CONCLUSION

The death of Sir John Finch forms so fitting an end to the drama in which he bore a principal, if not a leading, part that, in a work of the imagination, any further addition would have been an artistic crime. But in a book like the present the claims of artistic fitness must yield to those of historic completeness.

After getting their ships out of the Vizir’s clutches, the English endeavoured to come to an arrangement with him on the basis of their original offer of 55,000 dollars, in which the sum paid at Smyrna should be included; but they failed. Kara Mustafa, infuriated, meant to have his revenge; and a few days later he summoned the merchants to the Porte—the merchants only, for his policy now was to treat the matter as a quarrel between them and the Customer—a purely commercial lawsuit in which neither the King of England nor his representative had any concern. But Lord Chandos would have none of these fictitious distinctions. He assembled all the merchants in the Embassy, and when the Chaoush came to fetch them, he positively refused to let them go without him. After a day’s parley, he carried his point; and so, on Sunday morning, January 15th, 1682, Ambassador and merchants went together. They were shown into the Kehayah’s room, where they found, besides that officer, the Chaoush-bashi, the Customer, and three or four other dignitaries. The discussion soon degenerated into a violent altercation, until the Kehayah, proceeding from words to deeds, ordered a Chaoush to seize the two chief merchants, Montagu North and Mr. Hyet. Chandos at once interposed and, getting hold of them, declared that he would go to prison in their place: he was there to act as surety for the Nation under his protection. “No, no,” said the Kehayah, “the King of England and the Grand Signor are good friends, and you shall be treated accordingly: this is a mere matter of trade, in which the merchants are the only parties concerned,”—and he asked his Lordship to sit down and drink his coffee and sherbet! His Lordship hung on to the prisoners, as the Chaoush dragged them out—he hung on to them across the courtyard: the Chaoush pushed him off, but he still hung on with true bull-dog tenacity: so that the Chaoush had to resort to a ruse: he carried the prisoners back into the house, shut Lord Chandos out, and got them off by a back-door.

Baulked, angered, thoroughly disgusted, the Ambassador mounts his horse and returns home—to plan such measures as the situation demands. That afternoon he seals up all the English warehouses at Constantinople and despatches to the Smyrna Factory notice to provide against the worst. During the following days he plies the Vizir with memorials, messages, petitions for audience—“too tedious to relate”; to all of which he receives but one answer: the Vizir has given him an audience on his arrival, he has also seen him since about the business in dispute, and has heard all that could be said on that subject: the Grand Signor will soon be back: His Excellency will have an audience of him then, and an opportunity of saying anything he has to say. An appeal to the Mufti falls equally flat: the Mufti stands in too much awe of Kara Mustafa. And meanwhile our merchants remain in custody: for a month and a week they keep in tolerable health, but on the thirty-ninth day one of them sickens: he seizes the chance of a visit from the Ambassador’s Dragoman to say in Turkish that he will not die there—if he owes any man anything, he is ready to pay; if he has committed any crime, let his head fly. All he demands is justice: since the Ambassador cannot free him, he has slaves in his house, and he will send one of them to the Grand Signor with a pot of fire on his head![300] This threat, it was thought, reported to the Vizir by one of his spies, produced, or contributed towards producing, the desired effect. Soon afterwards Kara Mustafa agreed to Chandos’s original proposal that, for 55,000 dollars, he should condemn his own sentence and absolve the English from all such claims, past and future. The bargain struck, our prisoners, after forty-two days’ confinement, were released, and the Ambassador reported home:

“Thus are we restored to free commerce with these unrightuous people once again, how long it may continue is past my guess for never was there a people more false and ficle in theyr words then I have found thos here I have had to doe with ... but I consider’d it the duty of a faithfull servant to his master to avoid all is possible the necessity of pushing disputes to such extremities as to bring a war or great dishonor on his master and for this reason in the first place and secondly in regard to trade which would infallibly have receiv’d a deadly blow had their violence byn a little more provok’d for ’tis most certain that we have stuck many days at the pit’s brink.... I had my ar’s ready to have gone in person to the Visier and G: Signor but was overcome and prevented by the merchants reasons and intreaties and I hope all is for the best for there is not one instance of any one’s having ever got any good by wrangling with this Visier.”[301]

