Mavi Boncuk |Sir [1]Henry Lello was an English diplomat, warden of the Fleet Prison, and Keeper of the Palace of Westminster.
Lello went to Constantinople as an attache to the English Embassy to the Sublime Porte of the Ottoman Empire and in 1598 was appointed ambassador.
As ambassador he was less popular in the court than his predecessors William Harborne[2] and Sir Edward Barton [3]and was less comfortable also, at one point stating that he was shocked by the extent of the violence and intrigue in the court of Mehmet III and his mother Safiye Sultan, and in 1607 complaining that bribery was so widespread that the economy was now driven by the level of corruption and that neither religious or civil law had any place in it.
He began his term as ambassador by arranging the donation of an elaborate organ-clock commissioned by the queen Elizabeth I and built by organ-maker Thomas Dallam. The gift was intended to outshine overtures being made to the Sultan by Germany, France and other European nations in pursuit of trading rights in Ottoman territory. Tension was always high, indeed at one point in Lello's term a snowball fight between parties of English and French developed into a full-flown brawl in which people were injured and both ambassadors were involved.
[1] Knighted for his services upon his return to England by James I.
[2] William Harborne of Great Yarmouth, Norfolk (c.1542–1617) was a diplomat, businessman, and English Ambassador to the Ottoman empire, appointed by Queen Elizabeth I of England.
[3]
1583-1588: William Harborne, merchant
1588-1596: Sir Edward Barton
1597-1606: Henry Lello
1606-1611: Sir Thomas Glover
During 1599 and 1600 Dallam went on a voyage from London to Constantinople in order to deliver an organ to the sultan Mehmet III. The instrument was a large one which could be played normally or by clockwork. It was commissioned as a present from Queen Elizabeth I. Dallam kept a diary of his journey, which was published in the nineteenth century by the Hakluyt Society.
Early Voyages and Travels in the Levant: I. The Diary of Master Thomas Dallam, 1599-1600. II. Extracts from the Diaries of Dr. John Covel, 1670-1679. With Some Account of the Levant Company of Turkey Merchants, Issue 87