ENGLISH MERCHANTS. VOL. I. WILLIAM CANYNGE, THE YOTNGEK, OF BRISTOL. Vol. I., frontispiece. ENG LISH MERCHANTS MEMOIRS fN ILLUSTRATION OF THE PROGRESS OF BRITISH COMMERCE. H. H. VOX BOUKNK AUTHOR OF "A MEMOIR OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY. IN TWO VOLUMES. VOLUME I. THF. TlftST LONDON EXCHANGE. LONDON: K ! <J ! I A K I ) 1 : K N TL K Y . N K \^ H V I i 1 . 1 7\ < J TO N STK K 10' $u&ft£l>er in ©ratnarp to $cr #lafrftg. 186G. ttf foU PREFACE. These volumes aim to show how trade has taken its place among us, and done its work as a great promoter of England's welfare and the common good. To that end have been sketched the histories of some three dozen famous merchants, or families of merchants, chosen from many scores of men whose conduct illustrates the course of English commerce, and who are conspicuous for the energy and wisdom — very selfish energy and very worldly wisdom, now and then — with which they have beaten out new walks of trade, or widened the old ways. From the general history of commerce has also been drawn, incidentally throughout the work, and more regularly in four of its chapters, so much as seemed necessary to the purpose of the work. The use here made of printed books and manuscript col- lections has been carefully indicated in foot-notes. Other and large debts are due to private friends, and strangers who have acted the part of friends, for information concerning kinsmen and associates about whom they had special oppor- tunities of affording truthful and characteristic details. Some of these debts are recorded ; others, in deference to the wishes of the informants, are not specified. Their extent viii Preface. will appear from the number of unvouchcd statements that occur in these volumes, especially in the second. About half of the pages here brought together have already appeared in a periodical publication. These por- tions, however, have been carefully revised, to a great extent re-written, and the work, as a whole, now takes the shape in which it was projected. H. R. Fox Bourne. 29 Brixton Place, London, 2Uh November, 1866. CONTENTS OF VOLUME I. CHAPTER I. EARLY ENGLISH COMMERCE. PAGE The commerce of the Ancient Britons — Trade in Anglo-Saxon times — The first fairs—Trade under the Anglo-Norman Kings — The good work done by Flemish colonists and Jewish settlers in England — The old German wine-fleets — Scottish commerce under Macbeth and David the First — London, Bristol, and other trading towns in the twelfth century — Blunders in commercial legislation under the Plantagenets — The Charta Mercatoria granted by Edward the First — Hindrances to its working — The troubles of tradesmen and merchants at home — The markets, shops, and selds of old London — Mediaeval traders and their frauds — The Merchants of the Steel-yard — The rise of English Guilds and Trading Companies — The Merchants of the Staple — The Society of Merchant Adven- turers — Italian merchants in England — The Venetian trading fleets and their cargoes — Beginning of a new period in the history of English commerce 1 CHAPTER H. THE DE LA POLES OF HILL. [1311-1366]. The first De la Poles — Ravensrod — The early history of Hull — Richard and William de la Pole in Hull — Their services to Edward the Second and Edward the Third — William de la Pole's services to Edward the Third during his war with France — The favours granted to him on that account — His temporary disgrace — His charitable works in Hull— The later De la Poles 50 x Contents. PACE CHAPTER III. RICHARD WHITTCNGTON OF LONDON. [1360-1423]. London merchants before Whittington ; Henry Fitz-Alwyn, Gregory de Rokesley, William and Nicholas Farendon, Sir John de Pulteney, and Simon Francis — Sir Richard Whittington's kindred — His traditional history — The state of society in his day — John Philpot and William Walworth — Whittington's services to Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth — His charitable and philanthropic deeds — His death and three-fold burial 71 CHAPTER IV. THE CANYNGES OP BRISTOL. [1360-1475]. The early trade of Bristol — William Canynge the elder — Thomas Canynge of London — William Canynge the younger — His trade with Iceland and Prussia — His employments under Henry the Sixth — His zeal for the Lancastrian cause — Bristol in his time — Other Bristol merchants; Robert Sturmy and the Jays — Other merchants of the middle ages ; John Carpenter and Geoffrey Bulleyn of London ; John Taverner of Hull ; William Elphinstone of Glasgow 96 CHAPTER V. ENGLISH COMMERCE FROM THE CL06E OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. Henry the Seventh's furtherance of trade — The Company of Merchant Adventurers in his time — The commercial policy of Henry the Eighth — English merchants in Antwerp and Calais — Foreign merchants in England — The rise of the English Navy — Henry the Eighth's naval policy — The Merchants of the Steel-yard — The trade of the Merchant Adventurers with the Netherlands — Other trading companies of the sixteenth century — Trading voyages to various parts of the world — Their service to the nation — English commerce under the Tudors, as illustrated in the histories of Norwich and Newcastle-upon-Tyne — English commerce under James the First and Charles the First 109 CHAPTER VI. THE THORNES OF BRISTOL. [1480-1546]. Bristol under the early Tudors — The enterprise of its old merchants — John and Sebastian Cabot, and other maritime adventurers — The family of the Thornes— Robert Thome the elder — Robert Thorne the younger — His plan for reaching Cathay — Its unsuccessful following by Henry the Eighth — Robert Thome's trade and charities — Nicholas Thome — His trade and charities . . . 147 Contents. xi CHAPTER VII. THE GRESHAMS OF LONDON. [1500-1579]. The Greshams in Norfolk — Thomas Gresham the elder — Sir Richard Gresham — His City life— His re-organization of the City Hospitals — His arguments for a Burse, and in favour of free trade— Sir John Gresham — His trading employments— His revival of the Marching Watch— Sir Thomas Gresham— His schooling and City training — His trading occupations in London and the Netherlands — His various services to Edward the Sixth, Queen Mary, and Queen Elizabeth — His financial and commercial policy — His work as a political agent — London in the sixteenth century — Gresham's building of the first London Exchange — His troubles as guardian of Lady Mary Grey— His latter years, and death— His place in commercial liistory 164 CHAPTER VIII. THE HAWKINSES OF PLYMOUTH. [1530-1595]. Old William Hawkins and his voyages to Brazil— Other promoters of South American and West Indian commerce ; John Withal in Santos ; Richard Staper and Edward Osborne — John Hawkins's three expeditions to the West Indies — Francis Drake and the free- booters against Spain — William and John Hawkins as merchants in Plymouth and London — John Hawkins's services in opposition to the Spaniards — The projects for American colonization and North-Western discovery; Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Sir Martin Frobisher, and Michael Lock — The share taken therein by the Hawkinses — ' Young Mr. William Hawkins' — Services of Sir John Hawkins as Treasurer of the Navy — His preparations for the Armada fight — His troubles under Queen Elizabeth — His last voyage, and death 197 CHAPTER IX. THE MYDDELTONS AND THE MDDDLETONS OF LONDON. [1560-1631]. Famous London merchants of the sixteenth century ; Sir Lionel Duckett and Sir Edward Osborne — William, Thomas, Hugh, and Robert Myddelton — The beginning of the East India Company — Employments of Sir Henry Middlcton in its service — His voyage to Bantam and the Maluco Islands — His disastrous voyage to the East in the Trades Increase, and death— Captain David Middlcton — The occupations of Thomas, Hugh, and Robert Myddelton — Sir xii Contents. PAGE Hugh Mycldel ton's construction of the New River — The ceremony of its opening — Sir Thomas Myddelton's Lord Mayor's Show — Sir Hugh Myddelton's later employments, and death 230 CHAPTER X. GEORGE HERIOT OF EDINBURGH. [1563-1G34]. The early commerce of Scotland — Edinburgh and its trades in the Middle Ages and in the sixteenth century — The elder Heriots — George Heriot the younger — His early life in Edinburgh — His shops and his customers — His dealings with James the Sixth of Scotland and Queen Anne — His removal to London — His associates in the office of King's Jeweller ; Sir John Spilman and Sir William Herrick — Their joint services to James and Anne, as King and Queen of England — Heriot's private life and family relationships — His foundation of Heriot's Hospital in Edinburgh — His death . 259 CHAPTER XI. HUMPHREY CHETHAM OF MANCHESTER. [1580-1653]. Progress of manufacturing energy in Lancashire and Yorkshire — Rise of Halifax and other towns — Manchester in the sixteenth century — Humphrey Chetham and his trade — His public services, as Sheriff and Collector of Ship-Money, under Charles the First ; as High Collector of Subsidies, and General Treasurer for Lancashire, under the Parliamentarians— His commercial difficulties — His establishment of Chetham College, Manchester — His death and character 282 CHAPTER XII. ENGLISH COMMERCE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. The condition of English commerce under the Stuarts — The East India Company — The Turkey, or Levant, Company — Other trading associations — Rise of trade with the North American and West Indian colonies — The growth of those colonies; Virginia, Mary- land, New England, Pennsylvania, New York, Barbadoes, and Jamaica — The good effects of this new commerce in England — Increase of English manufactures — French settlers in England — Sir Thomas Lombe's silk mill at Derby — The commercial legisla- tion of the period — The Navigation Act of the Rump Parliament — The Methuen Treaty of 1703, and various laws restricting trade with Holland and Fiance — English commerce in the early part of tile eighteenth century, as described by Addison and Defoe . . 20fi Contents. xiii CHAPTER XIII. DUDLEY KORTH AND JOSIAH CHILD OF LONDON. [1630-1699]. The great London merchants trading with the East Indies and the Levant ; Sir Thomas Smythe and Sir Henry Garway — Sir Dudley North — His parentage and early training — His work in London, at Smyrna, and at Constantinople — His establishment as a Turkey merchant in London — His services to Charles the Second and James the Second — His Discourses upon Trade — His City occupations — His marriage, and mode of living in his London house, and at Wroxton— His death — The family of the Childs — Early trade of Sir Josiah Child — His Observations concerning Trade — His New Discourse of Trade— His share in the advancement of the East India Company— His brother, Sir John Child— Sir Josiah Child's place at Court — His family history and death — Sir Francis Child, the banker 314 CHAPTER XIV. EDWARD COLSTON OF BRISTOL. [1636-1721]. Thomas Colston and his offspring in Bristol — Edward Colston — His business in London and Bristol — The state of Bristol commerce before and in his day — His trade and benefactions — His death and burial 353 CHAPTER XV. WILLIAM PATERSON OF DUMFRIES. [1658-1719]. The Patersons in Dumfriesshire — William Paterson's early occupations — His trade in the West Indies and New England — His proposal of a settlement on the Isthmus of Darien — His mercantile work in London — His proposal of a National Bank — The rise of modern bauking — Chamberlayne's scheme for a Land Bank — Paterson's arguments for, and ultimate establishment of, the Bank of England — The revival of his Darien project — The establishment of the Scottish Darien Company — Paterson's troubles in connection with it— The disastrous ending of its expeditions — Paterson's efforts to retrieve its fortunes, and in other ways to forward the interests of commerce — His arguments in favour of the Union between Eng- land and Scotland, and their result — His arguments against the National Debt, and in favour of improved ways of taxation and public audit — His life in poverty and neglect — The improvement in his condition consequent on a Parliamentary grant made to him — His last occupations and death 3C3 xiv Contents. CHAPTER XVI. JOHN BARNARD OP LONDON. [1685-1764]. The turmoil of speculation consequent on the establishment of the Bank of England — The South Sea Bubble, and other triumphs of dishonest stock-jobbing — Sir John Barnard's opposition thereto — Barnard's birth and early occupations — His services to the city of London, and his Parliamentary work — His arguments in favour of free-trade, and his consequent opposition to Sir Robert Walpole's financial policy — His employments as Lord Mayor, and his City life — His retirement from public life — His residence at Clapham — His character and death 404 ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME I. PAGE William Canyhge, the Younger, of Bristol . Frontispiece. The First London Exchange Title Page Monument to Sir William de la Pole and his wife Katherine, in Trinity Church, Hull Facing 68 Sir Richard Whittington „ 74 Whtttington's House in Crutched Friars, London .... 93 Costumes of English, Prussian, Flemish, and Venetian Mer- chants rN the Sixteenth Century 124-127 Coasting Vessel, Galley, Galleon, and East Indian Carrack of the Sixteenth Century 132-135 Slb Thomas Gresham 175 The Tombs of Sir Thomas Gresham and Sir John Pickering, m Saint Helen's Church, Bishopsgate 196 Sir John Hawkins 202 Sir Hugh Myddelton's Birth-place, at Galch Hill, Denbigh 233 Sir Hugh Myddelton 235 Humphrey Chetham of Manchester 287 Sir Dudley North Facing 319 Sir Josiah Child 333 The Old East India House, London 346 Edward Colston of Bristol Facing 353 William Paterson , , 368 ENGLISH MERCHANTS. CHAPTER L EARLY ENGLISH COMMERCE. British commerce began more than two thousand years ago. The Phoenician and Carthaginian traders, visiting the Scilly Islands and the coast of Cornwall in quest of tin, laid the foundations of that system of merchandize which has done so much to make of our little island of Britain a mighty nation, aud to bring under its dominion many of the fairest provinces in every quarter of the world. Coming to our shores as early, we are told by antiquaries, as the fifth or sixth century before Christ, and at first coming only for the tin that was found more plentifully, and better prepared, by the ancient Britons than by any other people, these traders soon included lead, hides, and timber in their purchases, and brought in exchange various articles of earthenware, brass manufacture, and salt.* When the Tyrian race died out, others carried on the trade, the Cornish marts being replaced by others in the Isle of Wight and on the coast of Kent, whither the commodities were conveyed from the inland districts of England, to be taken in Gallic ships for sale in various parts of the Continent. With the growth of manu- factories and- marts, increased the number and variety of * The largest ship of war built at Syracuse by Archimedes was said to have been made of British wood. VOL. I. B 2 Old British Commerce. articles to be sold. Corn, gold, silver, iron, and precious stones, as well as tin and lead, were the chief commodities exported before and after the conquest of Julius Caesar.* It was the fame of the British pearls, according to one tra- dition, that first prompted Caesar to cross the Gallic Straits ; and the report of his soldiery speedily opened up a thriving trade with the Kentish towns for oysters to augment the luxuries of Roman feasting, for bears to fill the Roman circus, and for dogs to be used by Roman sportsmen. The establishment of Latin colonies in Britain, of course, gave a great encouragement to trade, and led to prompt develop- ment, in ways more or less rude, of the chief manufacturing resources of the country. The Staffordshire potteries trace their history up to the earliest Roman times ; and two hundred years ago the iron-workers of the West of England and South Wales found their most profitable business in gathering up the leavings of their old forerunners.t During the first few Christian centuries, many towns, besides London, — especially Canterbury and Rochester, Richborough and Dover, Exeter and Chester, York, Aberdeen and Dum- barton — became notable resorts of merchants. British trade declined after the Anglo-Saxon settlement, but, under English management, these same towns, with many others, prospered more than ever. When Christianity was introduced, and pious men betook themselves to monas- teries, they became the special patrons of commerce and * Mactherson, Annals of Commerce (London, 1805), vol. i., p. 133. t ' In the Forest of Dean and thereabouts, the iron is made at this day of cinders, being the rough and offal thrown away in the Roman time ; they then having only foot-blasts to melt the ironstone ; but now, by the force of a great wheel that drives a pair of bellows twenty feet long, all that iron is extracted out of the cinders which could not be forced from it by the Roman foot-blast. And in the Forest of Dean and thereabouts, and as high as Worcester, there are great and infinite quantities of these cinders ; some in vast mounds above ground, some under ground, which will supply the ironworks some hundreds of years ; and these cinders are they which make the prime and best iron, and witli much less charcoal than doth the iron- stone.' — Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land (London, 1077;. Anglo-Saxon Trade. 3 agriculture, bcin" 1 labourers and mechanicians themselves, as well as instructors of their lay brethren in the various arts of civilized life. " We command/' runs one of Edgar's laws, " that every priest, to increase knowledge, diligently learn some handicraft," * while smiths and carpenters, fishermen and millers, weavers and architects, are frequently mentioned in old chronicles as belonn-injr to various convents. The smith was the oldest and most honoured of all workmen. " Whence," he is made to ask, in a curious collection of Anglo-Saxon dialogues, " whence hath the ploughman his ploughshare and goad, save by my art ? whence hath the fisherman his rod, or the shoemaker his awl, or the sempstress her needle, but from me ?" In the same work, the merchant asserts his dignity and the nature of his calling. " I am useful," he says, " to the king and his nobles, to rich men and to common folk. I enter my ship with my merchandize, and sail across the seas, and sell my wares, and buy dear things that are not produced in this land, and bring them with great danger for your good ; and sometimes I am ship- wrecked, and lose all my wares, and hardly myself escape." " What is it you bring us?" one asks. " I bring you," he replies, " skins, silks, costly gems and gold ; various gar- ments, pigments, wine, oil, ivory and brass, copper and tin, silver, glass, and such like." " Will you sell your things here," inquires the other speaker, " as you bought them there ?" To which the merchant answers, " Nay, in truth ; else, where would be the good of all my labour ? I will sell them here dearer than I bought them there, that so I may get some profit, to feed me*and my wife and children."! In those early days, and for many centuries after, the merchant was the captain of his own little ship, and thus had the entire range of his business under his own super- vision. He was deservedly held in honour by his country- men. By a law of Ina, published near the middle of the * Wilkin?, Leges Anglo-Saxonicx (London, 1721), p S3. t Sharon Turner, History of England (London, 1S3G ; , vol. iii. pp. 110- ] 1 f>. 4 Anglo-Saxon Merchants, eighth century, it was appointed that every merchant, even though he were by birth a serf, who had made three journeys across the sea with his own ship and goods, was to have the rank of a thane.* The ships were mere boats, rude construc- tions of wood, propelled by eight or ten oars, with the assist- ance of a single square sail suspended from a single mast, and seldom large enough to hold more than half a dozen men, with two or three tons of cargo. Yet in these poor vessels, having no other compass than the sun and stars, and no proper rudder to direct their motions, our fearless fore- fathers wandered wherever they would. The silks and pigments, referred to in the dialogue just cited, could hardly have come from nearer parts than the shores of the Mediter- ranean. We know that trading voyages were often made to Iceland and Norway, and that in the eighth century one Anglo-Saxon merchant, at any rate, — Bolto by name, — was settled, and had influential position in Marseilles.! Among the people of various lands who frequented the fairs established in France by King Dagobert, in the seventh century, were Anglo-Saxon traders with the tin and lead of England \% and a letter written by Charlemagne to OfFa, King of Mercia, not later than the year 795, shows that at that time many merchants were in the habit of travelling through France, both openly and in the disguise of pilgrims. " Concerning the strangers," it is written, " who, for the love of God and the salvation of their souls, wish to repair to the thresholds of the blessed apostles, let them travel in peace without any trouble ; nevertheless, if any are found among them not in the service of religion, but in the pursuit of gain, let them pay the established duties at the proper places. We also will that merchants shall have lawful protection in our kingdom, according to our command ; and, if they are in * Thorpe, Ancient Laws and Institutions of England (London, 1840), p. 81. t Lappenberg, History of England under the Anglo-Saxon Kings (London, 1845), vol. ii., p. 304. ; Aebe Raynal, Hist, des Jndes (Paris, 1820), tome ii., p. 4. and their Various Merchandize. 5 any place unjustly aggrieved, let them apply to us or to our judges, and ample justice shall be done to them." * Some branches of Anglo-Saxon commerce, it must be admitted, were not altogether respectable. In a memoir of Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester at the time of the Norman Conquest, it is said : ' There is a seaport town called Bristol, opposite to Ireland, to which its inhabitants make frequent voyages of trade. Wulfstan cured the people of this town of a most odious custom, which they derived from their an- cestors, of buying men and women in all parts of England, and exporting them to Ireland for the sake of gain. You might have seen, with sorrow, long ranks of youths and maidens, of the greatest beauty, tied together with ropes, and daily exposed to sale ; nor were these men ashamed — oh, horrid wickedness ! — to give up their nearest relations, even their own children, to slavery.' It is to be hoped that dealings of this sort were not very common ; but it is clear that during these centuries the Irish, or rather, perhaps, the Danes, who were masters of a large part of Ireland, carried on a considerable trade with England. In very early times merchants took their cloths to Cambridge, and exhibited them in the streets for sale ; and Chester was filled during the summer months by Irishmen, bringing marten-skins and other articles to be given in exchange for the various com- modities most needed by their own people. Yet English commerce was still in its infancy. By one of the laws of Lothair, of Kent, living in the seventh century, no one was allowed to buy anything worth more than twenty pennies — something like five pounds, according to the present value of money — except within the walls of a town, and in the presence of the chief magistrate, or two or more wit- nesses. Another of Lothair's laws appoints that " if any one of the people of Kent buy anything in the city of London, he must have two or three honest men, or the king's port- * Wilkins, Concilia Magnx Britannix et Ilibernuv (London, 1737), vol. i., p. 158. (» The First Tolls. reeve, present at the bargain ;" and in a third it is written : '• Let none exchange one thing for another, except in the presence of the sheriff, the mass priest, the lord of the manor, or some other person of undoubted veracity. If they do otherwise, they shall pay a fine of thirty shillings, besides forfeiting the goods so exchanged to the lord of the manor." From such enactments we must infer, in the first place, that rogues were so numerous, and false dealings so prevalent, even in these early days, that it was not safe for trade to be carried on in any but the most public manner ; and, in the second, that, from the beginning, states and municipalities obtained part of their revenues from imposts upon articles of com- merce. Early in the eleventh century a regular tariff was appointed for London, by Ethelred the Second. 'If a small vessel came to Billingsgate, the toll was one halfpenny ; if a larger vessel, and if it had sails, a penny ; if a full-sized hulk came and remained, fourpence. From a vessel laden with planks, one plank was demanded. The weekly toll of cloth was taken on three days — Sunday, Tuesday, and Thursday. Whenever a boat with fish in it came to the bridge, the dealer gave a halfpenny toll, and for a larger vessel a penny. The men of Eouen, coming with wine or a grampus, gave the right toll of six shillings for a large ship, and the twentieth part of the said grampus. The Flemings, and men of Poitou, and Normandy, and France, showed their goods, and were free of toll. The men of La Hogue, Liege, and Nivelle, who came by land, showed, and paid tolls. But the men of the Emperor, who came in their ships, were deemed law-worthy like ourselves. It was lawful for them to buy for their ships uncarded wool, and unpacked grease, and three live hogs ; but it was not lawful for them to forestal to the burghers. Moreover, from panniers with hens, if they were brought to market, one hen was taken as toll ; and from panniers with eggs, five eggs. Grease- mongers, who trade in butter and cheese, gave one penny fourteen days before Christmas, and seven days after they The First Fairs. 7 gave another, by way of toll.'* In Lewes, at the time of the Domesday Survey, a tax of a farthing- was levied by the sheriff on the sale of every ox ; and when a slave changed hands, the payment due to the town exchequer was fourpence. In most parts of the kingdom, moreover, perhaps in all, a percentage on the price of every article sold for more than twenty pennies was divided between the king and the lord of the manor, half being levied from the buyer and half from the seller. The fairs or markets spread over the kingdom also paid toll to the crown. We read of one in Bedfordshire that yielded seven pounds a year, and of another at Taunton which produced about fifty shillings.! Fairs did the work of shops in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo- Norman times, and in doing so they gradually lost the reli- gious character with which they were started. 'In the beginning of Holy Church,' it is written in one of the old legends, 'it was so that people came at night-time to the church with candles burning ; they would wake and come with light toward the church in their devotions ; but after, they fell to lechery and songs, dances, harping, piping, and also to gluttony and sin, and so turned the holiness to cursed- ness. Wherefore, holy fathers ordained the people to leave that waking '— ^a term still retained in the Irish wakes — ' and to fast at even.'J The evening fasts, however, were as unprofitable, from a religious point of view, as those formerly held at night-time. The people who assembled, generally in the churchyards, and often in the churches themselves, of the saints whose merits they came to celebrate, soon turned their meetings into opportunities for amusement, and laid the foundation of those periodical fairs which, despite all the opposition of the clergy and other lovers of good order, have held their ground almost to the present day. But all the money was not spent in feasting and sight-seeing. Wherever numbers of people were gathered together, it was natural * Thorpe, Ancient Laics, p. 127. t Doomsday Book, passim. X Dugdale, Warwick (London, 1G5G), p. 514. b Trade under Edward the Confessor. that tradesmen should bring their wares for sale ; and to the villagers spending most of their time quite out of the reach of the scanty commerce of those ages, it was a great advantage to meet with merchants provided with large collections of useful and ornamental articles of home and foreign pro- duction, and willing to barter them for sheepskins and agri- cultural produce, or any of the rough and tough manufactures of the local workmen. In this way fairs became markets ; and markets, that never had been fairs, came to be held at various intervals, yearly, monthly, or weekly, in every part of the land. English commerce was in a healthier condition just before than just after the Norman Conquest. Under Edward the Confessor, merchants were highly esteemed ; they travelled much in France and Germany, and brought back foreign goods of every description : while the merchants of other countries not only came to trade in England, but had already begun to find the advantage of making it their home. But trade was scorned by the Normans, and, although their habits, more extravagant and ambitious than those of the Anglo-Saxons, in due time led to its further extension, their violent coming at first very greatly hindered its progress. ' In abundance of precious metals,' says William of Poictiers, William the Conqueror's own chaplain, and too staunch a hater of Anglo-Saxons to say more in their favour than he could help, ' their country by far surpasses that of the Gauls ; for while, from exuberance of corn it may be called the granary of Ceres, from the quantity of its gold it might be termed a treasury of Arabia. The English women are eminently skilful with their needle, and in weaving of gold ; and the men in every kind of artificial workmanship. More- over, several Germans, most expert in such arts, are in the habit of dwelling among them ; and merchants, who in their ships visit different nations, introduce curious handiworks.' ' To the opulence of their country, rich in its own fertility,' he writes in another place, 'the English merchants added The Flemish Colonists. 9 still greater riches and more valuable treasures. The articles imported by them, notable both for their quantity and for their quality, were either to have been hoarded up for the gratification of their avarice, or to have been dissipated in the indulgence of their luxurious inclinations. But William seized them and bestowed part on his victorious army and on the churches and monasteries, while to the Pope and the Church of Rome he sent an incredible mass of money in gold and silver, and many ornaments that would have been admired even in Constantinople.' It was not, however, until a curb had been put upon royal extortion and injustice, that the English merchants were able to pursue their ways with ease and profit. For the half-century following the Conquest we know little of the history of commerce, and it is probable that little progress was made in it. In the charters granted by the two Williams and Henry the First, no reference is made to merchandize ; and the public documents of these kings show only that they levied heavy tolls both on shipping and on inland trade. One beneficial measure, however, is to be set to the credit of Henry the First. Some Flemings, driven out of their own country by disastrous floods in 1100, having obtained per- mission from William Rufus to settle in Cumberland, his successor determined, in 1110 or 1112, to found a Flemish settlement in the neighbourhood of Ross, in Pembrokeshire.* The hardy colonists were invited chiefly with the view of checking the lawlessness of the marauding Welsh, and this they did with excellent result. But they did far more for England. Giraldus Cambrensis speaks of them as ' a people notably skilled both in the business of making cloth and in merchandize, ever ready with any labour or danger to seek for gain by sea or land.' For centuries English sheepskins had been bought up by traders from the Continent, to be taken abroad and converted into woollen garments. With * Anderson, Historical and Chronological Deduction of Olc Origin of Commerce (London, 1S01), vol. i., pp. 137, 144. 1 The Jews and their Work. the Flemish settlers, however, came to England the Flemish art of woollen manufacture, and henceforth this trade, a most important element in British commerce, was naturalized among us. Colonists of another and very different class were also encouraged in England at about the same time. These were the Jews, a fair sprinkling of whom had been mixed with the Anglo-Saxons from a period prior to Edward the Confessor's reign, and of whom great numbers began to cross the Channel immediately after the coming of the Normans. By William Rufus they were especially favoured, and Henry the First conferred on them a charter of privi- leges. They were enabled to claim, in courts of law, the repayment of any money lent by them as easily as Christians, and, while Christians were forbidden to charge any interest for their loans, there were no restrictions to the avarice of the Jewish capitalists. It was to the interest of the sovereigns that the Jews should be rich men, as then more gold could be forced from them, for the quelling of enemies abroad or of insurrections at home, whenever there was need of it. England itself also profited by this arrangement. The gathering up of wealth, to be spent in large schemes of traffic, is a great advantage to society ; and in the main the Jews did this work honestly and well. In no worse spirit than actuated their Christian contemporaries, they taught sound lessons of economy and prudence to the world, and therefore are entitled to the hearty praise of posterity. During the first half of the twelfth century, Scotland, un- disturbed by Norman invasion, was greatly benefited by the disasters which sent many peaceable and enterprising southerners to try their fortunes in the north. Therefore it was commercially in advance of England. Under the wise guidance of the best of its kings, David the First, who reigned from 1124 to 1153, it passed at once from what — despite the efforts of Macbeth, at the close of the eleventh century, who did his utmost to promote commerce with other London in the Twelfth Century. 11 nations — was very like barbarism, to as much civilization as could be claimed for any nation in that time. Foreign mer- chants were invited by David to visit his ports, and every encouragement was given to his own subjects to cross the seas on errands of trade. One of his laws exempted the property of all persons trading with foreign countries from seizure on any claim whatever during their absence, unless it could be shown that they had left their homes with the pur- pose of evading justice. He gave special encouragement to makers of woollen cloths ; and we are told by one contem- porary writer that at the end oL-his reign, and in that of his successor, the towns and burghs of Scotland were chiefly filled with Englishmen, many of them skilled in the art lately brought over by the Flemish colonists.* A race of Stephens would soon have depopulated England. Henry the Second, however, did his utmost to remedy the evils caused by the civil wars which led to his being made King, and his reign was one of commercial prosperity never before equalled. London, containing at this period between thirty and forty thousand inhabitants, the most populous town in the kingdom, and now, for the first time, the fixed abode of the King and Court, was of course the emporium of foreign and domestic trade. No city in the world, accord- ing to William Fitz-Stephen, the not altogether trustworthy biographer of Becket, sent so far and to so many quarters its wealth and merchandize ; and none was so largely the resort of foreign dealers. Gold, spice, and frankincense were brought to it from Arabia ; precious stones from Egypt ; purple cloths from India ; palm oil from Bagdad ; furs and ermines from Norway and Russia ; weapons from Scythia ; and wines from France.f " Let there," wrote Henry the Second to the Emperor Frederick of Germany in 1157, " be between * Macpherson, Annals of Commerce (London, 1805), vol. i., pp. 308, 323-325. t Craik, Jlistory of British Commerce (London, 1844), vol. i., pp. 101, 102. Macpuehson, vol. i., p. 329. 12 The old German Wine-Fleets. ourselves and our subjects an indivisible unity of friendship and peace, and safe trade of merchandize/'* and the Germans were not slow in using the advantages offered them. They were the * Emperor's men,' referred to in Ethelred's laws. Their chief, though by no means their only, commerce was in wine. * In the earlier days of the Plantagenets, if not at a still more remote period, a wine-fleet — its freight, probably, the produce of the banks of the Moselle — was in the habit of visiting this country every year. The moment this fleet of adventurous hulks and keels had escaped the perils of the German Ocean, and had reached the New Weir, in the Thames, the eastern limit of the city's juris- diction, it was their duty, in conformity with the fiscal and civic regulations, to arrange themselves in due order and raise their ensigns ; the crews being at liberty, if so inclined, to sing their kiriele or song of praise and thanksgiving, " according to the old law," until London Bridge was reached. Arrived here, and the drawbridge duly raised, they were for a certain time to lie moored off the wharf, pro- bably Queen-Hythe, the most important in those times of all the hythes or landing-places, to the east of London Bridge. Here they were to remain at their moorings two ebbs and a flood, during which period they were to sell no part of their cargo, it being the duty of one of the Sheriffs and the King's Chamberlain to board each vessel in the meantime, and to select for the royal use such articles as they might think proper ; the price thereof being duly assessed by lawful mer- chants of London, and credit given until a fortnight's end. The two ebbs and a flood expired, the wine-ship was allowed to lie alongside the wharf, and the tuns of wine to be dis- posed of, under certain regulations, to such merchants as might present themselves as customers. The first night after his arrival in the city, no Lorrainer was allowed to go to market or to fair, for any purposes of traffic, beyond four specified points, which seem to have been Stratford-le-Bow, * Haki.vtt, Voyages, vol. i., p. 128. Bristol in the Twelfth Century. 13 Stamford Hill, Knightsbridge, and Blackheath. A premium was offered to such of the Lorrainers as forebore to land at all, or to pass the limits of the wharf, in the shape of a re- duction of the duties on their wines. Unless prevented by contrary winds, sickness, or debt, the foreigner was bound to leave London by the end of forty days ; and, during his stay, there were certain articles — woolfels, lambskins, fresh leather, and unwrouofht wool in the number — which he was abso- lutely forbidden to purchase under pain of forfeiture to the Sheriff.'* And there were other traders besides these men of Lorraine. ' London,' says one contemporary historian, * is filled with goods brought by the merchants of all countries, but especially with those of Germany ; and, when there is scarcity of corn in other parts of England, it is a granary where the article may be bought more cheaply than any- where else.'f After London the most thriving city was Bristol, famous, as we have seen, in Anglo-Saxon times — when it was a walled town, curiously divided into quarters by the four principal streets, starting from a cross in the centre — and the chief port for vessels trading with Ireland and Norway. From Henry the Second its burgesses received, in 1195, a charter exempting them from tolls and some some other impositions throughout England, Wales, and Normandy. "No foreign merchant," it was ordered, " shall buy, within the town, of any stranger, hides, corn, or wool, but only of the burgesses. No foreigner shall have any tavern save in his ship, nor shall retail cloth save in the fair. No stranger shall tarry in the town with his merchandize, to sell the same, longer than forty days.''! Chester was another great receiving-place for the commodities of Ireland, while much was also imported from Gascony, Spain, and Germany ; " so that," writes one, * Riley, Munimenta GiUlhallx London) ens! s (London, 1859-18GCT;, vol. ii. Liber Custumarum, vol. xxxvi.-xxxviii., 01-63. t William of Mai.meshvky, De Genlis Poutificum Anglorum, lib ii. t Andekson, vol. i., p. 100. 14 The chief Trading Towns " being comforted of God in all things, we drink wine very plentifully ; for those countries have abundance of vine- yards." England had vineyards also in those days; and Gloucester and Winchester were noted for their trade in excellent wines of native production. Winchester was a great mart, moreover, for other commodities. The great centre of rude native cloth manufacture from Roman times, it began to decline as soon as the cloths of Flanders were found preferable to those made at home ; and when Henry the Second's Flemish colonists revived the English trade, other towns obtained the chief advantage from the change. The great Winchester cloth fair, however, was famous long after Winchester manufacturers and merchants had lost their im- portance. Thither went each year the merchants of Exeter, at that time almost the principal trading place of the southern coast. Exeter is described as a port full of wealthy citizens and the resort of no less wealthy foreigners, who came for the minerals dug up in the surrounding districts, and gave in exchange abundance of every foreign luxury that could be desired. On the eastern coast, Dunwich, now more than half- washed away by the violence of the Suffolk seas, was a flourishing port, 'stored with every kind of riches,' while Yarmouth was rapidly growing into importance as a fishinor station, and Norwich, destroyed by the Danes in 1003, had so far recovered its position, as to receive, in 1147, a charter of incorporation. Lynn, the dwelling-place of many wealthy Jewish families, had much trade with the cities of Germany and northern France ; and Lincoln — made accessible to foreign vessels by means of a great canal, connecting the Trent and the Witham, which had been constructed by Henry the First's orders in 1121 — was now becoming one of the most extensive seats of commerce in England. York had been so much devastated by war at the time of the Conquest, and by many dreadful fires in later years, that its trade had been seriously impaired. It was still, however, visited by manv vessels from Germany and Iceland, while Grimsbv was a in the Ticelfth Century. 15 favourite resort of merchants from Norway, Scotland, the Orkneys, and the "Western Isles, and Whitby and Hartlepool were prosperous marts, and Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a new and stately town built on the site of the ancient village of Monk- cestre, had already a large trade in coals with many parts of Europe, as well as the more southern towns of England. Berwick, the frequent cause of contention, during the middle ages, between the northern and southern kingdoms, was at this time the chief port of Scotland, one of its citizens, a man of Danish origin, named Cnut, being so wealthy that when a vessel belonging to him, with his wife on board, was seized by a piratical earl of Orkney, he was able to spend a hundred marks in hiring fourteen stout ships, suitably equipped, with which to go out and punish the offender. Other growing towns of Scotland were Perth, Leith, Stirling, Lanark, and Dumbarton. Edinburgh was still an insignificant place, and Glasgow was little more than a village, although incorpo- rated by William the Lion in 1175. In Ireland, the ancient city of Dublin had been so utterly ruined during the English conquest of the country, that Henry the Second, by a charter dated 1172, assigned it to the citizens of Bristol on condition of their colonizing it anew ; and straightway, we are told, it began so to prosper, that it threatened to rival London as a centre of wealth and commerce.* The things brought into England by foreign merchants in the twelfth and following centuries were for the most part articles of luxury — silks and furs, jewels and costly weapons, wines and spices, to gratify the extravagant tastes of gay courtiers and wealthy citizens. The commodities exported were nearly all articles of necessity — corn and flesh, wools raw and wrought, and copper, iron, tin, and lead. In 1194, Richard the First had to prohibit any further exportation of corn during that year, 'that England might not suffer from the want of its abundance ;' and the outgoing of all useful merchandize was far in excess of the returns in kind * Maci-herson, vol. i., pp. 328 334, and Ani>ki;.sox, vol. L passim. 1G Blunders in Commercial Legislation of other useful merchandize. The impolicy of this arrange- ment is apparent. Large quantities of silver and gold came into the country, but they came to enrich the few and encourage in them a wasteful expenditure of money, while the poor were yet further impoverished by a system of trade which kept the home-made necessaries of life at an unreason- ably high price, and brought no others from abroad to supply the deficiency. It must be admitted, however, that this evil was partially rectified by the ever-increasing demand for labour that resulted perforce from the growing demand for English produce. At this period, it is probable, there was remunerative employment for nearly all the population. Of the extent of agricultural and mining labour we can form no estimate ; but we know the wool trade to have been very important. Extensive manufactories were set up in London, Oxford, York, Nottingham, Huntingdon, Lincoln, and Win- chester, while Bedford, Beverley, Hull, Norwich, Northampton, and Gloucester were among the greatest marts for the sale of goods prepared elsewhere. There was a very large importation of woad, used for colouring the woollen fabric, manufactured both for home and for foreign use ; and there was also a very large exportation of sheepskins to be worked by Flemish manufacturers into a finer cloth than the English at that time had the knack of making. All the nations of the world, we are told by Matthew of Westminster, were kept warm by the wool of England, made into cloth by the men of Flanders. It was not long before English politicians perceived the mischief arising from the want of balance between imports and exports. They set themselves to try and remedy the evil in many unwise ways, and in doing so they were not a little aided by the rivalries of the great trading towns, and their united jealousy of foreign merchants. The history of British commerce under the early Plantagenets — lawless Richard, craven John, and feeble Henry — is for the most part a history of impolitic legislation, fiercely ordered, but, under the Plantagenets. 17 from the nature of things, and as a consequence of the steady growth of right principles among the people, almost every- where disobeyed. This is nowhere better shown than in the enactments of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries respecting wool and the woad used in making it into cloth. In a regulation of the City of London, made some time before 1237, it was laid down that all foreign merchants, and especially woad merchants, coming from Normandy and Picardy, if once they entered the Thames, ' might not and should not, according to the ancient customs and franchises of the city and the realm, come to, or anchor at, any other place than London only.' They were forbidden to have any dealings with foreigners or residents of other English towns, ' seeing that all their buying and selling out do take place within the city, and that only with the men of the city.' They were not, however, to stay in London more than forty days, and at the end of that time they were to go back to their own place, or at any rate to retire to some part as distant, and they were to see that within the forty days all their wares were sold or exchanged in open market, — 'as, when the term had expired, and it was his duty to depart, the woad-merchant might not hand over any portion of his stock to his host or to any other person ; nor might he carry aught away with him. Whatever was found in his possession after the time appointed for its disposal was forfeited for ever.'* That ordinance was bad enough ; but it was followed by others yet more severe and impolitic. In 1261, for instance, when Simon de Montfort was in authority, a law was passed forbidding the exportation of wool and the use of any apparel made out of the country, or made in the country with the help of imported materials. Woad was not admitted at all, and, in consequence, the people had for some years to content themselves with rough undyed cloths.f Such a law, however, could not long hold its ground. Jt * Munimeuta GihlhalLv London i 'enx Is, vol. ii., ]>]> 08, G'J. f Maci'hekson, vol. i., p. 412. VOL. I. C 18 Oppressive Commercial Ordinances was almost immediately remitted in favour of dealers with France and Normandy ; and although, through personal and national jealousy, it was nominally enforced against the Flemings, we read that in 1270, at one seizure, the Countess of Flanders, by way of reprisal, forfeited as much as forty thousand marks' worth of English goods waiting to be sold in her dominions.* That act led to fresh legislation " Whereas," runs a proclamation of Henry the Third, issued in 1271, " at the requirement of the merchants, as well of our realm, as of France, Normandy, and other kingdoms, who gave unto us pledges and other surety by corporal oath, that they would not take away wools unto the parts of Flanders or of Hainault, nor sell the same unto the Flemings ; and whereas we have of late for certain understood that the wools, by our leave thus taken out of our realm, are sold to the said Flemings ; we have determined that all wools of our realm, exposed to sale, shall remain within our realm, and shall not on any account be taken unto any parts beyond sea whatsoever." To that unwise mandate was added a wise proviso ; — " that all workers of woollen cloths, male and female, as well of Flanders as of other lands, might safely come into the realm, there to make cloths, and should be quit of toll and of payment of other customs for their work until the end of five years."f A fair number of Flemish immigrants claimed this generous privilege ; but the prohi- bition of all exports to the Continent was as futile as the one issued ten years before, and the many others issued in later years. Other hindrances, however, were offered to the free de- velopment of commerce. From early times it had been the custom of the City of London to allow foreign merchants, bringing their goods for sale, to put up at certain inns. There they might dispose of their wools, provided they sold no smaller quantity than a hundredweight at a time, and * Riley, Chronicles of Old London (London, 18G3), pp. 132 133 t lb.d., pp. Hi, 112. under the Plantagenets. 19 that in the presence of the King's Weigher, by whom a heavy tax, known as pesage, was to be claimed. ' But in process of time,' says a contemporary historian, ' when a great number of stranger merchants, who were extremely rich, had brought into the city a very great quantity of mer- chandize, in order that the amount of such wares might remain unknown to the citizens, they declined to be har- boured in the hostels of the citizens, and built houses in the city, and abode therein by themselves, housing there their goods. And there, too, weighing by balances of their own, they sold their wares contrary to the custom of the city, and even went so far as themselves to weigh by their own balances certain articles which were sold by the hundred- weight, and which ought to be weighed by the King's balance, to the great prejudice of his lordship the King, and to the loss and subtraction of his pesage. And this they did for many years.' * At last the retribution came. In 12Gi), twenty merchants were arrested and committed to the Tower, until a fine of 1000Z. had been paid, and the illegal weights and scales were broken up and burned. In 1275 more severe rules were laid down. " A strange merchant," it was appointed, " may lodge where he pleases, but he shall not sell by retail ; as, for instance, fustic-woods, he shall not sell less than twelve of them ; and if he have pepper, cummin, ginger, alum, brazil-wood, or frankincense, he shall not sell less than twenty-five pounds thereof at a time. If he bring girdles, he shall not sell fewer than a thousand and twelve at a time ; if cloths of silk, wool, or linen, he shall sell them whole ; if he bring wax, he shall not sell less than a quarter. Foreign merchants, also, shall not be allowed to buy dyed cloths while wet, or to make dye, or to do any work that belongs to the citizens. They shall not make a market in the city, nor shall they stay in the city more than forty days."| That last regulation, which we have already seen enforced with * Chronicles of Old London, p. 123. t Munimenta Gildhallx Londoniensis, vol. i. ; Liber Alius, p. xcv. 20 The Charta Mercatoria ; additional .severity upon the woad-merchants, must have pressed very heavily on the foreigners, obliging them often, in dull seasons, to go home again with their vessels full of unsold wares. It was withdrawn in 1303, a memorable year in commercial history, when Edward the First published the famous document known as the Charta Mercatoria, or the Statute de nova Custumd. It was the Mamia Charta of commerce, often abused and violated, yet an abiding bulwark of commercial liberty, the basis of a slowly- developed system of free trade. In it we read that " the merchants of Germany, France, Spain, Por- tugal, Navarre, Lombardy, Florence, Provence, Catalonia, Aquitaine, Toulouse, Flanders, Brabant, and of all other foreign parts, who shall come to traffic in England, shall and may safely come with their merchandize into all cities, towns, and ports, and sell the same, by wholesale only, as well to natives as to foreigners. And the merchandize called merceries," — miscellaneous haberdasheries of all sorts, toys, trinkets, and the like, — " as also spices," — gross-spiceries or groceries, as well as minor spices, — " they may likewise sell by retail. They may also, upon payment of the usual customs, carry beyond sea whatever goods they buy in England, excepting wines, which, being once imported, may not be sent abroad again without the special license of the King. Wherefore all officers, in cities, towns, and fairs, are com- manded to do sure and speedy justice to all foreign mer- chants, according to the law-merchant, or merchant's custom ; observing these three points especially, — first, that on any trial between them and Englishmen, the jury shall be one-half foreigners, where such can be had ; secondly, that a proper person shall be appointed in London, to be judiciary for foreign merchants; thirdly, that there shall be but one weight and measure throughout the land." In consideration of those privileges, certain fixed duties were to be levied from the strangers; two shillings on every tun of wine imported, *<>ver and above the old custom;' forty pence 'over and Hindrances to its Working. 21 above the old custom of half a mark,' that is, ten shillings in all, on every sack of wool exported ; and the like for every parcel of three hundred woolfels ; two shillings on every piece of scarlet cloth dyed in grain ; one shilling and six- pence on every other dyed cloth in which grain was mixed ; and one shilling on every cloth dyed without grain ; and ' over and above the old customs on such kinds of merchan- dize,' an ad valorem duty of threepence a pound on miscel- laneous articles, 'such as silk, sarcenet, lawns, corn, horses, and other live cattle, and many other kinds of merchandize, both imported and exported.' * That was a great boon to the foreign merchants, and therefore, also, to the English traders who were to benefit by their prosperity. But the charter was infringed in every generation ; and in every generation fresh obstacles were thrown in the strangers' way. In 1307, for example, an edict appeared, forbidding them to take either coined money or bullion out of the kingdom, and so forcing them to take English commodities in lieu of the goods they imported ; a rule which could not be enforced, and which only issued in an endless series of costly and vexatious expedients for attaining that impossible end.f Equally costly, vexatious, and futile, was another law, passed in 1328. It ordered that no woollen cloths should be admitted into the country unless they were of a certain size, the measure of all striped cloth being fixed at twenty-eight yards' length and six quarters' breadth, while all coloured cloths were to be just twenty-six yards long and six and a half quarters broad. By this enact- ment, immense expense was incurred in the employment of royal measurers, and the only practical result was the with- holding of many of the best commodities from the English market. Yet it was not repealed until 1353, when 'the great men and commons showed to our lord the King how divers merchants, as well foreigners as denizens, have with- drawn them, and yet do withdraw them, to come with cloths * Anderson, vol. i., p. 2G8. t Ciiaik, vol. i., pp. 130, 131. 22 Grievances of English Merchants into England, to the great damage of the King and all his people, because the King's Measurer surmiseth to merchant strangers that their cloths be not of assize.'* Illustrations enough have been given of the arbitrary and frivolous legislation by which, during these centuries, the foreign merchants seeking trade with England were prevented from doing or getting all the good that ought to have come of their dealings. There was no better treatment for the merchants and tradesmen at home. They also were the sport of unwise laws and arbitrary mandates. We read, for instance, of a fair appointed to be held at Westminster in the spring of 1245, when all the tradesmen of London were com- manded to shut up their shops, and all other fairs were for- bidden throughout England during fifteen days, in order that the whole commerce 6f the country might be confined in one place, and that thus a large amount of toll-money might be collected. During the whole fortnight, however, the weather was bad, so that vast quantities of clothing and provisions were left to rot in the tents, through which the rain pene- trated at once, while the dealers themselves had to stay all day, waiting for customers who never came, with their feet in the mud, and the wind and rain beating against their faces. t In 1249, the same sort of tyranny was again exer- cised. * The citizens of London, at the request of his lord- ship the King, not compelled, yet as though compelled, took their wares to the fair of Westminster, and the citizens of many cities of England, by precept of his lordship the King, also repaired thither with their wares ; all of whom made a stay at that fair of full fifteen days, all the shops and ware- houses of London being in the meantime closed. 'J On this occasion, also, the season was bad, and no buyers came for the damaged goods ; ' but the King did not mind the impre- cations of the people.' § King and Parliament, however, were willing sometimes to * Ciuik, vol. i., pp. 132, 133. + Clcronicles of Old London,??. 15, 16. f Matthew Paris, Historia Major. § Matthew Paris. under the Plantagenets. 23 listen to popular clamour when dictated by unreasonable pre- judice. In times of variable supply, it was most desirable that monied men should buy up different articles of food and clothing when they were most plentiful and likely to be wasted, and store them up for seasons of scarcity. But this custom of warehousing, called forestalling, gave offence to the thoughtless multitude, who held it better to use at once all that came in their way, without any heed of a morrow of scarcity, and who considered the greediness with which some forestallers made wealth out of the necessities of the people a reason for hating the whole class ; and their governors en- dorsed their opinions. " Be it especially commanded," it is written in one of Henry the Third's laws, " that no forestaller be suffered to dwell in any town, he being an oppressor of poor people, and of all the community, an enemy of the whole shire and country, seeing that for his private gains he doth prevent others in buying grain, fish, herring, or any other thing coming to be sold by land or water, oppressing tho poor and deceiving the rich."* But notwithstanding all these hindrances, commerce grew apare. By the Great Charter wrested from King John, it was declared that all native merchants should have protection in going out of England and in coming back to it, as well as while residing in the kingdom or travelling about in it, without any impositions so grievous as to cause the destruction of his trade. The privileges were often infringed in spirit, if not in letter ; yet all through the reigns of Henry the Third and Edward the Second, oppressive by reason of their weakness, and of Edward the First and Edward the Third, often oppressive by reason of their strength, English merchandize made steady progress. Two important steps were gained by the assign- ment of different branches of commerce to different classes of tradesmen, each of whom made it a point of honour as much as possible to extend and improve his own calling, and by the establishment of settled places of trade, in lieu, to a great * Craik, vol. i., p. 134. 24 Old London Markets, extent, of the older practice by which every merchant was a sort of pedlar. Both changes began long before the thirteenth century, but they were not properly effected until some time after its close. Not till long after London had become a chief resort of merchants do they seem to have made it a permanent resi- dence for purposes of trade, and even then their dealings were carried on in publ;c markets long before we hear of shops and warehouses. The London of the Plantagenets — all included, of course, within the city walls, and then with plenty of vacant space in it — was full of markets. There were the Chepe, or West-Chepe, now Cheapside, where bread, cheese, poultry, fruit, hides, onions, garlic, and like articles, were sold by dealers at little wooden stalls, moveable and flexible, and not more than two and a half feet wide, ranged along the roadside ; and the Corn-Hill, where grains and all articles manufactured of wood and iron were harboured at similar stalls ; while Soper's Lane, now Queen Street, Cheapside, was the chief resort of the pepperers or grocers ; and the Poultry, on the other side, was assigned to poulterers who were free- men of the City, Leaden-Hall being the special market for dealers in fowls and game who were not citizens. The Pave- ment at Grace-Church and the Pavement before the Convent of the Minorite Friars at New-Gate were for miscellaneous dealings, and thither merchants of all sorts were allowed to come and take up their temporary stations. The market of Saint Nicholas Flesh Shambles, the precursor of our modern Newgate, and head-quarters of the butchers, and the Stocks- market, on the site of the present Mansion House, both of them furnished with permanent stalls, were appropriated to butchers on flesh days, and fishmongers on fish days. Near to the Stocks-market was the yet more important mart of Wool-Church-Haw, close to Saint Mary Woolchm-ch, the great meeting-place of wool and cloth merchants, -while in any part of the City, with the exception of Corn-Hill, carts might stand loaded with firewood, timber, and charcoal. Shops and fields. 25 Dealers of all sorts, of course, might halt or loiter as they chose in the uninhabited suburbs of the city, in Moor- Fields or on the banks of the Old-Bourne, by Fleet-Ditch or round the Holy- Well, midway in the dismal unfrequented Strand; and far away to the west, in the independent city of West- minster, were a nest of separate markets, the principal being at the gates of old West-Minster-Hall. As London grew, and there was need of places for retail purchase nearer to the more out-of-the-way houses than were the central markets, it became the fashion for tradesmen to throw open the lower front rooms of their dwelling-houses and stock them with articles for sale. In this way shops came into fashion. And, in like manner, to make space for the storage of goods, many upper rooms came to be enlarged by pent-houses, or pro- jections, reaching nearly into the middle of the streets, but with their floors nine feet above the ground, ' so as to allow of people riding beneath.' Much larger than these were the selds or shields, great sheds erected by the more important dealers for their single use, or by several merchants in com- pany, for the sale of separate commodities. One in Friday Street, for instance, was, in Edward the Third's reign, appro- priated to traffic in hides, while another, known as the Win- chester Seld, adjoining the Wool-Church-Haw market, seems to have been the chief place of resort for the merchants of Winchester, Andover, and other towns, and to have been used by them for the stowage and sale of all sorts of goods. Towards the end of the thirteenth century its keeper was one William de W 7 ool-Church-Haw. ' This William,' we are told, 'although bound by oath to abstain from all mal- practices, was in the habit, immediately upon the arrival of a new comer with wares for sale, of shutting the doors of the seld, opening out the goods, and himself, or by his under- lings, making his bargain with the vendor. The price duly arranged, the goods were exposed for sale to the public by the merchant-strangers, as though their own, and not already so l ( i 5 — of which the consequence was that the goods were sold 26 Mediaeval Traders at a higher price than they ought to be, the public having to pay two profits, one to the merchant-stranger, another to William de Wool-Church-Haw. It was an even greater crime, no doubt, in the eyes of the King's officers, that, in defiance of the royal prerogative, this William had had the audacity to set up a tron of his own, for the weighing of wool, and had taken tronage, or toll, for the same.'* As the numbers of markets, shops, and selds increased, the varieties of trades and callings, of course, became likewise more numerous. There were in the fourteenth century almost as many different trades as there are in the nineteenth. We read of barbers, bowyers, spurriers, goldsmiths, silver- smiths, swordsmiths, shoeing smiths, brewers, vintners, millers, bakers, cooks, pie-makers, salt dealers, grocers, fishmongers, butchers, poulterers, furriers, dyers, shoemakers, hatters, tailors, and old clothesmen. But the separation between wholesale and retail dealers, merchants, and tradesmen, was much less clearly marked than now it is ; and those who bought goods in large quantities, either from foreign merchants for sale at home, or from the English producers for exporta- tion, for the most part dealt promiscuously in articles of all sorts. The divisions of commerce, however, were gradually becoming more distinct; and even now there was, at any rate, the one broad separation of trades in articles of food from trades in articles of clothing and manufacturing art. With food the great merchants of England had least to do. Some of them made it part of their business to buy up corn and fish for sale in foreign markets ; but these were the only articles of food exported to any great extent ; and the imports were chiefly managed by merchants from France, Flanders, Spain, Italy, and Germany, who came with shiploads of com- modities, and sold them in London and the other great ports. But by far the greater quantity of the food consumed in Lngland was of course produced in the country, and here * Riley, Munimenta Giblhallx Londoniensis, vol. ii. ; Liber Cudumarum, pp. xxxviii., xlvii., xlviii., 115. and their Frauds. 27 there was comparatively little wholesale trade. Over and over again it Avas sought by Acts of Parliament to regulate and improve these branches of commerce, and to put them into the hands of larger and more respectable merchants ; and not without some reason. Rojnies and swindlers were as plentiful then as now, and it was much more difficult to see and hinder fraud in small than in large dealers. "It is found " — to cite an ordinance of Edward the First, as one out of the hundred illustrations that might be given — "that certain buyers and brokers of corn, buy corn in the City of peasants who bring it for sale, and, on the bargain being made, the buyer gives a penny or a halfpenny by way of earnest, telling the peasants to take the corn to his house, there to be paid for it. And when they come there and think to have their money at once, the buyer says that his wife has gone out and taken with her the key, so that he cannot get at his cashbox ; but that if they will come again presently they shall be paid. And when they come back the buyer is not to be found, or, if he is found, he makes some other excuse to keep the poor men out of their money. Sometimes, while they are waiting, he causes the corn to be wetted " — with the view of making malt — "and when they come and ask for the price agreed upon, they are told to wait till such a day as the buyer shall choose to name, or else to take off a part of the price. If they refuse to do that, they arc told *to take back their corn — a thing that they cannot do, because it is wetted, and not as they sold it. By such bad delays, the poor men lose half their money in expenses before they are settled with ; and therefore it is provided that the person towards whom such knavishness is used, shall make com- plaint to the Mayor, and, if he can prove the wrong done to him, he is to receive double the value of the corn, besides full damages."* Frauds were also practised in other businesses. We read, * Riley, Munimenta Gildhulhe Londuniensis, vol. i., Liber Alius, pp. xcix., c. 28 London LacJcpei;*iy. among much else, of old clothes dubbed and varnished up to be sold as new ; of shoes made of dressed sheepskin, and charged for at the price of tanned ox-leather ; of sacks of coal sold under weight ; and of rings made of common metal, which, being gilt or silvered over, were palmed off as solid gold or silver. The experiences of John Lydgate's hero, London Lackpenny, coming up to try his luck in town, in the fifteenth century, were doubtless true for the preceding as well as for the following generations. He went first to Westminster, but there, instead of getting any help, he was pushed about and robbed of his hood. ' Within this hall neither rich nor yet poor Would do for me aught, although I should die; Which ruing, I gat me out of the door, Where Flemings began on me for to cry, " Master, what will you copen or buy ? Fine felt hats ? or spectacles to read ? Lay down your silver, and here you may speed." * Then into London I did me hie, — Of all the land it beareth the prize. " Hot peascods !" one began to cry ; " Strawberry ripe, and cherries in the rise !" One bade me come near and buy some spice. Pepper and saffron they gan me bede, But for lack of money I might not speed. ' Then to the Cheap I gan me drawen, Where much people I saw for to stand. Oue offered me velvet, silk, and lawn ; Another he taketh me by the hand, " Here is Paris thread, the finest in the laud !" I never was used to such things indeed ; And wanting money, I might not speed. ' Then went I forth by London Stone, And throughout all Cundlewick Street; Drapers much cloth me offered anon. Then comes me one crying, " Hot sheep's feet !" One cried " Mackerel !" — " Iiyster green !" another gan me greet. One bade me buy a hood to cover my head ; Put for want of money I might not be sped. Chaucer s Merchant. 29 ' Then into Cornhill anon I rode, Where there was much stolen gear among. I saw where hung mine owne hood, That I had lost among the throng. To buy my own hood I thought it wrong. I knew it as well as I did my creed, But for lack of money I could not speed. ' Then hied I me to Billingsgate ; And one cried, " Ho ! now go we hence." I prayed a bargeman for God's sake, That he would spare me my expense. " Thou goest not here," quoth he, " under two pence ; I list not yet bestow any alms' deed." Thus lacking money I could not speed.* * And of course there was knavery in large no less than in small transactions. Even Chaucer's ' merchant with the forked beard,' one of the company assembled at the Tabard Inn, at Southwark, to go on the memorable pilgrimage to Canterbury, good fellow though he was, was not altogether to be trusted. ' In motley suit, and high on horse he sat, And on his head a Flandrish beaver hat, His boots were clasped fair and daintily ; His reasons spake he with full gravity.' But there was policy in this gay and grave appearance. • This worthy man full with his wit beset, So that no wight could think he was in debt ; So steadfastly did he his governance. With his bargains and with his chevisance ;' — that is, with his schemes for borrowing money. And there were many merchants who not only borrowed money for speculating purposes, but, like William dc Wool-Church- Haw, secured to themselves more than was their due, by defrauding both the customers and the Exchequer. It was doubtless with the view of protecting themselves against tiie impositions of their fellows, as well as to maintain * Hau.iwixl, The Minor Putins of Lydgate (London. 1810, . pp. 103-107. 39 Tlie Beginning of Guilds. their interests in dealings with foreigners, and to withstand the aggressions of the Crown, that honest merchants and tradesmen clubbed together in guilds and societies. The oldest guilds were very old indeed. They may have o-rown out of the Anglo-Saxon law of frank-pledge, which, di- viding the people into companies of ten householders apiece, made each responsible for the wrong doings of any of its members. ' That they might the better do this, they raised a sum of money amongst themselves, which they put into a common stock, and when one of the pledges had committed an offence and was fled, the other nine made satisfaction out of this stock, by payment of money according to the offence. In the mean time, that they might the better identify each other, as well as ascertain whether any man was absent on unlawful business, they assembled at stated periods at a common table where they ate and drank together.' * Hence arose more organized institutions for mutual protection. In Exeter alone, before the Norman Conquest, there were at least two, the partners in which pledged themselves to pay a certain sum each year for the maintenance of their associations and for the assistance of any of their members who might fall into distress. We know not whether these had anything to do with commerce, or were simply friendly leagues for mutual help and the encouragement of good feeling ; but it is easy to understand how the institutions first formed for merely social ends, quickly acquired a commercial importance. Meeting for friendly intercourse in days when there were no shops and not many markets, the members began by ex- changing or bartering commodities among themselves, and even united for more extended traffic with strangers. Domesday Book records the existence of a gihalla, or guild- hall, at Dover, established for the benefit of merchants, and there were doubtless many such.f * Johnson's Canons, cited by Hekbert, Ttcelve Great Livery Companies of Loudon (London, 1837), vol. i., p. 3. t The Cinque Ports must originally have formed a like as.-.oeiation of The Merchants of the Steel-yard. 31 But the first well-defined instance of a mediaeval guild appears in the history of the Easterlings, or Emperor's men, whom we have seen mentioned as the most privileged of all foreign merchants in the days of Ethelred and the most in- fluential traders with England under the early Plantagenets. From very early times their principal factory in London, known as the Gilhalda Teutonicorum was situated in the Dowgate-ward, Thames Street, with free access to the river on the rear. Here the members of the hanse or guild, — whence the later name of Hanseatic League, — warehoused their goods and found lodging for themselves, down to the reign of Richard the Second. At that time, finding the old quarters too small, they obtained possession of an adjoining house. Soon after, in compliance with a stipulation of the Treaty of Utrecht, a third and yet larger building, known as the Steel-house, was awarded them by Edward the Fourth ; and the three buildings, with perhaps some others, were thereupon surrounded by walls strong enough to resist the jealous attacks of the London 'prentices, and provided with three stout gates. * Within this structure, partitioned into separate cells, the residents lived under strict regulations. They had a common table, and were probably then, as well as subsequently, divided into companies, each having its master and associates. All were obliged to remain single. Any one who married an Englishwoman, or concubined with one, lost his lianse and became disqualified from the burgher- ship of any town connected with it. For the sake of good order, no housekeeper was allowed ; not even a bed-maker was admitted, under a penalty, and, on a repetition of the offence, under a liability to loss of trading privileges. As it was necessary for them to become more united, and able to resist the attacks of the London mob, none of the residents, or at towns for the protection of each other's interests at sea, although their in- corporation by royal charter soon altered the character of the league, and the need of keeping up a naval force for the service of the Crown sub- ordinated trade to war. 32 The Merchants of the Steel-yard least none who belonged to the Council of Commerce, were allowed to sleep out of the Steel-yard. No less strict was the prohibition against communicating to the English any- thing which passed in the establishment. The direction was vested in an alderman and two deputies, or co-assessors, with nine councilmen, who composed together the Chamber of Commerce. These persons assembled every Wednesday, in summer at seven, in winter at eight in the morning, in the Merchants' Hall, to deliberate on the. general affairs, and to decide between contending parties. The residents here were also classed in three divisions. Cologne, Geldern, and the towns on the other side of the Rhine, composed one ; the commonalties of Westphalia, of Berg, of the Netherlands, and of the Lower Rhine, and the Saxons and the Wends composed the second ; and the Prussian, Lithuanian, and Scandinavian towns composed the third. On New Year's Eve all who had a voice in these three bodies assembled together. The Cologne department elected four out of the Westphalian, the Westphalian four out of the Prussian, and the Prussian four out of the Cologne department. The new alderman was then chosen out of this body by ballot, and after that the two divisions, out of which he had not been elected, nominated one co-assessor each out of the other. The three officers elect then took the following oath ; " We promise and swear to keep and maintain the rights and privileges of the English merchants, and all laws and privileges, to the best of our abilities, and to deal justly towards every one, be he rich or poor, in all affairs of com- merce, without malice." ' This oath being taken, and other preliminaries completed, the Council had absolute power for a year, the authority of the alderman in this council being generally undisputed. He it was who decided what ventures should be undertaken and how those under him should employ their talents. All negotiations with foreigners were conducted by him, and it was for him to communicate with the similar hanses in other parts of Europe so as to bring and Rival English Societies. 33 about a common course of action and secure the interests of all.* The Society of the Merchants of the Steelyard, as it came to be called, did not, of course attain that completeness of organization until near the end of Plantagenet rule, after an existence of nearly five hundred years ; but from the first we have the curious spectacle of a systematic association of foreign merchants, living and working, — with a shrewd adap- tation, from monastic rules and the institutions of such mili- tary bodies as the Knights Templars, of what seemed best suited to their wants and duties, — among the yet un- organized and often disunited merchants of England. Their religious devotion to commerce ensured them a large measure of success, large enough to provoke the jealousies and arouse the opposition of those among whom they lived. But the English did not simply oppose. They promptly followed the example here set them, and established among themselves trading guilds and mercantile associations of a kindred nature. At first they were of a very irregular and temporary kind. Thus, under the reign of Henry the Second, we read of ' the guild whereof Odo Vigil was alderman : the guild whereof Hugh Leo was alderman ; the guild of which Gosceline was alderman ; the goldsmiths' guild, Ralph Flack, alder- man ; the butchers' guild, William la Fisk, alderman ; the pepperers' guild, of which Edward was alderman ; the tra- vellers' guild, of which Warner le Tourner was alderman ; the guild of Saint Lawrence, with Ralph de la Barre for alderman ; the guild of Hal i well, whereof Henry, the son of Godrun, was alderman ; and four guilds of the Bridge, under Thomas Coke, alderman. 't Tn some of those were the rude beginnings of the livery companies incorporated by Edward the Third ; many, indeed, had a straggling existence, long before the time of the Plantagcnets. The earliest charters * Werdenhaoex, cited by HeriiEut, Twelve Great Livery Companies, vol. i., pp. 10-15. t Maijox, History of the Exchequer (London, 1700;. vol. i., p. 5G2. \'('\.. I. T 31 The London Guilds of which we have any trace speak of the several societies as being of ancient formation and already wide spread in their influence. So important had they become by the middle of the fourteenth century that Edward the Third found it expe- dient to bring about their re-organization and, by at the same time conferring fresh privileges and appointing more stringent rules, help them really to be, according to their original professions, ' for the greater good and profit of the people.' All the charters conferred by him provided that the guilds should assemble once each year, ' to settle and govern their mysteries,' to ' elect honest, lawful and sufficient men ' to direct the concerns of their trades and ' to correct and amend the same,' besides at least four other meetings in the year for business affairs and friendly intercourse. The members of each guild were bound to seek out dishonest traders of their craft, and punish offenders with the assistance of the Mayor of the City ; and it was specially directed that they were to ' purchase tenements and rents of small annual value, for relieving the poor and infirm and for maintaining a chaplain and a chantry.' They were enjoined to be generous towards one another, and to that end were allowed to have annual festivals, processions, and the like, and to wear regular liveries appointed for each.* The crowning concession made by Edward the Third to the London guilds dates from the last year of his reign, when it was appointed that the election of city dignitaries and officers, and even of members of Parliament, should be transferred from the ward representatives to the trading * Herbert, Twelve Great Livery Companies of London (London, 1837). vol. i., pp. 40-42, &c. To this learned book I am indebted for nearly all the information about the City guilds contained in the ensuing paragraphs. From it (vol. i. f p. 77) the following bill of tare and schedule of expenses, for a feast given to Henry the Fifth in 1419 by the Brewers' Company, are extracted. It comprised three courses: — "First course: Brawn with mustard; cabbages to the pottage ; swan standard ; capons roasted ; great custards. rtcrai,<l caurse : Venison in broth, with white rnottrews ; cony standard ; par- fridges, with cocks roasted; leehe lumburd, duueetts, with little parneux. and Trading Companies. 35 companies — an arrangement, greatly promoting their influ- ence in civic and national government, that lasted with modi- fications down to the time of the Reform Bill in 1832. In 137G there were forty-eight such companies, with an aggre- gate of a hundred and fifty-nine votes. Nine guilds — the grocers', the mercers', the drapers', the fishmongers,' the goldsmiths', the vintners', the tailors', the skinners', and the smiths' — had six votes apiece ; one, the hrewers', had five ; four were assigned to twelve others, the saddlers', the weavers', the tapistry-makers', the chandlers', the fullers', the girdlers', the stainers', the salters', the masons', the iron- mongers', the leatherdressers' and the butchers' ; while two apiece were allowed to the remaining six-and-twenty, the leather-sellers', the founders', the joiners', the curriers', the freemasons', the fleecers', the bakers', the clothmeasurers', the haberdashers', the braziers', the cappers', the pewterers', Third course : Pears in syrop ; great birds with little ones together; fritters, pain puff, with a cold bake-meat." And this was the cost of it : — First, for 2 necks of mutton, 3 breasts, 12 marrowbones, with porterage of a quar- ter of coiils .... 2 Item. For 6 swans ... 15 12 conies ... 3 200 eggs . . . 1 2 gallons of frumety 2 gallons of cream Hire of 2 dozen of earthen pots Hire of 2 dozen of white cups 1 quart of honey, with a new pot .... Divers spicery Porterage of water by the water-bearers 1 pottel of fresh grease . 4 dozen pigeons . 100 pears 5 G 4 8 4 1 4 4 2 4 4 8 4 4 7 For 11 gallons of red wine . 4 gallons of milk . White bread .... Trencher bread . Payn-cakes .... Half a bushel of flour 1 kilderkin of good ale . Item. Given to the minstels. To John Harsby, cook, for him and his servents . To William Devenysshe, pantcr For 1 quart of vinegar . Packthread .... Hire of 2 dozen pewter vessels Salt Washing of the napcry . !. d. 9 2 4 2 (l :•{ <; 7 2 4 1 4 3 4 1 1 1 •) 1 4 Tflnl £2 If. 36 TJic Fishmongers, Skinners, and Goldsmiths. the brewers', the hatters', the homers', the armourers', the cutlers', the spurriers', the plumbers', the wax-chandlers', the barbers', the painters', the tanners', the pouchmakers', the woodsawyers', and the pinners'. Many of these old societies have long ceased to exist, and many more have been added to the list since the time of Edward the Third ; but the great city guilds of those days are the great city guilds still, as they already had been, in a straggling and ill-defined way, for many generations before. Oldest and most influential of all, perhaps, was the Fish- mongers' Company, consisting as it did of the oldest class of traders, although not incorporated until the year 1363 ; and almost as venerable, and for a long time its rival in import- ance, was the society chartered by Edward the Third in 1327, with the quaint title of " The Master and Wardens, Brothers and Sisters, of the Guild or Fraternity of the Skinners of London, to the honour of God and the precious body of our Lord Jesus Christ." In the same year the as famous Com- pany of the Goldsmiths, though in some sort incorporated at least two centuries earlier, received its first extant charter. Therein it was provided that all those who were of the Gold- smiths' Hall should sit in their shops in the high street of Cheap, and that no silver plate or vessel of gold or silver should be sold in London, except in the King's Exchange or in the Cheap, among the goldsmiths, and that publicly, to the end that persons of the said trade might inform them- selves whether the sellers came lawfully by the goods ; seeing that ' of late not only the merchants and strangers brought counterfeit sterling into the nation, and many also of the trade of goldsmiths kept shops in obscure turnings and bye- lanes and streets, but did buy vessels of gold and silver secretly and without inquiry, and, immediately melting them down, did make the metal into plate and sell it to merchants trading beyond sea, that it might be exported, and so they made false work of gold and silver, as bracelets, rings, and other jewels, in which they set glass of divers colours, coun- The Drapers, Grocers, and Mercers. 37 terfeiting right stones, and did put more alloy in the silver than they ought, which they sold to those who had no skill in such things.' In like manner, the Guild of Drapers — originally makers of cloth, not dealers in it, and in early times known as the Company of Weavers — was avowedly incorporated in 1364, because 'it had been shown to the King in Council that persons of divers mysteries in the city of London intermixed themselves with the mystery of drapery, and practised divers deceits and frauds in their use of the said mystery, to the great damage of the King and his people.' Therefore, it was ordered ' that none do use the mystery of drapery in the city of London, or the suburbs of the same, who have not been apprenticed to the said mystery, or in other ways obtained the consent of the said mystery, and that each of the mysteries of the tenterers, tellers and fullers confine themselves to their own mysteries, and in no manner intermix themselves or interfere with the making, buying or selling of any manner of cloth or drapery, on pain of imprisonment and the loss of all cloth by them so made, bought or sold, or its value, to the King's use.' The guild, already modified so far as to include merchants as well as manufacturers, was in 1385 finally separated by charter from the weaving business, thus left in exclusive possession of the Weavers' Company. At the same time it was more deci- sively than theretofore cut off from the Tailors' Guild, famous even in Edward the Third's reign for the enterprise of its members in the importation of woollen cloth. But the Grocers', or the Pepperers', and the Mercers' Com- panies were the most strictly commercial of the London 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. All goods sold in retail that were weighed by the little balance, might pass through their hands ; whereas the pepperers or grocers, from dealing 'SS The Merchants of the Staple especially in spices, fell into the way of selling all commodi- ties of a miscellaneous nature that had to be weighed by the beams or in a wholesale way. In 1376 the name of grocer was officially exchanged for pepperer ; and fifteen years before that we find the members of this craft defined in a parliamentary document as ' those merchants called grocers,' and accused of being 'engrossers of all sorts of wares.' In another parliamentary paper, dated 1453, we find pepper, cloves, mace, cinnamon, ginger, saffron-wood and other spices, drugs, and dyes, currants, almonds, rice, and soap, cotton, silver, tin, and lead, specified as the chief articles in which it was proper for them to deal. Both they and the mercers, with men like Philpot and Whittington to give examples of commercial enterprise, had by that time fairly begun to rank as merchants rather than tradesmen. These and many other trading societies belonged exclu- sively to London ; and nearly every other port of England, from Newcastle to Exeter, and from Bristol to Liverpool, had its own kindred institutions. Apart from all, and yet more notable in the history of commerce, was the old Society of Merchants of the Staple, to which any members of any guild might be admitted, which served in great measure to provide the retail business for each and all of them. ' The Merchants of the Staple were the first and ancientest 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 manufacture ; wool and skins, lead and tin, wool, woolfels or sheepskins, 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 middle man, who bought it of him, and begot a traffic between them and the foreign clothmakers, who, from their being established for sale of their wools in some certain city, commodious for intercourse, were first named Staplers.'* * Gerard Malynes, Tlie Center of the Circle of Commerce (London, 1023',, cited by Anderson, vol. i., p. 23]. cnid their various Trading Places. 39 The English merchants who engaged in this trade soon saw the advantages of uniting themselves into a league for common help and protection, and that seems to have been done some- where near the year 1248, when John, Duke of Brabant, conferred upon them certain privileges on condition of their bringing their choicest wares into his territories.* As early as 1313, they were recognised by the English Crown, if not actually a chartered company. In that year Edward the Second issued a charter to their mayor and council, empowering them to choose a city of Brabant, Flanders, or Artois, to be called the staple, whither all wools and leathers exported from England were to be taken for sale to such foreign dealers as chose to come for them. The idea of establishing a central market for the exchange of commodities had much to com- mend it, and had the Society of Merchants, wisely constituted, been allowed to retain its power, much good might have resulted. But the staple was made a royal plaything, and a means of royal extortion, and, therefore, a source of mischief. In 1326, Antwerp, the port first chosen, was abandoned, and several towns within the kingdom were made staples instead, the chief being Cardiff, the property of Hugh Despencer, and therefore a most desirable place to be enriched by the coming together of merchants from all lands. In 1328, soon after the accession of Edward the Third, all staples were, in a fit of liberality, abolished ; but in 1332 several new ones were appointed. In 1334 all were abolished again, and in 1330 the staple was once more established on the Continent, Brussels, Louvain, and Mechlin, being the favoured cities. In 1341 it was transferred to Bruges, to be removed, in 1348, the year of its coming into the hands of the English, to Calais, when thirty-six London merchants were sent over to profit by the monopoly. In 1353 fourteen English and Irish towns were made staples ; and in 13G3 the staple was restored to Calais. In 1309 several English towns were again favoured, and in 1370 Calais again took their place. * ANHLULbON, Vol. i., J). 21 (J. 40 The Society of Merchant Adventurers. The staple fluctuated between the French town and certain places in England until 1429, when it was fixed at Calais, not to be removed till 1558, and then, with modifications that indicated the dying out of the old restrictive institution, it was transferred to Bruges, and forgotten.* Long before that the old Society of the Merchants of the Staple had been surpassed by the younger Fellowship of the Merchants- Adventurers of England, a company professing to trace its origin to Gilbert a Becket, the father of the Arch- bishop, and incorporated by Henry the Fourth, in 1406, as the Brotherhood of Saint Thomas a Becket. ' This charter,' as we are told by one old historian, ' gave no exclusive powers, but merely the authority to assemble themselves to choose a governor, and, by way of justice, to rectify their own abuses ; and of their privileges all the merchants and mariners of England and Ireland were to be equally partakers, without exception, or any limitation of commodity. When the making of cloth was got to some advance, King Henry the Fourth was willing to encourage every on.e of his subjects, as well as the Company of Merchants of the Staple, to export the same ; and therefore he made the regulations or charter above named, to such merchants who, not being of the Staplers' Society, might yet be willing to transport our cloth to Flanders, Brabant, Holland, and other countries.'! Their chief foreign station was, till 1444, at Middleburg in Zealand. In that year they removed to Antwerp. ' When Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy,' says another old writer, 'first granted privileges to this company in the year 1446, under the name of the English nation, there were but four merchants in the city of Antwerp, and only six vessels, merely for river navigation, they having then no maritime trade ; but in a few years after this company's settling there, the city had a great * Craik, vol. i., pp. 120-124; Anderson, vol. i., pp. 294, 304, 315, 332, 44S; vol. ii., p. 103, 104. t (I erard Malynes, The Center of Hue Circle of Commerce (Loudon, 1023\ p. SO. Italian Merchants in England. 41 number of ships belonging- to it, whereby it was soon much enlarged.'* While Englishmen thus benefited the commercial cities of the Continent, foreign merchants wrought an equal good for the great towns of England. Of the influence of Flemish manufacturers and German merchants we have already seen something. Almost as much good came from the settle- ments or visits of Lombard bankers and Venetian merchants in England. From very early times the English kings, like other European sovereigns, found the advantage of borrowing money from the great money-makers of Italy. In Edward the Second's reign, at any rate, many Lombard bankers had establishments or agencies both in London — whence the name of Lombard Street — and in other trading towns. Long before that date we find notices of the mercantile relations between England and Venice, the greatest commercial city of Europe in the middle ages. Those relations appear to have first assumed importance about the beginning of the fourteenth century. In or near the year 1317, it became the custom for a fleet, known as the Flanders galleys, des- patched by the Venetian Government, to go on an annual trading expedition to the west of Europe. Fleets were also sent each year to other parts, especially to the far east, for the collection of oriental commodities ; but the Flanders expedition monopolised nearly all the west of Europe business. As soon as the ships were ready for embarkation, they were chartered by auction to the merchant princes of Venice, the price generally varying from eighty to a hundred golden ducats for each ship. The captain or commodore was appointed by the Grand Council of the State, but paid by the merchants ; and with him were a notary public, two fifers, two trumpeters, and a number of physicians, besides pilots, scribes, and craftsmen. Each vessel was directed by four young patricians, defended by thirty archers, and manned by a hundred and eighty * John Wheeler, Tre«lise of Commerce (London, 1G01), cited by Ander- son, vol. i., ]). 40G. 42 The Venetian Trading Fleets mariners. The captain and soldiers might have no share in the trade, and, save on special occasions, they might not pass a night on land during the time of the voyage, the merchant-passengers, of course, being free to move about as they liked. The fleet, generally stilting from Venice, pro- ceeded to Capo d'Istria, then on to Corfu, Otranto, Syracuse, Messina. Naples, Majorca, and the ports of Spain and Morocco, touching last of all, before sailing due north, at Lisbon. It halted before Rye, or somewhere in the Downs, and then a part went on to Sluys, Middleburg, or Antwerp, to trade with the great Flemish merchants, while the rest turned in at Sandwich, .Southampton, Saint Catherine's Point, or London, there to spend some time in disposing of their wares, and obtaining others in lieu. All assembled again at Sandwich or Southampton, and so went home, after nearly a twelvemonth's trading voyage. After the wine-fleets of the Flemish and German merchants, which began at least two centuries earlier, and lasted almost as long, these Venetian trading expeditions had the principal share of foreign commerce with England during the middle ages. Only by forming trading associations strong enough to defend their rich cargoes from piracy and fraud were the old merchants able to traffic with distant lands. From the earliest times, however, private traders travelled with their own ships in the wake of the large expeditions, and in due time, by about the middle of the sixteenth century, the great expeditions came to be conducted by private traders of the richer sort, who in their turn helped to protect the smaller merchants, just as Antonio's argosies, ' With portly sail, — Like signiors and rich burghers of the flood, Or, as it were, the pageants of the sea, Did overpeer the petty traHk'kers, That curtsied to them reverence, As they flew by them with their woven wings.' About the cargoes of these Venetian argosies we have and their Cargoes. 43 very precise information. To the home-wrought cloths of silk and bawdekins of gold, damasks, satins, and the like, were added great quantities of raw silk, brought from Persia, Turkey, Sicily, and Greece, cottons from India and Egypt, as well as Oriental spices of all sorts, from ginger, cinnamon, pepper, cloves, and nutmegs, to saffron, camphor, aloes, and rhubarb ; all collected at such great emporiums of mediaeval trade as Aleppo and Damascus, Alexandria and Messina. Besides these, and a few score of miscellaneous articles, more or less worked up and compounded at Venice, the Flanders fleets took up great quantities of sugar and confections, spun cottons, and raw silk, beads, buttons, and saltpetre, when they halted at Sicily, and brought them for sale in England. London was not so much frequented by the Venetians, as that had been, from time unknown, the head-quarters of the Flemish trade ; but the great merchants of London, Bristol, Exeter, and Winchester, with a goodly number from the more northern marts, such as Lincoln, York, Beverley, and Hull, hurried down to meet them at Sandwich or Southampton, and there compete for possession of the best and cheapest of their commodities. Much of the traffic was by barter, and before the Venetian galleys went home they were well laden with supplies of English woolfels and raw wools, broad cloths and kersies, ox-hides and calf-skins, block tin and pewter. Wool raw and wrought was the staple, and of the latter a great many varieties are specified. There were white bastards, or broad cloths proper, and narrow bastard cloths ; Essex cloths, a yard wide and fourteen yards long, and tawny cloths of the same size, but inferior in quality ; fine medleys, and broad medleys ; white kersies, and kersies red, grey, green, and cream-coloured ; Winchester cloths, good and broad, in pieces twenty-six yards long, and Suffolk cloths, good-looking, but of bad wool, measuring nearly forty yards the piece : friezes for night wear, of loose texture, and white friezes of better quality, each piece measuring a dozen ells, and there- fore called "dozens/' sold at from eighteen to tvvo-and-thirty 44 Disputes between English shillings a piece ; besides a variety of other cloths from London, Witney, and Norwich. From the history of this Venetian trade during the two centuries in which it flourished, many noteworthy episodes might be extracted. As early as 13 19, we hear of a Vene- tian merchantman, sent to sell sugars in London and obtain a return car^o of wool at Boston, bein«- attacked off the Wash by English pirates, and losing its captain in the struggle. But the English were not always aggressors. In 1323, was issued 'a proclamation from the Mayor and corporation of Southampton, narrating an affray between the patrons, mer- chants, masters, and mariners of five Venetian galleys on one side, and the inhabitants of Southampton on the other, accom- panied with loss of life and property, whereby the Venetians were liable to proceedings for felony and homicide,' these proceedings, however, being stayed by ' the grant of a re- lease, in consideration of a certain sum of money received from the merchants of Venice.' These Italians seem to have been rather a wild set of men. 'As the oarsmen of the galleys, when in London and Bruges,' we read in a decree of the Venetian Senate, dated 1408, ' pledge themselves in the taverns beyond the amount of pay received by them in those ports, so that the masters are compelled to go round the taverns and redeem the men at very great trouble and ex- pense, it is ordered that all who shall be pledged in taverns to the amount of four ducats each, above the pay received by them, shall be redeemed by the masters, and the money paid on their behalf be placed to their debit,' any further debt being liable to a fine of fifty per cent on the amount. In 1408 arose serious differences between the Venetian traders and the Custom-house officers of London. 'The officers seized and forfeited certain Venetian merchandize which had not paid the duties, and also forfeited the galleys, the men, and the goods belonging to merchants who had not transgressed. Moreover,' adds the Italian document, ' the customers of London proceeded to a second art, mere harsh and Venetian 3ferchants. 45 and not usually enforced against any nation. Certain bales which had been packed, sealed, and noted regularly for the payment of duties, were opened, and the merchants com- pelled to present to the Customs a fresh note of the quantity and value of the cloths and things contained in the bales that had already paid duty. Thereupon the merchants put a higher value on the bales than at first ; but the customers still demanded more, and, alleging they had been deceived about these bales, declared the men, galleys, and merchan- dize to be forfeited. The captain, on hearing of this unjust act, went with the masters to the King's residence to com- plain. They could not obtain audience, but were told that if they wished the galleys not to unload completely, and to avoid the forfeit of everything, they must give 3,000Z. ster- ling, besides the other forfeitures, and that, if they would own to having erred and throw themselves on the King's mercy, his Majesty would grant them pardon.' Under such compulsion the error was partially admitted, and the fine was accordingly commuted to 1,333/. tis. Sd. But when the mer- chants returned to Venice, a special envoy was despatched to Henry the Fourth, to remonstrate and obtain a reversal of the punishment, and though in that he failed, he appears to have made arrangements for more considerate treatment of his countrymen in future. If the London officials were harsh in their treatment of these foreigners, however, there seems to have been some excuse for their conduct. The Venetian merchants settled in London brought on themselves frequent rebuke from the Senate, both for their neglect of duty to their own country and for their unjustifiable liabilities to the Englishmen with whom they dealt. Perhaps the jealousies thus aroused, and found specially prevalent during the time of our ruinous civil wars, were not diminished by the frequent presents of great value sent from Venice to the English sovereigns as bribes for the favourable treatment of its traders. Under the year 1-15G, we read of ' an extraordinary insult perpetrated by the 46 Decline of the Venetian Fleets citizens of London on Italian merchants/ without being informed as to its nature, and the records of the same year show several complaints as to the arrogance and inefficiency of the 'council of twelve,' who constituted the factory of Venetian merchants in London. In 1457, this London factory was abandoned. ' By reason of the insult perpetrated by certain artificers and shopkeepers of London against the Italian nation, to the risk of their lives and property, the Italian merchants— namely, the Venetians, Genoese, Floren- tines, and Lucchese — met together, and, after consultation, determined it was necessary to quit London for personal safety and security of their property ; and for their asylum they selected Winchester.' That exodus was brief; but it was clear the Italian traders were losing their ground not only in London, but all over England. Under the Plantagenets our commerce was too feeble to stand by itself. We gladly accepted aid from foreigners, and welcomed both Venetian merchants and Lombard bankers. But by the time of the Tudors we could be more independent, and so, with pardon- able ingratitude, — seeing that if the strangers had conferred benefit on us, they had done very much more for their own benefit, — we were ready to turn them out. This was some- times attempted with considerable roughness. In October, 1488, the Flanders galleys were coming, as usual, into Southampton, when, ' sailing off Saint Helen's, they were fallen in with by three English ships, which wanted them to strike sail. The galleys, seeing they were English, drew nigh, saying they were friends. Then the English endeavoured to take the galleys ; but the master blew his whistle and beat to quarters, and the crews killed eighteen of the English, the ships pursuing the galleys into Southampton Harbour. The captain wrote about the injury done him to the King, who sent the Bishop of Winchester to say he was not to fear, as those who had been killed must bear their own loss.' Henry the Seventh was too just a king to countenance piracv even when it issued in the death of several of his own subjects through the Growth of Native Trade. 47 in British waters. All through his reign he was very friendly to the Venetians, and encouraged their trading visits. But the days of the Flanders galleys were coming to an end. In the spring of 1532, they quitted Southampton never to return.* A hundred years before that, English patriots, rightly or wrongly, had begun to make great complaints of the unequal trade carried on in our towns by the Venetian merchants. They brought us trumpery commodities, it was alleged, and took in exchange the goods most important of all to our national welfare. * The great galleys of Venice and Florence Be well laden with things of complacence, All spicery and all grocers' ware, With sweet wines, and all manner of chaffare, With apes and japes and monkeys oddly tailed, Trifles and nicknacks that little have availed, And other things with which they catch the eye, Which things be not enduring that we buy. Thus do these galleys, for this fancy ware And eating ware, bear hence our best chaffare, Cloth, wool, and tin, which as I said before, Out of this land we worst of all can spare. Also they bear the gold out of this land, And suck the thrift away out of our hand, As the wasp sucketh honey from the bee ; So minish they all our commodity.' That extract is from The Libel of English Policy, a curious metrical treatise on commerce and its influence on the well- being of the nation, written near the end of 1436. It describes very minutely, though not always quite fairly, the details of English trade with the nations of Europe. The great part of this foreign trade was still carried on in Flanders or through Flemish intervention. With Italy, Por- tugal, and some other countries, the dealings were generally * Rawdon Bkowx, Culendvr of Slate Papers and Manuscripts relating to English Affairs, existing in the Archives and Collections of Venice, and other Libraries of Northern Italy (London, 18G4), vol. i., ]>assim. All the fore- going accounts of Venetian trade are drawn from this wonderful storehouse 'if new facts concerning English history. 48 Beginning of a new Period direct : but all our commerce with Spain, Prussia, and even Scotland, was more or less through Flemish agency. ' Flanders is the staple, men tell me, To fill the nations of Christianity.' But why ? Not surely because Flanders was rich in pro- ducts of its own. * For all that groweth in Flanders, green and seed, May not for one month find them meat and bread.' Why should we enrich another country by our traffic when it might all be applied to the welfare of our own people ? 4 What reason is it that we should go to host * In other countries, and in this English coast They should not so, but have more liberty Than we ourselves ? ' We ruin ourselves for the benefit of our enemies, ex- claimed the indignant writer, seeing to what a miserable state the dignity of England was being brought by the strife of parties and the kingly misrule that soon found full expres- sion in fifty years of civil war. And why should we ? We have command of the narrow sea between England and France, the high road from all the southern to all the northern marts of Europe. Let us only use our position, and all the nations will be held in order, with England in the place of honour and chief welfare. • Keep then the sea about in special Which is to England as a ronde wall ; As though England were likened to a city And the wall round about it were the sea. Keep then the sea, the wall of our England, And then is England kept by God's own hand ; That is, for any thing that is without, England would be at ease, without a doubt. And thus should every land, one with another, Be joined in peace, as brother with his brother; And live together, free from war, in unity, With no rancour, in very chanty, In rest and peace, to Christc's great pleasancc Withoute strife, debate or variance.' f * i. e. ' Take up our lodgings.' t Wkight, Political I'onns and Songs relating to English History ndon, IN<;i , vol. ii„ pp. l;VJ-2()3. in the History of Commerce. 49 Something has been done towards the bringing about of that end during the four centuries and more that have passed since those rough lines were written ; and the bio- graphical history of our country shows that the great mer- chants of England have helped it on as much as those other patriots who have built their fame with deeds of warlike bravery and skilful statesmanship. VOL. 50 CHAPTER II. THE DE LA TOLES OF HULL. [1311—1366.] Earliest among the famous English merchants of old times ahout whom we possess information enough for a proper understanding of their lives and works are the De la Poles of Hull. Coming over with William the Conqueror, the family was one of the first to take firm root in our country, to shake off its Norman prejudices, and to become thoroughly English. Under the early Plantagenets it had sturdy branches in Middlesex, Oxford, and Devon. Some of its members, going with Edward the First into Wales, fought so well that they received a large grant of land in Montgomery by way of recompense ; and a few years before that, in 1264, we find reference to a William de la Pole, of Middlesex, ' lately decorated with the belt of knighthood,' who is ordered by Henry the Third to receive 101. ' to purchase a house for his use, as our gift'* But it was not by fighting and courtier- ship alone that they became rich and famous, or won honour for their country. In 1371 — a year before Edward's acces- sion to the throne — we find it recorded that one William de la Pole and some other merchants of Totnes received a sum of 12/. 9s. bid. for cloths sold by them to the Crown at the fair * Nai'IEU, Swynoombe and Ewclme (Oxford, 1858;, p. 256 ; — a work lo which I am much indebted for the diligent collection of notes relative to De la Pole history contained in its appendix. The First De la Poles. 51 of Saint Giles, at Winchester ; and later in the same year it appears that the wools of a William de la Pole, a merchant of Rouen, were detained at Ipswich to prevent their being taken to Flanders; while in 1272 we hear of a Nicholas de la Pole, as one of the authorized collectors and receivers of the goods of the Flemish merchants in England.* Whatever his relation to this Nicholas, or to the knight whom Henry honoured with the present of a horse, it can hardly be doubted that William, the merchant of Rouen, was also the merchant of Totnes, belonging to both places, because he travelled from one to the other, after the fashion of all the great dealers of his day, buying and selling goods. This same man, also, we may with safety assume to have been the William de la Pole who settled, a few years later, in the newly-founded town of Ravensrod, at the south-eastern extremity of York- shire. Ravensrod has a curious history. Originally an island, formed by the gradual heaping-up of sand and stones, and separated from the mainland by more than a mile of sea, it was for a long time used only by the fishermen of those parts for drying their nets. By degrees, however, a narrow shingly road, the breadth of a bow-shot, was cast up through the joint action of the sea on the east and the Humber on the western side ; and as soon as this road was completed, the inhabitants of the neighbouring towns, especially of Ravenser, an ancient port and manor on the Humber, determined to make use of it. In this way was established the town of Odd, called Odd juxta Ravenser, and after a while, Ravenser- odd, or Ravensrod. Its convenience as a landing-place, and, at first, its freedom from civic interference, soon made it an important mart. In 1276, the people of Grimsby, on the other side of the river, complained to the King of the great damage it was doing to their trade, their loss in a year being more than 100/. Of this complaint no notice appears to have been taken by the Crown. But the people of Ravens- * Nai'IEr, p. 257. 52 The Be la Poles in Ravensrod. rod used it in an unlooked-for way. With unseemly zeal they made it a practice— so, at least, said their enemies— to go out in boats, intercept the trading-ships and fishing- smacks, and urge them to stop at Ravensrod, asserting, for instance, that while trade was there so brisk that 40s. could easily be obtained for a last of herrings, the people of Grimsby would not be able to pay them half as much. This persecu- tion of the Grimsby-men, however, did not last long, if indeed it was ever really practised. In 1361 a great flood came and compelled all the inhabitants to take refuge in the neighbouring villages. Spurn Head lighthouse now marks the site of Ravensrod, while of Ravenser there remains no trace at all.* At least fifty years before the time of the flood, while it was still ' a great flourishing town, abounding with merchants and all sorts of goods and traffic,' William de la Pole had done with Ravensrod. Having lived and prospered in it for a little while, he died in or before 1311, leaving a widow, Elena, who soon married again — her second husband being John Rotenheryng, a famous merchant of Hull — and three sons, Richard, William, and John, who carried on their father's work with notable success. Of the youngest of these three we know very little indeed, and about the private history of the other two we also have but scanty information. But their public life and work are very clearly decipherable from the scattered records of the time. Richard was born somewhere near the year 1280, William a few years later. They learnt to be adventurous of life and money amid the stirring incidents of Edward the First's reign, often, doubtless, crossing with their father, in the largest and swiftest of his ships, to the coast towns of Flanders and France, there to meet the richest merchants in the world, and treat with them for the selling of English wool and leather, and the taking in exchange of foreign wine and timber. Those short journeys were full of peril. At any * Fkost, Early Xulices of Hull 'IIull, 1827), pp. 54-5G. Their Removal to Hull. 53 moment there was the risk of being met unawares by French or Scottish pirates, and then — unless they were strono- enough to defeat their assailants, or fleet enough to be saved by flight — they could expect no pleasantcr fate than that their goods should be seized, the common sailors left hanging to the mast-head, and the masters only kept alive on account of the money that would be paid for their release. These things were bad enough under the vigorous rule of Edward the First. They were much worse during the disastrous period of Edward the Second's misgovernment. And it was, doubt- less, for greater security that the brothers De la Pole, soon after their father's death, removed a distance of twenty miles, to the fortified and rapidly growing town of Hull. They could not have settled in a better place. In the history of Hull are well illustrated the growth and character of an English commercial town during the middle ages. Owned by the monks of Meaux, who themselves made shrewd tradesmen, and who knew well how to encourage trade in others, it had been a thriving mart since 1198, and doubtless from a much earlier date, under the name of Wyke- upon-Hull. The Exchequer Rolls of the thirteenth century show that its exports, consisting chiefly of wool, rough sheep- skins, and prepared leather, were in some years half as great as those of London, and greater than those of any other port, save Boston and Southampton, Lynn and .Lincoln. At the beginning of the century they comprised nearly one-fourteenth of the entire English trade in those articles;* by its close they had trebled in value, and become about a seventh of the * The total receipts on account of customs for wool, woolfcls, and leather, between the 20th July, 1203, and the 30th November, 1205, amounted to 4U5SL 7s. 3£ri, seven-eighths of which were contributed as follows : — £. s. d. London .... 830 12 10 Boston .... 780 15 3 Southampton . . 712 3 7^ Lincoln .... 050 12 2 Lvim . . . . 051 11 11 Hull .... 344 14 4^ York . . Grimsby . Yarmouth Barton . Soarboroug Whitby . £. s. d. 175 8 10 91 15 Oh 54 15 11 22 ■ih 4 54 Early History of Hull. whole.* All through that time, and long- after — especially at the seasons during which proclamations against the send- ing of wool to Flanders made the trade very difficult in towns nearer to the seat of government, — Hull was a favourite resort of the great wool-merchants, about one-third of them being foreigners, especially Flemings and Florentines. Perhaps it was at the suggestion of these Italian merchants, great money- lenders as well, and therefore men very useful to the King, that Edward took it under his especial protection. Be that as it may, Edward bought it of the monks of Meaux in 1293, and ordered that it should be henceforth known as the King's town — whence Kingston-upon-Hull.t Henceforth it prospered more than ever. In 1297 it was made the sole port for the exportation of Yorkshire wools ; and in 1298, though York was made a staple town, it was with the provision that all its goods should pass through Hull.J Each year it received some fresh benefit either from the Crown or from private individuals. The nave and chancel of the noble Church of Holy Trinity had been set up in 1270, and its splendid tower was now in course of erection, to be completed in 1312. The Augustine monastery was on the right, at the meeting of Monk-gate and Market-place, and not far from the junction of the Hull with the Humber ; the Carmelite Friary was to the left, near the modern White Friars-gate, on the road to Beverley ; while the Chapel of Saint Mary, near the top of Market-place, was already built or building. The wall, now for the most part replaced by the western docks and basins, had been begun, and the harbour was finished, in 1299. In 1300 a mint was put up by royal ordinance. John Rotenheryng, stepfather of the brothers De la Pole, was, in 1302, appointed, with others, 'to make, * In 1780 the customs paid at Hull were 108GZ. 10s. M. ; at Boston, 3599Z. Is. 6d; in London, only 1G02Z. IGs. G%d. ; in Southampton, 1019Z. 10s.; and in Newcastle, 32'M. 3s. dd. ; the sum levied in all England being 8411/. 19s. 11 $d. t Fhost, pp. 95-114. X Malkdx, History of the Exchequer, vol. i., p. 782. Ricliard de la Pole. 55 direct, and appoint ways, causeways, and roads from Hull to the neighbouring towns ;' and in 1316 was established a ferry for conveying passengers, cattle, and goods, across the Humber to Barton, a more ancient town than Hull, and now rapidly increasing in importance.* Under this year, 1310', we first hear of the De la Poles as living in Hull, although it is probable they had come thither five or six years before. It was a year of such famine that wheat rose in price from 6s. 8d. to 40s. a quarter, and salt was sold at the same rate. Richard de la Pole, therefore, serving both himself and his neighbours, obtained a safe- conduct from the King, empowering him to visit foreign parts and bring home corn and other things, security being given that he would not sell them to the Scots, t How he fared in the business we are not told ; but from this time he seems to have steadily gained influence at Court. In 1320 he was made under-butler to the port of Hull, his duty being to aid the King's chief butler in making suitable provision for the royal household. In 1322 he obtained, jointly with another, the more important office of collector of customs for the town ; and the appointment was renewed in 1325, and again in 13274 In April of the latter year, two months after the accession of Edward the Third, he was promoted to the honourable and lucrative post of chief butler to the King. From this time he can have lived little in his house in Hull Street. He travelled with the Court, which for some time was moving about between York and Lincoln ; but he was still a merchant by profession, the business being managed by his younger brother William. In July of this same year, 1327, we find William lending to the King 4,000£ with which to fit out his first expedition against the Scots ; and this was followed by a loan of 2,000^. in August, and another of 1,200Z. in December, made in the names of both brothers. These * Frost, pp. 40-4G; Tickell, History of JIvll (Hull, 1798), p. 14. f Napieh, p. 2G2. I Fkost, p. 31. 50 Court Services of the debts, heavy even for a King to incur, were to be liquidated out of the duties on wools, woolfels, and leather, collected in Hull ; and in the meanwhile, as security, William de la Pole was to have possession of that part of the royal seal known as the cocket. Under every subsequent year we find refer- ences to similar transactions. In the summer of 1335, for instance, the brothers engaged to pay 201. a day for the expenses of the royal household, besides supplying as much wine as was needed, and received authority to pay themselves from the proceeds of the customs of London, Ipswich, Yar- mouth, Boston, Hull, Hartlepool, and Newcastle.* It became the rule for royalty to pawn its credit with such wealthy subjects as the De la Poles. For this, however, the young King was not responsible. ' Lady Isabel the Queen, and Sir Roger Mortimer,' says a contemporary historian, ' assumed unto themselves royal power over many of the great men of England and of Wales, and retained the treasures of the land in their own hands, and kept the King wholly in subjection to themselves ; so much so that Sir Henry, Earl of Lancaster, who was made chief guardian of the King at the beginning, by common consent of all the realm, could not approach him or counsel him. Wherefore Sir Henry was greatly moved against the Queen and Sir Roger Mortimer, with a view of redressing this evil, that so the King might be able to live upon his own, without making extortionate levies to the impoverishment of the people.' f The De la Poles, at any rate, suffered no impoverishment from the levies of the Crown. Doing their business honestly, and, as we have every reason to believe, taking no more from either King or people than was their due, they were advancing every year in wealth and influence. The favour shown to them perforce by King Edward while he was in the hands of his wicked mother and her more wicked lover was only augmented after he had taken the government upon himself. At the close of 1328, Richard received from him a * Napier, pp. 2(J3-2G5. f Chronicles of Old London, p. 2G9. Brothers De la Pole. 57 Christmas present of 1,000 marks, in consideration of the good services done by him ; and in the following May he was made gauger of all the wine sold throughout the king- dom, his brother William being appointed his deputy. In 1330, Edward is recorded to have cancelled another appoint- ment, that of valet of the King's bedchamber — 'a situation always filled by gentlemen ' — given to him against his will ; but there were special reasons for this, and as next year William is referred to as the King's * beloved valet and mer- chant,' we need not see in the transaction any disfavour to the De la Poles.* There is everything to show their grow- ing importance. In 1331, Richard seems to have found it necessary to go and live in London, there to attend to his Court duties. He therefore abandoned his connection with commerce, and left the whole business in his brother's hands. The document by which their partnership of twenty years' standing was dis- solved, is almost worth quoting in full. It is dated July the 12th, 1331. In it they first of all pardon one another for all manner of injuries done, said, or thought by one against the other, from the time of their coming into the world down to the writing of the deed; then they release one another from all contracts and mutual duties ever existing between them, save those arising out of their brotherhood, * which lasts and will last as long as God permits :' and after that they proceed to parcel out the wealth accumulated by them. Unfortu- nately, we are not told the value of the whole property, or the proportion in which it was divided. It is likely that, as William had for some years had the whole of the responsi- bility of managing the business, a large proportion fell to him. The portion allotted to Richard amounted to 3,874/. 17s., certainly a smaller sum, even when account is taken of the relative value of money, than we might have looked for, con- sidering the largeness of some of the transactions already referred to. Of this, 645/. was reckoned to be the value of * Napiek, p. 204. 58 Richard de la Pole. his house, while 100/. was set down for the cattle and live- stock in his farms, 30/. for his horses, and 80/. for his silver goods : making a total of 855/. Besides this, he was to collect some outstanding debts to the extent of 148/. os. Sd. ; 2,205/. was to be paid to him in cash ; and for his share in the rents and possessions held jointly by the two brothers in counties of York and Lincoln, AVilliam was to pay him either 100 marks a year, as rent, or 2,000 marks once for all.* Richard lived fourteen years after his retirement from business. He retained his butlcrship until 1338, going over to Ireland in 1334, there to deposit certain wines of the King's until they were needed for use. In 1335 he was made a justice in eyre for Yorkshire, and in 1336 we read that he received a reward of 250 marks ' for the expensive labours he had maintained in expediting certain affairs of the King's.' He is described as a citizen of London in 1337, when he received a grant of the vill of Basingstoke ; and in London he died on the last day of July, or the first day of August, 1345, leaving to his heirs, besides other property, houses in Gracechurch Street, Lombard Street, and Cornhill, and assigning a large sum of money to the clergy of Saint Edmund's, Gracechurch Street, and Saint Michael's, Cornhill, for distribution to the poor. At the time of his deatb he is said to have been debtor to the Crown to the extent of 2,576/. 12s., a third of which was obtained from the merchants of Prussia, being an outstanding debt of theirs to Richard de la Pole, and the remainder was remitted by the King in consideration of his long and faithful services to the State, t In the meanwhile, AVilliam was rising to the highest honours proper to a merchant prince. In the autumn of 1332, as King Edward was proceeding northwards to begin his Scottish wars in earnest, ' he himself,' as we read in a manuscript history of Hull, ' with several of his nobles and attendants following after, came to this town to take a view and prospect thereof, and both he and they were most splen- * Frost, Appendix, pp. 39, 40. f Napier, pp. 2G4, 265. William de la Pole. 59 didly and nobly entertained by William de la Pole.'* In token of his liking for the town and its citizens, he transferred the local government from the hands of a Bailiff to those of a Mayor, nominating William de la Pole as the first to fill the post. For eight years from this time the great merchant was repeatedly employed on duties half commercial and half political. In April, 1333, he spent, on the King's account, 40£ in fitting out the good ship Trinity of Hull, with men and munition, for going to fight against the Scots. In June, he was sent on a special mission to reprove the Earl of Flanders on account of the aid given to the Scots by his mariners; and in May, 1335, he was sent again on a like errand. In this year, moreover, besides being chosen Mayor, he was appointed supervisor of all the collectors of customs on the east coast of England, from Hull as far down as Lynn. In July, we notice that he received from King Edward an acknowledgment for 330^. spent in buying sixty hogsheads of wine and six hundred quarters of salt ; and in November, for services described in the King's warrant as * agreeable and useful to us, in happily expediting certain affairs that specially concern us, yet not without undergoing great and extensive labours,' he received a gift of 500 marks. In the following May another present was made to him of half that value, and in August we learn that he fitted out and sent to Gascony, Flanders, and other parts, two of his ships, the Bloom, and the Saint Mary, ' on the King's business as well as his own,' for which letters of safe conduct were issued. In the same month he received the King's acknowledgment for a debt of 3,02 11. ; and in the following November a pardon was made out in his favour, releasing him from penalty for not having already taken arms against the Scots, according to the King's proclamation, and excusing him from service for the next three years. f In this year's campaign, however, * Dr. La Tin-Mr, MS. JJistory of Hull (British Museum, Lansdowne MSS., No 890, S0I\ fi.l. 12. t Nahlk, pp. 27'-!, l27o. 60 William de la Pole the most peaceful man might have joined with impunity. ' At that time,' says the chronicler, * the King made another expedition into Scotland, hecause the people there would keep no peace, but would always be at war. And so the King passed through the land ; but the Scots always took to flight, so that no encounter could then take place. "Where- fore the King was very angry, and all his people returned into England.'* But Edward was not on this account less earnest in his preparations for war. In January, 1337, he commissioned William de la Pole to build a stout galley, for which forty picked oak-trees were to be sent to him from a priory in Not- tinghamshire, and in May the merchant was sent to scour the counties of York and Lincoln, in search of fit sailors to man the same.f All over England, throughout this year, people were busy building new ships, and repairing old ones, in readiness for a work only half talked about as yet This was the attempted subjugation of France to the Crown of England, an enterprise which modern students of history are learning to see in its true light, but which no Englishman living at the time could be expected to regard with anything but favour. William de la Pole, at any rate, was not tardy in support- ing the scheme. On the 3rd of January, 1338, by which time the arrangements were tolerably complete, we find a special duty assigned to him. He was empowered to arrest and cause to be arrested in Hull and elsewhere as many ships as he thought needful for the carriage of corn, cloth, and other articles, which it was to be his business to purchase and provide for the King's use, and to convey them to Aqui- taine, 'for the maintenance of the King's faithful people there ;' in other words, he was to undertake the feeding and clothing of the army to be taken to France and aug- mented there by Edward. It was doubtless in aid of this work that he was soon after authorized to use certain houses * Chronicles of QUI London, p. 271. f Natili; p. 274 with the Army in France. 61 in Conyng (now Coney) Street, York, and in reward for his doing of it, as well as in payment for some money which he had lent, that an important grant of land was made to him in the following November. Some time before this he had quitted England in pursuance of his commission. On the 4th of August he was appointed Mayor of the staple at Antwerp, King Edward having gone thither a fortnight before ; and in Antwerp and its neighbourhood he lived in state for at least a year and a half. During most of this time he was in the pay of the Crown. For the period between the 16th of August, 1338, and the 16th of November, 1339, with the exception of forty-seven days, during which he was absent on private business, he received a salary of 8s. a day from the Exchequer, while for the whole time were paid 4s. a day for one knight, and 2s. a day each for thirty-four men-at-arms in attendance upon him.* These eighteen months form the most memorable portion of his life. In February and March, 1339, we find him em- ployed, with some other commissioners, in strange and deli- cate business, lie had to treat with the Archbishop of Treves for the repayment of 50,000 golden florins, which, with other moneys, had been lent to the King, and for which ' the hereditary and most beautiful crown of our lord the King and the realm of England,' had been pledged ; which means, doubtless, that he had to pay the money himself, f In a hundred other ways, as it seems, he was at this time serving his King,| and Edward's appreciation of the service * NxriEn, pp. 274, 2S0. t Rymer, Focdera, 4 th cd. (London, 1821), vol. ii., pp. 1073, 1074. t This curious promissory note, given by Edward the Third to William dc la Pole, is worth preserving :— " Rex omnibus adquos, etc. Noveritis nos, per niiinus delicti clerici nostri Williclmi de Northwcll, custodis gar- derobnc nostrac, recipisse de dilcclo mcrcatore nostro Willielmo de la Pole, ex causa, mutui undecim milia libr.irum, tain, videlicet, pro cxpensis hospiti nostri, quantus expeditione arduorum negotiorum nostrorum in partibus cismnrinis ; quam quidem summam cidem Willielmo de la Pole, in festo Purifieationis bcata) Marias proximo futuro, absque dilatione alte- rioris, solvere proinittimus bona tide. In enjus, etc. Teste Hegc apnd Aidwcrn, xiv. die Novembris." — Rymei?, vol. ii., p. 10G5. C2 Special Favours granted to is shown in five notable documents, all issued from Antwerp, on the 15th of May, in this same year. In one, William de la Pole and his brother Richard are released from all annual payment on account of the manor of Myton-upon-Hull, granted to them some years before, at a rental of 10/. 3s. a year ; and in another, he and his other brother John, on account of their liberal dealing towards the State, are freed from all actions or demands of any sort that may be brought against them ; whence it appears that his younger brother, at any rate, was with him at this time.* The third document is very curious indeed, giving us one of the very few glimpses that we can get of our merchant's private life, and serving to show him a man of rare and far- seeing kindness in his domestic relations. " In consideration," it is written in the King's name, " of the great and reasonable supply which our beloved merchant, William de la Pole, has often made to us, and especially after our late passage over the sea, and also of the praiseworthy attendance bestowed by him upon us, we, at the earnest request of the same William, grant and give license, for ourself and our heirs, to Kather- ine, wife of the same William, that she, after his death, may marry whomsoever she wishes, so long as he be one of the King's subjects, without let or hindrance."! It is not every day that we find a husband filled with such unselfish love for his wife that he makes earnest request that she may have facilities for contracting a second marriage in case of his early death. It is less strange that William de la Pole should have made provision for the suitable settlement of his daughters. That the children, however, of a merchant, and, as the phrase goes, an altogether self-made man, should have a Kino-, and as proud a King as Edward the Third, for their guardian, is as strange as anything else. Yet so it was. In the fourth of the documents issued on this I.jth of May, Edward granted to his friend's eldest daughter, Katherine, " the first suitable * Napier, p. 277. f Ibid., p. 27G. William dc la Pole. 63 marriage of some heir male, whose lands and tenements did not exceed the value of 5007.,' a very large sum in those days ; to Blanche, the second, the next chance of like value ; and to Margaret the youngest, the one after that ; with a proviso that, ' if either of them should come to marriageable age before such marriages fell to the Crown, and had been accepted for themselves,' 1,000 marks should be paid in lieu to each of the unmarried ones.* The last of the five papers refers to William de la Pole himself, and shows why all the others were written. ' Con- sidering- in what manner his beloved merchant, William de la Pole, was worn out in his service, and fatigued with labours and various troubles, and therefore willing to have regard to his welfare and repose,' the King released him from attendance at assizes, juries, and the like, as well as from service in the capacity of Mayor, Sheriff, or other agent of the Crown, against his will. It was also promised 4 that this our present expedition being ended, in which we have perceived the service of the said William to have been ex- ceedingly advantageous to us, he be not against his will sent anywhere, on this or the other side of the sea, for the prose- cution of our business, or that of our heirs, and that he be not burthened with any office or labours to be undertaken for us ; but that henceforth he may thoroughly enjoy the comforts of his home, as shall be agreeable to himself, with- out molestation or any manner of annoyance being offered to him in any way by us or our heirs or our officers.' f These favours were great, greater perhaps than any mer- chant earlier than William de la Pole had ever received ; but they were certainly not more than he deserved. On the 30th of June, 133 ( J, the King acknowledged his debt to him to the extent of 76,1 80Z., in addition, as it seems, to 46,3897. 195. !()},(/., supplied in instalments during this and the pre- vious year.t This was an immense sum, representing not much less than a million of money, according to its present * Natiek, p. 27G. t Ibid. t Ibid., p. 277. 64 Edward the Third's Gratitude value ; but it was not more than was needed. Kins' Edward, we read in the manuscript history of Hull already cited, 'was reduced to such a strait for want of timely supplies of money out of England, that he was forced to send for William de la Pole, who was then at Antwerp, managing and carrying on his merchandize and affairs, and to borrow many thousand pounds of gold of him ; who did not only most freely supply him with all he had and could borrow and procure, but also mortgaged his own real estate to supply his further needs and necessities ; which w r as a most noble, worthy, and glo- rious mark of his love, fidelity, and loyalty to his prince, and of the greatness of his generous soul.' * Edward was not ungrateful. On the 27th of September he issued a charter almost unique in the history of commerce. Kings have often been sorely troubled for want of money ; but in no other instance, surely, have they so honestly and gra- ciously proclaimed to all the world the greatness of their need and the greatness of their debt to the men who helped them through it. " Know," it is written, " that our faith- ful and well-beloved subject, William de la Pole, presently after our coming to the parts on this side of the sea, hearing and understanding that our affairs, for which we took our journey, were for want of money very dangerously deferred, and being sensible of our wants, came in person unto us, and to us and our followers hath made and procured to be made such a supply of money that by his means our honour and the-honour of our followers — thanks be to God ! — hath been preserved, which otherwise had been exposed to great danger. And afterwards the said William, continuing our supply with exceeding bounty, hath undertaken the pay- ment of great sums for us to divers persons, for which he hath engaged himself by bonds and obligations, and if he had not done so, and intrusted his bounty and goodwill thus, not only unto us, but also unto our confederates and subjects with us in ]>rabant, we could not by any means have been * l)i: i.a Tkymi:, f„I. 12. to William de la Pole. G.~) supplied, but must necessarily, with a great deal of reproach, have ruined our journey and designs. And by his means being assisted and supplied, we got to Ilainault, near the marches of France, but could go no further, our moneys there again failing us. And when it was held for certain that our journey was altogether in vain, and our affairs utterly ruined, the said William having still a care to relieve our extreme necessity, engaged himself and his whole estate, procured for us a great sum of money, and delivered us again out of exceeding great danger."* In further recompense for these services, Edward, in the same day, made the merchant a knight banneret — ' nominally so, not really, because he could not do that, Sir William having never done any great thing or achieve- ment in war to have the banner for the same flourishing over his head, which was the old essential way of making one ' — f and also Chief Baron of the Exchequer ; and, to show that these honours were not conferred, as was too common with the needy sovereigns of the middle ages, as a means of extortion, he excused him from payment of even the ordinary patent fees. He gave him some houses in Lombard Street, London ; he authorized him to receive all the issues of the realm and all subsidies granted to the Crown, and apply them in relief of his own claims until the whole were paid off; and in the following February he sent him home to England with all show of favour.:}: But it was certainly not, according to the King's pledge, ' to enjoy the comforts of his home without molestation or any manner of annoyance.' In his new capacity of Chief Baron of the Exchequer, he was expected, along with his fellow-officers, to furnish as much more money as was needed for the conduct of the war in France. And here he proved stubborn. He had mortgaged all his own pro- perty in Edward's behalf, but he could not mortgage the strength and honour of England. To the King's repeated * Dr. la IY.yme, f'ol. 13. t Ibith. fol. 12. J Xamek, pp. 27!», 2>"J. VOL. I. r 6T> Sir William de la Pole in Disgrace. requests for money, 'these false traitors,' as the courtier- historian terms Sir William dc la Pole and his associates, ' sent him letters to the effect that the collection of the tenths of England, which had been granted to him, could not be made, nor could the number of the sacks of wool throughout all the realm be raised ; and that they did not dare to act more rigorously through fear of war, and lest the people might choose rather to rise against them than give them any more ; also, that the collection of such moneys as they had received did not suffice for the wages or for the fees of the servants and officers of the King, nor yet to clear off the debts which he himself owed for the expenses of his house- hold, to the payment of which they had been assigned by command of the King himself.' * Thereat King Edward was not a little angry. In November he came over to England, and, seizing the offenders, summarily put them under arrest. Sir William de la Pole was sent to the Castle of Devizes, and the others to similar places of confinement. t How they were treated, or how long they were detained, is not recorded ; but the circumstance at best affords a curious illustration of the lawlessness and injustice which the most chivalrous of kings could show with impunity towards the most honest and honourable of his subjects. For many years there was a marked coldness and harsh- ness in Edward's treatment of De la Pole. Many of the favours conferred upon him were withdrawn, and repayment of the money lent by him in Edward's time of sorest need was tardily and grudgingly made. At last, however, the King came to a better mind. In 1346 we find him restoring to his ' faithful merchant ' certain manors of his that had been appropriated to the royal use, and making restitution for the wrongful tenure ; and under the year 1354 we meet with a singular document to the effect that 'Sir William de la Pole, having, in the fullest possible manner, remitted and quirted claim to the King for all the debts on account of J ( Liunh\ts <>/ Old London, p. 282. f llx'd., n. 2S-1. His Good Works in Hull. 61 moneys lent to him,' was, in return, pardoned for all actions and demands of the Crown registered against him, as well as 'for all felonies, homicides, robberies, and the like, which he or his attorneys might have committed, contrary to the peace of the realm.' Moreover, ' because the aforesaid William was said to be impotent, and of great age, and not able personally to labour in prosecuting and defending pleas,' he was allowed to appear, whenever it was necessary for him to present himself, by attorney.* At this time he was about seventy years old, and certainly he had done enough to make him wish for rest. For some years past he seems to have been living quietly, though not idly, in Hull. ' Being put into so great a capacity of doing good,' says the local historian, ' he did mightily encourage and improve this town, by many new charters, privileges, immunities, and freedoms, that he got and obtained for it. And having lived in these great honours about twelve or fifteen years, feared and beloved of every one, and having with comfort and joy seen his two sons arising, and almost even risen, to the greatest honours in England, he then determined, out of thanks and gratitude to God for His so many and great favours bestowed upon him, to found, build, and endow a most stately monastery ; but before that he had half finished the same he died.' t His original purpose, as we learn from his son's statement, had been to found a hos- pital, and with this intent he obtained a charter from .Edward the Third ; then he resolved to make it a House for Minoress Nuns of the Order of Saint Clare ; but this determination in turn gave place to another, which issued in the erection of the Carthusian Priory, still in part existing as the Charter- house. The work, amply provided for in his will, was con- tinued by his son and heir ; while outside of it was also put up the building known as the Maison Dieu, for the housing and maintenance of thirteen poor old men and thirteen poor old women. | * NAriEK, pp. 2S1, 2S3. f D^ la Pbyme, fol. 13. J FnosT, pp. SI, *.*■. 68 Death of Sir William de la Pole. He died at Hull on the 22nd of June 136G. His widow- lived, on until the 28th of January, 1382, without making use of her license to marry again.* Both were buried in Trinity Church, Hull, where a monument, adorned with their effigies, still exists.t Through a century and a half the name of De la Pole was conspicuous in English history. More famous, but less fame- worthy, than the great merchant prince, were some of his descendants. His eldest son Michael, contemporary with Chaucer, began life as a courtier, and became an especial favourite with Richard the Second, who made him Chancellor of England in 1383, and Earl of Suffolk in 1384. Justly impeached before the Commons, however, for his evil deeds, he was in 1385 deprived of office, rank, and property, and forced to flee for safety into France, where he died in 1391. To his son Michael, a year or two before the deposition of Richard, were restored the peerage and the possessions of his father, and he held his honours with dignity until his death in September, 1415. His son, also named Michael, Earl of Suffolk for a month, was slain at Agincourt, in October of the same year, to be succeeded by a younger son, William, who, from being fourth Earl, became the first Duke of Suffolk. He conducted the siege of Orleans against Joan of Arc, and became the favourite of Margaret of Anjou, Lord Chancellor, Lord High Admiral, and virtually king of Eng- land, until at last he was hunted down as a traitor and * Napier, p. 285 ; Testamenta Eboracensia (Surtecs Society, 1836), pp. 7G, 77, 119. t Gough, Sepulchral Monuments (London, 179G), vol. i., p. 122. ' He is bare-headed, reclining his head on two cushions, habited as a mer- chant, in an outer cloak or mantle, buttoned close at the neck with a Btanding cape, and buttons down to the sides. His coat has six buttons on the breast, and the sleeves are buttoned and reach to his wrists. At his breast hangs a dagger or whittle. At his feet is a lion. She seems to wear the mitred head-dress, falling down in plaits at the side of her face ; her close gown buttoned on the waist, and also the sleeves, which reach to the wrists. Under this is a petticoat, and over it falls a kind of veil. In her hands she holds a heart. Her head rests on two cushions, ■"»Ui>orted by amrels. At her feet is a dojr." MONUMENT TO bilt WILLIAM 1)E LA l'OLE, IN TIUNITY CHUKCH, HILL. M. I.,fage 68. The Later Be la Poles. 60 beheaded in 1450. John, his son, was reinstated by Edward the Fourth, who gave him his sister in marriage, and died peacefully in 1491. His son and successor, Edmund, how- ever, was beheaded by Henry the Seventh in 1513, for trea- sonable coveting of the Crown of England ; and Anne, his only child, with whom ended the direct line of succession from Sir William de la Pole, merchant of Hull, became a nun.* Many daughters of the house, however, were married * This pedigree is taken chiefly from Napier : — Willi ah de la Pole = Elena =John Rotenheryng. Sie Richard de la Pole, Sir William de la Pole, = Ka the rine John de la Pole. Knt., d. 1345. Knt., d. 1366. I d. 1382. Sir William de la Pole, i Knt, d. 1367. Michael de la Pok, = Katherine, Sir John de la Pole, Knt 1st Earl of Suffolk, d. 5 Sept, 1391. daughter of Sir John Wingfield. Sir Walter de la Pole. Katherine — Constan- tine de Clifton. Blanch = Richard, Lord Scrope. Margaret = . . . Ne- ville. Sir Thomas de la Pole, d. 24 Oct, 1364. Sir Edmund de la Pole, Knt, d. 1419. Sir Walter de la Pole, d. 1434. Edmund de la Pole, d. 1391, s. p. Michael de la 2nd Earl of Suffolk, d. Sept, 1415. Pole, = Katherine, dau. of 1st Earl of Stafford. John de la Pole, Clerk, d. 1415. Sir Thomas = Anne de la Pole, Cheyne. d. Aug. 1420. Anne: : Gerald de L'Isle, d. 1383. I Michael dc la Pole, — Elizabeth, dau. 3rd Earl of Suffolk, d. Oct., 1415. of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk. William de la Pok, = A lice, dau. of 4 th Earl and 1st Duke of Suffolk, d. 1450. Katherine, a Nun, b. 1410. Sir Thomas Chaucer, widow of Thomas Earl of Salisbury. John de la Pole, = Elizabeth of 2nd Duke of I York, sister of Suffolk, d. 1491. Edward VI. John de la Pole, Edmuvd de la Pole, - Earl of Lincoln, d. 1487, s.p. Earl of Suffolk, beheaded, April, 1513. Margaret, dau. of Sir P. Scrope, of Boltou. I Edward de la Pole, Archdeacon of Richmond, d. 1485. Anne, a nun at the Minories, Ixindon, the last of the family lu direct succession. Richard de la Pole, assumed the title of Earl of Suffolk, died at the Battle of Pavia, 1525 ; last heir male of the family. 1 The Later De la Poles. into families of note, and helped, during the times of the Tudors, to encourage the spirit of disaffection which derived most of its strength from the action of Cardinal Reginald Pole and his nephews, descendants of the Countess of Salisbury who married the first Duke of Suffolk. 7L CHAPTER III. RICHARD WHITTINGTON OF LONDON. [13G0— 1423.] Foil full two hundred years before the time of Richard YVhit- tington there were famous and fame-worthy merchants in London, men of mark whose noble deeds won them honour in their own days, and gave them a title, not always respected, to the reverence and gratitude of all later Englishmen. Foremost of all was Henry Fitz-Alwyn, draper, of London Stone, first Mayor of London, and holder of the office for a quarter of a century, from its first establishment under Richard the First in 1189 to the time of his death in 1214.* To him was due the old Assize of Buildings, appointed in the first year of his mayoralty, * for the allaying of the con- tentions that at times arose between neighbours in the city, touching boundaries made, or to be made, between their lands, and other things,' full of sensible regulations for the welfare of the citizens and the improvement of city streets and buildings. ' It should be remembered,' says the old historian, * that in ancient times the greater part of the city was built of wood, and the houses were covered with straw and stubble and the like. Hence it happened that, when a single house had caught fire, the greater part of the city was destroyed, a tiling that took place in the first year of the reign of King >Stephen, when, by reason of a fire that broke out at * Chronicles of Old London, pp. 1, 179. 72 Henry Fitz-Alwt/n and London Bridge, the Church of Saint Paul Mas burnt ; from which spot the conflagration extended, destroying houses and buildings, as far as the Church of Saint Clement Danes. After this many of the citizens, to the best of their ability, to avoid such a peril, built stone houses upon their foundations, covered with thick tiles, and so protected against the fury of the flames ; whence it has often been the case that, when a fire has broken out in the city and has destroyed many buildings, upon reaching such houses, it has been unable to do further mischief, and has there been extinguished : so that, through such a house as this many neighbours' houses have been saved from burning. Hence it is that, in the aforesaid ordinance, it was provided and ordained, in order that the citizens might be encouraged to build with stone, that every one who should have a stone wall upon his own land sixteen feet high, might possess the same freely and meritoriously.'* That was only one of many wise arrangements for the growth of infant London that we owe to its old Mayor and draper. After him was Gregory de Rokesley, the richest gold- smith of his day, and therefore chosen keeper of the King's Exchange in London, and chief assay-master of all the King's mints throughout England ; also a great wool merchant, named at the head of fifty-seven dealers in wool who in 1285 were charged with having caused dissensions between « Henry and Edward, Kings of England, and the Earl of Flanders,' by persistent prosecution of their trade. In the same year he was Mayor of London, having already held the office during six earlier years, from 1275 to 1281.f In 1281, one of the Sheriffs serving under him was William Farendon, a goldsmith too, who had lately bought of one Ralph le Flael or Ralph le Fleure, ' all the aldermanry, with the appurtenances within the city of London and suburbs of the same, between Lud-gate and New-gate, and also without * Chronicles of Old London, pp. 184, 185. f Herbert, vol. ii., p. 20G ; Chronicles of Old Loudon, p. 241. oilier London Merchants. 73 the same gates,' on a cash payment of twenty marks and the promise of ' one clove, or slip of gilliflowcr, at the feast of Easter ' in each year. From him it passed to his son Nicholas Farendon, four times Mayor, in 1308, in 1313, in 1320, and in 1323, who was also chosen Member of Parlia- ment in ] 314, and again in 1320, and who, dying some time after 1363, left his name in the aldermanry that he had helped to make important.* Two other London merchants, contemporary with him, were specially noteworthy. One was Sir John de Pulteney, ancestor of the Pulteneys, Earls of Bath, and a draper by trade, who was Mayor in 1330, 1331, 1333, and 1336, and who, by his foundation of Lawrence Pultney College, and many other acts, won the praise of friends and followers for his piety and wisdom, even more than for his large pos- sessions and his magnificent style of living, f The other was Simon Francis, mercer of Old Jewry and Mayor in 1343 and 1356. In the former year, among other loans, he tendered to King Edward the Third the large sum, for those days, of 800^., and he died, about 1360, possessed of twelve rich manors in London and Middlesex, the chief being Hertford, Acton, Fulham, Harrow, and Finchley.J But of all these great merchants, and of the many others who worked with them for the good of London and of England, the broken records of history tell us little more than the names, with a meagre catalogue of their most philanthropic labours. Even of Sir Richard Whittington we know very little.§ * Strype's Stow, Survey of London, (London, 1720), book ill., p. 121. t Ibid., book i., p. 2G1. | Herheut, vol. ii., pp. 24G, 251. § Little, indeed, was known until the appearance of Tlte Model Merchant of the Middle Ages, exemplified in the Sturij of Whittington and his Cat ; being an attempt to Rescue that interesting Story from the region of Fable, and place it in its Proper Position in the History of this Country, by the Rev. Samuel Lysoxs ''London, 18G0). Without in all eases agreeing with Mr. Lysous respecting the truth of the favourite traditions about Whitting- ton, I have made free use of his researches, and here gladly acknowledge • 4 Wliittingtons Kindred. He was the youngest son of Sir William Whittington, a. descendant of an ancient Warwickshire family, and proprietor of the manors of Pauntley, in Gloucestershire, and Solers Hope, in Hereford, who died in 13G0. The family posses- sions passed to William, the first-born, and, on his early death, to Robert, the second son, High Sheriff of Gloucester in 1402, and again in 1407. This Robert must have been a wealthy man. On one occasion he was riding with his rfon Guy in the neighbourhood of Hereford, when about thirty followers of one Richard Oldcastle, who had doubtless been aggrieved at some of the High Sheriffs proceedings, waylaid and took them prisoners, only to be released on their entering into a bond to pay 6001. by way of ransom, and to take no proceedings against Oldcastle for his lawless conduct. In 1416, however, Robert Whittington obtained authority from Parliament to consider this forced engagement as null and void ; and it is likely that he got back his money and procured the punishment of his enemy.* Richard Whittington seems to have been only a few years old at the time of his father's death ; and he was not yet a man in 1374, when he lost his mother, f Being a younger my large debt to him, both for the help afforded by his volume, and for other information privately given. From his statement of the merchant's pedigree the following is abridged : — William tfc }VMly)iUm,—'M.a\\A, daughter and heiress of of I'iiuutley, Glouces- tershire, d. 12s4. John do Solers, of Solers Hope, Hereford. Sir ^\^iUiamds, W hil yvg tort = Joan Linet. of I'aumley mid Solers Hope, I d. 1332. Sir William ,lc Whityrtqton = Joan, daughter of William Mansel of i'aiintley and .Solers High Sheriff of Gloucester, in 1308; Hope, d. 13U0. widow of Thomas lkrkeley, High Sheriff of Gloucester, in 1333 and 1334. I | " " "" I \Vilhamde m>/t!/nntr.n, Hubert Whityntov . Sir Rich ard WirtTrnwTON = Alice ol launiley. N.k-rs Hope, of I'anntley, Solers Hope, Alderman and Sheriff or dan-liter Jiid Mauntoii, d. 1399, and Staunton; High London, 1393; Mayor of Sir *■}>■ Sheriff of Gloucester in 1397, 1400, and 1419: Hu"h 1102 and 1407 ; d. 1424. M.l'. for London, 1416: l'itz- Jroni him are descended d. 1423, s. i>. warren the \\ hitlinjrtons of Hunswell, still extant. * Lysox*. pp. 90-92. f ibid., p. is. SIR RICHARD WHITTINtiTON, LORD MAYOR OK LONDON. Vul.l , faye 74. The Story of Dick WJdttington. 75 son, he followed the common practice of younger sons in times when there were few other professions to choose from, and became a merchant. Of his early life nothing is re- corded, unless we take as record the unvouched tradition that has been the delight of English children through four hundred years and more. That, when he was seven years old, he ran away from a home where there was nothing to make him happy, that he was a beggar-boy for some years, and then, hearing that the streets of London were paved with gold and silver, that he worked his way thither to be saved from starvation by the good-nature of a merchant of Leaden- hall Street, named Fitz warren, is hardly credible, when we remember his parentage. But we may, if we like, accept as truth, with an adornment of fiction, many of the subsequent passages in the story-books, telling as they do how he was for a long time scullion in the merchant's house, much favoured by Mistress Alice, the merchant's daughter, but much perse- cuted by the ' vile jade of a cook,' whose bidding he had to follow ; — how at length his master, sending a shipful of mer- chandize to Barbary, permitted each one of his servants to venture something, and he, poor fellow, having nothing better, sent a cat which he had bought for a penny and set to destroy the rats and mice that infested his garret ; — how, while the ship was on its voyage, the cook-maid's tyranny so troubled him that he ran away, and had gone as far as Bunhill Fields, when the bells of Bow Church seemed to call to him — • Turn ngain, Whittington, Thrice Lord Mayor of London ;' and how, when, in obedience to this warning, he went back to Leadenhall Street, it was to learn that his cat had been bought by the King of Barbary for treasures worth 100,000Z. ; so that he was all at once almost the richest commoner in England, fit to marry good Mistress Alice, his patron's daughter, to become a famous merchant, and, as Bow bells had promised, thrice Lord Mayor of London, and to live in the City's history as one of its greatest benefactors. 76 Dick Wlattington s Cat. The conclusion of the tale, at any rate, agrees with the proved facts of Whittington's history. That a cat, moreover, had something to do with the making of his fortune is not easily to be denied. The legend is traced back to within a genera- tion of his lifetime, and to authorities that could hardly have been either ignorant or untruthful.* It is not at all unlikely that his first start in money-making was due to the accidental value of the world-famous cat. But the wealth thus derived can only have been a trifling sum, to be used well and greatly augmented by his own industry ; and certainly we do him greatest honour in assuming that he rose to wealth and in- fluence, not from any adventitious circumstance, but through his own talent and application. He must have had some slight patrimony of his own, and much more must have come to him by his marriage with Alice, the daughter of Sir Hugh Fitz warren of Torrington, owner of much property in Devonshire, Gloucestershire, and other counties. We have no solid ground for supposing that Fitzwarren himself ever meddled with trade, but his influence would be of * See the weighty arguments against the views of Mr. Keightley (in his Tales and Popular Fictions : London, 1834), of Mr. Riley (in his Muni- menta GildhaUse Londoniensis : London, 1859), and other sceptics, con- tained in Mr. Lysons' Model Mercliant. " Since the publication of that volume," says Mr. Lysons, in a recent letter to me, " the singular discovery has been made of a sculptured stone, in basso relievo, representing young Whittington, with the cat in his arms, now in my possession, dug up by labourers employed in making the sewerage at Gloucester, on the very spot where the archives of the Gloucester Corporation show that Richard Whit- tington, great nephew of the celebrated Lord Mayor, built his town-house in 14G0. It apparently formed part of a stone mantelpiece, or a tablet over the door of the house. Whichever it may have been, it shows that within thirty-seven years of Dick Whittington's death, and probably less — but certainly as early as tliat — the family not only recognised the account of his connection with a cat, but were proud of it. The Richard Whittington who possessed the house in Gloucester was most probably born before his great uncle's death, and was doubtless well acquainted witli the history of the cat. It is to my mind one of the most remarkable instances of the con- firmation of history I have ever met with. Mr. Albert Way, F.S.A., Mr. Franks, Director of the Society of Antiquaries, and Mr. Richard Westmacott, the sculptor, are unanimous in the opinion that the stone is a sculpture of that date." His 'Prentice Life. 77 use to young Whittington at his beginning of commercial life. But whether rich or poor at starting, Dick Whittington, the mercer's 'prentice, must have passed through some rou^h schooling before he rose to dignity as the greatest London merchant of the middle ages. No one might in those days follow any important trade in London who was not a member of one of the city companies, and for admission to those companies it was necessary to pass through some years of apprenticeship. At the door of Westminster Hall, or in Cheapside or Cornhill, young Whittington must have had to stand, day after day, offering coats, caps, and other articles of haberdashery and the like to passers by, just as, a gene- ration later, Lydgate's London Lackpenny found the trades- men doing. And when the day was over he must have gone home to his master's house, there, whatever his rank, to live in a garret, or worse ; to do, 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 opportunities of amusement. His was rare luck if any gentle Mistress Alice was at hand to tend the wounds of body or of spirit that must often have befallen him in the society of lads like Chaucer's Perkin Reveller : — 'Gaylard" he was, as goldfynch in the schawe, b Broun as a bery, and a prupre felawe, With lokkcs blak, and kempt ful fetously, Daunccn lie cowde wel and prately, d That lie was clcped* Parkyn Ilevcllour. He was as ful of love and paramour As is the honycombc of hony swete ; Wcl were the wenchc that mighte hiin meete. At every briilale would he synge and hoppe ; He loved bet the taverne than the schoppe. For whan tUer cny rydyng was in Checpe, Out of the sehoppe thidcr woldc he lepe, * Licentious. b Grove. c Daintily. d Picttily. c (Vital. 78 'Prentice life in the Days And tyl he hadde al that sight i-seyn, And daunced wel, he nold nat f come ageyn ; And gadred him a mcyne of his sort To hoppe and synge, and make sucli disport. And ther they setten stevene e for to meete, To playen atte dys h in such a strete. For in the toun ne was ther no prcntys That fairer cowdc caste a peyre ' dys TJian Perkyn couthe, k and thereto lie was free Of his dispence, 1 in place of pry vyte. That fand his maystcr wel in his chaffarc; 1 " For often tymc he fond his box ful bare. For such a joly prcntys revelour, That haunteth dys, revel, or paramour, His maister schal it in his schoppc abye," Al have he no part of the mynstralcye. This joly prentys with his maystcr bood p Til he was oute neygh of his prentyshood, Al were he snybbydi bothe erly and late, And som tyme lad r with revel into Newgate. But atte s laste his maystcr him bythought Upon a day, whan he his papyr sought, Of a provcrbe, that saith this same word, " Wel bctte is roten appul out of hord, Than that it rote al the remenauut." So farctli it by a ryotous ser vaunt ; It is ful lasse harm to late him pace,' Than he schende" al the scrvauntes in the place.'* •' Would not. k Could. ° Though he have. " At the. *•" Chose a time. ' Expense. p Abode. ' Let him go. h Play with dice. m Business. i Snubbed. u Spoil. ' Pair [of]. n Sutler for. r Led. * Canterbury Tales, lines 4. o )(j;")-4408. From the old records of the Gold- smiths' Company, this quaint illustration of the state of 'prentice life in London a generation or two after the time of Whittington is cited. ' It is to remember,' we read in an entry dated 1430, 'how that in the begin- ning of April, the third year of King Henry the Sixth, John Hill, citizen and goldsmith of London, had one John Kichard to his apprentice ; the which apprentice, for divers great offences and trespasses that he had done to his master, the same John Hill would have chastised, as reason and the common usage is of apprentices to be chastised of their masters when they trespass. The which apprentice, seeing his master would have chastised him, of very malice and cursedncss, as an obstinate apprentice to his master, went up forthwith on a stair out of the shop, bearing with him a short spear, tl io which he hid in the kitchen, imagining to kill his master; the which spear served to open and shut the windows of the shop. And when of Richard Wldttington. 79 There was rough schooling- for him, too, when he turned his thoughts from his own home life and his own shop or market work to watch the turmoil and excitement through which London and the busy world of which London was centre were just then passing. His city experiences, doubt- less, began a few years before the close of Edward the he had so done, he came down again, and in Iho midst of the stair lie reviled his master full dispiteously and ungodly, and said to him, "Come on now, for it is my time, and I have ordained for thee ; and as I may be saved, thou shalt never come into thy chamber." And his master, con- sidering that time his curscdness, and how he was purposed to kill him, to eschew all manner of peril of lwth sides, fair and soft went out of his house, and ordained so that the same apprentice was anon arrested and brought into the Counter, where he was up to the time that the wardens of the craft of Goldsmiths, appointed to correct the trespasses and defaults done within the siime craft, sent for him to know the matter, and rule it to an end. For the said John Hill had 'plained unto them on his apprentice, and told them all the matter above said. And then the said John Hill was ex- amined, and he 'plained him there openly on his apprentice, rehearsing his untruth and malice, and how he would have killed him. The apprentice was also examined in the same matter, what he said thereto, and how he would excuse him; and the apprentice could not withsay that his master put upon him, but openly 'knowledges! that he bare the said weapon into the kitchen, ready to defend him with against his master as well as he could And then the said wardens, considering the ungratefulness, rebelling, and curscdness of the said apprentice, the which might turn to tho undoing and evil cnsample of many another apprentice against their masters in the same crafts, in others also, unless it were duly remedied, asked the said apprentice, hy the desire and asking of 1 1 is master, whether he would forswear the craft and the town, or would abide still in prison till he had ordained such way and such friendship that might find sufficient surety, and make sufficient amends to his master for the trespass above; said ; and bade him choose which he would do at his own peril. And at the last, by his own will and proper assent, he chose to forswear the craft and the town.' Under the year 1450, again, we read that 'William Hede, goldsmith, being of the livery, as well as his wife, both made complaint to the wardens of their npprentice.William Rowden, who "irreverently, shame- fully, and of frowardness," had beaten his said mistress. His punishment, as ordered by the wardens, was, that he should be •' had into the kitchen of the hall," and there stripped naked, and, by the hands of his master, beaten until such time as he raised blood upon his body, in like wise as he did upon his mistress ; and that he should then be made, upon his knees, to ask grace and pardon of his master and mistress, " naked as he was beaten." — Ueuuert, vol. ii., pp. 1GS-170. SO TJie Troublous Times Third's long reign. They were cloudy years presaging the stormy time of Richard the Second's weak and evil govern- ment. Well might the popular poet of that day compare England to a ship, stately and strong while Edward's rule was vigorous and consistent, but now shattered and rudder- less. ' Sum tymc an Englis schip we had, Nobel hit was and heih of tour ; Thorw al Cliristcndam hit was drad And stif wolde stonde in uch a stour, a And best dorst byde a scharp schour, And other stormes smale and grete, Now is that schip, that bar b the flour, Selden iseye, c and sone forgete. d • Scharpe wawes c that schip has sayled And sayed f al sees at aventur ; For wynts ne wederes never hit fayled, Wil h the roothur miht enduir Though the see were rough, or elles diramuir,' Gode havenes that schip wold geete, k Nou is that schip, I am wel suir, Selde iseye and sone forgete.'* Edward the Third had his country's welfare at heart, and all classes of his people took pride in his government and supported it to the utmost. Parliament freely voted him money for his wars, and gladly accepted the national con- cessions which he made them in return. The great mer- chants of London and other towns readily lent him the wealth they had accumulated, and found substantial recom- pense in the civic charters, guild incorporations and the like that he was willing to grant. But as soon as Edward's hand grew weak with age, and his main stay was lost in the untimely death of the Black Prince, the long stifled evils of excessive love of fighting, pageantry, and courtly gaiety a Any battle. d Forgotten. e Winter. ' Calm. b Bare. c Waves. h While. k Get. c Seen. r Assayed. Political Poems and Songs (London, 1S59 ; , vol. i., p. 21G. of Richard the Second. 81 showed themselves in fearful and unlooked-for strength. Plague, pestilence, and famine fell upon the land with terrible severity, and people, rightly or wrongly, regarded them as Heaven's punishments for the wantonness of thought and action that had possessed all classes of society and found ex- pression in all sorts of evil dealing. The lust of the flesh, and the lust of the eye, and the pride of life, they considered, had filled all men's hearts and guided all men's movements and driven them into every kind of desperate excess and pernicious heresy. Good people and bad people alike, all but the very best and the very worst, shuddered at the doc- trines of teachers so opposed to one another in everything but denunciation of existing vices and their causes as Wyclif and John Ball. Those opinions were not openly expressed, or even clearly held, till near the end of Richard the Second's reign, but they had begun some years before the death of his grand- father, producing the opposition of the citizens of London to the reforming efforts of his uncle John of Gaunt, the friend both of Chaucer and of Wyclif. Therefore it was that on the first intimation of Edward's death a deputation from the city, with John Philipot or Philpot, one of its wealthiest and worthiest merchants then alive, and the greatest member of the Grocers' Company in the middle ages, was sent to the young King Richard at Kennington. " We bring news, most excellent Prince," said Philpot, with a mixture of flattery and blunt truth, " which without great sorrow we cannot rehearse, of the undoubted death of our most invincible King Edward, who hath kept and governed us and this kingdom a long time in quiet peace. And now, therefore, we beseech you, on behalf of the citizens of London, that you will have recommended to your good <:race the city, your chamber, seeing that you are shortly to he our king and that to vour rule we submit ourselves, bowing to your will and pleasure, under your dominion to serve in word and deed. And that we execute further our VOL. I. G b2 John Philpot and his message, your reverence knoweth your city to be unspeakably troubled, for that you have withdrawn your presence from it, although it is known to be so much at your devotion that the citizens are not only ready to spend their goods for your sake, but also to jeopardize their lives. Therefore, we come to your presence to beseech you that it may please you to remain there, both to the comfort of us your citizens and also surely to the solace of yourself. And furthermore we beseech you, most noble prince, that you would vouchsafe to make some good and profitable end of the discord which lately hath risen, through the malice of some and not to the commodity of any, but to the hindrance and discommodity of many, between our citizens and the Duke of Lancaster."* That was on the 22nd of June 1377. Philpot was enter- tained with pleasant words from the councillors of the boy- king and next day some noblemen were sent into the city to try and smooth over the grievances by a six hours' talk. But when Parliament met at Michaelmas and granted the new sovereign a subsidy, forseeing the ill use he would put it to, it prudently stipulated that the money should be placed under the safe keeping of certain trustworthy officers. Ac- cordingly Philpot and William Walworth were appointed to the duty,| thus making a sort of rude beginning of the office of Chancellor of the Exchequer. William Walworth, a great fishmonger and a chief pro- moter of the greatness of the Fishmongers' Company, had been Mayor of London in 1373, and was to hold the place again, with famous consequences, in 1381. But] a much worthier man, * a man of jolly wit and very rich in substance, according to the quaint old chronicler,} was John Philpot. He did many famous things for the relief of his country; chief of all perhaps being his punishment of John Mercer, a * Thom*: Walsingham, Historia Awjlicana (ed. by Riley; London, 18G3), vol. i., p. 329. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 343; Hallam, Middle Ages (London, 1855), vol. iii., p. 59. * Stow, Amials (Loudon, 1G15), p. 2S0. Services to the State. 83 bold merchant of Perth, in 1378, during which year Philpot was mayor of London. Mercer's father had for some time given assistance to the French by harassing the merchant ships of England ; and in 1377, being driven by foul weather on to the Yorkshire coast, he was caught and imprisoned in Scar- borough Castle. Thereupon the son carried on the strife. Collecting a little fleet of Scottish, French, and Spanish ships, he captured several English merchantmen off Scar- borough, slaying their commanders, putting their crews in chains, and appropriating or destroying their cargoes. This mischief must be stopped, and at once, thought John Philpot. Therefore, at his own cost, 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 re-taken the cap- tured vessels, had effectually beaten their impudent captors, and, in his turn, had seized fifteen Spanish ships, laden with wine, that came in his way. On his return from this notable exploit, we are told, * there was great joy made among the people, all men praising the worthy man's bountifulness and love towards the King.' But the peers of England by no means echoed the praise of the commoners. ' First, they lay in wait to do him some displeasure ; and after 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.' He was accordingly summoned before the King's Council and accused of illegal conduct in sroing out to fight the enemy without authority from the Crown. " Know, sir," he said with cutting irony to the Earl of Stafford, 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 colleagues 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 do- minion over other nations, has, through your slothfulness, become exposed to the ravages of the vilest race. Not one of you would lift a hand in her defence. Therefore it was 84 Wat Tylers Rebellion. that I gave up myself and my property for the safety and deliverance of our country." The Earl had naught to answer, adds the writer, a friend of Philpot's, who has told the story.* But the disfavour with which his patriotism was regarded by the greedy hangers-on at Court only encouraged Philpot to fresh exercises in it. When the English army in France was reduced to such a deplorable condition in 1380 that the soldiers had to pawn their armour and surplus clothing, — including the tunics, 'quos vulgo jakkes vocant,' — upwards of a thousand suits in all, he procured their restoration with his own money, besides in other ways giving substantial relief to the expedition.f Next year he was knighted, in company with his friend Walworth, the special services then rendered by them being too great to be overlooked even by ungrateful Richard and his jealous comrades.^ This was the year of Wat Tyler's insurrection ; and the excesses by which the rebels threw contempt upon their reasonable grounds of complaint united all honest men and all friends of order in opposition to their movements. 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 is reported to have exclaimed, when the men of Kent were preparing to take vengeance for that deed, "give help without delay to your afflicted King ; give help to me, your Mayor, encompassed by the self-same dangers ; or, if you do not choose to succour me by any reason of my supposed de- merits^ at any rate, beware how you sacrifice yourKing."j| The answer came in prompt and energetic combination of the citizens by which the rebellion was suppressed. But the pernicious causes of the rebellion were by no * Walsingham, vol. i., pp. 369-371. t Ibid., vol. i., pp. 435, 447. J Stow, Annals, p. 290. § The report had been raised that he resisted Tyler and the insurgents chit -fly because they had just demolished the stews of Southwark, which had been his properly, and :i great source of wealth to him. il Walsingham, vol. i. y>\\ 465, 466. Philpot and Whittington. 8.^ means suppressed. The miseries and vices engendered by Edward the Third's too strong- government, and fostered and brought to light by Richard's weakness, lasted and grew down to the time of Richard's deposition, not then to be very much reduced in power or number.* London, however, even at its worst, was not altogether vicious and miserable. John Philpot, ' the most noble citizen that had ever tra- vailed for the commodity of the whole realm, more than all others of his time,' as the best among his contemporaries considered, died in the summer of 1384 ;f and it must have been, at any rate, not later than that year that Richard Whittington, now a man and a prosperous merchant, began to be famous in the City of London. We are told nothing of any intercourse between the two men ; but Whittington must be regarded as in some sort a a pupil of Philpot, following, as far as might be, in his steps, and surpassing him in all good works. Philpot, by his bold fighting for the right, will illustrate the truth of the old poet's assertion, that * Yef» marchaundes were cherishede to here b spede, We were not lykelye to fayle in ony nede : Yff they bee riche, than c in prosperite' Schal be oure loude, lordes and comonte ;' • If. b Their. c Then. * " Heu ! quia per crebras humus est vitiata tenebras, Viae iter humanum hocus ullus habet sibi planum," exclaimed Gower, in an angry denunciation «of ' the vices of the different orders of society (Political Poems and Songs, vol. i., pp. 356-359), in which he thus spoke of the special vices of the merchants : — " Si mercatorum quaerantur lumina morum, Lux non fulgebit ubi fiaus cum cive manebit. Contegit usurae subtilis forma figurae, Vultum larvatum quem dives habet similatam. Si dolus in villa tua poscit habere sigilla, Vix reddes clarus, bona quae tibi praestat avarus. Et sic majores fallunt quain saepe minores; TJnde dolent tuibae sub murmure plebis in urbe. Sic inter cives emit sine luniine dives, Dumque fidem nescit, lux fracis ab urbe recespit." f Walsinuuam, vol. ii., p. 115 ; Stow, Survey, vol. i., p. 261. SG Wldttington under Richard the Second. but much more plainly was it shown in the later history of 'The sonne Of marchaundy, Richarde of VVhitingdone, Tliat loode-sterr d and chefe chosen floure; What hathe by liym oure England of honoure ! And what profite bathe bene of his richesse, And yet lasteth dayly in worthinesse, That penne and papere may not me suffice Him to describe, so high he was of prise. ' e * We first hear of Whittington in 1393, when he must have been nearly forty years old ; but, as at that time, he was a master mercer, and a member of the Mercer's Guild, with five apprentices working under him, it is evident that he must have been settled in London for, at any rate, some while previously.! In the autumn of 1393 he was elected Sheriff upon the re-establishment of the office, after its tempo- rary withdrawal by the arbitrary King. Richard had called upon the city for a loan of 1,000/. ; and on its refusal, had summoned the Mayor, John Hinde, and other municipal officers into his presence at Nottingham, there to be deposed and ordered into prison. All the city charters, laws, and liberties, had been annulled, and the whole government placed in the hands of a custodian after the King's own heart Philpot being dead, this summary treatment succeeded. After some months of severity the King had relented, as it was said, at the intercession of his Queen ; the fact being that the citizens had consented to buy back their rights for ten times the 1,000/. at first demanded of them. Thereupon there was a reconciliation ; and on the 29th of August, 1393, King Richard proceeded from his palace at Shene into the city, there to be entertained with a rare and very charac- teristic pageant As Whittington took part in this pageant, and learnt d Loadstar. e p r jce * The Libel of English Policy, in Political Poems and Songs, vol. ii., >p. 177, 17S. t Lysons, p. 49. A Pageant he took part in. 87 not a little from it, we shall do well to glance at it in passing. Rich tapestry, choice silks, and cloths of gold adorned the streets, with garlands and festoons of sweet smelling flowers freely mingled with them. Masters, as well as apprentices, for the nonce, matrons, maids, and children thronged the narrow streets almost 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. Presently a procession was formed. The custo- dian appointed by the King led the way ; after him came the four and twenty aldermen, — Whittington among them, — all arrayed in red and white, and they were followed by the several trades, each in its livery.* ' None seeing this com- pany,' says the delighted chronicler, * could doubt that he saw a troop of angels.' He does not tell us whether the King and Queen and their attendant courtiers so regarded it But the two parties when they met in Southwark gave great satisfaction to one another, and the satisfaction was increased by the gracious way in which on London Bridge choice presents of a crown and a palfrey were accepted by Queen Anne, and two chargers richly caparisoned by King Richard. In Chepe there were fountains pouring forth wine, and allegorical appearances of sweet youths with crowns. At the doorway of Saint Paul's there was heavenly music. * Thus described by the rhyming chronicler: — ' Hie argentarius, hie piscarius, secus ilium Mercibus hie deditus, venditor atque meri. Hie apothecarius, pistor, pietor, lathomusque; Hie cultellarius, tonsor, et armifabcr. Hie carpentarius, scissor, sartor, ibi sutor ; Hie pelliparius, fulloque, mango, faber. Hie sunt artifices ibi carniriccs, ibi tector; Hie lorinarius, pannariusque siinul. Ibi vaginator, hie zonarius, ibi textor; Hie candelarius, cerarius pariter. Hie pandoxator, ibi streparius, ibi junitor ; Est ibi pomilio, sic anigerulus hie. Hie cirothecariuri, buisistaque, cau{K>, coquusque : Ars pat<jt ex secta singula qiueque sua.' 88 hhittingtm under Richard the Second. From the summit of Lud Gate angels strewed flowers and perfumes on the royal party ; and at Temple Bar 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, the whole procession hurried on to Westminster, where the King seated himself on his throne. Then the Queen, having thrown herself before him with earnest entreaty for pardon of the city's evil deeds, it was graciously pro- claimed by him ; and the whole business ended with a long discourse, in which the excellent monarch reproved the citizens for their former errors, and besought them never again to vex their King by disobedience to his orders or dis- respectful treatment of his courtiers ; never to give any countenance to the pernicious heresies of new teachers in religion, or swerve in their allegiance to the pure doctrines of the Catholic Church ; never to use fraud, injustice or con- tention among themselves, or to fall short of the high ex- ample they were bound to set as freemen of the noblest city in the world.* That idle show coming after the wrongful assault on the liberties of London must have strengthened Whittington in resistance to the principles of misgovernment adopted by Richard and his directors. Just three weeks after its cele- bration, on the 21st of September, 1393, he was chosen Sheriff. In 1397 a writ was issued in the name of Richard the Second, appointing him to act as Mayor and escheator in the place of Adam Bamme, * who had gone the way of all flesh ;' and in the following year he was elected Mayor in his own right, t But all through the miserable reign of Richard he seems, as far as possible, to have held aloof from political questions and affairs of State. There was no hope of remedying the general condition of England by * Kichardt Maydiston, T)e Concordia inter Regem liic. II. et Civitatem London, in Political Poems and Songs, vol. i., pp. 282-300. t Lysons, p. 50. His Services to Henry the Fourth. 89 any political agitation, while such a King and such coun- sellors were at the head of the nation. Whittington chose the wisest course in applying himself steadily to the promotion of his trade. The mercers' calling was just now gaining much fresh dignity. Retail dealings were falling exclusively into the hands of drapers, haberdashers, and the like, and raw wool was coming to occupy a less important place in mercers' dealings than silks and costly articles. It cannot be doubted that Whittington's zeal and influence greatly con- duced to this. In 1400 we find his name among the list of great merchants and others excused from attendance upon Henry the Fourth in his Scottish wars ;* and henceforth he seems to have been a special favourite with the new and worthier King. In 1402 he received 215Z. 13s. 4d. for ten cloths of gold and other merchandize provided for the intended marriage of Blanche, Henry's eldest daughter, with the King of the Romans ; and in 1406 he furnished pearls and cloth of gold worth 24:81. 10s. Gd. to be used at the wedding of the King's other daughter, Philippa-t In the same year he lent 1,000Z. to King Henry on the security of the subsidies on wool, hides, and woolfels, a transaction exactly similar to the many in which we saw Sir William de la Pole engaged two generations earlier. Two other London merchants, John Norbury and John Hinde, appear at this time to have been richer even than Whittington, as on this occasion they each lent 2,000/. to the King4 Hinde was Mayor of London in 1391, and again in 1404, and his name is several times met with in conjunction with Whittington's. The King's debts were paid in 1410, and in 1411 we find that Whittington was employed to pay 100 marks for expenses incurred on account of the coming of French ambassadors to Dover, and their conveyance thence to the King's presence at Gloucester.^ In 1413 he lent * Lysons, p. G3. f Ibid., p." 87. X Rymeh, Foedera, vol. viii., p. 488. § Lysons, p. 85. 90 Whittington under Henry the Fifth. another sum of l,O0OZ. to Henry the Fourth, the money being returned in a fortnight ;* and it is certain that he often rendered similar service both to this monarch and to his son. For maintaining the siege of Harfleur in 1415 he lent 1001. to Henry the Fifth, to be repaid out of the customs on wool collected in London, Boston, and Hull ;f and another loan of 2000 marks, made in 1416, was discharged two years later. % In this year, 1416, Whittington was elected Member of Parliament for the city of London. § He had been chosen Mayor for the second time in 1406, and in 1419 he was. again appointed to the office. On that last occasion the members of the Mercers' Company, who had good reason to be proud of their representative, * attended the cavalcade with six new banners, eight trumpeters, four pipers, and seven nakerers,'|| nakers being wind instruments of some sort now forgotten, ' that in the battle,' according to Chaucer, * blowen bloody sounds.' It was during this last year of his mayoralty, most pro- bably, that Whittington was knighted. On that occasion, according to a pleasant but very doubtful tradition, he invited the King and Queen to a sumptuous entertainment at Guildhall ; and among the rarities prepared to give splendour to the festival was a marvellous fire of precious and sweet-smelling woods, mixed with cinnamon and other costly spices. While the King was praising the novelty, we are told, Whittington went to a closet and drew thence bonds, to the value of 60,0001, which during the French wars had been issued by the sovereign, and which he had diligently bought up from the various merchants and money- lenders to whom they had been given ; and this whole bundle he threw into the flames as the most expensive fuel of all. "Never had prince such a subject!" Henry exclaimed, as * Lysons, p. 85. f Rymek, vol. ix., p. 311. } Lvsons, p. 85. § Ibid., p. 50. || Ibid., pp. 50, 51. His Charitable Deeds. 91 soon as he understood the generosity of the act. " And never had subject such a prince !" answered Whittington. That story may or may not be true. But of other, wiser, and more honourable acts of liberality done by Whittington we have ample proof " The fervent desire and busy in- tention 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 end of this short life with deeds of mercy and pity, and specially to provide for those miserable persons whom the penury of poverty insulteth, and to whom the power of seeking the necessities of life by art or bodily labour is interdicted."* And this was certainly the rule of his own life. In the year 1400 he obtained leave to rebuild the Church of Saint Michael Paternoster, and found there a College, ' consisting of four fellows, clerks, conducts, and choristers, who were governed by a master, on whom he bestowed the rights and profits of the Church, in addition to his salary of ten marks. To the chaplains he gave eleven marks each, to the first clerk eight, to the second clerk seven and a half, and to the choristers five marks a year each.'f Besides this he built the chapel annexed to Guildhall, and is reported to have made contributions to the adornment of Gloucester Cathedral, besides endowing many other churches. Four hundred years before John Howard appeared as the prisoner's friend, Whittington began to rebuild New- gate 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 Hos- pital, in Smithfield, founded by Rayere in 1102, for the help of sick and lame paupers, and long fallen into decay, was repaired soon after his death, in obedience to the instructions * Dugdale, Monasticon (London, 1830), vol. vi., p. 739. t Malcolm, Londinium Redivivum (London, 1807,, vol. iv., pp. 514, :>15. 1 Lysons, pp. 55, 5G. 92 Whittington' s Good Works. of this * worthy and notable merchant, the which,' according to the testimony of his executors, ' had right liberal and large hands to the needy and poor people.'* In other ways he cared for the neediest among his fellow-men. ' One of the last acts of his life,' says a manuscript authority, * indicating his honesty and public spirit, was his active prosecution of the London brewers for forestalling meat and selling dear ale ; for which interference with their proceedings the brewers were very wroth.'f And as a small but significant illustration of his large-hearted charity, Stow tells us that * there was a water conduit east of the Church of Saint Giles, Cripplegate, which came from Highbury, and that Whittington, the Mayor, caused a bosse [or tap] of water to be made in the church wall,'t the forerunner, by nearly half a millenium, of the modern drinking fountains. Notable evidence of Whittington's ability in a province not much heeded by the majority of merchants, appears in the fact that Henry the Fifth, in 1413, a few months after his accession, appointed him chief supervisor of the rebuilding of the nave in Westminster Abbey.§ Two years later, more- over, in ordering certain alterations in the City of London, the King thought it well to direct that the Mayor should do nothing either in building up or in pulling down without the advice of Whittington. || But the merchant did more for the city than even King Henry could have expected. In his will he provided for the paving and glazing of Guildhall, luxuries at that time almost confined to palaces ;1I and during the last years of his life he was busy about the foundation of the library of the Grey-friars monastery in Newgate Street. 'This noble building,' according to Stow, ' was 129 feet long, 31 feet in breadth, entirely ceiled with wainscot, with 28 wainscot desks, and 8 double settees.' The cost of furnishing * Stow, Survey ; Dugdale, Monasticori, vol. vii., p. 746. t British Museum Library, Cotton MS., Galba, B. 5. X Lysons, p. 52. § Ibid., p. 59. || Ibid., p. 60. % Stow, Survey. His House in Crutched Friars. 93 it with books was 556/. 10s., of which 400Z. was subscribed by Whittington.* Still more important than this was the Guildhall Library, built by Whittington's directions, for the preservation of the civic records. f WHIITIKGTOS'S HOU&E.J For some years before his death, the good merchant appears to have resided in his house — a palace for the times in which * Stow, Survey. f Ibid. X Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ixvi. (179G), p. 545. " It forms three parts of a square," says one who saw it standing ; " but from time and ill-usage its original shape is much altered. Under the windows of the first story are carved, in basso relievo, the arms of the twelve companies of Ixmdon, except one, which is destroyed to make way for a cistern. The wings are sup- jKirtcd by rude carved figures, expressing satyrs, and from its situation near the church it is probable it has been a manor-house. The principal room lias the remains of grandeur. It is about 25 feet long, 15 feet broad, and 10 feet high. The ceiling is elegantly carved in fancied compartments; the wainscot is about G feet high, and carved, over which is a continuation of Saxon arches in basso rdieio, and between each arch is a human figure." 94 Whittingtons Death ne lived — in Crutched Friars. He was zealous to the last in the fulfilment of his civic duties. In September and October, 1422, he attended at Guildhall to take part in the election of Mayor and Sheriffs for the ensuing; year ; but in the winter he sickened, never to recover. A quaint sketch of the time shows him on his death-bed, lying naked, with the exception of a nightcap, as he holds converse with his executors ; two of them — Alderman John Coventry, and John Carpenter, the famous Town Clerk of London, who spent the best ener- gies of his life in continuing and completing the work his master had begun — being on his right ; John White, the priest, and William Grove on his left ; while behind them is the physician, holding a bottle to the light, and twelve bedesmen are collected near the foot of the bed. And so he died, on the 24th of March, 1423, about sixty-three years of age. ' His body was three times buried in his own Church of Saint Michael Paternoster — first by his executors under a fair monument,* then in the reign of Edward the Sixth, the * With this epitaph, according to Stow : — * Ut fragrans nardus Fama fuit iste Richard us Albificans Villain,* Qui juste rexerat ilium, Flos mercatorum, Fundator presbyterorum, Sic et egenorum Testis sit certus eorurn ; Omnibus exemplum, Barathrum vincendo morosum ; Condidit hoc templum, Micliaelis quam speciosum, Recjia spes et pies Divinis res rata turbis I'aupcribus pater, Et major qui fuit urbis : Martius hunc vicit, En annos gens tibi dicet, Finiit ipse dies, Sis sibi Ciuiste quies. Amen.' il Whitin^-town. and three-fold Burial. 95 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 and lap him in lead as before, to bury him the third time, and to place his monu- ment, or the like, over him again.'* But both church and tombstone were destroyed by the Great Fire of 1066' ; and now Sir Richard Whittingtou's only monument is to be found in the records of the city which he so greatly helped by his noble charities, and, as far as we can judge, by his perfect showing of the way in which a merchant prince should live. * Stow, Survey, book iii.. p. 5. 96 CHAPTER IV. THE CANYNGES OF BRISTOL. [13G0— 1475.] From very early times Bristol was one of the foremost marts of English commerce. In the twelfth century, according to William of Malmsbury, ' it was a very celebrated town, in which was a port, the resort of ships coming from Ireland, Norway, and other countries beyond sea, lest a region so blest with native riches should be deprived of the benefits of foreign merchandize ;'* and in later generations there was no diminution of the old seafaring zeal. The zeal, indeed, often showed itself in wild and lawless ways. In 1294, for instance, one Walter Hobbe, a great and greedy merchant of Bristol, seized the ship of a merchant from Holland, and detained its cargo. After much litigation, he was forced to restore the ship and its goods, and to pay the heavy sum of sixty-five pounds for the damage done by him ; ' it being a thing of great danger at those times,' says the old chronicler, ' and such as might occasion a war, to suffer alien merchants, par- ticularly those of Holland and Brabant, to depart without having justice granted to them.'f But, for the most part, the traders of Bristol were as orderly as they were enter- prising. "Considering the many and notable services," runs * Shyer, Memoir/; of Bristol (Bristol, 1821 ";, vol. i. p. 447. t Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 75, 70. TJie Early Trade of Bristol 97 a charter granted by Henry the Fourth soon after the year 1400, " which very many merchants, burgesses of our town of Bristol, have done for us and our famous progenitors in many ways with their ships and voyages, at, their own great charges and expense, and also since many of the said bur- gesses and merchants have been grievously vexed and dis- turbed by the lieutenants and ministers of our Admiralty of England, to their great loss and burthen, we therefore of our own special grace have granted for us and our heirs to the Mayor and commonalty and their heirs, that the said town shall be for ever free from the jurisdiction of the said Admiralty." Yet for a Ion"- time Bristol commerce ran in the old groove, without receiving much influence from the cloth trade introduced in the twelfth century from Flanders. Hull, Boston, and other towns on the eastern coast of England, with Winchester, Totnes, and others in the south, had been growing rich through some generations by means of com- merce in wool and cloth, before Thomas Blanket, a merchant of Bristol, and some of his friends were in 1340 fined by the civic authorities * for having caused various machines for weaving and making woollen cloths to be set up in their own houses, and having hired weavers and other workmen for this purpose.'* The fine was remitted, however, by Edward the Third, and the Bristol people, seeing the value of the innovation, soon learnt to honour its introducers. Thomas Blanket, with his two elder but less famous brothers, carried on a great trade, both with the inland towns and foreign ports, during many years. In 1342 he was made Bailiff of Bristol ; and in 135G he, with some of his fellow-merchants, was summoned to Westminster to advise with the King on matters of importance in the interests of trade. t From this time cloth was the chief article in the commerce of old Bristol. It provided a principal occupation both for the home manufacturers and for the traders with foreign countries * Seyeh, vol. i.. p. 138. t Hid., p. 137. VOL. I. II 98 William Canynge the Elder. until the discovery of America opened up new and yet more abundant sources of wealth. The greatest name in Bristol history prior to the beginning of that American traffic is first met with in the lifetime of Blanket, the cloth-weaver and cloth-dealer. William Can- ynge, or Canning, the elder, was a man of mark and a famous merchant during the second half of the fourteenth century ; but nearly all we know of him is summed up in a string of dates. In 13G1, and again in 1369, he was elected to the office of Bailiff of Bristol ; he was six times Mayor — in 1372, 1373, 1375, 1381, 1385, and 1389 ; and thrice— in 1364, in 1383, and in 1384 — he represented the city in Parliament. He died in 1396, leaving a large amount of money, acquired partly in cloth-making, but principally in foreign trade, to be divided between his children, and much more to be distributed in charity.* His son John was also a merchant of repute. A ship belonging jointly to him and to his father, trading to Calais and Flanders, was seized by some jealous seamen of the North in 1379, and detained at Hartlepool until the culprits had been brought to justice and restitution obtained. He also went the round of civic honours, being Bailiff in 1380, Sheriff in 1382, Member of * Prtce, Memorials of the Canynges' Family, and their Times (Bristol, 1854), pp. 39, 56. To this volume I am very largely indebted for the in- formation contained in this chapter. Mr. Pryce, with great labour and excellent discretion, has brought together a great many trustworthy state- meuts about the Canynges, and separated them from the apocryphal tales made famous in the notable Chatterton forgeries. From his volume the In! lowing pedigree is condensed : — William Canynge— Agues, daughter of John Stokes, d. 139U. | a merchant and benefactor of Bristol. I I | John Canynge, = Joan Wotton. Simon Canynge. Joan = John Milton, Mayor d. 1405. d. 1413. of Bristol. 1433. John, Thomas Canynge, William Oantngf,= Elizabeth .. . Agnes, died in Mayor of London, 1456; 139'Jorl400 — 1474. infancy, from whom are descended the present Cannings. Julian. Margaret. \\ illiam Canynge, = Elizal>etb Vowell, John Canynge; left only one d in his father's lifetime. | of Wells. daughter, who died young. Ihouidj Ganyuge, of W<.li>. Thomas Canynge of London. 9 ( J Parliament in 1384, and Mayor in 131)2 and 1398. He died in 1405, leaving a third of his goods to his wife, a third to his children, and a third to the poor.* His eldest son Thomas settled in London, where he served as Sheriff' in 1450. He took part in the suppression of Jack Cade's rebellion, which happened in that year ; and we have a curious petition addressed to King Henry the Sixth by him and his fellow-sheriff, William Hulyn, asking for a remuner- ation on account of the expense, trouble, and danger they incurred in ' drawing the body of the great traitor upon a hurdle by the streets of the city of London,' and suitably disposing of the same. The traitor's head they had been ordered to set on London Bridge, and of the carcass they were to send one quarter to the constable of Blackheath, another to the Mayor and Bailiffs of Norwich, a third to the Mayor of Salisbury, and a fourth to the Bailiffs of Gloucester ; " the which commandments," they said, " were duly executed to their great charges and costs, and especially for the carriage of the quarters aforesaid, for and because that hardly any persons durst or would take upon them the carriage of the said head and quarters for doubt of their lives."t We are not told whether Thomas Canynge received the recompense he sought ; but he prospered in London. He was elected Member of Parliament for the city in 1451, and chosen Mayor of London in 145G, a year of great rioting, in which he did much towards the preservation of public order. Beginning life as an apprentice of the Grocers' Company, he rose to be Master of the guild in 14CG, and, dying soon after, he left behind him a great name for energy and worth of character.^: But in fame and wealth he was far outdone by his younger brother. This brother, known as William Canynge the younger, * Pryce, pp. GO, Go, and GG. f Ellis, Original Letttrs, Second Series ^London, 1827;, vol. i., pp. JM, 110. ; Pkycl. pp. i i;j-l 15. 100 William Canynge the Younger. to distinguish him from his grandfather, was born in 1399 or 1400.* Of him, as of the other members of his family, very little indeed is recorded, That he was the greatest of Bristol's old merchant princes, however, is abundantly shown. He was about twenty-five when the men of Bristol first, ' by nedle and by stone,' went to Iceland, * As men were wonte of oldc Of Scarborough, unto the costes colde ;'f and it is pretty certain that he himself was one of the earliest and most energetic of the men who tranferred the fish trade to Bristol. Bristol was not long allowed without hindrance to enjoy this source of wealth. The short-sighted policy of the Danish government, submitted to by the weak and mischievous counsellors of Henry the Sixth, led to a treaty by which the merchants of London, Norfolk, Suffolk, Lincoln, York, Hull, Newcastle, and Bristol, were forbidden to trade to Iceland, Finland, and other districts subject to the King of Den- mark ; and in 1450, the treaty was confirmed. J To the rule, however, there was made in the latter year one notable exception. The Danish monarch allowed William Canynge, ' in consideration of the great debt due to the said merchant from his subjects of Iceland and Finmark, to lade certain English ships with merchandize for those prohibited places, and there to take fish and other goods in return.'§ And Canynge's ships were about the largest hitherto known in England. During eight years previous to 1460, we read that he employed on an average eight hundred mariners in the navigation of ten vessels, with an aggregate burthern of 2.930 tons. The names of these ships were the Mary and John, of 900 tons, the Mary Redcliffe of 500, and the Mary Canynge of 400, which cost him in all 4,000 marks, * Fryce, p. 91. t The Libel of English Policy, in Political Poems and Songs, vol. ii. p. 191. X KvMEii, Faidera, vol. xi., p. 264. <s Ibid., vol. xi., 277. His Trade with Iceland and Prussia. 101 worth considerably more than 25,000Z. in our money ; the Mary Bat, and the Katherine of Boston, of 220 tons bur- then apiece ; the Margaret of Tylncy, of 200 tons ; the Katherine, and the Little Nicolas, of 140 each ; and the Galiot, of 50 ; besides one of about 160 tons burthen, which was lost in Iceland.* It was not alone to Iceland that Canynge sent his great ships. In 1449, Henry the Sixth addressed letters of com- mendation to the master-general of Prussia and the magis- trates of Dantzic, inviting their favour towards certain Eng- lish factors established within their jurisdictions, and especially towards William Canynge, ' his beloved and eminent mer- chant of Bristol. 'f In going to these parts, Canynge was opening up a branch of commerce almost new to Englishmen, and treading ground hitherto all but monopolized by the Flemish merchants. In The Libel of English Policy, written in 1436, we read : — ' Now beer and bacon are from Prussia brought Into Flanders, as loved and dearly sought ; Iron, copper, bow-staves, steel, and wax, Boars' hides and badgers', pitch, tar, wood, and flax, And Cologne thread, and fustian, and canvas, And card and buckram, — of old time thus it was. Also the Prussians make their adventure Of silver plate, of wedges good and sure In greate plenty, which they bring and buy Out of Bohemia and of Hungary ; Which is increase full great unto their land, And they be laden, as I understand, With woollen cloths, all manner of colours, By dyers' crafts full diverse, that be ours.'J * Pkyce, p. 127. f Rymer, vol. xi., p. 22G. X Political Poems and Songs, vol. ii., p. 171. In quoting from Chaucer, or any other writer of standing in English literature, I think it right to be scrupulously careful in giving every word and letter as they occur in the best text extant. But in citations like the above, devoid of literary merit, and only useful for their quaint and accurate representation of facts, it eeenis best to modernise the spelling, and substitute intelligible for obsolete words. ] 02 William Canynge the Younger, That is, with dyed cloths exported from England by the Flemings. The favours shown to Canynge by Henry the Sixth were not altogether unselfish. The last and worst of the Lancas- trian kings, more extravagant and not less needy than his predecessors, followed their custom of exacting aid from wealthy subjects and paying them by conferring special pri- vileges connected with trade. There is no record of pay- ments made by Canynge to Henry, but that they were made is hardly to be doubted. "We know that he was a zealous Lancastrian, and served his King by all the means in his power, having been made Bailiff of Bristol in 1431, Sheriff in 1438, and Mayor in 1441 and 1449 * In the latter year — the same year in which he was recommended to the Prussian and Dantzic authorities — he used his influence with the Common Council towards putting the town in a proper state of defence against the threatened attacks of the Yorkist party, rapidly gaining ground in the west of England. In 1450, 15/. were spent in repairing the walls of Bristol, and and 40Z. in the purchase of * certyn gonnes and other stuffe necessarie for the defence of the said town,' being * 20 bote- full of warpestones, all the saltpetre that may be founde in the towne, and a dozen brasyn gonnes, to be made shetying (shooting) pelettes, as great as a Parys ball or less, and every gonne with 4 chambers.'! In 1451, Canynge was sent to Westminster as Member of Parliament for Bristol, % two shillings a day being allowed by the city authorities for his expenses ;§ and while there he took part in some memorable business. The most important was the attainder of Jack Cade, followed by inquiry into the grievances of the people. But the business most interesting, doubtless, to him must have been the voting of 1,000?. to be levied from the more important seaport towns, and used in * Pbyce, pp. 91, 92. f Ibid, p. 101. : Ibid, p. 102. 5j Barrett, HiRtnnj of Bristol (Bristol, 1789), p. 14G. Wheat was sold at that time for threepence a bushel. under Henri/ the Sixth and Edward the Fourth. 103 equipping a fleet ' for the protection of trade.' The money was to be made up of subsidies on all wine imported at 3*. a ton from native merchants, and 6s. a ton from foreigners, and of Is. in the pound on the value of all other merchandize, with the exception of cloth, imported or exported during three years from April, 1451. The proportions in which the 1000/. was to be levied, give us some clue to the relative importance of English trading towns in the middle of the fifteenth cen- tury. London was to contribute 3001. , and Bristol, next in wealth, had to furnish 150Z. Southampton was assessed at 1007., York and Hull at 1007. between them, while another 1007. was to be collected at Norwich and Yarmouth, and another at Ipswich, Colchester, and Maldon. The con- tribution of Lynn was reckoned at .00/., while 507. more was to come from Salisbury, Poole, and Weymouth, 30/. from Boston, and 207. from Newcastle-on-Tyne.* Parliament dissolved in 1455, and, on the summons for a new one, Canynge was at once re-elected by the Bristol men.f In 1450, he served as Mayor for the third time ; and in this year we find him entertaining Margaret of Anjou, when she came to Bristol to try and quicken the interest of the western people in the dying cause of her husband. £ The merchant himself was not slack in his allegiance. " A stately vessel, only for the war," we read under date of 1457, " is made new at Bristol by the Mayor, and the said town, with the west coasts, will do their part."