A history of Liverpool

n.^'-r; '.J

OfnrncU IniucraUg Slthratg

Stijum, 5fMa ^ork

BOUGHT WITH THE INCOME OF THE

FISKE ENDOWMENT FUND

THE BEQUEST OF

WILLARD FISKE

LIBRARIAN OF THE UNIVERSITY 1B68-1883
1905

Cornell University Library
DA 690.L8M95 1907

History of Liverpool,

3 1924 028 139 388

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Library

The original of tliis book is in
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A HISTORT OF LIVERPOOL

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A HisroRT

OF LIVERPOOL

BY

RAM SAT MUIR

ANDREW GEDDES AND JOHN RANKIN
PROFESSOR OF MODERN HISTORY IN
THE UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL

WITH MAPS y ILLUSTRATIONS

SECOND EDITION

PUBLISHED FOR THE UNIVERSITY PRESS
OF LIVERPOOL Br WILLIAMS ^ NORGATE,
HENRIETTA STREET, LONDON, W.C. 1907

i^Ui"^/

C. Tinling and Co., Lid.

Printers to the University Press of Liverpool

f,-! Victoria Street

To
John Rankin, Esq.

Preface

This book is an attempt to present the life-story
of the community of Liverpool in a concise and
consecutive narrative, designed rather for the
citizen than for the professed historical student.
It makes no claim to be regarded as a final or
authoritative treatment of its subject ; for, though
it contains new facts or new views upon a good
many points, its author is well aware that a vast
deal of painstaking investigation wiU still be
necessary before any such treatment will be
possible. On the other hand it does not aim
at being suitable for use in elementary schools :
I am glad to think that a little book, designed
for that purpose, is being prepared by an abler
pen. Nor does this book pretend to supersede
preceding works on the same theme : its scale and
plan having necessitated the omission of great
masses of fact for which the inquirer will still
repair to Baines and Picton.

In view of the purpose of the book, it has been
thought wise not to load its pages with references
to authorities. I have, however, added in an
appendix a short descriptive essay on the principal
sources from which information can be drawn on
the history of Liverpool. Perhaps I may take
this opportunity to say that on all questions related
to the vexed and difficult subject of municipal

vni

Preface

government I have assumed without argument
the conclusions put forward in my Introduction
to the History of Municipal Government in Liver-
fool. That work has now been before the public
for eight months ; and as djaring that time its
conclusions have not on any material point been
refuted or even impugned, I have felt myself justi-
fied in assuming that they were accepted.

I owe many and deep acknowledgments. Mr.
William Farrer has placed me under an inex-
pressible obligation by lending me his splendid
collection of transcripts, etc., for the mediaeval
period ; I have had the advantage of being able
to use Miss E. M. Platt's voluminous and pains-
taking transcripts for a later period ; and Mr. R.
J. McAlpine has placed at my disposal his large
MSS. collections for the History of Municipal
Government in Liverpool during the Nineteenth
Century. I do not attempt to enumerate my
obligations to those scholars whose work has been
made available by publication : perhaps they will
regard the Appendix as one long expression of
obligation.

Professor Mackay, Mr. W. Fergusson Irvine,
F.S.A., Mr. R. D. Radcliffe, F.S.A., Mr. J. H.
LuMBY, and Mr. T. H. Graham have been good
enough to read my proofs for me, in whole or in
part, and have saved me from many blunders.
The proofs of the difficult final chapter (in which
I have solved the difficulty of knowing what and
whom to mention by omitting the bulk of the
facts, and almost all names) have been also very

Preface ix

kindly read for me by the Vice-Chancellor of
the University, the Town Clerk (Mr. E. R.
Pickmere) and the Medical Officer of Health
(Dr. E. W. Hope). With such generous aid, I
am almost encouraged to feel that the book ought
to be a good one. But I am responsible not only
for any blunders which these kindly critics may
have overlooked, but also for any deeper defects
which they may have felt to be beyond remedy.

My great debt to those who have provided
me with the illustrations by which the book is
embellished is duly acknowledged in the notes
which I have appended to the ' List of Illus-
trations.'

In conclusion, it is inevitable that this succinct
rendering of a long story should contain slips of
detail or mistakes of emphasis, as well as (I doubt
not) more serious errors. I shall be much in-
debted to any reader who wiU be good enough to
indicate to me any of these which he may discover.

RAMSAY MUIR

7he University,
Liverpool,
Easter, 1907

Contents

Page

DEDICATION v

PREFACE vii

LIST OF CONTENTS xi

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS xiii

A HISTORY OF LIVERPOOL :—

Introduction i

Chapter I. The Berewick of Liverpool, 1066-1207 7
Chapter II. The Foundation of the Borough,

1207-1229 16

Chapter III. The Baronial Lords of Liverpool and

the building of the Castle, 1 229- 1399 • • • 23
Chapter IV. The Life of Liverpool during the

Middle Ages 40

Chapter V. The Anarchy of the Fifteenth Century,

1399-1485 55

Chapter VI. The Age of the Tudors, 1485-1603 . 65
Chapter VII. Trade and Society in Tudor

Liverpool 83

Chapter VIII. The Beginning of a New Growth,

1603-1642 102

Chapter IX. The Three Sieges, 1642- 1660 . . 116
Chapter X. The Beginning of Modern Liverpool,

1660-1700 13s

Chapter XI. Rising Prosperity, 1700-1756 . . 162

Chapter XII. The Slave Trade, 1709-1807 . . 190
Chapter XIII. The Age of Wars and Privateering,

1756-1815 207

Chapter XIV. Inventions and Commercial

Advance, 1760-1835 242

Chapter XV. Civilisation in Liverpool, 1760-1835 269
Chapter XVI. The Nineteenth Century, 1835-

1907 295

Conclusion 339

APPENDIX : NOTE ON AUTHORITIES ... 3+1

INDEX 351

List of Illustrations

1. King John's ' Charter ' Frontispece

Three-quarters scale of the original. Reproduced by
kind permission of the Town Clerk, from a photograph
by Brown, Barnes and Bell. An exact and very beautiful
facsimile is issued by the Corporation.

2. Conjectural Map of Liverpool in the
Fourteenth Century . ... To jace page 9

Drawn, from the calculations and measurements of Mr.
W. Fergusson Irvine, F.S.A., by Mr. L. K. Adams, B.A.,
of the University School of Architecture. The small
strips near the streets represent burgages. Each of the
larger strips is drawn to indicate the average amount of
the agricultural holding of a single burgage tenant. The
names of the fields, and the directions in which the strips
lay, are definitely ascertained facts ; the actual divisions
between the strips are conjectural only.

3. Liverpool Castle. E. W . Cox. To face page 25

This view is taken (by kind permission of Mr. W. Fergusson
Irvine, the Secretary) from the coloured lithograph with
which the late Edward W. Cox illustrated his paper, ' An
Attempt to Recover the Plans of the Castle of Liverpool,'
read before the Historic Society of Lancashire and
Cheshire, November 6, 1890. Mr. Cox had a remarkable
genius for this sort of work, and the results of his investiga-
tions have been generally accepted fay scholars. The draw-
ing has deliberately sacrificed perspective, in order to show
the arrangement of the Castle within the walls. The
small pointed building at the back, half-way down the
slope to the Pool, is the Castle dovecot.

4. The Liverpool Tower. fF. G. Herd-man

To face page 56

From the drawing ia the possessiofi of John Rankin, Esq.
Herdman's drawing is copied, substantially without
change, from an earlier engraving. The street on the
right in the drawing is Water Street, on tlie left.
Prison Weint.

xiv List of Illustrations

5. The Old Custom House. W. G. Herdman

To face page 88

From the water-colour drawing, in the possession of
John Ranlin, Esq. The Custom-house is the plain
building in the centre of the picture, into which goods
are being carried from the boats. It stood on the strand
at the bottom of Water Street, which is shown running
inland to the left, beside the Tower.

6. The Tower and Old St. Nicholas', from

Mann Island To face -page 104

From Gregson's Portfolio of Fragments. From an oil-
painting by Richard Wright, a Liverpool artist, 1735-
1765 (?). The water-line is shown coming up to the edge
of St. Nicholas' Churchyard and the outer wall of the
Tower, over the made ground now occupied by the Pier-
head and the dock railway. The spire of St. Nicholas'
here shown is that which fell in 1810.

7. Map of Toxteth Park . ... To face page 112

From a photograph of a large map made for Lord Sefton's
Estate Office in 1769, kindly lent me by R. D. Radcliffe,
Esq., F.S.A. Note Lodge Lane, leading from ' Smedom
Lane ' to the Higher Lodge (now Park Lodge, the resi-
dence of Sir Rubert Boyce), from which the predecessor
of UUet Road leads to Brook House.

Liverpool in the Seventeenth Century.

W. G. Herdman To face page 120

From the drawing now in the possession of John Rankin,
Esq. This drawing, like others of the same subject, is
based upon an oil painting of date c. 1680, preserved in
the Town Hall, where it was recently discovered by
Mr. R. Gladstone, Junr. Water Street is shown in the
centre of the picture with the Tower on the left and the
Custom-house on the right. At the top of Water Street
is the Town-hall (built in 1673). Note the fourteenth-
century tower of St. Nicholas'.

List of Illustrations xv

9. Liverpool, from Duke Street.

W. G. Herdman To face page 144

From the drawing in the possession of John Rankin,
Esq. St. Peter's Church (built in 1701) is shown on
the right, still in open fields. In the back-ground on
the right Wallasey Pool is seen ; in the middle distance
the Castle rises (demolished in 1725). In the foreground
Duke Street is shown as an unfenced road running
through meadows.

10. London Road and the Gallows Mills.

W. G. Herdman To face -page i68

From the drawing in the possession of John Rankin,
Esq. The mills were known as the Gallows Mills, and
the field in which they stood as the Gallows Field, because
here took place the execution of the Jacobites in 171 5.
{See p. 164.)

11. Map of Liverpool in 1725 . . .To face -page 176

This is the first surveyed map of Liverpool, made by John
Chadwick in 172; {see pp. 179, 180). Note especially the
position of the old dock which was not long completed
when the map was made, and the line of streets represent-
ing the Pool. It should be studied in connection with
Buck's view, taken at about the same time.

12. General View of Liverpool in 1728.

J. Buck Between pp. 192, 193

From the engraving In the possession of John Rankin, Esq.

13. Hugh Crow, Slave-Trader . . To face page 201

From the lithographic frontispiece to the Autobiography
of Hugh Crow.

14. The Old Dock and Custom House.

W. G. Herdman To face page 208

From the water-colour drawing In the possession of
John Rankin, Esq. The Custom-house Is on the left,
in what is now Canning Place,

xvi List of Illustratioris

15. The Fort in St. Nicholas' Churchyard.

W. G. Herdman To face page 216

From the drawing in the possession of John Rankin,
Esq. This improvised fortification which contained a
battery of 14 guns, was erected in 1759. {See p. 7.11.)

16. The Mersey in the Age of War.

J. T. Serres To face -page 240

From the coloured print in the possession of John Rankin,
Esq. Serres was marine-painter to George III. He
did four ^-ievi's of the Mersey, of which this is perhaps
the best.

17. Lord Street (South Side) at the Beginning
OF THE Nineteenth Century. W. G. Herdman

To face -page 280

From the water-colour drawing in the possession of
John Rankin, Esq.

18. William Roscoe. J. Gibson . . To face page 289

From a copy of the plaque by Gibson the sculptor, in
the possession of Sir Henry Roscoe.

19. Shaw's Brow and St. George's Hall

E. Beattie To face page 313

From a water-colour drawing, dated 1849, representing
the houses which stood between St. John's Churchyard
and Shaw's Brow or William Brown Street. The tower
of St. John's Church (now demolished) is seen in the back-
ground. St. George's Hall was not completed until five
years later.

20. The University. T. R. Glynn . To face page 336

From the original painting by Professor T. R. Glynn,
M.D., in the possession of the Vice- Chancellor of the
University.

A History of Liverpool

Introduction

It is only necessary to glance at the map to see
why Liverpool has become the greatest of British
ports. The city lies, as nearly as may be, at the
exact centre of the British Isles. Seated on
the slopes of a low ridge, she looks down upon a
great estuary, which is sheltered from all winds but
the north-west and (thanks to its narrow mouth)
is scoured out twice a day by the rush of racing
tides. This estuary opens upon the central reach
of the only purely British sea, which laves the
shores equally of England, Scotland, Ireland and
Wales, and leads, round the north and south of
Ireland, into the open waters of the Atlantic, the
highroad to aU the world. To the south and east
the estuary extends towards the centre of England.
On the one hand lie the clustered and populous
towns of Lancashire, with its mines and factories,
the busiest tract of land in all the world ; on the
other hand the plain of Cheshire stretches between
the mountains of Derbyshire and those of Wales,
forming the one great "gateway (with the exception
of the lower Severn Valley) in the long chain of
mountain land which cuts off the west coast of

2 Introduction

England from the main mass of tKe country.
Through the Cheshire gap, as geographers call it,
the Romans drove their roads to the west and
north ; and to-day roads, railways and canals
converge upon it, and make it the channel of
communication between midland and southern
England, and the great central port of the British
Isles.

Liverpool would have been a great city if she
had been nothing but the port of Lancashire.
But she is far more than that. Even before the
day of railways the broad gateway of Cheshire
opened to her the trade of the greater part of
England, and the waters of the Irish Sea gave
her the trade of Ireland, Wales and Scotland.
She is the meeting place of the Four Kingdoms,
with more Welsh citizens than any Welsh town
but Cardiff, more Irish citizens than any Irish
town but Dublin and Belfast, more Scottish
citizens than any but some three or four of the
great towns of Scotland. The height of her
greatness only came, indeed, when she reached
beyond these nearer seas, captured the trade of
Africa and America, and became the gateway
not of England only but of Europe, to the west.
But even before that, her geographical position
had secured her place among the most flourishing
of English towns.

It may perhaps seem difficult to understand
why, with such advantages of position, Liverpool
was so long in establishing her supremacy. But
it was only very slowly that these sources of her

Geographical Position of Liverpool 3

wealth began to be opened up. Until the
seventeenth century all the main connexions of
England, both in trade and in civilisation, were
with the opposite coasts of Europe. All her own
wealth was concentrated in the low and fat lands
of the south and east ; the north lay desolate,
savage and very thinly peopled. It was not till
the eighteenth century that the mineral wealth
of Lancashire began to be developed, or the
cotton industry to be fostered by the fortunate
moistness of her climate ; and, apart from mines
and climate, Lancashire is a poor county. Until
the middle of the 'eighteenth century, Lancashire
was one of the least important counties of
England ; and she was isolated from the rest by
the mountains on the east and by a range of
marshes on the south.

Even from inland Lancashire Liverpool was
long cut off by the marshes which lay between
Prescot and Ormskirk on the north-east, and
by Chat Moss on the south-east ; she was hemmed
into the most isolated corner of an isolated county.
Moreover, her estuary, though it led inland, did
not lead to navigable rivers. The streams that
run into the Mersey estuary — the Mersey itself,
the IrweU, the Weaver — run short courses from
the neighbouring hiUs, and cannot compare with
the rivers of the east, which trace long and sinuous
courses through level lands, and are in many cases
navigable for boats for many miles from the sea.

And finally, so long as the channel of the Dee
estuary remained open and unsilted, Liverpool

A Introduction

was faced by a serious rival for the trade even of
Ireland in Chester, which was also admirably-
placed for commanding the northern roads into
Wales, and, being an ancient city of the first
military importance, had on its side aU the advan-
tages of prestige. From the beginning of its
history, in spite of Chester, Liverpool always
commanded some share of the Irish trade, hj
virtue of her position. But the Irish trade was
never great until, in the Tudor period, the real
subjugation of that unhappy country was begun.

Thus the great natural advantages of her
position were largely nullified for Liverpool,
during many centuries, by a combination of
adverse circumstances ; a poor and thinly peopled
surrounding country ; isolation ; great physical
obstacles to inland communication ; a lack of
natural waterways ; a successful rival long estab-
lished and close at hand. All these obstacles had
to be overcome, either by the energy of her
townsmen, or by the development of events,
before the town rose to a place among the great
trading centres of the world.

The story of the gradual disappearance of these
obstacles forms the main thread of the history
of Liverpool. The chief causes of her ultimate
victory were no doubt beyond her control — the
discovery of America, the transference of the
main English trade-routes from the North Sea
to the Atlantic, the rapid development of the
cotton industry by the great inventions of the
eighteenth century — these were movements over

Causes of Late Development ^

which not the most vigorous groups of citizens
could have exercised any material influence. Yet
the townsmen proved themselves worthy and
able to make use of these opportunities when
they came, by the constant and successful struggle
which they carried on against the nearer obstacles
to their success. The driving of roads over the
surrounding marshes, the making of canals, the
deepening of shallow streams, the building of
railways, the creation of safe harbourage in the
first docks ever built in England — these were
activities in which the townsmen took their full
share ; and it was the vigour and enterprise which
they showed in these regards which gave to them
their ultimate victory over rival ports, such as
Bristol, which started with every advantage.

These enterprises, indeed, belong to the later
part of the story of the town, beginning in the
latter half of the seventeenth century. But they
were preceded by other long and obscure struggles
which paved the way for them. In almost cease-
less resistance to the feudal lords of the town, to
the king, and to the extravagant claims of the
rival port of Chester, the townsmen of Liverpool
gradually emancipated themselves, taught them-
selves self-reliance, and established a tradition of
vigour. They also made great material gains ;
buUt up for the town a large corporate property ;
got possession of the trade dues, which elsewhere
were under external control ; and made Liverpool
a free town and a free and cheap port. Without
the long struggles of the obscure burghers of the

6 Introduction

Middle Age, the vigorous corporate action and
immense commercial advance of the seventeenth
and eighteenth centuries would have been difficult
if not impossible. And even if it be true that
the real beginning of Liverpool as a town of any
importance belongs to a late period, yet it is in no
small degree to be placed to the credit of the
humble and in most cases nameless townsmen
who fought for freedom in the long centuries of
small things. And so the dim and difficult story
of the Middle Age is an essential part of our
narrative. It has more than a mere antiquarian
interest ; it is vital to the understanding of the
more splendid progress of the later ages.

CHAPTER I

The Berewick of Liverpool, 1066- 1207

Before the end of the eleventh century the
history of Liverpool is a blank. There is no
means of knowing when or by whom the first
settlement was made on the site of the future
city ; it is not even possible to say from which
of the many races who have dwelt in South
Lancashire the place got its name, for the name
of Liverpool is a puzzle to the etymologists.

Our earliest information comes from those dili-
gent commissioners whom William the Conqueror
sent round the country to discover the extent of
its taxable resources, and whose investigations
were the basis of Domesday Book. But even
they have strangely little to tell us. They do
not even mention Liverpool by name, and it is
only by inference that we can gather some notion
of what the place was like at this period.

The Domesday commissioners found Lancashire
a very desolate and thinly peopled county, covered
with forests, moors and marshes, amid which small
clearings were sparsely scattered, each peopled by
a handful of serfs. The West Derby hundred,
which extended from the modern Southport to
Hale and inland nearly to Wigan, was the most

8 The Berewick of Liver-pool

populous part of the county, containing sixty-six
of these cultivated clearings or townships. But
even in the West Derby hundred, nine-tenths of
the total area lay waste, and the total population
only amounted to some 3,000. In Western
Europe there were few more remote and isolated
corners.

Among the settlements in the West Derby
hundred several are mentioned by the Domesday
commissioner which have now been submerged by
the advancing tide of Liverpool's brick and mor-
tar : Crosby, Litherland, Bootle,Walton, Kirkdale,
Esmedun or Smithdown, Wavertree and Toxteth.
But the most important of these settlements was
that of West Derby itself. It was, in a sense,
the capital of the whole district. It had, at this
time or soon after, a castle of some importance.
It was the seat of the hundred court, to which
cases came from all the townships. And it had
dependent upon it a group of half-a-dozen small
clearings, called ' berewicks,' which the Domes-
day commissioners did not even think it worth
their while to name. One of these ' berewicks '
was Liverpool. And though neither the Domes-
day commissioners nor anyone else has a word
to say to us about it, it is possible to form a very
fair idea of what this little ' berewick,' the
humble ancestor of the great city, must have
been like.

First let us try to imagine its geographical
surroundings. An explorer who penetrated the
silent waters of the Mersey estuary at this period,

Its Geographical Features 9

after he had passed a line of Sandhills which ran
along the coast as far south as Kirkdale and
concealed the few scattered patches of cultivation
behind, would have come to a small tidal creek,
which entered the Lancashire shore from the
estuary, and, running inland in a north-easterly
direction for nearly half a mile, enclosed a small
triangular peninsula, a low ridge of ground, rising
gently from the north until it reached its highest
point (some fifty feet above sea level) at the
southern point or apex of the triangle, overlooking
the entrance of the creek.

This creek was the Liverpool Pool, which until
the eighteenth century (when the earliest dock
was made out of its mouth) formed the dominant
feature of Liverpool geography, and was probably
the cause of the creation of a little town here.
The Pool left the river where the Custom-house
now stands, and its course is marked by the line
of Paradise Street, Whitechapel, and the Old
Haymarket. To the south and east of it, where
Lime Street, Church Street, Bold Street are
to-day, the ground lay waste as far as the boundary
of the neighbouring township of Toxteth, marked
by the line of ParUament Street. To the north
and west of the Pool lay the handful of mud hovels
which formed the berewick of Liverpool. They
probably lay somewhere about the site of the
Town Hall.

East and north of the hamlet were cultivated
fields, divided into long and narrow strips, separ-
ated from one another not by hedges, but by balks

lo The Berewick of Liver fool

of turf. Each of the villagers probably held two
or three of these strips, and the rest belonged to
the lord of the manor ; the whol^ being cultivated
by the villagers working together as a gang, with
one of themselves for reeve or foreman, under the
direction of the bailiff of the West Derby manor.

Behind the village and its fields, our imaginary
explorer would see a long ridge of hill, varying
in height from one to two hundred feet, and
probably covered for the most part with heather
and gorse. At one point on this ridge, a little
to the north-east of our hamlet, there lay another
' berewick,' that of Everton ; further south
again a level stretch of ground, half way up the
hill and covering the ground between the modern
Hope Street and Crown Street, was occupied by
a marsh, later known as the Moss Lake. It was
overlooked by a rocky knoll, the Brown-low,
or hill, where the University now stands. And
past the Brown-low a little stream ran down
the hill from the Moss Lake, emptying itself
into the Pool near the bottom of the modern
William Brown Street.

Behind the long ridge of hill, four miles
from the estuary, was the parent manor of West
Derby, to which there ran a track from the
hamlet, following the line of Dale Street down
to the upper end of the Pool, and then climbing
the hiU by the line of London Road. By this
track the serfs went to and from the parent manor ;
and probably their journeys seldom extended
further. Another track led from the hamlet

Changes of Ownership 1 1

through the fields to the north towards Walton,
where was the parish church that served for all
this district.

So much we may safely say about the external
aspect of our little hamlet, as we dimly peer at
it through the mist of years. As for the life of
its humble inhabitants, we can only guess from
what we know of other similar places. The
chroniclers have nothing to tell us about the
doings of this handful of serfs. So far as they
are interested in Lancashire at all, they are
concerned only with the ravages and rebellions
of the great lords to whom the serfs belonged ;
and these have little interest for us. Liverpool
passed from one lord to another repeatedly during
the hundred years following the Conquest, as
part of the vast estate of South Lancashire.
But only once does any of these changes seem
to have any direct effect upon the history of
Liverpool. Henry II, who held these lands in
his own hands for a while before making them
over to his son John, made a grant of Liverpool,
with some other estates, to one Warin, Constable
of Lancaster castle. The deed by which this
grant was made is lost, but another deed survives,
dating from about 1191, in which John, after
taking possession of the estates, confirmed to
Warin's son, Henry, the grant which had been
made to his father. This document is the oldest
in which the name of Liverpool is mentioned.
But of the way in which Warin or Henry treated
Liverpool we know nothing. Whether they lived

12 The Berewick of Liverpool

there, or ever even visited it ; whether they were
good lords or bad ; vie. know nothing at all,
either about them or any other lords of the
berewick of Liverpool.

Yet the most important fact about the inhabi-
tants of the hamlet in this period was that they
were the serfs of a lord ; and little as we know
about them, we know what their state of serfdom
meant. It meant that, in addition to the work
they did on the lord's land, they owed him a
variety of other services and dues. It meant
that they might not leave the land ; they
were bound to it for life, part of the live-stock
of the estate, going with it if it were sold or given
away. They might not give their daughters in
marriage without the lord's consent. They must
send their corn to the lord's mill to be ground, and
pay for the grinding. They must bake their
bread in the lord's oven, and pay for the baking.
Finally, they must regularly attend the lord's
court, to which they were subject. Perhaps at
first they attended the courts in West Derby ;
but probably a court existed in Liverpool itself,
presided over by the lord's steward, where
breaches of discipline or failure to perform due
service would be dealt with. Here also would
be issued any new regulations or bye-laws affecting
the township.

But if the serfs were very much at the
mercy of their master, there were some aspects
in which their condition showed promise of
development. If the lord's court had juris-

Its Social Condition 13

diction over them, they themselves constituted
the court. The steward was only the president ;
and the tenants acted as the judges to the extent
of declaring what was ' the custom of the town-
ship ' on any question in dispute. Here was
the feeble germ of future self-government.

Probably a good part of the livelihood of these
serfs consisted in fishing. The Pool was an
excellent place for drawing up fishermen's cobles
out of reach of the swift currents of the estuary.
The Mersey was long famous for the abundance
of its fish, and as late as the end of the seventeenth
century salmon-trout were caught in such plenty
that they were used to feed the swine. The
fishermen would have to pay their lord for license
to fish, and give him a share of their catch. But
the fish would find a ready sale in the inland
townships, for fish was a necessity of life in the
Middle Ages.

In all probability a ferry ran across from
Liverpool to the Cheshire side. It would be in
charge of one of the serfs, but the greater part
of the fares would go into the pocket of the lord.
This ferry would be used by an occasional travel-
ling chapman from Chester, trading with the
inland townships. The lord would make him
pay for license to pass through his lands, and if
he stopped to do business, would exact further
dues on every purchase or sale that he made.
Perhaps, once in a long while, a smack from
Dubhn or Wales would find its way into the
Mersey and beach in the Pool, to buy cattle or

14 The Berewick of Liver fool

hides, or sell salt or tar. But the trade of Liver-
pool at this epoch cannot have extended beyond
these humble limits. There would be exceed-
ingly little contact between the hamlet and the
outer world. For, like all such communities, it
would be almost self-sufficing. It could supply
nearly all its own wants : even the rough clothing
of the serfs being spun and woven at home from the
wool of their own sheep. The few requirements
which could not be met by the hamlet itself —
such as ploughshares and other metal instruments
— would be bought by the lord's bailiff on an
annual expedition to Chester, or some other fair.

Such was the little community of serfs which
the slight allusion of Domesday Book, supple-
mented by what we know of the place at a later
date, and filled in by the common features'|of all
such communities in the Middle Ages, allows
us to imagine as the germ of the future city. But
in the year 1207 there came a sudden and striking
change. The hamlet and its lands and men
changed hands once more, and the change was to
lead to great results. On August 23rd of that
year, John, now king, made a new arrangement
with Henry, Lord of Liverpool. He resumed the
lordship of the berewick, and gave other lands to
Henry in compensation. This exchange ends the
first stage of the history of Liverpool. For John's
reason for making it was that he had resolved to
turn the hamlet into a borough.

Before, however, we proceed to explain what
John did to Liverpool in 1207, there is a change

Toxteth Park 15

which had taken place in a neighbouring town-
ship during the period covered in this chapter,
which deserves to be noted, because it was to
have important effects upon the history of Liver-
pool. It was probably the great Norman baron,
Roger of Poitou, lord of all Lancashire south of
the Ribble soon after Domesday Book was drawn
up, who, about the end of the eleventh century,
took the two townships of Toxteth and part of
the township of Smithdown or Smeddon, and
transformed them into a great deer park, dis-
possessing all their inhabitants, just as WiUiam
the Conqueror did when he formed the much
greater New Forest. This new park occupied
an area of some 2,300 acres of undulating ground,
and the wall which surrounded it was about seven
miles long. Its low wooded promontories and
little bays fronted the river for three miles from
the modern Parliament Street to Otterspool,
while it extended inland as far as Smithdown
Lane. Two streams ran through it. One of
these streams to-day supplies the ornamental
water in Sefton Park. Of this extensive and
beautiful deer-chase, only Sefton and Prince's
Parks remain to-day uncovered by streets and
houses ; but a wide expanse of dreary streets still
retains the name of Toxteth Park in rather
ironical memory of its green glades. Near as
it was to the site of the future borough, the park
was to be intimately connected with its history,
and we shall hear of it repeatedly in the course
of our story.

i6

CHAPTER II

The Foundation of the Borough, 1 207-1 229

The citizens of Liverpool owe reverence to the
v?orst king who ever ruled over England, for
King John was the founder and creator of the
city. By royal fiat, for his own purposes, he
turned the obscure hamlet at which we have been
looking into a thriving little borough, and en-
dowed it with substantial privileges.

John was anxious to complete the conquest of
Ireland, which had begun in his father's reign ;
and for this purpose he wished to use the men and
supplies of his Lancashire lands. But he had no
convenient port of embarkation. There was no
port at all in Lancashire, and Chester was too
much under the control of its powerful and
independent earl. In the year 1206 John
travelled through Lancashire from north to south,
and it was probably on this journey that his
attention was caught by the convenient sheltered
creek of Liverpool. In the next year he made
the exchange with Henry Fitzwarin which has
been already recorded ; and five days after the
exchange was completed, on August 28, 1207, he
issued letters patent inviting settlers to come to
his new port, and promising them liberal privileges

Ki?ig John's ' Charter ' 17

if they came. It is this invitation which is com-
monly, though inaccurately, described as King
John's charter ; and with it began the existence
of Liverpool as a borough and trading centre.

The preparations which John, or his agents, had
made for the new population may be very briefly
described. They seem to have laid out seven
main streets in the form of a cross ; the High
Street, running across the modern Exchange
Flags ; the streets afterwards known as Castle
Street and Old Hall Street, continuing it to
south and north ; and, at right angles to these,
two streets on the lines of the modern Chapel
Street and Water Street, running down to the
water's edge, and two more on the lines of the
modern Dale Street and Tithebarn Street, run-
ning inland. Along these streets they carved out
a number of building plots, with room for long
crofts or gardens behind. These were known as
burgages, and their rent was one shilling per
annum. At the end of the century there were
one hundred and sixty-eight of these burgages,
but the number was probably not so large to begin
with. John also appears to have enclosed some
of the waste land on the north of his new town, in
order to provide allotments of arable land for his
tenants, each of whom was given, without extra
rent, strips of land m the fields at the rate of rather
more than two acres for each burgage.

The inhabitants for the new borough were
provided partly by a transplantation of a good
many of the tenants in West Derby, and partly by

1 8 The Foundation of the Borough

immigrants who came in response to the invi-
tation conveyed in the letters patent; while the
original serfs of the ' berewick ' now became
burgesses, or tenants of burgages. It was not
wonderful that settlers should come in consider-
able numbers, for the advantages they obtained
were very great. For one thing, they were free
men ; once they had paid their modest rent,
they had no further services or labours to perform
for their lord. So free a place was a borough
that if any serf escaped to it and managed to
become a tenant of a burgage for a year and a
day, his lord could never again claim him. And
there were stiU further advantages. Any stranger
who came to trade in Liverpool would have to
pay a variety of dues and tolls to the lord, but
the tenants of burgages were freed from all such
payments, and so placed in a very favourable
position for carrying on trade. King John
started a weekly Saturday market in Liverpool,
and probably also an annual fair, held in Novem-
ber, and these would become the main buying
and selling centres for the whole district lying
behind Liverpool. And both in market and
fair, the burgesses had the right to have stalls
in the best position at a merely nominal rent,
while aU strangers had to pay what the king's
bailiff demanded.

It was a marvellous change for the better which
had been produced in the little hamlet by one
stroke of the pen. John's reason for doing aU this
was that he wanted to make the place a centre of

First Results of the Change 19

trade, and to attract to it merchants whose ships
he could use on occasion. He also hoped for profits
from the tolls paid by strangers trading here. His
new" borough was administered for him by a royal
bailiff, who saw to the collection of all the dues,
and who presided over the Portmoot, a court
which took the place of the old manorial court,
and at which the burgesses were bound to be
present at least twice a year.

It is likely that John's changes included also the
erection of a water-miU on the little stream which
ran into the Pool behind the modern Art Gallery,
for this mill was in existence twenty years later.
At this mill all the inhabitants of the town would
be bound to have their corn ground. And it is
probably to this date that we should attribute the
erection of the first Liverpool church — the little
Chapel of St. Mary of the Quay, which is known
to have been in existence sixty years after this
date. It stood by the water's edge, in what was
later St. Nicholas' churchyard.

During the next few years the infant borough
enjoyed a modest prosperity. It is true that the
king only succeeded in making ^() a year out of
all the rents of the burgesses, and all the trade
dues. But from the taxes paid by the burgesses
we can see that they were gradually growing
wealthier, probably because the transport of
troops to Ireland brought a modest trade in its
wake. In 1219 Liverpool paid only 13s. 4d., while
the older borough of Preston paid £6 13 s. 4d.,
but eight years later Liverpool paid £u 6s. 8d.

20 The Foundation of the Borough

while Preston paid only ^^lo, so that the new
borough was creeping up to its older rival.

The result of this growth was that in 1229
the burgesses of Liverpool were able to buy from
King Henry III, who was in great straits for
money, two very valuable grants. Somehow or
other they scraped together £6 13s. 4d., in
exchange for which the king gave them a new
charter, of a most comprehensive kind. This
charter enabled them, in the first place, to elect
their own officers instead of being governed by
the royal bailiff. It empowered them to try and
to settle, in their own Portmoot court, all cases
affecting rights or property in the borough, and
relieved them from the burden of attending,
as they had hitherto done, the hundred courts
held at West Derby. It freed them from the
payment of royal tolls not only in Liverpool itself,
but throughout the kingdom.

But by far the most important right which this
new charter granted to the burgesses was that
of forming themselves into an association or Gild
for the regulation of the trade of the borough,
and of extracting an entrance fee or Hanse from
the members of the Gild. They were further
empowered to prohibit anyone not a member of
the Gild from trading in the borough ; and this
power, by enabling them to lay down the con-
ditions upon which a stranger might trade,
practically gave them control over the whole
trade of the borough. Though we have no record
of the way in which they used these powers in

King Henry IIFs Charter 21

this period, we may be quite sure that, like other
boroughs which had the same powers, they used
them to secure to themselves the greatest possible
advantage in their own market. At a later period
we find them electing men as freemen of the
Gild who were not burgesses, that is, who did
not^hold burgages. Probably they claimed the
right to do this from the very first, and thus threw
open the privileges of the borough more widely
than woidd have been the case had they been
restricted to the holders of burgages.

This charter therefore marks a great step in
advance in the history of the borough. But
scarcely less important was the second grant which
they got from the king on the following day.
Even after the charter was granted, there were
of course many profitable rights which the king
owned in the borough : the rents of the burgages,
the tolls paid by strangers resorting to the market
and fair, the fees and fines paid in the Portmoot
court, the profits of the mill or mills, and the
profit of the ferry over the Mersey. For the
collection of these dues a royal bailiff, represent-
ing the Sheriff of Lancaster, would still remain
in the town, and he would stUl preside over the
court. And so long as he remained, the borough
could scarcely be fuUy self-governing. Now, as
we have seen, the king only derived from these
rights ^9 a year, paid to him by the sheriflF,
who probably made a comfortable profit on the
transaction. The astute burgesses offered to pay
^10 for the right of collecting all these dues

22 The Foundation of the Borough

themselves ; and on these terms they got what is
called a ' lease of the fee-farm ' of the town for
four years.

In this way the burgesses got rid of the royal
bailiff ; and so long as their lease lasted, they were
left as a surprisingly independent, self-governing
community, electing their own officers, running
their own courts, paying their rents to themselves,
working their own miUs and ferry, and not
meddled with at all by any outside authority.

23

CHAPTER III

The Baronial Lords of Liverpool, and the
building of the Castle, 1 229-1 399

All that had hitherto been gained had been
due to the passing of Liverpool under the control
of the king. But this fortunate relation was not
to last long. Seven months after the grant of
his great charter, Henry III, anxious to obtain
political support, granted aU his Lancashire lands,
including the borough of Liverpool, to Randle
Blundeville, the great and powerful Earl of
Chester ; and one hundred and seventy years
were to pass before the borough again came under
the direct control of the crown. Randle was an
old man when he obtained this grant, and he
only lived for three years more. From him
Liverpool passed to his brother-in-law, William
de Ferrers, Earl of Derby, who was succeeded
by his son, a second WiUiam, and by his grandson,
Robert. Robert, the last of the Ferrers, was an
impetuous young man, who threw in his lot with
Simon de Montfort in his rebellion against the
king ; and after his defeat in 1 266, his lands
were confiscated and granted to the king's second
son, Edmund, Earl of Lancaster.

During this long period we hear next to nothing
about the fortunes of Liverpool. The burgesses

24 Barofiial Liverpool

must have seen with misgiving the coming of
new^ baronial masters, vs^ho virere much less likely
to deal gently vs^ith them than the distant king.
They now had to pay to the new lords their
annual ^lo for the fee-farm lease, and it was
within the power of the lords to refuse to renew
it if they thought they could make more profit
by taking the management of the town into
their own hands. Even if they chose to ride
roughshod over the chartered rights of the
burgesses there would be no one to say them
nay ; for the king was not likely to trouble
himself about the fate of the borough now that
it had ceased to yield him any profit.

But, so far as we can tell, the Ferrers earls
used the borough very kindly, and renewed the
grant of the fee-farm lease from time to time as
it feU in, without increase of payment ; while right
at the end of the period, Robert de Ferrers
granted a confirmation of King Henry Ill's
charter. He probably did this as a means of
getting money out df the burgesses for his
rebellion. But, in any case, the borough was
allowed to retain its liberties in full.

The most important event of this period was
the building of the great Liverpool Castle,
which was the work of the first William de
Ferrers, between 1232 and 1237. The site of the
Castle was well chosen. At the highest point
of the little triangular peninsula enclosed by
the Pool, and at its southern end, overlooking and
controlling the mouth of the Pool, was a rocky

1^

^

B

J5

^

^-1

O

o

The Building of the Castle 25

knoll, some fifty feet above sea-level, just at
the top of the modern Lord Street. Here
the architects cut out a square plateau of
rock, some fifty yards long on each side, and
surrounded it vdth a broad moat or ditch
twenty yards wide, cut in the rock ; the ditch
was probably a dry one, as it stood on the top
of the hill. On the square plateau a formidable
fortress was erected. At the north-east corner,
looking down Castle Street, was a massive square
gatehouse, crowned by two small towers. An
archway, reached by a causeway over the moat,
passed through the centre of this gatehouse,
and was guarded by a portcullis. At the north-
western and south-western corners — on the side
next to the river — two round towers were
erected ; and lofty and strong walls ran all round
the square, joining tower with tower. Only the
south-eastern corner was unprovided with its
tower: this was added more than two centuries
later. The courtyard thus enclosed was divided
into two parts by a wall running from north to
south, which would form a second defence if an
enemy succeeded in forcing his way through the
gatehouse. The south-western tower formed the
keep, the most important building of the Castle,
probably containing the residential quarters of
the lord. From this tower a small chapel ex-
tended along the southern wall, as far as the
cross-wall dividing the courtyard ; while the
western wall, looking toward the river, was
occupied by a large banqueting hall, with kitchens

26 Baronial Liverpool

and a brew-house and bake-house. A small
postern gate on this side led to some steps into
the moat, whence an underground passage ran,
parallel with James Street, to the edge of the river ;
by this provisions could be brought into the Castle,
or the garrison could make its escape if necessary.
Under one of the walls of the Castle was a large
dove-cot, from which the lord derived consider-
able profits ; while from the edge of the ditch on
the east a pleasant orchard, occupying the site of
the modern Lord Street, sloped down to the Pool.

Such was the Liverpool Castle, as we can infer
it from later documents ; unfortunately it was
destroyed by our prosaic ancestors in 1725, and
no accurate pictures or plans of it survive. Its
erection, no doubt, added greatly to the impor-
tance and certainly to the picturesqueness of the
town. But at the same time it was a menace
to the freedom of the burgesses, and we may
imagine that they had a good deal of trouble with
its captains and its garrison.

Edmund of Lancaster, who succeeded to the
lordship of Liverpool after the forfeiture of
Robert de Ferrers in 1266, was the most powerful
and wealthy baron in England ; his son and
successor, Thomas, was strong enough to hold his
own against the unfortunate King Edward II,
and to turn England upside down with his wars
and tumults. Under these two earls the bur-
gesses of Liverpool were much less kindly treated
than they had been by the Ferrers. Edmund
seems to have formed the opinion that a good

Burghal Rights Withheld 27

deal more could be made out of the borough
than the ^10 per annum which the burgesses
paid for being left to themselves and allowed to
collect aU the dues of the lord. He seems to have
done his best to develope the town ; but, in order
that he might himself reap the benefit of its
growth, he refused to renew the fee-farm lease,
and his agents appeared in the town to collect the
dues directly ; with the result that instead of the
old ;^io, he made no less than £2:,.

But, worst of aU, he unscrupulously overrode
the chartered liberties of the borough. This we
learn from the report of the proceedings at an
enquiry held in 1292 before the king's justices at
Lancaster, when the ' bailiffs and community ' of
Liverpool were ordered to appear and show on
what ground they claimed their various liberties.
No bailiffs came ; but some of the burgesses
appeared on behalf of their fellows, and producing
their precious charters explained that they had
been accustomed to have a free borough, until the
Lord Edmund impeded them ' and permitted
them not to have a free borough ' or to elect a
bailiff ' of themselves.' Wherefore, said these
plaintive burgesses, ' they do not claim these
liberties at present, for the Lord Edmund has
them.' The king's justices ordered Edmund to
appear before them on a date which they fixed ;
but there is no record that he did so. Probably
he was too powerful a lord to be meddled with
unnecessarily, and the unfortunate burgesses were
left to his tender mercies and those of his officers.

28 Baronial Liverpool

One new privilege, however, the burgesses
acquired at this period, though they probably
did not regard it as a privilege but as a burden.
They were called upon to elect two members
to the Parliament of 1295, and again two to the
Parliament of 1307. But after that, their brief
electoral powers lapsed for over two hundred years.

Earl Edmund's successor, Earl Thomas, was
much too busy stirring up trouble for his cousin,
the unfortunate Edward II, to pay much attention
to Liverpool ; he attached so little importance
to it that towards the end of his reign he granted
it, borough and castle together, to a vassal of
his, Robert of Holland (Upholland). Holland's
tenure lasted only as long as the power of his
master, and we need say nothing about him.

But there were two things which Thomas of
Lancaster did before he gave Liverpool to Holland
which were of importance to the borough, and
show that it was still growing. In 1309, during a
visit to the Castle, Earl Thomas granted to the
burgesses for ever twelve acres of peat in the Moss-
lake, at a rent of one penny per annum. This was
the first piece of property ever owned by the
burgesses as a body, and may be called the begin-
ning of the corporate estate of Liverpool. The
land thus granted seems to have lain near the
top of Brownlow Hill. It supplied the burgesses
with peat for their fires, which they had previously
been in the habit of digging in Toxteth Park.
At some unknown date during his reign, Earl
Thomas also caused fifty acres of land beside the

Warfare and Confusion 29

river, at the northern end of the township, to be
enclosed and let out for cultivation in small plots.
This land was called the Salthouse Moor, perhaps
from some saltpans which may have existed here
with a warehouse for storing their products.
While some of the tenants in this new enclosure
were burgesses, there were about thirty of them
who were not burgesses, and did not share the
burgess rights. This shows that the population of
the town was growing.

The last years of Earl Thomas were filled with
fighting and confusion, and inevitably the little
borough was affected by it. In 1 3 1 5 we hear of
a band of rebellious tenants of the earl, knights
and men at arms, who, in warlike panoply and
with banners flying, came marching through the
streets of Liverpool to attack the Castle. They
were beaten back, and probably revenged them-
selves by plundering the defenceless townsmen.
This is the only occasion on record in which the
Castle was actually besieged during the Middle
Ages ; but we may be quite sure that it would
not stand alone if the records were full.

With his own vassals rebelling against him,
the turbulent earl was unable to hold his own
against the king whom he had so long defied. He
was defeated and executed, and for five years
Liverpool and its Castle passed under the royal
control. The king himself paid a visit to Liver-
pool during this period, staying for a week in the
Castle in the year 1323. We may imagine, if
we will, the bustle and excitement which this

30 Baronial Liverpool

royal visit would cause in the little borough,
the swaggering of soldiers, the splendour of court
favourites, the banquets and the councils, the
flocking of obedient vassals of the fallen earl,
the constant passage of wagons full of provisions.
But the only record of it aU that survives is the
fact that IS. 8d. had to be spent in mending the
roof of the great haU of the Castle in preparation
for the king. Luckily the royal agents for these
years have left very full accounts of their adminis-
tration, and these wiU supply us with a good deal
of material for a later chapter.

But the weak and unlucky Edward II, though he
had got the better of Thomas of Lancaster, was
not long left at peace. A new rebellion was raised
against him, headed by his wife and his son. And
now the bailiffs of Liverpool began to be pestered
by all sorts of feverish orders. They must stop all
ships in the harbour and send them round to
Portsmouth for the king's service ; they must
arrest aU suspicious persons, and seize all letters
disloyal to the king ; they must prevent any horses
or armour from being exported. But aU this was
in vain. The luckless king was captured and
imprisoned. His son succeeded him, and at once
restored Henry, the brother of his father's enemy,
Earl Thomas, to that brother's forfeited estates.
And with this change, a new period began in the
history of Liverpool.

The reign of Edward III was to be a period
of remarkable advance for Liverpool. But at first
this did not seem likely, for it took some years to

Revival of Self-government 31

get rid of the disorder left by the weak rule of
Edward II, and there are indications that Liver-
pool and its district were in a very tumultuous
condition. Several riots and murders in the
streets are recorded — the work of the turbulent
gentry. The worst of these took place in 1335,
when the sheriff, Sir William Blount, was mur-
dered in the town while in the execution of his
office ; and the only punishment which could
be imposed on the riotous gentlemen who
perpetrated this crime was to make them serve
for four years in the king's army in Gascony.
Ten years later a body of lawless men, including
several men of position in the county, entered
the town in arms ' with banners unfurled as in
war,' forced their way into the court where the
king's justices were in session, and ' did wickedly
kill, mutilate and plunder of their goods and
wound very many persons there assembled.'
Even these violent gentry were pardoned on
condition that they went to fight in Gascony for
a year. It may be imagined that the peaceable
burgesses had a hard time of it among such turbu-
lent neighbours, and had need to be men of their
hands if they wished to exist at all.

But in spite of disorder, the period is one of
advance both in prosperity and in freedom. In
1333 the king granted a charter, and although it
was only a renewal of the old charters, this meant
that the burgesses resumed the practice of self-
government so long suppressed by the earls.
Moreover we find the king and the earl granting a

32 Baronial Liverpool

continuous series of licenses to the burgesses to
collect certain tolls and dues on various kinds of
merchandise, and to spend the proceeds in paving
the streets. The reason for the attention which
the town now received from both king and earl
was that Liverpool was being found very useful
as a port for the shipment of men and supplies.
The reign of Edward III was full of warfare ;
with the Scots in the beginning of the reign, with
the French in the middle, and with Ireland in
the later years. In the great French wars of the
middle period Liverpool took little part. It
used to be supposed that one Liverpool ship had
been present at Calais, but this is a mistake ;
it was only from the southern and eastern ports
that the king drew ships for these wars, and the
only echo of them which the surviving records
contain is a warning from the king that ships had
better sail in fleets for mutual protection, the
seas being made dangerous by French pirates.

But in the Scotch war at the beginning and still
more in the Irish wars at the end of the reign, the
part played by Liverpool is so considerable that it
is clear she was already regarded as one of the
principal ports on the west coast. When the reign
opened an invading Scottish army was ravaging
the north of England, and the constable of Liver-
pool Castle received orders to throw its gates open
for the reception of refugees fleeing before the
Scots. Presently the English king takes the
offensive, and then there is more active work for
Liverpool sailors to perform. Several orders for

Scotch and Irish Wars 33

the detention of the shipping of the port for
warlike purposes survive ; but the most interesting
of these is a hurried demand, in 1335, that Liver-
pool shall send forth her two best ships, fuUy
manned and armed, to pursue and capture a
' great ship loaded with wine and arms,' which
was coming from France to the aid of ' the king's
enemies in the Castle of Dumbarton.' In the
same year six of the largest ships on the west
coast were ordered to be collected at Liverpool
and sent to attack the Scottish fleet. Unfor-
tunately no record survives of all these stirring
fights, which must have provided thriUing themes
for fireside talk in the little town.

Still more important was the part played by
Liverpool in the later Irish wars. Twice the
viceroy and his army passed through Liverpool;
several times aU the shipping in all ports on the
west coast was ordered to be collected in the
Mersey to transport armies ; and scarcely a year
passed but the town was enlivened by the visits
of troops, and the Great Heath dotted with
the tents of encamping armies waiting for fair
winds. All this must have been good for
trade ; for a state of war, while it is bad for the
country at large, brings wealth to the ports of
embarkation. For not only had the armies to be
transported, but they had to be kept supplied
with provisions and warlike stores. Clearly the
shipping of Liverpool must have grown in this
period ; and trade with Ireland must have in-
creased in the wake of the royal armies.

34 Baronial Liverpool

The consequence of this rising prosperity is
that we find the burgesses rapidly regaining the
powers thev had lost since 1266. They had
already regained their chartered liberties : now
we find them step by step regaining the invaluable
fee-farm lease. First they take a lease of the market
toUs, mills and ferry ; then they add to these the
fees and fines of the Portmoot courts and the
burgage rents ; and finally, in 1393, they obtained
from John of Gaunt, who had succeeded to the
Duchy of Lancaster, a lease so comprehensive in
its terms that briefly they may be described as
taking over all the lord's rights in the town, up
to the very edge of the Castle wall.

There are two points about the rights acquired
by this lease which deserve special mention. It
included a grant of control over the whole of the
waste or common which lay between the borough
and Toxteth Park. This waste, though it was used
by the burgesses for pasturing their cattle and
swine, was always regarded as the property of
the lord. The burgesses never gave up this
acquisition, in spite of the fact that the control
over the waste was not definitely included in
later leases. Thus all the land upon which
Lime Street and Church Street and Bold Street
and Abercromby Square now stand became the
property of the borough ; and the bulk of the
magnificent corporation estate of to-day stiU
lies in this part of the city, though much of it
was alienated in the centuries which followed.

The second point which deserves notice is that

Development of the Burghal Government 35

the tenants in the recent enclosure of the Salthouse
Moor who were not burgesses, were now brought
under the control of the borough officers and
courts. Just because they were not burgesses
they had not been regarded as being subject to the
ordinary burghal authorities, but as being under
the special control of the lord ; and, but for this
great lease, Liverpool might have been left with
a group of inhabitants in its midst, who were
governed by a distinct authority from that of the
burgess body at large. This lease decided that
the borough officers should control not only the
privileged burgesses, but also all inhabitants,
and though there was a good deal of dispute on
this question later, the burgesses never gave up
their point.

An important consequence of these acquisitions
of power was that the constitution of the borough
underwent a substantial change. Hitherto the
supreme officials had been two bailiffs, one of
whom was elected by the burgesses, while the
other was appointed by and represented the lord.
Of these two the lord's bailiff was the more
important ; he was the greater bailiff, the major
ballivus. But now that the lord's power had
practically vanished from the town — now that
the burgesses had taken over all his rights and
powers — it was necessary for him to be replaced
by someone. So the burgesses elect their own
major ballivus ; who presently comes to be called
simply the major or mayor, and after a while
actually appoints a bailiff of his own, just as the

36 Baronial Liverpool

lord had done. Hence the supreme authorities
of the borough are in future a mayor, elected by
the burgesses, and two bailiffs, one of whom is
elected, while the other (like a vicar's church-
warden) is nominated by the mayor. The
possession of a single supreme officer, able to
speak and act on behalf of the borough as a whole,
marks a great advance in burghal organisation.
The first recorded Mayor of Liverpool was
William son of Adam of Liverpool, in 1351 ;
we shall hear more of this gentleman later, for
he played a very big part in the life of the Liver-
pool of his time.

And there is another change which we can
dimly see taking place. The ordinary burgess
did not want to be bothered with municipal
politics ; he was quite content to leave them
in the hands of a group of leading men ; while
the lord, on his side, wanted to make sure of his
annual payments by having the surety of sub-
stantial men. So we find a little group of
leading burgesses forming itself ; its members
sign the leases from the lord, and divide the
offices of the borough between them. One of
them is mayor eleven times, another nine, another
sixteen. This little group comes to be called the
Mayor's Brethren, or the Aldermen or Elders,
and it mainly conducts the government of the
town. At a later date it had come to be under-
stood that every mayor, after serving for a year,
became an Alderman for life. So the borough is
gradually passing under the control of an oligarchy.

Foundation of St. Nicholas' 37

The prosperity which led to these great con-
stitutional changes was reflected in other ways
also, and most notably in the building and
endowment of a handsome new chapel. The
old chapel of St. Mary of the Quay was too small
for the growing borough ; so the burgesses built
a new one beside it, the Chapel of St. Nicholas,
the predecessor of the modern church, and in
1356 we find them obtaining license from the king
to acquire ^10 worth of land from the Duke to
serve as an endowment for the new chapel. Liver-
pool still remained part of the parish of Walton,
and the marriages and funerals must take place
there stiU, and tithes be paid to the rector ; but
it was to their own chapel, built and supported and
controlled by themselves, that the loyalty of the
burgesses was mainly due. They were generous in
their bequests and gifts to the chapel. Before the
end of the century three chantries had been
founded in it, one by Duke Henry, one by his
successor John of Gaunt, and one by John of
Liverpool, son of the first known mayor. These
chantries were endowments for the provision each
of a priest whose duty was to pray for the souls of
the founder and his ancestors ; but the three
chantry priests performed other functions also.
We see them playing an active part in the life of
the town, serving as trustees, witnessing deeds and
so forth ; and they brought into the borough a
valuable new element of cultivation.

But the story of Liverpool in the fourteenth
century was not one of uninterrupted prosperity.

38 Baronial Liverpool

That terrible plague, the Black Death, which in
the middle of the century destroyed half the
population of the country, did not leave Liverpool
untouched. In 1361 its ravages were so great
that it was impossible to carry the dead to be
buried in Walton churchyard, and the burgesses
had to obtain from the Bishop of Lichfield a
license to use the churchyard of St. Nicholas
as a burial ground. And the popular dis-
contents which followed the Black Death and
culminated in the great rising of the peasants
in 1 381, were felt in Liverpool also. John of
Gaunt, the lord and patron of Liverpool, was
one of the chief objects of the peasants' anger,
and one of their main demands was the abolition
of the monopolist privileges of the chartered
burgesses in the towns. It was most probably
as a result of this rising that in 1382 King
Richard II issued a new charter for Liverpool,
in which he formally abrogated the right of the
burgesses to exclude from trade any persons
who were not members of the Merchant Gild of
the borough. The burgesses certainly cannot
have applied for this charter, which destroyed
one of their most cherished privileges ; and it
was more than a little cruel that they should
have been forced to pay ^^5 of their scanty money
for it.

