is to be found in the _Rigveda_.
[311] See Appendix XVI.
APPENDIX I
[_Ellis Papers_ at the British Museum: _Add. MSS. 28937_, pp.
167-9.]
Instructions for our Trusty and wellbeloved Servant S^r John
Finch Knt going in Quality of our Amb^{r.} to reside at y^e
Court of y^e Grand Seig^{r.} Given at y^e Court at Whitehall the
________ 1672.
1. You shall embarque your self upon y^e ship designed to carry
you, and dispose thereof according to y^e instruc͡ons of our most
Dear Brother the Duke of York, our High Adm^{ll.} of England.
2. Being arriued at Constantinople you shall in y^e first place
informe your self from Mr Newman Secretary to y^e late Amb^{r.}
S^r Daniel Haruy, and by him left in the care of our affaires,
and of our subjects in that Court, in what state things now are,
and by him and such others as are best able to informe you, to
instruct your self in the manner of making your addresses with
our credentialls to the Grand Seignior and the Grand Vizier
according to the accustomed stiles used by those inuested with your
character, remembering allways not to suffer it to be prejudiced or
uiolated in any circumstance either by that Court, or any forreign
Ministers residing there.
3. In your Addresses to y^e Grand Seig^{r.} and Vizier you
shall expresse the Great Value wee haue for their persons, and
satisfac͡on in the obseruance of y^e peace & good correspondence
these towards our Subjects in their Trade & Com͡erce, w^{ch}
is so beneficiall to those parts aboue any other nac͡on, and
particularly those made with Algiers, Tunis, Tripoly, which wee
desire they would continue to protect & recom͡end, assuring them
wee shall seuerely punish any of our subjects, that shall in any
degree uiolate the same; or if in your passage, or upon the place
you shall learne any infringem^{ts.} haue been made on either side,
you shall as occasion shall furnish you with matter for it, frame
excuses or complaints.
4. In all y^e time of y^r Residence there you must be carefull to
maintain a good correspondence with all y^e Amb^{rs.} and Agents of
Christian Princes, especially those y^t shall be in a nearer degree
of alliance and amity with us, But not forgetting it euen towards
those that are lesse so: to protect their persons, and render your
self usefull to them with all good offices, employing effectually
likewise towards the good of all Christians in generall of what
Degree, Quality, Sect, or opinion so euer they be, giuing the
preference therein still to those of our own profession in Religion
in procuring them Justice & Fauour in all things.
5. You will learne best upon the place in what manner you must
proceed towards the protec͡on of all the priuiledges and im͡unityes
of our subjects of the Turky Company, for whose good and Benefitt
you are most especially to reside there, by preseruing firme and
inuiolable to them the Capitulac͡ons that are allready in being
with the Grand Seig^{r.} and by solliciting & procuring such
further additionall ones, as time and other circumstances may make
usefull for them to haue, so wee need not be particular in our
Direc͡on to you therein, assuring our self that you will not be
wanting in any thing to performe all good offices towards them to
their entire satisfac͡on.
6. You shall make it y^r particular care & endeauour to be
truly informed of all negotiac͡ons & practises in y^t Court
which may disturbe the peace of Christendom in any part of it,
and accordingly informe us thereof under the surest and most
speedy conueyance you can, by the hands of one of our principall
Secretaryes of State, with whom you usually correspond, who will
likewise take care on their parts, to signify our pleasure &
further Instruc͡ons to you upon all Emergencyes, com͡unicating to
you all such aduices from hence as may be of use to you there.
7. And whereas frequent Representac͡ons haue been made to us by the
Turky Company and otherwise of the great mischeifs occasioned in
Trade by the permitting of false and faulty monyes to be imported
or passed in payment in Turky, you shall take some fitt opportunity
to insinuate to the Grand Seig^{r.} and Vizier the mischeifs and
ill consequences of that abuse, and shall in some publick way, such
as you shall find most fitt, disowne the same in Relac͡on to the
English, and in case any English Factor shall transgresse therein,
either in importing those monyes or colouring them, or in receiuing
them by consignac͡on from others, wee do, with the aduice of our
Priuy-Councell, hereby giue you sufficient power & authority to
punish such offenders.
