Maurice Abbot
Sir Maurice Abbot (1565–1642) was an English merchant, Governor of the East India Company (1624–1638), and a politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1621 and 1626. He was Lord Mayor of London in 1638.[1]
Abbot's whole career, which had begun under no external advantages, was a remarkable instance of well-directed energy and enterprise; it was one of the earliest examples of the creation of enormous wealth by the application of great personal abilities to commerce, and illustrates the extraordinary development of the English foreign trade at the close of the sixteenth and opening of the seventeenth centuries.[2]
Biography
Abbot was the fifth and youngest son of Maurice Abbot, a cloth-worker of Guildford who died in 1606, and he was the brother of George Abbot (Archbishop of Canterbury) and of Robert Abbot (Bishop of Salisbury).[3] He was baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Guildford on 2 November 1565, was educated at Royal Grammar School, Guildford and was probably apprenticed in London to his father's trade. Subsequently he became a freeman of the Drapers' Company, and rapidly amassed great wealth as a merchant dealing in various commodities such as cloth, indigo, spices and jewellery.[4]
Abbot was one of the original directors of the East India Company, which was incorporated by royal charter in 1600, was among the earliest to invest large sums in its "stock",[4] was a member of its special committee of direction from 1607 onwards, and was throughout his life foremost in defending its interests against its enemies at home and abroad. In 1608 he was appointed a representative of the company for the audit of the accounts of expenses incurred jointly with the Muscovy Company in "setting forth John Kingston for the discovery of the north-west passage".[4]
He became a member of the committee of the
Early in 1615 Abbot was one of the commissioners despatched to Holland to settle the disputes that were constantly arising between the Dutch East India Company and the East India Company as to their trading rights in the East Indies and their fishing rights in the north seas. But the conferences that followed, produced no satisfactory result. In May 1615 Abbot himself paid a visit to the East Indies, and on his return was chosen deputy-governor of the company, an annual office to which he was eight times in succession re-elected.[4]
During subsequent years the disagreements with the Dutch increased in force, and in 1619 Abbot was one of those appointed to treat in London with commissioners from Holland as to the peaceful establishment of the two companies abroad. A treaty was signed (2 June), which secured two-thirds of the spice produce of the
In February 1621
Abbot not only took a leading part in the affairs of the East India Company during these years, he was also an influential member of the
During the last twenty years of his life Abbot played a still more active part in public affairs. In 1621 he was elected
On 17 November 1621 Abbot became a
In 1624, when he was again returned to parliament for Kingston-upon-Hull,[9] Abbot was appointed a member of the council for establishing the colony of Virginia. It was in the same year that he had been elected governor of the East India Company, an office that he was still holding in 1633, but which he resigned before 1638; and during the time that he sat in parliament he was continually called upon to speak in the company's behalf. On many occasions he complained of the obloquy heaped upon himself and his friends, because it was supposed that their extensive foreign trade deprived this country of the benefit of their wealth, and, with a discrimination far in advance of his age, denounced the "curiousness" of the English in forbidding the exportation of specie, and asserted the economic advantages to the state of the company's commerce.[9]
On the accession of
In 1627 the customs department was reorganised, and Abbot with others received a lease of the customs on wines and currants for three and a half years, in consideration of a fine of £12,000 and a loan to the King of £20,000. But he was no servile agent of the crown. On 16 September 1628 information was sent to the king's council that Abbot was one of the merchants who refused to pay a newly imposed additional tax on the importation of currants, and that, while the quarrel was pending, he had broken into the government warehouse where currants belonging to him had been stored. But the supreme authorities do not appear to have pressed the charge against him.[9]
