Introduction
1Hamel, England and Russia, pp. 87–8. Henry Lane records that Willoughby et al. were found by Russian fishermen in the summer of 1554 in his letter to William Sanderson, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 265.
2Today this is the northern coastal region of China.
3Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 9.
4Arber, First Three English Books, p. 43.
5Arber, First Three English Books, p. 9.
6DNB. Taylor, Original Writings and Correspondence of the two Richard Hakluyts, 2, p. 369.
7DNB. Quote in Crone, ‘Richard Hakluyt, geographer’, in D.B. Quinn (ed.), The Hakluyt Handbook, p. 10.
8Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 243.
Chapter One
1The tide’s range here is larger than anywhere else in Europe.
2On the background to this story see Williamson, The Cabot Voyages and Jones, ‘Alwyn Ruddock’. There is also a good short summary in the article on Sebastian Cabot by R.A. Skelton in the Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online.
3Precisely what Bristol mariners had discovered before Cabot is hotly debated, and is unlikely, barring new evidence, to be resolved. Perhaps they had already found a mainland, but if so it was kept a closely guarded secret. Why else was such a fuss made of Cabot in London after his return? See Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, p. 13 and the short summary in I. Wilson, John Cabot and the Matthew, pp. 11–13.
4The explorer was Sir Humphrey Gilbert. Quinn (ed.), Voyages and Colonising Enterprises, p. 134.
5See Latham, The Travels of Marco Polo, p. 130 and pp. 243–4. As Williamson notes, Polo’s exaggerated picture of Japan was ‘his greatest error’ (The Cabot Voyages, p. 88). In general, on European dreams of Asia see for instance Abulafia, The Discovery of Mankind, pp. 24–30.
6See the map of currents in Johnson and Nurminen, History of Seafaring, p. 29.
7Varied estimates of the size of the earth’s circumference were at the heart of the matter. See Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, p. 26.
8Henry VII listened to the pitch made by Columbus’ brother, Bartholomew: Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 76-7.
9Jones, ‘Alwyn Ruddock’, pp. 231–6.
10Quotes from Eden, The Decades of the newe worlde, in Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 288.
11The ambassador Puebla’s letter is known from the surviving reply from Ferdinand and Isabella. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, p. 48.
12Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, pp. 52–3. The original document is in the National Archives, Treaty Roll 178, membr.8. http://www.bris.ac.uk/Depts/History/Maritime/Sources/1496cabotpatent.htm
13Jones, ‘Alwyn Ruddock’, p. 242. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, pp. 208–10. Wilson, John Cabot, pp. 32, 39.
14Ruddock may have been dismissive of the sum, but it was perhaps around £5,000, equivalent, Jones points out, to two years’ earnings for a common labourer, and Cabot had struggled financially: Jones, ‘Alwyn Ruddock’, pp. 229–30.
15Hay (ed.), The Anglica Historia of Polydore Vergil, pp. 116–17, this extract of which is printed in Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, pp. 224–5. Williamson summarises the evidence in pp. 54–115. Alwyn Ruddock claimed to have found evidence that Cabot had returned, and had died shortly afterwards, but she didn’t publish it before her own death and it has not been discovered since. Given that Vergil arrived in England in 1502, only a few years after Cabot’s purported return, as a deputy for the same papal tax collector who backed Cabot, and then held an ecclesiastical position in the West Country (albeit largely an absentee one), it would be surprising if he was not aware of this. On Vergil see W.J. Connell, ‘Vergil, Polydore’ in DNB.
Chapter Two
1On Sebastian’s north-western voyage of 1508–9 see Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, pp. 145–72.
2Deane, ‘The Mappemonde of Sebastian Cabot’, p. 63.
3Eden, The Decades of the newe worlde, in Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 288.
4See A. Ruddock, ‘The Reputation of Sebastian Cabot’, p. 97 and generally.
5The quotation is from a well-informed Venetian account of 1536, quoted in Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, p. 142.
6See Bratchell, ‘Alien Merchant Communities in London 1500–1550’.
7Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, Epistle Dedicatorie in the first volume of the second edition: Vol. 1, p. 16. See Parker, Books to Build an Empire, chapter 3.
8Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, pp. 19, 37–9.
9Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 288.
10Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, pp. 144–5.
Chapter Three
1Pike, Aristocrats and Traders, p. 23. D. Loades, ‘Sebastian Cabot’, DNB. Thomas, Rivers of Gold, p. 204 and chapter 38, pp. 458–74. Elliott, Empires of the Atlantic World, pp. 109–11. The formal organisation of two annual fleets, though, began in the mid-sixteenth century.
2On the English émigré community in Seville see H. Dalton, ‘Negotiating Fortune: English Merchants in Early Sixteenth-Century Seville’, and on Bristol trade in general, Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate and Lobel and Carus-Wilson, ‘Bristol’.
3‘Book of Robert Thorne’, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 229. Thorne’s father was a leading Bristol merchant who had also crossed the Atlantic. On the Thornes see DNB articles, Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, pp. 259–62, and Nicholls, ‘The Royal Grammar School of Bristol, and the Thorns, its Founders’.
4Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 49.
5On the office see Rubio, El Piloto Mayor, Haring, Trade and Navigation, pp. 21–45 and Lamb, ‘Cosmographers of Seville: Nautical Science and Social Experience’. Cabot’s Spanish career is discussed in Sandman and Ash, ‘Trading Expertise: Sebastian Cabot between Spain and England’.
Chapter Four
1See R.C.D. Baldwin, ‘Robert Thorne the younger’, DNB, and Nicholls, ‘The Royal Grammar School of Bristol, and the Thorns, its Founders’. On the history of maps see Shirley, The Mapping of the World.
2Thome’s letter to Lee is in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 216–31.
3Barlow, Brief Summe, p. 180. Woolley, The Queen’s Conjuror, p. 102.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 228. Pierre d’Ailly, early in the fifteenth century, wrote that to the north-east of Iceland was ‘a region uninhabitable on account of the cold’. Quoted in Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, p. 64.
5On Thorne’s map see Skelton, Explorers’ Maps, pp. 99–100.
6Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 11.
7Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 212–16.
8Connell-Smith, ‘English Merchants Trading to the New World in the Early Sixteenth Century’, pp. 61–2.
Chapter Five
1On The Saviour see Jones, ‘The Bristol Shipping Industry in the Sixteenth Century, pp. 232–5. The ship was later rebuilt not newly built, as R.C.D. Baldwin implies in his DNB article on the Thornes.
2See Taylor, ‘Roger Barlow: A New Chapter in Early Tudor Geography’.
