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This webpage updated 14 October 2014

Merchants and Bankers
From 1500-1550

Trade - an international perspective

This Merchants and Bankers Listings website is years old and is now (from 2009) undergoing a marked identity change. Its timeline material on economic history (for 1560-1930) is being moved to a website managed by Ken Cozens and Dan Byrnes, The Merchant Networks Project. This will empty many of this website's pages which have always been in series. In due course, Merchants and Bankers Listings will carry information from the Crusades on the early development of what became “capitalism” in Europe to 1560 or so. As well as a conglomeration of data on modern developments, mostly on modern/technical industry, computing, and for the future, today's climate change problems. The editor's view is that in the context of climate change, the views of Merchants and Bankers (and Economists), the keepers of matters economic, are due for a considerable shake-up. If this website can encourage the shake-up, and help inform it reliably, well and good. -Ed

It is hoped that this web page will be of assistance to family historians in the UK, the US and Australasia, by way of providing contexts for further research.

Reference Item: K. Jack Bauer, A Maritime History of the United States: The Role of America's Seas and Waterways.. University of South Carolina Press, 1988., p. 229.

The Merchant Networks Project

	The history websites on this domain now have a companion website on a new domain, at Merchant Networks Project produced by Dan Byrnes and Ken Cozens (of London). This website (it is hoped) will become a major exercise in economic and maritime history, with some attention to Sydney, Australia.

Reference Item: Highly recommended on Indian history: James Burgess, The Chronology of Indian History. Delhi, Cosmo Pubs., 1972.

Item: See re origins of slave trade in Vol. 1 and 2 of W. Walton Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti: From the earliest times to the commencement of the Twentieth Century. London, John Murray, 1915.

If you value the information posted here, and the projects of these websites in general, you may like to consider making a donation to help reduce our production costs? It would be greatly appreciated. Options include: paying via PayPal which this website uses - Ed

Item: The role of Portugal in assisting the rise of the European slave trades is outlined in Gilbert Renault, The Caravels of Christ. (Translated by Richmond Hill). London, Allen and Unwin, 1959.

Item: 1450-1550: On development of bills of exchange from the fifteenth century or earlier, see R. B. Westerfield, Middlemen in English Business: 1660-1760. Newhaven, Connecticut, 1915. [Reprinted, Newton Abbot, 1968]., pp. 386ff.

The Welser Bankers – from 1488: Wels was a town of Upper Austria, 17 miles south-south-west of Linz, situated on the river Traun. Its oldest part dates from the 9th century. It stood on the site of the Roman Ovilaba, and by the 8th century was the residence of the dukes of Lambach-Wels. It became an important area for agricultural produce plus machinery, cast-iron, copper and brass goods, calico, gunpowder, oil, paper, articles in felt, flour, leather and biscuits. Wels also became home to the Welsers, a famous family of German merchants, members of which held official positions in the city of Augsburg during the I3th century.

The Welser family first became important during the I5th century, when the brothers Bartholomew and Lucas Welser traded extensively with the Levant and elsewhere, operating branches in the main trading centres of Southern Germany and Italy and in Antwerp, London and Lisbon. Lucas' son Antony (d. 1518) continued the business, and was one of the first Germans to use Vasco da Gama's sea route to the East. Follows an impression of their genealogy.

1. WELSER Senior-208826 sp: Miss NOTKNOWN 2. Levant trader of Wels, Austria WELSER Bartholomew-208828 2. Banker WELSER Lucas-208824 sp: Miss NOTKNOWN 3. Banker WELSER Antony I-208820 sp: Miss Notknown 4. WELSER Junior (notnamed) sp: Miss NOTKNOWN 5. Translator, Paul Welser (d.1620) 5. Scholar, Burgomaster of Augsburg Marcus Welser (b.1558;d.1614) 4. Banker to Charles V WELSER Bartholomeus (b.1488;d.1561) 4. Coloniser WELSER Antony II (active 1528) 4. Francis Welser (b.1497;d.1572) sp: Miss UNKNOWN 5. Wife1 Philippina WELSER (b.1527;d.1580) sp: Count Tryol, Ferdinand I Habsburg (b.1529;d.1595), son of Holy Roman Emperor Ferdinand I (died 1564)

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One of the most famous Welsers was the grandson of Antony I, the cultural scholar Marcus (1558-1614). Educated in Italy, Marcus became burgomaster of Augsburg, but was more distinguished for his scholarship and his writings (such as Rerum Boicarum libri quinque on the early history of the Bavarians as translated into German by the author's brother Paul (d. 1620). The Augsburg branch of Welsers became extinct in 1797, also a branch which settled at Nuremberg in 1878; but the Ulm branch of the family is still flourishing. (See as cited on a website, K. Habler, Die iiberseeischen Unternehmungen der Welser. Leipzig, 1903. W. Boheim, Philippine Welser Berlin, 1894. A. Kleinschmidt, Augsburg, Nurnberg und ihre Handelsfursten. Cassel, 1881. Some information on Marcus Welser has been posted on the Internet from 1995 Albert Van Helden.

Marc Welser was sent to Rome at the age of 16 and became a fine scholar of Greek and Latin; he also became fluent in Italian and studied antiquities. Upon his return to Augsburg, he became a lawyer and in 1592 became a member of the Senate of that city. He was elected the Senate's Council. His passions were history, antiquities, and philology, subjects on which he wrote to Europe's foremost scholars. He published books on the antiquities of Italy and Augsburg, on martyrs of the early church and on early German history. He also prepared an edition of Emperor Frederick II's (13th century) book On the Art of Hunting with Birds, and published several editions of hitherto unpublished Greek sources.

The Welser family was an old patrician family of Augsburg and "one of the wealthiest in Germany". One of the Welser interests was mining. They amassed great wealth and Antony's son Bartholomew (1488-1561) loaned large sums of money to Charles V., receiving in return several marks of the imperial favour, as follows...

Bartholomeus (Bartholomew) Welser became an advisor to the Emperor Charles V. It is said Welser once loaned Charles twelve tons of gold. A precis of an outcome is this: In 1528 "Bartholomeus sent a fleet to the New World and established a colony in Venezuela", which was taken over by the Spanish in 1555. Bartholomew and his brother Antony remain known chiefly as promoters of an expedition under Ambrose Dalfmger (d. 1532), which in 1528 seized the province of Caracas in Venezuela. This area was governed and exploited by the Welsers with the consent of Charles V; but trouble soon arose with the Spanish government, and the undertaking was abandoned in 1555. After Bartholomew died in 1561 the business was carried on by three of his sons and two of his nephews; but the firm became bankrupt in 1614. Bartholomew's niece Philippine (1527-1580), the daughter of his brother Francis (1497-1572), married the Archduke Ferdinand Habsburg, Count Tyrol, son of the emperor Ferdinand I. In the archduke's background or family were names such as Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, the nobility of Poland, Bohemia, Bavaria and some of the Medici. Philippine had only one son, Karl ("von Esterreich").

The story of the Welser misadventures in north-eastern South America provide a picture of misadventures the English could have had in "Amazonia", but did not.
Christopher Columbus had first sighted Venezuela while on his third voyage to the New World. From his ship anchored off Trinidad he saw Península de Paria Three days later, on 1 August, 1498, "Columbus became the first European to set foot on the South American mainland". Not yet aware of the extraordinary extent of the landmass he now stood on, an entire continent, he named the territory Isla de García then spent the next two weeks exploring the Río Orinoco delta. (NB: Material lifted from several websites are quoted in Arial typeface below).
"Fascinated with the vast source of fresh water and the pearl ornaments of the native population, Columbus believed that he had discovered the Garden of Eden" (as from a website).

1499 (from a website): "A second Spanish expedition, just one year later, was led by Alfonso de Ojeda and the Florentine, Amerigo Vespucci. They sailed westward along the coast of Tierra Firme (as South America was then known) as far as Lago de Maracaibo. There, native huts built on piles above the lake reminded Vespucci of Venice, thus leading him to name the discovery Venezuela, or Little Venice. Subsequent expeditions along the north coast of South America were driven largely by a lust for adventure, power, and, especially, wealth." The Spanish became besotted by legends of gold and "El Dorado".

Venezuela became known for pearls and rumors of precious metals. But by the 1520s the Spanish found the oyster beds between Cumaná and the Isla de Margarita at the western end of Península de Paria were becoming exhausted. The Spanish turned to the region's people wealth - to slave raiding, Slaving business soon moved inland from Península de Paria. Slaves were removed to Panama ("the Darien area") and to Caribbean islands used for the trans-shipment of gold and silver bullion from Mexico and Peru. (From a website) "These slave raids engendered intense hatred and resentment among Venezuela's native population, emotions that fueled more than a century of continual low-intensity warfare. Partly as a result of this warfare, the conquest of Venezuela took far longer than the rapid subjugations of Mexico and Peru. The prolonged nature of the conquest of Venezuela was also attributable to the area's lack of precious metals and the absence of a unified native population. Venezuela was given a low priority compared with regions of Spanish America containing vast ore deposits."

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(Again from a website) "The vast majority of what is today the territory of Venezuela was left untouched by the Spanish conquistadors. Instead, tireless Franciscan and Capuchin missionaries explored and Hispanicized the Río Unare Basin to the east of Caracas, the Río Orinoco, and much of the Maracaibo Basin during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Much of the western llanos and the south bank of the Orinoco remained unknown territory to the Spanish even at the close of the colonial period. Moreover, the territory that comprises present-day Venezuela contained no major political force, such as the Inca or Aztec leadership, whose conquest would bring vast resources and populations under Spanish domain. Rather, the conquerors found a large number of relatively small and unrelated tribes of widely varying degrees of cultural sophistication. Some were nomadic hunters and gatherers; others built cities and practiced advanced agricultural techniques, including irrigation and terracing. A number of coastal communities were reputed to be cannibalistic. One of the more advanced tribes, the Timoto-Cuica, was from the Andean region. The Timoto-Cuica (who apparently were not united, but rather comprised a series of "chiefdoms") built roads and traded with the populations of the llanos, or plains, to the southeast, and the Maracaibo Basin, to the northwest."

Spanish slavers established bases at Coro and El Tocuyo, south of Barquisimeto, in the western part of present-day Venezuela. In 1528, however, they were dislodged by a most unlikely competitor; a consortium of German bankers led by the German bankers Welser, which now enjoyed a concession from "the deeply-indebted Spanish crown" to exploit the area's resources. By now the Welsers were financiers to the Habsburgs, whose Emperor, Charles V "exhibited a rather flamboyant fiscal policy". In order to finance both his election campaign in the German lands of the Holy Roman Empire (that is, to buy the title of Holy Roman Emperor) and to fund his on-going wars with France and the Duke of Gelre in the Low Countries, Charles had borrowed much money - meantime failing to repay it.

(From a website): "Weary of Charles' dithering, the Welsers had despatched several representatives to Santo Domingo to ascertain whether Spain's great empire in the Americas really was bringing in substantial returns. Whilst there they noticed that although Tierra Firme was 'officially' Spanish, there was in fact only a limited physical presence along most of the littoral. The Welser agents returned to Augsburg with a suggestion: perhaps in lieu of repayments, the House of Welser could enjoy a small share of the profits of America: to wit, a proprietary grant of Nueva Andalucia land from the mouth of the Orinoque to, say, the Golfo de Maracaibo? Charles was pressured, and after lengthy consultation with the Consejo de Indias narrowed down the area to be handed away, eventually relented. In March 1528, for their services to the Crown, and in lieu of repayments of extensive loans, Holy Roman Emperor Charles V granted the House of Welser 'in perpetuity' a necessarily undefined area around and south of Coro on the Caribbean coast, roughly between Cabo de la Velá and Cumaná. However, this cedula real of 1528 conflicted with an earlier cedula real decreed in November 1525, in which Juan Martinez de Ampues, factor of Española, had been granted the right to repopulate the depopulated islas inutiles of Oroba, Islas de los Gigantes and Buon Aire [2] from the mainland opposite, admittedly after de Ampus himself had helped depopulate them along with other Indieros. (The islands of Aruba, Curaçao and Bonaire.)"

He achieved this by concluding a treaty of friendship (a promise to return the indieros guerros and protect the area against other Indieros) with the local Indian boratio and by founding the town of Santa Ana de Coro just east of the mouth of the Golfo de Maracaibo in July 1527. Strictly speaking, this 'treaty' held no validity - de Ampues had no rights on the mainland. But upon hearing of the proprietary grant of the region to the Welsers, de Ampues returned to Española in September 1528 to petition the Audiencia at Santo Domingo to recognize his claim to Coro. Having submitted his petition, de Ampues assembled a contingent of sixty soldados to strengthen both his hold on Coro and the rancho he had established on Isla de los Gigantes.

Determined to make the Welser presence permanent, a German expedition of three ships under Micer Ambrosio Alfinger one of the Welser banking house's directors fix edit landed at Coro in February 1529. (Alfinger being the Hispanicised form of Ambrosius Ehinger).

Founded in 1527, Coro competes with Cumaná as the oldest Spanish city on the American Continent. Apparently, it was the oldest continuous settlement and when King Carlos of Spain signed a decree creating the Province of Venezuela on 1528, Coro became its Capital. Cumana's founding followed the discovery of pearls on Cubagua; Indians outraged by its slavers forced their removal three times. In Coro, in the other hand, founder Juan de Ampíes got along well with the local caquetíos.

Although the men commanding the Welser expeditions were German, most of the soldados were recruited in Spain. (Goslinga suggests some of the men would have been Flemish mercenaries.)
fix arial "These sprucely-dressed chapetones initially arrived smiling condescendingly on the sunburnt, raggedly-clad baquianos, unaware that such misplaced haughty humour would very soon disappear upon experiencing the torrential downpours of entrada life. De Ampues soon realised he was both outnumbered militarily and out-manoeuvred politically. He withdrew first to Isla de los Gigantes, then to Española - where he sued Alfinger in the courts for impeding the former's cutting of brazilwood."

The first overland expeditions from Venezuela in search of fabled wealth set out from Coro. Extraordinary in scope, hardship as well as, barbarity most ended in death. The gold seekers were not Spanish but Germans. By the time Ampíes founded Coro, Charles V had made a deal with the banking House of Welser, leasing them the Province of Venezuela to cover his debts as he had borrowed heavily to buy the titles of Holy Roman Emperor

From 1528 or so, for the next twenty-eight years, a series of German governors administered Western Venezuela and engaged in a futile search for the fabled riches of El Dorado. The Germans showed no interest in settling the territory. Rather, they tried to extract from it the maximum amount of human and material wealth as rapidly as possible.

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Eager to start reaping the rewards of America, Alfinger cautiously set out thirty leagues westward on 1 September, 1530, to explore the vast delta lands west of the Lake Maracaibo region. With Teutonic thoroughness, this was more a 'reconnaissance-in-force' than an fully-equipped entrada, content only to survey the waters of the Golfo, and establish a rancheria with a small garrison on its western shore as a base-camp for future expeditions. Arriving back in Coro after a year's absence, Alfinger learned that he had been given up for dead and that a successor had been appointed. However, this new governor opportunely died and Alfinger resumed government. He left for Santo Domingo to procure arms, stores and fresh recruits, paying for this by selling a number of captured slaves, duly branded.

The second Alfinger entrada departed Coro with 200 men and many attendant Indians in 1531. Crossing west of the earlier rancheria toward Rio Hacha, then south along the Rio Cesar toward the valley of the Magdalena, it lasted two years and two months. Great cruelty was exacted upon those Indians too sick to continue their chained trek. Small quantities of gold were bartered from the Pacabuëy Indians or taken by force from more warlike tribes. (This gold was reputed to amount to some 60,000 pesos, or 600 pounds' weight. It was later buried for future retrieval but was never found by later searches.)"

Hunger was endured ... resorting to cannibalism. Cultivated land beyond the fringes of the Cordillera Oriental was heard of but only nearly reached. And Alfinger was killed by a poisonous dart in the valley of Chinacota in 1533.

Meanwhile a different approach was attempted by Diego de Ordas, a veteran of Cuba and Mexico. He was commissioned to conquer lands in the interior from Nueva Andalucia toward the Marañon River - probably the Paria. He tackled this brief by entering the Orinoque in June 1531, but soon became possessed by tales of wealth and struggled upstream to beyond the Meta. De Ordas' treasurer inherited his ambition. As gobernador of Paria from 1531, Jeronimo Dortal devoted himself to the search of an overland route from Cumaná to the Orinoque. On his first attempt in 1536 from San Miguel de Neverí he was abandoned by his men who mutinied and set off under Juan Fernandez de Alderete for 'rich lands to the southwest.' The lone Dortal survived to make a second and more successful effort in 1540. However, his subordinate Alonso de Herrera discovered the Orinoque-Meta route to be unexploitable.

Alfinger's successor, the well-born Welser appointee Georg Hohermuth [5], left Coro with 400 men in May 1535. (Known to the Spaniards as Jorge Espira - 'George of Speyer.')

Hohermuth/Espira struggled across the wide Meta and its tributaries, and skirted the Andean foothills for a year until adverse conditions in the Portuguesa valley prevented further progress. Los Llanos were reached but Hohermuth then decided to find the rumoured 'wealthy kingdom' of Xeria which the local Indians suggested was "in the highlands." Captain Juan de Villegas was deputed to reconnoitre a route of ascent but could not find one. Disappointed, and in the face of mounting hostility of the Choque Indians of the Guaviare region, Hohermuth founded San Juan de los Llanos and turned back for Coro, arriving there in May 1538 with only 90 men - and furious to find his deputy Federmann gone. Hohermuth died two years later, whilst planning another entrada.

Hohermuth's second-in-command was Nikolaus Federmann. A sagacious and ambitious leader who understood men, he was keen to employ his many "inactive and under-occupied" men and "do something profitable." Before leaving, Hohermuth had instructed Federmann to explore the region west of Lake Maracaibo. Eleven days after Hohermuth left in 1535, Federmann departed Coro on an unauthorised venture. Instead of heading west towards the Golfo de Maracaibo, his wanderlust took him south instead, up the Sierra Nevada de Merida, reaching the village of Barquisimeto where he heard tell of 'the great South Sea.' Descending the Cordillera, his party encountered the vast plains of mud known as Los Llanos, reached the Guanare river - in full flood - and assumed it to be the South Sea. He returned through hostile country, captured some 'pygmies,' and arrived back in Coro to find himself in disgrace. Uncowed and undaunted, in 1536 the ambitious Federmann again struck southward across the Sierra Nevada de Merida towards Los Llanos, perhaps fearful that Hohermuth might discover and claim as his rich lands Federmann believed should rightfully fall to him. This time, Federmann's force included three mining engineers - the first real prospectors in South America. Whilst at Barquisimeto, Federmann picked up the exhausted mutineers from Dortal's expedition of several months earlier. With this enlarged force of 300, Federmann struck out into Los Llanos, found Hohermuth's tracks, encountered some Indians working gold ornaments, and decided to enter the highlands for closer investigation - was this Xeria? Delayed by rains and starvation, he lost over half his men before reaching Bacatá to find de Quesada already in possession.

Cautiously respecting each other's courage and hardships in reaching Bacatá, de Quesada and Federmann arrived at a gentleman's agreement: for 10,000 pesos of gold Federmann threw in his lot with de Quesada until confirmations of jurisdiction or otherwise were determined by the Crown. When de Benalcasar arrived in early-1539 as well, a delicate situation developed. Like true caballeros, the three captains saluted each other with their swords, and set up camp at a respectful distance from each other. The three leaders agreed on a joint re-foundation of the town on August 6, 1539, this time as Santa Fé de Bogotá. De Benalcasar, deciding not to face a now-superior force, returned to Quito to find his governorship of Ecuador repudiated by Gonzalo Pizarro. Meanwhile, one of his captains, de Robledo, had left Calí on an expedition of his own, encountered Juan de Valdillo's expedition sent south up the Sinú and Cauca rivers, but discovered nothing of note himself, and founded Cartago in 1538. It was around the campfires of these three conquistadores that the tales of the Gilded Man multiplied and spread.

