Page 30 - Early English Adventurers in the Middle East_Neat

t 30 EARLY ENGLISH ADVENTURERS IN THE EAST

writhed under them with only occasional opportunities
for reprisals. Now that the opening of the seas had given
the opportunity of hitting back effectively neither the
Government nor the common people was disposed to look
too critically upon exploits which, besides paying off old
scores, brought a refreshing stream of wealth in their train.
So the indignant protests which in due course came from
the peninsula were drowned in a chorus of popular acclama­
tion amid which Lancaster retired for a period to the back­
ground to enjoy a well earned respite from active command.
Meanwhile, the old idea of commercial expansion in the
East was quietly fermenting in the mind of the merchant
j
class, which in the closing years of the sixteenth century
had become perhaps more powerful than at any previous i
'
period in English history. The formation of the English :
Turkey Company in 1579 had opened up an avenue of
independent trade with the near East, to the immense
widening of the knowledge of the countries of Asia.
Constantinople was then one of the principal emporiums
of the globe. Into its portals came caravans from all
parts of Asia, bearing the products of the looms of Persia,
India and China, and the spices of the remoter regions of
the Eastern seas. The great world of the Orient, which
had hitherto been known in Britain mainly through the
:
refracted medium of Venetian, and Spanish and Portuguese
eyes, now became more or less familiar by the direct narra­
tives of Englishmen who had entered the East by its
Mediterranean door.
As early as 1583 five Englishmen, Ralph Fitch, James
■
Newberry, J. Eldred, W. Leedes, and J. Story, started out
from Tripolis in Syria on a tour in Asia, which even to-day
would be considered remarkable. From Tripolis they pro-