§ These efforts, however, were not successful. Having been again made Mayor in the autumn of 14G0, Canynge had, in the following harvest-time, to entertain the new King, Edward the Fourth, when he came on a visit to those parts. The entertainment was in princely style, and a quaint pageant, illustrating Edward's many virtues and great generosity, war- prepared for his amusement. As the King entered the Temple Gate, some one, representing William the Conqueror, ad- * Uvin;u. t Pryck, p. 10<;. + Ibid. § J'aslon Letters 'Loudon, 1787,, vol. i., p. 140. 104 Ccmynge and other Bristol Merchants ; dressed him in complimentary terms, and then a giant de- livered to him the keys of the city. At Temple Cross, accord- ing to the old narrator, ' there was Saint George on horseback, upon a tent, fighting with a dragon ; and the King and Queen on high in a castle, and his daughter beneath with a lamb ; and at the slaying of the dragon, there was a great melody of anjrels.'* But the King did not come to be amused. His chief business in Bristol was to inquire into the wealth of its various merchants, and see what benevolences could be obtained from them. Canynge, the richest of the number, and doubtless the most zealous supporter among them of the Lancastrian cause, was found to possess the nine ships already named, and had, in consequence, to pay no less a sum than 3000 marks, representing about 2O,UO0Z. of money at its present value, ' for the making of his pcace.'f Unfortunately, we are not told what was the estimated wealth of the other Bristol men, or whit were the benevo- lences exacted from them. But the royal purse must have been tolerably full before Edward left the town. Canynge was only the foremost of a crowd of merchant princes then living in Bristol. One of the chief was Robert Sturmy, Mayor in 1450, and some years older than Canynge. He lived in princely style, we are told, keeping open house for the traders of all lands. His principal dealings were with the Levant. In his younger days he had gone to Jerusalem, taking a hundred and sixty pilgrims thither in his good ship Anne, and finding room also for some rare articles of commerce which would more than pay the cost of the journey. But on his return, he was shipwrecked near Navarino, on the Greek coast, and thirty-seven of his companions were drowned. He himself lived to run other risks. In 1458, we read, * as the fame ran that he had gotten some green pepper and other spices to have set and sown in England, therefore the Genoese waited him upon the sea and spoiled his ship and another ;' but for this offence the Genoese merchants * Pryce, p. ill. t Ibid., p. 125. Robert Sturmy and the Jays. 105 resident in London were arrested and imprisoned until they consented to make good the value of the lost property, esti- mated at 9000 marks.* Other merchants contemporary with Canynge were the Jays, a large and influential family, famous in two generations. One of them was Bailiff of Bristol in 145G, another was Sheriff in 1472. In 1480, we read in a contemporary narrative which it is hard to dis- believe, although there is evidently some mistake in the record, 'a ship of John Jay the younger, of 800 tons, and another, began their voyage from King's-road to the Island of Brazil, to the west of Ireland, ploughing their way through the sea. And Thlyde was the pilot of the ships, the most scientific mariner in all England ; and news came to Bristol that the said ships sailed about the sea during nine months, and did not find the island, but, driven by tempests, they returned to a port on the coast of Ireland, for the repose of themselves and their mariners.'f Other merchants mustered round Canynge, and worked with him in making Bristol rich and famous during- the disastrous period of the Wars of the Roses. The most important act of his last mayoralty, in'14G0, was the forming them into a sort of guild, for mutual protection in regulating the prices of various articles of trade and mutual help in misfortune. Such an association would ill agree with the free- trade principles of modern times ; but by this means Bristol was doubtless saved from much misery under the later Plan- tagenets, and enabled to prosper beyond all precedent under the earlier Tudors. But Canynge, now sixty-seven years old, did not seek to win any of the benefits to be obtained by the guild. After many years of married life, he had become a widower in 1460 ;\ and it is probable that all his children, — if indeed any of them, save the one whose offspring settled and prospered in Wells, passed out of infancy, — were dead before this time. * Lucas, Ssecularia (London, 1802), p. 112. f Ibid., p. 113. X Pkyce, p. 109. 106 Canynges Retirement and Death. He had grown rich, and had now no further need for riches. Much of his wealth he spent in the restoration of the noble church of Saint Mary Rcdcliff, and tradition makes him the founder of many charities.* But he was not willing to let it go into the purse of the King to whose cause he was opposed. It was said that a project of Edward the Fourth's for finding him a second wife, and of course exacting a large sum of money in honour of the marriage, forced him to retire suddenly from the business of this life.f At any rate, for some reason or other, in 1467 ' he gave up the world, and in all haste took orders upon him, and in the year following was made priest, and sang his first mass at our Lady of Redcliff.' He was made Dean of Westbury in or near 1468, and died in November, 1475. % William Canynge is the last of the men who must serve us as representatives of the great body of English merchant princes under the Plantagencts. Others there were, con- spicuous among the multitude of traders in the middle ages, either for their special virtues, or for their special skill in com- merce ; but we know very little of them, certainly too little for the presentment of orderly sketches of their lives. We can learn nothing characteristic of the merchants who made such, towns as Winchester and Yarmouth, Boston and Lincoln, Beverley and Newcastle, famous marts and centres of industry. Even in London history, only a few stray records are found. Nearly all we are told about John Carpenter, Whittington's worthy executor, and Mayor of London in 142 j, for instance, concerns the way in which he fulfilled the trust imposed upon him, and carried on the good work designed by the great merchant for the codification of city laws and regulations, in such books as the Liber Albus, and the Liber Custumarum^ and our information about Geoffrey Bulleyn, mercer, and grandfather of the famous wife of * Purer, p. 137. f Ibid., pp. VM . 1JJS. J Ibid, p. HI. 5 All that in known abrut him is to be found in Mr. Bklwlu's excellent little Life a/ Carpenter [Loudon, 185G). Other Merchants of his Time. 107 Henry the Eighth, is little more than a series of dates, showing how he passed through the usual routine of civic dignities, culminating in his mayoralty of 1453.* Con- cerning John Taverner of Hull, again, who seems to have been a worthy successor of the De la Poles, nearly all we know is contained in a single statement to the effect that in 1449 he, ' by the help of God and some of the King's subjects,' had built a great ship, the largest ever seen in English waters, which, because of its greatness, Taverner was allowed to call Henry Grace a Dieu and to use in conveying wools, woolfels, tin, and all other merchandize, regardless of the rule of the staple, from London, Hull, Sandwich, or Southampton, to Italy, and in bringing thence bow-staves, wax, and any other produce of the country. Of Taverner's great Scotch contemporary, William Elphinstone, father of the bishop who built the University of Aberdeen, we learn only that, by carrying on a large export trade in pickled salmon, he laid the foundation of the commerce of Glasgow ; and about two other very famous Scottish merchants of the fifteenth century, George Faulau and John Dalrymple, all we can discover is that they were frequently employed by James the Second on embassies and other public business.f Though the men who did the work are almost forgotten, however, there is abundant evidence of the ever-increasing commercial prosperity of our country. The miserable civil wars which brought the Plantagenct rule to a close, offered a serious hindrance to the progress of trade, and doubtless drove many men, as they drove William Canynge, to abandon it altogether. But ten years after Canynge's death, Henry the Seventh became King of England, and before ten other years were over, America had been discovered by Christopher Columbus. These two events mark the * Stryi-eV Stow, bonk iii.. p. 44 ; book v., p. 175. t Ckaik, vol. i., p. I'J'A. 10S The Beginning of Modern Commerce. commencement of a new era in the history of our com- merce. The firm and dignified rule of the Tudors cave far greater facilities than had ever yet been known to the exercise of trade with European nations, and the finding of a New World opened up a fresh and boundless field of enterprise. 109 CHAPTER V. ENGLISH COMMERCE, FROM THE CLOSE OF THE FIFTEENTH CENTURY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. " Because," said Cardinal Morton, Lord Chancellor of England, in his opening address to Henry the Seventh's second Parliament, assembled in November, 1487 — " be- cause it is the King's desire that this peace, wherein he hopeth to govern and maintain you, do not bear only unto you leaves for you to sit under the shade of them in safety, but also should bear you fruit of riches, wealth, and plenty, therefore his Grace prays you to take into consideration matters of trade, as also the manufactures of the kingdom, and to repress the bastard and barren employment of moneys to usury and unlawful exchanges, that they may be, as their natural use is, turned upon commerce and lawful and royal trading, and likewise that our people be set on work in arts and handicrafts, that the realm may subsist more of itself, that idleness be avoided, and the draining out of our treasures for foreign manufactures stopped."* That advice, excellent in the main, and coinciding exactly with the temperament of the people to whom it was addressed, found plenty of followers. Englishmen had learnt from the ex- ample of such merchants as William de la Pole and Richard \\ hittimrton that commerce, wisely pursued, could not fail to * Bacon, llldutij of Km 'j Jinny VII. (London, 1825 j, pp. 210, 220. 110 Henry the Seventh's Wise Government, brills' honour and wealth, both to each individual trader and to the nation at large ; and as soon as the iirm rule of the Tudors was established, they applied themselves to it with notable zeal. The miserable period of the Wars of the Roses, if it did no- thing else, served to rid the country of many restrictions introduced in the a^e of feudalism, and to make room for the development of free thought and independent action. The supremacy of the barons was brought to an end, and the supre- macy of the towns — that is, of the merchants and manufacturers who made the strength and wealth of towns — initiated. In any condition this result would have been attained ; under any rule, the commercial spirit would have shown it- self in unprecedented force ; but in no way, perhaps, could it have received much jjreater encouragement than from the prudent and energetic government of Henry the Seventh and his successors. ' This good Prince,' says the old historian of the period, ' by his high policy marvellously enriched his realm and himself, and left his subjects in high wealth and prosperity, as is apparent by the great abundance of gold and silver yearly brought into the realm by merchants passing and repassing, to whom the King, of his own goods, lent money largely, without any gain or profit, to the intent that merchandize, being of all crafts the chief art, and to all men both most profitable and necessary, might be the more plentifully used, haunted, and employed in his realms and dominion.'* We may, if we choose, reject the assertion that the sovereign usually accounted the niggard- liest that ever sat upon the English throne was in the habit of lending money to his subjects from his own treasury and without payment in return, out of mere devotion to the inte- lests of commerce and for the bole good of the people whom he thus aided ; but we can well believe that he followed the example of many earlier kings, and indirectly took a part in the mercantile adventures which, while very favourable to * Hall, Union of the. Tin, A«W/- Illustrious Fumilic* of I., t n>-v.*l.-r ami Fi.i7.\ L<>'i<lo!i ; l'ls , ,h!j //. „r,, i //;. audits G ood Effects on Commerce. Hi the nation at lame, were especially profitable to the indi- viduals concerned in them. At any rate he was a good friend to English commerce. Under his rule as under the rule of his successors for many generations following, many arbitrary and restrictive laws were passed, and, where it was possible, enforced ; and there was often great misunderstand- ing of the true principles of trade. But neither he nor his counsellors were behind their time : all they could be ex- pected to do was done by them for the commercial welfare of England. In this same session of Parliament which Morton opened with his famous speech, we find a law passed in contradic- tion of a resolution adopted by the civic authorities of London, which prohibited the citizens from carrying their wares for sale in any mart outside the city walls. Thus, it was thought, London would be aggrandized to the disparagement of other towns ; and the King and his commons, thinking so too, and seeing the great injustice of the arrangement, at once forbade it ; " for there be many fairs," as it was said in the preamble of the bill, " for the commonweal of your liege people, as at Salisbury, Bristol, Oxford, Cambridge, Notting- ham, Ely, Coventry, and at many other places, where lords spiritual and temporal, abbots, priors, knights, squires, gen- tlemen, and your commons of every country, have their common resort to buy and purvey many things that be good and profitable, as ornaments of Holy Church, chalices, books, vestments, and other ornaments for Holy Church aforesaid; and also for household and other stuff, as linen cloth, woollen cloth, brass, pewter, iron, bedding, flax, and wax, and many other necessary tilings, the which might not be forborne among your liege people."* Henry considered the comfort and advancement of his liege people in his dealings with other nations, as well as at home. He sought most of all, indeed, to promote the foreign commerce of the country. Before his time, the trade between + AMi-iN, v..]. ; ., y. ",■_' ; Cf:aik, vo], i., pp. 202, 'JOS. 112 Henry the Seventh's England and the continent was much more in the hands of continental than of English merchants. English trading ships going abroad to sell English goods and bring back cargoes of foreign commodities, were few in number. Most of the merchants were content to stay at home and sell their wares to the strangers who came each year to London and the other trading ports, or barter them for the produce of other lands with which their ships were freighted. In this way both the export and the import profits were left to foreigners, and in every way our native commerce was crippled. For centuries the German merchants of the Steel- yard, having a sort of walled fort in the heart of London, monopolized a great part of our wealth, and were protected by privileges without number obtained from kings and par- liaments, as well as bj their own strong ramparts and prac- tised arms, from the jealousies of London traders and the frequent assaults of London 'prentices. Finding this insti- tution in full force, and others like it, Henry the Seventh shrewdly used them, as his predecessors had done, as means of acquiring wealth, both by levying taxes upon the foreign ships and by selling liberties to the foreigners settled in London. But he was not on that account less zealous in striving to bring about a state of things more profitable to his own people. In the first year of his reign an act was passed forbidding the importation of Gascon or Guienne wines in any but English, Welsh, or Irish ships; and it was sub- sequently extended to other commodities coming from other* parts.* In 1490, he concluded a treaty with Denmark, by which English merchants were allowed to settle and trade freely there, in Norway, in Sweden, and in lceland,f and like treaties were effected in the same year by the government of England with the Florentines and the Spaniards, t The Ferkin Warbeck conspiracy, promoted by the Court * Axdehsox, vol. i., j). .118. f Hid., vol. i., p. 527, 52S. I Ibid., vol. i., pp. 529-531. Furtherance of Commerce. 1 ] 3 of the Netherlands, caused serious interruption of the long established and most important trade between England and Flanders. In 1493, Henry banished all the Flemings resi- dent in England, and forbade all intercourse with their coun- trymen abroad ; and the Archduke Philip retaliated with a similar order against the English traders. ' This, after three years' continuance,' says Lord Bacon, ' began to pinch the merchants of both nations very sore, which moved them by all means they could devise to affect and dispose their sove- reigns respectively to open the intercourse again. Wherein time favoured them. For the Archduke and his council began to sec that Perkin would prove but a runagate and a citizen of the world, and that it was the part of children to fall out about babies. And the King, on his part, began to have the business of Perkin in less estimation, so as he did not put it to account in any consultation of state. But that that moved him most was, that being a King that loved wealth and treasure, he could not endure to have trade sick, nor any obstruction to continue in the gate- vein which dis- persed that blood.'* Therefore a compromise was effected, resulting in a famous treaty, known afterwards as the Inter- cursus Magnus. The merchants of both nations, it was provided, with * all manner of merchandize, whether wool, leather, victuals, arms, horses, jewels, or any other wares,' might freely pass, 'without asking for passport or licence.' between their several countries, subject only to clearly defined rules as to their conduct, in port and at sea, the duties to be levied, and the like.f * Whereupon,' adds the historian, ' the English merchants came again to their man- sion at Antwerp, where they were received with procession and great joy.'+ * Bacon, vol. ii., p. 324. t Anderson, vol. i., pp. 545-517. + Bacon, vol. iii., p. 32G. The treaty was not well kept, however. " Most dear and good friends," we read in a letter of Henry the Seventh's to the Archduke Philip's Council, dated 21st June, 1490, "since our other letters that we sent to you hy our subject John Pickering, touching tlm VOL. T. 1 ] 14 The Company of Merchant Adventurers. These English merchants were the members of the Com- pany of Merchant Adventurers, at this time nearly two hun- dred years old. It had been established as a free- trading body in opposition to the old-fashioned and exclusive Society of Merchants of the Staple, and it had worked well till now. ' During the three years' cessation of trade with Flanders, the Merchant Adventurers, being a strong Company, and well-endowed with rich men, did hold out bravely,' we are told, ' taking off the commodities of the kingdom, though they lay dead upon their hands for want of vent.'* But at this very time great complaints were being made against them. In 1497, Parliament, inquiring into their case, found that they had lately departed from the liberal principles on which they had been founded, and which had hitherto procured for them national sanction and protection. Consisting almost agreement newly made in your counties about the woollen cloths which our subjects merchants convey or cause to be conveyed thither out of this our kingdom, we have been again duly informed that, notwithstanding the treaty and appointment lately made and concluded between us and the ambassadors of our cousin the Archduke, our said subjects merchants- are daily compelled to pay the florin with the cross of Saint Andrew on each piece of cloth, or deliver sufficient security for the provision thereof ; that their cloths are even unpacked and sealed with a leaden seal ordained for this purpose, and taken by force and violence and removed from their lx>oths, and moreover, when the officers engaged in this matter know where the said cloths are, they go and lock them up with two or three locks, because they will not consent to pay the said florin ; which things are directly contrary to our said treaty and appointment, and to the very great prejudice and injury of all our said subjects frequenting the said countries there. We are much surprised how among you you will suffer and tolerate such novelties to be imposed on our subjects, seeing that it is expressly said by our said treaty, that nothing new shall be imposed upon them otherwise than has been the custom for fifty years past ; but they should by the same our treaty be as well and favourably received in the said countries of our said cousin the Archduke as they ever were. And, therefore, most dear and good friends, we pray you that you will put other order in the matter, and sec our said subjects merchants to be treated according to the contents of our said treaty; for we could not suffer them in be otherwise treated." — Gaiiipnkr, Letters and Papers illustrative of the It.'itjm of llirhard III. and Hairy VII. 'London, 18G3), vol. ii., pp. G9-72. * Uacon, vo!. iii. p. J2j. Its lie-construction in 14! *7. 1]T> entirely of Londoners, they had left the trade with certain districts, as Spain, Portugal, Brctagnc, Normandy, France, Venice, Dantzic, Frieslaud, and other parts, pretty much in the hands of independent merchants ; but had taken to themselves exclusive possession of all the most profitable branches of foreign trade, including Flanders, Holland, Zea- land, and Brabant, " in which places," it was said, " are kept the universal marts or fairs, four times in the year, whither all Englishmen, and divers other nations, in time past, have used to resort, there to sell their own commodities and freely to buy such merchandize as they had occasion for." But " now of late, the fellowship of the mercers and other mer- chants and adventurers, dwelling and being free within the city of London, by confederacy amongst themselves, for their own singular profit, contrary to every Englishman's liberty, and contrary to all law, reason, charity, right, and conscience, have made an ordinance among themselves, to the prejudice of all other Englishmen, that no other Englishman resorting to the said marts shall either buy or sell any merchandize there, unless he have first compounded and made fine with the said fellowship of merchants of Loudon." Therefore it was urged, English trade was greatly injured, seeing that the produce of the country towns, especially wool, was withheld from the marts most in need of it, and left for sale anion"- out-of-the-way customers who were wishing to pay only a little at best, and who, when they found there was no compe- tition for the goods offered to them, beat down the price yet further, ' by reason whereof all the cities, towns, and boroughs of this realm in effect were fallen into great poverty, ruin, and decay, and were in manner without hope of comfort or relief: and the King's customs and subsidies, and the navy of the land, greatly decreased and minished, and daily they were like more and more to decay, if due reforma- tion Mere not had in this behalf.' There was doubtless some truth underlying the exaggeration of those words. At any rate the Commons thought so. The Company of Merchant ] hi Henry the Eighth and Foreign Merchants. Adventurers was not abolished, but an act was passed in this year, 1497, annulling some of its privileges or assumed prero- gatives, and throwing it open to all Englishmen on payment of an entrance fee of 10 marks or 61. 13s. 4ti* In accord- ance therewith, a new charter was granted to the Company in 1505, by which time, with its more liberal constitution, it had already made great progress.! In every way England made great progress in the reign of Henry the Seventh, and the good seed sown by him bore yet richer fruit under his son and grandchildren. The records of Henry the Eighth's earlier years show that many licenses were granted to foreigners to trade in England, and to ex- port cargoes of goods to their own country. But they also gfive evidence of the encouragement offered to native com- merce. On the 9th of December, 1509, the merchants of Newcastle-on-Tyne were licensed to collect wools from Nor- thumberland, Cumberland, Westmoreland, and other northern counties for shipment to the continent, on payment of the usual duty of ten shillings a sack, and an additional ten shillings on every two hundred and forty fleeces ; and in other like ways it was sought to increase the importance of our seaports as trading towns. Every year licenses were given by scores to mercers, goldsmiths, butchers, and mem- bers of every other trade for settling in Calais and Antwerp, and there carrying on business with foreign merchants.^ This new tide of mercantile emigration to continental towns seems to have stirred up much jealousy. Doctor, Sampson, writing to Wolsey in June, 1515, spoke of Antwerp as 'now one of the flowers of the world, of which the English mer- chants were the greatest cause, drawing many other mer- chants thither, as they would probably find out if Englishmen lesorted elsewhere.' The people of Antwerp did not think * Anderson, vol. i., pp., 550-552. f lhid., vol. ii., p. 11. t Bheweu, Letters and Papers, Foreign and Domestic, of the JleUjn of Henry VIII., preserved in the Public Record Office, the British Museum, and elsewhere in England, (London, 18G2-4), vol. i., p. 104; and vols. i. and ii., jmssirn. Antwerp and Calais. 11 < so. Heavy tolls, heavier than existed in any other European town, were put upon English goods, and vexatious arrange- ments of all sorts were made in the hope of keeping them out- Englishmen were not allowed to have agents of their own nation, but must transact their business through Flemish brokers. When they had made their purchases they could only ship them in Antwerp vessels. If bad weather drove them into Flemish ports on the road, they had to pay duties as though they had brought their goods for sale in those ports. On these accounts less arrogant towns than Antwerp sought to divert the stream of English commerce. "Bruges,'' Sampson was told, " is now in great poverty for want of mer- chants resorting, and great pity it is to see the decaying of such an excellent town. Your merchants be vexed with tolls passing into Brabant. Cause them only to resort to this town ; they shall be out of trouble, and none other tolls demanded of them but one small thing."* Many English- men did go to Bruges, there to find, however, that imposts almost as heavy as those of Antwerp were levied upon them by the needy townsmen, and that they had far less facilities for traffic with the great merchants of the continent. There- fore they fought their battle at Antwerp, and, assisted by some severe messages from King Henry, at last gained their point. On the 1st of June, 15J8, articles of commercial intercourse between the English merchants and the town of Antwerp were drawn up and signed, to result in great benefits to the trade of both parties, f Calais was in altogether a different position from Antwerp. Being English property, and the newly-appointed staple of English commerce, our merchants had free access to it. There, and in the neighbouring towns, however, they came into collision with the French traders, and hence frequent disputes arose. The French were in the habit, it seems, of robbing all English merchants who came in their power, ' under colour of Scotch letters of marque.' Therefore in August, * Bia:\VEi;, vol. ii., p. ICO. t Ibid., vol. ii., \\ 130.1. J ]8 Jealousies bctu-cen English 1.j15. Sir Bichard Wingfield was deputed to make formal complaint to Francis the First, and assure him " that, unless justice be done, King Henry will be obliged, in return, to give letters of marque and reprisal ; further, that he is informed the judges in France compel his subjects, in like cases, not. only to restore the principal with damages and interest, but amerce them with intolerable forfeitures, contrary to all justice, the like whereof was never before seen ; which, if not amended, may drive him to a similar course."* On the other hand, the French merchants represented that the English were the chief offenders, and what little piracy they resorted to was done in self-defence. English merchants in France, they maintained, had every facility for pursuing their business, whereas all sorts of hindrances were thrown in their way in the English markets. " French merchants must export wine or woad to England in English ships, for it is confiscated if conveyed in a French or Breton ship without the King of England's leave. On arriving, the amount of merchandize must be sent to the custom-house officers ; if false, the merchandize is confiscated. They are only allowed to deal with citizens of the town in which they are, under pain of confiscation. No merchant is allowed to take more than ten crowns out of England. They cannot go to the weekly fairs for cloth, &c, held at different English towns. Bonds between French and English merchants are not kept in England. On leaving they are searched to their shirts to see if they have more than the ten crowns allowed. If they are found out at night without a candle, they are imprisoned. If a French merchant go to Calais, he is im- prisoned, "f The English and the French, doubtless, were about equally at fault, and they continued to be at fault for a long time to come. Treaties of redress and negotiations touching compromises were made without number ; but national jealousy was too strong to be overcome, and the grievances were to last lor centuries. * r.i:i.\vi;i:, vol. ii., p. 222. f Ibid., ]>]>. 11KS. 1119. and Foreign Merchants. Ill' It must be admitted that, if the English merchants were hardly used in foreign cities, they were paid out in their own coin. The traders of France, Flanders, and Italy alike, coming to England, were received with notable disfavour, and subjected to insults and injuries of all sorts. Anxious tc extend their own commerce, the English had no liking for the merchants of other lands. How they showed their dislike may be seen in the history of the famous Evil May-day Riots, in 1517, provoked by the disastrous sweating sickness of 1516, which caused great stagnation of English trade and conse- quent advantage to the foreign traders. " The English mer- chants have little to do," it was complained, 4 ' by reason the merchant strangers bring in all silks, cloths of gold, wine, oil, iron, and the like, so that no man, almost, buyeth of an Englishman. They also export so much wool, tin, and lead, that English adventurers can have no living. Foreigners compass the city round about, in Southwark, Westminster, Temple Bar, Holborn, Saint Martin's le Grand, Aldgate, Tower Hill, and Saint Catherine's ; and they forestal the market, so that no good thing cometh to the market ; which are the causes that Englishmen want and starve, whilst foreigners live in abundance and pleiisure. Yea, the Dutch- men bring over iron, timber, leather, and wainscot, ready wrought ; nails, locks, baskets, cupboards, stools, tables, chests, girdles with points, saddles, and embroidered cloths : and besides this, they grow into such a multitude, that it is to be looked upon ; for I saw on a Sunday this Lent, six hun- dred strangers shooting at the popynjay with cross-bows, and they make such a gathering to their common box that every botcher will go to law with the City of London." So said John Lincoln, a London broker, on behalf of his fellow-citizens, to one Doctor Beale, a mendicant friar, when asking him " to take part with the commonalty against the strangers " in his Easter Tuesday sermon at Saint Mary's Spital. Beale promised to do so, and on the appointed day he preached such a sermon that the whole city was infuriated 120 Commerce under Henry the Mglitli. against the foreigners. May-day, the general merry-making time of the 'prentices wa s at hand, and then, it was resolved, a general assault, some said a general massacre, should be made upon the foreigners. Bad enough was the assault that really did take place. Two thousand or more rioters sacked the houses of the French and Flemish residents in London, treat- ing some of them so roughly that they hardly escaped with their lives. Then they proceeded to the Italian quarter ; but fortunately its tenants were prepared for their attack, and able to keep them at bay, till a strong body of troops, despatched by Cardinal Wolsey, came up and overpowered the mob.* Though foreign merchants came to London in sufficient numbers, however, to promote jealous opposition like this, the foreign trade of England advanced immensely during the reign of Henry the Eighth. Merchants from London, Bristol, Boston, Hull, Lincoln, Leicester, Southampton, Plymouth, Exeter, and a score of other thriving towns, made their way to all parts of the Continent, and, amid all disadvantages, managed to carry on a lucrative trade. Wool, wheat, tin, leather, kerseys, hides, cheese, beer, and beans, we learn, were the chief articles with which they helped to stock the continental markets, and their principal imports were said to consist of wine, woad, and alum, cloths of silk and gold, hats, caps, and bonnets.t Henry encouraged tin's growth of trade by granting letters of protection, charters, immunities, and the like. But his greatest service to commerce lay in his promotion of the naval strength of England. With him, indeed, almost begins the history of English maritime greatness. England was a sea-faring nation from the day when our Anglo-Saxon forefathers, coming in their long keels, settled on its shores. There was strengthening of the national power in the prudent measures by which Alfred the Great reconstructed and greatly enlarged its shipping; and there was preservation of * Ha ix, Henry 1777., fols. lxi., lxii. ; Bhewek, vol. ii., pp. ccxiv-ecxix. t Ijia.wri;, vols. i. and ii., yxtssim. The Rise of the English Navy. 121 the national honour, as well as extension of our country's commercial relations, in the organisation and maintenance, from a very early period, of the Cinque Ports. The Crusades did much to foster a sea-going- spirit ; and the one good feature in the character of King John, was his zeal in the establishment of convenient ports, and in the building of better sorts of ships than had hitherto been known. During the French wars of the first and third Edwards and of Henry the Fifth, including much tough fighting and many noble victories by sea, were for the first time fully developed the resources by which P^ngland has become the greatest of maritime nations, and in the eyes of true patriots there was no sadder testimony to the national degradation attendant on the wars of the Roses than the decline of naval power. But not till the time of the Tudors was its maritime power regarded as the chief clement in the greatness of England. Henry the Seventh encouraged the distant voyaging of the Cabots and other like enterprises promoted by the Bristol merchants. He also built the Great IIar?y, as it is sup- posed, in 1488, and in other ways sought to develope the shipping of England. In this his example was followed and improved upon by his son, with Cardinal Wolsey for an excellent counsellor. Henry the Eighth did much less than Henry the Seventh had been disposed to do in the encouragement of the adven- turous projects, formed by noble men for colonizing the distant countries newly found, or for discovering new passages to the yet more distant shores of India ; and herein he showed wisdom and good statemanship. It is incredible that Henry, with plenty of ambition and adventurous spirit in his nature, and with more personal liking for naval affairs than perhaps any previous monarch had shown, should have carelessly and indolently held aloof from the pursuit of those splendid enter- prises in which the examples of Columbus and his followers, and, nearer home, of the Cabots and their friends, had made all brave men ea^er to en^a^e. But he saw that there was 122 Henry the Eighth's Naval Policy. work enough, and much more pressing work, to be done at home. It was the one great duty of a right-minded king to make England a great nation ; and the nation could, just at that time, have been only impoverished and weakened by any spending of its men and money upon Transatlantic coloniza- tion and discovery. The finding of a northern route to the Indies was too arduous and doubtful a work to be under- taken by a prudent monarch ; the time had not yet come for making the barren and icy districts in the northern continent of America, to which England had the legitimate claim of first discovery, more productive than any of the gold-yielding and luxuriant provinces of the south ; and to have entered into rivalship with Spain for the possession of those provinces would, then more than ever, have been preposterous and impolitic England was recovering the place in European politics lost during the disastrous half-century of civil strife. France, Germany, and Spain, watched her progress with a jealous interest ; and all available strength was needed for competing on European ground, as friend or foe, with these three Powers. Therefore Henry very wisely kept at home his ships and sailors, did his utmost to augment the naval strength of the country, and did this with marked success. All through the early years of his reign England was full of the noise and bustle of ship-building ; and by the sprino- of 1513, a fleet of four and twenty men of war was brought together, with command of an indefinite number of merchant vessels, of the sort which hitherto, impressed and supplied with guns when they were needed, had constituted nearly the whole fighting force of England on the seas. The twenty-four had an aggregate burthen of 84G0 tons, and could carry 4650 soldiers, besides 2880 seamen. Two of these, the Henry Imperial, which seems to have been Henry the Seventh's Great Harry under a fresh name, and the Trinity, newly built, were each of 4000 tons burthen, and could hold 400 soldiers and 300 mariners apiece. A third Ship- Building in his lieign. 123 ship, the Regent, of the same size and strength, had been built. But in August, 1512, it came into collision with a great French vessel, the Cordelier of Brest, with a crew of 1600 men. After an hour's fighting, the English ship obtained the mastery, whereupon its French antagonist, accidentally or by design, was set on fire, and, the flames spreading, both vessels and most of their crew were destroyed. It was to repair the English loss that the Henry Grace a Dieu, of 1500 tons' burthen, was built, at a total cost, including the expenses of three small galleys attached, of 77087. 5s. 3d. The actual material cost 35317. 5s. lfd. ; the chief items being 1752 tons of timber, charged at 437/. 17s. 7^7. ; wrought and unwrought iron, 4087/ 19s. l\d. ; brass, 2437. 6s. Z\d. ; and cordage, 9097. 2s. lid. The wages of labourers from the 3rd of October, 1512, to the 6th of July, 1514, the time occupied in building, amounted to 21927. 6s. 3d. ; and the food supplied to them during the same period cost in all 19697. 18s. 2d. ; 3707. 7s. 8^7. being paid for 7497§ dozen loaves of bread, 5207. 19s. lid. for 1543 pipes and two kilderkins of beer, 7067. 17s. 9c7. for 557 beeves, 877. 2s. lOd. for 4522 cods, 197. 4s. for 30J wheys of cheese, and 47. 6s. for seven barrels of butter, then an article very little used.* Details like these are curious in many ways. When we remember that the wages of skilled labourers were at that time only sixpence a day, other prices being in proportion, they show that Henry the Eighth spent a very large amount of money in the establishment of the first English navy. From the records of his reign it appears that he and his counsellors also gave to the good work a very great deal of time and thought. They were not satisfied with building ships alone. In 1512 the naval yards and storehouses at Deptford and ^Yoolwich were founded. In the same year was incorporated the Trinity House at Deptford, with autho- rity tc examine, license, and regulate pilots, to superintend * Bkewei:, vol. i., jiavtim. 124 Improvements in Docks and Piers. the arrangements of havens and rivers, to order and direct the erection of beacons and lighthouses, and in other ways to provide for the safety of ships, stores, and mariners ; and soon after kindred establishments were set up at Hull, and Newcastle. In 1531, the first pier at Dover was erected, at public cost, and in 1531 an Act was passed for repairing and deepening the harbours at Plymouth, Dart- mouth, Teignmouth, Falmouth and Fowey.* By all these kffi£. AN ENGLISH MERCHANT OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTO RY. measures English commerce was encouraged, and, with the strengthening of English power among the nations of Europe, was enabled to take a much firmer footing than ever it had done before in all parts of the continent. One consequence of this was the jealousy, increasing every year, with which the foreign merchants resident in England came to be regarded. We have seen what rioting this jealousy produced in 1.015. It so grew throughout Henry * Anderson, vol. ii., pp. 2. r ), 2(5, 57; Ckaik, vol. i., pp. 224, 22:">. The Merchants of the Steel-yard. 125 the Eighth's reign, that, soon after its close, the governors of Edward 'the Sixth were induced to abrogate the privileges held for many centuries by the Steel-yard Company of Hanseatic merchants, against whom, from their greater numbers and the greater importance of their transactions, the opposition was chiefly directed. In 1552 these merchants were informed that the liberties conferred upon them long before were so old, and had been so stretched to the detri- A I'liUSSIAN MERCHANT OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. ment of native commerce, that they could no longer be recognized. The merchants were allowed to remain in London, but they remained on a par with other foreigners; and, losing their old facilities for collecting and shipping goods to Germany, we are told, they at once lost nearly all their business, producing an equivalent advantage to the English traders, and especially the Company of Merchant Adventurers. So great, indeed, were their distresses that the Hanseatic League, on their representations, induced 12G The Merchant Adventurers. Queen Mary, in ] 554, to reinstate them in nearly all their privileges. A year or two later some of those privileges were again revoked ; but the Steel-yard merchants continued to hold influential place in London till 1597, when the Emperor Rudolph's arbitrary shutting up of all the factories of the English Merchant Adventurers in Germany, gave Queen Elizabeth a fair excuse for ordering the final abolition of the German Company settled in England.* A FLEMISH MUtCHANT OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. By this time the Merchant Adventurers' Company had reached the height of its prosperity. Henry the Eighth's care of commerce had helped it on very notably, and under the vigorous rule of Elizabeth, with men like the Grcshams for its most conspicuous ornaments and promoters, it had made sure and rapid progress. " It is marvellous," wrote Ludivico Guicciardini in or near the year 15G0, "to think of the vast quantity of drapery imported by the English into * A\ni:i:.sox, vol. ii , pp. 1)0, 07, 11"), 102 ; Chair, vol. i., pp. 23.3-23G. Their Trade with the Netherlands. 127 the Netherlands," — and the Merchant Adventurers were almost exclusive possessors of this branch of trade, — " being undoubtedly, one year with another, above 200,000 pieces of all kinds, which, at the most moderate rate of 25 crowns a piece, is 5,000,000 crowns ; so that these and other mer- chandize brought to us by the English, and carried from us to them, may make the annual amount to be more than 12,000,000 crowns,"— about 2,400,000/. sterling— " to the A VENETIAN MERCHANT OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTTTItY. great benefit of both countries, neither of which could possibly, or not without the greatest damage, dispense with this their vast mutual commerce." It cannot possibly have been so great as Guicciardini believed ; but it was undoubtedly vast enough to be of immense advantage to both countries. "To England," he continues, "Antwerp sends jewels and precious stones, silver bullion, quicksilver, wrought silks, cloth of gold and silver, gold and silver thread, camblets, spices, drugs, sugar, cotton, cummin, galls, linens fine and coarse, serges, tapestry, madder, hops in great quantities, 12S The Merchant Adventurers. glass, salt fish, metallic and other merceries of all sorts to* a great value, arms of all kinds, ammunition for war and household furniture. From England Antwerp receives vast quantities of fine and coarse draperies, fringes and other things of that kind to a great value, the finest wool, excellent saffron in small quantities, a great quantity of lead and tin, sheep and rabbit skins without number, and various other soi-S of fine peltry and leather, beer, cheese, and other sorts of provisions in great quantities, and also Malmsey wines, which the English import from Candia."* That extensive commerce enriched all England, as well as the Netherlands, but the Company of Merchant Adventurers reaped the chief advantage from it. Nothing could stay the advancement of these Merchant Adventurers. Several times they were driven out of the home which, after the fashion of the Steel-yard merchants in London, they had made for them- selves in Antwerp ; but other towns, Embden, Hamburg, Staden, Groningen, Dort, and Bruges, were anxious to receive them and be benefited by the great trade they brought with them ; and never were they long absent from Antwerp before its citizens "besought them to return. Fre- quent complaints were made against them by private mer- chants and rival companies, who grudged them the great advantages that came from their vast scheme of co-operation ; but these complaints only issued in the granting of fresh charters and the conferment of fresh privileges by Queen Elizabeth and her successors. In 1601, according to con- temporary testimony, the Company of Merchant Adventurers included more than half of all the wealthy traders of London, York, Norwich, Exeter, Ipswich, Newcastle, Hull, and the other chief commercial towns. ' These of old time linked themselves together for the exercise of merchandize, by trading in cloth, kerseys, and all other — as well English as foreign — commodities vendible abroad, whereby they brought much wealth home to their respective places of residence. * Macpherson, vol. ii., p. 127, 128. Their Trade with the Netlierlands. 129 Their limits are the towns and ports lying between the river of Somme, in France, and along - all the coast of the Nether- lands and Germany, within the German Sea : not into all at once, at each man's pleasure, but into one or two towns at most within the same bounds, which they commonly call the mart town or towns, because there only they staple their com- modities and put them to sale, and thence only they bring such foreign wares as England wanteth, which are brought from far by merchants of divers nations, flocking thither to buy and sell as at a fair. The Merchant Adventurers do annually export at least sixty thousand white cloths, worth at least 600,0007., and of coloured cloths of all sorts, kerseys, baize, cottons, northern dozens, and other coarse cloths, forty thousand more, worth 400,000/., in all, one million sterling, besides what goes to the Netherlands from England of wool- fels, lead, tin, saffron, coney skins, leather, tallow, alabaster, corn, beer, and the like. And our Company importeth of the Dutch and German merchants, wines, fustians, copper, steel, hemp, onion seed, iron and copper wire, latten, kettles, pans, linen, harness, saltpetre, gunpowder, and all things made at Nuremberg, such as toys and iron ware ; of the Italians, all sorts of silks, velvets, cloth of gold, and the like ; of the Easterlings, naval stores, furs, soap, ashes, &c. ; of the Portuguese, spices and drugs. With the Spanish and French they have not much to do, by reason that our English mer- chants have had a great trade directly to France and Spain, and do serve England directly from thence with the com- modities of those two countries. Of the Netherlands they buy all kinds of manufactures, tapestry, buckrams, white thread, linen, cambrics, lawns, madder, and the like. Philip the Good, Duke of Burgundy, and sovereign of the Nether- lands, the founder of the Order of the Fleece, gave the fleece for the badge of that Order, in consideration of the great revenue accruing to him from the tolls and customs of our wool and woollen cloths.'* That last assertion is more than * MAcrnEnsox, vol. ii., pp. 220, 221. VOL. I. K 130 Other Trading Companies doubtful, but it is true enough that the English trade in woollen and other commodities tended greatly to enrich the people of the Netherlands and Germany. In 1615 the Merchant Adventurers alone sent five-and- thirty ships to Hamburg and Middleburg, besides having a large share in the thirty sent to Dantzic, the twenty to .Naples, Genoa, and other Italian towns, and the twenty to Portugal and Andalusia.* In 1(504 a fresh charter had been given to the Company by James the First, and when this was renewed in 1617, the association contained more than four thousand members of one sort or another.! In 1634 it was in- fluential enough to obtain from Charles the First a proclama- tion securing to it the entire woollen and cotton trade with the Continent. " And to the end," the edict proceeds, " that the said trade may be hereafter reduced and continued in an orderly and well-governed course, we do hereby declare our royal pleasure to be that the said fellowship of Merchant Adventurers shall admit to the freedom of their said trade all such of our subjects dwelling in our City of London, and exercised in the profession of merchandize, and no shop- keepers, except they give over their shops, as shall desire the same, for a fine of 50/. apiece, and those of the outposts for 25/. apiece.":}: In 1643, again, while England was in the midst of civil war, the Company obtained from the Long Parliament a confirmation of those privileges, with the right of doubling the entry fees, on condition of their paying 30,000/. into the public purse.§ The Company of Merchant Adventurers, however, was but one, and at that time the most important, of several kindred associations. As early as 1554, a Russia Company had been established. In 1554, a small and unsuccessful rivalry of the Merchant Adventurers had been started by the founders of the Hamburg Company ; and later in the century the extension of English trade, first along the shores of the * Machierson, vol. ii., p. 281. % Rymek, vol. xix., p. 583. | Ibid., vol. ii., p. 286. § Maci'Herson, vol. ii., p. 424. of the Sixteenth Century. 131 Mediterranean, and soon in the more distant parts of the East, had given rise to several other societies of merchants. The Turkey Company began in 1581, the Morocco Com- pany in 1585, the Guinea Company in 1588, and the East India Company, destined to become far more influential than than any of the others, in 1600.* Most of these, and many others too short lived aud unimportant to be worth naming, owed their existence to the new spirit of enterprise aroused by the labours and suc- cesses of men like Columbus and Cabot. Through Henry the Eighth's reien this spirit was wisely repressed, in order that the whole energy of the nation might be applied to its consolidation and firm establishment as one of the great powers in Europe. But under Henry's successors it became too strong for repression, even had there been any need or effort to repress it. In 1552, Edward the Sixth established a * mystery and company of merchant adventurers for the discovery of regions, dominions, islands, and places unknown,' with Sebastian Cabot, son and fellow- voyager of the John Cabot who had discovered Newfoundland in 1497, for its governor : and it was through the energy of this company that Sir Hugh Willoughby was sent, in 1553, on his ill-fated voyage in search of a north-eastern passage to India. f Willoughby and seventy of his comrades, in two of the three vessels that made up the expedition, were lost on the shores of Lapland. But Richard Chancelor, captain of the third ship, was more fortunate. Separating from the others, and going in a more northerly direction, as he tells us, * he sailed so far towards that unknown part of the world that he came at last to the place where he found no night at all, but a con- tinual light and brightness of the sun shining clearly upon the huge and mighty sea,' and then, moving southwards again, he entered a great bay, apparently the White Sea, There he landed and won the friendship of the natives, and before * Macpherson and Anderson, passim. t Haklcyt, Voyages (London, lo!)9), vol. i., pp. 232-23G. 132 Trading Journeys to Russia long, leaving his ship to be taken care of by a party of its crew, he set off with the rest on a land journey of nearly fifteen hundred miles to Moscow. From the Czar he re- ceived all possible kindness, and after a stay of some months, he travelled northward again, to make a successful voyage home and comfort his employers, in some degree, for the dis- astrous issue of Willoughby's share in the undertaking.* In 1555, as soon as he could get ready for it, he was sent on a second journey to Moscow, by the same circuitous route, with orders ' to use all ways and means possible to learn how men may pass from Russia, either by land or by sea, to Cathay.' So zealous were the English of the sixteenth century in their quest of their fabled riches of the Indies, that they could hardly be satisfied with any more accessible source of wealth. A COASTING-VESSEL OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Nothing but good resulted from this state of mind, however, as it sent travellers all over the world, and opened up num- berless roads to commercial prosperity. In the present in- * Hakluyt, vol. i., pp. 237-212. and other Parts of the World. lo3 stance, Chancelor effected a successful trading alliance with Russia, and brought back a Russian ambassador to the Eng- lish Court.* Three out of his four vessels were wrecked on the return journey, but that mischance in no way disheartened the merchant adventurers. In 1558 they sent Anthony Jen- kinson, with a goodly number of enterprising companions, on a journey of exploration by land into the far east This journey, rich in geographical interest, was not very profitable from a commercial point of view. Among the Tartars, the chief articles of commerce were children, " of whom," Jen- kinson says, " we can buy thousands for a loaf of bread apiece." " Adrakhan is full of merchants, but their dealings are of a petty sort, and there is no hope of a trade in these parts worth following." All round the Caspian Sea " the few- ness of the ships, the want of towns and harbours, the poverty of people, and the ice, render the trade good for nothing," and about other parts the report is not more favourable. f A GALLTON OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. Jenkinson's experience deterred other English merchants from attempting much trade by land with the Asiatic nations. To Moscow, and other Russian towns, however, they often went to dispose of Englifeh commodities, and procure some of the more important articles that the caravans and local * Hakluyt, vol. i.. pp. 243-254. f Ibid., pp. 310-334. 134 Trading Voyages under the Tudors, traders had brought from Persia and Tartary. They also sought, in all sorts of other ways, to extend their commerce with the Indies. Most notable of all were the enterprises of such men as Gilbert and Frobisher. Cavendish, Davis, and Hudson, despatched by the great merchants of the sixteenth century in vessels which, if poor and perilous, were the best that those times could afford. But with these we have not here much to do ; while of the other and more strictly com- mercial voyages undertaken to the Levant and the Guinea Coast, to the West Indies and the East, we shall see enough in later pages. A GALLEY OF THE SIXTEENTH CENTURY. These commercial voyages were very helpful to the naval greatness of England. They encouraged good seamanship and skilful ship-building, and they provided vessels which, when necessary, did the work of regular ships of war at a and their Service to the Nation. 135 time when those ships of war were too few to perform the duties imposed upon them. The armament prepared for resistance of the Spanish Armada in 1588, comprised only thirty-seven of Queen Elizabeth's own ships, with fourteen others hired by her for this special work ; whereas the whole fleet numbered a hundred and forty-three vessels of all sizes. Of these no less than twenty, ' being double the number the Queen demanded, all well manned and thoroughly provided with ammunition and provision,' were furnished by the city an ea&t-!M>iax Carkack (circa A.I>. 1600). of London. From Bristol came three ' large and strong ships, which did excellent service,' besides a tender; from 136 Trading Ships and Fighting Ships. Barnstable, three 'merchant-ships converted into frigates;' from Exeter, two ships and a * stout pinnace ;' and from Plymouth, seven ' stout ships in every way equal to the Queen's men-of-war,' and a fly-boat, The nobility, gentry, and commons, supplied four-and-forty ships at their own ex- pense, and the Merchant Adventurers, in addition to their share in providing the vessels from London, Plymouth, and the other towns, contributed ten * prime ships, excellently well furnished.'* In nearly all the great naval battles of the sixteenth cen- tury and the first half of the seventeenth, indeed, more than half the righting was done by merchant-ships ; and the real power of the British navy, as a separate institution, can hardly be said to have begun earlier than the reign of Charles the First, when George Villiers, the famous Duke of Buckingham — not otherwise to be very much commended — during his tenure of office as Lord Admiral, set an example of diligent attention to naval affairs, f which was followed with excellent result by men as opposite in character as Robert Blake and James, Duke of York, a better patriot as Lord High Admiral than as King of England. The nation's growth in naval power, of course, by strength- ening its position on the seas and its influence with foreign countries, contributed very much to its commercial advance- ment. Where fighting ships abound there will always be an * Campbell, Lives of the British Admirals (London, 1779;, vol. i., pp. 3US, 3(59. | ' He raised the tonnage of the navy from twenty-six ships and 11,070 tons to fifty-three ships and 22,122; erected and repaired various buildings at Chatham, Deptford, and Portsmouth ; encouraged private shipbuilders to build ships of above the burthen of 100 tons; introduced the manufac- ture of great cables ; raised the wages of sailors from 14s. to 2Us. per month ; in times of necessity often impressed money of his own to advance the setting forth of the kings ships, and evidenced his zeal by motions made to the Council for means to maintain a fleet to guard the const.' — Bltvci:, Calendar of State Paper?, Domestic Series, of the lieiijn of Charles I., pre- served in Her Majesty's I'v.Uic Record Office ^London, 1803), vol. vi., pp. 123, 121. The Early History of Norwich. 137 abundance of trading ships. If Loudon alone, as we are told, in the reign of Charles the First, possessed a hundred vessels that miffht easily be converted into men of war,* it is clear that those hundred vessels were at ordinary times put to jrood use in the interests of commerce. All branches of trade grew immensely under the Tudors and the Stuarts, and the towns which were the chief haunts of those trades grew yet more in proportion. Norwich and Newcastle-upon-Tyne may be regarded as specimens of English commercial cities in Tudor and Stuart times. Norwich was a town of some importance long before the time of the Norman Conquest. It was sacked by the Danes in 1004 ; but by 108G, the year of the Domesday- Survey, it had so recovered and improved its condition, that there were in it fourteen hundred and seventy-six houses, a size attained at that time by very few other English cities. In 1199 a new charter from King John accorded to it 'all the liberties, free customs and usages which the city of London then had, the citizens of Norwich rendering or pay- ing for the same 180/. yearly.'! In 1331 Edward the Third appointed it the sole staple for all the wool and sheepskins of Norfolk and Suffolk, and five years later he showed it fresh and very helpful favour by planting in it and its neighbour- hood a little colony of Flemings, driven out of their own country by the encroachments of the sea.| Under their in- fluence, Norwich soon became the most flourishing mart in England for worsteds, — so called from the adjacent town of Worsted — fustians, fringes, and all other kinds of woollen goods. In 1533 it was found to contain twenty independent guilds, representing a much greater number of trades, as three, four, or five were generally associated under one govern- ment. Butchers, glovers, and parchment makers, for instance, * Monson, Naval Tracts, cited by Campbell, vol. i., p. 500. t Anderson, vol. i., p. IS:;. I Bi.omkfiklo, Tojiotjrajihical Hhtory of Norfolk London, 1800'., vol. iii., pp. 81, S3. 138 Norwich under Henry the Eighth were united in one company ; while goldsmiths, dyers, calen- dered, and saddlers formed a second ; cordwainers, cobblers, curriers and collar-makers a third ; grocers and timber masters a fourth ; mercers, drapers, scriveners and hardware- men a fifth ; and tailors, broiderers, hosiers and skinners a sixth. In like manner the cloth-cutters, fullers, woollen and linen weavers and wool merchants constituted one company ; the wax-chandlers, barbers, and surgeons another.* That amalgamation of crafts, sometimes very discordant, would hardly have been resorted to had they been in a flourishing condition. Norwich trade, in fact, deteriorated very much during the reign of Henry the Eighth. An act of that reign, dated 1541, declares that 'whereas among other cities, shires, and towns having private commodities, the city of Norwich hath always heretofore been maintained and preserved, and the poor men and other dwellers and inhabit- ants, godlily, honestly, and virtuously brought up in the same, have been occupied and exercised by a commodity growing and rising only within the said city, that is to say, the making and weaving of worsteds and other cloths, which have been made and woven of yarn spun of the wool growing and coming of sheep bred only within the county of Norfolk, and in no place elsewhere, — and whereas this trade has been of late craftily and deceitfully taken away by men buying up the wool of Norfolk and sending it in a raw state to be manu- factured in France, Flanders, and other places beyond the sea, and by reason thereof the city of Norwich and other towns in Norfolk are not only most likely to be brought to utter ruin and decay, but the inhabitants to be destitute of any way to get an honest living by \ no Norfolk wool is henceforth to be exported or worked up out of the county under a penalty of forty shillings on every pound of yarn so taken out of the hands of local workmen. f But legislation did not much help Norwich. Its woollen trade continued in a languishing state for a quarter of a cen- * Blomefield, vol. iii., pp. 'JOG, 207. f Ibid., p. 213. and Queen Elizabeth. 139 tury after King Henry's act. Then, however, the Duke of Alva's cruelties forced great numbers of Netherlander to abandon their own houses, and seek a shelter in Protestant England. Like their countrymen of former centuries, they crossed the Channel and landed in Yarmouth and its neigh- bourhood, thence to go inland in search of employment. In 1565, we are told, the citizens of Norwich, with Queen Eliza- beth's sanction, invited four and twenty Dutchmen and six Walloons, who were master- workers in the woollen trade, to settle in their town, each with ten servants, and their families, on condition that all the wool they manufactured was of Nor- folk growth and made up in Norwich or its neighbourhood, and that a proper tax was paid to the civic authorities for all. These colonists must have been, including the women and children, about a thousand in number ; and a great many other Flemings observing their prosperity, followed their example and obtained leave to emigrate to Norwich in the ensuing years. They ' behaved themselves orderly, became a civil people, and were of great service to the city.' This large importation of foreigners of course occasioned some jealousy. Serious disputes arose, also, in consequence of the religious tenets and practices of the strangers, often distasteful to the natives, famous through centuries for their troublesome devotion to matters theological. But they threw new life into the commerce of Norwich, and soon made of it a far more influential city than it had ever been before.* Good proof of this prosperity appears in the opposition shown towards it by the citizens of other commercial towns. Most jealous of all were the Londoners. In 1575 their Mayor and Corporation forbade the bringing of Norwich wares into London, without their first being taken to Blackwell Hall, there to be packed away, sold at stated times, and charged with very heavy tolls. This was an oppression never before resorted to. The citizens of Norwich therefore appealed against it, and much controversy ensued. At length, in * Blomwielu, vol. iii , pp. 85, 2S2-284, &c. 140 The Rise of Newcastle-cm- Tyne. 1578, the Privy Council ordered that 'the citizens of Nor- wich should continue their trade of occupying- and buying and selling of their wares in the city of London, as they had been accustomed, without any exaction or innovation to be offered by them of London, until they of London should show more sufficient cause before their lordships for the con- trary.' That was not attempted, and the Norwich dealers traded in London as they chose for sixty years. In 1038 the old order about the compulsory storing of their goods in Blackwell Hall was revived by the Corporation ; but it was promptly cancelled by the Privy Council ; and we hear nothing more of the dispute.* At that time it was reckoned that Norwich stuffs brought it no less than 100,000Z. a-year, besides some 60,000Z. derived from the manufacture of stockings alone, f The history of Newcastle-upon-Tyne shows a more even course of prosperity. It is said to have been founded by William Rufus, on the site of the ancient village of Monk- cester. ' He builded the New Castle upon Tyne, The Scottes to gainstand ; and to defend And dwell therein the people to incline, Th« town to build and wall, as did append, He gave them ground and gold full great to spend, To build it well and wall it all about, And franchised them to pay a free rent out.' % Excellently placed for trade between England and Scotland, as well as between both countries and the opposite continent, it quickly grew into importance. It was a famous nursery of seamen in the middle ages ; and no less famous as a resort of merchants and tradesmen of all classes. A new charter, with fresh privileges, was accorded to it by nearly every English king. That of Henry the Third, dated 1234, makes * Blomkfield, vol. iii., p. 305. t Ibid., vol. iii., p. 85. X Hardynge's Chronicle, cited by Mackenzie, Descriptive and Historical Account of Newcastle upon Tyne (Newcastle, 1827;, p. 105. Roger Thornton of Newcastle. 141 first mention of one of the chief elements of its commercial greatness. To its townsmen, ' upon their supplication,' license is mven ' to di<x coals and stones in the common soil without the walls, called the Castle Moor, and to convert them to their own profit, in aid of their fee-farm rate of 1001. per annum.'* In Edward the First's reign, great resistance was made to the use of Newcastle coal, one man being 1 even hanged for burning it within the walls of London. + But in 1357, Edward the Third, more enlightened, granted to its people the entire possession of the Castle Moor, and the Castle Field adjoining, ' for the purposes of there digging of coals, stone, and slate ;% and soon after that the convey- ance of coal to London and elsewhere became an important branch of the English coasting-trade. Newcastle had many notable merchants at this and every later time, the most notable of all being Roger Thornton. According to the old tradition, * At the "West Gate came Thornton in, With b hap and a halfpenny and a lambskin.' In due time he rose to be ' the richest merchant that ever was dwelling in Newcastle.' He is said to have built the old Exchange on the south side of Sandhill, as well as the strong West Gate, yet standing, in lieu of the ruder entrance that first admitted him to fortune, and many other orna- ments of the ancient town. He was Mayor in 1400, 1410, and 142G ; and as Member of Parliament, in 1399, 14J1, and 14 1G, he must have been often in London during the time of Whittington's greatest fame. He died in 1429, six years after Whittington.§ Many fresh privileges — partly due, no doubt, to Thornton's influence, — were conferred on Newcastle by Henry the Fourth and Henry the Fifth ; and in spite of the civil wars, * Anderson, vol. i., p. 20G. t Smiles, Lives of the Engineers (London, 18C1), vol. i., p. 291. t Andeiison, vol. i.. ]). 'MO. § Mackenzie, pp. lU'J, 11 (J, 215. 14'2 The Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle. from which, indeed, it was pretty well shut out by its posi- tion, the town flourished all through the fifteenth century. In 1510 we find Henry the Eighth, on the petition of the burgesses, occasioned by many disputes then prevalent, order- ins that none of the minor crafts should be admitted into the crafts of mercers, drapers, or spiccrs, without first renouncing their other avocations, and paying suitable fines on their admission. These three trades, or mysteries, had been, from the year 1215, when they were incorporated by King John, separated from other mysteries and united in one Company of Mer- chant Adventurers. By John's charter, its members were exempted from pleading anywhere outside of the city walls, and relieved from all duties of toll, portage, pontage, and passage, usually levied throughout the king's dominions. They were, like the merchants of Hull, great dealers in wool and wine all through the times of the Plantagenets, by most of whom fresh liberties were accorded to them ; others again being conferred by Henry the Seventh, in 1504 ; by Henry the Eighth in 1510 and 1517, and by Edward the Sixth in 1546. Under the Tudors, their chief business was in ex- porting to the continent and to other parts of England ' canvas, sheepskins, lambsfels, lead, grindstones, coals, and rough-tanned leather.' Their members had the privilege of joining the Company of Merchant Adventurers of England, and the other great trading associations, whose head-quarters were in London.* * Mackenzie, pp. G07, GG4, GGf> ; by whom are cited many curious ex- tracts from their records and regulations. In 154G, on the strength of Edward the Sixth's new charter, they carefully reformed their body, adopt- ing, among much else, new and stringent rules about apprenticeship. Their apprentices had to serve ten years, instead of the usual seven. During that time they were not allowed " to dance, dice, card, or mum, or use any gitterns; to wear any cut hose, cut shoes, or pounced jerkins, or any beards ; to wear any other hose than slops of coarse cloth, whereof the yard doth not exceed 12s. ; their shoes and coats to be of coarse cloth and housewife's making," and so forth. " What dicing, carding, and mumming!" exclaimed the frainers of these rules, in terror at the luxurious and pleasure-loving tastes of the age, " what tippling, dancing, and embracing of harlots ! what Its other Trading Guilds. 143 Besides this Association of Merchant Adventurers, New- castle hud nine other incorporated Companies. The mystery of the Skinners and Glovers had been founded in 1437, with Thornton's son for one of its first and leading members. The Bakers and Brewers, a very old society, having a monopoly of that calling along the whole length of the Tyne, had been incorporated in 1440. And the Butchers and Tailors, the Cordwainers, Saddlers, and Tanners, the Smiths and the Fullers and Dyers had each their separate Company. Besides all these, and with a lower standing in the corporation, there were fifteen bye-trades and ten unchartered companies. Chief of the bye-trades was that of the Masters and Mariners of Trinity House, incorporated 1402, and greatly favoured by Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth as an excellent school for seamen. Among the other bye-trades were the Weavers, the Barber-surgeons and Chandlers, the Shipwrights, the Coopers, the House-carpenters, the Masons, the Joiners, the Millers, the Felt-makers, Curriers and Armourers, the Col- liers and Paviours, the Slaters, and the Plumbers and Glaziers. The inferior Companies included Goldsmiths, Bricklayers and Plasterers, Pope-makers, Sail-makers, Upholsterers, Sta- tioners, Meters, Porters, Scriveners and Hoastmen, — the last-named being employed in loading and disposing of the coals dug up in the neighbourhood and shipped to all parts of Europe. They, indeed, were the most numerous and the most influential of all the makers of Newcastle greatness in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. "Many thousand people are engaged in this trade of coals," said one, writing in the time of the Commonwealth ; " many live by working of them in the pits, and many live by conveying them in waggons and wains to the river Tyne."* guarded [? braided], jagged hose, lined with silk, and cut shoes ! what use of gitterus by night! what wearing of beards! what daggers is by them worn cross-over and thwart their backs, that these their doings are more comely and decent for raging ruffians than seemly for honest apprentices !" * Chorofjruphia ; or a Survey of Newcaslle-ujwn-Tync (Newcastle, 1G49). 144 English Commerce under As in Newcastle, so all over England, especially under Stuart dominion, monopolies and restrictive companies of all sorts abounded. Each town had its own little set of guilds and trading associations, wholly independent, or more or less nearly related to the larger societies of merchants and trades- men that assembled in London. " I confess I did ever think," wrote Francis Bacon, in a letter to James the First, " that trading in companies is most agreeable to the English nature, which wanteth that same general view of a republic which runneth in the Dutch, and serves them instead of a com- pany."* And doubtless it was so. But the spirit that prompted men, as soon as they had formed themselves into any sort of a company, or when they found that their own town, or nest of towns, had especial facilities for conducting their particular sorts of business, to aim at securing for their companies, or their towns, a monopoly of those pursuits, brought great mischief to society when carried to excess, as it was under James the First and his successor. Over and over again complaints were made thereof in Parliament, and over and over again these early Stuarts acknowledged the evil, and avowed their intention of repressing it. But the granting of monopolies to societies and individuals afforded too many opportunities of favouritism and extortion for it to be willingly abandoned. Licence-granting and patent-selling increased every year, till they came to be a scandal and a mischief which could only be removed by the removal of the Stuarts themselves. Yet trade, foreign trade especially, advanced even during the reign, real and nominal, of luckless Charles the First, and in spite of the turmoils incident thereto. In some respects it was benefited by those troubles, as thereby the energy that ought to have found expression in domestic com- merce and manufacture was forced into other channels. ' When I consider,' writes Lewis Roberts, an intelligent but wordy Welshman, in his Merchants Map of Commerce, * Cited by Graik, vol. ii., p. 47. James the First and Charles the First. 145 published in 1G38, ' 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 English prying after the trade and commerce thereof, then again, I am easily brought to imagine 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 adds, in a spirit of timidity that is amusing when we compare the com- merce of to-day with that of two hundred years ago, * Eng- land being naturally seated in a northern corner of the world, and herein bending under the weight of too ponderous a burthen, 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.' The emporium of a good deal more than all Europe this island has become, in consequence of the enterprise that so astonished Master Roberts. * The staple com- modities of England,' he goes on to say, ' are cloths, lead, tin, some new late draperies, and other English real and royal ' — that is, patented — ' commodities. Shipped hence, in former times, they yielded by their returns from foreign parts all those necessities and wants we desired or stood in need of. But the late great traffic of this island hath VOL. I. L 146 England the Emporium of Europe. been such, that it hath not only proved a bountiful mother to the inhabitants, but also a courteous nurse to the ad- joining neighbours ; for in what matter of traffic they have lost, we have been found to have gained ; and what they have wanted, we have been noted to have supplied them with. Hath the proud and magnificent city of Venice lost her great traffic and commerce with India, Arabia, and Persia ? England hath got it, and now furnisheth her plenteously with the rich commodities thereof. Hath all Italy lost Venice, that fed it with those dainties ? London now supplieth her place, and is found both to clothe and nourish it. Hath France almost lost the excellent commodities of Constantinople, Alexandria, Aleppo, and generally of all Turkey ? London can and doth furnish it. Nay, is Turkey itself deprived of the precious spices of India ? England can and doth plentifully afford them. Will you view Muscovia, survey Sweden, look upon Denmark, peruse the East Country, and those other colder regions ? There you shall find the English to have been : the inhabitants, from the prince to the peasant, wear English woollen livery, feed in English pewter, sauced with English Indian spices, and send to their enemies sad English leaden messengers of death. Will you behold the Netherlands, whose eyes and hearts envy England's traffic? Yet they must perforce confess that, for all their great boasts, they are indebted to London for most of their Syrian commodities, besides what other wares else they have of English growth. Will you see France, and travel from Marselia to Calais? Though they stand least in need of us, yet they cannot last long without our commodities. And for Spain, if you pry therein from the prince's palace to the poor man's cottage, he will vow to God there is no clothing comparable to the English baize, nor pheasant excelling a seasonable English red-herring 1 !'* * Roberts, Tlie MercMnt's Map of Commerce (London, 1700), p. 308. CHAPTER VI. THE THORNES OF BRISTOL. [1480—1546.] Bristol under the early Tudors was in shape a sort of irregular circle, with the four principal streets — High Street, Broad Street, Wynch Street, and Corn Street, — meeting at right angles in the centre, where once a stately High Cross had been placed ; while four venerable churches — Saint Leonard's, Saint Lawrence's, Saint Ewen's, and Saint An- drew's, — occupied the four corners formed by the junction of the four streets. The lower and elongated portion of the circle was intersected by the Avon, and the whole was en- closed by a stout wall, not yet quite removed. The enclosure comprised a number of narrow streets, crowded with houses of all heights and sizes irregularly squeezed .together, and thickly interspersed with churches, crosses, and fountains. All round the wall, forming its inner margin, were the con- ventual establishments, — the Austin Friars round about Saint Augustine's Church ; the Bonhommes on the site of Saint Mark's, with their apple-gardens near Orchard Street, and their pigeon-house, ' columbarium,' or 4 culver,' by Culver Street ; the Bartholomews, the Franciscans, the nuns of Saint Mary Magdalene, where Maudlin Lane now stands, and many others. The commercial city was in the midst of this religious circle, with the meeting-houses of the various guilds and crafts nearest of all to the central Ilijjh Cross 148 Bristol under the early Tudor s. and the members of those guilds and crafts each in his own little district; the weavers, for instance, in Tucker Street and Rackhay ; the knifesmiths near the site of Christmas Street ; the cooks by the church of All Saints ; and the butchers in their shambles opposite Saint Nicholas Church and adjoining the northern shore of the Avon.* At some dis- tance to the west, away from both the monasteries and the haunts of business, was the stately Castle, long since destroyed ; and on the other side of the river was the then out-of-the-way suburb of Redcliffe, famous as the residence of William Canynge, and the monks whom he especially favoured. On the water, by the quaint old bridge that led to it, with a row of houses on either side, were always to be seen a crowd of galleys, cogs, and carracks, representatives of the richest and most enterprising commerce of those times. Rich and enterprising, most assuredly, were the merchants who crowded the streets of this thrifty and prayerful old town of Bristol. William Canynge, abandoning commerce and going to end his days in a monastery in 1475, left a crowd of busy friends and followers to enter upon a work far more perilous and far more advantageous to the world than any he could have dreamt of. We have already noticed a contemporary statement concerning two vessels despatched by John Jay, in 1480, in quest of * the Island of Brazil,' when ' the ships sailed about the sea during nine months, but did not find the island.' That report may be mythical ; but it is certain that from very near that time the old Bristol mer- chants were thinking and talking of a new world of trade on * ' At that day, as soon as you passed through the gates, you found your- self in a monastic suburb, which embraced the city with a sumptuous girdle of religious houses — a suburb which was, in fact, a second city, a city of monks, as its inner zone was a city of merchants, and where you heard, in exchange for clamourous wharves, the more protracted hum of devotional exercises.' — Lucas. Sxcularia (London, 18G2), p. 97. A very graphic and interesting sketch of old Bristol, to which I am indebted, fill pp. 88-108 of Mr. Lucas's volume. The Enterprise of its Merchants. 141J the other side of the Atlantic, and doing what they could towards actually going forth in search of it. ' For the last seven years,' says a Spanish ambassador in London, writing to his sovereigns Ferdinand and Isabella in July, 1498, ' the people of Bristol have sent out "every year two, three, or four light ships in search of the island of Brazil and the seven cities.'* The statement, if true — and though hard to believe, it is harder to dispute, coming as it does from a man who certainly could have no interest in exaggerating the naval skill and maritime enterprise of England, and who would be far more likely to say too little than too much — shows that our Bristol merchants were sailing out into the Atlantic at least two years before Columbus made his first voyage of discovery. And we know, beyond dispute, that the men of Bristol, led by John Cabot, had landed on the American continent before either Columbus or Americo Vespuccio had done more than visit and explore the islands of the West Indies. John Cabot, a Venetian by birth, but a Bristol merchant by choice and long residence, procured from King Henry the Seventh, on the 5th of March, 1496, for himself and his three sons Sebastian, Ludovico, and Sanzio, letters patent for the discovery of new lands. With the help of his fellow- traders, he thereupon proceeded to fit out a couple of strong vessels, manned by three hundred sailors, and thus equipped he sailed out of Bristol in May, 1497. f After traversing some seven hundred leagues, he sighted land, from his good ship the Matthew, on the 24th of June.J This land, which was the coast of Labrador, for a long time known as New- foundland, he supposed to be Cathay, ' the territory of the Great Khan.' " He coasted for three hundred leagues and then landed," as we read in a trustworthy letter written by a * Bergenroth, Calendar of Letters, Despatches, and State Papers, relating to the Negotiations between England and Sixiin ; preserved in the Archives at Simancas and elsewhere (London, 18G2), vol. i., p. 177. f Biddle, Memoir of Sebastian Cabot (London, 1831), p. 72. I Barrett, History of Bristol (Bristol, 1789), p. 172. 1.30 The Voyages of the Cabots Venetian merchant within a fortnight of his return. " He saw no human being whatsoever, but he has brought hither to the Kin" - certain snares, which had been set to catch frame. and a needle for making nets. He also found some felled trees ; wherefore he supposed there were inhabitants, and returned to the ship in alarm. The King has promised," adds the Venetian, " that in the spring he shall have ten ships, armed according to his own fancy, and at his request he has conceded him all the prisoners, except such as are confined for high treason, to man them with. He has also o-iven him money wherewith to amuse himself till then,* and he is now at Bristol with his wife, who is a Venetian woman, and with his sons. His name is John Cabot, and they call him the great admiral. Vast honour is paid him, and he dresses in silk. These English run after him like mad people, so that he can enlist as many of them as he pleases, and a number of our own rogues besides."f Honest people, as well as rogues, went on the next expedition to the North American shores ; but John Cabot was not of the number. It is likely that he died soon after his return. At any rate we hear nothing more of him ; and Henry's next patent, dated the 3rd of February, 1498, was made out in favour of Sebastian Cabot alone. ' This year,' says the chronicler, * Sebastian Cabot caused the King to man and victual a ship at Bristol to reach an island which he knew to be replenished with rich commodities. In the ship divers merchants of London adventured small stocks, and in the company of this ship sailed also out of Bristol three or four small ships, fraught with slight and gross wares, as coarse cloth, caps, laces, points and such other.'}; The * On the 10th of August, 1497, Henry granted « to him that found the new isle, KM.' — Biddle, p. 80. t Rawdon Brown, Notices concerning John Cabot and his son Sebastian, included in the Bibliographical and Historical Miscellanies of the Philo- biblion Society (London, 1S54-G,, pp. 7, S. X Fabian's Chronicle, cited by Haelvyt, Divers Voyages touching the Discoverie of America (London, 1582). a?id other Bristol Merchants. lol little fleet quitted Bristol in May, 1498, sailed towards Iceland, there and thereabouts made some search for a north- western passage to India, the first of a series of expeditions that lasted for three centuries and a half, and, failing in that, turned southward to explore the North American coast, as far as Chesapeke Bay.* It was an expedition very helpful to geographical science. But Cathay was not reached, and there was no market found for the * slight and gross wares ' sent out for sale. Therefore Henry the Seventh and his subjects looked upon it with some dissatisfaction ; and when Cabot made fresh proposals for ' discovering new countries ' we are told, he ' had no great or favourable entertainment of the King.' So in 1499, ' with no extraordinary preparation, he set forth from Bristol, and made great discoveries. 'f That is all we know of this expedition, unless we identify Sebastian Cabot with the Englishman whom the Spanish adventurer, Alonzo de Ojeda, found in the neighbourhood of Coquibacoa, when starting on the first of the brilliant expeditions that issued in the search for El Dorado and the conquests of Mexico and Peru. J But other attempts were made to bring profit out of the elder Cabot's discovery. On the 19th of March, 1501, license was given by King Henry to three Bristol merchants, liichard Warde, Thomas Ashehurst, and John Thomas, together with three Portuguese, at their own expense to explore all the islands, countries, regions, and provinces in the eastern, western, northern, or southern seas, not already known to Christians, with exclusive right of trading thither for ten years, on condition that in every place discovered by them they set up the royal banner and subdued its natives in name of the King of England. § That that expedition was successful may be inferred from an entry in the King's * AsiiKR, Henry Hudson the Navigator (London, 18G0\ p. lxxii. t ConU'iii]x>rary 31 S. cited by Seyeu, vol. ii.. p. 208. X Diddle, p. 92. § Ibid., pp. 22(3,227, 312. 152 The First Colony in North America. account-book, showing that, on the 7th of January, 1502, 207. was given to * the merchants of Bristol that have been in the New-found-land.'* In December of the same year, moreover, another patent was granted, extending the trading monopoly from ten to forty years, and conferring it upon only three of its former holders, two Portuguese merchants and Thomas Ashehurst, with whom was associated a Hugh Eliot, f These merchants, and others in their society, seem to have gone every year to the shores of North America, where, it has been suggested^ Sebastian Cabot was residing and govern- ing a little colony for some time. On the 17th of November, 1503, 11. was paid on Henry the Seventh's account, ' to one that brought hawks from the new-found-island.' On the 8th of April following 21. were given ' to a priest going to the new island ;' and in August, 1505, we find, ' wild cats and popinjays of the new-found-island,' were conveyed to the Court at Richmond at a cost of 13s. 4d.§ But no national effort to appropriate their new possessions, after the fashion of the Spaniards and the Portuguese in more southern parts, was shown by the English. After a few years Newfoundland or Labrador was almost forgotten. On the death of Henry the Seventh Sebastian Cabot went to live in Spain, there to be employed as map maker and adviser on all maritime affairs, until the accession of Charles the First, when the jealousies of the Spanish voyagers and councillors induced him to return to England. That was in 1516. In 1517, it seems, Henry the Eighth, ' furnished and set forth certain ships under the governance pf Sebastian Cabot and Sir Thomas Spert, whose faint heart was the cause that that voyage took none effect' || It certainly had not the effect desired by its most adventurous promoters, of 'going in the back side of the new-found-land, until they came to the back side and south seas of the Indies Occidental, and so, * Biddle., p. 230. x Diddle, p. 98. t Kymek, vol. xiii., p. 37. § Ibid., p. 234. || Eden, Treatyse of the Keice India (London, 1553) Dedication. The Family of the Thornes. 153 continuing their voyage, to return through the straits of Magellan ;'* but it issued in the discovery of what were afterwards known as Davis's and Hudson's Straits, and in the exploration of a great part of the coast line of Labrador, f In that, or in some previous voyage, perhaps in all the early expeditions of the Cabots and their Bristol friends, old Robert Thome was an important sharer. " My father," said his son and namesake, "with another merchant of Bristol, named Huffh Eliot," — the same who was included in the monopoly of 1502, — " were the discoverers of the new-found- lands ;"$ but of their movements we have no more precise information. Thome, born between 1460 and 1470, was about thirty years of age at the time of John Cabot's memorable voyage in 1497. It is very probable that he was one of the Bristol men who took part in it. The Thornes had been famous merchants, voyagers, and sharers in all sorts of enterprises helpful to the progress of society for many generations before his time. Claiming descent from Huldrich the Tom, uncle of Rollo, Duke of Normandy, and holding office as standard-bearers of the Norman house down to the time of William the Con- queror's coming to England, they formed the several branches of Toenis, Tains, Thanies, Thomeys and the like, shown by Domesday Book to have been planted among us before the close of the eleventh century, and were influential people all though the middle ages. They throve in Essex, Herts, and Lincolnshire, in the far northern, and the far western counties of England, as monks and merchants, courtiers and warriors. § They joined in the Crusades, and shared * Robert Thome, the younger, in IfAKLrjrr, Voyages (London, 1599), vol. i., p. 219. f Asher, p. lxxiii. X Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. i., p. 219. § A very full account of the Thornes and all their kinships, known and probable, from the earliest down to the present time, has been prepared by Dr. AVilliam Thorn of London, to whom I am much indebted for the opportunity of using his MS. in my notice of the family. 154 The Family of the Thornes. largely in the increased advantages to commerce that the Crusades occasioned. The Mamectus Spina, ' of the Society of English merchants at Florence,' upon whom Pope Inno- cent the Fourth conferred special privileges in a bull dated 1249,* and who in 1257 lent money to Pope Alexander the Fourth, t and the Roger Spina whom in 1299 a bull of Boniface the Eighth styled ' merchant of the Papal Chamber,^ were only English Thornes who followed the fashion of those days, and, when dealing with foreigners, translated their name into Latin. Our Robert Thome's grandfather was a Robert Thorn, of Saint Albans, appointed in 1417, along with other ' discreet men ' to inquire into the penury and poverty then existing, and to see how best they were to be removed.^ He is supposed to have been a clothier and cloth merchant. Those at any rate were the callings of several of his grandchildren. One of them, James, founded a business in Colchester, that was carried on through many generations. Another grandson was a clothier of Reading, one of the fifteen Thornes who were Mayors of the town and for two centuries or more contributed greatly to its commer- cial well being. Then there was John Thorn, Abbot of Reading from 1486 to 1519, and almost absolute ruler of its social and political, as well as its religious concerns. He it was whom Henry the Eighth visited in disguise on the famous occasion of his knighting a sirloin of beef. Of the * Rymer. (ed. 1816), vol. i., p. 271. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 3G5. X Ibid., vol. i., p. 905. § Rymer, vol. ix., p. 500. The following is from the JIarleian MSS. (1041 and 4031;, pointed out to me by Dr. Thorn : — liobert Tliorn, of Saint Albans. I Thomas Thorn. James Thorn, clothier John Thorn. Abbot Rorert Tiiokne, mer- William Thorn, of Colchester. of Reading. chant of Bristol. clothier of K.eading. I I I I Robert thorn f., = Bridget, dan. Nicholas Thornk, = Mary, dan. of John Thome, nf Bristol and of— Mill, of of Bristol, 1496-1516. Roger WiRston, Sheriff of Hristol, lyondou, 1492-1532. Hampton. of Wolston, 1527, d. s. p. 1547. Warwickshire (second wife). Robert TJwrne, the Elder. 155 beef, Henry himself partook so heartily that the Abbot exclaimed, " I would give one hundred pounds on the con- dition I could feed so heartily on beef as you do !' Alas, my weak and queazie stomach will hardly digest the wing of a small rabbit or chicken." Soon after the Abbot was summoned to London, ordered without explanation to the Tower, and there fed for a few days on bread and water. * At last, a sirloin of beef was set before him, on which the Abbot so fed as to verify the proverb that two hungry meals make the third a glutton. In springs King Henry out of a private lobby, where he had placed himself the invisible spectator of the Abbot's behaviour. " My Lord," quoth the King, " presently deposit your hundred pounds, or else no going hence all the days of your life. I have been your physician to cure you of your queazie stomach, and here, as I de- serve, I demand my fee for the same." '* Robert Thorne the elder, of Bristol, was this merry Abbot's brother. Like so many others of his family, he seems to have been a clothier and exporter of cloth by trade. He was also an extensive dealer in white soap, at that time, after woollen cloths, almost the principal article of manu- facture in Bristol. For some time, he resided at Seville, and there, we are told, he was knighted by King Ferdinand of Spain.f In 1510, he was appointed, with fourteen others, to hold in commission the office of Admiral of England in Bristol,:}: and in 1515, he served as Mayor.§ In 1523, he was sent up to London as member for Bristol in the Parlia- ment assembled in April of that year.|| Soon after that, at at any rate before the autumn of 1526, he ended a life that must have been full of riotable incidents, although of none of them are any details left on record. 11 Nor do we know * Fuller, Ecclesiastical History. t Barrett, p. 650. \ Brewer, Letters and Papers of tlte Reign of Henry VIII., vol. i., p. 157. § Pryce, Popular History of Bristol (Bristol, 1861), p. 482. U Archives of Bristol, p. 155, extracted by Dr. Thorn. \ He was buried in Temple Church, London, where an epitaph was placed in token of his worth. It is copied by Barrett, p. 650. 150 Robert Tliorne, the Younger. much about the two sons who inherited his worth and his wealth. Of these sons, Robert was born in 1492 ;* Nicholas, in 1496.f "I see it matters not," said Fuller of the elder, " what the name be, so the nature be good. I confess thorns came in by man's curse, and our Saviour saith, ' Do not gather grapes of thorns.' But this our thorn (God send us many copies of them) was a blessing to our nation, and wine and oil may be said freely to flow from him."J A merchant of Bristol, he was also a member of the Merchant Taylors' Guild in London, and for many years a resident in Seville. In Seville his commercial enterprises were very extensive. One of them gives curious evidence of his interest in the voyages of discovery upon which Spaniards, at any rate, were not slow in embarking. Sebastian Cabot, having left England after his unsuccessful expedition of 1517, had gone first to Spain, § thence to Venice, when he had done his utmost without avail to induce the government to take part in the work of American discovery, || and finally to Spain again, where at last he had obtained appointment to the command of a fresh undertaking. In 1526, he left Seville, with three ships and a caravel, to be absent five years, the interval being spent in the discovery of the river La Plata and the exploration of the adjoining districts.1I With him went the agents of various merchants whose ventures, it was estimated, amounted in all to about 10,000 ducats. To that sum Robert Thorne, the younger, and his partner in Seville contributed 1400 ducats, " principally," said the merchant, " for that two English friends of mine, which are somewhat learned in cosmography should go in the same * Stow, Survey, book ii., p. 123. t Pryce, p. 252. \ Filler, Worthies (London, 1G62), Somersetshire, p. 3G. § BlDDLE, p. 121. || Rawdon Brown, p. 1 0. H BlDDLE, pp. 131-1GS. His Zeal on behalf of Maritime Discovery. 157 ships, to bring me certain relation of the country and to be expert in the navigation of those seas."* Long before their return, the merchant gave other proof of his enlightened zeal in maritime affairs. Doctor Lee, Henry the Eighth's ambassador at the court of Charles the First, having written to him for information about Cabot's expedition, he took the opportunity of replying in a long and very notable letter, describing and criticising the several efforts made by the several nations of Europe towards the discovery and colonization of America and both the Indies, and strongly urging a revival of English interest in the subject. "It appeareth plainly," he said, " that the new-found-land that we discovered is all a mainland with the Indies Occidental, from whence the Emperor hath all the gold and pearls." Then he proceeded to detail, and urge the expediency of a plan for sailing due north from England and so getting to China and Cathay, with the option of returning the same way, or round through the straits of Magellan. " God knoweth," he added, " that though by it I should have no great interest, yet I have had and still have no little mind of this business. So that, if I had faculty to my will, it should be the first thing that I would undertake, even to attempt if our seas northward be navigable to the Pole or no. I reason that, as some sicknesses are here- ditarious and come from the father to the son, so this inclina- tion or desire of this discovery I inherited of my father."! Soon after the writing of that treatise, Thorne returned to England, in the company of Doctor Lee, who seems to have heartily approved of his project; and early in 1527 we find him writing to the same effect to King Henry himself. " It is my bounden duty," he said with a sharp touch of satire, " to reveal this secret to your Grace, which hitherto, I sup- pose, hath been hid ; which is, that with a small number of ships there may be discovered divers new lands and kingdoms, in the which, without doubt, your Grace shall win perpetual glory and your subjects infinite * IIakiavt, Vuyayes, vol. i, p. 215. t IM<1, PP- 214-219. 158 Robert Thome s Plan for reaching Cathay. profit." The southern, the eastern, and the western quarters of the world had already been taken possession of; but the north yet had to be explored. " The which," Thome con- tinued, " it seemeth to me, is only your charge and duty ; because the situation of this your realm is thereunto nearest and aptest of all other ; and also for that you have already taken it in hand." Then he referred to the fruitless voyage of Sebastian Cabot and Sir Thomas Spert, and urged that the better knowledge, both of the parts to be traversed and of seamenship, and all accessories thereto, made success almost certain. " Surely the cost herein will be nothing at all, where so great honour and glory is hoped for. It is very clear and evident that the seas that commonly men say that, without very great danger, difficulty and peril, it is impossible to pass, those same seas be navigable, and without any such danger but that ships may pass, and have in them perpetual clearness of the day, without any darkness of the night ; which thing is a great commodity for the navigants, to see at all times round about them, as well the safeguards as the dangers." That fancy of a perpetual daylight in the neighbourhood of the North Pole, was the quaintest of all the arguments adduced by Robert Thome for the prose- cution of his project. There would be ice and coldness, it was true, in those quarters; but, he urged, those obstacles would soon be overpassed, and then the voyagers would have open sea and temperate climate, for all the rest of their way. " Which considered, it will seem your Grace's subjects to be without activity or courage, in leaving to do this glorious and noble enterprise," by which, " without doubt, they shall find the richest lands and islands in the world, of gold, precious stones, balms, spices, and other things that we here most esteem."* Those arguments took prompt effect. On the 20th of May, 1527, 'King Henry the Eighth sent two fair ships well manned and victualed, having in them divers cunning men, * Hakliyt, vol. l., pp. 212-214. Its Unsuccessful following by Henry the Eighth. 159 to seek strange regions.' These ships, the Mary of Guild- ford and the Sampson having gone from London to Plymouth to be finally equipped, set sail on the 10th of June and pro- ceeded due north, as Thorne had urged. But on the 1st of July a violent storm arose, which destroyed the Sampson and all her mariners. The men of the Mary sailed a little further, but, seeing nothing of the promised wealth of Cathay, they soon lost heart.* " We found many great islands of ice, and deep water," wrote one of the number, in pathetic language, to Cardinal Wolsey ; " but we found no sounding, and then we durst not go no further to the north- ward for fear of more ice." They next turned aside to enter and explore " a good harbour and many small islands and a great fresh river going up far into the mainland ; and the mainland was all wilderness and mountains and woods and no natural ground, but all moss, and no habitation nor no people in these parts ; and in the woods we found footing of divers great beasts, but we saw none, not in ten leagues." Therefore they determined to go no further, and, changing their course, sailed round to Saint John's Bay, in New- foundland, f That was the end of the first voyage, the only one under- taken during Henry the Eighth's reign, in furtherance of Robert Thome's plan for reaching Cathay. It was revived in later years, and Thome's treatise contributed more than anything else, save Sebastian Cabot's report of his father's and his own discoveries, to quicken the zeal of Englishmen in traversing and seeking to traverse the Arctic Seas. Having written, however, and having seen the failure of its first result, the merchant seems to have abandoned the enterprise and turned to other work. A successful merchant, he amassed much wealth, which he spent in wise and charitable ways. " I have observed some at the church door," says his old panegyrist, " cast in sixpence with such ostentation that * Haklvtt, vol. iii., p. 129. | PtucnAS, Ilia l'ihjrimes ^London, 1G25-G), vol. iii., p. SCO. 1G0 Robert Thome s Charities. it rebounded from the bottom and rung against both the sides of the basin, so that the same piece of silver was the alms and the giver's trumpet, whilst others have dropped down silent five shillings without any noise. Our Thome was of the second sort, doing his charity effectually, but with a possible privacy."* In his life-time, we are told, he spent upon his own kindred, * besides debts forgiven,' a sum of 5,1427. ;t and by his will he left 4,4457. to be bestowed in charitable pur- poses.}: Of this amount a large portion was set apart for the rebuilding of Walthamstow Church, supposed to have been originally set up by his ancestors, in the eleventh century ; and a smaller sum was to be expended in founding a scholarship at the Merchant Tailors' School in London. § More memorable was a bequest of 3007. to be spent in buying land for the es- tablishment of a Grammar School at Bristol ;|| and in many other ways Robert Thome left money to bear good fruit when he was gone. A sum of 3807., for instance, was to be ap- plied in buying corn and wood when they were cheap and selling them at cost price, when they were dear, to the poor of Bristol ; and with 5007. was to be formed a fund for lending small amounts, interest free, to needy and deserving clothiers of the town. H In that charitable temper the good merchant died in 1532, when he was only forty years of age. He was buried in Saint Christopher's Church, London, long since pulled down and replaced by the Bank of England.** His brother Nicholas was his successor in good works. He took part in the endowment of the Grammar School, which, begun by Robert's executors in 1535, was completed before the * Fuller, Worthier, Somersetshire, p. 36. t Ibid. X Stow, Survey, book ii., p. 123. § Dr. Thorn's MS. On a window of Waltbamstow Church, lately removed, were these words ; " Christen people, praye for the soule of Robert Thorn, citizen of London, with whose goodys thys syde of thys churchc was newe edyfyd and fynyshed in the Yeare of Our Lord, 1535." || Tanner, Notitia Monastica. ^; Barrett, p. 613. ** Stow, vol. ii., p. 123. Nicholas Thome of Bristol. 161 ciose of the following year. He also, though himself, it would seem, residing nearly always in Bristol, was a sharer in the trading enterprises to the New World, that led in due time to the foundation of our great colonial empire. In 152G, as appears from an old account-book of his keeping, Nicholas Thorne, then just thirty years of age, was 'a principal merchant of Bristol,' and one memorable extract shows that, before that year, ' one Thomas Tison, an Englishman, had found the way to the West Indies and re- sided there, and to him the said Master Nicholas Thorne sent armour and other commodities ; whereby it is probable that some of our merchants had a kind of trade to the West Indies even in those ancient times and before also.'* In those days, however, all English trade witn the Spanish West Indies was contraband, and the enterprise of Thorne and Tison does not appear to have had many followers for some time to come. Nicholas Thorne was Sheriff of Bristol in 1528, a John, who was doubtless the third son of old Robert Thorne, being associated with him in the office, and from that time at any rate he was an influential man in all local business. When Henry the Eighth, proceeding through Somersetshire, went, on the 18th of August, 1534, to spend ten days at Thorn- bury, we are told how Master Thorne and some others visited him on the 20th of the month, and, ' in the name of the Mayor and commonalty of Bristol, presented to the King ten fat oxen and forty sheep towards his hospitality.' To Queen Anne Boleyn at the same time was given ' one cup with a cover of silver gilded, weighing twenty-eight ounces, with a hundred marks of gold, as a gift from her Majesty's town and chamber of Bristol.' A few days later, it is further recorded, King Henry ' came disguised to Bristol, with certain gentle- men, to Master Thome's house, and secretly viewed the city, which Master Thorne showed him ; and he said to Master * Hakluyt, Voyages, vol. iii., p. 500. VOL. I. M 162 Nicholas Thome of Bristol Thome, "This is now but the town of Bristol, but I will make it the city of Bristol," which he afterwards did by erecting it into a Bishops see.' At. the merchant's intercession, how- ever, the King stayed the demolition of the Cathedral, on which the iconoclasts of those days were engaged. For this and other conservative measures tie was roundly abused by many of* his neighbours.* Hut, though a good Church- man, he was a friend to Bristol and a good servant of the State. In 1537 he went to Westminster as Member of Parliament for Bristol ; and in 1545 he served as Mayor, during which time it is recorded, not quite intelligibly, ' he kept his Admi- ralty Court at Clevedon.'f Just then Henry the Eighth was busy about his war with France. Bristol sent to his aid twelve ships, most of them, as was the fashion in those times, named after the merchants who furnished them ; the three chief being the Thome and the Pratt, each of 600 tons burthen, and the Gournay of 400 tons. ' I * ould,' exclaimed King Henry while he was inspecting the goodly ships, 'that my realm had in it many more such Thornes, Pratts' Gour- nays and the like.'+ That is all we know about Nicholas Thorne. He was only fifty when he died, on the 19th of August, 1546. Following his brother's lead, he left 400/. to the young clothiers' fund, 25/. towards repairing a granary, probably the same in which Robert's cheap corn and wood were kept, and 36/. 13s. id. to be spent on the Grammar School. To the school also all his geographical and nautical instruments were bequeathed; while with 300/. was to be founded the library of Saint Bartholomew; 100/. were to be applied by the Corporation of Bristol in repairing bridges ; and the interest of 63/. 13*. 4d. was to be disposed of in gifts to honest maids of Bristol on their marriage. Well might his * Slyer, vol. ii., p. 214. t Puvck, pp. 253, 4S3. * Seyeu, vol. ii., p. 227. His Charitable Bequests. 103 splendid tombstone, in Saint Werburgh's, speak of him as 'a famous and upright merchant, whose words were governed by truth, and whose deeds Mere ruled by justice and by virtue, whom the whole community of Bristol acknowledged as a munificent father; for by his bounty they were blessed.'* * Barrett, p. 483. For Ihc details of Nicholas Thome's will, I am indebted to Dr. Thorn. 164 CHAPTER VII. THE GRESHAMS OF LONDON. [1500—1579.] The Greshams are first found in Norfolk. John Gresham, gentleman, of Gresham, — great-grandfather of the famous Thomas Gresham* — lived in the latter part of the fourteenth century, and inherited a respectable patrimony from ancestors who seem to have given their name to the district. James Gresham, his son, was a lawyer, living chiefly in London, in attendance at the King's Bench in 1443, and apparently a clerk or secretary to Sir William Paston, the judge, whose cause in the civil war he zealously espoused between 1443 and 147l.f He became lord of the manor of East Beckham, • John Gresham, of Gresham, gentleman, temp. Edward III. and Richard II. I James Gresham, of Holt, gentleman. I John Gresb<im = Alice, daughter and heir of Alexander of Holt, esq. i Blyth. ol Stratton, Norfolk, esquire. Ill I , William Gretfcam, Thomas <ireshani, Sir Richard Gresliam= Andrey, dau. of Sir John Grethavi of Holt and Lon- clerk, d. 1553. of London, knighted William Lynne, of Tiisey, in Sur a™ "■"•» h >*■»> ■* "i *■-»• ■«» esq. of North- rey, and l»ndon don, mercer, d. 1531, d. 21 Feb. 1549. 1548. aTupton.shire, d. knighted 1537, 28 Dec. 1522. d. 23 Oct. 1561. Sir John Gresham, Sir Thomas Grfstia»(,= Anne, daughter of William, knighted 1547, knight, b. 1519, d. 1560. d. 21 Nov. 1579. Femley. of West Cretin*, in Suffolk, esquire, ami widow of William Read, esquire; d. 23 Nov. 1556. Richard Gresham, b. ? 1548. d. 15K4. t Several letters of his are preserved among the Paston Letters. The Elder Greshams. 165 and transferred the family seat from Gresliam to Holt, a a bleak and desolate spot on the northern shore of Norfolk, about four miles from the sea. It is likely that in his later years he was something of a merchant, the neighbouring towns, full of Flemish settlers and convenient for intercourse with the coast towns o/ Flanders, being well adapted for amateur commerce. Certain it is, at any rate, that, whereas of his son John we know nothing but that he married a rich wife, his four grandsons were brought up to trade, having London for their chief place of residence.* These grandsons, all living in the time of Henry the Seventh and Henry the Eighth, were William, Thomas, Richard, and John. William, the eldest, is not much known to us. He was a mercer and merchant adventurer of Lon- don, and a freeman of the Mercers' Company, but he seems to have lived often at the family mansion, and also to have resided much abroad, besides making journeys in pursuit of his calling, f 'It appears,' says Hakluyt, 'out of certain ancient ledgers of Master John Gresham, that between the years 1511 and 1534 many English ships traded to the Levant,' among* them ' the Mary George, wherein was factor William Gresham ;'} and we find that in 1533 he was ap- pointed governor of the English merchants resident at Antwerp.§ In 1517 he, in partnership with his brothers Richard and John, young merchants all, were reported in debt to the Crown to the extent of 3,438/ Os. S^d. ;|| but in * Ward, Lives of Vie Professors of Gresham College ; to which is prefixed Vie Life of the Founder, Sir Thomas Gresham (London, 1740. — The author's copy iu the British Museum, with MS. additions), vol. i., p. 1, and appen- dix, pp. 11-15. Burgox, The Life and Times of Sir Thomas Gresham, compiled chiefly from his Correspondence preserved in If. M. State Paper OjHce, including Notices of many of his Contemporaries (London, 1839 j, vol. i., pp. G, 7. To these works, especially the latter, I am greatly indebted. t Buhgon, vol. i., p. 8. * Hakluyt, vol. ii., p. 9G. § Lesion, Stoic Papers of the Iieign of Henry VIII. (London, 1849;, vol. vii., p. 491. || Brewer, Letters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII., vol. ii., p. 1483. 100 Thomas Gresham, the Elder. 1544, near the end of their lives, it seems that a sum of 1,073Z. was owing to them from Henry the Eighth.* He died and was buried in Soper Lane, now Queen Street, in 1548. t Thomas Gresham was also a merchant trading to the chief towns of the Mediterranean ; but being frightened by a ghost, as it was said, he gave up business at an early age and became a priest. ' In the days of King Henry it was gene- rally bruited throughout England that Mr. Gresham, a mer- chant, setting sail from Palermo, where there dwelt one An- tonio, called the Rich,} who at one time had two kingdoms mortgaged unto him by the King of Spain, being crossed by contrary winds, was constrained to anchor under the lee of the island of Stromboli, which place is commonly affirmed by the Roman Catholics to be the jaws of hell, and that within which the damned souls are tormented. Now about mid-day, when for certain hours it accustomedly forbeareth to flame, he ascended the mountain with eight of the sailors ; and ap- proaching as near the vent as they durst, amongst other noises they heard a voice cry aloud, " Despatch ! despatch, the rich Antonio is a coming !" Terrified herewith, they descended ; and anon the mountain again evaporated fire. But from so dismal a place they made all the haste that they could ; when, the wind still thwa'rting their course, and desiring much to know more of this matter, they returned to Palermo. And forthwith inquiring of Antonio, it was told them that he was dead ; and, computing the time, they did find it to agree with the very instant that the voice was heard by them. Gresham reported this at his return to the lung, and the mariners being called before him, confirmed by oath the narration. In Gresham himself,' fearful that by further devotion to com- merce, he would bring upon himself a like fearful end, it was said, ' it wrought so deep an impression that he gave over all traffic ; distributing his goods, a part to his kinsfolk, and * Bisewek, vol. ii., p. 1483. f Birgon, vol. i., p. 9. t Anthony Fugger, the most famous member of the greatest family of merchant princes ever owned by Germany. Richard and John Gresham. 1G7 the reft to good uses, retaining only a competency to him- self, and so spent the rest of his life in solitary -devotion.'* In 1515 Thomas Gresham was presented by Henry the Eighth to a living in Norwich ;f at a later day he was made a prebendary of Winchester, and he died near the close of Queen Mary's reign. Much more important in the history of Tudor commerce were the lives of the two younger brothers, Richard and John Gresham. Both were brought up in London, as apprentices to a John Middleton, mercer, and Merchant of the Staple at Calais. Richard was made a freeman of the Mercers' Com- pany in 1507 ; John in 1517. Both fared well from the beginning — the elder brother finding his interest in residing for the most part in London, and going occasionally to Ant- werp and the other near trading towns on the Continent, while the younger chose a line of business that took him oftener and farther from home. As early as 1511 we find Richard Gresham advancing money to the King, and buying goods on his account.^ I'i November, 1514, he and William Copeland, a fellow-merchant, of London, received Sol. from Henry for the hire of their ship, the Anne of London, trading to Prussia,^ and in 1515, they were, in their turn, hiring vessels from the Crown. In the spring of that year, the King's ship, the Mary George, was lent to them for a voyage ' beyond the Straits of Morocco,' and in the autumn 300/. were paid for the freight of the Anne of Fowey, employed by the same merchants on two voyages, the one to Eastland, or Prussia, the other to Bordeaux.)] In March, 1516, Richard Gresham, acting by himself, bought for the Crown sixty-nine cables at a cost of 650/. 2s. ; and in the following April we find him obtaining a license to export cloths and other English merchandize, not belonging to the * Sandys, Narration of a Journey begun a.d. 1(510, cited by Ward, vol. i., pp. 1,2. t Bi;e\veu, vol. ii., p. 8G. § lb'ol., vol. i., p. 957. ; Jbid., vol. ii., p. 1153. ji Ibid., vol. ii., p. 1487, 14SS. 1G8 Richard Gresham' s Friendship for Cardinal Wolsey. staple of Calais, and to import silks and cloths of gold, woad and alum, malmsey and other wines, from any places that he chose, provided that the customs on the whole did not exceed 2,000?.* From the first he appears to have been intimately con- nected with the King and the Court. In 1516 he was appointed a gentleman-usher extraordinary in the royal household, and during the following year his name appears several times both among the debtors and creditors of the Crown, f Over and over again, up to the year of his death, he was sent to the Netherlands, as political and financial agent for Henry, in his dealings with France, Germany, and other nations ; % and plenty of work was also found for him in London. A merchant, in days when merchants traded indiscriminately in commodities of all kinds, he was constantly employed as purveyor both to the King's household and to the various executive departments of the Government, besides acting as a sort of money-lender and banker to the Crown. Sometimes his connection with the Court brought him into trouble in the City. In 1525, when there was great com- motion among the Londoners, in consequence of an order from Cardinal Wolsey, respecting a benevolence to be made by them on behalf of the King, Richard Gresham was one of the unpopular few who advocated compliance therewith. It was even proposed that he and two others, for speaking in favour of the King before the Common Council, should be expelled from that body. No such arbitrary measure was resorted to, however, and after the Cardinal had gained his object, § we may be sure that the merchant's persistent devotion to the royal cause, as it was upheld by Wolsey, was not forgotten. Richard Gresham, indeed, maintained his devotion to Wolsey after he had been deserted by the King whom he did so much to serve. When the great man was dying at Leicester, he told Sir William Kingston, his * Brewer, vol. ii., pp. 1550, 873. + Burgon, vol. i., pp. 21, 22. t Ibid., pp. 873, 991, 1471), H83. § Hall, pp. cxi., cxii. His Petition on behalf of the City Hospitals. 1 C9 custodian, that for a sum of 200?., which it was sought to take from him, with other possessions forfeited to the Crown, he was indebted to Richard Gresham. " I assure you it is none of mine," he said, with touching simplicity. " I bor- rowed it to bury me, and to bestow among my servants." Gresham, he added, had ever been his " fast friend."* That was in 1530. In 1531, Richard Gresham was elected Sheriff' of the City of London, and on that occasion he was knighted by Henry the Eighth. f In 1537, he suc- ceeded to the office of Lord Mayor.;£ This year, 1537, was a memorable one in London history. Sir Richard Gresham, as chief magistrate, petitioned the King " 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 tney be holpen and cured of their diseases and sickness," that the three hospita\s Known as Saint Mary's Spital, Saint Bartholomew's Spital, and Saint Thomas's Spital, and the new abbey by Tower Hill, might be restored to their first design. These buildings, he said, " were founded of good devotion by ancient fathers, and endowed with great possessions and rents only for the relief, comfort, and helping of the poor, and not to the maintenance of canons, priests, and monks to live in pleasure, nothing regarding the miser- able people living in every street, offending every clean person passing by the way, with their filthy and nasty sa- vourings," and he thought it better *' to refresh, maintain, and comfort a great number of poor, needy, sick, and indigent persons, and also heal and cure their infirmities frankly and freely, by physicians, surgeons, and apothecaries," than to support "a small number of canons, priests, and monk?, for their own profit only and not for the common utility of the realm."§ * Cavendish, Life of Cardinal Wohey (London, 1827), p. 384. t Ward, vol. i., p. 2. } Ibid., p. 3. § Ibid, MS. Appendix, pp. 1, 2. 170 Sir Richard Gresham s Arguments for a That was an argument which Henry the Eighth was nothing loth to listen to. The three hospitals became City property, and were from this time for the most part wisely governed for the benefit of the poor, the sick, and the insane. Out of the general breaking-up of old monastic institutions, Sir Richard Gresham also obtained for his own Mercers' Guild a grant of the house of Saint Thomas of Acre, since converted into the Mercers' Chapel in Chcapside.* Other benefits he procured for himself. Five successive grants of church lands were, at different times, made to him by King Henry, and in 1540 he was chosen commissioner for taking the value of the various abbeys, monasteries, and the like, situated in and about London. More zealous, it would seem, than consorted with independence of spirit and love of freedom, was his following of the King in his varying course of theological faith and religious persecution. He more than once assisted in the punishing of Papists : he was in 1541 put on a commission for deciding upon the best way of repressing the Protestant heresies done in the city and diocese of London, f But better work, and better worth remembering, was also done by Sir Richard Gresham. He laboured hard to obtain for London the great boon which was at last conferred through the hands of his more famous son. In the year of his mayoralty he wrote an earnest letter to Sir Thomas Cromwell, the Lord Privy Seal, to urge the procurement of some lands and houses in Lombard Street, to be used in constructing a Burse or Exchange, on the model of that recently established at Antwerp. The whole building, he estimated, would cost hardly more than 2000Z., the half of which he could probably collect during his year of office, and, if set up, would be " very beautiful to the City, and also for the honour of our sovereign lord the Kin^."t In O D "t* 1538 he again urged the work, sending a full statement of * Birgon, vol. i., p. 37. + Ibid., pp. 38, 4G0. * Ibid., pp. 31-33. Burse, and in favour of Free. Trade. 171 costs and sizes to Secretary Cromwell.* Hut nothing was done for scven-and-twenty years. In another attempt Sir Richard was more successful. An unwise proclamation, forbidding merchants to barter one commodity for another, on the supposition that the Ex- chequer would lose its due, having been issued, he wrote a letter, showing how every restriction upon free trade was mischievous ; more or less ruinous, in the first place, to the merchants themselves, and, in the second, to the Crown, which could only be enriched with a portion of their profits. " If it shall not please the King's goodness," he said " shortly to make a proclamation that all manner of merchants, as well his subjects as all other, may ever use and exercise their exchanges and rechanges frankly and freely, as they have heretofore done, without any let or impediment, it will cause a great many cloths and kerseys to be left unsold in the cloth- makers' hands, if it be not out of hand remedied ; for Bar- tholomew Fair will be shortly here, which is the chief time for the utterance of the said cloths and kerseys. Also there is divers merchants that will shortly prepare themselves toward Bordeaux for provisions of wines ; and for lack of exchanges I do suppose there will be conveyed some gold amongst them. I am sure, my lord, that these exchanges and rechanges do much to the stay of the said gold in Eng- land, which would else be conveyed over. I pray your good lordship to pardon me, for as God shall help me I write not this for none commodity for myself, but for the discharge of my duty towards the King's Majesty, and for that I do know it shall be for the common wealth of his subjects, and for the utterance of the commodities of this realm ; for the mer- chants can no more be without exchanges and rechang-es than the ships in the sea can be without water." That sen- sible and straightforward appeal caused a reversal of the proclamation. t Sir Richard Gresham was too well-informed and clear- * Ward, Appendix, pp. 1, 2. f Burgox, vol. i., p. 34. 172 Sir John Gresliam. beaded a man for the advisers of the Crown, or for the citizens of London, to despise. All through the later years of Henry the Eighth's reign, he was esteemed the most enlightened and patriotic merchant of England. He was also one of the richest. Dying in 1549, he was buried in the Church of Saint Lawrence, Jewry. He left to his wife and two sons property yielding an annual income, very great at that time, according to the then value of money, of 8507. 25. 6rf * Sir John Gresham, youngest son of old John Gresham, of Holt, seems to have been almost richer, and in no respect less worthy than his brother. In 1531, while Richard was serving as Sheriff of the City of London, he was busy in the Mediterranean. At the island of Scio he hired a Portuguese vessel, and filled it with goods to be conveyed to England ; but the owner and master of the ship took it instead to his own country, and there disposed of the cargo, worth twelve thousand ducats, on his own account. The theft was brought under the notice of Henry the Eighth, who wrote an angry complaint to the King of Portugal ; but the value of the merchandize does not seem to have been restored, t That John Gresham had influence enough to obtain his sovereign's help in this matter, however, shows him to have been already a man of mark. In 1537 he was living in London, and act- ing as Sheriff, his brother being promoted to the office of Lord Mayor at the same time.J He assisted that brother in all his benevolent projects, and formed others for himself. To him especially, we are told, does London owe the trans- ference from Romish to Protestant hands, and the consequent improvement, of Bethlehem Hospital, long before established as a madhouse under monastic government. In 1546 he bought of his eldest brother, William, the family house at Holt, and turned it into a free grammar-school, richly endowed with funds, which unprincipled aud negligent trustees have, * Bi-rgok, vol. i., pp. 42, 43. | Ibid., pp. 10, 11. + Ward, vol. i., p. 4. His Revival of the Marching Watch. 173 to a great extent diverted from their proper channels.* Yet in tiiis same year he was rich enough to lend 40.000Z., to the Crown ; and in 1548, while holding the office of Lord Mayor, he revived, for the amusement of the citizens, the expensive pageant of the marching watch, when great bonfires were lighted around Saint Paul's Cathedral and in nearly every street of London, and the merry citizens, were enlivened by minstrels, morris-dancers, and the show of a marching army. ' The watch,' says the old chronicler, ' which had been accustomed in London at Midsummer, of long time laid down, was now again used, both on the eve of Saint John and Saint Peter, in as comely order as it had been accustomed, which watch was greatly beautified by the number of more than three hundred demi-lances and light horsemen that were prepared by the citizens to be sent into Scotland for the rescue of the town of Haddington and other, kept by Englishmen in Scotland.' King Henry the Eighth, with his newly-married wife, Jane Seymour, went into the City to see the sight. But the entertainment was found too costly to be continued, and it gave way to a more sober and useful i substantial standing watch, for the safety and pre- servation of the City.'f Sir John Gresham died in October, 1556. ' He was buried with a standard and pennon of arms, and a coat- armour of damask, and four pennons of arms, besides a hel- met, a target and a sword, mantels and the crest, a goodly hearse of wax, ten dozen of pensils, and twelve dozen of escutcheons. He had four dozen of great staff-torches and a dozen of great long torches. The church and the streets were hung with black, and arms in great store ; and on the morrow three goodly masses were sung, one of the Trinity, another of our Lady, and the third of Requiem.' That empty * Burgox, vol. i., pp. 14, 15. t Stow, Annals, cited in The Life of Sir Thomas Gresham, Founder of the Royal Exchange 'London, 1845;; a very clever abridgment of the larger memoirs already named. 174 Sir Thomas Uresham. parade was in keeping with the spirit of the times; but Sir John was a man of good heart and honest temper. He left much money to be divided among the London charities, or in ways of his own choosing. A sum of 100/. was left to go in marriage-portions to a certain number of poor maids, and nearly twice as much was to be spent in buying broad- cloth to be made into gowns for a hundred and twenty poor men and women.* There was another Sir John Gresham, the eldest son of Sir Richard, born in 1518. He was a soldier as well as a merchant. For his prowess at the battle of Pinkie, in 1547, he was knighted by the Lord Protector Somerset; and in ] 550 he was admitted to the Mercers 1 Company. In 1553 he equipped three ships on a trading expedition to Muscovy, two of which were wrecked on the way ; and under the year 1555 we find his name first on the list of English merchants trading to Muscovy. He died in 1560, at the age of forty-two. f Much more famous was his brother Thomas, the greatest merchant prince, save Whittington perhaps, ever owned by the city of London. He was born, as it seems, in 1519, at one of his father's houses in Norfolk. $ His mother died when he was three years old, and we know nothing of the early influences by which he was trained to be the conspi- cuous ornament of a good and noble family. His father, even had the education of one's own children been thought proper work for the fathers of those days, was too busy a man to do very much at home. He was wanted at his counting-house in Lombard Street, and at the council-table of the Guildhall. Chiefly resident in London, he was often at Antwerp or Brussels, buying and selling merchandize for himself, and negotiating loans or purchasing stores for his sovereign. Sir Richard Gresham, however, was not unmindfu of his son. When he was about thirteen or fourteen, he sent him to Gonville, now Caius, Cambridge, where he spent * Stow, Survey, hook i., pp. 2oS, 2.59. f Ward, vol. i., pp. 5, 0. + FiLi.icu, Worthies; Norfolk, p. 253. His Schwliity and City Trcthtiity. 175 three \ears under the pergonal instruction, as it seems, of Dw ( aius, one of the founders of the school.* Then lie came hack to London, and was apprenticed, in 1535, to his uncle Jolni.f In Iblo lie was admitted to the freedom of the SIP. THOMAS GKtollAM. Mercers" Company, and fairly started in the family calling, " to the which science," he says in a letter written later in life, " 1 was hound 'prentice eight years, to come hy the expe- rience and knowledge that I have. Nevertheless, I need not 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 pur- pose except I were bound 'prentice to the same, whereby to * Wai;h, vol. i.. ji. G. t III i;<;un. vol. i., ]>. -17. 176 Thomas Greshams Employments come by the experience and knowledge of all kinds of mer- chandize."* He straight-.ray set about using his experience. In this same year, 1543, we find him in Antwerp, helping to buy up gunpowder and saltpetre for Henry the Eighth's warlike preparations against France ;f and henceforth, for the third of a century there seems to have been no flagging in his zeal. As early as the spring of 1545, his name was included with those of his father and his uncle among the wealthiest traders of England. A large quantity of English merchandize having been seized at Antwerp, by the Emperor Charles the Fifth of Gennany, great misery was looked for by all the smaller men thus injured ; but Richard and William and Thomas Gresham, it was thought, would really be gainers, as their large stocks of silk and other goods would now be sold at a higher price than, but for the seizure, could have been expected. % Thoma3 Gresham was not, however, wholly occupied with trade. Early in 1544 died William Read, a rich citizen and mercer of London, making his friend Sir Richard Gresham his executor, with a bequest of 10L and a black gown. It was doubtless at Sir Richard's instigation that Thomas took to himself a much larger portion of the estate, before the year was ended, by marrying the widow.§ The choice was not a happy one. Mistress Anne Read, aunt, by marriage, of Francis Bacon, was of good family ; it is likely that she brought her husband a goodly sum of monev, and she certainly encouraged him in storing it up ; but she seems to have urged him to no worthier pursuit. His letters contain numerous allusions to her, more or less expressive of kindness and sympathy ; but there is no good evidence of his liking for her, and none of anything in her that deserved to be liked. One child, a lad named Richard, who died at the age of sixteen, was born of this marriage; and it was a * Ward, vol. i., p. 0. \ Ibid., p. 49. t Bi'kgon, vol. i., p. 4S. § Ibid, pp. 49, 50. in London and the Netherlands. Ill source, we are told, of frequent discord between husband and wife that a daughter of the merchant's, but not of his wife's, was brought up in the Gresham household, and treated as kindly and carefully as her brother until she was married to Sir Nathaniel Bacon, elder brother of Francis.* Gresham's marriage did not keep him much in England. For some years he appears to have lived chiefly in Antwerp, with frequent journey* thence to Bruges and London. Ant- werp, as we have seen, had for many generations been the great meeting-place of the leading merchants of Europe. Sir William de la Pole resided there as early as 1338, in the capacity of mayor of the English staple and overseer of financial matters on behalf of Edward the Third. Other men held the ill-defined office, with few intermissions, for more than two hundred years, their business being generally to negotiate loans with wealthy merchants and money-lend- ers, and also to keep their sovereign informed as to all the important foreign matters known to them. When Thomas Gresham first went over to Antwerp, Stephen Vaughan was thus employed, and he was succeeded in 1546 by Sir William Dansell, a good-natured man, but not much of a merchant, and no financier at all. In 1549 he was reproved for a grievous piece of carelessness, by which, it was alleged, 40,OOOZ. was lost to the English Crown. He 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 assistance of "one Thomas Gresham." But the members of Edward the Sixth's Council were not satisfied. When Dansell wrote to say, " It seemeth me that you suppose me a very blunt beast, without 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 In the autumn of 1551, says the young man himself — at this time thirty-two years old — " I was sent for unto the Council, * Bikgon, vol. ii. pp. 4G!), 470. VOL. I. N ITS Gresham s Services as Factor and brought by them afore the King's Majesty, to know my opinion what way, with least charge, his Majesty might grow out of debt. And after my device was declared, the Kings Highness and the Council required me to take the room " — that is, the office — " in hand, without my suit or labour for the same."* Gresham and his 'device' were certainly needed. At this time the fair interest on foreign merchants' loans to Edward the Sixth amounted to 40,OOOZ. a year; and this burden was increased many times by the greed of the money- lenders, who, at every renewal of a debt, took the oppor- tunity of forcing upon his Majesty some bit of jewelry or other useless article at a fancy price. Here, for instance, is an extract from King Edward's private journal, in 1551, a few months before Gresham became his agent. The Ful- care referred to were the Fuggers, the richest traders of the day, turned into noblemen by Charles the Fifth of Germany. 'April 25. A bargain made with the Fulcare for about 6O,O00Z., that in May and August should be paid, for the deferring of it : first, that the Fulcare should put it off for ten in the hundred: secondly, that I should buy 12,000 marks weight at six shillings the ounce, to be delivered at Antwerp, and so conveyed over : thirdly, that I should pay 100,000 crowns for a very fair jewel, four rubies, marvellous big, one orient and great diamond, and one great pearl.' t Are there many worse bargains recorded in the note-books of spendthrifts, dupes of unprincipled money-lenders, now-a- days ? It was to put down this abuse that Thomas Gresham was appointed King's Factor in December, 1551, or January, 1552.J Personally, or by deputy, he filled the office, with a gap of about three years during Queen Mary's reign, for a quarter of a century. Over and over again, in these years, but most of all under Edward the Sixth, Gresham was instructed to effect fresh * lintGox, vol. i., pp. C3, GO. t Ward, vol. i.. p. 7. + Ibid. to King Edward the Sixth. 179 loans, and by the use of soft words and showy compromises to postpone the payment of the debts already incurred. No one knew better how to do this ; but he did not like the task. " It shall be no small grief to me," he wrote in August, 1552, to the famous and infamous Duke of North- umberland, " that, in being his Majesty's agent, any mer- chant strangers should be forced to forbear their money against their wills, which matter, from henceforth, must be otherwise foregone, or else in the end the dishonesty of this matter shall hereafter be laid upon my neck. ... To be plain with your Grace, according to my bounden duty, verily if there be not some other way taken for the payment of his Majesty's debts but to force men from time to time to pro- long it, I say to you, the end thereof shall neither be ho- nourable nor profitable to his Highness. In consideration whereof, if there be none other ways taken forthwith, this is to most humbly beseech your Grace that I may be discharged of this office of agentship. For otherwise I see in the end I shall receive shame and discredit thereby, to my utter undoing for ever ; which is the smallest matter of all, so that the King's Majesty's honour and credit be not spoiled there- by, and specially in a strange country."* That was bold lanjniajje for a merchant to use to the chief advisers — in this case, directors — of the Crown. If the members of King Edward's Council winced at it, however, they could not deny its honesty and truth any more than they could reject the * poor and simple advice ' offered to them by Gresham. This was, that a certain sum be put by weekly and sent to him, to be invested in judicious ways, and used in paying off the debts as they fell due. "If this be followed up, I do not doubt but in two years to bring the King's Majesty wholly out of debt, which I pray God to send me life to see!"f Of course the scheme found favour; and of course it was soon discarded. For eight weeks 1,2007. a week was sent to Gresham ; but then it was stayed, " because * Blrgon. vol. i., pp. 8S-92. t Ibid., p. 92. 180 Gresham' s Services as Factor that manner of exchange is not profitable for the King's Majesty."* But Gresham did not desist from his entreaties. Again and again he urged a policy of retrenchment, and suj^rested several devices — many of them, it must be admitted, quite opposed to the modern views of free trade — for improving the finances of the English Crown and people. Sometimes he took the law into his own hands, and adopted hard measures against both home and foreign merchants. " I have so plagued the strangers," he said, in a letter from Antwerp to the Council, detailing the way in which he had improved the rate of exchange, " that from henceforth they will beware how they meddle with the exchange for London ; and as for our own merchants, I have put them in such fear that they dare not meddle, by giving them to understand that I would advertise your honours, if they should be the occasion thereof, which matter I can soon spy out, having the brokers of exchange, as I have, at my commandment ; for there is never a burse but I have a note what money is taken up by exchange, as well by the stranger as Englishmen. "f " My uncle, Sir John Gresham," we read in another letter ' scribbled in haste' in London, "hath not a little stormed with me for the setting of the price of the exchange ; and saith that it lies in me now to do the merchants of this nation pleasure to the increase of my poor name amongst the merchants for ever." Sir John Gresham was in the wrong. By his more patriotic conduct the young man won for himself for ever even a greater name amongst the merchants than his uncle could have expected to come from selfish policy. Perhaps Sir John lived to admit this himself ; at any rate, he had not long to live before the natural generosity of his temper led him to forget his own great losses and those of his friends, all caused by this new project of his nephew's, in admiration of his pluck and perseverance. " He and I was at great words," adds the reformer, " like to fall out ; but ere we departed we drank to each other."! * Buncos, vol. i., p. 95. | Ibid., p. 99. J Ibid., p. 100. to King Edward the Sixth. 181 That was in May, 1553. At about this time the merchant presented his sovereign with ' a great present,' — a pair of long Spanish silk stockings; ' for you shall understand,' says Stow, ' that King Henry the Eighth did wear only cloth hose, or hose cut out of ell- broad taffeta, or that by great chance there came a pair of Spanish stockings out of Spain.'* Edward was not thankless for either the great or the little favours. In June of this year, three weeks before his death, having at previous times bestowed upon him property worth three times as much, he gave to Grcsham lands worth 100/. a year, saying, as he handed the charter, " You shall know that you have served a King !"f Thomas Gresham had indeed served Edward the Sixth most notably. In a document prepared by him soon after the King's death he spoke with proper pride of his achievements. "When I took this service in hand," we read, "the King's Majesty's credit on the other side," — that is, in Flanders, — " was small, and yet afore his death he was in such credit both with strangers and his own merchants, that he might have bad what sum of money he desired. Whereby his enemies began to fear him ; for his commodities of his realm and power amongst princes was not known before. And for the accomplishment of the premises," adds the merchant, " I not only left the realm, with my wife and family, my occu- pying and whole trade of living, by the space of two years ; but also posted in that time forty times upon the King's sending at the least, from Antwerp to the Court ; besides the practising to bring their matters to effect, the infinite occasion of writing also to the King and his Council." % * Stow, Annals (London, 1G31), p. 867. f Ward, vol. i., p. 10. X Ibid., vol. i., pp. 9, 10. "As I was reading of the letter enclosed herein," Grcsham adds as a postcript, "I received a letter out of Flanders, whereby I understand that my plate, household stuff, and apparel of myself and wife's, which I have sent and prepared into Antwerp, to serve me in time of my service there, by casualty of weather coming from Antwerp, is all lost. And now God help poor Gresham ! " 1 82 Gresham s Services to Queen Mary. From Queen Mary the merchant did not receive much help. He had a bitter enemy at Court in Bishop Gardiner. 'He sought to undo me," said Gresham, "that, whatever I said in these matters of finance, I should not be credited."* Gresham was too shrewd and influential a man, however, for his words to be discredited or his services rejected. Soon after the Queen's accesion he was employed on a very curious busi- ness. Money was sorely wanted by the new Government ; but none knew where to get it. It could not be raised at home by taxation; the absurd financial principles of those days made it impossible openly to procure it from foreign countries. Therefore Gresham was employed to negotiate a loan of 50,000Z. in Antwerp, and to convey the money to London in most secret manner. The 50,OO0Z. were soon obtained ; but chiefly in Spanish reals of silver, ' very massive to convey.' After much planning, however, Gresham managed to make a consignment to England of ' one thou- sand demi-lances' harnass,' packed in large casks or vats with 3,000Z. in each -vat. On the day of shipment he made presents of velvet and black cloth to all the custom-house officers and searchers, besides treating them to great quan- tities of liquor. Therefore the town-gates were left open and unguarded, and the money was smuggled over to Queen Mary's satisfaction. For this a State document was issued on the 15th of March, 1554, announcing the worth of her Majesty's * trusty and well-beloved servant Thomas Gresham, Esquire.'f Later in the same year he was sent to Spain on a like errand, though with a much less satisfactory result. Then he went back to Antwerp, to conduct further smuggling transactions ; for which he received not only the Queen's thanks, but also those of her graceless husband, Philip the Second. J But Gresham received little besides thanks, and even they were often mixed with sharp and unmerited rebukes. * Bi-hgox, vol. i., pp. 140-144. f Rymeh, vol. xv., p. 371* I This 'note of such suius of monov as came into the hands of Thomas Bis Favourable Treatment by Queen Elizabeth. 1S3 Better fortune came to him with the accession of Elizabeth. Hearing- of the change of sovereigns, he hurried from Ant- werp to Hatfield to render homage, and on the 20th of November, 1558, as he wrote to his old friend Sir William Cecil, afterwards Lord Burghley, " her Highness promised me, by the faith of a queen, that she would not only keep one ear shut to hear w?<% but also if I did her none other service than I had done to King Edward, her late brother, and Queen Mary, 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 upon my great charge again," — that is, the appointment as mayor of the Staple at Antwerp, which he seems to have resigned under Mary — ** with heart and courage ; and thereupon her Majesty gave me her hand, to kiss it, and I accepted this great charge."* His first act in fulfilling it was the writing of a letter to the Queen, showing how the nation had fallen into the debt which she found, and how its credit was to be regained. The evil, he said, sprang from three causes : in the first place, the great debasing of the coin of the realm by Henry the Eighth ; in the second, the wars that he waged on the Continent, which made it necessary for so Greshara, and passed from him in the time of Queen Mary,' is from a MS. in the British Museum. — (Bihgox, vol., p. 47G). First, average left in his hands, as well upon a bargain of fustians, as also for the pro- £. 8. d. vision of certain munition 8,919 14 10 Ready money received out of the Quceu's coffers 174,418 2 1 Money received in Spain 97,87S 15 Money taken up upon interest and by way of exchange 95,425 17 4 Money borrowed and had by way of loan. . . 41.42S 12 Money gotten and advanced by the travail of the accountant 40,421 11 9 Summa totalis . . . £-129,522 13 [It will bo seen that the addition is incorrect. J * Bit.gon, vol. i., pp. 217, 218. 1S4 Grcshams Services us Factor much gold to be carried to Flanders, and there disposed of: in the third, the protective policy shown to the foreign merchants of the Steel Yard, allowing them to export wool and other articles for a lower duty than that claimed from English merchants. The remedy was five-fold :— " First, your Highness hath none other ways but, when time and opportunity scrveth, to bring your base money into fine; secondly, not to restore the Steel Yard to their usurped privilege ; thirdly, to grant as few licences as you can ; fourthly, to come in as small debt as you can beyond seas ; fifthly, to keep your credit, and specially with your own merchants, for it is they must stand by you, at all events, in your necessity."* Gresham had procured the defrayment of Queen Mary's debts to the extent of 435,0007. ; but, as he said in a letter to Cecil on the 1st of March following, there was a moiety of the Crown's outstanding debts, equal to 30,000Z., that must be got rid of in the following April and May. "And for the payment thereof, and for keeping up of the exchange, the Queen's Majesty hath none other ways and help but to use her merchant adventurers, wherein I do right well know they do stand very stout in the matter. Nevertheless, considering how much it doth import the Queen's Majesty's credit, of force she must use her merchants. And for the compassing thereof her Highness shall have good opportunity both to bargain and to bring them to what price her Majesty and you shall think most convenient. First, it is to be considered that our English merchants have at least forty or fifty thousand cloths and kerseys lying upon their hands ready to be shipped, which they will begin to ship when they shall know to what point they shall trust their custom. Secondly, this matter must be kept secret, that it may not come to the merchants' knowledge that you do intend to use them, and to lay sure wait, when their last day of shipping shall be, and to understand perfectly at the * Wahd, vol. ii., MS. Appendix. to Queen Elizabeth. 185 customer's [custom-house officer's] hands, at the same day, whether all the cloths and kerseys be entered and shipped and water-borne, and being once all water-borne, then to make a stay of all the fleet, that none shall depart till further the Queen's pleasure be known. Thirdly, that being once done, to command the customer to bring you in a perfect book of all such cloths, kerseys, cottons, lead, tin, and all other commodities, and the merchants' names, particularly what number every man hath shipped, and the just and total sum of the whole shipping ; and thereby you shall know the number and who be the great doers." When, in this remarkable way the whole spring fleet of exports from the city of London was in the hands of the Government, Gresham showed it would be easy to compel the merchants to raise the rate of exchange from 20 to 25 Flemish shillings for the pound sterling. " This," he went on to say, " will prove a more beneficial bargain to the Queen's Majesty, and to this her nation, than I will at present molest you withal ; for it will raise the exchange to an honest price. As, for example the exchange in King Edward's time, when I began this practice, was but lu's. ; did I not raise it up to 236-., and paid his whole debts after at 20s. and 22s., whereby wool fell in price from 2Gs. 8d. to 16s., and cloths from GOZ. a pack to 40Z. and 3GZ. a pack with all other our commodities and foreigners', whereby a number of clothiers gave over making of cloths and kerseys ? Wherein there was touched no man but the merchant, for to save the prince's honour ; which appeared to the face of the world that they were great losers ; but to the contrary, in the end, when things were brought to perfection, they were great gainers thereby."* That letter clearly shows us with what a high hand Gresham served his sovereigns. Tyrannical and unjust was his policy if judged by modern standards; but then all the financial policy of the; Tudors was, in the abstract, tyrannical and unjust. He adopted the crude and very defective system * IkitGOX, vol. i., pj). 257-2G2. 180 Greshams Financial and Commercial Policy. of political economy current in his day — perhaps he had not even as moderately sound an understanding- of the principles of free trade as we have seen indicated in the speech of his father ; bnt we can hardly blame him for that. And, on the other hand, he is very greatly to be praised for the con- summate skill with which he used his imperfect machinery to the advantage of his sovereigns and their dominions. If he erred, he did that which was no error in the eyes of many of the wisest and best in his day, and he managed his mis- taken dealing so that the sufferings of the few were slight, and the profits of the many were great. He helped Edward the Sixth and his government out of what seemed to be insu- perable difficulties of finance, and in so doing abolished the grievous scandal by which an English monarch was left to the tender mercies of a crowd of foreign pawnbrokers. He served Queen Mary with equal zeal, until the un-English policy of her Spanish husband made it impossible for him to continue serving her in public. He aided Elizabeth during twenty years of her reign, and, even by the most violent measures which he took with that object, he helped to place the commerce of his country upon a firmer basis, and to win for it unprecedented honour from foreign nations. We need not follow him through the details of his service as Royal Factor under Elizabeth. To do so would require a volume ; and when that was done, but a small part of his busy life would be described. His correspondence shows him to have been full of occupation in a variety of ways. Unfortunately it is least explicit on the two points which we should be most glad to have elucidated — his domestic life and his doings as a merchant on his own account. We but dimly see him in his banker's shop in Lombard Street * — the bankers of that time being wholesale dealers in every kind of merchandize as well as money-lenders and pawn- brokers ; and we know still less of his conduct and appear- * On the site of the present banking-house of Messrs. Stone, Martin, and Company. His Various Occupations. 187 anee in the privacy of his residence upstairs. But he was not often at home. Early in Queen Elizabeth's reign he left the bulk of his business in Antwerp, both as Royal Factor and as independent merchant, in the hands of Richard Clough, a very clever and very honest Welshman, in whom the prompt and expeditious merchant found only one fault. "My servant," he said in a letter to Cecil, "is very long and tedious in his writing/' He had other agents stationed or moving about in all parts of England and the Continent. William Bendiowes, Thomas Denne, James Brockhop, Tho- mas Dutton, and Robert Hogan were trusty clerks generally employed, it would seem, in London and the English towns. Edward Hogan was at Seville, John Gerbridge at Toledo, Henry Garbrand at Dunkirk, Richard Payne at Middle- burgh, and John Weddington, with several others, in ' Hol- land and those parts.'* Gresham, a rich man now, had plenty to do in corresponding with them, and personally inspecting their movements. He had repeatedly to go abroad on either his own or the Queen's account. A bill which he sent in on the 22nd of April, 1562, for the first three years and a half of Elizabeth's reign, ran thus : — £. s. d. Riding and posting charges 1,027 9 House hire 200 Diet and necessaries 1,819 3 5 Total . . £3,046 12 5 which we must multiply by ten to get the approximate value in the currency of to-day. f Doubtless the money was well spent. Gresham travelled so quickly that once, in 15G1, he fell from his horse and broke his leg. J He had hard work to do in posting from place to place, borrowing money from one merchant, paying the debts due to another, and conciliating all by feasting them after the fashion for which Antwerp was famous during * Burgon, vol. i., p. 109, &c. f Ibid., p. 41G. X Mid., p. 309. 1SS Greshams Work as a Political Agent. many centuries. And he was not employed simply on money-matters. Several times we find him going- abroad on political errands. Now he is at Brussels, making inquiries as to the merits of the many foreign claimants for Queen Elizabeth's hand ; now at Antwerp, appeasing the displeasure of William, the Prince of Orange, offended that the Queen has not yet sent him help in his and the Huguenots' strife against Philip of Spain and the Catholic party ; and now again he is in the train of the Duchess of Parma, watching her movements, and sending home reports of them. There are few topics of moment at that period not touched upon in his letters to Cecil. In one, written as early as 1560, he writes to warn his mistress of the treacherous designs of Philip the Second against England : let her, he says, " make all her ships in a readiness, and suffer no mariners to go, no kind of ways, out of the realm." * In another, dated March, 1567, he rejoices in the fact that in Antwerp alone there are forty thousand Protestants willing to die rather than that the word of God should be put to silence. And in the same month he has to write and say that those forty thousand have been vanquished, and the Catholics are masters of Antwerp. That, the victory of Jarnac, brought to an end Gresham's employment as Queen's Factor at Antwerp. He hurried home from his last visit to give help to Elizabeth's advisers in London, and soon he was followed by Clough, and not a few of the Flemish merchants with whom he had had deal- ings, now houseless emigrants, though soon to grow wealthy again in England, and to add much, by their industry and honesty, to the wealth of their adopted country. England was already famous for its wealth and commerce. By the middle of Queen Elizabeth's reign the good effects of Tudor rule had become apparent. The old mediaeval modes of trading, when most of the enterprise was in the hands of the foreigners — Flemings or Italians — who visited our country, and when native merchants as adventurous or * Blrgon, vol. i., p. 295. London in the Sixteenth Century. 189 rich as Whittington were very rare, had been almost abo- lished. Now the traders of other lands, though they were o-enerallv welcomed in England, came as subordinates to the to •/ c more influential traders of our own nation, abounding most of all in London. " London," said an intelligent stranger, writing in 1592, " is a large, excellent, and mighty city of business, and the most important in the whole kingdom. Most of the inhabitants are employed in buying and selling merchandize and trading in almost every corner of the world, since the river is most useful and convenient for the purpose, considering that ships from France, the Netherlands, Swe- den, Denmark, Hamburg, and other kingdoms come almost up to the city, to which they convey goods, receiving and taking away others in exchange. 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 * An account of Duke Frederick of Wirtemberg's visit to England, printed by Mr. Kye, England as sceyi by Foreigners in the Days of Elizabeth and James the First (Ijondon, 18G5). "Tlie inhabitants were magnificently apparelled," bays the same informant, "and arc extremely proud and over- bearing ; and because the greater part, especially tbc tradespeople, seldom go into otber countries, but always remain in their houses in the city at- tending to their business, they care little for foreigners, but scoff and laugh at them ; and moreover one dare not oppose them, else the street-boys and apprentices collect together in immense crowds and strike to the right and left unmercifully, without regard to person ; and because they are the strongest, one is obliged to put up with the insults as well as the injury." A much more favourable report was given by another visitor, Levinus Lemuins, the Dutch physician, cited in the same interesting collection. " Frankly to utter what I think,'' he says, " of the incredible courtesy and friendliness in speech and afiibility used in this famous realm, I must needs confess it duth surmount and carry away the prick and juice of all others. And besides this, the neat clcanlinos, the exquisite fineness, the pleasant and delightful furniture in every point for the household, wonderfully rejoiced me; their chambers and parlours strewed over with sweet herbs refreshed me; their nosegays, finely intermingled with sundry sorts of fragrant Mowers in their bed-chambers and privy rooms, witli comfortable smell cheered me up mid entirely delighted all my senses. And this do I think to he the cause that Englishmen, living by such wholesome and exquisite meat, and in so wholesome and healthful air, he so fresh and clean coloured; their laces, eves, and countenance carrying with it and representing a portly • r vace and coiuliness givetli out evident tokens of an honest mind; in Ian- 190 Tlic Old Meeting-place of the London Merchants. 1GG6, the streets were narrower even than now-a-days, and the inhabitants, though scarcely more than a hundred thou- sand in number, may well 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. Lom- bard Street, before the building of the Exchange, was the central haunt of the merchants. There, especially in the open space near Grace Church, they were accustomed to meet, at all hours and in all weathers, to manage their affairs.* " What a place London is !" exclaimed Richard Clough, Gresham's agent, writing from Antwerp in 1561, " that in so many years they have not found the means to make a Burse, but must walk in the rain when it raineth, more like pedlars than merchants, while in this country, and all other, there is no kind of people that have occasion to meet, but they have a place meet for that purpose. "f Sir Thomas Gresham — he had been knighted in 1589, J — was of the same mind. Whether the suggestion first came from Do his agent, or whether it had already been his purpose to carry out the project started more than twenty years before by his guage very smooth and allective, but yet seasoned and tempered within the limits and bounds of moderation ; not bombastic with any unseemly terms or inforced with any cloying flatteries or allurements. At their tables, although they be very sumptuous, and love to have good fare, yet neither use they to overcharge themselves with excess of drink, neither thereto greatly provoke and urge others, but suffer every man to drink in such measure as best pleascth himself, which drink being either ale or beer, most pleasant in taste and wholesomely relished, they fetch not from foreign places, but have it among themselves brewed. As touching their populous and great haunted cities, the fruitfulness of their ground and soil, their lively springs and mighty rivers, their great herds and flocks of cattle, their mysteries nnd art of weaving and clothmaking, their skilfulness in shooting, it is needless here to discourse — seeing the multitude of merchants exer- cising the traffic and art of merchandize among them; and ambassadors also sent thither from foreign princes, are able abundantly to testify that, nothing needful and expedient for man's use and commodity lacketh in that most noble island." * Stow, Annals, p. GGS. t Blkgon, vol. i., p. 409. X Ward, vol. ii., Appendix, p. 13. Sir Thomas Greshanis Exchange. 191 father, we know not ; but very soon after the writing' of Clough's letter we find Gresham forcing upon the attention of the London traders the urgent need of a proper meeting- place. It took him three years to do this. At last, early in 1565, the merchants and citizens of London agreed to the building, and by the autumn of 15GG, seven hundred and fifty subscribers had set down their names for a total of about 4,000/. That sum served to buy the ground. The noble merchant undertook to pay for the building with his own money. ' On the 7th of June, Sir Thomas Gresham laying the first stone of the foundation, being brick, accompanied with some aldermen, every of them laid a piece of gold, which the workmen took up, and forthwith followed upon the • same with such diligence that by the month of November, in the year 1507, the same was covered with slate.' How the stone was brought from one of his estates in Norfolk, and the wood from another in Suffolk, while the slates, iron- work, wainscoting and glass were sent from Antwerp by Richard Clough ; how the noble building, with ample walks and rooms for merchants on the basement and a hundred shops or booths above-stairs for retail dealers, was completed by the summer of 15GU ; and how it was christened on the 23rd of January, 1571, when 'the Queen's Majesty, attended 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 Bishopsgatc Street, entered the Burse on the south side, and, when she had vicw r cd every part thereof above the ground, especially the Pawn,' — the upper part with its hundred shops — ' which was richly furnished with all sorts of the finest wares in the City, caused the same Burse, by an herald and trumpet, to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so to be called thenceforth, and not otherwise ;'* all is familiar to every reader of old London history. * Stow, Survey. 192 Gresham and Queen Elizabeth. Gresliam's house in Bishopsgate Street — soon to be eon- verted into Gresham College — had been in process of build- ing from 1559 to 1562, and there, especially after his final quitting of Antwerp in 1507, he generally resided, the Lom- bard Street shop being used solely as a place of business. His wealth and the favour of Queen Elizabeth enabled him to erect, or adapt to his use, several other splendid man- sions. Besides Fulwood House, he had at least three resi- dences in Norfolk, as well as Mayficld, in Sussex, on which alone Gresham spent 7,553Z. 10s. &d* Before 1562 he was in possession of Osterley House, supplied with many fair ponds, which afforded not only fish and fowl and swans, and other waterfowl, but also great use for mills, as paper-mills, oil- mills, and corn-mills, with corresponding adornments inside. To Osterley Queen Elizabeth came on a visit to the mer- chant in 1570 ; and on that occasion, we are told, ' her Majesty 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 dis- covered the court double, which the night before had left single. It is questionable 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 disported themselves with their several expressions, 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 familv, affirmed that any house is easier divided than united. 'f These disagreements between Sir Thomas Gresham and his wife were no secret to the world. And just now there was a special cause for them in the forced presence of the Lady Mary Grey in the Gresham household : as the merchant himself said, it was his wife's "bondage and heart sorrow. '"| * Waiu), vol. i., p. 27. f Fuller, Worthies. X Blkgon, vol. ii., p. 40G. Gresham and Lady Mary Grey. 193 This poor lady, youngest sister of Lady Jane Grey, had for many years led a sort of prison life as maid of honour to Queen Elizabeth, embittered by the sad fate of her sisters. At last, finding her lonely condition too irksome to be borne, yet deterred by her sister's example from marriage with an equal, she had in 1565 secretly and foolishly united herself, young, pretty, and of noble birth, to the Queen's sergeant porter, or gentleman porter, Thomas Keys by name, a plebeian of middle age and gigantic size. The secret was not long kept, and its publication destroyed for ever Lady Mary's hopes of happiness. " Here is an unhappy chance and monstrous," wrote Secretary Cecil, forgetful of his usual solemnity in amuse- ment at the event : — " The sergeant porter, being the biggest gentleman in this Court, hath married secretly the Lady Mary Grey, the least of all the Court. The offence is very great. They are committed to several prisons."* Keys was sent to the Fleet. Lady Mary was lodged first in one private house, and then in another. For a time she was intrusted to the dowager Duchess of Suffolk, Sir Philip Sidney's kind- hearted aunt, who sent to * good Mr. Secretary ' a pitiful account of the state of her prisoner, not only in mind and body, but even as regarded her stock of money, clothes, and furniture. " Would to God," she said in one of her letters, " you had seen what stuff it is ! She had nothing left but an old livery feather bed, all torn and full of patches, without either bolster or counterpane ; but two old pillows, one longer than the other; an old quilt of silk, so torn as the cotton of it comes out; such a piteous little canopy of red sarcenet as was scant good enough to hang over some secret stool ; and two little pieces of old old hangings, both of them not seven yards broad. Wherefore, I pray you, heartily consider of this ; and if you shall think it meet, be a means for her, to the Queen's Majesty, that she might have the furniture of one chamber for herself and her maid ; and she and I will play * Ellis, Original Letters, Second Series (Loudon, 1S27), vol. ii., p. 299. VOL. I. 194 Gresham and Lady Mary Grey. the good housewives, and make shift with her old bed for her man. Also I would, if I durst, beg further some old silver pots to fetch her drink in, and two little cups ; one for beer, another for wine. A basin and an ewer, I fear, were too much ; but all these things she lacks, and it were meet she had. She hath nothing in the world."* She had grievous sorrow, at any rate, and that she carried about with her wherever she went. Her last gaoler was Sir Thomas Gresham. She was passed on to him in June, 1569, and from that time, for three years or more, she lived in his Bishopsgate Street house, or accompanied his family to Osterley, Mayfield, and elsewhere. She was in Bishopsgate Street when Queen Elizabeth went to be feasted on the opening of the Exchange, and at Osterley, when the courtly piece of carpentering was done for her Majesty's entertain- ment. Repeatedly and urgently Sir Thomas wrote to beg for the removal of his visitor, his chief excuse being the annoyance that it gave to his wife, and the family troubles incident thereto. His entreaties were not heeded, however, until the end of 1572, when the death of Thomas Keys, and the evident harmlessness of the poor little lady, induced Queen Elizabeth to order her release. The last six years of her life were spent in poverty, sorrow, and toil, but with a show of freedom.! Of Sir Thomas Gresham, after the close of his unwelcome duties as gaoler, we hear little. He seems to have lived chiefly at his house in Bishopsgate Street, and quietly to have carried on his mercantile pursuits there and at the newly-built Exchange hard by. We see but little of him henceforth in the records of Court festivities or financial history. The work appointed for him he had done, and all the rewards he could hope for were his already. Honest and enterprising in the path he had marked out for himself, steadfast in the service of his Queen and his country, * Bcrgon, vol. ii., pp. 401, 402. f Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 404-415. Grcshanis Death and Burial. 195 and zealous for the dignity of both, he had little in common with the new generation of men just appearing in the prime of life. He had done his work in raising to an elevation never before attained the old-fashioned sort of English com- merce, within the narrow limits of European civilization, which he had learnt from his forerunners. In no unfriendly spirit, as we see from the numerous entries of his name as a subscriber to the exploring expeditions of Frobisher and others, but doubtless with the thought that he at anv rate had no need to £0 out of the beaten track in which he had walked so well, he left the chivalrous company of Hawkinses and Raleighs, Drakes and Cavendishes, to extend the empire of trade to far-off regions, and to open up new and boundless tracks of commerce. And he was wise in doing so. He died in harness. 'On Saturday, the 21st of Novem- ber, 1579, when he was seventy years of age, between six and seven of the clock in the evening,' we read, ' 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 December he was buried solemnly and splendidly, at a cost of 8007., in St. Helen's Church, hard by, a hundred poor men and a hundred poor women following him to the grave.* His greedy wife and her greedy son, born of a former husband (his own son Richard having died in 1564), inherited his immense wealth, chiefly through perversion of his will ; and the indolence of the Mercers' Company, in the course of gene- rations, robbed of nearly all its good effect the noble bequest by which he intended to have converted his famous house in Bishopsgate Street into a yet more famous college for educating young merchants in those parts of knowledge best fitted to adorn and to improve their stations. But neither avarice nor apathy have been able to deprive the noblest * Hollin'shed, Chronicles (Londou, 15S7;, vol. iii., p. 1310. 190 Sir Thomas Gresliam. name in the history of Tudor commerce of its place in the heart of every Englishman, or to undo the work of its greatest owner in forwarding the interests of trade and giving dignity to the merchant's calling. TOMBS OF SIR THOMAS GRESHAM AND SIR WILLIAM PICKERY IN SAINT HELEN'S CHURCH, BISHOrSGATE. 197 CHAPTER VIII. THE HAWKINSES OF PLYMOUTH. [1530—1595.] In the years 1530, 1531, and 1532, 'old Master William Hawkins of Plymouth, a man for his wisdom, valour, expe- rience, and skill in sea causes much esteemed and beloved of King Henry the Eighth, and being one of the principal sea- captains in the west parts of England in his time, not con- tented with the short voyages commonly then made only to the known coasts of Europe, armed out a tall and a goodly ship of his own of the burthen of 250 tons, called the Paul of Plymouth, wherewith he made three long and famous voyages unto the coast of Brazil, a thing in those days very rare, especially to our nation.'* In that brief sentence is con- tained the pith of all we know about the great man who, as far as extant history shows, was the first actual voyager from England to Brazil, and the founder of English commerce with South America. Contemporary with Robert Thome, the younger, and his brother Nicholas, William Hawkins shared their zeal for maritime enterprise, and the extension of trade and civiliza- tion to the newly-found regions on the other side of the Atlantic. His father,. John Hawkins, of Tavistock, a gentle- man by birth, appears to have been an influential shipowner and captain in Henry the Eighth's service between 1513 and * Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 700. 198 Old William Hawkins of Plymouth. 1518.* But neither of him nor of his son do we know any- thing in detail prior to the year 1530, when William made his first voyage to Brazil. Quitting Plymouth, — which, from being in Henry the Second's time, under the name of Sutton, ' a mean thing as an habitation for fishers,' grew important enough to be made a borough by Henry the Sixth,! and to become, in the reign of Henry the Eighth, ' a port so famous that it had a kind of invitation, from the commodiousness thereof, to maritime noble actions 'J — he touched first on the coast of Guinea, where he bought elephants' teeth and other commodities from the negroes, and then boldly crossed the Atlantic to sell them to the Indians dwelling on the coast of Brazil. ' He used such discretion,' we are told, ' and behaved himself so wisely with those savage people, that he grew into great familiarity and friendship with them ; insomuch that in his second voyage,' undertaken in 1531, ' one of the savage kings of the country of Brazil was contented to take ship with him, and be transferred hither into England ; where- unto Master Hawkins agreed, leaving behind in the country, as a pledge for his safety and return again, one Martin Cockeram, of Plymouth.' The native chief was brought to London, and presented to Henry the Eighth, at Whitehall ; and * at the sight of nim the King and all the nobility did not a little marvel, and not without cause, for in his cheeks were holes made according to their savage manner, and therein small bones were planted, standing an inch out from the said holes, which in his own country was reputed a great bravery. He also had another hole in his nether lip, wherein was set a precious stone about the bigness of a pea. All his apparel, behaviour, and gesture were very strange to the beholders.' He remained in England for the best part of a year, leaving it to return home when Hawkins started next * Brewer, Lelters and Papers of the Reign of Henry VIII. (London, 18G4), vol. ii., }>. 13G9. t Lelaxd, Itinerary (Oxford, 1744). vol. iii., p. 22. X Prince, Worthies of Devon (Exeter, 1701), p. 3S'J. Other Voyagers to South America. 199 summer on his third voyage. Unfortunately, he died of sea-sickness on the passage, and Captain Hawkins was much afraid that he would get into trouble in consequence. * Never- theless, the savages being fully persuaded of the honest deal- ing of our men with their prince, restored again the pledge, without any harm to him or any man of the company ; which pledge of theirs they brought home again into England, with their ship freighted and furnished with the commodities of the country.'* It is probable that William Hawkins died soon after the com- pletion of this voyage. At any rate, we hear no more of him. His example, however, was not forgotten. His son John was too young as yet to follow it ; but others, chiefly merchants of Southampton, promptly took the work in hand. About the year 1540, as we learn from the meagre accounts that have come down to us, ' the commodious and gainful voyage to Brazil ' was made many times by Robert Reniger, Thomas Borey, and other ' substantial and wealthy merchants ' of Southampton ; and in 1542 another Southampton adventurer, named Pudsey, 'a man of good skill and resolution in marine causes,' went to Brazil, there traded with the Portuguese residents, and built what was called a fort at Santos.t This southern town of Santos seems to have been the favourite resort of the English merchants. We have a curious letter, written thence in June, 1578, by one John Withal, to Richard Staper, a merchant of Plymouth and London. Withal tells his friend how he had gone thither on a voyage, intending to return to England shortly, but that he has fallen in with a wealthy native of Portugal, who prefers him to any of his own countrymen as a husband for his daughter, and " doth give with her in marriage to me part of an engine which he hath, that doth make every year 2,000 ducats' worth of sugar, little more or less," with a promise that he shall in due time be sole proprietor of the machine and of sixty or seventy slaves as well. " I give my * Hakluyt, vol. iii., pp. 700, 701. t Ibid., p. 701. 200 Early Trading with Brazil. living Lord thanks," he exclaims / " for placing me in such honour and plentifuluess of all things !" But shrewd Withal desires yet further increase in plentifulness. Therefore he writes to Staper, saying that if he and Edward Osborne, one of the richest and most enterprising London merchants of that time, will send him a cargo of English goods he will be able to dispose of them for thrice as much as they cost, and to send home in return a very profitable ship-load of suo-ar. " If you have any stomach thereto," he adds, " in the name of God, do you espy out a fine bark of 70 or 80 tons, and send her hither. First, you must lade in the said ship certain Hampshire and Devonshire kerseys ; for the which you must let her depart from London in October, and touch in the Canaries, and there make sale of the kerseys, and with the proceeds thereof lade fifteen tuns of wines that be perfect and good, and six dozen of Cordovan skins of these colours, to wit, orange, tawny yellow, red, and very fine black. I think you shall not find such colours there ; there- fore you shall cause them that shall go upon this voyage to take saffron with them to cause the same skins to be put into the said colours. Also, I think you shall take oil there ; three hogsheads of sweet oil for this voyage are very neces- sary, or 150 jars of oil." Then follows a long list of the commodities, and the quantities of each, that had better be sent off, the catalogue giving us a very clear notion as to the nature of the dealings with which our immense American and West Indian trade began. Cloths and flannels, hollands and hose, shirts and doublets, are spoken of as specially important. In the Brazil market there is room for 400 ells of Manchester cottons, * most black, some green, some yel- low ;' also for 400 or 500 ells of some linen cloth of a cheap kind for making - sheets and shirts, and 4 pounds of silk ; as well as 8 or 10 dozen hats, 4 dozen reams of paper, 4 dozen scissors, 24 dozen knives, 6,000 fish-hooks, and 400 pounds of tin, with a little scarlet parchment, lace and crimson velvet; "and, lastly, a dozen of shirts for my wearing, also William and John Hawkins. '201 G or 8 pieces of stuff for mantles for women, which is the most necessary thing that can be sent."* In 1580 a cargo of such commodities as these was de- spatched not by Richard Stapcr and Edward Osborne, but by a little company of London merchants, among whom Christopher Hodsdon, Anthony Garrard, Thomas Bromley, John Bird, and William Elkin were chief, in the Minion of London.\ Let us hope that it fared well, and that John Withal obtained his three hundred per cent, of profits. But the South American seas were at this time beginning to be frequented by much more notable ships, the property of much more notable ad- venturers. Captain William Hawkins left two sons, William, who, early in Queen Elizabeth's reign established himself as a merchant and shipowner in London, and John, destined to become one of the foremost naval heroes of England. He was a lad about ten or twelve years old when his father went to Brazil, and, as he betook himself early to the sea,:}: it is just possible that he shared in one or more of these expedi- tions. We know, at any rate, that during his youth and early manhood * he made divers voyages to the Isles of the Canaries, and there by his good and upright dealing being grown in love and honour of the people, informed himself of the state of the West Indies, whereof he had received some knowledge by the instructions of his father, but increased the same by the advertisements and reports of that people ; and being, amongst other things, informed that negroes were very good merchandize in Hispaniola, and that store of negroes might easily be had upon the coast of Guinea, he resolved within himself to make trial thereof.'§ This, if a new, was certainly not a very honourable branch of English commerce. But the discredit lies rather with the age than with John Hawkins himself. For generations it had been the custom of the Spaniards and Portuguese to make slaves of * Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 701. + Prince, p. 3S9. f Ibid., vol. iii., p. 704. § Hakluyt, vol. iii., p. 500. 202 John Hawkins and his Trade. their Moorish prisoners and of the African tribes associated with them ; and from time immemorial blacks had been reckoned an inferior race of beings. A man as philanthropic as Las Casas, the great apostle of the Indians, urged the substitution of negro for Indian slavery, on the ground of humanity, never thinking that the cruelty was as great in the one case as in the other. Hawkins therefore shocked no prejudices and broke no accepted moral law by participating SIE JOHN HAWKINS. in the slave-trade. It is true that a man of generous nature and high sense of honour would have preferred some other way of enriching himself. But Hawkins was not remarkable for generous or highly honourable conduct. Pie was a daring voyager, a brave soldier, and one of the great pro- moters of our country's commercial greatness. In other respects he was no better than his fellows. Much cruelty, of course, was perpetrated in his self- appointed business. Having, in the spring of 1562, con- His First Expedition to the West Indies. 203 suited with his father-in-law, Master Benjamin Gonson, a well-to-do merchant of London, and through him with some richer and more influential men — Alderman Duckett, Sir Thomas Lodge, and Sir William Winter among the number — he obtained from them money enough to tit out three good ships — the Solomon, of 120 tons; the Swalloiv, of 100 ; and the Jonas, of 40 — and to man them with a hundred hardy sailors by the autumn of the same year. He left England in October, touching first at Teneriffe, and then halting at Sierra Leone, ' where he stayed some time, and got into his possession, partly by the sword and partly by other means, to the number of three hundred negroes at the least, besides other merchandizes which that country yieldeth.' With that cargo he proceeded to Hispaniola, * where he had reasonable utterance of his English commodities and of his negroes, trusting the Spaniards no further than that by his own strength he was able to master them.' In exchange for his mixed cargo he obtained a goodly number of pearls, besides a sufficient quantity of hides, ginger, sugar, and the like, to fill not only his own three ships, but two chartered hulks as well ; and thus, ' with prosperous success and much gain to himself and the aforesaid adventurers, he came home, and arrived in September, 15G3.'* In the autumn of the following year Hawkins set out again, under the patronage of Lord Robert Dudley, afterwards the famous Earl of Leicester, the Earl of Pem- broke, and some others,t whose subscription of 500Z. enabled him to charter one of the stoutest and largest ships in Queen Elizabeth's service, the Jesus of Lubeck, of 700 tons burthen, besides his old Solomon and Swallow, and two other little vessels, the Tiger and the Saint John Baptist, with about two hundred men on board in all. " Serve God daily," ran the last of the pithy rules which he drew up for * IIaku yt, vol. iii., p. 500. t Ri:coi:i) Office MSS., Reign of Elizabeth, Domestic Correspondence, vol. xxviii., No. 2, aud vol. xxxvii., No. 01. 204 Captain John Hawkins. their guidance ; " love one another ; preserve your victuals ; beware of fire ; and seek good company." Very curious is the piety with which these men engaged in their evil work — work not the less evil in itself because the doers saw no harm in it, and because its first and most apparent results tended greatly to the naval power and glory of England. Cape Verde was the first African place at which they stayed. The natives they found * very gentle and loving, more civil than any others, because of their daily traffic with the Frenchmen ;' but that did not deter Hawkins from at- tempting to kidnap a number of them. Failing, through the treachery or right feeling of some of his men, he sailed southwards as far as the Rio Grande, and there ' went every day on shore, burning and spoiling their towns.' ' They took many in that place,' says the mariner who has written a his- tory of the voyage, ' and as much of their fruits as they could well carry away.' Other parts of the coast were visited, until a full cargo of slaves was obtained, and then the traders proceeded to the West Indies. They were becalmed for eighteen days midway, ' having now and then,' says our chronicler, ' contrary winds and some tornadoes amongst the calm, which happened to them very ill, being but reasonably watered for so great a company of negroes and themselves. This pinched them all, and which was worse, put them in such fear that many never thought to have reached the Indies without great death of negroes ; but the Almighty God, which never sufFereth his elect to perish, sent them the ordi- nary breeze.' The breeze took them first to Margarita, and then to Cumana, and then to Barbarata ; but in none of these places did Captain Hawkins find a market for his negroes, until, in the latter port, he landed a hundred men, well armed with bows and arrows, arquebuses, and pikes, and so forced the Spanish residents to buy his negroes at his own price. After that he proceeded to Curacoa, where ' they had traffic for hides, and found great refreshing both of beef, mutton, His Second Expedition to the West Indies. 205 and lambs, whereof there was such plenty that, saving for skins, they had the flesh given them for nothing ; and the worst in the ship thought scorn, not only of mutton, but also of sodden lamb, which they disdained to eat unroasted.' After refreshing his men with these good things, Hawkins returned to the mainland of South America, and proposed to exchange his negroes for the hides and sugars of Rio de la Hacha. ' But seeing they would, contrary to all reason, go about to withstand his traffic, he would not it should be said of him that, having the force he had, he was driven from his traffic per force, but would rather put it in adventure whether he or they should have the better, and therefore he called upon them to determine either to give him license to trade or else stand to their own defence.' The townsmen, after de- liberation, answered that they would buy his negroes for half the sum he asked. ' Whereupon the captain, weighing their unconscionable request, wrote to them a letter, saying that they dealt too rigorously with him, to go about to cut his throat in the price of his commodities, which were so reasonably rated as they could not by a great deal have the like at any other man's hands ; but, seeing they had sent him this to his supper, he would in the morning bring them as good a break- fast.' That breakfast, of arrows and javelins, had such a wholesome effect on the Spaniards that ' they made their traffic quietly.' So it was at other ports. At length, after some disasters, the whole stock of negroes was disposed of. Then the voyagers set about returning homa Foul winds de- tained them ' till victuals scanted, so that they were in despair of ever reaching home, had not God provided for them better than their deserving ; in which state of great misery they were provoked to call upon Him by frequent prayer, which moved Him to hear them,' and on the 20th September, 1565, they arrived at Padstow in Cornwall? ' with the loss of but twenty persons in all the voyage, and with great profit to the venturers, as also to the whole realm, in bringing home both gold, silver, pearls, and other jewels in 20G Captain John Haiokins. groat store.'* Great was the favour with which the per- petrators of these deeds were regarded by Queen, Court, and people. As for Hawkins himself, « by way of increase and augmentation of honour, a coat of arms and crest were settled upon him and his posterity,' the chief peculiarity in which was ' a demi-Moor, in his proper colour, bound and captive,' fit token of the iniquitous trade which he had made popular in England. t That voyage was followed by others, each one more ambitious than the last, in which first Hawkins, and after him a crowd of imitators — one, at any rate, destined to become even more famous than himself — managed to com- bine the pursuit of gain by violent and often unholy modes of traffic with the more patriotic work of crippling the over- weening power of Spain. Philip the Second was, to Pro- testant Englishmen, the Antichrist of those days, and none hated him more, or sought more persistently to cripple his power, by foul means or fair, than did Hawkins and his brother seamen. In the autumn of 15G6, we find him at Plymouth making the strange proposal to 'repair armed, for the purpose of traffic, to places privileged by the King of Spain.':}: In this instance Queen Elizabeth's government deemed it better to forbid such a step ; and accordingly Hawkins was compelled to sign a bond for 500Z. * to forbear sending his ship, the Swallow, about to make a voyage to the coast of Guinea, to any place in the Indies privileged by the King of Spain.'§ Hawkins seems to have been thereby hindered in his intended voyage ; and when he really set out next year ' to lade negroes in Guinea,' as he said, ' and sell them in the West Indies in truck of gold, pearls, and emeralds,' || he * Hakluyt, vol. iii., pp. 501-521. * PlUNCE, p. 389. X Lemon, Calendar of State Paper*, Domestic Series, of the Reiqns of Edward VI., Mary, and Elizabeth, preserved in II. M. Public Itecord Office (London, 185G-1SG5), vol. i., p. 279. § Ibid.,j>. 2S1. || Ihid., p. 323. His Third Expedition to the West Indies. 207 observed it as far as he was able. On the 2nd of October, LjG7, he quitted Plymouth with two ships, the Jesus and the Minion, supplied by Queen Elizabeth herself, and four smaller vessels, equipped by Hawkins, his elder brother William, and other adventurous merchants, the whole beinsr furnished, we are told, with fifteen hundred soldiers and seamen.* One of the four was the Judith, of 50 tons burthen, with Francis Drake, now about two-and-twenty years of age, for its captain. Drake was a native of Ply- mouth, — according to one account, a kinsman of Hawkins. f The son of a poor parson, and the eldest of twelve, he had, at a very early age, entered the service of one of his father's friends, who made small trading voyages between the coast towns of the east of England and occasionally crossed over to France and Holland, tie had served his master so well that he, dying about the year 15G5, had bequeathed to him the bark which he had helped to manage, and with its assistance he had scraped together a little sum of money, when he heard of Hawkins's new expedition. Thereupon he sold his vessel, hastened to Plymouth, and embarked his all in the West Indian venture.^ This time the voyage was not profitable. Nearly five hundred negroes were kidnapped on the coast of Guinea. But, in the West Indian waters, bad weather and Spanish treachery destroyed four out of the six vessels, and though many of the mariners were also lost, there was hardly room for the survivors in the already crowded Minion and Judith. " With sorrowful hearts," wrote Captain Hawkins, " we wandered in an unknown sea by the space of fourteen days, till hunger enforced us to seek the land ; for hides were thought very good meat : rats, cats, mice, and dogs, none escaped that might be gotten ; parrots and monkeys, that were had in great price, were thought then very profitable if * IIaklvyt, vol. iii., p. 522. t Prince, p. 23G. t Campbell, Lives of the British Admirals, vol. i., pp. 422, 423. 20S Captain John Hawkins. they served the turn one dinner." At last, in October, 1568, they drifted to the coast of Mexico, near Cape lioxo. " where we hoped to have found inhabitants of the Spaniards, relief of victuals, and place for the repair of our ship, which was so sore beaten with shot from our enemies, and bruised with shooting off our own ordnance, that our weary and weak arms were scarce able to keep out water. But all things happened to the contrary ; we found neither people, victual, nor haven of relief; only a place where, having fair weather, with some peril, we might land a boat." Several boatloads of people, about a hundred in all, were here set ashore, chiefly, as it seems, by their own desire, and left to support themselves as best they could until help could be sent from England. The others slowly sought their way home, many dying each day of starvation before, on New- Year's Eve, they reached the coast of Galicia, where, " by excess of fresh meat, the men gTew into miserable diseases." At last, on the 25th of January, 1569, the few survivors, _ obtaining assist- ance from some English seamen whom they met at Vigo, landed in Cornwall. "If all the miseries and troublesome affairs of this sorrowful voyage," said Hawkins, " should be perfectly and thoroughly written, there should need a painful man with his pen, and as great a time as he had that wrote the lives and deaths of the martyrs."* It was too miserable, and troublesome, and sorrowful for Hawkins, now about fifty years of age, to be eager for another West Indian enterprise. But Drake was just half as old. He had lost all his little store of money, and gained an immensity of hatred against Spain and the Spanish colonies of America. Hope of wealth and hope of glory, personal revenge and a desire to punish the great enemy of England, all prompted him to carry on a private war with Spain. ' A dwarf,' says Fuller of this enterprise, ' standing on the mount of God's Providence, may prove an overmatch for a giant ;' and it is plain that Drake and his fellow-sea- * Haki.lyt, vol. iii., p. 522-525. Captain Francis Drake. 209 men did really think that they were doing God service by attacking the chief supporter of the Inquisition, the haughty destroyer of independence in the Netherlands, and the greatest foe to civil and religious liberty known in the sixteenth century. At any rate they did good work for their country and themselves ; and, in their case, if ever, it must be admitted that the means were justified by the ends. ' This doctrine,' according to one and not a very friendly historian, ' how rudely soever preached, was very taking in England, and therefore Drake no sooner published his design than he had a number of volunteers ready to accompany him, though they had no such pretence even as he had to colour their proceedings.' * He set wisely about his work. In 1570 and 1571 he made two harmless trading expeditions to the West Indies, about which we have unfortunately no details, partly to make money and partly to study the tactics of the Spaniards. Thus prepared, he started in 1572 on the famous voyage by which the southern seas were for the first time opened up to English traffic, and in 1577 on the yet more famous voyage by which he sailed right round the globe. But these expeditions, and others that succeeded them, undertaken both by Drake himself and by a crowd of followers, were so thoroughly warlike, and had so little to do with honest trade, that we have not here to speak of them. They did exert a notable influence upon commerce, but only by encouraging English merchants and seamen to embark on distant enterprises, and to make themselves masters of the wealth of far-off lands. One proceeding of Drake's, especially, is said to have had a very practical effect on English commerce. Returning, in the autumn of 1587, from his memorable expedition against Cadiz, he fell in with a huge Portuguese trading vessel on its way from the East Indies. ' And it is to be noted,' as Hakluyt remarks, ' that the taking of this carrack wrought two extraordinary effects in England : first, that it taught * Campbell, British Admirals, vol. i., ]>. 423. VOL. I. P 210 William and John Haivkins. others that carracks were no such bugs that they might he taken ; and, secondly, in acquainting the English nation more generally with the particularities of the exceeding riches and wealth of the East Indies, whereby themselves and their neighbours of Holland have been encouraged, beinsr men as skilful in navigation and of no less courage than the Portugals, to share with them therein.' ' By the papers found on board,' says another old historian, * they so fully understood the rich value of the Indian merchandizes, and their manner of trading into the eastern world, that they afterwards set up a gainful trade and traffic, and esta- blished a company of East India merchants.' * John Hawkins did not live long enough to take a promi- nent part in that new and gainful traffic with the East Indies. But in the later years of his life, he ranked as one of the merchants whose enterprise and wealth, used in the advance- ment of foreign commerce, promoted other enterprise, and helped the accumulation of fresh stores of wealth. After his disastrous expedition of 15G7 and 1568, he seems for some years to have abstained from West Indian traffic. His elder brother, "William, had been, from the first, a busy merchant of Plymouth and London ; and it is likely that John, besides his maritime adventures, had all along been a partner in the quieter business inherited from their father. At one time, we are told, the two brothers were owners of thirty trading- vessels ; t but of the use to which they put them, and of the general nature of their transactions, we know very little indeed. Frequently, it would appear, their ships were char- tered to other merchants trading with the European ports ; and much profit came to them as agents both of the Crown and of private individuals, in supplying vessels with provisions and other necessary stores4 But neither brother could be satisfied with employment as a mere merchant. Near the beginning of December, * Stow, Annals, p. SOS. f Ibid., p. SOT. * Lemon, Calendar, vol. ii.. pp. 14, 502, &c. William Hawkins and his Work in Plymouth. 211 15G8, a very large amount of Spanish treasure, worth about 400,000/. in all, fell in the way of the merchants of Plymouth, Southampton, and the other western ports. As it chanced, William Hawkins had just before that heard the report of his brother John's disastrous adventure with the Spaniards in the West Indies. It was even said that he had been put to death by them. u God forbid it should be true !"' wrote William to Secretary Cecil on the 3rd of December; " but if it be, I shall have cause to curse them whiles 1 live, and my children after me." On this account he was eager to take tfye revenge just then within his reach. He petitioned Cecil " to the end there might be some stay made of King Philip's treasure in these parts, till there be sufficient recom- pense made for the great wrong offered ; and also other wrongs done long before this. I hope," he added, "to please God best therein, for that they are all God's enemies." * Permission was accorded, to Hawkins's great satisfaction ; and for the way in which he did his share in the work he was highly applauded. Writing to Cecil on the 1st of January, 1569, Sir Arthur Champcrnoun spoke of him as " an honest and necessary person." " He is the mcetcst," he said, "of any that I know to be fixed in these parts; being both for his wisdom, honesty, credit, and zeal, not inferior to any of his calling in this country ; whose help and advice I have especially used in these doings ; and without whom not I only in like matters shall feel a want, but rather the town of Plymouth and places near thereunto will be utterly unfurnished of their chiefest furtherance in such ser- vices as may be of any importance." t Three weeks later we find the merchant soliciting Queen Elizabeth's Council for " some relief for the port and town of Plymouth," \ and in many ways he seems to have done his best towards the work of local improvement, before Sir Francis Drake conferred on Plymouth its greatest boon in augmenting its water supply by means of the Leet. * Recoud Office MSS., lieign of Elizabeth, Domestic Scri<\<, vol. rr ] \ i i • . No. 50. T Ibid, vol. xlix., No. 2. * TimL, No. V,~. 212 Captain John Hawkins. John Hawkins was not often in Plymouth. Already famous as a sailor and a wonderful hater of the Spaniards, Queen Elizabeth soon employed him about congenial work. In September, 1570, he was in command of a little squadron of her majesty's ships, on some coasting expedition, when an accident enabled him to cive characteristic evidence of his temper. A large Spanish fleet, we are told, was on its way to Flanders, thence to convey Philip the Second's new wife, Anne of Austria, to Spain, when, passing close to the Eng- lish coast, it fell in with Hawkins's 'ships. The Spanish admiral attempted to pass without paying the usual *salute. ' Thereat Sir John ordered the gunner of his own ship to fire at the rigging of the Spanish admiral, who taking no notice of it, the gunner fired next at the hull, and shot through and through. The Spaniards upon this took in their flags and topsails, and running to an anchor, the Spanish admiral sent an officer of distinction in a boat to carry at once his compliments and complaints to Sir John Hawkins. He, standing upon deck, would not either admit the officer or hear his message ; but bid him tell his admiral that, having neglected the respect due to the Queen of Eng- land in her seas and port, and having so large a fleet under his command, he must not expect to lie there, but in twelve hours weigh his anchor and begone, otherwise he should regard him as an enemy declared, his conduct having already rendered him suspected. The Spanish admiral, upon receiving this message, came off in person, desiring to speak with him, which at first was refused, but at length granted. The Spaniard then expostulated the matter, in- sisted that there was peace between the two crowns, and that he knew not what to make of the treatment he had received. Sir John Hawkins told him that his own arrogance had brought it upon him, and that he could not but know what respect was due to the Queen's ships: that he had despatched an express to her Majesty with advice of his behaviour, and that in the meantime he would do well to depart. The Spa- His Overreaching of Philip the Second of Spain. 2K) niard still pleaded ignorance, and that he was ready to give satisfaction. Upon this Sir John Hawkins told him mildly that he could not be a stranger to what was practised by the French and Spaniards in their own seas and ports ; adding, " Put the case, sir, that an English fleet came into any of the King your master's ports, his Majesty's ships being there, and those English ships should carry their flags in their tops, would you not shoot them down, and beat the ships out of your port?" The Spaniard owned he would ; confessed he was in the wrong ; submitted to the penalty Sir John imposed ; was then very kindly entertained, and they parted very good friends.'* That show of friendship was soon followed by a much more notable piece of deception, in which Hawkins, stirred by his life-long hatred of the Spaniards, proved himself more than a match for even Philip the Second of Spain. In the autumn of 1570, it seems, he was in communication with the Spanish Ambassador in London respecting the liberation of some of his comrades, who had been made prisoners in the West Indies two years before. In April, 1571, he sent a message to Philip himself at Madrid, pretending that he was weary of Queen Elizabeth's fickle and tyrannical rule, and offering to shake off his allegiance, and to give the Spaniards all the advantages of his maritime skill and his intimate acquaintance with English statecraft, on condition that his old friends should be set free, and he himself provided with suit- able employment. To this astonishing proposal Philip gladly listened. He called for proofs that he was not being played upon. Proofs satisfactory to him were sent ; and in the following August not only were the captives released but a large sum of money was transmitted to Hawkins, to be used by him in making traitors of other Englishmen, and pre- paring some English ships for Spanish service. Even the details of the service on which they were to be employed were confided to him. Never before had Philip been so duped. Hawkins straightway informed Queen Elizabeth of the state * Campbell, British Admirals, vol. i., pp. 410, 411. 214 Hawkins's Various Services to the State. of affairs, and enabled her to use both Philip's secrets and Philip's money to his serious damage. " I have sent your lordship the copy of my pardon from the King of Spain, in the very order and manner I have it," he said in his letter on the subject to Sir William Cecil. "The Duke of Medina and the Duke of Alva hath every of them one of the same pardons, more amplified, to present unto me, though this be large enough, with my great titles and honours from the King — from which God deliver me ! Their practices be very mischievous, and they be never idle. But God, I hope, will confound them, and turn their devices upon their own necks. I will put my business in some order, and give my attend- ance upon her Majesty, to do her that service that by your Lordship shall be thought most convenient in this case." * Hawkins soon showed himself to Philip as a true, though not a very truthful, Englishman. In February, 1572, he was commissioned, with some others, to clear the British seas of pirates and freebooters, that is, to attack any Spanish vessels that were to be found near the English coast, f How he fared therein we are not told, but he so far satisfied the Queen that she appointed him, on the 18tli of November, 1577, in partnership with his father-in-law, Benjamin Gonson, to the office of Treasurer of the Navy4 Gonson had been in occupation of this office ever since the year 1557, § and it is probable that now old age prevented his proper attention to its duties, without the assistance of such a man as his son- in-law. Be that as it may, he died near the end of 1578, and on the last day of that year the appointment was given altogether to John Hawkins, a sum of 5,714/. 2s. 2d. yearly being allowed him for the expenses of his work.|| For many years before that Hawkins had had some em- ployment in other ways. Along with Humphrey Gilbert, he was elected member for Plymouth in the Parliament that * Frovde. llittonj of Kivjhmd from the Fall of Wolsey to the Death of Elizabeth (London, 1SGG), vol x., pp. 200-270. f Lkmux, vol. i., p. 437. + Bjid., p. f>CG. § Ibid., p. «JU. || Hid., p. GOD. iSir Humphrey Gilbert. 215 met on the 2nd of April, 1571, to be dissolved in seven weeks' time.* In May, 1572, he was elected again, this time having Edward Tremaine for his associate ; and lie seems to have taken part in its business carried on at in- tervals until April, 15S3.| It was during this long term of membership, before his appointment as Treasurer of the Navy, that, on the llth of October, 1573, he was nearly killed by accident. As he was crossing the Middle Temple, on his way to hear a lecture at Whittington College, a mad Protestant, mistaking him for Sir Christopher Hatton, stabbed him in the back, and was only prevented from mur- dering him by his own presence of mind and strength of limb.} As the friends of Gilbert, Raleigh, and Frobisher, William and John Hawkins heard much during these years of the projects for American colonization and North -Western discovery. While he had been busy with his trading expedi- tions to Guinea and the West Indies, the old notions of the Cabots and the Thornes had been revived, chiefly through the influence of Sir Humphrey Gilbert. The England of Queen Elizabeth's days contained few worthier or abler men than Gilbert. Raleigh's half-brother, and a brave captain under Sir Henry Sidney in troublous times of Irish rebellion, he came to England in the autumn of 15GG, his age being then about seven-and-twenty ; and to that date must be as- signed his petition to the Queen, beseeching her, as nothing had been said or done for a loner time concerning- the finding- cf a passage to Cathay, that he might be allowed to make trial thereof at his own cost.§ In that petition he sug- gested a north-eastern route. In another, which must have been written a few months later, he decided in favour of a north-west course, as most hopeful for the speedy discovery of a passage to Cathay, 'and all other the rich parts of the * Wilms, Nrfitia Porlimncutariu (London, 1750 , vol. iii., pt. 2, p. SO. t Willis, vol. iii.. port ii., p. !K). * Camhex. Annates, p. 284. § Saixswhy, Calendar of Slate Paper*, Colonial Scries East Indies, China, <uid Japan), preserved in li. M. State Paper Office, and elsewhere Ixmdon, 1SGH), vol. i., p. 0. 21 G Projects for North American Discovei'y. world not found ;' and in consideration of bis great charges, ' besides the apparent miserable travel, hazard, and peril of his life,' he asked for the life-governorship of whatever terri- tory he might discover, and a tithe of any profits that might accrue.* These reasonable demands were refused, however, in January 1507; and in the following June Gilbert was sent back to Ireland, there to aid in planting a colony of obedient subjects in Ulster, as a check upon the mutinous spirit of the natives. No important plan for more remote enterprise or colonization appears to have been announced during the next seven years ; but Gilbert's mind was at work, and his projects were gaining favour with others. In March, 1574, he was again in England, and again seeking the Queen's sanction for the attempted discovery of sundry rich and unknown lands, * fatally reserved,' as he said, ' for England and for the honour of her Majesty.' t To the same effect was a very able treatise written by him ' to prove a passage by the north-west to Cathay and the East Indie?/ published in May, 15754 The date is important. Though Gilbert had not sufficient influence at Court to obtain the commission after which he had been striving for years, he had the merit of arousing nearly all the interest then existing on the subject, and must not lose the honour, certainly his due, of having by this very discourse, as well as by his earlier argu- ments, instigated Martin Erobisher to plan and execute the voyage of discovery upon which he embarked in June, 1576. Two years before that date, Erobisher had gained the favour of the Queen, and obtained from her a letter to the Muscovy Company, urging them to renew their efforts, long discontinued, for finding a north-east passage to Cathay ; and that letter, not being attended to, was followed by another, written in more imperative tcrms.§ In the mean- * Sainsbvkv, pp. G, 7. r ItiicoiiD Office MSS., Iiekjn of Elizabeth, Domestic Correspondence, vol xcv.. No. (J3. J Hakli yt, vol. iii., pi). 42, 43. § Sainsbury, p. 12. Gilbert, Frobisher, and Michael Lock. 217 while Frobisher had yielded to Gilbert's arguments in con- sidering the route to the north of Greenland better than that in the direction of Russia which had cost Willoughby his life in 1554, and, as soon as license was granted, he set himself diligently to collect men and money for the work. " I daily instructed him," writes Michael Lock, agent of the Muscovy Company, and son of Sir William Lock, a wealthy merchant, contemporary with Grcsham and partner in some of his financial dealings,* "making my house his home and my purse his purse at his need, and my credit his credit to my power, when he was utterly destitute, both of money, and credit, and of friends." For a time Frobisher lived at the house of one Brown, in Fleet Street, and then, to be nearer Lock, he moved to Widow Hancock's house, in Mark Lane. When, after many months, he was not able to find venturers enough, and had received promise of only half the sixteen hundred pound, he was ' a sad man.' Lord Burghley would not help, unless ' a convenient person should take charge of this service ;' and by many, Frobisher, having ' very little credit at home, and much less to be credited with the ships abroad,' * This fragment of autobiography is well worth quoting : — " My lato father, Sir "William Lock," pays Michael, writing in 1577, "knight and alderman of London, kept me at schools of grammar in England till I was thirteen years old, which was ad. 1515, and, he being sworn servant to King Henry the Eighth, his mercer and also his agent beyond the seas in divers affairs, he then sent me over seas to Flanders and France to learn those languages and to know the world. Since which time I have con- tinued these thirty-two years in travail of body and study of mind, follow- ing my vocation in the trade of merchandize; whereof I have spent the first fifteen years in continued travail of body, passing through almost all the countries ol Christianity ; namely, out of England into Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, Germany, France, Spain. Italy, and Greece, both by land and by sea, not without great labours, care, dangers, and expenses of money in- cident; having had the charge as captain of a great ship of burthen, 1,000 tons, by the space of more than three years, wherewithal I returned into England. In which travels, besides the knowledge of those famous common languages of those countries, I sought also for the knowledge of the state of all their commonwealths, chiefly in all matters appertaining to the traffic of merchants; and the rest of my time I have spent in England under the happy reign of the Queen's Majesty now being." — Briti&li Museum, Cottoitian MS.,Otho, E. viii., fob 41. 