In 1637 he was one of those entrusted by the lords of the admiralty with fitting out ships at the expense of the city of London in accordance with the ship-money edict of 1636, and the attorney-general and the recorder of London shortly afterwards exhibited an information against him in the exchequer court on the ground that he had not provided sufficient men and ammunition. By order of the king's council, however, the proceedings against Abbot were stayed, and the charge dropped. In 1642 the recorder of London, who took part in the matter in behalf of the crown, was impeached by the parliament for having advised Abbot and others to levy ship-money.[13]
In 1638 Sir Maurice Abbot, who had on 13 September 1631 exchanged the ward of Bridge Without for that of
Abbot's mayoralty, which covered the greater part of the year 1639, was rendered somewhat eventful by the outbreak of war with the Scots (the
There is no certain record of the situation of Abbot's house in London, but his name occurs among those who in 1630 held "tenements from the great south door (of St. Paul's Cathedral) to the south-west corner of the cloister wall",[19] and he was one of the commissioners nominated in 1631 for the repair of the cathedral.[14]
In 1633 Robert Ashley dedicated his translation of an Italian work on Cochin China to Abbot, and attributes to him the assertion that "the remotest traffique is always the most beneficiall to the publick stocke, and the trade to East Indies doth farre excell all other".[14]
Family
Abbot married, firstly, Joan, daughter of George Austen, of Shalford, near Guildford, by whom he had five children.[14]
- Morris, one of his sons, was called to the bar as a member of the Inner Temple, and was one of the executors of the will of his uncle, the archbishop, who left him several legacies.[14]
- George (1602–1645), became a probationer fellow of Merton College, Oxford, in 1622, and was admitted bachelor of civil law in 1630. He carried the great banner at the funeral of his uncle, the Archbishop of Canterbury, in 1633, and sat in the Long Parliament as M.P. for Guildford until his death in 1645.[20]
- Edward, was, it appears from petitions to the House of Lords in 1641, in continual pecuniary difficulties.[14]
After the death of his first wife in 1597, Abbot married, for the second time, Margaret, daughter of Bartholomew Barnes, an alderman of London, and she died on 5 September 1630.[14]
1635 Abbot erected an elaborate monument in Holy Trinity Church, Guildford, to the memory of his brother, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who had died two years previously, and had appointed Abbot an executor under his will.[14]
Notes
- ^ A. Thrush, 'Abbot, Maurice (1565–1642), of Coleman Street, London', in A. Thrush and J.P. Ferris (eds), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604–1629 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), History of Parliament Online.
- ^ Lee 1885, pp. 23–24.
- ^ 'The Life of Sir Morris Abbot, Lord-Mayor of London', in W. Oldys, The life of Dr. George Abbot, Lord Archbishop of Canterbury, reprinted with some additions and corrections from the Biographia Britannica (J. Russell, Guildford 1777), pp. 156–58 (Umich/ecco).
- ^ a b c d e f Lee 1885, p. 21.
- ^ History of Parliament: Maurice Abbott
- ^ Department of Environment and Natural Resources of the Government of Bermuda: Abbot's Cliff Nature Reserve
- Julian Calendar with the start of the year adjusted to 1 January (see Old Style and New Style dates)
- ^ Lee 1885, pp. 21–22.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Lee 1885, p. 22.
- ^ Willis 1750, pp. 229–239.
- ^ Lee 1885, p. 22 cites Rymer, Fœdera, xvii. 467.
- ^ Lee 1885, p. 22 cites Authentic Documents of the Court of Charles I, i. 15.
- ^ Lee 1885, pp. 22–23.
- ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m Lee 1885, p. 23.
- ^ Beaven 1908, pp. 47–75.
- ^ "Porta [sic] Pietatis, or the Port or Harbour of Piety. Exprest in sundry Triumphes, Pageants, and Showes at the Institution of the Right Honourable Sir Maurice Abbot, knight, into the Mayoralty of the famous and fame renowned city London. Written by Thomas Heywood", London, 1638. Full text at Umich/eebo (open).
- ^ Lee 1885, p. 23 cites House of Lords MSS., Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. iv. 33.
- ^ He died January 1642 not 1640, as is usually given before the publication of the DNB in 1885 (Lee 1885, p. 23).
- ^ Lee 1885, p. 23 cites Cal. State Papers, 1629–31, p. 453
- ^ Lee 1885, p. 23 Members of Parliament, i. 494.
References
- Beaven, Alfred P. (1908). "Chronological list of aldermen: 1601–1650". The Aldermen of the City of London Temp. Henry III – 1912. London: Corporation of the City of London. pp. pp. 47–75.
- Willis, Browne (1750). Notitia Parliamentaria, Part II: A Series or Lists of the Representatives in the several Parliaments held from the Reformation 1541, to the Restoration 1660 ... London. pp. 229–239.
Attribution
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: Lee, Sidney (1885). "Abbot, Maurice". In Stephen, Leslie (ed.). Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 1. London: Smith, Elder & Co. pp. 21–24.