In adjusting this avania Lord Chandos had hoped, as he tells us, to find “some faire quarter” in other matters; but he soon found that “there is no peace with the wicked.” When he applied for his Audience of the Grand Signor, Kara Mustafa demanded an extraordinary present—not, he explained, as a price for the Audience, but as a recognition of the great favour he had done us by letting us off the silk claim on such easy terms. Chandos replied that all he had parted with was to purchase the Vizir’s goodwill, and he was willing to strain yet further to give him satisfaction; only he entreated his patience till the Audience was over, lest it should be said that he had paid money for it: which, being an alteration of the ancient practice between the Crowns, imported much more than his head was worth. This reply, in spite of its urbanity, set the Vizir in a mighty passion: he doubled his demand, and, as the Ambassador took no notice, he refused to let him deliver his Credentials. Moreover, every time an Englishman was sued before the Divan, Kara Mustafa condemned him out of hand; and, in short, missed no chance of showing his malice against us. Not that we enjoyed the exclusive monopoly of his rancour. The Dutch underwent a fresh fleecing on the same pretext as the English—silk export duties—and were glad enough to compound for 25,000 dollars; the Venetians were forced to pay ten times that sum by way of reparation for an affray between their own and some Turkish subjects in Dalmatia—it was, in truth, reparation for wrongs suffered rather than inflicted, but that made no difference: the Bailo, finding reason useless, had to employ “the rhetorick of chequins”—’twas the only means “to make faire weather with a Visier who is of a temper to doe anything for mony and nothing without it.” When describing to the Secretary of State how he and his colleagues fared at the hands “of this greivous oppressor of all Christians,” Chandos ventured to drop a hint that His Majesty might, “if the intolerable tyranny of this vile Minister receiv’s not a speedy check,” find “some other way to make him sensible of His iust indignation”—some way more “becoming His great wisedome and high honor.” But what could poor, lazy Charles do, where the haughty and energetic Louis was content to eat humble pie by the plateful? It was, indeed, the “submission,” as the Turks very correctly called it, of the French Padishah that had raised Kara Mustafa’s rapacious insolence to its present pitch. This brings us to the conclusion of the Chios exploit in which the Franco-Turkish quarrel had culminated.

Nothing more humiliating for Christendom, nothing better calculated to inflate Ottoman arrogance, could be imagined. The French Admiral, after hovering aimlessly about the Dardanelles with his squadron for nine months, sailed away leaving the French Ambassador to pay for his feat. It was no longer a question of exacting satisfaction for past insults, but of averting imminent calamities: M. de Guilleragues had to fight not for a stool, but for safety. A three days’ struggle ensued—the French gazettes of the time styled it an “audience.” The first day, when the Ambassador was brought before the Vizir, he spoke and acted with spirit; but Kara Mustafa, unimpressed by what he knew to be empty bluster, ordered him to be locked up. Three days’ confinement brought M. de Guilleragues to reason: he signed a bond to pay within six months an indemnity thinly veiled under the euphemism of a “galantaria” emanating from his private pocket—“a present of such value as became a Chivaliere.” When the six months expired, the “present” was duly tendered, but was rejected as falling short of what became a Chevalier in distress to give or a victorious Pasha to receive. After some kicking against the pricks, the Ambassador submitted to a valuation of his “galantaria” by experts appointed by Kara Mustafa, with the result that he was “screw’d up to 100 purses, that is, 50,000 Dollars.” This was for the Grand Signor. “What he paid the Visier himself and his inferior officers, by his own confession, came to between 15,000 and 20,000 Dollars and most of this mony was taken up at 18 or 20, and some at 22 per cent.”