2 IS Frobisher s Search for a Passage to Cathay. was not thought the most convenient person. At the end of a year, however, all difficulties were overcome. Frobisher was 'alive again.'* On the 12th of June, 1570, he quitted Gravesend. Four months were spent in sailing to Labrador, in making discoveries and enduring perils, of which the world has often been informed, and in returning to England by way of Friesland. In London, on the 9th of October, ' they were joyfully received with the great admiration of the people, brinjrino: with them a strange man and his boat, which was a wonder unto the whole city, and to the rest of the realm that heard of it as seemed never to have happened the like great matter to any man's knowledge.' t The stir that filled all England at the report of Frc- bisher's success, and of the new source of gold that he fancied he had found, is familiar matter of history. In 1577, and ajjain in 1578, he went back to the northern coast of Ame- rica, each time to add something to the geographical know- ledge of the world, and to do yet more good by setting an example of brave endurance and persistent labour in the cause he had at heart ; but, as everybody knows, no gold was found, and he himself was altogether impoverished. Two notable letters, undated but evidently to be referred to this time, are extant. In one, Frobisher addresses the Queen, praying to be employed somehow in her Majesty's service, or else to have some relief, " that he may but live ;" and assuring her that he would rather live with credit as her servant for a penny a day than grow rich under foreign princes. Not quite so self-sacrificing is his wife. Along with the husband's petition is one in which Dame Isabel Frobisher, " the most miserable poor woman in the world, in her most lamentable manner," relates to Sir Francis Walsingham how her former husband was a very wealthy man, who left her in very good state, but how her present lord — "whom God forgive" — has spent all, and put her and her children "to the wide world to shift." They arc * Sainsbiky, pp. 51, .02. f Ibid., p. 14. Gilbert's Project for a North- American Colony. 219 all, she says, in a pour room at Hampstead, ready to starve, and, unless the Secretary of State will help her to recover a debt of four pounds, or will otherwise assist her, thev must famish.* Frobisher and his household were not the only ones reduced to poverty by zeal in the cause of maritime research. In 1581 Sir Humphrey Gilbert wrote to Walsingham about some money due to him from the Crown. It was a miserable thing for him, he said, that, after seven-and-twenty years' service, he should now be subject to daily arrests, executions, and outlawries, and have even to sell his wife's clothing from off her back, for the sake of buying food to live upon ; and there are extant several other as touching letters, from him- self and his wife, detailing the straits to which they were broughtf But the poor man was able to talk much and eloquently upon the subject most dear to him, and, though never allowed to see the fruit of his labours, he was able to do much. To him, as we have before remarked, was chiefly due the merit of reviving the projects for exploring the north- western seas. When Frobisher was preferred before him, he magnanimously subscribed in furtherance of the work as much money as was given by some of the wealthy followers of the Court, and straightway applied himself to another and a yet worthier scheme. As early as 1574 there is evidence that, in conjunction with Christopher Carlile, he was planning the settlement of a colony on the northern coast of America, ' of all other unfrequented places the only most fittest and most commodious for us to intermeddle withal.' It was proposed, as a beginning, to convey thither a hundred men, to keep them there a year, during which time the friendship of the natives should be cultivated and observations should be made both as to what commodities the country could yield, and as to what things were best fitted for exportation, and so to make everything ready for a more extensive plantation.} * Recoup Office, MSS., Domestic Correspondence, vol. cli., Nos. 1C, 17. f Ibid., vol. cxlix., No. GG. 1 Ibid., vol. xcY., No. G3. 220 Projects for North- American Colonization. Nothing" appears to have been done, however, till 1578. In that year a charter of colonization was granted by Queen Elizabeth to Gilbert ;* and by the 23rd of September, just five days previous to Frobisher's starting upon his third voyage, as we learn from a letter written by him to Sir Francis Walsingham, he had made everything ready for embarking at Dartmouth, with a fleet of eleven ships, con- taining five hundred able men.t All, if they were able, were not willing. On the J 2th of November, Gilbert wrote to complain of the unkind and ill dealing shown towards him by several gentlemen of his company, and to tell of the con- sequent separation. His own fleet* of seven sail, however, was large enough, he said, for the business.! The number of ships was at last reduced to six, one being left behind as leaky. The rest set sail about the 1st of December, Walter Raleigh being captain of one ship, and our merchant, William Plawkins, of another. § That is all that we know of his share in the enterprise, and of the enterprise itself we know very little. Gilbert proceeded to Newfoundland, obtained some fresh knowledge respecting the country ; but for lack of means did nothing towards its immediate colonization, and returned to England early in the following year. He was too poor to undertake a fresh expedition before 1583, and then he was wrecked on his way to Newfoundland. In the meanwhile preparations had been made for another voyage to the North West. First projected, as it seems, by the Earls of Shrewsbury and Leicester, and largely subsidized by them, it was taken up by all the leading seamen and dis- coverers of the time. Frobisher, who was to take the com- mand, did his best to make the enterprise greater than any of the three he had already led. Drake subscribed 1,000 marks to the general concern, besides sending a ship of his * Haklcyt, vol. i., p. G77. \ Ibid., p. (',05. f Lemon, vol. i., p. C00. § Ibid, p. OO'J. The Share taken in them by the Hawkinses. 221 own, at a cost of 1,000/., and enlisting the services of the sailors who had lately sailed round the world with him, and therefore, as he said, would have " some experience that way." * Captain John Hawkins, as he wrote, from Chatham on the 20th of October, gave the project his sympathy, but nothing else. Neither adventurers nor anything needful for the furtherance of so good an enterprise, one of a sort for which he in particular had always had "a very good liking," he said, could be wanting ; and he would have been glad if his ability and estate had been such as he might share in it. But he was hardly able to overcome the debt he owed to her Majesty and to keep his credit. A sickness that had long troubled him, he added, still abode with him : every second day he had a fit, and it seemed more reasonable that he should prepare for his grave than encumber himself further with worldly matters.f But a 'young Mr. Hawkins,' William by name, — whom, though without actual proof, we may safely assume to have been John Hawkins's nephew, son of his brother William, — was one of the most energetic and prominent members of the expedition. First planned as an expedition of discovery, it was gradually changed into one of merchandize. " We will that this voyage shall be only for trade," ran the instructions issued to Frobisher in February, 1582, "and not for dis- covery of the passage to Cathay otherwise than if, without hindrance of your trade and within the said degree, you can get any knowledge touching that passage." J Those were terms not agreeable to Frobisher, and therefore, as it seems, he abandoned the enterprise. Edward Fenton was chosen his successor, with AVilliam Hawkins as his second, many being anxious that Hawkins should take the lead, he being "an honest gentleman of milder nature." § It would have been well if it could have been so. Fenton, anxious to turn the business to his own advantage, and careless for all other * Sainsbiuy, vol. i., pp. C7, GS. + Hid., p. 75. t Ibid., p. GS. § Ibid., p 7G. 090 Young Mr. William Hawkins.' interests, had hardly left Plymouth, on the 2nd of June, when he beiran to persecute his subordinates, Hawkins most of all, and to lead the little fleet into all sorts of difficulties. Making no attempt to go northward, he proceeded to the coast of Brazil and there floundered about till his little fleet was attacked by a much larger Spanish force. There was a " hot fight," in which the Spaniards received more harm than thev were able to cause ; but the English were too much damaged to proceed with advantage ; otherwise, said Fenton in his report, " they had brought home in honest trade above 40,OOOZ. or 50,000Z."* As it was, nothing was even attempted. On the return home, during one of the many quarrels into which Fenton's hasty temper and insultiug manner brought him, he declared that the voyage had failed because he had not chosen to play the thief, as Drake had done. " When we come home," exclaimed Hawkins, " if you call Sir Francis thief, I will see how you can justify it. for when we came both forth we were gentlemen alike." " Thou shalt not be as good as I," Fenton answered, " so long as thou livest." " What make you of me then ?" was Hawkins's rejoinder. Replied Fenton, " A knave, a villain, and a boy." " If I were at home," said Hawkins, with becoming moderation, " I would not be afeard to follow you in any ground in England ; but here, in this place, for quietness' sake, 1 let it pass, and will bear every wrong, be it never so great." " Wilt thou so ?" exclaimed the angry general. " Yea, truly," replied Hawkins. ' Then,' the narrative proceeds, ' the general would have drawn his long knife and have stabbed Hawkins ; and, interrupted of that, he took up his long staff and therewith was coming at Haw- kins, but the master, the surgeon, and the pilot stayed his fury.'f That was on the 29th of June, 1583, when the little fleet was in the Downs. We hear nothing more of youri": \\ illiam Hawkins for five years, when he had to take part * S.vinsuukv, p. 89. t Ibid , pp. 91, 92. Sir John Hawkins as Treasurer of the Navy. 223 with his uncle, cousin, and father in resistance of the Spanish Armada. These, as well as the five previous years, were spent by John Hawkins, the uncle, chiefly in attendance to his duties as Treasurer of the Navy. This work was much more various and important than the name implied. The Treasurer or Comptroller had, generally, to command the fleet in its coasting voyages ; to take all the responsibility of building new ships, of repairing old ones, and of equipping, victualling, and manning both old and new ; and to do everything else that was necessary to the preservation and improvement of the Navy. Captain Hawkins laboured zealously and successfully in his office. He made more important improvements in the management of the royal shipping, we are told, than any of his predecessors. ' He was the first that invented the cunning stratagem of false nettings for ships to fight in, and also in the first year of the Queen, in the wars of France, he devised the chain-pumps for ships, and perfected many defects in the Navy Royal.' * His foundation, in conjunction with Sir Francis Drake, of the Chest at Chatham, a fund formed of voluntary contributions from prosperous seamen on behalf of their less fortunate brethren,! gives evidence of his interest in the welfare of the mariners ; and he was no less zealous in seeing that the mariners and their captains honestly served their employers. " I remember/' said his son, Richard Hawkins, "that my father, in his instructions, had this par- ticular article, that whosoever rendered or took any ship should be bound to exhibit the bills of lading ; to keep accounts of captain, masters, merchants, and persons, and to bring them to him to be examined, or into England. If they should be by any accident separated from him, whatsoever was found wanting was to be made good by the captain and company which took the ship, and this upon great punish- ments. I am witness and avow that this course did redound much to the benefit of the general stock, to the satisfaction * Stow, AnnaU (London, 1G10 , p. SOG. f Cami-ukix, vol. i., p. 121. 224 Sir John Hawkins as Treasurer of the Navy. of her Majesty and the Council, the satisfaction of his govern- ment and the content of his followers."* But the very success of Hawkins, and the favour it brought him at Court, raised some opposition to his move- ments. In October, 15S7, for instance, 'certain articles' were presented to the Queen ' touching the Admiralty, very good to be amended by her Majesty,' in which it was repre- sented that ' her Majesty was abused, and Mr. Hawkins greatly enriched by his underhand management of the con- tracts for the Navy ;' and in which it was urged * that the Treasurer of the Navy should not be permitted to supply provisions to her Majesty's ships nor to play the merchant, nor any of her Majesty's officers to be builders or setters forth of ships or purveyors of provisions.'! In reply thereto Hawkins wrote to Lord Burghley, saying that he * had always, since his appointment to the Navy, faithfully done his duty for the Queen's service, and never vainly or super- fluously wasted her Majesty's treasure.'! There may have been some ground for the charges brought against Hawkins. A merchant himself, and associated in commercial transactions with his brother William, he would only have been following the fashion of those times, continued down to our own day, had he tried to join advantage to himself with his service to the State. But that he did, in the main at any rate, serve the State well is proved abundantly by the condition to which he had brought the Navy, and his share in the management of it during the memorable events of the ensuing year. In December, 1587, Lord Admiral Howard wrote to Lord Burghley in praise of the warlike manner in which the Queen's vessels were equipped and manned with 'as sufficient and able a company of sailors as ever was seen.' § Economical Burghley thought the fleet too large, and its men too numerous, and accordingly gave • Observations of Sir Richard Hawkins in his Voyage into the South Sea in 15513 (London, 1847), p. 1G7. f Lemon, vol. ii., p. 429. + Ibid., p. 43G. '_ § Ibid., p. 445. His Preparations for the Armada Fight. 225 directions for the reduction of both. Thereupon both Howard and Hawkins made great complaint. " The enemy," said Howard, on the 1st of February, 1588, "now make but little reckoning of us, and know that we are but like bears tied to stakes, and they may come like dogs to offend us :" how foolish, then, to diminish our strength just at that time !* Hawkins wrote on the same day in the same strain. He had long- seen the malicious practices of the Papists to bring this realm to Papistry, and consequently to servitude, poverty, and slavery. Only by a determined and resolute war would it be possible to secure a firm and wholesome peace, and the; best way to begin such a war would be boldly to send at least a dozen ships to the coast of Spain, there to plunder and destroy as much of the enemy's treasure as they could.f That was not done, as news soon came to convince Eliza- beth and her councillors that England would need as great a force as could be brought together for the protection of its coasts. Hawkins had his own way about the strengthen- ing and equipment of the fleet, and he did his work promptly and efficiently. " It does a man's heart good," wrote Sir William Winter to Hawkins, on the 28th of February, ** to see the gallant fleet"! At length, in the middle of June, it put to sea, and, during a three days' storm, according to Howard's expression, " danced as lustily as the gallantest dancers in the Court." § It was a small fleet, most assuredly, in comparison with the great Armada that it had to with- stand, but the Englishmen who manned it had no fears of the result ; and all the world knows how, aided by weather most disastrous for the enemy, they prospered in it. Hawkins was Rear-Admiral of the fleet during' the engage- ment, and had as large a share as any in its peril and its honour. He was specially thanked by Queen Elizabeth, and knighted in acknowledgment of his services. || But no sooner was the fighting fairly over than he fell into disgrace. * Lemon, vol. ii., p. 4G1. f Ibid., p. 4G1. X Ibid., p. 405. § Ibid., -1SS. || Siow. p. 748. VOL. I. Q 220 Sir John Hawkins as Treasurer of the Navy. During the months of preparation he had, by the Queen's directions, induced the sailors and fighting men to do their work on credit. When the time came for their discharge he had to make urgent demands for money with which to pay them. A sum of 19,OO0Z., he wrote to Lord Burghley on the 26th of August, ]58c5, was needed, and that at once; and Lord Howard added in a postscript, " Mr. Hawkins cannot make a better return : God knows how the lieutenants and corporals will be paid."* So impoverished was England that Burghley hardly knew how to pay the debt, and he was not pleased at being addressed on the subject. He wrote to Hawkins "so sharp a letter" that the worthy Comptroller, in his reply, said he was " sorry to have lived so long as to receive it." All the money he asked for was justly due to the men, and must be paid to them somehow or other.f " It is pitiful to have men starve after such a service," wrote Howard in support of his friend's request. "As we are like to have more of such services, the men must be better cared for."J Slowly and with difficulty the debts were paid, and the patriotic spirit that characterized the English of those times prompted them to continue their work, notwith- standing the tardy and grudging recompense that was made to them. So it was with Hawkins. When in trouble about paying the Armada debts, he declared that, if only God would help him to end that matter to her Majesty's liking, "then he would leave all."§ In less than a year, and before all the arrears were cleared, he was submitting to the Queen a new ' device for annoying the Spaniards,' in which, as he was out of debt, had no children to care for, and could not end his life in a better cause, he expressed himself willing and anxious to serve. He proposed, near the end of 1589, to go with the best of the fleet into the Spanisli seas, and boldly to storm Cadiz and conquer the rich galleys wintering in the * Lemon, vol. ii., p. 53G. % Ibid., p. 53S. t Ibid., p. 537. {> Ibid, His Troubles in the Service of Queen Elizabeth. 227 neighbourhood.* The suggestion was not adopted at once or in its entire boldness. In March, 1590, Hawkins wrote to tell Lord Burghley of his disappointment at the abandonment of his scheme, " wherein matter of great moment might have been performed," and to say that now " he had no hope of ever performing any royal thing."! Next month, moreover, he wrote to beg that, as the Queen seemed ill-satisfied with his conduct as Treasurer of the Navy, he might be relieved from " the importable care and toil " of the office. " No man living," he said, " hath so careful, so miserable, so unfortunate and so dangerous a life."J Elizabeth was given to scolding, but she had no mind to part with so good a servant as Sir John Hawkins. He was accordingly sent, early in May, at the head of six ships, Frobisher being appointed to accompany him with eight other ships, to threaten the coast of Spain, and to intercept the Portuguese carracks coming from India. § No prize was to be met with, however, just then ; and we are told that the Queen, much in need of money at that time, was very angry at Hawkins's return empty-handed near the end of October, || after a five months' cruise. Thereupon he tendered an ela- borate apology. " Paul might plant," he said in its conclu- sion, "and Apollos might water; but it was God only who gave the increase." That was more than Elizabeth could bear. " God's death !" she exclaimed ; " this fool went out a soldier, and is come home a divine !" Both apology and blame were premature. A few days later, on the 6th of November, one of Hawkins's ships, which had been lagging behind, entered Dartmouth with a valuable prize, an East Indiaman very richly laden with silks.H Other prizes were gained by him during the next few years. lie also worked on with his brother William, and now with his son Richard and his nephew William, seamen as en- terprising as their fathers, at the old trade of merchandize. * Lemon, vol. ii., p. COS. t Ibid., C51. + Ibid,, p. GGO. § Ibid., p. G(j4. || Ibid., p. G95. % Ibid., G ( J7. 228 Sir John Haivkins's Last Work. Of young William Hawkins we have seen something-, and shall see more hereafter. Richard Hawkins was much more a soldier than a merchant. His most famous under- taking was in 1593, when, with his father's help and advice, he fitted out two large ships and a pinnace for a voyage, partly of discovery, and partly of warfare against the Spaniards, to the South American seas. It was not at all commercial in its nature, and, in the end, not at all success- ful. Young Hawkins captured several prizes ; but on the coast of Peru he was himself captured, and there and in Spain he was kept prisoner for many years.* It was partly in the hope of releasing him, partly in the furtherance of his life-long desire, now quickened by his son's troubles, to hurt the Spaniards as far as ever he was able, that Sir John Hawkins set off on another distant voyage in 1595. He must have been by this time seventy years old or more ; but he was as young as ever in his hatred of Spain. Therefore he and Sir Francis Drake left Plymouth on the 28th of August, with a fleet of scven-and-twentysail, contain- ing about 2,500 men. The expedition was altogether un- fortunate. The two commanders each, perhaps, somewhat jealous of the other's fame, and neither willing to occupy a subordinate position in the fleet, fell to disputing almost as soon as they were at sea. At last, as it was currently reported at the time, a more violent quarrel than usual threw Hawkins into a sudden illness, and he died on ship-board, off the island of Porto Rico, on the 21st of November, 1595.1 Drake died of a fever, attributed to disppointment at the failure of all his plans for injuring the Spaniards, on the 28th of January following.:}: Sir John's brother, William, died on the 7th of October, 1589, and was buried in Dcptford Church. § His son Rich- ard, returning to England after long captivity among the * Observations o/SiR Richard Hawkins, passim. t Campbell, vol. i., pp. 419, 420. J Ibid., p. 432. § Stow, Appendix, p. 90. His Place in Commercial History. 220 Spaniards, settled down to peaceful occupations. Other Haw- kinses were famous in tiie history of England ; one of them, the younger William, was especially famous in the history of English commerce. But no other of the name was at once a merchant and a mariner, an independent trader and a ser- vant of the Crown. In the turmoil of the sixteenth century, when the old systems of commerce were dying - out, and the new were as yet but half established, it was necessary for trade with distant parts to be carried on in ships of war, and for merchants to be soldiers as well as sailors. In the infancy of the English Navy, moreover, it was the wise custom to take into the royal service all mariners of acknow- ledged skill and courage, so that merchant captains found it their interest, as well as their duty to sovereign and country, also to be admirals. But this medley of callings, if it did good service to commerce by encouraging 1 a spirit of ad- venture, and increasing the courage and perseverance of the merchant-voyagers, made impossible the legitimate exercise of foreign and colonial trade. The merchants felt this themselves. Never loth to serve their nation with the wealth which it was their special province to multiply for the good of all, and willing, when the need arose, to use the sword in defence of liberty and the resistance of wrong-doing, they saw that their calling, to be properly exercised, must be one of peace. Therefore they made it so as far as they could. For many generations to come, most of all in the business of the East India Company, the merchant had to travel with the sword at his side. But henceforth we shall not find the great merchants of England acting as regular servants of the State, or the commissioned soldiers or sailors engaging in the systematic pursuit of commerce. 230 CHAPTER IX. THE MYDDELTONS AND THE MIDDLETONS OF LONDON. [15G0— 1G31.] Contemporary with Sir Thomas Gresham and Sir John Hawkins, and in the generation succeeding theirs, were many great and influential London merchants. One of the most famous was Sir Lionel Duckett, Gresham's friend and chief executor.* The son of a Nottingham gentleman, he was Lord Mayor of London in 1573, and sharer in nearly every important venture of those times. Here we find him busy about furnaces set up for his use in England ; there he is em- ploying agents to melt copper and silver for him at Augsburg. At one time we see him taking part in the manufacture of cloth ; at another he is forming a company with the great Cecil and the Earls of Pembroke and Leicester as members, to construct waterworks for the draining of mines.t Such was his wealth, we are told, that to each of his three daughters he gave as dowry upwards of 5,000?. 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 Elizabeth herself, on becoming Queen, had found only 10,000/. in her Exchequer.} Another great merchant of Tudor London was Sir Edward Osborne. He it was who, according to the tradition, in or * Wills from Doctors' Commons 'London, 18G3), p. 58. t Lkmox, vol. i., pp. 2f>l, 25f), 271, 301. t I»i kki;. l'eercuja and Baronttwje i London, 18G4), art. Diichcft. Old London Merchants ; Duckett and Osborne. 231 near the year 3536, being apprenticed to Sir William Hewett — a great cloth-dealer, who came from Leicester to London to be Lord Mayor in 1560, and to have a handsome house on London Bridge, — jumped into the Thames to save from drowning his master's little daughter, Anne, who had fallen from an open window into the river. In after-years, when Mistress Anne was old enough to be married, more than one suitor of rank — the Earl of Shrewsbury among the number — sought her hand, partly on account of her own good looks, partly on account of the rich dowry that would be given with her. But the honest merchant refused them all. ' Edward Osborne,' he said, * had saved her life, and Edward Osborne should marry her.' To that the young man readily agreed, and in due time he inherited all his father-in-law's wealth, to augment it during a long life of successful enter- prise, and become the founder of the present dukedom of Leeds.* We have seen how he and Richard Staper were associated in some early trading to the West Indies. They were also influential members of the Turkey or Levant Company, and partners in several important ventures to the Mediterranean ports. In 1581 we find them petitioning Secretary Walsing- ham for protection of their property from Turkish pirates, t In 1583 Osborne was chosen Lord Mayor, 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, 1588, he petitioned the Crown that carriers might be prevented from travelling on the Sabbath day, either in London or its sub- urbs.:}: 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 care taken to prevent any others from coming in their place.§ In the following spring again we find him cor- * Chair, Romance of the Peerage (London. 1S50), vol. iv., pp. Gl, G2. f Le.M(.»\, vol. ii., p. Yd. J Ibid., p. ]'M. § Ibid., p. 142. 232 The Myddeltons and the Middletons. responding with Walsingham about the ancient rights of the City, assuring him that the zeal shown by him and his fellow- citizens, in this matter, resulted from no disaffection towards the Queen, but that they felt it their bounden duty to main- tain their time-honoured liberties. The special subject of controversy just then was the power of the City of London in directing the affairs of Southwark.* Having in 1 580 and the nine following years been a lead- ing member of the Turkey Company, not yet fully incor- porated, Sir Edward Osborne was the principal agent in procuring for it a regular charter in 1590,f the year before his death. He seems, however, to have taken no part in the much more important Company for trading to the East Indies, in process of formation during the ensuing years. Conspicuous among the founders of that Company were several members of two illustrious families as closely allied in name as they were in worth of character and boldness of enterprise. It is more than probable that they were kindred in blood as well as in spirit ; but of that there is no proof. To the one belonged Sir Hu^h Mvddelton and his brothers William and Thomas ; to the other, Sir Henry Middleton and his brother David.J All we know of the Middletons is that they were 'of Cheshire,' and laid claim to a Welsh ancestry.§ The Myddeltons were also Welsh, and connected with Cheshire. A descendant of Rlaydd, Lord of Penllyn, in Merionethshire, a famous warrior of the twelfth century, married the sister and heiress of Sir Alexander Mvddelton. of Mvddelton, in Shropshire, and, assuming his wife's name, had for great- * Lemon, vol. ii. f p. 159. f Ibid, pp. G57, 071. X The spelling of names was in those clays arbitrary, and very much at the option of tiiose who used them ; so that members of either family were often called both Myddcltnn and Middleton. £»nt fur convenience of dis- tinction the one spelling is here restrietcd to tin' one family, the other to the other. j The Voycuje nf Sir JLiury Middleton to Boutum awl the Mah-xo hluwh 'London, 18.15;, preface by Mr. Bolton Cuknly. David Myddelton and his Grandsons. 233 grandson a David Myddelton, of Gwaonynog, in Denbigh, Receiver of North Wales in the time of Edward the Fourth. Of this worthy the chief thing known is, as we are told by the historian of Denbigh, that he ' paid his addresses to Elyn, daughter of Sir John Donne, of Utkinton, in Cheshire, and gained the lady's affections. But the parents preferred their relative, Richard Donne, of Croton. The marriage was accordingly celebrated ; but David Myddelton watched the bridegroom leading his bride out of church, killed him on the spot, carried away his widow, and married her forthwith, so that she was maid, widow, and twice a wife in one day.'* One of this David's grandsons was Richard Myddelton, of Galch Hill, the first member of Parliament for Denbigh in Henry the Eighth's reign, and governor of its castle under Edward the Sixth, Mary, and Elizabeth. He died in 1575, at the age of sixty-seven, leaving behind him sixteen chil- SIR HUGH MYDDFXTON'S BIRTnrLACK, AT GALCH HILL .DENBIGH. dren,f of whom four at least, William, Thomas, Hugh, and Robert, claim to be mentioned here. * Williams, Ancient and Modern Denbigh (Denbigh, 185G). For re- ference io this and to Mr. Williams's other book, as well as for much other help, privately afforded or conveyed through his Lives of the Engineers, I am indebted to Mr. Smiles. t Williams, liccords of Denbigh (Denbigh, 1SG0). 234 The Brothers Myddelton. William Myddelton was a friend of Raleigh's, and, like him, a sailor and an author. Born somewhere near the year 1545, he studied at Oxford, and in later days gave proof of his scholarship by translating the book of Psalms into Welsh, and writing ' Barddonaicth ; or, the Art of Welsh Poetry,' a work highly thought of in its day. But at an early age the fame of such voyagers as Frobisher, Drake, and Hawkins, enticed him to sea, and it was as a sailor that he rose to distinction. He did his share of patriotic work in the Armada fight, and in 1591, when Lord Thomas Howard led a little squadron to fight with the Spanish fleet in the West Indian seas, he was captain of one of the ships, and by his sharpness and promptitude saved the whole from de- struction. His younger years seem to have been chiefly passed upon the sea, now and then on errands of commerce, but oftener in pursuit of Spanish ships of war or merchan- dize, whose seizure served at the same time to enrich the captors and to impoverish the great enemy of England. When he was forty-eight or fifty he settled down to a quiet life in London, where he and his friends, Captain Thomas Price and Captain Koet, were wont to attract crowds of won- dering lookers on, curious to behold the first smokers of tobacco in the streets of London. He is supposed to have died at his house in Highgate, in or soon after the year 1603.* Long before that time his younger brothers, Thomas, Hugh, and Robert, had become famous tradesmen and mer- chants of London. Thomas, now somewhat over fifty, and living in Qucenhithe, was an influential member of the Grocers' Company. He was made an alderman in May, 1G03, and knighted in the following July, by the new King, James the First, and towards the end of the year he served in the first Parliament assembled by that monarch. In the same Parliament Robert Myddelton, the youngest of the three brothers, who was of the Spinners' Guild, had a scat. Hugh Myddelton also had a place in it as member for his * Williams, Ancient and Modern Dcnbiyh. Sir Hugh Myddclton. 2: yy native town of Denbigh. Born about the year 1555, Hugh had been apprenticed to the Goldsmiths' Company in his youth, and now had a famous shop, a favourite haunt of Sir Walter Raleigh's in Basinghall Street. But he had also spent much of his time in Denbigh. In 1597 he was alderman of the town, and under that year we find him described in the local records as ' citizen and goldsmith of London, and one of the merchant adventurers of England.* All the three brothers SIR UUGII MTDDELTOX. were members of the old Merchant Adventurers' Company, just then almost at the height of its prosperity. Thomas and * Williams, pp. 10.1, 111. " From the frequent entries made in his own handwriting in the Corporation Book," says Mr. "Williams, " the worthy baronet might have been the actual town-clerk at Ihe time, such was the decj) and active interest he took in the welfare of his native town.'' — Records of Dcnbiyh, p. GO. 23G The Beginning of the East India Company. Robert were also sharers in the establishment of the new and yet more prosperous East India Company in 1599. Many voyages had been made to India, both by inde- pendent adventurers and by the agents of the Turkey and Guinea Companies, before that date. In 1579 a Thomas Stevtfns had gone thither, by way of the Cape ; and in 1583 Ralph Fitch had been sent in search of an overland route by the Turkey Company. Passing from Bagdad, along the Tigris and across the Persian Gulf to Ormus, and proceeding thence, by way of Goa, to Agra, Bengal, Pegu, Ceylon, and China, he had returned in 1591, with wonderful accounts 'of the wealth of these strange countries.* Two years before his return, moreover, several merchants had sought permission of Queen Elizabeth to send some ships to the islands and coast towns of the Indian seas, there to establish markets for the sale of English cloths and other articles, and for the taking in exchange of such native produce as had hitherto only been procurable through Russian or Portuguese traders.! Three vessels had accordingly been despatched with that intent in 1591. Two of them were lost in a storm, and the third, commanded by Master James Lancaster, only returned * after many grievous misfortunes.'! The promoters of the expedition, however, were not dis- heartened. In September, 1599, after long consultation, an association of more than a hundred merchants was formed, with an aggregate capital of 30,133Z. ds. Sd. to which Thomas and Robert Myddleton subscribed 500Z.§ and on the last day of 1600, a whole year being spent in arguments with the Queen as to the fitness of the enterprise, a charter was obtained allowing them, 'for the honour of our native country and for the advancement of the trade of merchandize within the realm of England, to set forth a voyage to the * Pt'RCHAS, Pilgrims. f Bruce, Annah of the East India Company (London, 1810), vol. i. p. 101). \ IIakiayt, vol. ii., pp. 5S9-595. § Sai.nsisi i:y, Colonial Papers, East Indies, vol. i., p. 99. Captain Henry Middleton. 237 East Indies, and other the islands and countries there- abouts.'* Preparations for the expedition were straightway made, and by the 2nd of April, 1601, five ships were ready to embark under the command of Captain Lancaster, Henry Middleton, ' of Cheshire,' having charge of one of the vessels. Of this Henry Middlcton's antecedents we are very igno- rant. It is pretty certain that he accompanied Lancaster on his earlier voyage ; but the first we actually know of him is that he was an energetic adviser on all matters appertaining to the new expedition. One day we find a Committee appointed to discuss with him the general arrangements for the voyage ;f on another he is asked, and gladly consents, to be one of the Company's three principal factors in the possessions it hopes to acquire ;$ and on a third, he is com- missioned, with some others, to buy the requisite provisions 'as good and cheap as they can.'§ At one time, again, a messenger is sent to ask what entertainment he desires for himself on the voyage ; at another, his advice is taken as to the princes and potentates in India to whom the Queen shall write letters of introduction, and as to the terms in which those letters shall be expressed. || At length, all preliminaries being completed, Captain Henry Middleton set out as Vice-Admiral of the Hector, with payment of IDOL down and the promise of 200Z. more if the affair succeeded, and with authority to assume com- mand of the whole expedition in case of Lancaster's death.lf The little fleet, quitting Torbay on the 2nd of May, 1601,** proceeded at once to Acheen, the principal port of Sumatra, and there formed an alliance with the king of the island, who wrote to Queen Elizabeth, telling her how the coming of the English had filled the horizon with joy. Great * Sainsbury, vol. i., pp. 101, 115. J Biu.ce, vol. i., p. 131. t Ibid., p. 111. § Saixshlkv, vol., p. 112. |j Ibid., pp. 113, 120. \ Ibid., p. 121. Jehu MicMlelon is the name entered in the Company's minuted; evidently a clerical error. ** BlUCli, vol. 1., p. 140. 238 Captain Henry Middlcton. quantities of pepper and all the other spices procurable in Sumatra were brought by the natives, and as good fortune would have it, a large Portuguese vessel, laden with calico and other valuable goods, fell into the hands of the English, so that they had more treasure than their ships could hold. Some of these goods they exchanged at a profit for the pro- duce of Bantam in Java, where they established commercial relations ; and, in September, 1G03, they returned to England with a rich store of wealth for their employers.* The next expedition of the East India Company was undertaken in 1604, and then Middleton succeeded Lan- caster in the command of the fleet.t Four ships, the largest being the Bed Dragon, of GOO tons burthen, with Henry Middleton and his brother David on board, set out on the 25th of March, in that year. On the 5th of Sep- tember, after a slow voyage, consequent on the illness of many of the sailors, the Cape of Good Hope was doubled ; and on the 23rd of December, Middleton anchored off Bantam. There he stowed large quantities of pepper and other goods, collected by the agents who had been left there two years before, in two of his ships for transmission to England, and himself proceeded, with the two others, to explore the Maluco Islands and establish commercial rela- tions with their inhabitants, native and European. On the 17th of March, said one of the party, "we had sight of all the clove islands, that is to say, Maquian, Motir, Tidore, and Ternate, all of them peaked hills in form of a sugar-loaf. The people of Maquian came aboard of us with fresh victuals. They said they had good store of cloves in the island, but they could not sell us any without leave of the King of Ternate." Ternate had been visited by Sir Francis Drake in 1579 : and thither Middlcton proceeded to form an alliance with its King, who found himself sorely troubled both by the quickened jealousy of his old enemy, the King of Tidoiv, and by the new rivalries of the Dutch and Portuguese ' Urn cl, vol. i., pp. 151, \o'l. f Sainsiiuky, vol. i., p. 140. His Voyage to Bantam and the Maluco Islands. 239 merchants already settled in his island. Some difficulties arose through Middleton's returning- to aid his new ally in fiffhtinfr auainst the rival Kin"- ; but at last friendship was formed with both potentates, and from each Middlcton received letters to Kino- James of England. " Hearing of the good report of your Majesty," ran the King of Termite's letter, " by the coming of the great Captain Francis Drake, in the time of my father, which was about some thirty years past ; by the which captain, my predecessor did send a ring unto the Queen of England, as a token of remembrance between us ; since the time of the departure of the aforesaid captain, we have daily expected his return. My father lived many years after, and I, after the death of my father, have lived in the same hope, till I was father of eleven children; in which time I have been informed that the English were men of so bad disposition that they came not as peaceable merchants, but to dispossess them of their country, which by the coming of the bearer hereof we have found to the con- trary, which greatly we rejoice at" This letter was deli- vered in June, 1605, at an audience given by the King of Ternate to Middleton, * with the sudden coming of a great many lights, and in the midst one of the chief noblemen under a canopy, carrying the letter in a platter of gold, covered with a coverture of cloth of gold.' It was presented, with many proofs that his voyage, notwithstanding the loss of one of his four ships, had been successful, on his return to England in May, 1606.* A third voyage was made in 1607, under the command of Captain Keeling, David Middleton, and the William Hawkins whom we have already met with as the companion of Edward Fenton in a voyage to the coast of Brazil in 1582 and 1583.f It was so successful that the profits * A full and very interesting eontempora -y account of tiiis expedition is in The Voyatje of Sir J lenri/ Middleton to 1! attain and the Maluco Island*, edited I iy Mr. IIolton Coknky for the Ilnkluyt Society in 1S5"). t Sajnsui i;v, vol. i.. p. 150. 940 Sir Henri/ Mlddlcton. divided among the shareholders amounted to no less than two hundred and thirty-four per cent..* On this occasion Henry Middleton stayed at home ; but he was not idle. On the 25th of May, 1006, he was knighted at Greenwich on account of his zeal on the East India Company's behalf, and he and his friend Captain Lancaster were in constant communication with its directors — his namesakes, Thomas and Robert Myddleton being of the number, — giving advice on all matters connected with the new expedition, receiving their shares of profits on the amounts ventured by themselves, and the like.f In January, 1G07, it was ordered that, 'the Japan boy brought home last voyage by Sir Henry Middleton be taken by David Middleton as his boy this voyage, and decently apparelled at the Company's charge before his departure ;'$ and in November a committee was appointed * to a^ree with Sir Henry Middleton, who seemed inclined to go the fourth voyage.'§ Unfortunately the agreement was not made, as in that case the disastrous issue of the voyage might have been averted. Two vessels were despatched in January, 16*08, one to be lost in the Indian seas ; and the other, with 70,0007. worth of goods on board, to be pulled to pieces orf the coast of France, by * the wicked Bretons, who went aboard to make spoil of the rich mer- chandize they found therein.' || Better success attended the next expedition, conducted by Captain David Middleton, who, having returned from his former voyage, set out again in April, 1G09, having command of only a single ship, the Expedition, a good part of which belonged to himself and his elder brother. After an absence of two years, he brought back a cargo of nulmegs and mace, which yielded a profit of two hundred and eleven per cent. II Thus far the operations of the East India Company had been only, as it were, experimental, and on the whole the experiment was mightily successful. Hardly a company at * Sainsbiry, vol. i., p. aliii. \ Ibid., p. 148. || Ihi<l, pp. 1512, 225. t Ibid., j). 14G, kc. $ Ibid., p. 100. Tj Ibid., p. 184. Progress of the East India Company. 241 all, according to the modern acceptation of the word, it had been, and for some years longer continued to be, little more than a gathering- of independent traders who speculated as much or as little as they chose on each separate voyage, and only clubbed together under the direction of managers chosen from themselves, in order that the expeditions might be large enough, and sufficiently protected, to be conducted securely and with profit. A step in advance, however, was made in May, 1609, when, in lieu of the privileges conferred for fifteen years by Queen Elizabeth, a new Charter was obtained from James the First granting to 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 Company, 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 undertaken. At its first public dinner, suggested by a present of a brace of bucks from the Earl of Southampton, ' to make merry withal in regard of their kindness in accepting him of their company,' it was resolved that two new ships should be built of a sort specially adapted for the business, and they were ready in less than a year.j The larger of the two was the largest merchant ship yet built ; its burthen being, according to different accounts, either ten, eleven, or twelve hundred tons. A silk ensign, ' with the Company's arms in silk or metal, as shall be thought fit,' was provided by Master Eobert Myddelton, the skinner \% and on the occasion of its being launched, on the 30th of December, preparations were made for a sump- tuous banquet served on china dishes, at which King James, the Queen and the young Prince Henry were present. His * Sainsir-ry, vol. i., pp. 184, 185. t Ibid., p. 188. J Ibid., p. 19G. VOL I. R 242 Sir Henry Middleton. Majesty christened the ship by the name of The Trade's Increase, and while the salutes were being- fired, put a medal, with a great gold chain, about the neck of Sir Thomas Smythe, the first governor of the Company.* That done, and 82,000/. having been expended in cargoes and shipping expenses, the big ship, attended by two smaller ones, set out in March, 10 10, under the command of Sir Henry Middleton, who was instructed to find his chief busi- ness in trading with the people on the coasts of the lied Sea. A prosperous voyage was made round the Cape and up the eastern coast of Africa, as far as Mocha, whicb Middleton reached early in November. Great show of friendship came from the governor of the place, and the only difficulty the English felt was in the want of a table on which to expose the cloths and other commodities that they brought for sale. Costly presents and very loving and courteous speeches were exchanged, until Middleton had been enticed to take up his residence in the town, 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 misconduct 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 me write I scarce know what." He and the fifty-one companions who were with him had plenty of time for writing during the six months, from November 1610 to May 1611, of their cap- tivity among the Turks. One of the number, William Pemberton, managed to run away, * having taken a surfeit of captivity under these heathen tyrants.' Wandering about the shore, he found a 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 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 * Sainsbiky, vol. i.. pp. 201, 202. His Last Voyage to the Last. 243 steal out of the town with a burden on his back : 'if he would do that, said Penibcrton, "they would get him safely into a boat.' But Middleton did not approve of the expedient. He would neither listen to Pemberton'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 proposal of his chief deputy, Captain Downton, that the English should make a forcible entry into Mocha and so liberate him. At last, however, he made his escape, and partly by threatening to attack the town, partly by promising that neither he nor any other English should in future make trading expeditions to those parts, he then succeeded in procuring the release of his comrades. * These troubles caused to the English, besides the deaths, by actual murder or cruel captivity, of several good men, a loss of 26,O0OZ, and a waste of eleven months' tima Then came a tide of better fortune. Quitting the Red Sea, Middle- ton 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 Portuguese admiral sent to say that, if the English had authority from his sovereign, they might enter ; otherwise, the sooner they went away the better would be their fortune. Sir Henry answered that he bore credentials from the King of England to the Great Mogul, whose territory was free to all nations, and who owed no vassalage to the Portuguese ; that he wished no harm to the merchants of other nations, but that he certainly, intended to enforce the rights of his own. For a time he did his best to carry on peaceful traffic with the natives, but finding himself thwarted therein, he boldly set his three vessels to attack the enemy's twenty ; with such success, that one of the Portuguese frigates was sunk and the others were put to flight, save one, which fell into his hands with a rich store of Indian goods. The coast being thus clear. Sir Henry proceeded to make a treaty with * Sainslsucy, vol. i., p. 205-221. 244 Sir Henry Middleton. the natives, and to buy from them all the useful commodities that he could find in the place. Good fortune, however, was not to remain with the ill-named Trade's Increase, or her commander. Meeting some other ships sent out from Eng- land, Middleton returned to Mocha, an.l, in excusable viola- tion of his agreement with 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 recrossed the Indian ocean with a view of making a profit at Bantam ; but the Trades Increase struck on a rock during the voyage and was hardly able to reach its destination, and the other two vessels were considerably the worse for two years' tossing about. One of them was sent to England under Captain Downtonin the spring of 1613, while Middle- ton and the rest took up their residence in what is called 4 his little new-built village of Pullopenjaun,' not far from Bantam. " He that escapes without disease," Downton had written, " from that stinking stew of the Chinese part of Bantam must be of a strong constitution of body." Middle- ton's men died one by one, and he himself sank under a sickness that had been oppressing him for months, some- where near the end of 1613 ; not, however, before the Trades Increase, which he had been waiting to repair with material from England, had been beaten to pieces by the waves, " which is a great pity," wrote Chamberlain in one of his gossiping letters to Sir Dudley Carleton, " being the good- liest ship of England, and never made voyage before."* Far better would it have been, however, for a score of such ships to have been wasted than that England and the East India Company should lose, in the prime of life, " the thrice worthy general," as Sir Dudley Digges termed him, " who laid the true foundation of our long-desired Cambaya trade."t But Sir Henry Middleton had done his work. While he was slowly dying in Java, the East India Company was being * Sainsbury, vol. i., passim. f Voyage of Sir Henry Middleton. Preface. The Issues of Ids Brave Life. 245 remodelled at home, and established on a more permanent footing as a regular joint-stock society ; and within a year of his death, Sir Thomas Koe was sent as an English ambassa- dor to the East, there to confirm the commercial relations which Sir Henry had already roughly formed, and to build up proper machinery for maintaining that English credit which the same forerunner had already spent his best energies in stoutly defending. Captain David Middleton, moreover, tried to do something in continuation of his brother's work. In April, 1614, he was appointed to the command of a new expedition, and, starting soon after that date, he reached Bantam in the following February, there to remedy the evils that had ensued upon Sir Henry's death more than a year before.* And in many other ways he did good service to the Company before his death a few years later. In the meanwhile, however, the Myddeltons who stayed at home were winning for themselves even greater fame than came to the Middletons who devoted their talents to the pro- motion of East Indian commerce. Thomas and Robert l^Iyddelton, as we have seen, were shareholders in the East India Company from the first, and Robert, at any rate, con- tinued all through his life one of its most zealous supporters. He was for many years an influential member of the Court of Directors.! He was conspicuous among the body of East India merchants who, not content with prosecuting their trade by the southern route, round the Cape of Good Hope, in 1G10, combined to send Henry Hudson in search of the long-hoped-for passage by the North West, and who thereby, though not succeeding in their immediate object, greatly helped on the work of North American discovery and colo- nization.]: In December, 1G14, he and another merchant were chosen to go on an embassage to Holland, there to try and smooth down the differences between the English and Dutch East India Companies ; and to effect 'a mutual con- * Saixsbuby, vol. i., pp. 292, 378, &c. t Ibid., pp. 155, 17G, 177, 1S7, &c. J Ibid., pp. 241, 2G9. 240 Thomas, Hugh, and Robert Myddelton. junction between these two countries.'* Myddelton was four months in Holland, and for his work there he received a reward of 200/., about which he was instructed to say nothing to his friends, " because no exception should be taken by the crcnerality, who have no means to consider the causes moving to bestow so liberally upon him."f But nothing came of the embassage, the Dutch making it a condition that the English should join with them in fighting in the East the Spaniards towards whom King James the First was showing so much favour in the West. " Our desire is," it was said, " that we and the Hollanders, as friends and neighbours, may freely, without any opposition on either part, trade in every place where the other resided ; but the Hollanders do not well taste the proposition without the conditions above mentioned."! Therefore, the Dutch and the English companies continued at feud for a long time to come, and Robert Myddelton con- tinued to benefit the London company and to enrich himself in the old ways. We do not find that his brother Hugh had anything to do with East Indian commerce ; but he found for himself plenty of other business. As one of the Society of Merchant Adventurers, he traded with the European ports, and he was especially zealous in the advancement of domestic enterprise. Most of his wealth was amassed in his goldsmith's shop in Basinghall Street, where among other like transactions he re- ceived, on the 9th of January, 1605, 250/., for ' a pendant of one diamond, bestowed upon the Queen by his Majesty. '§ But he was much more than a goldsmith. As a Member of Par- liament we see him frequently employed on Committees of Inquiry touching questions of trade and finance ; and from a speech made by him in the House of Commons in May, * Sainsbvhy, vol. i., pp. 348, 355. t Ibid., p. 409. X Letters from George Lord Careio to Sir Thomas Roe, edited for the Camden Society by Mr. Maclkan 'London, 18G0), p. 5. § Mrs. (Jkkkn, Odendar of State Papers, Domestic. Series, of the llei<jit of James I., preserved in the Record Office '.Ixnidon, 1857), vol. i., p. 1ST. Hugh Myddelton, Goldsmith, Merchant, and Engineer. 247 1614, it appears that, not sympathizing with the old-fashioned and very foolish prejudice in favour of sending raw material abroad, so that foreigners might have the labour of working it up, he established a large cloth manufactory at home, and in that way enabled several hundred families to maintain themselves in comfort.* There was yet another business, more memorable than any of them, which Hugh Myddelton had wit and wisdom to devise, and patient energy to bring to a successful issue. In January, 1605, he and his brother Robert were on a com- mittee of the House of Commons respecting the possibility of bringing a stream of running water from the River Lea to the northern parts of London,f a subject that the increasing need of water-supply for the City had long forced upon the people's attention. 'The matter had been well mentioned though little minded, long debated but never concluded,' says the quaint historian, ' till courage and resolution lovingly shook hands together, as it appears, in the soul of this no-way- to-be-daunted, well-minded gentleman.'^ Myddelton had already shown himself * no way to be daunted.' " It may please you to understand, " he wrote to Sir John Wynne in 1025, " that my first undertaking of public works was amongst my own people, within less than a mile of the place where I had my first being, twenty-four or twenty-five years since, in seeking of coals for the town of Denbigh."§ No coals were to be found, and Myddelton lost much money through his persevering search for them ; but he straightway set himself to the prosecution of public works of another sort, and public works whose value cannot be over-estimated. ' If those,' exclaims Fuller, ' be recounted amongst David's worthies, who, breaking through the army of the Philistines, fetched water from the well of Uethlehem to satisfy the longing of * House of Commons' Journal, citod by Mr. Smiles in lri.s Lives of the Engineers (Loudon, 1859), vol. i., pp. 103, 107. t lliil. + Stow, Survey (London, 1720), vol. i., p. 2G. § Williams, Ancient, mid Modern Denbigh, pp. 152, 153. 248 Sir Hugh My Melton. 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 on his own cost more than four-and-twenty miles, encountering all the way an army of opposition, grappling with hills, struggling- with rocks, fighting w ith forests, till, in defiance of difficulties, he had brought his project to perfection !'* That was the nature of the work done by Myddelton in construct- ing the New River. The business was fairly entered upon on the 28th of March, 1609, when the corporation of London formally accepted Myddelton's proposal to bring a supply of water from Chad- well and Amwell, in Hertfordshire, to Islington, as ' a thing of great consequence, worthy of acceptance for the good of the City,' stipulating only that the work should be begun in two months' time, and finished, if possible, within four years. The first sod was turned early in May ; and straightway began a storm of angry abuse and idle complaint. The owners of lands through which the New River was to pass petitioned Parliament for protection, representing that their meadows would be turned into ' bogs and quagmires,' and their ploughed fields into 'squalid ground;' that their farms would be 'mangled,' and that the canal would be worse than an open ditch into which men and beasts would tumble by the score in fine weather, and which every heavy rainfall would cause to overflow, to the certain ruin of all the poor on its banks. " Much ado there is in the House," wrote one member in May, 1(510, when the trench had been a year in construction, and upwards of 3,000/. had been spent upon it out of Myddelton's own purse, " about the work undertaken and far advanced already by Myddelton, of the cutting of a river through the grounds of many men, who, for their particular interests, so strongly oppose themselves to it, and are like, as it is said, to overthrow it all." Luckily they did not succeed. A bill was brought into Parliament * Filler, Worthies of England, Wales, p. 3G. His Construction of the Neiv River. 249 and referred to a Committee, but as the House was soon after adjourned, and did not meet again for four years, the cutting- had been completed before any report could be made. Myddelton steadily pursued his work, without regard to the 'accursed and malevolent interposition,' as Stow calls it, 'of those enemies of all good endeavours, danger, difficulty, im- possibility, detraction, contempt, scorn, derision, yea, and desperate despite.' Stow tells us how he himself went often to watch the progress of the river, and ' diligently ob- served that admirable art, pains, and industry were bestowed for the passage of it, by reason that all grounds are not of a like nature, some being oozy and very muddy, others again as stiff, craggy, and stony. The depth of the trench in some places descended full thirty feet, if not more, whereas in other places it required a sprightful art again to mount it over a valley in a trough, between a couple of hills, the trough all the while borne up by wooden arches, some of them fixed in the ground very deep, and rising in height about twenty-three feet.' Honest Stow would have marvelled greatly at modern developments of engineering art : but so, too, would Myddel- ton ; and if we would measure the greatness of the man's achievement, we must compare it with previous and contem- porary works, not with those produced by workmen who have been stimulated by examples such as his. Myddelton worked with desperate energy ; but the opposi- tion he had to encounter, and the great expenses to which he was put, might have ruined or at any rate delayed the scheme, had not help come from an unexpected quarter. ' King James,' writes one king-worshipping historian of Hertfordshire, ' residing at Theobald's, through whose park the New River runs, was heartily concerned for the success of the endeavour, and promoted it with so great zeal, as per- haps he may be reckoned chief in the work.' Hardly that, indeed ; but let King James have his meed of praise. Where selfishness and vanity were not in the way, he had a fair amount of wisdom. He saw that the complaints of his sub- 250 Sir Hugh Myddelton. jects were without reason, and that Myddelton was engaged on a work that would bring wealth to its promoters as well as health to the people on whose behalf it was undertaken. Therefore in November, 1G11, his Majesty made an agree- ment with the goldsmith to the effect that he would pay half the expenses of the undertaking and afford special facilities for carrying on the work as far as it had to pass through the royal grounds, on condition that he should receive a moiety of all interest and profits to be derived from it when com- plete. In accordance with this contract, Myddelton re- ceived from the King, in several instalments, the sum of 8,609Z. 14s. 6d. : whence it appears that the whole cost of the work was 17,219/. 9s. ; a large sum to be spent on a single undertaking in the seventeenth century, but small enough when we consider the amount of good that was done thereby. The distance between London and Chadwell is hardly twenty miles, but the length of the New River was made nearly forty miles, to lessen the number of cuttings and embankments. All was finished by the autumn of 1613, and then Myddelton was rewarded for the contempt and abuse that had attended his persevering efforts through four years and a half.* On Michaelmas-day the New River was formally opened, when a procession started from the Guildhall, with Sir John Swinnerton, the Lord Mayor, at its head, and made its way to the reservoir at Islington there to witness a characteristic pageant, composed for the occasion by Thomas Middleton, the dramatist, a namesake, but apparently no kinsman, of Sir Hugh's. After a performance of music there appeared 'a troup of labourers, to the number of threescore or upwards, all in green caps alike, bearing in their hands the symbols of their several employments,' and by one of their number, * Smiles. Lives of the Engineers, vol. i., pp. 110-124. Having nothing new to tell about the formation of the New Kivcr, I have in the foregoing paragraphs only repealed, as briefly as possible, the fuels given in detail in Mr. Siiiile.Vs delightful pages. The Ooening of the New River. 251 or by Thomas Middlcton on their behalf, this speech was delivered : — ' Long liave we laboured, long desired and prayed, For this great work's perfection : and by th' aid Of Heaven and good men's wishes, 'tis at length Happily conquered 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 f o 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 labourers employed upon the work : — ' First here's the overseer, this tried man, An ancient soldier and an artisan ; The clerk ; next him the mathematician ; The master of the timber-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 employed before ; Yet these in si^ht, and all the rest will say, That every week they had their royal pay ! — Now for the fruits thcu. 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 !' 1 At which word.-." the narrative concludes, ' the floodgates 252 Sir TJiomas Myddelton. opened, the stream let into the cistern, drums and trumpets H-ivin^ it triumphant welcomes, and, for the close of this their honourable entertainment, a peal of chambers.' * But there was yet greater show of honour to the Myd- deltons on the Lord Mayor's Day following this 29th of September. Sir Thomas Myddelton, the grocer, was Mayor elect for the ensuing year, and part of the festival prepared for the occasion was a sort of masque, written by the same Thomas Middleton who penned the speech in honour of Sir Hugh, and entitled * The Triumph of Truth.' The pro- cession started from Bow Lane, where the citizens assembled to hear some music, and, when that was over, to see the emblematical appearance of London, ' attired like a reverend mother, a long white hair naturally flowing on either side of her ; on her head a model of steeples and turrets, her habit crimson silk, her left hand holding a key of gold.' In a long speech this lady addressed the new Lord Mayor to the effect that, through all the former years, she had trained and watched over him like a mother, and, she concluded, ' Now to thy charge, thy government, thy cares, Thy mother in her age submits her years ; And though (to my abundant grief I speak it, Which now o'erflows my joy) some sons I have, Thankless, unkind, and disobedient, Rewarding all my homilies with neglect, The thanfulness in which thy life doth move, Did ever promise fairer fruits of love. So go thou forward, my thrice-honoured son, In ways of goodness ; glory is best won When merit brings it home; disdain all titles Purchased with coin ; of honours take thou hold By thy desert — let others buy 't with gold. Fix thy most precious thoughts upon the weight Thou gocst to undergo, 'tis the just government Of this famed city, me, whom nations call Their brightest eye : then witli what care and fear Ought I to be o'erseen to be kept clear? Spots in deformed faces are scarce noted, Fair chocks are stained if ne'er so little blotted. * Nichols, Progresses of James I. (London, 1S28), vol. ii., p. 702. His Lord Mayor $ Show. 253 Sec'st thou this key of gold ? it shows thy charge ; This place is the king's chamber ; all pollution, Sin and uncleanliness must be locked out here, And be kept sweet with sanctity, faith, and fear.' That discourse ended, Sir Thomas Myddelton proceeded to the river-side on his way to St. Paul's. At Baynard's Castle he was greeted by Truth's Angel on horseback, ' his raiment of white silk powdered with stars of gold,' on whom attended Zeal, 'in a garment of flame-coloured silk, with bright hair on his head, from which shot fire-beams, his right hand holding a flaming scourge, intimating thereby that, as he is the manifester of Truth, he is likewise the chas- tiser of Indolence and Error.' They made suitable speeches, and then appeared Error, ' his garment of ash-coloured silk, his head rolled in a cloud over which stood an owl, a mole on one shoulder, a bat on the other, all symbols of blind ignorance and darkness ;' and accompanying him was Envy, ' eating a human heart, mounted on a rhinoceros, her left breast bare where a snake fastened, holding in her right hand a dart tincted with blood.' Both of these also ad- dressed the new Lord Mayor, seeking to win him for them- selves. Thus spake Error : — ' This twelvemonth, if thou lov'st revenge or gain, I'll teach thee to cast mists to blind the plain And simple eye of man ; he shall not know 't, Nor see thy wrath when 'tis upon his throat; All shall be carried with such art and wit, That what thy lust acts, shall be counted fit. Then for attendants that may best observe thee, I'll pick out sergeants of my bund to serve thee : Here's Gluttony and Sloth, two precious slaves, Will tell thee more than a whole herd of knaves The worth of every office to a hair, And who bids most and how the markets are. Let them alone to smell, and for a need, They'll bring thee in bribes for measures and light bread. Keep thy eye winking, and thy hand wide ope, Then shalt thou know what wealth is, and the scope Of rich authority. Oh, 'tis sweet and dear ! Make use of time the*, thou ha^t but one poor year. 254 Sir Thomas My Melton. Tlierc i.s a ponr, thin, threadbare thing called Truth : I give thee warning of her; if she speak, Stop both thine ears close ; most professions break That ever dealt with her ; unlucky thing, She's almost sworn to nothing ; I can bring A thousand of our parish, besides queans, That ne'er knew what Truth meant, nor ever means ; Some I could cull and hire, e'en in this throng. If I would show my children, and how strong I were in faction. 'Las ! poor simple stray, She's all her lifetime finding out one way, She's but one foolish way, straight on. right forward, And yet she makes a toil on't, and goes on, With care and fear forsooth, when I can run Over a hundred with delight and pleasure, Backways and byways, and fetch in by measure, After the wishes of my heart, by shifts, Deceit, and slight. And I'll give thee gifts ; I'll show thee all my coiners, yet untold, The Yery nooks where beldames hide their gold, In hollow walls and chimneys, where the sun Never yet shone, nor Truth came ever near : 'Tis of my life I'll make the golden year.' Much more to the same effect Error might have said, had not Zeal, ' stirred up with divine indignation at the impu- dence of these hell-hounds,' pushed them away, and made room for Truth herself, who came * in a close garment of white satin, which made her appear thin and naked, figuring thereby her simplicity and nearness of heart to those that embrace her ; a robe of white silk cast over it, filled with eyes of eagles, showing her deep insight and height of wisdom ; over her thrice-sanctified head a milk-white dove, and on each shoulder one, the sacred emblems of purity, meekness, and innocence; under her feet serpents, in that she treads down all subtlety and fraud ; her forehead em- paled with a diadem of stars, the witness of her eternal descent : on her breast a pure round crystal, showing the brightness of her thoughts a.id actions : a sun in her right hand, than which nothing is truer ; a fan, filled all with stars, in her left, with which she parts darkness and strikes away tlu* vapours of ignorance.' She in her turn addre.-sed the His Lord Mayor s Show. 255 Mayor, showing him that her counsels alone had brought him to the dignity he that day received, and that he could only continue in the paths of honour by continuing her servant. Then she conducted him on his way, Error following as closely as she could, past five islands, whereon sat five ' dumb glories,' representing the five senses. Soon the procession was met by a strange ship, with the King of the Moors, his Queen, and two attendants, on board, and of course it stopped to listen to a long speech from his sable Majesty, relating how he had come from his distant home to show honour to one of the foremost of the merchants who had done so much for him and his by bringing them within the circle of civilization and commerce : — 4 My queen and people were at one time won By the religious conversation Of English merchants, factors, travellers, Whose truth did with our spirits hold commerce As their affairs with us ; following their path, We all were brought to the true Christian faith. Such benefit in good example dwells ; It oft hath power to convert infidels.' We need not follow the procession in detail through all its stages. ' The chief grace and lustre of the whole Triumph,' which met the eyes of the company as they turned the corner of Conduit Street, was the Mount Triumphant. At first the Mount was covered with * a thick sulphurous darkness/ placed there by Error, and guarded by four monsters, Bar- barism, Ignorance, Impudence, and Falsehood. But as soon as Truth's chariot approached, the monsters trembled, fell down, and at her command the darkness was dispersed. Then was seen ' a bright spreading canopy, stuck thick with stars and beams of gold, shooting forth round about it.' The whole Mount appeared as a mass of radiant glory, with the reverend figure of London seated in great honour at its base, and Religion enthroned upon its summit, Liberality being on her right hand, and Perfect Love on her left. On either side were displayed the charitable and religious works of 25 G Sir Hugh Myddelton. London, especially of the Grocers' Company, and on two lesser heights were seated Knowledge and Modesty, with Chastity, Fame, Simplicity, and Meekness in the rear. Much wholesome counsel was uttered by these honourable person- ages, and there was further talking on the part of Truth and others, after the Lord Mayor had been installed, had dined at Guildhall, and had attended service at Saint Paul's Ca- thedral.* The expenses which Hugh Myddelton had incurred in the construction of the New River had so impoverished him, that he found it necessary to borrow from the Corporation of London a sum of 3,000Z., at six per cent, interest ; and the need of money for carrying on his other projects induced him soon after to sell the greater part of his interest in the concern. The whole was divided into seventy-two shares, of which the King held thirty-six. Of Myddelton's thirty-six, all but two were disposed of before June, 1G1U, when he and those to whom he had sold them obtained letters-patent for a joint-stock society to be called * The Company of the New River from Chadwell and Amwell to London,' with Sir Hugh for its first Governor. To protect the Company from any overpowering influence of royalty, the King might only send an agent with one vote ; the other shares carried a vote apiece. Until 1640 there was such constant need of money in constructing new works and repairing old ones, that there was hardly any dividend, and consequently Charles the First, having pressing want of money to meet the growing opposi- tion of his subjects, sold his shares to the Company for a fee farm rent of 500L a year. Before the end of the century, however, the shares were worth about 200Z. a-year, and now they yield more than 850?. f Sir Hugh Myddelton's sale of his four-and-thirty shares brought him in something like 10,000/. This money, or most of it, he at once proceeded to spend in the embankment of Brading Harbour, an undertaking almost as important in * Nichols, vol. ii., pp. 679-701. f Smiles, vol. i., pp. 128-132. His Later Occupations. 257 en^inecrinjr history as the construction of the New River : but very little connected with commerce. Then he returned to his old, and formerly unsuccessful, project of mining in Wales. A Company of Miners Royal in Cardiganshire had been established in 1G04 ; but its operations had not been profitable. In 1G17, however, Sir Hugh farmed its mines for 40UZ. a year, and after some costly engineering, he succeeded in working them to great advantage,* sending so much gold to the Royal Mint that, for this and other services, he was made a baronet on the 19th of October, 1C22, King James, by a rare freak of generosity, acquitting him of the customary fee of 1,095Z. due to the Crown.f Nor was that all. On the *21st of February, 1G25, his grateful sovereign confirmed to him the lease of the Mines Royal * as a recompense for his industry in bringing a new river into London,' and exempted him from the payment of royalty for whatever gold and silver he might discover.! In these ways Sir Hugh Myddelton, though never a rich man, and much impoverished by his work on the New River, was enabled to end his days in comfort, and leave a respect- able patrimony to his children. Sometimes he lived at Lodge near to the Cardiganshire mines : sometimes at Bush Hill, his country-house near Edmonton, convenient for superin- tending the New River works. At other times he was to be seen at his house in Basinghall Street, where his goldsmith's business was carried on by his eldest son William. He worked hard to the last. Just as in earlier years he and his brothers, Thomas and Robert, had interested themselves in European and Asiatic trade, we find that in his old age he was a sharer in the Virginian commerce that had lately sprung up through the energy of Raleigh and other enterprising voyagers.§ But his chief interest was, as it had always been, in home concerns. In 1G25, his friend and kinsman, Sir John * Smiles, vol. i., pp. 141, 142. t Mrs. Green, Calendar of State Papers, vol. iii., p. 455. % Tbid., vol. iv., p. 4 SO. § Williams, Ancient and Modern Denbigh, p. 15'i. VOL. I. S 25S Sir Hugh Myddelton. Wynne, wrote to urge the undertaking of some new engi- neering work near Denbigh. " I may say to you," he added, " what the Jews said to Christ. We have heard of thy o-reat works done abroad, do now somewhat in thine own country." All through his life, by word and deed, as its civic officer and as its representative in Parliament, Sir Hugh Myddelton had been a zealous friend to his native town and its neighbourhood. " No burgess of Denbigh," he had written to the town council in 1613, "shall be more forward and willing than myself to further any good for the town, and I take it very friendly that you will employ me in any business that may tend to the public or private good of that town, and I sorrow to think that I can do no more for you."* But his working time was nearly over now. " 1 am grown into years," he said in answer to Sir John Wynne, " and full of business here at the mines, the river at London, and other places ; my weekly charge being above 200/., which maketh me very un- willing to undertake any other work, and the least of these requireth a whole man with a large purse."f Therefore he abstained from the enterprise, and spent his closing years in managing the works he had already taken in hand. He died on the 10th of December, 1631, at the age of seventy-six,:}: leaving, among many other charitable bequests, a share in the New Eiver Company, to be applied by the Guild of Goldsmiths in assisting its more necessitous brethren, ' especially such as were of his name, kindred, and country,'§ as he said in his will, ' in weekly portions of twelve pence a-piece,' — a fund that contributed to the support of more than one of his own degenerate and spendthrift offspring. * Williams, Records of Denbigh, p. 78. t Williams, Ancient and Modern Denbigh, pp. 152, 153. X Smiles, vol. i., p. 149. § Wills from Doctors Commons (London, 18G3), p. 9G. 259 CHAPTER- X. GEORGE HEKIOT OF EDINBURGH. [1563— 1G34.] About the commercial history of Scotland, prior to the union of its government with that of England under the House of Stuart, very scanty information has come down to us. From the time of David the First there had been a steady growth of trade and manufacture in all the more important southern and eastern parts of the kingdom. Foreign merchants had been invited to come to Scotland, and native adventurers had been encouraged to visit the important trading towns of the Con- tinent Through nearly four centuries, wools, raw and wrought, hides, and fish, had been regularly conveyed for sale to Flanders. The Scotchmen had brought back various articles of diet, wine being the chief commodity, with great quantities of haberdashery and ironmongery for use at home ; and by their means such towns as Berwick, Perth, Leith, Stirling, Glasgow, and Dumbarton had grown into importance. There had been two great hindrances, however, to the proper growth of Scottish commerce. The one sprang from the lawless disposition of too many of the people themselves, who found their occupation rather in warlike than in peaceful ways, and who made it very difficult work for the few who applied themselves to trade to carry about their wares in safety and obtain adequate payment for their toil ; the other from the constant rivalry of the English merchants and 2(50 Edinburgh and its Trades in the Middle Ages mariners, who had excellent opportunities for damaging the commerce of the North, both in foreign markets and in the intermediate seas, and who certainly were not slow in using them. Hence it is that George Ilcriot of Edinburgh is the first Scottish merchant of whom we have much knowledge. Edinburgh received its first charter at the hands of Robert Bruce in 1320, fifteen years after the battle of Bannockburn, the town of Leith, with its venerable harbour and mills, being by that document assigned to it as a dependency.* In 143G it was recognized as the capital of Scotland; and in 1450 James the Second gave the citizens licence to enclose and fortify the town.f From that time it became the favourite residence of royalty, and the centre of both the politics and the commerce of the nation. In 1477 it was found necessary to fix the localities of the different markets, which had hitherto been held at various places to suit the convenience of the traders, and with that end James the Third's confirmation was obtained to a scheme drawn up by the magistrates. The Tron, or Weigh-house, whose site is now occupied by the Tron Kirk, was naturally the most central place of business. Thither butter, cheese, wool, and everything else sold by weight had to be brought. Round that meeting-place the butchers were assembled. The market for meal and corn extended from the Tolbooth as far as Libberton's Wynd ; and further to the left, as the name still indicates, Mas the Lawn-market, for the sale of all kinds of cloth. Fish was sold between Friars' Wynd and the Nether Bow, in High Street, and salt in Niddry's Wynd. In Grass-market and Cattle-market, hay, straw, horses and cows were collected ; while the hatmakers and skinners had a place assigned them nearer to Saint Giles's Kirk. The wood and timber market lay between Dalrymple Yard and the Grey Friars : and the shoe-market stretched from Forester's Wynd, westward. The mart for cutlery and smith's work was beneath the Nether Bow, * Anderson, UisLory of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1S5G), p. 7. t Ibid., p. 9. and in the Sixteenth Century. 261 about Saint Mary's Wynd ; and saddlery was to be bought near Greyfriars Kirk,* These regulations did much for Edinburgh ; but more was done by James the Third's Golden Charter, conferred in grati- tude to the citizens for their zeal in liberating him from a nine months' imprisonment in the Castle, enforced by the rebellious nobles. That charter made the Lord Provost of Edinburgh its hereditary high sheriff, and empowered the magistrates to frame what laws they deemed expedient for the good of their city. At the same time the incorporated trades received a standard or banner, known as the * Blue Blanket,' even now not quite worn out, to be borne at all processions, in token of the King's approval of their work.f Yet more energetic was King James the Fourth, who showed special favour to the mer- chants trading to foreign parts. 'They were encouraged,' says the historian of Scotland, ' to extend their trading voyages, to purchase foreign ships of war, to import cannon, and to superintend the building of ships of war at home. In these cases the monarch not only took an interest, but studied the subject with his usual enthusiasm, and personally super- intended every detail. He conversed with his mariners, rewarded the most skilful and assiduous by presents, visited familiarly at the houses of his principal merchants and sea officers, and delighted in embarking on short voyages of experiment, in which, under the tuition of Wood and the Bartons, he became acquainted with the practical parts of navigation. The consequences of such conduct were highly favourable to him ; he became as popular with his sailors as he was beloved by his nobility ; his fame was carried by them to foreign countries ; shipwrights, cannon-founders, and foreign artisans of every description flocked to his Court, from France, Italy, and the Low Countries.' From places nearer home, also, enterprising men came up to enjoy the security and prosperity of commercial life in the Edinburgh of James the P'ourth. Among the number seems * Amjeksun, pp. 10, 11. t Ibid., pp. 11, 12. 2(j*2 The Heriots of Edinburgh. to have been a George Heriot, great-grandson of a James Heriot, spoken of as a ' confederate ' of James the First.* To John, the son of this oldest Heriot known to us, Archi- bald, Earl of Douglas, in recompense for military service, assigned the lands of Trabroun, about four hundred acres, in the parish of Gladsmuir, in East Lothian, and the charter was confirmed by James the First in 1425. t Of John Heriot's children we know nothing ; but there can be no doubt that his grandson was the eldest George, who went up to Edin- burgh near the beginning of the sixteenth century, married Mistress Christian Kyle, a citizen's daughter, and became a well-to-do goldsmith. His son, also named George, born in 1540, carried on the business. Goldsmiths at that time were not thought much of in Scotland. In social position they were classed with the hammermen ; and it was not till 1581 that they received a charter of incorporation from the magistrates of Edinburgh, to be confirmed, with many fresh privileges, by James the Sixth in 158G. The second George Heriot, however, was a man of note in his day. He was five times deacon-convener of the incorporated trades of Edinburgh, and on several occasions he represented the city in the Scottish Parliament. In 1596 he was chosen, with three others, to go and make excuse to King James touching the conduct of the citizens during a riot, more turbulent and treasonable * James Heriot of Niddry-Marischal. I John Heriot, esquire, of Trabroun. j ? i George Heriot, goldsmith, of Edinburgh. Elizabeth Balderston = George Heriot = Christian Blaw. I 1540-1610. I 1 I I II Ml I 1 George Heriot, Patrick. Margaret. Thovias, Christian. Sibilla. James. David 1563-1624. bapt.29July, Janet, married, died, 1603. llurion. 1625. 1661. t Steven, History of George Heriot's Hospital (Edinburgh, 1858), p. 1. For much of the information contained in the following pages about the Heriots I am indebted to the enlarged edition of this work by Dr. Bedford, the present Governor of the Hospital. George Her lot, the lounger. 263 than usual, that had caused the monarch to flee from the capital near the close of the year ; and when he died in 1610, at the age of seventy, his sons, George and David, were allowed to set up a costly monument in his honour in the Greyfriars Kirkyard * But the son who took the chief part in erecting that monument was destined to leave behind him a far nobler memorial of his own rare worth. George Heriot, the younger, was the oldest of ten children ; two besides himself being the offspring of Elizabeth Balderston, his father's first wife, and the seven others being the children of a second wife, named Christian Blaw. George was born in June, 1563. f Of his youth we know nothing, save that, his own mother being dead, he was brought up by one of his father's relations, about whom we find an interesting fragment of in- formation some forty years later. " I have a poor kinswoman, named Katherine Robinson," wrote Heriot from London to his Edinburgh agent in 1620, '* who, besides the obligation of kindred, had the care and keeping of me when I was a child, who, 1 understand, is on the point of going to the hospital for lack of a house to dwell in. For preventing whereof I am willing to allow her 241. Scots by year, which I entreat you to cause to have paid to her."J At an early age the lad was apprenticed to his father's calling, and he steadily followed it all through his life. There is a tradition that, during his apprenticeship, he one day saw a foreign vessel discharging its ballast in Leith harbour, and observing a great quantity of gold amidst the rubbish, bought it for a song, and so became rich.§ But this is not very likely. His father's help and example, and his own honesty and perseverance, sufficiently account for the wealthy and influential position that he attained, without our seeking an explanation in any of the doubtful stories * Constable, Memoirs of George Heriot (Edinburgh, 1822), pp. 3-7. f Ibid., p. 2. ; Ibid. § Steven, p. 4. 2G4 George Hcriot in Edinburgh. that are told, with few variations, about so many of the old merchant princes. In the beginning of 1587, when he was about three-and- twenty, he married Mistress Christian Marjoribanks, the orphan daughter of an Edinburgh merchant, and began business on his own account. On that occasion his father o-ave him 1000 Scots marks, ' to be a beginning and pack to him,' as we read in the marriage contract, dated the 14th of January ; * besides the setting up of a booth to him, furnish- in" - of his clothing to his marriage, and of workrooms and other necessaries requisite to a booth,' valued at 500 marks more ; and his wife brought him 1075 marks' worth of mills on the water (if Leith, so that the joint capital of the two was 214Z. lis. Sd. sterling, a very respectable possession for a young goldsmith in the sixteenth century.* Heriot's first residence was in Fish-market Close. The shop, or booth, or kraam, which his father fitted up for him was by the Lady's Steps, at the north-east corner of Saint Giles's Kirk.f Since about the year 1555, Saint Giles's Kirk walls had got to be studded with such booths, the especial resort of goldsmiths and jewellers, watchmakers and booksellers ; and the bazaar, if such it may be called, was not abolished till 18174 Hither came all the country people to buy whatever articles of ornament and luxury they stood in need of, such as silver spoons and spectacles, wedding-rings and watches. Like all other institutions of the sort, this also became a great meeting-place for gossips. For centuries ' it had been usual for the goldsmith to adjourn with his customer to John's Coffee-house, or to Baijen-Hole, which was then a tavern, and to receive the order or the payment, in a com- fortable manner, over a dram or a caup of small ale ; which was on the first occasion paid for by the customer, and on * Steven, pp. 231-234. f Ibid., p. 5. X 1*o:;ekt Chambers, Traditions of Edinburgh (Edinburgh, 1825\ vol. ii., i.. L»0."i. His Shops and his Customers. 2G5 the second by the trader ; and over these refreshments it was natural for various topics of interest to be discussed.'* On the 28th May, 1588, George Heriot was made a member of the Goldsmiths' Company of Edinburgh. f By about that time his business had so increased that he found it necessary to take a larger booth. * This shop and work- shop existed till 1809, when the extension of the Advocates' Library occasioned the destruction of some interesting old closes to the west of Saint Giles's Kirk, and altered all the features of this part of the town. There was a line of three small shops with wooden superstructures above them, extend- ing between the door of the Old Tolbooth and that of the Laigh Council House, which occupied the site of the present lobby of the Signet Library. A narrow passage led between these shops and the west end of Saint Giles's ; and George Heriot's shop, being in the centre of the three, was situated exactly opposite to the south window of the Little Kirk. The back windows looked into an alley behind, called Beith's, or Bess Wynd. His name was discovered upon the archi- trave of the door, being carved in the stone, and apparently having served as his sign. The booth was also found to contain his forge and bellows, with a hollow stone, fitted with a stone cover or lid, which had been used as a recep- tacle for, and a means of extinguishing, the living embers of the furnace upon closing the shop at night '} This larger shop was only about seven feet square. It was large enough, however, to hold the ungainly figure of James the Sixth, besides the other famous customers who had deal- ings with Heriot. Often, according to tradition, the monarch came to look over the goldsmith's stores, to give him some commission, and to taste the new wine which he was shrewd enough to buy whenever a good opportunity occurred. One day, it is said, Heriot visited the King at Ilolyrood House, and, finding him sprawling before a fire of perfumed wood, * Chambers, vol. ii., pp. 119, 120. t Constable, p. 12. X Chambers, vol. ii., pp. 209, 210. 9(30 George Heriot in Edinburgh. praised it for its sweetness. "Ay," answered the Kin<r, " and it is costly." Heriot replied that if his Majesty would come to his shop he would show him a yet costlier one. " Indeed, and I will," exclaimed the monarch. Whereupon they proceeded to the booth against Saint Giles's Kirk, and, much to James's disgust, found nothing but a few poor flames burning in the goldsmith's forge. " Is this, then, your fine fire ?" he asked. " Wait a little," answered the mer- chant, " till I get the fuel ;" and then opening his chest, he took thence a bond for 2000Z. which he had lent to the King, and threw it among the embers. " Now," he asked, " whether is your Majesty's fire or mine more expensive ?" " Yours, most certainly, Master Heriot," was the answer.* Let all who like believe the tale. It is however clear that Heriot was rich enough to pay his sovereign a compli- ment of this kind over and over again, without seriously feeling the loss to his exchequer. On the 17th of July, 1597, he was made Goldsmith in Ordinary to Anne of Denmark, James's good-for-nothing wife ; his appointment ' for all the days of his life, with all fees, duties, and casualties proper and due to the said office,' being proclaimed, ten days later, by sound of a trumpet, at the High Cross of Edinburgh.! And on the 4th of April, 1601, he was promoted to the yet more lucrative business of Goldsmith to the King himself, an apartment in Holyrood Palace being fitted up for his especial use.J The direct * fees ' for these offices were small, but the indirect emoluments derived from them were very great, and the 'duties and casualties' multifarious indeed. It is com- puted that Heriots bills for jewels bought or manufactured for Queen Anne alone, in the few years prior to 1G03, amounted to 50,000/. of English money,§ and James's debts were larger still. Let this bill be cited as a specimen :— * September, ] 599. Paid at his Majesty's special command, with advice of the Lords of Secret Council, to George Heriot, * Chambers, vol. ii., p. 211. + Steven, p. 237. t Steven, pp. 5, 23G § Ibid., p. 7. His Dealings with King James and Queen Anne. 267 younger, goldsmith, for a cupboard presented to Monsieur Vetonu, French Ambassador, containing the following pieces : — two basins, two lavcrs belonging thereto, two flagons, two chandeliers, six cups with covers, two cups without covers, one laver for water, one salt dish with one cover ; all chiselled work and double overgilt, weighing 2 stone, 14 lbs. 5 oz., at 8 marks the ounce, 4,160?.' of Scottish money.* In the beginning of 1G01, moreover, appears a charge of 1,333/. 6s., ' for a jewel, wherewith his Highness presented his dearest bedfellow in a New Year's gift.'t The making and procuring of jewellery for the King and Queen, and for the crowds of nobles who followed their example of wanton extravagance and of empty show, was but a part of Heriot's business. He was Royal Pawnbroker and Money-lender. The first known instance of his employ- ment in these ways appears in June, 1599, when we find his Majesty writing to Lord Newbattle, and bidding him, with all haste and diligence, obtain money enough ' to satisfy and make payment to George Heriot,' of a certain sum not named, * out of the first and readiest of our taxation, seeing our dear bedfellow's jewels were engaged for this sum, and that it toucheth us nearly in honour.'! The honour of both King and Queen, however, was from this time often very nearly touched indeed. The spendthrift monarchs, never owning money enough for the payment of their lawful debts, were ever rushing into some fresh extravagance, and to that end pawning everything on which a little gold could be raised. Their imprudence, and the imprudence that their example caused in the courtiers and lordlings in attendance upon them, had this effect — true in individual cases, though, as a sound political economy, after many centuries of bungling, is beginning to make clear, altogether false as regards the general progress of society — that it was ' good for trade.' It was good for George Heriot's trade, at any rate. He * Constable, p. 13. t Steven, p. 7. Ibid., p. G. 2GS George Hcriot in London. throve wonderfully during the last ten years or so of James's Scottish rule ; and when the King went southward to take possession of the English Crown, the goldsmith, after pro- viding him and his attendant nobles with vast quantities of jewellery for their personal adornment, and with a cart-load of rings to be given to the English courtiers who were expected to assemble on the road, packed up his goods as soon as he was able, and travelled southward likewise, to establish himself in London * foranent the New Exchange,'* where the booths erected by Sir Thomas Gresham offered much better facilities for trade than those that were clustered round Saint Giles's Kirk in High Street, Edinburgh. That was in the summer of 1603. For the remaining twenty years of his life Heriot seems to have spent nearly all his time in London and its neighbourhood. He was too much needed at Court to be able to pay more than flying visits, whether for business or for pleasure, to his native city or to other parts. He was not, however, as in Scotland, exclusive holder of the office of "Goldsmith or Pawnbroker to the Crown. Two Englishmen, one of them as rich and influential as himself, were also made King's Jewellers almost as soon as James had taken possession of his crown. These were Sir William Herrick and Sir John Spilman. Spilman was the first English paper-maker known to us. In 1588, or earlier, he set up a mill at Dartford ; in 1598 he obtained from Queen Elizabeth an order ' that he only and no others should buy linen rags and make paper;' and in 1605 his mills were personally inspected by King James, and won for him the honour, such as it was, of a Stuart knighthood. f Herrick was a more notable man. He was one of a noble family of merchant princes, famous in the annals of Leicester- shire. Old John Herrick, his father, who died in 1589, at the age of seventy-six, had been a well-to-do gentleman, * Steven, pp. 9, 10. t Nichols, Progresses of James (he First (London, 1828), vol. i., p. 515. The Herrichs of Leicester. 269 having lived at his ease, according to the quaint record of his tombstone, ' 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 sometimes twenty in household.' He had twelve children, and his wife, livino- 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.'* Nearly every mem- ber of this large and singularly happy family fared well in life. One of the daughters married Lawrence Hawes, and another married Sir Thomas Bennett, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1603, both of them wealthy merchants. Robert, the eldest son, was an ironmonger and ironfounder in Leices- tershire, thrice Mayor of his native town, and its representa- tive 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 1 am do delight in the pleasant woods of Cank, 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 find as good iron as was there this forty years, as good weight, as good workmen, as honest fellows, as good entertainment, what want you more ?" He ' 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 1618. His portrait was placed by admiring friends in the town-hall of Leicester, with this inscription — ' His picture, whom you here see, When he is dead and rotten, By this shall he rememhered be, When he would be forgotten.' f Nicholas, the next son of worthy John llerrick, and father * Nichols, History and Antiquities of the County of Leicester (London, IS15), vol. ii., p. GIG. t Ibid., vol. ii., pp. G17, G25. 270 Nicholas and William Herrick of London. of Robert Herrick, tbe poet, went up to make bis fortune in London. He was articled, in 155(5, to a goldsmitb in Cheap- side, where in due time be set up a goodly shop of his own, not far from the old cross that was pulled down by order of the Commonwealth in 1642. He died in the prime of life, in consequence of a fall from an upper window of his house into the street, leaving one merchant son, at any rate, to carry on his business, but having for a more noted successor his younger brother William, the compeer of Heriot. This William, born in 1557, was apprenticed to bis brother in 1574 or 1575. He employed well his opportunities of becoming both a rich and a useful man.* * Nichols, vol. ii., p. G18. Many very interesting letters from old John and Mary Herrick to their children in London have been printed by Nichols. In one of them, dated April 11, 155G, John wrote to his son Nicholas, at that time a goldsmith's apprentice: — "We do pray to God daily to hless you and to give you grace to be good, diligent, and obedient unto your master, both in word and deed ; and be profitable unto him, as well behind 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." ^Twenty years later, on the 29th of October, 1575, the old man wrote to Nicholas about his younger brother William, lately articled to him. " I give you hearty thanks 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 lie had not been so tall as he is, nor never would have been I do advertise you," adds the good man, as if in pre- science of his son's disastrous accident, " 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." In 1578, Mary Herrick wrote thus to * her loving son, William Herrick, in London, dwelling with Nicholas Herrick, in Cheap :' — " William; with my hearty commendations, and glad to hear of your good health, etc., and this is to give you thanks for my pomegranate and red herring you sent mc ; wishing you to give my daughter Hawcs thanks for the pomegranate and Ixpx of marmalade that she sent me. Furthermore. I have sent you a pair of knit hose and a pair of knit kersey gloves. I would have you send mc word how they serve you ; for if the gloves be too little for you, you Some of their Parents Letters to Them. 271 While George Heriot was growing necessary to James the Sixth in Scotland, William Herrick was making for himself as important a position in England under Queen Elizabeth. Gresham being dead, he inherited something of his work. To the Queen and her nobles he lent immense sums of should give them to one of your brother ILiwes' children, and I would send you another pair." Dated the ISth March, 15S0, is a letter from John Herrick to William, in which he thanks him, and his brothers and sisters in London, 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 lampreys you sent. A quartern of them hud 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 commendation, to your sister Mary and you." Towards the cud of 1582 Nicholas Herrick married. "I trust, now that you be a married man," wrote his father on the 15th December, "fori heard that you were appointed to marry on Monday ; and il you be married, we pray God to send you both much joy and comfort together, and to all her friends 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 beeu painful for 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 kneebones 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 of my right shoulder, that I cannot get on my gown without help. Age bringeth infirmities with it : God hath so ordained." Nicholas Herrick's marriage had the usual consequences. " I pray you," wrote his father to William on the 9th March, 1583, " show your brother Nicholas that I think that paper is scant in London ; because I never received any letter from him since he was married." And Nicholas was not the only child of whom the old man had to com- plain. Young Mary Herrick had gone up to London many years before, as companion to Nicholas, and she found life in London so much pleasanter, that, when the special object of her stay was over, she was not willing to go home again. Therefore her father sent her a scolding letter on the 3rd June, 1583. —"You were obedient at our desire," he said, "to go to Loudon, 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 pains that 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 ; and likewise you be bound to be obedient to your parents by the law of nature and by the law of the 972 Sir William Hcrrich of London. monev; and out of the interest thereon, as well as out of the profits of his goldsmith's trade, he was rich enough, in 151)."), to buy Beaumanor Park, in Leicestershire.* Before thai time he had been sent by his sovereign on an embassage to the Porte.f In 1G01 he became Member of Parliament for Leicester, on that occasion 'giving to the town in kindness twelve silver spoons.' On King James's accession he resigned his seat in Parliament, and on the 2nd of May, IGOo, in consideration of his long and faithful service to his late mistress, he was made Principal Jeweller to the new monarch.:}: On Easter Tuesday in 1605, writes a rather envious correspondent of Winwood's, * one Master William Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside, was knighted for making a hole in the great diamond the King doth wear. The party little expected the honour ; but he did bis work so well as won the King to an extraordinary liking of it.'§ In the same year he again entered Parliament for Leicester, besides being chosen Alderman of Farringdon Without. From service in the latter office, however, as well as from future employment as Sheriff of London, he was excused on pay- ment of '6001., * in respect that the said Sir William is 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 so doing, 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 occasion to shorten our days, which cannot be long; 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." * Nichols, Progresses, vol. i., p. 504. + Ibid., vol. i., pp. 150, 151. X Record Office MSS., Domestic Scries, James I., vol. i., No. 72. § Win wood, Memorials, vol. ii., p. 57. The Debts of James the First and Queen Anne. 273 King's Majesty's sworn servant, and cannot so necessarily afford the daily service as behoveth.'* On the 4th of January, 1G0G, we find, he tendered to his sovereign a splendid amethyst ring, as a New Year's gift, and in the records of the next two dozen years occur a great many entries of other presents and loans made by him to James the First. " Since my being teller," he wrote in a petition dated 1 GIG, C; I have lent unto his Majesty divers great sums of money gratis, which none of my fellows ever did, to my loss and disadvantage of at least 3,000Z."t The debt was much greater when Herrick retired from public life. He was a rich man, however, and found good use for his wealth in charitable works, and schemes for local improvement in Leicester and its neighbourhood. He died in 1653, at the age of ninety-six.} Both his and Spilman's names are frequently found in conjunction with Heriot's, as jewel-makers and as money- lenders to the Crown ; but the Scotchman appears to have been the special favourite, as was natural with the Scottish sovereign and his spouse. In the six and a-half years previous to Christmas, 1609, the Queen's debts alone for jewellery and goldsmith's work amounted to 20,500Z., the principal creditors being Heriot and Sir John Spilman. Her Majesty being unhappy about this, we are told the Privy Council took the case in hand, and gave authority for raising that sum at ten per cent. interest.§ Whether the whole was collected or not we do not know ; but on Christmas Eve George Heriot received a six months' bill for 5,245£.|| Long before it fell due, however, other debts were piled up, and the heap went on accumulating from month to month. In November, 1611, the Queen was in Heriot's debt 9,O0OZ., on account of presents made to her eldest son, Prince Henry, * Nichols, Progresses, vol. i., p. 596. t Ibid. X Ib'd. § Mrs. Gkeen, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Reign of James I., vol. i., pp. 572, f>74. || Ibid., vol. i., p. 577). VOL. I. T 274 George Her lot in London. alone ;* and in July, 1613, a year after Henry's death, was issued a warrant from the Council for payment of 4,0007. to Ileriot, on account of a sumptuous chain and hatband, set with diamonds, which he had procured for him. f Prince Henry being taken out of this school of extrava- gance, his younger brother was soon admitted to it. In March, 1615, we find a warrant for the payment of 2,952Z. Is. 4d., expended by Heriot on jewels and workmanship for Prince Charles,! and numerous similar charges appear in later years. When the Prince and his Mephistopheles, the Duke of Buckingham, were preparing to start on their disgraceful journey to Spain, in 1623, George Heriot was sent to the jewel-house at the Tower, to assist in selecting a number of the best jewels for Charles's use, and in furbishing them up, and supplying their deficiencies with new workmanship.§ He laboured night and day to complete the business in time. Yet hardly had the adventurers reached Madrid, and made their way to the presence of the Infanta, whom it was hoped Charles would get for a wife, than Buckingham thought it needful to write home to his " dear dad and gossip/' com- plaining of their poor estate. " Hitherto you have been so sparing of jewels," he said, "that, — whereas you thought to have sent him sufficiently for his own wearing and to present to his mistress, who I am sure will shortly now lose that title, and to lend me, — that I, to the contrary, have been forced to lend him. Sir, he hath neither chain nor hatband, and I beseech you consider how he hath no other means to appear like a King's son." " I confess," wrote Charles him- self to the same effect, " that you have sent more jewels than, at my departure, I thought to have had use of; but since my coming, seeing many jewels worn here, and that my bravery can consist of nothing else" — poor Charles! — "and * Calendar of Stale rajxrs, vol. ii., p. 91. t Ibid., vol. ii.. p. VM. J Ibid., vol. ii., p. 27S. § Stakk, Picture of Edinburgh Edinburgh, 1823), p. 232. ' These jewels were never paid fur by Janus ; but when Charles. I. succeeded to the throne, the debt to Heriot was allowed to his trustees.' His Jewel-making and mending for Prince Charles. 27i5 besides, that some of them which you have appointed me to give to the Infanta, in Stecnie's opinion and mine, are not fit to be given to her, therefore I have taken this boldness to entreat your Majesty to send more for my own wearing and for giving to my mistress." To which there is this cha- racteristic postscript in Stecnie's handwriting : " I, your dog, say you have many jewels neither fit for your own, your son's, nor your daughter's wearing, but very fit to bestow on those here who must necessarily have presents, paid this way will be* least chargeable to your Majesty, in my poor opinion."* That correspondence with notable truth reflects the character of the foolish King, his misguided son, and their joint friend and tempter. It led, as it seems, to the giving of fresh com- missions to Heriot, the last of any importance which he lived to execute. We have had evidence enough of the use made of the goldsmith by his employers. These two curious petitions, undated, but evidently written in or near the year 10*18, may help us to see how he was treated, t In one addressed to Queen Anne, who died on the 2nd of March, 1619, Heriot urges that, " whereas the last time her gra- cious Majesty was pleased to admit her suppliant to her royal presence, it then pleased her Highness to regret that her gracious intentions towards the payment of her debts were much hindered by the scarcity of her Majesty's trea- sure ; whereupon her suppliant did resolve to forbear to trouble and importune her Majesty until it should please God to second her royal disposition with greater plenty than now it is," he is at last compelled to remind her of " the extreme burden of interests wherewith he is borne down, and which he must -shortly either pay or perish, unless she will pay him a little part at least of the money that she owes * Ellis, Originul Letters (London, 1824), Series i., vol. iii., pp. 145, 146. t A great many others may lie seen by the curious among the records of the State Paper Office, as well as in published books, especially the Memoir of George Heriot, published anonymously, in 1822. 276 George Heriot in London. him." * The other petition is addressed to the King himself. " Whereas there is due unto your Majesty's suppliant," since February, 1G1J, it sets forth, " the sum of 18,0007. sterling and above, which remaincth yet unpaid, the want whereof has brought your Highness 's suppliant to so hard an extremity as he hath been enforced, for maintaining of his credit, to take up on interest the sum of 15,0007., engaging his friends, and laying to pawn all his stock of jewels and commodities wherein he is accustomed to deal, to his utter overthrow, not having them in his hands to sell for his benefit when there is occasion ; his humble suit is that (in consideration of his readi- ness of delivery to your Majesty's use, not only of his own estate, but likewise whatsoever his credit could procure, and of his twenty-four years' service to your Majesty, the Queen, and your royal children, without having ever sought or obtained any recompense for the same, as others of his pro- fession and meaner desert have had,) your Majesty will be graciously pleased to commiserate the hard estate your sup- pliant is brought to, so as he may have satisfaction of that which hath been so Ion" owing." t There must have been some exaggeration in those state- DO ments. Heriot grew richer every year. But it is clear that King James the Sixth was a thoughtless borrower and a tardy payer of his debts. To make profitable his dealings with the sovereign, the goldsmith doubtless found it neces- sary to put a high price on every article of jewellery that he sold, and to demand a large interest for the great sums of money that he lent. The dignity of his position, however, as Court Jeweller, and the fame of his tact and honesty as a banker and money-lender, brought him plenty of custom from other and more trustworthy employers. Of Heriot's busy life in London a clearer and completer notion is to be derived from the fictitious but truthfully-drawn portrait in The Fortunes of Nigel than from any mere statement of the few authentic facts that have come down to * Stevln, pp. 18, 19. f Ibid., pp. 19, 20. Ilia Court Difficulties, and his Family Troubles. 277 us. The Jingling Geordie 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 obser- vant eye, neglecting no opportunity of assisting those who were not possessed of the experience necessary for their own guidance,' was, as far as we can judge, the veritable George lleriot 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 relations with others as he was upright and persevering in the pursuit of his own fortunes. Home troubles did their work in ripening and enno- bling George lleriot's character. His first wife, Christian Marjoribanks, died before they had been wedded more than twelve or fifteen years ; prior, at any rate, to his removal from Edinburgh to London. That match may have been like most marriage unions of those times, one of policy rather than affection ; but it must have been no slight grief that the two sons whom this wife bore to him were lost at sea, doubtless in performing the short voyage to London.* In September, 1G08, when his age was five-and-forty, the mer- chant paid a visit to Edinburgh, and took for a second wife Mistress Alison, the daughter of James Primrose, clerk to the Privy Council in Scotland for about forty years from 1602, and grandfather of the first Earl of Boseberry.f The young wife, one of nineteen children, was only fifteen years old. She did not live to be twenty. She died in childbirth, on the lGth of April, 1612. George lleriot recorded on the handsome monument erected to her memory in Saint Gregory's Church, which formed one of the towers of old Saint Paul's, that she was ' a woman richly endowed with all good gifts of mind and body, and of pious disposition. 'J Tears shed on tombstones seldom go for much. But the loss of his young and beautiful wife, and the loss with her of his hope of an heir, seems to have deeply affected the goldsmith. "She * Steven, p. 10. t Ibid., p. 11. J Ibid., p. 13. 2/8 George Her lot and his Father -in-Law. cannot be too much lamented, who could not be too much loved," he wrote on a private document, intended for no eye but his own, some time after her death.* Some evidence of Ileriot's affection for this young wife, moreover, as well as of his natural good-heartcdness, appears in his subsequent treatment of his father-in-law, James Prim- rose. Hardly had his daughter been buried, as it seems, before the old man, finding it hard work to maintain his too large family, and not very particular about the ways in which he scraped together the requisite funds, made a singular claim upon the widower. He sent to Heriot, bidding him straightway refund the dowry of 5,000 marks that he had given to his daughter, and also supply him with between 4,000 and 5,000 more, as compensation for the expenses he had been put to in suitably conducting the marriage. Heriot reasonably enough, disclaimed all liability in the matter, but generously offered to return the amount of the dowry. With this, however, Primrose was not satisfied ; he threatened to institute legal proceedings against his son-in-law, and through more than four years he kept up on the subject an angry and foolish correspondence, only interesting for its illustration of Heriot's patience and good feeling. At last the dispute was settled through the interposition of Lord Binning, afterwards Earl of Haddington, Heriot paying the 5,000 marks, and Primrose being satisfied therewith. On the 4th of October, 1610, the merchant wrote to Adam Lawtie, his agent in Edinburgh, expressing his joy that at length there seemed likely to be, as he said, " some end of that matter in contro- versy betwixt my good father and me, it being a business so unworthy of my friend's travails. As concerning that apology," he continued, in a pardonable tone of sarcasm, " which you think he minds to write, I do not much regard it, being assured to find much more friendship in his words than I ever had in his actions. Jn a word, as God has com- manded, I am resolved to seek peace and follow after it, and * Steven, p. 14. His Project of an Asylum for Orphans in Edinburgh. 270 leave him to his own humours, till his time come, as I thank God mine is, when he may get leisure to think upon his oversights, of which number he may peradventure reckon his subtle temporising dealing with me to be one."* Heriot was a very honest, though not a very graceful cor- respondent. But graceful or ungraceful, we would fain have more of his letters. He appears to have been too busy a man to write any that he could avoid ; at any rate, very few have come down to us, and in those few the personal allusions are scanty indeed. One other sentence about himself, how- ever, is contained in the letter already quoted from. " By God's merciful providence," he says, " I am like to recover of that heavy disease wherewith I have been so long and dangerously afflicted ; for, as I did write to you, the swelling is much diminished and the humour doth daily resolve ; so that I hope, by God's grace, to have yet some small respite of my life."f He lived rather more than seven years after that, steadily accumulating wealth, and learning how most worthily to apply it. " It has pleased God to try me with the loss of two children," he is made to say in The Fortunes of Nigel, " but I am patient and thankful ; and for the wealth God has sent me, it shall not want inheritors while there are orphan lads in Auld Reekie." And so it is. Seventy years before the venerable church and monastery of the Grey Friars, en- dowed with a noble library by the will of Sir Richard Whittington, had been handed over to the City of London through the influence of Sir Richard Gresham, and by Edward the Sixth, with Sir Richard Dobbs, Lord Mayor of London, for a noble coadjutor, had been established as Christ's Hospital, ' where poor children, innocent, and fatherless, are trained up to the knowledge of God and virtuous exercises, to the overthrow of beggary.' George Heriot now resolved to use his princely fortune in building a similar institution for his native city. " Forasmuch," he wrote in an assignation of his property, dated the 3rd of September, 1G23, "as I intend, by * Steven, pp. 15- IS. t Ibid., p. 17. 280 George Heriofs Hospital. God's grace, in the zeal of piety, to found and erect a public, pious, and charitable work within the borough of Edinburgh, to the gloryof Gad, for the public weal and ornament of the said borougb of Edinburgh, for the bonour and due regard which I have and bear to my native soil and mother city, and in imitation of the public pious and religious work founded within the City of London, called Christ's Hospital, the same shall be called in all time " (berc Heriot left a blank, which the executors filled up with his own name) " Hospital and Seminary of Orphans, for education, nursing, and up-bringing of youth, being poor orphans and fatherless children of decayed burgesses and freemen of the said borough, to such competent number as the means and maintenance allowed thereupon are able to afford, where they may have some reasonable allow- ance, for their maintenance, of food, lodging, and raiment, within the said Hospital and Seminaiy, until they attain the age of fifteen, at which time they may be set forth in pren- ticeships to learn some honest trade or occupation, or other- ways sent to colleges or universities according to their capa- cities."* George Heriot did not live long after that precise statement of the wish that had doubtless been £ainin«- strength in his mind for years. On the 21st of October, 1G23, Adam Lawtie wrote to express his sorrow at his friend's * present heavy sickness and disease,' and to assure him that if the property was properly assigned to this charitable purpose, there could be no fear of its falling into the hands of his eldest niece, the daughter of a brother who had spent his life in Italy ; a point which appears to have given Heriot much trouble in these last months.f To remove the danger, he formally prepared his will on the 10th of December, making numerous bequests to his kindred, friends, and servants, and taking especial care of two illegitimate children — one of whom, Elizabeth Band, was at this time thirteen years old, the other, Margaret Scott, only five. His whole estate amounted to 47.507/. 10s. ll±d. * Steven, p. 22. f lhid„ p. 23. George Harlot's Death. 281 Half of it was disposed of in legacies or absorbed by bad debts. The residue, 2o.62.~7. 10$. S^d., was left in the hands of his executors, the Provost, Bailies, and Council of Edin- burgh, to be spent in establishing the famous and noble Heriot's Hospital.* That Hospital is the merchant's true monument. He died in London, on the 12th of February, 1624, and was buried on the 20th, in the churchyard of Saint Martin-in-thc-Fields, near which he had bought a house, and dwelt for some time past.f But nothing is known of his last days, and the tomb- stone erected to his memory is not now to be traced. | * Constable, pp. G7-102. A full and very interesting history of Heriot's Hospital is given in Dr. Steven's volume, brought down to 1858 by Dr. Bedford, the present governor of the institution. At its opening, in 1G59, thirty boys were admitted. In 1GG1 the number was raised to fifty-two ; in 1753 to a hundred and thirty ; and in 17(13 to a hundred and forty. The funds of the hospital were soon after found insufficient for so many scholars, and their number was reduced to about a hundred. Since 1821, however, it has been fixed at a hundred and eighty ; besides which there was found to be, in 1835, surplus revenue, which justiiied the trustees in erecting the Heriot Foundation Schools " for the education of such Burgesses' Sons as cannot be admitted into the Hospital." The income was then 14,500/. a-year; the expenditure, 11,500/. With tho balance, provision was made for the education of children of poor citizeus. t Steven, pp. 24, 25. X Since the above chapter had been placed in the printer's hands, how- ever, it appears that the labourers employed in enlarging the National Gallery have had to dig up part of the old churchyard, and have there found a coffin containing the remains of George Heriot, placed, strange to say, next to the coftiu of the celebrated highwavinan, Jack Sheppard. — The Times, Oct. 18, 18GG. 282 CHAPTER XL HUMPHREY CHETHAM OF MANCHESTER. [1580—1653.] From the fourteenth century, when the more skilful modes of workmanship were introduced by Flemish settlers, to the seventeenth, when they had to compete with other sorts of kindred enterprise occasioned by the great increase of trade through the opening up of intercourse with distant countries and colonies, America and Asia, the East Indies and the West, woollen goods formed the staple manufacture of England. A chief source of wealth to the great commercial ports was, all through that time, as it had been long before, the sale to foreign merchants of sheepskins, raw wools, and woollen cloths ; and we find that during the same period, the inland towns most famous and influential were those best fitted for the collection and the manufacture of these articles. From the valley of the Thames wealth streamed into London ; the valley of the Severn nourished Bristol ; and the sheep-growing districts of Norfolk and Suffolk enriched Norwich, with Lynn and Yarmouth for its ports. Rather later in their development, but in due time almost more important than any of" these southern centres of industry, were the manufacturing districts of South Lancashire and the West Riding of Yorkshire. 'The parish of Halifax and other places thereunto,' as we read in the preamble of an Act of Parliament, prepared in the reign of Mary Tudor, ' being planted in great wastes and moors — where the fertility of Rise of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Woollen Trade. 283 the soil is not apt to bring forth common good grass, but in rare places and by exceeding and great industry of the inha- bitants—the inhabitants do altogether live by cloth-making, and the greater part of them neither groweth corn, nor is able to keep a horse to carry wool, nor yet to buy much wool at once, but hath ever used only to repair to the town of Halifax and some other nigh thereto, and there to buy of the wool dealer, some a stone, some two, and some three and four, according to their ability, and to carry the same to their houses, some three, four, five, or six miles off, upon their heads or backs, and so make and convert the same either into yarn or cloth, and to sell the same, and so buy more wool of the wool dealer ; by means of which industry the barren grounds in these parts are now much inhabited, and above five hundred households there newly increased within these forty years past.'* So it was with several other Lancashire and Yorkshire towns. Wakefield, when Leland visited it in 1538, was about as large as Halifax; Bradford was half the size of Wakefield ; and Leeds, a clothmaking town ever since the days of Edward the Third, if not even earlier than that, was described as ' a pretty market, as large as Bradford but not so quick as it.' Kendal in Westmor- land was another thriving centre of woollen manufacture ; while Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, and Blackburn, in Lancashire, had already obtained some repute. In Manchester, the business had been established as early, at any rate, as 1,322, to be much improved by a Flemish settlement in the neigh- bourhood in 1331. In 1520, according to one old writer, there were ' three famous clothiers living in the north country ; Cuthbert of Kendal, Hodgkins of Halifax, and Martin Brian ' — more probably Byrom — ' of Manchester. Every one of these kept a great number of servants at work, carders, spinners, weavers, fullers, dyers, shearmen, &c.'f Martin Brian or Byrom had many followers. ' Manchester * Baixes. Hidonj of Liverpool (London, 1S52), pp. 254, 255. f Baixks, History of Lancashire (London, 1S30), vol. ii„ pp. 400, 401. 284 Manchester in the Sixteenth Century. is the fairest, best buildcd, quickest, and most populous town of all Lancashire,' wrote Leland, in 1538. 'There be divers stone bridges in the town, but the best, of three arches, is over the Irwcll. This bridge divideth Manchester from Salford, the which is a large suburb to Manchester. On this bridge is a pretty little chapel. In the town be two fair market-places,* adjoining the banks of the Irwell and near to the old collegiate church.' ' The town of Manchester is and hath of long time been well inhabited,' it was written in 1542, in the preamble to an Act of Henry the Eighth's, ' and the King's subjects, inhabitants of the said town, have obtained, gotten, and come unto riches and wealthy livings, and have kept and set many artificers and poor folks to work within the said town ; and by reason of the great occupying, good order, straight and true dealing of the inhabitants, many strangers, as well of Ireland as of other places within this realm, have resorted to the said town with linen yarn, wool, and necessary wares for making of cloths, to be sold there, and have used to credit and trust the poor inhabitants of the same town, which were not able and had not ready money to pay in hand for the said yarns, wools, and wares, unto such time the said creditors, with their industry, labour, and pains, might make cloths of the said wools, yarns, and other necessary wares, and sell the same, to content and pay their creditors ; wherein hath consisted much of the common wealth of the said town, and many poor folks have living, and children and servants are there virtuously brought up in honest and true labour out of all idleness.'! Linen manufacture seems in those times to have been as much followed as the making of woollen cloths in Manchester. On the other hand, according to the statement of Leland, ' Bolton-upon-Moor market standeth most by cottons ; divers villages in the moors about Bolton do make cottons.'}: * Leland, Itinerary Oxford, 1744), vol. v., pp. SS, 89. t Bainks, Lancashire, vol. ii., p. 200. X Leland, vol. vii., p. 4G. The Elder Chethams. 285 Manchester cottons or coatings, be it noted, were then, and for a hundred years to come, a rough kind of woollen cloth, much esteemed for their warmth and durability. Not till the seventeenth century were what we call cotton goods much made in England, and then the word was used indis- criminately both for the new fabric and for the old woollen and linen goods. 'The town of Manchester,' it was written in 1(541, 'must be worthily for their encouragement com- mended, who buy the yarn of the Irish in great quantity, and weaving it, return the same again into Ireland to sell. Neither doth their industry rest here ; for they buy cotton- wool in London that comes first from Cyprus and Smyrna, and at home work the same, and perfect it into fustians, vermilions, dimities, and other such stuffs, and then return it to London, where the same is vended and sold, and not seldom sent into foreign parts.'* That was the Manchester in which Humphrey Chetham, the man who did more, perhaps, than any other, to make of it an influential town and the centre of a new world of com- mercial energy, was born in July, 1580.f He was either the fourth or the fifth son of Henry Chetham of Crumpsall, descended in some way from a Sir Geoffrey de Chetham, who served King Henry the Third as Sheriff of Lancashire between the years 1259 and 1262. From him were descended the Chethams of Nuthurst, of Turton, and of Chetham4 In what way the Chethams of Crumpsall were related to these three branches is not clear ; but in 1635 we find that Thomas Chetham, of Nuthurst, granted a certificate to Humphrey, the merchant, to the effect that his family was descended from ' a younger brother of the blood and lineage ' * Lewis Roberts, Tlir Treasure of Trope. t Gastrell, Notilia Cestricxsis ; edited by the Rev. F. R. Raines, for the Clictham Society (Manchester, 1845', vol. ii., p. 74. t Hiuhekt, History of (he FoumhiUons hi Manchester, including a History of Chetham Hospital and Library, by Mr. Whaiton (Manchester, 1834), vol. iii., pp. 127, 128. 286 Humphrey Chetham of Mancliester. of bis ancestors.* Humphrey Chetham, however, cared little for ancestral dignities, and was content to win credit for himself as an honest tradesman. It is likely that he was educated at the Grammar School, founded in 1524 by the Oldhams and Beswicks, whose grandchildren were his kins- men, and that after that he was apprenticed to one of the merchants of the timet He was a merchant himself very early in the seventeenth century. ' The Manchester traders,' says the old historian of the town, ' went regularly on market days to Bolton, to buy pieces of fustian of the weaver, each weaver procuring yarn or cotton as he could. Mr. Chetham was the principal buyer. When he had made his markets, the remainder was purchased by Mr. Cooke, a much less honourable dealer, who took the advantage of calling the pieces what length he pleased, and giving his own price.'! Worthy Humphrey found that honesty was the best policy. For some thirty years he paid his visits to Bolton, occasionally going on longer errands to London and elsewhere, making it his chief business to buy the Lancashire cottons in the grey, and take them home to finish off for sale to the retail drapers ; but also keeping a sort of shop for warps and woofs and the other implements of the weavers' calling, and making profit out of the thousand and one minor articles, from pins to millers' sacks, which Manchester workmen needed for their own use, or made for sale in other parts of England. In these ways he grew rich. In 1020 we find that Sir John Byron of Newstead Abbey, apparently a descendant of the old clothier and ancestor of the poet, sold Clayton Hall to the two brothers, ' George Chetham of London, grocer, and Humphrey Chetham of Manchester, chapman,' for the sum of 4,700Z. ;§ and a few years later, in 1629, Humphrey was rich enough to pay 4,00()Z. out of his own purse for Turton * HiHi'.r.KT, vol. iii., p. 120. t CJastkki.l, vol. ii., p. 74. t Aikin, Description of the Country round Manchester [Loud., 179;")), p. 15S. § Gastrki.l. His Trade and his Wealth. 287 Tower, near Bolton.* Henceforth he seems to have lived much at one or other of these mansions, paying less attention to the business that had doubtless already procured him as much wealth as he cared for. We have one curious proof of his fame as a rich man. James the First had set the fashion of making money by the sale of knighthoods, and Charles the First, finding that Stuart titles were not reckoned worth the buying, went a step HUMl'HRF.T CHETHAH OF MANCHESTER. further, and exacted fines from many of the wealthier com- moners who rejected the honour proffered them. In August, 1631, 'Mr. Humphrey Chetham of Turton ' was summoned to Whitehall, there ' to compound for not appearing at his Majesty's crownation to take upon him the order of knight- hood.'! We hear nothing more of the business, but may be sure that Charles was too poor at that time to be baulked of his money. * Gastkeij,. t rilBRERT, vol. iii , p. 143. 288 Humphrey Chetham as Sheriff of Lancashire. The worthy merchant could buy the privilege of continuing to be called plain Humphrey Chetham, but he could not save himself from a closer connection with the Government than he cared to have. " Noble sir," he said in a letter to a Mr. Bannister, an influential man in county affairs, written in the summer of 1634, "so it is that a report suddenly bruited abroad which comes to me by the relation of your brother, puts me in some jealousy that I am in the way to be Sheriff; which, although the consideration of my unworthiness, methinks, might correct the conceit, yet out of the observa- tion of former times, wherein this eminent office hath fallen very low, I cannot presume of freedom, but am confident, out of your ancient professed friendship, you will not be the instrument to bring me upon the stajre. But that's not all ; for my earnest desire is, seeing that power is in your hands, that you would stand betwixt me and danger ; that, if any put me forwards, you will stand in the way and suffer me not to come in the rank of those that shall be presented to the King's view, whereby I shall be made more popular and subject to the peril of the times. I am ashamed to express what a burthen this honour would be to me ; therefore, good sir, let it light where it may be more welcome, and so I shall rest in peace."* That, however, was not to be. In November, 1634, Chetham was appointed Sheriff for the county of Lancaster. ' He discharged the place with great honour,' it was said, ' insomuch that very good gentlemen, of birth and estate, did wear his cloth at the Assize, to testify their unfeigned affection for him.'f Yet his first troubles on entering the office sprang out of the dissatisfaction felt by these same gentlemen at its being given to a tradesman. To propitiate them the self-made man looked up his pedigree, and obtained from the repre- sentative of the old house of Chetham the certificate of kin- ship already mentioned. That done, some friends in London, who affected to be learned in such matters, supplied him with * Hiubert, vol. iii., pp. 143, 144. f Filler, Worthies. His Employment as Collector of Ship-money. 280 a coat of arms, and in all innocence he adopted it. But the arms belonged to some one else, who resented the appropri- ation, and out of the blunder sprang a lively little quarrel, which was only settled by the merchant procuring, through his friends, a new escutcheon. " They," the arms, he wrote in satire of the whole affair, " are not depicted in so good metal as those arms we gave for them ; but where the herald meets with a novice he will double his gain."* Humphrey Chetham, however, was no novice in the doing of any work that lay before him. His first business as Sheriff, and the only one about which we have much infor- mation, was connected with the never-to-be-forgotten levying of ship-money by Charles the First. Chetham was not a Hampden. Living far away from parliamentary influence, and troubling himself little about politics of any sort, he was content with doing, as far as possible, his duty to both King and people. He was ordered to collect ship-money, and he at once set about it, only troubling himself to find the easiest and most equitable way of doing the work. " The first thing," we find in a note made by him on the occasion, " is to consider how much money will purchase a ship of such a burthen ; the second is to apportion the same moneys equally. For this, methinks, the Mayors of ever)' town should, either by some ancient rule or tradition, give some direction what and how much every of the said maritime places ought to pay ; for if you shall tax and assess men according to their estate, then Liverpool, being poor, and now, as it were, a-begging, must pay very little ; and if you shall tax men according to their trading and profit by ship- ping, then Lancaster, as I verily think, hath little to do that way."f Therefore he arranged that uncommercial Lancaster should pay only SI., and poor Liverpool but 15/. out of the 408/. collected from the whole county. Nearly as much as both towns contributed was drawn from Chetham 's own pocket, * Edwards, Memoirs of Libraries (London, 1S59^, vol. i., p. G31. t Hiijbert, vol. iii., pp. 15'J, 100. VOL. I. U 290 Chetham' 8 Appointments, under the Parliamentarians, his expenses in the collection amounting to 22/. " I moved for allowance," he says, " but could get none.''* To the worthy merchant that was a real grievance. He was willing enough to give away money ; but he did not like to be robbed, and this refusal of his claim seemed to him to be robbery. So when, in August, 1G35, the order for a second levying of ship-money came down, he resolved to set himself right. In this instance the much larger sum of 3,500£. was required, and Chetham added 9GZ. to the amount, by way of making good the expenses he was put to on this as well as on the former occasion. But that was an exac- tion that the tender-hearted and upright members of King Charles's government could on no account tolerate. They refused to repay the money which Chetham had paid to his agents ; they also forbade his levying the amount for him- self. He was ordered to refund the 96Z. ; and after an angry correspondence, that lasted some years, he found himself compelled to do it.f That was in the spring of 1G40, the year in which the Long Parliament assembled and the civil war was virtually begun. Chetham, as we have already seen, was not disposed to have any more connection than he could help with either party in the strife. But his sympathies were with the Parlia- mentarians, and the Commonwealth leaders found him too influential and trustworthy a man to be left in the back- ground. In June, 1641, he was appointed High Collector of Subsidies within the county of Lancaster :| and in October, 1643, this laborious and thankless office gave place to another as troublesome, that of General Treasurer for the county. § Chetham petitioned to be excused — he was three- and-sixty at the time — ' on account of his many infirmities ;'|| * Edwards, vol. i., p. G28. t Ihid., vol. i., pp. 629, G30. An interesting letter from Chetham, show- ing how he effected this second levy, is printed by Hibisekt, vol. hi., pp. 2G0-2G2. t Hibbekt, vol. hi., p. 277. § Ibid., vol. iii., p. 1G8. |j Ibid., vol. iii., p. 1G6. as Collector of Subsidies and Treasurer for- Lancashire. 291 but the petition was not listened to, and lie was kept to the work for at least five years. " Whereas," ran an order of Sir Thomas Fairfax's, dated the 19th of January, 1644, " the army of the enemy arc very potent, cruel, and violent, and ever ready to assault and devour us and our neighbour- hood, without making any distinction of persons, unless, by God's assistance and our timely endeavour, there be some speedy prevention, which cannot be done by any ordinary means, without the raising and maintaining of extraordinary- forces, which, in these times of imminent danger, we are enforced to do ; therefore for the support and maintenance of the same forces, it is ordered that an assessment of 50(V. by the week be made and levied in the county of Lancaster, and that the moneys so levied be from time to time col- lected and paid monthly unto Humphrey Chetham, of Turton, Esquire, appointed Treasurer for that purpose, which Treasurer is to pay the same over immediately to the Treasurer of the Army."* Chetham did not find his task a light one. He had thought 498J. a large sum to be levied in his county as half a year's ship-money ; but here he was answerable for the collection of 500Z. a week. After a while the impost was greatly reduced ; but even then he had no little difficulty in getting together the money, and many were the begging letters and scolding letters sent to him from time to time.t There was * Hibbert, vol. iii., pp. 281, 282. t Ibid., vol. iii., pp. 283-294. " Sir " — runs one letter to him from the Deputy-Lieutenants, dated Nov. 20, 1G44, — " it appears to us that by two several ordinances of Parliament you are appointed to be Treasurer of certain moneys, to be by you issued by warrant under the hands of six Deputy- Lieutenants of the county, according to which there have been several warrants directed to you. . . . Now, forasmuch as we are informed that you refuse to execute the said warrants, or in any wise to intermeddle with the same, which may tend to the great loss and almost certain undoing of the poor men to whom the said moneys are due, we have thought fit hereby to require an account from you in writing of the reasons and grounds of such your denial, that so we may render an account to the Parliament, and may better know how to proceed in the premises." 292 Humphrey Chetham's Troubles under the Commonwealth. one sum of 200/., about which lie was specially troubled. On the 1 6th of November, ] 048, Colonel Duckingfield wrote to him from Chester, saying, " I am again directed to demand the 200?., and I do assure you I will ere long send a hundred horse to quarter in your county till it be paid to me. Neces- sity compels me hereto, because the garrisons of Liverpool and Lancaster are in extreme want of moneys, and 1 will not suffer them to starve whilst I have charge of them."* Alarmed at that blunt threat, Chetham at once wrote up to General Asheton and the Committee, sending his accounts, and showing that all the money he had received had long since been paid to the authorities, "and the rest, if it ever come in, will not discharge an order of 750Z. for the soldiers of our county, whereof I have paid part, and the rest, when I receive it, shall not stay in my hands."! The Parliamentary Commissioners were satisfied with the explanation ; but Duck- ingfield was not On the 29th of November he wrote again to 'his much respected friend, Mr. Humphrey Chetham, of Clayton.' " If you please," he then said, " within eight days to procure me the said 200?. I shall account it as a favour from you ; otherwise I will send four troops of horse into your county that I can very well spare."! But the mer- chant made another appeal to the General Committee ; and the refractory colonel appears to have been silenced. If, on this occasion, he escaped, Chetham suffered heavily enough in other ways through the commotions of the civil war. One of 'several notes of particulars for the general account of charges laid out for the wars,' is specially interesting, showing, as it does, that Chetham, though now an old man, living in days too troublous for much attention to commerce, still practised his merchant's calling. " Having lent Mr. Francis Mosely 700/.," we read, " and requiring the same of him again, he directed me to take up half of the said sum of some of my neighbour shopkeepers in Man- * Hibbebt, vol. iii.. p. 201. t Ibid., 291. ; Ibid., p. 203. His Charitable Disposition. 293 cbester, to give my bill of exchange for the same, to be paid by his partner at London, Mr. Robert Law, upon sight of the said bill ; and the other half of my money to be paid likewise in exchange a month after that. In pursuance of which directions, before I could effect it, the said Mr. Mosely was proved a delinquent, and the said money intended for me, with the rest that he had in cash, in cloth, his debts and book -debts, and all other his goods, by order of Parliament were sequestered and seized for the public use ; so as hereby doth appear there went to the Parliament, of my money, 1601 And were an account required of losses sustained by the enemy (my house being three times entered and kept for a certain time, until all my goods, both within my house and without, were either spoilt or quite carried away), I could give an account to a very great value."* Yet Humphrey Chetham was rich enough to spare some money to aid the noblest battle for civil liberty that has been fought in modern centuries. During his long and busy life — a bachelors life throughout — he had amassed con- siderable wealth ; and in his old age he set about disposing of it in a noble way. From the beginning he was an open- handed man, ever ready to give help both to his kindred and to strangers. But as he advanced in years one princely scheme of charity took shape in his mind. His will tells us that, in his lifetime, he had * taken up and maintained four- teen poor boys of the town of Manchester, six of the town of Salford, and two of the town of Droylsden, being two-and- twenty in all.'f An extant account-book in his handwriting shows that this began about October, 1G49, and shows also with what minute care he attended to his charge. Here we see entries without number about blue kersey, yellow baize, and linen cloth ; thread, buttons, and beeswax ; caps, girdles, and shoes ; to say nothing of books, desks, and other imple- ments of schooling.! About this time, moreover, we find * Ed\vaiu>.<, vol. i., pp. V>'.V2, 633. t Hibbekt, vol. iii., p. 187. I Ibid., vol. p. iii., 171. 2!>4 The Establishment of Ghetham College, Manchester. him in treaty for the purchase of the set of buildings, once helono-ino- to the Earls of Derby, that were afterwards con- verted into Chetham College, although, from the unsettled state of the times, the transaction was not completed till l(j()5, twelve years after his death.* In the meanwhile, he appears to have, at first, put the boys to board with his poorer friends, whom thus he helped as well : and when that arrangement was found inconvenient, suitable quarters were procured for them. Full of this project for a Manchester Blue-coat School, the worthy merchant made his will on the 16th December, 1651. After making ample bequests to his nephews and other kins- men, as well as to various friends and charitable institutions, he directed that the number of his poor scholars should be increased to forty, three more being taken from Droylsden, ten from Bolton, and five from Turton. A sum of 7,500/. was to be spent in founding and endowing a hospital for their maintenance and education, between the ages of six and fourteen, and then for putting them out as apprentices, unless they were otherwise provided for. If there was any surplus, it was to be invested and applied ' for the augmentation of the number of poor boys, or for the better maintenance and binding apprentice of the said forty poor boys.'t That was the beginning of the institution that now gives excellent training to. a hundred lads at a time.} Connected with it is * Edwards, vol. i., p. 63G. + Hibbert, vol. iii., pp. 183-21G. Mr. Edwai^ls has pointed out some inaccuracies in the printing of this document. + " The College," says Mr. Whatton, " stands upon the edge of a rock which overhangs the Irk, near the ix>iut of its conflux with the Irwell, and must at the period of its foundation have been most romantically situated. The lower apartments of the building, and all the adjoining offices, are appropriated to the use of the Hospital ; the upper rooms containing the Library and the apartments of the Librarian and Governor. On the right hand of the entrance into the house is a large and lofty kitchen, open to the roof; and on the left is the ancient hall or refectory, where the boys usually dine. The upper end of this spacious room is still furnished with the dais, or raised division of the hall, set apart, in the times of baronial ceremony and splendour, for the lord and his family; audit is still covered by it. Humphrey Chatham's Death. 20;") a library containing some twenty-five thousand printed volumes, and a respectable number of manuscripts. To- wards its construction Clictham left 1,000Z., with another sum of 1,000£. to be spent in books, in addition to all the proceeds of his otherwise unassigned property, plate, house- hold stuff, and the like. Besides all this, 2001. was ' to be bestowed by his executors in godly English books, such as Calvin's, Preston's, and Perkins's works, comments or an- notations upon the Bible, or other books proper to the edifi- cation of the common people, to be chained upon desks, or to be fixed to the pillars or in other convenient places, in the parishes of Manchester, Bolton,' and elsewhere.* We know very little of Humphrey Chetham's habits as a merchant, and nothing of his private life, save what may be inferred from the stray fragments of information that we have already noted, together with Fuller's statement, on the authority of one of his executors, that ' he was a diligent reader of the Scriptures, and of the works of sound divines ; a respecter of such ministers as he accounted truly godly, upright, sober, discreet, and sincere.'! But that is enough. He died on the 12th of October, 1C53, two months before the beginning of Cromwell's protectorate, and was buried in the Collegiate Church, now the Cathedral, of Manchester, whithei seventy-three years before he had been brought for baptisn.t attendait massy carved screen. But the most perfect and most charac- teristic remains of the original building are the cloisters, which surround a small court, and give an air of monastic antiquity to the whole.'' — Hibbert, vol. Li., p. 180. * Edwards, vol. i., p. G35. f Fuller, Worthies, p. 121. X Hibbert, vol. iii., p. 178. 296 CHAPTER XII. ENGLISH COMMERCE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE SEVENTEKNTH TO THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. English commerce, notably dependent on the character and the will of kings and potentates during the early stages of its history, and greatly influenced thereby even in the times of the later Plantagenets and the Tudors, had virtually broken through all bondage of that sort by the middle of the seventeenth century. Some hindrance came, of course, to internal trade through the turmoil of civil war under Charles the First ; just as, in later as well as earlier periods, every foreign warfare that has interfered with the passing to and fro of merchant ships has been more or less prejudcial to our commerce with other nations. But for the last two hundred years, and more, neither the most oppressive legis- lative measures, nor the worst attempts at lawless rule, have had any appreciable effects on the development of English trade : the private whims and meddlesome inclinations of monarchs and their counsellors have had no effect at all. It was during the miserable twelve years following the pre- paration of the Petition of Rights and the assembling of the Long Parliament, the years during which Eliot died for his steadfast working in the cause of freedom, and Hampden was tried for his refusal to pay the illegal ship-money, that Lewis Roberts wrote The Mcrcliaats Map of Commerce, showing that English trade was then in a more prosperous condition than ever it had been before. Trade under Charles I. : the East India Company. 297 This work gives us much interesting information about the great traffic of England in the reign of Charles the First. This traffic was still, as it was to be for some time yet, con- ducted chiefly by the trading companies, which had begun to acquire power two or three generations before, in succession to the great guilds of the middle ages. The East India Company, in Roberts's opinion, was the most important machinery of English commerce at that time. To Persia, India, and Arabia, it sent numbers of ships every year, loaded with European goods, to bring back * pepper, cloves, maces, nutmegs, cottons, rice, calicoes of sundry sorts, bezoar stones, aloes, borax, calamus, cassia, mirabolons, myrrh, opium, rhubarb, cinnamon, sanders, spikenard, musk, civet, tamarinds ; precious stones of all sorts, as diamonds, pearls, carbuncles, emeralds, jacinths, sapphires, spinals, turquoises, topazes ; indigo, and silk, raw and wrought into sundry fabrics, benzoin, camphor, sandal-wood, and infinite other commodities. And, although in India and these parts, their trade equalleth neither the Portuguese nor the Dutch, yet in candid, fair, and merchant-like dealing, these Pagans, Mahometans, and Gentiles hold them in esteem far before them, and they deservedly have the epithet of far more current and square dealers.'* Next to the East India Company, at this time, was the Turkey or Levant Company, greatly benefited by the wisdom and energy of Thomas Mun, the author of a clever treatise on the foreign trade of England,f of whose private life nearly all we know is contained in his son's testimony, that ' he was in his time famous amongst merchants, and well known to most men of business for his general experience of affairs and notable insight into trade -, neither was he less observed for his integrity to his prince and zeal to the com- * Lewies IioBEKTs, The Merchants' Map of Commerce (London, 1700). t Euglaiid's Treasure by Forraign Trade ; or, the Balance of our Forraign Trade is the Rule of < air Treasure; in M'Cilloch's Select Collection of Early English Tracts on Commerce (London, 1S5G), pp. 115-201). 298 The Turkey Company and other Trading Associations. monwealth.'* Mun speaks of the Levant trade as among the most extensive and remunerative open to London mer- chants in 1G21. And of the Turkey Company, in 1638, Lewis Roberts writes : ' Not yearly but monthl} 7 , 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 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 some- times the gems of India, the drugs of Egypt and Arabia, the muscatels of Candia, and the currants and oils of Zante, Cephalonia, and Morea.'f Then there were other associations, in addition to a crowd of independent merchants, zealously promoting the interests of English commerce. The Company of Merchant Adven- turers, trading chiefly with Hamburg, Rotterdam, and the other great cities of the Netherlands, made monthly ship- ments of cloth and other English commodities, and brought back an equivalent in miscellaneous articles, from lawn and tapestry to soap and crockery. The Eastland and Muscovy Companies also had cloth for their staple export, making their return cargoes of 'ashes, clapboard, copper, deals, firs, rich furs, masts, pipe-staves, rye, timber, wainscot, wheat, fustians, iron, latten, linen, quicksilver, flax, hemp, steel, caviare, cordage, hides, honey, tar, sturgeons' roe, tallow, pitch, wax, resin, and sundry others.' ' The merchants of England trading into Italy,' says Roberts in continuation of his summary, ' are not observed to have any joint-stock or company ;' but private enterprise fared quite as well as any combined effort could have done in supplying the Italian market with all sorts of goods, and obtaining thence a large supply of velvets, satins, damasks, and the like ; so that ' here * England's Treasure by Forraign Trade, p. 117. f Robekts, Merchants' Map of Commerce. G-rowth of North American and West Indian Trade. 299 likewise all Other foreign nations willingly give place to the English, as the prime and principal merchants that either abide amongst them or negotiate with them.' Besides all this there was a respectable trade with the north and west coasts of Africa. But of this Roberts gives us no precise account. ' Neither,' he says in conclusion, ' need I nominate the home-land commerce of this kingdom to Scotland and Ireland ; neither go about to particularise the large traffic of this island to their late plantations of Newfoundland, Ber- mudas, Virginia, Barbadoes, and New England, and to other places which rightly challenge an interest in the present trade and traffic of this island.'* Yet that was a branch of trade and traffic well worth par- ticularising. Already a great impetus to commerce had come from the settling of various colonies in North America and the West Indies since the beginning of the century. Of these Virginia was the oldest. All Sir Walter Raleigh's attempts at the colonization of the land granted to him by Queen Elizabeth having failed, it was assigned by James the First, in April, 1606, to two companies of 'knights, gentle- men and merchants,' the one belonging to London, the other to Bristol and the west of England,! to be by them put to profitable use after some years of quarrelling and misfortune. 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 ;'} and in 1622 it was said that ' many cities of great renown in the West Indies, established by the Spaniards, more than sixty years, were not to be com- pared to those of Virginia.'§ In that year James the First desired these colonists to breed silkworms and set up silk- works, silk being ' a rich and solid commodity, preferable to tobacco ;'|| and in 1631 Charles the First issued orders that * Roberts. t Sain.sbirv, Calendar of State Tapers, Colonial Series. (London, 18G0), vol. i., ji. 5. X Ibid., p. 17. § Ibid., p. 3S. || Ibid., p. 31. ,300 Rise of the North American Colonies , they were to send home * some better fruit than tobacco and smoke,' and so to avoid 'the speedy ruin likely to bcfal the colonies, and the danger to the bodies and manners of the English people, through the excessive growth of tobacco.'* Other articles were exported by the Virginians, almost from the first, wheat and timber, saltpetre and potash in especial ; but, until the introduction of cotton, tobacco was, in spite of all prohibitions, the staple product of the colony. In 1628 it was estimated that by the 3,000 inhabitants at least 412,500 pounds were produced each year ; every master of a family raising 200 pounds, and every servant 125 pounds. f More than a century later, in 1740, it was found that at least two hundred British ships were constantly engaged in the collection of tobacco in Virginia and Maryland, about 18,000,000 pounds being the annual total of their cargoes.! For a long time tobacco served as money in Virginia. By the old laws, absence from church was punished by a fine of a pound of tobacco, and slander of a clergyman was assessed at 800 pounds ; no innkeeper might charge more than 10 pounds for a dinner, or more than 8 pounds for a gallon of beer.§ Maryland, first planted by Lord Baltimore, in 1032, was, after Virginia, the great tobacco-growing colony. Like Virginia, though in greater proportion, it also yielded pitch, tar, furs, deer-skins, and walnut-wood, with some quantities of flax, wool, drugs, and iron. The entire income to England from both the settlements was estimated, in 1731, at 180,1)00 J. a-year.|| Yet more remunerative were the New England colonies, begun in 1020, when the patent was issued which led to the establishment of New Plymouth by the Pilgrim Fathers in 1621. Massachusetts Bay received its first settlers in 1029. New Haven was colonized in 1635, and Connecticut in * Sainsbury, p. 125. f Ibid., p. 89. X Anderson, Origin of Commerce (London, 1801), vol. iii., p. 22G. § Cower, I'tqndur History of America (London, 1S05), p. 215. II Anderson', vol. iii., p. 170. Virginia, Maryland, and Neiv England. 301 1636. These four were associated in 1643 as the United Colonics of New England, to which New Hampshire, Maine, and Rhode Island were afterwards annexed. " 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, neighbours, and friends, especially of the poor, are accounted the greatest burdens, which, if things were right, would be the highest earthly blessings. Hence it comes to pa-ss that all arts and trades are carried on in that deceitful manner and unrighteous course, as it is almost impossible for a good upright man to maintain his charge and live comfortably in any of them."* Therefore they carried their arts and trades to the New World ; and there, though failing to practise them with entire freedom from the ' deceitful manner and unrighteous course ' of less arrogant people, succeeded in establishing a very influential centre of civilization and com- merce. 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 the Second, and have continued famous traders ever since. In 1715, it was said by one of them ' one fleet only from New England brought home 6,000 barrels of pitch, tar, and turpentine to London. 'f And in 1731 there were found to be, in Massa- chusetts alone, ' at least one hundred and twenty thousand white inhabitants, employing 40,000 tons of shipping in their foreign and coasting trades, and above three hundred sail of ships and sloops trading to Europe.' Their fisheries pro- duced annually 230,000 quintals of fish, which, being exported to Portugal, Spain, and the Mediterranean, yielded 138,000Z. ' And as their salt, rum, and molasses, as also their pro- * General Considerations for Planting New England (1G49), cited by Cooi'En. ]i. 232. t Andlksux, v<>1. iii., p. GS. 302 Rise of the North American Colonies ; visions and utensils,' it was added, ' are purchased with the refuse fish which is not fit for the European market, and with the oil made from the fish, the said sum may be said to be all gained out of the sea. By this fishery and their other commerce they are said to employ at least six thousand seamen ; and adding to the above sum the freight and com- mission, all earned by our own people, the whole will be 172,500/., all remitted to Great Britain. There is, more- over, their whale fishery, employing about 1,300 tons of shipping. To Europe, also, and to the West Indies, they send great quantities of lumber of all sorts and of provisions, the produce whereof is likewise remitted to England. They also trade to the Bay of Honduras for logwood ; and as they build shipping very cheap, they can afford to sell their timber to our sugar colonies at a lower rate than any other people can. From New England also we have the largest masts in the world for our Royal Navy. From thence also, as from our other continent-colonies, we receive all the gold and silver that they can spare, none of which ever returns to them ; for we give them in exchange all manner of wearing apparel, woollen, brass, iron, and linen manufactures, East India goods, and the like ; in all, to the value of 400,000/. yearly.'* Pennsylvania and New York, the former not founded till the year 1681, and the latter only recovered from Dutch usurpation of sixty years' standing in 1GG7, were even more prosperous than the New England colonies. ' The product of Pennsylvania for exportation,' says the writer of ] 731, ' is wheat, flour, biscuit, barrelled beef and pork, bacon, hams, butter, cheese, cider, apples, soap, wax, candles, starch, hair-powder, tanned leather, beeswax, strong beer, linseed oil, strong waters, deer-skins and other peltry, hemp, some little tobacco, timber for houses, masts and other ship timber, and drugs of various sorts. The Pennsylvanians build about 2,000 tons of shipping yearly for sale, over and above * Anderson, vol. iii., p. 172. Pennsylvania and New York. The West Indies. 303 what they employ in their own trade, which may be about 6,000 tons more. They send great quantities of corn to Portugal and Spain, frequently selling the ship as well as cargo ; and the produce is then sent to England, where it is laid out in goods and sent home to Pennsylvania. They receive no less than from 4,000 to 0,000 pistoles from the Dutch isle of Curacoa alone, for provisions and liquors : and they trade to Surinam in the like manner, and to the French parts of Hispaniola, as well as to the other French sugar islands, from whence they bring back molasses and also some money. All the money they can get from all parts, as also sugar, rice, tar, pitch, etc., is brought to England, to pay for the manufactures they carry home from us ; which has not for many years past been less than 150,000^ per annum. New York and the two Jerseys have the same commodities as Pennsylvania has for exportation, except that they do not build so many ships. New York also has lately found in her bowels the richest copper-mine that perhaps was ever heard of, great quantities of which have been lately brought to England. This and the iron-mines of Virginia, Maryland, and Pennsylvania, might be wrought to supply Great Britain and Ireland with all we want of those metals ; which, too, would be paid for with our own manufactures, instead of paying 3,000Z. of our cash for those metals to Sweden. New York, it is true, sends fewer ships to England than some other colonies, but those they do send are richer, as dealing more in furs and skins with the Indians, and they are at least of equal advantage to us with Pennsylvania, both as to the money they send us and the manufactures they take of us.'* The Carolinas and the younger colony of Georgia were also busy haunts of commerce. More important, however, were the English settlements in the West Indian islands. Barbadoes, the great sugar colony, gave employment in 1731 to a thousand English seamen and 10,000 tons of English * Anderson, vol. iii., pp. 171, 172. 304 The North American and West Indian Colonies, shipping* From Jamaica, in the same year, 10,000 tons of sugar were also sent to England, in addition to 2,000 tons of cotton, ginger, pimento, rum, mahogany, logwood, and indigo, finding employment for three hundred sail of ships, and yielding to England, in duties alone, nearly 100,000/. a-year.f Upwards of 500,000/.'s worth of goods were im- ported thence into England in 1732, the exports for the same period being hardly 150,OOOZ.| T.n 1731 it was reported Great Britain gained a million sterling: from her American and AY est Indian colonies, besides thus having employment for at least eighteen thou- sand seamen and fishermen. § Seventy years before that Bar- badoes was famous, though not more so than several of the other settlements, ' 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 commodities, whereby seamen are bred and custom increased, our commodities vended, and many thousands employed therein.' || It was not only seamen and seafaring men who profited by this vast increase of commerce. In every branch of English trade employment was found for a great many more labourers than had ever been known before. The ports and marts famous in earlier centuries, like London and Bristol, New- castle and Hull, rapidly advanced in size and wealth ; and others, like Liverpool and Glasgow, which, if they had been founded long before, had hitherto been small and insigni- ficant, now quickly rose into importance, and became centres of fresh industry. It was the same with the inland manu- facturing towns and districts, such as Manchester and Leeds, Birmingham and Norwich ; and even the strictly agricul- tural parts of England reaped their just share of the general prosperity. During the twenty years previous to 1688 * Anderson, vol. iii., p. 179. t Ibid., p. 203. : Ibid.,pY>. 150, 109. § Ibid.,?. 173. || Craik. vol. ii., ji. 04. and their Service to English Commerce. 30") it was averred ' there were apparently more improvements made in land than had been known in fifty years before, by enclosing, manuring, taking in of waste ground, and melio- rating what was poor and barren ;' and these improvements affected the happiness of all classes of the community. ' As to the common people,' says the same authority, ' there is no country in the world where the inferior rank of men arc better clothed and fed, and more at their ease than in this kingdom, nor, consequently, where they propagate faster. As to buildings, not only many stately edifices, both public and private, have been erected, but farmhouses have been kept up, and of smaller tenements, from 1666 to 1688, there have been about 70,000 new foundations laid.'* Forty years later, in 1 628, we find Defoe asserting that, * as the trading, middling-sort of people in England are rich, 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/ he continues, ' 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, such as beef, mutton, bacon, etc., 'tis to a fault, nay, 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 furnished ; at least, stuffed well with useful and necessary household goods. Even those we call poor people, journey- men, working, and pains-taking people do thus : they lie warm, live in plenty, work hard, and need know no want. 'Tis by these that all the wheels of trade are set on foot ; 'tis by the largeness of their gettings that they are supported, and by the largeness of their number the whole country is supported.'! * Davenant, Discourses on the Public Revenues and on Trade, cited by Ciiaik. vol. ii., pp. ST, SS. t Daniel Dekoe, A Plan of the English Commerce, partly reprinted in MCueloch's Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Commerce (London, lSZ'J), pp. 13S, 139. VOL. I. X 300 English Manufactures : Woollen and Silk Goods. Woollen manufacture was still, as it had been during many previous centuries, the great staple of domestic trade and a principal item of commerce with other countries. Of the total exports of England in 1699, valued at 6,7S8,1GG7., the woollen goods alone were said to be worth 2,932,292/., while nearly twice as much was retained for home consumption ;*' and in 1739 it was computed that upwards of fifteen hundred thousand people in Great Britain were thus employed.! The cotton trade was, till the end of the eighteenth century, very insignificant, and the linen trade was still chiefiy confined to Ireland ; but all through that century there was steady and speedy increase in the manufacture of silk. As early as 1455 we find mention of ' a mystery and trade of silk and thread throwers,' composed of women in London, J and doubtless Ion"- before that there was some sort of silk manu- facture practised in England ; but throughout the middle ages nearly all the commodities of this kind were brought over by merchants from Lombardy and Venice ; and after the middle of the* sixteenth century the English market was chiefly supplied from the manufactories of France. In Charles the First's reign great efforts were made to increase the business at home ; and, from the accession of Charles the Second, it became an important branch of English trade. In 1713 it was reported to be twenty times as extensive as it had been in 1664. ' All sorts cf black and coloured silks,' it was said, ' are now made here as good as in France ; and black silk for hoods and scarfs, not made here above twenty-five years ago, which before were imported from France, have for several years past amounted annually to above 300,000?.'§ The chief cause of that sudden development was the revo- cation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685, by which nearly half a million Frenchmen, mostly of the working classes, were forced to seek safety in foreign lands. Great numbers of * Anderson, vol. ii., p. G45. J ]Iri<l., vol. i., p. 477. f IbitL, vol. iii., p. 22:;. § Ibhl, vol. iii., p. 5G. French Silk Weavers in England and their Influence. 30 OA 7 them went to Prussia, there to give an immense impetus to its yet undeveloped trade. Many planted themselves in Holland and Switzerland. About fifty thousand, in spite of opposition, settled in England, ' where, instead of doing us hurt,' it was soon discovered, ' they have proved a great and manifest blessing, by improving some of our ancient arts and manufactures, and likewise by introducing various new ones. To them England owes the improvement of several of its manufactures of slight woollen stuffs of silk, linen, paper, glass, and hats. The silks called a-la-modes and lustrings were entirely owing to them ; also brocades, satins, black, and coloured mantuas, black Padua silks, ducapes, watered tabbies, and black velvets ; also watches, cutlery-ware, clocks, jacks, locks, surgeons' instruments, hardwares, toys, and the like.'* In London, great numbers of French workmen found homes for themselves in Soho and Saint Giles's, and the dis- trict of Spitalfields was almost entirely peopled by French silk weavers. The foreigners do not seem to have gone far into the provinces; but their influence spread in all direc- tions. In Derby, especially, besides its old trade in wool, there was a newly established silk factory. The marvel of the day was a great silk-throwing machine, set up on the Derwent by a Mr. Lombe, to whose brother, Sir Thomas Lombe, a patent for it was granted by George the First in 1719. * This amazingly grand machine,' according to contemporary testimony, * contains 26,586 wheels and 97,746 movements, which work 73,726 yards of organzine silk thread every time the water wheel goes round, being thrice in one minute, and 318,504,960 yards in one day and night One water-wheel gives motion to all the other move- ments, of which any one may be stopped separately, without obstructing the rest. One fire-engine conveys warm air to every individual part of this vast machine, containing in all its buildings half a quarter of a mile in length. The model * Andeksox, vol. ii., p. 5C>'J. 308 Lombe s Silk Factory at Derby. of it is said to have been taken by John Lorn be from the original in Piedmont, under the disguise of a common work- man, he having secretly drawn its plan on paper and then made his escape to England.'* * Anderson, vol. ii., p. 5C.9. An interesting memoir of John Lombe is given in Knight's Old England, vol. ii., p. 323. He went to Leghorn in 1715. " One of his first movements was to go as a visitor to see the silk- works ; for tliey were occasionally shown under very rigid limitations, such as that they would be seen only when in motion — the multiplicity and rapidity of the machinery making it impossible then to comprehend them — and the spectator was also hurried very rapidly through the place. At first young Lombe thought he could have accomplished liis object in this way, by going again and again under different disguises. One time ho was a lady — another a priest. He was as generous too with his money as he could 1x3 without exciting suspicion. But it was all in vain. He could make nothing of the, hurried glimpses he thus obtained ; and every effort to sec the machinery put in motion, or at rest, failed. He now tried another course. He began to associate with the clergy, and being a well-educated man and of liberal tastes, he succeeded in ingratiating himself with the priest who acted as confessor to the proprietor of the works. And there can be no doubt of the fnct that this priest's assistance was obtained by Lombe. Neither do we think there ran be any doubt of the means by which that assistance was won. Hardly any bribe coidd be too great that enabled the young adventurer to succeed in his object. A plan was now designed and put into execution for young Lombc's admission into the works. He disguised himself as a poor youth out of employ, and went to the directors with a recommendation from the priest, praising his honesty and diligence, and remarking that he had been inured to greater hardships than might be supposed from his appearance. Lombe was engaged as a boy to attend a spinning-engine called a filatoe. He had now evidence of the sufficiency of his disguise, and was accommodated with a slccping-placc in the mill. In a word, his success was, as it were, at once secured. But even then he had an arduous and most hazardous task to perform. After he had done his day's work, the secret work of the night had to begin ; and if discovered in that employment ! — he must often have shuddered at the possibility. Even the few appliances he required were an additional source of danger. It appears that there was a hole under the stairs where he slept, and there he hid his dark-lantern, tinder-box, candles, and mathematical instruments. And now the work went rapidly on. Drawing after drawing was made from different parts of the machinery, and handed over to the priest who called occasionally to inquire how the poor boy got on. The priest handed the drawings over to the agents of tin; Messrs. Lombe, who transmitted them to England piecemeal in bales of silk. And thus at last every portion of the machinery was accurately drawn, and the secret— a secret no longer. Lombe stayed at the mill until a ship was ready to place the suspected out of reach. No sooner was he Increase, of Mechanical Appliances in England. 309 So highly was this silk-machine thought of that, in 1732, when Sir Thomas Lombe's patent had run out, a sum of 14,000/. was voted to him by Parliament, 'as a consideration for the eminent services he had done, in discovering, intro- ducing, and bringing to full perfection, at his own expense, a work so useful and beneficial to this kingdom.' Though not really the discoverer of this machine, (Sir Thomas had well earned the reward assigned to him. His enterprise, and the enterprise of others like hiin, had so promoted the silk- trade of England that it soon came to be thought the best in Europe. ' In Italy itself/ according to the report of a traveller in 1730, ' the silks of English manufacture are most esteemed, and bear a greater price than those of Italy ; so that, at Naples, when a tradesman would highly recommend his silk stockings, he protests they are right English.' In advancement of all other trades and trading occupations, from coal-mining and iron-smelting to glass-blowing and paper-making, machinery was also being successfully employed, though only in rude anticipation of the wonderful develop- ment of mechanical appliances of a later period of which we shall see something hereafter. In the history of commercial legislation, and of State inter- ference with the progress of commerce, during the hundred years subsequent to the Commonwealth era, there is not very much worth noting. In 1651 the Rump Parliament promul- gated an important Navigation Act, which forbade the ship- ment of British or colonial goods in any but English vessels with Englishmen for at least three-fourths of their mariners. This was, as it was meant to be, a great blow to Holland, on board than suspicion was aroused and an Italian brig despatcbed in pursuit, but Lombe was not captured, and returned safely to England. He died at tbe age of twenty-nine; and there is a tragical story told of his death which is likely enough to be true. It is said that the Italians, when they heard of the whole affair, sent over a female to England to poison him. Lombe had brought over with him two Italians who were accustomed to the manufacture he bud risked so much fur. The woman succeeded, through the means of one of them, in administering a deadly poison." ?Aii Commercial Legislation in the Seventeenth Century. whose ships and sailors had hitherto been largely employed In English merchants. It was even made an excuse for the Dutch wars that began in the following year ; while the English merchants themselves at first loudly complained of it, on the ground that they had not shipping of their own enough to meet their needs, and that thus a great deal of business was lost to the country.* It was re-enacted, however, in 1G60, immediately after the accession of Charles the Second, and had, at any rate, some share in promoting the increase of our merchant shipping. That law, aimed against the Dutch, was followed by others designed to cripple the power of France. 'The immense importation into England of French wares of various kinds,' said one of the apologists of these measures, * gave just um- brage to all wise people, as occasioning a vast annual loss in point of the general balance of England's trade ; some say to at least one million sterling, others to considerably more, because, whilst we were wantonly and without measure im- porting and using the produce and manufactures of France, the wiser French ministry were from time to time laying heavier duties upon the English manufactures and produce. Hereby the English foreign trade in general languished, rents fell, and all ranks began sensibly to feel its bad effects.'! Under that impression an Act was passed in 1678, declaring the importation and sale of French goods in England to be ' a common nuisance to this kingdom in general, and to all his Majesty's subjects thereof,' and ordering that henceforth no French wine, vinegar, brandy, linen, cloth, silks, salt, or other produce or manufacture should be admitted into any British port or dependency 4 It was a law too preposterous to have much effect; but it remained in force till 1GS5, when James the Second's accession brought the governments of the two countries into greater friendship than had existed during the previous reign. Its reversal in that year led to a sudden * Anderson, vol. ii., pp. 4] 5, 41G. f Ibid., vol. ii., p. 5 IS. X Ibid., vol. ii., p. 547. Restrictions upon Trade with France. 311 increase of trade. In 1G8G England sent to France 515,228/. 's worth of goods, 409,563/. from London and 105.GG5/. from the outposts, and brought thence goods worth 1,284,419?., 569, 12G/. to London, and 715,293/. to other parts.* The excess of exports over imports was very alarming to the mis- taken economists who imagined that England could only prosper by receiving more than it sent out. 'This were a loss,' it was urged, ' sufficient, if annually repeated, to ruin this kingdom in a very few years.'f Therefore, with the Revolution, was revived the effort to cripple trade with France, and so to increase English dealings with other countries. The south of Europe offered greater seeming advantage of this sort than any other part of Europe, and consequently the statesman and political economists of William the Third's reign and the reigns that followed were especially eager in forcing a trade therewith. The famous Methuen Treaty of 1703, was the greatest development of this policy. It secured the introduction of British wools into Portugal, and by admitting the wines of Oporto and Xeres into England at a much lower duty than was charged on * Craik, vol. ii., p. 179 ; whence these details are extracted. ' Among the imports from France arc the following items : — 229 cwt. of unbound books, valued at 20s. per cwt. ; 37 small gross of bracelets or necklaces of glass, valued at 44Z. 8s. ; 3,87G fleams to let blood, at Id. each ; 102 dozen fans for women, at 40s per dozen; 1,487 cases of glass for windows, at 30s. per case; 20 reams of blue paper, at 10s. per ream; 20 of cap paper, at 7s. Gd. j)er ream; 77,330 of copy-paper, at 5s. per ream; 1,655 reams of royal and larger paper, at 40s. per ream; besides 11.G17 reams (probably of copy-paper) into the outports, at f)s. per ream ; 70 tuns of Caen stones, at 15s. per ton ; 1,18S ells of tajK-'stry with caddas, at 8s. per ell ; 1G2 ells of tapestry with silk, at 13s. id. per ell; 1G,G1S tuns of wine, at 17/. 10s. per tun; 400 mill-stones, at 10/. each; 302 lbs. of coral, at 3s. id. per lb. ; 4.2GG lbs. of garden seeds, at Sd. per lb. ; 2G8 gallons of orange-flower water, at 5s. per gallon ; and 400 lbs. of rose leaves, at Is. per lb. Among the exports to France are: — 1,075 dozens of old shoes, at 10s. per dozen ; 3 pairs of virginals, at 57. per pair ; 49 cwt. of printed books and maps, at 20s. per cwt. ; 3 pictures, at 40s. each ; 4 'J barrels of salmon, at 4/. per barrel; 11 horses at 10/. each ; 50 cats, valued altogether at 7s. G<i, ; 141 dozen dogs, at G/. per dozen ; and 5G1 lbs. of tea, at 10s. ]>er lb.' f The British Merchant, cited by CliAIK, vol. ii., p. 179. 312 The Advantages of Trade other foreign liquors, created a revolution in English taste for wines. It crippled, during many subsequent years, our com- mercial dealings with other countries, and set an example of pernicious legislation in matters of trade that did not cease its mischief for a hundred years to come. Yet English trade made steady progress, spite of all these hindrances ; and, as it prospered, men were gradually forced to shake off their mistaken notions about restrictions and arbi- trary interferences of all sorts, and to accept the teachings of experience in- favour of that absolute independence of com- merce which we have learned to call free-trade. Addison has summed up the good effects of commerce as apparent to the dullest in this day : — " If we consider our own country in its natural prospect," he wrote in 1711, " 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 assistances of art, can make no further ad- vances 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 naturalized in our English gardens ; and that they would all degenerate and fall away into the taste of our own 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 improved the whole face of nature anions us. Our ships arc laden with the harvest of every climate ; our tables are stored with spices and oils and wines ; our rooms are filled with pyramids of china and adorned with workmanship of Japan ; our morning's draught comes to us from the remotest corners of the earth ; wc repair our bodies by the drugs of America, and repose ourselves under Indian canopies. The vineyards of France are our gardens, the described by Addison and Defoe. 313 Spice I stands our hotbeds: the Persians are our weavers and the Chinese our potters. Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare necessaries of life ; but traffic gives us a great variety of what is useful, and at the same time supplies us with everything that is convenient and ornamental. For these reasons there are not more useful members in a com- monwealth than merchants. They knit mankind together in a mutual intercourse of good offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work for the poor, add wealth to the rich and magnificence to the great. Our English merchant converts the tin of his own country into gold, and exchanges his wool for rubies. The Mahometans are clothed in our British manufacture, 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 person 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 enlarging 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 themselves."* To that extract must be added some sentences from a greater journalist and sounder observer of the world than Addison: — "Are we," said Defoe, in 1728, u a rich, a po- pulous, a powerful nation, and in some respects the greatest in all those particulars in the world, and do we not boast of being so ? 'Tis evident it was all derived from trade. Our * The SpwUdor, No. GO. 19th May, 1711. 314 The Advantages of Trade. 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 merchandize,' that is, with our trade. If usefulness gives an addition to the character, either of men or of things, as with- out 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 uni- versal mechanism, are they not everywhere depending upon it for their most necessary supplies ? If they do not all sell, they are all forced to buy, and so are a kind of traders them- selves ; at least they recognize the usefulness of commerce, as what they are not able to live comfortably without. Trade encourages manufacture, prompts invention, employs people, increases labour, and pays wages. As the people are em- ployed they are paid, and by that pay are fed, clothed, kept in heart, and kept together. As the consumption of pro- visions increase, more lands are cultivated, waste-grounds are enclosed, woods are grubbed, forests and common lands are tilled and improved. 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 im- provement 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."* * A Plan of the English Commerce, reprinted in pail in M'Cllloch's Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Tracts on Commerce (London, 1859), pp. 107, 112, 113. 315 CHAPTER XIII. DUDLEY NORTH AND JOSIAH CHILD OF LONDON. [1G30— 1G99.] A new class of merchant princes appeared in London with the growth in power and wealth of the great trading societies, of which the East India and the Turkey or Levant Com- panies were the most influential and important. First in order of time, perhaps, was Sir Thomas Smythe, son of another Sir Thomas Smythe, Farmer of Customs under Queen Elizabeth, who, besides inheriting his father's profit- able office, took the lead in nearly every great commercial enterprise of James the First's reign. In 1G00 he was chosen Governor of the East India Company on the procurement of its first patent from Elizabeth,* and he was its real chief- tain from that time until his death in 1G25. It was his zeal and intelligence, to a great extent, that helped it through its early troubles and started it in a prosperous existence. In princely way we find him, in 1G09, when the Company, on electing him its Governor for the fifth time, voted him a present of 500?., for his pains in its service, refusing to accept office unless 250?. were taken back. ' The residue,' it was said, ' his worship kindly consented to take.' | In princely way, too, we find him, in 1(314, sending a portrait * iSainsiuky, Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, East Indies 'London, 1SG2), vol. L, pp. 109, 117. t Ihid., p. 1S7. 310 Sir Thomas Smytlie of London. of himself, as a mark of favour, to the Great Mogul. "I presented the Mogul with your worship's picture," wrote William Edwards, the Company's agent, from A j mere, in March, 1615, "which he esteemed so well for the workman- ship, that the day after he sent for all his painters, in public, to see the same, who did admire and confessed that none of them could anything near imitate the same, which makes him prize it above all the rest, and esteem it for a jewel." * While the opponents of the Company were busy in their attempts to damage it, Sir Thomas Smythe had to excuse himself from regular attendance at the Directors' Courts, on the ground that he had to be in Parliament every day, so as to answer any imputations that might be cast on the Com- pany ; f but he was not often slack in the performance of his duties. It seems that he honestly strove to make the Company a good and helpful institution to the people with whom it dealt. Thus, in February, 1G14, he assembled all its factors then in London, and about to proceed to the East, and exhorted them conscientiously to discharge their trusts. He besought them to avoid the example of some tyrannical and self-seeking factors 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." lie be££ed them to abstain from all frauds upon the natives, or anything that could damage the Com- pany " by making the people hate and detest us before we be settled amongst them," and assured them of the Com- pany'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." % It was chiefly at Smythe's instigation that Sir Thomas Roe was sent as ambassador, from the Crown and the Company, to the Great Mogul, " he being a gentleman of pregnant understanding, well spoken, learned, industrious, of comely * fcjAixsiu-KY, p. 3G0. t Ibid-, p. 290. ; lb'ul, p. 270. Henry Gar way oj London. 317 personage, and one of whom there were great hopes that he might work much good for the Company." * The hopes were well grounded, and a share of the merit of this em- bassage must be assigned to Sir Thomas Smythc. He also, while serving his country as well as he was able, succeeded in advancing his own interests. In 1G19, a great house at Deptford, in which he had resided, was burnt down ; but in the same year his house in London was found large enough to lodge and entertain in sumptuous style a French Am- bassador with a hundred and twenty persons in his train, t At the time of his death he was reputed the richest and shrewdest merchant in England, the ablest champion of the trading interests, and the chief adviser of the Crown on all commercial matters. Contemporary with Sir Thomas Smythe and his successor as chief farmer of the Customs, was Sir William Ganvay, who died in 1G25, at the age of eighty- eight. He had seventeen children, most of whom grew to manhood and womanhood, and wealth enough to enrich them all. The oldest and most famous was Henry, a great merchant, a good Protestant, and an experienced traveller. " I have been," he said, " in all parts of Christendom, and have con- versed with Christians in Turkey : and in all the reformed churches there is not anything more reverenced than our English liturgy, not our Royal Exchange, nor the name of Queen Elizabeth." lie passed many years, as a factor of the Levant Company, in Turkey ; and about 1609, when he was forty years of age, he settled in London as a Turkey merchant. He was governor of the Levant Company through a great part of the reign of Charles the First ; and through all the time of disaffection he was a leading champion of Charles's cause in the city of London. In 1040, as Lord Mayor, he raised a company of troops and sent them to * Sainsiu-ry, p. 318. t Maclkax, Letters of Gcoroc Lord Curciv to Sir Thomas Roc (Loudon, 9G(I ;> i>. -17. 318 Henry Gar way of London. York, in opposition to the wishes of the corporation. He joined the citizens, however, in protesting against the illegal modes adopted for raising money by the King and his advisers. When, in January, 1G 11, Charles determined to retire from London, Garway was one of the most earnest in entreating him, for his own honour and the safety of the kingdom, to remain at his post. " Sir, I shall never see you again," he . exclaimed, when he found his persuasions were useless : and so it happened. A year later, in January, 1642, Garway made the last speech in Charles's favour that was heard for many years within the walls of Guildhall. He besought the citizens to defend the King, and to grant no supplies to the wicked men who were seeking his overthrow. The worth of the speaker and the eloquence of his speech so told upon the audience that the friends of liberty were full of fears 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 resolution was concerning assisting the Parliament with money ; but the cry was so great, ' No money ! no money !' 'Peace ! peace !' that he could not be heard." But the speech was soon forgotten and the cause of freedom pre- vailed, to the necessary injury of all who, however honestly, stood in its way. " Garway was afterwards tossed, as long as he lived," said one of his friends, " from prison to prison, and his estate conveyed from one rebel to another — he dying of a grievous fit of stone." Of the many thriving merchants to be found in London, as soon as order was restored, perhaps the most notable were Sir Josiah Child and Sir Dudley North. Dudley North was a younger brother of the famous Francis North, Baron Guilford, and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under the two last Stuarts, and descendant of Roger North, an old merchant of some repute in the reign * Heywood, Norn's ropers, pp. vi.-ix. IIIM^ Vol. II.. jtage 131. Dudley North's Parentage. 319 of Henry the Seventh.* He was born in London, on the IGth of May, 1641 ;f while his father — a Roundhead in a family of Cavaliers — was busy about the patriotic work of the Long Parliament. 'He was a very forward and beautiful child,' says the brother who has told the story of his life in detail ; 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 during the plague time of 1G65. He was seized by the malady, and only preserved through the tender nursing of his mother. Soon after that, being designed for a merchant, he was sent to Bury Grammar School, in due * lloGER North, Life of Sir Francis North (London, 1742), p. v. From this work, and from Collixs's Peerage, the following is abridged : — Thomas North, 1-Jsq., of Walkringham, Notts. I Roger North, Esq., d. 1497. Thomas, ancestor of the Iiogcr North, a merchant, Norths of Walkringham. d. 1509. I Edward, first Lord North, 1496-1564. I Sir Roger, second Lord North, 1540-1600. Sir Thomas North, Knt. orth, Sir John North, Knt., d. 1597. Sir Henry North, knt., 1556-1620. Dudley, third Ijord North, 15S1-1C6G. Sir John North. Roger North. Gilbert North. _J f I I ' "I Dudley, fourth Ixird North, d. 1677. Charles North. Robert North. John North. II I I Charles, fifth Francis NorVi, Raron Sir Dudi.ky North, Knt., Dr. John North, }A>rd North, of Guilford, ancestor 1611-1691. d. 1032. 1634-1690. of the Karls of Guil- ford, d. 16?5. Montague North, d. 1710. Jtoger North, author ol the ' Kxamen.' t Roger North, Life of Sir Dudley Nortli (London, 1744), p. i. I have here done little more than condense and extract the most pertinent passages in this very interesting biography. 320 Dudley North's Schooling. time to be placed in a writing-school in London, ' to learn good hands and accounts.' That he did to his parent's satisfaction : but he learned other things not quite to their likinsr. * One of his capital entertainments was cock-firrhtinrr. 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 prac- tices very unjustifiable and, except among inexperienced boys, altogether inexcusable. When a fresh youth came to the school, he and his companions looked out sharp to discover how well his pockets were lined ; and some of them would insinuate into his acquaintance, 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 impor- tunate 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.'f 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 before going abroad, as supercargo to a ship proceeding to Arch- angel. That was the beginning of many years' absence from England, passed in busy money-making, and enlivened by many strange experiences, of which welcome record exists, either in his own letters or in his brother's reminis- cences. He was a ' raw youth,' only seventeen or eighteen years * North. Life, p. 4. f Ibid., p. 5. His Residence at Smyrna and Constantinople. 321 old, when he started and first went to Archangel, there to sell his goods and stock the ship with others, which he in- tended to dispose of in Italy, before hiking up his residence at Smyrna. His own capital was only 100Z. ; but he spent it prudently, in buying such articles as were sure of bringing 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 Constantinople, where a merchant of spirit and judgment, by trade with the Court and with the dealers that there came together from most parts of the world, could not fail of being- rich.'t 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 language, and, of the five hundred or more lawsuits which he found it necessary to engage in, conducted most in his own per- son. ' 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. lie brought to per- * North, pp. 33, 34. f Ibid., p. 41. VOL. I. Y Q09 Dudley North at Constantinople. faction 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, a harmless, honest witness, that doth not know his play, cannot so well stand his many cap- tious questions as a false witness, used to the trade, will do.'* It must be remembered, 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 brother avers, was chiefly with the Turkish Court, which he supplied with jewels and other costly furni- ture, often making four or five thousand dollars by a single transaction ; and with the officers and agents of the govern- ment, 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 borrowing ; and, if they can but get the money, they care not upon what terms, for the place to be paid for will soon reim- burse 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 unlawful ; and the debtor need not, whatever he agrees, pay a farthing on that account Therefore they are forced to go to tricks ; and, like our gamesters, take the interest together with the principal. There is a world of cun- ning 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.'! His advantages were various. With one Turk, the cap- * North, p. 47. t Ibid., p. G2. His Business there. Honest and Dishonest. 32o tain of a galley, named Baba-IIassan, he had numerous deal- ings. For eacli voyage he lent him large sums of money, which were returned twice over at the end of the expedition. '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 lie 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 where 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 Baba-IIassan, that made him take it for a debt ; but he more furiously cursed that dog that 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 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 believe he was no niggard ; but, as for falsities, such as cheating by weights and measures, or anything that was knavish, treacherous, or perfidious, 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.'t 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 1G80. He immediately established himself as a Turkey merchant in London, having a house in * North, p, G3. t Ibid., p. l.°,4. 324 Sir Dudley North in London. Basingliall Street, with offices and warehouses close to the Exchange.* He also became the principal director of the African Company. ' Here it was that, in the opinion of the Exchange, he first did justice to his character. For he was sagacious to take the substance of any matter at the first opening ; and then, having by proper questions more fully informed himself, he could clearly unfold the difficulty, with all its circumstances of advantage and disadvantage, to the understanding of others. He was an exquisite judge of adventures, and the value and eligibilty of them. He was very quick at discerning the fraud or sincerity of many persons the Company had trusted, as also the character of those that proffered, and were examined, 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 in- flexible, and no solicitation or means whatsoever could pre- vail with him to cover or connive.'f In 16*82, at the instigation of his brother, the Lord Keeper, Dudley North accepted office under Charles the Second as Sheriff of London, and in that capacity he gave great satis- faction to the courtly party by his zealous prosecution of the Whigs.J For that service he was knighted, and, besides being made alderman of Basingliall Ward, was appointed a Commissioner of Customs, that office being afterwards exchanged for a brief period for a commissioncrship in the Treasury, with a. salary of 1,600?. a year.§ On the accession of James the Second he entered Parliament as member for Banbury, and at once his ready wit and great experience, heartily devoted to the service of the Tories, made him the * Nokth, p. 147. f Ibid., p. 150. * North, Life of Francis North, pp. 1G9, 171. "The Government found in him," says Lord Macaulay, with the impetuosity characteristic of the great Whig historian, "at onee an enlightened adviser 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 his fine house in Basing- liall Street for orders." — History of England (London, 185S), vol. ii., p. 95. S Xuinii. Life of Sir Dudley North, pp. 15S, KU, 172. His Services to King James the Second. 325 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 l,9O0,0O0Z. 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 1091 Dudley North issued some Discourses upon Trade, full of sensible opinions 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 consider trade in the general upon true prin- ciples, but are satisfied to understand their own particular 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 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 avocations as a merchant. On his retirement he returned to them, but not for long. ' He had formerly joined with other merchants in building three defensible ships ; for piracies in the straits had made trading * Macaulav. vol. ii., p. 9G. t Ibid, vol. v., p. 140. + M'Ciluicu, Sih-ct Collection of Early English I'racta on Commerce (Loudon. iy5G;, pp. 505-510. 32G Sir Dudley North in London. 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 Revolution 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 h'i6 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 10,000/. than it was when the French war first broke out. I believe he had less perse- vered 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 metal ; and his family was in- creasing, and children were coming forward, whom he considered before himself; and what was worst of all, he grew liable to infirmities, especially the phthisic, which made him not so active as he had been and desired to be.' * In 1G82, just before his election as Sheriff, he had fallen in love with Lady Gunning, a widow lady, very beautiful and rich, the daughter 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 settlement for his daughter. When his consent was asked, he required that North should purchase and secure to the lady an estate worth 3,000/. or 4,000/. 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, R. C." His rejoinder was as brief: "Sir, — 1 perceive you like neither me nor my business. Your humble servant, ] ). N." J But Dudley * Ivogick Noma, pp. 187, 188. f Ibid., p. 151. % Ibid., p. 150. His Marriage and City Life. 327 North did like his business. He therefore addressed him- self 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 splendid equipage. And the old man, in his own house, often said to him, " Come, son, let us go out and shine," — v ,hat is, walk about the streets with six footmen in rich iveries attending.'* The wedding festivities kept pace with the merchant's kiighthood, and his induction into the shrieval honours. ' Mr. North took a great hall that belonged to one of the ccmpanies, 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 aid taking apostle-spoons in the room of them ; which, with vhat they ate, drank, and such as came in the shape of wives — for they often gratified a she-friend or relation with tlat preferment— carried away, made but an indifferent birgain. His lady, contrary to her nature and humour, wiich was to be retired, kept him company in public at his feistings, sitting at the upper end of the table at those noisy and fastidious dinners. The mirth and rejoicing that was in the city, as well at these feasts as at private entertainments, is scarce to be expressed. 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 encourage- ment in the city.'t Soon after his marriage, Sir Dudley North left his house in Basinghall Street for a much larger one at the back of the Goldsmiths' Hall. This he did chiefly k because his lady, though affecting retirement, yet, when she did appear, loved to have a parade about her; and often childing brought * Noktii, ]j. 157. f Ibid., pp. 157, 158. 328 Sir Dudley North in London. christening's, which, in the city, were usually celebrated with much company and feastings.' In furnishing the house he spent at least 4,000/., and its suite of reception-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 repen- tance of his vanity. ' It was situated among the goldsmiths, and other smoky trades, that, for convenience of the Hall, are very thickly planted thereabouts, and their smoke anc 1 dust filled the air, and confounded all his good furniture He laboured hard in person to caulk up the windows, and al chimneys, not used were kept close stopped. But notwithstano ing all that could be done to prevent it, the dust gathered thick upon everything within doors ; for which reason tie rooms were often let stand without any furniture at all.'* Sir Dudley North's mode of life in these last year was minutely described by his brother. ' His domesti* methods were always reasonable, but, towards his lad), superlatively obliging. He was absent from her as little as he could, and that was being abroad ; but at home thty were seldom asunder. When he had his great house, a litte room near his chamber, which they called a dressing-roon, was sequestered for the accommodation of both of then. She had her implements, and he his books of account ; and having fixed a table and a desk, all his counting-house business was done there. There also he read such books as pleased him, and, though he was a kind of a dunce at school, in his manhood he recovered 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. 1 have come there and found him very busy in picking out the stitches of a dislaced petticoat. But his tenderness to his * North, p. 1G3. His Private, Life and Domestic Amusements. 329 children was very uncommon, for he would often sit by while they were dressing and undressing, and would be himself assisting if they were at any time sick or out of order. Once his eldest son, when about five years old, had a chil- blain, 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 till it was cured. But, after the methods were instituted, the father would dress it himself.'* In various odd and homely ways, the retired merchant found occupation and amusement for himself. ' In that great house he had much more room than his family required. He used his spare rooms for operations and natural experi- ments, 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 hence he took into the next vessel where it refined ; and out of that he drew into a third ; and, from thence, took for us"e. The first was continually supplied with raisin stalks, warm water, etc. In this manner, after the course was begun, the house was supplied, with little or no charge, for several ycars.'t North travelled much each summer. He went frequently to Bristol and the neighbourhood, where lay his wife's pro- perty ; and from the death of his brother, the Lord Keeper Guildford, he was often at his house at Wroxton, there fulfilling his trust as guardian of the young Lord Guildford. ' At Wroxton,' says Roger North, * there was an old build- ing which was formerly Hawk's Mews. There we instituted a laboratory. One apartment was for woodworks, and the other for iron. His business was hewing and framing, and, being permitted 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 occasion very well. We got up a table and a bench ; but the * Nuktii, pp. 199, 200. f Ibid., pp. 200, 201. 330 Sir Dudley North's Retirement and Death. £reat 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 con- veyed by elder guns let into one another, 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 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 waist- coat, red cap, and black face ; so that the lady when she came to call us to dinner, was full of admiration what crea- tures she had in her family. In the afternoons we had employment 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 implements were made. It was not a little strange to see with what earnestness and pains we worked, 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, incomparably better pleased than he had been in all the stages of his life before.' * From eccentric retirement of that sort, Sir Dudley North was called away by death when only fifty years of age. He divided the vacation of 1691, 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. ' He was thereupon put to bed,' says his brother, ' and, as I found him, lay gasping for breath. He discoursed * North, pp. 201-203. The Family of the Child*. 331 seriously, that he found himself very ill, and concluded he should die ; that he knew 01 no cause of illness on his part, but God's will be done. Doctor Radcliff was sent 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 tranquillity of mind, and entire resig- nation, he endured the pain of hard breathing till he breathed no more, which happened on the 31st of December, 1691.'* "Well," exclaimed the apothecary who attended him, "I never saw any people so willing to die as these Norths are !"f Just eight years afterwards died Sir Josiah Child, North's senior by eleven years. He, too, was of ancient and well- known family. Several L'Enfants and Le Childs, the names being identical in those days, were concerned in Henry the Second's conquest of Ireland and its subsequent government, and others were settled at Pool-Court, Shrewley, and Pencook, all in Worcestershire, during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. A Richard le Child was living at Northwick, in the same shire, in 1320, a William le Child in 1350, and a Thomas le Child in 1353. Another Thomas le Child, probably a son, was Eschcator for the County of Worcester in 1428. From him was descended William Child, of Northwick, whose grandson and great-grandson, both named William, were High Sheriffs for the county, under Queen Elizabeth, the one in 158G, the other in 1599. The manor of Northwick remained with the family until the reign of Charles the Second ; but before that time a younger and more important branch had left Worcestershire for dis- tricts nearer London. Richard Child, a great-great-grandson of the second Elizabethan Sheriff, was Sheriff of Bedfordshire in 1640, the year of the Long Parliament's assembling. Born somewhere near the beginning of the century, he had by that time acquired considerable wealth as a London * North, ]>\>. 207-200. t Ibid., p. 209. Josiah Child of London. merchant, and become the owner of valuable property in Bedfordshire.* Finding most of his business in connection with the lately opened and now highly prosperous trade to the East and West Indies, he paved the way for the yet greater success of his son Josiah. About the early history of this son, who was born on the 7th of May, lo'30,t we are ignorant. While his elder * William Child, of Northwick, Esq. I Edmund Child, of Northwick, Esq. William, Child, of Northwick, Esq., High Sheriff of Worcestershire, 1586. I William Child, of Pensax, Esq., High Sheriff of Worcestershire, 1599. I William Child, of Northwick, Esq., 1553-1633. I William, Child, of Northwick, Esq., living in 1634. Thomas Child, of Northwick. John Child. William Child. I Richard Child, of London, Merchant, Sheriff of Bedfordshire, 1640. Sir John Child. 1. Anne, dau. of Edward = Sir Josiah Child, Bart., =3. Emma, dau. of Sir of London, Merchant, Henry Bernard, of 1630-1699. Stoke, Salop, and widow of Sir Tho- mas Willoughby, of Wollaton, Sa- lop, d. 1725. Boat, of Portsmouth Mary, dau. of William = Atwood, of Hackney, Merchant, widow of Thomas Stone of London, merchant. Sir Josiah Child, Knt., d. without issue, 1704. Bernard Child, Sir Richard Child, Bart, = Dorothy, dau. of John Glynnc, Esq., d. 1698. 