Nevertheless, in spite of these checks, the
fourteenth century was one of steady advance,
and at its close Liverpool had reached the highest
point which it attained in population, prosperity

Baronial Liverpool 39

and freedom, during the middle age. The next
century was to see a woeful decline, due to the
anarchy and turbulence of the age. But before
we turn to that distressful story, it will be well
to try to piece together some picture of the life
of mediaeval Liverpool, which the records of
this period for the first time enable us to do in a
satisfactory way.

40

CHAPTER IV

The Life of Liverpool during the Middle Ages

By 1393 Liverpool had become a thriving little
self-contained and self-governing community.
The limits of this tiny commonwealth, within
which (excepting the Castle) its own officers were
supreme, were marked by a series of ' mere
stones ' or boundary marks, which were very
jealously guarded. Once a year it was the duty
of the officers of the borough, followed by a
crowd of townsmen, to march solemnly from
stone to stone round the whole of the township,
in order to see that the stones had not been shifted
to the detriment of the borough. This boundary
included the town, with its harbour, the Pool ;
the cultivated fields, which supplied most of the
town's needs ; the extensive pastures stretching
from the Pool to Toxteth Park ; and the broad
peat bog, the Mosslake.

The town proper consisted of the same little
cluster of half-a-dozen streets which we have
already noted as being laid out by King John.
The central point was the High Street, some-
times called Juggler Street, perhaps because

Streets and Houses 41

jongleurs or musicians took up their stand here
on fair days. It ran north and south across the
site of the Exchange Flags, and at each end of
it was a town cross. Of the other streets, Chapel
Street, Dale Street, and Castle Street already
bore the names they bear to-day ; Water Street
was known as Bank Street, Oldhall Street as
Whitacre Street, and Tithebarn Street as Moor
Street, being so called because it led to the Moor
Green, a stretch of wet ground which lay near
the upper end of the Pool. Round this cluster
of streets ran a wall, which left the river near
the Old Hall, curved round Tithebarn Street to
the lower end of Dale Street, and after following
the line of the Pool, ran along the line of Lord
Street and James Street to the river.

The streets were narrow, and, like those of
other towns, very dirty. They must have been
particularly bad before they were first paved in
1328. It was the duty of each burgess to keep
the street clean in front of his own house, and it
was one of the multifarious duties of the bailiffs
to see that he did so. But if Liverpool was like
other towns these duties were not very well ful-
filled. The extreme dirt of any mediaeval town
can scarcely be exaggerated ; and the entire
absence of sanitation was one of the principal
reasons for the terrible ravages of the plague.
We must not imagine very much traffic in these
narrow and dirty streets. In the early morn-
ings the swineherd would come along to collect
the pigs from the crofts behind the cottages

42 Life in Mediaeval Liverpool

and drive them out upon the waste ; and on
market days cattle would be driven along them,
bellowing and jostling, to the market-place. But
there would be little wheeled traffic, except that
of a few springless country wains : there was no
good carriage road out of Liverpool until the
eighteenth century.

The houses which faced upon these sordid
lanes were of the meanest description ; there do
not seem to have been more than three or four
stone houses in the town, and the rest would be
wooden-framed earthen huts. The furniture,
too, was of the scantiest. The will of William
son of Adam, the wealthiest burgess of his time,
shows that his furniture and domestic utensils
were only worth £'j 6s. 8d. ; and there is evidence
that the average value of the furniture and other
personal property of the burgesses was not above
los. a head.

In this squalid little town there were, in the
middle of the fourteenth century, 197 house-
holders ; which, on the usual reckoning, would
give a total population of about a thousand.
Perhaps we should add a few more for sailors,
apprentices and other dependents, and estimate
the population of mediaeval Liverpool at some-
thing like 1,200. In spite of the prosperity of
the second half of the century, this number must
have diminished rather than increased before
1399, for the ravages of the Black Death have to
be taken into account. Among this population
we can discriminate four distinct social grades :

Agriculture and ^rade 43

a few representatives of county families, who held
burgages probably in order to enjoy the privileges
of the market ; a few leading families of the
borough, who held groups of burgages ; the
mass of the ordinary burgesses, whose normal
holding was half a burgage; and a number of
non-burgesses.

All this population was largely engaged in
agriculture ; for in becoming a trading centre
Liverpool had not ceased to be also a rural
village. Every burgess held strips, fewer or more
in number, in the great open fields which stretched
to the north and east of the streets ; and there
is evidence that half of the inhabitants derived
their main subsistence from farming. The will
of William son of Adam, already alluded to,
shows that his property was mainly agricultural
in character. Apart from furniture, what he
had to bequeath was grain in his barn worth
^6 13s. 4d., twenty-four 'strips' of growing
wheat in the fields, worth ^7, nine oxen and
cows worth about los. apiece, six horses worth
about 7s. apiece, and eighteen pigs worth is. 6d.
apiece. Several of the officers annually elected
by the burgesses had to do with the management
of the fields : such as the hayward, whose duty
was to see that the hedges round the great fields
were in good repair, so that cattle coming to the
market should not be able to spoil the crops.

The trade of the borough was mainly local in
character. The weekly Saturday market and
the annual fair on St. Martin's day were chiefly

44 Life in Mediaeval Liverpool

resorted to by people from the neighbourhood
who came to sell their agricultural produce ;
while the more enterprising burgesses sold them
spices and wines and fine stuffs, brought from
the great English fairs like Stourbridge and
Winchester, to which foreign traders came ; or
iron goods, or salt, or fish, or rough woollen stuffs
from Kendal or Lancaster. A few ' stranger '
merchants would come to the fair, but not often
to the market.

To both market and fair a good many customers
were brought by the ferries over the Mersey. In
addition to the ferry which the burgesses worked,
the Prior of the monastery of Birkenhead had a
right of ferry ; and since 1 3 1 8 he had kept houses
of entertainment for the use of the ' great
numbers of persons wishing to cross' to Liverpool
who were ' often hindered by contrariety of
weather and frequent storms.' The fares by
this ferry were fd. for a man on foot, 2d. for a
man with a horse ; but on market days the fares
were doubled. The Prior sold the produce of
his own lands at the Liverpool market, and for
this purpose had a house and barn at the bottom
of Water Street, where he stored his corn.

With regard to the sea-going trade of Liverpool,
evidence is scanty. The main trade was with
Ireland, which sent hides and wool, and received
woollen cloths, iron and grain. It would appear
that Liverpool mainly dealt in rough woollen
cloths from Lancashire and Yorkshire, iron from
Furness, and perhaps salt from Cheshire. A

Industries of the Town 45

modest trade also existed with France, whence a
certain amount of wine was imported. Both the
home trade and the foreign trade were under the
control of the body of burgesses, acting as a
Merchant Gild ; but no details survive as to the
way in which they used their powers at this period,
and we must wait till we come to the sixteenth
century, when the material is abundant, for an
account of the way in which trade was regulated.

The industries which were carried on were
few, and of such a character as might be expected
in a small rural market town. In 1378 there were
three weavers in the town, one of whom was a
foreigner from Brabant, while the other two made
only ' shalloons ' or coarse woollen stuffs. There
were four drapers, two tailors, one maker of bows,
one tanner, four bootmakers, five ' souters ' (who
probably made saddles and leather jerkins), and
five fish merchants, who traded chiefly in herrings,
and probably owned most of the shipping of the
port. We hear also of two smiths, and at an
earlier date there is mention of a goldsmith.
But all these were trades which simply catered
for the ordinary needs of the neighbouring
district.

The most active industry was undoubtedly
that of brewing, which in 1378 formed the
principal occupation of no less than eighteen
householders. Beer was the universal beverage,
and would be in large demand on market days,
and still more when soldiers were passing through
the town. In 1 324 no less than thirty-five persons

\G Life in Mediaeval Liver-pool

were fined for brewing and selling ale of bad
quality or at too high a price. Probably the
greater part of the population turned an honest
penny in this way.

As the townsmen were mainly engaged in agri-
culture, and as it was principally agricultural
produce which was brought in to the market,
milling was naturally also an active business.
The old water mill on the mill dam behind the
modern Art Gallery had vanished by this time ;
but it had been replaced by two great windmills,
the more important of which, known as Eastham
mill, stood just beside the old water-mill, while
the other, known as Townsend mill, was within
a stone's throw of it, on the site of the modern
Wellington Column, opposite to St. George's
Hall. At one or other of these two mills every
inhabitant of Liverpool was bound to grind his
corn.

The importance of the mills is indicated by the
fact that they were worked by the two leading
families of the town. These were the Liverpool
family and the Moore family.

The very fact that the Liverpool family used
the place-name as a surname shows that they had
been settled here for a long time. In the middle
of the fourteenth century the various members
of the family appear to have held among them no
less than fifteen burgages, and they played an
extremely important part in the history of the
borough. One of them may have been one of the
first members of parliament for Liverpool in

William son of Adam 47

1295 ; another paid a larger share of the subsidy
of 1332 than any other Liverpool man ; and they
take an active part in the regaining of the fee-farm
lease.

But beyond question the greatest member of the
family was William son of Adam of Liverpool, to
whom several references have already been made.
He was the first recorded mayor of Liverpool,
in 1 35 1, and though the list of mayors is far from
complete he is known to have held the office
eleven times. He took a main part in the erection
of the Chapel of St. Nicholas ; and so outstanding
were his services that in 1361 the duke rewarded
him by a pension of 20s. a year for life. He was
the tenant of the principal Liverpool mill, that at
Eastham, and he also worked a bakery in Castle
Street, and a fishing station near Toxteth Park.
In short, he is at once the wealthiest and the most
public-spirited Liverpool burgess of his day. He
died in 1383, and his will is almost the only Liver-
pool document with a personal note in it which
survives from the middle ages. ' I bequeath,' it
runs, ' my soul to God and the Blessed Virgin and
all Saints, and my body to be buried in the Chapel
of Liverpool, before the face of the image of the
Virgin, where is my appointed place of burial.
I leave to be distributed in bread on the day of
my burial three quarters of wheat. I leave
six pounds of wax to be burned about my body.
I leave to every priest in the chapel of Liverpool
fourpence. I leave the rest of my goods to
Katherine my wife and our children born of her,'

48 Life in Mediaeval Liverpool

Somewhere beneath the flags of St. Nicholas'
still rest the crumbled bones of this honest old
merchant and citizen, who laboured his best for
Liverpool in his day.

He left behind him two sons, one of whom
founded one of the three chantries in the chapel.
But his lands and his miU soon passed to Richard
Crosse, son of his wife by a later marriage;
and thus begins the connexion with Liverpool
of the Crosse family, who were to play a very
important part in its affairs during the next
century. Perhaps the mansion of Crosse-hall,
from which the modern Crosshall Street takes its
name, and which, with its croft sloping down to
the Pool, occupied the corner at the lower end
of Dale Street, may represent the home of William
son of Adam, first recorded mayor of Liverpool.
The other branches of the Liverpool family
adopted various surnames, especially Williamson
and Richardson, and became indistinguishably
merged in the mass of burgesses.

The main rivals of the Liverpools were the
Moores, who have left deep traces on the map
of Liverpool as well as on its history. Their
descendant. Sir Edward Moore, in the seventeenth
century claimed that they had been settled in
Liverpool from the beginning of its history.
They held even more land in the town than the
Liverpools, but unlike the Liverpools they also
acquired large holdings outside of the borough, in
Bootle, Kirkdale, West Derby, and other town-
ships. Their original seat, Moore Hall, lay at the

The Moore Family 49

northern end of the village, and its croft and
gardens ran down to the shore of the river. When
they acquired lands in Kirkdale, and built a
country house at Bank Hall, their older house was
called the Old Hall ; in this form it has given its
name to a modern Liverpool street.

The first Liverpool official of whom there is any
record was a Moore. It was a Moore who went to
plead the case of the burgesses against Edmund of
Lancaster, in 1292, and down to the middle of the
fourteenth century we find them constantly serv-
ing as bailiffs. The younger members of the family
often served as scribes and engrossed deeds relating
to lands in the township; and these deeds, pre-
served in the archives of the family, and now housed
in the Free Library, provide us with much of our
knowledge of the internal details of the mediaeval
borough. But about the middle of the century
the leadership of the town seems to have been
wrested from them by the Liverpools. While
William son of Adam lived, no Moore was allowed
to hold the mayoralty, but immediately after his
death Thomas Moore became mayor, and for a
long time his family almost monopolised the office.
Evidently there was a keen rivalry between these
two families, a rivalry which would be not less
keen because they were rival millers, for the
Moores held the Townsend mill. This rivalry
even got into the law courts, in 1374, when
Thomas Moore strove to get possession of William
of Liverpool's bakery in Castle Street, and of his
fishery near Toxteth Park. These are the dim

E

50 Life in Mediaeval Liverpool

echoes of what must have been a pretty lively feud,
which probably tore the town asunder.

The system of borough government, for the
control of which these two families fought so
keenly, was still rudimentary in its form. The
centre of it was the Portmoot court, which in
its form and procedure was a direct descendant of
the old manorial court. It had two solemn
sessions in each year, at which every burgess was
bound to be present on pain of a fine. When
the burgesses held the fee-farm lease, this court
was presided over by their bailiff or by the mayor ;
when the lord's agents collected the dues, his
steward or bailiff presided over the court. In
this court were elected the borough officers, at
the annual meeting in October. In the six-
teenth century only the lesser officers were elected
in this court, the mayor and bailiffs being chosen
by a distinct meeting, the General Assembly of
Burgesses, held a few days earlier, but it is unlikely
that this distinction had already grown up.

The Portmoot also tried all sorts of minor
offences, especially breaches of the burgesses' duty,
and it was in this way that the mayor and bailiffs
got the work of the town performed. ' Present-
ments ' or charges of this kind were made by
a jury of twelve members, empanelled by the
bailiffs ; and this jury was the nearest approach
to an executive committee or council of the bur-
gess body. Apart from the control exercised by
this jury, there was no means of regulating the
action of the mayor and bailiffs, who during

Modes of Borough Government 5 1

their year of office were practically irresponsible
rulers. The mayor especially was a much more
powerful and independent person than his modern
successor in the office ; all the minor officers were
under his orders, and he was almost a little king.
The only body which really served as a check upon
him was the informal body of aldermen or leading
burgesses, which we have seen coming into
existence.

In addition to the solemn annual meetings of the
Portmoot there were also more frequent meetings
held every three weeks in theory, but at irregular
intervals in practice. These meetings were held
for minor legal business, and those only were
required to be present who were concerned in
cases before the court. The mayor presided over
this court, which came to be called the mayor's
court, and afterwards the Court of Passage.
The modern Liverpool Court of Passage (the
only court of that name in England) is one of the
very few examples of the survival of a mediaeval
borough-court into modern times.

We have observed that a large part of the
business of the Portmoot dealt with the per-
formance by the burgesses of their common duties,
under the supervision of the mayor and bailiffs.
The extent to which these obligations were
carried, the magnitude and number of the
co-operative enterprises of the burgesses, forms
one of the most striking features of the life of the
mediaeval town. There was no police force in
the borough, there were no scavengers, no paid

52 Life in Mediaeval Liverpool

public servants of any kind. All these functions
had to be performed by the burgesses themselves.
They had to take their turn in guarding the
town by night ; they were bound to join in the
pursuit of a thief or other suspicious character,
or in suppressing riots in the streets or the market,
or in quenching the fires that easily broke out
among the closely huddled wooden cottages : they
must often have had difficulty in maintaining
order when large bodies of troops were in the
town. Every burgess also had to take his part
in cleaning the streets, and in keeping the town
walls in repair ; and they were bound by law to
be provided with arms according to their means,
and to be ready to take part in the defence of the
town or even in national military service. Just
as the burgesses performed their public duties
in common, so they enjoyed many of their fes-
tivities in common. Though we have no direct
authority on this point, we may safely assume
that Liverpool was like other boroughs which
we know of, and that when there was any money
in hand it was spent in great ale-drinkings, in
which all would have a share, and the officers a
double portion.

All this points to the most valuable and
promising feature of the life of the community.
It was a small, rude and ignorant society, far
from wealthy, living amid the most sordid con-
ditions ; but it was a society whose members
were constantly being taught to regard common
interests, and to act in co-operation. Here was

The Plenishment of the Castle 53

being learnt the great and difficult art of self-
government ; and it is just that fact which makes
the obscure story of these humble burgesses
essentially more interesting than the more
romantic intrigues and feuds of the great nobles
from whom they had painfully wrested their
liberties. The huge and massive Castle, as it
towered above their mean hovels, seemed to be
a sign of their permanent inferiority. Yet the
Castle has vanished from the face of the earth,
and it was the descendants of the burgesses who
destroyed it, and spread busy streets and shops
over its site.

But we must not close our survey of mediaeval
Liverpool without a glance at the economy of
the Castle, for which a few sentences will suffice.
It was presided over by a constable, who received
an annual salary of £6 13s. 4d., and who was
usually also ranger of Toxteth Park, and some-
times of the two other local deer parks, Croxteth
and Simonswood. The constable, however, did
not always reside in the Castle, but sometimes in a
house just outside the gate, at the south-end of
Castle Street. In normal times no standing
garrison was kept in the Castle, which seems to
have been used merely as a gaol, and the per-
manent staflE apparently consisted merely of a
watchman and a doorkeeper, who were paid lid.
a day each, and had to find their own meals.

A curious list survives of the equipment kept in
the building for the use of the garrison, when
there was a garrison. There were 186 pallet-beds,

54 Life in Mediaeval Liverpool

which, seem to represent the usual number of
the garrison, 107 spears, 39 lances, 15 great
catapults for hurling stones, and several other
engines of defence, together with a large vat
for brewing, two tables, one large and two small
brass pots, and so forth, down to ' one ewer with
a basin,' (the only washing utensils mentioned)
which seems to be a somewhat inadequate
allowance for the people who slept in the 186
pallet beds.

55

CHAPTER V

The Anarchy of the Fifteenth Century
1399-1485

For the greater towns of England the fifteenth
century was a period of steady growth. It was in
this age that England began to take her place
among the trading nations ; York and Norwich
began to compete with the looms of Flanders,
and the merchants of Bristol, Sandwich and
other towns began to challenge the mercantile
supremacy of the German cities. But for Liver-
pool the period was one of steady decay. Her
trade was too local in character and too insecurely
established not to suffer greatly from the wild
anarchy which resulted from the Wars of the
Roses, and which was nowhere worse than in
Lancashire ; her burgesses were neither numerous
enough nor strong enough to be able to shut
their gates upon the turmoil of war, as the towns
of the south and east could do.

Yet at the opening of the century the prospect
seemed promising enough. By the succession of
the son of John of Gaunt to the English throne
Liverpool once more came under the direct
control of the crown, and it might have been
expected that this would result to the profit of
the borough. But the issue was the exact

56 Anarchy of the Fifteenth Century

opposite. So long as the great lease of the
lordship rights granted to the burgesses by John
of Gaunt in 1393 continued, all went well. But
when it expired, as it did in 141 o, trouble at once
resulted.

There survives a curious memorandum, the
oldest document relating to the history of Liver-
pool written in the English language, which
shows how anxious were the discussions of the
burgesses over this question. They applied for a
renewal and even an extension of the lease ; they
thought of asking also for a new charter con-
veying to them sundry new powers ; and they
engaged the aid of Sir Thomas de Lathom, one
of the most powerful magnates of the neighbour-
hood, to back their claim. But the memorandum
shows that there was a good deal of difference of
opinion among the inhabitants of the town. The
tenants of the recent enclosures from the waste
who were not burgesses had been subject to the
control of the burgess-body since 1393, and
they seem to have resented the way in which
this control was exercised, to have desired to
return to the conditions existing before 1393,
and therefore to have opposed the renewal of the
lease. In other words, the great question at
issue was the question whether the burghal
authorities should exercise authority over all
the inhabitants of the town, or only over the
holders of burgages.

The consequence of these squabbles was that
the burgesses got nothing of what they asked

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The Burgesses' Quarrel with the Crown 57

for. They got a new charter, indeed, from King
Henry V in 141 3, but it contained none of the
grants they desired, and its only value was that
it restored the trade monopoly which Richard II
had abolished. But the crown decided not to
renew the lease in fuU. The burgesses were
only allowed to collect the burgage rents, the
market tolls and the ferry-dues, for which they
paid j^22 17s. 6d. in place of the ^^38 they had
paid since 1393. But officers of the Duchy of
Lancaster re-entered the town, after an absence
of fifty-four years, to work the mills, to hold the
Portmoot courts and take the profits, and to
exact all other dues owing to the king. It seemed
that all the gains of the previous half-century
had been lost.

But the burgesses, after their long experience
of freedom, showed no such timidity as they had
once exhibited in their contest with Edmund
of Lancaster. They boldly defied the crown,
and insisted on holding the courts themselves
and taking the profits, though they had no
shadow of legal right. They even sent up a
petition to the House of Commons for protection
against these officers of the king who * now of
late have come, usurped and held certain courts
in the borough by force ' so that ' the said
burgesses are grievously molested, vexed and
disturbed in their liberties. ... by the said

officers contrary to law and reason

to the great hindrance and detriment

of the said borough and the disinheriting of the

5 8 Anarchy of the Fifteenth Century

said burgesses, if they be not succoured and
aided in this present parliament.' And though
Parliament gave them very little succour and aid,
merely referring the matter to the King's Council,
the burgesses, undismayed, continued to exercise
what they regarded as their rights for no less than
six years.

The king found that he could not get a penny
out of the borough beyond the £^12 ijs. 6d.
paid by the burgesses, and a couple of pounds
for the rent of the mills. He summoned all the
mayors for six years to appear before the Exchequer
court in Lancaster, and answer for ' the time
they have held our courts ' and ' the tolls and
other profits they have collected.' But it was
all in vain ; in the end he had to give way and
grant them a lease for one year at the rent of
^23, pending an enquiry into the whole question.
The enquiry never came off, for Henry V died
before the year was out, and during the minority
of his son the court was too much engaged with
the disputes of the nobles to have any attention to
spare for the obscure usurpations of a petty borough
like Liverpool. So the burgesses were allowed to
continue to hold their courts, and their lease was
regularly renewed for nearly thirty years.

In this brisk little struggle with the crown the
burgesses had gained a striking victory, and they
were left in the enjoyment of all the rights they
had previously exercised, for ^15 less of annual
payment. What had happened was that in the
long tenure of their rented rights they had lost

The Coming of the Stanleys 59

the distinction between the rights they enjoyed
in permanence by charter and the rights they
enjoyed only temporarily by lease. But great
as the victory was, it was a sign that there were
troubles in store. The very weakness of the
crown, which had been the cause of their success,
was to be their undoing. For it meant that the
king would be unable to protect them from the
turbulence of the nobility which was to rage
so fiercely in the middle of the century.

The main feature of the history of Liverpool
in this period is the establishment within the
borough of two great noble houses, which have
been intimately connected with its fortunes ever
since. One of these had already planted itself
in the town before the great quarrel between the
king and the burgesses. Sir John Stanley, a cadet
of an ancient Cheshire family, had, towards the
end of the previous century, married the heiress
of Thomas of Lathom, and obtained as part of
her dowry the manor of Knowsley and a patch
of land in Liverpool, on the shore of the river
next to the chapel, at the foot of Water Street.
Stanley was a man of immense boldness and
vigour, and he rapidly made himself the most
powerful magnate of South Lancashire. As a
reward for his services at the battle of Shrewsbury
in 1403 he received large grants from the for-
feited estates of the rebellious Percies. Among
these was included the Isle of Man, of which the
Stanleys remained kings, owing fealty to the
King of England, until 1737.

6o Anarchy of the Fifteenth Century

Desiring a link between his Lancashire lands and
his new dominion, and a base for men and supplies,
Sir John Stanley, in 1406, obtained leave to fortify
a house of stone and lime in Liverpool. This
house was the Liverpool Tower, which remained
standing at the bottom of Water Street untU
1819, and is to-day represented by Tower
Buildings.

The erection of the Tower marks the beginning
of the intimate connexion of the family of Lord
Derby with Liverpool, a connexion which has now
been one of the outstanding features of the life of
the borough for exactly five hundred years. Liver-
pool thus became the official point of contact
between England and the Isle of Man, and this
may have been good for trade. But the erection
of a second feudal stronghold in the town must
have been regarded with some disquietude by
the burgesses. They must have felt somewhat
nervous as to the probable behaviour of these
new and embarrassing neighbours.

The trouble that was soon to come was fore-
shadowed by an episode which took place in 1424.
At that date, under the feeble government of
the regency of Henry VI, the barons had already
begun to get out of hand. In south Lancashire
a feud had broken out between the Stanleys and
their chief rivals, the older family of Molyneux,
ancestors of the Earls of Sefton. Just after
midsummer, 1424, the Sheriff of Lancaster
found it necessary to collect the posse comitatus
and ride down to Liverpool to prevent bloodshed.

The Molyneuxes and the Stanleys 6i

There they found Thomas Stanley ' in his father's
house ' (the Tower) ' with a multitude of people
in the town to the number of 2,000 men and
more.' When he was asked the reason for this
assembly, Stanley told them that ' Sir Richard
Molyneux wiU come hither with great con-
gregations, riots and great multitude of people,
to slay and beat the said Thomas, his men and
servants, the which [very naturally] he would
withstand if he might.' So the sheriff arrested
him, and went after Sir Richard, whom he found
marching across the Mosslake somewhere near
Abercromby Square, ' with great congregations

to the number of 1,000 men and more,

arrayed in manner as to go to battle, and coming
in fast towards Liverpool town.' Molyneux
also submitted to arrest, and the storm blew over.
But the Liverpool streets had very narrowly
escaped being the scene of a pitched battle.
And if this was the state of things when order
was still tolerably respected, what are we to
imagine of the period of full anarchy, for which
no records remain, because it was hopeless for
the sheriff to attempt to check the disorder !

Nor was the riotous conduct confined to the
great nobles. It was a Liverpool man, one
William Poole, a relative of the Stanleys, who
in 1437, along with * many other felons and
disturbers of the peace . . . harnessed and
arrayed in manner of war,' burst into the house
of Sir John Butler, of Bewsey, near Warrington,
at five o'clock one Monday morning, carried off

62 Anarchy of the Fifteenth Century

Lady Butler by force, transported her to Bidston
and compelled her, under threat of death, to go
through the ceremony of marriage. For this
outrage no redress could be got from the courts ;
Butler had to petition Parliament, and all that
Parliament could do was to pass a special act
outlawing the ruffianly ' William Poole of Liver-
pool.' It cannot have been easy for the mayor
to keep order or for trade to thrive in the borough
when its population included gentry of this type.

But worse was yet to come. In 1441 Sir
Richard Molyneux was made Constable of Liver-
pool Castle and Ranger of Toxteth, Croxteth
and Simonswood parks. Five years later these
offices were made hereditary in the Molyneux
family. The effect of this grant was practically
to turn the Castle into a private stronghold of the
Molyneuxes ; and the year after his occupancy
began Sir Richard made it more formidable than
ever by the erection of a new tower at the south-
east corner.

The two most powerful baronial families of
South Lancashire were now both entrenched in
impregnable fortresses in the heart of the borough;
the crown was quite incapable of maintaining
order ; and the mayor and burgesses were helpless
indeed. From their little thatched town-hall in
the High Street they looked down on the one hand
to the massive embattled Tower by the wharf, and
on the other up to the huge and frowning Castle on
its rocky eminence ; they were ground between
the upper and the nether millstone. Their only

Declining Prosperity 63

hope was in playing off one of their dangerous
neighbours against the other ; and as the Moly-
neuxes were on the whole the more dangerous of
the two, they tended to throw themselves on the
protection of the Stanleys, who thus became (as
they are described in the next century) ' the
patrons of the poor decayed town of Liverpool.'

No details survive of the extent to which
Liverpool was dragged into the Wars of the
Roses. Fortunately both of the great Liverpool
barons were adherents of the Yorkists ; so that
the wretched borough was spared the misery of
continued war between them, which might have
snuffed it out altogether. But as the Lan-
castrian party drew much of its strength from
the Duchy of Lancaster, it is likely that Liverpool
saw many bloody affrays of which all record is
lost.

All the evidence which survives goes to show
(what might be expected) that the borough
underwent a rapid and terrible decay. It cannot
pay even the reduced rent of £23 for its precious
fee-farm lease. It gets it reduced to ^14 and
even to ^11 — which means that the revenue from
the borough was not much more than it had
been at the time of its foundation — but still falls
into hopeless arrears. Finally the lease of the
king's rights is taken from the burgesses alto-
gether, and transferred first to the Crosses,
fortunately a local family, and then, at the end
of the period, to a Welsh retainer of Henry
VII, one David Griffith.

64 Anarchy of the Fifteenth Century

This was a very serious loss ; but not so serious
as at first sight appears. For after all, this age
of misery and disorder had one advantage, that
nobody paid much attention to what the unlucky
burgesses did. They were allowed to go on
holding their courts, ruling the inhabitants who
did not hold burgages, and treating the waste
lands of the township as if they were their
own property. While kings and great lords
were frenziedly fighting for power, the petty
usurpations of an insignificant and decaying
borough passed unregarded. At the end of this
century of gloom no one knew very clearly what
were the rights of the burgesses and what were
the rights of the crown ; and the burgesses, who
desperately clutched everything they could, man-
aged to keep many things which, then almost
valueless, were to be in the future of untold
value. In particular we may attribute to this
age of anarchy the securing of the burgesses'
control over the waste, which means the estab-
lishment of the corporation estate, and the
submission of all the inhabitants of the town
to the burghal authorities. If Henry V had
lived, if his successor had been a vigorous ruler,
Liverpool would have been saved much misery.
But it is also pretty certain that she would not
have been able to retain these properties, over
which she was still fighting with Henry V in the
last year of his life.

65

CHAPTER VI

The Age of the Tudor s, 1485-1603

Modern England begins with the sixteenth
century. No longer torn asunder by the feuds
of a turbulent baronage, she enjoyed, under the
firm rule of a succession of shrewd and master-
ful despots, leisure for the development of her
commerce and her industry. It was then that,
with gradually increasing boldness, English barks
began to steal their way to the New World ; while
at home the steady growth of industries, especially
wool-spinning, provided material for the rising
over-sea commerce. Lancashire was beginning
to be a seat of industry, humble enough as yet ;
and Manchester, as the topographer Leland reports
in 1533, is already ' well set a-work in making
of cloths as well of linen as of wooUen.'

But Liverpool, still languishing after the afflic-
tions of the previous century, had little share of
this prosperity until the end of the period. Her
mariners did not yet dream of venturing beyond
the Atlantic ; and she profited little even from
the new prosperity of Lancashire, which seems
to have sent its products rather to eastern ports.
Whether in population or in trade, Liverpool
spent this century in laboriously climbing back
to the position she had occupied at the end of
the fourteenth. Her population in 1565, the

66 The Age of the Sudors

first year for which there are definite figures,
amounted to about 700. A quarter of a century-
later, in 1590, it had attained to something over
1,000, or less than it had been in 1346. The
slowness of the growth of population is largely
accounted for by the ravages of the sweating
sickness, which repeatedly visited the town, and
in 1558 raged so furiously, that the annual fair
had to be dropped, no markets were held for three
months, and 240 persons, or a third of the popu-
lation, are said to have died.

But the plague can scarcely account for the sur-
prisingly slow advance of the shipping in the port.
In 1557 Liverpool owned thirteen vessels, the
largest being of 100 tons, manned by 200 seamen
in all ; eight years later there were fifteen vessels,
but three of them belonged to Wallasey, the
largest was only of forty tons, and the number of
seamen had fallen to eighty ; while towards
the end of the century there may have been about
twenty ships. In spite of these figures the
borough was really advancing ; and though it
describes itself on occasion as a ' poor decayed
town,' its burgesses show throughout this period
a vigorous spirit which was in itself the cure for
aU ills.

They needed a high spirit, for we find them
continually compelled to battle for their rights.
The Tudor kings were too acute and energetic
to allow any recoverable crown rights to slip out
of their hands, and the burgesses found themselves
much more closely looked after than they had

Disputes about Fee-farm Leases Gj

been in the age of anarchy. In 1498 Henry VII
required them, by what was called a writ of quo
warranto, to produce evidence of their legal right
to hold their various liberties, with what result
we do not know. In 15 14 Henry VIII, dis-
satisfied with the amount yielded by the tolls,
commissioned Sir William Molyneux and others
to find out whether the mayor and burgesses
had been admitting persons not resident in the
town to membership of the Gild, and so enabUng
them to ' defraud us of our tolls,' from which,
of course, members of the Gild were exempt.
The king regarded this action as illegal, but he
did not succeed in stopping it. In 1528, William
Moore was ordered to make enquiries about wrecks
which legally belonged to the king, and about
' concealments and subtractions of our tolls,'
which the king suspected to be going on. ' ;-(

Not only were the burgesses worried by the
king, but they were at issue with the holders of the
fee-farm lease. It wiU be remembered that the
burgesses had lost the lease (which conveyed the
right of collecting all the royal dues in the borough)
during the troubles of the previous century, and
down to 1537 it was held, at first by David Griffith
and his family, and afterwards by Henry Ackers,
a well-to-do squire of West Derby. The burgesses
managed to keep the control of their own courts
and markets, however, by making an arrangement
with the lessees whereby they collected all the dues
and kept half of them, paying ^10 for the privilege.
But in spite of this arrangement, a quarrel broke

68 The Age of the Tudors

out over the right of ferry. Some of the bur-
gesses had been working a ferry to Runcorn
without paying anything for the right to do so,
and Ackers maintained that he alone had the right
of carrying on any ferry from Liverpool. The
rights and wrongs of this question are rather
obscure, but in any case, the mayor was very
promptly ordered to put a stop to the illicit ferry.

In spite of these quarrels, however, the affairs
of the town were looking up. It can be shown
that Ackers made a very handsome profit out of
his fee-farm lease, the payment of which had
nearly ruined the town in the previous century.
And the secret of the revival is doubtless to be
found in the fact that Henry VIII took up in
earnest the problem of subjugating Ireland, and
that Liverpool began to be used again, as she had
been in the fourteenth century, for the trans-
portation of men and provisions ; though now
Chester took a much larger part of this business
than her younger rival.

The army of Skeffington, Henry's most vigorous
viceroy, was transported from Chester and Liver-
pool in 1534 ; and a paper of instructions on the
conduct of the Irish campaign says that the troops
in Ireland ' must be victualled with beer, biscuit,
flour, butter, cheese and flesh out of Chester,
Liverpool,' and other ports. The revival of this
military business brought with it a revival of the
more regular trade with Ireland ; and the anti-
quary, Leland, in 1533, notes Liverpool as a place
to which ' Irish merchants come much. . . . Good

The Liverpool Grammar School 69

merchandise at Liverpool, and much Irish yarn
that Manchester men do tuy.'

Within the town, too, things were improv-
ing. In 1524 Sir William Molyneux rented
a patch of waste land near the IV^oor Green
from the burgesses, as a site for a new barn to
hold the tithes of Walton, which had come into
his possession. It was this barn which gave its
name to Tithebarn Street ; and what is more
important, the transaction shows the burgesses
acting as owners of the waste, unchallenged.
A borough rental of the next year showed that
they drew 7s. 5d. from the rents of various patches
of waste.

These years saw also a very valuable bene-
faction to the borough from one of its sons.
John Crosse, of the famUy of Crosse HaU, had
entered the church, and become vicar of St.
Nicholas of the Shambles, in London. In 15 15
he made over aU his property in Liverpool,
consisting of several burgages and holdings in
the fields, for the endowment of a new chantry,
the priest of which was not only to pray for the
souls of all the members of the Crosse family,
but also to keep a grammar school, to which
aU poor boys and aU boys of the name of Crosse
were to be admitted without payment, while the
fees of other scholars were to go to the augmen-
tation of the teacher's salary. The priest and
teacher was to be appointed by the mayor and
the testator's brother or his heirs. At the same
time, the good priest presented to the borough

JO The Age of the Tudors

the ' new house called Our Lady's House, to keep
their courts and such business as they shall think
most expedient.' Thus, by one generous act, the
town was equipped with a grammar school and a
Town Hall. The new Town Hall, a thatched
building, stood in the High Street, on part of the
site of the Liverpool, London and Globe Insurance
offices ; it appears frequently in the records later
in the century. The grammar school seems to
have been held in the ancient chapel of St. Mary,
in St. Nicholas' churchyard ; though, sad to
relate, the first priest of the chantry, a member
of the founder's own family, was so lazy that
he neglected the school altogether.

This new institution had scarcely had time
to get itself well established before the Refor-
mation began, which very nearly resulted in its
abolition. The first events of the Reformation
made little material difference to Liverpool.
The suppression of the monasteries, which aroused
the greatest popular discontent, scarcely touched
the borough, for the only monastic property
connected with it was the house which the Prior
of Birkenhead had in Water Street, and his ferry-
right over the Mersey. But the later suppression
of the chantries touched the borough much more
nearly, for the four chantries of St. Nicholas were
the only public endowments which the borough
possessed. The endowments of the four chantries
consisted entirely of lands in the borough. When,
after the suppression, these lands passed to the
crown, those belonging to two of the chantries

Efects of the Reformation 71

were disposed of on leases which, for the most part,
were taken up by members of the burgess body.
The lands of the other two chantries were retained
by the crown. The income accruing from them
seems to have been used for paying the salary of a
priest for the chapel and of the schoolmaster
of the grammar school. It is, however, a little
doubtful whether during the first years after the
suppression the school was permitted to survive.

So much for the material effects of the earlier
Reformation upon the borough. As to the way in
which the great change was regarded by the
burgesses, it is exceedingly difficult to say any-
thing. Perhaps at first they were inclined, to
resent the changes. The chantry priests con-
tinued to live in the borough after the suppression,
and they must certainly have exercised a deep
influence on a population accustomed to look up
to them. So in 1564 the Bishop of Chester had
to enjoin the curate and churchwardens of Liver-
pool to ' use no beads,' and to ' utterly extirpate
all manner of idolatry and superstition out of their
church.' But as time went on the townsmen
became more Protestant, till, as we shall see, at the
end of the reign of Elizabeth they had become
almost Puritan in temper.

Perhaps religious difficulties had something to
do with a very bitter quarrel which sprang up
between Sir Richard Molyneux and the burgesses,
in the first year of Queen Mary's reign. In 1537
the Molyneuxes had succeeded in obtaining the
fee-farm lease of the town, and later they had

72 The Age of the Tudor s

secured a renewal of it for so long a period as forty-
one years. This was nothing less than a disaster
to the burgesses ; it was bad enough to have their
markets and courts at the mercy of a local squire
like David Griffith or Henry Ackers ; but to
be delivered over into the hands of a family
which already controlled the Castle and received
their tithes payable to Walton Church, was ten-
fold worse. At first the Molyneuxes were content
to allow the burgesses to collect the dues, as
Ackers had done. But in the first year of Queen
Mary's reign the unfortunate burgesses somehow
angered their great neighbour, and instead of
renewing the old arrangement with them. Sir
Richard, in 1554, put his own officers into the
town to collect the dues and hold the courts.

At once the burgesses blazed up in opposition,
ready to fight the lord of the Castle as they
had long before fought King Henry V on the
same question. They refused to allow the officers
to collect the tolls. One of them, Hugh Dobie,
was a burgess. He was promptly deprived of
the freedom of the borough, and when he persisted
in trying to collect tolls, the mayor, Thomas
Moore, imprisoned him in the cellar of the Town
HaU, and kept him there for four months. When
Sir Richard Molyneux tried to proclaim a meeting
of the Portmoot, which he claimed the right to
hold, his officers were roughly handled, and the
mayor insisted upon holding it himself. Sir
Richard indicted the mayor, the bailiffs, all the
aldermen, and fifty-seven of the burgesses at the

Struggle with Sir R. Molyneux 73

Quarter Sessions, for taking part in this business.

The anxious burgesses held frequent meetings
to consider the best course to be taken. Sure that
their charters secured them in the disputed rights,
they sent the mayor up to London to get them
confirmed by Queen Mary, and great was the
rejoicing when the confirmation came down.
They also elected a good Catholic, Sir William
Norris of Speke, as their next mayor, in the hope
that his influence might outweigh that of Moly-
neux. But alas ! the laws (or at any rate the
lawyers) were against them. Thomas Moore, on
going up to London again, was imprisoned in the
Fleet on the indictment of Molyneux, and only
released when Hugh Dobie was let out of his
Liverpool jail. And when the whole case came to
be tried before the Chancery Court of Lancaster,
judgement was given at every point against the
unfortunate burgesses. They were told that their
charters did not convey to them the rights they
claimed, and that aU toUs of aU sorts levied within
the borough legally belonged to Molyneux, who
was also entitled to hold the Portmoot court and
to compel the attendance of all burgesses.

This was a woeful issue for so gallant a struggle ;
and a very different from that of the last struggle
on the same question. It delivered over the
borough bound and gagged into the hands of the
Constable of the Castle. Fortunately, however,
the friendly patron of the borough was at hand
to give aid. On the intercession of Lord Strange,
eldest son of Lord Derby, Sir Richard Molyneux

74 The Age of the Tudors

was persuaded to renew the old arrangement,
whereby the burgesses held the courts and col-
lected all the dues, paying over half of them and
^14 more to Sir Richard. On these terms peace
lasted between them for the rest of the period ;
but, not unnaturally, they regarded the Moly-
neuxes henceforward with very strained feelings.
Another trouble, of a more amusing and less
serious kind, arose directly out of this dispute.
In 1547 the Liverpool burgesses had again been
caUed upon to elect two members, a privilege
which they had not enjoyed since 1307, but which
they were not again to lose. But, like others in this
period, they did not choose their own members :
their regular practice was to invite their patron,
Lord Derby, to nominate one of the members,
and the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster,
on behalf of the crown, to nominate the other.
In 1562, however, the burgesses ventured to
depart from their ordinary practice, and in order
to celebrate their reconciliation with Molyneux,
they offered him the nomination to one of their
parliamentary seats for his son, reserving the other,
as usual, for Lord Derby. But this aroused the
anger of the Chancellor of the Duchy, who was
thus deprived of his customary nomination. So
enraged was he that he actually returned writs
duly filled, and the writs of Parliament for that
year contain a duplicate set for the borough of
Liverpool. He also threatened — on what legal
ground it is impossible to imagine — to prosecute
the borough.

Parliamentary Elections 75

In such a predicament there was only one thing
to be done. Lord Derby's help must be obtained.
So Ralph Sekerston, the most active and individual
figure in the Liverpool of that age, went to see my
lord, who was so pleased with his spirit that he not
only intervened to protect the town from the
Chancellor's wrath, but gave Sekerston his own
nomination ; and for sixteen years the borough
had a real member of its own. It had to pay for
the privilege, for Sekerston had to receive 2s. a
day for his service, while the usual nominees were
glad enough to serve without pay. But Sekerston
was an admirable representative, who cared for
nothing but the interests of the borough, and
his pay was well earned.

In later Parliaments the earl and the chancellor
as of old were allowed to make the nominations.
It was probably on the chancellor's nomination
that in the year of the Armada no less a man than
Francis Bacon for four months represented Liver-
pool. Like most of the representatives of the
period he probably never visited the borough, and
the burgesses most likely knew (and cared to know)
nothing about him. He Vi^as the chancellor's
member ; that was enough for them.

This episode, which shows how slight was the
interest of the burgesses in national politics,
brings us into the stirring reign of Queen Elizabeth.
In the world-shaking events of that reign, Liver-
pool was strangely little concerned. Though a
Liverpool trader, who had escaped after a year's
imprisonment in Spain, is said to have been the

76 The Age of the Tudors

first man to bring to England the news of the
preparation of the Spanish Armada, the only trace
of the excitement caused by that great danger in
Liverpool is the fact that the burgesses raised
enough money to erect one gun on the ' Nabbe,'
at the mouth of the Pool.

The continual piratical raids against Spanish
shipping which preceded the Spanish Armada,
first in the English Channel and later on the
Spanish Main, concerned Liverpool rather more
directly. In 1555 a Spaniard, Inigo de Baldram,
complained to the privy council that he had been
robbed by ' pirates of Liverpool and Chester,'
and later one or two captured French and Spanish
ships were brought into the Mersey. Piracy raged
in the Irish Sea as well as in the English Channel,
and the government of Elizabeth, which secretly
encouraged it when it was directed against Spain,
found some difficulty in keeping it within limits.

Far more than in the Spanish struggle, Liver-
pool was interested in the ferocious Irish wars in
which Elizabeth endeavoured to complete the
work of subjugation recommenced by Henry VIII,
and did it by turning the Green Isle into a desert.
The Earl of Essex and part of his army were
transported from Liverpool, and on at least six
other occasions substantial forces left the port.
The activity thus caused was far greater than
it had been under Henry VIII, and must have
brought a good deal of profit to the ship-masters
of the borough. The cost of transport averaged
more than ^i per man, 2s. was allowed to each

Transport of Troops to Ireland 77

soldier for food during the voyage, and while the
troops were detained in the town, as they some-
times were for long periods, 3d. a head was
allowed for each meal, and 4d. a day for the
feed of each horse.

But there were drawbacks to this constant use
of the port for transport of troops. Quarters and
food had to be compulsorily provided while the
troops lay in the town. Even when these were
promptly paid for, it must have been difficult
for so small a town to make adequate provision,
and soldiers have a way of helping themselves if
they are not weU provided.

Moreover the troops were often riotous. A
very vivid account survives of an affray which
broke out one Sunday morning in 1573, between
the captain and the lieutenant of two detachments
bound for Ulster. Captain Bartley with a company
of his motley-coats met Lieutenant Sydenham
with some of his blue-coats, in the street ; swords
were drawn, and such was the ' rageous perse-
cution of the said Bartley ' that the other side
had to take refuge in a house, where by the ' good
previse and fortunate shift of the wife of the
said house ' they were conveyed into ' an high
loft-chamber by the ladder, and so they drawn
up the ladder up to them in the said loft, and so
escaped death, as pleased God.' The victorious
party then seem to have broken into riot
and terrorised the town, sacking and plundering,
while ' Roger Sydenham, poor gent, was in
cover all the while.' As it was Sunday morning.

78 The Age of the Tudor s

however, the burgesses were at home, and on
the mayor's summons all trooped out to the heath
beyond the Pool, where the mayor drew them
up in battle array, ' every man with his best
weapons,' and aU ' as eager as lions.' This had
the effect of bringing Captain Bartley to his
senses ; and ' after all this done,' says the
chronicler, ' the captains and their soldiers were
more gentle to deal with all whiles they abode
within the town.' Eight years later we hear of
a formidable mutiny breaking out among the
troops at Liverpool, which had to be visited
with ' sharp and exemplary punishment.'

Another drawback of this transport business
arose from the fact that, by royal order, the
shipping of the port was often withdrawn from
trade and detained for long periods in harbour,
waiting for troops which did not arrive. In 1593
it was only the intercession of Lord Derby for
the ' poor masters and owners of vessels stayed
at Liverpool,' which obtained their release,
though the expedition for which they were
detained had been given up.

In the transport of troops to Ireland, however,
Liverpool at this point played a less important
part than Chester ; so much so, that the govern-
ment treated Liverpool as a sort of dependency
of Chester. Chester was also the centre of a
large customs district, including all the North
Wales ports as well as Liverpool. This was a
convenient arrangement, because the customs at
Liverpool were so small that they had apparently

Chester's Claim to Superiority 79

not been worth the trouble of collection between
the end of the fourteenth and the middle of the
sixteenth century.

But the position thus held by Chester was made
the ground of a general claim to supremacy over
the port of Liverpool, first put forward in 1565,
which the Liverpool men very vigorously resisted.
Chester claimed that the Mersey was only ' a creek
of its port,' and that aU ships entering there should
pay dues through Chester. This claim was suc-
cessfully rebutted by the help of Lord Derby, who
got a friendly commission of enquiry appointed,
and by the energy of Ralph Sekerston, M.P., who
' of his own politic wit and wisdom ' drew up a
petition to the queen, in which he cunningly
pointed out that the subordination of Liverpool
to Chester would be an indignity to the royal
duchy of Lancaster, of which he said (not quite
correctly) that Liverpool was the only port. The
Chester claims came up again in a modified form
in 1578, when Chester tried to compel ships calling
on the Cheshire side of the Mersey to pay dues to
her. The Liverpool men were as vigorous as ever
in resistance, ordering the water-bailiffs to arrest
and confiscate any such ship which did not pay
dues at Liverpool.

But this quarrel was dropped without formal
settlement, because at the moment the two rival
ports had a common danger to face. A charter
had been granted giving a monopoly of the English
trade with Spain to a new company, and empower-
ing it to impose heavy fines upon aU merchants

8o The Age of the Tudors

trading with Spain who were not members of the
company. This would have crushed out of exis-
tence the small Spanish trade carried on by a few
shippers in the two towns. Once again it was to
Lord Derby that the burgesses were indebted for
protection and aid. He obtained from the privy
council a promise that the merchants of Liverpool
and Chester should be exempted from the pay-
ment of fines to the Spanish company, on the
rather humiliating ground that their trade was
of so small and retail a character as to be of no
importance.

This danger, the last of the long series of
troubles which had afflicted the burgesses during
the century, was the direct cause of a striking
change in the government of the borough. It
had long been felt that the general assembly of
all burgesses was not a suitable body to handle
difficult questions ; in 1555, during the heat of
the quarrel with Sir Richard Molyneux, the
Assembly itself had assented to the statement
of the mayor ' that it were not convenient to
declare there aU things which was done ....
forasmuch as he well perceived aU in the whole
house were not to be credited and trusted.'
Several attempts had been made to institute a
sort of standing committee or council, to take
over the normal management of affairs ; but
these attempts had aU failed because after once
electing a council, the Assembly always became
jealous of its powers, and did not re-elect it.

In 1580, however, a more drastic change was

Establishment of the Town Council 8i

made. The then mayor, Edward Halsall, told
the Assembly that all the misfortunes of the
borough were due to the lack of a body consisting
of the most discreet and substantial of the bur-
gesses, to administer the burghal business. He
therefore made a proposal which was carried
after much discussion. This was that a council
of twenty-four ordinary members and twelve
aldermen should be appointed, and empowered
to administer all the borough business without
reference to the Assembly. To prevent the
Assembly from destroying this body as it had
destroyed its predecessors, it was determined
that the members should sit for life, and that
vacancies as they arose should be filled, not by
the Assembly, but by the Council itself.

Thus there was established the close self-elected
Town Council, which continued to govern the
borough from this time tiU the Municipal Reform
Act of 1835. It was the direct outcome of the
troubles and disputes of the period with which
we have been dealing in this chapter. The
Assembly now retained no power except that of
electing the mayor and one of the bailiffs, and
perhaps passing occasional by-laws.

In form the borough thus suddenly passed
from the government of the widest of democracies
to that of the narrowest of oligarchies. But
the change was probably not so startling as it
seems. The same process had been going on in
most other English boroughs ; and the way had
been prepared for the final step in Liverpool

82 The Age of the Tudors

by the practice, which had so long existed, of
leaving the ordinary administration in the hands
of the mayor and of that group of leading bur-
gesses who constituted the mayor's brethren or
aldermen. Still the definite establishment of the
Town Council as the ruling body in the borough
marks a very definite epoch in the borough's
history. One inevitable result of it may be briefly
noted. The mayor becomes at once a much less
important person. Instead of being almost a
dictator, only capable of being called to account
after his year of office, he becomes merely the
agent and mouthpiece of the permanent Town
Council.

83

CHAPTER VII

Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool.

In the middle of the sixteenth century the regu-
lar Municipal Records of Liverpool begin. They
are far from being mere dry minutes of pro-
ceedings. Parts of them were written by some
unknown scribe who had a very vivid pen, and
they enable us to realize the life of Liverpool in
that age with quite extraordinary clearness.

The town had changed scarcely at all in its
external aspect since the fourteenth century, and
we need not repeat what was written in a previous
chapter about the streets and the houses. The
only new building of importance since that date
was the great square Tower at the bottom of
Water Street, where the Earls of Derby occasion-
ally stayed when they visited the borough. Nor
had the fields or the system of agriculture
materially changed, though it is now possible to
describe them in more detail, and to mention
(for example) the booth which stood at the end
of what is now Scotland Road for the collection
of ingates and outgates, which were the tolls taken
from country-folk coming to or leaving the
market.

Of the town's trade we now have a much more
minute knowledge. Foreign trade, as we have

84 Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool

already noted, was as yet very small, though, there
were two or three merchants who traded with
Spain, and Portugal, taking out corn, fish and
rough cloths, and bringing back wine and iron.
Spanish iron was highly esteemed, for the English
mines, as yet, were little worked, and their
product was inferior : in 1586 some English iron
which came to Liverpool was declared to be ' very
coarse metal, brittle, and very unfit for this place.*
But the bulk of the sea-borne trade was with
Ireland. During three months of 1586, for
which we have full returns, sixteen vessels entered
the port, all from Irish ports, Dublin, Drogheda
or Carlingford. In every case their cargoes
consisted of linen yarn, hides and sheepskins,
with sometimes a little tallow. The linen yarn
was destined for the hand-looms of Manchester ;
many of the hides were tanned in Liverpool. In
the same period seventeen vessels cleared for
the same ports. The outgoing cargoes were
much more varied. Six consisted largely or
wholly of coal, probably brought by road from
Wigan. But the most important item is textiles
of various sorts, ' cottons ' or ' coatings ' of rough
linen stuff from Manchester and Kendal, and
Yorkshire woollens. There are also Sheffield
knives and scythes, pewter cups and trenchers
from Chester, saddles, bridles and other leather
goods. ' Smallwares ' form a frequent item,,
including gloves, leather ' points ' (laces which
took the place of buttons), stockings, shoeing-
horns and soap, with, on one occasion, 1400

Methods of Conducting Trade 85

tennis balls and 24 rackets. It may be observed
that Liverpool is already engaged, though on the
smallest scale, in exporting manufactures and
importing raw materials ; and her manufactures
already come from the looms of Manchester and
the furnaces of Sheffield.

But if there is a faintly modern air about the
commodities dealt w^ith, there is nothing modern
about the way in which traders were treated
when they arrived in the port. On the arrival
of a vessel it was promptly boarded by one of the
water-baUiflEs, a place of anchorage was assigned
to it, and unless the ship belonged to a freeman,
the master had to pay anchorage and wharfage
dues. He then (whether he was a freeman or
not) had to see the mayor to arrange the terms
on which he would be allowed to dispose of his
cargo. The mayor consulted with the aldermen,
or the Assembly, or (later) the Town Council, as
to whether the cargo or any part of it should be
taken as a ' town's bargain.'

If it was decided to make a town's bargain,
the officers called merchant prysors were sent to
value the cargo : they, and not the seller, fixed
the price. If the trader chose to take the town's
oflFer his cargo was landed and weighed under
the supervision of the merchant prysors, and he
paid weighage dues, while at the same time the
* customers ' collected the customs duties. The
goods were then carted to the common warehouse
under the Town Hall, where the keeper of the
common warehouse charged hallage dues. Every

86 Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool

freeman of the borough then had the right of
taking his share of the goods, at the price fixed
by the merchant prysors.