De Quesada and Federmann did not remain long, however, for conflicting stories arose as to where the golden lake could be found. Was it Lake Guatavitá, or was it another nearby lake called Seïcha? Federmann was recalled to Spain to account for his insubordination by answering accusations of heresy and fraudulent misuse of Royal revenues. He died in prison in Valladolid in 1542. De Quesada, too, left Nueva Granada to present his case. He endured seven years of costly legal delays and loss of his governorship of the lands he had conquered. It was 1549 before he returned to Nueva Granada. Meanwhile, his brother Hernan Perez attempted to drain Lake Guatavitá. During the dry season of 1545 he organised a bucket-chain of labourers with gourd jars, and in three months' work managed to lower the water level by about three metres - enough to expose the edges of the lake bed, though not its centre. According to contemporary reports, between 3,000 and 4,000 pesos of gold were found.

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With the gold-rich civilisations of the Inca and Muisca now found in the Andean highlands, the search for more riches shifted beyond the Sierra east into Los Llanos and south of the area fruitlessly combed by Alfinger, Hohermuth and Federmann. Hernan Perez hoped to succeed his brother Jiminez's governorship and set off to explore the area between the Putamayo and Guaviare rivers, hoping that the 'Kingdom of the Gilded Man' lay somewhere therein. His year-long quest ended in disappointment.

On 1 August, 1541, another German expedition left Coro, the first to specifically search for the 'Kingdom of El Dorado.' The force of 100 horsemen was led by a survivor of Hohermuth's long march and the acting gobernador of the colony, Ritter Philipp von Hütten, learned knight, cousin of the Reformation humanist Ulrich von Hütten, and brother of a bishop. There were only vague directions to the city of El Dorado, which von Hütten believed to be on the river Meta. He eventually reached a fair-sized 'city' called Macatoa, and there he was told of a 'very rich city' nearby to the south called Omagua. He travelled on to where this 'Omagua' was deemed to be, only to be met with a volley of arrows, but he nevertheless returned to Barquisimeto filled with optimism. The little he had seen of the region - "rich townes and splendid houses" - made him think he had discovered the 'Kingdom of El Dorado.' However, this was the last German expedition.

While von Hütten was in the interior a dispute developed over the 'perpetual' concession under which Charles V had bestowed on the House of Welser all the territory of Nueva Andalucia between Cabo de la Velá and Cumaná. The German tenure of the area had proved undesirable, particularly due to the harsh slave-procurement practices to fund the entradas. While men of law engaged in courteous dispute in a lawsuit instigated by the Welsers at the Spanish court, the tough conquistadores and a few Landser were fighting savagely for possession of Venezuela. Von Hütten arrived back in Coro in 1545 to find the irredentist Spaniards in control. The new Spanish gobernador had him beheaded. Five years later military reality was recognised in law: the Welsers lost their case and territory.

Upon arrival in Coro Welser's agent, Ambrosius Alfinger arrested Ampíes and deported him to Curaçao. He then explored Lake Maracaibo and founded the settlement of Maracaibo. Alfinger pursued his golden idol as far as the Magdalena in Colombia where he was killed. The next German Governor Georg Hohemuth of Speier (Jorge Spira) set out with 361 men and got as far as the Meta River in The Llanos but missed the Kingdom of El Dorado and, starving returned with a few survivors. Nicholas Fedherman got all the way to Bogota only to find Jimenéz de Quesada arrived before him. German efforts ended in 1545 when Bartholomew Welser and Phillip Von Hutten were assassinated by Juan de Carvajal who had forged Governor's credentials. Coro struggled to survive. Some inhabitants left with him and coerced by Carvajal founded El Tocuyo. In 1578 the Governor moved to Caracas in effect taking The Capital with him.

The colonists at Santa Marta (founded 1525) had been feeling their way up the Magdalena river since the expansion of their settlement began in 1529. They already knew of Tamalameque and much of the course of the Cauca and Lebrija rivers. Evidence of gold sources further upriver was encouraging - it suggested the veracity of 'Dabeiba.' Gonzalo Jiminez de Quesada left Santa Marta on the Caribbean coast on April 5th, 1536, hoping to find a quick access to Peru by land, rather than the Isthmus route. With 800 men and a flotilla of rafts de Quesada set off overland, reached the Magdalena river near Tamalameque, and followed it southwards. De Quesada was an unlikely conquistador, being a professional lawyer and having arrived in Santa Marta as a magistrate. However, he enjoyed a quick grasp of commercial possibilities. And he was a pious man, interested not only in gold, but also in political and more spiritual conquests: subjects for Spain and souls for the Church.

It was an arduous journey. Each foot-slogging step had to be hacked out with a machete and then tortuously widened. The men sank to their wastes in thick, cloying swamps - snakes and alligators were a constant peril. But worst of all was the hunger - they tried to stave it off by chewing snakeskins and gnawing swordbelts. Ever firm, de Quesada urged them onward. Reduced in numbers by detached expeditions and the ever-present hunger, the men were at the end of their strength when, in March 1537, they reached the junction of the Magdalena and Opon rivers. Suddenly the countryside changed: the valley became fertile, maize was growing, and they came to villages where potters were working and weavers were making brightly coloured cotton cloth ... and craftsmen were hammering out vases of gold and silver. This was the tableland of the Muisca [1] peoples, who dwelt in towns of not-inconsiderable sizes, which to de Quesada resembled 'castles' - and who were therefore clearly an advanced civilisation. (Muisca is the social and cultural name for the peoples of the Chibchá "empire" in what is now central Colombia.)

The Spaniards left the southward river route towards Peru, advanced south-east instead, through the salt-pans of Nemocon, and headed into the highlands of Bacatá where, on 22nd April, 1537, de Quesada named the valley Valle de los Alcazares and the city Santa Maria de Bogotá. The highland region itself reminded the Spaniards of Granada in southern Spain, and so they named it Nueva Granada.

Zipá Tisquesusa of the southern Muisca kingdom quickly realised what it was the newcomers where after; rumours had by now filtered through from the south of the destruction of the Inca empire. So he told the Spaniards that it was the northern kingdom that they wanted, for there were the gold artefacts and 'little green stones' they sought. De Quesada and his men duly moved northward to Tunja, subdued the second Zipá and, as promised, found a few emeralds. But they found something else. In the northern, and to the Muisca peoples sacred city of Sogamoso was a temple dedicated to the sun and covered with ... plates of gold. The Indians said they traded for the gold from another tribe in exchange for bars of salt, but even under horrific torture they would not reveal the whereabouts of this tribe. However, they did tell of a nearby Lake Guatavitá, only a few days' march, where the ceremony of the 'Golden King' took place. Fix which year

The Spaniards immediately set out for Lake Guatavitá with an Indian guide. They found this tarn to be a deep, dark expanse of water set in the crater of an extinct volcano almost 10,000 feet above sea level. There were a few huts, but of the Golden King and his people .... there was no trace. The treasure - if there was any - must be at the bottom of the lake. So to drain the lake .... Lazaro Fonte, de Quesada's lieutenant, was the first to try, but it was a feeble attempt, due to lack of money and resources. De Quesada returned to the south - where he now encountered another party of 120 white men led by Nikolaus Federmann .... a German.

Spanish explorers in the meantime, pushed eastward from El Tocuyo, founding Valencia in 1555. After more than a decade of fierce fighting with the recalcitrant native population, forces under Diego de Losada established the settlement of Santiago de León de Caracas in 1567. The value of Caracas lay not only in the fertile agricultural lands in its vicinity, but also in its accessibility, through the coastal range, to the seaport that would later become La Guaira.

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In 1556, the House of Welser's contract was terminated. The group had grown tired of its vain search for a mountain of gold to match what the Spanish had discovered in Peru and Mexico and the Spanish had become equally weary of the behavior of their German concessionaires, "which was ruthless even by the ignoble standards of the conquerors".

A mountain of gold in reverse? By repute, the Welsers lost 3 million florins trying to capture and control Venezuela, while Charles V had already escaped the money he owed them.

"An English privateer, Christopher Mings burned Coro as late as 1659, leaving it just smoked ruins, and it appeared on some maps as "destroyed". But Coro survived and became a supply center for Curacao and Aruba through its port La Vela. Exports were mainly cacao, tobacco, horses and mules. Such commerce continued despite being illegal and the town began to prosper. Most of its important buildings and houses date from the 18th century."

1500: Portuguese mariner with the second Portuguese India fleet, Pedro Alvares Cabral, sights the east coast of what is now Brazil south of Cape Sao Roque. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 172.

1500: The Portuguese, while trading along the East China Sea, initiate the smoking of opium. The effects were instantaneous as they discovered but it was a practice the Chinese considered barbaric and subversive.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

Circa 1500: India: Nanak founds the Sikh sect to promote Hindu-Moslem reconciliation.

1501++: Genoese residents in Seville had invested in Columbus' first and second voyages and were also the chief backers of Sebastian Cabot's expedition to the Rio de la Plata. "As for the Germans, the houses of Fugger, Hochstetter and Welser all invested heavily in the early sixteenth-century Portuguese voyages to India, and the Fuggers, through their Spanish agent, Cristobal de Haro, provided the goods carried by Magellan's fleet. See J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 24.

1501-1504: Michelangelo Buonarroti sculpts his statue of David.

1501-1524AD: Reign of Ismail, first Safavid Shah of Persia.

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1500-1502: Perhaps following up on voyages of Cabot for England, the Corte-Royal brothers make three voyages for the Portuguese Crown to coasts of Greenland, Labrador and Newfoundland, Nova Scotia. The Newfoundland cod banks were of course found to be very important to mariners of various countries. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 279.

1502 Europe-India: Papal Bull views Portugal's king as a "lord of trade" to India, Persia, Bijapur.

1502: Persia: Sha Isma'il founds the Safavid Dynasty and unites Persia.

1502 approx: Goslinga on asientos, writes, "Slavery became an evident necessity in the New World within ten years of its discovery. The instructions given to Nicolas de Ovando, the first administrator of the Spanish American empire, permitted the introduction of Negroes into the Western Hemisphere. From the outset Spain tried to organize the importation of Negro slaves through official channels; such intentions are obvious in the first asientos granted by Charles V to Lorenzo de Gomenot, the governor of Bresa. De Gomenot was licensed to import four thousand Negroes - a fact which reflects the influence of Las Casas - yet these slaves are far too few to solve the labour problem. Goslinga, Dutch in the Caribbean, p. 339. - Asiento chronology -

1502-1508: Italy: Bolognan Ludovico di Varthema visits the great Hindu kingdom of Vijayanager in India. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 93. See R. C. Temple, (Ed.), J. W. Jones, (Translator), The Itinerary of Ludovico di Varthema of Bologna from 1502-1508. London, Argonaut Press, 1928.

1503: Portuguese sailors first reach Table Bay, South Africa, and later use it as a refreshment base.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1503: Portugal sends Afonso and Francisco Alburquerque to Cochin, India, to build a fort. They rescue Portuguese (besieged by the King of Calicut) left behind by Cabral and da Gama. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 97-106.

1503: Birth in Provence of prophet Nostradamus (Michel de Notre Dame). He publishes his prophecies in 1555 and 1558. See James Randi's book, The Mask of Nostradamus. 1990.

In the first part of the 1500s Theophrastus Bombastus von Hoheheim, otherwise known as Paracelsus created the famous opiated potion, laudanum. Laudanum has come to be a generic term for a variety of oral opiate preparations. When laudanum is made to Paracelsus' original recipe using orange and lemon juice, one gets a primitive form of heroin. Laudanum-named preparations were a staple medicine used by medical doctors up through the early decades of the twentieth century. Although a tussle between herbalists and medical practitioners continued, the medical establishment embraced laudanum and other opiate preparations for pain relief and their effect of masking the symptoms of disease.

From website The Boodle Boys - by R. A. Kris Millegan 2000. his mailto: roadsend@aol.com

1503 India: First European fortress in India is Turumumpara, for Albuquerque.

1503: Portuguese sailors first reach Table Bay, South Africa, and later use it as a refreshment base.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1503 India: Sikander transfers the capital of Empire from Delhi to Agra; battles of succession in Kandesh.

1504 India: Kabul invaded, taken for 22 years; Berar has a peaceful succession.

1505: European Ludovico Varthema sails in the East.

On the Order of Christ in Portugal:
An early master of the Order of Christ

K. Jack Bauer, A Maritime History of the United States: The Role of America's Seas and Waterways.. University of South Carolina Press, 1988. was Henry the Navigator (died 1460). Later, the heir of the King of Portugal, John II Capet, The Perfect (died 1495) was his wife's brother, also his cousin, Manuel Duke Beja, who was Master of the Order of Christ at the time. The (otherwise unexplained ) revenues of the Order of Christ at this time funded the Portuguese explorations of Africa. The Portuguese from 1505 via the Order of Christ explored the western coasts of Africa. At the same time, Almeida went to Cochin to invade Moslem trading areas, after earlier Portuguese voyages to the east of 1500.

1505: Portugal after 1492 - when Columbus had discovered the Caribbean - by about 1510 - begins to develop aspirations of breaking the monopoly of Moslem traders on the spice trade to Europe. (The legend exists that by 1536, Portuguese mariners had discovered Botany Bay at what is now, Sydney, Australia - see Kenneth McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia, a discovery which was lost to history.)
(By 1505, geopolitically, an important strategic hot spot was the entrance to the Red Sea - Aden - where Moslem trading ships sailed, human traffic re the pilgrimage to Mecca not unrelated. The entrance to the Red Sea was also important to Moslems, since Indian Moslems sailed from Western Indian ports into the Red Sea and up to ports from where they travelled to Mecca, and returned. So the entrance to the Red Sea was important to Moslems for both religious and commercial reasons.

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Meanwhile, as part of the operation of the Spice Trade, Moslem mariners had sailed as far south-east as the Spice Islands, also to the Maldive Islands, or, to the Malacca Straits, from where they could also deal with mariners from China (Canton).)

1506: 5 April: Portugal: King Manoel the Fortunate sends Padre Joao Sanches and Joao Gomes plus a guide, to see Prester John in Ethiopia, on a ship part of the fleet of Tristao da Cunha. At this time, Afonso de Alburquerque is Portuguese Governor of India (to be succeeded by Dom Lopo Soares de Albergaria). King Manoel then works on a scheme for Diogo Cao to round Africa by the Cape of Good Hope (as it becomes known from 1488), and plant Christianity in India. Captain-General of three ships would be Bartholomew Dias, whom Renault says sailed from August 1487 (not August 1486). Also sailing are Dias' brother, Pero, pilot Joao de Santiago, and Joao Alvares as master. (Dias returned to Lisbon on ?) From Renault, The Caravels of Christ, pp. 97-113.

1506: Establishment as a mercenary operation of the Swiss Guard at the Vatican, as they are asked in to help save the Vatican from godless infidels by Pope Julius II.

1507 (and 1516): A world map - Carta Marear - A Portuguese Navigational Sea-chart of the Known Earth and Oceans - is drawn by German-born cosmographer Martin Waldeseemuller (c.1470-1518), the first ever to call a continent "America", and the first to chart latitude and longitude "with precision". The map is first owned by Nuremburg astronomer and geographer Johannes Schoner (1477-1547), later thought lost, but is found in 1901 in Castle of Wolfegg in Southern Germany. It remained there in obscurity till 2001, when US Library of Congress bought it from Prince Joahnnes Waldburg-Wolfegg for $10 million. The map clearly shows the west coast of North America from modern Canada (near Vancouver Island) to the equator (Ecuador). This map's depiction of Florida and Caribbean seems to have been influenced by two earlier charts, the Cantino of 1502 (Alberto Cantino is agent of Duke Ercoli d'Este of Ferrara) and the Caviero Map on 1505. These maps also show the Great Bahamas Bank, but the Caviero also shows the Yucatan Peninsula of Mexico, which is not on the Cantino. Menzies in 1421 thinks all these maps were influenced by an even earlier map - Chinese in origin.
(Item from Gavin Menzies, 1421, The Year China Discovered the World. 2002 - hardcover edition)

1507: India: Ponnani, a thriving river port, is attacked by the Portuguese Almeida. It is attacked again by Menezes in 1525.

1508: Michelangelo begins painting The Sistine Chapel. Completed by 1512.

1508: Maritime history: Voyages of Pinson and de Solis.

1509: Portuguese defeat Mamluks near Diu.

1509: Explorer Sebastian Cabot (1472-1477-1557): Cabot saw the early rise of English anti-Spanish feeling. Son of a Venetian navigator whose discoveries had been promoted by John Dee, Hakluyt and Humphrey Gilbert, Sebastian claimed to have found a north-west passage by 1508-1509, after a voyage around the Hudson's Strait area; that passage interested England till Cook's time.

1509: The Spice Islands: Diogo Lopes de Sequeira's voyage to "Malacca" in 1509. The capture of Malacca in 1511 by Alonso de Albuquerque and Antonio de Abreu, who voyaged to the Spice Islands in 1512. In 1511, Albuquerque captures "Malacca", and Portugal wants to be rid of need to trade with Chinese middlemen and to go straight to the Moluccas. A prime Portuguese motive was to cut out the middleman - possibly something they had learned about eastern trading matters from the Moors in their own country?

1510: Invention of the watch in Nuremberg.

1510: The entry of the Portuguese into Indian Ocean trades has provoked "universal hostility" amongst the Moslem rulers of the entire Indian Ocean littoral, further provoked by the Sultan of Egypt, who was egged on by the Venetians. Portugal then in 1510 sent Affosno d'Alberquerque, who captured Goa as a centre for Portuguese activities. A later official at Goa (1510-1517 or so) was Duarte Barbosa, who wrote a book. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 97.