1718 Baron of Newton, | by Dorothy, daughter of Francis and Viscount Castle- Tylney of Kotherwlck, Esq. roaine, 1732 Earl Tylney. Richard Child-Tylncy, second Earl Tylney, d. without issue, 1750. John Chlld-Tilney, third Earl Tilney. Emma=Sir Robert Long of Draycott, I Bart., d. 1758. Sir James Tylney Long, d. 1794. Sir James Tylney Long, d. 1805, aged 11. Catharine, = W r iIliam, Viscount Wellesley, fifth d. 1825. | Earl of Mornington, and who on his marriage assumed the name of Tylney-Long, 1788-1857. William Richard Arthur Pole Tylney Ixing Wellesley, Viscount Wellesley, sixth Earl ol Mornington. Compiled from Collins, Peerage ; the Peerage of Ireland ; Morant's Essex; etc. t Lodge, Peerage of Ireland (London, 17G8), vol. i., p. 57. ' From a humble position,' says Lord Macavlay ' his abilities raised him rapidly to opulence, power, and lame. There were those ' — in 1G91 — ' who remem- His Early Trade in Xew England Timber. 333 brother, John, was working in India, where he was a factor from the year 1653, he seems to have been chiefly engaged in the newer trade with the West Indies. He was a larp-e contractor for the supply of American timber to be used in shipbuilding at the Government dockyards. Among several tenders sent in, at the beginning of 1665, when he was five- SJK JOMAH CHILD. and-thirty years of age, for masts, bowsprits, and yards, those furnished by him and John Shorter, his partner, were accepted. In August of this year, we find him writing to the Navy Commissioners about a cargo of masts that he had procured from New England. Most had been bered him an apprentice, sweeping one of the counting-houses in the City.' This statement, giving a wrong impression of Child's origin, seems to have been based on Evelyn's assertion that be had been ' a merchant's apprentice.' — Evelyn, Life <iu<l Correspawlencc, ed. 1850, vol. ii., p. 173. In those days every one intended for a merchant had to learn his work as a ' merchant's apprentice.' 33 i Josiah Child of London. accepted, but there was hesitation about five of the largest. Child urged the acceptance of the whole parcel, as he had ordered them solely for the King's service, and such large masts were hard to get and harder to sell among private dealers.* He gained his point, and obtained payment at the rate of 25/. a piece for the masts twenty inches in diameter, and 33/. for those of twenty-five inches.f A fortnight later he wrote to the Admiralty clerk, saying he was to have the highest price recorded in the Admiralty-books, that being * the dearest time for masts that ever was.'! On the 4th of October in the same year we see him requesting a convoy through the Channel for a ship he is sending to New Eng- land for a further supply of timber, as thus much time will be saved, besides the charge of seven or eight shillings a day for demurrage ;§ and on November the 17th, he complains of the hazard and delay he has been put to for want of the convoy as far as Plymouth, and begs that suitable protection may be given to the vessel for the rest of the voyage, until it is at sea. || These are among the earliest instances that we meet with of his employment as Government contractor. Every later year has its own records of similar transactions. Eut he was not simply an East India and New England mer- chant. Dated April the 30th, 16CG, is a message from Charles the Second to the Company of London Brewers, recommend- ing that Josiah Child, merchant of London, who has done faithful service in supplying the Navy with beer, and has bought a brewhouse in Southwark to brew for the Kind's household and for the Navy, be admitted a free brother of the Company on payment of the same subscription as had been paid by the late Timothy Alsop, the King's brewer.H Unfortunately, we hear nothing more of the success of this speculation. In one way and another, however, the merchant, still a * Green, Calendar of State Papers, Domestic Series, of the Ecian Charles II., preserved in Her Majesty's Ptiblic Record Ojjlc*, (London, 18G0, &c), vol. iv., p. 540. t Ibid., vol. iv., p. 5GS. % Ibid., vol. iv.. p. 5G4. § Ibid., vol. v.. p. 4. i| Ibid., vol. v., p. G2. ' TJ Ibid., vol. v., p. oil. His 'Observations concerning Trade.'' 33.3 young man. was amassing wealth. About this time, and, probably, as a consequence of his frequent visits to Ports- mouth, in connection with the naval dockyard, he married Anne, the daughter of Edmund Boat, a gentleman of that town ;* and he was able to provide her with a comfortable home, by buying Wanstead IIouse,t the time-honoured mansion at which, nearly eighty years before, the famous Earl of Leicester had entertained Queen Elizabeth, with the help of a masque written for the occasion by his more famous nephew, Philip Sidney ; and which, at a later period, had been given to ' Steenie ' Buckingham by Charles the First. Wanstead House was rebuilt by Josiah's son, Richard, the first Earl Tylney, in 1718; but the old-fashioned mansion served for the merchant. He was there during the autumn months of 16G5, the year of the Great Plague, and he used his forced leisure in the preparation of a little book entitled Brief Observations concerning Trade and the Interest of Money, the producer of an angry paper-war that lasted more than thirty years, and almost the parent of our modern science of political economy. " The prodigious increase of the Netherlanders," it begins, " in their domestic and foreign trade, riches, and multitude of shipping, is the envy of the present, and may be the wonder of all future genera- tions ; and yet the means whereby they have thus advanced themselves are sufficiently obvious, and in a great measure imitable by most other nations, but more easily by us of this kingdom of England." Therefore, the merchant sets him- self to show, with a mixture of wisdom and error, what seem to him the points in the Dutch policy best worth copying. " These," he says, " are fifteen in number. First, they have in their greatest councils of state, and war, trading merchants that have lived abroad in most parts of the world, who have * Moraxt, History and Antiquities of Essex (Lo.don, 17G8), vol. i., p. 30. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 30. 336 Josiah Child of London. net only the theoretical knowledge, but the practical expe- rience of trade, by whom laws and orders are contrived, and plans projected, to the great advantage of their trade. Secondly, their law of gavelkind, whereby all their children possess an equal share of their fathers' estates after their decease, and so are not left to wrestle with the world in their youth, with inconsiderable assistance of fortune, as most of our youngest sons of gentlemen in England are who are bound apprentices to merchants. Thirdly, their exact making of all their native commodities, and packing of their herrings, cod-fish, and all other commodities which they send abroad in great quantities ; the consequence whereof is, that the repute of their said commodities abroad continues always good, and the buyers will accept them by the marks without opening ; whereas the fish which our English make in New- foundland, New England, and herrings at Yarmouth, and our pilchards from the west country, often prove false and deceitfully made. Fourthly, their giving great encourage- ment and immunities to the inventors of new manufactures, and the discoverers of any new mysteries in trade, and to those that shall bring the commodities of other nations first in use and practice amongst them, by which the author never goes without his due reward allowed him at the public charge. . . . Sixthly, their parsimonious and thrifty living, which is so extraordinary, that a merchant of 10,000Z. estate with them will spend scarce so much per annum as one of 1,500Z. estate in London. Seventhly, the education of their children, as well daughters as sons ; all which, although of never so great quality or estate, they always take care to bring up to write perfect good hands, and to have the full knowledge and use of arithmetic and merchants' accounts ; the well understanding and practice of which doth strangely infuse into most that are the owners of that quality, of either sex, not only an ability for commerce of all kinds, but a strong aptitude, love, and delight in it. And, in regard the women are as knowing therein as the men, it doth encourage Jlis Comparison of Dutch and English Trade. 337 their husbands to hold on in their trades to their dying days, knowing the capacity of their wives to get in their estates, and carry on their trades after their deaths ; whereas, if a merchant in England arrive at any considerable estate, he commonly withdraws his estate from trade before he comes near the confines of old age, reckoning that if God should call him out of the world, while the main of his estate is disrated abroad in trade, he must lose one-third of it, through the inexperience and inaptness of his wife to such affairs, and so it usually falls out. . . . Tenthly, their use of banks, which are of so immense advantage to them, that some, not without good grounds, have estimated the profit of them to the public to amount to at least 1,000,000/. sterling per annum. Eleventhly, their toleration of different opinions in matters of religion ; by reason whereof, many industrious people of other countries, that dissent from the established government of their own churches, resort to them with their families and estates, and after a few years' cohabitation with them, become of the same common interest. Twelfthly, their law-merchant, by which all controversies between merchants and tradesmen are decided in three or four days' time, and that not. at the fortieth part (I might say, in many cases, not the hundredth part) of the charge they are with us. Thir- teenthly, the law that is in use among them for transference of bills for debt from one man to another. This is of extra- ordinary advantage to them in their commerce, by means whereof they can turn their stocks twice or thrice in trade for once that we can in England, for that, having sold our foreign goods here, we cannot buy again to advantage till we arc possessed of our money, which it may we shall be six, nine, or twelve months in recovering ; whereas, were the law for transferring bills in practice with us, we could, presently, after sale of our goods, dispose of our bills and close up our accounts." Those sentences give very interesting information touching the state of trade in England two hundred years ago ; be- vol. i. z :',?,$ Josiah Child of London. side? showing us, in clear light, the shrewd money-making character of the London merchant, anxious to make his nation as thoroughly commercial as was Holland. But the point which he thinks specially worth imitating from the Dutch, and to the discussion of which he gives most of his space, is " the lownesss of interest of money with them, which in peaceable times, exceeds not three per cent, per annum," whereas the rate of interest in England is six per cent, at the least. "This, in my poor opinion," he adds, "is the causa causans of all the other causes of riches in that people ; and if interest of money were with us reduced to the same rate as it is with them, it would in a short time render us as rich and as considerable in trade as they now are." He argues that the prosperity of England has increased in exact proportion to the abatement of interest, which by law, before 1635, was ten per cent., to be reduced in that year to eight ; and, again, in 1645, to six per cent. ; and that the grand impediment to the wealth which England ought to attain comes from the rule that makes it hard for young merchants to get on in the world, " most of our trade being carried on by young men that take up money at interest," and tempts elder men, as soon as they have gained experience at their work, to abandon commerce for usury, " there being, to every man's knowledge, divers English merchants of large estates, which have not much past their middle age, and yet have wholly left off their trades, having found the sweetness of interest ; neither scattering by their expenses, so as the poor may glean anything after them, nor working with their hands or heads to bring either wax or honey to the common hive of the kingdom ; but swelling their own purses by the sweat of other men's brows and the contrivances of other men's brains. And how unprofitable it is for any nation to suffer idleness to suck the breasts of industry, needs no demonstration." There we have good common sense and sound morality. But political economists have taught us that the rate of interest; like everything else, from gin-drinking to theological His Plan for the Relief of the Poor. 339 belief, must be left in the hands of the people themselves, and that only mischief can come from legal restrictions of any sort. That was a view, however, that neither Child nor his crowd of pamphleteer-opponents were able to arrive at. During thirty years the subject was hotly discussed in a small library of treatises, that make very uninteresting and unprofitable reading. The controversy itself has lost all its value, and the books in which it found expression are only worth preserving for the scraps of information they contain about the state of commerce and society in the latter part of the seventeenth century. Some of those scraps we have already noticed ; some others may be culled from Child's New Discourse of Trade, a greatly amplified edition of his former work, published in 1692, but chiefly written in 16G9. The chapter most attractive in itself, and most interesting also to us, because of its illustration of the natural kindliness of the author's character, is ' Concerning the Relief and Employment of the Poor.' " Our poor in England," he says, " have always been in a most sad and wretched condition ; some famished for want of bread, others starved with cold and unkindness ; many whole families, in all the out parts of cities and great towns, commonly remain in a languishing, nasty, and useless condition, uncomfortable to themselves and unprofitable to the kingdom." Hence the country is stocked with thieves and beggars, and materially weakened in its productive resources. But the chief blame, it is urged, lies not with the poor wretches themselves, but with* the laws that make every parish chargeable with its own paupers, and so waste nearly all the money and energy that should go to their relief in " shifting off, sending, or whipping back the poor wanderers to the place of their birth or last abode." " A poor idle person that will not work, or that nobody will em- ploy in the country, comes up to London, to set up the trade of begging. Such a person, probably, may beg up and down the streets for seven years, it may be seven-and-twenty, before anvbody askcth why she doth so ; and if, at length, 340 Josiah Child of London. she hath the ill-hap, in some parish, to meet with a more vigilant beadle than one in twenty of them are, all he does is but to lead her the length of five or six houses into another parish, and then concludes, as his masters the parishioners do, that he hath done the part of a most diligent officer. But suppose he should go yet further, and carry this poor wretch to a justice of the peace, and he should order the delinquent to be whipped, and sent from parish to parish to the place of her birth, which not one justice of twenty, through pity or other cause, will do ; even this is a great charge upon the country, and yet the business of the nation itself wholly un- done ; for no sooner doth the delinquent arrive at the place assigned, but, for shame or idleness, she presently deserts it, and wanders directly back, or some other way, hoping for better fortune ; whilst the parish to which she was sent, knowing her a lazy, and perhaps a worse qualified person, is as willing to be rid of her as she is to be £one from thence." The merchant — ' more qualified to manage the details of a counting-house, than to correct the errors of legislation,' as Eden remarks ;* but, however unsound his views, as jealous as any professed philanthropist to improve the condition of the poor — proposed to remedy the present evils by doing away with the distinction of parishes, and dividing England into two or three poor-law provinces, each under the govern- ment of a body of " Fathers of the Poor," appointed by the crown, with power to buy lands, erect, and endow work- houses, Hospitals, and houses of correction, as well as " petty banks for the benefit of the poor ;" to send such poor beyond the seas as they shall think fit, into his Majesty's plantations ; and to employ those kept at home in useful work. "The girls may be employed in mending the clothes of the aged, in spinning, carding, and other linen manufactures, and many in sewing linen for the exchange, or any housekeepers that will put out linen to the matrons that have the govern- ment of them ; the boys in picking oakum, making pins, * Edex, State of the Poor, vol. i., p. 1SG. His Plan for the Relief of the Poor. 341 rasping wood, making;, hanging, or any other manufactures of any kind : which, whether it turns to present profit or not, is not much material, the great business of the nation being first but to keep the poor from begging and starving, and enuring such as are able to labour and discipline, that they may be hereafter useful members to the kingdom." To obtain funds for these purposes, Child proposed a continuance of moderate assessments by law, with the addition of weekly col- lections in all parish churches ; taxes upon the receipts at play- houses, and "whatever else his Majesty and Parliament shall think fit to recommend to them, or leave to their discretion." Those projects have been much decried by professional advocates of the English poor-law ; but the successful working of the 'Assistance Publique,' in France, in many respects curiously like the old merchant's scheme, entitles them to some consideration. But the most interesting feature of this treatise to us is its evidence of Child's practical sense and generous disposition. Very characteristic of the man is his proposal, made at the very time when the cry for test acts and intolerance of all sorts was noisiest in England, " that there be no oaths or other tests imposed upon the said fathers of the poor at their admission, to bar out non-con- formists, amongst whom there will be found some excellent instruments for this £ood work." "Compulsion in matters of religion," moreover, is one of the causes to which Child ascribes the decline of English trade in wool apparent in his time. He shows that the difficulties thrown in the way of English operatives, and the more tolerant customs of foreign nations, as well as the facilities coming from the low rate of interest abroad, encourage our merchants to export raw wool, instead of enriching the country by first manufacturing it into cloth. In this treatise Child speaks of the !0ast Indian trade as, in lour ways, the most beneficial of all branches of foreign commerce. '• 1. The trade worthily employs twenty-five to thirty sail of the most warlike ships in England, with sixty to 342 Josiah Child of London. a hundred men in eacli ship. 2. It supplies the nation con- stantly and fully with that (in this age) necessary materia] of saltpetre. 3. It supplies the nation, for its consumption, with pepper, indigo, calicoes, and several useful drugs, near the value of 150,000Z. to 180,000?. per annum. 4. It furnisheth us with pepper, cowries, long-cloth, and other calicoes, and painted stuffs, proper for the trade of Turkey, Italy, Spain, France, and Guinea, to the amount of 200,0007. or 300,000/. per annum ; most of which trades we could not carry on with any considerable advantage, but for those supplies. And these goods exported do produce in foreign parts, to be returned to England, six times the measure in specie that the Company exports from hence." " Were it not for the East Indian Company," lie adds, " we should be at the mercy of the Dutch traders ; we should have to buy foreign linens instead of the calicoes that come from our own dependencies, and we should lose the protection secured for the country, by the employment of so many stout ships and mariners. That was in 1G69, by which time the Company had passed through the greatest of its early troubles, and was again on the road to prosperity. A capital of 429,000/. having been raised in 1612, a fresh subscription of 1,000,000/. was begun in 10 17, and in 1632 a further addition of 420,700/., called the third joint-stock, was made to the existing capital. The East India Company, however, had not the exclusive monopoly promised in its successive char- ters. Great obstructions came to it from the jealousy of the similar companies established in Holland and Portugal, and frequent patents of trade were granted to private English- men, as in the case of Sir William Courtecn, who in 1635 was authorized to trade, under certain limitations, with Goa, Malabar, China, and Japan. Much money and energy were wasted in attempts to overturn this patent ; and. at last, in 1057, the larger and older Company was glad to effect a coalition with the rival association, which starting His Advocacy of the East India Company. 3-13 with Courtecn's enterprise, had conic to be known as the Company of Merchant Adventurers. This was done, a fresh subscription to the amount of 786,0007. was made, and a revised charter was obtained from Lord Protector Crom- well by the beginning of 1G58. The Company worked languidly, however, for some years after ; and it was thought that Child's favourable account of the trade was purposely exaggerated with the view of drawing fresh speculators into its ranks.* There can be no doubt, however, that the Company was steadily extending its operations. In 1677 appeared A Treatise, wherein it is demonstrated that the East India Company is the most National of all Foreign Trades, of which there is little doubt that Child was also the author. At that time, we learn, there were from thirty to thirty-five ships in the Company's employ, used in exporting about 430,0007. worth of goods and bullion, and in bringing to the English market commodities worth at least twice that sum. Every year showed much progress in wealth and importance to the members of the East India Company. Their actual capital was only about 370,0007. ; but they borrowed vast sums of money at the six per cent, interest which Child wished to see reduced to four, and were rumoured to make about thirty per cent, profits thereby. In 1G7G every pro- prietor received a bonus equal to the value of his stock, and the shares, which in 1(564, were to be bought at 707. for 1007. worth of stock, rose in 1677 to 2457., in 1081 to 3007., and in 1691 to 3607. or more. In that period of almost unexampled prosperity many fortunes were made ; by far the greatest of all being that accumulated by Josiah Child. Among the lists of share- holders, prior to these years, we do not find the merchant's name ; but it is probable that he bought stock in 16;") 7, when the new subscription was made and the charter with fresh * For details of the history of the East India Company at this time, see Bruce's Annals, and Mill's History of British India. 314 Sir Josiah Child of London. privileges was obtained from Cromwell. He was then seven- and-twenty, and starting upon the commercial life for which his father had prepared him. From the time of Charles the Second's accession, he was a favourite at Court, doing his share of money-lending to the spendthrift King, and gaining esteem by the honest deportment which even the most dis- honest well knew how to prize. Politically he was a Whig, and by his tolerant spirit, and bold defence of schismatics, he had won the special hatred of the Duke of York, who was to become King of England as James the Second. But with Charles and Charles's courtiers he was in favour, and that favour secured him a baronetcy on the 18th of July, 1678 ; and enabled him to marry one of his daughters, with a dowry of 50,000Z., to the eldest son of the Duke of Beaufort, in March, 1G83, another daughter having already wedded a gentleman of Strcatham, to become grandmother of a Duke of Bedford.* He himself, having lost his first wife, had, some years before this, increased his wealth and influence by marrying Mrs. Mary Stone, widow of a thriving merchant, and daughter of another merchant, William Atwood, of Hackney. Near the end of Charles the Second's reign, if not before, Sir Josiah Child bejran to be the foremost man in the management of the East India Company. For some years he had been a member of the committee of management, having been with great difficulty raised thereto, said his enemies, by the friendship of Sir Samuel Bernardisson, Sir John Mordaunt, Thomas Papillon, and other great Whig merchants in the city ; and lately, the same men, seeing his great talents, joined in promoting him to the office of Governor. Then a division arose. According to the state- ments of his opponents, Sir Josiah Child turned Tory, got rid of all the honest servants of the Company, and became fin abject slave of the Court, for purposes of his own aggran- dizement. By far the richest member of the Company, with * MoRANT. Vol. i., ]). oO. Ills Management of the East India Company. 345 a third of its stock in his own hands, or the hands of some fourteen of his dependents, it was alleged that he could do whatever he liked, and that he managed the whole business so as to enrich himself, and curry favour with King Charles and the Duke of York. ' By his great annual presents,' says one of the pamphleteers, 'he could command, both at Court and Westminster Hall, what he pleased.'* That Child did shift his political ground, and give way to the tide of Tory feeling that preceded the accession of James the Second, is clear. But he shared that crime with the great majority of Englishmen. In common with many other merchants of those and other times, he seems to have troubled himself but little about the complications of politics. So long as he did his own duty in the world, conformed to the current maxims of commercial morality, and made his money honestly, he was willing to leave questions of state- craft and the like to others But there is no evidence of either fraud or folly in his management of the Company's affairs. His abusers were all political opponents, or men whom he had displaced from employment in India, or the India House, on account of their dishonesty and incapacity. None of their great charges are supported by trustworthy authority ; many of them are clearly disproved. There was a reason for their spite. In helping to bring the East India Company to a state of unexampled prosperity, Sir Josiah Child had revived the old prejudices of a large * Some Remarks on the Present State of the East India Company's Affairs (London, 1G90) ; White, Account of Hie Trade to the East Indies (London, 1G91); ricrce Butler's Tale (London, 1G91) ; Reasons for Constitut inn a New East India Company in London (London, 1GS0); and other pamphlets of the day. ' A present of ten thousand guineas,' snys Macaulay, on the authority of these libellers, ' '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 at Court, ministers, mistresses, priests, were kept in good humour by presents of shawls and silks, birds'-nests and atar of roses, purses of diamonds, and hairs of guineas. His bribes, 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.' — History, vol. vi., p. 142. 340 Sir Josinh Child of London. minority of English merchants against this branch of com- merce. The members of the Turkey Company, great sufferers by that prosperity, did their utmost to bring it into THE OLD EAST INDIA noCSE, LEADKNHALL STREET (1646 — 1726). disrepute. They were supported by the other joint-stock companies, and the many private traders who, from choice or from necessity, were left to conduct their businesses in inde- His Management of the East India Company. 347 pendent ways. Not heeding their opposition, Sir Josiah carried on the work he had taken in hand, and did his utmost to extend the influence and enlarge the prosperity of the Company. All through these years, he was the life and soul of the whole undertaking. At one time he writes about the prospect of trade in Ceylon ; at another he is considering how best the lost ground may be recovered in Java. On one day he discourses to his Majesty's Chief Secretary about the Great Mogul, and the growing disputes with him ; on the next he has an interview with some Japanese ambassadors, and urges them to bring about an opening for English trade with their country — " which I apprehend," he says, in a letter, " might prove of very great advantage to this nation, by the sending of vast quantities of the English woollen manufactures, the Japanese being a great and rich people, and the situation of many of their provinces northerly enough to wear such clothing as this kingdom affords."* Meanwhile the opposition grew, and having no influence among the authorities at home, it produced very disastrous results in the. far-off provinces of the Company, most mischief being done at Bombay, where John Child, the elder brother of Sir Josiah, was the Company's chief factor. This brother — ' a person of known sobriety, wisdom, truth, and courage, esteemed and beloved by all people of all nations in India, that have so much ingenuousness as to acknowledge virtue in an enemy,' according to a friendly writerf — a man ' grasping and violent/ from the first, and whose ' pride and oppression grew intolerable ' as he advanced in power, as his enemies asscrtedj — had been in India ever since the year 1G53.§ How he was occupied during most of that time, whether busied with trade on his own account, or employed in the * East India Office MSS., vol. xi., passim. t The Eart India Company's Answer to Mr. Whites Charges (London, 1C8S;, p. 41. I Axiji-;i;>ox, X<to Account of the East Indies (London, 1744), vol. i., p. IS!). § Ea at India Cvmjiany's Answer, p. 41. 34S Sir John Child in Bombay. Company's service, we are not told, lie seems to have had some connection with Bombay from the time of its cession by the Portugese to the English in luo'i. In 1(382 he was ap- pointed its Governor. That appointment was the signal for open resistance among the private traders, or interlopers, in the district, and through them, among those servants of the Company who had been induced to join the opposition. Mutiny and massacre began in the autumn of 1683, and were only suppressed by the appearance of a fleet off the island, and the sending of the insurgent leaders to England. After that, Governor John Child appears to have acted with, occasionally, too great severity. Anxious to keep down a spirit of rebellion, he perhaps helped to increase it by the sternness of his conduct. That, at any rate, caused some base Englishmen to make treasonable offers to the Great Mogul. Aurungzebe, never as friendly to the English as he had been to the Dutch and Portuguese, readily listened to their complaints, and issued such orders to the natives trading with the Company that war seemed necessary. An armament was despatched from England in 1G87, and letters from King James the Second were also sent out, making Bombay the head-quarters of Indian Government, with a baronetcy for its Governor, John Child, along with the title of General of the English forces in the northern part of India, Persia, and Arabia. ' Our neighbours, the French and Dutch,' says the mocking pamphleteer, ' could not put themselves in a posture enough of laughing at it.'* But while they laughed the new baronet made good use of his authority. ' Pie managed that hazardous war against the Mogul,' we are told, ' with such success and moderation that he took almost all the Mogul's and subjects' ships sailing in and out of Surat, without spilling a drop of their blood, and dismissed the prisoners with cloths and money in their pockets, which gained such a reputation to our nation, even amongst the Moors themselves, that they became universal advocates and - WniTi:. Account of the Trade to (he Euvt Indies. Sir Joslah Child and the East India Company. 349 solicitors to the Mogul, for the pacification.'* That friendly feeling did not last long. Other contests had to be carried on, and much blood had to be shed. Child fought unwisely, and Aurungzebc, then in the fulness of his power, sharply punished the English for attempting to crush him. He attacked Bombay and captured a portion of it, before con- senting to come to terms, and then he made it a condition of peace, that the offending Governor should be deprived of his office. That stipulation was unnecessary. While it was being despatched, on the 4th of February, 1G91, Sir John Child died of a fever brought on by hard work and chagrin.t His worthier brother lived for eight years longer, retain- ing to the last his share in the direction of the East India Company. Before that time the Revolution of 1688 had changed the aspect of the political world, and Sir Josiah Child's Toryism left him but little influence at Court The old libels were revived, and new ones every year were added. But he troubled himself very little about them, and allowed them in no way to alter his schemes for the welfare of the Company. In some years he held the office of Governor, in others he left it in other hands ; but in either case alike he was its guide and ruler. Every proposal was submitted to his consideration, and every edict reflected his wishes. After the Revolution, and after the disasters incident to the war with the Mogul, commerce had had a temporary check. The annual profits were not so large, and Child saw the impor- tance of strengthening the Company's footing in the Indies. "The increase of our revenue," it was asserted in instruc- tions issued by the directors in 1G89, " is the subject of our care, as much as our trade. 'Tis that must maintain our force, when twenty accidents may interrupt our trade. 'Tis that must make us a nation in India. AYithout that we are but as a great number of interlopers, united by his Majesty's royal charter, fit only to trade where nobody of power thinks * Ea.<t India Company ',<? Answer, p. 41. f Axdei&ox. -A'cjc Account, vol. i., p. lS'J. 6. A Sir Josiah Child of London. it their interest to prevent us ; and upon this account it is that the wise Dutch, in all their general advices which we have seen, write ten paragraphs concerning their govern- ment, their civil and military policy, warfare, and the increase of their revenue, for one paragraph they write concerning trade."* In other words, it was resolved, thus early in the history of the Company, to make sovereignty in the East its chief object of pursuit, and to draw wealth more from imposts upon native and British subjects than from direct commerce. Child's libellers asserted that he carried his love of government and power to the absurdest limits. According to one statement, the new Governor of Bombay, having written home to say that the laws of England made it impos- sible for the instructions sent out to him to be obeyed, Sir Josiah wrote back in anger, * that he expected his orders were to be his 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 regulating of companies and foreign commerce.'f That assertion is hardly credible ; but the Tory merchant sympathized little with the new-fashioned principles of the Whig rulers of the country, and his measures — measures for which he was responsible, whether propounded in his name or in those of the Governors who succeeded him — were carried out with a high hand. His great success in accumu- lating wealth for himself, and in forwarding the interests of the Company, made him somewhat haughty and imperious in his deportment, and gave colour to some of the envious charges brought against him by his enemies. There is sub- stantial truth, doubtless, in the epitome of his character as an old man, given by the contemporary historian. ' He was a man of great notions as to merchandize, which was his education, and in which he succeeded beyond any man of his time. He applied himself chiefly to the East India trade, * Mill. vol. i., p. 87. t Ibid., p. 91 ; Macallay, vol. vii., p. 100. His Character and Death. His Descendants. 351 bv which his management was raised so high that it drew much envy and jealous}' both upon himself and upon the Company. He had a compass of knowledge and apprehen- sion unusual to men of his profession. He was vain and covetous, and thought too cunning, though he seemed to be always sincere.' * With that opinion of him among the best informed and most impartial of his time, Sir Josiah Child died at Wan- stead on the 22nd of June, lC99.f Some fifteen or eighteen years before he had married a third wife, Emma, the daughter of Sir Henry Bernard, of Stoke, in Shropshire, and widow of Sir Thomas Willoughby, of Wollaton, in Nottinghamshire, a lady who lived on till the year 1725, ' at which time,' it is recorded, ' she was nearly allied to so many of the prime nobility that eleven dukes and duchesses used to ask her blessing, and it was reckoned that above fifty great families would go into mourning for her.'J Of the three children born to him by his first wife, two sons had died in infancy and a daughter had been nobly w r edded. As issue of his second marriage, he had two daughters, also nobly wedded, and a son Josiah, who after being knighted by William the Third at a Lord Mayor's dinner in 161)2, and obtaining for wife the daughter of Sir Thomas Cook — who succeeded Sir Josiah Child as Governor of the East India Company, and was in 1G95, on charge of bribery, committed to the Tower by order of the House of Commons, to be promptly acquitted by the House of Lords — died without issue in 1704. Before that date, had died Bernard, the first-born of the third marriage, so that the wealth of the family descended intact to the youngest son, Richard, who much increased it by wedding the granddaughter and heiress of Francis Tylney, of Rotherwick. He represented the county of Essex in Parliament for many years, and, by virtue of his large fortune, was created Baron Newton and Lord Castlemaine in 1718, * Tiniul, Continuation of Jiaju'/i's History (London, 1751), vol. i., p. 394. t Mokant, Essex, vol. i., p. :;0. * Ibid. 3-32 Sir Francis CI did of London. and Earl Tylney in 1732. From him the earldom passed, first to his eldest and then to his second son, to become extinct with the latter, while Wanstead and the appendant possessions in Essex, descended through the last earl's sister, Lady Emma Long, to her granddaughter, Catherine Tylney Long, who, in 1812, married the scapegrace Earl of Morn- iugton. lie died in 1859, leaving to be bequeathed by his son to Earl Cowley, the wreck of his property as the last representative of the richest and most influential of Eng- land's merchant princes in the latter half of the seventeenth century. The name of Child, however, was not suffered to die out of the annals of English commerce. Whilst Sir Josiah was working his way to distinction as a merchant, Francis Child, his junior by twelve years, was serving his apprenticeship to William Wheeler, a thriving goldsmith in Ludgate Hill, next door to Temple Bar. Seeing the worth of the young man, Wheeler married him to his only daughter, and, on his death in 1GG3, left him heir to his business. Child carried on the goldsmith's business for a time, and followed the fashion of others of his craft in also acting as a sort of banker. Therein he prospered so well that before long he abandoned the goldsmith's work and established himself as a banker alone, being the first Englishman who made of this a separate profession. In 1691, when in his fiftieth year, he was chosen Alderman of Farringdon Without. Fie was Lord Mayor of London in 1699 ; and in 1702, the year of Queen Anne's accession, he was knighted and sent to Parlia- ment as member for the City of London. He died in 1713, leaving a thriving business, to be carried on by his successors during more than a century and a half.* * Hemjert, Great City Companies, vol. ii., p. 203. Vol. /., pay 35.'!. 06 CHAPTER XIV. EDWARD COLSTON OF BRISTOL. [1636—1721.] Among the many notable contemporaries of Josiah Child in the busy world of English commerce none has a greater claim upon the grateful recollection of posterity than Edward Colston, the philanthropist. He was the last of a long line of Bristol merchants. A Thomas Colston, of Preston, had settled in the city made famous by the successes of William Canynge and his fellow- traders, about the year 1400, and his offspring, through five generations, appear to have been almost exclusively devoted to commerce. A later Thomas Colston was an eminent Mayor of Bristol under Queen Elizabeth, and a William Colston was a conspicuous royalist in the troublous times of Charles the First.* ' The King's cause and party,' says one, writing in 1G45, ' were favoured by two extremes in that city ; the one the wealthy and powerful men, the other of the basest and lowest sort ; but disgusted by the middle rank, the true and best citizens.'f William Colston was a true and good citizen, however, notwithstanding his adherence to the Stuart cause. lie was Sheriff in 164o, and on that occasion received Charles the First as a visitor at his house in Small Street. In 1(>45 he was dismissed by the * Garrard, Edward Colston the J'Jtilanthropist, his Life and Times ; edited by Samuel Griffiths Tovet (Bristol, 1852), pp. 2-4. t .John CoiiUET. cited by Skyer, Bridal, vol. ii., p. 314. VOL. I. '2 A of>4 Edward Colston of Bristol. Parliamentarians from his place in the corporation, to be reinstated in 1GG0. He died in 1GS1, at the age of seventy- three.* Five-and-forty years before that time, on the 2nd of November, 1630, his son Edward was born.f We know that he was christened on the 8th of the month, and put out to nurse nt Winterbourn, in the neighbourhood.! But of the way in which his youth and early manhood were passed we have no record save his own statement that he had his edu- cation in London ;§ to which must be added a reasonable tradition that part of his early commercial life was spent as a factor in Spain, where his kinsman, Humphrey Colston, was consul. || When he was about forty years old, at any rate, he was settled as a merchant in London. In 1G81 he was chosen a governer of Christ's Hospital, and in almost every subsequent year we find entries of his gifts to that institution, in sums varying from 100Z. to 500Z.H An interesting tradition refers to an earlier date. ' In 1676,' we are told, 'he paid his addresses to a lady, but being very timorous lest he should be hindered in his pious and charitable designs, he was determined to make a Chris- tian trial of her temper and disposition. Therefore — having filled his pockets full of gold and silver, in order that if any object presented itself in the course of their tour over London Bridge, he might satisfy his intention — while they were walking near Saint Agnes's Church, a woman in extreme misery, with twins in her lap, sat begging, and as he and his intended lady came arm-in-arm, he beheld the wretched object, put his hand in his pocket and took out a handful of gold and silver, casting it into the poor woman's lap. The lady being greatly alarmed at such profuse generosity, coloured prodigiously, so that when they were gone a little further towards the bridge foot, she turned to him, and said, "Sir, do you know what you did a short time ago?" * (;.u;u.\i;i), pp. tJ-l;;. f Ibid., pp. 17-27. X Ibid., p. 29. § Mil., p. lli. j] Ibid, \ Ibid. The Progress of Bristol Commerce. 6i)i) " Madam," replied Colston, " I never let my right hand know what my left hand doth." He then took leave of her, and for this reason never married.'* That story is in keeping with all we know about Colston, most of the ' all ' having to do with his work as a philanthropist. In the beginning of 1082 his name is first found in the annals of Bristol, and then he is spoken of as a merchant of London, lending to his native city 1,800/. at five per cent, interest, f He was at home in both the great centres of seventeenth-century commerce. Bristol then shared with London almost all the trade of England with America — Liverpool and Glasgow being yet obscure towns — it was in Colston's day, as it had been for a hundred years or more, the great highway from England to the New World. The enterprising Bristol merchants who helped the Cabots to go on their early voyages of North American discovery, had worthy followers in every subse- quent generation. When, in 1574, Sir Humphrey Gilbert and his comrades petitioned Queen Elizabeth for leave to start an expedition of discovery and trade to the northern parts of America, as ' of all unfrequented places the only most fittest and most commodious for us to intermeddle withal,' we find that 'the city of Bristol very readily offered 1,000/.' to- wards the 4,000Z. necessary for the undertaking :% and though that project brought no immediate success, other and larger ventures were promptly and prosperously made. It was chiefly through the perseverance of Bristol men that Virginia, after the failure of Kaleigh's experiment, became a nucleus for all the southern parts of the United States; and that in like manner the northern colonies, growing out of the New England settlement, were strengthened and extended. The New England patent was issued in 1020. Three years later James the first wrote to the cities of Bristol and Exeter, requesting them ' to move persons of quality to join in the * Silas Tonn, <-i:i-.l liy 0.\i;::,\Kn. \>. I"! 1.1. t (>'ai:kaki\ ;i. *>in. 1 Sain^ilv. C\iL,uLi a" >«\;L i'«;*;>\ t .Lnutl ;Ju-i<.z, >•-»!. i„ i>. i. •°).3C The Progress of Brvstcl Commerce advancement of that plantation, a work in which the public take great interest, and likely to bring" in good returns,'* and the former town was specially willing- to share in the work. Dated 1038 is a petition from 'Walter Barrett, Walter Sandy and Company, of Bristol, merchant?,' setting forth that ' they have been many years settling a plantation in New England, which was begun long before such multi- tudes of people went over; all they intend to send arc regular people, neither factious nor vicious in religion : their plantation is apart from all others, and they desire now to transport a hundred and eighty persons, to provide victuals for furnishing the ships employed in the fishinn- trade upon that coast, for which they have built and made ready two ships/f Many similar documents show the zeal with which the Bristol traders applied themselves to other branches of American commerce. In 1051, for instance, ' Lieutenant-Colonel Robert Yeomans, and other merchants of Bristol, and owners of the Mary and Francis,'' obtained license from Cromwell's Council of State to accompany the fleet going to Barbadoes, 'upon giving security to the value of the ship and goods, that she does not depart from the fleet, or trade with any in defection from the Com- monwealth ;'j while on the 1st of January, 1057, sanction was given to Mr. Ellis, of Bristol, to transport 1,000 dozen of shoes to the island of Barbadoes,' followed by authority to the same merchant for a like shipment on the 3rd of December. § One other document is too curious to be left unquoted, showing, as it docs, how early began the great tide of Irish emigration, in Bristol ships, to the New World. By a Commonwealth order of 105^, 'liberty was given to Henry Hazard and Robert Yeomans, of the citv of Bristol, merchants, to carry two hundred Irishmen from any port in Ireland to the Caribbec Islands.' |j That Robert Yeomans was the son of a Robert Yeomans * SA'N.-nrr.v. v..]. i., |i. f»I. f Ibid, p. 2$G. X 77././ , p. .Til). < ////J., pp. 4.*.:., 1G1. |! //,«/., p. ::*:. daring the Seventeenth Century. I'.iji who in 1G43 had been put to death by the Parliamentarisms for his leadership of a plot in favour of Charles the First.* He himself was Sheriff of Bristol in 1603, and in that year was knighted by King Charles the Second. Other merchants were of the opposite party, and there was much hindrance to Bristol commerce during the years of civil strife through the zeal with which that strife was carried on. " I did all 1 could," said Sir Robert Atkins, in 1682, after holding the recordcrship of the town for one-and-twenty years, " to join them together and unite them : for ever since they grew rich and full of trade and knighthood, — too much sail and too little ballast, — they have been miserably divided."! Another resident of Bristol in those days made other com- plaints against its merchant- princes. " Vice, profligacy, and a disregard of civil and moral obligations," we read, " had entered the city, and taken possession of her high places. The sacred fount of justice was polluted, her laws violated, and religion herself, in her holiness and purity, was degraded to an instrument of cruelty, oppression and wrong. In their abundance the people had forgotten the God they had acknowleged in their extremity. In their elevation pride and the lust of power had supplanted the meekness and humility with which they were clothed in their adversity. They cared not to traffic with the bodies and souls of men, so that they supported their state and maintained their rule. They heeded not the groans that resounded from the prison walls, so that the banquet was spread, and assembled guests brought joy to the repast. "+ Yet Bristol prospered. Its merchants, famous for their wealth, built great houses for themselves in Redd iff Street, Thomas Street, and Temple Street, gathered in crowds about their nmrket-place and Exchange, and sent their ships to every known quarter of the world. That was the commercial condition of Bristol when * Si:yi;k, Memoirs of Bristol, vol. ii., p. :J.">1. t I'.iil, vol. ii., p. 520. * MS., cit-xl by (Jakkakd, p. 'ill. o.j 8 Edward Colston of Bristol. Edward Colston became a regular merchant of the town, though not always resident in it. On the 10th of Decem- ber, 1083, he received the freedom of Bristol ;* and from about that time, or earlier, it seems that his chief business inherited from his father, who died in 1081, consisted in sending ships to the West Indies, there to sell English goods, and bring back commodities for home consumption. Six years later, in 1689, he set up a sugar refinery at an old house known as the Mint, in Saint Peter's Churchyard,! his partners being Richard Beacham, of London, Sir Thomas Day, and the Captain Nathanial Wade, whose republican vehemence had inclined him in his youth to go and form an ideal colony in New Jersey, and who, more lately, had been implicated in Monmouth's rebellion against James the Second, and narrowly escaped execution. In taking so fierce a regicide for partner, Edward Colston showed that lie in no way shared his father's royalist prejudices. Had it been otherwise, he would hardly have chosen to live in the quaint, roomy house at Mortlake, yet standing as a ruin, where Oliver Cromwell had dwelt before him. J There we find him settled down in 1689, attending vestry-meetings, and otherwise doing duty as an ordinary parishioner when- ever he could be at home. But he was frequently away ; often at his lodgings in London, apparently in the neighbour- hood of Whitechapel, whence he could have personal super- vision of the shipping in which he was interested, but oftener still at Bristol, where he retained his father's house in Small Street.§ Bristol and London divided his benefactions. To Christ's Hospital, as we have seen, he gave large sums nearly every year. On one occasion he gave 1,0001. towards the relief of the poor in Whitechapel ;|| and in 1701 he sent another 1,000/., to be spent in maintaining the poor children * Gauuaiii), ]). HIT. t Ibid. X I /.sons. Environ* of London. •j JJa!:::i:tt. llulorij of Bristol, p. G5J>. || Ibid.. \>. 053. His Trade and his Benefactions. 359 of the same parish, then, as now, one of the wretchedest parts of London.* Twice every week, we arc told, he had large quantities of meat and broth prepared for distribution among the paupers in his neighbourhood.! Every year he went through Whitechapel Prison and the Marshalsea, to empty his purse in freeing the most deserving debtors for small amounts ; and at one time he sent a lump sum of 3,000/. to relieve and liberate the poor debtors in Ludgate Prison.J In 1709, again, a year of famine, he sent a noble present of 20,000/., to be applied by the London committee in helping the starving poor of the City.§ Those were casual charities. Most of Colston's permanent endowments were in Bristol. In 1G90 he obtained leave from the borough corporation to buy about three acres of ground on Saint Michael's Hill, known as the Turtles, ' to erect thereon an almshouse and chapel and three other mes- suages,' for which 100/. were to be paid. || That was done at a cost of about 2,500/., and by the autumn of 1695 the almshouses were built and endowed, accommodation being afforded in them for twelve poor men and twelve poor women, whose care and future election was assigned to the Company of Merchant Adventurers of Bristol, incorporated by Edward the Sixth, in 1547, and confirmed by Elizabeth in 156G.H " The almshouse on Saint Michael's Hill wants some men to fill it," he wrote to a friend, in the following December. " If you or anybody know of any persons that are fit to go into it, I would gladly have them put in. I would willingly that they should be such that have lived in some sort of decency ; but that a more especial regard should be had that none be admitted that are drunkards, nor of a vicious life, or turbulent spirit, least the quiet and order the inhabitants at present live in be thereby interrupted/'** This year, 1095, was rich in other good works. ' One of * Garrard, ]>. 398. § Garrard, p. 339. % Ibid, p. 38. r >. f Barrett, p. G55. || Ibid., p. 3S4. ** Ibid., p. 3SC. I Ibid. .'500 Edward Colston of Bristol. his ships,' it is recorded, ' having been missing- for upwards of three years, and having been given up as lost, arrived deeply laden. He said, as he had given her up as totally lost, he would claim no right to her, and ordered the ship and cargo to be sold, and the produce to be applied towards the relief of the needy, which was immediately carried into execution.'* In October, lu'95, he proposed to maintain six poor sailors, if the Merchants' Company would be at the cost of building a wing to the almshouses at The Turtles, an offer that was accepted, with the generous addition of an endow- ment for six other mariners,! and in the following month Colston made provision for the admission of six new boys into Queen Elizabeth's Hospital, a charitable institution founded in 1589, by William Bird, merchant and some time Mayor of Bristol.} A year or two later the untiring philanthropist made a further endowment for six boys, raising the number of inmates to fifty; and in 1702 he gave 500/. towards rebuilding the school-house, and making it large enough to hold a hundred and fifty boys.§ In 1697, 'Edward Colston and co-partners,' sold their sugar-refinery at the Mint for 800/., Colston himself ad- vancing a large part of the money, and in that way the Mint workhouse was established. || The rich merchant's charities grew as he advanced in years and wealth. They were so large and numerous that his neighbours, in unreasonable jealousy, resented his labours for the good of the town. When, in 1702, he made his munificent proposal to increase the number of Queen Eliza- beth's Hospitallers from fifty to a hundred, he was ' hardly censured,' and the institution he wished to benefit was stig- matized as ' a nursery for beggars and sloths, and rather a burden than a benefit to the place where they were bestowed.'H But Colston would not take a refusal. In March, 1700, he repeated his offer, saying, that were the like made to the * Gatuurd, p. 391. % Ihiil, |). 3!>4. || Jbi,l, p. 39a. t Ibid., p. 3U2. § Ibid., p. 401. \ Ibid., p. 105. His Benefactions in Bristol. 361 corporation of London, he knew well it would be glady accepted for Christ's Hospital ; " but although I have had my education, and spent good part of my days there, yet since I first drew my breath in your city, I rather incline that the poor children born there should partake thereof."* The Bristol aldermen had grown wiser in the interval. This time they promptly accepted the proposal. By August, 1 707, ' Mrs. Lane's house in Saint Augustine's Lack,' had been bought for 1,300/. ; and further sums having been spent in fitting it for a new and suitable school-house, the old endow- ments were augmented by a gift representing 640/. a year, and the new establishment was opened in July, 1710. t While Colston was at Bristol, attending the ceremony, a woman is said to have gone to him with an urgent request that he would obtain for her son admission into the school, and, on his agreeing thereto, to have promised to teach the lad all life long to thank his benefactor. "No," was the merchant's characteristic reply, " teach him better ; we do not thank the clouds for rain, nor the sun for light, but we thank the God who made both clouds and sun."J Edward Colston's charities have secured for him renown as the most illustrious of Bristol's many noble benefactors. In English history there is hardly another instance of such lifelong perseverance in well-doing. The worthy merchant was Member of Parliament for three years. He was elected in 1710 at the age of seventy-four. He had refused to stand, alleging that he was too old to perform the duties that would devolve upon him. But the people were determined to have him for their representative, and he was elected by acclamation. ' It was very surprising,' wrote a newspaper correspondent of that day, ' to see the joy it occasioned in this city when they carried their member along the city, with the mitre and streamers before him ; and the whole city was illuminated, and the night concluded * <Jai;i;ai;d, p. 401. t Ibid., pp. -100-114. + Ibid., p. 415. 3G2 Edward Colston of Bristol. with bonfires and ringing of bells.'* Parliament was dissolved in 17J3 : and from that time we hear little more of Colston. He died at his house in Mortlakc, he having attained the ripe age of eighty-five, on the 11th of October, 1721. ' As to what relates to my funeral,' he wrote in the will which assigned about 100,0(J0Z. to his kindred and friends, besides the vast sums expended hi benevolence, ' I would not have the least pomp used at it, nor any gold rings given, only that my corpse shall be carried to Bristol in a hearse,' and attended to the grave by the recipients of his various chari- ties, especially ' the six poor old sailors that, are kept at my charge in the Merchants' Almshouse in the Marsh,' as he said ; * and that the money that might otherwise have been expended in gold rings be laid out in new coats and gowns, stockings, shoes, and caps for the six sailors : and the like, except the caps, for so many of the men and women in my almshouse that shall accompany my corpse as above, and are willing to wear them afterwards.'f * Tost Boy, Oct. 31, 1710, cited by Garrard, p. 427. f Garrard, pp. 403, 4C4. ;g;j CHAPTER XV. WILLIAM PATERSON OF DUMFRIES. [1G58— 1719.] William Paterson was born in April, 1G58,* at Skipmyre, in the parish of Tinwald, in Dumfriesshire. His birthplace was a comely farmhouse on the summit of a hill, midway between Lochmaben, in the vale of Annan, and the town of Dumfries, whence it was distant a few miles in a north- easterly direction. About his father we know nothing save that he was a well-to-do farmer, descended from other farmers long settled in the parish.! But among his kindred or namesakes were some men of note in old Scottish history. One of the number, living at the beginning of the eighteenth century, son of a Bishop of Ross, was the last Archbishop of Glasgow ; while another, a retired sea-captain of Edinburgh, attained unenviable distinction as a persecutor of the Cove- nanters, among whom others of his name were conspicuous. * Bannister, Writings of William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of England (I/mdon, 1851);, second edition, vol. i., p. xix. Besides the eareful editing of all Paterson "s works now known to us, Mr. Bannister has, in his prefaces, his biographical introduction, and his appendices, brought together nearly all the available materials for Patcrson's biography, — both those which his own patient research has discovered in the State Paper Office, the British Museum, and other manuscript libraries, and those contained in the Darien Papers of the Bannatyne Club, and other publications. t William Pagan, The Birthplace and Parentage of William Paterson, Founder of the Bank of England, and Projector of the Darien Scheme (Edinburgh, 18G5), pp. 11, 72, &c. 3G4 The Patermis of Dumfriesshire. The Church historians of Scotland tell especially how John Patcrson, of Penyvenie, defended himself and the faith that was dear to him during the troublous times amid which he lived. Once, we read, he was at breakfast, when three dragoons, sent to arrest him, came within sight. ' He instantly rose from the table,' says the word-heaping histo- rian, ' and, grasping his trusty sword, presented himself in the attitude of self-defence at the door. His affectionate wife, whom solicitude for her husband's welfare prompted to expose herself to danger, followed close at his back. The soldiers, in order to overpower their victim, made a simulta- neous onset ; but Patcrson, with undaunted breast and powerful arm, brandished his glittering glaive above his head, and dealt his blows so lustily, that he disabled two of his opponents, and laid them stunned, but not dead, at his feet. The third, a stalwart dragoon, yet unscathed, ap- proached the valiant Covenanter, who so bravely maintained his position before the door, with a view to cut him down, and the more easily, as he was already exhausted by the stiffness of the conflict ; but his wife, who, like a guardian angel, was hovering near him, hastily untied her apron and flung it over the soldier's sword-arm, by means of which the weapon was entangled, so that Patcrson made his escape without injury to himself. It was some time before matters were adjusted on the battle-ground, and before the prostrate soldiers recovered themselves, and by this time the fugitive was beyond their reach.'* From such adventures as those — and .John Paterson had many of them during a lifetime of ninety years — his famous kinsman was removed. William Paterson is reported to have been from infancy trained by his pious mother in the doctrines of the Covenanters, and all through his life we find in him a simplicity and a devoutness that well accorded with that training ; but he left home before he was old enough to share the persecutions of the time. At the age of sixteen, * Simpson, Traditions of the Covenanters (Edinburgh, 1852), pp. 137, 138. William Patersons Early Occupations. 3G5 it is reported, he went to Bristol, where he lodged for a while with an old kinswoman, and at her death inherited from her money enough to start on the commercial career he had marked out for himself* From 1GS(), he said at a later date, he especially devoted himself, 'abroad as well as at home, to matters of general trade and public revenues.'! Some time before that, probably in 1081, he left Bristol, either, in the first instance, to make brief study of continental commerce in Amsterdam, or at once to enter upon a few- years of wandering life in the American colonies. He married the widow of a Puritan minister at Boston, named Bridge,} and he is said to have been a partner in Sir William Phipp's exploit for recovering the Spanish treasure lost off Bahamas. In later years some of his enemies said that his occupation in the West Indies had been that of a missionary ; others, that he employed himself as a buccaneer. Neither statement has any real foundation. His Presbyterian train- ing, and the known piety of his character, may have led him to follow the practice of his fellow-thinkers, and preach or conduct prayer-meetings, whenever occasion seemed to de- mand this service ; and doubtless some of the transactions in which he was engaged, like those of all his brother trades- men in the American waters, would look piratical if strictly judged by modern rules. Englishmen in those days had not forgotten the old mode of warfare with their great Spanish enemies : they still fought and made prizes on their own account, as Drake, Frobisher, Raleigh, and Caven- dish had done before them ; but it is clear that Paterson was a merchant, and an honest and energetic one. One who, as a lad, must have known him in his old age, speaks of him as ' a merchant who had been much in foreign countries, and had entered far into speculations relating to commerce and colonies.'§ Trading voyages, chiefly, as it seems, between Bahamas and Boston, occupied him for the five * Bannisto', vol. i., p. xxi. t Ibid. X Ibid., vol. iii., p. 2415. v: A\'i>i;i;son, Origin of Com.ncrcc, vol. ii. 366 William Patersons First Advocacy or six years of his stay in the West Indies ; and it was a desire to make public a larger scheme of trade that brought him home before he had time to accumulate much wealth by his traffic. He must have been in England in 1681, as on the 16th of November in that year he obtained preliminary admission into the Merchant Taylors' Company ; and the record of his full and final admission on the 21st of Oc- tober, 1689, shows that he was in England again at that time.* He had left the West Indies, indeed, about two years earlier than that. On his own showing, in a document addressed to William the Third, the first thought of a Darien colony occurred to him in 1684; and in 1687, according to the statement of one of his contemporary libellers, 'he returned to Europe with his head full of projects. He endea- voured to make a market of his wares in Holland and Ham- burg, but without success. He went afterwards to Berlin, opened his pack there, and had almost caught the Elector of Brandenburg in his noose, but that miscarried too. He likewise imparted the same project to Mr. Secretary Blath- wayt, but still with the same success. Meeting thus with so many discouragements in these several countries, he let his project sleep for some years, and pitched his tent in London, where matter is never wanting to exercise plotting heads.' These sentences are quoted from the pamphlet of a profes- sional traducer employed by the English ministry, in 1700, to write down the Darien scheme, for 300Z. a year.f But the facts are tolerably correct. Coming to England shortly before the deposition of James the Second, Paterson had laid * Bannistek, vol. iii., Preface. t William Hodges, cited by Bannister, vol. ii., p. 281. " I think it proper," said this man, in a letter, dated August, 1700, to his employers, '• to put you in mind that a too narrow encouragement would neither con- tribute to my reputation, nor allow me to live at that rate, or in a creditable way, to keep such converse as will be necessnry for capacitating me to advance these designs of public good, which I have conceived for the mutual interest of the government and nation. According to my serious reckoning, I think I shall be pinched in supporting my resolutions by an allowance under 300/. a-vcar." of a Settlement on the Isthmus of Darien. 367 before that sovereign a proposal for taking- possession of the Isthmus of Darien, ' the key of the Indies and door of the world,' and there founding a settlement which would answer the treble purpose of providing a central post for operations against Spain, of securing an emporium for English trade in the West Indies and along the western shores of both North and South America, and of establishing a high-road for com- merce with the more distant dependencies in India and other parts of Asia. " There will be herein," he said, in the conclu- sion of a long and learned treatise on the subject, published some years after this time, " more than sufficient means for laying the foundation of our trade, and improvement as large and extensive as his Majesty's empire, and to order matters so that the designs of trade, navigation, and industry, instead of being like bones of contention, as hitherto, may for the future become bonds of union to the British kingdoms ; since here will not only certainly and visibly be room enough for these, but, if need were, for many more sister nations. Thus they will not only be effectually cemented, but, by means of these storehouses of the Indies, this island, as it seems by nature designed, will, of course, become the emporium of Europe. His Majesty will then be effectually enabled to hold the balance and preserve the peace among the best and most considerable, if not likewise amongst the greatest part of mankind, from which he hath hitherto principally been hindered and disabled by the mean and narrow concep- tions of monopolists and hucksters, who have always been, and if not carefully prevented will still be, presuming to measure the progress of the industry and improvements of the very universe, not by the extent and nature of the thing, but by their own poor, mistaken, and narrow conceptions thereof."* But James the Second was too busy witli the troubles that his bigotry had brought upon him to listen to suggestions for the benefiting of his kingdom or the cementing of union between England and Scotland ; least of all when those sug- * Baxmsteu, vol. i., pp. 157, 158. 368 William Patcrson in London. "■estions came from a Puritan merchant and a kinsman of Scottish Covenanters. As King of England he had no dis- position to carry on the schemes of naval grandeur that had won honour for him when Duke of York ; and the only merchants whom he cared to have intercourse with, or to keep under his protection, were those same ' monopolists and hucksters ' who found it their interest to pay him largely for his friendship. Therefore Paterson obtained no hearing at the English Court. Not yet disheartened, he took his Darien project abroad. In 1688, while matters were being arranged for the coming over of William of Orange, he was often to be seen in the coffee-houses of Amsterdam, conferring with the great Dutch merchants, and urging their participation in his views. Later in the same year he was at Hamburg, urging the establishment of a company for the carrying out of his pet scheme.* But in both places he failed ; and returning to London in 1689, he seems, not to have for a moment abandoned the idea, but to have postponed it for a more suitable occasion, when the nation, as well as himself, might be less oppressed with * troubles, disappointments, and afflic- tions.'f Concerning his life in London during the next few years, we are told but little ; but that little helps us to a fair understanding of his position. He was living for some time, long or short, at Windsor ; and there is a pleasant tradition that he bought a farm there, with the view of providing a comfortable home for his aged parents, robbed of all enjoy- ment in their native district by the persecutions then abound- ing. But the merchant himself had need to live nearer the centre of business. For some years his residence was in the parish of Saint Giles-in-the-Fields, where in 1691 he took a leading part, in company with Sir John Trenchard, Paul Daranda, and other notable men, in a project for bringing water into the north of London from the Hampstead and Highgate hills, an idea suggested by the noble enterprise of * Bannister, vol. iii., p. 24G. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 117. Will. 1AM I'ATKI.'SM.N OK DIMKUIIS. \ol. /., fitlyr 'MS His Project of a National Bank. 3G9 Sir Hugh Myddelton in connection with the New River Company.* But he was also busy about matters much more commer- cially important. Late in this year, 1691, we find him giving evidence before the House of Commons, as a merchant of influence and repute, on the collection and management of public loans. He proposed that, in lieu of occasional and unsettled loans formerly made to Government, a fixed sum of 1,000,000Z. should be advanced by the trading merchants, at six per cent, interest, as a perpetual fund, to be managed by trustees chosen from the subscribers, and used not only in supplying the pressing claims of Government, but also in forming a public bank, ' to exchange such current bills as should be brought to be enlarged, the better to give credit thereunto, and make the said bills the better to circulate.'! That, be it noted, Was the first suggestion of the Lank of England. In old times the only bankers were pawnbrokers. The Italian merchants who in the twelfth and thirteenth cen- turies had given its name to Lombard Street, set a fashion which men like Sir Richard Whittington and Sir Thomas Gresham were not slow in following. Goldsmiths, and rich traders of all sorts, took the place, in ways more or less rude, of bankers. Country people and townspeople found it expedient, instead of locking up their money in their own houses, to place it in the hands of competent men of business, who had facilities for keeping valuable property in safety ; and those who often had no ready money at command soon learnt the trick of borrowing from rich neighbours, and "'ivinjr them the best and most moveable of their property as security for the return of what they borrowed. Edward the First once pawned his crown, and James the First and Charles the First many times pledged the crown-jewels. In like manner nobles pawned their rich suits of armour, and common folk their trinkets, whether of much or of little value; while others * Bannister, vol. i., p. xxvi. f Jour mils of the House of Commons, Jan. 18, 1G92. VOL. I. '1 1) 370 The Rise of Modern Banking. brought title-deeds of lands or other documentary security. But 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 things unknown. 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 quantities of capital, the mercantile community was seriously damaged, although one class — especially 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 extravagances of life under the gay rule of the Stuarts, and the risk which private indi- viduals felt in keeping money in their own hands during the troublous 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- became natural and necessary for the paper to be used as money ; and no sooner was the custom begun than its con- venience, 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 gold- smiths' vaults, and the buying and selling of ordinary mer- chants and tradesmen was carried on almost exclusively by means of paper.* Both for giving and for receiving bullion the * Roger North tells how his brother, Sir Dudley, on his return from Constantinople, was astonished at the new and irregular hanking customs introduced during his ahsence. For a long time he refused to lodge Ids money in the goldsmiths' hands, preferring to keep ' his own cashkeepcr' in his own eountingdiouse, ' as merchants used to do.' ' His friends,' it is mlded, ' wondered at this, as il' he did not know his own interest.' At last lie, Uk>, iumul it nc'j'j^arv to follow the f'ashiun. 'In the latter end of Lis Paterson s Suggestion of the Bank of England. 371 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 privi- leges, ran the risk of losing their wealth through the failure or defalcation of the men to whom they intrusted it. It was to remedy this state of things that, in 1691, William Paterson urged the establishment of a national bank, so as to provide a safe means of investment and a trustworthy machinery for lending and borrowing money at proper rates of interest. Many of the great London mer- chants supported his project, especially, as it seems, Michael Godfrey, one of the richest and most honest city men of that time, brother of the ill-fated and famous Sir Edmondsbury Godfrey ; but others opposed it, and it was coldly entertained by the legislature. Five or six gentlemen joined with Pater- son, we read in the Parliamentary journals, in urging the project and giving evidence touching it before a Committee of the House of Commons. ' The Committee were of opinion not. to receive any proposal which required making the bills of property current, so as to force them as payment on any without their consent. But they acquainted Mr. Paterson that they would receive any proposal to advance one million on a perpetual fund of interest, to be in the nature of a purchase, where they might assign their interest as they pleased, to any one who consented thereto.' To that pro- posal to do for the Government all that it needed, without according to the merchants what they chiefly desired, Pater- son, ea£er for the interest and honour of the Commonwealth, was willing to agree ; but the more prudent merchants who had promised to assist in subscribing the capital thought otherwise* Therefore, after some further debating and con- time, when he dealt more in trusts and mortgages than in merchandize, he saw a hotter custom, and used the shop of Sir Francis Child, at Temple liar, fur paying and receiving all his great sums.' — Life of Sir Dudley Xurt't, p. 14S. * Jourruils of tl.c lloutc of Commons, Jan. IS, 1T.02. 372 Patersons Suggestion of a National Bank, sideration, the proposal was thrown aside, to be carefully thought over by Paterson, however, and discussed with his friends in the City and the West End. It was also taken note of, and made the basis of many absurd propositions, by some of the political and financial speculators for whom the ensuing years were famous. Chief of these were Hugh Chamberlayne and John Briscoe, who published pamphlets and tendered petitions to Parliament representing the advantages to be derived from a land bank, and the issuing of unlimited supplies of paper money, incon- vertible into gold or silver. By this arrangement every one having land was to receive paper money equivalent to its value, besides remaining in possession of the land itself. The owner of an estate yielding 15Q/. a year — and therefore supposed to be worth 8,000Z. — for instance, was to be enriched by a bonus of 8,000Z.'s worth of paper. ' In consideration of the freeholders bringing their lands into the bank,' said Chamberlayne, ' for a fund of current credit, to be established by Act of Parliament, it is now proposed that for every 150/. per annum, secured for a hundred and fifty years, for but one hundred payments of 100Z. per annum, free from all manner of taxes and deductions whatsoever, every such freeholder shall receive 4,000/. in the said current credit, and shall have 2,000Z. more put into the fishery stock for his proper benefit ; and there may be further 2,000Z. reserved at the Parliament's disposal towards the carrying on this present war.'* The nonsense of such talk is now apparent to every one, but in those days of hazy political economv, and of financial difficulties leading both men and nations to all sorts of preposterous hopes of money-making, it was accepted by thousands. It even found supporters enough in the House of Commons to get it referred to a committee at the Christmas time of 1693. But there it was left, the irood sense of the House being too strong for its real adoption, and the commercial world generally being made aware of * Journals of the House of Commons, Dec. 7, 1G03. and its Perversion by Chambcrlmjnc and others. 37o its folly through the eloquent pamphlets of William Paterson and others. Chamberlavne's silly scheme had this good effect, at any rate, that, by the force of contrast, it brought favour upon Paterson's wise one. Paterson's proposal was abandoned in 1C91, as we saw, because the Government objected to the legalizing of paper currency. That was the ostensible objec- tion. A more real one arose from the fact that the financier's scheme also involved the doing away with the pernicious custom, adopted by needy governments during many gener- ations, of debasing the coinage and appropriating the money thus gained. That was a policy that Paterson could not fail to denounce both on moral and on financial grounds. He also denounced the system of lotteries and annuities by which, for the receipt of money to be presently squandered in foreign wars, heavy additions were made to the national debt, * that dangerous and consuming evil,' as he called it in the days of its commencement. * Upon the whole,' he wrote in one of his many treatises, * they so managed matters in these last three years, from the first proposition to the establishment of the Bank ' — that is, from 1691 to 1694 — ' as that the before-mentioned debt of three millions was, one way or other, more than doubled. At last, with much ado, they ventured to try the proposition of the Bank, although not so as to affect the general credit for the better so much as at first designed, but only as a lame expedient.'* But Paterson's battle was won as soon as he had gained permission to establish the Bank anyhow. His chief helpers in the work were Michael Godfrey, who used his influence in the City, and Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, Pater- son's constant friend and supporter, who fought down the opposition of Court and State. That was by no means a a light task. The proposal had to be smuggled into Par- * An Inquiry into the State of the Union of Great Britain and the Past and Present State of the Trade and Public Uevenucs thereof {1111), printed by Bannistek, vol. ii., p. GG. or William Patersms Establishment liament under cover of a Bill imposing a new duty on ton- nage, for the benefit of the capitalists lending money towards carrying on the war with France. A loan of 1,200,000/. was to be made to the Crown, at the unusually low rate of eio-ht per cent, interest, and, as a return for those moderate terms, the subscribers were to be incorporated as the Governor and Company of the Bank of England, with power to deal in bills of exchange, bullion, and forfeited bonds, provided they carried on no other trade in their corporate capacity. This suggestion was sharply canvassed in the House of Commons, and only passed after many divisions and amend- ments. It was angrily denounced in the House of Lords, the final discussion, after many delays and repeated consider- ations, lasting from nine o'clock in the morning till four in the afternoon. Even then the opposition was not over. William the Third was abroad when the Bill went up for the royal signature, and the non-contents did their utmost to prejudice Queen Mary against it. 'She was detained in council from four in the afternoon until ten at night,' wrote Paterson ; ' and had it not been for the Queen, who insisted on the express orders from the King, then in Flanders, the commission had not passed ; consequently, notwithstanding all the former pains and expense of private men about it, there had still been no Bank.' But there was to be a Bank. The Bill was endorsed by the King on the 25th of April, 1094, and on the 27th of July the royal charter of incorporation was issued. Within ten days of the opening of the books the subscription was full.'* On the first day 300,000/. was paid or promised, 2,000/. being Fatcrson's own ; and on the tenth John Locke had to hurry up to the temporary meeting-place of the Company at the old Mercers' Hall, that he might be in time to tender his contribution of 500/. to the required sum of 1,200,000/. ' The advantages that the King and all concerned in tallies had from the Ban]':,' said Bishop Burnet — no friend to Paterson — ' were so * Inquiry, in Baxxistek, vol. ii., p. G7, &c. of the Bank of England. 37o soon sensibly felt, that all people saw into the secret reasons that made the enemies of the constitution set themselves with so much earnestness against it.' Paterson himself, in a modest narrative of the business, telling nothing at all about his own share in it, remarked that ' the Bank not only relieved the managers ' — that is, the Chancellor of the Ex- chequer and his associates* — ' from their frequent processions to the City to borrow money on the best and nearest public securities, at ten or twelve per cent, per annum interest, but likewise gave life and currency, to double or treble the value of its capital, to other branches of the public credit, and so, under God, became the principal means of the success* of the campaign in the following year, 10*95, particularly in reducing the important city and fortress of Namur, the first material step to the peace concluded at Ryswick, two years after.'f But if the Bank of England did much to facilitate the reduction of Namur, the reduction of Namur was the occasion of much mischief to the Bank of England. Hardly had the Company, consisting of a governor, a deputy-governor, and four-and-twenty directors, quitted their temporary home at the Mercers' Hall, to find a more permanent dwelling-place in the Grocers' Hall — where their business was conducted in one long room by fifty-four clerks,J — than it lost its two best members. Business took Michael Godfrey to the camp of William the Third in the Netherlands, in the summer of 1095, and curiosity led him to be present at the siege of * ' Formerly,' says Macaulny, ' when the Treasury was empty, when the taxes came in slowly, and when the pay of the soldiers and sailors was in arrear, it had been 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 aldermen, to make up a sum by borrowing 1007. from this hosier, and 200i. from that ironmonger.' f Baxnisteh, vol. ii., p. G8. % Fkancis, History of the Bank of England (London, 1848), vol. i., p. Go. ' I looked,' says Addison, 4 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, according to the parts they hold in that just and regular economy.' 376 William Patc?'soiis Establishment Namur. " Mr. Godfrey," said the King-, when he caught sight of him among the officers of his staff, "Mr. Godfrey, you ought not to run these hazards. You are not a soldier : you can be of no use to us here." "Sir," answered the merchant, " I run no more hazard than your Majesty." " Not so," replied the King ; " I am where it is my duty to be, and I may without presumption commit my life to God's keeping. But you ." Godfrey never heard the sentence finished. At that instant a cannon-ball struck him, and he fell dead at King William's feet* Godfrey had been deputy-governor of the Bank, and a stout champion of all the measures propounded by Pater- son, who, from his inferior mercantile position, was only a director, marked out for special and ill-tempered resistance, just because of his fame and influence in the outside world. This opposition seems to have induced him, as soon as his friend's death left him alone, to abandon the work altogether. There is no warrant for the current assertion that he was expelled from the direction ; but he does appear to have been, according to a contemporary statement, * intrigued out of his post, and out of the honours he had received. 'f At any rate, after the first year his name is not to be found in the list of directors, and before long he re-purchased his * Macavlay, vol. vii., p. 218. Late in 1694 Godfrey had issued A Short Account of the Bank of England, designed to prove that ' the Bank, notwith- standing all the cavils which the wit and malice of its opponents have raised, is one of the best establishments that ever was made for the good of the kingdom.' It is the only sure corrective, he shows, of the evil by which 'much money has been lost in England by the goldsmiths and scriveners breaking, which in about thirty years past, cannot amount to so little as betwixt two and three millions, all which might have been prevented had the Bank been sooner established.' He also points out that ' the Bank, besides the raising 1,200.000/. towards the charge of tiie war. cheaper than it could otherwise have been done, and, like the other public funds, tying the jxjople faster to the Government, will infallibly lower the rate of interest, as well on public as on private securities ; and the lowering of interest, besides the encouragement it will be to industry, will, by a natural conse- quence, rai.se the value of land.' t Cited by Fkancus, vol. i., p. GG. of the Bank of England. oil stock, to use it in other ways. Henceforth the memorable history of the Bank of England has nothing to do with Faterson. Having overcome the conservative opposition of many of his contemporaries, and the yet more dangerous love of novelties that characterised many others, and suc- ceeded in the establishment of a noble institution, too full of vitality to be seriously harmed by the folly or selfishness of its members, he left it to do its work in the brinjnnjj about of an entire change in the financial policy of England, and to contribute vastly to its unparalleled commercial greatness. But Paterson had no thought of being idle. He only left the institution, in which his presence seemed to excite jealousies, to do what seemed to him quite as useful work of another sort. Having withdrawn his 2,000/. from the Bank, we find him at this time investing double that sum in the City of London Orphans' Fund, and making important suggestions for the improved management and distribution of that charity.* The suggestions, however, were not adopted ; and the merchant straightway turned all his attention to a revival of his long-cherished Darien project. Fully to tell the history of that project and its effects would require a volume, and then another volume would be wanted for disproof of the errors into which most writers have fallen respecting it. Prejudice against Scotland, and the personal abuse of Paterson that was heaped upon him when misfortune left him many enemies and few friends, caused grievous misrepresentations to be published in his lifetime, and those misrepresentations have found ready adoption at the hands of later historians.! We have already * Bannister, vol. i., p. xxxiii. t See especially Macavlay, vol. viii., pp. 195-228. ' The story is an exciting one,' said Lord Macaulay, 'and it lias generally been told by writers whose judgment had been perverted by strung national partiality.' There arc other partialities l>esides national ones; and as the most impartial are apt to make blunders, if they write without precise information, the careful student of Paterson's career will find much to dissent from, even in one of the most eloquent episodes in the most eloquent of modern histories. 378 William Paterson's Arguments seen that Patcrson was not * a foreign adventurer, whose whole capital consisted in an inventive brain and a persuasive tongue.'* The actual facts show him to have acted in this affair, not. always with worldly wisdom, but from first to last with rare disinterestedness. If there were errors in his scheme, they were errors of a generous mind, and such as a well-balanced judgment might fall into without reproach. The dangerous faults of the undertaking were clearly seen and boldly denounced by him, and for the ruin they brought upon it blame can attach only to the men who thwarted and superseded him. For more than ten years the project had been taking shape and gaining force in his mind. He had already proposed it, without success, to James the Second of England, to the merchants of Amsterdam and Hamburg, and to the Elector of Brandenburg. He now urged it upon his countrymen in Scotland, partly in a patriotic desire to increase their slender foreign trade, and partly because among them he would be likely to meet with less opposition than among the long- established monopolists of London. Mainly due to his in- fluence, doubtless, was the Act of Parliament encouraging Scottish trade, passed in 1693 ; and to him is attributed the very wording of the statute for the formation of a Scottish African and Indian Company, which received the royal sanction on the 26th of June, 1695.f "There are re- markable occurrences at this time," he wrote on the 9th of July following, to the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, " and our neighbours lie under many disadvantages. A considerable measure of the gains of trade and improvements seems to incline to Scotland, to give them a facility and inclination to gain some advantages for themselves and their posterity, all which seem to be harbingers of, and to portend, success. Above all, it's needful for us to make no distinction of parties in this great and noble undertaking ; but of whatever nation or religion a member, if one of us, he ought to be looked * Macaulay, vol. viii., p. 19G. f Bannisteh, vol. i., pp. xxxvii., xxxviii. for a Colony in Daricn. 379 upon to be of the same interest and inclination. "We must not act apart in anything, but in a firm and united body, and distinct from all interest whatever ; so hoping- that Almighty God, who at this time seems to have fitted so many able instruments, both of our own nation and others, and given us such opportunities as perhaps others have not, will perfect the work begun, and make some use of Scotland also to visit those dark places of the earth whose habitations are full of cruelty."* With Paterson philanthropy was quite as strong a motive as commercial gain, and perhaps it was the blending of these two generally discordant elements that led to the failure of his project ; but, whether rightly or wrongly, his countrymen thought with him. The Scottish African and Indian — better known as the Darien — Company at once found favour with the people of Scotland. There is no good authority for the statement often made, that Paterson went north with his visionary friend, Fletcher of Saltoun, and, by a series of extravagant representations, worked upon the credulity of the ignorant. It rather appears that the first plan of a Scottish colonization of Darien began with others — with Sir Robert Christie, the Lord Provost of Edinburgh, and Lord Belhaven, in especial — and that at their instigation Paterson consented to give up to his own country the scheme he had wished to see adopted by some richer and more influential state. At that time Scotland was poor indeed; but it was rich in zeal on behalf of this scheme. No sooner was the subscription list opened than people of all classes and from all parts flocked up to Edinburgh to set down their names. Paterson, himself a subscriber for 3,000Z., was at the head of a com- mittee in London ; and in a few days from the first announce- ment, capital to the amount of 300,000/. was there collected. * Tlic Darien Papers, being a Selection of Original Letters and Official Documents relating to the Establishment of a Colony at Darien by the Com- pany of Scotland trading to Africa and the Indies ; edited for the Bauuatyne Club by Mr. J. H. Burton (Edinburgh, 1849), pp. 2-4. 380 William Patcrsons Arguments So soon as the project that he had vainly advocated for ten vears was publicly taken up, it found abundance of sup- porters. Statesmen, merchants, and philanthropists alike were charmed at the thought of establishing a new colony upon the narrow strip of land connecting North and South America, so as to embrace the trade of both halves of the great con- tinent, and afford a convenient meeting-place for the ships brincing" merchandize both from Europe and from the distant settlements in India and the Asiatic islands. Vast regions in America had been appropriated and found wonderfully profitable. Vast enterprises had been set on foot, with excellent result, for bringing within reach of civilized Europe the natural and developed wealth of the richest parts of Asia by means of long voyages round the southern coast of Africa. But till now, as Paterson urged, men had forgotten the real * key to both the Indies,' a splendid place for commerce in itself as well as the portal to that direct traffic with the East which had hitherto been carried on in roundabout ways. " The Isthmus of America," he said, " all things considered, is in healthfulness and fruitfulness inferior to few, if any, of the other places in the Indies, as naturally producing plenty of gold-dust, dye-woods, and other valuable growths, vast quantities and great variety of the best timber for shipping in the known world, and is capable of yielding sugar, tobacco, indigo, cocoa, vanilla, annatto, ginger, and such like, of the best and in great abundance. But besides and above all, as being an isthmus, and seated between the two vast oceans of the universe, it is furnished on each side with excellent harbours, between the principal whereof lie the more easy and convenient passes between the one and the other sea. These ports and passes being possessed and fortified, may be easily secured and defended against any force, not only there, but that can possibly be found in those places which are not only the most convenient doors and inlets into, but likewise the readiest and securest means, first, of gaining, and after- wards for ever keeping the command of, the spacious South for a Colony in Darlcn. 381 Sea, which, as it is the greatest, so even, by what theory wo already know, it is by far the richest side of the world. These ports, so settled with passes open, through them will flow at least two-thirds of what both Indies yield to Christen- dom, the sum whereof in gold, silver, copper, spices, salt- petre, pearls, emeralds, stones of value, and such like, will hardly amount to less than 30,000/. sterling yearly. The time and expense of the voyage to China, Japan, and the richest part of the East Indies will be lessened more than a half, and the consumption of European commodities soon be more than doubled, and afterwards yearly increased."* Whether Paterson's plans and hopes were trustworthy or not is open to question ; but they took the world of English commerce by surprise, and were gladly endorsed by the multitude of merchants and adventurers whose capital and energies were not already employed in the old-fashioned channels of Eastern trade. To the East India Company and its rivals, the Turkey and Muscovy Companies, of course, the new project was altogether distasteful, and to their united opposition must mainly be attributed its disastrous ending. " The gentlemen here," wrote Paterson on the 9th of July, 1695, " think that we ought to keep private and close for some months, that no occasion may be given to the Parlia- ment of England to take notice of it in the ensuing session, which might be of ill consequence, especially as a great many considerable persons are already alarmed at it."| The caution was not unnecessary. During a very short time, as we have seen, the subscriptions to the Darien Company rose in London alone to 300,000/. The amount would doubtless soon have been very much greater but for the East India merchants and the ' great many considerable persons ' who supported them. These opponents, however, were too much for Paterson. His plan was approved by * A Proposal to 1'lant a Colony in Darlcn, printed by Baxxistek, vol. i., pp. lf>8, l.V.i. t Darien Vapors-, p. 3. 382 William Paterson and the Darien Company. King William himself, and endorsed by some of his foremost ministers and shrewdest advisers, with Lord Halifax and John Locke at their head ; but it was energetically denounced in Parliament as wildly fanatical in itself, and certain to bring about war with Spain by its tampering with the Spanish monopoly of Central American trade ; and those arguments had sufficient weight to lead to the impeachment of Paterson and his chief fellow- workers before the House of Commons.* The impeachment was never carried through ; probably it was never meant to be more than a threat ; but it served its purpose, by frightening the English capitalists and deterring Londoners from taking any important share in the enterprise. Therefore it was confined to Scotland, and Scotland was too poor or too inexperienced for the single-handed prosecu- tion of so large an undertaking. Instead of the 300,000?. promised in London being added to, only a small portion of the amount was paid up, and months, not days, were needed for collecting as much in Scotland. A few large sums were tendered, Paterson's venture of 3,0007. being backed by contributions to a like amount from the Duchess of Hamil- ton and the Duke of Queensberry, Lord Belhaven, and Sir Robert Christie, the city of Edinburgh, and the city of Glasgow.f But most of the subscribers took shares of 1007. or so apiece ; and in the Scotland of a hundred and seventy years ago there were not a great many men with even 100Z. to spare. Not till the beginning of 1697 was an aggregate capital of 400,000/. subscribed, and even then there was some delay in prosecuting the schemes of the Company, owing to the difficulty of collecting stores and building ships at Edinburgh and Leith.J A very prudent man would not have embarked on the huge enterprise with so small a fund, and with the know- ledge that when it was spent the revenues of Scotland would * Bannister, vol. i., p. xlv. f Ibid., vol. ii. ; pp. 2G5, 200*. \ Darien I'/t^crs, Early Misfortunes of the Undertaking. 383 be pretty nearly exhausted. But Paterson, full of joy at the realization of his lifelong hopes, was naturally disposed to be somewhat imprudent. Therefore, from the handsome offices of the Company in Milne Square, Edinburgh, he boldly directed his operations, and made ready for the sailing of the first fleet in the spring of 1698, with himself as its com- mander, until an untoward circumstance robbed him of his supremacy, and virtually ruined the whole affair. It seems that a sum of 25,OO0Z. was set apart for the purchase of stores at Amsterdam and Hamburg, and thither Paterson himself went to transact the business, having previously lodged the money in the hands of a London merchant, named James Smith. By so doing he thought to save the Company 2,000Z. or more, consequent on the variations of exchange between Edinburgh and London. But the result was far other- wise. Paterson was in Hamburg near the end of 1697, when he heard that one of his bills upon Smith was dishonoured, and further inquiry showed that a large portion of the money — upwards of 8,000Z — had been fraudulently made away with.* That was a terrible blow to Paterson. His subsequent conduct in the matter gives notable evidence of his chival- rous character, just as his treatment by the directors of the Company clearly proves their meanness and unfitness for the responsibilities devolving upon them. A common man would have said, " I am very sorry, but I acted for the best, and am not chargeable with the defalcations of others." Pater- son did otherwise. He practically took the whole blame upon himself. He represented that, ' by his engaging him- self in the Company's service, leaving his own affairs abruptly, and thereby neglecting also other opportunities by which lie might have advanced his fortune in England, he had lost more than the balance now due to the Company/ and was therefore unable at once to repay the whole amount. He was willing, however, to pay all he could, and for the rest, the * Banmstek, vol. i., p. xlviii. 384 William Pater son and the Darien Company. directors were at liberty ' either to dismiss him out of the Company's service, allowing him time to recover some fortune or employment, and then, as he became able, he would pay by degrees ; or to retain him in their service, and allow him some reasonable consideration out of the Company's first free profits, for his pains, charges, and losses in promoting the same, out of which allowance to be given him by the Company he doubted not in a few years to discharge the balance.'* The latter plan was urged, amid much praise of Paterson's energy and honesty, by two gentlemen to whom the question had been referred — Mr. Robert Blackwood, merchant, of Edinburgh, and Mr. William Dunlop, Principal of Glasgow College, who, according to a contemporary ac- count, was ' distinguished by the rarely united excellencies of an eminent scholar, an accomplished antiquary, a shrewd merchant, a brave soldier, an able politician, a zealous divine, and an amiable man.'t " We are convinced," added these referees, "that Mr. Paterson's going along with the Company's intended expedition is, we will not say absolutely necessary, but may be very profitable and convenient, for these reasons : first, it is well known that for a consider- able course of years he has applied himself to the knowledge of whatsoever doth principally relate to settlements, and certainly the advantage of his experience, reading, and con- verse must needs be very assisting to those whom the Com- pany will think fit to intrust with the management of their affairs out of Europe ; secondly, Mr. Paterson having cer- tainly a considerable reputation in several places of America, and wherever the Company will settle, the account of his being there will doubtless be a means to invite many persons from the neighbouring plantations who are possessed with an opinion of him." % * Banmstek., vol. i., p. lii. f Denmston, Geutulutjies of Duiuhartons/dre, cited by Bannistek, vol. iii., p. 2GG. + Bannister, vol. i., p. lv. Further Misfortunes of the Undertaking. 385 In that advice kindness and unkindness were mixed. The directors took the unkindness by itself, and aggravated it to the utmost Paterson was deposed from his place as manager, and in the preparation of the expedition that quitted Leith on the lGth of July, 1G98, he had no authoritative share ; but he was sent with it in a subordinate capacity, the direc- tion of the voyage and the plantation being intrusted to seven incompetent councillors, invested with equal powers.* That mad arrangement was in keeping with all the other plans for the undertaking. There was bad management of every sort ; Paterson's persistent efforts to correct abuses and prevent disasters being as persistently thwarted by the igno- rant and arrogant men in authority. Before the ships started, Paterson represented that they were scantily supplied with bad provisions, and that the stores sent out for sale were not worth their freight.t But he was overruled both then and all through the tragic history of the expedition. Painful by reason of its monotony of sadness is his record + of the enterprise in which nothing was done as he wished and had purposed. " During the voyage," he says, "our marine chancellors did not only take all upon them, but likewise browbeat and discouraged everybody else. 1 et we had patience, hoping things would mend when we came ashore. But we found ourselves mistaken ; for, though our masters at sea had sufficiently taught us that we fresh- water men knew nothing of their salt-water business, yet, when at land, they were so far from letting us turn the chace, that they took upon them to know everything better than we. I must confess it troubled me exceedingly to see our affairs thus turmoiled and disordered by tempers and dispositions as boisterous and turbulent as the elements they are used to struggle with, which are at least as mischievous masters as ever they can be useful servants." Paterson's first effort was to induce the seven governors so to divide * Bakkisteii, vol. i., j). 55. t Ibid., p. ITS. I Duricn Pajicrs, j>p. 17S-10S. VOL. I. 2 c 386 The Bad Management and Utter Failure their authority that each should be supreme ruler for a month, and he planned that the four more moderate and capable of the seven should be first in office. " In this time," he says, " I was in hopes that we might be able to make some laws, orders, and rules of government, and, by people's management in the time, be better able to judge who might be most fit to proceed for a longer time, not exceeding a year." The councillors, however, agreed among them- selves, that each in succession should be chief for a week at a time. " I urged," Paterson reports, " that it would be to make a mere May-game of the government, and that it would reduce all things to uncertainty and contradictions ; yet this determination of the rest was unalterable.''' The first mischief resulting from this preposterous arrange- ment was the landing of the Company on 'a mere morass, neither fit to be fortified nor planted, nor indeed for the men to lie upon,' the only reason given for this being that thereby labour would be saved in supplying the colonists with water. After two months had been wasted, and many men had been weakened, if not killed, by their unhealthy situation, the colony was transferred to another part of the isthmus. Already, however, most of the provisions brought from Scot- land had been eaten or lost. The colonists were in no con- dition for sowing and reaping for themselves. All their time was required in building houses and laying out grounds, negotiating with the native Indians, and protecting them- selves from the jealous treatment of the Spanish settlers in the neighbourhood. Some futile public efforts were made to obtain provisions from Jamaica and other parts. Fail- ing therein, many died of starvation, while many others fell victims to the fevers of the tropics. In half-a-year two- thirds of the party perished, and the remainder had to make their way, amid grievous disasters of all sorts, back to Scot- land. Twelve hundred men went out in the gladness and hopefulness of youth and unembittercd manhood, in the summer of 1698; a hundred and fifty miserable wretches of Paterson's Darien Expedition. 387 returned near the end of 1699, leaving the ruins of their settlement as a huge and ghastly tomb for the members of a second expedition, despatched in the previous August. William Paterson was the greatest sufferer of all. He certainly did not go out ' flushed with pride and hope.' * But on the other hand, though miserably ill during many months, and afflicted by the loss of his wife and her infant son — the first wife, the widow Bridges, having died many years before — it is an error to say that ' his heart was broken, his inventive faculties and plausible eloquence were no more, and he seemed to have sunk into second childhood.'f It was a second manhood into which the noble merchant- patriot — at that time only two-and-forty — entered with the beginning of the year 1700. "Thanks be to God/' he wrote to one of his associates in the Darien enterprise, on the 6th of February, " I am wonderfully recovered, only a great cold and feverish humour oppress me at present, but I hope it will soon be over." Finding that he only had been thoroughly honest and devoted to their interests, the directors of the Company began to repent of their long ill-treatment. "They are exceeding hearty and sensible," he continued, "and do seem to make amends for any former neglect or defect. I comfort myself, hoping that at last the Almighty will make us glad according to the days wherein He has afflicted us ; and in all my troubles it is no small satisfaction to have lived to give the Company and the world unquestion- able proof that I have not had any sinister nor selfish designs in promoting this work, and that unfeigned integrity has been the bottom of it. How and what I have suffered in the prosecution thereof God only knows ; and may the Almighty lay it no further to their charge who have been the cause ! I have always prayed for this, but must needs confess I could never, since my unkind usage, find the free- dom of spirit 1 do now." J * Macallay, vol. viii., p. 21G. t Ibid., p. 225. X Darien 1'apcrs, p. 259. 3S8 William Paterson in Edinburgh. That freedom of spirit he used, as long as there was any hope, in striving to correct the errors of the first Darien exploits and lead to a successful colonization. Therein lie failed, and Scotland suffered heavily from the loss of men and capital, although by no means so heavily as contem- porary and subsequent critics have represented. Nothing but honour, however, is due to Paterson. If he erred at first, he erred because of his enthusiastic generosity and philanthropic zeal, too ijreat to take a fair account of the difficulties in his way. If now he failed, he failed because others were not as disinterested and untiring as himself. But though his views were not adopted, honest men of all parties joined in show- ing respect to his superior honesty. The Scots, who thought themselves ruined by the failure of the Darien Company, honoured him as their benefactor. The English, who de- nounced the Company as a wanton piece of folly, joined praise of him with abuse of his associates. The paid hire- lings of the Court, it is true, raked up old stories, and twisted them into new libels ; but by King William and his ministers he was held in hearty esteem. In singular proof of this we find a letter from the Duke of Quccnsbury, the Royal Com- missioner in Scotland, written on the 31st of August, 1700, showing that William had ordered some money to be sent to him in relief of the poverty to which his labour had brought him. "The poor man acts," he says, " with great diligence and affection towards the King and country, lie has no bye-end, and loves this Government both in Church and State. He knows nothing vet of my having obtained anything for him ; and I am a little embarrassed how to give him what 1 am allowed for him, lest his party in that Company should conceive an unjust jealousy of him, or he himself think that I intend as bribe that which is really an act of charity."* Just three weeks later the Duke of Queensbury re- ported in another letter that ' Mr. Paterson, the first person * State Pu])crs and Letter* Addressed to IVilliam Cardares (Edinburgh , 1774,, p. G31, cited by Banmstei;, vol. i., p. xcn. His Proposals for a Council of Trade. ,°>S9 that brought the people of Scotland into the project of Cale- donia, was writing such things as it was honed might create some temper of moderation among them.'* This was a volume of Proposals and Jieasons for constituting a Council of Trade, published in 1701, for a long time attributed to John Law, but now clearly proved f to have been written by Paterson. In this work the merchant set himself, in excel- lent spirit, to suggest plans for repairing the mischief which his Darien scheme had done to Scotland, and to propound much else full of patriotism and good sense. The establish- ment of a sort of merchants' parliament, with vast legislative and executive powers on all commercial matters, was not very wise or feasible ; but the general purport of the tract was admirable. In Paterson's judgment, Scotland needed intellectual and moral, as well as commercial advancement. The political troubles of the country during the disastrous hundred years following on the accession of James the First had not been beneficial to it. " Although a great and capable genius," he urged, " be a kind of metal that can never be so well-tempered as by and in the furnace of afflic- tion, yet the meaner and more abject sort of spirits, instead of being better or further improved, are rather the more de- pressed and crushed thereby. Instead of growing more wise, prudent, patient, constant, careful, diligent, meek, and easy in themselves and with others, they become more hardened, presumptuous, conceited, rash, unthinking, and uneasy, or otherwise more mean, abject, heartless, and stupid." But wretched, indeed, was the country in which this state of things lasted for ever ; and it was with the view of helping his own nation out of so great a mischance that Paterson wrote, in the hope, as he said, " that the many and various exercises we have lately met with will have the better and not the contrary effect, and prove only necessary preparatives, * Carstares Papers, p. Of)."). t By Mr. Saxl Uannisti.i;, who lias reprinted the treatise with an in- teresting Preface, vol. i., pp. fxxxiv.-cxxxix., ]-10fj. 390 Paterson's Projects for the Advancement of Scotland. the bettor to fit the people of this kingdom for some glorious success to come ; that after a lethargy of near an age they will now be effectually roused up, and that their sense and genius in matters of trade shall be capable of mounting some- what higher than the aping a few of the worst, meanest, and most pernicious shifts and mistakes of some of our most trading neighbours ; that contrariwise our hearts will be enlarged in proportion to the weight and consequence of what we have in hand, and the favourable occasions that offer at home and abroad ; and that by the means thereof we may have the glory as well as the comfort of taking more care of the next generation than the last has done of us, and of put- ting our country in the way of regaining in the next century what it has lost in this." * The details of Paterson's proposals are too elaborate to be here set forth. Their general character, and the nature especially of their impracticable parts, may be gathered from a satirical letter written at the time to William the Third's confidential secretary. " The design," we are there told, "is a national trade, so that by it all Scotland will become one entire company of merchants. It proposes a fund of credit by which in two years to raise above 300,000/. sterling. With this stock they are, first, to trade to both the Indies and to the colonies, on the terms of the Act establishing their Company ; second, to raise manufactories throughout the kingdom ; third, to pursue their fishery to greater profit in all the markets of Europe than any other fishing company in Christendom can do ; fourth, to employ all the poor in the nation, so that in two years there shall not be one beggar seen in all the kingdom, and that without any act of slavery ; fifth, to pay back to any subscribers to the African stock his money, if demanded, so that nobody can complain of any loss that way."t Paterson never forgot his Darien project. He was faithful to all his old plans for the benefiting of mankind. Some of * Bannister, vol. i., pp. cxxxviii., exxxix. f Carstares Papers, p. G3. His last Interview with William the Third. 391 them, especially the plan of the Bank of England, had had wonderfully good effect ; but the financial and political troubles amid which William's reign was ended, disheartened him as well as all other earnest men. "In the last months of the life of this great but then uneasy prince," he wrote to the Lord Treasurer Godolphin on the 12th of December, 1709, in a very valuable letter, showing, as it does, how influential was his position even in this time of poverty and apparent disgrace, " I had access to him, when, finding him in much perplexity and concern about the state of his affairs, I took opportunity to represent to him tfiat his mis- fortunes did not so much proceed from the variable tempers or humours of his people, as some pretended, but rather from the men of his house, or those he had trusted with his busi- ness, who, either for want of capacity or experience, or that they preferred themselves to him, had brought the affairs of the kingdom into such confusion as made his subjects uneasy ; and now at last, instead of removing the causes of complaint, they had presumed to employ his treasure and authority to silence the complainers ; — that, as matters stood, there were no reins of government, no inspection, no inquiry into men's conduct ; every man did as he pleased, for nobody was punished, nor indeed rewarded according to merit ; and thus his revenue was sunk, and his affairs in the utmost confusion. He owned this, but asked for remedies. Upon which I proposed that, in the first place, he should put the manage- ment of the revenues on the right footing, without which all other remedies would prove ineffectual. The first step towards reforming his revenue was that of restoring the public credit, by making provision of interest for all the national debts, and by taking care for the time to come such should be granted as to prevent further deficiency. The course of the Treasurer and Exchequer should be so regu- lated, both in receipts and payments, as to render them easy to be understood, and so certain and prudent as to leave no room for fraud or ill practices in time to come. In order to 392 Patersons last Interview icith William the Third. this, I proposed that a method of inquiry and inspection from time to time into the behaviour of all men concerned in the revenue be laid down and nicely executed. Thus I showed him that he would quickly get out of debt, and at least a fourth }>art of the revenues would be saved hereafter. The next thing I proposed to him was the seizing upon the prin- cipal posts in the West Indies," — a modification of the old Darien scheme, about which enough lias already been said and quoted. " The third thing I proposed was an union with Scotland, than which I convinced him nothing could tend more to his glory, and to render this island great and considerable. The fourth thing I proposed — and which I told him was to be done first, in order to the restoring his authority, and showing to the world that for the time to come he would no more suffer such a loose and unaccountable administration as his being a stranger to men and things here had forced him to wink at hitherto — was a present com- mision of inquiry, by which he would see how and by whom his affairs had been mismanaged, and who they were who, under pretence of mending matters, perplexed and made them still worse, and in particular would be able to point out how far the present debts did arise from mismanagement or from the deficiencies of the funds. I spoke much to him of the nature of this commission, with which, and the other pro- posals, he seemed extremely satisfied, as is evident by his last and memorable speech, in which he earnestly recom- mends the retrieving of the public credit, and offers his con- currence to all such inquiries as should be found necessary ; and it is plain, by the seventh article of the Grand Alliance, and his messages to the two Mouses of Parliament, how much he laid to heart both the affair of the West Indies and that of the Union."* Of this very noteworthy letter — interesting both as an important link in the man's own biography, and as a con- tribution to the general history of the country — the most * Inquiry, in Banmstei;, vol. ii., \>\>. 7j-77. His Projects for the Advancement of England. 303 noteworthy part is that referring to the union of England and Scotland. To this great end Paterson's mind had been steadily advancing- since the disastrous close of his Darien expedition. He saw in it the best, perhaps the only, means of breaking down the jealousies of the two nations, and of making possible their full development, commercial, political, and moral. And though contemporary writers did scant justice to the merchant, and modern historians have alto- gether forgotten him, facts show that no other single man contributed as largely to this glorious result as William Patcrson, the visionary and the pauper. For some years from this time Paterson was in and out of London, living chiefly at a house in Queen Square, West- minster, writing many tracts on miscellaneous subjects of im- portance, and planning the formation of a valuable library of trade and finance for the use of merchants and all concerned in the commercial welfare of the island,* but working chiefly on behalf of the Union. Almost the last thoughts of Kin£ * "My collection,'' lie says, "gives some better idea than -what is gene- rally conceived of (he tracts or treatises requisite to the knowledge and study of matters so deep and extensive as trade and revenues; which, notwith- standing the noise of so many pretenders as we have already had, and are still troubled with, may well be reckoned never yet to have been truly methodized or digested — nay, nor perhaps but tolerably considered by any. Trade and revenues are here put together, since the public (or, indeed, any other) revenues are only parts or branches of the income or increase by and from the industry of the people, whether in the way of pasture, agricul- ture, manufactories, navigation, extraordinary productions or inventions, or by all of them. So tbat to this necessary (and it is hoped now rising) study of trade, there is not only requisite as complete a collection as possible of all books, pamphlets, or schemes, merely and abstractedly relating to trade, revenues, navigation, useful inventions or improvements, whether ancient or modern, but likewi.-c of the best histories, voyages, discoveries, descriptions and accounts of the states, interest, laws and customs of coun- tries. From thence it may be clearly and fully understood how the various effects of wars and conquest.-, fires and inundations, plenty and want, good or bad direction, management or influence of governments, have more im- mediately aifeeted the rise or declension of the industry of a people, whether home or foreign." — lUxxisTEK, vol. iii., pp. 47, 4S. Paterson's list comprises four hundred and forty -two books and pamphlets, all tlie important works that had appeared up to that time, stdl the infancy of commercial literature. 304 Paterson s Share in the Establishment of William were on behalf of this noble business ; and it was one of the few matters in which Queen Anne's ministers were willing to follow the lead of their predecessors. Paterson was throughout the guiding genius. A proper account of his work, however, cannot be given here. It would involve a re-telling of a large portion of English and Scottish history during the early years of Anne's reign. All through those years we see Paterson in busy conference with the leading statesmen of both countries. On one day he is writing a quire of notes for Secretary Godolphin's considera- tion ; on another he is explaining and adding to them in person. At one time he is arguing down the prejudices of Englishmen : at another he is showing Scotchmen how groundless are their fears. During these years he was generally to be found in London ; but often, especially in the autumn of 1706, he was in Edinburgh as Commissioner from the English Government. In September and October, 1706, he wrote five letters, or treatises, which, according to an im- partial contemporary, ' cleared the understanding of some dubious, though well-meaning people, who were deluded, misinformed, and carried away by the surmises of scribblers making it their business to perplex, and, if possible, cause the Union to shipwreck in the very harbour where, in all appear- ance, it ought to have been protected ; and bore such weight with the committees appointed to examine the several mat- ters referred to them, that we may, without flattery, say they were the compass the committees steered by.'* "Not any sort of league, confederacy, limitation, agreement, or bargain, or, indeed, anything less or below a complete Union," said Paterson himself in a longer work on the subject,! published * Bannistek, vol. iii., p. 4. f An Inquiry into the Reasonableness and Consequences of an Union with Scotland ; containing a brief Deduction of what hath been Done, Designed, or Proposed, in the matter of the Union during the last Age ; a Scheme of mi Union, as accommodated to Vie Present Circumstances of the Two Nations ; also. States of the respective Revenues, Debts, Weight*, Measures, Taxes, and ImjKists, and of other Facts of Moment ; in vol. i. of Mr. Bannisters Collec- tion, pp. 1G5-251. the Union between England and Scotland. 395 in this same year, 1706, "can introduce the good which may be justly expected therefrom, or effectually deliver these nations from the mischiefs and inconveniences they labour under and are exposed unto for want thereof. Nothing less than a complete Union can effectually secure the religion, laws, liberties, trade, and, in a word, the peace and happiness of this island. And since, by the blessing of God, a happy occasion now offers for completing this great and good work, not in humour or in rage, but in cool blood, with reason and understanding, it is hoped that, after all the troubles, hazards, and distresses of these nations for want thereof, an Union shall in their temper and disposition be concluded, to the glory and renown of our excellent Queen, common benefit and general satisfaction of all her subjects, who, as having but one interest and inclination, may for ever after be of one heart and one affection."* Not altogether to the glory and renown of excellent Queen Anne, or to the common benefit and general satisfaction of her subjects ; yet, as soon as national jealousies had been overcome, to the immense advantage of both nations, the Union was agreed upon, and the separate States of England and Scotland were merged into the Kingdom of Great Britain on the 1st of May, 1707. The last act of the Scottish inde- pendent Parliament, dissolved on the 25th of March, was to declare that William Paterson, Esquire, deserved a great reward for his efforts in promoting the Union, and formally, on that account, to recommend him to her Majesty's favour, f Noteworthy evidence of the merchant's influence, and of the esteem in which he was held by all parties, is in the fact that by the Dumfries burghs, so full of unreasonable discontent at this very Union that they almost became the scene of civil war, he was elected their representative in the first United Parliament. But there was blundering in the election, and Paterson seems to have never sat in the Mouse of Commons.^ * Bannister, vol. ii., pp. 240, 250. t Ibid. X Ibid., vol. i., p. cix. ; Journals of the House of Commons. 396 Patcrson's Arguments in Favour of About his movements during the ensuing years we have no very precise information. That lie was busy, as he had been through all the earlier years of his life, devising plans for the benefiting of society, is sufficiently shown in the numerous writings from which some passages have been already cited. While he was working on behalf of the Union, he found time for the preparation of numerous tracts, all very sensible and very manly, on the National Debt, and on systems of auditing public accounts, on free trade and taxa- tion, and the like ;* and when his political duties were over he had leisure for closer attention to the financial and com- mercial topics that were his special study. At a time when the National Debt was a new thing, it was no idle under- taking to attempt its redemption, and to preach the duty of compelling each year and each enterprise to pay its own costs, * This is Mr. Bannister's enumeration of the works of Patcrson, so far as he has been able to identify and fix them : — 1690. Portions of a Tract on the Government of the West Indies. 1G91. rian of the Hampstead Waterworks Company. 1692. Evidence before the House of Commons on Public Loans. 1694. Two Tracts on the Bank of England. 1695. The Scottish Act of Parliament on Darien. 1695. Letters on Darien. 1696. Tracts on Coin and the Stoppage of the Bank of England. 1699. Ecpoi t on the Disasters of Darien. 1700. Paper on the Revival of the Darien Colony. 170U. Tract on the Social Progress of Scotland, or his " Proposals of a Council of Trade,'* attributed erroneously to John Law. 1701. Tract on the National Debt. 1701. Tract on Auditing the Public Accounts. 1701. Memoir on Free Trade, and on British Settlements in Central America. 1702. Paper on Taxation. 1706. Wednesday Club Dialogues on Legislative Unions of Great States. 1706. Letters on the Union. 1706. Paper on the Revenue of England and Scotland. 1709. Papers, &e., on his Indemnity. 1709. Letters to Lord Treasurer Godolphin, on Taxation. 1710. Paper on Toleration. 1716. Paper on Redeeming the National Debt. 1717. Wednesday Club Dialogues, on the Result.-' of the Union, and on Reducing the National Debt. Improved Taxation and Government. 3D 7 without fastening a burden on posterity. This was one of Patersous chief employments during the later years of his life, and it was no small disappointment to him to find that the foolishness and wrong-doing of Queen Anne's ministers, and the recklessness of the more important leaders of the English people, subverted the objects he had at heart. " Upon the whole," he said, in the memorial addressed to Secretary Godolphin on his interviews with William the Third, from which we have already quoted, " instead of the valuable securities and advantages we might have justly ex- pected from a sincere and vigorous prosecution of these wise and solid measures of the King, we have seen the then national debts of fifteen or sixteen millions, so far from beinjr diminished, that they are near, if not quite, doubled ; the public revenues almost wholly sold and alienated, and yet about one-third of new debts still without funds for paying them ; heavy bills and other such deficient credit at twenty or twenty-five per cent, discount, and in danger of falling still lower, with all the other parts of the public credit in propor- tion, — disorders which must still increase, if any considerable part of future supplies should be raised by anticipations on remote and doubtful funds ; our home industry and improve- ments under insupportable difficulties ; most of the branches of our foreign trade so overcharged as to amount to a pro- hibition ; not only our reasonable designs to the West Indies, but even navigation itself, and our proper plantations and acquisitions abroad abandoned or neglected ; our enemies suffered to carry away many millions which might have been ours; and the true spirit of the Union, with the great advan- tages that would otherwise have naturally followed upon it, stifled and suppressed."* " At the Revolution," he said again, " it was expected that these disorders would have been effectually redressed, but instead of this the confusions of the revenues have grown greater than in any time before, nay, to such a degree, that the throne hath been thereby shaken, * Inquiry, in Bannister, vol. ii., p. 78. 398 William Paterson in London. the public credit hath been violated, the coin adulterated, high premiums and interests allowed, scandalous discounts made necessary, navigation, with foreign and domestic im- provements discountenanced or abandoned, frauds and cor- rupt practices in the trade and revenues rather countenanced than discouraged, and those few who endeavoured or per- formed anything towards the amendment or reforming these or such-like disorders oppressed or neglected."* Oppression and neglect, without doubt, were the lot of William Paterson. Sorely troubled at the failure of his hopes for the general welfare and financial dignity of Great Britain, he had cause enough for trouble on his own account. Impoverished long ago by the fraud of his agent in the Darien enterprise, which, with an honourable feeling rare indeed among the men of his time, he resolved to consider as a debt of his own, and deeply chagrined at the disastrous issue of the whole enterprise, he continued a poor man till very near the end of his life. The pressure of business, which he felt called upon to undertake on behalf of his country and the public welfare, prevented him from resuming the mercantile pursuits by which he might easily have en- riched himself; and the Queen and State whom he served with all his powers gave him no recompense. At the time of the Darien failure, the Scottish Parliament had promised him indemnity for his losses therein; and in 1707 it was enacted that ' in regard that, since his first contracts, the said William Paterson hath been at further expenses, and sustained further losses and damages, the Court of Exchequer of Scotland should take account thereof, and likewise of his good services and public cares, and make a full and fair report thereof to her Majesty.'f But nothing was done. " The dependence I have had upon the public," Paterson said, in a plaintive letter to Secretary Godolphin, dated the 4th of April, 1709, " for a settlement in its service, or in some way or other to have a recompense for what I have * Bannister, vol. ii., p. 74. f Ibid., vol. i., p. cix. His Poverty and Petitions for Help. 399 done for near seven years of her Majesty's reign, besides former losses, hath at last so reduced me and my family, that without a speedy provision and support from her Majesty, I must unavoidably perish." Therefore he asked the Secretary to lay before the Queen a petition detailing his various services under the State, and their influence on the affairs of the country: "by which so long-continued troubles and ex- pensive proceedings," he urged, " your petitioner is rendered unable to subsist, or to extricate himself from the debts and difficulties wherein he is thereby involved, without your Majesty's special care and protection."* Still nothing was done. ' There are two reasons why men of merit go unre- warded,' said a contemporary historian, writing in 1711. ' Busybodies have more impudence, and get by importunity what others deserve by real services ; and those at the helm are often obliged to bestow employment on their supporters without any regard to merit.'t Therefore Paterson, without influence among the place-givers, and too true a patriot to desist from the good work because of his employers' ingrati- tude, was forgotten ; and many besides the writer just cited had to complain that 'this great politician, the chief pro- jector of the Bank of England, the main support of the Government, very instrumental in bringing about the Union, and the person chiefly employed in settling the national accounts, should be so disregarded that the sums due to him were not paid.'J He lived as cheaply as he could, doing his utmost to continue in honourable independence. We are told, among other things, of an advertisement in one of the old journals inviting pupils to his classes in mathematics and navigation. § But he could not keep himself out of debt. Paul Daranda, the great merchant, his former asso- ciate in the establishment of the Bank of England and other good worksj received 1,0007., in 1719, in payment for the * Bannister, vol. iii., Preface. t Boykk, Political Slate for 1711, cited by Bannistek, vol. i., p. cxiv. X Ibid. § Bannisteu, vol. i., p. ex. || Ibid., vol. i., p. cxl. 400 Pater sons last Petition and its Answer. help given to him in the support of his step-children — children of his own Patcrson seems not to have had, with the excep- tion of the infant who died at Darieu — and other debts were; faithfully repaid by him as soon as he was able.* That, however, was but a little while before his death. 'A memorial of Mr. Patcrson,' a document of great interest, both personal and public, addressed to George the First soon after his accession, tells how, " with much pain and expense, he hath already made considerable progress towards a proper return or representation of some public affairs of the greatest consequence, particularly of the taxes, imposi- tions, and revenues of Great Britain, with the anticipations and debts charged and contracted therein during the last twenty-six years, amounting to about fifty millions sterling. This scheme is to demonstrate in what cases those imposi- tions may be rendered more easy to the subject, yet the revenues greatly improved ; whereby, of course, this immense debt will be sooner and more easily discharged. But the great expense he hath been at in the last twenty-three years in things relating to the public service, and the non-payment of a considerable sum of the equivalent- money, detained from him for several years by a violent party, disables him at present from completing this design. Former neglects of these and like things, make it no easy matter soon to put them in any tolerable light. How- ever, 500Z. or 600?. present supply, would enable him to go forward with this great work till further provision be found proper."f That modest request, made in March, 1715, was promptly answered by a parliamentary vote, passed in the following July, which assigned to him 18,00OZ. as in- * Sonic bliime lias been thrown upon Daranda for his supposed treatment of Patcrson's heirs ; apparently without foundation. Daranda was Paterson's steady friend from 1G91, when they were associated in the Hampstead Water- works Company, till Pater a ou"s death in 1711). He himself lived on till 1729. f Bannister, vol. i., p. cxix., citing a document in the Record Office. His last Work on Trade and Finance. 401 demnity for the many and heavy expenses he had been put to in the service of the State.* The gift, if gift it may be called, was well-timed. It enabled Paterson to pay all his debts, reckoned to have amounted to something like 10,000/., and it encouraged him to the writing of his last and most valuable work, An Inquiry into the State of tlie Union of Great Britain, and the Pant and Present State of the Trade and Public Revenues thereof, published in 1717. It contained suggestions for the reduc- tion of the National Debt, wbich George's statesmen were not wise enough to adopt, and which so offended ' the meaner sort of dealers in the public funds,' the dishonest stock-jobbers of those days, that they burnt it in front of the Royal Ex- change. But it also contained other suggestions, about exchequer bills and public credit, excise duties and taxes, which were made the basis of many important financial changes, and the means of saving vast sums of public money, besides contributing greatly to the national honour. Those reforms were seriously checked, and Paterson's last days were painfully embittered, by the strange favour accorded by the world to his famous kinsman's pernicious teachings. Cruellest of all the slanders with which the fair fame of Paterson has been sullied, is that whicn connects him with the schemes of John Law of Lauriston, his junior by thirteen years. Between the two men there was some sort of cousin- ship ; and Law, the goldsmith's son of Edinburgh, doubtless spoke the truth when he told Montesquieu that he traced his skill in the jugglery of figures to the lessons taught him by Paterson's Bank of England, in 1G95. But we have no evi- dence of intercourse between them, while there is abundant proof that Paterson was the foremost opponent of Law's visionary and dishonest projects. In 1700, when Law made his first experiment in the financial speculations that reached perfection in the Mississippi scheme, by addressing to the * Dannistki:, wl. i., p. cxxi. VOL. I. 2 1) 402 William Paterson and John Law. people of Edinburgh ' two overtures for supplying the present scarcity of coin and improving trade, and for clearing the debts due by the Government to the army and civil list by issuing paper money,' Paterson issued two able pamphlets showing the mischief of that and all other ' imaginary pro- jects,' and maintaining that there would be no national credit without solid cash, and no national progress without per- severing industry.* These maxims he adhered to all through his life. It is true that he looked with favour upon the South Sea Company before it was converted into the South Sea Bubble, and, having no funds of his own, agreed to his friend Daranda's investing 4,000Z. in it ; but he heartily disapproved of John Law's reckless conduct in France, and of the infatuated liking with which in later years he came to be regarded in England.f The consummation of that saddest and maddest of all financial follies William Paterson did not live to see. On the third of July, 1718, ' at the Ship tavern, without Temple Bar, about four in the afternoon,' he made his will, therein providing that all his debts should be paid, and the residue of his property, about 6,400£, be divided among his step- children, his nephews and nieces, and his ' good friend Mr. Paul Daranda,' who was to act as executor.} He died at the age of sixty-one, in the following January, 1719. § A whole volume would be too short for a thorough exposi- tion of his great talents and greater honesty, his untiring patriotism and persistent devotion to everybody's welfare but his own, and for even the briefest setting- forth of the good in- fluence that his commercial and financial teaching had upon the future trade of England ; but enough has been said to justify * Bannister, vol. ii., pp. xli.-lxii. f Ibid., vol. i., p. cxliii. + Ibid., vol. i., p. cxl.-cxli. § His will was " proved in Doctors' Commons, 22nd January, 1719, o. 6." — Bannister, WilUum Paterson, Bis Life cud Trials (Edinburgh, 1858) ), -127. Patersons Place in Commercial History. 403 the praise given to him by his friend Daniel Defoe, as i: a worthy and noble patriot of his country, one of the most eminent in it, and to whom we owe more than ever he'd tell us, or I am afraid we'll ever be sensible of, whatever fools, madmen, or Jacobites may asperse him with." A merchant prince he is hardly to be called, if worldly wealth and the honour of the contemporaries for whom he worked are necessary attendants upon such an one ; but if rare intelli- gence and rarer honesty, native worth and the wisdom that comes of experience, are to be taken account of, few, indeed, among the worthies of England or of any foreign country have better right to the distinction than this beggared ad- venturer and forgotten benefactor. 404 CHAPTER XVII. JOHN BARNARD OF LONDON. [1685—1764.] The establishment of the Bank of England in 1695 marks 't>' a new era in our commercial history. But the financial wisdom, with William Paterson for its chief exponent and Charles Montague, Earl of Halifax, for its foremost patron, that organized that institution, had to fight against the financial folly that had its full development in the South Sea Bubble of 1720. For some thirty years before that climax the folly was steadily gaining influence in England, and most of all in London. Of Chamberlayne's and Briscoe's wild projects for a land-bank, and of Paterson's work in denouncing them, in 1691 and later years, we have already seen something. At the same time there were started a great many other projects for every conceivable sort of 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 intro- duced, 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 wonderfully. If it happened that any one person got considerably by a happy and useful invention, the con- sequence generally was that others followed the track, in spite Stock-jobbers and their Character. 405 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 denuncia- tion of it in Parliament and the pulpit, in learned treatises and vigorous pamphlets without number. ' It is a complete system of knavery,' we read in one work, ' founded in fraud, born of deceit, and nourished by trickeries, forgeries, false- hoods, and all sorts of delusions, coining false news, whisper- ing 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 countrymen 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 played 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 1698, 'for divers years last past have set up many mischievous and unlawful^ games, called lotteries, not only in the cities of London and West- * Anderson, vol. ii., p. G42. t Cited by Francis, Chronicles and Characters of the Stoclc Exchange (London, 1851). X Ibid., p. '29. § Ibid., pp. 29, 30. 406 The South Sea Company. minster 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 unjustly and fraudulently got to themselves great sums of money from the children and ser- vants 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 organize the most gigantic lottery ever known. In 1711, Robert Harley, Earl of Oxford, and Lord Treasurer, finding the State burdened with 1 O,0OO,O00Z.'s 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 adven- turers respecting the boundless wealth to be obtained by search and settlement 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 in- debted, with the exclusive privilege of trading, colonizing, and fighting in the southern seas from Tierra del Fuego to the northernmost part of South America. The Company was to be aided by State influence, and, if necessary, by the protec- tion of the British army, besides having various profitable imposts assigned to it. In this way, it was represented by Harley and his associates, the public creditors would obtain interest for their loans without any expense 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 historian, c remarkable beyond any other * Axdeksox, vol. iii., pp. 43-4G. The South Sea Bubble. 407 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 legislators never to leave it in the power of any hereafter to hoodwink mankind into so shameful and baneful an im- position on the credulity of the people, thereby diverted from their lawful industry.'* In 1711) 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. Thereupon ensued a scene of turmoil and disaster unpa- ralleled in commercial history. Its general character is well known. The South Sea stock rose to a fabulous value, and the. success of this wicked speculation encouraged a crowd of others as wicked. * Any impudent impostor,' says the historian, speaking from his own observation, * whilst the delu- sion 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 somewhat rela- tive to commerce, manufacture, plantation, or some supposed invention, either newly hatched out of his own brain or else stolen from some of the many abortive projects of former times, having first advertised it in the newspapers of the pre- ceding day, and, he might, in a few 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 projects feasible. It was enough for their purpose 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 themselves.'! It was nothing uncommon for shares to be * Anderson, vol iii., p. 91. t Ibid., vol. iii., p. 102. 408 The South Sea Bubble and its Bursting. 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 hours. At one time the South Sea 1007. shares # were to be sold for 1,0007., while East India stock rose from 1007. to 4457., and African stock from 237. to 2007. The 107. shares of a York Buildings Company attained the fictitious value of 3057., and the shares of a Welsh Copper Company, without having a penny of real capital, originally valued at 47. 2s. tid. per cent, could hardly be bought for 957. 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 dis- cover 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 propa- gate a larger kind of mules in England.' So preposterous were the many of the bona 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 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. The clever few of course gathered vast wealth from the losses of the many. Among these the most conspicuous of all was Thomas Guy, famous for his employment of the fruits of his gambling in the construction of the hospital in Southvvark * Anderson, vol. iii., p. 92-120. Thomas Guy, the Bookseller. 409 that bears his name.* But Guy stood almost alone in his charity. Selfishness led his companions to embark in the * Mr. Chakles Knight, in his Shadows of the Old Booksellers (London, 18G5j, has lately said a good deal in correction of current mis-statenicnts about the life and character of Guy. The son of a Thames lighterman, who left him an orphan at the age of eight, he was born in 1G44. In 16G0 he was apprenticed to a bookseller in Chcapside. In 11)68, just after the Great Fire, he began business on his own account as master of a little shop 'near Stocks Market,' at the corner of Cornhill and Lombard Street. The office of King's printer, carrying with it a monopoly in the printing of Bibles, having continued in one careless family for more than a century, the volumes had come to be so * very bad, both in letter and in paper,' that they were hardly legible. Guy was the most enterprising of several booksellers who started a profitable trade in Bibles, printed in Holland. ' But this trade,' says Maitland, * 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.' Guy found it his interest to abandon the trade very early. He made a compromise with the monopolists and obtained leave to print Bibles in London, with types imported from Holland. Thereby he soon grew rich. Mr. Knight mistrusts the common stories of his stinginess, and finds him guilty of nothing but 'the most scrupulous frugality.' He boldly denies the other stories to the effect that he made a great part of his wealth by buying as cheaply as he could the. paper with which it was the custom to pay sailors, and then con- verting them into money at something like their real value. That, says Mr. Knight, was a practice of Charles the Second's day, but not of Queen Anne's. Guy doubtless enriched himself partly by the sale of Bibles, and yet more by investing the profits of that sale in the buying of Government stock and other lawful ways of making money on 'Change. In 1720 he spent 45,5007. in buying South Sea stock at 1201. for the 100Z. share. He began to sell out when the shares were worth 300Z., and disposed of the last of them for 600Z. apiece. In that year, however, he was seventy-six years old, and he had long before become famous for his wealth. It is clear that, apart from penuriousness in his personal affairs, he was willing to use freely his wealth, however gotten. ' As he was a man of unbounded charity and universal benevolence,' says Maitland, ' so was he 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 member for Tarnworth, from 1G95 to 1707. In 1705 he built some almshouses at Tarnworth. In 1707 he added three new wards to St. Thomas's Hospital, and iu 1720 his Soutli Sea gains encouraged him to buy ground for a new building. Guy's Hospital, completed very soon after his death in 1724, cost 19,000Z. in erection, and was endowed by him with 220.000Z. 410 Sir John Barnard of London. wild speculations of the day, and those who prospered by the enterprise were selfish to the end, and nothing but mis- chief sprang from their work. " The many bad consequences of stock-jobbing are well known," said the worthiest London merchant then alive, addressing the House of Commons in 1733, "and it is high time to put an end to that infamous practice. It is a lottery, or rather a gaming-house, publicly set up in the middle of the city of London, in which the heads of our merchants and tradesmen are turned from getting a livelihood by the honest means of industry and frugality, and are enticed to become gamesters by the hope of getting an estate at once. It is not only a lottery, but one of the very worst sort, because it is always in the power of the principal managers to bestow the benefit tickets as they have a mind. The broker comes to the merchant and talks to him of the many fatigues and dangers, the great troubles and small profits that are in his way of trade ; and after having done all he can to put him out of conceit with his business, which is often too easily effectuated, he pro- poses to dig for him in the rich mine of Exchange Alley, and to get more for him in a day than he could get by his trade in a twelvemonth. Thus the merchant is persuaded. He engages ; he goes on for some time ; but never knows what he is a doing, till he is quite undone."* Therefore the wise and good men of the time set them- selves, heart and soul, to the prevention of stock -jobbing, the leader of the crusade being Sir John Barnard, the speaker of the words just cited. Barnard was at that time eight-and- forty years of age. He had lived through all the time of bubble agitation and, holding aloof from it as very few besides himself had the good sense and the courage to do, had steadily gained wealth and influence to be used for the good of his fellows as soon as the excitement had subsided enough for him to find listeners and followers. He was born at Reading, his parents being Quakers, in * Genilemun's Magazine, vol. iii. (1733), pp. 673, 674. His Disposition and early Occupations. 411 16S5. ' The integrity of his mind and the strength of his intellect were very early remarkable,' we are assured by the friend who wrote the scanty memoir that tells us nearly all we know of his personal history.* ' Even his playmates were so struck therewith as to choose him, when a child, their chancellor in the little differences they had with each other, and to abide satisfied with his decision.' That may be idle praise ; but there can be no doubt about the rare talent and yet rarer honesty that characterised the simple merchant and patriot through all his long and busy life. He was sent early to a Quaker school at Wandsworth, where the exclusive principles of his sect allowed him to acquire very little beyond the rudiments of a plain English education, and even that had to be abandoned at an age when the best half of a boy's schooling is usually only beginning. His father seems to have been a well-to-do wine merchant in London, but by the year 1700 his health was too bad for him to continue the management of his business. So the lad, when only fifteen years old, was taken from school and set in a responsible position in the city counting-house. His father, according to a statement that we must receive with some modification, ' from observing his natural turn, assiduity, and talents, scrupled not to entrust the management, of a great business to his care, even at that tender age ; nor were his expectations disappointed.'! But whatever the precise terms on which young Barnard began city life as his father's deputy, there can be no doubt that he prospered well in it. He also found time for other pursuits. He applied himself to historical and philosophical reading, thus partly supplying the deficiencies of his schooling. He entered with yet more zest upon all branches of statistical study and financial calculations. He spent much of his leisure, moreover, in religious and theological reading ; the * Memoirs of the late Sir John Barnard, Knight and Alderman of the City of London (I/mdon, 177G), p. 4. f Memoirs, \\ 4. 412 Sir John Barnard of London. first practical result of which appeared in his renunciation of the Quaker dogmas in which he had been trained to believe. In 1703, it is recorded, after several conferences on the subject of religion with Dr. Compton, Bishop of London, he was baptized by that prelate in his private chapel at Fulham. Divines and philosophers — and of those only the few who, in the dissolute age of Georgian rule, were correct in their deportment — were his only friends. ' He sought out com- panions amongst men distinguished by their knowledge, learning, and religion ;' holding carefully aloof from the wild associations in which the other young men of his day found their sole occupation, when not busied about commerce or stock-jobbing. In due time, somewhere near the year 1715, he married ; but when, or whom, we are not told. Up to his six-and-thirtieth year, his life was quiet and uneventful. * He was distinguished only by the excellencies of his private character, and eminent through the whole circle of his acquaintance as a man of reading and strong parts.'* Then, however, he had to enter upon a more public sphere of action. In 1721 a bill, very detrimental to the wine trade, had passed through the House of Commons, and was on its way to becoming law, when the wine merchants of London petitioned the Lords on the subject. In consequence of that petition further evidence was called for, and Barnard was selected by his brother merchants for the purpose. ' The extent of his knowledge in commerce, and the per- spicuity and force of his reasoning, adorned with the charm of modesty, carried the point.'t The bill was rejected, and Barnard found himself famous. Therefore he was chosen Member of Parliament for the city of London at the ensuing general election, Francis Child, the banker of Fleet Street, being one of his three partners in the honour. Again and again, six times in succession, he was re-elected by his fellow-citizens, and they could hardly have had a worthier or more efficient representative. ' From * Memoirs, pp. C, 7. t Ibid., p. 7. His Services to the City and the State. 413 his first taking- his seat in the House of Commons,' says his friendly critic, 'he entered with acumen into the merits of each point under debate, defended with intrepidity our con- stitutional rights, withstood every attempt to burden his country with needless subsidies, argued with remarkable strength and perspicuity, and crowned all with close atten- dance on the business of Parliament, never being absent by choice, from the time the members 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 Parlia- ment during- the reign of George the Second. He sided always with the advocates of peace and retrenchment, show- ing himself a zealous reformer on all matters affecting the national honour and the development of trade, but something of a conservative whenever the welfare of the country did not seem to him to call for change. Thus, in 1725, he distin- guished himself by his opposition to a bill for regulating and modifying the election of aldermen and sheriffs in the city. If this bill passed, he urged, it would afford a precedent for other interference, on the part of the Crown, with the ancient rights and privileges secured by the City Charter ; it would deprive many honest citizens of their right to vote at ward- mote elections ; and it would lessen the influence of the Common Council, while giving too much weight to the Lord Mayor and the Court of Aldermen. The bill became law, however, and is still the rule in civic elections ; but Barnard added much to his popularity by the resistance he offered to it.f In 1727 he again stood up for the City, by withstand- ing a proposal for transferring 370,000Z. of the coal duty levied that year from the civic treasury to the national exchequer.:}: But Barnard only defended old London pri- * Memoirs, p. 7. t Parliamentary History, vol. viii. X Ibid. 414 Sir John Barnard of London. vileges when they seemed to him just and reasonable. In 1729 he took an active part in an inquiry into the state of metropolitan gaols for debtors, using his opportunities as a city magistrate — he had been alderman of Dowgate ward since 1722* — for observing the abuses long practised and tolerated in the Fleet and Marshalsea Prisons. It was owing chiefly to his eloquent and pathetic description of those evils, we are told, that a bill providing for a better state of affairs was made law on the 14th of May. On the same day, also, the royal assent was obtained to another charitable bill, introduced by Barnard in the previous month, ' for the better regulation and government of seamen in the merchant service.'f Next year he was prominent in resisting a proposal for preventing British subjects from participation in loans to foreign powers, unless the sanction of the Court of Exchequer were in each case previously obtained ; the special aim of the bill being to prevent the negotiation of a German loan for 400,000£, then in the London market. * He said that he thought it a restraint upon commerce that could not be justi- fied, and such restraints had ever been prejudicial to our- selves ; that he remembered a bill of this sort against Sweden, to prohibit all commerce with that kingdom, yet the conse- quence was that we were forced to enable our merchants to carry it on in Dutch bottoms, which rendered the prohibition useless, as well as burdensome, before we took it off,' and much more to the same effect, urging the advantages of free trade over any restrictive policy whatever. * He likewise declared against making the Court of Exchequer a court of inquisition : he conceived it odious to the laws, nay, odious to the constitution, that men should be obliged to accuse themselves, and thereby incur the worst of penalties. He knew not what precedents might be furnished ; he believed they could easily find precedents for anything. But the liberties of his country were much more weighty with him * Memoirs, p. 9. t Tarliamenlarij History, vol. viii., pp. 70G-753. His Arguments in Favour of Free Trade. 415 than any precedents whatever ; and he would never consent to a bill which he thought a violation of our fundamental laws, a breach of our dearest, liberties, and a very terrible hardship on mankind.'* The bill passed, however, along with many others that Barnard felt bound to oppose as detrimental to the national welfare. On the 23rd of February, 1732, he made a famous speech on a Sugar Colony Bill, introduced with tbe view of crippling foreign colonies by probibiting all English exports to them, and so of promoting the growth of our own com- merce. " Our sugar trade," he said, " is without doubt at present in a most lamentable condition, and must necessarily be quite undone, at least in so far as regards our exportation to foreign markets, unless something be done to help them." But the help must come, he urged, not by the heaping up, but by the withdrawal, of restrictions upon trade. " We ougbt never 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." For in all matters relating to trade we ought chiefly to consider the foreign exportation ; "and it is certain that at all foreign markets those who sell cheapest will carry off the sale and turn all others out of the trade."f Those doctrines, clear as the daylight to men who have had Peels and Cobdens to enlighten them, were far beyond the comprehension of most statesmen and political economists in Barnard's day. In all branches of trade, as much as in the matter of sugar, they sought to increase the cost of foreign commodities, instead of cheapening home and colonial produce, just as they attempted to damage the sale of foreign goods in England by the levying of extravagant im- posts. The influence of Barnard and those who thought with * Parliamentary History, vol. viii., p. 78G. t Gentleman's Magazine, vol. iii., pp. 198, 403 ; Monthly Magazine, vol. i., p. 514. 416 Sir John Barnard of London. him delayed the passing of the Sugar Colonies Bill for a year, and in March, 1733, Barnard presented a petition against it from the colonists of Rhode Island, in New Eng- land. That startled not a little the old-fashioned members of Parliament, who looked upon a colonial petition against their decisions as next door to a colonial insurrection. Bar- nard quieted their fears, and again urged that the principles of free trade were the only principles that could lead to prosperity. " An honourable gentleman says," he observed, "that the petitioners are aiming at an independency, and are disowning the authority of this House. This, sir, in the present case, seems to be a very odd assertion. Is not their applying by petition to this House as direct an acknowledg- ment of the authority of this House as can be made by men ? Another gentleman says that the bill now before us is a bill for taxing the French only. This seems to be as odd an assertion as the other. Does this gentleman imagine that the tax paid in this island upon French wine is a tax upon the French ? Does not everybody know that the whole of it is paid by the consumers here ?"* The only really effective way of helping the sugar-colonies, Barnard urged, lay in the removal of the unjust and un- reasonable law by which they were compelled to send all their produce to England. In this way articles intended for the foreign market were burdened with much unnecessary cost of transport, to say nothing of the double impost charged upon them, first in England and afterwards in the country for which they were destined. Selfish and shallow-minded merchants and politicians defended this rule, as it seemed to benefit the ports, like Bristol and Liverpool, through which the commodities were forced to pass, and added largely to the public revenues. Therefore they held to the old prac- tice, and the colonies suffered, for some years yet to come. At last Barnard's plan was sanctioned, as an experiment, in * Parliamentary History, vol. viii., p. VLGo. His Opposition to Walpole s Financial Policy. 417 1739, and the colonies throve so well that it was permanently adopted. In the meanwhile, the general battle of commercial taxa- tion, of which this Sugar Bill formed a small part, was being fought out, with Sir John Barnard (he had been knighted on the 20th of September, 1732), and Sir Robert Walpole for its leaders on either side. The two things chiefly aimed at in Walpole's whole financial system were the increase of taxes upon commodities, with a corresponding reduction in the taxes on property ; and the conversion of customs — that is, of duties paid by the merchants upon importation, — into excises — or, duties paid by the retail dealer upon consump- tion. ' His grand object,' according to his most zealous panegyrist, ' was to give ease to the landed interest, by the total abolition of the land-tax ; to prevent frauds, to decrease smuggling, to augment the revenue, and to simplify the taxes. The specific propositions were, to divide the com- modities into taxed and not taxed, and to confine the taxed commodities to a few articles of general consumption ; leaving untaxed the chief necessaries of life and all the raw materials of manufacture, and thus reducing the price of labour and underselling other nations.'* Those proposals were very specious. They left the large landowners almost altogether untaxed ; and promised the middle and lower classes of society, on whom they really threw the whole burden of the national expenditure, very great and altogether impossible benefits from the changes. But the system was a rotten one, and the proposed method of administering it threatened ' to de- stroy the very being of Parliament, undermine the constitu- tion, render the King absolute, and subject the house, goods, and dealings of the subject to a State inquisition. 'f So, at any rate, thought Barnard and the many able politicians who sided with him, Pulteney, Wyndham, and Methuen among the number. No sooner had the King's * Coxe, Memoirs of Sir Robert Walpole (London, 1798), vol. i., p. 380. t Ibid., p. 381. VOL. I. 2 E 418 Sir John Barnard of London. Speech been read at the opening of Parliament on the 16th of January, 1733, than Barnard protested against the clause in it which announced the projected change ; and when Walpole's Bill was introduced, on the 27th of February, he was its most energetic opponent.* This Bill proposed that, from the ensuing midsummer, the custom-house duties hitherto levied on tobacco should be abolished. Walpole urged — and there was a good deal of truth in the complaint, as the history of Liverpool and Glasgow commerce sufficiently shows — that those duties were grievously abused by crafty merchants and smugglers by profession, and that the public revenue was greatly impoverished by the numberless frauds and perjuries resorted to for the sake of evading the law. Therefore he proposed that every package of tobacco brought into an English port should be lodged in a warehouse appointed for the purpose, and there, in the first instance, subjected to an impost of three farthings a pound ; * that the keeper of each warehouse should have one lock and key, and the merchant-importer another ; and that the tobacco should thus be secured until the merchant should find vent for it, either by exportation or home consumption ; that the part designed for exportation should be weighed at the custom- house, discharged of the three farthings a pound which had been paid at its first importation, and then exported without further trouble ; that the portion destined for home con- sumption should, in presence of the warehouse-keeper, be delivered to the purchaser, upon his paying an inland duty of fourpence a pound, by which means the merchant would be eased of the inconvenience of paying the duty upon im- portation, or of granting bonds and binding sureties for the payment before he had found a market for the commodity ; and that all appeals should be heard and determined by two or three of the judges, in the most summary manner, with- out the formality of proceedings in courts of law or equity.' In this proposal Barnard and his friends saw the begin- * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. iii., pp. 392, 393. His Arguments against Walpoles Excise Bill. 419 ning of a system of taxation altogether foreign to the principles of English liberty. The multiplication of excise- men and warehouse-keepers, appointed and paid by the Treasury, they maintained, would seriously affect the free- dom of elections ; and what with having these impracticable officials to deal with, on one hand, and having no protection beyond a summary and final appeal to the assize judges on the other, the merchant would be terribly harassed in his work. ' He would be debarred all access to his commodities, except at certain hours when attended by the warehouse- keepers. For every quantity of tobacco he could sell he would be obliged to make a journey, or send a messenger, to the office for a permit, which could not be obtained without trouble, expense, and delay.' All his profits would be thus taken from him, and he would have no heart to carry on his trade. Moreover, if this plan of tobacco excise were autho- rized, it would soon be made a precedent for other excise laws ; and ere long there would be Government warehouses for every article imported into the kingdom ; nothing could be bought or sold without the sanction of the State ; and English liberty would be hopelessly ruined. The present laws against smuggling, Barnard insisted, might be made thoroughly efficient if only care were used in their administra- tion ; and it was clear that there really was very much less smuggling practised than Walpole had represented. But it would be better for the revenue to be defrauded ten times as much as was actually the case than for fraud to be prevented by practices subversive of liberty. " For my own part," exclaimed Barnard, in bold terms that not even his angriest opponent could gainsay, " I never was guilty of any fraud. I put it to any man, be he who he will, to accuse me of so much as the appearance of a fraud in any trade I was ever concerned in. I am resolved never to be guilty of any fraud ;" but he would sooner have frauds countenanced than that Eng- lish liberty should be despoiled. " I had rather beg my bread from door to door, and see my country flourish, than be 420 Sir John Barnard of London. the greatest subject in the nation, and see the trade of my country decaying, and the people enslaved and oppressed."* In that temper Barnard fought against Sir Robert Wal- pole's Excise Bill on the 27th of February. All the mer- chants of London and the other commercial cities regarded him as their great champion ; and when the Bill was brought forward for a first reading, on the 14th of March, a goodly company of city men assembled in the lobby of the House of Commons and the outlying courts of Westminster Hall, to show their interest in the measure, and to watch its progress. Thereat ensued some angry words between the two poli- ticians. In the course of the debate Walpole complained of the multitudes who lined all the approaches to the House. Barnard said it was only a modest multitude, come to watch its interests and eager to receive early information as to the progress of the discussion thereupon. " Gentlemen may call the multitude now at our doors a modest multitude," ex- claimed Walpole ; " but I cannot think it prudent or regular to bring such crowds to this place. Gentlemen may give them whatever name they think fit ; it may be said they come hither as humble suppliants, but I know whom the law calls sturdy beggars ; and those who bring them here cannot be sure they will not behave like sturdy beggars, and try to frighten us into granting their request." Sir Robert Walpole was called to order for his angry insinuations, and laughed at for his groundless fears. But there was some reason for his annoyance. There was no intimidation in the crowding of merchants at the doors of the House ; but they were soon found to be representatives of the whole commercial body in England. Walpole had a large majority for the first reading of his Bill ; but it excited such clamour and alarm throughout the country, that he was forced to abandon it and to adopt in lieu the policy advocated by Barnard.! * Cenflemdu's Ma<jnz!nc, vol. iii., p. 457. t Ibid., pp. 5G7, 5G. v \ 571, (>15-G17, G23 ; Smoj.i.itt, Hhlorij of Kiighiud, vol. iii., pp. 22G-232. His Arguments for Preservation of the Sinking-Fund. 421 Nor was this the only victory gained by the city patriot over the great Whig statesmen in the spring of 1733. On the 22nd of February, Walpole proposed to relieve taxation by transferring half a million of money from the Sinking Fund to the revenues of the current year. That fund, instituted in 1717, chiefly at the instigation of William Paterson, and the subject on which he spent the last energies of his ener- getic life, and heartily encouraged by Walpole himself, had already done something towards the reduction of the Na- tional Debt, and if steadily maintained, and honestly applied to the object for which it was started, it would, as some san- guine financiers calculated, clear off the whole burden in about twenty years more. It failed to do that ; but the project — the National Debt being still insignificant — was most commendable, and Barnard showed his honesty in defending it against Walpole's treacherous scheme for its virtual annihilation. If this sacred deposit solemnly appro- priated to the discharge of the debt were once touched, he urged, the whole would soon be absorbed, and all likeli- hood of ridding posterity of an unjustifiable burden wx»uld be for ever removed. Better increase the land-tax than tamper with the Sinking Fund, he declared ; though thereby he himself and thousands like him would suffer in consequence. " I have a part of my estate in land," he said, " and there- fore ought to be for reducing that [the land] tax. I have another part of my estate in the public funds, and conse- quently I ought to be as fond as other men of not being paid off, and having as high an interest as I can possibly get from the public. And the remaining part of my estate I have in trade, as to which also I speak against my own interest ; for, as a trader, I ought to be against paying oft' the public funds, because the interest of money will be thereby reduced, and, though it may seem a paradox, yet it is certain that the higher the interest of money is in any country, the greater profit the private trader will always make. In a country where the interest of money is high, the traders will be but 2 e -1 422 Sir John Barnard of London. few, the general stock in trade will be but small ; but every man who is a trader must make a great profit of what he has in trade."* If Barnard's arguments had not much weight in the House, vast numbers of sensible people through- out the country thought with him, and Walpole was forced, in this instance, as in the excise question, to submit to the evident wish of the people. It was in the spring of this same memorable year in com- mercial history that Barnard introduced his Bill against 1 the infamous practice of stock-jobbing,' providing that no loss incurred in the practice of this trade should be recover- able by law.f In his principal speech thereupon we have already noted some trenchant sentences. The Bill passed, but wrought no good. ' It is still in force,' it has been well observed, 'yet representative bargains have not only in- creased, but form the chief business of the Stock Exchange. The greatest corporation in the world has availed itself of the principle, and the effect of the statute is, not to prevent respectable men from speculating, but to make rogues refuse to pay their losses, proving that while the law is inefficient, the black-board of the Stock Exchange is their only punishment.' % For this, however, Barnard is not to be blamed. All through his Parliamentary career he worked with notable honesty and singleness of purpose, none the less apparent and honourable because now and then his measures were short- sighted and unreasonable. In these days it is amusing to find Barnard introducing, as he did in February, 1734, a Bill for improving the ways of levying taxes on teas, in which an increase of duty was recommended. " I wish it were higher than it is," he said, ** because I look upon it as an article of luxury."§ There were other luxuries that the sometime Quaker would have been glad to do away with. In the spring of * Gentleman s Magazine, vol. iii., p. 450. f Ibid., vol. iii., pp. G73, G74. + Francis, Chronicles of the Stock Exchange, pp. 81, 82. § Gentleman s Magazine, vol. iv., pp. 303, 34 1. His Later Work in Parliament. 423 1735 he introduced a Bill 'to restrain the number of houses for playing of interludes, and for the better regulating of interludes,' seeing that there were already as many as six theatres in London, and the probability of even more being set up. In this case Walpole sided with Barnard ; but he wished to place greater power in the hands of the Lord Chamberlain than Barnard thought right Therefore the Bill, at that time, fell through, to be revived two years later by Sir Robert Walpole, and established as the law enforced to this day.* Meanwhile Barnard was troubling himself about weightier matters. In March, 1737, he caused great commotion in the mercantile and moneyed world by proposing the reduction of interest on the National Debt from four to three per cent., with facilities of selling out for those who objected to the lower rate. Thereto Mas to be added a further motion, * that the House would, as soon as the interest of all redeemable debts should be reduced to three per cent per annum, take off some of the heavy taxes that oppress the poor and the manufacturer.' Long and angry discussions, almost without number, ensued ; and at last Barnard's projects were rejected. He revived them, however, in 1750, and then, with the sup- port of Pelham, gained his point, though not without violent opposition. " Mr. Pelham/' says Horace Walpole, " who has flung himself almost entirely into Sir John Barnard's hands, has just miscarried in a scheme for the reduction of interest, by the intrigues of the three great companies and other usurers."! Notwithstanding his intimacy and great influence with Pel- ham and his supporters, that was the last Parliamentary work of importance in which Sir John Barnard took part He was an old man now, and found employment enough in civic and private duties. These duties were in no way neglected * Coxe, vol. i., p. 515. t Ibid., vol. i., p. 498 ; Gentleman s Magazine, vol. vii., pp. GG8, 712, 772 ; Fhakcis, pp. 87, 88. 424 Sir John Barnard of London. during the period of his most active work in more public ways. In 1737 he was elected Lord Mayor of London, and to celebrate the occasion, we are told, he provided a magni- ficent entertainment, himself wearing on this occasion 4 a fine lace turnover and ruffles, the manufacture of Bath.'* Another authority, concerning himself more about the inner spirit than the outer covering of the man, assures us that, * from his entrance into this office till his resignation, he paid a parental attention to the welfare of his fellow-citizens. Though a passionate lover of the country, he would not, sleep there a single night, lest some emergency might call for the presence of the chief magistrate, and any of them suffer injury from his absence. 'f Among the good things done by him while in office, it is recorded that ' he immediately gave strict injunctions to remove the great nuisance of common beggars out of the City, taking care those injunctions should be well observed, till scarcely one vagrant was to be seen within its walls ; thus preventing perversion of alms, baneful idleness, imposition, and pilfering, the prelude to still greater evils from infesting the community. In the same spirit of benevolence, watching for the public good, he was led to use, instead of rigour, the tenderest com- passion, consistent with equity, towards young delinquents. In every instance, when it could be done with propriety, he was an advocate to soften the penalties they had so rashly incurred, and would labour to persuade the stern prosecutor not to send a petty offender for the first trespass to prison, where surrounding profligates would certainly inflame the evil, too predominant already, when generous treatment might possibly contribute towards working a cure.'l One of the other matters, for which he was highly praised by the pious people of his day, was the effectual issuing of an order against Sunday trading. § * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. vii., pp. 572, G3G. 'On all occasions,' it is adik'il. 'hi lias been a great encouragor of British manufactures.' t M-moirt, p. 'J. + Ibid. § Ibid. His Later Services to the City and the State. 425 During the year of his mayoralty Sir John Barnard lost his wife, her body being conveyed from the Mansion House to the merchant's abode at Clapham, by boys of Christ's Hospital. She left him one son, who, as ' John Barnard, Esq., of Berkeley Square,' had some celebrity a hundred years ago as a collector of pictures and a miser ;* and two daughters, Sarah and Jane. Sarah was married in 1733 to Sir Thomas Hankey, son of the Sir Henry, who founded the great bank- ing-house yet existing. In 1738, Jane became the wife of Henry Temple, Esq., son of Henry, first Viscount Palmer- ston, and grandfather of the statesman of our own times. t But about Barnard's family affairs we know very little in- deed. Nor is there much of interest to be said concerning his mercantile and municipal relations. There is evidence of his patriotism and importance in the fact that, in 1745, when the Scotch rebellion caused a dangerous run upon the Bank of England, and so far threatened its destruction that its notes fell in value ten per cent, below par, his name stands at the head of sixteen hundred City merchants and traders, in signature to an agreement for taking and exchanging the bank-notes at their full value whenever they came before them 4 Next year he issued a proposal for raising 3,000,0007. to meet the special needs of the Government ; one-third, by a five per cent loan, to be repaid in the course of ten years ; another, by a perpetual annuity at four per cent, ; and another, by a lottery at four per cent. Soon after he pro- pounded a second scheme for raising the whole by means of a lottery. It is said that when he laid the scheme before the Treasury, he offered to deposit 300,0007. in stock as his own contribution. That amount being objected to as * City Biography, containing Anecdotes and Memoirs of the Rise, Progress, and Situation and Character of the Aldermen and other Conspicuous Person- ages of the Corporation a>id City of London (London, 1800; ; an amusing but not very trustworthy book, which lias helped mo to a lew of the facts recorded above. t Collins, Fctrag".. X Gcidleiuan's Magazine. 426 Sir John Barnard of London. less than he could afford, he replied that, if two days' notice were given to him, he would produce four times the amount* On that occasion he was publicly spoken of as 'a worthy patriot, whose reputation is superior to praise, and who in every station of life is a pattern to be imitated. 't On the 23rd of May, 1747, a statue was erected in his honour in the Royal Exchange, there to mark him as Gre- sham's great successor in benefaction to the City 4 It was reported of him that he never after that time entered the Exchange, but transacted all his business outside the doors. He was then, however, sixty-two years of age ; and, though he lived seventeen years longer, he does not seem to have had much more to do in City matters. On the 17th of July, 1756, he resigned the post he had long held as alder- man of Bridge Ward Without, and with it the title that had come to be conferred upon him of Father of the City, alleg- ing, as his excuse, his age and the bad state of his health. On the 23rd of the same month he was publicly thanked in Guildhall ' for the honour and influence which the City had upon many occasions derived from the dignity of his character, and the wisdom, steadiness, and integrity of his conduct ; for his firm adherence to the constitution, both in Church and State, his noble struggles for liberty, and his disinterested and valuable pursuit of the glory and prosperity of his King and country, uninfluenced by power, unawed by clamour, and unbiassed by the prejudice of party. '§ Thenceforth Sir John Barnard lived in privacy. A bishop, meeting him in November, 1758, is reported to have thus addressed him, " I am glad of this opportunity to congratu- late you, sir, upon your honourable retirement from the stage of public life, after having acted your part in it so much to the emolument of your country and your own glory. In your old age you can now enjoy what Tully and all the ancients have told us is the best support of the mind under the decay * Gentleman's Magazine, voL xvi., p. 190. % Tln'd. f Ibid., vol. xvii., p. 245. § Ibid., vol. xxviii., p. 337. His Private Life and Character. 427 of the body. You can look back on a life employed much to the good of mankind." — " You mentioned Tully, sir," was Barnard's rejoinder ; " he was, you know, a heathen." — " I ^rant it," answered the bishop ; " but he was a very wise man." — " A very vain man, I have always thought," said Barnard. " Though a life stained with crimes, or wasted in dissipation, must afford a terrifying retrospect indeed, yet, for my own part, I never can think of looking back upon what I have been or done to find consolation from it in my old age. That must spring, I think, from another source."* That anecdote fairly illustrates the religious austerity of Sir John Barnard. In spite of the opposing influences of Court and City during the worst period of Georgian depra- vity, he retained the simplicity of his youth. He spent an hour each day, we are told, in prayer and study of the Scrip- tures, 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 signatures of meekness in his aspect.'! 'All his 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 mention was heard from his own mouth of the transactions in which he bore a principal part and acquired great glory. If questions regarding them were asked for information's sake, his answers were always brief, and the subject never by himself pursued.'! In that temper, after an illness of five years' duration, he died at his house in Clapham on the 29th of August, 1764. He was buried at Mortlake.§ * Memoirs, pp. 19, 20. t Ibid., p. 18. J Ibid. p. 19. § Ibid, p. 21 ; Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xxxiv., p. 399. END OF VOL. I. ENGLISH MERCHANTS. VOL II. hlU JOHN HAF(NARl), LOUP MAYOK OK LOMMi.V \ol. II., front 'tpiect. ENGLISH MERCHANTS MEMOIRS IN ILLUSTRATION" OK THE PROGRESS OF BRITISH COMMERCE, H. R, FOX BOURNE, AUTHOR OF " A MEMOIR OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY, IN TWO VOLUMES. VOLUME II. THE SECOND LONDON EXCHANGE. LONDON: RKJHAI.'P P.RNTLBY, NEW BUBMNGTON STREET IDurjItefjrr in (&rtJtnarn ta fyex M&]ettv. 1866. CONTENTS OF VOLUME II. CHAPTER XVII. ENGLISH COMMERCE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. PAGE The three chief causes of England's commercial progress during the last hundred years. (1) The growth of its colonial empire and consequent extension of trade with the United States, Canada, and the West Indies, the East Indies and China, the Australian colonies, and the countries of Europe. (2) The development of manufacturing energy illustrated in the history of the iron trade and improvements in the making of iron and steel ; and in the progress of such trading towns as Bristol. The merchants of modern Bristol ; William Miles and Conrad Finzel — (3) The ex- tension of free-trade principles, and of sound views on political and commercial economy 1 CHAPTER XVIII. SOME MERCHANTS OF LIVERPOOL ; ESPECIALLY THOMAS JOHNSON, BRYAN BLUNDELL, ARTHUR AND BENJAMIN HEYWOOD, AND THOMAS BENTLEY. [1G00-1800]. The rise of Liverpool commerce — Its progress during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries — Liverpool in the seventeenth cen- tury — Some of its old merchants ; the Johnsons and the Percivals ; William Clayton, William Cleveland and the Norriscs — Sir Thomas Johnson — His commercial and political employments — His share in the tobacco trade, and in the smuggling incident thereto — His zeal in the town's advancement— Saint Peter's Church — The Old Dock, and its service to Liverpool — Johnson's knighthood — His later historv and death in America — Bryan Blundell and his Blue-Coat School — Foster Cunliuc ami other Liverpool merchants vi Contents. PAGE in the eighteenth century — Progress of the slave-trade and other sources of prosperity to Liverpool — The family of the Heywoods — Arthur and Benjamin Hey wood— Their occupations in Liverpool — Thomas Bentley in Liverpool — His partnership with Josiah Wedgwood — Later history of the Heywoods 29 CHAPTER XIX. MATTHEW BOULTON OF BIRMINGHAM. [1728-1809]. The early history of Birmingham — Birmingham and its trades in the , eighteenth century — John Taylor of Birmingham — The elder Boultons — Matthew Boulton of Birmingham — His early trade — His establishment of the Soho Manufactory — The articles made there — Boultons Manufacturing energy — The favour shown to him by George the Third and Queen Charlotte — The progress of his Soho works — His acquaintance with James Watt — Watt's troubles in introducing his steam-engine — Boulton's help — The firm of Boulton and Watt— Boulton's other friends ; Dr. Small, James Keir, Thomas Day, Erasmus Darwin, and Joseph Priestley — The Lunar Society — Progress of the steam-engine trade — Matthew Boulton's other occupations— His copying-press — His controversy with the brass-founders — His share in the Albion Mill, Southwark — His manufacture of gold and silver wares and plated goods — His improvement of the coinage — Establishment of the Soho Mint — Boulton's coins and medals — His death and character 80 CHAPTER XX. THE COUTTSES OP EDINBURGH AND LONDON. [1720—1822]. The first bankers ; the Woods and the Smiths — The earlier Couttses in Montrose and Edinburgh — John Coutts, the elder, of Edinburgh — — His sons and successors, corn-factors and bankers — Patrick Coutts of London— John Coutts, the younger, of Edinburgh — His successors, Sir William Forbes and Robert Hemes — IiOndon bankers; the Hoares and the Barclays — James and Thomas Coutts of London — Growth of the London bank under Thomas Coutts's management — His first wife — His business habits and personal characteristics—His second wife — His death .... 120 CHAPTER XXI. THE PEELS OF MANCHESTER. [1723-1830]. The Peeles of Blackburn — Old Robert Peel of Blackburn — Manchester and Manchester merchants in the eighteenth century — Progress of cotton manufacture — Old Robert Peel in Blackburn and Burton- Contents. vii PAGE upon-Trent — His character and habits— The first Sir Robert Peel — His early training— His factories at Bury and Tam worth — His relations with Samuel Crompton — His Parliamentary work ; sup- port of Pitt ; defence of slavery ; arguments in favour of the factory children ; assertion of free-trade principles ; share in the recompense of Samuel Crompton; opposition to the Corn Laws; defence of the Bank Restriction Act ; disagreement with the second Sir Robert Peel respecting the currency question — His residence at Drayton Manor — Illustrations of his character — His death 148 CHAPTER XXII. SOME MERCHANTS OF GLASGOW ; ESPECIALLY PATRICK OOLQTJHOUN, DAVID DALE, AND THE MONTEITHS. [1420-1848]. The earliest merchants of Glasgow ; William Elphinstone, Archibald Lyon, William Simpson, and Walter Gibson — William Flakefield and the rise of linen manufacture — Progress of Glasgow commerce during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — Good effects of the Union — Beginning of the tobacco trade in Glasgow — Growth of shipping— The tobacco lords ; Andrew and George Buchanan, Alexander Spiers, John Glassford, and others — Patrick Colquhoun — His occupations in America— His settlement in Glasgow and furtherance of its commerce — The Glasgow Chamber of Commerce — Colquhoun's work in London — David Dale — His early history — His religious and philanthropic undertakings — His establish- ment of the New Lanark Cotton Mills — Robert Owen and his later management of the New Lanark Mills— The old Monteiths in Perthshire — James Monteith in Glasgow — His furtherance of linen and cotton manufacture — His mills at Blantyre — His sons John and Henry — Their services to Glasgow 174 CHAPTER XXIII. SOME MERCHANTS OF LEEDS; ESPECIALLY BENJAMIN GOTT, JOHN MARSHALL, AND MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER. [1630-1845]. The early history of Leeds — John Harrison and his benefactions to the town — The Sykeses and Denisons of Leeds — Growth of the woollen trade in Leeds during the eighteenth century — Its encouragement by Benjamin Gott — Gott's factory at Armley — Progress of linen manufacture during the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries — Its introduction in Leeds by John Marshall — Marshall's flax-mills at Meanwood and Holbeck — Michael Tliomas Sadler's work in Leeds — The philanthropic and political employments of Sadler, Gott, and Marshall '. 211 viii Contents. CHAPTER XXIV. THE BARINGS AND NATHAN MEYER ROTHSCniLD OF LONDON. [173G-1S4S]. PACK The elder Barings — John Baring's cloth factory at Larkbcer — Sir Francis Baring and his trade in stocks and shares — Other great stock jobbers ; Samson Gideon, and Benjamin and Abraham Gold- sraid — Sir Francis Baring's influence in commercial and financial legislation — His friendship with Joseph Paicc, and appointment of Charles Lamb to a clerkship in the India 0/liee— His successors in the house of Baring Brothers — Alexander Baring, Baron Ashburton — His work in Parliament and share in commercial legislation— His success as a merchant — His other occupations — His picture-collecting — His change of politics, and employment under Sir Robert Peel — The Ashburton Treaty —The later Barings — The Rothschilds in Frankfort — Nathan Meyer Rothschild in Manchester and London — His dealings on the Stock Exchange — His traffic in foreign loans — His character and disposition— His deatli and his bequests . 234 CHAPTER XXV. THOMAS TOTTER AND SOME OTHER MERCHANTS OF MANCHESTER. [1704-184.1]. John Potter of Tadcaster and his sons — Thomas and Richard Potter, Manchester warehousemen — Manchester and its trade in their time — Manchester politics in the eighteenth century — Pitt's war policy and its consequences — The troubles in Manchester result- ing from the French and American wars — Thomas and Richard Potter's share in opposition to the Corn Law, in procuring the Reform Bill, and in establishing the Anti-Corn-Law League — Sir Thomas Potter's services in obtaining the municipal enfranchise- ment of Manchester — Hi's work as its first "Mayor — His other ser- vices to the town — His warehouses and the business done therein — Other Manchester merchants ; Samuel Watts, John Rylands, Alex- ander Henry, George William "Wood, and the brothers Grant . . 2GG CHAPTER XXVI. JOHN GLADSTONE AND WILLIAM BROWN OF LIVERPOOL. [1704-18(34]. The progress of the cotton trade in Liverpool — Other branches of com- merce — Great Liverpool merchants : William Rathbone, James Cropper, William Ewart, and Thomas Leyland— Sir John Gladstone in Leith and Liverpool — His services to the trade of Liverpool and to the general advancement of the town — The Liverpool and Man- chester Railway— Gladstone's polities and Parliamentary work — Contents. ix PACK His charities and philanthropic labours in Liverpool and elsewhere — His retirement and death at Fasque — Sir William Brown — His parentage — His training in America — His settlement in Liverpool — His municipal and commercial occupations — His devotion to the cause of free trade — His place in Parliament — His mediation between England and America in 1S57 — His foundation of the Liverpool Free Library — His death 290 CHAPTER XXVII. JAMES EWING OF GLASGOW. [1775-1853]. Humphrey Ewing of Cathkin — James Ewing's education and early life — Glasgow and its trade in his day — Kirkman Finlay and Charles Tennant of Glasgow — James Ewing's commercial progress and furtherance of Glasgow commerce — His philanthropic work in the town— His arguments for free trade and religious freedom — His care of prisoners and the honest poor — His other services to Glasgow and society — His character and death 321 CHAPTER XXVIII. THE GURNETS OF NORWICH AND LONDON. [1G0O-1S5G]. The elder Gournays — Sir Richard Gurney of London — Francis Gournay and his manufacturing experiment at Lynn — The first John Gurney of Norwich and his wife Elizabeth — The second John Gurney of Norwich — The founders of the Norwich Bank — Samuel Gurney of London — The House of Richardson, Overend, and Company, afterwards Overend, Gurney, and Company — The progress of banking during the eighteenth century — The principles of modern banking, as illustrated in Samuel Gurney's operations — The rise of joint-stock banking — The Bank Charter Act of 1844 — Samuel Gurney's rivals in bill discounting — The progress of his business — His charitable and philanthropic character — His death . 340 CHAPTER XXIX. RICHARD COBDEN, AND TUE COMMERCE OF THE PRESENT. [1804-181)5]. Richard Cobden's ancestors— His early occupations — His employment as a commercial traveller— His establishment as a merchant and manufacturer — His share in the Anti-Corn-Law agitation — The triumph <>f the Anti-Corn-Law league — Cobden's travels on the Continent— His further work in Parliament— His labours as a reformer, and the spirit in which lie applied himself to them — His procurement of the Commercial Treaty with France — His VOL. II. b X Contents. PAGE other services in the cause of free trade — His death and cha- racter — The nature of his services to English commerce — Sta- tistics of English trade during the year 1SG5— A general survey of the present state of English commerce — Trade in articles of food — The coal-fields and their produce — Iron-mines and iron manufac- ture : the works of Mr. Fairbairn in Manchester, and Messrs. Platts at Oldham— Cotton machinery and cotton manufacture: Messrs. Rylands' factories at Wigan and elsewhere — Changes in the cotton trade, resulting from the cottou famine of 1SG2-G3 — Woollen trade and flax cultivation — Linen manufacture and the linen trade ; Messrs. Baxter's factory at Dundee — Saltaire Mills, uear Bradford, and the manufacture of alpaca wool — Trade in machinery and hardware — The manufactures of Birmingham — Pen-making and pin-making — The production of brass and brass-wares — The development of new trades, as in the case of india-rubber manu- factures — The great centres of commerce — Inland towns and sea- ports — The docks of Liverpool and London, and the various trades helped thereby — Trade in bullion and money — Bankers, money- lenders, and stock-jobbers — The modern growth of trading com- panies, and their probable result — The development of trade in past centuries — The future of English commerce 3G5 Index 423 ILLUSTRATIONS TO VOLUME II. Sib John Barnard of London Frontispiece The Second London Exchange Title Page Liverpool in 1680 Facing 33 Matthew Boulton of Birmingham 86 Thomas Coutts of London Facing 137 The New Exchange, Strand 140 Exeter Change, Strand 141 Manchester in 1727 Facing 150 Old Robert Peel's House in Fish Lane, Blackburn . . . 153 The First Sir Robert Peel Facing 157 Drayton Manor, the Residence of Sir Robert Peel ... 170 Glasgow in 1760 Facing 181 Patrick Colquhoun of Glasgow 185 Watts's Warehouses, Manchester 284 Saltaire Mills, near Bradford 404 The Royal Exchange, London 422 ENGLISH MERCHANTS. CHAPTER XVII. ENGLISH COMMERCE FROM THE MIDDLE OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY TO THE MIDDLE OF THE NINE- TEENTH CENTURY. A new period in the history of English commerce, a period of prosperity so wonderful that the most ardent enthusiast could never have foreseen it in his wildest dreams, began about a century ago. The long training through which, in successive generations, our merchants had passed as mem- bers of various guilds and companies, and the hindrances they had long been subject to from their own mistaken principles of trade and from the arbitrary and unreasonable interferences of kings and politicians, at length issued in substantial freedom of action and in that increase of wit in action that can only come through long and painful bondage. The establishment of sound views in all departments of political and commercial economy, and the sudden access of mechanical and artistic power that gave new life to every branch of manufacturing industry, are the two great internal causes of England's mercantile advancement during the past three or four generations. Another, and the chief external, cause — also to be traced back to the internal enterprise of the country — has been the rapid growth of its colonial empire. VOL. ii. b 2 The Growth of English Trade British possessions in India were, in the middle of the eighteenth century, still insignificant ; but all the American colonies held by England were, by that time, firmly esta- blished, and they had already surpassed every European nation in the extent and value of their commerce with the mother-country. In 1761, the first year of George the Third's reign, and the year that, better than any other, may be taken as the first of the new era, the entire exports from Great Britain, to all parts of the world, amounted to 16,038,9137., the corresponding imports to 10,292,5417. The value of the exports to North America and the West Indies was 3,330,3717., or more than a fifth of the whole; the value of the imports thence was 3,726,2617., or more than a third.* In 1769, the North American colonies pos- * The value of exports from Scotland was 304.527Z. ; of imports, 379,662*. These are some of the chief details for England : — Exports. Imports. Hudson's Bay, Newfoundland, Cape Breton, 1 n0/lr , co , „ en „™ Quebec, and Nova Scotia . . . . )i 349,524 £50,689 New England, New York, and Pennsylvania . 827,863 134,043 Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, and Georgia . . 824,218 713,850 Jamaica 441,618 932,197 Guadaloupe 131,942 482,179 Saint Christopher's 134,069 294,850 Barbadoes 215,479 253,900 Antigua 108,244 280,869 Bermuda, Montserrat, Nevis, New Providence, j Saint Croix, Saint Thomas, Tortola, Monte 1 56,803 203,319 Christi, Saint Eustathius | These are the figures given for the chief European countries : — Exports. Imports. Holland £2,682,165 £524,109 Germany 2,331,998 716,746 Portugal 1,266,171 250,167 Italy 203,635 701,916 The Mediterranean .... 389,577 103,628 Flanders 425,130 30,546 France 177.393 480 Russia 47,718 843,185 The East Country .... 202.254 133,536 Denmark and Norway . . . 155,240 103, G63 Sweden 2(5,126 298,750 Turkey 54,282 163,366 Chalk, History of British Commerce (London, 1844), vol. iii., pp. 10-12. with North America and the West Indies. 3 sessed 389 ships of their own, 1 13 being square-rigged vessels, the others sloops and schooners, with a total burthen of 20,001 tons. Most of these were employed in inter- colonial trade, and the trade with Europe was carried on almost entirely in European vessels. In this year the colonies received 90,710 tons of shipping from Great Britain and Ireland, 34,151 from other parts of Europe and from Africa, and 94,916 from the British and foreign West Indies. In return, they sent 99,121 tons to Great Britain and Ireland, 42,601 to the rest of Europe and to Africa, and 96,382 to the West Indies.* That was the condition of British American commerce at the commencement of the disputes that resulted in American fighting for independence* In 1800 the exports from Great Britain to the colonies in the West Indies and on the Continent that still were subject to it, had far exceeded those sent to all the colonies in 1761, and the imports were nearly twice as great, while our trade with the United * Craik, vol. iii., pp. 38, 39. la illustration of the condition of American commerce a hundred years ago, let one other extract be given from the same work (p. 41, condensing the details of Macpheuson, Annals of Commerce, vol. iii., pp. 570-578) : — "In the year 1770, from all the British continental colonies, including the islands of Newfoundland, Bahama, and Bermuda, the principal exports to Great Britain were, 1,173 tons of potashes, 737 of pearlashes, 5,747 of pig-iron, 2,102 of bar-iron, 584,593 pounds of indigo, 5,202 tons of whale-oil, 112,971 pounds of whale-pins, 74,073 barrels of rice, 78,115 of common tar, 15,125 of turpentine, 3,043 tons of masts, yards, &c, 6,013,519 feet of pine, oak, and cedar boards, 4, 921,020 staves and headings, furs to the value of 91,485/., 799,652 pounds of deer skins, and tobacco to the value of 904,981/. The other principal exports were, to Ireland, 305,083 bushels of flax seed ; to the south of Europe, 431,380 quintals of dried fish, 588,561 bushels of wheat, 18,501 tons of bread and flour, and 36,296 barrels of rice; to the West Indies, 351,625 pounds of spermaceti candles, 206,0S1 quintals of dried fish, 29,582 barrels of pickled fish, 402,958 bushels of Indian corn, 49,337 bushels of peas and beans, 23,449 tons of bread and flour, 2,870 tons of beef and pork, 167,313 pounds of butter, 4,033 barrels of rice, 8,548 pounds of loaf-sugar, 85,035 pounds of soap, onions to the value of 6,378/., 35,922,168 feet of pine, oak, and cedar boards, 11,116,141 staves and headings, 3,817,899 hoops, 62,099 short hogsheads, 3,184 heads of cattle, 6,092 horns, 12,797 sheep and hogs, and 183,893 pounds of tallow and lard. To Africa the only considerable export was 292,966 gallons of New England rum, of which spirit, also, a much larger quantity was sent from the New Knsrlaud colonies to the Indians of Nova Scotia and Canada." 4 The Growtli of English Trade States, the West Indies and the Canadian and adjacent provinces in 1800, was only a fifth less than our trade with all the world in 1761. In the later year Great Britain sent goods worth 6,885,500/. to the United States, receiving in ieu commodities valued at 2,358,216/. Its exports to the British West Indies amounted to 3,416, 9667., its imports thence to 5,805,7877. From Canada, New Brunswick, Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, and Hudson's Bay, the articles received were valued at 975,9867., while the articles sent thither were found to be worth 393,6967.*. Since then American commerce has every year made vast increase. In 1860 Great Britain exported to the United States, goods worth 22,907,6817., and received thence other goods, the chief being cotton, worth 44,724,3127. For the same year the export trade with the British North American colonies amounted to 3,854,8347., the import trade to 6,641,9357. The West Indies have retrograded, the exports of 1860 being only valued at 2,020,7687., the imports at 4,399,9177. ; but the aggregate trade of these districts has been more than quadrupled in sixty years.f In the same period of sixty years the trade of Great Britain, with India and China, has increased more than sixfold. In 1860 it was eight-and-twenty times as great as it had been in 1761. In that year our exports to the East Indies amounted only to 845,7977., our imports thence to 840,987 ; \ hardly more in the aggregate than the exports to and imports from the island of Jamaica. The government of the East India Company was just then entering upon a new stage. "With the victory of PI assy, won by Clive in 1757, began the development of military power and terri- torial aggrandizement that has led to the establishment of our present vast empire in India. The old-fashioned trade continued, without loss, while Clive, Hastings, and Corn- * Ckaik, vol. iii., pp. 171-173, I Capi'&u, The Port and Trade of London (London, 1862 J, pp. 301, 40 i>. 418. X Craik., vol. iii., p. 12. with the East Indies and China. f> wallis were persuing their conquests, and there was especial advancement of commerce, under the Company's auspices, with China and other Asiatic countries. But the time had already passed for trade to be as prosperous under any great company's monopoly as in the hands of private adventurers, and this greatest of all companies, as it increased in posses- sions, found it more profitable to extort money from its subjects by arbitrary systems of taxation than to acquire it by honest commerce. More traffic was done during the last quarter of the eighteenth century and early in the nineteenth, by independent traders, acting in violation of the monopoly and turning to the best advantage the meagre liberties accorded by Parliament, than by the East India Company itself. The Company, indeed, not caring to in- crease its commerce, still less caring to aid the private traders, sought to prove that there was no market for English goods in India. "The small demand for foreign commo- dities in India," urged its governors in 1809, "results from the nature of the Indian people, their climate and their usages. The articles of first necessity their own country fur- nishes more abundantly and more cheaply than it is possible for Europe to supply them. The labour of the great body of the common people only enables them to subsist on rice and to wear a slight covering of cotton cloth ; they, therefore, can purchase none of the superfluities we offer them. The com- paratively few in better circumstances, restricted, like the rest, by numerous religious and civil customs, of which all are remarkably tenacious, find few of our commodities to their taste, and their climate, so dissimilar to ours, renders many of them unsuitable to their use ; so that a commerce between them and us cannot proceed far upon the principle of supplying mutual wants. Hence, except woollens, in a very limited degree, for mantles in the cold season, and metals, on a scale also very limited, to be worked up by their own artizans for the few utensils they use, hardly any of our staple commodities find a vent among the Indians ; the (j Tlie Growth of English Trade other exports which Europe sends to India being chiefly con- sumed by the European population there, and some of the descendants of the early Portuguese settlers, all of whom, taken collectively, form but a small body, in view to any question of national commerce."* English merchants thought otherwise. At the granting of a new charter in 1793, it was stipulated by Parliament that the Company should provide three thousand tons of shipping every year for the use of private traders. This was done, but with so many hindrances to the traders, that they were able to make little use of their privilege. There- fore the subject was reconsidered by Parliament, and in April, 1814, the trade was thrown open to the public. In that year the exports of the Company amounted to 826,558/., and those of private merchants to 1,048,132/. In 1817, the Company's trade had sunk to 638,382/., the private com- merce had risen to 2,750,333/. In 1828, the Company sent to India only 488,601 /.'s worth of goods, while the private traders exported to the value of 3,979,072/. Every later year the merchants' trade advanced, and the Company's declined almost as rapidly. In 1840 the total exports from Great Britain to the eastern marts, exclusive of China, amounted to 6,023,192/. In 1850, they were assessed at 8,022,665/. ; and by 1860, they had risen to 17,683,669/., with 5,318,036/. additional for China. For the same year the shipments from the British East Indies were valued at 15,106,595/., those from China at 9,323,764.| With other quarters of the world our trade has also mightily advanced ; but with none more notably than Aus- tralia. In 1760, Australia was almost an unknown land to Englishmen. It had been visited by Dampier in 1688, and again in 1699 ; but it was little thought of prior to Cook's discoveries on the east coast in 1770. Those dis- * Paperg published by authority of the East India Company (London, 1813), p. 21. t Capper, pp. 35G, 357, 190, 191. with Australia and the Countries of Europe. 7 coveries led to the colonization of Sydney, in 1788, chiefly to be valued as a penal colony down to the year 1848. The city of Melbourne was founded only about 1835, Adelaide in 1830, and Fort Phillip in 1838. Yet in 1860, the goods brought from Australia amounted to 5,527,995/., besides 0,7J9,S57/.'s worth of gold and silver; and the corresponding exports were valued at 9,530,938/. In 1810, the Australian colonists sent home 167 pounds of wool; in 1820 the quantity had risen to 99,415 pounds ; in 1830 to 1,967,309 pounds; in 1840 to 9,721,243 pounds; in 1850 to 39,018,221 pounds; and in 1860 to 59,165,939 pounds, valued at 5,387,078?., the imports of wool from all other parts of the world in this year being estimated at 5,317,844/.* It is unnecessary to show in detail how our commerce with Europe has been helped on by the growth of our own colonial and American trade. In 1761 our exports to Holland were assessed at 2,682,165/., our imports thence at 524,109/. In 1860 the exports were four times, the imports sixteen times as great. To France, under the de- terring influences of bad statesmanship, with the Methuen Treaty for its worst achievement, we sent, in 1761, goods worth 177,393/. ; the corresponding imports were estimated at only 480/. In I860, the year following the Cobden Treaty, the exports amounted to 12,701,372, the imports to 17,774,031/. In 1761, again, Russia received from us 47,7187.'s worth of goods, and sent us back commodities valued at 843,185/. In 1860 the exports amounted to 5,446,279/. ; the imports exceeded 16,000,000/. The trade of Great Britain, with all its colonies and all foreign countries, Ireland being- then considered one of the foreign countries, comprised, in 1761, imports valued at 10,292,541/., and exports to the amount of 16,038,913/. In 1860, the imports from all parts of the world to Great Britain and Ireland were estimated at 210,530,000/, the exports from it at 1 64,470,000/. f * Capper, pp. 384. 387. f Ibid., pp. 490, 491, &c. 8 The Growth of English Manufacturing Energy. Of the latter sum, 135,840,000^. stood for the domestic produce of Great Britain and Ireland, and the articles manu- factured therein. The domestic produce and the manufac- tured articles consumed at home cannot be assessed. The vast increase of foreign and colonial trade, bringing into our country immense quantities of cotton, flax, silk, wool and iron, sugar, grain, tea, coffee and live animals, oil and timber, drugs and dyes of all sorts, has been in part the cause, in part the consequence, of the wonderful develop- ment of manufacturing energy apparent in our country during the last hundred years or so. Of this we shall see frequent evidence in later pages. Here we may briefly glance at the history of the iron trade and iron manufacture in England, in illustration of the general progress of its industrial history. There have been iron-works in England ever since the time of the Romans, although in the middle ages iron brought from the shores of the Bay of Biscay was preferred to that produced in England. Our superiority over other nations dates from the time when coal took the place of wood as fuel. Until then, indeed, no great effort was made to extend the trade. In 1354 the exportation of iron was prohibited on account of the scarcity of timber,* and in 1581 the erection of iron-works was forbidden, within certain distances from London and the Thames, ' for the preservation of the woods.' t Forty years later, in 1621, Lord Dudley obtained a patent for ' the mystery and art of melting iron ore, and of making the same into cast works or bars, with sea-coals or pit-coals, in furnaces, with bellows,' which had been introduced by his famous son Dud Dudley.J Dudley suffered much from the persecution of rival iron- masters ; but, he said, " I went on with my inventions * Ajtderson, Origin of Commerce (London, 1801), vol. i., p. 337. t Ibid., vol. ii., p. 152. % Fairbairn, Iron, its History, Properties, and Processes of Manufacture (Edinburgh, 1865), p. 8. Jlise of the Iron Trade. 