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).

John Locke's troublesome portrait

29th August, 1632, is the birthday of philosopher and scholar, John Locke.  He was born in Wrington, near Bristol in this cottage - which looks somewhat decayed in this much later print. This was the childhood home of his mother Agnes Keene, who had come here to be with her mother for the birth.  It has since been pulled down and is now marked by a commemorative plaque set against the churchyard wall nearby.  His father was a country attorney and a few days later mother and child returned to Belluton, near Pensford, which remained Locke's home until he left for Westminster School, followed by Christ Church college, Oxford in 1652.
 In 1665 he was employed as a minor secretary on a diplomatic mission to Cleves near Brandenberg and on his return to England became part of Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper's household at Exeter House in the Strand, as physician and confidential secretary.

John Locke c. 1672  by John Greenhill

© National Portrait Gallery, London

 Locke was rising forty when this portrait was painted, and Ashley-Cooper, now Lord Shaftesbury, had his portrait painted by Greenhill around the same time.

Sir Anthony Ashley-Cooper c. 1672-3,  after John Greenhill

© National Portrait Gallery London

Three years later Locke's health, always worse in the heavily polluted London air, forced him abroad in November 1675 to winter in Montpellier.  Before he left he made arrangements for his books and other belongings, including a portrait,  to be cared for in Oxford and at Exeter House, not knowing that he would be abroad for over three years.

So, is this the famous portrait of Locke left in safekeeping with his colleague and friend, Shaftesbury's steward Thomas Stringer, along with his books and other effects, over which he and Mr & Mrs Stringer quarrelled when Locke asked for its return some years later?

While Locke was abroad Exeter House  had the builders in in 1676 and then the Shaftesbury family and staff moved to Thanet House in Aldersgate Street and to Wimborne St Giles, the family seat.  Stringer would have been dealing with all these relocations of people and goods, as well as moving to lodgings in St. Martin's Lane himself.

Locke returned to Shaftesbury's service in 1679, but then following Shaftesbury's death in disgrace in 1683,  he also fled to the Netherlands for safety for the next six years.  No wonder there was some confusion over the painting's ownership by 1688 when Locke asked a friend to retrieve it for him*, but this does not entirely explain Thomas Stringer's unfriendly and adamant claim that it had been a gift.
He writes to Locke's go-between, Edward Clarke in March, arguing at length:
 "…wee are now too old for Children's play to have a thing given and then to have it called for againe;"

This sense of umbrage remained between both parties, and the identification of the painting remains uncertain.   

John Greenhill was also a Somerset man, who trained with Peter Lely before setting up his own London studio about the time he painted this showy self portrait.  It was probably intended to attract potential patrons, and he holds Lely's drawing of him like  a reference. 

Self Portrait, c. 1665, aged 20

© Trustees of Dulwich Gallery

By the time he painted Locke,  Greenhill  was an established portrait painter, but was to die young after a fall returning home from a heavy night out, in 1676.  Many of his portraits of Stuart worthies are now in public collections, as are his and other artists' portraits of Locke. 

*Locke wanted an engraving made for the frontispiece to his Essay concerning Human Understanding,   and admitted his vanity in liking this image of his younger self.

The Weather in June, 1681 and more

Very unseasonal weather in June is nothing new.  On 24th June, 1681, James Tyrrell writes to his friend from their student days at Oxford,  John Locke:

"as for news all that wee talk of here is of the rain and are still praying for more, I think it were worth your enquiry to write to your Friends in France whether they have had the same weather there, since I hear at Oxford, that the Drought hath bin so great about Paris, that the fear of Famine had raised Corne to well near a pistol a bushel: the truth of which I should be glad to know.  in the mean time you may furnish your Paris vertuosos with this observation concerning weather: that for the honour of our Northern Climate, there hath bin seen several times this month ice of the thickness of half a Crowne, and the last time I was told of it was just after I writ my last to you, which was about the 11th. or 12 instant. God be thanked wee are now like to have a seasonable after spring, and in hopes of it I am hayning [fencing grass to protect from cattle] my ground againe as if it were but Lady day having had almost no hay yet; "

This must be small comfort to today's Paris 'virtuosos'.  But dipping into Geoffrey Grigson's  The English Year, extremes of weather seem not uncommon (or perhaps more often recorded) in June.  