Follows an impression of the family history of London Lord Mayor of 1503-1504 and 1509-1510, Sir William Capell
Descendants of CAPELL Senior... 2. London Lord Mayor Sir William CAPELL (c.1503) sp: Margaret ARUNDELL Of Lanherne 3. Dorothy CAPELL wife1 sp: John ZOUCHE Lord8 Zouche (b.1486;d.10 Aug 1550) 4. Richard ZOUCHE Lord9 Zouche (b.1510;d.22 Jul 1552) sp: Joan ROGERS wife1 (m.1525) 5. George ZOUCHE Lord10 Zouche (b.1526;d.19 Jun 1569) sp: Mary Margaret WELBY 6. Coloniser Edward ZOUCHE Lord11 Zouche (b.6 Jun 1556;d.18 Aug 1625) sp: Eleanor ZOUCHE wife1 (m.1578) sp: Sarah HARINGTON wife2 (d.1629) 7. Elizabeth ZOUCHE (d.1617) sp: Sir William TATE (d.1617) 7. Mary ZOUCHE (d.1652) sp: Thomas LEIGHTON (m.4 Mar 1602/1603) sp: Margaret CHENEY wife2 3. Elizabeth CAPELL (d.25 Dec 1558) sp: Lord Chancellor William PAULET Mqs1 Winchester (b.1483;m.1509;d.10 Mar 1571) 4. John PAULET Mqs2 Winchester (b.1510;d.4 Nov 1576) sp: Elizabeth WILLOUGHBY wife1 (m.20 Oct 1528;d.4 Apr 1552) 5. William PAULET Mqs3 Winchester Lord St John, Poet (b.1532/1533;d.24 Nov 1598) sp: Agnes Anne HOWARD (d.18 Nov 1601) 6. William PAULET Mqs4 Winchester Lord St John (c.1587;d.4 Feb 1628/1629) sp: Lucy CECIL (b.7 Mar 1567;m.28 Feb 1586/1587;d.Oct 1614) 7. Royalist John PAULET Mqs5 Winchester (b.1598;d.5 Mar 1674/1675) sp: Jane SAVAGE wife1 (b.1594;m.18 Dec 1622;d.16 Apr 1631) sp: Isabella Theresa Lucy HOWARD wife3 (b.1644;m.30 Apr 1669;d.2 Sep 1691) sp: Honora (Bourke) DE BURGH wife2 (b.19 Aug 1610;d.10 Mar 1661) 7. William PAULET Lord St John (b.1587/1588;d.4 Aug 1621) sp: Mary BROWNE (m.17 Feb 1613/1614) 7. Henry PAULET Lord Paulet (d.1672) sp: Lucy PHILPOT (m.7 Jan 1762) 6. Sir William PAULET, Illegit, of Wilts sp: Miss NOTKNOWN 7. Elizabeth PAULET sp: Robert, Lord DEVEREUX, Earl3 E (b.Jan 1590/1591;m.11 Mar 1630/1631;d.14 Sep 1646) sp: Sir Thomas HIGGONS 5. Mary PAULET (d.10 Oct 1592) sp: Henry CROMWELL Baron3 Cromwell (b.1538;d.20 Nov 1592) 6. Edward CROMWELL Baron4 Cromwell (b.1560;d.27 Apr 1607) sp: Frances RUGGE wife2 (d.1631) 7. Thomas CROMWELL Baron5 Cromwell, extinct (b.22 Nov 1624) sp: Elizabeth UPTON wife1 (d.1592/1593) 5. Elizabeth PAULET (d.4 Nov 1576) sp: Sir William COURTENAY Earl12 Devon (c.1535;d.18 Aug 1557)
6. Jane COURTENAY wife1 (d.1557) sp: Sir Nicholas PARKER (b.1547;m.Jan 1573;d.9 Mar 1620) sp: Francis BROWNE 6. Coloniser, Sir William I COURTENAY, Earl12 Devon, Of Powderham (b.1553;d.24 Jun 1630) sp: Jane HILL wife3 sp: Elizabeth SYDENHAM wife2 (d.9 Jun 1598) 7. Francis COURTENAY Earl14 Devon, of Powderham (b.1576;d.3 Jun 1638) sp: Mary POLE wife1 sp: Elizabeth SEYMOUR wife2 (d.Feb 1664) sp: Elizabeth MANNERS wife1 (m.18 Jan 1572/1573) 7. Sir William II COURTENAY (b.1580;d.1603) 7. Edward COURTENAY 7. Margaret COURTENAY sp: Sir John CHUDLEIGH 7. Elizabeth - Mary Courtenay sp: Sir William WREY sp: Elizabeth SEYMOUR wife2 (d.1563) sp: Winifred (Brugg) BRYDGES (d.16 Jun 1586) sp: Elizabeth WILLOUGHBY wife1 (m.20 Oct 1528;d.4 Apr 1552) 5. William PAULET Mqs3 Winchester, Lord St John, Poet (b.1532/1533;d.24 Nov 1598) 5. Mary PAULET (d.10 Oct 1592) 5. Elizabeth PAULET (d.4 Nov 1576) 4. Lord Chedioc PAULET sp: Frances NEVILLE 4. Margaret PAULET 4. Senior PAULET sp: Miss NOTKNOWN 5. Senior PAULET sp: Miss NOTKNOWN 6. William PAULET Of Paultons (c.1605) sp: Frances ST BARBE (b.1576;m.1605/1606) sp: Miss NOTKNOWN 6. William PAULET Of Paultons-30845 (c.1605) sp: Miss NOTKNOWN-96223

1510: Hungary: A contradictory and ominous political figure at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Tamás Bakócz, has been, in the course of his career, royal secretary and Bishop of Gy?r under King Matthias's reign. Under the reign of Matthias's successor, Wladislas II, he was royal chancellor, Archbishop of Esztergom, and later a cardinal. A master of Machiavellian intrigue and a remarkable political strategist, trusted by Venice and mediator between Milanese and Florentine bankers and Buda, he rose in the course of a few decades from the son of a wheelmaking serf to the rank of the richest and most powerful men in the country. In 1510, Bakócz set himself the greatest objective of his life, the attainment of the vacant papal throne. He arrived in Rome at the head of a magnificent delegation, and for months he attempted to dazzle the Eternal City with sumptuous festivities on which he spent enormous sums of money. As far as his ambitions for papal throne was concerned, the conclave elected young Giovanni Medici as the head of the Church.

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1511: Portuguese become first Europeans to set foot on (Indonesian archipelago) Banda Islands, spice islands, They do not return until 1529 when Portuguese trader, Capt. Garcia, lands troops on the Banda Island, principal island named Neira. The islands are so small they are in gunshot of each other, except for Run. There are stories of cannibalism and head-hunters. Previously, spices had reached the west from Venice, and before that, Constantinople, and before that, Arab mariners in the Indian Ocean. Now, the Venetian monopoly on the European spice market is broken.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1511: Maritime history: Albuquerque captures Malacca/Malacca Straits.

1511: The Portuguese capture Malacca.

1511?: England: Winter family progenitor John Winter possibly about 1511 married Alice Terry. He became master of ordnance for ships of Henry VIII. The family had some descend from Botetourt. He had eleven children, including Arthur who died fighting against Spanish.

1511: Affonso Albuquerque takes Malacca by force, and as with Goa, makes a fortified base, used till 1641. In 1512, Albuquerque sent three ships under Antonio de Abreu to survey the spicery of the Banda islands. Of the men sailing, navigator was Francisco Rodrigues, an officer was Francisco Serrao, who was shipwrecked and went to Amboina then to Ternate (where cloves grew) where he stayed as adviser to the Moslem ruler there, and to Europeans. From 1512-1515, the Royal Factory of Portugal at Malacca used an accountant, Tome Pires, an observant man of humble origin, also a useful writer, who became wealthy. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 109-110.

1511: Portuguese become first Europeans to set foot on the Banda Islands, spice islands. They do not return until 1529 when Portuguese trader, Capt. Garcia, lands troops on the Banda Islands, principal island, named Neira. The islands are so small they are in gunshot of each other, except for Run. There are stories of cannibalism and head-hunters. Previously, spices had reached the west from Venice, and before that, Constantinople, and before that, Arab mariners in the Indian Ocean. Now, the Venetian monopoly on the European spice market is broken.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1511: Albuquerque captures Malacca "in the Malayan peninsula", on a point of trade in gold. Sumatra produces gold; gold coin is minted at Aden using Ethiopian gold. At Hormuz, gold coin is left for Mecca in exchange for spices in India. Silver is also dealt at the Straits of Hormuz (Ormuz, Moslem maritime territory). The Portuguese potentially have a world market in precious metal at their fingertips?
Pierre Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, 1450-1920. London, Verso, 1991., p. 94, p. 99.

1512: Maritime history: Abreu and Serrao reach Moluccas (Malacca Straits) of Indonesia.

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1512: Portuguese Abreu and Serrao reach the Moluccas; the Portuguese king has ordered the finding of the Papal line of demarcation to the eastward of Goa. Some historians feel that Abreu deserves to be known as the discoverer of the Pacific, as it was not until 1513 that the Spaniard Balboa looked from his peak on Darien on the Pacific, and saw highly desirable possibilities.
Abreu died on the way home, but on that voyage also was "ace cartographer" Francisco Rodrigues, who made the first useful map of the Indonesian archipelago. Legends of gold told on that voyage, or about it, helped create fantasies of a great southern "Isle of Gold". So later the Portuguese wanted to go south (Diogo Pacheco's effort). News of this tale seeped via Magellan to Spain, so prompting the later Spanish efforts of Mendana and Quiros in exploring the Pacific - in vain and again missing out on finding Australia.
An historian has it that Portugal had an idea to settle Timor. And that the Portuguese had the habit of carrying convicts on their ships, and of leaving them behind in places to shift for themselves. A view has arisen that with the voyage of Abreu, only 80 returned, so from the beginning, one version of the early stages of the history of the "South land" was "contaminated" by association with facts of European crime.

1513: Scottish Battle of Flodden.

1513: Maritime history: The Spaniard Balboa crosses the Isthmus of Panama. (Site roughly of present-day Panama Canal). (The area later remained vital in the views of English promoters of colonisation, since if it could be taken from the Spanish, it would provide an ideal foothold for further English activity in the Caribbean region, and against the Spanish, as happened much later.)

1513: Balboa is not the first European to view the Pacific, as before he did, Antonio de Abreu had sailed around the Pacific extremity of the Sunda Islands in 1512 (but his report was kept secret). See J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 232-233.

1513 and earlier: Darien (area of the Panama Canal): "The first important Spanish settlement on the mainland was Darien", yielding gold. From this area, the first European credited with gazing on the Pacific is Vasco Nunez de Balboa in 1513. Parry says he was one of the first great conquistadors of the American mainland. He helped prompt further speculation about a new route to the "spicery" of the Malaccas, also some final proof of a notion of perpetual world-ocean which as sub-oceans girdled the world. Balboa's papers were inherited by Oviedo, who wrote a history. Note: With Balboa in 1513 was Francisco Pizarro, who was later to arrest Balboa at the command of Pizarro's judicial murderer, governor Pedrarias Davila, and was later to conquer Peru.
See J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 232-233.

1513: Portuguese Albuquerque lays siege to Aden but is repulsed. In 1513, also, Portuguese reach Canton, China.

1514: A first mention of Timor is dated 6 January, 1514; ships had just gone to Java and Timor, and the Portuguese had already brought syphilis into a new area.

Timor (Dili) was "founded" probably in 1516, and some early Portuguese settler names were da Costa and Hornay. It remained a Portuguese colony until 1976, and so had escaped the massive de-colonialisation seen in most of the rest of South-East Asia. So for some 460-250 years, people on Timor had largely - and continually - ignored nearby Australia - only 285 miles away. Spain as a colonial power, meanwhile, was far better off in and near the Pacific Ocean with the Philippines.

1514: Hungary: The Peasant Rebellion of 1514 and the Battle of Mohács

1514: The Diet in Hungary is convened in the autumn of 1514 and proceeds to pass a law depriving the serfs of all freedom of movement.

1514: Portuguese visit China, from the Malaccas to China on local junks. The first visit was made in 1514 by Jorge Alvarez, who later went trading to Japan. In 1517 an official Portuguese embassy with letters from the King went to Canton, led by Toma Pires. The mission was not successful, for many complicated reasons, and the now-exiled Sultan of Malacca evidently answered to Chinese power as a vassal. In 1521 the Chinese emperor died not having seen any Portuguese representative, and a decree was issued forbidding all trade with Europeans. Pires was arrested, ordered to return Malacca to the sultan, refused, and most of Pires' men died in prison. The survivors in their letters home recommended that Portugal make war on China. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 123.

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By a combination of bad luck and failure of analysis, however, Portugal failed to find a second place of strategic value in geopolitics. Spain found that place, more or less; the Darien area, site of the present Panama Canal, a quicker route to the Pacific from the Iberian Peninsula than Portugal had found. (The Scottish and the English were also to recognise the Darien area as of prime strategic value - the English as they pursued their usual anti-Spanish and anti-Catholic vendetta, the Scots to their eternal cost with the ill-dated Darien Company adventures of the 1690s )

Finally, Spain from Mexico could send an annual treasure ship to the Philippines, guaranteeing trading value (as an extension of credit) from a close proximity to China and to other European traders in the area coveting trade with Canton. Far more useful than a colony such a Timor, with denser trading connections possible.

1514: Portuguese Albuquerque takes Hormuz.

1515: More to come

1516: First settlement of Timor, Indonesia, by Portuguese.

1516: First settlement of East Timor, finally Dili, a Portuguese colony there until 1976 (Indonesian take over of Timor), some 460 years and all quite close to Australia, so by 1770 with Cook, Portuguese already been 250 years offshore of Australia; the Dutch later claimed South Timor.
Kenneth Gordon McIntyre, The Secret Discovery of Australia: Portuguese Ventures 250 Years before Capt. Cook. Revised. Sydney, Pan, 1977., pp. 215-216.

1517: Martin Luther nails his 95 revolutionary theses to the door of Wittenberg University Church.

1517: Canton, China: A Portuguese squadron under Fernao Peres d'Andrade lands at Canton, but the Portuguese do not obtain regular trading rights till 1557 at Macao.

1517: Ottomans use guns to defeat the Mameluke cavalry in Egypt.

1517: The Pope allows the slavery of Africans. By 1539, annual slave sales sell more than 10,000, and a major slave market operates at Lisbon. See W. Walton Claridge, A History of the Gold Coast and Ashanti: From the earliest times to the commencement of the Twentieth Century. London, John Murray, 1915., pp. 80-81.

1517-1518: Small Spanish expeditions from Cuba explore the north and west coasts of Yucatan, seeking not Balboa's South Sea but "Golden Castile", slaving, trading and prospecting in the Gulf of Honduras. And hearing stories of the Maya, inhabitants of impressive cities. Explorers followed the Yucatan Channel into the Gulf of Mexico. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 192.

1518: A website suggests that the Spanish crown first authorizes a direct shipment of slaves from Africa to the Americas. - Asiento chronology -

1518: King Manoel receives news that Magellan's flotilla is to sail, Portuguese govt alarmed, though shielded by treaty of Tordesillas, so Manoel ordered the Indian ocean coast to be fortified, and between 1519 and 1522 some seven forts erected at the East, and possibly the one at Ternate saved the Portuguese Empire.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 140ff.

1519: Maritime history: Magellan sails from Spain. J. de Albuquerque sails from Portugal.

1519: Herman Cortes begins conquest of the Aztecs of Mexico. He takes their capital in 1521.

1519: Tenochtitlan, capital of the Aztec Empire, has a population of 200,000.

Bernal Diaz del Castillo, lieutenant for Cortes, said of Aztec cities, "We were amazed and said that it was like the enchantments they tell of in the legend of Amadis, on account of the great towers and temples and buildings rising from the water, and all built of masonry. And some of our soldiers asked whether the things that we saw were not a dream."
(It is estimated that the indigenous population of Mexico shrank from 25 million to one million in the first century of Spanish rule.)

1519: A third Spanish force following stories of the inland Maya people (of Mexico) is commanded by Hernan Cortes, and establishes itself at Vera Cruz' site of today. Cortes expedition is planned and part-financed by Diego Velazquez, conqueror and governor of Cuba. Cortes' secretary is Francisco Lopez de Gomara, who later wrote A History. After a few months of reconnaissance they march to Tenochtitlan-Mexico to conquer king Montezuma. Importantly, Cortes maybe mutinously double-crossed Velazquez, who was only interested in trading-slaving. Cortes given his extraordinary conquest later repudiated Velazquez' authority and reported directly to the Crown, hoping for further Crown support.
From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 192.
Useful books arising include: The Decades, by Peter Martyr (who never went to America). The Histories by Las Casas (an official) and Oviedo (a settler). The book written by Francisco Lopez de Gomara, A History, received a counterblast in form of The True History of the Conquest of New Spain by Bernaz Diaz del Castillo, who had sailed with Grijalva in 1518 and been a foot-soldier for Cortes, and settled in America. See also, Alfred Percival Maudslay, (Ed.), The True History of the Conquest of New Spain, by Bernard Diaz del Castillo. Five Vols. London, Hakluyt Society, 1890.

1520: 28 November, 1520: Magellan enters Pacific. Voyage of Magellan showed Spain that the priceless Spice Islands were close to the Boundary of the Pope's Line.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p. 38, p. 143.

Joao III (Aviz), King Portugal 1521-1577.

1521: Musket now allow faster reloading.

November, 1521: Magellan's ships reach the Indonesian spice islands, the Moluccas. This severely annoys the already-resident Portuguese on the spice islands.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1520 Mexico: Hernan Cortes as he advanced on Tenochtitlan was regarded as a god by the Aztecs, that is as an avatar of their supreme god, Quetzalcoatl.

1520-1566AD: Reign of Sulayman the Magnificent; Ottoman empire at its peak.

1521: Magellan's ships for Spain crossed the Pacific, to the Spice Islands in 1521. Portuguese mariners - Albuquerque - were ordered to intercept him. The return of Sebastian del Cano's ship Victoria with spices spurred the Spanish to more efforts. A second expedition under Garcia de Loaysa and del Cano left Spain in 1525 to follow Magellan's track to the Moluccas. Both commanders died, and only one ship reached Moluccas in "a pitiable state".

1521: January 24, 1521: Magellan at Ladrones.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 143. Can we believe McIntyre here? His information is fascinating whether we believe in his theory or not.

1521: 18 March, 1521: Magellan at Philippines,
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p. 143.

1521: Death of Magellan,
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 215-216.

November, 1521, Magellan's ships reach the Indonesian spice islands, the Moluccas. This severely annoys the already-resident Portuguese on the spice islands.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1521: Magellan rounds Cape Horn, on his way to the Moluccas Islands, Indonesia, which were far further than he had imagined.

1521: Died 1521, Ferdinand Magellan, in the Philippines, where he attempted to convert local natives at gunpoint. He was killed by natives using iron-pointed bamboo spears and scimitars.

Magellan's crew once sold a cargo of 26 tons of cloves for 10,000 times its original cost - a good example of the mercantilist's hopes of buying cheap and selling dear.

1521-1522: Ferdinand Magellan begins his expedition to make the first circumnavigation of the world.

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1522: Maritime history: Voyage of Cristovao de Mendonca.

1522 or so: The Portuguese discoverer Abreu discovered Timor, later a Portuguese colony, only 285 miles from the Australian coast.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p. 29.

1520-1522: Mendonca sails from Spice Islands east across the Arafura Sea, reaching Cape York Peninsula, passed through Torres Strait, unaware it was a strait as unaware of New Guinea to the north, then south down the eastern coast of Aust and in Bass Strait, west along to Warrnambool where it seems his three ships hit by a tidal wave, one left as the Mahogany Ship, one possibly sent east to New Zealand, one surviving, to return to Spice Island.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p. 145.

1521: Controversy: Australia, 1756 as seen in the so-called Dauphin map, which showed a large land mass south of Indonesia labelled Jav La Grande by Portuguese map-makers, and McIntyre's conclusion that the map was made by a Portuguese navy captain who sailed in 1521 from Malacca, with three caravels, Cristovao de Mendonca, who possibly sailed east across the north of Australia, passed through Torres Strait, headed south down the east coast. The chart ends abruptly at Warrnambool, Victoria, so the Mahogany Ship there is probably one of his ships which came to grief, the others turned back.

1522: The Portuguese (McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p. 143.) did not know of the existence of New Guinea, and there is maybe an idea that India Meridional suggested that a large land mass ("Australia"?) slid away to the south east to join South America. Mendonca ignorant of Torres Strait. A voyage by Cristovao de Mendonca attempted to try to find where the Pope's Line existed in respect of any land south of New Guinea, as, depending where the Line was, maybe Spain could have Philippines as well as Spice Islands? But if so, then Portugal could have more land of eastern South and North America? Rivalry between Spain and Portugal switched from the Atlantic side of the earth, to Pacific and Indian Oceans, with the mystery of land south of Java remaining (pp. 38ff) and when Magellan's surviving ship got back from his voyage to Spice, the Moluccas, advising incorrectly they were on the Spanish side.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 215-216.

It was due to Sequeira's efforts that the Papal line was modified in the Treaty of Saragossa, "stupendous deal in real estate": following which an idea rises that the Moluccas be sold to France, Portugal paid Spain 350,000 ducats for - what? Portugal hides its knowledge of Australia. What Portugal got was a removal of Spain from the East and the Spice Islands, and this was Portugal's chance to colonise Aust, a chance she never took up.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 177ff.

1523: Lefevre d'Etaples publishes his translation of the Bible into French.

1523: Guatemala: The Maya are overthrown by conquistador Pedro de Alvarado, who is sent by Hernando Cortez.

1524: Italian explorer Giovanni da Verrazano arrives in France to report on his New World discoveries, which include (what is later seen as) New York's bay.

1524: (Reported 30 July 2002: Mexico City: A manuscript dated 23 September 1524 has been found at Mexico's National Library of Anthropology and History, detailing the takeover of Mexico by Spanish conquistador Hernando Cortes.

1524: Maritime history: Junta of Badajoz. Voyages of Verrazano and Loaysia.

1524: Voyages of Verrazano and of Loaysia.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 215-216.

1524: Spanish conquistadors come to land-locked Paraguay.

1524: Is it possible to sail west across the Atlantic to Asia via northern reaches? Florentine Giovanni da Verrazzano, financed by Italian silk merchants in Lyon, France, makes a try. Verrazzano is a privateer settled at Dieppe, turns discoverer, who has a licence from the king of France. Verrazzano sailed west from Madeira, got to the Carolinas coast, then went north as far as Newfoundland. Mapmakers found that there were now two large continents to consider - north and south America. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 288-289.

1524: Junta of Badajoz: Mathematicians gathered re navigation re the Pope's Line and related matters.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 32ff, pp. 215-216.

1525-1545: Period of extreme secrecy in Portugal re recent discoveries, a "gap in cartography" affecting cartography equally of Canada and Australia.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p. 62.

As early as 1526 the Thornes of Bristol had a factor, Thomas Tyson, in Santo Domingo, Hispaniola; there were Englishmen in Mexico and by 1550, they engaged in trade and serving Spain. A Bristol man went on Magellan's voyages but died in 1526. Roger Barlow of Bristol and Henry Latimer, backed by Robert Thorne, sailed with Sebastian Cabot, Pilot Major of Spain in 1526 to the River Plate.

