APPENDIX III

The Levant Company’s Charter of 1605, which established it in perpetuity, superseding the earlier patents granted by Elizabeth for a limited number of years, conferred on the Merchants full power “to name, choose, and appoint at their will and pleasure” Consuls or Vice-Consuls; but on the point of the Ambassador it was silent, unless the Company’s right to name him might be inferred from a clause which authorised it “to assign, appoint, create, and ordain such and so many officers and ministers,” both at home and abroad, as “shall seem expedient for the doing and executing of the affairs and business appertaining to the said Company.” At the same time, the Merchants were authorised, “for the sustentation of the necessary stipends and other charges,” to levy upon all goods transported from England to the Levant or vice versa, and upon every ship so employed, such sums of money, “by way of Consulage or otherwise,” as “to them shall seem requisite and convenient.” [The original is to be found in S.P. Levant Company, 107, at the Public Record Office; for a printed copy see M. Epstein’s Early History of the Levant Company, London, 1908, Appendix I.]

The Parliamentary ordinance of 1643 accorded to the Merchants explicitly “free choice and removal of all ministers by them maintained at home and abroad, whether they be dignified and called by the name of Ambassadors, Governors, Deputies, Consuls, or otherwise,” and also recognised in specific terms their right to levy import and export duties on foreign merchandise carried under the English flag to and from the Levant (“Strangers’ Consulage”), as well as on English merchandise (“Native Consulage”). Thus the Company obtained an official recognition of its claim to appoint the Ambassador and an undisputed power over all the funds by which the Embassy was maintained.

The new Charter of 1661, though not ratifying the Company’s claim to appoint the Ambassador, sanctioned its hold upon both kinds of Consulage. [See the Charter in S.P. Levant Company, 108.] In other words, the Merchants retained the material means of keeping, and therefore, by implication, the right of appointing the Ambassador.

In 1668, when, upon the recall of Lord Winchilsea, the question of a choice of Ambassador once more arose, Sir Sackville Crow, still smarting from his grievances, presented to Charles a vindictive Memorial in which he recapitulated the old disputes and urged him to recover “one of the Supreme Prerogatives of your Crowne, viz. the Election of the Ambassadours for Turky,” by depriving the Company of the Consulage which enabled it to maintain and, in consequence, to claim the right of naming, the Ambassador. Otherwise, he said, His Majesty’s envoys, by depending entirely on the Company for their maintenance, would be the Merchants’ “stipendiaries and vassalls, and obliged to serve theire Lustes and Pleasures (good or badd) agaynst the Law or Crowne, whereof his late Majestie had too sadde an experience and may justly caution your Majestie to take care of and provide agaynst.” ⁵

Nothing came of this instigation, and the anomalous position of the Constantinople Embassy continued for ages a source of intermittent friction.