London’s Triumph

by Stephen Alford

  1Douglas Bruster, Drama and the market in the age of Shakespeare (Cambridge, 1992), p. 14.

  2Sir Walter Mildmay in 1576, in R. B. Outhwaite, ‘Royal borrowing in the reign of Elizabeth I: the aftermath of Antwerp’, EHR, 86 (1971), p. 261.

  3SP 1/224, fo. 88.

  4SP 1/224, fos. 72–3v; SP 1/224, fos. 88–9v.

  5SP 70/2, fo. 7.

  6BL Lansdowne MS 12, fo. 16.

  7SP 70/14, fo. 73.

  8Gerard Malynes, ‘A treatise of tripartite exchange’, BL, Cotton MS, Otho E.X, fo. 94.

  9BL, Lansdowne MS 12, fos. 28–30v.

  10SP 12/19, no. 2; The death of usury, or, the disgrace of usurers (STC 6443, Cambridge, 1594), p. 21.

  11Outhwaite, ‘Royal borrowing’, pp. 252–3.

  12Norman Jones, God and the moneylenders: usury and law in early modern England (Oxford, 1989), pp. 34–42; Outhwaite, ‘Royal borrowing’, p. 253.

  13Thomas Wilson, A discourse upon usury, ed. R. H. Tawney (London, 1925), p. 304.

  14For a more developed study of The Merchant of Venice, see Michael Ferber, ‘The ideology of The Merchant of Venice’, English Literary Renaissance, 20 (1990), pp. 431–64.

  15Death of usury, p. 40.

  16Pierre de La Primaudaye, The French Academie (STC 15233, London, 1586), p. 527.

  17Louis Le Roy, Aristotles Politiques, or Discourses of government (STC 760, London, 1598), p. 52.

  18Thomas White, A sermon preached at Pawles Cross on Sunday the thirde of November 1577. in the time of the plague (STC 25406, London, 1578), p. 13.

  19William Wager, A comedy or enterlude intituled, Inough is as good as feast (STC 24933, London, [?1570]), sig. G1-v.

  20Richard Porder, A sermon of gods fearefull threatnings for idolatrye (STC 20117, London, [1570]), sig. A5-v.

  21For example, The Lawes of the Markette (STC 16704.6, London, 1562).

  22Bruster, Drama and the market, pp. 15–19.

  23Porder, Sermon, fo. 76-v (sig. L4-v).

  24George Whetstone, A mirour for magestrates of cyties (STC 25341, London, 1584), sig. H2.

  25Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, p. 303.

  26Porder, Sermon, fos. 81v–83 (sigs. M1v–M3). See also Raymond de Roover, ‘What is dry exchange? A contribution to the study of English mercantilism’, Journal of Political Economy, 52 (1944), pp. 252–7; Raymond de Roover, Gresham on foreign exchange (Cambridge, MA, 1949), pp. 94–172; and T. H. Lloyd, ‘Early Elizabethan investigations into exchange and the value of sterling, 1558–1568’, EcHR, 53 (2000), pp. 60–83.

  27Jones, God and the moneylenders, p. 4.

  28Porder, Sermon, fo. 84 (sig. M4).

  29de Roover, ‘What is dry exchange?’, p. 258.

  30Porder, Sermon, fo. 85-v (sig. M5-v).

  31Porder, Sermon, fo. 86v (sig. M6).

  32de Roover, ‘What is dry exchange?’, p. 255.

  33Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, p. 177.

  34Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, pp. 200, 209.

  35Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, p. 314.

  36Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, pp. 325–6.

  37Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, p. 249.

  38Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, pp. 177, 200.

  39SP 12/75, no. 54; Wilson, Discourse, ed. Tawney, p. 155; Jones, God and the moneylenders, pp. 51–2.

  CHAPTER 16: ST BARTHOLOMEW THE LESS

  1SP 12/245, no. 50.

  2Dekker, Plague, p. 33.

  3Ian W. Archer, The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), p. 11.

  4Jonathan Bate, Soul of the age: the life, mind and world of William Shakespeare (London, 2008), p. 12.

  5Henry Arthington, Provision for the poore, now in penurie (STC 798, London, 1597), sigs. B2–3.