APPENDIX II
[_S.P. Turkey_, 19, at the Public Record Office.]
ROUGH DRAFT
Charles the Second by the Grace of the most High God, King of
Great Brittaine, France & Ireland, Defender of the Christian
Faith &c. To the most High & Mighty Emperor Sultan Mahomet Ham
Chiefe Lord and Commander of the Musulman Kingdome, sole and
Supream Monarch of the Easterne Empire, sendeth Greeting. Most
High & Mighty Emperor, Having received advice of the death of S^r
Daniel Harvey, Our late Ambassador in Your Court, and desiring
above all things to entertaine firme & inviolable on Our part
that Good Amity & Friendship which is between Us & You, to the
Mutuall benefit & advantage of both Our Subjects in their Trade
& Commerce, We have made choice of Our Trusty & Wellbeloved S^r
John Finch K^{nt} a Principall Gentleman of Our Court [lately Our
Resident with Our Cousin the Great Duke of Tuscany & Councellor
to Us in][312] Our Councell for matters relating to Our Forraigne
Colonies & Plantations, who is the Bearer of these Our Letters[313]
to reside at Your Port as Our Ambassador in the roome & place of
the said S^r Daniel Harvey, We pray you therefore to receive &
admitt him favourably to negotiate with You as Our Ambassador, &
to give entire beliefe & Credit to him in whatsoever he shall
at any time move, propose, or treate in Our name for the mutuall
good & welfare of Our Dominions & People Our Friends and Allyes,
the protection of Our Merchants trading into Your Empire from all
wrongs, oppressions & violence in their persons or Estates, & in
what else may conduce to the strengthening & increase of that
Amity, Commerce & good Correspondence, w^{ch} hath been soe long
continued between our Crownes & Subjects And which We on Our part
are resolved to preserve most sacred & inviolable. All whereof We
have given Our said Ambassador charge more particularly to assure
you, Not doubting but he will find in all things the same favour &
good respect with You w^{ch} his Predecessor the said S^r Daniel
Harvey reported to Us to have ever found from You & Your Ministers
in all his negotiations, For which We now acknowledge Our thankes,
& shall be ready to make on all occasions those returnes that may
expresse the particular esteeme, We have of y^r Friendship & Good
Will & soe We committ You & Your affaires to the Almighty.
Given at Our Court & Palace of Whitehall the ________ day of
November in the Yeare of Our Lord God one thousand six hundred
seventy & two & of Our Reigne the four & twentieth.
* * * * *
Charles the Second by the Grace of the most High God, King of Great
Brittaine, France & Ireland, Defender of the Christian Faith &c. To
the High & Excellent Lord the Vizier Azem, sendeth Greeting.
High & Excellent Lord, Having received advice of the death of
S^r Daniel Harvey Our Ambassador with the Grand Signior Your
Lord & Master, & being desirous by all means to provide for the
improvement & encrease of that Amity & Friendship w^{ch} We have
hitherto soe happily entertained with the Grand Signior to the
mutuall profit & content of both our subjects, We have made choice
of this Bearer Our Trusty & Wellbeloved servant S^r John Finch
K^t a principall Gentleman of Our Court & one of Our Councell for
matters relating to Our Forreigne Colonies & Plantations, as one
who by the Employments he hath held on Our part for many yeares
in Courts of severall Forreigne Princes, We have judged more
particularly qualified to succeed the said S^r Daniel Harvey, to
reside with the Grand Signior as Our Ambassador, to negotiate on
our part & soe doe & performe those Offices on all occasions, by
which the Amity & good Friendship between us may be strengthened &
confirmed, & Our Subjects reciprocally reap the fruit thereof in
their Trade & Commerce, and therefore considering the eminent place
You justly hold in the favour, as well as the businesse, of the
Grand Signior your Lord & Master, & in regard of the good affection
you have alwayes expressed to Us & Our affaires, of w^{ch} We shall
ever retaine a very particular sense, We have desired by this to
recommend Our said servant to your kindnesse, as one of whose
discreet & respectfull carriage towards your Master & your selfe
We are very confident & doe therefore pray you to receive him as
your friend, to believe him in what he shall at any time deliver
to you in Our name, & to be aiding to him in all occasions by your
authority and support, in what may concerne the preservation of
that Friendship & good correspondence that is between Our Kingdomes
& that Empire & w^{ch} We are resolved to observe inviolably on
our part, as We doubt not of the Justice & good Disposition of
the Grand Signior to doe at all times on his. In w^{ch} We againe
pray your best Offices, & soe leaving Our said Ambassador in Your
favour, We recommend You to that of the Almighty.
