Arthur Conan Doyle was among the Late Victorian literary figures whose early work was recognized by the renowned sensational journalist, W. T. Stead. As editor of the influential Pall Mall Gazette (1883-1890), Stead appreciated Conan Doyle's literary merit and published his short novel, The Mystery of Cloomber, as a serial in the Gazette during September, 1888. They were in many ways quite similar; both were “impatient with … slow and seemingly unprogressive methods” and often appeared to act as if “Nothing short of a cataclysm” would satisfy them. Yet, Conan Doyle and Stead differed on many issues, especially on the Boer War and, during the decades 1890-1910, on spiritualism. Nevertheless their relationship, although never close, was marked by mutual respect for the courage and sincerity which distinguished their lives.

In October, 1890, Conan Doyle, fatigued by the effort of completing and arranging for the publication of his novel, The White Company, became interested in Dr. Robert Koch's well publicized remedy for consumption and decided to journey to Berlin to study Koch's cure. On the way to Berlin, Conan Doyle visited Stead in London to obtain letters of introduction to the press. Stead, who had left the Pall Mall Gazette in January, 1890, to establish the highly successful Review of Reviews, not only complied with Conan Doyle's request, but asked the young physician to write an article on Koch and his research on tuberculosis for the Review of Reviews.

Let me begin, in Evangelical fashion, with the dying words of a mid-Victorian entrepreneur to his son:

So went the recrimination of Kipling's Sir Anthony Gloster — self-made millionaire Master of Shipping, employer of 10,000 men, possessor of a baronetcy, and one-time luncheon guest of “his Royal ‘Ighness” — an entrepreneur whose fifty year struggles and successes pale as the man and the productivity of the past pass away leaving the son and the sterility of the future.

In the Elizabethan re-organization of the English militia the muster-master was given the responsibility of supervising the training and inspecting the equipment of the trained bands in each county. As an ex-professional captain, he supposedly provided the experience in military matters lacking among those who served in the county lieutenancy and commanded the militia.

In The Muster-Master, a pamphlet written probably by Gervase Markham around 1630, unstinting tribute is paid the Elizabethan muster-masters. Confronted with an unprecedented threat from abroad as well as occasional domestic rebellion, “the state elected so many old and experienced captains and approved officers in the wars, as might furnish every county in the kingdom with one able and sufficient commander” who would instruct the bands, inspect their armor and equipment and certify all defects to the commissioners of muster. These tasks were “faithfully and skillfully performed, not by inferiors, or petty officers, which knew no more but the bare A.B.C. of war: but by such as had run through every grammar rule thereof; such as had borne the office of captain by desert and not from private letters, gaudy clothes, or lustful employments; such as have their wounds in their faces, chasing the enemy, not such as have whole skins by running away, which they now call a violent retiring.”

Not for long, however, did this situation last. By the time of the Armada the Council unwisely shifted the burden of paying the muster-masters on to the counties while the office itself became part of the lord-lieutenant's patronage. Commenting on the rising opposition to paying the muster-master's fee in the early Jacobean period, Boynton writes that the “main complaint was apparently that, subject to the Council's formal approval, the office was venal. Not that there was anything unusual in that; but the lord-lieutenants often retained this piece of patronage for their own clients, so that the county paid but had no say in the matter.” The author of The Muster-Master was deeply troubled by the results attendant on the lord-lieutenant's monopoly of military patronage in the county.

In this year of the tercentenary of the incorporation of the Hudson's Bay Company it is appropriate to examine the founding membership of what may still be called “The Great Company.” It is surprising that the literature which chronicles the early adventures of the Company in the northern reaches of Canada has largely neglected a close scrutiny of the founders. The purpose of this article is to examine the early partnership, note the walks of life and social groups from which the adventurers came, and identfy those who formed the nucleus of leadership in planning and executing the endeavors for which the Hudson's Bay Company became renowned.

In general, the men who established the Hudson's Bay Company were representative of the era of extensive oversea expansion that characterized Restoration England. They were essentially promoters and imperialists. Yet they were not the first of their kind, for in the thirteenth century merchants had formed regulated organizations for prosecuting the cloth trade. Nor did they ever possess the financial power or parliamentary lobby of the East India Company. Nonetheless, their interest in the fur trade, in a Northwest passage and in general scientific inquiry prompted these men to lay the basis of a firm that by the height of its influence in the early 1840 was engaged in business throughout most of British North America as well as on the Pacific slope south to San Francisco Bay, in the Pacific islands, and in Canton. Today this organization remains the oldest merchant trading company in the world and the oldest business firm on the North American continent.