Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Jenkinson, Anthony
JENKINSON, ANTHONY (d. 1611), merchant, sea-captain, and traveller, when still a youth was sent, in 1546, into the Levant as training for a mercantile career. During the following years he seems to have visited most of the countries bordering on the Mediterranean, Algiers, and Tunis, Spain and Italy, Greece, Turkey, Western Asia, and the Holy Land, as well as the principal islands, Sicily, Crete, and Cyprus. In 1553 he was at Aleppo, and wrote an account of the entry of Solyman the Great on 4 Nov. From Solyman he obtained a ‘safe-conduct or privilege,’ permitting him to trade in Turkish ports, ‘with his ship or ships or other vessels,’ without hindrance, and free of any extraordinary custom or toll. In 1555 he was admitted a member of the Mercers' Company, and in 1557 was appointed by the Muscovy Company captain-general of their fleet sailing for Russia, and their agent there for three years, at a fixed salary of 40l. per annum. They left Gravesend on 12 May, and passing along the then little-known coast of Norway, by the terrors of the Maelstrom, and round the North Cape, arrived at St. Nicholas, at the western mouth of the river Dwina, on 12 July. The ships were discharged, re-laden, and sailed again for England on 1 Aug., Jenkinson remaining behind. On the 3rd he went to Kholmogori, where the company had established their factory, and setting out from there by boat on the 15th, he went up the Dwina to Vologhda, which he reached on 20 Sept.; ‘all the way,’ he says, ‘I never came in house, but lodged in the wilderness by the river's side, and carried provisions for the way.’ On 1 Dec. 1557 he left Vologhda in a sledge, ‘as the manner is in winter,’ and arrived at Moscow on the 6th. On the 10th he was officially received by the tsar's secretary, and on the 25th, ‘the day of the Nativity,’ he was admitted to the presence of the tsar, Iwan the Terrible, himself. The tsar ‘with his own mouth’ called him by name, and at his invitation Jenkinson dined with him at six o'clock, by candle-light. Jenkinson ‘sat at a little table, directly before the emperor's face.’ On 4 Jan. he was accorded a like favour.
Jenkinson wrote interesting descriptions of Russian life and manners as he saw them during his stay at Moscow, which lasted till 23 April 1558, when he started on his journey southwards, furnished with letters from the tsar. He travelled entirely by water, down the Moscow river to Kolomna, and thence to Nijni Novgorod, where, after some delay, he joined the train of the governor of Astrakhan, going to take up his command. On 19 May they sailed from Novgorod, on the 29th came to Kazan, where they stayed till 13 June, and on 14 July arrived at Astrakhan, at a time of terrible famine and pestilence. On 6 Aug. Jenkinson and his little party took boat and passed into the Caspian, coasted along its northern shores to the extreme east, and after a month's difficult navigation landed near Mangishlak, long afterwards known as Fort Novo-Alexandrovsk, and thence, joining a caravan of one thousand camels, after a long and adventurous journey by way of Khiva, they arrived on 23 Dec. at Bokhara. Three days afterwards Jenkinson was brought before the king and presented the tsar's letters. The king received him favourably, and on several occasions discoursed with him familiarly of the power of the tsar and of the great Turk, and of the laws, customs, and religion of England. ‘But after all this great entertainment,’ adds Jenkinson, ‘before my departure he showed himself a very Tartar; for he went to the wars owing me money, and saw me not paid before his departure.’ The fault, however, seems to have been the ministers', for they received orders to pay, but failed to obey them.
After two months' stay at Bokhara there were rumours of an impending siege, and Jenkinson was advised to depart. He wished to go into Persia, but the disturbed state of the country rendered this impossible, and he was compelled to retrace his steps to the Caspian, which he reached on 23 April 1559, bringing with him six Tartar ambassadors and twenty-five Russians, whom he had rescued from slavery. After many delays and difficulties ingeniously overcome, he came to Astrakhan on 28 May, and finally to Moscow on 2 Sept. At Moscow he remained in frequent intercourse with the tsar, and dining several times in his presence, till 17 Feb. 1559–60, when he returned to Kholmogori. As soon as the navigation opened, he journeyed to England, where he was well received by the company.
In the following year he was sent out again, with instructions to make another expedition into the Transcaspian region, and to try to open commercial relations with Persia. He carried also letters from the queen to the tsar and to the shah, or ‘great Sophy,’ from whom he was to endeavour to obtain letters of privilege for a free trade in his dominions. Sailing from Gravesend on 14 May 1561, he reached Kholmogori on 26 July, and taking a more expeditious route overland, arrived on 20 Aug. at Moscow, where he was delayed several months. By the middle of March 1561–2 he was permitted to proceed, carrying letters of recommendation and charged with some secret commission from the tsar, referring apparently to the relations of Russia with the Circassian princes. By the middle of June he was again at Astrakhan, and in the beginning of August, after touching at Derbend, then belonging to Persia, landed at Shabran, halfway towards Baku, and went to Shemakha, the residence of Abdullah Khan, king of Shirvan, who furnished him with an escort to the shah, then at Kazvin, thirty days' journey distant. At Kazvin, however, his negotiations were entirely unsuccessful, owing to the disturbed relations between Persia and Turkey, and Jenkinson seems to have considered himself fortunate in being able to depart alive. After another visit to Abdullah Khan, from whom he obtained letters of safe-conduct and privileges for English merchants, he arrived safely at Astrakhan on 30 May 1563, and at Moscow on 20 Aug., with all his ‘goods, merchandizes, and jewels,’ brought on the tsar's account and on the company's. There he remained through the winter, sending one of his companions, Edward Clarke, overland to England with his letters, and meantime preparing a second expedition to Persia, which started the following May, under the immediate command of Thomas Alcock [q. v.], where the date of death, repeating Hakluyt's error, is given 1563>. Jenkinson then returned to Kholmogori, and on 9 July sailed for England, arriving in London 28 Sept.
