New World, Inc.

The Story of the British Empire's Most Successful Start-Up

John Butman, Simon Targett

• Publisher: Atlantic Books
• Year: 2018
• Topic: History
• eBook ISBN:
  9781786495488
• Subtopic: Economic History
• Index: History

The thrilling story of the English merchant adventurers who changed the world. In the mid-sixteenth century, England was a small and relatively insignificant kingdom on the periphery of Europe, and it had begun to face a daunting array of social, commercial and political problems. Struggling with a single export - woollen cloth - a group of merchants formed arguably the world's first joint-stock company and set out to seek new markets and trading partners. It was a venture that relied on the very latest scientific innovations and required an extraordinary appetite for risk. At first they headed east, and dreamed of Cathay, with its silks and exotic luxuries. Eventually, they turned west, and so began a new chapter in history. Based on archival research and a bold interpretation of the historical record, New World, Inc. draws a portrait of life in London, on the Atlantic and across the New World, and reveals how profit-hungry business people transformed England into a world power.

Notes

THE PREQUEL TO THE PILGRIMS

¹ “Pilgrim Fathers,” Oxford English Dictionary; definition C2.

² John Stowe and Edmund Howes, Annales, or a General Chronicle of England, begun by John Stow: continued and augmented with matters Forraigne and Domestique, Ancient and Moderne, unto the end of this present yeere (London, 1631), 605.

1. WAXING COLD AND IN DECAY

¹ W. K. Jordan, Edward VI. The Young King. The Protectorship of the Duke of Somerset (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1968), 402–3.

² John Norden cited in Christopher Hibbert, The English: A Social History, 1066–1945 (London: HarperCollins, 1987; paperback, 1994), 173.

³ P. J. Bowden, “Wool Supply and the Woolen Industry,” The Economic History Review, n.s. 9, no. 1 (1956): 44–58; 45.

⁴ David Loades, England’s Maritime Empire: Seapower, Commerce and Policy, 1490–1690 (London: Longman, 2000), 15–16.

⁵ Martin Rorke, “English and Scottish Overseas Trade, 1300–1600,” The Economic History Review, n.s., 59, no. 2 (2006): 265–88; 274.

⁶ Sir Edward Coke (1552–1634), speaking in Parliament in 1621; cited in Nick Bunker, Making Haste from Babylon: The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World: A New History (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 2010), 252.

⁷ From the records of the Worshipful Company of Woolmen, http://woolmen.com/home/history/.

⁸ Anne F. Sutton, The Mercery of London: Trade, Goods and People, 1130–1578 (Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate Publishing, 2005), 49; 3–5.

⁹ John William Burgon, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham; Compiled Chiefly from His Correspondence Preserved in Her Majesty’s State-Paper Office, 2 vols. (London: Robert Jennings, 1839), 1: 5–43; Ian Blanchard, “Sir Thomas Gresham (c. 1518–1579), mercer, merchant adventurer, and founder of the Royal Exchange and Gresham College,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford: Oxford University Press, online edition); Ian Blanchard, “Sir Richard Gresham (c. 1485–1549), mercer, merchant advengturer and mayor of London,” in ibid.; and William Harrison, The Description of England. The Classic Contemporary Account of Tudor Social Life, ed. Georges Edelen (Washington and New York: Folger Shakespeare Library and Dover Publications, 1994), 132.

¹⁰ Burgon, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 1:72.

¹¹ Francesco Guicciardini, Florentine statesman and chronicler, cited in Burgon, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 1:76. Also: S. T. Bindoff, “The Greatness of Antwerp,” in The New Cambridge Modern History. Volume II. The Reformation 1520–1559, ed. G. R. Elton (1958; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 50–69.

¹² Thomas Smith to William Cecil, July 19, 1549, in Patrick F. Tytler, England Under the Reigns of Edward VI and Mary, 2 vols. (London: Richard Bentley, 1839), 1: 185–89; 185.

¹³ Mary Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith. A Tudor Intellectual in Office (London: Athlone Press, 1964), 29–30 (provost of Eton); 50–51 (case for reform and rejection); 12–13 (Cambridge); 25 (enters Seymour’s household); 32 (becomes Secretary of State).

¹⁴ Mary Dewar, ed., A Discourse of the Commonweal of This Realm of England, Attributed to Sir Thomas Smith (Charlottesville: The University Press of Virginia, 1969), 18 (“poverty reigns”), ix (prices), 18–19 (imported goods), 34 (“grieved”).

¹⁵ Frederic William Russell, Kett’s Rebellion in Norfolk: Being a History of the Great Civil Commotion that Occurred at the Time of the Reformation, in the Reign of Edward VI (London: Longman, Brown, Green, Longmans, Roberts, and William Penny, 1859), 12.

¹⁶ Thomas Tusser cited in Hibbert, The English: A Social History, 172.

¹⁷ Dewar, ed., A Discourse of the Commonweal, 49.

¹⁸ G. R. Elton, ed., The New Cambridge Modern History. Volume II. The Reformation 1520–1559 (1958; repr. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 39.

¹⁹ Dewar, ed., A Discourse of the Commonweal, 50.

²⁰ Russell, Kett’s Rebellion, 25.

²¹ Francis Aidan Gasquet, Henry VIII and the English Monasteries (London: John C. Nimmo, 1899), 360.

²² Burgon, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, 2:493; 499–500. In his will, Gresham gave Edward Flowerdew, Sir John’s son, an annuity of forty shillings for his “counselles.”

²³ John Walter, “Robert Kett (c. 1492–1549), rebel,” Oxford Dictionary of National Biography.

²⁴ Russell, Kett’s Rebellion, 27–28 (“weal,” “misery,” “avarice”); 102 (20,000); 69 (sheep); 48 (grievances); 95 (“common-wealth”).

²⁵ Jordan, Edward VI: The Young King, 487–88.

²⁶ David Loades, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland 1504–1553 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1996); Barret L. Beer, Northumberland: The Political Career of John Dudley, Earl of Warwick and Duke of Northumberland (Kent, OH: Kent State University Press, 1...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Contents
• Cast of Characters
• The Prequel to the Pilgrims
• I. Before America, 1551–1574
• II. Enterprise, 1574–1604
• III. Commonwealth, 1604–1621
• Forgotten Founders
• Chronology
• A Note to the Reader
• Acknowledgments
• Select Bibliography
• Notes
• Index
• About the Authors
• Illustration Credits
• Plates