Maurice Abbot

Sir Maurice Abbot (Morris) (1565–1642) was an English merchant, Governor of the East India Company (1624–1638), and a politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1621 and 1626. He was Lord Mayor of London in 1638. Abbot's whole career, which had begun under no external advantages, was a remarkable instance of well-directed energy and enterprise; it was one of the earliest examples of the creation of enormous wealth by the application of great personal abilities to commerce, and illustrates the extraordinary development of the English foreign trade at the close of the sixteenth and opening of the seventeenth centuries. Biography Abbot was the fifth and youngest son of Maurice Abbot, a cloth-worker of Guildford who died in 1606, and he was the brother of Archbishop of Canterbury George and of Robert, who became Bishop of Salisbury. He was baptised at Holy Trinity Church, Guildford on 2 November 1565, was educated at Royal Grammar School, Guildford and was probably apprenticed in London to his father's trade. Subsequently he became a freeman of the Drapers' Company, and rapidly amassed great wealth as a merchant dealing in various commodities such as cloth, indigo, spices and jewellery. Abbot was one of the original directors of the East India Company, which was incorporated by royal charter in 1600, was among the earliest to invest large sums in its "stock", was a member of its special committee of direction from 1607 onwards, and was throughout his life foremost in defending its interests against its enemies at home and abroad. In 1608 he was appointed a representative of the company for the audit of the accounts of expenses incurred jointly with the Muscovy Company in "setting forth John Kingston for the discovery of the north-west passage".