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The two manuscript diaries which are published in this volume give us the experiences of men who resided in Constantinople during the earlier days of the Levant Company. When Master Thomas Dallam went with the present of a marvellous organ from Queen Elizabeth to the Sultan Mahomed III in 1599, our Company of Turkey Merchants had scarcely organised themselves. When Dr. Covel went as chaplain to the embassy in 1670, the Company was still struggling to gain for itself those rights—or capitulations, as they are called—which formed the basis of the prosperity of the Company during the ensuing century and a half. Consequently, I think, a succinct account of the rise of this Company will form a suitable introduction to the perusal of the diaries themselves.

In the development of our system of commerce the Company of Turkey Merchants played a most important part, second perhaps only to the great East India Company, and its history is the history of one of those pillars on which British prosperity has been constructed. It was a marked feature of the sixteenth century, when all those Companies—the African Company, the Muscovy Company, the East India Company—all had their rise, and by them was laid the foundation of our subsequent mercantile successes. The Levant Company lived an active life of 244 years; and, besides the amount of wealth it accumulated for this country, it did infinite service in the development of art and research, geography and travel, the suppression of slavery, and the spread of civilisation in countries which would still have been unapproachable had not the continued efforts of the 244 years been towards civilisation and humanity.

The history of the capitulations or treaties with which foreign nations sought to establish themselves in the greatest centre of commercial enterprise before the opening out of other routes to India is a very interesting one, and dates back to remote ages, when commercial bodies were formed in the city of Constantine, at the time when the power of the Greek emperors was on the wane. As far back as the ninth and tenth centuries of our era, the emperors of the East granted to the Warings or Varangians from Scandinavia capitulations or rights of exterritoriality, which gave them permission to own wharves, carry on trade, and govern themselves in the Eastern capital: these rights established numerous imperia in imperio during the succeeding centuries in Constantinople. The Venetians obtained them early in the eleventh century; the Amalfians in 1056, the Genoese in 1098, and the Pisans in 1110, and henceforward they became so general, that the Greeks of the later empire complained that there were no wharves for themselves, and that they could not compete with these indefatigable foreign traders; much as we hear complaints now amongst our own artisans of the influx of German and Belgian workmen into England.

When the Turks took Constantinople they did little to interfere with the existing order of things: the Genoese and Venetians got their capitulations renewed; the right to have disputes with their fellow-countrymen decided by their own authorities; the right to have questions between them and Ottoman subjects decided only in presence of a Venetian interpreter; exemption from the tax imposed on Christians in lieu of military service; and the right to appoint their own magistrates in Constantinople. Being a nomadic race, the Ottoman Turks cared little for commerce: their ships were the caïques of the Greeks; their emperors wrote their decrees in red ink, as their Greek predecessors had done; and to the foreign traders who flocked to Constantinople they gave the same privileges that the Greek emperors had done, and, as far as they were concerned, the status quo was maintained.

Meanwhile trade was passing westwards; the time was come when the Portuguese, the French, and finally the English were to succeed the Italian republics as the commercial nations of the world.

In 1536 Sieur Foret arranged a capitulation for the French between Sultan Solyman I and Francis I, and the essential articles of this treaty have been often redrawn and embodied in many treaties with the different European Powers, and still remain as the foundation of the many treaties under which foreigners now live in Constantinople: matters of dispute between Frenchmen were to be decided only by their own authorities; questions between Frenchmen and Turks were to be decided only in the presence of the French dragoman; they could appoint their own magistrates, and were exempt from the harach. This was the first of what we may call the modern capitulations, by which the Western nations have obtained their footing in Constantinople; they are by no means an invention of the Turks, but a distinct inheritance from the old Byzantine days, which they were compelled to adopt, and which has turned out to be as great a boon to the Mussulman as to the foreigner who obtained it.

