John Beauchamp

John Beauchamp (1592–1655) was the most influential member of the Plymouth Company. Life and career John Beauchamp was the son of Thomas Beauchamp of Cosgrove and Dorothy (Clark) Beauchamp. His Norman French last name was pronounced as the British Anglicized "Beacham". See: Anglicisation of names. His son Edmund moved to Maryland, where he became a planter and clerk of court for Somerset County from 1665 to1695. His descendants in Maryland and Kentucky were influential planters and politicians. One of them, Champ Clark, was Speaker of the United States House of Representatives from 1911-1919. Beauchamp was born about 1592 in Cosgrove, Northamptonshire, England. Leaving Cosgrove as a young man to make his life in London, he was apprenticed as a Salter. He did not stay within his own trade, but began dealing in cloth and other goods as an 'interloper.' (Cosgrove is close to the old Roman road known as Watling Street, and the busy town of Stony Stratford). John would have witnessed traders travelling up and down the road to and from London, and this may have influenced his career plans. Nick Bunker, in 'Making Haste from Babylon - The Mayflower Pilgrims and Their World- A New History' (Pimlico: 2011) states that one of John's brothers was a haberdasher in London. John's uncle, another John Beauchamp, was a merchant in Amsterdam who left John 2000 guilders at his death in 1615, as well as some London house contents, and the management of a further 5,000 guilders for two years. Bunker describes how, within less than a decade, Beauchamp rose to become by far the largest importer of the sort of goods sold by travelling salesmen of the time. This included exports of fleeces, horsehair, and black rabbit skins, along with stockings which were popular in Holland. He would then import household goods which could be sold far and wide across England by peddlers travelling along the main roads out of London.