by John Butman
8
TRESOR TROUVEE
IT WAS THE ordinary stone picked up by Robert Garrard—and deemed insignificant by Frobisher—that caused a sensation that March of 1577. About the size of a small loaf of bread, and black in color, it turned out to be something much more than a curio, a worthless souvenir from an icy, barren land. This fragment of the New World seemed to contain the most precious metal known to man: gold.
Garrard had not made it back to England the previous October—he was one of the five mariners taken by the Inuits. But Frobisher kept the friable stone, which could easily be broken into chunks, and gave a piece to Michael Lok as a gesture of respect for his support and recognition of his investment.1 After all, there was not much else to give him—no gold or silver, no spices or silks, no exotic goods, and no letter of greeting from the Great Khan of Cathay, along the lines of the letter that Richard Chancellor had brought back from Ivan Vasilivich, Tsar of Muscovy. Yes, there was the astonishing news that Frobisher had discovered the entrance to the Northwest Passage, but this would not immediately provide a financial return on Lok’s considerable personal investment of £738—nearly half the total venture cost of around £1,600.
Then, according to George Best’s possibly fabricated account, a certain gentlewoman—“one of the adventurers wives”—threw a piece of the stone into a fire. It burned for some time and then, after it was “taken forth and quenched in a little vinegar,” it “glistered with a bright Marquesset of gold.” Lok now began to fixate on the possibility that the stone contained gold and that Frobisher might have stumbled upon an unexpected source of wealth. So, even as he worked with his fellow investors to prepare for and promote a second voyage in search of the Northwest Passage, he secretly pursued his own assay of the lump of ore.
An assay—from the Old French for “a trial”—is a complex process that combines art and science and was still being developed in the sixteenth century. Precious metals—including gold and silver—are typically embedded in rock and earth. They are rarely found in a pure state. The purpose of the assay, therefore, is to separate the precious metals and render them into a pure condition, with the goal of determining the percentage of gold or silver in the ore. The most common approach was to burn the ore in a furnace, often in combination with other materials, until the precious metal melted out. There was no standard procedure, and results could vary widely depending on many factors, including heat, duration, additives, and the skill of the assayer.
Lok sent some of his ore to William Williams, one of the assay masters at the Tower of London and one of England’s leading metallurgists.2 The assay came back negative. The stone, Williams said, was an iron compound of some kind—a pyrite, otherwise known as fool’s gold. Lok, reluctant to accept Williams’s findings, took samples to two other experts. They both confirmed Williams’s view that the rock was worthless. Lok refused to accept these tests as conclusive, either. So, like a hypochondriac seeking a doctor who will confirm his imagined ailment, he looked for an assayer who would give him the analysis he wanted.3
He soon found one: Giovanni Baptista Agnello, a Venetian goldsmith living in London, who was considered an expert in alchemy and metallurgy.4 He examined Lok’s sample and, after three days of tests, reported that he had managed to extract “a very little powder of gold” from the ore. But Lok, finally hearing what he wanted to hear, now seemed unable to accept it. Why was it that Agnello had found gold when three other skilled assayers had found none? Agnello replied, in his native Italian, easily understood by the well-traveled Lok, “Bisogna sapere adulare la natura” (You have to know how to flatter nature).5 Was Agnello dissembling? And, if so, to what end?
Lok met with Agnello several more times, and during these conversations the Venetian surprised Lok by pestering him for information on where the ore came from. He even suggested that the two of them might form some kind of enterprise to mine the ore and benefit from the proceeds for their “own use.” Lok finally divulged that the ore came from “the new land discovered by Mr. Frobisher” and that the Cathay Company held the commercial rights to the place. In other words, there could be no private dealing—which was always a concern in such joint-stock ventures. Lok told Agnello about the law of, as they spelled it, tresor trouvee—found treasure—which meant that such riches that belonged to the realm could not be taken without permission and license from the queen.