If, however, the seller did not choose to take
the town's offer, he might make a bargain with
the mayor to ' have an open market,' that
is, to sell his goods on his own terms. Thus in
1 591 ' one Mr. Pratt came before the mayor
and the whole assembly concerning certain rye
and barley brought by him from Ireland, which
he proffered to the mayor and the town to be
sold, for the which the mayor with the consent of
the whole assembly proffered 7s. 8d. per barrel
of the said rye, and 6s. per barrel of the said
barley, which price the said merchant refusing,
did then and there voluntarily make proffer to
the mayor of the sum of 33s. 4d. to have license
and free liberty to make his best market for the
sale of the said grain, which in the end was
granted.' Until the mayor and assembly had
considered the matter, and either made a town's
bargain or got a substantial fee for license to
sell, no burgess might bargain with the importer.
Non-burgesses were not allowed to buy direct
from him at aU — they must buy at second-hand
from the burgesses.

The control of the burgesses or freemen over
the trade of the port, however, went still further.
They imposed special duties of their own on
special kinds of goods. They prohibited the
export of other commodities : to deal with a
scarcity in 1587 the water bailiffs were ordered

Restrictions on Trade 87

to seize and sell all corn found in ships leaving
the river. Their jurisdiction extended over the
whole of the river, and boats making for Frodsham
or Warrington were boarded by the water
bailiifs and made to pay dues before going on.

In the ordinary local traffic much the same
system of regulations existed, though it does
not appear that town's bargains were made in
goods coming by land. Everyone entering or
leaving the township on market days had to
pay ingate and outgate dues : though, in virtue
of ancient royal grants, the men of Altcar and
Prescot were free of these. No goods brought
into the town by a non-freeman were allowed
to be sold to any but freemen : ' all the merchants
of Bolton,Wigan and Manchester which bring hops,
taUow, soap, or any other kind of wares . . . shall
sell the same to the freemen of this town, and
not to any foreigner in any wise ' ; the freemen
intended to have all middleman profits. One
exception only was allowed to this rule : sheep-
skins and yarns could be sold direct by foreigners
to foreigners, because they were chiefly sold
by Irish traders to Manchester weavers, who
came to Liverpool to buy them.

Even on the freemen themselves narrow restric-
tions were imposed. To prevent * cornering,' 'no
townsman shall buy above eight windles of corn
on one market day.' To prevent under-buying ' no
townsfolk, neither men, women nor servants
shall buy any butter, eggs or fish before the same
are brought to the usual place of market.' A

88 Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool

sharp watch was kept over the quality of the
goods sold in the town. Thus any shoemaker
who brought to market shoes made of horse-
hide or unlawful barked leather was liable to
have the shoes confiscated, to be fined, or to
be imprisoned at the mayor's discretion.

The market, at which all ordinary trade was
carried on, was held every Saturday, in High
Street, the northern end of Castle Street, and Dale
Street as far as the modern Stanley Street.
Different parts of this line were set apart for
different commodities. Country folk who brought
in corn had to arrange their sacks in rows along
the sides of the street, Lancashire men on the
cast and Cheshire men on the west. With the
mouths of their sacks open, they waited till the
mayor and his officers came round in their robes.
After the mayor came the 'levelookers' to check the
seller's measures by the standard town measures,
for the borough had measures of its own, and
goods were not allowed to be sold by any others.
Then the market opened, and for the first hour
only freemen were allowed to buy. At first the
cattle-market was held in the same place as the
rest, but in 1567 the cattle were removed to the
open fields on the far side of the castle, in what
is now South Castle Street (then Pool Lane),
because ' the town is much troubled on market
days with cattle and beasts.'

The annual fair in November 'was still more
lively, for merchants came to it from much
greater distances. The opening of the fair was

t3
o

o

H

P
U

a
o

w

X
H

Industries of Tudor Liverpool 89

marked by the hoisting of the sign of a hand
from the Town Hall, and during the three days
that it lasted all frequenters were free from
arrest within its limits. It was not easy to keep
order in these circumstances ; the mayor had
to peregrinate the fair in his robes, followed by
a number of men carrying halberds, and every
freeman was bound to come to his assistance
at need. For this purpose the mayor and each of
the aldermen had to keep ' four honest and seemly
bills or poleaxes,' and every bailiff and ex-bailiff
two bills, and every freeman one bill ; ' the
same to be provided before the fair day on
pain of 3s. 4d.' With all these bills and pole-
axes there must sometimes have been lively
work in the fair.

From the commerce of the town we may
next turn to its industries. Of these the most
important was still milling. The mUls were
still the same as in the fourteenth century ; but
the universal compulsion of grinding at them
was felt to be vexatious, and many burgesses set
up illicit handmUls or horsemills of their own,
or sent their grain to mills outside of the town.
In 1586 William Moore, who, like his ancestors,
worked the Townsend mill, went to law and
had all the private mills destroyed, but illicit
milling still went on.

The most interesting feature of the period m
regard to the industries of the town is the rise
of craft-gilds, or associations of all persons engaged
in a particular trade. These craft-gilds must

go Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool

not be confused with the merchant-gild, which
included all freemen. They were empowered to
regulate their own industries. They had long
existed in other boroughs, but in Liverpool they
seem either to have come into existence for the
first time, or to have been reorganised, about the
middle of the sixteenth century. The first of which
mention is made is the Gild of the Tailors, who
in 1558 paid 50s. to the assembly for the right
of excluding from the tailoring business all but
their own members. This precedent seems to
have been generally imitated, for a little later
comes an edict ' that no craftsman not free shall
set up his occupation without license of the
brethren of the occupation upon forfeiture of
6s. 8d.' The tailors charged 4s. 6d. for admission
to their gild and license to practise the trade,
while the weavers charged 5s. The nearest
modern analogy to these gilds is to be found in
such bodies as the Cotton Association in our
own city. But the craft gilds never took root
in Liverpool as they did in other towns ; by the
middle of the next century they had died out
altogether.

One industry the borough officers kept very
strictly under their own control — that of brewing.
Two officers, the ale-founders, were annually
appointed to see that all beer sold was of the
proper quality and measure. ' We find it
convenient,' the Portmoot decrees in 1584,
' that every one that hath ale to sell shall sell
a quart for a penny if it be called for, and that

Revenues of the Borough 91

they shall bring a full quart open (that is, in a
pot without a lid) to the intent they shall use no
deceit.'

To carry out these elaborate regulations a
number of special officers were required. All
were burgesses. Some of them served without
payment ; some took commissions ; others were
paid fixed salaries, like the keeper of the common
warehouse, who was paid 22s. gd. per annum, or
the 'customer,' who got 15s. per annum, with
I OS. extra for the * keeping of a horse or nag
to ride upon to attend upon the mayor, or
otherwise about the town's business.'

But the dues were large enough to pay these
salaries and leave a good deal over ; Isesides,
there were rents of the patches of the waste, let
out by the burgesses ; and there were also the
fines for the admission of freemen. For men
no longer obtained admission to the liberties
of the borough by holding a burgage, but by
being elected to the ' freedom ' ; and that is why
the name freeman is replacing the name burgess.
Sons or apprentices of freemen were admitted as
by right, on payment of a fine of 3s. 4d. in one
case and 6s. 8d. in the other ; other persons paid
higher sums, fixed seemingly in proportion to
their ability to pay.

From all these sources the borough derived a
considerable revenue, quite sufficient for ordinary
needs, and rates were only raised on special
occasions, as when expenses were involved in fight-
ing the claims of Sir Richard Molyneux, or the

92 Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool

city of Chester, The highest figure reached
by the borough revenue during this period was
about fyi, but it varied very widely from year
to year, and the average was about ^^60.

Of this sum a comparatively small proportion
was expended on what are now the most costly
departments of municipal government, because
most of the public works were carried out by the
freemen themselves. But a very large proportion
was spent on public amusements. Cock-fighting
and bull-baiting were the favourite sports, and they
were encouraged by the borough authorities.
In 1567 the jury at the Portmoot ' find it needful
that there be a handsome cock-fight pit made.'
Bull-baiting was perhaps more cheaply run
than the sister sport, because it was the rule
that no bull should be killed until it had been
baited, and no doubt there was a bull-ring
outside of the town. Horse-racing, too, received
municipal support. Every year, under the pat-
ronage of the mayor, a race was run for a silver
cup over a four-mile course on the Kirkdale
sands. Then the town kept and paid a musician,
or wait, who wore a silver badge and played in
the market-place morning and evening. His
instrument seems to have been the bagpipes ;
and he was ordered to play every day before the
houses of the mayor and all the aldermen. The
little town must have echoed continually to the
mellow music of this attractive instrument. It is
to be hoped that the wait knew more than one tune.

But the kinds of merry making in which the

Festivities of the Townsmen 93

freemen most delighted were banqueting and
drinking. Every new freeman, on admission,
was expected to stand drinks : if he wished to
be popular he would give a farvula collatio, a
little dinner, to his fellow townsmen. At fair
times there was generally a banquet in the Town
Hall at the public expense, open to all freemen.
And special occasions were eagerly seized upon for
celebration in this congenial English manner.

In November 1576, on the anniversary of Queen
Elizabeth's accession, the mayor ' caused a great
bonfire to be made in the market place near to
the high cross, and another anenst his own door,
giving warning that every householder should
do the like throughout the town, which was
done accordingly.' In the midst of this im-
pressive illumination, the jovial mayor ' caused
to call together his brethren the aldermen and
divers others of the burgesses of the said town,
and so went altogether to the house of Mr.
Ralph Burscough, alderman, where they ban-
queted a certain time, which done, the mayor
departed to his own house accompanied of the
said aldermen and others a great number, upon
whom he did bestow sack and other white wine
and sugar liberally, standing aU without the
door, lauding and praising God for the most
prosperous reign of our most gracious sovereign

lady And so, appointing his bailiff

and other officers to see the fires quenched, he
departed ' — rolling jovially up to bed by the
light of two hundred bonfires.

94 Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool

Occasionally one of the neighbouring magnates
would send in the materials for a feast, as in 1562,
when my Lord Derby ' gave the town a buck, a pure
good one, and merrily disposed of and eaten in the
common hall ; many of the town absent, the
others had more plenty. Also Sir Richard
Molyneux gave the town a buck, which proved
but mean, and that was divided between the
mayor, the aldermen, and the bailiffs, whereat
many of the commoners loured and something
murmured.'

The scene of all these festivities was the Town
Hall, 'Our Lady's Hall,' the same that was given
to the town by the good old parson John Crosse.
It served a variety of purposes — it was at once
meeting place, court room, jail and common ware-
house. The mayor had to pay for mending the
windows ; and the roof was kept in repair free of
charge by a slater, who was given the freedom on
this condition. Most of the wedding feasts of the
burgesses took place here ; is. 6d. was the charge
for festivals of this sort, but for dances and other
festivals the charge was 5s., ' to be paid before-
hand.' The townsmen were very proud of
their one public building, and gave it many fine
names — the Town Hall, the Gild Hall, Our
Lady's Hall, the Common Hall or Aula Com-
munis, and even the Praetorium.

But of all the festivals with which the Prae-
torium's rafters rang, the most brilliant were
those organised in honour of the great patron
of the borough. Lord Derby, who indeed, as

Festivals in honour of Lord Derby 95

we have seen, had earned every honour the
burgesses could give him. Several such occasions
are recorded, but the most splendid was the
' great triumph ' which was organised in the
earl's honour in AprU, 1577, when he stayed
for four days in the Tower.

First the earl went in solemn procession to
church, with the mayor, bailiffs and aldermen, in
strict order of precedence. When he came out
from St. Nicholas', there were ready to greet him
a great number of townsmen, whom the mayor
had got together and ' furnished and trimly set
forth as soldiers in warlike manner to march and
skirmish before the right honourable earl.' They
' skirmished very bravely and orderly,' ind fired off
many guns in the churchyard. Next morning the
earl went to church again, escorted by his skir-
mishers, and no doubt striving to maintain his
gravity. He presented the chaplain with a gold
piece and listened to a ' pious and godly
sermon.' AU day long the skirmishers went on
unweariedly, ' so that there was shot at the
least 1,200 culver shot ' ; and in the evening,
when it was dark, Roger Powell fired off a fine
squib, ' whereat his honour took great pleasure.'

On another occasion the earl, on his way to the
Isle of Man, was met at the Town's End by
the mayor, bailiffs, aldermen and freemen in
procession ; and ' the said earl rested and had
a couple of partridges,' to which the freemen
begged to be allowed to add ' a banquet of
delicious delicates of two courses of service.'

96 Trade and Society in Tudor Liverpool

Evidently these townsmen, like aU England
in this age, were fond of pageantry and ceremonial.
All the borough officers had robes of a particular
pattern which they were obliged to wear on all
public occasions. Questions of precedence were
very strictly regulated. In the chapel, as was usual
in that period, the men sat on one side and the
women on the other ; the mayor in the place of
honour, then the bailifis, then the aldermen in order
of seniority, then the ex-bailiffs. A long entry in
the records defines the precedence of officials*
wives, with the object of putting an end to the
' contention and variance ' which had arisen
among the women ' about their place of kneeling
and sitting in the church.'

Everything connected with the chapel, indeed,
was regulated by the borough officers. Repairs
to the fabric were carried out by the bailiffs at
the town's expense. The parson was elected by
the burgesses, but not for life — only ' during
the time he useth himself well and in good sort,
but yet always to be removed at the appointment
of the mayor and his brethren.' His salary (paid
partly by the borough, partly from the endow-
ment of one of the chantries administered by
the borough) amounted to ^^lo per annum with a
house ; but it sometimes fell seriously into arrears.

The burgesses kept a very sharp watch
upon the conduct of the parsons. One of them
was fined * for suffering the churchyard to be
spoiled with swine ' ; a second was requested
' to cut his hair of a comely and seemly length,

Ecclesiastical A-ffairs 97

as best beseemeth a man in his place ' ; another
had to pay 6d. for cutting down the great thorn
in the churchyard without license, and again
* for keeping horses and kine in the churchyard.'
This same parson, Sir Hugh Jannion, frequently
quarrelled with his masters ; they rebuke him
' for not keeping the gate of the churchyard
open at divine service ' ; and they inform him
that they * think it not meet nor convenient that he
do continue his journeys so often as he hath done
to Chester.' Finally they give him notice to quit.

Perhaps religious differences may have had
something to do with some of these quarrels,
for as the century grew old the burgesses became
more and more Protestant and even Puritan in
temper. The name of Sunday gives place to
Sabbath, and all ale-houses are ordered to be
closed on the Sabbath day ; they are very par-
ticular that the lessons shall be read in the body
of the church, and actually fine the mayor for
allowing them to be read in the chancel. The
priest becomes the minister ; the freemen begin
to insist that if he does not preach a sermon he
shall at any rate read a homily every Sunday,
and in 1 591 a special rate is levied to engage a
godly preacher, one Mr. Carter, who received
^4 per annum.

Like the parson, the clerk or sexton was also
an elected officer, his wages amounting to
j^3 6s. 8d. He was required to be able to * sing
his plain-song and prick-song and play on the
organs.' But he had also to perform more

H

98 frade and Society in Tudor Liver-pool

humble functions ; he is strictly enjoined to whip
the dogs out of church and keep the clock, which
seems to have been constantly out of order.
' The clerk shall have no wages ' it is decreed,
' unless he look well to the keeping of the clock.'
It was also his duty to ring the curfew bell for
half an hour from seven to half-past seven every
night during the winter, beginning on October 3 1
and ending on February 2.

Occasionally the clerk added to these duties
that of schoolmaster ; for the grammar school
was now fully under the control of the burgesses,
Queen Elizabeth having, in 1565, transferred
to the borough good old John Crosse's endow-
ment. As the lands in the borough of which
this endowment consisted yielded only ^5 13s.
4d., a rate had to be levied to supplement it ;
and to enjoy the munificent salary of ^10 per
annum (perhaps supplemented by fees) Mr.
Ralph Sekerston, the borough's own M.P., was
instructed to find a suitable schoolmaster. A
special assembly of burgesses was held to receive
and inspect the first borough schoolmaster, Mr.
John Ore, B.A. Thus the grammar school was
definitely established in much the same way and
on much the same scale as the corresponding
school in Manchester. The Manchester gram-
mar school is now among the biggest and most
distinguished schools in England ; the Liverpool
grammar school has altogether vanished. The
reason for this diversity of fate will be seen in
a later chapter.

Moral Regulatiotis no

Not only did the borough authorities regulate
the church and the school, they held it to be
part of their duty to keep an oversight of the
morals of the town. To keep down ' the ex-
ceeding number of alehouses and tippling-houses '
they forbid the opening of any such house with-
out license from the mayor, and all licensees
have to give surety ' against unlawful games.'
Gambling was rigidly suppressed ; so also were
bowling alleys, which persuaded people to waste
time. Apprentices who played cards were to be
whipped. Jugglers, players and showmen must
be licensed by the mayor. Bachelors might not
walk out after nine o'clock. Apprentices were
very strictly kept in order : ' no manner of
apprentice or servant shall depart out of their
master's or dame's house after eight of the clock,
unless it be on his master or dame's business,
on pain of imprisonment.' ' Scolders and
chiders ' were liable to a fine of los. or to imprison-
ment at the mayor's discretion ; and while in
prison no ' wine, beer, ale or other kind of drink '
was to be brought to them. Every burgess was
responsible for the behaviour not only of his
apprentices but of his guests ; and in 1592 (when
the town had become thoroughly Puritan) the
mayor himself was fined for having persons
staying in his house who did not go to church
on the Sabbath day.

The police regulations of the borough were
of a primitive kind ; for the most part, police
duties had to be performed by the burgesses

loo Trade and Society in Tudor Liver-pool

themselves. Watch and ward was kept in the
town from eight at night till four in the morning,
and all freemen had to take their turn in this
service. Indeed, the participation of all bur-
gesses in the common labours of the town remains,
as in the middle ages, a feature of its life. When
the paving needed repair 'every townsman having
a team ' was required ' to serve with the same
half a day apiece, in due order and course. '

Perhaps the most striking example of this co-
operative self-help was provided in the year
1561, when a violent storm broke down the old
harbour. ' The mayor ' thereupon ' called the
whole town together unto the hall, where they
counselled all in one consent for the foundation
and making of a new haven.' The mayor
himself, Robert Corbett, opened a subscription,
and ' of his own free will gave a pistole of gold
towards the beginning, which that day was good
and current all England through for 5 s. lod.,
although after, in a few days, but by proclamation

was prohibited and not current.

Also the same day, Mr. Sekerston (M.P.) did
give, also all the rest of the congregation did
give, so that in the whole was gathered that
present day the sum of 13s. 9d. current, and
put into the custody of Richard Fazakerley and
Robert Mosse.' 13s. gd. may seem a somewhat
inadequate capital for the construction of a new
harbour, but note the sequel. ' On the Monday
morning then next, the mayor, and of every
house in the Water Street one labourer, went

Co-operative Public Duties loi

to the old Pool and there began and enterprised
digging, ditching and busily labouring upon the
foundation of the new haven ; and so the Tues-
day, of every house in the Castle Street,' and
so on in turn, each street taking its day, ' and
this order continued until St. Nicholas' day
then next after, gratis.' There is something
almost heroic in these proceedings, but that was
the accepted mode of performing the common
labours of the town.

To some extent the problem of poverty was
treated in the same spirit, though it must be
admitted that, in the treatment of the poor, the
Liverpool freemen were often more than a little
harsh. But one of their experiments deserves
note. A list was drawn up of aU ' poor and
impotent people and children,' who were licensed
to beg ; and certain definite houses were allotted
to each of them where their begging must be done.
That was a mode of making the well-to-do sensible
of their obligations to their fellows which was
not without its advantages. It at least brought
a personal relation into the administration of
charity, and it forms a curious tail-foremost
anticipation of the much lauded Elberfeld system.

On that not unpleasant note we may close
this survey of sixteenth century Liverpool. It
is a piece of great good fortune which enables
us to get into such intimate contact with the
burgesses on the eve of an age of rapid change
upon which they were about to enter.

103

CHAPTER Fill

The Beginning ot a New Growth, 1603 -1642

The first forty years of the seventeenth century,
between the death of Elizabeth and the out-
break of the great Civil War, are marked by
two outstanding characteristics, in the history of
Liverpool as in the history of England. In the
first place this period witnessed the rise of two
acutely divided parties, divided on questions
both of religion and politics, whose differences
increasingly obscured older grounds of quarrel,
and in the end attained such a pitch of embitter-
ment as could only be relieved by the blood-
letting of civil war. But these differences did
not prevent a steady growth in prosperity, in
which Liverpool had its share. This was the
age when England founded her first colonies
beyond the seas, and when the ships of the East
India Company made their first voyages round
the Cape of Good Hope.

In Liverpool, old causes of quarrel still survive
in this period, and occupy a great space in the
records ; but their interest for us has now largely
vanished. There are disputes of the old type
with Sir Richard Molyneux about the powers

Progress of Trade and Population 103

conveyed by the fee-farm lease ; there is a revival
of the old quarrel with Chester about that city's
claim to superiority over her younger rival ; there
are controversies with the courts of the Duchy
over the borough's claim to settle all local matters
in its own courts ; and the freemen of Liverpool
fight these questions with as much determination
and with far more self-confidence than in the
previous century. But the chief interest of these
often-fought battles is the evidence which they
afford that the freemen were now far more capable
of self-help, and needed much less the condescen-
ding protection of their ' patron ' than of yore.

The town was very steadily progressing
in these years ; its population more than
doubled by the middle of the seventeenth
century. Its shipping was still of modest pro-
portions, so much so that when, in 1625, five
Liverpool ships, carrying troops for Ireland,
were wrecked off Holyhead, the mayor repre-
sented to the crown that the town would be
entirely ruined unless it received state aid.
Nevertheless the shipping of Liverpool had far
outstripped that of Chester, which had to
confess that it had no ships at all, but traded
only in small barks. In face of this the Chester
claim to superiority had become ridiculous ; and
though the mayor of Chester still acted as a
royal officer for the whole district in the transport
of troops to Ireland, yet the main bulk of that
traffic was necessarily carried on by her rival.
By the middle of the century Liverpool had

I04 Beginning of a New Growth

become, far excellence, the northern port for
Ireland, and not merely one of the less important
of a group of ports.

This expansion of trade was probably mainly
due to the comparative order and peace which
had come to Ireland since the desolating wars of
Elizabeth, and to the new industries which grew
up in that country when the North was re-
peopled by James I, and still more when the
firm and intelligent, if somewhat unscrupulous,
rule of Wentworth gave to the unfortunate island
a prosperity such as she had never enjoyed since
the beginning of her connexion with England.
Poor Chester, eager to get a share of this growing
trade, tried giving bonuses to Irish exporters to
persuade them to land their yarn at her wharves,
but in spite of aU such inducements Liverpool
had the lion's share of the traffic. Even the Irish
trade, however, was not without its dangers.
Piracy still flourished in the Irish sea, and in
1633 a ' Biscayan Spanish rogue ' impudently
took up his station in Dublin bay, and captured
two Liverpool vessels, one with a cargo worth
^3,000, while the other carried the Lord Deputy's
own linen.

Not only was the Irish trade" developing,
but new lines of trade were being opened up.
We hear of a cargo of woollens being brought
from distant Tewkesbury down the Severn and
round the coast of Wales to Liverpool. Mention
of direct traffic with France and Spain is much
more frequent ; and there is even recorded the

Members of Parliament 105

arrival of a ship from the West Indies, laden
with tobacco — the earliest forerunner, so far
as we know, of that gigantic Atlantic trade upon
which the greatness of Liverpool was to be built.
One imagines the greater part of the towns-
people turning out to gaze at this first ship from
America.

The new independence of spirit which growing
prosperity inspired in the freemen is particularly-
shown in the use they now make of their right
of returning members to parliament. One at
least of their two members is now always elected
directly by the freemen ; who pay his expenses
at the rate of 2s. for each day's attendance in
parliament, because they find it worth while
to have their interests specially looked after
there. They keep a very strict oversight of
their members' behaviour. When Mr. Brook,
M.P., in 161 1, claimed ^28 9s. as his wages
for the session, they first deduct £i/^ 4s. yd.
already received by him ; from the remainder,
^^14 4s. 5d., they deduct the odd 4s. 5d. ' in
regard of his stay in Chester about his own
business four days ' ; and finally they make the
payment of the remainder conditional upon
his procuring a new charter for the borough.
It can have been no easy service that Mr. Brook
had to render.

This anxiety of the freemen to get a new
charter is worthy of note. They had made
repeated attempts to obtain one, and raised
(for them) large sums of money. The reason was

io6 Beginning of a New Growth

that the continual attacks on their liberties which
they had suffered in the previous century had
made them very nervous about their rights.
Their existing charters were all couched in the
same terms — all mere repetitions of the old
grant of Henry III ; and the legal terminology
of the middle ages had now become unintelligible.
Nobody knew exactly what powers were conveyed
by the antiquated technical phrases of which
the old charters were full. But some of the
advisers of the borough even doubted whether
the borough had ever been really incorporated
at all, and this doubt must be resolved. In
1626 they were able to purchase from Charles I
(who in the middle of his quarrels with
Parliament and his wars with Spain was hard
put to it for money) a new charter of the most
comprehensive and satisfactory kind. It departed
altogether from the old phraseology, and in
verbose but unmistakable terms declared that
the borough of Liverpool was henceforth an
incorporated borough, whether it had been so
before or not ; and that its burgesses were to
enjoy all the rights and privileges which they
then exercised, whether they had obtained them
by definite grant or by usurpation. That was
an invaluable clause. It settled everything in
the most satisfactory way. Among other things,
it removed all doubts as to the right of the
burgesses to act as owners of all the town commons
or wastes.

There are a great many points of interest in

Charter of Charles I 107

the charter of Charles I, which marks an epoch
in the history of the borough ; but we cannot
here stop to examine them. There is, however,
an omission in the charter which is even more
striking than its contents : it does not mention
the Town Council, but gives all legislative and
executive powers to the body of burgesses at
large. This does not mean that the Town Council
was abolished ; on the contrary, it was re-elected
immediately after the grant of the charter, and
continued to exercise all its powers without
dispute. But at least a ground was here given
for future controversy, of which we shall have
something to say in a later chapter.

Though the Town Council continued to be
the supreme governing body, and though the
ordinary freemen seem to have been quite content
to obey it, the Council found a good deal of
difficulty in this period in keeping the officers
of the borough in order. This was not unnatural,
for the Council had only been instituted in 1580,
and the officers, who before that time had been
left uncontrolled, found it hard to reconcile
themselves to the strict subordination which the
Council now exacted. In 1627 both of the
bailiffs had to be locked up in the Town Hall for
refusing to carry out the Council's orders ; and
two years later the bailiffs of 1629 actually brought
an action against the Council, in the King's Bench,
for which one of them was summarily deprived
of the freedom.

But far more troublesome than the bailiffs

io8 Beginning of a New Growth

was the Town Clerk, Mr. Robert Dobson, whose
irresponsible behaviour fills many pages of the
records during this period. Bailiffs changed yearly,
but Mr, Dobson went on for ever. For the borough
had fallen into the bad habit of selling the office,
and Dobson, having paid £jo on his appointment
in 1624, assumed that he could not be deposed
or called to account. He charged excessive
fees ; he neglected the records ; he behaved
disrespectfully to the mayor and bailiffs, whom
he regarded as mere temporary officers. Time
and again the jury in the Portmoot solemnly
* presented ' him to be fined for these offences ;
but unfortunately Dobson himself was the only
person who was entitled to draw up these
documents, and all the presentments had to be
quashed as informal. The Town Council sus-
pended him, but he refused to pay any attention
to them. The mayor ordered one of the bailiffs
to imprison him, but ' the said Dobson forcibly
broke from the said bailiff and so made an escape,
contrary to the oath of a freeman.' As time
went on his behaviour became more and more
intolerable. He insisted on taking precedence
of the bailiffs in church. He ' malignantly
scandalously and opprobriously insulted the
bailiffs and burgesses by calling them by an
English name, to wit, Bashragges ' — an insult
probably all the more cutting because nobody
had an idea what it meant. But the crowning
point of his insolence was reached when he
immodeste et indecente haec Angli (sic) verba

Sir R. Molyneux buys the Lordshif 109

utravit, he immodestly and indecently uttered
these words in English, ' Whosoever the divell
was mayor, he would be the town's clerk.' This
absurd quarrel went on for no less than twelve
years, and must have gravely disorganised the
business of the borough.

During its course a very serious thing happened.
King Charles, having borrowed ^25,000 from the
city of London, and being quite unable to repay
because of his quarrel with parliament, granted to
the city in 1628 the lordship of a large number of
manors, one of which was Liverpool ; and in
1635 Sir Richard Molyneux bought the lordship
from the Londoners for ^450, thus turning his
lease into a freehold property, subject only
to the payment of £i/\. 6s. 8d. a year to the
crown. His position for attacking the burgesses
was now stronger than ever ; and he proceeded
to deliver a new attack upon them, bringing an
action in the Court of Wards which they were
obliged to compromise. There is no saying
what further challenges to the burghal liberties
might not have been in store if the outbreak
of the Civil War had not come to swallow up
all these minor controversies in its all-engrossing
interest.

As the war drew nearer it became more and
more clear that Liverpool was likely to have a
troublous time, for the town was deeply divided
on the great questions at issue. Most of the
burgesses were Puritan in their religious opinions.
Their earnestness is shown by the fact that,

no Beginning of a New Growth

over and above the regular parson of the chapel,
they maintained a preacher, to whom they paid
;^30 a year with ' a good milk cow,' which the
Town Council cautiously reserved the right of
changing at discretion. But even this did not
satisfy their love of preaching, and in 1635 they
made arrangements for week day sermons twice
a month, engaging for this purpose the services
of some of the most pronounced Puritan clergy
of the neighbourhood.

Nor was it only on the religious question that
they found themselves in sympathy with the
opposition to Charles I. When the king first
levied ship-money in 1634 without a grant from
parliament, a good many ' village Hampdens ' were
found in Liverpool who declined to pay, and it is
clear that their refusal was a matter of principle,
for Liverpool was only asked for ^15 towards the
cost of a ship of 400 tons, which was to be pro-
vided by the united subscriptions of all the counties
and boroughs from the Bristol Channel to the
Solway Firth. A short time before ^^620 had been
raised without difficulty to fight a lawsuit in
which the town was interested ; and nobody
had objected to pay his share of that. But
when it came to ship-money, several of the
freemen informed the bailiffs not only that they
would not pay, but that if their property was
distrained they would prosecute the bailiffs.
On the second levy of ship-money scarcely
anything seems to have been paid in the town.

The leaders of this sturdy opposition were

Ptiritanism in Liverpool in

the Moores, who were still, as in the Middle Ages,
the most important residents in the town.
Edward Moore, as one of the members for the
borough, voted steadily against the king in
the last parliament of James I — the parliament
that impeached Lord Bacon, a former member
for the borough. Edward's son, John, was a
still more acrid and vehement Puritan. Foremost
in the resistance to ship-money, he went to the
Long Parliament as member for Liverpool ;
when the war broke out he threw himself eagerly
into the parliamentary cause, and so mortgaged
his fortune that the family estates never recovered;
and finally he distinguished himself by serving
as one of the judges who condemned Charles I
to death.

But though the Puritan party in the town
was in a majority, and had such vigorous and
influential leaders, there were countervailing
influences of great strength. AU the surrounding
gentry were strong Royalists ; the Moores stood
quite alone among the gentry of West Derby
hundred in adhering to the Parliamentary
side. Many of them, like the Molyneuxes and
the Norrises of Speke, were Catholics ; above
all Lord Derby, whose influence in the town
outweighed all others, showed an unwavering
and unselfish devotion to the Stuart cause.
The influence of the county gentry was still
overwhelmingly powerful in Liverpool, and it
was supported by the fact that the two great
fortresses, the Castle and the Tower, were both

112 Beginning of a New Growth

in Royalist hands. It is not surprising, therefore,
that Liverpool should have followed a somewhat
wavering course ; unlike Manchester, whose own
vigorous Puritanism was reinforced by the equally
vigorous Puritanism of its surrounding districts.
And so, side by side with the Moores, Liverpool
sometimes sent up supporters of the court as
their representatives to Westminister ; indeed
in the Petition of Right Parliament both of
the Liverpool votes were steadily cast against
the popular side. Liverpool thus echoes and
illustrates the divisions that cleft England in
twain. Like most seaports she was at heart
Puritan, but she was isolated in the midst of
a fanatically royalist district, and among her
freemen were counted many adherents of the
great county families.

The Puritan party in the town must have been
materially encouraged by a change which took
place just outside of its boundaries during these
years. In 1604 the ancient deer-park of Toxteth,
which during the whole history of the neigh-
bouring borough had only been inhabited by a
few keepers and by beasts of the chase, was dis-
afforested by Sir Richard Molyneux, and divided
into about twenty small farms. Tenants for
these farms were brought mainly from the
neighbourhood of Bolton. They were all, or
nearly aU, strong Puritans, pious simple folk.
The district which they occupied, still shut in
from the world by the old park wall, was in
the eighteenth century called the Holy Land ;

y,
o
h

o

The Puritans of Toxteth 113

the little stream which ran through it to join the
river at Otterspool, and which to-day supplies the
ornamental water in Sefton Park, was known as
the Jordan; and the farm by which it passed, near
Otterspool, was nicknamed Jericho. No doubt
these quaint names were due to the religious
character of the first settlers in the Park.

This handful of Puritan farmers soon organised
themselves for religious purposes. In 161 1 they
brought from Warrington a youth named Richard
Mather to serve as schoolmaster for their children,
and built him a school-house in the centre of the
park, where the Dingle tramway terminus is to-
day. After a while young Mather went to Oxford ;
but on finishing his course he was invited by the
Toxteth farmers to return, this time not as
a schoolmaster, but as a minister of religion. He
was duly ordained by the Bishop of Chester,
and licensed to preach in the extra-parochial
district of Toxteth Park. For his ministrations
the farmers erected a humble little chapel, the
predecessor of the still standing Ancient Chapel
of Toxteth, long the headquarters of Puritanism
in the Liverpool district. Mather was a fiery
impetuous soul ; he did not confine his eager
preaching to his own quiet district ; and when
Archbishop Laud came into power and began
to set the church in order, Mather found it wise
to flee to New England, where he played an
active and honourable part.

In the year in which Mather came as minister
to Toxteth (1618) there was born in the farmhouse

114 Beginning of a New Growth

of Jericho, down by the river, a boy named
Jeremiah Horrox, who was to earn a name among
the greatest of English astronomers. Taught by
the zealous young preacher, the boy went up to
Cambridge at the age of fourteen, and during three
years there proved himself the possessor of an
amazing mathematical genius. When Mather fled
to America young Horrox's Cambridge course was
just completed, and he was called back to take
his first teacher's place. In this quiet corner
he spent most of what remained of his brief life,
preaching in the chapel, teaching in the school,
studying the heavens, watching the action of the
swift tides as they swept past his home, and cor-
responding with friends at a distance who shared his
scientific enthusiasm. In 1 639 Horrox left Toxteth
for a year, to become curate of Hoole, near
Preston. It was here that he had the delight
of being the first human being to observe the
transit of Venus across the face of the sun ; he
had calculated the moment at which it should
take place with wonderful precision, and rigged
up his own simple mechanism for watching it.
The transit took place on a Sunday, after morning
service. It is not unlikely that the sermon that
morning was short and absent-minded. Soon
afterwards failing health brought back the young
astronomer to Toxteth. Next year, in 1641, he
died, at the age of twenty-three. Yet, mere
boy as he was, he ranks, by the testimony of no less
an authority than Sir Isaac Newton, among the
two or three great pioneers of English astronomy.

Jeremiah Horrox 115

Horrox can have had little influence on the
honest burgesses of Liverpool ; they may have
heard him preach, but they knew^ little and
cared less about the scientific interests which
engrossed him. But the handful of religious
farmers, and their young scholar-parson studying
the stars while all England was torn asunder by
the controversies between king and parliament,
form a pleasant background to the vacillations
and the obscure disputes of our perplexed bur-
gesses, and to the growing embitterment of feeling
which was presently to burst out into a flame of
war. Young Horrox died before he saw armies
marching through the quiet corner where he
spent most of his short life. But we shall have
to listen to their drums and tramplings in the
next chapter.

ii6

CHAPTER IX
The Three Sieges. 1642- 1660

We have now reached the most stirring episode
in the history of Liverpool, when for a time the
borough was drawn from its isolation, and made
the shuttlecock of contending armies. And since
the part played by the borough in the civil war
was by no means unimportant, it will be impos-
sible in this chapter to confine ourselves wholly
to local events.

When in January, 1642, King Charles I left
London to make preparations for war, and when,
as a result, both parties began to arm themselves
in every county, there were few parts of the
country where the Royalist cause had a more
promising aspect than in Lancashire. Though
Manchester and the east of the county were
Puritan, aU the gentry of the western half of the
county were devotedly loyal. And they had
as their leader the most gallant and romantically
devoted of Royalist heroes, Lord Strange, who
wielded the immense influence of the Stanleys
during his father's illness, and himself became
Lord Derby early in 1643. So confident was
Lord Strange of the loyalty of Lancashire and
Cheshire, of both of which counties he was

The Beginning of the Civil War 117

lord-lieutenant, that he wanted the king to
raise his standard at Warrington, and promised,
in that case, an army of 10,000 men from Lan-
cashire alone. The king preferred Nottingham
as a centre, and Lord Strange was left to secure
Lancashire. To do so he strained every nerve,
raising 3,000 men among his own tenantry, while
the other gentry imitated his example. Mean-
while the Parliamentarian party had appointed
a lord-lieutenant and a number of deputy-
lieutenants of their own, one of whom was John
Moore of Liverpool, the only Parliamentarian
landowner in the hundred of West Derby.
Within the first month or two it became clear
that the county was sharply divided. Salford
and Blackburn hundreds were for the parliament ;
the four western hundreds were for the king.
This cleavage was clearly shown in the beginning
of June, when the High Sheriff summoned a
county meeting at Preston, to open the king's
commission of array. On the moor outside of
the town the two parties ranged themselves apart,
cheering and counter-cheering. The meeting
broke up without bloodshed, but from that
moment there was a state of war.

In the first rush to get possession of warlike
supphes and fortified places, the Royalists, thanks
to . the energy and alertness of Lord Strange,
had much the advantage. He seized Wigan,
Preston, Lancaster and Warrington ; he also
threw a garrison into Liverpool, where he
captured a large store of gunpowder, early in

1 1 8 7 he Three Sieges

June. For, Puritan though the townsmen were,
they could not resist the masters of the Castle
and the Tower, and some of their own leading
men were friendly to the king. John Walker,
mayor in 1642, got a special letter of thanks
from the king for his activity ; but there was
some opposition, for the mayor was threatened
with imprisonment and transportation from the
county — perhaps by John Moore. Colonel Norris
of Speke became the Royalist governor of the town,
and large stores were thrown into the castle.
But during a year's occupation the Royalists made
little use of their opportunity. They did nothing
to strengthen the fortifications, beyond perhaps
restoring the earthen ramparts which ran from
the Old Hall to the bottom of Dale Street.

Meanwhile Lord Strange had been vigorously
pressing the Parliamentarians, and though he
was beaten back from Manchester, he had
certainly the upper hand of them until he was
weakened by the summons to send the bulk of
his forces to take part in the main campaign
in the south. This gave their chance to the
Lancashire Parliamentarians, who in the begin-
ning of 1643 proceeded to attack the Royalist
strongholds in the west of the county. Lord
Strange (now Lord Derby) by herculean efforts
contrived to raise a new army, and for some
time held his own against the Manchester men.
But when his only trained regiment was once
more called off to the south, the Parliamentarians
rapidly gained ground again ; and as trouble was

fhe First Siege 119

breaking out in the Isle of Man, Lord Derby
had to betake himself hurriedly thither, only
pausing to throw a garrison into Lathom House,
near Ormskirk, of which his heroic wife remained
in command. The remnant of his army, some
1,600 men, under the gallant Colonel Tyldesley,
kept the field for a short time between Ormskirk
and Preston.

But the triumphant Parliamentarians, under
Colonel Ashton, having captured Warrington
in the beginning of May, were marching
towards Liverpool and Lathom House, which
were now almost the only Royalist strongholds
remaining in Lancashire. Tyldesley, fearing to be
cut off, hurriedly fell back on Liverpool, perhaps
in the hope of getting by water to Chester.
But he had left his retreat too late. When he
reached Liverpool, Ashton was already hard on
his heels, and there was no time to throw up
additional fortifications. What was worse, a
vessel of the Parliamentarian navy had entered
the Mersey before his arrival, and cut off his
retreat by water. The townsmen too were
hostile, for we are told that they ' readily gave
entertainment and assistance ' to the Parliamen-
tarian vessel. In these circumstances no serious
attempt was made to defend the ramparts.
Ashton's army carried them by storm, and after
two days' hard fighting captured the whole line
of houses on the north side of Dale Street as well
as St. Nicholas' chapel, on the tower of which
they erected guns which commanded the whole

120 The Three Sieges

town. Tyldesley, who still held the Castle,
offered to surrender if he were allowed to march
out with arms and artillery, unpursued ; but
these terms were naturally rejected. A new
assault was ordered by Ashton, and after hard
fighting in Castle Street and the fields and
orchards where Lord Street now is, the Royalist
army was completely routed. Most of them
escaped, probably over the Pool to Toxteth
Park ; but eighty were left dead and 300 were
captured, while the conquering Parliamentarians
lost only seven men.

The acquisition of Liverpool was of the first
importance to the Parliamentarian cause. Not
only would it keep in check the gentry of the
most royalist part of the county, and form a
base for attack on Lathom House, which still
held out ; but still more important, it was the
only port on the west coast not in Royalist hands,
and could be of the greatest value for keeping
a watch on the Royalists in Chester and Ireland.
A military governor was appointed, at first one
Lieutenant-Colonel Venables, but in the begin-
ning of 1644, on the petition of the burgesses,
Colonel Moore became governor of his native
town. He was also appointed vice-admiral under
the Earl of Warwick, and thus controlled
both the naval and the military operations of which
Liverpool was the base. A German engineer
was brought in to reconstruct the fortifications.
Under his directions a deep ditch, thirty-six feet
wide and about nine feet deep, was cut from

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The Parliamentary Garrison 121

the river north of the Old Hall, round Tithebarn
Street to the Town's End at the top of the Pool,
beside the modern Technical School. Behind the
ditch a lofty and thick rampart of earth was
raised, broken at the ends of OldhaU Street,
Tithebarn Street and Dale Street by massive
gates which were protected by cannon. A
series of earthworks, with batteries of cannon,
protected the line of the Pool ; a strong fort,
with eight guns, was erected at the corner of
the Pool ; and a number of guns were also
mounted on the Castle.

To defend the town a regiment of foot and
a troop of horse were sent in, their expenses
forming a first charge on all public money raised
in the West Derby hundred. In addition, the
burgesses were required to perform military
duties, and for their use the mayor and aldermen
were entrusted with 100 muskets, 100 bandoliers
(shoulder straps from which little tin cases
containing charges of powder were suspended)
and 100 rests, on which to level the heavy muskets.
Military discipline was rigidly enforced ; any
burgess who failed to turn out for the performance
of his military duties ' at the beating of the drum '
was fined is. for each offence. The bailiffs had
to go periodically through the town ' and take
notice of aU strangers and other lodgers ' ; and
if they found any who were not ' faithful and
trusty ' they had to ' remove them forth of the
town with all speed possible.' During the period
of war, the authority of the governor overrode

122 7 he Three Sieges

all the ordinary borough authorities. This must
have been very vexatious ; and still more vexatious
was the necessity of providing quarters for the
soldiers. They seem, indeed, to have been very
well behaved. A young Puritan, Adam Martin-
dale, who was in Liverpool during these months,
tells us that he ' enjoyed sweet communion with
the religious officers of the company, which used
to meet every night at one another's quarters
by turns, to read scriptures, to confer of good
things, and to pray together.' But if the regi-
mental mess was a model of seemliness, far other
was the governor's establishment. This same
Adam Martindale acted for a time as Colonel
Moore's secretary ; and he reports that ' his
family was such an hell upon earth as was utterly
intolerable. There was such a pack of arrant
thieves, and they so artificial at their trade,
that it was scarce possible to save anything out

of their hands Those that were not

thieves (if there were any such) were generally
(if not universally) desperately profane, and
bitter scoffers at piety.' This surprising descrip-
tion suggests that Colonel Moore was one of the
most undesirable type of Roundheads. Other
hints suggest that he was a bitter and unscrupulous
egotist.

Nevertheless under his rule Liverpool played
for some months a very vigorous and effective
part. A small fleet of six warships was kept in
the Mersey ; and under the command of one
Captain Danks it ranged the Irish Sea and inflicted

Importance of Liverpool in the Civil War 123

serious damage on the Royalist cause. The only
rivals whom Danks had to fear were the ships
of Bristol, then in Royalist hands ; but the
Bristol merchants and seamen seem to have been
half-hearted Royalists, for one of their ships,
laden with warlike supplies for Chester, deserted
and put into the Mersey, where it joined the
Parliamentarian squadron. The ravages of the
Liverpool vessels in the Irish Sea were all
the more important because at this time the
king was hoping for large reinforcements from
the Royalists of Ireland under the Marquis of
Ormond ; and by preventing the importation
to Ireland of necessary supplies, and interrupting
communication between Dublin and Chester,
Liverpool made the transport of this force
difficult. Thus Liverpool was the one weak
spot in the Royalist position on the west coast,
and it is not surprising to find Lord Ormond
writing to the Royalists of Cheshire, ' earnestly
recommending ' them to attack Liverpool ' as
soon as they possibly can,' and urging that ' no
service, to my apprehension, can at once so much
advantage this place (Dublin) and Chester, and
make them so useful to each other.'

The rooting out of this ' pirates' nest ' was
one of the tasks entrusted to an army of 3,000
men under Lord Byron which landed from
Ireland at Chester in November, 1643. During
the next two months, when this force was over-
running Cheshire, there was serious alarm in
Liverpool ; but in February, before Byron had

124 ^^^ Three Sieges

begun to invade Lancashire, he was defeated at
Nantwich by two Parliamentarian forces, one
under Ashton from Manchester, the other from
the main Parliamentarian army in Yorkshire.
Byron fell back on Chester, and the garrison of
Liverpool, relieved from its fears, was able to
devote itself to the siege of Lathom House.

Ever since April, 1643, the heroic Countess
of Derby had successfully maintained herself
at Lathom, the defence of which, though it is
no part of our story, forms one of the most
romantic episodes in the Civil War. Isolated,
and with scarcely a prospect of relief after Byron's
defeat, the countess had to deal with two besieging
forces. The most important of these was drawn
from the east of the county, and had its base at
Bolton ; the other consisted of the garrison of
Liverpool, under Colonel John Moore. By April
of 1644 the countess was hard pressed, her
ammunition was running low, and her fortress
was almost battered about her ears. And her
friends in Chester were addressing piteous appeals
to the king's headquarters not to allow so gallant
a struggle to end in disaster. Her noble husband,
now returned from the Isle of Man, sent to
Prince Rupert, most chivalrous of the Royalist
leaders, a strong and simple appeal. ' I do take
the boldness,' he wrote, ' to present you again my
most humble and earnest request in her behalf
that I may be able to give her some comfort
in my next. I would have waited on your
highness, but that I hourly receive little letters

Prince Rupert's Advance 125

from her, who haply a few days hence may
never send me more.' But Lord Derby urged
also that the occupation of the bulk of the
garrison of Liverpool in the siege of Lathom
presented a splendid opportunity for an attack on
that town, ' which your highness took notice of
in the map the last evening I was with you, for
there is not at this time fifty men in the garrison.'
Other reasons also were urging Rupert to
march to the north. The main Royalist army
of the north, under the Marquis of Newcastle,
was penned into York by the combined forces
of Fairfax, Cromwell, and the invading Scots,
and its surrender seemed imminent. In May of
1644, therefore, Rupert set out from Shrewsbury
with an army of 10,000 men. His main purpose
was to relieve Newcastle and drive the Scots
home, but on the way he intended to relieve
Lathom House and recapture Liverpool. Gnce
started, he swept with the rapidity of movement
which was the secret of his success up into
Lancashire by way of Stockport. At the news of
his approach the besiegers of Lathom hastily
broke up the siege, Moore falling back on
Liverpool, while Rigby with the main body
retreated to Bolton. Before, however, the latter
force could reach its retreat, Rupert flamed down
upon it, scattered it, and stormed the town,
which he gave over to his soldiers to plunder.
Twenty-two standards which had waved over the
besiegers of Lathom were sent by special messen-
gers to be presented to the countess, and Rupert

126 The Three Sieges

swept on through Wigan, amid the cheers of
Royalists pouring in to join him from the lands
of the Stanleys. Two days later, on June 7, he
came down over the hill by way of London Road,
and saw the cottages of Liverpool beneath him,
behind the muddy Pool and the long lines of
earthworks, and with the Castle in the background.
A mere crow's nest, he called it, that a parcel of
boys might take.

Meanwhile inside the mud walls there had
been feverish preparation for the defence against
' that viper,' as the frightened Parliamentarians
called the fiery prince. The garrison, already
large, had been reinforced by 400 men from
Manchester. The ships were drawn up in the
Pool to assist in repelling the attack, or to take
off the garrison if that should become necessary.
On the ramparts sacks of Irish wool had been
heaped, to break the enemy's fire ; and all
women and children, together with all men
suspected of disloyalty, had been removed from
the town. All who remained, says a corres-
pondent of the Mercurius Britannicus, were
resolute to defend the place.

But the little town was far from capable of
standing a siege conducted in force by a large
army. It was completely overlooked by the
ridge of hill on the east, and especially by that
part of it which looks down on the old town from
Lime Street and St. George's Hall. Artillery
placed here might be expected to batter the
place about its defenders' ears very easily. Even

Prince Rupert'' s Attack 127

from an assault it was ill-protected, for its long
straight earthen rampart had no salient angles
from which a cross-fire could be directed against
an advancing enemy. Rupert might well imagine
that so poor a place ought not long to delay him.
He had, indeed, no time to spare ; for the
situation in Yorkshire was highly critical.

He seems to have begun the attack with a
fiery and impetuous assault, hoping to get the
same success from a sudden onslaught as he had
won at Bolton. But his stormers were repulsed ;
in this and the subsequent assault he lost no less
than 1,500 men. There was now nothing to be
done but to bring his artillery into play ; entrench-
ments were cut for them along the line of Lime
Street and in the open fields to the north. For
several days a fierce cannonade went on, so
vigorous that the besiegers used up a hundred
barrels of gunpowder, the lack of which left them
ill-provided for their northern campaign. Per-
haps it was after this furious bombardment had
silenced some of the opposing batteries that the
second assault was ordered. But it too, was
triumphantly repulsed ; while the impetuous
prince, in his headquarters at Everton, fumed
at the delay. Every moment was precious,
for while the siege went on, Newcastle wrote from
the north to implore the Prince to make haste,
assuring him that he could not hold out more than
six days longer. The unexpected resistance of
Liverpool was imperilling the whole Royalist cause.

At length, on the 12th or 13th of the month,

128 The Three Sieges

Rupert resolved on a night attack, the command
of which was entrusted to Caryll, brother of
Lord Molyneux, on the ground of his local
knowledge. Molyneux led the surprise party
round through the fields on the north of the
town, and along the path which pierced the
rampart beside the Old Hall. They reached
the rampart in their stealthy advance at three
o'clock in the morning. To their intense surprise
they found it deserted. Creeping through the
breaches which had been made by the cannonade
in the outhouses of the Old Hall, they found
themselves inside the fortifications before they
met with any resistance. The reason for this
was that Colonel Moore had come to the con-
clusion that the town was no longer defensible ;
determined to save his men and supplies, he
had drawn off the greater part of the garrison
and embarked them in the ships which lay in
the Pool, during this same night, without giving
any notice to the burgesses.

But there still remained some four hundred men
of the garrison, besides the townsmen ; and though
the governor had deserted and his ships were sail-
ing down the river, the attacking party had a
good deal of hard fighting before they made them-
selves masters of the town. The street fighting
lasted for several hours ; and the Royalists gave no
quarter, slaying ' almost all they met with, to the
number of 360, and among others . . . some
that never bore arms in their lives, yea, one poor
blind man.' Caryll Molyneux is said to have

The Sack of Liverpool 129

killed seven men with his own hand. But after
the Royalists had fought their way along Old-
hall Street and Juggler Street, the remnant of
the garrison surrendered at the High Cross, in
front of the modern Town Hall. They were
imprisoned for the time in the Tower and St.
Nicholas' Chapel, where some of them remained
till the town was recaptured by the Parliamen-
tarians in the following November. The town
was given over to the soldiers to plunder :
' whatsoever was desiderable was the soldiers'
right for their hard service.'

From the sack and from the fighting Liverpool
suffered very severely. Six months later, every
household had to be ordered to send a man with
a spade to aid in ' better covering the dead bodies
of . . . the great company of our inhabitants mur-
thered and slain by Prince Rupert's forces.' The
freemen found it very hard to forgive Colonel
Moore's desertion, to which, not unreasonably,
they attributed these misfortunes ; for the town
could certainly have resisted for some time longer,
or, at the worst, have got good terms for surrender.
It is indeed hard to defend Moore's action,
especially since he knew that every day's delay
at Liverpool was of the utmost importance to the
campaign in Yorkshire. It was openly said that
he had betrayed the town ; and neither he nor
his family ever recovered their old leadership.

After the capture Rupert stayed for two or
three days in the castle, not leaving for Ormskirk
tiU the 19th. An elaborate plan for re-fortifying

130 7 he Three Sieges

the town was drawn up by a Spanish engineer,
one Captain Gomez, but nothing was ever done
to carry it out, for the Royalists were not long
allowed to remain in possession. Rupert left
behind him a large garrison of English and Irish
under Sir John Byron, and hastened off to
Yorkshire. There, on July 2nd, he fought the fate-
ful battle of Marston Moor, in which the Royalist
cause in the north was ruined, and the steadier
flame of Cromwell's genius dimmed Rupert's
lustre. Next day he began a hurried retreat
through Lancashire. He was expected to stop
at Liverpool, but he passed it on one side and
hastened by Runcorn to Chester, Lancashire was
again left to its own resources, and, as in 1643,
two places alone, Lathom and Liverpool, stood
out for the Royalist cause.

To deal with the two strongholds a large
Parliamentarian force was told off, under Sir
John Meldrum. During July and August Lord
Derby and Sir John Byron were still able to keep
the field, and several skirmishes had to be fought
round Ormsldrk before the two garrisons were
finally cooped up within their respective lines.
The third siege of Liverpool seems formally to have
begun about the commencement of September.
It was very different in character from its two
predecessors. There was a large garrison in the
town, with ample supplies, including a number of
cattle ; and the Parliamentarians were in no
such hurry as Rupert, and tried no assaults.
They calmly sat down before the town, drew

The Third Siege 131

lines of entrenchment, and prepared to starve it
out. But there must have been many sallies
of the desperate garrison, and the Royalists of
the surrounding country strained every nerve to
relieve the place. Lord Derby, left much to
himself while the siege of Liverpool proceeded,
raised a new force and marched to the relief,
but a detachment of the besieging army routed
him with a loss of 500 men. The Cheshire
Royalists were active too, and planted guns on the
Wirral shore to prevent the advent of Parlia-
mentarian ships ; while a considerable army from
Shropshire started northwards, only to be met
by a superior Parliamentarian force. Presently
the runaway Colonel Moore returned with his
ships to the Mersey, and the wretched garrison
found themselves beset by sea as well as by land,
and with no chance of escape.