Given at Our Court & Palace of Whitehall the ________ day of
November in the yeare of Our Lord God one thousand six hundred
seventy & two & of Our Reigne the four & twentieth.
Your affectionate Friend.
FOOTNOTES:
[312] This sentence is crossed out; the Great Duke being the
Sultan’s enemy, the fact that Sir John came from his Court would
scarcely be a recommendation!
[313] Here the following is added in the margin: “After haveing
served Us with good satisfac͡on s̶e̶v̶e̶r̶a̶l many yeares in
severall Foreigne Negotiac͡ons.”
APPENDIX III
The Levant Company’s Charter of 1605, which established it in
perpetuity, superseding the earlier patents granted by Elizabeth
for a limited number of years, conferred on the Merchants full
power “to name, choose, and appoint at their will and pleasure”
Consuls or Vice-Consuls; but on the point of the Ambassador it was
silent, unless the Company’s right to name him might be inferred
from a clause which authorised it “to assign, appoint, create, and
ordain such and so many officers and ministers,” both at home and
abroad, as “shall seem expedient for the doing and executing of
the affairs and business appertaining to the said Company.” At the
same time, the Merchants were authorised, “for the sustentation of
the necessary stipends and other charges,” to levy upon all goods
transported from England to the Levant or vice versa, and upon
every ship so employed, such sums of money, “by way of Consulage
or otherwise,” as “to them shall seem requisite and convenient.”
[The original is to be found in _S.P. Levant Company_, 107, at the
Public Record Office; for a printed copy see M. Epstein’s _Early
History of the Levant Company_, London, 1908, Appendix I.]
The Parliamentary ordinance of 1643 accorded to the Merchants
explicitly “free choice and removal of all ministers by them
maintained at home and abroad, whether they be dignified and called
by the name of Ambassadors, Governors, Deputies, Consuls, or
otherwise,” and also recognised in specific terms their right to
levy import and export duties on foreign merchandise carried under
the English flag to and from the Levant (“Strangers’ Consulage”),
as well as on English merchandise (“Native Consulage”). Thus the
Company obtained an official recognition of its claim to appoint
the Ambassador and an undisputed power over all the funds by which
the Embassy was maintained.
The new Charter of 1661, though not ratifying the Company’s claim
to appoint the Ambassador, sanctioned its hold upon both kinds
of Consulage. [See the Charter in _S.P. Levant Company_, 108.]
In other words, the Merchants retained the material means of
keeping, and therefore, by implication, the right of appointing the
Ambassador.
In 1668, when, upon the recall of Lord Winchilsea, the question of
a choice of Ambassador once more arose, Sir Sackville Crow, still
smarting from his grievances, presented to Charles a vindictive
Memorial in which he recapitulated the old disputes and urged
him to recover “one of the Supreme Prerogatives of your Crowne,
viz. the Election of the Ambassadours for Turky,” by depriving
the Company of the Consulage which enabled it to maintain and,
in consequence, to claim the right of naming, the Ambassador.
Otherwise, he said, His Majesty’s envoys, by depending entirely
on the Company for their maintenance, would be the Merchants’
“stipendiaries and vassalls, and obliged to serve theire Lustes and
Pleasures (good or badd) agaynst the Law or Crowne, whereof his
late Majestie had too sadde an experience and may justly caution
your Majestie to take care of and provide agaynst.”[314]
Nothing came of this instigation, and the anomalous position of the
Constantinople Embassy continued for ages a source of intermittent
friction.
FOOTNOTE:
[314] _Narrative Levant Companies Proceedings with the Crowne And
my Petition to His Majesty thereon for Examination_, in _S.P.
Turkey_, 19. Cp. _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series_,
1667-1668, pp. 226, 230.
