>w, 
 
 I' " Fainom " 
 Ljondon 
 
 %A Book for Boys.
 
 Ex Libris 
 
 "1 
 
 
 
 1 
 
 THE LIBRARY 
 
 OF 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 LOS ANGELES
 
 i.^^ X- ^ . ^
 
 5 12.1 
 
 ft-tH/O 

 
 FAMOUS 
 
 LONDON MERCHANTS.
 
 GEORGE PEABODY.
 
 , FAMOUS 
 LONDON MERCHANTS. 
 
 %. gooh foe gODS. 
 
 BY 
 
 H. R. FOX BOURNE, 
 
 AUTHOR OF " ENGLISH MERCHANTS," " ENGLISH SEAMEN UNDER THE TUDORS," 
 " A MEMOIR OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY," ETC. 
 
 >r/r// TIVENTV-FOUK ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JAMES HOGG & SOX, YORK ST., COVENT GARDEN. 
 
 1869. 
 
 [All rights rcscrc'al.'\
 
 14F 
 ^sos 
 
 ^H - 
 
 Ballaniyue ^ Companv, Printers, Edinburgh.
 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 fHIS little volume follows the method 
 pursued in my " English Merchants ; 
 Memoirs in Illustration of the Pro- 
 gress of British Commerce," which was pub- 
 lished two years ago. It is designed to furnish 
 younger readers with some account of the 
 growth and influence of trade, and the work 
 and character of its heroes. Some of the lives 
 here sketched have been alluded to or detailed 
 in the larger work. Where the same ground 
 has been travelled over, free use has been made 
 of what has already been written, but with 
 such alterations of style and substance as 
 seemed to be called for by the different pur- 
 pose now in view. The whole series of biogra- 
 phies, however, has been drawn from London 
 history ; and, as far as seemed consistent with 
 the proper handling of the theme, the work is 
 limited to the sphere of London commerce. 
 
 Having thus borrowed from my own book, 
 I have also availed myself of the researches 
 
 img7d:i
 
 vi Preface. 
 
 of other w Titers. In a small volume making no 
 pretensions to completeness, and not many to 
 originality, it has appeared to me unwise to 
 cumber the pages with foot-notes, specifying 
 each precise obligation, and authenticating 
 every single statement. It may be enough 
 here to acknowledge the use made of Mr 
 Lysons' " Model Merchant of the Middle 
 Ages," in the chapter on Whittington, and of 
 Mr Burgon's " Life of Sir Thomas Gresham," in 
 the chapter on the greatest merchant of Tudor 
 times ; and to record the help derived from Mr 
 Charles Knight's " Shadows of the Old Book- 
 sellers,'' from Mr J. C. Colquhoun's " Wilber- 
 force and his Friends," and from Mrs Geldart's 
 " Memorials of Samuel Gurney," respectively, 
 in preparing the sketches of Guy, Thornton, 
 and Gurney. The obligations to older sources 
 of information, though still greater, hardly need 
 be specified. Notes made from old folios and 
 quartos, from manuscript collections and pri- 
 vate sources, during some years of inquiry 
 into commercial history, have been used where- 
 ever they were applicable to the subject of the 
 volume. 
 
 H. R. F. B. 
 
 London, Dec. 15, 1868.
 
 CONTENTS. 
 
 I'AGE 
 
 I. Sir Richard Whittington. [1353-1423.] 
 
 The Dick Whittington of the Story Books and the Dick Whittington 
 of History — Whittington's Parentage — His Training as a London 
 Apprentice — The Growth of London and its Commerce — Old 
 Trading Companies and Guilds — Old London Merchants ; Henry 
 Fitz-Alwyn ; William and Nicholas de Farcndon ; William Wal- 
 worth; John Philpot— Whittington as Sheriff of London under 
 Richard II. — An old Holiday Show— Whittington as Mayor — His 
 Trading Occupations — His Services to Henry IV. and Henry V. 
 — His Charitable and Religious ^^^k — Whittington College — 
 Guildhall Chapel and Librar\' — Tlic Library of Gray Friars' 
 Monastcr>'— Whittington's Death and Threefold Burial, ... 13 
 
 11. Sir Thomas Gresham. [1519-1579] 
 
 The Elder Grcshams — Sir Richard and his Work — Birth and Train- 
 ing of Sir Thomas Gresham — The Mercers and the Merchant 
 Adventurers — English Trade with the Netherlands — Gresham in 
 Antwerp— His Occupations as Factor to Edward VI., Queen 
 Mary, and Queen Elizabeth — His duties as Banker, Financial 
 Agent, and Ambassador — His Residence and Employments in 
 London — Queen Elizabeth's London — The Building of the Royal 
 Exchange — Queen Elizabeth's Visit to it — Grcsham's House in 
 Bishopsgatc Street — His House at Osterlcy, and Entertainment of 
 the Queen there— His last Occupations and Death, ... 
 
 10
 
 viii Contents. 
 
 TACK 
 
 III. Sir Edward Osrorne. [1530-1591.] 
 
 Old London Bridge and its Houses — Sir William Hcwit and His 
 Daughter Anne — Ned Osborne's Prowess in Saving her from 
 Drowning — His Reward — His City Associates : Sir Lionel 
 Ducket ; Sir John Spencer ; Richard Staper — The Firm of 
 Osborne and Staper — The Formation of the Turkey or Levant 
 Company, with Osborne for its Governor — Trade and War — A 
 Famous Fight between English Merchantmen and Spanish Gal- 
 leys— Osborne's work as Sheriflfand Lord Mayor — The Beginnings 
 of English Trade with India — Osborne's Death — His Ducal 
 Descendants, ... ... ... ... ... ... 65 
 
 IV. Sir William Herrick. [1557-1653.] 
 
 Old John Herrick of Leicester — His Sons Robert and Nicholas — 
 William Herrick's Early History — His Letters from Home — 
 Mary Herrick and Her Father — Sir William Herrick's Occu- 
 pation as a Goldsmith — His favour with Queen Elizabeth and 
 with James I. — His great Rival and Friend, George Heriot — 
 Heriot in Edinburgh and in London — Herrick's Services to James 
 I. — His Retirement in Leicestershire— His Wife, the Lady Joan, 84 
 
 V. Sir Thomas Smythe, [1560-1625.] 
 
 Thomas Smythe, the Customer — His Enterprising Son — The Forma- 
 tion of the East India Company, with Sir Thomas Smythe as its 
 First Governor — His Troubles as Sheriff — His Share in the Man- 
 agement of the East India Company — Its Early History — The 
 First Expedition under Sir James Lancaster — The "Trades' In- 
 crease," and its Disastrous Voyage under Sir Henry Middleton 
 — William Adams — Sir Thomas Roe's Visit to the Great Mogul 
 — Progress of the East India Company — Sir Thomas Smythe's 
 other Work — The Early History of Virginia — Smythe's Share in 
 its Government — Smythe's Contemporaries : Sir Thomas and Sir 
 Hugh Myddelton — The New River, and its Opening — Sir 
 Thomas Smythe's last Occupations and Death— His Chari- 
 ties, ... ... •■• ... ... ••. 102 
 
 VI. Sir Henry Garway. [1570-1645.] 
 
 Sir Henry Garway's Early Employments — The State of Trade in his 
 Time — The Levant Company — Sir Richard Gurney — The Con- 
 duct of Garway and Gurney in Support of Charles I. and their 
 troubles in the Commonwealth Times, ... ... ... 13(3
 
 Contents. ix 
 
 VII. Sir Dudley North. [1641-1691.] 
 
 Dudley North's Schooling — His Trading Adventures and Achieve- 
 ments in the Levant — His Occupations in London — Sir Josiah 
 Child and the East India Company — Dudley North's Work as 
 Sheriff of London — His "Discourses upon Trade " — His Marriage 
 and Married Life — His Employments in Retirement — His 
 Death, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 146 
 
 VIII. Thomas Guy. [1644-1724.] 
 
 Old Horsleydown and its Traders — Thomas Guy's Parentage and 
 Youth — The Great Fire of London — A Young Bookseller and his 
 Occupations — Gu>''s Trade in Cheap Bibles — His Marri.ige Pro- 
 ject and its End — William Paterson and the Bank of England — 
 Its Effect on Commerce — The Great Stockjobbing Mania — The 
 South-Sea Bubble— Guy's Prudent Stockjobbing — His Wise Use 
 of his Wealth — Guy's Hospital, ... ... ... ... i68 
 
 IX. William Beckford. [1708-1770.] 
 
 The Beckfords in Jamaica — William Beckford's Schooling — The Rise 
 of Trade with America and the West Indies — Its Benefits to 
 England— Beckford's Share in it — His Parliamentary Life — His 
 Employments as Alderman, Sheriff, and Lord Mayor — George 
 III. and the Lord Mayor's Show — David Barclay — Beckford's 
 Great Feast — Sir John Barnard — Beckford's Radicalism — His 
 Quarrel with George III. — His Death and Character — Chatter- 
 ton's Elegy on him, . . ... ... ... ... 198 
 
 X. Henry Thornton. [1762-1815.] 
 
 Robert and John Thornton — John Thornton's Charity and Piety — 
 Wilbcrforcc and the Clapham Party — Henry Thornton as a 
 Banker — The Progress of Banking — The Hoares — Thomas 
 Coutts — Henry Thornton in Parliament — His Share in the Re- 
 form of the Bank of England — His Philanthropic Labours — 
 Thornton and Wilbcrforce — Thornton's Connexion with Hannah 
 More — His Sierra I.^one Colony — His Various Occupations — His 
 Literary Work — His Death, ... ••• ... ... 221 
 
 XI. Nathan Meyer Rothschild. [1776-1836.] 
 
 The Rothschilds in Frankfort — Nathan Roth.schild in Manchester —
 
 X Contents. 
 
 rAci; 
 His Settlement in London — The Jew Hankers of London — The 
 Hrolhcrs Ooldsniid — The Barings — Rollischild's money-making — 
 The Battle of Waterloo, and Rothschild's gains by it — His Mer- 
 cury Trick — His Foreign Loans — His Jokes — Brigand-like 
 Bankers— Rothschild's Death and Wealth, ... ... ... 245 
 
 XII. Samuel GuRNEY. [1786-1856.] 
 
 The ( )ld Gurneys — Samuel Gurney's Training — The House of Overend, 
 Gurney, & Company — The Modern Moncy-Market — Gurney's 
 Services to it — His Charitable and Philanthropic Actions — His 
 Death, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 265 
 
 XIII. George Peabody. 
 
 The Peabody Family — George Peabody's Training and Occupations 
 in America — His Settlement in London — The Crisis of 1837 — 
 Peabody's Business as Merchant and Banker — His Services as an 
 Anglo-American — His Benefactions in America — The Peabody 
 Lodging-Houses in London — The Commerce of Modern London 
 — Imports and E.\ports — The Docks of Londori — Bullion and 
 other Money — The Money Market and the Stock Exchange — 
 Conclusion: The Progress of Commerce, and its Services to 
 Civilisation, ... ... ... ... ... ... 285
 
 LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 -o- 
 
 George Peabody, 
 
 ... FRONTISPIECE 
 
 F.\nE 
 
 Sir Richard Whittington, ... ... ... ... .•• i5 
 
 Guildhall Chapel, London, ... ... ... ... ... 34 
 
 Christ's Hospital, London, ... ... ... ... ... 35 
 
 Sir Thomas Gresham, ... ... ... ... ••• 39 
 
 Mercer's Hall, Cheapside, ... ... ... ... ••■ 4' 
 
 A Flemish Merchant of the i6th Ccntur)', ... ... ... 4*5 
 
 An English Merchant of the iCth Ctntury, ... ... ... 47 
 
 The First Royal Exchange, ... ... ... ... ••• 57 
 
 Crosby Hall, London, ... ... ... ••• •■ 6> 
 
 The Ancient Chapel of Thomas a Beckct, afterwards a Shop and 
 
 Warehouse, on London Bridge, ... ... ... ... 66 
 
 A Galley of the i6th Century, ... ... ... ••. 74 
 
 An East Indian Carrack of the iCth Century, ... ... ... 105 
 
 The First East India House, ... ... ... ... •■. 125 
 
 The Last East India House, ... ... ••• -. ••• "O 
 
 Sir Hugh Myddclton, ... ... ... ... ••• '35 
 
 Sir Josiah Child, ... ... ... ■•■ ••• ■■■ '55 
 
 William Paierson, ... ... ... ... •.• ••■ '78 
 
 The Second Royal Exchange, ... ... ■•• ■•• '84 
 
 The South-Sea Bubble, ... ... ... ... - J'ji 
 
 Thomas Coutts, ... ... ... ... ... ••■ 229 
 
 TTie Tower of London, ... ... ... •.. ••• 283 
 
 The.Prescnt Royal Exchange, .. •. .• ••• 303 
 
 London Stone, ... ... ... ••. ••• 3'5
 
 FAMOUS 
 LONDON MERCHANTS. 
 
 I. 
 
 SIR RICHARD WtllTTINGTON. 
 [1353-1423.] 
 
 IIIEF of all the great merchants of 
 London during the Middle Ages is 
 Richard Whittington, not quite the 
 same Dick Whittington who lives in the story- 
 book, but a Whittington whose worth is only- 
 shown more clearly by divesting the popular 
 narrative of its fables, and adding to it the 
 sure facts of history. 
 
 Dick was not a beggar-boy who, running 
 away, when he was seven years old, from a 
 home in which there was nothing to make him 
 happy, and, hearing that the streets of London
 
 14 Tlic Story- Book Version. 
 
 were paved with gold and silver, worked his 
 way thither to be saved from starvation by a 
 good-natured merchant of Leadenhall Street, 
 named Fitzwarren. He was the youngest son 
 of Sir William Whittington, who was descended 
 from an old Warwickshire family, and owned 
 estates in Gloucestershire and Hereford. The 
 father died in 1360, and the estates passed to 
 the eldest son. Dick, who was then only a 
 child not more than five or six years old, 
 seems, as soon as he was old enough, to have 
 been sent up to London, there to become a 
 merchant. A London merchant, at any rate, 
 he became, though in what precise way we are 
 not told. 
 
 We may, if we like, accept the version of 
 the story-book, and believe that he was for a 
 long time little better than a scullion in his 
 master's house ; that he was much favoured 
 by Mistress Alice, his master's daughter, but 
 much persecuted by a "vile jade of a cook," 
 whose bidding he had to follow; that at length 
 his master, sending a shipful of merchandise 
 to Barbary, permitted each one of his servants 
 to add something to the cargo : and that he, 
 poor fellow, having nothing better, contributed 
 a cat, which he had bought for a penny, and 
 set to destroy the rats and mice which infested 
 his garret ; that, while the ship was on its voyage 
 the cook's tyranny so troubled him that he ran
 
 Sir Richard Whittingtoii, Lord Mayor of London.
 
 Fables and Facts. I y 
 
 away, and had gone as far as Bunhill Fields, 
 when the bells of Bow Church seemed to call 
 to him, 
 
 "Turn again, ^Yhittington, 
 Lord Mayor of London ;" 
 
 and that when, in obedience to the call, he 
 went back to Leadenhall Street, he found that 
 his cat had been sold to the King of Barbary 
 for a large sum of money; and that this money 
 helped him to become the richest merchant 
 of his time. The money paid for the cat 
 must have been vastly less than the ^^ 100,000 
 of which tradition speaks, and most of the 
 wealth with which he started in business on 
 his own account must have been made up of 
 his patrimony and of the fortune that came 
 with his wife, who, though a Mistress Alice, 
 was the daughter, not of a merchant, but of a 
 Sir Hugh Fitzwarren, owner of much property 
 in Gloucestershire and other counties. 
 
 The popular account of his youth, however, 
 may be partly true. No one, however rich 
 and high-born, might, in those days, follow 
 any important trade in London who was not 
 a member of one of the city companies or 
 guilds, and for admission to these companies 
 it was necessary to pass through some years of 
 rough apprenticeship. WhiLtington, we know, 
 was so apprenticed to a member of the Mercers' 
 Guild, which at that time engrossed one of the
 
 1 8 Whittiugtou's 'Prcutice-Lije. 
 
 most prosperous branches of the tradesman's 
 calHng. In front of one of the shops in Cheap- 
 side or Cornhill, which then were open stalls or 
 booths, such as we now see in the markets, he 
 jnust have had to stand, day after day, offering 
 coats, caps, and other articles of haberdashery 
 and the like, to passers-by; and when the day 
 was over, he must have gone indoors to live in a 
 garret, or worse, to do, in spite of his gentle 
 birth, whenever he was bid, such jobs as scullions 
 now-a-days would think beneath them ; and 
 to associate with rude and lawless fellow- 
 'prentices — lads whose play was generally coarse 
 and brutal, and to whom fierce brawls and 
 deadly fighting only offered special opportuni- 
 ties of amusement. His was rare luck if there 
 was any kind Mistress Alice at hand to heal 
 the wounds of body and of spirit that must 
 have befallen him. 
 
 They were rough times in which he lived, 
 times in which the modern history of England 
 was fairly beginning, after a thousand years 
 and more of rude preparation. London had 
 been growing for at least fourteen centuries. 
 Tacitus, who lived in the days of the Emperor 
 Nero, spoke of it as being then "famous for 
 its merchants and the abundance of its mer- 
 chandise." Five hundred and fifty years after- 
 wards, the venerable Bedc called it " a mart 
 town of many nations, which repaired thither
 
 Old Lo7idon ajid its Trade. 19 
 
 by sea and land." The Romans had found it 
 in some sort of prosperity, and it had prospered 
 much more under their dominion. The pros- 
 perity had continued during the centuries of 
 Anglo-Saxon colonisation and progress ; and 
 if there was some hindrance to this during 
 the turmoil of the Norman Conquest, London 
 began to be a far more influential town than 
 ev^er as soon as those turmoils were over. 
 " London," says one of the old chroniclers, writ- 
 ing in the twelfth century, "is a noble city, re- 
 nowned for the opulence of its citizens, who, 
 on account of the greatness of the city, arc 
 among the first rank of noblemen. It is filled 
 with goods brought by the merchants of all 
 countries, but especially with those of Ger- 
 many ; and when there is a scarcity of corn 
 in other parts of England, it is a granary at 
 which the article may be bought more cheaply 
 than anywhere else." " To this city," sa}'s an- 
 other writer of the same century, " merchants 
 repair from every nation of the world, bringing 
 their commodities by sea : 
 
 " Arabia's golfl, Salirca's spice and j^rims, 
 Scytliia's keen weapons, and the oil of palms 
 From Babylon's deep soil, Nile's precious gems, 
 China's bright shining silks, the wines of P'rance, 
 Norway's warm I'cltry, and the Russian sables. 
 All here abound." 
 
 That is a highly-drawn picture of London
 
 20 Old London and its Trade. 
 
 commerce under the early Plantajrcnets. The 
 "nations of the world" then within reach of 
 England were few in number, and the mer- 
 chants were more like modern pedlars and 
 small shopkeepers than the great millionaires 
 of recent times. But the London of that 
 period was as great, in comparison with other 
 towns both in and out of England, as is the 
 London of to-day; and then, as now, its great- 
 ness was chiefly caused by its commerce. This 
 commerce, however, was mostly in the hands 
 of foreigners. English merchants worked hard 
 and fared well at home ; but they were less 
 enterprising than the merchants of other coun- 
 tries, who, not content with pursuing their 
 calling in their own lands, established them- 
 selves in all other districts where they had a 
 chance of getting trade and making money. 
 The foreign merchants who came to London 
 and settled in it were chiefly Germans and 
 Italians, the Germans being the first in the 
 field. From very early times there was a 
 curious little colony of German traders in the 
 heart of London. On the banks of the Thames, 
 near what is now Dowgate Wharf, they had 
 a home during several centuries. Until the 
 reign of Richard IL one large building served 
 both as a residence for the merchants, and as 
 a warehouse for their goods. Then a second 
 building was granted to them ; and soon after-
 
 Tradiiisr Colonies and Guilds. 2 1 
 
 tj 
 
 wards a third was added, which having been 
 previously known as the Steel-house or Steel- 
 yard, gave its name to the whole establish- 
 ment : in it a colony of German merchants 
 continued to reside down to the time of Eliza- 
 beth. There they carried on their trade, hav- 
 ing constant supplies of all sorts of goods 
 brought across the seas and up the Thames, 
 to be deposited at their own door, and thence 
 sold to the London traders. A colony some- 
 what of the same sort was formed of Italians, 
 chiefly Lombards, a little farther from the 
 river-side : and the record of their settlement 
 still exists in the name of Lombard Street. 
 Near it is Old Jewry, once the special resi- 
 dence of the Jewish colonists. 
 
 These little colonies of foreigners, bound 
 together by strict rules, and pledged in all 
 ways to help one another in their various 
 occupations, set the fashion of guilds or trad- 
 ing companies of Englishmen. When and 
 how they first began, we do not know. They 
 seem to have existed in some shape even 
 betore the Norman Conquest, and soon after 
 that event they became of great importance. 
 Edward III., seeing how useful they were to 
 the progress of commerce and of the nation 
 which owed so much to commerce, did ail he 
 could to strengthen them. Eorty-cight sepa- 
 rate guilds were recognised by him, between
 
 22 TJlc Old London Guilds. 
 
 which all the business of the city was divided. 
 No one was allowed to take part in trade un- 
 less he was a member of the guild established 
 for his special calling, and bound himself to 
 work in friendship with all the other members, 
 and to have no dealings with any unlawful 
 traders who were members of no guilds. One 
 good feature in these guilds was the care with 
 which they were pledged to assist their aged 
 and unfortunate members and the orphans of 
 all who died young, excellent relics of which 
 appear in the many city charities now exist- 
 ing. They were not merely good, however, 
 but necessary to the times. The times were 
 too violent, and commerce was too small and 
 weak for separate traders to be able to hold 
 their own against tyrannical barons at home, 
 pirates on the sea, and enemies in foreign 
 lands. It was only by association that they 
 became strong ; and certainly strength came 
 thus to the merchants of the Middle Ages. 
 
 Some of the old guilds were devoted to work 
 which modern merchants would repudiate. 
 The chandlers, the masons, the bakers, the 
 hatters, the barbers, the painters, the wood- 
 sawyers, and the brushmakers, were concerned 
 in occupations that are now held proper for 
 small tradesmen and artisans, not for mer- 
 chants. Fishmongers are now generally ple- 
 beians : yet the old Fishmongers' Guild was
 
 The Grocers and the Mercers. 23 
 
 almost the most aristocratic, as well as the 
 oldest, of the ancient city companies. 
 
 The names of some are misleading. The 
 most influential of all were the Grocers' and 
 the Mercers' Guilds. In olden times the 
 mercers dealt not in silks, but in toys, small 
 haberdasheries, spices, drugs, and the like. 
 They were at first in the position of pedlars, 
 and afterwards had a miscellaneous trade in 
 stray commodities, like village shopkeepers of 
 the present day. Ultimately they came to be 
 wholesale dealers and great merchants, though 
 their business was still nominally confined to 
 trade in all goods intended for retail sale, all 
 that were weighed by the " little balance." 
 The grocers, who were also called pepperers, 
 came to have almost the same trade. Pepper, 
 cloves, mace, ginger, saffron-wood, and other 
 spices; drugs and dyes; currants, almonds, rice, 
 soap, cotton, silver, tin, and lead, were the chief 
 articles in which it was proper for them to 
 deal. All their wares, however, were to be 
 sold by the "gross balance," or the beams, 
 and in a wholesale way. 
 
 Besides these trading societies, which were 
 limited to London, and had counterparts in 
 nearly every other English town, there was a 
 more strictly commercial institution, founded 
 nearly two hundred years before Whittington's 
 time. This was the Society of Merchants of
 
 24 Trade in Whiiti)igtoii's Day. 
 
 the Staple. "The merchants of the staple," 
 says an old writer, "were the first and an- 
 cientest commercial society in England, so 
 named from their exporting the staple wares 
 of the kingdom. Those staple wares were 
 then only the rough materials for manufac- 
 ture : wool and skins, lead and tin, sheep- 
 skins and leather, being the chief. The grower 
 of wool contented himself at first with the sale 
 of it at his own door, or at the next town. 
 Thence arose a sort of middleman, who bought 
 it of him, and begot a traffic between them and 
 the foreign clothmakers, who, from their being 
 established for the sale of their wools in some 
 certain city commodious for intercourse, were 
 first named staplers." These staplers, or mer- 
 chants of the staple, came to include all the 
 most enterprising members of the various 
 guilds in and out of London. 
 
 This, then, was the trading world of London 
 in which Whittington was to make himself 
 famous. There had been famous merchants 
 before him. Foremost of all was Henry Fitz- 
 Alwyn, of the Drapers' Guild, first Mayor of 
 London, and holder of the office for a quarter 
 of a century — from its establishment in 1189 
 to the time of his death in 12 14. He it was 
 who first encouraged the citizens to build their 
 houses of enduring stone, instead of the wood 
 and thatch, which, easily catching fire, caused
 
 Walworth and Wat Tyler. 25 
 
 whole quarters to be frequently burnt down. 
 After him were William de Farendon, of the 
 Goldsmiths' Guild, who was Sheriff in 1281, 
 and his son, Nicholas Farendon, who was four 
 times chosen Mayor between 1308 and 1323, 
 and who, dying when Whittington was eight 
 or ten years old, left his name in Faringdon 
 Street, which, with all the neighbourhood, be- 
 longed to him. 
 
 Two other great merchants were also alive 
 in Whittington's youth. One of these was 
 William Walworth, owner of the suburb still 
 called Walworth, who was a leading member 
 of the Fishmongers' Guild, and Mayor in 
 1373, and again in 1381. The latter year was 
 the year of Wat Tyler's rebellion. It was 
 Walworth himself, we are told, who rushed 
 single-handed among the crowd of insurgents, 
 and slew Wat Tyler. " Good citizens and 
 pious all !" he exclaimed, when the rebels were 
 preparing to take vengeance for that deed, 
 " Give help without delay to your afflicted 
 King ; give help to me, your Mayor, encom- 
 passed by the self-same dangers. If you do 
 not choose to succour me, at any rate beware 
 how you sacrifice your King!" The answer 
 came in prompt and energetic combination of 
 the citizens, by which the rebellion was sup- 
 pressed. 
 
 A worthier merchant of that time, " a man
 
 26 John PJdlpot the Grocer. 
 
 of jolly wit and very rich in substance," accord- 
 ing to the quaint old chronicler, was John Phil- 
 pot, of the Grocers' Guild, who lived on the 
 site of Philpot Lane. lie did many famous 
 things for the relief of his country, chief of all 
 perhaps being his punishment of John Mercer, 
 a Scotch merchant and pirate in 1378, the yearin 
 which Philpot was Mayor of London. Mercer's 
 father had also boen a pirate. Being caught, 
 and imprisoned in Scarborough Castle, in 1377, 
 his son carried on the strife with yet more bold- 
 ness. Collecting a little fleet of Scotch, French, 
 and Spanish ships in 1378, he captured several 
 English merchantmen off Scarborough, slay- 
 ing their commanders, putting their crews 
 in chains, and appropriating or destroying 
 their cargoes. This mischief, thought Lord 
 Mayor Philpot, must be stopped, and stopped 
 at once. Therefore, at his own expense, he 
 promptly collected a number of vessels, put in 
 them a thousand armed men, and sailed for 
 the north. Within a few weeks he had retaken 
 the captured vessels, had effectually beaten 
 their impudent captors, and, as a revenge, had 
 seized fifteen Spanish vessels, full of wine, that 
 came in his way. On his return from this not- 
 able exploit, we are told by the old historian, 
 " there was great joy made among the people, 
 all men praising the w^orthy man's bountiful- 
 ness and love towards the king." But the peers
 
 His Patriotic Conduct. 27 
 
 of England by no means echoed the praises 
 of the commoners. " First, they lay in wait to 
 do him some displeasure, and afterwards they 
 spake against him openly, saying that it was 
 not lawful for him to do such things without 
 the orders of the king and his realm." Phil- 
 pot was accordingly summoned before Richard 
 II. 's council, and accused of illegal conduct in 
 going out to fight the enemy without authority 
 from the Crown. Philpot was angry with good 
 reason. " Know, sir," he said to the Earl of 
 Stafford, who was loudest in his reproaches, 
 " that I did not expose myself, my money, and 
 my men, to the dangers of the sea, that I might 
 deprive you and your mates of your knightly 
 fame, or that I might win any for myself; but 
 in pity for the misery of the people and the 
 country, which, from being a noble realm, with 
 dominion over other nations, has, through your 
 slothfulncss, become exposed to the ravages of 
 the vilest race. Not one of you would lift a 
 hand in her defence. Therefore it was that I 
 gave up myself and my property for the safety 
 and deliverance of England." Ilis rivals at 
 Court could find no real complaint against 
 him ; and his friends among the people praised 
 him as one of their greatest benefactors. 
 
 rhilpot died in 1384, and Walworth at about 
 the same time. Whittington, then nearly thirty 
 years old, was their .successor, and surpassed
 
 2 8 Whit ting ion 's Mcnhan t L ife. 
 
 them as a type of the merchants of England 
 during the Middle Ages at their best. 
 
 Of his early occupations as a mercer and a 
 citizen of London we know nothing in detail ; 
 but we can guess something of them from the 
 illustrations that have been given of the state 
 of the times in which he was schooled. They 
 were times in which, Richard II. being king, 
 England was given up to jealousies and quar- 
 rels, rebellion and t}'ranny. Richard was not 
 wise enough or strong enough to keep his 
 realm in order. In trying to do so, he only 
 made mischief. Nobles were at feud with 
 nobles, only leagued together for frequent op- 
 position to him, and for constant resistance 
 of the attempts made by the common people 
 to rise out of the degradation in which they had 
 long been kept, and violently to seize a share 
 in the government of the country. The mer- 
 chants of London did their best to keep out of 
 the strife ; but they were often forced to be- 
 come soldiers, as when Walworth led the citi- 
 zens against Wat Tyler; and sailors, as when 
 Philpot went out to punish John Mercer and 
 the Scottish pirates. Whittington, a young 
 and enterprising man, must have watched the 
 turmoil with close interest, keeping out of it 
 as much as possible, and doing his utmost, 
 with wonderful success, to become a rich and 
 influential trader.
 
 A Quarrel and its Ending: 29 
 
 We first hear of him in 1393, when he must 
 have been nearly forty years old. He was 
 then a master-mercer, and a member of the 
 Mercers' Guild, with five apprentices working 
 under him ; and before the year was out he 
 was elected Sheriff of London, having pre- 
 viously been made an alderman. 
 
 As an alderman he had just before taken 
 part in a curious ceremony. Richard II. had 
 called upon the city for a loan of ^^ 1000. The 
 city had refused, and the mayor and other 
 chief officers had accordingly been deposed 
 and sent to prison, the management of aftairs 
 being placed in the hands of a "guardian," 
 appointed, in violation of all civic laws and 
 privileges, by the King himself. The effect of 
 this severity was, that after a few months the 
 citizens had consented to buy back their rights 
 for £ 10,000, ten times the sum which they had 
 formerly declined to pay. Thereupon there 
 was a great show of peace-making. On the 
 29th of August, King Richard proceeded from 
 his palace at Shcne or Mortlakc, into the city, 
 there to be entertained with a famous pageant. 
 Rich tapestry, choice silks, and cloths of gold 
 adorned the streets, garlands and festoons of 
 swect-smclling flowers being freely mingled 
 with them. All the members of the city guilds 
 and all their apprentices, matrons, maids, and 
 children, thronged the narrow streets almost
 
 A n Old L on don Pa secant. 
 
 <b' 
 
 from daybreak, while a thousand and twenty- 
 young men on horseback marched up and 
 down, keeping order, and adding to the pomp 
 of the occasion. In the afternoon a procession 
 was formed. The "guardian" appointed by 
 the King led the way. After him came the 
 four-and-twenty aldermen, Whittington being 
 one of them, all arrayed in red and white, and 
 they were followed by the leading representa- 
 tives of the various trades, each in its own 
 livery. " None seeing this company," says the 
 delighted chronicler, "could doubt that he 
 looked upon a troop of angels." The proces- 
 sion passed over London Bridge, and met 
 another procession, consisting of King Richard 
 and Queen Anne, and a host of attendant 
 courtiers. Then all turned back, crossed Lon- 
 don Bridge, and traversed the city, to be 
 delighted with fresh sights and wonders at 
 every turn. In Cheapside there were fountains 
 pouring forth wine, and allegorical appearances 
 of sweet youths with crowns. At the doorway 
 of Saint Paul's Cathedral there was heavenly 
 music. From the summit of old Ludgate, 
 angels strewed flowers and perfumes on the 
 royal party ; and at Temple-Bar there was a 
 wonderful representation of a forest, and a 
 desert full of wild beasts, with John the Baptist 
 in the midst of them, leading the Lamb of God. 
 These entertainments having been admired,
 
 Whittingtons Occupations. 3 1 
 
 the whole procession hurried on to West- 
 minster, where the King seated himself on his 
 throne, and formally pardoned the citizens ot 
 London for their naughtiness in not lending 
 him money as soon as it was asked for. At 
 the same time he gave them back the privi- 
 leges that had been taken from them. 
 
 It was in consequence of that restitution of 
 privileges, and just three weeks after the cere- 
 mony, that Whittington was chosen Sheriff. 
 Five years aftenvards, in 1 398, he was appointed 
 Mayor, and he held that office for a second time 
 in 1406, and for a third time in 1419. In 1416, 
 also, he was elected a member of Parliament 
 for the city of London. 
 
 All through these years Whittington was a 
 busy merchant. Besides all the minor trade 
 that was proper to the mercer's calling, he 
 dealt extensively with foreign merchants in the 
 raw wool and hides which were then the chief 
 articles exported from England, and in the 
 silks and other costly articles from distant 
 lands that were exchanged for native wool 
 and leather. Much of his wealth also was de- 
 rived from an irregular sort of banking, which 
 brought him into close connexion with the two 
 famous monarchs, Henry IV. and Henry V., 
 who reigned in England after the overthrow of 
 Richard II. By lending money to them and 
 others, and arranging all their complicated
 
 32 A Costly Piece of Loyalty. 
 
 business in money matters, he became, in the 
 course of his long life, very rich. 
 
 He was as magnanimous as he was rich, 
 although some of the stories illustrating his 
 magnanimity can hardly be believed. One of 
 these stories tells how, on the occasion of his 
 being knighted, apparently in 1419, he invited 
 Henry IV. and his queen to a sumptuous en- 
 tertainment at Guildhall. Among the rarities 
 prepared to give splendour to the festival was 
 a marvellous fire of sweet-smelling woods, mixed 
 with cinnamon and other costly spices. While 
 the King was praising this novelty, we are told 
 Whittington went to a closet, and took from it 
 bonds to the value of iJ^6o,ooo — worth nearly a 
 million pounds of modern money — which he 
 had diligently bought up from the various 
 merchants and money-lenders to whom they 
 had at various times been given by Henry. 
 This bundle he showed to the King, and then 
 threw into the fire. " Never had prince such a 
 subject!" exclaimed Henry: "And never had 
 subject such a prince !" answered Whittington. 
 
 That story may or may not be true ; but of 
 other and nobler acts of liberality done by 
 Whittington we have ample proof. " The fer- 
 vent desire and busy intention of a prudent^ 
 wise, and devout man," he is reported to have 
 said not long before his death, "shall be to 
 cast before and make sure the state and the
 
 lVhitti?igton's Cliariilcs. 33 
 
 end of this short life with deeds of mercy and 
 pity, and especially to provide for those miser- 
 able persons whom the penury of this world 
 insulteth, and to whom the power of seeking 
 the necessities of life by art or bodily labour 
 is interdicted." And that was certainly the 
 rule of his own life. 
 
 Four hundred years before John Howard 
 appeared as the prisoner's friend, Whittington 
 began to rebuild Newgate prison, hitherto "a 
 most ugly and loathsome prison, so contagious 
 of air, that it caused the death of many men ;" 
 and dying before the work was done, he left 
 money that it might be duly completed. 
 
 Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, in Smithfield, 
 founded in 1 102 for the help of sick and lame 
 paupers, and long fallen into decay, was re- 
 paired soon after his death, in obedience to the 
 instructions of this "worthy and notable mer- 
 chant, the which," according to the testimony 
 of his executors, "had right liberal and large 
 hands to the needy and poor people." 
 
 As a small but significant illustration of his 
 large-hearted charity, we are told that " there 
 was a water conduit cast of the church of Saint 
 Giles, Cripplegate, which came from Highbury, 
 and that Whittington, the mayor, caused a tap 
 of water to be made in the church wall," — a 
 forerunner, by nearly five centuries, of the mo- 
 dern drinking fountains.
 
 34 
 
 WJiittiiigtons Charities. 
 
 A long list might be made of all Whitting- 
 ton's acts of charity. In 1400 he obtained leave 
 to rebuild the church of Saint Michael Pater- 
 noster, and found there a college, " consisting 
 
 ;2:-r^-fC^s^g^kS^Si£i; 
 
 Guildhall Chapel, London. 
 
 of four fellows, clerks, conducts, and choristers, 
 who were governed by a master," an institution 
 out of which grew not only the reorganised 
 Whittington College in the City, but also the
 
 Christ's Hospital. 37 
 
 \\Tiittington almshouses at Highgate. Tn his 
 will he provided for the paving and glazing of 
 Guildhall, which was built in his lifetime. These 
 were luxuries at that time almost confined to 
 palaces. To the famous building he also added 
 the beautiful chapel which was pulled down in 
 1822. The Guildhall Library, too, was built 
 by his directions in 1419. 
 
 During the last years of his life Sir Richard 
 Whittington was busy about the foundation of 
 the library of the Grey Friars' monastery, in 
 Newgate Street. It was a building 129 feet 
 long, and 31 feet wide, furnished, at starting, 
 with books worth ;£^556, los., (more than £6000 
 in the present value of money,) of which £AfiO 
 was subscribed by Whittington. In the reign 
 of Henry VIII., the monastery and its library 
 were given to the City of London at the request 
 of Sir Richard Grcsham, a great merchant, 
 who was father of a greater merchant. Sir 
 Thomas Gresham ; and in the reign of Ed- 
 ward VI., through the influence of Sir Richard 
 Dobbs, another worthy merchant, and Lord 
 Mayor, they were converted into the excellent 
 Christ's Hospital, "where poor children, inno- 
 cent and fatherless, are trained up to the know- 
 ledge of God and virtuous exercises, to the 
 overthrow of beggary." 
 
 For some years before his death, the gooti 
 Sir Richard Whittington appears to have lived
 
 38 Whittington 's Death and Burial. 
 
 in a large house, which he built for himself in 
 Crutchcd Friars, which was pulled down not 
 very long ago. He worked hard in all good 
 ways to the last. In September and October 
 1422, he was in attendance at Guildhall, helping 
 to elect the mayor and sheriffs for the following 
 year ; but in the winter he sickened, never to 
 recover. He died on the 24th of March 1423, 
 not far short of seventy years old. " His body," 
 says Stow the chronicler, "was tJiree times 
 buried in his own church of Saint Michael Pa- 
 ternoster, — first by his executors, under a fair 
 monument ; then, in the reign of Edward VI., 
 the parson of the church thinking some great 
 riches, as he said, to be buried with him, caused 
 his monument to be broken, his body to be 
 spoilt of its leaden sheet, and again the second 
 time to be buried ; and, in the reign of Queen 
 Mary, the parishioners were forced to take him 
 up, clap him in lead as before, to bury him 
 the third time, and to place his monument, or 
 the like, over him again." 
 
 But both church and tombstone were de- 
 stroyed by the great fire of 1666 ; and now Sir 
 Richard Whittington's only monument is to be 
 found in the records of the city which he so 
 greatly helped by his noble charities, and by 
 his perfect showing of the way in which a mer- 
 chant prince should live.
 
 II. 
 
 SIR THOMAS GRESHAM. 
 (1519-1579.) 
 
 TR RICHARD WHITTINGTON had 
 been dead ninety-six years when Sir 
 Thomas Gresham was born. London 
 had many famous merchants during the four 
 generations that separated these two men ; but 
 Whittington had, in all respects, no successor 
 as notable as himself until Gresham came to 
 surpass him. 
 
 Perhaps the most eminent London merchant 
 in the interval was Sir Thomas Gresham's 
 father. Sir Richard Gresham. He was the son 
 of a wealthy gentleman of Norfolk, who, early 
 in the reign of Henry VIII., established his four 
 sons as mercers in London. One of the sons 
 afterwards became a clergyman ; the other 
 three carried on an extensive business in part- 
 nership. Sir Richard, though not the oldest, 
 was the most prosperous. He not only made 
 much money as a merchant, but also acted as 
 a sort of banker to Henry VIII. and Edward
 
 40 Sir RicJtard GrcsJiavi. 
 
 VI. He was a great friend of Cardinal Wol- 
 scy's, continuing his friend even after his dis- 
 grace. To Wolscy he lent ;^200, equal to nearly 
 ;^2000 according to the present value of money, 
 shortly before his death. " I borrowed it," 
 said Wolsey, " to bury me and bestow among 
 my servants." 
 
 Many other proofs of Sir Richard Gresham's 
 goodness are on record, chief of all being his 
 zeal in inducing Henry VHL, at the great 
 division of church property in 1557, to allow 
 three old monasteries, Saint Mary's, Saint Bar- 
 tholomew's, and Saint Thomas's, to be handed 
 over to the City of London and converted into 
 hospitals " for the aid and comfort of the poor, 
 sick, blind, aged, and impotent persons, being 
 not able to help themselves, nor having no 
 place certain where they may be refreshed or 
 lodged at, till they be holpen and cured of their 
 diseases." 
 
 Eighteen years before that, in 15 19, his son 
 Thomas was born. Of Thomas's early life we 
 are not told much. At the age of thirteen he 
 went to Cambridge for three years, and in 1535 
 he was put to learn the intricacies of London 
 commerce as it was practised by the Mercers' 
 Company. " To that science," he said in a 
 letter written some time after, " I was bound 
 'prentice eight years, to come by the expe- 
 rience and knowledge that I have. I need not
 
 ■;«"irii|li.-.i|ipj|I, 
 
 P 
 
 hZ. "■!! 
 
 3 
 J
 
 Tlioinas Gresham 's Training. 43 
 
 have been 'prentice, for that I was free by my 
 father's copy ; albeit, my father, being a wise 
 man, knew it was to no purpose except I were 
 bound 'prentice to the same, whereby to come 
 by the experience and knowledge of all kinds 
 of merchandize." 
 
 The Mercers' Guild, of which young Gresham 
 was thus wisely qualified to be a working mem- 
 ber, was still, as it had been in the days of 
 Whittington, the chief school for London mer- 
 chants. But it was no longer the great repre- 
 sentative of London commerce. Already the 
 old guilds had done their best work, and, as 
 guilds, were beginning to make feasts and 
 shows their principal business. Their more 
 active members used them chiefly as a means 
 of introduction to the Company of Merchant 
 Adventurers, which took the lead in Gresham's 
 time, as the Society of the Merchants of the 
 Staple had done in Whittington's. 
 
 The Merchant Adventurers traced their 
 origin to a period long before Whittington. 
 The founder of their company is said to 
 have been Thomas a Bccket's father, Gilbert 
 a Bccket, who, in the time of the Crusades, 
 went to the far East for purposes of trade, 
 while most of his adventurous countrymen 
 were devoting themselves to chivalrous fighting 
 against the Saracen enemies of the Cross. 
 Gilbert 4 Bccket, as the doubtful story runs,
 
 44 -^^ Romance of Commerce. 
 
 was taken prisoner in Syria by a cruel Paynim. 
 But, if the Paynim was cruel, his pretty daughter 
 was kind. Falling in love with the English 
 merchant, she contrived his escape, and, when 
 he had safely returned to Entdand, managed 
 to run after him. Knowing only two English 
 words, " London " and " Gilbt rt," the bold 
 damsel made her way from Syria to England, 
 and, after much wandering about, found her 
 lover in front of his shop in Cheapside ; to be 
 rewarded, let us hope, for all her boldness and 
 devotion. 
 
 That tale can hardly be true ; but it is true 
 that Gilbert a Bccket was an enterprising mer- 
 chant in the time of Henry II,, and the trading 
 company, said to have been founded either by 
 him or by others in furtherance of his com- 
 mercial projects, was incorporated by Henry 
 IV., perhaps with assistance from Whittington, 
 who was then at the height of his greatness, 
 as the Brotherhood of Saint Thomas a Becket. 
 Soon after that time it became a powerful and 
 very prosperous society. By its means English 
 merchants were then able to do in a body what 
 the jealousy of kings and statesmen made it 
 impossible for them to do singly. They estab- 
 lished a regular colony in Antwerp, which was 
 then the chief trading town on the Continent, 
 and which gained much by the fresh trade 
 that they brought to it. " To England," said
 
 TIte Merchant Adventurers. 45 
 
 an Italian resident in the Netherlands in the 
 time of Sir Thomas Gresham, " Antwerp sends 
 jewels and precious stones, silver, quicksilver, 
 silks, spices, sugar, cotton, linens, serges, drugs, 
 hops, glass, salt fish, and other merceries of all 
 sorts, to a great value. From England, Ant- 
 werp receives vast quantities of fine and coarse 
 draperies, fringes, and other things of that kind, 
 the finest wool, sheep and rabbit skins without 
 number, a great quantity of lead and tin, beer, 
 cheese, Malmesey wines, and other sorts ot 
 provisions, in great abundance. This is of im- 
 mense benefit to both countries, neither of 
 which could, without the greatest damage, 
 dispense with this their vast mutual com- 
 merce." 
 
 The English half of this famous trade was 
 managed by the Company of Merchant Ad- 
 venturers ; and that he might take his share in 
 it, as his father was then doing, young Thomas 
 Gresham was sent to Antwerp in 1543, when 
 he was twenty-four years old, and as soon as 
 his apprenticeship to the Mercers' Guild was 
 over. Antwerp was his usual home for four- 
 and-twenty other years. 
 
 The chief English merchant resident in Ant- 
 werp, a sort of governor or controller of the 
 whole colony, was known as the King's Factor, 
 that title being given to him because, besides 
 his work in presiding over tlie wIidIc bod\', his
 
 46 
 
 G res Jul}) I in AiiHverp. 
 
 special business was to negotiate any loans 
 with wealthy merchants and money-lender.i 
 that might be needed by the English sove- 
 reign, and to keep the sovereign informed as to 
 all the important foreign matters known to 
 him. He was not only a sort of governor 'jnd 
 
 A Flemish Merchant of the i6th Century. 
 
 consul, but a sort of ambassador and foreign 
 secretary as well. This was, in fact, the most 
 influential employment, out of England, under 
 the English crown. When young Gresham 
 went to Antwerp to look after his father's busi- 
 ness and to begin business on his own account.
 