  6The Queenes Majesties Proclamation for staying of all unlawfull assemblies in and about the Citie of London, and for Orders to punish the same (STC 8242, London, 4 July 1595).

  7The Queenes Majesties Proclamation for suppressing of the multitudes of idle Vagabonds, and for staying of all unlawfull assemblies, especially in and about the Citie of London, and for orders to punish the same (STC 8266, London, 9 September 1598).

  839 Elizabeth I, c. 4, printed as An Acte for punishment of Rogues, Vagabonds, and sturdie Beggers (STC 8261.7, [London, 1598?]).

  9Archer, Pursuit of stability, p. 8.

  10Two Tudor subsidy assessment rolls for the city of London: 1541 and 1582, ed. R. G. Lang (London Record Society, vol. 29, London, 1993), pp. 170–71.

  11Kingsford, vol. I, p. 180.

  12Freshfield, Minute books, pp. xliv–xlv.

  13Freshfield, Minute books, p. 12.

  14Freshfield, Minute books, pp. 39, 40.

  15Freshfield, Account books, p. 3.

  16Freshfield, Minute books, p. 40. See also Freshfield, Account books, p. 3.

  17The ‘Bocke of Statuttes’ bought by the parish some time after February 1598 (Freshfield, Account books, p. 3) was STC 9492.7 (or one of its variants), where the Vagabonds Act could be found on sigs. B6-C3.

  18Freshfield, Account books, p.10.

  19PROB 11/81/9.

  20PROB 11/88/94.

  21Tarnya Cooper, Citizen portrait: portrait painting and the urban elite of Tudor and Jacobean England and Wales (New Haven, CT, and London, 2012), pp. 126–7.

  22Freshfield, Minute books, p. 25.

  23Elizabeth I and her people, ed. Tarnya Cooper (London, 2013), p. 142.

  CHAPTER 17: CHANGE AND NOSTALGIA

  1Dekker, Plague, p. 40.

  2John Stow, The survay of London, ed. Anthony Munday (STC 23344, London, 1618), p. 800.

  3John Schofield, ‘An introduction to the three known sheets of the Copperplate Map’, in Tudor London: a map and a view, ed. Ann Saunders and John Schofield (London Topographical Society, no. 159, London, 2001), p. 2.

  4Bridget Gellert, ‘The melancholy of Moorditch: a gloss of 1 Henry IV, I. ii. 87–88’, Shakespeare Quarterly, 18 (1967), pp. 70–71; John Taylor, The pennyles pilgrimage (STC 23784, London, 1618), sig. D1v.

  5Robert Anton, The philosophers satyrs (STC 686, London, 1616), p. 20 (sig. F2v); Gellert, ‘Melancholy of Moorditch’, pp. 70–71. See also the imposture of Brainworm as a poor gentleman-soldier begging for charity in Moorfields in Ben Jonson’s Every Man In His Humour (1616), II. iv. 6–17, 44–7, a reference I owe to Professor Martin Butler.

  6The travels of John Sanderson in the Levant, 1584–1602, ed. William Foster (Hakluyt Society, second series, no. 67, London, 1931), pp. 288–9.

  7Richard Johnson, The Pleasant Walkes of Moore-fields (STC 14690, London, 1607), sig. A4.

  8Stow, Survay, ed. Munday, p. 802.

  9Johnson, Pleasant Walkes of Moore-fields, sig. A4.

  10Johnson, Pleasant Walkes of Moore-fields, sig. A2.

  11Johnson, Pleasant Walkes of Moore-fields, sig. A3v.

  12Johnson, Pleasant Walkes of Moore-fields, sig. A4.

  13John Norden, Speculum Britanniae (STC 18635, London, 1593), p. 36.

  14Kingsford, vol. I, p. 72; Stow, Survay, ed. Munday, p. 794.

  15Kingsford, vol. I, p. 126.

  16TRP, vol. II, p. 466.

  17Lena Cowen Orlin, ‘Temporary lives in London lodgings’, HLQ, 71 (2008), pp. 219–42. See also her Locating privacy in Tudor London (Oxford, 2007).

  18Kingsford, vol. II, p. 368.

  19Kingsford, vol. II, p. 73; Survay, ed. Munday, p. 795.

