Anthony Jenkinson was born at Market Harborough

Market Harborough

Market Harborough is a market town within the Harborough district of Leicestershire, England.It has a population of 20,785 and is the administrative headquarters of Harborough District Council. It sits on the Northamptonshire-Leicestershire border...

, Leicestershire

Leicestershire

Leicestershire is a landlocked county in the English Midlands. It takes its name from the heavily populated City of Leicester, traditionally its administrative centre, although the City of Leicester unitary authority is today administered separately from the rest of Leicestershire...

. He was one of the first Britons to explore Muscovy and present day Russia

Russia

Russia or , officially known as both Russia and the Russian Federation , is a country in northern Eurasia. It is a federal semi-presidential republic, comprising 83 federal subjects...

. Jenkinson was a traveller and explorer on behalf of the Muscovy Company

Muscovy Company

The Muscovy Company , was a 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 became closely associated with such famous names as Henry Hudson and William Baffin...

 and the English crown. He also met Ivan the Terrible several times during his trips to Moscow

Moscow

Moscow is the capital, the most populous city, and the most populous federal subject of Russia. The city is a major political, economic, cultural, scientific, religious, financial, educational, and transportation centre of Russia and the continent...

 and Russia. He detailed the accounts of his travel through several written works over his life.

Family life

Anthony Jenkinson's father, William Jenkinson, was a man of great property and wealth. Anthony Jenkinson was thus trained in his earlier years for a mercantile career. By the year 1568, Jenkinson had become a pivotal researcher for the Muscovy Company. On 26 January 1568 Jenkinson married his wife Judith Marshe, daughter of John Marshe and his wife Alice. Marshe had extensive business ties, including being one of the founding members of the Company. Jenkinson thus benefited greatly through these financial ties. Jenkinson and his wife had six daughters and five sons, of whom only four daughters and a son survived. There exists speculation that Jenkinson had an illegitimate daughter, Anne Beck

Anne Whateley

Anne Whateley is the name of a woman who is sometimes supposed to have been the intended wife of William Shakespeare before he married Anne Hathaway. Most scholars believe that Whateley never existed, but that her name in a document concerning Shakespeare's marriage is merely a clerical error...

 or Whateley, who was at one point engaged to be married to William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare

William Shakespeare was an English poet and playwright, widely regarded as the greatest writer in the English language and the world's pre-eminent dramatist. He is often called England's national poet and the "Bard of Avon"...

. However, these claims are widely disregarded as mere speculation on the part of their originator, William Ross. By 1606 Jenkinson was living in a manor house in Ashton

Ashton, Cambridgeshire

Ashton is a hamlet in the English county of Cambridgeshire. It falls within Bainton civil parish, part of the city of Peterborough unitary authority....

. His wife died before him from a bad case of palsy

Palsy

In medicine, palsy is the paralysis of a body part, often accompanied by loss of sensation and by uncontrolled body movements, such as shaking. Medical conditions involving palsy include cerebral palsy , brachial palsy , and Bell's palsy ....

. Jenkinson was buried on 16 February 1611 at Holy Trinity Church in Teigh

Teigh

Teigh is a village and civil parish in the county of Rutland in the East Midlands of England. It is notable for its parish church, almost unaltered since a 1782 rebuild, that features pews that face one another rather than the altar....

.

Anthony's son Sir Robert was the father of the first of the Jenkinson Baronets

Jenkinson Baronets

There have been two Baronetcies created for people with the surname Jenkinson, both in the Baronetage of England. One creation is extant as of 2008...

 of Hawkesbury, Gloucestershire

Hawkesbury, Gloucestershire

Hawkesbury is a hamlet consisting of a few cottages around a triangular green, it is also the name of a civil parish in the South Gloucestershire unitary authority in England in which Hawkesbury itself lies, it is located west of Hawkesbury Upton, off the A46 road.The civil parish includes...

.

Travels to Muscovy

Jenkinson traveled to Muscovy several times during his life on behalf of the Muscovy Company.

First Expedition, 1558

Jenkinson was in Moscow in the year 1558. He began his journey by traveling south down the Oka and Volga Rivers, passing through the Khanate of Kazan

Khanate of Kazan

The Khanate of Kazan was a medieval Tatar state which occupied the territory of former Volga Bulgaria between 1438 and 1552. Its khans were the patrilineal descendants of Toqa Temür, the thirteenth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan. The khanate covered contemporary Tatarstan, Mari El,...

 (conquered by Russia in 1552), and arrived at the town of Astrakhan

Astrakhan

Astrakhan is a major city in southern European Russia and the administrative center of Astrakhan Oblast. The city lies on the left bank of the Volga River, close to where it discharges into the Caspian Sea at an altitude of below the sea level. Population:...

, (conquered 1556). His party continued their journey south-east after traveling across the Caspian Sea

Caspian Sea

The Caspian Sea is the largest enclosed body of water on Earth by area, variously classed as the world's largest lake or a full-fledged sea. The sea has a surface area of and a volume of...

 to Serachik (Serakhs), where they joined a merchant caravan and traveled for several months across the Tatar lands of the Nogai Horde

Nogai Horde

The Nogai Horde was a confederation of about eighteen Turkic and Mongol tribes that occupied the Pontic-Caspian steppe from about 1500 until they were pushed west by the Kalmyks and south by the Russians in the 17th century. The Mongol tribe called the Manghits constituted a core of the Horde...

