Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 05.djvu/412

  with two other shippes, Sir Hugh Willobie being Admirell of the Beete, who, with all the company of ye said two shippes, were frozen to death in Lappia ye same winter. After his discouerie of Roosia, and ye Coastes there to adioyninge—to wit, Lappia, Nova Zemla, and the Countrie of Samoyeda, etc.: he frequented ye trade to St. Nicholas yearlie, as chief pilot for ye voyage, until he was chosen of one of ye foure principall Masters in ordinarie of ye Queen’s Maties royall Nauy, where in he continued in charge of sundrie sea services till time of his death.' [For a supposititious expedition by another Stephen Borough, or Burrogh, in 1585, see .]

 BOROUGH, WILLIAM (1536–1599), navigator and author, born at Northam, Devonshire, in 1536, was the younger brother of Stephen Borough [q. v.], under whom he served as an ordinary seaman in the first voyage of the English to Russia. In his short autobiography preserved to us he writes: ‘I was in the first voyage for discouerie of the purtes of Russia, which begun in anno 1553 (being their sixteen yeeres of age), also in the yeere 1556, in the voyage when the coastes of Samoed and Nova Zembla, with the straightes of Vaigatz, were found out; and in the yoere 1557, when the coast of Lappia and the Hay of St. Nicholas were more perfectly discouered’ (, i. 417). His employment for the next ten years was that of ‘continual practise in the voyages made to St. Nicholas.” In one of these homeward voyages we find him entrusted with a curious present from the traveller Anthony Jenkinson to Sir W. Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley. The former writes : ‘Yt may please you, I have sent Wm. Aborough (sic), Mr of one of the Moscovy Companyes shippes, a strange beast called a Loysche, and bred in the country of Cazan in Tartaria’ (Cal. State Papers, Foreign Series, 26 June 1566). According to the ‘Cat, of Lansd. MSS.,’ Brit. Mus. (p. 19), Borough made ‘a voyage for discouery of the sea coast beyond Pechora to find an open passage to Cathay’ in 1568. This is, however, not quite correct; a comparison of the manuscript referred to (Lansd. 1035) with Hakluyt (i. 382) serves to show that a commission was granted by the agent of the company to one James Bassendine, or Bassington, with two other English sailors, to find this passage in a Russian boat, with interpreters, for which ‘necessary notes to be observed’ in the discovery were drawn up by Borough, with a sketch map, at St. Nicholas in August, probably before is departure for his homeward voyage in that year (cf. Cal. State Papers, Foreign Series, 1568, No. 2415). After the first establishment of the trade of the merchant adventurers at Narva, in the Gulf of Finland, in the winter of 1569, it was found that the sea passage to this port was infested by pirates, in consequence of which we find Borough in 1570, as ‘captaine generall’ of a fleet of thirteen ships, well furnished with all ‘necessaries for the warres,’ in conflict with a fleet of six Danske free-booters off an island in the gulf, then known as Tuttee. Borough, after a sharp fight, dispersed the fleet, and took one of the captains, named Hans Snarke, prisoner (, i. 401). His yearly voyages for the next four years were either to Narva or St. Nicholas, as the occasion required. In 1574–5 we find Borough employed as agent to the company, ‘in passing from St. Nicholas to Moscow’ and from Moscow to Narva, and thence bark again to St. Nicholas by land, setting downe alwayes, with great care and diligence, true obseruations and exact notes and descriptions of the wayes, rivers, cities, tovmes, etc.’ These, added to his notes on ‘the islands, coastes of the sea, and other things requisite to the artes of nauigation and hydrographie,’ acquired in his former voyages by sea, he turned to good account at a later period as an author and a chartographer. Like those of his brother Stephen, his services were destined to be transferred from the merchant adventurers to the queen. In what year this took place with Wil1iam Borough we have no exact information. In January 1579 we find him residing at Limehouse, involved in a dispute with Michael Lok, master of the mint and treasurer of the Cathay Company, in reference to a ship (the Judith) bought by the latter for Frobisher’s third voyage. There are several incidents in this affair which point to Borough being already in the service of the crown, particularly his relations with Walsingham, by whose assistance Borough seems to have thrown the unfortunate Lok into the Fleet Prison, on a suit for 200l. in connection with the ship (Cal. State Papers, Col. Ser., i. 47, and, i. 175). The next two years were evidently devoted to literary effort in preparing his well-known work, ‘Discourse of the variation of the Compas,’ which first saw the light in 1581 (see infra). We next 