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From this it would appear that the Consul and the Chaplain had not an admirer in our Treasurer. Nor, it may be presumed, had he in them fanatical worshippers.

Such was the Honourable Dudley: independent, self-reliant, holding in profound contempt the weaknesses, stupidities, and conventionalities of his neighbours; yet withal knowing how to use them for his own ends; a man infinitely flexible of plan, but fixed of purpose, and, happen what might, intent not to play the dilettante in this world.ssss1

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ssss1 “Dragoman” is of course a clumsy transliteration of the Turkish, or rather Arabic, Targuman, interpreter. Seventeenth-century Englishmen gave to this word many forms, more or less fantastic and more or less remote from the original (drichman, truckman, etc.), but it most commonly figures as Druggerman (pl. Druggermen).

ssss1 See e.g. Harvey to Arlington, Dec. 4, 1670; April 30, July 19, 27, 1671, S.P. Turkey, 19. But the most eloquent testimonial to Dragoman information is furnished by Harvey’s Secretary: “Here seldome happens anything worthy remarke and when there does it is so uncertainly reported to us by our Druggermen who are our only Intelligencers, that experience makes us very incredulous; what wee heare one day is com̴only contradicted the next, and shou’d I give you a dayly account of things according to your desire, my busines wou’d bee almost every other Letter to disabuse you in what I had writt to you before.”—Geo. Etherege to Joseph Williamson; Endorsed: “R. 8 May, 1670,” ibid.