APPENDIX VI

The Instructions given by the Levant Company to every new Ambassador and Consul contain a clause to this effect: “If you shall find any of our Factors or others of the English Nation to be notoriously addicted to Gaming, Drinking, Whoreing, or any other licentious course of life, to the dishonour of God, the scandal of our Religion and Nation, their principalls’ damage, and the ill example of others, wee doe straitly require and recommend to you to endeavour to reclaim them by your good admonitions or, finding them incorrigible, to give us speedy notice of such persons to the end some other course may be taken with them.” [See Instructions to Sir Daniel Harvey (1668); to Lord Chandos (1681); to Sir William Trumbull (1687); to Sir William Hussey (1690); to Lord Pagett (1693); to Sir Robert Sutton (1701); to Paul Rycaut, Smyrna (1668); to Thomas Metcalfe, Aleppo (1687); to George Brandon, Aleppo (1700); to William Sherrard, Smyrna (1703); to William Pilkington, Aleppo (1708)—Register, 1668-1710, S.P. Levant Company, 145; Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, 1667-8.] The repetition of this injunction shows at once how necessary and how ineffective it was.

Another means employed by the Company to combat licentiousness deserves attention. Macaulay has grossly exaggerated the scarcity of books during the 17th century.[316] From John Evelyn’s letters, Pepys’s diary, and many other contemporary sources, it is clear that England abounded both in private and in public libraries: Norwich had one since 1608, Bristol since 1615, Leicester since 1632, Manchester since 1653. As to the English in the Levant, that even there books were not lacking for those who cared to make use of them is proved by two documents before me. The first is “A Catalogue of the Library belonging to the English Nation at Aleppo, taken in the year of our Lord 1688”—seven folio pages, giving the titles of 210 works. The other is “A Catalogue of the Books in the Library belonging to the English Nation at Smyrna. Taken in the year of our Lord 1702”—a list of some 110 volumes. [Register, pp. 157-164, 301-304, S.P. Levant Company, 145.] But these collections, apparently formed under the inspiration of the chaplains and, one might suspect, for their own benefit, consisted mostly of Theological, Classical, Historical, and other ponderous tomes hardly calculated to allure gay young sportsmen. With the exception of “Lovelace his Poems, 8o Lond. 1649,” light literature is represented in them by nothing lighter than “Bacon his Essayes, 12o Lond. 1664,” and “Lock, of Understanding, Lond. 1690.”