of bishops and clergy. At Aleppo he held frequent conversations with the patriarch of Antioch, then resident there, and left copies of the church catechism translated into Arabic. From Aleppo he went to Jerusalem, where he was honoured both by the Greek and the Latin christians. The Greek patriarch ‘expressed his desire of communion with our old church of England,’ and gave him his bull or patriarchal seal; while the Latins received him into their convent, a rare honour then to be paid to a heretic. ‘Then,’ he says, ‘I passed over the Euphrates and went into Mesopotamia, Abraham's country, whither I am intending to send our catechism in Turkish to some of their bishops.’ This was in 1652; the winter of 1652–3 he passed at Aleppo. In the spring of 1653 he performed a marvellous exploit: he went from Aleppo to Constantinople by land, a distance of about 600 miles, unaccompanied by any one who could speak any European language. He had picked up a little Arabic at Aleppo, and he joined a company of twenty Turks, an apparently dangerous escort; but they treated him well, because he acted as physician to them. He now enjoyed a little comparative rest. At Pera, near Constantinople, he undertook to officiate to the French protestants, on the express condition that he might use the English liturgy in French. To this they consented, and promised ‘to settle on him a competent stipend.’ Here he became known to Achatius Baresay, envoy to the Porte from Prince George Rákóczy II. Baresay introduced him to the prince. ‘In 1661,’ he writes, ‘I was honourably engaged, and that still with the royal leave [Charles II's], in the service of that valiant Achilles of Christendom, George Ragoczi II, Prince of Transylvania, my late gracious master, who for the space of seven years had honoured me with the divinity chair in his university of Alba Julia [Weissenburg], the metropolis of that noble country, and endowed me (a meer stranger to him) with a very ample honorary, till in that very year, that prince dying of his wounds received in his last memorable battel with the Turks at Gyala, the care of his solemn obsequies was committed to me by his relict, the Princess Sophia, whereby I was kept a year longer out of England.’ Basire still kept his one object in view at Alba Julia, for we find him writing to Sir Edward Hyde (afterwards Lord Clarendon) in 1658: ‘As for maintenance here 'tis competent; but my especial loadstone hath been the opportunity in the chair to propagate the right christian religion as well for discipline as doctrine.’ He had great influence with Prince Rákóczy, and was not afraid of boldly telling him his mind. When a Turkish invasion was imminent, he wrote to the prince, urging him either to exert himself to save his country or to abdicate his throne. The appeal was not in vain. Rákóczy made an heroic but unsuccessful struggle against the infidels, in the battle of Gyalu, but was mortally wounded and died soon after (June 1660). All this time Basire had not severed his connection with his other royal master, Charles II. In 1655 he wrote a long letter in Latin to the king, exhorting him to be true to his religion; and in the same year Charles wrote to Prince Rákóczy thanking him for his kindness to Basire, and another letter a little before the prince's death begging him to send Basire back to England. Rákóczy, ‘loath to lose him,’ concealed this letter from Basire for a while, and after his death his widow begged him still to stay in Transylvania and educate her son. This, however, he refused to do. The church of England was now restored, and Mrs. Basire and her five children were still in England. To England, therefore, Basire naturally returned towards the close of 1661 by way of Hamburg and Hull. In the archives of the chapter of Alba Julia is a list of his goods and manuscripts (including lectures, disputations, and itineraria), which were to be sent after him. A similar list, in Basire's handwriting, endorsed ‘Bona relicta in Transylvania anno 1660,’ is among the Hunter MSS. in the Durham Chapter Library. The result of his varied experiences, so far as religion was concerned, is thus stated by himself: ‘The church of England is the most apostolical and purest of all christian churches. Expertus loquor, for in fifteen years' ecclesiastical pilgrimage (during my voluntary banishment for my religion and loyalty) I have surveyed most christian churches, both eastern and western; and I dare pronounce the church of England what David said of Goliath's sword, “There is none like it,” both for primitive doctrine, worship, discipline, and government.’ Though Basire speaks of both eastern and western churches, it was with the eastern that he had most to do. ‘It hath been my constant design,’ he writes in his letter to Sir R. Browne, ‘to dispose and incline the Greek church to a communion with the church of England, together with a canonical reformation of some grosser errors.’ Those who are acquainted with the church history of the eighteenth century will observe that Basire was in advance of his age; for what he attempted was, half a century later, the subject of many negotiations in which the nonjurors took a leading part.
Basire, on his return to England, was re-
