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You can find much greater detail for the timeframes 1550-1700 at a new website now almost finished ... THE BUSINESS OF SLAVERY... a website book also designed to bring genealogical studies up-to-date from 1530 to the present-day... as well as questions of merchant lives and activities... Click now to... The Business of Slavery (in English history).

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Merchants and Bankers
From 1600-1650

Trade - an international perspective

This website, produced by Australian historian Dan Byrnes, is a no-frills, text-based website designed simply to list historical and genealogical information on many notable merchants and traders of what is termed, the Western World.

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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.

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.

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: Chris and Carolyn Caldicott, The Spice Routes: Chronicles and Recipes from around the World. Fances Lincoln, 2001.

Reference item: Lawrence Stone, An Elizabethan: Sir Horatio Palavicino. Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1956.

Pre-1600?: The little-known Englishman and vicar, armchair navigator, Samuel Purchas, publishes his book, Purchas, His Pilgrimes, which is to inspire London's merchant adventurers, somewhat based on reports of Magellan's voyages.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1600s: Residents of Persia and India begin eating and drinking opium mixtures for recreational use. Portuguese merchants carrying cargoes of Indian opium through Macao direct its trade flow into China.
From website based on book: Opium: A History, by Martin Booth Simon and Schuster, Ltd., 1996. e-mail info@opioids.com

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1600: Wm Gilbert's "De Magnete" synthesizes, predicts vacuum in outer space.
About 1600: A physicist William Gilbert uses the word, "electric".

1600: C16th generally: Roland Fletcher, Assoc. Professor of Archaeology, Sydney University, thinks that one million people lived around Angkor Wat in the C16th. Similar-size populations lived in Edo (now Tokyo), Beijing, Sian (now Xi'an), Sukhothai in Thailand, and Pagan in what is now Burma.

1600++: tobacco and coffee consumption skyrockets in Europe.

1600s in Europe: The Tulip Craze, one of the oddest of financial bubbles known.

Circa 1600: Abbas I (reigns from 1587 to 1629) introduces reforms in Persia and expands territories.

1600: Charles E. Nowell, The Great Discoveries and the First Colonial Empires. Ithaca, 1954.*

1600: Richard W. Unger, The Ship in the Medieval Economy, 600-1600. Montreal, 1980.*

February 1601: Lancaster's five East India Company ships proceed down the Thames River. The crowd would not be repeated in size till 1610 when Nathaniel Courthope sailed for the East. Among the 1601 ships are Susan, Hector, Ascension, Red Dragon. The ships reached Table Bay by 9 September 1601, later to Madagascar. The Nicobar Islands. By 5 June 1602 to Achin, a port of Sumatra. When Lancaster arrived, he saw ships already there from Gujarat, Bengal, Calicut, and the Malay Peninsula. Lancaster departed Achin after various adventures in November 1602. Lancaster left for England in February 1603, arriving home in September 1603, when London had been victim to plague. There followed another English East India Co. voyage under Henry Middleton, with ships Susan, Hector, Ascension, Red Dragon.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1601: Raleigh helps suppress the rebellion of Essex and presides at execution of Essex as captain of the guard.

1601: Maritime history: Eredia claims to have discovered Nuca Antara.

Circa 1601: France: With all these distractions the King did not neglect his cares of state. He and Sully laboured to increase the Royal revenues. It is impossible to exaggerate the nightmare complexity of the Ancien Regime taxation system with its crazy mosaic of regional and social variations in assessment and imposition, its host of levies, dues and tariffs, ordinary and extraordinary, direct and indirect, sometimes nominal, sometimes crushing and frequently self-defeating, and its hydra-headed multitude of exemptions, the whole administered by a battening host of greedy officials; Dallington shuddered at 'the infinite number in all France, upon why they lie, as thick as the Grasshoppers in Egypt'. Why this chaotic system could not be simplified was of course a question of fundamental law; the rights of those who levied taxes had to be protected no less than the rights of those who were exempt from them, official posts being sacrosanct. All that Henri and Sully could hope to do was try to work this fantastically cumbersome and antiquated engine: it was a question of oil rather than spare parts, let alone new machinery.
They had first to combat the now almost traditional practices of embezzlement and plain theft which devoured the greater part of the revenue, and to force those who collected monies due to the King to pay them into his treasury. Much of the Royal income from indirect taxes reached him through the agency of 'farmers' whom the impossible system made indispensable; at least they had an incentive to extract the maximum from the unfortunate taxpayer. By cutting their percentage Sully made an immediate profit without impairing the tax farmers' greedy industry. Unlawful exemptions were set aside and corrupt assessments readjusted."
...Sir George Carew (the English ambassador) wrote: "When Sully first came to the managing of the revenues, he found... all things out of order, full of robbery, of officers full of confusion, no treasure, no munition, no furniture for the king's houses and the crown indebted three hundred million (that is, three hundred million pounds sterling). Since that time, in February 1608, he had acquitted one hundred and thirty millions of that debt, redeeming the most part of the revenues of the crown that were mortgaged; that he had brought good store of treasure into the Bastille, filled most of the arsenals with munition, ... but only by reducing that to the king's coffers which was embezzled by under-officers."
From Desmond Seward, The First Bourbon: Henri IV, King of France and Navarre. London, Constable, 1971., p. 143.

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February 1601: Lancaster's five East India Company ships proceed down the Thames River. The crowd would not be repeated in size till 1610 when Nathaniel Courthope sailed for the East. Among the 1601 ships are Susan, Hector, Ascension, Red Dragon. The ships reached Table Bay by 9 September 1601, later to Madagascar. The Nicobar Islands. By 5 June 1602 to Achin, a port of Sumatra. When Lancaster arrived, he saw ships already there from Gujarat, Bengal, Calicut, and the Malay Peninsula. Lancaster departed Achin after various adventures in November 1602. Lancaster left for England in February 1603, arriving home in September 1603, when London had been victim to plague. There followed another English East India Co. voyage under Henry Middleton, with ships Susan, Hector, Ascension, Red Dragon.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1602: The new Dutch East India Company (VOC), quickly sends three ships under Sebald de Weert and Wybrand van Warwyck for Java, Sumatra, Ceylon and the spice islands. Warwyck was to visit China coasts and establish trading bases. The Dutch eventually got a world monopoly on the supply of cloves and in theory, on nutmeg also. This was soon abridged by a new fleet of English to the spice islands.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1602: 20 March: Organisation by attorney-general of Holland, Johan van Oldebarnvelt, who realised the need for an organised monopoly, which became the Dutch East India Company. (VOC, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, run by a council of 17 men).
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1602: Formation of Dutch East India Company.

