Thread by @antonhowes

Possible candidate for most influential person in England in mid-16thC:

Sebastian Cabot

Increasingly certain - his name just keeps on cropping up! - that he was responsible for the introduction of patents, and joint stock companies, not to mention England’s age of exploration

Probably born in Venice (though he thought Bristol), Cabot was one of the major pioneers of celestial navigation, pretty much being poached back from Spanish service in the 1540s so that England could become a maritime nation (strange to think it, but before then it was not)

He was named on the first monopoly patent of discovery in 1496, which was obtained by his father, the explorer Zuan Chabotto (John Cabot). And soon after he returned to England, he reclaimed it, getting an official copy made in 1550.

He appears to have then used his patent monopoly to attract investors in a scheme to find a northeast passage to Asia in 1553 - what would soon become the first joint stock company, later called the Muscovy Company, of which he was governor for life

Strikingly, it’s in the years after he does these two things that both patent monopolies and joint stock companies actually start to take off. Eg in the 1560s you see a few Germans with English partners use pretty much the same procedure to form the Company of Mines Royal

And apart form this institutional innovation, there’s the fact that he taught many of England’s first generation of native explorers - Stephen Borough, Richard Chancellor, etc. Before 1550s they were instead overwhelmingly foreign-trained immigrants like himself.

I’ll likely write this up properly at some stage, but in the meantime here’s the context on early patents in England: antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven…

And here’s what it meant for him to have helped introduced celestial navigation techniques: antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-inven…