Sir Edward Osborne
1530-1591

London Bridge, in the olden time, was a street with houses, shops, and even churches on it

"It seems," says a lively antiquary, "to have been accounted rather a preferable, almost a genteel locality. It was the grand entry to the metropolis, by which passed, of necessity, all those pomps and shows, and processions of state and ceremony which made so important a part in the life of our forefathers. Nowhere was there more stir and activity of every kind, and at all hours; and for good air and plenty of it, there could have been no street comparable to the Bridge anywhere else in London. The very sound of the river beneath was considered musical and soothing: it is related that those who had been used to it could not easily fall asleep without having it in their ear. In front of the houses flowed from morning to night an unceasing current of the busiest and most various humanity; and the back windows had another kind of cheerfulness of their own,—a spacious and open prospect over town, country, and sky, with a full share of the sunshine and the breeze."

ANCIENT CHAPEL OF THOMAS A BECKET, AFTERWARD A SHOP AND WAREHOUSE ON LONDON BRIDGE.

Here lived, throughout the middle ages, some of the richest merchants of London, and in Henry VII.'s and Edward VI.'s and Queen Mary's reigns there were few richer than Sir William Hewit, a leading member of the Clothworkers' Guilds and an enterprising merchant in other ways. He was Lord Mayor of London in 1559, the year of Queen Elizabeth's accession, and dying in 1567, he left, besides much other property, an estate worth £6000 a year, to be enjoyed by his only daughter Anne and her fortunate husband, Edward Osborne.

Edward Osborne was then between thirty-five and forty years old. More than twenty years before, his father, a well-to-do gentleman of Kent, had sent him to London to make his fortune as a merchant The lad was apprenticed to Sir William Hewit, and a lodging was found for him in the London Bridge house. There he was looking out of a window one day, while, at another open window, as it seems, a nurse was playing with his master's little daughter, a child of two or three years old. The play was dangerous, and the little girl, leaning over or jumping out, slipped from the nurse's hold and fell into the river. By good chance young Ned Osborne saw the accident, and had the wit, without loss of a moment, to jump into the river after her, and thus save her from drowning.

That good service, we may be sure, endeared young Osborne to his master. He found him a ready scholar in ways of commerce, and he helped him on to the utmost. He made him, when his apprenticeship was over, a partner in his business; and when the young lady whose life he had saved was old enough, he gave her to him for a wife. Plenty of other lovers gathered round her; rich men and men of rank, the Earl of Shrewsbury at the head of them, sought her hand; and Sir William Hewit was often advised to bestow her upon a husband of good station in the world. But he steadily refused. "Osborne did save her," he always said; "Osborne shall have her."

The marriage occurred in 1565 or 1566. About that time Osborne began to take an important place for himself in the world of London commerce, of which Sir Thomas Gresham was then the king. There was a crowd of other famous merchants then alive, none greater perhaps than Sir Lionel Ducket, the son of a Nottingham gentleman, he was Lord Mayor in 1573, and sharer in nearly every great enterprise of those times. We hear of him sometimes as employing agents to melt silver and copper for him in Germany; sometimes as setting up furnaces for the same purpose in England. At one time, we see him busy about the manufacture of cloth; at another, he is forming a company to construct water-works for the draining of mines. He was a great encourager of those schemes of distant voyaging and discovery which sent Frobisher and Davis into the polar regions, which caused Drake and Cavendish to sail round the world, and which induced a score of other famous men to try their fortunes in various seas and climes in search of new fields for conquest, commerce, and civilisation. He was one of the richest men of his time. To each of his three daughters, we are told, he gave as dowry upwards of £000 in Tudor money; and when asked why he had not given more, he answered that that was as much as it was seemly for him to bestow, since Queen Elizabeth herself, on ascending the throne, had found only; £"10,000 in her exchequer.

Another famous merchant, an old man in Osborne's youth, was Sir John Spencer, generally known as "Rich Spencer," to distinguish him from his poor but more illustrious kinsman, Edmund Spenser, the poet. He was chosen Sheriff of London in 1584, and Lord Mayor in 1594, and he took a leading part in the preparations made by patriotic Londoners, never more patriotic than then, to defend the kingdom from the great attempt made by Philip II. of Spain to conquer England by means of the fleet which he vainly termed his Invincible Armada.

Among a multitude of other great merchants of London in the days of Queen Elizabeth was Richard Staper, a native of Plymouth. With him Edward Osborne, on the death of his father-in-law, seems to have entered into a sort of partnership. They traded, as Gresham and the others did, in all sorts of commodities brought from the Continent to England, as well as in the various English goods, which were found useful to Continental buyers. They also shared in trade to more distant parts.