1602: Lawrence Hyde about 1602 is railing in England against the system of monopolies.

1602: Bartholomew Gosnold charts the coast of lower Maine and Massachusetts, and gives names to Cape Cod and Martha's Vineyard.
See K. Jack Bauer, A Maritime History of the United States: The Role of America's Seas and Waterways.. University of South Carolina Press, 1988.

1602: Raleigh sells his Irish estates to Richard Boyle. Raleigh finds he disagrees with James I re conflict with Spain, and is also expelled from Durham House. is dismissed from captaincy of guard, deprived of his monopolies and of government of Jersey.

1602: The new Dutch East India Company (VOC), quickly sends three ships under Sebald de Weert and Wybrand van Warwyck for Java, Sumatra, Ceylon and the spice islands. Warwyck was to visit China coasts and establish trading bases. The Dutch eventually got a world monopoly on the supply of cloves and in theory, on nutmeg also. This was soon abridged by a new fleet of English to the spice islands.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1602: 20 March: Organisation by attorney-general of Holland, Johan van Oldebarnvelt, who realised the need for an organised monopoly, which became the Dutch East India Company. (VOC, or Vereenigde Oost-Indische Compagnie, run by a council of 17 men).
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1602: By 1602-1604 in Guinea trade are Charles Leigh and his brother Oliph (sic). Charles Howard/Nottingham deals with shipowning merchants Robert and William Bragg who also handle war business. Allied to Cecil were Sir Thomas Myddleton and Sir Richard Hawkins; also in Cecil's circles Thomas Alabaster an Anglo-Iberian trader of Seville. Myddleton has a partner, Nicholas Farrar.
See Andrews, Chapter five of the Spanish Caribbean, pp. 110 ff.

1603: Japan: Tokugawa Shogunate, Edo Period.

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1603: Japan: Tokugawa Shogunate begins. In 1633, Japanese are forbidden to travel overseas.

1603: London's Globe Theatre is razed during a production of Shakespeare's Henry IV.

1603: England: Raleigh on 19 July 1603 is committed to Tower of London, unsuccessfully tries suicide, on trial by November 1603, facing an unfair attorney-general Sir Edward Coke and sentenced to death. Raleigh is sent to the Tower to 19 March, 1616. His estate is confiscated from Raleigh's son by James I and only part repaid.

1603: Mariner Martin Pring on ship Speedwell re-surveys the areas of lower Maine and Massachusetts surveyed by Bartholomew Gosnold in 1602 and sails up Piscataqua River. Samuel de Champlain operates from short-lived French settlement of St. Croix at border of Maine/New Brunswick, sketches the coast north to Cape Cod (area also surveyed by George Weymouth). These surveys excite little real interest although some London and Plymouth merchants formed a trading-colonizing company that took the name of Raleigh's ill-fated settlement of Virginia.
Verbatim from K. Jack Bauer, A Maritime History of the United States: The Role of America's Seas and Waterways.. University of South Carolina Press, 1988.

1604: 5 December: James I has permitted an expedition by Sir Edward Michelbourne to the East Indies with Tiger and Tiger's Whelp departing Isle of Wight on 5 December, 1604, and with aboard the highly-experienced John Davis, who had sailed with James Lancaster. Davis had been bad-mouthed by Lancaster to the East India Company re dealings at Achin concerning Davis' views on availability of pepper at Achin, and prices. On this voyage, Michelbourne behaved like an unprincipled pirate in regard to local and Dutch shipping. A Japanese pirate junk which had already worked the coasts of China and Cambodia, Borneo, quietened Michelbourne down - and killed John Davis. Michelborne had to shoot cannon through the interior of his own ship to get rid of the Japanese. Michelbourne got home to England in 1606.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1604: The Dutch later become aware that Englishman Charles Leigh had maintained the first English colony on the Wiapoco River by 1604. By 1600 the Dutch were on the Xingu River with two forts. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, p. 76.
Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, p. 76.

1604: In 1604, James I licensed Sir Edward Michelborne to trade in China and elsewhere in the east. In 1609 (in an example of the unreliability of monarchs) James was persuaded to allow the establishment of a Scottish East India Company, which infringed the charters of the East India, the Levant and the Russia Companies. Some companies were forced to buy out their rivals.

1604: By 1604 in the English Caribbean trade are new men John Eldred and Richard Hall, talking to Sir Robert Cecil in 1604 of such trade, some Dutch names given, some Genoese, John Williams of London, Edward Savage a London merchant a go-between, Charles Howard earl of Nottingham and Lord High Admiral 1585-1619 is a political ally of Sir Rbt Cecil and a privateer too.

1605: First Dutch sightings of Australia. Torres sails in Torres Strait between Australia and New Guinea.

1602-1605: English mariner George Weymouth explores America's northern coastline, reaching the entrance to (what became) Hudson's River. Weymouth's information falls into the hands of the Dutch East India Co.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1605: Time of troubles in Russia.

1606: Privateer Christopher Newport: An East India Company investor, he commands the Virginia Company voyage of 1606.

1606: Execution of some Gunpowder plotters including descendants of Sir William Winter, earlier a noted naval administrator.
On the Gunpowder Plot, see website: (broken link?) http://www.gunpowder-plot.org/news/1998_04/wintour1.htm

1606: Sir Edwin Sandys (1561-1629), associated with the Virginia Company as treasurer 1619-1621, also active with the Somers Island Company (1606-1621) and a member of the East India Company. His brother George (died 1644) was a treasurer of the Virginia Company, his sister had a daughter who married a governor of Virginia, Sir Francis Wyatt.
(Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, pp. 70-100. Hasler, History of Parliament, Vol. 3, pp. 339ff. Who's Who /Shakespeare, pp. 214ff.)

