Peter Mundy - Revision history

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			{{Short description\|British merchant trader, traveller and writer}}
	{{Use dmy dates\|date=October 2019}}		{{Use dmy dates\|date=October 2019}}
	'''Peter Mundy''' (~~[[fl.]]~~ 1597 – 1667) was a seventeenth-century ~~[[British people\|British]]~~ merchant trader, traveller and writer. He was the first ~~Briton~~ to record, in his ''Itinerarium Mundi'' ('Itinerary of the World'), tasting ''[[Tea\|Chaa]]'' (tea) in China and travelled extensively in Asia, Russia and Europe.<ref>Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, Ed. R E Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library, Oxford</ref>		{{hatnote\|For the American developmental psychologist, see [[Peter Clive Mundy]].}}

			'''Peter Mundy''' (born-1597 ~ 1667) was a seventeenth-century English factor, merchant trader, traveller and writer. He was the first Englishman to record, in his ''Itinerarium Mundi'' ('Itinerary of the World'), tasting ''[[Tea\|Chaa]]'' (tea) in China and travelled extensively in Asia, Russia and Europe.<ref>Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, Ed. R E Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library, Oxford</ref>

	==Life==		==Life==
	Mundy came from [[Penryn, Cornwall\|Penryn]] in south [[Cornwall]]. In 1609 he accompanied his father, a [[pilchard]] trader <ref>"His father was engaged in 'the pilchard business'." [[Carrington, Dorothy]] (1949) ''The Traveller's Eye''. London: Pilot Press; p. 178</ref> to [[Rouen]] across the [[English Channel\|Channel]] in Normandy, and was then sent to [[Gascony]] to learn French. In May 1611 he went as a cabin-boy in a merchant ship, and gradually rose in life until he became of independent circumstances.		[[File:Ascension crake.png\|thumb\|Mundy's drawing of the [[Ascension flightless crake]], now extinct]]Mundy came from [[Penryn, Cornwall\|Penryn]] in south [[Cornwall]]. In 1609 he accompanied his father, a [[pilchard]] trader <ref>"His father was engaged in 'the pilchard business'." [[Carrington, Dorothy]] (1949) ''The Traveller's Eye''. London: Pilot Press; p. 178</ref> to [[Rouen]] across the [[English Channel\|Channel]] in Normandy, and was then sent to [[Gascony]] to learn French. In May 1611 he went as a cabin-boy in a merchant ship, and gradually rose in life until he became of independent circumstances.

	~~[[File:Ascension crake.png\|thumb\|Mundy's drawing of the [[Ascension flightless crake]], now extinct]]~~		He visited [[Constantinople]] in 1617, returning to London and overland via Bulgaria, [[Sarajevo]], [[Split, Croatia\|Split]], [[Venice]], [[Chambéry]] and Paris with the English Ambassador [[Sir Paul Pindar]], and afterwards made a journey to Spain as a clerk in the employ of Richard Wyche. Following Wyche's death and a brief spell in the family Pilchard business, he returned to London and obtained employment on account of his language skills, travelling experience and reference from Pindar, with the [[East India Company]] on a salary of 25 pounds.

	He visited [[Constantinople]], returning to London and overland via Bulgaria, [[Sarajevo]], [[Split, Croatia\|Split]], [[Venice]], [[Chambéry]] and Paris with the English Ambassador [[Paul Pindar]], and afterwards made a journey to Spain as a clerk in the employ of Richard Wyche. Following Wyche's death and a brief spell in the family Pilchard business, he returned to London and obtained employment on account of his language skills, travelling experience and reference from Pindar, with the [[East India Company]] on a salary of 25 pounds. On 6 March 1628 he left [[Blackwall, London\|Blackwall]] for [[Surat]] (India), where he arrived on 30 September 1628. In November 1630 he travelled to [[Agra]] and remained there until 17 December 1631, when he proceeded to [[Puttana]] on the borders of [[Bengal]]. He returned to Agra and Surat, and leaving the latter in February 1634, arrived off [[Dover]] on 9 September 1634. This portion of his travels is contained in the Harleian MS. 2286, and in the Addit. MSS. 19278–80.
	[[File:Peter Mundy's Relations.jpg\|thumb\|The title page of Mundy's Relations]]		[[File:Peter Mundy's Relations.jpg\|thumb\|The title page of Mundy's Relations]]
	As a fisherman and sailor it is likely that he spoke at least some [[Cornish language\|Cornish]] of which he makes some account of its relation to Welsh, visiting [[Wales]] (and climbing [[Ysgyryd Fawr]]) in 1639 where he noted "few of the common or poorer sort understand any English at all".<ref>Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, ed. R.E. Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library Press, Oxford; p, 148</ref>		As a fisherman and sailor it is likely that he spoke at least some [[Cornish language\|Cornish]] of which he makes some account of its relation to Welsh, visiting [[Wales]] (and climbing [[Ysgyryd Fawr]]) in 1639 where he noted "few of the common or poorer sort understand any English at all".<ref>Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, ed. R.E. Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library Press, Oxford; p, 148</ref>

