New World, Inc. E-Book

John Butman

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Beschreibung

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.

Leseprobe

This edition published by arrangement with Little Brown and Company, a division of Hachette Book Group, Inc.

First published in Great Britain in 2018 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © John Butman and Simon Targett, 2018

The moral right of John Butman and Simon Targett to be identified as the authors of this work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

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A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78649-547-1

E-book ISBN: 978-1-78649-548-8

Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78649-549-5

The illustration credits on p.406 constitute an extension of this copyright page.

Printed in Great Britain

Atlantic Books

An Imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd

Ormond House

26–27 Boswell Street

London

WC1N 3JZ

www.atlantic-books.co.uk

To my parents, Olive and Robert — JohnTo my parents, Val and Pete — Simon

Contents

Cast of Characters

The Prequel to the Pilgrims

I. Before America, 1551–1574

1. Waxing Cold and in Decay

2. The Lure of Cathay

3. The Mysterie

4. A Newe and Strange Navigation

5. An Elusive Realm

II. Enterprise, 1574–1604

6. The Last Great Challenge of the Age

7. The Supposed Strait

8. Tresor Trouvee

9. Ilandish Empire

10. Nova Albion

11. To Heaven by Sea

12. Western Planting

13. Principal Navigations

14. The Old East and the New West

III. Commonwealth, 1604–1621

15. Two Virginias

16. A Public Plantation

17. First Colony

18. A Stake in the Ground

19. A Weighty Voyage

Forgotten Founders

Chronology

A Note to the Reader

Acknowledgments

Select Bibliography

Notes

Index

Cast of Characters

Clement Adams (c. 1519–1587) was a writer, engraver and tutor. One of William Cecil’s Cambridge-educated acolytes, Adams was hired to help Sebastian Cabot engrave an updated version of his 1544 map, featuring new details of the Northwest Passage. This map was reproduced widely and later hung on the wall of Whitehall Palace, and Adams was rewarded with the post of schoolmaster to the king’s henchmen — Edward VI’s young friends. He subsequently wrote the account of the first Mysterie voyage, after interviewing Richard Chancellor.

Matthew Baker (c. 1530–1613) was a royal shipwright who designed and built the Gabriel, Frobisher’s first vessel. He also designed Edward Fenton’s flagship for the aborted voyage to the Spice Islands in 1582. He compiled the first English treatise on ship design — Fragments of Ancient English Shipwrightry — which was later collected by Samuel Pepys, the naval administrator and diarist.

George Barne (c. 1500–1558) was one of the two “principal doers” — the real architects of the Mysterie. A member of the Haberdashers, he was Lord Mayor of London in 1552–1553. His son, also George Barne (d. 1593), became governor of the Muscovy Company, a leading investor in overseas ventures (although he withheld his support for Frobisher), and later followed in his father’s footsteps as Lord Mayor of London.

George Best (c. 1555–1584) was a writer and sea captain. The son of Robert Best, a translator for the Muscovy Company, Best was educated at Eton. He served as a captain in Frobisher’s second expedition. His chronicles of Frobisher’s three voyages provided the classic account of England’s first detailed exploration of the New World. He died in a duel with a peer of the realm.

William Bonde (d. 1576) was a merchant and civic administrator. A member of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, he became Sheriff of London in 1567, and was wealthy enough to buy Crosby Hall, one of the city’s most prestigious mansions. There, the leading merchants behind the first Frobisher voyage to Cathay met to plan the expedition.

Stephen Borough (1525–1584) was a sea captain and naval administrator. He served as master on Richard Chancellor’s ship in the first Mysterie voyage to Cathay. In 1555, he became one of the youngest charter members of what later became known as the Muscovy Company. He made a pioneering voyage to the White Sea along the Northeast Passage to Cathay, but he was among those skeptical of Frobisher’s plans to search for the Northwest Passage. By contrast, his brother, William Borough (1536–1598), was actively involved in the organization of Frobisher’s voyages.

William Bradford (1590–1657) was one of the Pilgrim Fathers and a founder of the Plymouth Colony. His account of the separatists’ story, Of Plymouth Plantation, was lost after his death, and only came to light in the mid-nineteenth century, when its publication by Little, Brown rekindled interest in the founding myth of America.

John Brereton (c. 1571–1619) was a clergyman and writer. He accompanied Bartholomew Gosnold on his voyage to the New World. His account, A Brief and True Relation of the Discovery of the North Part of Virginia, was the first published account of a voyage to New England (other than Giovanni da Verrazzano’s account of his 1524 voyage, published in Italian in 1556).

Sebastian Cabot (c. 1482–1557) was an explorer, navigator, and naval administrator. He accompanied his father, John Cabot (c. 1451–1498), on the successful voyage to the New World in 1497. He later claimed to have discovered the entrance to the Northwest Passage during a voyage in 1508–1509. He served the Spanish as pilot major and later transferred allegiance to England, where he was made governor of the Mysterie (later the Muscovy Company) and oversaw the first voyages in search of a passage to Cathay.

William Cecil (1520–1598) was initially John Dudley’s right-hand man before becoming Elizabeth I’s long-serving adviser. He became Lord Burghley, and he was connected with many major overseas ventures, first as a leading investor in the Mysterie and later as a prominent courtier behind the Frobisher voyages. His son Robert Cecil (1563–1612) became the Earl of Salisbury, served as adviser to James I, and continued his father’s support of overseas ventures.

Richard Chancellor (d. 1556) was the pilot major on the first Mysterie voyage to Cathay in 1553. On this visit, he secured trading rights after reaching Moscow and meeting Ivan IV, the tsar later known as “The Terrible.” On a second visit, he strengthened commercial ties between England and Russia. But he drowned at sea on the homeward journey, when escorting the first Russian ambassador to England. One of his sons, Nicholas Chancellor, was purser on several voyages, including the Frobisher voyages.

Humfrey Cole (d. 1591) was a maker of navigational instruments. He designed the instruments used in the Frobisher voyages.

Thomas Dale (d. 1619) was a soldier and colonial leader. He arrived in Jamestown in 1611 and enforced strict military law, which was codified in the Lawes Divine, Morall and Martiall. He oversaw an expansion of the colony beyond Jamestown, founding the city of Henrico, named after James I’s son Prince Henry. He also introduced measures that paved the way for the creation of private plantations in Virginia. In 1616, he returned to England, bringing Pocahontas to London. He later served the East India Company and died in India.

