CHAPTER XVI
THE CASE OF MRS. PENTLOW
Among the numerous devices for the collection of cash to which the Grand Vizir had recourse before setting out on the war path, were some that touched foreign residents directly. Until his time all Franks had been exempt, by virtue of their Capitulations, from the Haratch, or poll-tax, levied upon non-Moslem Turkish subjects. The immunity extended to the Dragomans of the various European Embassies and Consulates, as well as to other natives under foreign protection. Every Ambassador received from the Porte a number of Barats, or Patents, which, though given to him for the benefit of his own servants only, he was, by an abuse of privilege, in the habit of selling to wealthy rayahs—Greeks, Armenians, or Jews: so that the suburbs of Galata and Pera had come to be peopled very largely by privileged persons (Baratlis). For some years past the Farmers of the Revenue had been drawing attention to this state of things, and even overstating it, in order to beat down the Farm; but their representations had produced no effect until 1677, when by order of Kara Mustafa an inquisitor was appointed to ascertain the facts. This official came over, and not being offered a bribe, as he expected and as one who had come on a similar errand some time before had received, executed his commission with exemplary conscientiousness. The upshot was an edict limiting foreign Ministers and Consuls to three Dragomans and obliging them to obtain fresh Barats for them. Moreover, the Grand Vizir ordained that every Frank who was married to a country-born woman should henceforth be deprived of the benefits of the Capitulations, pay Haratch, and be treated in all respects as a rayah.
As was natural, married Franks denounced the measure bitterly: they had come to Turkey on the understanding that they should live in it as free men, and now by a stroke of Kara Mustafa’s pen they were suddenly reduced to the position of slaves. The outcry was loudest among the French and the Dutch, upon whom the innovation fell most heavily: some forty Frenchmen, including the chief merchants, and three of the principal Dutch merchants had native wives. But notwithstanding all that the French Ambassador and the Dutch Resident could say or do, and all the endeavours of private individuals, and all their offers of money, not the least grace was shown to them. The rich French merchants escaped the consequences of the edict by purchasing titular Consulships at Gallipoli, Athens, and so forth; but their poorer compatriots were disfranchised. The English had so far been very little affected. Sir John had easily obtained the necessary Patents for his Dragomans. Nor did the marriage disqualification trouble them, as, with very few exceptions, our colony consisted of gay bachelors.[221]
But now—soon after Kara Mustafa’s return to Adrianople—there arose a case which was to cost our countrymen dearly.
Mr. Samuel Pentlow, a wealthy English merchant of Smyrna, who was married to a Greek lady, had just died, leaving his widow and his children—a son about three years of age and a daughter three or four months old—to the care of his Assigns, Mr. Gabriel Smith and our old acquaintance Mr. John Ashby, with instructions that they should be sent home to enjoy the lands and other possessions he owned in England, together with his Smyrna estate, which was commonly estimated at something between two hundred thousand and half a million dollars: fruit of thirty years’ labour in the Levant. In obedience to the wishes of the deceased, the Assigns took passage for his family in an English ship about to sail from Smyrna. But the other residents, fearing, in view of Kara Mustafa’s recent edict, that the departure of the woman and children without official permission might expose the colony to the Grand Vizir’s attentions, protested to the Consul and the Ambassador, who agreed that this business could not safely be done in a clandestine manner. The Assigns, therefore, entered into negotiations with the Cadi. This gentleman was quite willing to wink; but he demanded his reward in advance, while Messrs. Smith and Ashby would not part with a single asper until after the thing was done. Their caution offended the sensitive Cadi, who, out of spite, hastened to inform the Grand Vizir of the contemplated elopement.
Kara Mustafa so far had only had enough of English gold to stimulate his appetite, not enough to satisfy it: gratification but gave him ampler zest. He only waited for an occasion to take another and bigger bite. And here was the best of all imaginable occasions. Without delay he passed the information on to the Grand Signor, who, in his turn, consulted the Mufti: What should be done to Turkish subjects that attempted to fly the country? The oracle responded that they deserved to have their property confiscated: that was the Law. A decree was accordingly issued, and despatched to Smyrna by an Aga, who also had orders to bring Messrs. Smith and Ashby to Adrianople that they might give an account of the estate. This done, another messenger was despatched to Constantinople with a letter from the Grand Vizir for the Ambassador, notifying to him the fact and asking him to send to Adrianople a Dragoman to be present at the examination of the Assigns: which, Sir John said, was very civil of the Vizir; “but this civility was attended by a Sting in the Tayl bidding me take care that in Smirna nothing was acted contrary to this Command.”
The message upset Sir John very much. He did not want to have any more trouble with the terrible Vizir. Things had been going on so well—and now this Sting in the Tayl! Sir John was angry—not with Kara Mustafa, nor even with Messrs. Smith and Ashby: strange to say, he was angry with the late Mr. Pentlow. His thoughts of the deceased, when he reported the case to the Secretary of State, became winged words—his quill an arrow barbed and envenomed: “He is the onely man since our Trade into Turky that ever marryed Here, and was worth any thing,” he wrote, and as he wrote, his wrath grew into virulence: “How it [Pentlow’s estate] was gott I know not, How he livd’ I know, He would not afford Himselfe bread, but livd’ upon other Merchants’ Tables; After the Birth of His Sonne the first child, when the Mother was bigg of a second, He dischargd’ a Pistoll unwares just behind her back to make Her miscarry, That charges might not encrease.”[222]
It would be idle to enter into a serious examination of these scurrilous irrelevancies. That the Pentlow fortune had not been built up wholly with clean hands, may easily be credited (few great fortunes ever are); and there is some evidence that the late merchant had not been exceptionally careful about his methods.[223] But what, in the name of common sense and common decency, had the ethics of the deceased to do with the case? The question at issue was one of law: it all turned upon the interpretation of a clause in the Capitulations, which ran as follows: “If any Englishman shall come hither either to dwell or traffique, whether he be married or unmarried, he shall be free.” Hitherto this clause (which figured in the Capitulations of all other nations also) had been construed by everybody as including Europeans married to native as well as to foreign women; and the Turks had never questioned that construction, until Kara Mustafa, the year before, had thought fit to announce that “that Article was to be understood onely of such who were marryd’ to those that were not subjects of the Gran Signor.” Was he justified in so doing? The Levant Company thought not. In an account of this case presented to the King, it emphatically maintained that the Turkish contention that “Pentlow his wife and children were subjects to the Grand Signor” was a breach of “the Article wee have in Our Capitulations to the contrary.”[224] On the other hand, the Company’s Treasurer at Constantinople, after recording both interpretations, refused to commit himself to a definite pronouncement, though, on the whole, he thought that, “in a case any thing dubious, it is shrewdly to be feared that their [the Turks’] interpretation will stand before ours.”[225] The Ambassador, however, preferred the line of least resistance. Rather than risk another conflict with the Grand Vizir, he accepted without question his view of the matter. “Pentlow,” he wrote, “by marrying a Greeke made Himselfe a subject to the Gran Signor, as the Visir in Pentlow’s life time had declard’; the Turkish Law making them all so. But Pentlow having children They without all dispute were by the Turkish Law born subjects.”