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The Scottish East India Company of 1617: Patronage, Commercial Rivalry, and the Union of the Crowns

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2020

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Abstract

The history of the Scottish East India Company of 1617 is a history of partnerships and rivalries within and between Scotland and England. The company was opposed by the merchants of the royal burghs in Scotland and by the East India Company, Muscovy Company, and Privy Council in England. At the same time, it was supported by the Scottish Privy Council and was able to recruit Dutch, English, and Scottish investors. The interactions between these groups were largely shaped by the union of the crowns, which saw James VI accede to the thrones of England and Ireland and move his court to London. Scotland was thus left with an absentee monarch, decreasing the access of Scottish merchants to the king while increasing the importance of court connections in acquiring that access. Regal union also created opportunities for Scots to become part of the London business world, which, in turn, could lead to backlash from English interests. Having developed in this context, the Scottish East India Company speaks to how James VI and I approached patronage and policy in his multiple kingdoms, how commercial rivalries developed in England and Scotland, and how trading companies played a role in constitutional developments in Stuart Britain.

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Journal of British Studies , Volume 59 , Issue 3 , July 2020 , pp. 582 - 607
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Copyright © The North American Conference on British Studies, 2020

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References

1 The company was commonly referred to as the Scottish East India Company. Numerous historians have called it the Scottish East India and Greenland Company, which is reasonable as long as one bears in mind that in early seventeenth-century England and Scotland, “Greenland” referred to Spitsbergen (now Svalbard) and not modern-day Greenland.

2 From the Danish translation of the Scottish East India Company patent, 24 May 1617, TKUA/SD/England A.II.12, Rigsarkivet, Copenhagen. My thanks to Professor Liv Helene Willumsen for help in translating this document. The original patent is not known to be extant and is not in the surviving (and published) Register of the Great Seal of Scotland. The inclusion of the Levant, Muscovy, and Spitsbergen differed from the rights granted to the English East India Company; the patents of both the English East India Company and the Scottish East India Company nominally included Africa and the Americas. East India Company, Charters Granted to the East-India Company, from 1601; also the Treaties and Grants, Made with, or obtained from, the Princes and Powers in India, From the Year 1756 to 1772 (London, 1774), 12, 40–41.

3 Dasent, John Roche et al. , eds., Acts of the Privy Council of England, n.s, 1542–1630, 46 vols. (London, 1890–1964)Google Scholar (hereafter APC), 36:70–71.

4 APC 36:70–72; English East India Company Court Minutes, 10 March 1617/8, IOR/B/6, fol. 139, British Library, London (hereafter BL).

5 The National Archives, Kew (hereafter TNA), CO 77/1, no. 64.1, Estimate of Scottish East India Company's losses, 4 May 1618, fol. 125; TNA, CO 77/1, no. 66, Answer of the United Muscovy and East India Companies, 8 August 1618, fol. 147. References to pounds are pounds sterling unless otherwise specified.

6 For example, Ashton, Robert, The City and the Court, 1603–1643 (Cambridge, 1979), 103–4CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Lawson, Philip, The East India Company: A History (London, 1993), 33–34Google Scholar; Nicholls, Andrew D., The Jacobean Union: A Reconsideration of British Civil Policies Under the Early Stuarts (Westport, 1999), 168–70Google Scholar, 173; Bogart, Dan, “The East Indian Monopoly and the Transition from Limited Access in England, 1600–1813,” in Organizations, Civil Society, and the Roots of Development, ed. Lamoreaux, Naomi R. and Wallis, John Joseph (Chicago, 2017), 23–49Google Scholar, at 28.

7 For example, Conway, W. Martin, No Man's Land: A History of Spitsbergen from Its Discovery in 1596 to the Beginning of the Scientific Exploration of the Country (Cambridge, 1906), 105Google Scholar; Jackson, Gordon, The British Whaling Trade (London, 1978), 14–15Google Scholar; Sanger, Chesley W., “The Origins of British Whaling: Pre-1750 English and Scottish Involvement in the Northern Whale Fishery,” Northern Mariner/Le marin du nord 5, no. 3 (1995): 15–32Google Scholar, at 17–21.