In proportion to the exigencies of the Turk and his want of money, the system of capitulations has increased in strength. Encroachments have occurred; fresh clauses have had to be introduced to meet the subtleties of the Turk; the so-called avanias, of which we shall hear more in Dr. Covel’s diary, had to be combated; but, nevertheless, the progress has been continuous, and no Company has contributed more to the success of the foreigner on Turkish soil than the “Turkey Merchants” of England.

During the reign of Elizabeth, our infantile commercial adventures were beginning to make themselves felt. Early in the sixteenth century there had been a few isolated cases of voyages to the Levant in search of wealth. From 1511 to 1534 we hear of certain “tall ships belonging to London, Southampton, and Bristol, which made voyages to the East, trading with Sicily, Crete, Chios, and sometimes Cyprus, Tripoli, and Beyrout in Syria”; but there appears to have been no systematic commerce carried on in English bottoms in those days, most of the trade between the Levant and England being conducted by the Venetians. So far back as 1513 we had a consul established at Chios, and in 1534 (Hakluyt, vol. ii, p. 98) we read of an exciting voyage made by The Holy Cross and The Matthew Gonson to Crete and Chios, both ships coming back much the worse for wear. In 1550 Captain Bodenham, with “the great Barke Aucher”, went to Chios, and three years later Anthony Jenkinson went to Aleppo, and got trading privileges “on a footing with the most favoured nations”. This was the actual foundation of our future capitulations, and the first commencement of our Levant Company.

Up to this time the carrying trade between England and the Levant had been carried on, on ships called argosies, by the Venetians. Sir Paul Ricaut, son of a London merchant, who was born in 1620, was secretary to Lord Winchilsea, and consul at Smyrna for eleven years; he wrote, by the direction of Charles II, a work entitled The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches. He also wrote a book entitled The Present State of the Turkish Empire, a very interesting work, the first edition of which, Pepys tells us, was destroyed in the Great Fire of London. In this work he tells us that the ships known as argosies were so called because they were built at Ragusa for the Venetian merchants. “These vast carracks called argosies, which are so famed for the vastness of their burthen and bulk, were corruptly so denominated from Ragosies, ships of Ragusa.” The Ragusans, as merchants, were much to the fore in those days, prior to the great earthquake, and had, as we see from Dr. Covel’s diary, an ambassador of their own at Constantinople.

“Your mind is tossing on the ocean;

There, where your argosies, with portly sail,—

Like signiors and rich burghers on the flood,

Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea,—

Do over-peer the petty traffickers,

That curt’sy to them, do them reverence,

As they fly by them with their woven wings.”

(Shakes., Merchant of Venice, Act i, Scene 1.)

One of these argosies was wrecked off the Isle of Wight about 1575, and it is said that the Venetians refused to bring merchandise into such dangerous seas after this catastrophe. Perhaps this argosy may be the very one which suggested to Shakespeare the shipwreck of the Venetian merchantman. At any rate, this fact obliged individual action on the part of the English merchants of the day, and at once necessitated the formation of a distinct Company, if the trade with the Levant was to be continued.

Another point also contributed to the starting of an independent trade with the Levant, namely, a quarrel with Venice concerning the duties on currants (State Papers, Domestic, 11th April, 1606). In 1575 Venice had granted a patent to one Acerbo Velutelli, a native of Lucca, which gave him the sole right of importing to England currants and oil from Venetian dominions. Velutelli contrived to get these articles conveyed to England on English ships, and, by exacting an export duty for his own benefit, enriched himself and impoverished the Venetian traders. Venice then imposed a fine of 5s. 6d. on currants and oil conveyed to England in other than Venetian bottoms. Elizabeth retaliated by a similar fine on their importation, and for a time trade in these commodities was at a standstill.

