The Sultan and the Queen: The Untold Story of Elizabeth and Islam (35 page)

Lello possessed neither the tact nor the dynamism of his predecessors. His colleagues nicknamed him “Fog” and could hardly restrain their glee in reporting his shortcomings. During one of his earliest audiences with the sultan, he stood “like a modest midwife, and began a trembling speech in English . . . sounding like the squeaking of a goose divided into semiquavers.”
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Although he struggled to adapt to his position in Constantinople, he managed to convince London that if reasonable Anglo-Ottoman relations were to continue, gifts and letters confirming his position must be sent immediately.

As Elizabeth’s advisers debated what to send to Mehmed, Richard Hakluyt was in the final stages of preparing the publication of the second edition of his
Principal Navigations
. Hakluyt had dedicated the first edition to his patron, Walsingham, and would soon dedicate the second to Burghley’s son Robert Cecil, who became one of Elizabeth’s leading ministers in 1596 following his father’s incapacitation due to ill health (he died two years later).

Hakluyt’s dedicatory epistle drew on Bacon’s earlier defense. It turned first to ancient history, arguing, “If any man shall take exception against this our new trade with Turks and misbelievers, he shall show himself a man of small experience in old and new histories, or wilfully lead with partiality, or some worse humor. For who knoweth not, that king Solomon of old, entered into league upon necessity with Hiram the king of Tyrus, a gentile?” It was a carefully chosen Old Testament analogy. Just as King Hiram of Tyre had provided Solomon with the timber needed to build the Holy Temple of Jerusalem, so Elizabeth would do business with whoever enabled her to erect the Protestant Temple of God in England. Turning to the hypocrisy of England’s Catholic opponents, each of whom had merchants based in Constantinople, Hakluyt went on: “Who is ignorant that the French, the Genoese, Florentines, Ragusans, Venetians, and Polonians are at this day in league with the Grand Signior, and have been these many years, and have used trade and traffic in his dominions?” He concluded by taking a global perspective:

Who doth not acknowledge, that either hath traveled the remote parts of the world, or read the histories of this later age, that the Spaniards and Portugales in Barbary, in the Indies, and elsewhere, have ordinary confederacy and traffic with the Moors, and many kinds of Gentiles and Pagans, and that which is more, do pay them pensions, and use them in their service and wars? Why then should that be blamed on us, which is usual and common to the most part of other Christian nations?
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In other words, nobody could blame the English for working with the Turks or the Moors because everyone was at it.

Nevertheless, as news began to circulate in January 1599 that a ship carrying a consignment of gifts was ready to leave London for Constantinople, many onlookers expressed their anxiety. The inveterate gossip and diarist John Chamberlain wrote that a “great and curious present is going to the Grand Turk, which will scandalize other nations, especially the Germans.”
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Elizabeth chose the gifts personally and they were indeed “curious.” One was a coach worth £600 intended for Safiye Sultan, a shrewd decision that not only continued their reciprocal exchange of gifts but also enabled Elizabeth to cultivate the woman who it was believed had wielded ultimate power at the Turkish court since her son’s accession. The other gift was even more elaborate—a clockwork musical organ, built and already played before the queen (much to her satisfaction) by a musician and blacksmith from Warrington in Lancashire named Thomas Dallam. Edward Barton had written to Elizabeth back in 1595 suggesting she send Mehmed a “clock in the form of a cock.” Elizabeth clearly felt that a clockwork organ was better than a cock, and along with the coach, a consignment of cloth and a team of artisans, including Dallam himself, the organ was packed up and put on board the
Hector,
a 300-ton Levant Company ship bound for Constantinople.

