Meanwhile, Roe was vexed to discover that the Mughals regarded relations with the English as a very low priority. On arrival he was shoved into a substandard accommodation: only four caravanserai rooms allotted for the entire embassy and they ‘no bigger than ovens, and in that shape, round at the top, no light but the door, and so little that the goods of two carts would fill them all’.58 More humiliatingly still, his slightly shop-soiled presents were soon completely outshone by those of a rival Portuguese embassy who gave Jahangir ‘jewels, Ballests [balas spinels] and Pearles with much
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