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1606: Sir Edward Michelbourne arrives home to England from his piratical voyages to the Indonesian spice islands to retire to disgrace. Meantime the English East India Company realised that after sending three fleets to the East Indies, and about 1200 men, they had lost 800 lives, mostly by disease. The Dutch were about sending 14 fleets made of 65 ships. So the English East India Co. decided to send out a Turkish-speaking Englishman, William Hawkins to negotiate with the Moghul Emperor of India, Jehangir, from 1607 for larger adventures.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1606: Sir Edward Michelbourne arrives home to England from his piratical voyages to the Indonesian spice islands to retire to disgrace. Meantime the English East India Company realised that after sending three fleets to the East Indies, and about 1200 men, they had lost 800 lives, mostly by disease. The Dutch were about sending 14 fleets made of 65 ships. So the English East India Co. decided to send out a Turkish-speaking Englishman, William Hawkins to negotiate with the Moghul Emperor of India, Jehangir, from 1607 for larger adventures.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1606 Spring: Middleton arrives back to England after voyage to the East Indies/spice islands of the Moluccas, with little cargo due to the depradations of not the Dutch or Portuguese, but of Englishman ("gentleman adventurer") Sir Edward Michelborne. Michelborne had earlier sweet-talked James I, who scarcely grasped the issues about trade, and the necessity for a properly-backed monopoly against the powers of the Portuguese and Dutch, into permitting a Michelbourne expedition to the East Indies with Tiger and Tiger's Whelp departing Isle of Wight on 5 December 1604.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1606: The voyage of Don Diego de Prado y Tovar through Torres Strait. The earliest documented account of the European discovery of Australia. Prado's 32-page manuscript was not produced till 1614-1615 after Prado returned to Spain, to become a monk of St. Basil in Madrid. Prado was second-in-command for the expedition led by Fernandez de Quiros, a Portuguese, to discover The Great South Land and to convert the heathen. Prado had been on Quiros' ship but changed to the second ship, captained by Luis Vaez de Torres at Vanuatu (which Prado called Australia del Spiritu Sancto). The two ships were storm-separated, Torres went through what is now the strait named for him, Quiros sailed for South America, forced to do so by a mutinying crew. The Prado manuscript came to light when the British sacked Manila in the 1760s. The Spanish had deliberately suppressed news of existence of Torres Strait to harrass their commercial rivals. Torres Strait however was named by the British hydrographer of the later eighteenth century, Alexander Dalrymple. (From Sydney Morning Herald, 16 August 1997)

1607: English colony of Virginia founded in America.

1607: Dutchman Jan Pieterszoon Coen sails to the East Indies/spice islands. Early in his career, Coen finds some Dutchmen there have been massacred, possibly with English planning. Coen sails for East Indies again in 1612.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1607: William Hawkins is sent on ship Hector by English East India Company to negotiate with Moghul Emperor of India, Jehangir for creation of an English factory on India's western coast at Surat. Hawkins had the bad luck to encounter the Indian owner of a ship that had earlier been pirated by Sir Edward Michelbourne. But Hawkins had luck in getting on well personally with Jehangir (a binge drinker and opium taker), speaking in Turkish. Hawkins became a member of the Moghul inner court, and ended up married to an Armenian woman. Hawkins finally died on his way home and his Armenian widow married East India trader Gabriel Towerson, who took her back to the East. (Towerson once kidnapped a Negro named Coree of the Table Bay area, took him back to London, to be met by Sir Thomas Smythe. Coree was cheered up by a present of some chain mail, which he often wore, then taken back to South Africa.)
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1607: Under William Keeling, third expedition of ships of English East India Co. to spice islands, with instructions to keep ahead of the Dutch, with £17,600 of gold bullion and only £7000 worth of English-produced goods. Also sailing is David Middleton, captain of a small ship, Consent (at Table Bay by 24 July 1607), who knew Gabriel Towerson, who had been left at Bantam in the spice islands by David's brother Henry in 1604. David Middleton sailed for the Celebes Islands, where he bought cloves (and slaves) and sailed for England. Middleton spent £3000 and reaped more than £36,000.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1607: English colony of Virginia founded.

1608: Christmas: William Keeling's ships in the spice islands sail home for England via the Banda Islands, only to be interrupted by arriving Dutch ships. Even more Dutch ships on a seriously commercial-military mission under Peter Verhoef, with 1000 Dutch fighting men and Japanese mercenaries. Verhoef proposed to build a fort on Neira Island, to defend the Dutch from the Portuguese, which locals found outrageous. This fort was built on the foundations of an old fort abandoned by the Portuguese about 100 years earlier. A massacre followed, perhaps co-organised by Keeling. The Bandanese massacred 42 Dutchmen. Dutch command went to Simon Hoen who demanded revenges, but signed a peace treaty by 10 August 1609 which gave Neira to Dutch power. But the Dutch ended killed by the locals including dyak head-hunters), so that when David Middleton arrived, he had great complexity to deal with. Encouraged by Middleton, the islanders killed even more Dutch. In London after Middleton got home, the East India Co. directors began to look at maps and the island of Run.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

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1607: The Plymouth Company of England, the second Virginia Co. group, focuses attention on New England. They sent an expedition under George Popham to Sagahadoc (modern Popham Beach), to Maine, the Kennebec River. Their ship is 30-tonner Virginia, built by Digby, and not, as sometimes said, the first vessel built in America, as about seven ships earlier built by Spanish or French had preceded her. Virginia sails between England and her colony for another 20 years.

1608: By 1608, reports are that Henry Hudson (an Englishman) has sailed to within ten degrees of the North Pole. He has also touched the eastern coast of Greenland. English merchants are interested, the Dutch also. Hudson arrived in Amsterdam in 1608 to meet the Dutch East India Co., to have his navigation theory questioned by Petrus Plancius. The seventeen of the Dutch East India Co. failed to accept Hudson's plan, so Hudson was approached by the French (King Henry IV) via dissident Dutchman Isaac Lemaire. The Dutch found out and recalled Hudson for an expedition for 1609.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1608: Champlain founds Quebec for France in Canada.

1608: Death of London merchant John I Smythe.
(Hasler, The House of Commons, 1558-1603, p. 403).

1608: Lippershey invents telescope; Galileo makes astronomical observations.