9 cheerfully, and made annually great store of iron, good and merchantable, and sold it unto divers men at 12/. per ton. I also made all sorts of cast-iron wares, as brewing cisterns, pots, mortars, and the like, better and cheaper than any yet made in these nations with charcoal."* After per- severing efforts Dudley succeeded in producing seven tons of iron a week, " the greatest quantity of pit-coal iron," as he said, "ever yet made in Great Britain;"! and he had an able coadjutor in his efforts to advance the iron trade in Andrew Yarranton. In 1G77, too, a Doctor Frederick de Blewstane obtained a patent for " a new and effectual way of melting down, forging, extracting, and reducing of iron and all metals with pit- coal and sea-coal, as well and effectually as ever hath yet been done by charcoal, and with much less charge." % But many years elapsed before the plan of substituting coal for timber obtained much favour. In the meanwhile a long and curious battle was being waged between the home manufactories and the people of the young American colonies, who were desirous of in- creasing the demand for the iron they had just learned to produce. In 1719, it was reckoned, iron, wrought with charcoal, was third in the rank of English manufactures, and gave employment to two hundred thousand persons. These people, urged the colonists and their friends at home, were burning up all the wealth of England. " The waste and destruction of the woods in the counties of Warwick, Stafford, Hereford, Monmouth, Gloucester, and Salop, by these ironworks," it was said in the House of Commons, " is not to be imagined. If some care be not taken to pre- serve our timber from these consuming furnaces, there will not be oak enough left to supply the lxoyal Navy and our mercantile shipping."§ The iron worker?, on the other hand, protested that if the colonists wished to enrich them- * Smiles. Industrial Biography (London, 1863), pp. 50, 51. f Ibid., p. 51. X Ibid., p. 78. § Anderson, vol. iii., p. 89. 10 Rise of the English Iron Trade. selves and the mother-country at the same time, they should send their timber to England instead of using it in their own furnaces ; and therefore a bill was brought into Parlia- ment enjoining that ' none in the plantations should manu- facture iron wares of any kind whatever, out of any sows, pigs, or bars whatever.'* That cruel and short-sighted ordi- nance necessarily did much harm to the colonists, who, had it been rigidly complied with, would have been unable to make a single nail, bolt, or screw for themselves, or to pro- cure them from any market nearer than England. With good reason, they made a fresh complaint in 1737. At their instigation, it was represented in Parliament that, ' by reason of our woods being so far exhausted,' England could not possibly make more than the 18,000 tons of pig iron at that time being produced each year, as was proved by the fact that, to meet the needs of the market, nearly 20,000 tons had to be brought from Sweden and Russia, at a cost to the country of about 180,000Z. a year. Surely it would be better to bring that supply from our own colonies, and so benefit them instead of any foreign power. f The argument prevailed in time. In 1750 an act was passed * to encourage the importation of pig and bar iron from his Majesty's colonies in America, and to prevent the erection of any mill or other engine for slitting or rolling of iron, or any plating-forge to work with a tilt-hammer, or any furnace for making of steel, in the said colonies ;' % thus forbidding them to do any but the roughest work, and reserving all the fine manipula- tion for England, to which the pig-iron was to be shipped. Even that jealous law, however, was immediately produc- tive of good, both to the colonies and to the mother-country, and in due time it led to a further development of free trade in iron. In 1740 only 17,350 tons of iron were produced in England, whereas some fifty years before the issue of the furnaces had * Andebson, vol. iii., p. 88. t Ibid., vol. iii., p. 217. X Ibid., vol. iii., p. 279. Dad Dudley and Abraham Darby. 11 been reckoned at 180,000 tons.* It seems as though the English trade would soon have died out altogether but for the new impetus that came, partly from the introduction, in large quantities, of American, as well as foreign iron, but much more from the revival of Dud Dudley's old project for feeding the furnaces with coal instead of charcoal. That project had failed chiefly, hitherto, from the unfitness of the old-fashioned furnaces for the new kind of fuel. Coal and coke, burning slowly and with feebler chemical affinities for the iron ore, required its subjection to a much more powerful blast than could be obtained in the shallow furnaces then in use. At last the evil was remedied by young Abraham Darby, son of the Abraham Darby who, in 1709, founded the Coalbrook Dale Iron-works. ' Between 1730 and 1735, he determined to treat pit-coal as his charcoal-burners treated wood. He built a fire-proof hearth in the open air, piled upon it a circular mound of coal, and covered it with clay and cinders, leaving access to just sufficient air to maintain slow combustion. Having thus made a good stock of coke, he proceeded to experiment upon it as a substitute for char- coal. He himself watched the filling of his furnace during six days and nights, having no regular sleep, and taking his meals at the furnace-top. On the sixth evening, after many disappointments, the experiment succeeded and the iron ran * Fairbairn, p. 283. These are the details of the produce of 1740, as given by Mr. Fairbairn : — Glamorgan . . 2 Carmarthen . . 1 Cheshire . . . 3 Denbigh . . 2 Gloucester . . 6 Hereford . . . 3 Hampshire . . 1 Monmouth . . . 2 Furnaces. Tons. 600 400 100 1,700 550 2,850 1,350 200 400 900 Nottingham Salop . Stafford Worcester Sussex . Warwick York . Derby . Furnaces. . 1 . 6 . 2 . 2 . 10 . 2 . 6 . 4 Annual average for each furnace, 294 tons, 1 cwt. 1 qr. Weekly , , , , : , 13 , , , . Tons. 200 2,000 1,000 700 1,400 700 1,400 800 59 17,350 12 TJie Manufacture of Iron and Steel. out well. He then fell asleep so soundly, in the bridge-house at the top of his old-fashioned furnace, that his men could not wake him, and carried him sleeping to his house, a quarter of a mile distant. From that time his success was rapid.' * From that time, moreover, began a new era in the history of English iron manufacture. A few years later, in 1740, Benjamin Huntsman left Don- caster to settle in the neighbourhood of Sheffield. In his work as a clockmaker he had been troubled by the bad quality of the steel with which he had had to construct his springs and pendulums. Therefore he set himself, in his new home, to find out some better mode of making steel. ' He had not only to discover the fuel and place suitable for his purpose, but to build such a furnace and make such a crucible as should sustain a heat more intense than any then known in metallurgy. Ingot-moulds had not yet been cast, nor were there hoops and wedges made that would hold them to- gether.'j For a long time he failed- But in the end he overcame every difficulty, and brought the manufacture of cast steel very near to its present condition.! * Percy, Metallurgy of Iron and Steel (London, 1865), quoting an in- teresting memoir by Mrs. Darby. f Smiles, Industrial Biography, p. 104. % Ibid., p. 105. 'The process of making cast-steel,' says Mr. Smiles, ' as invented by Benjamin Huntsman, may be thus summarily described. The melting is conducted in clay-pots or crucibles manufactured for the purpose, capable of holding about 34 pounds each. Ten or twelve of such cru- cibles are placed in a melting furnace, similar to that used by brass-founders ; aud when the furnace and pots are at a white heat, to which they are raised by a coke fire, they are charged with bar steel, reduced to a certain degree of hardness, and broken into pieces of about a pound each. When the pots are all thus charged with steel, lids are placed over them, the furnace is filled with coke, and the cover put down. Under the intense heat to which the metal is exposed, it undergoes an apparent ebullition. When the furnace requires feeding, the workmen take the opportunity of lifting the lid of each crucible and judging how far the process has advanced. After about three hours' exposure to the heat, the metal is ready for " teeming." The completion of the melting process is known by the subsidence of all ebullition, and by the clear surface of the melted metal, which is of a dazzling brilliancy, like the sun when looked at with the naked eye on a clear day. The pots are then lifted out of their place, and the liquid steel Benjamin Huntsman and Henry Cort. 13 In the meanwhile the manufacture of crude iron was rapidly progressing. Having set up seven furnaces at Coalbrook Dale, Abraham Darby extended his work to Horsehay in 1754, and in 175G the Horsehay furnaces alone produced up- wards of twenty tons of iron a week, * sold off, as fast as made, at profit enough.' * In 170*0 a new blowing apparatus, con- sisting of large cylinders, with closely-fitting pistons, was sub- stituted for the old clumsy bellows, by Smeaton, at the Carron Iron-works.f In 170G the Craneges introduced a rever- beratory or air furnace, by which, without any blast, the pig iron was made malleable and fit for the forge hammer ;J and in 1783 Peter Onions, of Merthyr Tydvil, started the idea of a puddling furnace, wherein, with help of a current of air from beneath, the fire was left to act upon the metal until it was brought, as he said, ' into a kind of froth, which the work- man, by opening the door, must turn and stir with a bar or other iron instrument, and then close the aperture again, applying the blast and fire until there was a ferment in the metal.' In that way the dross was got rid of, and the pure iron ready for the forge. § At the same time Henry Cort was develop- ing the same process at Gosport. In 1783 he patented a method of faggoting the bars and then passing them through rollers which pressed out the earthy particles and made the iron tough and fibrous. Next year, in a second patent, ' he introduced a reverberatory furnace heated by coal, and with a concave bottom, into which the fluid metal is run from the smelting furnace; and he showed how, by a process of puddling, while exposed to the oxidizing current of flame and air, the cast metal could be rendered malleable.' || These inventions of puddling and rolling, soon aided by the application of Watt's steam-engine to mining operations, proved of immense is poured into ingots of the shape and size required. The pots are replaced, filled again, and the process is repented; and the red-hot pots thus serving for three successive charges, afler which they are rejected as useless.' * Faii;j$aii;\, p. 11. t II>'<1. t Smii.es, p. 115. j Ibid., p. 11G. .; F.MKHArx, pp. 12, 13. 14 The Manufacture of Iron and Steel. value. In 1860 upwards of eight thousand of Cort's furnaces were in operation in Great Britain alone, each one producing more iron in a week than could often be obtained with the old appliances in the course of a year.* Other improvements in the various parts of iron manufac- ture were introduced in later years, the most important of all being the hot-blast process, patented by Mr. Neilson of Glasgow, in 182S. Hitherto all furnaces and forges requiring the use of bellows or any other blowing apparatus, had been fed with blasts of cold air, which absorbed much of the furnace's heat before they could act upon the metal. Mr. Neilson suggested the simple plan of heating the air at a separate fire, and then applying it to the iron, and the process has been found to give so much fresh power over refractory ores that from three to four times the old quantity of iron can be worked with the addition of only one-third more fuel.t A few years later as great a benefit was brought to another department of iron manufacture by Mr. Nasmyth's steam hammer, patented in 1840.J No hammer previously in use was one-tenth as powerful in operations requiring force, or one-tenth as manageable in operations of delicacy. Without it our finished engines, huge paddle-wheels and screw-shafts for ocean-steamers, and wrought-iron ordnance could hardly have been constructed. § Later still, and likely to prove more important than any other invention bearing upon iron manufacture, is Mr. Bessemer's plan for converting the crude metal, by one simple process, into malleable iron and steel. Under the stimulus of inventions like these and the yet greater stimulus of the demand from all departments of English manufacturing industry, and from all parts of the world, for ever increasing supplies both of crude iron and of * Smiles, p. 120, quoting from the Mechanics' Magazine. t Faikuairx, pp. 14, G3-G5. X Smij.es, p. 288. ^ An interesting memoir of the inventor is in Smiles, pp. 275-298; a concise description of the invention in Faiubaikn, pp. 132-137. The Growth of the Iron Trade. 15 finished iron machines of all sorts, the iron trade has grown mightily during the last hundred years. In the years between 1740 and 1788 the produce of Great Britain had increased from 17,350 tons to 68,300 tons. By 1796 it had grown to 124,879 tons. In 1820 it was more than thrice, in 1827 more than five times, that quantity ; and in 1857 it was found that 3,659,447 tons of pig iron had been produced from 9,573,281 tons of iron ore. The value of this pig iron was assessed at £12,838,560.* It is doubtful whether the pro- duce of all the other countries in the world is worth as much.t * Fairbairn, pp. 283-287, whence these details of the pig-iron manufac- ture of 1857 are extracted. England : — Tons. Northumberland 63,250 Durham 284,500 Yorkshire 296,838 Lancashire 1,233 Cumberland . • 30,515 Derbyshire 112,160 Shropshire 117,141 North Staffordshire 134,057 South Staffordshire and Worcestshire 657,295 Northamptonshire 11,500 Gloucestershire 23,882 Somersetshire 300 Wales : — Flintshire and Denbighshire . 37,049 Glamorganshire, anthracite districts 63,440 Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire, bituminous ) 90 - 007 districts / ' Scotland 918,000 Ireland 1,000 Total produce in Great Britain and Ireland 3,G59,447 t From the same useful work this rough estimate of the produce of Tons. Russia 200,000 Sweden 150,000 Various German States 100,000 Other countries . . 300,000 Total . G.000,000 irious nations is taken : — Tons. Great Britain . . . 3,000,000 United States . . . 750,000 Austria . . 250,000 Belgium . . 200.UOO 16 TJie Results of English Iron Manufacture. It is to this development of its iron-trade that Great Britain mainly owes its commercial superiority over all other nations. By it have been made possible the vast establish- ments in which cotton, woollen, and linen goods, and a thou- sand other wealth-producing commodities are manufactured, the wonderful system of railways by which all these, and all the other articles, in an unmanufactured state, with which commerce has to do. are distributed over the country, and the no less wonderful system of ships and sailing-vessels by which our staples of trade are carried to all the quarters of the world, to be there exchanged for other goods required in the English market. To it especially is due the prosperity of those younger towns — young as towns, though old as vil- lages — like Manchester and Liverpool, Glasgow and Dundee, Leeds and Bradford, Birmingham and Sheffield, which have grown like mushrooms and become strong as oaks, each to be the centre of a great and wealthy district, and which thus, by contrast at any rate, have thrown such older towns as Norwich and Bristol into something like insignificance. These older towns, however, have shared in the prosperity. Bristol is no longer the rival of London, and the superior of every other trading town in the kingdom ; but it is still a busy hive of industry. If Queen Anne's statement, that * she never knew she was a Queen until she went to Bristol,' would now be truer of other towns, Bristol still can boast of merchant princes, famous alike for the enterprise with which they have forwarded their own welfare and that of their town and country, and for the munificence with which, having amassed great wealth, they have expended it. Most notable of all among these men were William Miles and his son Philip. Somewhere near the year 1700 — so the story goes — William Miles walked into Bristol with three half- pence in his pocket, and a resolution to use his ready wit and his strong arms in advancing his then very slender fortunes. Taking the first porter's job that he could meet with in the streets, he earned sixpence thereby. With fourpence he iniliam Miles of Bristol. 17 managed to buy food enough for the day, and to find some sort of lodging for the night. Next day he earned more, and earning each day more than he spent, he worked on as a street- porter till he had saved a sum of 151. With that he apprenticed himself for three years to a carpenter and joiner, and during those three years he earned some more money and gained some further experience by doing evening work for a small shipbuilder in the neighbourhood. He thus qualified himself, when his apprenticeship was over, for going out as ship's carpenter in a Jamaica merchantman. While in Jamaica he applied his little savings in buying a cask or two of sugar, for which he was allowed free passage to Bristol, and while there he managed to sell at a consider- able profit. With the proceeds he procured a little stock of such articles as he thought there was the best market for in Jamaica. So he went on, from each voyage earning more money and enabling himself to carry on a larger traffic. Thus he came to be known on both sides of the Atlantic as a man of remarkable energy and honesty, and as soon as he had sufficient capital he settled down as a merchant in Bristol, with certainty of success. So well did he succeed that in 1795, when his son Philip John, then twenty-one years of age, proposed to marry a daughter of the Dean of Lismore, he was rich enough to hand him a cheque for 100,000£., and so, it was said, to remove the opposition of the aristocratic clergyman to association with the family of a self-made man.* Before that time> apparently in 1793, William Miles had taken his son into partnership with him as a West India merchant, dealing chiefly in sugars, which, with trade in African slaves, were then the staple of Bristol commerce. Their counting-house and warehouse were at No. 6], Queen Square. They also had a sugar refinery at Lewis * I have given the story of William Milcs's rise in life as it has come to me by verbal report, the only absolutely certain fact being that his son married the Dean's daughter in 179a. VOL. II. C 18 Great Bristol Merchants ; Mead.* Of these sugar refineries there were in Bristol twenty, the largest being Miles's, in 1799 ; and in the same year there were seventy full-sized vessels, several of them having Miles for their owner, engaged in the West India trade. t In 1800 or 1801, the thriving merchant was rich enough to buy a leading partnership in the old banking-house of Vaughan, Baker, and Company, in Corn Street, which then came to be known as Miles, Yaughan, Miles, and Com- pany, and occupied the foremost place in Bristol banking that it holds to this day4 William Miles was alderman in 1793. He lived at Clifton Down, and there, rich and honoured, died about the year 1805. In that year Philip John Miles's name stands alone as a merchant in Queen Square. § In 1808 Philip bought Leigh Court, the old Elizabethan house in which Charles the First had been concealed after the battle of Worcester, and replaced it by a larger building. || He bought other estates in Somersetshire, and continued to draw large sums, larger every year, from the mercantile, manufacturing, and banking enterprises in which his father had embarked. In compen- sation for the damage done to the warehouse in Queen Square and its contents, during the Reform riots of 1831, he claimed 3,500/., and subsequently he accepted 1,311/., 1 9s., as a com- promise ; the entire sum paid by the Corporation on that account being 68,208/. 1«. 6cZ.H He was too rich, however, to feel the loss. Spending his wealth in splendid ways, he died in 1848, leaving personal property valued at more than 1,000,000/., of which 300,000/. went, to the eldest of his eight sons, and 100,000/. apiece to each of the others/* William Miles was not the only man who rose in Bristol * Bristol Guide and Directory for 1794. f New Bristol Guide (Bristol, 1799), p. 82. t Matthews, Directory for Bristol, 1801. § Bristol Triennial Directory, 1805-1807. || Burke, Visitation of Seats, p. 257. % The Riots o/183l (Bristol, 1835). ** Gentleman's Magazine, ISIS, part ii., pp. C57, G58. William and Philip Miles, and Conrad. Finzel. 19 from a humble station to the dignity of a merchant prince. As conspicuous a man, of a generation later, was Conrad Finzel, a native of Frankfort. Finzel was born about the year 1790. He was in his teens when Napoleon became master of Frankfort, and he was one of the conscripts drawn to serve in the Imperial army. Having no liking for the work, however, he ran away with two other youths, pro- ceeded to Hanover, and thence made passage in an open boat to Heligoland. There he found an English ship, which brought him to London. As he walked through the streets, knowing nothing of the language, and almost penniless, he had the good fortune to meet with some countrymen of his own, to whom he told his adventures, and of whom he asked advice as to his future movements. They were labourers in a sugar-refinery, and obtained work for him in the same establishment. There his ingenuity and industrious habits soon led to his advancement. For a few years he was second boiler in the London house. Then he proceeded to Bristol, to serve as principal refiner in a sugar-house belonging to the Savages, and in course of time to save money enough to enable him, in 1836, with a. grocer named Davis for his partner, to set up a small sugar refinery in Counterslip.* On the site of that little building now stands the largest and busiest sugar refinery in the world, yielding a thousand tons of sugar every week, and giving constant employment to more than fifty large West Indiamen, under the manage- ment of Messrs. Finzel, Son, and Company. Conrad Finzel was always a benevolent man, but his benevolence was more than ever apparent, after the year 184G, when his sugar-reiinery was burnt down. "I then asked myself," he said, some time afterwards, in terms eminently characteristic of the man, " what Conrad Finzel had done to call for this chastening stroke from God ; and after thinking for some time, the truth flashed upon me. The Almighty had punished me because I had not given to * Pkyce. Popular History of Bristol (Bristol, 1801), pp. 007, G0&. 20 G-reat Bristol Merchants ; His uses as He had blessed me. He had greatly increased my store, and I had only helped the poor in the same pro- portion as when I had little. Thus I deserved punishment, and God sent me this affliction to remind me of my duty ; so, instead of giving so-and-so, I said, I will give one-third of my gains for the future. I have given them, and God has gone on blessing me." He gave freely to all sorts of charitable institutions, but most freely of all to the remark- able Orphan House established on Ashley Hill by his coun- tryman, the Reverend George Muller. During some years, it was reckoned, his gifts thereto amounted to 10,000/. a year. When near his end, a friend once spoke to him of the misfortune that his death would prove to the institution. " What has the life of George Muller, or Conrad Finzel, or any one else," he answered, " to do with the Orphan House. It is God's work, and God will take care of it when there is not one of us left."* In that temper Conrad Finzel lived and worked in Bristol for nearly forty years. He died at Wiesbaden, while on a visit to his native land, on the 21st of October, 1859.f To the last he refused to take any part in public affairs, save as a merchant and a merchant philanthropist. * Prtce, pp. 611, G12. t Ibid., p. 607. From the same interesting memoir these further details of the good man's life are extracted : — ' Not until he had been in Bristol nearly thirty years, and become rich, did he visit the land of his boyhood ; but on becoming wealthy he determined to do so. On reaching his native village in Germany, with a beating heart he took the path which led to the cottage where he first saw the light. He lifted the latch and entered. The only inmate was a plain-spoken man about his own age. The worthy German-Bristolian asked the occupant of the house many questions as to his family, and expressed a deep interest in his relatives. "Had you a brother, then?" inquired Mr. Finzel. " Yes, I had," said the man, ''but he went away, and is dead, I suppose." "When did you last hear of him?" inquired Mr. Finzel. " The last time we heard anything about him he was in England, at a place called Bristol." " How long is that since?" "Twenty or thirty years," was the reply. " And his name was " continued Mr. Finzel. " Conrad," said the man, finishing the sentence. "Oh! I knew him," said Mr. Finzel. "I knew your brother well; Avorked in the same shop with him, slept with him, ate the same bread, drank the same drink." Conrad Finzel and his Sugar-Refinery. 21 " God gave me a faculty to be a good sugar-boiler," he said, when refusing the office of alderman, to which he had been elected ; " but no turn or talent to be a town- councillor."* The sugar-boiling faculty was so strong that for a lono- time it brought him, besides the profits of his own large establishment, some 10,000Z. a year in royalties paid by other refiners for use of the vacuum pan and centrifugal vat for making crystals, which he had invented and patented, f The premises which he built in place of those burnt down in 1846 were constructed almost entirely of iron and stone, at a cost of about 250,000Z. Of the way in which the development of manufacturing energy has helped on the progress, both of special districts, and of the whole of Great Britain, we shall have numerous other instances in future pages. We shall also find ample evidence of the benefits that have resulted from the extension of sound views on political and commercial economy, all tending to the establishment of that thorough and entire free-trade policy which we now possess in a tolerably perfect shape. The free-trade battle of the Plantagenet, Tudor, and Stuart periods was chiefly limited to domestic At this the man, little thinking who his brother's " companion " was, ex- pressed the deepest interest in him, because of his knowledge of Conrad, and pressed for more information. At last, unable to disguise his emotions, the rich merchant exclaimed, " Do you not know me ? I am Conrad, your brother!" We need not describe the joy there was in the village on the discovery of the lost one ; but our story would lose its point did we not state that, before leaving the village, Conrad Finzel had settled annuities on his brother and every relative he could find in the neigh- bourhood His personal habits were simple, without being self- denying. He was fond of music, and, like all his countrymen, a great smoker. When in Bristol, he dined usually at the Refinery, returned to his residence, which he built at great cost at Clevedon, at about four, and was immediately afterwards seen, regular as the day, in his Scotch cap on his strong cob starting for his ride of ten miles. Except during the months of January aud February he bathed regularly in the sea, near his residence, every morning, his last bath for the winter being on Christmas Day.' * Fbyce, p. G10. t Ibid. 22 The Growth of Free-Trade Princijjles in England. ground. The boldest merchant or politician never thought of admitting foreign traders to an equality with Englishmen in the English markets, by removing the heavy and arbitrary imposts set both upon the importation of foreign produce and upon the exportation of home-made or home-grown commodities. Few even ventured to think it wise or generous that all the subjects of the English Crown should have equal rights and privileges in trade. During several centuries the history of British commerce was principally a history of monopolies and legislative restrictions : towns fought with towns, trades with trades, and companies with companies for the possession of special powers or immu- nities. Each centre of manufacturing or productive industry and each convenient port obtained special charters from the Crown, and guarded them with ruinous jealousy. We have seen how the corporation of London sought to advance its trade by all sorts of arbitrary regulations, at one time limiting the stay of foreign merchants in the city, or its suburbs, to forty days, and confining them to certain parts ; at another, fixing the tax to be paid on every boat-load of fish brought into Billingsgate market ; at another, forbidding the Norwich clothiers to send their goods to Blackwell Hall ; and one conspicuous relic of the old restrictive policy appears in the heavy charge still made for every ton of coals brought into the Thames, — a famous source of city wealth, though a grievous injury to the poor who thus are forced to pay so much more for their scanty store of fuel. Then there were all the trading guilds of mediaeval times. Grocers — importers of large wares — and mercers — importers of small wares — leagued together for common protection and assistance, and soon every other class of tradesman, from the goldsmith and the fishmonger to the tailor and the apothecary, had its own guild or association, of which every one seeking to follow the trade must be first an apprentice, and then a qualified member. In the early stages of commerce these guilds were useful in promoting good fellow- The Ages of Monopoly and Commercial Restriction. 23 ship, and forming a strong body for mutual defence, both in carrying on foreign trade and in resisting the encroach- ments of city corporations and of greedy kings and ministers of state. But they soon proved burdensome, and partly to correct them, partly to meet the altered circumstances of civilization, fresh associations were incorporated. Of these the Society or Company of Merchant Adventurers was the most eminent under the Tudors. In Stuart times it was succeeded by a crowd of others, as the Muscovy Company and the Levant Company, the African Company and the Virginia Company, by far the most famous, influential and long-lived being the Company of Merchant Adventurers trading to the East Indies. But for such trading bodies, it may be that the vast colonial empire of Great Britain could never have been established. Two hundred years ago, few single and unprotected merchants would have dared to send their slender ships over seas of which buccaneers or the fleets of hostile nations were masters, and none would have succeeded in making permanent settlements, or organizing durable systems of traffic with the natives of distant barbarous countries. The manifest superiority, in these respects, of incorporated societies secured for them uni- versal favour, and that favour kept many of them alive long after they might have been dispensed with. It is only a few years ago that the private and trading powers of the East India Company were finally removed, and then only after half a century of zealous opposition, in which strong party- feeling helped to strengthen the cause of commercial justice. Now, however, it is generally admitted that all monopolies are injurious and unjust, and that there should be perfect equality and freedom in all trading enterprises among the whole body of Englishmen. " The only beneficial care," said Alexander Baring, in 1808, '« that a government can take of commerce is, to afford it general production in time of war, to remove, by treaties, the restrictions of foreign governments in time of peace, and cautiously to abstain 24 TJie Growth of Free- Trade Principles in England. from any, however plausible, of its own creating. If every law of regulation, either of our internal or external trade, were repealed, with the exception of those necessary for the collection of revenue, it would be an undoubted benefit to commerce as well as to the community at large. An avowed system of allowing things to take their own course, and of not listening to the interested solicitations of one class or another for relief, whenever the imprudence of speculation has occasioned losses, would, sooner than any artificial remedy, reproduce that equilibrium of demand and supply which the ardour of gain will frequently derange, but which the same cause, when let alone, will as infallibly restore. The interference of the political regulation in these cases is not only a certain injury to the other classes of the com- munity, but generally so to that in whose favour it is exercised. If too much sugar be manufactured in Jamaica, or too much cotton in Manchester, the loss of those concerned will soon correct the mischief; but, if forced means are devised to provide for the former, a temporary increase of demand, which cannot be permanently secured, a recurrence to that natural state of fair profit which is most to be desired, is artificially prevented by the very means intended for its re- lief. If the cotton manufacturer, on the other hand, is to have his imprudences relieved at the expense of those em- ployed on linen, silk, wool, or other materials, the injustice as well as impolicy of such a remedy needs no illustration. The interest of the State consists in the prosperity of the whole : it is contrary to sound policy to advance one branch of trade beyond its natural limits, and still more to do so at the expense of others ; and the only mode of ascertaining the limits of each is to leave them all alone." * "I maintain," said another champion of free-trade, Mr. Poulett Thomson, in an eloquent speech delivered in the House of Commons on the 14th of April, 1829, " I maintain, without fear of * Inquiry into the Causes and Consequences of the Orders in Council (London, 1808, p. 133. The Consequent Advancement of the Nation. 25 contradiction, that the very essence of commercial and manu- facturing industry is freedom from legislative interference and legislative protection. Attempt to assist its course by legislative enactments, by fostering care, and you arrest its progress, you destroy its vigour. Unbind the shackles in which your unwise tenderness has confined it, permit it to take unrestrained its own course, expose it to the wholesome breezes of competition, and you give it new life, you restore its former vigour. Industry has been well likened to the hardy Alpine plant. Self-sown on the mountain side, ex- posed to the inclemency of the seasons, it gathers strength in its struggles for existence, it shoots forth in vigour and jn beauty. Transplanted to the rich soil of the parterre, tended by the fostering hand of the gardener, nursed in the artificial atmosphere of the forcing-glass, it grows sickly and enervated : its shoots are vigourless, its flowers inodorous. In one simple word lies the soul of industry — competition. The answer of the statesman and the economist to his sovereign, inquiring what he could do to assist the industry of his kingdom, was, * Let it take its own way.' Such is my prayer. Relieve us from the chains in which your indiscreet tenderness has shackled us — remove your oppressive protec- tion — give us the fair field, we ask, and we demand no more. The talent, the genius, the enterprise, the capital, the in- dustry of this great people will do the rest ; and England will not only retain, but she will take a yet more forward place in the race of competition for wealth and improvement, which, by the nature of things, she is destined to run amongst the nations of the world." Those anticipations have been fully realized. During the last "quarter of a century the foreign commerce of Great Britain has been tripled in extent, amounting, for a popula- tion of thirty millions, to as much as the foreign commerce of France and the United States put together, with a popu- lation of more than seventy millions.* This has resulted * So the case was tersely put by Mr. Gladstone in his Budget speech of 26 TJie Growth of Free-Trade Principles in England. not only from the revolution that has in recent times been effected by abandonment of legislative interference in the internal trade of the country, but also, perhaps yet more, from the introduction of enlightened views upon all questions of trade with other nations. During the last hundred years the advocates of free-trade have been able to shift their the 2nd of May, in the present year, 186G. From the same speech I cannot help quoting this excellent illustration of the advantages resulting from removal of restrictive duties. Speaking of his project for annulling the impost on foreign timber, he said:— "The duty on timber is a very low duty, and that is the best which can be said in its favour. When a thing is bad, the best that can be said of it is that there is very little of it. In every other point of view the duty on timber is as bad as it can be. To begin with, it is a protective duty ; to go on with, it is a duty on a raw material ; and lastly, it is a material of which this country stands iu great want, which is of such vast bulk, and which has to be brought such distances, that to continue the duty on it is the very essence and quintessence of political folly. The history of the consumption of timber in this country is rather remarkable. In 1811 the duty on timber was high, and the consumption was 417,000 loads. At that period, certainly a most ill-omened one for commercial legislation, the duties were further raised ; and in 1814 the consumption had fallen as low as 218,000 loads. However, the growing wealth of the country brought about a gradual increase ; and I now pass over a long period of years to the year 1841. Here I will beg the House to observe, that every reduction of duty which has been made has been answered by a more than corresponding increase in the import and use of this great and essential material. In 1841 the consumption of foreign and colonial timber was 829,000 loads. At that time the duty was reduced as follows : On foreign timber the duty was reduced from 56s. 6d. to 31s. 6d., but the duty on colonial timber was reduced from lis. 6d. to 10s. The reduction only took place in October, 1842 ; but as early as 1843 the consumption had risen from 829,000 loads to 1,298,000 loads. In 1850 it had risen to 1,723,000 loads. The duty was then further reduced on foreign timber from 15s. down to 7«. 6d. ; and 20s. on foreign deals was reduced to 10s. The consequence was, that by 1859 the consumption had advanced from 1,723,000 loads to 2,480,000 loads. In 18G0, though the duty was then what is called a moderate duty, we went to work again, and further reduced the duty to what is called almost a nominal rate, namely, from 10s. and 7s. 6d. to 2s. and Is. That was the occasion when a gentle- man from the colonies, then member for Launceston, predicted inevitable ruin over the whole timber industry of New Brunswick and Canada. But the consequence has been that the consumption, which was in 1859 2,480,000 loads, has actually increased more than 50 per cent, in those six years, being now 3,700,000 loads. I think we have now only to complete the work by setting that trade entirely free." The Wo?'k of the Political Economists. 27 battle-ground : and the transparent wisdom of their aro-u- nients lias already gone far to remove all restrictions upon our commercial dealings with foreign countries. We have now found out that, if free trade is greatly to the advantage of every subject of the English commonwealth, it is no less advantageous to England at large and to every other member of the commonwealth of nations. This is chiefly due to the teaching of the political economists, most of all to the excellent doctrines set forth by Adam Smith in his Wealth of Nations, published in 177G, and by David Ricardo in the Principles of Political Economy and Taxation, which appeared in 1817. Practical statesmen and practical mer- chants, like Baring and Thomson, soon saw the force of those doctrines, and ably supported them. In 1820 the leading merchants of London took a memorable step, in which they were quickly followed by the merchants of nearly all the other great towns in the country, in petitioning Parliament for the abolition of all protective duties on articles of trade of alien nations. " Foreign commerce," it was urged by them, " is eminently conducive to the wealth and prosperity of a country, by enabling it to import the commodities for which the soil, climate, capital, and industry of other countries are best fitted, and to export, in payment, those articles for which its own situation is better adapted. Freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade and the best direction to the capital and industry of the country. The maxim of buying in the cheapest market and selling in the dearest, which regulates every merchant in his individual dealings, is strictly applicable, as the best rule for the trade of the whole nation. A policy founded on these principles would render the commerce of the world an interchange of mutual advantages, and diffuse an increase of wealth and enjoyments among the inhabitants of each state. Unfortunately, a policy the very reverse of this has been and is, more or less, adopted and acted upon by the government of this and every other country ; each trying to exclude the 28 The Growth of Free-Trade Principles in England. productions of the others, with the specious and well-meant design of encouraging its own productions ; thus inflicting on the bulk of its subjects, who are consumers, the necessity of submitting to privations in the quantity or quality of com- modities, and thus rendering what ought to be the source of mutual benefit and of harmony among states a constantly recurring occasion of jealousy and hostility. Nothing would tend more to counteract the commercial hostility of foreign states than the adoption of a more enlightened and a more conciliatory policy on the part of this country. And al- though, as a matter of diplomacy, it may sometimes answer to hold out the removal of particular prohibitions or high duties, as depending upon corresponding concessions by other states in our favour, it does not follow that we should maintain our restrictions in cases where the desired conces- sions on their part cannot be obtained. Our restrictions would not be the less prejudicial to our capital and industry, because other governments persisted in preserving impolitic regulations; and, upon the whole, the most liberal would prove to be the most politic course on such occasions."* In the generation and a half that has elapsed since the preparation of that document, the views therein advocated have been steadily gaining ground, producing wonderful ad- vantage both to the commerce of the country, and, through its commerce, to every one of its subjects. * McCulloch, Commerce, an excellent article contributed to the Library of Useful Knowledge (London, 1831-1833), pp. 68, 69. 29 CHAPTER XVIII. SOME MERCHANTS OF LIVERPOOL; ESPECIALLY THOMAS JOHNSON, BRYAN BLUNDELL, ARTHUR AND BENJAMIN HEYWOOD, AND THOMAS BENTLEY. [1G00— 1800.] For six centuries before the introduction of that traffic with America which has been the chief promoter of the wealth of modern Lancashire, Liverpool had some sort of a com- mercial history. Founded in Anglo-Saxon times, it had a well-fortified castle under William the Conqueror, and by a charter issued in 1173, Henry the Second ordered that the whole estuary of the Mersey should be for ever a seaport to which the men of ' Lyrpole,' on either side of the water, might come and return, freely and without obstruction, with their ships and merchandize.* That charter was confirmed by King John in 1207, and in 1229 Henry the Third made Liverpool a free borough, with a merchants' guild and house, and like liberties of tollage, passage, stallage, and customs to those enjoyed by the burgesses of London, Bristol, Hull, and other towns ; no strangers being allowed to trade or settle in the town without sanction from the municipal authorities.! At that time, and for long afterwards, however, Liverpool was one of the smallest chartered towns in England, the largest being small enough. In 1272 there were in it, it was reported, a hundred and sixty eight houses ;% and in v Baines, Lancashire, vol. ii., p. 57. | Ibid., p. 59. J Ibid. 30 Progress of Liverpool Commerce 1338, when all England furnished seven hundred vessels, with fourteen thousand mariners, for the prosecution of Edward the Third's war with France, only a single ship, if ship it could be called, and half-a-dozen sailors came from Liverpool.* In 1565, when Stow wrote his Survey, there were in the har- bour twelve ships, with an aggregate burthen of 223 tons, and seventy-five men to guide them. All these sailors, how- ever, can hardly have belonged to Liverpool. Its entire population numbered only six hundred and ninety, occupy- ing a hundred and thirty-eight houses, scattered over seven streets.f Liverpool was thus actually smaller than it had been in 1278. But even then it was beginning to be known as a haunt of commerce. In 1524, before Stow was born, Leland declared that there was ' good mer- chandize at Lyrpole: much Irish yarn that Manchester men do buy is there, and Irish merchants come much thither as to a good haven.'J And Camden, writing in 1586, calls this ' the most convenient and most frequented passage to Ireland.'§ It was Humphrey Brooke, a merchant of Liverpool, who, two years later, gave to Queen Elizabeth's ministers the first intimation of the coming of the Spanish Armada ; lie having, he said, * departed out of Saint John de Luc, in France, the day after the fleet set sail.'|| Perhaps Humphrey Brooke was not the only Liverpool merchant who went on trading expeditions to the Continent ; but the chief commerce of the town was still with Ireland. In former times Chester had been the principal market for Irish traders. Thither came the merchants of Dublin, Drogheda, Dundalk, Newry, Carlingford, and Waterford, * London sent 25 ships with 662 men; Bristol, 24 6hips and 600 men ; Hull, 16 ships and 466 men ; Portsmouth, 5 ships and 96 men. f Chapel Street, Bank (now Water) Street, Tithebarn (now Moor) Street, Castle Street, Dale Street, Juggler (now High) Street, and Peppard (now Old-hall , Street. One of the houses in Castle Street was let for 4Z. a-year, and two others were sold for 10Z. — Stow, cited by Baines, Lancashire, p. 09. \ Leland, Itinerary, vol. vii., p. 44. § Camden, Britannia. || Lettish Mlseem, Harleian MS., No. clxxxvi., p. 88. during the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries. 31 with little shiploads of flax and provisions, to be exchanged for English and foreign manufactures. But as the ships grew larger and more numerous, the Dee became less navigable. Therefore the Chester merchants began to use Liverpool as their port, and, in consideration of the benefits derived from their patronage, soon claimed a sort of lordship over it. This relationship, at first helpful to the new town, soon proved irksome. Endless disputes arose between the traders of the two ports, and step by step the younger obtained its coveted freedom. In 1584, through the influence of the Lord Derby of that time, certain old privileges conferred on the merchant adventurers of Chester — which gave them a right to exclude from trade with Spain and Portugal all retail dealers who did not pay them a tax of twenty-five per cent, on all their imports — were withdrawn.* As late as 1602, however, the Chester people asserted that 'the town of Liverpool was but a creek of the port of Chester, and had always used to send their shipping to the port of Chester ;'f and its emancipation was not even complete in 1626, when a new charter, making it a city, with James Strange, Lord Stanley, for its first Mayor, was conferred by needy Charles the First4 In 1634, Humphrey Chetham, the great merchant of old Manchester, when ordered to collect 498Z. as ship money from the whole county of Lancaster, levied only 15Z. from Liverpool, it being * poor and, as it were, a-begging,' while Chester was made to contribute a round sum of 100?. But the foundations of its immense trade had already been laid. It was the chief market in the north-west quarter of England for the woollen, linen, and cotton goods brought from Man- chester, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, Blackburn, and other towns in the South Lancashire districts ; from Kendal in Westmore- land, and from Wakefield, Halifax, Bradford, Leeds, and other parts of the West Riding of Yorkshire. Good stores of cut- * Thomas Baines, History of Liverpool, (Liverpool, 1852), p. 24G. f Baines, Lancashire, vol. ii., pp. 73, 74. X Ibid. 32 IAvevpool Commerce in the Seventeenth Century. lery and hardware were brought to it from Gloucester, Sheffield, Kotherham, Birmingham, and Walsall, with a large proportion of the little iron at that time procured from the mines in Sussex and the Forest of Dean. Larger quanti- ties of iron were imported, chiefly by Liverpool merchants, from Biscay, in those days the most famous iron district in Europe ; but the staple import of Liverpool was Irish flax.* In carrying these commodities to and fro, the townsmen found in 1618 employment for four-and-twenty ships, just twice as many as Stow had noted half a century before, f Another half century found Liverpool one of the most promising towns in England. The Irish rebellion of 1641 led to the settling in it of a useful colony of Irish Protest- ants, and the plague and fire of London in 1665 and 1666 brought it further and greater assistance by encouraging many influential merchants, driven out of the capital, to carry their wealth and experience to the hopeful town in the north.} Favoured by Cromwell as the best highway to Ire- land, and made of political importance by the great share taken by its leading men in the Commonwealth strife, it had the great good fortune of being directed by an excellent lord of the manor. ' It is of late,' wrote one who visited the town in 1673, * at the great charge and industry of the family of the Moores, of Bank Hall, which family for some hundreds of years have had a large property therein, and at present combine chief lords and owners of the greatest share thereof, having divers streets that bear their name, entirely of their inheritance, which hath so enlarged the town, that its church, though large and good, is not enough to hold its inhabitants, which are many ; amongst whom are divers eminent merchants and tradesmen, whose trade and traffic, especially into the West Indies, makes it famous, its situation * For a more detailed account of Liverpool commerce iu the sixteenth century, see Baines, Liverpool, chapter viii. f Baines, Lancashire, vol. ii., p. 74. X Tfie Moore Rental, edited for the Chetham Society by Mr. Thomas Heywood (Manchester, 1847), pp. 76", 77. 4k : ps 111' 4« lllt!i jl'iJ liwi:, I- ^Lil'J'iJiijli.u-'.^.f u '.J, in: ' '•!: «:i t.f Hi's IJi' 1 ! : rii-;: ; ••' ill I J|. I 1 !: Villi ftrff- 3 IIP If ii: 1 :|| I V" Lit ; lift mm" mlllli.ll'Illi I 1 1 «! ll'lll|i||IHIII Hilir ' ' III P'lll :i I'l'hll iwlUpKii iFi. :i: ; >i; I • irsi! Vi ft ,' i,.,i ii< ! 11/ :| Liverpool in tlie Seventeenth Century. 33 affording in great plenty, and at reasonabler rates than in most parts of England, such exported commodities as are proper for the West Indies, as likewise a quicker return for such imported commodities, by reason of the sugar-bakers and great manufactures of cotton in the adjacent parts ; and the rather for that it is found to be the convenientest passage to Ireland and divers considerable counties of England with which they have intercourse of traffic. Here is now erecting, at the public charges, a famous town-house, placed on pillars and arches of hewn stone, and underneath is the public exchange, for the merchants. It hath a very considerable market on Saturdays for all sorts of provisions and divers commodities, which are bought by the merchants, and hence transported as aforesaid.'* The ' chief lord and owner ' to whom Liverpool owed so much of its improvement at this time was Edward Moore, son of Colonel John Moore, notorious in Commonwealth times, and representative of one of the oldest and most honourable families in Lancashire, whose members were through four centuries and a half the principal landowners of Liverpool. He died in 1678, about five-and-fifty years of age. The full description of his property in Liverpool — that is, of nearly the whole town — which he drew up hi 1665 for the guidance of his son and heir,f aided by a curious old picture of Liverpool drawn at about this time, gives a very fair notion of the appearance and condition of the town towards the close of the seventeenth century. The Liverpool of two hundred years ago did not cover one fiftieth of the area of the modern town, and in that fiftieth there was room for pleasant gardens and wide, strangling fields. At the left-hand corner, looking at it from the banks of the Mersey, was the venerable Chapel of our Lady and Saint Nicholas, serving as parish church, with the school-house abutting it on the water's edge : and yet further to the left, * Bi/OME, Britannia (London, 1G73 . f Moore Rental. VOL. II. D 34 Liverpool and its Trading Facilities separated from it by open fields, and far beyond the limits of the picture, was Old Hall, the residence of the Moorcs. On the extreme right was the ancient castle, long- since de- stroyed ; and at some distance inland, adjoining Dale Street, stood Crosse Hall, the abode of one of the oldest and worthiest Liverpool families. At the other end of Dale Street, by the river side, and in the centre of the sketch, were the only two other large buildings then existing, the old Custom House on the right-hand side, and the old Tower on the left. Dale Street and Castle Street, which ran from the corner of Chapel Street to the old Castle, were then, as now, the busiest parts of Liverpool. In Castle Street, Moore had a horse mill. " God bless it," he said to his son ; " a thing of great concernment to your estate." * Then he had a windmill of equal value in Dale Street ;f and hard by was the Sugar House Close. " This croft stands on the left-hand side of Dale Street, and fronts the street for some twenty-seven yards. I call it the Sugar House Close because one Mr. Smith, a great sugar-baker of London, a man, as report says, worth 40,000?., came from London on purpose to treat with me, and according to agree- ment he is to build all the front, twenty-seven yards, a stately house of good hewn stone, four storeys high, and then to go through the same building with a large entry, and there, on the back side, to erect a house for boiling and drying sugar, otherwise called a sugar-baker's house. The pile of building must be forty foot square. Then he is to encompass all his ground with a brick wall round. If this be once done, it will bring a trade of at least 40,000?. a year from the Barbadoes, which formerly this town never knew. This house, it is thought, will cost at least 1,400Z." \ Liverpool had no other building as large as that ; but there were others that gave promise of future prosperity. The chief house in Castle Street belonged to BaSlie Johnson, " one of the hardest men of the town," as Moore called him. * Moore Rental, p. 51. | Ibid., p. G8. % Ibid, pp. 77, 78. near the End of the Seventeenth Century. 35 " lie bought this without my consent/' he adds, " and at last, for 40/., I admitted him tenant, and charged him two lives. But within less than a year, I, making Phoenix Street, had occasion to use the little close which is now \\ idow Greton's back side, and he had the impudence to demand 60/. of me for that, when, in truth, it was worth but 10 shillings per annum, and the whole tenement was at least 18/. a-year which I let him have for 40/. Thus you may see that you must expect no mercy from such rogues ; and therefore, in the name of God, make the best you can of your own. Re- member," the document proceeds, in terms very indicative of the old landowner's forethought and perception of the real basis of Liverpool greatness, " there belongs a great close to this house, lying in Dale Street, which runs down to the Pool. If ever the Pool shall be cut so as shipping shall come up on the back of the town," — as long since it has done, in the noblest series of docks ever constructed, — " then this will be a most especial place to make a street, the only piece of land you have. I charge you never lease it again, but reserve it for a street. This house in Castle Street of itself is worth 130/., and the land in the fields 100/., and the barn and close in Dale Street, all worth no- body knows what." * Moore was fully alive to the value of those parts of the town which have since been converted into docks, and their approaches. In Pool Lane, at the back of Bailie Johnson's house, were four closes. " These," said Moore, " may be the greatest concern you have in England ; for if the Pool be made navigable, the shipping must lie all along those closes, and the trade will be all in them for the whole town. You may have building there worth far more than 20,000/., if God send peace and prosper trade." f Peace was sent, and trade advanced even more rapidly than the old landowner expected, but not as much to the advantage of his descendants as he wished. The most clear- headed and enterprising man, and the man who, though he * Moore Rental, pp. 47, 48. t Ibid., pp. SO, 81. 36 Liverpool Merchants in the Seventeenth Century ; did not much for himself, did most for the welfare of Liver- pool, was Thomas Johnson, son of the Bailie Johnson who had gained possession of the house in Castle Street contrary to the wishes of Edward Moore. We know little of the younger man's private history ; of his father's we know next to nothing. Bom at Bedford, somewhere near the year 1G20, Thomas Johnson the elder is supposed to have gone to Liverpool, when he was fifteen or twenty years old, and there to have applied himself to trade. He grew rich and influential. In 1659 he was councilman, in 1663 he was Bailiff, and in 1670 Mayor. In 1677 he re- fused to take the oaths prescribed by Charles the Second's new charter, and therefore had to retire fron the civic government ; and on a motion for his readmissioh, in 1683, he was declared ineligible. A fresh charter, obtained from William the Third, in 1695, enabled him to take office again, and in October of that year he served as Mayor for fifteen days, soon resigning the post in honour of his son.* That son was born between 1650 and 1660. In 1689 he held the office of Bailiff, and in 1695, when he succeeded his father as Mayor, he had come to be concerned in all the municipal affairs of Liverpool. He was also, even then, one of the leading merchants of the town, conspicuous among a little company of men, famous and influential in their day. The oldest of all was Richard Percival, Bailiff in 1651, Mayor in 1658, and for more than fifty years one of the most successful tradesmen of Liverpool. A zealous Puritan, he had aided Cromwell's soldiers with shipping — doubtless in other ways as well ; and before his death, in 1700, at the age of eighty-four, had amassed a large fortune, to be yet farther increased by his son, also a Richard and a merchant, and wasted by his grandsons. Then there were William * Moore Rental, pp. 132, 143, 144 ; The Norris Papers, also edited for the Chetharn Society by Mr. Hey wood (Manchester, 184G), p. 48. For the valuable details contained in these volumes, as also for much help, privately given, towards an understanding of the commerce of old Liverpool, I am much indebted to Mr. Hey wood. the Johnsons, the Percivals, the Norrises, and others. 37 Clayton, Mayor during Johnson's bailiffship in 1689, and his senior by about a dozen years, the greatest Liverpool ship- owner under Charles the Second, and proprietor of the oldest sugar refinery in Liverpool, built in Sugar House Close in 1676 ; William Cleveland, one of Johnson's most intimate friends ; and Richard Houghton, his associate in trade, and his constant opponent in politics. More memorable than most of these were the Norrises, sons of a Thomas Norris, who with his father and brother took a chief part in defending the royalist cause in Lancashire during the Civil Wars. He married a very remarkable woman, Katherine Garway, daughter of the Sir Henry Garway who was Governor of the Levant Company, Lord Mayor of London in 1639, and a stout champion of Charles the First all through the time of his troubles. Thomas and Katherine Norris had seven sons, four of them men of mark. Thomas, the eldest, was more of a country gentle- man than a merchant. He was one of the members sent by Liverpool to the Convention Parliament of 1688, and to him is chiefly attributed the merit of having obtained from William the Third the charter of 1695, renewing the liberties, and greatly advancing the interests, of Liverpool. His brother Willam had his own fortune to make, and there- fore lived a more eventful life. He succeeded his brother as Member of Parliament in 1695 ; and in 1699, in conse- quence of his connection with the Garways, he was sent by the English East India Company as ambassador to Aurung- zebe, with instructions to do his best towards advancing the interests of his employers and damaging the position of the other companies trading in the east. Edward, a younger brother, went as his secretary. William failed in his misson, and died of overwork ; but the journey was in some respects profitable. Edward came home in 1701 with a richly-laden vessel, containing 60,000 rupees' worth of property belonging to the Company, and treasure amassed by his brother to the amount of 87,000 more rupees. After that he seems to have 38 Thomas Johnson of Liverpool. settled down as a Liverpool merchant, Member of Parlia- ment, and municipal reformer. But of all the brothers the most active in Liverpool matters was Richard, the youngest Ten or twelve years younger than Thomas Johnson, and his close friend through life, he was Bailiff in 1G95, Mayor in 1700, Member of Parliament from 1708 to 1711, and Sheriff of Lancashire in 171S.* Half our knowledge of Johnson's history is derived from the extant correspondence between him and Richard Norris. It covers only five or six years, beginning with the autumn of 1 700 ; but those five or six years were the most important in Johnson's life, and began a new stage in the history of Liverpool. From the first letter we learn that Johnson was in London in November, 1700, busied about all sorts of trade concerns, but chiefly, as it seems, about a great cheese squabble of that time. About the year 1G44 trade in cheese had become important in Liverpool, shipments of it being made thence to all parts of Europe as well as to the colonies in the New AVorld. Soon the members of the corporation, anxious to fill their exchequer, levied town and port dues, amounting to sixteen pence a ton on all cheese shipped in the Mersey. Against this heavy charge the cheesemongers of London petitioned King and Parliament, and on account of it did their best to prevent the granting of William the Third's charter in 1695. In that year, also, the Lord Mayor of London wrote to the Liverpool corporation, urging a more moderate assessment. But the town authorities were reso- lute. They made answer that "they had 1,0007. to spend, and the cheesemongers mi^ht take their course at law ;" and they were as good as their word, save that they did not suffer the law to take its course. Litigation lasted till 1 700, and then an Exchequer judgment being against them, no one was able for some time to serve a process on the corporation, * Norris Papers, passim; Bruce, Annals of the East India Company, His Commercial and Political Employments. 39 c by reason of the menaces to any that should serve them with it ; and being at length served on them by an attorney of the town, they caused him to be suspended of his practice in their town, and forced him to send for a mandamus to be restored.' The suit was not ended till the autumn of 1700, when Johnson came to assist in the transaction.* He left London at the end of November. " J am ill wearied of this place," he wrote to Norris on the 14th ; "but being daily in expectation of oak stays me. 1 do not find that the death of the King of Spain makes any alteration in trade. Oils by little and little are advanced. I suppose ere this Mr. Clayton hath his tobacco." f In buying cheese, oil, and timber for the Irish and north of England markets, and in procuring tobacco from Virginia for sale both at home and on the Continent, Johnson found plenty of employment in Liverpool. But the zeal that he showed on behalf of all local concerns, induced his townsmen to keep him often out of it. In December, 1701, he was elected Member of Parliament in succession to Sir William Norris,| William Clayton being his fellow member, and he held his seat in three successive Parliaments, until the year 1721. All through his Parliamentary career he acted honestly and with dignity, erring often, perhaps, in showing too much devotion to the interests of his own town and similar centres of new and rapidly improving commerce, but doing his best to promote the general welfare of the country and secure for it an honourable place among the nations of Europe. During twenty years he voted steadily with the Whigs, save on one occasion, when their participation in an especially flagrant job compelled him to add his weight to the opposition raised by the Tories.§ From first to last he seems to have held aloof, as far as he was able, from the jealousies and selfishnesses then rife in Court and Govern- * Xorrh rapcrs, }>. 30. 1 Ibid, p. 74. f Ibid., p. 4'J. § Ibid., p. 100. 40 Thomas Johnson of Liverpool. merit. "These contending parties," he said in one letter, written on the eve of Queen Anne's accession, "make the kingdom uneasy. We are sure an unhappy people, and purely occas : oned by the pride of ambitious men."* " There is no preaching up good husbandry," we read in another; " all the managers are agreed, some to keep places and some to get new. The poor country hath lost all her friends. To see how men are changed is worth observation."! "I am troubled," he wrote, a few months later, too angrily to express himself logically, although his meaning is clear, " I am troubled to see men that I know made the greatest noise about their constitution and the hardships of the people of England — and now these people can do anything. Here is a gloomy change in men, but no more than I expected ; I think I told you so before, I find it more and more every day."t "God help the country," we read once more; "we are but in a miserable condition. God Almighty open the eyes and hearts of the Commons, that they may be able to discern and know who are for the interest of their country ; nothing but pride reigns amongst these courtiers."§ Thus thinking, Johnson appears to have steadily voted, and spoken when need arose, on behalf of the national honour. A liberal himself, all we know of his movements in the House of Commons shows him to have been a constant advocate of civil and religious liberty. " I hope I shall be able to answer anything that may be alleged against me," he said, in reply to some who accused him of lukewarmness in his advocacy of toleration for dissenters, "and do heartily wish all men's votes were this sessions printed, that gentlemen would be better able to judge."|| About his work in Parliament, however, we have very little information. It is probable that he took no prominent part in the discussion of the general business of the nation. It was hardly expected that he should do so. The welfare * Karris Papers, p. 78. f Ibid, p. 80. X Ibid., p. 103. § Ibid., p. 124. || Ibid., p. 80. His Occupations in Parliament. 41 of the State was left much more in the hands of the sove- reign and his ministers than would now-a-days be thought possible, and for approval of their measures they looked far more to peers and county members than to the delegates of towns and cities. Least of all were the representatives of new ports and centres of commercial and industrial life supposed to trouble themselves about general politics. They were sent to look after the special interests of the class that elected them, and according to their success therein they were praised or blamed. No man, viewed in this light, could be more praiseworthy than Thomas Johnson. An active merchant and a devoted friend to his native town, he made it his chief business to promote the commercial and municipal importance of Liverpool. And he did this won- derfully well, both by his speech and vote in Parliament and by the personal assistance and advice that he gave on all points of local interest. "1 long to be amongst you," he said, in a letter to Norris, dated March, 1702; "but the land tax and salt prevents me."* Salt, from the Cheshire mines, was already taking an important place in Liverpool commerce, and Johnson had to labour at protecting it from the heavy taxation by which the Government, for the furtherance of its foreign warfare under Marlborough, obtained money from the trading towns, just as it appropriated much of the whole country's wealth by means of land taxes as heavy. The national debt was then a new and mistrusted institution. " When upon the Revolu- tion," says Davenant, the financial critic of the time, " the Parliament fell most willingly into the war, as a thing made absolutely necessary by the enemy, espousing King James's interest, the first branch of our expense was carried on in the common mode of levying taxes, and the money required for every year's expense was raised and paid within the year. The nation was rich, trade prodigiously great, paper credit ran high, and the goldsmiths in Lombard Street commanded * Xorris Papers, p. 90. 42 TJiomas Johnson of Liverpool. immense sums. Land-taxes, polls, additional duties of customs, excises, and the like, were the ways and means by which these things were done." It was certainly better for each season to meet its own expenses than for the wealth of the future to be forestalled ; but in the struggle for money, it was natural that each class of the community should strive to get the chief burthen laid upon its neighbours. Therefore Johnson argued for as low an excise as possible on salt. But tobacco was at that time the chief staple of Liverpool ; and Johnson took much greater interest in the mode and extent of its taxation. In the ten years from 1700 to 1709, the average annual importation of this commodity from Virginia amounted to 12,880 tons, 7,857 tons for re-ship- ment to other countries, and 5,023 tons, about two-thirds of the quantity now used by a population thrice as large, for home consumption.* Half the shipping and a great deal more than half the wealth of Liverpool were engaged in the trade.! No other town in England had so large a share in it ; while perhaps no other merchant was as energetic and influential as Thomas Johnson. He used his influence and showed his energy in ways very characteristic of the times. Great jealousy, it seems, was felt by the traders of other ports at the rapid growth of Liverpool. This jealousy led to the careful showing up of practices that would be very blame- worthy were they not almost universally adopted a century and a half ago. Even now-a-days tender-conscienced and strictly honourable people see no harm in smuggling. Under Queen Anne and the early Georges, nobody, save Ministers and excisemen, and they only where private inte- rests did not clash with public duties, had any scruples about it. The commercial classes resented the determination of men like Robert Walpole to lay the whole burden of taxation upon manufactured and imported goods, to the relief of land and agricultural produce. Hence the merchants of Liver- * Ckaik, vol. ii. t d. 153. t Norris Papers, p. 81. His Sha?'e in the Tobacco Trade, and in Smuggling. 43 pool united in a wholesale system of smuggling, and thereby mulcted the Exchequer of very large sums of money. The fraud — if that can be called a fraud in which none but a very few whose honesty was far in advance of their times saw anvthing fraudulent — was practised in two ways. Whenever it could be done, tobacco was brought slily into the kingdom, without paying any duty at all. When that was not possible remission of duty was claimed for great quantities, on the plea that it was damaged and unmarketable. We are not enlightened as to the precise modes of peculation resorted to, but it is clear that peculations of all sorts were easy, so long as Members of Parliament, acting for their corporations, had the appointment of all local custom-house officers. There can be no doubt that most of the officers were parties to the objectionable practices ; and those who would not act with the merchants had to be hood-winked. "Good sir," wrote Johnson to Norris on one occasion, " manage this thing prudently, so as not to be played with ; for if such a thing come to the custom-house officers' ears, it will destroy us. Johnson made no secret, among friends at any rate, of his participation in the business. It was the cause of frequent dispute between him and his fellow- member, William Clayton, who, though as great a smuggler as the rest, decried it for the sake of gaining influence with the Ministry. He pro- fessed to be specially anxious that all casks of tobacco intended for the foreign market, nearly two-thirds of the whole supply, should be sent out just as they were imported, ' without alteration in the cask, mark, or number,' so as to prevent any tampering with the contents, or any fictitious claiming of abatement on account of damage. "I told him all our allowances were at an end, if one such practice was on foot," wrote Johnson to his friend ; " and then where was our trade ? We mifht have one such as the country would admit of but we could not expect to supply those parte we now do."f * Norris Papers, p. 82. t Ibid., p. 81. 44 Thomas Johnson of Liverpool. That was in the spring of 1 702. In October, while John- son was in Liverpool, two fresh custom-house officers were sent down from London to look after the local inspectors, and see that the public interests were cared for. " They put all the Pill-garlics into a cold sweat," writes Peter Hall, John- son's brother-in-law. Johnson and some eight or ten others, however, took them in hand, " and continued a very sharp dispute about, the nature of tobacco, especially such as de- served damage. They said they would not allow in any that was damaged before brought into this country, as house- burnt, sea-burnt, chaff, etc. With much ado we have brought them tolerably to stand on their feet, and hope in a few days to learn them to go." And a week later he adds, in terms that make us suspect something like bribery had been used, "We have now clearly gained our point with the surveyors, who are honest, rational, and ingenuous men. They were big with expectation at first, and treated us, as they believed us to be, robbers ; but our light now shines in darkness, and there is not one word to be believed that was spoken by the poor devils. They declare that they find us to be an honest, industrious people, and that we deserve encouragement. They have looked at several of Mr. Johnson's hogsheads, who was chiefly complained against, and find everything in our favour."* But the surveyors seem not to have spoken quite as favourably in London as they had done in Liverpool. Johnson says that they went about gossiping against the persons who had just entertained them, alleging that 'Mr. Houghton had a fine house, and kept good wine, but we all lived frugally ;' that * Mr. Clayton had a fine house, but it was not furnished,' and the like. "Now I suppose these gentlemen thought we did not make enough of them," says Johnson. "When they come again we shall know better how to deal with them. We arc sadly envied, God knows, especially the tobacco trade at home and abroad. "f There was some excuse for the envy felt by strangers at the * Norris Fopers, pp. 'JO, 100. f Ibid., p. 114. His Zeal in the Towns Advancement. 45 prosperous trade of Liverpool ; but it would be tedious to track the whole history of Johnson's share, crooked and straightforward, in its promotion. There is more to interest us in the share he took in all the local improvements made necessary by the growth of commerce in the town. "Sir," he said, in a letter to Norris, dated the 17th of March, 1702, " I am told Mr. Mayor continues to alter the corn-market. With submission, I think Castle Street is the properest place for it ; the stones are there laid, and there's room enough to unload the carts. Methinks it's against the interests of the corporation to draw all the market to a beggarly part of the town. I would propose, and I hope it will look fair, that the butchers be at the new market ; the butter, cheese, and poultry about the 'Change, as the butchers were ; the corn-market as formerly ; the yarn-market, shoe- market, and potatoes at the White Cross."* " I think a handsome square might be made very well," he wrote, five years later, on the 5th of April, 1707, when there was dis- cussion as to what should be done with a piece of vacant ground adjoining Castle Street ; " but then you should let it to people that would build good houses and make them uni- form ; and as the custom is here not to let to any that open shops, I do hope it may be built by merchants, or such private families. This would be a mighty ornament to the town."f Therefore Saint Peter's Square was built on part of the site of the old Castle, with handsome dwelling- places that were in time replaced by shops and warehouses when that part of Liverpool came to be used exclusively for business purposes. Liverpool Castle, after some five centuries of substantial existence, having proved a disagreeable stronghold of the Commonwealth cause, had been partly demolished, soon after his accession, by Charles the Second. For some thirty years the bare walls, half broken down, were left standing, until the ruins ceased to be even picturesque, Then, near the * Norris Papers, p. 80. t Ibid., p. 15'J. 4.6 Thomas Johnson of Liverpool. end of the seventeenth century, it was resolved to clear the ground altogether, and put it to practical use. Many influential men, Thomas Johnson among them, were anxious to build on it a church. In 1609 they petitioned Parliament for leave to make Liverpool an independent parish, with a Parish Church in addition to the oltl Chapel of ISaint Nicholas and our Lady, till then its only place of worship. " Liverpool was formerly a fishing village," they urged ; " but has now the third part of the trade of England, and pays upwards of 50,000Z. per annum to the King. And by reason of such increase many new streets are built and still in building ; and many gentlemen's sons, of the counties of Lancaster, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire, and North Wales, are put apprentices in the town. And there being but one chapel, which doth not contain one-half of our inhabitants, in the summer — upon pretence of going to the Parish Church, which is two long miles, and there being a village," appa- rently Kirkdale, " in the way — they drink in the said village, by which and otherwise many youths and sundry families are ruined. Therefore it is hoped the Bill may pass, being to promote the service of God."* The Bill did pass, and the building of Saint Peter's Church was begun as soon as possible, no one taking greater interest in the work, or helping it on more, than Johnson. ''Good sir," he wrote to Norris, at the end of 170 1, almost as soon as he had proceeded to London to commence his parliamentary duties, " forward the raising money for the church in time. It is a shame,"f — a shame, we presume, that people did not subscribe quickly enough. " Our new church goes on well," he wrote in June, 1713 ; " we now agree to seat it with oak."} And in the September following we find him writing to Norris : " Please to inquire what we can have your black and white marble for per stoop or yard, proper to lay in the chancel. We shall want as much as will lay about forty vards. But we would know the charjje before we cn^ag-e, * Moore Rental, p. 77. f Ibid., p. 77. J Ibid., p. 128. His Zeal in the Towns Advancement. 47 lest it be too large for us. We have ordered the black fla^ from the Isle of Man to lay the aisles with ; it will be much better than our common flags."* There are other notes extant, showing- what deep interest Johnson took in the buildinjr of his Parish Church. At the same time he was interested in other building of much more commercial importance. This was the construc- tion of the Old Dock, the oldest dock in the kingdom. To- wards the improvement of the shipping capabilities of Liver- pool all its intelligent traders had been striving for many years past. In 1G94 Thomas Patten, of Bank Hall, Warring- ton, a merchant of some note in his day, widened the Mersey and made it passable from Runcorn to Warrington. "Since I made the river navigable to Warrington," he wrote in 1701, "there have been sent to and from Liverpool 2,000 tons of goods a year, and I believe as much by land, which if the river above Warrington were cleared of wears, would all go by water; for the river to Manchester is very capable of being made navigable at a very small charge. And this would encourage the tradesmen in Manchester, Stockport, Macclesfield, Congleton, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, and some parts of Yorkshire and Staffordshire to come to Liverpool and buy their goods, instead of going to Chester, Bristol, or London. The carriage would be easy and cheap. I think it would nearly double the trade of Liverpool. "f The trade of Liverpool has been a good deal more than doubled thereby. But much more important than these plans for the improvement of inland navigation were the measures by which sea traffic was advanced. The insufficiency of the Mersey as a harbour for shipping was a chief cause of the insignificance of Liverpool down to Johnson's time. The Thames, without any artificial appliances, afforded a safe resting-place for all the ships that needed to come to London ; Bristol had the junction of the Avon and the' Frome, and Plymouth its excellent bay; Hull the basin of the Ilumbcr * Korrh Papers, p. 121). t Ihid., p. 37. 48 Thomas Johnson of Liverpool. and the Hull, and Newcastle the bed of the Tyne. These were the chief ports of England, until Johnson and his friends determined to provide Liverpool with a better artificial har- bour than came to any of them through natural causes. About the beginning of the enterprise we are told very little. A sort of experiment was made in the partial exca- vation of the Old Dock in 1699, and the 8th of June, 1700, is named as the day on which it was first used ; but the real work was not entered upon till some eight years later. The project was repeatedly discussed in the Corporation, and each year found a growing inclination to adopt the suggestion made long before by Edward Moore, and convert the Pool into a place to which ships might resort. All grants of land in that neighbourhood made by the Corporation were con- ditional on the construction of a dock ; and in 1701 it was re- solved that ' the town is to build a bridge over the intended canal.' At length, in 1708, when the Corporation found that it was possessed of an income of about 1,200Z. a year, and that the port was frequented by some three hundred and fifty ships, eighty-four of which, averaging seventy tons apiece, and manned by about nine hundred sailors in all, were Liverpool property, it resolved to make a fair beginning of the work. On the 3id of November, in that year, the municipal authorities ordered * that Sir Thomas Johnson and Richard Norris, esquires, the representatives in Parliament of the Cor- poration, being now going to Parliament, be desired and em- powered to treat with and agree for a person to come to the town and view the ground and plan of the intended dock.'* Mr. Thomas Steer was the engineer selected for the work, and in accordance with his plans a bill was presented to Parliament by Johnson and Norris. Thereupon arose a hot discussion. The promoters of the bill represented that in the harbour of the Mersey the water, at the time of spring- tides, rose to thirty feet, while at neap its hciirht was only fifteen feet, and that the shore was so level that there was * Baines, Liverpool, p. 344. The Construction of the Old Dock. 49 between three and four hundred yards' distance between hio-h and low water mark. The current was strong- and rapid, and the harbour was very much exposed to westerly winds and tempestuous weather. Ships had either, at low water, to lie aground on a rock covered with a thin and treacherous coating - of sand, or to go out into the channel, there to be beaten about with the likelihood of shipwreck within sio-ht and hearing of the townsmen. Each course was very dangerous, besides leaving only two or three hours a day for loading and unloading ; and trade suffered greatly by all these risks and delays. Therefore it was proposed to con- struct a dock, four acres in extent and large enough to hold a hundred vessels, with a depth of at least fourteen feet at low water, and room at spring-tides for the largest man-of- war. Quays, wharves, and warehouses were to surround it. The whole cost of the undertaking was estimated at 10,0007., and this money the corporation of Liverpool proposed to raise by a tonnage upon all vessels using the docks. They asked the sanction of Parliament to their project, on the ground that it would not only be very helpful to the general trade of the nation, but also be of extraordinary service to Her Majesty's ships of war, there being no convenience of a dock in all the channel, or any nearer than Plymouth Harbour. Much opposition Mas, of course, made to the proposal — especially by the cheesemongers of London, who thus revived their old grudge against the merchants of Liverpool — on the score of its novelty and doubtful utility. At any rate, it was urged, if the Liverpool men were allowed to make their experiment they should do it at their own risk, and not burden merchants of other towns with the expense. Parlia- ment, however, decided that Johnson's scheme was very reasonable and greatly to the advantage of the nation. Early in 1709 an act was passed authorising the col- lection of dock dues at rates varying from two pence to eighteen pence a ton on all goods imported or exported, and empowering the Corporation to raise 0,0()()Z. on \<>[.. II. '■ 50 The Progress of Liverpool Commerce. mortgage of shore dues, reckoned to bring in about G007. a year* The work was formally begun in December, 1709, by a grant of 5007. from the Corporation ; but its novelty, bringing difficulties and expenses not calculated for, caused it to spread over many years. In 1717 the commissioners ap- pointed for its execution reported that they had spent all the (5,0007. assigned to them, and in addition 5,0007. of their own money, and that now the business was delayed for want of funds. Permission was accordingly granted by George the First for the borrowing of a further sum of 4,0007. With that assistance the Old Dock — the oldest dock in England — was completcd.f It soon became too small for the wants of the town. Other docks were built one after another, to become the wonder of modern travellers ; and the Old Dock, falling into disuse, was at length filled up to make room for the new Custom House of Liverpool. A tourist, writing in 1727, declared that 'in his first visit to Liverpool, in 1680, it was a large, handsome, and thriving town ; at his second visit, ten years later, it was become much bigger ; but at his third visit, in 172G, it was more than double its bigness of the said second visit ; and it is still in- creasing in people, buildings, wealth, and business.'! And in 17G1 we find writers averring that " Liverpool, in point of a vastly extended foreign commerce and mercantile ship- ping, is long since become undoubtedly the greatest and most opulent sea- port in the kingdom, next after London and Bristol : probably employing about three hundred sail of her own, greater and lesser shipping, mostly in the Guinea and American trades, and is now said to be thrice as large and populous as it was at the accession of the late King William and Queen Mary to the Crown. "§ Liverpool was * Baines, pp. 345-349. f Ibid., pp. 400, 401. X A Tour through (he Whole Inland of Great Britain, cited by Amu.kson. vol. iii.. ]). 14:;. 5 A.Mih'lw.N, vol. iii., p. 325. Thomas Johnson's Share in it, and His Reward. 51 then not thrice but seven or eight times as large and populous as it was in 1688; and during the last hundred years it has become nearly ten times as extensive as it was in 1761, — ten times over and over again, if we reckon as parts of it the outlying districts that have been made pros- perous by its prosperity.* Of all this Thomas Johnson must be regarded as the chief promoter. In 17U7, in consideration of his great services to Liverpool, he was knighted by Queen Anne ; but it was sorely against his will. " This day," he wrote from London on the 10th of March, " half an hour past 12, or near 1, I went to the House of Lords to know when the Lord Derby would please to present the Corporation address ; upon which my Lord told me when the Queen came to the House in the Princess's Chamber, and desired I would stay. Upon which, Mr. Pool with me, I did stay the Queen's coming ; and after the Queen returned from the House, the Lord Derby carrying the sword, he presented the address. And I being there, the Lord Derby, against my knowledge, spoke to the Queen to confer the honour of knighthood. God knows I knelt to kiss the Queen's hand, and to my great surprise the other followed. I am under great concern about it, knowing I no way desired that I had, and must undergo a great many censures ; but the Lord forgive them as 1 do. I had not mentioned this thing ; but I know you'll have it by others, though of no information of mine, and I am sure the surprise has put me more out of order than I have been since I came to London. This, I am satisfied, * This epitome of the population returns shows how Liverpool has during the last three half-centuries ; the first hcing the chief }>eriod tohaeco trade ; the second, of the African slave trade ; the third, cotton trade : — 17G0 . . 25,787 1700 5,715 1710 8,108 1720 . 11,833 1730 . 12,074 17-12 18,000 1752 . 18,500 1770 1777 178(5 171)0 1801 35,000 34,107 41,000 55,732 77, 70S 1811 1821 1831 1841 1851 1801 94. 118, 205, 280, 370, 437. grown of the of the ,370 ,972 572 ,487 005 710 .Yl Thomas Johnson of Liverpool. was an effect »>f my Lord's kindness, but I could not forbear telling my Lord I could not thank him."* That characteristic letter shows how highly Johnson was esteemed in his day. It also shows that, as far as worldly prosperity went, he himself shared but slightly the benefits that he conferred upon Liverpool. Too much of a patriot to pay proper heed to his own concerns, he seems never to have been very rich, and to have grown poor as he advanced in years. On his father's death in August, 1700, the house in Castle Street and the closes in Dale Street, of which we found mention in old Edward Moore's Rental, descended to him, along with another house in Water Street, and an estate in Ford ;t but these bequests were burdened with heavy legacies, and added little to his wealth. In 1707 he was too poor to desire the honour of knighthood, or to know how to support it with dignity; and in 1722, after faithful work for Liverpool in three successive Parliaments, his re-election was declared invalid in consequence of a peti- tion from Sir Thomas Booth showing that, not being a land- owner worth 300/. a year, he did not possess the requisite qualification. He never disputed the statement ; but at once retired from Parliament. He left Liverpool and England in the following January. lie went to take a custom-house officer's place on the Rappahannock in Vir- ginia, at a salary of SOL a year ; and there, or somewhere in the New World, he died a short time previous to May, 17294 Liverpool, just beginning the full enjoyment of the good influences that he had exerted on its behalf, had almost forgotten him in his lifetime, and in later days his memory has been so slighted, even by the special historians who have attempted to trace the origin and growth of the town, that his name is hardly ever mentioned. But Liverpool has not been able to forget the name of another of its early benefactors, a generation younger than * Xorris Papers, p. 170. f Moore Rental, p. 144. + Ibid., p. 144; Norn's Papers, p. 48. Bryan Blundell of Liverpool. o.'l Sir Thomas Johnson. Bryan Blundcll was born somewhere near the year 1(585. Left an orphan at an early age. he had to light his own way in the world ; and by 1709 he had won for himself a position of some influence. He Mas master of a ship engaged in foreign trade, which either was his own property, or afforded him opportunities of engaging in occa- sional business for himself, and so of getting together a little heap of money. In that year, the year when the Old Dock began to be built, he agreed with the Rev. Robert Stithe, one of the clergymen of the Parish Church, to found a charity school, partly with their own money, partly by help of sub- scriptions from their friends. Setting to work at once, they collected enough to form a fund yielding 60/. or 70/. a year. That done, they built a school-house for 35/. and placed therein fifty children, whom they clothed and taught during the day-time, leaving them to be kept by their parents. Stithe was appointed treasurer; "and I," says Blundell, in a record of his work in this cause, " went to sea on my employment, telling Mr. Stithe that 1 hoped to be giving him something every voyage for the school." In four years he did give 200/. Then, in 1713, good Mr. Stithe died, and his successor in the church showed no inclination to carry on his charitable work ; " which gave me much con- cern," writes Blundell. " I therefore determined to leave off the sea and undertake the care of the school, and was chosen treasurer in 1714 ; at which time there was 200/. at interest, which was all the stock the school had. In a little time I saw some of the children be<><nn<r about the streets, their parents being so poor as not to have bread for them ; which jrave me great concern, insomuch that I thought to use my best endeavours to make provision for them, so as to take them wholly from their parents, which I hoped might be promoted by a subscription. 1 therefore got an instrument drawn out for that purpose on parchment, went about with it to most persons of ability, and many subscribed hand- somely. On the strength of which I went to work and got • »1 Bryan Blundell of Liver-pool, the present charity school built, which has cost between 2,000/. and 3,000/., and was finished in 1718, at which time 1 gave for the encouragement of the charity 750/., being one- tenth of what it pleased God to bless me with, and did then purpose to give the same proportion of whatever he should indulge me with in time to come, for the benefit and encou- ragement of the said charity. So great has been the mercy and providence of God in prospering me in business that I have made up the 750/.," he said, writing in 1751, "to 2,000/., which I have paid to the use of the school, and my children, six in number, the youngest of them now near thirty years of age, are so far from wanting or being worse for what I have given to the school, that they are all benefactors to it, some of them more than 100/. >at a time ; I may truly say, whilst I have been doing for the children of the school, the good providence of God hath been doing for mine." It was certainly a happy thought that led honest Bryan Blundell to abandon the sea and settle down as a Liverpool merchant. Not only was he able to establish the most important local charity to be found in the borough, but he thus, securing the double blessing attendant on the quality of mercy, made for himself and his offspring an honourable place among the great men of Liverpool. He became an enterprising merchant, an influential townsman, and a great promoter of every sort of good work. He was Mayor in 1721, and again in 1728. He had stately ships of his own trading with Africa, with North Carolina, Jamaica, and Nevis, as well as other parts of North America and the AVest Indies. But he never forgot his charity school. In 1726 he procured its enlargment, so as to admit ten more children, and in 1735, all the sixty, hitherto only partially boarded, were taken altogether out of their parents' hands. In 1742, ten more were added, and in 1748 the number was raised to a hundred, seventy of them being boys and thirty girls. " The charge is now." he said, three years later, " 700/. per annum, towards which we have, by the blessing of God, and his Blue-Coat School. 5j attained to a stock or income of 400Z. a year. The other 300/. comes in by gifts and legacies, so that we have never yet wanted at the year's end, but always continue increasino- a little. I have now been treasurer thirty-seven years, in which time more than four hundred children have been put out apprentices, mostly to sea, in which business many of them are masters and some mates of ships. Several of them are become benefactors to the school and useful members of society. We take the children into the school at eight years of age, and put them apprentice at fourteen, and give 40s. apprentice fee with each. It is so useful a charity that I have frequently wished to see as many charity schools as we have churches in the town, which are four, and I yet hope the good providence of God may bring it to pass in the next generation."* Bryan Blundell died in 175G, with that wish unfulfilled. Liverpool still has only one Blue-Coat School ; but that has grown immensely since the death of its founder, and the Blundells have continued to be champions of good works to this day. Yet more conspicuous in the history of Liverpool, during the eighteenth century, is the name of Foster CunlifFe, * a merchant,' — according to his panegyrist — ' whose honesty, diligence, and knowledge in mercantile affairs procured wealth and credit to himself and his country ; a magistrate who administered justice with discernment, candour, and impartiality ; a Christian, devout and exemplary in the exer- cise of every private duty ; a friend to merit ; a patron to dis- tress ; an enemy only to vice and sloth.'t He was descended from an ancient Lancashire family which had lands granted to it at Billington, near "Whalley, somewhere before the close of the thirteenth century, and which for a long time was famous both in commercial and in political history. In * The foregoing sketch of Bryan Blundell's life is taken almost entirely from a brief memoir of his own, printed in the Account of the Life and Writings of Mrs. Trimmer (London, 181G), vol. ii., pp. 317-321. t From the inscription under his handsome monument iu Saint Peter's Church, Liverpool. 56 Foster Cunliffe of Liverpool, the year 1282 we find an Adam Cunliffe named as one of the twelve principal persons in Manchester ; and four hundred years later Nicholas and Robert Cunliffe were members of Parliament for Lancashire and leaders of the Royalist cause in Lancashire. Nicholas's grandson was Ellis Cunliffe, a notable Cambridge divine who settled in the north, and be- came the father of Foster Cunliffe, the next great merchant patriot of Liverpool after Sir Thomas Johnson.* He was born in 1685. He was chosen Mayor of Liverpool in 1716, in 1729, and again in 1735. In the latter year he was prevented from entering Parliament owing to his inability to show the prescribed qualification, just as Johnson had been unseated thirteen years before ; but for a time long before and long after that date he was the leading man in Liverpool affairs. Political opponents regarded him as a tyrannical ruler of both the corporation and the town during a third of a century ; those of his own party honoured him as an ex- emplary promoter of their cause. At any rate he was a great promoter of Liverpool commerce. When he began work as a merchant, the traffic of Liverpool was chiefly with Ireland and the English coast towns, while the Virginian tobacco trade was just rising into importance. At the time of his death, in 1758, that trade, although still vigorous, had become insignificant in comparison with the newer African trade. In 1709 this African trade employed one ship of 30 tons. In 1760 it gave occupation to seventy-four vessels, with an aggregate burthen of 8,178 tons, and enriched up- wards of a hundred merchants, nearly half as many as were to be found in London and Bristol put together, those being the only two other towns concerned in this branch of com- merce.! ' The principal exports of Liverpool,' said Samuel Derrick, who visited the town in the latter year, ' are all kinds of woollen and worsted goods, with other manufactures of * Wottox, Baronetage of England (London, 1771), vol. iii., pp. 152-155. t Brooke, Liverpool as it icas during tlie Last Quarter of the Eighteenth Century (Liverpool. 1853), p. 23-1; Williamson's Liver-pool Memorandum Bool: (Liverpool, 1753,. and the Slave Trade in his Day. 57 Manchester and Sheffield, and Birmingham wares, &c. These they barter on the coast of Guinea for slaves, gold dust, and elephants' teeth. The slaves they dispose of at Jamaica, Barbadoes, and the other West Indian islands, for rum and sugar, for which they arc sure of a quick sale at home.'"' The slave-trade was certainly not a very commendable branch of commerce, but it was the great source of Liverpool prosperity during the eighteenth century, and, till near its close, was followed with a clear conscience by men of exem- plary honesty and known Christian worth. In 1753 Foster Cunliffe and the two sons then in partnership with him, Ellis and Robert, had four slave-ships fitted to hold 1,120 slaves in all. These made two or three voyages in the year, between Guinea and the West Indies and North America, and brought theCunlilFes profit enough to stock a dozen vessels with rum, su^ar, and other articles for sale in England. Five of these twelve vessels traded with Antigua, four with Maryland, two with Montserrat, and one with Jamaica.! A hundred other merchants were in 1753 engaged in the African and West Indian trade, the total number of ships possessed by them in all its branches being one hundred and ninety-four, while only eight-and-twenty were sent to the European ports, and twenty-five to Ireland, Bristol, Glasgow, and other British haunts of commerce, besides eighty small sloops reserved for local trade in salt, coal, and other home commodities.} For the next half-century the business of Liverpool progressed in about the same proportion. In 1799, the busiest year of all, the slave-trade was nearly six times as great as in 1751. In the ten years between 1795 and 1804 the Liverpool merchants shipped 323,770 slaves from Africa to America and the West Indies, the London share in the traffic including only 40,405 slaves, and the Bristol people being responsible for the shipment of 10,718.§ It * Bainls, History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1S52;, p. i'27. t Williamson's Liverpool Memorandum Hook. X Ibid. $ BnooKii, p. 234. 58 The Progress of Liverpool Commerce was well for the honour of England that the trade was put a stop to in 1S07. That was not, however, till it had done its share in making Liverpool, after London, the largest and richest port in the United Kingdom. Its annual shipping, during the seven years ending 171C, averaged 18,371 tons, being one twenty- fourth that of all England. During the seven years ending with 1792, the yearly average was 200,380 tons, more than a sixth of that of the whole kingdom. That is, while the nation at large had in the interval increased its shipping about three times, the maritime trade of Liverpool had grown considerably more than twelve times as great.* The chief causes of this wonderful development were the African slave-trade and the West Indian and Virginian trade — for the first half of the period chiefly in tobacco, for the second half chiefly in sugar, rum, coffee and cotton. \ There were also five other distinct branches of foreign commerce. Mer- chants sent their ships to British North America for timber and to Greenland for fish, while with the western countries of Europe, with the Mediterranean States, and with the ports * Baines, p. 491. These were the stages of its growth, in septennial averages ; — Years. Tons. Years. Tons. 171G . . . . 18,371 1758 . . . 44.168 1723 . . . . 18,607 1705 . . 62,390 1730 . . . . 18,504 1772 . . 84,792 1737 . . . . 19,921 1779 . . 79,470 1744 . . . . 22,404 1780 . . 151,347 1751 . . . . 32,702 1792 . . . 200,382 f This table shows th< i state of the West Indian trade ir i 1787 :— Outwj UIDS. It. WARDS. Ships. Tons. Ships. Tons. London . . 218 01,095 252 70.418 Liverpool . 87 17,403 143 27,578 Bristol . . . . 73 10,913 71 10,209 Lancaster 37 5,005 33 4,943 All other ports . . 30 7,210 107 1,052 Totfl Is 451 10S.952 GOG 120,200 ROOKE, p. 233. during the Eighteenth Century. 59 of the Baltic, they effected an interchange of miscellaneous English and Continental products. Considerable, also, were the trades with Ireland and the various ports of England and Scotland. 'The inhabitants are universal merchants,' it was said in 1753, ' and trade to all parts except Turkey and the East Indies. Liverpool shares the trade of Ireland and Wales with Bristol, and engrosses most of the trade with Scotland.'* Before long, Glasgow made the Clyde accessible to large vessels of its own, and so ceased to use Liverpool ships and warehouses for its traffic with distant countries. But soon also, Liverpool and Glasgow combined to procure the opening of trade with Turkey and the East, and in that way obtained for themselves and the other ports of Great Britain a large accession of wealth. Throughout the eighteenth century Liverpool was the most exclusively commercial town in the kingdom. London, and, during the first half of the period, Bristol, Norwich and other places, had larger shares in trade, but none of them were so entirely devoted to commerce as Liverpool. It was pre-emi- nently a haunt of merchants, and most of them self-made men, or men whose fathers had risen from the crowd by their own exertions. Very characteristic is Samuel Derrick's report of them, made in 17(10. ' Though few of the merchants have more education than befits a counting-house,' he said, * they are genteel in their address. They are hospitable and very friendly to strangers, even those of whom they have the least knowledge. Their tables are plcnteously furnished, and their viands well served up. Their rum is excellent, and they consume large quantities of it in punch.' t But some- thing better might have been said about the Liverpool merchants than that they ate good dinners and drank plenty of punch. In advancing their own fortunes, they aided the general progress of the country to a wonderful extent, and, while enriching themselves, made of Liverpool a great and thriving city. Thomas Johnson and the Is orrises, 1 otter * Williamson's Liverpool Mcmonnulum Booh. t Baines, p. 427. GO The Family of the Ileywoods. Cunliffc, and Bryan Blundell had many notable successors, good friends to Liverpool and its trade, as famous for their philanthropy as for their commercial wisdom. There was among them, however, no single master-mind. No one merchant stands out as the leader of the rest. The course of prosperity was already marked out, and there were hundreds vieing with one another for supremacy ; the leaders in the race led rather from the advantageous cir- cumstances in which they were placed than from any marked originality or superior intelligence in themselves. So it was with Arthur and Benjamin Hey wood. They were descended from an old John Heywood who owned Heywood Mill, at Waterside, near Bolton, in the time of Edward the Sixth. His great-grandsons were the Reverend Oliver Heywood, of Halifax, and the Reverend Nathaniel Heywood, Vicar of Ormskirk, both of them ejected on ac- count of their non-conformity in 1062 ; and Nathaniel was father of another Nathaniel Heywood, who lived quietly at Ormskirk, and a Richard Heywood, who resided sometimes at Liverpool, sometimes at Drogheda, making some money by carrying on a trade between the two places. Richard Hey- wood had no children, and in 10'Jl) he requested that his nephew Benjamin might be carefully educated and sent to him at Drogheda. This was done shortly before the old merchant's death, and Benjamin Heywood succeeded to a thriving business in Drogheda. He was admitted to the guild of that town in 1707, when he was about twenty years old ; soon afterwards, he married Anne Graham, then fifteen years of age, daughter of General Arthur Graham, of Armagh, and niece, apparently, of John Graham, mayor of Drogheda. The Grahams were an old and wealthy family, great land- holders and fortunate traders;* and Benjamin Heywood's connection with them was of great advantage to his business. He died in ll'lb, only about eight-and-thirty years of age ; * Their history has been tokl hy Sir Bkknard Bukki:, Vu-issitudca of Families, Scries iii. Arthur and Benjamin Hey wood. 61 but leaving a large fortune to his widow and nine children. The widow, reported to be as handsome as she was good, lived till 1747, steadily refusing all offers of marriage, and devoting herself to the education of her children, and the administration, on their behalf, of the property committed to her trust. She found good husbands for her daughters, and saw her sons on the high road to prosperity of their own procurement.* Of these sons Arthur and Benjamin were the most famous. Arthur was born in 1715; Benjamin in or near the year 1722. Arthur was sent to Liverpool in 1731, there to serve his five years' apprenticeship under John Hardman, of Allerton, then, and for four-and-twenty years to come, one of the greatest merchants in Liverpool, also one of its representatives in Parliament for some time before his death in 1755. Benjamin does not seem to have proceeded to Liverpool till 1741. On the 15th of August in that year he was bound apprentice to James Crosby, another merchant of the town, his brother Arthur being his surety. Among the conditions of the apprentice oath it was stipulated that if he ' committed matrimony,' the bonus paid should be forfeited, and the apprenticeship at an end. Benjamin Heywood did not commit matrimony till five years after the term of this prohibition ; but in another way he was sorely tempted to forego his chances of success as a merchant. In 1745 all Liverpool was in a turmoil of patriotism. The first intimation of the Pretender's having landed in the Highlands was conveyed to the Government through Owen Pritchard, the Mayor of Liverpool, who heard the news from the captain of a vessel, returning from the Baltic, which had put in at Skye. Immediately great preparations for defence were made by the^ people of the * Whole Works of the Reverend Oliver Heyicood {Idle, 1S27), vol. ;'., pp. 50G-514. For much that is in the foregoing paragraph, as well as for most of what follows concerning the Hey woods, I am indebted to Mr. Thomas Hi-mvoon, F.8.A , who lm.- kindly placed at my di.-posal a scries of notes from documents in the possession of the family. 02 Arthur and Benjamin Heywood. town. The Corporation granted 1.000Z. — subsequently in- creased to 6,0001. — to raise a regiment of volunteers, after- wards famous as the Liverpool Blues. Therein Arthur Heywood was at once appointed a captain ; and his brother Benjamin, commissioned as a lieutenant on the 4th of October, was raised to a captaincy on the 12th of November. The young men, or their friends, had also interest enough to secure the command of the regiment for their uncle, Colonel Graham, who afterwards obtained a colonelcy, and even- tually became Brigadier-General in the regular army, taking most of the Liverpool Blues as recruits to his regiment The Pretender entered England on the 8th of November, 1745. He summoned Carlisle on the 10th of the month, and on the 15th obtained possession of it On that day the Liverpool Blues marched out to Prescot, and on the 10th they proceeded to Warrington, "where," said Benjamin Heywood, who kept a diary of his movements in soldierly style, "we lay till the 20th." They were in Warrington asrain on the 22nd, orders being sent to them from London that they were to defend the pass of the Mersey, and prevent a junction with the rebels in Wales. On the 25th, at 2 o'clock in the afternoon, they began to pull down Warrington Bridge, and did their work so promptly that it was entirely demolished by 4 o'clock. For this the Blues were subsequently sued by the Warrington corporation ; but the action was stayed by order of the Government They also captured a reconnoitring party of rebels in Warrington ; but that was the nearest approach to fighting that was made in that quarter, the Pretender being deterred from attacking Liverpool or venturing into AVales, it was said, by the formidable appearance of the Blues. The amateur regiment was afterwards left in garrison at Carlisle while the Duke of Cumberland fought the battle of Culloden. After that there was no further need for the volunteer corps, and it was broken up, many of its members returning to their shops or counting-houses in Liverpool, Their Occupations in Liverpool. 03 many others going to take employment in the regular army. Benjamin Hey wood was so pleased with his little play at soldiering that it needed all the arguments of his brother and friends to prevent his making it the business of his life. It is likely, however, that his military ardour soon died out On the 17th of October, 1740, two months after the termination of his apprenticeship, he took the burgess oath, as a preliminary to going into partnership with his elder brother. Arthur Hey wood became a burgess ten years before that, and was an independent merchant for the greater part of the time. In 17oU he married Elizabeth, daughter of Samuel Ogden, of Mossley Hill, a Liverpool merchant, and through her acquired a share of the large fortune left by her grandfather, John Pemberton.* This first wife bore him only one daughter, and died on the 8 th of February, 1748. On the 20th of April, 1750, he married her cousin Hannah, a daughter of Kichard Milnes, of Wakefield, by another of Pemberton's daughters. In 1751, Benjamin Heywood also married, choosing for a wife one of his brother's sisters-in-law, Phoebe Ogden. Both of Arthur Hey wood's wives, and Benjamin's wife as well, were thus grand-daughters, and joint heiresses of old John Pemberton. The triple connection must have added largely to the wealth that they received through their mother, and have enabled them, while yet young men, to take rank with the oldest and richest of the Liverpool merchants. Among these the most notable of all was Foster Cunlifie, sixty-one years old in 1740. A great trade was carried on * John Pemberton, born on the 29th of June, 1G6G, and a burgess of Chester, gained much wealth by trading in Liverpool. He died on the 1st of April, 1743. He left three daughters. The eldest never married. The second, Penelope, married Samuel Ogden, and thus became mother- in-law of both Arthur and Benjamin Heywood, and great-grandmother of the Sir Benjamin Heywood, who died in 1865. The third, Bridget, married Kichard Milnes, of Wakefield ; thus becoming, in her turn, the mother-in- law of Arthur Heywood, and through him the great-grandmother of Mr. John Pemberton Ikyxvood, now the head of the house in Liverpool. Yet more notable is another of her great-grandsons, the present Lord Houghton, son of Hubert Pcnibvitoii Milnes, of Wakefield. (>4 Arthur and Benjamin Hcywood. by him, his sons, Ellis and Robert, being partners with him, in African slaves and West Indian produce. Next in rank, and of about the same age, was Bryan Blundell, the philan- thropic founder of the Blue Coat School, who found in his philanthropy no argument against joining in the slave-trade. Robert Cunliife carried on the business after his father's death and his brother's retirement, and later generations of Blundells have held their place among the merchants of Liverpool to this day. Another famous Liverpool house began about the same time as the Heywood's, and prospered by the same means. Old John Earle kept an ironmonger's shop in Castle Street during the first half of the eighteenth century, and, like other leading shopkeepers, joined now and then in the ventures to foreign lands. Thereby, and by his regular business, he throve so well that he left money enough to enable his eldest son John to live without working, and to establish his three other sons as wealthy merchants. These three were Ralph — who in 1788, two years before his death, changed his name to Willis, in order that he might take possession of some landed property that had been bequeathed to him — Thomas, and William who died in 1788, at the age of sixty-seven.* Both the Earles and the Heywoods were owners of African slavers, and of other ships going to the West Indies for sugar, rum, and coffee. They were also associated in nearly all the principal movements of their times, whether commercial or social. Ralph Earle contributed 21. 2s. to the Liverpool Infirmary that, in 1748, was set up on the ground now covered by Saint George's Hall. Arthur and Benjamin Heywood gave 51. 5s. a piece, while Bryan Blundell subscribed 421., and Ellis and Robert Cunlifie l')l. 15s. each. Foster CunlifFe was treasurer of the fund, and a large subscriber to it.f Another and more important building, in which all these merchants were concerned, was * History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1797j, p. 127; BciiKE, Dictionary of the Landed Gentry. t Baini^, History of Liverpool, pp. 412-414. Tlicir Occupations in Liverpool. 65 the New Exchange, ' which for its size,' it was said at the time, ' is not to be paralleled in Europe. It was begun in 174 ( J, and finished in 1754.* In the setting up of another sort of Exchange the Heywoods also took part. This was the Warrington Academy, founded in 1757. The Unitarians, leaders of scientific and philosophical thought in those days, had long felt the need of some central meeting-place, which should also serve as a place of education for young men preparing for the ministry. After some deliberation, Warrington, the mid-way town between Liverpool and Manchester, and on the high road to both the south and the north, was fixed upon, and there the Academy was organized, Arthur and Benjamin Heywood, Thomas Bentley, Thomas Wharton, and some others being trustees on behalf of the Liverpool Unitarians. Dr. Taylor of Norwich, Dr. Aikin of Kibworth, and Mr. Holt of Kirkdale were the first tutors, Taylor being soon replaced by Priestley ; and the Academy became, for many years, a centre of enlightened thought and zealous action in furtherance of sound views in politics and science, literature, and philosophy.f The Thomas Bentley, who took an influential part in this business, was younger than the Heywoods, and of much less note as a Liverpool merchant ; a man, however, who did quite as much in aid of the general progress of English com- merce. He was born at Scrapton, in Derbyshire, on the first day of 1730. In 1745 he was clerk in a wholesale draper's shop in Manchester. Thence he went abroad for a few years, and shortly before 1757 he was established in King Street, Liverpool, as a dealer in Manchester goods, having a * TnoiT.HTOK, History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1810), pp. 285-290; Bkooke, pp. 71-74, 119, 195. The New Exchange was destroyed by fire in 1795, to be re-built and oj>cned in 1797. Soon after that it became the Town Hull, pnrt of it having previously been used for municipal purposes, and a newer Exchange, larger, and in every way more convenient than the other building, was completed in 1S0S. t Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vol. xi. '1S5M\ pp. l-['A), an interesting paper by Mr. II. A. Bright. VOL. II. F 66 Thomas Bentley. private house in Paradise Street.* His association with the Warrington Academy brought him into intimate friendship with Priestley. " The tutors," said Priestley, " having suf- ficient society amongst themselves, we had not much acquaintance out of the Academy. Sometimes, however, I made an excursion to the towns in the neighbourhood. At Liverpool I was always received by Mr. Bentley, a man of excellent taste, improved understanding, and good dis- position, "f The taste, understanding, and disposition were at once ap- parent to Josiah Wedgwood when, while on a visit to Liver- pool, he was introduced to Bentley in 1762. The two soon found strong bonds of friendship in their common desire to benefit mankind. " I most sincerely congratulate you," wrote the potter to the merchant in June, 1763, referring to the opening of the Octagon Chapel in Liverpool, to which the Hey woods were subscribers ; " and sympathize with you in the exalted pleasure you must feel in thus leading the way to a reformation so long talked of and so much wanted in our church militant here below. I long to join with you, but am, alas, tied down to this rugged pot-making spot of earth, and cannot leave it at present without suffering for it." % The * Boardman, Bentleyarui (Liverpool, 1851), pp. 7, 8, 13. t Miss Meteyard, Life of Josiah Wedgwood (Loudon, 18G5-G), vol. i. pp. 303-308. % Meteyard, vol. i., p. 317. The Octagon Chapel, and Bentley's share in it, should not he forgotten hy students of religious progress in England. It was designed for the use of Christians whose Christianity was wide enough to include all who sought to shape their lives in accordance with the spirit that shone through the life of Christ, without regard to creeds and doctrines, or any sort of Pharisaism and Saddueeeism. The project failed. Octagon Chapel was sold to the Corporation, and converted, in 1792, into S.iint Catharine's Church, finally to he pulled down and replaced by the Fire Police Station. In 177G, Bentley, then living in London, pub- lished, in conjunction with a Mr. Williams, a Unitarian minister, A Liturgy on the Universal Principles of Religion and Morality. " Of all the projects that have ever been formed," said Bentley, in the Preface thereto, "there is not one so absurd, and that hath so much mischief and wickedness to answer for, as that of bringing mankind to an uniformity of opinion by the influence of penal laws. A genuine history of the effects of this design would cou His Occiqmtions in Liverpool. C7 ' rugged pot-making spot of earth,' at Burslem, was becoming the nucleus of one of the most wonderful developments of tain the greatest part of the calamities that have afflicted the world, and rendered it a scene of discord and wretchedness. " Public worship, as a recital of sublime find important trusts, is reasonable in itaelf, useful in its eftccte, and delightful in the exercise. We are so formed, that every pleasure is multiplied on ns by society. To see numbers of our fellow-creatures, equally sincere with ourselves, in acknowledging those truths which make us all happy, must afford as high a pleasure as we are capable of. " It cannot be enjoyed, however, in this country by any man who has the misfortune to disapprove of the Book of Common Frayer, and the method of worship among the Dissenters. These may have this misfortune, without deserving blame. It is the duty of all men to act on the principles they possess. We apprehend, therefore, that in providing for our religious improvement, on those principles we believe to bo true — while we offer no man an injury, aim at no man's interest, and profess the warmest attach- ment to the constitution and laws of our country — we do no more than we are allowed to do, by the principles of nature and religion, the best laws of civic society, and that prevailing temper and disposition of men in England, which may be called the spirit of the times and the ruling law of the land. It is with pleasure we have observed that many degrees of im- provement have taken place in various parts of Europe ; and that the minds of wise and good men are well employed in removing the errors of dark ages, and in suiting forms of worship to the present state of knowledge. To all such we wish success; and to all mankind the perfect enjoyment of their inestimable liberties. Let every man worship God according to the dictation of his conscience; let religion be as free as philosophy, and truth will surely prevail. But as we apprehend the chief defect of all forms of devotion proceeds from an idea in those who composed them, of the necessity of a certain uniformity of opinion in speculative and doubtful doctrines, we wish to try the effect of a form of social worship, composed on the most enlarged and general principles; in which all men may join who acknowledge the existence of a supreme intelligence, and the uuivcrsal obligations of morality. We can see no reason why our public forms of devotion should be contrived to divide men into parties, while we enjoy the most valuable blessings in common, and all acknowledge the most import- ant truths. Are we not all the children of one benevolent parent? Do not Jews and Gentiles, Christians and Mahometans, own his power, his wisdom, and his goodness? Do not all men acknowledge the eternal obligations of piety and virtue ? And doth not the harmony of the world, and the happiness of society, depend chiefly upon these great principles? Why, then, should any be excluded the pleasure ami advantage of social worship, who acknowledge them ? If all good men of all religions would sometimes unite in adoring Almighty God, and acknowledging those great truths which they all hold to be the most important, it might be hoped that 68 Tliomas Bentley. manufacturing energy in modern England ; in which soon Bentley was to be a sharer. Long before the firm of Wedg- wood and Bentley was established, however, the Liverpool merchant found half his business in exporting the manufac- tures of the Burslem potter. " The bulk of our particular manufactures," wrote Wedgwood in 1765, " are exported to foreign markets, for our home consumption is very slight in comparison to what is sent abroad, and the principal of these markets are the Continent and islands of North America. To the Continent we send an amazing quantity of white stone- ware, and some of the finer kinds ; but for the islands, we cannot make anything too costly."* In conducting this traffic Thomas Bentley, as senior partner in the house of Bentley and Boardman, was the principal agent, until he left Liverpool to enter into yet closer relations with Wedgwood ; and even then he continued to share in it by connection with his partner. While in Liverpool, Bentley was associated in every move- ment helpful to the social and commercial well-being of the town. He was almost the principal founder, in 1757, of the Liverpool Library, which, after a century of progress, received a splendid house in the building set up through the munifi- cence of Sir William Brown. | In that good work the Heywoods joined with him. In another, Bentley was opposed both to them and to all the other great merchants of the town. He was the first assailant of the slave-trade, taking those comprehensive principles would have a stronger tendency to harmo- nize and unite than doubtful and less important opinions have hitherto had to divide them. It is for the use of those who entertain such generous sentiments as these that the following liturgy has been composed, the principal object of which is to promote universal piety and benevolence. And it is under the protection of a good Providence, and the humanity of an enlightened age, that we mean to worship God according to the best dictates of our hearts; without presuming to prescribe to others, or to insult any who, in like manner with us, assert their own most sacred rights, in the spirit of charity and peace." — Boardman, pp. 22, 23. * Metkyahd, vol. i., p. 307. f Boardman, Benlleyana (Liverpool, 1851), p. 9. His Occupations in Liverpool. 69 every opportunity, in spite of ridicule and reprobation, of denouncing it as unchristian and inhuman, and at the same time doing his utmost to induce the African merchants to turn their attention to trade in ivory, palm-oil, woods, and other more legitimate produce of the Guinea coast.* His arguments apparently had no effect, but they led the way to the later and successful efforts of Roscoe, Rathbone, and other philanthropists of a later generation. Of Brindley's scheme for constructing the Grand Trunk Canal Bentley was, in common with Wedgwood, a zealous advocate from first to last. He wrote a pamphlet and numerous newspaper articles about it, procured for it, after some trouble, the support of the Liverpool corporation, and went to London to give evidence in its favour.f In other public business he took influential part. Only a few days after the passing of the Trent and Mersey Navigation Bill, which sanctioned Brindley's canal, he was in London, as agent of the corporation on business connected with the Bankrupt Act. "I am a little sorry," wrote Wedgwood to him on the 26th of May, 1766, " for your being obliged to take the field again before the scars of the last campaign are closed up. But take courage, my friend. Fatigues and hard- ships are very necessary in forming great characters ; and you will, by these frequent attendings in Parliament, be the better prepared for filling a seat in that august assembly yourself, when the time comes, and who knows how near that may be ? But let this happen when it will, I perceive very plainly, by the good sense your corporation hath now shown, that, when anything of moment to the port of Liverpool is to be transacted in Parliament, you must be their agent with the senate." % * Boardman, Bcntleyana (Liverpool, 1851), p. 10. t The history of the cannl is fully given in Mr. Smiles's Lives of the Engineers, vol. i., pp. 334-448; and everything known of Bentley's and Wedgwood's share in it is detailed by Miss Meteyakd, vol. i., pp. 339-438. X Meteyakd, vol. i., pp. 4G9, 470. 70 Thomas Bentley. That, however, was not for long. Before his acquaintance with Bentley, Wedgwood had fairly entered on the wonderful business that was to turn earthenware manufacture into an art, and to make the Staffordshire Potteries a famous source of wealth. Every later year saw rapid progress, both in Wedgwood's artistic designs and in the extent of his business. In 1766 he bought a new plot of land near to Burslem, and thither Bentley went to aid him in planning the new works to be constructed upon it.* Before the year was out he found Bentley 's advice so necessary to him that he offered him a partnership in the business, just then being remodelled. Bentley's letter, detailing the grounds on which he hesitated about accepting the offer, is lost ; but Wedgwood's reply is extant and very helpful to an understanding of both men's characters. " I have read your letter many times over," he said, " and find several of the objections to our nearer ap- proach may be surmounted. The first is * your total ignor- ance of the business.' That I deny : you have taste, the best foundation for our intended concern, and which must be our Primum Mobile ; for without that all will stand still, or better it did so ; and, for the rest, it will soon be learned by so apt a scholar. The very air of this country will soon inspire you with the more mechanical part of our trade. The difficulty of leaving your business in Liverpool, which seemeth now to be altering for the better, I cannot so easily obviate ; I have, it's true, a great opinion of the design answering our most sanguine expectations with respect to profit; but if you should suffer as much by having your attention taken off your mercantile concerns, you would be a loser on the whole, though I should not, and to what degree that loss might be extended I can have no idea, nor you any certainty, unless we could divine in what proportion your absence would affect the success or prevent the increase of your commerce. The money objection is obviated to my hand, and, I doubt not, in * Meteyakd, vol. i., p. 401. His Partnership ivith Josiah Wedgwood. 71 a way that will be agreeable to us both " — that is, by Wedgwood's declaration that he would be glad enough to have Bcntley for a partner without his investing any money in the concern. " But the leaving your friends, and giving up a thousand agreeable connections and pleasures at Liver- pool, for which you can have no compensation in kind — this staggers my hopes more than everything else put together. Can you part from your Octagon and enlightened Octagonian brethren, to join the diminutive and weak society of a country chapel ? Can you give up the rational and elevated enjoy- ment of your Philosophical Club for the puerile tete-a-tete of a country fireside ? And — to conclude all under this head in one question — can you exchange the frequent opportunities of seeing and conversing with your learned and ingenious friends, which your present situation affords you, besides ten thousand other elegancies and enjoyments of a town life, to employ yourself amongst mechanics, dirt, and smoke ? If this prospect does not fright you, I have some hopes ; and if you think you could really fall in love with and make a mistress of this new business, as I have done, I should have little or no doubt of our success, for if we consider the great variety of colours in our raw materials, the infinite ductility of clay, and that we have universal beauty to copy after, we have certainly the fairest prospect of enlarging this branch of manufacture to our wishes ; and, as genius will not be want- ing, I am firmly persuaded that our profits will be in propor- tion to our application, and I am as confident that it would be, beyond comparison, more congenial and delightful to every particle of matter, sense, and spirit in your composition, to be the creator, as it were, of beauty, rather than merely the vehicle or medium to convey it from one hand to another, if other circumstances can be but rendered tolerable."* Bentley yielded to these arguments, and, after some delay necessary to the construction of works, at that time unrivalled in extent and mechanical appliances, the firm of A\ edgwood * Meteyaud, vol. i., pp. 483-485. 72 Thomas Bentley. and Bentley was established, and Etruria was opened. On the 13th of June, 1769, Wedgwood moulded the first lump of clay, and Bentley for the first time turned the potter's wheel, at an establishment more memorable than any other for its influence both on English art and on English com- merce.* " I am always so much better satisfied in my own mind and pleased with everything about me after spending a few days with you," said Wedgwood, in one of his letters to Bentley, " that I long more and more for the time of your settlement at Etruria, when I may feast every day upon what I am now permitted to taste of only two or three times a year, or so."| Bentley 's residence in Staffordshire, how- ever, was very brief. Hardly had he left Liverpool, before it was found desirable that he should take up his residence in London, there to superintend the mercantile part of the business, besides having oversight of the branch works, which, in 1770, were set up at Chelsea, and doing all he could in private ways, both to forward the sale of the new manufactures and to obtain suitable designs for adoptfon in them. Henceforward, for the next ten years, we find him living first in Greek Street, Soho, and afterwards at Turn- ham Green, and taking prominent position in London society, negotiating with artists like Flaxman, and borrowing works of art from all who owned them. Sir William Hamilton lent him the treasures lately brought from Herculaneum ; others supplied him with Oriental products. Often he was sent for by George the Third and Queen Charlotte, to tell them of the progress of the works at Etruria, and to receive their orders for the newest and choicest manufactures. In all sorts of ways he gave valuable aid to the enterprise originated by Josiah Wedgwood, bringing thereto less in- * Jewitt, Wedgwood ; being a life of Josiah Wedgicood, with Notices of his Works, Memoirs of the Wedgwoods and other Families, and a History of the Early Potteries of Staffordshire (London, 1865), pp. 201-5. f Meteyahd, vol. i., p. 492. His Partnership with Josiah Wedgwood. 7o vcntive genius and less marvellous energy than were shown by Wedgwood, but surpassing his partner in refinement and grace.* It seems to have been in a great measure at Bentley's suggestion that Wedgwood, after long battling with the inferior workmen, who sought to enrich themselves by stealing his secrets and copying his inventions, resolved, as he said, " to cast all dread of rivalship behind his back, * Boarpman, pp. 11, 12. To his partner in the Liverpool business, lie thus wrote from London on the 4th of November, 1709: — "We are every day finding out some ingenious man, or curious piece of workmanship ; all which we endeavour to make subservient to the improvement of our taste, or the perfection of our manufacture. I have not time to name the things that we have seen ; but one great curiosily I cannot omit, with which wc have been highly entertained : I mean a Chinese portrait-modeller, lately arrived from Canton — one of those artists who make the Mandarin figures that are brought to England. He intends to stay here some years, is in the Chinese dress, makes portraits (small busts in clay), which he colours, and produces very striking likenesses with great expedition. I have paid him three visits, and had a good deal of conversation with him, for he speaks some English, and is a good-natured, sensible man; very mild iu his temper, and gentle in his motions. His dresses are chiefly of satin. I have seen him in crimson ami in black. The India figures upon the fans are very just resemblances of the originals. His complexion is very swarth, but the eyelashes almost always in motion. His arms are very slender, like those of a delicate woman, and his fingers very long — all his limbs ex- tremely supple ; bis hair is cut off befoic, and he has a long plaited tail hanging down to the bottom of his back. He has been with the King and Queen, who were much pleased with him, and lie is to take the portraits of the royal infantry. I have not time to be more particular now ; but be is far tlic greatest curiosity I have seen. He has ten guineas apiece for his ]>ortraits. which are very small." On the 15th of December, 1770, he wrote to the same friend : " Last Monday Mr. Wedgwood and I had the honour of a long audience of their majesties at the Queen's palace, to present some bas-reliefs her Majesty had ordered, and to show some new improvements, with which they were well pleased. They expressed, in the most obliging and condescending manner, their attention to our manufacture, and entered very freely into conversation on the further improvement of it, and on many other subjects. The King is well acquainted with business, and with the characters of the principal manufacturers, merchants, and artists; and setms to have the success of all our manufactures much at heart, and to understand the importance of them. The Queen has more sensibility, true politeness, engaging affability, and sweetness of temper, than any great lad I ever had the honour of speaking to." — Boaudjian, pp. 1J, 17. Vol n. c; 74 Thomas Bentley. treat it as a base and vanquished enemy, and not bestow another serious thought upon it." * " So far from bein^ afraid of other people getting our patterns," wrote Wedg- wood to his friend in September, 17G9, " we should glory in it, throw out all the hints we can, and, if possible, have all the artists in Europe working after our models. This would be noble, and would suit both our dispositions and senti- ments much better than all the narrow mercenary selfish trammels. How do you feel yourself, my friend ? have vou forgot how our hearts burned within us, when we conversed upon this subject on our way from Liverpool to Prescot? We were then persuaded that this open generous plan would not only be most congenial to our hearts and best feelings, but, in all probability, might best answer our wishes in pecu- niary advantages ; and, for the time, I well remember we agreed to pursue it. Do you think when our principles were known, the nobility would not still more make it a point to patronize and encourage men who acted upon such dif- ferent principles to the rest of mankind, — the trading and mercantile part of them at least ? When they are witness to our bestowing so much pains and expense in the improve- ment of a capital manufacture, nay, in creating a new one, and that not for our particular emolument only, but that we generously lay our works open to be imitated by other artists and manufacturers for the good of the community at large, this would surely procure us the good-will of our best customers. With respect to myself, there [is nothing relating to business I so much wish for as beinc released from these degrading slavish chains, these mean selfish fears of other people copying my works. Dare you step forth, my dear friend and associate, and share the risk and honour of acting on these enlarged principles ?"f Bentley declared him- self quite willing, as he had always been, to enter on this bold and generous course ; and the result was, great improvement in the fortunes of the house of Wedgwood and Bentley. * Meteyard, vol. ii., pp. 21 G. f Ibid., pp. 214, 215, His Character and Death. 75 Thomas Bentley did not live, however, to see the fulness of its triumph. In 1754, he had married Hannah Oates, of Sheffield, who died very soon after, and in 1772 Mary Stamford, of Derby, became his wife. But neither bore him any children, and he died himself, at his house in Turnham Green, on the 2Gth of November, 1780, only fifty years of age. " Blessed with an elevated and comprehensive understanding, " it was said on his monument in Chiswick Church, " informed in variety of science, he possessed a warm and brilliant imagination, a pure and elegant taste. His extensive abilities, guided by the most expansive phi- lanthrophy, were employed in forming and executing plans for the public good : he thought with the freedom of a philosopher : he acted with the integrity of a virtuous citizen."* In the meanwhile the earthenware trade with America, which Bentley had partly begun as Wedgwood's agent, con- tinued to be carried on in Liverpool. The town also, during the latter half of the seventeenth century, contained some establishments of its own for the manufacture of blue and white earthenware. It was yet more famous for its watches, ' which are not to be excelled in Europe,' it was said in 1753. * All the different branches are manufactured in and about the town, to supply the London and foreign markets.' f But Liverpool was then, as now, much more notable as a resort of merchants than of manufacturers. Great impetus came to their trade through the trading difficulties of the towns more open to attack during the war with France that attended the early years of George the Second's reign. 'The harbour beinsr situated so near the mouth of the North Channel,' said the same old chronicler of 17515, 'between Ireland and Scotland, — a passage very little known to or frequented by the enemy — afforded many conveniences to * Boa human, pp. 12, 115. t Williamson's Liverpool Memorandum Booh. Minute and ink-resting histories ftf the Liverpool pottery works and watch manufactures are in the Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical Society. 76 Tlic Progress of Liverpool Commerce the merchants here, untasted by those of other ports, which invited many strangers from different parts to begin trade and settle here, finding it so advantageous a mart.' * The disadvantages of war were, however, felt even by Liverpool in 1756, when fresh fighting began. A French privateer entered the Channel, and, in 1758, Liverpool was blockaded for seven weeks. On the loth of February, 1759, forty-five Liverpool merchants requested Williamson, who had started his Liverpool Advertiser three years before, to discontinue the list of ships going in and out of the port which he had been in the habit of publishing, as * they had too much reason to apprehend that that conduct had been of very bad consequence this war.' Among the merchants who signed the document were Robert Cunliffe, Ralph and William Earle, and Arthur and Benjamin Heywood.f In spite of war and other hindrances, however, Liverpool commerce made steady and rapid progress. The Old Dock which had been initiated by Sir Thomas Johnson and others in 1700, having proved insufficient to the growing wants of the town, the Salthouse Dock, begun in 1734, was opened in 1753, and in 1761 an Act was obtained for building George's Dock. It was begun in 1767, and completed in 1771. In 1781, authority was obtained for building two other docks, King's and Queen's. The former was opened in 1788, the latter in 1796. In 1764, Liverpool had seventy-four vessels engaged in the African trade, a hundred and forty-one in the American and the West Indian ; the total of ships cleared inwards during the year from all ports being seven hundred and sixty-six, while the outward clearances amounted to eight hundred and thirty-two. The trade of Bristol in the same year was represented by three hundred and thirty-two in-coming, and three hundred and forty-two out-going, vessels. In 1781 the entire eustorn-house duties of Liverpool were G-1-S,GS-1Z. ; those of Bristol only 331-,909£, little more than half as much. This stupendous growth of trade, led of course to rapid increase of population, and extension of the * Williamson's Linrpool Mrm>.min>him Booh. f Bainls, p. 12j. during the Eighteenth Century. 77 limits of the town. In 1730, the inhabitants of Liverpool numbered 12,074, and they lived in 2,430 houses. In 1760 the population had increased to 25,787, the houses to 5,150. In 1770, the numbers were respectively, 35,000, and 6,800 ; in 1790, they were 55,732, and 8,865 ; and in 1801, they were 77,708, and 11,784. In seventy years Liverpool was increased six - fold ; in the ensuing- sixty years it was increased nearly six times again.* ' This quondam village,' said Erskine, on a famous Liverpool trial in 1791, ' which is now fit to be a proud capital for any empire in the world, has started up like an enchanted palace even in the memory of living men. I had before often been at the principal sea- ports in this island, and believing that, having seen Bristol and those other towns that deservedly pass as great ones, I had seen everything in this great nation of navigators on which a subject should pride himself, I own I was astonished and astounded when, after passing a distant ferry and ascending a hill, I was told by my guide, " All you see spread out beneath you, that immense plain, which stands like another Venice upon the waters, which is intersected by those numerous docks, which glitters with those cheerful habitations of well-pro- tected men, which is the busy seat of trade, and the gay scene of elegant amusements growing out of its prosperity, where there is the most cheerful face of industry, where there are riches overflowing, and everything that can delight a man who wishes to see the prosperity of a great community and a great empire, all this has been created by the industry and well-disciplined management of a handful of men since you were a boy." ' * Those arc the fiprures : — Iu 1S11 the population was 94,37G ; the numher of houses 10,102 1821 ,, ,, 118,972 ,, ,, 2(1,339 1831 ,, ,, 205.572 ., ,, 27,3G1 1811 ,, ., 280,487 ,, ,, 45.385 1851 ,, , , 370,005 ,, ,, 59,550 1801 ,, ,, 437,740 ,, ,, 05,999 78 Arthur and Benjamin Heyivood. Very conspicuous amongst that handful of men were the Heywoods. Not much is to he said of them, however, save that they followed the tide of prosperity that began about the time of their birth, working zealously and, in their way, honestly and wisely, seizing every opportunity of advance- ment, and doing all they could to widen yet further the channels that, during their life-time had been widened to a wonderful extent. With them, and those who traded in their company, began the American cotton-trade, which was to assume marvellous proportions in the following genera- tion. They also were sharers in the early efforts made by Liverpool to break down the monopoly of the East India Company and open its privileges to other ports than Londoa At a meeting of merchants held in January, 1768, it was pro- posed to buy from the Government a share in the India and China trade, and form a new Company, whose members might come from Liverpool and Bristol, Glasgow and Hull.* That project fell to the ground, but it led to later and more successful efforts. In it were associated both the Heywoods and the Earles. The Earles have worked on as merchants to the present day ; -j- but the Heywoods, in due time, having amassed large fortunes by trade, proceeded to increase it yet further as bankers. In or just before the the year 1774, Arthur Hey wood dissolved partnership with his brothers, and in company with his sons, Richard and Arthur, the one born in 1751, the other in 1753, established the bank of Arthur Heywood, Sons, and Company, now changed into the Consolidated Bank.J Benjamin Heywood was a merchant some fourteen years longer. But in 1788 he, too, turned banker, and established, in partnership with * Baines, p. 441. t Thomas Earle established a line of packets, from Liverpool to Leghorn, in 1772, and so greatly promoted Liverpool's trade with the Mediterranean ports. Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser, December 4, 1772. \ On the 24th of June, 1774, Arthur Heywood, Sons, and Company, were, by royal proclamation, authorized to receive the light gold then in circulation, and exchange it for gold of full weight. Ibid., July 8. 1774. TJteir Occupations in Liverpool. 79 his sons, Benjamin Arthur and Nathaniel (at that time re- spectively thirty-three and twenty-nine years old), the Man- chester firm of Benjamin Heywood, Sons, and Company, known as Heywood Brothers and Company from 1795 till 1828 ; and after that as Benjamin Heywood and Company till 18G0, when it again assumed the title of Heywood Brothers and Company. Arthur Heywood, being then eighty years old, died in Liverpool, on the 11th of February, 1795. His brother Benjamin, died, at the age of seventy-three, on the 10th o August, in the same year.* * This table shows the connection between the older Heywoods and the most notable of their later descendants : — John Heywood, of Bolton, temp. Ed. VI. Oliver Heywood, of Little Lever, Bolton. (?) 155S-(?) 1628. I Ricliard Heywood, of Little Lever, Yeoman. 1595— 167G. Rev. Oliver Heywood, of Halifax, 1629—1702. Rev. Nathaniel Heywood, Vicar of Ormskirk, 1633—1677. Nathaniel Heywood. Richard Heywood, of Liverpool | and Drogheda, 1661—1702. Benjamin Heywood, of Drogbeda, = Anne, daughter of 1687 — 1725. | General Graham. I Arthur Heyuood,= l. Elizabeth Ogden. of Liverpool, I 2. Hannah Milnes. 1715—1795. Benjamin Heywood,=Phazbe of Liverpool, (?) 1722—1795. I III Richard Heywood, Benjamin Heywood, Arthur Heywood, John I'emberton of Larkhall, Liver- of Stanley Hall, of Liverpool, Heywood, pool, banker, Wakefield, banker, banker, 1751—1800. banker. 1753—1836. of Wakefield. I John I'emberton HeyvMxtd, banker, of Liverpool. Ogden. I Samuel Heyu-ood, of Iyondon, a judge. Benjamin Arthur Heywood, of Liverpool, mer- chant, 1750 — 1S28. Nathaniel Heywood, of Liverpool and Maiichoster, merchant and banker, 1759— 1H15. Sir lienjamin Ileywood, of Mawlu-sler, banker, 1794— laoo. I I I Nathaniel Heywood. Thomas Heywood. Richard Heywood. 80 CHAPTER XX. MATTHEW BOULTON OF BIRMINGHAM. [1728-1809.] Birmingham, * the toy-shop of Europe,' as Burke called it, is supposed to have been one of the chief centres of iron manufacture during the Roman occupation of Britain. On one side of it, at Aston, a huge cinder-heap, having traces of a great antiquity, and evidently the accumulation of a great many generations, existed while the town was yet, as modern travellers thought, almost in its infancy ; and on another, in Wednesbury Old Field, have been found hundreds of ancient coalpits, * which the curious antiquarian would deem as long in sinking as the mountain of cinders in rising.'* It was a place of some repute in Anglo-Saxon times. In Domesday Book it was rated for four hides of land, and was half a mile in length and four furlongs wide, the whole being valued at twenty shillings. From Henry the Second, Peter de Birmingham, the lord of the manor, obtained permission to hold in it a weekly market, and his successor, William de Birmingham, procured charters from Henry the Third for two yearly fairs. In 1319 licence was given by Edward the Second for a toll to be levied on all commodities sold in the market during the next three years, in order that the streets might be paved ; and, the funds thus raised being insufficient, * Hctton, lit story of Birmingham, 6th edition (Birmingham, 1835), p. 20. The Early History of Birmingham. SI a similar licence was given in 1337. By that means the work was done, and Birmingham, protected by its manorial lords, whose moated house was near the site of Saint Martin's Church, made steady progress down to the time of Henry the Eighth. ' The beauty of Birmingham, a good market town in the extreme parts of Warwickshire,' says the traveller who visited it in Henry's reign, ' is one street, going almost from the left bank of the brook up a mean hill by the length of a quarter of a mile. There be many smiths in the town, that use to make knives and all manner of cutting tools ; and many lorimers that make bits, and a great many nailers ; so that a great part of the town is maintained by smiths, who have their iron and sea-coal out of Staffordshire.'* A hun- dred years later, Birmingham was found to be ' full of in- habitants, and resounding with hammers and anvils, for the most part of them smiths. 't In Charles the First's reign, Birmingham suffered for its sympathy with the Commonwealth party. In 1042, on Charles's departure, after a visit in which he received none of the help he sought, the inhabitants seized his carriages, and conveyed the plate that they found in them to Warwick Castle. For that Prince Rupert was sent next year with a company of horse to scour the country and damage the town. He fulfilled his commission with terrible success, and Birmingham had hardly recovered from its results when the plague of lGGf) again brought trade almost to a standstill. With the Revolution, however, came a return of prosperity. A few years before the plague it is supposed the town con- tained about 5,000 inhabitants, living in fifteen streets, all of which converged towards the Old Cross in the centre of the town. By the year 1700 the streets had been increased to twenty-eight, and the population had been trebled. In 1731 there were, we are told, fifty-one streets and 23,280 inhabit- ants. In 1781 there were a hundred and twenty-five streets * Lfxand, Itinerary f Oxford, 1744), vol. iv., p. 109. f Cajidicn, Britannia. 82 Birmingham and its Trades and 50,295 inhabitants. In 1801 there were two hundred and fifty streets and 73,G70 inhabitants.* In 1801 the population of Birmingham had grown to 290,070'. From times unknown the Old Cross had been the great meeting-place of the merchants and manufacturers of Bir- mingham, the simple piece of stonework being renewed about once in every hundred years by the lords of the manor. In 1702 a solid building was set up to serve as an Exchange, until 1784, when it was pulled down, and the merchants removed to more commodious quarters.f Already they had become too numerous for the little structure to hold them. Of ironworkers there were in the eighteenth century fewer perhaps than in earlier times ; but the manufacturers of all sorts of articles constructed of iron and other metals were very much more numerous. The making of steel had been introduced in the seventeenth century by a family named Kettle, and the works set up in Steelhousc Lane soon had many rivals, devoted to the manu- facture of needles, pens, and similar articles. Brassworks had been set up at about the same time by a family of Turners, and before the close of the eighteenth century a thousand tons of brass were converted in a year into com- modities of which pins were the smallest and most plentiful. Before 1780 this trade was in the hands of a few rich men, ' who, instead of making the humble bow for favours received, acted with despotic sovereignty, established their own laws, chose their customers, directed the price, and governed the market.' In 1781 their arbitrary conduct led to some riotous opposition, and the establishment of a new and exten- sive manufactory, soon followed by others, in which the public interests were more consulted. Buckles were made in immense quantities, and the manufacture of buttons, in glass, horn, bone, pearl, steel, and all other sorts of sub- stance, was so great, that by the end of the century it was divided into nearly sixty separate branches. Knives, * IIittun, pp. 23, 37-41, W, G9, 77. t Ibid., p. 377. in the Eighteenth Century. S3 tools, and fancy articles of every kind, were made in great abundance. Birmingham was also famous for its guns. William the Third, soon after his accession, according to a tradition current in the town, once lamented that there were no guns manufactured in England, and that he was obliged to procure them from Holland at great expense and greater difficulty. " Sire," Sir Richard Newdigate, the member of Parliament for the county, is reported to have answered, " genius resides in Warwickshire, and I will answer for it that my constituents will answer your Majesty's wishes." Thereupon he posted down to Birmingham, conferred with a tradesman living in Digbeth, and obtained from him drafts and patterns, which so pleased the King when they were shown to him, that the tradesman was at once commissioned to make guns for the Government, and from that time the gun trade flourished in Birmingham. But while other branches of industry were growing, there was no lessening of the old trade in nails and blacksmiths' work of various kinds. ' In 1741, when I first entered Birmingham,' says the old historian of the town, ' 1 was sur- prised at the number of blacksmiths' shops upon the road, and could not conceive how a county, though populous, could support so many people of the same occupation. In some of these shops I observed one or more females, stripped of their upper garments, and not overcharged with their lower, wielding the hammer with all the grace of their sex. The beauties of their faces was rather eclipsed by the smut of the anvil. Struck with the novelty, I inquired whether the ladies in this country shod horses, but was answered with a smile, " They are nailers." '* In 1783, it was estimated there were in Birmingham * Nearly all the foregoing account of Birmingham trade in the eighteenth century is drawn from HuTTON and his continuator, pp. 171-192. A full and very interesting account of the industrial history of the town lias lately hecn published in The Resources, Products, ami Industrial History of 84 John Taylor of Birmingham. three inhabitants worth upwards of 100,000Z., seven worth 50,000/., eight worth 30,000/., seventeen worth 20,000/.. eighty worth 10,000/., and ninety-four worth 5,000/. Of these two hundred and nine 'a hundred and three began the world with nothing but their own prudence ; thirty-five more had fortunes added to their prudence but too small to be brought into account ; and seventy-one were favoured with a larger, which in many instances is much improved.'* The man most conspicuous in the history of Birmingham commerce during the first half of the eighteenth century — dead before that guess at the wealth of Birmingham men in 1783 had been made— was John Taylor. " Him," said his foremost panegyrist, "we may justly term the Shakspeare or Newton of his day. He rose from minute beginnings to shine in the commercial atmosphere as they in the poetical and philosophical." He was born in 1714. In 1747 he served Birmingham as Low Bailiff. In 1756 he was Sheriff of the county of Warwick. Beginning life as a common labourer, he threw so much skill and energy into his work that he soon became master of a large establishment, which he directed with taste and tact hitherto unknown in Birming- ham. He was a maker of buttons, buckles, snuff-boxes, and other fancy articles. A single workman earned seventy shillings a week in his shop from painting snuff-boxes for a farthing apiece. In his busiest years he manufactured 800/. worth of buttons every week, and he sold his shop-sweepings, containing quicksilver, brass scrapings, and the like, for 1,000/. a year. He also made ornamental clocks and toys of all sorts. A nobleman, buying several articles in his shop, Birmingham and Ute Hardware District ; a scries of Reports collected by the Local Industries Committee of the British Association at Birmingham, in 1865; edited by Samuel Timmins (London, 18G6). * An estimate of the wealth of Birmingham in 1828, showing that six- teen of its inhabitants were worth about 4,000,000?. in all, that three hundred divided about 4,000,000Z. more among them, and the rest 1,000,000/. was contributed to Aris's Birmingham Gazette, by Mr. James Luckcock, on the 1st of September in that year. Matthew Boultoiis Family. 85 among them one toy worth 80/., is reported to have said that ' he plainly saw he could not live in Birmingham for less than 2U0L a day.' so many were the temptations offered by the shops, among which Taylor's was the most conspicuous. It was Taylor who, in 1701, brought under Josiah Wedg- wood's notice Plumier's Art de Tourner, and so helped him in the development of his pottery-works. To Taylor, also, Wedgwood owed his introduction to William Cox, the clever mechanic, whose ready wit enabled him to apply to his craft the engine-lathe devised by Plumier ; and there is evidence of much other help given by the great button-maker to the great potter. In 1705, with a Mr. Lloyd for his partner, John Taylor established the first, and for a long time the greatest, bank in Birmingham, known by the name of Taylor and Lloyd. He died in 1775, leaving upwards of 200,000/., in the bank and in the manufactory, to his son and successor.* But a much greater man, the one great merchant prince that Birmingham can boast of — its father, as he has well been called, and the leader of nearly every good work that has been done to it, was Matthew Boulton. He was born at Birmingham on the 3rd of September, 1728.f John Boulton, his grandfather, was a native of Northamptonshire, where there had been farmers of his name for many generations. In the days of William the Third, this John Boulton was living at Lichfield, married to a wife who had brought him a fair amount of wealth ; but not so rich that he did not think it well to send his son Matthew to Birmingham, there, on Snow Hill, to become a silver stamper and piecer. That was the trade in which Matthew Boulton the younger received his apprenticeship, after brief schooling in the private academy of a Mr. Ansted * IIutton, pp. 1G9, 174, 201, 219, 222 ; Mkteyarp, Life of Josicdt Wedgwood, vol. i., pp. 2SS, 339. All men did not think well of Taylor. •\John Taylor died the other day, worth 200.0UOZ.," wrote James Watt to Matthew Boulton, " without ever doing one generous action." — Smiles, Lives of lioulton and Watt, p. 332. f Lurojnan Majiv.in-'. vol. lvi., n. 1G3. 86 Mattlieiv Boulton of Birmingham. at Deritend. to which he added much in later years, working at Latin and French as a duty, and finding his chief delight in mathematics and drawing, mechanics and chemistry.* Very soon young Boulton became master of the business in which he had been trained. Before he was seventeen years old he had added watch-chain, button, and buckle making to the silver stamping. The inlaid steel buckles that in the year 1745 began to be largely imported from France, as French MATTHEW BOULTON OF BIItMINGIUM. manufacture, were of his invention, great quantities of them being actually made in his father's shop and sent to the Continent for re-shipment, t As soon as he was twenty-one he was a recognized partner in the business, and henceforth he was its real head. Signing for ' father and self,' he ordered * Euro)Man Magazine, vol. lvi. Smiles, Lives of Boulton and Watt (London, 1SG5), pp. 1G'3, 1G4. My great obligations to Mr. Smiles's work will appear from the frequent references to it in the following pages. t European M/igazine. vol. lvi., p. 1G3. Jlis ' Toy ' Shop on Snoiv II ill. S7 everything as he chose. In 1757, for instance, writing to Benjamin Huntsman, of Sheffield, about the cast steel that he had lately invented, he says, " When thou hast some of a proper size and quality for me, and an opportunity of sending it, thou may'st, but I should be glad to have it a little tougher than the last."* In the same year, in a letter to Timothy Holies, of London, he complains of the attempts made by some to beat down the price of coat-links and vest buttons, and so to make it necessary either for the maker to go without his profit, or for his wares to be of worthless stuff. " Yet," he adds, " as I have put myself to greater expense than anybody else in erecting the best conveniences and the completest tools for the purpose, I am not willing that any in- terlopers should run away with it." " From the first he was ' resolved to have nothing to do with Brummagem goods, as they were even then termed, through the preference of many Birmingham manufacturers for cheap showy goods instead of those that were simple and substantial. His father's death, in 1759, when he was thirty-one years old, left Boulton absolute master of the business, and also of a considerable sum of money, saved from the profits of former years. In 1760 he married Anne Robinson, daughter of a Lichfield gentleman, with whom he received 28,0001. in money and land.} Thus enriched, he immediately set about extension of his trade. In 1762 he was still 'Matthew Boulton, toy-maker, of Snow Hill;'§ but long before that the great works at Soho had been begun. To Soho, a drearv Staffordshire heath, with Hockley Brook running through it, at that time two miles distant from the town of Birmingham, • Smiles, p. 105. t Ibid. t Ibid, p. 1GG. § Tliis curious little document is quoted by Mr. Smiles, p. 1G7 : " Received of Matthew Boulton, toyniaker, Snow Hill, three shillings and sixpence, for which sum I solemnly engage, if he should he chosen by lot to serve in the militia for this parish, at the first meeting for that purpose, to procure a substitute that shall be approved of. Birmingham, January 11, 17G2. — Henky Brookes, Sergeant." SS Matthew Boultoris Works at Soho. Boulton was attracted by a mill lately set up by one Edward Huston. Huston had leased the ground from the lord of the manor in 1750, with permission to widen the brook in one place so as to form a pool, and thus enable hiin to work his mill. He had spent 1,000/. in effecting these changes when Boulton bought up his lease — ultimately purchasing the fee simple from the original proprietor — and at once proceeded to build a very much larger mill, with vast workshops adjoining, and a handsome house in the neighbourhood. The buildings and their furniture cost more than 20,000/.* By the end of 1762 they were com- pleted, and taken into use by a transfer of the principal part of the business from Snow Hill. At the stock-taking incident thereto, the manager of the works and nine subor- dinates were engaged through eight days in weighing and counting the goods and preparing an inventory. " I founded my manufactory," wrote Boulton in 1790 to Lord Hawkes- bury, " upon one of the most barren commons in England, where there existed but a few miserable huts, filled with idle beggarly people, who, by help of the common land and a little thieving, made shift to live without working. The scene is now entirely changed. I have employed a thousand men, women, and children in my aforesaid manufactory for nearly thirty years past. The lord of the manor hath ex- terminated those very poor cottages, and hundreds of clean, comfortable, cheerful houses are found erected in their place." f Boulton's business at this time comprised the old trade in buttons, buckles, watch-chains, and similar articles, with the addition of all sorts of filagree and inlaid work. Very soon after, if not already, it was further extended to the manu- facture of solid silver and plated goods — Boulton being the introducer of the silver-plated business into Birmingham — * IIuttox, pp. 395, 39G ; European Magazine, vol. hi. p. 1G3; Swinney's Birmingham Directory (1774j ; Smiles, p. 1GS. f Smius, pp. 1GS, 1G9. The Articles Manufactured there. 89 of candlesticks, urns, brackets, ormolu wares, and the like.* On entering liis new premises, Boulton took as his partner one John Fothergill.a gentleman of small moans, but steadv, shrewd, and well acquainted with the European markets. It was FothcrgiU's duty to superintend the foreign trade, to establish agencies in all parts of the Continent, and to make careful study of all foreign inventions and appliances, with a view to their introduction, if desirable, at Soho. lioulton took on himself the direct supervision of the works, besides doing all he could to extend business relations in all the great towns of England. He also made it his special business, as it was by nature his great delight, to forward the artistic development of his craft. "The prejudice that Birmingham hath so justly established against itself, 1 ' he said, in a letter to Fot.hcrgill, " makes every fault con- spicuous in all articles that have the least pretensions to taste. How can 1 expect the public to countenance rubbish from Soho, while they can procure sound and perfect work from any other quarter ?" | Boulton was determined that the taste and excellence of everything produced at Soho should be in advance of public opinion instead of behind it With that end he bought, or borrowed and had copied, all sorts of works of art, making interest with noblemen and monarchs, searching public gal- leries and private treasure-houses, at Windsor, at Straw- berry Hill, iu out-of-the-way country seats, and in distant corners of Europe. " I wish," he wrote to his partner, about some candlesticks and vases that he had borrowed of Queen Charlotte, u Mr. Eginton would take good casts from the Hercules and the Hydra. I perceive we shall want many such figures, and therefore we should omit no oppor- tunity of taking good casts." \ "If, in the course of your ■ " The number of ingenious mechanical contrivances they avail them- selves of, by means of water-mills, much facilitates their work, and saves a great portion of time and labour." — Swixney's ll'mn'nujham Directory {MIA). t Smiles, p. 170. % "" w -> P- 17L VOL. II. H 90 Boultons Manufacturing Energy. future travelling," we read in another letter, addressed in July, 1707, to an agent in Italy, "you can pick up for me any metallic ores or fossil substances, or any other curious natural productions, I should be much obliged to you. as I am fond of all those things that have a tendency to improve my knowledge in mechanical arts, in which my manufactory will every year become more and more general ; and there- fore wish to know the taste, the fashions, the toys, both useful and ornamental, the implements, vessels, &c, that prevail in all the different parts of Europe, as I should be glad to work for all Europe in all things that they may have occasion for — gold, silver, copper, plated, gilt, pinchbeck, steel, platina, tortoiseshell, or anything else that may become an article of general demand." * It was, indeed, almost a fault of Boulton's that he was anxious to include in his business anything and everything likely to be ' of general demand.' To Josiah Wedgwood, just then following the example of Soho in the establishment of Etruria, he said " he almost wished to be a potter," and he seems to have had some thought of adding pottery manu- factures to his many other occupations. At first Wedgwood was alarmed and annoyed thereat. t But he soon changed his opinion on the subject. " Stand firm, my friend," he wrote to his partner Bentley in September, 17G9, "and let us support this threatened attack like veterans prepared for every knock or change of fortune that can befall us. If we must fall, if Etruria cannot stand its ground, but must give way to Soho and fall before her, let us not sell the victory too cheap, but maintain our ground like men, and endeavour, even in our defeat, to share the laurels with our conquerors. It doubles my courage to have the first manufacturer in England to encounter with. The match likes me well. I like the man, I like his spirit. lie will not be a mere drivelling copyist like the antagonists I have hitherto had, but will venture to step out of the lines upon occasion and * Smiles, p. \~'l. t Meteyakd, Life of M'cilgicood, vol. ii., p. 7G. His Vases and his Clocks. 91 afford us some diversion in the combat."* But there was never any real competition between the two great manu- facturers. Boulton soon contented himself with admiring his friend's ware, and supplementing it with metal work of his own. " The mounting- of vases," he said, in a letter to Wedgwood, " is a large field for fancy, in which I shall indulge, as I perceive it possible to convert even a very ugly vessel into a beautiful vase." | In those ways Boulton worked on for several years, in- venting for himself and applying the inventions of others, winning a great deal of fame in all quarters of the world, but sometimes finding that his expensive and elaborate work- manship brought him in more praise than profit. Among his favourite productions were some wonderfully-wrought astronomical clocks. " I find philosophy at a low ebb in London," he wrote in 1767, in a letter to his wife, "and have therefore brought back my two fine clocks, which I will send to a market where common sense is not quite out of fashion." The market in this case, strange to say, was Russia, whose Empress Catherine not only bought the clocks, but purchased a great many other articles from Soho, and was a steady patroness of Boulton. " If I had made the clocks play jigs upon bells, and a dancing bear keeping time," he continued, in his complaint of the London buyers, " or if I had made a horse race upon their faces, I believe they would have had better bidders." \ Yet Boulton had many friends and admirers in London. "The King." he said, in the same letter, u hath bought a pair of cassolets, a Titus, a Venus clock, and some other things. 1 was with them — the Queen and all the children — between two and three hours. There were, likewise, many of the nobility present. Never was man so much com- plimented as 1 have been ; but I find that compliments don't make fat nor fill the pocket." " I am to wait upon ihcir * Mi:ti:yari>, IJff of Wnhjw<«><J, vol. ii., p. 213. | Smiles, p. 17:5. J Ibid., p. 171. 92 Matthew Boulton at Court. Majesties again," he wrote, a few weeks later, " so soon as our tripod tea-kitchen arrives, and again upon sonic other business. The Queen is extremely sensible, very affable, and a great patroness of English manufactures. Of this she gave me a particular instance ; for after the King and she had talked to me for nearly three hours, they withdrew, and then the Queen sent for me into her boudoir, showed me her chinmev-piece, and asked me how many vases it would take to furnish it. 'For,' said she, 'all that china shall be taken away.' She also desired that I would fetch her the two finest steel chains I could make. All this she did of her own accord, without the presence of the King, which I could not help putting a kind construction upon."* George the Third and Queen Charlotte were good friends to the English manufacturers, and their patronage was very helpful in encouraging a taste for solid and artistic workman- ship among the great buyers of London. In 1705 Boulton's friend, Josiah Wedgwood, had been commissioned to make a tea-service for the Queen ; and that order followed by other orders for the Court and the attendant courtiers, was the beginning- of his great fame. He soon set about the esta- blishment of Etruria, and, applying 1 the wisdom that had come to him through many previous years of patient study, effected an entire revolution in the trade which, as far as England was concerned, in his hands first became artistic. In the meanwhile Matthew Boulton, quite as zealous as Wedgwood for the development of his trade in artistic ways, was making rapid progress. In 1703 he sold goods which brought him in 7,000/. In 17G7 his gross income was 30,000/. In 1770 he had from seven to eight hundred skilled artizans working at Soho — " the largest hardware manufactory in the world," as he himself called it — in metals and stones, glass, enamel, and tortoiseshell. " I have almost every machine,' he wrote in that year, " that is applicable to these arts. 1 have two water-mills employed in rolling, polishing, grinding, * S 31 ILLS. ]). 175. Progress of the SoJio Works. Do and turning various sorts of lathes. 1 have trained up many, and am training up more, plain country lads into good work- men, and wherever I find indications of skill and ability, I encourage them. I have likewise established correspondence with almost every mercantile town in Europe, and am thus regularly supplied with orders for the grosser articles in common demand, by which I am enabled to employ such a number of hands as to provide me with an ample choice of artists for the finer branches of work ; and I am thereby encouraged to erect and employ a more extensive apparatus than it would be prudent to provide for the production of the finer articles only." Two years later he said, " We have a thousand mouths to feed, and it has taken so much labour and pains to get so valuable and well-organized a stair' of workmen together, that the operations of the manufactory must be carried on at whatever risk."* At a good deal of risk Boulton's works were carried on through many years. His large profits were more than absorbed by his various projects for improvement of machinery and extension of the higher branches of trade. All his own and all his wife's money was locked up in the business, and large sums had to be borrowed from his friends. This fettered him considerably, and seems to have been the chief reason for his delay in entering on a new sphere of business in partnership with Watt. James Watt, born at Greenock on the 19th of February, 1736, had, in 1754. been put to learn mathematical instru- ment making- in Glasgow. There, after a short and unsuc- cessful stay in London, he had started business on his own account, near the end of 1750. His shop, within the walls of Glasgow University, soon became a favourite resort both of students and of professors. He made quadrants and mathematical instruments of all sorts. He also made and mended musical instruments, from flutes to organs, lie even sold maps, charts, and books. But his natural timidity stood * Smiles, pp. 177, 179, ISO. <>4 Watt's Steam- Engine, and Boulton s in the way of success, and left him plenty of time for more congenial pursuits, for learned intercourse with the mathe- maticians and philosophers of Glasgow, and above all, for working out the idea that had been cherished by him from the time when, as a little boy, his aunt had scolded him for wasting a whole hour in taking oft" the lid of the kettle and putting it on again, ' holding now a cup and now a silver spoon over the steam, watching how it rose from the spout, catching and counting the drops it fell into.' In 17G1 or 1762 he began fairly to apply himself to the subject, study- ing all that had been written about steam and its employment as a motive power, and speculating as to the further and greater uses to which it might be put. By 1765 his inven- tion of the steam-engine was virtually completed.* About that time, also, Boulton began to think of producing something of the same sort. " The enormous expense of the horse-power," we read in one of his letters, " put me upon thinking of turning the mill by fire, and I made many fruit- less experiments on the subject." In 17GG his fresh experi- ments were so far successful that Benjamin Franklin, then in London, and his agent in the construction of a model, Erasmus Darwin, and others — all ignorant of the discovery already made by the unambitious tradesman of Glasgow- assured him of his ultimate triumph. t But in 1767 Watt visited London, and on his way home he called at Soho. Boulton was absent, and so lost the advantage of a personal account of Watt's machine. Next year, however, Watt was again at Birmingham, and then he met with Boulton. " I had much conversation with him," he said, "on the subject of the Soho manufactures. He explained to me many things of which I had been before ignorant. On my part I explained to him my invention of the steam-engine, * The story of Watt's invention lias been told often enough ; most fully in Mr. Muikhead's Origin and Progress of the Inventions of James Watt (London, 1854), and Life of James Watt (London, 1858); most clearly and concisely in Mr. Smiles's Lives of Boulton and Watt. f Smiles, pp. 182-184. Proposals for Partnership between Boulton and Watt. 5)5 and several other schemes of which my head was then full, in the success of which he expressed a friendly interest. My stay at Birmingham at that time was short, but I after- wards kept up a correspondence with Mr. Boulton through our mutual friend Dr. Small."* Dr. Small was a Scotchman, six years younger than Boulton, who went from college to be a physician and pro- fessor of mathematics in Williamsburg College, Virginia. There, after some years' residence, his health failed, and he determined to settle in England. In 1765 Franklin sent him to Birmingham with a letter of introduction to Boulton, in which he described him as " one who is both an ingenious philosopher and a most worthy, honest man."| So Boulton found him. He often took his advice, and sometimes adopted his inventions in the Soho works ; and it was chiefly at his instigation that he ultimately entered into partnership with Watt. Therein, however, there was a delay of several years. This was partly caused by the circumstance of Boulton being already perplexed by the number and variety of his engage- ments, and the great expense to which they put him ; but much more by the fact that Watt was already in partnership with Dr. Roebuck, a native of Birmingham, and an old friend of Boulton's, but long since settled in Glasgow, and founder there of the Carron Iron-works. The world owes much to Roebuck, and no one was readier than Boulton to admit his talents, his honesty, and his generosity. But he was too rash a speculator for any prudent man to intrust with his fortune. In January, 1768, Small had written to AVatt, saying that he and Boulton would gladly join with him if he would come to Birmingham.} Both Watt and Roebuck were eager for the partnership ; but they wished to stay in Glasgow. Therefore Boulton withdrew his offer. " I was excited by two motives," he said, in a letter to Watt, dated the 7th of February, 1769, * MrimiEAD, Inventions of Watt, vol. i., pp. cxlvii., cxlviii. f Ibid., vol. i., p. clii. + Ibid., vol. i., p. 17. 96 Boultons Friendship for Watt. " to offer you my assistance, which were, love of you. and love of a money-getting, ingenious project. I presumed that your engine would require money, very accurate workmanship, and extensive correspondence, to make it turn out to the best advantage, and that the best means of keeping up the repu- tation, and doing the invention justice, would be to keep the executive part out of the hands of the multitude of empirical engineers, who, from ignorance, want of experience, and want of necessary convenience, would be very liable to produce bad and inaccurate workmanship ; all which deficiencies would affect the reputation of the invention. To remedy which, and to produce the most profit, my idea was to settle a manufactory near to ray own, by the side of our canal, where I would erect all the conveniences necessary for the com- pletion of engines, and from which manufactory we would serve all the world with engines of all sizes. By these means and your assistance we could engage and instruct some ex- cellent workmen, who, with more excellent tools than would be worth any man's while to procure for one single engine, could execute the invention twenty per cent, cheaper than it could be otherwise executed, and with as great a difference of accuracy as there is between the blacksmith and the mathematical instrument maker. What led me to drop the hint I did to you was the possessing an idea that you wanted a midwife to ease you of your burden, and to introduce your brat into the world, which I should not have thought of if I had known of your prc-engagement ; but as I am determined never to embark in any trade that I have not the inspection of myself, and as my engagements here will not permit me to attend any business in Scotland, and as I am almost saturated with undertakings, I think I must conclude to : no, you shall draw the conclusion. Yet nevertheless, let my con- clusions be what they will, nothing will alter my inclinations for being concerned with you, or for rendering you all the service in my power ; and although there seem to be some obstructions in the engine-trade, vet I live in hopes that you Watfs Troubles in Glasgow. 0< or I may hit upon some scheme or other that may associate us in this part of the world, which would render it still more agreeable to me than it is by the acquisition of such a neigh- bour."* The partnership was delayed five years longer, Watt in the intermediate time doing all he could to perfect his invention and bring it before the world, but finding serious hindrance to his project in Roebuck's embarrassments and his own short- ness of money ; and Boulton waiting patiently for the steam- engine to be completed, in order that he might make use of it at Soho. In the summer of 17G8, Robison, the Glasgow professor, and one of Watt's most intimate friends, visited Birmingham, and was taken by Boulton over his ' magnificent works,' as he called them. ' As we walked through a yard,' wrote the Scotchman, ' he drew me aside and said, " Does Mr. Watt seriously mean to apply for a patent?" I an- swered, " Yes, most certainly, in conjunction with Dr. Roe- buck." " Why then," said he, " I will stop that work," pointing to some brick pillars which lay on the other side of a large watercourse or ditch — "I am about erecting a steam- engine, very unlike what you describe, but where I should have availed myself of what I learnt from Mr. Watt's conver- sation ; but this would not be right without his consent." 't Watt was willing enough that Boulton should make an engine for himself, and so help to bring the invention before the public ; but Boulton thought it more business-like to wait, and he waited in vain until the spring of 1774. By that time Roebuck's difficulties had become so overwhelming that he consented to make over his share in Watt's project to Boulton in liquidation of a long-standing debt, and it was agreed that the work should be transferred to Birmingham. That was very much to the satisfaction of Watt. " I begin now to see daylight," he wrote to Small on the 9th of April, 1774. + " Min:m:.\i>, vol. L, pp. Il-lS. + Ibid , vol. i., p. cl. - Ibid., vol. ii.. p. 77. ,98 The Partnership of Boulton and Watt. In May Watt went to live in Birmingham, and step? were at once taken by Boulton for the erection of suitable works at Solio, in which skilled workmen should carry out the inventor's instructions of Watt. " The fire-engine I have invented is now going, and answers much better than any other that has yet been made," Watt wrote to his father, still living at Greenock, on the 11th of December, "and I expect that the invention will be very beneficial to me."* The benefit was not at once apparent. Watt's patent for fourteen years had been obtained in 1769. More than five years had been spent and very little had been done. Ten years had yet to pass before the business was remunerative. Through that long time, amid all sorts of opposition from strangers and rivals, and troubles arising from defects of machinery and incompetence of workpeople, Boulton and Watt worked on very patiently and very zealously. The machines were the best that could be made in those days — days of infancy for all mechanical contrivances — and the workmen were the most skilled and intelligent that could be obtained. From the first, indeed, Boulton's workpeople were famous for their superiority over their fellows, and one of his difficulties arose from the eagerness of other masters to tempt them over to their employ. But for all that the hindrances were great, and they had tedious up-hill work for years. People were slow in buying engines, and when they had bought them, they or their servants were often stubborn and careless, so that accidents were occasioned, and good work had to be repeated needlessly and to nobody's profit. In all sorts of ways the concern was burdened and the action of its promoters was restrained. Boulton's first care, after arranging for the establishment of the works at Soho, was to send Watt to London, there to use interest for obtaining- an Act of Parliament which should secure the patent-right for four-and-twenty years more. In that he succeeded, after much opposition, by the end of May, 1775.f * Miiuhead, vol. ii., ]>. 7'J. t Smiles, pp. 207-212. Progress of the Steam-Engine. 00 A deed of partnership between Boulton and Watt was there- fore drawn up, and no time was lost in completing the works and canvassing for orders. "Jn the name of God," said Boulton, in a letter to his partner, " fall to and do your best.'"* Both men worked with wonderful energy. All Boulton's friends — and he had many in every county in England, who regarded him as about the most honest and trustworthy manufacturer then living — were canvassed for orders, and soon there was as much business to be done as they were able to get through. Several orders came from Cornwall ; and, as special diffi- culties in the use of the engines occurred there, while it was specially important that they should be favourably introduced into the great mining district, Watt paid many tedious visits to the west of England. He found many difficulties to over- come, and much ignorance had to be removed before the enterprise could prosper. " All the world are agape to see what it can do," he wrote to Boulton from Chasewater, on the arrival of an engine in September, 1777. "The velocity, violence, magnitude, and horrible noise of the engine," he added, a few weeks later, " give universal satisfaction to all beholders, believers or not. I have once or twice trimmed the engine to end its stroke gently, and to make less noise ; but Mr. Wilson " — the superintendent of the mine — " cannot sleep without it, and seems quite furious, so I have left it to the engine-men ; and, by-the-by, the noise seems to convey great ideas of its power to the ignorant, who seem to be no more taken with modest merit in an engine than in a man."t The foolish liking naturally led to opposition as foolish. " Almost the whole county is against us," Watt wrote, in the spring of 178-, "and look upon us as oppressors and tyrants, from whose power they believe the horned imps of Satan are to relieve them.":}: In that strain he often wrote. The press and worry of business perplexed him. " I fancy," * Smiles, p. 21S. t Ibid., p. 23G. I Ibid., p. 31G. 100 Boulton and Watt in Harness. we read in one letter. " that I must be eut in pieces, and a portion sent to every tribe in Israel."* "The care and atten- tion which our business requires," he complained in another, " make me at present dread a fresh order with as much horror as other people with joy receive one. What signifies it to a man though he gain the whole world, if he lose his health and his life? The first of these losses has already befallen me, and the second will probably be the consequence of it, without some favourable circumstances, which at present I cannot foresee, should prevent it."| " Solomon said that in the increase of knowledge there is increase of sorrow," he said elsewhere ; " if he had substituted business for knowledge, it would have been perfectly true. "J Boulton loved business as much as his friend loathed it. But he, too, often found it hard to hold up his head against the troubles that pressed upon him during the first ten years of his partnership with Watt. The heavy expenses to which the firm was put compelled him to seek money in every direction, to borrow of all his friends, and even then to resort to various expedients for the warding off of bankruptcy. His wife's property was mortgaged ; his own was in great measure sold. Money was raised on security of the steam- engine rovalties, the works at Soho, and all other available property. Money was also obtained, on personal security, from Thomas Day, the author of Sandford and Merton, and many other intimate acquaintances. The greatest strain came from the steam-engine business, conducted by the new firm of Boulton and Watt ; but, owing partly to the extreme attention paid to that business, the old hardware and "toy "-making firm of Boulton and Fothcrgill was found, during the eighteen years prior to ]780, to have had an excess of losses over profits to the extent of ll,000/.§ Nor was this all. Over and over again Watt's patent rights were threatened or infringed ; and great expense, of money * Smiles, p. 2.T7. t Ti,id., p. 2G9. X Ibid., p. 3G:5. § Ibid., p. 262. Their Ultimate /Success. 101 and of time, had to be incurred in legal action, Parlia- mentary influence, and the like. Yet. Boulton persevered. He knew that, if the worst should happen, there would be assets for the full payment of every debt, and that, therefore, there was no dishonesty in continuance of the enterprise ; and he never doubted that, in the long run, it would brin<r wealth to himself and his partner, and be of incalculable benefit to the nation. In due time Watt, and all his other friends, acknowledged that he was right. Previous to 1785 the engine manufactory cost more than it earned, but from that time the tide changed. Watt, till now supported by an allowance from Boulton, received from fi,000£. to 7,000Z. in 1787, as his first share of the profits,* and every later year brought him an ample income. Boulton also was a rich man at last. In the ensuing years of their prosperity, as in the many previous years of their perplexities, they were cheered by the society of some friends who contributed to make the Birmingham of eighty years ago famous as a centre of literature and science. Boulton and AVatt were men of no common mind ; they gathered round them others of rare intelligence and wisdom. Of these, not quite the earliest, but the first to go, was Dr. Small. He died, hardly more than forty years of age, in February, 1775, less than a year after Watt's settlement in Birmingham. "I have this evening bid adieu to our once good and virtuous friend for ever and ever," wrote Boulton to Watt, then in London. "If there were not a few other objects yet remaining for me to settle my affections upon, I should wish also to take up my lodgings in the mansions of the dead."f Boulton's sorrow was real and deep. " No man ever enjoyed, or deserved more the esteem of mankind." said Captain James Keir. " Mr. Boulton and myself, who were more particularly blessed with his intimacy and friendship, loved him with the tenderest affection, and * Smilk, p. 303. t MriuuKAO, Life of Walt, p, 248. 102 Boulton s Friends — Small, Kcir, Day, etc. shall ever revere his memory."* Boulton showed his rever- ence by erecting, in the prettiest and most retired part of his garden, a monument to his friend. " 'Tis a sepulchral grove," he said, " in which is a building adapted for con- templation. From one of its windows, under a Gothic arch formed by trees, you see the church in which he was interred, and no other object whatsoever, except the monument."t James Keir himself was one of Boulton's earliest and dearest friends. Watt called him " a mighty chemist and a very agreeable man/'| In partnership with Boulton and Watt, he conducted an establishment for making letter- copying machines of the sort now in general use.§ He was also author of several tracts and treatises on chemistry, and biographer of Thomas Day, who, with Dr. Withering, the botanist, and Richard Lovell Edgeworth, helped to make famous the society of Birmingham in Boulton's day. Yet more famous anion" 1 the number were Josiah Wedgwood, who often came over from his Burslem potteries ; Erasmus Darwin, who, living at Lichfield, made Birmingham almost his literary home ; and Joseph Priestley, who resided in the town from 1780 to the miserable riot-year of 1 791. "I consider my settlement at Birmingham," wrote Priestley, "as the happiest event in my life, being highly favourable to every object I had in view, philosophical or theological. I had the convenience of good workmen of every kind, and the society of persons eminent for their knowledge of chemistry, particularly Mr. Watt, Mr. Keir, and Dr. Wither- ing. These, with Mr. Boulton and Dr. Darwin, who soon left us by removing from Lichfield to Derby, Mr. Galton, and, afterwards, Mr. Johnson, of Kenilworth, and myself, dined together every month, calling ourselves the Lunar Society, because the time of our meeting was near the full moon, in order to have the benefit of its light in returning home."|| * Miirhead, Life of Watt, p. 252. f Ibid., pp. 252, 254. X Ibid., p. 178. § Smiles, p. 262. |] Memoirs of Dr. Pktlstley, by Himself, cited by Mlimiead, Life of Watt, p. o ( J2. The Lunar Society. 103 The history of this Lunar Society is full of interest. Originated, as it is supposed, by Dr. Small, it seems to have had an ill- defined existence for some years, generally meet- ing at Buulton's house on Handsworth Heath, before 177G, when it was established in an orderly way. " Pray re- member," wrote Boulton to Watt, in the February of that year, " that the celebration of the third full moon will be on Saturday, March the ord. Darwin and Keir will both be at Soho. I then propose to submit many motions to the members respecting new laws and regulations, such as will tend to prevent the decline of a society which I hope will be lasting."* Reorganized at that time, the Lunar Society had healthy life for fifteen years more, and continued in existence upwards of twenty years after that. At its meet- ings were propounded and discussed some of the most memorable inventions and discoveries of modern times. At first Darwin and Boulton were its most energetic members. Darwin's increased duties at Lichfield, and his subsequent removal to Derby, lessened his share, though not his interest, in its deliberations.! His place was soon taken by Watt. " I beg," wrote Watt to Darwin on the 3rd of January, 1781, '* that you would impress on your memory the idea that you promised to dine with sundry men of learning at my house on Monday next, and that you will realize that * Smiles, p. 3Gfc. The chapter iu which Mr. Smiles sketches the history of the Lunar Society, though far too short, gives a fuller account of its operations than is to be met with anywhere else. t "Dear Boulton," wrote Darwin from Lichfield, in April, 1778, " I am sorry the infernal divinities who visit mankind witli diseases, and are, therefore, at perpetual war with doctors, should have prevented my seeing ull your great men at Soho to-day. Lord ! what inventions, what wit, what rhetoric, metaphysical, mechanical, and pyrotcchnical, will be on the wing, bandied like a shuttle-cock from one to another of your troop of philosophers ! while poor I, I by myself, I. imprisoned in a postchaise, am joggled and jostled and bumped and bruised along the King's highroad, to make war upon a stomach-ache or a fever!'' ' I am lure," Ik; wrote from Derby, in 17S2, " cut off from the milk of science which Hows in such redundant streams from your learned lunatics, and which, 1 can assure you, is a very great regret to me." — Smiles, pp. 3G9. 370. 104 The Lunar Society. idea. There is a new book to cut up, and it is to be deter- mined whether or not heat is a compound of phlogiston and empyreal air, and whether a mirror can reflect the heat of the fire. If you are meek and humble, perhaps you may be told what light is made of, and also how to make it, and the theory proved both by synthesis and analysis."* " You know," said Darwin in reply, three days later, " there is a perpetual war carried on between the devil and holy men. Sometimes one prevails in an odd skirmish or so, and sometimes the other. Now, you must know this said devil has played me a slippery trick, and, I fear, prevented me from coming to join the holy men at your house, by sending the measles amongst nine beautiful children of Lord Paget's. For I must suppose it is a work of the devil. Surely the Lord could never think of amusing himself by setting nine innocent little animals to cough their hearts up ! Pray ask your learned society if this partial evil contributes to any public good ; if this pain is necessary to establish the subor- dination, or different links, in the chain of animation. If one was to be weaker and less perfect than another, must he therefore have pain as a part of his portion ? Pray inquire of your philosophers, and rescue me from Manicheeism. As to material philosophy, I can tell you some secrets in return for yours, namely, that atmospheric air is composed of light and the earth of water (aqueous earth) ; that water is com- posed of aqueous gas, which is displaced from its earth bv oil of vitriol."^ In that playful talk there was a foreshadowing of the dis- covery soon to be made, separately or jointly, by at least two members of the Lunar Society, of the composition and con- stituents of water. Whether the discovery was first made by Watt or Priestley, by Cavendish or by Lavoisier, doe? not concern us. Certain it is that this and all sorts of other questions were exciting general attention during the last * Mlikhead, Inventions of }]'uit, vol. ii., p. 124. t Ibid., vol. ii., p. 124. Priestley and the Birmingham Riots of 1791. 105 quarter of the eighteenth century, and nowhere more than among the members of the Lunar Society. Even Matthew Boulton was turning aside from his numerous manufacturing concerns to conduct elaborate chemical experiments, and his friend Wedgwood sought amusement in similar ways. But Priestley was the greatest chemist. Long before his removal to Birmingham, at Warrington and at Leeds, he had thought shrewdly and written learnedly on various matters of great scientific interest, and to him was in great measure due, not only the quickened attention given to those matters by the Lunar Society, but also the reconstruction of experi- mental science and the introduction of scientific influences into what was previously considered the sole domain of theology, in the world at large. The Lunar Society lost its greatest member through the Birmingham riots of 1791, immediately provoked by Priest- ley's sympathy for the leaders of the French Revolution. " About eight o'clock, on the fourteenth of July," said Watt, in a letter to one of his friends, " a mob assembled, pulled down two dissenting meeting-houses, then Dr. Priestley's house, which they razed to the ground, he and his family making their escape in time. They then destroyed a very good house in town, and some of the best houses in the country, mostly belonging to dissenters, they say to the number of ten or fifteen, and to the amount of above 100,000Z. Then was the sovereignty of the people es- tablished in full authority for three days and nights ! Quiet subjects were panic-struck ; and after some feeble efforts to establish peace, people submitted quietly to their fate. We, on our part" — that is, at Soho — " finding there was no like- lihood of any other protection, applied to our workmen, con- vinced them of the criminality, as well as imprudence, of joining the mob, and kept them all at home, procured some arms, and had their promise of defending us and themselves against all invaders. Though our principles — which are well known as friends to the established government and enemies VOL. II. i 10G Boulton s Regard for Pricstlcij. to republican principles — should have been our protection from a mob whose watchword was ' Church and King,' yet our safety was principally owing to most of the dissenters living on the south of the town ; for, after the first moments, they did not seem very nice in their discriminations of re- ligion or principles. I, among others, was pointed out as a Presbyterian, though I never was in a meeting-house in Birmingham, and Mr. Boulton is well known as a Church- man. * Both Boulton and Watt did their utmost, by writing letters of sympathy and by substantial presents, as Priestley said himself, "to set up a broken philosopher."! The last present reached him at Northumberland, in Pennsylvania, whither he had gone, after a few years of uncomfortable residence in London, in 1795. Thence, on the 17th of of October, 1801, he wrote to his old friends : — " I cannot express how much I think myself obliged to you for the noble present you have made me of a furnace and other apparatus for making large quantities of air. I have had it only a few days, and I find it, in all respects, to exceed my expectations. In this state of exile from my native country, and the friends that I most value, I am happy to have the means of prosecuting my experiments ; but everything that I make use of, substances as well as instruments, must be had from England, and, consequently, at a great expense. I am truly thankful to my friends for lessening this expense." Priestley ended his letter " with every good wish to all the members of the Lunar Society, the advantages of which," he said, " I most feelingly find the want of.":}: The good man * Muirhead, vol ii., pp. 241, 242. t lhid. t vol. ii., pp. 243, 244. X Ibid., vol. ii., pp. 275-277. 4l There are few things that I more regret, in consequence of my removal from Birmingham," he had written in 1793, " than the loss of your society. It both encouraged and enlightened me, so that what I did there of a philosophical kind ought, in justice, to be attributed almost as much to you as to myself. From our cheerful meetings I never absented myself voluntarily, and from my pleasing recollections then will never be absent. . . . Philosophy engrossed us wholly. Politicians Boulton and Watt's Steam- Engines. 107 died on the 0th of February, 1804, at the age of seventy, leaving Matthew Boulton his executor and trustee for his daughter.* Most of the original members of the Lunar Society had gone before him. Day died in 1789, Wedgwood in 1795, Withering in 1799, and Darwin in 1802. It is not necessary to trace the history of the Soho manu- factory during the years of its successful management by Boulton and Watt and their successors. At first the engines were used chiefly for mining purposes. In 17S5 an order came from the Robinsons of Papplewick for one to be em- ployed in cotton-spinning. In 1787 one was introduced by the Peels into their establishment at Burv, and three others were applied to a similar use at Nottingham. In 1789 the first cotton-spinning engine at Manchester was set up by Peter Drinkwater, and thenceforward they were quickly brought into general use in the manufacturing districts.! During the eight-and-forty years prior to 1824 there were made at Soho two hundred and eighty-three engines for pumping and blowing, eight hundred and five rotative en- gines, and seventy-six boat engines — eleven hundred and sixty-four in all.J Of these works, down to the year 1800, Matthew Boulton was the chief director. He also found for himself plenty of other occupation. Part of this was in connection with the copying-press started by himself and James Keir. Great opposition was at first offered by the bankers and others, on may think there arc no objects of any consequence besides those which immediately interest (hem. But objects far superior to any of which they have an idea engaged our attention, and the discussion of them was accompanied with a satisfaction to which they are strangers. Happy would it bo for the world if their pursuits were as tranquil, and their projects as innocent and as friendly to the best interests of mankind as ours." — MuiiiiKAi), Life of Wall, pp. 3'JG, 3'J7. * s.Mn.Ks, p. 4o<;. t Muuiikai), IiirnifiouK of Wall, vol. ii., pp. "70, 371. + MiimiKAX), Life of Watt, p. 1-3. 108 Boulton s Copying-Press. the supposition that, it would give to the dishonest facilities for forgery, and otherwise interfere with the orthodox carry- ing on of business. In May, 1780, directly after taking out a patent, Boulton submitted the scheme to the members of Parliament and to the chief merchants of London. " On Tuesday," he said, in a letter to Watt, dated the 14th of May, " I was visited by several members of both Houses, who, in general, were well pleased with the invention ; but all expressed their fears of forgery, which occasioned and obliged me to exercise my lungs very much. Many of the members tried to copy bank-notes, but in vain. I had quite a mob of members next day. Some of them mobbed me for introducing such wicked arts ; however, upon the whole, I had a greater majority than Lord North hath had this year. On Thursday I had a tolerable good House, even a better than the Speaker, who was even obliged to send his proper officer to fetch away from me the members to vote, and sometimes to make a House. I spent Friday evening with Smeaton and other engineers at a coffee-house, when a gentle- man, not knowing me, exclaimed against the copying- machine, and wished the inventor was hanged and the machines all burnt, which brought on a laugh, as I was known to most present." Before the year was out, however, a hundred and fifty machines, all that had been made as a first experiment, were disposed of, and many more were ordered.* In this same year, 17S0, Boulton was concerned in a movement very memorable in the history of Birmingham trade. It was the year in which, as we have already seen, the ' despotic sovereignty ' of the rich old brass-founders reached its highest point. In August they clubbed together and proclaimed a rise of seven and a half per cent, in the price of all brass-foundry goods. That, of course, produced great dissatisfaction among all who used those goods in their various factories and trades. Boulton seems to have taken * Smiles, pp. 2GG, 2G7. Boulton and the Brans- Founders. 109 the lead in the consequent opposition.* At any rate, he was the most influential founder and promoter of a New Brass and Spelter Company, which was established, on more liberal principles, in the spring of 1781. The principles, however, soon ceased to be liberal and, therefore, Boulton soon gave up his share in its management. The two hundred shares to which it was limited at starting were quickly taken up by a few energetic merchants of Birmingham, and in their hands it almost immediately began to emulate the ' brazen sove- reignty ' of the older manufacturers. " Congress-like," as Boulton said, " after obtaining power, they showed a dispo- sition to exercise it to their own advantage only." That was wholly opposed to Boulton's plans in starting the project. "I thought it incompatible with the original motion," he said, " and I caused a general meeting to be held in order to rectify the complaint ; but the decision of that meeting was against me." Therefore he retired from partnership in it. i" There was plenty of other occupation for his enterprising mind. During several years he was largely concerned in Cornish copper-mining, and in 1785 he was instrumental in forming a Copper Company4 It did not prosper, however, and he lost much money by the speculation. Unfortunate also to him was the Albion Mill, established at South wark in 1786, in furtherance of a project which he had started three years earlier. The design was to make use of steam power in grinding corn, partly as a commercial speculation and a help to the public by cheapening the price of bread, but yet more as an exhibition of the steam-engine in the most perfect shape that it had then attained. ' It consisted/ ac- * It can hardly be doubted that Boulton -was the author of A Serious Address to the Merchants and Manufacturers of Hardware, and particularly the Inhabitants of Birmingham and Vie adjacent towns, a very eloquent argument in favour of free-trade and commercial equality, which is quoted at length in The Resources, 1'roducls, and Industrial llisiorij of Birmingham, pp. 245-218. t Resources, &c. of Birmwgham, pp. 248-254. I Smiles, p. 340. 110 Boulton and the Albion Mill. cording to Watt's description, 'of two engines, each of fifty horse-power, and twenty pairs of millstones, of which twelve or more pairs, with the requisite machinery for dressing the flour and for other purposes, were generally kept at work. In place of wooden wheels, always subject to frequent de- rangement, wheels of cast iron, with the teeth truly formed and finished, and properly proportioned to the work, were here employed ; and other machinery, which used to be made of wood, was made of cast iron in improved forms ; and I believe the work executed here may be said to have formed the commencement of that system of mill-work which has proved so useful to this country.' For a time, from the absence of the principal managers, the mill was very badly managed. It became a famous resort of idlers, who hindered the workmen, and of speculators, who discredited the enter- prise by their rash projects. Boulton had to make a journey to London and set matters right. " The manufacturing of bubbles and new schemes," he wrote to Watt, " is removed from the mill to a private lodging." The engines were pro- perly set to work, and they succeeded in grinding and dressing wheat at the rate of 16,000 bushels a week. Before the concern had been brought to pay its expenses, however, the mill was maliciously burnt down by some enemies of the project, on the 3rd of March, 1791, four months before the Birmingham riots. Thereby Boulton lost G000Z., and Watt 3000Z.* Boulton's share in the manufacture of steam-enmnes and his many other commercial enterprises in no way lessened his interest in his original establishment for the production of hardware and other miscellaneous articles atSolio. In Soho he started all sorts of new trades, and so led to their general adoption in Birmingham. By him, for instance, the manu- facture of silver-plated goods was introduced, soon to become a staple of Birmingham commerce ; although, up to the time * Muirhead, Life of Wait, pp. 2SS, 280; Smiles, Boulton and Watt, pp. 35o-!559 ; Smiles, Lives of the Enijiucers. vol. ii., p. 1:57. Boulton s Gold and Silver Wares and Plated Goods. Ill of his death, no rival could at all compete with him in ex- cellence or honesty of workmanship.* For plated goods, indeed, as well as solid gold and silver wares, Soho was especially noted. "In the town and neighbourhood of Bir- mingham, within a few years past," said Boulton himself in 1773, " workers in gold and silver have become very numerous, together with carvers, charm-engravers, designers, enamellers, jewellers, and other artists in the precious metals, so that their productions have been sold advantageously both at home and abroad, and have become no contemptible article in the trade of this kingdom."! That statement is from a petition addressed to the Houses of Parliament, in which Boulton represented the inconvenience which he and other manufacturers suffered through having to send all their goods for assay to one or other of the towns — London, Bristol, Exeter, Norwich, Chester, York, and Newcastle — appointed for the purpose. Chester, the nearest of them, was seventy miles distant from Birmingham. " De- lays are occasioned which offend and disappoint our customers," urged Boulton ; " our works, especially the richest and most delicate of them, are very often damaged and sometimes ruined by accidents in carriage and careless packing and re- packing at the assaycr's ; a great price is paid for carriage, and our fresh designs, which have often cost us considerable sums of money, and always pains and time, are communicated to rivals before the inventors have reaped benefit from them." These and other arguments led to the establishment of an Assay Office at Birmingham, in 1773, with Boulton for its first director. * Resources of Birmingham, p. 478.—" It is said that, in order to prove that the ' silver mountings,' of which all the ornamental parts of the articles were made, were indeed silver, Mr. Boulton used to send a small tile with the goods to his customer, that he might test the quality of the metal used. So richly were the articles first made at Soho, that the daily use of forly years has scarcely made them ' bleed.' " t Petition r<hitin: to Assaying and Making II' ' r ought Plate at Birmingham in t)ie British Museum. 