A curious letter exists, written in 1578 by a John Withal, one of the first Englishmen who visited South America, telling how he had found his way to Brazil, and desired to promote English trade with the new Portuguese settlements and the rude natives in that region. He urged Osborne and Staper to send a cargo of London goods to Brazil, where they could be sold for thrice their value at home, and to let the ship return loaded with some of the excellent sugar produced there.

"If you have any stomach thereto," he said, "in the name of God do you espy out a fine bark of 70 or 80 tons, and send her hither." Of the sort of goods to be put into this "fine bark" he gave a careful list, including woollen goods of all sorts, cloths and flannels, hoUands and hose, shirts and doublets, besides "4 pounds of silk, 4 dozen scissors, 24 dozen knives, 6000 fish-hooks, and 400 pounds of tin, with a little scarlet, parchment, lace, and crimson velvet."

Staper and Osborne do not appear to have sent out the cargo asked for by Withal. They left other merchants to begin the great English trade with South America, and made it their chief business to open up a thriving trade with a district nearer England, though far enough off to be reached only by dangerous voyaging. This district included Turkey, and the adjoin ing shores of the Mediterranean known as the Levant. Thither, in former times, before the passage round the Cape of Good Hope had been discovered, merchants of various nations had brought all the costly merchandise of the East Indies, rich spices and precious stones, silks, laces, calicoes, and other textile goods.

All through the Middle Ages the great Venetian merchants had bought up these articles and sent their ships with them to Antwerp and London, and the other trading towns of western Europe. But, as English merchants grew in wealth and influence, they grudged the profits which the Venetians secured by this arrangement. They resolved to go to the Levant and buy the goods for themselves, direct from the eastern merchants, who brought it thither in their caravans. This they had done in irregular ways, yet with great profit, for more than a century before the time of Edward Osborne. Osborne and his friends determined that it should be done in a more systematic way and with much more profit; and with that object, in 1581, they founded the Levant or Turkey Company. The charter of the company, granted in that year by Queen Elizabeth, tells how

"Sir Edward Osborne and Richard Staper had, at their own great costs and charges, found out and opened a trade to Turkey, not heretofore, in the memory of any man now living, known to be commonly used and frequented by way of merchandise by any English merchants; whereby many good offices may be done for the peace of Christendom, relief of Christian slaves, and good vent for the commodities of the realm, to the advancement of the Queen's honour and dignity, the increase of her revenue, and the general wealth of the realm."

Therefore the Turkey Company was founded, with Edward Osborne for its first governor, and Richard Staper, Thomas Smythe, and eleven others, for its first directors under him. They alone, of Englishmen, were to be allowed to trade with Turkey, and a share of their profits was to be paid to the Queen in return for the privileges thus granted to them. They lost no time in fitting out some large vessels—so large and so well made that the merchants were publicly thanked by Queen Elizabeth for their skilful ship-building. In 1592, one of these ships—the Susan—was sent out under competent agents, instructed to make a treaty with the Porte, to establish consuls in the different towns, and to open up an active trade. Messengers were specially sent to inquire into the nature of dyeing-stuffs in Italy, and into the art of dyeing; also what species of them might be produced in England, and how beneficial such new productions might be to us. The Susan was provided with thirty-four guns with which to resist any attacks that might be made by the pirates of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. Pirates did give them some trouble, but the voyage was very successful, as were most of the other voyages undertaken every year during the lifetime of Sir Edward Osborne.

The prosperous trade, however, was not carried on without danger. In 1583, one of the Turkey Company's ships, named the Jesus laden with currants and other articles from Morea, was attacked by two Algerian galleys and sunk, after being robbed of its valuable contents.

"The greatest number of the men thereof were slain and drowned in the sea, the residue being detained as slaves," said Sir Edward Osborne in the letter which he wrote to the Dey of Algiers, complaining of his subjects' conduct, and urging him to punish them for it, and to force them to make restitution. Osborne was especially anxious, as he should be, in seeking the Dey's "aid and favour, that the poor men detained in captivity might be set at liberty, and return into their country." This was not done for two years, many of the prisoners having died of the cruel treatment that they received in the interval.