The English started trading with Guinea in the reign of Henry VIII when John Hawkins's father William Hawkins (d. 1554), Receiver or Treasurer to the Corporation of Plymouth (1524-5), and Collector of the Subsidy for Devon, traded with La Rochelle, Bordeaux, Portugal and Spain, exporting tin and cloth and importing Rochelle salt, Bordeaux wine, sugar, pepper, olive oil and soap from Spain and Portugal and Newfoundland fish. He had Spanish connections and was allowed to trade with the Americas, Hispaniola and Mexico under the Spanish flag as early as 1526, even serving the Spanish government under Charles V.

He also traded with the Portuguese colony of Brazil where Thomas Cromwell was involved in the trade in brazilwood (from which a red dye for cloth was extracted), sailing there three time, calling at Guinea on his way. In 1530 he traded with Africa near the Sestos river in Upper Guinea for malaguette pepper called grains of Paradise.
(Information from websites on the Hawkins and Winter families is cited elsewhere.)

By 1526 the Merchant Venturers of Bristol had agents and factors at San Lucar de la Barrameda, the port of Seville at the mouth of the river Guadalquivir in Andalucia, Spain, where the English merchants of the Spanish Company (an off-shoot of the Bristol Venturers of which Sir William Winter was a member), had a factory with a branch in the Canaries and traded with the Americas under the Spanish flag as long as the Anglo-Spanish Alliance lasted.

Their ships, bound for the West Indies, were laden with cloth for the Canaries which was exchanged for kid skins and orchel, orchella, orchil, orchilla or archil, a dye obtained from the lichen Rocella. Other cargoes consisted of wine, sugar, drugs, "dragon's blood" (a resin from the Canarian dragon-tree Dracaena draco of the genus Lillaceae, used as varnish) and wheat. The islands were a rendezvous for merchants as well as pirates.
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1526: Founding of the Mogul Dynasty in India.

1526AD: Babur (descendant of Mongol ruler Genghis Khan and of Tamerlane), first Mogul emperor, invades India.

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1526AD: Hungary: In 1526 King Louis Jagiello meets defeat and death against the Turkish army of Sultan Suleyman the Magnificent at the battle of Mohacs (near Belgrade). Half of Hungary now paid homage to the Turks and the rest was absorbed into the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which lasted until the First World War.

1526: Hungary: Decisive attack of the Turks. After occupying two of Hungary's southern bastions, the Turkish Sultan Suleiman II (1496-1566) launched a large-scale offensive with a well-equipped army of eighty thousand in the summer of 1526. The Hungarian forces, led by Louis II, barely consisted of twenty thousand men who were poorly armed in comparison to the Turkish army. The decisive battle was fought at Mohács by the Danube river and ended with the annihilation of the Hungarian army. Fifteen thousand were killed in the battle, and the king himself died on the battlefield. This event was one of the tragic turning points in Hungarian history, and its efforts were felt for centuries to come. The territorial unity of medieval Hungary, together with its independence, were lost.

1526: Babur founds Mogul Empire in India.

1526: Japan: Discovery of the silver mines of Iwamiginzan.

1527: Bristol merchant Robert Thorne, an English trader in Seville, Spain, writes secretly to King Henry VIII that it is possible to reach the Eastern spice islands via the North Pole. (Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

By 1527: an English merchant Robert Thorne ("a writer of Bristol") had spent time in Seville in Spain. He became aware of Portuguese relations with India and submitted a project to Henry VIII, to gain a passage to India. Since the Portuguese defended their hard-won route by the Cape of Good Hope, Thorne's idea was to sail by some north-west passage. So two voyages were mounted, one about 1527, another about 1537, both ending in failure. in 1580 another attempt to find a north-west passage also failed.
(Ramkrishna Mukherjee, The Rise and Fall of the East India Company: A Sociological Appraisal. Bombay, Popular Prakashan, 1973. [Also, New York, 1974]., p. 60.
Williamson, Age of Drake, p. 13.)

October 1527: Cortes despatches three ships under his kinsman Alvaro de Saavedra across the Pacific from New Spain in America, to reexamine on Magellan's expedition and to establish a Spanish Claim to the Spice Islands.

Two vessels were lost here, but Saavedra went to the Philippines, then to the Moluccas, where the Spaniards were at war with the Portuguese.
The Portuguese made belated efforts which might have given them New Guinea, but they did not enjoy that outcome. The Moluccas were disputed as they lay on the boundary of the papal division of land and water between Spain and Portugal.

1527 and later: Whalers of the northern Iberian peninsula, the Basques, have worked on the whale packs of the Bay of Biscay since about 1000AD. In 1527 they appeared in the waters off Newfoundland, and 50 years later have 20-30 vessels working the area.

1527: During the height of the Reformation, opium is reintroduced into European medical literature by Paracelsus as laudanum. These black pills or "Stones of Immortality" were made of opium thebaicum, citrus juice and quintessence of gold and prescribed as painkillers.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

1528: Follows from Goslinga - In 1528 Charles V gave to the German commercial house of Welser (perhaps concerning salt supplies?), a grant over some part of South America (Venezuela - Caracao? - salt pans?) although Goslinga does not say how or why this happened, whether or not with Spanish co-operation, nor what it actually meant. But Goslinga, p. 340, says that in 1528 the Spanish government and the House of Welser a contract was made, although confusion has arisen since historian Donnan referred to these Germans as "Flemings". Goslinga, Dutch in the Caribbean, p. 264. - Asiento chronology -

1528: In 1528 the Spanish government and the House of Welser make a contract, (as an asiento for slave trading?) although confusion has arisen since historian Donnan referred to the Germans as "Flemings". Goslinga, Dutch in the Caribbean, p. 340 (where it is not clear what is the nature of the contract or the business to be undertaken). - Asiento chronology -

1528: Dutch Zeelanders are taking salt for their herring industry from the Cape Verde Islands. (The Wild Coast is roughly the area between the mouths of the Orinoco and Amazon rivers - the Amazon area being the northern stretch for mariners.) Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, p. 49.

1529: Treaty of Saragossa. Bishop of Viseu is exiled.

1529AD: In 1529 Suleiman II personally leads his forces into Hungary to help Zápolyai. On the site of the battle of Mohács, Zápolyai formally planted the vassal's kiss on the Sultan's hand. From this point on, Hungary became a battleground. The Turks viewed Hungary as the springboard for their attack on Vienna, and the Habsburgs, for their part, attempted to maintain at least the northern and western parts of the country under their influence. In this way, Hungary became the locale for a great power struggle, in which both sides strove for decisive power in Europe.

1529: Portuguese Captain Garcia visits spice island, Neira.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1529: Turks menace the gates of Vienna in Austria, but the 1571 the Battle of Lepanto breaks Turkish sea-power.

1529: Charles V of Spain in deference to the Portuguese pawns his claim to the Moluccas but not to the Philippines. That "pawning" cost Portugal dearly: 350,000 ducats.

1529: Treaty of Saragossa, and here, when Portugal might have mentioned it knew of Australia, Portugal did not mention it, as it had earlier not mentioned it knew of the existence of Brazil; and, Bishop of Viseu exiled, and also, some vague Portuguese interest in New Guinea, although nothing concerted.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, pp. 58ff, pp. 215-216.

1529: Portuguese Captain Garcia visits Indonesian spice island, Neira.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1530: "Old Master William Hawkins" of Plymouth, went (in 1530, 1531, 1532), with ship Paul, 250 tons to coasts Brazil, coast Guinea, "to sell to the Indians".

1530: "A brief relation of the two sundry voyages made by the Worshipful Master William Hawkins of Plymouth, father of Sir John Hawkins, knight, late Treasurer of Her Majesty's Navy, in the years 1530 and 1532. Old Master William Hawkins of Plymouth, much esteemed and beloved of King Henry VIII and being one of the principal sea-captains in the west parts of England in his time, not contended with the short voyages commonly then made only to the known coasts of Europe, armed out a tall and goodly ship of his own called the "Paul of Plymouth" where with he made long and famous voyages unto the coast of Brazil in the course of which he touched at the river of Sestos upon the coast of Guinea where he trafficked with the Negroes and took of them elephants' teeth and other commodities which the place yieldeth". ("William Hawkins reaches Brazil" - Hakluyt's "Voyages").
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1530 and earlier: Spaniard in the New World, Hernando Pizarro (one of five brothers), finds he has a royal appointment to be governor of a kingdom he has yet to find and conquer, south of the Darien area. He and comrades from Extremadura, Francisco Pizzaro and Diego de Almagro, plus a priest-with-finance, Luque, spend four years in coastal explorations. Pizarro visited Spain to find support, coinciding with a triumphal appearance by Cortes arriving from Mexico. Pizarro in 1530 sails from Panama with 180 men and 27 horses for the conquest of Peru. He arrived at Tumbez in the midst of a dynastic civil war. In 1532, Pizarro marched form his base at Tumbez for Cajamarca in northern Peru, to capture the ruler, winner of the civil war, Atahuallpa. Reinforcements for Pizarro soon came from Panama under Alamagro. Cuzco is taken and sacked in November 1533. Pizarro has secretary Francisco de Jerez, who witnessed the murder of Atahuallpa; and escort Miguel de Astete. (From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 208ff)
Pizzaro an outright murderer: Australian researchers using refined new technology have examined a fragment of a letter with a beeswax seal written by a Jesuit in Inca territory, to find a date for the writing of the letter. A mystery of conquest may now be solved - Pizzaro and his few troops overwhelmed the Incas by the simple expedient of murdering their emperor and his general. (Reported in Australia 13 October 1999)

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1531: More to come

1532: Capt John Hawkins, born 1532, was bred to the sea. His father William was a merchant captain who'd been to Guinea, so John first went there in 1562 with private ships, crew less than a 100 total, and got 300 Negroes.
Mannix, Black Cargoes , pp. 21ff.
1532-1538: William Hawkins (died 1553) marries Joan Trelawney. He trades in tin, exports cloth to Europe, gets salt and wine from France, dyewood from Brazil, sugar and pepper from Portugal, soap from Spain and fish from Newfoundland. Mayor of Plymouth in 1532 and 1538. Partly responsible for making Bristol a chief trade port with the Americas. His first voyage to Brazil is in 1530.

1532: Capt John Hawkins born 1532, bred to the sea, his father a merchant captain been to Guinea, so John first went there in 1562, private ships, crew less than a 100 total, and got 300 Negroes, swapped for hides, sugar, ginger and pearls, he sent some slaves to be sold in Spain but since he'd taken them illegally from Guinea, the outraged Spanish authorities seized the slaves, Elizabeth 1 thought Hawkins's actions "detestable" and worthy of the vengeance of heaven, but when she saw Hawkins' balance sheet, she promptly became a shareholder in his second voyage, in 1564, and Hawkins now had four ships, one more voyage in 1567, with him on the Judith was Francis Drake, a young man, Drake earlier been on slaving voyages. (Mannix, Black Cargo p21ff.)

1532: Capt John Hawkins born 1532, bred to the sea. His father a merchant captain been to Guinea, so John first went there in 1562 with private ships, crew less than a 100 total, and got 300 Negroes.
Mannix, Black Cargoes , pp. 21ff.

1532-1538: William Hawkins (died 1553) married Joan Trelawney. He trades in tin, exports cloth to Europe, gets salt and wine from France, dyewood from Brazil, sugar and pepper from Portugal, soap from Spain and fish from Newfoundland. Mayor of Plymouth in 1532 and 1538. Partly responsible for making Bristol a chief trade port with the Americas. His first voyage to Brazil was in 1530.

William Hawkins (died 1553) married Joan Trelawney. He began trading in tin and with exporting cloth to Europe, getting salt and wine from France, dyewood from Brazil ("Brazil" means dyewood), sugar and pepper from Portugal, soap from Spain and fish from Newfoundland. He was mayor of Plymouth in 1532 and 1538, and as such partly responsible for making Bristol a chief port for trade with the Americas. At one point he had an assistant, Capt. Keeling. William's first voyage to Brazil was in 1530.
(See Who's Who/ Shakespeare, pp. 110ff. G. R. Elton, Tudor England. Furber, Rival, pp. 39ff. Fox-Bourne, Merchants: Memoirs, Vol. 1, pp. 197ff.)

This William Hawkins before crossing the Atlantic was trading to Spain and Canary Islands, where he learned about the West Indies, so he proceeded to the West Coast of Africa and took Negroes to America. He later became an associate of Francis Drake. Variously, he owned merchantmen and privateers, led expeditions to Africa and Brazil, and died in 1553/1554.
(Williamson, Age of Drake, variously.)

William Hawkins died 1553-1554 had a son William (the elder?) who managed the Plymouth headquarters of the family business, while his brother John commanded ships and dealt with foreign connections. John Hawkins went frequently to the Canary Islands, and dealt with Spanish merchants. He had "an acute mind" for assessing information and learned how the supply of Negro slaves to planters was restricted by a monopoly system which enhanced slave prices. Also that English goods found good markets where slaves were sold, a system started by Charles V for defence against French, and made tighter in the days of Philip II. There was however at this time no Asiento (silver exchange/financial clearing house) for slave purchasing, though at this time perhaps, Portuguese or Genoese merchants handled that business. The Genoese might advance money to the Spanish government or furnish fleets of galleys for wars against Turks in the Mediterranean. Hawkins got whiff of an idea that a foreigner might hold "slaving concessions" from the Hispanics.
(Williamson, Age of Drake, p. 51.)

Sir John Hawkins, slaver and treasurer of the Navy, was of a "virulently anti-Spanish" spirit. At times he was supported by backers Alderman Duckett, Sir Thomas Lodge and Sir William Winter.
(C. R. N. Routh here disputes the DNB entry on this man, pp. 378ff. See Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, pp. 188ff. Fox-Bourne, Merchants, pp. 200ff.
(There is a childless Sir John Hawkins who died 1603 at Deptford, a deputy treasurer of Navy from 1589, who has a niece married to mariner Capt Edward Fenton, but I am not sure if this is the same John.)
A relevant title here is: E. G. R. Taylor, (Ed.), The Troublesome Voyage of Captain Edward Fenton, 1582-1583. Cambridge University Press, Second Series, No. CXIII. The Hakluyt Society, 1959. Works Issued by the Hakluyt Society. Descendants of this man include Sir R. Leicester Harmsworth and Harold C. Harmsworth circa 1927; and the Steward-Hawkins family.)

1533: Haiti - Hispaniola: Spanish have wiped out native Arawak Indians and begin to bring in Negro slaves to take their place as workers.

1533: Cabot: In 1533 the Muscovy Company incorporated under Sebastien Cabot with a view to seeking a passage to Old Cathay and this merely brought England into contact with Russia.

1534: England splits with the Church of Rome.

Circa 1535:

Pizzaro an outright murderer: Australian researchers using refined new technology have examined a fragment of a letter with a beeswax seal written by a Jesuit in Inca territory, to find a date for the writing of the letter. A mystery of conquest may now be solved - Pizzaro and his few troops overwhelmed the Incas by the simple expedient of murdering their emperor and his general. (Reported in Australia 13 October 1999)
Pizarro is illiterate, but "experienced". In 1528 he sails along Inca coastlines to reconnoitre. He arrived in middle of a civil war. The ruler, Sapa Inca, had been Huayna Capal, to 1525, he had two sons, Atahuallpa and Huascar, and Huascar lost the battle which broke out, Pizarro murders Atahuallpa. (Notes - the Incas were at Machu Picu.)
(Reader's Digest, The Last Two Million Years, p. 203) ... When Pizarro murders Atahuallpa, he also "eliminates" the 4000-strong leadership of the Inca Empire, from 1530. A TV documentary on Australian SBS on 29-7-2001, says that in the Spanish new world, the Pizzaros and the Orianas were two related large families who became deadly enemies in the New World over gold (?).

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1536: Further on the destruction of the Inca Empire: From about 1432, the Incas had developed an astronomical/astrological system which allowed belief also in a dire prediction about the demise of what became their empire, more or less a self-fulfilling prophecy, after five rulers had exercised power. Disasters on earth would echo disasters in the skies/heavens, in conformity with the formula, "as above- so below". The time of disaster coincided with a conjunction of Saturn and Jupiter. As to disaster, the Inca Empire had a population of more than five million. Within 50 years of the arrival of the Spanish from 1532, five million Incas had died. But the tragedy had been long foretold, and during the lead-up to their demise, the Incas had tried to stave off or forestall disaster by engaging in child sacrifice (every fourth year, and/or at an annual solstice,. the victims aged 7-12), in a deliberate effort to rearrange earthly patterns so that the heavenly patterns became more congenial.
The idea was that the children, carefully selected from tribes which had their origins in certain constellations, would return as messengers to their heavenly home to plead for a rearrangement of circumstances on earth. In which case, human sacrifice was a ritual-of-last-resort. As to such beliefs, the questions arise: were the Incas here exercising an old belief system shared by other civilizations? Such as might have been exercised at Sumer? A belief system spread by maritime contact? From how long ago? (Lost Worlds tends to think so - Ed)
It also seems that this belief system was the major asset enabling the Inca Empire to grow and enjoy (or coerce) the co-operation of the diverse peoples in its mountainous territories.

1536: Buenos Aires (capital of Argentina), is founded by conquistador Pedro de Mendoza, but abandoned in 1541, refounded in 1580 by Juan de Garay to defend Spain in Brazil from Portugal.

1536: Henry VIII's Dissolution of monasteries.

1536: England: In 1536, one Master Hore of London, "a student of Cosmography", inspired some young courtiers and lawyers (with the king's encouragement) to make a discovery-voyage to north-west parts of America. Hore put up his own ship, Trinity, and sailing on her were Thomas Buts, John Rastell (Hore's son-in-law?), and on another ship, Minion, were Armigill Wade and a London merchant named Oliver Dawbeney (who also knew the Johnsons). Dawbeney later related the story of the voyage to Hakluyt. The expedition got to Cape Breton Island, the difficulty arose of food shortage, and a case of cannibalism. Starving Englishmen were saved by a French ship they were able to capture; and they did see icebergs in northern seas. (Winchester).

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1537: Maritime history: Pedro Nunes discovers the Loxodrome.

1537: Spanish Conquistadors searching for "legendary El Dorado" reach Columbia and loot the burial places of Indian priests and chiefs, also ransacking gilt-lined temples and palaces. This is in the Great Lakes region of Columbia, location of the ancient Sinu sanctuaries. Today (March 2001), a tomb-looting indigenous tribe continue the looting, the Guaqueros, their chief named Jaunito. These looters either sell artefacts, or if no buyer can be found, melt them down. There is a legal artefact-manager in the country, the Gold Museum in Bogota - which evidently cannot stamp out looting. (From an article by Francois Guenet in The Australian Magazine, 3-4 March, 2001).

1537: Invention of Fontana's gunner's quadrant for aiming cannon.

1538: Arabian Peninsula: Ottomans capture Aden, ending Portuguese threats.

1539: Maritime history: Orellan's voyage down the Amazon River.

1539: Spaniard Hernando de Soto explores from Tampa bay in Florida north to the Appalachians, and west to the Mississippi. (J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., p. 225.)

1539: Orellano's voyage down the Amazon.
McIntyre, Secret Discovery, pp. 215-216.

1540: Hernando de Alarcon is first European to explore the Pacific coast of North America. He left Acapulco on 9 May 1540 in command of a fleet supporting conquistador Coronado's effort to take New Mexico. Alarcon first charted the peninsula of Bahia California, then California itself.

1540: Spaniard Francisco Vazquez de Coronado, governor of New Galicia, on orders from viceroy Antonio de Mendoza to investigate rumours about New Mexico, surveys New Mexico, the Rio Grande and the Pecos, moving maybe as far north as Kansas. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 225ff.

1540: Execution for treason of Thomas Cromwell, earlier chief adviser to King Henry VIII of England.

1540: Francisco Vasquez de Coronado takes 2000 men into the deserts north of Mexico in search of the Seven Cities of Cibola, which legendarily had palaces and temples filled with gold and silver. In the present-day New Mexico. What was found was a humble Zuni Indian settlement.