June 3rd:  "Since which till last week we had hot dry weather. Now it rains like mad."  Thomas Gray 1760;

June 9th:  "Everything seemed parched and dried up by the two months' drought except some brilliant patches of crimson sanfoin which lighted up the white hot downs and burning Plain."  Francis Kilvert, 1874;  and

June 11th:  We have had an extraordinary drought, no grass, no leaves, no flowers; not a white rose for the festival of yesterday!  About four arrived such a flood, that we could not see out of the windows: the whole lawn was like a lake, though situated on so high an Ararat  [at Strawberry Hill]… You never saw such desolation.…It never came into my head before, that a rainbow office for insuring against water might be very necessary."   Horace Walpole, 1775

The Blind Girl  John Everett Millais, 1856

Birmingham Museums Trust

About the Vernal Equinox

The spring equinox has been reached earlier than ever this year, when day and night are of almost equal length around the globe. (see livescience.com etc.)

Vernal Equinox 1987   David Maccoby   

© the artist, Ben Uri Gallery

But March has a tradition of change, with the Julian Calendar being reformed by Pope Gregory XIIIth in 1582, to keep the yearly reckoning on track, with the introduction of an extra day every Leap year, (except in the years ending in 00, unless they were divisible by 400).

And in Britain the Calendar Act in 1752 cut eleven days from that year to formalise the new Gregorian rules, leading to the urban myth (perpetuated by Hogarth) that the populace were shouting to be given back their eleven days.  There must have been many who felt like that; in addition the calendar was  changed to start the legal year on January 1st, instead of on 25th March, the traditional Lady Day.
In the previous century documents and correspondence were frequently dated with both Old Style and New Style dates for the three months of January, February and March, especially in correspondence with Europe, which had already adopted the Gregorian Calendar.  So John Locke in 1667, writing to Robert Boyle about collecting peony roots, "in April, when Sol is in Aries, and at a plenilunium before the rising of the Sun", dates his letter March 24, 66/67.

And in England we have a further change this month when the clocks go forward for British Summer Time.  No wonder we feel buffeted about at this time.

"O Proserpina

For the flowers now that frighted thou let'st fall

From Dis's waggon! daffodils

That come before the swallow dares, and take

The winds of March with beauty:…"  (A Winter's Tale)

Spring, wall painting from Pompeii  

Archaeological Museum, Naples

Two Lotteries for London

The building of Westminster Bridge was partly funded by a lottery, for which the prize was a  truly giant silver wine cistern, or wine bottle cooler, made for Henry Jerningham.  Flanked by nymph and satyr, supported by crouching panthers and decorated with scenes of Bacchus, it was made by master silversmith Charles Kandler in 1735, with modelling by Michael Rysbrack, weighing some 8000 ounces.  The lottery tickets were five or six shillings each and were accompanied by a silver medal.  The winner (who may not have realised its enormous size and weight) sold the original to a niece of Peter the Great and it is now in the Hermitage collection.  

In 1884 Elkington's of Birmingham made electrotype copies of Russian silver treasures, including the Jerningham wine cistern, as part of an international art education project, and this copy is now in the Victoria and Albert Museum.

The Jerningham Wine Cooler,  electroplate copy 1884  

 ©V&A Museum

Another public lottery was run several decades earlier, for the building of Greenwich Hospital, which was begun following the wish of Queen Mary II to provide for old and wounded seamen after the naval battle of La Hogue.    It was carefully controlled, according to John Evelyn (treasurer and a Commissioner for the Hospital) in 1699 for: "All Lotterys 'til now cheating people, to be no longer permitted than to Christmas next, except that for the benefit of Grinwich Hospital:"

Even John Locke, who was aways very cautious with his money, bought himself a ticket in summer 1700, when asked by a fellow scholar to buy tickets for some friends in Paris.  There appear to have been monthly draws, with large and small lotteries at twenty shillings and five shillings a ticket.  Because of the vagaries of the post, often sending letters via acquaintances crossing the Channel, some draws were missed, but Locke and his French friend did have some winning tickets, as what they jokingly called the ''deus ex machina" looked favourably on them.