3Eustace Chapuys to the Queen of Hungary, 26 May 1541: Gairdner and Brodie (eds), Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, Henry VIII, Vol. 16 (1540–41), pp. 409–10. It has been suggested, in Bradley, British Maritime Enterprise, p. 247, for example, that the foreign pilot from Seville might have been Sebastian Cabot. But this cannot be right. The prolonged absence from his post of Spain’s Pilot Major would certainly have provoked comment.
4On Dudley see Loades, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and his article in DNB.
5See the report of Marillac, the French ambassador, in E.T. Hamy, ‘Jean Roze, Hydrographe Dieppois’, pp. 232–3. Cited in Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 64.
Chapter Six
1On all of this see Sandman and Ash, ‘Trading Expertise: Sebastian Cabot between Spain and England’ and Lamb, ‘Science by Litigation: A Cosmographic Feud’.
2Wyatt to Philip Hoby, Add. MS. 5,498, f. 8. Cited in Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, p. 308.
3Skelton, ‘Sebastian Cabot’. Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot, p. 166. Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, p. 308.
4François van der Delft to the Emperor, 28 May 1549: Hume and Tyler (eds), Calendar of Letters, despatches and state papers ... Spain. Vol. 9:1547–1549, pp. 372–83.
5Emperor to van der Delft, 18 January 1550. Van der Delft to the Emperor, 31 January 1550. Quoted in Quinn, England and the Discovery of America, p. 153.
6See the National Archives converter, which produces values for 2005: www.nationalarchives.gov.uk/currency, and at www.measuringworth.com
Chapter Seven
1It is generally accepted that he was born in or not much before 1484. See Skelton, ‘Sebastian Cabot’.
2Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate, p. 30.
3Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate, p. 24.
Chapter Eight
1Harris Sacks, The Widening Gate, p. 29. Stow, Survey of London, p. 12.
2Jordan (ed.), The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI, pp. 12–13.
3Loades, Duke of Northumberland, p. 120 (citing Jordan, Edward VI, p. 445).
4Loades, Duke of Northumberland, p. 161.
5Loades, Duke of Northumberland, p. 146.
Chapter Nine
1Sir William Pickering, quoted in Crane, Mercator, p. 164; Deacon, John Dee, p. 23; French, John Dee, pp. 22–4.
2Act against Sorcery 1542 repealed 1547. Gibson (ed.), Witchcraft and Society, p. 2. K. Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic, pp. 280, 292. Woolley, The Queen’s Conjuror, pp. 11–16.
3Feingold, The Mathematicians’ Apprenticeship, pp. 35–6. A mathematical examiner was tasked to question pupils for one hour daily on the public lectures of the schools, to discourse with pupils when no public lectures took place, and to deal three times a week with pupils who found the lectures too difficult. See also C. Cross, ‘The English Universities, 1553–58’, in Duffy and Loades, The Church of Mary Tudor, pp. 57–76. Dudley was the university’s Chancellor.
4French, John Dee, pp. 29–30.
5Waters, Art of Navigation, pp. 78–9, p. 84 note 1.
6On this map see Deane et al., ‘February Meeting, 1891: Cabot’s Mappe-Monde’. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 7, p. 194 (this reference is to the 12-volume 1903 Maclehose edition). Beazley, John and Sebastian Cabot, p. 253.
7Gilbert, ‘A New Passage to Cataia’, in Quinn (ed.), Voyages and Colonising Enterprises, pp. 139–40, 147. Gilbert’s essay exists now in the form in which it was published in 1576, but was written by 1566. See ibid., p. 8. On the world map which was published with it, based on the Ortelius world map of 1564 see Skelton, Explorers’ Maps, p. 120. On it there is a clear and viable passage north of America.
8Deane et al., ‘February Meeting, 1891: Cabot’s Mappe-Monde’, p. 339.
Chapter Ten
1Deane et al., ‘February Meeting, 1891: Cabot’s Mappe-Monde’, p. 309.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 3, p. 12. Bodenham did also remember the shipwright Matthew Baker.
3See Skidmore, Edward VI, p. 227 on the control over Edward which Dudley exerted via Sidney.
4Waters, Art of Navigation, p. 15.
5William Borough. Quoted in Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 97.
6Sandman and Ash, ‘Trading Expertise: Sebastian Cabot between Spain and England’, p. 821.
7Taylor, Tudor Geography, pp. 89–91.
Chapter Eleven
1Scheyfve replied to d’Eecke’s concern in a letter to the Queen Dowager, dated 24 June 1550. Tyler (ed.), Calendar of Letters, despatches and state papers ... Spain. Vol. 10:1550–1552, pp. 108–18.
2Incorrectly transliterated ‘Ireland’, see Taylor, introduction to Barlow, Brief Summe, p. lv.
3Scheyfve to the Queen Dowager, 24 June 1550.
4Advices of Jean Scheyfve, Jan. 1551.
5Taylor, introduction to Barlow, Brief Summe, p. liii.
6Taylor, introduction to Barlow, Brief Summe, p. lv.
7Quoted in Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 93.
Chapter Twelve
1See also, for instance, the map made by Jean Rotz for Henry VIII in 1542, on which northern Asia is completely blank. See H. Wallis (ed.), The maps and text of the Boke of Idrography presented by Jean Rotz to Henry VIII, now in the British Library.
2Willan, Early History, p. 2.
3Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 7–8.
4Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, chapter 7. Stow, Survey of London, p. 32.
5On the preponderant involvement of merchants with Iberian interests see Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p. 20.
6Latham, The Travels of Marco Polo, pp. 329–32.
7Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, ‘Epistle Dedicatorie to Sir Robert Cecil’, 1, p. 44.
8As there had been, of course, until about 10,000 years ago, and which allowed the first humans to populate America.
9Crane, Mercator, pp. 138, 233.
10Letter to Richard Hakluyt of 1580. Quoted in Crane, Mercator, p. 276.
11Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 267.
Chapter Thirteen
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 267. Willan, Muscovy Merchants, pp. 28–9.
2On John Cabot’s second voyage, Henry VII provided one of the five ships. The others were provided by private merchants. Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, pp. 95–115.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 267–8.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 247. Willan, Muscovy Merchants, p. 7. Cabot himself was perhaps more realistic. His ordinances forbade private trading until company business had been completed: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 237 (article 21).
5Willan, Muscovy Merchants, pp. 6–7.
6Willan, Muscovy Merchants, p. 22.
7Over £5,000 in the money of 2005 according to the National Archives converter.
8Willan, Muscovy Merchants, pp. 9–21.
9Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 6.
10Willan, Early History, p. 41.
11Russell was born around 1485, so was about 68 in 1553. He died early in 1555. It was his son, Francis Russell, the 2nd Earl who is mentioned some years later as having a copy of Cabot’s map hung in his manor at Chenies, perhaps inherited from his father. Cecil also recorded his payment (Willan, Early History, p. 41).
12Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 239.
Chapter Fourteen
1Scammell, ‘European Seamanship in the Great Age of Discovery’, p. 358.
2Loades, Tudor Navy, p. 94.
3Loades, Tudor Navy, pp. 94–5.
4The standard measure of the size of a ship, the ‘ton’, was one of volume not of weight, and referred originally to a ‘tun’, the largest standard cask of wine. When used in reference to ships, therefore, the measure indicated initially the number of tun casks it could carry. In fact the derivation was the same, because a tun of wine – 256 gallons – weighed close to a ton.
5Mayers, North-East Passage, pp. 29–31.
6Loudon, Arboretum et Fruticetum Britannicum, Vol. 3, p. 1380.
7Loades, Tudor Navy, p. 87. Morris, ‘Naval Cordage Procurement in Early Modern England’, p. 90 passim.
8Oppenheim, Administration, p. 103, cited in Loades, Tudor Navy, p. 154. Morris, ‘The Rise of the English Sailcloth Industry 1565–1643’.
9Scammell, ‘European Seamanship in the Great Age of Discovery’, p. 360. Block, To Harness the Wind, p. 41.
Chapter Fifteen
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 266–93.
2In the will of Sir Hugh’s half-brother, Sir John, proved in January 1548–9, mention is made of ‘my niece Rose, daughter of my brother Hugh’. In the Wollaton accounts there is also mention of 20l. a year paid to Henry, son of Sir Hugh. See the article on Sir Hugh Willoughby by John Knox Laughton in the previous edition of the DNB edited by Sir Leslie Stephen and Sir Sidney Lee.
3During the recent war with Scotland, John Dudley had regretted that it was impossible to find well-born men to lead all of Henry’s many ships. ‘As concerning the mean ships,’ he wrote, ‘I know no other way ... but to place them with mean men to be their captains’: Loades, Tudor Navy, p. 102.
4Scheyfve to the Emperor, 7 March 1553 (Tyler (ed.), Calendar of Letters, despatches and state papers ... Spain. Volume 11: 1553, p. 14). It has often wrongly been suggested that Willoughby had no naval experience at all, but it is true, as Willan writes, that ‘there is no evidence that he knew anything of seamanship’ (Early History, p. 3). Emphasis to Adams’ quotation added.
5Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 288.
Chapter Sixteen
1Quoted in Ash, Power, Knowledge and Expertise, p. 112.
2Couper and Henbest, The Story of Astronomy, pp. 42, 86. Richey, Astronomy and Astrology’, pp. 49–51.
3The Latin extract is printed in Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 253 (scipsisse being a misprint for scripsisse). I am very grateful to Alexander Evans for his help with Latin translation. See also J.C. Warner (ed.), John Bale’s Catalogue of Tudor Authors, p. 333, which notes that Chancellor is ‘said to have written much on astrologia’.
4Crossley (ed.), Autobiographical Tracts, p. 5.
5Dee, Compendious Rehearsal, and Thomas Digges, Alae seu Scalae mathematicae, the relevant extracts of which are quoted in Taylor, Tudor Geography, pp. 253–6. The Compendious Rehearsal is in Crossley (ed.), Autobiographical Tracts of John Dee. See also R. Julian Roberts, ‘John Dee’ (DNB). Transversals had been invented earlier by Levi ben Gerson, but Chancellor invented them independently.
6See Mayers, North-East Passage, pp. 100–1 and references.
7Crossley (ed.), Autobiographical Tracts of John Dee, p. 28. See Richey, ‘Navigation: Art, Practice and Theory’, p. 509.
Chapter Seventeen
1For Adams’ account of the meeting see Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 269–70.
2Adams was mistaken about the date. As Willoughby’s log records, the ships left on 10 May, and no doubt this was the deadline set.
Chapter Eighteen
1He is also listed as Richard Stafford. One name, clearly, was a mistake.
2Williamson, The Cabot Voyages, p. 47.
3Willan, Early History, pp. 3–4.
4Fury, ‘Health and Health Care at Sea’, p. 211.
5On the Anthony Roll, the Lartique, smaller at 100 tons than two of the three expedition vessels, carried fifty-two mariners, eight gunners and eighty soldiers, making a complement of 140 men.
6Scammell, ‘Manning the English Merchant Service’, pp. 131–2.
7Morison, European Discovery, p. 134.
8Scammell, ‘Manning the English Merchant Service’, p. 134.
9Sir Henry Sidney, in Clement Adams’ account of his speech: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 269.
10At a high level, gunnery, like navigation, was increasingly scientific. As well as the chemistry and physics which went into the design of powder and of cannon, ability at maths helped the artilleryman aiming the piece. In general, though, a more haphazard, trial and error approach to shooting prevailed. See Scammell, ‘Manning the English Merchant Service’, p. 151.
11Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 248 and 268.
12Richard Morgan was the cook on the Esperanza, Thomas Hante on the Confidentia.
13Burwash, English Merchant Shipping, p. 36.
14James Watt, ‘Some forgotten contributions of naval surgeons’, p. 753.
15Fury, ‘Health and Health Care at Sea’, passim.
Chapter Nineteen
1The ordinances are to be found in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 232–41.
2Roger Barlow, who accompanied Cabot to the Plata estuary, had written of the ‘very ill people’ called the Guaranies who ‘continually make war upon their borders and one eat another’: Brief Summe, p. 157.
3Deane et al., ‘February Meeting, 1891: Cabot’s Mappe-Monde’, p. 334.
4Johnson and Nurminen, History of Seafaring, p. 239.
5See Quinn, ‘Sailors and the Sea’, p. 30.
6Barlow, Brief Summe, p. 64.
7Deane et al., ‘February Meeting, 1891: Cabot’s Mappe-Monde’, p. 334.
Chapter Twenty
1Adams suggests the deadline was 20 May, but Willoughby’s log gives 10 May as the departure date and this is confirmed by other sources.
2Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 288.
3Stow, Survey of London, p. 12.
4Porter (ed.), Survey of London vols 43 & 44: Poplar, Blackwall and the Isle of Dogs, vol. 43, pp. 375–7. Baker (ed.), A History of the County of Middlesex volume 11: Stepney, Bethnal Green, p. 26.
5Zell (ed.), Early Modern Kent, 1540–1640, pp. 128–9.
Chapter Twenty-One
1See the contemporary illustrations of the palace by Antonis van der Wyngaerde, held by the Ashmolean. Chettle, The Queen’s House, Greenwich, pp. 16–24, and Jennings, Greenwich, p. 35ff.
2Skidmore, Edward VI, p. 246.
3Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, pp. 33–4 (11 April 1553). Their destination, of course, was not the ‘new found land’ to the west. But gossip was as unreliable then as now.
4Jehan Scheyfve to the Emperor, 28 April 1553.
5Jordan (ed.), The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI, p. 55 and p. 80.
6Scheyfve to the Emperor, 12 May 1553. Skidmore, Edward VI, p. 247.
7Scheyfve to the Bishop of Arras, 5 May 1553; Scheyfve to the Emperor, 12 May 1553. Skidmore, Edward VI, p. 247.
8Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 271.
9Scheyfve to the Emperor, 12 May 1553.
10Skidmore, Edward VI, p. 254.
11Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 241–3.
Chapter Twenty-Two
1John Norden 1593, detail. Porter (ed.), Survey of London vols 43 & 44: Poplar, Blackwall and the Isle of Dogs, pp. 548–52.
2The Thames was preferred to the south coast as a dockyard location for its proximity both to London merchants who could supply raw materials and to the forests and foundries of the Kent Weald, the main source for timber and cannon.
3It is not entirely clear from Willoughby’s account whether he means 9 a.m. or 9 p.m. The latter is an educated guess. Willoughby’s account of his voyage is in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 248–54.
4On this famous ship see L.P. Paine, Warships of the World to 1000, pp. 72–3.
5Jehan Scheyfve to the Emperor, 7 March 1553.
6Emperor to Prince Philip, Brussels, 2 April 1553.
7Scheyfve to the Bishop of Arras, 10 April 1553.
8Scheyfve to the Emperor, 11 May 1553.
Chapter Twenty-Three
1Square-rigged ships could at best sail at an angle 70 degrees off the wind as opposed to about 40 degrees off for a modern ‘fore-and-aft’ ship.
2The word ‘lateen’ may have derived from ‘latin’, owing to the technique’s early adoption in the Mediterranean. See also Parry, The Age of Reconnaissance, pp. 81–4 and Block, To Harness the Wind, p. 13ff.
3Loades, Tudor Navy, p. 84.
4See law 7 of the Laws of Oléron (The Judgementes of the See), with an English translation of the French text extracted from Pierre Garcie, The Rutter of the See. It is on p. 60 (taking the title page as p. 1) but the copy consulted had no page numbers. Loades, Tudor Navy, p. 100.
5Carter and Mendis, ‘Evolutionary and Historical Aspects of the Burden of Malaria’, p. 582.
6An important maritime court was based there at the time, in the twelfth century, that Eleanor of Aquitaine reissued the laws which derived from the ancient Mediterranean.
7Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men, p. 66.
Chapter Twenty-Four
1From a shanty dated to 1548, quoted in Mayers, North-East Passage, p. 58.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 271–2.
3Waters, Art of Navigation, pp. 137–8.
4William Bourne, Regiment of the Sea, quoted in Waters, Art of Navigation, p. 36.
5Dates were ten days adrift in the sixteenth century due to slippage of the Julian calendar; 14 July was equivalent to 24 July today. The beginning of Leo is generally given as 23 July.
Chapter Twenty-Five
1George Best, son of the interpreter Robert Best, quoted in Mayers, North-East Passage, p. 100.
2This is currently at 66° 33′ 44″, though it has drifted slightly northward since the sixteenth century, with a slow change in the tilt of the earth on its axis. Currently it is moving northward at about fifteen metres per year – or just under seven kilometres in the 459 years since 1553.
3Mayers, North-East Passage, pp. 59–61.
4Fury, ‘Health and Health Care at Sea’, p. 194. William Cloves was the surgeon.
5Puffins are still caught and eaten in Iceland. On the puffin (and countless other birds) as part of an earlier English diet see Thomas, Man and the Natural World, p. 55.
6Anthony Jenkinson: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 410.
Chapter Twenty-Six
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 336.
2In fact a nearby point was slightly further north, and technically a neighbouring promontory was the uppermost reach of the mainland, since the ‘North Cape’ was part of an island that lay slightly offshore, but the psychological force was the same. It is Kinnarodden on the nearby Nordkinn peninsula that actually marks the northernmost point of the European mainland.
3See the illustration of Wardhouse in 1594 in Mayers, North-East Passage, p. 70.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
1Thomas Randolph embassy 1568, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 81. Hamel, England and Russia, p. 97.
2Embassy of Giles Fletcher, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, pp. 294–5; Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude & Barbarous Kingdom, pp. 119–20.
3We cannot be sure how much of a surprise this was. On the Continent, von Herberstein had recently published an account of Russia which showed access to Moscow from a ‘Mare Glaciale’ in the north. John Dee may have brought his information to England. See Baron, ‘Herberstein and the English “Discovery” of Muscovy’. Adams’ account certainly gives no suggestion that an arrival in Russia was anticipated.
4Planché, Cyclopedia of Costume, pp. 216–18.
5Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 275.
6Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, pp. 9–10 (n. 1), 98–9.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
1Waters, Art of Navigation, pp. 18–19.
2All such observations were made with the naked eye. The idea for a telescope was not new, but the first that were practicable were not developed until the early seventeenth century. Waters, Art of Navigation, pp. 52, 296n. Woolley, The Queen’s Conjuror, p. 150.
Chapter Thirty
1Quoted in Lamb, ‘Science by Litigation: A Cosmographic Feud’, p. 45.
2On the compass see Johnson and Nurminen (eds), History of Seafaring, pp. 90–6.
3R.A. Skelton, ‘Sebastian Cabot’, Dictionary of Canadian Biography Online. Burwash, English Merchant Shipping, p. 5.
4See the article by Prince Kropotkin in the 1902 Encyclopedia Britannica. For a recent attempt to plot Willoughby’s likely course by a sailor see Mayers, North-East Passage, pp. 64–6.
5An interesting picture of Kolguev island is to be found in the account given by the Victorian naturalist Aubyn Trevor-Battye in Ice-Bound on Kolguev (1895).
Chapter Thirty-One
1Skidmore, Edward VI, p. 249.
2On links between the Willoughbys and the Greys see Ives, Lady Jane Grey, pp. 36–7 and on Willoughby’s family in general, Hamel, England and Russia, pp. 5–15.
3Stow, Survey of London, 1, p. 67.
Chapter Thirty-Two
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 292.
2See, generally, Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 99. George Turberville, with Thomas Randolph, 1568.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, pp. 81–2. Embassy of Thomas Randolph in 1568. Randolph was in fact a diplomat, and was careful in his formal despatch not to make specific allegations. Less cautious was another Englishman, whose charge that buggery was widespread was excised by Hakluyt lest it cause unnecessary offence. See Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 76 (and compare Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 99 where six lines are omitted).
