1,721,094 research outputs found
The Merchant Fleet and ship-board community of Kent c.1565-c.1580
No full textUntil recently, knowledge of Kent’s merchant fleet in Tudor times relied heavily on ship surveys such as those of 1566 and 1572. However, records of individual ship voyages (both overseas and coastal), which began to be systematically collected at ports countrywide from 1565, can now be exploited thanks to the creation of a national database covering the period to 1580 at the University of Southampton (www.medievalandtudorships.org). The Kentish data contained therein is fully analysed here from which the patterns of coastal trade and voyages overseas emerge together with details of the activities of individual masters
“Sitting on a noble horse as white as snow”: the English royal horses at Agincourt
No full textDespite the intense interest in all aspects of Henry V’s victory at Agincourt in 1415, the study of the royal horses on the campaign and at the battle remains neglected. This is because the only known source for them until now – an account by the Master of the Horse, John Waterton, for 1414–16 – survives only in summary form on England’s foreign account rolls. However, the “particulars of account” used to compile the summary on the foreign has been rediscovered in the equitium regis collection in The National Archives. These particulars are far more detailed than the summary on the foreign account roll, containing a full, nominal list of Henry V’s horses at the time of the Battle of Agincourt detailing those that were killed at the battle and lost on the campaign. This article is the first detailed analysis of these “Agincourt” particulars. It provides the first examination of the king’s horses – their number, names, and types – at the time of the battle, detailing their fate in terms of those that died or were lost on the expedition. It also places the royal horses within the martial context of the time, illuminating several facets of equine management and the organization of the royal stables, by comparing Waterton’s account with other surviving records of the equitium regis from both the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In so doing, it shows how horses served as important diplomatic tools, as a social glue that bound the king to his leading subjects, and that the types of horse being utilized for war at the time of Agincourt, and within the royal equine establishment, had undergone a marked change from only a half century before
Domestic Maritime Trade in Late Tudor England c.1565–85: A Case Study of King’s Lynn and Plymouth
No full text‘William Fowler’, Sir William Garrard, Sir John Hawkins and the sixteenth-century Atlantic slave trade
No full textThis article sheds new light on English involvement in the sixteenth-century transatlantic slave trade, especially the voyages of John Hawkins in the 1560s. Its focus is on William Fowler, a merchant who in 1569 was brought in front of the English High Court of the Admiralty to provide expert evidence on behalf of Sir William Garrard and Sir John Hawkins. Fowler was an experienced slave trader who worked within the Spanish system, probably trading out of Seville to New Spain. His testimony in 1569 was of great importance to Hawkins, Garrard and the other investors who backed Hawkins’s ill-fated slaving voyage of 1567–9, for in his testimony Fowler provided independent and up-to-date information as to the value of slaves and other commodities which Hawkins lost in 1568 at San Juan de Ulúa. Hawkins and his backers would use these valuations to bolster their claim for compensation from the Spanish Crown for the goods they lost in 1568. Using previously unpublished sources, the article will investigate the origins of William Fowler and assess the social and economic connections that existed between Hawkins and his investors, and explain why these socio-economic networks brought Fowler to the Admiralty court in 1569. The article concludes with a transcription of Fowler’s testimony
England’s reserve Navy: the Ship Survey of 1572
No full textThe threats to Queen Elizabeth I from a possible Spanish invasion were real. The ‘Queens maiesties shipes’ in 1570 listed only twenty ships and three galleys. However, the merchant fleet could be requisitioned in an emergency, and Burghley ordered a survey of the merchant fleet, which was carried out by Thomas Colshill in 1572. Colshill was intimately acquainted with the merchant trade, having started in 1549 as supervisor of petty customs in London and appointed surveyor of great customs in London in 1572. He used the customs accounts to compile the survey, listing the head ports all the way round the coast from Newcastle to Chester. Under each port are listed all the ships in that port arranged by tonnage from the largest to the smallest, together with the master of that vessel
To Agincourt and beyond! The martial affinity of Edward of Langley, second Duke of York (c.1373-1415)
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The merchant fleet and maritime communities of Kent, Hampshire, and Dorset, c.1565-c.1630
No full textThis article examines the merchant fleet and maritime communities of Kent, Hampshire, and Dorset. It draws on innovative methodologies which enable us to examine the size and geographical distribution of the merchant fleets of these counties. Drawing on a series of musters and ship-surveys it also investigates the size and geographical distribution, and ages, of the maritime communities within these counties
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