When, on the appointed day, the Treasurer of the Levant Company and the Dragomans came to the Kehayah with the cash, that gentleman said he could not touch it before he had spoken with the Vizir. The Rais Effendi proved less coy. He very kindly pocketed his present and showed the bearers the Capitulations being drawn up fair. Fair they were, indeed, so far as calligraphy went; but the Dragomans noted that one Article--the Article about English factors turning Turks--had, in the process of copying, undergone a curious transmutation. In the draft read to Sir John, though the evidence of Christian witnesses was not granted, it had been conceded that the proofs of embezzlement should be derived from the Levant Company’s books and bills of lading: wherewith his Excellency was well satisfied. This concession had entirely vanished.[148] In Sir John’s own phrase, “the Mufti castrats the Article as to manner of Proofe,” or, “the Byshop had His foot in it.” However, the point was not worth fighting for--English factors were not likely to turn Turks every day. The thing that made Sir John uneasy was the Kehayah’s new-born repugnance to bribery. What did it mean?
Sir John was not left in doubt long. When his Dragomans went to the Kehayah for an answer to his Petition on behalf of the Latin Fathers, they brought back word that his Excellency would do well to give up all thoughts of that matter. The Vizir was inflexible: “He cannot deferr the Execution of the sentence any longer; for the messenger being now returnd’ from Jerusalem which He had employd’, He was resolvd’ to issue out the Gran Signor’s Command immediately in order to putt the sentence in execution.” Sir John bore this blow with comparative equanimity. He had at first been led to believe that the sentence involved expulsion of the Cordeliers from Jerusalem and confiscation of their convents. But two months’ close intercourse with the “good Fathers,” assisted perhaps by the wish to minimise in his own eyes the magnitude of his failure, enabled him to see things in their true proportions. “Now, Sir,” he tells the Secretary of State, “you will wonder that so great a noise should be made about so small a thing, the sentence being onely this, That the Latin Fathers who were in possession of the Luoghi Santi at Jerusalem are to be lookd’ upon as living in the Patriarchicall See of Jerusalem, and so under the Patriarch: which jurisdiction is onely to be shown in this, that when the Greek Easter and theirs fall on the same day, the Ceremony’s of Palme Sunday and Easter Day are to be performd’ first by the Greeks, and the Latins are to pay a small recognition besides in mony; Both which points the Latin Fathers look upon as renouncing the Pope’s Supremacy; For the rest they are to enjoy their convents and freedome of Mass as formerly.”[149]