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oliverhardy -> This was the true founder of modern American BDSM (1/11/2016 4:34:09 AM)
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Richard Amerike was born in 1445 at Meryk Court, Weston under Penyard, near Ross-on-Wye, Herefordshire, a descendant of the Earls of Gwent. The family name was an anglicised spelling of the Welsh ap Meuric, ap Meurig or ap Meryk, which means "son of Meurig".[1]
Amerike married Lucy Wells and settled for a time at West Camel, near Ilchester in Somerset. He decided to move his family to Bristol, a city growing in importance as a port, and second only to London at the time. It was attracting merchants and adventurers from all over the country. Amerike became a wealthy and important merchant and dignitary, holding the post of King's Customs Officer three times and becoming the High Sheriff of Bristol in 1497.
Seeking new sources of fish and other resources, Amerike and other Bristol merchants helped fund an expedition beyond Iceland authorised by the king. The Italian Giovanni Caboto (called John Cabot) was to lead the voyage. Amerike was said to be a major sponsor, as well as donating logs from his estate to build the ship Matthew for the expedition. Because Amerike's coat of arms was similar to the flag later adopted by the independent United States, a legend grew that the North American continent had been named for him rather than for Amerigo Vespucci.[1] It is not widely accepted.
n 1908, the local Bristol antiquarian Alfred Hudd first proposed the theory that the word America had evolved from Amerike or ap Meryk, based on a lost manuscript that he claimed to have seen.
map of the world of the year 1507
Waldseemüller's 1507 map with "America" at lower left
Hudd proposed that the word "America" was originally applied to a destination across the western ocean, possibly an island or a fishing station in Newfoundland. After the king of Iceland had cut off trade for fish, England sent out expeditions to find new sources. Hudd suggested Amerike's sponsorship made his name known in Bristol in association with the North American destinations prior to other mapmaking or voyages. The writer Jonathan Cohen noted he made a conjectural leap to reach that conclusion, and no extant evidence supports it.[2] In 2001, scholar John Davies briefly mentioned the story as a kind of Welsh patriot piece.[3]
John Lloyd and John Mitchinson, authors of "The Book of General Ignorance" (2006) explained that John Cabot mapped the coastline of "America" from Nova Scotia to Newfoundland in 1497, a decade before Waldseemüller's world map appeared in 1507 and five years before Amerigo Vespucci set out with Christopher Columbus. Lloyd and Mitchinson wrote, "As the chief patron of the voyage, Richard Ameryk would have expected discoveries to be named after him. There is a record in the Bristol calendar for that year: '... on Saint John the Baptist's day [June 24], the land of America was found by the merchants of Bristowe, in a ship of Bristowe called the Mathew." (p. 94) However, neither authors cite the source of their material that claims "America" was first named by Cabot after his patron.
The naming is traditionally attributed to the cartographer Martin Waldseemüller, who used the Latinized feminine form of Amerigo Vespucci's first name, "America", on his world map of 1507, which was published in Cosmographiae Introductio and has survived the centuries (although it is more likely that Waldseemüller's colleague Matthias Ringmann was responsible for the naming of new lands, while Waldseemüller's role was in drawing their shapes). However, Jules Marcou, a prominent French geologist who while studying North America argued, as did other 19th-century writers, that Vespucci changed his Christian name from Alberico to Amerigo after his discovery. Indeed, the only records of Vespucci's full name were created a few years before his death,[citation needed] long after his voyage. Specifically, Marcou introduced the name of an Indian tribe and of a district in Nicaragua called Amerrique (Land of the Wind), visited by both Columbus and Vespucci. The region was rich in gold, which led to Amerrique and gold becoming synonymous with the explorers. Vespucci may have been bequeathed with the nickname by others, or invented it himself; either way, he signed two documents using "Amerigo". In 1507, Vespucci's published letters came into the hands of German scholars at St. Dié, near Strasbourg, France. Among them was Waldseemüller.
Knowledge in the 15th century
There are two key characters in this story, John Cabot, a sailor, and Richard Amerike, a Bristol business man. Unfortunately, neither left much of themselves for us to see or read: no portrait, nothing in their own writing, no detailed contemporary record of themselves or their work. There is, however, enough recorded to know that they both achieved things of lasting importance; one very directly, the other less obviously but in its way even more portentous: Cabot awakened the world to the existence of the North American continent, and Amerike gave his name and badge to what, in time, was to become one of the great nations of the world.