  20Ian W. Archer, The pursuit of stability: social relations in Elizabethan London (Cambridge, 1991), p. 81.

  21Orlin, ‘Temporary lives’, p. 220.

  22Patrick Collinson, ‘John Stow and nostalgic antiquarianism’, in Imagining early modern London: perceptions and portrayals of the city from Stow to Strype, 1598–1720, ed. J. F. Merritt (Cambridge, 2001), pp. 27–51.

  23Ian W. Archer, ‘The arts and acts of memorialization in early modern London’, in Imagining early modern London, ed. Merritt, pp. 89–113.

  24Kingsford, vol. II, p. 17.r />
  25Kingsford, vol. II, p. 72.

  26Kingsford, vol. I, p. 126.

  27Kingsford, vol. II, p. 213.

  28PN2, vol. I (1598), sig. *4.

  29PN2, vol. I (1598), sig. *4.

  30PN2, vol. I (1598), sig. *4.

  31PN2, vol. I (1598), sig. *5v.

  32PN2, vol. I (1598), pp. 124–5.

  33Kingsford, vol. I, p. 4.

  CHAPTER 18: TO THE EAST INDIES

  1The travels of John Sanderson in the Levant, 1584–1602, ed. William Foster (Hakluyt Society, second series, no. 67, London, 1931), p. 255.

  2Travels of John Sanderson, ed. Foster, p. 3.

  3The policy of the Turkish Empire (STC 24335, London, 1597), sig. A3.

  4‘The praise of the red herring’ (1599), in The works of Thomas Nashe, ed. Ronald B. McKerrow and F. P. Wilson, 5 vols (Oxford, 1966), vol. III, p. 173.

  5SP 97/2, fo. 66; Travels of John Sanderson, ed. Foster, p. xii.

  6Works of Thomas Nashe, ed. McKerrow and Wilson, vol. III, p. 173.

  7PN2, vol. II (1599), i, pp. 141–4.

  8A collection of state papers, ed. William Murdin (London, 1759), p. 781; Alfred C. Wood, A history of the Levant Company (London, 1964), p. 17.

  9Wood, Levant Company, p. 17.

  10SP 97/2, fo. 235; Wood, Levant Company, p. 13.

  11PN2, vol. II (1599), i, pp. 295–303.

  12PN2, vol. II (1599), i, pp. 250–65; Trevor Dickie, ‘Fitch, Ralph (1550?–1611)’, ODNB.

  13PN2, vol. II (1599), i, pp. 250–51.

  14PN2, vol. II (1599), i, p. 296.

  15PN2, vol. II (1599), i, p. 297; SP 97/2, fo. 159.

  16The voyages of Sir James Lancaster to Brazil and the East Indies, 1591–1603, ed. William Foster (Hakluyt Society, second series, no. 85, London, 1940), pp. 1–30; and Kenneth R. Andrews, Elizabethan privateering: English privateering during the Spanish war, 1585–1603 (Cambridge, 1964), pp. 214–16.

  17Andrews, Elizabethan privateering, p. 216.

  18PN2, vol. II (1599), i, p. 250.

  19Om Prakash, ‘The English East India Company and India’, in The worlds of the East India Company, ed. H. V. Bowen, Margarette Lincoln and Nigel Rigby (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 2.

  20The voyage of Sir Henry Middleton to the Moluccas, 1604–1606, ed. William Foster (Hakluyt Society, second series, no. 88, London, 1943), pp. 199–201; R. A. Skelton, Explorers’ maps: chapters in the cartographic record of geographical discovery (London, 1970), pp. 148, 156; P. J. Marshall, ‘The English in Asia to 1700’, in The origins of empire: British overseas enterprise to the close of the seventeenth century, ed. Nicholas Canny (Oxford, 1998), p. 269.

  21A true report of the gainefull, prosperous and speedy voiage to Java in the East Indies, performed by a fleete of eight ships of Amsterdam (STC 14478, London, [1599?]), p. 23 (sig. D2).

  22Travels of John Sanderson, ed. Foster, p. 180.

  23SP 12/253, no. 118.

  24Travels of John Sanderson, ed. Foster, p. 184.

  25Travels of John Sanderson, ed. Foster, p. 190.

  26Travels of John Sanderson, ed. Foster, p. 186.