Moorish pirates were not the only enemies whom Osborne's merchantmen had to withstand. The years in which the Levant Company began its work were years of fierce jealousy between England and Spain. It was in 1588 that Philip II. sent his great Armada to be utterly overthrown in its attempt to conquer England. In the years before and the years after that great event, there was desperate fighting on the sea between Spaniards and Englishmen; and as the ships of the Turkey Company had to pass all round the coast of Spain, and through the Straits of Gibraltar, they were particularly liable to attacks from their deadly enemy.

A GALLEY OF THE 16TH CENTURY.

One such attack was made in 1586, when eleven Spanish galleys and frigates made an assault on the fleet of five vessels which was that year despatched by the Turkey Company for trade in the Levants They were bravely met, and bravely driven off. A much more memorable fight, however, occurred in 1590. Ten merchantmen had, in the autumn of 1589, been sent out by the Company. Returning in the following spring, laden with the produce of the East, they met for mutual protection, according to custom, near the coast of Barbary. The meeting was fortunate; for twelve great Spanish galleys, "bravely furnished and strongly provided with men and ammunition," were lying in wait for them. Let the rest of the story be told in the quaint words of one of the party:

"In the morning early, being the 24th of April," he says, "according to our usual customs, we said service and made our prayers unto Almighty God, beseeching Him to save us from the hands of such tyrants as the Spaniards, whom we knew and had found to be our most mortal enemies upon the sea. And having finished our prayers, and set ourselves in readiness, we perceived them to come towards us, and that they were indeed the Spanish galleys that lay under the conduct of Andrew Doria, who is Viceroy for the King of Spain in the Straits of Gibraltar, and a notable enemy to all Englishmen.

"So, when they came somewhat nearer to us, they waved us a main for the King of Spain, and we waved them a main for the Queen of England, at which time it pleased Almighty God greatly to encourage us all in such sort as that the nearer they came the less we feared their great multitude and huge number of men, which were planted in those galleys to the number of two or three hundred men in each galley. And it was thus concluded among us, that the four first and tallest ships should be placed hindmost, and the weaker and smallest ships foremost; and so it was performed, every man being ready to take part of such success as it should please God to send. At the first encounter, the galleys came upon us very fiercely; yet so God strengthened us that, if they had been ten times more, we had not feared them at all.

"Whereupon the Solomon being a hot ship, and having sundry cast pieces in her, gave the first shot in such sour sort as that it sheared away so many men as sat on one side of a galley, and pierced her through in such manner as that she was ready to sink; which made them to assault us the more fiercely. Whereupon the rest of our ships, especially the Margaret and John, the Minion, and the Ascension, followed, and gave a hot charge upon them, and they at us, where began a hot and fierce battle with great valiancy, the one against the other, and so continued for the space of six hours.

"About the beginning of this our fight there came two Flemings to our fleet, who, seeing the force of the galleys to be so great, the one of them presently yielded, struck his sails, and was taken by the galleys; whereas, if they would have offered themselves to have fought in our behalf and their own defence, they needed not to have been taken so cowardly as they were to their cost. The other Fleming, being also ready to perform the like piece of service, began to vail his sails, and intended to have yielded immediately. But the trumpeter in that ship plucked up his falchion, and slipped to the pilot at the helm, and vowed that, if he did not speedily put off to the English fleet, and so take part with them, he would speedily kill him; which the pilot, for fear of death, did, and so by that means they were defended from present death, and from the tyranny of those Spaniards, which doubtless they should have found at their hands. Thus we continued in fight six hours and somewhat more, wherein God gave us the upper hand, and we escaped the hands of so many enemies, who were constrained to flee into harbour and shroud themselves from us, and with speed to seek for their own safety. This was the handiwork of God, who defended us from danger in such sort as that there was not one man of us slain. And in all this fierce assault made upon us by the Spanish power, we sustained no hurt or damage more than this, that the shrouds and backstays of the Solomon who gave the first and last shot, and galled the enemy shrewdly all the time of the battle, were clear stricken off.

"After the battle was ceased—which was on Easter Tuesday—we stayed for want of wind before Gibraltar until the next morning, when we were becalmed, and therefore looked every hour when they would have sent forth some fresh supply against us; but they were unable to do it; for all their galleys were so sore battered that they durst not come forth of the harbour, by reason of our hot resistance which they so lately before had received."

In that brave way the merchantmen of England under Elizabeth withstood the force of the proud Spanish ships of war, even in Spanish waters. Men who could fight so bravely, so piously, and so triumphantly, deserved success. And the Turkey Company, in spite of all the obstacles thrown in its way, succeeded famously. All the articles of Eastern produce which Venetian merchants had hitherto been almost the only ones to bring to England, were by it made available for English use in much greater abundance, and at much less cost. The benefits that sprang from it were acknowledged by his grateful contemporaries to be chiefly due to Sir Edward Osborne.

