Entertaining the Moroccan Ambassador in 1682

The Moroccan Ambassador,  'Mohammed Ohadu '   Godfrey Kneller and Jan Wyck 1684

©  English Heritage, Chiswick House

The visit of Muhammad ben Haddu al-'Attar, the Moroccan Ambassador to England in the reign of Charles II, is recorded not only in this dramatic portrait in the style of van Dyck, but also by the institutions he visited, in the newspapers and in diaries.  He was in England from late December 1681 until 23rd July1682.

John Locke's friends also mentioned the ambassador in their letters to him.  Writing on 9th May, 1682, from Thames Street, on the route between the Tower and Westminster, Mrs Anna Grigg breaks into her rather cross letter to note that,

"just now pases under my window the Morrocco Embasador, in civility to him I will begin to be calm lest he should popp up and say I look sowerly, and that my writing now may have some merit these men in blanquets are at this minute at my Elbow dining…"  Locke Correspondence, E.S. De Beer

Muhammad as the Moroccan ambassador may have been in the procession, but this was the date when the ambassadors from Bantam (Java)  entered into London, so she may have been mistaken.   "Blanquets" hardly does justice to Muhammad ben Haddu's colourful velvet riding habit in the Kneller painting.  He was much admired for his daring horsemanship, seen riding regularly in Hyde Park.  Godfrey Kneller was the court portrait painter, but  Jan Wyck, a Dutch Baroque painter of military scenes, would have been called upon to provide the mettlesome horse and the exotic landscape in the background.

John Evelyn records his appearance at court in January 1982: "Saw the Audience of the Morroco Ambassador: his retinue not numerous, was received in the Banqueting-house both their Majesties present:"

Whitehall Banqueting House, with its ceiling by Rubens, 1635    Historic Royal Palaces

"he came up to the Throne without making any sort of reverence, bowing so much as his head or body: he spake by a Renegado English man, for whose safe returne there was a promise:   They were all Clad in the Moorish habite Cassocks of Colourd cloth or silk with buttons & loopes, over this an Alhaga or white wollan mantle, so large as to wrap both head & body, a shash or small Turban, naked leg'd & arm'd, but with lether socks like the Turks, rich Symeters, large Calico sleev'd shirts &c: The Ambassador had a string of Pearls odly woven in his Turbant; I fancy the old Roman habite was little different as to the Mantle & naked limbs: The Ambassador was an handsom person, well featur'd, & of a wise looke, subtile, and extreamely Civile: Their Presents were Lions and Estridges &c:  Their Errant, about a Peace at Tangire &c:…"  Evelyn Diary, 11th January 1682

At a banquet in their honour two weeks later, "both the Ambassador & Retinue behaved themselves with extraordinary Moderation & modestie, though placed about a long Table a Lady between two Moores: [the ladies*]…as splendid as Jewells, and Excesse of bravery could make them:  The Moores neither admiring or seeming to reguard anything, furniture or the like with any earnestness; and but decently tasting of the banquet :  They drank a little Milk & Water, but not a drop of Wine, also they drank of a sorbet & Jacolatte: did not looke about nor stare on the Ladys, or expresse the least of surprize, but with a Courtly negligence in pace, Countenance, & whole behaviour, answering onely to such questions as were asked, with a greate deale of Wit & Gallantrie…"
Evelyn then likens the Russian ambassador to " a Clowne, compared to this Civil Heathen".
 *the hostess was Charles's mistress, Louise de Kerouaille, Duchess of Portsmouth and the bejewelled Ladies included Nell Gwyn and others.

Evelyn Diary, 24 January 1682,  E. S De Beer, © Clarendon Press

While in London, the Ambassador visited the Royal Society and also Lincoln's Inn, who have his signature in their archives with that of his secretary/translator,  but no details of his visit in their records.

The Arabic inscription reads as:

Praise be to God alone! Written by the servant of the wise, the pilgrim to god, Muhammad the son of Muhammed the son of Haddu, belonging to Sus, the Bahamwani.  May God be gracious unto him! Amen."    ©  Lincoln's Inn archives, 4th March 1682

Written in Roman script is his secretary/translator's  signature, apparently Alhash Mahamed Lacos Abencerahe.  © Lincoln's Inn Archives

The ambassador  was also a guest of the Royal Society and visited Oxford University at the end of the month.  He broke his dusty journey at Shotover on 30th May,  (" a sweet place".. according to Evelyn) as guest of Sir Timothy and Lady Tyrrell, the parents of Locke's friend James, where he experienced the contemporary equivalent of "afternoon tea" in an English country garden.