John Dee (1527–1609) was a mathematician, cosmographer, and astrologer. A Fellow of Trinity College Cambridge while still a teenager, he was hired to help Richard Chancellor and Martin Frobisher prepare for their voyages across uncharted waters to Cathay. As Elizabeth I’s favorite astrologer, he approved the date for her coronation. Also, he made the case for her title to lands in the New World, coining the phrase “British Empire.” Humphrey Gilbert gave him the right to all the land north of today’s US-Canada border. He never sought to claim these lands, however.

Francis Drake (1540–1596) was an explorer. The first English captain to complete a circumnavigation, he struck a trade deal with the king of Ternate in the Spice Islands; laid claim to the northwest coast of America, which he named Nova Albion; and captured a hoard of Spanish treasure that transformed him into one of the richest men in England. His remarkable success earned him the Spanish nickname “El Draque” and served as a catalyst for a new surge of interest in colonial activity.

Lionel Duckett (1511–1587) was a merchant. A member of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, he was governor of the Muscovy Company and the Company of Mines Royal, and he became Lord Mayor of London in 1572. The business partner of Thomas Gresham, he was an early supporter of the Frobisher voyages to Cathay, going against the consensus held by other leaders of the Muscovy Company.

John Dudley (1504–1553) was a soldier and courtier. He became the Earl of Warwick (1547) and Duke of Northumberland (1551). As Lord President, he was de facto king from 1549 and gave London’s merchants the support they needed to embark on the search for new markets. Two of this sons, Ambrose Dudley (c. 1530–1590), who became Earl of Warwick, and Robert Dudley (c. 1533–1588), who became Earl of Leicester and Elizabeth I’s favorite, were prominent investors in overseas ventures. Ambrose’s wife, Anne, Countess of Warwick (c. 1548–1604), was a supporter of the Frobisher voyages and had an island and a sound named after her.

Richard Eden (c. 1520–1576) was a translator. Educated at Cambridge, where he studied under Thomas Smith, he became secretary to William Cecil, compiling the travel dossier for the first Mysterie voyage to Cathay in 1553. He followed this with an expanded dossier for the second voyage in 1555. In doing so, he introduced several new words into the English language, including “China” and “colony.”

Elizabeth I (1533–1603) was the longest-reigning queen until Victoria in the nineteenth century. She presided over a series of overseas ventures that led to the creation of the first British empire, and her nickname — the Virgin Queen — is remembered in the name of America’s oldest state: Virginia. Although reluctant to invest money in foreign enterprises, she encouraged colonial development, diverting state monopolies to leading adventurers such as Walter Ralegh.

Martin Frobisher (c. 1535–1594) was a pirate and privateer who became a pioneering navigator and led three epic voyages in search of the Northwest Passage in the 1570s. He left his mark on the landscape — Frobisher Bay is named after him. He later earned a knighthood after distinguishing himself in the defense of England during the battle against the Spanish Armada.

William Garrard (c. 1510–1571) was one of the two “principal doers” of the Mysterie (along with George Barne). A Haberdasher, he became Lord Mayor of London in 1555–56 and governor of the Muscovy Company. His daughter married George Barne’s son, George.

Thomas Gates (d. 1622) was a soldier and colonial leader. One of the eight people named in the Virginia Charter, he was among the settlers shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda. Later, he arrived in Jamestown, which had endured a miserable winter, and took the decision to abandon the colony — only to turn back after meeting a relief supply with new colonists coming the other way. He served as effective governor until 1614.

Humphrey Gilbert (1537–1583) was a courtier, colonist, and adventurer. He studied at Eton and Oxford, and served Elizabeth when she was still a princess before becoming a soldier in the army. He fought in the abortive campaign to win back Calais and tried to establish colonies in Ireland, where he won notoriety (and a knighthood) for the brutal way he put down a rebellion. He is best remembered as the author of the Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia and the leader who claimed Newfoundland for Elizabeth I. His son, Raleigh Gilbert, was one of the leaders of the short-lived Popham Colony.

Ferdinando Gorges (1568–1647) was a soldier and colonial investor. Captain of the Plymouth Fort, succeeding Francis Drake in that post, Gorges became fascinated by the New World when he hosted some Indians captured by George Waymouth in 1605. He was one of the prime movers behind the Popham Colony and later led the Council for New England that gave the Pilgrims their letters patent. He was granted the province of Maine but never fulfilled his dream to visit the New World.

Bartholomew Gosnold (d. 1607) was a lawyer and colonial leader. A kinsman of Thomas Smythe, he led an expedition to Virginia in 1602, and gave Cape Cod and Martha’s Vineyard their names. He returned with an exotic tree — sassafras — which was believed to have magical medicinal properties. In 1606, he was one of the leaders of the first voyage of the London Company, which led to the founding of Jamestown. He died within a few months of his arrival in the New World.

Richard Grenville (1542–1591) was a naval commander and colonial investor. A kinsman of Humphrey Gilbert and Walter Ralegh, he worked with the first on colonial enterprises in Ireland and South America. When these came to nothing, he worked with Ralegh on the Roanoke Colony, commanding the fleet that escorted the settlers in 1585.

Thomas Gresham (1518–1579) was a leading cloth merchant and financial adviser to three monarchs. A founding member of the Muscovy Company, he was a prominent supporter of the Frobisher voyages. He built the Royal Exchange, England’s first bourse, which marked the beginning of London’s rise as a global financial center.

Richard Hakluyt (c. 1552–1616) was a clergyman and colonial publicist. As a schoolboy, he was introduced to the glories of cosmography by his cousin, also Richard Hakluyt (d. 1591). After Oxford, he wrote a series of works championing colonization in the New World — above all Principal Navigations and Voyages, which first appeared in 1589, and later reappeared in an expanded version in 1598–1600. He was one of eight people listed on the first Virginia charter that led to the founding of Jamestown.

Thomas Harriot (c. 1560–1621) was a mathematician, scientist, and colonist. Hired by Walter Ralegh, he learned the rudiments of Algonquian and traveled on the first English colonial voyage to Roanoke in 1585. There, he prepared notes on the food, commodities, and people, which he later published as Brief and True Report of the Newfound Land of Virginia. After returning to England in 1586, he settled on Ralegh’s Irish estates and subsequently won acclaim as a mathematician and stargazer, pioneering the use of telescopes.

