by John Butman
7. THE SUPPOSED STRAIT
1 Christopher Hall, “The First Voyage of M. Martin Frobisher, to the Northwest, for the search of the straight or passage to China, written by Christopher Hall, Master of the Gabriel, and made in the yeere of our Lord 1576,” in Vilhjalmur Stefansson, ed., The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 2 vols. (London: The Argonaut Press, 1938; in Amsterdam: N. Israel and New York: Da Capo Press, 1971), 1:147–54; 149.
2 [Lok], “East India by the Northwest[ward],” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 80; Hall, “The First Voyage of M. Martin Frobisher,” in Stefansson, ed., Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 1:150.
3 Frobisher and Hall to Dee, 1576, excerpted in Taylor, Tudor Geography 1485–1583, 262–63.
4 Hall, “The First Voyage of M. Martine Frobisher,” in Stefansson, ed., The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 1:151.
5 Helen Wallis, “England’s Search for the Northern Passages in the Sixteenth and Early Seventeenth Centuries,” Arctic 37, no. 4 (1984): 453–72; 463.
6 Best, A True Discourse, in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 71 (“swallowed up” and “cast away”); [Lok], “East India by the Northwest[ward],” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 81.
7 Ibid., 72 (“extreme foul weather”); 70 (“undone,” “determined and resolved,” and “or else never to return”).
8 Ibid., 71 (“high and ragged land”); 72 (“Queen Elizabeth’s Forland” and “conceived no small hope”).
9 Ibid., 73.
10 Hall, “The First Voyage of M. Martine Frobisher,” in Stefansson, ed., Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 1:153.
11 Ibid., 1:154.
12 [Lok], “East India by the Northwest[ward],” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 83–84.
13 Ibid., 84.
14 Best, A True Discourse, in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 73.
15 Ibid., 74.
16 Ibid., 75.
17 [Lok], “East India by the Northwest[ward],” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 87.
18 “Accounts, with subsidiary documents, of Michael Lok, treasurer, of first, second and third voyages of Martin Frobisher to Cathay by the north-west passage”: The National Archives (Kew), E 164/35, fo. 14; the globe or “sphere” cost 8 shillings. Also: Kenneth R. Andrews, Trade, Plunder and Settlement: Maritime Enterprise and the Genesis of the British Empire, 1480–1630 (1984; repr., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 173.
19 “Michaell Lok Saluteth the Worshipfull Commyssioners,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 336.
20 Alden T. Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters: American Indians in Britain, 1500–1776 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 1–4.
21 Best, A True Discourse, in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 74 (“new pray,” “strange infidel”); [Lok], “East India by the Northwest[ward],” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 87.
22 [Lok], “East India by the Northwest[ward],” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 87.
23 Ibid., 87.
24 Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, 3.
25 “Articles of Graunt from the Queene’s Majestie to the Companye of Kathai,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 111–113: 111.
26 Ibid., 113 (“High Admiral”, “wares”); 112 (“to seek, discover”). Also, “Articles consented and fully agreed by the Company of Kathaye,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 114–115.
27 “Articles consented and fully agreed by the Company of Cathay”, in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, East Indies, China and Japan: 1513–1616, ed. W. Noel Sainsbury (London: Longman, Green, Longman & Roberts, 1862), #31, 16–17.
28 Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 91.
29 Sir Humphrey Gilbert, A Discourse of a Discoverie for a New Passage to Cataia (London: Henry Middleton, 1576), in Quinn, Voyages and Colonising Enterprises, 1:129–64; 134.
30 Ibid., 135.
31 Ibid., 1:160–61. The quotes in this and the next paragraph are taken from these pages.
32 John Roche Dasent, ed., Acts of the Privy Council of England Volume IX, 1575–1577 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1894), 302–3.
33 McDermott, Martin Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer, 149.
34 Vaughan, Transatlantic Encounters, 3–4.
35 Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 110.
36 Ibid., 108–9.
8. TRESOR TROUVEE
1 The story of the assaying business is told in Lok’s letter of April 22, 1577, “Mr. Lockes Discoors Touching the Ewre, 1577,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 92–99; 92.
2 Donald D. Hogarth, Peter W. Boreham, and John G. Mitchell, Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Venture, 1576–1581. Mines, Minerals, Metallurgy (Hull, Quebec: Canadian Museum of Civilzation, 1994), 21.
3 “Mr. Lockes Discoors,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 92. Williams and another assayer, Wheeler, said the stone was “markesyte.”