Shotover House, new built by James Tyrrell , c. 1713-18

 "There is here in the Grove, a fountain of the coldest water I ever felt : 'tis very cleere, his plantations of Oakes &c. is commendable"  Evelyn, Diary 1664

Plan of Shotover House and grounds  © Ordnance Survey 

 "as for the Entertainment of our Moorish Embass: since you expect a further account of it
all I can tell you is that the collation was in the well Arbour, which was the more surprizeing because he expected nothing there, which stood all ready against he came in being onely sweetmeats and milk- meats; Tarts etc. he eat of many things but drank nothing but milk and water and seemed by what I hear, much better satisfyed with this runing banquet then with that which was much more costly that my Lord Bishop made him.  His carriage was very civill and obliging; and his parting complement I shall not forget.   which was, his prayers that wee might all (of that Family) live long to enjoy that pleasant place, and that our good K. might live as many years as Adam, and when those were past live them over agen, that wee might alwayes live in peace."

James Tyrrell writing to Locke, June 1682.  Locke Correspondence (as above).

April: the stones of Avebury, "a more delightful indagation"

Thursday, 2nd April, 1946

"…I drove with Eardley straight to Avebury.  He took me round the Circle.  He is madly keen on Avebury and rather peevish about my lack of enthusiasm and disrespect for the ugly stones which Keiller* has dragged from the ground into the light of day.  I cannot approve of the proposal to destroy the old village inside the Circle.  I admit that the empty sections of the Circle are impressive where the terraces have been cleaned of scrub and are neatly cropped by sheep; but to remove medieval cottages and clear away all traces of habitation subsequent to the Iron Age seems to me pedantic and a distortion of historical perspective.  We walked round the Manor garden.  Eardley was bored by the house because it is not classical and is romantic. Today's fashionable distaste for the romantic in English country houses is as overemphasised as was the Edwardians' for the classical and regular.""

Ancestral Voices  James Lees-Milne, 1946

Avebury Manor  © National Trust

It was John Aubrey, writer and antiquarian, whose careful study of the Avebury henge brought it to the attention of scholars.  Later travellers like Celia Fiennes and John Evelyn would record their visits to Stonehenge, but Avebury's apparently random stones were not widely noticed or remarked upon before 1649 when Aubrey chanced upon them during a hunt;  he stopped to look more closely and caught up with the hunt later.

"The morrow after Twelfth Day Mr Charles Seymour and Sir William Button met with their pack of hounds at the Grey Wethers….
'Twas here that our game began and the chase led us at length through the village of Avebury, into the closes there: where I was wonderfully surprised at the sight of those vast stones of which I had never heard before; as also at the mighty bank and graffe [ditch] about it .  I observed in the enclosures some segments of rude circles, made with those stones, whence I concluded they had been in the old time complete.  I left my company a while, entertaining myself with a more delightful indagation [investigation]: and then (steered by the cry of hounds) overtook the company, and went with them to Kennet, where was a good hunting dinner provided."  7th January 1649 (from his Monumenta Britannica ms.)

John Aubrey, engraving by C.F. Wagstaff after a drawing by William Faithorne, c. 1666 in the Ashmolean Museum

Aubrey gave Charles II a personal tour of the Avebury stones during the King's progress to Bath in the summer of 1663, just as James I  on seeing Stonehenge in 1620 had asked his Royal architect, Inigo Jones, to research the origins of that monument.

"I brought with me a draught of it donne by memorie only; but well enough resembling it, with which his Majesty was pleased: gave me his hand to kiss, and commanded me to waite upon him at Marlborough when he went to Bath with the Queen (which was about a fortnight later) which I did: and the next day when the Court were on their journie, his Majesty left the Queen and diverted to Avebury where I showed him that stupendous antiquity with the view thereof.   He and His Royal Highness the Duke of York were well pleased."  John Aubrey

 West Kennet Avenue, Avebury

In the seventeenth century, both Stonehenge and even more so Avebury's circles were in poor condition, with their sarsen stones buried, broken and removed; at Avebury they had been incorporated into village houses and the surrounding ditches filled in.  Nevertheless, the Royal visit put these  mysterious ancient monuments on the map for wealthy educated travellers.