An impression of the family history of London Lord Mayor 1608-1609 Sir Humphrey Weld
Descendants of John Weld sp: Joanna Fitzhugh-45664
2. London Lord Mayor Sir Humphrey Weld (c.1608/1609;d.1610) sp: Anne Wheeler
3. Sir John Weld Kt (d.1662) sp: Frances (has issue) Whitmore (d.1656)
4. Sir John Weld Kt Banneret (d.1674) sp: Hon. Mary Stourton (m.1648) 4. Humphrey Weld (d.1684) sp: Clara Arundell (m.1638) 5. Mary Weld sp: Carlingford Earl2 Carlingford (d.1690) 4. William Weld sp: Miss Notknown 5. William Weld sp: Elizabeth Sherburne (m.1672) 6. Humphrey Weld (d.1722) sp: Margaret Simeon (m.1701) 7. Edward Weld of Lulworth Castle (b.1705;d.1761) sp: Hon. Catherine Elizabeth Aston (m.1727;d.1739) sp: Mary Theresa Vaughan wife2 (m.1740;d.1754) 8. Edward Weld Of Lulworth (b.1741;d.1775) sp: Maria Mary Anne Smythe Fitzherbert (b.1756;d.1837) 6. Humphrey Weld (d.1722) sp: Margaret Simeon (m.1701) 7. Edward Weld of Lulworth Castle (b.1705;d.1761) sp: Miss Notknown 5. William Weld 4. Margaret Weld sp: Sir William Bowyer Bart1 (b.1612;d.2 Oct 1679) 5. Sir William Bowyer, Bart2 (b.1639) sp: Frances Cecil 6. Cecil Bowyer sp: Julian Parker 7. Sir William Bowyer, Bart3 (b.1710) sp: Lady Anne Stonhouse (d.22 May 1785) 8. Sir William Bowyer, Bart4 (b.1736;d.Apr 1799) sp: Anne Carey (m.26 Aug 1776;d.25 Dec 1802) 8. Lt-General Henry Bowyer 8. Vice-Admiral George Bowyer (b.1739;d.6 Dec 1799) sp: Henrietta Brett wife2 (m.4 Jun 1782;d.Nov 1845) 9. Sir George Bowyer Bart6, MP sp: Anne Hammond Douglas (m.19 Nov 1808;d.1844) sp: Margaret (Widow Downing) Price wife1 (d.18 Sep 1778) 8. Richard (Atkins) Bowyer-Atkins Bowyer Judge-Advocate (b.1745;d.21 Nov 1820) sp: Elizabeth Brady of Dublin (m.3 Feb 1773) 8. Penelope Bowyer

1609: Englishman Henry Hudson in service of the Dutch enters Delaware Bay. See later history of Pennsylvania.

Follows an impression of the family history of London Lord Mayor 1610-1611 Sir William Craven
Descendants of William Craven and sp: Beatrix Hunter(?) widow (d.1547)
2. London Lord mayor Sir William Craven (c.1610;d.1618) sp: Elizabeth Whitemore Whitmore
3. Whig, Carolina activist, William Craven Earl1 Craven (b.1608;d.9 Apr 1697) 3. Elizabeth Craven (b.7 Jan 1599/1600;d.8 Oct 1662) sp: Percy Herbert Baron2 Powis (m.19 Nov 1622;d.19 Jan 1666/1667) 4. William Herbert Earl1 Powis, Royalist, Mqs1 Powis (b.1626;d.2 Jun 1696) sp: Lady bedchamber Elizabeth Somerset (m.Jul 1654;d.11 Mar 1690/1691) 4. Mary Herbert (b.Oct 1623) sp: George Talbot Lord Talbot (b.1620;m.Jan 1639;d.Mar 1644) 4. Urania Herbert sp: MP Coulson Fellowes (b.1696;d.1769) 3. John Craven Baron Craven, Died Young, of Ryton (b.1643;d.1648) 3. Thomas Craven Unm, Died Young (b.1617;d.1637) 3. MP John Craven Baron1 Craven Of Ryton (b.1610;d.1648) sp: Elizabeth Spencer (b.16 Feb 1617/1618;m.4 Dec 1634;d.11 Aug 1672) 3. Mary Craven wife1 sp: Thomas Coventry Baron2 Coventry (b.1606;m.2 Apr 1627) 4. George Coventry Baron3 Coventry (b.1628;d.15 Dec 1680) sp: Margaret Tufton 4. Thomas Coventry Earl1 Coventry, Baron2 Coventry (b.1629;d.15 Jul 1699) sp: Winifred Edgecumbe wife1 (m.2 Apr 1627;d.11 Jun 1694) sp: Elizabeth (Grimes) spinster Graham wife2 (m.16 Jul 1695;d.1724) 2. Henry Craven (d.1604) sp: Margaret Notknown (d.1613) 3. William Craven (b.1571) 3. Thomas Craven (b.1578) 3. Robert Craven (b.1574;d.1661) sp: Margaret Shearwood (d.1670) 4. Sir William Craven Of Lenchwick (b.1610;d.1655) sp: Elizabeth Fairfax 4. Thomas Craven of Burnstall (b.1611;d.1682) sp: Anne Proctor (d.1681) 4. Henry Craven (b.1608;d.1634) 4. Sir Anthony Craven (d.1670) sp: Elizabeth Pelnets 2. Anthony Craven, of Darley (d.1604) sp: Margaret Notknown (d.1613) 3. William Craven

1609: August: Henry Hudson's ship Half Moon sees the shores of Chesapeake Bay. later Hudson gets to Coney Island at the mouth of the Hudson River. (The Hudson River had been discovered 85 years before by Giovanni da Verrazano in the service of the French, searching for a way to the East Indies.) Hudson's findings (eg about Manhattan Island) generate different views in Holland versus England. The Dutch are not interested, the English are.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1609: 12 September, English explorer Henry Hudson on Half Moon has discovered Delawere Bay, then sails into the New York river that now bears his name. The Dutch meantime are interested in furs from Indians on the Hudson River and in 1613 they make a post below Albany for such trade.

