Sir John’s reflections upon this fresh experience of Kara Mustafa’s cash-collecting mania are interesting. That the Grand Vizir was right in subjecting every importation of silver and gold to severe scrutiny he would not deny: nor could we complain of measures which we ourselves had instigated. “But,” with characteristic imperception of the exquisite irony of the situation, he thought “this is no reason why he should begin with us who have allway’s bin innocent.” Worse still, he mulcted us, the authors of the measure! “Here you see the justice of this present Goverment. It is impossible if the Visir once getts ready mony into his power that he can make any pretence upon whatsoever to lett it goe free without his share of it. Neither is there any officer about him, that has not the same tincture, but of a deeper dye.”
In the circumstances, the poor Ambassador sees ahead of him nothing but “disasters from dormant pretensions awakend or from unforeseen miscarriages.” He sees himself “being further preyd’ upon by Ravenous and Insatiable appetites upon dormant or future pretences.” In the first category he places “the reviving of the old Pretensions of the Bassà of Tunis.” In the second, “the probability of a warr with Argiers.” Admiral Narbrough, shortly after his return from Tripoli, was ordered back to the Mediterranean to chastise the Algerine pirates: “if wee should chance to batter any thing upon Terra firma, God knows what use this Visir would make of it.” The prospect fills Sir John with a dismay that has something of terror in it: “Capitulations being now declard’ to be but contemptible things and like a peice of wett parchment that may be stretchd’ any way, renders this place to me very wearysome and tedious, for it does me a great deal of hurt, both in body and mind, to see your estates rent and torne from you, and no help to be avaylable, neither prudence nor language having any place, where all accesse to the Visir is denyd’ not onely to the Druggermen but to the Ambassadours themselves.” Thus he wrote to the Levant Company, ending with a pious “God give you and me patience for from Him alone must come deliverance.” In his communications to the Secretary of State he was even more piteously emphatic: “It makes my condition of life here very uneasy to me who have the care upon me of the whole estate of His Majesty’s subjects in the Levant.” And again, striking a more poignant note: “God preserve us from unreasonable and inflexible men,” he cries. “I beseech Almighty God to deliver me from unreasonable and wilfull men; in the maintenance of His Majesty’s honour and defence of the estates and Interest of His subjects.”
It is evident from these utterances that, by the end of 1677, Sir John Finch felt the burden too heavy for his shoulders. But his contract with the Company had yet some time to run, and besides he did not wish to return home before his friends had found him some other employment. His mentor Baines, to whom as usual Finch delegated the task of string-pulling, had already discussed the subject in a letter to Lord Conway, in the course of which he said: “If your Brother leaves this charge without being in possession of a fayr and convenient post in England, I shall think that He hath not a friend there, or at least very few, and those of no influence.”[207] Pending the fruition of these exertions on his behalf, Sir John could do nothing but set his teeth and stick to his saddle like a fearful rider.
FOOTNOTES:
[200] It is amusing to watch the process as mirrored in his reports. On Nov. 29 Finch tells Coventry that his audience cost Nointel “near the same with me,” which was not true. On Dec. 15 he emends this statement: “I now judge His Expense to have bin much higher; for one Persian carpett alone is valud’ to me by a Jew that serves the Visir, at three thousand five hundred Dollars. This,” he adds, “I mention, not to advantage my Own Condition, but to compassionate His.” Very likely!
[201] Finch to Coventry, Nov. 29, S.V., 1677.
[202] Hammer, vol. xii. p. 136.
[203] Life of Dudley North, p. 78.
[204] See Rycaut’s Memoirs, pp. 258-60; Life of Dudley North, pp. 79-80; and the following State Papers: Intelligence for Lord Arlington, Constantinople, Feb. 22, 1667-68; Unsigned Letter dated Smyrna, June 1, 1668; The King’s Instructions to Harvey, Aug. 3, 1668; Inclosure in Winchilsea’s despatch of April 4-14, 1669; Harvey’s despatches March 10, 15, 1668 [-69]; Jan. 31, 1670 [-71]; April 30, 1671. S.P. Turkey, 19.
[205] See above, p. 76. Cp. Instructions to Finch, [Appendix I]. Cl. 7.