	He went on further voyages to India, China, and Japan, when he started from [[The Downs (ship anchorage)\|the Downs]] on 14 April 1636. His journals record his being served "''Chaa''" or tea by the Chinese and tasting chocolate aboard a Spanish merchant vessel. The fleet of four ships and two [[pinnace (ship's boat)\|pinnace]]s were sent out by [[Sir William Courten]], and Mundy seems to have been employed as a factor. His journals end somewhat abruptly, but a manuscript in the [[Thomas Rawlinson (barrister)\|Rawlinson collection]] at the [[Bodleian Library]] continues the narrative of his life, spending many years living in the [[Hanseatic League\|Hansa]] free city of [[Danzig]] - modern [[Gdańsk]] - including journeys to Denmark, Prussia, and Russia, which lasted from 1639 to 1648. Mundy himself made the drawings for the volume and traced his routes in red on the maps of [[Hondius]]. In 1663 he declared his travelling days over and retired to Falmouth. His journals record his own calculation of the distance he had travelled in his many voyages as 100,833 and 5/8th miles. His manuscripts were lost for nearly 300 years before being published by the [[Hakluyt Society]].		He went on further voyages to India, China, and Japan, when he started from [[The Downs (ship anchorage)\|the Downs]] on 14 April 1636. His journals record his being served "''Chaa''" or tea by the Chinese and tasting chocolate aboard a Spanish merchant vessel. The fleet of four ships and two [[pinnace (ship's boat)\|pinnace]]s were sent out by [[Sir William Courten]], and Mundy seems to have been employed as a factor. His journals end somewhat abruptly, but a manuscript in the [[Thomas Rawlinson (barrister)\|Rawlinson collection]] at the [[Bodleian Library]] continues the narrative of his life, spending many years living in the [[Hanseatic League\|Hansa]] free city of [[Danzig]] - modern [[Gdańsk]] - including journeys to Denmark, Prussia, and Russia, which lasted from 1639 to 1648. Mundy himself made the drawings for the volume and traced his routes in red on the maps of [[Hondius]]. In 1663 he declared his travelling days over and retired to Falmouth. His journals record his own calculation of the distance he had travelled in his many voyages as 100,833 and 5/8th miles. His manuscripts were lost for nearly 300 years before being published by the [[Hakluyt Society]] (1905-36).

	[[Philip Marsden]]'s history of Falmouth, ''The Levelling Sea'', published in 2011, provides a brief account of Peter Mundy's life on pages 131–137.		[[Philip Marsden]]'s history of Falmouth, ''The Levelling Sea'', published in 2011, provides a brief account of Peter Mundy's life on pages 131–137.

	He also left the earliest description of the ''[[Musaeum Tradescantianum]]''.<ref>http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/amulets/tradescant/tradescant03.html {{~~Bare URL inline~~\|date=~~June 2021~~}}</ref>		He also left the earliest description of the ''[[Musaeum Tradescantianum]]''.<ref>{{cite web\| url = http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/amulets/tradescant/tradescant03.html\| title = Ashmolean\| access-date = 24 October 2009\| archive-date = 5 August 2017\| archive-url = https://web.archive.org/web/20170805002810/http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/amulets/tradescant/tradescant03.html\| url-status = live}}</ref>

			== Travels to India ==
			Peter Mundy travelled from [[England]] to [[Surat]], which he reached at September 1628. In 1630, it was agreed to transfer Peter Mundy to [[Agra]]. He began his journey on 11 November, reaching Agra on 3 January 1631. He served his superiors but then he was told to go to [[Patna]] to make an investment in cloth. On 6 August 1632, he set out for Patna, travelling 500 miles and reaching his destination on 20 September 1632. He did not make a good profit in Patna and decided to return to Agra in November. He reached Agra on 22 December and stayed there for two months, during which time he witnessed the marriage of [[Shah Jahan]]'s two elder sons. He appears to have enjoyed visiting [[Fatehpur Sikri]], which was deserted by [[Akbar]].<ref>{{Cite web\|title=The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia 1608 - 1667 Vol. II: Travels in Asia, 1628 - 1634\|url=http://indianculture.gov.in/rarebooks/travels-peter-mundy-europe-and-asia-1608-1667-vol-ii-travels-asia-1628-1634\|access-date=2022-02-17\|website=INDIAN CULTURE\|language=en\|archive-date=3 November 2023\|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20231103151335/https://indianculture.gov.in/rarebooks/travels-peter-mundy-europe-and-asia-1608-1667-vol-ii-travels-asia-1628-1634\|url-status=live}}</ref>

