Background
He was the son of Thomas Methwold and his wife, Susan both of Swaffham, Norfolk.
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William Methwold
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At the age of sixteen he was apprenticed to an English merchant, and served him for four years in London and then five in Middelburg, Netherlands.
Career
He is credited with identifying the site of Bombay as a strategic port. A fictional character in the novel Midnight"s Children by author Salman Rushdie bears the same name and is described as a direct descendant. ( See List of Midnight"s Children characters).
During this time he gained knowledge of Latin, and became fluent in Dutch and French.
In September 1615 Methwold was accepted for service in the East India Company as a linguist and sailed in its 1616 fleet to Surat, in Gujarat, India. He prospered as a merchant in the employ of the company from a base in Masulipatam on the Coromandel coast.
He practiced some private trading, which was forbidden by company rules and in 1622 was recalled to England to answer charges which he freely admitted. He left the company and spent a number of years practicing as an independent trader but reconciled with it in 1628 when he was given the freedom of the East India Company, entitling him to become a shareholder.
With her he had two sons who both became merchants.
His skill as a negotiator and linguist, he could by now also converse in Persian, the language of the Mughal court and high officials, were noted and he was appointed president of Surat in November 1633. In 1635 he negotiated a pact with the Portuguese which ceased hostilities in India and gave English ships access to Portuguese resources. Around this time he began to lobby for the acquisition of Bombay from the Portuguese as a supremely suitable trading centre on the west coast of India.
Methwold was elected deputy governor of the East India Company in 1643 and was re-elected annually thereafter until his death.
Around 1640 he acquired Hale House and adjoining land in Kensington, London, as his home in England. Methwold himself died on 5 March 1653, at Hale House aged 63 years.
He was buried, under the name Meathall, in Street Mary Abbots Church, Kensington, on 10 March 1653.
