Sir George Peckham (died 1608) was an English merchant venturer.
He was third son of Sir Edmund Peckham. George succeeded to the paternal estate at Denham, and was knighted in 1570.
In 1572 he was appointed High Sheriff of Bedfordshire and Buckinghamshire. In 1574 he, together with Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Richard Grenville, and Christopher Carleill, petitioned the queen to allow them an expedition into unknown lands. In the enterprise, which finally took form in 1583, Peckham alongside Thomas Gerard was the chief adventurer, Gilbert assigning to him large grants of land and liberty of trade. In November 1583 he published A True Reporte. [1] [2] A major factor behind this plan was to allow Catholics to emigrate following the increase of fines imposed on those who failed to attend Anglican services in 1581. [3]
Whether by unsuccessful ventures or otherwise, he afterwards became embarrassed in his circumstances, and in 1595 the estate and manor of Denham came to the queen by reason of his debt to the crown. They were conferred on William Bowyer. He[ clarification needed ] died in 1608. He married, in 1554, Susan, daughter and heiress of Henry Webbe. She died in childbed, at the age of seventeen, on 11 December 1555. By a second wife two sons are mentioned: Edmund the elder, who would seem to have predeceased him; and George, who was his heir.
Sir Francis Walsingham was principal secretary to Queen Elizabeth I of England from 20 December 1573 until his death and is popularly remembered as her "spymaster".
Sir Humphrey Gilbert was an English adventurer, explorer, member of parliament and soldier who served during the reign of Queen Elizabeth I and was a pioneer of the English colonial empire in North America and the Plantations of Ireland. He was a maternal half-brother of Sir Walter Raleigh and a cousin of Sir Richard Grenville.
Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is known for promoting the English colonization of North America through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America (1582) and The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation (1589–1600).
The Popham Colony—also known as the Sagadahoc Colony—was a short-lived English colonial settlement in North America. It was established in 1607 by the proprietary Plymouth Company and was located in the present-day town of Phippsburg, Maine, near the mouth of the Kennebec River. It was founded a few months after its more successful rival, the colony at Jamestown.
The Muscovy Company was an English trading company chartered in 1555. It was the first major chartered joint-stock company, the precursor of the type of business that would soon flourish in England and finance its exploration of the world. The Muscovy Company had a monopoly on trade between England and Russia until 1698 and it survived as a trading company until the Russian Revolution. Since 1917, the company has operated as a charity, now working within Russia.
Sir Hugh Willoughby was an English soldier and an early Arctic voyager. He served in the court of Henry VIII and fought in the Scottish campaign where he was knighted for his valour. In 1553, he was selected by a company of London merchants to lead a fleet of three vessels in search of a Northeast Passage.
The Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands was an early joint stock association, which began with private exploration and enterprise, and was to have been incorporated by King Edward VI in 1553, but received its full royal charter in 1555. It led to the commencement of English trade with Russia, Persia and elsewhere, and became known informally, and later formally, as the Muscovy Company.
The European explorer-colonial historical record in North America begins in the second half of the 16th century, with ongoing European exploration.
Mathew Roydon was an English poet associated with the School of Night group of poets and writers.
Events from the 1580s in England.
Ralph Kettell (1563–1643) was an English college head, the third President of Trinity College, Oxford. In a long tenure he built up the college both in terms of architecture and its academic reputation.
Sir William Garrard (1518–1571), also Garrett, Gerrarde, etc., was a Tudor magnate of London, a merchant citizen in the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers, who became alderman, Sheriff (1552–1553) and Lord Mayor of London (1555–1556) and was returned as an MP for the City of London. He was a senior founding officer of the Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands in 1554/55, having been involved in its enterprises since the beginnings in King Edward VI's time, and for the last decade of his life was one of its permanent governors. He worked hard and invested largely to expand English overseas trade not only to Russia and the Levant but also to the Barbary Coast and to West Africa and Guinea.
Sir William Pelham was an English soldier and Lord Justice of Ireland, which was a military and political role rather than a judicial one.
David Ingram, Davy Ingrams, or Davyd Ingram was a 16th-century English sailor and explorer who claimed to have walked across the interior of the North American continent from Mexico to Nova Scotia in 1568.
Sir James Stewart, 1st Baronet was a Scottish lawyer and politician.
Sir Henry Lee KG, of Ditchley, was Queen's Champion and Master of the Armouries under Queen Elizabeth I of England.
Sir William Chester was one of the leading English Merchants of the Staple and Merchant Adventurers of the mid-16th century, five times Master of the Worshipful Company of Drapers, Lord Mayor of London in the year 1560–61 and Member of Parliament for the City of London. He should not be confused with his contemporary, William Chester, merchant of Bristol, M.P.
Sir Edward Lewknor or Lewkenor was a prominent member of the puritan gentry in East Anglia in the later Elizabethan period, and an important voice on religious matters in the English Parliament.
Sir Leonard Chamberlain or Chamberlayne was an English soldier and politician. He was the Governor of Guernsey in 1553.
Anthony Parkhurst was an English explorer and promoter of English colonisation of North America in the 1570s and 1580s. He is best known for his early engagement in the English fishery off Newfoundland and his exploration of the island and its resources.