Thomas dallamcouldn't believe his luck. Dallam was a young organ builder in late 16th-century England―a time when there was little call for such skills. Now Good Queen Bess herself wanted a splendid new organ and he had been asked to build it. Dallam was excited, if a little surprised by the commission. The English Church had spent the past half century dismantling its instruments and selling the pipes for scrap. The process began when Henry Ⅷ fell out with the Pope and decided to reform the Church. Under Elizabeth, the Church had grown yet more puritanical and almost all the remaining organs had gone. So why did the Queen want an organ now? Paid for by the powerful Levant Company, which traded in the eastern Mediterranean, it was to be a gift to the new Turkish Sultan, Mehmet Ⅲ, the ruler of the Ottoman Empire.
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