ABSTRACT
English merchants from Plymouth and Southampton had begun to trade on the Brazil coast before 1530, following in the wake and often using the expertise of Norman seamen who had trafficked there since the beginning of the century. English pilots entered the service of the French. The settlers left behind by Riffault on the Maranhao survived for fifteen years before receiving any official support from the French crown. The passing interest of the Grand Duke of Tuscany in the Amazon was stimulated by English adventurers. The involvement of John Dudley, duke of Northumberland, in the earliest English project to explore the river may be questionable. An English envoy at Florence informed the Earl of Salisbury in August 1608 that the Grand Duke had been ‘first theirunto incouraged by Sir Robert Dudley, who hoped to have ben an aduenturer in it with a Pinace of his owne, named the Beare & ragged staffe'.