By August 1703 the sum of £89,364,  fourteen shillings and eightpence-farthing had been spent on the buildings since work began in 1696.  The first seamen were admitted in 1705 but building continued till 1752.   The Old Royal Naval College is a wonderful sight from the Thames to this day.

Greenwich Hospital,  Antonio Canaletto c. 1752 

© National Maritime Museum

Lady Masham's closet

No portrait survives of Damaris Cudworth, Lady Masham, who was a close friend of Locke since 1681;  she was then living in Cambridge where her father, the Platonist Ralph Cudworth, was Master of Christ's College.

The Master's Lodge, Christ's College, Cambridge (built c. 1550)

© Christ's College Cambridge

This description was written in November 1685, when she was still adjusting to her new life as wife to Sir Francis Masham, stepmother to his children and mistress of a household in rural Essex, and it gives us a vivid sense of her personality.

"I have several times begun to write to You since I received Yours But the Necessitie of Household Affaires will have it so that I could never Yet finish one Letter;...'Tis in vain that you bid me Preserve my Poetry; Household Affaires are the Opium of the Soul… if ever that Humour come on me againe You shall Wish for Finis a Thousand times before you find it; I will set the  Affronted Countrey Ladies too upon you, and They shall Abuse you Ten times more than I can, for All your Contempt of Theire Sublime Ideas of Goose Pye and Bag Puding.  This would bring me again now to the Chapter of Household Affaires, and my imployments, but that I am awearie: However for All my quarrel with you I cannot help  telling you that there is scarse any thing I would not give to see you Here in my Closet where I am now writing to You: I can but think how you would  smile to see Cowley and my Surfeit Waters Jumbled together; with Dr. More and my Gally Potts of Mithridate and Dioscordium; My Receits and Account Books with Antoninus's his Meditations, and Des Cartes Principles; with my Globes and my Spinning Wheel; for just in this order they at present ly, and tis not without Reason I think that I designe to Draw Curtains over this Fantastical Furniture."

From her letter to John Locke, 14 November 1685
The Correspondence of John Locke, ed. E. S. De Beer  Oxford University Press

Engraving of Lady Masham's estate, Oates House, Essex (c. 1821)

(Essex Records Office)

This portrait of Locke was painted in the summer of 1689, soon after his return to England from political exile in Holland. The next year he moved to live with the Mashams at Oates,  a more healthy spot than London, where he became an influential part of the household (although he insisted on paying rent).   So Lady Damaris Masham's correspondence with her friend was replaced with daily conversation.

  John Locke   Herman Verelst,  1689
© National Portrait Gallery

John Locke: sight and insight.

Here are portraits of two very great friends - young William Molyneux, Irish astronomer and natural scientist and John Locke, the famous philosopher and man of letters. They lived in an age of enquiry and  debate - widely spread through the printed word - and shared their  interests and studies in natural philosophy.      You feel that as such close friends, who relied almost entirely on correspondence between Dublin and England, with only the one meeting in August 1698, they would want to be looking at each other.  But here they are, side by side, having sat for these portraits in 1696.

William Molyneux, attribut.  Sir Godfrey Kneller; and John Locke, by Michael Dahl  c. 1696
© National Portrait Gallery

 Locke wrote to Molyneux in May 1697:

"Though the honour you do me in the value you put upon my shadow be a fresh mark of that friendship which is so great an happiness to me, yet I shall never consider my picture in the same house with you, without great regret at my so far distance from you my self.  But I will not continue to importune you with my complaints of that kind; 'tis an advantage greater that I could have hoped, to have the conversation of such a friend, though with the sea between; and the remaining little scantling of my life would be too happy if I had you in my neighbourhood."


Their friendship began in 1692, when Molyneux read Locke's Essay concerning Human Understanding.  He praised it for its 'more profound Truths, established on Experience and Observations' in the dedication of his work on optics,  Dioptrica Nova, and sent a copy of this to Locke,  who recognised a kindred spirit.  "For meeting with but few men in the world whose acquaintance I find much reason to covet, I make more than ordinary haste into the familiarity of a rational enquirer after, and lover of truth, whenever I can light on any such.  There are beauties of the mind, as well as of the body, that take and prevail at first sight;…"  Locke wrote in September, and asked Molyneux for his detailed advice in preparing the second edition of his Essay.

