East India Portcullis Money
By Peter Preston-Morley | Wednesday, 4 July 2001
In the 1570s and 80s Portugal had built up a trade monopoly with the East. This was undermined in the 1590s by two works published by the Dutch geographer Jan Huyghen van Linschoten. Translations of these two works with their invaluable sailing directions for Eastern waters were eagerly sought by European merchants. An expedition to the East Indies for spices was set up by a Dutch consortium on nine merchants in 1594. They despatched four ships commanded by Cornelis Houtman, taking nearly 15 months to reach the north-east coast of Java at Bantam.
A trading agreement was reached with the King but, because of local bad feeling created by Houtman„ it was not until late autumn in 1597 that the fleet returned to Amsterdam. The cargo consisted of 245 bags of pepper, 45 tons of nutmeg and 30 bales of mace. Although the sale of this more than covered the expedition's costs, only 89 of the original 249 men on the expedition survived. However, the Portuguese monopoly on the trade had been broken.
By 1595 five separate trading companies set up in different Dutch cities had sent 22 ships to the East. By far the most successful was the Company of the Far Lands, with its commander Jacob van Neck. He left Amsterdam on 1 May 1598, arriving at Bantam on 25 November. Five weeks later, with a cargo of 3000 tons of pepper and 125 tons of cloves he sailed for Holland, arriving in July 1599 with half his fleet. Profits from sales amounted to 100% and, when the second half of his fleet arrived in 1600, laden with cloves, nutmeg and mace, investors in the expedition saw their initial outlay quadrupled.
London merchants were appalled at the Dutch success, especially since it undercut their own markets with the East through the Levant Company since those goods were land-transported and sold at far higher prices than the Dutch were charging. An initial meeting to counter the threat was held on 22 September 1599 in the city mansion of Sir Thomas Smythe in Philpot Lane. This was to be the place of meeting of the newly formed company for the next 20 years until 1621. The subscribers were known as the Company of Merchant Venturers - 101 of them subscribing their names included many City traders who put up an average of £200 to £300 a man.
The total subscription raised was £30,133 6s 8d, a very considerable sum at the time. The value of the company formed was, however, to multiple in value by over 50 times. Most of the subscriptions were paid in coin, and this was largely in the form of foreign bullion such as cobs and other Spanish money that was in circulation especially in the mercantile community.
The figurehead of the new company was the Lord Mayor, Sir Stephen Soame, but the driving force was Sir Thomas Smythe. On the East India's Company's charter of incorporation in 1600 he is named as Governor. Subsequently involved in the Earl of Essex's rebellion, Smythe and his wife spent a while in the Tower of London but by 1607 he had regained his Governorship and was re-elected annually until 1621. With £30,000 underwritten a second meeting on 25 September sought the way to proceed forward. It was resolved to petition the Queen for permission to send a trading fleet to the East, and for her to grant sole privilege for soe manie yeres as can be obteyned and for such freedomes of Custome and other tollerations and favors as may be gotten.
Concurrently, the Privy Council was petitioned 'that it may be lawful to send out foreign coin'. Should there be a shortage of specie then there should be coined in her Majesty's Mint so much foreign coin as shall supply the want of such bullion or plate as shall be brought in by the Adventurers, or by other means. Although Elizabeth was in favour of the venture, she refused point-blank to sanction the coining of foreign (Spanish) money at the Mint. Any direct challenge to Spanish and Portuguese eastern trade could set back the talks then in process to end the war with those two countries - she wanted to assert British rights by negotiation, and withheld approval for the voyage pro tem.
Negotiations in Boulogne in Spring 1600 on the question of Eastern trade had the Spaniards claiming, from a century-old Papal bull, that divided non-European territory between them and the Portuguese. The English Commissioners replied by listing all the areas in the East not under effective Spanish or Portuguese control, and claiming a right to trade in those areas. In June 1600 the English diplomats were instructed not to accede to any Spanish restrictive demands, and in July the negotiations broke down. On 23 September a meeting at Smythe's house of the original subscribers agreed 'to go forward in the said viage' if the Queen granted permission. This she did and on 31 December 1600 she signed the charter of the Governor and Company of Merchants Trading into the East Indies, giving them a monopoly for 15 years.