Thus the long-drawn-out duel between the wig and the turban ended in a decisive victory for the turban. It was not pleasant to witness “the barbarous triumphing of the Turks over all Christians upon this their success against the French, for the Turks judge all things by the event and impute all that hitts right to the great wisedome and conduct of their Visier, for in this business they say (according to their proverb) the Visier caught a hare with a cart, and the French who are the loosers have nothing to say, which is hard according to our English proverb.” Nothing to say—they who a few months before “made many high brags of great wonders they resolv’d to doe.”[302]

But in ascribing their triumph to Kara Mustafa’s genius the Turks paid him a tribute to which he was not entitled. The causes of the French defeat lay in Paris rather than in Stambul. Louis was a calculating politician as well as an arrogant prince. His arrogance prompted him to beard the Turks, his policy forbade him to break with them. It was essential for the success of his ambition in the West that the German Empire should be engaged in the East; and he did not hesitate to purchase the co-operation of Kara Mustafa at any price. Kara Mustafa, on his part, had long nourished the wish to attack Austria, and he had a good opportunity of doing so in the first two years of his Vizirate, when the French harassed the Emperor on one side and the Magyars on the other; but, with characteristic acumen, he had chosen to go to a profitless war with Russia and to postpone the realisation of his favourite dream to a less convenient moment. However, Louis thought, better late than never.

In the meantime, while these machinations were maturing, Kara Mustafa sharpened his sword. Chandos heard of “nothing soe much as the drawing togeather of great forces from all parts of this vast Empire,”[303] and, though he prayed “God defend all Christians from the violence of Turks,” he could not help feeling that in a long-protracted war lay his only hope of escaping further molestation. It was therefore with profound relief that he saw the Vizir make his stately exit from Constantinople: “nor doe we dispair of God’s mercy either to convert him from or confound him in his malice against us before his returne.”

Of the two contingencies it was the more probable that came to pass; and, if the English had good reason to attribute the aggravation of their woes to the Machiavellian policy of Louis, it was to that same policy that they owed their final deliverance.

Kara Mustafa, in the spring of 1683, marched north at the head of as numerous an army as ever Grand Vizir led—the whole strength of the Ottoman Empire was bent against Austria. With this host, augmented, too, by Hungarian rebels, he crossed the frontier, traversed Hungary performing miracles of ferocity and perfidy, and, not finding in his way either fortified towns or armies capable to arrest his progress, penetrated to the very gates of Vienna (July 14, N.S.). At the approach of the enemy the Emperor Leopold fled with precipitation, leaving the Duke of Lorraine with a small force to defend his capital.

The unhappy citizens, isolated and abandoned by their natural protector, presented to the world a memorable example of courage and initiative. But hunger and disease soon began to decimate them. Of succour there was no sign. The beleaguered city seemed doomed, and with it the whole of Central Europe. Only a combination of chances could save Vienna.

Such a combination was provided by Kara Mustafa’s multiform imbecility. Eager to secure the treasures of the Hapsburg capital for himself, he declined to stimulate the ardour of his soldiers with the promise of plunder and avoided a general assault which could have reduced the town before the arrival of relief, hoping to take it intact by capitulation. Being as arrogant as he was greedy, he disdained to keep himself informed of the movements of the enemy, took no measures to prevent their passage of the Danube, and allowed them to concentrate close behind his camp without the slightest opposition. At the very moment when Vienna seemed ready to succumb, John Sobieski joined the Imperial forces under the Duke of Lorraine on the neighbouring heights.

Next day (Sept. 11, N.S.) this army of only 77,000 men descended to the plain like an irresistible avalanche and beat Kara Mustafa’s host into confusion, defeat, destruction. Some ten thousand Turks remained dead on the field of battle. The rest, including the Grand Vizir, fled leaving behind them their guns, their tents, their archives, and all their colours except the sacred standard of the Prophet. Not the least notable item in the long list of loot was the Grand Vizir’s pavilion: a miniature palace surrounded by baths, gardens, and fountains: which that night afforded a luxurious resting-place to the happy King of Poland—the King whose ambassadors Kara Mustafa had treated as we have seen. And so in a few hours the cloud that had hung over Central Europe for months melted away.

