Volume 1

An English garner ... / [Rearranged and classified under the general editorial supervision of Mr. Thomas Seccombe].

Date:
1903-1904
Catalogue details

Licence: Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International (CC BY-NC 4.0)

Credit: An English garner ... / [Rearranged and classified under the general editorial supervision of Mr. Thomas Seccombe]. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    ‘informed himself by diligent inquisition of the State of the West India (whereof he had received knowledge by the instructions of his father, but increased the same by the advertisements and reports of that people). And being amongst other particulars assured that Negroes were very good merchandise in Hispaniola, and that store of Negroes might easily be had upon the coast of Guinea, [he] resolved with himself to make trial thereof.’ These voyages of John’s to the Canaries were probably subsequent to I5S5> the year of old William’s death, and they soon brought such profit, that shortly after the accession of Elizabeth the future sea-king married a daughter of Benjamin Gonson, Treasurer of the Royal Navy. Already, in 1553, the English had begun to struggle for a share of the Guinea trade; and in 1561 Gonson had joined in a syndicate whose aim was to establish a factory at Benin or some other point in the Guinea littoral, in defiance of Portuguese opposition.^ The enterprise failed, but in 1562 it was renewed, while Hawkins prepared for a still more daring venture—no less than the commercial invasion of the Spanish American monopoly by means of the African, or more particularly the Guinea, slave trade. As to this commerce, it had been practised by the Portuguese con- tinually since 1441, when Antam Gonsalves brought home certain Mouros negros from the neighbourhood of Cape Bojador.2 In 1517 Charles V. formally licensed the importation of African negroes into the West Indies. The trade was supported by philanthropic arguments, as by the generous Las Casas, who (for a time) saw in it the ^ The Queen, as Mr. Corbett well suggests {Drake, i. 78), was possibly a shareholder in this venture : the Minion was certainly lent to the venturers from the Royal Navy. * Cf. Azurara, Chronicle of the Discovery and Conquest of Guinea, xii.-xiv.
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