1540: An English Baltic timber merchant is William Watson, who had successors, King's merchant for Dansike. By 1556 see the English Merchant Adventurers to Russia finding masts, tarre, hemp.
Robert G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problems of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1926., p.154.

1540: Mapping the Great Southern Land - Australia: Australia first appeared, inaccurately, on a map about 460 years ago, drawn in 1540 by Sebastian Munster, professor of Hebrew at Basel University. This view of Australia joined Africa to the west to south-east Asia in the east. By 1635, Dutchman Willem Blaeu had drawn India and adjacent islands. This was the first map to depict what is now known as Cape York, and influenced the later work done by Dutchmen Willem Jansz, Dirk Hartog and Gerrit Frederikszoon de Witt. By 1641, a world map by Henricus Hondius showed parts of Cape York associated with "Terra Australis Incognita. The English "privateer" William Dampier mapped the north-western coast of Western Australia in 1729. Some 15 years later, the Englishman Emmanuel Bowen produced the first map showing "only Australia". In 1804, the circumnavigator of the island continent, Matthew Flinders, then held by the French on Mauritius, writing to Sir Joseph Banks in Britain, was the first to suggest use of the name, Australia. Reported 31 March 2001 in Australia.

1541: Dies in the Spanish New World: Francisco Pizzaro, (c1471-1541). Discoverer and conqueror of Peru. He accompanied Balboa on discovery of the Pacific Ocean. In 1522 Pizzaro dreamed dreams of conquest to the south, and he sailed down the west coast of South America. He returned to Seville in Spain by 1828 and by 1829 was made governor and captain-general of New Castile. (The South American coast he had seen). Pizzaro is joined by his brother Hernando. Pizzaro in 1541 is assassinated by followers of his Spanish enemy, Diego de Almagro. Half-brother of Francisco was Gonzalo Pizzaro (C1505-1548), In 1539, an ex-miner at Potosi mines, Gonzalo becomes governor of Quito, later governor of Peru. He was executed by an enemy on 26 June 1546.

1541AD: Hungary: After the Turkish occupation of Buda in 1541, the region of the Great Plain becomes part of the great Ottoman Empire which stretches over three continents.

1541: London: The burning at stake of Protestant Anne Ayscough (Askew). Some witnesses include Nicholas Throckmorton with his brothers George and Kenelm.
(See Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 449.)

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1541: Dies in the Spanish New World: Francisco Pizzaro, (c1471-1541). Discoverer and conqueror of Peru. He accompanied Balboa on discovery of the Pacific Ocean. In 1522 Pizzaro dreamed dreams of conquest to the south, and he sailed down the west coast of South America. He returned to Seville in Spain by 1828 and by 1829 was made governor and captain-general of New Castile. (The South American coast he had seen). Pizzaro is joined by his brother Hernando. Pizzaro in 1541 is assassinated by followers of his Spanish enemy, Diego de Almagro. Half-brother of Francisco was Gonzalo Pizzaro (C1505-1548), In 1539, an ex-miner at Potosi mines, Gonzalo becomes governor of Quito, later governor of Peru. He was executed by an enemy on 26 June 1546.

1542: Portuguese sent by the Pope protect Ethiopia from Moslems and for the first time Ethiopia is under Catholic influence within Christianity. (In 1632, Emperor Fasilidas expelled Jesuits and closed the country to foreigners.)

1542: Portuguese give Japan (torn by civil war) first contact with the west.
1543: First recorded official visit of Portuguese to Japan, driven in by stress of weather. (Earlier unofficial contact had been with Japanese Wako pirates in the 1530s). Later, Portuguese visitors to Japan would include: Fernao Mendes ("Mendax") Pinto, by 1547 by Jorge Alvarez at request of missionary St Francis Xavier. Xavier went to Japan in 1549, hopeful of making converts, but finally decided his best success would be in China. From J. H. Parry, The European Reconnaissance: Selected Documents. London, Macmillan, 1968., pp. 143-144. See C. R. Boxer, The Christian Century in Japan, 1549-1650. University of California Press, 1951.

1543AD++: Portuguese traders begin to arrive to Japan. Have learned of existence of Japan's surplus of silver after one of their ships is blown off course and lands on an island.

1543: Copernicus suggests the earth is not the centre of the universe and shocks the Catholic Church.

1543: Japan: Western (Portuguese) commerce arrives at Tanegashima, and "leaves his guns".

1544: William Winter as a royal servant sails on an expedition with 260 ships and burns Leith and Edinburgh. In 1545 he serves in the Channel Fleet under John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and in 1547 is sent on another expedition to Scotland by Protector Somerset.
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1544: On 6 November 1544 a plot was hatched to place Elizabeth on the throne. According to their indictment (Placita Coram Rege KB27/aa74 Rex V) the conspirators led by Sir Thomas Wyatt (son of the poet who was Anne Boleyn's suitor) were Sir Peter Carew, Sir James Crofts (later Sir William Winter's partner in the London Merchants Company), Sir Nicholas Arnold, Sir William Pickering, Sir Edward Rogers (possibly of Cannington, Somerset and son-in-law of George Winter of Dyrham), William Winter, Sir George Harper and William Thomas.
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1544: From 1544, England took to refining her own sugar, and after 1585, becomes an important refining centre for the European sugar trade. The first documented shipload of sugar went to England direct in 1319. In 1551, Capt. Thomas Wyndham returned to England from Agadir, Morocco with a load of sugar.
From Sidney W. Mintz, Sweetness and Power: The Place of Sugar in Modern History. New York, Viking, 1985., p. 45.

1544: William Winter on an expedition with many ships and burns Leith and Edinburgh. In 1545 he serves in the Channel Fleet under John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and in 1547 was sent on another expedition to Scotland by the Protector Somerset.
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1544: Old trade habits change, as Emperor makes peace with France, war of 1544. English privateers scour seas with Spaniards and Flemish", earlier their allies, now neutrals who carried French goods.

1544: When William Gonson died in 1544, the post of Paymaster of the Navy went to John Winter of Lydney, merchant of Bristol, captain of one of the King's ships in the 1545 campaign who died of a "burning" fever at the end of the year. John Winter had been recommended to Sir William Fitzwilliam the admiral by Thomas Cromwell, once Recorder of Bristol who knew Roger Winter of Huddington, probably a relative of John who had been ward of Anthony fitzPoyntz of Iron Acton, Gloucestershire (Hundred of Berkeley, Vol. 3 p..225) in 1544 (35 Henry VIII).
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

Privateering from 1544 as a "national English activity" is noted by Winchester, p. 246. Notable London merchants circa 1544 are Sir Michael Dormer, Sir William Chester, Thomas Leigh, Sir Andrew Judde, Sir Thomas Offley, Sir Ralph Warren, Stephen Kyrton and David Woodrof. Barbara Winchester, Tudor Family Portrait. London, Jonathan Cape, 1955., p. 251.

1544: William Gonson dies in 1544. The post of Paymaster of the Navy went to John Winter of Lydney, merchant of Bristol, captain of one of the King's ships in the 1545 campaign who died of a "burning" fever at the end of the year. (Williamson, Age of Drake, pp. 254ff.) John Winter had been recommended to Sir William Fitzwilliam the admiral by Thomas Cromwell, once Recorder of Bristol who knew Roger Winter of Huddington, probably a relative of John who had been ward of Anthony fitzPoyntz of Iron Acton, Gloucestershire (Hundred of Berkeley, Vol. 3 p..225) in 1544 (35 Henry VIII).
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1544: On 6 November 1544 a plot was hatched to place Elizabeth on the throne. According to their indictment (Placita Coram Rege KB27/aa74 Rex V) the conspirators led by Sir Thomas Wyatt (son of the poet who was Anne Boleyn's suitor) were Sir Peter Carew, Sir James Crofts (later Sir William Winter's partner in the London Merchants Company), Sir Nicholas Arnold, Sir William Pickering, Sir Edward Rogers (possibly of Cannington, Somerset and son-in-law of George Winter of Dyrham), William Winter, Sir George Harper and William Thomas.
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

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1545: Spanish discover silver in Potosi, Bolivia.

1545: England, Henry VIII shuts down the long use of brothels, which earlier had been officially sanctioned. Officially, brothels were never re-opened. (R. Brasch, How Did Sex Begin?)

1545: English abridge respect for flags and take enemy goods as "fair prizes in neutral bottoms". Emperor retaliates, in 1545 arrests all English merchants in Spain and the Netherlands, prohibits trade with England. Reduces prosperity of English trades current since Tudor times. Stoppage lasts a year . The main English beneficiaries are freebooters of the sea.

1545: Various merchant groupings of interest, and information on the conduct of the Calais Staple circa 1545 and later by the English are given in Barbara Winchester, Tudor Family Portrait. London, Jonathan Cape, 1955. Merchant and other groupings given include: Johnson and Company of Calais and London, wool staplers who bankrupted, with Otwell Johnson a functionary for Comptroller of the Royal Household, Sir John Gage. These Johnsons knew Sir Andrew Judde, Sir William Chester, Thomas Lodge, Richard Lambert, the Offleys and the Levesons. Anthony Cave, brother of the diplomat Sir Ambrose Cave, and ex-merchant-draper, Thomas Cromwell, secretary to Cardinal Wolsey. Winchester pp. 40ff gives the story of a friend of Otwell Johnson, Armigill Wade, a Clerk of the Privy Council, known as "The English Columbus".
The Johnsons had one agent William Gifford, replaced by one Robert Tempest.

1545: If the English Navy began from 1545, it fell into the hands of an (unnamed) "unscrupulous group" surrounding the Protector Somerset and his successor, the Duke of Northumberland. they followed Henry VIII in confiscating the property of chantries; but they did not share the proceeds in naval defence, they took profits amongst themselves. Six years of "scandalous profiteering" resulted; this government was hated. Northumberland prevailed over Somerset and administered from 1549 to 1553, an unpopular ruler. Public opinion welcomed Mary Tudor (died 1558) to the throne, but her religious and pro-Spanish policy, and her marriage plans, were unpopular. She also burned Protestants at the stake, not likely to encourage popularity. A "new English Protestantism" arose with a passion for new-found liberty - or was it an insular Protestantism that became basis for "a new vision of patriotism". The English began to think of expansionism as trade with Europe declined, and they looked to Russia and Northern Asia, the west coast of Africa, to the Spanish possessions in Caribbean, the tropical East. Under Edward VI the government became Protestant, encouraging freedom from clerical domination. The counter-reformation was launched in Europe; adventurers rationalized that to damage the enemy to enrich themselves was acceptable. So entered Elizabeth I and her adviser, William Cecil.
Williamson, Age of Drake, p. 6.

1544 or after: There was another rebellion led by Sir Henry Dudley, second son of John Sutton de Dudley and younger brother of Edmund Sutton, 4th baron Dudley. His mother was Cecily, daughter of Thomas Grey, Marquis of Dorset, kinsman of the Duke of John Dudley. Involved in this rebellion was John Throckmorton of Tortworth Gorseland, Gloucestershire, son of Sir Thomas Throckmorton of Coughton, Warwickshire who was related to Sir George Throckmorton (father of Katherine, wife of Robert Winter of Huddington). John Throckmorton went to the block, Nicholas did not and sat as MP in Elizabeth's first parliament. Amongst those questioned after the conspiracy were Lord Grey, Lord Thomas Howard, Nicholas Arnold, Nicholas Throgmorton, Edmund and Francis Verney and Anthony Kingston, Comptroller of the Queen's Household, MP for Gloucester in the Parliaments of 1545, 1552-3 and 1555.
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1546: Philippines: Magellan (killed in 1521 in Philippines), is succeeded by arrival of Spaniard Miguel Lopez de Legaspe, explorer who claims region for Philip II of Spain. In 30 years, de Legaspe has gained Spanish control of Moslem Philippines except for Sulu and Mindanao.

1546: The Compass improved: The Spanish improved on the Chinese invention of the compass by installing it within a set of gimbals. Gimbals invented by the Chinese about 100BC. (Source: James/Thorpe).

1546AD: Tabinshwehti conquers Pegu from the Mons and assumes title of king of all Burma.

1546: Anthony Jenkinson (died 1611), mariner/merchant, sea captain, traveller, went to sea in 1546 to the Levant for commercial training. Visited most countries of Mediterranean, Algiers, Tunis, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Western Asia. Sicily, Crete and Cyprus. In 1553 at Aleppo. got licence to trade from Suliman the Great. In 1555 admitted to membership of Merchants' Company, in 1557 appointed by Muscovy Co. as Captain-general of their fleet sailing to Russia, diplomat to an indecisive Czar. Went to Bokhara, went to Caspian area, at Moscow by 20 August, 1563. One of his companions then is Edward Clarke who went home with Jenkinson's letters. Then from London came a second expedition to Russia of May 1564 with Thomas Alcock. On 30 May 1565 Jenkinson addressed a memorial to Queen Elizabeth re a north-east passage to Cathay, but nothing came of ideas.

1546-1601: Life of Danish astronomer Tycho Brahe, who produced systematic star maps.

1546: Anthony Jenkinson (died 1611). Merchant, sea captain and traveller, went to sea in 1546, to the Levant for commercial training, visited most countries on Medit, Algiers, Tunis, Spain, Italy, Greece, Turkey, Western Asia. Sicily, Crete and Cyprus.

1546: Spanish discover silver in Zacatecas, Mexico.

1547: England: Death of King Henry VIII, who is succeeded by his nine-year old son, Edward VI.

1547: Death of Hernan/Hernando Cortes, Spanish conqueror of Mexico. He studied law, began at Hispaniola (Santo Domingo), as a farmer. In 1511 he went with Diego Velazquez on expedition to Cuba. In 1519, Cortes went to Yucatan, later to Tabasco. There he found a mistress, Dona Marina (Malintzin) who gave him a son, Martin. Cortes then founded Veracruz, then went inland at a time when nation of Tiaxcala is at war with Aztec ruler Montezuma of Mexico. Cortes entered Mexico City on 8 November 1519, and killed Montezuma. By 1521, Cortes had caused the fall of the Aztec Empire. Cortes returned to Spain and was made captain-general (of Mexico). Cortes' enemies grew, but Cortes did explore Lower California about 1535. Later he explored Honduras. Cortes again returned to Spain and died near Seville in 1547. See M. Collis, Cortes and Montezuma. 1955.
Encyclopedia Britannica item.

1549-1557AD: Japan: St. Francis Xavier launches a Jesuit mission (He converted 150 Japanese to Christianity - by 17th c a half million converted)

1549: England: William Winter appointed Surveyor of the Navy/ Master of Ordnance of Ships (Year of the Prayer Book rebellion) after the death of Benjamin Gonson (date not identified yet). His father John Winter held under Henry VIII. His brother George Winter was made Clerk of the King's Ships and is mentioned in an order of Elizabeth I dated 16 July 1563 to Lord Clinton, Lord High Admiral to deliver certain stores to George Winter "Clerk of our Ships". (Add. MSS. 752 fo.6b).
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

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1548: More to come

1549: England: William Winter appointed Surveyor of the Navy/ Master of Ordnance of Ships (Year of the Prayer Book rebellion) after the death of Benjamin Gonson. His father John Winter held under Henry VIII. His brother George Winter was made Clerk of the King's Ships and is mentioned in an order of Elizabeth I dated 16.7.1563 to Lord Clinton, Lord High Admiral to deliver certain stores to George Winter "Clerk of our Ships". (Add. MSS. 752 fo.6b).
From websites on the Hawkins and Winter families cited elsewhere.

1550: Portuguese settlement on Nova Scotia, first European settlement in North America
McIntyre, Secret Discovery, pp. 215-216.

1550: The Spaniard Balboa, searching for gold, a colony called Golden Castille (Castilla del oro), and Darien soon depopulated, but repopulated, and a link made between Pacific and Atlantic oceans, silver mines of Peru, and Port Bello; and by 1550, German bankers also were active in the Caribbean, Americas.
Pierre Vilar, A History of Gold and Money, 1450-1920, pp. 106-107.

c1550++: England's economic boom, use of windows and brass deplete forests.

It is hoped that this web page will be of assistance to family historians in the UK, the US and Australasia, by way of providing contexts for further research.

An essay section on Henry VIII

In 1521, Henry VIII had proposed a national effort to establish a company to work the oceans, but it was protested this would annoy Spain and Portugal and imperil existing business. (There'd been a trade depression by 1550 or so, and coldness grew on English relations with the Hapsburg states.) England by 1550 had to find new markets, and Thorne about 1531 collaborated with Roger Barlow to write The Declaration of the Indies, a plan for empire-building in the Pacific, by way of a northern passage - an idea not well-received. About then, scholars such as Sir Thomas More and his brother-in-law John Rastell wrote of unknown continents, but England not producing as much relevant information as Spain, Portugal or even Germany - no one chronicled the Cabot voyages...

British historians have long mentioned elements of intermarriedness in books on the first English mariners, but the proposition here is that the intermarriedness was more dense than they have thought. Various surnames, themes of commercial and maritime endeavour and families keep cropping up.

Certain trends set in during the reign of Henry VIII (died 1547), who was interested in matters naval. (The English Navy was born it is said "about 1545". The four themes noted here in Chapter 1 filled some of the voids left by Henry's tendency to despotism. Puritan religious fervour filled his nation's ambivalence about religious sensibility. Puritanically-motivated commercial activity applied religious sensibility to commerce conducted more energetically. This in turn, partly by the agency of the Hawkins family, and many English mariners, became applied to commercial expansionism, which led also to engagement in slaving business, while few questioned Henry's policy on dominating Ireland. How this maritime expansionism happened is not entirely clear. Trends however decidedly resemble what is today called a "trickle-down effect", an influence seeping from the top to the bottom of society. Finally, the tendencies leading to engagement in slaving business and piracy were supported by Elizabeth I.

The reign of Elizabeth I (born 1533, daughter of Anne Boleyn), began in 1558, preceded by serious religious factionalism before the execution of the always-intriguing Mary Queen of Scots. By the early 1570s, Puritans were pushing new energies into parliament. As a simultaneous movement, elements more Puritan than Catholic were overtaking England's maritime resources. Thus we see an odd movement in family history - the Hawkins-Gonson influence on naval developments.

But this was preceded by something odd in the histories of notable families at or near the court of England. Henry VIII's wife Catherine Howard (executed 1540-1542), is said in Encyclopedia Britannica to have come from a family representing little threat to Henry VIII, a "reactionary party". That is, conservative. Catherine was granddaughter of the Second Duke of Norfolk; whose son Lord Admiral Edward Howard (died 1513-1514), her uncle, seems to one of the few in her extended family with any interest in matters maritime - and that interest naval and not commercial.

A more energetic interest in maritime matters seems to be evidenced by others in the extended families of the unfortunate wives of Henry VIII.

The Boleyn and other political scenarios:

With the history of English trade, the role of wool producers and dealers, drapers and clothworkers should never be forgotten. Yet another theme in this book is the influential role played by Lords Mayor of London, who sometimes had children who married into the aristocracy - or became titled (or aristocracy) in their own right. London Lords Mayor and their ceremony, London aldermen, trade, and political radicalism often formed a united social environment, and the children of London aldermen might become upwardly socially mobile, by virtue of marrying into aristocracy.
(This theme however is not emphasised in: Valerie Hope, My Lord Mayor: Eight Hundred Years of London's Mayoralty. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson in association with the Corporation of the City of London, 1989.)

London Lord Mayor Geoffrey Boleyn (died 1463) falls into this category, in a somewhat negative sense.
(On Boleyn family history see: Retha M. Warnicke, The Rise and Fall of Anne Boleyn: Family Politics at the Court of Henry VIII. Cambridge University Press, 1989. Antonia Fraser, The Six Wives of Henry VIII. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1992. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Ormonde. Also GEC, Peerage, for Ormond, p. 140; Berkeley, p. 146; Hunsdon, p. 627; Pembroke, p. 403; Rochford, pp. 51-52; Monmouth, pp. 58ff; Hoo, p. 565; Cobham, p. 347.)

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Geoffrey Boleyn was married to Anne Hoo, daughter of Thomas, first Baron Hoo and Hastings (a short-lived title). First Baron Hoo had a second wife, Anne, mother of Anne married to Boleyn; he also had a first wife, Eleanor Welles, of the line of the Barons Welles. In Eleanor's background are names such as Greystoke, Mowbray, Clifford, Seagrave and Beauchamp. This Eleanor had a daughter also named Anne, and one Eleanor, who married James Carew. The Carew families became notable for connections with people and exploits in the time of Raleigh and Drake.
(On Carew family history, see A. L. Rowse, Raleighs and Throckmortons, variously. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Carew. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, pp. 537-544. GEC, Peerage, Hoo, p. 565.)

