John Eldred was born at New Buckenham in Norfolk, England in 1552. He was an apprenticed Clothworker in the City of London in the 1560's and in 1583 two other eminent Clothworkers, Sir Edward Osborne and Richard Staper, sent him on a pioneering voyage to the Middle East in the ship TIGER. She went to Tripolis (now Trablous in the Lebanon) whence the expedition went overland to Aleppo and down the Euphrates to Felugia. From there they went to Baghdad and on down to Basra, names that are all too familiar today. He returned to Aleppo a year later with a vast cargo consisting mainly of nutmeg and cinnamon. He then stayed another three years in the Middle East, traveling widely and setting up various trading bases, before returning to London in 1588, having made himself a very rich man: not only that, but famous too. It had been a pioneering voyage of outstanding importance for English trade such that Shakespeare alluded to it in Macbeth (Act I, Scene 3: "Her Husband's to Aleppo gone, master o' the TIGER"). More conventionally it was recorded in Hakluyt's "Principal Navigations" of 1599, and some more of Eldred's letters of that time are in "Purchas his Pilgrimes" of 1644.

 

Meanwhile Eldred continued his career as one of the great merchants of the City of London. He received a Grant of Arms in 1592 and bought the manor and advowson of Great Saxham in 1597, where he built a large house known locally as "Nutmeg Hall". Sadly, it was burnt down in 1779. He had become Treasurer of the Levant Company in 1592 and, along with another five Clothworkers, he was a subscriber to the first voyage of the East India Company, whose Royal Charter of 31st December 1600 conferred upon it the sole right of trading with all countries Iying beyond the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan.

 

In March 1604 he was elected an Alderman of the City, but soon afterwards paid the fine of £500 to be excused the duty of that of office, citing pressure of work, a common practice in those days. In the same year he was elected Master of The Clothworkers' Company.

 

By now he was 52 years old but he would continue to be active for the rest of his long life. He was on the Court of the East India Company for over ten years; he had shipping interests including the ownership of privateers; he invested in Henry Hudson's voyage in search of the

 

North-West Passage; he was a contractor and commissioner for the sale of lands, and a farmer of Customs.

 

In his Will, dated 8 October 1630, he desired to be buried in the church of Basinghall, London, where his wife was buried and in which parish he had lived for many 

years. But that was not to be as he died at Great Saxham on 8 December 1632 and was buried there, his alterative choice. ~ Reprinted b y permission of The Clothwoekers Assoc. of London.

 

 

 Bust of John Eldred the Greatfound at Great Saxham Han Saxham, England Reprinted with permission of The Clothworkers Assn. of London (Right)

John Eldred the Great