5The brief account he later wrote, and the description he gave to Clement Adams, comprised the first attempts in English to analyse Russian society. It was the first of a number of studies by Englishmen, several of which were of high quality, and which are important sources for historians of Russia since Russian primary source material can be sparse. See Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom.
6Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 432–3.
7See E. Duffy, Stripping of the Altars, chapter 13 regarding changes in religious practice in England under Edward VI. On the participation of icons in the sanctity of their prototypes see Miller, ‘The Viskovatyi Affair’, p. 295.
8Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 432.
Chapter Thirty-Three
1Arthur Edwards, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 55. Alef, ‘The Origin and Early Development of the Muscovite Postal Service’, p. 2.
2Quoted in Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, pp. 47–8.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 82. Thomas Randolph was the ambassador.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 55.
5Marco Foscarini, quoted in Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, p. 47. Giles Fletcher made the same observation: see Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 122.
6Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, p. 47.
7Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 105. George Turberville, 1568.
8Stevens, ‘Banditry and Provincial Order in Sixteenth-century Russia’. Adams refers to the ‘many cutpurses among them’ in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 288.
9Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, p. 47.
Chapter Thirty-Four
1R. Lemon and M.A.E. Green (eds), CSP Domestic: Elizabeth 1601–3; with Addenda 1547–65, pp. 382–96. On the background to this conflict see Sadler, Border Fury, chapter 18.
2Jordan (ed.), The Chronicle and Political Papers of King Edward VI, p. 26.
Chapter Thirty-Five
1Picard and Grundy (eds), Description of Moscow and Muscovy, p. 19.
2He was perhaps too pessimistic, since a short growing season did exist in the summer months. Giles Fletcher later noted that ‘a man would marvel to see the great alteration and difference betwixt the winter and summer in Russia’, Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 114.
3Robert Best noted, after his voyage of 1557, that ‘barks of trees are good meat with them at all times’: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 437.
4Fletcher, ‘A Note on Two Words in Milton’s History of Moscovia’, p. 316. There is an illustration on Olaus Magnus’s map of this animal involved in a similar procedure, though it appears to be defecating rather than giving birth.
5Deane et al., ‘February Meeting, 1891: Cabot’s Mappe-Monde’, p. 334.
6Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia, 1553–1815, p. 12.
7Alef, ‘The Origin and Early Development of the Muscovite Postal Service’, p. 6.
8Many pursued a discipline which was at least nominally loyal to the instructions of St Benedict, just as many monks did in the Western Catholic Church, and Benedictines were noted for their adoption of black clothing.
9Crummey, The Formation of Muscovy, 1304–1613, p. 2 and chapter 1 passim.
10At the time these were spelt Yeraslav, Rostov and Pereslav: see Jenkinson’s account in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 413–14. Jenkinson says there were fourteen posts between Vologda and Moscow but he only lists thirteen. See also Robert Best’s account, p. 419.
11See Alef, ‘The Origin and Early Development of the Muscovite Postal Service’, pp. 1–15.
Chapter Thirty-Six
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 257 (A brief discourse on the voyage of Sir Jerome Bowes in 1583).
2The English still often referred to him as the ‘Duke’. They had known, vaguely, of the Duchy of Moscow, and had not taken into account Ivan’s self-elevation to emperor or ‘tsar’.
3De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 62–3. Ivan himself remembered that ‘a fiery flame burned the ruling city of Moscow’: Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 81.
4Giles Fletcher was the visitor. Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 126. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 301.
5Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 255.
6De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 56; Bushkovitch, ‘The Moscow Kremlin and its History’, p. 226.
7Bushkovitch, ‘The Moscow Kremlin and its History’, p. 225.
8On his lavish building campaign, unlike any that came before it, and epitomised at new palaces like Hampton Court and Nonsuch, see Scarisbrick, Henry VIII, pp. 505–6.
9Hughes, ‘The Courts of Moscow and St Petersburg’, p. 299.
Chapter Thirty-Seven
1Filatov et al., White Sea, pp. 9–11. Took, Running with Reindeer, p. xii.
2Took, Running with Reindeer, p. 169.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 298.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 417–18.
2On one of Ivan’s thrones, made in 1551, bas-reliefs depicted the coronation of his ancestor Grand Prince Vladimir Monomakh, alleged to have physically conveyed the crown – and Byzantine imperial authority – to the ‘Russians’ then centred on Kiev: Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors, pp. 75–6.
3Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors, pp. 39–41.
4Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, p. 55; De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 32.
5Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 280. De Madariaga and Crummey both assume this was Adashev (Ivan the Terrible, pp. 121–2; Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 25). On the career of Adashev see De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 67–9. Miller ‘The Viskovatyi Affair’.
6Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors, p. 148.
7Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 93. Cavendish, ‘Kazan falls to Ivan the Terrible’. On the importance of the streltsy musketeer units see Paul, ‘The Military Revolution in Russia, 1550–1682’, pp. 22, 28–9 and Martin, Medieval Russia, pp. 353 and 360.
8In general, on the importance of the Kazan campaign for Russia, see Romaniello, The Elusive Empire.
9Fennell (ed.), Prince A.M. Kurbsky’s History of Ivan IV, p. 49. This work also contains an account of the fall of Kazan.
10The full title was given by Ivan in the letter he sent home with Chancellor; see Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 293. Place names have not here been modernised. A later English ambassador, Sir Jerome Horsey, referred to the ‘great rabblement’ of the names of Ivan’s provinces that he was expected to recite, though provocatively he refused to do so: Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 265.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
1Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 73.
2Ivan was crowned on 16 January 1547; Edward on 20 February.
3De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 33–4.
4Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 95.
5Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 95.
6Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 237.
7Bogatyrev, The Sovereign and his Counsellors, p. 21; Miller, ‘The Viskovatyi Affair’, p. 304.
Chapter Forty
1Scheyfve to the Bishop of Arras, 10 April 1553. Later embassies brought specimens of crafted silver, like the large, shallow drinking cup, decorated with leaves and classical figures, brought by Anthony Jenkinson soon afterwards. On this occasion, though, they had not known their destination, let alone the Tsar’s liking for silver objects. See Dmitrieva and Abramova (eds), Britannia & Muscovy: English Silver at the Court of the Tsars, pp. 60–1.
2A similar symbolism was understood from being the first to dismount from a horse, and ambassadors reported what now seem ludicrous stand-offs in which a visitor and his Russian contact strained to hold a posture half off their horse, feet hovering over the ground, anxious not to be the first to touch down: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 254.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 429–30 and 2, p. 104.
4Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, p. 57.
5Campbell, ‘Gold, Silver and Precious Stones’, p. 156.
6De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 55–6; Hughes, ‘The Courts of Moscow and St Petersburg’, p. 296.
7Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 25.