Salisbury Plain was "eminent for many barrow or butts that are thick all over the plaine, and this of Stoneage, that is reckoned one of the wonders of England how such prodigeous stones should be brought there; ...  the story is that none can count them twice alike, they stand confused;"  Celia Fiennes, c. 1680s

Celia Fiennes counted only 91 but John Evelyn with difficulty counted 95 in July 1654, and thought  these sarsens were brought from Avebury.  In his Diary he describes the rural landscape, "for evenness, extent, Verdure, innumerable flocks, to be one of the most delightful prospects in nature and put me in mind of the pleasant lives of the Shepherds we reade of in Romances and truer stories:"  He also  mentions the barrows and mounds in the vicinity, as "antient intrenchments, or places of burial after bloudy fights:"

Indefatigable Samuel Pepys visited both Stonehenge and Avebury in June 1668. Like his friend Evelyn  he comments on the countryside: riding "over the downes, where the life of the shepherds is, in fair weather only, pretty",  and believes the profusion of stones around easily supplied both Stonehenge and Avebury.  He is told the legend of Silbury Hill, so called from one King Seale buried there, and sees from his coach, "one place with great high stones pitched round, which, I believe, was once some particular building, in some measure like that of Stonage".  

West Kennet Long Barrow  © National Trust

Even older than Avebury and Stonehenge is the West Kennet Long Barrow, a neolithic burial chamber c. 3650 BC.  Excavations in 1955-56 found it to have been used for burials for around a thousand years, at which period the entrance had been blocked off.   I went inside with a history group on a field trip once and it was a very eerie experience which I would not really wish to repeat.

* The revival of the Avebury complex is the result of Alexander Keiller's efforts to rescue and restore the stone circles and avenues in the 1930s,  and the history of the stones and his years of work is on view in the Manor House museum.  Objects he found while excavating the stones run from very early pottery shards through Roman coins and later carvings, to a piece of a Keiller's marmalade pot from 1900, found while digging up stone 14.  However, in his process of recreating the ancient site, the buildings and history of many later centuries were swept away.  James Lees-Milne's comments on the method Keiller chose are still a matter of controversy today.

St Valentine's day: Love and death for the Merry Monarch, Charles II

Pierre Mignard painted this flattering portrait of Louise de Keroualle, Charles II's French Catholic mistress, in 1682 in Paris; some years later he became Louis XIV's first painter.
The distinctive blue sleeves may have been from a studio prop, and the negro child, the coral, nautilus shell, and the pearls all contrast with Louise's pearly skin, and also hint at the "vanitas" of earthly love.

Louise de Keroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth,   Perre Mignard, 1682

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Charles II had many mistresses - or "Valentines",  over the years, most famously English-born Nell Gwyn, and it was her rival Louise de Keroualle she was referring to, in her famous quip "I am the Protestant whore!" during a period of anti-Catholic demonstrations.

There were constant rumours that the King himself was a closet Catholic, and almost certainly died as such on 6th February 1685.   It was to avoid such anti-Catholic disturbances that Charles II was quietly buried between eight and nine at night on St Valentine's Day, 14th February 1685, as John Evelyn recounts:

"the King was [this night] very obscurely buried in a vault under Hen: 7th Chapell in Westminster, without any manner of pomp, and soone forgotten after all this vainity, & the face of the whole Court exceedingly changed into a more solemn and moral behaviour: The new King affecting neither Prophanesse, nor bouffonry:  All the Greate Officers broke their white-Staves on the Grave &c: according to form:"  Diary of John Evelyn, ed. E.S. De Beer

Henry VII's Chapel, © Westminster Abbey

Evelyn's friend, Samuel Pepys, whose Diary tells us so much about Charles II and his Court in the 1660s,  also records Valentine's Day merrymaking, a mixture or romance, sex, and 'bouffonry'.  It was the custom for groups of friends to draw lots for their Valentines for the forthcoming year, and give their ladies gifts. John Locke writes to his Oxford valentine in 1659: "I have an overflow of happiness and honour in being yours though a Lottery made me soe, and you have given no small proofs of an excellent and obliging nature in accepting such a trifle from the hand of fortune. "

You were also expected to take as your Valentine the first person of the opposite sex whom you saw that morning:
"14. St.  Valentine. 
This morning comes betimes Dicke Pen[n] to be my wife's valentine, and came to our bedside.  By the same token I had him brought to my side, thinking to have made him kiss me, but he perceived me and would not. So went to his Valentine -- a notable, stout, witty boy.  I up, about business; and opening the door, there was Bagwell's wife, with whom I talked afterwards and she had the confidence to say she came with a hope to be time enough to be my Valentine, and so endeed she did -- but my oath preserved me from losing any time with her."  Samuel Pepys, Diary 1665

In May 1660, Pepys sailed with Edward Lord Montague to the Hague, part of the  convoy to bring King Charles and his brother James back to England, where Pepys was presented to the King, his brother James, Duke of York and their sister Mary, the Princess Royal.  Before this, Charles and his attendants in exile had been living in penury, " in a sad, poor condition for clothes and money…their clothes not being worth 40s., the best of them".