Christopher Hatton (c. 1540–1591) was a courtier and one of Elizabeth I’s favorites. From the 1570s, when he was captain of the queen’s bodyguard and an industrious member of the privy council, he wielded great influence in overseas ventures. He supported George Best, Frobisher’s chronicler, John Dee, who dedicated his work on the British empire to Hatton, and Francis Drake, who changed the name of his flagship from the Pelican to the Golden Hind — the defining feature of Hatton’s coat-of-arms.

James I (1566–1625) was the son of Elizabeth I’s hated cousin, Mary Queen of Scots. He succeeded Elizabeth in 1603 and, guided by Robert Cecil, supported colonial efforts, with the first enduring English colony, and the river on which it was situated, named after him: Jamestown and the James River. His eldest son, Prince Henry (1594–1612), was an enthusiastic supporter of colonial activities in Virginia before his untimely death at the age of eighteen.

Robert Johnson (fl. 1586–1626) was a merchant, colonial investor and promoter. A member of the Worshipful Company of Grocers, he was a loyal supporter of Thomas Smythe as deputy treasurer of the Virginia Company. He wrote some renowned pamphlets exhorting people to invest in the Jamestown Colony — notably Nova Britannia, published in 1609. He became an alderman of London in 1617 but lost out to Edwin Sandys in the race to succeed Smythe as treasurer of the Virginia Company.

Andrew Judde (c. 1492–1558) was Lord Mayor of London in 1551 when the cloth crisis hit England’s capital. Later, he was Mayor of the Staple in Calais, serving in the year that the port was recaptured by the French after more than two centuries in England’s possession. He was one of the senior merchants responsible for founding the Mysterie.

Michael Lok (1532–1620) was the son of Sir William Lok, the “king’s merchant” in Henry VIII’s day. He was the agent of the Muscovy Company and the leading merchant behind Frobisher’s voyages in the 1570s. He lost his family fortune, ending up in a debtor’s prison on several occasions. But he remained influential, producing a map of the world that was reprinted by Hakluyt in 1582. He later served as the Levant Company’s resident merchant in Aleppo.

Christopher Newport (1561–1617) was a sea captain and privateer. He came to prominence in the sea war with Spain in the 1590s, captaining the ship that seized the rich cargo of the Madre de Dios in 1592. He led the first voyage of the London Company to Virginia in 1606, and subsequently made several resupply voyages. Later, he served the East India Company, and he died on the Indonesian island of Java.

Philip II (1527–1598) was a Spanish king and, when he also held the title of king of Portugal, the most powerful man in the world, commanding two global empires. When he was a prince, the Philippines were named after him, and when he succeeded his father in 1556, he was already king of England, having married Mary I (1516–1558). When she died in 1558, he tried to remain king of England, offering to marry Elizabeth. But this never happened, and the two monarchs became enemies, with Elizabeth supporting efforts to establish bases in the New World from which raids could be launched on Spain’s prized treasure fleet. Philip launched his Armada in an effort to overthrow her. His death in 1598 signaled the end of a long sea war between England and Spain.

John Popham (c. 1531–1607) was a senior judge and colonial investor. As Lord Chief Justice, Popham presided over some of the most famous court cases — including the trials of Walter Ralegh and the men behind the Gunpowder Plot. He became interested in the New World after he hosted two Indians captured by George Waymouth. With Ferdinand Gorges, he led the Plymouth Company, sponsoring the voyage that led to the establishment of the Popham, or Sagadahoc, Colony in Maine by his nephew George Popham (1550–1608).

Walter Ralegh (1554–1618) was a courtier, colonial investor, and writer. He gave Virginia its name, and organized the first English colony in the New World: Roanoke. He later went in search of El Dorado and sent out several voyages in search of the so-called “Lost Colonists” of Roanoke. A great favorite of Elizabeth I, he was despised by James I, who had him incarcerated in the Tower of London, where he wrote his famous History of the World. He was executed in 1618.

John Rolfe (1585–1622) was a colonist and tobacco entrepreneur. He was among the colonists shipwrecked off the coast of Bermuda. There, his wife and newborn child died, and he settled in Jamestown, marrying Pocahontas (c. 1596–1618), who was born Matoaka and took the name Rebecca Rolfe. The match marked the end of the first Anglo-Powhatan War. He successfully pioneered the growing of tobacco in Jamestown — an achievement that put the vulnerable colony on a secure economic footing.

Edwin Sandys (1561–1629) was a parliamentarian and colonial leader. Early on, he was close to Thomas Smythe, and was tasked with drafting the second Virginia charter in 1609. With Smythe, he was involved in the setting up of a legislative body in Jamestown, the House of Burgesses. But these firm friends became entrenched enemies, and in 1619 Sandys staged a corporate coup, seizing control of the Virginia Company and replacing Smythe as treasurer, its effective leader.

Jonas Schütz (1521–1592) was a metallurgist. Also known as Christopher, he was living in England in the 1560s, on temporary leave from his master, the Duke of Saxony. He became one of the two patentees of the newly formed Company of Mineral and Battery Works. In 1577, he was approached to conduct assays on the black stone brought back by Frobisher. In the second voyage, he was sent out to oversee the extraction of hundreds of tons of black ore — which proved worthless.

Henry Sidney (1529–1586) was a courtier and administrator. A close boyhood friend of Edward VI and son-in-law of John Dudley, having married Mary Dudley (c. 1530–1586), who shared her father’s and her husband’s interest in overseas ventures, Sidney was a founding investor in the Mysterie and became Elizabeth’s Deputy Lieutenant, or viceroy, in Ireland. Mary supported the Frobisher voyages, and her son Philip Sidney (1554–1586) was a leading supporter of Humphrey Gilbert’s colonial venture in 1583.

John Smith (1580–1631) was a soldier, colonist, and chronicler. After fighting in eastern Europe, he helped found Jamestown in 1607. He led exploratory trips into the hinterland and, after being captured by some Powhatans, was — he claimed — saved from a brutal death by a young Indian princess: Pocahontas. He rose to become president of Jamestown and later wrote several accounts of his time in Virginia. A brilliant publicist, he gave New England its name.

Thomas Smith (1513–1577) was a Cambridge University professor turned courtier. He became Secretary of State under Edward VI and Elizabeth I, as well as ambassador in Paris. With his son, he tried — but failed — to establish an English colony in Ireland’s Ards Peninsula. But he won lasting fame as the author of the greatest social and economic tract of the sixteenth century: Discourse of the Common Weal of This Realm of England.