The English soldiers of the garrison began to
grow desperate, fearing to share the vengeance that
had been threatened to the Irish, and one night, at
the end of October, fifty of them deserted, driving
with them all the cattle. At this the Irish too
began to murmur. Some of the officers, suspecting
them, determined to imitate Moore's example,
and make a dash for it with the ships which lay
in the Pool ; but while they were quietly em-
barking their ammunition, the private soldiers
mutinied, took all their officers prisoners, and
surrendered to Sir John Meldrum, who rewarded
them by sparing their lives. Row-boats were
promptly put out to seize the ships, and the

132 The Three Sieges

whole of the stores and supplies passed into the
hands of the besiegers without a blow. Among
the captured officers were two colonels, two
lieutenant-colonels, three majors, and fourteen
captains and other junior officers. The success
thus gained was considered by the Parliamentary-
leaders sufficiently important to warrant a special
thanksgiving service, which was held in St.
Paul's Cathedral on November 5.

Thus ended the last of the three sieges which
had brought such unwelcome excitement into
the lives of the townsmen in 1643 and 1644, and
completely disorganised the trade and adminis-
tration of the borough. Liverpool now settled
down again under the rule of a Parliamentarian
military governor, supported by a substantial
garrison, the only part of the army in Lancashire
which was not disbanded. Though the tide
of war several times swept over Lancashire in the
years from 1644 t° 1650, Liverpool was not
directly affected by it ; but more than once the
Liverpool garrison had to march out, as in 1650,
when a forlorn dash from the Isle of Man was
made by Lord Derby. A small naval squadron
used Liverpool as its base to crush out Royalist
privateering in the Irish sea ; and the port was ~
one of the places of embarkation for Cromwell's
troops on the way to Ireland.

But on the whole, peace was restored under the
iron rule of the soldiers, and trade began to revive.
The town, too, got handsome recompense from
parliament for the suffering it had endured.

7 he Croinwellian Rule 133

There were pensions for the widows and orphans of
the slain ; there were grants of timber from Knows-
ley and Croxteth, and of lead from Lathom House
for the repair of ruined houses ; there was even
a magnificent grant from Cromwell of 10,000
acres of land in Galway, but this turned out
to be entirely iUusory, for after wasting a good
deal of money, the burgesses failed to get posses-
sion of their shadowy estate.

More practical, if temporary, advantages also
resulted from the Cromwellian regime. Not the
least of these was the disappearance of Lord
Molyneux and his claims ; all of which were trans-
ferred, by a formal grant of Parliament, to the
burgess-body, which thus (for a time) got rid of
every shadow of feudal supremacy. Another
boon which the Commonwealth Parliament gave
was the turning of Liverpool into a separate
parish ; the tithes which had been paid by the
burgesses to Walton Church since before the
foundation of the borough, being now devoted to
the maintenance of the minister of St. Nicholas',
the Rev. John Fogg. This arrangement, however,
lasted only until the Restoration. Liverpool was,
like east Lancashire, frankly Presbyterian, and
formed the chief centre of the fifth of the nine
Classes or Presbyteries into which Lancashire
was divided during the period of Presbyterian
ascendancy.

But though the Commonwealth brought many
advantages, its stern and exacting rule had many
defects also ; and even Liverpool, which had

134 ^^^ Three Sieges

gained so much, became more and more weary of
the military dictatorship. The Independent army
officers treated the Presbyterian ministers very
harshly, harried them about, and imprisoned
divers of them in Liverpool Castle. The con-
tinued maintenance of the military regime in the
town was deeply resented, and many were the
demands for the reduction of the garrison to
such numbers as could be housed in the Castle
without invading the freemen's dwellings, and
for the demolition of the walls and gates, with
the vexatious military regulations about ingress
and egress. Above all, the practical suppression
of self-government by the subordination of the
town to the military governor was an infraction
of the burgesses' liberties such as they had not
experienced since the days of Edmund of Lan-
caster. Even the Puritans of the town, who
were many, welcomed with enthusiasm the
restoration of the old monarchy and the return
to the old state of things. But the effects of the
revolution were indelible ; and, as we shall see
in the next chapter, there is quite a different
atmosphere in Liverpool after 1660. The storm
of war had obliterated many old landmarks,
which could not be restored.

135

CHAPTER X

The Beginning of Modern Liverpool
1 660-1 700,

The storms of the Civil War had rudely shaken
out of its rut the quiet market town and
coasting port which we have so long observed, and
the half century which followed the restoration of
Charles II saw a new beginning in the history
of Liverpool. This fresh start is observable
on every side : in the trade and industries
of the town, in the form of its government, in
the character of its inhabitants and their relation
to their neighbours, and in the part which the
borough plays in the life of the nation. Though
the growth of this period, in numbers and wealth,
was small in comparison with that which some
later periods have shown, yet there is no period
in the long story of Liverpool which witnessed
a more radical change. The Liverpool of 1710
is almost unrecognizably different from the
Liverpool of 1660.

And first, the period saw a surprising develop-
ment of Liverpool's trade. In 1699 the burgesses
could boast (perhaps with some exaggeration) that
their town had become ' the third port of the

136 Beginning of Modern Liver-pool

trade of England,' and that ' from scarce paying
the salaries of the officers of the customs,' it
now yielded ' upwards of ^50,000 per annum '
in customs duties. Several causes conspired to
produce this striking advance. One of these was
undoubtedly the growth of the manufacturing
industries of Manchester and eastern Lancashire,
which had now begun to spin a little cotton
(brought at first from the East) as well as wool
and linen. These new industries gave Liverpool
commodities for export both to Ireland and to
more distant markets. The settlement of Ireland
no doubt helped, and the Irish trade of Liverpool
steadUy increased, completely dwarfing that of
Chester. With the continent also there was an
expansion of commerce, and Liverpool ships are
found plying not only to Spain and France,
from which they brought much wine, but also
to Baltic ports, where they began to compete
with the ships of Hull.

But the most important feature of the period,
which marks it as the beginning of Liverpool's
greatness, was the opening out of a direct trade on
a comparatively large scale with the American
colonies, and especially with the West Indies.
The secret of all the buoyant prosperity of these
years is to be found here. At last Liverpool
was finding her way to her kingdom. As early
as 1673, when the traveller Blome visited the
town, he reported that it contained ' divers
eminent merchants, whose trade and traffic,
especially with the West Indies, make it famous ' ;

Growth of Trade 137

and he added that the neighbourhood of Man-
chester and other rising industrial centres 'afforded
in greater plenty and at reasonabler rates than
most places in England such exported commodities
proper for the West Indies.'

But it was not only the prosperity of Man-
chester, but the adversity of London, that told in
favour of Liverpool. The great plague of 1665
and the great fire of 1666, together with the
insecurity of southern waters during the Dutch
wars of the same years, drove several merchants to
find a new seat for their trade in the north, and
thirty years later Liverpool men themselves
traced the commencement of their greatness to
this fact. When the fierce struggle with France,
which was to last for more than a century, began
in 1689, Liverpool gained a new advantage at
the expense of her southern rivals ; for London
merchants were persuaded that it was better to
bring their American imports ' north about
round Ireland,' and transport them by land from
Liverpool, rather than ' run the risk of having
their ships taken' by the French pirates who
infested the English Channel. The Irish Sea,
indeed, was not free from privateers : in 1690,
we hear of ' fifteen privateers and two French
men-of-war waiting nigh the north channel for
the return of the West India ships belonging
to Liverpool.' But if these pirates ventured so
far, how much more insecure must the narrow
waters of the English Channel have been ! So
the Liverpool vessels increased rapidly in number,

138 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

and were kept actively employed. When King
WiUiam III, preparing to invade Ireland, made
enquiries as to the best ports at which to get
shipping for his troops, he was told by the customs
officials that Chester had no ships and only a few
small barks for coasting trade, while Liverpool had
' 60 or 70 good ships of 50 to 200 tons.' But the
officials were doubtful if much use could be
made of them, ' because they drive a universal
foreign trade to the Plantations (colonies) and else-
where,' and were continuously engaged. The
business of transport was now despised by Liver-
pool shipowners, and the terms they charged were
so high that the royal officials were frightened
and applied for further instructions.

The chief commodities imported by these busy
ships were sugar and tobacco, both mainly produced
in the West Indies, which were then, and for a
century afterwards, the centre of the most lucra-
tive traffic in the world. The sugar trade was
greatly encouraged by the erection of sugar-
refineries in the town. The first of these was
buUt about 1668 by a ' Mr. Smith, a great sugar
baker of London,' who was probably one of those
driven to Liverpool by the plague and the fire
and the Dutch wars. He rented from Sir Edward
Moore a piece of land in Cheapside, on the
north side of Dale Street, on which he erected
a building ' forty feet square and four storeys
high ' ; and Moore joyfully anticipated that
this would bring to Liverpool ' a trade of at
least j^40,ooo a year from the Barbadoes, which

Growth of Population 139

formerly this town never knew.' From that date
the sugar trade and the industry of sugar refining
never looked back ; Liverpool steadily made
herself their chief centre in England.

Even more important was the tobacco trade.
It was claimed that all the tobacco for Ireland,
Scotland, and the north of England came to
Liverpool. Sir Thomas Johnson, one of the
foremost of the vigorous men who were busy
re-making Liverpool in these years, spoke of it
in 1 701 as ' one of the chiefest trades of England,'
and asserted that any interference with it would
* destroy half the shipping of Liverpool.' ' We
are sadly envied, God knows,' he said, ' especially
the tobacco trade, at home and abroad.' Liver-
pool can scarcely have been the object of much
envy before this period.

The growth of trade brought inevitably a
rapid growth of population ; and though it is
difficult to arrive at accurate figures, the popula-
tion of the town seems to have risen from 2,000
or less at the time of the Civil War to over 5,000
at the beginning of the eighteenth century.
These may seem small figures ; but England at
that date included few large towns. Among the
newcomers were many men of some wealth and
position. Commerce at this period was becoming
respectable, and we are told that ' many gentle-
men's sons of Lancashire, Yorkshire, Derbyshire,
Staffordshire, Cheshire and North Wales were
put apprentices in the town.'

To accommodate the growing population

140 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

building went on apace. The original seven
streets, which, had held all the townsmen of
Liverpool for more than four hundred years,
were rapidly added to. The most energetic
pioneer in this direction was Sir Edward Moore,
who thus hoped to coin money out of his Liver-
pool lands. Before 1668 he had made Moor
Street, parallel with Water Street, Fenwick
Street (which he named after his father-in-law,
Sir John Fenwick, of Northumberland), Fen-
wick's Alley, and Bridge's Alley, and was full
of schemes for further improvements. Lord
Molyneux, anxious to share in the prosperity,
cut a street through the Castle orchard down
to the Pool, and gave it his own name — afterwards
abbreviated to Lord Street.

Many of the streets in the centre of the town
owe their names to the burgesses of the period.
Alderman Preeson was the first man to build a
house on the edge of the castle ditch, and is com-
memorated in Preeson's Row. Thomas Lancelot
was a ' drunken idle fellow ' and scarcely deserves to
be commemorated in the name of the street which
was cut through his Hey or field; but Roger James,
who gave his name to James Street, was ' a very
honest man,' and had ' a good woman to his wife.'
Sir Thomas Street owes its name to Sir Thomas
Johnson, already named, who owned a croft on
the site of the Municipal Buildings ; and ' a
brave street,' now known as Hackins Hey, was
cut through the Hey of John Hacking.

But the most important extension of the town

4 Nizv Generation of Merchants 141

was that over the waste, which now first began to
be built upon. We shall have occasion later
to allude to some troubles which were connected
with this development. But it may here be
noted that the opening up of the waste, which
was claimed as corporation property, led to a
gfeat increase in the revenue of the borough,
which was also swelled by the increase of trade
dues. In 1662 the corporate income, exclusive
of rates, which were seldom levied, was £2^1
19s. 3d. ; in 1700 it had risen to £1,20^) 5s. 2d.

while the town was thus expanding, it was
impossible that it should be content to remain
under outworn feudal restrictions, or to continue
its traditional dependence upon its great
neighbours. A new generation of prosperous
merchants — the Claytons, the Clevelands, the
Johnsons, the Tarletons — ^wielded the destinies
of the town, and ' knowing not Joseph,' they
were the less likely to take for granted their own
inferiority to the old patrons of the town. These
connexions had already been shaken by the wars ;
and the greater income now controlled by the
Town Council gave a new confidence in fighting
the battle of independence. And so, in many
ways, we feel a different spirit in the burgesses
in these days.

In nothing was this new independence of
temper more strikingly exhibited than in the
relation of the burgesses to the Moores, who,
after being the principal inhabitants of the town
for four hundred years, now found themselves

142 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

flouted, and before long were driven to cut their
connexion with the town altogether. Sir Edward
Moore, son of the runaway regicide colonel of
whom we have heard so much in the last chapter,
had succeeded, on the death of his father in
1650, to an estate which was deeply encumbered
with debt. At the Restoration he would have
lost it altogether, confiscated as a punishment
for his father's treason, had he not fortunately
married Dorothy Fenwick, daughter of a stalwart
Northumberland royalist, on whose account he
was pardoned. The unwavering affection of the
gentle Dorothy reflects a pleasant light on
Moore's character, which otherwise shows un-
pleasantly enough. For he was utterly soured by
his misfortunes, and a harsh and vindictive temper
showed itself in a constant series of disputes with
the burgesses. The family had been discredited
by the behaviour of Colonel Moore in the siege
of 1644, and Sir Edward was not the man to
regain lost popularity. He found his pet schemes
for improving his Liverpool property checked
by the Town Council's malice. He saw himself
ousted from his family's traditional leadership
in the borough. Moore was loyal enough to the
town ; but his view of the right relation between
them was that they should ' hold closely together,'
and that he should ' as a gentleman countenance
them before the king ' with ' their purse to
back ' him. In other words, the relation was
to be that of patron and clients. But the new
generation of merchants declined to accept such

7 he Last of the Moores 143

a relation, and refused to elect him either to the
mayoralty or to parliament. In a very full
description of his lands and tenants in Liverpool,
which he wrote for the guidance of his son, he
cannot find venomed words enough to charac-
terise his fellow-townsmen. ' They have deceived
me twice, even to the ruin of my name and family,
had not God in mercy saved me ; though there
was none at the same time could profess more
kindness than they did, and acknowledge in
their very own memories what great patrons
my father and grandfather were to the town.
.... Have a care you never trust them, ....
for such a nest of rogues was never educated in
one town of that bigness.' Each of his opponents
in turn is characterised in the bitterest words
his pen could find : * one of the lurchingest
knaves in town,' ' a sour dog fellow ' ' a notorious
knave,' ' a base, iU-contrived fellow,' ' a knave
of knaves,' ' a very cunning woman,' ' one of
the hardest men in town,' ' an idle drunken
fellow,' * a base fellow and a knave and his wife
worse,' and so forth. ' The Lord Jesus forgive
them ! ' he prayed — appealing to Heaven to do
what was beyond his own power. Sir Edward
Moore died in 1678, a worn-out old man at
the age of forty-four, and his shrewd plans for
making advantage of the town's growing wealth
were never carried out. His son, a thriftless
' useless spark,' was the last representative of
the family in Liverpool. He mortgaged his
lands more deeply than ever ; and at length, in

144 beginning of Modern Liverpool

171 2, the mortgages were foreclosed, and the last
of the Moores retired to the south of England.
The disappearance of the oldest and chief family
was the breach of one of the chief links with the
middle age.

Another link, of a more vexatious kind, was
broken in this same period by the final settlement
of the old quarrel with the Molyneuxes. They
had regained the lordship of the town at the
Restoration, with all its vague and ill-defined
powers, and the old disputes were promptly
renewed. Lord Molyneux, like Sir Edward
Moore, hoped to profit by the prosperity of the
town. It occurred to him that the waste, which
had so long been left to the burgesses because it
was practically valueless, ought to belong to the
lord of the manor ; and, supported by counsel's
opinion, he resolved to continue his new road,
Lord Street, over the Pool and across the waste.

But when his servants began to build a bridge
at the busy tramway junction of our day where
Lord Street joins Church Street, they were met
by forcible resistance : the mayor pulled the
bridge down and confiscated the wood and stones.
Lord Molyneux responded by a whole series of
actions at law, in which the question of the
right of ownership of the waste as well as many
other questions were raised. The burgesses were
quite ready to fight him, the more so as the charter
of Charles I confirmed them in all that they
claimed, and probably it was because he realised
this that Lord Molyneux agreed to a compromise.

»^ til TFIh \

H
w

Pi

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Settlement of Molyneux Disputes 145

Under this settlement the borough undertook
to pay him ^30 a year, and to let him build his
bridge for a nominal rent of 2d. per annum in
acknowledgment of their ownership of the waste ;
and in return received from him a lease of all his
rights for a thousand years. Thus, after centuries
of struggle, all feudal superiority over the borough
came to an end, and the right of the corporation
to the great expanse of waste ground, now
becoming a valuable property, was finally
admitted. We shaU hear no more about fee-farm
leases ; and another link with the early history
of the borough has been severed. More than
a century later the transaction was completed,
in 1777, when the borough paid Lord Molyneux's
descendant, then Earl of Sefton, a lump sum of
^2,250 in commutation for their annual payment.

But though he had thus parted with his
lordship of the manor, Lord Molyneux did not
yet cease to be connected with the town. He
was still hereditary constable of the Castle,
which continued to be outside of the control
of the borough officials. It was partially dis-
mantled in the years following the restoration,
and it was no longer inhabited by a garrison ;
but Lord Molyneux allowed a number of men
to live within its limits, who, as they were not
subject to the control of the borough courts,
were a perpetual centre of disorder. At the time
of the revolution of 1688 Lord Molyneux, who
vigorously took the part of King James II against
the Prince of Orange and his supporters, once

I.

146 Beginning of Modern Liver-pool

more made use of the Castle as a storehouse for
arms and supplies ; and when a few years later,
in 1694, he was implicated in an attempted
Jacobite rising, he was punished by being deprived
of his hereditary constableship, and not long
afterwards the burgesses obtained a lease of the
Castle site. Its ultimate fate we shall see in a
later chapter. In the meantime it is enough to
note that the once terrible fortress, which had
kept their ancestors in awe, had come under
burghal control ; and that is another breach
with mediaeval conditions.

A still further sign of the new age is that in
1699 Liverpool was again, and this time finally,
cut off from the parish of Walton, and trans-
formed into a distinct parish. This very reason-
able change had been already made during the
Commonwealth, but the old arrangement had
been restored in 1660. Now the burgesses were
able to present so strong a case that their petition
could not be refused. At the same time, as
St. Nicholas' Chapel had become too small for
the growing population, the burgesses obtained
powers to erect a second church at the public
expense on the waste beyond the Pool, after-
wards known as St. Peter's ; and by a curious
arrangement Liverpool became a parish with two
rectors and two parish churches. Before this
new arrangement could be completed Lord
Molyneux, owner of the great tithes of Walton,
had to be compensated, as had also the Rector
of Walton ; but the borough had no difficulty

Rise of Party Bitterness 147

now in finding the necessary funds. Under the
acts which completed this change the right of
appointing and the duty of paying the two
rectors was given to the corporation, and thus
Liverpool became ecclesiastically as well as feudally
independent. But it should be noted that the
creation of the parish involved the establishment
of a new governing authority, for the vestry, or
meeting of parishioners (whether freemen of the
borough or not), became automatically responsible
for the administration of the Poor Law. This
was the first of a series of ruling bodies distinct
from the town council, which was to be greatly
extended during the next century, and to bring
the government of the borough into i very
confused state.

But the most striking feature of this period
was the growth of keen party feeling in the
borough, where, in a small field, the bitter strife
of the two great national parties was echoed.
The clear-cut division of the people into two
parties is a new feature in this age. Its effects
were displayed in the parliamentary elections,
which during these years were much more keenly
fought than ever before ; the days when the
burgesses were so little interested in national
affairs as to leave their members to be nominated
by Lord Derby or the Chancellor of the Duchy
had vanished for ever.

But the rivalry of the two parties was still more
clearly manifested in the realm of municipal
politics. There has never been a period in the

148 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

history of Liverpool when party strife was so
bitter, or party leaders so unscrupulous in their
tactics, as in the half-century following the
Restoration. Two parties fought desperately
for a monopoly of power ; and the result of
this half-century of conflict was a remarkable
series of changes in the system of local govern-
ment. It is significant that these changes came
about in accordance with the fluctuations of
opinion in the nation at large, so that it is
impossible to tell the story clearly without frequent
references to the state of national politics.

The two parties whose feud distracted Liver-
pool during this half-century originated in the
strife of the Civil War. We have seen that during
that period, though there were many Royalists
in the town, who were strengthened by the
support of the neighbouring gentry, yet the
majority of the population were Puritan in
temper. The regime of Cromwell had produced
a reaction here as throughout England ; and
when the Restoration came most of the burgesses
were doubtless glad to return to the old ways,
and saw, without very keen regret, the extrusion
of the Presbyterian minister, the Rev. John Fogg,
who had occupied the pulpit of St. Nicholas'
during the Commonwealth period, and who,
with the ministers of Walton and Toxteth Park,
was driven out by the Act of Uniformity in 1662.
At the same time the town clerk, five aldermen,
and seven ordinary members of the Town Council
were deposed from their positions ; perhaps they

Whigs and Tories 149

also were not very deeply regretted ; and no
less than thirty-eight new freemen, all powerful
landowners of the neighbourhood, and all good
cavaliers, were admitted in a batch to strengthen
the Royalist element in the town.

There still remained a good many inhabitants
of Liverpool who clung to the modes of worship
and belief of the previous period, and who formed
a group of dissenters in the town ; when travelling
dissenting ministers visited Liverpool in secret, as
they sometimes did, they got (as one of them
reports) ' frequent opportunities ' and ' good com-
fort'; and when Charles II, in his anxiety to win
Puritan support, permitted (by the Declaration
of Indulgence) open worship in dissenting forms,
a chapel was built in Pool Lane, or South Castle
Street, the services being conducted by Samuel
Augier, the minister of Toxteth. No doubt the
Puritan farmers of Toxteth helped to keep non-
conformity alive in Liverpool.

The steady nonconformists, however, were few
and discredited, and the high church cavaliers
seemed to be triumphant in the early years of the
period. But there were very many who, though
they made no difficulty about taking the oaths or
attending the church services, had yet Puritan
sympathies both in religion and politics. Among
these were included some of the principal
merchants of the town, such as Thomas Clayton,
Thomas Johnson, and William Norris. It would
be misleading to call these men Puritans ; it will
be convenient to denominate them Whigs and

150 Beginning of Modem Liverpool

tlieir rivals Tories, though these names did not
come into use till about twenty years after the
Restoration.

The Whigs, then (including both conformists
and nonconformists), seem to have had a large
majority among the freemen. And, in spite of
the weeding out of the Council, for some time
that body appears to have included as many
Whig as Tory members. The Tories endeavoured
to secure their ascendancy by obtaining a new
charter, to obtain which they enlisted the support
of that sound cavalier, Lord Derby, son of the
hero of the Civil War ; but three applications
which they made before 1667 were unsuccessful.

For more than ten years after the Restoration
there was no outbreak of actual strife between
the parties, partly, no doubt, because all the
energies of the town were engaged in the struggle
with Lord Molyneux. But in 1672, after that
question had been finally settled, the party feud
broke out with violence. The Tories by that
time were in a majority in the Council, while
the Whigs were in a majority in the Assembly of
Burgesses. The Tories, therefore, seem to have
prevented the Assembly from meeting or passing
by-laws, as it had an undoubted right to do
under the charter of Charles I, and they would
appear also to have taken out of the hands of
the Assembly the election of the bailiffs — the
only means which the burgesses possessed of in-
fluencing the composition of the Council, of which
the bailiffs became life-members on election.

Establishment of Tory Jscendancy 151

In 1673 the trouble came to its height
at the annual Assembly for the election of the
mayor and bailiffs, which the outgoing mayor
declared to be dissolved immediately after the
new mayor's election. The Whigs refused to
have their rights thus overridden, and a group
of twenty-six of them declined to adjourn, kept
the mayor in his chair for the space of two hours
by force — meetings being illegal unless he was
present — and proceeded to transact business, the
nature of which is not recorded, because the
records were kept by the party in power, who
chose to regard the proceedings as riotous and
illegal. Eventually the mayor was released by
officers with halberds, and the riotous freemen
were all deprived of their freedom by resolution
of the Tory Council.

But the Whigs still continued to be in a majority
in the Assembly of Burgesses, and were thus able
occasionally to elect a Whig mayor. The mayor of
1676, a Whig, just before the election day admitted
a whole batch of Whigs as freemen, without con-
sulting the Council, no doubt for the purpose of
making sure of a ma j ority at the next election. The
Council, however, resolved that all these freemen
should be struck off the roll, claiming (without
any show of law) that it alone could elect free-
men ; and when a Whig mayor again received a
majority of votes, the Council calmly declared
his competitor elected on the most trifling
grounds.

The immediate outcome of all this strife was

152 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

the grant of a new charter by Charles II, on
the appHcation of the Tories in the Council,
without any consultation of the Assembly of
Burgesses, to whom supreme power had been given
by the previous charter. The new charter had the
effect of absolutely securing the ascendancy of
the Tories. It raised the number of the Council
(hitherto unfixed, but usually about forty) to
sixty, and laid it down that fifteen of the sixty
should be non-resident burgesses. As the non-
resident burgesses were mostly county gentlemen
who were all sound Tories, the object of this
provision is clear enough. It gave the Tory party
a solid block of votes, which could be used on
an emergency.

But the most striking feature of the new charter
was that it gave to the Council the right of electing
the mayor and bailiffs, the election of whom was the
sole relic of power now remaining to the Assembly
of Burgesses. There was now no occasion for the
Assembly ever to be summoned, and the Tory
minority were left in absolute and irresponsible con-
trol of all the resources of the town. And there
seemed no possible mode of getting rid of their
power ; for as the members of the Town Council
sat for life, and themselves filled up all vacancies
in their own body, it was certain that every new
member would be a Tory. Naturally there was
warm opposition to this intolerable arrangement.
But opposition was useless. Some of the principal
Whigs in the Council (among them Alderman
Thomas Johnson, their most active leader)

The Charter of Charles II 153

declined to take the oaths under the charter,
but the only result of that was that they were
deposed, and replaced by Tories. The town had
to settle down as best it might under the rule
of an irremovable oligarchy out of sympathy
with the majority of its subjects, and there
seemed to be no hope of relief, for it was part
of the policy of the crown to establish the
ascendancy of the ultra-royalist party in the towns,
which had been the strongholds of Puritanism.
But there were some things which even a high
Tory Council could not stand ; their loyalty to
the church was even stronger than their loyalty
to the king, and when the Whigs in London
began to play upon the popular fear of Catholi-
cism, even the Tory Council grew anxious and
restive. When the panic about the Popish plot
was used by the Whigs as a pretext for a definite
attempt to exclude the king's CathoUc brother,
the Duke of York, from the throne, all England
fell into a fever of excitement, pouring in addresses
to the crown on one side or another. The
Liverpool Tories sent up a loyal address, but
under a veil of devotion its phrases gave expression
to their religious fears, and if Charles II (at heart
a Catholic) ever read it, he must have found much
amusement in it. For the good anxious Tories
thanked him profusely for his adherence to the
true Protestant religion, ' notwithstanding your
many and great temptations to the contrary,'
and for his promise to ' endeavour the extir-
pation of Popery ' ; and they indicated their

1 54 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

support of the king in his struggle to secure the
succession to his ' Papist ' brother by undertaking
to spend their lives and fortunes in defending his
majesty's ' royal persons, heirs and lawful suc-
cessors against all Popish contrivances and devices
whatsoever.'

King Charles got his own way ; the ' No Popery'
craze was forgotten ; and the leading Whigs ruined
themselves in the eyes of the country by involving
themselves in a foolish plot against the king's life.
Toryism was again triumphant, and its doubts
were forgotten. The Liverpool Council sent up a
new address, couched in a lyrical vein of bom-
bastic loyalty, bitterly condemning ' that sort of
men (the Whigs) whose infectious anti-monarchial
principles are enough to empoison all who are
not sufficiently prepared with the infallible
antidote of loyalty,' and devoutly praying (with
an allusion to Dryden's topical satire of ' Absalom
and Achitophel ') that ' the counsel of your
faithful Hushais shall ever prevail against the
united force of all aspiring Absaloms, and the
desperate advice of all pestilent Achitophels.'

But this ardent loyalty was ill rewarded. In
1684 (just a year after this address) Liverpool
was required to surrender her charter, in order
that it might be revised in such a way as to give
the control of the borough not merely to the
Tory party, but to the king. The same course
was being taken at the same time with most
other English boroughs. The mayor, therefore,
travelled to Warrington in order to yield up

Charter of James II 155

the precious document to the infamous Judge
Jeffreys, representing the crown. The revised
charter was issued in the name of James II,
Charles II having died before it was ready. In
one point only did it shew any material change
from its predecessor. The Tory ascendancy was
fully maintained, but the new charter also
contained a clause empowering the crown at any
time to remove any of the borough officers or
any member of the Town Council.

This clause was intensely unpopular even with
the high Tories of the Council, and the fervour of
their loyalty began to abate from this moment.
Already, in 1684, a Tory alderman had been fined
for refusing to promise not to attend unlawful
meetings — probably meetings of the burgesses at
large. In 1687 loyalty was still more sorely tried,
when the king intervened to protect two Roman
Catholics from the persecution of the High
Church Council. These were one Richard
Lathom, a surgeon, and his wife, who kept a
school. They had been prosecuted in the
borough courts for pursuing professions unlawful
to Papists ; but a royal mandate came down
ordering the prosecution to cease, and the
Lathoms to be left in peace, and when this order
was disregarded, the deputy mayor and the
senior alderman — both good Tories — were sum-
marily removed from their offices by royal order.

The growing alienation between the Tories
and the king on religious questions was still
more clearly shown three months later, when a

156 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

commissioner came down to enquire whether the
mayor and council would do their best to secure
the election to parliament of two members who
would vote for the repeal of the Test Act against
CathoHcs. The mayor's reply was guardedly
hostile : ' that what is required by his majesty
is a very weighty and new thing, and that he
was not provided to give any other answer but
this : when it shall please the king to call a new
parliament, he purposed to vote for such persons
as he hoped would serve the just interests both
of his majesty and the nation.' Loyalty stopped
short when the church was threatened ; and at
first even the Tory Council was ready to welcome
the landing of WiUiam of Orange and the over-
throw of the Stuart line.

But the revolution was not carried out without
trouble. Lord Molyneux, a Catholic, was strong
on the side of James II, and a body of regular
soldiers for a time occupied Liverpool in the
interest of the king, even threatening the life of
Lord Derby who, though a Royalist, had after
some hesitation declared on the side of William
of Orange. The flight of James II, however,
put an end to all trouble, and the Tory Town
Council seized the opportunity to drop the recent
charter and to restore the deposed members.
For a short time party feuds were forgotten ;
some of the expelled Whigs returned to the
Council ; but the Tories remained dominant,
and when in 1691 they obtained from the new
king and queen a confirmation of the charter of

Charter of William III 157

Charles II, their power seemed to be securely-
established.

The reconciliation of the parties, however, did
not last long. The Whigs, in a large majority
among the freemen, were not likely to accept
their continued exclusion from power, and began
an agitation for a new charter. To push their
claims they needed strong supporters at West-
minster, and the first great trial of strength
between the parties came in the election of
1694. In that year the Whig candidate, Jasper
Maudit, a local merchant, polled 400 votes
against fifteen cast for his Tory opponent, one
Brotherton, though Lord Derby and other
magnates strained every nerve to secure Brother-
ton's election. The Tory mayor even went so
far as to declare Brotherton elected, amid riotous
scenes at the hustings, but on a petition to the
House of Commons this decision was overthrown,
and the mayor sharply reprimanded. Now began
a vehement struggle on the charter question.
The Tory Council commanded all the resources
of the town, which they prepared to use lavishly.
The Whigs on their side, headed by old Thomas
Johnson and his son, raised funds to fight their
battle by private subscription, to which the
merchants of the town liberally subscribed ;
while the two members in parliament ' laid their
heads close together,' to good effect.

The result was that William III granted a
new charter in 1695, which was to be the govern-
ing charter of the town till the Municipal Reform

158 Beginning of Modern Liverpool

Act of 1835. Unfortunately it was so badly
drawn up tliat it gave room for bitter disputes
later. Its object was simply to restore the
system of government which had existed before
the charter of Charles II. It therefore restpred
to the burgesses the right of electing the mayor
and bailiffs, and also the right of legislating for
the town over the heads of the Town Council,
but this was so badly phrased that the Council
was later able to claim that the clause giving this
power was only intended to fix its own quorum.
The number of the Council was reduced to forty,
and a new Council, predominantly Whig, was
nominated in the charter. Thus, after their long
exclusion, the control of the borough passed into
the hands of the Whigs. In their hands it
remained for three quarters of a century.

But this did not end the strife. The Tories
refused to accept the new charter, as the Whigs
had refused to accept that of Charles II. The
ex-mayor actually declined to surrender the
town plate, which he had held as surety for the
costs of resisting the new charter, a debt which
the Whigs naturally repudiated. The ' old-
charter ' men, as they were called, remained a
substantial party for nearly a generation, always
ready for intrigue ; and their opportunity came
when, in the reign of Queen Anne, the high
church and Tory party got the upper hand again
in national affairs. A petition was sent up to the
queen for the quashing of the last charter ; but
after dragging on for a year, and causing bitter

Meetings of the Council 159

strife in the town, the agitation ended in failure,
and the Whigs remained in power.

Thus on all sides this period is one of great
activity and constant change, and the borough has
very decidedly emerged from its long obscurity.
The new dignity of its governing body, and the
greater importance of the interests it had to
safeguard, necessitated a much greater formality
in procedure, and these years saw the adoption
of elaborate rules of debate for the Town Council.

The meetings now took place in a handsome
new Town Hall, which was built in 1673, and
replaced the old common-hall bequeathed to
the borough by John Crosse, which had served
for a century and a half. The new building,
the first great public building erected in Liver-
pool, stood in the middle of the broad market
place in front of the modern town hall. It looked
up the narrow Castle Street, and behind it lay
the narrow High Street and the butchers'
shambles. It was raised on a colonnade of
arches, open to the air, and the covered place
thus provided was used as an exchange, the
council chamber and banqueting hall being on
the first floor.

Here the meetings of the Council were held
regularly at one p.m. on the first Wednesday
of each month. All members of the Council
were required to wear their official robes, which
were of different pattern for bailiffs, aldermen,
and common councillors. The mayor had four
halberdiers to attend him ' on all occasions,'

i6o Beginning of Modern Liverpool

and when he took the chair a mace, presented
by Lord Derby in 1669, lay before him, ' richly
gilt and engraven with his majesty's arms and
the arms of the town.' The borough owned by
this time a good deal of silver plate, for use at
the banquets which were frequently given,
especially on fair-days and at elections ; but the
body of freemen were now too numerous to feast
all together as they had once done, and these
festivities were confined to the members of Council
and other leading men.

It was impossible that the town should have
passed through so many changes without some
modification of the rigid customs which had
governed trade and society in the previous age.
Space does not permit of any full account of the
customs of this period, which indeed were
constantly changing. But it is enough to say
that the elaborate system of town's bargains, and
the necessity of consulting the mayor before any
cargo was sold, and the jealousy of strangers
frequenting the market, were all vanishing' as
trade increased — vanishing because it was im-
possible to maintain them. Non-freemen resident
in the town were still forbidden to trade. But
the object of this was simply to force them to
become freemen and pay the fees due on election,
which formed a substantial item in the borough
revenue. It is clear that at the beginning of the
eighteenth century the great majority of the
inhabitants of the borough were freemen, sharing
in all the privileges.

An Age of Change i6i

The half-century after the Restoration had
thus seen the beginning of a new prosperity for
Liverpool, and, as a consequence, had seen
also many great changes in the social relations
and political organisation of the borough. The
next age was to bring a still more rapidly advanc-
ing prosperity, accompanied by still further, but
more gradual, changes in the life and character
of the town.

M

1 62

CHAPTER XI

Rising Prosperity, 1700- 1756

The Whig party in Liverpool, established in
power by the Revolution, clung very firmly to
their position. They had, indeed, the support of
the great majority of the inhabitants, and
throughout the period covered by this chapter
the town was noted for its loyalty to the Whigs
and to the Hanoverian line. So strong was this
sentiment that at the accession of George I
Liverpool presented an address to the new king
urging the punishment of the Tory statesmen
of Queen Anne. Planted in the midst of a
strongly Tory and Catholic district, the Liverpool
justices were of great service to the Whig govern-
ment in sending up the names of ' Papists and
other disaffected persons ' ; and the town reaped
many advantages from being in favour with the
ruling powers.

It was in connexion with the two Jacobite
risings of 171 5 and 1745 that the stalwart Whig-
gism of Liverpool was most clearly shown.
Curiously enough, on each of these occasions
Manchester, with equal decision, took the opposite
side. Manchester, which in the Civil War had
been the stronghold of the Roundheads, was now

The Rebellion of ijit, 163

the mainstay of the Jacobites ; Liverpool, which
had been the last refuge of the Lancashire Cava-
liers, was now the bitterest opponent of the
Stuart line.

The situation brought about by the rebellion
of 1 71 5 was such as to form a serious test of
Liverpool's loyalty. A force had been landed in
Scotland, and the Highlands were in arms. A
second force was organising itself in Northumber-
land and Cumberland, under the Earl of Derwent-
water and Mr. Forster. In Lancashire, eager
mobs everywhere cheered for the Stuarts ; bells
were rung to celebrate King James Ill's birthday ;
and in Manchester the mob took possession of the
town, organised a force, and sent out emissaries
to stir up similar movements elsewhere. Except
Liverpool, all Lancashire was aflame ; and when,
in November, the army of Lord Derwentwater
took possession of Lancaster and proclaimed
James III king, it looked as if Liverpool, the
sole loyal town in the county, would have
to look forward to a siege. But the townsmen
were quite ready to resist. They dammed up
the stream which ran into the Pool to form a
protection on the east ; they arranged the ships
in the river so as to give aid in defence ; they
cut a deep ditch from the river to the Pool along
the line of the old rampart of the Civil War sieges,
and on it and in entrenchments commanding the
Pool they mounted seventy guns ; while the
seamen were organised in companies, and the
townsmen were drilling.

164 Rising Prosperity

The ill-organised enthusiasm of the rebels,
however, came to nothing, and the loyalty of
Liverpool was not put to the test. But when the
rising had been put down, and prisoners filled the
gaols of Preston, Lancaster and Chester, Liverpool
was chosen by government as the place for the
trials ; no doubt because its townsmen could be
trusted to supply well-disposed jurymen. Lord
Derby's Tower was filled to overflowing with
prisoners waiting for trial. Thirty-four men were
executed in various places, and four of them suffered
at Liverpool. They were publicly hanged on a
special gallows erected in a field between London
Road and Islington, long known as the Gallows
Field ; their entrails were then burned, and their
bodies cut into four quarters to be publicly exposed
in other towns as a warning to future rebels.
Many hundreds more were sentenced to trans-
portation, and Liverpool merchants made good
profits in handling the convicts. We know of
one case in which ^1,000 was paid for the trans-
portation of 130 men; and to this must be
added the price obtained for the sale of the
luckless wretches as slaves on the plantations of
Virginia and the West Indies.

Thirty years later, the gallant but desperate
adventure of the Young Pretender afforded
another occasion for the display of Liverpool's
Whiggism. A Liverpool ship brought the news
of the landing of the Prince in the Hebrides, and
when the Highlanders began to gather round him
and the regular forces were scattered by their

The Rebellion of 1745 165

fierce attack, Liverpool again began to make
anxious preparations. A regiment of foot, called
the Liverpool Blues, was raised for the king's
service ; it was equipped by a subscription of
^6,000, ^2,000 of which was contributed by
the corporation ; while in addition seven com-
panies of volunteers for local service were raised
and officered by leading townsmen.

Though much less promising at the outset, the
rising of 1745 attained much greater success than
that of 1 71 5, and the Highland force, joined by
English recruits as it advanced southwards,
succeeded in making its way through Lancashire
and as far as Derby before meeting any serious
check. The Liverpool regiment, sent out to cut
bridges in order to check the enemy's southward
march, had a successful brush with some High-
landers at Warrington, but apart from this, it
confined itself to the defence of the town.

Meanwhile in Manchester the old Jacobite
enthusiasm had blazed out again, and a regiment
of recruits marched out to join Prince Charlie.
But they never had an opportunity of a bout in the
open field with their Liverpool rivals ; for disaster
soon began to dog the little force of rebels. The
Duke of Cumberland advanced against them
with a considerable army ; and the Young
Pretender had to retreat through Lancashire
back to Scotland.

When the duke got into Lancashire he was joined
by the Liverpool regiment, which did good service,
and especially was employed in garrisoning Carlisle.

1 66 Rising Prosperity

We are told by an officer in the duke's army that ' no
regiment in the campaign made a better appear-
ance than the Liverpool regiment ; their officers
were a set of soldier-like gentlemen, though they
had not been bred in the military way, being
mostly gentlemen, tradesmen, etc., yet had a
very good discipline, having thrown off their
trade and merchandise for a time, and ventured
their lives and fortunes and everything dear to
them in defence of their king and country.'

Liverpool gave a still further proof of its loyalty
by sending at its own expense thirteen tons of
biscuit for the use of the troops in Carlisle.
When the rising was finally crushed on the
bloody field of CuUoden, the event was nowhere
received with more enthusiasm. A less pleasant
expression of the fervid Whiggism of Liverpool
was given in April and May of 1746, when, in the
excitement produced by the rebellion, a mob
sacked and burned the only Roman Catholic
chapel in the town, and the house of a widow
of the Roman Catholic persuasion.

As might be expected, a town so fervently
devoted to the Whig cause generally returned
Whig members to parliament. Sir Thomas
Johnson, of whom some mention has already
been made, was one of the borough's represen-
tatives from 1 701 to 1727. His whole strength
was devoted to the service of the town ; his
influence was strong enough to obtain for it
many '. advantages ; and he well deserved the
knighthood with which he was rewarded in 1708.

Sir Thomas Johnson 167

So great, indeed, was his devotion that his private
affairs were neglected, and in the end he had to
accept a post in distant Virginia, where he died.
The only memorial of him that survives in the
city he served so well is the name of Sir Thomas
Street, the street that runs past what was once
the garden of his house. With him served, at
various times, Sir WiUiam Norris of Speke,
famous for his embassy to the Great Mogul in
India, and his brothers, Richard and Edward ;
also John and William Cleveland and William
Clayton, representatives of the new generation
of merchants which had appeared in Liverpool
since the revival of its prosperity.

The only important exception to the list of
Whig members was Sir Thomas Bootle, from
whom the Earls of Lathom inherit some of their
lands in this district. Bootle was one of the
representatives of Liverpool from 1727 to 1734.
He was a barrister of some distinction, and
had been mayor of the town ; but despite his
personal popularity, he held his own with
difficulty against the official Whig candidates,
and always had for a colleague a devoted follower
of the Whig chief Sir Robert Walpole. Bootle,
indeed, was far from being a Jacobite ; and his
letters to his patron, the Duke of Somerset,
show that the secret of his success was to be found
in the fact that he was a bitter opponent of the
close corporation which still governed the town.

The Whig members of the Town Council,
having forced their way into power by using the

7 he Revolt against the Town Council 169

* in this kind of common council ' might transact
any business whatever. The Town Council
held the view that this clause was only intended
to fix the quorum at Council meetings. Bootle
and his followers more correctly took the view
that it was intended to give to the Assembly of
Burgesses (provided the mayor and a bailiff were
present) the right of overriding the Council.
They, therefore, during four years, scarcely ever
permitted the Council to be summoned, but
transacted business, passed by-laws, and elected
freemen at general assemblies of the burgesses.
The humour of the situation was that the Council
was quite powerless, because even on its own
reading of the disputed clause it was incompetent
to transact business unless the mayor was present,
and as the mayors were elected by the Assembly of
Burgesses, the popular party contrived for four
successive years to carry their own candidates.
The struggle came to its height in 1733, when
the popular party persuaded Lord Derby to
accept election as mayor, and to take up their
cause, which he did with much vigour. Un-
fortunately he died during his year of office ;
the Council returned to power, and its first actions
were to declare all that had been done null and
void, to depose from the Council those who had
taken part in the recent proceedings, and to
do all they could to secure the defeat of Sir
Thomas Bootle in the parliamentary election of

^734- . .

The attempt to democratise the constitution

170 Rising Prosperity

of the borough had failed. But the Council could
not but feel that its position was insecure, and
that it was at the mercy of any future mayor.
It therefore applied, in 1750, for a new charter
to put the question at rest by formally trans-
ferring to itself all the powers claimed by the
Assembly of Burgesses. The application was
refused, and its only result was a brief renewal
of the struggle. Mr. Joseph Clegg, an alderman
of the borough, published a virulent pamphlet
against the Council, for which he was deposed ;
but in an action at law he forced the Council to
reinstate him, and three years later was elected
mayor. But even Mr. Clegg did not try to use
his position as mayor to re-open the great question.
It was left undisturbed, and the Council remained
in the undisputed exercise of power for forty
years more, in spite of the fact that the law and
the lawyers were definitely against them.

This strange collapse of a vigorous agitation is
at first sight rather difficult to explain. But the
probability is that everybody felt very seriously
the dislocation of business caused by these dis-
putes. The Assembly undoubtedly had the right
to override the Council if it liked ; but it could
not but be felt that a miscellaneous assembly
of freemen formed an exceedingly incompetent
governing body. And though the Assembly could
itself rule, it had no power by charter to replace
the Council by an elected representative body.
For the same charter which left the Council
defenceless also established it as a permanent

Limitation of Number of Freemen 171

institution, and provided that its members should
hold office for life and fill vacancies as they
occurred in their own number. Thus, however
successful an attack on the Council might be at
the moment, it was always certain that sooner or
later the Council would return to power and
abrogate all that had been done. To continue
the agitation meant only plunging the town in
continual chaos, without any prospect of per-
manent reform ; and so Liverpool was left under
the sovereignty of a close, self-elected oligarchy.
Such was the result of the Whig victory, won on
the plea of popular rights. In Liverpool, as in
England at large, it led simply to the rule of a
privileged minority.

It is probable that the power of the Council
would never have been challenged if it had not
been out of touch with the mass of inhabitants,
and if it had not been following a narrow and
exclusive policy. The results of this policy were
in many respects unfortunate, and in the event
had the most serious influence upon the develop-
ment of the town.

The principal aspect of the new policy is to be
seen in the mode of admitting freemen, to whom
alone (as the reader may need to be reminded) all
political privileges belonged. Up to the begin-
ning of the eighteenth century it seems to have
been the practice that any one settling in the town
could, by paying a reasonable sum, obtain the free-
dom with all its privileges, which included not only
the right of voting for mayors and for members of

172 Rising Prosperity

parliament, but also the more material right of
exemption from the payment of town dues on all
imported merchandise. Under the old practice
the Council had forbidden residents who were not
freemen to trade in the town, a prohibition which
could only be enforced when every trader might
hope for admission to the freedom. These prohibi-
tions cease early in the eighteenth century, and
their cessation is a sign that a new policy was
being followed in regard to the admission of free-
men. The Council was now using its power of
electing freemen principally for the purpose of
influencing elections ; on several occasions we hear
of large batches of freemen being admitted on
the eve of a parliamentary contest. Apart from
these, almost the only new freemen now admitted
were those who as sons or apprentices of freemen
had a legal right to the freedom.

The new population of enterprising merchants
and industrious artizans thus found themselves
more and more rigidly excluded from all share in
the privileges of the town which they were enrich-
ing, until finally, in 1777, the rule was laid down
that no new freemen whatever should be admitted
except these who were admitted by right. Thus
during this period the body of freemen was in-
creasingly becoming a privileged minority of the
inhabitants of the town.

A stiU more unfortunate result of this new
policy was that the Council gradually came to
regard itself, not as being charged with the
government of the whole body of inhabitants

The Functions of the Town Council 173

over which it ruled, but as being simply a body
of trustees to safeguard the rights and properties
of the privileged body of freemen.

It was in this spirit that they administered the
corporate estate, now becoming every year more
valuable ; and one curious result of their new
attitude was, that they no longer levied rates, but
carried on their work solely on the proceeds of
the corporate estate, the town dues, the market
tolls, and other traditional sources of revenue.
For rates are payments made by the whole
community for services rendered to the whole
community; and the Council did not consider
that it was its business to serve the whole com-
munity, but only the body of freemen.

When such services had to be performed, new
bodies had to be invented to perform them. Thus
the policing, lighting and scavenging of the streets
— functions which, of 'all others, seem to rest
among the primary duties of the Town Council —
were, from 1748, entrusted by act of parliament
to a special body consisting partly of members
of the Council and partly of members elected by
the ratepayers. A similar but independent body
was later charged with the oversight of sewers,
for the Council held itself responsible only for the
sewering of ' the ancient streets of the borough '
— the streets which it had looked to before it
began to take a confined view of its duties.

Thus the functions of government were coming
to be split up among several rival bodies, and there
was no single ruling body which felt itself generally

174 Rising Prosperity

responsible for the provision of decent conditions
of life for all the inhabitants of the town. This
was to have serious results, for it meant that
there was to be no proper oversight of the new
population which, in ever-increasing numbers,
was beginning to flock into the town.

But in spite of the narrowness of the policy
which was pursued hy the Town Council during
this period, and the evils which resulted from it,
it cannot be denied that the Council showed a
good deal of vigour, especially in the earlier part
of the century, before the new methods and
principles had been fully established. The
growing civic pride of a prosperous town was
reflected in the erection between 1748 and 1754
of a new Exchange and Town Hall, to replace the
outgrown building of 1673. Planned by the
Woods, who made Bath a place of beauty, the new
hall was almost the first worthy public building
erected in Liverpool, and it set the pattern for
a style of architecture well suited for civic
purposes, and admirably carried out in many of
the later buildings of the town. In its first form
it was a square block with a low dome ; its ground
floor, surrounded by pillars, was used as an
exchange for merchants, while the upper floors
included the council chamber, public rooms and
offices. It was later considerably added to and
altered with great taste ; but the original building
still forms the bulk of that dignified Town Hall
which Liverpool may regard with just pride.

The provision of a Town Hall was a natural

Acquisition of the Castle and the lower 175

function for the Town Council, even on the
narrowest view of its duties. But in the earlier
years of the century much more original and
adventurous undertakings were carried out with
success. In the first place, the Council saw with
satisfaction those two relics of a feudal age, the
Tower and the Castle, pass under its direct control.
The Tower was sold by Lord Derby in 1737 to
William Clayton, from whom the corporation first
rented it, and later bought it. Part of the build-
ing was used as a town gaol ; the chapel served
for some time as an assembly room for dancing,
to which, we are told, ladies came afoot through
the streets, wearing heavy blue cloaks and raised
from the mud on pattens ; for before the middle
of the century not even the wealthiest merchants
owned private carriages, and hackney coaches
were unknown.

The Castle had been acquired still earlier.
In 1704 the borough obtained from the crown
a lease of the site, with the right of demolishing
the ancient fortress, subject only to the payment
of the traditional salary due to the constable.
Disputes with Lord Molyneux, the hereditary
constable, and others, prevented the utilisation
of this grant. In 17 14 an act of parliament for
the erection of a new church on the site was
obtained, but even after this there was, for various
reasons, a long delay ; and it was not until 1725
that the Castle was finally demolished.

The lover of antiquities cannot but regret the
destruction of this massive and venerable pile

lyS Rising Prosperity

which, had it survived, would have lent an
atmosphere of dignity to a city now devoid of
every memorial of antiquity. Yet it would be
scarcely just to charge the townsmen of 1725
with mere stupid vandalism. The days when
the Castle had overawed and defied them were
still too recent for them not to feel a thrill of
delight in witnessing the demolition of the one-
time stronghold of their masters. Part of the
site was later used for the erection of a fish-
market ; and housewives chaffered over the
price of herrings where armed men had once
clanked and blustered. On another part of the
site a new church was built to accommodate the
growing population. St. George's became the
corporation church, with seats reserved for all
members of the Council ; and all the details of the
service were elaborately regulated by the Council.
Now St. George's has in turn vanished, to
make room for the memorial to Queen Victoria.
The erection of churches was one of the duties
which the Council accepted, and twenty years
later, in 1750, a fourth church, that of St. Thomas,
was erected.

But the most marked sign of a new age was
the building of the first dock — the first wet
dock erected in the modern world. The act
empowering the creation of the dock was obtained
in 1709, but it was not until 171 5 that it was
completed. It was mainly the enterprise of
Sir Thomas Johnson that led to this immense and
fruitful departure ; but the credit must be shared

^! alijiiiiiiiiiiiiilll I'l

The Building of the First Dock 177

with the engineer, Mr. Thomas Steers of London,
who carried out the scheme, and who may fairly
claim to be the inventor of wet docks. The cost of
the dock was materially reduced by utilising the
broad mouth of the old Pool. The upper reaches
of the Pool were, at the same time, closed and
partially filled in, and the site remained a stretch of
marshy ground until, at a later date. Paradise Street
and Whitechapel arose upon it. The filling up of the
Pool removed another and stiU more noteworthy
landmark of mediaeval Liverpool : a geographical
feature which had caused the first origins of the
town. Had it been maintained and waUed in,
it would greatly have added to the town's
picturesqueness ; but it would not be fair on
this account to fall short in respect to the towns-
men whose spirited enterprise at once turned
Liverpool into the best and safest port in the
kingdom, and gave it an immense impetus on
its career. So valuable did the dock prove to
be that it was immediately added to by the
creation of a tidal basin or ' dry dock,' to the
north of it ; while in 1734 a new dock to the
south was begun, which (not being built in a
natural inlet) took nineteen years to build.
Primarily intended for the Cheshire salt-trade, it
stood beside a great saltworks which had for
some time existed on the waste ground south of
the Pool, and thus obtained the name of the
Salthouse dock.

Nor was the creation of the new docks the
only enterprise for the encouragement of trade

178 Rising Prosperity

undertaken by the Town Council. They began
the buoying of the channel, a task which was
entrusted to Mr. Steers, and carried out at the
corporation's expense. And they gave their aid
also to the accomplishment of other engineering
works which helped to overcome that geographical
isolation and those defects of communication
which had hitherto hampered the growth of
Liverpool's trade. A new public road to Prescot
made carriage exit from Liverpool for the first
time practicable. A weU-made road to Warring-
ton brought the town into touch with the great
north and south coach routes.

StiU more important, means of water communi-
cation began to be systematically developed.
During the first half of the eighteenth century the
main object of the engineers was the deepening
of existing watercourses, which, in the neighbour-
hood of Liverpool, were so poor as to be useless
for purposes of navigation. In 1720 the river
Douglas was made navigable from Wigan to the
Ribble, thus enabling coals to be brought by
water to Liverpool more cheaply than was
possible by land. Two years later an act was
passed for deepening the Mersey and IrweU
beyond Warrington, so as to enable barges to
go to Manchester, and in the following years
the deepening of the Weaver as far as Nantwich
made Cheshire salt vastly cheaper and more
abundant. Finally, in 1755, the project for
deepening the Sankey Brook, from St. Helens
to the Mersey, began a new era in inland

Improvement of Communications 179

navigation. For the Sankey Brook was so poor a
stream that the deepening of it really meant the
creation of a new canal ; Brindley, the engineer,
boldly struck away from the course of the stream,
merely using its waters as a source of supply,
and thus created what was practically the first
artificial waterway or canal in England, and began
that process of canal building which was to be
carried on with such activity during the next
period, and to improve so immensely the position
of Liverpool as a distributing centre. At last
the engineer, the revolutioniser of modern society,
had got to work, and was transforming the
natural conditions which had hitherto placed
Liverpool at a disadvantage in comparison with
the ports of the east and south.

