Abstract
Sometime in 1603, an English visitor arrived in Agra at the court of the Mughal emperor, Akbar. John Mildenhall (or Midnall), merchant and traveler, had set off initially for Constantinople in February 1599 onboard the English ship, the Hector. Among his fellow travelers was the musician Thomas Dallam, and in the ship’s hold, Dallam’s creation—a mechanical musical organ that was to be Elizabeth I’s gift to the new Ottoman Sultan, Mehmed III. Mildenhall’s journey, however, would carry him further field. After six months in Constantinople, he continued traveling, ultimately taking the long and onerous overland caravan route through Aleppo and Persia to northern India. On his arrival in the city of Lahore, he sent letters to Akbar requesting an audience. The request was granted, and a royal “guarde of horse and foote” escorted Mildenhall on the twenty-one-day journey to Agra. In a letter written three years later to the prominent London merchant Richard Staper, dated October 3, 1606, Mildenhall describes the interview that followed:
The third day after, having made before a great man my friend, [Akbar] called me into his Councell: and comming into his presence, He demanded of me, what I would have, and what my businesse was. I made him answere, That his greatnesse and renowmed kindnesse unto Christians was so much biased through the World, that it was come into the furthermost parts of the Westerne Ocean, and arrived in the Court of our Queene of Englands most excellent Maiestie; who desired to have friendship with him, and as the Portugals and other Christians had trade with his Majestie, so her Subjects also might have the same, with the like favours; and farther, because there have beene long Warres betweene her Majestie and the King of Portugal!, that if any of their ships or Portes were taken by our Nation, that he would not take it in evill part, but suffer us to enjoy them to the use of our Queenes Majestic1
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Notes
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© 2011 Charles Beem
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Das, N. (2011). Elizabeth and India. In: Beem, C. (eds) The Foreign Relations of Elizabeth I. Queenship and Power. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230118553_9
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