4 William M. Jones, “Two Learned Italians in Elizabethan England,” Italica 32, no. 4 (1955): 242–47; 245–46.
5 “Mr. Lockes Discoors,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 93.
6 Ibid., 93 (“own use”; “the new land”; “desirous to know”).
7 “Bernardino de Mendoza to the King,” March 31, 1578, in Calendar of Letters and State Papers Relating to English Affairs, preserved principally in the archives of Simancas, Volume 2, Elizabeth: 1568–1579, ed. Martin A. S. Hume (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1894), #484, 567–69; 568.
8 “Mr. Lockes Discoors,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 92–99.
9 John Cooper, The Queen’s Agent. Francis Walsingham at the Court of Elizabeth I (London: Faber and Faber, 2012), 26–33 (exile); 39 (elected M.P.); 42, 49 (work with Cecil); 59 (ambassador).
10 Ibid., 86–87 (sworn in as Secretary of State); 92 (spymaster).
11 “Mr. Lockes Discoors,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 94.
12 M. R. P. and P. W. Hasler, “William Wynter (c.1528–89), of Deptford, Kent, and Lydney, Glos.,” in P. W. Hasler, ed., The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603 (London: History of Parliament Trust, 1981; online edition).
13 For Cecil’s meetings with Agnello, see Harkness, The Jewel House, 142–43, 282n1.
14 Hogarth et al., Martin Frobisher’s Northwest Venture, 73; James W. Scott, “Technological and Economic Changes in the Metalliferous Mining and Smelting Industries of Tudor England,” Albion: A Quarterly Journal Concerned with British Studies 4, no. 2 (1972): 94–110; 100; Robert Baldwin, “Speculative Ambitions and the Reputations of Frobisher’s Metallurgists,” in Thomas Symons, ed., Meta Incognita, 2:401–476; 405–406.
15 “Mr. Lockes Discoors,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 97–98.
16 See “A Brieff Note of all the Cost and Charge… for the First Voyage… in June, Anno 1567,” and “The Bryef Account of the Second Voyage,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 115–16 and 166–67, respectively. Lok notes the “whole stok of the adventurers” to be £875 in June 1576 (116) and the sum he’s received “of all the venturers” to be £5,150 (166). By March, some forty-five investors had pledged £3,225, meaning that another £1,925 was raised after news of gold was circulated.
17 See Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 107, 109.
18 M. B. Donald, Elizabethan Copper. The History of the Company of Mines Royal, 1568–1605 (London: Pergamon Press, 1955), 43–47 (Duckett); 52–55 (Wynter).
19 Cecil T. Carr, ed., Select Charters of Trading Companies, A.D. 1530–1707 (London: Bernard Quartich, 1913), 16–20. Also: M. B. Donald, Elizabethan Monopolies: The History of the Company of Mineral and Battery Works from 1765 to 1604 (London: Oliver & Boyd, 1961), 17–18.
20 Scott, The
Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, 1:39–40; 104.
21 Carr, ed., Select Charters, 4. Also, Donald, Elizabethan Copper, 15–42.
22 Ibid., 16. Also, Donald, Elizabethan Monopolies, 24–34.
23 Martin Lynch, Mining in World History (London: Reaktion Books, 2002), 16.
24 Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica, trans. Herbert Clark Hoover and Lou Henry Hoover (New York: Dover Publications Inc., 1950), xxvi.
25 Ibid., 33 (“obtain”); 38 (frost); 20 (physicians).
26 “Wm. Humfrey to Sir Wm. Cecill,” June 30, 1566, in CSP-Domestic, 1547–1580, vol. 40, #17, 275.
27 “Thos. Thurland to [Cecil],” August 1, 1566, in ibid., vol. 40, #41, 276.
28 Douglas Grant, “The Sixth Duke of Somerset, Thomas Robinson and the Newlands Mines,” in Transactions of the Cumberland and Westmoreland Antiquarian and Archaeological Society, Series 2, vol. 85, 1985, 143–62.
29 Lynch, Mining in World History, 28. For a remarkable account of Cortés’s exploits in Mexico see Bernal Díaz, The Conquest of New Spain, ed. and trans. J. M. Cohen (London: Penguin Books, 1963).
30 For discussion of the establishment of Spanish mining activity in the New World, see Lynch, Mining in World History, 25–29.
31 Peter Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain: Indian Labor in Potosí, 1545–1650 (Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 2009), 8.
