by John Butman
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 watercolors. 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.
PART I
BEFORE AMERICA 1551–1574
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.