Early voyages and travels in the Levant

by John Covel; Thomas Dallam

§ 3.—Of the further Progress of the Levant Company.

It was understood from the first that the Levant Company should pay and appoint the consuls, ambassadors, and other officials of their Company, though difficulties arose on this point between the Government and the Company concerning the salary of Sir Edward Barton. Affairs seem to have gone on smoothly till 1600, when the monopoly was removed, and the Company had to struggle on as best it could against competition which proved almost fatal to it at the very outset of its career.

Accordingly, in 1605, we find petitions from the Company to James I, complaining that they could no longer pay the salaries of the ambassadors and consuls, and that they feared that the Turks might seize their factories and buildings in the Turkish towns. Lord Salisbury entered into consultation with Chief Justice Popham on the subject, and the result was that, on the 14th December 1606, letters patent were granted by James I which may really be said to have established the Company on a permanent basis. The five years’ terminable licences were made perpetual, and privileges were granted to several persons and their sons, and such others as should be after admitted. The Company was to have the monopoly of all the Levant trade: in fact, the English traffic of nearly all the Mediterranean was handed over exclusively to the Company, which was to be open to all merchants who could pay £50 towards the expenses of carrying on the trade, the salary of the ambassadors and consuls, and the presents which, from time to time, were necessary to be given to the Sultan to keep him favourably disposed, and the first year’s “imposition”, or tax of £5,322, was handed over to the Company to assist in tiding over a time of difficulty.

Thomas Glover, who had been one of Thomas Dallam’s companions on board the ship Hector on his journey out, was ambassador at this time, with power to appoint consuls and regulate the trade for the Company. It does not appear what emolument he got from the Company, but it was doubtless considerable, as he was forbidden to trade on his own account, and, under his skilful management, the successful career of the Levant Company was inaugurated.

It was absolutely necessary in those early days of mercantile enterprise to give the monopoly of the Levant trade to one Company; only a rich and united body, with the privileges accorded to them by their capitulations, could carry on such trade. It was necessary, for the safety of the ships, that they should sail in large numbers for mutual protection from Dunkirkers, corsairs, and other hostile craft, and hence very strict penalties were imposed on private individuals who sought to carry on trade under the protection of the Company without actually belonging to it. The celebrated case of Bates, who refused to pay a tax to the Company on currants, and drove them off in his own cart from the wharf, was tried shortly after this, and when it was decided in the Company’s favour, their monopoly was clearly established.

In the reign of James I the Company received the name of “The Governor and Company of Merchants of England trading to the Levant Seas”, and the arms of a ship with three masts in full sail between two rocks. Their crest was a demi sea-horse salient; their supporters two sea-horses; and their motto, “Deo Respublicæ et amicis.”

In 1612, Mr. Paul Pindar, another of Thomas Dallam’s companions on board the ship Hector, succeeded Sir Thomas Glover as ambassador for the Company to the Porte.

In 1623, Sir T. Roe was ambassador. He got a salary of £1,800 per ann. from the Company, besides a portion of the consulage and other advantages, but at the same time he was forbidden to carry on a trade of any kind. During this period the Levant Company continued to make satisfactory progress, and the only thing to remark is the controversies which, during the reigns of James I and Charles I, raged between the regulated Companies, namely, the Levant Company and Merchant Adventurers, against the East India Company, which, as then constituted, they considered as the monopoly of a few which told against the monopoly of larger corporate bodies.

In 1643 further privileges were granted to the Levant Company. In an ordinance of both Houses, upholding the Levant Merchants, dated 9th of March 1643, the following points occur:—

“That for the better supportation and encouragement of the Fellowship of merchants of England, trading to the Levant Seas, which, besides the building and maintaining of divers great ships, both for defence and burthen, the venting of kerseys, sages, perpetuanas, and several other commodities hath been found very serviceable and profitable to the State, by advancing navigation, and transporting into foreigne parts for severall years together above 20,000 broadclothes per annum, besides other commodities whereby the poor people are sett at worke, and the whole kingdome receive benefit. The Lords and Commons do ordaine:—

“That the Fellowship of Merchants trading to the Levant Seas shall continue a corporation; that they shall have 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, Governours, Deputies, Consulls, or otherwise.

“That they shall have power to levie monies on the members of their corporation, or on strangers; on goods shipped in English bottoms, or on English goods in strange bottoms, which shall goe into or come from the Levant Seas, for and towards necessary charge, maintenance, and supply of their ministers, officers, and government.

