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Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681 cover

Under the Turk in Constantinople: A record of Sir John Finch's Embassy, 1674-1681

Chapter 65: APPENDIX XI
By G. F. Abbott
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About This Book

A detailed historical account of Sir John Finch's years as English ambassador in Constantinople between 1674 and 1681, reconstructed from original dispatches, letters, and contemporary memoirs. The narrative combines transcribed correspondence, reports from other English residents and foreign envoys, and archival research to depict Ottoman administration, court politics, commercial interactions, and the daily challenges faced by diplomats and merchants. Episodic chapters juxtapose official negotiations, personal observations, and procedural details, often reproducing the language and spelling of seventeenth-century documents to convey immediacy. The work balances documentary evidence with contextual commentary to illuminate the practicalities of seventeenth-century Anglo‑Ottoman relations.


APPENDIX XI

SIR JOHN FINCH TO SECRETARY COVENTRY

[Coventry Papers]

(Extract)

Caragas near Adrianople,
September the 9th, 1675.

This done, I thought no other difficulty could remain; but when they were wrote out and the Gran Sigrs seale to them, and I appointed to come to receive them from the Vizir, asking whether the Gran Sigrs Hattesheriffe or Hand was to them, I was answerd’ No. I said then, I could not receive them: Here I send to the Rais Affendi who desires me to desist for it was impossible to be done, for neither France, Venice, nor Holland had a Hattesheriffe to their Capitulations who were renewd’ since ours. Then I send to the Kehaiah my good Friend the Capitulations renewd’ by my Lord of Winchelsea, to which the Imperiall Hand was sett, with this message by my Druggerman, that it was a point I could not depart from, for the Capitulations would not onely be thought by the King my Master to whome I was to send them to be surreptitiously gott, but also it was the losse of my Head to accept of lesse then what my Predecessors had gott: Whereupon the Kehaiah immediately takes Pen and Ink, and writes to the Vizir, who had an Answer immediately that it should be done, but I attended a whole week before it was effected, and three days more before the Vizir deliverd’ them.