112 Boulton s Improvement of the Coinage. From making gold and silver ornaments, Boulton passed to the coining of gold and silver money. The most important of all his projects, except the engine manufactory at Soho, was, perhaps, his establishment of the Soho Mint, leading to a general reformation of the coinage. It grew out of his honest indignation at the quantity of spurious coin manu- factured by some of his disreputable neighbours. Bad management at the Mint, and the inventive spirit which suddenly burst into activity about a century ago, and which, while putting great numbers in the way of honest advance- ment, encouraged a few to enrich themselves in lawless ways, had made the coining of bad money a regular branch of trade, with Birmingham for its head-quarters. There were Brummagen guineas, shillings, and notes, as well as Brum- magen goods of other sorts. Matthew Boulton, while re- forming all other branches of trade in his native town, de- termined to reform this also. " I lately," he wrote to a friend in December, 1787, "received a letter from a Jew about making him a large quantity of base money ; but I should be sorry ever to become so base as to execute such orders. On the contrary, I have taken some measures to put a stop to the execution of them by others ; and if Mr. Butcher hath any plan of that sort he would do well to guard against me, as I certainly shall endeavour all in my power to prevent the counterfeiting of British or other money, that being the principle on which I am acting." * As early as 1774, that is, from the time of his first settling in Birmingham, Watt says, in a manuscript memoir of his friend, that Boulton was in the habit of talking with him about the improvement of the coinage ; but for some years he only talked. ' When the new coinage of gold took place,' as we are told by Watt, 'Mr. Boulton was employed to receive and collect the old coin, which served to revive his ideas on the subject of coinage, which he had long considered to be capable of great improvement. Among other things * Smiles, Boullon and Watt, pp, 3S7, 3SS. Establishment of the Soho Mint. 113 he conceived that the coin should all be struck in collars, to make it exactly round and of one size, which was by no means the case with the ordinary gold pieces ; and that, if thus made, and of one thickness, the purity of the gold might be tested by passing it through a gauge or slit in a piece of steel, made exactly to fit a properly-made coin, lie had accordingly a proof guinea made, with a raised border, and the letters en creux, somewhat similar to the penny pieces he afterwards coined for Government. This completely answered his intention, as any piece of baser metal which filled the gauge was found to be considerably lighter ; or, if made to the proper weight, then it would not go through the gauge. Such money was also less liable to wear in the pocket than the common coin, where all the impression was prominent/* Boulton submitted his improvement to the Mint, and sig- nified his readiness to contract for any work that might be given to him. Nothing was done by the Government for some time yet ; but the East India Company employed him to coin some money for its use, and at a later date similar orders came in from the colonies. In 1786 he brought a skilful machinist from France, and with help from some of the best engineers in England — William Murdoch, Peter Ewart, John Southern, and John Lawson in especial — set up the Soho Mintf "This Mint," according to his own de- scription, given in 1792, " consists of eight large coining- machines, which are sufficiently strong to coin the largest money in current use, or even medals ; and each machine is capable of being adjusted in a few minutes, so as to strike any number of pieces of money from fifty to one hundred and twenty per minute, in proportion to their diameter and degree of relief. Each machine requires the attendance ol * S. MILKS, p. 389. t "God only knows the anxiety and unremitting perseverance of your father to accomplish this end,'' wrote Lawson, to Boulton's son. in 1S10, "and we all aided and assisted to the best of our powers, without ever considering by whose contrivance anything was brought to hear. '—Smii.es, pp. 3'.t0, 31.11. 114 Boultons Improvement of the Coinage. one boy of only twelve years of age, and he lias no labour to perform. He can stop his press one instant and set it goinrr again the next. As the blows given by this machinery are much more uniform than what are given by the strength of men's arms when applied to the working of the common press, the dies are not so liable to break, nor the spirit of the engraving to be so soon injured. It is capable of striking at the rate of 26,000 English crowns, or 50,000 of half their diameter, in one hour, and of working night and day, without fatigue to the boys, provided two sets of them work alter- nately for ten hours each." * This Mint being set up, Boulton offered the Privy Council to coin all the money used in England, proposing to begin with copper, and to do that at " not exceeding half the expense which the copper coin hath always cost at his Majesty's Mint."t In 1797, after ten years' delays, his offer was accepted. For nine years he coined all the two- penny, penny, halfpenny, and farthing pieces issued in Eng- land — some four thousand two hundred tons in all — besides doing a great deal of work for foreign countries, and pro- ducing nearly all the tokens employed by private tradesmen. He also used his presses for striking off various medals, or, as he called it, " establishing elegant records of the medallic arts in the reign of George the Third." For this, Benjamin West, Flaxman, Nollekens, and other artists aided him with designs. A series of medals in commemoration of the French revolution was so famous that in one instalment twenty tons of them were sent to Paris. J By these and others he made much money. Others, again, he struck to give away. One, the Trafalgar Medal, in honour of Nelson's victory, was issued by him in a very graceful way. An impression was given to every officer and man engaged in the famous battle, and then the dies were destroyed, in order that no more copies might be produced. § * Smiles, pp. 3%, 397. t Ibid., p. 392. ; Ibid., pp. 31)4-3%. § Mui;iil.\l>. Life of Watt, p. J74. Boulton s Last Work. 115 But Boulton's services in this respect only began with the construction of the Soho Mint. When, in 180(5, the new Mint on Tower Hill was set up, he was commissioned to build and fit it on the model of the Soho establishment, lie also furnished jMints for Russia, Spain, Denmark, Mexico, Calcutta, and Bombay. ' Had Mr. Boulton done nothing more in the world than he has accomplished in improving the coinage,' said Watt, ' his name would deserve to be im- mortalized ; and if it be considered that this was done in the midst of various other important avocations, and at enormous expense — for which at the time he could have no certainty of an adequate return — we shall be at a loss whether most to admire his ingenuity, his perseverance, or his munificence. He has conducted the whole more like a sovereign than a private manufacturer ; and the love of fame has always been to him a greater stimulus than the love of gain.' * While he was finishing his reformation of the coinage, Boulton was slowly dying of a painful malady. In 1800, on the completion of their bond of partnership and the cessation of their patent rights, he and Watt had left the management of the engine manufactory to their sons, Matthew Robinson Boulton and James Watt the younger. Watt went to spend nineteen years in happy retirement, in the society of the learned friends who crowded round him, and in pleasant continuance of the mechanical inventions and the philosophical studies that had engrossed him in earlier years. Boulton could not shake off his harness. He must ' either rub or rust,' he used to say. Giving special heed to the operations at the Soho Mint, he continued his oversight of the older works, every year increasing through the energy and wisdom with which he had organized them. " It is necessary for me," he wrote to Watt on the 10th of October, 1802, "to pass a great part of my time in or upon the bed ; nevertheless, I go down to the Manufactory or the Mint once or twice a day, without injuring myself as heretofore, but not without some * Smili>, pp. 39S, 39'J. 116 Matthew Boulton'' s Death. fatigue."' * Over and over again his friends begged him to abstain from work. " While you suffer yourself to be in- truded upon in the manner you do," wrote Watt in 1804, " you can never enjoy that quiet which is now so necessary to your health and comfort ;" and Watt's good old wife added a postscript, saying she could wish that it would rain every day in the year, if so Mr. Boulton might be hindered from walking to the works, and there wearying himself with em- ployment that should be left to younger inen.f lie could not work much longer. " If you wish to see me living," he wrote to his daughter m March, 1809 — his wife was already dead — " pray come soon, for I am very ill." J In agonizing pain he lived for five months longer. He died on the 17th of August, 1809, eighty-one years of age. A notable gathering of friends, and of the sons and grandsons of friends who had gone before him, with four hundred of his oldest and most attached workmen, followed him to his place of burial in Handsworth churchyard.§ Boulton had outlived the jealousies of rivals and the fears of friends. " To his generous patronage, the active part he took in the management of the business, his judicious advice, and his assistance in contriving and arranging many of the applications of the steam-engine to various machines," wrote Watt, " the public are indebted for great part of the benefits they now derive from that machine. His active and sanguine disposition served to counterbalance the despondency and diffidence which were natural to him. Without him, or some similar partner — could such an one have been found — the invention could never have been carried by me to the length * Smiles, p. 4G2. f Ibid., pp. 474, 475. X Ibid., p. 477. § The coffin, borne by hand for a distance of three-quarters of a mile, was attended by " forty-two gentlemen, heads of the manufactories, five hundred men employed in the manufactories at Soho, sixty women employed in the manufactories," and numerous private mourners. Eighteen singers, in cloaks, preceded, singing appropriate psalms the whole way. All the beadles of Birmingham were on horseback, and kept the way open. — Documents relative to the Funeral of MaWiew Boulton (Birmingham, 1S11). Matthew Boulton s Character. 117 that it has been. Mr. Boulton was not only an ingenious mechanic, well skilled in all the arts of the Birmingham manufacturers, but he possessed in a high degree the faculty of rendering any new adventure of his own or of others useful to the public by organizing and arranging the pro- cesses by which it could be carried on, as well as of promoting the Side by his own exertions and those of numerous friends and correspondents. His conception of the nature of any invention was quick, and he was not less quick in perceiving the uses to which it might be applied and the profits that might accrue from it. When he took any scheme in hand he was rapid in executing it, and on those occasions spared neither trouble nor expense. He was a liberal encourager of merit in others, and to him the country is indebted for various improvements which have been brought forward under his auspices." * According to the report of a younger friend, ' he was tall and of noble appearance. His temperament was sanguine, with that slight mixture of the phlegmatic which imparts calmness and dignity. His manners were eminently open and cordial. He took the lead in conversa- tions, and, with a social heart, had a grandiose manner, like that arising from position, wealth, and habitual command. He went about among his people like a monarch bestowing largess.' f He chose good workmen and made them his friends. The story of his first meeting with William Murdoch, a rough country lad, and his choice of him as an apprentice because of his self-made hat, has been often told.;}; Murdoch became a rich and famous engineer, and many others who came to Boulton as common labourers, left him — or oftener stayed with him — to become prosperous masters in their calling. He always made careful search for the best workmen, but, * Smiles, pp. 485, 4 SO. + Autobiography of Mary Anne Sciiimmelrenninck (London, 1858), p. 40. * Smiles, p. 255. IIS Matthew Boultons Character. unlike some others of his time, to whom with reason he made indignant remonstrance, he would never engage any in dis- honourable ways. " I have had many offers and opportunities of taking your people, whom I could, with convenience to myself, have employed," he wrote in 17G9, to John Taylor, the great and not very generous manufacturer and banker of Birmingham, " but it is a practice I abhor." * From honour- able motives he refused to follow the practice, then coming into fashion, of receiving gentlemen-apprentices. He thought it better to take all his pupils from the labouring classes, and so help those who had less chance of helping themselves. " 1 have built and furnished a house," he said to an applicant who came prepared to pay a premium of several hundred pounds, " for the reception of one kind of apprentices, father- less children, parish apprentices, and hospital boys ; and gentlemen's sons would probably find themselves out of place in such companionship." f Of both boys and men in his establishment he took ex- cellent care. He called Soho his school of industry ; he also did his best to make it a school of economy. Every labourer was bound to contribute one-sixtieth of his weekly earnings to a Mutual Assurance Society in connection with the works ; and thereby an ample fund was collected for the assistance of all its members during sickness and old agre. In all other ways he watched over and aided his workpeople. Soho be- came the wonder of all visitors for the excellent order in which everything was arranged and the good effect thus produced upon the labourers. " Have pity on them, bear with them, give them another trial," he used to say to Watt, or any others who had less patience than himself. " True wisdom directs us, when we can, to turn evil into good. We must take men as we find them, and try to make the best of them." % Boswell visited Soho in 177G, and observed a pleasant instance of Doulton's treatment of his men. ' One of them * Smiles, p. 178 f Ibid. % Ibid., pp. 4S0, 4S1. His Place in Commercial History. 119 came to him complaining grievously of his landlord for having distrained his goods. " Your landlord is in the right, Smith," said Boulton, " but I'll tell you what — find a friend who will lay down one half of your rent, and I'll lay down the other, and you shall have your goods again." ' * 'I shall never forget Mr. Boulton's expression to me when surveying the works,' adds Boswell. ' " I sell here, sir, what all the world desires to have — Power." I contemplated him as an iron chieftain, and he seemed to be a father of his tribe.' \ The great works at Soho have been surpassed by other works both in and out of Birmingham ; but the noble man who founded them must still be honoured as, more than any other, the father of modern manufacturing industry — first of the 'iron chieftains' whom his example has made numerous and powerful indeed. i ' Sjiiles, p. 479. t Ibid., p. 47S. 120 CHAPTER XXL THE COUTTSES OF EDINBURGH AND LONDON. [1720-1822.] Sir Francis Child, the first English banker, according to the strict meaning of the term, had many followers during the eighteenth century. Goldsmiths, like Child, gave up their trade in trinkets and devoted themselves wholly to trade in money, often before combined by them with their humbler craft ; and merchants and dealers of all sorts soon found it to their advantage to devote themselves to the new and profitable business. In this way banks were established all over the country, the oldest after Child's being the Old Gloucester Bank, as it came to be known, founded in 1710 by James Wood, who, from keeping a mere chandler's shop, proceeded to deal in bills as well as soap and candles, and at length became the guardian of half the floating wealth of the western counties. His grandson, famous for his stingy habits, died in 1836, leaving a million of money to be quarrelled over by his relations, and wasted by them in law- suits.* In like manner the London banking house of Smith, Payne and Smith, owes its origin to the enterprise of a Nottingham draper, who, early in the eighteenth century, began to serve both his customers and himself, by holding for them their gains, to be prudently invested and returned to them with interest when they asked for it. The eldest Smith * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. vi. (New Series), p. 102. The Elder Couttses. 121 thus became a banker in Nottingham ; his son extended the business to Lincoln and Hull ; and his grandson, taking a Mr. Payne as partner, transferred it to London.* No other country bankers, however, were so famous as the Couttses. All through the seventeenth century the Couttses were important people in Montrose ; but the world at large knew nothing of them until one of the family, Patrick bv name, sought a wider field of enterprise than the quiet country town afforded. In 1004, the year in which his famous countryman, "William Paterson, was founding the Bank of England, we find him described as ' a merchant of Montrose,' busy buying serges and worsted stuff's in Leeds, for ship- ment to Sweden. Next year, or the year after, he removed to Edinburgh, and there, up to the time of his death in 1704, he carried on his business, engaging in mercantile adventures to New York and Pennsylvania, Amsterdam, France, and the Canary Islands. He left about 2500/. to be divided between three children, of whom the eldest, John, was only five years old.f John was educated among his kinsmen at Montrose, and there he seems to have stayed till he was twenty years of age. Then he returned to Edinburgh, to pass some time as apprentice to a merchant of the town, and in 1723 to start, with the little fortune left him by his father, in business on his own account. Therein he prospered, being ranked, in 1780, as first merchant councillor in the town council of Edinburgh. At one time he was in partnership with Thomas Haliburton, Sir Walter Scott's great-grandfather; then— from 1740 to 1744 — he had a Robert Ramsay for his asso- ciate ; and from near the latter year, his wife's cousin, Archibald Trotter, was his partner. ' Their business.' says * Lavson, History of Hank nig ''London, 1850), p. 2C4. t Memoirs of « Banking House, by the lulc Su: William Foi:i;i>, of l'itsligo, Dart., Author of the ' Life of Dr. Beattio/ edited by Mr. Eobekt Chamiikiss '.London, 18(50), pp. 1,'i To this interesting little work I aiu indebted for nearly all the information given above concerning the early Couttses and their Edinburgh business. VOL. II, K 122 John Coutts, the Elder, of Edinburgh. one who afterwards was a clerk, and ultimately senior partner in the house. ' was dealing in corn, buying: and selling goods on commission, and the negotiation of bills of exchange on London, Holland, France, Italy, Spain, and Portugal. The negotiation of bills of exchange formed at that period a con- siderable part of the business of Edinburgh ; for there were then no country banks, and consequently the bills for the exports and imports of Perth, Dundee, Montrose, Aberdeen, and other trading towns in Scotland, with Holland, France, and other countries, were negotiated at Edinburgh.'* In this sort of business John Coutts found plenty to do, and managed to make a large amount of money. Other money came to him about this time from one of his brothers, who, having prospered as a merchant in London, and dying early, left all his earnings, some 20,000/., to the Edinburgh mer- chant and bill-broker, and thus much increased his influence. ' Being a man of high character as a merchant, as well as of very popular and agreeable manners, John Coutts lived with a degree of hospitality and expense not usual in the family of a merchant at that period.' Thereby he was well quali- fied to fill the office of Lord Provost of Edinburgh, to which he was elected in 1742. He was the first Lord Provost, we are told, who broke through the old custom of holding all civic entertainments at a tavern, when the expense was borne by the city, and, taking the provision and management of the hospitalities altogether into his own hands, conducted them in his own house. Therein, however, he did himself much harm. ' Unfortunately,' we read, ' he was thus led into excesses of the tabic, and other indulgences, which at length hurt his constitution.' In 1 749 he was forced to seek change and better health by travelling in Italy. Failing in that, he died at Naples in the spring of 1750, ' beloved and regretted by all his acquaintance, who overlooked the imperfections of his character when they thought of him as the upright citizen * Mdiinirs of a Banking House, p. 3, where is a portrait of John Coutts, from ,i painting by Iianisay. His Sons and Successors. 123 and useful magistrate, ever zealous in the service of his friends, and a most agreeable member of society.'* He left four boys, named Patrick, John, James, and Thomas, to share his business with their cousin Trotter. But the lads were too young and giddy, and Trotter was too sleepy and lazy, to carry it on with advantage. ' As neither his person nor manners were at all calculated to command their respect, his young friends were constantly teasing him with little boyish, roguish tricks. One consisted in their putting a live mouse under the cover of his inkstand, and watch in"' with glee for the start he was to give, when, on his lifting the lid, the animal jumped out, to the no small amusement, as might be expected, of the whole counting- house. 'f Therefore, Trotter was got rid of. He went to make a paltry living for himself as agent, on behalf of the Edinburgh bankers, in carrying on a curious quarrel then raging between them and the moneyed men of Glasgow, his business being to collect notes and present them for payment at all sorts of in- convenient times, and in all sorts of vexatious ways.j A new partner was found for the young brothers Coutts in a John Stephen, their uncle and a wine merchant. This John Stephen's son was also introduced into the firm, and sent to aid in mana£nnjr a branch establishment in London. With hirn went the eldest and the youngest of John Coutts's sons, Patrick and Thomas, their residence and place of business being in Jeffrey's Square, Saint Mary Axe, and their chief employment being the buying and selling of goods on com- mission. The two other sons, John and .lames, with the elder Stephen, remained in Edinburgh. 'They lived in the same house which their father had inhabited, being the * Mcnvh-a of a lhr,,l;ii,r\ Unuzc, p. 4. t ////(/., \>\>. 1, « r >. + H< certain! v was often treated with inconvenience and vexation in return. Once lie was nil day loim t'.>r thirty-four days obtaining |.ay:nent fir hills aaionntiiiir in all to "IXX',1. : one whole forenoon hcim; passed in receiving 7/.. <\>>\-'\ out in si x : >< ii"- s. one after another, as slo\vl_\ as iin.-vvible. — M..n(uir.< of a lni:ihiu<} //<<«.-■■.. p]). 5. u\ 124 John Coutts and Company in Edinburgh. second floor of the Presidents Stairs in the Parliament Close ; and they continued in the same line of business of banking and exchange which their father had carried on. Like him, too they dealt very largely in corn. They had a settled agent in Northumberland, residing at Fcnwick, who was employed to make purchases of corn for the house, and for none else, in that country. Others at Aberdeen, at Portroy, and at Dundee, made purchases for the house in the fertile corn countries of Perth, Forfar, Kincardine, Aberdeen, Banff, and Moray ; and two others, again, in Caithness and in Ross-shire, both of them gentlemen of landed property, but also men of business, though not, strictly speaking, merchants, made purchases for the house on their joint account in those northern counties. In England the house had large quanti- ties of corn shipped for them at Yarne and at Stockton, in Yorkshire ; at Lynn Regis, Fakenham, and Yarmouth, all in the rich county of Norfolk ; at Haverfordwest, in South Wales ; and by the noted Cooper Thornhill, who at that time kept the Bell Inn at Hilton, and wa» one of the most considerable corn-factors in England.'* They also procured corn from Belfast and Droghcda ; and occasionally even imported wheat from Dantzic and Konigsberg. The Couttses were certainly the largest and the most adventurous corn-dealers in Scotland, perhaps in all Great Britain, a hundred years ago. ' When I reflect on the * 'It was he' says the same informant,' who performed the extraordinary ride from Hilton to London, back to Hilton, and thence to London again, being '1'lr) miles, in 12 hours 17 minutes, lie set out at four o'clock in tin morning of llic 29 th April, 17io, and came to the Queen's Anns, opposite Shorediteh Church, in :'. hours and fi2 minutes; returned again to Ililfon in 4 hours and 12 minutes, and came hack to London in 4 hours and JH minutes. He was allowed 15 hours for the task, and as many horses as In plotted, which he had ready waiting him at various places on the road. He was so little fatigued hy this exploit that he rode next day ;is if nothing had happened. The mad was lined with spectators (o sic him pass and repass, and many thousands, besides his own wager of .jOO guineas, depended on the performance. Mr. Thornhill, though he kept an inn, was much respected for hi.- gentlemanlike manners, and generally hroughi to table hy hit guests.' — j\hiiu:irn of a Buuhimj Jloutc, pp. C-JS. Their Corn-Trade and Banking Business. 125 extent of all their correspondence,' says their sometime clerk, Sir William Forbes, ' and the combination of such a variety of intelligence respecting the prices of corn at all those different places, compared with the prices in the different parts of Scotland, I cannot but wonder at the boldness of enterprise which led them to embark in such a perilous traffic. Some years they made large profits, which they as often lost in others, owing to the fluctuation of markets, and the bankruptcy of many of those with whom they dealt. Indeed, I have often thought it not a little singular that a banking-house, which, of all branches of business, seems peculiarly to require caution, and which ought, as much as possible, to be kept clear of every undertaking of hazard or speculation, should have chosen to embark so largely in the corn-trade, which is perhaps the most liable to sudden fluc- tuation, and in which no human prudence or insurance can guard the adventurers from frequent loss.'* Yet in combining banking transactions with general com- merce, the Couttses only did as nearly all other bankers were accustomed to do in the middle of the eighteenth cen- tury. Neither in Edinburgh nor out of it were there many bankers in the strict sense of the term. At that time the leading men of business in Edinburgh, after the Couttses, were James Mansfield, a linen-draper, who, having made money in his trade, proceeded to make more by dealing in bills of exchange, and at length founded the famous banking- house of Mansfield and Company, afterwards Mansfield, Ramsay, and Company, and then Ramsay, Bonars, and Company ; William Cuming, who in like manner combined banking with the cloth business that he had inherited from his father ; and William Alexander and Sons, who began as tobacco merchants and ended as money-lenders of great repute, f None of these, however, were, or ever became, as famous as the Couttses. Having in 1750 firmly established them- * Memoirs of a Banking House, p. 8. t Ibid., p. 9. 12(1 James and Thomas Coutts of London. selves both in Edinburgh and in London, they proceeded to extend their engagements in both places, neglecting none of the general commerce, but especially aiming at increase of the banking business. In 1754 there were in Edinburgh only four clerks and two apprentices, besides the three partners, and in London the three other partners seem to have done nearly all the work by themselves. But in that year great changes began. In August, James, the third of the four, went on a visit, to his brothers in London, where he fell in love with a Miss Polly Peagrim, whose uncle, George Campbell, originally a goldsmith in the Strand, had come to be an influential banker, patronized by all the ^ T higs, while his near neighbour and rival, Andrew Drummond, had the friendship of the Tories. Before the year was out, young Coutts was married to the niece, settled in London, and made a partner in the new firm of Campbell and Coutts. In 1760 his father-in-law died, and he then took his brother Thomas into partnership, the house being thenceforth known as that of James and Thomas Coutts.* Patrick and John thus were left alone in possession of the original business, the one in London, the other in Edinburgh. ' Patrick was a man of elegant and agreeable manners, but more inclined to the study of books than to application to business.' He soon abandoned it altogether. Going on the Continent for pleasure and for health, he met with an accident prejudicial to both. At Lisle he was walking on the ramparts, jotting down some short-hand notes in his pocket-book, when a bystander came to the conclusion that he was a spv, and accordingly informed against him. He was thrown into prison, and there detained several months, before his friends could satisfy the authorities of his honesty, and procure his release. That trouble seems to have strength- ened certain eccentricities in his character, and soon after his return to England, he had to be lodged in a London madhouse, there to remain through more than forty years-! * Memoirs of a Banking House, pp. 12, 13. t JhuL, p. 1!'. John Coutts, the Younger, of Edinburgh. 127 John Coutts had died before that misfortune occurred. lie appeal's to have been the best of all the four brothers. * Lively and well-bred, and of very engaging manners,' says Sir William Forbes, ' he had the happy talent of uniting a love of society and public amusements with a strict attention to business. While resembling his father in his general manners more than did any of his brothers, he was more correct in his conduct ; nor do I recollect to have ever seen him but once in the counting-house disguised with liquor, and incapable of transacting business.' We may infer that he was often so disguised when not in the counting- house ; but no Scotchman pretending to be a gentleman and a pleasant member of good society could be expected to be otherwise at that period. Even in the strictest walks of business, room was found for merrymaking and good fellow- ship. ' In those days,' we are told, ' it was the custom for the merchants and bankers in Edinburgh to assemble re°:u- larly every day at one o'clock at the Cross, where they transacted business with each other, and talked over the news of the day ; and as there were among the merchants at that time several gentlemen of a literary turn, and possessed of considerable powers of conversation, we were joined by many who had no concern in the mercantile world, such as physicians and lawyers, who frequented the Cross nearly with as much regularity as the others, for the sake of gossip- ing and amusement merely.' In that pleasant little business- world, not so oppressed with the burdens and cares of business as now-a-days, John Coutts was thoroughly at home. Un- fortunately he died in 17(51, before he was thirty years of age.* Thus it happened that, before the end of 1701, there were no Couttscs left in the old house of John Coutts and Com- pany. The name, however, lasted for a long time ; and the business — the banking business, at any rate — has lasted to this day. The two surviving and sane brothers, who had * Memoirs of a Hanking 7/oi«c, pp. 10, 11. 128 Sir William Forbes and Robert Herrics. established themselves in the Strand, having still an interest in the firm as guardians of poor mad Patriek, promoted two of their old clerks, Sir William Forbes and James Hunter, afterwards Sir James Hunter Blair, to be partners in the business, with Robert Herries, a London merchant of in- fluence, at the head of the firm. Herries cared more for merchandize than for banking. He conducted great specu- lations in all sorts of articles, and brought to the house much wealth, albeit at great risk, as agent of the Farmers-general of France for the purchase of tobacco in England, especially in Glasgow, then the head-quarters of this trade. He also conceived a bold plan for providing European travellers with circular letters of credit, and with that end set up an office in Saint James's Street, London, where is still conducted the bank that bears his name. But he was too speculative for his partners. Therefore they separated in 1775; and, from that time till his death in 1806, Sir William Forbes was the chief manager of the great Edinburgh bank of Forbes and Company, amalgamated with the Union Bank of Scotland in 183&* He was not famous as a banker alone. * Mr. Scott came to breakfast,' says Boswell, ' at which I introduced to Dr. Johnson and him my friend Sir William Forbes, a man of whom too much good cannot be said ; who, with dis- tinguished abilities and application in his profession of a banker, is at once a good companion and a good Christian, which, I think, is saying enough. 'f Of him, too, the son of 'Mr. Scott' said, in Marmion, "Far may we search before we find A heart so manly and so kind ! And not around his honoured urn Shall friends alone and kindred mourn ; The thousand eyes his care had dried Pour at his name a bitter tide : And frequent falls the grateful dew For benefits the world ne'er knew." In the meanwhile the house of James and Thomas Coutts * Memoirs of a Banking House, pp. 15-91. f Tour to (lie Hebrides. The Jloares of London. 129 in London was steadily advancing in wealth and influence. From the first it chiefly aimed at extending the aristocratic connection started by George Campbell, leaving the city business in the hands of the banking-houses already esta- blished on the other side of Temple Bar. Of these the two most notable had been founded by the Hoares and the Barclays. Henry lloare, the son of a humble Buckinghamshire farmer, was a merchant in London about the middle of the seventeenth century.* His son Richard, born in 1048, was famous in his day for his good business qualities and his public services, for his wealth, and the good use to which he put it. ' He not 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 president of Christ's Hospital, and one of its leading benefactors. He was Member of Parlia- ment for the city of London from 1710 to 1713, and in the latter year, having been knighted, he served as Lord Mayor.} He was related, both in business and in some unexplained way of kinship, to a James Hore or Hoare, one of several goldsmiths who, according to a list drawn up in 1G77, kept ' running cashes ' for the benefit of their customers. For many years this James Hore issued bills or notes payable on presentation at his shop, known by its sign of a Golden Bottle, in Cheapside.§ lie died in 1G94 ; but some two years or more before his death 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 1718, it seems to have descended intact to his three sons. Of these sons, Richard, a merchant in Watling Street, died in 1720 ; John, a Turkey merchant, died in 1721 ; and Henry, who * Sir lticiiAKD Colt Hoaie, Pedigrees and Memoirs of the Families of Hove and lloare fliatli, 1S1!» , pp. 1. 2. t YVii.Foini, Memorials and Characters (London, 17JI , p. 777. ; Hwakl, pp. 3, -J'J, '11. § Ibid., p. li». i:j(J The Hoarcs of London. directed the goldsmith's and banker's business in Fleet Street, died in 1725." The youngest son seems to have been the ablest and worthiest. 'His behaviour was such,' we are assured by one of his friends, ' 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, 2000/. to be spent in distributing Bibles, prayer-books and religious works, and other large sums to be applied in various bene- volent ways.| Henry Iloare had two sons. To the elder, Henry, born in 1705, descended the mercantile property in London, and various estates in Wiltshire and Dorset, of which Srourhcad was the chief. The younger, Richard, was also partner in the business. He was Sheriff of London in 1745, and won for himself some honour by his skilful and honest perform- ance of his duties during the rebellion of that year.$ But he died at the age of forty-five ; and his brother, surviving him by more than forty years, was the chief promoter of the fame and influence of the banking-house, which he directed during more than half a century. Having, as he afterwards declared, wasted his youthful years in the fashionable pursuits of his time — hunting, drinking, and gambling — he soon re- pented of his folly, and spent the remainder of his long life, covering eighty years, in diligent and honest money-making and enlightened studies out of business hours. Of his ample wealth he applied 100,000/. to the adornment of his house and grounds at Stourhead, and with other thousands he improved his other estates in Dorsetshire and Wiltshire. All these, with rare generosity, he gave, in 1783, as a wedding present to his grandson, Sir Richard Colt Iloare, the famous antiquary of AYiltshirc ; reserving to himself only the house on Clapham Common which he had built for * IIOAiiE, pp. o, 2, 9. f Wii.kor]), pp. 777, 77S. * HOAHK, p. 11. The Barclays of London. 131 convenience of access to his banking-house in Fleet Street. lie died in 1785.* Of mind as generous, though differently shaped, were his brother bankers, the Barclays. David Barclay, the commer- cial head of the house, was the son of Robert Barclay of Ury, author of the Apology for the Quakers. Soon after his father's death, in 1 (>!)(), when he was only ten or eleven vears old, David was apprenticed to James Taylor, a merchant of the Drapers' Company. Indue time he married his master's only daughter, and succeeded to the business. He after- wards married Priscilla Freame, daughter of John Freame, a goldsmith who, like James Hore, kept 'running cashes ' at his house in Lombard Street in 1077. Bv the two marriages he had, besides several daughters, four sons ; James, who married a Sarah Freame, and became an influential member of the old banking-house of Freame, Barclay, and Freame ; Alexander, who settled in Philadelphia ; and David and John, who, for some time, at any rate, were chiefly employed in the mercantile establishment in Cheapsidc.f There old David Barclay lived and worked to the last. From some time previous to 1733, when he renewed his lease, at an annual rental of 140/., he was in occupation of the old house, 108, Cheapsidc, exactly opposite to Bow Church, built by Sir Edward Waldo.} It was a house long noted as almost the best in the city for watching the procession of the Lord Mayor's Show. Thither, and for that purpose, the Duke of York had taken his daughters Mary and Anne, in 1G77. There, many other royal visits having been paid to it in the intervening years, George the Third went with his family, in 17(51, ' to sec the city procession, in a balcony hung with crimson silk and damask. '§ Great were the preparations made for this visit by the homely Quaker and his house- * HoxitE, pp. 10, 11, 20-30. f Mounts Charles Jones:, Reminiscences connected with an Old Oak PanelliiKj (Welshpool, 1S01), p. 39. I Ibid., p. VI. § Annual lleijister for 17G1, p. 230. 132 Old David Barclay hold ;* and to the consequent favour of the King' is. in part, attributed the rapid progress of the Barclays in money- making. * la Mr. Jones's interesting pamphlet, drawn up in consequence of his having gained possession of the old panelling of Waldo's and Barclay's house, are printed two curious letters, of which some portions are here extracted. One of them was written by John Frcamc, David Barclay's brother-in-law, to his sister. He says that, " in the first place, brother Barclay 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 appeared 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. Barclay and his family, who were introduced to him by the lords-in-waiting, and kindly received ; and brother, with all his sous, 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 the royal family." " The Queen, with others of the family, and several of the nobility, refreshed 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 entertainment." " 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 condescension (I am told) so affected the old gentleman, 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." The other letter, by one of Barclay's daughters, is more minute in its details. "I fully intended," she begins, "before I received your last packet, to make choice of the first opportunity to give you a sketch of the honours we received, and to inform you that the splendour, with every other circumstance relating to the important day, far exceeded the utmost stretch of our imagination, and has left so pleasing an impression that I am tempted to wish that Old Time would forget to erase it.'' ..." Next the drawing-room door was placed ourselves, I mean my papa's children; for, to the great mortification of our visitors, none else were allowed to enter and his Royal Guests. 133 That they did progress is certain. Old David Barclay died soon after this memorable visit of 1701. His eldest the drawing-room ; for, as kissing the King's hand without kneeling was an honour never before conferred, his majesty chase to confine that mark of condescension to our own family, as a return for the trouble we had been at upon the occasion. After the royal pair had shown themselves to the populace for a few moments from the balcony, we were all introduced ; and you may believe that, at that juncture we felt no small palpitations. His Majesty met us at the door, which was a condescension wo did not expect; at which place he saluted us with great politeness, and, advancing to the end of the room, we performed the ceremony of kissing the Queen's hand, at sight of whom we were all in raptures, not only from the brilliancy of her appearance, which was pleasing beyond description, but being throughout her whole person possessed of that inexpressible something that is beyond a set of features, and equally claims our attention. To be sure, she has not a fine face, but a most agreeable countenance ; is vastly genteel, with an air, and, notwithstanding her being a little woman, is truly majestic, and I really think by her manner expressed that complacency of disposition which is perfectly amiable ; and, though I never could perceive that she deviated from that dignity which belongs to a crowned head, yet, on the most trifling occasion, she displayed all that easy behaviour that elegant negligence can bestow." " Her hair, which is of a light colour, was in what is called coronation ringlets, with a circle of diamonds, so beautiful in themselves, and so prettily disposed as will admit of no description." " The lustre of her stomacher was inconceivable, being one of the presents she received while Princess of Mecklenburg, on which was represented, by the vast profusion of diamonds placed on it, the magnificence attending so great a prince, who, I must tell you, 1 think a fine personable man ; and the singular marks of honour by him bestowed on us, declares his heart disposed to administer all the pleasure and satisfaction that royalty can give. Nothing could have added to the scene, but that of conversing with the Queen, who inquired if we could speak French, for that purpose, and so flattered our vanity as to tell the lady-in-waiting that the greatest mortifica- tion she had met with since her arrival in England, was her not being able to converse with us." "The same ceremony was performed of kissing the hand with the Princess Dowager, Amelia, Augusta, and the Dukes of Cumberland and York, and the other princes, who followed the King's example in complimenting each of us with a kiss, but not till their majesties had left the room ; for you must know there were proper apartments provided, to give the rest of the royal family an opportunity of paying and receiving compliments; and then we were at liberty to go in and out as we pleased ; but we could not bear the thought of absenting ourselves while we had one leg to stand on, and the feast supplied for our eyes supplied even other wants, or, at least, rendered us insensible of any. As both the doors were' open t'le whole time, the people without had a very good opportunity vt seeing; besides which the Queen was upstairs three times, and one of 1,'Ji David Barclay the Yow>yer. son, James, did not long survive him : and thus David Barclay the younger became the chief manager both of the banking-house in Lombard Street and of the mercantile establishment in Cheapside. The details of the banking business, however, he seems to have left to others, especially to his younger brother John. He himself was pre-eminently a merchant, the most influential merchant of his time in London, perhaps, with the exception of William Beckford, the Earl of Chatham's great city friend and adviser on com- the opportunities was made use of for introducing my little darling, Lucy Barclay, with Patty Barclay, and Priscilla Bell, who were the only children admitted. At this sight I was so happy as to he present ; you may he sure I was not a little anxious on account of my girl, who, very unexpectedly, rememhered all instructions, and kissed the Queen's hand with such a grace that I thought the Princess Dowager would have smothered her with kisses; and on her return into the drawing-room such a report was made of her to his Majesty, that miss was sent for again. She was so lucky as to afford the King great amusement, in particular by telling him that she loved the King, though she must not love fine things, and that grandpapa would not allow her to make a courtesy." "Her sweet face made such an impression on the Duke of York, that I rejoiced she was only five instead of fifteen." "The King, you may observe, never sat down, nor did he taste anything the whole time. Her Majesty drank tea, which was brought her on a silver waiter by brother Jack, who delivered it to the lady-in-waiting, and she presented it kneeling, which, to us, who had never seen that ceremony performed before, appeared as pretty as any of the parade." "Through fatigue, mamma was soon obliged to retire, when sister Weston was declared mistress of the ceremonies, and sister Polly her attendant. As for us, we were so fortunate as to have nothing to do but converse with the ladies. Some of them were very sociable." " But what charmed me most of all was their Majesties being left with us by themselves, having sent away all before them, except the two ladies-in-waiting on the Queen ; and, indeed, that has been deemed by tho public the greatest mark of respect they could bestow, to trust themselves without so much as a guard in the house, or uny of the nobles. The leave which they took of us was such as we might expect from our equals — full of apologies for the trouble they had given us, and returning thanks for the entertainment ; which they were so careful to have fully explained, that the Queen came up as we were standing all on one side of the door, and had every word interpreted, and left us in astonish- ment at lier condescension." " If, after the perusal of this, you should think of anything that wants confirmation or explanation, if you will tend me word I shall answer in my next. I have several things (o communicate, hut this memorable day engrosses all my time and thoughts." William Beck ford of London. ] 3f) mercial and financial matters.* Like Beckford, he applied himself chiefly to American and West Indian commerce, then the most profitable branch of trade. Ue was greatly honoured, and apparently with good reason, in his day. 'Graced by nature with a most noble form,' we are assured by his earliest biographer, ' all the qualities of his mind and heart corresponded with the grandeur of his exterior. The superiority of his understanding confirmed the im- pression which the dignity of his demeanour made on all ; and though, by the tenets of his religious faith, he abstained * " This person," said Loni> Macavlay in his brilliant essay on The. Earl of Chatham, " was a noisy, purse-proud, illiterate demagogue, whose Cockney English and scraps of mispronounced Latin were the jest of the newspapers." That illiberal description has been sufficiently refuted by Mr. Cvurs Redding, in a recent book entitled Past Celebrities ichovi I have Known (London, 1SGG), vol. i., pp. 294-207. Beck ford was a Tory, and, therefore, nn offender in the eyes of the great Whig partizan ; but he was a good man and an honest citizen ; neither illiterate nor a Cockney. Iiis great-grandfather, Colonel Teter Bcckford, one of the first and most influ- ential colonists of Jamaica in 1G5G, had been appoinled President of the Island Council by Charles the Second, and William the Third had made him Lieutenant-Governor and Commander-in-Chief, lie died, very rich, in 1710. Further wealth was accumulated by his son and grandson, each named Peter, who, having made Jamaica their home, died, the one in 1735, the other in 1737. William, son of the third Peter, was sent to England when he was twelve years old, to be educated at Westminster School. There he learnt enough, at any rate, to find amusement in later years in translating several of the Latin classics. He greatly increased the great wealth that came to him by employing it in mercantile trans- actions, lie was the foremost American and East Indian merchant of his time. He was Member of Parliament for the city during fourteen years, and twice Lord Mayor, serving his fellow-citizens so well that they set up a monument to his honour in Guildhall. " His civic entertainments," says Mr. Bedding, " were the most magnificent ever given. On one occasion, nt his private expense, he invited a number of the members of the Houses of Lords and Commons to a dinner, which cost him 10,000/. On that occasion, .mx dukes, two marquises, twenty-three earls, four viscounts, and fourteen barons of the Upper Mouse of Parliament joined the members of the Lower, and went in procession to the city to honour him. There were six hundred dishes upon the tables.'' Dying in 1770, lie left to his son, the eccentric William Bcckford of Fouthiil, the author of Vaihek, property yielding 110,000/. a year, Le.-ides 1.000,00(1/. in ready money. — Bkdding. vol. i.. j,j, 2!H-2!)7; Bimtton, Hliisti-afioNfi of Fnnthill Abbey, with Xoticts of the lif.hford Family Loudon, 1623,, pp. 02, U3. 136 David Barclay the Younger. from all the honours of public trust to which he was fre- quently invited, yet his influence was justly great on all the public questions of the day. His examination at the bar of the House of Commons, and his advice on the subject of the American dispute were so clear, so intelligent, and so wise, that, though not followed, Lord North publicly acknowledged he had derived more information from him than from all others on the east of Temple Bar.'* David Barclay retired from the American trade at the time of its temporary restrictions during the Revolutionary War. He continued at the head of the Lombard Street bank, to which his cousin, Sylvanus Bevan, and his nephew by marriage, John Henry Tritton, were in due time ad- mitted as partners. In 1781, moreover, in conjunction with a friend named Perkins, he expended 135,000£ in buying from Dr. Johnson, as executor for Henry Thrale, the immense brewery that the latter had established. His nephew Robert, son of the Alexander Barclay who had emigrated long before to Philadelphia, was brought to England to take part in the management of this concern. f In this, as in all the other affairs of David Barclay's life, says his old panegyrist, ' instead of making those he loved dependent on his future bounty, he became himself the executor to his own will, and, by the most magnificent aid to all his relatives, lived to see the maturity of all those establishments which now give such importance to his family. Nor was it merely to his relations that this reasonable friendship was given, but also to the young men whom he had bred in his mercantile house, and of whose virtuous dispositions he approved.' Barclay was a friend to all, a patron to all who were deserving. Great sums of money were applied by him to charitable purposes, and his charity was of no sectarian and narrow-minded sort. Philanthropic undertakings of all kinds had in him a princely supporter. Two of these may be instanced. In the one case, we are told, lie founded near to his own house at Youngbury * Morning Chronicle, June 5, 1S09. t Josls, pp. 30, 3S. THOMAS COUTTS OF LONT>ON\ Vol. II., page 137 James and Thomas Coutts in London. 137 a House of Industry, on which he spent lf>00/. a vear for several years, until the excellent system of management pointed out by him had succeeded in making it self-sup- porting. In the other he attempted a practical refutation of the assertion made by opponents of the anti-slavery move- ment, started in his lifetime, that ' the negroes were too ignorant and too barbarous for freedom.' Having an estate in Jamaica, he applied 10,000Z. in emancipating all the slaves thereon, in sending out an agent to transport them to America, and in there instructing and establishing them in various trades and handicrafts. 'The members of this community,' it was said, 'prospered under the blessing of his care, and lived to show that the black skin enclosed hearts full of gratitude, and minds as capable of improvement as the proudest white.'* In that temper David Barclay lived. In that temper he died, eighty years of age, on the 30th of May, 1809, leaving his vast wealth to his only daughter, married to Richard Gurney of Norwich, and mother of the Hudson Gurncy who died on the 2nd of November, 1804, worth about 2,000,000/. Barclay had many rivals in wealth, none more famous than Thomas Coutts, his junior by about two years. This Thomas Coutts, youngest of the four sons of old John Coutts of Edinburgh, had come to London, as we saw, to be junior partner in the mercantile establishment of Saint Mary Axe, in 1754, when he was about twenty -three years old ; and he quitted that in 1760 to join his brother James in manage- ment of the banking-house established by George Campbell in the Strand. James Coutts, never a very happy or agree- able man, became more morose and unattractive as he grew older. His chief reason for taking his brother Thomas into partnership in 1 700 appears to have been the need of some tru?tworthy assistant in managing the business. Soon after that he probably save up nearly all active share in its direc- tion. He entered Parliament as Member for Edinburgh; * Morning Clironicb:, Juuc 5, 180.1. VOL. II. L 138 Tliomas Coutts of London. but he took no prominent part in its debates till near the year 1777, when symptoms of the family insanity that had already seized his eldest brother showed themselves in him. He made a speech in the House of Commons, so rambling and preposterous that his friends persuaded him to take no further share in the debates. Soon after that he went to Italy with his daughter, an only child, who there found a husband. At Turin he became raving mad ; and, while on his way home for suitable treatment, he died at Gibraltar, early in 1778.* Even Thomas showed occasional eccentricities during his long and busy life. In 17(50, or shortly after, he married one of his brother's servants, the daughter of a small Lanca- shire farmer, Elizabeth Starkey by name ; ' in whom, with a handsome countenance and great good-humour, were united many rustic virtues that are, unfortunately, not so common to domestic servants at the present day.' So says the bio- grapher, writing in 1823. But even Betty Starkey could be saucy now and then. A few days before her marriage — a rainy, dirty day, we are told — she was at her work, when one of her master's clerks ran into the house, and was proceeding to hurry upstairs, there to get rid of his wet clothes. Betty stopped him, and bade him take off his shoes, so as to avoid dirtying the newly-washed stairs. But the young man, resenting what he thought an impertinence, only paused to stamp and scrape on each step as he ascended, in order that he might soil them all as much as he could. *• Before long," Betty shouted after him, " I'll make you pull off your shoes, and your stockings too, whenever I choose it." The threat was never put in force. The young man, when he heard oi the approaching marriage, thought he would surely be dis- missed, or made to suffer in some way for his indiscretion. Instead of that, the young Airs. Coutts showed herself * Memoirs of a Tiavlina House, p. 1 1 ; Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xlviii.. part i., p. 141 ; vol. xciL p:irt i.. p. 100; Annual Biography and Obituary, »ji vi. , p. 245. His Wife and his Business. 130 especially friendly towards him.* ( In the earlier stage of her connection with her husband,' it is said, ' her mind was necessarily uncultivated, and her manners far from refined. Mr. Coutts, however, neglected not to take all due pains to qualify her for the station to which he had elevated her ; and her quickness and capacity was such as amply rewarded him for his exertions. In a few short years she became, in manners and intelligence, as much a gentlewoman as some of those ladies who had been bred and brought up in the lap of luxury and splendour.'f And she certainly educated her three daughters so well that they were thought fit, with the help of the dowries their father was able to give them, to enter the most aristocratic circles. Sophia, the eldest, was married to Sir Francis Burdett, in 1793 ; Susan, the second, became Countess of Guildford in 1796 ; and Frances, the third, was made wife of the first Marquis of Bute in 1800. Thomas Coutts, though laughed at and abused for marry- ing a housemaid, succeeded well in pushing the business, of which he soon became, and continued for nearly fifty years, entire master. Soon after his establishment as a banker, we are told, he began to have regular dinner-parties of bankers and moneyed men, intended to promote friendly feelings among all members of the class, and especially to increase his own influence. At one of these dinners, a city man, gossiping about his business, told how, on that same day, a nobleman had come to him, sought a loan of 30,OOOZ., and been refused, as he could give no sufficient security for the large debt. Before going to rest, Thomas Coutts sent a message to the nobleman referred to, asking the favour of his lordship's attendance at the counting-house in the Strand, on the following morning. The invitation was accepted, and the visitor, introducing himself to the banker, was astonished at his tendering him thirtv 1000Z. notes. " But what security am I to give you?" he asked. "I shall be satisfied," an- swered Coutts, " with your lordship's note of hand." Tha * Annual Biography, vol. vi., pp. 24G, 2-17. t H'id., p. 247. 140 Thomas Coutts of London. was soon and thankfully given. " Now," said the nobleman, " I find that at present I shall only require 10,OOOZ. Be good enough, therefore, to keep the remaining 20,00(J/., and open an account with it in my name." To this proposal Coutts assented, and before long he was rewarded for his unusual exercise either of good-nature or of exceptional prudence, by a repayment of the loan, accompanied by a deposit of 200,000Z., the result of a sale of some family estates, made possible by that loan. Other members of the aristocracy, at the recommendation of Coutts's first friend, transferred their accounts to him ; and from that time his house became the most fashionable of the West End banks.* Dili NEW LXCMANGK, STUAKD. Geonre the Third banked with him until he found th.it Coutts had lent 100,000£ to his son-in-law, Sir Francis Burdett, in furtherance of his election as Member of Parlia- ment for Middlesex. Thereupon he transferred his account * Lawsox, History of Banking. His Bankinq-IIousc in tlie Strand. 141 to one of the Tory establishments. With Burdett for his son-in-law, and Sir Thomas Cochrane, afterwards Lord Dun- donald, for one of his oldest and stanchcst friends, the Tory monarch might certainly regard him with some dislike. In spite of his radicalism, however, Thomas Coutts pros- pered as a banker. Retaining the old house handed over to his brother by George Campbell, he soon filled it with business to overflowing. It was nearly in the centre of the space once covered by the New Exchange, the simple struc- ture designed as a rival to Gresham's building, and service- able as a resort for Dryden, Wycherlcy, Etheredge, and his friends in one generation, and Addison and his followers in another, before the place grew so disreputable that it had to 142 Thomas Coutts of London. be pulled down in 1737. When the brothers Adam be^an to build the Adelphi in 1768, Coutts secured a piece of ground adjoining his house, and stipulated that the new street leading to the entrance a little to the west of Exeter Change, — started in a sort of rivalry to the New Exchange in 1670, and famous during the fifty years previous to his death, in 1817, as the haunt of William Clarke, a humble rival of Thomas Coutts,* — should be opposite his property. He pro- ceeded to erect upon it a wing or continuation of his old premises, containing new offices and strong rooms. The strong rooms alone cost him 10,000£ Walls, floors, and roofs were made of solid blocks of stone six inches thick, and joined together with unheard-of precaution. The doors and panels were all of wrought-iron, and the closets contained safes within safes, all made as stoutly as possible. The first article deposited in any of these safes, it is recorded, was a precious diamond aigrette, which the Grand Turk had with his own hands transferred from his turban to Sir Horatio Nelson's hatf Coutts carried to extremes the strictness of detail proper in a banker. Every evening care was taken to balance the day's transactions ; and on one occasion, when a deficit of 2s. lOd. was found on closing the books and comparing them with the state of the till, we are told that he kept in all his clerks the whole night through, bidding them find out the error somehow or other. Next morning, Mr. Antrobus, a junior partner in the firm, coming in, and hearing of the difficulty, explained that he had taken 2s. lQd. out of the * In 17G5, William Clarke borrowed 100Z., and with it furnished a stall in Exeter Change. By careful attention to business, and some closeness in his personal expenditure, he ended by establishing a trade in cutlery, turnery, and the like, which engrossed half the ground floor of the building, and yielded him more than G,00G7. a year. He was long styled the King of Exeter Change, and died, some eighty years of age, worth half a million of money. The site of the New Exchange is now covered by Nos. 54 to 64 of the Strand. Exeter Change extended from No. 352 to the site of Burleigh Street. f Annual Biography, vol. vi., pp. 250, 251. Sis Business Habits. 143 till, to pay for the postage of a foreign letter, but had for- gotten to put it on record.* This is another of the stories told about Thomas Coutts's management of his bank : ' It is the duty of the junior clerks in most banking-houses,' says the narrator, ' to do the out-door or bill-collecting business ; but, if the day's transactions be heavy, some of the upper clerks take that duty. On the day that relates to this anecdote, the amount of the western walk exceeded 17,000^. ; and a Mr. L was directed to take it. At the usual hour of the clerks' re- turning Mr. L was missing. The noting hour passed ; messengers were sent to all the settling-houses, and to his private lodgings ; but no tidings could be obtained. Ad- vertisements were sent to all the newspapers ; and next morning the town was placarded with a full description of person and property, and a large reward offered for securing the defaulter. Nothing was heard during the next day ; but early the following morning one of the partners in the Southampton Bank arrived post, bringing with him the note- case and bag, containing the whole of the missing property, of which he gave the following account. " The landlord of the inn at which the coach arrives," he said, " had the day before, about three o'clock, called on him, and begged him to accompany him to his house, where a gentleman had arrived early in the morning, had gone to bed, apparently very ill, was, as he thought, now dying, and wished to make some communication relative to a large sum of money then in his possession. On his arrival, the person told him his name, said that he was a clerk in Mr. Coutts's house, and had been out collecting, and that on his return through Piccadilly he was seized with a stupor, a malady he for the last four months had been subject to, owing, as he supposed, to a contusion on the head he had received by a fall from a suing " (strange sport fur a banker's senior clerk !) " in the gardens of the Mermaid at Hackney. He * Annual Biography, vol. vi., pp. 250, 251. 144 Thomas Coutts of London. added, he could give no other account how he came where he now was, which he did not know till the landlord informed him ; for, on the moment he found the stupor coming on, to save the money, he got into a coach with the door standing open, which he supposed was a hackney one, but which proved to be the Southampton stage ; and that he had remained insensible during the whole journey. He now begged, for God's sake, that an express might be imme- diately sent off to inform the house of the circumstance." The firm caused all the posted bills to be pasted over with bills acknowledging the recovery of the whole property, and stating that the delay had only been occasioned by sudden illness.' The banker seems to have had some slight sus- picion, however, that his clerk had purposely gone down to Southampton, intending thence to make his way to the Con- tinent ; and that, finding the Guernsey boat gone, he had adopted this plan of hiding his evil purpose. But nothing could be proved against him. Therefore he was dismissed on the ground that a person subject to such fits could hold no place of trust in a banking-house ; and a present was made to him, large enough to secure him a comfortable annuity.* Thomas Coutts was a charitable man, though very strict in all business relationships, and, in old age, very miserly- looking in his own bearing and apparel. ' He was,' accord- ing to a not very friendly critic, * a pallid, sickly, thin old gentleman, 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 offered him a guinea. Coutts thanked him, but declined the gift, saying that he was in no ' immediate want.'-f* The banker was by no means stingy, however, in any case in which stinginess was really blame-worthy. His purse was always open for the relief of distress. He was also famous * Annual Biography, vol. vi., pp. 2,")] -253. t Memoirs of the Duchess of Saint AVhuis (London, 18-10\ vol. i., p. 331. cited by Mr. TiioiiNUUitY, Haunted London (London, 1805), p. 478. Mis Second Wife. 145 for the good dinners tli.it he gave, and the crowd of wits that those dinners tempted into the circle of his acquaintance. He was especially fond of theatrical society. Playwrights and actors always found him a good patron ; and, either in idle compliment, or because his opinions were worth heeding, often consulted him on even the intricate details of stage management and play- writing. One of his theatrical friendships was particularly memor- able in its consequences. Of Thomas Contts's first wife, the exemplary servant whom he married somewhere near 17 GO, we hear nothing after 1785 or 17SG, save that soon after that, symptoms of madness or imbecility — a kind of trouble that pressed with singular force and frequency on the banker's kindred and belongings — appeared in her conduct ; and that, having long been dead to society, she actually died in 1815. Thomas Coutts was nearly seventy-five years old at that time. But within three months of his first wife's death, he married a second — the famous Harriet Mellon. With her, indeed, he had been very intimate for some years previously ; thereby providing the world with plenty of topic for scandal. There seems to have been no real ground, though plenty of excuse, for this. * Miss Mellon,' we are told by Leigh Hunt, * was arch and agreeable on the stage. She had no genius ; but then she had fine eyes and a good- humoured mouth.'* In 1795, while yet quite young, having herself and her mother to provide for, she made her first appearance at Drurv Lane, as Lydia Languish. She caused much stir during the next twenty years, albeit Mrs. Siddons was then alive and giving expression to her wonderful talents on the same Old Drury boards. Her last appearance on the stage was as Audrey, near the beginning of 1815. At that time, because of the insults to which she was sub- jected, in consequence of his long-continued attentions to her, old Coutts persuaded her to abandon the theatre, and he gave her very liberal opportunities for so doing. Tor * Monthly licpositonj for 183G, cited by Mr. Thobnbuky, p. 92. 14G TJiomas Coutts of London. 25,000/. he bought Holly Lodge, at the foot of Highgate Hill, from Sir \V. Vane-Tempest ; and, having stocked it with horses, carriages, and every sort of requisite furniture, placed it at her disposal. Before the year was out he married her ; and she seems to have been a good wife to him during his few remaining years of life. She knew how to hold her own against the opposition of other people, shown in all sorts of curious and vulgar ways. Specially prominent in his opposition was her next-door neighbour at Highgate, * a late member for Middlesex.' His carriage road passed directly in front of Mrs. Coutts's dining-room windows ; and every time that she gave a dinner-party this road was sud- denly filled with ' sheets, shirts, shifts, and pillow-cases, and all the appendages of a washing-day, hung out to dry, and in such abundant quantities as surprised the neighbours, and made some of them suppose the honourable member took in washing.' Thereto was added, of course, ' a clique of noisy household damsels and charwomen,' whose business it was to talk as loudly and as coarsely as they could ; their work being best done when they oftenest and most effectively re- peated the scandals spoken of the lady whom they were hired to insult. That was a persecution that no one could patiently submit to. Mrs. Coutts complained of it ; but obtained no answer. She offered to buy up her enemy's house and carriage road for a very high sum ; but still no notice was taken of her communications. Then she resorted to a fresh expedient. She had a high wall, more than a hundred feet long, built all along her grounds, and in front of her neigh- bour's property ; and in that way entirely cut off from him all view of the Highgate Hills. That cost her 1000Z. ; but it effected its purpose. The stubborn Member of Parlia- ment declared himself willing to sell the ground in question ; the wall was pulled down again ; and Holly Lodge, with extended surroundings, became a pleasanter spot than ever.* Mrs. Coutts was not Mrs. Coutts very long. Her vener- * Annual Biography, vol. vi., pp. 249, 250. His Death and Wealth. 147 able husband died in February, 1822, at tnc age of ninety- one years. He left her in unrestrained possession of all his personal and landed property, stated to be under G0(J,OU0Z. in value, in Middlesex — we know not how much out of Middlesex — besides a very large share in the immense annual profits of the banking-house. In due time Mrs. Coutts became Duchess of St. Albans ; but she took care to secure her vast fortune in her own hands ; and when she died she left it, in accordance, it was supposed, with her former husband's wishes, to his favourite grand-daughter. It was reckoned a few years ago that Miss Burdctt Coutts's wealth, if told in sovereigns, would weigh thirteen tons, and fill a hundred and seven flour-sacks.* * Thornbuky, p. 478. 14S CHAPTER XXII. THE PEELS OF MANCHESTER. [1723— 1830.] About the year 1600, a William Peele went, with his father, three brothers, and their families, from Craven in Yorkshire to the Lancashire town of Blackburn. Blackburn and its neighbourhood, a couple of centuries before, had been the property of some old De Peles, and from them, doubtless, William Peele was descended ; but his offspring- took no pains to trace out the pedigree, priding themselves, when they were most rich and influential, in the fact that the modern founder of their house was neither knight nor squire, but one of the sturdy class of English yeomen. He settled in a farmhouse, known, by reason of its low situation, as Hole or Hoyle, and there, early in the seventeenth century, was born a grandson, Robert Peele, who abandoned the farm to take a house in the centre of Blackburn, and begin business as a maker of woollen cloths.* Blackburn even then had some repute as a manufacturing town. Blackburn greys were coarse unfinished woollen goods, generally sent to London to be worked up and prepared for sale. Robert Peele set himself to improve the workmanship of these goods, and the rough, home-made tools with which he in some sort anticipated the inventions of the next century were for a * Sin Lawrence Peel, Shriek of the Life and Character of Sir Robert Peel (Loudon, I860,, pp. G, 7, 9, 11. Robert Peek and Robert Feci of Blackburn. 149 long time preserved as curiosities in the family. He was an industrious, enterprising man, famous for his business-like charity and hospitable disposition. He was richer than most of the men around him. To each of several daughters he left a sum of nine score pounds ; and his eldest son, Robert, who succeeded to his business, was rich enough to buy the little estate known as the Crosse — henceforth Peele's Fold — near Blackburn. This Robert's son William, however, had not health to carry him prosperously through life. Shutting himself up in the Fold, he became a farmer, like his great- grandfather and namesake, and was willing that his children should follow his example.* His eldest son Robert, — the first who shortened the name from Peele to Peel, — was not so minded. Born at Peele's Fold in 1723, and fairly educated at Blackburn Grammar School, an old foundation of Queen Elizabeth's, he was at first a simple farmer. But with the farm he inherited the rough wooden blocks with which his grandfather and great- grandfather, sixty and a hundred years before, had stamped patterns on woollen cloths, and they set him thinking. He had a natural aptitude for mechanics and chemistry, and he used both in some inventions of which the secret was so well kept that we cannot tell what they were. In 1744, moreover, he married Elizabeth Haworth, whose brother, after an apprenticeship to some calico-printers in London, had lately returned to Blackburn, full of projects for the improvement of the work and its transference to Lancashire. The brothers-in-law clubbed together and began to make for themselves a business as calico-printers. But they had not funds enough for their enterprise : so they sought and ob- tained the co-operation of William Yates, who had made or inherited a little fortune as keeper of the Black Bull Inn, in Blackburn. Hence the firm of Haworth, Peel, and Yates, * Sm Lawrence Teel, pp. 11, 12, 14, 1G. There was an old saying among the Peels, says Sir Lawrence, that in their family two generations of working bees alternated with one of drones. 150 Manchester in the Eighteenth Century. established soon after the year 1750, with a factory at Blackburn and a warehouse in Manchester.* Manchester, though the centre of Lancashire manufactures then as now, was a small town a hundred years ago. In 1757 there were in it and Salford hardly 20,000 inhabitants, one twenty-fourth of the present population, and its trade consisted then, as in the time of good old Humphrey Chet- ham, in the manufacture by hand of the coarse woollen articles known as Manchester cottons, besides fustians and all sorts of miscellaneous articles, from pins and needles to millers' sacks and women's bodices. The leading merchants, working hard and living frugally, were pedlars and small tradesmen in comparison with the cotton lords of later times. ' When the Manchester trade began to extend,' says the old historian of the town, ' the chapmen used to keep gangs of pack-horses, and to accompany them to the principal towns with goods in packs, where they opened and sold to the shop- keepers, lodging what was unsold in small stores at the inns.t The pack-horses brought back sheeps' wool, which was bought on the journey, and sold to the makers of worsted yarn at Manchester, or to the clothiers of Rochdale, Saddleworth, and the West Riding of Yorkshire.' \ In 1702, one of the * Sib La whence Peel, pp. 16, 17. t There is a tradition that in this way William Yates, of the Black Bull, Blackburn, adding warehousing to his innkeeping, came to be the partner of old Kobert Peel and Haworth. X Aikin, Description of tlie Country from Hiirty to Forty Miles Round Manchester (London, 1795), p. 183. Mr. Walker, in his ' Original,' describes 'one of the principal merchants of Manchester, who was born at the commencement of the last century, and who realized sufficient fortune to keep a carriage when not half a dozen were kept in the town by persons connected with business. He sent the manufactures of the place into Nottinghamshire, Lincolnshire, Cambridge- shire, and the intervening counties, and principally took in exchange feathers from Lincolnshire and malt from Cambridgeshire and Nottingham- shire. All his commodities were conveyed on pack-horses, and he was from home the greater part of every year, performing his journeys leisurely on horseback. His balances were received in guineas, and were carried with him in his saddle-bags. He was exposed to the vicissitudes of th« V,\ "V'\ JT~iT.'4l--J^!"''M"i : " : 'l l t'TNi '"'■& Manchester Merchants in the Eighteenth Century. 151 greatest merchants of Manchester paid 40£. for the year's rental of his house and warehouse.* ' An eminent manu- facturer of that age,' we are told, ' used to be in his ware- house before six in the morning, accompanied by his children and apprentices. At seven they all came in to breakfast, which consisted of one large dish of water-pottage, made of oatmeal, water, and a little salt, boiled thick and poured into a dish. At the side was a pan or basin of milk, and the master and apprentices, each with a wooden spoon in his hand, without loss of time, dipped into the same dish, and thence into the milkpan ; and as soon as it was finished they all returned to their work.'t As the manufacturers grew rich, and apprentices came to them from a higher grade of society, business began to be carried on in a more luxurious way. In the year 17G0 the master used to allow a back parlour to his apprentices, and give them tea twice a day. About this time, too, the pack-horse mode of trade began to decline. The manufacturer stayed at home, and appointed agents in the different towns, or sent messengers from place weather, to groat labour and fatigue, and to constant danger. In Lincoln- sin re he travelled chiefly along bridle-ways, through fields wliere frequent gibbets warned him of his peril, and where flocks of wild-fowl continually darkened the air. Business carried on in this manner required a combina- tion of personal attention, courage, and physical strength, not to be hoped for in a deputy; and'a merchant then led a much more severe and irksome life than a bagman afterwards, and still more than a commercial traveller of the present day.' * In the same year his contribution to the " wages " of the dissenting minister whom he attended, was 10s. For a periwig lie paid 21. 10s. His little girl, five years old, being ill, he, and some others of his family, took her to Scarborough, at a cost of 2G/. 18s. 9cZ., besides coach hire, amounting to 13?. Gs. 2d. The child died, and 45s. were spent on gloves to be worn at her funeral. — Aikin, pp. 18f>, ISO. t Aikix. As another illustration of old Manchester customs, Dr. Aikin tells of a Madam D , who owned one of the three or four carriages to be found there in 1720. She did not like tea or coffee, and whenever slit paid an afternoon visit to her aristocratic friends, she would — while they were partaking of the new-fangled beverages— sit by the fire, enjoying her tankard of ale and pipe of tobacco. 152 Progress of Cotton Manufacture. to place with samples of his goods, leaving the goods them- selves to he sent when they were ordered.* Cotton manufacture, soon to become the staple of Man- chester commerce, began in the smaller towns of the neigh- bourhood. First introduced in 1G7G by the Protestants who had been driven to England by the revocation of the Edict of Nantes, it was, indeed, for a long time confined to London and other towns on the Thames. t For a century every sort of opposition was raised to its development by the manu- facturers of woollen and silken goods, who imagined that the new commodities would ruin tiieir own trades. They en- couraged riots in the streets of London and in country towns, and they procured the passing of arbitrary laws in Parliament. In 1712, an excise duty of threepence was set on everv square yard of calico made in England ; in 1714, the duty was raised to sixpence ; and in 1721 cotton goods were absolutely forbidden, a penalty of 5Z. being appointed to every wearer of them, while every seller was made liable, for each offence, to a fine of 20Z.J None of these laws were effectual, and gradually a better feeling spread through the country. In 1 73G the manufacture of calicoes was permitted, with a cotton woof, provided the warp was linen, and in 1774 the manufacture and sale of every kind of 'painted, stained, and dyed stuffs, made wholly of cotton,' were made lawful. Many years before that they had come to be freely practised both in London and in the north, the first calico manufacturers of Lancashire being Robert Peel and his brother-in-law. The details of their work would be worth knowing, could we only get at them. But, according to the fashion of those times, none knew them, even in their own day. Peel and llaworth kept their secrets as nearly as possible to themselves, in- trusting them only to a few tried agents, bound to secrecy * AiKix.pp. 183, 184. t Axurasiix, Orujiu of Commerce .London, 1801',, vol. ii., ji. ."i.'lj. * Ibid., vol. iii., pp. 127, 128. Old Robert red at Blackburn. <Jo by oath. The trustiest of all was a skilled mechanic closeted in Hawortlfs private house, who carried on both his experi- ments and his finishing processes unknown to any one else.* In Peel's private house experiments, though of a homelier sort, were also carried on. On one occasion, we are told, the manufacturer himself was working in his kitchen, de- signing patterns and planning how best to print them oft', when his little daughter Anne ran oft* to the herb warden OLl> liollLBl i-ttX's JloLsK IK FISH LA.NK, ULACKl&UN. and brought back a sprig of parsley. With a child's elo- quence she pointed out its beauty and begged him to use it as a pattern. The hint was promptly acted upon. A pewter dinner-plate was at once taken down from the dresser, and father and daughter between them roughly sketched a figure of the leaf, which served for a first experiment. It was soon copied and improved upon. Nancy's pattern, as it was known in the family, became a favourite among calico-buyers, and because of it the father obtained the nickname, through- out Lancashire, of Parsley Peelf * Sii; Lawrence Fell, p. 18. VOL. II. f Ibid, ]«p. 19,20. M 154 Old Robert Peel, at Blackburn and Burton. From those humble beginnings an active and profitable business was soon developed. Living generally at a house which he had bought in Fish Lane, Blackburn, and having his chief factory at Brookside, a village two miles off, Parsley Peel worked on for twenty years or more. His partners, Ha worth and Yates, as it seems, soon left him to found a separate and larger manufactory at Bury, halfway between Blackburn and Manchester ; but there was always close friendship, as well as some sort of business connection, between the houses. In 1779 he also had to leave Black- burn. In that year the long-growing dissatisfaction of the handloom weavers, especially provoked by Hargreaves' in- vention of the spinning-jenny, broke out in open rioting. Nearly all the machinery in Blackburn was destroyed, and among the rest Peel's works at Brookside.* Thereupon he travelled south. With part of his old savings he built three large mills at Burton-upon-Trent, two on the river's side and one a little distance off. The canal supplying it with water cost him 9,000Z. Here, as at Blackburn, we are told by one of his grandsons, ' all the works which he erected or caused to be made were of a solid and enduring kind. He understood thoroughly every branch of the cotton trade. He instructed his sons himself. He loved to impress on their minds the great national importance of this rising manufacture. He was a reflecting man, who looked ahead ; a plainspoken, simple-minded man, not illite- rate, nor vulgar, either in language, manners, or mind, but possessing no refinement in his tastes, free from affectation, and with no desire to imitate the manners or mode of life of a class above his own. His sons resembled him, and a strong ilkeness pervaded the whole family. They were, without one exception, hardworking, industrious, plain, frugal, un- ostentatious men of business, reserved and shy, nourishing a sort of defensive pride and hating all parade, shrinking * Sin Lawkence Peel, n. 17. Ills Character and Habits. 155 perhaps too much from public service and public notice, and it may be too much devoted to the joys of a private station.'* ' My father,' said the most enterprising aud successful of these sons, ' moved in a confined sphere. He possessed in an eminent degree a mechanical genius and a good heart. He had many sons, and placed them all in situations that might be useful to each other. The cotton trade was pre- ferred as best calculated to secure this object ; and by habits of industry, and imparting to his offspring an intimate know- ledge of the various branches of the cotton manufacture, he lived to see his children connected together in business, and, by their successful exertions, become, without one exception, opulent and happy. My father may be truly said to have been the founder of our family ; but he so accurately appre- ciated the importance of commercial wealth, ill a national point of view, that he was often heard to say that the gains of the individual were small, compared with the national gains arising from trade.'f Everything we know about the good old man goes to prove the accuracy of that pleasant sketch. He was a shy and absent man ; always looking down as he walked, and therefore known as * the philosopher ' by the Burton people among whom he lived for some ten years. 'He wore a burly Johnsonian wig. Like Johnson, he was dressed in dark clothes of ample cut. He leaned, as he walked, upon a tall gold-headed cane, and as he was a very handsome man, he looked a figure stately enough for a mediaeval burgo- master.' It was his maxim, through life, that ' a man, barring accidents, might be whatever he chose. 'J * Sir Lawrence Peel, pp. 20, 21. t Corrv, History of Lancashire (London, 1825), voK ii., p. G57. % Sir Lawrence Peel, pp. 17, 18, 24. To the many passages cited alx>vc from Sir Lawrence Peel's delightful volume, almost the only authentic source of information about the first Robert Peel, the following should be added: "It chanced one day "—lie being at Burton— " that the Earl of Uxbridgc, from whom he rented his mills, called upon him on some business, on the conclusion of which his lordship was invited by Mr. Peel 156 Old Robert Peel and his Wife. Robert Peel, the elder, was fifty-six when he settled in Burton. After a residence there of some ten or twelve years he seems to have left the thriving business in the hands of his sons, and to have gone to end his days in Manchester, with or near his only daughter, the Nancy of the parsley pattern, now a clergyman's wife. There he died in Sep- tember, 1795, at the age of seventy-two. His wife lived six months longer. 'She had wished to survive him,' we are told. ' One evening near the close of their lives, as thev were seated by their fireside, surrounded by some of their descendants, conversing with the calmness of age upon death, the old lady said to her husband, " Robert, I hope I may live a few months after thee." u Why ?" asked her husband. " Robert," she replied, "thou hast always been a good kind husband to me : thou hast been a man well thought of, and I should like to stay by thee to the last and keep thee all right." ' The loving wife had her wish. She died in March, 170G, and was buried by her husband's side in Saint John's Church, Manchester.* to his house, an invitation which was courteously accepted. They walked together to the house, whicli was at no great distance. As they approached it, Mr. Peel saw that the front door was closed, and Iwing always impatient of form, and also a valuer of time, he led his honoured guest into the house by the back way on a washing day, and whilst piloting him through u north-west passage, not without its obstructions of tubs, pails, and other household utensils, was observed by the reproachful eyes of his wife, who failed not, with a due observance, however, of time and place, to make continual claim in the name of decoium against an entry scarcely less lawless in her eyes than a disseisin. This dame," adds Sir Lawrence, " wus quite able to guide the helm herself."' On one occasion, " there was a panic — some great house had fallen. Mr. Peel was from home when the news arrived, which came on a Saturday night. The Peels were at this time connected with a bank on which a run was apprehended. The next morning Mrs. Peel came downstairs to breakfast dressed in her very best t>uit, and seeing her daughter less handsomely attired than she in her politic brain deemed expedient, she desired her to go upstairs and put on her very best clothes. 'Look as blithe as you can,' said she, ' for, dtpend upon it, if the folks see us looking glum to-day, they will all be at the hank to-morrow.' " — pp. 25, 2G. * Sik Lawkence Pell, p. 28. Tin: Fitter sii! i;ohi:i>t pkix. 1'/./ U ,l<i</r I. The First Sir Robert Peel. 157 Six sons, all cotton-spinners and calico-printers, survived them. Of these Robert, the third, was the cleverest and the best man of business. He was born at the Fish Lane house in Blackburn in 1700, and there he lived for nearly twenty years. When a lad of fourteen, it has been said, he avowed his intention of extending the fame of his family far beyond the limits set by his unambitious father ; * and at the ao-e of eighteen, telling his father that in Blackburn they were too thick upon the ground, he begged for a sum of 5007. with which to go out and build his own fortune in the world.f That request was not acceded to. But soon afterwards, in 170*9 or 1770, a place was found for the young man in the establishment of Haworth and Yates in Bury,} now almost a part of Manchester, but then a separate village, nine miles off, with about two thousand inhabita.uts.§ In Bury young Robert Peel lodged with his partner, Mr. Yates, paying for his board, it was said, eight shillings a week. There is a tradition, not very credible, that Yates, finding the eight shillings inadequate payment for the trouble and expense he was put to, soon demanded another shilling, and that thereupon so serious a quarrel arose that the whole connection was likely to be broken off", until at last a com- promise was made and eight and sixpence a week was agreed upon. Be that as it may, Robert Peel passed many years in William Yates's house and found it a pleasant home. Its youngest inmate was Y r ates's daughter Ellen, a merry pretty little girl. She was young Peel's plaything and play- fellow when he went home after a hard day's work, and often, we are told, he would take her on his knee and play at love-making. " Nelly, thou bonny little dear," he used to say, "wilta be my wife ?" "Yes," was her constant answer. '•Then I'll wait for thee, Nelly," he replied as constantly ; " I'll wed thee and none else." He kept his word. Pretty * \V. Cooke Tavloh, Life and Times of Sir Robert Peel (London, no dale,, vol. i. : p. G. t Slit La whence Peel, p. 32. \ Ibid., p. 33. § Aikin, p. 2GG. 158 The First Sir Robert Peel. Nelly wont to school, and in due time came back as hand- some a young woman as was to be found in England. She was somewhat too gay for the hardworking cotton-spinner, but she was willing to do her best towards making herself a good wife for him, and she succeeded altogether. They were married in 1786, when she was eighteen, he six-and thirty ; and for seventeen years she was his best friend and helper. She wrote his letters, criticised his plans ; and, what perhaps was most serviceable of all, entertained his friends for him. She died in 1803, partly, it was thought, through the excessive toil involved in the gaieties of the London season, much welcomer to her, even though they were killing her, than to her busy husband. " Ah, if Robert hadn't made our Nelly a lady," old Yates used to say, " she might ha' been living yet !" * Long before that, at least a dozen years before his mar- riage even, Robert had become a partner in the Bury house of business. About that time his uncle Haworth retired, and Yates, though senior partner, was glad to leave the chief management in the hands of the younger and more active man. " The will of our Robert is law here," he used to say when any complaint was made against the strict rule or the frequent innovations adopted by his partner. Young Peel was fond of hard work, and he expected all under him to be good workmen. Living near to the works, he used, whenever there was threatening of bad weather, to get up in the middle of the night and make personal inspection of the bleaching-grounds, to see that everything was as well as possible protected from harm. And regularly once a week he sat up all night with his pattern drawer, in order, without an hour's delay, to examine the patterns brought by the London coach, which arrived soon after midnight. For many years after his first settlement in Bury, the London calico-printers were thought superior to all others, and the * Smiles, Self- Utlp ( London, 1SG0), p. 3S ; Siu Lawkexce Peel, pp. 35, 30. His Factories at Bun/. 159 greatest house in Lancashire was content to follow their lead. As soon as he could Robert Peel reversed this state of things and before the close of the eighteenth century all the printing done in London was less in quantity than that produced under his sole supervision in the works at Burv.* ' The principal of these works,' said Dr. Aikin in 1795, 'are situated on the side of the Irwell, from which they have large reservoirs of water. The articles here made and printed are chiefly the finest kinds of the cotton manufacture, and they are in high request both at Manchester and London. The printing is performed both by wooden blocks and by copper rollers, and the execution and colours are some of the very best of the Lancashire fabric. The pre- mises occupy a large portion of ground, and cottages have been built for the accommodation of the workmen, which form streets and give the appearance of a village. Ingenious artists are employed in drawing patterns and cutting and engraving them on wood and copper, and many women and children in mixing and penciling the colours, and so forth. The company has several other extensive works in the neigh- bourhood, as well on the Irwell as on the Rock. Some of them are confined to the carding, slubbing, and spinning of cotton ; others to washing the cottons with water-wheels which go round with great velocity, but can be stopped in an instant for taking out and putting in the goods. Boil- ing and bleaching the goods are performed at other works. In short, the extensiveness of the whole concern is such as to find constant employment for most of the inhabitants of J Jury and its neighbourhood, of both sexes and all ages, and, notwithstanding their great number, they have never wanted work in the most unfavourable times. The peculiar healthi- ness of the people may be imputed partly to the judicious * Sir Lawrence Peel, pp. 33, 34; The l'r<l Family— it* Uise and Fortunes, a scries of very interesting papers compiled from traditions ill the memory of various people of 1 Jury, and published in the Mavcliester Fsaiuiner and Times for October and November, 1S.0O. 1G0 The First Sir Robert Peel. and humane regulations put in force by Mr. Peel.'* He was exceedingly attentive to the personal comfort of his workmen, and to the education and healthy bringing up of their children. Other children were brought in great num- bers from the London workhouses to be carefully prepared for factory work, in two large schools, directed by competent mistresses. In like manner, older labourers were brought from various parts of Lancashire and Yorkshire to stock the immense establishments known as RadclifFe Mill and Makin Mill, the Hinds and the Burrs, White Ash, and Summer- seat.j The whole town of Bury became a sort of appendage to Peel's factories, and, in consequenee of his wonderful prosperity, its population steadily advanced, from being about 2,000 in 1773, to upwards of 15,000 in 18314 He also erected other works in other parts of England, the most important being those at Tamworth. Altogether, it was said in 1803, he had 15,000 persons in his employ, and in a single year he paid more than 40,000Z. to the Excise Office by way of duty on his printed goods. § Of one pattern alone he sold upwards of twenty thousand pieces every year for several years, the profit on each piece being reckoned at a guinea. || In these patterns, though coarse enough according to modern judgments, were displayed the best manufacturing art of the times. They generally consisted of circles, dia- monds, dice, and clubs, and various sorts of leaves and flowers, daisies and buttercups being the most common. One favourite pattern for bed-furniture was adorned with pictures of sun-flowers, each measuring five inches across. The patterns were only printed in a single colour or outline shade. They were finished afterwards by female pencillers who, in Peel's establishments, filled two long rows of workshops. They put in the colours necessary to the completion of the * Aikik, pp. 2G8, 2G9. t The Fed Family. X Aikin. p. 2GG. § Public Characters of 1803-4 London, 1S04), pp. 31, 33. || The Fed Family. His Dealings with Samuel Crompton. 161 device by hand, often going ver the piece of calico eight or nine times. This made the material expensive. Calico was sold, eighty years ago, for 41. or .")/. a piece ; that is, about Ss. or 3s. (>d. a yard. Even in 1810 a good print was worth 2s. ()d. a yard. The women employed as pcncilcrs easily earned 21. a week, and those were the wajres of a jrood engraver.* In his cotton mills Peel took full advantage of Samuel Crompton's famous invention of the mule, in ] 779. IJe would gladly have secured for Crompton himself much greater advantage than his pride permitted. Soon after the promulgation of the invention Peel went over to Black- burn, there to inspect the instrument, taking with him several skilled mechanics to examine and learn how to copy it. Crompton was willing enough that this should be done ; but it seems that Peel grievously, though inno- cently, offended him by offering him sixpence for each of the labourers who had been allowed to examine the mule.| The fact of his poverty made the proposal appear insulting to him. Of this, however, Peel was ignorant. Twice, in later years, he visited the inventor; in the first instance, to offer him a lucrative situation in his factory ; in the second, to propose to him a partnership that would have certainly enriched him, besides hastening the general intro- duction of the mule into cotton manufacture. This would have been a union of business-like qualities and inventive energy, as notable and as bencfical both to the world and to the men themselves as the partnership of Boulton and Watt in the manufacture of steam-engines ai Birmingham. Put Crompton would have nothing to do with Peel. His old grudge hindered him from being even grateful for the kind- ness shown to him, either now or at later times, by the great cotton-spinner and cotton-printer.}: * Tlu V<d Fmn'ihj. t Fkkxch, Life and Times of Samuel Crouijdou Miuiohcster, 1SG0,, p. 81. ; JW., pp. 7'J-Sl. 1 02 The First Sir Robert Fed. Sir Robert Peel, therefore, grew rich without him. He well deserved to prosper. * He was an ambitious man,' it has been said by his nephew ; ' he loved money ; but lie loved it principally as an instrument of power. He was the very reverse of a selfish man. He possessed a genial, generous nature ; he loved young people, and loved to see all around him happy. He was eager to diffuse happiness ; he was at all times bountiful and munificent in his gifts. As his possessions were great, it was his duty to give largely ; but still, even so viewed, his was a bountiful hand. He dealt with money as one who, if he knew its value, witli how much toil and anxiety it had been won by him, felt also that God has impressed wealth with a trust, and that the trustee must pass his accounts. He gave much, and by preference he gave in secret. He gave also with delicacy of manner, and the nice feelings of a gentleman. His was no narrow or one-sided beneficence. He knew no distinction of politics or creed when a man needed help. He was a moral and religious man. He was grave in exterior, yet a humorous man, with a quiet relish of fun. He had small respect for a man of idle life — for any one, in short, who was not useful ; and neither fashion nor rank, without good service of some sort, won any allegiance from him. He was the true child of commerce. The productive industry of England, its value and its power — these were his abiding themes.'* It was chiefly with the design of forwarding that industry that he entered Parliament as member for Tain worth, in 1790, to hold his seat in seven successive houses, for thirty years in all.j An honest Tory, he regarded Pitt as his ideal statesman. He supported him in nearly all his measures throughout twelve years. So heartily did he approve of his protracted war with France, that in 1797 he subscribed 10,000/. to a voluntary fund in its aid; and in 1798 he * Sir Lawrence Peel, pp. 3G, 37. t Elected first in 1790, he was re-elected in 179C, 1802, 180G, 1807, IS12, and 1818. His Occupations in Parliament. IGo raised, chiefly anions: his own workmen at P>ury, six companies of Bury Royal Volunteers.* In 1799, at Pitt's request, he made a famous speech in support, of the proposed union with Ireland, which is said to have exerted a marked influence upon the people of both nations, showing as it did what great advantages would result to both from the breaking down of jealousies and the establishment of one strong government and one code of laws.f In April, 1802, he supported the Bank Restriction Act, in a speech which went so far as to advocate a permanent inconvertible paper cur- rency ; % and in May, 1803, when many of Pitt's friends were deserting him, he stood forward as 4iis eloquent cham- pion. " No other minister," he said, after more general defence of his policy, " has ever understood so well the com- mercial interests of his country ; no one before him has seen so clearly that the true sources of the greatness of England lie in its productive industry. I believe that to the mea- sures of the late Chancellor of the Exchequer I owe the liberty of delivering my sentiments in this house, and that to him I owe the possession of that wealth and rise in the world which my industry has acquired. And I do not speak solely of myself; the same may be said of every individual whose industry has succeeded under his protection. He has been the benefactor of his country. He has neglected no one's interest but his own."§ Slavery was almost the only question on which Sir Robert Peel— he had been made a baronet on the 29th of Novem- ber, 1800 |j — disagreed with Pitt. 'The Africans,' he main- tained, ' were not sufficiently matured by civilization to understand or enjoy the rights of freemen ; and to give them liberty, without first training them to use it, would * Public Characters of 1803-4 ^London, 1804 \ pp. 15-17. t Ibid., pp. 19-24. t Tayi/jr, vol. i., pp. 14, 15. § Gentleman's Magazine, vol. c, part i., p. 557 ; Sin Lawrence Peel, I'- 42. || Geidhnuin's Magazine, vol. c, part i., p. om. 161 The First Sir Hubert Peel be like putting a deadly weapon in the hands of a madman.'* Perhaps he was right in that. At any rate he showed his good sense and real charity by urging the prior claims of the slaves abounding in England, and most of all in his own county of Lancashire. In 1802 he carried through Parlia- ment a bill ' to ameliorate the condition of the apprentices in the cotton and woollen trades/ f Finding that insufficient, he introduced a fresh bill in 1815, intended to forbid the employment in factories of children under ten years of age, or the employment for more than ten hours a-day of children between ten and sixteen years old. \ The bill failed, as did another which lie .brought forward in the following year, urging the same measures on behalf of the children, and also proposing to limit the hours of adult labour. In 1810' there was some stir throughout the country on the occasion of fourteen poor children being burnt to death while at nightwork in a factory. Thereupon Sir Robert Peel made one more philanthropic effort — somewhat less philanthropic, however, than before, as there seemed no chance of his original proposal being adopted by Parliament. 'He now,' he said, ' recommended that children employed in cotton factories should, from nine to sixteen, be under the protec- tion of Parliament, and before nine that they should not be admitted ; that they should be employed eleven hours, which, with one hour and a half for meals, made twelve hours and a half. It was his intention, if possible, to pre- vent the recurrence of such a misfortune as that which had recently taken place. lie knew that the iniquitous practice of working children at a time when their masters were in bed too often prevailed. He was ashamed to own that he had himself been concerned when that proceeding had been suffered ; but he hoped the House would interfere and pre- vent it for the future. It was his wish to have no night- work at all in factories.'§ * Taylor. f Fublic Characters of lS(K]-4, p. 27. X Taylor, vol. i., p. 2S. § Ibid., p. 29. His Occupations in Parliament. 1C5 Peel's wishes were not realized in his lifetime. In many other matters of commercial legislation, however, his voice had weight in the House. In 1808 he opposed Sheridan's bill for limiting the number of apprentices to be taken by calico-printers, as well as Rose's proposal for fixing a minimum of the wages to be paid to cotton-spinners.* lie also resisted various measures for enhancing or interfering with the price of food. The only basis of national prosperity was in free-trade. Any meddling with the market-price, either of labour or of the necessaries of life, he maintained, was objectionable : any scheme for unduly favouring the working-classes would only increase their troubles by in- ducing capitalists to withdraw their money from trade. In 1812 Sir Robert Peel took a leading part in the efforts to make public recompense to Samuel Crompton for his in- vention of the spinning-mule. At the close of 1811 it was found that upwards of four and half million mule-spindles were used in various parts of England, in spinning about forty million pounds of cotton-wool each year, steady occu- pation being thus afforded to seventy thousand workpeople, besides a hundred and fifty thousand more employed in weaving the yarn thus spun.f Yet Crompton had gained nothing by his invention. Arkwright, prudently securing patent rights for an invention of much less moment, and one that was hardly his at all, had become a rich and famous man. Crompton, having taken no such precautions, was still neglected, and, therefore, in 1811, determined to bring his case before Parliament. Sir Robert Peel was one of its most energetic supporters, lie was one of the committee appointed in March, 1812, to make investigations and advise the House as to the compensation to be made, lie was dis- cussing the matter in the lobby of the House of Commons on the 11th of May, with John Blaekburne, Member of Parliament for Lancashire, and Crompton himself, when Perceval came up to them. Crompton modestly fell hack * T.xyluk, p. 17. t Fi.r.NUi. l.>'/< <>f < 'rout/lion, pp. HO, 150. 1GG The First Sir Robert Peel before he was perceived, and hardly heard the Chancellor of the Exchequer say to the others, " You will be glad to know- that we mean to propose 20,OO0Z. for Crompton ; do you think that will be satisfactory ?"* They were almost the last words spoken by him. As Crompton walked away the madman Bcllingham hurried up, and in a few minutes more Tercival was cruelly assassinated. Thereby Crompton suffered with the world at large, and suffered more than most. He had hoped for a compensation of 50,000Z., although, when Peel asked how much he would be satisfied with, he haughtily replied, " Sir Robert, this is working at the wrong end. I entertain no doubt of the Parliament acting according to their own dignified character, and not doing a mean or little thing, if the case is fairly brought before them." t Perhaps he would have been satisfied with the 20,000Z. designed by Perceval ; but, Perceval being dead, he received only a quarter of that amount. Crompton is supposed to have blamed Peel as the instigator of this beggarly payment. \ But there seems to have been no reason for the charge. Sir Robert Peel's plans for helping trade were not always wise. During the great commercial depression of 1811 he induced Parliament to sanction the issue of exchequer bills to the extent of 3,000,000Z., to merchants and manufacturers who could give suitable guarantee for the employment of the money within reasonable time. That was an infringement of the principles of free-trade, and did not work well. Then, in 1813, he produced a very objectionable scheme for re- ducing taxation by applying part of the sinking-fund to the current expenses of the nation. § A better financier and statesman was his eldest son Robert. This son was born in 1788. We are told how the father, twice disappointed by the birth of daughters, when he heard that at last a son was born to him, fell on * French, Life of Crom),tou, p. 1G0. t Ibid, p. ICG. t Ibid., p. 210. § Tayluk, vol. i., p. IS. The Second Sir Robert Peel. 1G7 his knees and vowed that he would give up his child to the service of his country.* The vow was well kept. All the home-training and all the schooling were planned with a view to his education as an orator, a statesman, and a patriot. Wonderfully significant was Lord Byron's account of his schoolmate at Harrow : — ' Peel was my form-fellow, and we were both at the top of our remove. AVe were on good terms ; but his brother was my intimate friend. There were always great hopes of Peel amongst us all, masters and scholars, and he has not disappointed them. As a scholar he was greatly my superior : as a declaimer and actor I was reckoned at least his equal : as a schoolboy, out of school, I was always in scrapes, and he never ; and in school he always knew his lesson, and I rarely ; but when I knew it I knew it nearly as well. In general information, history, &c, I think I was his superior, as well as of most boys of my standing.' The boy who was never in scrapes, and who always knew his lessons, must have been rather a tame fellow. But young Peel's brains were well worked. He entered Parliament in 1809, when he was only one-and- twenty ; and in 1812 he was Secretary of State for Ireland, — ' a raw youth,' as O'Connell complained, ' squeezed out of the workings of I know not what factory, and not past the foppery of perfumed handkerchiefs and thin shoes.' O'Connell had some ground for his dislike. But Peel satisfied his party, and did his work honestly, following his father's training by making it one of his great objects to foster the trade of Ireland, and to place its merchants and manufacturers on a par with their neighbours in England. In two of the measures for which Robert Peel the younger was afterwards famous he was anticipated by his father. In 1813 the first Sir Robert opposed the tax on cotton ;t and in 181.3, when the Corn Laws were introduced by Mr. Frederick Robinson, afterwards Earl of Ripon, he steadfastly resisted * Sii: Lawklnce Yv.v.x., pp. 40, 41. t Tayi.oi;, vol. L pp. \\\ 20. 1 GS The First Sir Robert Peel them. It was an error, he said, to suppose that the interests of the landholder and the manufacturer were conflicting or incompatible ; they were one and the same ; the success or ruin of the one class must tend to the success or ruin of the other. The whole community was enriched by the sale of manufactures ; all needed to be fed alike by agricultural produce.* That was the argument, also, of the second Sir Robert Feel, twenty-seven years later. On one remarkable occasion, father and son were at variance. In the spring of 1819 the young man was elected chairman of the Currency Committee, appointed to devise a way of helping both the Bank of England and the country out of difficulties attributed to the old Bank Restriction Act of 1797. By that Act the Bank was allowed to refuse pay- ment in cash for its notes, and there was, in consequence, a large issue of paper money, with no equivalent of bullion in the strong boxes of the Bank. This measure the first Sir Robert had supported in 1802, on the plea that it was a great boon to the trading community, and that, instead of its abrogation, the thing most needed was a clearer and more absolute system of inconvertible paper currency. Other financiers thought differently. It was complained that this paper money had already deteriorated, and would deteriorate more and m e, and that trade was seriously damaged by the inequality between the paper pound and the gold pound; and to this view young Peel, thinking as it seems with his father when he entered the Committee, was converted in the course of its deliberations. Therefore, on the 21tli of May, he introduced the Currency Bill, known henceforth as Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1819, the parent of Peel's more famous Bank Charter Act of 1841. Before that, at the first sitting of the House, his father presented a petition from many leading merchants of London, praying for the rejection of the bill. *' To-night," he said in so doing, " I shall have to oppose a * Taylok, vol. i., p. 21. Father and Son at Variance on the Currency Question. 1G9 very near and dear relation ; but, while it is my own senti- ment that I have a duty to perform, I respect those who do theirs, and who consider that duty to be paramount to all other considerations. I have mentioned the name of Mr. Pitt. My own impression is certainly a strong one in favour of that great man. I have always thought him the first man in the country. I well remember, when the .relation I have alluded to was a child, I observed to some friends that the man who discharged his duty to his country in the manner Mr. Pitt had done was the man of all the world the most to be admired and the most to be imitated ; and I thought at that moment that, if my life and that of my dear relation should be spared, I would one day present him to his country, to follow in the same path. It is very natural that such should be my wish ; and I will only say further of him that, though he is deviating from the proper path in this instance, his head and heart are in the right place, and I think they will soon recall him to the right way."* Those sentences are very note-worthy. They clearly reflect the admirable character of the first Sir Robert Peel. They called forth some equally characteristic sentences from his son. " Many difficulties," said Mr. Peel, in the clever speech with which he introduced and carried through his Bill, " pre- sented themselves to me in discussing this question. Among them is one which it pains me to observe — I mean, the necessity I am under of opposing myself to an authority to which I have always bowed from my youth up, and to which I hope I shall always continue to bow with deference. My excuse now is, that I have a great public duty imposed upon me, and that, whatever may be my private feelings, from that duty I must not shrink."! That was the last episode of note in Sir Robert's Parlia- mentary career. lie resigned his seat next year, the seventieth of his life. Some time before he had left all com- mercial affairs to the management of his sons. Henceforth * Taylok, vol. i. t Mid. VOL. II. N 170 The First Sir Robert Peel. he lived quietly, in the enjoyment of a princely fortune, at Drayton Park, near Tamworth.* Many instances are given of the way in which, both now and in all the earlier years, he used his wealth. Hating all idle show, and caring little for gay society, he sought the company of honest friends, and strove to have everything about him and belonging to him llhAllu.S 11AMW. as genuine, good, and thorough in its character as possible. If he did not always succeed in this, the fault was in his defective education and the narrowing influences of a youth devoted to commercial pursuits. Of picture-collecting he was especially fond, and he made it a rule never to buy without first seeking counsel of his good friend Wilkie. * During most of the previous thirty years he had lived still more quietly at Chamber Hall, near Bury, a house built lor him on his marriage, wiUi an entrance hall, two parlours, a kitchen on the ground-floor, and corrojiond- ing rooms above. Tlie front parlour served as a counting-house, and, after a time, the back yard was built upon for a packing-room.— The Feel Family. Illustrations of his Character. 171 Once, we are told, the rule was broken ; and the painter was taken, after dinner, to admire a choice relic of one of the old masters lately bought by Sir Robert. Honest David looked with some astonishment, and then with an amused face by no means agreeable to the connoisseur. " Well, sir, what do you think of it ?" he asked. " It is not for me," answered Wilkie, " to find fault with the painting or to con- demn your taste in selecting it ; but do you sec those initials?"' pointing to a small D. w. in the corner. The picture was one of Wilkie's own ; and Sir Robert had been played upon by the dealer of whom he had bought it. " Well," he said, when he understood his blunder, " I see I have been deceived ; but I have never before been cheated so much to my own satisfaction." ,. Sir Robert Peel did not spend all his spare money in picture-buying. He was a governor of Christ's Hospital and president of the House of Recovery in Manchester, to which, as well as to many other benevolent institutions, he gave freely. To the Society for Benefiting the Condition of the Poor, he made, in 1801, a donation of 1,000/., and he was a constant friend and benefactor to the poor of Bury and Tamworth.* He built and endowed a chapel at Fazeley in Staffordshire, and by his will, besides many other charitable bequests, 0,000/. were left for the establishment of a free- school in the same village. Many anecdotes are preserved of his charitable work in individual cases. We are told of an instance in which a large cotton house in Manchester, for many years engaged in active though generous rivalry with his own, had, by immense speculations, brought itself, in 1801, almost to bankruptcy. Sir Robert Peel hearing of it, and knowing the house was honourable, secretly advanced, without security, upwards of 11,000/., and so enabled it to tide over its difficulties.! In the same year he heard of the failure of a house m which two younjr men, sons of a merchant with whom he had * rublic Characters of 1803-1, pp. 39, 10. 1 lbi<l, pi». 10, 11. 172 The First Sir Robert Peel. had dealings, had lost not only their own wealth, but also the portions, 5,000Z. apiece, of their three sisters. To each of these sisters he sent, with all possible delicacy, a cheque for 1,000Z., and he used his influence to procure for their brothers respectable employment in which they might retrieve their positions.* Then there was a clergyman of whom old Sir Robert had learned to think so highly that he voluntarily sought and obtained from the Chancellor the promise of a vacant living. Before it could be granted, however, there were ministerial changes, and the living found its way to other hands. Sir Robert Peel straightway bought a presentation of equal value and handed it to his friend.f Other stories, giving like evidence of a generous disposi- tion, are on record ; but we are told, and we can well believe, that Sir Robert Peel loved best to do his charities in secret He also deemed it best to give freely of his wealth in his lifetime, instead of hoarding it up for ostenta- tious benevolence after death. Yet he was one of the richest men in England when he died. Drayton Manor and other large estates in Staffordshire and Warwickshire descended to his eldest son, on whom he had settled 9,000Z. a year from the time of his entering Parliament, when he was one-and- twenty. To each of his five younger sons a sum of 135,0007. was left ; and his three surviving daughters were enriched to the extent of 53,O0OZ. apiece. Living in happy retirement, the good old man had the gratification of seeing the steady and honourable advance- ment of the son whom he had done his best to make a second Pitt. A stanch Tory, save on some questions of free-trade, he could not sympathise with that son's gradual change of politics, and he was especially grieved, it was said, at his handling of the Roman Catholic Relief Bill in 1820. But he was an honest and independent man himself, and he not only tolerated but honoured the honesty and independence * Public Charactirs of 1S03-4, p. 42. f Ibid., p. 40. His Charities, and his Death. 173 of others, whether his own kindred or strangers, even when they differed most from him. On his seventy-eighth birthday, in 1828, Sir Robert Peel was able to assemble fifty children and grandchildren at Drayton. To each of them he gave a silver medal in memory of the occasion. He died on the 3rd of May, 1830. * A few days before his death,' we are told, ' feelino- himself more than usually alert, he invited three of his nephews to dine with him. At dinner he asked if the champagne was good, and being told that it was, he drank a glass of it. The wine raised his spirits, and he conversed with much animation about past times. After dinner they played at whist ; and after a rubber or two Mr. Willock' — one of the nephews — 'perceiving that his uncle's hand shook a little as he dealt the cards, offered to deal for him. " No, no, Robert," he said ; " if I cannot deal my own cards, it is time to give up the game ;" and with this characteristic speech he broke up the rubber.'* His game of life, a singu- larly noble and attractive one, was over. Of his great son's after-life we have not to speak. The principles implanted in him by his merchant father were his guides to the last, and in many of his legislative measures, in his Bank Charter Act, and in his anti-Corn-Law opposition most of all, he exercised very notable influence on mercantile history ; but he was in no sense himself a merchant. In the world of commerce the Peels most to be remembered, the men to be honoured as the greatest of all early promoters of Manchester trade and of the trade that has enriched all the towns round Manchester, are Robert Peel, the beginner of calico-printing in Blackburn, and Robert Peel, the master of the factory-village at Bury. * Sir Lawrence Peel, p. 55. 174 CHAPTER XXII. SOME MERCHANTS OF GLASGOW; ESPECIALLY PATRICK COLQUHOUN, DAVID DALE, AND THE MONTEITHS. [1420-1S48.] The commercial history of Glasgow begins with a William Elphinstone, contemporary with William Canynge of Bristol. About the year 1420 he was famous for his shipments of pickled salmon and dried herrings to France and other parts of Europe, for which he received wine and brandy in ex- change.* The Bishop Elphinstone who founded the Uni- versity of Aberdeen was his son, and the proceeds of the old merchant's trade are said to have greatly helped on the good work. Towards the end of the fifteenth century, while the University was being built, Archibald Lyon, youngest son o Lord Glamis, the Earl of Strathmore, settled in Glasgow, and lived with Archbishop Gavin Douglas in old Glasgow Castle. He married a Mistress Margaret Douglas, and became a merchant. 'He undertook great voyages and adventures in trading,' according to the old chronicler, * to Poland, France, and Holland. His endeavours were won- derfully blessed with success, so that he acquired considerable lands in and about the city of Glasgow. He built' — in 1536, as it is supposed — ' a great lodging for himself and family upon the south side of the Gallowgate Street. There- after he built four closes of houses and forty-four shops, high • Anderson, vol. i., p, 453 ; Beauties of Scotland (Edinburgh, I80G), toI. iii., p. 275. Old Glasgow Merchants. 175 and low, on the south side of the Gallowgate, and a part of the east side of the Saltniarket.' lie lived to be ninety-five years old. lie had a son named Archibald, whose son George was another famous merchant of Glasgow ; and his three daughters were all wedded to merchants, ancestors of other merchants.* Old Archibald Lyon must be considered the father of Glasgow. ' No other nobleman's youngest son in Scotland,' says his first panegyrist, ' can boast of such an opulent off- spring.'t So important had Glasgow commerce become during the lifetime of his grandchildren, and so much were they and their fellow-merchants or tradesmen given to quarrelling among themselves, and with the foreigners who now began to settle in the neighbourhood for purposes of commerce, that their relationship with one another, and their position in the town, had to be made subjects of legislation. ' At that time,' we are told, 'the traders of Glasgow were by far more numerous than the merchants, so as they claimed not only as great a share and interest in the government of the city, but also the right of being equal sharers with the merchants in seafaring trade ; to which the merchants were altogether averse, affirming that they were to hold every one to his trade, and not meddle with theirs. Upon which there arose terrible heats, strifes, and animosities betwixt them, which was like to end with shedding of blood ; for the trades rose up against the merchants.'} Among the whole- sale and the retail dealers of Glasgow there were, about the year 1G00, as great jealousies as there had been in London, a century earlier, between the merchant adventurers and the members of the trading guilds who desired to share their commercial advantages. In this case the differences were settled by the establishment, in 1G05, of a guildery, for re- gulating and maintaining the limits of trade and commerce, having at its head a dean, who was to be 'a merchant, * John- M'Ure, alias Campbell, View of Vie City <>f Glasgow (Glasgow, 173G ; , pp. 115, 135. t Ibid., p. 110. ! lhhU P- l $7. 17C Old Glasgow Merchants; William Simjjson, a merchant sailor, and a merchant venturer.' He was to be assisted by a provost and bailies, a council and deacons, half of them being merchants, the other half craftsmen ; and none but guild brothers were in future to be allowed to trade or traffic in Glasgow.* Many of these guild-brothers, living in the seventeenth century, were famous men of business. One of them, William Simpson, in or near the year 163G, built two ships and traded to Flanders, Poland, France, and Dantzic. ' He built great houses in Glasgow, within the Trongate, with great orchards,' we are told, ' and four large barns and great gardens at the back thereof.'! One of the merchants, living at that time in Glasgow, was John Anderson, the first importer into those parts of Scotland of French light wines. J Another and a greater, was Walter Gibson, who began life as a brewer and malt- maker, and then proceeded to become a regular merchant. In 1668 he cured and packed 300 lasts or herrings, each containing twelve barrels, and worth 61. of Scottish money, and shipped them to Saint Martin's, in France, in a Dutch vessel of 450 tons burthen. For each barrel of herrings, it is recorded, he obtained a barrel of brandy and a crown. Some of the crowns were spent in buying salt ; which, with the brandy, had so good a market in Glasgow, that out of the profits Gibson was able to purchase the Dutch ship and two other vessels, almost as large, with which he * set to his fellow-citizens an example of extensive traffic to different parts of Europe.' He is even reported to have established the sale and manufacture of iron in Glasgow.§ About this time, too, there was a William Wilson, who went from Flakefield to settle as a merchant in Glasgow, * M'Ure., pp. 1GG-191. An interesting account of the Merchants' and Trades' Houses of Glasgow is given as an introduction to Glasgow Past and Present (Glasgow, 1851 , a very valuable collection of notes by local anti- uaries, edited by Mr. James Pagan. t M'Ure., p." 2C2. Z GmsoN, Jli>-tory nf (lla*gow, ((*l;isgow, 1777\ p. 205. § Giijson. p. 205 ; M'Uku, pp. 20G, 207; Beauties of Scotland, p. 205. Walter Gibson, and William Flakefield. 177 and there, as there were other Wilsons, to be known as William Flakefield. He had a son, William, whom he apprenticed to a weaver. But the lad, not quite liking the business, enlisted, near 1 G70, in the Camoronians, and after- wards joined the famous regiment of Scots Guards in France. He lived some years abroad, until, having met with a blue and white check handkerchief, woven in Germany, a novelty in those days, it occurred to him that he would try and make others like it. Therefore, in 1700, he returned to Glasgow, and, improving upon his old apprenticeship, set about the work. ' A few spindles of yarn fit for his pur- pose,' says the old biographer, ' was all, at that time, that William Flakefield could collect, the which was but ill- bleached, and the blue not very dark. They were, however, the best that could be found in Glasgow. About two dozen of pocket handkerchiefs composed the first web. When the half was woven, he cut out the cloth and took it to the merchants. They were pleased with the novelty of the blue and white stripes, and especially with the delicate texture of the cloth, which was thin set in comparison with the Hollands that they generally dealt in. The new adventurer asked no more for his web than the net price of the materials, and the ordinary wages for his work. All he asked was readily paid him, and he went home rejoicing that his attempts were not unsuccessful. This dozen of handkerchiefs, the first of the kind ever made in Britain, was disposed of in a few days.' Others were disposed of in abundance as quickly as they could be made. Merchants and weavers from all parts came to learn the trick, and many settled down in Glasgow to practice it with success. ' The number of looms daily increased, so that Glasgow became famous for that branch of the linen trade. The checks were followed by the blunks, or linen cloth for printing, and to these,' it was written in 1793, 'is now added the muslin trade.'* * David Uke, History of llulhcrglcn and East Kilbride (Glasgow, 1793), pp. 1G9-172. 17S Progress of Grlasgoiv Commerce William Flaketield should have an honourable place in the commercial history of Glasgow ; but he was forgotten even in his lifetime. He died poor and unknown, after earning a meagre subsistence as a town drummer* He was not the only man, however, who at this time helped to forward the manufacturing greatness of Scotland. From the middle of the seventeenth century, Gallowgate, then the chief resort of wholesale traders of all classes, was crowded with woollen and hardware manufacturers, soap-boilers, sugar-refiners, and the like. In 1669, five merchants, named John Cross, James Peadie, John Luke, George Bogle, and Robert Cross, clubbed together and built the East Sugar House, the pride of Scotchmen in that day, a wonderful series of buildings for boiling sugar, under the direction of an expert master-boiler brought over from Germany on purpose. The Sugar House was a source of wealth to many families during several generations.! In all sorts of ways the commercial energy of Glasgow was apparent during the latter part of the sevententh century. The water at Broomielaw being found not deep enough for the larger ships that now came to be built, it was resolved to establish a port nearer the mouth of the Clyde. With that intent thirteen acres of ground, adjoining the village of Newark, were purchased by the corporation in 1662, and laid out in streets and harbours, to be quickly put to use.+ The ambitious disposition of Glasgow merchants at this time is illustrated by the proposal of John Sprent, ' merchant and citizen of Glasgow,' who had made much wealth through selling herrings in many parts of the world for sixpence apiece, to send ships to Guinea thence to procure gold-dust and elephants' teeth in exchange for 'linens and woollen manufactures, knives, scissors, small looking-glasses, and other toys, strong water, tobacco and beads, and pewter * David TJre, History of Eufhcrglen and East Kilbride, p. 172. t Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. i., p. 45. X Cleland, Annals of Glasgow (Glasgow, 1829), p. 28. during the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. 17 ( .) dishes. Glasgow plaids and blue bonnets.' he added. ' may do for their kings and queens.'* That suggestion was not adopted : but at the time of its appearance, Glasgow was about to embark on a much more profitable trade. A great change came with the establisb- ment of the Union in 1707. Hitherto the Glasgow mer- chants had gone only to continental towns ; and ha vino- to make a long voyage round, either southwards or northwards, they found it hard to compete with the people of Edinburgh, Dundee, and other earlier haunts of commerce. By the Union Scotland was made a sharer in the colonial wealth of England, and henceforth Glasgow, the capital of western Scotland, began to advance from the same causes, and with as much rapidity as Liverpool and Manchester. Its mer- chants at once began to follow the example of Liverpool, and send vessels — at first they were only hired vessels, Glasgow having no shipping of its own strong enough for crossing the Atlantic — to the American and West Indian ports. These vessels carried out clothing and hardware, and brought back tobacco. ' A supercargo went out with every vessel,' we are told, ' who bartered his goods for tobacco, until such time as he had either sold all his goods, or pro- cured as much tobacco as was sufficient to load his vessel. He then returned immediately, and, if any of his goods remained unsold, he brought them home with him.'f The first venture made by Glasgow in the tobacco trade was in or very soon after the year 1707. The captain of the vessel was appointed to act as supercargo. ' This person,' we are told, ' although a shrewd man, knew nothing of accounts ; and when, on his return, he was asked by his employers for a statement of how the adventure had turned out, told them he could give them none, but there were its proceeds ; and threw down upon the table a large hoggar — that is, a stocking— stuffed to the top with coin. The ad- * Strang, Glazr/ow and its Clubs (Glasgow, 1S57), pp. 30, 31. t Gibson, p. 20G. ISO Rise of the Glasgow Tobacco Trade. venture had been a profitable one ; and his employers con- ceived that if an uneducated, untrained person had been so successful, their gains would have been still greater had a person versed in accounts been sent with it. Under this impression they immediately despatched a second adventure, with a supercargo, highly recommanded for a knowledge of accounts, who produced to them a beautifully made-out statement of his transactions, but no hoggar.'* Those enterprises, like all others of the time, were con- ducted by a company of traders. ' Up to the middle of the eighteenth century, commercial concerns, whether for manu- factures or for foreign trades, were in general carried on by what might be termed joint-stock companies of credit : six or eight responsible individuals having formed themselves into a company, advanced each into the concern a few hundred pounds, and borrowed on the personal bonds of the company whatever further capital was required for the undertaking. It was not till commercial capital, at a later period, had grown up in the country that individuals, or even companies trading extensively on their own capital, were to be found.' So it was with the Virginia trade. 'One of the partners acted as manager, and the others did not interfere. The transactions consisted in purchasing goods for the shipments made twice a year, and making sales of the tobacco which they received in return. The goods were bought upon twelve months' credit ; and when a shipment came to be paid off, the manager sent notice to the different furnishers to meet him on such a day, at such a wine-shop, with their accounts to be discharged. They then received the payment of their accounts, and along with it a glass of wine each, for which they paid. These wine-shops were opposite to the Tontine Exchange, and no business was transacted but in one of them.'t * Statistical Account of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1845), vol. vi., pp. 230, 231, quoting from the Scrap Book of Dlgald Bannatyne. f Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. vi., pp. 230, 231 :— 'This curious ■''VJMmi Increase of Shipping in Glasgow. 181 Those were the rude beginnings of Glasgow's trade with America, In 1718 the first home-built ship went out for tobacco ; and within a few years so many were on the seas that great opposition was raised by the rival merchants of Bristol, Liverpool, and Whitehaven. In the year 1721, ' a most terrible confederacy was entered into by almost all the tobacco merchants in South Britain.' By them the Glasgow merchants were accused of all sorts of frauds, both upon their neighbours and upon the Exchequer, and accordingly a commission was sent down from the Treasury to make in- quiries as to the alleged abuses. This commission reported that the complaints of the merchants of London, Liverpool, arid Whitehaven were groundless, and that they proceeded from a spirit of envy, and not from a regard to the interest of trade or the King's revenue.' That decision was not at all to the liking of the southern traders. Therefore they made interest with the House of Commons, and procured a new body of commissioners, whose verdict, given in 1723, was against the people of Glasgow. Hence arose lawsuits and quarrels of all sorts without number, very prejudicial for a time to the welfare of the new centre of commerce. In 1723, the Glasgow merchants possessed three-and-twenty tobacco ships. In 1735, they had only twenty-seven vessels of all classes trading with America and the West Indies. But the hindrance was only temporary. In 1735 the entire shipping of Glasgow amounted to about 5, GOO tons. By 1771 it had risen to nearly 60,000 tons.* mode of paying off of these shipments,' it is added, ' was contrived with a view to furnish aid to some well-horn young woman, whose parents had fallen into bad circumstances, whom it was customary to place in one of those shops in the same way that, at an after period, such a }>erson would have been put into a milliner's shop.' * The trade reports of the latter year are worth analysing. We find that the manufactures of Glasgow at this time comprised linens, calicoes, lawns, and cambrics, cotton and woollen goods in great quantities, leather, soap, hardware, and jewellery, with a net value in all of about 450,0002. The imports consisted of 4 0,055,1. '59 lbs. of tobacco, and some 50,000 cubic feet of timber, besides skins and other miscellaneous articles from the North 182 The Glasgow Tobacco Lords ; In 1740 there were more than a hundred notable mer- chants in Glasgow. Some of them are described as 'sea- adventurers, trading to sundry places in Europe, Africa, and America.' The rest formed 'a great company, undertaking the trade to Virginia, the Carribean Islands, Barbadoes, New England, Saint Christophers, Montserrat, and other colonies in America."* These latter were the tobacco-lords, famous for their wealth, whereby they generally came to be bankers as well, and for the pomp and pride which that wealth engendered. Satirists are fond of telling how, in scarlet coats, cocked hats, and powdered wigs, they strutted up and down the Plainstanes, the only bit of pavement then in Glasgow, covering three or four hundred yards of road in front of the Town Hall and the adjoining offices — talking grandly to one another, and nodding haughtily to the humbler folk who came to do them homage.t But they were, for the most part, worthy, enterprising men. One of the oldest of them was Andrew Buchanan, who in 17 ID began to acquire property near the street named after American ports of Boston and Falmouth in Philadelphia, Maryland in Virginia, and the North Carolina towns ; 179,544 gallons of rum, 47,357 lbs. of sugar, and 59,434 lbs. of cotton from the West Indian islands of Antigua, Granada, Jamaica, Nevis, St. Kitts, St. Vincent, and Honduras; 39,922 busbels of gait, 32,000 gallons of wine, and 32,250 lemons, besides miscella- neous groceries from Italy, Portugal, and the South of Europe ; and great quantities of flax and linen articles from Germany, Poland, and Russia. Much greater quantities of linen came from Ireland ; 731,118 yards from Dublin, 361,502 from Belfast, and 7.G71 from other towns, making a total of 1,100,291 yards; to which must be added 4,022 barrels of salt-beef, besides hams, butter, and other goods from several other Irish towns, with Cork at their head. In return for these commodities, largo supplies of ale, rum, carpets, haberdasheries, and tobacco were sent to Ireland. Linen aud woollen goods, leather, hardware, and all sorts of English manufactures were despatched to North America and the West Indies; and tobacco was the staple export to the European countries, 20.774. 843 lbs. being sent to France, 15,000,000 lbs. to Holland, 4,000,000 lbs. to Germany, 170,S531bs. to Italy, 140,852 lbs. to Mineral, and smaller quantities to Sweden, Denmark, Norway, and Russia.— Gibson, pp. 212-234, 24S * M'Uije. t Stiiaxg. pp. 35-37, and Glasgow, Past and Present, passim. The Buchanans ; Alexander Speirs ; John G-lassford. 183 him. In 1740 he was Provost of Glasgow, and in 1745, when the rebels roughly called upon him for a contribution of 500/. to their exchequer, he bade them plunder his house, if they must, but refused willingly to help them with a farthing.* He died soon after that, leaving his son George Buchanan, also a great foreign merchant and importer of tobacco, to build the Old Virginia House, in 1752. f He lived in his mansion seventeen years, and a few months after his death, in 1769, it was sold to Alexander Speirs, the richest of all the tobacco lords.} * I once asked the late Provost Cochrane of Glasgow, who was eminently wise, and who has been a merchant there for seventy years,' said Sir John Dalrymple, in 1788, ' to what causes he imputed the sudden rise of Glasgow. He said it was all owing to four young men of talent and spirit, who started at one time in business, and whose successes gave example to the rest. The four had not 10,OOOZ. amongst them when they began.'§ Something, but certainly not all, was owing to these four enterprising merchants. They were William Cunningham, of Lainshaw ; Henry Ritchie, of Busbie ; Alexander Speirs, of Elderslie ; and John Glassford, of Dougaldstone. They and their fellow-merchants, of whom there were two-and-forty, had brought the tobacco-trade to such a state of prosperity that, of the 90,000 hogsheads brought into Great Britain in 1772, 49,000 were brought to Glas- gow ; and of that quantity Speirs's consignment amounted to 0,035 hogsheads, a fifteenth of the entire importation of the country, John Glassford's to 4,500. Glassford had a fleet of twenty-five ships of his own, which he employed solely in his own trade. During the years of his greatest business, he is said to have imported 500,000Z.'s worth of goods each year. He died in 17S3.|| * Strang, p. 24. t Glastjow, Fast and Present, vol. ii., p. 197. * Ibid., vol. ii., p. 199; vol. iii., p. 010 (Edinburgh, 17S8). § Dai.uymim.i., Memoirs of Great Britain and Ireland, vol. ii., Appendix. || GlataoLc, l'ast and I'resent, vol. ii., p. 17G. 184 Patrick Colquhoun of Glasgow. In that year, too, the tobacco trade of Glasgow had be<nin to die. The American war threw obstacles in its way, and so left room for the greater development of other branches of commerce, and the full unfolding of the wealth and pros- perity of Glasgow. The man who, perhaps, did more than any other to brino- about this good result, was Patrick Colquhoun. Descended, through both his parents, from the old family of Colquhouns, he was born on the 14th of March, 1745, at Dumbarton. There his father, an old class-fellow of Smollett's, served as local judge and registrar of county records. But the boy seems to have been an orphan, and not very well off, before he was sixteen years old. Then, or soon after, he emigrated to Virginia, to reside in its eastern part, separated by Chesa- peake Bay from the centre of the colony. There he occupied some sort of mercantile position, and twice each year, we are told, he crossed the water to trade with the people who came up to the General Courts at Richmond. He himself was fond of listening to and joining in the legal talk. His chief friends in America were lawyers and law students, among whom he added much to the scanty education he had re- ceived at home, and developed a taste, strong and healthy all through life, for political economy and social science. But ill health brought him back to Scotland in 1766.* In 1767, when he was two-and-twenty years of age, he started as a merchant in Glasgow,! there chiefly to reside for another term of two-and-twenty years. Of his own commercial dealings we hear very little. He was one of those patriotic merchants who, without neglecting their duties to themselves and their immediate dependents, make it their chief business to study the welfare of society at large. All good works came naturally to Colquhoun, but he devoted himself especi- ally to the promotion of British commerce and the advance : * Biographical Sketch of the Life and Writings of ralricJc Colqulwun, by 'larpo'i ("Loudon, 1818), p. 5. f Ibid., p. G. His Local and Public Services. 185 ment of Glasgow among its great places of resort. In 1770, during the American war, he was one of fourteen principal contributors to a fund for raising a Glasgow regiment of troops. In 1779, and again in 1780, he visited London to hold conferences on trade with Lord North, then Premier, and to work through Parliament a Bill of considerable im- portance to the commerce of Scotland ; and in the latter year he was chosen a local magistrate and a member of the City 1'XtiUCK COLQUIIOCK OF GLASGOW. Council of Glasgow. In 1781 he started a scheme for building a Glasgow Coffee-llouse, to be developed into the Chamber of Commerce. He also procured the improvement of the Glasgow Exchange, and so led to the construction of a new and splendid building. In 1781, moreover, he was chosen a commissioner from Glasgow to a convention of the royal burghs of Scotland, then sitting at Edinburgh ; and next year he came to London, as agent of that con- vention, to obtain an Act of Parliament, placing the linen VOL. II. o 186 The Glasgow Chamber of Commerce manufacturers of North Britain on a par with those of Ireland.* Near the end of 1782 the building appointed for the Chamber of Commerce and Manufactures of the City of Glasgow was completed and opened amid great rejoicings. Colquhoun was elected its first chairman, to continue in office till 1786 ; and it started with about three hundred members.! It was designed for the consideration of all plans and pro- posals for protecting and improving every branch of domestic trade and manufacture, and the establishment of rules for the guidance and extension of all sorts of foreign trade. It was also designed to give help and advice to all individual traders, both in the immediate advancement of their callings and in furtherance of their dealings with the Government, with Parliament, or with foreign countries, and to ' procure relief or redress in every grievance, hardship, oppression, or inconvenience affecting any particular branch of trade or manufacture carried on by the members of the Society.' In short, as it was stated in the charter of incorporation which Colquhoun visited London to procure in the spring of 1785, it was intended ' to take cognizance of every matter and thing in the least degree connected with the interests of com- merce, and to give stability and encouragement to the com- merce and manufactures of the city of Glasgow and the towns and villages in the neighbourhood. 'J That most assuredly it did. No single event in the history of Glasgow was so advantageous to its mercantile interests as this founding of the Chamber of Commerce, due altogether, as it seems, to the forethought and perseverance of Patrick Colquhoun. At this time also he began to work with his pen. In 1783 he wrote some very sensible Obser- vations on tlie Present State of the Linen and Cotton Manu- factures. In 1785 he published another work on The Interchange of British Manufactures with Ireland ; and in * Biographical Slcet'h of Patrick Colquhoun, pp. G, 7. f Ibid., p. 8. \ Cleland, Annals of Glasgow (Glasgow. J81G), vol. ii., pp. 377-382. founded by Patrick Colquhoun. 187 178S, at Pitt's request, and for his guidance, he prepared a minute account of the state of the cotton trade in Great Britain.* Many other books and pamphlets followed these, all giving proof of his devotion to trade and his enlightened appreciation of its character and needs. This he showed in all sorts of other ways. Often he hurried up to London to hold interviews with the ministers, with Members of Parlia- ment, and with the great City merchants. Often he went on like errands to Manchester, Paisley, and other towns. During the later months of 1788 and the beginning of 1789 he was in Flanders and Brabant, oftenest in Ostend, at that time the great European depot for East Indian goods, seeing how far British manufactures could be brought to compete with foreign wares. Thence he returned to London, and did his utmost for the organization of a new national machinery for the interchange of commodities with the con- tinental towns, as well as among the great British marts. His efforts were very beneficial, though greatly crippled, we are told, by the jealousies of the great merchants of London, who were loth to have smaller people in any sort of partner- ship with them. To him, it seems, was chiefly due the in- troduction of British muslins on the Continent, soon to issue in the establishment of an immense and very profitable trade.f In other ways, through more than thirty years, Patrick Colquhoun did great service to the nation. But his work, henceforth, had not much to do with Glasgow. For some reason unexplained — probably because, as a merchant, he had already made money enough to enable him in future to devote himself, without hindrance, to employments wholly philanthropic and altogether to his taste — he abandoned the pursuit of commerce in November, 17894 That done, he quitted Glasgow and, at the age of forty-four, took up his residence in London. During one-and-thirty years he busied himself in various ways for the good of society, and * Biograpliical Sketch, pp. 11, 13. t Tbi'd. pp. 13-1G. J Ibid., p. 17. 188 Patrick Colquhouris Work in London. especially for the advancement of commerce. He was com- mercial agent in London for several of the West Indian islands and some continental towns. He was also durino- many years, an able police magistrate. He was a frequent adviser both of the ministers of the Crown and of the great City men on matters of trade and the trading interests. He also wrote many valuable books ; the most important beino- a treatise on The Police of the Thames, which led to the es- tablishment of organized plans for preventing the serious depredations of river-thieves, and another on The Wealth, Power, and Resources of the British Empire, full of en- lightened views and charitable doctrines. He died in 1820, at the age of seventy-five, much honoured by all the good people of London, and with so much fame induced by his philanthropic works among them that his share in the ad- vancement of Glasgow and Glasgow commerce was almost forgotten. But the good effects of his labours in that cause could not be forgotten. Leaving Glasgow in 1789, he left it in a very different condition from that in which he found it when he first made it his home in 1767. Glasgow was even then on the high road to prosperity, and must, in any case, have steadily grown rich and influential. But Patrick Colquhoun greatly helped it in so doing, by his own example of mercan- tile honour and enterprise, and by his advocacy of the highest commercial interests both at home and abroad. To him must be traced many of the enlightened views that charac- terised the Glasgow merchants who joined with him in the formation of the Chamber of Commerce, and whom he left to carry on his principles when he retired to London. Of these merchants the most notable of all was David Dale, in many ways a pupil of Colquhoun, though his senior by six years or more. David Dale was born on the 6th of January, 1739, at Stewarton, in Ayrshire, where his father, breaking through the custom of his ancestors who, through many generations, David Dale of Glasgow. 1S ( J lived and died as simple farmers, had established himself as a groeer and general dealer. At first David, whose onlv schooling was acquired by himself in later years, was a sort of farmer's boy. Then he was apprenticed to a weaver at Paisley. Not liking his work, he ran away from it ; but soon after we find him returning to the same kind of employ- ment and serving as a weaver's lad in Hamilton. Thence he went to Glasgow, to be advanced to a clerkship in a silk- mercer's establishment ; and prospering therein he was able in 1763, to start in business on his own account. Renting a shop in High Street, five doors from the Cross, for which he paid 51. a year, he sub-let half to a watchmaker for 50s., and for twenty years confined himself to the other half, finding his occupation in importing linen yarn from Flanders for sale to the manufacturers in Glasgow and elsewhere. This was the trade which, according to his own phrase, " first put mar- row in his bones." So profitable was it, that he was able, in 1782, while retaining his humble office, to build for himself a great house in Charlotte Street, at a cost of 6,000/. In 1783, in consequence of his marriage to the daughter of a rich Edinburgh merchant and banker, he was appointed agent in Glasgow of the Royal Bank of Scotland. There- upon the watchmaker was turned out of his old quarters, that they might be converted into a banking house.* In this year also, the first year of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce, Dale made other work for himsel£ He in- vited Sir Richard Arkwright to Glasgow, with his assistance selected the site of the famous New Lanark Cotton Mills on the Clyde, and, engaging to buy from him the exclusive * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxvi., p. 770 ; Chambers, Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen, including a memoir of Dale by his friend Andrew Liddell (Glasgow, 1850), vol. v., pp. 162, 1G3 ; Irving and Murray, The Upper Ward of Lanarkshire Described and Delineated (Glasgow, 18G5), vol. ii., pp. 380, 381 ; Glasgow, Past and Present (Glasgow, 1851), vol. i., p. 105 ; vol. ii., p. 50. Dale's great bouse was afterwards converted into a nunnery. His garden is now covered by a school, a church, a theatre, an old clothes- market, and a model lodging-house. 190 David Dale of Glasgow. rio-ht of using his spinning machine in Scotland, proceeded to expend on this enterprise most of the money he had been laying by during the previous twenty years. Just then, however, Arkwright's patent right was challenged, and David Dale was thus enabled to spend in other ways the amount he was about to pay for its use. In company with George Macintosh and a Frenchman named Papillon, he established the first Scotch works for dyeing cotton Turkey- red ; and in the same year, we are told, he joined in a large undertaking for the manufacture of cotton goods.* ' The individual, who, some thirty or forty years before, was a little herdboy at Stewarton,' says his biographer, ' was now sole proprietor of, or connected as a managing partner with, several of the most extensive mercantile, manufacturing, and banking concerns of the country, the proper supervision of any of which would have absorbed the entire powers of most other men. Mr. Dale, however, was eminently qualified to sustain the numerous and varied offices which he had under- taken. Every duty being attended to in its own place and at the proper time, he was never overburdened with work, nor did he ever appear to be in a hurry. We find him suc- cessfully conducting, with strict commercial integrity, all the important enterprises in which he was embarked, together with others not included in the enumeration. Besides de- voting his time and money to various benevolent schemes, he discharged the onerous duties of a magistrate of the city of Glasgow, to which he was elected in 1791, and again in 1794. Moreover, every Lord's day, and sometimes on other days, he preached the Gospel to a Congregational Church of which he was one of the elders.'f The busy merchant had been of a religious disposition from the first; and about the year 1779 he and some others 'dis- carded, as unscriptural, Church government by sessions, pres- * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxvi., p. 770 ; Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., p. 303. t Chambers, Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., p. 163. His Business and his Religion. 191 byteries, and synods, maintaining that all who possessed the qualifications for the ministry, as laid down in the apostolic writings, and who were called by their brethren to the exercise of these gifts, were not only at liberty, but were bound, to exercise them for the good of their fellow-creatures, although they had never entered the portals of a college or a divinity hall. These new views, especially when acted upon by the appoint- ment of Mr. Dale to the ministry, raised a shout of derision. He was hooted and jostled in the streets, and many times forced to take shelter under some friendly roof. Even the meeting-house did not escape the popular dislike; stones and other missiles were hurled against it, till the windows, roof, and other parts of the building were much injured.' David Dale paid no heed to this petty persecution, however, and preached on as his conscience bade him. In so doing he lost no favour with any whose favour was worth having, as was curiously shown during his magistracy in 1791. 'It was then and for a long time afterwards the practice of the magistrates and other civic functionaries to walk in proces- sion to the Parish Church, escorted by city officers in uniform, with halberds and other tokens of authority. Mr. Dale could not, of course, accompany the procession to the Parish Church ; but rather than allow a magistrate to go unescorted to any place of worship, it was arranged that a portion of the city officers should, in livery and with halberds, attend him to and from his own place of worship, and wait upon him while there.'* Honest Dale did not suffer his religious zeal to interfere with his zealous attention to business matters ; but like many other rich merchants, he was famous for his charitable dis- position. During the famine years of 1782, 1791, 1792, 1793, and 1799, we learn, he chartered several ships and sent them to America, Ireland, and the Continent, there to buy all sorts of wholesome food, which, when brought to Glasgow, he caused to be sold to the poor at cost price or * Chambers, Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., p. 170. 192 David Dale of Glasgow. less. " David Dale gives his money by sho'elfuls," the poor people of Glasgow used to say ; " but God Almighty sho'els it back again."* And his charity found expression in all sorts of ways. ' He was one of the most liberal, conscien- tious, benevolent, and kind-hearted men I ever met with through my life,' said his son-in-law. ' His good-nature was much imposed upon, and he gave away large sums, often in mistaken charities, which were pressed upon him through his being the pastor of upwards of forty churches or congrega- tions, dissenters from the Church of Scotland, composed chiefly of poor persons, learned in the peculiar cause of their dissent, but otherwise uninformed as to general knowledge. Mr. Dale received all these kindly and hospitably, and was truly a good pastor to them in every sense of the word. He was a bishop among them, without receiving anything from his flock ; but, on the contrary, expending his private fortune freely to aid and assist them.f' Dale was charitable, too, to persons not of his own way of thinking on religious matters. Once, it is said, a young man brought to the bank, to be discounted, a draft which excited the cashier's suspicions. The matter was referred to David Dale himself, and he, on questioning the youth, soon drew from him a confession that he had forged the bill under the pressure of great want. It proved to be a reckless and fool- hardy, rather than a criminal act. So, at any rate, thought the banker. He therefore pointed out to the youth the dan- ger he had incurred and the mischief that might have arisen to others as well as himself from his rashness, — and then not only destroyed the draft, and with it all proof of his guilt, but seconded his good advice with a present of some money 4 When establishing the mills at New Lanark in 1783, Dale took every care of his workpeople. He built comfort- * Chambers, Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., p. 173 ; Gentleman's Maga- zine, vol. lxxvi., p. 770. t Life of Robert Owen, Written by Himself (London 1857), vol. i. (the only volume published), p. 70. J Chambers, Biographical Dictionary, vol. v., p. 175. His Cotton Mills at New Lanark. 193 able dwellings for them, gave them good wages, and promised them constant employment. But the great prejudice then existing among the Lowland Scots against factory work made it difficult for him to get labourers enough. He had to bring from a distance great numbers of Highlanders, and also, following the first Sir Robert Peel's example, to draw from the poor-houses of Glasgow, Edinburgh, and the other large towns all the orphans and pauper children who were found worthy of employment* That, by itself, was a great boon to Scotland. ' His little kingdom,' said one who visited the establishment in 1797, 'consists of neat, well-built houses, forming broad, regular, and cleanly streets. Near the middle of the town stand the mills, and opposite to them the chief mansion of the place, the residence of the superintendent of the works. The town contains two thousand inhabitants, mostly High- landers, all of whom that are capable of labour are employed by Mr. Dale in his service, either in working at the cotton manufactory or in repairing or keeping the mills in order. Five hundred children are entirely fed, clothed, and instructed at the expense of this venerable philanthropist. The rest of the children live with their parents in comfortable and neat habitations in the town, and receive weekly wages for their labour. The health and happiness depicted in the counte- nances of these children show that the proprietor of the Lanark Mills has remembered mercy in the midst of his gain ; the regulations adopted here for the preservation of health, both of body and mind, are such as do honour to the goodness and discernment of Mr. Dale, and present a strik- ing contrast to the generality of large manufactories in this kingdom. It is a truth which should be engraven in letters of gold, to the eternal honour of the founders of New- Lanark, that, out of nearly three thousand children working in three mills, during a period of twelve years, from 178a to 1797, only fourteen have died, and not one hath suffered * Gentleman's Magaziiie, vol. lxxvii., p. 770. 194 David Dale of Glasgow. criminal punishment. Pure and fresh air, without which life cannot exist, is administered in abundance in this manufac- tory, by frequently opening the windows and by air-holes under every other window, which are left open during the summer months. The children are all washed before they go to work, and after they have finished their daily labour, previous to their appearance in the schools. The floors and machinery of the mills are washed once a week with hot water, and the walls and ceilings twice a year are whitewashed with unslaked lime. The children are lodged in large airy rooms. The boys and girls are kept separate from each other during rest, meal times, and working hours. They are fed plentifully with plain and wholesome food, which consists chiefly of fresh beef and barley broth, cheese, potatoes, and barley bread, with now and then some fresh herrings as a variety. Their breakfast and supper is principally oatmeal porridge, with milk in the summer, and in winter a sauce made of beer and molasses. At seven o'clock the children sup ; after this there is no nightwork. After supper the schools open, and continue so till nine o'clock. The lesser children, that are not yet old enough to work, are instructed in the daytime : the elder children learn in the evening, when the daily labour is concluded. Proper masters and mistresses are employed to teach both the boys and the girls ; the boys learn to read and write and cast accounts ; the girls, in addition to these, are taught to work at the needle. Some of the children are taught church music, and on Sunday they all, under the im- mediate guidance of the masters, attend a place of Divine worship, and the rest of the day is occupied chiefly in receiv- ing moral and religious instruction from these masters.'* The New Lanark Mills brought to Dale the larger part of his great wealth. But, having no knowledge of the details of cotton manufacture himself, and finding that their manage- ment, often their mismanagement, by his half-brother and * Bristed, Pedestrian Tour, extract in the Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxiv., p. 492. His Acqaintance with Robert Given. 195 agent, James Dale, occasioned him much trouble and anxiety, he resolved, in 1799, when he was sixty years of age, to dis- pose of them. To that step he was further led by a visit from the famous Robert Owen, who, then only eight-and- twenty, had already raised himself from a humble station to a position of affluence as managing partner of the Chorlton Mills, near Manchester.* Owen had visited New Lanark in 1798 at the instigation of Dale's eldest daughter, to whom he * Robert Owen was born at Newtown, in Montgomeryshire, in 1771. His father was a saddler and ironmonger, and his mother a farmer's daughter. He was sent to school when only four or five years of age, but the master being unable to teach more than reading, writing, and the first four rules of arithmetic, he had, at seven, learnt all that could be taught him, and became assistant usher in the school. When about five years of age he scalded himself so severely with some hot flummery, that from that time his stomach was incapable of digesting any but the most simple food, and that only in very small quantities. " This," he says, " made me attend to the effects of different qualities of food on my changed constitution, and gave me the habit of close observation and continual reflection ; and I have always thought that this accident had a great influence in forming my character." Being very ' religiously inclined,' he read the religious books of all parties ; and, studying these ' contending faiths,' began to doubt the truth of any of them, on account of the deadly hatred felt by each for all others. When he was ten years old he was sent to London to find employment, and from that time he entirely maintained himself. He was placed in the shop of a draper at Stamford, named McGuffoy, and there learned habits of steady industry and methodical management of business which were of the greatest use in his future life. Employing his leisure hours in reading and en- deavouring to find out the true religion, he says that he found himself com- pelled, ' with the greatest reluctance,' to abandon his ' first and deep-rooted impressions in favour of Christianity.' " But," he adds, " my religious feelings were immediately replaced by the spirit of universal charity." After being three years with Mr. McGuffoy, Owen left his service. After paying a visit to his family in Wales, he found a new situation in the house of Messrs. Kent and Palmer, retail haberdashers, whose shop was on Old London Bridge. There he had very hard and incessant work, and acquired habits of great activity and quickness in business. Then he went to reside with a Mr. Satterfield, in Manchester. While there he met with a man named Jones, who had succeeded in discovering how to make the then new cotton-spinning machines, and who offered to establish a business, in partner- ship with Owen, if he could find a 100Z. for capital. This he did; but after some time, finding his partner had no business capacity, he was glad to leave him, bargaining to receive a certain amount of machinery in return for the capital he had invested. Ho then set up, with part of the promised 190 David Dale of Glasgoic. was introduced in the course of a business visit to Glasgow. Other visits were quickly paid one after another, partly on business, partly because of the pleasure that he found in meeting with Miss Dale. But in none of them had he the opportunity of introduction to her father. It was more as an excuse for that, and in order thus to forward his love-making, than with serious intent of becoming its purchaser, that he at length sought out the banker and made inquiries about the machinery, a small business of his own, having declined a very advantageous offer of a partnership with his former master, Mr. McGuffoy. His business prospered, that being the time when cotton-spinning was just beginning to be very profitable. At that time Mr. Drinkwater, a rich Manchester manufacturer and foreign merchant, 'had built a mill for fine spinning, and was beginning to fill it with machinery, under the superintendence of Mr. George Lee, a very superior, scientific person in those days. M/., after Sir George, Philips, was desirous of building a large mill in Salford, and he, unknown to Mr. Drinkwater, formed a partnership with Mr. Lee.' Mr. Drinkwater, being quite ignorant of machinery and cotton-spinning, was greatly non-plussed at being thus abandoned by Mr. Lee, on whose success he had depended entirely in the matter. He advertised for a manager ; and Owen, hearing of it, determined to apply for the situation. * Mr. Drinkwater said imme- diately, " You are too young. How old are you ?' — " Twenty in May, this year," was my reply. " How often do you get drunk in the week ?" — " I was never," I said, "drunk in my life." "What salary do you ask?" — " Three hundred a year," was my reply. " What !" Mr. Drinkwater said, with some surprise, repeating the words — " Three hundred a year ! I have had, I know not how many, seeking the situation, and I do not think all their askings together would amount to what you require." " I cannot be governed by what others ask," said I ; " and I cannot take less. I am now making that sum by my own business." Can you prove that to me?" "Yes; I will show you the business and my books." "Then I will go with you, and let me see them," said Mr. Drinkwater.' The result was that Mr. Drinkwater consented to give what he asked, and to take his machinery at cost price. Mr. Drinkwater knew nothing about the mill, and so the whole of the machinery and the 500 workmen were at once placed under Owen's superintendence ; and thus, utterly uninstructed, he undertook the whole concern. " I had to purchase the raw material ; to make the machines, for the mill was not nearly filled with machinery; to manufacture the cotton into yarn ; to sell it ; to keep the accounts ; pay the wages ; and, in fact, to take the whole responsibility of the first fine cotton-spinning establishment by machinery that had ever been erected." He gave up all his time to examining the machinery minutely, and hy silent inspection and superintendence, day by day for six weeks, hecame His Acquaintance with Robert Owen. 197 disposal of New Lanark. Dale sent him to make careful inspection of the mills, and then desired him to talk over the matter with his Manchester partners. This was done, and shortly afterwards Robert Owen returned to Glasgow, in the company of John Barton and John Atkinson, members of the Chorlton Company, resolved, if possible, to buy the mills from Dale. ' We inquired the price at which he valued this property,' said Owen. ' He said he was really at a loss to sufficiently master of the position to give directions in every department. Owen soon began to improve the quality of the manufacture, and to gain universal approbation. Mr. Drinkwater then sent for him, and offered to raise his salary every year for three years, and at the end of that time to take him into partnership with himself and his two sons, and signed an agreement with him on those terms. Owen soon came to be considered one of the best judges of the quality of cotton in the market ; and he intro- duced the American Sea Island cotton, now so extensively imported and grown in the Southern States of North America. He was a member of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, and a friend of Dr. Ditton, and of other celebrated men, Coleridge among the number. At their meetings he was known as "the Reasoning Machine," because, as they said, he ' made man a mere reasoning machine, made to be so by nature and society.' Soon after, Mr. Drinkwater's daughter became engaged to Mr. Samuel Oldknow, one of the greatest muslin manufacturers of the time. He was ambitious of becoming also one of the greatest cotton- spinners, and proposed to enter into partnership with Mr. Drinkwater for this purpose. He wished the business to be kept to the two families, and proposed that Owen should give up his, they giving him a large sum in compensation, and what salary, as manager, he liked to ask for. Owen replied : •' Here is the agreement ; I now put it in the fire, because I never will connect myself with any parties who are not desirous of being united with me ; but under these circumstances I cannot remain your manager, with any salary you can give." Mr. Drinkwater tried in vain to change his resolution, he would only consent to remain until a new manager could be found, which was not until nearly a year afterwards. Owen then made an arrangement for entering into business with two young men, inexperienced in the business, but having capital. "I commenced," he says, " to build the Charlton Mills upon land purchased from Mr. Samuel Marsland and his partners ; but while the mills were erecting, a new arrangement was made with those two rich, old-established houses, Messrs. Borrodale and Atkinson, of London, and Messrs. Bartons, of Manchester, with whom and myself a new partnership was formed, under the firm of the Charlton Twht Company, under my management, assisted by Mr. Thomas Atkinson, a brother "of one ,in the firrn of Borrodale and Atkiuson."— Lift <>f Hubert Owen, vol i. pp. 1-12. 198 David Dale of Glasgow. put a value upon it ; his half-brother and Mr. William Kelly managed it for him ; and he himself was seldom there, and only for short periods, as his chief business was in Glasgow. " But," he said, " Mr. Owen knows better than I do the value of such property at this period, and I wish that he would name what he would consider a fair price between honest buyers and sellers." * I was somewhat surprised and nonplussed at this reference to me,' continues Owen, 'with all its responsible consequences, and taking into consideration the position of all parties. My estimate of the establishment, from having taken only a very general inspection of it, was such that I said, " It appears to me that 60,000£., payable at the rate of 3,000Z. a year, would be an equitable price between both parties." ' — " If you think so," answered Dale, " I will accept the proposal, as you have stated it." In that way, in the summer of 1799, was founded the New Lanark Print Com- pany, with Robert Owen for its managing partner.* In the same year Owen married David Dale's daughter, the old man's original dislike for the young enthusiast soon giving place to strong and lasting admiration. " From my marriage to his death," said Owen, in his autobiography, " he and I never exchanged one unpleasant expression or an unkind word ; and this was the more remarkable because our religious notions were very different at the period of my marriage, and we distinctly knew this difference. But Mr. Dale, being sincerely religious, was most charitable to those who differed with him."f Dale was now growing an old man, and his banking engagements required all the energy he retained. Therefore, at Owen's suggestion, he disposed of the other mills that he had established in various parts of Scotland in 1802.+ He died on the 17th of March, 1806, in his great house at the corner of Charlotte Street. He left about 100,000?., to be divided among his five daughters, the four younger of whom * Life of Robert Owen, pp., 52, 53. f Ibid., p. 70. t ibid., p. 7G. Robert Owen and the New Lanark Mills. 199 were consigned to the guardianship of Robert Owen and other relatives.* Twice as much, it was reported, had been applied during his lifetime in ways of benevolence.f Robert Owen continued for more than twenty years to manage the New Lanark Mills. The management had been fairly commenced more than six years before, in January, 1800. The people over whom Dale himself had had little oversight for some time previous, had already fallen into a disorderly condition. " The great majority of them," said Owen, "were idle, intemperate, dishonest, devoid of truth, and pretenders to religion, which they supposed would cover and erase all their shortcomings and immoral pro- ceedings.! Owen set himself to reform them, and establish a model state of society in accordance with the socialist principles for which he is famous. " I had now," he said, " to commence in earnest the great experiment which was to prove to me, by practice, the truth or error of the principles which had been forced on my convictions as everlasting principles of truth, and from which all great and permanent good in practice must pro- ceed. This was to ascertain whether the character of man could be better formed, and society better instructed and governed by falsehood, fraud, force, and fear, keeping him in ignorance and slavery to superstition, or by truth, charity, and love, based on an accurate knowledge of human nature, and by forming all the institutions of society in accordance with that knowledge. It was to ascertain, in fact, whether, by replac- ing evil conditions by good, man might not be relieved from evil and transformed into an intelligent, rational, and good being ; whether the misery in which man had been and was surrounded, from his birth to his death, could be changed * Life of Robert Owen, p. 99. f Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxvi., p. 771. In person, Dale was short and corpulent. Once be told a friend that he had tumbled on the ice, and "fallen all his length." "Be thankful, sir," was the reply, " that it was not all your breadth." * Life of Robert Oucsn, vol. i., p. 57. 200 Bobert Owen and the New Lanark Mills. into a life of goodness and happiness by surrounding him through life with good and superior conditions only."* Proposing thus to establish a model state of society, Robert Owen opened at New Lanark the first infant school in Great Britain, and though he despaired of influencing grown persons as he expected to influence the children whom he trained from the first, he did his best to improve their con- dition. He was so far successful that visitors from all parts, attracted by the fame of Owen's experiment, declared it the most notable achievement in social science — as it has since come to be called — of modern times. Commercially, also, New Lanark, under Owen's management, was very prosperous. In 1814 some changes were made, and some new partners, the most famous being Jeremy Bentham and William Allen the Quaker, were introduced. It was then arranged that, after five per cent, on the capital had been paid to the share- holders, all further profits should be applied to " the religious, educational, and moral improvement of the workers and of the community at large." Unfortunately differences upon questions of religion and religious duty soon arose between Robert Owen and some of his associates, and Owen, forced to abandon his work at New Lanark, proceeded in a wilder way to develope his communistic plans at Queenwood in Hamp- shire, before going farther to advocate his views in America.f While the great socialist experiment was being made at the New Lanark Mills, established by David Dale in 1783, the Blantyre Mills, of which he had also been the founder, were being turned to wonderful profit by James Monteith and his sons. This James Monteith is rightly honoured as the chief promoter of cotton manufacture in Glasgow and its neigh- bourhood, holding in Lanark a place akin to that of the * Life of Robert Owen, vol. i., pp. 59, GO. t A very interesting account of Owen's work, to be read with allowances, appears in his autobiography, of which, unfortunately, only the first volume, with a supplementary volume of Appendices, was published. The Old Monteiths. 201 first Robert Peel in Lancashire. His grandfather, also a James Monteith, was born about 1(570 or 1080. He was a farmer of his own little plot of land near Aberfoyle, in Perthshire, and there tried to improve his condition by rearing and selling cattle. But he was too independent for his times. Refusing to pay the black- mail claimed by Rob Roy MacGregor, just then at the height of his predatory success, he became especially obnoxious to the freebooter, and in consequence a raid was made upon Aberfoyle, and all old James Monteith's cattle were driven off. The sturdy farmer was not influential enough to get back his own. He therefore worked hard for some years, and at length suc- ceeded in replacing the stolen cattle by others. These, however, were promptly taken from him by the lawless High- lander, and a third effort at stolid resistance being equally unsuccessful, he is reported to have sunk under his misfortunes and died of a broken heart* He left one son and three daughters, the latter being severally known to the homely people of the neighbourhood, as ' Jenny wi' the ruffles, Maggie wi' the buckles, and Nannie wi' the cork-heeled shune.'t In these titles of honour has been found proof of the dignified position of the family in spite of the mischief done to it by Rob Roy. But the old farmer left his affairs in so disastrous a state that his son Henry, born in 1710, was barely able by sale of the property to pay the debts bequeathed to him. Rather than remain a poor man in Aberfoyle, he determined to go south and fight his fortunes in a new way. He was a market-gardener at Anderston, in Glasgow, sonic years before 1745, when he was a volun- teer in one of the two battalions of six hundred men raised by the city for the service of the government in resisting the Pretender's rebellion. With the others of his regiment he fought bravely but unsuccessfully at Falkirk. He was at the final victory of Culloden, and then, his services as ;i * Glusgmv, Past and Present, vol. iii., pp. 31.°,, 314. t Ibid., p. 314. VOL. II. v 202 James Monteith of Glasgow. soldier being no longer called for, he went back to his work as a market-gardener.* After that we hear no more of him. James Monteith of Anderston was his only son. Born in 1734, five years before David Dale, he began life, like Dale, as a weaver's apprentice. He liked the business, and soon rose by it to a position of comfort and independence. He became one of the many master weavers collected in Ander- ston, and known as ' Anderston wee corks,' who, besides manufacturing linen goods with the aid of their apprentices and journeymen, made money by buying up the linen yarns which, a hundred years ago, were spun by hand in nearly every private family. These homespun yarns being woven into cloth, yielded material of which part was often bartered for fresh supplies of yarn, leaving the other part to be sold to strangers at a great profit. Whenever it was desired, the * wee corks,' instead of buying the yarn from the private spinners, made a charge for weaving and dyeing it, and then sent it back to its original producers. In this sort of trade James Monteith soon became famous. Making money thereby, he prudently used it in procuring from France and Holland finer yarns than were wrought by the homely manufacturers of Scotland, and these he converted into lawns and cambrics as good as the best that could be obtained in any other part of the world. Anxious to do everything in his power to improve the character of his goods, he also joined with some other enterprising manufacturers in inviting forty experienced Frenchwomen to settle in Glasgow and instruct the natives in the best waj of spinning and making up the finer sort of yarns. t James Monteith was not content with being the richest and most influential linen manufacturer of Glasgow. He procured some cotton yarn from India, of the sort used in making East India muslins, and with it produced the firtt * Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., pp. 314, 315. t lbid^ pp. 316-318. His Linen and Cotton Manufactures. 203 muslin ever manufactured in Scotland. To signalize the event he caused a dress to be made of a part of the material, and embroidered with gold, for presentation to Queen Char- lotte.* He did much more than that. From the very com- mencement of cotton manufacture in Glasgow he interested himself in the subject. He was one of the merchants who, in 1783, invited Arkwright to visit the town ; and in 1792 he bought the Blantyre Cotton Mills, which David Dale had established seven years before, in furtherance of the project in which he had embarked in company with Arkwright. Buying them in prosperous times, he paid a good price for them ; but he had hardly set to work before the commercial crisis of 1793, following the commencement of revolutionary war in France, caused a stagnation of trade, and threatened Monteith with ruin. He had looked to his profits for funds with which to pay for Blantyre ; not having them, he knew not what to do. He begged Dale to annul the sale and take back his mills, but to that proposal Dale, worldly wise for once, would not consent. Therefore Monteith, in spite of his fears, carried on his works, and soon, as it proved, overrode all his difficulties. In about five years he realized a fortune of 80,000?., and in 1805 his Blantyre works alone provided occupation for nine hundred operatives.! In November of that year Miss Mary Berry, the friend of Horace Walpole, visited Blantyre, and set down in her journal an interesting memoir of her observations. ' Of the nine hundred persons employed about it,' she said, ' about one hundred are artificers of various sorts, smiths, car- penters, &c, &c, to keep the buildings and machinery in repair. The remaining eight hundred are all employed in the various operations of making the cotton ready for the weaver from the rough state in which it comes home in bales. Of these eight hundred, nearly five hundred are children from six to twelve or fourteen years old, and of the remain- * Pagan, History of Glasgow, p. 87. + Glascjoic, Past and Present, vol. iii., pp. 300-302. 204 James Monteith of Glasgow. ing three hundred there are many more women than men The children arc for the most part apprentices, bound to the manufacturer for six or seven years, according to their age, for their food and clothing. After this time is out, they either continue on to receive wages or go to some other business. All these children, as well as all their fellow- labourers, are employed fourteen hours a day, from six o'clock in the morning to eight at night, of which time they are allowed an hour for breakfast, from nine till ten, and an hour for dinner, from two till three ; after which they continue uninterruptedly at work till eight at night. Their forlorn and squalid looks are, God knows, painfully enough impressed on my mind. They have a building where the parish children and such as come to them from a distance are lodged, girls and boys separately ; they have porridge of oatmeal at breakfast and supper, and broth and beef for dinner. They have a master to teach them to read and write, which is done after their work is over at night, and they are carried to church of a Sunday. The men and women are in general all at piecework. The carders and reelers — I mean those who attend the carding and reeling (for everything here is done by machinery) — are all women ; they earn about ten shillings per week, the spinners from fifteen to sixteen shillings per week ; these too are almost all women, and have two children attending the particular machine that each belongs to. The women and girls that are at weekly wages, such as those who tie up and sort the hanks of cotton thread when spun, receive from six to seven shillings per week. The men make from a guinea to two pounds per week. I cannot say that in general the women looked unhealthy ; they were for the most part young girls, about and under twenty, and some of them good looking. Some, on the contrary, are objects sadly disfigured by nature. They all work, as in all manufactories, in large lofts, heated by a large tin tube of steam, going the whole length of the room, and giving any required degree of His Cotton Mills at Blantyre. 205 warmth. I have said that the whole operations here are done by machinery ; the whole is moved by one o-reat water- wheel, eighteen feet and twenty-one feet in diameter, which turns several vast iron spindles, communicating motion to all the endless wheels which spin six thousand pounds weight of cotton thread in a week. A fifth part is lost in the manufacture ; that is to say, to produce a thousand pounds weight of cotton thread, a fifth part more of the raw material is required. Part of this refuse, however, is not perfectly useless, but is sold to be used up in coarse yarn. The only operation done by the hand is picking the cotton as it comes out of the bale quite clean ; after that it is beat, carded, and spun, all by machinery, undergoing six different ope- rations before it is ready to be spun into thread. The various multitude of leather straps upon all the wheels of this immense machinery costs them between 3001. and 400£. yearly in leather, atid the oil and candles consumed in lighting the lofts 4007. a year. They are now going to have it lighted by the new contrivance for consuming coal smoke. They likewise at this manufacture dye cotton of a most beautiful colour with madder ; they say, such is the demand for it, that they could use twice as much madder as they can get. The cotton yarn undergoes forty different operations before it is made ready to receive the colour. The number of people employed in this great work, together with their wives and children, the place to lodge them, and the persons necessary to feed, clothe, and wash for them, compose a little town — and so it is, in fact, becoming, with a row of houses, two or three shops, &c, &c, — the only real foundation of towns which the Empress of Russia, with all her greatness, in vain commanded, and Frederick the Second, with all his abilities, in vain coaxed.' * The little town now contains about fourteen hundred inhabitants, * Extracts from the Journal and Correspondence of Miss Berry ; edited by Lady Theresa Lewis (London, 18G5), vol. ii., pp. 302-305. 206 The Cotton Mills at Blantyre. upwards of a thousand of them being employed in the Blantyre cotton works.* * From the same interesting book these notes, supplied to Lady Theresa Lewis by the present proprietors of the factor)', are extracted : — 'The numbers at work, in May, 1860, amounted to 1,061; their ages and employment as follows : — Males Females ™, . under 18, above 18. under 18, above 18. 10tal - Spinning-mills .... 27 32 32 169 260 Weaving factory ... 1 20 41 289 351 Dye Worlcs 18 133 42 201 394 Mechanics and labourers 1 55 — — 56 47 240 115 659 1,061 •The above numbers include oidy twelve children under thirteen years of age ; the employment which required so many of that class in 1805 having been long since discarded. The system of binding apprentices was given up about 1809, and the services of that class expired altogether about 1816 or 1817. While that system continued, it was observed, when terms of service expired, that females generally remained in the factory, working on wa^es and binding themselves, while the males more generally went forth into the world. This factory appears to be considered a home by all who have been employed in it, for they are free to come and free to go ; there is no engagement of any kind on entering ; a worker is permitted to leave without giving notice of any kind — he has only to state las wish to the manager, who gives him a line to the clerk to make up his wages, which is paid immediately, and no questions asked. No children are now received from any parish workhouse, school of industry, nor any charitable institution of any kind. The hours of labour are prescribed by the Factory Act, viz. : From 6 a.m. till 9 a.m., 3 hours; from 9| a.m. till 2 p.m., 4£ hours ; from 2$ p.m. till 6 p.m., 3| hours : 5 days, at 10$ hours, 52£ hours. Saturday, from 6 a.m. till 9 a.m. 3 hours ; from 9£ a.m. till 2 p.m.. 4 \ hours— 1\ hours ; making a total for the week of 60 hours. The buildings in which the cotton spinning was carried on in the year 1805 have remained very much as they were, but by this introduction of improved machinery the work in those buildings, as well as keeping the machinery and buildings in repair, is now efficiently carried out by 260 workers, of whom 201 are females and 59 males. The building of four storeys, called the picking-house, which existed in 1805, was destroyed by fire, and has been replaced by one not so high for other purposes, as picking by hand has long been discontinued. The cleaning of cotton is now all done by machinery. The buildings in which the apprentices of former days were lodged, are now converted into ware- house stores, counting house, and an armoury for the rifle-corps. In 1809-10 a large building was added, capable of holding 350 power-looms. A gas-making apparatus was erected in 1814, by which all the works are lighted ; and, since 1843, all the dwelling houses in the village, as well as James Monteith and his Sans. 207 James Monteith was described, by one who knew him in his later years, as ' a portly gentleman, five feet nine inches high, walking with a slow and rather heavy step, dressed in a neat round hat, powdered hair and long cue, white neck- cloth, Duke of Hamilton striped vest, blue ,eoat and gilt buttons, yellow buckskins, and top boots.'* He left six sons, John, James, Henry, Robert, Adam, and William, all of them concerned in muslin and cotton manufactories in Glasgow and its neighbourhood. John, the eldest son, we are told, was * a fine, frank, open- hearted man, full of playfulness and sport, and the life of any jovial company of which he happened to form a part.' He started in business for himself, during his father's life- time, in Saint Andrew's Square. When he founded the concern of John Monteith and Company, Robert Scott MoncriefF, of the Royal Bank, became his partner. * Mon- crieff had, at the outset of life, carried on business for him- self on a small scale, and, although he became the manager of the great establishment of the Royal Bank, he could never feel at ease in carrying on a large business with the streets, have also been lighted with gas. In 1845 mechanics' shops and stores were erected. A good school-house is kept up, and efficient teachers provided; nearly two-thirds of the expense defrayed by the company, and the remainder by the children in school pence. Parents not connected with the works send their children, that they may participate in the advantages of this school. The children are taken by their parents to whatever church they please. There are two Established churches, two Free churches, one United Presbyterian, within twenty minutes' walk of the village ; besides which, the Methodists meet in the village school, and one of the Free Church ministers delivers a sermon every Sabbath in the school-house ; and, from five to seven o'clock, the schoolmasters, assisted by the heads of families, and others as monitors, conduct a Sabbath evening school in the school-house, which is attended by 180 to 190 chil- dren. About two-thirds of the inhabitants attend the Free and United Presbyterian churches, the remainder are divided betwixt the Established Church, Roman Catholics, and Methodists. The village belonging to the works in 1851 contained a population of 1,280 ; there are now about 1,400, every available house being occupied ; and were there a fourth more houses added, they would be occupied as fast as they could be built.' * Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., p. 302. 208 John Montcith of Glasgow. moderate capital. John Montcith, on the contrary, was of an active, ambitious turn of mind, and bent upon pushing his business to the fullest extent possible. Mon- crieff was at first very well pleased with the profits from the concern ; but by-and-by, when he saw Monteith coming to the bank with great loads of bills for discount, he got alarmed, and remonstrated with him against the business being so far extended. Monteith quieted his scruples by some good-humoured pleasantry, and a promise of attending to his advice ; but, instead of following it, he continued to extend the business more and more. Thereupon Mon- crieff was so alarmed that he wished to withdraw from the partnership. That was done, and shortly after John Monteith took as partner Patrick Falconer, afterwards of the famous house of Dalglish, Falconer and Company. The firm of the new house then became Monteith and Falconer.'* But John Monteith died childless, and the business passed to other hands. James Monteith, the second son of the old manufacturer of Anderston, to whom fell the management of Blantyre, also left no family. Robert, Adam, and William, the three younger sons, died early, without making much position for themselves as men of business.t The most prosperous and influential of all the * Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., pp. 319-322. 'At this time,' the narrative continues, 'France had extended her rule to Holland and the banks of the Rhine, so that the trade with Germany was interrupted. Mr. Falconer having a knowledge of French and German, it was proposed that he should go over to Germany, the great fairs offering an opening for the disposal of Glasgow goods. Soon after his arrival in Germany he was arrested by a French guard on suspicion of being an English spy, and carried before the General. After many questions about Glasgow, the French general, to Mr. Falconer's great surprise, said to him, in good broad Scotch, " But, my frieu', do you ken auld James Monteith o' Anderston T Mr. Falconer replied, " Oo, ay, General, I ken him brawly, for he's my ain pairtner's father." The General then spoke to him in fluent English, and told him he was well acquainted with James Monteith, having lived with him three years when taken by his father to study in Glasgow. He then allowed Mr. Falconer to go quietly on his journey.' t Glasgoic, Past and Present, vob iii., pp, 319, 324. Henry Monteith of Glasgow. 209 brothers, the one to whom descended nearly all the wealth of the family, was Henry, old James Monteith's third son. This Henry Monteith was born in 17G4. In 178;") he was in business for himself as a wholesale weaver in Ander- ston.* There in 1789 he united with others in reducing the wages of the workmen, who thereupon struck work altogether. Many acts of violence were done ; and Henry Monteith, falling once into the hands of a mob, was very roughly used, one of the indignities to which he was sub- jected being the cutting off of his pigtail.f All through life, however, he was a good friend to his own workmen and to the poor of all classes. To him were mainly due the reforms that were introduced into the Blantyre mills, of which he became in due time chief proprietor, as well as the excellent institutions that were adopted at the splendid works which in 1802 he set up at Barrowfield or Dalmarnock for the manufacture of bandana handkerchiefs.^ Henry Monteith, having done his full share in the ad- vancement of Glasgow commerce, soon left it in other hands. At some time previous to 1820 he became possessed of Carstairs House, about half-way between Glasgow and Edinburgh, which, from being a stronghold of the fighting Bishops of Glasgow in the middle ages, had descended to his father-in-law, William Fullarton. In 1820 Monteith pulled down most of the old house, and set up in its place a much more splendid structure, lodged on the summit of a * Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., p. 324. t Ibid., vol. ii. p. 35. That was not the only occasion on which he was in bodily trouble. In the same book (vol. ii., p. 109) we arc told how, on u West Indian mail-day, towards the close of last century, he was pushing and scrambling with a crowd of other merchants at the little wicket window of the Prince's Street post-office— then the only post-office in Glasgow— when, in the scuffle, he got into a dispute with Robert Watson, the banker. 'From high words they proceeded to fisty-cuffs, and had a fair set to in Prince's Street. So long as the contest was in words, the embryo M.P. had the best of it; but when it came to fighting, the banker won. Thereupon some friends separated them, and they were good friends ever after.' X Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. vi., p. 103. 210 Henry Monteith of Glasgow. hill which slopes downwards to the banks of the Clyde.* Here the enterprising merchant amused himself with agri- cultural enterprise. He was one of the first to adopt the ' frequent drainage system ' of Mr. Smith of Deanston.f In all sorts of ways he set himself to increase the welfare of Carstairs and its people. * Besides affording constant employment to the labouring classes and striving to render their situation comfortable,' it was said, in 1839, 'he takes every opportunity of discountenancing vice and promoting true religion by his personal example. '% Monteith entered Parliament as member for the Selkirk Burghs in 1820, Robert Owen being his opponent,§ and Sir Walter Scott one of the chief advocates of his cause. " Selkirk has declared decidedly for Monteith, and his calling and election seem to be sure," wrote Scott to Lord Montague, in February, 1820. || Monteith was in Parlia- ment for some years, rarely speaking, but voting steadily on the Tory side, and taking some prominent share in opposition to the measures for Catholic Emancipation and Abolition of the Corn Laws. In spite of their political differences, Sir Robert Peel was his cordial friend to the last Scott also was his steady friend through life. It was perhaps through this friendship and his consequent acquaint- ance with the early troubles of the Monteiths at Aberfoyle, that Scott was led to write his novel of Rob Roy. Henry Monteith died in 1848. * A detailed account of Carstairs is in the Weekly Register for January the 14th, 1865. t Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. vi., p. 557. % Ibid., p. 563. § Life of Robert Owen, vol. i., p. 230. |j Lockhart, Life of Scott. 2J1 CHAPTE XXIII. SOME MERCHANTS OF LEEDS ; ESPECIALLY BENJAMIN GOTT, JOHN MARSHALL, AND MICHAEL THOMAS SADLER. [1600-1845.] Leeds was in existence more than a thousand years before it attained much commercial notoriety. Built on or near the site of an old Roman encampment, it was a fortified town in the days of Bede. Its strength made it a special object of attack at the time of the Norman Conquest, and thereafter, for several generations, the Paganels and their descendants were its feudal lords. Maurice de Gaunt, or Paganel, the last of these, in 1208, gave to its burgesses a charter of freedom, worthily robbing himself of much of his authority in order that the welfare of the town might be promoted.* Then, however, and for some centuries ensuing, Leeds was small and uninfluential ; steadily advancing as a market for wool and sheepskins, but inferior to some others of the Yorkshire and Lincolnshire towns to which the Hull and Boston merchants resorted for those staples of trade with the continental cities. In ancient Leeds there were few elements of prosperity ; but as soon as Lancashire and Yorkshire became great fields of manufacturing energy, Leeds was found to be the fittest centre for its eastern half, having Hull for its port, just as Manchester helped on, and was helped by, the com- mercial advancement of Liverpool. Manchester and Leeds * Wardell, Municipal History of Leeds (Leeds, 184G), appendix ;; 212 John Harrison of Leeds. have grown together, taking the places, as great manufac- turing resorts, of the older towns of Bristol and Norwich. About contemporary with Humphrey Chetham, the great benefactor of Manchester, was Sir John Saville, who, in lG'IG, obtained from Charles the First a charter of incorpo- ration for his native town, and was thereupon appointed its first Mayor or Alderman.* Sir John Saville's arms, in which a sheep, the most prominent object, fitly indicated its subse- quent prosperity as a seat of woollen manufacture, became the arms of Leeds, and from his time the annals of the town show a notable succession of merchants and manu- facturers. Most famous among them all was excellent John Harrison, who was born in 1579, and died in 1G56. His father, also a John Harrison, was a rich merchant before him, so pros- perous and wealthy, that the son had little need to earn more money, and wisely spent his fortune in doing all the good that lay in his power. When he was seven years old, it was reported, he saw a poor boy in the streets, without coat or shoes, and, straightway taking off his own coat, threw it over the lad's shoulders. t When he was seventy, and himself-if not in actual poverty much poorer than he formerly had been, carping lookers-on declared that he had brought his misfortunes on himself by the reckless ways in which all through life he had shown his charitable disposition.} In 102G, Harrison acted as Mayor of Leeds, on behalf of Sir John Saville, and twice afterwards he filled the office in his own name. During his second mayoralty, in 1034, Saint John's Church, begun three years earlier, and built at his own expense, was completed. § He had already set up a * Wuittaker, Lnidis and Elmete (Leeds, 1S1G), p. 272. f Taylok, Biogruphia Leodiensis (Leeds, 18G5;, p. 91. * Having bought Hockley Hall, in the Lowcrhead Row, soon after in- heriting his father's fortune, his first step was to set apart its two largest rooms as storehouses for food and clothing to be given to the poor. — TilORESBY, Ducatus Leodiensis, edited by Whlttakek < Leeds, 181Gj, p. 27. § Ibid., p. 19. Jiis Benefactions and his Loyalty to Charles the First. 213 new and much more commodious building for the old Leeds Grammar School, founded seventy years before ; and in 1C53 he established and endowed, near to Saint John's Church, a hospital for poor widows.* About this time, too, he built himself a house in Briggate, — « a good old-fashioned house, with a quadrangular court in the midst,' says the old historian, who adds, that * it has one thing very peculiar in it, namely, holes, or passages, cut in the doors or ceilings for the free passage of cats, for which animals he seems to have had as great an affection as another eminent benefactor, Sir Richard Whittington.'t Other doubtful anecdotes, akin to some other Whittington traditions, are recorded of John Harrison. ' When Charles the First, then in the hands of the Scots, was brought to Leeds,' it is said, ' access to his person was not, of course, easily obtained, but Mr. Harrison desired permission to pre- sent his Majesty with a tankard of excellent ale, which he brought in his hand. In this the guards could see no treachery, and they accordingly admitted him ; but the King, on opening the lid, found that, instead of the expected beverage, the vessel was filled with broad pieces. These he contrived to hide with great dexterity, and his loyal bene- factor was dismissed with more gratitude than thanks.'} Honest Harrison could not follow the tide of progress that brought about the Commonwealth, and his last years were made unhappy by the failure of the royalist cause. The de- fection of many of his old friends was a great grief to him. " The time was when you called me patron, and remembered me in your prayers, public and private," he said, in a letter to the incumbent of Saint John's Church, on which, with its school -house, and associated charities, he had spent at least 6,000?. ; " but now patrons are out of date, and churches may be tithe barns ; to pray for any is Popish and prelatic. The time was when I suffered for you under the royal party * Thoresry, pp. S3, 55. t Ibid., p. 13. * 'Wiiittaker, appendix, p. 2. t4l4 Great 3IercJiants of Leeds. more than you will suffer for me under the Parliament ; but, oh, the times ! my suffering for you is made the apology to deter you from so much as visiting me, being under the hatches : a poor conclusion grounded on weak premises. The time was when all I could do for you was too little ; but now the least done for me is too much."* Posterity, however, has remembered John Harrison's good actions, and he is rightly honoured as the foremost of all the benefactors of Leeds. The greatest boon conferred by Harrison on the commerce of Leeds was his erection, in Kirkgate, of * a stately cross for convenience of the market'! Thither assembled, during many subsequent generations, the wool producers and wool- staplers, the clothiers and cloth merchants of Leeds. Among the most famous of them were John and Philip Thoresby, brothers, and both of them aldermen of the borough soon after its incorporation, the eldest of whom was grandfather of Ralph Thoresby, the antiquarian ; William Milner, who was Mayor of Leeds in 1697, and father of a William Milner on whom Queen Anne conferred a baronetcy ; and several Denisons and Sykeses. The Sykeses were conspicuous among the merchants of Leeds during more than two centuries. A William Sykes, son of Richard Sykes, of Sykes' Dyke, near Carlisle, settled in Leeds as a clothier in the sixteenth century, and his grandson Richard, wealthy enough to buy the manor of Leeds from the Crown in 1625, was chief alderman of the town for the first eighteen years of its incorporation. Dying in 1645, he left large estates to each of his four sons, and 10,0007. to each of his four daughters, from whom four knights' and baronets' families were descended.! Another of the family was Daniel Sykes, who was born in 1632, and died in 1693. He was Mayor of Hull, and for many years the greatest merchant therein. He followed the Baltic trade, and it is recorded of him that at one time, * Whittaker, p. 12. f Thoresby, p. 19. X Ibid., pp. 3, 3C. TJie Sykescs of Leeds and Hull. 215 during a grievous famine in Sweden, he freighted several vessels with provisions, and despatched them for gratuitous distribution among the starving people. In return for that, noble act, the Swedish Government granted him a lease of iron mines, whence his sons and grandsons drew immense wealth. The house of Joseph Sykes, Son, and Company, for more than thirty years almost monopolised the trade in Swedish iron.* Joseph, old Daniel Sykes's grandson, was father of another and more famous Daniel Sykes. He was bred a lawyer, and legal pursuits partly occupied him all through life ; but the state of his health led him to find in commerce his chief employment, and he also became a famous merchant both in Leeds and in Hull, joining the two callings in an unusual way, and adding to them further work as a zealous politi- cian. For nearly forty years he was Recorder of HulL He also served it, from 1820 to 1830, as Member of Parliament. In 1830 he was elected by the constituents of Beverley, and he was only prevented by failing health from succeeding Lord Brougham as representative of Yorkshire in 1832. In that year he died, having won the praises of his fellows as a good and honest man, as a wise and generous statesman, and, above all, as a merchant ' thoroughly versed both in the details and in the principles of commerce, attached to the utmost freedom of industry, so independent and dis- interested, that he sacrificed the representation of Hull because he would not support the claims of the shipping interests to a re-imposition of the old restrictions on naviga- tion, favourable to freedom of trade in corn and freedom of trade to the East : a cool, clear-headed, patient man of business, and of the most inflexible integrity and unstained purity of character.'! All these Sykeses were of one stock, with a pedigree plainly * Thoresby; Tayloh, pp. 33S, 339. t Gentleman s Mngnzine, vol. cii , part i., pp. 178-1S1 ; Taylok, pu. 333-312. 21G The Denisons of Leeds. defined. It is not clear whether the many Denisons con- temporary with them were all of common parentage or members of several distinct families. Two branches, between whom no kinship can be traced, are specially notable. One sprang from a William Denison, clothier and mer- chant, who was in business at North Town End, near the beginning of the eighteenth century. Of his two sons, the younger, Sir Thomas Denison, was a famous lawyer and King's Bench judge : the elder, William, carried on his father's trade. He was very rich, very generous to the poor, and somewhat eccentric Four times, between 1754 and 1758, he was elected Mayor of Leeds, but refused to enter upon the duties of the office, so that fresh Mayors had to l>e chosen. In the last year the insulted corporation brought an action against him for this persistent rejection of their profferred honour, and he at length agreed to take the title of Mayor on condition that all the business should be done by his brother. In 1779 he was High Sheriff of Notting- hamshire, in which county he had some time before bought the manor of Ossington. That estate, with half a million of money, he left to his eldest son, John, who greatly increased the fund before making room for another John. John Denison, the younger, was Member of Parliament for Chi- chester, and afterwards for Malton. A daughter of his first wife married Charles Manners Sutton, Speaker of the House of Commons, and afterwards Lord Canterbury. Through a second wife he had several sons, one of them the Bishop of Salisbury, who died in 1854 ; another, the present Governor- General of Madras, while the eldest has been Speaker of the House of Commons since 1857.* Another of the Denisons, named Joseph, was born at Leeds in 1726. His parents were too poor, it is said, to be able to teach him even to read. But he managed to scrape together a little knowledge by his own energy, and then he applied that energy to the making of a great fortune. He * Taylor, pp. 109, 180. 181. Benjamin Gott and John Marshall of Leeds. 217 ran away from Leeds to London, just in time to obtain a situation in the counting-house of John Dillon of Saint Man- Axe. By some means or other he soon acquired a partner- ship, and then sole possession of the business, his old master at last becoming his clerk. ' By unabated industry and the most rigid frugality, he worked himself,' we are told, ' into very high credit and an increasing fortune.' He was about fifty when, in 1775, the Heywoods of Liverpool established their bank and found it expedient to employ him as their London agent. Here, again, he steadily pushed himself into the topmost place, bequeathing, in 180G, the senior partner- ship in the house of Denison, Heywood, and Company, besides more than a million in lands or money, to his son, William Joseph Denison, many years Member of Parliament for Surrey, Sheriff of Yorkshire in 1808, and uncle of the first Lord Londcsborough. When he died he was worth between two and three million pounds.* Most of the money-making Denisons left Leeds to spend or hoard their wealth elsewhere. The true merchant-patriots of a town are those who use the influence that it brings them for its own advancement ; and such pre-eminently were Benjamin Gott and John Marshall, the greatest merchants of Leeds during the last twenty years of the eighteenth century and the first twenty of the nineteenth. Their lives were very nearly contemporaneous, and they were associates in many good and charitable works ; but in business matters they held different courses. The one gave new life to the old woollen trade of the town ; the other brought to it another staple source of wealth, by making it a great centre of linen manufacture. All the early prosperity of Leeds, as we have already observed, sprang from its trade in woollen goods ; yet in the middle of the seventeenth century, shortly before the birth of Benjamin Gott, this trade was still in its infancy. Leeds itself was, in comparison with its present condition, an insig- * Taylor, pp. 228-232. VOL. II. Q 218 Growth of the Woollen Trade in Leeds nificant town, hardly longer than the length of Briggate, stretching westward no further than Trinity Church, and with Saint Peter's Church for almost its eastern limit. Saint John's Church, with the Free Grammar School and Har- rison's Almshouses adjoining, formed its modern boundary ; and all the town was contained on the northern side of the Aire. The old Norman bridge at the foot of Briggate still sufficed for the weekly cloth-market ; the traders of the town and the country manufacturers being called together by a bell rung in the quaint bridge-chapel, and the merchants of Hull, Boston, and similar places coming there to buy the cloths and caFry them away in river-boats. By 1758, however, the trade had outgrown that old- fashioned mart, and, accordingly, a commodious building, now known as the Mixed Cloth Hall, was set up a little to the west of Trinity Church. This structure, thought pre- posterously large at the time of its erection, formed a quad- rangle three hundred and sixty-four feet long, and a hundred and ninety-two feet broad, with an inner court measuring three hundred and thirty feet, by ninety-six. It was acces- sible by seven doors, was lighted by a hundred and sixty- seven windows, and was large enough, it was reckoned, to hold 109, 200/. 