8De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 68–71, p. 140.
9De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 87, quoting Kurbsky letter.
10De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 44.
11Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, p. 27, p. 59 (the repetition of ‘suppression’ is in the translation).
Chapter Forty-One
1The English guests would not have been particularly surprised. The ‘mute’ swan had been considered a royal bird in England since well before this was reaffirmed by the 1482 Act of Swans, but its flesh was a regular at the royal table.
2Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, p. 58.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 421. Account of Osip Napea voyage by Robert Best.
4Ibid.
Chapter Forty-Two
1Took, Running with Reindeer, p. 170.
2Henry Lane wrote of Willoughby ‘entering into a River immediately frozen up’ upon a ‘desert coast in Lappia’. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 265.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 228.
Chapter Forty-Three
1Ives, Lady Jane Grey, p. 248.
2Ives, Lady Jane Grey, p. 249.
3Edwards, Mary I, p. 131.
4Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, p. 170. For details of the procession, Edwards, Mary I, pp. 125–8.
5See Wooding, ‘The Marian Restoration and the Mass’.
6Edwards, Mary I, pp. 114–16.
7Regarding her marriage plans see Loades, Mary Tudor, pp. 201–3 and Kamen, Philip of Spain, pp. 54–7.
8Edwards, Mary I, pp. 172–3.
9Quoted in Ives, Lady Jane Grey, pp. 267–8.
10The last hours of Jane’s life are recounted in Ives, Lady Jane Grey, pp. 271–7. See the letter sent by Robert Swyft to the Earl of Shrewsbury, Lodge, Illustrations of British History, vol. 1, p. 235.
Chapter Forty-Four
1Hasse’s account is in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 294–9.
2See Tiberg, Moscow, Livonia and the Hanseatic League, 1487–1550.
3Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 30.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 422 (Robert Best account).
5Ostrowski, Muscovy and the Mongols, p. 51.
6Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 423.
7Berry and Crummey (eds), Rude and Barbarous Kingdom, p. 27. Unusually, Chancellor does seem to have bought this exaggerated claim. The Russian army of the time was very large by western European standards, but is thought to have been around 150,000-strong.
8Not until later in the sixteenth century was the metropolitan of Moscow officially hailed as Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church, but already, since the fall of Constantinople to the Ottomans, he was esteemed as the Orthodox Church’s most revered figure.
9See Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 415 and pp. 424–5.
10Kudriavtseva, ‘Ambassadorial Ceremony at the Tsar’s Court’, p. 60.
11In their veneration of St George Russians and Englishmen were at one. The dragon he battled with represented a variety of enemies: evil, paganism, the Roman Empire or other anti-Christian forces.
12It was the twentieth year of Ivan’s governance only if the years of his minority are included.
13De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 119–20.
Chapter Forty-Five
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 254.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 265.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 236.
4Nordenskiold, The Voyage of the Vega, p. 62 for instance.
5Or they might, like Martin Frobisher later on his voyages in search of a north-west passage, have carried it with them.
6For this argument see Gordon, ‘The Fate of Sir Hugh Willoughby and his Companions’.
Chapter Forty-Six
1The phrase ‘Merchant Adventurers of England’ comes from the charter granted by Philip and Mary, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 319. Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 59.
2It took Stephen Borough’s son Christopher two months over a quarter of a century later. Subsequent voyages did not depart until July, returning in September or even October, but the crew would surely have been anxious, this first time, to set out.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, pp. 264–9.
4Quoted in Willan, Early History, p. 45.
5It is true that much company paperwork has not survived, after its archive was destroyed over a century later during the Great Fire of London.
6Scammell, ‘Manning the English Merchant Service’, pp. 134 and 139.
7Simon Renard to the Emperor, Blois, 4 February 1551.
8Andrews, ‘The Elizabethan Seaman’, p. 250.
9Fury, Tides in the Affairs of Men, pp. 22–6.
10Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, chapter 7 passim; Senior, A Nation of Pirates.
11Williamson, Maritime Enterprise, pp. 365–7; see also Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 27–8.
12Scammell, ‘Manning the English Merchant Service’, p. 131.
13Scammell, ‘European Seamanship in the Great Age of Discovery’, p. 368.
Chapter Forty-Seven
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 333.
2S. Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus or Purchas, His Pilgrimes, quoted in Cotton, ‘Stephen Borough, the Navigator’ and in Mayers, North-East Passage, p. 76.
Chapter Forty-Eight
1The outline of Scandinavia and northern Russia on the surviving map of 1544 with which Cabot was involved is wildly inaccurate. The original is in the Bibliothèque Nationale de France. The British Library has a facsimile.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 239 and 254.
Chapter Forty-Nine
1Brennan, Sidneys of Penshurst, p. 23.
2Brennan, Sidneys of Penshurst, pp. 24–5.
3Brennan, Sidneys of Penshurst, pp. 24–5.
4Hannay, Philips Phoenix, p. 10. A general pardon, as was customary, was issued on Mary’s coronation, to which there were forty-seven named exemptions along with anyone imprisoned at the command of Mary and her Council. See Kesselring, Mercy and Authority, pp. 66–7.
5Brennan, Sidneys of Penshurst, p. 25. Edwards, Mary I, pp. 179–81. Sir Henry Sidney, DNB. Bedford is mentioned as being in Santiago de Compostela when Philip signed the contract on 25 June. For Bedford’s early involvement see 1555 charter, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 318.
6Kamen, Philip of Spain, p. 56.
7Edwards, Mary I, p. 182.
8Edwards, Mary I, pp. 183–5.
9Edwards, Mary I, p. 187.
10Edwards, Mary I, p. 190.
11Edwards, Mary I, p. 197.
Chapter Fifty
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 67.
2See Willan, Early History, p. 6 footnote 5.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 66. The royal licence is Cotton MSS. Faustina CII, f.110.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 66. Act of Incorporation 1566. Quoted in Willan, Early History, p. 6.
5Edwards, Mary I, p. 197.
6Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 254.
7Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 295.
8Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 296–7.
9Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 294. Of course no member of Mary’s Council was sent back to Russia in 1555.
10Quoted in Turner, The History of England, Vol. 11, p. 298.
Chapter Fifty-One
1Edwards, Mary I, p. 213; Kamen, Philip of Spain, p. 58; Whitelock, Mary Tudor, pp. 243, 246. Michael Surian, the Venetian ambassador, also agreed: see his letter home of 3 April 1557.
2J. Pratt and J. Stoughton (eds), The Acts and Monuments of John Foxe, Vol. 6, p. 572.
3Edwards, Mary I, p. 223.
4Duffy, The Voices of Morebath, p. 94.
5Duffy, The Voices of Morebath, p. 94.