8 For example, Fry, Michael, The Scottish Empire (East Linton, 2001), 84Google Scholar; Devine, T. M., Scotland's Empire, 1600–1815 (London, 2003), 1Google Scholar, 3; Murdoch, Steve, Network North: Scottish Kin, Commercial and Covert Associations in Northern Europe, 1603–1746 (Leiden, 2006), 135–36Google Scholar; Watt, Douglas, The Price of Scotland: Darien, Union and the Wealth of Nations (Edinburgh, 2007), 24Google Scholar.

9 Scott, William Robert, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, 3 vols. (Cambridge, 1910–1912), 1:xiv, 147–48Google Scholar, 2:55, 104; Chaudhuri, K. N., The English East India Company: The Study of an Early Joint-Stock Company, 1600–1640 (London, 1965), 30–31Google Scholar.

10 Rupali Mishra, A Business of State: Commerce, Politics, and the Birth of the East India Company (Cambridge, MA, 2018), 162–77.

11 Mishra, 1–2, 10–11, 22–25, 304–7; quotation at 25.

12 Philip J. Stern, “Companies: Monopoly, Sovereignty, and the East Indies,” in Mercantilism Reimagined: Political Economy in Early Modern Britain and Its Empire, ed. Philip J. Stern and Carl Wennerlind (Oxford, 2014), 177–95, at 180.

13 William A. Pettigrew, “Corporate Constitutionalism and the Dialogue between the Global and Local in Seventeenth-Century English History,” Itinerario 39, no. 3 (2015): 487–501.

14 Jason Cameron White, “Royal Authority versus Corporate Sovereignty: The Levant Company and the Ambiguities of Early Stuart Statecraft,” Seventeenth Century 32, no. 3 (2017): 231–55.

15 S. G. E. Lythe, The Economy of Scotland in its European Setting, 1550–1625 (Edinburgh, 1960), 78–80, 116, 126–28; Claire McLoughlin, “The Control of Trade in Scotland during the Reigns of James VI and Charles I,” Northern Studies 45 (2013): 46–67. The term “geographical monopoly” is from Jelle C. Riemersma, “Oceanic Expansion: Government Influence on Company Organization in Holland and England (1550–1650),” Journal of Economic History 10, no. S1 (1950): 31–39, at 33.

16 This situation likely accounts for the small number of companies created in Scotland in this period. According to a recent study, only eighteen Scottish companies (mostly mining and manufacturing) were established or even applied for privileges before 1681. Mark Freeman, Robin Pearson, and James Taylor, “Law, Politics and the Governance of English and Scottish Joint-Stock Companies, 1600–1850,” Business History 55, no. 4 (2013): 636–52, at 639.

17 Mishra, Business of State, 149–77.

18 TNA, SP 52/27, Peers of Scotland, [1577], fol. 25.44v; James Paterson, History of the County of Ayr with a Genealogical Account of the Families of Ayrshire, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1852), 107, 117.

19 John Hill Burton and David Masson, eds., The Register of the Privy Council of Scotland, 1st ser., 14 vols. (Edinburgh, 1877–98) (hereafter RPC), 5:406; Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, 119.

20 Paterson, History of the County of Ayr, 108, 119; John Maitland Thomson et al., eds., […] The Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, A. D. 1306–1668, 11 vols. (Edinburgh, 1882–1914), 6:293.

21 He was knighted sometime before 9 July 1607. Charter for Balwearie, 9 July 1607, GD26/3/638, National Records of Scotland, Edinburgh. For evidence of his involvement in public affairs, see RPC, 7:55; Robert Pitcairn, ed., Criminal Trials in Scotland […], vol. 3 (Edinburgh, 1833), 9.

22 Scott, Constitution and Finance, 1:147, 2:104.

23 For the importance of court connections in receiving royal grants, see Linda Levy Peck, “Court Patronage and Government Policy: The Jacobean Dilemma,” in Patronage in the Renaissance, ed. Guy Fitch Lytle and Stephen Orgel (Princeton, 1981), 27–46. For the idea of “projects,” see John Cramsie, “Commercial Projects and the Fiscal Policy of James VI and I,” Historical Journal 43, no. 2 (2000): 345–64.

24 For example, Conway, No Man's Land, 105; W. A. McNeill, “Papers of a Dundee Shipping Dispute, 1600–1604,” in Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, vol. 10 (Edinburgh, 1965), 55–85, at 64n2.

25 For Cunningham's connections with these men, see notes 28, 29, 32, 33, 34, and 35, below.

26 See Neil Cuddy, “The Revival of the Entourage: The Bedchamber of James I, 1603–1625,” in The English Court: From the Wars of the Roses to the Civil War, ed. David Starkey (London, 1987), 173–225; Neil Cuddy, “Anglo-Scottish Union and the Court of James I, 1603–1625,” Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, no. 39 (1989): 107–24.

27 Anna Groundwater, “From Whitehall to Jedburgh: Patronage Networks and the Government of the Scottish Borders, 1603 to 1625,” Historical Journal 53, no. 4 (2010): 871–93, at 872–73, 892; Alan R. MacDonald, “Neither Inside nor Outside the Corridors of Power: Prosaic Petitioning and the Royal Burghs in Early Modern Scotland,” Parliaments, Estates and Representation 38, no. 3 (2018): 293–306, at 301–2.

28 J. S. Brewer and William Bullen, eds., Calendar of the Carew Manuscripts, Preserved in the Archi-Episcopal Library at Lambeth, vol. 5, 1603–1624 (London, 1873), 264; C.W. Russell and John P. Prendergast, eds., Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland […], 1611–1614 (London, 1877), 262–63.

29 Russell and Prendergast, Calendar of the State Papers Relating to Ireland, 1611–1614, 262–63, 497, quotation at 262.

30 Neither Cunningham nor his uncle applied to become planters when the opportunity arose in 1609, but they fit the criteria the king was looking for in Scottish planters. M. Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster in the Reign of James I (London, 1973), 98–113, 317–22.

31 For James VI and I's approach to granting rewards for service, see Linda Levy Peck, “‘For a King Not to Be Bountiful Were a Fault’: Perspectives on Court Patronage in Early Stuart England,” Journal of British Studies 25, no. 1 (1986): 31–61.

32 APC, 36:71. In a 1627 letter supporting a petition of Cunningham's widow, Charles I referred to the “good and acceptable service done by the said Sir James Cunningham unto our dear father and our Crown.” James Morrin, ed., Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, of the Reign of Charles the First, First to Eighth Year, Inclusive (Dublin, 1863), 267.

33 James Maidment, ed., State Papers and Miscellaneous Correspondence of Thomas, Earl of Melros, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1837), 171–72. Hamilton was secretary of state for Scotland when the company patent was granted, and Murray was an important figure in Scottish politics as his position as a groom of the royal bedchamber made him a conduit for correspondence between the king and his Scottish subjects. Furthermore, Murray's role as keeper of the privy purse from 1611 to 1625 made him of particular importance to those seeking royal grants. William Taylor, “The Scottish Privy Council 1603–1625: Its Composition and Its Work” (PhD diss., University of Edinburgh, 1950), 14–17, 21; Groundwater, “From Whitehall to Jedburgh,” 878–79, 884–85, 889–91; Cuddy, “Revival of the Entourage,” 187–88, 219.

34 Charles Rogers, Memorials of the Earl of Stirling and of the House of Alexander, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1877), 62–63; Charles Rogers, ed., The Earl of Stirling's Register of Royal Letters Relative to the Affairs of Scotland and Nova Scotia from 1615 to 1635, vol. 1 (Edinburgh, 1885), 89; Morrin, Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, 266–67.

35 James VI and I to Cunningham, [1617], IOR/B/2, fols. 166v–67r, BL. Alexander was serving as master of requests and as one of the signet clerks for Scotland at the time.

36 Alexander Fraser, ed., Nova Scotia: The Royal Charter of 1621 to Sir William Alexander (Toronto, 1922), 24–51. Cunningham also had a connection with the other leader of this project, Robert Gordon of Lochinvar, who served as a cautioner for one of his debts in 1611. Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, 7:559n1.

37 RPC, 11:136. Notably, this was the first time these three men all attended the same meeting of the council.

38 RPC, 11:120; Maidment, State Papers, 284.

39 Maidment, State Papers, 284.

40 Marguerite Wood, ed., Extracts from the Records of the Burgh of Edinburgh, 1604 to 1626 (Edinburgh, 1931), 156.

41 RPC, 11:125.

42 TNA, CO 77/1, no. 65, Privileges of the Scottish East India Company, [1619?], fol. 128.

43 Theodora Keith, “The Trading Privileges of the Royal Burghs of Scotland,” English Historical Review 28, no. 111 (1913): 454–71, at 457–60.

44 Keith M. Brown et al., eds., Records of the Parliaments of Scotland to 1707 (online), 1607/3/24, “Act in favouris of the frie burrowis regall aganis unfremen,” 11 August 1607; 1488/10/48, Legislation, 17 October 1488; 1504/3/55, Legislation, 15 March 1504.

45 It was on these grounds that they opposed not just the Scottish East India Company but all private monopolies in this period. The Convention of Royal Burghs banned merchants from participating in monopolies in 1632. McLoughlin, “Control of Trade,” 55–56; Alan R. MacDonald, The Burghs and Parliament in Scotland, c. 1550–1651 (Aldershot, 2007), 69–70.

46 See McLoughlin, “Control of Trade,” 46–67; MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, 57–82; Keith M. Brown, Noble Society in Scotland: Wealth, Family and Culture, from Reformation to Revolution (Edinburgh, 2000), 49–70.

47 MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, 70.

48 Groundwater, “From Whitehall to Jedburgh,” 872–73, 892; MacDonald, “Neither Inside nor Outside the Corridors of Power,” 301–2.

49 James to Cunningham, IOR/B/2, fols. 166v–67r; Danish translation of patent, 24 May 1617, TKUA/SD/England A.II.12, Rigsarkivet.

50 This opposition, expressed on 5 July 1617, is the last direct evidence of the royal burghs’ opposition to the Scottish East India Company. J. D. Marwick, ed., Extracts from the Records of the Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, 1615–1676 (Edinburgh, 1878), 46.

51 Perceval-Maxwell, The Scottish Migration to Ulster, 337–38; Register of the Great Seal of Scotland, 7:92, 94, 305, 318, 320, 322, 332; RPC, 10:105–6, 526; Contract of wadset, 7 July 1613, GD20/1/548, National Records of Scotland; Inhibitions against Cunningham, 1611–20, GD149/85, National Records of Scotland.

52 RPC, 11:20.

53 Morrin, Calendar of the Patent and Close Rolls of Chancery in Ireland, 266–69, 384.

54 Morrin, 266–69, 384; Petition of Patrick Black to the House of Lords, 21 March 1625/6, HL/PO/JO/10/1/30, fol. 109, Parliamentary Archives, London (hereafter PA); Petition of Katherine Cunningham to the House of Lords, 10 April 1628, HL/PO/JO/10/1/35, PA.

55 Steve Murdoch, “The Good, the Bad and the Anonymous: A Preliminary Survey of Scots in the Dutch East Indies, 1612–1707,” Northern Scotland 22, no. 1 (2002): 63–76, at 64–65.

56 Murdoch, “The Good, the Bad,” 64–65; “Memorie A,” Archief familie van Borssele van der Hooge 141, fols. 42r–43r, 50v–52v, Zeeuws Archief, Middelburg.

57 Samuel Purchas, ed., Purchas his Pilgrims in Five Bookes […], vol. 3 (London, 1625), 468.

58 Brown, Noble Society in Scotland, 49.

59 Brown, 62–63; Nicholls, Jacobean Union, 166–68; Theodore K. Rabb, Enterprise and Empire: Merchant and Gentry Investment in the Expansion of England, 1575–1630 (Cambridge, MA, 1967), 234, 287, 305, 311, 363, 385.

60 W. Noël Sainsbury, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies, China and Japan, 1513–1616 (London, 1862), 238–39.

61 Hamilton was not named in the company's 1615 patent, but he became a leading shareholder within the following five years. Vernon A. Ives, ed., The Rich Papers: Letters from Bermuda, 1615–1646 (Toronto, 1984), 349, 361.

62 David Stevenson, “Hamilton, James, Second Marquess of Hamilton,” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online).

63 Some merchants did work with members of the gentry in monopolies, despite the wishes of the Convention of Royal Burghs. MacDonald, Burghs and Parliament, 69.

64 TNA, SP 14/132, no. 77, Petition of the Scottish East India Company to the Privy Council, July 1622, fol. 123r; R. E. G. Kirk and Ernest F. Kirk, eds., Returns of Aliens Dwelling in the City and Suburbs of London from the Reign of Henry VIII to That of James I, vol. 3 (Aberdeen, 1907), 165, 207; W. Bruce Bannerman and A. W. Hughes Clarke, eds., Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, vol. 1 (London, 1916), 19.

65 APC, 41:369. It is noteworthy that Caron was heavily involved in Anglo-Dutch diplomacy regarding Spitsbergen and the East Indies as well as in negotiations regarding Dutch fishing in Scottish waters. See George Edmundson, Anglo-Dutch Rivalry during the First Half of the Seventeenth Century (Oxford, 1911), 43–48, 52–57, 72–73, 81, 86, 89–90.

66 English East India Company Court Minutes, 20 March 1617/8, IOR/B/6, fol. 142, BL; Court Minutes, 14 April 1618, IOR/B/6, fols. 158–59, BL; Court Minutes, 15 April 1618, BL IOR/B/6, fols. 159–60, BL.

67 English East India Company Court Minutes, 14 April 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 158, BL.

68 English East India Company Court Minutes, 17 March 1623/4, IOR/B/6, fol. 459, BL. For information on Pruson, see A. P. McGowan, ed., The Jacobean Commissions of Enquiry, 1608 and 1618 (London, 1971), 36–48.

69 Contemporary accounts consistently referred to additional unnamed partners. See, for example, Norman Egbert McClure, ed., The Letters of John Chamberlain, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, 1939), 150; APC, 36:70, 77; James to Cunningham, IOR/B/2, fols. 166v–67r.

70 Petition of the Scottish East India Company to the House of Lords, 18 March 1623/4, HL/PO/JO/10/1/22, PA.

71 Petition of Thomas Gabriel and others to the House of Lords, 16 April 1624, HL/PO/JO/10/1/24, fol. 5, PA.

72 Petition of Patrick Black to the House of Lords, 21 March 1625/6, HL/PO/JO/10/1/30, fol. 109, PA. Black was a Scot and, in addition to being a royal tailor, was a leading member of the Merchant Taylors Company. His name also appears with that of Lucas Corsellis as a creditor of the Scottish courtier Richard Preston, 1st Earl of Desmond. APC, 46:386–87; Rogers, The Earl of Stirling's Register of Royal Letters, 25–26; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Fourth Report of the Royal Commission on Historical Manuscripts, Part 1: Report and Appendix (London, 1874), 68; Nigel Victor Sleigh-Johnson, “The Merchant Taylors Company of London, 1580–1645: With Special Reference to Politics and Government” (PhD diss., University College London, 1989), 358n1.

73 Petition of John Sharp to the House of Lords, 23 April 1624, HL/PO/JO/10/1/24, fol. 29, PA.

74 English East India Company Court Minutes, 3 February 1617/8, IOR/B/6, fol. 124, BL.

75 Petition of Patrick Black, HL/PO/JO/10/1/30, fol. 109.

76 Petition of Sir Piers Crosby and Peter Bradshaw to the House of Lords, 28 March 1626, HL/PO/JO/10/1/31, PA. Interestingly, Crosby would later work with William Alexander on plans to establish a settlement near Nova Scotia. For this and Crosby's other commercial activities, see Aidan Clarke, “Sir Piers Crosby, 1590–1646: Wentworth's ‘Tawney Ribbon,’” Irish Historical Studies 26, no. 102 (1988): 142–60, at 151–55.

77 Petition of Jane Barnes to the House of Lords, 1624, HL/PO/JO/10/1/27, fol. 96, PA.

78 Sidney Lee and Trevor Dickie, “Cambell, Sir James (c.1570–1642),” in Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (online).

79 Lee and Dickie, “Cambell, Sir James”; Bannerman and Clarke, Miscellanea Genealogica, 19; John Stow, A survey of the cities of London and Westminster and the borough of Southwark […], ed. John Strype, vol. 1 (London, 1720), 274–75, https://www.dhi.ac.uk/strype/.

80 Stow, Survey of the cities, 275; Bannerman and Clarke, Miscellanea Genealogica, 19, 62.

81 Petition of the Scottish East India Company, HL/PO/JO/10/1/22, 18 March 1623/4.

82 TNA, CO 77/1, no. 66, Answer of the United Muscovy and East India Companies, 8 August 1618, fol. 147.

83 See note 118, below.

84 Petition of the Scottish East India Company, HL/PO/JO/10/1/22, 18 March 1623/4.

85 Le Maire is also an example of a merchant who looked for ways to circumvent trading companies in their native country. He had, for example, attempted to establish an East India company in France. Corsellis maintained an interest in the East Indian trade after the Scottish East India Company project and joined the English East India Company in 1623. J. G. Van Dillen, “Isaac le Maire et le commerce des actions de la compagnie des indes orientales,” Revue d'histoire moderne 10, no. 16 (1935): 5–21; J. G. Van Dillen, “Isaac le Maire et le commerce des actions de la compagnie des indes orientales: II,” Revue d'histoire moderne 10, no. 17 (1935): 121–37; English East India Company Court Minutes, 19 September 1623, IOR/B/8, fol. 129, BL. For Edge's claim, see Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 468.

86 List of men to be paid, 4 June 1621, HL/PO/JO/10/1/19, fol. 22r, PA; Kirk and Kirk, Returns of Aliens, 128 −29, 235, 250, 253, 260, 268, 272 −73, 289. There was also a Dominico Bowens who had a petition to the English Admiralty and Privy Council supported by Noel de Caron in 1613, and a “Bownes” associated with Dishington and Le Maire in the southwest passage project. APC, 33:12, 50-51, 242; English East India Company Court Minutes, 10 April 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 157, BL.

87 English East India Company Court Minutes, 27 October 1615, IOR/B/5, fols. 529–30, BL.

88 It is also notable that the next Scottish trading company to be created, the Scottish Guinea Company, involved Dutch merchants and has been described as a front for foreign investment. Robin Law, “The First Scottish Guinea Company, 1634–9,” Scottish Historical Review 76, pt. 2, no. 202 (1997): 185–202.

89 See Keith M. Brown and Allan Kennedy, “Land of Opportunity? The Assimilation of Scottish Migrants in England, 1603–ca. 1762,” Journal of British Studies 57, no. 4 (2018): 709–35.

90 Beaver-makers were craftsmen who made beaver hats. The other Scots involved were William Alexander, his son Henry Alexander, Ninian Cunningham, and possibly Alexander Dunsire. TNA, SP 16/366, no. 67, Charles I to John Bankes and Edward Littleton, August 1637, fol. 124r; TNA, PC 2/49, Concerning the Company of Beaver-makers, 31 March 1638, fols. 27v–28r; TNA, SP 16/382, no. 53, Proclamation for the Corporation of Beaver-makers, 20 February 1637/8, fols. 133–40; TNA, SP 16/475, no. 56, Petition of David Cunningham and the Corporation of Beaver-makers to Charles I, [1640?], fol. 157r.

91 For one example of Muirhead's and Cloberry's activities, see E. B. O'Callaghan, ed., Documents Relative to the Colonial History of the State of New-York […], vol. 1 (Albany, 1856), 71–83, 108.

92 TNA, SP 14/111, no. 125, Petition of Cunningham to the Privy Council, [1619?], fol. 204r; Petition of Cunningham to the House of Lords, [5 May 1621?], HL/PO/JO/10/1/18, fol. 185, PA.

93 Petition of Thomas Northen to the House of Lords, 23 April 1624, HL/PO/JO/10/1/24, fol. 30, PA.

94 APC, 36:70–71.

95 Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 465, 723–24, 733, 736; W. Martin Conway, ed., Early Dutch and English Voyages to Spitsbergen in the Seventeenth Century […] (London, 1904), 43; TNA, CO 77/1, no. 64.1, Estimate of Scottish East India Company's losses, 4 May 1618, fol. 125.

96 List of men to be paid, HL/PO/JO/10/1/19, fol. 22r; TNA, CO 77/1, Estimate of losses, fol. 125.

97 TNA, CO 77/1, Estimate of losses, fol. 125.

98 For an overview of Basque whaling, see Julian de Zulueta, “The Basque Whalers: The Source of Their Success,” Mariner's Mirror 86, no. 3 (2000): 261–71.

99 Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 465–66, 709–10, 732; Conway, Early Dutch and English Voyages, 20; C. C. A. Gosch, ed., Danish Arctic Expeditions, 1605 to 1620, vol. 2 (London, 1897), xxiv–xxvi. The Muscovy Company had also hired Basque experts for earlier whaling attempts around 1577. Cecil T. Carr, ed., Select Charters of Trading Companies, A.D. 1530–1707 (London, 1913), 28–30.

100 Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 716–17; James Haig, ed., The Historical Works of James Balfour […], vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1824), 60. See also RPC, 10:330.

101 TNA, SP 16/195, no. 19, Petition of Nathaniel Wright to the Privy Council, 29 June 1631, fol. 25r.

102 Gosch, Danish Arctic Expeditions, xxv–xxvi.

103 Gosch, xxvi; TNA, CO 77/1, Estimate of losses, fol. 125.

104 For examples of Muscovy Company defectors in relation to Spitsbergen whaling, see Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 466; APC, 33:264.

105 Purchas, 468.

106 Danish translation of patent, TKUA/SD/England A.II.12, Rigsarkivet. My thanks to Dr. Alexia Grosjean for this translation.

107 TNA, CO 77/1, no. 65, Privileges of the Scottish East India Company, [1619?], fols. 129–30.

108 Riemersma, “Oceanic Expansion,” 33.

109 For example, there are only three known transatlantic voyages undertaken by Scottish vessels prior to the founding of the Scottish East India Company (not including the whaling voyage of 1616): two to Newfoundland in 1596 and 1599–1600, and one to the Caribbean in 1611. McNeill, “Papers of a Dundee Shipping Dispute,” 68; R. J. Hunter, “Scotland and the Atlantic: The Voyage of the Jonet of Leith, December 1611,” Mariner's Mirror 79, no. 1 (1993): 83–84. Evidence for the 1596 voyage has recently been discovered by Dr. Thomas Brochard. My thanks to Dr. Brochard for sharing this information with me.

110 James to Cunningham, IOR/B/2, fols. 166v–67r.

111 Danish translation of patent, TKUA/SD/England A.II.12, Rigsarkivet.

112 For a recent study of corporate organization in England, see William A. Pettigrew and Tristan Stein, “The Public Rivalry between Regulated and Joint Stock Corporations and the Development of Seventeenth-Century Corporate Constitutions,” Historical Research 90, no. 248 (2017): 341–62.

113 TNA, CO 77/1, Privileges of the Scottish East India Company, fols. 128–29.

114 TNA, CO 29/1, “The Earle of Carlisle's first Graunt of the Caribbee Islands,” 2 July 1627, fols. 2r–7v.

115 Esther Mijers, “Between Empires and Cultures: Scots in New Netherland and New York,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 33, no. 2 (2013): 165–95, at 172, 184, 194.

116 Mishra, A Business of State, 61–74; Rabb, Enterprise and Empire.

117 APC, 36:70–72.

118 TNA, CO 77/1, Answer of the United Muscovy and East India Companies, fol. 147. Cunningham initially sought an additional £1,194 10s. After the deliberations of the subcommittee, the amount of ￡924 10s was claimed by Cunningham and his associates. Through 1628, the Muscovy Company had not paid all of this sum despite orders to do so from the Privy Council, the House of Lords, and the king. APC, 36:72, 77, 204–205; English East India Company Court Minutes, 22 July 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 189, BL; English East India Company Court Minutes, 14 December 1618, IOR/B/6, fols. 270–71, BL; TNA, CO 77/1, Estimate of losses, fol. 125; TNA, SP 14/132, no. 77.1, Order of the House of Lords on petition of Cunningham, 18 December 1621, fol. 124r; Estimate of commissioners, [July 1619?], HL/PO/JO/10/1/18, fol. 188, PA; Order upon report from the committee in the cause of Cunningham v. the Muscovy Company, 4 June 1621, HL/PO/JO/10/1/19, fols. 18r-21r, PA; Hugh Hammersley to Henry Elsyng, 16 June 1621, HL/PO/JO/10/1/19, fol. 29r, PA; Petition of Katherine Cunningham to the House of Lords, 10 April 1628, HL/PO/JO/10/1/35, PA.

119 Mishra, Business of State, 168–71; Maria Salomon Arel, “The Muscovy Company in the First Half of the Seventeenth Century: Trade and Position in the Russian State—A Reassessment,” vol. 1 (PhD diss., Yale University, 1996), 42–52.

120 Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 468.

121 TNA, CO 77/1, Answer of the United Muscovy and East India Companies, fols. 147–48.

122 Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 468.

123 The details of the collapse of the “old” Muscovy Company (as it came to be known) are not completely clear, and the episode is subject to several interpretations. For an overview, see Arel, “Muscovy Company,” 51–74.

124 Mishra, Business of State, 162–77.

125 APC, 36:71.

126 McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, 134–35.

127 Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 468. See also McClure, Letters of John Chamberlain, 150; APC, 36:70–71; S. Muller, Geschiedenis der Noordsche Compagnie (Utrecht, 1874), 213–14.

128 Charters Granted to the East-India Company, 47–49.

129 APC, 33:330, 398–99; TNA, SP 14/141, Confirmation of the liberties of the Muscovy Company, 30 March 1613, fols. 61r, 65v.

130 For Michelborne and Penkevell, see Mishra, Business of State, 157–59. For Muscovy Company complaints against whalers from Hull and Lynn, see APC, 35:344, 346; 36:2, 40–41, 45–46; TNA, SP 14/94, no. 70, Petition of the Muscovy Company, 20 December 1617, fol. 111v.

131 Vincent C. Loth, “Armed Incidents and Unpaid Bills: Anglo-Dutch Rivalry in the Banda Islands in the Seventeenth Century,” Modern Asian Studies 29, no. 4 (1995): 705–40.

132 Clements R. Markham, ed., Voyages of William Baffin, 1612–1622 (London, 1881), 38–79; Conway, Early Dutch and English Voyages, 13–65; Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 467, 732; Muller, Geschiedenis der Noordsche Compagnie, 214–20, 402–6.

133 In addition to Dutch competition and English interlopers, the Muscovy Company was contending with Danish, French, and Spanish (particularly Basque) whalers at Spitsbergen. Purchas, Purchas his Pilgrims, 466–69, 717–20, 732; Conway, Early Dutch and English Voyages, 20–38; APC, 34:48–49.

134 APC, 36:70–71; Mishra, Business of State, 167.

135 Charters Granted to the East-India Company, 33, 47–49, quotation at 47.

136 William A. Shaw, ed., Letters of Denization and Acts of Naturalization for Aliens in England and Ireland, 1603–1700 (Lymington, 1911), 17. It was necessary for Cunningham to be endenizened or naturalized in England to be able to own land in Ireland, as those processes granted the right to hold land in the same manner as natural-born English subjects. Endenization differed from naturalization in that it was granted by royal letters patent rather than by act of Parliament. Shaw, ii–viii.

137 Rogers, Earl of Stirling's Register of Royal Letters, 25–26.

138 For Edward Coke's famous report on Calvin's Case, see Steve Sheppard, ed., The Selected Writings and Speeches of Sir Edward Coke, vol. 1 (Indianapolis, 2003), 166–232.

139 Canada Merchants to Sir John Coke, [1633?], Egerton MS 2395, fol. 25r, BL.

140 Answer of the Muscovy Company to Cunningham's petition, HL/PO/JO/10/1/18, fol. 189, PA. The document is undated and while 1618 is most likely, it could also be from 1619, 1620, or 1621.

141 APC, 42:184–85, 199–200, quotations at 199.

142 English East India Company Court Minutes, 27 March 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 151, BL; Court Minutes, 10 April 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 153, BL; Court Minutes, 14 December 1618, IOR/B/6, fols. 270–71, BL; Court Minutes, 19 January 1618/9, IOR/B/6, fol. 285, BL; Court Minutes, 30 July 1619, IOR/B/6, fol. 389, BL.

143 Answer of the Muscovy Company, HL/PO/JO/10/1/18, fol. 189.

144 APC, 36:72.

145 Answer of the Muscovy Company, HL/PO/JO/10/1/18, fol. 189; APC, 36:72; English East India Company Court Minutes, 10 April 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 153, BL.

146 English East India Company Court Minutes, 22 December 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 276, BL.

147 English East India Company Court Minutes, 14 December 1618, IOR/B/6, fol. 271, BL.

148 Clark, G. N. and van Eysinga, W. J. M., The Colonial Conferences between England and the Netherlands in 1613 and 1615, vol. 2 (Leiden, 1951), 132Google Scholar.

149 English East India Company Court Minutes, 30 July 1619, IOR/B/6, fol. 389, BL.

150 Levack, Brian P., The Formation of the British State: England, Scotland, and the Union, 1603–1707 (Oxford, 1987), 1–9Google Scholar.

151 Mason, Roger A., “Debating Britain in Seventeenth-Century Scotland: Multiple Monarchy and Scottish Sovereignty,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 35, no. 1 (2015): 1–24CrossRefGoogle Scholar, at 2.

152 See Bowie, Karin, “‘A Legal Limited Monarchy’: Scottish Constitutionalism in the Union of Crowns, 1603–1707,” Journal of Scottish Historical Studies 35, no. 2 (2015): 131–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

153 Nicholls, Jacobean Union, 49–50, 56–62, 82–85, 151, 172–73.

154 John Toller, “‘Now of Little Significancy’? The Convention of the Royal Burghs of Scotland, 1651–1688” (PhD diss., University of Dundee, 2010), 230.