David Jonkin
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David Jonkin or Jenkin (died 1641) was a Scottish merchant and shipowner. He imported sugar, French wine, Swedish timber, linen from Haarlem, and lint from Poland.
An early notice of David Jonkin's merchant activity appears in a manuscript record of Edinburgh's Baillie court. It was found in April 1616 that Elizabeth Nicholson owed Jonkin £47 for goods. She had bought the items from Jonkin when her husband John Aslowane was still alive, and it was a principle of Scottish law that a husband was responsible for the payments of debts contracted by his wife.[1]
Jonkin was able to extend credit, and in August 1623 lent 500 guilders to Alexander Erskine at The Hague. Erskine, a son of John Erskine, Earl of Mar (1558–1634), was at the court of Elizabeth Stuart, Queen of Bohemia and was equipping himself to fight in her cause.[2]
Jonkin sold food, wine, coal, and other goods, and owned and held part shares in a number of ships. In 1625 he was part owner of the St John of Leith, built in Rotterdam in 1624,[3] with George Gourlay as master, and had shares in the Alexander and Love of Leith, and the Bruce.[4]
David Jonkin was fined for breaking Edinburgh's market regulations in 1624 when it was discovered he was buying imported food in Burntisland to profiteer during a famine.[5] He sold claret and white wine to the Earl of Winton in 1628.[6]
Jonkin and a business partner David Cruikshanks shipped cloth to Spain in the Blessing of Leith in October 1633. The textiles, re-exported rather than manufactured in Scotland, included coloured buckram, say, and "ambobrudge buckasie", a Hamburg cloth.[7] Jonkin was Cruikshank's landlord for a property on the Royal Mile.[8]
In 1634 Jonkin and Patrick Wood had a patent to start manufacturing cables and rope for ships and recruit foreign craftsmen for their works in Edinburgh or Leith.[9]
Jonkin had a booth or shop situated under the Tolbooth in Edinburgh, rented from the burgh council.[10]
By 1636 David Jonkin acquired joint ownership with Thomas Gledstanes of a house on Edinburgh's Lawnmarket on the High Street now called Gladstone's Land.[11] They had flats in the building, and their tenants included two lawyers, Andrew Hay and John Adamson.[12]
Jonkin supported the Scottish Covenant in 1639 by selling firearms to the Earl of Argyll and buying a warship in Holland.[13]
He married twice. His first wife, Margaret Lauder or Baxter died in November 1625, her children were Hercules, John, and Margaret Jonkin.
Jonkin died on 28 February 1641.[14]
His will lists his stock, including armour, and the value of his five ships,[15] and sums of money owing to him, and debts for making gunpowder. The Earl of Moray had bought wainscot timber from Jonkin.
References
- ↑ Cordelia Beattie, "Women, Debt and Coverture in Scotland", Cordelia Beattie, Matthew Frank Stevens, Married Women and the Law in Premodern Northwest Europe (Boydell, 2013), p. 179.
- ↑ Henry Paton, HMC Mar & Kellie, 2 (London, 1930), 177.
- ↑ James J. Brown, "Merchant Princes and Mercantile Investment", Michael Lynch, The Early Modern Town in Scotland (Croom Helm, 1987), p. 133.
- ↑ Will of Margaret Lauder or Baxter, NRS CC8/8/53 p. 585.
- ↑ Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, 1604-1626 (Edinburgh, 1931), p. 248.
- ↑ HMC 2nd Report, Forbes-Whitehaugh (London, 1871), p. 199.
- ↑ Marguerite Wood, Extracts from the Burgh Records of Edinburgh, 1626-1641 (Edinburgh, 1936), p. 146.
- ↑ Aaron Allen & Catherine Spence, Edinburgh Housemails Taxation Book (SHS, Woodbridge, 2014), p. 98.
- ↑ Earl of Stirling's Register of Royal Letters Relative to the Affairs of Scotland, vol. 2 (Edinburgh, 1885), pp. 791, 801.
- ↑ Aaron Allen & Catherine Spence, Edinburgh Housemails Taxation Book (SHS, Woodbridge, 2014), p. 162.
- ↑ Cathryn Spence, 'Inhabitants of Gladstone's Land', Jennifer Melville, Gladstone's Land (Edinburgh: National Trust for Scotland, 2018), p. 16.
- ↑ Aaron Allen & Catherine Spence, Edinburgh Housemails Taxation Book (SHS, Woodbridge, 2014), p. 89.
- ↑ David Stevenson, The Scottish Revolution, 1637-1644 (David & Charles: Newton Abbot, 1973), p. 128: HMC 10th Report Eglinton (London, 1885), p. 35.
- ↑ Sir Thomas Hope's Diary, p. 128.
- ↑ James J. Brown, "Merchant Princes and Mercantile Investment", Michael Lynch, The Early Modern Town in Scotland (Croom Helm, 1987), p. 133.