Thomas Smythe (1558–1625) was a merchant, civic administrator, and ambassador. He served as the governor of several trading companies, including the Virginia Company, the Muscovy Company, and the East India Company. Also, he became Sheriff of London and, after being elevated to a knighthood by James I, ambassador to Russia. His father, also Thomas Smythe (1522–1591), was a leading investor in the Mysterie and commonly known as “Customer” Smythe because he was the top customs tax collector for the Port of London. Smythe’s grandfather was Sir Andrew Judde.

George Somers (1554–1610) was a privateer and colonial leader. Admiral of the expedition that was struck by a hurricane off the coast of Bermuda, he spotted land and guided the passengers of his stranded ship, the Sea Venture, to safety. After nine months, the settlers left for Jamestown, but Somers returned to Bermuda and died there. For many years, the Bermuda Islands were known as the Somers Islands, in his honor.

William Strachey (1572–1621) was a colonial administrator and writer. He traveled on the ill-fated voyage to Jamestown in 1609 when his ship, the Sea Venture, was wrecked off the coast of the Bermuda Islands. After reaching Jamestown in a makeshift vessel, he served as secretary of the colony and, drawing on his education at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn, helped Thomas Dale codify the colony’s rules. He also wrote an account of the Atlantic storm that is widely thought to have provided Shakespeare with the inspiration for his final play, The Tempest.

Francis Walsingham (c. 1532–1590) was an administrator and ambassador. Fervently Protestant, he left England during Mary I’s reign, only returning after Elizabeth I’s accession and later becoming ambassador in Paris and Secretary of State. An enthusiastic investor in the Muscovy Company, Frobisher’s voyages, and Drake’s circumnavigation of the world, he was among the most important patrons of New World ventures.

George Waymouth (fl. 1587–1611) was a sea captain. In 1602, he led a failed expedition in search of the Northwest Passage before setting out three years later on a voyage to explore Virginia. In advance, he presented James I with Jewell of Artes, a practical guide to setting up a settlement in the New World. He returned with five Indians, who were sent to live with Gorges and Popham. James Rosier (1573–1609), a young Cambridge graduate and one of the crew, wrote the account of the expedition.

Thomas West (1577–1618) was an aristocrat and colonial governor. The third baron De La Warr, he became Lord Governor and Captain General of Jamestown in 1610, after investing five hundred pounds in the venture. He arrived with a great fanfare, the first nobleman to lead an American colony. But he stayed barely ten months, most of which was spent on board his ship. In 1618, he set off for Jamestown once more but he died en route.

Thomas Weston (died c. 1647) was a merchant. A member of the Worshipful Company of Ironmongers, he was a struggling cloth merchant when he approached a group of Separatists who wanted to leave Holland and establish their own settlement in the New World. He found and supplied two ships, including the Mayflower, but he was a ruthless negotiator, forcing the worshippers who would later be known as the Pilgrims to make a punitive agreement. He backed out of the deal after one year. By 1628 he had moved to Virginia, where he acquired a plantation and became a member of the House of Burgesses. In the 1540s he returned to England, where he died.

John White (fl. 1577–1593) was a painter and colonist. He first came to prominence in 1577, when he painted Inuits brought back by Martin Frobisher. Then, in 1585, he was hired by Ralegh to paint pictures of Roanoke and its people, producing more than two hundred water-colors. In 1587, he was made governor of the second Roanoke Colony, where his daughter gave birth to Virginia, the first English baby born on American soil. But after he left Roanoke to get supplies, he never saw his granddaughter again, and she entered American legend as one of the “lost colonists.” White returned once more in 1590 but failed to make contact with them.

Hugh Willoughby (d. 1554) was a soldier. He led the first expedition in search of Cathay in 1553, even though he did not have any relevant sailing experience. He and his crew froze to death in the icy wastes of the Arctic, after getting lost in the North Sea and taking the risk of overwintering in a river inlet to the Barents Sea on Russia’s north coast.

Edward Maria Wingfield (1550–c. 1619) was a soldier and colonist. One of the eight people named on the original Virginia charter, he was the first leader of Jamestown, having been selected as president of the Council of Virginia.

William Winter (c. 1525–1589) was a naval administrator and colonial investor. A charter member of the Muscovy Company, he was involved in Gilbert’s colonial plans in Ireland and was a prominent member of the commission set up to provide oversight of the Frobisher voyages.

John Yorke (d. 1569) was a merchant whose family had a long connection with Calais. He became prominent at the Tower of London mint and later rose to become Sheriff of London and a close friend of John Dudley. He raised his wayward nephew, Martin Frobisher, and set him on his course for a life at sea.

The Prequel to the Pilgrims

On May 6, 1621, the Mayflower returned to England from the fledgling American colony of New Plymouth. In the eight months since the little ship left the English coast behind, the seventy investors that had bankrolled the voyage — mostly London merchants — had not received a scrap of news about the fate of their venture. Now, as the ship’s master, Christopher Jones, eased the Mayflower into its dockage at Rotherhithe, an ancient landing place two miles down the Thames from London that had become a huddle of boatyards, sailors’ cottages, and merchants’ warehouses,* the financial backers eagerly awaited news about the one thing they cared about most: what saleable cargo the ship had brought back from the New World. Perhaps it carried oak timbers for shipbuilding and barrel-making. Perhaps it contained cedar, which was much prized for the construction of exquisite dining-room furniture. Perhaps there might be great bundles of sassafras, the wildly popular plant that could be decocted into remedies for syphilis, malaria, incontinence, and the common cold. Best of all, and certainly the most lucrative, there might be beaver pelts for fashioning the hats that had become all the rage with aristocrats and rich merchants. Such commodities could quickly find a ready market, not only in England but in mainland Europe, and perhaps even in Asia, where they could be traded for the fabulous goods that the English craved: Chinese silks and velvet and linen, precious stones and metals, spices, medicines, fine wines and exotic foodstuffs, and Turkish carpets.

But no. The Mayflower carried no goods or commodities, nothing saleable, nothing of value at all. Instead, the hold groaned with rocks, loaded as ballast to replace the weight of the 102 settlers left behind on the far-distant shoreline.

