Emmanuel Altham was born a gentleman, though his family had its
connections with commerce and the legal profession rather than the
titled aristocracy. His two older brothers successively held the
family’s country seat at Mark Hall, Latton, about twenty miles north of
London. As a younger son, Altham inherited little of his parents’ wealth
and so, over objections by his relatives, sought excitement and his
fortune in the expanding world of English overseas trade. Altham began
as an investor in the Company of Adventurers for New Plymouth, served
for a time as agent of the Company, and became an admirer of the
colonists and New England with such ardor that he could more easily
envision the colony’s future success than see the hardships which the
planters were enduring when he first arrived. He went to the New World
with a sense of honor, moreover, rather than the qualities of a
hard-driving trader. Perhaps he was not a typical Adventurer: his
devotion to the cause of colonization and taste for the heroic side of
commerce rather than the ledger went beyond the ordinary, and helped
keep English backing for the Pilgrim plantation alive when profit did
not.
Altham crossed the Atlantic to Plymouth the first time in the summer of
1623. He went as “Captain” of the _Little James_ (James Bridge, master),
the pinnace of about 44 tons which the Company was sending to the
plantation for use in fishing and fur-trading expeditions. In 1623, the
expert in charge of sailing a ship was her “master,” and if there was a
captain, he had command over the military and mercantile affairs of the
voyage. Since his ship carried authorization to operate as a privateer,
Altham had the decision about taking prizes as well as the transaction
of business. After a year in New England waters, described in the first
three of Altham’s letters printed here, he recrossed the ocean with the
ship. She was seized for the satisfaction of debts to two of the
Company’s members, Thomas Fletcher and Thomas Goffe, who sent her (but
not under Altham) on a second voyage in 1625.
Altham’s fourth letter from New England describes the occasion of his
second expedition, on his own. Evidently his hopes for a future with the
colony faded, for he returned to England some time before July 1626 and
soon afterwards began to look for employment as a soldier with the East
India Company.
Through the influence of his brother, Sir Edward, he was sent to the
Company’s fort at Surat and spent over two years in exploits around the
Indian Ocean. The East India Company’s business was a mixture of trade
and raid—competing with the Portuguese for control of port cities in
India and the trade to which they gave access. The climax of these
years, for Altham, was an expedition to Madagascar and Mozambique to
intercept the fleet of caracks from Portugal.
After a visit to England in 1630, Altham returned to India a more
important man: Factor and Captain of the fort at Armagon (now abandoned,
at a place about sixty miles north of Madras), the Company’s main post
on the east side of India. He served the firm well, rebuilt the
fortifications, and finally began to accumulate wealth. He expected to
return to England permanently and live in style—had even begun to order
paintings and fancy bedding, but died at Armagon in January, 1635/1636.
The originals of the letters of Emmanuel Altham to Sir Edward Altham
belonged to Dr. Otto Fisher, of Detroit, who before his death generously
consented to their first publication here. The letter of Altham to James
Sherley has been published in Massachusetts Historical Society,
_Proceedings_, XLIV, 182-189, from a transcript of the original in the
English Public Records Office (Admiralty Court Misc., bundle 1142), with
editorial comment and notes by J. F. Jameson.