These great enterprises, needless to say, were
not, like the docks, carried out by the Town
Council ; but Liverpool found much of the
money required for them, and gave them warm
support. They were the cause of a steadily
accelerating progress. But they were also in part
the result of the striking growth which during
this period brought Liverpool to the rank of the
second among British ports.

The growth by which these enterprises were
produced, and which they accelerated, may be
readily traced on the maps of the period. In
1725 John Chadwick drew up the first surveyed
map of Liverpool, for which he was rewarded by
a grant of £6 from the Town Council. This
map shows thirty-seven streets in existence, and

i8o Rising Prosperity

presents a marked contrast to the map of fifty
years before, which might serve for almost any
period in Liverpool history before the eighteenth
century. The Pool has vanished, and the Old
Dock (on the site of the modern Custom-house)
has taken its place. But there is as yet little
building south of the old line of the Pool ; while
to the north the limits of the house-covered area
still extend only to the Old Hall. George Perry's
map of 1 769 shows a remarkable growth. Church
Street and Ranelagh Street were well built up ;
Duke Street and Hanover Street were full of
fine houses ; houses with big gardens occupied
Mount Pleasant ; and a dense mass of building
was spreading along the riverside southwards.
To the north expansion was slower, but building
had extended as far as the modern canal basin.
The growth of population was even greater than
this physical expansion suggests, for most of the
houses were cramped and overcrowded. It
rose from 5,000 in 1700 to 18,000 in 1750, and
25,000 in 1760.

What had brought this growing population
was, in part, the rise of new industries. Ship-
building yards were active on the shore to north
and south of the docks. Half-a-score of whirling
windmUls busily at work gave a picturesque
aspect to the rising town. Sugar refineries were
busy and prosperous. Rope-making was very
actively carried on in long rope yards that appear
prominently in the maps. There were one or two
iron foundries. Liverpool had come to be known

Growth of Trade

i8i

for the excellence of her watches. The Liver-
pool pottery industry was in its best period,
turning out fine blue and white delft, and also
(at a later date) printing designs on china sent
from Staffordshire. The principal potteries were,
in the early part of the period, in Dale Street
and Shaw's Brow (now William Brown Street),
and later in Islington and other places.

But manufacturing industries have always been
of minor importance in Liverpool, and it was
above all the growth of a world-wide commerce
which had attracted the new population. In
1700 the port owned about seventy vessels, and
employed about 800 seamen. In 1751 the number
of vessels owned in the port had risen to 220, and
the number of seamen to 3,319. The trade
which employed this considerable fleet was of a
very varied character, Liverpool now controlled
the great bulk of the Irish trade ; Chester
had ceased to be a competitor, though packet
boats for passengers still sailed from Parkgate ;
even Bristol had been far surpassed. Large parts
of Scotland and Wales, too, were commercially
dependent upon Liverpool ; she was by this time
established as the central port of the British lands.
In the Baltic trade a considerable footing had
been obtained, though here the natural advantages
of HuU gave the pre-eminence to that port.

But it was the trade with the new world which
brought to the rising port most of its prosperity.
As yet the trade of the American colonies, soon
to be the United States, was of comparatively

1 82 Rising Prosperity

small proportions ; but Liverpool had a large
share of it, her only competitor being Bristol.

Far more important were the West Indies. Not
only were the British West Indies the chief sources
of supply for sugar, tobacco and cotton, the main
staples of Liverpool trade, but they were also the
centre of a still more lucrative smuggling trade
with the Spanish dominions in Central and South
America. The Spanish government, anxious to
secure for the home country the control of its
colonial commerce, stringently limited the amount
of foreign trade admitted at colonial ports. The
result was that on the one hand Spanish smugglers
haunted the ports of Jamaica to buy there the
goods which their rulers forbade them to buy at
home, and on the other hand English smugglers
did their best to evade the Spanish coastguards
and to trade direct with Mexico and Cuba. In this
traffic Bristol possessed by far the greater share
at the beginning of the eighteenth century, but
before the first quarter of the century was over
the energy of Liverpool merchants had given
them the lead, and by the middle of the century
Bristol was completely distanced. In 1757, 106
LiA^erpool vessels were employed in this trade,
and they are said to have brought to the port an
annual profit of ^250,000. As the goods exported
for this trade were largely paid for in Spanish
gold, pistoles and doubloons became common
currency in Liverpool.

But we must not attribute the whole of this
advance to the energy of the Liverpool merchants.

The Trade with Spanish America 183

Two circumstances helped them. In the first
place, the growing activity of the Manchester
mills provided them with commodities much in
demand in the West Indies — coarse woollens
and cottons, which were produced much more
cheaply than the French and German goods
which formed the bulk of the outgoing cargo of
the Bristol vessels ; and thus the smuggling trade
of the West Indies gave to the industry of Man-
chester as great an impetus as to the commerce
of Liverpool.

A second cause of Liverpool's success in the
rivalry with Bristol was that the Liverpool ships
were more cheaply manned than those of Bristol.
Captains and officers received lower pay ; while
a wide extension of the system of apprenticeship
provided a considerable proportion of the crews
almost without wages. It was the practice to
apprentice boys at fourteen or fifteen for seven
years ; they received no wages from their masters,
whose sole obligations were to feed and clothe
them, teach them their trade, and administer to
them ' all needful chastisement.' It is said that
even the younger officers of vessels were some-
times apprentices, serving without wages.

The most profitable part of this trade, that
which was carried on by smuggling with the
Spanish colonies, did not outlive the middle of
the century ; for, after causing a war between
England and Spain, it was almost brought to an
end by an act of parliament of 1747, which
forbade foreign vessels to frequent British West

184 Rising Prosperity

Indian ports, and thus drove away Spanish
smugglers from the ports of Jamaica. But before
it died it had led to a still more lucrative and
stiU more questionable traffic. The West Indies
had always been closely linked to West Africa ;
the sugar and tobacco plantations had long been
worked by the labour of negro slaves, and the
constant demand of their West Indian customers
for negroes led the Liverpool merchants to foUow
the lead of Bristol, and to embark upon the slave
trade. By the middle of the eighteenth century
Liverpool was fairly launched upon this iniquitous
traffic, the most lucrative which the world has
ever seen ; and before long the port had obtained
a proud and shameful eminence as the chief
centre of the trade in human flesh. But the
slave trade, at once the glory and the shame of
Liverpool, is too important not to demand a
chapter to itself.

The irregular and adventurous traffic of the
West Indies, whether in Manchester goods or in
human bodies, brought the traders into constant
conflict with the Spanish coastguards, who
haunted the seas between Jamaica and the
mainland ; and the loud complaints of the
merchants engaged in this trade, backed by the
parliamentary thunders of William Pitt and his
' patriot ' followers, were the principal cause of
the war with Spain, which began in 1739, and
was five years later merged in a still wider war
with France. In this long strife, which lasted
till 1748 and was the beginning of an almost

Early Privateering 185

unintermitted series of wars extending to 181 5,
the sailors of Liverpool were very ready to take a
hand. The conditions of the West Indian trade
had produced a very vigorous, unruly and war-
like type of sailors, always ready for riot and
fighting, often difficult to keep in order when
they were ashore ; and such men were very ready
to embark upon the gay and profitable enterprise
of privateering. These were the days of Captain
Fortunatus Wright, one of the prime heroes of
eighteenth century Liverpool, a Liverpool man
who fitted out the privateer Fame at Leghorn,
and for months terrorised the Western Medi-
terranean, capturing no less than forty-six French
vessels. But Fortunatus Wright, that dashing
pirate, though a Liverpool man, was not actually
a Liverpool trader ; and it must be confessed
that the merchant ships which turned privateers
during these years were not strikingly successful.
They captured a number of French and Spanish
vessels, but their own ships in the West Indies
lay very exposed to French or Spanish attacks, and
over one hundred Liverpool vessels were taken
by the enemy. Nevertheless we are told that
Liverpool profited vastly from this war, because
her home waters were so much less exposed than
those of Bristol and London, and the route round
the North of Ireland so much safer than that
through the English Channel, that trade increas-
ingly deserted these ports for their northern rival.
It is the picture of a very vigorous and thriving
port which emerges as we study the records of

1 86 Rising Prosperity

Liverpool in the first half of the eighteenth
century ; but there is a reverse side to the picture.
While trade and wealth were growing, civilisation
was not growing with them. The streets were
narrow, mean, ill-paved, and dirty. The houses
were closely huddled together and over-crowded.
The recreations of the people were of a brutal
type — cock-fighting and buU-baiting still held
their own. It was only in 1759 that the first
theatre was built in Drury Lane, though there is
a notice of theatrical performances two or three
years earlier. There is no mention of any music
other than that rendered by the public waits, who
were paid by the corporation.

Perhaps the amusements of the well-to-do were
more refined. Derrick, the successor of Beau
Nash as arbiter elegantiarum at Bath, visited
Liverpool in 1760, and has left a record of his
impressions. He reports that the assembly-room
in the town hall ' is grand, spacious, and finely
illuminated ; here is a meeting once a fortnight
to dance and play cards ; where you will find
some women elegantly accomplished and perfectly
well dressed.' As for the men, ' though few of
the merchants have had more education than
befits a counting-house, they are genteel in their
address. . . . Their tables are plenteously fur-
nished, and their viands well served up ; their
rum is excellent, of which they consume large
quantities. . . . But they pique themselves greatly
upon their ale, of which almost every house brews
a sufficiency for its own use. . . . There are at

Intellectual Life 187

Leverpoole three good inns. For tenpence a man
dines elegantly at an ordinary, consisting of ten or
a dozen dishes. . . . They have plenty of the best
and most luxurious foods at a very cheap rate.'

This is a pleasant, even an appetising, descrip-
tion of Liverpool society. But when we turn to
things less material than the creature comforts,
the tale is not so favourable. The intellectual
life of the town was strangely starved. No news-
paper was published in the town. The Liverpool
Courant, a bi-weekly sheet of two small pages,
had run for a few months in 171 2, but died of
inanition. There was no public library, except a
small circulating club collection, which amounted
to 450 volumes in 1758, and had been kept up to
that time in a box in the house of one of the
subscribers. These were 109 of the principal
gentlemen of the town, who found for a sub-
scription of five shillings per annum sufficient food
for all their intellectual needs. In 1759 this
library was provided with a more permanent
home in a room in North John Street ; it was the
first nucleus of the Lyceum library.

Nor were there any public schools, except the
old grammar school of the foundation of John
Crosse, which was dragging out a very precarious
existence because the Town Council had merged
the lands with which it was endowed in the general
corporate estate, and only granted it the most
miserable annual subsidy. There were a few
feeble private schools ; at one of these, in Paradise
Street, a boy, WiUiam Roscoe, of whom we shall

1 88 Rising Prosperity

hear more, was learning to read and write in
1760.

But if the town had not yet learned its respon-
sibility for stimulating and providing for the
intellectual needs of its citizens, it had begun at
least to feel pity for suffering and poverty. The
oldest of Liverpool charities owe their existence
to this period. In 1731 the first workhouse was
erected at the corner of College Lane and
Hanover Street ; the object of its erection was
declared to be ' to employ the poor .... and
thereby to ease the inhabitants of the great
burthen the poor are at present ' ; a motive in
which not much humanity is perceptible. The
period saw also several bequests for the foundation
of almshouses. A small group of almhouses for
sailors' widows in Shaw's Brow had been estab-
lished by Silvester Richmond in 1692, and enlarged
by John Scarisbrick in 1723 ; another group, also
for sailors' widows, was established in Hanover
Street in 1706; and in 1727 Mrs. Ann Molyneux
gave ;^200 for the relief of debtors in the Liverpool
gaol, and ;^3oo for the benefit of the widows in
the almshouses. These are small gifts, which may
seem scarce worthy of mention, when later gifts
of far greater amount must be left unnamed.
But their significance is in their smallness, and in
the fact that they stand almost alone.

Far more important was the foundation of
that most venerable of Liverpool charities, the
Blue-coat Hospital, which owes its existence
to the kindliness of the Rev. Robert Stythe, one

Early Liverpool Charities 189

of the first rectors of Liverpool, and its earliest
endowments above all to the rare generosity of
Bryan Blundell. Blundell was a master mariner
and part-owner of his own vessel ; he belonged to a
family which had been settled in Liverpool since
the time of Elizabeth. Deeply impressed by the
plight of destitute orphans in the streets of his
native town, he joined Mr. Stythe, in 1708, in
opening a day school for fifty boys, and then
set to work to collect money to establish a per-
manent building where they could be housed and
fed. He left the sea to devote himself to this
worthy hobby. He himself gave one-tenth of
his whole means, and collected ^3,000 by personal
begging. Prospering in business, he devoted
throughout the remainder of his life a tithe of
his income to aid the maintenance of the school ;
and before he died in 1756, had the satisfaction of
seeing his charity firmly established, and com-
manding the interest and support of all^that was
respectable in Liverpool.

The fact that the purse strings of the prosperous
merchants were being loosened was still more
clearly proved by the foundation of the Royal
Infirmary in 1745, on the future site of St.
George's Hall. These are the first faint begin-
nings of public spirit, the first awakenings of the
sense of mutual civic responsibility in the history
of Liverpool. They are a good beginning, but
the town had yet to learn that there are other
needs besides those of the sick, the orphan and
the widow.

190

CHAPTER XII

The Slave Trade, 1 709-1 807

The trade in negro slaves, like many other
iniquities, began in misdirected benevolence.
Las Casas, a liumanitarian Spanish missionary,
appalled by the sufferings of the West Indian
natives, who were dying out under the forced
labour imposed upon them by Spain, suggested,
as a means of preserving that simple race, that
negroes should be employed in their stead.
Negroes were the sons of Ham, condemned by
God to atone in eternal servitude for the sin of
their ancestor at the time of the flood. To
enslave them would be to carry out the will of
God ; and it would bring them a possibility of
eternal salvation by a knowledge of Christianity.
So the horror began with a pretence of religious
sanction, almost at the opening of the history
of the New World ; with less and less sincerity
the religious pretence continued until the iniquity
was abolished in the nineteenth century.

At first Spain and Portugal, which owned the
great slave-worked colonies, naturally controlled
the trade ; though the adventures of Captain
Hawkins, who invaded the monopoly in the reign

Its Origin 191

of Elizabeth, showed that it was not any scruple
of conscience that kept Englishmen aloof. But
in the seventeenth century, when English, French
and Dutch aU began to acquire West Indian
sugar islands, and lands in Guiana, aU these nations
began to share in the trade ; all founded stations
on the West African Coast, and strove for the
control of the best sources of supply. The trade
in human flesh was already the most lucrative
in the world, and to obtain the upper hand in
it became a prime ambition with every nation.
The proudest triumph of English diplomacy in
the early eighteenth century was the Assiento
Treaty of 171 3, whereby the English obtained the
right to supply slaves to the Spanish colonies
as well as to their own.

In the early days of the English slave trade
London and Bristol practically had the trade to
themselves, and from 1698 to 1730 Bristol was
rapidly surpassing London. In these years,
indeed, Bristol was devoting aU her energies to
the African trade ; she hoped to find here a
compensation for the decline of her more direct
West Indian traffic, which, as we have seen, the
enterprise of Liverpool was rapidly undermining.
Liverpool had as yet made no serious attempt
to enter the African trade ; one vessel of thirty
tons went to Africa in 1709 and got a cargo of
fifteen slaves, but this beginning was not followed
up until 1730. Until that year the trade had
been controlled by a company, to which all
traders had to pay 10 per cent, for the upkeep

192 The Slave Trade

of forts and factories on the West Coast. But
in 1730 an act of parliament threw the trade
open to all persons willing to pay a registration
fee of £2. These fees were to be payable either in
London, Bristol or Liverpool, and each of the
three ports was to provide a committeeman to
reside on the coast and supervise the trade.

Thus encouraged, the merchants of Liverpool
entered with aU heartiness upon the new specu-
lation. In the first year fifteen ships were sent
to Africa. Seven years later the number had
grown to thirty- three, and in 1752 Liverpool had
fifty-eight vessels engaged in the slave trade.
By that time Bristol had been beaten in the
race, and London was far behind ; and in the
second half of the century Liverpool was beyond
all competition the principal slaving port, not
only in England, but in Europe. In 1792, when
the trade was at its height, it was estimated that
Liverpool enjoyed five-eighths of the English
trade in slaves, and three-sevenths of the whole
slave trade of all the European nations. Nearly
half of the blood-stained wealth earned by
this iniquitous traffic enriched Liverpool pockets ;
nearly half of the appalling sum of human misery
which it caused lay at the doors of Liverpool
merchants and saUors. Not that the trade was
considered to be guilty or even dubious. Until
almost the end of the eighteenth century there
was scarcely a man in Europe who would not have
regarded such phrases as have been used above
as the language of misguided sentimentalism. In

op

Its Immense Profits 193

the eyes of the Liverpool merchants, and in the
eyes of all the world, the success of Liverpool was
a thing to be envied, the legitimate reward of
enterprise which everyone would have been
delighted to share.

The magnitude of the trade, and the magnitude
of the profits derived from it, may be best
exhibited by a summary of the results of a
short period, for which fuU figures are available.
In the eleven years from 1783 to 1793, 878 round
trips were made by Liverpool slaving ships.
They carried 303,737 slaves from Africa to the
West Indies ; and sold them for ^^i 5, 186,850.
Deducting agents' commissions and incidental
expenses, the total amount remitted to Liverpool
came to over twelve millions and a quarter
sterling. Not aU this, of course, was profit ; the
cost of the cargoes sent out to Africa as purchase
for the slaves has still to be deducted, as well as
the cost of maintenance of the ships. But even
after these deductions have been made, the total
profits amounted to over thirty per cent., or
an average of nearly ^300,000 per annum during
the whole period under consideration.

But even this does not represent the full profit
made out of the business. For after the slaves
were sold in the West Indies, the holds of the
vessels were filled with sugar, tobacco, rum, cotton
and other West Indian produce which yielded
immense profits, the amount of which it is not
possible to calculate. The amazingly lucrative
character of this traffic is not apparent until it is

194 The Slave Trade

realised that it produced a double crop of profits,
and combined two distinct lines of trade. The slave
ship left Liverpool laden with cheap Manchester
goods, bad muskets, glass beads and inferior spirits.
It exchanged these for a full cargo of ' prime
negroes branded as per margin.' After a rapid
run on the trade winds it disposed of them at high
prices to the planters ; and it completed the
* great triangle of trade ' by returning full of
commodities that were always certain of a sale
at good prices.

It is no wonder that the ' African trade '
(as it was delicately named) was the pride of
Liverpool, and that the vast majority of the
townsmen were prepared to defend it through
thick and thin, and had no words bitter enough
for the faddists who wanted to put an end to it.
Not 'only did it employ nearly one-fourth of the
total tonnage of the port ; not only did it engage
the capital of over one hundred of the town's
principal merchants ; but many hundreds of
humbler citizens were enriched by it. ' Almost
every order of people,' says a Liverpool writer
in 1795, ' is interested in a Guinea cargo . . .
He who cannot send a bale, will send a bandbox.
.... It is well known that many of the small
vessels that import about an hundred slaves are
fitted out by attorneys, drapers, ropers, grocers,
tallow-chandlers, barbers, tailors, etc' of whom
* some have one-eighth, some a fifteenth, some
a thirty-second ' share. An army of sailors, who
got better pay on these ships than on any others ;

Its Methods 195

a host of shipwrights, ship's chandlers, manu-
facturers of chains and implements, whose liveli-
hood depended upon the trade, all equally
resented attacks upon it. It had flooded
Liverpool with wealth, which invigorated every
industry, provided the capital for docks, enriched
and employed the mills of Lancashire, and afforded
the means for opening out new and ever new
lines of trade. Beyond a doubt it was the slave
trade which raised Liverpool from a struggling
port to be one of the richest and most prosperous
trading centres in the world.

The methods of a trade which did so much for
the town deserve a more detailed examination.
Ships of special design were required, the build-
ing of which gave much employment to Liverpool
shipyards. They must be swift-sailing clippers, so
as to reduce the wastage of the cargo by death,
which was the invariable result of the horrors of
a lengthened voyage. Then their decks must be
designed to accommodate the greatest possible
number of negroes in the least possible space.
The slave deck ran across the ship, and was usually
five feet eight inches high — too low to permit a tall
man to stand upright. It was fitted with wooden
benches clamped to the floor, close together,
with an alley down the centre.

On the West Coast the traders resorted to a
few recognised slave depots, the chief of which
were Bonny and Old Calabar. Here the develop-
ment of the trade had produced a contemptible
gin-sodden race of ' kings ' and ' princes ' who

196 The Slave Trade

rejoiced in European nicknames bestowed upon
them by the sailors, and made a livelihood by-
selling their fellow-beings. In the romantic
picture with which people at home soothed their
consciences, these poor creatures appeared as the
fierce chieftains of barbarous tribes perpetually
at war with their neighbours, and constantly
taking large numbers of prisoners, whom they
would massacre and perhaps devour if the
beneficent trader did not make it more profit-
able to seU them to Christian masters. In
reality the ' kings ' made their livelihood by
organising raids upon unoffending villages to
supply the slave mart.

As the trade developed and the demand for
slaves increased, these raiders had to go further and
further afield, often finding their victims two or
three hundred miles from the coast. Bands of
man-hunters burst down upon sleeping villages —
usually in the night, so that no spoil might be
lost — and, setting fire to the cottages, captured
all the inhabitants, except the old, who were killed.
Men, women and children were stripped naked ;
the men were chained together in a long file, but no
such precaution was necessary with the rest ; and
under the crack of the whip the long march to
the coast began. Those who broke down were
left by the wayside to die ; their friends were
driven away from them with whips, and the
procession continued. When the coast was
reached the travel-worn victims were sold to the
trader, taken aboard, branded with hot irons.

The Middle Passage 197

and thrust down, naked and quivering, into the
hold. Sometimes they must wait days or even
weeks before the cargo was completed ; and the
extent of the demoralisation into which the trade
had brought the coast would then be displayed.
Sons, eager for gain, would seU their fathers, or
fathers their sons. Nor were the traders over-
scrupulous as to the means by which they got
their slaves ; to them one ' nigger ' was as good
as another. It is on record that one negro slave-
dealer, having received the payment for a batch
of slaves in gold, was fool enough to accept the
captain's invitation to drink in the cabin. His
money bag had roused his host's cupidity, and he
awoke from his hocussed liquor to find himself
at sea. Amid the laughter of the sailors, the
screaming wretch was stripped, branded, and
thrust down among his own victims.

It was not tin they got to sea that the worst
horrors were revealed. The slaves — men on one
side, women on the other — ^were chained to the
benches and to each other, so close together that
they could scarcely move or turn. To keep them
in health they were brought on deck in batches
every morning for exercise ; but, lest they should
rebel, or throw themselves into the merciful sea
(as they did on the least opportunity), a long chain,
secured to the deck, was passed over the chain that
joined the ankles of every slave. Then they were
ordered to dance, on pain of the lash, and some-
times to sing. It is not easy to imagine a more
heart-rending spectacle than that of these wretches

198 The Slave Trade

jumping sadly up and down to the music of their
jangling chains, and wailing the tunes they had
learnt in their burnt villages. Often the weather
was too bad to allow them on deck ; then port-
holes and hatches must be closed, and the slaves
left to stew in the foetid atmosphere between
decks. In these conditions they died like flies,
the dead remaining chained to the living tiU the
sailors were at leisure to throw them overboard.

It is not surprising that under such circum-
stances the slaves should frequently have
endeavoured to end their lives by the only means
open to them — that of refusing all food. Young
children were known to do this, and the practice
was so common that in the windows of those shops
in Liverpool which were devoted to the equip-
ment of slavers a common sight was a steel
appliance for forcing the mouth open and holding
the tongue down until nutriment could be poured
down the throat.

When the horrors of the ' middle passage '
were over, there came the sale, arranged for by
the agent for the shipowner in Jamaica. Some-
times the sale was made by private treaty with
the agent. Most often it was effected by a
' scramble,' which had the advantage of disposing
of the cargo quickly. In this method the slaves
were brought on deck, and arranged in four
groups — men, women, boys, and girls. The
intending purchasers came out in small boats, and
at the sound of a gun rushed on board, armed
with lengths of string or tape. Seizing the slaves

John Newton 199

they intended to purchase, they drew their cord
round their bodies. An equal price was paid for
slaves of each class bought in this way. The din
on these occasions was beyond description, and
the negroes are spoken of as trembling like leaves.
A third method of sale was by auction, but this
was usually only employed with the poorer slaves.
Men and women, old and young, were exposed
together for public inspection for some days
before the sale. Those who were so feeble that
no one would buy them were turned adrift and
left to die.

The merchants who conducted this traffic
were often very genial, courteous and charitable
gentlemen. But they lived far away, and never
saw any of its horrors, except the worst horror
of all — the profits. It may be imagined that
the sailors who actually conducted the traffic
were brutal, callous, licentious and turbulent.
So, for the most part, they were ; and their
influence on the town when they got home from
their voyages could be nothing but evil. Yet
there were exceptions. Even among the slavers
there were men honourable, upright and kind-
hearted, who never questioned the legitimacy of
the traffic in which they were engaged.

Two such figures deserve more than a bare
mention. One was the strangest of aU men to
find in such surroundings — the Rev. John Newton,
best known as the friend of the gentle Cowper,
as a leader of the evangelical revival, and as
the author of ' How sweet the Name of Jesus

200 The Slave Trade

sounds,' ' Come mj soul thy suit prepare,'
and many other favourite hymns. Newton was
born of respectable parents, and early in life
entered the navy as a midshipman. He was
flogged and degraded for bad conduct, deserted,
and spent some years in disreputable adventures
in aU parts of the world, being at one time
reduced to such misery that he was practically a
slave on one of the Bahamas. Escaping at length,
and repenting of his evil courses, he found his
way to Liverpool, got employment as mate of a
slaving ship which belonged to a friend of his
father, rose to be captain, and turned over a
new leaf. He was now genuinely converted ;
and during the six years (1748-1754) which he
spent in this employment, he gave a remarkable
demonstration of the fact that a sincerely religious
man might carry on this trade without a qualm
of conscience. His ship obtained a reputation
for saintliness. No spirits were allowed on board.
The slaves were well fed and seldom whipped ;
and daily the captain prayed and sang hymns
with them, earning from them a touching grati-
tude. In 1754 Newton left the sea, not because
he doubted the righteousness of his profession,
but because he desired to take holy orders. In
this ambition he found, not unnaturally, con-
siderable difficulty ; the Archbishop of York was
hard to persuade that the ex-captain of a Liver-
pool slave-ship would prove a suitable minister
of religion. Yet Newton became one of the most
powerful religious forces of his time ; a moving

HUGH CROW, SLAVE-TRADER

To face p. 201

Hugh Crow 20 1

preacher, a writer of hymns that have ever since
been dear to the whole Christian community,
and one of the apostles of a new school of religious
thought, among whose followers were later to be
found the men — ^Wilberforce, Clarkson, Sharp,
and Macaulay — ^whose unflagging zeal ultimately
brought about the destruction of the slave
trade.

A very different, and a much more normal,
type is represented hj Hugh Crow. A Manx boy
of humble origin, he spent his youth on the
sea, undergoing a series of perils and adventures
which might furnish forth a score of boys' story
books, and enduring such hardships that it is
amazing any man could survive them. In 1790
he made his first voyage to Africa, and the rest
of his seafaring life was spent in the slave trade.
He was captain of the last slave ship that made
the voyage from Liverpool. Buoyant, shrewd,
kind-hearted, utterly fearless, indifferent to hard-
ship and intolerant of ' cant,' he had no patience
with the opponents of the slave trade. For him
the three cardinal virtues of a seaman were
resourcefulness, straightforwardness and utter
loyalty to his employers : the open eye and the
single eye. He treated his negroes well, with
a bluff, contemptuous kindliness, for after all
they were only ' niggers ' ; and they adored him
— old ' passengers ' of his would grin from ear to
ear and rush to welcome him when he visited
their new home. The valour of the man may be
illustrated by one episode of his later career.

202 The Slave Trade

Returning from Africa, he met one night two
large vessels, which he took to be French priva-
teers known to be haunting those waters. They
required him to stop ; but disdaining to strike
his flag, he fought a running battle with them
all through the night, and only discovered in the
morning that they were British warships. In his
later years Crow's ruddy face and bluff, portly
figure was one of the sights of Liverpool, as he
stumped up Lord Street, spy-glass under arm, to
view the shipping, or told tales of his youth
round the fire in the Lyceum newsroom. The
tales were so stirring that his friends persuaded
him to write them out ; the result is the
Autobiography of Hugh Crow, a most engaging
little book, swift, simple and direct, which con-
veys a vivid picture of the conditions of seafaring
life a century ago.

It will have been noted that the slave trade
consisted in the transportation of negroes from
Africa to America, not in the importation of
them to England ; and the legend which pictures
rows of negroes chained to staples in the Goree
Piazzas, exposed for sale, is a curious instance of
popular superstition. After 1772, indeed (and
the slave trade was at its height after that date),
no slaves can have been brought to Liverpool ;
for in the Somerset case, tried in that year, it
was laid down by the judges that under the
common law slavery did not exist in England
and that every slave became free so soon as his
foot touched English soil. Before 1772 a few

The Abolition Movement 203

slaves were brought to Liverpool, but they
were exceptions ; there was never any systematic
importation. The largest number of slaves known
to have been oflEered for sale at one time in
Liverpool was eleven ; but though the news-
papers contain advertisements of slaves for sale,
' warranted sound,' and though auctions of
negroes occasionally took place in the shops or
coffee-houses or on the steps of the old Custom-
house, these cases were exceptional, and do not
deserve the prominence they have obtained in
most histories of Liverpool.

In the last quarter of the eighteenth century
public opinion in England at large underwent a
remarkable change in regard to the slave trade.
Adam Smith the economist, Paley the philosopher,
and Wesley the preacher had all condemned it ;
but in 1787 mere criticism passed into a definite
campaign, and the Society for the Abolition of
the African Slave Trade was founded in London.
Naturally Liverpool regarded this movement with
hostility and anxiety. The corporation voted ;^l 00
to the Rev. Raymund Harris, a Spanish Jesuit, to
show its approval of his pamphlet in defence of the
trade, in which, with nauseous unction, he argued
' its conformity with the principles of natural
and revealed religion delineated in the sacred
writings of the Word of God.' When Thomas
Clarkson visited Liverpool to coUect information
for an exposure of the iniquities of the slave-trade,
he spent his time in danger of his life. The
belief was universal that the abolition of this

204 The Slave Trade

trade would be the ruin of Liverpool, and that
if ever the faddists had their way, grass would
soon be growing in Castle Street.

Yet there was a sort of restless discomfort
blended with the fierceness of the opposition.
Honourable men's consciences were beginning to
be touched ; all men were uncomfortable in the
feeling that they were the objects of general public
reprobation. ' The discussion,' said Dr. Currie, ' has
produced much unhappiness in Liverpool. Men
are awaking to their situation, and the struggle
between interest and humanity has made great
havoc in the happiness of many families.' When
George Cooke, the actor, was hissed for appearing
drunk on the boards of the theatre, he puUed
himself together, and said venomously over the
footlights that he had not come to be insulted
by a pack of men every brick in whose detestable
town was cemented by the blood of a negro ; and
it speaks strongly, not only for the magnanimity
of his audience, but also for the change that
was coming over their opinions, that he should
have been cheered for his bitter defiance.

With most of the townsmen violence of
language concealed uneasiness of conscience. Yet
even in Liverpool itself there was found a little
group of men who dared not only to feel, but
to express, their opinions. Such an one was
Edward Rushton, the blind poet, who had himself
been a sailor in a slave ship, and knewwhat he wrote
about. His West Indian Eclogues are not great
poetry, but they breathe the hatred of oppression

Liverpool Opponents 205

and the love of liberty. Such again was William
Rathbone, second of that name, and grandfather
of the revered philanthropist whom the city-
lost not long ago. He spared no pains to aid and
protect Clarkson when he visited the town ;
and he showed the genuineness of his own con-
victions by refusing on any terms to allow the
timber in whichhe dealt to be sold to any builder of
slave ships. Such again was James Currie, a young
Scotch doctor building up a practice in the town,
who did not hesitate to risk his prospects by
writing against the trade by which the wealthiest
men in the town made their wealth. Such,
above aU, was William Roscoe, greatest of Liver-
pool citizens. Long before the abolition move-
ment commenced, when he was a struggling lad
of nineteen, trying to make a livelihood out of
the law, he had dared to express his views in
verse ; now, at the opening of the agitation,
he lent an already honoured name to it by
publishing a long poem on the Wrongs of Africa,
and by taking up the cudgels against Harris in
a vigorous ' Scriptural Refutation.' Throughout
his life he lost no chance of raising his voice
against the iniquity which defiled his native
town, while at the same time he defended those
who conducted the traffic from the imputation
of being the ruthless mercenary tyrants which
they had come to be in the popular imagination.
By an extraordinary freak of fortune, a miracle
of poetic justice, Roscoe was returned to parlia-
ment in 1806 as a representative for his native

2o6 The Slave Trade

town, which, though it hated his"politics, was
proud, as it well might be, of his world-wide
fame. He sat for only a few months. But he had
the pleasure of being able to speak and vote for
the act which abolished the slave trade. On
his return Roscoe was welcomed by a mob with
staves and brickbats ; he never again sat at
Westminster. But it was one of his greatest
sources of pride that he, as a member for Liverpool,
had been enabled to cast his vote for the ending
of a trade which had brought into the town a
flood of wealth, but brought upon it also the
responsibility for an ocean of suffering and tears.
The slave trade ended on May ist, 1807. The
last ship to sail from Liverpool on a slaver's
errand was the Mary, Captain Hugh Crow ; its
cargo of 400 negroes was the last shipment of
human souls sold by English merchants to labour
in the plantations of the New World.

207

CHAPTER XIII.

The Age of Wars ana Pnvateermg
1756-1815

The period from 1756 to 181 5 is a period of
almost continuous wars — wars the most gigantic
ever waged in the history of England, perhaps in
the history of the world. For they set every part
of the globe aflame, Europe, America, Africa,
India ; and, above all, every sea echoed to the
guns of battleships or privateers, and the unarmed
trader was never safe except in great convoys.
Portentous in the magnitude of their range,
these wars were still more portentous in the
immensity of their results. During their course
the elder empire of Britain reached the pinnacle
of its pride under the inspiration of the great
Pitt. During their course that empire fell in
ruins again with the loss of the American colonies.
During their course the world was upheaved by
the volcano of the French Revolution, and in the
midst of the chaos arose a new empire of Britain.
This is the epical age of English history.

On no part of England did these events make
themselves more directly and profoundly felt than
on Liverpool, now the second port of Britain,
with a merchant fleet that ranged every part of
the Atlantic. The wars of a maritime power are

2o8 Age of Wars and Privateering

bound to be most deeply felt, for good or ill, hy
the people of the port towns. They bring divers
benefits, but they bring also many hardships. It
is the vessels of the port tovims that are exposed
to the ravages of the enemy's privateers, and their
captured sailors that must pine in the enemy's
prisons.

From the ports too, must be drawn the supply of
men for the manning of the national fleet. The
drain upon Liverpool for this purpose was very
heavy during this period. In 1795, for example,
Liverpool was suddenly required to provide over
1,700 sailors for the navy; and as a government will
take no denial in moments of national peril, no ships
were permitted to leave the port till the quota was
made up. Such immense and sudden demands
were not often made ; nevertheless the drain
was unceasing, and formed a serious handicap
to commerce. The corporation tried to stimulate
voluntary enlistment for the navy by offering
bounties — a guinea for every sailor, half-a-guinea
for a landsman ; then two guineas and a guinea ;
then, in desperation, ten guineas and five guineas.
But even with these inducements voluntary enlist-
ment was never sufficient to supply the demand.
Forced service had to be resorted to, and the
greatest of the hardships which Liverpool had to
endure during this age of war was the constant
presence of the press-gang, with all its violence
and injustice.

The length to which naval officers could go in
this age when their crews were incomplete may be

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The Press-gang 209

illustrated by a single episode. In 1759 H.M.S.
Vengeance arrived short-handed in the Mersey, and
lay in wait. Presently there entered the river a
whaling ship just home from the long Greenland
voyage. The cutters of the Vengeance boarded her,
and a lieutenant in command calmly ordered the
whole crew to go straight on board the warship
to serve His Majesty. The whalers, in sight of
their homes after a long voyage, angrily refused,
and with long blubber knives and harpoons drove
the man-o'-war's men back to their cutters, and
sailed on. The Vengeance pursued them with
cannon balls, several of which fell in various
parts of the town, fortunately without doing
damage. Immediately on landing, the whalers
hastened to the Custom House to get papers of
protection, but the Vengeance men followed them
and stormed the Custom House, firing pistols
in defiance of the protest of a magistrate who
was present. Most of their intended victims
scrambled through the windows and escaped,
but the captain and five others were seized and
enrolled as foremast hands. But still the warship
was not content. Another vessel came into the
river — a slave-ship, just returned from the round
trip to West Africa and Jamaica. The Vengeance
ordered her to heave to ; she tried to escape,
but was stopped ; and the whole of her crew and
officers, except the captain and first mate, were
impressed. When they came aboard, the first
action of the captain of the Vengeance was to
order them all to be stripped, tied up to gratings.

2IO Age of Wars and Privateering

and flogged. This was in sight of their homes.
Thus brought into a cheerful and patriotic frame
of mind, they sailed off for a two or three years'
cruise. This was an extreme case, but throughout
this 'period the fear of the press-gang was ever
present, and its activity was unceasing.

A second dread which continually haunted the
mind of ~ the Liverpool sailor in this age of war
was the dread of finding himself in a French
prison. How many Liverpool men suffered this
fate during the^course of these wars it is impossible
to say; the number must certainly have run into
the thousands. The hardships which the prisoners
had to endure were always great, often shameful.
We hear of their being plundered of the very
clothes upon their backs, ' put down in a dungeon
forty feet underground and not permitted fire or
candle,'^made-to pay for the straw they lay upon,
herded with ■ felons, Ul-fed, forbidden to have
any dealings;, with the inhabitants, even to pur-
chase food ; and though these descriptions doubt-
less represent the worst cases, the lot of the
prisoner of war, whether in France or England,
was" always a'.hard one. Some of these captives
achieved the most surprising escapes from prisons
in the heart of France ; and the stories of the
escaped sailors are no whit less thrilling than
Captain Marryat's tale of Peter Simple's escape
from his French prison.

But though war brought such hardships, it
called forth the most spirited gallantry among
these rude and turbulent seamen of old Liverpool.

The Seven Tears' War 211

The first of the series of great wars (known as the
Seven Years' War, 1756-1763) put the town upon
its mettle. For three successive years, at the
beginning of the war, England reaped nothing
but disaster. In earlier wars, as Liverpool had
found to her advantage, the Irish Sea at least
had been safe from the enemy. But now the
daring Thurot of Brest ventured into these
inviolate waters. He appeared off the Isle of
Man in 1758, lying in wait for vessels to or
from Liverpool, and scarcely a ship dare venture
out. He came and went mysteriously, no one
knew when or where ; now in the Irish Sea, now
ravaging the isles of Scotland. Even in the
annus mirabilis of 1759, when England was
triumphant in every quarter of the globe, her
mostj'private waters were insecure ; and it was
not till February of 1760 that the gaUant French-
man was finally disposed of, after doing immense
damage. While Thurot was hovering about,
Liverpool had to be on guard. She raised
volunteers, and mounted a battery of fourteen
guns in the churchyard of St. Nicholas. The
boldest of her privateers, Captain Hutchinson,
volunteered to lead a squadron of merchant
vessels against him in 1758, but somehow men
were slow to come forward, and before things were
ready, Thurot had vanished again.

During these years of disaster Liverpool trade
suffered terribly, not only from Thurot, but from
French warships and privateers further afield.
The voyage across the Atlantic had become very

212 Age of Wars and Privateering

dangerous ; and West Indian and African waters
were especially unsafe. But with the utmost
spirit Liverpool men threw themselves into the
business of privateering, that is to say, into
waging private war against the enemy for the
profits to be made out of plunder. There is no
record of the number of mercantile warships which
sallied out from Liverpool during the Seven
Years' War, but it was in this war that the
sailors of Liverpool gained the reputation of being
the boldest privateers in England. They brought
many noble prizes into the port ; they performed
many feats of high courage which we have not
space to record.

A brief narrative of a couple of cruises of the
most gallant of Liverpool privateers. Captain
WiUiam Hutchinson, must suffice as an example
of these adventurous enterprises. Hutchinson
knew his business well, for he had served in the
previous war as mate to Fortunatus Wright, a
hero whom he adored. In June 1757, when
England seemed whelmed in disaster, he sailed
from the Mersey in the privateer Liver-pool, a
fine quick-sailing vessel of twenty-two guns and
two hundred men. A week later he came upon
a bigger French ship, which, after a sharp fight,
he captured and took home to Liverpool with
her crew on board as prisoners. In July he
recaptured an English vessel under the very guns
of the French fort at Ushant, and sent her home ;
then chased a French privateer on to the rocks,
and sunk a fishing schooner, taking her crew

William Hutchinson, Privateer 213

prisoners. Joining company with another English
privateer, he next devised an impudent stratagem
for sailing into the very harbour of Bordeaux and
cutting out its richest vessels ; but before this
spirited plan could be executed, the allies met
three French ships, aU of which they captured.
The second privateer was sent off with these
vessels to Kinsale, while the Liverpool gave chase
to three other vessels which had hove in sight.
All three were captured, and though one was
lost near Milford on the way home, the other
two reached Liverpool safely, escorted by their
captor, now ready for a winter's rest.

Next year Hutchinson sallied out again, and this
time invaded the Mediterranean. Liverpool's first
news of him was that three captured French
vessels had been sent in by him to be sold at
Leghorn. Next came the rumour that the
gaUant privateer had himself been captured by
a French fleet. But before long this story was
contradicted by the tidings that a French priva-
teer worth 20,000 dollars had been sold by the
Liverpool at Cagliari in Sardinia. Then two
Dutch vessels, laden with West Indian com-
modities, arrived in Liverpool as Hutchinson's
prizes ; and finally, before the end of August,
Hutchinson himself arrived bringing with him
a handsome French privateer of about the same
size as his own vessel. Hutchinson was, perhaps,
the ablest and boldest of the Liverpool privateers.
After retiring from the sea he published a curiously
detailed series of instructions as to the best mode

214 ^^"^ °f Wars and Privateering

of fitting out merchant vessels for these warlike
purposes, which were of great use in later wars.

Few obtained such uniform success as Hutchin-
son ; though some found greater single prizes,
and some performed more dashing single exploits.
But it is obvious that Liverpool found a real
compensation for the woes caused by the dis-
location of her normal trade in the gains made
from these exciting raids. The game of privateer-
ing became immensely popular in the town.
There was never any difficulty in finding crews
for privateer ships, for one-third of the -profits
was divided among the seamen, and in this way
a foremast hand might suddenly become master
of a little fortune such as all the labour of a life-
time could scarcely have won for him.

In the later stages of this war the most dazzling
success attended the English arms. French and
Spanish ships almost vanished from the seas ;
French and Spanish lands fell into English hands.
For a time England was mistress of the West
Indies, and the trade of Liverpool leaped up
accordingly. Even when, at the peace of 1763,
many of these conquests were restored, the
advantage which commerce had obtained was
not lost ; England was established as beyond
rivalry the principal purveyor of tropical produce
to Europe ; and beyond rivalry Liverpool had
the lion's share in this development. The first
war had brought, in the end, nothing but intoxi-
cating success.

The interval of twelve years' peace between

Liverpool becomes Tory 215

the triumphs of the Seven Years' War and the
disasters of the American War is chiefly remarkable
first for the expansion of Liverpool's trade, at
a swifter pace than in any previous period ;
and, secondly, for the rise of acute political
diflEerences, which were to continue throughout
this age.

Hitherto Liverpool had been loyally and almost
unanimously Whig. But the great Whig nobles,
who for half a century had controlled the govern-
ment of England, had lost popular sympathy. All
England believed that it was their incompetence
which had inflicted upon the country the humilia-
tions of the early years of the war ; for all England
had seen how swiftly those humiliations were
replaced by the most dazzling triumphs from
the moment when Pitt, despite the Whigs'
hostility, forced his way into power. Now the
new and popular young king, George III, saw
his opportunity to overthrow for ever the
dominance of the Whig nobles in English politics.
He would have had most Englishmen on his side
if he had not shown a disposition to establish an
overweening power for himself. The struggle
raged round the case of John Wilkes, which is
no concern of ours, except that it formed a
rallying cry for a new grouping of parties, and
caused a general shifting of political allegiances.

In Liverpool the Town Council strongly took
the king's side, and sent up in 1769 a loyal address,
in which it reprobated the supporters of Wilkes
(who included all the greatest English statesmen)

2i6 Age of Wars and Privateering

as a ' faction of licentiousness under the mask of
liberty.' From this time the Town Council of
Liverpool may be regarded as being Tory in
politics, Toryism meaning the support of the
claims of the crown to larger powers. But not
all Liverpool was converted from its traditional
Whiggism, though the process of conversion had
begun. There was still at this period a Whig
majority among the freemen, as is shown by the
fact that Sir William Meredith, one of the most
active of the Whigs in the House of Commons,
sat for Liverpool until 1780. And when a
petition was sent up with 1,000 Liverpool signa-
tures demanding the dissolution of the obsequious
parliament which had been the king's instrument
against Wilkes, only 450 names could be found
for a counter-petition.

In the midst of the excitement about ' Wilkes
and Liberty,' England at large was strangely
inattentive to another vast issue which was
arising on the horizon — the question of the
taxation of America, involving the whole problem
of colonial administration. Not even Liverpool,
closely as her commerce bound her to the
American colonies, seems to have taken much
interest in the earlier stages of the quarrel. The
Liverpool merchants were a little alarmed when,
on the passage of the Stamp Act, the Americans
began to abstain from buying English goods,
and clamoured for the repeal of the act. But
they were as tardy as almost all other English-
men in seeing the real gravity of the situation

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The American War 217

created by the second attempt at taxation which
followed the repeal of the Stamp Act. It was
only in 1773, when the quarrel was already almost
irreconcilable, that they began to be seriously
perturbed, and then only because their commerce
was being damaged by the obstinacy of the
colonists on the one hand, and the haughty
insistence of the king and his ministers on the
other.

But, in spite of the tardy protests of the mer-
cantile community, things grew worse and worse,
until in the end England found herself drawn
into a miserable and fratricidal war, out of which
no advantage could be gained, but by which end-
less misery was inflicted. ' All commerce with
America is at an end,' moans a writer in Gore's
Advertiser in 1775, shortly after the commence-
ment of the war ; even ' our once extensive
trade to Africa is at a stand ' ; and the docks
are a mournful sight, fuU of ' gallant ships_ laid
up and useless.' When this lament was written
a British army was locked up in Boston, and an
American force was invading Canada ; while a
swarm of American privateers were haunting the
West Indies, and inflicting immense damage on
Liverpool commerce. The petitions which were
now sent up, though strongly worded, came too
late to be of any use. And even now the Town
Council remained firmly loyal— even when_ the
town was thus heavily suffering from the king's
foUy, it still sent up addresses reprobating the
wicked conduct of the Americans and expressing

21 8 Age of Wars and Privateering

its ' abhorrence and detestation of all traitorous
and rebellious disturbers of your majesty's peace.'

The war thus entered upon formed the most
disastrous epoch in the history of modern Liver-
pool and in the history of modern England. Dur-
ing the seven years for which it lasted the
population of the town actually decreased; every
branch of foreign trade declined, and the tonnage
of the port diminished from 84,792 to 79,450
tons.

The distress which was thus caused led, among
the turbulent and disorderly population who
were trained by slaving and privateering, to
disgraceful riots. The first of these, which broke
out in 1775, was probably the most serious mob
tumult of the eighteenth century, with the
exception of the Gordon riots in London — also,
it may be noted, a product of this period. There
are said to have been 3,000 idle sailors in the
port ; and the African merchants, whose trade
was suffering, sure that there would be no diffi-
culty in getting men, decided to reduce wages
from 30s. to 20s. -per mensem. Upon this the
sailors of a slaver in the river mutinied, cut the
rigging to pieces, and roused the crews of other
ships to mutiny also. Nine of the mutineers were
arrested and imprisoned in the Tower. There-
upon a mob of 2,000 armed sailors proceeded to
relieve them. The Riot Act was read in vain ;
and the authorities thought it safer to release
eight of their prisoners. But the rage of the
mob only rose the higher. They stormed the

The Riot of 1775 219

Tower and released the ninth prisoner. Then,
joined by all the unemployed and discontented
ruffians in the town, they roamed through the
streets, levying contributions from the trembling
townsmen. When the terms which they offered
to the authorities were refused, they proceeded
to violence, sacking shops, bursting their way
into public-houses, and tearing down the houses
of unpopular townsmen. So high did their
daring rise that they laid siege to the Town Hall,
which they swore to burn to the ground ; and
to show that these were not idle threats, they
brought up cannon from the ships, and, planting
them in Castle Street, began to bombard the
Town HaU. A small garrison resisted valiantly,
but probably it was only the drunkenness of the
mob that saved the building from destruction,
and, perhaps, averted a massacre. One of the
windows of the Town Hall is said to bear the
marks of the firing to-day. In the end it was
only after the mob had held the town for over
a week that they were reduced to obedience by
troops sent from Manchester.

This episode was an alarming proof of the
dangers that might accrue from the turbulent
character of the Liverpool populace and the in-
effective policing of the town. It probably had
much to do with the initiation of attempts to
improve the morals and manners of the poor which
began a few years later. But the restless and
disorderly temper shown in this riot continued
through the war : in 1777 the Council found it

220 Age of Wars and Privateering

necessary to appoint a police committee, which sat
daily, and advised all respectable persons, if they
wished to avoid arrest, not to leave their houses
at night ; in 1779 the Yorkshire militia, then on
garrison duty in Liverpool, had to be scattered in
detachments through the town to maintain order.

Grave enough during the early years of the
war, the military situation became desperate when
in 1778 France declared war, and in 1779 Spain
and Holland. England now stood alone against
the world ; and on all the seas where the Liver-
pool traders plied a treble horde of privateers and
hostile warships lay in wait. For the first time
the English navy absolutely lost command of the
seas, and dare scarcely venture out from the
Southern ports, while French fleets flaunted it
in the Channel. The traders of Liverpool were
now left to their own resources. And the peril
came very intimately home when the redoubtable
American sailor, Paul Jones, appeared in British
waters, and, with a daring greater than that of
Thurot, swooped down in succession upon one
point after another on the coast. When, in
September, 1779, he descended on Whitehaven
and destroyed its shipping, the danger was indeed
near.

The one redeeming feature of these depressing
years was the vigour, courage, and patriotism
with which Liverpool threw herself into the
struggle, especially after the French war had
been added to the American. A large round
fort was raised on the north shore, where the

Privateering in the American War 221

Prince's dock now is, with barracks for a force
of four or five hundred troops. In addition,
batteries were raised at the dock mouths. The
Corporation undertook in 1778 two-thirds of the
cost of raising and fitting out a regiment of
regular troops, to be called the Liverpool Blues,
and when the muster was called the regiment
numbered 1,100 men. Its senior officers were
borrowed from the regular army, but the subal-
terns were aU young Liverpool men. Among
them was Banastre Tarleton, who later in the
war gained a high reputation as a dashing cavalry
leader in America. The regiment was sent out
to garrison Jamaica. So terribly did it suffer
from the climate, that in 1784 only eighty- four
men returned alive to hang the colours in the
Town Hall. But this did not exhaust the patriot-
ism of Liverpool ; when things were at their
blackest in 1782, and a French invasion in force
seemed likely, the town also raised and equipped
at its own expense a corps of volunteers, officered
entirely by local merchants.

But it was above all in privateering that Liver-
pool found its consolation for all these Uls.
During the first or purely American period of
the war no privateers were sent out, probably
because American commerce was too small to
promise much plunder. But when the old foe,
France, came into the arena, at once there was
a fever of preparation. In six months no less
than 1 20 vessels were equipped, and we are
informed that prizes to the value of ^^100,000

222 Age of Wars and Privateering

were brought into the port within the first five
weeks of the campaign. Privateering, whose
intoxicating adventures and sometimes dazzling
profits formed the one gleam of brightness in
the murky sky, became a craze, a passion. It
was like gambling : there was always the chance
of a discovery like that which was made on the
French East Indiaman Carnatic, brought into
Liverpool in October, 1778, in which was found
a box of diamonds worth ^135,000 ' to the no
small satisfaction of the captors.' The whole
town flung itself into the enterprise. Everybody
took shares in ships ; fathers invested on behalf
of their children, and Mr. James Stonehouse,
in his old age, recorded how he was taken down
as a child to be shown over the fighting ship
of which he was part proprietor.

There were losses as well as gains, and heavy
ones; but on the whole the privateers did well.
Certainly they conducted themselves heroically.
Hear the opinion of the American privateer.
Captain Darling, who crawled into Martinique to
refit in March, 1778, after being battered about
for half the night hj an English vessel. They told
him that his enemy was the Isabella of Liverpool,
a boat of half his size, with a crew of fifty against
his 135. ' He expressed great surprise . . . . ;
acknowledged he was obliged to sheer off, and
that it was the second drubbing he had got
from Liverpool men, and wished not to meet with
any more armed vessels from that port.' The
West Indian newspaper which reports the story

Privateering Adventures 223

goes on to say that he was quite right, for ' the
merchants of Liverpool have entered more into
the spirit of arming ships than any others in
England.' The little Isabella, which had taught
such a lesson to Captain Darling, had received
132 shots in the hull and masts; yet, being
attacked next day by two more American ships,
one considerably larger than herself, ' We got
our stern chaces to bear on them, and began to
fire away, our people stiU in good spirits ; the
third shot we carried away the brig's cross-
jackyard, sent several shots into her bows and
rigging, and beat them both off.'

Liverpool might weU be proud of such men, even
if they limped home with wounded rigging and
without prizes : stiU more when they brought with
them such honour as the little Ellen. This vessel,
with sixty-four men aboard, many of them pass-
engers, fought a sloop-of-war of the Spanish royal
navy, manned by over 100 men, and forced him to
haul down his colours and come trailing as a
captive into Kingston harbour. It is said that
over 3,000 sailors were employed on the Liverpool
privateers during this war. If to that number
we add the 1, 1 00 of the regiment, the sailors
supplied to the royal navy, and the volunteers
ashore, Liverpool's contribution to the defence
of the country in these dark years was no mean one.

But for aU the glory and profit of privateering,
the townsmen of Liverpool were profoundly
thankful when peace returned, and ordinary
commerce could be resumed. They were almost

224 '^^^ ^i^ ^f ^^^-f ^>^d Privateering

as relieved as the French captives who had been
locked up for a longer or shorter time either in
the Tower or in the old powder magazine on
Brownlow HiU, just where RusseU Street is to-day.
Three of these prisoners had somehow managed to
escape from the Tower, letting themselves down
from a window over Prison Weint, and then
vanishing into the night. Now all might follow
their adventurous fellows ; and the numerous
Liverpool men in French prisons might come
home ; and the ships might again ply the Atlantic
securely. Trade leaped into prosperity once
more, and the population and shipping of the
port began again to advance.