  27The dawn of British trade as recorded in the court minutes of the East India Company, 1599–1603, ed. Henry Stevens (London, 1886), p. 270; Wood, Levant Company, p. 31.

  28Dawn of British trade, ed. Stevens, pp. 5–7.

  29Dawn of British trade, ed. Stevens, p. 8.

  30Dawn of British trade, ed. Stevens, pp. 10–11.

  31Those Levant merchants appointed as directors of the East India voyage were Thomas Cordall, William Garaway, Thomas Simonds, Richard Staper and Nicholas Leate: PN2, vol. II (1599), i, p. 296; Select charters of trading companies, 1530–1707, ed. Cecil T. Carr (Selden Society, London, 1913), pp. 31–2; Theodore K. Rabb, Enterprise and empire: merchant and gentry investment in the expansion of England, 1575–1630 (Cambridge, MA, 1967), alphabetical list of names; Robert Brenner, Merchants and revolution: commercial change, political conflict, and London’s overseas traders, 1550–1653 (Cambridge, 1993), pp. 21–2, 77–9. For the charter members of 1605, see Mortimer Epstein, The early history of the Levant Company (London, 1908), pp. 158–60.

  32The register of letters etc. of the Governor and Company of Merchants of London trading into the East Indies, ed. George Birdwood and William Foster (London, 1893, repr. 1965), pp. 163–89; Select charters, ed. Carr, pp. 30–43.

  33Register of letters, ed. Birdwood and Foster, p. 204.

  34Register of letters, ed. Birdwood and Foster, p. 198.

  35Dudley Digges, The defence of trade. In a Letter to Sir Thomas Smith Knight, Governour of the East-India Companie, &c. (STC 6845, London, 1615), p. 42.

  36K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India Company: the study of an early joint-stock company, 1600–1640 (London, 1965), p. 8.

  37Register of letters, ed. Birdwood and Foster, p. 180.

  38Marshall, ‘English in Asia’, p. 269; Chaudhuri, East India Company, p. 117. See also Register of letters, ed. Birdwood and Foster, pp. 196–9.

  39Digges, Defence of trade, pp. 19–22.

  40The English factories in India: a calendar of documents in the India Office, British Museum and Public Record Office, ed. William Foster, 13 vols (Oxford, 1906–27), vol. I.

  41The lawes or Standing Orders of the East India Company (STC 7447, [London], 1621), pp. 50–51.

  42Prakash, ‘English East India Company’, p. 3.

  43Dawn of British trade, ed. Stevens, pp. 123–4; Peter C. Mancall, Hakluyt’s promise: an Elizabethan’s obsession for an English America (New Haven, CT, and London, 2007), pp. 237–43; Heidi Brayman Hackel and Peter C. Mancall, ‘Richard Hakluyt the Younger’s notes for the East India Company in 1601: a transcription of Huntington Library Manuscript EL 2360’, HLQ, 67 (2004), pp. 423–36.

  44Taylor, Richard Hakluyts, vol. II, pp. 487–8; The Hakluyt handbook, ed. D. B. Quinn, 2 vols (Hakluyt Society, second series, nos. 144, 145, London, 1974), vol. I, pp. 305–6, 311, 313; Mancall, Hakluyt’s promise, pp. 240–41; Hackel and Mancall, ‘Richard Hakluyt the Younger’s notes’, p. 425; Jan Huygen van Linschoten, Itinerario, voyage ofte schipvaert van Jan Huygen van Linschoten (Amsterdam, 1596); John Huighen van Linschoten his Discours of Voyages into the Easte & West Indies (STC 15691, London, [1598]), on which see Skelton, Explorers’ maps, pp. 146–7; Juan Gonzáles de Mendoza, The Historie of the great and mightie kingdome of China, and the situation thereof, trans. Robert Parke (STC 12003, London, 1588).

  45Dawn of British trade, ed. Stevens, p. 143; Taylor, Richard Hakluyts, vol. II, pp. 465–8, 476–82; Mancall and Hackel, ‘Richard Hakluyt the Younger’s notes’, pp. 431–5.

  CHAPTER 19: VIRGINIA RICHLY VALUED

  1SP 91/1, fo. 171-v; T. S. Willan, The early history of the Russia Company, 1553–1603 (Manchester, 1956), p. 256.

