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MICHAEL. The thing it selfe agrees right well with the picture: for they that haue seene the mediterran or inner parts of the kingdome of China, do report it to be a most amiable countrey, adorned with plenty of woods, with abundance of fruits and grasse, and with woonderfull variety of riuers, wherewith the Chinian kingdome is watered like a garden; diuers of which riuers doe naturally flowe, and others by arte and industry are defined into sundry places.
Lastly, I haue here put downe at large the happie renuing and much increasing of our interrupted trade in all the Leuant, accomplished by the great charges and speciall Industrie of the worshipfull and worthy Citizens, Sir Edward Osborne Knight, M. Richard Staper, and M. William Hareborne, together with the league for traffike onely betweene her Maiestie and the Grand Signior, with the great priuileges, immunities, and fauours obteyned of his imperiall Highnesse in that behalfe, the admissions and residencies of our Ambassadours in his stately Porch, and the great good and Christian offices which her Sacred Maiestie by her extraordinary fauour in that Court hath done for the king and kingdome of Poland, and other Christian Princes: the traffike of our Nation in all the chiefe Hauens of Africa and Egypt: the searching and haunting the very bottome of the Mediterran Sea to the ports of Tripoli and Alexandretta, of the Archipelagus, by the Turkes now called The white sea, euen to the walles of Constantinople: the voyages ouer land, and by riuer through Aleppo, Birrha, Babylon and Balsara, and downe the Persian gulfe to Ormuz, and thence by the Ocean sea to Goa, and againe ouer-land to Bisnagar, Cambaia, Orixa, Bengala, Aracan, Pegu, Malacca, Siam, the Iangomes, Quicheu, and euen to the Frontiers of the Empire of China: the former performed diuerse times by sundry of our nation, and the last great voyage by M. Ralph Fitch, who with M. Iohn Newbery and two other consorts departed from London with her Maiesties letters written effectually in their fauour to the kings of Cambaia and China in the yere 1583, who in the yeere 1591. like another Paulus Venetus returned home to the place of his departure, with ample relation of his wonderfull trauailes, which he presented in writing to my Lord your father of honourable memorie.
And we of our further Royall fauour and of our especiall grace, certaine knowledge, and meere motion haue graunted and by these presents for vs, our heyres and successors doe graunt to the sayd Gouernour and companie of Marchants of the Leuant, that the sayde landes, territories, and dominions of the sayde Grand Signor, or the dominions of the Signiorie of Venice, or any of them within the sayde Leuant or Mediterran seas shall not be visited, frequented, or haunted by the sayde Leuant sea by way of marchandize by any other our subiects during the saide terme of twelue yeeres contrarie to the true meaning of these presentes.
And furthermore we of our ample and aboundant grace, meere motion, and certaine knowledge haue graunted, and by these presents for vs our heyres and successours doe graunt vnto the said Gouernours and companie of marchantes of the Leuant, that they and such onely as be and shall be of that companie, shall for the sayd terme of twelue yeeres haue, vse, and enioy the whole and onely trade and traffike, and the whole entire and onely libertie, vse, and priuilege of trading and traffiking, and vsing feate of marchandise by and through the Leuant seas otherwise called the Mediterran seas into and from the sayd dominions of the Grand Signor, and dominions of the state of Venice; and by and through the sayd Grand Signors dominions to and from such other places in the East Indies discouered as aforesayd.
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