Disappointed and unwilling to throw good money after bad, most of the investors eventually sold out of the Mayflower venture and washed their hands of the New Plymouth settlers, the people who later referred to themselves as “pilgrims.” Four centuries later, however, the tables have turned. The commercial organizers of the Mayflower voyage have long since been forgotten, while the Plymouth settlers have been enshrined as the true originators, the makers of America. Indeed, the Oxford English Dictionary, that great storehouse of the English language, defines the Pilgrim Fathers as “the founders of the United States.”1

But the story of the making of America actually begins in England in the mid-1500s — seventy years before the Mayflower set out to brave the westerly gales and cross the Atlantic. At that time, England was a small kingdom at the margin of Europe, a relatively insignificant participant in world affairs. The island realm faced a daunting array of social, commercial, and political problems: rising unemployment, failing harvests, a widening gulf between rich and poor, and a crisis of leadership. A prepubescent boy, Edward VI, nominally led the country following the death of his father, the tyrant-king Henry VIII. But a cabal of ambitious noblemen held the real power. A whiff of rebellion, perhaps even revolution, hung in the air. And to provide a physical manifestation of the country’s precarious health, a virulent disease known as the sweating sickness returned for the first time in a quarter of a century, destroying lives and devastating communities. You could be dancing in the morning, the saying went, and be dead by noon. In just a few days, nearly a thousand people perished in London.2

Throughout the land, conditions had grown so dire that a terrifying question loomed over the kingdom’s cosmopolitan capital city as well as its countless rural villages: Can England survive?

As if in answer to that existential question, a constellation of remarkable people, often linked by family ties, emerged over the course of three generations to seek solutions to England’s ills. There were courtiers, intellectuals, scientists, writers, artists, and buccaneers. Above all, there were some of England’s most prosperous merchants. Although these entrepreneurs rarely ventured overseas themselves, they masterminded a relentless stream of commercial enterprises dedicated to discovery, exploration, development, and settlement. Variously bold, obsessed, hungry for gold and glory, and driven by compelling ideas about social improvement and commercial advantage, they organized, promoted, and supported hundreds of ventures, one after another, until multiple threads of failure began to stitch into a fabric of success.

In the process, they developed many of the elements that shaped America as it grew into the country we know today. They originated new corporate and political institutions workable in the New World, embraced new approaches to leadership and social organization, and applied the latest technologies and the latest thinking. They learned how to raise funding, share risk, and allocate capital in ventures with unpredictable outcomes. And most strikingly, they learned how to overcome seemingly insuperable challenges, accept and learn from failure, and cherish the quality that Americans have come to regard as quintessentially their own: perseverance. In New World, Inc., we tell their story — the prequel to the Pilgrims. And, insofar as their actions helped to usher in the modern world, it is our story, too.

* Rotherhithe has Saxon origins, its name deriving from Rothra (“a mariner”), and hythe (“a landing place”).

PART I

BEFORE AMERICA1551–1574

1

WAXING COLD AND IN DECAY

THE STORY BEGINS with sheep.

By the middle of the sixteenth century, there were 11 million sheep throughout England, outnumbering human beings by around four to one.1 They grazed everywhere — on the tiny tracts of land rented by peasant farmers as well as on the great estates of noblemen, bishops, and abbots. Their ubiquity was attributable to one factor: the age-old importance of wool to the English economy.

The hardy English sheep had long flourished in the cold northerly climate, grazing on land that was, as one contemporary put it, “so fruitful that if overnight a wand or rod be laid upon it, by the morning it shall be covered with grass of that night’s growth.”2 In these conditions, they grew a golden fleece of fine, dense fibers that could — once sheared, carded, fulled, tucked, and dried — be spun into a wonderfully warm and weatherproof cloth.3

As early as the twelfth century, raw English wool was exported to the Low Countries, then the epicenter of Europe’s clothmaking industry, and textile makers there considered it to be the finest in Europe.* In 1343, King Edward III granted a group of merchants a monopoly on the trade of raw wool with the textile merchants of the Low Countries that transformed the way the business was done.4 In return for the royal monopoly, the king exacted an export duty that covered a significant portion of the royal budget. Also, soon after, he fixed the official market for the wool trade, known as the “staple,” in the port town of Calais, on France’s northern coast, which he had recently captured as a trophy of war. There, the merchants, who were incorporated as the Company of the Staple and known simply as the Staplers, conducted their trading activities with foreign merchants. For some time, the Staplers’ monopoly ensured that they prospered most from England’s greatest natural resource.†

But in commerce, nothing stands still: over the next fifty years, the trade in raw wool steadily declined as woven cloth grew in popularity — significantly because the export duty on woven cloth was lower than on raw wool.5 The cloth dealers now followed the precedent set by the Staplers. In 1407, they founded the Company of Merchant Adventurers and received a royal monopoly for the export of woven cloth to Europe.

The Merchant Adventurers purchased their cloth from regional suppliers who transported it to London’s Blackwell Hall, a converted medieval mansion that stood adjacent to the Guildhall at the heart of London’s commercial district. Most of the cloth was unfinished — the dyeing and other refining activities were undertaken by textile workers in foreign markets. The classic English product was the broadcloth — a sheet thirty yards long and made from as many as sixty fleeces. Typically woven in East Anglia as well as the West Country counties of Gloucestershire, Wiltshire, and Somerset, it was popular in the cool-climate countries of northern Europe. Another cloth, the kersey — a smaller, cheaper cloth, woven from short-stapled wool, fulled less extensively and woven to be lighter, and produced in narrower measures — was favored in warmer climates to the south.

English cloth was popular beyond the Low Countries. Venice, Florence, Lucca, and the other city republics of the Italian peninsula were eager purchasers of English cloth. So, too, were Spanish traders, who bought it and then shipped it across the Atlantic to their colonies in the West Indies and other parts of the New World. Meanwhile, merchants from Ragusa (now Dubrovnik) on the Adriatic coast distributed English cloth across the Ottoman empire, which stretched from the Mediterranean to the Caspian Sea, including swaths of what we know today as Turkey, Syria, Iran, Iraq, and the Arabian Peninsula.

By the mid-1500s, almost everyone in England was involved with, benefited from, or was affected by England’s dominant industry. In a speech before Parliament, Sir Edward Coke, one of England’s most prominent judges, later remarked that if one were to “divide our native commodities into ten parts . . . nine arise from the sheep’s back.”6

Many of England’s leading families built their livelihoods, fortunes, estates, and, in the long run, their legacies, on the cloth trade. One prosperous merchant etched an encomium in a window of his home:

I praise God and ever shall...