13 November 1609: Mariner Nathaniel Courthope is hired by East India Company to go to the spice islands, especially the Island of Run. Courthope is the hero of Milton's book as follows.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

30 December 1609: James I sees the departure of new East India Co. fleet from Deptford. Ships are Trades Increase, Peppercorn and Darling. At a dinner, James I slips a great gold honorary chain around neck of EICo chairman Sir Thomas Smythe. Fleet actually sails in April 1610 under Sir Henry Middleton.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

28 October 1610: Leader of the newest East India Co. fleet Sir Henry Middleton rows ashore at Red Sea port of Mocha. Various unpleasant incidents follow.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1610: Arrival of tea in Europe from China.

1611: The Dutch establish an outpost in Africa - Maure or Fort Nassau - and their first governor on the Gold Coast is Jacob Adriaenszoon Clantius. The climate of the area in the next few years took 1000 Dutch lives. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, p. 75.

1611: English establish factory at Masulipatam, India.

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1611: England by 1611 had engaged the first killing of a "Greenland whale". Early English whalers included Thomas Edge and Marmaduke of Hull; William Baffin's name was attached to Baffin Bay. In 1618 arose the Scottish East India and the Greenland companies, but the Dutch companies for such ventures were larger than the English companies. The English whalers sailed from Leith, Yarmouth (sent by soap manufacturers), but whaling declined during the Civil War. (By 1671, George Turfry and Co. were whaling, but the industry seemed on its last legs, attempts to re-establish it failing. (Gordon Jackson, The British Whaling Trade. London, Adam and Charles Black, 1978).

An impression of the family history of London Lord Mayor 1612-1613 John Swinnerton,
1. Morocco trade merchant John Swinnerton (d.Oct 1608) sp: Miss Notknown
2. Wine merchant and customs farmer Lord Mayor John Swinnerton (b.1564;d.8 Dec 1616) sp: Buckfolde Thomasine - 3. Swinnerton Richard

1611: Dies Henry Hudson, after a futile search for the North-West Passage. His crew mutinies, and set him adrift in an open boat to freeze. The mutineers who returned home were found not guilty of mutiny.

1611: Dutchmen begin living on the entrance to Hudson's River, near Island of Manhattan.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

August 1611: Sir Henry Middleton's latest EICo fleet so far has accomplished nothing.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1612: In 1612 the Mayor of Bristol is Thomas Povey, entertaining Queen Anne (of Denmark) when she visited his city. (Agnes Strickland, Lives of the Queens of England, Vol. 5, p. 147, p. 155, p. 162). Reasons connected with the origin of English chattel slavery will mean the name Povey is repeated.

1612: Jurist Hugo Grotius publishes his book Mare Librum: A Discourse on the right which the Hollanders claim of trade to India.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1613: The Dutch make extra efforts to control their imports from the Guianas and to colonize there, but are destroyed by Spaniards from Trinidad. But by 1615, the Dutch returned to Cayenne on the Waipoco and on the Amazon. Theodore Claessen of Amsterdam placed 280 colonists at Cayenne, but these people went to Surinam. Of these people, Capt Aert Adriaenszoon Groenwegen (who had been in the service of the Anglo-Dutch house of Sir William Courteen Senior) became rather "romantically mysterious". Groenwegen later served the Spaniards as a factor on the Orinoco, but then went to Zeeland, and met promoter-burgomaster Jan de Moor of Flushing. de Moor found the official support of the States of Holland and recruited Pieter Lodewijksz and his son Jan Pietersz, just returned from the Guianas planting tobacco, for work on the Wild Coast/Amazon area. Plus a fleet of three ships under Michiel Geleynsse, to make a colony on the Wiapoco. These were not the only Dutch endeavours about now.
Groenewegen's work was funded by Jan de Moor "in co-operation" with William Courteen. Groenwegen left Flushing in 1616. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, pp. 79ff.

1613: The Hague, Holland. Dutch and English negotiators meet (till 1615) to try to promote peace in trade.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1613: East India Co. factor John Jourdain sails from Bantam to Amboyna in spice islands to buy cloves and spices. Jourdain gets on badly with the Dutch, including Jan Coen.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1613: English establish factory at Surat, India.

1613: Thomas Argall in ship Treasurer sails to Mount Desert on Maine Coast, America, to thwart French efforts there to plant a colony.

1614: Whaling history: John Smith has an expedition to discover more of the whaling fishery off the coast of Maine, New England, reporting a great number of whales and the richness of the cod resources. Full-time American whaling probably stemmed from 1640 with the English of Nantucket Island. Although the Indians of the outer Long Island area of New York had earlier been whalers. 1614 is a marker year for the "first chartered commerce" of New York.
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.

1614: A small English ship under Richard Welden moves amongst the spice islands, dealing with English already there including John Jourdain.

1614: Dutch establish colony of New Amsterdam, (later New York).

1614: John Smith of the colony of Virginia sails along the coast of New England to Cape Cod . Stocks of fish are found, sold to Spanish or English for £1500, a large profit for the times.

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1615: Coffee is introduced to Europe.

14 May 1615: Armed conflict breaks out between Dutch and English in the spice islands.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1615: England: James I requires glass to be made only with coal.

1615: Sir Thomas Roe goes as official ambassador of James I to the Moghul Court, Delhi, India.

1615: By 27 June, 1615 the East India Company agent at Firando, Japan, is Mr. Wickham, who wanted to buy tea from Macao. (Misra, p. 19).

1615: Edward Wright, a little-known navigator and mathematician, dies 1615. Wright knew the navigator John Davis. Wright lectured on navigation for the East India Company, and had gone with George Clifford Lord Cumberland to the Azores.
Who's Who/ Shakespeare, p. 274.

1616: June: The Dutch commonwealth is fully liberated. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, p. 75.

1616: Groenewegen's work in 1616 was funded by Jan de Moor "in co-operation" with William Courteen. Groenwegen left Flushing in 1616 with three ships, and founded a settlement 20 miles up the Essequibo River, using an abandoned Portuguese fort; and he married the daughter of an Indian chief, to rule his colony for nearly 50, dying in 1664 aged 83, a wealthy man. Goslinga, The Dutch in the Caribbean and on the Wild Coast, 1580-1680, pp. 79ff.

