Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 49.djvu/96

 entered in July 1613 into some theological disputations with Dr. T. Wright at Spa, and these were published by the latter in 1614 at Mechlin, under the title of ‘Quatuor Colloquia.’

In 1614, after being elected M.P. for Tamworth, Roe was commanded by James I to proceed, at the request and at the expense of the East India Company, as lord ambassador to the court of Jehângîr, the Mogul emperor of Hindustan (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 24 Nov. 1614). His instructions were to arrange a commercial treaty and obtain concessions for ‘factories’ for the English merchants in continuation of the privileges obtained by Captain William Hawkins [q. v.] in 1609–12 (, 1625, i. 544;, Annales). The expedition consisted of four ships under the command of Captain William Keeling [q. v.] Roe embarked in March 1614–15, and, sailing round the Cape of Good Hope, landed at Sûrat on 26 Sept. Thence he travelled by way of Burhânpûr and Mândû to Ajmîr, where the Emperor Jehângîr resided. He had his first audience of the emperor on 10 Jan. 1615–16. He remained in close attendance at the court, following Jehângîr in his progress to Ujain and Ahmadâbâd, until January 1617–18, when he took his leave, having accomplished the objects of his mission as far as seemed possible. He obtained the redress of previous wrongs, and an imperial engagement for future immunities, which placed the establishment at Sûrat in an efficient position for trade, and laid the foundations of the future greatness of Bombay, and, indeed, of British India in general. The patience and self-restraint exercised by Roe under exceptional provocation are admirably displayed in the pages of his entertaining ‘Journal,’ which gives an inimitable picture of the Indian court.

On his way home Roe went to Persia, to settle matters in respect of the trade in silks (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 7 Jan. 1619), and was reported on 11 Sept. 1619 as ‘returned [to London] rich from India,’ though it appears the wealth consisted chiefly in presents for King James, and that the ambassador had ‘little for himself.’

Roe was elected, in January 1620–1, one of the burgesses for Cirencester, doubtless by the Berkeley interest. But his parliamentary career was quickly interrupted by a new foreign mission. He was sent in September 1621 as ambassador to the Ottoman Porte. In passing through the Mediterranean he received ample evidence of the depredations of the Barbary pirates, and resolved to make it his business to try to suppress them. He arrived at Constantinople on 28 Dec. 1621, displacing Sir John Eyre. Roe's audience of Sultan Osmân II took place about the end of February 1621–2, and was of course purely formal. ‘I spake to a dumb image,’ he reports (Negotiations, p. 37). He was under no illusions as to the strength or the dignity of the Turkish empire. He described it as ‘irrecoverably sick’ (ib. p. 126), and compared it (almost in the words of the Emperor Nicholas 230 years later) to ‘an old body, crazed through many vices, which remain, when the youth and strength is decayed’ (ib. p. 22). He remained at the Porte till the summer of 1628, his term of appointment having been specially extended at the urgent prayer of the well-satisfied Levant merchants to Buckingham, in spite of Roe's repeated requests for recall (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 8 March 1625).

At Constantinople Roe succeeded in enlarging the privileges of English merchants, and the secretary of state, Sir George Calvert [q. v.], wrote that he had ‘restored the honour of our king and nation’ (Negotiations, p. 60). He also mediated a treaty of peace between Turkey and Poland (ib. pp. 129, 133), and liberated many Polish exiles at Constantinople (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 20 May 1623), services for which he received the thanks of King Sigismund in September 1622 (, Account of the Greek Church, 1680, p. 252;, l.c.). The suppression of the Algerine piracy in the Mediterranean proved beyond the power of mere diplomacy; but Roe's negotiations put England's relations with Algiers on a better footing, and he arranged for the freeing of English captives, partly at his own cost (Negotiations, pp. 14, 117, 140). By his efforts a treaty with Algiers was patched up in November 1624 (ib. p. 146); and though it was not wholly approved in England, it led to the liberation of seven to eight hundred English captive mariners (Cal. State Papers, Dom. 1623). Roe, however, met with doubtful success in his zealous efforts to attach Bethlen Gabor, the prince of Transylvania, to the protestant alliance, and to use him as an instrument for the support of Count Mansfeld and the restoration of the palatinate. Gabor's attitude perplexed the ambassador, and James I's hesitation and lack of money for subsidies impeded the negotiation. But eventually Roe procured the promise of a monthly subsidy from England, and the Porte's support for the prince. The Porte consented to the reversion of the principality of Transylvania to Gabor's wife, a princess of Brandenburg, who was duly invested with the banner and sceptre by a Turkish ambassador (ib. p. 558;, Gesch. d. osm. Reiches, iii. 73–5). Gabor