It is the sheep hath paid for all!7

AMONG THE MOST successful of these families were the Greshams, who originally hailed from Norfolk on England’s blustery North Sea coast and who initially prospered as purveyors of hats made from worsted, the cloth named after the local village of Worstead. Then, in the first half of the 1500s, three Gresham brothers — William, Richard, and John — rose to become prominent members of the Worshipful Company of Mercers, the most powerful guild of merchants. They specialized in the import of textiles: linen, fustian, and, above all, silk.8

Over time, the Gresham brothers gained renown across Europe — trading with the Low Countries, Spain, and the Levant — and they came to exert an extraordinary influence over the commercial fortunes of London and, indeed, of England.* At various times, they served as masters or wardens of the Mercers. Also, William became governor — chief executive — of the Merchant Adventurers, while Richard and John each served as Lord Mayor of London. The mayoralty was the pinnacle of achievement for any London merchant. As one contemporary noted, there is “no public officer of any city in Europe that may compare in port and countenance” with the Lord Mayor of London.9 Both brothers were knighted for their service as mayor.

The Greshams’ success, built on their unquestioned business acumen, was greatly aided by the growing dominance of London as England’s commercial capital. In the early years of the sixteenth century, London had been rivaled in commercial importance by several “outports,” commercial and trading centers on England’s south, southwest, and northeast coasts, including Bristol, Hull, Newcastle, Plymouth, and Southampton. But as the export of unfinished cloth grew, London’s relative proximity and easy access to Antwerp, the staple, or primary trading center, for England’s unfinished cloth, gave the city and its merchants, including the Greshams, an advantage over the outports.

Antwerp was northern Europe’s greatest entrepôt — a hub for the trading of goods from around the world. Situated near the mouth of the Scheldt river, which rises in France and flows through what is now Belgium and into the North Sea, Antwerp was ideally located to serve as a commercial thoroughfare for the transport and trade of goods throughout Europe. As a nineteenth-century historian wrote, “It was no uncommon sight to see two or three thousand vessels at one time in the Scheldt, laden with merchandise from every quarter of the globe.”10 Here, German merchants traded silver and copper from the mines of central Europe, Venetian merchants displayed silks from the Levant and beyond, and Portuguese merchants, fast displacing Venetians as carriers of luxury goods from the East, arrayed their spices. The Greshams and other ambitious English merchants brought their unfinished cloth to market in Antwerp, exchanging it for the luxury products prized by England’s wealthiest citizens.

A cosmopolitan metropolis of some 100,000 inhabitants — including William Gresham, who resided in the English community there — the city was a melting pot of cultures and a gabble of languages. While out and about in Antwerp, noted one observer, it was not unusual to meet “a lady who could converse in five, six, or even seven different languages.”11 With so many merchants conducting business and with so much money flowing in and out of the city, Antwerp soon became the financial capital of Europe — and its richest city. Emperors and kings came from across the continent to raise their loans and discharge their debts. Merchants, flush with cash, became bankers. Germans, such as the Fuggers, were preeminent among these, tapping into their networks of merchant-factors with capital to invest and offering a variety of financial mechanisms such as bills of exchange to manage and maintain their accounts. Some English merchants — the Greshams, in particular — became bankers, too.

In the 1540s, when London’s trade with Antwerp was booming, Thomas Gresham, Richard’s son, emerged as the leader of the next generation. In a portrait dated 1544, when he was twenty-six years old, newly married, and recently admitted to the Worshipful Company of Mercers, Thomas poses in an unadorned black coat with white collar and sleeves, his face characterized by a regal nose, eyes of great clarity, and a modest ginger-colored beard. The impression is of a person both equable and resolute, poised to spend his life — as Greshams before him had — in service to his crown and country.

But even as the Greshams prospered, it was becoming clear that not everyone was benefiting from England’s trade boom. A few who had the foresight to look deeply into the matter could see that, on the contrary, England was on the cusp of a great crisis: the cloth trade was faltering, the English presence in Antwerp was threatened, the crown was mired in debt, people were homeless and unemployed, towns were ravaged, and disease raged.

One of the most perceptive analysts of the English situation was a very different sort of character than any of the Greshams — a courtier, a former Cambridge professor, a man with no commercial interests: the brilliant intellectual Sir Thomas Smith.

IN THE SUMMER of 1549, Smith, one of England’s two secretaries of state and a member of King Edward’s Privy Council — essentially his cabinet of chief ministers and closest advisers — escaped London and the burdens of court. He repaired to Eton College, where he served as provost, a position that brought him an additional salary and the advantage of a fine country retreat. Eton was, and still is, one of England’s grandest secondary schools. It is situated some twenty miles west of London, on the banks of the Thames and within sight of Windsor Castle, the mightiest of the royal residences.

Smith was deeply concerned about what he called “the miserable estate, our commonwealth.” He had tried assiduously to explain his reasoning and make the case for reforms to Edward Seymour, who was the uncle of the boy-king Edward VI and wielded great state power as effectively regent with the grand title of Lord Protector.12 But Smith had been ignored by Seymour and, feeling aggrieved, retired from court to spend some time at Eton. Over the course of the long summer months, Smith tried to get the frustration out of his system by putting his ideas down in writing. The resulting work, A Discourse of the Commonweal of This Realm of England, is now considered one of the most powerful social and economic tracts of the sixteenth century.

Like the Gresham family, the Smith family was rooted in the cloth industry. They were not cloth merchants, however, but sheep farmers, based in Walden in Essex, fifty miles northeast of London. But Thomas was not destined to follow in his father’s footsteps. Showing early prowess as a scholar, he won a place at Queens’ College in Cambridge at the age of thirteen. At first, he struggled financially, and came near to abandoning his studies. In the end, however, he persisted, achieved distinction, and, by the age of thirty, he had become not only the first Regius Professor of Civil Law but also the vice-chancellor of the university. But this, it seems, was not enough for him. In February 1547, at the age of thirty-three, Smith relinquished a university career and accepted an invitation to enter Seymour’s service. A little over a year later, he was named Secretary of State.13 It was a meteoric rise.

Smith’s Discourse manifested his deep understanding of England’s travails and expressed his urgent desire to overcome them. The book is written as a dialogue, a popular literary device of the day, in which a husbandman (farmer), a knight, a merchant, a capper (artisan), and, most prominently, a doctor — who clearly speaks for Smith — engage in an extended debate on what ails England. Smith begins by enumerating England’s many ills, the most alarming of which, according to the doctor, is the matter of wealth disparity. Although rich landowners, with their large flocks of sheep, and successful cloth merchants such as the Gresham family were making large profits, not everyone in England was prospering in the boom times.