 TJie Kings Factor hi A ntwerp. 47 
 
 a Stephen Vaughan was in office. In 1546 he 
 was succeeded by Sir William Dansell, a good- 
 natured man, but not much of a merchant, 
 and no financier at all. In 1549 he was re- 
 proved for a grievous piece of carelessness, by 
 which, it was said, ;i^40,ooo was lost to Edward 
 
 An English Merchant of the i6th Century. 
 
 VI. lie answered that he had done his very 
 best, that he could not have done better if he 
 had spent forty thousand lives on the business, 
 and that what he had done was with the assist- 
 ance of "one Thomas Grcsliam." But the mem- 
 bers of Edward VI. 's Council were not satisfied.
 
 48 Gresham as King's Factor. 
 
 When Danscll wrote to say, " It secmeth me 
 that you suppose me a very blunt beast, with- 
 out reason and discretion," they did not deny 
 the charge. They thought, and thought wisely, 
 that •• one Thomas Gresham" would act better 
 as principal than as assistant. Accordingly, in 
 or near December 155 1, he was appointed 
 King's Factor ; and personally, or by deputy, 
 he held the office, with a gap of about three 
 years during Queen Mary's reign, for a quarter 
 of a century. 
 
 The long history of his services in this capa- 
 city need not here be detailed. Though all 
 the while he was working zealously and very 
 profitably as a merchant on his own account, 
 his official work was not strictly that of a 
 merchant. A great part of his duty was in 
 borrowing money for the three sovereigns who 
 employed him — Edward VI., Mary, and Eliza- 
 beth — and in paying, or trying to pay, their 
 debts. This he did very cleverly, and with 
 great advantage to his sovereigns and his 
 country. " When I took this service in hand," 
 he wrote, shortly after the death of Edward VI. 
 in 1553, "the King's majesty's credit in Flan- 
 ders was small ; and yet afore his death he was 
 in such credit with strangers and his own mer- 
 chants that he might have had what sum of 
 money he desired. Whereby his enemies began 
 to fear him ; for the commodities of his realm
 
 His Services to Edward VI. 49 
 
 were not known before. And for the accom- 
 plishment thereof I not only left the realm, 
 with my wife and family, my occupying and 
 whole trade of living, by the space of two 
 years ; but also posted in that time forty times 
 at the least, upon the King's sending, from 
 Antwerp to the Court," 
 
 Gresham conferred small as well as large 
 favours upon Edward VI. For a New-year's 
 gift in 1553, he sent him a pair of long Si:)anish 
 silk stockings, " a great present," says the old 
 chronicler, " for you shall understand that King 
 Henry VIII. did wear only cloth hose, or hose 
 cut out of ell-broad tafteta, unless by great 
 chance there came a pair of Spanish stockings 
 out of Spain." 
 
 Edward VI. was not ungrateful for either the 
 great or the little kindnesses. Three weeks 
 before his death, having at previous times be- 
 stowed upon him property worth three times 
 as much, he gave to Gresham lands worth 
 £\OQ) a year, saying, as he handed the charter, 
 " You shall know lliat you h;ive served a 
 king!" 
 
 Besides a king, Gresham served two queens 
 
 right nobly. Mis service to Queen Mary was 
 
 not so great as it might be, because his dislike 
 
 of her Romish ways, and those of her husband, 
 
 Philip of Spain, put him out of their favour, 
 
 and also made it impossible for him to do 
 
 IJ
 
 50 Greshavi 's Work under Elizabeth. 
 
 heartily much that they required of him. But 
 better fortune came to him with the accession 
 of Queen Elizabeth in 1558. Hearing of the 
 change of sovereigns, he hurried from Antwerp 
 to England to render homage, and he was very 
 graciously received. "Her Highness promised 
 me, by the faith of a queen," he said, in a letter 
 describing the interview, " that she would not 
 only ' keep one ear shut to hear me,' but also, 
 if I did her none other service than I had done 
 to her late brother and her late sister, she would 
 give me as much land as ever they both did ; 
 which two promises made me a young man 
 again, and caused me to enter on my great 
 charge again with heart and courage. And 
 thereupon her Majesty gave me her hand to 
 kiss, and I accepted this great charge." 
 
 He worthily fulfilled it. During the first 
 three and a half years of Queen Elizabeth's 
 reign, as appears by a bill which he drew up, 
 he spent ^1627, 9s. in "riding and posting 
 charges" on her Majesty's service — which 
 amount, like all others of this date, we must 
 multiply by nine or ten to get the approximate 
 value in the currency of to-day. Once, in 1561, 
 he rode so fast that he fell from his horse and 
 broke his leg, whereby he was lamed for the 
 rest of his life. He had hard work to do in 
 travelling from place to place, borrowing money 
 from one merchant, pa}-in[; the debts due to
 
 His VarioNS Eniploynients. 5 i 
 
 another, and conciliating all by feasting them 
 after the fashion for which Antwerp was famous 
 during many centuries. And he was not busy 
 simply with money matters ; he was often 
 employed on political errands, watching the 
 movements of the Queen's enemies, negotiating 
 with her friends, and in all sorts of ways pro- 
 moting her interests. 
 
 Thus he was not always resident in Antwerp. 
 From the commencement of Elizabeth's reign, 
 indeed, he was never there for long at a time 
 His own business, and the local duties attached 
 to his office as Queen's Factor, were performed 
 by a clever agent named Richard Clough, an 
 honest Welshman, in whom the prompt and 
 expeditious merchant found only one fault. 
 " My servant," he said, " is very long and tedi- 
 ous in his writing." Other trusty clerks he had 
 in London, at Seville, at Toledo, at Dunkirk, 
 and elsewhere. Antwerp, however, after Lon- 
 don, was his head-quarters up to the year 
 1567. 
 
 In that year his services as Queen Elizabeth's 
 factor at Antwerp came to an end. For some 
 time previous, war had been waging between 
 the Protestant States of the Netherlands, and 
 Philip, the Catholic King of Spain. In 1567 
 the Spaniards took possession of Antwerp, 
 driving out not only the English merchants, 
 with Gresham at their head, but also a great
 
 52 Grcsham as a London Merchant. 
 
 number of Flemish traders, many of whom 
 settled in England, adding much, by their in- 
 dustry and honesty, to the wealth of their 
 adopted country. 
 
 Henceforth Gresham was much more strictly 
 a London merchant. For some time to come 
 he seems to have been settled down in his 
 banker's and mercer's shop in Lombard Street, 
 where every kind of merchandise was traded 
 in, and where, after the fashion of all great 
 merchants of those times, he also carried on a 
 thriving business as pawnbroker and money- 
 lender. It was still the custom, as it had been 
 in Whittington's days, for princes and nobles — 
 banks proper, railways, national funds, and other 
 modern means for investing money not yet be- 
 ing introduced — to lodge their surplus money 
 with the great tradesmen, who used it with 
 such advantage that they were able to pay 
 good interest to the traders, besides making- 
 large profits for themselves. Others, who needed 
 more ready cash than they had at command, 
 used to bring their jewels and treasures, even 
 their title-deeds and rent-rolls, to the same 
 tradesmen, who lent money upon them, just as 
 pawnbrokers now do. 
 
 Of that sort, and of all other sorts, was the 
 business carried on by Sir Thomas Gresham in 
 his Lombard Street shop, with its branches and 
 agencies in various parts of England and the
 
 Londoji in Ids Time. 53 
 
 Continent. King of the merchants of his time, 
 he was also, in his quaint, blunt way, a famous 
 courtier in the famous court of Queen Elizabeth, 
 where men like the great Earl of Leicester, and 
 his worthier nephew. Sir Philip Sidney, contri- 
 buted to the gaiety and the renown. Could 
 we look back through three centuries, and see 
 London and England as they really were, we 
 should miss many of the refinements of the mo- 
 dern civilisation which the commerce of men 
 like Gresham did not a little to promote. But 
 travellers of that time, having none of the 
 later refinements to compare them with, were 
 charmed with the state of things which they 
 saw. Let us listen to one of them, a Dutch 
 doctor, who visited London in the days of Sir 
 Thomas Gresham : — 
 
 " Frankly to utter what I think," he says, 
 " of the incredible courtesy and friendliness in 
 speech and affability used in this famous realm, 
 I must confess it doth surmount and carry away 
 the price of all others. The neat cleanliness, 
 the exquisite fineness, the pleasant and delight- 
 ful furniture, wonderfully delighted mc. Their 
 chambers and parlours, strewed over with sweet 
 herbs, refreshed mc. Rich nosegays in their 
 bed-chambers, with comfortable smell, cheered 
 mc up, and entirely delighted all my senses. 
 And this do I think to be tlic cause that 
 Englishmen, living by such wholesome and
 
 54 London in Greshayn's Time. 
 
 exquisite meat, and in so wholesome and 
 healthful air, be so fresh and clear-coloured. 
 At their tables, although they be very sump- 
 tuous, and love to have good fare, yet neither 
 are they to overcharge themselves with excess 
 of drink, nor do they greatly provoke and urge 
 others thereto, but suffer every man to drink 
 in such manner as best pleaseth himself." 
 
 Another traveller, a German, writing at about 
 the same time, was less complimentary to 
 London and its people. " The inhabitants," he 
 says, " are magnificently apparelled, and are 
 extremely proud and overbearing ; and because 
 the greater part, especially the tradespeople, 
 seldom go into other countries, but always 
 remain in their houses in the city, attending to 
 their business, they care little for foreigners, 
 but scoff and laugh at them ; and, moreover, 
 one dare not oppose them, lest the street-boys 
 and apprentices collect together in immense 
 crowds, and strike to right and left unmerci- 
 fully, without regard to person ; and because 
 they are the strongest, one is obliged to put up 
 with the insults as Avell as the injury." Yet 
 even this poor traveller, who had to run away 
 from the rude 'prentices, but could not run out 
 of hearing of their chaff, spoke well of London 
 as a place of trade. " London," he said, " is a 
 large, excellent, and mighty city of business, 
 and the most important in the whole kingdom.
 
 Its Traders and their Trades. 5 5 
 
 Most of the inhabitants are employed in buying 
 and selhng merchandise, and trading to almost 
 every corner of the world, since the Thames is 
 most useful and convenient for the purpose, 
 considering that ships from France, the Nether- 
 lands, Sweden, Denmark, Hamburg, and other 
 parts, come nearly up to the city with their 
 goods. It is a very populous city, so that one 
 can scarcely pass along the streets on account 
 of the throng." 
 
 A hundred years before the great fire of 
 1666, which did good at any rate in leading to 
 the building of better roads and houses than 
 previously existed, the streets were far narrower 
 than now-a-days, and the inhabitants — nearly as 
 numerous within the city walls as now, though 
 of course the great suburbs of London were 
 still only out-of-the-way villages — must have 
 found it hard to get along, as they went 
 to market in Cheapside or the neighbourhood 
 of Leaden Hall, or to change their money and 
 transact wholesale business in Lombard Street 
 and the adjoining parts. 
 
 Lombard Street at that time was the central 
 haunt of the merchants. There, especially in 
 the open space near Grace Church, they used 
 to meet, at all hours and in all weathers, to 
 transact their business. " What a place Lon- 
 don is ! " exclaimed Grcsham's agent, Richard 
 Clough, writing to him in 1561 ; "that in so
 
 $6 The Royal Excluxnge. 
 
 many }'ears tliey have not found the means to 
 make a bourse, but must walk in the rain when 
 it raineth, more hke pedlars than merchants." 
 
 A bourse or exchange, for merchants to 
 meet in, and do their business comfortably in 
 spite of rain or wind, had long before been 
 built in Antwerp, and as early as 1537 Sir 
 Thomas Gresham's father had been anxious to 
 build one in London. Others also had pro- 
 posed it ; but the enterprise was too great, and 
 most of the London merchants were too care- 
 less in the matter, for anything to be done, 
 until Sir Thomas Gresham took the project in 
 hand ; and putting his whole heart into it, 
 toiled on till it was completed. 
 
 This was the great work of his life, less 
 memorable in itself than other services done 
 by him to his country, but, in its effects, 
 almost more helpful than anything else to the 
 progress of English commerce. Contributing 
 much money himself, he persuaded seven hun- 
 dred and fifty other citizens of London to sub- 
 scribe smaller sums, and between March 1565 
 and October 1566, ^4000 was collected. The 
 city of London gave the land, which was sup- 
 posed to be worth about £\0Q)0 more, and 
 before the end of 1566 the building was fairly 
 begun. The stone was brought from one of 
 Gresham's estates in Norfolk ; the wood from 
 another in Suffolk; the slates, iron-work, wain-
 
 a 
 o 
 ■a 
 
 a 
 o 
 
 a 
 a 
 
 J3 
 y 
 X 
 
 M 
 
 -a 
 
 o 
 
 Pi 
 
 J3 
 
 H
 
 i
 
 Tho Royal Exchange. 59 
 
 scoting and glass were sent from Antwerp by- 
 Richard Clough ; and the quaint Dutch-look- 
 ing building, with ample walks and rooms for 
 merchants on the basement, and a hundred 
 shops or booths, called the Pawn, above stairs, 
 for retail dealers, was completed by the sum- 
 mer of 1569. 
 
 Queen Elizabeth christened it on the 23d of 
 January, 1571. "The Queen's Majesty," says 
 the old historian, " with her nobility, came from 
 her house at the Strand, called Somerset House, 
 and entered the city by Temple Bar, through 
 Fleet Street, and, after dinner at Sir Thomas 
 Gresham's in Bishopsgate Street, entered the 
 Bourse on the south side, and, when she had 
 viewed every part thereof above the ground, espe- 
 cially the Pawn, which was richly furnished with 
 all sorts of the finest wares in the city, caused 
 the same Bourse, by a herald and trumpet, 
 to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so 
 to be called thenceforth, and not otherwise." 
 
 The house in Bishopsgate Street, at which 
 Sir Thomas Gresham gave a dinner to Queen 
 Elizabeth and her courtiers, had been built 
 nearly ten years before. It was one of the 
 finest houses in the city, inferior perhaps to 
 none but the noble Crosby Hall, very near to 
 it, built by a much older merchant of London, 
 Sir John Crosby. In it Gresham generally 
 lived after leaving Antwerp, the Lombard
 
 Co A CompHyncut to Quern Elizabeth. 
 
 Street shop being used henceforth only as a 
 place of business. He was owner of several 
 other splendid mansions, one of them being 
 Osterley House, near Brentford. There he 
 added to his trading occupations by setting up 
 a paper-mill, (almost the first in England,) oil- 
 mills and corn-mills. There, too, in 1579, he 
 entertained Queen Elizabeth in courtly fashion. 
 On this occasion Gresham is reported to 
 have amused Queen Elizabeth with a triumph 
 of engineering. " Her Majesty," says old Ful- 
 ler, " found fault with the court of the house as 
 too great, affirming that it would appear more 
 handsome if divided with a wall in the middle. 
 What doth Sir Thomas, but, in the night-time, 
 send for workmen to London, who so speedily 
 and silently apply their business, that the next 
 morning discovered that court double which 
 the night had left single before. It is question- 
 able whether the Queen, next day, was more 
 contented with the conformity to her fancy, or 
 more pleased with the surprise and sudden 
 performance thereof; whilst her courtiers dis- 
 ported themselves with their several expres- 
 sions, some avowing it was no wonder he 
 could so soon change a building who could 
 build a 'Change ; others, reflecting on some 
 known differences in this knight's family, af- 
 firming that any house is easier divided than 
 united."
 
 Gresham's DeatJi. 6i 
 
 That last joke was unkind. In 1 544, Gresham 
 married a widow, Dame Anne Read, aunt, by- 
 marriage, of Sir Francis Bacon ; and his wife 
 and he do not seem to have agreed very well 
 together. They had an only son, Richard, who 
 died in 1564, when he was sixteen years old. 
 
 Sir Thomas Gresham, an active merchant to 
 the last, lived to the age of sixty. " On Satur- 
 day, the 2 1st of November 1579," it is written 
 in the " Chronicles of England," " between six 
 and seven o'clock in the evening, coming from 
 the Exchange to his house, which he had 
 sumptuously builded in Bishopsgate Street, he 
 suddenly fell down in his kitchen, and, being 
 taken up, was found speechless, and presently 
 died." On the 15th of September he was 
 buried, solemnly and splendidly, in Saint 
 Helen's Church, hard by ; a hundred poor men 
 and a hundred poor women following him to 
 the grave. 
 
 His property, worth ;{^2300 a year, passed 
 to his wife and a son of hers by another mar- 
 riage. The Bishopsgate Street house was de- 
 voted to a charitable project, which seems to 
 have been very dear to the merchant's heart 
 during the last years of his life. This was the 
 establishment of Gresham College. He meant 
 it to be as helpful a school for London ap- 
 prentices as the Universities of Oxford and 
 Cambridge could be for other students. But
 
 64 Grcsham College. 
 
 those to whom he entrusted the work used in 
 selfish ways the large sum which he left for 
 the purpose, and Gresham College is now 
 only a monument of the good intentions of 
 its founder.
 
 III. 
 
 SIR EDWARD OSBORNE. 
 [1530-1591.] 
 
 ^/^^ONDON BRIDGE, in the olden time, 
 ^rj^^^ was a street with houses, shops, and 
 Ng^=^] even churches on it " It seems," 
 says a hvely antiquary, " to have been ac- 
 counted rather a preferable, almost a genteel 
 locality. It was the grand entry to the metro- 
 polis, by which passed, of necessity, all those 
 pomps and shows, and processions of state 
 and ceremony which made so important a part 
 in the life of our forefathers. Nowhere was 
 there more stir and activity of every kind, and 
 at all hours ; and for good air and plenty of 
 it, there could have been no street comparable 
 to the Bridge anywhere else in London. The 
 very sound of the river beneath was considered 
 musical and soothing : it is related that those 
 who had been used to it could not easily fall 
 asleep without having it in their ear. In front 
 of the houses flowed from morning to night 
 an unceasing current of the busiest and most 
 
 E
 
 66 
 
 Old London Bridge. 
 
 various humanity ; and the back windows had 
 another kind of checrfuhiess of their own, — a 
 spacious and open prospect over town, coun- 
 try, and sky, with a full share of the sunshine 
 and the breeze." 
 
 Ancient Chapel of Thomas k Becket, afterwards a Shop and Warehouse, 
 on London Bridge. 
 
 Here lived, throughout the middle ages, 
 some of the richest merchants of London, and 
 in Henry VHI.'s and Edward VI.'s and Queen 
 Mary's reigns there were few richer than Sir 
 William Hewit, a leading member of the
 
 Ned Osborne and Anne Heivit. Gy 
 
 Clothworkers' Guild, and an enterprising mer- 
 chant in other ways. He was Lord Mayor of 
 London in 1559, the year of Queen Elizabeth's 
 accession, and dying in 1567, he left, besides 
 much other property, an estate worth ;^6ooo 
 a year, to be enjoyed by his only daughter 
 Anne and her fortunate husband, Edward 
 Osborne. 
 
 Edward Osborne was then between thirty- 
 five and forty years old. More than twenty 
 years before, his father, a well-to-do gentle- 
 man of Kent, had sent him to London to 
 make his fortune as a merchant. The lad was 
 apprenticed to Sir William Hewit, and a lodg- 
 ing was found for him in the London Bridge 
 house. There he was looking out of a window 
 one day, while, at another open window, as it 
 seems, a nurse was playing with his master's 
 little daughter, a child of two or three years 
 old. The play was dangerous, and the little 
 girl, leaning over or jumping out, slipped from 
 the nurse's hold and fell into the river. By 
 good chance young Ned Osborne saw the 
 accident, and had the wit, without loss of a 
 moment, to jump into the river after her, and 
 thus save her from drowning. 
 
 That good service, we may be sure, endeared 
 young Osborne to his master. He found him 
 a ready scholar in ways of commerce, and he 
 helped him on to the utmost. He made him,
 
 68 Osborne's Contemporaries. 
 
 when his apprenticeship was over, a partner in 
 his business ; and when the young lady whose 
 life he had saved was old enough, he gave her to 
 him for a wife. Plenty of other lovers gathered 
 round her; rich men and men of rank, the Earl 
 of Shrewsbury at the head of them, sought her 
 hand ; and Sir William Hewit was often advised 
 to bestow her upon a husband of good station in 
 the world. But he steadily refused. " Osborne 
 did save her," he always said ; " Osborne shall 
 have her." 
 
 The marriage occurred in 1565 or 1566. 
 About that time Osborne began to take an 
 important place for himself in the world of 
 London commerce, of which Sir Thomas 
 Gresham was then the king. There was a crowd 
 of other famous merchants then alive, none 
 greater perhaps than Sir Lionel Ducket. The 
 son of a Nottingham gentleman, he was Lord 
 Mayor in 1573, and sharer in nearly every 
 great enterprise of those times. We hear of 
 him sometimes as employing agents to melt 
 silver and copper for him in Germany ; some- 
 times as setting up furnaces for the same 
 purpose in England. At one time, we see 
 him busy about the manufacture of cloth ; at 
 another, he is forming a company to construct 
 water-works for the draining of mines. He 
 was a great encourager of those schemes of 
 distant voyaging and discovery which sent
 
 Ducket and Spencer. 69 
 
 Frobisher and Davis into the polar regions, 
 which caused Drake and Cavendish to sail 
 round the world, and which induced a score of 
 other famous men to try their fortunes in various 
 seas and climes in search of new fields for con- 
 quest, commerce, and civilisation. He was 
 one of the richest men of his time. To each 
 of his three daughters, we are told, he gave as 
 dowry upwards of iJ^5000 in Tudor money ; and 
 when asked why he had not given more, he 
 answered that that was as much as it was 
 seemly for him to bestow, since Queen Eliza- 
 beth herself, on ascending the throne, had 
 found only ;^io,ooo in her exchequer. 
 
 Another famous merchant, an old man in 
 Osborne's youth, was Sir John Spencer, gene- 
 rally known as " Rich Spencer," to distin- 
 guish him from his poor but more illustrious 
 kinsman, Edmund Spenser, the poet. He 
 was chosen Sheriff of London in 1584, and Lord 
 Mayor in 1 594, and he took a leading part in 
 the preparations made by patriotic Londoners, 
 never more patriotic than then, to defend the 
 kingdom from the great attempt made by 
 Philip n. of Spain to conquer England by 
 means of the fleet which he vainly termed his 
 Invincible Armada. 
 
 Among a multitude of other great merchants 
 of London in the days of Queen Elizabeth was 
 Richard Staper, a native of Plymouth. With
 
 70 Osborne and Staper. 
 
 him Edward Osborne, on the death of his 
 father-in-law, seems to have entered into a 
 sort of partnership. They traded, as Grcsham 
 and the others did, in all sorts of commodities 
 brought from the Continent to England, as 
 \vell as in the various English goods, which 
 were found useful to Continental buyers. They 
 also shared in trade to more distant parts. 
 
 A curious letter exists, written in 1578 by 
 a John Withal, one of the first Englishmen 
 who visited South America, telling how he 
 had found his way to Brazil, and desired to 
 promote English trade with the new Portu- 
 guese settlements and the rude natives in that 
 region. He urged Osborne and Staper to 
 send a cargo of London goods to Brazil, where 
 they could be sold for thrice their value at 
 home, and to let the ship return loaded with 
 some of the excellent sugar produced there. 
 "If you have any stomach thereto," he said, 
 " in the name of God do you espy out a fine 
 bark of 70 or 80 tons, and send her hither." 
 Of the sort of goods to be put into this " fine 
 bark " he gave a careful list, including woollen 
 goods of all sorts, cloths and flannels, hoUands 
 and hose, shirts and doublets, besides " 4 
 pounds of silk, 4 dozen scissors, 24 dozen 
 knives, 6000 fish-hooks, and 400 pounds of 
 tin, with a little scarlet, parchment, lace, and 
 crimson velvet."
 
 Their Trading Enterprises. y i 
 
 Staper and Osborne do not appear to have 
 sent out the cargo asked for by Withal. They 
 left other merchants to begin the great English 
 trade with South America, and made it their 
 chief business to open up a thriving trade with 
 a district nearer England, though far enough 
 off to be reached only by dangerous voyaging. 
 This district included Turkey, and the adjoin- 
 ing shores of the INIediterranean known as the 
 Levant. Thither, in former times, before the 
 passage round the Cape of Good Hope had 
 been discovered, merchants of various nations 
 had brought all the costly merchandise of the 
 East Indies, rich spices and precious stones, 
 silks, laces, calicoes, and other textile goods. 
 All through the Middle Ages the great Vene- 
 tian merchants had bought up these articles, 
 and sent their ships with them to Antwerp 
 and London, and the other trading towns of 
 western Europe. But, as English merchants 
 grew in wealth and influence, they grudged 
 the profits which the Venetians secured by this 
 arrangement. They resolved to go to the Le- 
 vant and buy the goods for themselves, direct 
 from the eastern merchants, who brought it 
 thither in their caravans. This they had done 
 in irregular ways, yet with great profit, for 
 more than a century before the time of Edward 
 Osborne. Osborne and his friends determined 
 tiiat it should be done in a more systematic
 
 72 The Turkey Company. 
 
 way and with much more profit ; and with 
 that object, in 1581, they founded the Levant 
 or Turkey Company. The charter of the com- 
 pany, granted in that year by Queen Elizabeth, 
 tells how " Sir Edward Osborne and Richard 
 Stapcr had, at their own great costs and 
 charges, found out and opened a trade to 
 Turkey, not heretofore, in the memory of any 
 man now living, known to be commonly used 
 and frequented by way of merchandise by any 
 English merchants ; whereby many good offices 
 may be done for the peace of Christendom, 
 relief of Christian slaves, and good vent for 
 the commodities of the realm, to the advance- 
 ment of the Queen's honour and dignity, the 
 increase of her revenue, and the general wealth 
 of the realm." 
 
 Therefore the Turkey Company was founded, 
 with Edward Osborne for its first governor, and 
 Richard Staper, Thomas Smythe, and eleven 
 others, for its first directors under him. They 
 alone, of Englishmen, were to be allowed to 
 trade with Turkey, and a share of their profits 
 was to be paid to the Queen in return for the 
 privileges thus granted to them. They lost no 
 time in fitting out some large vessels — so large 
 and so well made that the merchants were 
 publicly thanked by Queen Elizabeth for their 
 skilful ship-building. In 1592, one of these 
 ships — the Susan — was sent out under compe-
 
 Its First Expeditions. 73 
 
 tent agents, instructed to make a treaty with 
 the Porte, to establish consuls in the differ- 
 ent towns, and to open up an active trade. 
 Messengers were specially sent to inquire into 
 the nature of dyeing-stuffs in Italy, and into the 
 art of dyeing ; also what species of them might 
 be produced in England, and how beneficial 
 such new productions might be to us. The 
 Stisan was provided with thirty-four guns with 
 which to resist any attacks that might be made 
 by the pirates of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli. 
 Pirates did give them some trouble, but the 
 voyage was very successful, as were most of 
 the other voyages undertaken every year dur- 
 ing the lifetime of Sir Edward Osborne. 
 
 The prosperous trade, however, was not car- 
 ried on without danger. In 1583, one of the 
 Turkey Company's ships, named the Jesus, 
 laden with currants and other articles from 
 Morea, was attacked by two Algerian galleys 
 and sunk, after being robbed of its valuable 
 contents. " The greatest number of the men 
 thereof were slain and drowned in the sea, the 
 residue being detained as slaves," said Sir Ed- 
 ward Osborne in the letter which he wrote to 
 the Dey of Algiers, complaining of his subjects' 
 conduct, and urging him to punish them for it, 
 and to force them to make restitution. Osborne 
 was especially anxious, as he should be, in seek- 
 ing the Dcy's "aid and favour, that the poor
 
 74 
 
 The Titrkij Compauy. 
 
 men detained in captivity might be set at 
 liberty, and return into their country." This 
 was not done for two years, many of the 
 prisoners having died of the cruel treatment 
 that they received in the interval. 
 
 Moorish pirates were not the only enemies 
 whom Osborne's merchantmen had to with- 
 stand. The years in which the Levant Com- 
 pany began its work were years of fierce 
 jealousy between England and Spain. It was 
 in 1588 that Philip II. sent his great Armada 
 to be utterly overthrown in its attempt to con- 
 quer England. In the years before and the 
 years after that great event, there was desper- 
 ate fighting on the sea between Spaniards and 
 Englishmen ; and as the ships of the Turkey 
 Company had to pass all round the coast of 
 
 A Galley of the iGth Century. 
 
 Spain, and through the Straits of Gibraltar, 
 they were particularly liable to attacks from
 
 A Fight zvith Spaniards. 75 
 
 their deadly enemy. One such attack was 
 made in 15 86, when eleven Spanish galleys 
 and frigates made an assault on the fleet of 
 five vessels which was that year despatched by 
 the Turkey Company for trade in the Levant. 
 They were bravely met, and bravely driven off. 
 A much more memorable fight, however, 
 occurred in 1590. Ten merchantmen had, in 
 the autumn of 1589, been sent out by the 
 Company. Returning in the following spring, 
 laden with the produce of the East, they met 
 for mutual protection, according to custom, 
 near the coast of Barbary. The meeting was 
 fortunate ; for twelve great Spanish galleys, 
 "bravely furnished and strongly provided with 
 men and ammunition," were lying in wait for 
 them. Let the rest of the story be told in the 
 quaint words of one of the party : " In the 
 morning early, being the 24th of April," he 
 says, "according to our usual customs, we said 
 service and made our prayers unto Almighty 
 God, beseeching Him to save us from the 
 hands of such tyrants as the Spaniards, whom 
 we knew and had found to be our most mortal 
 enemies upon the sea. And having finished 
 our prayers, and set ourselves in readiness, we 
 perceived them to come towards us, and that 
 they were indeed the Spanish galleys that lay 
 under the conduct of Andrew Doria, who is 
 Viceroy for the King of Spain in the Straits of
 
 7<5 A Fight witJi Spaniards. 
 
 Gibraltar, and a notable enemy to all English- 
 men. So, when they came somewhat nearer 
 to us, they waved us a main for the King of 
 Spain, and we waved them a main for the 
 Queen of England, at which time it pleased 
 Almighty God greatly to encourage us all in 
 such sort as that the nearer they came the less 
 we feared their great multitude and huge 
 number of men, which were planted in those 
 galleys to the number of two or three hun- 
 dred men in each galley. And it was thus 
 concluded among us, that the four first and 
 tallest ships should be placed hindmost, and 
 the weaker and smallest ships foremost ; and 
 so it was performed, every man being ready to 
 take part of such success as it should please 
 God to send. At the first encounter, the gal- 
 leys came upon us very fiercely ; yet so God 
 strengthened us that, if they had been ten 
 times more, we had not feared them at all. 
 Whereupon the Solomon, being a hot ship, and 
 having sundry cast pieces in her, gave the first 
 shot in such sour sort as that it sheared away 
 so many men as sat on one side of a galley, 
 and pierced her through in such manner as 
 that she was ready to sink ; which made them 
 to assault us the more fiercely. Whereupon 
 the rest of our ships, especially the Margaret 
 and John, the Minion, and the Ascension, fol- 
 lowed, and gave a hot charge upon them, and
 
 Right a?id Might. yj 
 
 they at us, where began a hot and fierce battle 
 with great valiancy, the one against the other, 
 and so continued for the space of six hours. 
 About the beginning of this our fight there 
 came two Flemings to our fleet, who, seeing 
 the force of the galleys to be so great, the one 
 of them presently yielded, struck his sails, and 
 was taken by the galleys ; whereas, if they 
 would have offered themselves to have fought 
 in our behalf and their own defence, they 
 needed not to have been taken so cowardly as 
 they were to their cost. The other Fleming, 
 being also ready to perform the like piece of 
 service, began to vail his sails, and intended to 
 have yielded immediately. But the trumpeter 
 in that ship plucked up his falchion, and slipped 
 to the pilot at the helm, and vowed that, if he 
 did not speedily put off to the English fleet, 
 and so take part with them, he would speedily 
 kill him ; which the pilot, for fear of death, did, 
 and so by that means they were defended 
 from present death, and from the tyranny of 
 those Spaniards, which doubtless they should 
 have found at their hands. Thus we continued 
 in fight six hours and somewhat more, wherein 
 God gave us the upper hand, and we escaped 
 the hands of so many enemies, who were con- 
 strained to flee into harbour and shroud them- 
 selves from us, and with speed to seek for their 
 own safctv. This was the handiwork of God,
 
 yS The Turkey Company. 
 
 who defended us from danger in such sort 
 as that there was not one man of us slain. 
 And in all this fierce assault made upon us by 
 the Spanish power, we sustained no hurt or 
 damage more than this, that the shrouds and 
 backstays of the Solomon, who gave the first 
 and last shot, and galled the enemy shrewdly 
 all the time of the battle, were clear stricken 
 off. After the battle was ceased — which was 
 on Easter Tuesday — we stayed for want of 
 wind before Gibraltar until the next morning, 
 when we were becalmed, and therefore looked 
 every hour when they would have sent forth 
 some fresh supply against us ; but they were 
 unable to do it ; for all their galleys were so 
 sore battered that they durst not come forth 
 of the harbour, by reason of our hot resistance 
 which they so lately before had received." 
 
 In that brave way the merchantmen of Eng- 
 land under Elizabeth withstood the force of 
 the proud Spanish ships of war, even in Spanish 
 waters. Men who could fight so bravely, so 
 piously, and so triumphantly, deserved success. 
 And the Turkey Company, in spite of all the ob- 
 stacles thrown in its way, succeeded famously. 
 All the articles of Eastern produce which Vene- 
 tian merchants had hitherto been almost the 
 only ones to bring to England, were by it made 
 available for English use in much greater abund- 
 ance, and at much less cost. The benefits that
 
 Osborne's other Work. 79 
 
 sprang from it were acknowledged by his 
 grateful contemporaries to be chiefly due to 
 Sir Edward Osborne. 
 
 Osborne was not exclusively devoted, how- 
 ever, to the Turkey Company. Having been 
 made Sheriff of London in 1574, he was chosen 
 Lord Mayor in 1583, and during his year of 
 office he seems to have been unusually zealous 
 in seeking the welfare of the city. On the 14th 
 of December he petitioned Queen Elizabeth's 
 Council that carriers might be prevented from 
 travelling on the Sabbath-day, either in Lon- 
 don or in its suburbs. A fortnight later he 
 addressed the Council again, complaining of 
 the great number of Irish beggars and vagrants 
 who infested the city and had to be committed 
 to Bridewell, and begging that they might all 
 be sent back to their own country, and that 
 care might be taken to prevent any others 
 from coming in their place. In the following 
 spring, again, we find him corresponding with 
 Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State, 
 about the ancient rights of the city of London 
 to control the affairs of Southwark. 
 
 Yet, in spite of these and kindred actions. 
 Sir Edward Osborne was especially a merchant. 
 As appears by his establishment of the Turkey 
 Company, his trading projects went far beyond 
 the limits of the Clothworkers' Guild, of wlu'ch 
 he was in his day tlie chief ornament. And
 
 8o The First Englishman in India. 
 
 his trading projects even exceeded the pro- 
 vince, wide though that was, of the Turkey 
 Company. In 1583, shortly before his mayor- 
 alty, he and his partners in the company 
 sent four merchants, named Fitch, Newberry, 
 Leedes, and Storey, to the Levant with in- 
 structions to proceed thence overland to 
 India, whither only one Englishman, Thomas 
 Stevens, a Jesuit priest, is known to have gone 
 before them for a century or more. Proceeding 
 on their errand, they conveyed some cloth and 
 tin, as samples of English commerce, to Aleppo, 
 and afterwards to Bagdad. Thence they passed 
 down the Tigris to Ormuz, and so on by sea 
 to Goa, where they arrived near the end of the 
 year. There they were roughly used, chiefly 
 through the jealousy of some Portuguese mer- 
 chants, who, having learnt the way to carry on 
 a prosperous trade with India, were unwilling 
 to let the English share it with them. Father 
 Stevens, however, and his fellow-Jesuits in- 
 terested themselves on behalf of the travellers. 
 " Had it not pleased God," said Newberry, " to 
 put into their minds to stand our friends, we 
 might have rotted in prison." By Stevens's 
 help, they escaped with only a short captivity, 
 and were able to extend their journey to many 
 inland parts of India, — to Ceylon, Malacca, 
 and Pegu. Newberry died on the road, how- 
 ever; Storey became a Jesuit priest; and Leedes
 
 Osborne's Last Work. 8i 
 
 entered the service of the great Akbar. Fitch 
 travelled about till 1591, when he returned to 
 England to write a full account of his wonder- 
 ful experiences and observations, and thus to 
 encourage his countrymen to enter upon the 
 famous trade with India, which must have 
 been in Osborne's mind when he sent him out. 
 In that trade, however, Sir Edward Osborne 
 was not able to take part. Two years before 
 Fitch's return, though not before the news of 
 his adventures had reached England, in 1589, 
 Osborne, and a number of other London mer- 
 chants, had petitioned Queen Elizabeth for 
 leave to send some ships direct to India, instead 
 of following the more dangerous plan of going 
 to Turkey by ship, and thence proceeding 
 overland. While that new project was under 
 consideration, moreover, Osborne was active in 
 securing a fresh charter for the Turkey Com- 
 pany, which had only been licensed for seven 
 years from 1581. In this he succeeded, and in 
 the new charter, which was dated the 7th of 
 January 1591, it was recorded how "our well- 
 beloved subjects, Edward Osborne, knight, and 
 Richard Stapcr, have, by great adventure and 
 industry, with their great cost and charges, by 
 the space of sundry late years, travelled, and 
 caused travel to be taken, as well by secret and 
 good means, as by dangerous ways and pas- 
 sages, both by land and sea, to find out and set 
 
 F
 
 82 Sir Edward Osborne's Death. 
 
 open a trade of merchandise and traffic into the 
 lands, islands, dominions, and territories of the 
 great Turk ; whereby we perceive that many- 
 good actions have been done and performed, 
 and hereafter are likely continually to be done 
 and performed for the peace of Christendom, 
 and the good and profitable vent and utterance 
 of the commodities of our realm." In reward 
 for these services, the old Turkey Company 
 was allowed to be reconstructed and made yet 
 more useful, under the name of the Company 
 of Merchants of the Levant. And as Sir Ed- 
 ward Osborne had been " the chief setter forth 
 and actor in the opening and putting into prac- 
 tice of the said trade," he was appointed its 
 governor, for the first year at any rate, " if he 
 so long shall live." 
 
 He did not live so long. He died early in 
 1 591, about sixty years old, too soon to take 
 his share in establishing the great trade be- 
 tween England and India which was to be of 
 such immense advantage to both countries, but 
 not before he had done more good work for 
 commerce and civilisation than most men are 
 able to achieve. He had been able, too, to add 
 much by his own exertions to the wealth that 
 came to him through his marriage with the 
 daughter of Sir William Hewit, whom he had 
 saved from drowning in the Thames. His son. 
 Sir Edward Osborne, was made a baronet by
 
 His Titled Descendants. 83 
 
 Charles I. ; and his grandson, Sir Thomas Os- 
 borne, having been an influential statesman 
 under Charles II. and James II., was created 
 Duke of Leeds by William III. in 1694 That 
 is only one out of many instances of famous 
 peerages and great titled families being made 
 by the enterprise and honesty of London mer- 
 chants.
 
 IV. 
 
 SIR WILLIAM HERRICK. 
 [1557-1653.] 
 
 '^N the quaint town of Leicester, in 
 1589, died old John Herrick, at the 
 age of seventy-six. He had been a 
 well-to-do gentleman, who, according to the 
 record on his tombstone, had " lived at his ease, 
 with Mary his wife, in one house, full two-and- 
 fifty years ; and in all that time never buried 
 man, woman, nor child, though they were some- 
 times twenty in household." He had twelve 
 children, and his wife, living till she was ninety- 
 seven, " did see, before her departure, of her 
 children, children's children, and their children, 
 to the number of a hundred and forty-two." 
 
 Most of the children of this fine old patri- 
 arch inherited his prosperity and happiness. 
 One of his daughters married Lawrence Hawes, 
 another married Sir Thomas Bennett, both of 
 them wealthy merchants of London. Robert, 
 his eldest son, was an ironmonger and iron-- 
 founder in Leicestershire, thrice mayor of his
 
 The Herricks in Leicester. 85 
 
 native town, and its representative in Parliament 
 in 1588. He had extensive ironworks, and 
 paper-mills as well, in Staffordshire. " You 
 know," he wrote to his brother, " that such 
 pleasant youths as I am do delight in the 
 pleasant woods, to hear the sweet birds sing, 
 the hammers go, and beetles in the paper-mills 
 at the same place also. For him that hath got 
 most of his wealth for this fifty years or near 
 that way, and now finds as good iron as there 
 was this forty years, as good weight, as good 
 workmen, as honest fellows, as good entertain- 
 ment, what want you more.'*" This contented 
 man " had two sons and nine daughters by one 
 wife, with whom he lived fifty-one years," and 
 he died, " very godly," at the age of seventy- 
 eight, in 161 8. His portrait was placed by 
 admiring friends in the town-hall of Leicester, 
 with this inscription : 
 
 " Ilis picture, whom you here see 
 When he is dead and rotten, 
 By this shall he remembered be, 
 When he would be forgotten." 
 
 Nicholas, the next son of worthy John Her- 
 rick, was sent to make his fortune in London. 
 Me was articled, in 1556, to a goldsmith in 
 Chcapsidc. " We do pray to God daily," wrote 
 his good father to him, when he had only been 
 in London a few months, " to bless you, and 
 to give you grace to be good, diligent, and
 
 S6 The Hcrricks in London. 
 
 obedient unto your master, both in word and 
 deed ; and be profitable unto him, as well be- 
 hind his back as before his face ; and trust nor 
 lend none of his goods without his leave and 
 consent. And if so be that you be faithful and 
 painful in your master's business, as I hope you 
 be, doubtless God will provide for you another 
 day the like as much again. I pray God to 
 give you grace to live in His fear, and then 
 you shall not do amiss ; and it shall be a great 
 comfort for your mother and me, and to all 
 your friends, and best to yourself another 
 day." 
 
 The good old man's prayers were answered. 
 Nicholas Herrick prospered in his business, 
 and, his apprenticeship being over, set up a 
 goodly shop of his own in Cheapside, near 
 to the memorable old Paul's Cross, a famous 
 place for open-air preaching upon great occa- 
 sions during many generations, which was 
 pulled down by order of the Commonwealth 
 in 1642. 
 
 To this Nicholas Herrick, his younger bro- 
 ther William, the most illustrious member of 
 the whole family, who was born in 1557, was 
 apprenticed in 1573 or 1574. The lad was in 
 London two or three years before he could be 
 spared from the shop to go down on a visit to 
 his parents. That he did in the autumn of 
 1576: "I give you hearty thanks," wrote old
 
 Young Wiiliani Herrick. 8y 
 
 John Herrick to Nicholas, " that you would 
 send him to Leicester to see us, for your 
 mother and I did long to see him, and so did 
 his brothers and sisters. We thought that he 
 had never been so tall as he is, nor never 
 would have been." 
 
 Very pleasant and instructive are the letters 
 that passed between the members of this happy 
 family of the Herricks, which time has spared 
 for us to read. They show us very vividly 
 what sort of intercourse existed between pa- 
 rents and children three centuries ago, in the 
 days of good Queen Bess. 
 
 The tall lad was not able to stay long in 
 Leicester. He soon returned to London, to 
 be followed by the loving thoughts of his 
 parents. Here is part of a letter written in 
 1578 by the mother to " her loving son William 
 Herrick, in London, dwelling with Nicholas 
 Herrick, in Cheap," which is none the worse 
 for its bad grammar: — "William, with my 
 hearty commendations, and glad to hear of 
 your good health, &c. ; and this is to give you 
 thanks for my pomegranate and red herring 
 you sent me, wishing you to give my daughter 
 Hawes thanks for the pomegranate and box 
 of marmalade that she sent me. Furthermore 
 I have sent you a pair of knit hose, arid a pair 
 of knit kersey gloves. I would have you send 
 me word how they serve you, for if the gloves
 
 88 Hcrrick and his Parents. 
 
 be too little for you, you should give them to 
 one of your brother Hawes's children, and I 
 would send you another pair." 
 
 Red herrings and pomegranates, and other 
 delicacies, not easily to be procured in Lei- 
 cester, seem to have been sent down by Master 
 William as often as he had an opportunity of 
 confiding them to the care of some chance 
 traveller, in days when there were not even 
 coaches to travel by ; and, in exchange, he 
 received occasional parcels of warm stockings, 
 and other household goods. In a letter written 
 in March 1580, we find John Herrick thanking 
 William, and his brothers and sisters in Lon- 
 don, for " all their tokens." " And we be sorry," 
 he proceeds, " that you have been at so much 
 cost as you were at for your oysters and lam- 
 preys you sent. A quartern of them had been 
 sufficient to send at one time. I would have 
 you be a good husband, and save your money. 
 My cousin, Thomas Herrick, and his wife, hath 
 sent you a gammon of bacon, with commen- 
 dation to your sister Mary and you." 
 
 Near the end of 1582 Nicholas Herrick took 
 to himself a wife. " I trust now that you be a 
 married man," wrote his father on the 15th of 
 December, " for I heard that you were ap- 
 pointed to marry on Monday; and if you be 
 married, we pray God to send you both much 
 joy and comfort together, and to all her friends
 
 Father Merrick's Complaints. 89 
 
 and yours. We wish ourselves that we had 
 been with you at your wedding. But the time 
 of the year is so that it had been painful to 
 your mother and me to have ridden such a 
 journey, the days being so short and the way 
 so foul ; chiefly, being so old and unwieldy as 
 we both be ; and specially your mother hath 
 such pains in one of her knee-bones, that she 
 cannot go many times about the house without 
 a staff in her hand : and I myself have had, for 
 the space of almost this half-year, much pain 
 df my right shoulder, that I cannot get on my 
 gown without help. Age bringeth infirmities 
 with it ; God hath so ordained." 
 
 One of the infirmities of age that afflicted 
 the good old man was a little sharpness of 
 temper. Touches of anger are in his later 
 letters which are entirely wanting in his earlier 
 ones. " I pray you," he wrote to William in 
 March 15S3, " show your brother Nicholas that 
 I think that paper is scant in London, beause 
 I never received any letter from him since he 
 was n.arricd." 
 