. They reached Bokhara after fighting off bandits in the desert, but found that though the routes to China and India were well known, they were impassable due to wars and banditry along the way. The hostility of the local authorities made their stay precarious, and ultimately they were forced to retrace their steps, leaving Bokhara only shortly before the army of Samarkand arrived to besiege it. After many more hardships, including having to completely re-rig the boat they had left on the Caspian (making their own sails, ropes and cables), they arrived back in Moscow in 1559, but could not travel back to England until the spring of 1560 opened the sea passages again. On this journey, however, Jenkinson did manage to make a map of some of the Russian and Tatar territories, though he fell into the common mistake of assuming the Aral Sea was a gulf of the Caspian. His map was incorporated into Ortelius' atlas Theatrum orbis terrarum

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum

Theatrum Orbis Terrarum is considered to be the first true modern atlas. Written by Abraham Ortelius and originally printed on May 20, 1570, in Antwerp, it consisted of a collection of uniform map sheets and sustaining text bound to form a book for which copper printing plates were specifically...

.

Second Expedition, 1561

Upon his arrival back from his first expedition into Russia, Jenkinson immediately began to prepare for a second expedition there. His intent was to travel to Russia and continue through to Persia. He arrived in Moscow in August 1561, with the intent to talk trade terms with Ivan the Terrible. However, he was not capable of having an audience with him until March 1562. From there, Jenkinson traveled across Russia, down the Caspian and into Persia, where he reached the court of Shah Tahmasp, then at Qazvin, and managed to attain preferential trading deals on behalf of the Muscovy Company. However, he found that the wider objective of breaking into the Indian Ocean trade was blocked by the Portuguese outpost at Ormuz on the Persian Gulf, and the sale of English goods was limited by competition from the Venetians operating via the much shorter route from the Mediterranean through Syria. Also during this expedition, he made a great impression on Ivan the Terrible who granted a large extension of trading rights to the Muscovy Company. In his travels into Central Asia and Persia, Jenkinson had a relationship of mutual advantage with the Tsar, buying commodities on the Tsar's behalf, but also benefiting from Ivan's letters of credence, which had considerable weight with local powers in the aftermath of Russia's triumphs at Kazan and Astrakhan. In July 1564 Jenkinson returned to London.

Third Expedition, 1566

Jenkinson was sent to Russia for a third time in order to settle a dispute regarding the trade deals that England had made with Russia during Jenkinson's last voyage there in 1564. Upon his arrival, in a letter sent back to his friend, Jenkinson mentioned the cruelty that had swept over the Russian territories due to Ivan. In order to successfully negotiate the trade terms, Jenkinson was sent back to England. He was ordered to bring war experts to Russia to help Ivan with his wars. Due to this voyage, Jenkinson successfully negotiated new trade terms with the Russian monarch in September 1567.

Fourth Expedition, 1571

In July 1571, Jenkinson was sent to Russia on his fourth and final expedition there. In 1568, Ivan had revoked the trading privileges that Jenkinson had successfully attained in 1566. On behalf of the queen, Jenkinson was sent to reinstate the trade agreement. After being held up at Kholmogory

Kholmogory

Kholmogory is a historic village and the administrative center of Kholmogorsky District of Arkhangelsk Oblast, Russia. It lies on the left bank of the Northern Dvina, along the Kholmogory Highway, 75 km southeast of Arkhangelsk and 90 km north of the Antonievo-Siysky Monastery. The name...

 for six months due to plague, Jenkinson was finally able to arrive in Moscow by May 1572. During his voyage Jenkinson remarked on the devastation that the Crimean Tatars

Crimean Khanate

Crimean Khanate, or Khanate of Crimea , was a state ruled by Crimean Tatars from 1441 to 1783. Its native name was . Its khans were the patrilineal descendants of Toqa Temür, the thirteenth son of Jochi and grandson of Genghis Khan...

 had committed upon parts of the country. By the 23 July, Jenkinson had successfully reinstated all trading privileges with Ivan and Russia.

Writings

Jenkinson's maps of Russia were incorporated into Ortelius' famous atlas Theatrum orbis terrarum. Also, historians have mined many of Jenkinson's surviving personal letters, in which he describes Russia. Particularly, he makes mention of Ivan's terrible and atrocious form of rule. Also, Jenkinson's travel accounts were used in Richard Hakluyt

Richard Hakluyt

Richard Hakluyt was an English writer. He is principally remembered for his efforts in promoting and supporting the settlement of North America by the English through his works, notably Divers Voyages Touching the Discoverie of America and The Principal Navigations, Voiages, Traffiques and...

's compendium of geographic, trade and exploration material The Principal Navigations, Voyages, Traffiques and Discoveries of the English Nation.

External links

• Oxford Dictionary of National Biographies (http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/14736)