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. 
 
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 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.
 
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 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
 
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