Colonisation of North America & the Virginia Company of London.- Abbott (Sir Maurice, English merchant, Committee Member and Auditor of the Virginia Company of London, 1565-1642) Inscription in the hand of Sir Maurice Abbott on verso of document copy of a charter, granted in 1268 by Sir Henry Longchamp, to Philip Basset, (justiciar to Henry III and royalist nobleman, d. 1271) and Ela his wife the manor of Warneburng [South Warnborough, Hampshire], witnesses: Walter de Irton, Robert Walerand, (administrator at the court of Henry III, d. 1273), manuscript on paper in brown ink, folds, slightly browned, 295 x 193mm, [c.1625].

⁂ Sir Maurice Abbott: English merchant, Committee Member and Auditor of the Virginia Company of London (1610-1620) Governor of the East India Company (1624–1638), Member of Parliament in the House of Commons (1621-1626); and Lord Mayor of London (1638).

Abbott was a late 16th and early 17th century entrepreneur and politician who, despite his very humble beginnings, through the application hard work and enterprise amassed both enormous wealth and political power. He was a member and auditor of the Virginia Company of London which had responsibility for colonising parts of the East Coast of North America and established the Jamestown Settlement in the Colony of Virginia in 1607.