APPENDIX IV
Ahmed Kuprili’s age is uncertain: “only thirty years of age”--Lord
Winchilsea to Secretary Nicholas, Nov. 11-21, 1661 [_S.P. Turkey_,
17]; “Not exceeding 32 years of Age”--Sir Paul Rycaut, 1661
[_Memoirs_, p. 82]; “The Vizier, they say, exceeds not the age of
two and thirty yeares”--Geo. Etherege[315] to Joseph Williamson,
“R. 8 May 1670” [_S.P. Turkey_, 19], which would make him at his
accession only 24. John Covel in 1675 writes: “He is, they say, 44
years old, though, for my own part, I guesse him not above 40, if
so much” [_Diaries_, p. 195]. Covel’s guess would make Ahmed at the
time of his accession 26--an estimate which coincides with Hammer’s
statement: “Kœprilu Ahmed, alors âgé de vingt-six ans” [_Histoire
de l’Empire Ottoman_, vol xi. p. 113].
Concerning his merits contemporary English opinion is unanimous.
“He was one of the best Ministers that People ever knew” [_Life of
Dudley North_, p. 72]. “This great Kupriogle was a Man of Honour
... and just” [Covel’s _Account of the Greek Church_, Pref., p.
lii.]. “He is prudent and just, not to be corrupted by money,
the general vice of this country, nor inclined to cruelty as his
father was” [George Etherege, _loc. cit._]. “Very prudent, honest
... not given to blood as his father, not mercenary, an enemy to
_avanias_ and false pretences ... just in his decrees” [Lord
Winchilsea, “Memorandums touching the Turkish Empire” (1669), in
_Finch Report_, p. 522]. Sir Paul Rycaut gives him the character
of “a prudent and Politick Person,” speaks of his “gentleness and
moderation,” and adds that “he was not a Person who delighted in
bloud, and in that respect of an humour far different from the
temper of his Father. He was generous, and free from Avarice, a
rare Vertue in a Turk!... In the administration of Justice very
punctual and severe” [_Memoirs_, p. 333].
Equally unanimous is the evidence as regards his favour to the
English. “I shall apply myself to the Vizier and doubt not to have
all satisfaction from him, being assur’d of his good will to us
and aptness to favor us in all our reasonable demands”--Sir Daniel
Harvey to Lord Arlington, Jan. 31, 1669 [-70]; “Your Lordship may
be assurd our merchants heer in Turkie are soe farr from meeting
with any obstruction in their affayrs, that they have all the
countenance and incouradgment the publick ministers which reside
in those places where we have factories can give them and that
not without some preference to other nations”--the Same to the
Same, April 30, 1671; “As to the honour and privilege which our
Nation enjoyeth here, and security of our persons and estates
under the Turkes, it is beyond the example of former times”--Paul
Rycaut, Smyrna, July 26, 1675 [_S.P. Turkey_, 19]. Cp. “He was
very observant of the Capitulations between our King and the Grand
Signior, being ready to do Justice upon any corrupt Minister who
pertinaciously violated and transgressed them” [_Memoirs_, p.
333]. “And whereas under the Government of Kuperlee Ahmet Pasha
... our Merchants enjoyed great security and freedome in the
Trade....”--Charles II. to the Grand Vizir, Whitehall, Dec. 28,
1680 [_Register_, 1668-1710, pp. 99-100, _S.P. Levant Company_,
145].
FOOTNOTE:
[315] The celebrated Restoration dramatist. He had gone with Sir
Daniel Harvey to Turkey as his Secretary and, in the winter of
1669-70, accompanied him to Salonica, where the Ambassador had
his audience of the Grand Signor. Of this, Sir George Etherege’s
first step in the diplomatic service, no mention is made in the
article on him in the _Dictionary of National Biography_. The one
letter from him on Turkish affairs and personalities preserved at
the Public Record Office makes us wish for more: a better informed
or better written document does not exist in all the Turkey State
Papers.
APPENDIX V
Two such instances may be quoted as affording an instructive
parallel to the present case. In 1661 the Algerines complained
“That the ship the _Goodwill_, bound, with the persons and goods
of several Turkish passengers from Tunis to Smyrna, meeting with
some Maltese galleys, without any dispute or contest, resigned them
up all with their estates into the hands of the Grand Signor’s
enemies. That another ship, the _Angel_, had done the like to the
Venetian fleet and rather sought excuses to cover the treachery
than means to avoid the enemy”--Lord Winchilsea to Secretary
Nicholas, Adrianople, Jan. 13, 1661-2 [_S.P. Turkey_, 17].