On August 28, 1599, the
Hector
reached its destination. The Venetian
bailo
(resident ambassador) Girolamo Capello’s report on its arrival was mixed. He noted that the ship’s cargo “consists of an organ very cunningly designed, which serves as a clock and can play several airs by itself, of a carriage and fittings for the sultana, of some silver vases and many suits of cloth which they say are moldy and ruined.”
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The reality was even worse. Lello was horrified to discover that Dallam’s organ had been damaged on the long sea journey, alongside the consignment of ruined cloth, and with it possibly his hopes of receiving Mehmed’s formal blessing as ambassador. Dallam saw that the “gluing work was clean decayed on the organ” and “his metal pipes were bruised and broken.” He blamed “the working of the sea and the hotness of the country.”

Lello’s French and Venetian counterparts had turned up to laugh at the pile of broken pipes. Aside from the fuss over the presents, the Venetian
bailo
remained concerned about Lello’s longer-term ambitions to establish a Protestant church in Constantinople. Several weeks after Dallam’s arrival, Capello wrote to his superiors:

The English Ambassador will kiss hands tomorrow morning. He goes working away at various chimerical schemes, principally the idea of asking the Grand Signor to give him one of the churches in Galata for the use of a preaching minister whom he has brought with him. Both the French Ambassador and myself considered this design of his to be obviously important in its effect on the honor of the Holy Church, and we accordingly approached the poor Mufti on the matter. He promised us every support; but now we have had recourse to the Chief Eunuch; nor shall we fail to make every effort in order to thwart this excessive and arrogant pretension of the English, who would endeavor to sow even here the perversity and impiety of Calvin.
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While the French and Venetians worried about Lello’s religious ambitions, the prickly Englishman was more concerned about Dallam. It must have been with mixed feelings that he watched the industrious Lancastrian quickly overcome the initial setback with his organ, spending the next month repairing, then reassembling it in front of a curious and increasingly expectant Turkish audience at the Topkapi Palace. At least the coach had arrived unscathed and proved to be a success. Lello later described the somewhat incongruous sight of the sultan and his mother riding around the city in it. When the organ’s repairs were complete, Dallam was called to perform before the sultan. On September 25 he and his organ were ushered into the inner sanctum of the Topkapi. As the sultan entered he demanded silence, and the twenty-four-year-old blacksmith from Lancashire began to play the organ in front of the most powerful ruler in the world. Dallam recounted what happened next:

All being quiet, and no noise at all, the present began to salute the Grand Signor [Mehmed]; for when I left it I did allow a quarter of an hour for his coming thither. First the clock struck 22; then the chime of 16 bells went off, and played a song of 4 parts. That being done, two personages which stood upon two corners of the second story, holding two silver trumpets in their hands, did lift them to their heads, and sounded a tantara. Then the music went off, and the organ played a song of 5 parts twice over. In the top of the organ, being 16 foot high, did stand a holly bush full of black birds and thrushes, which at the end of the music did singe and shake their wings. Diverse other motions there was which the Grand Signor wondered at.
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Mehmed was so enchanted that he demanded Dallam play for more than two hours, while the humiliated Lello was left outside, fuming, as he waited in vain to kiss the sultan’s hand.

The recital was a triumph for Dallam. He was given gold worth £20 by Mehmed and was implored by the sultan’s advisers “to stay with them always, and I should not want anything, but have all the content that I could desire.” Then he was taken into Mehmed’s “privy chambers,” where he was allowed to draw his sword in imitation of the sultan and was offered the pick of the sultan’s harem, “either two of his concubines or else two virgins of the best I could choose my self.” To whet his appetite, he was even allowed to see the harem women by spying on them through “a grate in a wall,” where he saw “thirty of the Grand Signor’s concubines,” and “very pretty ones indeed.”

Dallam was clearly delighted to report that the concubines wore “fine cloth made of cotton wool, as white as snow and fine as lane [muslin]; for I could discern the skin of their thighs through it.” It all proved too much for his furtive guide, who “stamped with his foot to make me give over looking; the which I was very loath to do, for that sight did please me wondrous well.”
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Dallam was the first recorded Englishman ever to see the sultan’s harem. It must have all seemed a long way from Warrington.