Here is Charles as Prince of Wales with his siblings in happier times, with on the left in the painting Princess Mary, whose son would reign as William III, and Charles' brother James, still in long skirts, who would succeed Charles as King James II, in February 1685.

The five eldest children of Charles I,  copy after Anthony Van Dyck 1637

© National Portrait Gallery

"Versailles, Versailles!"

I watched some of the BBC' s  Versailles last night, mainly to check out the furniture (no euphemism there), and I was distracted by imagining how Sid James and better still, Kenneth Williams, would have livened up the stilted dialogue.  As for the set furnishings, I  saw the Palace's beautiful painted panelling and some period cabinets, but nothing as eye-catching as this one I saw at the V&A Museum recently.

Ivory cabinet and stand, 1661-65    Pierre Gole   © V&A Museum

This exquisite display cabinet was made by Pierre Gole, cabinet maker to Louis XIV, for Philippe, duc d'Orleans and his English wife, Henriette-Anne (Charles II's favourite sister, Minette).

Unusually, it is all veneered in ivory with a delicate inlaid floral pattern.  Gole has used many materials to achieve the colours, including several exotic woods, ebony, horn, bone (stained green for the leaves)  and tortoise shell, along with brass mounts.  More tiny drawers are hidden behind the central door panel.  

The amazing craftsmanship of this piece means that it would never be boring.

"And a few friends, and many books,…" Abraham Cowley

Abraham Cowley,  Sir Peter Lely, 1666-67
© National Portrait Gallery

Highly regarded in the seventeenth century, there are portraits of Cowley in several Oxford and Cambridge Colleges, and he was buried in pomp in Westminster Abbey. His reputation as a poet dwindled in later centuries, but he should also be remembered for his influence amongst those who founded the Royal Society; his Proposition for the Advancement of Learning was published in 1661 and he and his friend John Evelyn shared their interest in botany. 

THE WISH

"Well then! I now do plainly see

This busy world and I shall ne'er agree.

The very honey of all earthly joy

Does of all meats the soonest cloy;

And they, methinks, deserve my pity

Who for it can endure the stings,

The crowd, and buzz, and murmurings,

Of this great hive, the city.

"Ah, yet, ere I descend to the grave,

May I a small house and large garden have;

And a few friends, and many books, both true,

Both wise, and both delightful too!

And since love ne'er will from me flee,

A Mistress moderately fair,

And good as guardian angels are,

Only beloved and loving me.

"O fountains! when in you shall I

Myself eased of unpeaceful thoughts espy?

O fields, O woods!  when, when shall I be made

The happy tenant of your shade?

Here's the spring-head of Pleasure's flood:

Here's wealthy Nature's treasury,

Where all the riches lie that she

Has coin'd and stamp'd for good.

"Pride and ambition here

Only in far-fetch'd metaphors appear;

Here naught but winds can hurtful murmurs scatter,

And naught but Echo flatter.

The gods, when they descended, hither

From heaven did always choose their way:

And therefore may we boldly say

That 'tis the way too thither.

"How happy here should I

And one dear She live, and embracing die!

She who is all the world, and can exclude

In deserts solitude.

I should have then this only fear: 

Lest men, when they my pleasures see,

Should hither throng to live like me,

And so make a city here." 

Abraham Cowley,  1618-1667.  

Cowley was a staunch Royalist, carrying secret letters between Henrietta-Maria from exile in France and Charles I.   Having lived through the political and religious upheaval under Charles I, Cromwell  and Charles II, it is not surprising that Cowley echoes Virgil and Horace in his picture of a quiet rural life (although he never married).  But for the modern reader, Andrew Marvell says it so much better.   

Tangier Harbour

"The Commissioners for Tanger met, and there my Lord Tiviott, together with Capt. Cuttance, Capt. Evans, and Jonas Moore, sent to that purpose, did bring us a brave draught of the Molle to be built there, and report that it is likely to be the most considerable place the King of England hath in the world; and so I am apt to think it will."

Diary ( 28 Sept. 1663)  Samuel Pepys