The interval of ten years' peace which separated
this war from the war of the French Revolution
is marked by several events of importance in the
history of the town. And first, it was an age of
hard-fought and stirring parliamentary elections.
The election of 1780, in which both of the Whig
members were thrown out, had shown that, in
spite of the town's sufferings, it had become Tory,
and had no support to give to the Whigs who
opposed the war. The election of 1784 showed
that this temper still continued. For though
Colonel Tarleton, a popular hero who had been
wounded in the American war, and whose breezy
manner endeared him to the mob, was a candidate
in the Whig interest, he failed to secure his
election : Bamber Gascoyne of Childwall, a dull
rich nonentity, who is of interest to this generation
chiefly because Lord Salisbury's Liverpool estates

Outbreak of the French Revolution 225

came by inheritance from liim, was preferred before
the local hero, disgraced as he was by the friend-
ship of Charles James Fox and the Whig Prince of
Wales. This election was disfigured by riots, which
showed that the turbulence of the mob had not
ended with the war. Mr. James Gildar t, a merchant
who had made himself somehow unpopular,
had his house ' broke to pieces ; all the windows,
shutters, and even iron bars are broke ; and
they cut the window curtains with cutlasses all
to bits, tore up and destroyed the palisades and
wall before the house.' Here is the rough side
of the privateering heroes.

Before long the shadow of the French Revo-
lution began to disturb Liverpool, as it disturbed
all Europe. At first most people regarded the
rise of liberty in France with delight ; and the
earliest result was that the Whigs of Liverpool
were reinvigorated, and Colonel Tarleton carried
the election of 1790. The little group of
cultivated Whigs who formed, in this period,
the pleasantest feature of Liverpool society,
and among whom William Roscoe, Dr. Currie
and William Rathbone were the chief, watched
the progress of reform in France with enthusiasm.
For a banquet held in 1791 to celebrate the second
anniversary of the fall of the Bastille, Roscoe wrote
perhaps the best of his verses, the song which
begins : —

' O'er the vine-covered liills and gay valleys of France
See the Day-star of Liberty rise ! '

and there was an atmosphere of enthusiasm and

226 Age of Wars and Privateering

hope among all the reformers, who saw many
things to amend in the "state of England and
of Liverpool, and hoped for much from the
example of France.

But others besides the orthodox Whigs were
moved by this great event, and it is to the
influence of the French Revolution that we must
attribute a new and systematic attack which
was directed, in 179 1, against the monopoly of
power by the self-elected Town Council. The
mayor, on the requisition of many of the principal
merchants of the town, Whigs and Tories alike,
called an Assembly of Burgesses in the ancient
manner, so long disused. By-laws were passed,
members were elected to vacant places in the
Council, the treasurer was summoned to submit
his accounts to a public audit, and, on refusing,
fined ^^5, which he declined to pay. He was
prosecuted for the fine, and on this small issue
the great question came into the courts of law.
It was fought out with the greatest gravity and
learning ; the most eminent lawyers of the day
were engaged on both sides ; and all the archives
and records of the early history of the town,
ransacked by the industry of Henry Brown, a
learned old antiquarian lawyer, were laid before
the court. The verdict went in favour of the
reformers ; but the Town Council got a fresh
trial. Three times over was the case tried,
the ancient records sifted and tested ; on each
occasion the Council was defeated, on each
occasion it obtained a fresh trial on technical

Revolt against the Town Council 227

grounds. But by this time the first enthusiasm
for reform which the French Revolution had
produced had been turned into alarm by the
excesses of the revolutionary leaders in France.
The reforming party lost heart and gave up the
fight, and the Town Council was left in possession
of absolute power, which it retained undisturbed
until 1835.

This episode supplies a striking demonstration
of the rapidity with which opinion about the
revolution was changing. In 1790 everybody
had regarded it, if not with enthusiasm, at any
rate without alarm. But in 1792 the Town
Council, in one of its loyal addresses, told the
king that it ' observed with concern the prevalence
of wild and delusive theories tending to weaken
the sentiments of obedience to the laws.' Next
year the great war had begun, and henceforward
aU Whigs and reformers were under a cloud.
Roscoe and Currie protested in speech and in
writing against the war, which they believed to
be unnecessary and unjust. But their words had
no influence over the majority of the people of
Liverpool. Like the majority of people else-
where, they had fallen into a panic. They were
convinced that anyone who desired reform was
capable of executing the king. They were ready
to suspect anyone of plots and conspiracies to
overthrow ' our glorious constitution.' They
even welcomed the extraordinary series of enact-
ments for the repression of all public discussion,
which the government had persuaded itself to be

228 Age of Wars and Privateering

necessary. They were convinced that civilisation
would be destroyed unless the French monsters
were annihilated. Roscoe and Currie and their
friends might protest in vain ; they were swept
off their feet by the frenzy of popular enthusiasm
for war, and popular fear of conspirators and
reformers. So great was the panic that a little
society which these gentlemen had formed for
the discussion of Italian literature had to be
given up, owing to the popular distrust of ' secret
societies.' So Liverpool settled down to a new
war in a temper widely different from that in
which she had entered upon any previous war,
and with an amazing intolerance for all difference
of view. It is true that Colonel Tarleton was
still able to keep his seat in 1796 ; but it was only
his personal popularity that saved him, and the
election was marked by an acrimony and a
virulence hitherto unknown. The great earth-
quake had begun.

The first effect of the opening of the war in
Liverpool, as elsewhere, was the outbreak of a
commercial panic. One of the three banks in
the town had to close its doors, and the others
might have followed but for the prompt action
of the principal merchants, who calmed the panic
by announcing their perfect confidence in the
surviving banks, and their readiness to accept in
payment of all biUs the private notes which
provincial banks were at that time permitted to
issue. The corporation, too, helped to tide over
the difficulty by obtaining parliamentary powers

War of the French Revolution 229

to issue notes of its own up to the value of
^^300,000, on the security of the corporate estate.
It was never necessary to use these powers to
their full extent, and after a short time the
private negotiable notes of the corporation of
Liverpool were called in, having fuUy served
their purpose of calming the commercial stress
which had resulted from sudden panic.

In spite of these troubles, however, Liverpool
made vigorous preparations to take her part in
this, as in the preceding wars. On the invitation
of the government, a deputation of merchants
went up to London to consult with Mr. Pitt as
to the means to be taken for the protection of
the port and its trade ; and once more privateer-
ing became active. Within five months of the
declaration of war, sixty-seven Liverpool priva-
teers were either at sea or ready to start, and
the number was greatly increased later. At first
they reaped a rich harvest, and a large number
of French prizes and prisoners were brought
into the port. But after a while, for the
most satisfactory reasons, privateering declined.
French commerce had been practically annihila-
ted, and there was no profit to be got from
privateering. Throughout this war the Liver-
pool privateers were never so industrious,
nor was their business so profitable, as during
the American War. For privateering is essentially
the desperate resource of the weaker power, and
is only effective against a state whose merchant
vessels are able to hold the sea. Consequently

230 Age of Wars and Privateering

it was now the French who were most busy in
this way ; French privateers, swift, well-armed,
and crammed with fierce and reckless men,
haunted the highways of commerce, and the task
of hunting them down gave employment to a
large part of the British fleet. But the Liverpool
vessels, though they for the most part abandoned
the adventurous game of privateering and devoted
themselves to ordinary trade, still had frequent
opportunities of excitement and adventure, for
they had to be ready at all times to deal with
armed French vessels.

Of the innumerable stories of battle and
heroism which the trading annals of Liverpool
for these years contain, a couple of examples
must suffice to illustrate the dangers which the
trader had to expect to encounter. One of these
stories relates the surprising adventure of the
packet boat Windsor Castle, a tale so astounding
that it is difficult to believe it. This vessel was
in 1807 bound from Liverpool to the West Indies
under the temporary command of a young
Captain Rogers, when it was attacked by the
French privateer Le Jeune Richard. The French-
man had a crew of 109, the Windsor Castle only
twenty-seven men and boys. By the first broad-
side the English ship lost ten men Hlled and
wounded ; but after a desperate struggle the
remaining seventeen captured Le Jeune Richard,
killing twenty-six men and taking sixty prisoners,
half of whom were wounded. In the last half-
hour of the fight Rogers was left with ten

French Prisoners in Liverpool 231

unwounded men, and the final scene saw him
board the privateer and charge triumphantly
down its decks at the head of four men. Less
dazzling than this extraordinary fight, but more
credible, and perhaps equally creditable, was
the adventure of the snow Shaw in i8o8. The
captain of this vessel, one Hymers, reported to
his owners that he had been attacked by a French
privateer much larger than the Shaw, and
crammed with men. After a desperate fight,
Captain Hymers came to the end of his ammuni-
tion ; but he and all his men pulled off their
stockings, and filling them with nails, scraps of
iron and carpenters' tools, fired off a final volley
which fortunately drove off the enemy.

Such men were well able to take care of them-
selves. Yet many Liverpool sailors, as in previous
wars, pined in French prisons. But they were
probably less numerous than the French prisoners
in Liverpool. In previous wars the old Tower
and the powder magazine on Brownlow Hill
had been sufficient to contain aU who were
brought captive into the town. But in 1793 the
government found it necessary to hire from the
corporation the new Borough Gaol which had
been built in Great Howard Street in 1786, but
had not yet been used. Even this, however,
was insufficient to accommodate the prisoners,
who in 1799 numbered no less than 4,009, These
French prisoners were indeed a feature of Liver-
pool during the war. Cheerful and resourceful,
they acted little plays which the townsmen

232 Age of Wars and Privateering

went to see, and added to their comforts by the
manufacture and sale of ingenious and pretty-
toys. One prisoner, who was released at the
brief peace of Amiens in 1802, was said to have
made no less than three hundred guineas by this
means.

Though privateering was decaying, the press-
gang was more active during this war than ever
before. The Princess, a permanent guardship
for pressed men and volunteers, lay in the river
opposite the George's Dock, and the press-gang,
selected from among the most fierce and unscru-
pulous sailors in the navy, had recognised rendez-
vous in two or three places of the town. Sailors
lived, indeed, in perpetual terror for their
liberty during these j^ears : on sea their ships, if
they escaped the privateers, were liable to be
stopped and robbed of their crews by British
warships, and when they came ashore the press-
gang awaited them. Their favourite haunts,
the inns in Pool Lane or South Castle Street,
were dangerous, not only because of the presence
of the press-gang, but because their hostesses,
willing to hide the men while their money lasted,
were often ready to sell them when their purses
were empty. Often the sailors of incoming
vessels would leap into the river as they entered
the Mersey, and swim to the Cheshire shore.
Here a celebrated innkeeper, romantically named
Mother Redcap, whose house lay on the Liscard
shore, was famous as the friend of the hunted
sailor-men, and strange scenes must often have

Volunteers in the Revolutionary War 233

been witnessed in her sanded kitchen, dense with
smoke, and crowded with rough and fierce men.
Mother Redcap had subterranean hiding-places
for them, and credulous people believed that the
caves in the Red Noses at New Brighton ran
underground as far as her inn.

It was in the raising of troops and the organi-
sation of volunteers that the patriotism of
Liverpool especially exhibited itself during this
war. In the first years of the war, when France
stood alone against the world and her navy was
helpless, the danger of invasion seemed remote
and little was done to prepare for it. But when,
in 1796, the naval forces of Holland and Spain
were joined to those of France, and the main
strength of the confederacy was turned against
England, the danger became serious. How
serious was shown in February 1797, when news
reached Liverpool that a French army had
landed at Fishguard, in South Wales. At once
volunteers were called for, and in four days
1,000 men were enrolled and armed. Fifty guns
were mounted on the fort, which still stood on
the shore, near where the Prince's Dock now is ;
batteries were erected at the mouths of the docks
and at points along the coast ; vessels, mounted
with guns, were moored at the mouth of the
river to serve as floating batteries, and pilot
boats were sent to reconnoitre for the enemy.
The alarm turned out to be needless ; the small
force which had been landed was quickly forced
to surrender.

234 ^K^ °f Wars and Privateering

But the impetus to the military spirit of the
town was not lost. In the spring of the same
year seven companies of Liverpool yeomanry
were raised. In the next year, when a rebellion
was threatened in Ireland, and there was reason
to expect an invasion by a French army of 35,000
men, convoyed by the combined fleets of France,
Spain and Holland, 2,000 volunteers were raised
in Liverpool; they remained under arms until after
the Peace of Amiens in 1802. Their disbandment
then was short sighted, for in the next year war was
recommenced on a more gigantic scale than ever :
and, realising that the whole might of Napoleon
was now to be turned upon England, the entire
country became one vast camp of volunteers.
In Liverpool volunteer forces were now raised
on a larger scale than ever ; at a review held in
1804 no less than 180 officers and 3686 men
paraded, including a regiment of artillery from
among the boatmen on the river. Not content
with this, Mr. John Bolton, one of the wealthiest
and most spirited of Liverpool merchants, raised
and equipped at his own sole expense a regiment
of 800 regulars, enlisted in the town ; and the
whole male population between the ages of
sixteen and sixty was registered to be called out
in case of need. To command aU these forces
Prince William, afterwards Duke of Gloucester,
was sent to Liverpool and took up his quarters
at St. Domingo House, Everton, where for three
years Liverpool society had the unwonted luxury
of a court.

A False Alarm 235

The enthusiasm of the new levies was soon
tested. On the night of January 2, 1804, firing
was heard in the river from the guardship
Princess. The town very promptly took the
alarm — the bugles sounded, the various corps
mustered in haste at the appointed rendezvous ;
the streets echoed to the clatter of half-awakened
cavalry and the rattle of artillery : in short, the
scenes described by Scott in a famous chapter
of the Antiquary were enacted in full. When
morning dawned it was found that the guns had
only been signals for aid from the guardship,
which had drifted from her moorings, but the
episode had served to prove the readiness of the
citizen-soldiers.

These preparations turned out to be greater
than the occasion demanded; and when Trafalgar
removed for ever the danger of invasion, the
greater part of the forces was disbanded.
From that date the fear of the landing of hostile
forces ceased to haunt men. In the last
ten years of the war the English navy was left
in absolute command of aU the seas ; oversea
traffic went on almost unmolested, and at first
throve greatly because of the destruction of all
rivalry.

But before long the diabolical ingenuity of
Napoleon invented a new form of war, which
inflicted greater damage upon the trade of the
port than anything that had gone before. Unable
to overcome English naval supremacy, Napoleon
resolved to use his vast power to exclude all

236 Age of Wars and Privateering

English vessels from continental ports and so
cut away the roots of his enemy's strength by
annihilating her commerce, England replied by
declaring the whole continent in a state of
blockade, and by forbidding the ships of neutral
powers to trade with Napoleon's subjects or
allies on pain of confiscation, unless they first
called at a British port, in which case they would
be exposed, equally with their British rivals,
to the vengeance of the great dictator.

The. results of this tremendous duel were
immediate and immense. English trade was not,
and could not be, destroyed, for the commodities
of which Liverpool was now the principal purveyor
— the textiles of Manchester and the sugar and
tobacco of the West Indies — had become necessi-
ties. The trade continued by means of smuggling
on an immense scale. But of course its volume
was much diminished ; and the risks were so
great that while a successful venture brought a
fortune to the merchant who engaged in it,
many were ruined by the seizure of their goods
when the smuggling adventure was unsuccessful.
The result in Liverpool was, of course, a serious
sudden shrinkage in trade. In the year 1807
the trade of the port declined by one-fourth.
From this came terrible distress to the poorer
classes in the town, many hundreds of whom
were left without employment while the prices
of necessities of life rose daily. Already, in
1 800, it had been necessary to raise by subscription
a fund of _^i 0,000 for the purchase of potatoes.

The American War of 1812 237

and of ^20,000 for the purchase of other provisions
for the relief of the destitute poor in Liverpool.
Now the distress became so great that we find a
series of recommendations being issued to all
householders urging the disuse of aU pastry, and
the most rigid econoniy in potatoes and in fodder
for horses, in order that the poor might be
supplied.

What aggravated the evil was that the shipping
of neutral powers could not be utilised. But
for the action of the English government, our
trade would have been diverted rather than
diminished ; for the products of America and
the West Indies, and of the looms of Lancashire,
would have been carried to neutral ports, and
thence shipped to European ports. For this
reason many of the leading merchants of Liver-
pool protested with unvarying earnestness against
the British Orders in Council, though the town
councU stiU remained unflinchingly loyal. In
the end these protests were successful. The
Orders in Council were withdrawn, but not
before they had brought on a needless and
disastrous war with the United States, which
did more harm to the trade of Liverpool than
the navies and privateers of France had ever
inflicted.

America, finding her trade crushed out of
existence between the upper and the nether
millstone of Napoleon's mastery on land and
English supremacy by sea, after vain protests
against the injustice of a system whereby her

238 Age of Wars and Privateering

ships were liable to seizure if they entered any
European port, declared war. The immediate
result to the trade of Liverpool was disastrous.
The number of ships entering the port sank from
6,729 in 1810, to 4,599 in 1812. What was
worse, America, precluded from peaceful trade,
and unable to face the British navy in a direct
struggle, threw all her strength into privateering,
and displayed in this enterprise quite amazing
daring and skill. Large and heavily armed
American privateers haunted the West Indies,
the African coasts, and even the British home
waters. The True-blooded Yankee, one of the
most daring and successful of these vessels,
made the Irish Sea its beat during two years ;
and the scale on which its depredations were
conducted may be illustrated by the fact that
in one cruise of thirty-seven days it captured no
less than twenty-seven vessels.

The miserable American war, out of which
neither profit nor honour were to be acquired,
caused more^^distress and aroused more exasper-
ation in Liverpool than any preceding war.
Nevertheless, the steady loyalty of the town
to the party in power was strikingly exhibited
in the great parliamentary election of 181 2,
the most exciting ever fought in Liverpool. The
candidates on the Whig side were Brougham
and Creevey the diarist, who was a Liverpool
man ; on the Tory side Canning and the old
sitting member General Gascoyne ; but prac-
tically the election was a duel between Brougham

7he Canning-Brougham Election 239

and Canning, the two most brilliant orators and
most dazzling political figures of their age.

Seldom can any electorate, in any constituency,
have been the auditors of oratory of such quality
as these two great men poured forth daily on the
hustings, and nightly from the windows of their
respective hosts' houses — Brougham in Clayton
Square, Canning at the house of Sir John
Gladstone in Rodney Street, where a small
child, then three years old, WiUiam Ewart
Gladstone, began to acquire that veneration for
the golden-tongued statesman which was the
governing factor of his early political life.
Brougham had in his favour the fact that he
had been for more than four years the pertinacious
opponent of the obnoxious Orders in Council,
which, thanks to his efforts, had just been repealed.
The wide spread distress, not unreasonably
attributed to the action of government, was his
ally. He had the whole hearted support of one
who had by this time become the most deeply
respected man in Liverpool, William Roscoe.
But the Toryism of Liverpool was so deep-rooted
that Canning was returned to power by a large
majority, and honoured the town (never accus-
tomed to much distinction in its representatives)
by retaining his seat until 1823.

But for all its fervent loyalty and patriotism,
Liverpool longed for peace ; and when peace came,
after the most gigantic war history has ever seen,
a war that had lasted for twenty-two years, the
rejoicings were commensurate with the delight

Gains from the Age of War 241

war had brought to Liverpool many great gains.
These long and desperate fights had left England
supreme on the seas, the only European power
with vast interests beyond the seas, possessed of
a mercantile marine so immeasurably superior to
those of all the other powers that she might
almost be called the single maritime power of the
world, the monopolist of sea-going trade. In that
practical monopoly Liverpool had an immense,
and was to have a still greater, share. It was
something that she had herself borne her full
part in the fightings and the labours by which
these gains were acquired.

242

CHAPTER XIV

Inventions and Commercial Advance
1760-1835

' I HAD before and often been at the principal
seaports in this island, and believing that, having
seen Bristol and those other towns that justly
pass for 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 place which stands like another Venice
on the waters — which is intersected by those
numerous docks — which glitters with those cheer-
ful habitations of well-protected men — which is
the busy seat of trade, and the gay scene of
elegant amusements growing out of its prosperity
— where there is the cheerful face of industry —
where there are riches overflowing and everything
which can delight a man who wishes to see the
prosperity of a great community and a great
empire ; all this has been executed by the
industry and well-disciplined management of a
small number of men since you were a boy."

Growth of Population 243

I must have been a stock or a stone not to be
affected by such a picture.'

Such was the impression made upon the mind of
the eloquent Erskine hy the Liverpool of 1792.
The wealth and greatness of a port ' fit to be a
proud capital for any empire in the world ' had
' started up like an enchanted palace, even in
the memory of living men.' So dazzling, in
the eyes of contemporaries, seemed the progress
of the town in the second half of the eighteenth
century. Yet the progress of the next generation
was more rapid still, and the next generation
after that surpassed its predecessors. When
Erskine spoke in 1792 the population of the town
was about 60,000, having more than doubled since
1760. In 1 83 1 the population of the borough,
within the old limits, had risen to 165,000 ; but
these limits were being overflowed, and in
the populous suburbs which were growing up in
Everton, West Derby and Toxteth there dwelt
already over 40,000 more. At the northern
end of Toxteth Park the glades of the one-time
forest had given place to a dense mass of mean
streets, planned by Lord Sefton in 1775, as a
means of obtaining a share in the prosperity
of the thriving town, but not in any way under
the control or oversight of the borough authori-
ties. J • ir •

The population had thus trebled itself m
about thirty years, and this growth represents
an inrush of population from the rural districts
of a kind hitherto unknown in England. The

244 Inventions and. Commercial Advance

newcomers who came to inhabit the mean, dirty
and crowded streets represented every part of
the British Isles, and a writer of 1795 especially
remarks ' the great influx of Irish and Welsh, of
whom the majority of the inhabitants at present
consists.' It was, however, after the miseries of
the rebellion of 1798 that the immigration of
poor Irishmen began on a large scale, continuing
without cessation until it was relieved by the
beginning of wholesale emigration to America.
Scotsmen were not so numerous as either
Irishmen or Welshmen, and it was not until 1793
that the first ' Scotch Church ' (that in Oldham
Street) was opened in a town that is now said
to be the most Presbyterian, and therefore the
most Scottish, south of the Border. Yet a
surprisingly large number of Scottish names are
to be found among the principal trading houses,
and John Gladstone, who came to Liverpool in
1787, and had risen by the end of the century
to be one of the outstanding merchant princes
of the town, may be taken as an example of
many Scottish youths for whom the ever-inviting
southern road led to Liverpool and fortune.
Many also of the most successful captains of
packet-boats, privateers and slavers were Scots-
men, coming especially from Galloway and the
south-west of Scotland, a district which then
and for long after looked to Liverpool rather
than to Glasgow as its principal market.

The progress of the period is still more strikingly
shown in the figures for the growth of shipping.

Increase of Trade 245

In 1 75 1 Liverpool owned 220 ships of 19,175
tons, worked by 3,319 men. In 1801 the number
of ships was 821 and the number of men 12,315,
each having multiplied nearly fourfold ; while
the tonnage, 129,470, was over six times as
large as fifty years before. The magnitude of the
increase is yet more evident if we take the total
of inward and outward tonnage, not merely
that belonging to Liverpool ; this is a fairer test
of the progress of a port, especially in time
of war. In 1751 the total tonnage of the British
and foreign vessels that entered or left the port
during the year amounted to 65,406 ; in 1791,
(just before the French war) to 539,676 ; in 1835
to 1,768,426. The same story is told by every
other set of figures. In 1780 the customs
collector is reported to have exclaimed, ' How
happy I should be if the customs of Liverpool
amounted to over ^^100,000 ! ' In that year they
were worth about ^80,000. But in 1823, just
before the substantial reductions in duties made
by Huskisson, they brought in ^1,808,402.

One necessary and immediate result of this
immense growth was a steady expansion of the
dock system, which, until 1825, continued to be
owned and directed by the Town Council. In
1760 the only docks existing were the Old Dock
(on the site of the present day Custom-house) with
its neighbouring tidal basin, and the Salthouse
Dock, opened in 1753. The total area of these
two docks amounted to not much more than
eight acres. But during the age of war — the sixty

±^6 inventions and Commercial Advance

years from 1756 to 1815 — four new docks were
opened, with, an area (excluding tidal basins) of
over twenty-one acres. When peace came, pro-
gress was still more rapid, and the twenty years
from 1815 to 1835 saw the opening of eight new
docks, with an area of over forty-five acres.
Thus, in the period covered by this chapter, the
dock area of the port had multiplied nine times,
rising from eight acres to seventy-two acres, in
spite of the fact that the first of the series, the
Old Dock, was closed in 1826.

This is an extraordinary development to have
been achieved largely during the strain of almost
unceasing and world-wide wars. As we have seen
in the last chapter, these wars aided rather than
retarded the growth of Liverpool's commerce
by destroying foreign rivalry and giving to the
traders of Liverpool a securer hold on the trade
of all lands beyond the Atlantic. But the wars
in themselves are wholly inadequate to explain
this expansion.

Nor did the industries of Liverpool itself bear
any appreciable part in it. Some of them, indeed,
underwent a serious decline during these years.
The great pottery business was steadily decaying,
most of the Liverpool workmen in the finer kinds
of china having migrated to Staffordshire, whence
they were brought in large numbers on coaches to
vote at parliamentary elections. In 1 796, indeed, the
large Herculaneum pottery works were opened in
Toxteth Park, on the site of the dock to which they
bequeath their name. But the enterprise was never

Liver-pool Industries i^j

very successful. Shipbuilding was at its height
during the last quarter of the eighteenth century,
and the yards to north and south of the docks,
famous for the slaving clippers which they turned
out, were employed between 1778 and 181 1
for the building of no less than twenty-one
vessels of various types for the royal navy.* But
from that time the shipbuilding industry, for
undiscoverable reasons, slowly decayed. This
period also saw the rise and fall of a special
industry — the whale fishery and the oil refineries
based upon it. It was in 1764 that the Green-
land whale fishery began, with three vessels. It
reached its height in 1788, when twenty-one
ships of 6,485 tons left Liverpool for Greenland ;
but between 1 8 10 and 1816 there were only two
whalers belonging to the port, and in 1823 the
last survivor made its last voyage. While it
continued, this fishery gave employment to a
large oil refining factory at the bottom of Green-
land Street, beside the Queen's Dock. The
herring fishery also gave a good deal of employ-
ment ; several curing houses existed in the town,
at work for the export trade to the Mediterranean.
But this branch of industry had been at its height
about the year 1770 ; it gradually deserted the
port, to be concentrated at the east coast ports,
and had entirely vanished by 1835. There were
two or three iron-foundries, but they could not
stand the competition of the coal-field towns

• During this period every tree on Lord Sefton's estritcs was felled.

248 Inventions and Commerciat Advance

when coal began to be used for smelting. Two or
three cotton miUs also were started during these
years, but they failed, as for some unknown
reason the same industry has always failed here.
Sugar-baking and rope-making, the earliest of
Liverpool industries, were still prosperous, but
apart from these perhaps the only really thriving
industry of Liverpool was watchmaking, which
employed nearly 2,000 hands about the year 1 800,
and had so high a reputation that there was a
considerable export of watch movements to
America and even to Geneva. At that date
Liverpool produced on the average 150 watches
every week.

But these minor industries, most of them
ephemeral and unsuccessful, do not help to
explain the immense advance of the port. The
real cause was that this age, besides being the
age of titanic wars, was the great age of engineer-
ing triumphs and mechanical inventions. It
was the age of the triumph of mechanism, of
coal, and of steam, which, between them, were
to transform the face of England. The great
wars tended, perhaps, to retard the portentous
results of the revolution which these new forces
were bringing about, and the wars certainly
accentuated the bitterness of distress which was
the inevitable result of a sudden transformation
in the economic organisation of society. But
the wars also had the effect of giving to England
almost a complete monopoly of their advantages.
She alone enjoyed domestic peace, she alone

the Industrial Revolution 249

was secure from the devastations of invading
armies ; and thus encouraged, she established
that industrial ascendancy which even a century
has not overthrown. No town in all England
profited more directly from this vast revolution
than Liverpool, for Liverpool was the natural
exporting centre for the wide district which it
most immediately affected.

It is no part of our concern in this narrative
to repeat in any detail the often-told story of
the series of great inventions which distinguished
this period. But its principal aspects must be
briefly noted, because they supply the explanation
of Liverpool's amazing progress. The most
important of these inventions were those by
which machinery was applied to the processes
of textile manufacture. Hitherto the rough
woollens of Yorkshire, or the mixed wooUen,
linen and cotton fabrics of Lancashire, had been
spun by the labour of women on the pre-historic
wheel, and woven on the hand-looms of cottagers.
But the hand-labour of the woman at the spinning
wheel could not produce from the fragile staple
of cotton a yarn fine enough to form the weft of
cloth, so that a linen weft always had to be com-
bined with a cotton warp ; while it was impossible
for the spinner to produce yarn fast enough to
keep the weaver employed. Between 1767 and
1780 the successive inventions of Hargreaves,
Arkwright and Crompton completely changed
all this. Yarn could be spun by their machines
so fine that linen yarn need no longer be used ;

250 Inventions and Commercial Advance

so cheaply that the demand for it multiplied
amazingly ; and so abundantly that the weaver
could no longer keep pace with the supply of
yarn. Then Cartwright invented the power
loom, which enabled one man to weave as much
as ten, and centred the industry where water
power could be got. And finally Watt's supreme
invention, the application of steam to machinery,
brought the culmination of the change. Factories
rose like mushrooms wherever coal could be
cheaply got, especially on the Lancashire coalfield
whose moist climate was favourable for spinning.

The woollen industry profited from these inven-
tions almost equally with the cotton industry,
and Yorkshire, possessing coal, swiftly leaped
ahead of its old rivals in the south. A little
earlier, the long-sought mode of smelting iron
by means of coal instead of wood was discovered
by Smeaton ; the British iron trade, which was
decaying because wood was becoming scanty,
became suddenly a hundred-fold more active,
and the Western Midlands, like Lancashire,
became busy and populous. To this period, also,
belong those great improvements in the manufac-
ture of pottery and glass which brought sudden
wealth to Staffordshire and South Lancashire.

In every industry the last forty years of the
eighteenth century formed the beginning of a
new era. In every industry easy access to coal
became supremely important. It is the beginning
of the Age of Coal, and all those districts beneath
whose soil coal lay hidden festered into hideous

Commercial Importance of the North 25 1

and swarming towns. In a single generation
the balance of wealth and population passed from
the south of England to the north and the western
midlands, which had hitherto formed much
the less important half of the country. The
products of these regions henceforth constitute
the principal sources of English wealth, and for
the greater part of them Liverpool was the
exporting centre and the market for raw materials.
Nearly the whole area within which these
astounding activities were being established lay
within a hundred miles of her harbour ; and
there was no port which could seriously rival
her in handling their products. Thus, while
the great wars were driving the foreign rivals of
Liverpool from the seas, the great inventions were
turning her into the chief distributing centre of
a new Industrial England.

But there were other developments, going
on side by side with these, which forwarded
and aided them, and which had an almost equally
profound influence on the progress of Liverpool.
The first of these was the beginning of the growth
of the United States of America, destined soon to
replace Africa and the West Indies as the principal
foreign markets for English commodities, and the
principal sources of supply for raw materials.
The development of America came in time to
compensate Liverpool for the loss of the African
slave trade, abolished in 1807. It was only in
the last years of the eighteenth century that
companies of emigrants from New England and

252 Inventions and Commercial Advance

the Southern States began to pour through the
hitherto seldom penetrated gorges of the Alle-
ghanies, and to settle on the prairies of Kentucky
and Tennessee, and in the rich cornlands of
Ohio and western New York.

A still more remarkable expansion was the direct
outcome of the Napoleonic wars. In the year
1803 Napoleon, desirous of making a friend
of the young western nation and at the same
time striking a blow at the colonial ambitions
of England, sold to the United States the French
colony of Louisiana, then regarded as including
the greater part of the uninhabited Mississippi
vaUey. The Louisiana purchase, whose centenary
was celebrated only the other day by the great
exposition of St. Louis, threw open to the rising
energy of the Americans the vast and fertile
lands which have since become the greatest
cotton-producing area in the world. Thus,
just at the time when mechanical inventions were
producing in England an unparalleled demand
for raw cotton, an immense new field of supply
was thrown open, which quickly displaced all the
earlier fields.

To take advantage of these opportunities a
great tide of emigration began to pour over the
Atlantic, chiefly from England, driven forth by
the suffering caused by the combination of a tre-
mendous war with the distresses and disturbances
of the industrial revolution. Until the beginning
of the nineteenth century emigration to America
had been on a comparatively small scale ; now

Development of America 253

there began to pour into the Land of Promise
that flood of the poor and distressed of the Old
World which has continued in ever increasing
volume from that day to this. These emigrants
provided in abundance the labour which was
necessary to develope the resources disclosed by
the settlement or purchase of the Middle West.

And soon an enlightened public enterprise
provided a new and easy road from these lands
to the shores of the Atlantic. In 1825 the great
Erie canal was opened. This canal joined the
majestic waters of the Hudson to the line of the
great lakes, and brought down to the harbour
of New York the larger share of the vast products
of the central plain. Hitherto New York had
been a port of secondary importance ; as late
as 1752 only one Liverpool ship regularly plied
to it. But, before the end of our period, the
greatest highway of the world's commerce had
come to be the track that a constant succession of
vessels followed between Liverpool and New
York. In other words, the principal feature of
the trade of modern Liverpool, its intimate
connexion with New York, was the creation of
the period under review.

This period witnessed also the opening to
Liverpool merchants of markets hitherto closed
to them by legislative enactment. Of these the
greatest was the trade of the Far East. Before
1 81 3 no Liverpool vessel had ventured round the
Cape of Good Hope, because ever since 1600
English trade with the East had been a strictly

254 Inventions and Commercial Advance

protected monopoly of the East India Company,
whose headquarters were in London. But the
great age of war had seen that company trans-
formed from a mere trading organisation into the
controlling power of the most populous empire
ever ruled by a European people : the conquest
of India began with Clive in 1757, and by the
close of the governorship of Wellesley in 1 804, less
than fifty years later, the East India Company
had become the supreme power of India. Under
these circumstances the maintenance of a trade
monopoly in the hands of the ruling company
had become dangerous and impossible. The
trade to India was therefore thrown open to all
English merchants in 181 3 ; and though the
company still retained for a while the monopoly
of Chinese trade, that too was thrown open in
1833. Liverpool merchants were prompt to take
advantage of the new opening, which afforded
an unrivalled market for the cotton goods of
Lancashire, as well as a new source of supply
for raw cotton. In March 18 14 Mr. John
Gladstone sent out the Kingsmill, the first Liver-
pool vessel to trade with India ; but so great a
host of ships followed it that by the close of our
period India was already becoming the next
most important field for Liverpool trade after the
United States.

Another vast market, hitherto artificially restric-
ted, was also thrown open in these years, in
the Portuguese and Spanish colonies of Central
and South America, So long as Portugal

O-pening of New Markets 255

remained effectively mistress of Brazil, and Spain
of the rest of these lands, English trade was almost
completely excluded by the deliberate policy of
the home governments. But the wars of the
French Revolution put an end to this. When
Napoleon made himself master of Spain and
Portugal, the Portuguese royal house exiled itself
to Brazil, and threw open its markets to its loyal
English allies ; while the Spanish colonies refused
to acknowledge the new government of Spain,
and, left to their own devices, abandoned those
restrictions on foreign trade which had never been
popular in the colonies themselves. On the
overthrow of Napoleon and the re-establishment
of the legitimate line, the colonies, having tasted
the sweets of independence, refused to return to
their allegiance. Beyond doubt their chief motive
was a sense of the advantage they had derived
from an open trade.

Liverpool naturally took a deep interest in the
long struggle between Spain and her revolted
colonies. In spite of her Toryism, which led her
to be generally unsympathetic with revolting
peoples, all her sympathies were on the side of the
rebels, because her interests were engaged with
them. The merchants and even the Town Council
sent up addresses to government urging that
England should recognise the independence of the
South American States, and it is more than a mere
coincidence that the statesman who finally took
that step in 1825 was Canning, who had so long
been member for Liverpool, and knew better

256 Inventions and Commercial Advance

than most of his colleagues how deeply English
commercial interests were involved. From that
date English commerce with South America
advanced with great rapidity ; and, from the
first, Liverpool was pre-eminently the centre
for the South American trade.

Expanding manufactures at home and expand-
ing markets abroad are not the only causes of
the growth of Liverpool in this age ; for it was
in this age that the engineer came to the aid of
the merchant, and brought him into easy com-
munication with the industrial districts from
which he derived his goods for export.

Until the middle of the eighteenth century
Liverpool had been seriously hampered by the
difficulties of communication between her remote
and isolated harbour and the seats of the principal
English manufactures. Her anxiety to overcome
these natural obstacles to commerce had been ex-
hibited in the numerous projects for deepening
the various short and shallow streams near the
Mersey estuary which have been already des-
cribed; but these cuts, though they were of great
service in their time, were quite inadequate for the
gigantic needs of the new age, for none of them
extended for more than thirty miles from the
Mersey. Even in the last quarter of the eighteenth
century goods were carried to and from Man-
chester largely on horseback. The seventy pack-
horses which in 1788 daily started for Man-
chester from a single inn in Dale Street must
have been picturesque enough as a spectacle, but

The Making of Canals 257

exceedingly unsatisfactory as well as expensive as a
means of transport. The final conquest of these
difficulties by the establishment of cheap and
eflEective communications with all parts of the
country is not the least important aspect of the
progress of these years.

The first stage in the process was marked by
the creation of canals, which was pushed forward
with immense activity during the second half
of the eighteenth century. The possibilities
of canal transport had already been disclosed
by the last and boldest of the river-deepening
projects, that of the Sankey brook from Wigan to
the Mersey, which was opened in 1755. It was
the success with which Brindley had carried out
this bold scheme which encouraged the Duke of
Bridgewater to provide that brUliant engineer
with the means for carrying out a still more daring
enterprise, that of the first great English canal,
from Liverpool to Manchester. The Bridgewater
canal, commenced in 1758, was opened in 1776,
and afforded a startling demonstration of the
superiority of the new means of transport. It
had cost 40s. a ton to transport goods from
Liverpool to Manchester by land, and 1 2s. by the
deepened channel of the Irwell. By the new
canal it cost only 6s. a ton.

The immediate result was an immense out-
burst of energy in the creation of canals, and
before the end of our period 2,600 miles of
navigable canals had been constructed in England,
opening up every part of the country. In no

258 Inventions and Commercial Advance

district was the work more actively pursued than
in the neighbourhood of Liverpool, whose
merchants provided much of the funds for
many of these enterprises. The principal canals
which more immediately affected the prosperity
of Liverpool were the Grand Trunk or Trent and
Mersey canal, begun in 1765 ; the Mersey and
Calder canal, first projected in 1766, which gave
direct water-communication between Liverpool
and Hull ; the Leeds and Liverpool canal, begun
in 1767 ; the Mersey and Severn canal, begun
in 1792 ; and the Grand Junction canal, which
linked up the whole northern canal system with
the southern system and the Thames, giving
through communication between Liverpool and
London. But these are only the chief of a
whole series of schemes carried out in these years.
In them all Liverpool was profoundly interested,
as is shown by the fact that the Town Council, as
each new proposal came forward, gave it the
most hearty support. For the Trent and Mersey
scheme, in 1765, the Council wrote to ask every
member of parliament in Lancashire and Cheshire
for his vote and interest, and in addition granted
^200 for the preliminary parliamentary expenses.
Similar grants were several times repeated, notably
for the Leeds and Liverpool canal. The Town
Council might well give encouragement and aid
to enterprises which brought into Liverpool
a continual stream of commodities for export,
and turned her into the great distributing centre
for the new manufacturing districts of England.

Railways and Steamboats 259

But the creation of canals, important as it was,
(and perhaps no single generation had seen so
much done for the improvement of communi-
cations since the Romans drove their great roads
through the forests and marshes of Britain),
nevertheless sinks into comparative unimportance
in contrast with another development which began
just before the close of the period. In 1830 the
first railway in the world was opened, and it was
quite in accord with the new importance of these
centres, and with the energy which both of them
had displayed in removing the natural obstacles
to the growth of their trade, that the two towns
which this railway linked were Liverpool and
Manchester. No elaboration is necessary to show
how immense an influence was exercised by the
development thus commenced upon the growth
of the trade of Liverpool. While England scoffed,
Liverpool took up the dream of Stephenson with
enthusiasm ; and the last step was thus taken in
the conquest of the natural obstacles which had so
long prevented the port from tapping the trade
of the greater part of England.

Even before the railway, the steamboat had
made its appearance in the harbour soon to be
known as the peculiar home of racing leviathans.
It was in 1815 that the first steamboats — already
known on the Hudson and on the Clyde — made
their appearance in the Mersey. They were at
first used for river traffic between Liverpool and
Runcorn. In 1819 the first steamboat to cross
the Atlantic reached Liverpool on its way from

26o Inventions and Commercial Advance

New York to St. Petersburg, where it was to
be offered as a present to the Emperor of Russia.
The early steps in the application of steam to
navigation were slow ; but in 1835, at the close
of the period covered by this chapter, its enormous
future consequences were already clear.

Even before steam had been used to any con-
siderable extent for sea-going traffic, there was
one use to which it was turned which brought
home its value very intimately to Liverpool
shipowners. Mr. Gladstone, in his reminiscences
of his boyhood, has recalled, as the most pictur-
esque sight which Liverpool had to offer, the
swarm of white-winged vessels which raised their
sails simultaneously to the winds in a harbour clear-
ance, after a period of steady north-west winds.
Picturesque the sight must have been, but the
delays which made it possible must have been
costly and exasperating to the shipowner. There
is a story of two vessels, before the days of steam,
which started simultaneously from the Mersey
to the West Indies. One got out of the river,
but before her consort could follow, the wind
veered round to the north-west, penning her in ;
and continued steadily for so long that the first
vessel, returning home from her distant cruise,
found her consort still waiting for a favourable
wind. Even before the application of steam to
sea-going vessels, the humble tug-boat had put
an end to all such exasperations.

It is, then, in a confluence of great movements
that we find the explanation of the stupendous

The Cotton Trade 261

development of Liverpool during the period from
1760 to 1835. The invention of machinery for
the textile industries ; the use of coal for the
smelting of iron ; the application of steam to
machines; the concentration of most of the great
English industries within a radius of a hundred
miles from the Mersey; the opening of the markets
of India and Spanish America ; the vast and rapid
growth of America; the concentration of its
principal trade in the great port of New York; the
opening up of the whole of England, as never before,
by means first of roads and canals, and later of
railways : these are the secrets of the majestic
progress of Liverpool. Watching her growth, we
seem to feel the pulse of England as she passed
through the greatest social and economic trans-
formation of which her history has any record.

It is out of the question to attempt any analysis
of the effect of these changes upon the various
branches of Liverpool's trade, for these were now so
numerous that henceforth any detailed treatment
of them must be impossible. But on one branch of
this vast commerce — a branch which then became,
and has ever since remained, the premier trade of
Liverpool — something ought to be said.

The cotton trade is of much more recent origin
than is generally supposed. Manchester did not
begin to make cotton goods until late in the seven-
teenth century ; and the raw material then came
to her from the East, particularly from Smyrna,
and was shipped by way of London. Liverpool
probably began to bring cotton from the West

262 Inventions and Commercial Advance

Indies as soon as she got effective control of that
line of trade in the early eighteenth century, but
the amount of her imports can have been but
small, since the first consignment of which any
record remains is one of twenty-five bags from
Jamaica in 1758. But the import expanded
steadUy, and in 1770, 5,521 bags were imported
from the West Indies. The American states had
not then begun seriously to produce cotton for ex-
port, for in the same year the total American import
to Liverpool was three bales from New York,
four bags from Virginia, and three barrels from
South Carolina. So slowly did the trade develope
that in 1784 a custom house officer is said to
have seized eight bags of cotton brought by an
American ship, in the belief that cotton was not
grown in America, and that its importation was a
breach of the Navigation Acts, which only allowed
foreign vessels to import the commodities of the
country from which they came.

By the beginning of the nineteenth century,
however, America had begun to throw herself with
vigour into the production of cotton, to meet the
increased demand of Lancashire; by 1812 it had
become the principal source of supply, so that the
interruption of the supply was one of the principal
causes of the unpopularity of the American war
which broke out in that year. By 1835 the pro-
duce of the American cotton fields had completely
dwarfed that of all the other cotton-producing
countries, though the yield of Brazil and of India
had greatly increased. The West Indies were

Old Institutions Unsuitable 263

beaten out of the field, and the Liverpool cotton
market had already assumed something like its
modern form.

A trade so vast and so rapidly growing as that
of Liverpool now was, found itself seriously
hampered by being placed under a system of
regulation and control which descended from
the Middle Ages. The ancient charters of the
borough gave almost unlimited powers of trade
regulation into the hands of the freemen ; but the
freemen had now come to be a small privileged
minority of the inhabitants of the town, a minority
from which most of the principal merchants were
excluded. And for some centuries all the powers
of the freemen had been exercised by the close
self-electing Town Council of forty-one members,
which was often out of touch with the sentiments
of its subjects.

The Town Council administered the corporate
estate, now immensely valuable, and collected the
ancient traditional town dues which were payable
on all merchandise brought into the port by others
than freemen. The Town Council was the sole
authority for regulating the facilities for trade,
and in that capacity it not only organised the
markets, but was responsible for the erection of
all the earlier docks, and the dock-dues formed,
during the eighteenth century, a regular part of
its revenue.

As the dock estate grew in importance (dock-
dues rose from ^23,380 in 1800 to nearly ^200,000
in 1835) the administration of its affairs was placed

264 Inventions and Commercial Advance

in the hands of a special dock committee of the
Town Council, which had a separate budget ; but
the Council reserved the power of over-riding
the proceedings of this committee, or of spending
its income ; thus we find the Council voting
^2,000 from its own income and ^1,000 from
the dock funds towards the fortification of the
town during the great war. This system, how-
ever, was eminently unsatisfactory to the mer-
chants using the docks, who asserted that the
council was quite incompetent to administer
an estate which required special and expert
knowledge. In 1825, therefore, a compromise
was made, and an act of parliament was obtained
constituting a new docks committee, to consist of
thirteen members of the Council and eight mer-
chant ratepayers, elected by those who used the
docks. The Council thus retained a clear working
majority, and it reserved also the power of con-
firming or referring back the proceedings of the
dock committee.

The result of this arrangement was unceasing
friction. The merchant members of the com-
mittee generally formed a solid minority in
opposition. They resented their position pro-
foundly, and probably greatly exaggerated the
evil results of the system. But, at any rate, the
mercantile community was brought into a state
of revolt against the powers exercised by the Town
Council ; and when, after the Reform Bill of
1832, a commission was sent to enquire into the
working of the close corporations all over the

T^he Reform Movement 265

country, the mercantile community of Liverpool
appeared among the most vigorous impugners of
the old system, and the maladministration of the
dock estate constituted the principal ground of
their attack.

Another ancient usage which aroused deep
resentment was that of charging town dues on non-
freemen, and exempting freemen from them. In
1830 a number of the principal merchants of the
town decided to bring this question to an issue,
and declined to pay their dues. The question
was tried in the law courts. But though the trial
was prolonged, the award ultimately went in
favour of the Council, for there could be no doubt
that legally and historically freemen were exempt,
and all others were bound to pay.

This was an example of the survival of tra-
ditional rights and usages into an age for which
they were not suited. The resentment which the
whole system caused was the principal reason why,
for a time, Liverpool ceased to be Tory, and
elected to parliament members who were pledged
to vote for reform. The two members for this
most Tory of towns voted for the Reform Bill of
1832, which threw open the parliamentary fran-
chise to aU qualified residents as well as to freemen,
and for this purpose included within the limits of
the borough the outlying suburbs which had
grown up in Everton, Kirkdale, Toxteth and the
part of West Derby nearest to Liverpool.

This was the first serious invasion of the privileges
of the freemen. But its inevitable result was a

266 Inventions and Commercial Advance

further and more important attack. In the next
year a Royal Commission set to work to investigate
the constitution and proceedings of the close
corporations which ruled nearly every borough of
England. Even where, as in Liverpool, no direct
evidence of corruption was found, it was abun-
dantly clear that the system was anomalous and
unsatisfactory, and that (especially in prosperous
and growing towns) the majority of the leading
inhabitants resented the arbitrary and irrespon-
sible power which the Town Councils exercised.
In Liverpool the feeling was so strong that the
Town CouncU itself recognised the inevitability of
a change, and declined to take part in any oppo-
sition to the bill which the Whig government
introduced for the reform of municipal corpora-
tions.

The Municipal Reform Act, passed in 1835,
abolished the close corporation which had existed
since 1580, replaced it by an elected Council,
enlarged the boundaries of the borough, and
destroyed nearly all the special privileges of the
ancient body of freemen. The change came none
too soon, and it marks the beginning of a new era.
Trade had been seriously hampered by the old
system, and the town had suffered in many ways,
as we shall see in the next chapter, from the fact
that its ruling body was out of touch with its
subjects, took a curiously narrow view of its
responsibilities, and had made no attempt to cope
with the terrible problems which a sudden rush
of wealth and of population had brought.

Virtues of the Old Regime 267

Nevertheless, in fairness to the old Council,
it ought to be recognised that, though it left
undone much that a modern view regards as
included among the primary duties of such a body,
it performed with exemplary fidelity, and on the
whole with conspicuous success, the functions
which it did undertake. Elsewhere close cor-
porations were a byword for corruption ; here
no shadow of suspicion ever rested upon the
Council of having used their control of vast
resources for improper purposes or for private
advantage. Elsewhere members of Town Councils
unblushingly divided among themselves the spoil
of the town ; here the most serious charge which
could be brought by the enemies of the Council
at the great enquiry of 1833 was that money had
been improperly spent in providing a portrait of
one of the members of the Council who had sat
for sixty years, or on a statue of Canning, the
greatest man who has ever honoured Liverpool by
representing it in parliament. Streets had been
widened, public buildings and churches erected,
and a whole system of docks created without
the imposition of a penny of rates upon the
inhabitants of the town.

This had been made possible by the immense
increase during the previous century in the value
of the estate administered by the corporation, and
the funds for public improvements had been
obtained by loans raised on the security of that
estate. More than half of the area of the original
township and parish of Liverpool was the property

268 Inventions and Commercial Advance

of the corporation, thanks to the obscure annex-
ations of the burgesses of the middle ages. The
Council made some mistakes in the administration
of these lands ; it sold large blocks which ought to
have been retained, when it might, by judicious
purchases, have gradually brought the soil on
which the city is built completely into the city's
ownership. On the whole, however, the corpora-
tion estate was well administered ; and if the
reformed Council, which came into office in 1835,
was faced by many grave problems of city govern-
ment which had largely arisen through the neglect
of its predecessor to perform the primary
functions of administration, at least it was aided
in its task by the possession of an estate of such
magnitude that it yields to-day no less than
^106,000 per annum — far more than the corporate
estate of any other English provincial borough.

269

CHAPTER XV

Civilisation in Liverpool, 176 0-1835

Ws'have traced the course of Liverpool's strenuous
public activity and analysed the causes of her
astonishing progress, during these years when
her greatness was established. It remains to en-
quire how these developments had affected the
life of the community ; how far the growing town
had succeeded in turning itself into a place in
which, apart from money-making, it was good
for a man to dwell ; how far she had cherished
and stimulated among her citizens those higher
interests and aspirations, towards which money-
making is only a means.

On this side it must be confessed that the inves-
tigator finds little fuel for enthusiasm. When
Erskine, in the exuberance of his rhetoric, spoke
of Liverpool as ' fit to be the proud capital of any
empire,' he can have been thinking only of her
size, her wealth and the energy of her merchants.
In aU other requirements of a capital city she
was lacking, and she would have been a very
dangerous model and guide for a whole nation to
look up to.

270 Civilisation in Liverpool

For the vast commerce which had so suddenly
come to the town had not brought civilisation in
its train. Great wealth had come ; but only to
the few, and these it intoxicated and engrossed.
The getting of money seemed to be the only
interest of the town : cives, cives, quaerenda
fecunia frimum est : virtus post nummos was the
Horatian motto which the caustic describer of
Liverpool in 1795 thought appropriate for his
title page. But the great majority of the inhabi-
tants had little share of this golden shower. They
dwelt in conditions of sordid and degrading misery,
stunted and brutalised. All the new towns of the
north which had been created by the industrial
revolution were hideous enough ; but it is hard
to believe that any of them can have been more
dreadful than Liverpool. The indifference of
most of the wealthy to the condition of the
degraded wretches who helped to earn their
wealth was perhaps the worst feature of the town,
worse even than the general indifference to every-
thing but money-making. Yet this age saw
the birth of new ideals, and was illuminated by
the labours of many noble and aspiring men.

Even the external aspect of the town was
singularly unprepossessing. When Samuel Cur-
wen, an American loyalist exile, visited Liverpool
in 1780, he found the ' streets long, narrow,
crooked and dirty. . . We scarcely saw a well-
dressed person. . . . The whole complexion
of the place was nautical, and so infinitely
below all our expectations that naught but the

Streets and Houses 271

thoughts of the few hours we had to pass here
rendered it tolerable.' The principal streets,
before 1786, were not more than six yards wide,
and the paving was exceedingly rough, ' the
remark of all strangers.'

In the earher part of the period the houses
which faced upon the old streets were of infinite
variety of size and form, for rich and poor lived
together, and the wealthiest merchants did not
disdain to live above their cellar warehouses, the
yawning openings to which formed a serious
danger to foot passengers. Houses of this type
may stiU be seen in Duke Street and Hanover
Street, but in the eighteenth century merchants
dwelt also in Water Street, Oldhall Street, and
Lord Street. Towards the end of the century,
however, they began to desert the old houses,
and to betake themselves to residences further
afield. Rodney Street was well built up by the
end of the eighteenth century, Mr. John Glad-
stone being established in his fine house before
1798 ; St. Anne Street contained many good
houses ; and in 1801 the Mosslake fields began to
be laid out, with Bedford Street, Chatham Street,
Abercromby and Falkner Squares. The country
mansions of merchant princes were to be found
dotting the country side, scattered over Everton
Hill, frequent in the southern part of Toxteth
Park, and even as far afield as Childwall and
Allerton.

At the same time new districts rose with mush-
room rapidity for the accommodation of the poorer

272 Civilisation in Liverpool

inhabitants. No regulations existed to ensure that
these houses should be healthy and substantial.
They were erected back to back, with no proper
provision for air and light, and no adequate sanita-
tion ; and they were often so shoddily built that
in 1823 a violent wind blew many of them down,
and for the first time awoke the council to the
necessity of taking precautions. Thus arose those
terrible slum areas to the north and south of the
town, with which the municipal government has
been striving ever since.