This rout, aggravated by some other disasters which overtook shortly afterwards the demoralised Ottoman army, exhausted the Grand Signor’s favour for his Vizir. Kara Mustafa’s enemies at Court fanned the Imperial wrath to a white heat, and an Aga was sent to Belgrade, where the would-be conqueror had retired, with orders to relieve him of his head. The Aga arrived on December 25th (N.S.) after sunset; and before sunrise he had fulfilled his mission. Thus perished, in the height of his pride, one of the most wicked Ministers, and one of the weakest-minded, that ever tyrannised over a country. His death was lamented only by those few who had had no cause to regret his birth.

Kara Mustafa’s disappearance brought comparative peace and contentment to foreign residents in Turkey. Not long afterwards Lord Chandos had the Audience from which he had been debarred for three years, and after a prosperous career this shrewd and sturdy Englishman retired, in 1687, with a full purse.[304]

But for Kara Mustafa’s country there was neither peace nor contentment. The discomfiture before Vienna afforded a revelation of Turkey’s weakness which tempted Russia and Venice to join Austria and Poland in what they called a “Holy League.” As we have seen, they all had many scores to settle with the Porte. They settled them now with a vengeance. From 1684 on to 1699 this struggle for dominion and plunder raged under the name of religion. The religious fervour of the Moslems was not less holy than that of the Christians, but Allah fought on the side of the majority. Misfortune followed misfortune and loss came on the top of loss. In 1687 the Turks thought to change their luck by changing their Sultan. But to no purpose: the cycle of their misfortunes went on unbroken. Famine, fires, and insurrections at home heightened the dismay caused by defeats abroad, until at last the mighty Ottoman Empire, stripped of vast territories, distracted, and utterly spent, had to seek the mediation of the Maritime Powers—England and Holland. Lord Pagett and Jakob Collyer, the successors of the diplomats whom Kara Mustafa had outraged so grievously, tried in 1699 to rescue what was possible from the wreck Kara Mustafa had wrought. (Peace of Carlowitz, Jan. 26.)

Not long after this remarkable instance of historic retribution, one of Kara Mustafa’s victims reappeared upon the stage. Mrs. Pentlow had, on his fall, endeavoured to obtain reparation for the injury done to her, and the new Grand Vizir, our old friend Soliman, Ahmed Kuprili’s suave Kehayah, was very willing to see both that and our other claims settled out of his enemy’s estate. But the Grand Signor, who had confiscated that estate, demanded due proofs, which was demanding the impossible. Avanias were always so conducted that hardly any one besides the persons concerned knew the details: the Turks concerned were Kara Mustafa’s creatures who, on his death, were dispersed; the evidence of his Jew and of our Dragomans was inadmissible against True Believers; the only witness who could have helped us was the Chief Customer; but Hussein Aga would not, for prudential reasons, come forward.[305] So the matter dropped, and Mrs. Pentlow went away to England, where she married a member of the St. John family, apparently resigned to her loss. But she had not abandoned all hope, and in the autumn of 1700, when our Ambassador was basking in the sun of popularity, she arrived at Constantinople with her daughter, now grown into a fine young “Mrs. Susanna Pentlow,” and a letter from the Earl of Jersey, Secretary of State, to Lord Pagett, requesting him to use his influence for the recovery of the Smyrna estate.

Lord Pagett enjoyed among the English in the Levant the reputation of a diplomat who made “no great figure at Court, contenting himself with being feared by his own nation.”[306] And in this case he did precisely as the unfortunate Sir John Finch would have done. He indited a lengthy despatch in which he gave five different reasons why he could do nothing. The records of the Porte had been lost before Vienna, and without them no claim would be considered. The widow had no documents to prove her case. By the Turkish law all debts for which no demand had been made for fifteen years were invalid. The Vizir then in power was the son of Kara Mustafa’s sister who was still alive, and there was nobody in the whole of the Ottoman Empire who respected the memory of that “unfortunate great man” so much or who showed a stronger devotion to his family. Lastly, the Turkish Government had no money to pay off its soldiers and sailors, all of whom were clamouring for their long overdue stipends: “and while pressing, clear, just debts can’t be got in, there’s little hopes of recovering an old, doubtfull, litigious pretence, pursued upon a very cold scent.”[307] His Lordship therefore advised that the matter should be allowed to rest till some favourable opportunity turned up. Such an opportunity, to the best of the present writer’s knowledge, has not yet turned up. And so we may part for ever with Mrs. Pentlow, alias Mrs. St. John, and direct our attention to some of the other characters that have figured in our story—those three distinguished Englishmen who, it is hoped, did in Turkey enough to inspire the reader with a wish to know what became of them afterwards.

