Maurice Abbot

Sir Maurice Abbot (Morris) (1565–1642) was an English merchant of the East India Company and later a politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1621 and 1626. He was Lord Mayor of London in 1638.

Life

Abbot was the fifth and youngest son of Maurice Abbot, a cloth-worker of Guildford who died in 1606, and was the brother of Archbishop of Canterbury George and of Robert, who became Bishop of Salisbury. 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.

He was one of the original directors of the East India Company (EIC), which was incorporated by royal charter in 1600, was among the earliest to invest large sums in its 'stock,' 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.' Early in 1615 he was one of the commissioners despatched to Holland to settle the disputes that were constantly arising between the Dutch East India Company and the EIC 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. 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 Molucca Islands, where the disputes had grown hottest, to the Dutch company, and the remaining third to the English. But this settlement was not a permanent one. In 1620 the Dutch infringed some regulations of the treaty, and Abbot in company with Sir Dudley Digges went on an embassy to Holland to set matters once again on a surer footing. The commissioners were at first well received (20 November 1620) by the Prince of Orange and the states-general; but the Dutch were unwilling to make any concessions, and pursued the negotiations, according to the English accounts, with too much duplicity to admit of any effectual arrangement. In February 1620–1 Abbot returned to London, and in an audience granted him by James I he bitterly complained of the 'base usage' to which he had been subjected. It was clearly impossible to diminish the active feelings of jealousy that existed between the English and Dutch residents in the East Indies, and Abbot shared the sentiment too heartily to enable him to improve the position of affairs. In 1624 matters became more critical. News reached England that Amboyna, one of the chief trading depôts of the Moluccas, had been the scene of the murder of Gabriel Towerson and several other English traders by the Dutch. At the time Abbot was holding the office of governor of the company, to which he had been elected 23 March 1623–4. Intense excitement prevailed throughout the country, and the greatest anxiety was evinced as to the steps that Abbot would take. He recognised at once the necessity of 'pressing the matter modestly,' in order to avoid open war with Holland; but in repeated audiences with the king and in petitions and speeches to the privy council he insisted that demand should be made of the Dutch authorities to bring the perpetrators of the outrage to justice. He spoke of withdrawing from the trade altogether if this measure was not adopted, and after much delay the Dutch agreed to give the desired reparation. But death of James I saw the promise unfulfilled, and Abbot's efforts to pursue the question further proved unavailing.

But it was not only in the affairs of the EIC that Abbot during these years took a leading part. He was an influential member of the Levant Company before 1607, and the English merchant service was, from the beginning of the seventeenth century, largely under his control. In 1614 one of his vessels, named the Tiger, was assaulted and taken by 'M. Mintaine, a Frenchman of the Mauritius,' and Abbot sought redress for the injury in vain. In 1616 he with others received a bounty for building six new ships. In 1612 he was nominated a director of a newly incorporated company 'of merchants of London, discoverers of the north-west passage,' and his statement that in 1614 he 'brought to the mint 60 pounds weight of gold for Indian commodities exported' proves that his own commercial transactions continued for many years on a very large scale. He also expressed himself anxious a few years later to open up trade with Persia, and to wrest from the Portuguese East India Company the commercial predominance they had acquired there.

He was involved in the settling of the colony in Virginia in 1624.

Political career

In 1621, Abbot was elected Member of Parliament for Hull. He was chosen as a replacement for another member at Hull in 1624 and was re-elected for the seat in 1625. In 1626 he was elected MP for City of London.^[1] He was appointed a Sheriff of London in 1628. He was elected Lord Mayor of London in 1638.^[2]

Personal life

Abbot married, firstly, Joan Austen, daughter of George Austen, of Shalford, near Guildford, by whom he had five children. 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. George Abbot, another of his sons, 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 (Members of Parliament, i. 494). A third son, Edward, was, it appears from petitions to the House of Lords in 1641, in continual pecuniary difficulties. 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 Sept. 1630.

References

1. 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.
2. 'Chronological list of aldermen: 1601-1650', The Aldermen of the City of London: Temp. Henry III - 1912 (1908), pp. 47-75. Date accessed: 16 July 2011

Attribution

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: "Abbot, Maurice". Dictionary of National Biography. London: Smith, Elder & Co. 1885–1900.