  2Freshfield, Account books, p. 4.

  3SP 91/1, fo. 194.

  4BL, Lansdowne MS 112, fos. 134–5v, printed in ‘Of the Russe Commonwealth’ by Giles Fletcher 1591: a facsimile edition with variants, ed. Richard Pipes and J. V. A. Fine (Cambridge, MA, 1966), pp. 61–4. See also The English works of Giles Fletcher, the elder, ed. Lloyd E. Berry (Madison, WI, 1964), pp. 150–53; Felicity J. Stout, ‘“The strange and wonderfull discoverie of Russia”: Hakluyt and censorship’, in Richard Hakluyt and travel writing in early modern Europe, ed. Daniel Carey and Claire Jowitt (Hakluyt Society, extra series, no. 47, Farnham, 2012), p. 160; and Felicity J. Stout, Exploring Russia in the Elizabethan commonwealth: the Muscovy Company and Giles Fletcher, the elder (1546–1611) (Manchester, 2015), pp. 189–98.

  5Sir Thomas Smithes voiage and Entertainment in Rushia (STC 22869, London, 1605), sig. B1v.

  6SP 91/1, fos. 196–8v, at fo. 196.

  7Karen Hearn, ‘Merchant-class portraiture in Tudor London: “Customer” Smith’s commission, 1579/80’, in Treasures of the royal courts: Tudors, Stuarts and the Russian tsars, ed. Olga Dmitrieva and Tessa Murdoch (London, 2013), pp. 37–43. See also Kingsford, vol. I, p. 174.
>
  8SP 12/278, no. 57.

  9T. S. Willan, The Muscovy merchants of 1555 (Manchester, 1953), pp. 105–6; Beaven, vol. I, p. 158; vol. II, p. 47.

  10PN2, vol. III (1600), sigs. (A2), (A3).

  11PN2, vol. III (1600), sig. (A3).

  12PN 1, p. 728.

  13Taylor, Richard Hakluyts, vol. II, p. 332; John Brereton, A Briefe and true Relation of the Discoverie of the North part of Virginia, being a most pleasant, fruitfull and commodious soile (STC 3611, London, 1602), p. 30 (sig. D3v).

  14John Guy, Elizabeth: the forgotten years (London, 2016), pp. 68–75, at p. 73.

  15PN 1, pp. 770–71; Thomas Harriot, A briefe and true report of the new found land of Virginia (STC 12785, London, 1588); David Beers Quinn, England and the discovery of America, 1481–1620 (London, 1974), pp. 283–5.

  16The English New England voyages, 1602–1608, ed. David B. Quinn and Alison M. Quinn (Hakluyt Society, second series, no. 161, London, 1983), p. 207.

  17John Brereton, A Briefe and true Relation of the Discoverie of the North part of Virginia (STC 3610, London, 1602), pp. 15, 23. On Brereton’s pamphlet (STC 3610) and its expanded reissue (STC 3611), see The Hakluyt handbook, ed. D. B. Quinn, 2 vols (Hakluyt Society, second series, nos. 144, 145, London, 1974), vol. I, p. 319.

  18Sir Thomas Smithes voiage, sig. B1.

  19‘To the Virginian voyage’, in Michael Drayton, Poemes Lyrick and pastorall (STC 72255, London, [1606]), sigs. C4–C5.

  20George Chapman, Ben Jonson and John Marston, Eastward Hoe (STC 4973, London, 1605), sig. E1-v; Peter C. Mancall, Hakluyt’s promise: an Elizabethan’s obsession for an English America (New Haven, CT, and London, 2007), pp. 257–8. For the verbal similarities between Eastward Hoe and Utopia, see Thomas More, A fruteful, and a pleasaunt worke of the beste state of a publyque weale, and of the newe yle called Utopia (STC 18094, London, 1551), sig. K7-v, a reference I owe to the kindness of Professor John Guy.

  21Virginia Company of London, A true and sincere declaration of the purpose and ends of the Plantation begun in Virginia … Sett forth by the authority of the Governors and Councellors established for that Plantation (STC 24832, London, 1610), p. 6.

  22Hakluyt handbook, ed. Quinn, vol. I, p. 317.