- William Cockayne
Sir William Cockayne (Cokayne) (1561 –
20 October 1626 ),London ,England , was a seventeenth-century London merchant,alderman , and, in 1619, Lord Mayor. In 1614, while serving asalderman in theCity of London and as governor of theEastland Company of English merchants, Cockayne devised a plan to dye and dress English cloth,England 's main export at the time, before shipping it abroad.Cockayne convinced James I to grant him a
monopoly on cloth exports as a part of this plan, and the plan was intended to increase the profits of English merchants, Cockayne's in particular, while boosting royal customs duties through bypassing Dutch merchants. The Alderman Cockayne Plan proved a miserable failure as the Dutch refused to purchase finished cloth, and the English cloth trade was depressed for decades as a result.He owned a country estate at Rushton in
Northamptonshire . He married Mary Morris on22 June 1596 inLondon and they had issue:
*Charles Cockayne, 1st Viscount Cullen
*Anne Cockayne (b. 1604)
*Martha Cockayne (1605-1641), who marriedMontagu Bertie, 2nd Earl of Lindsey .
*Jane Cockayne (b. 1609)
*Abigail Cockayne (1610-1687), who married John Carey, 2nd Earl of Dover.
*Mary Cockayne, who marriedCharles Howard, 2nd Earl of Nottingham .References
* [http://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/5C61458D-4D0A-4C07-AE3E-90C1C20B1E71/0/LH_HC_lordmayors1189.pdf List of Lord Mayors of London]
*Astrid Friis. Alderman Cockayne's Project and the Cloth Trade. London: Milford, 1927.
* [http://history.wisc.edu/sommerville/361/361-22.htm J P Sommerville's 'The Rule of the Howards']
*Joel D. Benson. Changes and Expansion in the English Cloth Trade in the Seventeenth Century: Alderman Cockayne's Project. Lewiston, NY: Edwin Mellen Press, 2002.
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