It is a very curious thing that, though the Constantinople Embassy was a byword for difficulty and even for danger in the diplomatic world, and though few of its tenants had not, sooner or later, begged for recall as for an inestimable boon, yet there never were wanting keen candidates: the pay and perquisites offered an irresistible attraction, and, apparently, each would-be ambassador flattered himself that Fortune would prove kinder to him than she had done to his predecessors. No fewer than eight individuals (some of whom ought to have known better) were eager to step into Sir John’s tight shoes. One of these was our friend Paul Rycaut. As soon as the recall of Finch was decided upon, the ex-Consul, encouraged by his former chief Lord Winchilsea with assurances that “neither his person nor endeavours towards this promotion would be displeasing to his Majesty,” hastened to put in a claim with the Crown, dwelling on his past services, his qualifications, and “the knowne loyaltie of his family.” At the same time he canvassed the Levant Company, which, on his return home, had acknowledged its obligations to him with a gratuity. Everything tended to make Rycaut think that “he stood as faire in the nomination as any person whatsoever.” But suddenly the Earl of Berkeley, Governor of the Company, put an end to Rycaut’s expectations by announcing that the King did not wish that any one who had lived in Turkey “under a lesse degree and qualitie then that of an Ambassadour” should be chosen.[267]
Another aspirant was the Hon. Dudley North. He also felt sure that, with all his experience of Turkey, he would be able to do the nation better service there than anyone else. But his aspirations never got beyond the stage of aspirations. Before leaving Constantinople he had sounded his brothers, and they laughed him out of the project by telling him that he knew “as little of London and interest at Court here, as they did of Constantinople and the Turkish Court there.”[268] This, in fact, was the one fatal objection to North, as it was to Rycaut. Either of these gentlemen would have made an ideal envoy at the Porte: no contemporary Englishman could be compared with either in all the essential qualifications for the post. But neither stood the slightest chance; for neither possessed the influence (or, as they said in those days, the “interest”) without which qualifications then, as now, were of little account.