Preparations were immediately put in hand with the purchase of three former Levant Company ships: Hector (300 tons), Ascension (260 tons), and Susan (240 tons). A fourth, a 600-ton warship, the Malice Scourge (later to be renamed as the Red Dragon), was bought from the Earl of Cumberland for £3,700. The merchants realised, knowing well that in any such trading enterprise English merchandise, which was mainly woollen goods, iron, tin and lead, would not be sufficient to attract the goods they wanted by barter alone, that they also would need to have a large supply of acceptable silver coin - Spanish 8-real pieces. A Committee for Rials was established and it acquired 24,000 pieces from Calais and had them brought to London. Sailors were hired, and paid two months in advance against a voyage anticipated to take eight months. Not least, the problem of what presents should be offered to local rules vexed their minds, and cases of pistols, silver ewers, helmets and the like were agreed to be appropriate.
The expedition was to be under the command of James Lancaster (who had commanded the Edward Bonaventure in the Armada), who was chosen as being 'a quietly efficient man' and who had previous experience of a voyage lasting three years to the East Indies. Queen Elizabeth changed her mind about recoining Spanish coin and required that a percentage of the foreign coin be recoined into an anticipated English trading equivalent of the Spanish piece of eight. On 11 November 1600 a warrant was issued for the coining of £5000 at the Tower Mint with the bullion being provided for same. This was to carry a portcullis on one side and the arms of England on the other. The coins were to be made at 11 oz 2dwt fine silver and 18 pennyweight of alloy to the Pound Troy. The coins were to be 8, 4, 2 and single Testern pieces, at 109 Testerns to the pound weight.
The two highest denominations were like in size to the crowns and half crowns of Edward VI issued almost 50 years previously. Although the Portcullis series was being struck at the equivalent weight of the Spanish 8-real piece, they were actually some 12% lighter. The work went ahead apace since by 24 January, only 13 days after the date when the Royal Warrant had been issued to Thomas Knyvet, Warden of the Mint, the full value of £6000 (increased from the original £5000) had been struck, together with a large overplus of £66. The coins were pyxed on 20 May 1601 at the Star Chamber, being referred to as 'dollars for the India voyage' [sic. Indies, i.e. Sumatra, Java, Indonesia, etc], and on 22 May the engraver, Charles Anthony, was paid £29.10s for stamps [dies] for the East Indie moneys.
However, Gerald Malynes, writing c. 1620, noted that the Portcullis pieces were resisted when the merchants attempted to use them because they were not such as the people of these parts were acquainted with; but stamped with an image strange and unknown to them. Their challenge to the Spanish silver cobs was not as effective as had been hoped, and the presumption is that the coins went into the melting pot either in England or at the factory at Bantam - very few worn specimens have survived to the present day.
When the Company made their second and third voyages to the East in 1604 and 1607, only Spanish money in the form of bullion was taken out. By the 1620s James I was allowing English gold and silver coins to be exported to the East, which is a factor affecting the present-day scarcity of many of the issues of the period 1610 to 1621. Memories of the Portcullis coinage were fast receding.
The voyage took nearly seven months, scurvy broke out on most of the smaller ships, but not the Red Dragon where Lancaster had the forethought to have stock of bottled lemon juice with every man receiving a daily dose - 105 men ended up dead. There were many tragedies and mishaps before they were finally to set sail for home on 20 February 1603, arriving in the Downs off the Kent coast on 11 September. The four ships had brought back 1,030,000 pounds weight of pepper which realised a profit of 95% for investors. King James I, now on the throne, knighted Lancaster for his efforts in opening up the sea trade to the East.