“That no person shall send ships into these parts limited by their corporation, but such as are free brothers, or otherwise licensed, each person to pay, if a mere merchant, £50, if above twenty-one years of age, or £25 if under that age; and they shall have power to fine persons disobeying their orders in a sum not exceeding £20, or imprisoning their persons till the said sum be paid.”

About this time the Levant Company suffered somewhat from the conflicting state of parties in England. Sir S. Crowe was appointed in 1642 as ambassador of the Levant Company; he was a staunch loyalist, and, during his tenure of office abroad, his goods in England were confiscated by the Parliamentarians. On hearing this, Sir S. Crowe imprisoned many of the English factors in Constantinople, and appropriated their goods. The Parliamentarians forthwith obliged the Company to send out another representative, Sir J. Bendish, who, after some difficulty, succeeded in establishing himself as the ambassador of England, and Sir S. Crowe was sent home. On arriving in London, he was impeached at the suit of the Company, condemned, and kept in prison till 1653.

The regulations of the Company with regard to their employés were very strict in those days; none of the consuls under their authority might marry without the consent of the directors, and the factors or merchants at Constantinople and elsewhere in the Levant frequently received admonitions from the governing body at home against “sensuality, gambling, Sabbath-breaking, neglect of public worship”, and other irregularities of life in which the merchants, far from the influence of their strait-laced relatives at home, were prone to indulge.

In 1661 the Earl of Winchilsea went out on The Plymouth as ambassador for the Company. Captain Hayward was in command of the vessel, with whom Pepys (p. 50) made merry at the Rhenish Wine House. Lord Winchilsea is described as “a jovial Lord, extremely favoured by Vizier Kiuprili”. Two Kiuprilis, father and son, were practically the rulers of Turkey from 1658 to the death of the latter in 1676. Both the Kiuprilis were men of exceedingly good powers of organisation, and raised Turkey to comparative power, despite the weakness of her princes. The Sultan Mahomed IV, about whom Dr. Covel in his MS. tells us so much, was a man of weak character, devoted only to the chase, and left the organisation of the empire to his Vizier. From him Lord Winchilsea obtained further capitulations, an account of which is given us by his secretary, Paul Ricaut, in a pamphlet entitled The Capitulations and Articles published by Paul Ricaut, Esquire, Secretary to his Excellencie the Lord Ambassador, in 1663, and addressed to the Governors of the Levant Company. In this pamphlet he says: “The first capitulations took place 80 years before, in Queen Elizabeth’s reign, and have been enlarged in the time of allmost every ambassador, with such alterations as the state of affaires, and the abuses, and the iniquities of the times suggested.” The principal grievance which this set of capitulations rectified was “that English ships should be exempt from search for foreign goods”. Mahomed IV, in his address to Charles II, on the occasion of the granting of these capitulations, speaks in high-flown language of “the Queen of the aforesaid Kingdom” who commenced the Levant trade.

A curious and ludicrous instance of the fanaticism of the times occurred in 1661. An individual called “John the Quaker” arrived at Constantinople, and began to preach at the street corners repentance to the Turks in his own native tongue. Naturally enough, the Mohammedans looked upon him as a lunatic, and consigned him to a mad-house, where he languished for eight months, until his nationality was discovered, and he was taken before Lord Winchilsea. On entering the ambassador’s presence, true to the regulations of his creed, John refused to remove his hat, whereupon he was bastinadoed; and, on his clothes being examined, a letter was discovered in his pocket addressed to the Sultan, politely telling that monarch that he was the scourge employed by God to punish wicked Christians.

There was a distinct revival at this juncture in the condition of the power of the Ottoman Turks at Constantinople; under the severe rule of the elder Kiuprili, and the firm but temperate jurisdiction of his son Ahmed, both internal and external affairs prospered favourably. Ahmed Kiuprili conducted the wars with Austria with a fair amount of success. He won Crete for the Turks, in 1669, from the Venetian general Morosini; the wars with Sobieski, under his guidance, were, with certain fluctuations, favourable to the Turks. He, in 1675, instituted the levy of 3,000 boys from the Christian population to fill the ranks of the Janissaries; and three days after the peace of Zuranna, by which the Turks regained much of their lost military prestige, he died, very shortly after the events related in such minute detail by Dr. Covel in our second manuscript, and very shortly after the ratification of further capitulations with the Levant Company at Adrianople; the incidents concerning the obtaining of which Dr. Covel relates so graphically.