Sir Maurice Abbot (1565–1642) was an English merchant, Governor of the East India Company (1624–1638), and a politician who sat in the House of Commons between 1621 and 1626. He was Lord Mayor of London in 1638.[1]
Abbot's whole career, which had begun under no external advantages, was a remarkable instance of well-directed energy and enterprise; it was one of the earliest examples of the creation of enormous wealth by the application of great personal abilities to commerce, and illustrates the extraordinary development of the English foreign trade at the close of the sixteenth and opening of the seventeenth centuries.[2]
- ^ A. Thrush, 'Abbot, Maurice (1565–1642), of Coleman Street, London', in A. Thrush and J.P. Ferris (eds), The History of Parliament: the House of Commons 1604–1629 (Cambridge University Press, 2010), History of Parliament Online.
- ^ Lee 1885, pp. 23–24.