32 Lynch, Mining in World History, 38.
33 See Bakewell, Miners of the Red Mountain, 15–17. Quechua was a dialect spoken by some Incas of the period. It is still spoken today.
34 Ibid., 16–17.
35 Bartolomé Arzáns de Orsúa Vela, Tales of Potosí, ed. R.C. Padden and trans. Frances M. López-Morillas (Providence, RI: Brown University Press, 1975), xi; xiii.
36 Ibid., xiv.
37 Lynch, Mining in World History, 38. By 1611, it would boast a population of 100,000: Vela, Tales of Potosí, xiii.
38 Vela, Tales of Potosí, xxv.
39 For a discussion of the Spanish fleet, see Timothy R. Walton, The Spanish Treasure Fleets (Sarasota, FL: Pineapple Press Inc., 1994), 47.
40 Ibid., 51.
41 Gwendolin B. Cobb, “Supply and Transportation for the Potosí Mines,” The Hispanic American Historical Review 29, no. 1 (1949): 25–45; 34.
42 D. B. Quinn, “Some Spanish Reactions to Elizabethan Colonial Enterprises,” in Transactions of the Royal Historical Society 1 (1951): 1–21; 2.
43 Fernand Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization & Capitalism, 15th–18th Century, Volume 2, trans. Siân Reynolds (New York: Harper & Row, 1982; First Perennial Library edition, 1986), 198.
44 Lynch, Mining in World History, 14–15; Braudel, Wheels of Commerce, 198.
45 Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce, 198.
46 Neil MacGregor, A History of the World in 100 Objects (London: Allen Lane, 2010), 516–22.
47 “Instructions given to Martyne Ffurbisher, Gent., for orders to be observed in the viage nowe recommended to him for the North West parts and Cathay,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 117–120. Also, James McDermott, “The Company of Cathay: the financing and organising of the Frobisher voyages,” in Symons, ed., Meta Incognita, 1:147–178: 163.
48 “A little bundle of the tryeing of ye Northwest ewre. By D. Burcot, Jonas Schütz, Baptista Agnillo, etc.,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 174–79; 175.
49 “Instructions,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 119.
50 Ibid.
51 George Best, “A True Reporte of such things as hapned in the second voyage of Captayne Frobysher, pretended for the discoverie of a new passage to cataya, China, and the East India, by the North West. Anno Do. 1577,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 121–57; 128.
52 “Names of the venturars,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 164.
53 Best, “A True Reporte…,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 137.
54 Ibid., 152.
55 Charles Trice Martin, ed., “Journal of Sir Francis Walsingham from December 1570 to April 1583. From the original manuscript in the possession of Lieut.-Colonel Carew,” in The Camden Miscellany, vol. 6 (London: Camden Society, 1871), 1–99; 32.
56 George Best, “The Thirde Voyage of Captaine Frobisher, pretended for the discoverie of Cataya, by Meta Incognita. Anno DO. 1578,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 225–89; 225.
57 Ibid., 226.
58 Entry for 28 November 1577 in James Orchard Halliwell, ed., The Private Diary of Dr John Dee and the Catalogue of his Library of Manuscripts, From the Original Manuscripts in the Ashmolean Museum at Oxford, and Trinity College Library, Cambridge (London: Camden Society, 1842), 4.
59 Best, “A True Reporte…,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 122.
60 McDermott, Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer, 210.
61 Ibid., 459n23.
62 “Edward Fenton’s provisional list for the 1578 Colony,” in James McDermott, The Third Voyage of Martin Frobisher to Baffin Island, 1578 (London: Hakluyt Society, 2001), 66–69.
63 Steuart A. Pears, The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet (London: William Pickering, 1845), xvi.
64 Sir Philip Sidney to Hubert Languet, October 1, 1577, in Pears, The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, 119.
65 Hubert Languet to Sir Philip Sidney, November 28, 1577, in Pears, The Correspondence of Sir Philip Sidney and Hubert Languet, 124–25.
66 McDermott, Frobisher: Elizabethan Privateer, 199.
67 Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 199.
68 “A Little Bundle,” in ibid., 177. The amount of time the workmen estimated for completion is not specified.
69 “11 March, 1577. To the Lord Treasurer and Lord Chamberlayne abowt the North-West Viage,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 182.
70 “All the stok of the venturers in all the iij voyages,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 358–59; 358.