 And Nicholas was not the only child of 
 whom John Merrick made complaint. His 
 daughter Mary had gone up to London many 
 years before, as companion to Nicholas ; and 
 she found London life so much pleasanter than 
 Leicester life, that when the special object of 
 her stay was over, she was not willing to go
 
 90 Mary Her rick's Stubbornness. 
 
 home again. So her father sent her a scolding 
 letter in June 1583 : — "You were obedient at 
 our desire," he said, " to go to London, to keep 
 your brother's house when he had need of you ; 
 but now he, being married, may spare you. 
 He is very sorry that you should take the 
 turns you do ; but he tells your mother and 
 me that you will needs do so. You ought to 
 be obedient unto us now, as you were at your 
 going up ; and not only then and now, but at 
 all times, as you know by the commandment 
 of God you ought to be ; likewise you be bound 
 to be obedient to your parents by the law of 
 nature and by the law of the realm. We would 
 be both very sorry that you should be found 
 disobedient to us or stubborn. We do not send 
 for you for any ill purpose towards you, but 
 for your comfort and ours. We do not send 
 for you to work or toil about any business, but 
 to oversee my house, and do your own work, 
 and have a chamber to yourself, and one of 
 your sisters to bear you company. I thank 
 God all your brethren and sisters do show 
 themselves obedient to your mother and me ; 
 and, in doing so, they do but their duty, and 
 God will bless them the better for it. I pray 
 you let me not find you contrary to them, for 
 if you do, it will be a great grief to your mother 
 and me in these our old days, and be an occa- 
 sion to shorten our days, which cannot be long;
 
 Death among the Herricks. 91 
 
 but grief of heart and mind will shorten life, 
 as daily experience doth show. Remember 
 yourself whether you have done well or no. 
 We might have commanded you, but we have 
 desired and prayed you, and you refuse to be 
 obedient." 
 
 Mary Herrick still refused ; yet it is likely 
 that she was forgiven when her father heard 
 that the reason for her staying in London, was a 
 forthcoming marriage between her and the rich 
 merchant. Sir Thomas Bennett, who was Lord 
 Mayor of London in 1603. 
 
 Six years after the short quarrel with his 
 daughter, John Herrick died, and before long, 
 in the prime of life, his son Nicholas died also. 
 " I do advertise you," the father had written 
 twelve or thirteen years before, " to make your 
 book of reckoning perfect, as well what you do 
 owe as what you have owing. For we be all 
 uncertain when it shall please God to call us, 
 whether in young age, middle age, or old age," 
 The warning was needed by Nicholas Herrick. 
 Death's summons to him was very sudden. 
 Looking one day out of an upper window of 
 his house in Chcapsidc, he fell into the street, 
 and so was killed. 
 
 He left one infant son, Robert Herrick, who, 
 becoming a parson, was one of the sweetest of 
 all the sweet singers that fluttered about the 
 court of Charles I., and another son, who
 
 92 The London Goldsmiths, 
 
 attained eminence as a merchant. But his 
 real successor in the goldsmith's business in 
 Cheapside was his younger brother and former 
 apprentice, William. 
 
 The trade of a goldsmith was then one of 
 the most lucrative and honourable that an Eng- 
 lishman could follow. It meant much more 
 than dealing in jewelry and golden trinkets. 
 The old Goldsmiths' Guild had the exclusive 
 power of coining money ; and to its members 
 belonged especially that irregular sort of bank- 
 ing, which, before it was assigned to a parti- 
 cular class of traders, was also often resorted 
 to by great merchants like Whittington and 
 Gresham. The goldsmiths, whose shops were 
 generally in Cheapside, were great money- 
 lenders and money-changers. Kings and 
 nobles, country gentlemen and merchants, if 
 in need of cash, brought them not only their 
 jewels and trinkets, but often their title-deeds 
 and written bonds, to be held in security for 
 the coin which they required to borrow. Thus 
 they were something between the pawnbrokers 
 and the bankers of modern times. All who 
 needed money, and to whom it was safe to lend 
 it, borrowed from them, and paid good interest 
 for the loans, often forfeiting their property 
 when they were unable to pay back the debts 
 at the proper time, and thus adding yet more 
 to the wealth of the lenders.
 
 Herrick's Ocaipations. 93 
 
 Among the goldsmiths of this sort, in the 
 time of Queen Elizabeth, William Herrick 
 came to be the most eminent. The Queen 
 herself was one of his best customers. Em- 
 ploying Gresham, Ducket, and others, to con- 
 duct her foreign monetary business, she went 
 to Herrick for the small loans and minor bar- 
 gains to which, her exchequer being often 
 nearly empty, she very often had to resort. 
 Could we discover the ledgers which old John 
 Herrick bade his son keep carefully, we should 
 see a wonderful array of loans, not only to 
 Elizabeth, but also to nearly every one of her 
 famous courtiers, the great Earl of Leicester, 
 and his noble nephew. Sir Philip Sidney, the 
 great Earl of Essex, and his worthier rival Sir 
 Walter Raleigh, and half-a-hundrcd other men 
 of excellent wit and excellent grace ; men 
 whose courtly bearing, noble thought, and 
 noble action, make the age of Queen Eliza- 
 beth the most illustrious in our history. 
 
 So high was Elizabeth's opinion of Her- 
 rick, -that she once sent him as ambassador to 
 the Sultan of Turkey. But she generally 
 found occupation enough for him in his proper 
 trade. To her and to her subjects he lent 
 money almost without limit ; and out of the 
 interest thereon, as well as out of the profits of 
 his ordinary work as a goldsmith, he was rich 
 enough, in 1595, to buy Bcaumanor Park, in
 
 94 " Ji'iS^^'^S Gcordiey 
 
 Leicestershire. In 1601 he became member of 
 ParHament for Leicester ; and on that occasion, 
 we are told, " he gave to the town in kindness 
 twelve silver spoons." 
 
 In 1603 Queen Elizabeth died, and James 
 VI. of Scotland became King of England as 
 James I. The new King, in consideration of 
 his long and faithful service to his late mistress, 
 continued to employ Herrick in the same sort 
 of service, and dignified it by conferring on him 
 the title of Principal Jeweller or Teller to the 
 Crown. 
 
 Under King James, however, Herrick had a 
 friendly rival in a man in some respects wor- 
 thier and abler than himself. This man was 
 the famous George Heriot. Heriot, born in 
 1563, had carried on the same sort of trade, 
 regular and irregular, for more than a dozen 
 years, under King James in Scotland. His 
 little shop or booth, measuring about seven 
 feet square, was the richest spot in Edinburgh, 
 the great resort of King James and his crowd 
 of spendthrift courtiers. One day, according to 
 tradition, Heriot visited the King at Holyrood 
 House, and seeing him sprawling before a fire 
 of perfumed wood, praised it for its sweetness. 
 " Ay," answered the King, " and it is costly." 
 Heriot replied that, if his Majesty would come 
 to his shop against St Giles's Kirk, he would 
 show him a yet costlier one. " Indeed and I
 
 His Services to King James. 95 
 
 will," exclaimed the monarch. On reaching 
 the shop, however, nothing was to be seen but 
 a few poor flames flickering in the goldsmith's 
 forge. "Is this, then, your fine fire.''" asked 
 King James. " Wait a little," answered the 
 merchant, " till I get the fuel ; " and then, 
 opening his chest, he took thence a bond for 
 £20QO, which he had lent to the King, and 
 threw it among the embers. " Now," he asked, 
 "whether is your Majesty's fire or mine the 
 better .-• " " Yours, most certainly, Master 
 Heriot," was the answer. 
 
 Let all who like believe the tale. But it is 
 clear that Heriot was rich enough to pay his 
 Sovereign a compliment of this kind over and 
 over again. He throve wonderfully as Gold- 
 smith in Ordinary to King James, and as 
 money-lender to both the Kingand his courtiers, 
 and when, in 1605, James went southwards 
 with his wasteful followers, Heriot followed him 
 to open a larger shop " foranent the new Ex- 
 change," which was just being set up in the 
 Strand, on the site of the present Adclphi, and 
 to share with William Herrick the lucrative 
 office of Jeweller to the King of England. 
 
 Of Hcriot's busy life in London a clearer 
 and completer notion is to be derived from the 
 fictitious but truthfully-drawn portrait of him 
 in Sir Walter Scott's " Fortunes of Nigel," than 
 from any mere statement of the few authentic
 
 96 Heriot and Herrick. 
 
 facts that have come down to us. The " Jing- 
 ling Gcordic " of Scott's delightful novel, who, 
 by worth of character, goodness of heart, and 
 rectitude of principle, set a noble example of 
 manliness in an over-seLfish and ungenerous 
 age, who "walked through life with a steady- 
 pace and an observant eye, neglecting no oppor- 
 tunity of assisting those who were not possessed 
 of the experience necessary for their own guid- 
 ance," was, as far as we can judge, the veritable 
 George Heriot of real life. The little that we 
 actually know of his private history shows him 
 to have been a man as kind and self-sacrificing 
 in his dealings with others as he was upright 
 and persevering in the pursuit of his own 
 fortunes. 
 
 Heriot, in the Strand, and Herrick, in Cheap- 
 side, ran a race of wealth together. Heriot 
 was plain George Heriot to the last. But on 
 Easter Tuesday, in 1605, says an envious 
 letter-writer of the time, " one Master William 
 Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside, was knighted 
 for making a hole in the great diamond the 
 King did wear. The party little expected the 
 honour ; but he did his work so well as won the 
 King to an extraordinary liking of it." 
 
 James I. knighted men for smaller services 
 than making a hole in a great diamond ; and 
 Sir William Herrick well deserved his honour. 
 In the same year he again entered Parliament
 
 Herrick's Mone^'-Lcnding. 97 
 
 as member for Leicester. He was also chosen 
 alderman of Farringdon Without, but from this 
 office, as well as from employment as Sheriff of 
 London, he was afterwards excused, on pay- 
 ment of iJ^SOO, "in respect," as it was said, 
 " that the said Sir William is the King's sworn 
 servant, and cannot so necessarily afford the 
 daily service as behoveth." 
 
 During the next dozen years and more Sir 
 William Herrick was in almost daily service at 
 the Court. Great sums of money were lent by 
 him to the King in formal ways for public and 
 private uses ; and he also lent much money in 
 the less regular ways of personal friendship. 
 " Since my being teller," he wrote in a peti- 
 tion dated 161 6, " I have lent his Majesty divers 
 great sums of money gratis, which none of my 
 fellows ever did, to my loss and disadvantage of 
 at least ^^3000." Yet all these good offices, he 
 complained, were forgotten, and the ungrateful 
 monarch allowed him even to be defrauded 
 and tricked out of his due. A blunder had 
 been made by a clerk in copying a deed, which 
 unless corrected, would cause him a consider- 
 able loss every year. " And yet, such is my 
 misfortune," he said, " that this little and just 
 favour is not yet allowed me." 
 
 That petition and others of the same sort 
 
 were answered with gracious words and large 
 
 promises, and Ilcrrick continued to fnid means 
 
 G
 
 98 Her rick in Retirement. 
 
 for the extravagant indulgences of the King 
 and his son, Prince Charles, afterwards Charles 
 I. He was a rich man, however, and found 
 good use for his riches in charitable works and 
 schemes for local improvement in Leicester and 
 its neighbourhood. 
 
 In that neighbourhood, at his fine estate of 
 Beaumanor Park, he seems to have settled 
 down, as a retired merchant of great wealth, in 
 or near the year 1624. There he lived splen- 
 didly and happily, dealing kindly with his 
 tenants, and winning their hearty love and es- 
 teem. At every Christmas-time these tenants 
 crowded up with presents, betokening their 
 gratitude. Apples and cakes, puddings and 
 sausages, chickens, capons, turkeys, geese, and 
 pigs, here and there " one pound of currants " 
 or " a bottle of claret wine," are among the 
 articles which the good and careful eld man 
 noted down as received from his various de- 
 pendants. 
 
 Sometimes, too, these dependants, according 
 to the fashion of those days, entertained him 
 with quaint dramatic shows, of the sort still 
 feebly represented by Jack-in-the-Green' and 
 Punch-and-Judy. One of them was prefaced by 
 this speech, spoken by the play-master of the 
 day : " The rare report of your worship's favour, 
 gentle acceptance, extraordinary kindness, and 
 most liberal eutertainment, that you have
 
 Cojintry Courtesies. 99 
 
 always showed to your neighbours, hath not 
 
 only won the hearts of your domesticated 
 
 friends, but hath now drawn poor Amintas, 
 
 even in the waning of his age, from the downs, 
 
 to come to present himself and all the fruits of 
 
 his forepassed youth, the lively offspring of 
 
 this aged shepherd, a few silly boys, to make 
 
 such sport this night in square-play, as shall in 
 
 no sort be offensive to you, nor much hurtful 
 
 to them, if fortune favour them not ; for they 
 
 bring not mountains of money, but mole-hills 
 
 gathered on mountains. I thought good, as 
 
 my duty is, to acquaint your worship with my 
 
 intended purpose, and desire to know how you 
 
 will accept of me and my poor boys, whose 
 
 rudeness I hope you will impute to my mean 
 
 estate, for shepherds be no courtiers." 
 
 Sir William Hcrrick's pleasant life was shared 
 
 by his good wife, the Lady Joan, famous in her 
 
 day for her piety and her bounty. She had 
 
 some beauty, too, if there is truth in an old 
 
 portrait of her which bears this motto : — 
 
 " Art may her outside thus present to view, 
 How fair within no art or tongue can show." 
 
 Something of her inner character, however, 
 may be gathered from a letter written by her 
 to her husband when she was absent from him 
 in 16 16 : " Sweetheart," she there says, " I hope 
 you remember Mr Votier's ' Godly Use of 
 Prayer' every morning and evening, with all
 
 100 TJie Lady Joan Ilcrrick. 
 
 your company. As you love God, leave it not 
 undone ; it shall bring a blessing on you and 
 yours. God knows how short our time shall 
 be on earth, as we see daily fearful examples to 
 put us in mind of our last end. One of our neigh- 
 bours at Richmond went out to milk her kine, 
 as well as ever she was in her life, and milked 
 two kine, and suddenly fell down dead, and 
 never spoke more." Then she talks of the bring- 
 ing up of her daughters, whom she does not like 
 to send to a boarding-school. " If you should 
 board them forth, they would cost you £\a^ z.- 
 year at the least, and save nothing at home ; 
 besides, they will never be bred in religion as at 
 home, and wear out twice as many clothes as 
 at home. All things considered, this is the 
 best course." So Lady Joan tells her husband 
 that she has hired a governess. " My sister 
 Hicks sent me word of her, how fit a woman 
 she was for me to breed up my girls, and I, 
 knowing it of my own knowledge to be so, I 
 hope you will not be angry with me for it. 
 God, that knows my heart, knows I was never 
 more loth to offend you in all my life than I 
 have been within this half-year ; and so I hope 
 ever I shall be." 
 
 In 1624, at about the same time as Sir Wil- 
 liam Herrick's retirement from business, his 
 associate George Heriot died. Heriot's good- 
 hearted ness was even greater than Herrick's. 
 
 I
 
 Heriot 's Hospital. i o i 
 
 Having lived an honest life in times when dis- 
 honesty was too much the fashion, he was much 
 occupied near its close in settling how best to 
 spend his large fortune. He bequeathed it to 
 his native city of Edinburgh, where Heriot's 
 Hospital, '' for education, nursing, and upbring- 
 ing of poor orphans," is a standing proof of his 
 wise munificence. 
 
 Sir William Hcrrick lived in well-employed 
 retirement for nearly thirty years. He died in 
 1653, ^t the age of ninety-six.
 
 V. 
 
 SIR THOMAS SMYTHE. 
 [1560-1625.] 
 
 iHE richest and most influential London 
 merchant in the reign of James I. — 
 richer, and by reason of the nature of 
 his trade, more influential than Sir William Her- 
 rick — was Sir Thomas Smythe. His father, also 
 a Thomas Smythe, was an enterprising and pros- 
 perous trader, contemporary with Sir Thomas 
 Gresham, in the days of Queen Elizabeth. To 
 a trade very similar to Gresham's he added 
 the lucrative business of Customer to the Queen ; 
 that is, he undertook to collect all the duties 
 upon goods brought into London, or exported 
 thence to foreign parts. Queen Elizabeth's 
 " customers," however, were very difl"erent from 
 modern custom-house officers. They chose 
 their own way of levying the duties, and made 
 their profit out of so much as they could collect 
 over and above a fixed sum which they paid 
 every year to the Crown. Old Thomas
 
 An Elizabethan " Customer!' 103 
 
 Smythe's annual payment was ^^ 14,000; and 
 we may be sure that the surplus which fell to 
 his share was considerable, probably more than 
 another sum of ;^ 14,000. 
 
 His son succeeded him in the office of Cus- 
 tomer, apparently in 1590. But the foreign 
 trade of England had by that time so increased, 
 that instead of paying ^14,000 a year, as his 
 father had done, he was able to pay just thrice 
 as much, or ^^"42,000 ; and that amount was 
 raised, a few years afterwards, to ;^5o,ooo a 
 year. Yet he made a handsome profit, which 
 helped him to share in other profitable under- 
 takings. 
 
 Of the private life of Thomas Smythe, the 
 son, we know very little. He was born about 
 1560, and was a member of the Skinners' 
 Guild. He must have been nearly forty when, 
 in 1600, he began to take a leading share in 
 the management of the great East India Com- 
 pany. 
 
 Nearly twenty years before there had been 
 talk of sending English ships to India, there 
 to compete with the Portuguese and Spaniards 
 in the prosperous trade which they had been 
 carrying on for some time past. Great ves- 
 sels, known as carracks, had gone out, two 
 or three or more together, every year, for the 
 purpose of buying the spices and other costly 
 commodities, or of seizing them by force of
 
 104 Trade with the East Indies. 
 
 arms, and thus great wealth had come to 
 Portugal and Spain. The English merchants 
 coveted a share of this wealth, and, during the 
 war between England and Spain, they had 
 occasionally possessed some of it by way- 
 laying the carracks as they proceeded home- 
 wards and capturing their contents. But, until 
 the defeat of the Great Armada and other 
 deeds of prowess proved to all the world that 
 England was more than a match for Spain, 
 they did not dare to enter upon a regular 
 course of trade with India. Sir Edward Os- 
 borne and the Turkey Company had pro- 
 cured some East Indian merchandise through 
 the Levant, and had sent Fitch and others to 
 pave the way for an overland commerce. It 
 was reserved for Sir Thomas Smythe and the 
 East India Company to begin the commerce 
 by help of ships, rivalling the Spanish carracks 
 in size and strength, which sailed to India 
 round the Cape of Good Hope. 
 
 This was begun in 1591, when three large 
 vessels were despatched to the East. One of 
 them was wrecked on the way ; and another 
 was sent home with invalids ; but the third, 
 commanded by Captain James Lancaster, 
 reached its destination, and there laid the 
 foundations of future trade. Terrible troubles 
 befell Lancaster and his crew on their home- 
 ward voyage. Their ship and most of its
 
 All li-asl Indian Carrack of the lOth Ccnlury.
 
 The East India Company. 107 
 
 people were lost, and the few survivors, rescued 
 by a French vessel, did not reach England till 
 1594. The report which they brought home 
 concerning the wealth of the East Indies and 
 the prospects of a wonderful trade with them, 
 however, encouraged the London merchants 
 to make preparations for further enterprise in 
 the same direction. In this, as was well, they 
 proceeded cautiously. Six years were spent 
 in deliberations and arrangements. On the 
 31st of December 1600, a charter was con- 
 ferred by Queen Elizabeth upon the East 
 India Company, consisting of two hundred 
 and fifteen members, who included some noble- 
 men and courtiers, as Avell as all the leading 
 merchants of London. 
 
 Of this company Thomas Smythe, having 
 been one of the most active in its formation, 
 was appointed governor. Through a curious 
 adventure, however, he was removed from the 
 office in the following April. In the autumn 
 of 1600 he had been made Sheriff of London, 
 and as Sheriff he had had to take account ot 
 a strange episode in London history. The 
 famous Earl of Essex, having for many years 
 been the principal favourite of Queen Elizabctii, 
 had in 1599 been made by her Lord- Lieutenant 
 of Ireland. He had misused the powers com- 
 mitted to him, had been recalled and thrown 
 into prison as a traitor, and, though soon
 
 io8 Sniytlic in Trouble. 
 
 released, had not succeeded in winning back 
 the favour of the Queen. In despair thereat, 
 he conceived a foolish plan of insurrection in 
 February 1601, one inducement being a pre- 
 tended message from Sheriff Smythe to the 
 effect, that, if he would come into the city, a 
 thousand trained-band men would be ready 
 to meet him and enable him to seize the 
 Tower, whence he could dictate terms to the 
 Oueen. 
 
 Accordingly, on the morning of Sunday the 
 8th of January, the earl, attended by a few 
 crazy friends, and a silly crowd, proceeded from 
 his house in the Strand into the city, and made 
 his way to Smythe's house at the corner of 
 Fenchurch Street. There he found none of the 
 trained-band whose support he counted on, and 
 learned that Smythe himself, on hearing of his 
 approach, had given information to the Lord 
 Mayor. He therefore went home disconsolate, 
 to be speedily taken prisoner, brought to trial, 
 and executed for high treason on the 25th of 
 February. 
 
 There is nothing to show that Sheriff Smythe 
 was in any way an accomplice in this foolish 
 plot. His name appears to have been used for 
 a wicked hoax, intended to tempt the Earl of 
 Essex to his own ruin. But a certain amount 
 of suspicion fell upon him. He was committed 
 to the Tower, and there detained for about five
 
 Sinythe in Favour. 109 
 
 months before the case could be fully investi- 
 gated and he be honourably acquitted. 
 
 In the meanwhile, the young East India 
 Company could not get on without a governor. 
 On the nth of April it was decided "that the 
 election of another governor be proceeded with, 
 because the company cannot endure the delay 
 and expectation of Thomas Smythe's being 
 discharged from his imprisonment," and Alder- 
 man Watts was chosen in his place. As some 
 compensation, it would seem, for the hard usage 
 to which he had been exposed, Queen Elizabeth 
 sent the sheriff on a diplomatic mission to 
 Russia. But his connexion with the East 
 India Company docs not seem to have been 
 resumed for more than two years. 
 
 In 1603, immediately after the accession of 
 James I., he was summoned to Court, and 
 knighted by the new King. In 1604 he was 
 again appointed Governor of the East India 
 Company, and the appointment was renewed 
 .in 1605, and, with a gap of a year, in 1607, 
 when he consented to take office "with the 
 promise that the company expect no further 
 of him at courts or otherwise than his other 
 affairs will permit." He was again chosen in 
 1608, and in 1609, when he was chiefly instru- 
 mental in procuring from King James a new 
 and improved charter for the company. For 
 that service, and for all the services that pre-
 
 1 10 TJic East India Company. 
 
 ceded it, he was "gratified with ;{J"50o" ss a 
 token of his friends' esteem. But in princely- 
 way, he objected to take this gift, and at length 
 only consented to receive half the amount. 
 " The residue," it is said, " his worship kindly 
 yielded to take." Except during two or three 
 years, when " his other affairs " forced him to 
 decline the honour, he seems to have held the 
 office steadily until his final retirement from 
 commercial life. 
 
 During his lifetime, indeed, and whether in 
 actual office or not, Sir Thomas Smythe was 
 the real master of the East India Company. 
 All its members regarded him as their head 
 and champion ; all its enemies considered him 
 their great opponent ; and all its successes 
 were mainly attributed to his wisdom and 
 energy. 
 
 These successes were great. The first ex- 
 pedition was composed of four stout ships, 
 containing nearly five hundred men, which 
 sailed out of Torbay on the 20th of April, 
 under the leadership of Captain Lancaster. 
 He took with him several copies of a letter 
 from Queen Elizabeth, one of which was to be 
 delivered to each of the various kings and 
 potentates whom he might visit in the East. 
 Therein the Queen represented that, God hav- 
 ing ordained that no place should enjoy all 
 the things appertaining to man's use, but that
 
 Its First Expedition. in 
 
 one country should have need of another, and 
 that thus there should be commerce and inter- 
 change of friendship between the people of 
 remote districts, she had sent out these her 
 subjects, to visit the territories of the East, and 
 to offer trade according to the usage of mer- 
 chants. She promised that they should behave 
 honourably, and therefore asked that they 
 might be kindly entertained, and be allowed, 
 both to buy and sell in the various countries 
 and to learn the languages and follow the 
 fashions of each. 
 
 The incidents of this first expedition of the 
 great East India Company are curious. Lan- 
 caster sailed easily, though very slowly as com- 
 pared with modern rates of travelling, down to 
 the Equator. There he was becalmed for some 
 weeks, and the crew would have been short of 
 provisions had they not, on the 2ist of June, 
 fallen in with a Portuguese carrack, which was 
 soon captured and despoiled of a goodly store 
 of wine, oil, and meal. Much sickness befell 
 them as they slowly sailed towards the Cape, 
 and they were obliged to put in at Saldanha 
 Bay early in August. There Lancaster built 
 huts for the sick, and conversed with the people 
 in " the cattle's tongue, which," he says, " was 
 never changed at the confusion of Babel;" 
 that is, he shouted " moo " and " baa," to show 
 that he wanted to buy cows and sheep. Keep-
 
 1 1 2 Perils and IlTarvds. 
 
 ing on good terms with the Caffres, he pro- 
 cured more than a thousand sheep and about 
 fifty oxen, a piece of iron six inches long being 
 the price paid for each of the former, and one 
 eight inches long for each of the latter. The 
 Caffres were anxious to sell him land as well, 
 and to induce him to settle among them ; but 
 two months' careful management served to re- 
 store the sick men to health, and, on the 29th 
 of October, he put to sea again. The Cape of 
 Good Hope was doubled on the ist of Novem- 
 ber, and the stormy seas to the east of it were 
 traversed without damage. Fresh sickness 
 among the crews made necessary another and 
 longer delay, apparently on the coast of Mada- 
 gascar. Thence they sailed across the Indian 
 Ocean, leaving India considerably to the north. 
 Halting at an island near Sumatra, they saw 
 w^hat they supposed to be a religious service of 
 the natives, in which the priests, wearing horns 
 and tails like devils, appeared to be worshipping 
 the prince of the devils. They also reported 
 that they saw a wonderful tree, 'growing from 
 a worm which gradually dies as the tree grows, 
 the branches of the tree itself, when cut off and 
 dried, being turned into white coral ! 
 
 Sumatra was reached on the 2d of June 
 1602, more than thirteen months after the de- 
 parture from England. Lancaster was gener- 
 ously received by the king of the island, who
 
 Trading and Treaties. 1 1 3 
 
 sent a guard of honour, including six elephants, 
 to conduct him to court. He presented Queen 
 Elizabeth's letter and presents of looking- 
 glasses and other articles, and was entertained 
 at a feast, in which all the dishes used were of 
 gold and other costly metal. After that he 
 bought a good deal of pepper, cinnamon, and 
 cloves, the chief produce of the island. Then 
 he passed on to Bantam, and formed an alli- 
 ance with its king, and exchanged English 
 goods for the pepper and spices of the natives. 
 Some of these natives proved thievish, but 
 Lancaster was authorised to kill any one he 
 might find about his house at night-time, and, 
 it is said, " after thus killing four or five, they 
 lived in peace." 
 
 At Bantam the ships were loaded with the 
 commodities they were sent out to buy, and 
 Lancaster, having made treaties with the 
 people of two large islands of the East Indies, 
 started on his homeward voyage on the 20th 
 of February. This was attended with con- 
 siderable trouble, though hardly greater than 
 was usual to the unwieldy vessels of those 
 times. A furious storm did damage, near to 
 Sumatra, which could never be repaired ; and 
 two months afterwards, when they were near 
 the Cape of Good Hope, Lancaster's own ship 
 was nearly wrecked by another storm that 
 
 caused much delay, as they had to push .slowly 
 
 II
 
 I 1 4 TJic East India Company. 
 
 on to St Helena before the injuries could be 
 repaired. They entered the English Channel, 
 having been absent nearly two years and a 
 half, on the nth of September 1603, bringing 
 home a rich store of wealth for their em- 
 ployers, including a ruby ring and two dresses 
 embroidered with gold, and placed in a box of 
 purple china, as a present from the king of 
 Sumatra to Queen Elizabeth, who had died in 
 the interval. 
 
 That first voyage may be taken as an illus- 
 tration of the character of all the early expe- 
 ditions of the East India Company. These ex- 
 peditions followed one another in quick succes- 
 sion ; in each some fresh part of the East Indies 
 was visited and brought into commercial rela- 
 tions with England ; and, in spite of occasional 
 shipwrecks and other misfortunes, nearly all 
 the expeditions were very profitable. Brave 
 sailors laid the small foundations of the vast 
 trade that has subsequently been established ; 
 and Sir Thomas Smythe and his fellow-mer- 
 chants put their wits to good use in devising 
 ways and means for promoting the great work. 
 
 At first the East India Company, hardly a 
 company at all, according to the modern accep- 
 tation of the word, was little more than a 
 gathering of independent traders, who specu- 
 lated as much or as little as they chose on 
 each separate voyage, and only clubbed to-
 
 SviytJie 's Furtherance of it. 1 1 5 
 
 gcther, under the direction of managers chosen 
 from themselves, in order that the expeditions 
 might be large enough, and sufficiently pro- 
 tected, to be conducted safely and with profit. 
 A step in advance of this was made in May 1609, 
 when, chiefly through Sir Thomas Smythe's 
 influence, in lieu of the privileges conferred by 
 Queen Elizabeth, a new charter was obtained 
 from James I., conferring upon the company 
 " the whole entire and only trade and traffic to 
 the East Indies" for ever and a day, no one 
 being allowed to have any share in that branch 
 of commerce without licence from the com- 
 pany, and all the members being bound by 
 oath " to be good and true to the King, and 
 faithful and assistant to the company, having 
 no singular regard to themselves in hurt or 
 prejudice of the said fellowship." 
 
 Encouraged by this, the company resolved 
 on a larger enterprise than had yet been under- 
 taken. At its first public dinner, suggested by 
 a present of a brace of bucks from the Earl of 
 Southampton, " to make merry withal," as he 
 said, " in regard of their kindness in accepting 
 him of their company," and given at Sir Thomas 
 Smythe's great house in Philpot Lane, it was 
 resolved that two new ships should be built of 
 a sort specially adapted for the l:)usiness, and 
 they were ready in less than six months. 
 
 The larger of the two was the largest Eng-
 
 1 1 6 The Trade V Increase. 
 
 lish merchant ship yet built, its burthen being, 
 according to different accounts, either ten, 
 eleven, or twelve hundred pounds. It was 
 launched at Deptford on the 39th of Decem- 
 ber, in the presence of James I., Queen Anne, 
 and the young Prince Henry, the amiable heir 
 to the throne who died before his father. 
 After inspecting the fine vessel, the royal 
 family were royally banqueted in the chief 
 cabin, while the courtiers were entertained at 
 a long table on the half-deck, " plentifully 
 served with delicacies served in fine china 
 dishes " — among the rarest and most prized of 
 the company's importations — " all which were 
 freely permitted to be carried away by all per- 
 sons." The feast being over, the great ship 
 was launched. King James christened her 
 by the name of TJie Trades Increase, and, 
 while the salutes were being fired, says an eye- 
 witness, " graced Sir Thomas Smythe with a 
 chain, in manner of a collar, worth better than 
 ;^200, with his picture hanging at it, and put 
 it about his neck with his own hands." 
 
 That done, and ;^82,ooo having been ex- 
 pended in cargoes and shipping expenses, the 
 big ship, attended by two smaller ones, set out 
 in March 1610, under the command of Sir Henry 
 Middleton, who, after Sir James Lancaster, was 
 the first great naval commander of the East 
 India Company's fleets. Hitherto the expedi-
 
 Its Unfortunate Voyage. 1 1 7 
 
 tions had been to Sumatra and the other great 
 islands lying north-east of the Indian conti- 
 nent. IMiddleton was now instructed to find 
 his chief business in trading with the people 
 on the coasts of the Red Sea, in Arabia, along 
 the Persian Gulf, and on the north-western 
 part of India itself 
 
 A prosperous voyage was made round the 
 Cape, and up the eastern coast of Africa, as 
 far as Mocha, which Middleton reached early 
 in November. Great show of friendship came 
 from the governor of the Arabian town, and 
 the only difficulty which the English felt was 
 in the want of a table on which to exhibit the 
 cloths and other commodities that they had 
 brought for sale, until Middleton had been en- 
 ticed to take up his residence in Mocha, and 
 bring with him a quantity of his most valuable 
 goods. No sooner was he on shore, however, 
 than his deputies on shipboard began to mis- 
 conduct themselves, and give some excuse for 
 the rough conduct that the natives had been 
 treacherously contriving. " One grief on the 
 neck of another," wrote Middleton, "makes a 
 burden of my life, and therefore makes mc 
 write I scarce know what." He and fifty-one 
 companions who were with him had plenty of 
 time for writing during the six months, from 
 November 1610 to May 161 1, (>{ their cap- 
 tivity among the Moslems. One of the num-
 
 1 1 8 S/r Henry Lliddlcton j Troubles. 
 
 ber, William Pemberton, managed to run away, 
 "having taken a surfeit of captivity under 
 these heathen tyrants," as he said. Wander- 
 ing about on the shore, he found an old canoe, 
 tied his shirt to a pole by help of his garters, 
 and so, between paddling and sailing, made 
 his way to the ship, half dead from toil and 
 wet and want of food. Several times he wrote 
 to his master, urging him to procure some 
 native clothing, cut off his hair, besmear his 
 face, and steal out of the town with a burden 
 on his back. If he would do that, said Pem- 
 berton, they would bring a boat and rescue 
 him. But Middleton did not like the trick, 
 especially as it would have left his comrades 
 in the lurch. He would neither listen to Pem- 
 berton's assurance that " in this heathenish 
 and barbarous place they were void of all 
 gentle kind of humanity," and therefore must 
 be met by subterfuge, nor consent to the pro- 
 posal of his chief deputy, Captain Downton, that 
 the English should make a forcible entry into 
 Mocha, and so set him free. At last, however, 
 he adopted both expedients. He made his 
 escape, and, partly by threatening to attack 
 the town, partly by promising that neither he 
 nor any other Englishman should in future 
 visit those parts, he then succeeded in procur- 
 ing the release of his companions. 
 
 These troubles caused to the English, be-
 
 A Tide of Good Fortune, 119 
 
 sides the deaths, by actual murder or cruel 
 captivity, of several good men, a loss of 
 ;^ 26,000, and a waste of eleven months' time. 
 Then came a tide of better fortune. Quitting 
 the Red Sea, IMiddleton made for Surat, and, 
 reaching it in October, found a Portuguese 
 squadron of twenty armed vessels stationed at 
 the mouth of the river, on purpose to prevent 
 the landing of any rival traders. The Portu- 
 guese admiral sent to say that, if the English 
 had authority from their sovereign, they might 
 enter ; otherwise, the sooner they went away 
 the better would be their chance of life. Sir 
 Henry answered that he bore credentials from 
 the King of England to the great IMogul, 
 whose territory was free to all people, and who 
 owed no vassalage to the Portuguese ; that 
 he meant no harm to the merchants of other 
 nations, but that he certainly intended to 
 maintain the rights of his own. For a time he 
 did his best to carry on a peaceful traffic with 
 the natives ; but finding himself thwarted 
 therein, he boldly set his three vessels to 
 attack the enemy's twenty. He had such 
 success that one of the Portuguese ships 
 was sunk, another fell into his hands with 
 a rich store of Indian goods, and the others 
 were put to flight. The coast being thus 
 clear, he proceeded to make a treaty with 
 the natives, and to buy from them all the
 
 I20 The End of the Trade's Increase. 
 
 useful commodities that he could find in the 
 place. 
 
 Good fortune, however, was not to remain 
 with the ill-named Trades Increase or her com- 
 mander. INIceting some other ships sent out 
 from England by the East India Company, 
 Middleton returned to Mocha, and in excus- 
 able violation of his promise to its treacherous 
 governor and people, set himself to punish them 
 for the cruelties to which he and his men 
 had been subjected a year before. Then he 
 re-crossed the Indian Ocean, with a view 
 of finishing his trading exploits at Bantam. 
 That he did, though far otherwise than he in- 
 tended. The Trades Increase struck on a 
 rock during the voyage, and was hardly able 
 to reach its destination, and the two smaller 
 vessels were considerably the worse for two 
 years' tossing about. One of them was sent 
 to England in the spring of 1613, while Mid- 
 dleton and the rest took up their residence in 
 what is called "his little new-built village of 
 Pullopenjaun," not far from Bantam. " He 
 that escapes disease," Downton had written, 
 " from that stinking stew of the Chinese part 
 of Bantam must be of a strong constitution of 
 body." Middleton's men died, one by one, 
 and he himself sank under a sickness that had 
 been oppressing him for months, somewhere 
 near the end of 161 3. Shortly before that,
 
 Will Adams hi Japan. 121 
 
 the Trades Increase, which he had beeii 
 waiting to repair with material from England, 
 had been beaten to pieces by the waves, — 
 " which is a great pity," said a gossiping letter- 
 writer of the time, " being the goodliest ship 
 of England, and never made voyage before." 
 Far better would it have been, however, for a 
 score of such goodly ships to have been wasted, 
 than that England and the East India Com- 
 pany should lose, in the prime of life, a man 
 so valiant and skilful as Sir Henry Middle- 
 ton, " the thrice-worthy general," as he was 
 termed by a contemporary statesman, " who 
 laid the foundation of our long-desired Cam- 
 baya trade." 
 
 Yet the Cambaya, or Indian, trade con- 
 tinued to thrive famously. A good beginning 
 had been made in several parts of the East 
 Indies. Sir Thomas Smythe tried hard to ex- 
 tend it to a quarter which is only now com- 
 mencing to be open to English commerce. < 
 His coadjutor in this was William Adams, l^ 
 famous as the first Englishman who went to 
 Japan. Adams accompanied a Dutch expedi- 
 tion as pilot-major in 1598. After two years 
 of wonderful adventure on the sea, he reached 
 Japan in 1600. He was favoured by its em- 
 peror, for whom he built ships, and to whom 
 he gave instruction in mathematics and other 
 branches of European knowledge. In 1611
 
 122 The East India Conipafiy. 
 
 he wrote a letter to his " unknown friends 
 and countrymen," which found its way to 
 Sir Thomas Smythe, as Governor of the East 
 India Company, who, in 1612, wrote to Adams, 
 offering to send ships to trade with Japan. 
 Adams answered, that in Japan EngHshmen 
 would be " as welcome and free as in the river 
 of London," and that they would find immense 
 profit from trading thither. In the same letter 
 he thanked Sir Thomas Smythe " for lending 
 his wife ;^20." Dealings with Japan were ac- 
 cordingly attempted ; but the arrogance of the 
 English gave offence to the haughty Japanese, 
 and they were banished from the island. 
 
 In the East Indies proper, however, there 
 was no such mischance. Great success at- 
 tended the company's enterprises, the merit of 
 which must be partly assigned to Sir Thomas 
 Smythe. Nothing seems to have been done 
 without his advice, and that advice appears to 
 have been wonderfully sensible and compre- 
 hensive. He was consulted as to the things to 
 be bought, and the things to be sold, the men 
 to be admitted into the company as traders, and 
 the men to be employed as agents ; and in the 
 character and conduct of these agents, he took 
 a fatherly interest. In February 1614, for in- 
 stance, we find him assembling all the com- 
 pany's factors, then in London, and about to 
 proceed to the East, and exhorting them con-
 
 The Zeal of its Governor. 123 
 
 scientiously to discharge their duties. He be- 
 sought them to avoid the example of some 
 tyrannical and self-seeking persons who had 
 lately been in India, and urged them "to be 
 the more respective, and shun all sin and evil 
 behaviour, that the heathen might take no 
 advantage to blaspheme our religion by the 
 abuses and ungodly behaviour of our men." 
 He begged them to abstain from all frauds 
 upon the natives, or anything that could damage 
 the company, " by making the people hate and 
 detest us before we be settled amongst them," 
 and assured them of the company's desire to 
 furnish them with everything needful to their 
 spiritual comfort and the health of their bodies, 
 " also books of divinity for the soul, and history 
 to instruct the mind." 
 
 Not content with establishing trading rela- 
 tions with the people of the East Indian islands 
 and the coast towns or the mainland of India, 
 Sir Thomas Smythc determined to make a for- 
 mal treaty with the great Mogul. With that 
 view he sent one William Edwardes on a dip- 
 lomatic mission to Persia in 16 14. Edwardes 
 took with him a curious token of the great 
 merchant's favour. " I presented the Mogul 
 with your worship's picture," he wrote, " which 
 he esteemed so well for the workmanship, th;it 
 the day after, he sent for all his painters in 
 public to sec the same, who did admire it, and
 
 124 The East India Company. 
 
 confessed that none of them could anything 
 near imitate it, which makes him prize it above 
 all the rest, and esteem it for a jewel." 
 
 Edwardes so far succeeded with the great 
 Mogul, that Sir Thomas Smythe induced King 
 James to send a famous ambassador to the 
 great Mogul, in the person of Sir Thomas Roe, 
 "he being a gentleman of pregnant under- 
 standing, well-spoken, learned, industrious, of 
 comely personage, and one of whom there were 
 great hopes that he might work much good 
 for the company." Sir Thomas Roe did work 
 much good. He formed an alliance with the 
 great Mohammedan emperor of the East, one 
 of the race of mighty potentates who ruled all 
 the north of India, and the vast districts on the 
 other side of the Himalayas, and thus surely 
 laid the foundations of that intercourse be- 
 tween England and India which was to end 
 after two centuries of trading and fighting, in 
 India becoming the property of England. 
 
 For all this, not a little of the praise belongs 
 to Sir Thomas Smythe. To the end of his life 
 he was the great champion and promoter of 
 the East India Company's interests, his house 
 in Philpot Lane being the chief office of the 
 association, until it was powerful enough, after 
 his death, to set up the quaint East India 
 House in Leadenhall Street, which was its 
 place of business until 1726, when a new build-
 
 The First East India House.
 
 The East Iiuiian Trade. \2j 
 
 ing was erected, to be itself replaced in 1799 by 
 the more imposing structure which was pulled 
 down in 1862, when the government of India 
 passed from the East India Company to the 
 English Crown. 
 
 The success of the company had a wonder- 
 ful effect on English trade, causing all sorts of 
 new commodities to be brought into English 
 use, and provoking much jealousy in other 
 trades and trading companies, which fancied 
 that thus their own callings were being injured. 
 The jealousy was uttered in sober treatises, as 
 well as in such street ballads as this : — 
 
 " Our ladies all were set a-gadding ; 
 After these toys they ran a-madding ; 
 And nothing then would please their fancies, 
 Nor dolls, nor Joans, nor lovely Nancies, 
 Unless it was of India's making ; 
 And if 'twas so, 'twas wondrous taking. 
 
 " Tell 'em the following of such fashion 
 Would beggar and undo the nation, 
 And ruin all our neighbouring poor, 
 'Ihat must, or starve, or beg at door. 
 They 'd not ail regard your story. 
 But in their painted garments glbry." 
 
 Among all the rest of his work Sir Thomas 
 Smythe had at Court, in Parliament, among 
 merchants, and among gentlefolk, to defend 
 the Ea.st India Company from such charges, 
 and to prove that, instead of ruining the 
 nation, and reducing tlie poor to beggary and
 
 128 Smyth: s other Occupations. 
 
 starvation, it was contributing mightily to the 
 wealth of England, and the well-being of all 
 classes of its people. To the last he worked 
 zealously for the company, and interested him- 
 self in little things as well as great. In 1618 
 occurred a curious illustration of the way in 
 which he made good use of his position. Two 
 boys having stolen a hat worth six shillings, 
 were, according to the barbarous law of that 
 time, sentenced to be hanged for their offence. 
 The chief culprit was accordingly executed. 
 His accomplice was pardoned at Sir Thomas 
 Smythe's intercession, and on his promise to 
 put him in the way of reformation by sending 
 him to India ; and this he did. 
 
 In taking the lead in the wonderful trading 
 movement from which our vast Indian empire 
 has been developed, however, Sir Thomas 
 Smythe only did part of the work for which 
 posterity must honour him as almost the 
 greatest of all the great merchant princes who 
 have done so much for the prosperity of Eng- 
 land. He also took the lead, under James I., 
 in another wonderful trading movement, out of 
 which the establishment of our North American 
 and West Indian colonies, and of the stupen- 
 dous empire of the United States has resulted. 
 
 This movement had been begun in Queen 
 Elizabeth's reign. Before India was thought 
 of as a resort of English commerce, efforts
 
 I 
 
 2 
 ■3 
 
 y
 
 The Virginia Company. 1 3 i 
 
 had been made by Englishmen to plant trade 
 and government in America. Sir Humphrey 
 Gilbert had died in nobly trying, though with- 
 out success, to found a colony in Newfound- 
 land ; and Sir Walter Raleigh had spent many 
 years in attempting to build up his colony of 
 Virginia, in the district now known as North 
 Carolina. 
 
 Raleigh's project, in his own hands, led only 
 to the loss of many lives and of much money. 
 But in 1606 it was taken up by others, who 
 sent out a small party of adventurers under 
 Captain Newport. Of these adventurers the 
 most notable was a John Smith, who had proved 
 his wild valour and endless resource in previous 
 fighting with the Turks. He showed his coun- 
 trymen how to build and sow and hunt in Vir- 
 ginia. On one occasion, having wandered in 
 a canoe far up the Chichahominy, he was taken 
 prisoner by the Indians, and ordered to execu- 
 tion by their chief, Powhatan. But Powhatan's 
 little daughter, Pocahontas, took a strange 
 fancy to the white man. She threw her arms 
 round his neck, and made it impossible to kill 
 him without first taking her life. Thereby her 
 father's heart was touched. Smith was spared. 
 His quick wit and good-nature soon made the 
 Indians very friendly to him, and in this way 
 the first solid settlement of the English in 
 America was greatly helped.
 
 132 Smythe's Mauagaiiciit of Virginur. 
 
 It is not known what share Sir Thomas 
 Smythe had in sending out the expedition 
 under Captain Newport ; but it must have 
 been considerable, as for the next twelve years 
 he was known as the governor and absolute 
 master of the Virginian colony. His govern- 
 ment was by deputy, he himself having more 
 important and more congenial work in follow- 
 ing his merchant's calling at home. In 1609, 
 when a new and more extended Virginia 
 Company was formed, he was its treasurer 
 and guiding spirit. A code of stringent rules — 
 called by his enemies "tyrannical laws" — for 
 the government of the colony was drawn up 
 by him. The money required for sending out, 
 nearly every year, fresh ship-loads of colonists 
 and goods was furnished by him. The articles 
 sent out were chosen by him ; and the articles 
 sent home, of which tobacco was chief, were 
 disposed of under his directions. Every Thurs- 
 day — during part of the twelve years at any 
 rate, and in the few subsequent years in which 
 he continued to live and work — there was a 
 meeting at his house in Philpot Lane, to con- 
 sider the progress of events, and to decide 
 upon any fresh action that had to be taken. 
 