Even so, as he rejected Agnello’s proposals, Lok was not yet ready to reveal his secret assaying activities. In late January 1577, he dined with Frobisher, who said he was “desirous to know what was found in the stone.” Lok prevaricated. He said that he had given samples to three or four assayers, and that one of them had found a bit of tin and a trace of silver, which pleased Frobisher. Lok did not mention Agnello or the grains of gold.6
Over time, this dissembling seems to have weighed on Lok’s mind. Although he was the principal organizer of the venture, he was now acting on his own, contrary to the joint-stock principle. Also, by contravening the rule of secrecy surrounding the venture, he was taking a potentially fatal risk. As Bernardino de Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, later reported to Philip, the Frobisher venture was so hush-hush that if anyone “should divulge anything about it, he should be punished with death.”7
Three days after his dinner with Frobisher, Lok sent a letter to Elizabeth, briefing her on his activities.8 He did not provide sufficient detail to satisfy Sir Francis Walsingham, the queen’s principal secretary and member of the Privy Council, who read the letter first. Walsingham was one of the advocates of—and investors in—the Frobisher voyage and he immediately sensed something was not quite right about Lok’s written account. This is not surprising, given Walsingham’s background, expertise, and interests. Born around 1530, he was the son of a prominent lawyer and, like William Cecil, his mentor, he was educated at Cambridge and Gray’s Inn. He and his family were zealous Protestants and, soon after Mary’s accession, he had, like Lok, fled abroad. He had lived in the Swiss city of Basel, one of the great centers of Protestantism, and studied at the university. Later, he enrolled at the university in Padua, one of the oldest in Europe, where he studied civil law. After returning to England following Elizabeth’s accession, he became a Member of Parliament and entered service at court, working for Cecil and, for a time, alongside Sir Thomas Smith as one of the two ambassadors to France.9
Walsingham’s reputation as a rising star was solidified in 1573, when he became Secretary of State, once again working with Sir Thomas Smith. In this role, he became, in effect, the queen’s “spymaster” and chief of her “secret service,” assembling an extensive network of agents who were positioned in foreign courts and who gathered and relayed intelligence back to London.10 So when Lok came to discuss the matter with Walsingham, he found himself dealing with a man accustomed to investigation and interrogation and on the lookout for duplicity or scheming. Walsingham accused Lok of not revealing the entire story of the ore in his note to Elizabeth. Realizing he was on weak ground, Lok quickly confessed, admitting everything about Agnello and the assay. Walsingham was unimpressed by what Lok had to say and dismissed it all as an “alchemist matter”—in other words, worthless. Even so, he crumbled the ore sample into three or four pieces, explaining that he would distribute them among “diverse men to make proofs.”11
There followed a protracted series of investigations, conversations, and negotiations among the investors, courtiers, and assayers. It all came to a head on March 28, when the commission appointed by the Privy Council met at the house of Sir William Winter, surveyor of the navy. After the meeting, Winter took Lok aside and asked to meet privately with him the next day. Described by Cecil as a “man to be cherished,” Winter was a figure to be reckoned with.12 A founding member of the Muscovy Company, his long experience in a wide range of commercial ventures—from Africa’s Gold Coast to Ireland—made him a highly competent head of the Privy Council’s commission.
When they met the following morning, Winter
revealed to Lok that he knew all about Agnello, the ore, and the gold. It seems that Agnello had violated his own pledge of secrecy and disclosed his work—almost certainly to Cecil, who held secret meetings with the Venetian, and unquestionably to Sir John Berkeley, an enthusiastic investor in overseas enterprises who had been among Sir Thomas Smith’s staunchest supporters in the Irish colonial venture.13 Eventually, word reached Winter, who, with Berkeley, resolved to engage yet another assayer. They chose Jonas—also known as Christopher—Schütz, who was in England on temporary leave from his master, the Duke of Saxony. Described as “a Saxon metallurgist”—that is, among the most knowledgeable in the world—he also had experience with England’s fledgling mining industry.14
Winter explained to Lok that Schütz had duly conducted his tests and had done more than just confirm Agnello’s assay results. He pointed to a golden lump glittering on his windowsill and told him that, according to Schütz, the ore was much richer than they had imagined—a “far greater treasure than was known.”15 Schütz estimated there were four ounces of gold in every hundred pounds of ore. In financial terms, that meant each ton was worth some £240. And, with ore this rich on the surface of the earth, there was possibly much more gold that could be mined underground. It also meant that, as Winter explained, this venture was far too great for them to pursue solely as a company. It was now a matter of national importance. The queen had to be informed and involved.
