Anthony Jenkinson

Anthony Jenkinson (1529 – 1610/1611) was born at Market Harborough, Leicestershire. He was one of the first Britons to explore Muscovy and present day Russia. Jenkinson was a traveller and explorer on behalf of the Muscovy Company and the English crown. He also met Ivan the Terrible several times during his trips to Moscow and Russia. He detailed the accounts of his travel through several written works over his life.

Anthony Jenkinson's father, William Jenkinson, was a man of great property and wealth. Anthony Jenkinson was thus trained in his earlier years for a mercantile career. By the year 1568, Jenkinson had become a pivotal researcher for the Muscovy Company. On 26 January 1568 Jenkinson married his wife Judith Marshe, daughter of John Marshe and his wife Alice. Marshe had extensive business ties, including being one of the founding members of the Company. Jenkinson thus benefited greatly through these financial ties. Jenkinson and his wife had six daughters and five sons, of whom only four daughters and a son survived. There exists speculation that Jenkinson had an illegitimate daughter, Anne Beck or Whateley, who may at one point have been engaged to be married to William Shakespeare. However, these claims are widely disregarded as mere speculation on the part of their originator, William Ross. By 1606 Jenkinson was living in a manor house in Ashton. His wife died before him from a bad case of . Jenkinson was buried on 16 February 1611 at Holy Trinity Church in Teigh.

Anthony's son Sir Robert was the father of the first of the Jenkinson Baronets of Hawkesbury, Gloucestershire.

Jenkinson traveled to Muscovy several times during his life on behalf of the Muscovy Company.

Jenkinson was in Moscow in the year 1558. He began his journey by traveling south down the Oka and Volga Rivers, passing through the Khanate of Kazan (conquered by Russia in 1552), and arrived at the town of Astrakhan, (conquered 1556). His party continued their journey south-east after traveling across the Caspian Sea to Serachik (Serakhs), where they joined a merchant caravan and traveled for several months across the Tatar lands of the Nogai Horde. They reached Bokhara after fighting off bandits in the desert, but found that though the routes to China and India were well known, they were impassable due to wars and banditry along the way. The hostility of the local authorities made their stay precarious, and ultimately they were forced to retrace their steps, leaving Bokhara only shortly before the army of Samarkand arrived to besiege it. After many more hardships, including having to completely re-rig the boat they had left on the Caspian (making their own sails, ropes and cables), they arrived back in Moscow in 1559, but could not travel back to England until the spring of 1560 opened the sea passages again. On this journey, however, Jenkinson did manage to make a map of some of the Russian and Tatar territories, though he fell into the common mistake of assuming the Aral Sea was a gulf of the Caspian. His map was incorporated into Ortelius' atlas Theatrum orbis terrarum.

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