 Concerning his management of Virginia and 
 its affairs, great complaints were made by some 
 of the colonists and their friends at home. For 
 some years an endless series of quarrels were
 
 TJce Colonisation of America. 133 
 
 referred to King James and his Council. A 
 writer of the time said that both Court and City 
 were divided into Guelph and Ghibelline fac- 
 tions respecting Virginia ; and it is not easy 
 now to say how far each party was in the 
 right. But all that we know of Sir Thomas 
 Smythe's conduct in other relations shows him 
 to have been wise and generous ; and it is 
 clear that, either through him or in spite of 
 him, the first English colony in America throve 
 famously. In 1616 it was reported to be "in 
 great prosperity and peace," likely to become 
 " one of the goodliest and richest kingdoms of 
 the world." 
 
 It did become, though not a kingdom, part 
 of the goodliest and richest democratic con- 
 federation, in the world. Virginia being pros- 
 perous, other colonies, destined to become 
 members of the United States, were founded 
 one after another: New England in 1620, 
 Mar>dand in 1632, New York in 1667, Penn- 
 sylvania in 168 1, and the others in quick suc- 
 cession. Sir Thomas Smythe was one of the 
 parents of all this prosperity. 
 
 His Virginian and East Indian business, how- 
 ever, did not take up all his time and thoughts. 
 When he gave up the employment, which he 
 inherited from his father, as Farmer of the 
 Customs, does not appear. lie carried on to 
 the last the general trade with the Continent,
 
 1 34 'Jlw BrotJurs Mydddton. 
 
 which had been his father's chief occupation. 
 In 1617, for instance, we find him joining some 
 other merchants trading with France, in a peti- 
 tion to be allowed to import French playing- 
 cards, which had been prohibited through the 
 influence of some of James I.'s advisers. 
 
 Of Sir Thomas Smythc's many famous con- 
 temporaries in the world of commerce, none 
 were more eminent than the brothers Myddel- 
 ton. Sir Thomas Myddelton, the eldest, was 
 a member of the Grocers' Company, and his 
 younger brother Robert belonged to the Skin- 
 ners' Guild. Both were influential shareholders 
 in the East India Company. Sir Hugh Myd- 
 delton, the most illustrious of the family, a 
 member of the Goldsmiths' Guild, did not 
 concern himself in East Indian trade, but he 
 worked zealously with Smythe in the advance- 
 ment of commerce with the new colony of 
 Virginia. 
 
 Sir Hugh Myddelton was more than a gold- 
 smith and an American merchant. His fame 
 chiefly rests upon the engineering skill and 
 indomitable perseverance with which he con- 
 structed the New River which still supplies 
 London with most of its water. "If those," 
 says quaint old Fuller, "be recounted amongst 
 David's worthies who, breaking through the 
 army of the Philistines, fetched water from the 
 well of Bethlehem to satisfy the longing of
 
 Sir HitgJi Myddelton. 
 
 :>:> 
 
 David — founded more in fancy than necessity — 
 how meritorious a work did this worthy man 
 perform who, to quench the thirst of thousands 
 in the populous city of London, fetched water 
 
 Sir Hugh Myddelton. 
 
 at liis own cost more than four-and-twenty 
 miles, encountering all the way an army of 
 opposition, grappling Avith hills, struggling 
 with rocks, fighting with forests, till, in de- 
 fiance of difficulties, he had brought his project 
 to perfection." 
 
 That was the nature of the work done by
 
 136 Myddelton 's New River. 
 
 Myddelton between the spring of 1609, when 
 the business was fairly entered upon, and the 
 autumn of 161 3, when it was happily com- 
 pleted. On ]\Iichaclmas-day the New River 
 was formally opened at Islington by the Lord 
 Mayor and a goodly company of Londoners. 
 A curious picture of the ceremony has been 
 preserved, as well as a precise narrative of its 
 circumstances. A speech in verse was made 
 by one of the company: — 
 
 *' Long have we labour'd, long desired and pray'd. 
 For this great work's perfection ; and by th' aid 
 Of heaven and good men's wishes, 'tis at length 
 Happily conquer'd by cost, wit, and strength, 
 After five years of dear expense in days, 
 Travail and pains, "besides the infinite ways 
 Of malice, envy, false suggestions, 
 Able to daunt the spirit of mighty ones 
 In wealth and courage, this, a work so rare. 
 Only by one man's industry, cost, and care, 
 Is brought to blest effect, so much withstood ; 
 His only aim, the city's general good. 
 
 " Then worthy magistrates, to whose content, 
 Next to the State, all this great care was bent. 
 And for the public good which grace requires. 
 Your loves and furtherance chiefly he desires 
 To cherish these proceedings, which may give 
 Courage to some that may hereafter live 
 To practise deeds of goodness and of fame, 
 And gladly light their actions by his name." 
 
 Then followed a description of the laoourcrs 
 employed upon the work : — 
 
 " First here 's the overseer, this tried man. 
 An ancient soldier and an artisan ;
 
 Its opening. 137 
 
 The clerk ; next him the mathematician ; 
 The master of the tiraber-work takes place 
 Next after these ; the measurer in like case ; 
 Bricklayer ; and engineer ; and after those, 
 The borer; and the pavier ; then it shows 
 The labourers next; keeper of Amwell head ; 
 The walkers last ; so all their names are read, 
 Yet these but parcels of six hundred more, 
 That at one time have been employ'd before; 
 Yet these in sight, and all the rest will saj', 
 That every week they had their royal pay ! 
 — Now for the fruits then. Flow forth, precious 
 
 spring, 
 So long and dearly sought for, and now bring 
 Comfort to all that love thee ; loudly sing, 
 And with thy crystal murmur struck together, 
 Bid all thy true well-wishers welcome hither!" 
 
 "At which words," the narrative concludes, 
 " the floodgates were opened, the stream was 
 let into the cistern, drums and trumpets giving 
 it triumphant welcomes, and, for the close of 
 this their honourable entertainment, a peal of 
 chambers." 
 
 Sir Hugh Myddelton lived on till 163 1, six 
 years longer than Sir Thomas Smythe; and 
 the famous goldsmith and the famous skinner 
 did much good work in common for London 
 and English commerce during the ensuing 
 years. Sir Thomas Smythe continued to the 
 last a busy man, the richest and shrewdest 
 merchant in England. Besides all his trade, 
 he was employed by James I. as a navy com- 
 missioner, and a sound adviser on all matters 
 affecting the well-being of the country. He
 
 138 Sir Thomas Smytlie. 
 
 was as rich as he was useful. In 1619 a 
 great house at Deptford, in which he had re- 
 sided, was burned down ; but in the same year 
 his house in Philpot Lane was found large 
 enough to lodge and entertain in sumptuous 
 style a French ambassador, with a hundred 
 and twenty persons in his train. 
 
 He also had a great house at Tunbridge, in 
 Kent, and there he died in 1625, about sixty- 
 five years old. Besides many charities in Lon- 
 don and elsewhere, he endowed Tunbridge 
 school. Among his numerous bequests, he 
 left funds for providing a fourpenny loaf a-piece 
 every week to thirty-six poor persons, and the 
 same number of pieces of cloth, worth twenty 
 shillings each, to be made into winter garments 
 for the recipients of his charity.
 
 VI. 
 
 SIR HENRY GARWAY. 
 
 [1570-1645.] 
 
 )ARLY in the reign of Henry VIII., one 
 John Garway sold his estate in Sussex 
 and settled as a merchant in London. 
 He married the daughter of Sir John Brydges, 
 who was Lord Mayor in 1521 ; and his son, 
 Sir William Garway, inheriting much wealth, 
 became a prosperous merchant. He succeeded 
 Sir Thomas Smythe as Chief Treasurer of the 
 Custom.s, and like him, was an enterprising 
 member of the East India Company. The two 
 friends died in the same year, Garway being 
 eighty-eight years old, and the father of seven- 
 teen children. 
 
 The eldest of his children, Henry Garway, 
 was born about 1570. Mis father wisely sent 
 him about the world to study the commerce of 
 various nations. He thus became a great mer- 
 chant. He was also a good Protestant. "I 
 have been in all parts of Christendom," he .said,
 
 140 Sir Henry Garway. 
 
 " and have conversed with Christians in Turkey; 
 and in all the reformed churches there is not 
 anything more reverend than the English 
 Liturgy — not our Royal Exchange, nor the 
 name of Queen Elizabeth." 
 
 Henry Garway passed many years in Turkey 
 as a factor of the Levant Company, lately 
 founded by Sir Edward Osborne ; and in or 
 near the year 1609, his age being then forty, he 
 settled in London as a Turkey merchant. He 
 was Governor of the Turkey Company through 
 a great part of the stormy reign of Charles L 
 
 The political storms, though disastrous to 
 many merchants of London, were hardly in- 
 jurious to London commerce. It prospered in 
 spite of them. " When I consider," said Lewis 
 Roberts, author of a " Merchants' Map of Com- 
 merce," which he dedicated to Sir Henry Garway 
 in 1638, "the true dimensions of our English 
 traffic, as at this day to me it appears to be, 
 together with the inbred commodities that this 
 island affords to preserve and maintain the 
 same, with the industry of the natives and the 
 ability of our navigators, I justly admire both 
 the height and eminence thereof; but when, 
 again, I survey every kingdom and great city 
 of the world, and every petty port and creek of 
 the same, and find in each of these some Eng- 
 lish prying after the trade and commerce 
 thereof, then again, I am easily brought to ima-
 
 Trade under the Stuarts. 141 
 
 gine either that this great traffic of England is 
 at its full perfection, or that it aims higher than 
 can hitherto by any weak sight be either seen 
 or discerned. I must confess England breeds 
 in its own womb the principal supporters of its 
 present splendour, and nourisheth with its own 
 milk the commodities that give both lustre and 
 life to the continuance of this trade, which I 
 pray may neither ever decay nor yet have the 
 least diminution. But," he added, in a spirit 
 of timidity that is amusing when we compare 
 the commerce of to-day with that of two hun- 
 dred years ago, " England being naturally 
 seated in a northern corner of the world, and 
 herein bending under the weight of too ponder- 
 ous a burtJien, cannot possibly always and for 
 ever find a vent for all those commodities that 
 are seen to be daily exported and brought 
 within the compass of so narrow a circuit, unless 
 there can be, by the policy and government 
 of the State, a mean found out to make this 
 island the common emporium and staple of all 
 Europe." 
 
 And of Sir Ilcnry Garway's own Turkey 
 Company, Lewis Roberts said : " Not yearly 
 but monthly, nay, almost weekly, their ships 
 are observed to go to and fro, exporting hence 
 the cloths of Suffolk, Gloucester, Worcester, 
 and Coventry, dyed and dressed, kerseys of 
 Hampshire and Yorkshire, lead, tin, and a great
 
 1 42 Garway and Giirney. 
 
 quantity of Indian spices, indigo, and calicoes ; 
 and in return thereof they import from Turkey 
 the raw silks of Persia, Damascus, and Tripoli, 
 cottons, and cotton-yarn of Cyprus and Smyrna, 
 and sometimes the gems of India, the drugs of 
 Egypt and Arabia, the muscatels of Candia, 
 and the currants and oils of Zante, Cephalonia, 
 and Morea." 
 
 By that commerce Sir Henry Garway pro- 
 fited very much until he was seventy years of 
 age, and old enough and rich enough to keep 
 aloof from the turmoils then arising in Eng- 
 land through the evil conduct of Charles I., and 
 the growing love of freedom among English- 
 men. Garway had prospered under Charles 
 and his father, and had no liking to the new 
 views of the Roundheads. Therefore he used 
 his position as a great London merchant and 
 grandee in attempting to suppress them, and 
 in surrounding his old age with misfortunes. 
 
 This fate was shared by another famous 
 merchant of that time. Sir Richard Gurney. 
 Gurney, born at Croyden in 1577, had been 
 apprenticed to a silk mercer in Chcapside, who 
 liked him so well that, at his death, he be- 
 queathed to him his shop, and a sum of ;^6ooo. 
 Part of that money he spent in travelling 
 through France and Italy, " where," says his 
 old biographer, "he improved himself; and, by 
 observing the trade of the respective marts as
 
 Civil War among Merchants. 143 
 
 he passed, laid the foundation of his future 
 traffic." Soon after his return, being himself 
 "of no great family," he discreetly married 
 into " a family at that time commanding most 
 of the money, and, by that, most of the nobility, 
 gentry, and great tradesmen of England." 
 Thereby he became a great merchant and a 
 very wealthy man, closely allied in fortune and 
 misfortune to Sir Henry Garway. 
 
 Garway was elected Lord Mayor of London 
 in 1639. As Lord Mayor, in 1640, he raised a 
 company of troops, at the cost of the city, and 
 sent them to York for the assistance of King 
 Charles, in spite of the opposition of most of the 
 corporation. He joined the citizens, however, 
 in protesting against the illegal modes adopted 
 for raising money by the king and his advisers. 
 At Lambeth he was active in suppressing a 
 rising of the people, though no such feat of 
 valour is recorded of him as of Sir Richard 
 Gurncy. In this same tumultuous year, it is 
 said, when Gurncy was sixty-three years old, 
 "one night, with thirty or forty lights, and a 
 few attendants, he rushed suddenly out of the 
 ho'.ise on thousands, with the city sword drawn, 
 who immediately retired to their own houses 
 and gave over their design." 
 
 In the autumn of 1641, Gurney was made 
 Lord Mayor, and, in November, he prepared a 
 splendid entertainment for the king, who came
 
 T 44 Garivay and Pyni. 
 
 into the city to stir up the loyalty of the mer- 
 chants and 'prentices. There was great show 
 of loyalty on Lord Mayor's day ; but the citi- 
 zens of London, as a body, were staunch in 
 their opposition to Charles. To Pym, Hamp- 
 den, and three others, the famous " five mem- 
 bers," they gave a hearty welcome in the fol- 
 lowing January, greatly to the indignation of 
 the Lord Mayor and his royalist friends. 
 
 On the 13th of January 1642, Pym made a 
 memorable speech to the citizens in front of 
 Guildhall. On the 17th, Sir Henry Garway 
 made a speech hardly less memorable, in 
 opposition to it. He besought the citizens to 
 defend the king, and to grant no supplies to 
 the wicked men who were seeking his over- 
 throw. " These are strange courses, my mas- 
 ters," he exclaimed ; " they secure our bodies to 
 preserve our liberty ; they take away our goods 
 to maintain property ; and what can we expect 
 in the end but that they should hang us up to 
 save our lives V^ The worth of the speaker, and 
 the eloquence of his speech, so told upon the 
 audience, that the friends of liberty were full of 
 fear as to its effect. " As soon as it was done, 
 and the great shout and hum ended," said one 
 who heard it, " the Lord Mayor, trembling and 
 scarce able to speak, asked what their resolu- 
 tion was concerning assisting the Parliament 
 with money ; but the cry was so great, ' No
 
 Mistaken Patriotism. 
 
 145 
 
 money ! no money ! ' ' Peace ! peace ! ' that lie 
 could not be heard." 
 
 But the speech was soon forgotten, and the 
 cause of freedom prevailed, to the necessary 
 injury of all who, however honestly, stood in 
 its way. Sir Richard Gurney, a few months 
 afterwards, was deprived of his mayoralty, 
 thrown into the Tower, and, for refusing to 
 pay a fine of iJ'5000 appointed by Parliament, 
 there kept a prisoner until his death in 1647 ; 
 and Sir Henry Garway, according to one of his 
 friends, " was tossed, as long as he lived, from 
 prison to prison, and his estate conveyed from 
 one rebel to another." 
 
 K
 
 VI r. 
 
 SIR DUDLEY NORTH. 
 [1641-1691.] 
 
 ^S^WO Roger Norths, father and son, were 
 l¥^I^Sl nierchants of some repute in the time 
 ^^Asd of Henry VII. The son of the second 
 was made Lord North, and through five gene- 
 rations the Norths were well-to-do gentlemen, 
 soldiers, and statesmen, under the Tudors and 
 the Stuarts. The most influential of them all 
 was the famous Francis North, Baron Guild- 
 ford, and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under 
 Charles 11. and James II. His younger brother 
 was Sir Dudley North, a merchant of note, and 
 especially noteworthy to us because the lengthy 
 memoir of him written by another brother, 
 Roger North, gives us very precise information 
 as to the character, training, and conduct of an 
 influential London trader of the second half of 
 the seventeenth century. From this amusing 
 biography the following pages will chiefly be 
 extracted.
 
 Dudley NortJi's Schooling: 147 
 
 Dudley North was born on the i6th of ]\Iay 
 164.1. " He was a very forward and beautiful 
 child," says his brother ; so forward that he 
 was often in trouble through his fondness for 
 running out into the street, there to talk and 
 play with any other children he could find. 
 On one occasion he was stolen by a beggar- 
 woman, and only recovered after his clothes 
 had been taken from him. A second danger 
 came to him while the plague was raging. He 
 was seized by the malady, and only kept alive 
 by' the tender nursing of his mother. Soon 
 after that, being designed for a merchant, he 
 was sent to Bury grammar-school, in due time 
 to be placed in a writing-school in London, " to 
 learn good hands and accounts." That he did 
 to his parents' satisfaction ; but he learned other 
 things not quite to their liking. " One of his 
 capital entertainments was cock-fighting. If 
 possible, he procured a place in the pit, where 
 there was splutter and noise, cut out, as it were, 
 for folks half-mad. I have heard him say," 
 reports his brother, " that when he had in the 
 world but three shillings, he had given half a 
 crown for an entrance, reserving but sixpence 
 to bet with." Often the sixpence was turned 
 to good account ; but he was always in debt. 
 "And this pinching necessity drew him into 
 practices very unjustifiable, and, except among 
 inexperienced boys, altogether inexcusable
 
 148 Dudley NoriJi's Apprenticeship. 
 
 When a fresh youth came to the school, he 
 and his companions looked out sharp to dis- 
 cover how well his pockets were lined ; and 
 some oT them would insinuate into his ac- 
 quaintance, and, becoming dear friends, one 
 after another borrow what he had ; and all got 
 that way was gain to the common stock ; for, 
 if he was importunate about having his money 
 again, they combined and led him a wearisome 
 life, and, rather than fail, basted him till he 
 was reduced to a better temper." 
 
 That was poor training for one intended to 
 be an honest merchant. But Dudley North 
 soon discovered his error. He managed to 
 pay off all his debts ; and he left school with a 
 solemn resolution, which he kept, never to incur 
 obligations for a farthing more than he really 
 possessed. He was apprenticed to a Turkey 
 merchant in Threadneedle Street, and initiated 
 in all the mysteries of London commerce be- 
 fore going abroad as supercargo to a ship 
 proceeding to Archangel. That was the be- 
 ginning of many years' absence from England 
 passed in busy money-making, and enlivened 
 by many strange experiences, of which wel- 
 come record exists, either in his own letters or 
 in his brother's reminiscences. 
 
 He was a " raw youth," only seventeen or 
 eighteen years old, when he started. He first 
 went to Archangel, there to sell his goods and
 
 Life at Smyrna. 149 
 
 stock the ship with others, which he proceeded 
 to dispose of in Italy, before taking up his 
 residence at Smyrna. His own capital was 
 only ;^iOO ; but he spent it prudently in buy- 
 ing such articles as were sure to bring him 
 a large profit when sold in England, and he 
 found other occupation as agent for several 
 Turkey merchants in London. " He did not, 
 as most young factors, set himself up in an 
 expensive way of living, after the example of 
 those that he found upon the place, for he 
 wore plain and cheap clothes, kept no horse, 
 and put himself to diet as cheap as he could. 
 He was a gentleman ever brisk and witty, a 
 great observer of all incidents, and withal very 
 friendly and communicative, which made him 
 be generally beloved, and his company desired 
 by the top merchants of the factory." He did 
 not at first, however, prosper as well as many 
 of them. He made more money for his 
 employers than for himself, and soon grew 
 dissatisfied with Smyrna. Therefore, after a 
 brief visit to England, he gladly accepted 
 the offer of a Mr William Hodges, living at 
 Constantinople, to become his partner. At 
 that time " there was no greater emporium 
 upon the face of the earth than Constan- 
 tinople, where a merchant of spirit and judg- 
 ment, by trade with the Court, and with the 
 dealers that there came together from most
 
 150 Life at Constantinople. 
 
 parts of the world, could not fail of being 
 rich." 
 
 So Dudley North found it Almost from 
 the first he was in reality, if not in form, the 
 head of the Constantinople factory. He soon 
 reformed the whole method of transacting 
 business, and put it in a more profitable shape 
 than had ever been known before. He made 
 himself thorough master of the Turkish lan- 
 guage, and, of the five hundred or more law- 
 suits which he found it necessary to engage in, 
 conducted most in his own person. " He had 
 certain schemes by which he governed himself, 
 and seldom failed of a prosperous success ;" 
 some of them, however, not being much to his 
 honour. He brought to perfection the art of 
 bribing judges. He also, according to his 
 brother's testimony, "found that, in a direct 
 fact, a false witness is a surer card than a true 
 one ; for, if the judge has a mind to baffle a 
 testimony, an harmless, honest witness, that 
 doth not knew his play, cannot so well stand 
 his many captious questions as a false witness, 
 used to the trade, will do." It must be remem- 
 bered, however, in Dudley North's excuse, that 
 these practices were, in his day and long after, 
 almost as current in England as they were in 
 Turkey. 
 
 North's trade in Constantinople, "by which 
 he obtained superabundant profit," as his
 
 Turkish T7'ade. 151 
 
 brother avers, was chiefly with the Turkisli 
 Court, which he supplied with jewels and other 
 costly furniture, often making four or five thou- 
 sand dollars by a single transaction ; and with 
 the officers and agents of the government, who 
 were glad to borrow of him all the money he 
 had to lend at twenty or thirty per cent, interest. 
 " All those who come into posts of authority 
 and profit in Turkey," we read, " are sure to 
 pay for them ; and, on that account, the seraglio 
 is a sort of market. This makes the pashas, 
 who solicit for better preferment, and all the 
 pretenders to places, prodigiously greedy of 
 money, which they cannot have without bor- 
 rowing; and if they can but get the money, 
 they care not upon what terms, for the place 
 to be paid for will soon reimburse them. The 
 lending these men money is a very easy trade 
 as to the terms, but a very difficult trade as to 
 the security. For, by the Turkish law, all 
 interest for the forbearance of money is unlaw- 
 ful ; and the debtor need not, whatever he 
 agrees, pay a farthing on that account. There- 
 fore they are forced to go to tricks ; and, like 
 our gamesters, take the interest together with 
 the principal. There is a world of cunning and 
 caution belongs to this kind of dealing, and 
 the wisest may suffer greatly by it ; but our 
 merchant had the good luck to come off scot- 
 free, and made his advantages accordingly."
 
 152 "A McrcJiaiit of Honour !' 
 
 His advantages were various. With one 
 Turk, the captain of a galley, named Boba- 
 Hassan, he had numerous dealings. For each 
 voyage he lent him large sums of money, which 
 were returned twice over at the end of the ex- 
 pedition. " He used him as well for getting 
 off his rotten cloth and trumpery goods, which 
 were not otherwise vendible ; for he could be 
 demure and say he had no money, but he had 
 some goods left, and if he would please to take 
 them for part, with some money he could raise, 
 he might serve him with the sum he desired, and 
 so forth. Once he was walking in the street 
 at Constantinople, and saw a fellow bearing a 
 piece of very rotten, worthless cloth, that he 
 had put off to the captain. He knew it again, 
 and could not hold, but asked the fellow v/here 
 he had that cloth. With that the man throws 
 down the cloth, and sitting him down at the 
 door, fell to swearing and cursing that dog 
 Boba-Hassan, that made him take it for a 
 debt ; but he more furiously cursed that dog 
 chat sold it to him, wishing him, his father, 
 mother, and all his kindred, burnt alive. The 
 merchant found it best to sneak away, for if he 
 had been found out to have been once the 
 cloth's owner, he had certainly been beaten." 
 
 Dudley North cannot be greatly praised for 
 honesty ; but, to say the least, he was no worse 
 than most merchants of his time. " As to all
 
 Dudley North in England. 1 5 3 
 
 the mercantile arts or guiles," says his brother, 
 " and stratagems of trade, which could be used 
 to get money from those he dealt with, I be- 
 lieve he was no niggard ; but, as for falsities, 
 such as cheating by weights and measures, or 
 anything that was knavish, treacherous, or per- 
 fidious, even with Jews or Turks, he was as 
 clear as any man living. He transacted and 
 dealt in all respects as a merchant of honour." 
 The Levant Company, at any rate, found him 
 a better servant than it had ever had before. 
 
 - He also served himself so well, that, before 
 he was forty years old, he was rich enough to 
 return to England. This he did in the spring 
 of 1680. He immediately established himself 
 as a Turkey merchant in London, having a 
 house in Basinghall Street, tvith offices and 
 warehouses close to the Exchange. He also be- 
 came the principal director of the African Com- 
 pany, a trading society akin to the East India 
 and Turkey Companies, but older than either, 
 formed for dealing in the commodities of the 
 West Coast of Africa. " Here it was that, in 
 the opinion of the Exchange, he first did jus- 
 tice to his character. For he was sagacious to 
 take the substance of any matter at the first 
 opening ; and then, having by proper ques- 
 tions more fully informed himself, he could 
 clearly unfold the difficulty, with all its cir- 
 cumstances of advantage and disadvantage, to
 
 1 54 Sir JosialL Child. 
 
 the understanding of otlicrs. He was an ex- 
 quisite judge of adventures, and the vakic and 
 ehgibihty of them. He was very quick at 
 discerning the fraud or sincerity of many per- 
 sons the Company had trusted, as also the 
 character of those that proffered, and were ex- 
 amined, in order to be employed or trusted. 
 If he once found that any person was false or 
 had cheated the Company, he was ever after 
 inflexible, and no solicitation or means what- 
 soever could prevail with him to cover or 
 connive." 
 
 A yet more skilful and prosperous merchant 
 of London in that time, however, was Sir 
 Josiah Child, eleven years older than Dudley 
 North. Born in 1630, he began to prosper as 
 a merchant during the period of the Common- 
 Avealth. His first employment was in trade 
 with New England and the other young and 
 thriving colonies in America. Then he be- 
 came the most influential member of the East 
 India Company, which had been rapidly and 
 steadily progressing since its establishment 
 seventy years before under the direction of Sir 
 Thomas Smythe. Near the end of Charles 
 II. 's reign, Child began to be the foremost 
 man in its management. A staunch Whig 
 before, he now turned into a zealous Tory ; 
 and, according to his many enemies, made the 
 Company an immense machinery for Tory
 
 A MercJiant Courtier. 
 
 155 
 
 jobbing-. " By his great annual presents," ac- 
 cording to one, " he could command, both at 
 Court and Westminster Hall, what he pleased." 
 " A present of ten thousand guineas," says 
 Macaulay, " was graciously received from him 
 by Charles. Ten thousand more were accepted 
 by James, who readily consented to become a 
 holder of stock. All who could help or hurt 
 
 fjS 
 
 Sir Josiah CliilJ, liart 
 
 at Court, ministers, mistresses, priests, were 
 kept in good humour by presents of shawls 
 and silks, bird's-nests and atar (A roses, purses 
 of diamonds, and bags of guineas. His bribes,
 
 156 TJic East India Company. 
 
 distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily 
 produced a large return : just when the Court 
 was all-powerful in the State, he became all- 
 powerful at the Court." 
 
 Whether Child was honest or not in his 
 change of politics, and in his subserviency to 
 the degenerate Stuarts, it is clear that he used 
 his position to the great advantage of the East 
 India Company, no less than to his own ad- 
 vancement. In some years he held the office 
 of Governor of the Company ; in others he left 
 it to be held by other merchants. But in 
 either case alike he was its chief guide and 
 ruler. Every proposal was submitted to his 
 consideration, every edict reflected his wishes. 
 On one occasion, when the Governor of Bombay 
 wrote home to say that the laws of England 
 made it impossible for him to obey the instruc- 
 tions sent out to him, he is reported to have 
 angrily replied, " That he expected his orders 
 to be the rules, and not the laws of England, 
 which were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a 
 few ignorant country gentlemen who hardly 
 knew how to make laws for the good of their 
 own private families, much less for the regu- 
 lating of companies and foreign commerce ! " 
 That report is hardly to be believed ; but it is 
 clear that Child's great success in accumulating 
 wealth for himself and in forwarding the in- 
 terests of the East India Company, made him
 
 Dudley North as Sheriff. 157 
 
 somewhat haughty and imperious in his de- 
 portment. " He was a man of great notions 
 as to merchandise, which was his education, 
 and in which he succeeded beyond any man 
 of his time," says one of his friends. " He 
 'had a compass of knowledge and apprehension 
 unusual to men of his profession. He was 
 vain and covetous, and thought too cunning, 
 though he seemed to be always sincere." He 
 was a less amiable man than his contemporary, 
 Sir Dudley North. 
 
 " In 1682, at the instigation of his brother, the 
 Lord Keeper, Dudley North accepted office 
 under Charles II. as Sheriff of London, and in 
 that capacity he gave great satisfaction to the 
 courtly party by his zealous prosecution of the 
 Whigs. " The Government found in him," says 
 Lord Macaulay, "at once an enlightened ad- 
 viser and an unscrupulous slave. His juries 
 never failed to find verdicts of guilty; and on 
 a day of judicial butchery, carts, loaded with 
 the legs and arms of quartered Whigs, were, to 
 the great discomposure of .his lady, driven to 
 liis fine house in Basinghall Street for orders." 
 For services of this sort he was knighted, and, 
 besides being made Alderman of IJasinghall 
 Ward, was appointed a Commissioner of Cus- 
 toms, that office being afterwards exchanged 
 for a brief period for a Commissionership in the 
 Treasury, with a .salary of ;^iGoo a year. On
 
 1 5 8 Dudley NortJi on Free- Trade. 
 
 the accession of James II., he entered Parlia- 
 ment as member for Banbury, and at once his 
 ready wit and great experience, heartily devoted 
 to the service of the Tories, made him the 
 financial leader of the House of Commons. 
 His plan of levying additional imposts on sugar, 
 tobacco, wine, and vinegar, was regarded as a 
 triumph of statesmanship, and secured for King 
 James an income of ^1,900,000 for the year 
 1685. He lost his seat and his offices, however, 
 soon after the establishment of William of 
 Orange, and, it was said, only escaped attainder 
 through his skill in falsification. 
 
 In 1691 Dudley North issued some "Dis- 
 courses upon Trade," full of sensible opinion? 
 on commercial matters. "Although to buy 
 and sell," he said, "be the employment of every 
 man, more or less, and the common people, for 
 the most part, depend upon it for their daily 
 subsistence, yet there are very few who con- 
 sider trade in the general upon true principles, 
 but are satisfied to understand their own par- 
 ticular trades, and which way to let themselves 
 into immediate gain." He boldly denounced 
 all such selfish views, showed the folly and 
 evil of all restrictive measures, and steadfastly 
 argued for the establishment of entire freedom 
 in all commercial dealings. He maintained 
 that " the whole world, as to trade, is but as 
 one nation or people, and therein nations are
 
 Disastrous Comvterce. 159 
 
 as persons;" that " no laws can set prices in 
 trade, the rates of which must and will make 
 themselves ; but when such laws do happen to 
 lay any hold, it is so much impediment to 
 trade, and therefore prejudicial;" that "all 
 favour to one trade or interest against another 
 is an abuse, and cuts so much of profit from 
 the public ;" in fine, that " no people ever yet 
 grew rich by policies ; it is peace, and industry, 
 and freedom, that bring trade and wealth, and 
 nothing else." 
 
 His public work for the Stuarts had for some 
 years taken Dudley North from his old avoca- 
 tions as a merchant. On his retirement he 
 returned to them, but not for long. " He had 
 formerly joined with other merchants in build- 
 ing three defensible ships ; for piracies in the 
 straits had made trading in small vessels too 
 hazardous, and the employment of these ships 
 had engaged him deeper in adventure than 
 otherwise he had been. But after the Revolu- 
 tion things grew worse and worse ; because the 
 wars with the French gave them an advantage 
 over our Turkey trade, and both at home and 
 abroad they met with us. One of his great 
 ships, with a considerable adventure, homeward 
 bound, and little insured, was taken by the 
 French. But yet he traded on, and it appeared 
 his estate was less by ^^ io,ocx) than it was when 
 the French war fir.st broke out. I believe he
 
 i6o Trade in Matrimony. 
 
 had less persevered in trade at that time if he 
 had not had a consideration of his house in 
 Constantinople, where his brother Montague 
 was his factor, to whom he thought himself 
 bound to send out business, especially when 
 others withdrew, else they must have sunk. 
 But so many corrections as he received, one 
 after another, abated his mettle ; and his family 
 was increasing, and children were coming for- 
 ward, whom he considered before himself ; and, 
 what was worst of all, he grew liable to infir- 
 mities, especially the phthisic, which made him 
 not so active as he had been and desired to 
 be." 
 
 In 1682, just before his election as Sheriff, 
 he had fallen in love with Lady Gunning, a 
 widow lady, very beautiful and rich, the daugh- 
 ter of Sir Robert Cann, a morose old merchant 
 of Bristol, as his brother testified. There was 
 some hindrance to the match, through the old 
 gentleman's anxiety to secure a large settle- 
 ment for his daughter. When his consent was 
 asked, he required that North should purchase 
 and secure to the lady an estate worth ;^30C0 
 or ;^4000 a year. The merchant replied that 
 he could not spare so much capital from his 
 business, but that he would make a settlement 
 of ;^ 20,000. To that he received a brief reply : 
 " Sir, — My answer to your first letter is an 
 answer to your second. Your humble servant,
 
 Marriage Festivities. i6i 
 
 R. C." His rejoinder was as brief : "Sir, — I 
 perceive you like neither me nor my business. 
 Your humble servant, D. N." But Dudley 
 North did like his business. He therefore 
 addressed himself to the daughter, and with 
 such effect, that she consented to marry him 
 without her father's leave. " The old knight, 
 her father," it is added, " came at last to be 
 proud of his son ; for, when the first visit was 
 paid to Bristol, Mr North, to humour the vanity 
 of that city and people, put himself in a splen- 
 did- equipage. And the old man, in his own 
 house, often said to him, ' Come, son, let us go 
 out and shine,' — that is, walk about the streets, 
 with six footmen in rich liveries attending." 
 
 The wedding festivities kept pace with the 
 merchant's knighthood, and his induction into 
 the shricval honours. " Mr North took a great 
 hall that belonged to one of the companies, 
 and kept his entertainment there. He had 
 divers very considerable presents from friends 
 and relations, besides the compliments of the 
 several companies inviting themselves and 
 their wives to dinner, dropping their guineas 
 and taking apostle-spoons in the room of them ; 
 which, with what they ate, drank, and such as 
 came in the shape of wives — for they often 
 gratified a she-friend or relation with that pre- 
 ferment — carried away, made but an indifferent 
 bargain. His lady, contrary to her nature and 
 
 L
 
 1 62 Dudley North's Great House. 
 
 humour, which was to be retired, kept him 
 company in pubHc at his feastings, sitting at 
 the head of the table at those noisy and fasti- 
 dious dinners. The mirth and rejoicing that 
 \A'as in the city, as well at these feasts as at 
 private entertainments, is scarce to be ex- 
 pressed. It was so great that those who called 
 themselves the sober party were very much 
 scandalised at it, and lamented the debauchery 
 that had such encouragement in the city." 
 
 Soon after his marriage, Sir Dudley North 
 left his house in Basinghall Street for a much 
 larger one at the back of the Goldsmith's Hall. 
 This he did chiefly " because his lady, though 
 affecting retirement, yet, when she did appear, 
 loved to have a parade about her ; and often 
 childing brought christenings, which, in the 
 city, were usually celebrated with much com- 
 pany and feastings." In furnishing the house 
 he spent at least ^4000, and its suite of recep- 
 tion-rooms was one of the wonders of the day. 
 It was the scene of feasts without number — 
 christening feasts being frequent and most 
 sumptuous of all — in which all the civic forms 
 and ceremonies were scrupulously observed. 
 But the house had one great disadvantage, 
 causing Sir Dudley, we are told, much repent- 
 ance of his vanity. " It was situated among 
 the goldsmiths, and other smoky trades, that, 
 for convenience of the Plall, are very thickly
 
 His Occupations ifi it. 163 
 
 planted thereabouts, and their smoke and dust 
 filled the air, and confounded all his good fur- 
 niture. He laboured hard in person to caulk 
 up the windows, and all chimneys, not used, 
 were kept close stopped. But notwithstanding 
 all that could be done to prevent it, the dust 
 gathered thick upon everything within doors ; 
 for which reason the rooms were often let stand 
 without any furniture at all." 
 
 Sir Dudley North's mode of life in these last 
 years was minutely described by his brother. 
 '* His domestic methods were always reason- 
 able, but, towards his lady, superlatively oblig- 
 ing. He was absent from her as little as he 
 could, and that was being abroad ; but at 
 home they were seldom asunder. When he 
 had his great house, a little room near his 
 chamber, which they called a dressing-room, 
 was sequestered for the accommodation of 
 both of them. She had her implements, and 
 he his books of account ; and having fixed a 
 table and a desk, all his counting-house busi- 
 ness was done there. There also he read such 
 books as pleased him, and, though he was a 
 kind of dunce at school, in his manhood he re- 
 covered so much Latin as to make him take 
 pleasure in the best classics, especially in 
 Tully's philosophies, which I recommended to 
 him. If time lay on his hands, he would assist 
 his lady in her affairs. I have come there and
 
 1 64 Dudley North 's Vinegar-Making. 
 
 found him very busy in picking out the stitches 
 of a dislaced petticoat But his tenderness to 
 his children was very uncommon, for he would 
 often sit by while they were dressing and un- 
 dressing, and would be assisting himself if they 
 were at any time sick or out of order. Once 
 his eldest son, when about five years old, had 
 a chilblain, which an ignorant apothecary had 
 converted into a wound, and it was surgeon's 
 work for near six months, and the poor child 
 relapsed into arms again until it was cured. 
 But, after the methods were instituted, the 
 father would dress it himself" 
 
 In all sorts of pleasant, homely ways, the 
 retired merchant found occupation and amuse- 
 ment for himself. " In that great house he 
 had much more room than his family required. 
 He used his spare rooms for operations and 
 natural experiments, and one operation was a 
 very useful one — that was a fabric for vinegar. 
 He managed that in three vessels. The first 
 had the fruit, or whatever was the ground ; 
 this was always foul. From whence he took 
 into the next vessel, where it refined ; and out 
 of that he drew into a third ; and, from thence, 
 took for use. The first was continually sup- 
 plied with raisin stalks, warm water, &c. In 
 this manner, after the course was begun, the 
 house was supplied with little or no charge for 
 several years."
 
 A Merchant at Play. 165 
 
 North travelled much each summer. He 
 went frequently to Bristol and the neighbour- 
 hood, where lay his wife's property ; and from 
 the time of his brother, the Lord Keeper Guild- 
 ford's death, he was often at his house at Wrox- 
 ton, there fulfilling his trust as guardian of the 
 young Lord Guildford. " At Wroxton," says 
 Roger North, "there was an old building which 
 was formerly Hawk's Mews. There we insti- 
 tuted a laboratory. One apartment was for 
 woodworks, and the other for iron. His busi- 
 ness was hewing and framing, and, being per- 
 mitted to sit, he would labour very hard ; and 
 in that manner he hewed the frames for our 
 necessary tables. He put them together only 
 with caps and pins, but so as served the occa- 
 sion very well. We got up a table and a bench ; 
 but the great difficulty was to get bellows and 
 a forge. He hewed such stones as lay about, 
 and built a hearth with a back, and by means 
 of water and an old iron which he knocked 
 right down, he perforated that stone for the 
 wind to come at the fire. What common tools 
 we wanted we sent and bought, and also a 
 leather skin, with which he made a pair of 
 bellows that wrought overhead, and the wind 
 was conveyed by elder guns let into one an- 
 other, and so it got to the fire. Upon finding 
 a piece of an old anvil we went to work, and 
 wrought all the iron that was used in our
 
 1 66 Dudley North 's Amusancnts, 
 
 manufactory. He delighted most in hewing. 
 He allowed me, being a lawyer, as he said, to 
 be the best forger. This was morning work 
 before dressing, he coming out with a red short 
 waistcoat, red cap, and black face ; so that my 
 lady, when she came to call us to dinner, was 
 full of admiration what creatures she had in 
 her family. In the afternoons we had em- 
 ployment which was somewhat more refined ; 
 and that was planing and turning, for which 
 use we sequestered a low closet. We had our 
 engines from London, and many round imple- 
 ments were made. It was not a little strange 
 to see with what earnestness and pains we 
 Avorked, sweating most immoderately, and 
 scarce allowing ourselves time to eat. At the 
 lighter works in the afternoon he hath sat, 
 perhaps, scraping a stick, or turning a piece of 
 wood, and this for many afternoons together, 
 all the while singing like a cobbler, incompar- 
 ably better pleased than he had been in all the 
 stages of his life before." 
 
 From pleasant retirement of that sort. Sir 
 Dudley North was called away by death when 
 only fifty years of age. He divided the vaca- 
 tion of 1 69 1, as usual, between Wroxton and 
 Bristol. On his coming back to London for 
 the winter, he was troubled with a cold, but 
 made light of it, as was his wont. Near the 
 end of December he became suddenly, worse.
 
 His Death. 
 
 167 
 
 " He was thereupon put to bed," says his 
 brother, " and, as I found him, lay gasping for 
 breath. He discoursed seriously, that he found 
 himself very ill, and concluded he should die ; 
 that he knew of no cause of illness on his part, 
 but God's will be done. Dr Radcliff was sen^ 
 for ; and he, observing his breathing with a 
 small hiccup, asked if he was used to breathe 
 in that way ; and, somebody saying ' No,' he 
 asked no more questions. Sir Dudley lay not 
 long in this manner ; but in all good sense, 
 conscience, and understanding, perfect tran- 
 quillity of mind, and entire resignation, he en- 
 dured the pain of hard breathing till he 
 breathed no more, which happened on the 
 3 1st of December 1691," " Well ! " exclaimed 
 the apothecary who attended him, " I never 
 saw any people so willing to die as these 
 Korths are ! "
 
 
 VIII. 
 
 THOMAS GUY, 
 [1644-1724] 
 
 N Horsleydown, near the eastern end of 
 Toolcy Street, which was then what 
 its name implies, a down for horses 
 to graze in, near to the southern bank of the 
 Thames, and just opposite to the Tower of 
 London, Thomas Guy was born in 1644, three 
 years after Dudley North. His long life, how- 
 ever, carries us into a generation later than 
 North's, and into a region of commerce very 
 different from that in which North made him- 
 self famous. 
 
 His father was a lighterman and coal-dealer, 
 who carried on a humble but respectable trade 
 in the district specially appropriated to small 
 shipping and to traffic in coal, which was just 
 then beginning to be brought in considerable 
 quantities from Newcastle and its neighbour- 
 hood, to take the place of the wood, which had 
 hitherto been almost the only fuel in use among
 
 Thomas Giiy's Youth. 169 
 
 Englishmen. So great had been the prejudice 
 against Newcastle coal in former times, that, 
 during the reign of Edward I., one man was 
 haneed for daring to burn it within the walls 
 of London. 
 
 Thomas Guy lost his father when he was 
 eight years old. But his mother, a native of 
 Tamworth, was a good and clever woman, de- 
 termined to help her children on in the world. 
 She carefully trained them herself, and gave 
 them the best schooling that could be had. 
 • Little Thomas played upon the open fields, 
 which then stretched along the banks of the 
 river up to London Bridge, and took heartily 
 to his lessons, showing an especial fondness for 
 books. That fondness may have led his mother 
 to apprentice him for eight years, in 1660, to a 
 bookseller named John Clarke, whose shop was 
 in the porch of Mercer's Chapel, in Cheapside. 
 Guy was then sixteen years old. He served 
 his time, and became a member of the Sta- 
 tioners' Company. But before the time was 
 up, on the morning of the 2d of Septem- 
 ber 1666, he was called out to see the most 
 wonderful sight and the most terrible calamity 
 that ever happened in London. At a baker's 
 shop in Pudding Lane, on Fish Street Hill, at 
 the spot now marked by the Monument, a fire 
 broke out. Most of the houses being of wood, 
 and there being no fire-engines or other cffi-
 
 170 The Great Fire of London. 
 
 cient means of staying it, the fire was driven 
 by a sharp wind, north, south, and west, as far 
 as Pye Corner, in Smithfield. People after- 
 wards made fun of the fire Avhich began at a 
 baker's shop in Pudding Lane and spread to 
 Pye Corner. But the Great Fire was no matter 
 for a joke. Through four long days and nights 
 it grew and raged, darkening the sun, and, 
 with its lurid glare, making night as bright 
 as day. " The sky," says John Evelyn, who 
 watched it, " was like the top of a burning 
 oven, visible for forty miles round, to which 
 distance the smoke extended. The cracklincr 
 of the flames, the shrieking of the women and 
 children, the fall of towers, houses, and churches, 
 was like a hideous storm, and the air about so 
 hot and inflamed, that at last no one could 
 approach it. The stones flew like grenadoes, 
 and the melting lead ran down the street in 
 a stream, and the very pavement glowed with 
 fiery redness." Sir Thomas Grcsham's Ex- 
 change, the old Guildhall, the venerable cathe- 
 dral of St Paul's, considered the noblest in 
 Christendom, were destroyed, along with eighty- 
 nine churches, and more than thirteen thousand 
 houses in four hundred streets. Of the whole 
 district within the city walls, four hundred and 
 thirty-six acres were in ruins, and only seventy- 
 five acres were left covered. Property worth 
 jfj" 1 0,000,000 — avast sum, indeed, for the smaller
 
 Goodout of Evil. 171 
 
 and poorer London of those days — wz.'s, wasted, 
 and thousands of starving Londoners had to 
 run for their lives, and crouch for days and 
 weeks on the bare fields of Islington and 
 Hampstead, Southwark and Lambeth. " Oh, 
 the miserable and calamitous spectacle ! " ex- 
 claimed Evelyn ; " such as haply the world had 
 not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor 
 to be outdone till the universal conflagration 
 of it!" 
 
 Some good sprang, however, from the evil. 
 The Great Plague of 1665, which began the 
 year before, and continued during the following 
 year, and which killed nearly seventy thousand 
 people in London and its neighbourhood, was 
 burnt out by the Great Fire of 1666. And 
 the narrow streets and clumsy houses of old 
 London were soon replaced by broader tho- 
 roughfares and better buildings. 
 