ONCE THE NEWS broke, the Frobisher venture was swiftly transformed from a quest for the Northwest Passage into a hunt for gold, with the hope that the mineral wealth of England’s new Arctic region could be exploited for the enrichment of the voyage’s investors and the good of the realm. Lok’s financial worries swiftly evaporated, as London was gripped by gold fever and new investors pledged money. In the six weeks between the news of gold and Frobisher’s departure, nearly £2,000 was pledged, taking the total to £5,150—more than enough to cover the costs of the second voyage.16 Courtiers were the biggest enthusiasts, contributing two-thirds of the new capital, compared with one-third in the first voyage. Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, tripled his investment—from fifty pounds to one hundred and fifty. Even more striking was the about-face of Walsingham. He set aside his skepticism and quadrupled his investment, pledging two hundred pounds.17
Among the merchants, who were usually more cautious than courtiers with their money, Lionel Duckett and Thomas Gresham remained enthusiastic, even as the priorities of the venture shifted away from the search for Cathay. That may be partly because they, along with Winter and several of the courtiers, were already knowledgeable and significant supporters of England’s nascent gold and silver mining industry. For them, it was another extraction project. It did not seem like a shot in the dark.
Both Duckett and Winter had been involved in English mining ventures. Duckett served as the governor of the Company of the Mines Royal, which had been incorporated in 1568 for the discovery of precious metals, namely gold and silver, and Winter acted as his assistant governor.18 A “mine royal” was one that contained gold or silver and as such was automatically considered the possession of the crown, regardless of who owned the land. Other leading investors included Robert Dudley, William Cecil, and Thomas “Customer” Smythe—all members of the Muscovy Company.
These three—Dudley, Cecil, and Smythe—were also prominent supporters of England’s other major mining company, the Mineral and Battery Works, which was licensed by Elizabeth to mine lesser minerals, those with more practical, often industrial, uses—notably “calamine stone.”19 Better known today as zinc oxide, calamine is a necessary element for making latten—a brass-like alloy used in the manufacture of wool cards, machines with bent wire teeth for carding, or untangling, wool before it is spun and woven into cloth. Wool cards, essential to England’s most vital trade, had long been imported.20 Now, it was hoped, wool producers would be able to have a local supply. England would be self-sufficient—just as Sir Thomas Smith had advocated in his A Discourse of the Commonweal.
A striking feature of these emerging English mining companies was their reliance on merchants and metallurgists from the German states of the Holy Roman Empire. In both organizations, the patents—as opposed to the shares—were held jointly by one Englishman and one German. Letters patent for the Mines Royal were granted to Thomas Thurland and Daniel Höchstetter.21 Letters patent for the Mineral and Battery Works were granted to William Humfrey, assay master at the Royal Mint in London, and Jonas Schütz, the metallurgist employed to carry out the assay on Lok’s ore.22
The English had long boasted a thriving tin industry in the southwest—the desire for tin had attracted the Romans to England, the most northerly outpost of its empire, more than fifteen hundred years earlier—but they lagged the German states when it came to the mining of other metals. Ever since the mid-900s A.D., with the accidental discovery of the great silver mine of Rammelsberg in the Harz mountains of Saxony, German miners had won renown across Europe. Legend has it that the mine was discovered after a Teutonic knight tied his steed to a tree while hunting for deer. As he pursued his quarry on foot, the horse pawed the ground, struck its hooves against a rock, and exposed a shiny vein of silver.23 The disgorging of silver that ensued produced the fortunes of, among others, the Fugger family, who rivaled the Medici in their wealth.