Was this James Carew of the family producing Sir Nicholas Carew, master of horse for Henry VIII? The family producing a cousin of Walter Raleigh, George Carew (1555-1629), first Baron Clopton (and Earl Totness), anti-Spanish, who in 1578 was a sea captain under Sir Humphrey Gilbert. George Carew who in 1596 was on an expedition to Cadiz "where he allegedly stole 44,000 ducats of gold from Cadiz Castle". In 1592 he became Lt-General of Ordnance, "inclined" more to the Cecil than the Essex faction. In 1608 he became Master of Ordnance, and "profited from overseas colonisation"; He was from 1609 on the Council for the Virginia Company. He and other militant Carews also helped to keep Ireland subdued! In Ireland he helped suppress the Earl of Tyrone's rebellion. And one Amy Carew married a mayor of Bristol, Sir John Hawkins, of the family that began English slaving.
(Burke's Landed Gentry for Trollope-Bellew of Carew-Casewick-Crowcombe, and Lorimer, Amazon, p. 293, Note 10. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603 on Carews, pp. 539ff, and p. 433 on his illegit son MP Thomas Stafford. GEC, Peerage, Totness, p. 79. Who's Who / Shakespeare, p. 35, p. 49.)

Geoffrey Boleyn's great-granddaughter Anne was executed in 1536. Lord Mayor Geoffrey had a son, William, who had a son, Thomas Boleyn died 1538-1539. (This William married Margaret Butler, of the line of the Earls of Ormonde, which Margaret had forebears named Beauchamp, Montagu and Welles.) Thomas Boleyn (died 1538-1539), first Viscount Rochford and Earl Wiltshire; was father of Mary, and Anne who married Henry VIII. (First Viscount Rochford married Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas, second Duke Norfolk by his first wife Elizabeth Tylney.) This Thomas Boleyn was also father of George Boleyn, first Baron Rochford, beheaded on 17 May 1536, two days before his sister Anne was executed. (George's wife Jane Parker was also executed.)

The sister Mary of Anne Boleyn, (wife of Henry VIII, mother of Elizabeth I), married William Carey, a royal privy gentleman; she was mother of Henry Carey (1525-1596) first Baron Hunsford and also first Viscount Rochfort. First Baron Hunsford had a daughter Catherine (died 1602-1603) who married Charles Howard (1536-1624), first Earl Nottingham, a privateer and a joint commander-in-chief against the Spanish Armada, certainly a man of anti-Spanish fervour. First Baron Hunsford also had a son Sir George Carey, a vice-admiral and an anti-Spanish privateer.
(Andrews, Elizabethan Privateering, p. 3, pp. 28-29 on family linkages.)

Henry VIII ventured afield little in finding some of his wives - names keep recurring in extended families in odd ways. Wife of Henry VIII, Jane Seymour (died 1537), (Encyclopedia Britannica indicates), had as brother a mendacious man, Thomas Seymour, a Lord High Admiral of England (to guard the Channel against English invasion), who once consorted with pirates he was supposed to suppress; Thomas Seymour, Lord Seymour, beheaded in 1548.
(GEC, Peerage, Latimer, p. 484; Seymour of Sudeley, p. 637.)

This Thomas Seymour married as his third wife, his former lover Katherine Parr, formerly wife of Henry VIII. What of her family? Katherine Parr was daughter of Sir Thomas Parr (died 1517) of Kendall, a royal official, whose son had married Katherine the sister of Lady Jane Grey; and Sir Thomas Parr also had a daughter Anne, first wife of colonist William Herbert (1506-1569), first Earl Pembroke, once Lt-General for Beyond the Seas, in 1554, who backed Hawkins' slaving voyages and also employed John Dee (see below).

The bible-study group of Catherine Parr, wife of Henry VIII:

From Brenner's Merchants and Revolution, it is clear that with some merchant families, genealogical interconnectivity crossed several generations from about 1550-1570, and the establishment of the early Russia and Levant companies, and say, Cromwell's time, to 1650. What is less clear with the rise of "new" English commerce in pre-Elizabethan days, is the influence of upper-class and/or aristocratic families, particularly in the light the "new learning" of Protestantism, where, say, one might also read Tawney's book, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism.
(R. H. Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism: A Historical Study. Ringwood, Victoria, Pelican, 1966.)

That is, how did the religious-commercial linkages form and travel relatively intact across class boundaries, genealogically and ideologically? More so where the rambuctious careers of the English "pirates", such as Drake and Sir Walter Raleigh, are concerned?

The linkages came from the last years of Henry VIII's reign, partly via the "bible study group" of Henry's last wife, Catherine Parr (1512-1458). Wilson has a book, A Tudor Tapestry, on the religious revolution of Henry's time, partly concerned with Anne Ayscough, (Askew), a Protestant enthusiast who became well-known at court, and in London, who was burned at the stake after being wracked.
(Derek Wilson, A Tudor Tapestry: Men, Women and Society in Reformation England. London, Heinemann, 1972.)

Wilson on p. 173 names a king's privy gentleman, Protestant Sir Anthony Denny. On p. 175 and p. 219, Wilson lists the regularly-meeting Protestant friends of Queen Catherine Parr as including:
(1) Lady Herbert, later Countess of Pembroke and sister of the Queen and chief of her privy chamber;
(2) Lady Jane of the Privy chamber, a cousin germane;
(3) the Lady Tyrrwhit/Tyrwhitt of Privy Chamber;
the Lincolnshire Lady, Elizabeth Tyrrwhit, wife of Sir Robert and governess of princess Elizabeth.
(4) Catherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, half-Spanish, wife of one of the realm's most powerful men;
(5) Anne, Countess of Hertford, wife of Seymour;
(6) Lady Denny;
(7) Jane Fitzwilliam the wife third of alderman Sir William Fitzwilliam of London, a close friend of Lord Russell;
(8) Anne, Countess of Sussex, married to Henry Radcliffe (Ratcliffe), who differed with her husband on religious matters;
(9) Jane Dudley, wife of the Lord Admiral;
(10) Maud Lane, widow of Sir Ralph Lane and a cousin to Catherine Parr;

On p. 175, Wilson writes, "The predominance of these Protestants at Court decisively influenced the course of major events throughout the last two years of the reign. Its effects were felt in both domestic and foreign affairs" ... (and) something also was attributable to the educators of Prince Edward.

Just what were the connections of these ladies for and to the Protestant commercial future?

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(1) Lady Herbert was Anne Parr, sister of Catherine, wife of William Herbert (1506-1569), first Earl Pembroke, in terms of this book, a "colonist". This William Herbert was father of Henry Herbert (1534-1600), second earl Pembroke, who married a third wife, Mary Sydney, daughter of a "henchman" of Henry VIII, Henry Sydney, president of Council of Wales. This Henry Sydney was patron of the Welsh "magus", astrologer, geographer and navigator, who taught Richard Chancellor astronomy in Sydney's own house. This Henry Sydney married Mary Dudley (died 1586), daughter of a Lord Admiral. This family group then had serious interests in making England a more skilled maritime power. Dee in time, of course, rather intrigued Elizabeth I. There were later marital links between the Sydney and Walsingham families.
Note: Some general cultural contexts in the time of Elizabeth I are well-outlined at a recommended website at: (broken link): http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep2ded.htm/
(2) Lady Jane was: Jane Guildford (died 1554/1555), wife of Lord Admiral John Dudley, (executed 1554), first Duke Northumberland, who had proclaimed Lady Jane Grey, also a "timber merchant".
(Robert G. Albion, Forests and Sea Power: The Timber Problems of the Royal Navy, 1652-1862. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1926., p. 122). Jane/Joan Guilford was daughter of Edward Guildford, Marshal of Calais.
(GEC, Peerage, De La War, p. 157; Northumberland, p. 726.)

Sir Edward here had married as first wife, Eleanor West, of the line, Barons De La War. Jane Guildford's son Henry Dudley (died 1557) married Winifred Rich, daughter of Richard Rich, first Baron Rich (see below), which Baron Rich was ancestor of the earls of Warwick surnamed Rich who did much to promote commerce and colonisation in post-Elizabethan times.
(3) was: as Wilson writes, Elizabeth Tyrrwhit, wife of Sir Robert and governess of princess Elizabeth. She was Elizabeth Oxenbridge, (See Burke's Landed Gentry for Tyrwhitt; Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Tyrwhitt of Stainfield. The Oxenbridge name also married to Monson, and to Sydenham.)
This Elizabeth's daughter, Ursula, married "colonist", Edmund Sheffield (1565-1646), first Earl Mulgrave, third Baron Sheffield, a leader against the Spanish Armada, by 1609 with the Virginia Company and by 1620 with the New England Company; which Ursula became mother of Mary who married Ferdinando Fairfax, second Baron Fairfax.
(See Lorimer, Amazon, p. 291, Note 6; GEC, Peerage, Fairfax, p. 230; Mulgrave, p. 389.)

(4) was: Catherine Willoughby, (1519-1580), daughter of Lord William Willoughby (died 1526), eleventh Lord Willoughby of Eresby, of Parham, by his second wife. She married Charles Brandon, first Duke Suffolk, who is mentioned in Hamel's book as helping promote voyages to Russia. See Josef Hamel, England and Russia; comprising The Voyages of John Tradescant The Elder, Sir Hugh Willoughby, Richard Chancellor, Nelson and others, to the White Sea. London, Richard Bentley, 1854. (Translated by John Studdy Leigh)., pp. 19ff.

(5) Anne, Countess of Hertford, was: Anne Stanhope, second wife of the Earl of Hertford, Lord Admiral/Lord Protector, Duke of Somerset, Edward Seymour (died 1556/1552). Edward, the father of Thomas Seymour, long-term paramour of Catherine Parr, wife of Henry VIII. Here, the family of Jane Seymour, consort of Henry VIII and mother of Edward VI, died 1553.
(Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 595. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Burgh, GEC, Peerage, for Cromwell, p. 558; Despenser, p. 292; Latimer, p. 484; Seymour of Sudeley, p. 637; Somerset, p. 84 (genealogical table); Ughtred, p. 165; Winchester, p. 763-764.)

(6) was: Lady Denny. Probably, Joan Champernowne, wife of Sir Anthony Denny (died 1573/1574), an executor of Henry VIII. Joan being daughter of Sir Philip Champernowne.
(A. L. Rowse, Raleigh and the Throckmortons, p. 130; Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 27, p. 369.) Sir Philip had a daughter Katherine, sister of Joan, who married Walter Raleigh (1505-1581) the Elder, father of Walter the famous pirate/navigator. Walter the Elder here also married one Joan Drake, also a link to a famous pirating name.)
Sir Anthony Denny had a "colonist" son, MP Sir Edward Denny (1547-1600), a follower of first Earl Essex, with him in Ireland.
(Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Carew; GEC, Peerage, Norwich, p. 767, Note e.) This Sir Edward married a maid of honour to Elizabeth I, Margaret Edgecumbe.

(7) Jane, wife of London alderman Fitzwilliam, no information.

(8-9) was: Anne, Countess of Sussex. Anne Calthorpe, second wife of second Earl Sussex, second Viscount Fitzwalter, Henry Radcliffe (1506-1556-1557), daughter of Sir Philip Calthorpe.
(GEC, Peerage, Fitzwilliam, pp. 488-489). This Henry Radcliffe had a first wife, Elizabeth Howard, daughter of Thomas, second Duke of Norfolk.)

(10) Maud Lane. Being Maud Parr, daughter of first Baron Parr, William Parr, and Mary Salisbury. This Maud was mother of Ralph Lane, who became a "colonist", a privateer, a first governor of Virginia/North Carolina, who served in Ireland and was equerry to Elizabeth 1.
(Rowse, Elizabethans and America, p. 35.)

Ralph's sister Lettice married the anti-Spanish MP, and defender of Parliament, Peter Wentworth; which Peter Wentworth had a second wife named Walsingham.
(Note that with secretary Walsingham - his wife Ursula St Barbe was also descended from Thomas Hoo and Eleanor Welles noted above).

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Wilson also notes the faction of Norfolk (the second Duke), Gardiner, Wriothesley and Rich. ("Baron Rich's devious mind")
Here, Wriothesley is Lord Chancellor, Thomas Wriothesley (died 1550), first Earl Southampton Rich is first Baron Rich, father of Winifred named above.

And so, the connections of Catherine Parr's "Protestant bible study group" had a great deal to do with the promotion of new varieties of English commerce and maritime endeavour. It is only a generation or two between their time, and the agricultural colonisation of Virginia. This generational shift falls untidily between Tudor and Elizabethan times, but the social levels involved, which retained links to royalty, also influenced the lower orders and the merchant classes - partly via Protestant enthusiasm.

The connections of the study-group members here, drawn from narrow and often genealogically-linked social grouping, fulfill the four themes being pursued here:
domination of Ireland, interest in colonisation/maritime endeavour, the expansion of the powers of Parliament, and anti-Spanish feeling. Parr's bible study group actually inspired a long-term and increasingly effective colonising-and-commercial revolution - and contributed to the development of an Empire. Remarkably, the genealogical linkages would one day stretch to Australia!
Note: Some general cultural contexts in the time of Elizabeth I are well-outlined at a recommended website at: (now a broken link?): http://www.dipmat.unipg.it/~bartocci/ep2ded.htm/

Note on first Baron Rich:
Sir Richard Rich, Baron1 Rich Lord Chancellor, Lawyer (1496-1567/1568), Speaker House of Commons, son of Richard Rich and Joan Dingley. Baron Rich married Elizabeth Jenks. They had five sons and ten daughters. Campbell (Campbell's Lives of Chancellors, , Vol. 2, pp. 143ff., available from the Law Library, University of New England) regards his career as sordid, unprincipled, dissolute. Rich had a great mansion at Great St Bartholomews, and was "virtually an army contractor" for the monies for wars in France and Scotland. He becomes solicitor-general to the King, is once Speaker to the House of Commons. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, p. 441, calls him an intriguing lawyer using "pliancy, profligacy and some said, perjury" to make his way.
(References: Rich's own DNB entry. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Rich. GEC, Peerage, Lumley, pp. 277ff. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 658 re his daughter's marriage to Roth; and Hasler, p. 59 for his daughter Audrey; Hasler, pp. 215-222 for marriage of his daughter Elizabeth to Robert Peyton (d. 1590), but not so termed elsewhere. Who's Who /Shakespeare, p. 176.)

Evolving quite close to the royal court, but perhaps seemingly suppressed by Henry VIII's despotic influences versus the religious tensions he had let loose within English domestic society, not to speak of his marital atrocities, and unloosed also by a patriotic Protestantism which had turned to anti-Catholicism, was a new English spirit concerned with maritime endeavour. More interested in offence than defence, and rightly so, given the dread prospect to be posed by the Spanish Armada. This spirit was strongly anti-Spanish, but in its political expression at home in parliament, was perhaps also increasingly at odds with the royal, dynastic and Catholic families of Europe. Still, it would be a long time before England aspired to actual mastery of the seas - or had the skills to be master.

With the move to marine endeavour and colonisation, plus Puritanism, anti-Spanish feeling was complex, as it moved from theological disapproval, to rivalry about senses of cultural superiority, ethnic hatred, awareness of high-level political difficulties that might arise from royal marriages, envy of Spanish silver supplies from South America/New World, commercial frustration. (If the Spanish could not control Barbary pirates, nor could the English.)

Given the history of European royalty since pre-Crusades times, the Welsh-English Tudors had come from comparatively nowhere, but succeeded in extricating the English throne from the tentacles of the originally-French Angevines and Capetians. It was the task of Elizabeth I, daughter of Henry VIII Tudor, to keep the English throne away from those families, a task which her rival, Mary, Queen of Scots, would never have accomplished. This trend intensified with the rise in England of anti-Spanish/anti-Catholic feeling. Elizabeth I inherited from her father a four-themed legacy which she had to reshape as best she could, and in which she succeeded well. A legacy which gave an anti-Spanish complexion to her reign, independently of any plans to see her married. The themes influenced parliamentary behaviour, and as some historians have noted, critically of Elizabeth, enriched her coffers at the expense of any system of continued fair play on the high seas; a legacy which did the Negro race little good.

So the themes are, often revealed by the actions of members of a single aristocratic family across any 20-30 year period - continued domination of Ireland, continued expansion of maritime-derived wealth from international trade. Continued colonisation. And in England itself, rivalry between the powers of parliament and those of royalty. It was with traditions formed from these four themes, that the British from 1786 possessed Australia - and the existence of the traditions shows as much in British genealogy as it does in books - maybe more clearly, as we shall see... The Puritans of the City of London needed to be able to trust their primary-producing, Puritan-minded friends in far-flung colonies (a lack of such trust produced the Virginia Company squabbles of the 1620s). One of the reasons for the later American Revolution was that North Americans finally felt obliged to withdrew that trust, to protect their own interests

Importantly, English Puritanism put considerable fire in the belly of the English drive for colonisation, and the refinement of later-built trading systems. The rise of Puritanism in England, so associated with an anti-Spanish prejudice, was often moved forward by families who were of an oppositional feeling, but also interested in colonisation, expansion of trade, maritime endeavour. Raleigh once said, there were 600 like him in Devon. He seemed to mean, he was part of a social movement. Many others thought as he did, and he certainly was interested in expanding England's interests overseas, and in promoting them in the face of Spanish overseas activity.

Now, the narrative will move on to rivalry between families (or, men) of Bristol and Plymouth, then London, who were rivals in the administration of what became the English navy, the Hawkins, the Gonsons and the Winters.

However, claims made here about certain implications of Ann Boleyn's forebears being associated with the Lord Mayoralty of London may seem unexpected. There are however, many precedents germane to the present argument.

London's Lord Mayors and aristocratic linkages:

It is not generally thought that the English aristocracy married to the mercantile class, but we find from the cases of up to 31 Lords Mayor of London, the following:

(1) Adam Francis, Lord Mayor of 1339-1340, whose daughter Maud married with John Montagu third Earl Salisbury, who was beheaded by a mob.
(GEC,
Peerage
, Exeter, p. 210; Salisbury, p. 393; Willoughby, p. 665. There are also links here to Lords Zouche and Fitzalan.)

(2) Thomas Mirfyn of the fifteenth century gives 415 records for a descent which is still irregular. It is helpful to see his descendants in line with those of Lord Mayor Geoffrey Boleyn, noted earlier. (Providing links to many names including Dukes 4-7 Manchester, eleventh Earl Montrose, sixth Earl Tankerville, fourth Baron Edgecumbe, and many links, as with Lord Mayor Ralph Warren and the financier name, Palavicino.)

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(3) Lord Mayor Robert Drope with his second wife, Joan Unknown, who married Edward Grey, third Baron Grey, who died in 1492.
(GEC, Peerage, Lisle, pp. 59ff.)

(4) Lord Mayor Thomas Legge married Elizabeth Beauchamp. This Elizabeth Beauchamp was daughter of Katherine Mortimer [first daughter of Roger Mortimer, first Earl March, executed 1330] and Thomas Beauchamp, third Earl Warwick. There are links here also to Miles Bermingham, Lord Bermingham, and the later William Legge, first Earl Dartmouth. This Elizabeth Beauchamp also married Thomas De Ufford (died 1368, son of Robert De Ufford (1298-1369), first Earl Suffolk).
(GEC, Peerage, Abergavenny, p. 28; Ufford, p. 152.)

(5) Lord Mayor of 1525, John Alleyn, whose illegitimate son Christopher married Audrey Paget, daughter of William, first Baron Paget.
(Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, p. 3; GEC, Peerage, Paget, pp. 276-280.)

(6) John Tate, whose descent provides 46 database descent records.
(Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Duncombe-Pauncefote; Burke's Landed Gentry for Flower.)

(7) William Capel, circa 1503, with a descent providing at least 576 records following daughters linked to eighth Lord Zouche, and to Paulet as second Marquis Winchester.

(8) Circa 1517, Lord Mayor William Brown whose widow, Alice, daughter of Lord Mayor Henry Keble, married as third wife of William Blount (1478-1534), fourth Baron Mountjoy and became mother of Charles, fifth Baron.
(GEC, Peerage, Mountjoy, p. 341.)

