Benedict Spinola

Beginning his career as a clerk, he rose to become an exporter of woollen cloths and importer of wines and also served the English government as an agent and financier.

[1] Unusually for a foreigner, Spinola was fully naturalized in 1552, which gave him the right to pay taxes and customs dues at the rates applied to the English.

I doo confess that I have entred in the customs' book at London, and shipped out of this realme in my owne name, and uppon my licence, the number of foore hundred forty-foore karseys, which wer the proper goods of Ihon Justiniano of Cio, stranger.

He became an adviser to the English government, gathering intelligence from correspondents overseas and negotiating financial questions, and by the 1570s was dealing in huge sums of money.

[1] In 1568, Huguenot raiders forced ships into English ports which were carrying silver lent by Genoese merchants to be used for paying the troops of the Duke of Alba.

[9] Magdalene College, which considered that it had been cheated, pursued legal actions unsuccessfully, and more than four hundred years later in 1989, it avenged itself by erecting a gargoyle representing Spinola, designed by Peter Fluck and Roger Law, the creators of Spitting Image.