 Thomas Guy and his master were, of course, 
 burnt out of their little shop in the porch of 
 Mercer's Chapel. The master seems to have 
 been ruined ; but Guy, being only a shopman, 
 suffered no serious injury. In 1668, having 
 served his apprenticeship, and being twenty- 
 four years old, he started in business for him- 
 self, with a capital of ;^200, in a new shop 
 built on the sharp corner formed by Cornhill 
 and Lombard Street, looking out upon the 
 whole length of the Poultry and Chcapsidc, on
 
 172 Thomas Guy's Book- Shop. 
 
 both sides of which more commodious, though 
 less picturesque, houses were being set up, 
 with the second Royal Exchange, now in pro- 
 gress of building, on his right, and a little to 
 his left a pretty fruit and flower market, with 
 trees growing up among its sheds, which had 
 formerly been a meat-market, on the site now 
 occupied by the Mansion-house. 
 
 There he prospered in his work, a clear 
 notion of which we may derive from Mr Charles 
 Knight's words. " Placed thus," he says, " in 
 the very heart of the great commercial opera- 
 tions of London, I can see the shadow of the 
 young bookseller as he sits in his shop amidst 
 his small stock, restless at the want of occupa- 
 tion, and envying the great merchant-adven- 
 turers congregating in the Exchange. He 
 spreads his new books and his old upon a 
 board in front of his window, now and then 
 soliciting the busy trader who glances at them 
 to buy Mr Wingate's 'Arithmetic made Easy,' 
 or Mr Record's ' Grounds of Art,' or Mr 
 Hawse's ' Short Arithmetic,' or, * The Old and 
 Tedious Way of Numbering reduced to a New 
 and Brief Method.' He had divinity books, 
 too, chiefly by the famous controversialists 
 who wrote against any approach to the errors 
 of the Church of Rome ; and some by their 
 opponents, who were equally hostile to the 
 doctrines of the Nonconforming clergy. The-
 
 Protestant Bibles. 173 
 
 ology was by far the most exciting topic of 
 those days. Mr Guy was a good Protestant ; 
 and, as he sat in his shop, too often unvisitcd 
 by customers, he meditated frequently upon 
 the large trade that he could command if it 
 were in his power to offer godly people Bibles 
 well printed and cheap. There was no such 
 commodity to be had in England. All the 
 arts associated with the production of books 
 were hampered with privileges and restrictions, 
 and were consequently in a state very inferior 
 to those practised in some countries abroad 
 under conditions of freedom." This was the 
 case with all books, but most of all with Bibles. 
 The privilege of printing Bibles was allowed 
 only to the King's Printer and Oxford Univer- 
 sity. But the University Press was idle ; and 
 the office of King's Printer being continued in 
 one careless family for more than a century, 
 the printing of the volumes had come to be 
 so " very bad, both in letter and paper," that 
 they were hardly legible, and full of gross 
 blunders. One important text was, in the 
 Bible of 1653, printed, " Know ye not that the 
 unrighteous" (instead of " righteous,") "shall in- 
 herit the kingdom of God." "Fie! for shame!" 
 exclaimed old P'ullcr, with good reason. " Con- 
 sidering with myself the causes of the growth 
 and increase of impiety and profancncss in our 
 land, amongst others this sccmcth to me not
 
 174 Guy's Trade in Bibles. 
 
 the least, — the late many false and erroneous 
 impressions of the Bible. Now know, what is 
 but carelessness in other books, is impiety in 
 setting forth of the Bible." 
 
 As a good Christian and a shrewd trades- 
 man, Thomas Guy resolved to provide better 
 and cheaper Bibles for his countrymen ; and, 
 in so doing, he set an example which several 
 other enterprising booksellers of his day were 
 quick in following. He employed an agent in 
 Holland, who bought for him good paper and 
 fine types, and entrusted them to competent 
 Dutch printers, who had not yet lost the fame 
 of superiority in the art which Caxton had 
 learned from their forefathers and introduced 
 into England two hundred years before. In 
 this way capital Bibles were produced and sent 
 over to Guy, who was able to sell great num- 
 bers of them at a low price, and yet with good 
 profit to himself. But he had to smuggle 
 them into England, and to be punished for so 
 doing. "This trade," says the old historian, 
 " proving not only very detrimental to the 
 public revenue, but likewise to the King's 
 Printer, all ways and means were devised to 
 quash the same, which being vigorously put 
 in execution, the booksellers, by frequent 
 seizures and prosecutions, became so great 
 sufferers, that they judged a further pursuit 
 thereof inconsistent with their interest."
 
 Its Difficulties and Profits. 175 
 
 Thomas Guy, shrewder and more prosper- 
 ous than the rest, did not so judge. But he 
 bethought him of a better way of carrying on 
 his well-meant enterprise. The University of 
 Oxford, being privileged to print Bibles, though 
 it did not make much use of its privilege, was, 
 after much persuasion from Guy, induced to 
 farm its monopoly to him. He thereupon 
 bought a good supply of types in Holland, 
 brought them and a number of printers to 
 London, and started a busy little printing-office 
 in his shop at the corner of Lombard Street. 
 There he began to make his fortune, and to 
 do good service to religion and literature, by 
 issuing great numbers of cheap Bibles in the 
 name of the Oxford University. 
 
 He was a frugal man ; and his enemies, 
 jealous of the prosperity which he was honour- 
 ably attaining, called him a miser. They 
 remembered the time when, in the first year of 
 his shopkeeping, he lived a bachelor, himself 
 doing the whole household work, which he 
 could not afford to keep a servant to do for 
 him, and when he ordered his dinner from a 
 neighbouring cookshop and ate it at his counter, 
 with a sheet of paper for his only tablecloth. 
 There was nothing dishonourable in that. The 
 dishonour would have been in following the gay 
 fashion of the City gallants of his day, who 
 rivalled the Court gallants of Charles H.'s time
 
 176 Giiy^s Economical Ways, 
 
 in extravagance, and incurrinfr expenses be- 
 yond his means. Yet tlic foolish contempt 
 which he won thereby has stuck to him ever 
 since, and he is still often known as " Thomas 
 Guy, the miser." 
 
 That he was always a very strict and pru- 
 dent man, however — perhaps with rather a hard 
 covering to the deep charity that was in his 
 heart — is clear. In illustration of this, let us 
 again turn to Mr Charles Knight for a picture 
 of him when he was beginning to be rich. 
 " He is lonely. He has indulged himself with 
 the cost of a female servant, who cooks his 
 frugal meal and keeps his Holland shirt tidy. 
 But he wants the solace of a household friend. 
 He goes little into society. He dines rarely in 
 his Company's Hall. The city dames, according 
 to his observation, are too ambitious of finery. 
 He has once or twice conversed during the 
 banquet at Guildhall with the daughter of a 
 rich stationer, and has found her deplorably 
 ignorant of the commodities in which her father 
 deals. Gradually he begins to think that his 
 own maid-servant is quite as attractive as a 
 citizen's daughter, born of honest parents, 
 religiously disposed, and skilled in cookery 
 and other useful arts. What if this neat- 
 handed Phillis should become his wife ! He is 
 sure that he can compel her to regulate his 
 affairs with due economy. She has never
 
 Why he never Married. I'j'j 
 
 wasted money nor victuals while in his service. 
 She has professed that implicit obedience to 
 his will which he requires. He at last makes 
 his proposal, and is accepted graciously. But 
 there is one danger which the handmaiden has 
 not foreseen. She has not apprehended the 
 possibility of giving dire offence by the slightest 
 manifestation of her own opinion in opposition 
 to that of her master. He has been very cross 
 for several days. He has been fined once for 
 neglecting to pave the footway in front of his 
 shop. He delays to incur an expense which 
 he thinks ought to fall upon the pavement 
 commissioners ; but he must yield. The pa- 
 viors go to work. He watches them narrowly. 
 He has a ground-plan of his own premises, 
 the boundary of which is not very well defined 
 in the frontage. He gives the most minute 
 directions as to the exact point where his por- 
 tion of the stoneway within the posts should 
 begin and end. The workmen find that a very 
 awkward space is left unpavcd. They carry 
 their remonstrances to the incautious maiden 
 within doors during the absence of her master. 
 She little knows what she is doing when she 
 says, ' Do as you wish. Tell him I bade you, 
 and I am sure he will not be angry.' The poor 
 girl mu.st accept her destiny, to remain unmar- 
 ried to the thriving bookseller. The romance 
 
 of Thomas Guy's life is over." 
 
 M
 
 178 Wi//iam Pa Person. 
 
 Yet he was to take a prominent part in the 
 most romantic episode in the whole history of 
 English commerce. The chief cause of this, 
 though indirectly, while he was the direct cause 
 Sn a great measure of the future prosperity of 
 England, was another self-made, but a very 
 different man, contemporary with Thomas Guy. 
 The man was William Paterson, the founder 
 of the Bank of England. 
 
 William Paterson, a native of Dumfries, was 
 born in April 1658. He came to London, and 
 became a member of the Merchant Tailors' Com- 
 pany in 1 68 1, but the few years following that 
 date were passed by him in America and the 
 West Indies. He was in London again in 
 1686, and from that time he took up his posi- 
 tion as an influential, though not as a very 
 prosperous, merchant. He is chiefly famous for 
 his ill-fated effort to establish a Scottish colony 
 in the Isthmus of Darien. In two other favourite 
 projects he was more successful. He was 
 through a great many years a zealous advocate 
 of the Union of England and Scotland, which 
 had come to be under one sovereign since the 
 time of James I., under a single form of govern- 
 ment; and the adoption of that excellent benefit 
 was mainly the result of his labours. His 
 other project was strictly commercial. Soon 
 after the accession of William and Mary, if not 
 before, he began to urge the establishment of a
 
 ^i^i^ 
 
 WILLIAM I'ATERSON, 
 
 THE POINOBR OF TIIK UANK OF ENOI.ANU.
 
 The Bank of England. 1 7 9 
 
 National Bank of England, akin to the public 
 banks already set up in Venice and elsewhere. 
 Through three years he steadily recommended 
 this enterprise against the fierce opposition of 
 private and public enemies to it. At length, in 
 the summer of 1694, the Bank of England wa? 
 started, meeting first in the new Mercers' 
 Hall, built in place of the old building in the 
 outskirts of which Guy had passed his 'prentice 
 days as a bookseller. Afterwards, until the 
 growth of the business made it necessary for a 
 separate building to be set up, the Bank had a 
 larger and more permanent dwelling-place in 
 the Grocers' Hall, where Addison once saw 
 fifty-four clerks at work in one long room. " I 
 looked," he says, " into the great hall, where 
 the bank is kept ; and was not a little pleased 
 to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks, 
 with all the other members of that wealthy 
 corporation, ranged in their several stations, 
 acc!ording to the parts which they hold in that 
 just and regular economy." 
 
 The establishment of the Bank of England 
 was of immense benefit to commerce and 
 society. The first bankers, from the times of 
 Whittington to those of Herrick and his suc- 
 cessors, were, in their capacity of bankers, 
 little more than pawnbrokers. When kings, 
 nobles, and others wanted monc}', they brought 
 their jewels, title-deeds, and the like, to those
 
 I So Primitive Banking. 
 
 who had gold to lend, and left them as security 
 for whatever they borrowed. Whether the 
 pledge was given in paper or in solid money's 
 worth, bills, and every other sort of paper 
 currency, as we now understand the terms, 
 were for a long time unknown or unused. 
 Until the money was repaid, the security was 
 locked up, and not allowed to come into the 
 market. By this plan of tying up great quan- 
 tities of capital, the mercantile community was 
 seriously damaged, although one class — espe- 
 cially since the days of George Heriot and Sir 
 William Herrick — the class of goldsmiths, was 
 greatly enriched and advanced in influence. 
 In attempting to remedy this evil, the London 
 merchants fell into another as great. The ex- 
 travagances of life under the gay rule of the 
 Stuarts, and the risk which private individuals 
 felt in keeping money in their own hands 
 during the troublesome times both of the 
 Rebellion and of the Restoration, brought 
 immense quantities of coin and bullion into 
 the keeping of the goldsmiths and other rich 
 men of Lombard Street and its neighbourhood. 
 Having begun as mere money-lenders, they 
 came to be money-keepers as well. They not 
 only lent great sums of money in return for 
 paper bonds, but they also took charge of 
 vast quantities of wealth, for which, in like 
 manner, they issued paper bonds. Thus it
 
 Irrcs'ular Bankers. 1 8 1 
 
 became natural and necessary for the paper to 
 be used as money ; and no sooner was the 
 custom begun than its convenience, both to the 
 honest and to the dishonest, led to its adoption 
 to an unreasonable and dangerous extent. 
 Half the gold in the kingdom came to be 
 stowed away in the goldsmiths' vaults, and the 
 buying and selling of ordinary merchants and 
 tradesmen was carried on almost exclusively 
 by means of paper. Both for giving and for 
 receiving bullion the bankers or money-agents 
 charged high rates of interest, and so enriched 
 themselves to the disparagement of their neigh- 
 bours ; and the public, while paying dearly for 
 these privileges, ran the risk of losing their 
 wealth through the failure or defalcation of the 
 men to whom they entrusted it. When Sir 
 Dudley North came home from Constantinople, 
 we are told, he was greatl)'' astonished at the 
 new and irregular banking customs which had 
 been introduced during his absence. For a 
 long time he refused to lodge his money in the 
 goldsmiths' hands, preferring to have "his own 
 cash-keeper" in his own counting-house, "as 
 merchants used to do." " His friends," it is 
 added, " wondered at tin's, as if he did not 
 know his own interest." At last he, too, found 
 it necessary to follow the fashion. " In the 
 latter end of his time, when he dealt more in 
 trusts and mortgages than in merchandise, he
 
 1 82 Williavi Patcrson 's Bank. 
 
 saw a better custom, and used the shop of Sir 
 Francis Child, at Temple Bar, for paying and 
 receiving all his great sums." 
 
 Sir Francis Child, the first regular private 
 banker, " the father of his profession," was a 
 safe guardian of the money entrusted to him ; 
 and so were many of his rivals and contempo- 
 raries. But many of the new sort of bankers 
 were by no means safe, and much risk was in- 
 curred by those who entrusted their wealth to 
 them. It was to remedy or improve upon this 
 state of things that the Bank of England was 
 started, at William Paterson's suggestion, in 
 1694, and it was wonderfully successful. It 
 became, not only the bank of the State, serv- 
 ing as the depositary of the public revenues, 
 but also the centre of all the vast financial 
 machinery which has since been developed for 
 the convenience and profit of merchants, and 
 all who share in their prosperity. At its foun- 
 dation it received power to deal in bills of ex- 
 change, bullion, and public and private bonds, 
 and, in lieu of the old irregular and cumbrous 
 securities which were given by the private 
 bankers, to issue bank-notes, which could be 
 passed from hand to hand as easily as gold 
 and silver, and converted at any time into 
 actual coin. 
 
 Being established just at the dawn of those 
 fortunate times which were come for England
 
 Its Services to Commerce. 183 
 
 by the great Rebellion, and the setting up of 
 William III. in place of James II., it greatly- 
 helped the extension of that regenerated com- 
 merce which Addison described so vividly in 
 171 1. " If we consider our own country in its 
 natural prospect," he wrote, " without any of 
 the benefits and advantages of commerce, what 
 an uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our 
 share ! Natural historians tell us that no fruit 
 grows originally among us, besides hips and 
 haws, acorns and pignuts, with other delicacies 
 of the like nature ; that our climate of itself, 
 and without the assistance of art, can make no 
 further advances towards a plum than a sloe, 
 and carries an apple to no greater perfection 
 than a crab ; that our melons, our peaches, 
 our figs, our apricots, and cherries are strangers 
 among us, imported in different ages, and 
 naturalised in our English gardens ; and that 
 they would all degenerate and fall away into 
 the taste of our country, if they were wholly 
 neglected by the planter and left to the mercy 
 of our sun and soil. Nor has traffic more 
 enriched our vegetable world than it has im- 
 proved the whole face of nature among us. 
 Our ships arc laden with the harvest of every 
 climate ; our tables are stored with spices and 
 oils and wines ; our rooms arc filled with 
 pyramids of china and adorned with workman- 
 ship of Japan; our morning's draught comes
 
 1 84 
 
 The Benefits of Commerce. 
 
 from the remotest corners of the earth ; we 
 repair our bodies by the drugs of America, 
 and repose ourselves under Indian canopies. 
 The vineyards of France are our gardens, the 
 Spice Islands our hotbeds ; the Persians are 
 our weavers, and the Chinese our potters. 
 Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare 
 necessities of life ; but traffic gives us a great 
 variety of what is useful, and at the same 
 time supplies us with everything that is con- 
 venient and ornamental. For these reasons 
 there are not more useful members in a com- 
 monwealth than merchants. They knit man- 
 
 Second Royal Exchange. 
 
 kind together in a mutual intercourse of good 
 offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work 
 for the poor, add wealth to the rich, and mag- 
 nificence to the great. Our English merchant 
 converts the tin of his own country into gold, 
 and exchanges his wool for rubies. The Ma-
 
 in the Eighteenth Century. 185 
 
 hometans are clothed in our British manufac- 
 ture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone 
 are warmed with the fleeces of our sheep. 
 When I have been upon 'Change, I have often 
 fancied one of our old kings standing in per- 
 son where he is represented in effigy, and 
 looking down upon the wealthy concourse of 
 people with which that place is every day 
 filled. In this case how would he be surprised 
 to hear all the languages of Europe spoken in 
 this little spot of his former dominions, and to 
 see so many private men, who, in his time, 
 would have been the vassals of some powerful 
 baron, negotiating like princes for greater sums 
 of money than were formerly to be met with 
 in the royal treasury ! Trade, without en- 
 larging the British territories, has given us a 
 kind of additional empire. It has multiplied 
 the number of the rich, made our landed 
 estates infinitely more valuable than they were 
 formerly, and added to them an accession of 
 other estates as valuable as the lands them- 
 selves." 
 
 In helping to establish that noble empire of 
 trade, which is now twenty times as extensive 
 and powerful as it was in Addison's day, the 
 Bank of England also gave accidental en- 
 couragement to a new branch of trade which 
 for the most part was very mischievous. The 
 new impetus in lawful money-making gave
 
 1 86 The Stock-jobbing Mania. 
 
 birth to all sorts of more or less unlawful 
 money-making. " Some of them," according 
 to a contemporary authority, " were very useful 
 and successful whilst they continued in a few 
 hands, till they fell into stock-jobbing, now 
 much introduced, when they dwindled into 
 nothing. Others of them, and these the greater 
 number, were mere whims, of little or no 
 service to the world. Moreover, projects, as 
 usual, begat projects ; lottery upon lottery, 
 engine upon engine, etc., multiplied wonder- 
 fully. If it happened that any one person got 
 considerably by a happy and useful invention, 
 the consequence generally was that others 
 followed the track, in spite of the patent ; thus 
 going on to jostle out one another, and to abuse 
 the credulity of the people." " London at this 
 time," says another historian, of the year 1698, 
 " abounded with many new projects and 
 schemes promising mountains of gold ; the 
 Royal Exchange was crowded with projects, 
 wagers, airy companies of new manufactures 
 and inventions, and stock-jobbers and the like." 
 In that year, indeed, stock-jobbing became 
 so extensive a business that it had to find a 
 separate home in 'Change Alley. The business 
 advanced each year, in spite of the angry 
 but well-merited denunciation of it in Parha- 
 ment and the pulpit, in learned treatises and 
 vigorous pamphlets without number. " It is a
 
 Knaves and Fools. 1 87 
 
 complete system of knavery," we read in one 
 work, " founded in fraud, born of deceit, and 
 nourished by trickeries, forgeries, falsehoods, 
 and all sorts of delusions, coining false news, 
 whispering imaginary terrors, and preying 
 upon those they have elevated and depressed." 
 " The stock-jobbers," says another, " can ruin 
 men silently ; they undermine and impoverish 
 them, and fiddle them out of their money by 
 the strange, unheard-of engines of interest, 
 discount, transfers, tallies, debentures, shares, 
 projects, and the devil-and-all of figures and 
 hard names." " The poor English," writes a 
 third, " run a-madding after new inventions, 
 whims, and projects ; and this ingredient my 
 dear countrjmen have — they are violent, and 
 prosecute their projects eagerly." 
 
 When all business was regarded as a game 
 of chance, in which the professed money- 
 makers j)la)'ed with loaded dice, it is not 
 strange that senseless speculations of all sorts 
 should be wildly entered upon. " Several evil- 
 disposed persons," it was averred in an Act of 
 Parliament passed in 169S, "for divers years 
 last past have set up many mischievous and 
 unlawful games, called lotteries, not only in 
 the cities of London and Westminster, and in 
 the suburbs thereof and places adjoining, but 
 in most of the eminent towns and places in 
 England and Wales, and have thereby most
 
 1 88 The South Sea Company. 
 
 unjustly and fraudulently got to themselves 
 great sums of money from the children and 
 servants of several gentlemen, traders, and 
 merchants, and from other unwary persons, to 
 the utter ruin and impoverishment of many 
 families, and to the reproach of the English 
 laws and government." 
 
 But before long the English Government 
 itself proceeded to organise the most gigantic 
 lottery ever known. In l/ll, the Earl of 
 Oxford, who was Lord Treasurer, finding the 
 State burdened with ;!^io,coo,ooo worth of 
 debts and deficiencies, hit upon a wonderful 
 expedient for tiding over the difficulty. He 
 saw that people's heads were turned by the 
 exaggerated talk of buccaneers and other 
 roving adventurers respecting the boundless 
 wealth to be obtained by search and settle- 
 ment in the seas and coast-land of South 
 America. Therefore he procured an Act of 
 Parliament appointing that, " to the intent 
 that the trade to the South Seas be carried 
 on for the honour and increase of the wealth 
 and riches of this realm," a company should 
 be formed, having for its members all those to 
 whom the State was indebted, with the exclu- 
 sive privilege of trading, colonising, and fight- 
 ing in the southern seas from Tierra del Fuego 
 to the northernmost part of South America. 
 The Company was to be aided by State in-
 
 The Climax of Stock-Jobbing. 1 89 
 
 fluence, and, if necessary, by the protection of 
 the British army, besides having various pro- 
 fitable imposts assigned to it. In this way, it 
 was represented, the pubhc creditors would 
 obtain interest for their loans without any ex- 
 pense to the nation, and some money, it was 
 even hoped, would be saved, to go towards a 
 fund for sinking the national debt. 
 
 The company was straightway formed, and 
 had a quiet and tolerably harmless existence 
 till 1720, "a year," says the contemporary his- 
 torian, " remarkable beyond any other which 
 can be pitched upon for extraordinary and 
 romantic projects, proposals, and undertakings, 
 both private and national, and which therefore 
 ought to be had in perpetual remembrance, as 
 it may serve for a perpetual memento to legis- 
 lators never to leave it in the power of any 
 hereafter to hoodwink mankind into so shame- 
 ful and baneful an imposition on the credulity 
 of the people, thereby diverted from their 
 lawful industry." In 1719, Law's Mississippi 
 scheme had been at its height in France, and 
 that example gave unheard-of success to a 
 like project of the South Sea Company's. 
 The company proposed to buy up the whole 
 national debt, and liquidate it by means of 
 paper money, and the proposal, after some 
 competition on the part of the Bank of England, 
 was accepted.
 
 1 90 The South Sea Bubble. 
 
 Thereupon ensued a scene of turmoil and 
 disaster unparalleled in commercial history. 
 The South Sea stock rose to a fabulous value, 
 and the success of this wicked speculation 
 encouraered a crowd of others as wicked. 
 " Any impudent impostor," says the historian, 
 speaking from his own observation, "whilst 
 the delusion was at its greatest height, needed 
 only to hire a room at some coffee-house or 
 other house near Exchange Alley for a few 
 hours, and open a subscription-book for some- 
 what relative to commerce, manufacture, plan- 
 tation, or some supposed invention, cither 
 newly hatched out of his own brain, or else 
 stolen from some of the many abortive pro- 
 jects of former times, having first advertised 
 it in the newspapers of the preceding day ; and 
 he might, in a ^qw hours, find subscribers for 
 one or two millions, in some cases more, of 
 imaginary stock. Yet many of those very 
 subscribers were far from believing those pro- 
 jects feasible. It was enough for their pur- 
 pose that there would very soon be a premium 
 on the receipts for those subscriptions, when 
 they generally got rid of them in the crowded 
 alleys to others more credulous than them- 
 selves." It was nothing uncommon for shares to 
 be sold at ten per cent, more on one side of 
 'Change Alley than on the other, or to rise a 
 hundred per cent, in value in the course of a few
 
 3 
 
 3 
 PQ 
 
 3 
 O 
 
 V
 
 A Year of Buddies. 193 
 
 hours. At one time the South Sea £ 100 shares 
 were to be sold for ;^iooo, while East India 
 stock rose from ;f 100 to ;!{J^44S, and African 
 stock from £2^ to ^^"200. The ;^io shares of a 
 York Buildings Company attained the fictitious 
 value of ;^305, and the shares of a Welsh 
 Copper Company, without having a penny of 
 real capital, originally valued at £4. 2s. 6d., 
 could hardly be bought for £gS- There is 
 extant a list of nearly two hundred principal 
 bubble companies started in this year of 
 bubbles, " none of which were under a million, 
 and some went as far as ten millions." One 
 was designed to make salt water fresh ; another, 
 to furnish merchants with watches ; a third, to 
 discover perpetual motion ; a fourth, to plant 
 mulberry trees and breed silkworms in Chelsea 
 Park ; and a fifth, " to import a number of 
 large jackasses from Spain, in order to pro- 
 pagate a larger kind of mules in England." 
 So preposterous were many of the dond fide 
 schemes, that one knows not whether it was in 
 jest or in earnest that an advertisement was 
 issued announcing that " at a certain place, on 
 Tuesday next, books will be opened for a 
 subscription of two millions for the invention 
 of melting saw-dust and chips, and casting 
 them into clean deal boards, without cracks or 
 knots." 
 
 Well might Newton say, when asked what 
 
 N
 
 194 Thomas Guy's Stock-Jobbing. 
 
 all this would end in, that " he could calculate 
 the motions of erratic bodies, but not the 
 madness of a multitude." Men had not long 
 to wait, however, before the issues were clear 
 to every one ; grievous ruin to thousands upon 
 thousands of innocent and foolish speculators, 
 great stagnation to the general commerce of 
 England, and an ugly blot upon the national 
 honour. 
 
 Some men, however, shared without dis- 
 honour in the speculations, which reached 
 their climax in the South Sea Bubble, and 
 thereby became very rich ; and of these the 
 most memorable was Thomas Guy. Having 
 begun to make money by selling Bibles, as we 
 saw, before the establishment of the Bank of 
 England, he used it to make more money 
 through upwards of thirty years. He em- 
 ployed his wealth in trading in Government 
 securities, great and small. His first enter- 
 prise of this sort, according to tradition, was 
 in a tolerably humble sort of trade. The needy 
 agents of James H., following an example of 
 long standing, were in the habit of paying the 
 seamen of the Royal Navy, not in cash, but in 
 pay-tickets or promissory-notes, for which cash 
 was to be given at a distant day. As the 
 seamen required their money at once, it was 
 usual for them to sell their pay-tickets as soon 
 as they were received, for whatever they could
 
 His Ways of Mo7iey-making. 195 
 
 get for them ; and Guy is said to have found 
 it a very lucrative business to buy their tickets 
 at about two-thirds of tlieir nominal value, 
 holding them till they became due, and he 
 could recover the whole amount from the Gov- 
 ernment. 
 
 If he did so, that was only one of the 
 many ways of money- making which he fol- 
 lowed. " Formerly," says Macaulay, " when 
 the Treasury was empty, when the taxes came 
 in slowly, and when the pay of soldiers and 
 sailors was in arrear, it was necessary for the 
 Chancellor of the Exchequer to go, hat in 
 hand, up and down Cheapside and Cornhill, 
 attended by the Lord Mayor and by the Alder- 
 men, to make up a sum by borrowing ;^ioo 
 from this hosier, and ;^200 from that iron- 
 monger." Throughout James II. 's reign, until 
 the Bank of England was founded, Guy the 
 bookseller lent much money to the Govern- 
 ment in that way, and received good interest 
 for it. When a better state of things was in- 
 troduced with the Bank, Guy continued to 
 lend his money with great advantage upon the 
 more orderly system that was established. He 
 was one of the first contributors to the National 
 Debt, which was formally begun in 1692. He 
 also shared, to some extent, in the new busi- 
 ness of stock-jobbing that came into fashion 
 at about the same time. In all the financial
 
 196 TJionas Guy's Later Work. 
 
 speculations of the day, which seemed to him 
 safe and honourable, he freely took part. In 
 1710, just when the South Sea Company was 
 coming into favour, and when its ;^I00 shares 
 were to be bought for ;^I20 a-piece, he was 
 possessed of ;^45,5oo worth of its stock. Part 
 of this he sold when the shares were worth 
 ;£"300 a-piece. The rest he kept for a few years 
 more, and disposed of when he could get ;^6oo 
 for each of them. In ways of this sort he 
 amassed great wealth. 
 
 And he used it well. Having become a man 
 of mark, he entered Parliament in 1695, and 
 retained his seat till 1707, if not longer. "As 
 he was a man of unbounded charity and uni- 
 versal benevolence," says his first biographer, 
 " so he was likewise a great patron of liberty 
 and the rights of his fellow- subjects ; which, 
 to his great honour, he strenuously asserted in 
 divers Parliaments, whereof he was a member." 
 He sat in the House of Commons as Mem- 
 ber for Tamworth, his mother's birth-place, in 
 which he seems to have held property, and in 
 which he always took a great interest. In 
 1705 he built and endowed some alms-houses 
 there for fourteen poor men and women, with 
 pensions for each occupier; and to that com- 
 mon form of charity he added the then unusual 
 and excellent one of establishing a good free 
 library for the poor. In 1707 he added three
 
 Guy's Hospital. 19/ 
 
 new wards to the old Hospital of St Thomas, 
 in Southwark, the relic of an ancient monas- 
 tery, which has lately been reconstructed near 
 to Westminster Bridge. Other minor charities 
 were done by him all through the time of his 
 prosperity. 
 
 But his greatest act of charity was reserved 
 to the last. In 1720, when he was seventy-six, 
 he made about ^^"300,000 by profitable specu- 
 lations in the course of three months. That 
 money he resolved to spend in building and 
 endowing a new hospital, and his project was 
 nobly carried through. When he died in 1724, 
 the roof was being put to Guy's Hospital, the 
 construction of which cost him about ;^i9,ooo; 
 and the ;^220,ooo with which he endowed it 
 has enabled it to continue to this day as a 
 splendid monument of his wealth, and of his 
 wise application of it.
 
 IX. 
 
 WILLIAM BECKFORD. 
 [1 70S- 1 770.] 
 
 N Jamaica, once the most prosperous 
 of the West Indian Islands, one of the 
 first and most influential colonists was 
 Colonel Peter Beckford, a soldier, who made 
 much wealth as a planter, and spent it as a 
 local statesman and grandee. By Charles II. 
 he was made President of the Island Council, 
 and under William III. he was Lieutenant- 
 Governor and Commander-in-Chief. He died, 
 very old and very rich, in 17 10. Further 
 wealth was accumulated'by his son, also named 
 Peter, who died in 1735. Besides other pro- 
 perty, he owned twenty-four large estates, and 
 twelve hundred slaves. 
 
 The famous Alderman Beckford of London 
 M'as one of thirteen children of this second 
 Peter Beckford of Jamaica. He was born in 
 1708. At the age of twelve or thirteen he was 
 sent to England, and the next few years were
 
 The New World. 199 
 
 spent by him at Westminster School. There 
 he took rank with the cleverest boys, two of 
 his friends and rivals being Lord Mansfield 
 and Lord Kinnoul. Then he settled down as 
 a London merchant, at first finding his chief 
 employment in selling the sugar, rum, and 
 other products of his father's Jamaica estates, 
 and soon extending that business so as to 
 become the most influential West Indian and 
 American merchant of his day. 
 
 That was a branch of commerce that had 
 grown mightily since its beginning, in the days 
 of Sir Thomas Smythe. The troubles to which 
 Englishmen — and especially Puritan English- 
 men — were subjected under Charles I. had 
 helped it greatly. " The land is weary of her 
 inhabitants," said the old Puritans, in justifi- 
 cation of their retirement from England; "so 
 that man, which is the most precious of all 
 creatures, is here more vile and base than the 
 earth we tread upon ; so as children, neigh- 
 bours, and friends, especially the poor, are 
 accounted the greatest burdens; which, if things 
 were right, would be the highest earthly bless- 
 ings. Hence it comes to pass that all arts and 
 trades arc carried on in that deceitful manner 
 and unrighteous course, as it is almost impos- 
 sible for a good, upright man to maintain his 
 charge in any of them." That was the lan- 
 guage of the first colonists of New England.
 
 200 English Colotiies in America. 
 
 'o 
 
 Therefore they carried their arts and trades to 
 America ; and there, though failing to practise 
 them with entire freedom from the "deceitful 
 manner and unrighteous course" of their op- 
 ponents in rehgion and pohtics, succeeded in 
 establishing a very influential centre of civil- 
 isation and commerce. With ample stores of 
 timber, copper, and iron, and with facilities for 
 gathering in great quantities of fish, corn, and 
 wool, they began a profitable trade with the 
 mother- country soon after the restoration of 
 Charles II., and have continued famous traders 
 ever since. In Charles II.'s reign, too, Penn- 
 sylvania and New York were founded, mainly 
 by people whose religious grievances led them 
 to follow the example of the Puritans of New 
 England. The Carolinas, and the other mem- 
 bers of what are now the United States, were 
 founded afterwards in quick succession ; some 
 of them by successors of the Cavaliers, who, 
 having driven the Puritans and Quakers across 
 the Atlantic, were encouraged, by their great 
 success in their new homes, to go and carry 
 on a more friendly rivalry with them in the 
 same neighbourhood. All these states, how- 
 ever widely they differed from one another in 
 religion, in politics, and in ways of life, vied 
 with one another in commercial activity, and 
 in the prosperity that was easily secured by 
 it. Almost more important at first were the
 
 Their Growth and Wealth. 20 1 
 
 English settlements which grew up during the 
 same period in the West Indian islands, — Bar- 
 badoes, the great sugar colony, and Jamaica, the 
 great producer of rum, being the chief of them. 
 In 173 1, just at the time Avhen William 
 Beckford came to London to be schooled as 
 an English merchant and statesman, the Ame- 
 rican and West Indian colonies were in a state 
 of prosperity which dazzled the eyes of all on- 
 lookers. Massachusetts alone dispatched in a 
 single year more than three hundred ship- 
 loads of rum, molasses, salt, and fish to Eu- 
 rope. Virginia and Maryland sent home vast 
 quantities of tobacco, grain, skins, and timber. 
 Timber, too, was supplied in countless ships 
 by New England ; and grain, with a score of 
 other useful articles, by Pennsylvania and New 
 York. One year's stock of sugar from Bar- 
 badoes, amounting to 10,000 tons, gave em- 
 ployment to a thousand English seamen ; and 
 besides an equal quantity of sugar, Jamaica 
 furnished large cargoes of rum, logwood, and 
 spices. Both Jamaica and Barbadoes were 
 famous " for having given to many men of 
 low degree exceeding vast fortunes, equal to 
 noblemen, by carrying goods and passengers 
 thither, and bringing thence other commodi- 
 ties, whereby seamen arc bred, and custom 
 increased, and commodities vended, and many 
 thousands employed therein."
 
 202 The Grotuth of Commerce. 
 
 It was not only seamen and seafarers who 
 profited by this wonderful growth of commerce. 
 The mother-country was enriched quite as 
 much as her children in the colonies by the 
 interchange of new and old commodities. In 
 every branch of English trade employment was 
 found for a great many more labourers of all 
 grades. " As the trading, middling sort of 
 people in England are rich," said Daniel De- 
 foe, the author of " Robinson Crusoe," in 1728, 
 " so the labouring, manufacturing people under 
 them are infinitely richer than the same class 
 of people in any other nation in the world. 
 As they are richer, so they live better, fare 
 better, wear better, and spend more money 
 than they do in any other countries. They 
 eat well, and they drink well. For their eating 
 of flesh meat, 'tis a fault even to profusion ; as 
 to their drink, 'tis generally stout, strong beer ; 
 not to take notice of the quantity, which is 
 sometimes a little too much. For the rest, we 
 see their houses and lodgings tolerably fur- 
 nished ; at least, stuffed well with useful and 
 necessary household goods. Even those we 
 call poor people, journeymen, working and 
 painstaking people, do tliis : they lie warm, 
 live in plenty, work hard, and know no want. 
 'Tis by these that the wheels of trade are set 
 on foot. 'Tis by the largeness of their get- 
 tings '-hat they are supported. Are we a rich,
 
 Its Various Bcjiefiis. 203 
 
 a populous, a powerful nation, and in some 
 respects the greatest in all those partieulars in 
 the world, and do we not boast of being so ? 
 'Tis evident it was all derived from trade. Our 
 merchants are princes, greater and richer and 
 more powerful than some sovereign princes ; 
 and, in a word, as is said of Tyre, we have 
 ' made the kings of the earth rich with our 
 merchandise ;' that is, with our trade." " If 
 usefulness gives an addition to the character, 
 either of men or of things, as without doubt it 
 does, trading men will have the preference in 
 almost all the disputes you can bring. There 
 is not a nation in the known world but have 
 tasted the benefit, and owe their prosperity to 
 the useful improvement, of commerce. Even 
 the self-vain gentry, that would decry trade as 
 a universal mechanism, arc they not every- 
 where depending upon it for their most neces- 
 sary supplies } If tliey do not all sell, they are 
 all forced to buy, and so are a kind of traders 
 themselves ; at least they recognise the use- 
 fulness of commerce, as what they are not 
 able to live comfortably without. Trade en- 
 courages manufacture, prompts invention, cm- 
 ploys people, increases labour, and pays wages. 
 As the people arc employed they arc paid, and 
 by that pay are fed, clothed, kept in heart, 
 and kept together. As the consumption of 
 provisions increase, more lands are cultivated,
 
 204 William Beck ford. 
 
 waste grounds are enclosed, woods are grubbed, 
 forests and common lands are tilled and im- 
 proved. By this, more farmers are brought 
 together, more farm-houses and cottages are 
 built, and more trades are called upon to 
 supply the necessary demands of husbandry. 
 In a word, as land is employed, the people 
 increase of course, and thus trade sets all the 
 wheels of improvement in motion ; for, from 
 the original of business to this day, it appears 
 that the prosperity of a nation rises and falls 
 just as trade is supported or decayed." 
 
 That panegyric of trade, spoken a hundred 
 and forty years ago, is no less true of the com- 
 merce of the present ; and now, as then, a 
 famous part of the benefits of English com- 
 merce must be traced to the wise colonisation 
 of. America and the West Indies, and the 
 increased employments that it made necessary. 
 The earlier Beckfords did much to help it on 
 as far as Jamaica was concerned ; and William 
 Beckford came to London in time to enjoy 
 some of its first fruits. 
 
 He was enabled to do this most successfully 
 through the death of his elder brother Peter in 
 1737, whereby the great wealth accumulated 
 by his father and grandfather, amounting to 
 ;;6^ 10,000 a year, passed into his hands. Till he 
 was about forty, he seems to have applied him- 
 self closely to business. Then, having made
 
 His Wealth and Work. 205 
 
 sure his standing in the world of commerce, he 
 followed the example of Sir John Barnard and 
 other London worthies, in accepting civic 
 honours, and entering upon a Parliamentary 
 career. In 1747 he was elected Member of 
 Parliament for both London and Petersfield. 
 He chose to sit for the metropolis ; but, in re- 
 cognition of the honour shown to him by 
 Petersfield, he gave ^400 towards re-paving 
 its streets. 
 
 He sat for London during three and twenty 
 years, and throughout that time he was a 
 zealous champion of free-trade, as far as free- 
 trade was then understood, and of commercial 
 interests. That was especially the case with 
 the first speech delivered by him in the House 
 of Commons, in February 1748, on the occa- 
 sion of a scheme for raising money to pay the 
 expenses of the European war in which Eng- 
 land was then engaged, by levying fresh taxes 
 upon imported goods. Bcckford ably exposed 
 the mischievous effect of the scheme in cripp- 
 ling trade and, consequently, the comfort of the 
 people at home ; and in yet more seriously in- 
 juring the American and West Indian colonies ; 
 and with characteristic impetuosity proposed 
 that the funds should be raised by forcing all 
 the officers and pensioners of the Crown, in- 
 cluding judges and clergymen, to give up half 
 of all their stipends. Another memorable
 
 2o6 Bcckfoj-d hi Parliament. 
 
 speech of his was in 1751, in opposition to the 
 standing army which was at that time being 
 formed in England, to replace the old plan of 
 military service, which our modern militia and 
 volunteer corps are partly reviving. With like 
 boldness, and, in spite of occasional extrava- 
 gance, with much sound sense, Bcckford spoke 
 in other years on all sorts of subjects connected 
 with trade and the welfare of the nation. 
 Sympathising with the most advanced Whigs 
 of his time, he was a staunch friend and ad- 
 viser of the elder William Pitt before he be- 
 came a Tory, and the private friendship lasted 
 after the change of politics. This epigram, 
 circulated during the election time of 1761, 
 illustrates the estimation in which he was held 
 by most of his contemporaries. 
 
 " Augusta, see ! Behold Pitt's generous friend, 
 Whom all the patriot virtues recommend ; 
 Hear every tongue proclaim him good and great, 
 Rendering the hero and the man complete." 
 
 " The different characters he affected to pos- 
 sess, to reconcile with each other, and some- 
 times to blend in one motley mass," it was 
 said by a less hearty admirer of Beckford, 
 "would furnish a most curious subject for the 
 biographer. He was an eminent West India 
 planter and merchant, a member of Parlia- 
 ment, a militia officer, a provincial magistrate, 
 an alderman of London, a man of taste and
 
 His Rough Bearing. 207 
 
 dissipation. Mr Beckford wanted the external 
 graces of manners and expression ; adorned 
 with these accomplishments, he would have 
 made a first-rate figure. He possessed a sound 
 understanding, and very extensive knowledge 
 of British politics, especially that important 
 part of it which relates to trade and commerce; 
 nor did he ever disgrace himself by a variable- 
 ness or inconsistency of conduct. His manners 
 were not pleasant ; but this circumstance did 
 not arise so much from a crabbed disposition, 
 as from an ardent, impetuous turn of mind, 
 whose favour he always indulged. This im- 
 petuous animation, accompanied with an in- 
 harmonious voice and vehemence of action, 
 prevented his public speaking, as well as his 
 private conversation, from receiving that atten- 
 tion and affording that pleasure which, from 
 his knowledge and abilities, they might be 
 supposed to have deserved and produced. In 
 the House of Commons he oftentimes called 
 forth the laughter, and frequently promoted 
 the languor, of his audience, from no other 
 cause than the neglect of digesting and arrang- 
 ing the matter he delivered." 
 
 Beckford was more popular in the City of 
 London than in Westminster. His unpruned 
 eloquence was more to the taste of the mer- 
 cantile classes, which, whether high or low, 
 were then rough alike, than to the House of
 
 2o8 Beckford 's Political Honesty. 
 
 Commons or the gentle-folk of the West End. 
 His genuine honesty and stout love of English 
 liberty, too, were of a sort to be better liked 
 by citizens than by courtiers under the House 
 of Hanover. They chose him for their repre- 
 sentative, without coercion, and because of his 
 honesty. " It has been told me," he said at 
 one of his election speeches, " that I have given 
 offence to many of you, by not canvassing for 
 your votes. I am sorry for it, because I respect 
 you too much, and love the constitution of my 
 country too well, to infringe on the freedom of 
 election, of which, in these corrupt times, this 
 city still continues to give a most glorious 
 example. If you recollect, gentlemen, I did 
 not canvass you at the last general election. 
 I have not canvassed you for the approaching 
 one, and I tell you honestly I never will canvass 
 you. You shall elect me without a canvass, or 
 not at all." And on those honourable terms 
 he was elected four times running. 
 
 He was made Alderman of Billingsgate ward 
 in 1752. In 1758 he was Sheriff of London, 
 and in 1762 Lord Mayor. His civic functions 
 were well performed, and he is famous for the 
 especial splendour with which he performed 
 one important part of them. As Sheriff, he 
 gave four great banquets, surpassed in richness 
 only by those which he gave when he was 
 Mayor. Though very simple in his tastes and
 
 His Great Banquets. 209 
 
 habits, he seems to have considered sumptuous 
 public entertainments to be matters of vital 
 importance. On the occasion of George III.'s 
 coronation, after taking part in the show, he 
 went, with the other city magnates, to dine at 
 Westminster Hall, and great was his indigna- 
 tion at the sorry fare provided for them. " We 
 have invited the King," he exclaimed, " to a 
 banquet which will cost us ;^ 10,000, and yet, 
 when we come to Court, we are given nothing 
 to eat." 
 
 The banquet to which Beckford referred, in 
 the sumptuous preparation of which he seems 
 to have taken a leading part, was on the occa- 
 sion of the young King's going into the city to 
 see the Lord Mayor's Show. He watched it 
 from the house of David JBarclay the Quaker, 
 founder of Barclay's Bank and Barclay's Brew- 
 ery, and Bcckford's chief rival in the successful 
 carrying on of the American trade. It had 
 long been the practice for each new sovereign 
 to witness the Lord Mayor's Show that first 
 occurred after his accession, before going to 
 dine at the Guildhall ; and it was the custom for 
 this to be done at a fine old house in Chcai> 
 side, opposite to Bow Church, and almost tlie 
 fittest in the city. We have a curious account 
 of this episode in a letter written by John 
 Frcamc, Barclay's brother-in-law and partner. 
 He says that, " in the first place, brother Bar- 
 
 o
 
 210 George III. among Quakers. 
 
 clay spared no cost in repairing and decorating 
 his house. When that was perfected, Lord 
 Bruce came several times to give directions 
 about the apartments and furniture, (which 
 was very grand,) and also in what manner the 
 family were to receive their royal guests. But 
 previous to this, brother Barclay insisted that 
 all his children that came there should be 
 dressed like plain Friends. This injunction 
 was an exercising time indeed to several of 
 them. The sons were dressed in plain cloth, 
 the daughters in plain silks, with dressed black 
 hoods, and, my sister says, on the whole, made 
 a genteel appearance, and acted their part in 
 the masquerade very well. So that (as to the 
 outward) the testimony of the Apology ap- 
 peared to be maintained. And now, all things 
 being in order, brother and sister Barclay, with 
 David and Jack, were appointed to receive the 
 royal family below stairs, and to wait on them 
 to the apartment prepared for them above. 
 Soon after which, the King asked for Mr Bar- 
 clay and his family, who were introduced to him 
 by the lords-in-waiting, and kindly received ; 
 and brother, with all his sons, permitted to have 
 the honour to kiss his hand without kneeling, 
 an instance of such condescension as never was 
 known before. The King after this saluted my 
 sister and the girls, and the same favour was 
 conferred on them by the Queen and others of
 
 A Quaker's " OpportiniityV 211 
 
 the royal family. The Queen, with others of 
 the family, and several of the nobility, re- 
 freshed themselves with the repast provided 
 for them in the back parlour and kitchen, 
 which was elegantly set off for the occasion, 
 and it being, I suppose, a great novelty to 
 them, were highly delighted with the enter- 
 tainment. On the King's going away, he 
 thanked brother Barclay for his entertainment, 
 and politely excused, as he was pleased to say, 
 the trouble they had given. This great con- 
 , descension, I am told, so affected the old gen- 
 tleman, that he not only made a suitable 
 return to the compliment, but, like the good 
 patriarchs of old, prayed that God would 
 please to bless him and all his family, which 
 was received by him with great goodness." 
 
