[78] Winchilsea to Nicholas, March 4, 1660-61; Aug. 20, Oct. 19, Nov. 11-21, 1661; Jan. 13, 1661-62; May 24, 1662; Harvey to Arlington, Aug. 18, 1669; Jan. 31, 1669-70; April 30, 1672, S.P. Turkey, 17 and 19.
[79] Finch to Narbrough, May 24: S V. 1675, Coventry Papers.
[80] Finch to Coventry, Feb. 24/March 6, 1674-75, Coventry Papers.
[81] Finch to Coventry, Feb. 24/March 6, 1674-75, Coventry Papers.
[82] Finch to Coventry, Sept. 9, 1675, Coventry Papers.
CHAPTER VI
SIR JOHN GOES TO COURT
On Sunday, the 2nd of May 1675, after morning prayers and a sermon by the Rev. John Covel, his Excellency set out from Pera with a very great retinue. Besides the Embassy staff and servants, there were all the English merchants of Constantinople and some of Smyrna with their own servants—altogether one hundred and twenty horsemen, fifty-five baggage-wagons, three led horses in rich trappings, a gorgeous coach-and-six with postillions, a coach-and-four for the Chief Dragoman, and a double litter canopied with fine wrought cloth and carried by four mules harnessed together two and two: in that litter, attended by four muleteers and preceded by two link-bearers, Sir John Finch and Sir Thomas Baines lay in state.
It must have been a comely sight to watch these English travellers on that spring day, two hundred and fifty years ago, clatter over the wooden bridges which spanned the streams at the head of the Golden Horn, skirt the walls of Stambul, and enter upon the highway to Adrianople. We will follow their slow progress along that dusty road; for the details of their journey are all on record, and one might do sillier things than that.