Collection search - Colonization Companies fonds [textual record]

In the seventeenth century, companies were not infrequently formed by British men of wealth, usually merchants and noblemen, to finance trading ventures and the establishment of colonies in the newly discovered lands overseas. The London (or South Virginia) Company and the Plymouth (or North Virginia) Company were two interrelated trading companies granted a patent by the English crown in 1606 for colonizing America. The London and Bristol Company was incorporated in 1610 to establish settlers on the island of Newfoundland.

Cottonian Manuscripts Otho E, volume VIII, is a collection of letters and relations concerning maritime voyages and expeditions. It is part of the famous Cotton Library accumulated by Sir Robert Cotton (1571-1631) and his grandson, Sir John Cotton (1621-1702), who presented it to the British nation in 1700. After being severely damaged by a fire in 1731, the Cotton collection was incorporated, in 1753, in the newly founded British Museum (now the British Library), where it is maintained as a special collection. The manuscripts are numbered Julius A.I. - Faustina F.X., according to the names of the twelve Caesars and two Imperial ladies, whose busts surmounted the fourteen presses in which Cotton housed his library. In 1914, the National Archives of Canada transcribed three small excerpts from it that were of Canadian interest.

Originals with the British Library, London, England.