APPENDIX XII

Sir John Chardin, writing from first-hand knowledge, described our export trade with Turkey at that time as amounting to between £500,000 and £600,000 a year (a quarter of the total export trade of the kingdom), and estimated the annual exportation of cloth, the staple commodity of England, at about 20,000 pieces [Travels into Persia, London, 1691, pp. 4-6]. These statements are corroborated by an official Account which the Levant Company delivered to the Lords Commissioners for Trade in 1703. We find there the exports of cloth from 82,032 pieces (the total for the six years 1666-1671) rising in the next six years (1672-1677) to 120,451: the high-water mark of our Turkey trade [Register, p. 308, S.P. Levant Company, 145]. Further evidence that the embassy of Sir John Finch coincided with our commercial zenith is supplied by a Petition from the Levant Company against the Woollen Manufacture Encouragement Bill of 1678. The Petitioners claim that they have advanced the consumption of broad cloth in Turkey from 14,000 or 15,000 to 24,000 or 25,000 a year [House of Lords Calendar, in Hist. MSS. Comm., Ninth Report, Part II. P. 111.]

As to selling on credit, the Company’s attitude is illustrated by the comment which accompanies the Account cited above: “My Lords, By the foregoing particulars of our exportations does plainly appear that the Trade hath been considerably increased since the year 1672 when the Oath against Trusting first took place.” Ambassadors and Consuls were instructed to watch over the strict observance of that oath [see the Company’s Instructions to Lord Chandos, Sir William Trumbull, Sir William Hussey, Lord Pagett, Sir Robert Sutton, to Thomas Metcalfe, Consul at Aleppo, to George Brandon, also Consul at Aleppo, and to William Sherrard, Consul at Smyrna, in the Register already cited]. It was found, however, that the Factors, in spite of their oath, would “trust.” Whereupon, in 1701, the wise men in London put their heads together to discover “what methods were best to be used to prevent so ill a practice” [Instructions to Sutton, Clause 7], and “made a new Oath against Trusting, more full and comprehensive than the former, to be taken by all our Factors in Turkey, which you are to see strictly observed, with this limitation only: that our Factors may sell on trust such goods of the growth and product of Turkey, Persia, and India as are not proper to be sent to England, upon their own account, being willing to make an experiment of the effects which such an indulgence may produce” [Instructions to Sherrard, Clause 5]. The text of this new Oath was as follows. I reproduce a copy enclosed in a despatch from Sir Robert Sutton to the Secretary of State, dated “Pera of Constantinople, Nov. 30th, O.S. 1702” [S.P. Turkey, 21]:

“I A. B. do solemnly swear in the presence of Almighty God and upon the holy Evangelist that I will not sell or barter upon Trust, for my own or any English-man’s account, any Cloth or other goods and commodities whatsoever, nor suffer it to be done by any other person or persons for or under me directly or indirectly.

And I do further swear that I will not deliver out of my possession, nor suffer to be delivered directly or indirectly any goods or commodities for my own or any English-man’s account, before I have received full payment for the same in mony, if such goods and commodities were sold for mony, but if such goods and commodities were sold in barter against goods I will not deliver the goods I so sell before I have received the full value in the goods bartered for, and they to be at my immediate disposal to all intents and purposes as if I had bought and paid for them with mony.

And I do likewise further swear that I will not take in payment or in pawn as security for any goods sold or bartered, neither by myself or any other person directly or indirectly, any Temesooks, Mery Tescarees, Beghlar Tescarees, Sebeb Takrirs, Hojets, or any assignments or other writing or writings of what nature soever of or from any person or persons of what nation soever.

All which I will duely observe without any equivocation or mental reservation so long as I shall remain in Turky, unless the Levant Company shall sooner annul their order in this behalfe.

So help me God.

At a General Court of the Levant Company held at Pewterers’ Hall London the 24 October 1701.

Ordered that every person taking this Oath shall repeat the words after him that administers it and the same shall be entered in Cancellaria and subscribed by the respective parties.”