They were mostly Portuguese- or Spanish-speaking merchants.
He was financed by his father-in-law, a wealthy Portuguese merchant.
The clan descend from the Portuguese merchant who shipped Africans to Brazil in the middle of the 18th century.
British and Portuguese merchants broke this monopsony by resorting to contraband trade.
'You were daring to enter here,' a Portuguese merchant said.
At the age of 16 he entered the counting house of a Portuguese merchant in London.
Between the late 15th century and the beginnings of the 16th century, Italian and Portuguese merchants brought orange trees in the Mediterranean area.
In the 17th century British, Portuguese and Dutch merchants set up factories there and carried on an extensive trade.
French money was not a popular currency these days - particularly with privateers trying to use it to buy timber and rope from Baltic or Portuguese merchants.
Sharpe, Daniel (1806-56): left school at the age of sixteen, and became a clerk in the service of a Portuguese merchant.