Yet another, and that a political, cause promoted our intercourse with Turkey. Queen Elizabeth was just entering into her vital contest with Philip II of Spain, and to secure the alliance and co-operation of the Sultan was one of her favourite schemes at this critical juncture. Until the reign of Amurath III the English had been altogether strangers to Turkey; but in 1579 three merchants were sent to Constantinople—William Harebone, Edward Ellis, and Richard Staple—to spy out the land, as it were, and, if possible, obtain for English merchants the same social and commercial privileges that other nations enjoyed. Two years later Queen Elizabeth formed a treaty charter with Amurath III for five years, in which he styles himself “the most sacred Mussulman-like Emperor”, and she also granted letters patent to a small Company entitled “The Company of Merchants of the Levant”, consisting of Sir E. Osborne, Thomas Smith, Stephen and William Garret—“because they had found out and opened a trade in Turkey, not known in the memory of any man now living to be frequented by our progenitors.”

The first of the Company’s ships to trade with the Levant was sent out in 1582. It was called The Great Susan, and William Harebone, the first ambassador from England to the Ottoman Porte, was carried out by her. He established factories at Constantinople, obtained capitulations from the Porte, and regularly inaugurated our trade there. Harebone was considerably assisted by the great Vizier Sokolli and the Sultan’s tutor, the learned historian Seadedin, in his negotiations. (Von Hammer.)

At the same time it is evident that commercial objects were not paramount in Queen Elizabeth’s mind, but a desire to obtain the Sultan as an ally against her formidable enemy. In her letters to the Sultan she takes advantage of the well-known horror the Mahommedans have of image-worship, and styles herself, “the unconquered and most puissant defender of the true faith against the idolaters who falsely profess the name of Christ”.

In 1587 her agent in Constantinople presented a petition to Sultan Amurath III, for assistance against the Spanish Armada, imploring him to send help “against that idolater, the King of Spain, who, relying on the help of the Pope and all idolatrous princes, designs to crush the Queen of England, and then to turn his whole power to the destruction of the Sultan, and make himself universal monarch.”

Christendom, luckily for the reputation of Elizabeth, never saw an alliance between the Crescent and the Cross of so peculiar a nature brought to any ultimate result. The Sultan promised, but did nothing. Turkey was already on the decline, and her internal troubles occupied her sufficiently. Ranke, vol. i, p. 433, speaks of “the advances made by the English Government to the Turks in the time of Elizabeth”, and this factor had no doubt as much to do with the formation of the Levant Company as anything else.

In 1586 a charter was granted to fifty-three individuals, with power to trade in the Levant; and though, of course, the ambassador resided at Constantinople, in those days the principal mart of English trade was Aleppo, where Michael Locke was at that time consul, whose account of the condition of affairs in that city is quaint and interesting. He also speaks of the trade of Chios being great some years before, and alludes to it as “the great store of sundry commodities”, and further states that in 1593 tin was the principal article of export from England. He founded a factory at Aleppo which was one of the most flourishing in the Levant for 150 years. The outlet of this commerce was Scanderoon, and we find all the vessels which traded to the East, including the ship Hector, which took Master Dallam out, going to Scanderoon before Constantinople.

Sir Edward Barton was the first resident ambassador at Constantinople. Harebone had evidently been only sent out as a plenipotentiary extraordinary to inaugurate the intercourse with the Levant. Hakluyt (vol. ii) gives us an account of the present which Sir Edward Barton took out on the ship Ascension in 1593 for the Sultan Amurath III: “12 goodly pieces of plate, 36 garments of cloth of all colours, 20 garments of cloth of gold, 10 garments of satin, 6 pieces of fine Holland, and certain other things of good value.” To his powerful wife, the Sultana Safiye, Queen Elizabeth sent a “jewel of her Majesty’s picture set with rubies and diamonds; 3 pieces of gilt plate; 10 garments of cloth of gold; a very fine case of glasse bottles, silver and gilt; and 2 pieces of fine Holland.” With Mahomed III, who succeeded his father, Amurath III, in 1595, Sir E. Barton seems to have been on most intimate terms, carrying on the traditional alliance, and hopes of possible hope of support which had been started in his father’s reign.