(9) Lord Mayor circa 1520 John Brydges, whose daughter Winifred married Treasurer Richard Sackville (d. 1566).
(GEC, Peerage, Dacre, p. 11, Dorset, p. 422; Winchester, p. 764.)

(10) Lord Mayor of 1537, Richard Gresham, father of the founder in 1566 of the Royal Exchange, Sir Thomas Gresham (1519-1579).
(Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Gresham, p. 227. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 55. R. G. Lang, `Social Origins and Social Aspirations of Jacobean London Merchants', Economic History Review, 2, V, 27, 1974., pp. 28-47. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Bacon, regarding ancestors of the Lords Townshend.)

The Lord Mayor of 1537, Sir Richard Gresham (died 1548), was brother of Lord Mayor John Gresham.

(11) Circa 1555: Lord Mayor Sir William Gerard/Garrard. This man produced a son John also a London Lord Mayor, and a daughter Anne who married Lord Mayor George Barne, and so arose a part-dynasty in commercial circles, more than any influence on aristocracy directly.
(Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 17ff. Josef Hamel, England and Russia; comprising The Voyages of John Tradescant The Elder, Sir Hugh Willoughby, Richard Chancellor, Nelson and others, to the White Sea. London, Richard Bentley, 1854. (Translated by John Studdy Leigh)., p. 26. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Garrard of Lamer, p. 214. R. G. Lang, `Jacobean London Merchants', as above. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, Vol. 3, pp. 294-295. GEC, Peerage, Berkshire, p. 151. In Thomas S. Willan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade. Manchester University Press, 1959., pp. 129 and previous, Garrard here would seem to be involved in trade to Morocco, exporting perhaps cloth and arms, importing sugar.)

(12) For Thomas Curteis, Lord Mayor circa 1557, there appear to be nil linkages. The name Curteis does appear however in connection with George Sackville-Fox, twelfth Lord Conyers.
(GEC, Peerage, Powis, p. 655.)

(13) For Thomas Leigh, Lord Mayor in 1558, few linkages are found. His daughter Winifred married Lord Mayor Sir George Bond.
(R. G. Lang, `Jacobean London Merchants'. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Bond of Peckham and for Leigh of Stoneleigh. GEC, Peerage, Leigh, p. 566 for first Baron Leigh; Willoughby, p. 713.)

(14) Lord Mayor Sir John Rivers appears in the lines for Garrard above.

(15) Lord Mayor George Barne has already been discussed. (With links to Secretary of State Sir Francis Walsingham, treated elsewhere.)

(16) For John White, Lord Mayor circa 1563, few linkages are found.
(R. G. Lang, `Jacobean London Merchants'. Burke's Peerage and Baronetage for Bellyse Baker of Highfields.)

(17) Lord Mayor William Holles, provides a descent with 364 records, with his son Sir William Holles marrying Anne Denzell; with their son Denzell Holles marrying Eleanor, a daughter of Edmund Sheffield, first Baron Sheffield.
(Here were later provided links with John Townshend second Viscount Sydney, the marquises 1and 2 Rockingham and third Baron Rockingham, fifth Earl Dartmouth, second Earl Strafford, third Marquis Bath and fifth Earl Bath, third Duke Portland; the nineteenth century bankers Grenfell, fifth Earl Dartmouth; and the beheaded Thomas Wentworth, first Earl Strafford, who died in 1641.
(Hasler, History of Parliament, Vol. 2, p. 330. GEC, Peerage, Clare, p. 247.) (18) Lord Mayor John Garrard is found in R. G. Lang, `Jacobean London Merchants', and GEC, Peerage, Berkshire, p. 151.

(19) Lord Mayor Rowland Hayward had links to Mirfyn, and his second wife was Catherine a daughter of Sir Thomas "Customer" Smythe (d. 1591). (Hayward provides links to Barons Knyvett and to Townshend MPs.
(Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 63. Hasler, History of Parliament, Vol. 2, p. 283; Vol. 3, pp. 516-517. GEC, Peerage, Strangford, p. 358.) Sir William Winter was friends with London merchant figure John "Customer" Smythe who is treated at length in later files here.

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(20) Lord mayor William Bowyer provides no records of interest.
(He is noted in Hasler, History of Parliament, Vol. 3, p. 368.)

(21) Lord Mayor William Browne, providing 99 records of descent.
He can be noted in Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Tyrrell of Springfield, and in GEC, Peerage, Mordaunt, p. 196; Say and Sele, p. 484.)
(With links including to: fifth and sixth Viscounts Say and Sele, twentieth Baron Clinton, fourth Earl Lincoln, Robert Walpole as second Earl Orford and second Baron Rolle; Ralph Warren with 408 records, with daughter Joan married to Sir Henry Cromwell and following arose links to eleventh Earl Montrose, ninth Baron Brooke, third Earl Plymouth, ninth Earl Wemyss, first Earl Buckinghamshire and fourth Earl Buckinghamshire; and Dukes 5-7 Manchester and via Cromwells to the financiers Palavicino.)

(22) Lord Mayor John Spencer with 186 records due to his daughter Elizabeth, who married to William Compton the first Earl and second Baron Compton. (Providing later links to second Baron Amherst, first Earl Compton, John Townshend fourth marquis and fourth Duke Dorset; Barons 1 and 2 Chesham, twelfth Earl Devonshire; and Coke as second Earl Leicester.)

(23) Lord mayor for 1589-1590, Stephen Soame, had nil aristocratic linkages.
(R. G. Lang, `Jacobean London Merchants'. Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 73. Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Soame. Lord Mayor Peter Soame is seen in Burke's Extinct Baronetcies for Barnardiston, p. 40.)

(24) Lord Mayor of 1590, Sir John Hart, on whom there is little information, was a Levant Company merchant and moneylender, often governor of the Muscovy Company. He had a daughter Jane who married Sir George Bolles.
(Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, Bolles, p. 69.)

There were then, many precedents for discussing linkages between commercial families and aristocracy. Where the family of Boleyn becomes conspicuous, along with the "Bible-study group" of Katherine Parr, is with the rise of a Puritan social movement, which included increasing numbers of affluent merchant families, that also interested itself in colonialism and maritime endeavour. This was a new trend in English life, and it happened to connect with opportunities provided by the existing slave trades in the New World conducted by the Portuguese and Spanish... as follows...

Bristol men - including it seems the later naval administrator Sir William Winter - were inspired by John Cabot, originally a Venetian who "had been on the American continent before Columbus", but who'd done more than merely visit. A patent was got from Henry VII dated 5 March, 1497, in ship Matthew, to Newfoundland. John died and his ideas were taken up by his son Sebastien. Henry VII dated 3 February, 1498, made out a patent to Sebastien and some London merchants who "adventured small stock". Three or four small ships left in May 1498, getting as far as Chesapeake Bay, but certainly not to Cathay.
(H. R. Fox Bourne, English Merchants: Memoirs, p. 100.)

The very fact of Cabot's patent disputed the partition of the world into Hispanic spheres of influence; Williams says: the implicit English view was that England would regard ownership as by right of discovery. France felt much the same, it seems. With the rise of Protestantism and the failure of the Spanish to keep the friendship of the French, England now typified the terms of any dispute about the pretensions of the Papal Bull in presuming to divide the world into two spheres ultimately answering to Vatican authority. Britain developed a doctrine of "effective occupation", leaving the way open for an argument that the discovery and use of a place by any power would in future be the basis for a right of continued occupation of any unknown location, not the fiat of an ecclesiastical power dealing Jesuitically with two powers it held subject. And in that attitude, England remained remarkably consistent. England gave notice then, it would discover and occupy what it liked, when, and as may be, and one expression of this was the (brutal) tradition of British piracy - buccaneering - incarnate in the career of Sir Francis Drake. Drake demonstrated that on the seas, Spain was temptingly vulnerable. Treasure was at stake in days when a full treasure chest was supposed to be the key to the wealth of a nation - or an empire.

The very issue of Cabot's patent disputed the partition of the world into Hispanic spheres of influence; Williams says, the implicit English view was that England would regard ownership as by right of discovery. France felt much the same, it seems. With the rise of Protestantism and the failure of the Spanish to keep the friendship of the French, England now typified the terms of any dispute of the pretensions of the Papal Bull in presuming to divide the world into two spheres ultimately answering to Vatican authority. Britain developed a doctrine of "effective occupation", leaving the way open for an argument that the discovery and use of a place by any power would in future be the basis for a right of continued occupation of any unknown location, not the fiat of an ecclesiastical power dealing Jesuitically with two powers it held subject. And in that attitude, England remained remarkably consistent. England gave notice then, it would discover and occupy what it liked, when, and as may be, and one expression of this was the (brutal) tradition of British piracy - buccaneering - incarnate in the career of Sir Francis Drake. Drake demonstrated that on the seas, Spain was temptingly vulnerable. Treasure was at stake in days when a full treasure chest was supposed to be the key to the wealth of a nation - or an empire:

Explorer Sebastian Cabot (1472-1477-1557): Cabot saw the early rise of English anti-Spanish feeling. Son of a Venetian navigator whose discoveries had been promoted by John Dee, Hakluyt and Humphrey Gilbert, Sebastian claimed to have found a north-west passage by 1508-1509, after a voyage around the Hudson's Strait area; that passage interested England till Cook's time.

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In 1512 Sebastian Cabot left England and spent 35 years serving the Spanish, becoming a pilot-major at Seville's world-first school of navigation. About 1548 he was tempted to revisit England and by 1552 he found the Duke of Northumberland (executed in 1555), urging him to help with an attack on Peru, with the help of French corsairs, or, going up the Amazon; ideas which were dropped. Sebastian helped found the Muscovy Co. and The Company of Merchant Adventurers.
(A. L. Rowse, Raleigh and the Throckmortons. London, Macmillan, 1962. A. L. Rowse, An Elizabethan Garland. London, Macmillan, 1953., p. 4. Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 6. See also, E. G. R. Taylor, `The Northern Passages', in A. P. Newton, (Ed.), The Great Age of Discovery. Josef Hamel, England and Russia; comprising The Voyages of John Tradescant The Elder, Sir Hugh Willoughby, Richard Chancellor, Nelson and others, to the White Sea. London, Richard Bentley, 1854. (Translated by John Studdy Leigh). Lorimer, Amazon, variously. Williamson, Age of Drake, pp. 12ff.)

The Hawkins family of Plymouth:

The Hawkins are first found ...as follows:

1511-1525: About this time progenitor John Winter and his spouse Alice Terry were alive. He became Master of Ordnance for ships of Henry VIII. (The family has some descent from Botetourt.) He had eleven children, including who Arthur died fighting against Spanish. (From website on Winter naval family.)

1525: Maritime history: Two voyages of Gomes de Sequeira.

1525: Conquistador Pedro de Alvarado conquers El Salvador.

1525: England: Secretary of the navy, William Gonson was active from about 1525, family data unknown.
(See E. G. R. Taylor on Edward Fenton. G. R. Elton, Tudors; Williamson, Age of Drake, pp. 34ff, pp. 254ff.)

He worked as secretary/organiser of Navy from 1525 till his death, aiding Henry VIII. His son was admiralty figure, treasurer/secretary of the navy, Benjamin Gonson, active by 1561.
Benjamin's daughter was Katherine Gonson (1540-1591) wife1 (from 1559) of John Navy Treasurer slaver Hawkins, She is buried at Deptford.
See websites giving print media citations also: (Broken link?) http://home.ican.net/~jenseng/descend/Amadas.html
Also on Hawkins genealogy: http://www.southern-style.com/hawkins.htm

By about 1530, "Old Master William Hawkins" of Plymouth, went (in 1530, 1531, 1532), with Paul of Plymouth, 250 tons to the coasts of Brazil, to the coast of Guinea, by Brazil "to sell to the Indians". His sons were William Hawkins a merchant and shipowner in London, and John, a "naval hero".

1532: Capt John Hawkins, born 1532, was bred to the sea. His father William was a merchant captain who'd been to Guinea, so John first went there in 1562 with private ships, crew less than a 100 total, and got 300 Negroes.
(Mannix, Black Cargoes , pp. 21ff.)

1532-1538: William Hawkins (died 1553) marries Joan Trelawney. He trades in tin, exports cloth to Europe, gets salt and wine from France, dyewood from Brazil, sugar and pepper from Portugal, soap from Spain and fish from Newfoundland. Mayor of Plymouth in 1532 and 1538. Partly responsible for making Bristol a chief trade port with the Americas. His first voyage to Brazil was in 1530.

Ancient trades were changed from 1544 when the Emperor made peace with France after war. "English privateers scoured the seas with Spaniards and Flemish", earlier their allies, now neutrals who carried French goods.
(Williamson, Age of Drake, p. 6.)

1545: English abridged respect for flags and took enemy goods as "fair prizes in neutral bottoms". One Capt. cruised off Cape St. Vincent and captured a Spanish treasure ship with no French goods on board. The Emperor retaliated and in 1545 arrested all English merchants in Spain and the Netherlands and prohibited trade with former ally, England. This broke the prosperity of English trades prevailing since Tudor times. The stoppage lasted a year and the Hanse competitors to the English did well from it. The only English to gain were freebooters of the sea.

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English slaving business and the Winter-Gonson-Hawkins story:

In 1533, an English Muscovy Company was incorporated under Sebastian Cabot with a view to seeking a passage to Old Cathay, although this merely brought England into contact with Russia. By 1581, Elizabeth I granted charters to companies trading to Spain and Portugal, the Eastland Co. to the Baltic, the Levant Co. to Turkey and Raleigh began planning a company for Virginia which ended in disaster, and at century's end the East India Company was chartered.
(Neville Williams, Elizabeth I: Queen of England. London, Sphere, 1971., p. 298.)

The English move to slaving business:

England's interest in developing a northern hemisphere trade route was one thing. Developing interest in what could be created by engagement in slaving business - slowly, across decades - was another.

The Hawkins family and the English slave trade:

From about 1550 begins the period when it becomes necessary to list a rapidly-growing population of English merchants.

Rising through the records of maritime activity is, notoriously, the Hawkins family of Plymouth, known as the "founders" of the English slave trade. They were conspicuous in their own day as skilled mariners, and rose to prominence in the then-unsophisticated circles guiding what would become, the royal navy. Even in the days of the Hawkins', there are many English aristocrats to be mentioned, interested in trade in various ways.

First to be noted is William, son of shipowner John Hawkins of Tavistock and his wife Joan Amydas. The career of Captain William Hawkins (1495-1553) MP of Plymouth, reintroduces themes which are often underplayed, one of which is English interest in South America, Brazil, and the Amazon River area, all part of an English interest in finding a southern maritime border for the activities that would allow freedom from Spanish interference.

The Hawkins family were largely the creators of Plymouth as a major port, active in new trade with America, and a leading city of England's south west. Family members played a leading part in local Plymouth politics, in national-London politics, in overseas trade and naval warfare, "often all at the same time".
Entry in C. R. N. Routh, Who's Who in History. Vol. Two. England: 1485-1603. London, Basil Blackwood, 1964., p. 378. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, pp. 280 for his son John. E. Keble Chatterton, The Mercantile Marine. London, William Heinemann Ltd., 1923., p. 51. See also E. Keble Chatterton, Ventures and Voyages. London, Longmans Green, 1928.)

The Hawkins-Gonson-Winter naval story - overview:

The story of the how England's naval administration grew is clouded by the oft-told story of how one of the administrators, John Hawkins, also "began English involvement in slavery". This is true enough at the levels of fact-plus-legend, but matters were more complex. Books of both popular and serious history tell us that: the families of Hawkins, Drake, Raleigh and Winter intermarried. But why, how? There is a wider story, involving firstly co-operation, then rivalry, between two families originating distantly from London - the Hawkins' of Plymouth and the Winters of Bristol.

The outcome of the rivalry was associated with the origins of English slaving business, but associated also were matters of family attitude to problems of royal succession, tensions between Catholics and Protestants, involvements in political conspiracies (or not), differences of opinion about methods of naval administration,. In short, the Hawkins' won the historical propaganda war via their intermarriages and adherence to Protestant causes; the Winters lost due to ambivalence about the Catholic/Protestant divide. If any finger needs to be pointed to English "engagement in slavery", the Winters can be blamed as much as the Hawkins.

To chronologise (and available genealogies are often patchy):
William Amydas married Margaret Hawkins of Cornwall, who may have been related to other Hawkins' of Launceston and/or Plymouth. Margaret had a daughter Joan who married the Hawkins progenitor in question, John Hawkins (1450-1490?). See website: http://www.southern-style.com/hawkins.htm

This John had a son William (1495?-1553), an MP and mayor of Plymouth, who sailed about Brazil in 1530; he married Joan Trelawney. This William had a son William (1519-1589) (The Elder), an MP, a privateer; and a son John (1531-1595), treasurer of the Navy, who married Katherine Gonson. (Katherine's father William Gonson died 1545.)

Meantime, in Bristol, the Winter family also became involved in naval administration.
On the Winter family, some information below is from website: http://www.pillagoda.freewire.co.uk/ADMIRAL.htm

The Winters cannot have been ignorant of Cabot's adventures... 1544: Sebastian Cabot had a map of 1544 possibly a corrupted version of the Dauphin map, which France had filched from Portugal, Bristol men led by John Cabot originally a Venetian been on American continent before Columbus had done more than merely visit. a patent from Henry 7th, dated 5 March, 1497, in ship Matthew, to Newfoundland, John died and ideas taken up by Sebastien, Henry 7th dated Feb 3, 1498, made out to Sebastien Cabot, and some London merchants adventured small stock. 3 or 4 small ships, left in May 1498, as far as Chesapeake Bay but certainly not to Cathay.
(McIntyre, Secret Discovery of Australia, p 80; H. R. Fox Bourne, English Merchants: Memoirs, p. 100.)

William Winter (later Sir) was born about 1528 (or 1519?). He became Keeper of Deptford Storehouse by 1546, and then Surveyor of the Ships or Surveyor of the Marine Causes from June 1549, and Master of the Ordnance of the Ships from July 1557 and he held both offices till his death in 1589
(Add MS 5762 fo. 6b). Letters Patent of Philip & Mary dated 2 November 1557 refer to a patent of Edward VI which appointed William Winter to be "Surveyor of our Ships" and goes on to appoint him "Master of our Ordnance of our Ships". He was administrator in all sea-going expeditions (1557-88).

William Winter was knighted in 1573 and held the Vice Admiralty of Somerset (united with Bristol) which his descendants held until 1628.

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1551-1553: London Lord Mayoralty period for colonist, Andrew Judd, co-founder of the Muscovy Co.
His spouse Names wife1 Joan Mirfyn and wife2 Mary Mathew.
http on Winter naval family. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 403 on John I Smythe d.1608. Seen as alderman in Hasler, p. 97 on Sir Wm Morgan d 1583. Who's Who / Shakespeare, p. 231. Williamson, Age of Drake, pp. 14ff. GEC, Peerage, Strangford, p. 358.)
Note: The Winter family split into two branches, the main one being of Huddington.

William Winter was MP for Portsmouth (1559 & 1563), Clitheroe (1572) and Gloucestershire (1586) and had an active Parliamentary career. By about 1559 William Winter was described by William Cecil (Burghley) as "a young gentleman" and a "man to be cherished".

What loyalty should a family have placed on a contender for the English throne at the time? As a website on the Winter family puts it:
"It is not commonly realised that Philip's claim to the English throne was better than Elizabeth's. To begin with, Pedro the Cruel and his half-brother Henry of Trastamara were both descended from Alfonso VII of Castile and Eleanor Plantagenet, daughter of Henry II of England and Eleanor of Aquitaine (1126-1157). Philip was also twice legitimately descended from John of Gaunt, Duke of Lancaster, son of Edward III. On the other hand Elizabeth was descended from John of Gaunt through his illegitimate son John Beaufort, earl of Somerset. Edward IV usurped the throne (which rightfully belonged to Henry VI of Lancaster) after killing the Lancastrian heir Edward. Henry VII's wife Elizabeth Plantagenet (Edward's daughter) had been declared illegitimate by Richard III on the evidence of no less a person that Robert Stillington, Bishop of Bath & Wells on the grounds of Edward IV's pre-contract with Lady Eleanor Talbot, daughter of the earl of Shrewsbury and wife of Thomas Butler, the earl of Ormond's brother. Elizabeth herself was declared illegitimate by her own father after her mother Anne Boleyn's execution and remained so in Catholic eyes even after she ascended the throne. Anne was 3 months pregnant when she married Henry before he got his divorce which was not recognised by the pope nor the Catholic world."
Websites on Winter naval family:
"In addition Philip had been king of England by right of his wife Mary Tudor whose right was better than Elizabeth's as she was Henry VIII's legitimate daughter. Furthermore Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, heir to the English throne through her grandmother Margaret Tudor Henry VII's sister, bequeathed her right to Philip in her Will."