“Poverty reigns everywhere,” Smith declared.

One of the root causes of the problem, he wrote, was inflation. Indeed, prices had risen by 50 percent in the first four decades of the sixteenth century, and they continued to rise, especially on goods that were scarce in the realm and were often imported — notably silk, wine, spices, paper, and glass of all kinds. “Every man finds himself grieved” by the rising prices, he wrote.14

Smith blamed the inflationary spiral on Henry VIII, who spent recklessly on foreign wars and an extravagant lifestyle and plunged the crown into debt. When Henry could no longer raise sufficient money from taxes, loans, and the sale of monastic land, he turned to financial chicanery: currency manipulation. This involved debasing the coinage by reducing the amount of silver in every coin. Although the crown could spend less on silver, the value of the coins plunged and prices were driven even higher. This was a disaster for everyone. In his Discourse, Smith called for an end to this abuse.

Also, Smith identified another factor that he saw as deleterious to the realm: the practice of “land enclosure.” England’s open lands — the island was a rural patchwork of vast fields and manorial estates — had long done double duty. Generally, arable land was tilled by one owner or tenant, but after the harvest or during an off-season, it was available to everyone and was typically employed for the grazing of sheep.15

For landowners who sought relief from the damaging effects of inflation, the temptation was to convert some or all of their arable land into pasture for their own animals to graze exclusively. This involved enclosing their fields with wooden fences, rows of stones and mounds of earth, or hedges — and thereby removing them from common use. Such enclosure made good economic sense for the landowners. Wool for cloth was in high demand, and the cost of grazing sheep was considerably less than the cost of growing grain or corn. Thomas Tusser, an old Etonian Norfolk farmer, reckoned that enclosure made land three times more profitable than when it was made available to everyone.16 But the effects on local communities could be disastrous. Smith noted that a plot of land that once employed one or two hundred people would, after enclosure, serve only the owner and a few shepherds.17 Without employment — or even land to grow food or graze small flocks — entire villages were abandoned.

The practice of enclosure was not new. In the fourteenth century, England, like much of Europe, was devastated by the Black Death — an epidemic of bubonic plague that obliterated nearly half the population.18 With so few laborers available to farm the land, landowners were forced to enclose their property and turn it into pasture for sheep and other animals.

Of course, some unscrupulous landowners took advantage — even as the population started to rise again — and over the years, the crown had sought to curb the most flagrant abuses: two acts of Parliament, in 1489 and 1515, were introduced to limit or regulate the practice of land enclosure, but they had little effect. By the 1540s, when the practice spiked, the Privy Council, led by Edward Seymour, made another attempt to tackle the problem, issuing a royal proclamation that condemned the “unlawful converting of arable land to pastures.” A commission for the “redress of enclosures” was established and charged with conducting an inquiry into those who had been transgressors or violators of the anti-enclosure statutes already on the books.

But government intervention had failed before, and as Smith wrote in his Discourse, there was little reason to think that it would work now, particularly as it was the avarice of landowners that underlay the recent practice and this seemed unlikely to change. And so, unless they could find a way to solve the problem, the king and his court could expect to face mounting social unrest. It was no surprise, Smith wrote, that given “hunger is a bitter thing to bear,” the impoverished majority “murmur against them that have plenty.”19

His observation was prescient. As he penned these words, the country was on the brink of rebellion. About 150 miles away, in the Gresham family’s home county of Norfolk, and just north of Smith’s own home county of Essex, the people were preparing to do a great deal more than just murmur about their discontent.

IN THE FIRST week of July 1549, a crowd of villagers gathered at the local chapel of the village of Wymondham to attend a pageant, an all-day festival of “processions and interludes.”20 Emotions ran high because the beloved building was scheduled for demolition as part of Edward’s dissolution of church properties — a euphemism for smashing and looting — begun by his father, Henry VIII. In 1534, the king had proclaimed himself supreme leader of the church of England, broken from the Pope and the Catholic Church in Rome, and soon set about stripping ancient monasteries of their treasure, lands, and influence. Between 1538 and 1540, more than two hundred monastic buildings — housing more than 8,000 monks, nuns, and canons (a clergyman or clerk) — were suppressed, their riches seized by the crown and their property sold to raise cash.21

Wymondham’s churchgoers dearly wished to save the chapel, but their ability to do so against the decree of the king seemed doubtful, if not impossible. As the festival played on, a group of townspeople banded together and marched to nearby Morley, where they began “throwing down” fences erected by landowners there. The fences — and the sheep they enclosed — were, if nothing else, a symbol of the favor shown to the wealthy men who grazed the sheep and whose interests were placed above those of the majority of the local and larger population.

Throwing down the enclosures at Morley did not fully quell the anger of the Wymondham people, and it discontented others. One of these, a significant landowner called Sir John Flowerdew — a lawyer, whose son was a close friend of Thomas Gresham and who lived in the nearby village of Hethersett — was angry that some of his fences had been removed. Seeking a twisted kind of revenge, he offered money to anyone who would be willing to have a go at the enclosures of another local landowner, a man named Robert Kett.22

A band of about six men took Flowerdew up on his offer. It is unlikely, however, that they saw Kett as the enemy: he was a local citizen, an ardent supporter of the church, and a tanner by trade. Although a man of rising prosperity, holding property worth about £670, he was no grand figure.23 So, before dismantling his enclosures, the men entreated Kett to return the land to public use. They spoke, they assured him, not just on their own account, or for Flowerdew, but for the “weal of the Commonalty.”

Kett made no attempt to turn them away or defend his enclosures. He did not even defend his right to have them. Instead, he declared his sympathy with the protestors, revealing that “he felt deeply their own misery.” The “nobility and gentry,” he said, possessed a “power so excessive, avarice so great, and cruelty of every kind so unheard of” that it had to be restrained.

As if to convince the protestors, Kett marched with them into his field, helped remove his enclosures, and then participated in throwing down those in the fields of other landowners in the county. In doing so, he quickly emerged as the rebels’ leader. As word of the action spread, the handful of Wymondham men grew into a watershed of protestors, at first trickling and then cascading across the fields and pastures and woodlands of Norfolk, destroying hedges and ransacking villages as they went, until they pooled into a great, raging body — estimated to have reached 20,000 at its peak — on Mousehold Heath, an open area on the outskirts of Norwich, the capital of Norfolk.