At the end of the 15th century knowledge was a scarce commodity, and it is difficult for us to comprehend just how ignorant people were.
At the end of the 15th century knowledge was a scarce commodity, and it is difficult for us to comprehend just how ignorant people were. They knew nothing about almost everything. They had no idea how their bodies worked - why they breathed, urinated, defecated or felt hungry, felt sick or had a temperature - and many made no connection at all between the sexual act and childbirth. They knew nothing about geography - most people didn't know or, unable to travel, care what went on on the other side of the horizon - and they thought the world was flat. Nearly everyone was illiterate, even kings; only a few of the clergy knew how to read and write. Symbols were used to identify status and trades: eminent people had coats of arms to identify themselves, especially in battle, when it was important that they didn't get spiked in mistake for someone else; the barber/surgeon's red-and-white striped pole, for example, identified his calling.
People lived a cold, hungry and uncomfortable existence. Filth lay all around, and disease lurked in the hovels in which most people lived. Ever since the Romans had departed from Britain centuries before, people had hardly washed themselves; as spices were used to kill the smell and flavour of decaying meat, which was eaten as a matter of course, so wafted perfumes drowned the stench of a courtier's lady. The rest of the population just stank to high heaven.
On a voyage of discovery at the end of the 15th century Christopher Columbus, thinking he had missed China and reached the Indian Ocean, found and named the West Indies. On his third voyage, in 1498, he landed on the mainland of South America. But neither he nor John Cabot were the first people, or Europeans, to arrive in North America: native Americans had crossed the Bering Strait from Asia in prehistory, migrating south and becoming, in time, American Indians, Aztecs and Incas; St Brendan was there in the 6th century; Eric the Red, a Viking, was there in the 10th; Basque whalers saw Maine and Rhode Island on the horizon in the 14th and 15th centuries. But, generally, the world was unaware of the fact that North America existed.
That was the sort of world in which Cabot and Amerike lived.
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John Cabot
Giovanni Cabotto (the name Cabotto means 'coastal seaman' - or, according to some, 'Big Head') was born in Genoa in 1450, the son of a spice merchant. By 1461 the Cabot family had moved to Venice, where John Cabot worked in his father's shop. In 1476 he married a young woman called Mattea (the female version of the name Matthew) who bore him three sons - and maybe daughters, too: they were not considered important enough to be listed in legal documents.
Between 1485 and 1490 Cabot travelled widely, becoming, according to his contemporaries, a 'skilful mariner'. Knowing that spices came from the East, and that it was possible, though not proven, that the world was round, he was convinced that by sailing westwards he could explore, and tap, the riches of the Orient.
Hoping to find someone to sponsor a voyage of discovery, in 1495 Cabot came to Bristol, and was introduced to a group of businessmen, led by an Anglicised Welshman by the name of Amerike, who were just as keen as he was to expand trade. Impressed by Cabot, the Bristolians arranged an audience with King Henry VII in London, and on 5 March 1496, Cabot secured letters patent (a letter of authority to make a voyage and claim lands on behalf of the monarch) from the King.
Thirty-four days after leaving England the sailors sighted a 'New Found Land'.
A ship, only 70 feet long, was designed and built in Bristol, and on 20 May 1497, with a well-chosen crew of 18, the Matthew sailed from the mouth of the Avon, travelled to the fishing grounds south of Iceland and then due West. Eventually, 34 days after leaving England, the sailors sighted a 'New Found Land'. They went ashore in three places and brought back several pieces of evidence of their voyage, including a needle for making nets, a snare for catching animals and the jawbone of a whale. They made the return journey in just over two weeks, and only three days after returning to Bristol Cabot presented these things to the King. Much impressed, Henry VII granted another patent, and in 1498 Cabot, with a fleet of five ships, again set sail from Bristol. One, storm-damaged, returned to Ireland: the others were never heard of again.
One of Cabot's sons, Sebastion, was to become almost as famous as his father. He sailed to St Petersburg, was the first Governor of the Muscovy Company of Merchant Venturers, and he led an expedition that explored the coast of Brazil. But he did not achieve what his father had achieved: the discovery of a continent most of the world did not know existed.