In the old quarter of the town the houses
deserted by the merchants or thriving tradesmen
came to be crowded by a swarming multitude of
poor people. The cellars once used as warehouses
became the homes of whole families. Even the
cellars of houses inhabited by well-to-do trades-
men were commonly let out as dwellings. In
1790 a careful survey of the town showed that
there were 8,148 inhabited houses, of which
1,728 had inhabited cellars. In these appalling
abodes no less than 6,780 persons dwelt, being
almost four persons to every cellar, and con-
siderably more than one-ninth of the total popu-
lation of the town. Imagination quails before the
picture of squalid misery suggested by these
figures. And inevitably a population living in
such conditions was unclean and unhealthy. In
1823 no less than 31,500 cases were treated in
the dispensaries and the infirmary, that is to say
almost one in four of the population ; and this
leaves out of account all who consulted private

Drunkenness and Riots 273

medicaj men, and all the residents in the work-
house.

The misery of this wretched population was
perpetuated and increased by the extraordinary
number of licensed houses which the slackness of
the magistrates had allowed to grow up. In 1795
a cynical observer, who has left us an invaluable
picture of the Liverpool of his day, calculated
that every seventh house in the town was open
for the sale of liquor : ' the devotion of the lower
order of people,' he goes on, ' to their Bacchan-
alian orgies is such as to give employment , to
thirty-seven large and extensive ale breweries,'
while rum was brought very^, cheaply and in large
quantities from the West Indies. So serious was
the licensing problem that even the Town Council,
not usually a reforming body, thought it necessary
in 1772 to pass a resolution urging the magistrates
to reduce the number of public houses, especially
round the docks, and pointing out ' the wicked-
ness and licentiousness ' which were due to
them.

A population so degraded and so drink-sodden,
reinforced by the rough and desperate privateers-
men and slavers, was inevitably turbulent and
unruly. The streets of Liverpool were constantly
the scenes of riots and open fights, especially in the
days of the press-gang ; at night they were very
unsafe. For there was no adequate police. ^ In
the day time there was none at aU ; at night
a few old and feeble watchmen paraded the streets
crying the hours as they passed, or dozed in their

T

274 Civilisation in Liverpool

sentry boxes, which it was a favourite prank to
overturn with the watchman inside. In i8n
the Town Council resolved to reorganise the police.
It did so by dividing the borough into seven
districts, to each of which one head constable at
25s. a week, and two assistants at 21s. a week,
were allotted : being a total force of twenty-one
police for a population of nearly 100,000. Out-
side of the area of the borough, in the populous
suburbs of Everton and Toxteth, the state of
things was still worse. There was in these dis-
tricts practically no controlling authority at all,
and the inhabitants refused to submit to a rate
for providing themselves with a police force.
Though the wealthy residents in the southern
parts of Toxteth Park subscribed a few guineas
per annum to maintain a patrol, the crowded
streets at -the north end of Toxteth Park were
unsafe to ^traverse, and the most surprising out-
rages passed entirely unpunished.

The turbulence of Liverpool was perhaps most
strikingly exhibited at the parliamentary^elections,
which were positive orgies of anarchy. And, as
a majority of the freemen in this period belonged
to the poorer class, whose poverty made bribery
hard to resist, Liverpool became notorious for
its corruption. The estimated value of each vote
early in the nineteenth century was ;^20, and the
most honest of the freemen regarded this pay-
ment as their right. Besides these payments in
money, strong drink flowed like water during
a contest, and the candidates were expected to

Poor Law Administration 275

provide mammoth feasts for their supporters,
at which misrule reigned supreme. The Liver-
pool election of 1830 was perhaps the most
flagrantly corrupt, on both sides, that had ever
been fought in English politics. Even the
Reform Act of 1832 did not put an end to the
evil ; at the next election the corruption was so
bad that it was proposed to disfranchise aU the
freemen, who had been allowed to retain their
votes whether they had the property qualification
laid down by the bill or not. Though the
proposal was not carried, it shows that it was
from among the freemen that the corruption
proceeded.

With so large a population living on the verge
of penury, and in conditions which encouraged
thriftlessness, it is to be expected that the number
of paupers would be great, and the workhouse
always fuU. In 1794, before the distresses of the
French war were very seriously felt, and when
Liverpool's prosperity was advancing swiftly, one
out of every forty inhabitants of the town was in
the workhouse, and at some later dates the pro-
portion was still higher.

Yet on the whole the Poor Law was well
administered during this period, perhaps better
administered in Liverpool than anywhere else
in England. As in other places, the supreme
control of Poor Law administration was vested
in the whole body of ratepayers. At the annual
Easter vestry meeting, held in St. Nicholas'
church, the ratepayers elected annually the

276 Civilisation in Liverpool

churchwardens and overseers, who were, in the
eyes of the law, solely responsible for the adminis-
tration of the poor rates. But so large a body
was little competent to direct difficult and com-
plicated business, or to maintain a proper oversight
over the conduct of their officials. In many
towns, as in Manchester, the result was hopeless
confusion and corruption ; the vestry meetings
were packed with riotous supporters of the over-
seers, who were annually re-elected, and made
large profits out of their unchecked control of the
public funds. In Liverpool these evils were
avoided by the development of a select committee
which controlled the overseers and annually
presented fuU reports to the vestry. During the
troublous period of the French war the work of
this admirable committee was largely inspired by
Dr. Currie, the friend of Roscoe ; and under his
guidance Liverpool earned the reputation of being
the model urban parish.

Unfortunately, however, the powers exercised
by the committee were extra-legal. The overseers
could disregard them if they liked, and in 18 19 and
the following years a Mr. Denison, being elected
overseer, boldly overrode the committee, launched
upon reckless expenditure, gave splendid dinners
out of the rates, and generally threw things into
confusion. On the whole, however, the adminis-
tration of the Poor Law, which in Liverpool
presented complexities greater than existed in
most other places, was the one bright spot in the
direction of local public affairs.

The Prisons 277

But if the workhouse was well managed, this
was far from being the case with the prisons,
which presented perhaps the most terrible spec-
tacles then to be seen even in barbarous Liverpool.
With a population such as we have described, it
was inevitable that the prisons should always have
been well fiUed. There were three prisons in the
town, aU of which have been described in detail
by the prison reformers, John Howard and Joseph
Neild. The principal prison was the old Tower
at the bottom of Water Street, where felons'^were
indiscriminately kept along with the miserable
debtors, whom the law in that age condemned to
a..confinement that deprived them of all chance
of clearing themselves. The Tower contained
seven small underground dungeons, each about six
feet square, lighted and ventilated only by holes
in the doors. In each of these three prisoners
were lodged. A larger and better room con-
tained, in 1803, twelve prisoners, men and women,
who were locked in together. Debtors were
lodged in one of the towers, and generously
provided with straw, and permitted to hang out
a- bag for the alms of passers by ; if they could
afford it, they might sleep two in a bed, for one
shilling a week apiece. A courtyard, once Lord
Derby's garden, served for exercise for all the
prisoners.

Besides the Tower, there was a bridewell, a
small brick building on the north side of the
George's Dock. It is described as ' damp and
offensive,' ' totally dark and unventilated.' It was

278 Civilisation inj^iverpool

replaced in 1804 by a new bridewell in Chapel
Street. Lastly, there was a House of Correction
for vagrants and disorderly persons in Brownlow
HiU, beside the workhouse. It was the practice
in this place to hold aU the women prisoners
under a pump in the courtyard once a week in
the presence of the men. All these noisome
places of confinement had vanished before the
end of the period, being replaced in 181 1 by a new
model prison in Great Howard Street, which
had been built in 1786, but employed for the
confinement of French prisoners.

The Tower being now empty, it was demolished
in 1 8 19 to permit the widening of Water Street.
Thus vanished the last remaining relic of medi-
aeval Liverpool ; for the old church of St. Nicholas
had been rebuilt in the eighteenth century, and
in 1 8 10 even the eighteenth-century spire had
fallen and been replaced.

Though the Town Council made no attempt to
alleviate . or remove the conditions of sordid
misery in which so many of the inhabitants of the
town dwelt, they paid a good deal of attention
during this period to the beautifying of the central
streets and public buildings. The Town Hall,
gutted by a fire on the i8th of January, 1 795, was
enlarged and very successfully reconstructed.
Behind it the huddled and unsavoury alleys which
occupied the site of the modern exchange, were
demolished ; and in the open space thus created
there was erected a splendid monument to Lord
Nelson, the result of a subscription that followed

Public Improvements 279

Trafalgar, and the first public monument erected
in Liverpool. Round it there rose a spacious
quadrangular exchange, which was opened in 1808,
but served the needs of the town's commerce only
for fifty years, being replaced in 1858 by the
modern exchange.

At the other end of Castle Street, the Old Dock,
after more than a century's service, was filled in
in 1826, and on its site was erected a fine pillared
and domed Custom-house, from the designs of
Mr. John Foster, the town surveyor ; the site,
and a substantial part of the cost, being provided
by the Council, while the remainder was contri-
buted by government.

The narrow and tortuous streets began to be
systematically improved. The first Improvement
Act for Liverpool was obtained in 1785, and its
immediate result was the widening of Castle Street,
Dale Street and Water Street. To Castle Street,
always Liverpool's premier thoroughfare, special
attention was given, and builders were required
to conform to an uniform design in erecting
houses on the west side. This is almost the
only case in which the Town Council made any
attempt to enforce dignity of design upon private
builders. These changes made Castle Street, we
are told, as ' elegant a street as there is in any
town in England,' but the same observer continues
that no care had been taken to secure a good vista
either here or elsewhere : ' a general prospect of
cabbages and potatoes ' (in the market at the top
of James Street) was, according to this caustic

28o Civilisation in Liverpool

critic, the end of the view from the Town Hall.
With these reforms began ' a rage of improvement
and a rapid increase of streets, squares, and
erections of useful and ornamental buildings.'
In 1825 further powers were obtained hj a new
Improvement Act, under which many more streets
were widened.

But neither in 1785 nor in 1825, nor at any
later date, did the Town Council make any
attempt to control the character or direction of the
new streets which were being created with such
rapidity during this age of growth, so as to make
the town healthy or beautiful. A glorious oppor-
tunity was thus lost. For Liverpool, throned on
her long range of hill, and looking over a magnifi-
cent estuary to the distant hills of Wales, might
easily have been made one of the most beautiful
cities in Europe, if due care had been taken to
ensure that the streets running down the hill
should command uninterrupted vistas. The fact
that in modern Liverpool these fine possible
prospects do not anywhere refresh the vision of
the treader of pavements must be attributed
above aU to the lack of foresight of the governors
of the town in the age when it was so rapidly ex-
tended. And it cannot be said that the Town
Council were left altogether without guidance.
In 1 816, for example, a memorial was sent up by
a number of leading townsmen suggesting that a
* spacious handsome public road with wide foot-
paths planted on each side with two rows of trees '
should be laid out, to run round the whole boundary

u
a

w

w

H

Parks and Gardens 281

of the old township. Such a scheme could have been
carried out at very little expense at that time ;
and how vastly it would have improved the aspect
of the modern city! But the Council only curtly
replied that ' the memorial cannot be entertained.'

The same memorialists, with as little success,
asked that ' open pieces of land in the out-
skirts of the town (now covered with mean
streets) should be appropriated to the amuse-
ments of the working classes.' This is the first
proposal to institute parks or playgrounds ; but
the need for such luxuries had not yet been felt.
Indeed, one of the most striking features of the
Liverpool of this date was the absence of any
pleasant green places of public resort. There
had|been two Ladies' Walks, bordered with trees,
where hooped and furbelowed dames paced,
attended by their squires. One of these ran from
OldhaU Street to the river, the other between
Bold Street and Duke Street. Both had vanished
before 1795, the one to make way for the Leeds
and Liverpool canal, while the other was built
upon. Our caustic critic in that year says there
are * no walks — commerce alone appears to engage
the attention of the inhabitants.' The only places
of public resort of this kind in the early nineteenth
century were the little gardens on St. James'
Mount, and a short parade on the sea-ward side
of the George's Dock, much frequented by
ladies.

The amusements of a people are often an
excellent indication of the degree of their tastes

282 Civilisation in Liverpool

and culture. Those of Liverpool were still of a
comparatively primitive order, though this period
witnessed a considerable improvement. It was
the pleasures of the table that provided the
chief relaxation of eighteenth century .Liver-
pool from the exacting labours of commerce ;
for (as our anonymous critic teUs us, in somewhat
shaky French) ' almost every man in Liverpool is
a scavoir vivre (sic) and he who cannot drink
claret will drink ale.' Dinners at the Town Hall
swallowed up a substantial part of the borough
revenue. The fashionable hour, about 1775, was
one o'clock; it gradually advanced to three at the
end of the century, and a dinner at three had the
advantage that it left plenty of time for the
gentlemen's wine and cards to follow; by 1835
the hour of dining had climbed up to five.

After dinner an adjournment might be made to
one of the two bowling greens in Mount Pleasant,
or to the Ranelagh Gardens, on the site of the
Adelphi Hotel, which were, from 1765 to the end
of the century, a favourite place of resort : in the
gardens were benches, on which one could sit
to gaze at displays of fireworks, and listen to a
small orchestra : the performance usually began
at 6 p.m. More vigorous sport was provided by
the archery ground in Cazneau Street, which
was, however, closed in 1 798 ; or in following the
Liverpool harriers, whose kennels lay, in 1775,
near the bottom of Richmond Row.

The poorer people, with some of their richer
neighbours, refreshed themselves by watching

Music and the Fine Arts 283

dog-fights, or cock-fights, or bull-baitings ; and
in 1775 a number of drunken sailors distinguished
themselves by dragging a terrified baited bull into
the heat and light of the theatre, where its
appearance in a box caused no small consternation
among the ladies. Only one theatre existed in the
town during this period — the Theatre Royal, in
Williamson Square, now a cold storage warehouse.
It was opened in 1772 and enlarged in 1803, and
its stage witnessed the performances of aU the best
actors of the period. Just at the end of the
eighteenth century this single house of amusement
was supplemented by the erection of a circus in
Christian Street, but it was never very successful.

Of music we hear scarcely anything until 1784,
when the first of a series of triennial musical
festivals was held. All the leaders of fashion
flocked to listen to Handel's oratorios, and after-
wards to a banquet and a fancy ball in the Town
Hall. As the tickets for five performances cost a
guinea and a half, this can scarcely be said to have
done very much for the diffusion of musical taste
in the town.

Nor, with one exception, were the fine arts
much more seriously cultivated in the town. The
exception was domestic architecture : it was this
period which gave us those simple and beauti-
ful doorways and interiors which distinguish
many of the houses in Rodney Street, Hanover
Street and Duke Street, and which a later age
has never been able to excel.

But though good taste governed the builders of

284 Civilisation in Liverpool

most of the rich men's houses, the sister arts of paint-
ing and sculpture received little encouragement in
the Philistinism of eighteenth century Liverpool.
A society for the encouragement of the Arts of
Painting and Design was started in 1773, but it
soon died because there was nobody sufficiently
enthusiastic to take the trouble of managing it.
Revived in 1783, largely through the activity of
William Roscoe, it held a few exhibitions and
tried to provide instruction in the arts, but once
again died through lack of encouragement. In
1 810 Mr. Henry Blundell of Ince Blundell, a well-
known virtuoso, offered ^1,000 for the erection
of a permanent Academy of Art, but the town
was not ripe for such a scheme, and it fell to
the ground. In the last few years of our period
exhibitions of paintings and sculpture were held
with a modest degree of success, receiving from
the Town Council such encouragement as was
implied in the award of prizes for the best pictures
of local artists.

But these attempts at culture, designed for the
well-to-do, and very ill supported even by them,
did little for the real amelioration of the
barbarism of the town. For the beginning of
this we must find the source in that general
awakening of humanitarian feeling which is so
striking a feature of the last quarter of the eigh-
teenth century. Perhaps its most impressive result
was the movement for the abolition of the slave
trade ; but on a hundred other sides the new
birth of compassion and indignation led to great

The Religious Revival 285

fruits in this age. Associated intimately with a
religious movement, its source is doubtless to
be found in the general stirring of the waters
that followed the preaching of Wesley. In his
unceasing pilgrimage Wesley several times visited
Liverpool, and perhaps his visits may have stimu-
lated the zeal for reform here, as they certainly
inspired his Methodist followers, here and else-
where, with a noble zeal for social improvement.

But the new humanity was by no means con-
fined to one denomination. The Church of
England was stirred by the evangelical revival,
and Mr. Gladstone has recorded how deep was
its influence on his father and his Liverpool circle.
The nonconformist denominations awoke to a
new vigour ; the Roman Catholic church, too,
was stirred by a parallel wave of emotion. The
period from 1780 onwards was a period of extra-
ordinary activity in the building of new churches
of aU denominations ; their number was so large
that no mention can be made of them individually.
But one feature of the age is that private wealth
began to be lavishly expended on the provision
of religious opportunities. Thus Sir John Glad-
stone built no less than three churches at his own
expense, the 'Scotch Church' in Oldham Street
in his early Presbyterian days ; then St. Andrew's
in Rodney Street ; finally, when he built his
country mansion at Seaforth, a church there also.

The same enthusiasm which produced this
many-sided religious activity produced also a
remarkable expansion in the charitable organi-

286 Civilisation in Liverpool

sations of the town. Of these also no account
can be given ; but perhaps space ought to be
found to record the foundation, in 1791, of the
first school instituted in England for the training
of the blind in various industries.

The most profitable form which this charitable
zeal assumed was the institution of schools for the
poor. Before the year 1784 the town did not
contain any schools for the education of the children
of the poor, except the Blue-coat charity school
for orphans, and the old grammar school, which
had now fallen on evil days. Had the grammar
school been permitted to enjoy the full income
of its original endowment, it would have been a
vigorous and thriving school like that of Man-
chester. But it was now housed in a wing of the
charity school ; it had been set apart for the free
instruction of the sons of those freemen who chose
to claim the privilege ; and its staff consisted of a
master, on an extremely exiguous salary, together
with one usher and a writing master. The Town
Council several times discussed proposals for recon-
stituting it, but nothing was done, and when Mr.
Baines, the last master, died in 1802, the school
was quietly suppressed. In 1826, visited by tardy
compunctions, the Council founded in its place
two free elementary schools, one for the north
and the other for the south end of the town.
They are those which are still known as the
North and South Corporation Schools. Thus
ended an endowment which should have been of
the utmost value to the town.

Schools for the Poor 287

In 1784 the religious revival led to a combined
movement for the establishment of Sunday schools,
and a scheme was launched at a town's meeting
whereby a whole group of such schools was to
be started. The children were to go to school at
one o'clock every Sunday, and to be kept ' till
evening comes on.' They were to be taught to
read and write, and as soon as they could read
were to be taken to church. Somewhat modified,
the scheme was carried out on a large scale, and it
formed the first beginning of popular education
in Liverpool. Five years later a day school, with
fees of id. per week, was founded in connexion
with the parish church. It received 200 boys and
120 girls, and the modest expenses i£2'^6) were
met by subscriptions. This school is the same
which is still at work in Moorfields. In the years
which followed this beginning a whole series of
schools was founded. Some of them were wholly
or partly endowed by individuals ; most were
supported by one religious denomination or
another ; and aU the denominations strove in
honourable rivalry to fill this glaring need. By
1835, when the state was awaking to the impor-
tance of encouraging and aiding these schools,
Liverpool was, on the whole, tolerably well
supplied, according to the standards of England
at that date.

For the supply of adequately equipped higher
schools — schools to teach more than the barest
rudiments — the town had to wait stiU longer.
But the foundation of the Royal Institution in

288 Civilisation in Liverpool

1 8 17 brought about the institution of one such
school, of excellent quality, now defunct ; the
establishment of the Mechanics' Institution in
1825, led after some j^ears to the development
of a second ; and, later still, the Liverpool
CoUegiate Institution gave birth to a vs^hole
group of valuable schools. So that Liverpool
entered upon the next era in her history not badly
equipped, though at a great disadvantage as com-
pared with Manchester, Leeds and Birmingham,
where sixteenth century grammar schools, like
that which old John Crosse founded in Liverpool,
had been allowed to survive and to enjoy the
income of their original endowments.

If this period saw the beginning of a new
educational system in Liverpool, it was still more
distinguished by the work of a considerable group
of vigorous and intelligent men, who promised to
lend a new atmosphere to the Philistine town.

The study of practical seamanship and of scien-
tific shipbuilding and the knowledge of the tides
received a great impetus from the work of WiUiam
Hutchinson, an honest and religious privateersman
of whose warlike exploits something has already
been said, and who spent the last part of his life
in useful labours and studies as harbour master
in his native town.

The parliamentary elections, from 1790 onwards,
were illuminated by a remarkable succession of witty
squibs and verses, sometimes attaining a high degree
of excellence, and testifying to the birth of a novel
intellectual alertness. Both parties contributed to

WILLIAM ROSCOE

From a plutjue by Gibson

To face p. 289

Historical Studies 289

this humorous paper warfare. On the Tory side
Silvester Richmond, collector of the customs,
and on the Whig side the Rev. William Shepherd,
Unitarian minister of Gateacre, and the friend
of Roscoe, were the principal writers, and some
of their verses were witty enough to retain even
to-day something of their original salt.

On another side intellectual studies were stimu-
lated by the succession of great law-cases in which
the corporation was involved, and which, as they
turned largely upon ancient rights and privileges,
led to a ransacking of the records of the borough.
Thanks to these disputes, the eccentric old
attorney, Henry Brown, who fought the case
of 1 79 1 for the corporation, became one of the
first authorities in England on the legal antiquities
of borough government ; while Charles Okill,
clerk of committees to the corporation, got to-
gether a wonderful collection of transcripts and
documents bearing upon the history of the town,
which stOl remains in the municipal archives,
and has been the principal source from which
later historians have derived their materials.
Another distinguished antiquary of this period
was Matthew Gregson, ancestor of a family which
has done good service to Liverpool. He issued
in 1817 a miscellaneous Portfolio of Fragments
relative to the History of the Duchy of Lancaster.
The period also saw the issue of no less than five
histories of Liverpool, of which some account
will be given in an appendix. Valueless as
historical works, except for the period in which

u

290 Civilisation in Liverpool

they were written, these books are, nevertheless,
important as evidence of the rise of that sense
of civic pride in the town, which demands to learn
something of its origins, and is stimulated and
developed hy that knowledge. The|fact that so
many books on local history, printed and published
in the town, should have found a sale, is in|itself
evidence that Liverpool was beginning to awaken
intellectually.

There were, indeed, many cultivated house-
holds which formed bright spots in the provincial
barbarism of early nineteenth century Liverpool,
and those who have read the narrative of the
boyhood of William Ewart Gladstone, or of the
late William Rathbone, must feel that the sheer
materialism of the mid-eighteenth century was,
so far as the upper classes of the town were con-
cerned, beginning to be dissipated.

But the glory of Liverpool in this period was
to be found in a group of friends who were not
content to cultivate their own minds, but strove
to diffuse throughout the money-grubbing com-
munity in which they found themselves something
of their own delight in the civilising power of
letters and the arts. These men were Whigs,
holding unpopular politics, and very dubiously
regarded by their fellow-citizens, as we have
already seen. They were the enemies of the slave
trade, and the strenuous advocates of political and
social reforms which few of them lived to see
realised. Some of them deserve to be named.
William Rathbone, second of the name, was not

William Roscoe 291

himself an intellectual force, but, like aU of his
name, he was a believer in whatsoever things are
good, pure and beautiful. Dr. Currie, the bio-
grapher of Burns, and the writer of several political
pamphlets which obtained a wide circulation, was
also an enthusiastic practical reformer, and found
a useful sphere in the administration of the Poor
Law. Another medical man. Dr. TraiU, was one
of the prime movers in the foundation of the
Royal Institution. He also stimulated the scien-
tific interests of the members of his own profession
by helping to organise for them discussions of
medical problems, and for a number of years he
issued from Liverpool a scholarly medical journal.
It was largely the scientific enthusiasm with which
he had inspired his colleagues at the Royal In-
firmary that led in 1834 to the foundation of the
Royal Infirmary School of Medicine, the ancestor
of the Medical Faculty in the modern university.
But among this group of warm-hearted and
large-minded friends, one stands out pre-eminent
— ^WUliam Roscoe, a man who, while immersed in
the cares of extensive|businesses, yet contrived to
win for himself the highest historical reputation
of his age ; and, while opening his mind to every
public interest, and finding time for the strenuous
and constant advocacy of political and social
reform, yet threw himself with avidity into the
study and practice of the arts, made himself re-
spected in the science of botany and in scientific
agriculture, and acquired the friendship of many
of the most distinguished men of his age. Born

292 Civilisation in Liverpool

in 1753, the son of an innkeeper in Mount Pleasant,
Roscoe's formal education lasted only till the age
of twelve, when he returned to work in his father's
market garden, and, later, to earn his livelihood
in the arid' atmosphere of a lawyer's office. Yet
by the time he was twenty he had acquired a read-
ing knowledge of Latin, French and Italian, was
revelling in the history and literature of fifteenth
century Italy, had taught himself to etch, and
was studying with eagerness the history of the
fine arts. Already he had been captivated by that
enthusiasm for Florence and its great citizen-
prince, Lorenzo de Medici, which subsequently
led him to write the life of his hero, and to win the
applause of Europe.

Roscoe's historical writings have not stood the
test of time ; but one aspect of them retains an
inspiring interest. In this writer the historian
and the citizen are never dissociated. What drew
him to Florence and Lorenzo was that in Florence
he saw a great commercial city, as great in its own
age as Liverpool in this, but a city which was
inspired by the love of beauty, which was the
nurse of poets and scholars and artists ; a city in
which it was an inspiration to live, whose very
atmosphere stimulated and inspired the finest
aspirations of its citizens ; a city which for that
reason, and not at all because of the magnitude of
its commerce, has earned an imperishable fame.
Poignant as was the contrast between Florence
and Liverpool, it gave a zest at once to Roscoe's
historical studies and to his political activities. He

Beginnings of Intellectual Life 293

found in Florence at once refreshment from the
brutal materialism of his native town, and inspira-
tion for the attempt to breathe into it a new
spirit.

Of Roscoe's manifold political interests and
work, this is no place to teU. But something
must be said of the group of new institutions for
the creation of an intellectual life in Liverpool
which were carried out by him and his group of
friends, and for which his historical studies pro-
vided much of the inspiration. The various
attempts to found an organisation for the pro-
motion of the fine arts always had Roscoe for their
principal supporter. He and his friends were
the creators of the Athenaeum, a library for
scholars, opened in 1799. The Botanic Gardens,
at first established at the top of Mount Pleasant,
owed their existence to him ; they were the first
institution for the encouragement of scientific
studies established in Liverpool. Above aU, the
year 18 17 saw the opening of the Royal Institution
in Colquitt Street, an organisation which, though
it never fulfilled the hopes of its founders, was
nevertheless the outcome of a noble dream ; an
attempt to institute in the midst of a great trading
city a place which should be a perpetual focus for
every intellectual interest, a perpetual radiator
of sane and lofty views of life, a perpetual reminder
of the higher needs and aspirations of men in the
midst of the fierce roar of commercial competition,
and the clangorous appeal of these surroundings
to the vulgar lust of money.

294 Civilisation in Liverpool

Roscoe and his group redeem to some extent
the sordidness of Liverpool at the opening of the
nineteenth century. Their spirit, and the spirit
which had scattered over the city in a score of years
schools, charities and churches, were a fortunate
augury for the new age ; since they seemed to
promise that gentle pities and noble dreams were
not to be wholly crushed under foot in the fierce
triumphal march of the city towards commercial
supremacy.

295

CHAPTER XVI

The Nineteenth Century, 183 5-1 907

In 1835 the principal causes which produced the
greatness of Liverpool were already manifest, and
the lines of her future commercial development
were already laid down. The following seventy
years have been marked mainly by the increasing
utilisation of the openings already made, and it
will not be necessary to describe in any detail
the growth of trade during this age. It would
be interesting to analyse the principal factors
which have contributed to determine the character
of the commerce of modern Liverpool : the pro-
gressive opening up of new markets by conquest,
settlement or exploration ; the wonderful improve-
ments in means of communication ; and the
changes in the fiscal systems of England herself
and of the countries with which Liverpool has
principally traded. But these topics are at once
too great and too complex to be treated adequately
without a far greater expenditure of space than
the plan of this book allows.

The period covered by this chapter falls into two
parts, roughly of equal length. During the first
England maintained that supremacy, amounting

296 The Nineteenth Century

almost to monopoly, which she had obtained as
a result of the Napoleonic wars, both in the
principal processes of manufacture and in over-sea
trade. Until about 1870, Europe was so much
perplexed by political troubles, the heritage of the
French Revolution, that the governments of Euro-
pean states made comparatively little systematic
endeavour to foster and stimulate manufactures,
commerce and colonisation ; while in the same
period the United States were stiU mainly engrossed
by the development of the immense lands of the
West, and, in the sixties, by that gigantic Civil
War in which the unity of the American common-
wealth was secured. During the first half of
this period of seventy years, therefore, England
was left as the supreme industrial, commercial
and colonial power of the world ; the world's
workshop and market ; and Liverpool, as the
distributing centre for the great English indus-
trial district, profited accordingly. She especially
profited when, by the establishment of the system
of free trade, all artificial restrictions on the
movement of commerce were brought to an end ;
for in the middle of the nineteenth century
England was like a vast whirlpool which sucked
all trade in towards itself, and the removal of
barriers to the current magnified her prosperity
amazingly.

But it was inconceivable that this state of things
could continue indefinitely, or that other states
could permit their trade to be permanently
dominated and controlled by English merchants,

The Age of Commercial Rivalry 297

and their peoples to be reduced (as it was pictur-
esquely phrased) to be mere hewers of wood and
drawers of water for the industrial empire-state.
So the second half of the period saw a change.
When Europe had settled down politically, and
when the United States had fully realised, after the
Civil War, the magnitude of their own resources,
there began an era of fierce competition. Now
commenced that eager rush to obtain control of the
unoccupied parts and the undeveloped markets of
the earth, which has been the source of almost
every international political difficulty for the last
twenty years. Now, also, foreign governments
began to encourage the rise of native industries in
the only way in which that seemed possible — by
protecting them by high tariffs against the over-
whelming ascendancy of England. Soon, too,
other nations began to be eager for a larger share
in over-sea commerce, and English shipowners
found themselves faced by a competition that was
often backed by the resources of whole nations.

This reaction against the industrial and mercan-
tile supremacy of England was quite inevitable.
The only surprising thing about it was that
English trade was not merely able to survive, but
actually went on progressing during these years,
so that the second half of our period shows an
advance as striking as the first. The tonnage of
Liverpool shipping, 1,768,426 in 1835, had risen
to 5,728,504 in 1870: that is to say, it had multi-
plied three and one-half times during the period
of the unquestioned ascendancy of English trade.

298 T^he Nineteenth Century

But in 1905 it had risen to 15,996,387. This, it
is true, is less than three times as great as in 1870,
so that the rate of increase had fallen off. But
rate of increase is a very fallacious test, because
no port can expect its shipping to go on for ever
increasing in geometrical progression. The im-
portant point is that the actual addition to the
tonnage of Liverpool made during the period of
competition was more than twice as great as the
actual addition made during the period of
unquestioned ascendancy.

The result is, that at the end of her seventh
century as a chartered borough, Liverpool finds
herself amongst the three or four greatest ports
of the world. She conducts one-third of the export
trade, and one-fourth of the import trade, of the
United Kingdom. She owns one-third of the total
shipping of the kingdom, and one-seventh of the
total registered shipping of the world. Liverpool
ships are, on the average, of larger size than those
of any other British port. But even taking that
into account, these facts mean that of every ten
ships that go to and fro on all the seas of all the
world, one hails from Liverpool. In the midst of
a fiercer competition than she has hitherto known,
the port proclaims her confidence in the future by
erecting for the new century a huge domed dock
office at the gateway of the town, and a stately
pillared cotton exchange near by ; two such
palaces of trade as fifty years ago could scarcely
have been dreamed of.

It is no part of our business here to analyse

The Dominance of the ' Liner ' 299

the causes or the details of this surprising develop-
ment of commerce. The changed conditions of
the new age have produced many changes in the
character and methods of Liverpool trade, but
these are matters for a very special study. One
outstanding fact alone may be noted ; this period
has witnessed the triumph of the steamship, which,
being no longer dependent upon the winds, can
run to a time-table with a degree of accuracy
never before possible. The coming of the ' liner,'
the aristocrat of the seas, belongs to this period.
The first of Liverpool ' liners,' in a strict sense,
was the Britannia, with which, in 1840, the
Cunard Company inaugurated a regular fort-
nightly service to New York. Since then Liver-
pool has become in a peculiar sense the home of
' liners,' sailing to all parts of the globe, and the
method of fixed and regular sailings has been
largely applied to cargo as well as to passengers.
Though the trade of the port is far less depen-
dent on the ' liners ' than is commonly supposed,
yet they have had a far-reaching effect upon the
economic conditions of the port. Ships have
increased marvellously in size and complexity.
The average size of vessels owned in Liverpool is
five times as great as it was in 1835 ; and even
this does not fuUy represent the extent of the
change, since the numerous fishing boats, colliers
and other coasting craft, which pull down the
average, remain much the same in size and form
as they were at the beginning of the period. The
modern 'liner' is a vast floating town, representing

300 The Nineteenth Century

an enormous investment of capital. Owing to
the keenness of competition, and the perpetual
development of new inventions, it has but a short
life ; and, as it is designed for one peculiar line of
service, it often cannot be used for other purposes
when its day of service is over. Consequently it
must be made to earn with the greatest swiftness
possible ; there must be the utmost despatch in
the handling of its cargo, and in refitting and
supplying it ; every convenience must be easily
and immediately available.

These requirements have had very striking
results upon the conditions of labour in Liverpool,
of which something more will be said later. They
have also led to the most remarkable practical
achievement of Liverpool during this period, the
enlargement and perfecting of the dock system
untU it has no rival anywhere in the world. After
several experiments the management of this
great enterprise has been, since 1857, entrusted to a
board directly elected by the commercial interests
most immediately concerned, and on the whole
the system has worked very well. It has come to
be an honour, competed for among the principal
merchants of the port, to be allowed to give their
time and labour to the direction of these vast
interests. The Dock Board has also enlisted in its
service a succession of permanent officials of com-
manding ability, men of whom no individual
mention may here be made, but to whom the city
owes much good work.

At the end of two centuries from the creation

The Liverpool Docks 301

of the first humble dock, the port possesses dock
space to the extent of 570 acres on both sides of
the river. The massive granite walls by which
these docks are surrounded give a lineal quayage
of over thirty-five miles, and the creation of new
docks still continues. For seven miles and a
quarter, on the Lancashire side of the river alone,
the monumental granite, quarried from the
Board's own quarries in Scotland, fronts the river
in a vast sea wall as solid and enduring as the
Pyramids, the most stupendous work of its kind
that the will and power of man have ever created.
Nor is this all. Immense ugly hoppers, with
groanings and clankings, are perpetually at labour
scooping out the channel of the estuary so as to
save Liverpool from the fate of Chester, and to
permit vessels of all sizes to have a clear passage
at all tides. Huge warehouses of every type,
designed for the storage of every kind of com-
modity, front the docks, and giant-armed cranes
and other appliances make disembarkation swift
and easy. To a traveller with any imagination
few spectacles present a more entrancing interest
than that of these busy docks, crowded with the
shipping of every nation, echoing to every tongue
that is spoken on the seas, their wharves littered
with strange commodities brought from all^the
shores of all the oceans. It is here, beside the
docks, that the citizen of Liverpool can best
feel the opulent romance of his city, and the
miracle of transformation which has been wrought
since the not distant days when, where the docks

302 The Nineteenth Century

now stand, the untainted tides of the Mersey
raced past a cluster of mud hovels amid fields and
untilled pastures.

This swift growth of commerce has brought
with it a steady and growing inrush of population,
even more varied in character than the previous
age had welcomed. Census returns scarcely indi-
cate the nature or extent of this growth of
population, because the census returns only
relate to the population within the municipal
boundary, which, until 1895, remained fixed at
the limits laid down in 1835, when Everton,
Kirkdale and the populous parts of West Derby
and Toxteth were added to the original township.
It was not until 1 895 that the townships of Walton
and Wavertree, the remnant of Toxteth, and
another section of West Derby were incorporated
in the city. Five years later the township of
Garston (once a sister ' berewick ' of Liverpool,
and like it dependent on the manor of West
Derby) was also included. The population of
this enlarged city, at the census of 1901, was
716,000. But this was far from representing the
extent of the population economically dependent
upon Liverpool. The period with which we are
dealing saw the town of Bootle, on the northern
boundary of the city, develope from a rural
township into an incorporated borough with a
population in 1901 of 58,000. Beyond Bootle,
to the north, it saw a group of populous suburbs
of some 40,000 inhabitants spring up in Seaforth,
Litherland, Waterloo and Crosby. On the other

The Growth of Population 303

side of the river the same period saw Birkenhead
rise out of nothing with such rapidity that it
began to hope to surpass its mother city. Birken-
head had, in 1901, a population of 110,000 ; and
outside of its limits the district of Wallasey could
claim 535OOO inhabitants, and the more remote
district of Hoylake and West Kirby 10,000 more.
All these, as well as others of less importance, are
merely expansions of Liverpool, disgorging every
morning, by boat and train, their thousands to
take their parts in the labours of docks, offices,
factories and warehouses. Thus the population
economically dependent upon Liverpool largely
exceeds 1,000,000, and has multiplied fivefold in
the course of the last seventy years.

To accommodate this immense aggregation of
human beings, the tide of brick and mortar has
spread far afield on both sides of the river ; and
the observer who takes his stand upon one of the
busy ferry-boats, sees nothing all round him, for
eight miles on either shore, but a continuous
dense mass of houses, over which there hangs for
ever a low and broad paU of dun-coloured smoke,
visible on clear days from many miles' distance.
AU the old landmarks have been obliterated ; the
ridge of heathery hiU which backed the small
mediaeval town has been covered, and into the
open country behind long tentacles of streets
spread in every direction, further and further
every year.

All this was inevitable. But two aspects of
this physical expansion of the town during the

304 The Nineteenth Century

nineteenth century deserve comment. One is
that no attempt has been made to direct the
course that building should take, or to ensure
that the streets (since streets must replace green
fields) should be spacious and orderly, or that the
houses should be dignified or pleasant to look at.
The building of the period has been on the whole
indescribably mean and ugly, far inferior to much
of the building of the previous period ; nor can
anything be imagined much more depressing than
the miles of duU, monotonous and ugly streets in
which not only the poor but the middle classes
of the town are condemned to live. Another
feature of the growth of this period, in Liverpool
as elsewhere, is that special quarters have de-
veloped themselves for the rich, the people of
middling fortune, and the poor. That too,
perhaps, was inevitable ; yet it forms a physical
barrier to the growth of the social spirit.

The people who inhabit this vast congeries of
streets are of an extraordinary diversity of races ;
few towns in the world are more cosmopolitan.
And these various races (except in so far as
they belong to the wealthier class) tend to hive
together in distinct quarters. The most numerous
are the Irish, who have their principal quarter
in the northern part of the old town, and who
supply a large proportion of the unskilled labour
required at the docks. Always numerous in
Liverpool (there were Irish names among the
burgesses as early as 1378), the Irish became
especially numerous after the great potato famine

A Cosmopolitan City 305

of 1845-6. Over 90,000 of them entered Liver-
pool in the first three months of 1846, and nearly
300,000 in the twelve months following July
1847. In that year the presence of so enormous
a number of penniless and hunger-driven wretches
led to such turbulence that 20,000 townsmen
had to be sworn in as special constables, and 2,000
regular troops camped at Everton. The majority
of them emigrated to America ; but enough
remained to aggravate seriously the problem of
poverty in Liverpool, to add gravely to the
overcrowding and misery of the lower quarters of
the town, and to create a distinct Irish-town
within the city. Welsh immigrants have never
come in such droves, and therefore have never
clustered together in quite the same way, but
there are almost as many Welshmen as Irishmen
in the city. Space fails to enumerate all the
foreign nationalities which are represented in
Liverpool by distinct little quarters wherein, to
some extent, the customs and ways of life of the
old country are reproduced in unfamiliar surroun-
dings and amid sordid conditions. There is|no
city in the world, not even London itself, in
which so many foreign governments find it
necessary to maintain consular offices for the
safeguarding of the interests of their exiled
subjects. It should, however, be noted that this
amazingly polyglot and cosmopolitan population,
consisting to a considerable extent of races which
are backward in many ways, and maintaining
itself largely by unskilled labour, vastly increases
w

3o6 The Nineteenth Century

the difficulty of securing and maintaining the
decencies of life.

The very nature and magnitude of the progress
of the port also tends to accentuate these social
difficulties. There is probably no city of anything
like equal size in which so small a proportion of
the population is maintained by permanent and
stable industrial work. There are, of course, a
number of minor industries carried on in the
town, but even of these, some (such as match-
making) depend upon low-paid and comparatively
unskilled labour. And the principal occupation
of the city, the foundation of its prosperity, is the
handling of goods between ship, warehouse and
railway ; a function which is mainly performed by
unskilled labour. And as this work comes largely
in sudden rushes, and has to be done at high
pressure, in order to save interest on costly ships
and costly dock space and warehouse space, it has
come about that a large proportion of the men
employed have no permanent work, but must
submit to periods of idleness alternating with
periods of sudden heavy labour, extending over
long hours, and inevitably followed by fatigue,
reaction, and the ever-easy consolation of alcohol.
Thus the great development of steamships and
docks has brought it about that the city's pros-
perity largely depends upon casual labour, the
most degrading as well as the most insecure form
of employment ; and that Liverpool has to deal
with a social problem perhaps more acute than
that which faces any other city.

E-ffects of Commercial Growth on Character 307

On another numerous and important class of
the community these developments have had a
similarly depressing effect. The sailors who man
the innumerable ships of Liverpool may be less
riotous and unruly than their predecessors, but it
is clear that their quality must have been impaired
by the change from sails to steam. Their em-
ployment no longer calls for the same vigour,
capacity or alertness as it once did. They are
chiefly engaged in menial labours, the real work
of driving the ship being done by a small band of
skilled engineers. Hence this employment is less
attractive to good men. The seafaring crowd,
vavTiKo<s o%Xo9, has always been difficult to govern
well ; but it must be obvious that a sea-going
population in the age of steam and mechanism, if
less turbulent, is stiU more difficult than its
predecessors to keep in healthy and happy
conditions.

Putting aside the large class employed by the
many trades which are called into being by the
needs of the actual population of the town, and
which are conducted in much the same way as in
other towns, there remains a third large distinctive
class of the Liverpool population — the class of
clerks, who are more numerous here than elsewhere
in proportion to the total. Now the conditions
of the clerk's life usually render him conventional,
xespectable, timid and unadventurous. His work
does not encourage, but rather represses, indi-
viduality and openness of mind. For that reason
it is ill-paid, yet convention requires him to live

3o8 The Nineteenth Century

in a wajr that perpetually strains his income. This
class, though it includes many capable and clear-
headed men, is also largely recruited from among
the half-hearted, the listless, the unimaginative
and the dull ; and so in any period of stress or
depression many of them will drift helplessly,
especially if once their moorings of respectability
are cut.

Such are the most prominent elements of
which the community of Liverpool is formed ;
they are not elements out of which it seems easy
to make a virile, coloured and happy society. But
the city is to some extent compensated by the
character which belongs to the small directing
class in a commercial community. Great mer-
chants and shipowners, whose interests range
over the whole world, or at any rate far overpass
their own immediate surroundings, are rendered
by the character of their work — and must be, if
they are to succeed in it — alert, open-minded,
hospitable to big ideas, accustomed to and tolerant
of the widest divergencies of view. For this
reason it is that great trading centres have so
often been, like Athens, Florence, Venice,
Amsterdam, also centres of vigorous intellectual
life. One of the greatest interests in the study
of the history of Liverpool during the nineteenth
century, must be to see how far this principle
holds good here, under new conditions ; how far
the first beginnings of higher interests which
marked the preceding period were carried forward
by its successor ; and how far the vigour and

Changed Attitude of the Town Council 309

enlightenment of the directing classes in the great
seaport community have been able to counteract
the depressing tendencies, in other directions, of
the remarkable material progress of this period,
and to turn their city into a human and habitable
place in which it is a privilege to dwell. The
mere increment of material wealth, the mere brute
growth of trade, is of course in itself no cause for
satisfaction. However brilliantly it may have been
aided or directed, it is of no permanent advantage
unless it is made the means for a heightening of
the possibilities of genuine human happiness, a
real development of real civilisation.

Beyond aU comparison, therefore, the most
important change which Liverpool experienced
during this period, was the change which came
over the attitude and spirit of the Town Council
after the Municipal Reform Act of 1835. Before
that date, as we have seen, the Council had not
regarded itself as being in any way charged with
securing the welfare of the whole body of inhabi-
tants, but had looked upon itself merely as the
trustee for the small privileged body of freemen.
So great was the reaction against the old Council's
view, that in the elections to the first reformed
Council the reforming or Whig party had things
aU their own way, and for a brief period of six
years' absolutely controlled the government of the
town, with an overwhelming majority in the
Council.

Upon the task of reconstructing the whole
system of borough government they set to work

3IO The Nineteenth Century

with enthusiasm. They began hj getting rid
of most of the old officers, though some of
them were very competent men, and cutting
down salaries unsparingly. They took over the
functions of the old separate Watching, Lighting
and Cleansing Board, and proceeded at once to
reorganise the police of the borough. Several
committees were appointed to suggest schemes
of reform in various departments of administration.
One of these presented a long and dreadful report
in 1836, on the moral condition of the town and
the ineflEectiveness of the existing police system.
This report pointed out that a vast number of
thieves were known to be at work, no less than
1,200 juvenile thieves being known, under the age
of fifteen ; while the streets were rendered dis-
gusting by 3,600 known prostitutes, who had
recognised centres. The result was that the
police force was at once doubled in number, and
reconstructed. Hitherto its function had been
almost confined to the arrest of criminals ; now
the principle began to be laid down that it was
the duty of the police not merely to punish, but
to prevent vice and crime ; and thus a beginning
was made of the efficient and admirable police
force of to-day.

Another committee reported on the unhealthy
and unsafe character of a large proportion of the
buildings of the town. The Council thereupon
obtained power to appoint a building surveyor,
and also to demolish dangerous houses at the
owner's cost. But this was not enough. Many

The Beginnings of Reform 311

hundreds of houses, which were not actually-
dangerous in the sense of being likely to collapse,
were far more dangerous by reason of their in-
sanitary condition, and the appalling state in
which their inhabitants had to live. In order
that they might attempt to remedy this, the
Council applied for power to impose certain
building regulations on aU new buildings erected
in the town, to close existing houses which were
not merely dangerous but filthy or unwholesome,
and to appoint a Health Committee to regulate
the sanitary condition of the town. The great
Building Act of 1842 which resulted from these
proposals, and which was the pioneer act of its
kind in England and the model for other towns,
did not come into operation until the Whigs had
fallen from power, but they deserve the credit of
initiating it.

Another very fruitful development of this
period was the initiation of public wash-houses,
in which Liverpool took the lead of all England.
The origination of this valuable scheme must be
credited to a lady in very modest circumstances, a
Mrs. Martin, who, perceiving how impossible it
was for the wives of dwellers in the mean streets
of Liverpool to cleanse their families' clothes,
threw open her own kitchen freely to them. Mr.
William Rathbone (third of the name) hearing
of this enterprise, persuaded the Town Council to
establish public wash-houses at a small charge ;
and in 1842 the first of an invaluable series was
opened.

312 The Nineteenth Century

But perhaps the subject on which the enthu-
siasm of the first reformed Council was most
warmly aroused was that of education ; in which
many of them saw the only permanent means of
bringing about an amelioration of the condition
of the town. Two schools the Council already
controlled : those two which had been founded
in i8z6 to replace the old grammar school. These
schools were now reorganised. Religious teaching
according to the doctrines of the Established
Church had hitherto been given in them. The
Whigs held that this was an improper use of
public money, the more so as the schools were
planted in the midst of an Irish Catholic popula-
tion who were thus prevented from using them.
They therefore substituted a form of religious
instruction which they hoped might be equally
acceptable to Catholic and Protestant. But the
immediate result of this change was an outburst
of Protestant feeling, led by that fiery orator the
Rev. Hugh McNeile. While the Whigs con-
tended for that strangely familiar doctrine, the
inalienable right of the parent to have his children
preserved to his own faith, all the popular feeling
of non-Irish Liverpool was aroused to defend the
cause of Protestantism against the insidious
attacks of Popery ; and in the end the Whigs
were so discredited that in election after election
they were hopelessly defeated, and finally left in a
very small minority. Except for a very brief
period they never recovered power through-
out the century, and Liverpool passed under

■^^i

3'

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J

W\

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O

O
w
O

Q

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St. George's Hall 313

Conservative rule. The Whigs had entered upon
their task with high ideals ; but they were too
doctrinaire, and though they had made a good
beginning, they had actually achieved little.

One enterprise of these years, not begun by the
Council but warmly supported by it, and at a later
date taken over by it, must not pass without men-
tion. This was the proposal to erect a worthy
public hall for the city, to be called St. George's
HaU. A subscription of ^^25,000 was raised, and
the council voted the old site of the Royal Infir-
mary, which had recently moved up to Pembroke
Place. Here began, above the rather slovenly but
not unpicturesque houses which then occupied
both sides of Shaw's Brow (now WiUiam Brown
Street), that noble building, one of the noblest in
the modern world, which is to-day the supreme
architectural boast of the city. That it should
have been so amply planned was evidence that a
new spirit of civic pride was rising in the city. Its
architect, Harvey Lonsdale Elmes, was a mere
boy when his design was chosen, and he died
before it was completed in 1854. But the choice
of him is a remarkable proof of that good taste in
architecture which Liverpool had long possessed,
and of that good fortune in her public buildings
which has never deserted the city.

The change from Whig to Tory did not involve
any slackening in the work of amending the state
of the town, though it led to some change in the
methods in which the work was undertaken.
Education fell into the background, but the

3i6 The Nineteenth Century

only a temporary and partial solution of the
difficulty, and by the Sanitary Amendment
Act of 1864, ^^^ Town Council obtained
power for the medical officer to ' report ' any
court or alley for condemnation to the grand
jury, and power to the Council itself to alter or
demolish aU dwellings thus condemned, after
purchasing them or paying compensation to the
owners. The powers thus obtained far surpassed
any possessed by other local authorities in
England, and even to-day the local and special
powers possessed by Liverpool are in some respects
more useful than those given by the national
Housing Acts. In short, the group of private
acts from 1842 to 1864, supplemented by the by-
laws which they empowered the Town Council to
make, rendered Liverpool the pioneer in housing
reform ; and though some of the provisions in
these local acts were afterwards imitated in general
national acts, in several respects the building
regulations of Liverpool are still to-day ahead of
those of other towns. Liverpool had acted with
greater vigour because her need was greater ; but
thanks to the policy which had now been adopted,
she was in a fair way to shake off the hitherto
deserved nickname of the ' black spot on the
Mersey.'

Equally important with the rooting out of the
worst slum quarters was the introduction of an
abundant supply of good water, which was under-
taken in these same years. Until this date water
had been supplied by two rival companies, one of

A New Water Supply 317

which derived its supply from wells in Bootle, the
other principally from wells in Toxteth Park.
The water thus obtained was of good quality, but
it was quite inadequate in quantity. A con-
tinuous supply, which now seems a necessary of
life, was then unknown. Often the water was
only turned on for a quarter of an hour or half an
hour on alternate days, and sometimes it was
turned on for this brief period at extremely
inconvenient times — eleven o'clock at night, or
six o'clock in the morning. Under these cir-
cumstances even personal cleanliness was almost
impossible for the majority of the inhabitants.
In the poorer quarters whole courts had to draw
their supply from a single standpipe ; and the
inhabitants must squabble for their turns to fill
the jugs and buckets in which the supply had to be
kept, often, of course, missing their chance
altogether. Clothes could not be washed with
such a supply ; the same water had to be used over
and over again until it was positively offensive ;
and in a large number of the poorer houses the
floors had never known the luxury of a scrubbing
since they were built.

To remedy this appalling state of things — ^which
formed a more fruitful source of disease and
misery than even bad houses and overcrowding —
the Town Council, in 1848, first bought out the
two companies, and then looked about for ^ a
source of further supply. After two years of dis-
cussion it was decided to form reservoirs below the
moorlands of Rivington, north of Bolton. This

31 8 The Nineteenth Century

great work was commenced in 1852, and in 1857
Liverpool received for the first time in her history
the unspeakable boon of a continuous and abun-
dant supply of pure water : perhaps the greatest
social reform that the century saw.

This boon was so much more largely used than
anybody had anticipated that from the first the
old wells had to be employed to the full in
addition to the Rivington supply; and even then,
as population increased, the supply became very
narrow, a long drought in 1864 and 1865 repro-
ducing for a time almost the old conditions.
After many discussions therefore, it was resolved
in 1879 ^° launch upon a still more ambitious
scheme, and in 1880, under Parliamentary powers,
the bold and magnificent project was begun of
creating in the heart of the mountains of Wales a
huge and beautiful lake of pure water, connected
with Liverpool by vast pipe-lines. The making
of Lake Vyrnwy is an achievement almost as great
as the making of the docks, but in some ways it is
a stiU nobler one.

Another aspect of the work of the Town Council
begun early in this period deserves also to rank
high among the pioneering activities of the
Liverpool municipality ; the more interesting
because it shows that the new spirit which was
increasingly mastering the Council was not content
with providing merely for the physical and
material needs of the community. This was the
foundation, in 1852, of the Liverpool Public
Library, one of the earliest of such institutions in

Library, Museum and Art Gallery 319

the country, and the organisation, in close associ-
ation with it, of the Public Museum. The
provision of free public libraries was first suggested
as a proper object of public expenditure by a
Liverpool man, William Ewart, who, in 1850,
succeeded in passing through Parliament the
Public Libraries Act. But the need of such an
institution had already been urged in Liverpool
before that act was passed, and a subscription had
been raised for the purpose and transferred to the
Council, which, in 1852, opened a temporary
library in Duke Street. In 1851 the thirteenth
Earl of Derby bequeathed to the city his fine
collection of natural history specimens. Stimu-
lated by this gift the Council obtained a special
act empowering them to establish not merely a
library, but a ' Public Library, Museum and Art
Gallery ' ; thus from the first the three kindred
institutions were closely linked together. The
generosity of Sir William Brown provided funds for
the erection of a fine library and museum building
in Shaw's Brow, now appropriately re-named
WiUiam Brown Street, and to these beginnings
new additions were quickly made. In 1857
Mr. Joseph Mayer presented to the city his great
collection of objects of historic and archaeological
interest, which formed an invaluable supplement
to the Derby collections. Later, a large new
circular reading room was added by the Town
Council, and named in honour of Sir James Picton,
who had done good service to the cause of
learning in the city. In 1873 Mr. A. B. Walker

320 The Nineteenth Century

completed the group of institutions by presenting
to the city a spacious gallery of art, thus fulfilling
an ambition which many earlier dreamers like
WUliam Roscoe had striven after in vain.

All these buildings, which, when completed,
filled up the whole north side of William Brown
Street, and looked across to the noble St. George's
HaU and St. John's Churchyard below, were
from the first of worthy design, built in that
classic style which has been so well carried out in
aU the public buildings of Liverpool ; and they
helped to form a great public place which (if its
other sides were of at all equal attractiveness)
would have few rivals in Europe for dignity and
beauty. They formed therefore not only an
exceedingly valuable series of public institutions,
but an immense addition to the beauties of the
city, and their site, looking down from rising
ground to the clustered irregular roofs of the
old town, was one of exceptional value, and
commanded a prospect such as is to be obtained
nowhere else in our ill-planned city.