The subsequent career of Paul Rycaut need not detain us long. On missing the Constantinople appointment, our late Consul entreated the King to cast a gracious eye upon him, when any office which His Majesty’s wisdom should judge most agreeable to his talents and experience became vacant; and in 1685 he obtained the post of Secretary to the Earl of Clarendon who had recently been made Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. At the same time he was knighted and sworn of the Privy Council and judge of the Admiralty in Ireland. In this employment the ex-Consul earned his Chief’s commendations for integrity and, among the Irish Catholics, the character of an extortionate official. Whichever of these two opinions was correct, Sir Paul did not hold that office long. At the beginning of 1688 he returned to England, and about the middle of the following year he was transferred at last to a sphere for which his linguistic attainments and his diplomatic and commercial experience really fitted him—that of English Resident in Hamburgh and the Hanse Towns. He filled that position almost till his death, which occurred in 1700, a few months after his recall. As in Turkey, so in Europe, Rycaut devoted much of his time to literary work, publishing The Present State of the Greek and Armenian Churches (1678); The History of the Turkish Empire from 1623 to 1677, including his Memoirs (1680); and some translations from the Spanish and the Latin. Of these productions the History was long considered one of the best works of its kind in the English language; and the Memoirs part of it, at least, can still be read with profit and not without pleasure.

To turn to the Rev. John Covel. Thanks to his trip to Adrianople, supplemented just before he left Turkey by some swift excursions to Nicomedia, Nicaea, and the islands of the Sea of Marmara, and by a passing view of such classic spots as the homeward bound ship touched at, our Chaplain returned home with his fame as “a great Oriental traveller” firmly established.[308] Soon afterwards he was made Doctor of Divinity by royal warrant, instituted to two sinecure rectories, and, in 1681, was appointed Chaplain to the Princess of Orange at the Hague. He was now forty-three. With his faculties unimpaired and patronage from high quarters flowing in, he seemed to have the ball fairly at his feet. For about four years he flowered in the sun of princely favour; and then, suddenly, the fair prospect became overcast. Dr. Covel would never speak of the cause which brought his residence at the Hague to an abrupt close—it was, perhaps, the one subject on which he ever succeeded in holding his tongue. But we know it. Among the various and, doubtless, useful functions a divine had to perform in the Orange household, that of gossip and newsagent was not included. Dr. Covel, however, unable to break himself of an old habit, continued his investigations into other people’s affairs with unabated ardour. To put it plainly, he became one of the spies and tale-bearers who were encouraged, if not actually employed, by King James to make mischief between his daughter and his son-in-law. A letter from the Chaplain giving the English Ambassador an account of the way in which William treated Mary was intercepted—and Dr. Covel had to pack at three hours’ notice.

King James tried to console the dismissed cleric with the Chancellorship of York during its vacancy (Nov. 9, 1687); and the Mastership of Christ’s College falling vacant, the Fellows, to avoid having a certain Smithson thrust upon them by the King, hastily chose (July 7, 1688) Dr. Covel: “a choice,” it has been guessed, “they probably would not have made, had they had more time.”[309] But the Rev. John was not to be consoled for the loss of his place in the princely sun. He denied the accusation, denounced his accusers, did everything possible to regain the Paradise Lost. But all in vain. That William neither believed nor forgave him became painfully obvious when, soon after the Revolution, he visited Cambridge. That year (1689) Dr. Covel was Vice-Chancellor of the University, and since he could not avoid coming into personal contact with the King he had offended as a Prince, he anxiously inquired how His Majesty would be pleased to receive him. The answer must have made him wince: His Majesty could distinguish between Dr. Covel and the Vice-Chancellor of the University. Curt, caustic Majesty!

