John Scolvus: The First Battle Of Columbus

part of this well-organized and well-disciplined group. They drew up a manifesto clearly stating their complaints, in part economic, but mainly political. They were overwhelmingly concerned with misgovernment and corruption at home. They also made it clear that they blamed ‘not all the lords nor all those about the king’s person nor all gentlemen nor yeomen nor men of law nor all bishops nor priests’. The rebel solution was to demand government by a broadly based group of peers including the Dukes of York, Exeter, Buckingham, and Norfolk.” See Lander, Government and Community, pp. 187–189. There was a period of uneasy calm for a few years, followed in 1455 by the outbreak of hostilities between York and the Crown—the first battle of the

John the Skillful, perhaps John Lloyd), who may have been a Welsh seaman with great experience in northern latitude voyaging, may have sailed directly to the New World on a venture of (further) discovery in 1477, fifteen years before Columbus’s famous voyage. Scolvus is thought to have landed as far south as Maryland. Also in 1477, Columbus himself visited Bristol, England, John Lloyd’s home port, perhaps learning from this experience. These accounts are detailed in a Royal Geographical Society publication. See Arthur Davies, “Prince Madoc and the Discovery of America in 1477” in The Geographical Journal 150(3):

How William Saundre of Banbury achieved success in the wool trade at an early age is not clear. His father had useful contacts from his own wool trade and may have endowed his son with venture capital to initiate this commerce, but we are unable to move beyond speculation on this point.

25. A full excursion into the history of European capitalism can be taken in F. Braudel, The Wheels of Commerce: Civilization and Capitalism, 15th to 18th Century (New York: Harper and Row, 1986). If a reader takes nothing else from Braudel, his insightful contrasts between ancient markets and historically emergent capitalism will clarify the deeply obfuscated debates about modern economic processes.

26. The Galileo Project at Rice University has this to say about the Medicis, “The Medici family dominated Florentine politics for two and a half centuries and presided over a cultural achievement that is equalled only by Athens in the golden age. The family also got its genes mixed with most of the royal families in Europe. Medici women included Catherine (1519–1589) whom married Henry II, King of France, and ruled the country after her husband’s death (and) Maria (1573–1642) married Henry IV, King of France. Maria’s daughters became queens of Spain and England. Cosimo Medici II’s wife, Mary Magdalena, was the sister of Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor.” See http://www.Galileo.rice.edu/gal/medici.html. The family was perhaps the wealthiest in Europe in the sixteenth century, and two popes