APPENDIX VI
The Instructions given by the Levant Company to every new
Ambassador and Consul contain a clause to this effect: “If you
shall find any of our Factors or others of the English Nation to be
notoriously addicted to Gaming, Drinking, Whoreing, or any other
licentious course of life, to the dishonour of God, the scandal of
our Religion and Nation, their principalls’ damage, and the ill
example of others, wee doe straitly require and recommend to you
to endeavour to reclaim them by your good admonitions or, finding
them incorrigible, to give us speedy notice of such persons to the
end some other course may be taken with them.” [See Instructions to
Sir Daniel Harvey (1668); to Lord Chandos (1681); to Sir William
Trumbull (1687); to Sir William Hussey (1690); to Lord Pagett
(1693); to Sir Robert Sutton (1701); to Paul Rycaut, Smyrna (1668);
to Thomas Metcalfe, Aleppo (1687); to George Brandon, Aleppo
(1700); to William Sherrard, Smyrna (1703); to William Pilkington,
Aleppo (1708)--_Register_, 1668-1710, _S.P. Levant Company_,
145; _Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series_, 1667-8.] The
repetition of this injunction shows at once how necessary and how
ineffective it was.
Another means employed by the Company to combat licentiousness
deserves attention. Macaulay has grossly exaggerated the scarcity
of books during the 17th century.[316] From John Evelyn’s letters,
Pepys’s diary, and many other contemporary sources, it is clear
that England abounded both in private and in public libraries:
Norwich had one since 1608, Bristol since 1615, Leicester since
1632, Manchester since 1653. As to the English in the Levant,
that even there books were not lacking for those who cared to
make use of them is proved by two documents before me. The first
is “A Catalogue of the Library belonging to the English Nation at
Aleppo, taken in the year of our Lord 1688”--seven folio pages,
giving the titles of 210 works. The other is “A Catalogue of the
Books in the Library belonging to the English Nation at Smyrna.
Taken in the year of our Lord 1702”--a list of some 110 volumes.
[_Register_, pp. 157-164, 301-304, _S.P. Levant Company_, 145.] But
these collections, apparently formed under the inspiration of the
chaplains and, one might suspect, for their own benefit, consisted
mostly of Theological, Classical, Historical, and other ponderous
tomes hardly calculated to allure gay young sportsmen. With the
exception of “Lovelace his Poems, 8o Lond. 1649,” light literature
is represented in them by nothing lighter than “Bacon his Essayes,
12o Lond. 1664,” and “Lock, of Understanding, Lond. 1690.”
FOOTNOTE:
[316] Of that popular historian’s way of writing history one
instance will suffice. He cites Roger North’s Life of his brother
John as evidence that the booksellers’ shops in Little Britain
were crowded by readers who could not afford to purchase books
(_History of England_, 4th ed. vol. i. p. 392). In point of
fact, what North says is that scholars went to Little Britain,
“a plentiful and perpetual Emporium of learned Authors,” as to a
Market. “This drew to the place a mighty Trade; the rather because
the Shops were spacious, and the learned gladly resorted to them,
where they seldom failed to meet with agreeable Conversation. And
the Booksellers themselves were knowing and conversible Men, with
whom, for the sake of bookish Knowledge, the greatest Wits were
pleased to converse.” (_Life of the Hon. and Rev. Dr. John North_,
1742, p. 241.) North’s whole intention is to draw a picture of the
abundance and diffusion of books at the time, in contrast with the
opposite state of things which, he asserts, prevailed at a later
period, when the bookselling trade had “contracted into the Hands
of two or three Persons,” with the result that bookshops diminished
in number, deteriorated in quality, and, as places of resort, were
superseded by the tavern or the coffee-house.