Mahomed III was the eldest son of Amurath, one of his 103 children. He was a son of his Venetian wife and favourite, the Sultana Safiye, a lady of the House of Baffo, who had been captured by a Turkish corsair in her youth. Mahomed III put nineteen of his brothers to death on his accession, the grossest instance of fratricide even in Turkish annals. He was at the outset of his reign chiefly engaged in wars in Hungary, and in these Sir Edward Barton accompanied him. They ended in the victory of Cerestes, and, on his return to Constantinople, Sir E. Barton, worn out by the rigours of the campaign, died. In Sultan Mahomed III’s letter to Queen Elizabeth, in 1596, he thus alludes to Sir E. Barton: “As to your highnesse’s well-beloved Ambassador at our blessed Porte, Edward Barton, one of the nation of the Messiah, he having been enjoined by us to follow our imperial camp without having been enabled previously to obtain your highness’s permission to go with my imperial Staff, we have reason to be satisfied, and to hope that also your highness will know how to appreciate the services he has thus rendered to us in our imperial camp.”

Mustapha, the first Turkish envoy to England in 1607, also alludes to Sir E. Barton: “Mr. Barton was in the army ... when Raab, alias Severin, was won from the Christians.”

Sir E. Barton came of a Yorkshire family, and was sent out to Constantinople as ambassador in 1593, with the title of “Agent for her Majesty with the Grand Seignior”. Subsequently, however, he received his stipend from the Levant Company. He died at Chalki, one of the Prince’s Islands, in 1597, and was buried at the monastery there. His tombstone (which Dr. Covel saw, vide p. 281) was displaced and put over the door of the monastery wrong way up, until Lord Strangford had it put in its present position, and the following inscription is still legible:—

“Eduardo Barton, Illustrissimo Serenissimo Anglorum Reginæ Oratori viro præstantissimo, qui post reditum a bello Ungarico quo cum invicto Turcorum imperatore, profectus fuerat diem obiit, pietatis ergo, ætatis anno xxxv. Sal. vero MDXCVII XVIII Kal. Januar.”

Mr. Henry Lello was appointed to succeed Sir E. Barton. From the Venetian Baily’s report we learn about his reception by the Sultan. He calls him Sir Henry Billoe (Von Hammer), but this is an obvious mistake. Sir Henry Lello wrote regularly to England an account of affairs as they progressed at Constantinople. His term of office is chiefly marked by a prolonged quarrel with the French ambassador, to which Dallam refers in his MS. (vide p. 81), to settle which the Baily of Venice, one of the Capello family, was chosen arbiter.

Sir Henry Lello’s correspondence is now in the Record Office, and from one of his letters we learn officially how the Sultan received the present which Dallam took out. I herewith transcribe a considerable portion of it as bearing very good testimony to the accuracy of Master Thomas Dallam’s MS.:—

“S. P. Foreign, Turkey, No. 4.

“Henry Lello to Sʳ Robᵗ Cecil, 21 Oct. 1599.

“Right Honorable,—I omitted the last curier, for that I could not then, nor yet cannott, advize yoʳ honnoʳ of that good succes of my ymployment heere wᵗʰ the Gʳ Signior, as I expected, by the meanes of the french Ambassador, who, with his great bribes (receyvinge now the Pope’s pay), sparethe nothinge to hinder all my desingnes in mallice, seinge the reputation of Her Majesty is so great in this port, and cheefly for the consulledge of forrestiers, wᶜʰ the Grand Signior lyttle after the arrivall of the shipp graunted should come under Her Majesty’s banner, nothwithstandinge the same was formerly graunted by his father and him sealfe, proffering all other reasonable demaunds wᶜʰ her Majesty should desire, countinge hir frindshipp before that of any other Christian Prince, rejoysinge greatly to see the shipp to come into port, and more hir princely presents, espetially the instrument and plate, whereof hee made great accompt, and at the tyme apoynted mee to come present the same; he made demonstration therof by spekinge himsealf to me wᶜʰ hath not ever bin used (as is reported) to any Cristian prince’s ambassador, the manner whereof in breefe I doe hereby advize yoʳ honnor.