Over the years, Germans became master miners, leaders in the emerging science of metallurgy. In 1556, Georgius Agricola, a Saxon like Jonas Schütz and Europe’s leading expert, published De Re Metallica, one of the first great manuals on “the art of mining.”24 The work is filled with advice on a range of practical matters, such as the best place to “obtain a mine” and the most effective way to recognize the natural signs of a vein beneath the surface—such as a patch of herbage on which no frost has formed. Agricola also tackled some philosophical controversies, in particular the issue of whether mineral wealth such as gold was inherently evil. He contended that it wasn’t—precious metals were essential to the creation of tools needed by physicians, architects, painters, merchants, and artists in a good civilization.25
With German help, the English mining companies saw some early success. In 1565, soon after the founding of the Mineral and Battery Works, German miners established a blast furnace in Keswick, in the heart of the ancient Lake District in the north of England. The following year, as the company engaged in an accelerated program of surveying, prospecting, smelting, and assaying ores, some encouraging discoveries were made. By June 1566, calamine had been found in Somerset, a traditional tin-mining district.26 A month later, a copper mine was discovered in the Newlands valley in the Lake District that was said to be “the best in England.”27 The German miners dubbed it Gottesgab—God’s gift. Over time, this was corrupted into English as Goldscope mine.28 While calamine was essential to the cloth industry, copper ore was valuable because, among other things, it sometimes contains small amounts of gold and silver.
But by 1577, as Frobisher prepared for his second voyage, England’s mining companies had not discovered a gold or silver mine that would transform the fortunes of the investors and the country—as the discoveries in the New World had done for Spain.
THE STORY OF Spanish New World wealth loomed large in the minds of English investors. Spain, after all, had no tradition of mining whatsoever. And yet, in the half century after Columbus’s first voyage, Spanish conquistadors had explored the West Indies for precious metals and found enough alluvial gold, first in Hispaniola and then in the surrounding islands, to persuade them to search the mainland. In 1518, Hernán Cortés, who first went to the West Indies in 1504, started to subjugate the Aztec empire in what is now Mexico, pillaging their stores of treasure. Francisco Pizarro pushed southward into the land of the Incas, largely with the goal of finding gold, and after garroting Atahualpa, the Incan emperor, in 1533, claimed sovereignty over that territory for Spain.29
To capitalize on the rich trove of precious metals they found in Mexico and South America,
the Spanish established settlements and organized their newly claimed territory into three governmental regions, each ruled by a viceroy. New Spain lay to the north, basically what is now Mexico; New Granada comprised the northern area of South America; while Peru was delineated as the vast area embracing the Andean mountain range.30
By the 1540s, New World metals constituted an important source of revenue for Spain. But the Spanish spectacularly hit the jackpot in 1545 when they stumbled across the silver mountain of Potosí, which sits on a cold arid plateau in the Andes, more than 12,000 feet above sea level. There are many stories about how the Spanish became aware of the cerro rico—the rich mountain—of Potosí, in what was then called Peru, now modern-day Bolivia. One features a native, who, while trying to recapture a bolting llama, fell or tripped on a silver-gleaming outcropping of rock—four-legged creatures seem to take a starring role in these tales.31 Another story, perhaps more likely, tells of a man called Diego Gualpa who scaled the red-tinted peak looking for the location of a shrine in the hope of looting precious relics. Near the bracing summit, a bluster of wind thrust him to the ground. He seized at a rock and found he was gripping a lump of silver ore.32
These eureka stories may all be apocryphal. It seems most likely that Incans had long known about the silver mountain. They had already established mining operations at a place called Porco, some twenty miles southwest of Potosí. They had even developed a smelting method that was, in effect, a small-scale, wind-driven blast furnace—the guayra, derived from the Quecha word for “wind”—which they set up on mountain ridges.33 In 1549, Pedro de Cieza de León, who wrote a history of Peru, reported that at night there were so many of these furnaces burning “all over the countryside and hillsides that they look like decorative lights. And when the wind blows hard, much silver is extracted. When the wind falls, they can extract none. And so, just as the wind is useful for sailing on the sea, so it is here, for obtaining silver.”34