	==Character==		==Character==
	"It is rare to find a man so representative of his period as was Peter Mundy. In an age when curiosity was the outstanding characteristic of intelligent Englishmen, curiosity was the ruling passion of this life. ... His insatiable appetite for information, his eye for detail, his desire for accuracy, would have made him in modern times a first-rate scientist. ... True to his period, also, was his heartlessness ... he was more interested in the appearances of things than their implications in the lives of human beings. ... But if he was unfeeling, he was by no means insensitive; each strange item in the surprising world he had inherited is described with a spontaneous brilliance seldom to be found in modern writing."<ref>Carrington, Dorothy (1949) ''The Traveller's Eye''. London: Pilot Press; p. 178-79</ref>		"It is rare to find a man so representative of his period as was Peter Mundy. In an age when curiosity was the outstanding characteristic of intelligent Englishmen, curiosity was the ruling passion of this life. ... His insatiable appetite for information, his eye for detail, his desire for accuracy, would have made him in modern times a first-rate scientist. ... True to his period, also, was his heartlessness ... he was more interested in the appearances of things than their implications in the lives of human beings. ... But if he was unfeeling, he was by no means insensitive; each strange item in the surprising world he had inherited is described with a spontaneous brilliance seldom to be found in modern writing."<ref>Carrington, Dorothy (1949) ''The Traveller's Eye''. London: Pilot Press; p. 178-79</ref>[[File:Mundy-Jew at Constantinople.jpg\|right\|thumb\|"Jew at Constantinople", "A briefe relation of the Turckes, their kings, Emperors, or Grandsigneurs, their conquests, religion, customes, habbits, etc" - Istanbul 1618]]
			==Itinerary==
			*1530s Grandfather was ''Chanoor'' or ''Chantor'' at [[Glasney College]]
			*1596 Born at [[Penryn, Cornwall\|Penryn]], his father was Richard Mundy
			Religious education with uncle in Devon
			*1608 first voyage to [[Rouen]] with his Father trading pilchards
			*1610 [[Bayonne]], Gascony to learn 'the French Tongue'
			*1611 No further mention of his mother
			*1613 [[Sanlúcar de Barrameda\|San Lucar]] with Mr Parker
			*1615 [[Seville]] with Mr Weaver, "attains" the Spanish Tongue
			*1617 [[Constantinople]] with James Wyche; returns overland via [[Belgrade]]; [[Sarajevo]]; [[Split, Croatia\|Split]]; [[Venice]]; [[Padua]]; [[Verona]]; [[Milan]]; crosses the Alps to [[Lyon]]s; [[Orléans\|Orleans]]; [[Paris]]; [[Calais]]; [[London]]
			*1620-21 Returns overland to Penryn
			*1621 Seville for ‘the Copper Contract’; apparently a Falmouth-based family venture with sparse details recorded initially.
			*1625 [[Valladolid]]
			*1626 [[Saint-Malo\|St Malo]] and [[Jersey]] – apparently an excursion for pleasure
			*1628 Applies to the East India Company to [[Surat]], India on £25 salary
			*1635-38 India to Japan
			* 1637 June to December in Macao
			*1639 ‘Petty Progress’ in England & [[Wales]]
			*1640-1647 [[Amsterdam]] and [[Holland]], [[Prussia]], [[Warsaw]] and [[Poland]], [[Russia]] – based from the free city of Dantzigk / [[Gdańsk\|Gdansk]]
			*1647 Returns to [[Falmouth, Cornwall\|Falmouth]]
			*1650-54 Begins writing in earnest in London
			*1655-56 3rd Voyage to India on the Alleppo Merchant
			*1658 Stays in London
			*1663-67 Returns to complete memoires in Penryn.

	==Notes==		==Notes==
	{{Portal\|Cornwall}}		{{commonscat\|Peter Mundy}}
			{{Portal bar\|Cornwall\|Biography\|History}}
	{{Reflist}}		{{Reflist}}

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2021-07-14T08:36:39Z

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{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2019}}
'''Peter Mundy''' ([[fl.]] 1597 – 1667) was a seventeenth-century [[British people|British]] merchant trader, traveller and writer. He was the first Briton to record, in his ''Itinerarium Mundi'' ('Itinerary of the World'), tasting ''[[Tea|Chaa]]'' (tea) in China and travelled extensively in Asia, Russia and Europe.<ref>Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, Ed. R E Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library, Oxford</ref>

==Life==
Mundy came from [[Penryn, Cornwall|Penryn]] in south [[Cornwall]]. In 1609 he accompanied his father, a [[pilchard]] trader <ref>"His father was engaged in 'the pilchard business'." [[Carrington, Dorothy]] (1949) ''The Traveller's Eye''. London: Pilot Press; p. 178</ref> to [[Rouen]] across the [[English Channel|Channel]] in Normandy, and was then sent to [[Gascony]] to learn French. In May 1611 he went as a cabin-boy in a merchant ship, and gradually rose in life until he became of independent circumstances.