“Althoughe he kept his court out of the Cittie, yett cam hee home of purpose for mee to delliver her Majestie’s letter and present, and to kisse his hand, at wᶜʰ tyme I apoynted to attend upon me xii gentlemen on horsebacke, vested in cloth of gould and silver, a gentlem̅ usher, ii pages in white damaske, 20 menn in livery gownes, xii merchaunts, desently apparelled merchaunt-like in blacke, and my sealf attired as richly as I might.

“The captains of the Chowses and Spahees (Chiauses and Spahis) were sent to accompany and entertayne mee to the Gʳ Signior his pallace, where first in open court before the Gʳ Signior, his Pashas, or Counsellors, I declared to them her Maᵗʸᵉ’ˢ pleasure, salutations, and requests.

“Conferring about divers late accidents, espetially of her Majestie’s forces against Spaine, and of the peace made betweene him and the French Kinge, wᶜʰ thay all seemed to dislike, we spent a smale tyme untill the banquett ordayned for mee was provided; which being furnished, only I, Halul Pasha, the Cheefe Vizier, and a first Pasha, late general of Scelestia (Silistria), sate at one Table, the other Pashas satt apart by them sealves; at another, a lyttle distant from us, satt the ii Cadiliskers, or cheefe Judges of all this empire, and apart from them ii of the high Tresorors; by them satt alone the highe chaunsellors, every one served accordinge to his degree, but our Table furnished wᵗʰ the allowance and dayenties as are usually served to the Gʳ Sʳ, in great variety and abundance; wᶜʰ finished, order was sent by the Gʳ Sʳ that before our entrance unto him bothe I and my gentlemenn should be clothed in vests out of his Tresorie, wᶜʰ were there scarcely found, yet had I ii, and ten for my gentlemenn; and so, in company of the Vizeires, I entered into the presence chamber, where the Grand Sigioʳ satt uppon a cushion of red sattin most richly ymbrodred wᵗʰ pearls, and all his chamber floored with Redd sattin Ritchly ymbrodered wᵗʰ gould; and, omyttinge the sumptuousnes of the sight, coming to deliver my Ambassadge unto him, I first salluted him in her Highnes’ name; secondly, declared to him the good intelligence betweene her Highnes and his father,[1] and of the bennefitt therof to both their dom̅nions and subieckts; thirdly, I ymformed him of Her Majesty’s pleasure for my Confirmation in former charge of Ambassador, requiringe therein not only his Highnes’ consent, but princely favour in all future occations; and, lastly, recom̅ended unto him the affayres of her merchaunts traffickinge in his dom̅nions, wher unto hee him sealf answered as afore, sainge he did much reioyce at Her Majesty’s frindshipp, and prayed God that shee might allwayes have the victory over her enemyes as hether unto. Lastly, he tould me I should receyve sattisfaction of all I desiered, Licensinge me to departe. I was accompanied with Chiauses and other his officers to my house, having binn both outward and homward Salluted wᵗʰ divers tiers of artillery from the Shipp, for wᶜʰ and the favour of the Grand Signoʳ shewed me that day ministred many dayes after occation to speak of my Entertainment.

“But this while thinkinge my sealf sure of all things, the French ambassador, with his bribe of 6,000 chickins,[2] did not only over throughe our former graunt of counsolledge of forresteeres, but all other demandes I made, besides the confirmation of our ould Capittulations, the Vizeer denienge me audience to shew reason for my just demands.”

[Then follows a long account of his difficulties owing to the interference of the French ambassador, and certain details concerning the war in Hungary; and the letter closes as follows:—]

“I comitt yoʳ honnoʳ to Gode’s most mercifull protection this 21ᵗʰ of October 1599. Yoʳ honnoʳˢ most dewtifull

“Ever to comand,

“Henry Lello.”

Addressed—

“To the right Honᵇˡᵉ Sir Robert Cecill, knight, principal secrʳⁱᵉ to the Queen’s most Exᵗ Magᵗⁱᵉ and Her Highnes’ honorable privie Counseill.”