It appears that during the very first years of the Ottoman Era (1570–1878), about 20,000 of the 40,000 recruited Ottoman Armenians had remained in Cyprus. Their number, however, rapidly declined, due to the harshness and the oppression of the regime, the onerous taxation and the natural disasters: according to the Latin Bishop of Paphos, Pietro Vespa, in 1630 there were only 2,000 Armenians in Cyprus (out of a total population of 56,350 – mostly living in rural areas), as a great number emigrated elsewhere and many others embraced Islam or they became Linobambaki. Franciscan missionary Giovanni Battista da Todi recorded only 200 Armenians in Nicosia in 1647, while in 1660 he recorded over 300 Armenians on the island. Cardinal Bernardino Spada, representative of Propaganda Fide, also mentioned 200 Armenians in Nicosia in 1648, out of 3,000 inhabitants, also mentioning that their church was the largest in the capital, with 3 priests. Up until the mid-18th century, despite the limited arrival of Ottoman Armenians and Persian Armenians, their number was rather small. Russian monk Basil Barsky, who visited the island in 1727 and 1735, mentions "some Armenians" living in Nicosia. Visiting Cyprus in 1738, British traveller Richard Pococke mentions "very few Armenians, yet they have possession of an ancient church [in Nicosia]", while for the island as a whole he makes mention to "a small number of Armenians, who are very poor, though they have an Archbishop and a convent in the country". However, by the time Italian Abbot Giovanni Mariti visited Cyprus in 1760 and 1767, they had apparently become "the richest section of the inhabitants [of Nicosia]", which is why thought "there are many Armenians [on the island]". By the mid–19th century, following various waves of Hellenisation (peaceful assimilation) and Turkification (forced conversion), the number of Armenian-Cypriots ranged between 150–200. When the Scot John MacDonald Kinneir visited Cyprus in 1814, he estimated about 40 Armenian families in Nicosia (around 200 persons) – out of a total of 2,000 families (about 10,000 persons), as did British Consul Niven Kerr and Greek Vice-Consul Demetrios Margarites in 1844 and 1847, respectively. The first large-scale Ottoman census in 1831, under the supervision of Muhassil (governor) Halil Effendi, counted 114 non-Muslim males in the Armenian quarter of Nicosia and 13 at the Armenian Monastery (with a total male population of 45,365). Therefore, the number of Armenians in Cyprus would have been around 200 (out