1616: John Smith of Virginia publishes book, Description of New England (an early pitch for real estate development). This helps to promote a series of new New England settlements, such as Plymouth in 1620, established by Pilgrims.

1616-1617: Raleigh obtains freedom from the Tower, where he has been occupied writing, with "discreditable means". He promises James I to find a gold mine in Guinea without bothering the Spanish, despite warning of Spanish ambassador, James I agrees, though if Raleigh commits piracy he will be executed when he returns. Raleigh sails on 17 March, 1617, ill-equipped, and reaches mouth of Orinoco River by 31 December, 1617. Raleigh is ill and remains at Trinidad. He sends on Lawrence Keymis and his son Walter Raleigh, and a cousin of Walter. They encounter Spanish and Walter Jnr is killed. Keymis suicided when reproached by Raleigh Snr. for this outcome. When Raleigh returned home the king's threat is made good and Raleigh is executed 29 October, 1618.
(Encyclopedia Britannica, entry on Raleigh.).

23 December, 1616: Arrives at Run, a small spice island (an atoll) in the Indian Ocean, English ship Swan Capt. Nathaniel Courthope. James I has ordered that the ship reach their destination in secret. (The spice trade can bring profits in London of up to 60,0000 per cent.) (From: Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader who Changes the Course of History. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.

1616: Governor of Virginia Sir Thomas Dale arrives back in London with Indian woman, Pocahontas. Dale's next work for English expansionists is to go to the spice islands, where he arrives about January 1619 with a new East India Company fleet.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1616: Nathaniel Courthope leaves his East India Company job as factor at Sukadana and returns to Bantam in the spice islands. Where he meets EICo merchant John Jourdain, who is from Lyme Regis in Dorset, England.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

October 1616, John Jourdain gives Nathaniel Courthope use of two ships in the spice islands, Swan (Master John Davis) and Defence to make for the Island of Run. Courthope begins to make fortifications.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

November 1617: Spice Islands, English ship Speedwell meets three Dutch vessels which humiliate Speedwell. By now, English feel tired of Dutch using physical force.

23 December, 1616: Arrives at Run, a small spice island in the Indian Ocean, English ship Swan Capt. Nathaniel Courthope. James I has ordered that the ship reach their destination in secret. (The spice trade can bring profits in London of up to 60,0000 per cent.) (From: Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg, Or, The True and Incredible Adventures of the Spice Trader who Changed the Course of History. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.

1617: Japan: Renewed persecution of Christians (fumie- walk on crucifix- test).

1618: English merchants in search of slaves establish a fort on James Island at mouth of River Gambia.

Spring 1618: Spice Islands: Three English ships are sent to reinforce Nathaniel Courthope on Island of Run.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1618, Bohemian Revolt in Europe: Outbreak of the Thirty Years' War.

30 December 1618, an English fleet gathers off Jakarta, Indonesia, eleven ships under Sir Thomas Dale, to fight seven Dutch ships under Jan Coen. Dale allowed the Dutch to escape unharmed. (Dale dies on 19 July 1619.)

1618: In 1618 James I commutes a sentence of death to transportation because the convicted person was a carpenter, and carpenters were needed in Virginia. If this commutation was mercy, it was mercy instituting a regime long to be corrupted in the history of British colonialism.

1618: Sir William St. John, active circa 1618, of the Guinea Company. (St John is active from 1618 in the Guinea Company, and saw some developments which culminated in the company selling Kormantin on the West African Coast to the English East India Company in 1657.
Sir Percival Griffiths, A Licence to Trade: The History of the English Chartered Companies. London, Ernest Benn, 1974.)

1619: At the Virginia Company Court meeting, April 28, the treasurer says that His Majesty has sent a man suspected of deer stealing to Virginia. The same year the King sent another 50 people to Virginia. Roderick Cameron says that 1619 seems to be the earliest actual recording of transportation to a colony, "a hundred dissolute persons" being sent to Virginia by order of James I. (Roderick Cameron, Australia: History and Horizons. London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson., pp. 48ff).

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Follows an impression of family history of London Lord Mayor 1619-1620 Sir William Cokayne
Descendants of Levant trader, London Lord Mayor Sir William Cokayne (b.1561;d.1626) and sp: Mary Morris wife2
2. Martha Cokayne wife1 (b.1605;d.Jul 1641) sp: Montagu Bertie Earl2 Lindsey Lord Willoughby (b.1608;m.18 Apr 1627;d.25 Jul 1666)
3. Robert Bertie Lord16 Lord Willoughby, Earl3 Lindsey (b.1630;d.Sep 1655) sp: Elizabeth Wharton wife2 (d.1 Jul 1669) sp: Mary Masingberd wife1 sp: Elizabeth Pope 3. Bridget Bertie (b.1629;d.7 Jan 1703/1704) sp: Thomas Osborne Duke1 Leeds Earl1 Danby (b.20 Feb 1631;m.1653;d.26 Jul 1712) 3. Elizabeth Bertie wife4 (d.20 Jul 1683) sp: Baptist Noel, Visc3 Campden, Royalist (b.13 Oct 1611/1612;m.6 Jul 1655;d.20 Oct 1682) 3. Hon Charles Bertie, Co. Lincoln sp: Mary Tryon sp: John Ramsay Earl1 Holderness (b.1580;m.Jul 1624;d.28 Feb 1625/1626)
2. Elizabeth Cockayne wife2 (b.Mar 1609;d.Feb 1667) sp: Levant trader, Sir Thomas Rich, Bart, of Berks (b.1661;d.15 Oct 1667) 3. Sir William Rich, Bart (d.1711) sp: Lady Anne Bruce (c.1698) 3. Mary Rich sp: Sir Robert Gayer, KB sp: Thomas Fanshawe Visc1 Fanshawe (b.1596;m.24 Jun 1629;d.26 Mar 1665) 3. Thomas Fanshawe Visc2 Fanshawe (b.Jun 1632;d.May 1674) sp: Catherine Ferrers wife1 sp: Sarah Widow Wray Evelyn wife2 (d.Oct 1717) 2. Charles Cokayne Visc1 Cullen (b.4 Jul 1602;d.May 1686) sp: Mary O'Brien (m.24 Jun 1627) 3. Brien Cokayne Visc2 Cullen (b.12 Sep 1631;d.Jul 1687) sp: Elizabeth Trentham (m.1657) 2. Mary Cokayne wife2 (b.Oct 1598;d.6 Feb 1650/1651) sp: Charles Howard Baron3 Effingham of Effingham, Earl2 Nottingham (b.17 Sep 1579;m.22 Apr 1620;d.3 Oct 1642) 2. Abigail Cokayne sp: John Carey Earl2 Dover, Visc2 Rochford, Baron5 Hunsdon (b.1608;d.26 May 1677)

