in London, Sir Henry Lello became its
Warden after buying the office from Sir Robert Tyrrel, Knight, for £11,000 in 1594 Lello went to
Constantinople as an attache to the English Embassy to the
Sublime Porte of the
Ottoman Empire, but originally as secretary to Edward Barton. In 1597 he took his place as ambassador. During his tenure, he wrote letters to the Secretary of State,
Sir Robert Cecil, about the actions of the Persian ambassador while in Constantinople, and the relationship between the Sultan and the Tsar of Russia. As ambassador he was less popular in the court than his predecessors
William Harborne and
Sir Edward Barton and was less comfortable also, at one point stating that he was shocked by the extent of the violence and intrigue in the court of Sultan
Mehmed III and his mother
Safiye Sultan, and in 1607 complaining that bribery was so widespread that the economy was now driven by the level of corruption and that neither religious or civil law had any place in it. He began his term as ambassador by arranging the donation of an elaborate organ-clock commissioned by Queen
Elizabeth I and built by organ-maker
Thomas Dallam. The gift was intended to outshine overtures being made to the Sultan by Germany, France and other European nations in pursuit of trading rights in Ottoman territory. He was among the ambassadors who negotiated with the princes of Moldavia to gain trading privileges for English merchants. He was on good terms with
Giovan Battista Nani's brother, Agostino Nani, the
Venetian ambassador, during a time when English pirates in the Levant disturbed the activities of the French and Venetian shipping companies. In 1598, he assisted in the negotiations between the Sultan and
Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor of the
House of Habsburg. ==Later career==