Somewhat surprisingly, none of these enticements persuaded Dallam to stay, and he made plans to leave. Both Mehmed and Lello were determined to keep him, and removed him from the
Hector
as it was about to sail for England in December 1599 with Safiye’s gifts and diplomatic correspondence for Elizabeth. The furious organist eventually persuaded the ambassador to let him slip away under pretense of illness and travel to Zante, where he could rejoin the
Hector
. As he left Constantinople never to return, Dallam had one final poignant encounter. To guide him through Ottoman territory he was assigned a dragoman, whom he described as “an Englishman, borne in Chorley in Lancashire; his name Finch. He was also in religion a perfect Turk, but he was our trusty friend.”
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As he reached the Greek coast, Dallam took his leave of Finch: two men from Lancashire, briefly united as friends, standing together on the Greek coast, one, a Christian, headed west, the other, a Muslim convert who had “turned Turk,” headed back east. Dallam had spent nearly a year traveling more than thirty-five hundred miles from London to Constantinople and through Greece to meet a man born in Chorley, not much more than twenty miles away from his hometown of Warrington. We will never know what they discussed on their ten-day trek, or whether they spoke of their lives, their beliefs and the choices they had made that separated them.

In May 1600 the
Hector
docked in England, with Safiye’s gifts and letters to Elizabeth. At first, all seemed well. Safiye’s translated letter acknowledged that “you sent us a coach; it has arrived and has been delivered. It had our gracious acceptance.” It also itemized the gifts sent in response: “a robe, a sash, two gold-embroidered bath towels, three handkerchiefs, and a ruby and pearl tiara.” Even more important, the elaborate exchange of gifts seemed to have had its desired diplomatic effect of persuading Mehmed to ratify the Anglo-Ottoman Capitulations. Safiye assured Elizabeth:

I will take action in accordance with what you have written. Be of good heart in this respect. I constantly admonish my son, the Padishah [Mehmed], to act according to the treaty. I do not neglect to speak to him in this manner. God willing, may you not suffer grief in this respect.
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Unfortunately, on closer inspection it transpired that the original letter had been so hastily written in Constantinople that it was addressed to “the king of England, may his last moments be concluded with good.”
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Safiye’s gifts paled in comparison with the lavish coach and organ sent to Constantinople. Safiye’s
kira,
Esperanza Malchi, who it transpired had already been accused of withholding some of the gifts dispatched to Elizabeth six years earlier, had the temerity to address a letter directly to the queen, asking whether she could send Safiye “rare distilled waters of every kind for the face and odiferous oils for the hands” and offering her services, despite being “a Jewess by faith and of a different nation from your Majesty.”
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Perhaps unsurprisingly, no record survives of any response from Elizabeth to this request for perfume and hand lotion.

The exchange would prove to be the zenith of Anglo-Ottoman relations under Elizabeth. Although the Capitulations were agreed and Lello’s embassy was ratified, the querulous Englishman failed to reproduce the kind of friendship the increasingly pro-Venetian Safiye Sultan had enjoyed with Barton. He was also persistently outwitted by his French opposite number. He struggled on until 1607, when he was recalled to England and replaced by the more capable Thomas Glover, who was promptly accused by his vindictive predecessor of bigamy, adultery, sodomy, domestic violence and—worst of all—wearing too many jewels and feathers in the sultan’s presence.
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In Constantinople, Esperanza Malchi’s luck ran out even before the
Hector
reached London. Fed up with the political control and financial corruption exercised by the harem, the Turkish imperial cavalry rose up against the Safiye Sultan and vented their fury on her confidante Esperanza. A Levant Company official named Humphrey Conisby described what happened. The cavalry

drew the
kira
out of her house (this was a Jew woman most dear to the Sultana, who by such grace, with her accomplices, governed in effect, the whole empire; and was worth at her death millions). Her they hauled through the streets, forth at Adrianople Gate, and there killing her (after she had offered more for her life than their pay came to) they cut her into small pieces, every one, that could get, carrying back through the streets to their houses a piece of her flesh upon his knife’s point.
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