From there, where they made camp and established a kind of headquarters, Kett’s rebels expanded their activities across large parts of Norfolk. Within days, the small Wymondham protest turned into a prolonged combination of revolt, crusade, campout, and riot. The rebels seized control of Norwich and scoured the countryside for food, slaughtering and devouring 20,000 sheep in the process. They captured members of the local gentry — the few who had not fled their estates — and held them hostage in the woods.

While enclosures were a tangible symbol of the rebels’ plight and an easy target for their anger and aggression, Kett and his men knew their removal alone would not restore the England they had once known. So, in their wooded haven at Mousehold Heath, they drew up a petition of twenty-two grievances to be presented to King Edward. It was a laundry list of complaints. One grievance directly addressed the issue of land enclosure, others railed against high and rising prices as well as exorbitant and unregulated rents, and yet others called for revisions to fishing rights, greater standardization of weights and measures used in trade, and questioned the duties of priests.

The rebels made it clear that, despite their grievances, they were loyal supporters of the king, and their only goal was to achieve justice and, again, to “deliver the common-wealth.”24 But Edward Seymour, as regent to the boy-king, saw Kett’s action as a serious threat to the sovereignty of the king and the peace of the nation. He ordered William Parr, the Marquis of Northampton, to lead a royal force against the rebels. Extraordinarily, Kett’s men rebuffed the attack.25

A second royal force was mounted. This time, Seymour, taking no chances, gave command to his long-standing friend and ally on the Privy Council, the dashing forty-five-year-old John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. Dudley was typical of yet another class caught up in England’s crisis. Neither a merchant like Gresham nor an intellectual like Smith, Dudley was an aristocrat and a man of action who had won a fine reputation as, among other things, a tournament jouster. John’s father, Edmund, had been a close adviser of Henry VII but was executed on trumped-up charges of treason when Henry VIII acceded to the throne. Without a father, John was sent to be raised in the household of one of the king’s favorite soldier-courtiers, and he was quickly marked out for great things, receiving a knighthood at the age of nineteen after distinguishing himself on the battlefield against France. Seymour was knighted at about the same time, and the two became companions at arms. Over the next twenty years, Dudley emerged as one of Henry’s stalwart supporters, and benefited from gifts of land and offices. In 1543, he joined the Privy Council as Lord Admiral, responsible for England’s naval activities. After Henry’s death, he was granted the earldom of Warwick by Edward, and over the course of his reign, the boy-king came to think of the earl as a mentor — even a father figure.26

Called into action after Kett’s unlikely victory, Dudley assembled a much larger force than William Parr had put together. With six thousand foot soldiers and fifteen hundred cavalry — including fourteen hundred mercenary soldiers from Germany and Italy — he rode towards Norwich. As he approached Kett’s encampment, he stopped for the night at the home of Thomas Gresham, whose family estate, Intwood Hall, lay just three miles south of Norwich.27

The next morning, Dudley set out to engage the Mousehold rebels. But before he unleashed his forces, he sent two emissaries into the rebel camp in an attempt to persuade Kett to surrender and offer them leniency if they did so.28 It was a notable display of compassion that seems out of character for a commander sent out to quash an act he saw as rebellion. His efforts failed, however. Kett distrusted Dudley and his promises and refused to back down.

Given Kett’s unbending response, Dudley had little choice but to order an attack by his royal force. The result was mass slaughter. Kett’s ragtag army was no match for Dudley’s mercenary soldiers. In a single August day, some three thousand five hundred rebels were killed at a place called Dussin’s Dale.29 Kett, seeing that the cause was lost, fled. When his followers saw him abandoning the battlefield, they too lost heart, and at last surrendered.

The next morning, most of the leaders were rounded up and hanged. In the following weeks, Dudley presided over court proceedings, after which many more of the Mousehold rebels were executed, some in gruesome fashion: “first their privy parts are cut off, then their bowels pulled out alive, and cast into the fire, then their head is cut off, and their body quartered: the head set upon a pole, and fixed on the tops of the Towers of the City, the rest of the body bestowed upon several places, and set up to the terror of others.”30 Eventually, Kett himself was captured, tried, found guilty, and hanged in chains from the top of Norwich Castle.31

The punishment meted out to the rebels did not satisfy some of the local gentry, who demanded even greater action. Dudley retorted, “There must be measure kept,” even in punishment. Was there, he pleaded, no place for “humble petition” or even “pardon and mercie?”32 His apparent sympathy may be telling, but he would have known the potential danger that Kett’s rebellion posed to the kingdom. Uprisings were taking place across the country — in neighboring Suffolk, as well as in Cornwall and Devon. The motives varied and overlapped — sheep and enclosures, taxes and subsidies, new religious strictures, laws concerning vagrancy and treason. But at their heart there was a continuing and growing disgust with the avarice of the nobility and gentry, the 2 percent who governed the 98 percent of yeomen and husbandmen, artisans and apprentices.33

KETT’S REBELLION SHOOK England to its foundations. Some feared that the country might even descend into civil war. In the febrile atmosphere at court, Seymour started to lose the confidence of the Privy Council, and Dudley, the hero of the hour, emerged as the most powerful royal adviser. It helped that he had not fully disbanded his fighting force and, within a couple of months of suppressing Kett’s rebellion, he staged a coup d’état, arresting Seymour, becoming the effective regent, and assuming the title of Lord President.

In his new role, Dudley’s tasks were nothing less than to restore confidence in Edward’s reign, rescue England from economic calamity, and resolve the damaging social divisions that were being exposed by land enclosure. His job was made immeasurably harder with an abrupt and seemingly catastrophic collapse in demand for cloth from mainland Europe. In 1550, as he took over from Seymour, the cloth trade was buoyant, and total exports numbered 132,767 cloths, as lengths of fabric were called. But in 1551 this slumped to 112,710 cloths, falling to 84,968 the following year.34 At a time when the monarchy was already heavily in debt, the decline in demand seemed to rule out any hope that royal loans could be paid back with customs revenue from the cloth trade. As one merchant reflected, some years later, England’s economy was “waxing cold and in decay.”35

The situation was made worse by another development. In 1549, as Smith wrote his Discourse, Antwerp collapsed as a center for Europe’s spice trade. For fifty years, Portuguese merchants had used the Flemish port as its staple, trading spices there for German silver. But now the king of Portugal, João III, had decided that, with sufficient silver pouring into Lisbon from Spanish silver mines in America, he did not need to trade in Antwerp.36