6Sir John Cheke, DNB.
7See Duffy, The Voices of Morebath, pp. 72–8.
8Quoted in Knighton, ‘Westminster Abbey Restored’, p. 82.
9Quoted in Picard, Elizabeth’s London, p. 47.
10Page (ed.), Victoria History of the County of Kent, Vol. 2, pp. 194–8.
11Michiel, 4 November 1555.
12Webb, The Records of St Bartholomew’s Priory, 1, p. 277.
13These were repealed under Edward VI, who was not, of course, a paragon of tolerance. He may have planned a comparable persecution of those who spurned his Protestant vision, but death deprived him of the chance.
14Baldwin Smith, Fools, Martyrs, Traitors, chapter 8.
Chapter Fifty-Two
1The charter is printed in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 318–29. It is in Calendar of Patent Rolls, 1554–55, pp. 55–9. The original is now in C66/883 at the National Archives.
2Willan, Muscovy Merchants, pp. 14–16. Different copies of the charter give slightly varying numbers of members. Mayers, on p. 115, for instance, cites 213 men.
3Gerson, Studies in the History of English Commerce, p. 37.
4Also included among the aldermen in some lists is Mrs Margaret Kyrtom (or Kirton), though she is not mentioned by Willan.
5Thornbury, ‘St Bartholomew’s Hospital’, in his Old and New London, Vol. 2, pp. 359–63.
6Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 7 (10 July 1551). Rappaport, Worlds within worlds, p. 50.
7Elizabeth Wilford, DNB; Katherine Lomnour, Willan, Muscovy Merchants, p. 110. See also the document in M.A.E. Green, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of Elizabeth, 1601–03 with Addenda 1547–65 (original document reference SP 15/7 f.115).
8Willan, Muscovy Merchants, p. 9. The charter granted by Queen Mary is in Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 318–29.
9See coin at British Museum – illustration, http://www.britishmuseum.org/explore/highlights/highlight_image.aspx?image=ps289219.jpg&retpage=20841
Chapter Fifty-Three
1The name Buckland was sometimes written as Backhand. Like Chancellor and Stephen Borough, Buckland was an investor as well as a company employee. See Willan, Muscovy Merchants, p. 83.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 380.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 303.
4Whitelock, Mary Tudor, p. 253.
5See Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, pp. xxxix, 46, 50–60. None of this prevented Eden being arrested and deprived of office, charged with heresy.
6Edwards, Mary I, p. 267; L. Porter, Mary Tudor: The First Queen, p. 338; Whitelock, Mary Tudor, p. 255.
7Edwards, Mary I, p. 267 footnote. The Privy Council order is reproduced in The Society of Antiquaries of London, Archaeologia or Miscellaneous Tracts relating to Antiquity, Vol. 18 (1817), p. 182.
8Kamen, Philip of Spain, pp. 62–3.
Chapter Fifty-Four
1Michiel, 21 May 1555.
2Hamel, England and Russia, pp. 87–8. Henry Lane records that Willoughby et al. were found by Russian fishermen in the summer of 1554 in his letter to William Sanderson, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 265.
3Giovanni Michiel to the Venetian Doge and Senate, 4 November 1555, Rawdon Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Vol. 6 Part 1 1555–1558, p. 240.
4Hamel, England and Russia, pp. 87–8.
5Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 267.
Chapter Fifty-Five
1Kerner, The Urge to the Sea, p. 39.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 81 and p. 173.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 239. See Orme, Early British Swimming, p. 49 and passim.
4For Christopher Hudson, or Hoddesdon see Willan, Early History, pp. 34–5.
5Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 407.
6On Lane see Willan, Early History, p. 25. On Best, ibid., p. 36 (note 5) but Willan is surely mistaken that he was sent from England into Scotland, since Hakluyt is sure he was in Moscow with Chancellor.
Chapter Fifty-Six
1Baldakin was an ornate fabric made of gold and silver.
2The letter from Philip and Mary is printed in Tolstoy, First Forty Years, pp. 9–10.
3The ‘And the Son’, or ‘Filioque’, clause in the Nicene Creed lay at the heart of the schism between East and West which solidified in 1054. The authority of the Pope in Rome was another cause of disagreement, and here, of course, the dispute was rather too close to home given the similar rejection of Rome by Protestants in England, which had been, of course, a common bond between London and Moscow – though no more.
4At a distance of thirty-one years, Lane had got the names slightly wrong; as Killingworth no doubt remembered more accurately, Arthur Edwards had stayed in Vologda, while Edward Price and Robert Best joined the party in Moscow.
5See Henry Lane letter: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 267. See also De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 84–5.
Chapter Fifty-Seven
1See also the list of cloths given as sent in 1557, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 381–2.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 380–91.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 220. Norris, Tudor Costume and Fashion, p. 345.
4Plesco is known now as Pskov, and is a city in the far west of European Russia.
5Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 416.
6Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 139.
7Martin, Medieval Russia, pp. 393ff.
8There is a useful short summary of the situation in Hosking, Russia and the Russians, pp. 117–19.
9This was Dr Joseph Hamel, whose work was published initially in German in 1847. See Quinn (ed.), The Hakluyt Handbook, p. 162 footnote 2. The version in Hakluyt is in Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 313–18.
10See the discussion in Willan, Early History, pp. 11–14.
11If there is any truth in the claim, later made, that Willoughby’s suit of clothes survived at his family home of Wollaton, then his body must, in all likelihood, have sailed home with the Philip and Mary. Hamel, England and Russia, p. 94.
12Hamel, England and Russia, p. 146.
Chapter Fifty-Eight
1See John Incent’s account: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 356–64 (although Hamel, p. 146, gives 2 August).
2Willan, Early History, pp. 52–3 and see reference in footnote.
3For their names see Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 366. Hamel, England and Russia, pp. 146–7.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 381.
5Henry Lane to William Sanderson, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, pp. 264-9.
6Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 380.
Chapter Fifty-Nine
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 380.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 381.
3Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 127 (27 February 1557).
Chapter Sixty
1John Incent account, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 361. Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 127 (27 February). How little was generally known of the distant realm from which this man came is suggested by the fact that Holinshed, in his chronicle, referred to Napea’s master as ‘the emperor of Cathay, Muscovy and Russeland’: Holinshed, Chronicles, Vol. 6, p. 1132 (This is transcribed and analysed online at the Holinshed Project: http://www.cerns.ox.ac.uk/holinshed/).
2Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 127. See the references to plate at the wedding feast of Philip and Mary, Edwards, Mary I, p. 191.
3Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 127 (27 February). Admittedly this was not always then an exclusively nocturnal garment: Norris, Tudor Costume and Fashion, p. 262.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 381.
5Michiel Surian, 3 April 1557.