's worth of cloth at a time. Within seventeen years from its opening, it was found necessary to build another meeting-place. The White Cloth Hall, between Briggate and Saint Peter's Church, was completed in 1775 ; and within a few years, nine similar structures were opened in all the trading towns of the West Riding of Yorkshire. All grew with the growth of Leeds. In 1775, Leeds con- tained 17,117 inhabitants. By 1801 the population had increased to 30,099 ; in 1821 it amounted to 83,746 ; and in 18G5 it was estimated at 224,025. One of the causes of that rapid growth was the opening of the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, begun in 170*7, and steadily but slowly continued down to its completion in 1810. As early as 1774, however, twentv miles of the during the Eighteenth Century. 211) canal, extending from Bingley to Bradford, were ready for use, and presented, according to the judgment of contempo- raries, ' the noblest works of the kind that perhaps are to be found in the universe, namely, a five-fold, a three-fold, a two-fold, and a single lock, making together a fall of a hundred and twenty feet, a large aqueduct-bridge, of seven arches, over the river Aire, and an aqueduct on a large embankment over Shipley Valley.'* There certainly was need of improvement in the ways of traffic. Down to 1753, the best roads between Leeds and the neighbouring towns were narrow lanes, with just room enough for the old- fashioned waggons that were used for burdens too heavy to be conveyed in the usual way, on the backs of single horses. On these pack-horses the raw wool and roughly-made cloths were generally carried by the small dealers, who rode in front of their goods. It was slow travelling at best, rendered very dangerous by the bad state of the dark and cheerless roads and the constant risk of attack by highwaymen.! Most of the wool was made into cloth by small manufac- turers scattered' about the country, and lodged in the different towns and villages of the West Riding. These manufac- turers brought or sent their goods to the markets of such places as Leeds, Bradford, or Wakefield, there either to be sold at once to the wholesale merchants, who came from other parts of England or from foreign countries, or to be collected by the wool-staplers and reserved for subsequent distribution. There were no manufactures conducted on the extensive scale now common, and necessary to the more finished workmanship of modern times, until Benjamin Gott set the fashion. This good man was born on the 24th of June, 1762, at Leeds, where his father, contemporary with Brindley, and, like him, originally a common working man, rose to some * Williamson's Liverpool Advertiser, cited by Smu.es, Lives of the Engi- neers, vol. i., p. 4f)G. t WiniTAKER, p. SO. 220 Benjamin Gott of Leeds. distinction as a civil engineer. The son was put to school at Bingley, and then placed as a clerk in the house of Wor- mald and Fountain, who carried on a respectable trade as wool-dealers and manufacturers of the sort then common in Leeds. Showing aptitude for the business, he was soon taken into partnership by his employers, and upon their death or retirement he became sole master of the establish- ment.* His energy, prudence, and reasonable philanthropy, soon made it the largest of the kind in Leeds, and insured for him so much prosperity that in due time he came to be the recognized head of the woollen trade in Yorkshire. From first to last he aimed, above all things, at preserving the independence of the small dealers and manufacturers. Full of sympathy for the great body of the people, he watched with jealous eye the development of huge factories like those of the Peels, at Bury and Tamworth, and the Monteiths, at Blantyre and Dalmarnock. He saw that this was an inevitable tendency of modern commerce ; he yielded to it himself, and became proprietor of a monster factory of his own ; but he felt that this growth of trade, if, on the one hand, it was very helpful to the lower classes, was likely, on the other, to inflict upon them a serious injury. He con- sidered that the men who were only fit to be the servants of others could not possibly be hurt, would very likely be benefited, by having employment in large, instead of small establishments. But he was very loth to damage the position of the multitudes of insignificant manufacturers who honour- ably preferred to be their own masters and to follow the calling inherited from their fathers, only aided by their own sons and daughters, or perhaps by one or two apprentices, who hoped in time to be also independent cloth-makers. With all such men Benjamin Gott was anxious to trade after their own fashion. He sought them out, bought their produce from them on equitable terms, made every allowance for any defects in its character that were due to the incompleteness * Tayloh, p. 377. His Woollen Trade and Woollen Manufacture. 221 of the machinery with which they were forced to be content, and encouraged them to go on in their old ways, only adapt- ing those ways to the demands of modern commerce for cheap and well-made goods. With that excellent purpose he did his utmost to carry on the smaller sorts of business that had characterised his house when he first became a partner in it. He was not, however content with that. Reasonably mindful of his own interests as well as with the view of promoting the welfare of his town and trade, he also became a manufacturer on a large scale. His factory at Arraley was, towards the end of the eighteenth century, so extensive that his workmen's wages amounted to 1,000/. a week — a small sum in the eyes of many great manufacturers of the present day, but very large indeed if taken as a measure of the extent of an employer's business seventy years ago.* * In 1841, Mr. William Chambers visited the establishment of Messrs. Gott and Sons, and penned this account of his visit : — ' To observe the first step in the operation, we were conducted from the ground level to the summit of one of the large structures, by means of a scaffold, which is pulled up a kind of well in the building. On opening a door below, we see a low table before us ; and stepping upon it, and pulling a rope to set the machinery in motion, we are immediately carried upwards with great steadiness. The table may be stopped at any floor in passing, and it is lowered with equal facility. Steam-power is of course the mover of this, as well as of all the other mechanical contrivances in the house. By means, therefore, of this stair-saving process, which is now common in all large factories, we were speedily landed on the uppermost floor, and there followed the wool in all its subsequent stages — dyeing, spinning, weaving by power-loom, fulling, dressing, clipping of surface, drying, pressing, and packing. Steam is employed throughout ; it boils the great tin cauldrons in which the dyeing is effected, lifts the enormous mallets which are employed in fulling, turns the cylinders to which the teasles are applied for raising the mass, dries the cloth on tenter-racks — fixed tier above tier from bottom to top of a building, works the hydraulic presses, packs the bales, and, in short, is the universal agent of power and heat ; on every hand saving labour, time, and expense, and, therefore, giving the manufacturer that economical command of means which places him at such advantage over less favoured competitors. As many as eleven hundred persons have been employed at one time in this large concern ; but trade being at present in a depressed state in Leeds — much to the distress of the operatives as well as the proprietors— no more than about seven hundred are employed. Even 222 Benjamin Gott and the Woollen Trade. At that time wool and worsted were worked exclusively by hand ; neither Hargreaves' jenny nor Crompton's mule, nor any of the other inventions that had already caused wonderful improvement in cotton manufacture, having been as yet adapted to woollen fibre. The wool was first sorted, and then combed or carded by the manual labour of men and boys, whose average wages amounted to about twelve shillings a week ; then it was spun, generally by women and girls, whose wages varied from eighteen pence to half-a- crown a week. It was finally submitted to the hand-loom weaver, who, by hard work, could rarely earn more than ten shillings a week. In 1S58 the average wages of the men employed in the Leeds woollen factories amounted to twenty- two shillings a week, while boys received about six and eightpence, and women and girls more or less than eight shillings. Thus the labourers' rate of pay has been more than doubled, notwithstanding the very great reduction in the price of the goods produced by them, through the intro- Even this, however, is a large number ; and a stranger would naturally expect to observe some degree of confusion and slovenliness where so many workmen were brought into close contact, but he would be pleasingly dis- appointed. Two stupendous steam-engines, the prime movers of the works, are individually lodged in private apartments as clean and well- painted as a gentleman's drawing-room, and all parts shine with the most brilliant polish. Throughout the different large buildings containing the workmen, you do not hear a word spoken. Every individual is as busy as a bee at his own peculiar work ; no such thing as straggling out and in is observable, and the whole system seems perfect in point of concentrated industry and organization. The raw material employed is in a great measure the fine Saxony wool, and the purchase and importation of this article forms one of the principal professions in the district. An attempt was at one time made on the part of the wool-growers of Burton to exclude Saxony wool from our markets ; but it was successfully shown by Mr. Gott, and other gentlemen, in their evidence before Parliament, that if it were done, the ruin of the British wool-trade would follow, for it was only by the use and admixture of Saxony wool that our manufacturers could compete with continental fabrics. By pursuing the enlightened recommendations of these gentlemen, and admitting Saxony wool, the producers of wool in our own country at all times command a ready and profitable maiket among the wool-staplers of England.' — Chambers' Edinburgh Journal, vol. x., p. 353. John Marshall and the Linen Trade. 223 duction of machinery into the woollen manufactures, boo-un by Gott and his associates, and greatly extended in recent years by younger men, like David Cooper. In 1850, the Leeds clothing district, engrossing about half the woollen trade of Yorkshire, and more than a fourth of that of all Great Britain, was occupied by 340 manufacturers, who gave employment to 23,328 operatives, besides using 1,00.") gigs, 2,344 power-looms, and 423,482 spindles worked by steam-power equal to the force of 7,810 horses.* And while the woollen trade has been thus progressing in Leeds, under the encouragement of men like Benjamin Gott, the town has become the home of another wealth-producing branch of commerce, with John Marshall for its foster-father. There had been a linen trade in Leeds, as in every other part of England, from time immemorial. Long before woollen fabrics came into general use, it was the fashion for country people to grow, or barter, a little flax, and therewith to make rough clothing for themselves and those belonging to them. There was a guild of linen-weavers in London in the fourteenth century, and every important town had a similar association during the middle ages. But the trade was slow in making progress as a trade. Long after Eng- land had grown famous for its woollen manufactures, the making of linen clothing was left chiefly in the hands of country folks and the daughters of the household, their coarser wares being found good enough for ordinary use, while the better sorts were imported from France and Holland. In the second half of the seventeenth century, however, a great change began. In 1663 a law was passed for the encouragement of linen manufacture in England, and, with- out the aid of laws, the trade was readily prosecuted in various parts of Scotland. About 1670, moreover, some Scots, resident in the north of Ireland, started the manufac- ture in Belfast and the neighbourhood, where for many centuries flax had been freely grown, but only for exporta- * Baines, Tlie Woollen Manufacture of England. 224 Progress of Linen Manufacture tion or domestic use. ' No women are abler to spin linen thread well,' said Sir William Temple, in 1GS0, 'than the Irish, who, labouring little in any kind with their hands have their fingers more supple and soft than any other women of the poor condition among us. And this may cer- tainly be improved into a great manufacture of linen, so as to bear down the trade both of France and Holland, and draw much of the money which goes from England to those parts upon this occasion into the hands of his Majesty's subjects of Ireland, without crossing any interest of trade in England.' Successive generations of statesmen were of that opinion, and in all sorts of ways the linen trade was encouraged in Ireland, much good to the country being done thereby in spite of the consequent injury to the older business in woollen goods. By the year 1760, Belfast, Newry, Drogheda, Londonderry, Dundalk, and Dublin, had come to have a thriving trade in linen, most of which was shipped to Liverpool, for distribution in various parts of England. In Scotland, also, the trade made rapid progress, Glasgow being its head-quarters, and other towns, like Kirkaldy and Dundee, being set by it on the highway to prosperity. In the first half of the eighteenth century, ' linen being every- where made at home,' according to contemporary report, 'the spinning executed by the servants during the long winter evenings, and the weaving by the village webster, there was a general abundance of napery and under-clothing. Every woman made her web and bleached it herself, and the price never rose higher than two shillings a yard, and with this cloth nearly every one was clothed. The youn<* men, who were at this time growing more nice, got linens from Holland for shirts, but the old ones were satisfied with necks and sleeves of the fine, which were put on loose above the country cloth.'* In those days the handsomest ball-dresses * Cited by Warden, The Linen Trade, Ancient and Modern (Dundee, 1864), p. 423. To this interesting book I am indebted for some other help in the writing of the above paragraph. during the Eighteenth Century. 225 were made of linen, and in country places the wealthiest ladies thought it no disgrace to busy themselves with the spinning wheel. This same spinning wheel was used alike in the cottages of the poor and in the largest manufactories then established. In 1741 a mill was set up at Birmingham on the principle of the roller-spinner invented by Lewis Paul in 1738, and there for a little while it was turned by a couple of donkeys, while two girls were employed in working off the yarn thus produced. But nothing noticeable was done before the year 1787. Then John Kendrew, an optician, and Thomas Port- house, a clockmaker, of Darlington, made public an inven- tion that was destined to effect an entire revolution in the linen manufacture. The speciality of their invention was ' a cylinder three feet in diameter by ten inches broad, smooth on the surface, with some small cylinders on rollers in con- nection, for holding and drawing the flax or other fibrous materials put upon it for operation.'* This machine was first put to use at a little mill set up on the Sperrie by Kendrew and Porthouse, and it was soon adopted in various parts of the kingdom, Darlington being made by it, for a little while, a famous resort of linen manufacturers. Thither James Aytoun went from Manchester, in 1792, to make careful study of the machine and introduce important im- provements in it, before going to Kirkaldy to spend nearly seventy years in forwarding the trade in which, perhaps, he was the most prominent man of all. Thither also went John Marshall from Leeds, to receive suggestions which he was to turn very notably to the advancement both of Leeds and of himself. Marshall was born at Leeds on the 27th of July, 1765, three years after Gott. His grandfather, John Marshall, of Yeadon Low Hall, near Leeds, had been a man of some substance ; f but his father, William Marshall, was a shop- * Brown, Reminisccnscs of Flax Spinning (Dundee, 18G2). t Burke, Dictionary of the Landed Gentry. 226 John Marshall of Leeds. keeper in Briggate.* John Marshall was soon tired of his prospects as a shopkeeper's assistant. He was eighteen when Kendrew and Porthouse produced their flax-spinning machine. It is not clear whether he was thereby influenced in his choice of a business or whether his course had already been marked out. At any rate he lost no time in proceeding to Darlington, there mastering the intricacies — such as they were — of the machine, and returning to his own town, to put it into use at Scotland Mill, near Meanwood, which, in 1788, he built a few miles out of Leeds, in partnership with Samuel Fenton, of Leeds, and Ralph Deartone, of Knares- borough.f There he spent all his energies and all his money in various experiments, doing all he could towards improving the Darlington spinning-machine as well as to- wards making serviceable the other instruments necessary for the production of linen. That he did considerable business is proved by the fact that his debt to Kendrew and Port- house, to whom he had agreed to pay a royalty for each spindle that he employed, rose in a few years' time to 9007. He made no profits, however, during these first years, and declared himself unable to meet the claim. He also con- tested it on the ground that the many improvements adopted by him made his machinery so different from that of the Darlington inventors that he had really ceased to make use of their patent rights.^ Of those improvements Matthew Murray was the chief author. Born at Newcastle in 1765, Murray had been working as an engine-smith at Stockton-on-Tees, when in 1789 he determined to go and try his fortune in Leeds. He offered his services to John Marshall, and was so suc- cessful in the first job on which he was employed, that he was permanently engaged by him. By the end of 1789, * Leeds Mercury, June 14, 1845. f Longstaffe, History and Antiquities of Darlington (Darlington, 1854), pp. 311, 312 ; Fairbairn, Treatise on Mills and Mill-Work (London, 1865), part ii., p. 197. X Longstaffe, p. 312. His Flax Mills at Mcanwood and Holbech. 227 before he had been a year at his new work, he had suo-o-ested so many useful changes that his master made him a present of 20/., and he was promoted to the management of the little workshop at Scotland Mill. He continued for six years in Marshall's establishment, by his ready wit and steady perseverance helping his employer through all his mechanical difficulties, and enabling him, in due time, to become the most successful flax-spinner in the world. In 1795 he left John Marshall to enter into partnership with James Fenton and David Wood, older and richer men than himself, in establishing engine-building and machine-making shops at Holbeck, then a village, now a part of Leeds. Making all sorts of other tools, he continued to give special attention to the tools required in linen manufacture.* ' But for his im- provements,' says his son-in-law, 'it is nearly certain that flax-spinning in the neighbourhood of Leeds would have ceased to exist, as all those embarked in it had lost the greater part of their capital without any success. At his commencement mill-gearing was in a very rude state ; he left it in nearly its present condition.'! Some time before Murray's independent settlement in Holbeck, John Marshall had gone thither. In 1791 he established, in Water Lane, the mill which, with later additions, is still the chief seat of the flax-spinning business conducted by his successors.} Three mills now occupy the ground, one of them being unique in manufacturing architec- ture. The building, unlike almost all other large factories, is only one storey in height. One room comprises the whole. About four hundred feet long and more than two hundred broad, it covers nearly two acres of ground. It is nine times as large as Birmingham Town Hall, seven times as large as Exeter Hall in London. ' The room is some twenty * Smiles, Industrial Biocrapliy, pp. 2G0-2G4 ; Taylor, pp. 298-302, where some corrections of Mr. Smiles's account are made by Mr. J. O. March, Murray's son-in-law and successor in the business. t Taylor, pp. 299, 301. % Fairbaikn, part ii., p. 197. 228 John Marshall's Flax Mills and the Linen Trade. feet high and supported by about twenty pillars. The spaces between the pillars allow the roof to be partitioned off into a series of flattish domes, or groined arches, sixty or seventy in number ; and in the centre of each dome is a lofty conical skylight, of such large size that the whole series together contain ten thousand square feet of glass. Upwards of a thousand persons, mostly females, are employed in this room alone. In one part of it the flax-drawing operations are carried on ; in another the roving, in another the spinning.' This room is not the only marvel. The roof is a green field, we are told ; the wood-work being thickly covered with plaster and asphalte, and that with a stratum of earth, which protects the asphalte from the heat of the sun.* John Marshall also built a great linen-thread manufactory at Shrewsbury. But his chief business was in Leeds, and there his mills were, and still are, larger than those of * Tiie Land we Live in (London, no date), vol. iii., pp. 31, 32. Chambert' Edinburgh Journal, vol. x., p. 353. This is Mr. Chambers' account of the factory in 1841 : — 'The mill of Messrs. Marshall is probably the largest in the kingdom. Consisting of several large brick edifices and out-houses, some high and some low, it more resembles a town than a single establish- ment, and at present gives employment to about fifteen hundred individuals, many of whom are children of both sexes. By the usual contrivance of the moving table or scaffold, we were conducted in an easy manner to the top of one of the large buildings, and introduced to the first operation in the pro- cess, that of breaking handfuls of flax into three pieces or lengths, and sort- ing them according to qualities. The lower part of the filament is the coarsest, the next coarsest is at the top, and the finest is in the middle. It being necessary to separate these qualities, but without cutting, the division is effected by causing an apparatus to break or tear each handful into three parts. The apparatus, which seems a complex combination of wheels and rollers, is exceedingly elegant, being all made of polished iron and brass, and it effects its purpose with great nicety and rapidity. A host of youngsters were employed on several floors in superintending this kind of machine, as also machines for dressing and smoothing the rolls of lint, previous to their being carried to the spinning apparatus. The material finally appears in the form of twist, ready for weaving, or in thread prepared for the sempstress. The putting of the thread on reels or small bobbins, such as we see for sale in shops, is a remarkably neat operation. It is done by girls, with the aid of an ingeniously-contrived spindle, and finger appa- ratus to guide the thread in even layers, and the filling of a bobbin is the work of only a few seconds.' Michael Thomas Sadler in Leeds. 229 any of the other manufacturers whom his success has led to embark in the trade. In 1821 there were in Leeds and its neighbourhood nineteen mills, having in all 700 horse- power, and containing 36,000 spindles. Four out of the nineteen were Marshall's. In 1831 the number of mills had been increased by five ; and in 1838 it had grown to forty, employment being thereby given to 2,027 men and 4,303 women. In 1846 there were in Leeds thirty-seven separate establishments, giving work to 140 power-looms, li)8,076 spindles, and 9,458 men and women, all the other linen factories of Yorkshire having only about half that strength.* This rapid growth of linen manufacture in Leeds has led, of course, to much commerce with other parts of England and with foreign countries. Besides encouraging manufac- turers to settle in Leeds, John Marshall's prosperity brought to the town many influential merchants. Of these the worthiest, though not the richest, was Michael Thomas Sadler. Fifteen years younger than Marshall, he was born at Snelstone, in Derbyshire, on the 3rd of January, 1780. In a comfortable house, and by estimable parents, he was carefully educated, with the intention that he should be a lawyer. In the year 1800, however, when he was about twenty, he was sent to Leeds, where his elder brother, Benjamin, had already been established in the flax trade. The brothers worked successfully for ten years, and then entered into partnership with the widow of Samuel Fenton, the same who had been Marshall's associate at Scotland Mill twenty years before, and who had also for a long time — long before Leeds had any linen goods of its own to sell — been the principal importer of Irish linens for sale in Yorkshire. Thenceforward the house of Sadler, Fenton, and Company, carried on a thriving trade, both in raw flax and in linen goods, having places of business in Leeds and in Belfast, and doing good service to both districts by promoting an * Waiujex, p. 3S1. 230 Gott, Marshall, and Sadler. interchange of commodities between Yorkshire and the north of Ireland.* But Michael Thomas Sadler was not himself much of a merchant. During the first few years of his residence in Leeds he found relief from the monotony of the counting- house in literary and other pursuits. He was a hard reader, a close scholar, and a diligent writer. He produced a metri- cal version of the Psalms, wrote an epic poem and shorter pieces, and contributed numerous articles to the Leeds Intel- ligencer, then the leading Tory newspaper in the north of England. He was captain of a company of Leeds volunteers. He was also, during many years, the indefatig- able superintendent of a large Sunday school, and all through life an active sharer in all sorts of religious and philanthropic works, having therein congenial fellowship with William Hey, the benevolent and learned surgeon of Leeds, the friend of Wilberforce and other leaders of the anti- slavery party. Gott and Marshall, also, though too full of their commer- cial duties to give to it very much of their time, were zealous promoters of philanthropic work in Leeds. Both of them were associated with Sadler and Hey in the foundation of the Leeds Philosophical Society in 1818. In November of that year, at a meeting held in the Court House, under the presidency of William Hey, it was decided to establish a society for the advancement of ' all the branches of natural knowledge and literature, but excluding all topics of religion, politics, and ethics.' On the 9th of November, 1819, the foundation stone of the Philosophical Hall was laid by Ben- jamin Gott ; and on the Cth of April, 1821, it was formally opened, the total cost of the building, about 6,000Z., being defrayed by subscriptions, in which Gott and Marshall took the lead. Both men were active in helping on the society by all possible means. Gott gave to it fossils, books, and * Memoirs of (he Life and Writings of Micliacl Thomas Sa dler (Loudon, 1842), pp. 2-11. TJieir Philanthropic Works in Leeds. 231 the like. Marshall, besides various donations, aided it by several lectures. One, delivered in 1S19, during the Society's temporary lodgement in the Court House, was on ' the relative happiness of cultivated society and savage life.' In 1821 he lectured on ' geology ;' in 1824, ' on the production of wealth, and on the propriety of discussing subjects of poli- tical economy as distinguished from politics;' in 182G, 'on the present state of education in England as a preparation for active life.' These titles indicate the bent of the lecturer's mind. Other lectures were from time to time delivered by Michael Thomas Sadler, in common with most of the other leaders of society in Leeds forty years ago.* The Philosophical Society being especially designed, and therein succeeding admirably, for the encouragement of studious thought among - the more well-to-do inhabitants of the town, it was quickly followed, apparently in 1824, by the Leeds Mechanics' Institute, adapted for a different class of members. Gott was its first president, Marshall its first vice-president ; and both were liberal donors to its funds. Marshall was also a foremost patron of the Lancasterian School established in Leeds. He organized good schools for the children of his own workpeople ; and among various other measures for the instruction of those workpeople, he published a volume on The Economy of Social Life, repeat- ing cleverly and clearly, in a form adapted to the under- standing of factory operatives, the leaoing principles of poli- tical economy as they were then established. lie was one of the founders of the London University in 1825, and served for many years on its council. In 182G his zeal for the advancement of education led him to urge the establishment of a similar institution in Leeds, for the benefit of the inha- bitants of the north of England.! Generally agreeing on matters of philanthropy, the great * The above details arc plcancd from the records of tfie Philosophical Society, for access to which I am indebted to its Curator, t Taylor, pp. 412, 413. 232 Gott, Marshall, and Sadler. merchants of Leeds differed widely on political questions. Marshall was a hearty Whig, both from his own convictions and by family ties, his eldest daughter being the second wife of Lord Monteagle, and two of his sons being married to daughters of the same nobleman. Gott and Sadler were as zealous on the Tory side. Gott, always shunning noise and turmoil, took little public part in politics. Sadler was a stout and bustling Tory from first to last. Having made himself famous throughout England as an opponent of Roman Catholic Emancipation, he went in 1829 to continue his opposition in Parliament as Member for Newark-upon- Trent. Before that, in 1826, Marshall had been chosen, along with Lord Milton, to represent the Liberals of York- shire. In 1830 he declared himself too old for re-election, but he was an eager champion, in his own neighbourhood, of the great Reform movement of 1831 ; and in 1832, on the first election of Members of Parliament for Leeds, his son, John Marshall the younger, who died in 1836, was chosen, in company with Thomas Babington Macaulay, the unsuccessful Tory candidate being Michael Thomas Sadler. Sadler had ceased, long before that time, to have any per- sonal share in the commerce of Leeds, or even in the philan- thropic movements of the town. Residing generally in Belfast or London, he devoted himself to political topics and general questions of social philosophy. A fierce opponent of the Reform Bill, he seconded the motion of General Gascoigne, in 1831, which led to the dissolution of the House of Commons, and the consequent excitement in every quarter of England. He was also, to the last, a persistent enemy of Catholic Emancipation ; and he was no less steady and eloquent in his opposition to every measure in favour of Free Trade. Specially interesting himself on behalf of Ireland, he sought to establish a law for the allotment of land to all the deserving poor, and that measure he further advocated, with the rich and varied eloquence that characterised all his speeches and writings, in a treatise on Ireland, its Evils, Their Political Differences. 233 and their Remedies. He it was, too, who produced the famous Ten Hour Bill, for the protection of children employed in factories. He published his opinions on that subject in a book on Tlie Factory System, and in another work, on Tlie Law of Population, he undertook to controvert the teachings of Malthus.* While writing a supplement to that work, he died at Belfast, on the 29th of July, 1836, only five and fifty years of age. Gott and Marshall, though his seniors, both survived him. Gott, after many years of peaceful retirement, in the splendid house that he had adapted to his literary and artistic tastes at Armley — years enlivened by pleasant intercourse with friends like Rennie, Watt, and Chantrey, and hallowed by many noble acts of charity — died on the 14th of February, 1840, in his seventy-eighth year. Marshall was very nearly eighty when he died, on the 6th of June, 1845, at Hallsteads, an estate on the banks of Ulleswater, whither he had gone to pass most of his closing years. * An elaborate exposition of his various opinions is in tlie Memoirs of Sadler, to which I am indebted for all the facts introduced in the abovo brief sketch of his life. VOL. II. 234 CHAPTER XXIV. THE BARINGS, AND NATHAN MEYER ROTHSCHILD, OF LONDON. [173G-1848] The Great Revolution, in bringing a German prince to guide the course of English liberties, led to the coming over of a crowd of Germans who, as merchants and manufacturers, bankers, and stock-brokers, helped on a revolution, almost as notable, in the character of English commerce. Of these the Barings were the most famous of all. Francis Baring — the son or grandson of Peter Baring, who, about the middle of the seventeenth century, was living at Grdningen, in the Dutch province of Overyssel — was a Lutheran minister at Bremen, until the accession of William of Orange to the English throne opened the way for him to greater influence as pastor of a Lutheran church in London. John Baring, his son, was founder of the commercial house, now famous in every quarter of the world. Using the experience that he seems to have acquired in the factories of the Continent, he set up a cloth manufactory at Larkbeer, in Devonshire. Making money there, he came to increase it in London ; at first, merely sending his cloths to the American colonies, and thence procuring in exchange such articles as he could be sure of selling to advantage in England. By strict honesty ;md close business habits, we are told, he won the esteem of merchants much greater than himself. They helped him on John Baring, and his Sons, John and Francis. 23fj in his business, and before his death he too was a merchant of wealth aud eminence.* Of his four sons, Francis, the third, born in 173G, was the most notable. Carefully trained during childhood under his father's own supervision, he was in due time put to school with a Mr. Coleman, author of several mathematical treatises of some note in their day. Mr. Coleman's arithmetic was not wasted on young Francis Baring. From him, it is recorded, the lad ' acquired the talent for which he was most distin- guished ; for in calculations made on the spot, admitting of no previous study, he was certainly considered as unequalled.' It is not clear whether, on leaving school, he went at once into his father's office or first served a sort of apprenticeship in the great house of Boehm. While yet a young man he became a merchant on his own account. At first, from the time of his father's death, he, and his eldest brother John, were in partnership, pushing the interest of the Larkbeer cloth fac- tory, buying, wherever they could be bought most cheaply, the wool, dye-stuffs, and other raw material required for its operations, and finding a market for the cloths when they were made, besides engaging in various other sorts of mer- cantile enterprise. Before long, John Baring retired from trade and went to enjoy his wealth at Mount Radford, near Exeter. Francis Baring carried on the business on a vastly extended scale. Having married an heiress in 17G0, he became an East India proprietor, a holder of bank stock, and a great dealer in funds and shares.f That was a trade which, though by no means new in Francis Baring's day, was just then acquiring new dignity and importance, partly through the honesty and enterprise of Benjamin and Abraham Goldsmid.} They were sons of * Vincent Nolte, Fifty Years in Both Hemispheres, or Reminiscence* of a Merchant's Life (London, 1851), p. 157 ; l'Mic Characters of 1805 (London, 1805), p. 51. t Annual Register, vol. In., pp. 399, 400 ; Public Characters of 1805, pp. 31-33; Gentleman's Magazine. % The representative sUx-k-jubber of the generation preceding that ol 236 London Stock-Jobbers ; Samson Gideon, Aaron Goldsmid, a Jew, who came from Hamburg about the middle of the eighteenth century, and settled as a merchant Baring and the Goldsraids, was Samson Gideon, tlic son of a West India merchant, who was born early in the eighteenth century. His schooling was in that South Sea scheme, and the hundred other financial bubbles attendant on it, which so grievously affected English commerce and the happiness of all classes of English people in 1720 and the following years. Robert Walpole's friend, he began, as a young man, to enrich himself by help of the lotteries and other stock-jobbing appliances which Walpole and nearly every other statesman of those times encouraged. But he seems to have done it honestly. His first great accession of wealth came in 1745, the year of the Pretender's rebellion. During the panic caused by the report that an insurgent army was marcliing upon London, stock of all sorts fell to an almost nominal value. Samson Gideon was nearly the only man who did not share in the alarm. Instead of trying to dispose of his scrip, he wisely invested every pound that he possessed, or that he could borrow, in buying more. Before many days were over, when it was known that the Pretender's army had been routed, he was able to sell out at a vastly increased rate, and to find himself in consequence master of some- thing like a quarter of a million. That wealth, prudently applied during the next fifteen or sixteen years, was nearly quadrupled in the time. Gideon was described by his contemporaries as *a shrewd, sarcastic man, possessed of a rich vein of humour ; good-hearted and generous in all private relationships, honest and trustworthy in all business matters.' In 1745, when Suow, the banker, as fearful as his neighbours, wrote in plaintive terms to beg that he would immediately repay a sum of 20,0007. that he had borrowed of him, the broker adopted a characteristic way of reproving him for his groundless anxiety and melancholy. Procuring a little bottle of hartshorn, he wrapped round it twenty l,OO0Z. notes, and packing it up like a doctor's parcel, addressed it to "Mr. Thomas Snow, goldsmith, near Temple Bar." He was a great promoter of insurance and annuity funds, and from them he drew a large part of his wealth. " Never grant life annuities to old women," he used to say ; " they wither, but they never die." And if he was in attendance at the office when a sickly, asthmatic looking person came for an insurance, he would exclaim, " Ay, ay, you may cough, but it shan't save you six months' purchase !" Gideon's great ambition was to found an English house. He was too old, he said, to change his own religion ; but he brought up his children as Christians, taking special interest in the education of the eldest of them who, when a boy of eleven, was made a baronet througli Walpole's influence. Once, it is said, the honest man attempted to catechize this son on the cardinal points of his faith. "Who made you?" was his first question. " God," answered the lad. " Who redeemed you?" he next asked, without oppression of his easy conscience. " Jesus Christ," was the reply. But what was the third question? Gideon could not remember what he ought Benjamin and Abraham Goldsmid. 23 Z6i in Leman Street, Goodman's Fields. He died in 1782, leaving four sons, George, Aslicr, Benjamin, and Abraham, to carry on his business. The two younger, born, the one in 1755, and the other in 1750, were the most prosperous. Either separately, or in company with the others, they carried on their business in Leman Street till 1792.* In that year they took a house in Capel Street, opposite the Bank of England, and began using the wealth they had accumulated as stuck-brokers and money-lenders. In Abraham Newland, chief cashier of the Bank, they had a good friend.t Know- ing them to be honest and enterprising men, he intrusted them with much of the business that came in his way ; and as at that time the managers of the Bank were busy in con- tracting loans for the Government, then overwhelmed with the foreign warfare occasioned by the French Revolution, the Goldsmids had plenty to do. They soon established a large connection, winning everywhere respect for the strict promptitude and honour with which they managed all their transactions. Chance, as well as their own good sense, was in their favour. In one year they gained two sweepstakes of vast amounts in the great lotteries still in fashion, besides l,000/.'s worth of stock and several other prizes. In 1794, when a great many of their neighbours were ruined, their to say. " Who — who — who," he stammered out— adding at last, witli a reckless appropriation of the first thought that occurred to him, *' who gave you that hat?" Young Samson had answered boldly before ; he now said as boldly, " The Holy Ghost." Like tolerance of all creeds was shown by Gideon in the will made public after his death on the 17th of October, 1762. He left 1.000Z. to the synugogue in which he had worshipped, and 2,000Z. to the Corporation of the Sons of the Clergy, besides 1,0007. to the London Hospital, and other bequests to worthy institutions of all sorts. 'Gideon is dead, worth more than the whole land of Canaan,' it was said in a contemporary letter. • He has left the reversion of all his milk and honey, after his son and daughter and their children, to the Duke of Devonshire, without insisting on the duke's taking his name or being circumcised.'— Gentleman s Magazine: Francis. Curiosities of the Stock Exchange. * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. lxxx., part ii., p. 384. f Lawsok, History of Banking. 238 Benjamin and Abraham Golds mid. entire losses from bad debts amounted to only 50/. Ben- jamin Goldsmid, indeed, shared with Nathan Rothschild the repute of possessing unequalled skill in estimating the worth of every name, English or foreign, that could be found on the back of a bill. That, and the consequent skill in making money, were nearly all that the two men had in common. Both of the Goldsmids were as generous as they were rich. Accumulating wealth with unheard-of rapidity, they distri- buted in charity much more than the tithes prescribed by their Mosaic law. Numberless instances of their co-opera- tion 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 splen- did hospitality with which they entertained all the leaders of society in their day. They built themselves great houses in town ; and they invested portions of their wealth in buying country residences. Abraham became master of Morden ; Benjamin made a home for his wife and seven children at Roehampton.* He did not himself enjoy it long. On the morning of the 11th of April, 1808, when he was only fifty-three years old, he hanged himself from his own bedstead. Of a plethoric disposition, he had, while yet a young man, seriously injured his constitution by a reckless habit of blood-letting, and that had brought upon him occasional fits of melancholy, prompting him at last to suicide. t The mischief did not end there. Abraham Goldsmid never ceased to grieve for his brother. The two, it was said, had all life long been singularly devoted to one another. Every step in their rapid rise to fortune had been made by them together, and nothing had ever arisen to cause diffe- rence between them, or lack of interest in one another's movements. Abraham had been reputed the best man of * European Magazine ; Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ixxx., part ii., p. 384. t Ibid., vol. lxxviii., part i., p. 457 Sir Francis Baring. 239 business ; but if it was so, his business powers were shattered by his brother's death. Every enterprise in which he em- barked during the next two years was more or less unfortu- nate. At last, in 1810, he staked all his wealth and all his credit upon a new Government loan for 14,000,000Z. That sum he and Sir Francis Baring contracted to supply. Tt was expected that the shares would sell well and that much profit would accrue to the first purchasers, and Abraham Goldsmid accordingly induced all his friends to take them up freely. He was greatly disappointed at finding that, partly from the bad odour in which the English Government was just then, and partly from an opposition raised by younger men against such old leaders of the Stock Exchange as himself and Baring, the shares fell heavily upon the market. Sold cheaply at first, they steadily declined in value. Goldsmid estimated that he had lost 200,000?. by the speculation, and that nearly all his friends were sufferers in like proportion. This increased his melancholy, and on the 28th of September, when there was another fall iu prices, he went home in a very excited state. After dinner he went into the garden and shot himself.* Fourteen days before, died Francis Baring, a merchant worthier and richer than either of the Goldsmids, famous, even amongst his enemies, as ( a man of consummate know- ledge 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 un- sullied integrity.' f Lord Shelburne styled him ' the prince of merchants,' and turned to him as chief and best adviser on all questions of commerce and finance during his brief term of office.} Pitt, coming into power in 1783, regarded him with equal honour. To him he went for help in settlement of the difficulties on matters of trade that sprang up between England and the insurgent colonies of America. To him also * Gentleman's Magazine, vol. Ixxx., part ii., p. 3S2. t Ibid. X Vincent Noltk, p. 158. 242 Sir Fi-ancis Baring. merchant bought it himself for 20,000Z. That had hardly been done before the original proprietor died suddenly, and Baring found himself master at once of property that he had expected to wait several years for. Thereupon he did what no one but a true gentleman, and a man of rare honour, would have thought of doing. He immediately forwarded to his friend a draft for 7,000Z. " As I have maturely con- sidered every circumstance that attaches to the question," he said in the letter that went with the money, " the result is what you will find enclosed, which it is absolutely necessary for my peace of mind should remain without alteration. I will not wound your delicacy with reasons why it should be one sum in preference to another ; but I hope you will suffer me to assure you that neither myself nor any of my family will ever receive the return of any part of this sum, either now or hereafter. With this view you will permit me to request an assurance from yourself, which I know to be sacred, that you will not give or bequeath to the whole or any part of my family what shall exceed the value of 100Z."* Well might Baring be called the prince of English mer- chants. ' At his death,' according to the common and true judgment of his friends, * he was the first merchant in Eng- land ; first in knowledge and talent, character and opulence.' f "My dear sir," Baring said to Paice, on the last day of October, 1810, "we have enjoyed a friendship of nearly seventy years." J It was a friendship very full of happiness to both men. Paice earnestly desired, it is said, that he might not survive his comrade ; and his wish was curiously met. Paice died on the 4th, Baring on the 11th of Sep- tember, 1S10.§ Francis Baring had been made a baronet in 1793.|| He left property worth l,10O,O00Z. and a great house of business, to become yet greater and more remunerative in the hands * Family Pictures, p. 84. f European Magazine. J Family Pictures, p. 87. § Ibid., p. 88 ; European Magazine. II Public Characters, p. 35. His Successors in the House of Baring Brothers. 243 of his sons. Of these sons, five in all, Thomas, the eldest, born in 1772, inheriting his father's baronetcy and the greater part of his property, took no active share in the business. William and George, the youngest, passed most of their busy years in India. Alexander and Henry took charge of the London establishment. Henry's share in the management, however, was of short duration. He was a great gambler and an almost constant frequenter of the gaming tables of Baden Baden and other towns on the Continent.* Therein he made money. But it was not wealth that could add to the credit of the house of Baring Brothers, and he was accordingly induced to retire from business. For eighteen years the exclusive direction of affairs was with Alexander, the second son. Alexander Baring was born on the 27th of October, 1774.J He was educated partly in Germany and partly in England, before being placed, for commercial schooling, in the great Amsterdam house of Hope and Company, seventy or eighty years ago the greatest mercantile and banking establishment in the world.} The youngest partner in that house was Peter Caesar Labouchere, whose friendship for young Baring lasted through life. In 1796 he married the young man's sister Dorothy, and by her became father of the present Lord Taunton. § Having mastered the whole mystery of European com- merce under the guidance of the Hopes, Alexander Baring next determined to make personal observation of the younger commerce of America. His father sanctioned the project ; * Vincent Nolte, p. 158. f Gentleman's Magazine (New Series), vol. xxx., p. 89. t The house had been founded near the end of the seventeenth century by Henry Hope, a Scotchman, born in Boston, who, early in life, settled in Amsterdam. In Baring's time it comprised several members of the family, the principal being three brothers, grandsons of old Henry Hope : Adrian, who lived in Amsterdam; Henry Philip, who resided sometimes at the Hague and sometimes in England; and Thomas, who settled in England, the father of Mr. Beresford Hope. § Vincent Nolte, p. lf> ( J. 244 Alexander Baring in America and England. but urged him to be careful on two points — to buy no waste lands in the New World, and not to bring- a wife thence. " Uncultivated lands," said shrewd Sir Francis, " can be more readily bought than sold again ; and a wife is best suited to the home in which she has been brought up, and cannot be formed or trained a second time." The young man, however, followed neither piece of advice. In 1798, soon after his arrival in the United States', he married the daughter of William Bingham, a rich merchant and in- fluential senator, who bequeathed the sum of 900,000 dollars to his son-in-law. He also made wise investment of a great deal of money, some 30,000?. or 40,000Z., in purchasing and improving vast tracts of land in Pennsylvania and Maine, soon greatly increased in value by the growth of population in the United States.* Alexander Baring spent four or five years in America; there having General Washington for one of his friends. When he was about thirty he returned to England, to settle down as chief adviser of his father — soon as chief manager on his own account — in the London business. His wealth and his good sense made him, in spite of some personal dis- advantages, as great a favourite in the fashionable as in the commercial world. Miss Berry, the friend of Horace Wal- pole, sat next to him at dinner on the 20th of March, J 808. He was, she said, * rather a heavy -loooking young man, with a hesitating manner ; but very clear in his ideas, and unassuming in his manners.' t Soon the whole world had proof of the strong will and wonderful power of organization that were beneath that modest exterior. With Alexander Baring's supremacy be- gan the European fame and influence of the house of Baring. The young merchant-prince at once brought his wisdom to bear on every question affecting the commercial welfare of * Vincent Nolte, p. 159. t Journals and Correspondence of Miss Berry (London, lSCS^, vol. ii., p. 344. His Share in Commercial Legislation. 245 England. Entering Parliament, as member for Taunton, in 1800',* he at once took rank with the great financiers and economists of half a century ago. His stutter and oratorical deficiency lessened the weight of his counsels ; but they were always listened to with respect, and very often followed. In the budget of 1811, for instance, it was proposed to raise money by levying a tax of a penny a pound on the cotton- wool imported from all districts save British and Portuguese colonies. Baring showed that the measure would be fraught with two-fold evil ; that it would deprive England of great quantities of American cotton, even then found far more serviceable than any that could be got from the East or the West Indies ; and that, in keeping American cotton out of England, it would encourage American manufactures, and so cause further injury to our trade. The foolish scheme was withdrawn in that year, and, on its revival in 1813, being again opposed by Baring and his fellow-thinkers, it was finally abandoned.! In the meanwhile Baring was taking a prominent part in other questions about America. In 1812 he supported Henry Brougham in his opposition to the famous Orders in Council of 1807 and 1809, directing stringent search in all foreign vessels for English seamen and contraband articles. Those orders, it was urged, had already proved very disas- trous to the commercial and manufacturing interests of England, and were the cause of much needless misery to great numbers of British subjects. They were soon after made an excuse for the American declaration of war with England. In the House of Commons, Baring pointed this out, and found in it good reasons for condemning the Ministry. As war had been brought about, however, he insisted that it must be carried through with zeal. He boldly advocated the blockading of all the ports of the United States; and when peace had been negotiated, in * Gentleman's Magazine (New Scries), vol. xxx., p. 8D. f Annual Eegister, vol. liii., pp. 07, CS ; vol. lv., pp. 6S, 70. 24G Alexander Baring in Parliament. December, 1814, he angrily denounced the negotiators for supineness.* The wisdom of his complaints has been since abundantly proved by the frequent disputes concerning right of search in the case of American vessels. In all the commercial legislation of the latter part of George the Third's reign, and the whole of George the Fourth's, Baring took an influential part. In 1815 he stoutly opposed a measure for establishing the price at which foreign corn might be imported, that price being fixed for the protection of English grain. Therein he failed.t Next year he succeeded in his resistance of the income tax.J In 1821, in the discussions concerning the resumption of Bank payments, he advocated a modification of the esta- blished rules regarding currency. Something must be done, he said, to meet the growing wants of an increasing population, driven to all sorts of difficulties through scarcity of floating coin, and in the absence of its equivalent in paper. " No country before ever presented the continuance of so extraordinary a spectacle as that of living under a progressive increase in the value of money and decrease in the value of the productions of the people." On this occasion Baring moved for a select committee to inquire into the financial embarrassments of the nation, and to suggest remedies for the evil. In this, and in other efforts to improve the state of the currency, however, he failed.§ In the management of his own commercial affairs he certainly did not fail. The greatest proof of his influence in the monetary world appeared in 1818. "There are six great Powers in Europe — England, France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Baring Brothers," said the Due de Richelieu in that year ; and with reason. Baring had just negotiated * Annual Register, vol. liv., p. 92; lv., p. 4 : lvii., p. 17; Edinburgh Review, vol, xii., pp. 23G-245; vol. xliv. pp. 77, 78, 348. f Annual Register, vol. lvii., pp. 5, 6. \ Und., vol. lviii., p. 22. § Ibid., vol. lxiii., pp. 70, 71 ; Gentleman's Moguziuc, vol. xci., part i., pp 2G7, 359, 3G0, G32. His /Success as a Merchant. 247 for the French Government a loan of 27,238,938 francs, in five per cent, rentes, at a rate of 07 francs to the 100. By that means the restored Bourbons were able to buy off the projected occupation of France for five years by Russian, Prussian, and Austrian troops, and the convention of Aix-la- Chapelle was brought about Baring's ' power,' however, did not end there. The sudden issue of State paper*for the loan of 27,000,000 francs caused a depression of the Funds from (37 to 58, and consequently gave room for much wild speculation, and made certain the failure of many honest traders. Baring thereupon persuaded Richelieu to annul the contract for half of his loan, and at the same time induced the bankers who had joined with him in effecting it — the Hopes and the Rothschilds being the principal — to agree to the surrender. That restored the funds to something like their proper condition. All through the conferences of the plenipotentiaries at Aix-la-Chapelle, Baring was in attendance to answer questions, give advice, and see that the decisions arrived at were in accordance with sound monetary principles.* From that time the chief business of the house of Baring Brothers lay in the negotiation of foreign loans. Nearly all the merit of this must be assigned to Alexander Baring. Having brought the house, however, to the highest pitch of its greatness, he retired from all active part in its direction when he was only fifty-four years old. One of his nephews, Mr. John Baring, had, in 1823, joined with Mr. Joshua Bates, an American, in establishing a large commission- agency in Boston. Another nephew, Mr. Thomas Baring, had been for some time engaged in the house of Hope, at Amsterdam. In 1825, on the advice of his brother-in-law, Peter Labouchere, Alexander Baring resolved to take into partnership with him his son Francis, both his nephews, and Joshua Bates as well; and three years later, in LS28, * Vincent Noltf.. pp. 2G7, 2GS ; Annual Bcnittrr, vol. lx., pp. 145, 14G vol. lxi., p. 128; Gentleman's Magazine, vols, lxxxi., lxxxii. 248 Alexander Baring's Picture Gallery. finding that the young men worked well, he left the business altogether in their hands, surrendering his part in the management, and appointing as a substitute his son-in-law, Mr. Humphrey St. John Mildmay. Henceforth the house was known as Baring and Company, to have for its principal directors, during more than thirty years, Mr. Joshua Bates, who died in 1864,* and Mr. Thomas Baring, the present Member of Parliament for Huntingdon. As early as 1811, Alexander Baring had been rich enough to buy an estate at Shoreham for 100,000?. He adorned it with almost the choicest private collection of paintings to be found in England. He was reputed an excellent judge of pictures. If now and then he made mistakes, his error was shared by other competent critics. Of this an instance occurs in Thomas Moore's Diary; where, by the way, we find ample proof of the witty poet's liking for the good dinners and the good society to be met' with at the merchant's table. One day in June, 1829, says Moore, " Mrs. Baring showed me some new pictures that Baring had just bought. She told me of a picture of * Bates was bom at Weymouth, near Boston, in 1788. For several years, beginning with 1803, he was a clerk in the great American house of W. R. and W. Gray. In 1815 or 1816, his employers sent him as confi- dential agent to the north of Europe. Returning to Boston a few years later, he soon entered into partnership with John Baring, each partner pro- viding 20,000Z., with which to start the business. From 1825, when the business was merged into that of Baring and Co., to the time of his death, he resided almost constantly in London. For many years he was in intimate friendship with Coleridge, and during that period Bates's drawing-room was a famous haunt of the admirers of the great thinker and great talker. Another of Joshua Bates's favourites was Prince Louis Napoleon. The close and trustful friendship existing before 1848 between the wealthy merchant and the modest refugee continued, without hinderance, we are assured, after the refugee had become Emperor of the French. Among many other proofs of his benevolent disposition, Bates spent 50,000 dollars in buying some of the best European books for the free library of Boston, and sent over another sum of 50,000 dollars to be funded for its benefit, the interest being every year applied to the purchase of more books. He died on the 24th September, 18G4, leaving a large fortune to his only surviving child, Madame Van de Weyer, wife of the Belgian ambassador. His Defence of the Friendly Societies. 249 Rembrandt that Baring- once bought at a very large price, which used to make Sir Thomas Lawrence unhappy, from its beinff a finer Rembrandt than that of An^erstein. After contemplating it, however, for several hours one day, he came to the conclusion that it was too highly finished to be a genuine Rembrandt ; and, in consequence of this opinion of his, the picture fell in value instantly."* At another time, a picture which Baring had paid 5,000Z. for, as a Correggio, was in like manner declared an imitation, and accordingly reduced in price to 500£. or less.j In 182G, Baring made a splendid addition to his gallery, by purchasing Lord Radstock's collection, including a Titian, priced at 1,800 guineas, and a Giorgione at 700.J In other ways Baring showed an enlightened taste and disposition. His father had been one of the founders of the London Institution in 180G. In 1825 the son was chosen one of the council of the London University, just founded at a cost of 30,000/.§ In 1828 he presided at a festival at Freemasons' Tavern in celebration of the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts.|| It was through him, moreover, though more for commercial than any other reasons, that Sir Robert Peel was induced, in the following year, to abandon a project for bringing all the Friendly Societies in England under the management of the Government. This measure gave umbrage to great numbers, and, after vainly petitioning on the matter, they decided upon a system of coercion. On the moraine before the bill was to be read a third time, notices were posted all over the country requesting all who had any money invested through the agency of Friendly Societies to draw it out if the obnoxious bill was made law. As the total deposits for the whole kingdom were very * Memoirs of Tliomns Moore, edited by Lord John IUsslxl, vol. vi., p. 56. t Ibid., vol. vi., p. 88. X Ibid., vol. v., p. GG. § Gentleman's Magazine, vol. xcv., part ii., p. 028. II Ibid., vol. xcviu., part ii., p. 60S. VOL. II. S 250 Alexander Baring's Change of Politics. heavy, that proposal caused much excitement in the money market Therefore, in the evening, when Sir Robert Peel brought forward his bill, Baring rose and protested. " Does my right houourable friend know what he is doing? This morning I was astonished to find the Funds fallen two per cent, with no apparent reason for the fall. Then I found that it was caused by the determination of these depositors to withdraw all their money from public use. Sir, this is a very serious measure, very serious indeed. I trust the House will not endorse it without grave consideration." The result of that speech was the withdrawal of the bill, and the substitution for it, next session, of another, framed by the delegates of the Friendly Societies themselves. Alexander Baring began political life as a Whig, the friend and supporter of Lord Brougham, Lord John Russell, and other liberal reformers. Soon after his retirement from business, however, he changed his policy. He was alarmed at the growing excitement of the English people on the question of Parliamentary reform. " It is impossible," he said, in November, 1829, "for rich capitalists to remain in a country exposed to tumultuary meetings. Great numbers of manufacturers have been brought to this country at various times from other countries, some to escape civil and some religious persecutions. But there is no persecution so fatal as a mob persecution. Every other persecution it is possible to find some means of softening ; but mob persecu- tion is unrelenting and implacable. Despotism itself is to be preferred to mob persecution."* Therefore he went over to the side of despotism. For his opposition to the Reform Bill his windows were broken in 1831, and from that year he sided on all questions with the Tories. On the formation of Sir Robert Peel's new Government in 1834, Baring took office as President of the Board of Trade and Master of the Mint. In April, 1835, he was raised to the peerage as Lord Ashburton.t Henceforth, with one * Gentleman's Magazine, New Series, vol. xxx., p. SO. t Ibid., p. 90. His Settlement of the American Boundary Line. 251 famous exception, he took no prominent part in public affairs. The exception was in 1841. On Peel's return to power in that year the most pressing business before him related to a question on which Baring had had much to say seven-and- thirty years before. One of his complaints at the way in which peace had been established with America in ]814 concerned the question as to the north-eastern boundary line of the United States from British America. The difficulty arose from an inadvertence in drawing up the treaty of 1783, it being there left doubtful which of two lines of highlands were to form the separation. Hence there was debateable ground of nearly a hundred miles' breadth, and with an entire area of 6,750,000 acres. This was one of the grounds of quarrel in 1811, and in the pacification of 1814 Baring found great fault with the negotiators for leaving the question still unsettled. They had referred it to the arbitration of the King of the Netherlands. For seventeen years his Majesty studied or pretended to study the question without arriving at any decision. At last, in 1831, he proposed to reject both lines and take for boundary line the stream of the river St John, thus giving to England 2,G3G,1G0 of the disputed acres. To this suggestion Lord Palmerston, who was then Foreign Secretary, readily acceded. President Jackson and the American Government also approved of it ; but there was so much opposition raised by certain demagogues in the United States, who, eager to have all the territory in their own hands, declared that the King of the Netherlands had exceeded his authority in proposing a third line, that nothing came of it. Over and over again the English Government sought to effect an arrangement, but the Americans were obstinate. The dispute lasted ten years, and when Sir Robert Peel resumed power in 1841, it seemed almost certain to end in war. Peel, however, determined to make one more peaceful effort. He appointed Lord Ashburton to proceed to Washington, 252 Alexander Baring, Baron Ashhurton. and there effect, if it was any how possible, some sort of settlement. * Lord Ashburton.' said one. who took part in the negotiation, * was a nobleman well adapted to the occasion, from his connection by marriage and property with the United States. He was not a trained ambassador, but his general knowledge of business, straightforwardness, and good sense, were qualities far more valuable than those to be generally found in professional diplomatists, whose proceedings so often embroil instead of conciliating.' Lord Ashburton proceeded to the United States in March, 1842. There many of the commissioners appointed to treat with him were his personal friends, and his arguments took effect. He secured a compromise yet more favourable to England than that designed by the King of the Netherlands, Great Britain being left in possession of 3,370,000 acres, America of 3,413,000. This was the Treaty of Washington, or the Ashburton Treaty, signed on the 9th of August, 1842.* Lord Ashburton died, seventy-four years old, on the 13th of May, ]848.f His son, William Bingham Baring, who succeeded to the peerage, had nothing to do with commerce, and the second son, Francis, who became Lord Ashburton a few years ago, soon retired from business. The Barings still flourish and draw money, through commercial channels, from all quarters of the world ; but of the living, if they had here to be spoken of, perhaps nothing more important, as regards their mercantile history, could be said than that they are good and zealous followers of the system of money- making established by old Sir Francis Baring and his son Alexander, Baron Ashburton. Yet more famous and successful, however, in the com- mercial history of the last half-century, has been the house that chiefly owes its prosperity to the enterprise of Nathan Meyer Rothschild, who was born on the 16th of September, * Mr. Thomas Colley Grattan, cited by Messrs. Saxford and Townsend in TJie Great Governing Familes of England (London, 1805), vol. ii., pp. 128-130. t Gentleman's Magazine, New Series, vol. xxx., p. 90. The Rothschilds in Frankfort. 253 177G, at Frankfort- on-the -Maine. There, in the vilest part of the town, the quarter specially assigned to the Jew money- lenders, pawnbrokers, old-clothes-men, and the like, and therefore known as the Juden-gasse or Jews' Street, his grand- father had been settled as a merchant or dealer of some sort from near the beginning of the eighteenth century ; and there his father, Meyer Amschcl, or Anselm, was born in 1743, six years before Goethe. According to one report this Meyer Anselm had been educated by kind strangers to be- come a priest, and had already acquired some fame as a learned archaeologist and numismatist, when his father brought him home., and forced him to settle down as a broker in Frankfort. According to another and more probable ac- count, he was left a penniless orphan at the age of eleven, and had to work his way on foot to Hanover, there to get some employment as a money-changer's shop-boy, and slowly to save money enough to take him back to Frankfort, when he was nearly thirty years old. At any rate, he was married and established in Frankfort as a money-lender, pawnbroker, and dealer in second-hand goods in 1772. His little shop in Jews' Street was known by its sign of the Red Shield, or Roth-Schild, whence he himself acquired the name of Meyer Anselm Rothschild. It was a busier shop than any other in the neighbourhood, frequented by the greatest persons in Frankfort, who came either to borrow money, or to buy the pictures, coins, cameos, and other rarities of which the broker was a skilful collector. One of these was William, Land- grave of Hesse, who, after several years' trial of old Roth- schild, liked him so well, that when the French bombarded Frankfort in 179G, he gave him and his treasures safe housing in his fortified house at Cassel. The Jews' Street was destroyed by the French, 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 Rothschild, therefore, as soon as he went back to the town, built himself a handsome house in one of its most 254 Nathan Meyer Rotlischild fashionable parts. He was appointed foreign banker and financial agent of Landgrave William, and at once entered on a more extensive and more profitable range 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 the onslaught of Napoleon, just then carving out a kingdom of Westphalia for his brother Jerome, intrusted to him his treasure of three million florins, something like 250,000/. This money he invested very successfully ; lend- ing at exorbitant rates, pawning for trifling sums the property of owners who in those unsettled times were never able to redeem their property, and turning pence and pounds in every possible way that the usurer at any rate would con- sider honest. When he died, in 1812, he left twelve million florins to be divided among his five sons, Anselm, Solomon, Nathan Meyer, Charles, -and James. From these five sons he exacted an oath upon his death-bed, that they would keep his business intact, extending it as much as they could, but acting always in partnership, so that the world might know only one house of Rothschild. The oath was strictly kept, with this exception, that Nathan, the third son, proving the cleverest of them all, came to be practically the head of the house in place of his elder brother Anselm.* Fourteen or fifteen years before that, Nathan had left Frankfort to settle in Manchester. "There was not room enough for all of us in Frankfort," he said, some thirty years later. " I dealt in English goods. One great trader came there who had the market to himself. He was quite the great man, and did us a favour if he sold us goods. Some- how 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 German. On the Thursday I started. The nearer I got to England, the * Das Haus Iiotlischild (Prag., 1857), Thiol i, passim; Gentleman's Magazine, New Series, vol vi.. pp. 325-330 ; Francis, p. 293. in Manchester and in London. 255 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, then full of the turmoil of the new cotton trade, and crowded with young adventurers glad to borrow money at high rates of interest, for the sake of investing as manufacturers or warehousemen, was the best possible field for young Rothschild's talents, and he reaped from it a golden harvest. "I soon found," he continued in his personal narrative, " that there were three profits— the raw material, the dyeing, and the manufacturing. I said to the manu- facturer, '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 made my 20,000/. into 60,000/. 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 for all the rest of them !' Another advantage I had. I was an off-hand man ; I made my bargains at once." Rothschild started with another maxim, 'to have nothing to do with an unlucky place or an unlucky man.' " I have seen," he said, " many clever men, very clever men, who had not shoes to their feet. I never act with them. Their advice sounds very well ; but fate is against them : they cannot get on themselves, and if they cannot do good to themselves, can they do good to me?" f Resolving to govern his life by such rules, Nathan Roth- schild put himself 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, considering that the most successful of all his businesses, that of money-lending, could be carried on quite as well in one place as another, and that other work as remunerative would be more within reach in London than in any smaller town. This change, indeed, was part of a plan by which eventually the five brothers * Buxton, Life- of Sir lliomas Fowell Buxton. t Ibid. 25G Nathan Meyer Rothschild. took possession of all the chief centres of European com- merce, Anselm remaining in Frankfort, Solomon being sometimes in Berlin, sometimes in Vienna, Charles being in Naples, James in Paris, and Nathan in London. In 1806 Nathan married a daughter of Levi Barnet Cohen, one of the wealthiest Jew merchants then in London. Prudent Cohen, it was said, after he had accepted him as his daughter's suitor, became nervous about the extent of his property. A man who speculated so recklessly, he thought, was very likely to be speculating with other people's money. He therefore asked for proof of young Rothschild's wealth. 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 'good character' meant steadiness and skill in money- making, he was certainly right. Nathan Rothschild was without a rival in that art. Having persistently advanced his fortune in private ways through some years, he began, in 1810, to trade in Government securities. He bought up at a discount a number of Wellington's drafts for the expenses of the Peninsular war, which the Treasury had no funds at hand for meeting, and by transferring them to the Govern- ment at par, with a prolongation of the term of payment, he managed to help it out of a difficulty, and at the same time to insure a large profit for himself. " When the Govern- ment had got the money," he said, " they did not know how to get it to Portugal. I undertook all that, and I sent it " — by help of the continental Rothschilds — " through France. It was the best business I ever did." f It was this business that started him on a new stage in his glittering — more glittering than brilliant — course of money- making. This and other like services that followed made friends for him at the Treasury, and so helped him to procure early information as to the progress of war and the policy of the English and foreign governments, which gave him a * Gentleman' s Magazine. t Life of Buxton. His Ways of Money -making. 257 notable advantage over his fellow stock-jobbers. The ramifi- cations of the Rothschild establishments and connections on the Continent, moreover, made him the best agent of the Government in transmitting money to the armies in Spain and elsewhere, and this agency he made profitable to himself in various ways. Finding the immense power that he derived from his appliances for securing early information in foreign affairs, he made it his business to extend and increase them to the very utmost. He turned pigeon-fancier, and, buyino- all the best birds he could find, he employed some of his leisure in training them, and so organized a machinery for rapid transmission of messages unrivalled in the days when railways and telegraphs were yet unknown. He made careful study of routes, distances, and local facilities for quick travelling, and mapped out new roads for the passage of his human agents carrying documents or money. The South- Eastern Railway Company, it is said, established their line of steamers between Folkestone 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 overreaching distance and his fellow-speculators was in 1815. He was near the Chateau d'Hougoumont on the 18th of June, watching, as eagerly as Buonaparte and Wellington themselves, the pro- gress of the Battle of Waterloo. All day long he followed the fighting with strained eyes, knowing that on its issue depended his welfare as well as Europe's. At sunset he saw that the victory was with Wellington and the Allies. Then, without a moments delay, he mounted a horse that had 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, to find the sea so stormy that the boatmen refused to trust themselves to it. At last he prevailed upon a fisherman to make the venture for a reward of 80Z. In that way he managed to reach Dover. At Dover, and at the intermediate stages on the 258 Nathan Meyer Rothschild. road to London, other horses were in waiting, and lie 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 ; that by himself he could not possibly succeed, and therefore the cause of England and her allies was lost. The funds fell, as they were meant to fall. Every one was anxious to sell, and Rothschild and his accredited agents scoffed at all who brought them scrip for purchase. But scores of unknown agents were at work all that day and all the next. Before the Stock Exchange closed on the afternoon of the second day, when Nathan Rothschild's strong boxes were full of paper, he announced, an hour or so before the news came through other channels, the real issue of the contest. Very soon the funds were higher -than they had been during many previous weeks ; and Rothschild found that he had made something like a million pounds by his quick travelling and clever misrepresentation.* Other millions were collected, rather more slowly, by other transactions of a like nature. Sometimes the mighty stock- jobber was unsuccessful. In negotiating the English loan for 12,000,000Z. in 1819, almost the first national loan for which he was a contractor, he lost something.! He suffered a little also from a French loan in 1823, which fell ten per cent, in a few days' time. In both those instances, however, he managed to get rid of his bad bargains before his customers knew all the facts, and so threw nearly all the burden upon them. By his association in Lord Bexley's scheme for fund- ing exchequer bills in a three and a half per cent, stock, he was said to be a sufferer to the extent of nearly 50(J,000Z4 A great part of Rothschild's wealth, however, came from his negotiations of foreign loans. These he was the first to * Martin, Stories of Bankers (London, 1805), pp. 74-7G. This little book has helped me to some other anecdotes about City men. t Fhancis, p. 297. X Gentleman's Magazine. His Traffic in Foreign Loans. 259 1818. Prussian 1821. Spanish 1822. Prussian Russian make popular in the English market. Preparing for his customers precise details of the state of foreign monetary projects, he further helped those who wished to share in them by establishing, under his own management, a mode of paying the dividends in London, and at an organized tarn of English money. He soon came to be the principal agent of all the great or needy governments — Russian, Turkish, French, German, North American, and South American — in disposing of their scrip to the English stock-jobbers.* * The following: is a list of the principal foreign loans contracted in England during the first few years in which this husiness was carried on largely among us, showing their contractors, and the prices at which they were issued : — £5.000,000 at 5 per cent. N. M. Rothschild 72 per cent. 1,500,000 „ „ E. F. Haldiinan 50 3,500,000 „ „ N. M. Rothschild 84 3,500,000 „ „ N. M. Rothschild 82 ( Herring, Graham, "Iq, \ & Co. . / " 1,000,000 „ „ Hallett Brothers 70 450.000 „ „ Frys & Chapman 88 2,500.000 at 5 per cent. N. M. Rothschild 82 1,500,000 ,, „ |B.A.GoldschmidtJ, 7 ^ 1,500,000 „ „ J. Campbell & Co. 30± „ . -r« «™ i. ^ i f B.A.Goldschinidt\ cei 1824. Columbian 4,750,000 at G per cent, j & q q jS8£ „ Brazilian 3,200.000 at 5 per cent. T. Wilson & Co. 75 „ „ n ( B. A.Goldschmidt \ ro „ Mexican 3,200,000 „ „ | & Co J 58 „ Neapolitan 2,500,000 „ „ N. M. Rothschild 92£ „ „ BuenosAyresl, 000.000 at G per cent. Baring Brothers 85 Greek 800.000 at 5 per cent. Lough nan & Co. " Peruvian 750,000 at G per cent. Frys & Chapman 1825. Danish 5,500,000 at 3 per cent. T. Wilson & Co. . f Parclav, Herring, \ oa -, 3,200,000 at G percent.) & Co. , . / 89 « 2,000,000 at 5 per cent. X. M. Rothschild 85 1,428,571 at G per cent. J. & A. Powles 73 1,000,000 at 5 per cent. Ricarclos 5G£ G1G.000 at G per cent. Frys & Chapman 78 000,000 at 5 per cent. W. Edwards, jun. GO 800.000 ,, ,, Rotlisrhild&Wilson 2,000,000 - •• N. M. Rothschild 85 1823. Columbian 2,000,000 at G per cent. Chilian Peruvian Austrian Portuguese Spanish 59 82 75 „ Mexican „ Brazilian ,, Guatemala „ Greek „ Peruvian „ Guadaljava 1829. Brazilian 1832. Belgian -Gilbart, History and Principles of Banking (London, 1834), p. 59. 2G0 Nathan Meyer Rothscldld. Out of nearly all such transactions he secured large profits ; one of them by itself yielding the 115,000Z. with which he bought the estate of Guunersbury, near London. They helped him also in his old business of bill discounting. ' He never,' it was said just after his death, ' hesitated for a moment in fixing the rate, either as a drawer or as a taker, on any part of the world ; and his memory was so retentive that, notwithstanding 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.'* In all sorts of other ways of making money Nathan Rothschild was as clever. The story of his mercury trans- actions is well known to many. Nearly all the mercury procurable in Europe comes either from Idria on Illyria, or from Almaden in Spain. The Almaden mines, famous and profitable through five-and-twenty centuries, had fallen for some years into disuse before 1831, when Rothschild, be- coming contractor for a Spanish loan, proposed, as recom- pense for his trouble, to hold them for a certain term at a nominal rental. That was cheerfully agreed to, and the mines soon began to give token of renewed activity. In a kindred way the great merchant obtained possession of the mines at Idria. The consequence was that the price of mer- cury was suddenly doubled. Rothschild had quietly acquired a monopoly of the article, and he was able to charge for it whatever he thought fit. It was nothing to him that the exorbitant prices which helped to fill his coffers drove some smaller tricksters to scrape off' the quicksilver from old looking-glasses and the like, and work it up into poisonous calomel, as well as bad material for new mirrors, thermome- ters, and so forth. For this stratagem Rothschild was much and properly abused. His conduct was not often such as could be expected to win the admiration of his fellows. Once he was in need * Gentleman's Magazine. His Character and Disposition. 261 of bullion, and accordingly went to the Bank parlour to ask for a loan. The gold was given to him on his engagement to return it by a certain day. When the day came Roth- schild was again in Threadneedle Street, But instead of the looked-for gold he produced a bundle of notes. The officials in attendance reminded him that the Bank reserve had been broken in upon for his accommodation, and that he had promised to return the money in kind. " Very well, gentlemen," he is reported to have replied, " give me back the notes. 1 daresay your cashier will honour them with gold from your vaults, and then I can return you bullion."* The great man's jokes were not very witty. 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 his stinginess, who chanced to say that, for his part, he preferred mutton to venison. " Ah, I see," Rothschild answered ; " you like mutton because it is sheep (cheap) ; other people like venison because it is deer (dear)."f Another saying attributed to him gives evidence, 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 Saint Swithin's Lane, where Rothschild sat, busy with a heap of papers. The name being announced, Rothschild nodded, offered him a chair, and then went on with the work before him. For this treatment the prince, who expected that everything * Frakcis, p. 300. f Somewhat smarter was a speech recorded of Nathan Rothschild's nephew, the great hanker at Vienna. During the insurgent times of 1848, some six or eight republicans rushed into his counting-house, informed him that the days of liherty, equality, and fraternity had now arrived, and ac- cordingly insisted on his sharing his wealth with tlicm. *' Well, my friends," he said, " what do ycu suppose is the amount of my wealth?" " Forty million florins," answered one. " You have a good deal overrated it," was the reply ; " hut never mind that. There are about forty million people in Germany ; so that, according to your reckoning, each would expect a florin from me. Here are your florins. Goed-morning." 262 Nathan Meyer liothscJuld. should give way to one of his rank and dignity, was not at all prepared. Standing a minute or two, he exclaimed, " Did you not hear, sir, who I am ? I am " detailing his titles. " Very well," answered Rothschild, " take two chairs." At another time, two strangers were admitted into this same private room. They were tall foreigners, with mousta- chios and beards such as were not often to be seen in the City thirty years ago ; and Rothschild, always timid, was frightened from the moment of their entrance, lie put his own interpretation upon the excited movements with which they fumbled about in their pockets, and before the expected pistols could be produced he had thrown a great ledger in the direction of their heads, and brought in a bevy of clerks by his cries of " Murder !" The strangers were pinioned, and then, after long questionings and explanations, it ap- peared 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 in- troduction which they were to present. During the later years of his life, it was said, Rothschild was always in fear of assassination. " You must be a very happy man, Mr. Rothschild," 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 500/. I will blow your brains out !' Me happy !" Yet it was in the making of money that Rothschild found all the enjoyment of his life, not so much prizing the money when it was made, as finding intense delight in the scram- bling and fighting, the plotting and tricking, by means of which it was acquired.* " I hope," said another dinner- * " This," says one who knew him well, in a communication with which he has favoured me, " is the key to an understanding of llwtiisehild's cha- racter : — His ambition tended to the accomplishment of elaborate financial His Character and Disposition. 263 table 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 wish that," answered Rothschild. " 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 manner he was an excellent friend. Some of the wealthiest commercial houses now in London, it is said, owe their prosperity to the readi- ness with which Rothschild, seeing good business qualities in the young men around him, endorsed their bills, and thus gave them a recommendation patent to all the world. There were cases, too, in which he went out of his way to put ex- ceptional opportunities of money-making in the ways of his favourites. Even his charities, according to his own confes- sion, were exceptional, and chiefly indulged in for his own entertainment. " Sometimes 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."f Rothschild, it may well be conceived, had few tastes or pleasures out of the Stock Exchange and the Saint Swithin's Lane counting-house. When Louis Spohr, the violinist and operations — of making money, if yon like; but in this phrase the emphasis must be placed on the maJcivg ; for he did not value either money in itself, or the things that could be procured by it. He had no taste nor inclination for what every Englishman .seeks as soon as lie has money enough to buy it— comfort in every respect. Ilis ambition was to arrive at his aim more quickly and more effectually than others, and to steer towards it with all las energy. When his end was reached, it had lost all its charm for him, nnd ho turned his never-wearying mind to something else." * Li/a of Buxton. t Ibid.. 2C4 Nathan Meyer Rothschild. composer, called upon him in June, 1820, with a letter of introduction from his brother in Frankfort, he said to him, " I understand nothing of music. This " — patting his pocket and rattling the loose coins therein — " is my music : we understand that on 'Change. But you can come and dine with me at my counting-house." " Nevertheless," adds Spohr, in his report of the visit, " the letter of recommendation to Rothschild was not wholly useless, for he took a whole box at my benefit concert."* Nathan Rothschild was a zealous money-maker to the last. His father had directed that the house of Rothschild should continue united from generation to generation. Each of the brothers had a share in all the others' con- cerns. It was in furtherance of the general scheme that, some time before, Nathan's youngest brother, James, had married one 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 fol- lowing 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 three words, ' II est mort.' None but his own kindred ever knew what was Rothschild's real wealth. The guesses ranged between three millions and ten. To his widow he left 20,000/. a year, with life interest in the house in Piccadilly and the estate of Gunners- bury. Each of his four sons had received 25,000Z. on his becoming of age, and to each 75,000Z. was to be given on his marriage. To his three daughters, besides 25,000Z. apiece on their reaching the age of twenty-one, 100,000/ was left, half as a wedding-present, half to remain in the busi- ness at four per cent, interest. " Their marriage, however." * Lovis Sroim\> Aut'jliugnijJi'j x Loudon, 18G5), vol. ii., p. 7S. His Death and his Bequests. 265 it was characteristically ordered in his will, " can only at anv time take place with the sanction of their mother or brothers ; and in the event, which is not to be supposed, that in such respect they shall not be able mutually to agree, and their mother or brothers should refuse their consent, then shall my brothers decide thereon, and this decision is to be complied with unconditionally by all parties." If the daughters married without consent they were to lose everything.* The Chief Rabbi, — in preaching the funeral sermon over 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,' — applauded the charity of Nathan Meyer Roths- child, 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 entertainment or his own aggrandizement. * Annual Obituanj for 1S3G. t Ibid. VOL. II. 206 CHAPTER XXV. THOMAS POTTER AND SOME OTHER MERCHANTS OF MANCHESTER. [1764-1845.] The history of Manchester during the last hundred years, — itself more than twenty times as large, and four hundred time? as rich in 1860 as it had been in 1700, and the centre of a district nearly every former village of which has in the intervening century become a populous and wealthy town, — comprises the history of a dozen famous merchants of almost equal worth and eminence. If we single out Sir Thomas Potter from the group, and cluster round the story of his career so much as is necessary to be said about his contempo- raries, it is rather because his long life covered nearly the whole period of greatest prosperity, and because his energy on political and municipal questions made him especially prominent, than because the other men were less notable or less helpful to the progress of Manchester commerce. He was born at Wingate Hall, near Tadcaster, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, in 17G4. His father, John Potter, there owned a farm of some three hundred acres. He was a modest man, of no education or gentility, but shrewd, industrious, and honest. It is reported that for his known opposition to the English policy which issued in the American War of Independence, and for his refusal to join in the illuminations consequent on the victories of the English John Potter and his Sons. 267 troops over Washington, all his windows were, on one occasion, broken ; but he generally troubled himself little about matters outside of his farm and family. In 1802 he received a silver cup as a prize for the best crop of turnips produced that year in the county of York. In other ways he acquired some fame for his good farming, and he suc- ceeded thereby in saving some money, which was to prove very useful to his sons. Of these there were three, William, Thomas, and Richard. William was sent, while a lad, to take a situation under a woollen manufacturer and wholesale draper in Wigan, and there he gave so much satisfaction to his employer that he was soon promoted to responsible and lucrative work. Thomas and Richard were at first, and for many years, occupied in managing the farm. Their leisure they used in the supervision of a small draper's shop, which John Potter had opened in Tadcaster, placing his daughters in it as sales- women. Thomas, during many years, went periodically to fairs in the neighbourhood in search of the best stock for the farm, and every now and then he proceeded to Manchester, Leeds, and other towns, to make purchases for the draper's shop. This general schooling of the family in a humble sort of trade issued, in due time, in a larger enterprise. In 1802 William and Richard opened a warehouse in Manchester — the precise locality being No. 5, Cannon Street — and a few months later arrangements were made for releasing Thomas also from attendance at the farm. On the 1st of January, 1803, the firm of William, Thomas, and Richard Potter was established, to be changed in 180G into Thomas and Richard Potter, through the retirement of the elder brother. The capital, made up of all the family savings during half a century or more, with which the house began business in 1803, was estimated at £1 4,000. At that time, and for thirty years ensuing, its chief business lay in procuring from the neighbouring manufacturers grey, white, and dyed 2b'8 Thomas and Richard Potter of Manchester. calicoes, linens, flannels, fustians, counterpanes, and the like, for sale to the wholesale dealers in such centres of trade as London, Bristol, Exeter, and Norwich.* That was a branch of commerce that the extension of Lancashire manufactures was rapidly bringing into import- ance. Nathan Rothschild, as we have seen, applied himself to it and thus obtained large profits during his few years' residence in Manchester. Many other bold adventurers, making Manchester their permanent home, and confining themselves to more legitimate walks of trade, pursued their ends with notable advantage both to themselves and to their town. Among them Samuel Watts and Henry Bannerman were only a little younger, and perhaps no whit less enter- prising and successful, than the Potters. Manchester, though even then a famous place, was, at the time of Thomas Potter's first settlement in it, small and in- significant in comparison with its present size and importance. In 1801 it and the adjoining township of Salford, contained 84,020 inhabitants : in 1861 the population had risen to 460,028. All the business of the town was carried on in the immediate neighbourhood of Market Place, with the old Parish Church, now the Cathedral, and Chetham's Hospital a little to the north. Deansp-ate, leading; to the out-of-the- way suburb of Hulme, was the widest and finest thoroughfare, and Cannon Street the principal haunt, both for business and for residence, of the merchants. Saint Ann's Square, now the fashionable centre of the city, had but lately been built on the site of an old corn-field, known as Acre's Field. Other new squares and streets, with commodious houses, were being constructed at this time ; but there were still to be seen whole streets in which all the buildings were of wood, clay, and * Leeds Mercury, March 29, 1845 ; Ma7ichestcr Times, March 22, 1845 ; Mancliester City Ncics, February 4, 18G5. To the last-named journal I am indebted fur a great many facts, drawn from two interesting series of papers on Manchester Finns and The Workshops of iMncashim, that have lately appeared in its columns. They are the result of careful research by a competent local authority. The Town and its Trade in their Tune. 2GU plaster. Hardly anywhere were the pathways wide enough for two persons to walk abreast, and most of the roads, unpaved and rarely mended, were in such a condition that it was dangerous to walk along them at night without a lantern. Manchester then began to vie with London in the rapidity of its growth, and also, it was said in 1795, ' in the closeness with which the poor are crowded in offensive, dark, damp, and incommodious habitations.' * The newest and the worst parts of Manchester were in the neighbourhoods of the great cotton-spinning and calico-print- ing works, which, bringing into the town great numbers of labourers who had to be housed in the cheapest way possible, were becoming the principal source of wealth to the town. In 1768 all Great Britain spent less than 200,000Z. in buy- ing and manufacturing cotton goods. In 1788 the trade was more than doubled, and large enough to give work to 26,000 men, 31,000 women, and 53,000 children, who were employed in spinning, and to 133,000 men, 59,000 women, and 48,000 children, employed in the later stages of manu- facture ; in all to 350,000 persons. Of the 142 water-mills which were used in these manufactures, 41 were in Lancashire, 22 in Derbyshire, and 8 in Cheshire ; that is, just half were in the district of which Manchester was the centre. This growth of the cotton trade of course gave encouragement to all other branches of industry. A large business was done in fustians, and Manchester was famous, as of old, for its hats, and for its ' laces, inkles, tapes, and worsted small wares.' New trades were also made necessary by the re- quirements of the cotton-spinners. Iron manufacture was * Aikin, Country Round Manchester, p. 192. — " In 1790, a piece of ground, covering 2,400 square yards, situated near the junction of Piccadilly and Market Street, was purchased from Sir Oswald Mosley, lord of the manor, for about 400/. Twenty years afterwards, it was sold for 5.000Z. A few years after this, it was again sold for 11,000/. The last purchaser divided it into two portions, of which he sold one for 8,000/., and the other, soon afterwards, for 17,500/., making 25,500/. in all, or about sixty-fold on the original price." — Land ice Lice in, vol. i., p. 213. 270 Manchester Politics in the Eighteenth Century. begun at Salford, about 1770, by Bateman and Sharrard, who for some time supplied nearly all the wheels, cylinders, boilers, ovens, and the like, that were needed in the cotton- works. Besides the produce of their establishment, and be- sides the large supply of steam-engines and machinery that came from Boulton and Watt, in Birmingham, there was room, in 1795, for five other iron foundries in Manchester.* The history of Manchester and the Manchester district, however, during Sir Thomas Potter's lifetime, was by no means one of even prosperity. The Blackburn Riots of 1779, when mobs of spinners and weavers destroyed all the spinning- jennies and other machines that they could find, were only one conspicuous illustration of a long and painful strife, in which some excuse can be found for the ignorant and short-sighted aversion entertained by the old hand-labourers to the new mechanical contrivances by which the trade to which they looked for support was being wonderfully helped on. And there were other and more blameworthy causes of dissension. Manchester has long been famous for its zealous participa- tion in political controversies. Now looked upon as the head -quarters of the Radical party, it was, during a chief part of the eighteenth century, a favourite haunt of Toryism and Jacobinism. There were not many men unbiassed enough to say with the wise and witty Doctor Byrom, while Prince Charles Edward was lodging in 1745 at a place afterwards known as the Palace Inn, in Market Street, * God bless the King— I mean our faith's Defender ! God bless (no harm in blessing) the Pretender ! But who Pretender is, or who is King — God bless us all ! — that's quite another thing.' The Jacobites were followed by the Tories in the direction of Manchester affairs. No great difficulties arose, however, till near the time of the French Revolution. Then the * Their proprietors were Brodie, M'Niveu, and Ormrod; Smiths and Company ; Bassett and Smith ; John Smith; and Mrs. Phoebe Fletcher.— Aikin, pp. 176-178. J'itfs War Policy and its Consequences. 271 Tory hatred of democracy, which caused the prosecution of men like llorne Tooke and Leigh Hunt in London, led to a similar attack on Thomas Walker, the author of The Original, and other champions of civil and religious liberty in Manchester. Hence ensued much party-strife, the weak being persecuted by the strong, and thereby excited to an opposition they would not otherwise have thought of, and Manchester became the scene of a battle that has to some extent lasted to this day. One great incentive to the contest was the part taken by England in the war with France. English workmen would not have troubled themselves much about the French Revo- lution or American politics had not the impetuosity of the war-makers brought upon them a famine that lasted for years. * Old inhabitants, of the industrial classes shudder at the recollection of the sufferings endured in 1800 and 1801, when wheat, which, before the war, was at 6s. a bushel, had risen to l(3s. 8d., and the poor-rates which, at the com- mencement of the war, amounted to 2,1(37,748/., had risen to an average of 5,300,000/.'* In 1812, Mr. Brougham, making report to the House of Commons concerning the financial and commercial results of the war, spoke of the misery that was everywhere apparent : — " Birmingham and its neighbourhood, a district of thirteen miles round that centre," he 'said, " was formerly but one village, — I might say, one continued workshop, peopled with about four hun- dred thousand of the most industrious and skilful of mankind. In what state do you now find that once busy hive of men ? Silent, still, and desolate, during one half of the week ; during the rest of it, miserably toiling at reduced wages, for a pittance scarcely sufficient to sustain animal life in the lowest state of comfort, and at all times swarming with unhappy persons, willing, anxious to work for their lives, but unable to find employment." Yet greater were the dis- * Prentice, Historical SlidcJics and Personal llecolledions of Manchester (Manchester, 1851), p. 2G. 272 Troubles in Manchester, consequent on tresses of the poor in Manchester and the adjoining districts. " The food which now sustains them," said the same eloquent speaker, " is of the lowest kind, and of that there is not nearly a sufficient supply : bread, or even potatoes, are now out of the question ; the luxuries of animal food, or even milk, they have long ceased to think of: their looks, as well as their apparel, proclaim the sad change in their situa- tion. A gentleman largely concerned in the cotton-trade, whose property in part consists of cottages and little pieces of ground let out to workpeople, told us that lately he went to look after his rents ; but when he entered those dwellings and found them so miserably altered, so stripped of their wonted furniture and other little comforts — when he saw their inhabitants sitting down to a scanty dinner of oatmeal and water, their only meal in the four and twenty hours — he could not stand the sight, and came away without asking for his money. Those feelings were not confined to that respectable witness. Masters came forward to tell us how unhappy it made them to have no more work to give their poor men, because all their money, and in some cases all their credit too, was already gone in trying to support them ; some had involved themselves in embarrassments for such pious purposes. One, again, would describe bis misery at turning off people whom he and his father bad employed for many years ; another would say how he dreaded the coming round of Saturday, when he had to pay his hands their re- duced wages, insufficient to support them ; how he kept out of their way on that day, and made his foreman pay them : while a third would say that he was afraid to see his people, because he had no longer the means of giving them work, and he knew that they would flock round him and beg to be employed for the lowest wages, — for wages wholly in- sufficient to feed them."* Worse miseries than those befel the cotton operatives fifty years later ; but the men who suffered most from the Lanca- * PliENTICE, pp. 44^G. the French and American Wars. 273 shire Cotton Famine of 1862 and 18G3 bravely and patiently met their misfortunes, knowing that there were none, in Eng- land at any rate, who could be blamed for them. It was otherwise in 1812 and the ensuing- years. The people thought, and with reason, that most of their troubles might have been averted had the Tory advocates of war with France and America been restrained ; and they gave violent utterance to their indignation. The Manchester Exchange Riot of 1812 was the signal for incendiarism in all the neighbouring districts. All moderate men deplored these measures ; " but," as one who witnessed and sought to check them said, " we had no Church and King mobs after that !" Soon all Manchester became of one mind. Merchants and manufacturers, with some exceptions, joined with the labouring classes, and all worked together in furtherance of reform. Their opponents gave them plenty of ground for fighting. Peace came in 1815, and with it might have returned com- mercial prosperity and abundance of food, with certain re- sult in the contentment of the people. But in that year the Corn Bill was passed, forbidding the importation of wheat when the price was under 80s. a quarter, and thus se- curing for the landed aristocracy, and the wealthy farmers, relief from the burden of war taxes, at the cost of cruel sufferings to the poorer members of society. That measure caused wider dissatisfaction than the war policy had ever done, giving proof, as it did, of greater selfishness and more wanton contempt for the welfare of the people. Nowhere did there appear a more notable body of cham- pions of the people, champions also of English honour and commercial prosperity, than in Manchester. Old men like Robert Philips and Samuel Greg, Samuel Jackson, Thomas Preston, and Thomas Kershaw, leaders of the opposition that had for twenty years been offered to the war with France, joined with younger and yet bolder men, like John * Pkentice, p. 51. 274 Thomas and Richard Potter of Manchester. Edward Taylor and Joseph Brotherton, Thomas and Richard Potter, in forming - and preserving through a quarter of a century what Richard Potter called " a small but determined band of free traders and reformers. ''* In this band the Potters were most conspicuous of all. It was in a little parlour at the back of their Cannon Street, counting-house, generally known as ' the plot ting-parlour,' that nearly every movement in the long battle of reform was first talked over and resolved upon.f " Gentlemen," said Thomas Potter, at one of the early meetings, *' I have not the talent for public business possessed by my brother Richard, but I promise you that I shall work in our business in order that he may devote himself freely to the protection of the oppressed."! In so saying he did scanty justice to his own abilities, but that was the arrangement observed for some years. Richard Potter applied himself almost exclu- sively to the political movements which the brothers had at heart ; Thomas Potter, ' benevolent, strong of purpose, and energetic, always willing to aid the cause of reform, but taking little or no part in public questions,'§ took the entire management of the warehouse, and established in it the largest business to be found in Manchester. In 1830, the younger brother was elected Member of Parliament for Wigan, and thus had less time left for Manchester affairs. Thomas Potter then allowed himself to become more of a public man, and in so doing added to his own repute, and won everybody's favour. ' From that time forward,' it was said, ' there was not a single movement in Manchester, for general or local reform, for the promotion of education, for the relief of the poor, or for the improved administration of the town's affairs, in which Mr. Potter did not stand in the first rank, aiding with his always open purse, but more by his characteristic energy, we may almost say impetuosity, of character, which saw no obstacles, and permitted none to * Prentice, pp. 73, 74. f Manchester City News, February 4, 1865. + Manchester Times, March 22, 1845. § Prentice, p. 74. Their Sliai'c in the Opposition to the Corn Laws. 275 be seen, to the fulfilment of any really good object, and which communicated itself to all with whom he had to act, stimulating the faint-hearted to hope, and rousing the phlegmatic to exertion.'* The first business in which Thomas and Richard Potter took much part was political. The angry meetings that many of the working classes had held, in Manchester and elsewhere, for condemnation of the Corn Law and of the entire treatment they were receiving at the hands of the Tories, gave an ex- cuse to Lord Liverpool's Government for suspending the Habeas Corpus Act and arresting, on the information of an organized set of spies, all who were suspected of sedition. Many honest men from Manchester, Samuel Bamford among them, were seized, conveyed to London in irons, and there im- prisoned without trial. Noisy and self-styled philanthropists, like Wilberforce, supported this conduct ; but truer friends of the people, with Brougham at their head, stoutly opposed it in the House of Commons. In Manchester it was loudly condemned by the Potters and their fellow-thinkers. The two brothers, and five and twenty other leading men in the town, sent up a petition to the House, showing how, if there was any sedition abroad, it had been induced by the policy of the Government ; and that, on the other hand, with very few exceptions, ' the conduct of the labouring part of their fellow-townsmen did not exhibit the slightest tendency to insubordination or violence, while they had sustained an unparalleled extremity of distress with fortitude the most exemplary and heroic' The petition led to a debate and a division in the House, but without success, a Bill of Indem- nity being passed in favour of the spies and their employers in high places. Unsuccessful, also, was the little exercise of spite by which the names of the twenty-seven petitioners were printed on cards, to be hung up in counting-houses and shops, as names of men with whom no honest friend of King and State should allow himself to trade. The time had * Manchester Times, March 22, IS 15. 27G Thomas and Richard Potter of Manchester. gone by for merchants to be injured in their business affairs by differences of political opinion. " In spite of all opposi- tion," said Archibald Prentice, one of the offenders, " Shuttle- worth and Taylor sold their cotton to men who could not buy it cheaper elsewhere, Thomas and Richard Potter their fustians, Brotherton and Harvey their yarns, Baxter his ginghams and shirtings, and I my fine Glasgow muslins."* With one of the twenty-seven, persecution was attempted in another way. John Edward Taylor was brought into court in 1819 on a trumpery charge of libel, the real object being to punish him for his intrepid advocacy of Radical sentiments. After a long and unfair trial, in which the judge acted, for the nonce, as senior counsel for the plaintiff, he was acquitted. The result was so much increase of popu- larity, both to him and to his party, that, in 1821, twelve merchants met in the Potters' ' plotting parlour,' and formed a fund for starting the Manchester Guardian, under his editorship.f In 1824, the Guardian having failed to give just expression to their views on reform, an old paper was re-shaped, with Archibald Prentice as its editor, to appear first as the Manchester Gazette, then as the Manchester Times and Gazette, and subsequently as the Manchester Examiner and Times. This younger and bolder paper also mainly owed its origin to the influence of Thomas and Richard Potter.J In all sorts of other ways the brothers were zealous friends of the Radical cause. They were especially active in pro- motion of the Reform Bill. During the latter half of 1830, and all through the year 1801, they took the lead in calling several great meetings of the people, and addressing them on the subject in earnest and temperate language. A much larger meeting than any that had previously been held was appointed for the 10th of October, 1831, a week after Man- * Trkntice, pp. 123, 127, 131. f Pi-.ENTici:, p. 202; Manchester City News, February 4, ISGj. X PltENTICE, p. 24S. Tlicir Share in Procuring the Reform Bill. 277 cliester had heard of the rejection of the Bill by the House of Peers. It was summoned ' to consider the propriety of presenting a dutiful and loyal address to his Majesty, for the purpose of assuring him of their devotion to his person, and of their unshaken determination to give to his Majesty and his Government all the support in their power ; and also of imploring his Majesty to take such decisive constitutional proceedings as shall counteract the pernicious consequences which may result from the rejection of the Reform Bill by the House of Lords, secure the passing of that important measure into a law, and thus preserve the peace, and conduce to the future welfare of the country.' It was intended that the meeting should be held in a room in Lower Mosely Street ; but so vast a crowd clamoured for admission that it was adjourned to Camp Field, and there Thomas Potter presided over an assemblage of a hundred thousand persons. His own speech was too moderate and conciliatory to give general satisfaction. Other speakers, rising from the vast crowd, advised measures more or less violent, and when the people were urged to support the men who were fighting their battles in Parliament, they shouted, " We'll fight our battles for ourselves." But Thomas Potter, and the other friends of order, succeeded in keeping them from any such expression of anger as appeared in the Bristol Riots and the destruction of Nottingham Castle. The Manchester reformers wisely confined themselves to eager speech and unfulfilled threats. In the time of greatest excitement, we are told, ' the shopkeepers left their places of business and ran about asking, ** What's to be done now ?" The working classes, in every district of the town, gathered into little knots, and, with curses both loud and deep, ex- pressed their hatred of the faction whose intrigues had pre- vailed over the voice of twenty-four millions of people.' But that was the limit of their incendiarism. The world had proof, however, of the interest shown in Manchester on the subject of reform. On its being reported 27S Thomas and Richard Potter of Manchester. in the town that the Ministers had resigned office and aban- doned the cause they had promised to support, a meeting was straightway convened in the Town Hall. Then it was resolved, without delay, to send an urgent petition to the House of Commons, begging, ' that as the people had been twice denied their birthright by the endeavours of a small number of interested individuals,' no supplies might be voted, ' until a measure essential to the happiness of the people and the safety of the throne should be carried into a law.' At one o'clock the petition was drafted ; at three the sheets were distributed for signature ; at six o'clock they were returned with twenty-four thousand names attached to them. Without loss of a minute, a deputation, consisting of Richard Potter and two other merchants, posted to London, making the journey in seventeen hours, notwithstanding the considerable time spent in halting on the road. * At every town and village they distributed a short account of the meeting and the petition ; and as they approached London, copies of the petition were distributed to the passengers of the numerous coaches they met, so that in the course of that day intelligence of the Manchester meeting was spread throughout the greater part of the kingdom.' Thus the monster protest from Manchester was promptly followed by numberless other petitions to the same effect. In less than a month the Reform Bill became law, and Manchester had a share in the Parliamentary representation.* His fellow-townsmen were not slow in acknowledging their debt to Thomas Potter for the share taken by him in this battle. He was also prominent and influential in the later con- test, yet more famous in the annals of Manchester than the struggle for Reform, which led to the repeal of the Corn-Laws in 1840. He did not live to see its termination, and, during the time of most zealous fighting, his age, and his other avoca- tions, prevented him from taking as active a share in the work as he had done in former years. Younger, and more eloquent * PuL.vriCE, pp. 397-417. TJwmas Potter mid the Anti-Corn-Law League. 279 men, with Richard Cobdcn at their head, were the chief pro- moters of that greatest of all benefits to English commerce. But to the end of his life Thomas Potter was the acknow- ledged head of the movement in Manchester. He was a member of the provisional committee appointed in October, 1S38, to form the Anti-Corn-Law Association, soon changed to the Anti-Corn-Law League. He was one of the first, largest, and most persistent subscribers to the fund necessary to keep it alive. He marched at the head of the processions that, passing up and down the streets of Manchester, drew a crowd of curious observers from every part of England, and, albeit with something of clap-trap, thus helped to rouse interest in the subject. He gave hearty encouragement, by word and with money, to the Free Trade Hall set up in Saint Peter's Field. In every way, and to the utmost of his power, he aided the League with his most strenuous and in- fluential support, up to the time when its head-quarters were in London and its ramifications in every part of England.* There was another work in which Manchester was specially interested, contemporary with the early action of the Anti- Corn-Law League, to which Thomas Potter devoted himself. Over and over again the reformers of Manchester had been hindered in their work by the old-fashioned way in which the municipal affairs of the town were directed by a borough reeve. In 1828 the Tories, hoping thus to check the pro- gress of liberalism, applied for an Act of Parliament, direct- ing that no one should have a vote in the election of Police Commissioners unless he was assessed at a rental of 25/. a year, and that none should be eligible for the office itself whose house was valued at less than 40/. a year. Thomas Potter was leader of the opposition offered to that project, and claimed the rJ£fht both of voting and of candidature for all rate-payers. Therein he did not succeed, and Par- liament fixed the respective qualifications at 10/ and 28/. * Frcrvrir! , History of the Anti-Corn-Laic League (London, 1S53 , vol. i., pp. 73, [)2, 97, 120, 128. iiOO, 217, &c. 280 Sir Thomas Potter, First Mayor of Manchester. So great was the dissatisfaction caused by that compromise that, after the all-absorbing question of Parliamentary Re- form had been settled for a generation, and Manchester had received a part of its due by being made a Parliamentary borough, Potter and his fellow-workers returned to the municipal battle. After two or three years of preliminary agitation, a committee, with William Neild for chairman, was appointed in February, 1838, to present a petition to the Queen in Council, praying for a charter of incorpora- tion. The answer to the petition was given in the follow- ing October and December. Thomas Potter was elected first Mayor of Manchester. ' The appointment of Mr. Potter,' it was said at the time, * must be peculiarly gratify- ing to all who have witnessed his long, consistent, and ener- getic labours to promote the political and moral improvement of his fellow-men and the munificent use, directed by an en- lightened and ever-active benevolence, he has made of the large means which a life of industry and integrity has placed at his disposal.' It was not peculiarly gratifying to the Tories. They urged that the incorporation of Manchester was opposed to the wishes of a majority of the inhabitants, and that it would entail upon them additional and unneces- sary expenses, and therefore they raised a fund of 12.000/. to be spent in trying to upset the charter. The Liberals controverted their statements, and collected about 30,000/. for protection of the advantages they had already obtained for the town. Litigation followed, rates were refused in certain wards, and all sorts of difficulties were put in the way of the newly-appointed Mayor, Aldermen, and Council- men. These, however, were all overcome, and soon every one admitted that Potter had done good service to the town by his share in procuring its municipal charter. He was re-elected Mayor in 1839, and on that occasion received the honour of knighthood.* * Manchester Gazette, October 27, November 3, 10, 17 ; December 1, 8, 15, 22, 1S38 ; Manchester Times, March 22, 1845. Potters other Services to the Town. 281 Full of zeal for the municipal and political advance- ment of Manchester, Sir Thomas Potter was no less phi- lanthropic in other ways. His powerful speech and his well-filled purse were freely used in furtherance of every good and charitable work. In 1818, with the co- opera- tion of his wife, a daughter of Thomas Bayley, of Booth Hall, he set up, at Irlams-o'-the-Height, a school in which some seventy or eighty poor girls were to be suitably educated, and enabled to make a living for themselves as servants or factory-workers ; an institution cared for, after the old man's death, by his son, Mr. Thomas Bayley Potter.* Sir Thomas was the leader in a much more important educational movement. ' The Grammar School at Man- chester,' established early in the sixteenth century, ' with funds to the amount of 4,000Z. a year, had long given instruction to only about two hundred boys; and that not gratuitously, for every branch of education, beyond what, in the old parlance, was called grammar, was charged for at a high rate. Sir Thomas Potter and Mr. Mark Philips, at their sole expense, made application to Chancery and ob- tained an order, under which the number of pupils has been more than doubled,' it was said in ] 845, * and they are taught, without charge, not only grammar, but writing, arithmetic, mathematics, drawing, and several of the modern languages.'! In juvenile reformatories he always took great interest, and he was engaged in correspondence thereon, with a view to the establishment of one in Manchester, almost to the last day of his life.} He died on the 20th of March, 1845, at his house on Brick Hill, near Manchester.§ His brother Kichard had died at Penzance two years before. He left two sons, who * Manchester City News, February 4, 1SG5. f Manchester Times, March 22, IS 15. I Manchester City News, February 4, 1SP>;>. § Manchester Times. VOL. II. U 282 The Potters of Manchester. heartily applied themselves to the furtherance of the objects he had chiefly at heart, steady friends of political and muni- cipal freedom, of education and social improvement Sir John Potter, the elder of them, who died in 1857, was thrice Mayor of Manchester, and the chief promoter of the Manchester Free Library. Mr. Thomas Bayley Potter, the younger son, was the intimate friend of Richard Cobden, whom he succeeded as Member of Parliament for Rochdale in 1865. Both entered the mercantile house, and helped to increase its importance, during their father's lifetime ; aiding it still more from the time when they became senior partners in 1845. In 1830, Mr. S. H. Norris had been admitted to a share in the business, which, in 1836, had been transferred from its original house in Cannon Street to No. 1, George Street. Before that time, George Street, Mosely Street, and Portland Street, now crowded with immense warehouses and the busiest resort of Manchester merchants, contained no- thing but dwelling-houses and shops. Thomas Potter was laughed at for taking his business out of town, beyond the reach, as it was thought, of the customers who frequented Cannon Street and High Street. In building his new ware- house in the new neighbourhood, however, he set a fashion which has done much for the architectural improvement of Manchester, as well as for the extension of its commerce. In Cannon Street he had chiefly traded with the wholesale dealers of London and the great towns of England, in Lancashire cottons and fustians, and Yorkshire linens and flannels. In George Street, while extending these old branches of business, he added to them a rapidly increasing trade in silks, ribbons, hosiery, merinoes, and all sorts of haberdashery and small wares ; and besides the shipment of these articles to foreign countries, opportunity was found for immediate dealings with the shopkeepers of Great Britain. In 1864, ' the firm had from five to six thousand customers spread all over the country, from John-o'-Groat's Their Warehouses, and the Business done therein. 283 to Land's End, and twenty travellers were employed to visit these customers periodically.'* A shrewd and observant foreigner visited the warehouse in 1843. ' It is a great building six storeys high,' he said, ' the upper floors of which are occupied by the lighter, and the lower by the heavier goods. As the great quantities of cotton and woollen goods perpetually traversing Manchester, between the different spinning, weaving, bleaching, dyeing, printing, and exporting establishments, could not be con- veyed by the ordinary means without great loss of time and trouble, a kind of conveyance, called vans, has been lately introduced, consisting of enormous square, watertight boxes, placed on springs and wheels, which are capable of conveying immense masses of goods in a comparatively small compass and short space of time. At the great warehouses, like that of Messrs. Potter, machines called steam hoists are used for raising the goods into the vans. These little steam-engines stand on the ground floor, and raise great bales of goods with extraordinary ease and celerity. Besides this steam- engine, no less than fifty workmen are constantly employed in the warehouse in packing and unpacking the bales. Every country has its particular partialities in the goods it pur- chases, and the speculating merchant must always be well acquainted with these, no less than with the real wants and customs of each nation. From the Manchester warehouses great quantities of black cloth are annually sent to Italy, to clothe the innumerable priests of that country. But this black cloth must always be of a particular coal-black, with- out the slightest tinge of brown or blue. Goods must also be packed differently for different nations ; thus, at Messrs. Potters, I saw bales of cotton, intended for China, packed in the Chinese manner and decorated with bright, tasteful little pictures, representing Chinese customs, ceremonies, cos- tumes, and the like. Nor must the manner of transport used in the interior of the countries for which they are jp- * MauchesUr City News. February 4, 18C5. 284 Manchester Warehouses and Warehousemen. tended be forgotten in the packing- of the goods. Wares to be carried on the backs of elephants, camels, or llamas, must be differently packed from those to be conveyed by waggons, canals, or railways.'* In 1843 the Potters' establishment was the largest and most influential of some three hundred and sixty mercantile houses that at that time were scattered over Manchester.! In the ensuing twenty years the number of warehouses has been more than quadrupled, and several of their owners, profiting by the wonderful example of energy and tact in WATTS'S WAREHOUSE, MANCHESTER. * J G. Kchi, England and Wales (London, 1844), pp. 12G, 12" t II, id., p. 120. Samuel Watts and John Rylands. 285 studying the wants of all the markets of the world that was set by Sir Thomas Potter, have gained a place equal, if not superior, to that of the older house of which he was the head. Among these establishments, perhaps the most famous of all, for domestic trade at any rate, are those conducted by Messrs. S. and J. Watts and Company, in the handsomest mercantile building to be found in Manchester ; by Messrs. Rylands and Sons, and by Messrs. Henry Bannerman and Sons.* * Lengthy histories of all three houses appeared in successive numbers of the Manclwster City News for March and April, 1865. Therefrom these details about one of these establishments are extracted. In the Messrs. Rylands' warehouse, we are told, 'there are now thirty-three departments, irrespective of the offices and packing rooms. In the cellars are grey calicoes, ginghams, checks, and dowlases, Scotch sheetings, and flannels and blankets. On the first floor— the offices and packing-room— Irish lineus, carpets, cotton sheets, and rugs. Ou the second floor are bleached calicoes, dyed linings, and fustians. On the third floor are table covers, cloths, &c, ticks, regattas, grey bleach linens, nankeens, oilcloths' and floorcloths, French damasks, moreens, llamas, stuffs, and French merinoes, fancy dresses, plaids. On the fourth floor, woollen cloths, gloves, muslins, cotton handkerchiefs and skirts, silks, crapes, lace, ribbons. On the fifth floor, mantles and shawls, haberdashery and stays, small wares and umbrellas, prints. On the sixth floor, artificial flowers, millinery aud underclothing, straws and furs. And at the warehouse, No. 16, High Street, and No. 3, Bread Street, are the departments for hosiery, worsted and yarns, boots, shoes, and overshoes, shirts and collars. These various departments, and the collateral branches of the warehouses, require, and they now employ, 600 employee, of whom 33 are heads of departments. There are 21 travellers ; 19 travel all over Great Britain and Ireland, one takes Canada, and another Holland. In the entering-office there are 41 clerks; in the counting-house, shipping and mill and estate offices, 28 clerks. In the packing-room, there are 34 men as packers and porters, and four boys ; and there are more than 10,000 customers' accounts now open in the ledgers in the shipping and home trade. Our readers may judge for themselves from the facts we have given, that the annual returns of the firm are enormous. We were curious enough to ask what number of yards the counters for displaying the goods or samples would measure. Mr. Rylands instructed one of his joiners to furnish us with the necessary information, and to our utter astonishment we find that they are more than a mile and a quarter in length. As another illustration of the magnitude of the trade of this concern, we may name that in one article alone—viz., calicoes in the grey and finished state, they sell as many yards per annum, we find, by calcula- tions of our own, as would form a girdle once round our planet, and provide, 286 Alexander Henry of Manchester. Yet greater than any of these, however, from a strictly mercantile point of view, is the commercial house of Messrs. A. and S. Henry and Company. It owes its origin to the enterprise of an Alexander Henry, an Irishman, born in 1766, who emigrated to America in 1783. He was for a few years clerk in a merchant's office in Philadelphia. There he started business in his own name and on his own account, prospering sufficiently, during fifteen or sixteen years, to be able, in 1807, to retire from trade. He died in 1817 ; and his friends said of him, that ' his long life had been a continued exercise of benevolence, and the sanctity of a bright religious faith ennobled his motives, while it gave a wise direction to his actions.' While he was in business, one of his nephews, also named Alexander Henry, was sent over to him from Ireland. The lad profited by the commercial teaching of his uncle. In 1804 he crossed the Atlantic again, to estab- lish a sort of agency for the Philadelphia house, in Palace Street, Manchester. Thence he soon removed to larger premises in Spear Street, and finally, in 1833, he took up his quarters in Portland Street, there constructing a house, great in the first instance, and subsequently enlarged in accord- ance with his growing wants. In Manchester he had his younger brother, Samuel Henry, for a partner. He also opened other mercantile establishments, with other partners in each case, in Leeds, Bradford, Huddersfield, Glasgow, and Belfast. Himself the head of all these houses, he was besides, a good shirt for the whole of the male population of Great Britain and Ireland annually. And if this quantity of calicoes were all made into shirts, it would annually provide one shirt for every member of the male population of Great Britain and Ireland, France, and the United States. A very large portion of the shirts, collars, mantles, crinolines, black crape, bonnets, &c. (for which bonnets, we understand, the firm have a deserved celebrity) are made on the premises. All the printed circulars, price lists, &c, are printed in the warehouse ; and all the pattern cards they manufacture themselves. There are three steam-engines and a ten- horse boiler in the warehouse. One steam-engine works the hoist, another the packing presses, and the third sets the sewing machines constantly going.' — Manchester City News, April 15, 18G5. George William Wood of Manchester. 287 thus able to purchase on the spot all the varieties of British textile manufactures, and lie organized a wonderful machin- ery for selling them in every quarter of the world. He had agencies ' in all the chief cities of the United States, in Nova Scotia, and New Brunswick, in Montreal and Quebec, in the British West Indian Islands, in Cuba, Mexico, and all the states of South America, in California, the Philippine Islands, China, Batavia, the East Indies, Australia, Egypt, and Tur- key, on the African and European shores of the Mediterra- nean Sea, in Italy, Portugal, Spain, and northern Europe.'* Alexander Henry was a wise, honest, arid very prosperous merchant ; but not much more than a merchant. His wealth procured for him election as Member of Parliament for South Lancashire ; and he used some portion of his wealth in support of the Anti-Corn-Law League and other political movements, as well as in subscriptions to various benevolent institutions. But he is hardly entitled to high rank among the philanthropists and the true merchant-princes of Man- chester. These came, not only, like Sir Thomas Potter and George William Wood — a man to whom Manchester owes almost as much as to Sir Thomas Potter, though his work ran in quieter waysj — from the strictly mercantile classes, but also from * For the materials of the foregoing paragraph I am indebted to Mr. Smiles, who has also very kindly placed at my disposal numerous notes and extracts made by him concerning William Brown of Liverpool and Titus Salt of Bradford. f George William Wood was born at Leeds in 1781, his father being the Reverend William Wood, who succeeded Priestley as minister of Mill Hill Chapel, in that town, and did much for tbe advancement of literary and scientific tastes, political wisdom, and social refinement, among the many over whom he had influence. At the age of twenty, the son removed to Manchester, there in course of time to become a leading merchant, in partnership with Mark Philips. He was also a member of the firm of Oates, Wood, and Smithson, cloth-merchants, of Leeds. It is said on his monument in Upper Brook Street Chapel, Manchester, that ' having early in life engaged in commercial pursuits, and obtained by them an honourable independence, he quitted the pursuits of wealth for the nobler objects of public usefulness.' The praise was not idle. He vied with Sir Thomas Potter in his devotion to the municipal interests of Manchester, and he was 2SS George William Wood, and other the manufacturing community for which Manchester and its neighbourhood have been, during the last hundred years, a zealous supporter of all the Reform movements of the times. He was Member of Parliament for South Lancashire, at the first election fol- lowing the passing of the Reform Bill in 1832. At the next election he was defeated ; but in 1837, and again in 1841, he was chosen by the electors of Kendal. He died suddenly in October, 1843, while attending a meeting of the Manchester Literary and Philosophical Society, which he had been influential in forming. At the time of his deatli he was magistrate and deputy-lieutenant for the county palatine of Lancaster, and president of the Manchester Chamber of Commerce. — Gentleman's Magazine, February, 1844, p. 204; and Taylor, Biographia Leodiensis, pp. 232, 401, 402. 'When I visit Manchester,' said Sir James Kay-Shuttleworth, at the opening of the Manchester Art- Workman's Exhibition, on the 2Gth of February, 18G6, 'I reflect for how much of the great municipal improvements of this city we are indebted to the anxious, persevering, and self-denying labours of one whose memory, I venture to say, seems to me in too much danger of being neglected and forgotten. Mr. George William Wood was, in my early youth, the pioneer of our municipal improvement. He found this city a great village, in almost a chaotic state of administration, with a population which had rapidly grown towards its present dimensions, but without institutions suited to the progress of its numbers, and what ought to have been its progress in civilization ; and with devoted friends around him, such as your late Alderman Ncild, Mr. Henry Newberry, who still survives and Mr. Henry Tootal, aided likewise by the great public spirit of the late Sir Thomas Potter, his brother Mr. Richard Potter, and Mr. Alderman Shuttle- worth, Mr. Wood, as the leader of a moderate, intelligent, and conscientious party, laboured for years, amidst almost insurmountable difficulties, to found the system of municipal administration which has triumphed in this town. I cannot look upon the great avenues of commerce which have been opened through the centres of this city without reflecting how difficult it was to obtain the revenue for those improvements by the establishment of your gas-works, without whose profits Market Street would have still existed only in the condition of Market Street Lane, and the avenue from Broughton, past Hunt's Bank, would not have existed at all ; nor can I forget that for these improvements, for the origination of improved sanitary arrangements, for your representation in Parliament, for your municipal incorporation, for your increased security of property, health, and comforts among all classes of the community, you are indebted to pioneers whose remembrance may be fading from the minds of this generation ; and foremost among them, in my humble opinion, was Mr. George William Wood. He did not attract to himself the sympathies of the more advanced Liberal party, for he was very moderate in his political opinions, but he was the earnest advocate of all those national reforms which have received the sanction of Parliament.' — Manchester Examiner and Times, February 27, 180G. Merchants and Manufacturers of Manchester. 289 still more famous. All the world knows the portrait of the Brothers Grant in Nicltolas Nickleby, there termed the Brothers Cheeryble ; and scores of others, less modest and reticent, have made for themselves as great a fame, without the aid of fiction. 290 CHAPTER XXVI. JOHN GLADSTONE AND WILLIAM BROWN OF LIVERPOOL. [1764-18G4.] Liverpool emerged from the obscurity in which it lay for centuries as a seaside village by help of the tobacco trade, with Sir Thomas Johnson, the Norrises, and the Claytons for its leaders. A second period of development was coin- cident with the African slave trade, in which the Cunliffes and the Heywoods, the older Blundells, and the older Earles were conspicuous among a crowd of famous merchants. Much larger has been the crowd and much greater the aggregate fame in the third period of advancement, during which the American cotton trade, leading to an opening up of trade with India, and to all sorts of other commercial advantages, has made Liverpool not only the great channel through which Manchester and the Manchester district receive their raw materials and send forth their manufactured goods to all parts of the world, but, after London, the greatest port in Europe. Cotton had been brought from the east, to be worked up in Manchester and the adjoining towns, long before the western trade began, and it was imported from the West Indies some thirty years before there was any considerable ship- ment from the American continent. Dated the 3rd of November, 1758, is this advertisement in a newspaper of the time : ' To be sold by auction, at Forbes and Campbell's sale- room, near the Exchange, this day, at one o'clock, twenty-five Progress of the Cotton Trade in Liverpool. 291 bags of Jamaica cotton, in five lots.'* From that year cotton was regularly brought from the West Indies. In 1770 the Liverpool importations include 6,030 bales of cotton from ' the West India Islands and foreign countries, with the addition of three bales from New York, three bajrs from Georgia, four from Virginia and Maryland, and three bar- rels from North Carolina.'! It is said that as late as 1784, when eight bags of cotton were brought by an American vessel into Liverpool, they were seized by the custom-house officer as a contraband commodity such as was never known to be grown in America ; and when those eight bales were admitted into Liverpool, we are told, they caused such a glut in the market that William Rathbone, to whom they were consigned, found great difficulty in disposing of them 4 That report, however, is hardly credible, seeing that already Liver- pool, thanks to the enterprise of young men like Rathbone, and old and influential merchants like the Earles, had already made a fair beginning of its cotton trade. In 1791, 68,404 bales were brought into the town ; just half being consignments from Portugal, and 25,777 the produce of the British West Indies, while 64 bales came from America. But by 1796 the American imports had risen to 4,668 bales, the West Indian supply being 25,110, and the Portuguese being reduced to 30,721, with a total from all parts of 63,526 bales. From that time the cotton trade has grown with wonderful rapidity, nearly all the benefit of the growth being confined to the new and almost boundless American market. Other commodities were then, however, and for some years to come, the staples of Liverpool commerce. The African trade flourished, and was a principal source of wealth, up to the time of its suppression in 1807, after long and eloquent opposition, begun forty years before by Thomas Bcntley, and * Transactions of the Lancashire and Cheshire Historical Society (Liverpool), vol. vi., p. 115. t Enfield, History of Liverpool. X Transactions, &c, vol. iv., p. 43. 292 John Gladstone of Liverpool. subsequently carried on by other Unitarians, like Priestley, Yates, and Currie ; by the Quakers, with William Rathbone at their head, and most eloquently of all by Rathbone's friend, William Roscoc, the Liverpool attorney and the world- famous critic and historian. There were larger importa- tions of sugar, rum, and coffee than of cotton, moreover, from the West Indies and America, and greater still at that time was the trade in corn which Liverpool carried on with Canada and other parts. When the Goree Warehouses, then considered the most wonderful piece of commercial architec- ture in England, were burnt down in 1802, the loss was reckoned at 12(),000Z.'s worth of grain, 68,500£.'s worth of sugar, 30,000Z/s worth of cotton, besides sundries valued at 60,000^. These figures fairly illustrate the proportions of Liverpool trade at the beginning of the nineteenth century. It was as a corn merchant that Sir John Gladstone began life in Liverpool. He was descended from the old Gladstanes of Lanarkshire, his grandfather being John Gladstones of Biggar, in that county. His father, Thomas Gladstones, who died in 1809, was for many years an in- fluential corn and flour merchant and shipowner in Leith, with business very similar to that of the old Couttses of Edinburgh. At Leith John Gladstone * was born on the 11th of Decem- ber, 1764, and there he received all his school education, as well as his early commercial training. For a few years he took an active share in the management of his father's busi- ness. He went several times to the Baltic in order to buy corn, and a like business took him once or twice to America, where he was the ajrent to Sir Claude Scott ; ' and in these voyages,' it is said, ' he gave indications of that judicious management which was so amply exemplified in his future career. 'f In 1787, almost as soon as he became of age, he settled * Pie was John Gladstones till the 10th of February, 1S35, when he dropped the final s by royal license, and became John Gladstone, t Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. William Rathbone and James Cropper of Liverpool. 293 in Liverpool, as partner in the house of Currie, Bradshaw, and Company, corn merchants, bringing the training and the connections that he had acquired under his father to the advancement of his new business during sixteen years. In 1802, on the termination of his partnership, he established himself as a general merchant, then founding a commercial house which he himself was to manage with notable success during nearly thirty years, and which was to be no less famous and prosperous in the hands of his successors.* He had to compete with and to surpass a number of great merchants and promoters of Liverpool commerce. Of these, perhaps, the most conspicuous as merchant philanthropists were James Cropper and William Rathbone. Rathbone died in 1809, leaving, as his friend Roscoe said, ' a name which will ever be distinguished by independence, probity, and true benevolence, and will remain as an example to his de- scendants of genuine piety and patient resignation, and of all those virtues which give energy to a community, adorn society, and are the delight of private life.'f Cropper lived till 1840. 'The great features of his character,' according to the judgment of his townsmen, * were sound sense, per- severance, and benevolence. By these qualities he raised himself to wealth and influence in Liverpool, and entitled himself to the respect of all who knew him, and to the gratitude of thousands who never saw his face. The principal objects with which his name was connected were the repeal of the Orders in Council, the opening of the trade to India and China, and the abolition of negro slavery. He also took an active part, along with others, in introducing the railway system. He was for many years at the head of the well- known firm of Cropper, Benson, and Company. During the last years of his life he devoted himself almost entirely to works of benevolence, one of the most interesting of which was an orphan school at Fernhead, near Warrington, which he founded and superintended to the time of his death.' j * Baines, Liverpool, p. COS. t Ibid., p. 53S. 1 Ibid., p. G5S. 294 William Ewart and Thomas Leyland of Liverpool. Yet greater, as monied men, were Thomas Leyland and William Ewart. Ewart, the son of a Dumfries minister, had been brought up in the establishment of Sir George Dunbar ; and when his employer retired from business, he and one of his fellow clerks succeeded to it as heads of the house of Ewart and Rutson, for upwards of twenty years the richest and most influential of any that were engaged in American commerce. William Ewart died in October, 1823, after many years' intimate friendship with Gladstone — one result of which appears in the name of the most famous of Glad- stone's sons.* Thomas Leyland was his most remarkable con- temporary in commercial Liverpool. He too, was altogether a self-made man, working his way up, by persistent exercise of his talents, from a humble station to the possession and, in his own way, the enjoyment of immense wealth. For many years he was a thriving merchant, for many more a thriving banker, William Roscoe being his partner in that capacity for a few years.f In 1793 he was one of a committee ap- pointed to consider the best means of restoring confidence in Liverpool after the French Revolution ; and in 1798 he con- tributed 3007. to the Tory fund towards the support of the Government in prosecution of its war with France.} He was Bailiff of Liverpool in 1796 ; Mayor in 1788, 1814, and 1820. At his death he left the chief part of his great fortune to his partner, Richard Bullin, who asumed his name and became, in his day, the richest man in Liverpool. He, * Smithers, History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1825), p. 437; Liverpool a Few Years Since, by an Old Stager [the Rev. James Aspinall] (Liverpool, 1852), pp. 47, 49. t 'He was,' we are told, 'a man of amazing shrewdness, sagacity, and prudence. When the north countryman was asked for the receipt of his ale, which was always good, he answered, " There's just a way of doing it, man," and so it was with Mr. Leyland. He had "just a way of doing" tilings. By some intuition, instinct, or presentiment, call it what you will, he seemed always to have a warning of any coming storm in the money- market, and trimmed and steered the ship, and took in sail accordingly.' — Liverpool a Few Years Since, p. 39. : Bainks, pp. 494, 503. John Gladstones Occupations in Liverpool. 295 dying- in his turn in 1844, handed to his brother Charles, on the day previous to his death, a cheque for 1,000,000?., thus cleverly mulcting the Exchequer of the legacy duty to which it would have been entitled had the money been left by will.* John Gladstone took no active part in the municipal affairs of Liverpool, but he Mas a zealous politician, and his name appears in connection with nearly every commercial and philanthropic movement in the town for about the first forty years of the nineteenth century. He was one of the proprie- tors — Thomas Leyland being a trustee and William Ewart a director — of the Saint George's Fire Office, which was started in June, 1802, with a capital of 300,0007., and nearly ruined by the burning, three months later, of the Goree Warehouses, which had been insured in it for 323,000?. f But Gladstone was rich enough to bear his part of the burthen. Having entered upon his new business in that year, lie embarked at once in very extensive traffic in corn, cotton, and nearly every other commodity obtained from America and the West Indies. He does not appear to have had any share in the slave-trade, but in 1808, shortly after its abolition, he became a West Indian proprietor, having, especially, large estates in Jamaica, and drawing from them a good part of the sugar and rum which he sold to his customers at home. He had also much property in Demerara, near the district which, in 1824, became conspicuous as the scene of the insurrection in which the missionary Smith was implicated ; and thereby he suffered very serious loss.} From first to last he was a zealous Tory ; but in 1808 he, with others of his party, joined the Liberals in opposition to the Orders in Council, which, after grievously affecting the trade of England with America, led to the second Ameri- * Liverpool Albion, December 9, 1S44 ; Gentleman's Magazine (Now Series ), vol. xxiii., pp. 104, GG5. t Baixks, p. 5lo. + Cohhy, History of Lancashire (London, LS25;, vol. ii.,p. C99 ; Lircrpoo I Courier, December 17, ISol. 290 John Gladstone of Liverpool. can war. On the 26th of February, in consequence of a requisition signed by Gladstone, Ewart, and others, a meet- ing was held in which all parties, without regard to political bias, were associated in resistance to the Government policy.* Their protest, like all the others that came from various parts of the kingdom, was in vain, and the people were thrown into serious and needless misery. In 1809 the prices of food were so high, being twice as heavy as they had been a few years before, that other meetings were held to prevent the use of grain in distilling operations. In some of them Gladstone took a leading part.| He was also conspicuous in the measures taken in Liverpool to protect the interests of the merchants and lessen the disasters incident to the whole community through the commercial failures that were being caused by the American complications. Temporary relief was given to Liverpool commerce in 1809, by the opening of trade with Spain and Portugal, and their colonies in America. Goods of all sorts were shipped thither, especially to the South American provinces, in vast quantities. But in that way the price of commodities at home was further in- creased, and yet greater trouble ensued when the speculating merchants found that nothing came of their adventures. The year 1810 closed amid general panic, and the early months of 1811 were marked by terrible sufferings among all but the richest and most prudent inhabitants. Gladstone did all he could to lessen it, and it was mainly through the agitation in which he shared that part of a loan voted in Parliament for the relief of trade was assigned to Liverpool, and — a much more helpful measure — that in 1812 the ruinous Orders in Council were suspended.^ This suspension was a few weeks too late to prevent war with America ; but actual war proved better for trade than persistent war policy without righting, and after a few years the trade of Liverpool and of all England was in a more prosperous state than it had ever been before. * Baines, pp. 528-532. f Ibid., pp 542, 54G. J Ibid., pp. 544, 548. His various Services to the Town. 297 John Gladstone's share in that good ending- of the troubles must not be forgotten. Throughout the times of panic and distress he had never lost confidence in the stability of Liver- pool commerce. On the 4th of August, 1808, the Corn Exchange in Brunswick Street, which he had been in- fluential in procuring, was opened, and in 1809 the West India Association was organized, with him for chairman.* Through 1808 and 1809 he was zealous in his advocacy of further dock extension and custom-house accommodation, the result being an Act of Parliament obtained in 1811 for building the Brunswick Dock, for converting the Dry Dock into a Wet Dock, for constructing the Queen's Half-Tide Dock, and for filling up the Old Dock, built in the time of Sir Thomas Johnson, to make room for the new Custom-House.f But by far the most important measure in which at this period he took part was the agitation for removal of the East India Company's monopoly. In 1794, in spite of the oppo- sition raised by Burke and others, the Company's charter had been renewed for twenty years. In 1812, when that term had nearly expired, the question was revived. Gladstone took the lead in Liverpool, others working in conjunction with him in other towns, and the result was the passing of an Act, in 1813, throwing open to the general public all the Company's monopoly, except trade with China, and trade in tea with all places between the Cape of Good Hope and the Straits of Magellan. Liverpool at once took advantage of this change, and on the 22nd of May, 1814, Gladstone's ship, the Kingsmill, was despatched to the East Indies. It returned, laden with cotton, sugar, indigo, choice woods, and spices, in September, 18154 That was the beginning of Liverpool's participation in the East India trade, second only, as a source of profit, to its commerce with America. There was another monopoly, nearer home, which Glad- stone joined, a few years afterwards, in overthrowing. The * Raises, p. 537. t Ibid., pp. 539, 541. X Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851 ; Baini>, p. 5G'J. VOL. II. x 29S John Gladstone of Liverpool. East India Company had been an institution altogether helpful to English commerce during the early stages of its history. So the Bridgewater Canal, constructed by Brindley in 1773, had been of incalculable benefit to Liverpool, Man- chester, and the other towns with which it had been con- nected. But it too, growing rich through the commercial energy that it encouraged, became in a way obstructive. Having formed an alliance with the Leeds and Liverpool Canal, its managers desired to continue in exclusive posses- sion of the traffic between Liverpool and Manchester, notwith- standing its inability to do all the work intrusted to it. The result was, as Huskisson complained in the House of Com- mons, that ' cotton was sometimes detained a fortnight in Liverpool, while the Manchester manufacturers were obliged to suspend their labours ; and goods manufactured at Man- chester for foreign markets could not be transmitted in time, in consequence of the tardy conveyance.' That was a griev- ance felt by all the merchants of both towns, except those who, as canal-proprietors, received ample recompense for their personal losses in the large profits derived from the carrying business. At last, in 1820, a Mr. Sanders, an en- terprising merchant of Liverpool, resolved to see whether a tramroad could not be laid down. Having started the idea, others joined with him in its prosecution. The result was the Liverpool and Manchester Railway, begun in June, 1826, after tedious battling with prejudices and rival interests, both in Parliament, and in the districts specially affected, and opened on the 15th of September, 1830.* Preparatory to the obtaining of an Act of Parliament sanctioning the enterprise, two Liverpool merchants were examined by a Committee of the House of Commons, on the 21st of March, 1825. One of them was John Gladstone. lie had been a merchant of Liverpool for cight-and-thirty years. * Daines, pp. 599-G12. Very full histories of the enterprise appear in Mr. S.MlLES's Lives of the Engineers, Mr. Jeaffueson's Life of llohert Stephenson, and elsewhere. His Share in the Liverpool and Mancliester Railway. 299 he said, and a shipowner during the greater part of that time. For sixteen years he had been almost exclusively engaged in the corn trade ; after that he had applied him- self to various branches of commerce connected with the West Indies and the Brazils, the East Indies and other parts of the world. The ordinary modes of conveyance, he declared, were quite inadequate to the requirements of the times, and were growing more so every day. When he settled in Liverpool, in 1787, the dock dues were 9/200Z. In 1824 they were more than fifteen times as great. In 178S there belonged to Liverpool 431 vessels, carrying 71,953 tons; in 1824 the number of vessels was 1,115, their burthen 176,151 tons. In 17S8 3,677 vessels of all nations had entered the port ; in 1824 there were upwards of 10,000, with cargoes weighing in all 1,180,914 tons. The ware- housing system, he said, had been introduced into Liver- pool in 1805. In 1806 the number of warehouses occupied by bonded goods was 85; in 1824, it had risen to 204. That wonderful growth of trade made absolutely necessary some improvements in the mode of conveyance, and therefore, Gladstone added, he earnestly hoped that the proposed rail- way might be permitted. The other Liverpool merchant who gave evidence in sup- port of the movement was William Brown. He was in the habit, he said, of shipping large quantities of goods, especially the manufactures of Manchester and its neighbourhood, to the United States. Other goods were imported by him for transmission to Manchester; and the entire value of the goods which he received and shipped sometimes amounted to 1,000,000/. a year. There was, he continued, a regular and ample means of communication between Liverpool and America. Four lines of ships, sixteen in all, traded with New York ; two, comprising eight ships, went to Philadelphia, and one of these vessels visited Baltimore, each vessel carry- ing, on an average, about 50,000/.'s worth of goods, though sometimes the value was thrice as Great. These vessel- 300 William Brown of Liverpool. started punctually, refusing to take in goods after the day fixed as the limit, and it frequently happened that great loss was experienced through the tardiness of the canal agents in transmitting the commodities which were ordered and ready for shipment. He too, like Gladstone, and all the other leading men of Liverpool, urged the absolute necessity of some swifter and surer mode of communication between the great seat of cotton manufacture and the great cotton trading port of England. This William Brown, though twenty years younger than Gladstone, was, in 1825, second only to him as a Liverpool merchant, and second to none in the Liverpool cotton trade. He was an Irishman, brought up in America. His father, Alexander Brown, had been for some time, in a small way, a respectable merchant, chiefly concerned with the linen trade, at Ballymena, in the county of Antrim, and there William Brown was born in 1784. He was educated at a school kept by the Rev. Mr. Bradley, at Cathrich, near Rich- mond, in Yorkshire ; but his schooling was over before he was sixteen years old. In 1800 his father emigrated with his family to Baltimore, in the United States, and there established his old business on a wider basis. William Brown was his quick-witted and very helpful clerk for a few years, and then his partner. It was through his energy, to a great extent, that the house of Alexander Brown and Sons, flax and linen merchants, soon became famous. Its shrewd founders made full use of the advantages offered by a quickly growing population in a richly productive country. Sending their flax across the water, they procured return cargoes of English commodities, and when they found that cotton was even more marketable than flax, they lost no time in in- cluding it in their shipments. In a few years they found it desirable to establish a branch business at Philadelphia, and another in New York. These were directed by James and John, Alexander Brown's two youngest sons, while George, the eldest, stayed to help manage the business His American Schooling and Prosperity in Liverpool. 301 in Baltimore. William, the cleverest of the family, pro- ceeded to England in December, 1808, and in 1810 opened another branch of the business in Liverpool.* He came at a time of dismal suffering and terrible failure among the speculative merchants of Liverpool and their de- pendents ; but the young merchant, taking prudent advan- tage of the consequent fluctuations of credit, reaped from them only profit. He soon became a famous man on 'Change. Admiring friends and jealous rivals followed his lead in their transactions, and found that they might impli- citly rely both on the wisdom that guided his dealings and on the honesty that made his word as good as a bank note. A flax and cotton importer in especial, he extended his business to all sorts of merchandize. All the articles of American growth were either bought by him, or more fre- quently sent to him for sale on commission ; and in return he despatched, either in his own name or in that of one or other of his many correspondents, immense cargoes of iron, earthen- ware, and the thousand and one other commodities grown, made, or bartered in England, to be sold in all parts of America. Through his foreign connections he was also able to carry on a great and most profitable India and China trade, long before the withdrawal of the East India Com- pany's monopoly. While that monopoly lasted, no Liverpool merchant might trade direct with the East Indies ; but no legislation could prevent the Browns of Baltimore or New York from buying for American use any quantity of tea, coffee, silk, or opium, and then, as soon as the cargoes had arrived, from re-shipping them to the Brown of Liverpool. In these ways he very soon became a leader of Liverpool commerce. He did not, however, take much part in the general affairs of Liverpool, till after Gladstone's retirement. Gladstone had married a daughter of Joseph Hall, of Liverpool, in 1792, who died without issue in 1798. In * Liverpool Mercury, October 13, 18G0; which contains a tolerably full memoir of Sir William Brown, written, I believe, by Mr. W. Store, and revised by Sir William himself. 302 John Gladstone of Liverpool. 1800 he took for a second wife the daughter of Andrew Robertson, of Dingwall, in Ross-shire, who bore him several children. Of these, two, as they grew up, became chief managers of the commercial house, and left their father free to apply himself to other occupations. John Gladstone was always a zealous politician. He was very active in procuring Canning's election as Member of Parliament for Liverpool in 1812. * So great was his confi- dence in the abilities and principles of that distinguished statesman,' we are told, ' that — a difficulty having been started, in the preliminary state of the proceedings, as to the raising of funds to defray the expenses of the election — he offered to become personally responsible for the amount, whatever it might be, thus inspiring a feeling, and setting an example, which had the effect of speedily bringing forward other spirited and patriotic individuals to contribute liberally for the purpose.'* The result was the election 'of Canning and his associate Gascoyne, and the rejection of Brougham and Creevey, after seven days' polling, unparalleled in Liver- pool history. t Canning was re-elected in 1816, 1818, and 1820, and on his retirement in 1823, Gladstone procured the election of his friend Huskisson, to continue the fore- most representative of Liverpool up to the time of his death on the opening of the Liverpool and Manchester Railway in 1830. Gladstone himself went into Parliament, as member for Lancaster, in 1818, the Tories of Liverpool subscribing 4,000?. towards the expenses of his election. In 1820 he was chosen to represent the borough of Woodstock ; and in 1826 he was returned for Berwick, to be unseated on petition in the following year. In 1837, when he was seventy-three years old, he showed his persistent devotion to Tory principles by contesting — ' not without some personal danger,' it was said — the Radical borough of Dundee.J * Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. t Batnes, pp. 550-554. X Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. His Politics and Parliamentary Work. 303 During the many years that he was in the House of Com- mons, he held a respeetable though not a brilliant position. He was no great speaker, but an honest voter ; much em- ployed in committee work and government business. He was a hearty supporter of Lord Liverpool's and Canning's ministries, and their frequent adviser on questions of com- merce and finance. Once, we read, ' a sugar question was under discussion, and, as Goulburn was hammering and stammering through a string of figures and details, Huskisson smiled, as he quietly observed, " Goulburn has got his facts and figures and statistics from Gladstone, and they are all as correct and right as possible ; but he does not understand them, and will make a regular hash of it" '* Huskisson did understand Gladstone's facts, figures, and statistics, and often made valuable use of them, both in his Parliamentary speeches and in his government projects. So it was especially in matters relating to the West Indies. Both Huskisson and Canning turned to Gladstone for advice on the vexed ques- tion of the abolition of slavery. Gladstone also, at a later day, was especially influential in adjusting with Lord Stanley, then Secretary for the Colonies, the terms of negro emancipa- tion in 1834, and in procuring for the West Indian planters a grant of 20,000,OOOZ. by way of compensation.! Gladstone was a rich man from the beginning of the century ; and he made good use of his wealth. All the charities of Liverpool, and not they alone, received from him liberal support. In 1815 he built, at a cost of 14,000/., the large and handsome church of Saint Andrew, in Renshaw Street; and in 1817 he endowed another church, that of Saint Thomas, Seaforth, with schools adjoining it.} In 181(5 he was elected governor and trustee of the old Blue Coat Hospital, to which he always proved a good friend. § In all * Liverpool a Few Years Since, p. 88. t Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. J Pictorial Liverpool (Birkenhead, 1850), pp. 91, 90, 2G2. § lieport of tlie Blue Coat Hospital, Liverpool, 184G. 301 John Gladstone of Liverpool. other sorts of benevolent undertakings he freely took part, one of the most notable being the commodious building, now the home of the Bible Society, the Charitable Society, and other bodies, in Slater Street, which he set up in conjunction with James Cropper and Samuel Hope.* In 1841 he built and endowed the Church of Saint Thomas in the Fields, Toxteth Park.t He also gave l,O0OZ. to the excel- lent Collegiate Institution in Shaw Street, whose foundation stone was laid by Lord Stanley, in October, 1840, and which was opened in January, 1843, the inaugural address being delivered by Mr. W. E. Gladstone.} Long before that Gladstone had ceased to make Liverpool his home, or to have much personal connection with Liver- pool commerce. In February, 1824, his brother-merchants presented him with a splendid dinner service, ' to mark their high sense of his successful exertions for the promotion of trade and commerce, and in acknowledgment of his most im- portant services rendered to the town of Liverpool.'§ The services continued to be rendered for more than a quarter of * Picturesque Handbook of Liverpool, p. 82. t Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. X Pictorial Liverpool, p. 1G5 ; Baines, p. G58. § Liverpool Mercury, October 22, 1824. ' At a meeting convened on the 8th of January, it was resolved, " That John Gladstone, Esq., M.P., has rendered most important services to this town, by his zeal and ability in promoting and increasing its trade, and by his support of all establishments having for their object the advancement of its prosperity and refinement : That, in particular, Liverpool is much indebted to his exertions for the formation of commercial associations, by which the trading interests have been so greatly consolidated and strengthened : That, in the different public institutions, whether formed for the purpose of relieving distress, promoting morals, or refining taste, his name is found amongst their most liberal and zealous patrons and friends : That, in his more public character, as a Member of Parliament, it is highly gratifying to record his accessibility, his unwearied attention to those who have sought his assistance, and his indefatigable efforts to protect and improve the commerce of the country at large, and, more particularly, the trade and interests of this town : That, in the opinion of this meeting, such important services have justly entitled him to our warmest acknowledgments." ' — Liverpool Mercury, January 1G, 1824. The result of that meeting was the testimonial referred to above.' His Charities and other Philanthropic Work. 305 a century after that, but they generally came from a distance. In 1829, C41adstone bought the estate of Fasque and Balfour, in Kincardineshire. There he spent most of the last two- and-twenty years of his life, going often to London, and oftener to Liverpool, and spending several winters in Edin- burgh and his native town of Leith. He was one of the directors of the Royal Bank of Edinburgh, and during some time subsequent to 1833 he took an active part in its management. In 1839 ' he projected the steam ferry and breakwater pier across the Frith of Forth, from Leith to Burntisland, which had long been urgently required. His first endeavour was to induce the inhabitants of Fife to undertake this work ; but they were not prepared for the exertion, upon which, in conjunction with the Duke of Buccleuch, he obtained an Act of Parliament, and the work was executed on their joint account. The ferry was after- wards sold to the Edinburgh, Perth, and Dundee Railway Company, of which undertaking he was also the originator.' Here also he carried on his benefactions. In 1840 he built in Leith an asylum for women afflicted with incurable diseases, which, to the time of his death, he supported at an annual cost of about 300£. In Leith, moreover, he built and endowed a church, with manse and schools attached to it* Even at Fasque his life was a busy one. His interest in political and social affairs continued to the last, and he found a new subject of interest in the management of his estate. ' He went a comparative stranger to that part of the country,' it is said, ' but his public utility and kindly disposition, and the friendly aid which he was ever ready to extend to all who required it, were not long in rendering him a great favourite. In business matters, and particularly in the re- concilement of business differences, he was ever ready to give the advantage of his clear and judicious opinion, which rarely failed in affording full satisfaction. He was a good * Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. 30G John Gladstone of Liverpool. and liberal landlord, who delighted to see his tenants thriving, and was by them deeply respected for the fair and generous manner in which he treated them. In private life he manifested the same order and regularity, the same energy of purpose and dignity of mind, which marked all his public conduct, and which, being blended in familiar in- tercourse with a warm disposition, rendered him a sure and steadfast friend, as well as a kind and affectionate parent. '* In June, 1846, shortly before Sir Robert Peel's retirement from office, John Gladstone was offered a baronetcy. He accepted it, * solely on condition that, in doing so, he should not be considered to recognise the propriety of Sir Robert Peel's free-trade policy/t so stanch a Tory was he to the last. He died at Fasque, eighty-seven years old, on the 7th of December, 1851 ;$ almost forgotten in Liverpool, where he had lived for more than forty years, but recognised by all who did remember him as, for Liverpool, ' the master-spirit of the age in which he lived : every inch a merchant prince ; keen, energetic, industrious and per- severing ; cautious and prudent, yet withal liberal and generous, without being lavish or needlessly profuse.'§ ' We never remember,' said one who knew him, ' to have met with a man who possessed so inexhaustible a fund of common sense. He was never at fault, never baffled. His shrewd- ness as a man of business was proverbial. His sagacity in all matters connected with commerce was only not prophetic. He seemed to take the whole map of the world into his mind at one glance, and almost by intuition to discover, not only which were the best markets for to-day, but where would be the best opening to-morrow.' || Those remarks were as applicable to Sir William Brown as to Sir John Gladstone. Brown was an influential mer- * Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. t Morning Post, December 12, 1851. X Liverpool Mercury, December 9, 1851. § Liverpool Courier, December 17, 1851. |j Liverpool a Few Years Since, p. 8S. William Brown of Liverpool. 307 chant in Liverpool, as we have seen, some fifteen years before Gladstone's retirement from the active pursuit of commerce. In public life, however, he only began to be prominent about the time of Gladstone's removal from Liver- pool to Fasque. Having left Baltimore near the end of 1808, and being very nearly captured while on the passage to England by a French privateer, which chased the vessel he was in to the mouth of Falmouth Harbour, he went first to his old home in Ballymena, and married a daughter of Mr. Andrew Gihon, of that town. In 1810, at the age of six-and-twenty, he was established in Liverpool as agent of the American house of Alexander Brown and Sons, and also as a merchant on his own account.* For some years he devoted himself almost exclusively to commerce, doing his utmost to attain a place of eminence among the eminent merchants of Liverpool. Therein he succeeded wonderfully, and as his business prospered, he began to take an influential position in the general affairs of the town. The honorary freedom of the borough was con- ferred upon him in 1818. In August, 1828, he was elected a member of the Dock Committee. Four years later he became conspicuous as leader of a project for reformation of the old modes of dock government, which being in the hands of a committee composed of thirteen delegates from the council, and only eight from the body of dock ratepayers, was conducted much more to the advantage of the proprietors than to the convenience of the public. The appointment of a very young man as solicitor to the committee gave Brown and those who worked with him an opportunity for complain- ing that the whole business was carried on in a wrong and unjust way. Public meetings were held and a fierce opposi- tion was begun, to be carried on zealously for a year or two and then to languish until 1832, when the desired reforms * Liverpool Mercury, October 13, 1SG0. Most of the information given in ensuing pages, and not otherwise vouched for, is drawn from the memoir there given by Mr. Stoku. 30S William Brown of Liverpool. were effected with the sanction of Parliament. Brown was publicly thanked by his fellow ratepayers for his share in the work, in 1833 ; but in 1834 the Conservative influence brought against him was so strong that he lost his place on the Dock Committee. Other offices were conferred upon him in abundance. In March, 1831, the Bank of Liverpool was established, and William Brown, who had a large stake in it, was made chairman of its board of directors. So successful was the undertaking, that in the autumn of 1832, each member of the board received from the shareholders a present of 50Z.'s worth of plate. And Brown's prosperous banking was not limited to superintendence of the Bank of Liverpool. The extent of his business, and the entire uprightness with which he conducted it, made him, to all practical purposes, a banker and money-lender. The traders on both sides of the Atlantic, who transmitted their goods through him, sometimes procured from him advances on account of the goods in his possession, long before they were sold ; at other times they found it convenient 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. Working in these ways, first as representative in Liver- pool of the American house of Alexander Brown and Sons, then as member of the firm of William Brown and Brothers, and finally as head and soul of the establishment of Brown, Shipley, and Company, William Brown throve amazingly. He became more thoroughly a Liverpool merchant than he had been before, after the death of his father, at Baltimore, on the 30th of April, 1834.* In 1835 he was made an alder- * The Liverpool Mercury, in sketching his career, applauded him especially for his share in establishing "one of those splendid lines of packets which have rendered the mercantile transactions between Liverpool and the United States superior to those of any other part of the world for punctuality, safety, and expedition." Jfis Municipal and Commercial Occupations. 309 man, and took a prominent part in the movement which led to the removal of some oppressive clauses in the Municipal Reform Bill of that year. In 183G, he bought the Brandon estate, near Coventry, from the Marquis of Hastings, for 80,000£ In that year, it was reported, business to the amount of 10,000,000Z. passed through his hands. It was a year, however, of excessive trading both in England and in America, and especially in the dealings of the two countries with one another. ' American commerce was at that time a towering pile in course of erection ; bank credit was the scaffolding. In 1S37, the American banks, all over the Union, went down one after another, and many together, with an almost universal crash.' Several English banks, and a yet greater number of English merchants, also stopped payment ; and people had good reason for fearing the ruin of the Browns, when it was known that, at one time, they had 750,000Z.'s worth of protested bills on their hands. ' Had they possessed less than the strength of giants,' said one, writing a few years after the time, ' they could not have extricated them- selves. The British Government saw, and looked with appre- hension as it saw, the struggle of this gigantic establish- ment. From Inverness to Penzance there was not a single town but would have felt its fall. In Sheffield and Birming- ham, and the towns surrounding them ; in Manchester, Leeds, and all the great factory communities, a large num- ber of merchants and employers, and, as a matter of course, every man and woman employed, were more or less involved in the fate of this establishment.'* It was not only, therefore, on his own account that William Brown, even more alarmed at his position than the public could be, resolved upon a bold course of action, and worked it through with notable success, setting an example that has often since been followed in times of commercial panic. As soon as ever he was con- vinced that something must be done or he would fail, he hurried up to London, sought an interview with Mr. Curtis, * Morning Chronicle, 184-1. 310 William Brown of Liverpool. then Chairman of the Bank of England, and on assuring him that thus, and thus only, could his credit be saved, obtained from him the promise of a loan larger than had ever yet been made to any private individual in the world — a loan of no less than 2,000,0007. Taking his protested bills and other vouchers for substantial, though just then useless wealth, as security, the bank authorities empowered him to draw upon them to that amount. He found it necessary to make application for hardly half as much ; and that, with interest, was all repaid within six months, William Brown receiving a letter from the Directors to the effect that they had never had a more satisfactory transaction with any other house.* Thus nobly helped through a trouble that was not of his causing, William Brown worked harder than ever, not lessening his strictly commercial dealings, but subordinating them to an ever-growing banking connection, forced upon him by his customers, and willingly accepted, as an easy and safe way of making money. His growing importance in the towns appears from the frequent records of his co-operation in local and municipal affairs. As an alderman, he took an active part in the business of the Town Council, until his retirement in October, 1838. In September, 1837, he sought to increase the public contributions to town charities, and in October he brought some abuse on himself by his advocacy of religious freedom in schools. In February, 1838, he called the Council's atten- tion to a pamphlet lately issued by Mr. Rowland Hill on Post Office Reform, and pointing out the value of this agency in extending commerce, improving education, and strengthen- ing friendship, urged its energetic action in the matter ; and in July, 1839, he took the lead at a public meeting for petitioning Parliament in favour of a penny postage. In April, 1841, he shared in a movement in favour of the early closing of shops. In November, 1844, he joined with Mr. William Rathbone in heading a subscription on behalf * Morning Chronicle, 1811. Li cerjtool Mttcurt/, October 13, 1SG0. His Devotion to the Cause of Free Trade. 311 of Father Matthew, whose devotion to teetotalism had brought him into pecuniary difficulties. In 1845 he was patron of a series of cheap Saturday evening concerts, designed for the healthful entertainment of the working classes. Of that sort were the lesser efforts in which he was engaged for the advancement of education and the improve- ment of the people. A much more famous enterprise of which he was from first to last a hearty supporter was the Anti-Corn-Law League. To the cause of free trade he was a good friend long before the League was organized. " Mr. Brown is not an anti-monopolist of yesterday," said Richard Cobden, in 1844. " There is a fact singularly to the honour of Mr. Brown, and which strikingly proves the disinterested- ness with which he is willing to assail monopolies, even when he himself may be supposed to be interested in them. During the time of the monopoly of the China market by the East India Company, Mr. Brown was one of those in England who had a monopoly of the private trade with China, which was carried on through American houses. No private house could trade with those countries ; but the Americans took up the trade in an indirect way, and Mr. Brown was the agent for that commerce, which became a very important branch of his business. When the proposal was made to abolish the monopoly of the East India Company in the China trade, Mr. Brown went to London and gave evidence before the Parliamentary Committee in favour of opening the trade with China, though to do so would be to deprive himself of the monopoly he then had in the trade with that country." That was in 1831. In March, 1839, while Brown was on a visit to America, the Anti-Corn-Law League was formed. In January, 1840, he spoke at a meeting in the Sessions House, convened with a view to petitioning Parlia- ment for a repeal of. the Corn Laws. He there advocated the League on the plea that, by refusing admittance to American corn, we were forcing the Americans to turn their energies to manufactures, and thus were at once keeping the 312 William Brown of Liverpool. necessaries of life at a starvation price and lessening- the sources of wealth requisite to the purchase of those neces- saries.* He spoke at other meetings, contributed freely to the funds needed for carrying on the free trade battle, and in other ways gave all the help he could. " In Liverpool," said Cobden, in the speech already quoted from, " Mr. Brown's adhesion to the Anti-Monopoly Society was an event about as important to our movement there as the adhesion of Mr. Samuel Jones Loyd to the League's proceedings was in London." In the autumn of 1843 he was chosen vice-presi- dent of the Liverpool Anti-Monopoly Association, subscribing 100Z. to its funds, with an additional 50Z. to be spent in the dissemination of tracts on the subject among farmers and others. " By sticking to the text of Anti-Monopoly alone," he said in the letter that accompanied that gift, " we shall unite men of all political parties to get the corn laws repealed. We claim the right of private judgment, and we must allow it to others without impugning their motives."] In 1844, William Brown appeared much more promi- nently as a champion of free trade. A vacancy having occurred in the representation of South Lancashire, the leaders of the Anti-Corn Law League urged him to seek a place in Parliament as a supporter of the cause. With that intent he began a vigorous canvass, addressing meetings at Liverpool, Manchester, Warrington, Ormskirk, Southport, Wigan, Bolton, Bury, Rochdale, and other places. Meet- ings on his behalf were held in the great Free Trade Hall of Manchester, at which Cobden and others of the party urged his claims on popular favour. He was defeated, as might almost have been expected ; but in this election the Liberal party showed themselves possessed of unlooked-for strength in the Tory district. Two years later, William Brown was elected without opposition. In February, 1845, * Liverpool Mercury, October 13, 1SG0. t Ibid. ; Pkentice, History of the, Anti-Corn-Law League, vol. ii., p. 133. His Politics and his Trade. 313 he presided at a League meeting in Covent Garden Theatre, when Cobden introduced him as 'the late candidate and future representative of South Lancashire in Parliament. ' In the meanwhile, William Brown continued to prosper mightily as a merchant and banker. " If any of you know what a bale of cotton is," said Richard Cobden, in an earlier speech delivered in 1844, " you are only one remove from a near acquaintance with Mr. Brown, who has in his hands one- sixth part of the trade between this country and the United States. There is hardly a wind that blows, or a tide that flows in the Mersey, that does not bring a ship freighted with cotton, or some other costly commodity, for Mr. Brown's house ; and not a lorry in the streets but what is destined to carry cloth or other commodities consigned to the care of Mr. Brown, to be shipped to America, China, or other parts of the world." Those words were spoken on the occasion of William Brown's proposal to enter Parliament as member for South Lancashire. He failed, as we have seen, in 1844 ; but he was elected in 1846 : and he took his seat in Parliament just in time to hear the royal assent given to the Corn-Law Repeal Bill. At that time he was sixty-two years of age ; and hence- forth he left business matters chiefly in the hands of younger managers. For thirteen years he was an honest and energetic member of Parliament, though not very effective as a speaker. A weak voice and a tame delivery made his speeches — nearly all of them on commercial questions — uninteresting to the many ; but the few who valued these topics found them rich in shrewd and generous thought. An anecdote, recorded by an eye-witness, gives curious illustration of his position in the House : — ' The honourable member,' we are told, ' was the warm advocate of a decimal coinage, and on one occasion gave notice of his intention to bring it before the House. As it was his intention to quote a good deal of documentary evidence in support of his views, VOL. II. V 314 William Brown of Liverpool. the honourable gentleman, for the convenience of referring to his papers, spoke from the table on the Opposition side. Members turned their best ear to the great merchant ; but as few of his remarks reached them, it is no wonder that a gentleman, said to be connected with the Mint, who had been favoured with a seat under the gallery, was still less fortunate. Not a syllable could he hear, who had come prepared to enjoy a great intellectual and arithmetical treat He converted his hand into an ear-trumpet, but in vain ; and his despair grew tragic. At length, as the sound would not come to Gamaliel, Gamaliel determined to go to the sound. Accordingly he left his seat, and entering the sacred precincts of the House, he sauntered along the Opposition benches, nor stopped until he had gained the bench immediately behind Mr. Brown, where he composed himself to the enjoyment of the honourable Member's remarks. After a few minutes, for the speech was a long one, an usher was struck by a face not familiar to him, and he asked a brother-usher " who that new member was ?" Nobody knew him. The clerks at the table were appealed to, but they could not remember having administered the oaths to the strange visitor. The Serjeant-at-Arms was now apprised that there was a stranger, or what seemed such, in the body of the House. The matter became serious. It is a high breach of privilege for any person not a member to enter the House itself (by which is not meant the part allotted to strangers), the penalty being commitment to custody, if not removal to Newgate or the Tower, and the payment of a good round sum in the shape of fees. The Deputy Sergeant-at-Arms made his way to the stranger, asked him to follow him, and led him from the body of the House. We all expected a " scene," an appearance at the bar, a humble apology, a rebuke from the Speaker, or, perhaps, a remand and a search for precedents. Mr. Shaw Lefevre (now Viscount Eversley), however, took a more lenient and sensible view of the matter, and strained the His Place and Work in Parliament. 315 practice of the House in the visitor's favour. His offence was so manifestly involuntary, and Mr. Brown was so pro- vokingly inaudible, that the Speaker advised that no public notice of the matter should be taken by the Serjeant-at-Arms. The offender was therefore dismissed, and the matter was never brought before the House at all. Mr. Brown all this time, unconscious of the occurrence, was quoting his statistics, reading his documents, and endeavouring, in vain, to make himself heard.'* He did make himself heard, however, in indirect ways, both in and out of Parliament. 'The greatest public service rendered by Mr. Brown, if not in Parliament, yet in virtue of his parliamentary position,' says the authority just cited, * was in 1856. The government of the United States * London Review, November 3, 1860. * Decimal coinage and the licensing system,' said the Liverpool Mercury, 'are the subjects on which Mr. Brown has taken a leading part in the House. The Liverpool Chamber of Commerce, in December, 1852, took up the question of decimal notation, and were supported by a public meeting of the inhabitants, presided over by the Mayor. They memorialised the Government, but no action was taken until Parliament met in 1854, when Mr. Brown obtained a committee of inquiry into the merits of the principle. That committee made a unanimous report of its importance and in its favour. Nothing further being done, Mr. Brown, in 1855, again brought the subject before the House, and was seconded and supported by Lord Stanley. The result was that Government appointed a royal commission, who took evidence and published it without a report, as they were unable to agree upon one. Lord Overstone, however, published a report of his own. The licensing question Mr. Brown took up in April, 1853. Great dissatisfaction had been expressed by some of the Liverpool magistracy with the operation and results of the existing system. They held meetings, drew up and adopted a report urging a parliamentary inquiry, and forwarded it to the Secretary of State, Mr. Brown moved the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the system of licensing public houses, hotels, beershops, dancing saloons, coffee houses, theatres, and other places of entertainment. The inquiry, over which the Hon. C. P. Villiers principally presided, extended over two sessions ; many witnesses from Liverpool were examined ; and the report and the evidence occupied two ponderous blue-books, containing 1,174 pages. Among other tilings, the report recommended that public houses and beerhouses should be placed on the same footing, that higher rates should be paid for licenses, and that more stringent regulations should be enforced as to character and sureties.' 31 G William Brown of Liverpool. declared that the British Minister at Washington had violated the law of the United States in raising a foreign legion in the Union for service in the Crimea, and summarily dismissed Mr. Crampton. Lord Palmerston warmly resented the insult, and vindicated the conduct of her Majesty's minister. The American Government had allowed proceedings to jro on which they afterwards contended were contrary to the law of the United States, without sending for Mr. Crampton, or telling him what it was supposed he was guilty of doing. "They allow these things to accumulate," said Lord Palmer- ston, " in order that, when the proper time arrives, they may either take advantage of them, or deal with them as matters which do not deserve consideration." These views bein" o fully shared by the Cabinet, the public were prepared by a semi-official announcement for the dismissal of Mr. Dallas. Great alarm prevailed in monetary and commercial circles. A sudden activity was observable in our arsenals and dock- yards. Supplies of the materiel of war were sent out to Canada ; and the Secretary of State for the Colonics assured the Canadians that they would be supported by the whole force of the mother country in the event of war. Troops were despatched to British North America, and heavily- armed vessels of war received sailing orders for the American seaboard So great was the uneasiness, that the underwriters at Lloyds were asked in almost every case to insure against capture and seizure, and a percentage was actually charged for the increased risk. Public opinion at home supported the Government in declaring that Mr. Crampton's dismissal by President Pierce was unjustifiable, indefensible, and offensive. At this moment of peril, when the rupture of diplomatic negotiations between the two countries would probably have been followed by insulting and belligerent proceedings on the Canadian frontier and in central America, Mr. Brown came forward as a mediator between the two countries. He deprecated irritating debates in Parliament, induced Mr. Baillie to withdraw a party question condemna- His Mediation between England and America. 317 tory of the Government in regard to enlistment in the States, and made an appeal to a virulent Irish member, who was determined to make a speech on the subject, which fixed him with a tremendous weight of responsibility, and procured him a signal defeat on a division. The honourable member for South Lancashire offered his personal mediation between Lord Palraerston and Mr. Dallas, and meanwhile expressed his conviction in the House of Commons, that the disputes between the two countries would be amicably arranged to the satisfaction of both Governments, if no new cause of disagree- ment were supplied by party debates. The American minister in London gladly accepted Mr. Brown's mediation, for he did not wish to be sent back to Washington. With Lord Palmerston the honourable member's task was more difficult. What took place at these interviews has never been publicly stated. Some assert that Mr. Brown put before the Premier facts and figures proving that a rupture between the two countries would be followed not only by rebellion in the slave states, but also by a revolution in Lan- cashire. Others, with perhaps more reason, opine that Mr. Brown represented the conduct of the American Government as an attempt to get a little " Buncombe " out of the difficulty, with an eye to the next presidential election, and it was so regarded in the Union — that the attempt would signally fail (as the event proved) — and that if Lord Palmer- ston would only treat the affair as an unscrupulous and desperate attempt to get up a little political capital, he would, in a few months, be rewarded for his forbearance by seeing President Pierce and Secretary Marcy relapse into political obscurity and insignificance. Those who know Lord Palmerston best, affirm that the appeal to his magnanimity succeeded, when cotton statistics, tonnage, and all sorts of figures failed to shake his resolution to vindicate the insult passed upon her Majesty's representative. The Prime Minister yielded to the representations of one who spoke with peculiar weight, not only as a merchant, but as one 318 William Brown of Liverpool. of the most consistent and influential of Lord Palmerston's admirers and supporters in Parliament. Mr. Brown was not, however, satisfied with mediating between the two govern- ments. He appealed to the two nations, and at his instance Liverpool, Manchester, and other English towns, adopted addresses to the larger and more influential cities of the Union. These demonstrations elicited cordial and satisfac- tory responses from the other side of the Atlantic, breathing peace, and denouncing those who attempted to kindle disunion between two great and kindred nations. The poli- tical horizon soon cleared. Mr. Dallas remained in London, and Mr. Brown received the thanks and congratulations of all who knew his noble and useful endeavours to avert so hideous, unnatural, and horrible an event as a war between the two countries.'* With good reason might Nathaniel Hawthorne, then United States Consul at Liverpool, say, in 1858, of the man who could do all this, that " he grasped, as it were, England with his right hand and America with his left." Both nations should be proud of William Brown. From first to last he exerted the influence he had acquired by long years of perseverance and integrity in promoting the welfare of his fellows and the development of liberal thoughts and kindly feelings among governors as well as governed in both the nations that he had dealings with. And a fair measure of the wealth that came from those dealings was spent in works of philanthropy. To the Northern Hospital, in Great Howard Street, he was a hearty friend from its foundation in 1834. In 1844 he took a leading part in the inauguration of the new building designed for its use, and contributed 1,000Z. towards the expenses of its erection. In August, 1845, he laid the foundation-stone of Holy Trinity Church at Walton-breck, and in all sorts of other religious and charitable movements he was from time to time con- cerned. * London Review, November 3, 18G0. His Foundation of the Liverpool Free Library. 319 But all his earlier philanthropies are eclipsed bv his last, and, in the town itself, almost unexampled piece of benevo- lence as donor of its Free Library to Liverpool. About the year 1850 a small Free Library was opened in Duke Street, which in 1857 had so grown that it comprised about 22,000 books. William Brown resolved that it should be very much larger and have a very much larger house. In September, 1853, he offered to give a sum of G,0007. towards con- structing a suitable library for the town of Liverpool, if the Corporation would provide a proper site. The offer was ac- cepted in the following October ; 10,0007. were voted for the purchase of ground, and an act of Parliament was obtained. There was some delay in proceeding with the work as it was thought that more than 6,0007. was needed for a building worthy of the town. No one else was ready, however, to increase the sum to the requisite extent, and in October, 1856, Brown offered to double his gift, if another sum of 6,0007. were given by others. Still no advance was made, and in December, the worthy merchant declaring that he had set his heart on this business, and that he desired to see it finished during his lifetime, announced his intention to take the whole expense, whatever it might be, upon himself. No time was wasted after that. A spacious plot of ground, behind St. George's Hall, was cleared, and the foundation- stone of the new building was laid by William Brown on the 15th of April, 1857. " When I proposed building the library and museum," he said, in answer to one of thirteen addresses presented to him on that occasion, " I considered that I was only performing an act of public duty, which kind providence had placed within my power, and which deserved very little thanks." " I would not," he said, in another of these replies, " exclude from libraries any works but what the ministers of religion consider decidedly immoral. Readers ought to have access to both sides of a question. Place the bane and the antidote before them— they have a ready conception of what is right 320 William Broivn of Liverpool. and what is wrong. I am sanguine that the more intelligence they acquire the less we shall be subject to those ebullitions of public opinion which always inflict distress on the parties in place of benefiting their situation. I feel assured, the more we know the more we shall value the excellent consti- tution under which we live." * Entering on his philanthropic enterprise in those ways, William Brown was able, on the 18th of October, I860, to present to the town of Liverpool the handsome building which, having the old Duke Street Library and the adjoining Derby Museum — a collection of birds collected by the late Earl of Derby and presented to Liverpool by his son — for its nucleus, was completed and stocked with books and varieties of all sorts, at a cost to its founder of not less than 40,000Z., besides some 25,000Z. supplied by the Corporation and a few other subscribers. It was done amid all pos- sible display of enthusiasm, amid public meetings, splendid banquets, brilliant balls, and wonderful street demonstra- tions and processions.f This was, as it was meant to be, the crowning worK of William Brown's career. Three years later he was appointed High Sheriff of Lancashire, and honoured with a baronetcy. He died on the 3rd of March, .1864, seventy-nine years old. * Liverpool Mercury, October 13, 18G0. f Liverpool Daily Post, October 18 and 19, 18G0. 321 CHAPTER XXVII. JAMES EWING OF GLASGOW. [1775-1853.] Humphrey Ewing, son of another Humphrey Ewing, a native of Cardross in Dumbartonshire, was a merchant in Glasgow early in the eighteenth century. He married the daughter of John Maclae, another Glasgow trader; and his son, Walter, inheriting most of the wealth of both relatives, took the names of both, and was known as Walter Ewing Maclae of Cathkin.* He was not himself much of a merchant. For some fifteen or twenty years, before he changed his name and became a rich man in 1790, he found his chief employ- ment in acting as factor and trustee for bankrupt properties.! From 1790 till 1814, when he died, at the age of seventy, though chiefly busied with the management of his Cathkin estate, he continued to hold honourable place in Glasgow by performing the half legal and half mercantile duties of an arbitrator on commercial questions. ' An extensive know- ledge of mercantile business, of the principles of equity and of the laws of his country,' said his nephew, Dr. Wardlaw, ' eminently qualified him for discharging the important func- tions of an arbitrator. In this capacity, uncommon clearness of judgment enabled him to develop many cases of peculiar complexity and difficulty ; and, feeling strongly the weight of responsibility, his decisions were the result, always, of full * Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., p. 550. t Ibid., vol. iii., p. 549. 322 James Eiving of Glasgow. and often laborious investigation, united with the most in- flexible and conscientious integrity. These qualifications were equally displayed in the more public situation of a magistrate : as a justice of peace he fulfilled his duty with honour to himself and advantage to the communitv ; and in the parish over the affairs of which he was called to preside as a deputy lieutenant, he at once maintained order and conciliated attachment. Firm integrity, joined with correct- ness, promptitude, punctuality, and an unusual measure of forethought and prudence, distinguished him in all transac- tions of business. His advice was highly valued, and in every case where he was satisfied it could be of any service, it was freely bestowed. He had peculiar satisfaction in relieving the unfortunate and extricating the embarrassed, both by his aid and by his counsel. To his tenants and all placed under him he was endeared by a kind and condescend- ing frankness, which encouraged them in all their difficulties to look to him as their confidant and friend. An engaging mildness, ease and affability of manner, rendered him open and accessible to all classes, and while it won their affections to himself, contributed in an eminent degree to diffuse amongst others harmony and peace.'* This good man had three sons. Humphrey, the eldest, went out early in life to succeed a maternal uncle, named Ralph Fisher, in the management of some extensive and very profitable estates in Jamaica, and came home, on his father's death, to succeed to the family possessions at Cathkin. Walter, the youngest, also going abroad, died at Charles- ton, in South Carolina, when he was only twenty years old. James, the second son, became one of the greatest merchants of Glasgow. He was born on the 7th of December, 1775, fifteen years before his father became the owner of Cathkin House. His early training was of the rigid kind thought proper in a * Glasgow Reminiscences : Memoir of the late James Ewinj, Esq. (Glasgow, 1853, 1854 ), p. 4. Ms Parentage and Early Life. 323 Presbyterian home. ' When almost still a child,' we are told, ' to his mother's equal gratification and surprise, James, in his father's absence, would gladly undertake— not lightly, but with gravity and the solemnity due to the service— the conducting of family worship in his father's house, and was wondered at for the propriety and richness of his devotional expression and style of address.'* For all that, he was a laughing, happy boy, quick-witted and fond of his lessons. One of his great-uncles — the original of Smollett's ' good- natured usher ' in Roderick Random, it is reported — was his especial counsellor and friend, and the chief promoter of the literary tastes which, cultivated in youth, remained with him through life. Studying first at the High School, and then, from the age of twelve, at Glasgow University, he earned all possible distinctions at both, and, when his schooling was over, he went into the busy world, determined still to be a student and a hard worker for the rest of his days.f He was employed for a year or two in his father's office in Glasgow, there to master the intricacies of book-keeping.:): But it was intended that he should be an advocate, and he had already begun making particular study of the law, when, somewhat against his will, and chiefly at the instigation of his brother Humphrey and other members of the family who were specially interested in commerce, he changed his project and resolved to be a merchant.§ The chief inducement was in the fact that Humphrey Ewing needed a trustworthy agent to whom to consign the sugars which he, with James Laing, the brother of the historian, for his partner, was producing in large quantities on the Jamaica estates. The harm done to the old trade of * Dr. Macintosh Mackav, Memoir of James Ewing, Esquire, of Strathleven (Glasgow, 1S66J, p. 17. Dr. Mackay's book appeared while I was collecting materials for the above chapter. It contains much interesting matter that I could not otherwise have expected to acquire ; and the extent of my debt to it will appear in subsequent notes. t Mackay, pp. 18, 19. t Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., p. 549. § Mackay, p. 20. 324 James Ewing of Glasgoiv. the tobacco merchants with Virginia, that was caused by the American War of Independence, was very helpful to the Jamaica sugar trade. Many enterprising men, like Hum- phrey Ewing, went out to turn the then profitable estates to the best account, and the sugar consigned to Glasgow gave employment to a new race of merchants. Of these James Ewing was the most successful. Beginning business when he was about eighteen or twenty years of age, he soon became almost the busiest and most energetic man of his class in Glasgow. * Readiness, firmness, decision, soundness of discretion, and the most conciliatory bearing,' we are told, ' were in all his business movements, with a perspicuity of judgment that could see far through risks and dangers, and could with steadfastness guide him to avoid them, just as his own firmness of principle made him sure to shun whatever might tempt to any questionable course of action. It became the surprise of many among his fellow-citizens that one indi- vidual should be able to maintain full and perfect punctuality and the highest order in all the details of a business now grown into such extent and amount ; and to his nearer friends, acquaintances, and more select associates, it was matter of still greater surprise that when released from the toil and worryings of the day he showed a buoyancy and hilarity of manner and a relish for social and cheerful enjoy- ment, as if nothing had ever disturbed or burdened his mind, or had given colouring to his habit of thought or broken in upon his constitutional equanimity.'* When Ewing became one of its merchants, Glasgow was a compact little town, containing about 70.000 inhabitants in a space of little more than a square mile, with old Glasgow Cross for its centre. Most of the old shopkeepers and bankers were in Trongate and Gallowgatc, High Street and Salt Market. There too the old tobacco lords had their offices, their residences being generally in George Square, John Street, and the neighbourhood, then known as the New * Mackay, pp. 21, 22. The Town and its Trade in his Day. 325 Town. Other stately houses, like David Dale's famous mansion in Charlotte Street, were nearer the Clyde, in Virginia Street, Saint Enoch's Square, and the adjoining parts. Most of the small shipping trade of the town was conducted on the Broomielaw, and the manufacturing suburb of Anderston, still further to the west, was growing into importance chiefly through the enterprise of men like the Monteiths. But Saint Andrew's Square was at that time the great place for manufacturers' warehouses and dwelling- places, with Charlotte Street a little to the east, and the two great factories lately set up by the Monteiths at Barrow- field and Dalmarnock, about a mile further off. Glasgow Green was the fashionable place for country walks. On the north side of Trongate, between the Cross and Queen Street, was the favourite town promenade of the wealthy folk.* Fur- ther holiday taking, even fifteen years later, was by no means easy. * A gentleman resident in Glasgow in 1811,' we read, ' desired to convey his family for summer residence to the village of Gourock, three miles beyond Greenock, on the Clyde. They set out from Glasgow in the morning, in one of the passage boats at that time plying on the river, and known, not very appropriately, as flies. The whole of that day was spent in making good their way the length of Bowl- ing Bay, not half way from Glasgow to Greenock, and there they came to anchor for the night. Weighing next morning, and proceeding to sea, the wind being contrary, after spend ing the whole day in buffeting the waves of the Clyde, they were forced to put back, returning the second night to Bowling Bay. The third day they made the next attempt, and succeeded in making Port Glasgow in the afternoon, where the passengers took post-horses, leaving the fly in disgust ; and having seen his family housed in Gourock, the gentleman, on the fourth day, returned by land to Glasgow, weary, sick, and exhausted, the voyage and journey costing him 11. 14s.'f * Strang, Glasgow and its Clubs. t Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. vi. 326 Kirkman Finlay of Glasgow. For the wonderful change that has been made in Glasgow during the last fifty years, the chief praise belongs to James Ewing and the other merchants contemporary with him. Of these none were more notable than Kirkman Finlay and Charles Tennant. Both were members of old Glasgow fami- lies. In 1736 the heirs of Hugh Tennant and John Finlay, merchants, owned a house in Gallowgate Street, and it was in Gallowgate Street that Kirkman Finlay was born in 1772.* His father, James Finlay, was at that time an enterprising Glasgow merchant. He was one of the founders, in com- pany with Patrick Colquhoun, of the Glasgow Chamber of Commerce.t He was a great promoter of political reform and of free trade principles, and he showed his disposition by naming his son after Alderman Kirkman of London, just then a prominent advocate of the tenets dear to his heart.} The younger Finlay was true to his name. He also became a great merchant. In 1791 he was living with his father in Bell's Wynd, and taking a principal share in the business then carried on in Smith's Court, Candleriggs. Soon it was removed to Brunswick Square ; and in 1816 new and spacious offices were set up on the ground now occupied by the National Bank buildings.§ There is evidence of the extent of his business, in the election taunt, when he was being chosen Member of Parliament, that thereby he was going to save the house of James Finlay and Company 1,000Z. a year merely by franking its letters ; and further proof to the same end is in the fact that, at one time, having sent to India vast orders for cotton, in anticipation of a rise in price, and finding himself therein mistaken, he sent an overland express messenger, all the way from Glasgow to Bengal to countermand the order. || In 1812 he was chosen Lord Provost of Glasgow, and Member of Parliament for the Glasgow Burp-hs. Failing at the election for a fresh * Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. i., pp. G2, G3. f Ibid., vol. iii , p. 300. X Ibid., vol. ii., p. 34. § Ibid., vol. ii., p. 34 ; vol. iii., p. C33. || Ibid., vol. iii., pp. 103, 109. Charles Tennant of Glasgow. 327 Parliament in 1819, he was in that year appointed Lord Rector for Glasgow University. Charles Tennant, a man who cared less for public honours, was quite as helpful to the real prosperity of his native town. He was born in L768, and a young man look- ing for a pursuit to whieh to devote himself when the new school of English chemists, with Priestley and Dalton at its head, attracted general attention. Tennant entered it as a pupil, and there learned lessons which, joined with remark- able business capabilities, made him the greatest chemical manufacturer in the world. In 1798 he patented the process of bleaching now everywhere adopted, by a combination of chlorine with lime, which he had discovered, with some as- sistance from James Watt, the friend of Priestley, and the inventor of the steam-engine ; and in 1800 he established his chemical works at Saint Rollox, then an out-of-the-way suburb of Glasgow, now the centre of a crowded district. Here he began the wholesale manufacture of his bleaching powder, and in course of time adding to it other chemical operations, developed a business of wonderful extent and importance, before his death in 1838.