APPENDIX VII
When Macaulay, in his Third Chapter, depicted the English squire of
the 17th century as looking down upon those of his neighbours who
“were so unfortunate as to be the great grandsons of aldermen,” he
attributed to a past age prejudices derived from his own. A little
serious investigation might have taught him better. The Earl of
Danby, afterwards Marquis of Caermarthen (1680) and Duke of Leeds
(1694), was the great grandson of an alderman--the clothworker
Sir Edward Osborne, one of the founders of the Levant Company.
The Norths, whose _Lives_ he often quotes, emerged from obscurity
when the first North of whom we have any distinct knowledge
settled in London and became a merchant, sometime before the end
of the fifteenth century; his son rising to the peerage about the
middle of the next century. Sir John Finch’s brother, the Earl of
Nottingham, married the daughter of Daniel Harvey (about 1650); his
cousin, the Earl of Winchilsea, the daughter of John Ayres (1681);
and his successor at the Constantinople Embassy, Lord Chandos, the
daughter of Sir Henry Barnard (about 1670)--all of them merchants
of London. Another London merchant, Sir Josiah Child, as Macaulay
himself notes, married his daughter to the eldest son of the Duke
of Beaufort (1683). Further illustrations of the absence of any
chasm between the two classes will readily occur to any student of
literary history. For instance, the father of Sir Thomas Browne
(who was born in London in 1605), a merchant, sprang from a good
Cheshire family; the father of John Milton (who was born in London
in 1608), a scrivener, came of an ancient Oxfordshire stock; Edward
Gibbon was descended from a younger son of the Gibbons of Kent,
who, at the beginning of the seventeenth century, had migrated to
the City of London and become a clothworker. In mentioning this
fact, Gibbon very truly remarks that “our most respectable families
have not disdained the counting-house or even the shop” (_Memoirs
of My Life and Writings_, 1st ed., p. 5). Hume also, in speaking
of the Commonwealth, observes, “the prevalence of democratical
principles engaged the country gentlemen to bind their sons
apprentices to merchants” (_History of England_, chap. lxii.): he
is only wrong in the time he assigns to this social revolution--it
was much older than the Commonwealth, and was due to economic
causes rather than to political principles.
APPENDIX VIII
Of all the excesses of the age the most fashionable was excess in
drink. Smyrna was particularly famous for a kind of wine which
connoisseurs pronounced only inferior to Canary:[317] so excellent,
indeed, was this wine that a butt of it formed a most acceptable
present from an English Ambassador to a Secretary of State.[318]
The Franks made it in their own houses, buying the grapes in the
town. In the circumstances, it is not surprising that inebriation
nowhere attained greater heights than at Smyrna. When ships from
home came into port, captains and merchants vied with each other in
feats of conviviality. Here is a picture of these jollifications
drawn by a competent and appreciative eye-witness: “_Les marchands
vont quelquefois se divertir à bord des vaisseaux.... Ils y
viennent de bon matin et s’en retournent fort tard. Très souvent
les conviés ont besoin qu’on les mette dans leurs bateaux avec
des palans, de crainte que les pieds leur manquent en descendant
par les échelles. Cette précaution est sage et nécessaire après
ces sortes de longs festins où l’on a bu beaucoup, et, pour
l’ordinaire, beaucoup trop.... Quand les divertissements se font
à terre chez les marchands, et surtout chez les Anglois, on ne
peut rien ajouter à la magnificence des festins ni à la quantité
de vin qui s’y boit. Après qu’on a cassé tous les verres et les
bouteilles, on s’en prend aux miroirs et aux meubles. On casse et
on brise tout pour faire honneur à ceux à qui on boit et on pousse
quelquefois la débauche si loin que, ne trouvant plus rien à
casser, on fait allumer un grand feu et on y jette les chapeaux,
les perruques, et les habits, jusqu’aux chemises, après quoi ces
messieurs sont obligés de demeurer au lit jusqu’à ce qu’on leur ait
fait d’autres habits._”[319]
FOOTNOTES:
[317] Thevenot, _Travels into the Levant_, Part I. p. 92 (Eng. tr.
1687).
[318] Sir Daniel Harvey to Lord Arlington, Dec. 9, 1668; Jan. 31,
1670; Paul Rycaut to the Same, June 29, 1671, _S.P. Turkey_, 19.
[319] D’Arvieux, _Mémoires_, t. i. pp. 131-2.
APPENDIX IX