'Wisdom's the noblest ware that Travel brings' : English clerics and experiences of travel within the Mughal and Ottoman Empires, 1616-1724

This thesis centres on a small group of clerics within the Church of England, all of whom travelled throughout either Mughal India or the Ottoman Empire during the seventeenth century. It examines their understandings and perceptions of the myriad religious traditions that populated those states, most notably Eastern Christianity and Islam. In so doing, this thesis explores the impact of travel to the Mughal and Ottoman empires, and of first-hand exposure to their religious diversity specifically, on how English travellers thought about religious theory, ceremony and practice within the Church of England. In short, it considers how experiences of travel within the East shaped English travellers' views of the right and wrong ways of worshipping God, and how they sought to apply this knowledge in their service of the English Church. Within this broader framework, this thesis makes several interlocking arguments. Firstly, that our travellers used their experiences overseas to reflect on the role of Church-led education and learning in the cultivation and consolidation of right worship. Secondly, that there exists a uniquely English, as opposed to Western, or European, experience of the Mughal and Ottoman empires in the early modern period, insofar as that experience was shaped by uniquely domestic frames of reference, regarding, say, the Church of England. And finally, that our travellers, as a result of their experiences abroad, frequently thought and wrote about religious issues in ways that distinguished them from their non-travelling contemporaries, and that paved the way for new, and even controversial, intellectual and practical approaches to the established Church. In making these arguments, this thesis seeks to open up new avenues for the study of early modern English travel, on the one hand, and of the early modern Church of England, on the other.