 After that friendly interview with David 
 Barclay, which added much to the good mer- 
 chant's influence and prosperity, by bringing 
 him into immediate connection with the highest 
 persons in the realm, the King and Queen 
 went to partake of the great feast which cost 
 ;^ 1 0,000. 
 
 Next year William Bcckford was made Lord 
 Mayor, and famous opportunity was afforded 
 for showing his love of splendid entertainments. 
 Besides the ordinary feasts, he entertained, at 
 his own expense, the members of the Mouses 
 of Lords and Commons, at a dinner which
 
 2 1 2 Sir Jolin Barnard. 
 
 cost another sum of ;^i 0,000. Six dukes, two 
 marquises, twenty-three earls, four viscounts, 
 and fourteen barons, then joined with a host of 
 commoners in partaking of six hundred costly- 
 dishes. 
 
 That love of display was part of Beckford's 
 character, but only its weaker part, and perhaps 
 it was only indulged in by him as a means of 
 gaining influence with the merchants, states- 
 men, and courtiers of his day. And that in- 
 fluence he put to good use. He was the direct 
 successor of another great and good, perhaps a 
 better, man, Sir John Barnard. 
 
 Barnard was born in 1685, three and twenty 
 years before Beckford. A Quaker by birth, 
 though he afterwards became a member of the 
 Church of England, he exhibited a Quaker's 
 simplicity of manners, and a Quaker's honest 
 perseverance in money-making, to the end of 
 his long life. In his youth, says the friend 
 who wrote his biography, " he sought out com- 
 panions amongst men distinguished by their 
 knowledge, learning, and religion," of whom 
 there were not too many in the dissolute age 
 of Georgian rule. Men who did not care to 
 imitate him, however, respected his worth and 
 wisdom. In 1721 he was sent to Parliament 
 as member for the City of London, and he 
 was re-elected to the post six times in succes- 
 sion. " From his first taking his seat in the
 
 His Worth and Wisdom. 213 
 
 House of Commons," says his friend, " he 
 entered with acumen into the merits of each 
 point under debate, defended with intrepidity- 
 cur constitutional rights, withstood every 
 attempt to burden his country with needless 
 subsidies, argued with remarkable strength 
 and perspicuity, and crowned all with close 
 attention to the business of Parliament, never 
 being absent by choice, from the time the mem- 
 bers met till they were adjourned. It is hard 
 to say whether out of the House he was more 
 popular, or within it more respectable, during 
 the space of nearly forty years." 
 
 Barnard took a more or less prominent part 
 in nearly every measure of importance that 
 was brought before Parliament during the long 
 reign of George H. He sided always with the 
 advocates of peace and retrenchment, showing 
 himself a zealous reformer on all matters affect- 
 ing the national honour and the development 
 of trade, but being somewhat a Conservative 
 whenever the welfare of the country did not 
 seem to him to call for a change. But in all 
 commercial matters he held very advanced 
 views. At a time when merchants and politi- 
 cians believed that private and public interests 
 would be best served by all sorts of restrictions 
 upon the importation of foreign goods, and 
 arbitrary schemes for forcing English wares 
 at high prices upon foreigners, he appeared as
 
 214 " The Father of the City'' 
 
 the champion of free-trade. " We ought never," 
 he said, " to make laws for encouraging or 
 enabling our subjects to sell the produce or 
 manufacture of their country at a high price, 
 but we ought to contrive all ways and means 
 for enabling them to sell cheaply. It is cer- 
 tain that at all foreign markets those who sell 
 cheapest will carry off the sale, and turn all 
 others out of trade." Sir John Barnard, how- 
 ever, did not approve of all trades. In 1/34 
 he introduced a bill increasing the tax upon 
 tea, then something of a novelty in England. 
 " I wish the duty were higher than it is,'' he 
 oddly said, " because I look upon it as an 
 article of luxury," 
 
 In 1747, a statue of Sir John Barnard was 
 set up in the Royal Exchange, there to mark 
 him as Gresham's great successor in benefac- 
 tion to the city. He was henceforth known 
 as "The Father of the City." But at that 
 time, or soon after, he went to end his days 
 quietly at his house in Clapham. There, we 
 are told, he spent an hour each day in prayer 
 and study of the Scriptures, and every Sunday 
 he went twice to church, "where he behaved 
 with exemplary seriousness through every part 
 of divine service, hearing the preacher, though 
 his inferior in knowledge of divinity, no less 
 than in strength of intellect, with evident sig- 
 natures of meekness in his aspect." " All his
 
 Two Views of Beckford. 2 1 5 
 
 long train of honours," it is added, " seemed as 
 much unknown to himself as if they had never 
 thrown their lustre round his name. No men- 
 tion was heard from his own mouth of the 
 transactions in which he bore a principal part 
 and acquired great glory. If questions regard- 
 ing them were asked for information's sake, his 
 answers were always brief, and the subject 
 never by himself pursued." He died in 1764, 
 in the eightieth year of his age. 
 
 William Beckford was then at the height of 
 his renown, praised by friends, abused by 
 enemies, and made a trade of by many who 
 cared only to advance their own selfish in- 
 terests. " I was astonished," said an old writer, 
 in 1769, of a person of this sort, " at the effron- 
 tery as well as impudence with which he dared 
 to avow a want of all principle and honour. 
 He showed me two contrasted characters of 
 Alderman Beckford, the idol of the mob, which 
 he was to insert in antagonist newspapers : 
 one a panegyric and the other a libel, for each 
 of which he expected to receive the reward 
 of a guinea." 
 
 Tile prevalence of contradictory and unprin- 
 cipled writing of that sort makes it very difficult 
 to understand the real character of Beckford. 
 Sometimes he is painted as an ideal patriot ; 
 sometimes as a vulgar democrat. Tiuit he was, 
 however, "the idol of the mob," liking their
 
 2i6 Beck ford's Last Boldness. 
 
 idolatry, and doing something to deserve it, is 
 clear. He was the friend of Wilkes and the 
 most extreme Radicals of his day, and the 
 Tory inclinations of George III. and his 
 favourite ministers were denounced by him, in 
 no measured terms, in the House of Commons 
 and in the city. 
 
 His denunciations were loudest, and passed 
 far beyond the limits of courtly decency, in the 
 spring of 1 7/0. On two occasions, as Lord 
 Mayor for the year, he took the lead in prepar- 
 ing angry petitions from the citizens of London, 
 complaining of the King's conduct and of its 
 support by Parliament. On the 23d of May, 
 attended by the Common Council and a crowd 
 of followers, he went to St James's Palace to 
 offer a third and still bolder remonstrance to 
 George HI. After listening to it, the King 
 answered that the conduct of the citizens was 
 displeasing to him, that he had their best in- 
 terests at heart, and that he expected them to 
 rely upon his honesty and his reverence for the 
 English constitution. Thereupon, says the 
 historian, " to the dismay of the courtiers, and 
 contrary to all precedent and etiquette. Beck- 
 ford had not only the bad taste to endeavour 
 to draw his sovereign into a personal contro- 
 versy, but had also the impudence to address to 
 him the language of reproof" The harangue 
 which he is reported to have uttered on the
 
 Its Fatal Issue. 2 1 7 
 
 occasion was certainly very bold and threaten- 
 ing. " Permit me, sire, to observe/' he said, 
 in concluding it, " that whoever has already 
 dared, or shall hereafter endeavour, by false 
 insinuations and suggestions, to alienate your 
 Majesty's affections from your loyal subjects 
 in general, and from the City of London in 
 particular, and to withdraw your confidence 
 in regard for your people, is an enemy to 
 your Majesty's person and family, a violator 
 of the public peace, and a betrayer of our 
 happy constitution, as it was established at the 
 glorious and necessary Revolution." 
 
 That violent behaviour added much to 
 Beckford's popularity with the extreme mem- 
 bers of his party, but gave great and not un- 
 reasonable offence to George III. When, 
 on the 30th of May, he applied for another 
 audience of the King, he was refused admit- 
 tance. 
 
 Bcckford was now sixty-two years old, and 
 the political turmoil in which he was engaged 
 proved too much fur him. Early in June, 
 being ill, he went down to the splendid seat 
 which he had bought for himself at Fonthill, 
 in Hampshire. Thence, after a week or two, 
 being suddenly required in London for some 
 new political action, he travelled up to London, 
 a coach ride of a hundred miles, in one day. 
 A violent attack of rheumatic fever was the
 
 2 1 8 Chatter ton 07i Beckford. 
 
 result, causing his death at his town house, in 
 Soho Square, on the 2ist of June 1770. 
 
 The conflicting opinions held about him in 
 life continued after his death. By many he 
 was described as a man altogether vile and 
 vulgar. Others could not find words, in prose 
 or verse, strong enough for his praises. One 
 vigorous but fulsome elegy, from which the 
 following verses are extracted, was penned by 
 the unfortunate poet, Thomas Chatterton : — 
 
 " Weep on, ye Britons, give your general tear ! 
 But hence ye venal — hence each titled slave ! 
 An honest pang should wait on Beckford's bier, 
 And patriot anguish mark the patriot's grave. 
 
 " Thou breathing sculpture, celebrate his fame, 
 And give his laurel everlasting bloom ; 
 Record his worth while gratitude has name, 
 And teach succeeding ages from his tomb I 
 
 " The sword of justice cautiously he sway'd ; 
 His hand for ever held the balance right ; 
 Each venial fault with pity he survey'd ; 
 But murder found no mercy in his sight. 
 
 " He knew, when flatterers besiege a throne, 
 Truth seldom reaches to a monarch's ear ; 
 Knew if, oppress'd, a loyal people groan, 
 
 'Tis not the courtiers' interest he should hear, 
 
 " Hence, honest to his prince, his manly tongue. 
 The public wrong and loyalty convey'd, 
 While titled tremblers, every nerve unstrung, 
 Look'd all around, confounded and dismay'd,—
 
 " A/i Artless^ Fearless Citizen." 219 
 
 *• Looked all around, astonish'd to behold 
 
 (Train'd up to flattery from tlieir early youth) 
 An artless, fearless citizen unfold 
 To royal ears a mortifying truth. 
 
 " Titles to him no pleasure could impart, 
 No bribes his rigid virtue could control ; 
 The star could never gain upon his heart. 
 Nor turn the tide of honour iu his soul. 
 
 " He, as a planet, with unceasing ray, 
 
 Is seen in one unvaried course to move, 
 
 Through life pursued but one illustrious way, 
 
 And all his orbit was his country's love. 
 
 " But he is gone ! and now, alas ! no more 
 
 His generous hand neglected worth redeems ; 
 No more around his mansion shall the poor 
 Bask ia his warm, his charitable beams. 
 
 " No more his grateful countrymen shall hear 
 His manly voice in martyr'd freedom's cause ; 
 No more the courtly sycophant shall fear 
 His poignant lash for violated laws. 
 
 " Yet say, stem virtue, who 'd not wish to die, 
 
 Thus greatly struggling, a whole land to save ? 
 Who would not wish, with ardour wish, to lie 
 With Beckford's honour in a Beckford's grave ? " 
 
 Though not quite a hero of the most heroic 
 sort, WiUiam Beckford was a man for the City 
 of London to be proud of. 1 1 is statue, with 
 his famous speech to George III. written under 
 it, was put up in the Guildhall, and by most of 
 his fellow-citizens he was honoured as a great 
 and worthy patriot.
 
 220 
 
 William Btxkford. 
 
 He was certainly a shrewd and prosperous 
 merchant. His estate at Fonthill, and other 
 property, yielding ;!^iio,000 a year, besides 
 ;^i,ooo,ooo in ready money, descended to his 
 only son, the Earl of Chatham's godchild, 
 William Beckford, who is chiefly famous as the 
 author of "Vathek."
 
 X. 
 
 HENRY THORNTON. 
 [1762-1815.] 
 
 HROUGH most of the first half of 
 the eighteenth century, while William 
 Beckford was making a name for him- 
 self as a great London merchant and grandee, 
 a humbler man was honourably pursuing his 
 calling. His name was Robert Thornton. 
 He imported goods from Russia, and sent 
 thither English goods in exchange, a branch 
 of trade for which Hull, which seems to have 
 been his native place, was famous, and which he 
 carried on in connection with some influential 
 traders of Hull. He lived in the out-of-the- 
 way village of Clapham, and must have been 
 acquainted with Sir John Barnard, Bcckford's 
 rival as a great city merchant, and certainly at 
 that time the wealthiest and worthiest of the 
 pious merchants who even then had begun 
 to make Clapham their favourite abode. 
 
 Robert Thornton had a son, John, born in
 
 222 Jo] in Thornton. 
 
 1720, who succeeded him in the Russian busi- 
 ness, and made it very much more extensive. 
 " He was in business," says Mr Colquhoun, 
 " an active merchant, keen in watching oppor- 
 tunities, and skilful in using them. Eminent 
 for other qualities, he never lost the practised 
 eye of the merchant and his watchful observa- 
 tion. In one of his tours in Ireland, under- 
 taken late in life to recruit, as was his habit, 
 his strength, he showed the habits which pecu- 
 liarly characterised him. Walking out in the 
 early morning at Cork, he turned down to the 
 harbour, where a number of vessels, laden 
 with tallow, had just come in. A few ques- 
 tions, addressed by him to the persons con- 
 nected with them, put him in possession of the 
 facts, and by a stroke of his pen he made the 
 cargoes his own. By this adventure he cleared 
 a handsome profit. From the harbour he 
 strolled into a nursery garden, where he fell 
 in with its humble proprietor. The poor man 
 was in great perplexity, being hampered for 
 want of capital. Mr Thornton talked to him, 
 ascertained his circumstances, inquired into 
 his character, and being satisfied, by another 
 stroke of his pen helped him out of his 
 troubles, and set him fairly on his feet." 
 
 Of that sort was his conduct through life. 
 Always ready to see where a good bargain 
 was to be made, and how to make it, he
 
 His Ge?ierosities, 223 
 
 acquired great wealth, and was always ready 
 to spend it in wise and charitable ways. His 
 generous disposition has rarely been equalled. 
 Meeting one day on the Exchange a young 
 merchant, whom he knew to be honest and 
 intelligent, but cramped in business by the 
 small amount of money at his command, he 
 said to him, " John, I have been thinking much 
 of you and your circumstances ; I think if you 
 had a larger capital, you would now do a 
 better business." His friend said this waS 
 certainly the case. " Well," said John Thorn- 
 ton, "i^io,ooo are at your service. If you 
 prosper, you will repay me ; if you don 't, you 
 shall never hear of the debt." The younger 
 merchant, amazed at such an offer, asked for a 
 few days to think over it. When the few days 
 were past, Thornton sought him out and re- 
 minded him of their conversation. " I have 
 been thinking over your kind offer," was the 
 reply, "but I feel I must decline it. If I lost 
 your money, I should be very unhappy ; and, 
 through the blessing of God, I am now doing 
 a fair business ; so I had better remain as I 
 am. 
 
 John Thornton spent most of his wealth in 
 the interests of the religion that was dear to 
 him. Earnest men of all creeds were his 
 friends — Wesley, and Whitfield, and WiUiam 
 Bull, the Independent, as well as John Newton,
 
 224 Wilberforcc and the Thorntons. 
 
 and a host of clerf^ymen of the Established 
 Church. His favourite plan was to buy livings, 
 and give them, with additional endowments, 
 to clergymen of his own generous and earnest 
 way of thinking ; and in the same way, to 
 make large allowances, for their own use, and 
 for philanthropic employment, to Methodists 
 and Dissenting ministers. " I am glad you are 
 beginning a Sunday-school," he wrote to one 
 Dissenter; "when you want assistance, you 
 know where to come for it ; when you want 
 money, remember I am your banker, and draw 
 freely." 
 
 A sister of John Thornton's married an uncle 
 of William Wilberforce. Wilberforce, as a lad, 
 spent many years in the house of his uncle 
 and aunt, and went often to that of the 
 Thorntons. The associations there brought 
 in his way, however, were distasteful to his 
 kinsfolk, in whose opinions Christianity could 
 not exist out of the Church of England. "If 
 Billy turns Methodist," said his grandfather, 
 " he shall not have a sixpence of mine." 
 Therefore, at the age of twelve, young Wilber- 
 force was forbidden to go to either Wimbledon 
 or Clapham. But when he was his own master, 
 he went back to both places with a hearty love 
 for the religious habits which he there found 
 enforced. " It was by living with great sim- 
 plicity of intention and conduct in the practice
 
 Henry Thornton. 225 
 
 of a Christian life," he said afterwards of his 
 old friend, " more than by any superiority of 
 understanding or of knowledge, that John 
 Thornton rendered his name illustrious. He 
 anticipated the disposition and pursuits of the 
 succeeding generation. He devoted large sums 
 annually to charitaVjle purposes, especially to 
 the promotion of the cause of religion, both in 
 his own and other countries." 
 
 John Thornton died in 1790. He left not 
 only the old Russian business greatly enlarged, 
 but also a share in the extensive banking estab- 
 lishment of Down, Thornton, & Free, in Bar- 
 tholomew Lane. Both descended to his three 
 sons — Samuel, Robert, and Henry — although 
 the mercantile concern was managed princi- 
 pally by the two elder sons, the bank being 
 directed chiefly by the youngest and ablest. 
 
 Henry Thornton, born in 1762, seems indeed 
 to have been the leading spirit in the bank 
 from the first. His large powers and wise use 
 of them helped greatly to advance the whole 
 business while it was in his father's hands, and 
 these appear to have been the main cause of 
 its extension in the most lucrative of all ways 
 of honest money-making. " He inherited," 
 says Mr Colquhoun, " the business talents of 
 his father, and his untiring perseverance ; but 
 the ability, which in his father was limited to 
 mercantile enterprise, rose in him to a higher
 
 226 Henry TJionttotis Talents, 
 
 elevation. His mind was essentially philo- 
 sophic. To investigate every moral occurrence 
 and physical problem, to trace these through 
 their relations and connections, to analyse their 
 elements, to extract that which was essential 
 from the incidental, this furnished a constant 
 exercise to his intellectual powers. To exa- 
 mine carefully, to deliberate long, to balance 
 each quality and circumstance in the scales of 
 an equal judgment, to accept no standard but 
 that of truth, and to bring everything to be tried 
 by that standard — wherever law was applicable, 
 to apply it, and, where law was silent, to test 
 the subject by rules of equity, — this was his 
 favourite occupation, and the delight of his 
 leisure hours." 
 
 Like many other busy men, he found leisure 
 for philosophical thought and philanthropic 
 labour, without any hindrance to the due per- 
 formance of his complicated pursuits in the 
 counting-house. He was much more than a 
 banker, but, as a banker, he had no rivals in 
 his day. 
 
 Yet that was almost the most eventful period 
 in the progress of banking. Henry Thornton 
 had for competitors many men who have made 
 especial mark in the history of their profession. 
 The profession was then passing out of the 
 quiet ways to which it had long been limited, 
 and taking its place as the most important
 
 Early Bankers : the Iloarcs. 227 
 
 branch of modern commerce. The first bankers 
 were men Hke the mediaeval Jews of Old Jewry, 
 and the mediceval Lombards of Lombard Street, 
 Whittington and Gresham, Herrick and Heriot, 
 merchants and miscellaneous traders, who in- 
 creased their wealth and influence as money- 
 makers and money-changers, but had none of 
 the elaborate machinery of modern banking. 
 It was not till the seventeenth century that it 
 began to be a separate and highly-developed 
 institution. Sir Francis Child, originally a gold- 
 smith, the founder of Child's Bank, who lived 
 in the days of William IIL, was the first pro- 
 per banker. Other men soon followed in his 
 steps, and became rich by their new calling. 
 
 Among the chief of these was the family ot 
 the Hoares. Henry Hoare, the son of a hum- 
 ble Buckinghamshire farmer, was a merchant 
 in London about the middle of the seventeenth 
 century. His son Richard, born in 1648, was 
 famous in his day for his good business quali- 
 ties and his public services, for his wealth, and 
 the good use to which he put it. "He n(jt 
 only governed his private life by the strictest 
 rules of virtue," it was said of him, " but also 
 in many public stations did ever discharge his 
 duty with the utmost integrity and fidelity." 
 He was a great benefactor of Christ's Hospital. 
 He was Member of Parliament from 17 10 to 
 1713; and, in the latter year, having been
 
 228 Sir Hctny Hoare. 
 
 knighted, he served as Lord Mayor. He was 
 related, both by family ties and in business, to 
 James Hoare, an irregular banker, who lived 
 at the sign of the Golden Bottle, in Cheapside. 
 James Hoare died in 1694; but a few years 
 before that the business was removed to Sir 
 Richard Hoare's shop in Fleet Street, also 
 indicated by a golden bottle ; and on Sir 
 Richard's death, in 17 18, it descended to his 
 three sons, Richard, John, and Henry. The 
 youngest son seems to have been the ablest 
 and the worthiest. " His behaviour," said one 
 of his friends, " was such, under the various 
 circumstances, capacities, and relations which 
 he passed through, that a general esteem, love, 
 and honour, were all along most justly paid 
 to his character." He left ^2000 to be given to 
 various charity-schools and workhouses, ;i{i"2000 
 to be spent in distributing Bibles, prayer-books, 
 and religious works, and other large sums to 
 be applied in various benevolent ways. Dying 
 in 1725, he left a prosperous banking-house, to 
 be chiefly managed by his eldest son, Henry, 
 who spent a long life of eighty years in en- 
 larging his influence, increasing his wealth, and 
 putting it to good uses. His life was con- 
 temporary with that of John Thornton, and, 
 as he too lived on Clapham Common, he must 
 have been well acquainted with the pious mer- 
 chant and his famous son.
 
 THOMAS COUTTS.
 
 Thomas Coutts. 229 
 
 Another great banker and good man, though 
 he showed his goodness in different ways, was 
 Thomas Coutts. His grandfather, John Coutts, 
 was a prosperous corn-merchant in Edinburgh, 
 who added banking to his trade in corn. The 
 Edinburgh business was carried on by his son 
 and grandsons ; but the most enterprising of 
 these grandsons, Thomas, came to London in 
 1754, when he was about twenty-three years old. 
 In 1760 he established himself as a banker in 
 the Strand, succeeding to the business of a 
 George Campbell, who had originally been a 
 goldsmith. In 1768 he rebuilt his premises, 
 which form the present banking-house of Coutts 
 & Company. Coutts was charitable in his 
 way, often very generous in his dealings with 
 others; but the one great occupation of his 
 life was money-making. He is described by 
 one who often saw him shambling along the 
 Strand, as "a pallid, sickly, thin, old gentle- 
 man, who wore a shabby coat and a brown 
 scratch wig." One day a good-natured person, 
 fresh from the country, stopped him in the 
 street, and, pitying his forlorn appearance, 
 offered him a guinea. Coutts thanked him, 
 but declined the gift, saying that he was not 
 in "immediate want." When he died in 1822, 
 at the age of ninety-one, he left an immense 
 property, and a very lucrative business, to 
 his granddaughter, Miss Angela Burdctt Coutts,
 
 230 Tkonifon in Parliament, 
 
 whose wealth, it was reckoned a few years ago, 
 if told in sovereigns, would weigh thirteen tons, 
 and fill a hundred and seven flour sacks. 
 
 Henry Thornton never grew so rich as 
 Thomas Coutts or the Hoares. But he was 
 an abler man than any of them. He put 
 his talents to good use. Working hard in his 
 counting-house, he was also a zealous worker 
 outside of it. He entered the Hou.se of Com- 
 mons as Member for Southwark, and he held 
 his seat for one-and-thirty years, during six 
 successive Parliaments. Those were days in 
 which bribery was much more the fashion 
 than now it is, when very few candidates were 
 elected for their merits alone, the corruption 
 of poor electors or the influence of rich land- 
 lords being the accepted means for sending 
 even honest men to Parliament. Henry Thorn- 
 ton was too honest to adopt either of these 
 means. 
 
 He held his ground even when the opposi- 
 tion at some of the elections was most violent. 
 "In the election of 1802," says Mr Colquhoun, 
 "his success was doubtful. His colleague had 
 secured his seat by assiduous attention to the 
 voters. Henry Thornton had given his time 
 to important duties and public business. At 
 the nomination the show of hands was against 
 him. But when the voting began, and he was 
 found to stand lowest on the poll, there was a
 
 Election without Bribery. 231 
 
 prompt rally in his favour. He had, indeed, 
 no crowds of canvassers, nor could he win the 
 crowd to his side by witty eloquence. But his 
 character spoke for him ; and his good deeds, 
 experienced by many, spread a savour which 
 influenced a wide circle. To many families he 
 had been a liberal benefactor ; every one in 
 distress knew where he could find a friend." 
 And he was returned with an ovcrwhelmingf 
 majority. The mob, that had been disposed 
 to oust him, became furious in his favour. He 
 was then as calm in his success as he had been 
 at the prospect of defeat. " I had rather," he 
 said to his children, " have a shake of the hand 
 from good old John Newton, than the cheers 
 of all that foolish mob, who praise me, they 
 don't know why." 
 
 In 1807, again, there was a hard contest, and 
 Thornton looked upon his defeat as certain. 
 Against all the entreaties of his friends, he 
 refused to do as others did — to treat and flatter, 
 if not openly to bribe ; and again he was 
 placed at the head of the poll by men whose 
 respect he had nobly earned by his disinterested 
 conduct. Even those who would readily have 
 taken pay for their votes gave them for nothing 
 to a man so straightfonvard and disinterested. 
 One of the doggrcl verses circulated at the 
 contest expressed the thoughts of all about 
 their honest representative : —
 
 232 Thorntons Parliamentary Work. 
 
 " Nor place nor pension e'er got he 
 For self or for connection ; 
 We shall not tax the Treasury 
 By Thornton's re-election.'' 
 
 Henry Thornton entered Parliament, and 
 retained his seat there, in order to promote two 
 sorts of work which were very dear to him, and 
 to which he devoted the chief energies of his 
 life. One of these was the furtherance of the 
 philanthropic efforts which he shared with Wil- 
 berforce and the other members of that famous 
 group of religious men known as the Clapham 
 party. The other was the propounding of 
 enlightened views on banking and commerce 
 which have done much to make England as 
 rich and great as now it is. 
 
 The Bank of England was in his day, and 
 largely through his help, entirely reorganised. 
 It had been founded, as we have seen, by Wil- 
 liam Paterson about a hundred years before. 
 It had grown steadily, and was already not only 
 a great private establishment, of immense ser- 
 vice to merchants and their callings, and very 
 profitable to its shareholders, but also the 
 powerful agent of the State in its financial 
 dealings. It was allowed to be a bank for 
 private persons, on condition of its being also 
 a bank for the nation, competent to hold the 
 taxes levied throughout the country, and to 
 dispense them in the ways appointed by the
 
 The Bank of Etigland. 233 
 
 ministers of the State for the country's good. 
 But when Thornton began hfe, the Bank was 
 not only being used as a depositary for the 
 national income. The costly war in which 
 England was engaged with France involved 
 far more expense than the taxes could meet. 
 Much of this was provided for by a great in- 
 crease of the National Debt, in which the Bank 
 was an important agent ; much was supplied 
 by the issuing of additional bank-notes, under 
 Government authority. For as long a time as 
 possible the Bank, though authorised, and even 
 compelled, to issue notes, for which it had no 
 equivalent of gold in its coffers, was held to the 
 terms of its charter, by which it was obliged, 
 as now, to give gold in exchange for notes to 
 any one who asked for it. This, of course, it 
 would have been unable to do, had any great 
 demand been made for gold in lieu of notes ; 
 and the danger increased with the increased 
 excess of paper-money over coin in circulation. 
 At length things came to such a pass, that, in 
 October 1795, the Directors of the Bank in- 
 formed William Pitt, then Chancellor of the 
 Exchequer, that they were on the verge of 
 bankruptcy, and could not hold out much 
 longer. Other and more and more urgent 
 messages followed during nearly a year and a 
 half. The result was, that, in February 1797, 
 the Bank was authorised by the Privy Council
 
 234 'FJtc Bank Rcstrktion Act, 
 
 to refuse cash payment for its notes, or the 
 issue of any greater amount of coin than a 
 pound or a pound's worth of silver at a time. 
 In May a law, known as the Bank Restriction 
 Act, was passed, enforcing that resolution, and 
 sanctioning an almost unlimited issue of notes. 
 Sheridan declared it " a farce to call that a 
 bank whose promise to pay on demand was 
 paid by another promise to pay at some un- 
 defined period;" and Sir William Pulteney 
 introduced a bill " for the erection of a new 
 bank, in case the Bank of England did not pay 
 in specie on or before the 24th of June 1798." 
 But this opposition was ineffectual, and the 
 Bank Restriction Act remained in force for 
 two-and-twenty years. It did some good, in 
 setting bankers and financiers to devise some 
 better system of paper-currency ; but bank- 
 notes were so lowered in value, that at one 
 time poor people who had received five-pound 
 notes as if they were worth £^, found they 
 could not exchange them for more than £'^, los. 
 or £/^ a-piece. 
 
 Among all the financial reformers induced 
 by this state of things, none was more earnest 
 or outspoken than Henry Thornton, who, in 
 1803, published " An Inquiry into the Effects 
 of Paper Credit." In it he showed that it was 
 a great wrong to commerce and society to 
 issue more paper-money than, in the open
 
 Thornton on Banking. 235 
 
 market, could be exchanged for its full value 
 in actual coin ; and that to force upon the 
 people notes which were not really worth as 
 much as they professed to be, was a short- 
 sighted and ruinous policy. He persevered in 
 offering the same sound arguments, and was a 
 leading member of the famous Bullion Com- 
 mittee, appointed in 1810, which fully discussed 
 the whole question, and ultimately obtained 
 the adoption of those wiser principles of bank- 
 ing and monetary exchange which were partly 
 and beneficially adopted in 18 19, when the 
 Bank of England was reconstructed by a law 
 known as Sir Robert Peel's Act. 
 
 Before that time, however, Henry Thornton 
 died, having done much other very useful work 
 for his country. If merchants and statesmen 
 honoured him most as a great financier, he was 
 no less worthy of honour as a great philan- 
 thropist. He was one of the leaders, in some 
 respects the chief leader, of the religious com- 
 munity known as the Clapham party. Wil- 
 liam Wilberforce, its acknowledged head, had 
 learnt to be a good man in the house of old 
 John Thornton, with Henry Thornton for his 
 fellow-pupil. The two men became fast friends, 
 and were fellow-helpers for life. "When I 
 entered life," said Thornton, " I saw a great 
 deal of dishonourable conduct among people 
 who made great professions of religion. In
 
 2^6 Thornton and Wilherforce. 
 
 my father's house I met with a person of this 
 sort. This so disgusted me, that, had it not 
 been for the admirable pattern of consistency 
 and disinterestedness which I saw in Mr Wil- 
 berforce, I should have been in danger of a sort 
 of infidelity." " I owed much to Wilberforce, 
 in every sense," he said at another time ; " for 
 his enlightened mind, his affectionate and con- 
 descending manners, and his very superior 
 piety, were exactly calculated to supply what 
 was wanting to my improvement and my 
 establishment in a right course. It is chiefly 
 through him that I have been introduced to a 
 variety of other most valuable associates." 
 Wilberforce spoke of Thornton in terms of no 
 less loving praise. 
 
 The two friends and their valuable associates 
 did noble work amongst them. "In 1789," 
 writes Mr Colquhoun, "when both the friends, 
 then in delicate health, resorted to the Bath 
 waters, a visit made by Wilberforce to Cowslip 
 Green, where Hannah More, as he said, ' had 
 shut herself up in the country, to devote her 
 talents to the instruction of a set of wretched 
 people sunk in heathen darkness,' led to an 
 enterprise of benevolence which long engaged 
 both the friends. Wilberforce's compassionate 
 heart was touched by the savage condition of 
 the neglected people. He engaged, if Hannah 
 More would undertake the trouble of reclaim-
 
 Thornton and Hannah More. 237 
 
 ing them, that he would bear the cost ; any 
 calls for money he would readily meet ; ' for,' 
 he writes, ' I have a rich banker in London, 
 Mr H. Thornton, whom I cannot obliee so 
 much as by drawing on him for purposes like 
 these.' In 1791, when the two friends were 
 again at Bath, Henry Thornton accompanied 
 Wilberforce to Cowslip Green, and thus began 
 that intimate friendship between Hannah More 
 and Henry Thornton, which lasted through 
 their lives. Hannah More soon learnt what 
 sort of a man Henry Thornton was. She found 
 his purse open to her in all her difficulties ; 
 and, better than his purse, his counsels. Trials 
 had fallen on her and her sister in their bene- 
 volent labours; threats of prosecution, calum- 
 nious charges raised by obstinate prejudice, 
 and envenomed by jealousy, the rancorous 
 bitterness of the rich proving more odious than 
 the boorish apathy of the poor. So, when 
 these things came upon her, she poured forth 
 her story to her thoughtful friend ; and no 
 matter how busy the story found him — busy 
 at his bank, on committees, helping Wilber- 
 force in the cause of abolition, or assisting him 
 to make up his mind on the question of peace 
 with France — he was never too busy to send 
 advice to her. No matter what the subject, he 
 is ready. She is publishing a series of tracts, 
 half political, half religious; he reviews, re-
 
 238 Thornton's rJiilantJiropies. 
 
 touches, and prints them. He writes some 
 himself. ' While we are taking down a dull 
 evidence,' he writes from the Finance Com- 
 mittee, ' I seize a few minutes to write to you 
 on the subject of tracts. I have to tell you 
 that I thought it right to prepare a tract, to 
 be included in the printed volume.' Again : 
 * I have some thoughts of writing the second 
 part of the communion tract, another of 
 prayers for families, and one for Christmas- 
 day.' " 
 
 Those sentences will help us to understand 
 the nature of Thornton's religious and philan- 
 thropic labours through five-and-twenty years 
 and more. To follow it all we must study 
 the biographies of Wilberforce, of Clarkson, of 
 Hannah More, and a score of other worthies ; 
 yet even then we can follow it but dimly. 
 Henry Thornton was a modest worker. He 
 was the mainspring of a hundred movements ; 
 but he was generally in the back-ground, will- 
 ing that others should have the praise ; in the 
 simplicity of his heart believing that all the 
 praise was really due to them, and satisfied for 
 himself in thinking that he was able to have 
 such excellent agents and supporters in his 
 employment, and use of the money and the 
 talents given to him. 
 
 In one movement, however, which we may 
 look upon as an illustration of his whole cha-
 
 The Sierra Leone Company. 239 
 
 racter and conduct, he was outwardly, as well 
 as really, the leader. In 179 1, he organised a 
 Sierra Leone Company, and obtained a charter 
 for it. He was its chairman, and it started 
 with a capital of i^i 50,000. But money-making 
 was not here his object. The company was 
 intended to organise a settlement of escaped 
 and liberated slaves from Jamaica, Nova Scotia, 
 and elsewhere, who would thus, it was hoped, 
 not only have a comfortable home for them- 
 selves, but also be able to spread the bless- 
 ings of civilisation among the native blacks of 
 Western Africa. " The colony works me from 
 morning till night," he wrote in November 
 1791 ; " the importance of the thing strikes me, 
 and fills my mind so much, that at present busi- 
 ness, politics, friendship, seem all suspended for 
 the sake of it." He saw that the first ship was 
 properly freighted, and properly sent out. He 
 prepared a complete code of laws for the colony, 
 and chose for its first governor, Zachary Mac- 
 aulay, to whose son, the great historian, was 
 given the name of another influential worker 
 in the Sierra Leone scheme, and in all 
 kindred philanthropies — Thomas Babington. 
 Thornton, Babington, Wilberforce, and others, 
 toiled at home through weary years on behalf 
 of the colony, and Macaulay worked no less 
 zealously for it on the spot. Its purposes 
 failed, partly through evils of climate, partly
 
 240 Thornton s Various Occupations. 
 
 through the incompetence of the black colo- 
 nists ; and in 1808 it had to be transferred to 
 the Crown, and subjected to different and 
 rougher treatment. But the honour due to 
 Thornton and his associates is as great as 
 if their philanthropic undertaking had been 
 crowned with the utmost possible success. 
 
 This, too, was the beginning of the noble 
 enterprise in which Wilberforce was the chief 
 advocate, by which the slave-trade was abo- 
 lished, and a death-blow, acting slowly but 
 surely, was given to slavery itself. Henry 
 Thornton lived long enough to see and help 
 on only the commencement of this proud cru- 
 sade against the most grievous obstacle to 
 civilisation and progress in modern times. But 
 his share in it was hardly less on that account. 
 
 A marvellous career was that of this good 
 banker and merchant, who was so much more 
 than a mere banker and merchant. The toils 
 of half a dozen lives seemed merged in his 
 single life. " In his parliamentary work," .says 
 Mr Colquhoun, " his activity became every 
 year greater as he was better known, till, in 
 the later years of his life, there were few com- 
 mittees on finance, or taxes, or public economy, 
 on which we do not find his name. When we 
 add to these parliamentary Jabours the claims 
 of his constituency, their local requirements, 
 letters, memorials, private exigencies, and
 
 No Waste of Time. 241 
 
 public deputations — when we reckon up the 
 weeks of work which his infant colony of Sierra 
 Leone cost him, — we can see how he toiled. 
 To these labours are to be added his occu- 
 pation as a banker, for of the bank he was an 
 active partner, and his life was cast in a period 
 of our commercial history the most critical 
 which British trade has ever undergone. This 
 business occupied his time, and interrupted 
 his {cw intervals of leisure. It brought him 
 almost daily to the city, broke his holidays, 
 and forced him to London from Bath, Brighton, 
 or the Isle of Wight. It left him few and 
 uncertain seasons either for research or for 
 reflection. No doubt, as his Parliamentary 
 work grew, this encroached somewhat on his 
 banking efforts ; and the business of a banker, 
 which demands constant supervision, suffered 
 from this division of his time. But this was 
 not leisure, but only a change of work ; the 
 substitution of one class of employment for 
 another more absorbing." He was an able 
 and prolific author, too. " He wrote as much 
 as most men do who have health and abundant 
 leisure. He seized every fragment of time ; 
 wrote after his days of canvassing in South- 
 wark, or after his work at the bank, or while 
 engaged in the construction of his colony. He 
 jotted down his thoughts in his carriage as he 
 travelled, even on horseback as he rode." Be- 
 
 Q
 
 242 Tliorntoii 's A uthorship. 
 
 sides his work on " Paper Credit," he wrote a 
 volume of " Commentaries on the Old and New 
 Testaments," a volume of " Family Prayers," 
 and eighty-two essays, enough to fill a dozen 
 volumes, in the " Christian Observer," which 
 he was instrumental in founding. "And all 
 this work," to quote again from MrColquhoun, 
 " was done by a busy politician and banker, 
 through the orderly application of time and 
 thought, never hurried, but never idle; never 
 harassed, but never resting ; moments caught 
 up as well as hours ; the workman ever work- 
 ing cheerily under a Father's gracious eye. His 
 rest was to turn from one labour to a different, 
 one — to go from the bank to a council of bene- 
 volence — from a political discussion to a strug- 
 gling colony or a school in difficulties. He 
 lays down the pen of the financier to take up 
 the pen of the philanthropist — to write long 
 letters to a harassed governor — to settle differ- 
 ences among contending missionaries — to com- 
 pose tracts for Hannah More." 
 
 " If you should sink in the midst of your 
 work," he said in one of his letters to Hannah 
 More, " it will be better than sinking, like 
 Buonaparte, in the midst of the Egyptian 
 sands, or in that Holy Land which he may have 
 to traverse. My wife and I have lately ob- 
 served, and agreed much in the observation, 
 how much happier and better entitled to com-
 
 His Last Work. 243 
 
 fort are they who, towards the close of h'fe, 
 have to look back on scenes of activity, than 
 they who have only been talking and feeling 
 religiously all their days." 
 
 In that spirit he lived and worked to the 
 last. " The close of life," if it means old age, 
 never came to him. He worked too hard for 
 tliat. He began to die while he was yet a 
 young man, and death came upon him when, 
 had it been possible for him to be idle, he 
 might have been in the prime of life. He was 
 fifty-two when, in 1814, the anti-slavery crusade 
 was beginning. " We have some dark plots 
 in our head," he said, " for influencing the 
 Allied Powers in favour of the abolition of the 
 slave-trade through this earth of ours." The 
 plots were to continue, but he was not to share 
 in their fulfilment. In the autumn of the same 
 year his health, which had long been breaking, 
 began to break rapidly. By the end of Octo- 
 ber he was very ill. Through the next two 
 months his friends gathered round him. to 
 take their farewell of a man whom the best of 
 them, even Wilbcrforce, had to reverence for 
 his greater worth. He himself, whenever he 
 was strong enough, dictated the last of his 
 " Family Prayers." " When the shadows of 
 the evening fail around us," he murmured in the 
 last of all — a true utterance of Iiis own deej) 
 thoughts — " and when age and sickness shall
 
 244 Henry Tliornton 's Death. 
 
 arrive, and human help shall fail, be then 
 Thou, O Lord, the strength of our hearts, and 
 our deep portion for evermore ! " 
 
 In that temper he died, early in January 
 1815. " His influence was great," said one of 
 his many pious friends, Thomas Bowdler, " his 
 understanding of uncommon power ; and what 
 one fancied was a careless opinion was often 
 the result of such deep thought and patient 
 investigation as would have taken other people 
 hours to express. I have often thougiit it was 
 almost an evidence of the Christian religion, 
 that so commanding a mind as his, prejudiced 
 as it was in early life against enthusiasm of all 
 kinds, should quietly and soberly examine the 
 subject for himself, with all the force of his 
 intellect, and end in becoming not only con- 
 vinced of the truth of religion, but one of the 
 most warm and devout of her followers. How 
 we are all to go on without him, I cannot 
 understand. As a standard for us all to look 
 up to, he was invaluable. Even this day, the 
 first that has risen on his lifeless remains, I 
 have wanted his counsel ; and how many are 
 there to whom his example gave confidence 
 and guidance in their humble exertions, who 
 leant on him, and looked to him in every 
 season of doubt and temptation ! "
 
 XL 
 
 NATHAN MEYER ROTHSCHILD. 
 [1776-1836.] 
 
 [N Frankfort, as in most other busy 
 towns, the dirtiest quarter is that occu- 
 gyvl pied by Jew money-lenders, pawn- 
 brokers, and hucksters. A hundred years ago, 
 when it was dirtier than it is now, one of its 
 inmates was Meyer Anselm, whose Httle shop 
 was known by its sign of a Red Shield, or 
 Roth-Schild, whence he came to be called, and 
 lo call himself, Meyer Anselm Rothschild. 
 He sold all sorts of second-hand goods ; but 
 lie had a special reputation as a collector of 
 old coins, jewels, cameos, and pictures, and 
 on that account his shop came to be frequented 
 by great people as well as little, who came to 
 look at and to buy his curiosities, and often to 
 borrow money of him. One of his customers 
 was William, Landgrave of Hesse, who, after 
 several years' dealing with him, liked him so 
 well, that, when the French bombarded Frank- 
 fort in i/'jO, he gave him and his treasures
 
 246 The First of the Rothschilds. 
 
 safe housing in his fortified dwelling-place at 
 Casscl. The French' ransacked the Jews' quar- 
 ter, and, on their retirement, its old inmates 
 were allowed to disperse themselves over 
 Frankfort, and to live on an equality with 
 their Christian neighbours. Meyer Anselm, 
 therefore, as soon as he went back to the town, 
 built himself a handsome house in one of its 
 most fashionable parts. 
 
 He was appointed foreign banker and financial 
 agent to the Landgrave William, and at once 
 entered on a more extensive and more profit- 
 able Sort of business than had previously been 
 within his reach. He was a rich man in 1806, 
 when the Landgrave, being in his turn forced 
 to flee from a new French invasion under 
 Napoleon, placed in his keeping all his trea- 
 sure, amounting to 3,000,000 florins, or about 
 ^^250,000. This money Rothschild invested 
 very skilfully ; lending at exorbitant rates, 
 pawning for trifling sums the property of 
 owners who in those unsettled times were 
 never able to redeem it, and turning pence 
 and pounds in every possible way. When he 
 died, in 1 812, he left 12,000,000 florins to be 
 shared by his five sons, Anselm, Solomon, 
 Nathan Meyer, Charles, and James. From 
 these five sons, on his deathbed, he exacted 
 an oath that they would keep the business 
 together, extending it as much as they could,
 
 Nathan Rothschild' s Training, 247 
 
 bvt always acting in partnership, so that the 
 world might know only one house of Roth- 
 schild. The oath was strictly kept, with this 
 exception, that Nathan Meyer, the third son, 
 proving the cleverest of them all, came to be 
 practically the head of the house, in place of 
 his eldest brother, Anselm. 
 
 This third son, Nathan Meyer, was born at 
 Frankfort on the i6th of September 1776. 
 When he was about two-and-twenty, some 
 fourteen or fifteen years before his father's 
 death, he left Frankfort to settle in Manchester. 
 " There was not room enough for all of us in 
 Frankfort," he said long afterwards. " I dealt 
 in Engli.sh goods. One great trader came there 
 who had the market all to himself He was 
 quite the great man, and did us a favour if he 
 sold us goods. Somehow I offended him, and 
 he refused to show me his patterns. This was 
 on a Tuesday. I said to my father, ' I will go 
 to England.' I could speak nothing but Ger- 
 man. On Thursday I started. The nearer I 
 got to England the cheaper goods were. As 
 soon as I got to Manchester I laid out all my 
 money — things were so cheap ; and I made 
 good profit." 
 