Osborne was not exclusively devoted, however, to the Turkey Company. Having been made Sheriff of London in 1574, he was chosen Lord Mayor in 1583, and during his year of office he seems to have been unusually zealous in seeking the welfare of the city. On the 14th of December he petitioned Queen Elizabeth's Council that carriers might be prevented from travelling on the Sabbath-day, either in London or in its suburbs. A fortnight later he addressed the Council again, complaining of the great number of Irish beggars and vagrants who infested the city and had to be committed to Bridewell, and begging that they might all be sent back to their own country, and that care might be taken to prevent any others from coming in their place. In the following spring, again, we find him corresponding with Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State, about the ancient rights of the city of London to control the affairs of Southwark.

Yet, in spite of these and kindred actions. Sir Edward Osborne was especially a merchant. As appears by his establishment of the Turkey Company, his trading projects went far beyond the limits of the Clothworkers' Guild, of which he was in his day the chief ornament. And his trading projects even exceeded the province, wide though that was, of the Turkey Company.

In 1583, shortly before his mayoralty, he and his partners in the company sent four merchants, named Fitch, Newberry, Leedes, and Storey, to the Levant with instructions to proceed thence overland to India, whither only one Englishman, Thomas Stevens, a Jesuit priest, is known to have gone before them for a century or more. Proceeding on their errand, they conveyed some cloth and tin, as samples of English commerce, to Aleppo, and afterwards to Bagdad. Thence they passed down the Tigris to Ormuz, and so on by sea to Goa, where they arrived near the end of the year. There they were roughly used, chiefly through the jealousy of some Portuguese merchants, who, having learnt the way to carry on a prosperous trade with India, were unwilling to let the English share it with them. Father Stevens, however, and his fellow-Jesuits interested themselves on behalf of the travellers.

"Had it not pleased God," said Newberry, "to put into their minds to stand our friends, we might have rotted in prison." By Stevens's help, they escaped with only a short captivity, and were able to extend their journey to many inland parts of India,—to Ceylon, Malacca, and Pegu. Newberry died on the road, however; Storey became a Jesuit priest; and Leedes entered the service of the great Akbar. Fitch travelled about till 1591, when he returned to England to write a full account of his wonderful experiences and observations, and thus to encourage his countrymen to enter upon the famous trade with India, which must have been in Osborne's mind when he sent him out. In that trade, however. Sir Edward Osborne was not able to take part.

Two years before Fitch's return, though not before the news of his adventures had reached England, in 1589, Osborne, and a number of other London merchants, had petitioned Queen Elizabeth for leave to send some ships direct to India, instead of following the more dangerous plan of going to Turkey by ship, and thence proceeding overland. While that new project was under consideration, moreover, Osborne was active in securing a fresh charter for the Turkey Company, which had only been licensed for seven years from 1581. In this he succeeded, and in the new charter, which was dated the 7th of January 1591, it was recorded how:

"Our well-beloved subjects, Edward Osborne, knight, and Richard Staper, have, by great adventure and industry, with their great cost and charges, by the space of sundry late years, travelled, and caused travel to be taken, as well by secret and good means, as by dangerous ways and passages, both by land and sea, to find out and set open a trade of merchandise and traffic into the lands, islands, dominions, and territories of the great Turk; whereby we perceive that many good actions have been done and performed, and hereafter are likely continually to be done and performed for the peace of Christendom, and the good and profitable vent and utterance of the commodities of our realm."

In reward for these services, the old Turkey Company was allowed to be reconstructed and made yet more useful, under the name of the Company of Merchants of the Levant and as Sir Edward Osborne had been "the chief setter forth and actor in the opening and putting into practice of the said trade," he was appointed its governor, for the first year at any rate, "if he so long shall live."

He did not live so long. He died early in 1591, about sixty years old, too soon to take his share in establishing the great trade between England and India which was to be of such immense advantage to both countries, but not before he had done more good work for commerce and civilisation than most men are able to achieve. He had been able, too, to add much by his own exertions to the wealth that came to him through his marriage with the daughter of Sir William Hewit, whom he had saved from drowning in the Thames. His son, Sir Edward Osborne, was made a baronet by Charles I.; and his grandson. Sir Thomas Osborne, having been an influential statesman under Charles II. and James II., was created Duke of Leeds by William III. in 1694. That is only one out of many instances of famous peerages and great titled families being made by the enterprise and honesty of London merchants.