The Man
[Most of the following section derives from discoveries made by Dr Nellie Kerling, the then Archivist of St Bartholomew's Hospital, in 1975, in the Archives, including a systematic trawl through the Hospital's accounts, 1594-1610, and also the Churchwardens' Accounts of St Bartholomew's the Less, 1597-1615]

The first two noteworthy English voyages to the East were both made by James Lancaster, but the first (1592) never reached Java and the second (1601-3) was too late to have involved Llewellyn personally. Only one recorded voyage could have produced the information about Java set out by Llewellyn and, simultaneously, have been completed by summer 1597, and that was Houtman's. Dr Kerling discovered in the Hospital's records that on 27 August 1597 Llewellyn had applied in person for the stewardship of St Bartholomew's Hospital. It is the date that is vital here since it falls just two weeks after Houtman's vessels reached Amsterdam with their eighty-nine survivors, on 11 and 14 August respectively {elsewhere the figure for survivors was given as 87 - there does not seem to be a crew list}.

If Martin Llewellyn was not one of the 249 men under Houtman's command how else can we explain his sons' statement in Christ Church's Donors' Book that the atlas had been drawn "according to his own observations"? Do we see in Llewellyn a young man, chastened by his experiences, settling for a secure job ashore after an extremely hazardous voyage? Direct evidence that he accompanied Houtman is still wanting but the idea of an Englishman sailing with the Dutch need not stretch the imagination. Two of the four Dutch fleets that set sail to the East in 1598 had English pilots aboard.

When the few clues to Martin Llewellyn's identity were followed up they led, step by step, to the happy discovery that he had spent what must have been almost his entire working life in one place. When he had applied for the Steward's post in August 1597 a promise was clearly made to him. This was fulfilled in July 1599, when he presented himself to the Hospital Governors to hear that he had been appointed as their Steward. But, on the earlier occasion, he had been granted the post of Hospital Renter, with immediate effect. Initially, he held both posts and, after 1607, just that of Steward, in which position he remained uninterruptedly until his death in 1634. The value of this for our purpose is that his day-to-day duties associated with the collecting of rents and, as Steward, the requirement to 'supervise the victuals, and the admission and discharge of patients' - would have been incompatible with any voyage abroad after 1597, if the almost annual succession of children born to him between 1606 and 1623 was not even more potent evidence [recorded in the parish records of St Bartholomew the Less]. {Dr Kerling pointed out that, as the Hospital's rent-collector between 1597 and 1607, his name appears at the head of the accounts. Had he been absent in that period, leaving a deputy in place, she thought that the second name would have been mentioned as well. Bernard Quaritch had for sale a volume of receipts for rent paid to the Hospital by Sir Richard Saint-George, 1601-14, each signed by Llewellyn, half yearly initially and then quarterly until the end of his time as Renter/Receiver {listed on the web in 2006 at < http://www.polybiblio.com/quaritch/EW399.html >; not there February 2008}. As further corroboration, Dr Kerling also noted that the Governors' complaint of 1604 was directed at him personally}.



His growing family could well have been the cause of his perpetual state of debt [see His finances next page], which involved him at one time in a dispute with William Harvey, the discoverer of the circulation of blood. Somewhere there may be lurking some clue that will eventually link the two spheres in which Martin Llewellyn operated, as chartmaker and Steward. One possible bridge is provided by a series of estate plans, a few of them dated 1617, in the Hospital Repertory Book, some of which betray his characteristic style. {On these, see Moore 2:257-60; some of these plans are among those issued by the London Topographical Society, in their 'Maps, Plans and Views' series, nos 84, 87 (1950, 1954), on which see also Judith Etherton, 'New evidence - Ralph Treswell's association with St Bartholomew's Hospital', in: A.L. Saunders (ed.) London Topographical Record 27 (1995) pp.103-17 (Publication No. 149)}. One of these plans is evidently referred to in the payment to Llewellyn in 1613-14 of 3s 4d "for drawing a platt of the precinct of this parish" (Churchwardens Accounts). While his charts betray the work of a trained draughtsman, these further finds illustrate his versatility. {For a listing of the various written surveys and plans see the entry for St Bartholomew's Hospital Archives and Museum in the Access to Archives (under 'Contents:' then 'Particular of Lands')}.

Further than that, biographical details are yet to emerge. Clues may lie in the relationships with those to whom he owed money (see next section) or the wider range of his Associates. For a man on an annual salary of £10 to have incurred debts of many times that figure, and to have had the support of rich and influential figures, suggests there are important facets of his life of which we still know nothing. Despite the embarrassment he must have caused the Governors, his 35-year term as Steward was the longest in the Hospital's history.