 Manchester, which had been but a village, 
 and afterwards a small town, for more than a 
 thousand years, was just then bcginnirg to be 
 made a great place of business by the new trade
 
 248 RotJiscliild ifi Manchester. 
 
 in cotton, and the new manufacture of cottcn 
 goods. In it were plenty of young men glad 
 to borrow money at high rates of interest, for 
 the sake of establishing themselves as mer- 
 chants and manufacturers, and young Rotti- 
 schild was ready to lend money to every oie 
 whom he could trust to return it. Besides 
 being a money-lender, however, he was also a 
 merchant. " I soon found," he said, " that there 
 were three profits — the raw material, the dye- 
 ing, and the manufacturing. I said to the 
 manufacturer, ' I will supply you with material 
 and dye, and you shall supply me with the 
 manufactured goods.' So I got three profits 
 instead of one, and I could sell goods cheaper 
 than anybody. In a short time I turned my 
 iJ^20,000 into ;!^6o,ooo. My success all turned 
 on one maxim. I said, ' I can do what another 
 man can, and so I am a match for the man 
 with the patterns, and all the I'est of them ! ' 
 Another advantage I had. I was an off-hand 
 man — I made my bargains at once." It was 
 a favourite maxim with Rothschild also "to 
 have nothing to do with an unlucky place 
 or an unlucky man." " I have seen many 
 clever men, very clever men," he said, 
 " who had not shoes to their feet. I never 
 act with them. Their advice sounds very 
 well. But fate is against them. They can- 
 not get on themselves ; and if they cannot do
 
 Rothschild in London. 249 
 
 good to themselves, can they do good to 
 me ? " 
 
 Resolving to govern his life by such rules, 
 not over-exalted, but certainly good models of 
 selfishness, Nathan Meyer Rothschild put him- 
 self in a sure way to wealth. In or near the 
 year 1803, after five or six years passed in 
 Manchester, he proceeded to settle in London. 
 He considered that money-lending, the most 
 profitable of all his businesses, could be carried 
 on quite as well in one place as in another, and 
 that other work, quite as remunerative, would 
 be more within his reach in London than in any 
 smaller town. This change, indeed, was part 
 of a plan by which eventually the five brothers 
 took possession of all the chief centres of 
 European commerce — Ansclm remaining in 
 Frankfort, Solomon being sometimes in Berlin, 
 sometimes in Vienna, Charles being in Naples, 
 James in Paris, and Nathan in London. 
 
 London had been a favourite resort of 
 money-making Jews ever since the Norman 
 Conquest. In the middle ages, having the 
 neighbourhood of the Old Jewry for their 
 special residence, they steadily enriched them- 
 selves by trade with the Christians, who 
 thought it a virtue to persecute them. It is 
 not strange, seeing how hardly they were 
 treated, that their natural love of wealth should 
 have resulted in miserly ways, and that their
 
 250 Old Jew Tr a tiers. 
 
 natural hatred of Christians should have grown 
 into a fierce antipathy. Shakespeare's " Mer- 
 chant of Venice," showing their position in the 
 trading towns *of Italy, showed also, without 
 much exaggeration, their position in London 
 and other English cities. When Antonio, in 
 the play, comes to ask for a loan of money, 
 Shylock answers — 
 
 " Signior Antonio, many a time and oft 
 In the Rialto you have rated me 
 About my monies and my usances : 
 Still have I borne it with a patient shnig ; 
 For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe : 
 You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, 
 And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine. 
 And all for use of that which is mine own. 
 Well, then, it now appears you need my help, 
 You that did void your rheum upon my beard, 
 And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur 
 Over your threshold : monies is your suit. 
 What should I say to you ? Should I not say, 
 * Hath a dog money? ii it possii)le 
 A cur can lend three thousand ducats ? ' Or 
 Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key, 
 With bated breath and whispering humbleness, 
 Say this : 
 
 ' Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last ; 
 You spum'd mc such a day ; another time 
 You call'd me dog ; and for these courtesies 
 I '11 lend you thus much monies ?' " 
 
 Through four or five centuries the Jews in 
 England were spurned and spit upon, yet 
 made great use of, by the Christians, who gave 
 them a grudging residence among them. But
 
 The Brothers Golds mid. 251 
 
 some two hundred years ago tlaey beg^an to 
 take a better place and fill it better. Their 
 prudent ways of money-making- came to be 
 closely followed by their rivals and persecu- 
 tors. They were allowed to trade with Chris- 
 tians on equal terms, and they showed a dis- 
 position at any rate not less Christian than 
 that of many who bore the title. 
 
 The most famous, and the most deserving 
 of fame, among the wealthy Jews who were 
 in London when Rothschild settled in it, 
 were the Brothers Goldsmid. Their father, 
 Aaron Goldsmid, had come from Plambure 
 about the middle of the eighteenth century, 
 and established himself as a small merchant 
 in Leman Street. His small business was 
 made a great one by his four sons, the two 
 younger of whom, Benjamin an-i Abraham, 
 were the most prosperous. In 1792 the}' re- 
 moved from Leman Street to a house in Capel 
 Street, opposite the Bank of England, and 
 began using the wealth they had already accu- 
 mulated as .stock-brokers and mone\'-lcnders. 
 That was the time of English fighting with 
 France, and the Government, being in urgent 
 need of money with which to pay for the ex- 
 penses of the war, were beginning the great 
 .system of national loans which arc now so 
 frequent and stupendous. The (ioldsmids were 
 intrusted with much of this business, and they
 
 252 Ttvo Rich Suicides. 
 
 managed it, as well as everything else that 
 they took in hand, with remarkable honour 
 and ability. Chance, as well as their own good 
 sense, was in their favour. In 1794, when 
 several of their neighbours were ruined, their 
 entire losses from bad debts amounted to only 
 £$0. Both brothers were as generous as they 
 were rich. Accumulating wealth with unheard 
 of rapidity, they distributed in charity much 
 more than the tithes prescribed by their Mosaic 
 law. Numberless instances of their sharing in 
 every sort of philanthropic work are on record, 
 and the memory of their princely benevolence 
 has not yet ceased among old City men. They 
 were also famous for the splendid hospitality 
 with which they entertained all the leaders of 
 society in their day. They died young, how- 
 ever, and dismally. In a fit of melancholy 
 Benjamin Goldsmid hanged himself from his 
 own bedstead in 1808 ; and in 18 10 Abraham 
 Goldsmid shot himself in his own garden. 
 
 In the latter year, also, at a riper age, died 
 a yet greater City worthy. Sir Francis Baring. 
 Baring, the grandson of a Lutheran minister, 
 who came to England soon after the accession 
 of William of Orange, and the son of a cloth 
 merchant, who started a small business in 
 Devonshire, and made it a large one in London, 
 was born in 1736. He carried on his father's 
 trade, and greatly augmented it. He estab-
 
 The Barings. 253 
 
 lished an immense traffic with the East Indies 
 and America, and promptly following the lead 
 of the younger Goldsmids, dealt largely in na- 
 tional loans and public securities. Even his 
 enemies declared him to be " a man of con- 
 summate knowledge and inflexible honour." 
 " Few men," it was said, " understood better 
 the real interests of trade, and few men arrived 
 at the highest rank of commercial life with 
 more unsullied integrit}'." Dying at the age 
 of seventy-four, he left a fortune worth 
 iJ"i, 100,000, and a great house of business, 
 to be made yet greater through the enter- 
 prise of his .sons, chief of whom was Alexander 
 Baring, afterwards Baron Ashburton. " There 
 are six great powers in Europe — England, 
 France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Baring 
 Brothers," said a great statesman in 18 18, when 
 Alexander Baring, courted and dreaded by 
 sovereigns because of his vast wealth and the 
 vast influence that it gave him, was decid- 
 ing whether there should be peace or war in 
 Europe. 
 
 The Goldsmids and the Barings were the 
 men with whom young Nathan Meyer Roth- 
 schihl, coming to London in 1803, with a 
 determination to become the greatest mm of 
 all in the commercial world, hail to compete. 
 He lacked the higher graces, the goodness of 
 heart and the spotless honesty, of his first
 
 ^54 Rothschild's Marria/ce. 
 
 <b' 
 
 livals. But he surpassed thcni, eminent as 
 they were, in the tact and shrewdness which 
 go so far to the making of commercial success. 
 When he seemed to be most reckless in his 
 speculations, he was acting with a cautious- 
 ness which insured success. 
 
 In 1806 he married the daughter of Levi 
 Burnet Cohen, one of the wealthiest Jew mer- 
 chants then in London. Prudent Cohen, it is 
 said, after accepting him as his daughter's 
 suitor, became nervous about the wisdom of 
 the match. A man who traded so boldly, he 
 thought, was very likely to squander his own 
 and other people's money. He, therefore, 
 asked for proof of young Rothschild's wealth, 
 and of its safe investment. Young Rothschild 
 refused to give it, answering that, as far as 
 wealth and good character went, Mr Cohen 
 could not do better than give him all his 
 daughters in marriage. 
 
 If " eood character" meant steadiness and 
 skill in money-making, he was certainly right. 
 Nathan Rothschild was without a peer in that 
 art. Having steadily advanced, his fortune in 
 private ways through some years, he began in 
 1 8 10, the year in which both Sir Francis Baring 
 and Benjamin Goldsmid died, to trade in na- 
 tional securities. He bought up for a trifling 
 sum a great number of the Duke of Welling- 
 ton's drafts for the expenses of the Peninsular
 
 His Momy-jnaking Ways. 255 
 
 War, which the Government was too poor to 
 pay when they fell due. These he sold to the 
 Government at their full price, on the under- 
 standing that they were not to be paid for for 
 some time to come. By this means he helped 
 the Government out of a pressing difficulty, 
 and at the same time insured a large profit 
 to himself " It was tlie best business I ever 
 did," he said. 
 
 It was this business that started him on a 
 new stage in his wonderful course of money- 
 making. It made friends for him at the Trea- 
 sury, and led to his employment in other 
 services of the same sort, and also enabled 
 iiim to procure early information as to the 
 progress of the war then waging, and as to 
 the policy of the English and foreign Govern- 
 ments, which gave him a notable advantage 
 over his fellow -stockjobbers. The ramifica- 
 tions of the Rothschild establishment and con- 
 nexions on the Continent, moreover, made him 
 the best agent of the State in conveying money 
 to the armies in Spain and elsewhere, and this 
 agency proved very lucrative to him in various 
 ways. Seeing the great benefit that he derived 
 from his appliances for securing early and secret 
 information as to the progress of foreign affairs, 
 he made it his business to extend and increase 
 them to the very utmost. He turned pigeon- 
 fancier, and, buying all the best birds he could
 
 256 R otJiscJi ild 's Pigeons. 
 
 find, he employed some of his leisure in train- 
 ing them, and so organised a machinery for 
 rapid transmission of messages unrivalled in 
 the days when railways and telegraphs were 
 unknown. A note tied to a pigeon, taught to 
 fly direct from Paris to London, reached him 
 in a quarter of the time that was required for 
 sending it by any other way. He also made 
 careful study of routes, distances, and various 
 facilities for rapid travelling, and mapped out 
 new roads for his messengers. The South- 
 Eastern Railway Company, it is said, estab- 
 lished their line of steamers between Folke- 
 stone and Boulogne, because it was found 
 that Rothschild had already proved that route 
 to be the best for the despatch of his swift- 
 rowing boats. 
 
 Rothschild's greatest achievement in over- 
 reaching distance and his fellow-speculators 
 was in 18 15. While the battle of Waterloo 
 was being fought on the i8th of June, he 
 stood on a neighbouring height, watching its 
 progress almost as eagerly as did Buonaparte 
 and Wellington themselves. All day long he 
 followed the fighting with strained eyes, know- 
 ing that on its issue, to a great extent, depended 
 his fortune, as well as the welfare of Europe. 
 At sunset he saw that the victory was with 
 Wellington and the Allies. Then, without a 
 moment's delay, he mounted a horse that had
 
 Ai the Battle of Waterloo. 257 
 
 been kept in readiness for him, and hurried 
 homewards. Everywhere on his road fresh 
 horses or carriages were in waiting to help him 
 over the ground. Riding or driving all night, he 
 reached Ostend at daybreak. There, however, 
 he found the sea so stormy that the boatmen 
 refused to trust themselves to it. At last he 
 prevailed upon one of them to risk his life for 
 £^0, to be paid to him if he would cross over 
 to Dover; and in this way Rothschild suc- 
 ceeded in crossing the Channel with very little 
 loss of time. At Dover, and at the other stop- 
 ping places on the road to London, fresh horses 
 were in waiting, and he was in London before 
 midnight. Next morning — the morning of the 
 20th of June — he was one of the first to enter 
 the Stock Exchange. In gloomy whispers he 
 told those who, as usual, crowded round him 
 for news, that Blucher and his Prussians had 
 been routed by Napoleon before Wellington 
 had been able to reach the field. He did not 
 add, that afterwards Wellington had turned 
 the fortunes of the day, and secured peace for 
 Europe. The effect of his report was, as he 
 intended, a sort of panic among the capitalists 
 and speculators. Fearing that the funds would 
 sink very low, they tried to sell out as quickly 
 as possible, and in doing so sold out at very 
 great loss. The men who bought from them 
 were in secret league with Rotiischild, and a 
 
 K
 
 258 More IiTo>iey-maki>ig. 
 
 great quantity of scrip was transferred to his 
 coffers during that and the following day. On 
 the afternoon of the second day, the real issue 
 of the battle of Waterloo was made known. 
 Very soon the funds were higher than they 
 had been during many previous weeks — far 
 higher than they had been during the two 
 days of panic ; and Rothschild, quickly selling 
 the scrip that he had bought, found, it was 
 reported, that he had made something like a 
 million pounds by his rapid travelling and 
 clever deception. 
 
 Other millions were collected, rather more 
 slowly, in ways of which some, at any rate, 
 can hardly be called honest. One of his smart 
 speculations was in mercury. Nearly all the 
 mercury procurable in Europe comes either 
 from Idria in Illyria, or from Almaden in 
 Spain. The Almaden mines, famous and pro- 
 fitable through five-and-twenty centuries, had 
 fallen for some years into disuse before 1831, 
 when Rothschild, becoming contractor for a 
 Spanish loan, proposed, as part payment for 
 his trouble, to hold them during a certain time 
 at a nominal rent. That was cheerfully agreed 
 to, and the mines soon began to give token of 
 unusual activity. In the meanwhile the great 
 merchant also got possession of the mines at 
 Idria. Thus he obtained a monopoly of mer- 
 cury, and was able to charge for it whatever
 
 RctJischild' s Trade in Loans. 259 
 
 he thought fit. Its price was nearly doubled, 
 and Rothschild was able to make an immense 
 profit by the arrangement. It was nothing to 
 him that the exorbitant prices drove some 
 smaller tricksters to scrape all the quicksilver 
 from old looking-glasses and the like, and 
 work it up into poisonous calomel, as well as 
 bad material for new mirrors, thermometers, 
 and so forth. 
 
 Most of Rothschild's wealth, however, was 
 made in less disreputable ways. After he had 
 firmly established himself in London, his great 
 business was in negotiating foreign loans. 
 These he was the first to make popular in the 
 English market. He became the principal 
 agent of all the great and needy governments 
 — French and German, Russian and Turkish, 
 North American and South American — in dis- 
 posing of their scrip to English stock-jobbers. 
 London never had in it a man more thoroughly 
 competent for the carrying on of all sorts of 
 money-making projects. lie was master of 
 little things as well as great. " His memory 
 was so retentive," we arc told, " that, notwith- 
 standing the immense transactions on which 
 he entered on every foreign post-day, and that 
 he never took a note of them, he could, on his 
 return home, with perfect exactness, dictate 
 the whole to his clerks." 
 
 Rothschild had few tastes or j leasures out
 
 26o RotJiscJnld 's Vieiv of Money. 
 
 of the Stock Exchange and his counting-house 
 in St Swithin's Lane. When Louis Spohr, the 
 great German musician, called on him in June 
 1820, with a letter of introduction from his 
 brother in Frankfort, he said to him, " I under- 
 stand nothing of music. This" — patting his 
 pocket, and rattling the loose coins therein — 
 "is my music; we understand that on 'Change." 
 
 Money -making was the one pursuit and 
 enjoyment of Rothschild's life. He cared less 
 than many do for the money when it was 
 made. " He had no taste or inclination," says 
 one of his friends, "for what every English- 
 man seeks as soon as he has money to buy 
 it — comfort in every respect. His ambition 
 was to arrive at his aim more quickly and 
 more effectually than others, and to steer to- 
 wards it with more energy. When his end was 
 reached, it had lost all its charm for him, and 
 he turned his never-wearying mind to some- 
 thing else." It was in the scramblings and 
 fightings, the plots and tricks, of making money, 
 not at all in the spending, not much in the 
 hoarding of it, that he delighted. 
 
 " I hope," said a dinner-companion to him 
 on one occasion, " I hope that your children 
 are not too fond of money and business, to the 
 exclusion of more important things. I am 
 sure you would not wish that." 
 
 " I am sure I should whh that," he answered;
 
 Rothschild's Charities. 261 
 
 " I wish them to give mind, and soul, and heart, 
 and body — everything to business. That is the 
 way to be happy. It requires a great deal of 
 boldness, and a great deal of caution, to make 
 a great fortune: and when you have got it, it 
 requires ten times as much wit to keep it." 
 
 To all who were willing to work in this 
 fashion, he was, after his fashion, a good 
 friend. Some of the wealthiest commercial 
 houses now in London owe their prosperity to 
 the readiness with which Rothschild, seeing 
 good business qualities in the young men 
 around him, helped them on with his great 
 influence. There were cases in which he went 
 out of his way to put exceptional oppor- 
 tunities of money-making in the way of his 
 favourites. Even his charities, according to 
 his own confession, were eccentric, and chiefly 
 indulged in for his own entertainment. " Some- 
 times, to amuse myself," he said, " I give a 
 beggar a guinea. He thinks it is a mistake, 
 and, for fear I should find it out, off he runs as 
 hard as he can. I advise you to give a beggar 
 a guinea sometimes; it is very amusing." 
 
 The great man's jokes were not very witty. 
 One of the best of them owes its point to his 
 Jewish pronunciation. At a Lord Mayor's 
 dinner he sat next to a guest noted for liis 
 stinginess, who chanced to say that, for his part, 
 he preferred mutton to venison. "Ah, I see,"
 
 262 Rothschild 's Jokes. 
 
 Rothschild answered; "you like mutton be- 
 cause it is sheep (clicap) ; and other people 
 h'ke venison because it is deer (dear)." 
 
 Another saying attributed to him gives evi- 
 dence, if true, of some humour. Once, it is 
 said, a German prince, visiting London, brought 
 letters of credit to the banker. He was shown 
 into the inner room of the famous counting- 
 house in St Swithin's Lane, where Rothschild 
 sat, busy with a heap of papers. The name 
 being announced, Rothschild nodded, offered 
 his visitor a chair, and then went on with the 
 work before him. For this treatment the 
 prince, who expected that everything should 
 give way to one of his rank and dignity, was 
 not prepared. Standing a minute or two, he 
 exclaimed, " Did you not hear, sir, who I am } 
 
 I am" repeating his titles. "Oh, very well," 
 
 said Rothschild ; " take two chairs then." 
 
 At another time, two strangers were ad- 
 mitted into this same private room. They 
 were tall foreigners, with mustachios and 
 beards, such as were not often seen in the city 
 thirty or forty years ago, and Rothschild, 
 always timid, was frightened from the moment 
 of their entrance. He put his own interpre- 
 tation upon the excited movements with which 
 they fum.bled about in their pockets ; and 
 before the expected pistols could be produced, 
 he had thrown a great ledger in the direction
 
 A Millionaire's Perils. 263 
 
 of their heads, and brought in a bevy of clerks 
 by his cries of " Murder." The strangers 
 were pinioned, and then, after long question- 
 ings and explanations, it appeared that they 
 were wealthy bankers from the Continent, 
 who, nervous in the presence of a banker so 
 much more wealthy, had had some difficulty in 
 finding the letters of introduction which they 
 were to present. 
 
 During the latter years of his life, Rothschild 
 was said to be always in fear of assassination. 
 " You must be a very happy man, Mr Roth- 
 schild," said a guest, at one of the splendid 
 banquets for which his Piccadilly house was 
 famous. " Happy ! me happy ! " he exclaimed. 
 " What, happy ! when just as you are going to 
 dine you have a letter placed in your hands, 
 saying, * If you do not send me ;i!^50O I will 
 blow your brains out ! ' Me happy ! " 
 
 Perhaps, however, Nathan Rothschild was as 
 happy as any one as full of the cares of business 
 as he was could be. He was a zealous money- 
 maker to the last. His father had directed 
 that the house of Rothschild should continue 
 united from generation to generation. ICach 
 of the brothers had a share in all the others' 
 concerns. It was in furtherance of the general 
 scheme of keeping the family as compact as 
 possible, that, some time before, Nathan's 
 youngest brother, James, had married one
 
 264 '' II est Mort" 
 
 of his nieces. In 1836 it was resolved that 
 Nathan's eldest son, Lionel, should marry 
 one of his cousins, a daughter of Anselm 
 Rothschild, of Frankfort. With that object 
 the father and son went to Frankfort in June. 
 But on the wedding-day Nathan fell ill. He 
 died on the 28th of July, not quite sixty years 
 of age. On the morning following his death, 
 one of his own carrier-pigeons was shot near 
 Brighton. When it was picked up there was 
 found under one of its wings a scrap of paper 
 with these words written on it, " II est mort." 
 
 None but his own kindred ever knew what 
 was Rothschild's real wealth. The guesses 
 ranged between ;i^3,ooo,ooo and ,£"10,000,000. 
 
 He was buried in London, in a coffin " so 
 handsomely carved and decorated, with large 
 silver handles at both sides and ends, that it 
 appeared more like a cabinet or splendid 
 piece of furniture than a receptacle for the 
 dead." The chief rabbi, who preached the 
 funeral sermon, applauded in it the charity of 
 Nathan Meyer Rothschild, who, during his 
 lifetime, had intrusted him with some thousands 
 of pounds for secret almsgiving. But that was 
 all that the world ever heard of the rich man's 
 use of his riches in any sort of disinterested 
 charity, or in any way which, whether it did 
 good to others or not, was not chosen chiefly 
 for his own amusement or his own advantage.
 
 XII. 
 
 SAMUEL GURNEY. 
 [1786-1856.] 
 
 [NE of the Norman barons who came to 
 England with William the Conqueror 
 in 1066 was Hugh de Gournay ; and 
 when William divided the best portions of the 
 land among his leading followers, large grants 
 in Norfolk, Suffolk, and elsewhere were made 
 to the Lord of Gournay. His descendants 
 were men of mark during the ensuing centu- 
 ries. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, if not 
 before, they began to be merchants, the younger 
 sons generally taking to commerce, while the 
 elder ones settled down as country gentlemen. 
 One of these trading members of the family, a 
 John Gournay or Gurncy, who was born in 
 1655, and who became a Quaker soon after 
 the Quaker doctrines had been first preached 
 by George Fox, became especially eminent in 
 business. He was a manufacturer, a merchant, 
 and a banker in Norwich, and his offspring
 
 266 Sa))iuel Gurney 's Training. 
 
 carried on his callings, especially that of bank- 
 ing, with notable success. It is with his great- 
 great-grandson that we have here to concerrl 
 ourselves. 
 
 Samuel Gurney, the brother of Elizabeth 
 Fry and Joseph John Gurney, two eminent 
 philanthropists, was born at Earlham, near 
 Norwich, on the 1 8th of October 1786. He 
 was John Gurney's second son and ninth child. 
 At the age of seven he was put to school with 
 the Rev. John Henry Brown, a pupil of the 
 celebrated Dr Parr, and at fourteen he was 
 apprenticed to the Clothworkers' Company in 
 London, and placed in the counting-house, in 
 St Mildred's Court, Poultry, in which his 
 brother-in-law, Joseph Fry, who was also a 
 partner in the bank of Frys & Chapman, car- 
 ried on an extensive trade as a tea-merchant. 
 " He took to business and liked it," according 
 to the report of his niece, whose first remem- 
 brances of him were as an inmate in the St 
 Mildred's Court household. " In the counting- 
 house, as well as in domestic life, he was ex- 
 tremely amiable and cheerful, and was beloved 
 by the whole establishment. Although not 
 brought up in conformity to the costume or 
 speech of the Society of Friends, he showed 
 no propensity to follow fashions or gaiety of ap- 
 pearance beyond a suitable neatness of attire." 
 From the very first, indeed, he seems to have
 
 His Marriage. 267 
 
 been so thoroughly a man, or rather a boy, of 
 business, as to have cared for no lighter occu- 
 pations. In 1807, when his sister Hannah 
 married Thomas Fowell Buxton, he went down 
 to the wedding, but, it is recorded, tired of the 
 festivities long before they were over, and was 
 glad to get back to his book-keeping and 
 money-changing. 
 
 In the following year, however, Samuel 
 Gurney was married himself, his wife being 
 Elizabeth, the daughter of James Sheppard of 
 Ham House, in Essex, a handsome residence 
 that soon descended to the young couple, and 
 was their place of abode during nearly the 
 whole of their married life. The wealth that 
 came to Samuel Gurney from his father-in-law, 
 as well as that bequeathed to him by his father, 
 who died in 1809, helped him to make rapid 
 progress in the new business in which he had 
 embarked a little while before, on his reaching 
 the age of twenty-one. 
 
 The business had begun a few years earlier 
 than that, growing out of a yet earlier con- 
 nexion between Joseph Smith, a wool factor 
 in London, of the firm of Smith & Holt, and 
 the Norwich Bank. Joseph Smith had found 
 the advantage of applying part of his savings as 
 a merchant to the then very slightly-developed 
 trade of bill-discounting, and John Gurney of 
 Norwich, with whom he had been acquainted
 
 268 RicJiardson, Over end, &r Coinpa^ty. 
 
 long before, when both were simply dealers in 
 raw wool and manufactured cloths, also found 
 the advantage of sending up to him some of 
 the surplus money of the Norwich Bank, for 
 investment in the same way, paying to Smith, 
 as his commission, a quarter per cent, on the 
 money laid out in each transaction. This 
 arrangement having continued for some time, it 
 occurred to Smith's confidential clerk, Thomas 
 Richardson, by whom most of the bill business 
 had been done, that there was room in London 
 for a separate establishment devoted to trade 
 in bills. He asked his employer to open an 
 establishment of that sort, taking him as 
 managing partner therein. This Joseph Smith 
 refused to do, and Richardson resigned his 
 clerkship in consequence. He found the Nor- 
 wich Gurneys, however, more favourable to his 
 project, and about the year i8oo the house of 
 Richardson, Overend, & Company was founded, 
 the management being divided between him 
 and John Overend, formerly chief clerk in the 
 bank of Smith, Payne, & Company. Simon 
 Martin, an old clerk in the Norwich Bank, went 
 to London to help to build up the business, and 
 to watch its movements on behalf of the bank, 
 whence most of the money was obtained for 
 investment. The enterprise throve wonderfully 
 from the first, one great source of its popularity 
 being the change introduced by the new firm,
 
 Overend, Giiriiey, & Company. 269 
 
 which charged the quarter per cent, commission 
 against the borrowers of the money, instead of 
 the lenders as heretofore; and in 1807 John 
 Gurney added vastly to its strength by intro- 
 ducing his son Samuel as a partner. About 
 that time Thomas Richardson retired from the 
 business. It was carried on under the name of 
 Overend & Company, even after John Over- 
 end's death, until the secret of its connexion 
 with the Norwich house could no longer be 
 kept, and it assumed its world-famous title of 
 Overend, Gurney, & Company. 
 
 It won its influence and fame through the 
 skilful way in which its founders contrived to 
 profit by the altered circumstances of modern 
 commerce. I a simpler times money meant 
 only gold, silver, and other precise sorts of 
 current coin. But the increase of trade and 
 population, carrying with it a yet greater in- 
 crease in the demand for money and the uses 
 to which it may be put, has necessitated an 
 entire revolution in the finance of commerce. 
 
 Money is now not gold and silver alone, but 
 gold, silver, paper, and anything else that can 
 be regarded as a trust worthy agent in the 
 interchange of commodities and the bartering 
 of capital, labrnir, and the like. Were we 
 forced now to carry on all our commercial 
 dealings by means of gold and silver, it would 
 only be possible, in spite of the increase of our
 
 270 Paper Money. 
 
 stores of these metals, to continue a very small 
 portion of our present trade. This, however, 
 no one now attempts to do. The legal cur- 
 rency, whether gold, silver, or bank-notes, is 
 only a sort of pocket-money in comparison 
 with the real currency of trade. It serves 
 for the smaller sort of retail purchases, for 
 payments across the counter, and the like ; but 
 the great merchant lias not in his possession 
 all through his lifetime actual money equal in 
 amount to the paper equivalent of money that 
 passes through his hands every day in the 
 week. All his important business is carried 
 on exclusively by means of bills, bonds, cheques, 
 and the other materials included in the terms 
 "commercial debt" and "credit." His ready 
 money is lodged with a banker, as has been the 
 practice since the beginning of the eighteenth 
 century, except that now he draws cheques for 
 so much as he needs for use from time to time, 
 instead of receiving from his banker a number 
 of promissory-notes, to be passed to and fro, 
 while the actual deposit was in the banker's 
 hands, to be used in whatever safe and profit- 
 able way he chose. Now, however, the cheques 
 are, in comparatively few cases, exchanged for 
 real money, they being piled up by the bank- 
 ers, into whose hands they come, and paired 
 off one with another, or in heaps together, 
 while the deposits that they represent are
 
 Modern Credit. 271 
 
 left untouched. In this way the money does 
 double work, being itself available for use by 
 the banker or his agents, while the equivalent 
 cheques are quite as serviceable for all the 
 purposes of trade. 
 
 And this is only the simplest instance of 
 the modern principle of credit. In all sorts 
 of ways, every bit of money and everything 
 else that can be taken as a representative 
 of wealth, whether actual or prospective, is 
 turned over and over, each turning being a 
 creation, to all intents and purposes, of so 
 much fresh money. A merchant, for ex- 
 ample, buys j^iooo worth of goods for ex- 
 port, say to India, China, or Australia. He 
 pays for the same by means of a bill of ex- 
 change, accepted as soon as possible, but not 
 payable till two or three months after date. 
 The manufacturer or agent of whom he buys 
 the goods, however, does not wait all that time 
 for his money. In all probability he imme- 
 diately gets the bill discounted, thereby losing 
 some ;^ 1 5 or ;{;2o, but having the sum of ^980 
 or £<^?>S available for appropriation in other 
 ways, and thus for the acquisition of fresh 
 profits. Before the original bill falls due, he 
 has built perhaps twenty fresh transactions on 
 the basis of the first one, and so, in effect, has 
 turned his ;Ciooo into ;{;20,ooo, less the /; 300 
 or £AfOO that have been deducted by the bill-
 
 272 Siuniicl Gurney 's Business. 
 
 broker as discount. And the same original 
 transaction has been made the groundwork of 
 a number of other transactions on the part of 
 the merchant who bought the goods. He 
 bought them for ;^iOOo, to sell again for, say, 
 £i2Q0, part of the difference being his profit, 
 part being absorbed in freight, insurance, and 
 so forth. He is not likely to be paid for the 
 goods in less than six months' time, and he 
 has to pay for them in two or three months. 
 But long before either of those terms expires, 
 he has raised part of the money on the security 
 of his bill of lading, and so is enabled to enter 
 on other transactions, just as the manufacturer 
 had done. In such ways as these, and they 
 are numberless, a very small amount of actual 
 money goes to the building up, on the one side, 
 of a vast structure of credit, and on the other 
 of a vast structure of commerce. 
 
 There was a hazy comprehension of this 
 system long centuries ago. " If you were 
 ignorant of this, that credit is the greatest 
 capital of all towards the acquisition of 
 wealth," said Demosthenes, " you would be 
 utterly ignorant." But the modern theory of 
 credit is very modern indeed, having almost 
 its first exemplification, on a large scale, in 
 the establishment of Overend, Gurney, & 
 Company. This house, as we saw, was estab- 
 lished to make a separate business of bill-dis-
 
 Its Extension. 273 
 
 counting, much more complete and extensive 
 than the chance trade in bills that had for- 
 merly been, and that continued to be, carried 
 on by bankers, merchants, and all sorts of 
 irregular money-lenders. Very soon after the 
 time of Samuel Gurney's supremacy in it, it 
 began to assume gigantic proportions, and it 
 was for some thirty or forty years the greatest 
 discounting house in the world, the parent of 
 all the later and rival establishments that have 
 started up in London and elsewhere. At first 
 only discounting bills, its founders soon saw 
 the advantage of lending money on all sorts of 
 other securities, and their cellars came to be 
 loaded with a constantly varying heap of dock- 
 warrants, bills of lading, shares in railways and 
 public companies, and the like. To do this, of 
 course, vast funds were necessary, very much 
 in excess of the immense wealth accumulated 
 by the Gurneys in Norwich and elsewhere. 
 Therefore, having proved the value and stabi- 
 lity of his business, Samuel Gurncy easily per- 
 suaded those who had money to invest to place 
 it in his hands, they receiving for the same a 
 fixed and fair return of interest, and he obtain- 
 ing with it as much extra profit as the fluctua- 
 tions of the money-market and the increasing 
 needs of trade made possible, lie became, in 
 fact, a new sort of merchant, buying credit — 
 that is, borrowing money — on the one hand,
 
 274 -^ Panic Year. 
 
 and selling credit — that is, lending money — on 
 the other, and deriving from the trade his full 
 share of profits. 
 
 Great help came to his money-making and 
 to his commercial influence from the panic of 
 1825. That panic arose partly from the exces- 
 sive speculation which then existed in joint- 
 stock companies at home, as well as in con- 
 tinental mines, American cotton, and other 
 branches of foreign commerce. Several Lon- 
 don banks failed, and at least eighty country 
 banks fell to the ground, the Bank of Eng- 
 land itself being only saved by the accidental 
 finding of two million one-pound notes that 
 had been packed away and lost sight of 
 some time before. Even Joseph John Gurney, 
 much more of a philanthropist than a banker, 
 suffered from the pressure. " Business has 
 been productive of trial to me," he wrote in 
 characteristic way in his journal, " and has 
 led me to reflect on the equity of God, who 
 measures out His salutary chastisement, even 
 in this world, to the rich as well as the poor. 
 I can certainly testify that some of the great- 
 est pains and most burdensome cares which I 
 have had to endure have arisen out of being 
 what is usually called a ' monied man.'" 
 
 His brother, however, was much more mixed 
 up in the turmoil. " Knowing intimately, as 
 he did, the sufferings which awaited those who
 
 Guv my 's Prosperity. 275 
 
 could no longer command credit or obtain sup- 
 plies from other quarters," said one of Samuel 
 Gurney's old friends, "his anxiety was felt 
 more on others' account than his own," — the 
 fact being-, that his own financial dealings were 
 so sound that he had no fear for himself, and 
 only had to settle how to make most money 
 with most secondary advantage to those he 
 dealt with. " His desire," it is added, "was to 
 act fairly and justly to his fellow-creatures, as 
 well as to himself; and thus did he move 
 onwards, cautiously and step by step through 
 those troublous times, lest he should lead any 
 into error by his judgment. It was a remark- 
 able sight to witness him plunge day by day 
 into the vortex of City business, and return 
 thence to his own domestic hearth witliout 
 any trace of a mammon-loving spirit." 
 
 We can well believe that the honest Quaker 
 was reasonably free from the " mammon-loving 
 spirit;" but he knew well how to seek and 
 secure his own advancement, and this he did 
 very notably, by lending to many houses 
 money enough to enable them to tide through 
 their difficulties, and so bringing to himself 
 much favour and much new custom during 
 the following years. From this time forth he 
 came to be known as a bankers' banker, taking 
 the place, for many, of the Bank of England. 
 Hundreds of private banks fell into the way of
 
 2/6 A Bankers Banker. 
 
 sending him, from time to time, their surplus 
 cash, finding that they were as sure of getting 
 it back whenever they wanted it as if they 
 had lodged it in the bank of England, and 
 that in the meanwhile they were getting 
 hisfher interest for it than the Bank would 
 have granted. " We do not feel the slightest 
 dependence upon the Bank of England," said 
 one of the number, Mr Robert Carr Glynn, in 
 1832, "nor do we feel the slightest obligation 
 to it in any way," 
 
 Of that sort was the business by which 
 Samuel Gurney grew rich himself, and helped 
 others to become rich. While he was young 
 and vigorous, he made money-getting his one 
 grand pursuit. It is said of him that when 
 once an elder friend warned him against too 
 close attention to the things of this world, he 
 replied that he could not help himself — he 
 could not live without his business. During 
 the last ten or twelve years of his life, however, 
 he left nearly all the management in the hands 
 of others, and found his occupation in enjoy- 
 ment of his princely fortune and application to 
 various charitable and philanthropic undertak- 
 ings. Charitable he had been all through his 
 life. " Many are the solid remembrances of 
 the more prominent features of Mr Gurney's 
 charities," says his very friendly biographer; 
 " but besides those deeds more generally known
 
 G limey's Cliaritics. zyj 
 
 to the public, there were many lesser streams 
 ' of silent benevolence still flowing from the 
 fountain of love to God and man, which spread 
 refreshment around. To many members of his 
 large family his kindly aid was given, and it 
 might be said that not only there, but else- 
 where, he was wonderfully gifted both with the 
 will and with the power to help. Besides his 
 efficiency in action, his very presence seemed 
 to impart strength, courage, and calm in any 
 emergency, whilst his practical wisdom, his 
 clear and decisive mind, and noble spirit of 
 charity, led many to bring cases of difficulty 
 before him, knowing from experience how sure 
 and effective was his aid. It may be truly 
 said of Samuel Gurncy that he loved to do 
 good service, whether by advice or money — by 
 his sound judgment or well-apportioned aid. 
 He really took trouble to serve his fellow- 
 creatures, and a narration of his mere alms- 
 giving, extensive as it was, would give a very 
 limited idea of the good he effected during the 
 journey of life." Through the time of his 
 greatest wealth, he is reported to have spent 
 ;^ 10,000 a-year in charities, and one year, it is 
 said, the amount exceeded ;6^ 16,000. 
 
 Many are the records of his kindly disposi- 
 tion, shown in little ways and great. " One 
 afternoon," says one of his clerks, "as Mr 
 Gurncy was leaving Lombard Street, I saw
 
 278 /// tJic Felon 's Dock. 
 
 him take up a large hamper of game to carry 
 to his carriage. I immediately came forward 
 and took it from him. He looked pleased, and 
 in his powerful and hearty voice exclaimed, 
 
 ' Dost thou know H 's in Lcadenhall 
 
 Market t ' I replied in the affirmative. ' Then 
 go there and order thyself a right down good 
 turkey, and put it down to my account' " 
 
 A more important instance of his generosity 
 is in the circumstance that when, on one occa- 
 sion, a forgery had been committed to the in- 
 jury of his Lombard Street house, and the cul- 
 prit lay in prison with clear proof of guilt, 
 Gurney refused to prosecute him, and so ob- 
 tained his release. At another time, we are 
 told, " one of the silversmiths in the City, and 
 a man of high esteem for his uprightness, was 
 accused of forgery. The excitement as to the 
 probable result of this inquiry was intense, and 
 the opinions of men differed widely. On the 
 morning of the decisive day," says the merchant 
 who tells the story, " I chanced to hear that my 
 friend Gurney was prepared to stand by the 
 prisoner in the dock. I immediately proceeded 
 to Lombard Street, where I found him occu- 
 pied with the vast interests of his business, and 
 asked him hastily whether common report were 
 true. Upon which he said, ' After a most 
 anxious investigation of the matter, I am 
 firmly convinced of that man's innocence. I
 
 Guriicy 's PJiilanthropy. 279 
 
 deem it my duty to express this conviction 
 publicly, and will join him in the felon's dock.' 
 And most assuredly he went ; nor could any 
 one easily forget the intense sensation produced 
 in the crowd of spectators when, on the prisoner 
 being conducted to his place, the stately figure 
 of Samuel Gurney presented itself to the pub- 
 lic gaze by the side of the innocent silversmith." 
 In mitigation of the laws regarding forgery, 
 in company with his brother-in-law, Thomas 
 Fowell Buxton, Samuel Gurney first showed 
 himself to the world as a philanthropist. Ho 
 also took a lively interest in all plans for im- 
 proving and increasing refuges and reforma- 
 tories. He was for many years, after the death 
 of William Allen, treasurer to the British and 
 Foreign School Society, and to other like in- 
 stitutions he was always a good friend. Visit- 
 ing Ireland in 1849, he astonished the inhabit- 
 ants by the liberality with which he drained 
 his purse to relieve them, as far as he could, 
 amid their sufferings from the potato famine. 
 At Ballina he found the town so full of paupers 
 that there were none able to pay poor-rates, 
 and the workhouse was consequently bankrupt. 
 "I found an execution put into it," he said in 
 one of his letters, " and all the stock furniture 
 is to be sold off this week, when the poor will 
 have to lie on straw, and the guardians must 
 feed tiiem as well as they can.' I le bought up
 
 2 8o TJie Friend of A 11. 
 
 the whole of the furniture for ;^200, in order 
 that, being his property, it might be saved from 
 the creditors. 
 
 In 1848 Gurney gave ;^iooo to the Govern- 
 ment of Liberia, and he always took great in- 
 terest in the prosperity of the little colony of 
 freed slaves. Nor was he, like some anti-slavery 
 worthies, careful only for the freedom of the 
 blacks. In 1S52 he sent a petition to the King 
 of Prussia, on behalf of his dissenting subjects, 
 praying that full religious liberty might be 
 accorded them. The King answered that he 
 did not mean to do anything that could dis- 
 tress "his good friend Gurney." 
 
 Gurney was not a bigot. Some one having 
 written to him, in 1855, complaining of the way 
 in which Fox and Penn had been spoken of 
 by Lord Macaulay, in his History of EnglaJid, 
 he answered thus : — " It is a little mortifying 
 that Macaulay should so have held up our 
 honourable predecessors ; not that they were 
 perfect, or were ever held up as such, as far as 
 I know ; but they were extraordinary men, 
 wonderfully elucidating and maintaining the 
 truth. I am not prepared, however, to say that 
 Fox was clear of eccentricities, and that, at 
 times, he was not, to a certain extent, under 
 such influence on his conduct ; but, taking him 
 for all in all, he was wonderfully gifted and
 
 Saitiucl Giirncy^s Death. 281 
 
 enlightened. It will probably be considered 
 by Friends whether there should be an answer 
 somewhat official to these attacks on our two 
 worthies. I rather lean to it, although it would 
 be impossible to reach wherever Macaulay's 
 book may go ; yet, if well done, it might have 
 a beneficial effect upon the public mind, and 
 upon our young people. There is, however, 
 one consolation. ' The truth as it is in Jesus,' 
 — the truth as maintained by Friends — is un- 
 changeable, and remains the same, however 
 feeble, or even faulty, its supporters may have 
 been and are." 
 
 That letter was written from Nice, whither 
 Samuel Gurney had gone after the death of his 
 wife, hoping to improve the health that had 
 been greatly shattered by his loss, and the 
 anxiety that preceded it. But in that he was 
 mistaken. Growing worse in the spring of 
 1856, he hurried homewards, hoping to end his 
 days in his own country, and among his own 
 kindred. Me reached Paris, but could go no 
 further. There he died, on the 5th of June, 
 1856, seventy years old, and one of the richest 
 and most envied men in Europe. 
 
 The house of Overcnd, Gurney, & Company, 
 which he made so famous, lasted only ten years 
 longer. On Samuel Gurney's retirement, Mr 
 David Barclay Chapman became the chief
 
 282 Over end, Gtnney, & Company. 
 
 manager of the business. He retired in turn, 
 late in 1857, and then the direction fell into 
 less skilful hands. The establishment became 
 a Limited Liability Company in August 1865, 
 and failed in May 1866,
 
 \\. 
 
 w 
 
 o 
 •o 
 
 a 
 
 i H
 
 XIII. 
 
 GEORGE PEABODY. 
 
 WE have already seen how enterprising 
 
 men have come from various parts of 
 England and from foreign lands to 
 settle in our great metropolis, and to win fame 
 and fortune for themselves and to augment 
 the wealth and enterprise of their adopted 
 house, as famous London merchants. Our last 
 hero shall be one, surpassed in worth and 
 wisdom by none of his forerunners, who was 
 neither an Englishman nor a foreigner, one 
 of the famous race of colonists, who, having 
 England for their mother-country, have estab- 
 lished a greater England on the other side of 
 the Atlantic. George Peabody is only the 
 most notable of a crowd of great Americans, 
 who, enriching themselves and the land of their 
 l)irth, have done no le.ss service to the nation 
 from which their own nation is descended. 
 
 The Peabody family seems to be of Leicester- 
 shire origin, but it was from Saint Albans, in
 
 286 George Peabody^s SchooVuig. 
 
 Hertfordshire, that Francis Peabody went, in 
 1635, to be one of the first settlers in New 
 England. He was then twenty-one, and he 
 lived sixty-three years in his new home. Six 
 sons and eight daughters were born to him, 
 and the family multiplied greatly in succeeding 
 generations ; Danvers, in Massachusetts, being 
 its head-quarters. There George Peabody, the 
 great-great-great-grandson of old Francis, the 
 patriarch, was born on the i8th of February, 
 1795. His parents were not rich, and all the 
 education possible to him was obtained in the 
 district school of his native town, still little 
 more than a village. Even that came to an 
 end when he was eleven years old. In 1806 
 he became a grocer's boy in Danvers, and he 
 was so employed for four or five years. At 
 sixteen he went to be clerk to his elder brother, 
 who had started a dry-goods store at New- 
 buryport, in the north-eastern corner of Mas- 
 sachusetts ; but only a {(^w months afterwards 
 a great fire broke out in the town, half de- 
 stroying it, and ruining the enterprise of the 
 brothers. Young Peabody then went to 
 Georgetown, in Columbia, where an luicle 
 offered him a post in a dry-goods business, 
 which he also had just started. 
 
 That was in the spring of 1812. The war of 
 1812 was then breaking out, and the lad be- 
 came a volunteer in a company of artillery.
 
 His Progress in Americ.i. 287 
 
 He was stationed for a few months at Fort 
 Warburton, but no active work could be found 
 for him or his comrades, and he soon went 
 back to his uncle's store. The uncle being a 
 poor man, and perhaps not a very clever one, 
 the store was not successful, and after two 
 years' occupation in it, George Peabody left to 
 become manager of another dry-goods business, 
 established by a rich Columbian, named Elisha 
 Riggs. Elisha Riggs's friends blamed him for 
 confiding so much to a youth of only nineteen; 
 but his wisdom was soon proved. The busi- 
 ness was very successful. In 18 15 it was 
 transferred to Baltimore, to be carried on in a 
 larger way by the new firm of Riggs & Pea- 
 body, which afterwards, on the retirement of 
 the senior partner in 1829, was changed to 
 Peabody, Riggs, & Company. 
 