On 30 May 1565 he addressed a memorial to the queen urging the probability of the existence of a north-east passage to Cathay, and offering to take charge of an expedition to attempt it. Nothing, however, came of it, but in September he was appointed to command the queen's ship Aid, with instructions to cruise on the coast of Scotland, to prevent the Earl of Bothwell landing, and to clear the sea of pirates. The Earl of Bedford, then governor of Berwick, had licensed one Wilson, a reputed pirate, to look out for and intercept Bothwell, and he lodged a bitter complaint against Jenkinson for having, in contravention of the license, made a prisoner of Wilson and sent him to England. On the other hand, the Muscovy Company, having received a new charter, petitioned the queen that Jenkinson might be sent on another mission to the tsar to counteract the influence of an Italian agent. Jenkinson arrived in Moscow on 23 Aug. 1566, and was graciously received by the tsar on 1 Sept. The negotiations, however, proved tedious, and it was not till 22 Sept. 1567 that the tsar granted the company the privileges and the monopoly of the White Sea trade at which they had aimed.
Jenkinson probably brought the charter home overland; he was certainly in London in the following January. In the summer of 1571 he was again sent to Russia to appease the tsar, who, furious at the ill-success of his overtures to Elizabeth the year before, had annulled the privileges of the company and confiscated their property. Jenkinson arrived at St. Nicholas on 26 July, to learn that the country was being devastated by pestilence, famine, and war, and that the tsar had said that if Jenkinson ventured into the country he should lose his head. He was obliged to remain at Kholmogori, and it was not till the following spring that he was allowed to proceed. On 23 March 1571–1572 he was admitted at Alexandrof to the presence of the tsar, who stated the causes of his discontent. Jenkinson attributed everything to the mismanagement of the tsar's ambassador in England, and to the misconduct of some of the company's agents left in Russia, who, he now begged, might be delivered to him to be sent home. All this the tsar promised to consider; but it was not till 13 May that he gave Jenkinson another interview, at Staritza, when, after complimenting Jenkinson, he promised to restore the company's privileges. Jenkinson returned to England in September 1572, nor did he again undertake any lengthened voyage, ‘being weary,’ he wrote, ‘and growing old.’
He had married, in January 1567–8 (Chester, London Marriage Licenses; Visitation of Lond. 1568), Judith, daughter of John Mersh of the parish of St. Michael's, Huggen Lane, London, and of Sywell in Northamptonshire, governor of the company of merchant-adventurers and afterwards of the company trading to the Netherlands, and of his wife Alice, daughter of William Gresham and a cousin of Sir Thomas Gresham [q. v.] He was residing at this time in Aldersgate Street, doubtless engaged in business, and taking little part in public affairs. His name appears in 1576 on a commission to consider the fitting out of Frobiser on a second voyage to Cathay, and also as one of the venturers. In 1577 he was sent on a special mission to Embden to treat with the commissioners of the king of Denmark on the right of navigating the northern seas, as well as about the Sound dues. In 1578 he was on the commission to report on the ore brought home by Frobiser. About this time he moved to Sywell, which he had bought from his father-in-law, and there he lived for the next twenty years or more. Somewhere about 1600 he seems to have moved to Ashton in Northamptonshire, and to have died at a very advanced age while on a visit to his friend Sir Philip Sherard of Tighe in Rutland, where he was buried 26 Feb. 1610–11, but no existing monument marks the grave. He had a son and five daughters, all of whom married and had issue; two other daughters and two sons died in childhood. From Anthony Jenkinson was descended Charles Jenkinson, first earl of Liverpool [q. v.] On 14 Feb. 1568–9 Jenkinson received a grant of arms—Azure, a fess wavy argent, in chief three etoiles or; with the crest—a seahorse. The idea of this coat was clearly suggested by the arms of the Muscovy Company, and the charges on the shield are in allusion to his sea service; the preamble of the patent describes him as ‘one who for the service of his prince, weal of his country, and for knowledge sake, hath not feared to adventure and hazard his life, and to wear his body with long and painful travel into divers and sundry countries.’ Jenkinson was the first Englishman who penetrated into Central Asia. His voyages, though undertaken mainly in the interests of commerce, served largely to extend geographical knowledge of districts till then barely known by name. He seems to have been a good observer, so far as was then possible; and many of his determinations of latitude, both in Europe and Asia, are fairly exact; but far more interesting than these are his acute descriptions of his routes and of the people through whose country he passed.
[The original accounts of Jenkinson's voyages and of his diplomatic successes have been collected from the volumes of Hakluyt's Principal Navigations, and from the manuscripts in the Record Office and British Museum, in Mr. E. Delmar Morgan's Early Voyages and Travels in Russia and Persia (Hakluyt Soc., 1886). Mr. Morgan's introduction embodies also all that is known of Jenkinson's private life.]