6Whitelock, Mary Tudor, pp. 277–81.
7Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, pp. 129–30 (20–31 March).
8Giovanni Michiel, 29 July 1555.
9Michiel Surian, 3 April 1557. Surian took over from Giovanni Michiel in the spring of 1557.
10Gerson, Studies in the History of English Commerce, pp. 55–6. The letter, in Latin, is printed in full in Tolstoy, First Forty Years, pp. 13–14.
11Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 379.
12See Alcock’s letter describing his experiences, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 395–7. Also see the further accusations and rationale in Gerson, Studies in the History of English Commerce, p. 56.
13Emperor Ferdinand to Queen Elizabeth, 17 August 1559.
14Gerson, Studies in the History of English Commerce, p. 57.
15Whitelock, Mary Tudor, p. 277.
16Slack, ‘Mortality Crises and Epidemic Disease in England, 1485–1610’, p. 31. Strype, Ecclesiastical Memorials, 2, pp. 156–7. Fisher, ‘Influenza and Inflation in Tudor England’, pp. 126–7.
17See Knighton, ‘Westminster Abbey Restored’, pp. 77–123.
18Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, pp. 131 and 137 (6 April and 28 May).
19Giovanni Michiel, 4 Nov 1555.
20Whitelock, Mary Tudor, p. 287.
21On Calais’ perceived importance to the English see Michiel’s report made in 1557.
22Giovanni Michiel, 13 May 1557.
23Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 130 (31 March 1557).
24Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 390–1.
Chapter Sixty-One
1He had certainly been in contact with men in Spain, like Alonso de Santa Cruz, who attempted to measure longitude this way: see Portuondo, Secret Science, p. 69. And there were others too; see Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 66.
2Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. xlvii. The comment was included by Eden in the dedication he wrote to his translation of John Taisner’s De natura magnetis &c.
3Skelton, ‘Sebastian Cabot’.
Chapter Sixty-Two
1Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 465.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 268.
3It was not long before the company was equipping its ships to hunt whales in these northern waters, cutting them up on deck and boiling their blubber to produce oil. A careful list in 1575 described the necessary equipment, including javelins, great and small, harping irons, ‘great hooks to turn the Whale’, pulleys, tackles, huge baskets and knives: Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, pp. 162–3.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 375.
5Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. xliii.
6Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 398.
7Account of Christopher Borough, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 2, p. 181. For a general survey see Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 79–86.
Chapter Sixty-Three
1Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, pp. 290 and 292. The comments were originally made by Sebastian Munster and John Faber.
2Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 384.
3Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 399.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 400.
5Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 297, quoting Jacobus Ziglerus.
6Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 383.
7Baldwin, Sumptuary Legislation, p. 213 and pp. 216–20, quoted in Willan, Early History, p. 55.
8Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 401–2.
9Detailed instructions for this rope-walk are in the letter of Thomas Hawtrey to Henry Lane, Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 392. Willan, Early History, p. 40.
10Morris, ‘Naval Cordage Procurement in Early Modern England’, p. 88, quoting Hakluyt.
11Willan, Early History, pp. 55–6; Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia, p. 5.
12Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 401.
13Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 384. Willan, Early History, p. 38.
14Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 405. Willan, Early History, p. 39.
15Land which Sir Hugh Willoughby believed he had seen in 1553 was known in England long after as Willoughby’s Land and was depicted as an island on numerous late 16th century and early 17th century maps, such as Mercator’s map of the north pole published in 1595, before it was established that no such island actually existed.
16Nicholas Chancellor’s account of the voyage was included by Hakluyt in his first edition of 1589 though he removed it from his fuller edition of ten years later. See the facsimile edition of the 1589 text introduced by D.B. Quinn and R.A. Skelton and published by the Hakluyt Society, pp. 476–82.
17In 1565 Anthony Jenkinson argued that the discovery of a unicorn’s head (that of a narwhal, presumably), on the island of Vaigach, showed a passage did exist to ‘the Lands of Cathay, China and other Oriental Regions’, Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia, p. 6. See the doubts of Sir Humphrey Gilbert: Quinn (ed.), Voyages and Colonising Enterprises, p. 157.
18Willan, Early History, pp. 41–2. Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 384–5.
19Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, p. 402.
Chapter Sixty-Four
1Quoted in Whitelock, Mary Tudor, p. 291.
2Edwards, Mary I, p. 325.
3Giovanni Michiel had been the Venetian ambassador in England from May 1554. His final letter, with its full report on the state of England, was dated 26 January 1557. R Brown (ed.), Calendar of State Papers Relating to English Affairs in the Archives of Venice, Vol. 6: 1555-1558, pp. 1041–95. Whitelock, Mary Tudor, p. 297.
4Edwards, Mary I, p. 333. Whitelock, Mary Tudor, p. 306.
5Nichols (ed.), Diary of Henry Machyn, p. 178 (17 November).
Chapter Sixty-Five
1Fennell (ed.), Correspondence, pp. 19, 41.
2Morgan and Coote, Early Voyages and Travels, 2, p. 284.
3De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 229 for Kurbsky ‘children of darkness’ quote.
4Hosking, Russia and the Russians, p. 123. Crummey, ‘Reform under Ivan IV’, pp. 19–22.
5De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, p. 193. Bogatyrev, ‘Ivan IV’, p. 259. On the description also by other western European observers of the horrors committed see Poe, ‘A Distant World: Russian Relations with Europe Before Peter the Great’, pp. 14–15.
6Willan, Early History, p. 101. Morgan and Coote, Early Voyages and Travels, 2, pp. 256–7.
7Morgan and Coote, Early Voyages and Travels, 2, pp. 335–40.
8De Madariaga, Ivan the Terrible, pp. 182–3, 194–5.
9Morgan and Coote, Early Voyages and Travels, 2, pp. 281–2; Willan, Early History, p. 98.
10Willan, Early History, p. 119. See also Anderson, Britain’s Discovery of Russia, pp. 5–6.
11Willan, Early History, p. 80.
Chapter Sixty-Six
1Purchas, Hakluytus Posthumus, xiii, p. 5. Willan, Early History, p. 3.
2Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, p. 73. Scammell, ‘Hakluyt and the economic thought of his time’, p. 22.
3Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement, pp. 9–10.
4Hakluyt, Principal Navigations, 1, pp. 267, 237–9 (instructions nos 21 and 28).
5Arber (ed.), First Three English Books, p. 285.
6Lamb, ‘Science by Litigation: A Cosmographic Feud’, p. 40.
7F. Godwin, Annals of the Reign of Queen Mary, p. 354.
8Ballad by Thomas Churchyard. Quoted in Taylor, Tudor Geography, p. 41 and Stefansson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 2, p. 231.