Ric. Cocks.
God grant Tozayemon Dono do not play the jemeny with us in buying much of our merchandiz and stay there till he think I am com from hence, and so I shall nether meete hym heare nor theare, to make acco. with hym. I have the lyke dowbt of Neyemon Dono.
To his lovinge frendes, Mr. Wm. Nealson and Mr. Jno. Osterwick, English merchantes, deliver in Firando. From Fushamy.
[166] British Museum. Cotton Charter, iii, 13, f. 17.
[167] This early use of the proverbial “Hobson’s choice” is almost conclusive against the usual explanation of the phrase, that it was derived from the method adopted by Hobson, the Cambridge carrier, in serving his customers with horses. Hobson was born in 1544 and died in 1630. Granting that the expression arose during his life-time, it could hardly have begun to pass into common usage before the close of the sixteenth century; and in those days such popular phrases were not communicated so fast as in ours. But here we find Cocks using it as early as 1617, after an absence of some years from England; and he would hardly have picked it up abroad. Again, Cocks was not a young man; and, as a rule, proverbs are learned and become part of our vocabulary in youth. “Hobson’s choice” (or Hodgson’s, as Cocks writes it) may very well have been an older popular saying which was applied to the Cambridge carrier’s stable arrangements from the mere accident of his bearing the name he did.
Richard Cocks to the E. I. Company.[168]
Firando in Japon, the 15th of February, 1617[8].
Right worll. Ser and Sers,—
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