His garrulity had ruined Dr. Covel’s chances of ecclesiastical preferment; but it did not stand in the way of his academic career. He retained the Mastership of Christ’s all his life, and spent much of his leisure in transcribing, expanding, correcting, and every way spoiling the notes he had made at Constantinople: to the satisfaction of himself, though not of others. No publisher could be found courageous enough to undertake the publication of these masses of immense discursiveness and laborious irrelevance. It was only in our own time that a learned society ventured to print a selection from them. But Dr. Covel was not fortunate even in this tardy and partial emergence. To the author’s minute inaccuracies the editor has added a multitude of absurdities of his own; the upshot being the most bewildering bundle of blunders that ever issued from the press of any country in the guise of a book.[310]

So much concerning Dr. Covel’s Travels. His magnum opus on the Greek Church, after nearly fifty years’ incubation, came out at last when it was least wanted, in 1722—more than a generation after the question with which it deals had lost its actuality. It came out in folio, with a florid dedication to the Duke of Chandos, son of our late Ambassador and at the time Governor of the Levant Company: the author hints that, had he been made a Bishop, he would have had time to finish his book sooner. The delay, indeed, had its advantages: non cito, hoc est, non cito ac cursim agere; vel non temere et inconsulte. Yet, despite fifty years’ revisions and manipulations, he fears “some few things may yet appear Defective, and others Confus’d and Indigested.” The fear is well founded. Its diffused and confused style, and still more its creator’s fundamental inability to take an objective view of things, render this Account of the Greek Church one of the best illustrations extant of the aphorism mega biblion, mega kakon.

But, after all, it is not Dr. Covel the bad writer, but John the good fellow we care most about. In course of time he left off hoping for royal favours and episcopal mitres, and settled down to a mechanical routine of existence such as good dons lead. Whether he knew it or not, Dr. Covel was happy; the jollity which had made the Papas popular with the Factors of Constantinople helped to make the Master popular with the Fellows of Cambridge. This placid existence lasted till December 19th, 1722, when the Rev. John, in the 85th year of his age, went to join Finch and Baines under the pavement of Christ’s College chapel.

An inscription commemorates the virtues of Dr. Covel. A good portrait of him, in his congregational robes, preserves the features of his countenance. His voluminous journals and letters, stored in the British Museum, supply an ample and by far the most trustworthy testimony to the traits of his mind and character; they exhibit him as an amiable man rather than one of a very superior understanding.

DR. JOHN COVEL.
From the Portrait by Valentine Ritz at Christ’s College, Cambridge.

To face p. 372.

Much more exciting were the fortunes of the Honourable Dudley North. We saw him in Turkey a shrewd merchant, keen and unscrupulous in his pursuit of wealth. We find him in England a shrewd politician, keen and, some said, remorseless in his pursuit of power. He returned at a moment when the feud between Whig and Tory—to give the factions their new-fangled designations—was at its fiercest. By that infamous fiction, the Popish Plot, the Whigs had for a time driven the nation to madness and their principal opponents to an ignominious death. The public was just beginning to find out how it had been duped, and the Tories, profiting by the reaction, were getting ready to pay the Whigs back in their own false coin; the same gang of spies, witnesses, informers, and suborners who had hounded innocent Tories to the gallows, were now employed to hound innocent Whigs. North had come home a firm believer in Titus Oates’s murderous myth. He was undeceived—all the sooner because he was not slow to perceive that his interest lay on the same side as the truth: the Tory side. At the instance of his brother, then Lord Chief Justice, he was called to serve the King’s party as Sheriff of London and Middlesex: an expensive office which conferred the power of packing juries and securing convictions. Dudley performed the services expected from him with more energy than scruple. He considered it, indeed, very unfortunate that so many trials for high treason and executions should happen in his year of office; but business is business.

