[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: