THE EARLY CAREER OF RICHARD

COCKS (1566-1624), HEAD OF THE

ENGLISH EAST INDIA COMPANY'S
FACTORY IN JAPAN (1613-1623).
DEREK MASSARELLA
Richard Cocks is rightly famous for his Diary, one of the most
important sources for the study of the East India Company's brief
attempt to establish direct trade with Japan in the early seven-
teenth century. 1 The Diary is a rich storehouse of information
not just about the trading activities of the English, or more strict-
ly British, for other nationals of the British Isles were present
in Japan at that time,
2
but also about their daily routine, their
relationships amongst themselves, with the Japanese, and with
other foreigners. It also provides valuable information about Japan
This is a revised and expanded version of a paper that was read to the Society on
9 April 1984. In Japan, I am most grateful to Professor Iwao Seiichi for supplying me
with references to the Cocks family, Professor Imai Hiroshi and Professor Shimizu Yuji.
In Britain, I am most grateful to Dr G. E. Aylmer, Dr Pauline Croft, Mr A. J. Farr-
ington, of the India Office Library and Records, especially for sharing his extensive
knowledge of the genealogies of the Cocks, Staresmore and Hewett families, Mr L. W.
Fearns, Mr J. D. Hayward, Dr Anne Laurence, 11s Lesley Montgomery, Ms J. Smith,
Assistant Archivist, Staffordshire Record Office, and Mr D. E. Wickham, Archivist of
the Clothworkers' Company.
The spelling of 1\18 sources has been modernised and punctuation added.
1 There are three editions of the Diary: E. Maunde Thompson (cd.), Diary of Richard
Cocks, Cape Merchant in the English Factory in Japan, 1615-1622, ii vols., London, 1883;
N. Murakami (cd.), Diary of Richard Cocks, Cape Merchant in the English Factory in Japan,
1615-1622, ii vols., Tokyo, 1899; Diary Kept by the Head of the English in Japan, edited
by the Historiographical Institute, University of Tokyo, iii vols., Tokyo, 1978-1980.
The last is the fullest edition.
2 Despite its title, A. J. Farrington, 'Some Other Englishmen in Japan' (Transactions
of the Asiatic Society ojJapan, third series, 19, 1984, pp. 1-15), contains information about
other Britons.
2
at a time when the Tokugawa regime was still trying to con-
solidate its power and establish its legitimacy in the eyes of the
Japanese and of foreign powers.
Cocks's Diary is also a valuable document for the student of
social and economic history and for students interested in early
Euro-Japanese relations, a subject that is being re-examined from
a fresh perspective now that the hundred years or so of high im-
perialism has receeded and the debate is gradually released from
the partisan clutches of polemicists.
However, regardless of the Diary and his extensive cor-
respondence from Japan, Cocks's historical standing and that of
his fellow merchants in Japan has been very much overshadowed
by the fame of William Adams, the English pilot from Gillingham
in Kent who was shipwrecked along with other crew members
from the Dutch ship de Liefde in April 1600 off the coast of Bungo
in present-day Oita prefecture. Adams's story has fired the im-
agination of numerous writers, especially since the mid-nineteenth
century when Japan's foreign relations became less restricted.
Recently, the phenomenal success of the book Shogun and the tele-
vision series it spawned has puffed up his reputation even more.
But Adams's place in history is very overrated and depends largely
on having become a diplomatic peg on which to hang goodwill
between two island nations. He was not unique, but one of a
number of European adventurers who sought to take advantage
of the opportunities offered by 'the age of reconnaissance' and
the establishment of direct maritime trade between Europe and
Asia, and who once in Asia decided to stay on. He was not the
first, and was by no means the last, in a long line of people
stretching back into the sixteenth century and forward into modern
times who thirsted for fortune, and sometimes fame, along the
sea routes from the Atlantic to the China Seas. Contemporaries
of Adams included George Welden, an Englishman who served
the king of Boeton in the Spice Islands whom the Clove, the first
East India Company vessel to be sent to Japan, encountered on
its way thither, Melchior van Sanwoort and Jan Joosten, Adams's
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 3
own shipmates from de Lufde, plus numerous Spanish and especially
3
Portuguese.
The patient researches of Professor Iwao Seiichi have shown
that Joosten, who came from a fairly well-established Dutch fami-
ly, enjoyed a similar degree of favour from Tokugawa Ieyasu
as Adams. Like the latter, he was made a hatamoto, held lands
in Nagasaki and Edo, and helped the Dutch in their negotiations
with the Japanese after their East India Company had set up
shop in Japan in 1609, in much the same way as Adams did
for the English after their arrival in 1613. Joosten also had a
Japanese family. Both Adams and Joosten enjoyed a measure of
influence as informal advisors to Ieyasu, who liked to receive ad-
vice from a variety of sources anyway, but they could only proffer
their views when asked and in both cases their influence, such
as it was, waned considerably after Ieyasu's death.
4
Neither Adams
nor Joosten enjoyed power, unlike their near contemporary Yamada
Nagamasa, the famous head of the overseas Japanese in Siam
in the 1620s, nor the Greek adventurer Constantin Phaulkon,
also in Siam later in the century. Adams and Joosten were more
akin to go-betweens, or nakodo, the sort of people who could make
the Japanese feel comfortable in their dealings with foreigners.
Richard Cocks may not have enjoyed the status of one of Ieyasu's
informal advisors, but his surviving papers tell us far more about
Japan in the early seventeenth century than the more limited ones
of Adams. However, until recently biographical information on
Cocks, and especially about his pre-J apan career, was extremely
thin and mostly innacurate. The original editor of the Diary, E.
Maunde Thompson, erroneously suggested that Cocks was a native
3 On Welden, see Ernest M. Satow (cd.). The Voyage Captain John Sari,)' to Japan,
1613, London, 1900; Frederick Charles Danvers and Williarn Foster (cds.}, Letters Received
the East India Company, vi vols., London 1896-1902, i, p. 313; ii, pp. 35-36, 45, 272,
307, 308, 315; iii, pp. 61-62, 286, 287, 308. On Joosten, see Sciichi Iwao, 'Jan
Joosten', Bulletin oj the Japan-lV'etherlands Society, 1, 1958.
4 The fan10US Portuguese Jesuit, J oao Rodrigues, had also been an inforrnaI advisor.
Sec Michael Cooper, Rodrigues the lnterpreter, New York and Tokyo, 1974.
4
of Coventry and that he was one of the original subscribers to
the East India Company in 1600. In fact the Richard Cocks who
subscribed to the Company at its foundation was a Grocer and
is not the same man as the future head of the Hirado factory.
It is also wrong to link the latter with the shipmaster in Frobisher's
third voyage in 1578.
5
Unfortunately, much of the subsequent
work on the English factory in Japan, including the new edition
of the Diary, repeats many of these errors.
6
However, the discovery of Cocks's baptismal record and will
makes it clear that Cocks was a Staffordshire man. He was born
at Stallbrook in the parish of Sleighford in 1566 and was baptised
on 20 January 1566. His parents were Robert, who was a bailiff
on Lord Stafford's Derrington estate, and Helen Cocks, who died
in July 1614, three years after Richard had left for Japan.
7
The
family was a fairly prosperous one which had been in possession
of two manors of crown land since the fifteenth century. 8 Richard
had four brothers: John and Jeram, both born before 1560, when
the parish register begins, Walter, baptised 15 February 1568,
5 Thompson (ed.), Diary, pp. xii-xiii. [The] C[alendar oj] S[tate] p[apers Colonial Series]
East Indies [China and Japan], 1515-1616, p. 100, and Henry Stevens, The Dawn of
British Trade in the East Indies, London, repr. 1967, p. 2, make it clear that the Cocks
who subscribed to the East India Company was a Grocer. Sir George Birdwood and
William Foster (eds.), The First Letter Book of the East India Company: 1600-1619, Lon-
don, 1893, index, confuses the two.
6 Ludwig Riess, 'History of the English Factory in Hirado', Transactions of the Asiatic
Society oj Japan, first series, xxvi, 1898, p. 37; M. Paske-Smith, A Glympse of the 'English
House} and English Life at Htrado, 1613-1623, Kobe, 1927; idem) Western Barbarians in
Japan and Formosa, New York, repr. 1968, pp. 56-57; Cyril Wild (ed.), Purchas His
Pilgrimes in Japan, Kobe, 1939, pp. 109-110; Diary Kept . . . , i. p. xii.
7 Staffordshire Record Office D731/1, f. 20. Dates are a little confusing at this time.
The English continued to use the Julian calendar (Old Style) until 1752, while most
of continental Europe switched to the Gregorian calendar (New Style) in 1582. In this
article Old Style is used for material originating in England, except that the new year
is considered to begin on 1 January, not 24 March. New Style is used for material originating
in France and Spain, the contemporary practice. Thus Cocks's letters from France etc.
are New Style, while letters from England are Old Style. Cocks's Diary and letters from
Japan are Old Style, which was ten days behind the Gregorian calendar in the seventeenth
century.
8 [Manuscrlpts] C[ommission] Salisbury (Cecil) MSS, xx, p. 251.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624)
5
and Francis, baptised 16 October 1572. He also had two older
sisters, Marjory and Joan, also born before 1560.
John, the eldest son, inherited the family lands and was alive
in 1626 when the family was still trying to force the East India
Company to free Richard's estate following what the Company
considered his mismanagement of its interests in Japan. 9 J eram
was most probably a simpleton because Richard made a specific,
and unusual, request in his will that John was not to "misuse"
him and was to provide him with "sufficient meat, drink and
apparell." 10 Richard was also very concerned about the welfare
of his younger brother Walter. He managed to fix him up with
a job as a servant to Sir Thomas Hewett, but he appears to have
fallen on hard times, for in January 1616 Richard wrote to Sir
Thomas Wilson, then keeper of the records, begging for his help
in finding Walter a job in order to support his wife and children. 11
Of Francis we know nothing save his baptismal date. Of the two
sisters, Marjory did well, marrying into the Staresmore family
of Frolesworth in Leicestershire, a fairly important gentry family
which backed the wrong side in the Civil War and which ran
into debt and faced ruin by the time of the Restoration, although
this was not entirely the consequence of misplaced political affili-
ation. Her husband was incumbant of Frolsworth and Richard
appointed him one of his executors. He was still alive in 1630,
haggling with the Company over his brother-in-law's estate.
12
Joan married into the Gray family, of which nothing is known,
sometime before 1611.
13
In short, the family belonged to that zone of social status which
Dr G. E. Aylmer has drawn attention to, a status in which the
9 C.s.P. East Indies, 1625-1629, p. 267.
10 Diary Kept . . " iii, p. 264. lowe this suggestion to Mr A. j. Farrington.
11 See Derek Massarella, 'james I and japan', Monumenta Nipponica, xxxviii, 1983,
p. 385.
12 The Victoria History of the Counties oj England, Leicestershire, vol ii , London 1955, pp.
110, 215; C.s.P. East Indies, 1630-1634, p. 32.
13 See Cocks's will in Diary Kept . . . , iii, p. 264.
6
titles 'gent.' and 'Mr.' are interchangeable but which in no way
implies membership of the upper echelons of the traditional landed
ruling class.
14
Often these people were upwardly mobile, as was
the case with the Cocks family. In the Sleighford parish register
John is styled both "gent." and "yeoman", and Marjory im-
proved her status by a judicious marriage.
The opportunities for younger sons were very different. Their
position regardless of social rank was precarious, although in the
case of Richard fortuna was to keep a bountiful eye on him bless-
ing him with ability, adventurousness and the knack of making
good connections. Richard's position as a younger son was one
he shared with Sir Thomas Wilson, his future patron and possibly
the single most important person in his life. Wilson (knighted
in 1618) owed his rise to his close connection with the Cecil fami-
ly, perhaps the key family in the late Elizabethan and the early
Jacobean period and destined to become one of the leading political
families in Britain, remaining so until well into our own times,
and especially to his relationship with Robert Cecil, the future
Lord Treasurer and Earl of Salisbury. Cecil emerged as the most
powerful man at the early Jacobean court and was himself a
younger son. Cocks could not have done better than to lock himself
into this patronage network.
In his treatise The State of England, written in 1600, Wilson
described the condition of the "great younger brother" as "most
miserable," for the elder brother "must have all" leaving his
younger sibling little option but "to apply ourselves to letters or
to arms.,,15 Cocks, unlike Wilson, was not from a "great" gen-
try family and therefore had little opportunity to apply himself
to letters or arms. However, he did apply himself to another avenue
open to many younger sons, including those from more comfort-
able backgrounds than himself, business.
14 G. E. Aylmer, The State's Servants, London, 1973, p. 198. See also J. P. Cooper,
Land) Men and Beliefs, edited by G. E. Aylmer andJ. S. Morrill, London, 1983, chapter three.
15 Joan Thi rsk and J. P. Cooper (eds.), Seventeenth Century Economic Documents, Oxford,
1972, p. 756.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 7
Cocks was apprenticed in London to the Clothworker William
Hewett, another instance of fortuna shining on him. The Hewetts
came from Derbyshire. William Hewett's father possessed a con-
siderable estate at Killarmarch in the reign of Henry VIII. William
was apprenticed and eventually made free of the Clothworkers'
Company in the early 1570s. It is also likely that he is the same
person as the Merchant Adventurer, William Hewett, who was
appointed one of the assistants of the Spanish Company (chartered
in 1577). He died in 1599, aged 77, and was buried in St. Paul's
where his tombstone inscription records that he promoted literary
studies, which judging from Cocks's correspondence and Diary
and the fact that he possessed copies of St Augustine's City of
God and Sir Walter Raleigh's History of the World while in Japan,
rubbed off on the young Richard. Hewett left four sons. John,
who died relatively young but with offspring in 1602, Solomon,
Thomas (died 1623), and William. The two last became fairly
important members of the Jacobean establishment, both \vere
knighted, and Thomas also figured in Cocks's career. They were
not a particularly close-knit family. John and William tried to
tamper with their father's will, at Thomas's expense, although
there was a reconciliation as the latter appointed William his ex-
ecutor. Thomas, another younger son some eight years Cocks's
junior, also served an apprenticeship and was made free of the
Clothworkers' Company. All the brothers were original adven-
turers in the East India Company.f"
How Cocks came to be apprenticed to Hewett is unclear, but
16 P[ublic] R[ecord] O[ffice, London] PROB 11/94, ff. 29-34v (will of William
Hewett); PROB 11/101, ff. 106-108 (will of John Hewett); PROB 11/143, ff. 55-56v
(wil] of Sir Thomas Hewett}; Payne Fisher, The Tombs) Mtmumenis, etc visible in St. Paul '5
Cathedral. .. previous to its Destruction b] Fire AD 1666. edited by G. Blacker Morgen, Lon-
don, repr. 1885; Thomas Wotton, English Baronetage, iv vols., London, 1741, pp.
*441-450; C.s.P. Domestic) 1603-1610, p. 590; C.s.P. Domestic, 1611-1618, p. 192;
C. Domestic) 1619-1623, p. 502; Birdwood and Foster (eds.). First Letter Book. . . . pp.
164-165; Theodore K. Raab, Enterprise and Empire, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1967, p.
313; Pauline Croft, The Spanish Company, London, 1973, pp. xiii-xiv. For Cocks's books,
see Diary Kept . . . , i. pp. 67, 194; Danvers and Foster (eds.), Letters Received. . . , vi, p. 266.
8
the Cocks family were kinsmen of the Dorringtons who came from
Stafford and some of whom were important London merchants.
Cocks refers to John Dorrington, one of those merchants, as his
"cousin" (probably meaning kinsman), and in his will he makes
Richard Dorrington, who had inherited the family land in Staf-
ford (the Friars) and whom he styles "gent" as well as "kinsman"
and "cousin", one of his executors. Cocks also sent a letter from
Japan in January 1617, together with "4 beakers" to Francis
and George Dorrington who had been merchants in the Levant
at the end of the sixteenth century. It was this sort of connection
that introduced or recommended (the usual means by which ap-
prentices were selected) Richard as an apprentice to John Hewett. 17
During his apprenticeship Cocks would have acquired very broad
experience of the business operations and methods of his master,
and in the case of Hewett he was lucky to have served under
such a successful, well-established merchant. The apprentice's in-
denture imposed a mutual obligation on both the master and the
apprentice. According to an early seventeenth-century apologist
for apprenticeship, the master ought to furnish his apprentices
"with instruction and universal conformation or molding of him
to his art" while the apprentice ought to serve his master "with
obedience, faith, and industry." Apprenticeship involved both
technical training with a good measure of general education thrown
in, and also moral and spiritual education intended to produce
competent merchants and loyal subjects. One of the first things
an apprentice learned was how to keep petty cash books, such
as travel expenses, after which he graduated to studying and becom-
ing proficient in double book-keeping, for the keeping of accurate
books was considered essential by contemporary business stan-
17 Diary Kept . . . , ii, p. 11, iii, pp. 263, 275; The Victoria History of the Counties of
England) Staffordshire, vi, London, 1979, p. 207; P.R.O. HCA 13/26, ff. 235, 235v; HCA
13/30, f. 129; Sir William Foster (ed.), The Travels of John Sanderson in the Levant
1584-1602, London, 1931; Pauline Croft, 'English Trade with Peninsular Spain
1558-1625', unpublished University of Oxford D.Phil. thesis, 1969, p. 154; Barbara
Winchester, 'The Johnson Letters, 1542-1552', unpublished University of London
Ph.D. thesis, 1953, pp. 112-113.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 9
dards for the smooth operation of an enterprise. The apprentice
also learned the art of letter writing, usually by imitating model
letters; the standard practice of referring to all recent cor-
respondence with a particular recipient so that the latter could
check to ensure that he had received all letters; the necessity to
summarise briefly the contents of his previous letters; and finally
the habit of making copies of all letters sent-laborious procedures
but necessary at a time when there were no copying machines
or telephones and when the posts were very erratic. Cocks's own
letters show that he had not only mastered the techniques and
conventions of letter writing, but that he was an exceptionally
able correspondent with remarkably well developed powers of obser-
vation who was capable of expressing himself in a confident, clear,
personal and often witty style.
I 8
If it was likely that the apprentice would serve subsequently
overseas, he would become familiar with such documents as bills
of exchange and insurance policies, and with rates of monetary
exchange. Moral and spiritual welfare were also not neglected.
The Clothworkers' Company charged masters with giving:
in commandment unto their prentices that on holidays they shall
truly wait upon their master or masters to the church and there
to serve God. And after to wait upon their master or masters at
dinner and supper.
And in no wise to go from their master's house or door without
the license of their master. And their masters shall give no license
to no prentice to go forth to no place without he know whither
he goeth, and in what company he goeth in.
While the Merchant Adventurers, the largest trading company,
was aware of its responsibility to inculcate the sort of values that
would help young men maintain a sense of propriety when they
18 Winchester, Ph.D., pp. 118-119, 121; M. H. Curtis, 'Education and Appren-
ticeship', Shakespeare Survey, 17, 1964, p. 68 and passim; J[ohnJ B[rowne), The Marchant's
Avizo, edited by Patrick McGrath, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1957. There were plenty
of textbooks available for edification, covering all aspects of an apprentice's education,
of which The Marchant's Avizo is an excellent example.
10
were "released from the discipline of the home and exposed to
the temptations of life in a foreign town." 19
The only thing that is known for certain about Cocks's early
life before he turns up as a merchant in Bayonne in southwest
France in 1603 working on behalf of home-based merchants, is
the fact that he was made free of the Clothworkers' Company
in 1597 when he was thirty-one. The earliest date at which he
would have been eligible for his freedom was 1587 when he was
twenty-one. Freedom at twenty-one was granted according to the
'Custom of London', which appears to have been a concession
in London's favour overriding the Statute of Artificers of 1563,
which regulated these matters and which declared that an ap-
prenticeship could not expire before the apprentice had turned
twenty-four. The Statute also stated that an apprenticeship had
to last a minimum of seven years. While apprentices usually entered
servitude at around their mid-teens, this was not true in all cases;
certainly the Victorian practice of apprenticeship lasting from four-
teen to twenty-one was not standard in the sixteenth and seven-
teenth centuries. Thus an apprentice could start to serve his time
later, say in his late-teens or early-twenties. This might have
been the case with Cocks, and would account for his apparently
late freedom, at age thirty-one. However, given the fact that the
records of the Clothworkers' Company do not begin until April
1606, it is impossible to know exactly when he served his appren-
ticeship with Hewett. All that can be said with confidence is that
Cocks could not have been under twenty-one in order to obtain
his freedom and that he did not become a member of the Com-
pany's Livery, for which he would have had to establish himself
as a merchant in his own right (and his subsequent career con-
firms that he did not), for his name does not appear in the Com-
'L' l' 20
pany s . Ivery ists.
19 Curtis, art. cit., p. 70; Browne, Marchant '5 Avizo, p. xxi.
20 I am greatly indebted to Mr D. E. Wickham, Archivist of the Clothworkers'
Company, for supplying me with the date of Cocks's freedom and for clarifying the in-
tricacies of apprenticeship at this time.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 11
Fortunately, from 1603-1610 we can speak with much more
certainty, for there are more than one hundred items, mostly let-
ters from Cocks to Wilson, which tell us a great deal about the
man and which show that in addition to his business activity he
was also acting as an informal intelligence agent for the English
government.
The letters, only a fraction that have survived from what was
a very prolific correspondence, are mostly located in the Public
Record Office in London and, because of the Cecil connection,
among the Salisbury manuscripts at Hatfield House. Thompson,
the original editor of the Diary, mentions the p.R.a. letters but
did not give any references, nor does he appear to have realised
their importance.f ' However, they have been used as source
material by historians who have dealt with Anglo-Spanish trade,
and with English administration. Understandably, these historians
have not referred to the Japan connection.Y The only published
work to have used any of the letters and to refer to the Japan
link is J. W. Stoye's highly readable English Travellers Abroad
1604-1667, which refers to two of them and adds in a footnote
that "this man Cocks lived the last years of his life in Japan."
But Stoye did not feel that Cocks was important enough to merit
inclusion in the index!23
It is not exactly clear when Cocks arrived in southwest France.
In a letter of June 1608, after he had returned to England, he
mentions that he had not been home to Staffordshire for over
twenty years. The letters to Wilson begin in March 1603, but
it is likely that he had already been working abroad for some
time before then. In a letter to the Merchant Adventurers from
Japan in December 1614, he says that "for the space of 15 or
21 Thompson (ed.), Diary, i, p. xiii.
22 Harland Taylor, 'Price Revolution or Price Revision? The English and Spanish
Trade after 1604', Renaissance and Modern History, xii, 1968, pp. 5-32; Alan G. R.
Smith, 'The Secretariat of the Cecils, circa 1580-1612', English Historical Review, lxxxiii,
1968, pp. 481-504, esp. p. 497; Croft, D.Phil.; idem) Spanish Company. Dr Croft men-
tions the Japan connection in her thesis (p. 375n).
23 London, 1952, p. 342n.
12
16 [years I] have been very little or not time at all in England,"
that is from about 1598 or 1599, or shortly after his becoming
free of the Clothworkers' Company which lends some support
to the view that he was a 'late' appreritice.f"
In another letter, of 25 October 1605, Cocks describes himself
as "a factor for others.,,25 Professor T. S. Willan has drawn atten-
tion to the distinction between 'factor' and 'merchant', the factor
being an agent residing abroad for a merchant or merchants in
England. Very often these were former apprentices (sometimes
they were 'apprentice factors', that is apprentices in their fifth
or sixth year of training) who in some cases eventually acquired
enough capital to establish themselves as merchants in their own
right. The factor's job was to buy and sell commodities for whom-
soever he represented on the most favourable terms and to ship
goods home. Naturally this required knowledge of local markets
and trading conditions, foreign exchange matters, and book-
keeping.
26
However, by the time Cocks was operating at Bayonne,
contemporary usage did not differentiate sharply between 'mer-
chant' and 'factor' (although in Willan's sense the former implies
independent capital, and there was clearly a difference in substance,
if no longer terminology, between the two) so that Cocks, who
was acting as a factor or agent for a number of people in England,
can safely be termed 'merchant' . Thus by March 1603, when
his correspondence with Wilson had already begun and from which
time his activities as an informal intelligence agent date, Cocks
was well established at Bayonne. 27
24 P.R.O. SP 94/15, f. 70; Letters Received, ii, p. 221.
25 P.R.G. SP 94/12, f. 85v. See also SP 94/13, f. 97.
26 T. S. WiHan, Studies in Elizabethan Foreign Trade, Manchester, 1959. Dr Croft uses
the term 'merchant factor' (Spanish Company, p. xxx) and also draws attention to the
'apprentice factor' (D.Phil., p. 398 and 'Englishmen and the Spanish Inquisition
1558-1625', English Historical Review, lxxxvii, 1972, p. 252).
27 A possible career path might have been that of the former apprentice furthering
his master's interests abroad. The death of William Hewett in 1599 would have given
him more leeway to act for others, including John Dorrington (see P.R.G. SP 15/34,
p. 136; SP 94/9, f. 12; SP 94/13, f. 104).
The Ear(y Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 13
Intelligence gathering at the end of the sixteenth century and
in the early seventeenth was not systematised, nor always reliable.
There was certainly no MI5 and there were no news organisa-
tions like Reuters or the BBC with a string of correspondents
around the world constantly beaming back information. Two of
the great Elizabethan courtiers, Walsingham and Essex, had built
up effective intelligence networks-Burleigh had a more modest
one-and by the end of the reign Robert Cecil had also establish-
ed an extensive, if eclectic, network which relied on ambassadors'
reports, informants' letters, reports from individuals like Wilson
and from an assortment of others including merchants residing
abroad, sea captains and travellers. Cecil quickly grasped that
in diplomacy there was a vital connection between reliable
knowledge of international developments and political advantage. 28
During his travels on the continent, Wilson had engaged in
intelligence work, reporting to Robert Cecil, especially about the
Spanish and papal threat to England. Spain, the most powerful
European nation at the time, and England had been at war since
1585, although it had remained an undeclared war until 1587.
The English were deeply concerned about the possibility of a
Spanish invasion attacking their soft underbelly, Ireland, which
was, of course, predominantly Roman Catholic.
In 1601 and 1602 Wilson was in Italy and returned to England
by way of Bayonne where he met Cocks early in 1603.
29
This
was most probably their first meeting, although Cocks's name
might have been given to Wilson by mutual contacts in London.
Wilson was on the look out for suitable informal agents who could
watch movements into and out of Spain. Bayonne, an important
commercial centre, was strategically located along the road from
28 P. M. Handovcr, The Second Cecil: The Rise to Power 1563-1604, London, 1950,
chapter 12; D. \-Y. Davies, Elizabethans Errant, Ithica, 1967, pp. 64, 75.
29 The account of Wilson's life in the Dictionary' of National Biograph)' docs not mention
his visit to Bayonne, but Cocks refers to it (P.R.a. SP 15/34, p. 136; SP 94/9, ff. 11,
12) as docs another correspondent (H.A1. C. Salisbury (Cecil) /\.1SS, xiv , p. 262) and there
is a letter written by Wilson himself from Bayonne, 5 March 1603 (P.R.(). SP 151:14,
p. 137).
14
Spain to northern Europe where the Spanish were engaged in
a protracted war with the Dutch. The road circumvented the
Pyrenees, passing through San Sebastian and Bayonne, and was
much used for the transmission of despatches from the Spanish
government to Paris and to Spanish Flanders. 30 There was also
a steady stream of English Roman Catholic exiles on their way
to and from Spain, where many of them were trying to influence
Spanish policy in the hope of persuading the Spanish to invade
England and depose Elizabeth.
31
The English government felt that
the exiles needed watching, although it should be stressed that
the vast majority of Roman Catholics in England were not poten-
tial fifth columnists waiting for the signal from Rome to rise against
the 'heretic' Elizabeth.
Cocks must have impressed Wilson as a likeable, extrovert per-
sonality, knowledgeable about the area, a man with fairly good
contacts, whose Protestantism was not in doubt, and who was
willing and able to report his observations clearly and forward
them to London on a regular basis. Wilson's surviving 'in' letters
show that Cocks was by no means the only merchant Wilson receiv-
ed reports from-even on his brief visit to Bayonne a certain
Bourdet offered his services
32-but
Cocks seems to have hit it
off especially well with Wilson. Their relationship became warm
and fairly intimate, but was always deferential.
The meeting with Wilson must have seemed beneficial to Cocks
too. It gave him an opportunity to serve his country (Cocks's
patriotism, not of the narrow, bigoted kind, is one of his attrac-
tive qualities) and it provided him with a useful connection with
a man who was clearly on the way up, although when Cocks
began writing to Wilson he was not doing so with prescience. He
could not have guessed that Wilson would eventually become so
30 Stoyc, op. cit., p. 342; Taylor, art. cii., p. 10.
31 A. J. Loomie, 'Toleration and Diplomany: the Religious Issue in Anglo-Spanish
Relations, 1603-1605', Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, new series, liii,
1963, pp. 3-60; Croft, Spanish Company, pp. xxx-xxxi.
32 u.u.c. Salisbury (Cecil) MSS, xiv, p. 262.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 15
senior in government service and an influential and invaluable
patron, almost a kind of guardian angel looking after his interests.
Moreover, it would be wrong to criticise or condemn Cocks for
seeking to develop and use his relationship with Wilson. This
would have been considered quite normal. From the perspective
of a more democratic age in Britain where notions of equal op-
portunity have taken deep root and where 'connection' and 'influ-
ence' have tended to become dirty words, it is easy to overlook
just how important and central patronage was to the functioning
and stability of early modern English society. 33
Wilson served as consul in Spain from 1604 until 1605, when
Sir Charles Cornwallis became ambassador to the Spanish court
following the signing of a peace treaty between England and Spain
in 1604. In February of that year, Wilson again visited Bayonne,
although Cocks had already started corresponding with him by
then.
34
His letters and their meeting must have further impressed
Wilson for in December 1604 in one of his reports to London
he referred to Cocks as "one of the better sort of merchants residing
in those parts". He described the other merchants as mostly" raw,
inexperienced and unlanguaged", all the more reason for him
to appreciate Cocks who was by contrast, mature, experienced
and able to speak French and Spanish. 35 Just how far Cocks came
to be trusted by Wilson and by the government in England can
be gauged from the fact that Cornwallis was told that he could
use Cocks to forward letters, including secret ones, to England.r'"
Cocks was also able to get on well with Cornwallis, a rather can-
tankerous man who generally had a very low opinion of mer-
chants, not out of innate prejudice, but because many of them
33 Sec Wallace T. Macaffcry , 'Place and Patronage in Elizabethan Politics', in S.
T. Bindoff et. al . (cds.), Elizabethan Government and Socz'e{y, London, 1961, pp. 9:')-126.
::14 The earliest surviving letter to Wilson is dated 12 March 160:1 (P. R. O. SP 94/8,
f. 149) and to someone else (to John Dorrington) :) March 1603 (SP 15/34, p. 136,
concerning a bill of exchange in Wilson's favour).
35 P.R.O. SP 94/11, f. 4v.
36 For example P.R.O. SP 94/11, f. 174; SP 94/14, f. 36; SP 94/15, f. 1.
16
added to the considerable difficulties he had in seeking redress
for the numerous commercial grievances the embassy dealt with,
by making unreasonable demands and often expecting the em-
bassy to act as a nanny for them.
37
Cornwallis was another useful
connection to have made. Thus Cocks quickly established himself
as a reliable, attentive and diligent informant reporting about
English recusants and gleaning what information he could about
Spain's foreign policy intentions and Spanish military and naval
dispositions, and a highly trusty intermediary for the forwarding
of letters to and from London, and between the ambassadors in
Spain and France. The ambassador in Paris, Sir Thomas Parry,
in a letter to Cecil, presumably in response to a request from
the security conscious government, wrote in July 1605 about the
procedures for handling such inter-embassy correspondence:
I have heretofore used the means of one Cocks, an English mer-
chant. .. by whom I have often received and sent into Spain with
safe and speedy receipt both ways. Here the letters pass to him
in the packet of a French merchant, a very honest and wealthy
man, and thence they are returned in his factor's packet to him
again and arrive here speedily and safely. 38
In addition to his intelligence work, to which Cocks's extrovert
but discreet personality were well suited and which a large part
of the surviving correspondece deals with, Cocks's activity at
Bayonne can be divided into three further aspects. First was his
indirect role-obviously very indirect, but nevertheless important
in historiographical terms-in the efforts to secure the monopoly
of the Spanish Company over the Spanish trade against efforts
by interlopers and free traders, both locally and in England, to
37 Stoye, op. cit., p. 340; Taylor, art. cit., pp. 10, 16; Croft, D.Phil., p. 322ff.
38 p.R.a. SP 78/52, f. 162. There are numerous references in the State Papers Spanish
(SP 94) and French (SP 78) to letters forwarded by means of Cocks, and in the Cornwallis
correspondence in the B[ritish] L[ibrary] (Add[itional] MS 39853) and Bodleian Library,
Oxford (Tanner MS 75). It should be remembered, however, that Cocks was not the
only intermediary, nor, of course, the only intelligencer.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 17
undermine it. Second, and closely related, the floating of his can-
didature for the post of consul in San Sebastian. Finally, his in-
volvement in a long drawn out legal action to recover outstanding
debts which brought him onto a collision course with some other
influential people in England and could easily have ruined him
had he not enjoyed the patronage of Wilson. In its own way the
legal action contributed to Cocks's taking up the job with the
East India Company that was to bring him to Japan.
English trade with Spain had been disrupted by the war. The
main losers were the London merchants of the Spanish Company,
although not all of them, while the beneficiaries were the non-
Company merchants especially those from provincial ports, or
outports as they were called, who carried on the trade clandestinely.
They made a killing, not by gun running, although there was
some of this, nor from the export of English cloth, the main English
manufactured export at that time and the staple commodity of
the Spanish Company, but by exporting grain for which there
was a great demand in the Iberian peninsula. So much grain
was exported from England, flooding the Spanish market, that
it was reported "that the Spaniards in derision demanded if we
had brought the hogs to eat it". 39 But with the conclusion of peace
between France and Spain in 1598, restoring the most important
trading relationship for each country, and the signing of the peace
treaty between England and Spain in 1604, followed by a com-
mercial treaty between England and France two years later, the
stage was set for a more general economic improvement in English
overseas trade, which despite the activity of the East India Com-
pany in which Cocks was later to figure, remained primarily inter-
European. However, the revival of trade with Spain did not real-
ly take off. Demand for English cloth had changed during the
39 Quoted in Taylor, art. cit., p. 20. This paragraph is also based on V. M. Skill-
ington and A. B. Wallis Chapman, The Commercial Relations oj England and Portugal, Lon-
don, 1907; Brian Dietz, 'England's Overseas Trade in the Reign of James I', in Alan
G. R. Smith (ed.), The Reign oj James VI and I, London, 1973, pp. 106-122, esp. pp.
107, 144; Croft, D.PhiL, pp. 147-148; idem, Spanish Company, introduction.
18
war, not least, according to John Dorrington in a letter to Wilson
in September 1607, because during the hostilities the Spanish had
improved their own cloth manufacturing techniques, so much so
that Spanish cloth "is grown to such perfection that it is better
and better cheap than our English cloth" .40 Money had also
become scarce and debased in Spain and merchants relied for
their returns on commodities such as wine, tobacco, or oil, whose
prices fluctuated wildly. There was also the continued participa-
tion of the non-Company outport merchants who cheekily flouted
the Company's monopoly on the flimsy but realistic grounds that
it had become inoperative through lack of use.
4 1
The Spanish Company merchants also complained bitterly that
their difficulties were caused by Spanish trade barriers, tariff and
non-tariff, and by competition from interlopers. Inerloping was
nothing new nor were attacks against the monopolies granted to
trading companies, but complaints against interlopers became in-
creasingly shrill from 1604 to 1606 when there was an important
debate in England about whether or not the Spanish Company
should be abolished and trade with Spain thrown open to all mer-
chants. For a while it seemed as if those favouring regulation
had won the day for the Spanish Company received a new charter
in May 1605, largely the same as the original but with a noticeable
strengthening of outport representation, on paper at least. This
was only a Pyrrhic victory for the following year the Company
was dissolved by Act of Parliament giving "free liberty" to all
merchants to trade with Spain, Portugal and France.
42
40 r.n.o. SP 89/3, f. 86.
41 Skillington and Wallis Chaprnan, op. cit., p. 161.
42 c.s.t: Domestic) 1603-1610, pp. 183, 190, 221, 306, 315. For discussions of the
free trade controversy which rocked the political establishment at this time, and which
has been rekindled in modern historiography, see Astrid Friis, Alderman Cockayne's Project
and the Cloth Trade, London, 1927; Theodore K. Raab, 'Sir Edwin Sandys and the Parlia-
ment of 1604', American Historical Review, lxix, 1963-64, pp. 646-670; idem, 'Free Trade
and the Gentry in the Parliament of 1604', Past and Present, 40, 1967, pp. 165-173;
Robert Ashton, 'The Parliamentary Agitation for Free Trade in the Opening Years of
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 19
Cocks's letters greatly illuminate these developments and his
comments helped in some small measure to shape the arguments
of the pro-Company lobby, whose most influential figure was Cecil,
an honorary member of the Company and an opponent of free
trade on the grounds that regulation was needed to ensure order
in trade. Cocks himself did not profit from interloping and this
was another recommendation in the eyes of Wilson. Cocks reported
the persistence of the high tariff barriers even after the treaty
which had supposedly abolished them. These included a hefty 300/0
duty on English cloth, allegedly because it was dyed in the
Netherlands. The tariff issue was raised by the Spanish Company
merchants in London in a petition to the Privy Council.
4 3
Besides the formal tariff barriers there were also non-tariff ones,
and as with those in Japan today it is difficult to know which
were the outcome of deliberate policy obfuscation, which the pro-
duct of established bureaucratic practices, and which the result
of decentralised authority interpreting the letter and spirit of the
law according to its own judgement and prejudice. The non-tariff
barriers took a variety of forms including harassment, excessive
red tape, petty corruption and expensive and often inconclusive
legal proceedings, and were a reflection of the creaking, cumber-
some nature of Spanish government and administration at this
time.
44
Cocks complained somewhat resignedly that it was dif-
ficult to get a grievance remedied in Spain for there were so nlany
different government departments" that a man had need to carry
the Reign of Janles I', ibid" 38, 1967, pp, 40-55; idem, 'Jacobean Free 'Trade Again',
ibid., 43, 1969, pp. 150-157; Croft, Spanish Company, pp. xli-Jii: idem, 'Free Trade and
the House of Commons 1605-6', Economic History Review, second series, xxv iii , 1975,
pp. 17-27.
43 poR.a. SP 94/9, f. 79; SP 94/11, f. 14v; SP 94/13, f. 98; C,S.? Domestic,
1603-1610, p. 185; Taylor, art. cit.; Croft, Spanish Company, p. xxxiii n05. In addition
to paying the 30ro, the 'office of the 30 %' had to be paid five or six rials a day plus
food and drink until the loading was complete. The tariff was not removed until the
Twelve Years' Truce with the Dutch in 1609 (Croft, D.Phil., p. 51).
44 P. Roa. SP 94/11, f. 4ff. (a detailed position paper on Anglo-Spanish trading rela-
tions by vVilson); SP 94/9, f. 79; Croft, D.Phil., p. 309ff.
20
an almanac in his head". There was also the Inquisition standing
above all departments, which he especially detested, but like most
of his contemporaries he greatly exaggerated the terror of the
"hellish Inquisition". Very few Englishmen were actually imprison-
ed by the Holy Office, especially after the peace.
4 5
It should
also be remembered that some of the difficulties the English mer-
chants had in dealing with the Spanish authorities were not simp-
ly the result of Spanish obduracy or capriciousness but were often
self-inflicted. Cornwallis was told bluntly by the Duke of Lerma
that he was detracting from the dignity of his embassy by becom-
ing "a solicitor of the causes of Peter, John and James", and
the ambassador wrote angrily to the Privy Council that he had
surely given the merchants sufficient evidence "that I have not
want of will" in prosecuting their grievances. He complained that
he was hindered from doing this more thoroughly because often
the merchants who originally made the complaints did not come
over from England, appoint agents, or even give instructions.
46
Wilson was able to get a good idea of the situation for himself
during his consulship in Spain and from his visits to Bayonne.
In a detailed, sober position paper, written towards the end of
1604,47 he saw the problems as threefold. One was the attitude
of the Spanish, especially their non-tariff barriers and their ability
to exploit the greenness of a number of the English merchants,
some of whom were prepared "to frequent their masses and observe
all their superstitions" in order to curry favour and get an advan-
tage over the "honester sort of merchants which desire to keep
their conscience free in matters of religion". One is reminded
of the opprobrium and ridicule directed against the Dutch in
Europe for indulging in what Kaempher called"apish tricks" and
adhering to Japanese diplomatic protocol by crawling on their
45 P.R.O. SP 94/12, f. 80; SP 94/9, f. 54; SP 78/50, f. 19; B.L. Add. MS. 39853,
ff. 89v-90r, 104. See also Croft, 'Englishmen and the Spanish Inquisition', passim.
46 B.L. Add. MS. 39853, ff. 89v.-90, 104.
47 P.R.O. SP 94/11, f. 4ff.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 21
hands and knees "like a crab" when paying their respects at the
shogun's court in order to maintain their trade with ]apan.
48
Clear-
ly it was not just in Japan that merchants were prepared to dance
to Mammon's tune to gain his bounty. Wilson, reflecting senti-
ments shared by many in England, was afraid that this foolhardy,
myopic attempt to reap a short-term advantage would eventually
backfire by encouraging the Spanish to erect a new kind of religious
non-tariff barrier, outward conformity with Spanish religious prac-
tice, and that the merchants with steadfast Protestant consciences,
who would include Cocks, would be compelled to conform. He
felt that this should be nipped in the bud and was especially con-
cerned lest it play straight into the hands of Spanish religious
nationalists who were intolerant of "heresy", as they termed
Protestantism.
4 9
The second problem, and the main reason why Wilson believ-
ed that the Spanish were able to get away with so many abuses,
was the lack of a consul to represent the English merchants both
locally and at the Spanish court. On his return to England he
doubtlessly gave his views a full airing, and indeed in January
1605 was reported as being ready to return to Spain as consul.
In fact he did not go, but instead entered Cecil's service in the
autumn as secretary in charge of foreign intelligence, and thus
recipient of all reports from overseas which he was responsible
for analysing and reporting about to Cecil. 50 The need for local
consular representation was to be one of the most notable issues
over which Cocks's career and the broader questions of Anglo-
Spanish trading relations crossed.
Wilson, drawing freely on Cocks's observations, also drew at-
48 Engelbert Kaempher, The History oj Japan, ii vols., London, 1727, ii , pp. 53J,
535. The policy imperatives determining such protocol have been discussed in masterly
fashion by Professor Ronald P. Toby (State and Diplomacy in Early Modern japan, Princeton,
1984).
49 P.R.O. SP 94/11, f. 5; Croft, 'Englishmen and the Spanish Inquisition', pp.
261-262.
50 Sir Ralph Winwood, Memorials of Affairs of State in the Reign oj Queen Elizabeth and
KingJames I, edited by E. Sawyer, iii vols., London, 1725, ii, p. 45; Smith, art. cit.; p. 497.
22
tention to the third problem dogging trading relations, interlopers,
especially those who were shipping commodities directly from the
Baltic and Muscovy thereby avoiding English customs duties. Cocks
wrote much on this subject and denounced it vehemently. But
the flouting of companies' monoplies was nothing new, and it
was even an old story in the Spanish trade. Some of the most
important London merchants, including members of the Spanish
Company itself, profited from it. It was never fully controlled
even in Asia under the East India Company's monopolv.i'" Wilson
felt that the solution to all of these problems lay "in confirming
the Spanish Company although it be but at large that any may
enter into it for some portion of money".
The Spanish Company was granted its new charter by the king
on 31 May 1605 with 310 merchants specifically mentioned as
members, including Cocks who was listed among the London mer-
chants. There was some confusion as to whether Cocks had in
fact been made a member. In a letter of 4 July 1605 to Wilson
(itself a reply to one from the latter of 14 June no longer extant
mentioning details of the re-chartered Company and stating that
Cocks had not been made a member) Cocks wrote indignantly:
I perceive their ingratitude in leaving you out, considering it was
your pleasure to have been one of the Company. Truly it is not
to be marvelled at if they leave out Wm. Palmer and me, when
they are so forgetful of you, who have laboured so much in the
matter. Yet I know not how they can put me from my freedom,
considering I served a prenticeship for it as appears in the records
of the City of London.
However, it appears that Wilson had made a mistake, and that
51 P.R.G. SP 94/11, ff 4v-5; SP 94/14, fT. 71-73. For the endemic nature of in-
terloping see T. S. Willan, The Ear(v the Russia Company 1533-1603, Man-
chester, 1956, esp. pp. 184, 258fT, and Croft, Spanish Company, p. xv. On private trade
and country trade by private shipping, the kinds of 'interloping' prevalent in the East
Indies under the monopoly of the East India Company, and its importance for the con-
solidation of British economic and political power in India, see Holden Furber, John Com-
pa11:Y at New York, repro 1971. There was some private trading by the merchants
and crews at Hirado, as elsewhere in the Indies.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 23
Cocks had indeed been made a member. His name precedes that
of George Cotton, a childhood friend and fellow merchant residing
in the area. The charter also includes William Palmer, and while
there are a number of Richard Cockses at this time the evidence
suggests that it is unlikely that there was more than one William
Palmer involved in the Spanish trade. Moreover, despite what
Cocks and Cotton thought about Wilson's role in the moves to
re-charter the Company, they almost certainly overestimated the
extent of his influence at this time. Wilson did not formally enter
Cecil's service until the autumn of 1605 and was therefore unlikely
to have been as privy to all deliberations nor to have had access
to all the relevant papers relating to the Company (the charter
was not presented to the members of the Company who happen-
ed to be in London until 12 June, that is two days before Wilson
wrote to Cocks) as both Cocks and Cotton imagined, and as no
doubt Wilson wanted them to imagine. It would also have been
highly improbable that Cocks would have been pushed as a can-
didate for one of the consulships provided for in the new charter
had he not been the "Richard Cox" of the charter.
52
The charter stipulated that consuls, aided by assistants, were
to be appointed in various Spanish and Portuguese ports. In this
respect there was a measure of continuity with pre-vvar practice.
A consul general had been elected by the merchants residing in
Spain since their first tentative steps towards organisation early
in the sixteenth century. The practice of having a consul general
had been continued by the Spanish Company after its foundation
in 1577, although the man who served as consul, Roger Bodenham,
was resented by the merchants because he saw himself as respon-
52 Croft, Spanish Company, pp. xxxvi, 97; n.s C. Salisbury (Cecil) M5S, xvii, p. 301
(this letter is certainly to Wilson); ibid., xviii, p. 57. The "Rich. Cox, grocer" who
was made free of the Company on 4 September 1605 "by service with Robert Peacock"
is a different person (Croft, Spanish Company, p. 48). I arn grateful to Dr Croft for agree-
ing with the view that Wilson probably made a rnistake, and that Cocks's candidature
for consul would not have been floated had he not been a member of the Company
(personal communication, 1 Mercti 1985).
24
sible to the English Privy Council, to which he sent intelligence
reports, rather than to the Company. He also informed on mer-
chants who were trading in contraband goods from England while
profiting from such trade himself. However, the revived Spanish
Company had grander ambitions for an expanded, more com-
hensi 1 53
pre ensrve consu ar system.
Wilson and John Dorrington, who was himself a member of
the Company (he was also one of its assistants and chief counsellors,
roles in which he was very active and on the face of it well placed
to help Cocks) were keen to promote Cocks's candidature for the
post of consul for Biscay. Both men already knew each other.
Darrington is mentioned in Cocks's earliest surviving cor-
respondence from Bayonne in connection with problems about
bills of exchange payable to Wilson, and he considered Wilson
a valuable connection with Salisbury and the Privy Council, another
indication of just how interconnected the merchantile and political
establishments were at this time. 54 In letters no longer extant,
they both wrote to Cocks in June urging him to allow his name
to be put forward for the consulship. Dorrington was even prepared
to put up money to cover any necessary expenses. Cocks allowed
his name to go forward in the belief that the two men had his
best interests at heart. He wrote to Wilson in July:
For your friendly offer to assist me to procure the place of consul,
I give you humble thanks. My cousin Dorington has writ me about
the same matter and says he will layout for these parts of St
Sebastians and Bilbao and doubted not but you would procure his
Majesty's and the Council's letters in my behalf if need required.
The truth is that, if I did think the place might be beneficial to
me, I would stay in those parts for three or four years. Otherwise
I find trade bad and charges great, so that he which spends much
and gets little, it will not hold out always. In fine I refer myself
herein to you and Mr. Dorington, for I know neither the one nor
53 Croft, D.Phil., pp. 353-354; idem, Spanish Company, pp. vii-viii, xx-xxi.
54 P.R.G. SP 15/34, p. 136; SP 94/9, f. 12; C.s.P. Domestic 1603-1610, p. 229.
See also P.R.G. SP 89/3, f. 86.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 25
other would wish me unto the place, except you knew it were for
my preferment. 55
It is easily understandable why, for quite different reasons,
Cocks's candidature appealed to them. For Wilson, already im-
pressed with Cocks's ability as a reporter of intelligence, the more
official position of consul might enable Cocks to enrich his local
contacts and forward even more worthwhile information. It would
also be valuable to have someone who believed in trade regula-
tion in such an official position. For Dorrington, besides doing
a favour for a kinsman, having his own candidate in the post
could help strengthen his own position in the Company. The
possibility of getting the consulship also had its attractions for
Cocks, in addition to the reason to which he alludes in his letter
to Wilson. It came at an especially opportune moment as things
were not going quite so well. In May 1605, in one of his periodic
black moods, he had written to Wilson saying that "all is but
misery and vexation" and that he would have returned to England
had it not been for some outstanding debts owing from Spanish
knights and ladies, whom he was worried might exploit "their
might to overcome my right". 56 However, despite the support
of Wilson and Dorrington, and his own confidence that they would
be able to pull the necessary strings on his behalf, Cocks did
not get the job.
He was not even on the short list of candidates. On 6 September
1605, a general court of the Company was held to elect persons
to serve as consuls at various places around the Iberian penin-
sula' including Biscay. But the post went to James Wyche, who
was already living locally. The other two nominations were Thomas
Chace and William Palmer. 57 Wyche was the son of Richard
Wyche, member and assistant of the Spanish Company who in
terms of Company politics was more than a match for John Dorr-
ington. He was a freeman of the Skinners' Company, of which
55 H.M. C. Salisbury) (Cecd) MSS, xvii, pp. 302-303; P.R.O. SP 94/1], f. ] 74.
56 P.R.O. SP 94/11, ff. 38v, 176.
57 Croft, Spanish Company; p. 50.
26
he became master in 1614, a member of the Levant Company,
and an original adventurer in the East India Company. Born
in 1554 he married Elizabeth, daughter of Sir Richard Saltingstall,
Lord Mayor of London, and had twelve sons, of whom James
was the seventh, and six daughters. Judging by the investments
recorded in the inventory of his estate after his death he was
an extremely rich and successful merchant who took advantage
of all opportunities, shady or otherwise, that came his way. A
number of his children were able to climb in Jacobean society
on the strength of that success, including the sixth son, Peter,
who took over from Sir Thomas Roe as ambassador to Constan-
tinople in 1627.
58
Dorrington and Wilson certainly gave weight to Cocks's can-
didature and it is possible that Wilson approached Cecil himself
with a request to intervene, although here we have to rely on
some not wholly conclusive remarks in a letter of Cocks, again
a reply to a non-extant one of Wilson, in June 1606. There were
precedents for court and Privy Council intervention. The Duke
of Lennox had lobbied for one of his clients and Cecil himself
recommended a candidate as consul for Valencia. But Cecil did
not intervene and Wilson's request appears to have caused some
friction between himself and his master allegedly because of some
aspersions cast against Wilson by some of the Spanish Company
merchants, including Richard Wyche. But even had Cecil chosen
to intervene on Cocks's behalf this would have been unlikely to
have cut much ice anyway for, as Dr Croft points out, the Com-
pany had become very jealous of its powers, resenting interference
from outsiders, including the court and Privy Council, and was
determined to make its own appointmcnts.Y'The choice of James
58 R. C. Temple (ed.), The Travels oj Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia 1608-1667,
Cambridge, 1907, i, pp. 158-165; Wotton, English Baronetage, iv(2), p. *220; G. E.
Aylmer, The King's Servants London, 1961, p. 92.
59 Croft, Spanish Companv; pp. xxxviii , 25, and especially p. 44 for the Company's
prompt rejection of a nomination by Cornwallis; idem, D.Phil., p. 370; H.Nf. C. Salisbury
(Cecil) A15S, xix , pp. 15-16. The contents make it clear that this letter has been
misdated; the correct date is 20 January (N.S.).
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 27
Wyche had the virtue of being seen by all as very much a Com-
pany appointment. For Cocks, disappointed and resentful, the
election was a case where influence in high places was a liability.
Early modern English patronage had its limitations. He learned
of the outcome in October 1605. In a letter of 20 January 1606
to Wilson he commented that the post of consul would have enabled
him to have been more effective in his intelligence reporting. He
even suggested, not without sarcasm and deliberate irony, for as
it soon turned out he had plenty of reasons to dislike James Wyche,
that perhaps the better man had got the job' 'for the last I confess
he is more capable than myself. It will be a great trouble to him
who has it, if he perform it as he should". 60
The blow capped a bad year. There had been problems recover-
ing debts which prevented him from sticking to his intention to
leave for home (Wilson appears to have applied pressure on hirn
to stay; Dorrington suggested leaving); rumours of renewed hostility
between Spain and England (hence Dorrington' s suggestion); and
perhaps worst of all, the great indignity of having been arrested
by the French in September on a trumped up charge of treason
while on his way to Spain in the company of another Englishman,
Thomas Soam, son of Sir Stephen Soam, a Winchester merchant
and member of the Spanish Cornpany.Y'
This event had been demoralising. It had been extrernely
humiliating to be taken through the streets and exposed to the
chants and jeers of the crowd:
Truely they are unthankfull unto me for I am as well known arnongst
them as in the place where I was born, if not better, and as I
think they [the French] could have used us no worse in time of
open wars.
Cocks felt that his reputation had been irrevocably ruined:
60 P.R.O. SP 94/12, f. 92; H.Al.C. Salisbury (Cced) A1SS, xix , p. L1. Sec also P.R'().
SP 94/12, f. 106; SP 94/13, f. 17.
61 P.R.O. SP 94/13 ff. 17, 19; Croft, Spanish Company, p. xlix.
28
for the riches of a merchant is his credit or reputation, and the
very truth is that if I had an Alderman's wealth in England before
I came out of the country I would never have come into this coun-
try to have sought more. And being a factor for others (as I confess
I am) who will send any goods unto me when they shall understand
that I am a prisoner in a strange country?
Cocks wrote angry letters to the embassy in Paris and to Corn-
wallis in Spain, who felt compelled to report the matter back
to the Privy Council in London. It transpired that the arrest was
ordered on the initiative of a local official, a Captain Villa Neufe,
a shoemaker, on the basis of a ludicrously far-fetched and
groundless rumour that the English, in alliance with the Spanish,
were plotting to seize Bayonne to reassert the old English claim
to Guienne-Anglia irredenta indeed! Cornwallis especially resented
"such an indignation against my Sovereign" and considered it
a good illustration of similar unprovoked attacks on merchants
in Spain. The incident rankled Cocks into the New Year. Together
with the old year's frustrations and disappointments it was hardly
surprising that Cocks wrote to Wilson in January saying that "I
wish I were in the country where I was born. I could live with
a piece of bread and cheese and a cup of small drink, rather
than with all dainties of the world in these parts. ,,62
Wyche, working in close association with his father, proved
capable at seizing opportunities to advance the interests of the
family and its associates rather than in dispassionately advancing
the interests of the Spanish Company and its merchants, whom
he was supposed to represent. Wyche encouraged direct trade
from the Baltic and Muscovy, thus depriving both the English
government of its customs dues and some of the Spanish Com-
pany merchants of their profits from the re-export of Baltic and
Muscovy commodities to Spain. He also bribed Spanish officials
in return for reduced customs duties, and encouraged individual
62 P.R.O. SP 94/12, ff. 17-17v, 19, 84; Winwood, Memorials, ii, pp. 139-140;
B.L. Cotton Vespasian CIX, ff. 115-115v.; tt.u. C. Salisbury (Cecil) MSS. xix , p. 16.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 29
interloping. However, it would be unfair merely to point an ac-
cusing finger at the Wyches, something that Cocks from the
perspective of a believer in regulation did, often with logical, ar-
ticulate arguments. The Wyches, as shrewd merchants, were merely
responding to economic reality. Despite all the efforts made in
England to have the Spanish Company's monopoly restored and
the new charter issued, the revived Company never really had
much of a chance to establish itself with the kind of authority
that the Merchant Adventurers, Levant, Eastland or East India
Companies had. It was bitterly resented and attacked by the out-
port merchants, many of whom were also MPs who lobbied parlia-
ment, successfully, to have it abolished (it was dissolved in May
1606). It was even backed rather lukewarmly by the London mer-
chant community, many of whom could see little justification for
it when considered from an objective business angle. Unlike the
other major companies there appears to have been little necessity
for the merchants to band together in order to minimise risk as
there was really no fairly obvious, self-contained trade to monopolise
anyway. Anglo-Spanish trade could not be divorced from
Anglo- Baltic/Muscovy and Anglo- Levant trade, and high profits
were to be made by exploiting the links between these various
trade patterns. In short, for many merchants, including some of
its leading members, the Company was really a hindrance rather
than a help to trade. The Wyches certainly belonged to that
category, while Dorrington (long established as a Spanish mer-
chant) and hence Cocks, belonged to those who stood to gain
most from having a Cornpany.Y
These divisions within the Company and the shrill opposition
to it from without, especially from the outports, were reflected
locally in Bayonne and San Sebastian. Cocks had already com-
mented on different factions for and against the revival of the
63 This paragraph is based largely on Dr Croft's thorough discussion of the reasons
for the Company's failure (Spanish Company, pp. xlvi-Ii). The direct trade that the
Wyches encouraged was not necessarily harmful to English economic interests, contrary
to what Cocks was frequently to argue, especially if it was carried in English boats.
30
Company in May 1605, and he had already alienated those who
were against it, especially those benefitting from the direct trade
who, while they had no objection to him reporting to London
about developments in Spain and southwest France, probably
suspected that he was telling tales too.
64
During the first few months
of 1606 he hardly missed an opportunity to attack Wyche and
his schernes.Y'' This was not a matter of petty resentment, for
Cocks, even in Japan, was never small-minded; rather it was a
matter of conviction, taken almost to the point of a personal
crusade. In Cocks's reckoning, Wyche was only the most per-
nicious symptom of what was wrong with the existing condition
of the Spanish trade.
Over this period, and indeed into the autumn, he became in-
creasingly outspoken. In March in one of his letters to Wilson,
after reporting Wyche's latest activities, he launched into a powerful
attack on the direct trade, giving vent to his feeling of frustration
that comments and pleas for action in previous letters to Wilson
and others had gone unheeded:
And always I have said, and say so still, that I had rather our
Spanish Company should be broken, rather than Wyche and his
Company or faction should go forward. I am almost aweary in
writing unto you and other of my friends. And yet for ought I
can see you do not apprehend the meaning of my letters. For I
say that five or six such men in London have the whole Spanish
trade in their hands and keep one at San Sebastian (which is James
Wyche), an other at Bayona in Galicia, a[ no ]ther in Seville, and
a fourth in Lisbon. And I could name the rest if I would. So that
the three Companies which we had heretofore (namely a Spanish,
a Muscovy and an Eastcountry [i.e. Eastland], are now all three
metamorphosed into one. And their shipping cometh directly out
of those places for Spain, so that the king's majesty is cozened
of his customs and a whole kingdom hindered for the particular
64 P.R.O. SP 94/11, ff. 38-38v.
65 See P.R.O. SP 94/9, f. 161. This is endorsed "Coxe S1. Sebas. 1603 Mar 10"
and in modern pencil "5 Feb 1603/4" but the contents suggest that it was written in
either February or March 1606.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 31
benefit of four or five such curmudges. I say the Lord open your
understanding that you may look into these matters for except men
be blind, dumb and deaf they cannot chose but take knowledge
of these matters, for my letters are plain enough and large enough
and I think weary you in reading of them over (I speak of others
as well as of you). 66
In another letter to Wilson from around the same time, Cocks
set out his position at even greater length, underpinning it with
articulate observations based on his own sober assessment of ac-
tual trading conditions. He even made his own, perhaps rather
simple, contribution to the debate about government finances which
was taking place in England at the time. He also analysed very
clearly the different arguments of the resident merchants concern-
ing the Company, giving full attention to the outport view as
well. Essentially, Cocks, reflecting some of the conventional wisdom
about economics and the social structure but adding his own
speculations, rehearses the classic argument in favour of a monopo-
ly: it will protect the interests of all concerned, producer, mer-
chant and shipper. He adds that it will also benefit the king because
licences to companies:
cannot be granted without paying great sums of money for them,
which 'with impositions and customs will be a good means to fill
His Majesty's coffers. And then shall he have the less occasion
to raise taxes or subsidies on his poor subjects. I wish it might
so come to pass that the merchant might follow his vocation, the
mariner his, the tanner his and the countryman his, otherwise if
it should come to pass that one of them should take upon him
all the four it would prove a miserable metamorphosis. And now
to come to a conclusion, I may very well compare many of our
disputes to the Athenian citizen which brought his cockleshell to
Aristedes the Just, willing him to write his own name therein to
banish him out of the country. And being demanded of Arist.
whether he did know him, he made answer no, neither for what
occasion he would have him banished, except it were because men
gave him the name of Just. Even so the others would have these
66 r.n.o. SP 94/9, ff. 161-162, esp. f. 161v. See also SP 94/13, ff. 46-46v, 68.
32
licences put down, but they can lfve no reason wherefore, but that
they would have all at liberty.
The letter, whose contents would have pleased Wilson, Cecil and
Cornwallis, all of whom favoured regulated trade, was enclosed
in a packet of letters for "some particular friends" which one
can safely surmise covered much the same ground as the letter
to Wilson. He sent them unsealed and urged Wilson to look them
over if he wished.
Regardless of Cocks's attitudes, the Wyche appointment had
been devisive among the resident merchants, and Cocks was recom-
mended to use his connections in England to secure Wyche's
replacement by himself. His position was strengthened by the fact
that Cornwallis did not like the appointment either and would
have preferred Cocks. He wrote to Cocks personally stating this.
68
With the encouragement of other resident merchants, notably
George Cotton, Cocks wrote to Wilson in February and March
1606 offering his own candidature. In conjunction with Cotton
he advocated a clever but unworkable plan to oust Wyche and
have himself installed. The plan, outlined in a letter from Cotton
to Wilson in mid-February which catalogued Wyche's schemes
in much the same language as Cocks, was one to expose Wyche's
direct trade by making it into a government to government issue.
This was a non-starter because although clever it meant tackling
some very powerful vested interests in England with their own
considerable political clout. The 'conspirators' again overestimated
the extent of Wilson's influence with Cecil and the English govern-
ment to get such a plan implemented. Besides, when viewed in
relation to other more pressing matters of state, the goings on
in Biscay were very small beer inded. But Cocks obviously saw
things differently, although he ;as careful to stress that "I care
not who hath the place so Wyche may be put out, for I seek
67 P.R.O. SP 94/14, ff. 71-72v. This letter is incomplete but belongs to the early
part of 1606 rather than to 1607 under which year it has been tentatively listed.
68 P.R.O. SP 94/13, f. 37.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 33
nothing so much as to dissolve their monopolies which think to
lay all under their girdles". He also emphasised that as consul
he would be better placed to serve Wilson more fully, presumably
in relation to intelligence matters.
69
Cocks appears to have maintained his attacks on Wyche over
the summer of 1606 (unfortunately no letters survive from April
to September). By September he was worried that he was creating
a number of enemies, especially among the merchants profiting
from Wyche's policies and the direct trade, and not just among
those residing locally. His outspokenness had also aroused enmity
in England, most definitely among the Wyche family and its
associates. He felt that his correspondence was being tampered
with, on Wyche's orders he suspected, although he might have
been slightly paranoid about this for it was not the first time
that he had voiced this suspicion (he had said pretty much the
same thing in March). He urged Wilson only to send such letters
"as you care not who seeth them". 70 His position in London
and locally could not have been helped either by the fact that
John Dorrington and his partner Thomas Alabaster went bankrupt
in September in rather messy circumstances. Dorrington left
England for Portugal where he tried to recover some bad debts
which had contributed to the business's failure. Cocks was in no
way responsible for this, but because of the "disgrace", as he
termed it, he was liable for the 30 % tax on some felt wool sent
to Darrington as he could not furnish proof that the wool had
been discharged in England. Dorrington's sudden departure from
London removed his patron in the City. It also disrupted his
correspondence with Wilson for Darrington's house was used as
a forwarding address.i' ' Moreover, it occurred at a time when
it was becoming clearer that the much expected pick up in trade
with Spain after the peace, especially hoped for by those mer-
69 P.R.O. SP 94/13, ff. 37, 43, 46v.; H.M. C. Salisbury (MSS) MSS, xviii, p. 58.
70 P.R.O. SP 94/13, ff. 97-97v., 98v.
71 P.R.O. SP 94/13, ff. 101, 104v., 111.
34
chants like Cocks who were not engaged in the direct trade, was
not going to materialise. As Cocks put it: "God help us for we
lie in a miserable time, for the world is clear turned upside down
since I last saw you [Wilson], I mean for merchants trade in
these parts". It had been thought that the peace would bring
"mountains of gold but now it proveth molehills of earth' '. Others
find it so too, he continued, but as the old saying goes "some
have the sap and others stick in the gap". He felt he was in
the latter. 72
As before, Cocks stressed that his motives for attacking Wyche
were entirely honourable "to advise you that matters might be
better looked into, for a man warned is half armed". He added,
"for what benefit should I hope thereby: only a bad reputation
to be an informer". There was of course the possible 'benefit'
of becoming consul himself, although we can take at face value
Cocks's protestations that he was not motivated by covetousness,
even if he might have been hoping that the consulship would
give him more authority to deal with the French authorities over
the recovery of some bad debts still outstanding. By November,
Wyche had fallen foul of Cornwallis, who wrote to the Privy Coun-
cil at the beginning of the month about Wyche's "unfitness"
for the job. The letter, and others, were forwarded by Cocks to
whom the ambassador also wrote, reiterating the need for some
form of trade regulation despite the collapse of the Spanish Com-
pany. He urged Cocks to "use your friends for the best of those
places [i.e. consulships]" and assured him he was "in a good
disposition to do you any pleasure or kindness wthin my power" .73
72 P.R.O. SP 94/13, ff. 97-98v. See esp. f. 98 for Cocks's further comments on
the trade and the problems caused by a shortage of specie in Spain.
73 P.R.O. SP 94/13, ff. 98\'., 106. Wyche himself eventually returned to England
to pursue his career in his father's service. He died of smallpox in Constantinople in
1618. He had been sent there by the Levant Company, of which his father was a member.
His clerk on this mission was the famous Peter Mundy who recorded his master's death
(Temple (cd.), Travels of Peter Mundy, i , pp. xxiii, 10, 14, 23, 136n, 160). It is possible
that the James Wyche who was admitted as a member of the East India Company prior to
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 35
This gracious letter from the ambassador gave Cocks a welcome
and much needed morale booster, and he wrote to Wilson with
a direct solicitation saying "it is in your power to procure the
place for me if you put your helping hand, as I make no doubt
but you will". However, he still felt downcast because of the dif-
ficulties over his court action to recover the bad debts which
"almost driveth me out of heart" .74 Over the next few rnonths
into the new year matters proceeded very much in this vein. Corn-
wallis encouraged him to persist, and Cocks wrote to Wilson urg-
ing him to pull the necessary strings, which were not in Wilson's
hands anyway. Cocks seems to have felt that his appointment
would be a panacea for all his present legal and financial
troubles and provide him with the only justification for remaining
in those parts.
75
Some of his fellow merchants suggested that his
hopes were "but dreams" for now that the Spanish Company
had been dissolved there was no one to pay the consul's salary,
even if the king granted letters patent for the post, for the mer-
chants themselves could not be relied upon to pay up.76 Indeed,
it was over the question of responsibility, financial and otherwise,
that the consulship question ran into the sand in 1607.
The Spanish Company had selected five consuls, including
Wyche, and had made provision for their pay (for example Wyche
received 40 per annum, the consul at Seville 200, although
Cocks alleged that Wyche would make more than 400 from his
schemes).77 But none of the consuls, despite efforts otherwise,
had in fact been recognised as official representatives of the British
crown by the Spanish government. Moreover, the English govern-
ment remained lukewarm about any commitment to having con-
suls. Their value as sources of intelligence was recognised, especially
1609 is the same person (Sir William Foster, A Supplementary Calendar rl Documents in the
India Office, London, 1928, p. 7).
74 P.R.O. SP 94/13, f. 110.
75 P.R.O. SP 94/13, ff. 112, 125, 150v., 154, 162, 24-9; SP 94/14, f 45.
76 P.R.O. SP 94/13, f. 154; SP 94/14-, f. 45.
77 Croft, Spanish Company, pp. xliv, 52-53; P.R.O. SP 94113, f. 43.
36
by Cecil, and this was clearly a major reason why Wilson favoured
Cocks as consul.
78
There was also a recognition that with people
of the right calibre, consuls could considerably relieve the em-
bassy's workload, much of which Cornwallis felt could be dealt
with locally (hence his support for Cocks's candidature). But there
was a general lack of will both in the government and among
the merchants to pursue consular representation wholeheartedly.
For one thing, the merchants were very unenthusiastic about paying
for the consuls. Over the summer of 1607 the issue was allowed
to slip into abeyance. Wilson informed Cocks about this, arguing
that the government was unwilling to be responsible for them
lest they should try to exploit their position for their own gain
and bring the government into disrepute. 79 On 20 August Cocks
sent a rather feisty reply. He was overreacting, taking personally
something which was really a reflection of muddled government
policy and a general lack of enthusiasm among the merchants.
Cocks claimed that his enemies among the merchants were get-
ting their own back on him for exposing their illegal trade and
that they had managed to influence the government in this respect,
especially as they did not want to see as consul someone who
"would look too narrowly to their proceedings, for they cannot
abide to hear of that text of scripture which sayeth give unto
Caesar that which belongeth to Caesar". He felt that what he
regarded as the rejection of his candidature was the last straw
and resolved, according to Wilson's recommendation, to return
to England:
not to sue for the place of a consul, for I am altogether disgusted
78 Cf. Smith, art. cit., p. 497.
79 Behaviour does not seem to have been considered a problem by the government
in the East Indies where merchants were acting as representatives of the king when re-
questing permission to trade from foreign potentates. The position of East India Company
resident merchants and heads of factories was even more ambiguous: they represented
the Company, but in the eyes of the local rulers they represented the British crown.
See also Maurice Lee, 'The Jacobean Diplomatic Service', American Historical Review, lxxii,
1967, pp. 1264-1282, for a general discussion of the diplomatic service.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 37
in that matter, neither would I labour nor put myself in danger
for such unthankful people who are sufficient to drive a man into
a worser humour than ever was Timon of Athens. Only I will con-
tent myself to retire me into the country where I was born, and
so to live off that little or nothing which I have.
But this was not quite so simple, he went on, "for I am in danger
of some of them for certain bad debts" which he was still trying
to recover through the French courts, but to no avail. He feared
that this would cause trouble for him on his return and requested
Wilson to use his influence with Cecil to forestall anything unto-
ward happening, "which I shall esteem more of than 20 consul-
ships". It was indeed frustration and anxiety over the seemingly
interminable saga of the case that eventually made him leave
France, though not within the two months he mentioned in his
letter, but after another ten.
80
This was not to be the end of the consulship story, however,
for the following February he was pressured again to apply for
it by Cornwallis, but he wrote to Wilson saying he was turning
it down because he was "out of heart any more to pursue it",
claiming that he did not fancy living in Spain anyway (where
the consul was expected to reside):
for to say the truth I do find the Spanish so forward a nation and
so dangerous a people to deal withall that I have no great stomach
to live amongst them, the which being added to the opinionate
proceedings of our Spanish Company of merchants against me doth
altogether distaste me from accepting of the place.
He added, unconvincingly, that it would cause too much work,
even if there would be the satisfaction of making the former Spanish
Company merchants beholden to him. He thanked Wilson and
Cornwallis for their pains "and so do make an end of the mat-
ter". The "matter" did crop up again the following month and
Cocks threw the ball back into Wilson's court with a non-committal
"I will be alltogether ruled therein by you", although he did
80 P.R.G. SP 94/14, ff. l09-ll0v.
38
not doubt that his name would be put forward amongst others.
8 1
But his enthusiasm for the post had definitely waned, and hardly
surprising, for the law suit over the bad debts was coming to
a head and was, in his opinion, threatening him with complete
ruin forcing him to make concrete arrangements to return to
England where he reckoned he would have better prospects of
. hi 82
sorting t lngs out.
Cocks left France towards the end of May 1608 after spending
a few days in Bordeaux attending to the case. He took ship aboard
a French vessel, chartered by English merchants, bound for Chester,
but which had to put into Fowey, in Cornwall, because of con-
trary winds. His intention was to proceed directly to Stafford-
shire. Almost immediately upon disembarking, on 8 June, he wrote
to Wilson and, conscientious as ever, enclosed a packet of intelligence
reports that had been forwarded from Spain. (During his last few
months in France he had still found time to send a steady stream
of intelligence reports himself to England and also to forward des-
patches from Cornwallis). This letter provides the fullest details of
his legal and financial difficulties which had been bothering him
lik .. h 83
I e a recurrIng nig tmare.
The case had evolved into quite a complex business with dimen-
sions far transcending a mere action to recover bad debts.
84
The
bone of contention was a debt of 2,000 crowns owing Cocks from
one Baltaser Mendes Trancrosa, "a poor man" and a Portuguese.
81 r.n.o. SP 94/15, ff. 13v., 31.
82 As for the question of the consulship, ambassador Cottington appointed consuls
for Andalusia and Granada in 1611 with a salary of 100 from James I, showing that
by this time the consuls' behaviour and its reflection on the government was no longer
a problem. However, the Spanish government did not recognise them. It was only towards
the end of the seventcnth century and in the early eighteenth that the decline in consular
representation was reversed and English consular privileges increased noticeably (Croft,
D.Phil., pp. 380, 391).
83 r.a.o. SP 94/15, f. 68ff. See also SP 94/12, ff. 19, 92; SP 94/13, f. 17; SP
94/ ] 4, f. 253; SP 94/1 5, ff. 37, 54.
84 The following account is based on letters of 25 March and 9 May (P.R.a. SP
94/]5, fT. 37-39v, 54-54v) but mainly on that of 8 June (SP 94/15, f. 68-70v).
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 39
From this sum, 700 crowns was owing to the estate of John Hewetr ,
the deceased eldest son of Cocks's master, William Hewett. John
Hewett's widow had remarried with Sir Gilbert Wakering, an
official of the Court of Wards, and thus an appointee of its master,
Robert Cecil. Mendes could not pay Cocks for he in turn was
owed money by another Portuguese, Alfonso Gomas Henriques,
to the tune of 28,000 rials, or 700, for merchandise he had bought
from Mendes.
Gomas acknowledged the debt, but claimed he had paid the
money to a third party by order of Mendes and by virtue of
a general procuration. Mendes contested this and initially the dif-
ference between the parties was brought before "3 honest mer-
chants of Bayonne". But Gomas, who Cocks said was not" ashamed
to tell me to my face that he will make me to spend all I
have before ever he will pay me a penny" because "he is a Jew
and therefore maketh no conscience to cozen a Christian", decid-
ed to up the stakes and take his case to a higher court at
Bordeaux.
85
Cocks felt that this was the cause of his present woes
as the affair had been dragging on for almost five years costing
him around six or seven hundred crowns in expenses for com-
muting between Bayonne and Bordeaux and in lawyers' fees, which
he remarked' 'hath almost ruinated me". He commented, "God
bless all men from law matters" and declared that:
I had rather have the labour or take the pains to load 20 ships
with merchandise than be a solicitor for one process. For although
the matter touch me, yet I stand like a cypher in Augean, for all
is decided by the mouths of pcuers [procurators] and advocates,
but I have never yet to this hour met with a mediator. So I will
leave that to Jesus Christ who is the only mediator and must employ
his aid to be my advocate.
85 This and other anti-semitic remarks by Cocks should not be read as personal pre-
judice. They are typical of the generalised prejudice against Jews at this time. For a
discussion of English theological attitudes to Jews see David A. Pailin, Attitudes to Other
Religions: Comparative Religion in Seventeenth and Eighteenth Century Britain, Manchester, 1984,
chapter five.
40
As a result of the transfer of the proceedings to Bordeaux, Cocks
had become very pessimistic about the chances of a favourable
outcome, especially because Gomas "hath gotten favour in the
court parlement [the parlement of Bordeaux] that the judges have
joined me in the instances with Baltaser Mendes, so that if he
should loose his process, then might Gomas come upon me for
all costs, damages and interest" which, he feared, would amount
to a bill of 4,000 crowns, an appalling prospect. To make matters
worse, Mendes had made Cocks a concessionary or transport (that
is, one to whom an assignment had been legally made) of the
700 owing from Gomas, and had accused the latter of perjury
and forging papers, so that a civil suit had become a criminal
one. No wonder Cocks decided to withdraw himself "out of their
danger" .
He had appointed a legal agent to handle the matter in the
interim-hence the visit to Bordeaux just before departing for
England-and had left money to cover costs for two months. In
England he intended to use his connections to interpose and get
the case removed from Bordeaux to Paris, before the French Privy
Council, "for it is not the Jew's bribes of pearls and precious
stones which will prevail there". Cocks felt he was on strong ground
because he had been able to obtain sworn affidavits and other
evidence to prove that Gomas was lying, especially over his claim
that on 19 May 1598, when the procuration to the third party
was alleged to have been made, Mendes was resident in Spain.
86
Cocks had obtained proof that Mendes had never been in Spain
for at least twelve years, and that he had signed a written con-
tract in St. Jean de Luz before a notary on 15 May 1598 (that
is, four days before the supposed procuration in Madrid) "so
that he [MendesJ must have a horse as good as Parolet to transport
him from St. John de Luz to Madrid in so short a time, for
you know full well or [of?] what way it is to pass over the Pyrenees
86 The fact that the origins of the affair go back to 1598 adds strength to the view
that Cocks arrived in southwest France shortly after serving his apprenticeship.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 41
mountains under or over". He had no doubts that Gomas was
"a cozening, conyketching fellow" who had a record of cheating
people, and was sure that if Wakering would assist in the efforts
to get the case moved to Paris a remedy, and thus satisfaction,
could be obtained. His assumption about Wakering was mistaken
as it turned out.
Cocks had brought the relevant papers to England with him,
but he realised that the matter was becoming more fraught, because
Wakering had started an action against John Hewett" s younger
brother, Sir Thomas. He urged Wilson to show his letter to Waker-
ing "and the sooner the better" so that the case could be moved
to Paris. In the meantime, he said that he would go down to
Staffordshire "amongst my friends whom I have not seen this
20 years". 87 He was also probably afraid that if he went up to
London directly, before Wilson had a chance to intervene, Waker-
ing might have him arrested.
Wakering did indeed act against hirn , setting in motion pro-
cedures to have him apprehended. But once again [ortuna was
on Cocks's side. On 20 July, about a month and a half after
Cocks's return to England the Privy Council wrote to Wakering:
Whereas we are informed that there is to be suit in law betwixt
you and one Mr. Cocks, merchant lately come from Bayonne, about
an account from him to your predecessor and that you have or
mean to cause the said Cocks to be arrested thereupon, these are
to let you understand that the said party is one that hath done
His Majesty good service in foreign parts. And coming now horne
to take order for his affairs, whereby he intendeth to give you,
and all men, satisfaction (as he promiseth) we therefore do pray
and require you
either to put the matter before
indifferent persons chosen by you both, or else forbear taking any
troublesome courses against him until he may have time to ex-
pedite his suit at Bordeaux or Paris.
88
87 P.R.G. SP 94/15, f. 70.
88 P.R.G. SP 14/35, f. 37.
42
Wilson had obviously interceded with Cecil, who in turn had raised
the matter in the Privy Council, in which he was the pivotal
figure. This provides the clearest illustration of just how seriously
Cocks was taken by some of the most senior men in the English
administration, for as we know from the work of Dr Alan G.
R. Smith on the secretariat of the Cecils, the secretaries of these
great men could do much to help or hinder clients from attaining
their desires. Like their counterparts today, seventeenth-century
officials could file and forget, and Dr Smith shows that this hap-
pened to the requests of men prima facie better qualified in terms
of social status and connection than Cocks.
89
In the country Cocks did not remain idle. His work was of
a semi-official nature, helping investigate cases of possible ward-
ship on behalf of the master of the Court of Wards. Wardship,
a feudal relic, was a source of profit both to the monarch and
to government servants, senior and junior. Originally when a minor
succeeded to lands held of the king by knight's service he was
considered unable to perform the necessary military service, the
other half of feudal obligation. As a result, the monarch made
the minor a ward and leased the lands to someone else until the
minor came of age. By the seventeenth century feudal practice
was, of course, long since over, but wardship was not. In Pro-
fessor Joel Hurstfield' s neat phrase it was a form of "fiscal
feudalism", and it amounted to an informal and unsanctioned
tax on the landed classes to help offset the increasing burden of
government. It was highly unpopular with landholders, who went
to great lengths to conceal possible wardship. Concealments were
often exposed by informers acting from a variety of motives, in-
89 Smith, art. cit.; idem, Servant of the Cecils: The Life of Sir Michael Hickes, London,
1977, chapter three. It is interesting to note that Cocks himself was considered influential
by others on the look out for the favours of influential men. In a letter of 1608 to Wilson,
Cocks commented that two people, who had brought the secretary's most recent letters
to hi m , are of "so good an opinion of I11e that they imagine my soliciting in their behalfs
lllay augment your favour towards then1" (P.R.O. SP 94/15, f. 15). Clearly Cocks was
flattered, but he had no illusions about his own influence; he was merely amused.
The Earf'p Career 0./ Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 43
eluding a desire to gain favour, or repay some previous obliga-
tion. Cocks's activities would appear to have been motivated by
the latter, although we cannot be sure of how much rime he spent
on this business. 90 He worked closelv with his brother \Nalter
and answered directly to Wilson , shovving his cu st ornarv energy,
dedication and attention to detail. During this time there was
also a problem, the facts of which are unclear, relating to the
Cocks family's own lands which caused a great deal of \vorry
to Helen Cocks but which Wilson helped solve. 91
He did not neglect the suit in France, nor could he have, as
Wakering was still breathing down his neck, trying to intirnidatc
him. But Cocks was prepared to fight back, not just to shelter
behind the skirts of prominent men. 92 U nfortunatclv, we have
no idea how the matter was eventually resolved, but it D1USt have
been to Cocks's satisfaction. However, the lengthy proceedings
and the gossip they prompted cast a shadow over Cockss private
life. He even went so far as to say that Wakering's proceedings
"against me hath been an occasion to hinder me from one or
two good marriages, for men judge I owe him great matters,
when it will be found that account will owe much rnoney to me. ,,93
It is tempting to speculate that without the suit Cocks would have
married and settled down in England and that the cape mer-
chant's job in Japan would have gone to someone else, not that
that would have altered the eventual outcome of the East India
Company's first attempt to drive a direct trade with Japan, for
the causes of that failure were really out of Cocks's control.
On balance it is difficult not to come down in favour of Cocks's
account of the case with Comas. The candour of his letters to
Wilson and their tone of genuine indignation (even if he was,
for obvious reasons, trying to make himself appear in the most
90 Joel Hurstficld, The Queen Wards, London, second edition, 197.').
91 P.R.G. SP 94/15, ff. 139-139v; SP 14/38, rr. 10S-IO:)\,; Il.A1.C (Cedi)
lv1SS, xx, pp. 250-251 (this letter is more correctly to Wilson than to Salisbury).
92 P.R.G. SP 94/15. f. 139; SP 14/38, ff. 105-]06v.
93 P.R.G. SP 14/38, f. 106.
44
favourable light) his resentment and distress at Wakering's menac-
ing tactics, and his confidence that if the latter chose to play dirty
he could in turn make things unpleasant for the knight, and his
trust in and willingness to be guided by Wilson, support his con-
ten tion that he had indeed fallen foul of a notorious trickster.
Legal problems, including delays, expenses and the difficulty of
securing settlement of outstanding claims were among the facts
of life of overseas trade. They contributed to the bankruptcy of
his City patron, Darrington, and Cocks already had plenty of
experience of these problems in Spain. Moreover, we know from
another source that a quarter of a million pounds of London capital
was reported as frozen in Spain in 1615 because of delays in
Spanish justice.
94
Delays in payment were also the result of a
lack of hard currency, a problem to which Cocks draws atten-
tion,95 and one that is found today in some developing countries.
The affair does not necessarily reflect unfavourably on Cocks's
judgement, and it would be wrong to draw a parallel with his
subsequent deception by the China captain in Hirado, Li Tan,
alias Andreas Dittis, who took him for an expensive ride with
. d' . de vwi h Ch' 96
enticements an spurIous promIses over tra e wit Ina.
The ramifications of the affair dragged on into 1609. In
November, in the last surviving letter of Cocks's pre-Japan days,
he reiterated that he was still willing" to put any difference which
might be betwixt him [Wakering] and me to indifferent men"
but that there had been as yet no reply. In the same letter (to
Wilson), Cocks mentioned that he was "aweary of the country"
and was planning "to go over again out of England about the
spring. ,,97 In fact, his departure from England, as an East India
Company cape merchant, did not occur until over a year later,
94 Taylor, art. cz't., p. 17.
9:' P.R.O. SP 94/13, f. 98.
96 On Li Tan see Sciichi Iwao, "Li Tan, Chief of the Chinese Residents at Hirado.
in the I... ast Days of the Ming Dynasty', Memoirs of the Research Department of the Toyo
Bunko, 17. 1958.
97 P.R.O. SP 94/16. f. 226.
The Early Career of Richard Cocks (1566-1624) 45
in April 1611. Exactly why he "vas chosen for the Company's
Eighth Voyage, which it had determined would also call at Japan
to open a factory, and in such a senior position-he was number
three in authority and "vas instructed to counsel John Saris, the
head of the Voyage, about the setting up of the factorv-e-musr
remain a matter of speculation, for unfortunately the Court Minutes
for 1610-1613, which might have provided some clues, are
.. 98
mIssIng.
It is possible that Cocks's restlessness, exacerbated by his failure
to find a wife, and his desire to work abroad again found expres-
sion in a request for help from Wilson, who with his own interest
in the East Indies might have suggested an approach to the
pany, or from Sir Thomas Hewett, one of the Cornpanys original
adventurers. The East India Company (incorporated in 16(0) had
already been trading with Asia since 1601 and by the time a
voyage to Japan was contemplated (purchases of cargo for the
Eighth Voyage had already been made Irorn Se ptcmbcr 1610)99
had already established certain criteria for recruiting its servants
for overseas service. Professor K. N. Chaudhuri's meticulous
research on the early history of the Company has described these
standards and also made clear that as with most jobs in the early
seventeenth century a measure of influence was also required
for success in gaining an appointment, although as Professor
Chaudhuri has also shown, merely having the right connection
could not in itself secure employment. Cocks, with his seniority
(he was forty-six in 1611), long experience in France and Spain, and
good connections was well placed to secure employment. )00 The
Company was looking for obedient 'civil service types', not in-
dividualistic entrepreneurs like a William Jardine, James Matheson
or John Swire. The Gomas affair and the dispute with Wakcring
would obviously have been evaluated by the special selection corn-
98 Birdwood and Foster (eds.}, First Letter Book, pp. 412-41:1, 415.
99 India Office Records, HOIT1e Miscellaneous Series, f. 1ff.
100 K. N. Chaudhuri, The English East India ComjJan)'. London. 1965, pp. 74-7B.
46
mittee which examined the suitabiliy of applicants, but it must
have concluded that on balance Cocks's misfortune was not his
own fault, and no doubt his influential referees would have vouched
for that. His qualifications were further bolstered by an excellent
record of public service and he would have found little difficulty
in finding someone to advance the bond or security that was re-
quired of all factors before they left for the Indies. This had been
fixed at 1, 000 marks with a guarantor standing surety for another
200 in 1606.
10 1
Be that as it may, his application was obviously successful, and
on 18 April 1611 Cocks left from the Downs aboard the Clove,
a senior member of the Eighth Voyage, in full knowledge that
he was to have responsibility for the setting up of the Company's
factory in Japan. As it turned out he was also to become the
main source of information in English about Japan in the early
seventeenth century. But in fact he was already a man of some
historiographical substance who had secured for himself a small
place in history as a valuable source for our knowledge of the
intricacies of Anglo-Spanish trade, and a major conduit and
purveyor of information to the English government. Richard Cocks
is one of those rare figures in history whose personality speaks
out across the centuries, a round character rather than a flat one,
a man whose life was touched directly by some of the main
developments of his day and one who has left a valuable and
. d f hi I' h 102
unIque recor 0 IS ro e In tern.
101 Ibid., p. 81.
102 A fuller assessment of Cocks's career will be undertaken in my study of Anglo-
Japanese relations in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries which is now in progress.