Bourne Archive: Bourne People: Job Hartop

http://boar.org.uk/abiwxo3Marrat’sHartop.htm                       Latest edit 22 Jul 2010

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The Bourne Archive.

Marrat’s Biographies: Job Hartop, Master Gunner.

From the Bourne entry in volume III of William Marrat’s History of Lincolnshire.

The copy used here was lent by the Willoughby Memorial Library, to the trustees of which I offer my thanks.

Transcript (pp. 108 – 109)

Job Hartop, born at Bourn went A. D. 1568 with Sir Jo. Hawkings his General, to make discoveries in New Spain. He was chief Gunner in the Ship called Jesus of Lubeck. Eight of his Men were killed at Cape-verd1, and the General wounded with poisoned Arrows, but was cured by a Negro2 drawing out the poison with a Clove of Garlick. He wrote a Treatise of his Voyage, wherein he makes mention of a Tree that affords a Liquor which is both meat and drink, yields both Needles and thread and tiles for Houses; which may therefore be called the Tree of Food Raiment and Harbour. Being with some others left on land, after many Miseries he came to Mexico, and he continued a prisoner 23 years, of which time he was 12 years in the Gallies, and [6?] 3 years a drudge to Hernando de Soria4, who then sent him to Sea in a Flemish5, which was afterwards taken by an English ship, called the Guleen-Dudley6, that safely landed him at Portsmouth December 2nd 1590. (Fuller’s Worthies)7

RJP’s Footnotes

1.        The point best known as Cape Verde (green headland) is at the western extremity of Africa. This fits the pattern of the voyage, since Hawkins and his crew were trading as slavers. Cape Verde is now part of Dakar, Senegal. By following the coast in this Satellite photograph northwards, it is easy to see that when the first Portuguese navigators were coasting southwards, after a long, sandy and rocky desert coast, with its salt lakes, the cape impressed them with a sudden change to green vegetation.

2.        This was originally a Portuguese word for black. In English, it was used to describe someone whose parentage was from Africa, south of the Sahara. The use of the word is now disliked but for Fuller or Marrat, it would have had no such connotations beyond foreignness. Everyone’s foreigner is by definition, exotic or strange. True, the Africans in the ship were mainly or all, slaves but so was Hartop in his next ship, where he was the foreigner. Where it exists, the idea of kindness towards foreigners without leverage, is a modern one. With respect to slavery, it has developed since around 1800, when Marrat was writing. This note is not a comment on the morality of a way of thinking; merely an attempt to neutrally describe the way things were.

3.        Marrat’s printing process has frequently left the ends of lines blurred. This looks most like 13 but that and the 12 would add up to more than the 23.

4.        He presumably came from Soria, which is now in the Community of Castile and León, in central-northern Spain.

5.        A ship from the Spanish Netherlands.

6.        Dudley will have come from the name of the Dudley family, most likely, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Just possibly, it might come from Dudley, in Worcestershire , now West Midlands. Guleen will be the vessel type. The word might be a form of galee, which is a now obsolete version of galley; hence, a rowing and sailing vessel (OED). However, it is probably a form of Galleon, a vessel type much more akin to those used by the English in the open ocean. However, neither guleen, nor galeen seems to have been noted by the OED.

7.        Thomas Fuller, born in Northamptonshire in 1608, wrote his Worthies of England in the last twenty years of his life. He died in 1661 and his son published the work in 1662. (Chambers). John T. Swift gives a more detailed version of this story but he does not name a source so, it is not possible to guess how much of his version comes from his imagination. See Fuller’s version.

For a much fuller account of the voyage, see (DNB enter ‘Sir John Hawkins’ then select the ‘merchant and naval commander’). The relevant voyage is the third one.

A further description of the third voyage is available on Paul Welbank’s site.

 

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