Sir George Barne (died 1558) (also called Barons or Barnes) was an English businessman in the City of London who was active in developing new trading links with Russia, West Africa and North America, far outside what had been traditional English trading patterns. Created a knight in 1553, he served as Sheriff of London and Lord Mayor of London. He was the father of Sir George Barne (died 1593) and grandfather of Sir William Barne. Nicholas Culverwell was probably a nephew.
Origins and early life.
His father was George Barne, whose family had links with Wells, Somerset, a citizen and Haberdasher of the City of London.
Barne was admitted to the freedom of the Worshipful Company of Haberdashers. He married Alice Brooke of Shropshire, the sister of Roger Brooke. She had previously been married to Richard Relff, citizen and Vintner of London, who died in 1528 and was buried at All Hallows Honey Lane. Relff's will affords various details of his circumstances: his wife Alice was his executrix. Barne's eldest son, George, was born around 1532. Between 1536 and 1548 Barne acquired leases and tenements around All Hallows Honey Lane. Barne followed his father in his conventional trading business, such as exporting cloth and importing wine to and from Spain. In 1538/39, in the Admiralty Court, Anthony Hussey gave a sentence against George Barnes (citizen and Haberdasher of London) and his factor Philip Barnes (defendants), on a bond in the sum of £25 lent by Roger Hurst of London for the purchase of wines at St Lucar in Spain. Barne progressed his career within the Company of Haberdashers, whose Master Stephen Pecocke had been Lord Mayor in 1532-33 and, dying in 1536, had left legacies to be administered by the Company's Masters and Wardens.
The Shrieval year, 1545-1546.
Barne had prospered and risen sufficiently in civic life by 1542 that he was in December of that year installed as alderman for the ward of Portsoken. Less than three years later he was selected, and at Michaelmas 1545 was installed, as Sheriff of London together with Ralph Aleyn (three times Master of the Worshipful Company of Grocers), to coincide with the mayoralty of Sir Martin Bowes (citizen and Goldsmith) for the term 1545-1546. This was the last full term before the death of King Henry VIII in January 1546/47. 
The year was marked by the celebrations for the Treaty of Ardres and the great Midsummer Watch conducted through London by the Lord Mayor; there were also various executions for heresy and treason which it was the Sheriffs' duty to see performed, not least the burning of the Protestant martyr Anne Askew. Ralph Aleyn died in January 1547, and after this "George Barons, alderman of London and Master of the Haberdashers", with Richard Aleyn and the other wardens of the Company, were defendants in Chancery against Anne and Thomas, executors of Ralph Ale[y]n, alderman, in a case concerning the legacies of Stephen Pecocke. In 1546 he exchanged the aldermanry of Portsoken ward for that of Coleman Street, which he retained until 1558.
Edwardian opportunities.
Through the middle years of the reign of King Edward VI, Barne became an important figure in promoting expeditions for the expansion of English overseas trade. The failing influence of the Hanseatic League freed English trade to take independent steps of its own. English contacts with the North American coast and Newfoundland had arisen in 1497 and 1498 with John Cabot's voyages out of Bristol under the commission of Henry VII. His son, the explorer Sebastian Cabot, among his many and varied endeavours sought to discover the Northwest Passage, and dreamed of finding sea-routes to Cathay. 
In 1550-1551 Cabot assisted King Edward in the settlement of certain disputes between the English and German merchants, and was granted £200 for his trouble. In December 1551 he, with Sir Hugh Willoughby and Richard Chancellor, and "with certain grave citizens of London", formed a "Company of Merchant Adventurers for the Discovery of Regions, Dominions, Islands, and Places unknown" (later called the "Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands", or the "Muscovy Company"), to which King Edward intended to grant a Charter of Incorporation, but died before it could be sealed. George Barne and William Garrard are commonly held to have been among the principal movers in promoting the company's first expedition, in 1553. 
This led on the one hand to Willoughby's discovery of Novaya Zemlya, but the loss of himself and his crews in search of the Northeast Passage to China, but on the other hand to Richard Chancellor's successful journey from the mouth of the Northern Dvina to Moscow and his negotiations there with Tsar Ivan IV.
The Mayoral year, 1552-1553.
As was customary, the election of the new Mayor occurred on Michaelmas day (29 September 1552) and a sermon was made in the Guildhall Chapel, the use of Communion for that occasion having been discontinued. On 17 October (St Luke's Eve) the Mayor and aldermen with Sir Robert Broke (Recorder of London) rode from the Lord Mayor's house through Friday Street, Cheapside and Newgate all in their scarlet gowns, up to the Serjeants' feast at Gray's Inn. There were four tables: at the first, the Lord Chancellor and other lords; the Lord Mayor, aldermen and sheriffs at the second, about twenty; the judges and the old serjeants sat at the third, and the new serjeants at the fourth. There were 10 dishes to the first, and eight to the last course, followed by wafers and hippocras.
Barne's mayoralty spanned a most dramatic course of events: he was the Lord Mayor who held his nerve and protected the City through it all. The sheriffs in his term were John Maynard and William Garrard. Maynard, a Mercer, was chosen after three previously selected persons, beginning with the citizen and Master Clothworker John Crymes, had refused the office and paid fines of £200 each to avoid it. Maynard had been living in Venice and had many contracts due to be paid to him whenever he should become Sheriff: so he did not lose by it. He assisted the midwinter and Easter festivities. It was an age of civic pageants and revels, in which the operations of the powers of the state were mimicked.