 For more than twenty years George Peabody 
 lived in Baltimore, working hard at his trade, 
 which consisted chiefly in the importation of 
 manufactured goods from Europe and their 
 sale in America, but to which, almost from the 
 first, an irregular sort of banking business was 
 added. In 1822 branch businesses were opened 
 in Pennsylvania and New York, all being 
 under the close superintendence of Peabody. 
 He was also occasionally employed in finan- 
 cial negotiations for the State of Maryland, 
 and these duties, as well as his own trade,
 
 288 Ptabody in Loudon. 
 
 brought him often on short visits to England 
 during the ten years following upon 1827. On 
 both sides of the Atlantic he won the respect 
 of all with whom he came in contact, by " a 
 judgment quick and cautious, clear and sound; 
 a decided purpose ; a firm will ; energetic and 
 persevering industry ; punctuality and fidelity 
 in every engagement ; justice and honour con- 
 trolling every transaction ; and courtesy, that 
 true courtesy which springs from genuine kind- 
 ness, presiding over all the intercourse of life," 
 In 1836 Peabody resolved to leave the busi- 
 ness which he had already made famous in 
 other lands, and to extend it mightily by 
 opening an establishment, under his own man^ 
 agement, in London. Since February 1837, 
 London has been his adopted home, and 
 fortune, favouring him amid the misfortunes of 
 others, came with him. The summer of 1837 
 was a time of great commercial crisis in 
 America and among English merchants whose 
 chief trade was with the American continent. 
 Three-quarters of all the banks in the United 
 States fell one after another with a tremendous 
 crash, and thousands of traders, hitherto pros- 
 perous, were ruined by the catastrophe. "That 
 great sympathetic nerve of the commercial 
 world, credit," said George Peabody's friend, 
 Edward Everett, the great author, orator, and 
 diplomatist, twenty years afterwards, " as far
 
 77^1? Cajise of his Success. 2S9 
 
 as the United States were concerned, was for 
 the time paralysed. At that moment, Mr 
 Peabody not only stood firm himself, but was 
 the cause of firmness in others. There were 
 not at that time, probably, half-a-dozen other 
 men in Europe who, upon the subject of 
 American securities, would have been listened 
 to for a moment in the parlour of the Bank of 
 England. But his judgment commanded re- 
 spect ; his integrity won back the reliance 
 which men had been accustomed to place in 
 American securities. The reproach in which 
 they were all involved was gradually wiped 
 away from those of a substantial character ; 
 and if, on this solid basis of unsuspected good 
 faith, he reared his own prosperity, let it be 
 remembered that at the same time he retrieved 
 the credit of the State of Maryland, of which 
 he was agent — performing the miracle by 
 which the word of an honest man turns paper 
 into gold." 
 
 That excellent beginning of his career in 
 London placed Peabody in the foremost rank of 
 merchant princes. In London and in all parts 
 of England he bought British manufactures for 
 shipment to the United States, and the ships 
 came back freighted with every kind of Ameri- 
 can produce for sale in England. To that 
 lucrative occupation, however, was added one 
 
 far more lucrative. The merchants and manu- 
 
 T
 
 290 Peabody as a Banker. 
 
 facturcrs on both sides of the Atlantic, wlio 
 transmitted their goods tlirough him, some- 
 times procured from him advances on account 
 of the goods in his possession long before they 
 were sold, At other times they found it con- 
 venient to leave large sums in his hands long 
 after the goods were disposed of, knowing that 
 they could draw whenever they needed, and 
 that in the meanwhile their money was being 
 so profitably invested that they were certain 
 of a proper interest for their loans. Thus, he 
 became a great banker as well as a great mer- 
 chant, and, ultimately, much more of a banker 
 than a merchant. 
 
 From the year 1843 especially, when he 
 retired from the house of Peabody, Riggs, & 
 Company, and founded the much greater house 
 of George Peabody & Company, he ran a race 
 with other great monetary traders like Samuel 
 Gurney, the Rothschilds, and the Barings. 
 The Barings having most to do with American 
 commerce, were his chief rivals ; and here the 
 friendly rivalry was carried on with a native of 
 his own country. The working head of the 
 house of Baring at this time was Joshua Bates, 
 who was born at Weymouth, near Boston, in 
 1788. In 1825, having previously had many 
 dealings with the family, he came to London 
 to become a member of the famous establish- 
 ment, and from 1828 till the time of his death
 
 Au Ajiglo-Auicrican. 291 
 
 in 1864 he was its principal manager. For 
 many years he was in intimate friendship witli 
 Coleridge, and during that period Bates's 
 drawincr-room was a favourite haunt of the 
 admirers of the great thinker and great talker. 
 Another of Joshua Bates's friends was Prince 
 Louis Napoleon. The intimacy which existed 
 before 1S48 between the wealthy merchant and 
 the eccentric refugee continued without hind- 
 rance, it is said, after the refugee had become 
 Emperor of the French. Bates was of generous 
 disposition, and, among other benefactions, 
 gave more than ^^ 20,000 to found and main- 
 tain the free library of Boston. 
 
 Much greater and wider have been the 
 philanthropies of George Peabody. From the 
 commencement of his wealth-winning, he put 
 his riches and the influence that came with 
 them to good use. Of his trading establish- 
 ment, he said : " I have endeavoured, in the 
 constitution of its members and the character 
 of its business, to make it an American house, 
 and to give it an American atmosphere, to 
 furnish it with American journals, to make it 
 a centre of American news, and an agreeable 
 place for my American friends visiting Lon- 
 don." An American himself, who had become 
 a citizen of London, he did iiis utmost to 
 strengthen the bonds of friendship between 
 the United States and Great Britain. During
 
 292 Peabody's Good Work. 
 
 many years, until it was deemed more suitable 
 that the whole body of American residents in 
 London should unite in the work, he celebrated 
 the famous Fourth of July with a sumptuous 
 dinner, at which the leading men of both 
 countries were invited to join in the fostering 
 of international friendship. To him were due 
 the principal arrangements for organising and 
 making conspicuous the wonderful display of 
 American manufactures at the great Exhibi- 
 tion of 185 1, and an entertainment given by 
 him, at the London Coffee-House, on the 27th 
 of October in that year, was everywhere re- 
 cognised at the time as an unparalleled occasion 
 for the interchange of national courtesies and 
 the strengthening of national good-will. 
 
 These were matters which, by reason of their 
 practical results, were not to be thought lightly 
 of. But the daily influences of his honest life 
 and stupendous work were yet more moment- 
 ous. So, too, the private chanties which pre- 
 ceeded and attended his great acts of public 
 benevolence have been of no mean importance. 
 Acquiring great wealth, he has always used it 
 generously. 
 
 From the first he showed himself a good 
 friend to his native village, since grown into a 
 prosperous town. Once, when it was grievously 
 injured by fire, he helped to rebuild it, and, 
 over and over again, he furnished fresh tokens
 
 His Charities in A vi erica. 293 
 
 of his generous remembrance of it. In 1852, 
 on the occasion of a public celebration, he sent 
 from London a letter, asking that he might not 
 be forgotten in the rejoicings of his friends, 
 and enclosing a sentiment, which was not to 
 be opened until the proper time for toast- 
 giving at the dinner. The sentiment was : 
 " Education, a debt due from present to future 
 generations," and as his share in payment of 
 the debt, he placed in the envelope a draft for 
 ;iC4,ooo, to be applied to " the promotion of 
 knowledge and morality in Danvers." Out of 
 that gift grew the Peabody Institute, to which 
 he afterwards subscribed upwards of ;^5,000 
 more. 
 
 In 1856 he went to Danvers, to revisit the 
 scenes of his childhood, and to receive the 
 honours which his fellow-townsmen were eager 
 to offer. " Though Providence," he then said, 
 "has granted me an unvaried and unusual 
 success in the pursuit of fortune in other lands, 
 I am still in heart the humble boy who left 
 yonder unpretending dwelling. There is not 
 a youth within the sound of my voice whose 
 early opportunities and advantages are not 
 very much greater than were my own, and I 
 have since achieved nothing that is impossible 
 to the most humble boy among you." 
 
 Another famous instance of George Pea- 
 body's generosity was in a gift of /^loo.ooo to
 
 294 ^^^ Peabody A Imshouscs. 
 
 Baltimore, for the establishment of an Edu- 
 cational Institute, which should also contain a 
 free library, an academy of music, and a gal- 
 lery of art. In 1866 he gave ;^30,ooo to the 
 Harvard University. A yet greater instance 
 sip-nalised his retirement from the commercial 
 world of London in 1862. He then placed in 
 the hands of trustees ;^i 50,000, to be so ex- 
 pended as " to ameliorate the condition of the 
 poor and needy of this great metropolis, and 
 to promote their comfort and happiness ; " and 
 suggested that the best way of carr}'ing out 
 his intentions would be " to apply the fund, or 
 a portion of it, in the construction of such im- 
 proved dwellings for the poor as may combine, 
 in the utmost possible degree, the essentials of 
 healthfulness, comfort, social enjoyment, and 
 economy." That suggestion being adopted, 
 commodious buildings have been set up, or 
 are still being erected, at Spitalfields and at 
 Chelsea, with accommodation for about two 
 hundred persons in each ; at Bcrmondsey, 
 larcre enoucih for about four hundred ; at 
 Islington, adapted for six hundred and fifty ; 
 and at Shadwell, for a yet larger number of 
 inmates. In continuance of this good work, the 
 benefactor applied a further sum of ^100,000 
 in 1866, and a second sum of like amount on 
 the 5 th of December 1868. 
 
 The modest, manly letter to the trustees
 
 A Fresh Act of Generosity. 295 
 
 announcing this fresh act of munificence, is 
 worth quoting entire : — 
 
 *■ Mv Lord and Gentlemen, — I beg to 
 acquaint you, who have so kindly undertaken 
 the management of the fund set apart under 
 my second deed of gift of the 19th of April 
 1866, for the benefit of the poor of London 
 and its vicinity, that, in pursuance of an inten- 
 tion which 1 have entertained since the crea- 
 tion of that fund, I am desirous now of adding 
 to it a further sum of ;^ioo,ooo. 
 
 " In contemplation of this, I purchased, 
 about three years ago, a tract of freehold build- 
 ing land, of about fifteen acres in extent, at 
 Brixton, near the City of London School, 
 easily accessible, and within a few minutes' 
 walk of frequent trains to and from London. 
 This land has increased in value, and can now 
 be let, on building leases of eighty years, at 
 rents producing about 8 per cent, per annum 
 on the cost, which is ^^ 16,285 '7^- 3d. This 
 land I propose to convey to you with the 
 same powers as are conferred by the deed 
 over the other property of this trust, and with 
 discretion to you cither to deal with it as a 
 source of income by letting it, or any portion 
 of it, on lease ; or, should you deem it expe- 
 dient, to retain it in your own hands as sites 
 for dwellings to be erected by the trust.
 
 296 Princely Bmevolence. 
 
 " Pursuant to my letter of the 29th January 
 1866, I transferred to you, subject to a contin- 
 gency therein explained, 5000 shares in the 
 Hudson's Bay Company, which accordingly 
 stand in your names, together with 642 addi- 
 tional shares purchased by the reinvestment 
 of the accruing income of the previous 5000. 
 These 5642 shares I have since redeemed, 
 conformably to the deed of the 19th April 
 1866, by the payment of i^ 100,000 on the ist 
 February last. I have now to acquaint you 
 that it is my intention, so soon as the neces- 
 sary deeds can be prepared, to hand the shares 
 over to you to be retained or dealt with, ac- 
 cording to your best judgment and discretion. 
 The price of these shares shall be fixed on the 
 17th inst. by the Stock Exchange sales on 
 that day, when I will hand to you a cheque for 
 the balance to make the gift a cash value of 
 ^100,000. This amount will increase my for- 
 mer donation of the second trust to ^^ 200,000, 
 and, including my gift under the first trust in 
 March 1862, of ^150,000, a total of ;^35o,ooo. 
 " I trust you will see manifested in this 
 further donation an expression of my entire 
 satisfaction with the manner in which you have 
 conducted the affairs of the trusts. — I am, with 
 great respect, your humble servant, 
 
 " George Peabody."
 
 A Modern Hero. 297 
 
 It is not strange that a man so generous as 
 this should be publicly thanked for his bene- 
 factions by the United States Congress and 
 the Queen of England ; or that spontaneous 
 praises of him should rise from the hearts of 
 millions on both sides of the Atlantic, to find 
 utterance sometimes in verses like the follow- 
 ing:— 
 
 ** We mourned the old chivalric times, 
 
 Their virtues, with their glories, dead — 
 Life stricken wholly from romance — 
 
 ' And what is left to us 1 ' we said. 
 Up through the land the murmur rose : 
 
 ' Oh for the days that are no more. 
 When love of God wrought love of man, 
 
 And all were human to the core ! 
 
 " * The great Arthurian days we mourn, 
 
 And all the lapsing years that wrought 
 Change after change, yet evermore 
 
 Some varying phase of splendour caught ; 
 Still noble deeds, still gentle lives, 
 
 Till every knightly heart grew cold, 
 And Valour's sunset-radiance lit 
 
 The tournay of the Cloth of Gold 
 
 " ' The poetry of earth is dead :* 
 
 What lesser griefs should we bemoan, 
 
 • " The poetry of earth is never dead."— Keat*.
 
 298 In Praise of Pcahody. 
 
 With Science in the place of Faith, 
 
 With quickcn'd brains and hearts of stone ? 
 
 Our noblest triumphs mock our skill, 
 We link the Continents in vain — 
 
 It only tends to sordid ends, 
 And whets the appetite for gain.' 
 
 " So from our lips remonstrance fell, 
 
 When through the land a rumour went, — 
 ' The old heroic fire revives — 
 
 Its pulsing fervour is not spent ! 
 The record of the glowing past 
 
 Shows in its dim and doubtful page 
 No deed like that which greets the eyes 
 
 Of this debased, prosaic age. 
 
 " ' For lo ! a Queen of sovereign sway. 
 
 Of zoneless empire, quits her throne, 
 Stooping to v/elcome one who comes 
 
 A stranger, nameless and unknown : 
 No comely youth in knightly guise 
 
 Shining at ruffled beauty's knees — 
 A silver'd head, a homely form — 
 
 No more the queenly woman sees. 
 
 " ' No more ; but in her heart tliere glows 
 
 The memory of a nol)le deed, 
 Of succour to her people lent, 
 
 Of princely aid in sorest need. 
 And gracious is her tearful smile 
 
 As forth she thrusts a trembling hand,
 
 In Praise of Pcabody. 299 
 
 And bids him in her name receive 
 The homage of her grateful land.' 
 
 " Homage to Goodness ! Queenly meed 
 
 Of generous thanks to simple Worth ! 
 Thus does the old chivalric soul 
 
 Survive in us of later birth ; 
 Nor doubt its promptings in the heart 
 
 Of him, — his nation's noblest son, — 
 The largesse of whose liberal hand 
 
 A sovereign's thanks has rightly won. 
 
 " Never did truer beauty clothe 
 
 The radiant limbs of courtly knight, 
 Than clothes that brow serenely smooth, 
 
 And fills those eyes with gentle light. 
 To latest times that homely form, 
 
 And that familiar, kindly face, 
 The holier memories of men 
 
 Will with a tender beauty grace. 
 
 -' ^^^^ere'er that honoured name is heard 
 
 The tears will gleam in woman's eyes ; 
 The hearts of men will stir and creep, 
 
 And blessings to their lips will rise. 
 Though Science join'd the sundcr'd worlds, 
 
 It needed yet what he has done, — 
 A noble action, meekly wrought, 
 
 Has knit the hearts of both in one. 
 
 «' Yes, and as, far above the glow. 
 
 When all the West is fierce with flame,
 
 300 Modcrji London Commerce. 
 
 A faint star brightens to the night, 
 Deep'ning about it — so his fame, 
 
 Surviving all the transient bloom 
 
 That makes the passing present bright, 
 
 "Will shine, and still resplendent shine, 
 An orb of ever-gathering light." 
 
 [From London Society, October 1866.] 
 
 George Peabody has earned all that honour 
 by reason of his princely benefactions ; but 
 there has been no less benefaction in his 
 honest pursuit of commerce, during more 
 than twenty years in Baltimore and five- 
 and-twenty years in London. Every honest 
 merchant is a benefactor, as thereby he aids 
 the progress of all classes of society in wealth 
 and civilisation. 
 
 The sum of the benefactions of the merchants 
 of London is to be seen in its present pros- 
 perity. The prophecy of Pope has been more 
 than fulfilled : — 
 
 " The time shall come, when, free as sea or wind, 
 Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind; 
 Whole nations enter at each swelling tide, 
 And seas but join the regions they divide." 
 
 London is now the great emporium of the 
 world. In it are assembled traders of every 
 race, who deal in the produce of every quarter 
 of the globe. About 30,000 ships enter it each
 
 The Emporhan of the World. 301 
 
 year, bearing more than 6,000,000 tons of 
 cargo, valued at considerably more than 
 £2>o,Q)00,QiOO : and the same ships take back- 
 to the lands from which they came an equal 
 quantity of goods of almost greater value. 
 Chief among its annual imports are about 
 400,000 oxen, sheep, and cows ; more than 
 3,000,000 quarters of corn ; 300,000 tons of 
 sugar ; more than 80,000,000 pounds of tea, 
 and more than 70,000,000 pounds of coffee ; 
 about 16,000,000 gallons of wines and spirits, 
 md more than 35,000,000 pounds of tobacco; 
 an immeasurable store of all sorts of miscel- 
 laneous articles of food, including 10,000,000 
 pounds of pepper alone ; a supply, no less 
 various and extensive, of dyes, drugs, and 
 the like ; more than 80,000,000 pounds of 
 wool ; and more than 30,000 tons of metal. 
 In return for these imports, it exports each 
 year about ;^9,ooo,ooo worth of textile 
 fabric, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk, besides 
 about ;^ 1, 500,000 worth of made-up clothing, 
 and leather of nearly the same value ; nearly 
 /^6,ooo,ooo worth of rough metals, and finished 
 machinery to be sold for about ;^9,0OO,O0O. 
 In other words, though robbed of the P'ast 
 India monopoly, it still has more than three- 
 quarters of the stupendous trade that lias 
 grown up with India, receiving nearly all its 
 produce, with the excejition of cotton, which
 
 302 The Trade of London^ 
 
 goes direct to Liverpool or Glasgow. It re- 
 ceives nearly seven-eighths of the cofifee sent 
 from Ceylon, and from China it imports nearly 
 all the tea sent to this country, with about a 
 third of its silk. Australia sends to London 
 more than half of the wool grown for English 
 use ; and to it come about a fifth of the corn, 
 and a sixth of the wool, nearly half of the 
 tobacco, and quite half of the sugar despatched 
 to Great Britain from the West Indies and the 
 continent of America. Moreover, it absorbs 
 more than half of the English trade with 
 Europe, receiving about a quarter of the grain, 
 about half of the provisions, about two-thirds 
 of the wines and spirits, and nearly all the live 
 cattle, with a goodly share of all the other 
 commodities that are brought thence for sale 
 among us. In return for these imports, it ex- 
 ports a sixth of the textile fabrics, cotton, 
 woollen, linen, and silk that are manufactured 
 in England for foreign or colonial use, a quar- 
 ter of the wrought and unwrought metals, and 
 a third of the finished machinery, about half 
 of the leather, and more than half of the pro- 
 visions and miscellaneous articles which are 
 sent abroad each year. 
 
 Some notion of the extent of London com- 
 merce may be gathered from the nature of the 
 docks which it employs. In former times, the 
 old-fashioned quays and wharves of the Thames
 
 -J 
 
 "j
 
 The Docks of London. 305 
 
 served for all the loading and unloading that 
 had to be done. But near the middle of the 
 eighteenth century these wharves and quays 
 began to be quite insufficient for the growing 
 wants of commerce. At last, in 1796, a plan 
 was started by the West India merchants for 
 the construction of a dock and adjacent ware- 
 houses adapted to the trade in which they were 
 engaged. The projected capital of ;^8oo,cxx) 
 was subscribed in a couple of days ; and after 
 five years spent in obtaining the sanction of 
 Parliament, the West India Docks were begun 
 in iSoo, and opened for business in 1S02. In 
 1 801 the London Docks were commenced, to 
 be finished in 1805, at a cost of ;{^2,ooo,ooo. 
 They were 100 acres in extent, with room for 
 500 ships at a time, and with warehouses large 
 enough to hold 230,000 tons of the wine, 
 brandy, tobacco, rice, and miscellaneous arti- 
 cles for which they were specially designed. 
 The East India Docks were sanctioned in 
 1803, "for the accommodation of the Hast 
 India shipping of the Port of London." In 1838 
 they were united with the West India Docks, 
 the two having a surface of 87 acres, with room 
 .for 624 vessels, and warehouses able to contain 
 about 200,000 tons of goods. On one occasion 
 there was lodged in them ;{^20,000,000 worth of 
 colonial produce, comprising 148,563 casks of 
 
 sugar, 70,895 barrels and 33,648 bags of coffee, 
 
 U
 
 3o6 Their Vast Extent. 
 
 35,158 pipes of rum and Madeira, 14,000 logs 
 of mahogany, and 2i,O0O tons of logwood. 
 These three establishments had, for some 
 twenty years, a monopoly in the dock-business 
 of London. In 1823 the Saint Katherine's 
 Docks were instituted " on the principle of free 
 competition in trade, and without any exclu- 
 sive privileges and immunities," as it was 
 declared in the Act of Parliament permitting 
 them. They were constructed by Telford in 
 more imposing shape than any of the others, 
 on as much space as could be obtained between 
 the London Docks and the Tower. That 
 space measured 23 acres, and was obtained by 
 the demolition of 1250 houses, and the turning 
 out of 11,300 residents in them, at a cost of 
 about ;^2,ooo,ooo ; but it was soon found to be 
 wholly inadequate to the wants of the city. 
 Therefore, in 1850, the Victoria Docks were set 
 up, with all the later appliances of engineering 
 and mechanical progress. In i860 the Victoria 
 Docks gave shelter to 2682 ships, with a burthen 
 of 850,327 tons ; the East and West India 
 Docks to 1200 ships carrying 498,366 tons; 
 the London Docks to 1032 ships with 424,338 
 tonnage ; and the Saint Katherine's Docks ton 
 905 ships with 223,397 tonnage. Very exten- 
 sive also are the Commercial Docks on the 
 south side of the Thames. 
 
 In general commerce London engrosses
 
 Trade in Bullion. 307 
 
 nearly a fourth of the whole business of Great 
 Britain. It has almost a monopoly in another 
 branch of trade. Nearly all the gold and 
 silver bullion and specie, either imported or 
 exported, enters, quits, or passes through the 
 town in which the Bank of England and the 
 Mint are lodged. In 1865, London received 
 gold valued at ^^ 5,045,000 from Australia, 
 ;{^4,298,ooo from the United States, and 
 ^^5, 1 26,000 from other places ; in all, 
 ;^i4,469,ooo ; of which rather more than half 
 was sent abroad again, ;{^6,o72,ooo to the Con- 
 tinent of Europe, i^575,ooo to India and Egypt, 
 ;^i, 581,000 to Brazil and South America, and 
 ;^245,ooo to other places. In the same year 
 ;^4,923,ooo came to London in silver from 
 Mexico, ^72,000 from Brazil, ;{^ 1,654,000 from 
 the Continent, and ;^3o6,ooo from other parts, 
 in all, ;{;"6,95 5,000 ; and of this nearly all was 
 .sent abroad again, ^3,801,000 to Incha and 
 ^gypt. ;^5.7C)3.ooo to the Continent, and 
 £ 193,000 to other parts. 
 
 These figures show an excess of imports 
 over exports, in gold and silver bullion and 
 specie, of ^{^6,254,000. The increased wealth 
 p[ the country, however, is hy no means indi- 
 cated by the increase of gold and silver in its 
 possession. Wealth is now understood to be 
 neither money by it.sclf, according to the shal- 
 low systems of economical science that pre-
 
 3o8 Money and Wealth. 
 
 ceded the times of Adam Smith, nor, as Adam 
 Smith defined it, " the annual produce of the 
 land and labour of society ;" but " all useful or 
 agreeable things which possess exchangeable 
 value." This, indeed, is the oldest view of all. 
 "We call wealth," said Aristotle, "everything 
 whose value is measured by money " — money 
 being the most convenient standard of mea- 
 surement, or the most portable representative of 
 the wealth, which is composed alike of land and 
 its material products, such as the houses that 
 are built on it, the corn that is grown from it, 
 the minerals that are dug out of it, and the 
 thousand and one manufactured articles that 
 result from its cultivation ; of the labour that 
 is expended upon those operations, and in all 
 other exercises of muscle and brain ; and of 
 incorporeal, transferable property, like shares 
 in trading companies, mortgages on material 
 possessions, or property in the public funds. 
 " A simple invention it was," says Mr Carlyle, 
 " in the old-world grazier, sick of lugging his 
 slow ox about the country till he got it bar- 
 tered for corn or oil, to take a piece of leather, 
 and thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure 
 of an ox, or pecus : put it in his pocket, and 
 call lipectmia, money. Yet hereby did barter 
 grow sale ; the leather money is now golden 
 and paper, and all miracles have been out- 
 miracled ; for there are Rothschilds and Eng-
 
 Trade in Money. 3 09 
 
 Hsh National Debts ; and whoso has sixpence 
 is sovereign — to the length of sixpence — over 
 all men ; commands cooks to feed him, phi- 
 losophers to teach him, kings to mount guard 
 over him to the length of sixpence." Money 
 now really consists, not only of the coin issued 
 from the Mint, and of the notes issued from 
 the Bank of England on the security of the 
 coin or bullion retained in its coffers, and of 
 the debts for which Government is answerable, 
 but also of all other marketable symbols of 
 property. Bills of exchange, promissory notes, 
 and all the various paper equivalents of wealth, 
 real or assumed, arc now of vastly more exten- 
 sive currency than that which has the Mint 
 mark, or the Bank of England stamp. 
 
 And the trade in these materials is, now-a- 
 days, the most gigantic of all. The farmer 
 and the miner bring to light the buried trea- 
 sures of the earth ; the manufacturer makes 
 those treasures available for use ; and the mer- 
 chant cither brings them together for manu- 
 facture, or, when they are manufactured, sends 
 them far and near to every district that is in 
 need of them ; but it is the banker who pro- 
 vides the circulating medium, without which 
 none of those businesses could conveniently or 
 cfTiciently be carried on. The richest and most 
 inHuential men in all the world arc now the 
 bankers and bill-discounters, the negotiators
 
 310 The Stock Exchange. 
 
 of foreign wants, and other dealers in public 
 credit. Hence the vast importance of the 
 Stock Exchange, in which millions pass each 
 day from hand to hand, partly in answer to 
 the healthy requirements of trade, and partly, 
 perhaps chiefly, in furtherance of wanton and 
 often ruinous speculation. The great financial 
 question of the day is, how to regulate this in- 
 stitution so as best to meet the needs of honest 
 trading, and to leave least room for the gam- 
 bling and fraud which are the chief causes of 
 money panics and commercial disasters. But 
 there can be no question as to the magnitude 
 of its operations, and the extent of its influ- 
 ence. In 1865, besides all its traffic in the 
 English funds, in foreign shares, and in the 
 shares of the innumerable public companies 
 already in existence, the Stock Exchange was 
 the scene of negotiation for six new foreign 
 loans, amounting in all to ^^46,236,363, and 
 for two hundred and eighty-seven companies, 
 with a professed capital of ;^ 106,99 5, 000, all 
 available for speculative purposes, and with an 
 actual deposit of iJ 12, 174,790. 
 
 But the commercial importance of London 
 is greater even than any statistics would 
 imply. The chief centre of trading life, vast 
 transactions, are carried on in it, which are in 
 no way represented by its own imports and ex- 
 ports. Its merchants buy in other markets goods
 
 TJie Empire of Commerce. 3 1 1 
 
 for other markets, without their being required 
 to pass through London at all. Men like 
 George Peabody, the Barings, and the Roths- 
 childs sit like kings upon commercial thrones, 
 and issue mandates that are obeyed, in every 
 quarter of the world, with a promptitude and 
 thoroughness that despots might envy. And 
 the wealth that they win by their enterprise 
 makes them richer than many sovereigns. To 
 understand the profits of London merchants, 
 we must measure their landed possessions, and 
 see the places they have attained in the ranks 
 of the aristocracy. From the time when com- 
 merce began to be important in English his- 
 tory, the wealth and worth of its leading men 
 have won for them high rank and honour; 
 and more great families owe their origin to 
 trade than to any other calling. Some have 
 attained nobility, like the Dukes of Leeds, 
 who trace their pedigree to Ned Osborne, the 
 London 'prentice of Queen Elizabeth's days, 
 and the family of Barings, now possessed of 
 two titles, Ashburton and Northbrookc. Others 
 are no less eminent as commoners, whether 
 their eminence is in their wealth, like tiiat of 
 the Rothschilds, or their worth, like that of 
 Cobden, a merchant himself, or Gladstone, the 
 son of a merchant. 
 
 Here, then, our brief sketches of famous
 
 3 1 2 The Development of Trade. 
 
 London merchants come to an end. We have 
 seen how the general influences of civilisation 
 have been wisely strengthened by a few 
 notable men in the direction of trading enter- 
 prise. The few whose lives we have glanced 
 at are only conspicuous specimens of the many 
 who have made London and its commerce 
 what they now are. They are only some of 
 the captains of a vast army, which has been 
 fighting zealously for English advancement 
 and the civilisation of the whole world during 
 half-a-dozen centuries. 
 
 There was fighting in long previous cen- 
 turies, but, as far as England and London were 
 concerned, only by an untrained rabble. There 
 were merchants of a humbler sort in very an- 
 cient times. Their fundamental principles of 
 action were the same as those of the most 
 enlightened and prosperous men of modern 
 times. To utilise the treasures of the earth, to 
 subject them to skilful handiwork, directed by 
 skilful headwork, and then to exchange the 
 commodities they had produced for the com- 
 modities produced by others, — this was their 
 attempt. But at first the attempt was neces- 
 sarily feeble. The best workers were very 
 ignorant, and they were opposed by people 
 more ignorant than themselves. English com- 
 merce made but poor strides until its worthies 
 learnt to band themselves together, as we have
 
 The Progress of Trade. 3 1 3 
 
 seen them doing in the trading companies and 
 the guilds of the Middle Ages. That was the 
 first effort at organising the great army of 
 commerce, and by this means famous triumphs 
 were attained. In course of time, however, the 
 discipline of these guilds and companies proved 
 oppressive to their most enterprising members, 
 who broke from the ranks to achieve special 
 triumphs, either as independent toilers or as 
 founders of new trading associations, which, in 
 turn, did excellent work, and were superseded 
 when that work was done. So it was with 
 men like Whittington and Grcsham ; so with 
 such institutions as the Turkey and East India 
 Companies. 
 
 In the meanwhile commerce progressed. Un- 
 like the armies of contending nations, in wliich 
 disaffection is dangerous and mutiny fatal, 
 the great army of peaceful traders profited by 
 every disaffection, and every mutiny which had 
 any principle of wisdom and justice in it has 
 been wholly beneficial. The only evils that 
 have arisen have been those based on false 
 views of trade and its transactions, exhibited 
 in crises like those of the South-Sea Bubble 
 and its bursting, and the many smaller panics 
 of recent times. These evils, however, were 
 short-lived, and very .slight in comparison of 
 the good that has prevailed in spite of them, 
 Commerce has advanced with giant strides.
 
 314 l^he Progress of Trade. 
 
 and no part of the world has gained more by 
 the advance than London. 
 
 On the ruins of an old Roman camp has 
 arisen the richest and busiest city in the world. 
 Its ships bring the produce of every clime to 
 add to the comfort and welfare of its citizens, 
 and all connected with them ; but more, its 
 ships bear civilisation and all its blessings to 
 every clime. Surely then, in spite of the sel- 
 fishness of some and the folly of others, a high 
 place in the catalogue of heroes and philan- 
 thropists is due to Famous London Mer- 
 chants.
 
 c 
 o 
 
 T3
 
 Choice Illustrated Books 
 
 CHIEFLY FOR YOUNG READERS. 
 
 PUBLISHED BY 
 
 JAMES HOGG & SON, 
 
 14 YORK STREET, COVENT GARDEN, LONDON, W.C 
 
 NEW WORK BY THE REV. PREBENDARY JACKSON. 
 Curiosities of the Pulpit and Pulpit Literature : Memorabilia, 
 Anecdotes, &&, of Celebrated Preachers, from the Fourth Century of the 
 Christian Era to the Present Time. By Thomas Jackson, M.A., Prebendary 
 of St Pau's Cathedral, and Rector of Stoke Newington, London. 
 
 Adventures in the Ice. A Comprehensive Summary of Arctic Ex- 
 ploration, Discovery, and Adventure, including Unpublished Experiences of a 
 Veteran Whaler. With Illustrations. By John Tillotson, Author of " Lives 
 of Eminent .Men," "Our Untitled Nobility." &c 
 
 Three Shilling and Sixpenny Books. 
 
 EUi^anlly bound in doth, bcvclUd boards, giit cdj;es. 
 
 Men who have Risen : A Hook for Boys. With Eight Illustrations;, 
 by Chari.es A- liovLB, printed on Toned Paper. 
 
 Women of Worth : A iJook for Girls. With Eight Illustrations, 
 by William Dickf.s, printed on Toned Paper. 
 
 Small Beginnings ; or, The Way to Get on. With Eight Illustra- 
 tions printed on Toned Paper. 
 
 Aunt Agnes; or. Tlic Why and the Wherefore of Life. An .\uto- 
 biography. By a Clcr(;vm.-»n'» I).iiik;hi'-r. With Eij;lit IliuMratioiis, by 
 Kkkikv IIAl.^wKl.l.F, pr.nttd on Toned Paper. 
 
 The Busy Hives around us : a Variety of Trips and Visits to the 
 
 Mine, the Wcrkshon. and the Kaclory. Willi Popular N<.tet on M;acrial», 
 Proce^^e■^, and M.ichinev With Seven Illustrationx, by William IIakvkv 
 and others, pr.nled on Toned I'apcr. 
 
 The Star of Hope and the Staff of Duty. Tales of Womanly 
 Tria'i and Vicioric*. With Eight Illustrations, by Julian Poktcii, printed 
 on Toned I'a|<<:r. 
 
 Pictures of Heroes, and Lessons from their Lives. Hv Mrs W. R. 
 
 I.I ovp, Aiitlior '■( "The Klowcr of CliriMiiin Chivalry," &C. With Eight Illu»- 
 trations, by C. A. DoVLK, piintcd on Toned Paper. 
 
 The Sea and her Famous Sailors. IJy Frank H. (Ioodrich. 
 
 With Einhl llluttralions, printed 011 Toned Pa|>er. 
 
 The Vicar of Wakefield. IJy Oi.ivkr Ooi.nsMiTH. With Twelve 
 
 chnii c full i»ai{c Illii>.lralions, printed on 'loned Paper. 
 
 The Pilgrim's Progress. r.yJ<»iiN Hunvan. With Twelve Iliuj- 
 iraliont, by C A. IJovlk, printed on Toned Pa|<r.
 
 Choice Illustrated Books, 
 
 Watchers for the Dawn, and otlier Studies of Christian Character. 
 By Mrs W. R. Llovd. With Eight Illustrations, by James Godwin, printed 
 on Toned P:iper. 
 
 The Steady Aim : a Book of Examples and Encouragements from 
 Modern Biography. By W. H. DAVENPniiT AnAMS, Author of "Famous 
 Regiments of the British Army," &c. With Eight Illustrations, by C. A. 
 DoYi.K, printed on Toned Paper. 
 
 Sandford and Merton. A Complete Edition, with Eight Illustra" 
 tions, by Groves, printed on Toned Paper. 
 
 Holiday Adventures; or. The Strettons' Summer in Normandy. By 
 Mrs Jamks Gambif.r. With Eight Illustrations, by Charles Ai.tamont 
 DoYi.E, printed on Toned Paper. 
 
 The Habits of Good Society ; a Handbook of Etiquette for Ladies 
 and Gentlemen. With Thoughts, Hints, and Anecdotes, concerning Social 
 Observances, Nice Points of 'I'aste and Good Manners, and the Art of making 
 One's-self Agreeable. The whole interspersed with numerous Illustrations of 
 Social Predicaments, Remarks on the History and Changes of Fashion, and 
 the difierences of English and Continental Etiquette. 
 
 The "Golden Rule" Story-Books. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED. 
 
 This interesting and attractive series of Stories for Young People is primarily 
 intended, as the title imports, to inculcate in an unobtrusive manner, the "Golden 
 Rule." The old proverb saith truly, " Precepts may lead, but examples draw." It 
 wi I be found that these Stories bear upon the cardinal elements of character — quietly 
 and naturally showing the necessity of their culture — bringing out in a pleas.int genial 
 manner the teaching of experience, and the true aims of life. 
 
 As a general rule, the Story Books are equally suitable for Boys and Girls. By 
 help of the title given, it will be easy for Parents, Teachers, and Friends quick to 
 mark the dispositions and habits of the young, so to choose, if need be, as to bring a 
 
 food Story to bear upon a weak point or a fault — to instruct, to inspire, or to warn, 
 t may be Industry and Sobriety; Firmness and Suavity," Patience, Self-denial, and 
 Cheerfulness; Order, Punctuality, and Contentment ; Filial Obedience ; Re=pect for 
 Experience, or Reverence for Age ; all these, and many other of the nicer essentials 
 to a tine character and a noble life, are distinctly traced in the "Golden Rule" Story- 
 Books. Printed in ciearbold type; every Book illustrated by Wood Engravings; 
 and published in 
 
 24 Books, ( Packets of Four Books, Eightpence per Packet ; 
 
 { 
 
 Sd.. each. ( Or in Cloth Volumes, Four Series, Is. 6d. each, 
 
 "These are books to make girls lay aside their dolls, and boys forget their hoops 
 for hours together. A bright-eyed child called from play an hour or two ago to re- 
 ceive one or two of them, has scarcely looked up sirice, and replies to the question 
 whether she has read ' every word ' of them by saying, ' Yes, every word, except the 
 good little bit at the end.' And ' the gnod little bit at the end' is not always present, 
 and it is never needed. The story tells its own moral, and conveys its own lesson." 
 — Baptist Magazine. 
 
 " We have here twenty-four small books for small people, at the smallest of prices ; 
 each volume containing from forty to fifty pages of small but clear letterpress, several 
 illustrations, good paper, good writing, and all for the charge of threepence ! . . . 
 We wi 1 only say that such a windfall of books is not often shaken from a Christmas 
 tree. " — A thenautn.
 
 Suitable for Presentation. 
 
 New and Imprned Editions, ONE SHILLING EACH. 
 
 The Rose-bud Stories. 
 
 An Attmc*'-- c--- ' ■ ' 'uvciii c C.oks, each vulumc with a Coloured Frontispiece. 
 Sixteen Vu in Size and Style, each containing 124 pages of dear, 
 
 bold Ictterir . ^tout paper, price One Shi. ling each, elcijantiv bound in 
 
 cloth. Every volume contains one or more Tales complete, written by various 
 Authors, mostofthcni expre-i^ly for the Scries; and for cheapness, atlracliveness, 
 and strr'ing interest, th v prc^rnt, perhaps, the most pleasing and useful collectioa 
 of Shillii.K St',r\- li. o1.n in M •i-m Juvenile Literature. 
 
 Ally and her Schoolfellow. A Tale for the Younjj. By Miss M. 
 
 I'.f I ham-Edwahij<;, Auth t of "Holidays among the Mountains" "Little 
 
 ! - '■ ■- ..nd Little 1 !■ • .'•&C. 
 An i I'.arrativc i>cricnces, incu'caling the importance of habiw 
 
 ofiiidu .ijsolutc i>c ,., patience in the hour of trial and suffering, and 
 
 g'X>d feeling t'jwards one another. 
 
 Prince Arthur; or, The Four Trials. By Catherine Mary Stir- 
 ling. And Tales by the Flowers. By Caroline B. Templer. 
 The Four Trials of I'rncc .\rthur teach ()l>cdience, Charity, Moral Coiiragc, and 
 Humility. In the " Ta cs by the Flowers," each sweet I'ud and blossom is made t 
 illu-trate the moral quality usuaily associated with it: Blue Bells, Hope: Daisy, 
 Looking up-.rarili : Cclamliiic, Humiiity, &.C. 
 
 The Story of Henrietta and the Ayah ; or, Do not Trust to Ap 
 pearances. A ' "' ' ' ' » ; or. One Good Turn deserve* 
 
 Another. By " , . • . , u • i. 
 
 The titles of t' •• •• ilvir intention. In the one is shown 
 
 tV e drccptivciic f''Cc may be accompani' d by a 
 
 warm heat; in 1 . irom a KO««l decl 0""c »» '•><» 
 
 proper lime. , »t • •• 
 
 Loyal Charlie Bentham. By Mrs Webb, Aulhor of "Naomi. 
 "Idoline," &c And The Children's Island. ATrue Story. Edited by L. 
 
 "J,. . > y . • . faji ,0 be a favoiinte with F.ngiish boys nml 
 
 girls, 11 of the virtues of "do..! t.)iic-ii Vici' ^ . 
 
 •• The t 111 litMi ^ 1 .1..11.1 11.0 1. . 1 •:. i lie adventures of a would-be I'olish " K.il 11 
 Crusoe." 
 
 Simple Stories for Children. By Mary F Mti i <;. 
 
 Th- Story of "The Cousins" is one of true and ndship «prin>;ine up 
 
 i„ , I , 1, -.1 ,,,.!, it,. t,:>,:- '..It!! 1!,.- vr.irs III "CI i s " I hc flul hor I H us- 
 
 I, ish fear of rioicule, the doing of evil 
 
 U "*■ 
 
 Stories from Englibh History, i or Young Children. FAlitcd by 
 
 the I''V \l'.:vrT HiSMKKR, MA 
 In • I'd to tl.. " of the >• "e se' 
 f,,ih . -^i.tsfroiii Hist, ry: A .-ire; 
 St Albans . the M iii.imj.ii, >ii;iory; Alplic.r, >.,. ..;.....! Arch- 
 bishop; th' tor, &c. ^ . , ,. 
 
 Twelve Liukt, ui liic Ciolden Cham. By Anna J. BucKiANn, 
 
 The "Twelve Links of the fjol.len Chain" arc the twelve ininlh* of the year. 
 Under each month i« arrani^e,! ., suitable »tory or (arable, conve)in(; an appropriaia 
 lesson in clear .-ind allr.tctivc lantfiiaije 
 
 The T if.- r.f Robinson Crusoe. Tn Short Wonls. By Sarah 
 ,, Author of " Life of Coliiml.u* ''Ac ' /■ . . 
 
 The I rv of T" .1. iix'in Criioc an<l hi* man Fiiday II here •« foilh in 
 
 thort woru. an. I the scenes with the Cannibal*, and all llicir horioii 
 
 biirin ociiiltcd, .. 1 very young reader*.
 
 Choice Illustrated Books. 
 
 The Rose-bud Stories — One Shilling Each. 
 
 A Winter's Wreath of Illustrative Tales. Edited by Ladv 
 
 Chari.ottk Law. And, Symtatiiv : a Tale. By E. A. M. 
 
 The "Winter's Wreath" includes the stirring story of tlie life of sturdy George 
 
 Stephenson; tlie Christmas Rose, a tale of love and constancy; the Adventures of 
 
 "Old Bob," an Afiican Negro ; and the Narrative of Alice St Maur, the Lost Child. 
 
 Susan and the Doll; or, Do not be Covetou.s. And, The Little 
 Orphan's Histoky; or, Everything for the Best. By Cakoline LiiiciiSTER. 
 The evil of covetousness and the blessing of a cheerful and contented spirit are the 
 points chiefly illustrated in this little volume. 
 
 A Child's First Book about Birds. By a Country Clersryman. 
 
 In a scries of conversations about birds, their habits and peculiarities are amus- 
 ingly brought forward, while an excellent moral is always inculcated. Thus, " The 
 Starling and the Linnet" shows the bitterness of strife ; "The Mag|)ie and Wood- 
 Pigeon" the excellence of honesty. Much useful knowledge is conveyed by these 
 entertaining stories. 
 
 Little Paul and his Moss- Wreaths; or, The King and the Boy 
 who kept his Word. By Angelika von LagerstkOM. Together with the 
 Story of Little George Bell. 
 "We are poor, but we shall be h.appy if we shun sin and do that which is right," 
 is the moral of the story of " Little Paul." " Little George Bell" i; a narrative of 
 the misfortunes of a child stolen by beggars, but after some time accidentally dis- 
 covered by his mother through the agency of the good dog Dash. 
 
 Easy Talks for Little Folks. By the Author of " Little Crumbs," 
 &c. And, May-Day; or. Anecdotes of Miss Lydia Lively. Edited by L. 
 Nugent. 
 A volume for very young children, replete with such counsel and encouragement 
 as young children need, and containing some brief and simple tales in which the 
 advantages of a good temper, a generous disposition, and industrious habits are in- 
 sisted upon. 
 
 Juvenile Tales for Juvenile Readers. By Charlotte Eliza- 
 beth. 
 
 The "Juvenile Tales" by this popular authoress embodied in the present selection 
 are — Charlie's Wish ; or. Do Buy me a Ponv ' — Thomas and his Marbles ; or. Don't 
 play for Money; — The Fragments; or, the Value of Scraps; — and 1'he Nestlings. 
 The goodness of God unto His creatures is the theme of the last-mentioned nar- 
 rative. 
 
 Six Short Stories for Short People. By the Rev. F. W. Bouverie, 
 
 Author of " Life and its Lessons," &c. 
 
 These short Stories are devoted to the enforcement of simple but important truths. 
 Their titles indicate their object : " As if I cared for a Prize," or, the folly of indif- 
 ference in a good cause; "Never Mind; ' "If you don't, I'll tell;" "Please, 
 Mamma, it wasn't my fault;" "Nobody loves me;" and "I'm sure I'm quite as 
 good us anybody." 
 
 The Captive Skylark ; or. Do as You would be Done By. A Tale. 
 By Madame de Chatei.ain. 
 
 "Do as you would be done by," — the second great commandment of the New 
 Testament — is the secret of present happiness and future biiss. Madame de Chate- 
 lain has shown in this graceful little volume the good that flows from the observance 
 of the Scripliu'al injunction.
 
 UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY 
 
 Los Angeles 
 
 This book is DUE on the last date stamped below. 
 
 LD 
 
 •URii^-- AUG 13 71 
 
 mm^. ■ 
 
 REG 
 
 «5 RUG^^'^r 
 
 REC'D Li '-URL 
 
 JAN 1 6 1991:. 
 
 r- 
 
 1995 
 
 JUm-7,'68(JI895s4) — C-1'2U
 
 3 1158 01 
 
 llllliHilliliil 
 
 052 9617