The friends finally met, face to face, when William visited Locke at Oates, Essex, in August 1698.   William  died soon after, in October 1698 aged only forty-two.  The leading Irish scientist of his day, his 'globe and cube problem' has yet to be satisfactorily resolved.

Quotations from The Correspondence of John Locke  edited E. S. de Beer, the Clarendon Edition, Oxford University Press

"Accidentally, on purpose"

This useful and expressive phrase goes back several centuries, and is particularly pertinent when faced with entrenched bureaucracy.  Thus, Sylvester Brounower writes to John Locke with news from London in 1697.

John Locke , plumbago drawing by Sylvester Brounower (Locke's amanuensis) c. 1685

© National Portrait Gallery, London

Whitehall April the 24th: 1697   

"Mrs Smithsby…presents her service to you and would be glad to see you [Locke] in Town again, as some in our Office [the Dept of Trade and Plantations] do, she has been served just as we are, for her Petition and the King's reference upon it; and Our Establishment with the King's reference upon it, are both, accidentally, on purpose, lost in the Treasury."

(Mrs Smithsby had petitioned for 12 years' arrears of a pension originally granted to her father and her petition was referred to the Surveyor-General of Crown Lands in July 1696.  See Correspondence footnote.)

The Correspondence of John Locke  ed. E. S. de Beer   © Oxford University Press

Seasonal Greetings from frozenink.blogspot

A very big thank you to all those whose blogs I follow and enjoy reading regularly - including Spitalfields Life, English Buildings, Quad Royal, Fired Up, James Russell,  First Known when Lost, and many others.

And if you wish to raise a glass, you may find a tipple or a tavern to your taste here :…

"Home-made drinks in England are beer and ale, strong and small:  those of most note that are to be sold, are Lambeth ale, Margaret ale, and Derby ale; Herefordshire cider, perry, mede.  There are also several sorts of compounded ales, as cock-ale, worm-wood ale, lemon-ale, scurvygrass-ale, College-ale, &c.  These are to be had at Hercules Pillars, near the Temple; at the Trumpet, and other houses in Sheer Lane, Bell Alley; and, as I remember, at the English Tavern near Charing Cross."

Letters, 1697    John Locke
[and see www.pepysdiary.com for more detail]

Cottage library

"I asked him how he got his books.  He explained that he bought them of a pedlar who travelled the country and to whom he had given a list of the works which he most desired to posses.  This man was able to get them cheap, at sales or at houses where a removal was expected.  When he came to Gulley's cove he always brought one or two volumes in his pack.  He had got the Human Understanding from a dairy-maid in exchange for a cap ribbon.  She had been using it as a scale-weight for cheeses."

Troy Chimneys  Margaret Kennedy

Lord Keeper of the Great Seal

"It being little release to a man that the cause is judged at last with justice on his side when he is undone in the length of the suit."
Locke to Edward Clarke on John Somers' appointment as Lord Keeper, 1693

Correspondence of John Locke, edited E. S. De Beer

Epistolary friends

"I have taken the liberty to trouble you with the inclosed to our Oxford friend* whom I suppose you often meet at the Trumpet ... I hope he is not soe taken up with the names of princes and great men in his index but that he will afford a line or two to an old friend of mean rank dormant in the Country, ...who when he has got you here, shall not much envie those who fill the mouth of fame in the histories and Gazets of the age."
*James Tyrrell
Locke to Anthony Collins in London, June 1704

Correspondence of John Locke ed. E. S. De Beer

Impertinent Concernes

"  ...'Tis in Vaine that I think...of Suiting my Mind to my Condition, for Businesse and the Impertinent Concernes of a Mistresse of a Familie will never have Anie Place in my Heart, and I can at most do no more then submit to Them.

Damaris Masham  1687
Correspondence of John Locke (III. 896) ed. E. S. De Beer