Peter Mundy
Peter Mundy (
Life
Mundy came from
to learn French. In May 1611 he went as a cabin-boy in a merchant ship, and gradually rose in life until he became of independent circumstances.He visited
As a fisherman and sailor it is likely that he spoke at least some
He went on further voyages to India, China, and Japan, when he started from
Philip Marsden's history of Falmouth, The Levelling Sea, published in 2011, provides a brief account of Peter Mundy's life on pages 131–137.
He also left the earliest description of the Musaeum Tradescantianum.[4]
Travels to India
Peter Mundy travelled from England to Surat, which he reached at September 1628. In 1630, it was agreed to transfer Peter Mundy to Agra. He began his journey on November 11, reaching Agra on 3rd January 1631. He served his superiors but then he was told to go to Patna to make an investment in cloth. On 6 August 1632, he set out for Patna, travelling 500 miles and reaching his destination on 20 September 1632. He did not made a good profit in Patna and decided to return to Agra in November. He reached Agra on 22nd December and stayed there for two months, during which time he witnessed the marriage of Shah Jahan's two elder sons. He appears to have enjoyed visiting Fatehpur Sikri, which was deserted by Akbar.[5]
Character
"It is rare to find a man so representative of his period as was Peter Mundy. In an age when curiosity was the outstanding characteristic of intelligent Englishmen, curiosity was the ruling passion of this life. ... His insatiable appetite for information, his eye for detail, his desire for accuracy, would have made him in modern times a first-rate scientist. ... True to his period, also, was his heartlessness ... he was more interested in the appearances of things than their implications in the lives of human beings. ... But if he was unfeeling, he was by no means insensitive; each strange item in the surprising world he had inherited is described with a spontaneous brilliance seldom to be found in modern writing."[6]
Itinerary
- 1530s Grandfather was Chanoor or Chantor at Glasney College )
- 1596 Born at Penryn, his father was Richard Mundy
Religious education with uncle in Devon
- 1608 first voyage to Rouen with his Father trading pilchards
- 1610 Bayonne, Gascony to learn 'the French Tongue'
- 1611 No further mention of his mother
- 1613 San Lucar with Mr Parker
- 1615 Seville with Mr Weaver, “attains” the Spanish Tongue
- 1617 Constantinople with James Wyche; returns overland via Belgrade; Sarajevo; Split; Venice; Padua; Verona; Milan; crosses the Alps to Lyons; Orleans; Paris; Calais; London
- 1620-21 Returns overland to Penryn
- 1621 Seville for ‘the Copper Contract’; apparently a Falmouth-based family venture with sparse details recorded initially.
- 1625 Valladolid
- 1626 St Malo and Jersey – apparently an excursion for pleasure
- 1628 Applies to the East India Company to Surat, India on £25 salary
- 1635-38 India to Japan
- 1639 ‘Petty Progress’ in England & Wales
- 1640-1647 Amsterdam and Holland, Prussia, Warsaw and Poland, Russia – based from the free city of Dantzigk / Gdansk
- 1647 Returns to Falmouth
- 1650-54 Begins writing in earnest in London
- 1655-56 3rd Voyage to India on the Alleppo Merchant
- 1658 Stays in London
- 1663-67 Returns to complete memoires in Penryn.
Notes
- ^ Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, Ed. R E Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library, Oxford
- Carrington, Dorothy(1949) The Traveller's Eye. London: Pilot Press; p. 178
- ^ Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, ed. R.E. Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library Press, Oxford; p, 148
- ^ "Ashmolean". Archived from the original on 5 August 2017. Retrieved 24 October 2009.
- ^ "The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia 1608 - 1667 Vol. II: Travels in Asia, 1628 - 1634". INDIAN CULTURE. Archived from the original on 3 November 2023. Retrieved 17 February 2022.
- ^ Carrington, Dorothy (1949) The Traveller's Eye. London: Pilot Press; p. 178-79
References
- This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Mundy, Peter". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.