The Lords of Misrule.
King Edward spent Christmas at Westminster, and had George Ferrers as his Lord of Misrule. On 4 January 1553 Barne attended an alderman's funeral before noon. On the same day the King's Lord of Misrule came to Tower Wharf with his company and met with the Sheriff's Lord of Misrule with all of his, and all attired in velvet suits and embroidered costumes with ribbons and spangles with horse riders, fools and hangmen and prisoners, and morris men dancing as they went, they processed in a pageant through Gracechurch Street and the Cornhill, making proclamations with their heralds.
At a prepared scaffold the King's lord knighted the Sheriff's lord, giving him a rich gown and dubbing him thrice on the shoulder with his sword. They drank to one another, and the cofferer cast gold and silver around as they went on through Cheap, the two lords of misrule turning up Wood Street to dine with the Mayor, and thence to the Sheriff's house, to the Old Jewry and the Treasurer's house at London Wall, stopping for drinking and banqueting. So by the evening they came through Bishopsgate, Leadenhall, Fenchurch Street and Mark Lane: the Sheriff's lord accompanied the King's lord by torchlight down to Tower Wharf, where the King's lord went into his pinnace with a great shot of guns, and the Sheriff's lord took his leave of him.
Civil welfare.
On 21 November 1552 the poor children of the City were taken into Christ's Hospital (formerly the Greyfriars), and other sick and poor people were taken into St Thomas' Hospital in Southwark, where they were to have lodgings, food, drink and clothes from the City's alms. On Christmas Day, when the Lord Mayor and aldermen rode to St Paul's, the street through Cheap was lined with the children (some 350 of them) and their keepers, the masters of the Hospitals, all in their liveries. Barne promptly set about reforming trading standards: he sat in judgement on one Fowlkes who had cheated his customers, and had him set in the pillory in Cheap with his ear hard nailed to it. He set others in the pillory for selling by false measures, he punished bawds and whores by having them driven around in carts, and he had the vagabonds whipped out of the city, "so that all malefactors feared him for his good executinge of justice." He is regarded by some as having been a stern moralist. Mary, the king's sister, came to London in February, and in March 1553 the Parliament sat.
The Lenten play.
On 17 March 1553 John Maynard rode in through Aldgate with a standard and drums, followed in procession by giants and hobby horses, with great men and horses with coats of velvet and gold chains on their necks: then followed the morris dancers, and many minstrels, and he who had lately been lord of misrule rode in, arrayed gorgeously with chains of gold about his neck and many valuable rings in his hands. The serjeants followed in coats of velvet with chains of gold. These were followed in by a Devil and a Sultan, after whom there came in a priest, shriving the Jack o' Lent on horseback, followed by the Jack's physicians. There was a short pageant-play, for Jack o' Lent's wife brought his physicians to him, offering to pay them a thousand pounds if they would save Jack's life. A carriage came in draped with cloth of gold, with banners, and minstrels playing and singing.
Willoughby sets forth.
Barne was knighted by the King at Westminster on 11 April 1553. Henry Machyn tells that on that day the king went from Westminster to Greenwich by water, passing the Tower, all the ships firing off salutes of guns as he passed. At Ratcliff "the iij shypes that was rygyng "[there, to go]" to the New-fouland, and the ij pennons "[pinnaces]" shott guns and chambers a grett nombur." At this time the "Edward Bonaventure", the "Bona Esperanza" and the "Bona Confidentia" were being prepared for their Expedition in search of the Northern Sea Route to Far Cathay, or at least to northern Muscovy, under the command of Sir Hugh Willoughby and Stephen Borough, with the navigator Richard Chancellor. 
It was the start of the great project, the dream of Sebastian Cabot, to whom a consortium of distinguished persons (led by the Duke of Northumberland) and many merchants brought their personal investment and sponsorship. 
Hugh Willoughby was not only a highly experienced naval commander, he was moreover closely related to that side of the royal lineage traced through the descendants of Mary Tudor, which in the spring of 1553 was favoured as the most likely to produce a Protestant succession. Having the particular support (as it is said) of George Barnes and William Garrard, the society of adventurers promoting this voyage was now to receive a Charter from King Edward to incorporate them as a Company of Merchant Adventurers to New Lands, "for the discoverie by sea, of Iles, lands, territories, dominions and Seigniories vnknowen, and by the Subiects of the sayd late king not commonly by seas frequented" (so it is related in Elizabeth's charter of 1566), but that the said king "died before the finishing and sealing of his most ample and gracious letters of priuiledges promised to the sayd Subiects". 
But in this expectation, and under this authority, the three vessels weighed anchor at Deptford on 10 May 1553. It is likely that the governance of this Company (known commonly as the Muscovy Company), which in Philip and Mary's Charter to them of February 1554/55 was granted to Sebastian Cabot as Governor, with four Consuls, Sir George Barne, William Garrard, Anthony Hussey and John Southcote, and twenty-four named Assistants, reflected the intention of the Edwardian Charter.
Church vessels, and the Bridewell grant.
Soon after receiving his knighthood, Sir George sat in the Guildhall with Nicholas Ridley, Bishop of London and the Chief Justice Sir Roger Cholmeley, as Commissioners, to receive certificates from all the churchwardens listing the remaining money, plate, jewels and other metals in their churches, which, together with all copes and vestments of cloth of