January 1619: Spice Islands: Former Gov of Virginia Sir Thomas Dale arrives about January 1619 with a new East India Company fleet for the spice islands.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

July 1619: East India Englishman John Jourdain sails from spice islands for India via Malay Peninsula, meets three Dutch ships, and is killed.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1620: In 1620, the aldermen of London want 100 street children sent to Virginia, and get their way without protest. The tradition arises of people being "disappeared", especially in Middlesex. In 1620, Sir Thomas Smith is allowed to ship 20 people to the Somers Islands (Bermuda).

1620: The Mayflower sailed for North America (Cape Cod) in September 1620, landing at Plymouth; the settlement is annexed to Massachusetts in 1691.

18 October 1620, Spice Islands, Islanders of Great Banda rise up against the Dutch and turmoil results. Courthope wonders if they will come to his aid against the Dutch. But the Dutch (Jan Coen) end killing Courthope about the 20th October. The Dutch end renaming Jakarta as "Batavia". Coen becomes Gov-General of Dutch East Indies.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1620: From 1620, Scottish colonisation of Nova Scotia gives a small stimulus to trade. To end of king's reign, a slump, blamed on a shortage of specie, mistaking effect for cause, as Davies notes. Throughout his reign, James is in debt, unsound national finances rebound on business fortunes, James rarely repays money he borrows, and inflicts losses on individuals, and since he has no money with which to reward his followers, he often grants monopolies or permits them to accept bribes in order that others can gain monopolies - to 1625

1620: (Wood on Bentham, p. 330), The City of London "sent a swarm of 100 children to America".

1620++: Nova Scotia has been given attention by Scots colonists in 1620, but in 1629, Britain had abandoned her efforts on Nova Scotia as part of Charles I' peace plan with France. (Otherwise, Englishmen regularly entertained fantasies of sending convicts to Nova Scotia until after 1788). (Davies, Early Stuarts, p. 326.) Also in 1620s, James I grants land between Middle of New Jersey Coast and Newfoundland plus monopoly of offshore fishing to Sir Ferdinando Gorges and others in Council for New England.

June 1621: Dutch States-General charter the new Dutch West India Company to trade to South Africa, America, West Indies, Far East.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1621: William Claiborne, a colonist of Virginia, born circa 1587 in Cliburne, Westmoreland, England (died 1677 in Virginia) was possibly a son of E. W. Claiborne (Cliburne); his mother was Grace Bellingham. [Dictionary of American Biography, 1928]. In June 1621 he was appointed surveyor of the colony of Virginia; later, secretary of the colony, then treasurer. He was given much land, disliked Catholics, and dealt with the London firm Cloberry and Co. Claiborne obtained a semi-monopoly of a large trade territory by 1631 per William Alexander, secretary of state for Scotland. This led to troubles with Lord Baltimore regarding Maryland, as Claiborne by then was a partner with Robert Ingle. Baltimore would not recognise such Scots-based claims. (See Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 185). William Claiborne by 1638-1642 was associated with the Providence Island Company which intended to harrass the Spanish, and also with the founding of an English colony at Ruatan, Honduras. (A relevant title here is J. H. Claiborne, William Claiborne of Virginia. 1917.
A descendant, Colonel Leonard Claiborne died in 1694 at Carlisle Bay, Jamaica, a son of one William Claiborne. Presumably there will be extensive material on the Claibornes of Virginia. Leonard Claiborne, son of Colonel William Claiborne of Virginia, settled in Jamaica where he was a colonel in the militia of St. Elizabeth's, killed in a repulse of the French in 1694 at Carlisle Bay. By his wife Martha he is supposed to have had two daughters, Katherine and Elizabeth. Elizabeth remains unknown. Catherine is supposed to have married Apt John Campbell of Inverary, Argyleshire, (Black River, Jamaica) who had gone to "Darien" and on his return to Jamaica was one of the custos of St. Elizabeth's. The published sources available to Dorman do not indicate if Campbell and Katherine Claiborne-Campbell had children; it seems they did not.

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1598: A London hosier and tobacco dealer active by 1598 was Thomas Claiborne, eldest son of Thomas Claiborne and Grace Bellingham. (Brenner, Merchants and Revolution, p. 121, p. 157, p. 596). It was apparently his brother, William, the surveyor of Virginia, who traded furs with the Susquehannock Indians and later backed the Kent Island project. William had some links with William Cloberry in London, who had influence as an English Secretary of State for Scotland and became a partner with Sir William Alexander's attempt to settle the matter of the proprietorship of Nova Scotia. The Kent Island project was intended to help provide provisions for Nova Scotia. Help with this plan had come also from a City of London trader and financier, John de la Barre. Maurice Thomson was also interested in promoting Kent Island. Regarding the Providence Island Company, by May 1638, William Claiborne was granted a commission to found a new settlement on the island of Ruatan off the coast of Honduras, which till 1642 was called Rich Island, when the Spanish overwhelmed it. (Maurice Thomson was also involved here). Brenner (p. 596) says Claiborne himself also kept a covetous eye on Maryland).

1621: Miles Standish and crew enter the inner harbour of Boston in September.

1622: In 1622 arose the first association of an English ship and Australia, on 25 May, 1622 when the East Indiaman Tryal Capt. John Brooke wrecked on a reef north of the Monte Bello Islands. Brooke had been relying on a 1620 southern route recommended by Capt. Humphrey Fitzherbert of the ship Royal Exchange, who had used the southern route to the Indies but seen no "South Land". Brooke sighted land near North West Cape but misunderstood Fitzherbert's directions and wrecked, losing 92 lives and much treasure. (In June 1681 the English ship London Capt. John Daniel came in sight of the coast of New Holland, making a sketch of Wallabi group that was later used as a chart by Alexander Dalrymple the East India hydrographer [and rival to Capt. James Cook]). The next major sighting of an Australian coast was made by William Dampier.