In the midst of all this sanguinary work, he found time to court a wealthy widow, Lady Gunning, and, in spite of her father, to marry her. She loved him, admired him, idolised him, and presided over the splendid banquets he gave in his Basinghall Street mansion. He returned her affection fully, and it was partly that she might not remain, were it only in name, separate from him, but become Lady North, that he accepted the honour of knighthood which a grateful Court bestowed upon him. Thus happy both in his private and public affairs, Sir Dudley climbed from height to height, becoming in quick succession an Alderman, a Commissioner of the Customs, a Commissioner of the Treasury, a Member of Parliament, and the chief advocate for the Crown in all questions of revenue that came before the House of Commons. In this last capacity North shone with a pure light.

Men who spend their lives in making money are usually the least competent to understand the abstract principles that govern the accumulation and distribution of wealth. The distant views and ultimate conclusions which make up the science of Political Economy are beyond their vision. All the progress achieved in that most important field of knowledge has been achieved by philosophers, to whose discoveries our merchants and manufacturers were the last to be converted. North, by a most rare gift of nature, combined in his mental constitution the contradictory qualities of the practical trader and the speculative thinker. Together with a large fortune, he had brought from the Levant a large fund of original deductions from his experience.[311] Withal, he possessed a faculty of expressing himself, at once homely and forcible, which arrested attention and carried conviction. As a speaker on financial topics the Member for Banbury had no rival.

How much higher a man of so many gifts and so few scruples might have climbed must remain matter of speculation. The Revolution of 1688 pulled the ladder from under him. The day which witnessed the victory of the Whigs was a day of reckoning for the Tories. Forgetting the wrongs they had inflicted and remembering only the injuries they had suffered, the victors were grimly set on revenge. Parliamentary Committees were appointed to inquire into the late judicial proceedings, to punish all persons concerned in them, and to indemnify the victims out of their estates. Among the rest, Sir Dudley North had to stand his trial. Great sport was expected from his baiting. The galleries and benches of the House of Commons were crowded with spectators; but they got very little satisfaction. To all the questions put to him as to the manner in which he had obtained his Shrievalty and his conduct therein, North gave fearless and, apparently, full and frank answers. This was not well! After much whispering into the Chairman’s ear, one of the members of the Committee moved that the ex-Sheriff should be asked to name the Aldermen who, as he pretended, had assisted at his election. The Chairman nodded. That was Sir Dudley’s supreme moment. He turned quietly round and with his cane pointed to five Aldermen present, who since the Revolution had gone over to the Whigs, naming them one after another with deadly distinctness. This was worse than ever! To prevent further sensations, a cunning Parliamentarian stood up hastily, and “Mr. Foley,” he said, addressing the Chairman, “you had best have a care: you have an honourable gentleman before you: that you do not ask him, etc.” Having thus turned the tables upon his prosecutors, the clever Dudley left the House with colours flying, sped away by the very persons who had dragged him there.

For a time he continued in the Commission of the Customs. But, presently, that and his other offices were taken from him; and Sir Dudley relapsed to his original status of a Turkey Merchant. He went back to the buying and selling of cloth with the resignation of a philosopher and the spirit of a veteran trader. But even there luck had at the last rounded upon him. The War with France just begun (1689) hit North as hard as it did most of the other merchants of England trading into the Levant Seas. Their trade was attacked by the enemy both in Turkey and on the way to it. These calamities abated North’s mettle and affected his health. He decided to give up the perilous business and turn country gentleman—a quiet rural life, he thought, would restore to him the health of body and peace of mind of which the bustle of the world had robbed him: he would beat his clothyard into a ploughshare; he would raise crops with as much pleasure as he had raised dollars or cut off heads. Alas! even here his good fortune failed him. After inspecting several great estates and offering great prices for them in vain, he succeeded at last in finding a home in Norfolk; the date was fixed for him to go down to sign the agreement; but on the day before, he was seized with the disease which killed him. He died on the last day of 1691, at the comparatively early age of fifty.

However his character may be appraised, Dudley North will always be remembered as one of the outstanding figures of his time: the most brilliant of those seventeenth century merchant-adventurers who were the founders of our national prosperity and commercial pre-eminence.

So with all our actors off the stage, we may ring the curtain down. La commedia è finita.

The Hon.ble S.r Dudley North K.t
Commissioner of the Treasury to King Charles the Second.
From an Engraving by G. Vertue, 1743.

To face p. 376.