Benedict Spinola

Benedict Spinola (1519/20 – 1580), born in Genoa and died in London, also called Benedick Spinola, and in Italian Benedetto Spinola, was a 16th-century Genoese merchant of the Spinola family who lived his whole adult life in the City of London, then the principal seaport of the Kingdom of England. Beginning his career as a clerk, he rose to become an exporter of woollen cloths and importer of wines and also served the English government as an agent and financier.

He never married and died of the plague in London in August 1580, shortly after his return from a mission to the Seventeen Provinces.

Born at Genoa, Spinola was the second son of Battista Spinola by his marriage to a cousin, Elisabetta, a daughter of Giacomo Spinola. The family was an important one in the city, and in 1556 Spinola's father declined election as Doge.

Little is known of Spinola's early life, but by 1541 he was in London working as a clerk at a salary of two pounds a year for Bastian Bony, postmaster to the City of London's foreign merchants. Spinola lived his whole adult life in the parish of St Gabriel Fenchurch, latterly joined there by his nephews Hannibal and Ascaneo Spinola. He never married and had a property in Shoreditch known as "Spinola's pleasure".

Unusually for a foreigner, Spinola was fully naturalised in 1552, which gave him the right to pay taxes and customs dues at the rates applied to the English. In 1559 he was an exporter of woollen cloths and an importer of wines. In 1561, he confessed to exporting another trader's goods on his own licence:

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