71 Bernardino de Mendoza to the King,” April 22, 1578, in CSP-Spain (Simancas), Volume 2, Elizabeth: 1568–1579, #489, 576.
72 Best, “The Thirde Voyage,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 232.
73 Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, xii.
74 John Roche Dasent, ed. Acts of the Privy Council of England, Volume XI, 1578–1580 (London: Her Majesty’s Stationery Office, 1895), 64–65.
75 “The Humble Petition of Michael Lok for Charges Disbursed”, in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 349–50: 350.
76 For matters touching Lok’s accounts of the Frobisher voyages and the trials of the ore, see “State Papers Subsequent to the Third Voyage,” in Collinson, The Three Voyages of Martin Frobisher, 317–63; 350.
77 “Bernardino de Mendoza to the King,” February 7, 1579, in CSP-Spain (Simancas), Volume 2, Elizabeth: 1568–1579, #549, 642.
78 Robert McGhee, The Arctic Voyages of Martin Frobisher: An Elizabethan Adventure (Montreal: Canadian Museum of Civilization, 2001), 146.
9. ILANDISH EMPIRE
1 Deborah E. Harkness, “Managing an Experimental Household: The Dees of Mortlake and the Practice of Natural Philosophy,” Isis, 88, no. 2 (1997): 247–62; 247.
2 Glyn Parry, The Arch-Conjuror of England: John Dee (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2013), 20.
3 Dee spent three thousand pounds: Suster, John Dee, 10, 15. According to the 1583 catalog, there were three to four thousand titles: William H. Sherman, John Dee: The Politics of Reading and Writing in the English Renaissance (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1995), 31. More than one hundred volumes were stolen in his lifetime and are now in the collection of the Royal College of Surgeons in London: see Katie Birkwood, “Scholar, Courtier, Magician: the Lost Library of John Dee,” in Commentary 6 (2015); 12–15. Cambridge University
, by contrast, had 451 titles at the time. Suster, John Dee, 15.
4 Quinn, The Voyages and Colonising Enterprises, 1:170–75. Quinn suggests that the signature is Gilbert’s, though the body of the text may not be his handwriting.
5 See the Oxford English Dictionary for “annoy,” definition 4a.
6 Suster, John Dee, 43.
7 Rappaport, Worlds Within Worlds, 7. See the Oxford English Dictionary definition 1a, http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/114675?rskey=DNowjO&result=1&isAdvanced=false#eid?? http://www.oed.com/view/Entry/114675?rskey=TAZ6Hz&result=1&isAdvanced=false.
8 “Sir Humfrey Gilbert to the Count Montgomery or Lord Burghley,” September 6, 1572, in Calendar of State Papers Foreign: Elizabeth, Volume 10, 1572–1574, ed. Allan James Crosby (London: Longman & Co, 1876), #556, 175.
9 “Petition of divers gentlemen of the West parts of England to the Queen,” in CSP-Domestic, 1547–1580, vol. 95, #63, 475.
10 Quinn, Voyages and Colonising Enterprises, 1:102.
11 Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Pelican Books, 1979), 178.
12 Jason Eldred, “The Just Will Pay for the Sinners: English Merchants, the Trade with Spain, and Elizabethan Foreign Policy, 1563–1585,” Journal for Early Modern Cultural Studies 10, no. 1 (2010): 5–28; 9.
13 John Dee, General and Rare Memorials Pertayning to the Perfect Arte of Navigation (London: John Daye, 1577; Kessinger Legacy Reprint [facsimile], 2003, 10 (“Victorious British Monarchy,” “marvellous Security,” “wonderfully increase”); 28 (“New Foreign Discoveries,” “Ilandish Empire”).
14 David Armitage, The Ideological Origins of the British Empire (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 42–43.
15 Dewar, Sir Thomas Smith, 48.
16 Entry for 28 November 1577 in Halliwell, ed., The Private Diary of Dr John Dee, 4. For the first two reports, see John Dee, The Limits of the British Empire, edited by Ken MacMillan with Jennifer Abeles (Westport, CT: Praeger, 2004), 5, 10–13, 37–41.
17 Joseph H. Peterson, ed., John Dee’s Five Books of Mystery: Original Sourcebook of Enochian Magic (Boston: Weiserbooks, 2003), 8; Suster, John Dee, 55–6; Glynn Parry, “John Dee and the Elizabethan British Empire in Its European Context,” The Historical Journal, Vol. 49, No. 3 (2006), 643–75.