The English Atlantic World: A View from London Alison Games Georgetown University William Booth occupied an unfortunate status in the land of primogeniture and the entailed estate. A younger son from a Cheshire family, he went up to London in May, 1628, "to get any servis worth haveinge." His letters to his oldest brother John, who had inherited the bulk of their father's estate, and John's responses, drafted on the back of William's original missives, describe the circumstances which enticed men to London in search of work and the misfortunes that subsequently ushered them overseas. William Booth, unable to find suitable employment in the metropolis, implored his brother John to procure a letter of introduction on his behalf from their cousin Morton. Plaintively reminding his brother "how chargeable a place London is to live in," he also requested funds for a suit of clothes in order to make himself more presentable in his quest for palatable employment. William threatened his older brother with military service on the continent if he could find no position in London, preferring to "goe into the lowcuntries or eles wth some man of warre" than to stay in London. John Booth, dismayed by his sibling's martial inclination, offered William money from his own portion of their father's estate rather than permit William to squander his own smaller share. In what proved to be a gross misreading of William's character but perhaps a sound assessment of his desire for the status becoming his ambitions, John urged William to seek a position with a bishop. The eleven surviving letters between the Booth brothers convey William's growing impatience with his failure to secure a position in London, his canny ability to manipulate his brother with threats of military service, and John's helpless concern from distant Cheshire. William's humiliation at his repeated failures in London reached its pinnacle when his tenacious pursuit of an unpaid debt led the purported debtor, Sir Edward Whitton, to refuse to receive him. Finally, after less than five months in London, William decided he had had enough. London had answered his hopes with disappointment. "I will stay noe lounger," he wrote John in July, "but a weay with the first that doth goe let what will follow it is better to indure slaverie where a man is not knowne then in his owne cuntry I have spente more in seekeinge for a servis then I shall gaine in 2 yeares servis and am sorie I had not resolved upon this course souner." William travelled to Gravesend in September. From there, he chose to sail, but not as we might expect to the new American colonies where an ambitious and fortunate young man might anticipate economic advancement and adventure. Instead, scorning the degrading labor such destinations promised, he sailed straight across the Channel toward North Holland to serve as a soldier, with English forces on the continent.' The English Atlantic World 47 The remarkable collection of letters between the Booth brothers touches on the struggles young men faced making their way in early seventeenth-century London. William Booth's quest for adventure and position in the great metropolis was so common that it had already become embedded in popular culture. The most celebrated person to make his fortune after a journey to the City was Dick Whittington: the Whittington legend established a pattern for future fictitious adventurers, although most subsequent aspirants for success in London found their plots rewritten as they met with disappointment, dissipation, and despair in the City. The first part of the formulaic saga described the adventures of a young man in London. So commenced the story of one Leonard of Lincoln, a character whose ambitions were recorded in a ballad, The CheatingAge: Or LeonardofLincolnes iourney to London to buy Wit, which was printed only three years before William Booth made his own way to London from Cheshire. We learn from his experience that nothing could prepare a provincial man for London. This city was the largest in Europe and was congested, busy, loud, and rank.2 A new arrival would not know what to make of London's noises and sights. Even the cries of many competing vendors hawking their wares would baffle the newcomer with their babble.' Leonard of Lincoln did not stand a chance. He fell among bad company as soon as he "entered Bishops wide gate" who enticed him into a tavern. Over the course of his adventures Leonard squandered "most part of [his] state," and was reduced to selling his cloak and sword in order to pay his debts. Rather than finding the wit he had envisioned, Leonard to London "with griefe bid adiew." "My journey to London long time I shall rue," he lamented. "I ne're in my life met with villaines so vilde, To send a man home like the Prodigall Childe."4 With the advent of viable colonial ventures in the early seventeenth century, authors of ballads like The CheatingAge found new endings to their London stories.' These fictitious models echoed the real experience of men for whom London was a destination ultimately replaced in the seventeenth century by more promising and remote ones.6 Truth proved no stranger than fiction. Richard Norwood, the great Bermuda surveyor, made his home on Bermuda only after a series of adventurers on the continent. His family's frequent moves disrupted Norwood's education. Finally, having failed to win a scholarship he coveted, Norwood went to London at the age of fifteen as an apprentice to a fishmonger, "a stern man." In London Norwood was captivated by passions other than fish. His master's house was frequented by mariners who excited Norwood with talk of their travels. Norwood developed an interest in navigation, "wherewith," he recalled, "I was so much affected that I was most earnestly bent both to understand the art which seemed to me to reach as it were to heaven," and he resolved to go to the East Indies. Breaking his apprenticeship, he went to sea, and saw much of Europe, at one point considering a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. He finally returned to England, but set 48 Pennsylvania History out yet again for Turkey and other places, learning navigation as he travelled. Once back in London, Norwood was recruited by the Adventurers for Bermuda because of his diving skills-they believing there were many pearls there- and Richard Norwood finally voyaged to the colony that was, after more fits and starts, to become his adult home. Norwood's Atlantic career followed a. taste for adventure first sparked in London, was whetted further by long travels around the world, and finally terminated in the colonies after he had cultivated skills that made him valuable to colonial investors.7 As the stories of Booth and Norwood suggest, travel overseas was not always the primary goal of a trip to London. Fortune, adventure, and advancement in London itself were of foremost concern. London was the mecca of England, with one-sixth of the population passing through the metropolis.' Metropolitan life, however, was hardly unrelieved pleasure. Norwood and Booth proved luckier than most in that they actually survived to move on. Plague was, endemic in London, producing mortality rates as high as 24% in the worst outbreaks, as in 1563. And the diseases that fed on poverty, poor sanitation, and malnutrition had free reign.9 Many destitute migrants who survived London's horrific disease environment were ensnared in the legal apparatus enforcing the Poor Laws. Some found themselves eventually boarding ship, like William Booth or Richard Norwood-whether reluctantly or enthusiastically - for a range of overseas ventures. '° Such was the case in 1635 for five boys sent by the Bridewell to Bermuda, having been brought in by a London constable. Another immigrant of 1635, Thomas Reynolds, was taken in by the night watch and described as "an old prisoner." Reynolds was shipped to Virginia." Joining him that year on voyages to Virginia from London were fourteen prisoners from Newgate who were ordered overseas. 12 Thus a number of people unable or unwilling to support themselves legally in London were shipped overseas, along with those like Norwood or Booth who had skills and expectations but thirsted for advancement. London functioned as a filter for population moving into the city from all over England, and out of the city on ships for the Continent or any one of a range of English commercial or colonial ventures. As Booth and Norwood suggest, migration also enhanced imperial development. Men blundered their way onto ships to serve in the army that secured England's sovereignty or to explore, invade, and settle the colonies that promised wealth and power. Both migration and commercial ventures similarly shaped the character of London.'3 Thus migration played a role in the life cycle of individuals and in the life cycle of the nation. As part of the life cycle of the nation, the increased migration of the early Stuart period provided able manpower for a variety of new commercial enterprises that ultimately transformed England into an empire. The English Atlantic World 49 The Crown viewed this abundant internal and overseas mobility with considerable alarm, especially in light of the political and economic instability which distinguished the reigns of James I and Charles I. Especially during the years of the personal rule, 1629-1640, Charles I found it necessary to refine and expand on proclamations first issued by his father in order to curtail the movements of his subjects. Although colonization and trade were for the most part privately organized, the crown provided an important support by granting monopolies to individuals, corporations, and joint-stock companies.