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Richard Amerike
Descending from the Earls of Gwent, Richard Ap Meryk - in Welsh, Richard, son of Meryk - was born in 1445 at the family home, Meryk Court, Weston-under-Penyard, near Ross-on-Wye. (Elizabeth, granddaughter of one of his ancestors, Hywel Ap Meurig, married Sir John Poyntz in 1343. Queen Elizabeth II is descended from their Tudor lineage, as was Diana, Princess of Wales, via the Spencer family connections.)
...Amerike sought reward for his patronage by asking that any new-found lands should be named after him.
Richard Amerike married a woman by the name of Lucy Wells, living for a time at West Camel, near Ilchester, where the local assize courts were held. When Bristol grew in importance and the assizes moved there, so did Amerike, joining relatives already established in the city. When he arrived it was the second biggest port in England after London. Trade was controlled by a few energetic men and to succeed he had to make the right contacts: he did, and in time became an important and wealthy man. By 1497 he was Sheriff of Bristol and also, for the third time, King's Customs Officer for the port - an office usually held for only one year though Amerike had already been the Customs Officer twice before, in 1486 and 1490.
When Cabot's voyage of discovery was proposed, Amerike donated more money than anyone else to funding the construction of the ship. Also, as no wood was readily available nearby, oaks from Amerike's family estate were cut down and floated down the Wye from Ross to Chepstow, over the Severn and then up the Avon to the Bristol dockyard.
It was probably in honour of Cabot's wife Mattea that the ship was named Matthew, but it could also have been named after Amerike himself, Matthew, one of the apostles, having been a custom's officer. But it is also probable that, as the chief sponsor of the Matthew's voyage, and with Cabot's wife and children then living, at his instigation, in a house belonging to a close friend, Amerike sought reward for his patronage by asking that any new-found lands should be named after him.
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The Stars and Stripes
The American flag The Stars and Stripes of the American flag © Since the flag of the United States of America is based on the design of Amerike's coat of arms, it is more than probable that its origins lie with Amerike and not with George Washington, whose family also bore arms of the Stars and Stripes. According to the American Flag Research Centre in Massachusetts the heraldic origin of the American flag is not positively known; archives in the British Library confirm that the Stars and Stripes was the coat of arms of the Ap Merike family - and that they pre-date Washington's connection with the continent by 300 years.
...little did (Amerike) know that the Stars and Stripes on his personal banner would eventually become an emblem known the world over.
Amerike's coat of arms can be seen in the Lord Mayor's Chapel on College Green in Bristol as part of the Poyntz crest, a relative having married into that wealthy, land-owning family.
Cabot must have been a very remarkable person. How else could someone of no great wealth or personal influence pursue a goal so single-mindedly and achieve it so triumphantly? How else could a foreigner convince the English king that he should give him formal backing, and hard-headed Bristol merchants that the money they were hazarding would be spent with hope of a good return? Who else, knowing just how dangerous the oceans could be, would set off again and again to risk his life and that of his crews on the quest for new places beyond the horizon?
As to Richard Amerike, the picture that emerges is of a man who was an outstanding medieval entrepreneur - defined in the dictionary as 'one who undertakes a business enterprise with chance of profit or loss'. He was very successful, but little did he know that the Stars and Stripes on his personal banner would eventually become an emblem known the world over.
A lot of people believe that America was named after Italian cartographer and explorer Amerigo Vespucci.
However, in 1479 (13 years before Columbus' first voyage), Richard Amerike (pronounced "America") sponsored John Cabot's voyage to Newfoundland. Columbus knew about the British discoveries in Newfoundland before he sailed.
Therefore, many people believe that America was named after Richard Amerike. One of the arguments for Amerike is that he was very important in terms of its discovery.
Another is that when a place is named after a real person, (eg. James Cook & the Cook Islands; but not Europa & Europe) it is named after their surname (unless they are royalty, because a lot of royals are of the same family, and have the same surname).
Amerike-supporters have said that if America was named after Amerigo Vespucci, it should be called Vespuccia.
However, the Vespucci-supporters have pointed out that all of the continents have Latin female names. America is the Latin female version of Amerigo (which is an Italian male name). Amerike is a Welsh surname.
This resulted in the Amerike-supporters saying that the other continents have not been named after real people, and naming America after a real person would mess up the naming system, so it may not be true.
So what do you think? Who is America named after? Do you have any other evidence for either side? Do you think it was named after someone completely different?
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