* * Statistical Account of Scotland-, vol. vi., p. 163. The Saint Rollox Chemical Works now occupy fourteen acres of ground. ' The most extra- ordinary part of the works,' it was said in 1858, ' is that in which the sulphuric acid is made. In going into this place we pass between two mountains of sulphur, each of which contains 5,000 tons. Passing an immense row of glowing furnaces, we ascend some hundred feet above the surrounding buildings. Immediately beneath us are fifty-eight lead chambers for receiving the sulphurous gas and converting it into vitriol. Eacli of these immense aerial reservoirs holds 21,000 cubic feet of gas. These chambers are approached by many miles of wooden stages. Returning to the furnaces, we see men breaking up the mountains of crystalized soda, and bearing immense loads of salt into them— salt being the basis of all the leading articles manufactured in the works, witli the exception of vitriol. We now come to a pair of stills, in which the sulphuric acid is reduced in bulk and raised in strength. These stills are made of platina ; no other material will stand the combination of such intense heat with the corroding liquid that passes through them. Upon leaving this place we pass between huge air-tight chambers in which cloride of lime is made. Eighteen tons of lime, finely powered, arc put into one of these compartments, and after this has undergone the necessary process, it comes out twelve tons heavier 328 James Eiving of Glasgow. Ewing was seven years younger than Tennant, three years younger than Finlay. Of the details of his early mercantile life we have no records. But in 1814, when his father died and his mother was too oppressed with her loneliness to choose to live longer in Cathkin House, he was rich enough to buy for 6,000Z. the handsomest house then to be seen in Glasgow, at the northern end of Queen Street, known as Queen Street Park, and fit it up in costly manner for her use.* The good lady was never able to enjoy than when it went in, having absorhed two-thirds its weight in chlorine. This part of the St. Rollox Works occupies thirteeu acres. In another department of the huge establishment, some sixty tons of soap are made each week ; and a little further off is the St. Rollox cooperage. From eight hundred to nine hundred casks, large and small, are turned out in this place weekly. Every part of a cask is made by machinery. In one place the staves are planed and shaped, in another the heads and bottoms are cut and bevelled. The staves necessary to form a cask are set up by men for the purpose with a single iron hoop, The embryo cask is then placed in a steam chamber, and when taken out, is put in another chamber, where the two halves of a mould of the required size are made to enfold the staves by the powerful aid of a Bramah press. When the cask comes out of one of these machines it is braced tight by four strong iron hoops. All that requires to be done to complete the work, is to put on the wooden hoops, sixteen of which are required for each cask, and fit in the ends. For some time past the firm of Charles Tennant and Company have had two screw- steamers plying between London and Glasgow, and a third steamer carries the produce of their works to the various ports of the Baltic, and returns freighted with materials for their own consumption. Numerous coasting vessels are constantly employed in bringing limestone from Ireland and sulphur from Italy. The firm also has coal-mines of its own, with an iron- foundry to supply the machinery and other fittings of the works. The average number of men employed hi the works is a thousand ; the number of people employed directly or indirectly must exceed that by at least eight times. In 1S53 the Messrs. Tennant mannfacturcd 19,000 tons of soda- ash, 7,000 tons of bleaching powd< r, and 2,000 tons of sulphuric acid, for sale, the quantity of sulphuric acid used in their own works being estimated at 14,000 tons a year. In 1854 they employed in their various manufactures 90, 000 tons of coal, 30,000 of limestone, 17,000 of salt, 5,000 of sulphur, and 4,500 of manganese. — Commercial Enterprise and Social Progress, or Gleanings in London, Sheffield, Glasgow, and Dublin (London, 1858), pp. 114-119. * Glasgow, Past and Present, vol. iii., p. 549 ; Glasgow Reminiscences, p. 15. Mr. Ewing subsequently sold the ground, with an exhausted quarry adjoining, to the Edinburgh and Glasgow Railway, for a guinea a square ycu-d,*, me 35,000/. in all. Sis Philanthropic Work in the Town. 329 this proof of her son's affection. Going to Devonshire for the benefit of her health, she died there in 1815. In that year, the fortieth of his life, James Ewing began to be, much more than previously, a public man. Some of the work hitherto done by his father as commercial arbitra- tor now fell to him. He also became a visible leader in every measure undertaken for the improvement of his native town. He was one of the founders of the Glasgow Bank — now known as the Union Bank of Scotland — which was just then being started at the instigation of his friend James Denniston. Though not officially connected with it, we are told, he was a chief promoter of the generous and prudent administration by which the bank was enabled to hold its ground in times of commercial depression, and to make rapid progress during the competition incident to prosperity ; by which, too, ' many merchants and manufac- turers, struggling in early life, but obtaining credit there- from, have ultimately amassed vast fortunes, besides estab- lishing their name and their fame, not only in their own city, but also in the most distant parts of the world.'* In another and perhaps a yet more commendable banking enterprise Ewing also interested himself. On the 19th of June, 1815, was opened a Provident or Savings Bank, the first of its kind in all Scotland, * for the benefit of the lower orders of the community. 't Archibald Smith, of Jordanhill, was its first governor, James Ewing its deputy-governor. All who were not able to invest in larger undertakings were here invited to deposit their savings, from a shilling upwards. In the first year a hundred and fifty-seven accounts were opened and l,Gub?. lo's. were received, and in every later year its operations were widely extended. Other kindred banks, all of them due to this successful one which Ewing was influ- ential in establishing, were founded, and just fifty years after the commencement of the movement the united savings banke * Chwc/mv Itam'niscotcefi, p. <i. t Ib.'d., \). 7 ; Clkj.and, Annuls of CliKijoir. VOL. II. '/■ 330 James Eiving of Glasgow. of Glasgow contained upwards of 1,000,000/., deposited by more than thirty thousand members of the working and smaller trading classes.* In 1815, moreover, Ewing was elected Dean of Guild by the Merchants' House of Glasgow. The Merchants' House, established in 1605, for the encouragement of commerce and the protection of merchants, had lately lost some of its old dignity and influence. It still formed an integral part of the civic constitution of Glasgow ; but the younger Chamber of Commerce, instituted by Patrick Colquhoun, afforded better means, where these were needed, for the encouragement and guidance of Glasgow trade, and another important intention of the founders of the House had been almost forgotten. Ewing set himself to revive it. " The primary object of the Merchants' House," he said, " was charity to its reduced members and their families." For more than two centuries 'mortifications,' as they were called in Scottish phraseology, had been accumulating, and too often allowed to accumulate, without any adequate fulfil- ment of the donors' wishes. Large sums were set apart for the support of various classes of poor persons ; others were designed for the training, and advancement in the several branches of trade, of orphans and the children of poor parents; others, again, were intended to aid the sons of burgesses and others in acquiring a good university education. But none of these charities were efficiently distributed. Anticipating the time when he himself was to surpass all previous donors in beneficence, Ewing did his utmost to improve the existing administration of the Merchants' House, and in this he very notably succeeded. He also, both by direct argument and by that strongest of all arguments that comes from a good man's silent example, so quickened public interest in the Merchants' House that it attained a prosperity never equalled in any previous stage of its history. All the registered members of the institution * Mackay. i'. 32. Mis Philanthropic Work in the Town. 331 between 1604 and 1815 amounted only to six hundred and one. In the first year of Ewing's tenure of office the list was augmented by two hundred and twelve new members, and a hundred and fifty more were subsequently added. Every merchant and tradesman of repute in Glasgow, under Ewing's influence, sought a place in the House. It was reasonably said at the time that ' no Dean of Guild ever performed his duties to that House with more industry and fidelity than Mr. James Ewing.'* There was striking evidence of the zeal with which he applied himself to his duties in the fact that the merchant turned historian, and, in 1817, published a full and very interesting account of the progress of the Merchants' House from its foundation to the year 1816. By the members of the institution he was publicly thanked for ' the ability and research with which he had prepared this accurate, luminous, and valuable record. 'f The busy merchant was concerned in nearly every other measure for the advancement of Glasgow. In commercial and social, philanthropic and religious movements alike, he took the lead. In 1816 he was chosen Convener of the Committee of the City Council for regulating the High School of Glasgow, and in that capacity he procured the establishment of a new department of the school, wherein, while the old classical schemes of education were left intact, provision was made for the suitable training of lads intended for commercial life.} In 1817 he was elected President of the Andersonian University, an institution designed for the literary and scientific instruction of residents of Glasgow who were unable to attend the classes of the older and more legitimate University. § In the same year he was also chairman of the Glasgow Marine Society, a director of the Glasgow Auxiliary Bible Society, a director of the Magdalen Hospital, and a director of the Glasgow Lunatic Asylum. * Mackay, pp. 2G, 27, 112, 123, 124. t Ibid, p. 28. X Glasgow Reminiscences, p. 10. § Mackay, p. 35. 332 James Ewing of Glasgow. These multifarious employments, however, were not allowed to interfere with E wing's mercantile engagements. At this time he and his friend Finlay were leaders in the foreign trade of Glasgow. They worked together in attack- ing, with wonderful perseverance and force of argument, the East India Company's monopoly, Finlay using his influence especially as a member of Parliament and in Lon- don, Ewing working in Glasgow and with his pen. Several pamphlets, wise and weighty, were published by him on the subject. " The spirit of monopoly," he said, in one issued in 1818, "may now be considered as subdued. The eyes of the country are awakened to its pernicious influence. The sentiments of the legislature are expressed as to its erroneous principle. Its partial continuance has been tolerated only on the ground of alleged necessity ; and if the commercial privileges still retained by the East India Company should survive the duration of their new charter, there can scarcely exist a doubt as to their subsequent dissolution. Other prospects yet remain. In a national point of view, the in- crease of the shipping will add to our maritime strength, and the extension of trade will augment our financial resources. To those who carry their ideas beyond either mercantile success or public prosperity, the free intercourse presents the gratifying hope of the mental, the moral, and the political improvement of the natives of India."* Thus, even when seeking to weaken the power of the East India Company in the interests of commerce, Ewing also kept in view, perhaps was chiefly influenced by, the prospect of a social and religious reformation, to be aided by the closer connection that would be brought about by the increased trade. His efforts, joined with like efforts made by the leading merchants of other towns, were successful, and his anticipations of the good to result therefrom have, in most respects, been fairly realized. In overthrowing another sort of monopoly James Ewing also took the lead in this year, 1818. Deeming that all * Glasgow lieminisceiices, p. 11. His Arguments for Free Trade and Religious Freedom. 333 subjects of the British crown had a right to share alike in all municipal and political privileges, he strenuously advocated the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts ; and, that being the part of the general scheme of restriction which was most obnoxious to the people of Glasgow, he attacked with special vigour the burgess oath appointed by law to the Scottish towns. By the civil authorities of Glasgow he was appointed chairman of a committee whose business was to investigate the whole question, to correspond with all the other Scottish burghs, and to unite them in a determined opposition to the obnoxious oath. " It is due to the ages that are gone," said Ewing, in the report which he drew up on behalf of this committee, "neither to treat their institu- tions with irreverence nor to pass them over in neglect But with every sense of the wisdom and zeal and prudence of our ancestors, it is incumbent upon us to exercise our own judgment, as they would themselves have done had they lived in the same era, and been placed in the same circum- stances. Statutes and customs vary their character and lose their utility with the changes of times and manners, and the period has surely arrived when we may apply the hand of reform without the reproach of innovation." The hand of reform was applied, and, by the inhabitants of nearly every royal burgh in Scotland, Ewing was publicly thanked for his share in the removal of the oath.* For his share in another kind of reform Ewing deserved yet heartier thanks. Between 1819 and 1822 he was chair- man of a committee appointed to consider the state of prison management in Glasgow, and to secure its improve- ment. " The present Bridewell," he said, in shaping this committee's first report, in September, 1819, "has become altogether inadequate. It was erected in 1799, since which period the state of society has undergone a material altera- tion, as to the increase both of population and of crime. There are only a hundred and five cells for the reception * Mackay, pp. 41-44; Glasgow Reminiscences, pp. 11-13. 334 James Ewing of Glasgow. of two hundred and ten prisoners. Solitary confinement has thus become impracticable, and the great object of a penitentiary has been rendered abortive. It is impossible to prevent the association of early vice with hardened depravity, and the institution, instead of being- a school of reform, has thus been too often converted into a seminary of corruption. The wretches who enter its walls come out only to return to criminal habits, or to receive a final, awful, and ignominious doom. Therefore, a new Bridewell must be established, in which every chance of amendment will be afforded, and, by attention to industry, instruction, and morals, the victims of error may be reclaimed from the paths of ruin." On these representations it was agreed that the sanction of Parliament should be sought for the building of a new prison at a cost of 30,000?., two- thirds being furnished by the county of Lanark, one-third by the city of Glasgow. The matter was under discussion for more than three years, and Ewing proceeded several times in the course of them to London, there not only to make interest with the Government and Parliament, but also to study the various systems of prison arrangement and decide upon the best. The result was the new County and City Bridewell, begun in 1822, and still considered the most perfect prison in the kingdom.* ' The Howard of Glasgow,' as Ewing was called, was not satisfied with that. Anxious to have criminals treated in the wisest way, he was yet more careful of the honest poor. " No subject," as he said himself, " is more delicate in its nature, or more difficult in its practice, than the best mode of providing for the poor. That the miserable ought to be relieved and the destitute supported, that those who are dibilitated by age, disabled by disease, or reduced by mis- fortune, should be assisted or sustained, is inculcated at once by religion, humanity, and expedience. But to aid indigence and suffering without encouraging indolence and * Glasgow lleminiscences, pp. 19-21. His Care of Prisoners and the Honest Poor. 335 vice, to consult the sentiments of benevolence without encroaching on the dictates of policy, to maintain the un- employed population without interfering with industry and conferring a bounty on redundant increase, and, by dis- criminating between the causes of poverty, to administer the remedy not only to the extent but to the sources of the disease, is the most perplexing problem that can occur in civil or political institutions."* Ewing sought to solve the problem by close personal intercourse with the poor of Glasgow and by careful consultation with the foremost phi- lanthropists of the district. As chairman of a committee of magistrates, he was especially concerned in the improvement of the Town's Hospital,f and during many years he was an energetic associate of Doctor Chalmers in all sorts of measures for improving the condition of the poor, and wisely directing the charities instituted on their behalf. Full of care for the living, he was mindful also of the respect due to the dead. At his instigation, and after deli- berations in which he was from first to last the chief mover, the Merchants' House set apart an ancient property, known as the Fir Park, very near to the Cathedral, as a place of burial for the citizens of Glasgow.}: The little cemetery, now called the Glasgow Necropolis, has hardly an equal in Europe. In its most conspicuous part is a statue of John Knox. Ewing was one of the principal subscribers to it, and at the laying of its foundation-stone, on the 22nd of September, 1825, he made a speech marked by the good sense that was common to all his utterances, and that lost none of its goodness from the occasional grandiloquence with which it was expressed. Therein he showed why, as a merchant, it behoved him to honour the memory of Knox and the other reformers. " It was at the Reformation," he said, " that light dawned on the human intellect, and dispelled the shades of bigotry and superstition. It was the Reformation, accom- * Glasgow Reminiscences, p. 23. f Ibid., p. 22. J Ibid., p. 27. 33G James Ewing of Glasgow. panicd by the discovery of printing and the revival of letters, which unlocked the boundless stores of science and philo- sophy. It is to the Reformation we arc indebted for the right of private judgment, and that free and happy constitu- tion which is the best birthright, the noblest inheritance of Britons. It is the Reformation we have to thank for the wealth of the nation, which had previously been drained by the rapacity of a foreign priesthood. It is to the Reforma- tion we must trace the sources of our commercial prosperity ; for it was in Britain the arts found an asylam when expelled from other lands by the horrors of persecution. In place of convents, we now behold manufactories. In place of disso- lute and ignorant monks, we behold a virtuous and enlight- ened clergy. In place of idle mendicants dependent on monasteries, we behold industrious artizans who would scorn subsistence but from their own labour."* James Ewing made another famous speech two years later, on the 18th of December, 1827, in the presence of Henry Monteith, then Lord Provost of Glasgow, and a great crowd of merchants and citizens, when he laid the foundation-stone of the Royal Exchange. In its construc- tion, as in everything else affecting the welfare of Glasgow, he was a zealous mover from first to last, and he was the largest subscriber to the sum of 60,000Z. expended in producing one of the stateliest buildings of the kind in the United Kingdom, almost the chief ornament of Glasgow.t The Royal Exchange was opened in 1829. On the 3rd of September, 1833, another notable monument of modern Glasgow commerce, the Jamaica, or Broomielaw, or Glasgow Bridge, known by all three names, was inaugurated. Here, too, the man chosen to lay the foundation-stone was James Ewing.J At that time he was in the enjoyment of the two highest honours that could be conferred upon him by his fellow- * Mack ay, p. GS. f Glasgow Ilcminisccncps, pp. 2G, 27. X Glasgow, Past and Present, vol..i., p. 149. His Services to Glasgow, and their Reward. 337 citizens. He had been proposed for election as Lord Provost of Glasgow in 1820, but had declined the office. In 1832 he was elected again, and with such strong expression of feeling on the part, of those who chose him, that he consented to occupy the post.* In like manner, at the election of members of Parliament, in 1830, though at first disposed to become a candidate for the Glasgow burghs, he had at once withdrawn from the contest on finding that his friend Kirkman Finlay was willing to stand, and with more certainty of success than any other advocate of liberal views. In 1832 there w r ere no personal hindrances to his election, and, after a spirited contest, in which six candidates were engaged, his name was at the head of the poll, James Oswald being his fellow-representative of Glasgow, now for the first time an independent burgh in the reformed Parlia- ment/I" He only held his seat, however, for two years. An honest Whig, he had advocated Parliamentary and municipal reform, and was in favour of abolition of the Corn-laws ; but he was found to be not sufficiently a Radical for the electors of Glasgow, and he was defeated at the election consequent on the dissolution of Parliament and Lord Melbourne's resignation in 18344 He was then nearly sixty years old, and rich enough to retire from city life. Twelve years before that he had made a step in the way of retirement by fixing his residence at Castle House, in Dunoon, on the Firth of Clyde.§ In 1 835 he purchased the estate of Levcnside, henceforth to be known as Strathleven, in Dumbartonshire. There he spent most of his later years in company with the young wife whom he married in 1836, finding health and amusement in the management of his estate. « It was interesting,' says one of his friends, ' to see the activity and zeal of the new proprietor in determining upon the alterations and improve- * Glasgow Jiemim'scevcca, pp. 1G, 31 ; Mack ay, p. 80. t Ibid., pp. 80, 31. t Ibid., ]>. ^. § Mackay, p. 95. 33S James Ewing of Glasgow. mcnts necessary to be made, and in carrying them forward. Had he been brought up from his youth to rural occupations and habits alone, he could not with more practical skill have instructed and conducted personally the changes needed, nor could they have been more speedily effected.'* He succeeded almost as well in farming as in the avocations of the merchant, and he was as generous and helpful to all who were dependent upon him in his new position as he had been to his associates in the trade of Glasgow. Having in his busiest times shown a taste for literary work, he now amused himself with antiquarian researches, and contributed two stout volumes, The Chartulary of the See of Glasgow, to the publications of the Maitland Club. In Glasgow and its affairs he took a lively interest to the last, often going to the city to give counsel to his friends in matters of com- mercial intricacy, or to join in the philanthropic movements that were always dear to his heart. His philanthropy was, to a remarkable extent, free from religious bigotry; but he was all through life a zealous member first of the Presby- terian Church, and then of the Free Church that seceded from it, showing, in his old age, the same spirit that made him an eager leader of family prayer in his boyhood. He died in Glasgow, on the 29th of November, 1853, seventy-eight years old, and was buried in his favourite Necropolis.! Nine years before that he had made his will, bequeathing to various philanthropic and religious institutions a sum of G9,000Z., besides annuities of a yearly value of 1,060/4 * Mackay, p. 99. t Ibid., p. 131. X To the Dean of Guild and Directors of the Merchants' House he left 1 0.000Z., to be applied in pensions or presents to decayed Glasgow merchants ; 10,0007-. to be given to needy widows and daughters of merchants ; and 10,0007. to be spent in educating and starting in business their sons. He assigned 10,0007. to the Glasgow Infirmary ; 2,0007. each to the Glasgow Asylum for Lunatics, and to the House of Refuge in Glasgow ; and 1,0007 each to the Glasgow Blind Asylum, and to the Glasgow Deaf and Dumb Institution, besides numerous smaller bequests. To the General Assembly of the Free Church of Scotland he left 5,0007., ' to be applied to the educating His Character and his Death. 339 A new generation of merchants had arisen in Glasgow before the death of James Ewing, of Strathleven ; but few, if any, have acquired so large a fortune by exercise of their trade, and none have done so much either for the general well-being or for the commercial advancement of the town. Ewing's name is foremost among the great merchants who have made Glasgow second only to Liverpool as a centre of commerce with the East and the West Indies, America, and Australia, just as the earlier enterprise of men like David Dale and the Monteiths made it a formidable rival of Man- chester in manufacturing energy. and training of young men for the ministry of the Free Church ;' as well as 5.000Z. towards the erection of a Free Church College at Glasgow, 2.000Z. towards a similar building in Edinburgh, and several other benefactions to Free Church institutions. A sum of 4,500Z. was assigned to various missionary societies. — Glasgow Reminiscences, pp. 35, 36. 540 CHAPTER XXVIII. THE GURNEYS OF NORWICH AND LONDON. [1G00-185C] The Gurneys hold a place almost unique in commercial bio- graphy. Nearly all the great merchants of the world have risen from the crowd by their own enterprise, and, beginning in small ways, have made places for themselves as successful traders and men of wealth and influence ; and their sons or grandsons have generally, abandoned the commerce that has helped them to distinction, eager to mix with those of rank and title older than their own, and willing, if they can, to forget by what means they have been enabled to enter the circle of aristocracy. A goodly number of the titled families of England owe their origin to old merchants and shop- keepers, but their modern representatives have nothing to do with trade. In the Gurneys we see the almost solitary instance of an ancient family that in later times has not been ashamed to engage in commerce, and has drawn from it a dignity as great as any that could come from lengthy pedigrees and the traditions of bygone ages. They are descended from a Hugh de Gournay, Lord of Gournay and the adjacent Barony of Le Brai, who in 1054 commanded at the Battle of Mortimer, and in 1000 accom- panied William the Conqueror to England. To him and his successors were made large grants of land in Norfolk, Suffolk, and elsewhere ; and the Gournays were men of mark during" the ensuing centuries. One of his descendants was Edmund Gournay, who held a situation analogous to that of T/ie Elder Gournay s. 341 Recorder of Norwich, in the reign of Edward the Third ; and from that time to this Norwich has always been the residence of some members of the family.* The most notable of his successors, as far as we are concerned, was a Francis Gournay, or Gurnay, who was born in 1581. He seems to have been a native of Great Ellingham, in Norfolk, where his father went to reside in 1571, and he married the daughter of a Norwich merchant ; but the greater part of his life was spent in London. In 16*00 he was made a member of the Guild of Merchant Tailors, and for some years he lived in Broad Street ward, in the parish of Saint Benet Finck, workino- as a merchant and sort of banker. f * Gurney, The Records of the House of Gournay (Loudon, privately printed, 184S, 1858), p. 507. t Ibid., p;». 503, 524, 529, 532a, 532b, 880. The following table shows the descent from Francis Gournay of those members of the family whose history most coucems us : — Francis Gournay, merchant of London, b. 1581. I /■Vancis Gournay, of Maldon, merchant, b. 1628 I John. Gournay, or Guritty, of Norwich, merchant, 1655—1721. I I John Gurney. of Little Joseph Gorney, of Keswick, Baminghain, 16SS— 17-10. i«>92-1750. Ill II Joii* Jlem-y Jolin Gurney— Mi&belli, d. o( .sanvcl Gurnry, Joseph Gume>/, Gurney, 1716 — 1770 I Uichard Keli U. 1733. ' Gurney U. 17?y. a. 1777. J of Norwich. 1692—1760. 1 I i I BaitlcU Richard Gurney— Joh>t ^CatheritiH, d. Joseph Gurney f Keswick. Gurnti/, of Daniel Gurney, <L 1803. i. Agntlia.0. of 2. Kach 1. d. of ofEailhani, : litll. of David Barclay Osgood Han- 1750 — 1S09. i Lak?n- of Youngs- bu'.v, ot Old bury, Herts. held Grange | Es~ex. Hudson Gurney, Jti- hard of Keswick Ilanlury and London, Gurney, 1775 - 1«G4. 1733 -1352. hum Grove. 1 Jolin Gurney, 1 s'ainuel Guniey, 1 Joseph Jo'.in 1 Daniel Gurney, 1 1 I 1 Elizabeth = Joseph Fry of Kai lliam, if Upton, Ussex, Gurney, of North Runcton, of Ixmdoii. 1*1-!. 1786 — 1856. ITS:) — 1317. Norfolk, b. 1791. Hannah := Sir T. K Buxton. Louisa = Samuel Hoare. Priscil'.a Gurney, and three others. 342 Sir Richard Gurnet/ of London. There was another merchant of his name, and a much more famous man, living in London at the same time, though apparently not of the same family. Sir Richard Gurney was born at Croydon in 1577. He was apprenticed to Mr. Richard Coleby, a silkman in Cheapside, who so liked him that, at his death, he bequeathed to him his shop and a sum of 6,0001. Part of that money he spent in travelling through France and Italy, ' where,' says his old biographer, ' he im- proved himself, and by observing the trade of the respective marts as he passed, laid the foundation of his future traffic' Soon after his return, it is added, 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. He was Sheriff of London in 1634, and Lord Mayor in 1641. He was a great benefactor to the Clothworkers' Company, of which he was a member and warden, and he gave freely to all sorts of City charities. He also, being a sturdy royalist, lent or gave immense sums of money to King Charles the First ; at one time, on his Majesty's return from Scotland, spending 4,OO0Z. in entertaining him. He was one of the great champions of Charles's cause in the City during the early part of the Commonwealth struggle. In 1640, when he was sixty-three years old, it is recorded ' one night, with thirty or forty lights and a few attendants, he rushed sud- denly out of the house on thousands, with the City sword drawn, who immediately retired to their own houses and gave over their design.' This excess of loyalty, however, caused his ruin. In 1642 he was ejected from his mayoralty and lodged in the Tower. There, for refusing to pay the tine of 5,000?. oppointed by Parliament, he was kept a prisoner for seven years, and there he died in 1 649.* His contemporary, Francis Gournay, had his share of trouble. On the 17th of June, 1622, the corporation of Lynn lent to him and two partners of his a sum of 200Z., for * A fragmentary biography cited by Mr. Girnly, pp. 533-535. Francis Gournay of London and Lynn. 343 ' setting the poor to work within the town.' According to the terms of the agreement between them, the money was to be repaid in three years' time, and in the meanwhile Gournay was ' to freely provide, find, and deliver sufficient wool and other material to all those poor people dwelling within the borough who shall come to be set on work in spinning of worsted yarn.' He was also to instruct all the poor children who were sent to him in the spinning of wool ; in fact, he was to do all he could to establish in the town a branch of the woollen manufacture that for some time past had formed the chief business of Norwich and its neighbour- hood. Therein, however, he failed. Good churchmen attri- buted the failure to the circumstance that his factory was a desecrated church. A century before, it seems, the corpora- tion of Lynn had received certain monasteries and ecclesias- tical foundations during the spoliation under Henry the Eighth. One of these, the Church of Saint James, in Lynn, according to Sir Henry Spelman, was * perverted to be a town house for the manufacture of stuffs, laces, and trades- men's commodities, whereby they thought greatly to enrich their corporation and themselves. Great projects and good stocks, with a contribution from some country gentlemen, were raised for this purpose — two several times to my know- ledge. But the success was that it came to nought, and all the money employed about new building and transforming the church hath only increased desolation ; for so it hath stood during the whole time almost of my memory, till they lately attempted, by the undertaking of Mr. Francis Gournay and some artisans from London, to revive the enterprise of their predecessors ; but speeding no better than they did, have now again, with loss of their money and expectation, left it to future ruin.'* Whatever was the cause of it, Francis Gournay's experi- ment failed. He was not able to pay back the money he had borrowed from the corporation ; and he seems to have been * SreXMAX, Hidory and Fate of Sacrilege (London, 1S53), pp. 240, 241 344 The First John Gurney of Norwich, in trouble, by reason of it, to the end of his life. His son, Francis, born in 1G28, was a merchant or shopkeeper at Maldon, in Essex, and apparently a man of not much sub- stance. But the fortunes of the house were revived by old Francis Gournay's grandson, John Gcurney, or Gurney, of Norwich. He was born at Maldon on the 7th of October, 1655, and, as soon as he was old enough, was apprenticed to Daniel Gilman, a cordwainer of Norwich. For a time his business energies were restrained by the bigotry of his fellow- townsmen. Some five-and- twenty years after George Fox's public preaching of the doctrines of the Society of Friends, before 1678, at any rate, John Gurney became a convert to those doctrines. He was one of the fourteen hundred and sixty Quakers imprisoned on account of their religious opinions, and for three years he lay in Norwich Gaol. After that he was released ; but still considerable difficulty arose through his refusal to take the freeman's oath required before he could be allowed to practise as a merchant within the city walls. At last, however, an exception was made in his favour, and for some thirty years or more he was a famous and very thriving merchant in Norwich, living at a house in Saint Gregory's parish. He was chiefly engaged in supply- ing with silk the Palatines and other foreign refugees who settled in Norwich and there carried on their old callings. That brought him into close connection with the great traders of the continent, among others, with the Hopes of Amster- dam, just then entering on their wonderful career of com- mercial prosperity. Like them, he added a sort of banking business to his occupations as a merchant. He was also a manufacturer. A brother of the Sir Thomas Lombe who established the celebrated silk-mill at Derby was a Quaker, and, for a time, a fellow-prisoner of Gurney 's. Gurney after- wards bought of Sir Thomas some property that he possessed in Norwich, and placed thereon a silk-mill, imitated from that set up at Derby. In these ways he soon grew rich, being much aided in his business by his wife, Elizabeth and his Wife Elizabeth. 345 S wanton, whose brothers were merchants of Wells, in Norfolk. It was said, indeed, that Elizabeth Gurney had the greater business abilities of the two, and that she was the real founder of the commercial greatness of the Norwich Gurneys.* Be that as it may, the business prospered mightily, and when John Gurney died, in 1721, he left a goodly fortune and very profitable connections to his sons, John and Joseph, f These sons were partners in the business, prosecuting it with considerable success. John Gurney, the younger, who was born on the 16th of July, 1088, and died on the 23rd of January, 1740, was a famous man in his day. He was an intimate friend of both the Walpoles, and by them urged to * This amusing letter was addressed by her to her husband, wliile he was up in London, in 171G : — " F/or John Gurney, Senr., att Theodore EUleston's, in Croim Court, in Gracechurch Street, London. "Norwich, y« 17 of 3 d mo., 1716. " My Deare, — Tlieise are to acquaint thee that I have drawn a bill on John Ettleston, to William Crowe, or order, for James Paynter. Thou told me he nor his father would want no money, but he have been with me twice for sum, but I had none for him nor nobody else. I never knew sucli a week of trade all the hard weather as I have known this week. I could have had some if Richard How had sent culord and the book muslin and those goods I have sent for ; but when he have served all his customers, so that they have forestalled the market, then 1 shall have the rubbish they leave. I take it very ill that thou tye me to those people, for I am sure we are both sufferers by it. He know right well if there be anything to do, it is at this time of yearc, but I have been served 60 severall years. Branth- wait have not sent me the money, nor Lilly have paid none, nor the country have sent none, nor I have taken scarce any ; so I know not what they will do att John's. What pleasure thou meet withall at London much good may it doe thee ; but I am sure I am in trouble enough. I can hardly tell how to forgive Richard How, to think how he have done by me. My neibour Alice desire thee to buy her 2 hundred of gold, and 2 pound of the best coffee. Pray desire John to think to buy me sum silk gloves of the maker, as I ordered him by my letter. So with deare love to thee and my children, I conclude, *' Thy discontented Wife at present, " Eliz. Gurney. "My daughter Hannah have now sent for me straight. Her child is taken very ill." — G\ :uney, p. 545. f Gurney, pp. 504, 508, 511, 514, 515, 521, 541-543. VOL. II. 2 A 346 T/ie Second John Gurnet/ of Norivich. enter Parliament ; but he preferred to devote himself to his business, and take all his relaxation at home.* In 1720 he was examined before the House of Lords concerning the intended prohibition of Indian calicoes, which had lately come to be freely imported into England. He drew a dismal picture of the evils consequent to the woollen trade from this innovation. Worcester and Gloucester, Bristol and York, he said, were being ruined through the preference that was being shown to cotton over woollen clothing. In York, ' the poverty of the manufacturers was so great that they were obliged to eat unwholesome diet, which had occasioned a distemper among them.' In Norwich, he represented, there was the greatest distress of all. Thousands of workpeople were thrown out of employment ; and the paupers were so numerous, that the poor-rates, on many of the houses, were assessed at twenty-four shillings for every pound of rent These arguments, and the arguments of other monopolists prevailed. A law was made in 1721 'to preserve and en- courage the woollen and silk manufactures,' whereby all cotton clothing was forbidden, with a fine of bl. for each offence upon the wearer, and 207. on the seller ; and John Gurney was henceforth known as ' the famous advocate of the weavers.'! Joseph Gurney, four years younger than his brother, sur- vived him by ten years. In 1747 he was rich enough to buy the Old Hall at Keswick.} His two elder sons, John and Samuel, succeeded him as merchants. They introduced into Norwich the Irish plan of making home-spun yarns, besides employing great numbers of native Irish, and were in their time accounted great benefactors both to the eastern counties of England and to the southern districts of Ireland.§ They sent great quantities of wool to Cork and its neighbourhood, to be there spun by hand, and then brought it back for * Gurney, pp. 551, 555, 571. f Norurich Gazelle, April 20 to May 7, 1720; Anderson, Origin of Com- merce, vol. iii., pp. 227, 228. ; Gukney, pp. 55G, 5G2. § Ibid, pp. 562, 563. The Founders of tlie Norwich Bank. 347 sale to the Norfolk manufacturers. Samuel Gurney left only daughters, and John's three sons, Richard, John, and Joseph, soon retired from the mercantile business to become partners with their cousin, Bartlett Gurney, in the management of the Norwich Bank. This Bank had been founded by John and Henry Gurney, sons of the John Gurney who had defended the woollen monopoly before the House of Lords in 1720. Succeeding their father as merchants, they followed the example of many other wealthy traders, and added an irregular banking busi- ness to their ordinary trade. Finding this a great source of further wealth, they at last devoted themselves exclusively to banking, and to that end converted their old house in Saint Augustine's parish into the original Norwich Bank, in 1770. From them the business descended in 1779 to Bartlett Gur- ney, Henry Gurney 's son, and by him it was transferred to its present quarters, and enlarged by the admission of other partners, the principal being the three cousins already named, and they, after Bartlett Gurney's death in 1802, were its chief proprietors and managers. Of the three, John Gurney, born in 1750, was perhaps the most remarkable* Himself a good and useful man, he was the father of a famous family. One of his seven daughters was Elizabeth Fry, another married Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton. Of his four sons the most notable were Joseph John Gurney the philanthropist, and Samuel Gurney the millionaire. Samuel, the one whose history most concerns us, was born at Earlham, near Norwich, on the 18th of October, 178G. * His elder brother, Richard, was also a man of mark. Inheriting Keswick and the greater part of his father's fortune, he soon retired from business. His first wife was the daughter of David Barclay, the great banker and brewer, and to his eldest son, Hudson Gurney, descended a share in Barclay's Brewery, whence he derived great wealth. Hudson Gurney was a man of very great ability and very varied acquirements. He was for many years Member of Parliament. He died in 1864, having been for half a century the head of the Gurney family. 34S Samuel Gurney of London. He was John Gurncy's second son and ninth child. At the age of seven he was put to school with the Reverend John Henry Brown, a pupil of the celebrated Doctor Parr, and at fourteen lie was apprenticed to the Clothworkers' Company in London, and placed in the counting-house, in Saint Mildred's Court, Poultry, in which his brother-in-law, Joseph Fry, who was also a partner in the bank of Frys and Chapman, carried on an extensive trade as a tea-merchant. * He took to busi- ness and liked it,' according to the report of his niece, whose first remembrances of him were as an inmate in the Saint Mildred's Court household. ' In the counting-house as well as in domestic life he was extremely 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 appearance, beyond a suitable neatness of attire.'* From the very first, indeed, he seems to have been so thoroughly a man, or rather a boy, of business, as to have cared for no lighter occupations. In 1807, when his sister Hannah married Thomas Fowell Buxton, he went down to the wedding, but, it is recorded, was tired of the festivities long before they were over, and glad to get back to his book- keeping and nioney-changing.t 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, * Mrs. Geldakt, Memorials of Samuel Gurney (London, 1S57), pp. 9,13. t Ibid., p. 16. % Ibid. The House of Richardson, Over end, and Company. 349 growing out of a yet earlier connection between Joseph Smith, a wool factor in Loudon, of the firm of Smith and 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 ac- quainted 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 establish- ment 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 Norwich Gurneys, however, more favourable to his project, and about the year 1800 the house of Richardson, Overend, and Company was founded, the management being divided between him and John Overend, formerly chief clerk in the bank of Smith, Payne, and Company. Simon Martin, an old clerk in the Norwich Bank, went to London to help 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, 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 introducing his son Samuel as a partner. About that time Thomas Richardson retired from the business. It was carried on under the name of Overend and Company, even after John Overend's death, until the -ecret of its connection with the Norwich house 350 The Progress of Banking could no longer be kept, and it assumed its world-famous title of Overend, Gurney, and Company. Its prosperity was in some measure the cause, but in much greater measure the consequence, of the new views on banking and trade in money that were adopted in the early part of the nineteenth century. Banking, which had existed in some other countries for a long time before, came into fashion in England about the middle of the seventeenth century. Of the foundation of the Bank of England, at William Paterson's suggestion, in 1694, we have already seen something. It immediately proved very helpful to British commerce in lowering the rate of interest for borrowed money, strengthening all sorts of financial operations, and in other ways giving encouragement to every branch of trade and industry. The Bank of England, however, was from the first, and is to this day, only a private bank on a large scale, endowed with special privileges on account of its loans to the Government, amounting at its foundation to 1,200,000?., and now to upwards of 11,000,000?. Its first charter offered no obstacle to the establishment of other like institutions, and no law could ever be passed preventing private individuals from following the banker's trade. But in 1709 the governors of the Bank obtained an Act forbid- ding the formation of any banks of issue under more than six proprietors, and so secured for themselves a practical monopoly in joint-stock banking. Their company was allowed to issue paper money to the extent of its loans to the State ; but no paper money not covered by Government securities was allowed, and the quantity issued could not be forced on people against their will. During the eighteenth century a great number of other banks were formed, both in London and in the country. In 1 750 there were in England hardly a dozen bankers out of London ; in 1793 there were more than four hundred. Scotland also, untouched by the law in favour of the Bank of England, had three joint-stock banks, with branches in various parts, besides a great number of private establishments. These banks, grow ing out of the during the Eighteenth Century. 351 commercial prosperity of the country, helped the tide of speculation which, if it might have been fortunate in times of peace, led to terrible failures on the revival of a European war and the disasters consequent thereupon. In 1784 there were in circulation six millions of bank-notes, that is, of the paper vouchers given by bankers for the money deposited with them, which in those days took the place for ordinary trading purposes of the modern cheques. In 1792 the number had risen to nearly eleven millions and a half. Next year war was declared between England and France, and in the panic that ensued at least one-fourth of the English country banks stopped payment, most of the others being grievously shaken. The London banks also suffered con- siderably, the suffering being everywhere attributed in great measure to the restrictive policy of the directors of the Bank of England, who, in spite of the advice of the Government and the prayers of thousands of merchants and manufacturers, sought to strengthen their own position by issuing as little money as they possibly could for the assistance of their neighbours. For this their best excuse was in the fact that their resources had been, and continued to be yet more and more, materially crippled by the immense drains made upon them by Government on account of the expenses of its con- tinental wars. In October, 1795, the directors, brought almost to bankruptcy, informed Pitt that they could not hold out much longer. Other messages followed, and at last, in February, 1797, the Bank was authorised by the Privy Council to refuse cash payment for its notes, or the issue of any coin in sums larger than twenty shillings. In the fol- lowing May an 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 undefined period,' and Sir William Pulteney introduced a bill ' for the erection of a new bank in ease 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 852 The Princijjles of Modern Banking. Restriction Act remained in force for two-and-twenty years, without any serious attempt at overturning the monopoly of the Bank of England. Great advantage sprang from this Restriction Act through its encouragement of sound and enlightened views as to the value of paper money and the nature of credit ; but, while it lasted, it also brought serious mischief by its depreciation of the bank note in value to the extent, at one time, of from 25 to 30 per cent. Almost the greatest of the many great benefits conferred on commerce by Sir Robert Peel was his Act of 1819, abolishing the restrictions on gold and silver currency and the forced issue of paper money. The di- rectors of the Bank of England were still allowed to issue as many notes as they chose, but they were compelled to exchange them for gold on demand, and thus were virtually prohibited from giving out more than the public felt it safe to take at the full price of their equivalent in bullion. This was a national avowal of the principle that money, that is, the circulating medium, is not gold and silver alone, but gold, silver, paper, and anything else which can be regarded as a trustworthy agent in the interchange of commodities, and the bartering of capital, labour, and the like. This was the principle which gave vitality to such concerns as the one of which Samuel Gurney was for a long time the head, and which, not a little through his help, has been great source of extension to modern commerce. " Credit," said Daniel Webster, " has done more a thousand times to enrich nations than all the mines of all the world." 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 stores of these metals, to continue a very small portion of our present trade. This, however, no one now attempts to do. The legal currency, whether gold, silver, or bank-notes, is only a sort of pocket-money in com- parison 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 has not in his Currency and Credit. 353 possession all through his lifetime actual money equal in amount to the paper equivalent of money that passes through his hands every day of the week. All his important husiness 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 re- ceiving 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 profitable way he chose. Now, however, the cheques are in com- paratively few cases exchanged for real money, they being piled up by the bankers, into whose hands they come, and paired off one with another, or in heaps together, while the deposits that they represent are 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 every- thing 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 example, buy l,0007.'s worth of goods for export, say to India, China, or Australia. lie pays for the same by means of a bill of exchange, ac- cepted 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 immediately gets the bill dis- counted, thereby losing some 15Z. or 20L, but having the sum of VSCl. or tiSol. 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, 354 Samuel Gurney of London. has turned his 1,000?. into 20,000*., less the 300/. or 400/. that have been deducted by the bill-broker as discount. And the same orginal transaction has been made the ground- work of a number of other transactions on the part of the merchant who bought the goods. He bought them for 1,000/., to sell again for say 1,200/., 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, and Company. This house, as we saw, was established to make a separate busi- ness of bill-discounting, much more complete and extensive than the chance trade in bills that had formerly 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 His Services to Commerce. 355 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 stability of his business, Samuel Gurney easily persuaded 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 obtaining with it as much extra profit as the fluctuations of the money market and the increasing needs of trade made possible. He became, in fact, a new sort of mer- chant, buying credit — that is, borrowing money — on the one hand, 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 com- mercial influence from the panic of 1825. That panic arose partly from the financial disorganization consequent on the enforcement of Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1819, very good in itself but promotive of much trouble until it had brought matters into a healthy condition. Its more immediate cause, however, was the excessive speculation in joint-stock com- panies at home as well as in continental mines, American cotton, and other branches of foreign commerce.* Several * This is an enumeration of the joint-stock companies projected in 1824 and 1825, the great years of joint-stock-company mania : — Capital. 74 Mining Companies £38,370,000 29 Gas ditto 12,077.000 20 Insurance ditto 35,820,000 28 Investment ditto 52,000,000 54 Canal and Railroad ditto .... 44,051,000 G7 Steam ditto 8,555,5(10 11 Trading ditto 10,450,000 2G Building ditto 13,781,000 23 Provision ditto 8,300,000 292 Miscellaneous ditto 148,108,000 G24 £372,173,100 Of these, however, only 245 companies were actually formed, and the actual capital paid up amounted to only £17,G05,G25.— Enc.usii, Complete View of (lie Joint Stock Companies formed during 1824 and 1825 (London, 1827), pp. 29. 31. 356 Samuel Gurncy of London. London banks failed, and at least eighty country banks fell to the ground, the Bank of England itself being only saved by the accidental rinding 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 greatest 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 could no longer command credit or obtain supplies 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 ns 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 remarkable sight to witness him plunge day by day into the vortex of City business and return thence to his own domestic hearth without any trace of a mammon-loving spirit't We can well believe that the honest Quaker was reason- ably 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 ride through their difficulties, and so * Bkathwaite, Memoirs of Joseph John Gurney Norwich, 185-1), vol. i. t Geldakt, pp. 28, 29. His Services to Commerce. 357 bringing to himself much favour and much new custom during the following years. From this time forth lie came to be known as a banker's banker, taking the place, for many, of the Bank of England. Hundreds of private banks fell into the way of 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 higher interest for it than the Lank would have granted. " We do not feel the slightest dependence upon the Bank of England," said one of the number, Mr. Robert Carr Glynn, before the Bank Charter Committee in 1832, " nor do we feel the slightest obligation to it in any way. Samuel Gurney was thus the cause of an injury to the Bank of England for which he was not easily forgiven. And in other ways the old Bank privileges were being assailed during these years. In 1826 an Act was passed sanctioning the establishment of joint-stock banks throughout the country, except in London and within a distance of sixty- five miles thereof. " The present system of law as to banks," said Lord Liverpool, in supporting the measure, " must now be altered in one way or another. It is the most absurd, the most inefficient legislation. It has not one recommendation to stand upon. The present system is one of the fullest liberty as to what is rotten and bad, but of the most com- plete restriction as to all that is good. By it a cobbler, or a cheesemonger, may issue his notes, without any proof of his ability to meet them, and unrestricted by any check what- ever ; while, on the other hand, more than six persons, how- ever respectable, are not permitted to become partners in a bank with whose notes the whole business of the country might be transacted. Altogether the whole svstem is so absurd, both in theory and practice, that it would not appear to deserve the slightest support if it was attentively con- sidered even for a single moment." It would certainly have 358 The Rise of Joint-Stock Banking. been altered long before, but for the influence of the Bank of England directors, eager to have as much of a monopoly as possible in their own hands. This bill, permitting joint- stock banks at a distance, however, was passed in 1826, and a few years later the wonderful discovery was made that joint-stock banks were legal even in London, and had been so from the beginning. James William Gilbart, having begun life as a banker's clerk in 1813 and, after twelve years so spent, having gained fresh experience and influence in Ireland, pointed out that the Act of 1709, while forbid- ding joint-stock banks of issue, offered no obstacle to joint- stock banks of deposit. The consequence was the imme- diate formation of the London and Westminster Bank in 1833. Before that bank was fairiy established, however, Parliament had complied with the demands of the free traders in money and passed a bill intended to give legal countenance to the institutions against which it was found that there was no legal prohibition. Therein it was 'declared and enacted that any body politic or corporate, or society, or company, or partnership, although consisting of more than six persons, might carry on the trade or business of banking in London or within sixty-five miles thereof.' That was a full concession of the grand point at issue. Other matters of dispute arose, and for the first four years of its history the London and Westminster Bank was in constant alterca- tion and litigation. But at last common sense prevailed, and the London and Westminster Bank not only entered itself upon a career of wonderful prosperity, but also became the parent of a number of other joint- stock banks, destined in due time, we may fairly believe, altogether to supersede the older private banks. It was really to atone for that apparent infringement of the Bank's monopoly, though ostensibly, according to the Chancellor of the Exchequer of the day, ' to prevent, as much as possible, fluctuations in the currency, of the nature of those which have, at different times, occasioned hazard to The Bank Charter Act of 1844. 359 the Bank and embarrassment to the country,' that the Bank Charter Act of 1844 was passed. Sir Robert Peel entered heartily into the work, thinking that thus he would complete the financial reform begun by his Act of 1819, and in some of the wealthiest bank directors he had very eloquent and persuasive guides. Part of the new Charter was unquestion- ably beneficial. By it the Bank was separated into two dis- tinct establishments, one solely for issuing bank-notes, the other for transacting ordinary business. The banking de- partment is only a huge joint-stock bank, and deals with the public just in the same way as do the London and West- minster Bank or Coutts's or Child's Bank. The issue de- partment, subsidized by Government, receives all the bullion intended to be held in reserve, and promulgates an exact equivalent for it in bank-notes, issuing also paper money, for which there is no corresponding bullion, to the extent of 14,650,000Z., on the security of Government debts and other securities endorsed by Government. Whether the Bank Charter has on the whole been helpful to the progress of commerce need not here be discussed. It has been, beyond all question, very helpful to the Bank and to the many wealthy men whose wealth has brought them into connection with it. Among these, though as wealthy as any, Samuel Gurney was not reckoned. His house was too much in rivalry with one branch of the Bank of England's business for him to have more connection with it than was necessary. He took no prominent part, therefore, either in favour or in disap- proval of the reconstruction of the Bank Charter in 1844. But he was as zealous as any of the men in office in Thread- needle Street in his opposition to the movement in favour of joint-stock undertakings. It may be that in this he was somewhat influenced by his anticipations of the rivalry that would come through them to the vast business that he had formed. The only rivals that appeared during his lifetime, however, 300 Samuel Gurney of London. were private speculators. Of these, the first was Richard Sanderson, originally a clerk of his own. After learning the mystery of successful money-lending in the house of Overend? Gurney, and Company, Sanderson started in business for himself. He married a daughter of Lord Canterbury's, and became a Member of Parliament, thus advancing his social position, but perhaps damaging his commercial prospects. He failed in 1847 ; soon revived the business in partnership with a Mr. Sandcman, and therein prospered for a few years, to fail again in 1S57. More uniformly successful was an- other and younger bill-broker, a Mr. Alexander, who had for some time been a clerk in the banking-house of Robarts, Curtis, and Company. In 1856, the year of Samuel Gurney 's death, it was estimated that Overend, Gurney, and Company held deposits amounting to 8,000,OO0Z., while Alexander and Company were in possession of documents valued at 4,000,OOOZ., and Sanderson and Sandeman of 3,500,000Z.'s worth of paper ; the wealth of the three houses together being no less than 15,500,000Z* During many years before that, Samuel Gurney had had very little to do with the business, its chief management being then in the hands of Mr. David Barclay Chapman. While he was young and vigorous, Gurney made money- getting his one grand business. 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 enjoyment of his princely fortune and application to various charitable and philanthropic under- takings. Charitable he had been all through his life. 1 Many arc 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 to * Gilbakt, Logic of Banking. f Geldart, p. 43. His Business and his Charities. 361 the public, there were many lesser streams of silent benevo- lence 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 elsewhere, 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 Gurney 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 10,000Z. a year in charities, and one year, it is said, the amount exceeded lG,000if Many are the records of his kindly disposition, shown in little ways and great. ' One afternoon,' says one of his clerks, 'as Mr. Gurney was leaving Lombard Street, I saw bim taking 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 Leadenhall Market?" I replied in the affirmative. "Then go there and order thyself a right down good turkey, and put it down to my account." 'J A more important instance of his generosity is in the cir- cumstance that when, on one occasion, a forgery had been committed to the injury of his Lombard Street house, and the culprit lay in prison with clear proof of guilt, Gurney * Geldart, p. SI. f Essex Standard, July 2, 18. r >fi. X Geldaut, p. 82. VOL. II. K 382 Samuel Gurncy of London. refused to prosecute him, and so obtained 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 occupied 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 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 public 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. He also took a lively interest in all plans for improving and increasing refuges and reformatories. He was for many years, after the death of William Allen, treasurer to the British and Foreign School Society ; and to other like insti- tutions he was always a good friend. Visiting Ireland in 1849, he astonished the inhabitants 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 * Geldart, p. 37. t From a Jotter of M. Bunscn's, cited by Mrs. Gelbart, pp. 40, 41. His Charitable Disposition. 303 one of his letters, "and all the stock furniture is to be sold oft' this week, when the poor will have to lie on straw, and the guardians must feed them as well as they can." He bought up the whole of the furniture for 200/., in order that, being his property, it might be saved from the creditors.* In 1848 Gurney gave 1,000/. to the government of Liberia, and he always took great interest 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 1852 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 distress ' his good friend Qurney.'f 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 England, he answered thus : — " It is a little mortifying that Macaulay should so have held up our honourable pre- decessors ; 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 eccen- tricities, 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 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 impos- sible 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 unchangeable, and remains the * Gelbart, pp. 75, 8-i, So. t Ibid., p. 97. 364 Samuel Gurney of London. same, however feeble, or even faulty, its supporters may have been and are."* That letter was written from Nice, whither Samuel Gurney had gone very soon 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 kindred. He reached Paris, but could go no further. There he died, on the 5th of June, 1856, seventy years of age, and one of the richest and most envied men in Europe. The commercial establishment which he had brought to a position of unexampled wealth and influence, after passing into other and less competent hands, was reorganized as a joint-stock company, under the Limited Liability Act, in August, 1865, and failed on the 10th of May, 1866.f * Geldart, p. 119. f Here let me supply omissions in previous pages by stating that I have derived some information concerning Bank history from Mr. H. D. Mac- Leod's Tlieory and Practice of Banlting ; and have been to a small extent helped in my personal account of Samuel Gurney by Mr. Martin's Stories of Banks and Banlcers. 365 CHAPTER XXIX. RICHARD COBDEN AND THE COMMERCE OF THE PRESENT. [1804-1865.] Far above all other names stands that of Richard Cobden, as representative of the principles by means of which English commerce has reached its present vast proportions. He was hardly a merchant himself during the most notable years of his life, and commerce never brought him a thousandth part of the wealth with which it has enriched many of its systematic votaries ; but no other man of the nineteenth century has done as much for the mercantile and manu- facturing advancement of the nation, and no one in any century has done better service to the world in widening the channels of trade, and in guiding it so as to confer most benefits on all classes of the people. " It is many years," said Lord Palmerston, in the House of Commons, on the 3rd of April, 1865, the day after Cobden's death — "it is many years since Adam Smith elaborately and conclusively, as far as argument could go, advocated, as the fundamental principle of the wealth of nations, the freedom of industry, and the unrestricted exchange of the objects and results of industry. These doctrines were inculcated by learned men, by Dugald Stewart, and others, and were taken up in process of time by leading statesmen, such as Huskisson, and those who agreed with him. But the barriers which long-associated prejudice — honest and conscientious pre- 3CG Richard Cobden s Ancestors. judice — had raised against the practical application of these doctrines for a great number of years, prevented their coming into use as instruments of progress to the country. To Mr. Cobden it was reserved, by his untiring industry, his indefatigable personal activity, the indomitable energy of his mind, and by that forcible Demosthenic eloquence with which he treated all subjects he took in hand — I say it was reserved for Mr. Cobden, by exertions which were never surpassed, to carry into practical application those abstract principles, with the truth of which he was so deeply impressed, and which at last gained the acceptance of all reasonable men in the country."* And that was only the most notable of the many services which the good man did for his country. He was born at Dunford farmhouse, near Midhurst, in Sussex, on the 3rd of June, 1804. In Midhurst and its neighbourhood his ancestors and namesakes had lived and worked for many previous centuries. A Thomas Cobden was Member of Parliament for Chichester in 1313. | In 1562 died a William Cobden, possessed of lands in West Dean, and part owner of the Hospital of Arundel.J In 1588 another Thomas Cobden contributed a sum of 257. towards the extraordinary loan set on foot for the defence of the country against the Spanish Armada, John Shelley, of Michelgrove, the father of the first baronet of that name, being a subscriber to the amount of 40Z.§ A little later, in 1G29, another Cobden was fined for his refusal to attend the coronation of Charles the First, and there be knighted — that is, pay the exorbitant fees then claimed in return for a knighthood — seeing that he was owner of lands worth 40Z. a year ; and in 1734, as owner of that same property, a William Cobden voted at a county election, a Richard * Times, April 4, 1865. f British Quarterly Review, January, 18GG, p. 3. X Sussex Archaeological Collections, vol. xvi., p. 51. § Times, April 2G.18G5. His Early Occupations. 307 Cobden voting at the same election, as possessor of a free- hold at Midhurst.* That Richard Cobden was the errand- father or great-grandfather of the Richard Cobden of our own times. But Cobden did not care about pedigrees, and valued himself only for what could be done by his own quick wit and steady perseverance. His father farmed his own little piece of land, and it was intended that he should follow in his steps. But the father died while Richard was still a lad, and, therefore, after some respectable training, first at Midhurst Grammar School, and afterwards, for three years, at a private school in Yorkshire, he was taken as a clerk into the office of one of his uncles, a well-to-do warehouseman in Eastcheap.f He was then sixteen years old, and zealous in his efforts to supplement the learning he had gained at school by all the evening reading and study that he could compass. * The knowledge derivable from books,' says the friend who relates the circumstance, ' was regarded at that time as wholly out of place in a youth bound to follow business and nothing else. There might be nothing actually wrong in his skimming through a novel once in a way ; and of course it was all right to read a chapter or a psalm on a Sunday night before going to bed. But as for study of any kind, or the collecting of information, even about trade, from books, pamphlets, or newspapers, the thing was deemed an absurdity or an affectation ; and when the beardless youth betrayed leanings that way, he incurred at first pity for his want of sense, and then reproof for his obdurate wilfulness in thus misusing his time. Luckily for himself, and for the world, however, he still went his way, working hard and well by daylight and by dusk, and never neglecting the business of his relative till the doors of the warehouse closed. But when his companions had betaken themselves to the amuse- ments befitting their time of life, or were glad to enjoy an early sleep, he loved to occupy himself with such books of * Times, April 27, 18G5. t British Quarterly Ileview, pp. 4, 5. .SOS Richard Cobdcn as a Bagman. travel, biography, and history as his limited opportunities enabled him to obtain ; and very early his mind became attracted by the study of those branches of knowledge which furnish the materials of industrial philosophy.'* He soon left his uncle's warehouse, to take a similar position, though one perhaps in which he was more able to follow his studious inclinations, at a house in Watling Street. There, after a while, he was requested, during the illness of one of the commercial travellers, to perform his duties ; and therein he succeeded so well that he obtained permanent employment as a bagman.f He carried his studies with him. One of his proposals, made half in earnest and half in mockery of the dispositions of most of his associates on ' the road,' was that they should join him in founding a Smithian Society, especially devoted, on the plan of the Linnean and other societies, to the study of political economy and the development and extension of the doctrines of Adam Smith 4 For all that, he was a favourite with his com- panions on account of his genial ways, and a favourite with his employers by reason of the success with which he did all the business intrusted to him. He ceased to be a commercial traveller, and began business on his own account in 1830, when he was only twenty-six years old. In that year he heard of a business near Man- chester, the plant of which was to be sold for 1,5007. Cobden had no money of his own, and no friends save those he had made for himself in the way of business. These, however, were many, and to one of them, a John Lewis, of 101, Oxford Street, in Manchester, he applied for help. It was proposed that Cobden and two of his fellow clerks should provide 5007. a piece. The other two young men agreed to do their shares, and Lewis promised to lend Cobden * British Quarterly Review, pp. 5, G. t Manchester City News, April 8, 18C5. X MGilchrist, Richard Cobden, the Ayostle of Free Trade, His Political Career and Public Services (Loudon, 180'j,, p. 13. His Establishment as a Merchant and Manufacturer. 369 his part of the money. ' Cobden left him in high spirits,' says the friend to whom Lewis afterwards told the story ; 'but soon after he called again, with a long face, to say his colleagues had not been able to raise their 500/. each. After a while, however, he came again, to state that the owner of the business in question, having heard favourably of the trio, agreed to let them have it for Mr. Cobden's 500Z. Would Mr. Lewis still let him have the money ? Mr. Lewis very kindly complied, and the three shortly after began the world together. The 500Z. was speedily repaid ; and, after a very few years, one and then another of the partners drew out of the business with a handsome fortune, and Kichard Cobden came to be what he was.'* Three separate establishments grew out of the enterprise that had that unusual and almost romantic beginning. At Saleden, near Clitheroe, were the Calico Print Works, carried on under the name of Sheriff, Foster, and Company ; and the goods there manufactured were sold by Sheriff, Gillet, and Company in London, and by Iiichard Cobden and Company in Manchester, the warehouses of the latter branch being in Moseley Street. Cobden, however, was the life and soul of all three concerns. ' The custom of the calico trade at that period, we are told, was to print a few designs, and watch cautiously and carefully those which were most acceptable to the public, when large quantities of those which seemed to be preferred were printed off and offered to the retail dealers. Mr. Cobden introduced a new mode of business. Possessed of great taste, of excellent tact, and remarkable knowledge of the trade in all its details, he and his partners did not follow the cautious and slow policy of their predecessors, but fixing themselves upon the best designs they had these printed off at once, and pushed the sale energetically throughout the country. Those pieces which failed to take in the home market were at once shipped to other countries, and the consequence was that the * Manchester Courier, April 10, 18G.J. 370 Richard Cobden in Manchester. associated firms became very prosperous.' The ' Cobden prints ' grew famous, and within four years of the Moseley Street warehouse being opened, Cobden's share of the profits was supposed to amount to 9,000Z. a year.* Had he chosen to be a merchant and manufacturer, and nothing' more, he would doubtless soon have become as rich a man as could be found in Manchester ; but from the first he set before him worthier objects of pursuit than wealth. During the first few years of his residence in Manchester, the years of angry battling and loud congratulation on account of the Reform Bill, he took no public part in political affairs. In the subsequent agitation for the in- corporation of Manchester, however, he was largely con- cerned. In 1834 he wrote a series of anonymous letters to the Manchester Times, then edited by Archibald Prentice, boldly exposing and denouncing the jobbery of the existing borough government, and zealously advocating municipal reform.f The agitation lasted four years, and, as it advanced, gained more and more of its strength from Richard Cobden's influence. When it was ended in 1838 by the granting of the coveted charter, and the appointment of Sir Thomas Potter as the first Mayor, Cobden was applauded as *a gentleman who, although he has not been so long before the eyes of the community, has, by the soundness of his judg- ment, his admirable capacity for business, his energy, his perseverance, and his conciliatory manners, placed himself high in the estimation of his fellow-townsmen.'f Much more memorable was the agitation for repeal of the Corn Laws, begun in Manchester long before the battle for municipal reform, but only attracting general attention after that was over. Its history is, in its essential parts, but a chapter in the life of Richard Cobden. The Anti-Corn- Law League was formally established in March, 1839. In 1835 Cobden had begun to work in the business by writing * Manchester City News, April 8, 18G5. f Manchester Times, December 22, 1838. His Share in the Anti-Corn-Laiv Agitation. 371 another series of anonymous letters in the Manchester Times. " They contained no internal evidence," said the editor of the paper, " to guide me in guessing as to who might be the writer, and I concluded that there was some new man amongst us, who, if he held a station that would enable him to take a part in public affairs, would exert a widely beneficial influence amongst us."* A few months later Prentice was introduced to his unknown correspondent. "I found," he said, " a man who could enlighten by his know- ledge, counsel by his prudence, and conciliate by his temper and manners, and who, if he found his way into the House of Commons, would secure its respectful attention ; but I had been an actor amongst men who, from 1812 to 1832, had fought in the rough battle for Parliamentary Reform, and I missed, in the unassuming gentleman before me, not the energy, but the apparent hardihood and dash which I had believed to be requisites to the success of a popular leader/'f Very soon Cobden proved that he had every necessary of leadership that was possessed by the older reformers, with vastly greater powers and materials of success. In June and July of 1835 he was travelling in the United States and Canada, going thither only to extend his calico business, but coming home to propound views that im- mediately attracted the attention, and long afterwards gained the adhesion, of the foremost thinkers and workers in the country. His famous pamphlet, really a portly book, entitled England, Ireland, and America, ' by a Manchester Manufacturer,' was published early in 1836. In it— while there were threatenings of European war, in which England was likely to aid the Ottoman power in opposition to Kussia — he eloquently propounded the doctrine of non-intervention, urging the prior claims of civilization, commerce, and domestic freedom upon the energies of English statesmen, * Pi:entice, History of the Anti-Corn-Law Lco<jue, vol. i., p. 4G. f Ibid., vol i., p. 47. 372 Richard Cobden and the Anti- Corn-Law League. and the sympathies of English taxpayers. He pointed to the prosperity of America as evidence of the soundness of his arguments. He pointed to the miseries of Ireland as evidence of the folly and wickedness of the policy that had long been dominant in the country, and that had had most fatal effect in the wretched warfare following the French Revolution. "Our efforts," he declared, "have been directed towards the assistance of States for whose welfare we are not responsible, whilst our oppression and neglect have fallen upon a people over whom we arc endowed with the power and accountable privileges of government. Does not the question of Ireland, in every point of view, offer the strongest possible argument against the national policy of this country, for the time during which we have wasted our energies aud squandered our wealth upon all the nations of the Continent, whilst a part of our own empire, which, more than all the rest of Europe, has needed our attention, remains to this hour an appalling monument of our neglect and misgovern- ment?" The story of the Anti-Corn-Law League need not here be detailed. Its main outlines are well known, and best known of all is the wonderful vigour with which Cobden advocated its principles, and, after seven years of persistent fighting, obtained their general adoption. Very characteristic of him was the way in which he brought into the League a young man, who, in 1839, had introduced himself to him with a request that he would go down to Rochdale, and there address a meeting for the encouragement of popular educa- tion. Cobden went, and heard his friend speak — with such effect that he urged him to become a Leaguer at once. The young man was then, however, too much occupied with other and personal matters to enter on any new public business. But he was not allowed to keep out of it for long. A few months after the Rochdale meeting, it is said, ' Mr. Bright was at Leamington, where his wife had just died. Mr. Cobden came to visit him, and found him sunk in grief and The Effects of Cobden s Eloquence. 373 despondency. The great free-trader reminded him that there were at that moment thousands of widows and children starving for want of the bread which was kept from them by the infamous laws against which they had been for some time protesting. "Come with me," exclaimed Cobden, " and we will never rest until we abolish the Corn Laws.' "* In that way Cobden gained his dearest friend and his foremost political coadjutor. In 1841 Cobden entered Parliament as member for Stockport The House was opened on the 24th of August. On the following day Cobden made his first Parliamentary speech on the Corn Laws. ' When the daily papers of the 26th of August reached their destinations throughout the land,' says the historian of the period, * there were medita- tive students, anxious invalids in their sick chambers, watchful philosophers, and a host of sufferers from want, who felt that a new era in the history of England had opened, now that the People's Tale had at last been told in the People's House of Parliament. Such observers as these, and multitudes more, asked of all who could tell them, who this Richard Cobden was, and what he was like ; and the answer was, that he was the member of a calico-printing firm in Manchester ; that it was supposed he would be an opulent man if he prosecuted business as men of business generally do ; but that he gallantly sacrificed the pursuit of his own fortune, and his partners gallantly spared him to the public, for the sake of the great cause of Corn Law Repeal — his experience, his liberal education, and his remarkable powers all indicating him as the fitting leader in the enterprise. It was added that his countenance was grave, his manner simple and earnest, his eloquence plain, ready, and forcible, of a kind eminently suited to his time and his function, and wholly new in the House of Commons. It was at once remarked that he was not treated in the House with the courtesy usually accorded to a new member; and it was * Manchester City News, April 8, 18G5. 374 Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Laiv League. perceived that he did not need such observance. However agreeable it might have been to him, he did not expect it from an assemblage proud of the preponderance of the landed interest within it ; and he could do without it.'* He succeeded, though painfully and slowly, in the object which he had at heart. When the battle was over, and the Corn Laws were finally and totally repealed on the 26th of May, 1846, Sir Robert Peel, either forgetting or rejoicing at the hard words that had been heaped upon him by Cobden and others before his conversion to the doctrines of free trade, paid an honest tribute to its foremost hero. ** The name," he said, " which ought to be, and will be, asso- ciated with the success of these measures, is the name of the man who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has, with untiring energy and by appeals to reason, enforced their necessity with an eloquence the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned — the name which ought to be associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden."f * Martineau, History of Oie Thirty Years' Peace. t This wise and truthful sketch of Cobden's share in the Anti -Corn-Law brittle, and the temper that he showed therein, is from the pen of one of his oldest Manchester friends : ' From the first speech which Mr. Cobden made on free trade in the Chamber of Commerce, in the second month of 1838 — a speech which was one of the ablest he ever made, and which so arrested public attention that it was copied into almost even - newspaper in the kingdom — the labours of the great leader of the movement steadily increased. Whilst all these movements were going on, however, a con- siderable demand upon his time was made to attend the daily meetings of the Council of the League in Newall's Buildings. It was in the council that he showed the preat resources of his mind ; his power to initiate and mature the schemes which were necessary to carry on the agitation with a prospect of success. At first, he was only present a few hours in the day, or sent for only occasionally from his warehouse; but as the movement went on, greater demands were made upon his time, till at length the whole of it, and his utmost energies, were given to his task. The amount of personal correspondence which his labours entailed upon him was some- thing beyond the capacities of most men ; but he usually sat down to it with a freshness of spirit, alacrity, and cheerfulness, from day to day, which never seemed to wane. During the parliamentary scssiun lie and Bright were necessarily absent for long periods, and it was only then that it became The End of the Battle. 375 During these years of agitation, Cobden had devoted himself almost exclusively to public work, and, in consequence, apparent how necessary their presence was in the council as well as in the field. It' was then that little intrigues and cahals were got tip, at the seat of the movement, with most hope of success, with a view to thwarting and placing in a false position those who were necessarily left in charge of the movements of the Lcngue. Men who did not very fully comprehend the entire bearings of the free trade question — men who were but half-hearted in the contest, and men who from time to time lost heart and began to think that a compromise might be made for a fixed duty upon corn — such men, counting upon their wealth or position, came down upon the council with their advice, and sought, by every means they had at command, to induce them to swerve from the path which had been chalked out with patient labour and mature thought as that which ought to be adhered to. Fortunately, the men left in charge of the helm were of sufficient nerve and steadfastness for the occasion : hut they had to fight hard, and were put to much trouble, and incurred a good deal of personal odium with their friends outside, through the misrepresentation and false colouring given to their conduct on such occasions. When Mr. Cobden was there in person, such adversaries and obstructives wrre easily brushed aside. "The total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws " was his motto ; and he was ever armed with such cogent and powerful reasons for this policy, that his arguments soon put doubt and pusillanimity to flight. On one memorable occasion, however, these intrigues were carried to such a length that Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright had to be summoned to the rescue ; and a local meeting was held, at which a victory in favour of the policy of the council was only snatched by a narrow majority. But for this victory, the other great victory which consummated the labours of the League might never have been attained. In the council, while he whs always firm and resolute where a principle was at stake, he was mild and conciliating in hie general bearing towards all opponents. When a resolution was proposed with which he did not concur, he rarely met it by proposing another, but preferred modifying and altering its language so as often to obviate the necessity of taking a vote upon it. His tact was admirable. Perhaps he was seen to most advantage during the days which were to terminate in the gTeat meetings at the Free-trade Hall. On such occasions gentlemen would be continually pouring into the council room from all parts of the country with letters of introduction to the man whose fame had now become almost world-wide in connection with this movement. In his usual easy, gentle and unassuming manner, he soon engaged such visitors in conversa- tion and it was rare, indeed, if they had any information in them which could be made useful, cith-r for argument or illustration, that he did not succeed in drawing it from thorn. I once heard one of those visitors after one of the great meetings, express the surprise it had given him to find how much of Mr Cobden s speech had been made up of informat.on thus 376 Richard Cobden on the Continent. his own business, which, after separating- from his old partners, lie carried on in company with his brothers, suffered considerably. It was with good reason, therefore, that some of his political and private friends, richer than himself, collected a sum of 80.000Z., and presented it to him as a splendid token of their admiration and gratitude, and hence- forth Cobden had little personal connection with trade. With a part of his little fortune, the farm at Midhurst, in which he had passed his earliest years, was purchased, and the old farmhouse was replaced by a much handsomer, though still a modest house. This was Cobden's home for the rest of his life. Often, however, he was travelling. In 1846, immediately after the repeal of the Corn Laws, he went on a lengthened tour on the Continent. In France he had an interview with Louis Philippe, whom he found, as he said, " very civil and communicative " on every subject save free trade. He was complimented and congratulated almost without end, how- ever, by the leading economists and liberal statesmen of France ; and like honours were paid to him in Spain. At Madrid he saw a bull-fight. " So long," he wrote in his note-book, *' as this continues to be the popular sport of high and low, so long will the people be indifferent to human life and have their civil contests marked with displays of cruelty which make other nations shudder." The whole aspect of gleaned in his presence from strangers. He had a great respect for the Society of Friends. The sturdy character of independence they had earned in resisting church rates, and, above all, their steadfastness in the anti- slavery agitation, had won his admiration ; and it was mainly owing to his influence with them that they consented to give up the services of Mr. George Thompson to the League, foreseeing, as he did, that too many agitations in the country at once might militate against the success of all. With the Chartists, of course, he could neither make nor offer terms. They wero led by a man of the class to which Hunt and Sir F. Burdettatone time belonged, who made the agitation they led a stepping-stone to personal notoriety and popular adulation, and there was little or no sympathy between Mich men and disinterested advocates of a principle like Mr. Cobden.' — Manchester City News, April 15, 1SG5. His Further Work in Parliament. 377 affairs was disheartening to him. " The Spaniards of the last two centuries," he complained, " seem literally to have done nothing but glorify themselves for the deeds of their ancestors, or loll in the shades of their olives and vines, and leave to nature the task of feeding and clothing them." During the early months of 1847 he was in Italy. At Rome, the brilliant ovation prepared in his honour afforded him " the most charming proof of the wide-spread sympathy for free-trade principles which he had seen in the course of his travels." At Turin he enjoyed the friendship of Count Cavour, " a young man," as he said, " with a sound, practical head," and helped him in his projects, then slightly formed, and not to take effect for a dozen years to come, for the establishment of constitutional government and agricultural and commercial freedom in Piedmont. Everywhere Cobden was treated with marked respect, and listened to as the rising statesman of England.* He found, on his return home in October, 1847, that, as in the case of other prophets, much less honour awaited him in his own country. Oue honour fell to him. In the elections for a new Par- liament that proceeded during his absence, he was chosen representative both of his old borough of Stockport, and of the West Riding of Yorkshire. He preferred to represent the county constituency, and did so for ten years. The ten years were spent in hard and honest Parliamentary work. He gave important aid to Lord John Russell's government in its application of free-trade principles to the remission of the sugar duties and the reform of the navigation laws. He entered, also, into the question of political reform, advocating extension of the suffrage, triennial Parliaments, and vote by ballot. More zealously, as war-rumours increased, and, at last, actual war was begun in the Crimea, to be followed by the unfortunate China war, he set forth his old doctrines of non- intervention. All the world knows the story of these mea- sures, though the time has not yet come for impartial judg- * British Quarterly Review, pp. 15-18. VOL. II. z ( 378 Richard Cobdms Labours as a Reformer, merit on their character. 'By many whose prejudices he offended in the earnest pursuit of objects that he deemed politically just, he was called a demagogue. They saw the proofs of his popularity, and they measured his self-love by their own ; they felt that the self-made man was able to wield a power which, with all the adventitious aids of birth and wealth and station, they could not gain ; and they could not persuade themselves that the exercise of this power had not created an appetite which must ever yearn and crave. They felt the keen edge of his argumentative eloquence in debate ; and they would not believe that the man who could thus overthrow opponents did not love the encounter and exult in victory. They knew not the man nor the spirit that animated him. There never was any one who had in him less jof the love of ambition or the lust of triumph. He neither feared nor shunned the fight ; and he rejoiced with child-like glee in the success of his cause. But it was the triumph of the cause, not of Cobden, that he fought for.'* He was too modest, generous, and sympathetic to engage in any battle into which he was not driven by his sense of duty, and then it was as a duty, not as a pleasure, that he fought. ' One evening,' says one of his friends, ' as he drove to the House of Commons, to take part in a debate which it was expected would be of the sharpest, his com- panion, who probably looked forward to the coming struggle with somewhat of bellicose enthusiasm, rallied him gently on being what he called dull ; and strove to rekindle his spirit by anticipating the weakness and wayward blundering which their adversaries were certain to betray, and by holding forth the promise of inevitable triumph. He was not, how- ever, to be roused from his dejection. " I know you can enjoy it all," he said, " and perhaps it is best so. But I * British Quarterly Reviev, p. 19. I make no apology for borrowing above and hereafter some sentences from the best account of Cobden's character that has anywhere been published. I believe I am right in supposing it to be from the pen of the gentleman who is preparing a detailed memoir ot the great man. and tJie Spirit in which lie Pursued them. 379 hate having to bear in this way hundreds of well-meaning, wrong-headed people, and to face the look of rage and loathing with which they regard me. I had a thousand times rather not have it to do ; but it must be done."* Cobden was too anxious to do his best in correcting the errors of the well-meaning, wrong-headed people who had supremacy in most things, to be willing to hold his peace. He fearlessly gave utterance to the opinions which seemed to him most just, regardless of the contempt that was heaped upon him in Parliament and throughout the country. But he was much grieved when the general disfavour with which his opposition to the China war was regarded led to his loss of a seat, during more than two years, in the House of Commons. To one of his friends he wrote from Dunford, in 1858, that " he was learning to promote the happiness of pigs, and to give them better food than they had had before ; and he had this encouragement — that they could not make him feel that they were ungrateful/'! He was in Parliament again in J 859, having, while he was absent in America, been chosen member for Rochdale. On his return to England he was offered a seat in the Government just then being organized by Lord Palmerston. This he refused, feeling that he could not consistently hold office under a man whose foreign and domestic policy he had always denounced as wasteful and dangerous ; but he heartily co-operated with the government, and was its absolute leader, in the measure for which it will hereafter be longest remembered and best applauded — the measure, too, which, after the repeal of the Corn Laws, had and will have more effect on English commerce than any other in which Cobden was engaged. This was the realisation of Cobden's long-cherished project for a commercial treaty with France. The subject had often been discussed by the foremost advocates of free trade on both sides of the Channel; but nothing was done till 1859. In that year, * British Quarterly Rtvieic, pp. 20, 21. t Ibifl, p. 22. 3S0 Richard Cobden and the Commercial Treaty with France. Mr. Bright, urging a reduction of armaments, publicly recommended a strengthening of intimacy between England and France by means of a treaty of commerce. That encouraged M. Michel Chevalier to write to Cobden, telling him that if the English Government favoured the scheme, he believed the support of the Emperor Louis Napoleon was certain. Cobden took counsel with Mr. Bright ; they discussed the matter with Mr. Gladstone, and, obtaining his hearty concurrence, obtained also the sanction of Lord Palmerston to the commencement of negotiations by Cobden. Cobden passed the winter of 1860 and 1861 in Paris, advocating the general principles of free-trade, and expounding his views on the special points at issue to statesmen and financiers of all ranks. Many weeks were spent in tedious battlings with prejudices ; but at last, chiefly through the personal influ- ence of the Emperor, all difficulties were overcome, and the terms of a treaty were agreed upon, to receive the ready support of Lord Palmerston's ministry and the tardy and half-hearted approval of the House of Commons. By the Cobden Treaty it was stipulated that for ten years following the 1st of October, 1861, various prohibitions upon British goods were to be removed, and all imports were to be reduced to an ad valorem duty of 30 per cent., to be further reduced to 25 per cent, at the end of three years. On the other hand, England was to abolish all duties on French manufactured goods, and to reduce the imports on French wine and brandy from 5s. lOd. and 15s., respectively, to 3s. and 8s. 2d. a gallon. Important reductions were also to be made in the duties charged in France on English iron, coal, and coke. Already many details of this treaty have been altered, and further alterations must be looked for every year. This was what Cobden looked for and ardently desired. He obtained all the concessions to the doctrine of free trade that were then in his power, confident that every fresh trial of the doctrine would give fresh proof of its wisdom, and in time make it clear that all restrictions upon the trade His Services to the Cause of Free Trade. 381 of one nation with another are objectionable, and to be removed as soon and as entirely as possible. That doctrine had been advanced before. But Cobden gave it fresh im- petus, and his name must ever have honourable place in the history of free trade. He refused the offer of a baronetcy and a place in the privy council that were made to him by Lord Palmerston, anxious that his service to his country and to the whole world should seem as disinterested as it really was, and preferring to have his only reward in the approval of wise, honest, and enlightened men. That he had, and was proud of. " With regard to Mr. Cobden," said Mr. Gladstone, speaking for the Government in which he was Chancellor of the Exchequer, and uttering the thought of thousands, "I cannot help expressing our obligations to him for the labour he has, at no small per- sonal sacrifice, bestowed upon a measure which he, not the least among the apostles of free trade, believes to be one of the most memorable triumphs free trade has ever achieved. Rare is the privilege of any man who, having fourteen years ago rendered to his country one signal and splendid service, now again, within the same brief span of life, decorated neither by rank nor title, bearing no mark to distinguish him from the people whom he loves, has been permitted to perform a great and memorable service to his sovereign and to his country." Other good work Cobden did during the short remainder of his life. He supported Lord Palmerston's Government in its abolition of the paper duty, and of other restrictions upon free trade. On the other hand, he stoutly condemned its increase of expenditure upon fortifications, armaments, and other costly systems of material defence ; maintaining, as he had done for five-and-twenty years, that the true strength of the nation lay in the temper of its people. " There is no question in this House," he said, in a memorable speech in Parliament, delivered on the 30th of June, 1862, "as to defending the country against a foreign enemy. That is not 382 Richard Cobden on the National Defences. the question here, where every man has an equal interest in the safety of the country. But we may take different views, as we are entitled to do, as to the best modes of fortifying and permanently defending the country. Some think we cannot do better than increase our armaments and fortifica- tions, while others may think, with Sir Robert Peel, that you cannot defend every part of your coast and colonies, and that, in attempting to do so, you run a greater risk of danger to the country than you would incur by husband- ing the resources which you are now expending upon arma- ments, so as to have them at call in time of emergency. That is my view. Our wealth, commerce, and manufactures grow out of the skilled labour of men working in metals. There is not one of those men who, in case of our being assailed by a foreign power, would not in three weeks or a fortnight be available with their hard hands and thoughtful brains for the manufacture of instruments of war. That is not an industry that requires you at every step to multiply your armed men. What has given us our Armstrongs, our Whitworths, our Fairbairns ? — The industry of the country in which they are mainly occupied. It has been sometimes made a reproach against me and my friends, the free-traders, that we would leave the country defenceless. I say, if you have multiplied the means of defence — if you can build three times as many steamers in the same time as other countries — to whom do you owe that but to the men who, by contending for the true principles of commerce, have created a demand for the labour of an increased number of artisans in this country ? Go to Plymouth, or to Woolwich, and look at the names of the inventors of the tools for making fire-arms and shot and shell. They bear the names of men in Birmingham, in Manchester, and in Leeds — men nearly all connected, for the last twenty years, with the extension of our commerce, which has thus contributed to the increase of the strength of the country, by calling forth its genius and skill." Thus worthily maintaining to the last that it was by trade, His Last Parliamentary Speech, and Death. 3S3 by free trade, that the country was to be strengthened in time of peace and defended in time of war, Cobden advo- cated all sorts of reforms tending to the best and completest development of English commerce. The last speech delivered by him in the House of Commons was in condemnation of the Government for its jealous opposition to private manu- facturers, and its attempting, especially in ship-building, gun-making, and the like, to do what could be done much better, more cheaply, and with more general satisfaction, by private hands. " I know of nothing," he said, in its conclu- sion, " so calculated some day to produce a democratic revo- lution as for the proud and combative people of this country to find themselves, in this vital matter of their defence, sacrificed through the mismanagement and neglect of the class to whom they have confided the care and future desti- nies of the country. You have brought this upon yourselves by undertaking to be producers and manufacturers. I advise you in future to place yourselves entirely in dependence upon the private manufacturing resources of the country. If you want gunpowder, artillery, small arms, or the hulls of ships- of-war, let it be known that you depend upon the private enterprise of the country, and you will get them. At all events, you will absolve yourselves from the responsibility of undertaking to do things which you are not competent to do, and you will be entitled to say to the British people, ' Our fortunes as a government and a nation are indissolubly united, and we will rise or fall, flourish or fade together, according to the energy, enterprise, and ability of the great body of the manufacturing and industrious community.' ' Those words were spoken on the 22nd of July, 18G4. Richard Cobden died, to the grief of thousands who had scoffed at him while he lived, on the 2nd of April, 1865, sixty-one years old. ' He was by nature, habit, and feeling a man of action, but not in the vulgar sense, which associates energy and ambition with incessant stir and noise. He was neither talkative nor restless, greedy of excitement or afflicted 384 Richard Cobdens Character. with the feverish thirst of fame. The key to his life is to b< found in the earnestness of his sympathy with his kind — witi. their sufferings and struggles, their hopes and fears, their wrongful humiliations and noble aspirings, with all, in short, that, whether for individuals or communities, goes to make up the wear and tear, the trials and triumphs of our nature. He was called an economist, and so he was ; his reason being convinced that the greatest service he could render mankind was to keep them clear of errors in the application of their industry and skill. But it was not for the sake of the theory of rule, or with any mere intellectual pride in vic- torious casuistry, that he inquired, computed, argued, and, when necessary, made costly sacrifices of time and health and fortune. With him the actuating motive was, from first to last, the accomplishment of the greatest possible amount of good to others in his day and generation. He thought habitually through his feelings, and no one ever succeeded in engaging his co-operation or alliance who failed to show him that his efforts, if successful, would alleviate some misery, or vindicate some questioned right, or help to give a better dinner to the working man, or strike down the uplifted arm of violence or oppression. He had the heart of a woman, with the intellect of a man ; and those who knew him best well knew what depths of tenderness for those he loved lay within him, unobserved by the many, and often dark and silent as unopened fountains.'* Richard Cobden was a man too much of our own day, and too closely involved in party questions, for his character to be at present fairly understood and rightly valued. But this, at any rate, is clear and everywhere admitted, that the won- derful prosperity now attained by English commerce is very largely due to his persistent and enlightened advocacy of free-trade doctrines, most notably illustrated by his procure- ment of the Repeal of the Corn Laws, near the commence- ment of his career, and, near its end, by his establishment of * British Quarterly Review, p. I'Z. His /Services to English Common the Commercial Treaty with France, but evident in all his other public measures. With his name ends our list of English merchants. In supplement to the little that has here been said about his jjersonal career, however, something has to be added con- cerning the general condition to which our commerce has been brought in the present day, by the ever-increasing wants of civilization, by the ever-growing enterprise of the merchants and manufacturers who set themselves to gratify those wants, and yet more by the ever-advancing wisdom and influence of the politicians and economists who have sought to facilitate the operations of trade by making it a bond of peace between nations, and a means of general enlightenment. The statistics of 1865 show how vast and varied are the ramifications of English commerce * In that year there were brought into Great Britain and Ireland, for domestic use and for exportation, 2 71, 134,969/. J s worth of goods of all sorts ;f while the value of British and Irish produce and * Most of the figures given in the ensuing pages are drawn from the Board of Trade returns for 18G5. I have also been much aided by a valuable supplement to the Economist of March 10, 18GG, sketching the commercial history of 1865. t This summary will show the relative value of our import trade with the various foreign countries and British possessions, arranged according to the amount of the goods received from them, in 1865 : — 1. British Possessions : — India .... Australia . British North America British West Indies Ceylon. Cape of Good Hope Singapore . British Guiana Mauritius . Hongkong . Channel Islands . Western Africa Bermudas . £37,395,372 10,283,113 6,350,148 5,159,833 3,707,615 2,218,94S 2,1G9,05G 1,707,437 1,246,299 773,008 417.8S8 402,692 259,954 Carried forward £72,091,423 38(J Statistics of English Trade manufactures despatched to various parts of the world, Brought forward £72,091,423 Belize 244,780 Natal . .... 201,293 Gibraltar 149,729 Malta 83,993 St. Helena 47,500 Caffraria 25,244 Falkland Islands .... 21,081 Ascension 18 72,865,067 2. France 31,645,660 3. Egypt 21,773,250 4. United States 21,549,281 5. Russia 17,383,395 6. Germany : — Hanse Towns 8,837,585 Prussia 6,126,205 Schleswig-Holstein . . . 1,015,230 Meckleuburgh 345,402 Hanover 243,024 Oldenburg 44,222 16,611,668 7. Holland 12,451,466 8. China 10,673,960 9. Belgium 7,379,393 10. Brazil 6,797,271 11. Turkey 5,845,753 12. Sweden and Norway 5,654,314 13. Cuba and Porto Rico 5,085,025 14. Spain 5,008,617 15. Peru 4,002,150 16. Chili 3,798,543 17. Mexico 3,216,924 18. Portugal 2,848,731 19. Italy 2,486,903 20. Denmark 2,284,287 21. New Granada 1,574,892 22. Western Africa 1,346,998 23. Uruguay 1,256,000 24. Philippine Islands 1,253,904 25. Austrian Territories 1,160,886 26. Greece 1,071,645 27. Argentine Republic 1,014,600 Carried forward £268,040,043 during the Year 1865. 387 amounted to 105,862,402/.* To effect these transfers, 44,510 vessels, with an aggregate burthen of 12,164,253 Brought forward £268,040,043 2S. Central America 594 245 29 - Ja P au 614,743 30. Foreign West Indies 447,903 31. Morocco 412389 32. Venezuela 221 331 33. Bolivia 151,026 34. Northern Whale Fishery 133,872 35. Eastern Africa 121 667 36. Algeria 90,505 37. Borneo 55,438 38. French Possessions in India 43 633 39. Equador 40,715 40. Islands in the Pacific 26,830 41. Papal Ports 23,921 42. Siam 9,372 43. Tunis 5,492 44. Persia 517 45. Java 226 46. Cape Verd Islands 1 £271,134,969 * Thus detailed :— 1. British Possessions: — India £18,254,570 Australia 13,352,357 British North America . 4,705,079 British West Indies . . 1,945,466 Hong Kong .... 1,561,851 Cape of Good Hope . . 1,454,540 Singapore 1,442,450 Gibraltar 1,116,659 Channel Islands . . . 752,048 British Guiana . . . 740,553 Ceylon 085,308 Malta 633,887 Mauritius 59G.848 Western Africa . . . 403, 3S3 Natal 223,420 Belize 160,445 Bermudas G2.G59 St. Heleua 46,103 Aden 45,595 Carried forward £4S, 183,221 38S Statistics of English Trade tons, entered the British ports during the year ; and in the same period, 12,817,442 tons of goods were exported, in 48,181 vessels. Of the total quantity of articles produced or manufactured at home for home consumption, and con- veyed from place to place by rail and waggon, canal and cart, it is not easy to make an estimate. It is enough, how- ever, to give occupation to an immense machinery of traffic, and to afford employment to half the population of the country, as merchants, manufacturers, shopmen, clerks, or labourers. Farmers, and their subordinates even, are members of the mercantile community. The corn and cattle that they pro- Brought forward £48,183,221 Kaffraria 22,1 9G Falkland Islands . . . 9,308 Ascension 7,811 Heligoland 32G 48222.SC2 2. United States 21,235,903 3. Germany : — Hanse Towns 15,091,373 Prussia 2,102,741 Hanover 399,933 Schleswig-Holstein . . . 147,313 Mecklenburg 70,993 Oldenburg 59.S87 17,878,240 4. France 9,034,883 5. Holland 8,111,022 G. Turkey 7,151,559 7. Egypt 5,985,087 8. Brazil 5,GG8,089 9. Italy 5.37G.88G 10. China 3,009,301 11. Russia 2,921,496 12. Belgium 2.921,300 13. Spain 2,427,801 14. New Granada 2,372,497 15. Portugal 2,210,900 10. Cuba and Porto Pico 2,207,511 17. Argentine Republic 1,951, 04S Carried forward £149,292,505 during the Year 1865. 3S0 duce and send to market are really the grand staple of our trade ; and, if they are merchants on a small scale, it is the chief business of many of our wealthiest and most influential merchants, strictly so called, to eke out our insufficient native supplies of food with importations from foreign countries. Of wheat, 3,580,313 quarters were, in 1805, reported as having been grown for sale in England; and in addition thereto, 21,342,000 cwts. were brought from other parts, about two- fifths being from Russia, a third from Prussia, Denmark, and the German States, an eighth from France, and a fifteenth from the United States and British North America. In 1864, Brought forward £149,292,505 18. Mexico 1,898,056 19. Chili 1,603,753 20. Sweden and Norway 1,578,417 21. Japan 1,520,895 22. Denmark 1,263,953 23. Peru 1,193,335 24. Foreign West Indies 1,157,960 25. Greece 1,020,489 26. Philippine Islands 945,624 27. Java 928,642 28. Austrian Territories 877,325 29. Uruguay 813,448 30. Western Africa 642,467 31. Venezuela 387,032 32. Morocco 272,184 33. Central America 137,655 34. Tunis 102,117 35. Eastern Africa 61,828 36. Siam 3G - 943 37. Islands in the Pacific 3G,329 38. Ecuador 28,675 39. Cape Verd Islands 2 1' 54 ? 40. Persia 10,237 41. Papal Ports 12 ' 708 42. Algeria 10 ' 91G 43. Bolivia 99/ 305 44. Arabia lia £IG. r ),S<;'2,402 45. Patagonia G5 390 English Commerce in 18G5. on the other hand, the abundant crops of America furnished nearly half of the quantity brought from abroad, and there was a corresponding diminution in the supplies of Eastern Europe. In 1862, again, a year of scarcity to England, no less than 41,033,000 cwts. of wheat were collected from foreign countries, to supply the deficiency. So it is with barley, oats, and other grain. Whatever is required to com- plete the supplies necessary to meet the wants of the English market is imported from Europe or America. Always, however, the trade of London is chiefly in foreign grain. In 1865 the London Corn Exchange saw the transfer of 974,295 quarters of wheat, and 587,006 of barley, three- tenths of each being British, seven-tenths foreign ; while of 2,252,653 quarters of oats disposed of in the same market, only a tenth part was grown in Great Britain and Ireland. Considerably more than half the bread eaten in England is thus made of foreign grain. More than half our meat is of native growth ; yet the quantity brought over from the Continent is very considerable. In 1865, 283,271 head of oxen, bulls, and cows, 914,170 sheep and lambs, and 132,943 pigs were brought into the United Kingdom ; making a total of 1,330,384 beasts, against 813,338 imported in 1864, and 608,823 in 1863 ; so that, if eastern Europe has sent us the cattle-plague, it has also sent us cattle enough to re- place, over and over again, those that we have lost by disease. No one knows how many beasts are slaughtered and dis- posed of in country districts. It appears, however, that in 1865 there were 346,975 cows and oxen, 1,514,926 sheep and lambs, and 32,179 pigs brought to London for sale at Srnithfield market. There is hardly a single kind of food, from hams to caviare, and from potatoes to truffles, that we do not get from abroad. All the farmyards of Europe help to meet the necessities of the population of England, too numerous to be fed exclu- sively with native produce. For many articles of diet that are now almost necessaries of life, we arc altogether de- Trade in Articles of Food. 391 pendent upon foreign countries. So it is, especially, with sugar, tea, and coffee. Of sugar, 509,357 tons were received in England in 1865, nearly half coming from the British West Indies and British Guiana, about a fourth from Cuba and Porto Rico, a little from Brazil, and most of the remainder from the Mauritius, India, Java, and the Philip- pine Islands. For the same period, the imports of tea amounted to 43,448 tons, about one twenty-fourth being East Indian and Japanese, the rest Chinese. Of coffee, more than thrice as much being entered in British ports and reshipped for foreign sale, 13,722 tons were imported for home consumption ; two-thirds being the produce of Ceylon, a fourth coming from Jamaica and other British possessions, and most of the rest from Central America. Real Mocha coffee is a thing now rarely sold. In the year 1865, every inhabitant of the United Kingdom, including children, con- sumed, upon an average, a pound of coffee, three pounds and a quarter of tea, and forty-one pounds of sugar. Of rice each person used rather more than three pounds and a half, and of tobacco, which is a sort of food to many, rather more than a pound and a third. Thus drawing much of its solid food from other regions, England still makes beer both for itself and for a good many other parts of the world.* Besides the vast quantities con- sumed at home, 516,366 barrels, valued at 2,060,369/., were, in 1865, sent to foreign countries and the colonies. On the other hand, 23,100 puncheons of brandy, 33,500 puncheons of rum, and 114,250 pipes of wine were received from abroad for English use. All the rum came from the West Indies ; most of the brandy from France. Of the wine, * At Burton-upon-Trent, Allsopp's Brewery alone covers thirty acres of ground, gives employment to nearly a thousand workmen, and produces, on an average, nearly 50,000 gallons of ale each day in the year. The Emperor of the French, it is said, after a visit to Allsopp's works, engaged some experienced men to introduce the method of brewing there adopted into France. But he could not take home the Trent, and without Trent water it is impossible to produce Burton ale. 392 English Commerce in 1865. nearly half was Spanish, about a quarter Portuguese, and a fifth French, the remainder being chiefly Italian and Rhenish, with a very scanty supply from the Cape. It is satisfactory to learn that Cape wine is being banished from the market. In 1859 more than 8,500 pipes were imported ; in 1865 there were hardly 450 pipes, and of these not half were sold. The much-abused Cobden Treaty is steadily taking effect in encouraging a healthy preference for the light wines of France, Italy, Greece, and Hungary, not only over the so- called port and sherry of the Cape, but over the inferior ind doctored products of Spanish and Portuguese vintage. Nor is there any real ground for dread as to the working of the Cobden Treaty in another way. Alarmists have threatened us with a speedy emptying of our coal-mines ; and we have been told that, while it is the duty of every English householder to be as careful of his fuel as he can, our governors have acted very wickedly in sanctioning the sale of it to foreigners. It is true that the continental states are every year obtaining larger stores of coal from England ; and in 1865 the exportation amounted to 9,189,021 tons, reported to be worth 4,431,492Z. ; but we can spare them that and more. The best statisticians tell us that, assuming our inability to work the mines at a greater depth than 4,000 feet, the known coal-fields will be able to meet all probable demands for the next five hundred years. Before the five hundred years are over, we may be certain either that new supplies will be discovered, or that new modes of working, enabling us to get lower down than now is possible, will be found out, or that advancing science will detect some alto- gether new ways of producing light and heat. That con- tingency is the likeliest of all. Surely, before long, coal will be as antiquated as wood for fuel, and for striking a light the match will be as old-fashioned as the flint. At present, however, coal is monarch absolute. We can^ not cook our food or warm our houses without it. Without it those wonderful manufacturing establishments that are The Coal-Fields and their Produce. 393 the chief causes of our commercial greatness in modern times could not possibly be carried on. In England and Wales there are seventeen coal-fields. By far the largest of them is that of South Wales. Out of the fuel which it contains might be shaped a mountain three times as high as Snowdon, and with a base of a thousand square miles. Its greatest thickness is 10,000 feet, exceed- ing any other in the world, except the great coal-field of Nova Scotia Its present yield is 9,000,000 tons a year, and the same annual produce may be drawn from it for two millenniums to come. Next to it in size is the Derbyshire and Yorkshire coal-field, which yields more than 12,000,000 tons a year, and can go on doing so for seven centuries without being exhausted. In it there are 541 collieries, spread over a surface of 760 square miles. The great Durham and Northumberland basin, which furnishes New- castle coal, covers an area of 4G0 miles, and contains 2G8 collieries, whence are dug about 10,000,000 tons of coal each year. The Lancashire district, with half the area, yields about half as much coal, though giving work to 390 collieries. The other English deposits are all much smaller, and, taken altogether, do not furnish as much coal as the Durham and Northumberland district. Some of them, like the famous Coalbrook Dale field, in Shropshire, are already nearly exhausted. In Scotland there is one vast deposit touching the southern slope of the Grampian Hills, with an area of about 1720 square miles, at present yielding less than 10,000,000 tons a year. Altogether, Great Britain now produces nearly 70,000,000 tons each year, less than half that quantity being drawn from all other parts of the world.* Even if there be excuse for fearing that we are using up our fuel too fast, it is evident that we are using it to wonderful advantage. ' We arc living,' as Robert Stephenson once said, ' in an age when the pent-up rays of that sun which shone upon the great carboniferous forests of past ages are * Hll.l.. TheCval-fithh- of Cn«t l(nh>:„. VOL. II. - U 394 English Commerce in 1805. being liberated to set in motion our mills and factories, to carry us with great rapidity over the earth's surface, and to propel our fleets, regardless of wind and tide, with un- erring regularity over the ocean.' The chief commercial advantage resulting from the increase in the coal trade has been its advancement of iron mining and iron manufacture. In 1741, before charcoal and coke furnaces were introduced, only 17,350 tons of iron were produced in the whole of Great Britain. In 1848, the quantity was eighty times as great In 1857 it had risen to 3,659,447 tons. In 1865 it was certainly not less than 4,200,000 tons. Of Scotch pig-iron, about 1,164,000 tons were produced, chiefly in Lanarkshire and Ayrshire. Quite as much came from Glamorganshire and Monmouthshire, and about 40,000 tons from Flint and Denbighshire. Of the English iron-fields, the Northumberland, Durham, and Yorkshire district yielded about 750,000 tons, the Derby- shire, Lancashire, and Cumberland about a third as much. From Staffordshire and Worcestershire were drawn some 900,000 tons, and from Shropshire and its neighbourhood about a quarter as much. The market worth of this pig- iron was not less than 12,000,000Z., and it was reduced from about 12,000,000 tons of iron-ore by means of nearly 700 blast furnaces. In most of these furnaces the same rule is observed. ' The crude iron is melted in a hollow fire, and partially decar- I'lirizcd by the action of a blast of air forced over its surface bv a fan or blowing engine. The carbon, having a greater affinity for the oxygen than for the iron, combines witli it, and passes off as carbonic acid.' This constitutes what is called the refining process. Partly purifying the iron, it adds to it other impurities drawn from the fuel, and these and others have to be removed by puddling. Here the iron is separated from the fire by a bridge or partition, and lodged in a reverberating furnace formed of iron plates fastened by iron tie-bars and lined with fire-brick. A current Iron Mines and Iron Manufacture. 395 of hot air induces the flame to play upon the iron. * In the furnace the iron is kept in a state of fusion, whilst the work- man, called the puddlcr, by means of a rake or rabble, agitates the metal so as to expose, as far as he is able, the whole of the charge to the action of the oxygen passing over it from the fire. By this means the carbon is oxidised, and the metal is gradually reduced to a tough, pasty condition, and subsequently to a granular form, somewhat resembling heaps of boiled rice with the grains greatly enlarged. In this condition of the furnace the cinder or earthy impurities yield to the intense heat and flow off from the mass over the bottom in a highly fluid state. At intervals in the process, portions of oxides of iron, hammer-scales, scoriae, and, in some cases, limestone and common salt, are thrown upon the molten iron, and form a fluid slag, which assists in oxidising the carbon and removing the magnesia, sulphur, and other impurities of the iron. The iron at this stage is comparatively pure, and quickly becomes capable of agglu- tination. The puddler then collects the metallic granules or particles with his rabble, and rolls them together, backwards and forwards, over the hearth, into balls of convenient di- mensions, about the size of thirteen-inch shells, when he removes them from the furnace to be subjected to the action of the hammer or mechanical pressure necessary to give to the iron homogeneity and fibre. It is thus reduced to the form of a flat bar, and is then cut into convenient lengths by the shears. These pieces are again piled or faggotted to- gether into convenient heaps and re-heated in the furnace. As soon as a faggot thus prepared has been heated to the welding temperature, it is passed through the roughing-rolls to reduce it to the form of a bar, and then through the finishing-rolls, where the required form and size arc given to it, either round or square bars, plates, or the like. Most of the iron used in England is of English extraction, * Fatmjairn, Iron, its History, Properties, and Processes of Manufacture 'Edinburgh, 18G5;>, pp. 104, 10. r >, 107, i:-!l. 396 English Commerce in 1S65. although in 18(15 there were 51,464 tons imported from foreign countries, the chief being Sweden. Most of the copper is of foreign production, the imports of 18G5 being 556,588 tons, of which half was Chilian. It is principally with iron, copper, and the mixture of copper and zinc in brass that the great tool manufactories of the country are carried on, wonderful sources of profit in themselves, and yet greater sources of profit as agents in the manufacture of cotton, wool, and other staples of our national wealth. Of all the monster establishments for the manufacture of iron, now in Great Britain, perhaps the most notable is that founded at Manchester by Mr. William Fairbairn in 1817.* Mr. Fairbairn set in motion all the wonderful improvements, in cotton, woollen, flax, and silk spinning and weaving me- chanism which later engineers have brought to perfection. Succeeding, and helping thousands of others to succeed mightily, in these ways, he afterwards turned his energies to other branches of engineering enterprise. The Canal Street Works carried on by his successors now comprise a vast foundry and forge ; a great boiler-yard, with machinery for rivet making, shearing and punching ; a bridge-yard in which iron bridges of all sorts and sizes are manufactured in bits and sent to all parts of the world ready for putting together ; a millwrights' factory containing blacksmiths' forges, with turning, planing, and fitting shops of various kinds ; and a huge engine yard with every appliance for making and fitting up all descriptions of steam-engines. Yet larger is the establishment of Messrs. Piatt Brothers and Company, at Oldham, known as the Hartford Works. In it more than 5,000 men and boys are constantly employed, to whom at least 250,000?. are paid each year in wages alone. Its various forges, foundries, workshops, and yards cover twenty acres of ground, and consume each week about 500 * An interesting sketch of his personal history appears in Mr. Smiles's Industrial Biography. Therefore no more than seemed absolutely necessary is said about him here. Iron-Works and their Productions. 397 tons of coal and 150 tons of coke, which, by help of fifteen steam-engines, with an aggregate power exceeding that of 2,500 horses, convert some 450 tons of iron every week into machinery of various sorts. The iron reaches the works in the crude state to which it is reduced by the blast furnaces. It is puddled and brought into a malleable condition before being conveyed to the smiths' shop, there to be submitted to an iron-cutting saw capable of revolving a thousand times in a minute, and passing in each revolution through a trough of cold water to prevent it from becoming too hot by friction with the metal. The iron bars thus cut into the proper lengths are next pressed between revolving rollers, which give them a perfectly smooth and uniform surface. Then they are conveyed to the turning and fitting shops, * which,' we are told, ' for extent and completeness stand unrivalled in the world. On the floors of the buildings set apart for these processes, hundreds of turning lathes and of planing, shaping, slotting, boring, and screw-cutting machines are to be seen at work. In one room we see a planing machine with a bed large enough to hold one half of the framework of a large power-loom, the cutting tools of which are so adjusted that all the portions of the frame which require planing are acted upon at one time ; while in another we find a shaping machine, manufactured at great cost, devoted to the production of a tiny bracket. One turning lathe will be found reducing the face of a huge cylinder — the chisel, as the cylinder turns slowly round, paring the hard metal with as much apparent ease as though it were chalk ; while at another, an active lad is turning off small iron screws by the gross.' The different parts of the various machines that are to be produced are forged and shaped in different rooms. They are finally taken into the fitting-up rooms, there to be put together and prepared for distribution to the wholesale dealers and shipping agents. All sorts of machinery are made in this vast estab- lishment, but its chief business is in the construction of appli- ances for cotton and woollen manufacture. It is calculated 398 English Commerce in 1865. that in it could be produced each week the entire fittings and furnishings for a mill of 20,000 spindles for preparing- and spinning either cotton or wool, as well as for a weaving shed of 200 looms in which the yarn thus manufactured is to be made into cloth.* Enumeration, in the order of their use, of the chief of these machines will enable us to understand the general process of cotton manufacture. The first machine produced at the Hartford Works is for use, not in England, but in the cotton- growing countries. The Messrs. Piatt are famous for their double-acting Macarthy gins, by which eight pounds of clean cotton may be separated from the pods and seeds in an hour by an ordinary workman, and an adaptation of the Macarthy principle to steam power, which can do the work four or five times as quickly. The cotton thus cleaned being brought to England and sent to the cotton mill, is first submitted to a machine called the opener, by which the fibre is opened up, and any dirt, sand, dry leaves, or other impurities mixed up with it are removed. Special need for this machine has arisen by the forced substitution, during the last few years, of Indian and other cotton for the cleaner produce of America. Surat cotton, that till lately was almost worthless, and that is still unavailable for old-fashioned machinery, can now be purified and smoothed out so as to uncoil without injury to the fleece. Then it is passed on to the carding machine. By this the fibre is combed and freed from finer impurities. One carding engine is sufficient for the coarser yarns ; those intended for more delicate use are submitted to two, a breaker and a finisher. ' The cotton which enters the carding engine in a fleece leaves it in the shape of a narrow riband called a sliver, which is then passed in succession through various machines, known as the drawing, slubbing, intermediate, and roving frames. The object of these machines is the same through- out, the drawing, straightening, and elongating of the cotton fibres, until, when it leaves the roving frame, the sliver as- * Manchester City News, April 1 aud 8, 18G5. Cotton Machinery and Cotton Manufacture. 399 sumes the shape of a softly-twisted cord, which is now ready for the throstle-frame or the spinning-mule, hy which it is further extenuated and twisted into yarn. The throstle or water-frame is chiefly used for spinning twist for warps or coarse numbers, while the finer qualities of twist and the bulk of the weft are spun upon the mule.' When, a hundred years ago, Hargreaves invented his spinning-jenny, every thread of cotton was spun separately and by hand. Now, many of Piatt's mules contain twelve hundred spindles, each one able to do the work of several dozen men, and adapted to produce every sort of thread, from the stout twist used in the manu- facture of rough cotton sheetings to the slender threads which go to the making of the most transparent muslins.* When the cotton is made into calico or muslin, it is sub- jected to further mechanical operations in bleaching, printing, and dyeing, and then it passes into the hands of the wholesale dealer or warehouseman. Often all these businesses are con- ducted by the same masters, the millowner having at once spinning, weaving, and printing works in one or other of the great cotton districts, and monster warehouses in such great centres of the trade as Manchester or Glasgow. Messrs. Rylands and Sons, of Wigan, whose Manchester warehouse has been already referred to, do all this, and apply themselves to half a dozen other businesses as well. About forty years ago, when he was thirteen, Mr. John Rylands spent the pocket-money allowed to him by his father, who made a living for himself as a draper, in buying a little warp and weft, which his old nurse helped him to turn into calico. That he sold, and so was able to buy other material, and thence step by step to build up an extensive trade for himself. The trade has grown wonderfully, all the more through the energy which has enabled him to keep all its ramifications in his own hands and under his own directions. He now obtains coal from collieries of his own, procures flax from fields in Ireland of which he is the proprietor, and is himself the im- * Manchester City News, April 15, 18G5. 400 English Commerce in IS 65. porter of the cotton wool that he uses, besides taking - personal supervision of the spinning, weaving, bleaching, and printing works at Ainsworth, Gorton, and Wigan, in which more than 4,500 workmen are employed. At their works near Wigan, pleasantly lodged in the valley of the Douglas, a mill, almost unrivalled in manufacturing architecture, which was set up in 1865, is conveniently adjacent to their extensive collieries.* * ' This magnificent mill is three storeys high, and the whole of it is fireproof. The top room of the north end is for receiving cotton, which will be brought by a line from the railway over a viaduct of 292 feet in length, crossing a reservoir, whose area is 7.30G square yards, and 6£ yards deep, the walls of which contain 59,400 cubic feet of stone, and it will hold above eight million gallons of water for condensing purposes. The second floor will contain the machinery for cleaning, opening, and making laps for the card-room. The bottom room is for boilers, mechanics' shop, &c. The second or middle division contains four horizontal steam engines, of 200- horse power, and the chief gearing for driving the mill. In this room the engine beds alone contain about 42,000 cubic feet of stone and brick. The south end has three storeys, each 273 feet by 108 feet ; the bottom and top rooms are for throstles and mules, and will contain GO, 000 spindles, producing about 70,000 lbs. weight of yarn weekly, ranging from No. 14's to 40' s. The middle room is for carding and preparing for these spindles. All the bottom rooms are 17 feet, the middle 14 feet 6 inches, and the top 13 feet 4 inches in height. The weaving shed will be 540 feet long, 19G feet wide, and 20 feet high, and is calculated to hold 2,940 looms, which will be driven by two horizontal engines of 100-horse power. The roof will be supported by 408 pillars, and the looms will be turned by 900 pulleys. The warehouse is 240 feet by 168 feet, one storey high. It extends over part of the lodge, supported by 74 stone pillars, three feet square and 24 feet high, and it will contain 16,000 cubic feet of stone, and 37,000 superficial feet of glass for lights. In the construction of the mill and weaving shed, the following materials have been or will be required, viz. : — 93,20G cubic feet of stone, 94,588 cubic feet of timber, 5,13G,410 common bricks, 10G.115 Staffordshire blue bricks, 70,830 Staffordshire white bricks, and 47,528 fire bricks. The thickness of the mill walls is 2 feet 10 inches. This mill and weaving shed will give employment to at least 1,500 hands, at about 700Z. weekly wages, and will cost over 100.000Z. The mill will be supplied with coal and cannel from Messrs. llylands' own pits, which are about 250 yards from the boilers, &c. It is distant about three quarters of a mile from Wigan Town Hall and the railway station, and the firm have a private junction railway of their own, from the millyard to the canal and North Union Railway. Taken as a whole, the Gidlow Works, Wigan, are certainly not surpassed, and, we believe, are not equalled by any other mill in the world.' — Mancliestcr City News, April 15, 18GG. Changes in the Cotton Trade. 401 The statistics of the cotton trade afford wonderful illustra- tion of the extent and elasticity of English manufacturing and commercial energy. In I860, the last year of prospe- rity previous to the famine caused by the American war, ' the number of spindles employed,' says Mr. Bazlcy, ' was about 32,000,000, and the number of looms employed would be about 340,000. The productions in the machine-making trade had doubled within ten years. Bleach works, print works, and dye works had been largely extended during the same period. The fixed investments, including the value of land and the rights to water, amounted to not less than 60,000,000Z. sterling, to which must be added a work- ing capital of 2O,000,0O0Z. Add to these again the value of merchants' and tradesmen's stocks at home and abroad, the value of raw cotton and subsidiary materials, and of bankers' capital, and the grand total of capital employed in the trade will not be less than 200,000,000/. sterling.'* In 1860, 1,079,321,000 pounds of cotton were used in the United Kingdom, 85 per cent, of the whole being American, 8 per cent. Egyptian or Brazilian, and 7 per cent. East or West Indian. In 1862 and 1863 less than half that quantity was consumed, and in 1864 a little more than half. In 1865, when the greatest difficulties of the famine were overpast, the consumption had risen to 718,651,000 pounds, but of that the American proportion was only 17 per cent., whereas the supply from Egypt, Turkey, and Brazil had risen to 27 per cent., and that from the East and West Indies to 56 per cent. Not only had the machinery to be adapted to the working up of the inferior qualities introduced in these large proportions, but — a much more notable achieve- ment — these inferior qualities had to be sought out in the new districts from which they came, and fresh kinds of com- modities had to be sent oft' in exchange for them, in lieu of the commodities required in the American market. The mean of exchange has not yet been reached. In I860 our * Watts, The Facts of the Cotton Famine (Manchester, 18G(J y , p. 59. 402 English Commerce in 18G5. imports from India, China, Brazil, and Egypt amounted to 37,000,000/. ; our exports thither to 30,30O,00OZ. In 1865 the imports had risen to 94,600,000/., the exports to only 38.300,0007. Our export trade with these countries has still to be more than doubled, and in doing so it will certainly confer vast benefit upon several departments of commerce. This will be some compensation for the miseries caused to the Lancashire and Lanarkshire operatives by the cotton famine. The recent derangement of the cotton trade has also been helpful to many branches of domestic manufacture, especially to the woollen and linen trades. The increased price of cotton gave encouragement to the flax growers of the north of Ireland to extend their cultivation, and the increased price of cotton goods led to a larger sale of linen articles. In like manner foreign countries, and yet more the Australian colonies, were induced to send us additional supplies of wool, which were promptly manu- factured and speedily disposed of. In 1865 there were in Ireland 251,552 acres of land devoted to flax cultivation, the entire yield of the year being between 40,000 and 45,000 tons ; and in the same year the arrivals from foreign countries amounted to 95,656 tons, of which three-fourths were Russian. The stock of linen yarn thus made available for the mills of northern Ireland, Yorkshire, and Scotland, and the price at which it could be bought, were each about 20 per cent, more than in 1860. There has been a nearly similar advance in the woollen trade, the raw wool imported in 1865 being 93,434 tons, half from Australia, a sixth from various parts of Europe, and the remainder from India, South Africa, and other places. There is no great difference between the manufacture of cotton and either linen or woollen goods. Many cotton mills, indeed, were utilized, during the famine years, by application to the sister trades. The greatest linen factory in the world is that established at Dundee, by William Linen Manufacture and the Linen Trade. 403 Baxter, and his son Edward, in 1822. In that year they erected a spinning-mill, of 15-horse power, in the Lower Dens, and in 1825 or 1826 added to it another of 30-horse power. Afterwards these engines were replaced hy a larger one of 90-horse power, working 3,028 spindles for dry-spun flax and tow. In 1833 the firm, before that changed to Baxter Brothers and Company, began the construction of their larger works in the Upper Dens. These works con- tained a power-loom factory, the first erected in Dundee, with a weaving shop 150 feet long and 75 wide, as well as two engines of 70- and 35-horse power, commanding 2,136 spindles for dry tow and 5,872 for wet spinning. By 1864 the establishment had been further extended, so as to contain sixteen steam-engines, with, in all, 6 15-horse power, working 20,000 spindles and 1,200 power-looms, and giving employment to about four thousand men, women, and children. The Messrs. Baxter now consume more flax and tow than any other linen manufacturers, using it chiefly for the coarser kinds of work. ' The goods made by them consist of sail-cloth, sheetings, dowlas, ducks, and the like, for the excellent qualities of which they have an esta- blished reputation. In addition to the yarn spun in their works, they purchase largely from other spinners ; and the whole goods produced by them are calendered and made up within the works, and sent out in bales, or as may other- wise be required by their customers, the value being about 1,000,000/. a year. There are several distinct spinning- mills in the Dens works, but the largest one is a noble structure of about 250 feet in length and four lofty storeys in height, besides alleys. The ground upon which the works are erected extends to upwards of ten acres, and it is nearly all covered with the mills, factories, warehouses, and other necessary premises required for carrying on so ex- tensive an establishment.'* •WARDEN, The Linen Trade, Ann-Mi and Modnn (Dundee, ISGi',, pp. G15, 021-G23. 404 English Commerce in 1 8G5. Other large factories join to make Dundee the centre of the linen trade in Scotland, though there less business is done than in the English district round about Leeds. Leeds, also, has an important share in the woollen manufacture, though Bradford in this has the supremacy. All over York- shire are woollen and worsted manufactories, the most notable in every way being the leviathan set of mills near Bradford, built in 1854 by Mr. Titus Salt, and known as the Saltaire Mills. Mr. Salt began life as a small farmer near SALTaIKC MILLS, NEAR BRADFORD. Leeds, his father being a woolstapler of that town. In 1834 he started business on his own account as a spinner. Just then alpaca wool — though first brought into England in 1811 — began to attract notice for its superiority over all other wools in length, lustre, and softness, those advantages being, in the judgment of many, quite counteracted by in- creased difficulties in carding and weaving occasioned by the leno-th and thinness of the fibre.* Mr. Salt set himself to * Leed* Times, September 24, 1S33. Saltaire and the Woollen Trade. 405 overcome these difficulties, and turn the advantages to the best use. In 1836, when he made his first purchases, about 560,000 pounds of alpaca wool were sold in England at an average price of tenpence a pound. In 1865 there was a market for 2,793,498 pounds, valued at about half a crown a pound. This increase is chiefly due to the energy with which Mr. Salt has applied himself to the manufacture of alpaca goods. From the first he has been at the head of the trade, and twelve years ago his already vast business led him to construct the huge establishment and attendant village of Saltaire. The village and its neighbourhood afford lodging for nearly five thousand workpeople employed in the building itself. This building covers an area of about twelve acres. It is six storeys high, 550 feet long, 50 feet wide, and about 72 feet high. The machinery, worked by two steam-engines with an aggregate force of 1,250 horse-power, comprises 1,200 power-looms able to produce 30,000 yards of alpaca cloth in a day, or more than 5,000 miles in a year.* * The Builder, August 19, 1854. ' Alpacu wool comes into the hands of Mr. Salt packed in what ure called ballots, or small bales — so packed as to be easily piled on the backs of the animals used as beasts of burden in South America, and by which they are conveyed to the shipping ports. In this shape they reach the importer. The base consists of fleeces, which are afterwards sorted into from six to ten different qualities, adapted for the manufacture of a variety of goods, all coming under the category of the alpaca trade in stuffs. These different kinds of alpaca wool are then given to the hand-comber — a very small projwrtion of the whole being combed by machine. The alpaca wool is generally combed by hand, and by the improved combs recently adapted by Mr Salt, which improve the gloss of the raw material, by having a larger number of rows of brooches in the comb to what are ordinarily used by the comber of English wools. Previous to this operation it is washed by the aid of rollers made for the purpose, and moved by steam-power. One stone of 1G lbs. of sorted alpaca will yield from eleven to twelve pounds of top, or material adapted for spinning, leaving about three pounds for soil — the waste ordinarily not exceeding much more than one pound and a half in the mere combing process. The top, as it is called, is then sent to the preparing-room. where it is first put through the " slivering, " or "slivery-box," perfected by an improved " gill,'' specially made tor tins class of material. The ordinary colours then go regularly through the diflerent processes of preparing, roving, and spiuning. The b uutlful variety of shades and colours is 406 English Commerce in 1865. In woollen, linen, and cotton manufactures, England stands unrivalled. Other kindred manufactures, in which other countries largely participate, the chief of all being silk, add vastly to our national wealth. Besides all the quantity used at home, 1,409,221Z. worth of silken goods were exported in 1865. In the same year the exports of worsted and woollen manufactures amounted to 20,102,259Z. ; of linen manu- factures to 9,155,358£. ; and of cotton manufactures to 46,903,796Z. All this prosperity is mainly owing to the energy shown by the iron-trade workers in improving the machinery re- quired for textile fabrics. The extension of iron manufacture has also been of wonderful advantage to all the other branches of English trade. The grandest and the most uni- versally helpful product of this enterprise appears in the development of such engineering appliances, as railways and steam-engines, steam-boats, bridges, and other aids to transit by sea and land, for which the names of Stephenson and Brunei, Napier, Peto, and a host of other men are famous all the world over. Another important branch of the iron-trade has to do with agricultural implements of all sorts, and others are engaged in the manufacture of mis- cellaneous tools, from ponderous steam-hammers to small obtained by an admixture of the sliverings, which are run up together through the second and eight following processes of preparing, roving, and spinning, according to certain approved principles of combination — showing a thorough amalgamation of the inherent colours of the raw material, and »o combining them that the goods when manufactured present a delicacy and blending of shades or tints perfectly unapproachable by any other worsted fabric. It will almost appear fabulous— but such is the fact— that in the processes described above, the silverings, drawings, and slubbin^s are mixed or doubled no fewer than 20,'J7 1,5*20 times in converting the top (or the comber's produce) into the finished bank or yarn. The yarn then passes to the weaving -room, when- it is woven into fabrics of various degrees of fineness and evi-n durability, according to the precise value or capabilities of the yarn. The average work of an alpaca weaver will be about three pieces per week, each piece con.si>tiii£ of thirty-six yards; in the inferior torts four, or even more, pieces may be woven by n good hand at the loom." — Ijccds Times, September 24, 1854. Trade in Machinery and Hardwares. 407 iron nails. Vast establishments devoted to these purposes are in London, Glasgow, Manchester, Liverpool, Leeds, Birmingham, Sheffield, and nearly every other town that is conveniently related to the great fields of coal and iron ore. In 1865, besides the much greater quantities required for use at home, 1,952,058/. worth of steam-engines were sent to foreign parts, as well as other kinds of machinery, valued at 3,260,87 2/., and railroad iron assessed at 3,541,296/. In that year, the total exports of iron and iron manufactures, including unwrought steel, were valued at 13,451,445/. Articles made of steel alone, or of steel mixed with iron, including all sorts of cutlery and industrial instruments, were sent abroad in the same year to the value of 956,801/., the quantities prepared for use at home being many times greater than that. For these and other kinds of hardware, Birmingham and Sheffield are the chief places of manufacture. In the neigh- bourhood of Birmingham 740,000 tons of pig-iron are annu- ally produced by fifty-eight separate firms, and about 300,000 tons more are brought from other parts. Employment is thus given to some seventeen thousand labourers, who receive 1,068,000/. a year in wages for work in connection with 2,100 puddling furnaces, and the 855,000 tons of finished iron resulting therefrom are nearly a third of the produce oi the whole kingdom.* A good part of this is finally worked up in the district. ' For chains, cables, and anchors alone,' we are told, ' upwards of 60,000 tons of best iron ore are annually consumed, and between two and three thousand persons arc engaged in this manufacture alone. Many thousands are also engaged in nail-making for the supply of nearly all the markets of the world. Anvils, bolts, and nuts, bedsteads, bridle-bits, stirrups, and general saddlers' iron- mongery, rolls and heavy machinery, edge tools, fenders and * The Jlesourcc.% Products, and Industrial History of Birmiunham and the Midland Hardware District, edited by Mr. Sami el Tiumins ^London, 1SGG), pp. GG-71. 408 English Commerce in 1865. fire-irons, files, fire-proof safes, gas and other tubes, gun- barrels, hammers, railway appliances, hinges, hollow ware, bridges, roofs, tin-plates, keys, locks, latches, rivets, screws, boilers and gasometers, wheels and axles, trays, vices, and iron wire, form extensive industries in the district, employing thousands of people and using up large quantities of iron.* One of the latest developments of the iron-trade is in the making of bedsteads, almost monopolized by Birmingham. From five to six thousand are turned out every week by establishments giving employment to about a thousand men, a thousand boys, and four or five hundred women and girls.f Steel manufacture, having been long ago appropriated by Sheffield, is carried on to only a very slight extent in Bir- mingham, but the manufactured article is largely used in the construction of swords, fire-irons, and all sorts of miscella- neous goods ; most notably of all in the pen trade. Forty years ago, when Joseph Gillott and James Perry were young men, steel pens were sold for a shilling apiece. Gradually the price sank to twenty shillings a gross, and then to five shillings, and even to three-and-sixpence ; and about twenty years ago the trade began to increase enormously. In 1849 there were twelve factories in Birmingham, giving employ- ment to three hundred men and boys, and fifteen hundred and fifty women and girls, and making in all 65,000 gross a week out of six-and-a-half tons of steel. In 1865 the number of factories was still only twelve, but in them work was found for three hundred and sixty men and boys, and two thousand and fifty women and girls, who every week converted about ten tons of steel into 98,000 gross of pens. The trade price of ordinary pens now varies from three-halfpence to a shilling a gross ; and barrel pens fetch from sevenpence to twelve shillings. * When it is remembered that each gross requires 144 pieces of steel to go through at least twelve processes, the fact that 144 pens can be sold for \^d. is a singular * Resources, <lc, of Birmingliam. p. 73. f Ibid < V- C2G. Pen-Making and Pin-Making. 409 example of the results attainable by the division of labour and mechanical skill.'* Birmingham is almost as famous for its pins as for its pens. A generation ago pin-making was the favourite illustration of the advantages of division of labour, every pin, in the pro- cess of its manufacture, having to pass through the hands of at least fourteen persons. Latterly, however, a complete revo- lution has been effected. By a machine invented in 1824 bv an American named Wright, but only brought to perfection after many years' experimenting in Birmingham, the whole thing is done by the single turn of a wheel. ' The principal shaft gives motion, in its rotation, to several sliders, levers, and wheels, which work the different parts of the mechanism. A slider pushes forward pincers, which draw wire from a reel at every rotation of the shaft, and advances such a length of wire as will produce one pin. A die cuts off this length of wire by the descent of its upper chap, and this chap then opens a carrier which takes on the wire to the pointing apparatus. Here it is received by a holder, which turns round, while a bevel-edged file-wheel, rapidly revolving, gives to the wire its first rough point. It proceeds immediately by a second carrier to a second and finer file-wheel, by which the point- ing is finished. A third carrier transfers the pin to the first heading-die, and, by the advance of a steel punch, one end of the pin-wire is forced into a recess, whereby the head is partially produced. A fourth carrier removes the pin to a second die, where the heading is completed. When the heading-bar retires, a forked lever draws the pin from the die, and drops it into a receptacle below. The pins now have only to be whitened. For this process they are boiled, in a copper vessel, in water along with grains of metallic tin and a certain amount of bi-tartarate of potash. When the boiling has continued about an hour, the pins are removed, thoroughly washed, dried, and polished in bran.'t * Resources, Ac, of Birmingham, pp. G33-G37. t Ibid., pp. C01-G04. VOL. II. "- E 410 English Commerce in 1865. In one Birmingham house alone, that of Messrs. Edelsten and Williams, three tons of brass are used each week in making pins ; and the Birmingham manufacturers employ brass ir a thousand other ways. Not only is the metal here put to all sorts of uses, but for the last four or five generations the town has been the chief place of manufacture for the metal itself. Of copper 19,000 tons, valued at 1,634,000Z., and of zinc 11,000 tons, worth 237,600Z., were thus worked up in 1865. In 1800 there were fifty manu- facturers of brass and brass-wares in Birmingham. In 1830 the number had risen to a hundred and sixty ; in 1865 to two hundred and sixteen. And the establishments thus increased in numbers have grown yet more in size. ' For- merly the works were small, and the workshops low-roofed and imperfectly lighted. They were in fact dwelling-houses converted into workshops, and were chiefly situated down courts, the manufacturer residing in the house in front. The manufacturer was not unfrequently his own rough ware- houseman, and some twenty, thirty, or forty workmen in- cluded his whole productive power. They treddled the turning-lathe, and he, not unfrequently, begirt with apron, examined the work, tied it up, made out the invoice, and sent off the finished work to its destination. Within the last twenty years manufactories have been specially built with reference to the requirements of the manufacture. The workshops, frequently large and roomy, often well ventilated, form, in many instances, three sides of a square, with offices and warehouses in front. Shafting, worked by steam power, is led into the shops, to drive the lathes. The casting- shops are separate buildings, high-roofed, with means to allow the escape of the noxious fumes arising from the metal when pouring.'* In 1831, the first year of which a record is preserved, there were 1,785 brass-workers, male and female, in Birmingham. In 1841 the number had risen to * Resources, &c , of Bii-mingluim, pp. 350, 360. Brass-working— The India-Rubber Trade. 411 3,408, in 1851 to 6,G95, and in 18G1 to 8,334. Now the workpeople cannot be fewer than 9,500.* Birmingham is now as famous for its brass as Sheffield for its steel, Man- chester for its cottons, and Bradford for its woollens. All sorts of other metal wares have a home in Birming- ham, from the most artistic gold and silver workmanship to the most trumpery imitations, outgrowths of the electro- plating process, for which the Elkingtons are especially notable, with a multitude of other articles, such as beads and buttons, snuff-boxes and matches, papier-mache goods and glass. But a detailed enumeration of the various manufactures of Birmingham would fill a volume, and a dozen volumes would not suffice for description of all the manufacturing contrivances and appliances that give occupation to at least a million Englishmen and Englishwomen. Some few of them, like the homely trades of bootmaking and tailoring, observe the rules adopted centuries ago, though here, even, the sewing-machine is now effecting a revolution ; in a great many others, like woollen and linen manufactures, the old trades are carried on in new ways ; and in many others again, like electro-plating, both trades and ways are new. Of these last, one very noteworthy illustration is in the history of the india-rubber trade. In 1770 Priestley called attention to the newly-found substance as useful to artists in obliterating pencil-marks. In 1771 a London instrument- maker named Nairre, living opposite to the Royal Exchange, began to sell it in cubical pieces of half an inch size, for three shillings each. It was not put to much more import- ant use till 1823, when the late Mr. Charles Macintosh, of Glasgow, patented his famous waterproof clothing, and started a manufactory in Manchester. Shortly afterwards his partner, Mr. Hancock, discovered the vulcanizing process, and thus led the way to numberless fresh applications of * Resource*, dr., of Birmingham, pp. 3G1, 3G2. 412 English Commerce in 1865. the substance. Messrs. Macintosh's works are now carried on in a building six storeys high, and covering more than two acres of ground ; and there are upwards of six hundred india-rubber manufactories, large or small, in operation in various parts of the world, producing articles valued at 8S0,000Z., each year. Of these at least half are in Great Britain. All the thousands of men who have brought their various branches of manufacture to perfection deserve to be ranked as merchants. They it is who give chief occupation to the merchants proper. These latter are, in fact, principally agents for procuring from foreign parts certain manufac- tured goods and vastly greater quantities of raw material to be handled by the English manufacturers, and then distri- buted for use among English buyers, or sent abroad in their altered state by the foreign merchants. It is curious to note how many of these merchants really are foreign merchants, by virtue of their nationality as well as the character of their traffic. The true Englishman seems best adapted for manufacturing energy, for the ma- nagement of vast numbers of men who can be under his personal supervision, and of machinery which, however im- mense, he can inspect with his own eyes. As a merchant, he generally fears to embark with the boldness necessary to eminence in his calling, or if he does embark, he is apt to fail. There are, of course, many notable exceptions, but they prove the rule. By far the greater number of our fore- most merchants are either Germans or Americans. Sir William Brown, the great merchant of Liverpool, and Alexander Henry, of Manchester, though Irishmen by birth, were Americans by education ; and Mr. Peabody, perhaps the foremost merchant in all London, by reason of his vast commercial dealings, as well as by reason of the munificent way in which he applies some of the proceeds of those dealing, is altogether an American. Yet more numerous are the Germans, beaded, in the last generation, by the Tlie Docks of Liverpool and London. 413 Rothschilds, and now famously represented by the house of Friihling and Goschen. Germans have the double advantage of being better linguists than Englishmen, and of possessing greater aptitude in estimating the wants and capabilities of foreign markets. Of prosperous merchants, however, whether natives or foreigners, England contains a goodly number, abounding most in London, Liverpool, and the other great ports of the kingdom. The merchants of the seaports, trading with foreign countries, are of course much more important and influential than those of the inland towns, whose chief business is with other inland towns, or who work merely as collectors of the goods that are to be sent abroad with help of the foreign merchants. London and Liverpool are, in fact, the great emporiums of the world. Through them pass con- siderably more than half of the 165,000,000Z.'s worth of articles brought into the country, and of the 270,000,000Z. 's worth of articles exported, London having more than a quarter of the whole, and Liverpool, thanks to its proximity to the great manufacturing districts of the northern and mid- land counties, engrossing more than a third. Some evidence of the vastness of this traffic appears in the docks that have been built for its accommodation. Liverpool, which in Sir Thomas Johnson's day could hardly be allowed to have its first little dock, with an area of less than three acres and a half, and a length of only 557 yards, now possesses docks and basins very nearly seventeen miles in length, with the addition of more than five miles of docks on the opposite side of the Mersey. Of the Liverpool docks the largest are the Prince's and the Queen's Docks, Huskisson, Brunswick, Coburg and George's Docks. They are thirty-nine in all, and Birkenhead has four of its own, the Western Float of Wallasey Pool being the finest dock in the world. London has not so many docks as Liverpool, and those it has are not all of them so well adapted to commercial purposes. They are, however, larger and more imposing 414 English Commerce in 1SG5. than any of the' docks of the Mersey, with the exception of Wallasey Pool. London had not in former times the same necessity for docks as Liverpool ; the old-fashioned quays and wharves of the Thames offering facilities for loading and unloading which were not possible on the open line of the Mersey. But near the middle of the eighteenth century these old wharves and quays began to be quite insufficient for the growing wants of commerce. At last, in 1795, a plan was fairly started by the West India merchants for the construction of a dock and adjacent warehouses, adapted to the trade in which they were engaged. The projected capital of 800,OOOZ. was subscribed in a couple of days, and, after five years spent in obtaining the sanction of Par- liament, the West India Docks were begun in 1800, and opened for business in 1802. In 1801 the London Docks were commenced, to be finished in 1805 at a cost of 2,000,000£ 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 articles for which they were specially designed. The East India Docks were sanctioned in 1803, 'for the accommodation of the East 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 lodged in them 20,000,000/. 's worth of colonial produce, comprising 148,563 casks of sugar, 70,895 barrels and 33,648 bags of coffee, 35,158 pipes of rum and Madeira, 14,000 logs of mahogany and 21,000 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 in- stituted * on the principle of free competition in trade, and without any exclusive privileges and immunities,' as it was declared in the Act of Parliament permitting them. They * Hie Land we Live in, vol. ii., p. 40. The Commerce of Liverpool and London. 415 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 1,250 houses, and* the turning out of 11,300 residents in them, at a cost of about 2,000,000/. ; 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 1860 the Victoria Docks gave shelter to 2,682 ships, with a burthen of 850,337 tons ; the East and West India Docks to 1,200 ships carrying 498,366 tons ; the London Docks to 1,032 ships with 424,338 tonnage, and the Saint Katherine's Docks to 905 ships with 223,397 tonnage. Very extensive, also, are the Commercial Docks on the south side of the Thames.* If the docks of London are smaller than those of Liver- pool, the aggregate trade is of course greater. Dover and Folkestone, Southampton and Portsmouth, with other maritime towns, are, indeed, really ports of London, while the business of Liverpool has to be divided between its own merchants and the traders of Manchester, and the adjacent seats of manufacture. Liverpool engrosses four-fifths of the trade of Great Britain with the United States, and also has extensive commerce with other parts of America, North and South ; with the West and East Indies, and with China. Yet more varied and comprehensive is the trade of London. Its ships go to every quarter of the world, and it is resorted to by the merchants of every land, both for the produce and manufactures of England, and for the goods imported from abroad for immediate re-shipment. Though robbed of the East India monopoly, it retains more than three-quarters of the stupendous trade that has grown up with India, receiving nearly all its produce, with the exception of cotton, which goes direct to Liverpool or Glasgow. It receives nearly seven- * Capper, The Port and Trade of London (London, 18G2), pp. 147-1 63; The Land we Live in, vol. iii., pp. 37-44. 416 English Commerce in 1865. eighths of the coffee 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 exports a sixth of the textile fabrics, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk that are manufactured in England for foreign or colonial use, a quarter of the wrought and unwrought metals, and a third of the finished machinery, about half of the leather, and more than half of the provisions and miscellaneous articles which are sent abroad each year.* If in these general articles of commerce London engrosses 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 5,045,0007. from Australia, 4,298,0007. from the United States, and 5,126,0007. from other places, in all, 14,469,0007. ; of which rather more than half was sent abroad again, 6,072,0007. to the continent of Europe, 575,0007. to India and Egypt, 1 ,581,0007. to Brazil and South America, and 245,0007. to other places. In the same year 4,923,0007. came to London in silver from Mexico, 72,0007. from Brazil, 1,654,0007. from the Continent, and 306,0007. from other parts, in all, 6,955,0007 ; and of this nearly all was sent abroad again, 3,801,0007. to India and * Capper, pp. 187, 188, &c. Trade in Bullion and Money. 417 Egypt, 2,703,000*. 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 0,254,000/. The increased wealth of the country, however, is by no means indicated by the increase of gold and silver in its possession. Wealth is now understood to be neither money by itself, according to the shallow systems of economical science that preceded 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 1 We call wealth,' said Aristotle, « everything whose value is measured by money' — money being the most convenient standard of measurement, 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.f Money, therefore, now really consists, not only of the coin issued from the Mint, and of * Mill, Principles of Political Economy, (ed. 1864), p. 6. t ' 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 bartered 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 it pecunia, money. Yet hereby did barter grow sale, the leather money is now golden and paper, and all miracles have been oitt-miracled ; for there are Rothschilds and English National Debts ; and whoso has sixpence is sovereign — to the length of sixpence — over all men ; commands cooks to feed him, philosophers to teach him, kings to mount guard over him— to the length of sixpence.' Sartor Jtesartus (London, 1858j, p. 24. The whole question of wealth, value, money, and credit, is excellently discussed in Mr. Macleod's Theory and Practice of Banking, of which a second edition has been issued this year. 418 English Commerce in I860. 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, pro- missory notes, and all the various paper equivalents of wealth, real or assumed, are now of vastly more extensive 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 treasures of the earth ; the manufacturer makes those treasures available for use ; and the merchant either brings them together for manufacture, 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 provides the circulating medium, without which none of those businesses could conveniently or efficiently be carried on. The richest and most influential men in all the world are now the bankers and bill-discounters, the negotiators of foreign wants, and other dealers in public credit. Hence the vast im- portance of the Stock Exchange — a shabby little building in Capel Court — 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 institution so as best to meet the needs of honest trading, and to leave least room for the gambling and fraud which are the chief causes of mor'.y panics and commercial disasters. But there can be no question as to the magnitude of its operations, and the extent of its influence. 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 Stock-jobbing and Public Companies. 419 10G,995,000Z., all available for speculative purposes, and with an actual deposit of 12,174,790^.* Most of these were of course Limited Liability Companies ; this being now the favourite form of speculation in succession to the older kind of joint-stock trading that came into fashion about forty years before, and to the railway mania that assumed importance some twenty years afterwards. Joint-stock enterprise is undoubtedly an absolute necessity in the present stage of commercial development, and there is much to be said in favour of the Limited Liability principle, introduced in the hope of correcting some evils consequent on the older modes of operation. It is not strange or unadvisable that great private undertakings which have advanced, under private management, to such vastness that they can hardly be carried on without the addition of fresh capital and the introduction of fresh managers, should be turned into joint-stock companies ; and there are other enterprises which, like banks, cannot be conducted safely without a larger guarantee than private capitalists can generally give ; or which, like railways or docks, can only be entered upon with resources that no single speculator — though a Rothschild or a Thornton — has command of. But nine- tenths of the companies now formed, under the Limited Lia- bility Act, have no such excuses. A great many of them are * Thus analysed in the Economist : — No. of Capital Capital n*tv«lt Companies. Companies. Authorized. Offered. **posu. Manufacturing and Trading 116 £2S,G35,000 £22,207,900 £3,890,290 inking H 15,200,000 10,400,000 1,465,000 Railways ...... 14 12,720,000 8,140,000 1,180,900 Financial and Discount . . 10 12,200,000 9.025,000 1,095,000 Building and Investment . 32 9,815,000 7,350,000 1,186,250 Assurance 7 9,250,000 3,050,000 395,000 Shipping ....-■ 15 6,170,000 4,235,000 729,100 Minino- ...... 49 4.505,000 4,196,000 1,038,000 Gas °. .... 6 2,025,000 1,750,000 370,000 Hotels '. . . . ■ 12 1,300,000 1,250,000 264,500 Miscellaneous' '.'.'.. 15 5,175,000 3,975,000 560,750 287 106,995,000 75,578,900 12,174,790 420 English Commerce in 1865. projected in dishonesty, and worked unscrupulously, until the inevitable failure ensues, showing a waste of all the capital invested, and gain to none but the moneyless projectors. Many others are undertaken honestly, but by men unfit for business, and in furtherance of plans that are generally un- businesslike. They, too, are certain, sooner or later, to fail ; and experience proves that many, even of the companies estab- lished from good motives and conducted in honest ways, are utterly untrustworthy. They all have this element of weak- ness — that they are built up with money in which the actual managers of the concerns have but little interest ; and that, therefore, the money is spent more recklessly, and responsi- bilities are assumed more fearlessly than would be the case if the capitalists looked after their own business, or if the mana- gers had to bear the whole or any adequate share of the risk. From this prevalence of joint-stock undertakings, however, there seems likely to ensue an entire change in the system of modern trade, a return, with differences necessarily resulting from the growth of civilization during the last twelve or fourteen centuries, to something like the method of the oldest commerce of our island. In early days all men were merchants. Every one who had grown anything on his own fields, or made anything with his own hands, or brought anything from foreign countries by his own labour, himself took it to market, either to barter it for something else of which he was in need, or to dispose of it for money, and with that money to make purchases to his taste. As society advanced, it became expedient for certain classes to devote themselves to productive labour, and to leave the business of buying and selling, on a large scale, in the hands of other classes specially prepared or fitted for the work. So it has been for many centuries, and in each century trade has become more restricted in its character, none being able to enter upon it prosperously who do not give to it all their energies. The most energetic have been most successful, and during TJie Future of English Commerce. 421 the last hundred years merchant princes have acquired in- fluence and wealth unparalleled in the history of earlier times. Now it is no uncommon thing for cotton-spinners and iron- masters to have several thousand persons in their employ ; and our greatest merchants, like the Barings or the Roth- schilds, if their immediate servants are fewer, are really masters of far greater numbers, since both manufacturers and their workpeople, and shipowners and their sailors, contribute to their maintenance, and look to them, in return, for the employment that gives them subsistence. As society progresses, it is found that commercial enterprises, to be thoroughly successful, must be carried on in more and more gigantic ways, as thus the new appliances of machinery can be used most economically, and all the expenses of production can be most reduced. But this arrangement, of subjecting thousands to a single individual, and of allowing by far the greater share of the profits to enrich that single individual, while the thousands have to be content with weekly earnings, which, whether much or little, are at any rate kept always at the lowest pos- sible point by competition in an overstocked labour-market, is manifestly unjust. The injustice has afforded some excuse for the numberless strikes and combinations in which, during the last two or three generations, have been squandered both money and the physical strength that goes to the making of money ; and which, if they have ruined some rich masters, have brought terrible sufferings upon thousands and thousands of the labouring classes. Working people themselves, how- ever, are learning the follv of all such violent measures, and are entering upon a sounder course of action. Seeing that richer men are uniting in joint-stock com- panies, each with several hundreds or thousands of share- holders, they are resolving that they, too, will form co- operative societies, and manage trades or manufactories, in which they will be partners as well as labourers. In Rochdale, Manchester, and elsewhere, this disjK)sition is very apparent. 422 TJie Future of English Commerce. Already there are large establishments in which business is successfully carried on by companies of workmen, under the guidance of directors chosen from and by themselves. In other instances the masters have wisely admitted their labourers to partnership with them, taking to themselves a fair remuneration for the capital they have embarked, paying the men at market rates for the work that they do, and equi- tably sharing all the profits with them. This practice, once adopted and found successful, must certainly be extended. When the grievous differences that have long existed between masters and workpeople are thus removed, the real enfran- chisement of the labouring classes will begin. THE ROTAL EXCHANGE, LONDON. 423 INDEX. Addison, Joseph, his opinions on commerce, i. 312. Albion Mill, Southwark, ii. 109, 110. Alexander, William, of Edinburgh, ii. 125. Anderson, John, of Glasgow, ii. 170. Antwerp, English trade with, in the middle ages, i. 39, 40 ; under the Tudors, i. 116, 117, 127-129. Australia, trade with, ii. 6, 7. Aytoun, James, of Kirkcaldy, ii. 225. Bank of England, the, its foundation and earlv history, i. 371-377 ; its later history, ii. 163, 108, 350- 359. Barbadoes, early history of, i. 303, 304. Barclay. David, merchant of London (d. 17G1), ii. 131-133. Barclay, David, merchant and banker of London (1 729-1809;, ii. 134-137. Baring, Alexander, Baron Ash- burton (1774-1848), his birth and education, ii. 243 ; his employ- ments in America, ii. 244 ; his settlement in England, ii. 244 ; his Parliamentary work, ii. 245, 24G, 249; his commercial occupa- tions, ii. 243, 244, 246-248 : his advocacy of free trade, ii. 23, 24 ; his picture - buying and life at Shoreham, ii. 248, 249 ; his change of politics, ii. 250; his settlement of the American boundary line, ii. 251, 252 ; his death, ii. 252. Barin<r, Sir Francis 1 1736-1810), his birth and early work. ii. 235; his trade in stocks and shares, ii. 235, 239; his Parliamentary em- ployments, ii. 239, 240 ; his con- nection with the East India Com- pany and the Bank of England, ii. 235, 240 ; his friendship with Joseph Paice, ii. 240, 242 ; his death and character, ii. 242. Baring, John, of Larkbeer and Lon- don, ii. 234. Baring, John, of London and Exeter, ii. 235. Baring, Thomas, ii. 243. Barnard, Sir John, of London (1685-1764), his birth and early occupations, i. 410, 411 ; his trade and city life, i. 411, 412; his Parliamentary employments, i. 412, 413 ; his" reform of the Fleet and Marshalsea prisons, i. 414 ; his defence of foreign loans, i. 414 ; his opposition to the Sugar Colony Bill, i. 415, 416 : and to Sir Robert Walpole's entire finan- cial and commercial policy, i. 416^418; his arguments against Walpole's Excise Bill, i. 418- 420, and against his proposal for absorbing the Sinking Fund, i. 421, 422 : his hills against stock- jobbing, i. 410, 422 ; for increase of the tea-duty, i. 422 ; and lor restraining playgoing, i. 423 ; his share in the reduction of interest on the National Debt, i. 423 ; his work as Lord Mayor, i. 424 ; his patriotism in 1715, i. 425; his proposal of a Government loan, i. 425, 426 ; his civic honours, i. 426 ; his retirement from public- um, i. 42C; illustrations of hia character, i. 42G, 427; his death, i. 427. 424 Index. Bates, Joshua (1788-18G4), ii. 247, 24S. Baxter, William and Edward, of Dundee, ii. 402, 403. Beckl'ord, William, of London (d. 1770 , ii. 135. Bentlev, Thomas, of Liverpool (1730-1780), ii. G5-G9; his part- nership with Josiah Wedgwood, ii. 70-75. Berwick in the middle ages, i. 15. Bessemer's steel, ii. 14. Birmingham, early history of, ii. 80- 82 ; in the eighteenth century, ii. 82-84, 105, 10G; in the nine- teenth century, ii. 271, 407-411. Blackburu, i. 283 ; ii. 148, 149, 153, 270. Blanket, Thomas, of Bristol (1340), i. 97. Blantyre cotton mills, ii. 200, 203- 206. Blundell, Bryan, of Liverpool (d. 175G), ii. 53-55, G4. Bolto, an Anglo-Saxon merchant, i. 4. Bolton, i. 283, 28G. Boulton, John, of Lichfield, ii. 85. Boulton, Matthew, of Birmingham (d. 1759), ii. 85-87. Boulton, Matthew, of Birmingham (1728-1809), his birth and pa- rentage, ii. 85 ; his early trade, ii. 8G, 87 ; his shop on Snow Hill, ii. 87 ; his establishment at Soho, ii. 87-93, 100, 105, 117-119; his foreign trade, ii. 89, 93 ; his deal- ings with George the Third, ii. 89, 91, 92 ; his friendship with James Watt, ii. 93-98 ; his manufacture of steam-engines, ii. 94, 97-101, 107 ; bis monument to Dr. Small, ii. 102 ; Lis share in the Lunar Society, ii. 102-105; his friend- ship with Joseph Priestley, ii. 105—107; his copying-press, ii. 102, 107, 108 ; his controversy with the Birmingham brass - founders, ii. 108, 109 ; his share in the Albion Mill, Southwark, ii. 109, 110; his manufacture of gold and silver wares and plated goods, ii. Ill ; his procurement of an Assay Office in Birmingham, ii 111 ; his improvement of the coinage, ii. 112-115 ; his last em- ployments, ii. 115 ; his illness and death, ii. 110; his character and place in commercial historv, ii. 110-119. Bradford, i. 2S3 ; ii. 404. Brazil, early trade with, by William Hawkins, i. 197-199 ; bv John Withal and others, i. 199-201. Bristol in Anglo-Saxon times, i. 5 ; in the twelfth century, i. 13, 9G, 97 ; under the Tudors, i. 135, 147, 148, 355 ; in the seventeenth century, i. 327, 355-357 ; in the eighteenth century, ii. 16. Brooke, Humphrey, of Liverpool (1588 , ii. 30. Brown, Sir William, of Liverpool (1784-1864), his birth and educa- tion, ii. 300 ; his life in America, 300 ; his settlement in Liverpool, ii 301, 307 ; his trading occupa- tions, ii. 299-301, 308-311, 313 ; his services to Liverj>ool com- merce, ii. 307, 308, 318 ; and to the general improvement of the town, 310, 311, 318 ; his share in the Anti-Corn-Trfiw League, ii. 311, 312; his work and place in Parliament, ii. 313-315 ; his me- diation between England and America, ii. 315-318 ; his founda- tion of the Liverpool Free Li- brary, ii. 319, 320 ; his later occu- pations and death, ii. 320. Bruges, English trade with, L 40, 117. Buchanan, Andrew and George, of Glusgow, ii. 182, 183. Bulleyn, Geoffrey, of London (1453), i. 10G. Burton-upon-Trent, ii. 154, 891. Bury, i. 283 ; ii. 157, 158, 169. Cabot, John and Sebastian, i. 131, 149-152. 156. Calais, English merchants in, i. 39, 117, 118. Campbell, George, banker of Lon- don, ii. 12G, 137. Canada, trade with, ii. 2-4. Cann, Sir Robert, of Bristol, i. 32G, 327. Canynge, John, of Bristol, (d. 1405), i. 98. Canynge, Thomas, Lord Mayor of London (,1456), i. 99. Index. 425 Canynge, William, of Bristol (d. 1396), i. 98. Canynge, William, of Bristol (1400- 1474), his parentage, i. 98; his trade with Iceland and Prussia, i. 100, 101 ; his public services under Henry the Sixth, i. 102, 103 ; his entertainment of Edward the Fourth, 103, 104 ; his estab- lishment of a merchant's guild at Bristol, i. 105 ; his wealth, i. 100, 106 ; his retirement from trade, and death, i. 106. Carpenter, John, Town Clerk of London and executor of Whitting- ton, i. 94, 106. Carron Iron Works, Glasgow, ii, 95. Chamberlayne, Hugh, his projected Land Bank, i. 372. Chancellor, Richard, Ins expeditions to Russia, i. 131, 132. Charta Mercatoria, the, i. 20, 21. Chester, in Roman times, i. 2 : in Anglo-Saxon times, i. 5 ; in the twelfth century, i. 13 ; in later times, ii. 30, 31. Chctham, Humphrey, of Manchester (1580-1653 •, his birth and parent- age, i. 285, 286 ; his trade, i. 286, 292, 293: his refusal of knight- hood, i. 287; his appointment as Sheriff of Lancashire, i. 288 ; as Collector of Ship-money, i. 289 ; as High Collector of Subsidies, i. 290 ;" as General Treasurer for Lancashire, i. 290; his troubles under the Commonwealth, i. 291- 293; his institution of Chetham Hospital, i. 293, 294 ; his death and burial, i. 295. Child, Sir Francis, of London (1042- 1713), i. 352; ii. 120. Child, Sir John, in Bombay (d. 1691), i. 347-349. Child, Sir Josiah, of London (1630- 1699;, his birth and parentage, i. 332; his early trade with New England, i. 333, 334 ; his business as a brewer, i. 334 ; his residence at Wanstead House, i. 335; his Observations concerning Trade, i. 335-338 ; his New Discourse of Trade, i. 339-342; his share in the management of the East India Company, i. 343-350; his place at Court, i. 345; his marriages VOL. II. and family relationships, i. 335, 351 ; his death and character, i. 350, 351. Childs, the earlier and later, i. 331, 332, 351, 352. China, trade with, ii. 6. Clayton, William, of Liverpool, ii. 37, 39, 43, 44. Cleveland, William, of Liverpool, ii. 37. Clough, Richard, Sir Thomas Gre- sham's agent and partner, i. 187, 190, 191. Coal trade, the, in the middle ages, i. 141 ; at present, ii. 392-394. Cobden, Richard (1804-1865), his birth and ancestry, ii. 366; his schooling and early life, ii. 367; his employment as a commercial traveller, ii. 368; his establish- ment as a merchant and manu- facturer, ii. 369, 370 ; hie share in the incorporation of Manchester, ii. 370 ; his share in the Anti-Corn- Law agitation, ii. 370-376; his travels on the Continent, ii. 376, 377 ; his later occupation in Par- liament, ii. 377, 378 ; his procure- ment of the Commercial Treaty with France, ii. 379-381, 392 ; his speech on the national defences, ii. 382 ; his last Parliamentary speech and death, ii. 383; his character and services to com- merce, ii. 378, 384. Colquhoun, Patrick/ of Glasgow, (1745-1820), his birth and early occupations, ii. 184 ; his services to Glasgow, ii. 184-187 ; his work in London and death, ii. 187, 188. Colston, Edward, of Bristol (1636- 1721), his birth and parentage, i. 353, 354; his trade, i. 354, 358, 360; his charities, i. 354, 358- 361 ; his residence at Mortlake, i. 362 ; his Parliamentary election, i. 361 ; his death and burial, i. 362. Colston, Humphry, Consul in Spain, i. 354. Colston, William, Sheriff of Bristol (1608-1681), i. 353, 354. Commerce, English, in the earliest times, i. 1, 2 ; in Anglo-Saxon times, i, 3-8 ; under the Plan- tagenets, i. 9-46; in the fifteenth 2 F 426 Index. century, i. 47, 48 ; under Henry the Seventh, i. 109-11G; under Henry the Eighth, i. 11G-121 ; under Edward tlie Sixth and Mary, i. 125; under Elizabeth, i. 120-136, 220 ; under James the First and Charles the First, i. 13G, 144-140, 296-299 ; under the later Stuarts and the early Georges, i. 304— 314 ; its rapid extension since 17G0, ii. 1G, 22-28; its condition in 18G5, ii. 385-422. Cort, Henry (1783), ii. 13, 14. Cotton trade and manufacture, i. 285; ii. 152, 160, 161, 165, 290, 291, 398^02. Coutts, James, of Edinburgh and London (d. 1778), ii. 123, 126, 137. Coutts, John, of Edinburgh (d. 1750), ii. 121, 122. Coutts, John, of Edinburgh (d. 1761), ii. 123-127. Coults, Patrick, of Montrose (d. 1704), ii. 121. Coutts, Patrick, of London, ii. 123, 126. Coutts, Thomas, of London (d. 1822), his early employments, ii. 123 ; his establishment as a banker, ii. 126, 137; his first marriage, ii. 138, 139; his daughters, ii. 139; his bank management, ii. 139- 144 ; his character and private life, ii. 144 ; his second mar- riage, ii. 145, 146 ; his death, ii. 147. Craneges, the, ii. 13. Crompton, Samuel, ii. 161, 165, 166. Cropper, James, of Liverpool (d. 1840), ii. 293. Cuming, William, of Edinburgh, ii. 125. Cunliffe, Adam, ii. 54. Cunlifle, Foster, of Liverpool (1685- 1758), ii. 55, 57, 64. Dale, David, of Glasgow (1739- 1806), his parentage and early history, ii. 188, 189; his trade in Glasgow, ii. 189-192, 198, 203; his charitable works and religious zeal, ii. 190-192. 198; his cotton- mills at New Lanark, ii. 192- 198 ; his death and character, ii. 198. Dansell, Sir William, i. 177. Daranda, Paulid. 1729), i. 399, 400, 402. Darbv, Abraham, of Coalhrook Dale (1730), ii. 11, 13. Darien, Paterson's colony at, i. 3GG-3G8, 377-387, 3S9, 391. Darwin, Erasmus, ii. 102-104. Day, Thomas, author of " Sandford a'nd Merton," ii. 100, 102, 107. Defoe, Daniel, his opinions on com- merce, i. 305, 313; his praise of William Patcrson, i. 403. De la Poles, the early, i. 50 ; the later, i. 68-70. De la Pole, John, of Hull, i. 52. De la Pole, Nicholas, i. 51. De la Pole, Richard, of Hull (d. 1345) i. 52 ; his employments under Edward the Second, i. 55 ; under Edward the Third, i. 56- 58; his trade and wealth, i. 55, 57, 58, 62 ; his death, i. 58. De la Pole, William, of Totnes, i. 50. De la Pole, William, of Rouen, i. 51. De la Pole, William, of Ravensrod, i. 51, 52. De la Pole, Sir William, of Hull (d. 1366), i. 52 ; his various loans to Edward the Third, i. 55-57, 61-64 ; his trade and wealth, i. 57-59, G(j ; his services as pur- veyor to the army in France, i. 60, 62, 64 ; as Chief Baron of the Exchequer, i. 65, 66 ; favours granted to, by Edward the Third, 61-65, 67; his imprisonment in Devizes Castle, i. 66 ; his philan- thropises in Hull, i. 59,67; his death and burial, i. 6S. Denison, Joseph, of Leeds, i. 216, 217. Denisons of Leeds, other, ii. 216. Dohbs, Sir Richard, founder of Christ's Hospital, London, i. 279. Drake, Sir Francis, i. 207-209, 211, 228, 238. Drapers' Guild in London, ii. 137. Drumniond, Andrew, banker of I-iondon, ii. 126. Dublin in the middle ages, i. 15. Duckett, Sir Lionel, Lord Mayor of London (1573), i. 230. Dudley, Dud (1621), ii. 8, 9. Dunwich in the twelfth century, i. 14. Index. 427 Earles of Liverpool, the, ii. G4, 78. East India Company, its foundation, i. 131, 201), 230; "its early history, i. 236-246, 207, 315, 310, 341- 350 ; its Inter history, ii. 4-G, 210, 297, 301, 326, 332. Edelsten and Williams, of Birming- ham, ii. 410. Edinburgh in the middle nges, i. 15, 2G0; in the sixteenth century, i. 2G1 ; in the eighteenth century, ii. 122, 125, 127. Edward the First's Charta Mer- catoria, i. 20. Edward the Second, services of the De la Poles to, i. 5G. Edward the Third, his incorporation of the London Guilds, i. 34 ; his relations with Richard and William de la Pole, i. 5G-G7; character of his reign, i. 80. Edward tlie Fourth's visit to Bristol, i. 103, 104. Eliot, Hugh, of Bristol, i. 153. Elizabeth, Queen, her relations with Sir Thomas Gresham, i. 192; with the Hawkinses, i. 211-214, 225-227. Elphinstone, William, of Glasgow, i. 107 ; ii. 174. Etruria, ii. 70-72, 90, 92. Ewart, William, of Liverpool (d. 1823), ii. 294, 295. Ewing, Humphrey, of Glasgow (1744-1814) ii. 321, 322. Ewing, James, of Glasgow (1775- 1853), his birth and education, ii. 322, 323 ; his trading occupations, ii. 323, 329, 332; his house in Queen Street, ii. 328 ; his share in the Glasgow Bank, ii. 329; in the Glasgow Savings Bank, ii. 329 ; his services as Dean of Guild, ii. 330 ; his improvement of Glasgow High School, and other philanthropic work, ii. 331 ; his share in removing the East India Company's monopoly, ii. 332 ; and in repealing the Test and Corporation Acts, ii. 333 ; his zeal in prison reform, ii.333, 334; his care of the honest poor, ii. 334, 335 ; his opening of the Glasgow Necropolis, ii. 335 ; of the Royal Exchange and the Jamaica Bridge, ii, 336 ; his elec- tion as Lord Provost and Member of Parliament, ii. 337; his retire- ment and death, ii. 337. 338; his benefactions, ii. 338, 339. Fairbairn, Mr. William, of Man- chester, ii. 39G. Fairs, the origin of, i. 7. Farendon, William and Nicholas, of London, i. 72, 73. Fentons of Leeds, the, ii. 22G, 227. 229. Finlay, Kirkmau, of Glasgow, ii 32G, 327, 332. Finzel, Omrad, of Bristol (d. 1859) ii. 19-21. Fishmongers' Guild in Loudon, i. 36. Fitch, Ralph, his overland journey to India (1553), i. 236. Fitz-Alwyn, Henry, first Mayor of London (d. 1214), i. 71,72. Flakefield, William, of Glasgow, ii. 177, 178. Flemish colonists in England, under William Rufus and Henry the First, i. 9 ; under the Tudors, i. 139. Forbes, Sir William, banker of Edin- burgh (d. 1806) ii. 128. Fothergill, John, Matthew Boultou's partner, ii. 89. Francis, Simon, Mayor of London (1343, 1356), i. 73. Free-trade, i.' 171, 415; ii. 21-28, 1G5, 167, 1G8, 273-276, 311, 312, 332, 370-375, 379-3S5. Frobisher, Martin, i. 215-219. Fry, Joseph, of London, ii. 348. Fuggers, or Fulcare, the great Ger- man merchants, i. 166, 178. Garway, Henry, of London, i. 317, 318 ; ii. 37. Garway, Sir William, of London (d. 1625), i. 317. George t lie Third, his friendship for Wedgwood and Bentley, ii. 72, 73; for Boulton, ii. 89, 91,92. Gibson, Walter, of Glasgow, ii. 176. Gideon, Samson, of Londou(d. 1762), ii. 236, 237. Gil hart, James William, ii. 358. Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, i. 215, 216, 219,220,355. Gillutt, Joseph, of Birmingham, ii. 408. 428 Index. Gladstaines and Gladstones, the, of Lanarkshire and Leith, ii. 292. Gladstone, Sir John, of Liverpool (1764-1851); his birth and early occupations, ii. 292, 293, 295 ; his opposition to the Orders in Coun- cil, ii. 295, 29G; his services to Liverpool commerce, ii. 297, 304 ; his own trade, ii. 292, 295, 297, 299, 304 ; his share in the Liver- pool and Manchester Railway, ii. 298, 299 ; his politics and his work in Parliament, ii. 302, 303 ; his wealth and his charities, ii. 303-305; his life in retirement at Fasque, ii. 305, 30G; his death there, ii. 30G. Glassford, John, of Glasgow, ii. 183. Glasgow in the middle ages, i. 15; ii. 174, 175; in the seventeenth century, ii. 175, 170, 178 ; in the eighteenth century, ii. 179-182 ; in the nineteenth century, ii. 324, 325. Godfrey, Michael, of London, his share in founding the Bank of England, i. 371, 373-376. Goldsmids of London, the, ii. 235- 239. Goldsmiths' Guild in London, i. 36. Gott, Benjamin, of Leeds (1762— 1840), ii. 217, 219-222, 230-233. Gournays, the elder, ii. 34(J, 341. Grants of Manchester, the, ii. 289. Gresham, James, of Holt, i. 164. Gresham, John, of Gretham, i. 164. Gresham, Sir John (d. 1556), his trade, i. 165, 167, 180 ; his loans to Henry the Eighth, i. 167, 173 ; his charities, i. 172, 174; his death and costly burial, i. 173. Gresham, Sir John (d. 1560), i. 174. Gresham, Sir Richard (d. 1549), his trade, and his loans to Henry the Eighth, i. 165, 167; his friend- ship for Cardinal Wolsey, i. 168, 109; his re-orgiinization of the City hospitals, i. 169, 170; his project for a burse in London, i. 170 ; his arguments in favour of free trade, i. 171 ; his death, i. 172. Gresham, Thomas (d. 1558), mer- chant and priest, 165-167. Gresham, Sir Thomas Q519-1579), his schooling and City training, i. 174, 175; his marriage, i. 176." his trade, i. 176, 1S7, 1S8, 192; his possessions, i. 192, 193 ; his services to Edward the Sixth, i. 177-181 ; to Queen Marv, i. 182; to Queen Elizabeth, i. 1S3-188; his building of the first Royal Exchange, i. 191 : his founda- tion of Gresham College, i. 192, 195 ; his troubles as guardian of Lady Mary Grey, i. 193, 194; his place in commercial history, i. 195 ; his deatli and burial, i. 195, 196. Gresham, William (d. 1548), i. 165. Grey, Lady Mary. i. 193, 194. Grimsby, i. 51, 53. Grocers' Guild in London, the, i. 37. Guilds, the origin of, i. 30 ; of London, i. 33-33 ; of Bristol, i. 105; of Norwich, i. 138, 139; of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 142, 143. Gurnav, Francis, of London (b. 1581), ii. 341, 343, 344. Gurney, Bartlett (d. 1803) ii. 347. Gurnev, Hudson, of Norwich (1775- 1864), ii. 137, 347. Gurney, John, of Norwich (1655- 1721), ii. 344. Gurney, John of Norwich (1688- 1740), ii. 345, 346. Gurney, John, of Norwich (1750- 1809), ii. 347, 349. Gurnev, Joseph John (1789-1847), ii. 347, 356. Gurnev, Sir Richard, of London (1577-1649), ii. 342. Gurney, Richard, of Norwich, ii. 137, 347. Gurney, Samuel, of London (1786- 1856), his birth and education, ii. 347, 348 ; his business occupa- tions, ii. 348-350, 352-360; his charitable and philanthropic dis- position, ii. 300-363; his death, ii. 364. Guv, Thomas, of London (1644- 1724), i. 408, 409. Halifax under the Tudors, i. 282, 283. Hardman, John, of Liverpool fd. 1755), ii. 61. Harrison, John, of Leeds (1579- 1656), ii. 212-214. Hawkins, John, of Tavistock, i. 197. Hawkins, Sir John, (1525-1595); his parentage and early voyaging, Index. 429 i. 201; his throe expeditions to the West Indies, i. 203-208 ; his trade in London and Plymouth, i 210, 224, 227; his projects for annoying the Spaniards, i. 2()u, 220, 227 ; his rebuke of Spanish pride while in command of the Channel Fleet, i. 212, 213; las overreaching of Philip the Se- cond, i. 213, 214 ; his services as Treasurer of the Navy, i. 214, 223-227; his work in Parliament, i. 214, 215; his narrow escape from being murdered, i. 215 ; his last voyage to the West Indies, and death there, i. 228. Hawkins, Sir Richard, son of the above, i. 223, 228. Hawkins, William, of Plymouth, father of Sir John Hawkins, his early voyages to Brazil, i. 197- 199. Hawkins, William, of Plymouth and London, son of the above, i. 201 ; his trade, i. 210, 224, 227; his services to Plymouth, i. 211. 'Hawkins, young Mr. William ;' his voyage to Brazil, i. 221, 222 ; his voyage to the East Indies, i. 239. Henry the First's introduction of Flemings into England, i. 9. Henry the Second's furtherance of trade, i. 12, 13. Henry the Third's legislation re- garding commerce, i. IS, 23. Henry the Fourth's dealings with Whittington, i. 89. Henry the Fifth's dealings with Whittington, i. 90-92. Henry the Seventh's furtherance of trade, i. 46, 109-113. Henry the Eighth's care of trade, i. 11G-118, 12U; and of shipping, i. 121-124. Heriot, George, of Edinburgh, i. 2G2. Heriot, George, of Edinburgh (1540- 1610), i. 262. Heriot, George, of Edinburgh and London (1563-1624), his birth and early history, i. 263, 264 ; his shops and customers in Edin- burgh, i. 264, 265 ; his residence in London,!. 268, 281 , his dealings with James the Sixth and Queen Anne, i. 265-268, 273-276; his progress in trade, i. 276; his two marriages, i. 264, 277 ; his dispute willi his f.ither-in-law. i. 278; his establi>hment of Heriot s Hospital, i. 279, 2iS0: his death, i. 281. Herricks of Leicester, the, i. 268- 272. Herrick, Sir William, of London (1557-1 < :r.3,, i. 268, 270-27H. Herries, liub.rt, banker of ljondon, ii. 12S. Hey, William, of Leeds, ii. 230. Heywood, Arthur, of Liverpool (1715-1795), ii. 61-65, 76, 78, 7!). Hcvwood, Benjamin, of Drogluda ("1687-1725), ii. CO. Heywood, Benjamin, of Liverpool ('.' l 1722-17!>5;, ii. 61-65, 78, 79. Heywood, Sir Bejamin, of Man- chester '1791-1865), ii. 63, 79. Hinde, John, Mayor of London(1393„ i. 86, 89. Hoares, the, merchants and bankers of Lon.ion, ii. 129-131. Hobbe, Walter, of Bristol (1295). i. 96. Hopes of Amsterdam and London, the, ii. 243, 344. Hore, James, goldsmith, of London, ii. 129. Houghton, Richard, of Liverpool, ii. 37, 44. Hull, its early history, i. 53, 54, 59, 67. Huntsman, Benjamin, of Sheffield (1740), i. 12, 87. Ind ; a, trade with, ii. 4-6. [See also East India Company. | India-rubber trade, tliL', ii. 411, 412. Intercursus Magnus, the, i. 113. Iron-working and steel-making in Romish times, i. 2; in the seven- teenth century, ii. 8, 9 ; in the eighteenth and nineteenth cen- turies, ii. 9-15; at the present time, ii. 15, 394-397, 406, 407. James the Sixth of Scotland, and First of England, his dealings with Sir Hugii Myddelton, i. 249, 250; with George Heriot, i. 205- 269, 273-270. Jay, John, of Bristol, i. 105, 148. Jeiikiiw>n, Anthony, his journey to the East, i. 133. Jews, the, in the middle ages, i. 10. 430 Index. Johnson, Thomas, of Liverpool (d- 1700), ii. 34-36, 52. Johnson, Sir Thomas, of Liverpool (d. 1729), his birth and early occu- pations, ii. 3G ; his trade, ii. 38, 39, 42-44, 52; liis municipal ap- pointments and services to the town, ii. 3G, 40, 41. 43-51; his Parliamentary occupations, ii. 39- 42, 51 ; his knighthood, ii. 51 ; his later history and death, ii. 52. Keir, Captain James, of Birming- ham, ii. 101, 102, 107. Kendrew, John, of Darlington, ii. 225, 220. Lamb, Charles, and the Tndia Office, ii. 240, 241. Lancaster, Captain James, i. 23G. Law, John, i. 401, 402, 407. Leeds, early history of, i. 283; ii. 211; in the seventeenth century, ii. 217; in the eighteenth century, ii. 218, 219; in the nineteenth century, ii. 222, 223, 229. Levant or Turkey Com pan v of Merchants, i. 131, 231, 297, 323. Leyland or Bullin, Richard, of Liverpool (d. 1844), ii. 294. Leyland, Thomas, of Liverpool, ii. 294, 295. Lincoln in the middle ages, i. 14, 53. Linen trade and manufacture, ii. 177, 223-229, 402, 403. Liverpool, its early history, i. 289 ; ii. 29-31 ; in the seventeenth century.ii. 31-35; in the eighteenth century, ii. 44-46, 55-59, 75-78, 290, 291 ; in tho nineteenth cen- tury.ii. 290,413,415. Liverpool docks, ii. 47-51, 76, 413. Lock, Michael, of London, i. 217. Lock, Sir William, i. 217. Lombard bankers in Ix>ndon, i. 41. Lombe, Sir Thomas, his silk-mills at Derby, i. 307-309, ii. 344. London, in Roman times, i. 2 ; in the twelfth conlury, i. II, 13, 71, 72; in the thirteenth centurv, i. 19, 20, 24, 25 ; in the days of Whit- tington, i. 77, 78, 87, 88 ; in the days of Gresham, i. 189, 190. London Docks, ii. 413-415. London Guilds, i. 33-38. London Lackpenny, Lydgate's, i. 28. Lunar Society, the, at Birmingham, ii. 103-107. Lynn in tho middle ages, i. 14, 53. Lyon, Archibald, of Glasgow, ii. 174, '175. Manchester, early history of, i. 283- 285 ; in the eighteenth century, ii. 150, 151; in the nineteenth century, ii. 2GS-273. Mansfield, James, of Edinburgh, ii. 125. Marshall, John, of Leeds '1765- 1845), ii. 217, 223, 225-233. Markets in Anglo-Saxon and Anglo- Norman times, i. 7 ; in the middle ages, i. 24. Maryland, early history of, i. 300. Mellon, Harriet, Thomas Coutts's second wife, ii. 145-147. Mercer, John, a merchant of Perth, captured by John Philpot, of London (1378), i. 83. Mercers' Guild in London, i. 37, 89. Merchant Adventurers of England, i. 40, 114-110, 120-130, 298. Merchants of the Staple, i. 3S—40. Merchants of the Steel-yard, i. 31, 32, 125, 12G, 178. Merchants, Anglo-Saxon, i. 4, 5, 8 ; mediaeval, i. 20, 29, 34-38, 78, 79 ; sixteenth century, i. 124- 127. Methuen Treaty, of 1703, i. 311, 312. Middleton, Captain David, i. 232, 239, 240, 245. Middleton, Sir Henry (d. 1613), his early occupations, i. 232, 237 ; his first voyage to the East Indies, i. 237, 238 ; his voyage in the Red Dragon, i. 238, 239; his services at home, i. 240 ; his voyage in the Trades Increase, i. 241-244; his death, i. 244. Miles, Philip John, of Bristol (1774- 1848), ii. 17, 18. Miles, William, of Bristol, father of the above, ii. 10-19. Moncrief, Robert Scott, of Glasgow, ii. 207, 208. Monteith, Henry, of Glasgow ih. 1710), ii. 201. Monteith, Henry, of Glasgow (1764- 1848 ; , ii. 209, 210. Monteith, James (b. 1734), his Index. 431 life and work in Glasgow, ii. 202- 207. Monteith, John, banker of Glasgow, ii. 207, 208. Moore, Edward, (d. 1G78\ hi* pos- sessions in Liverpool, ii. 33-35. Mun, Thomas, of London, ( 1024). i. 297, 298. Murray, Mathew, of Leeds (1705- 1820), ii. 220, 227. Muscovy Company, the, i. 131, 210, 298. Myddelton, Sir Hugh (1555- 1631 ) ; his birth, i. 233. 234 ; his employments as a goldsmith, i. 235, 240 ; as a merchant adven- turer, i. 235, 240 ; as a manufac- turer, i. 247 ; in Parliament, i. 234, 240 ; his construction of the New River, i. 247, 251-250 ; of Blad- ing Harbour, i. 257 ; his mines in Denbigh, i. 257; his services to Denbigh, i. 235, 258 ; his death, i. 258. Myddelton, Robert, of London, i. 233, 234 ; his services to the East India Company, i. 230, 241, 245. Myddelton, Sir Thomas, of Ixmdon, i. 233, 234; his share in the establishment of the East India Company, i. 230, 245 ; las Lord Mayor's Show, i. 252-250. Myddelton. Captn in William, (?1545- 1003 j i. 233, 234. Nasmyth's steam hammer, ii. 14. Navigation Act of 1051, i. 309, 310. Navy, rise of the English, i. 120, 121 ; its condition, under Henry the j'.ighth. i. 122, 123; under Queen Elizabeth, i. 135,130; under the Stuarts, i. 13G. Neilson's hot blast furnace, ii. 14. Newcastle-upon-Tyne, i. 15, 110, 140-143. New England, earlv history of, i. 300-302, 333, 331," 355, 350. New Lanark cotton mills, ii. 192- 200. New York, earlv history of, i. 302, 303. Norriscs of Liverpool, the, ii. 37, 38. North, Sir Dudley, of London (104 1 - 1091), his birth and parentage, i. 318,319; his schooling and 'pren- tice life, i. 320; his occupations at Smyrna and dnstantinople, i. 321-323; his residence and trade in London, i. 323, 324, 32G; his employments under Charles the Second and James the Second, i. 324, 325 ; his marriage and city life, i. 320, 327 ; his great house in London, i. 327 ; his private life and domestic amusements, i. 228- 320 ; his death, i. 331. Norwich in the middle ages, i. 14, 137; under the Tudors, i. 138, 139; under the Stuarts, i. 140; in the eighteenth century, ii. 340. Onions, Peter, of Merthyr Tydvil ( 1783^, ii. 13. Osborne, Sir Edward, of London (d. 1591 1, i:201, 230-232. -*-*"> Overend, John, of London, ii. 349. Owen, Robert, his early history, ii. 195-197 ; his share in the manage- ment of the New Lanark Mills, ii. 197-200; his later occupations, 200, 210. Paice, Joseph, friend of Sir Francis Baring and Charles Lamb, ii. 240- 242. Patten, Thomas, of Warrington, ii. 47. Paterson, William, of Dumfries (1058-1719; ; his birth and parent- age, i. 303, 304 ; his early occu- pations at home, i. 305 ; and in the American colonies, i. 365, 300 ; his return to England, i. 300 ; his proposal of a settlement on the Tsthnius of Darien, i. 300- 308 ; his trading occupations in London, i. 308; his arguments for, and ultimate establishment of, the Bank of England, i. 309- 377 ; his support of tiie London Orphans' Fund, i. 377 ; his es- tablishment of the Darien Com- pany, i. 377-382 ; his troubles in connection with it, i. 382-388 ; his further advocacy of a Darien settlement, i. 390-392; his plan of benefiting Scotland by means of a Council of Trade, i. 389, 300 ; his last interview with William the Third, i. 391, 392; his plans for financial reform, i. 391, 392, 300-401 ; his share in 432 Index. establishing the Union between England and Scotland, i. 392- 395 ; bis works on trade and his plan for a commercial library, i. 393, 394 ; his poverty and dis- tress, i. 3SS, 395, 39S*-400; his petitions for assistance, i. 398- 400 ; his ultimate receipt of a Parliamentary grant, i. 400 ; his relations with John Law, i. 401 ; his last years and death, i. 401- 403. Peeles, the elder, ii. 148, 149. Peel, Robert, of Blackburn and Burton-upon-Trent (1723-1795), ii. 149, 150, 152-156. Peel, Sir Robert (1750-1830) his birth, ii. 157; his residence at Bury, ii. 157, 158 ; his factories there, and at Tamworth, ii. 158- 160 ; his use of Crompton's mule and of Watt's steam-engine, ii. 107, 131 ; his wealth, ii. 160, 102, 170 ; his charitable disposition, ii. 162, 171, 172 ; his Pari ianicn ta ry occupations, ii. 162-169 ; his dis- agreement with his son concern- ing the currency, ii. 168, 169 ; his residence at Drayton Manor, ii. 170, 171 ; his retirement and death, ii. 172, 173. Peel, Sir Robert (1788-1850), his birth and education, ii. 166, 167; his Bank Act and Bank Charter Act, ii. 168, 169,359. Pemberton, John, of Liverpool (1666-1743) ii. 63. Pennsylvania, early history of, i. 302. Pen-making, ii. 408. Percival, Richard, of Liverpool, ii. 36. Perkin, Reveller, Chaucer's, i. 77. Philpot, John, Mayor of London (d. 1384}, his speech to Richard the Second, i. 81 ; his punish- ment of John Mercer, i. 83 ; other services to the State, i. 84, 85. Pin-making, ii. 409. Piatt Brothers and Co., of Oldham, ii. 396-399. Plymouth, i. 198, 211. Porthouse, Thomas, of Darlington, ii. 225, 226. Potter, John, of Tadcaster, ii. 266, 267. Potter, Sir John, of Manchester (d. 1S57), ii. 282. Potter, Richard, of Manchester (d. 1843), his trading occupations, ii. 267, 268; his political em- ployments, ii. 275-27S. Potter, Sir Thomas, of Manchester (1764-1845), his birth and early life, ii. 266, 267; his trade, ii. 268, 275, 282-284 ; his share in the Corn-Law agitation, ii. 275, 276 ; in the Reform movement, ii. 276-278; in the Anti-Corn-Law League, ii. 279 ; in the municipal enfranchisement of Manchester, ii. 279, 280 ; his charitable and philanthropic work, ii. 280 ; his death, ii. 280. Potter, William, of Wigan and Manchester, ii. 207. Potteries, Staffordshire, in Roman times, i. 2 ; in Wedgwood's day, ii. 67, 68, 70-74. Priestley, Joseph, ii. 65, 66, 102, 104-107, 411. Pulteney, Sir John de, Mayor of London (1330-1330) i. 73. Rathbone, William, of Liverpool (d. 1809), ii. 292, 293. Ravensrod, in Yorkshire, i. 51, 52. Richard the Second, character of his reign, i. 80, 81 ; his treat- ment of the city of London, 81, 87 : 88. Richardson, Thomas, of London, ii. 349. Rochdale, i. 283. Roebuck, Dr., of Glasgow, ii. 95, 97. Rokesley, Gregory de, Mayor of London (1275-1285), i. 72. Roman trade with Britain, i. 2. Roscoc, William, of Liverpool, ii. 292-294. Rotenheryng, John, of Hull, i. 52, 54. Rothschild, Meyer Anselm, of Frankfort, ii. 253, 254. Rothschild, Nathan Meyer (1776- 1836,1 his life in Frankfort, ii. 254 ; his occupations in Man- chester, ii. 254, 255 ; his removal to London, ii. 255 ; bis occupa- tions and character as a merchant, banker, and stockjobber, ii. 256- 264 ; his death, ii. 264. Index. 433 Rylands and Sons, of Maneli ester and Wigan, ii. 285, 'ISO, 399, 400. Sadler, Michael Thomas, of Leeds and Belfast ( 1780- 183G), ii. 229- 233. Salt, Mr. Titus, of Saltaire, ii. 403- 405. Sanderson, Richard, of London, ii. 3G0. Saville, Sir John, first Mayor of Leeds, ii. 212. Scotland, its commercial advance- ment under Macbeth and David the First, i. 10, 11 ; its commerce in the middle ages, i. 259, 2G0; under James the Third and James the Fourth, i. 2G1. Ships, Anglo-Saxon, i. 4 ; sixteenth century, i. 122, 123, 132-135. Shops and selds of mediaeval Lon- don, i. 25. Silk-trade and manufacture in Eng- land, i. 30G-309 ; ii. 40G. Simpson, Walter, of Glasgow, ii. 176. Slave-trade in Anglo-Saxon times, i. 5 ; in the sixteenth century, i. 201, 20S; in the eighteenth cen- tury, ii. 5G, 57, G4, G8, 7G. Small, Dr., of Birmingham (1734- 1775), ii. 95, 101-103. Smith and Holt, of London, ii. 349. Smith, Payne, and Smith's Lank, London, ii. 120. Smythe, Sir Thomas, of London, (d. 1G25), i. 242, 315-317. Soho. Birmingham, ii. 88-93, 98, 100, 103, 105, 107, 110-115, 118. Southampton, i. 43, 44, 53, 199. South Sea Bubble, the, i. 402, 406- 409. Spain and Spanish commerce, op- position to, in Queen Elizabeth's days, i. 204-20U, 208, 209. Spiers, Alexander, of Glasgow, ii. 183. Spilman. Sir John, jeweller to James the First, i. 2G8, 273. Sprent, John, of Glasgow, ii. 178. Staper, Richard, of Plymouth London, i. 199, 201, 232. Steel-yard, or Steel-house, the, i, 31, 32, 125, 12G, 178. Stockjobbing, i. 404-410, 422; n. 235-239, 25G-20O, 418. and Sturmy, Robert, of Bristol, i. 104. Sugar refineries in Bristol, i. 358 ; ii. 18-20 ; in Liverpool, ii. 31. Sykcses of Leeds and Hull, the, ii. 214, 215. Taverner, John of Hull, i. 107. Taylor, John, of Birmingham (1714- 1775), ii. 84, 85, 118. Taylor, John Edward, of Man- chester, ii. 274, 27G. Tcnnant, Charles, of Glasgow (17GS- 1838), ii. 327. Thompson, Mr. Poulett, on free- trade, ii. 25, 2G. Thoresby, John, Philip and Ralph, of Leeds, ii. 214. Thorns, or Thornes, the early, i. 153. Thorn, John, Abbot of Reading, i. 154. Thorne, Nicholas, of Bristol (1496- 154G), i. 1G1-1G3. Thorne, Robert, the elder, of Bristol, i. 153, 155. Thorne, Robert, the younger (d. 1492-1532), his dealings in Bristol, Seville, and London, i. 15G, 159 ; his project for reaching Cathay, i. 157-159; his charities, i. 1G0. Thornton, Roger, of Newcastle-on- Tync (d. 1429;, i. 141. Tobacco trade, of Liverpool, i. 418 ; ii. 42-44 ; of Glasgow, i. 418 ; ii. 179-182. Venetian merchants in England, and the Venetian trading Meets, i. 41-47. Virginia, early trade with, i. 299, 300, 355 ; ii. 179-181. Wakefield, i. 2S3. Wal pole's tiuancial policy, i. 417- 423. Walworth, Sir William. Mayor of London (1373, 1381), i. 82, 84. Warrington, ii. 47, 05, GO. Watch-making, in Liverpool, ii. 75. Watt, James (173G-1S19,), his early lite, 93, 91 ; Id- sU am-engine, ii. 94-101, 107 ; his connection with the Lunar Society, ii. 102-107; his retirement, n. 91. 434 Index. Watts. S. J., and Co., of Manchester, ii. 208, 285. Wedgwood, Josiali, ii. 66-74, 90, 92, 102, 107. Westminster fairs, i. 22. Westminster Hall, market at, i. 25. West Indies, early trade with, i. 161, 201, 203-209, 303, 304; later trade with, ii. 2-4, 56, 57. Whittington, Sir Richard (d. 1423), his parentage, i. 74 ; his tradi- tional history, i. 75, 70'; his 'prentice life in London, i. 77 ; Sheriff of London, i. 80 ; Mayor of London, i. 88, 90 ; Member of Parliament, i. 90 ; his loans to Henry the Fourth, i. 89; to Henry the Fifth, i. 90 ; his cha- ritable and philanthropic deeds, i. 91-93; his house in Crutched Friars, i. 93 ; his death and burial, i. 94, 95. Whittington, Robert, brother of the above, i. 74. Whittington, Sir William, father of the above, i. 74. Whittington s Cat, i. 75, 7G. William the Third, his relations with William Paterson, i. 374, 381,391,392. Willoughby, Sir Hugh, i. 131. Winchester in tlie middle ages, i. 14. Wine-trade in the middle ages, i. 13, 52 ; at the present time. ii. 392. Withal, John, a merchant at Santos, i. 199, 200. Wood, George William, of Man- chester (1781-1813,) ii. 287, 288. Wood, James, of Gloucester, ii. 120. Woollen trade and manufacture in the middle ages, i. 9, 10, 16-18, 43, 50. 53, 97 ; under the Tudors and Stuarts, i. 138-140; during the eighteenth century, i. 306 ; ii. 218-220, 346; in the nineteenth century, ii. 220-223, 403-406. Yarmouth in the middle ages, i. 14, 53. Yarranton, Andrew, ii. 9. Yates, William, of Bury, ii. 149, 150, 157, 158. Yeomans, Robert, of Bristol, i. 356. York in Roman times, i. 2 ; in the middle ages, i. 14, 53, 54, 61 University of California SOUTHERN REGIONAL LIBRARY FACILITY 405 Hilgard Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90024-1388 Return this material to the library from which it was borrowed.