[[File:Ascension crake.png|thumb|Mundy's drawing of the [[Ascension flightless crake]], now extinct]]

He visited [[Constantinople]], returning to London and overland via Bulgaria, [[Sarajevo]], [[Split, Croatia|Split]], [[Venice]], [[Chambéry]] and Paris with the English Ambassador [[Paul Pindar]], and afterwards made a journey to Spain as a clerk in the employ of Richard Wyche. Following Wyche's death and a brief spell in the family Pilchard business, he returned to London and obtained employment on account of his language skills, travelling experience and reference from Pindar, with the [[East India Company]] on a salary of 25 pounds. On 6 March 1628 he left [[Blackwall, London|Blackwall]] for [[Surat]] (India), where he arrived on 30 September 1628. In November 1630 he travelled to [[Agra]] and remained there until 17 December 1631, when he proceeded to [[Puttana]] on the borders of [[Bengal]]. He returned to Agra and Surat, and leaving the latter in February 1634, arrived off [[Dover]] on 9 September 1634. This portion of his travels is contained in the Harleian MS. 2286, and in the Addit. MSS. 19278–80.
[[File:Peter Mundy's Relations.jpg|thumb|The title page of Mundy's Relations]]
As a fisherman and sailor it is likely that he spoke at least some [[Cornish language|Cornish]] of which he makes some account of its relation to Welsh, visiting [[Wales]] (and climbing [[Ysgyryd Fawr]]) in 1639 where he noted "few of the common or poorer sort understand any English at all".<ref>Peter Mundy, Merchant Adventurer, ed. R.E. Pritchard, 2011, Bodleian Library Press, Oxford; p, 148</ref>

He went on further voyages to India, China, and Japan, when he started from [[The Downs (ship anchorage)|the Downs]] on 14 April 1636. His journals record his being served "''Chaa''" or tea by the Chinese and tasting chocolate aboard a Spanish merchant vessel. The fleet of four ships and two [[pinnace (ship's boat)|pinnace]]s were sent out by [[Sir William Courten]], and Mundy seems to have been employed as a factor. His journals end somewhat abruptly, but a manuscript in the [[Thomas Rawlinson (barrister)|Rawlinson collection]] at the [[Bodleian Library]] continues the narrative of his life, spending many years living in the [[Hanseatic League|Hansa]] free city of [[Danzig]] - modern [[Gdańsk]] - including journeys to Denmark, Prussia, and Russia, which lasted from 1639 to 1648. Mundy himself made the drawings for the volume and traced his routes in red on the maps of [[Hondius]]. In 1663 he declared his travelling days over and retired to Falmouth. His journals record his own calculation of the distance he had travelled in his many voyages as 100,833 and 5/8th miles. His manuscripts were lost for nearly 300 years before being published by the [[Hakluyt Society]].

[[Philip Marsden]]'s history of Falmouth, ''The Levelling Sea'', published in 2011, provides a brief account of Peter Mundy's life on pages 131–137.

He also left the earliest description of the ''[[Musaeum Tradescantianum]]''.<ref>http://www.ashmolean.org/ash/amulets/tradescant/tradescant03.html {{Bare URL inline|date=June 2021}}</ref>

==Character==
"It is rare to find a man so representative of his period as was Peter Mundy. In an age when curiosity was the outstanding characteristic of intelligent Englishmen, curiosity was the ruling passion of this life. ... His insatiable appetite for information, his eye for detail, his desire for accuracy, would have made him in modern times a first-rate scientist. ... True to his period, also, was his heartlessness ... he was more interested in the appearances of things than their implications in the lives of human beings. ... But if he was unfeeling, he was by no means insensitive; each strange item in the surprising world he had inherited is described with a spontaneous brilliance seldom to be found in modern writing."<ref>Carrington, Dorothy (1949) ''The Traveller's Eye''. London: Pilot Press; p. 178-79</ref>

==Notes==
{{Portal|Cornwall}}
{{Reflist}}

==References==
*{{DNB|wstitle=Mundy, Peter}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Mundy, Peter}}
[[Category:1590s births]]
[[Category:1677 deaths]]
[[Category:17th-century English writers]]
[[Category:17th-century English male writers]]
[[Category:Explorers from Cornwall]]
[[Category:Writers from Cornwall]]
[[Category:English male writers]]
[[Category:British East India Company people]]
[[Category:People from Penryn, Cornwall]]
[[Category:17th-century travelers]]