FOOTNOTES:

[188] This quotation and those that follow (until further notice) are taken from Finch’s despatch to Coventry, May 26, S.V. 1677, and the inclosed “Account of what Relates to Publick Ministers and their affayrs”—an astonishing document of fourteen closely written pages, Coventry Papers.

[189] Besides Finch’s “Account,” see his despatch of Nov. 29, S.V. 1677; Rycaut’s Memoirs, p. 335; Vandal’s Nointel, p. 230; Life of Dudley North, p. 74. If we are to believe the version of the incident transmitted by the Imperial Resident Kindsberg, Nointel’s exit was still more dramatic: two chaoushes flung him down from the Soffah, shouting to him, “Haide, kalk giaour” (Off with you, infidel), Hammer, vol. xii. p. 8.

[190] Two copies of this Memorial, an Italian and an English one, both dated April 28, 1677, accompany Finch’s despatch of May 26. For the instructions to which he refers see Appendix I. Cl. 2.

[191] See copies of it, dated May 12-22, 1677, ibid.

[192] See Rycaut’s Present State, p. 166; Life of Dudley North, p. 114.

[193] Finch to Coventry, Nov. 29, S.V. 1677, Coventry Papers; Life of Dudley North, p. 75; Vandal’s Nointel, pp. 231-2. This last version, based on Nointel’s own despatches, suffers from excess of discretion.

[194] Finch to Coventry, Nov. 29, S.V. 1677. This monumental despatch (22 pages), which the writer himself describes as “rather a History then a Letter,” is my main authority for what follows.

[195] Dudley North (Life, p. 77) says that the time for repayment of the debt had passed and that Ashby did not proceed to the sale until repeated applications to the Venetian had made him despair of ever getting his money back. A similar assertion appears in a thoroughly partisan “Narrative” presented by the Levant Company to the King (Register, S.P. Levant Company, 145). But this is flatly contradicted by Finch’s definite statement that the sale was carried out “three moneths before the mony was due.” The only palliation the Ambassador offers for an act which he condemns as “unjustifiable” is that Ashby had obtained Pizzamano’s verbal consent to the sale: a point which, in the absence of written evidence, could not be proved. It need hardly be said that Sir John had no motive to represent things as worse than they were, or that he was not prejudiced in favour of the Venetian, whom he describes as “a Rogue declard’”—“a Merchant that robbd’ all his Principles (sic) of Venice, and the Captain that brought him thence, and is by order of that State to be hangd’ if they can gett him.”

[196] On this point see Life of Dudley North, p. 76.

[197] See Roe to Calvert, Feb. 9-19, July 1, 1622, Negotiations of Sir Thomas Roe (London, 1740), pp. 18, 61-2.

[198] We have “a precise Account of it, and all the Circumstances that attend it, without the least variation,” in Finch to Coventry, Dec. 15-25, 1677, Coventry Papers.

[199] Telescope.