Autograph letter signed to "my loving frende William Hurtt [manuscript] Marchant at Crosbe Howse" London], from Bantam Java, [circa late 1635].
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Details
Title
Autograph letter signed to "my loving frende William Hurtt [manuscript] Marchant at Crosbe Howse" London], from Bantam Java, [circa late 1635].
Description
Folio sheet
Associated name
Jesson, Randall, author.
Hurt, William, recipient.
Hurt, William, recipient.
Summary
Reporting on Jesson's (mostly unsuccessful) attempts at commerce in the East Indies; including a missed shipment of a 'case of stronge waters,' a dispute with British East India Company Bantam President George Wiloughby, and discussions of the sea-worthiness of his ship, and details of his attempts to reach the island of Run.
Note
This is a PRELIMINARY RECORD. It may contain incorrect information. The "FAST ACC" number is a temporary call number. Please email catalog@folger.edu for assistance.
Item Details
Call number
FAST ACC 270953 (flat)
Folger-specific note
From dealer's description: "JESSON (Randoll). An extraordinarily informative Autograph Letter addressed to “To my loving frende William Hurtt Marchant at Crosbe howse” in London, probably from Bantam in Java, undated but late 1635 / early 1636 Written in a bold hand on a folded folio sheet with integral address, this panel somewhat thumbed, small hole affecting one word where the seal has been broken, otherwise in extremely good condition. 2 and 3/4 pages. In the last years of the sixteeenth century and the first four decades of the seventeenth the main focus of England and Holland’s rival new-born imperial ambitions was a tiny spot in the East Indies - the remote Spice Island of Pollaroon, more usually known as Run, one of the Banda Islands. "In those days, Run was the most talked about island in the world, a place of such fabulous wealth that Eldorado‘s gilded riches seemed tawdry by comparison. But Run’s bounty was not derived from gold - nature had bestowed a gift far more precious upon her cliffs. A forest of willowy trees fringed the island’s mountainous backbone; trees of exquisite fragrance. Tall and foliaged like a laurel, they were adorned with bell-shaped flowers and bore a fleshy lemon-yellow fruit. To the botanist they were called Myristica fragrans. To the plain-speaking merchants of England they were known simply as Nutmeg." (Giles Milton, Nathaniel‘s Nutmeg: How one man’s courage changed the course of history (London, 1999, p. 2). Convinced that it was a sure cure for the plague the European desire for nutmeg was unquenchable and securing its supply was the surest route to riches - this was why English and Dutch explorers were risking all in search of a North-West or North-East Passage. Randoll Jesson appears repeatedly in East India Co. records in the 1630s as Master of the Pearl. He was both a company servant and a merchant on his own behalf. In this letter Jesson makes clear that there was a dispute between him and the President at Bantam (George Willoughby) who obliquely refers to the matter when writing in a despatch of December 1635 (EBS, p. 138) that some of his former seeming enemies, including Jesson, are behaving well in the company’s business. The last known reference to Jesson is in June 1654 when Cromwell was pressing for the restoration of Pulo Run, one of the Banda Islands. His officials were keen to interview the survivors of the 1639 expedition to the island and one Thomas Gee is mentioned in the document as is Randoll Jessen who was by that time non compos mentis. (EBS, 1650-54, p.324-5).By the time that Jesson was writing, however, the superior organisation, financial power and ruthlessness (culminating in the infamous torture and execution of ten English merchants at Amboyna in 1623) of the Dutch East India Company had reduced the English presence in the Indies to a few scattered merchants, mainly based in the port of Bantam in Java. They were reluctantly tolerated but, underfinanced and unsupported, were scarcely able to do more than fend for themselves. Run, which had been ceded to King James by the native chiefs had been abandoned and the whole of the Spice Islands was fortified and controlled by the Dutch. In the end, as the British East India Company turned its attention from the Spice Islands to the Indian Subcontinent and started to build an empire there, the token claim to sovereignty over Run was swopped with the Dutch in 1667 for another apparently less-promising island on the Atlantic coast: Manhattan...." Ordered from Maggs, D 9048, 2017-01-13, website inventory. Purchase made possible by The Kenneth C. Hogate Acquisitions Fund. Purchase made possible by The B. F. Saul Rare Book Acquisitions Fund. Ordered from Maggs Bros. Ltd. D 92048, 20179-01-13, email quote.
Folger accession
270953