1623: About 1623-1624 the newly-organised Dorchester Company is granted rights by the Council of New England to fish and trade; in 1626 this company, which included Puritans, established a settlement at Salem . Notions had arisen to create a "Bible Commonwealth". (Clarence L. Ver Steeg, The Formative Years, 1607-1763. London, Macmillan, 1965., p. 35).

1623: Sir Peter Proby, Lord Mayor of London and knighted in 1623. (See K. G. Davies, The Royal African Company. London, Longmans, 1960. (First published in 1957.) Note: Davies' book is unusual in that many names for reference are given only in the index. It appears that Davies or his editors wished that many names would not be placed in his text (?). (On Proby's descendancies, see GEC, Peerage for Rockingham; Burke's Extinct Baronetcies, p. 429.) Among Proby's descendants are included: Thomas Watson Wentworth (1693-1750) first Marquis Rockingham; and William Proby, active 1705, a Whig and an operator for the New East India Company at Surat, India.

1623: A ship named New Netherland sails from Texel with Dutch settler families for the Hudson River area of North America.
(Giles Milton, Nathaniel's Nutmeg. Penguin Books, 1999/2000.)

1624: In 1624 the founding father of St. Kitt's (St. Christopher in the Caribbean) was Sir Thomas Warner, a Suffolk man a friend of John Winthrop the founder of Massachusetts. Warner had tried and failed in Guiana, then tried again at St. Kitts, which he occupied in 1624. His situation was risky for six years; when the French arrived in 1625 he was so weak he agreed to share the island with them. (Large numbers of Caribbean Indians were massacred one night in their hammocks). The English-French were all attacked in 1629 by the Spanish. Some English held on. When the Earl of Carlisle became Lord Proprietor of islands in the Caribbean he appointed Warner governor of St. Kitts. There was later an Edward Warner a Lt-Gov of Nevis. (Richard S. Dunn, Sugar and Slaves: The Rise of the Planter Class in the English West Indies, 1624-1730. London, Jonathan Cape, 1973., p. 119).

1619-1624: Dutch establish virtual monopoly of spice trade in Moluccas and other Indonesian islands.

1624: Virginia Company's charter stemming from 1607 declared vacant in 1624, Charles I had stepped in and Virginia (along with the Bermudas, (the Somers Islands) and New England, became England's first royal colony, and the local assembly, the House of Burgesses, became the first in the New World. and by 1619 the instinct on American soil for self government asserted itself very quickly, and by 1641 the colony well established.

1624: The story from 1624-1627 about the Anglo-Dutch financier Sir William Courteen (died 1666) varies, but it seems he was double-crossed. By 1625 Sir Charles Courteen had noted that an English ship (said by some to have been connected to Warner mentioned above) had touched at Barbados, found it uninhabited, and possessed it in the King's name. Courteens later sent out ships and soon had up to 1800 people on the island, maintained by their employers. Courteens had begun useful cotton and tobacco plantations but the proprietorship of the island went into dispute whilst the slowness of Courteen's supplies threatened famine - a case of starving-in-Paradise, as later happened with the first British settlers at Sydney, Australia. Barbados however survived and by 1640 was exporting profitably, tobacco, cotton and indigo, not without the help of coerced labour.
(On Thomas Warner establishing Barbados in 1625, see C. P. Lucas, Historical Geography of the British Colonies. Vol. 2, The West Indies, Second Edn, Oxford. 1905., cited in Lillian M. Penson, The Colonial Agents of the British West Indies: A Study in Colonial Administration Mainly in the Eighteenth Century. 1924. London, Frank Cass and Co., reprint 1971., p. 8).

1625: The Dutch found New Amsterdam, later New York by 1664.

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1625-1627 Barbados: After 1625, Barbados suffered from early mismanagement. Sir William Courteen a wealthy Anglo-Dutch merchant, already experienced in the Caribbean trade, gets together a syndicate sponsoring first settlement in 1627, sending two shiploads colonists under command of John and Henry Powell. Courteen syndicate sank about 10,000 pounds into the venture, hoping for similar returns as the backers of privateers got in the 1590s. (Notes, Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, p. 50). But as Dunn writes, unhappily for Courteen, an influential courtier, Earl of Carlisle, challenged Courteen's control of the island [in 1627] [although Dunn does not say what those grounds were], and both Carlisle and Courteen had royal patents for Barbados and both sent out governors, settlers, supplies, and both their agents were banished for seized, one governor was executed, Carlisle did very little to advertise the island, Carlisle expected to distribute land to settlers who paid to set themselves up, nearly 40,000 acres went to 250 colonists from 1628 to 1630, some grants very generous, Gov Hawley had no arable land left after ten years, eg to Edward Oistin (a fishing village remains on Barbados named Oistin), William Hilliard (who later sold half share of an estate to Thomas Modyford for 7000 pounds, but many grants of 30-50 acres to the poorer folk, (Notes, Dunn, Sugar and Slaves, pp 49ff, p. 81). Modyford was a kinsman of the duke of Albemarle son of a Mayor of Exeter, and he came to Barbados as a young man in 1647 with money, connections and losing the fight in the civil war, he could pay 1000 pounds down and pay 6000 in next three years, operating with his brother in law, Thomas Kendall a London merchant, and Modyford soon muscled in on local politics., in 1660 he engineered himself with the Commonwealth as a governor of Barbados, but as he took office, Charles II restored, so he reverted to royalism but later lost his govship of Barbados, see 1664. (Sir William Courteen, Financier, death 1636.)
See Holden Furber, Rival Empires of Trade in the Orient, 1600-1800. Minneapolis, Univ. Minnesota Press, 1976.

Active circa1630s: Italian banker Flavio CHIGI of Siena.

- 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...

Stop Press: For late entries

1602: W. L. Marvin, The American Merchant Marine, 1602-1902. 1902. *

1623: R. M. Baynes, History of Staten Island from its Discovery. 1887. *

1623: W. T. Bonner, New York, The World Metropolis, 1623-1923/4. (Two Vols) 1925. *

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