Grey's father), the earl of Pembroke and Lady Jane as sponsors. According to a poem, Nicholas and his 4 brothers warned Queen Mary Tudor of the plot to place Lady Jane Grey on the throne, but opposed Sir Thomas Tresham when he proclaimed Mary queen in Northamptonshire. Nicholas and his brothers Clement and Anthony were pardoned. He was made English ambassador in France by Elizabeth.
(Adapted from a website.)

Sir William in 1549 was appointed Master of Ordnance by John Dudley, earl of Northumberland, an extreme Protestant. Yet, Winter took part in Dudley's plot to place a Protestant queen, Jane Grey (1537-beheaded 12 Feb. 1554. A sixteen-year-old girl for nine days queen of England from 6 July 1553. Mary Tudor was proclaimed for the throne on 19 July by Jane's father ).

Winter also involved himself in in Sir Thomas Wyatt's Plot to rebel against Mary and place Elizabeth on the throne. (Wyatt was executed 11 April, 154). The failure of the latter resulted in Jane Grey being executed and Elizabeth being sent to the Tower. However, William Winter was not punished in any way by Philip and Mary. The Protestant Sir Nicholas Throckmorton (died 1571) was also involved, although other members of his family were Catholics and his nephews, Francis (died 1584) and Thomas conspired in the Throckmorton Plot to assassinate Elizabeth and place the Catholic Mary Stuart on the throne.

William Winter (born 1519? was cousin of the Winters of Huddington whose grandmother was Katherine Throckmorton, sister of Sir Nicholas - two members of which family were involved in Essex's rebellion (1601) and three in the Gunpowder Plot (1604-1605). Katherine's brother Sir Robert Throckmorton (died 1580 - see Hasler's notes on the Throckmorton family, p. 500) was ancestor of both the Catesbys and the Treshams, also involved in the Gunpowder Plot.
(On the Gunpowder Plot, see Graham Phillips and Martin Keatman, The Shakespeare Conspiracy. Arrow Books, 1995. Antonia Fraser also has a book on the subject, Faith and Treason.)
"Sir William's wife, Mary Langton, was descended from several families who were involved in the violently put-down Catholic Pilgrimage of Grace (1537). A chalice was found hidden at Lydney, inherited by his grandson Sir John Winter, secretary to queen Henrietta Maria. A "known and fervent Catholic", Sir John married Lady Anne or Mary Howard - a family again split by the Catholic-Protestant divide. (His son Sir Charles Winter was accused by Titus Oates of being a Catholic but no harm was done as Oates was proved to be a liar.)" (From website on the Winter family.)

By Elizabeth's reign (from 1558) English ships were unloaded at the English factory at San Lucar de la Barrameda (the only port allowed to trade with the Americas from 1492-1717) and Cadiz. English merchants from London, Southampton, Bristol and the West Country resided in Seville where the Casa de las Indias was situated. The English in Spain became hispanized and the Spanish in England anglicised; the English family of Castlyns or Castelyn were perhaps of Spanish origin. Hugh Tipton, an important English merchant in Seville, was John Hawkins's agent to whom he sent cargoes.
(According to Spanish sources, John Hawkins was even knighted by Philip II whom he served when he was king of England and referred to him as his master during the Ridolfi Plot.

Winter had plans afoot, but died in 1561. Became with Benj Gonson a Gold Coast venturer in 1561 promoting voyage by John Lok which made a profit of 3000 pounds. Merchant, slaver and Surveyor of the navy, Sir William Winter (spouse: Mary Langton), died in 1561.
http on Winter naval family. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, for his son Edward, p. 673. (William Winter had a cousin the "hot-gospeller", Edward Underhill.) (See Garrett Mattingly, The Defeat of the Spanish Armada. London, Jonathan Cape, 1960. Fifth impression., pp. 176-178, 268-269. Williamson, Age of Drake, pp. 34ff, pp. 258ff. G. R. Elton, Tudor England.

Hawkins, early English promoters of slaving interests:

Linkages between the Hawkins and Gonson families were extensive. Benjamin Gonson became an "admiralty figure". Men of the Hawkins family initiated the English slave trade, and as mayors of Plymouth are credited with helping their port reach maritime eminence.
(Hawkins' slaving and trading voyages are treated in K. R. Andrews, `The English in the Caribbean, 1560-1620', pp. 103-123 in K. R. Andrews, N. P. Canny and P. E. H. Hair, (Eds.), The Westward Enterprise: English Activities in Ireland, the Atlantic and America, 1480-1650. Liverpool University Press, 1978.)

John Hawkins of Tavistock had a son William (1495-1553), who married Joan Trelawney; the son of the latter was Sir John Hawkins (1531-1595), a slaving merchant and later Treasurer of the Navy, who married Katherine Gonson (1562-1591) as his first wife. Navy treasurer John's brother William (1519-1589) was a privateer and mayor of Plymouth. Later Hawkins descendants remained merchants. (An Australian reputed to be a Hawkins descendant was Hannibal Hawkins Macarthur, of the noted New South Wales grazing family, Macarthur.)

(G. R. Elton, England Under the Tudors. James A. Williamson, The Age of Drake. London, Adam and Charles Black, 1938., pp. 254ff. Andrews, Spanish Caribbean, pp. 188ff. C. R. N. Routh, (Ed.), Who's Who in History, on Hawkins, pp. 378ff.)

Routh writes that John Hawkins (died 1595) sailed not to "save the cloth trade" but for the Merchants Adventurers Company, which excluded cloth traders and worked to restrict the output of cloth. Slaves were Hawkins' main merchandise; his backers included naval treasurer Gonson, Sir Lionel Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, William Cecil, Lord Burghley; and the earls of Leicester and Pembroke. The slaving voyages of Hawkins and others did much to forge other connections between slaver voyages, privateering and ship and naval management, as well as to promote interest in navigation generally. Sir John Hawkins was of the notable London parish, St Dunstan's in the East, where many notable mariners and merchants later lived.
(Alfred C. Wood, A History of the Levant Company. London, Frank Cass, 1964.)

Examination of the careers of the above-mentioned trading figures, their families, and associates, provides evidence for further claims about a surprisingly narrow genealogical base for the expansion of English trade, as we shall see. As well, if one is metaphysically inclined, it is interesting to note the preoccupations, including cartography, of the "English magus", and "secret agent to Elizabeth 1", John Dee (1527-1608).

It is hoped that these webpages will be of assistance to family historians in the UK, the US and Australasia, by way of providing contexts for further research.

Events from 1562:

Something happened in 1561-1562 to increase the scale of English activity...

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1562: John Hawkins (by legend) "began the English slave trade" from the 1560s, but in fact he acted out an expansionist family theme from the 1530s. He used three ships outfitted from London, one of his backers being Alderman Duckett. John in 1562 got 300 slaves from Sierra Leone, and later used one of the largest ships available in England. Later John became a slaving-partner with Sir Francis Drake. But as he did so, English merchants became "expansionists" in several directions at once.
(Here a relevant title is: Rayner Unwin, The Defeat of John Hawkins: a biography of his third slaving voyage. London, Allen and Unwin, 1966. Bateson collection, Australian National Maritime Museum. H. R. Fox Bourne, English Merchants: Memoirs in Illustration of the Progress of British Commerce. London, Chatto and Windus, 1886., p. 136.)

By 1561, John Hawkins from Plymouth had links with a member of an important Canarian family of Genoese descent in Tenerife named Pedro de Ponte from whom he got information about the African and American trade.

The Canaries were free to English merchants under a treaty and there was a factory of the Company of English Merchants trading with Spain. Hawkins's pilot, Juan Martinez, was Sevillian. Hugh Tipton, an important English merchant in Seville, was John Hawkins's agent to whom he sent cargoes.

William Winter, surveyor of the navy, became with Benjamin Gonson a Gold Coast venturer in 1561, promoting a voyage by John Lok which made a profit of 3000 pounds.
(Williamson, Age of Drake, pp. 34ff, pp. 258ff. G. R. Elton, Tudor England.)

1561: Did the earlier-co-operating Hawkins and Winter families fall out? If so, when?

1562: Hawkins's first voyage involved 260 tons of shipping and 100 men; he sailed in October 1562 to Tenerife to meet Pedro de Ponte, accompanied by his Sevillian pilot, Juan Martinez of Cadiz. He brought back ginger, pearls, sugar and hides but broke Spanish laws by not obtaining a licence to go to Indies nor a trading licence and carried goods not manifested in Seville so his two cargoes were seized in Lisbon and Seville and his agent Hugh Tipton jailed.
Sir William Winter became involved in trading with Guinea, not only in spices but also slaves with Hawkins, whose slaving voyages started the Triangular trade via the Canaries to Gold Coast and then to the Spanish Main.

Soon after 1560 John Hawkins moved to London and formed a syndicate of merchants and officials including Sir Lionel Ducket and Sir Thomas Lodge, who were already engaged in Gold Coast trade, and Benjamin Gonson and Sir William Winter. This syndicate period may mark the time when a rather unexpected nexus of interest developed - between "naval men" and merchant-slavers.

A Winter family website says, "The careers of Sir William Winter and his brother George developed against a background of a cold war with Spain, Protestant persecution in France and the Netherlands and English Catholic plots fomented by the Pope which formed around Mary, the exiled Queen of Scots." So also, did the careers of the Hawkins' of Plymouth, but the two families had quite different destinies as far as historians are concerned, the dividing issue being ambivalence about Catholicism. In brief, the Hawkins' had no ambivalence about Catholicism, as they took the Puritan road.

The second wife of naval treasurer John Hawkins was Margaret Vaughan (died 1619) a woman of the royal bedchamber, daughter of Charles Vaughan.
(Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 280.)

The son of John Hawkins and Katherine Gonson was merchant, naval commander and "Darienite", Sir Richard Hawkins (1560-1622), RN, an only son. He was with Drake in the West Indies in 1585-86.
C. R. N. Routh, Who's Who in History. Vol. II. England, 1485-1603, p. 381 for his father. Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 280 for his father.
A mayor of Plymouth, Sir John Hawkins about 1701 married Amy Carew.

Navy treasurer (and slaver), Sir John Hawkins (1531/1532-1595), was a Puritan, a "Darienite", of a "virulently" anti-Spanish persuasion, He died at sea in battle off Puerto Rico. He was son of MP (and slaver) William Hawkins and Joan (Towne) Trelawney. He was of Kinterbury St., Plymouth, and in his retirement kept an inn, suggesting that when he died in battle, he was "out of retirement"?
There is a childless Sir John Hawkins who died 1603 at Deptford, a deputy treasurer of Navy from 1589, who has a niece married to Capt Edward Fenton (see Taylor's book on Edward Fenton.) Descendants of this man John died 1603 include Sir R. Leicester Harmsworth and Harold C. Harmsworth circa 1927; and the Steward-Hawkins family) A website gives him as a cousin of Sir Francis Drake: http://www.southern-style.com/hawkins.htm

So [John] Hawkins sailed on his first venture from Plymouth in October 1562 to the Canaries, his chief ally amongst the Spanish there being one Pedro de Ponte. Thence Cape Verde, while Ponte dealt with Hispaniola (Jamaica). Hawkins got about 400 slaves, some from Portuguese ships. In April 1563 Hawkins got to north of Hispaniolo, Puerto de Plata; then to La Isabela, bartering slaves for goods, pearls, hides and sugars, some gold. Hawkins' second voyage had the backing of Elizabeth, the earls of Leicester and Pembroke, and Lord Admiral of England, Lord Clinton (Edward [Fiennes] Clinton (1512-1584), first Earl Clinton), plus Gonson, Winters and some Londoners.

Some business was sent to Hugh Tipton, an English merchant at Seville. (About this time, The Duke of Feria, an adviser to Philip of Spain, had an English wife and one of Hawkins' men, George Fitzwilliam, was a kinsman of hers; though such connections "did not ensure cargo delivery".) Hawkins arrived home to England in September 1563, with profit despite all. Soon, hearing of seizures of his cargoes, Hawkins wrote to the queen, before the end of 1563. Then he readied to go to Spain in person.
By 1562, a Frenchman Jean Ribault wished to lead an expedition to Florida. About now, Elizabeth I wanted Thomas Stukely to go to Florida with Ribault, but Stukeley found Channel privateering more lucrative. Another Frenchman, a Huguenot, Rene de Laudonniere, sailed for Florida in 1564 with the approval of French government.
(Williamson, Age of Drake, p. 47, p. 60.)

1563: William's brother George Winter (died 1582)of Dyrham, Gloucestershire (which he purchased from Sir Walter Dennys in 1571 (13 Elizabeth I) is mentioned in an order from Elizabeth dated 16 July 1563 to Lord Clinton, Lord High Admiral asking him to deliver certain stores to George Winter "Clerk of our Ships" (Add. MSS Vol. 5752) a position he held until he died.
Richard Hakluyt in his Voyages related:
"Master John Haukins having made divers voyages to the Iles of the Canaries, and there by his good and upright dealing being growen in love and favour with the people, informed himselfe amongst them by diligent inquisition, of the state of the West India, whereof hee had received some knowledge by the instructions of his father, but increased the same by the advertisements and reports of that people. And being amongst other particulars assured, that Negros were very good marchandise in Hispaniola, and that store of Negros might easily bee had upon the coast of Guinea, resolved with himselfe to make triall thereof and communicated that devise with his worshipfull friends of London: namely with Sir Lionell Ducket, Sir Thomas Lodge, Mr Gonson his father-in-law, Sir William Winter, Mr Bromfield and others. All which persons like so well of his intention that they became liberall contributors and adventurers in the action."
"For which purpose there were found ships immediately provided: the one called the Saloman of the burthen of 120 tunne wherein Mr Haukins himselfe went as generall: the second the Swallow of 100 tunne, where went for captaine Mr Thomas Hampton: and the third the Jonas a bark of 40 tunnes, where in the master supplied the captain roome in which small fleet Mr Haukins tooke with him not above 100 men for fear of sickness and the inconvenience, whereunto men in long voyages are commonly subject."
" With this companie he putt of and departed from the coast of England in the moneth of October 1562 and in his course touched first at Teneriffe, where hee received friendly intertainment.

From thence he passed to Sierra Leona, upon the coast of Guinea, which place by the people of the countrey is called Tagarin, where he stayed some good time, and got into his possession, partly by the sworde and partly by other meanes, to the number of 300 Negros at least, beside other merchandise with that countrey yeeldeth. With this praye hee sayled over the Ocean unto the Iland of Hispaniola, and arrived first at the port of Isabella: and there hee had resonable utterance of his English commodities, as also of some part of his Negros, trusting the Spaniards no further, then that by his owne strength he was able to still to master them. From the port of Isabella he went to Puerto de Plata, where he made like sales, standing alwaies upon his guard from thence also hee sayled to Monte Christi another port on the north side of Hispaniola, and the last place of his touching, where he had peaceable traffique and made vent of the whole number of his Negros: for which he received into those 3 places by way of exchange such quantities of merchandise, that hee did not onely lade his owne shippes with hides, ginger, sugar and some quantitie of pearles but he fraighted also two other hulkes with hides, and other commodoties, which hee sent into Spaine. And thus leaving the Iland, he returned and disemboqued, passing out by the Ilands of the Caycos, without further entring into the Bay of Mexico, in this his first voyage to the West India. And so with prosperous success and much gaine to himselfe and the aforesayde adventurers, he came home, and arrived in the moneth of September 1563."
Hawkins was backed financially by a syndicate of London Merchant Adventurers formed to exploit the discovery which included Sir William Garrard, Sir Lionel Ducket, William Winter, Surveyor of the Navy and Master of the Ordnance, Hawkins's father-in-law Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of the Navy and son of William Gonson (Hawkins married Benjamin Godson's daughter Katherine and Edward Fenton married her sister Thomasine); Sir Thomas Lodge and others.

Three of them had been trading in gold from lower Guinea, called the Gold Coast and then slaves from Upper Guinea - 1,000 miles apart. Benjamin Gonson, William Winter, Sir William Garrard, Sir William Chester and Edward Castlyn from the City, Sir William Cecil, Robert Dudley, earl of Leicester, the earl of Pembroke and Lord Clinton the Lord High Admiral backed his second voyage some time after 3 March, 1554).

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The families of Hawkins, Drake, Raleigh & Winter intermarried. Sir Francis Drake was kinsman of Hawkins and cousin of Robert Barrett, burnt at the stake in Seville. Drake's first wife, Mary Newman, died in January 1582 and was buried at Budeaux near Plymouth and in 1585 he married as his 2nd wife Elizabeth, daughter of Sir George Sydenham whose second husband was Sir William Courtenay. Sir Francis Drake at lived at Gatcombe Park in Gloucestershire and Sir Walter Raleigh at Purton manor near Severn Bridge which crosses the river above Sharpness dock just past Lydney, Gloucestershire. Arthur, Charles & Henry Champernowne (d. 1570) of Modbury were Walter Raleigh's cousins.

The following material re Lord Mayor 1547-1548 John Gresham relates to the families of several London Lords Mayor
Descendants of John Gresham sp: Alice Blyth
2. Levant trader, Lord Mayor London Sir John Gresham (c.1547;d.1556) sp: Catherine Sampson wife2 sp: Mary Ipswell wife1 3. William Gresham, heir sp: Beatrix Guybon 3. Ellyn Gresham (b.1533;d.1567) sp: MP William Uvedale (b.1528;d.1569) 3. John Gresham sp: Elizabeth Dormer 3. William Gresham, heir sp: Beatrix Guybon 3. John Gresham sp: Elizabeth Dormer 3. Mary Gresham sp: Merchant adventurer, Lord mayor, Sir Thomas Rowe (c.1569) 4. Robert Rowe (c.1551) sp: Elinor Notknown 5. Coloniser, EICo trader, Sir Thomas Rowe (b.1581;d.1644) sp: Eleanor CAVE (m.1613) 4. Rowe Elizabeth sp: Sir William Garrard (d.17 Nov 1607) 4. London Lord Mayor William ROE (c.1590) 4. London Lord Mayor Sir Henry Rowe (c.1607) sp: Miss Notknown 5. Susan Rowe wife2 (c.19 Sep 1582;d.16 Jan 1645/1646) sp: Gov EICo, London Alderman William Halliday (b.1610;d.14 Feb 1623/1624) 6. Miss Halliday sp: Sir Henry Mildmay
2. London Lord Mayor Sir Richard Gresham (c.1537;d.20 Feb 1548) sp: Audrey Lyne wife1 3. Sir John Gresham sp: Frances Thwaites 4. Elizabeth Gresham sp: Sir Henry Neville 3. Financier, economist Sir Thomas Gresham, Bart2 (b.1519;d.1579) sp: Anne Fernley legal wife sp: Miss Notknown Lover 4. Anne Gresham wife1 sp: Sir Nathaniel Bacon 5. Anne Bacon sp: MP Sir John Townshend (b.1568;d.1603) 5. Elizabeth Bacon sp: Sir Thomas Knyvet 5. Winifred Bacon sp: Sir Robert Gawdy sp: Miss Notknown Lover 4. Anne Gresham wife1 3. Christian Gresham wife1 sp: MP, Mercer Sir John Thynne (b.1513/1515;m.1548;d.1580) 4. MP Thomas I Thynne (b.1566;d.1625) 3. Sir John Gresham sp: Frances Thwaites 4. Elizabeth Gresham 2. William Gresham

- Dan Byrnes (otherwise indicated in these pages as -Editor)

Note: You will find even greater detail than is given here, for specific periods in American - English - Australian history, with regard to merchants, traders, bankers and financiers, as part of the website, The Blackheath Connection...

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The great pioneers of the English Russia Co. and Morocco Co. were William Bond and Francis Bowyer, who were quite active before the advent of trade with the Levant.
Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 73.

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