David Jonkin or Jenkin (died 1641) was a Scottish merchant and shipowner. He imported sugar, French wine, Swedish timber, linen from Haarlem, and lint from Poland.
David Jonkin or Jenkin (died 1641) was a Scottish merchant and shipowner. He imported sugar, French wine, Swedish timber, linen from Haarlem, and lint from Poland.
An early notice of David Jonkin's merchant activity appears in a manuscript record of Edinburgh's Baillie court. It was found in April 1616 that Elizabeth Nicholson owed Jonkin £47 for goods. She had bought the items from Jonkin when her husband John Aslowane was still alive, and it was a principle of Scottish law that a husband was responsible for the payments of debts contracted by his wife. [1]
Jonkin was able to extend credit, and in August 1623 lent 500 guilders to Alexander Erskine at The Hague. Erskine, a son of John Erskine, Earl of Mar (1558–1634), was at the court of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and was equipping himself to fight in her cause. [2]
Jonkin sold food, wine, coal, and other goods, and owned and held part shares in a number of ships. In 1625 he was part owner of the St John of Leith, built in Rotterdam in 1624, [3] with George Gourlay as master, and had shares in the Alexander and Love of Leith, and the Bruce. [4]
David Jonkin was fined for breaking Edinburgh's market regulations in 1624 when it was discovered he was buying imported food in Burntisland to profiteer during a famine. [5] He sold claret and white wine to the Earl of Winton in 1628. [6]
Jonkin and a business partner David Cruikshanks shipped cloth to Spain in the Blessing of Leith in October 1633. The textiles, re-exported rather than manufactured in Scotland, included coloured buckram, say, and "ambobrudge buckasie", a Hamburg cloth. [7] Jonkin was Cruikshank's landlord for a property on the Royal Mile. [8]
In 1634 Jonkin and Patrick Wood had a patent to start manufacturing cables and rope for ships and recruit foreign craftsmen for their works in Edinburgh or Leith. [9]
Jonkin had a booth or shop situated under the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, rented from the burgh council. [10]
By 1636 David Jonkin acquired joint ownership with Thomas Gledstanes of a house on Edinburgh's Lawnmarket on the High Street now called Gladstone's Land. [11] They had flats in the building, and their tenants included two lawyers, Andrew Hay and John Adamson. [12]
Jonkin supported the Scottish Covenant in 1639 by selling firearms to the Earl of Argyll and buying a warship in Holland. [13]
He married twice. His first wife, Margaret Lauder or Baxter died in November 1625, her children were Hercules, John, and Margaret Jonkin.
Jonkin died on 28 February 1641. [14]
His will lists his stock, including armour, and the value of his five ships, [15] and sums of money owing to him, and debts for making gunpowder. The Earl of Moray had bought wainscot timber from Jonkin.
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