For, with aU their enthusiasm for improvement,
the Town Council had been singularly regardless of
the human craving for beauty, singularly blind to
the educational value and even to the physical
advantages of abundant air and space and greenery.
The most outstanding defect of the work of the
Council was its slowness to take in hand the
provision of parks and open spaces ; and every
postponement of this need made its satisfaction
more difficult and more costly. In 1835 it would

Parks and Gardens 321

have been easy for the Town Council at compara-
tively small expense to surround the town, as it
then was, with a continuous ring of parks. The
Town Council was too much engrossed with other
questions, and too eager for economy. The first
fifteen years of the reformed Council were very
fuUy occupied with urgent reforms : it was these
years which produced the great building acts, the
first clearance of the slums, the initiation of the
new water supply, and the origination of the
public library, and amid all these activities it is
perhaps not surprising that parks were forgotten.
In 1848, indeed, the Newsham estate was pur-
chased with a view to turning it into a public
park, but nothing was done. The truth is that
in the middle years of the century a distinct
slackening is noticeable in the zeal for public
improvement. The town was flourishing ; every-
body was engrossed in the building up of fortunes ;
and as there was no considerable body of opinion
to which these things were of secondary interest,
the Council was loth to undertake new and costly
enterprises.

But in 1868 the spirit of improvement revived
again, and the first question taken in hand was the
provision of parks. In that year parliamentary
powers were obtained for the creation of no less
than three great public pleasure-grounds — Sefton,
Newsham and Stanley Parks, costing in all
£6yo,ooo. From that time onwards no good
opportunity of obtaining fresh breathing-spaces
has been neglected, the latest and most beautiful

322 The Nineteenth Century

of these acquisitions being that of Calderstones
Park. Private munificence has come to the aid
of public funds, both in the provision of land (as
in the case of the princely gift of Wavertree Play-
ground in 1895, or of Bowring Park in 1906) or in
the equipment of the parks with palm-houses and
aviaries. Over forty churchyards and small greens
have been laid out in various parts of the city, and
the total area of parks and playgrounds now pro-
vided by the city for the health and amusement of
its citizens amounts to over 1,000 acres.

We must not, however, confine ourselves merely
to the provision made by the Town Council for the
amenity of the city and the improvement of the con-
ditions of life of the citizens. Other public bodies
also have been at work. Space permits only of the
barest mention of the work done by the Liverpool
School Board between 1870 and 1902 in erecting
in all parts of the town magnificent school build-
ings, and thus supplementing the work already
done by voluntary agencies, and rendering possible
the giving of some rudiments of education to every
child. A single sentence must suffice to com-
memorate the service of Mr. Christopher Bushell
and Mr. S. G. Rathbone in saving this great work
from being the prey of those sectarian animosities
which have often raged so bitterly in Liverpool.
The last few years have seen this function also
transferred to the City Council, and a beginning
made in the creation of a complete, reasoned and
logical system of education. A single sentence
must also suffice to note the invaluable quiet

Educational Development 323

service performed during man^ years by the Liver-
pool Council of Education, which, by means of a
system of scholarships from the elementary schools,
provided an educational ladder for boys and girls of
promise such as, until the last few years, few, if any,
English cities could show. The last thirty years
have, indeed, witnessed an amazing activity in the
provision of educational facilities ; schools have
been founded ; trade-classes and science-classes of
many types have been established by private and
public enterprise in every quarter of the city ;
colleges for the training of artists and of teachers
and of sailors and of housewives have been insti-
tuted. All these varied forms of educational work
are now placed under the co-ordinating and
directing control of the City Council ; and
though much remains to be done, it begins to be
possible to foresee the day when no available brain
power in the city will any longer be allowed to run
to waste.

Another field of social activity of great
importance has also lain mainly outside of the
sphere of the Town Council's activities : the super-
vision, namely, and the restriction within reason-
able limits, of the facilities for obtaining strong
drink, out of which so much misery arises. The
history of the treatment in Liverpool of the
vexed and difficult question of licensing is too
large a theme to be fairly or adequately dealt with
in a few lines of such a book as this, but it must not
be left untouched. Ever since the eighteenth
century, and perhaps earlier, the disproportionate

324 The Nineteenth Century

number of public houses existing in Liverpool has
been a subject of comment by every observer of
the town's social condition. During the first part
of the period covered by this chapter little attempt
was made to deal with this question, and between
1 83 1 and 1 841 the number of licensed houses rose
from 1,752 to 2,274. From 1861 to 1863 the
licensing bench entered upon a deliberate experi-
ment of a curious kind, that of granting licenses
freely to all who applied, without considering the
number already in existence in any given locality.
On the sacred principles of free trade, it was held,
there should be no distinction drawn between
beer-shops and bread-shops, and open competition
would rectify all evils. There might have been
something to say for this view if the appetite for
beer had been, like the appetite for bread, a
natural appetite, with natural limits. As it was,
the only result of the policy of free licenses
(possibly, it may be urged, because it never had a
fair trial) was to increase drunkenness, crime and
mortality. In 1874 conditions were so bad that
the Times commented on the dreadful moral
condition of Liverpool and its unparalleled death-
rate, and concluded by the trenchant, if not
whoUy just, assertion that ' the criminal statistics
and the health statistics of Liverpool point to the
same conclusion : Liverpool is a town whose
leading inhabitants are negligent of their duties
as citizens.'

This condemnation was not whoUy just, because
it failed to take account of the exceptionally

Licensing Reform 325

difficult circumstances which Liverpool presented,
or of the very real advances which had already
been made. Yet it came as a not altogether
undeserved rebuke to that tendency towards
lethargy, that slackness in continuing the work
of improvement, which, as we have noted, marked
the middle part of our period. And it helped to
stimulate the public conscience into a new activity
and to initiate a new reform movement which,
aimed first at the reform of licensing, presently
extended to other spheres, and led to that general
reforming activity which has never since wholly
died down, and in which all parties have shared,
each in its own way.

The year 1 874 saw the foundation of a Vigilance
Committee of leading citizens, for the purpose of
pressing on reform and in particular opposing the
renewal of unnecessary licenses. The men who
constituted this committee were inevitably the
butts of many jeers, and some of them may
have deserved the imputation of ' unco-guidness '
which was aimed against them. But they did
invaluable work ; and before long the licensing
bench frankly accepted the policy of definitely
endeavouring to reduce the number of public
houses, especially in those poorer quarters where
they clustered in largest numbers ; a policy which
has been consistently followed so far as justice
to the licensees permitted, ever since. And after
a while the Vigilance Committee ceased to be
necessary, because the Watch Committee and the
police came to be persuaded that it was their duty

326 The Nineteenth Century

not merely to arrest and prosecute drunken and
disorderly persons, but to keep a watch upon those
publicans who permitted or encouraged drunken-
ness. The same change of attitude took place in
the same years on the question of sexual vice.
The police gradually undertook (amid much
criticism) the function of driving open vice from
the streets, with the result that in a few years the
streets of Liverpool, once notorious even beyond
the streets of West London, became remarkable
for their comparative cleanness. It was quite
truly^urged against this new policy that vice was
not suppressed, but only driven underground ; but
at least it was a gain that the horror no longer
flaunted and beckoned in every thoroughfare.

It was a great change that was thus brought
about, a change which was not accomplished with-
out much honest questioning and doubt, as well
as much that was dishonest and impure. For it
involved a complete departure from the principles
of even the most ardent reformers in the mid-
century. Then it was regarded as being the sole
function of a governing body to maintain order,
to protect the just rights of every citizen, and
to punish actual wrong deeds after they were done;
anything beyond that seemed, in the mid-Vic-
torian age, an improper interference with liberty,
sure to be mischievous in the long run. But now
the city was embarked upon a much wider and
much more difficult task : no less than that of
preventing rather than punishing wrong doing ;
of removing undue temptations and invitations

Housing Reform ■^zj

to vice out of the way of the citizen. And that
is an end so vast, so difficult of achievement, so
manifold in its possible implications, that the
acceptance of it involved a quite indefinite en-
largement of the sphere of city government.

One result of the new spirit which this reform
movement in various ways stimulated was that
the Town CouncU began seriously to take in hand
the problem of not merely demolishing insanitary
property under the powers obtained by the various
local acts already enumerated, but of replacing
them by healthy and well-designed houses suitable
for the displaced tenants. Though many houses
had been demolished, only one block of cottages
had hitherto been erected to replace them, and
this was as late as 1869. The new policy really
began when in 1885 the large group of dwellings
known as Victoria Square was erected, and by 1900
accommodation had been provided for over 700
families. But at the opening of the new century
the city entered upon a far more vigorous cam-
paign, both of demolition and of reconstruction,
with the result that over 2,000 corporation
dwellings are now (in February, 1907) in occupa-
tion, and some 200 more are nearly completed.
The total outlay involved has been over ^^i, 000,000,
the interest on which is practically met by the rents
paid by the tenants. And the fact that the bulk
of these dwellings have been opened since 1904
shows that we are only at the beginning of a very
remarkable extension of municipal activity. The
principle has now been definitely laid down that

328 The Nineteenth Century

it is the duty of the city to provide new homes for
at least fifty fer cent, of those who are displaced by
every clearance of the slums. That this boon of
clean and healthy houses is appreciated, is shown by
the fact that in an average week of February, 1907,
only three fer cent, of the tenements were vacant.
In this remarkable enterprise the city government
is acting in a ' paternal ' way which would have
startled the most eager reformers of fifty years ago ;
and it is carrying out its new policy with more
vigour than any other local goveriiment in
England. The problem of housing for the mass
of our citizens cannot, of course, yet be said to have
been solved ; insanitary houses are still many ;
and even the Council houses, excellent as they are,
are necessarily erected on the sites of the houses
which they displace, that is to say, amid surround-
ings which are often dreary and depressing. Per-
haps a still greater step towards the solution of the
difficulty was taken when, in 1 897, the marvellous
system of cheap and swift transit by means of
electric trams was initiated by the Town Council,
and rendered possible the transportation of
thousands of poor folk to healthier surroundings
on the outskirts of the city. No account can
here be given of the course or results of this great
enterprise ; enough, perhaps, to say that we have
scarcely yet begun to realise the magnitude of the
results that may flow from it.

Thus on all sides, and in many further modes of
which no account has here been given, the city
government has, during the last thirty years

The Churches and their Work ^2g

especially, undertaken a responsibility for the
health and happiness of its citizens unlike anything
that its whole previous history has shown. And
if any full account were to be given of what the
city as a whole now endeavours to do for its
citizens, much ought also to be said of the extra-
ordinarily active works of charity and religion
which have been carried on during these years ;
but this vast theme must be left almost untouched.
Of the manifold activities of the churches of all
denominations it is impossible to give any adequate
account ; they have been the centres for the
greater part of the voluntary social activities of
most of the citizens.

The increasing magnitude of the city, and the
vastness of the field which it presents for religious
work, have led to its becoming an independent unit
of ecclesiastical organisation. The creation of the
separate diocese of Liverpool in 1880 gave to the
city a new dignity, and provided her with a new
official leader, never slack to encourage the labours
of social progress. The step had become necessary
for the adequate organisation and extension of the
work of the national church ; while the provision
of the necessary fiands afforded proof of the
vitality and strength of religious feeling in the
city. And now, to crown the so recent ecclesi-
astical reorganisation, comes the magnificent and
daring proposal to erect, in the midst of a busy
modern trading city, a vast cathedral like those
of the Middle Ages, whose tall towers and soaring
roofs, raised on the hill above the river, shall stand

330 The Nineteenth Century

forth above the roar of the traffic as a perpetual
reminder that ' man does not live by bread alone.'
The national church in Liverpool has been active,
and has been aided and led by noble men, through-
out this period, but it has never been more active
or more earnest in good works than it is at the
opening of the city's eighth century. The Roman
Catholic Church, more populous in Liverpool than
anywhere else in England, and finding its especial
sphere of work among the poor quarters of the
north, has achieved wonders in the provision
of schools, and in the conduct of multiform
labours of charity. It too has made Liverpool
the seat of an episcopal see. Nor have other
denominations lagged behind. Presbyterians,
Wesleyans, Congregationalists, Unitarians, Bap-
tists, Greeks, Jews and others have vied in honour-
able rivalry, both in the erection of churches and
in the maintenance of works of charity. Yet, for
aU this labour, Liverpool is, at the opening of the
twentieth century, not a very religious place.
Numerous as the churches are, they could not
possibly contain more than a small proportion of
the population, and many of them are half-empty.
The majority of the inhabitants of Liverpool
seem to be outside of the direct influence of the
churches.

Of the multitudinous charities which this age
has fostered, a few sentences must suffice to tell,
though they represent not only the expenditure
of vast sums of money, but the continuous, untir-
ing and unselfish devotion of thousands of good

Labours of Charity 331

citizens. Hospitals of every type give tender
nursing and the best attainable skiU without fee
to the poor and distressed, and sometimes also
to those who should be ashamed not to pay for
such services. Homes of rest provide refuge
for aged saUors, and widows, and the distressed
and afflicted of many kinds. Clubs and places of
recreation for men, women and young people try
to open windows of hope into the dreary condi-
tions of city life. Other agencies feed the hungry,
clothe the naked, and send the consolation of good
women to nurse the sick in their own homes.

Of aU these charities, none performs more
lasting service than those which aim at protecting,
helping or rescuing child-life ; the Society for the
Prevention of Cruelty to Children (which here
anticipated by some years the foundation of the
National Society) ; the Police-aided Clothing
Society, which clothes the ragged urchins of the
streets, and calls in the aid of the police to prevent
drunken parents from pawning the clothes ; or,
above aU, those agencies which are associated
with the names of Nugent, Major Lester, Garrett,
Berry and Birt, which strive to pluck children out
of the horrors and iniquities of the slums, and give
them a fair chance and a new start in happier sur-
roundings. A volume would scarcely suffice to
describe aU the manifold labours of charity that
are unweariedly pursued in the city, and to enume-
rate in the baldest catalogue the lives that have
been spent to bring relief to poverty and pain.
Benevolence seems almost inexhaustible, and the

332 The Nineteenth Century

record of the sums which Liverpool annually
devotes to these high aims surpasses belief or
imagination, and makes the observer think more
warmly of his kind. And yet, when one thinks
of aU these noble labours, it is not altogether a
feeling of satisfaction that is uppermost. That
there should be so many men and women willing
to give life and (what matters less) money, is a
great thing : but that aU their labours, so gener-
ously supported and so continuously exercised,
should yet leave so vast a mass of misery unrelieved,
is the most terrible indictment that could be
framed upon the conditions of life which render
them necessary.

There is one great enterprise of this period of
which nothing has yet been said. Many citizens
feel that no undertaking of the century has been
more ambitious, or more pregnant of great results,
than the foundation of the University, whose
twenty-fifth anniversary coincides with the seven
hundredth anniversary of the city.

The dream of planting in the midst of the
shops and warehouses of a great city a university
of a new type was one which could scarcely
have been entertained until the years when
the boldest schemes, and the highest ideals of
what was possible and desirable for Liverpool,
had begun to be entertained. When, after the
Education Act of 1870, England began to be
dotted with timid institutions then called Uni-
versity Colleges, a few enlightened men began to
urge that Liverpool also should take the same

The Foundation of the University 333

course. A handful of doctors, struggling to main-
tain the School of Medicine which had existed
since 1834, one or two scholars, like Charles Beard,
who had drifted into the not very congenial
surroundings of a great commercial centre, and a
few enthusiasts for scientific training as an equip-
ment for practical life — these were the pioneers of
the movement. But they found themselves faced
by many obstacles. When they tried to arouse
interest among the great merchants of the town,
they found, as one of them has testified, that most
of them were interested only in two things —
money-making and good living ; while others,
forming their ideas of a university upon the lawns
and ancient buildings of Oxford, laughed at
the idea of turning a trading town into the seat
of a university. Some, who might otherwise have
thrown themselves into the movement, were
diverted from it by the synchronous movement
for the establishment of the bishopric. Yet
gradually the idea gained ground, helped forward
not a little by the inspiring dream of what such a
civic university might be, which was put forward
by the great scholar. Bishop Lightfoot, himself
once a Liverpool boy ; and helped still more
by the whole hearted enthusiasm with which that
noble philanthropist, William Rathbone, threw
himself into the work of collecting funds. So at
length the scheme was formally launched at a
town's meeting in 1879; the corporation began
its munificent support by granting a site ; ^^50,000
were raised by subscription ; and in January,

334 'rke Nineteenth Century

1882, the University College was opened, in a
disused lunatic asylum, in the midst of a slum
district.

It is not possible, in these pages, to attempt any-
detailed narrative of the growth of this institution
in the twenty-five years which have passed since
its opening. Beginning almost last of all English
cities in the provision of higher education, Liver-
pool has, in twenty-five years, surpassed all but
the oldest of her compeers, and even to Manchester
she is rapidly creeping up. Two things have
rendered this amazing progress possible. The
first is the steady and lavish support of a number
of pious founders, whose generosity has rivalled
that of any mediaeval patrons of learning, and
whose gifts have only increased in volume as the
years have passed. The second has been the
cordial and friendly support of the city govern-
ment, which has not only co-operated with the
university in the creation of a whole series of
special advanced schools, and provided numerous
scholarships, but has given direct grants of
money, culminating in a noble subsidy of ^10,000
■per annum. And two features have especially
marked the work which this new civic university
has set itself to do. The first is the determination
that all knowledge is to be its province, and that
its function is not to be confined to the communi-
cation of already established knowledge, but is to
include the continual investigation of unexplored
fields ; it is to be a factory as well as a market of
learning. The second feature is that it has set

The Growth of the University 335

itself to provide efficient training for all the pro-
fessions that call for scientific attainments ; it will
not confine itself to the professions of the old
world, but will give an equipment for the innumer-
able new professions which have been called into
being by the changed conditions of modern life.

As this new conception of a university has
dawned upon the community, it has attracted to
itself a marvellous flow of generosity. Thirty- two
endowed professorships have been established,
together with a host of lectureships, representing
amongst them almost the whole range of human
knowledge. A remarkable group of big buildings,
equipped for the most advanced work, has been
planted on the summit of Brownlow Hill, where
the old Mosslake once sent out its streamlet to
turn the ancient mUl. Students have multiplied,
tiU now they number nearly 1,000, and come
from all quarters of the earth. Finally, progress
became so rapid that the name and status of a
' University College ' no longer represented the
facts ; and in its twenty-first year, thanks to the
cordial support of the city, the college obtained
from the Crown its charter as a fully-organised and
independent university, and worthily took rank
among the great seats of learning of the world. It
has much yet to add before it can stand com-
parison with the vast universities of other coun-
tries. Yet the trading town, which not long ago
took no interest in such matters, may well pride
itself upon what it has already achieved, and, in
its own seven hundredth anniversary, rejoice also

A Striking Contrast 337

dignity to which the town had thus attained
received a recognition which it had fully earned
when, by the first charter of Queen Victoria in
1880, it was granted that Liverpool should no
longer be denominated merely a ' borough,' but
had earned the higher appellation of a ' city.'
Thirteen years later, in 1893, the Queen's second
charter gave a new dignity to the chief magis-
trate who is annually elected to preside over all
these honourable activities : the plain Mayor of
Liverpool became, in full-blown sounding phrase,
the Right Honourable the Lord Mayor of the
City of Liverpool.

It is indeed a remarkable and a very heartening
contrast that presents itself if we compare the
borough of 1835 with the city of 1907. In 1835
the borough did little for its inhabitants ; it was
a place where they dwelt as they best might until
they should have made enough money to be able
to leave it. But now, what does the city not do for
its citizens ? It is no longer content merely to
guard their lives and property, though it does this
better than ever. It takes care of them from
the cradle to the grave. It offers to see that
the child is brought safely into the world. It
provides him in infancy with suitable food. It
gives him playgrounds to amuse himself in, and
baths to swim in. It takes him to school, and
offers him chances of passing from elementary to
higher schools, and thence to the university, and
thence to any position in the world for which he
is fit : or it trains him for his future trade. It

338 The Nineteenth Century

sees that the citizen's house is properly built, and
sometimes even builds it for him. It brings into
his rooms an unfailing supply of pure water from
the remote hills. It guards his food, and tries to
secure that it is not dangerously adulterated.
It sweeps the streets for him, and disposes of the
refuse of his house. It carries him swiftly to and
from his work. It gives him books to read,
pictures to look at, music to listen to, and lectures
to stimulate his thought. If he is sick, it nurses
him ; if he is penniless, it houses him ; and when
he dies, if none other will, it buries him. Every
year its services grow greater, and though there are
still too many who are whelmed in such sodden and
sordid poverty that they have no ground for
gratitude to the world — no ground for anything
but bitterness — yet to most inhabitants the
services which the city renders are so great, that
it begins at last to have a real claim on their
reverence. Dimly one begins to foresee a time
when the strange Virgilian motto of the city may
be pronounced without a smile : Deus nobis haec
otia fecit, ours is a God-given peace.

339

Conclusion

The life-story of our community is a long one ;
if it has been rightly told, it is a thrilling one too,
full of strange contrasts and marvellous changes of
fortune and ideas. It has not been rightly told
if, at the end of it, the reader feels any disposition
to glory in the colossal heaping up of wealth
and the colossal increase of population. Trade
may go as swiftly as it has come ; the great
docks may lie empty, with grass-grown wharves ;
the miles of cheap houses may drop to pieces in
vague heaps where dockans and nettles will
flourish. If that fate should come, what will be
the judgment of the world upon the character and
the work of the dead city ? Will travellers come
to Liverpool in the spirit in which we may go to
Carthage, to view the inexpressive relics of a
people that pursued gain with remorseless energy,
and then were blotted out ? Or wiU they come
in the spirit in which we still visit Athens or
Florence, to see a real city, a city whose very
atmosphere enriched the lives of all its citizens, a
city which, for that reason, the world can never
allow itself to forget ?

Such questions it is no part of a historian's duty
to answer ; but they cannot fail to present them-
selves at the close of a long survey such as we have
taken. In the Liverpool of yesterday there was

340 Conclusion

not much to promise a very inspiring memory ;
but the Liverpool of to-day challenges a nobler
verdict. The city which, at the opening of a new
age, is simultaneously engaged in erecting a great
cathedral and a great university, is surely no mean
city. It is building for itself twin citadels of the
ideal, a citadel of faith and a citadel of knowledge ;
and from the hill which once looked down on an
obscure hamlet, and which later saw ships begin to
crowd the river, and streets to spread over the
fields, their towers will look across the ship-
thronged estuary, monuments of a new and more
generous aspiration.

341

Appendix

Note on Authorities

The following note is intended not as an exhaustive catalogue,
but as a description of the principal groups of materials for the
history of Liverpool, especially those which I have myself
employed.

I. Charters and Leases. The originals of the twenty
charters granted to the borough between 1207 and 1893 are,
with one exception (the Charter of Charles II), aU in the
possession of the Corporation, and are housed in the Municipal
Offices. Contemporary copies of the missing charter, and of
all but one of the others, are preserved in the Public Record
Office in London. The originals of the grants of the fee farm
lease of the tovyn (which tell us far more than the charters
about its development) are in some cases in the Municipal
Offices, in other cases among the muniments of Lord Sefton
at Croxteth. Several of the leases, however, are missing ;
and although in some cases these omissions can be supphed
from copies in the Record Office, there are still a number of
gaps. The most important of the charters were printed, with
translations, in the Appendix to the Report of the Commission
on Municipal Corporations (1883). They have also been
printed in abstract, with much useful annotation, by Sir
James Picton, Mr. T. N. Morton and Mr. E. M. Hance in
the Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and
Cheshire, xxxvi, 53 ff (1884). The only full collection of the
surviving leases, (together with a complete set of the charters,
and much kindred and illustrative matter) is that which has
been printed by Miss E. M. Plait in the History of Municipal
Government in Liverpool (1906). These documents form the
principal material for the early study of the town.

342 Appendix

II. Private Local Charters. Much additional light,

especially upon the social and economic aspects of early Liver-
pool, can be derived from the very numerous deeds, chiefly
relating to transfers of land in the tovsfnship of Liverpool, which
survive. It is from these deeds, for example, that the list of
early mayors, the location of the streets and vi^alls, the system of
agriculture, etc., can alone be worked out. There are three
principal groups of these deeds, (i) The Moore deeds, preserved
by the ancient Liverpool family of the Old Hall and Bank Hall,
are now in the City Library, to the number of about 1400. I
have used the abstracts made by members of the School of
Local History, (ii) A considerable number of deeds in the
possession of descendants of the Crosse family of Crosse Hall,
have been edited by Mr. R. D. Radcliffe, M.A., F.S.A. (iii) A
large number of transcripts of deeds formerly in the possession of
the Crosse family were made by Christopher Towneley, a
Lancashire antiquary of the seventeenth century. Some of these
are among the Additional Manuscripts in the British Museum ;
others in the possession of Mr. W. Farrer. Besides these
deeds there are a large number at Croxteth and in other private
collections. A great service to local history would be rendered
by the publication of a calendar of all available deeds of this
class in chronological order, down to the sixteenth century.

III. National Records. Much information is to be
obtained from the archives in the Public Record Office relating
to the interferences of the central government— financial,
administrative or judicial — in local affairs. These are, for the
Middle Ages, mainly included in the Rolls known (according
to the different classes of matter with which they deal) as Pipe
Rolls, Patent RoUs, Close Rolls, Assize Rolls, Subsidy Rolls,
RoUs of Parliament, etc. Many of them have been published,
in full or in abstract, by the Record Commission, and the
Calendars of Patent and Close RoUs (so far as published) have in
particular yielded a good deal of material bearing upon Liverpool.
In Lancashire Fife Rolls, Mr. W. Farrer has made the Pipe Roll
entries relating to Lancashire the thread upon which he has
strung much useful material and acute criticism. The Records
of the Duchy of Lancaster, now also preserved at the Public
Record Office, are naturally still more rich in local material than

Appendix 343

the national records. A large amount both of the national and
of the Duchy records has been available for the use of scholars
by the invaluable publications of the Chetham Society and of
the Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire. Of the former
series I may name especially vols, xxii, xhx, xcv and cxiii ; of the
latter vol. xlviii {Lancashire Inquisitions) and vol. xli {Lancashire
Court Rolls, which includes the only court roll of mediaeval
Liverpool). For the later period (from the sixteenth century
downwards) the published volumes of Acts of the Privy Council
and Calendars of State Papers {Domestic) contain much useful
material ; while there is a vast amount of material as yet
unedited (regimental lists, assessment returns, etc.) and a good
deal which has been published by the Record Society and
elsewhere.

A large manuscript collection of copies of documents from
these sources bearing on the history of Liverpool was made by
Charles Okill, Clerk of Committees to the Corporation at the
beginning of the nineteenth century. This collection is pre-
served in the Municipal Offices. It formed the principal source
from which Thomas Baines and Sir James Picton drew their
materials for the early history of Liverpool. A good many
documents of value were included by Matthew Grecson in
his Portfolio of Fragments (1817). Mr. W. Farrer has had very
many previously unknown documents transcribed, and I have
had the inestimable advantage of being permitted to use many
of his transcripts. But there is still a great deal of work to
be done before this source of information can be said to have
been exhausted.

IV. Local Official Records. The above three classes
of documents practically exhaust the material for the history
of mediaeval Liverpool. But in the middle of the sixteenth
century the local official records begin, and are thenceforward
the principal source of information : the historian suddenly
passes from darkness to light.

(a) The Municipal Records preserved in the Municipal Offices,
include proceedings at Portmoots, proceedings of Assemblies
and Town CouncU, and a good deal of miscellaneous matter.
There are gaps, but on the whole the records are extremely rich

344 Appendix

from 1551, and it is possible to gain a very intimate view of the
condition of the town. These records ought to be printed (so
far as they relate to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries)
almost as they stand, only formal matter being abbreviated.
They should be equipped with full indices ; and it would be a
great aid to scholars if to each section of them a careful intro-
duction were prefixed, gathering up clearly what they have to
tell on various aspects of municipal life. Substantial excerpts
from them were made by Mr. T. N. Morton, a devoted scholar,
long archivist to the Corporation. Sir James Picton published
many of Mr. Morton's excerpts under the title of Liverpool
Municipal Records (2 vols., 1883 and 1886). Unfortunately his
arrangement is rather bewildering, and his index is almost useless.
From the middle of the eighteenth century onwards, the
Municipal Records become more formal, the most important
business being increasingly transacted in Committees. The
later records should therefore be treated in a different way from
the earlier records.

(i) The Vestry Minutes, or records of the administration of
parochial business and of the Poor Law, are preserved in the
Parish Offices, Brownlow Hill. They begin in 1682. Until the
middle of the eighteenth century they are very summary ; but
thereafter they are full and instructive. As Liverpool was
remarkable for having worked out perhaps the model system of
parochial administration in England in that period, the publi-
cation of a series of judicious abstracts from these records
would be (as Mr. Sidney Webb has urged) a real service to
historical scholarship.

(c) The Records of the Dock Board I have not been able to use
at all. But the story of the growth and government of the
greatest dock estate in the world is clearly of sufficient importance
to make it desirable that abstracts of the more important of these
documents should be published,

{d) Of other groups of records I may mention the Trade Unions'
Minutes, of which many survive. I have not been able to use
them, but they should be exceedingly valuable for the social
history of the nineteenth century. The records of the Blue-coat
School and of other charities also deserve investigation.

Apfendix 3/J.5

V,^ Family Papers. A very large amount of material
relating to Liverpool is to be found among the papers of old
families connected with the town, and even of some families
very indirectly connected with it. Many collections of such
papers have been calendared by the Historical MSS. Commission.
But the Commission has not dealt with the collections most
directly important for Liverpool — those of the Earls of Derby,
Sefton, and Lathom, the Duke of AthoU, the BlundeDs, the
Halsalls and other Lancashire families. The Sefton papers at
Croiteth are especially rich, the ancestors of Lord Sefton having
long been lords of the manor of Liverpool. Some fragments
of the Derby papers have been published by the Chetham
Society (vols, xxix, xxxi and n.s. xix). Of those collections which
the Historical MSS. Commission has dealt with I have found
useful material in the Cecil, Rutland, Kenyan, Cozuper, Portland,
Harley, Somerset, Denbigh, Le Fleming, Puleston and Dartmouth
papers, as well as various helpful references in other collections.
The most important, however, of these collections for our
purpose is the Stewart MSS., which include many papers of the
Moore family, especially letters from and to Col. John Moore
relating to the sieges of Liverpool. The Historical MSS. Com-
mission has also published abstracts of the MSS. of the City of
Chester, which naturally contain many references to Liverpool,
and of the House of Lords MSS., which are also rich. Contri-
butions to this class of Family Papers have also been made from
other sources. Of quite unparalleled value is the Moore Rental,
being an account of the lands of the Moore family in Liverpool,
written by Sir Edward Moore in 1668. This was printed by the
Chetham Society (vol. xii) ; it has since been admirably edited
by Mr. W. Fergusson Irvine, with a wealth of elucidation,
under the title of Liverpool in the reign of King Charles II (1899).
An almost equally valuable illustration of Liverpool at the close
of the seventeenth century and the beginning of the eighteenth
is afforded by the Morris Papers, published by the Chetham
Society (vol. ix). The same Society has also published other
family papers which contain stray references, useful in their
degree. The information to be obtained from family papers
is as yet far from being exhausted.

346 Appendix

VI. Biographies, Diaries, Reminiscences, etc.

From the eighteenth century onward this source of material is
exceptionally rich, and no exhaustive enumeration is possible.
The lives of eminent men connected with Liverpool, such as
several of the Earls of Derby, Jeremiah Horrox, John Newton,
George Canning and W . E. Gladstone yield much. More still
comes from the biographies of men who have spent the principal
part of their lives in Liverpool, such as William Roscoe, James
Currie, William Rathhone, etc. Some local reminiscences are
of great value, like Liverpool a few Tears Since by an Old Stager
[Rev. J. Aspinall] (1852), and Recollections of Old Liverpool by a
Nonagenarian [James Stonehouse] (1863). To this class belongs
The Autobiography of Hugh Crow, which provides a very
vivid picture of seafaring life in the eighteenth century ; and
Prison Scenes by Seacome Ellison (1838) which records the
adventures of a Liverpool sailor in French military prisons.
Descriptions by strangers who visited the town often supply
touches which are lacking in the local records. The principal
early accounts of this type are those of Leland {Itinerary,
written c. 1540, printed 1710), Camden {Britannia, 1586),
Adam Martindale {Diary, Chet. Soc, vol. iv), Blome {Britan-
nia, 1673), Defoe {Tour through Great Britain, 1704), Samuel
Derrick {Letters from Leverpoole, etc., ijdf)- After the middle
of the eighteenth century such visitors became so numerous that
no catalogue of them can be attempted.

vn. Reports of Trials and Royal Commissions

form an exceedingly important source of information. Among
these may be named the voluminous Report of Proceedings at
the great trials on the powers of the Town Council in 1 791 and
following years (published in 1796) ; the brief report of the trial
on Town Dues in 1833 (published in 1835) ; the report of the
Poor Law Commission in 1832, of the Municipal Corporation
Commission in 1833, and of the Special Commission on the
Administration of the Dock Estate in 1853. These are for
the most part very voluminous, but they cannot be neglected.
The material they supply, however, (except in so far as it is
drawn from sources already described) relates principally to the
nineteenth century.

Appendix 317

VIII. Pamphlets. The first important group of
pamphlets consist of those relating to the Civil War, of which a
useful collection was made by Geo. Ormerod for the Chetham
Society (vol. ii), under the title of Lancashire Civil War Tracts.
Pamphlets of local origin begin with A letter from il/r. Joseph
Clegg and A correct Translation of the Charter of Liverpool with
remarks by Philodemus (both n.d., but c. 1750), and others
bearing upon the vexed questions of municipal government. In
the later years of the eighteenth century pamphlets become so
numerous that any catalogue would be out of place, and during
the nineteenth century they are like the pebbles on a beach.
From 1846 the Annual Reports of the Medical Officers of Health
form an invaluable source of information. Under this head
may conveniently come the Poll-hooks and Collections of Squibs
for the parliamentary elections of the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries. These supply much vivid colour.
S. Richmond and the Rev. W. Shepherd, the authors of the
best of these squibs, have been already commemorated.

IX. Newspapers and Directories. No attempt can

be made to give a_bibliography of Liverpool newspapers, which
have been numerous ever since the early years of the reign of
George III, and fortunately such an attempt will soon be
rendered unnecessary, as a very full bibliography is now being
prepared by the City Library. As to Directories, an exhaustive
account and complete list will be found in vol. Iviii of the
Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire,
from the pen of Mr. Geo. T. Shaw.

X. Guide Books, etc. Some of the early guide books
contain useful information. The chief are Moss's Liverpool
Guide (1794, and several later editions), Kaye's Stranger in Liver-
pool (1810 and several later editions), Taylor's Picture of
Liverpool (1834), Liverpool as it is (1840), The Stranger's Vade
Mecum (n.d.). In this category may be included Stonehouse's
Streets of Liverpool (n.d., but c. 1870), an excellent collection of
detail and anecdote. Into a category by itself should fall
Herd man's Pictorial Relics of Ancient Liverpool (first series, 1843 ;
second series, 1856). Most of these valuable drawings are
reconstructions based upon old sketches ; others are views of
buildings, etc., then surviving, but now demolished.

348 Afpendix

XL Histories of Liverpool. The set histories of

Liverpool fall into two distinct groups : those which were
written before Drill's collections of material were available,
and those which have been written since. In the first group
there are four books : Enfield's Essay towards the History of
Leverpool (1773), based upon material collected by George
Perry ; an anonymous General and Descriptive Account of the
Ancient and Present state of the Town of Liverpool (1795) — a
vigorous piece of work, valuable on social conditions and on the
slave trade ; The History of Liverpool (1810), anonymous, but
issued by Thomas Troughton, a bookseller in Ranelagh Street ;
and Liverpool, Its Commerce, etc., by Henry Smithers (1825), a
rambling book containing some useful statistics. These four
books are all worthless for early history, but cast useful lights
upon the period in which they were written. The second group
includes two books : The History of the Commerce and Town of
Liverpool by Thomas Baines (1852) is an elaborate and con-
scientious work, in which much use was made of O kill's trans-
cripts. Baines' book was the first real attempt to investigate
seriously the history of the town. It is distinguished by a
conscientious endeavour to relate the growth of the town to
the general growth of English commerce. And although the
author scarcely knew how to interpret his documents in the
early period, and was driven into chaos by the superabundant
material for the later period, his book is still the best general
history of Liverpool. In 1873 Mr. (afterwards Sir) James A.
PiCTON published his Memorials of Liverpool in two volumes, the
first being historical, the second topographical. The topo-
graphical volume is fuU and interesting.

A number of books have dealt with special periods or aspects
of Liverpool history. R. Brooke's Liverpool during the Last
Quarter of the Eighteenth Century (1853) is a useful collection
of fragments and documents, together with much material
derived from the reminiscences of the author's father. Gomer
Williams' History of the Liverpool Privateers and Slave-trade
(1897) is an invaluable collection, in chronological order, of
materials drawn from newspapers, the private papers of various
firms, etc., and it sheds much new light upon its subject.
J. Hughes' Liverpool Banks and Bankers (1905) forms the
first attempt to deal systematically with its subject.

Appendix 349

Perhaps I may also mention the Introduction to the History of
Municipal Government in Liverpool (1906), the first attempt to
explain the purport and effect of the various charters of the
borough, and the gradual development of the form of borough
government. To this group may also be added the invaluable
Handbook to the Congress of the Royal Institutes of Public Health
(1903), in which Dr. Hope has gathered together a most in-
teresting collection of articles by experts on the development
of various spheres of municipal activity. Among books on more
general subjects which have sections relating to Liverpool,
mention should be made of Bennett and Elton's History of
Com Milling, in vol. iv of which (1904) Mr. John Elton has
put together with infinite patience the materials for the history
of the Liverpool mills ; S. and B. Webb's History of Local
Government (1907), in which there is an illuminating section on
tlie parochial administration of Liverpool in the eighteenth
century ; and Mrs. J. R. Green's Town Life in the Fifteenth
Century (1894), in which there is a chapter on Liverpool.

XIL Transactions of the Historic Society of
Lancashire and Cheshire. — So much of the most valuable

material and the most acute criticism of the history of Liverpool
is scattered through the fifty-eight volumes of this society
(which has included all the principal local antiquaries for the
last sixty years) that they deserve to stand in a class by them-
selves. The contributions which they contain are so numerous
that no catalogue is possible, and to single out a few examples
would be invidious.

351

Indi

ex

Rejcroicei to the Note on Authorities are not given.

Abercromby Square, 34, 61, 271

Abolition of the Slave Trade, Society for the, 203

* Absalom and Achltophel ' alluded to, 154

Ackers, Henry (of West Derby), lessee of the fee-farm of Liverpool, 67

Adelphi Hotel, 282

African trade, the, 191 ; a euphemism for slave trade, 194

Agriculture in mediaeval Liverpool, 10, 12, 17 ; the principal occupation

of the early borough, 43 ; In the Tudor period, 83
Aldermen, the; their origin, 36; a check on the Mayor, 51 ; included in
the Town Council, 81 ; some expelled at the Restoration, 148 ; removed
by the crown, 155
Ale-founders, 90
Allerton, 271
Almshouses, 188

Altcar, its Inhabitants exempt from dues In Liverpool, 87
America, first ship from, 105 ; early trade with, 136-7 ; trade with, 1700-60,
181 ; cotton trade with, 262 ; the taxation of, attitude of Liverpool on,
216; growth of at the end of the eighteenth century, 251-2; Irish
emigration to, 305
American Civil War, 296

American Independence, effects of the war of, on Liverpool, 217 ff.
American Privateers, 217, 220, 238
American War of i8i2, its effects on Liverpool, 237 fi.
Amusements In the sixteenth century, 92 ff. ; In the eighteenth century, 186
Anchorage dues, 85
Ancient Chapel of Toxteth, 113
Apprentices admitted to the freedom of the borough, 91 ; their discipline,

99 ; used to man ships cheaply, 183
Archery, 282

Architecture In Liverpool, 283, 313
Art Gallery, the Walker, 319
Arts, cultivation of the, 284

Ashton, Colonel, parliamentarian leader In the first siege of Liverpool, 1 19,
120 ; defeats Byron a,t Nantwich, 124

352 Index

Assembly of Burgesses, the, its relation to the Portmoot, 50 ; its unwieldiness,
80 ; its powers transferred to the Town Council, 81; its weakness in
the seventeenth century, 170 ; attempts to revive it in the eighteenth
century, 168, 226 ; see also s.v. Bitkgesses

Assiento Treaty, the, 191

Athenaeum, the, 293

Augier, Samuel, minister of Toxteth, 149

Atila Communis, 94

Bacon, Francis Lord, M.P. for Liverpool, 75, 11 1

Bailiffs, for the crown, 19, 20, 21 ; elected by the burgesses, 20; mode of
election, 50 ; summoned to quo warranto plea, 27 ; royal orders to,
30 ; relation to the Maj'or, 35 ; revolt against control of Town Council,
107 ; duties during the sieges, 121 ; election usurped by Town Council,
150 ; this usurpation confirmed by charter of Charles II, 150 ; restored
to burgesses by charter of William III, 158

Baines, John, 286

Baltic, trade with the, 136, 181

Bank Hall, 49

Bank or Bonk Street, 41 {see also s.v. Water Street)

Banks closed in 1793, 228

Barbadoes, 138

Bargains, Town'j, 85

Beard, Rev. Charles, 333

Bedford Street, 271

' Berewick ' of Liverpool, the, 8 ff.

Berry, Father, 331

Bewsey, 61

Birkenhead, monastery of, 44 ; its ferry, ib. ; its corn-barn in Water Street ,
ib. ; its suppression, 70

Birkenhead, growth of in the nineteenth century, 303

Birmingham, 288

Birt, Mrs., 331

Bishopric of Liverpool founded, 329

Blackburn, hundred of, 117

Black Death, the, in Liverpool, 38, 42

Blind, School for the, 286

Blome, Richard, his account of Liverpool, 136

Blount, Sir William, murdered in Liverpool, 31

Blue-coat Hospital, the, 188, 286

Blues, the Liverpool, 221

Blundell, Bryan, 189

Blundell, Henry, 284

Blundeville, Randle or Ranulf de. Earl of Chester, 23

Bold Street, 9, 34, 281

Bolton, 87, 112, 124, 125, 127, 317

Bolton, John, 234

Bonny, 195

Index

353

Bootle, 8, 48, 3oi, 317

Bootle, Sir Thomas, Mayor and M.P., 167

Bordeaux, threatened by Liverpool privateers, 213

Borough, rights of a free B., 18

Botanic Gardens, 293

Boulevards, proposed in 1816, 280

Boundary marks, and beating the bounds, 40

Bowling greens, 282

Bow-makers, 45

Bowring Park, 322

Brazil, trade with, 255, 262

Brewing, extent of, in mediaeval Liverpool, 45, 90

Bridewell, the, 277

Bridge's Alley, 140

Bridgewater canal, the, 257

Brindley, James, engineer, 179, 257

Bristol, 55, 123, l8i, 182, 191, 192

Britannia^ the, 299

Brougham, Henry, his candidature for Liverpool in 1812, 238

Brown, Henry, 226, 289

Brown, Sir William, 319

Brownlow Hill, 10, 28, 224, 231, 278, 335

Building Act, of 1842, 311 ; of 1846, 315

Building, character of in the nineteenth century, 304

Building regulations, absence of in the eighteenth century, 272 ; in the

nineteenth century, 310
Building sur\^eyor, 310
Bull-baiting, 92, 106, 283
Burgages, defined, 17 ; their number, ib. ; how divided among the townsmen,

43
Burgesses, « holders of burgages, 18; non-resident, 152; Assembly of

{see Assembly) ; co-operative enterprises of, 51; extensions of powers,

64 ; compulsory military service by, 52, 121 j deposition of, 72 {see also

Freemen)
Bushell, Christopher, 322
Butler, Sir John, of Bewsey, 61
Byron, Lord, invades Cheshire 1643-4, 123,124
Byron, Sir John, in command of royalist garrison of Liverpool, 1644, 130

Calabar, Old, 195

Calais, siege of, 32

Calderstones Park, 322

Canals, creation of, 179, 257-8

Canning, George, his election as M.P. for Liverpool, 18 12, 238; other

references, 255, 267
Carlisle, 165, 166

Carnatic, The, French East Indiaman captured by Liverpool privateers, 222
Carter, Thomas, special preacher, 97
Cartwright, Edward, 250

z

354 Index

Castle, the, of Liverpool, built by W. de Ferrers, c. 1234. Its site, 24 ;
description, 25 ; visited by Thomas of Lancaster, 28 ; besieged by his
rebellious vassals, 29 ; visited by Edward II, 29 ; thrown open to
refugees from the Scots, 32 ; its constable and equipment, 54 ; the
family of Molyneux hereditary constables, 62 ; new tower erected, ib. ;
fortified in the Civil War, 121 ; dismantled, 145 ; acquired by the
borough and demolished, 175 ; other references, in, 126, 146

Castle Street, 17, 25, 41, 47, 88, loi, 120, 159, 204, 219, 279

Cathedral, the, 329, 340

Cattle-market in South Castle Street, 88

Cazneau Street, 282

Cellar dwellings in Liverpool, 271, 272, 314

Chadwick, John, his map of Liverpool, 179

Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, see Lancaster

Chantries in St. Nicholas' Chapel, their foundation, 37; the Chantry of
John Crosse, 69 ; suppression of the chantries, 70 ; chantry priests after
the Reformation, 71

Chapel in the Castle, the, 25

Chapel of St. Nicholas, controlled by the burgesses, 96 ; precedence in, 96 ;
[see also s.v. St. Nicholas.)

Chapel Street, 17, 41, 278

Charities in the first half of the eighteenth century, 188; in the late eighteenth
century, 286 ; in the nineteenth century, 330 ff.

Charles I, Charter of, 106 (see s.v. Charter) ; sells the lordship of Liverpool,
109 J other references, no, 1 16

Charles II, Charter of, 152; other references, 135, 149, 153

Charles Edward, the Young Pretender, 164

Charters : — of John, 1 6 fE. ; of Henry III, 20 ; of Richard de Ferrers, 24 ;
of Edward III, 31 ; of Richard II, 38 ; of Henry V, 57 ; disputes about
rights conveyed in, 73 ; Ch. of Philip and Mary, 73 ; need of a new Ch.,
105 ; Ch. of Charles I, 106 ; its obscurities, 107 ; references to it, 144,
150; applications for a new Ch., 150; Ch. of Charles II, 152;
surrendered, 154; Ch. of James II, 155 ; of William and Mary, 156 ; of
William III, 157, 168 ; of George II, 170 ; of Queen Victoria, 337

Chatham Street, 271

Cheapside, 138

Cheshire in the Civil War, 116, 139

Cheshire ' gap,' the, i, 2

Chester, its early trade advantages over Liverpool, 4 ; its claims to supremacy
over L., 78 ; disputes about these claims, 103 ; outrivalled by L. in
early seventeenth century, 103 ; C. and the Irish trade, 68, 104, 136 ;
C. in the Civil War, 120, 124; pewter manufacture in C, 84; other
references, 16, 97, 105, 123, 138, 164, 181

Chester, Bishop of, rebukes popery in Liverpool, 71

Chester, Earl of, lord of Liverpool, 23

Childwall, 224, 271

China, trade with, thrown open, 254

Christian Street, 283

Church Street, 9, 34, 144, 180

Index

355

Churches, erection of, 285, work of the Ch. in the nineteenth century, 329

{see also St. Nicholas, St. Peter's, St. George's).
Civilisation in Liverpool, 1700-60, 186 ff. ; 1760-1835, 269 ff
Civil War, effects of on Liverpool, 133-5
Clarkson, Thomas, 201 ; his visit to Liverpool, 203
Classis, the, of Liverpool, 133

Clayton, the family of, 141 ; Thomas C, 149 ; William C, 167, 175
Clayton Square, 239
Clegg, Joseph, 170
Clerk, the parish, 97
Clerks, number of in Liverpool, 307

Cleveland, the family of, 141 ; John C, 167 ; William C, 167
Cock-fighting, 92, 186, 283
College Lane, i88

College, the Liverpool (L. Collegiate Institution), 288
Colquitt Street, 293

Commerce, effects of growth of on civilisation, 270 (j« Trade)
Commercial panic of 1793, 228
Common Hall, the, 94 (see also Town Hall)

Commonwealth, period of the, in Liverpool, 132 ff. ; its unpopularity, 134
Communications, improvements in, 178, 2$jS.
Coal, the Age of, 250 ; trade in, 84
Conservative predominance in the Town Council, 313
Constable of the Castle, the, 53
Consular offices, number of in Liverpool, 305
Cooke, George, actor, 204
Corbett, Robert, 100
Corporation estate (see Estate)
Corporation Schools, 286
Correction, House of, 278
Cotton, American supply of, 252 ; growth of trade in, 254 ; history of the

trade, 261 ; manufacture of, its beginning, 136; mills in Liverpool, 248 ;

improvements in machinery, 249 ; C. Association, the, 90 ; C. Exchange,

the, 298
' Cottons ' or coatings, 84
Council, (see Town Council)
Courts, manor, in early Liverpool, 12 ; Portmoot or borough C, 50 ; C. of

Passage, 51
Courts and alleys, 314
Craft-gilds (see Gilds)
Creevey, Thomas, 238
Crompton, Samuel, 249
Cromwell, grant of lands to Liverpool, 133 ; part of his army for Ireland

embarks from L., 123
Crosby, 8, 302

Cross, the High, 129 ; town crosses, 41
Crosse of Crosse-hall, the family of, 48 ; obtain fee-farm lease of Liverpool,

63 ; John C, his gift of grammar-school and Town Hall, 69, 94, 159,

288 ; Richard C, 48

356

Index

Crosse Hall, 48

Crosshall Street, 48

Crow, Hugh, slaver captain, 201-2 ; his fight with two warships, 202 ; hia

Autobiography, ib. ; commands last slave ship out of Liverpool, 206
Crown Street, 10
Croxteth Park, 53, 133
Cumberland, Duke of, 165
Cunard Steamship Company, 299
Curfew, the, 98

Currie, Dr. James, 204, 205, 225, 227, 276, 291
Curwen, Samuel, his description of Liverpool, 270
' Customers,' the, 85, 91
Custom-house, the, 9, 180, 209, 279
Customs — duties paid in Liverpool, 78, 136, 245

Dale Street, ro, 17, 41, 48, 88, 118, 119, 121, 138, 181, 256, 279

Danks, Captain, Commander of Parliamentarian squadron in the Mersey, 122

Darling, Captain, American privateer, 222

Debtors, Treatment of, 277

Declaration of Indulgence, 149

Denison, William, 276

Deputy-Mayor, 155

Derby, Earls of [see also Fermrs, Stanley] the Ferrers Earls of Derby, 23-6 ;
the Stanleys, Earls of Derby, their connexions with Liverpool, 60, 83 ;
their nomination to Parliament for Liverpool, 74 ; Edward, 3rd Earl
(d. 1572) as Lord Strange intercedes between Liverpool and Sir
R. Molyneux, 73 ; nominates R. Sekerston as M.P., 75 ; helps to resist
claims of Chester, 79 ; his presents to the burgesses, 94 ; Henry,
4th Earl (d. 1593) festivities in honour of, 948; protects Liverpool
against Spanish trading company, 80 ; gets Liverpool ships released, 78 ;
James, 7th Earl (d. 1651) (styled Lord Strange, 1607-42) his steady
royalism, ill, 116; his part in the Civil War, 117, 118, 124, 131, 132 ;
Charlotte, Countess of Derby, defence of Lathom House, 124 ; Charles,
8th Earl (d. 1672), 150; presents mace to Liverpool, 160; William,
9th Earl (d. 1702) 156, 157; James, loth Earl (d. 1736) Mayor of
Liverpool, leads attack on Town Council, 169; Edward, 13th Earl
(d. 1851) presents museum to Liverpool, 319.

Derrick, Samuel, of Bath, description of Liverpool, 168

Derwentwater, 3rd Earl of, 163

Diocese of Liverpool, the, 329 ; the Catholic diocese, 350

Dissent in Liverpool, 149

Dobie, Hugh, 72

Dobson, Robert, Town-clerk, io7fE

Docks, the ; the first dock created, 167-7 > growth of the docks, 1760-1835,
263 ; its administration, 264 ; the docks in the nineteenth century, 301 ;
the Dock Board, 300 : the Dock office, 298

Domesday Book, 7S

Douglas Navigation, the, 178

Dovecot, the Castle, 26

Index 357

Drunkenness in Liverpool, 273, 324-6

Drury Lane, 186

Dublin, 84, 123

Duchy of Lancaster [see Lancaster]

Duke Street, 180, 271, 281, 283, 319

Duncan, Dr., 314

Dutch wars, their effect on Liverpool trade, 137

Eastern trade of Liverpool begun, 253

East India Company, 254

' Eastham ' mill, 46, 47

Edmund of Lancaster (see Lancaster)

Education in Liverpool, 286-8, 312, 322, 333 fl.

Education, Council of, 323

Edward II, visit to Liverpool, 29

Edward III, importance of his reign to Liverpool, 30 ff. ; charter of, 31

Elections, parliamentary, their turbulence and corruption, 274 ; squibs and
verses on, 288-9 ; particular elections, 28, 74, 147, 157, 224, 228, 238

Ellen, the, Liverpool privateer-ship, 223

Elizabeth, Queen, 71, 75, 76, 93, 98

Elmes, Harvey Lonsdale, 313

Emigration to America, 252, 305

Engineering, influence of, on the growth of Liverpool, 179, 248

Erie canal, the, 253

Erskine, Lord, his description of Liverpool, 242, 243, 269

Esmedim (see Smithdown)

Essex, Earl of, his army transported to Ireland from Liverpool, 76

Estate, the Corporation, its beginning, 28 ; the waste administered by the
burgesses, 34; quietly annexed, 64; in 1525, 69; at end of sixteenth

' century, 91 ; secured by treaty with Lord Molyneux, 145 ; how ad-
ministered by the Town Council, 173, 267

Evangelical Revival, the, in Liverpool, 200, 285

Everton, a ' berewick,' 10; Prince Rupert's headquarters, 1275 other
references, 234, 243, 265, 271, 274, 302, 305

Ewart, William, 319

Exchange, the, 17, 279

Executions of Jacobites in Liverpool, 164

Fair, the Liverpool, probably instituted by John, 18 ; held on St. Martin's
day, 43 ; in the sixteenth century, 88-9

Falkner Square, 271

Fame, the, privateer-ship, 185

Fazakerley, Richard, 100

Fee-farm lease, defined, 21 ; Erst granted by Henry III, 22 ; probably con-
tinued by Ferrers Earls, 24 ; withheld by Edmund of Lancaster, 27 ;
gradually regained under Edward III, 34 ; the great lease of 1393, 34 ;
its expiry, 56 ; disputes among the burgesses, 56 ; and with the king,
57 ff. ; its decay in the fifteenth century, 63 ; lost by the burgesses,
ih. ; disputes about in the sixteenth century, 67 ; sublet to the burgesses
by Henry Ackers, 72 ; acquired by the Molyneuxes, 72 ; sublet by them,
ib. ; disputes about, 102 ; finally acquired by the burgesses, 145

358

Index

Fenwick, Dorothy, 142

Femvick, Sir John, 140

Fenwick Street, 140

Fenwick's Alley, 140

Ferrers, Robert de, Earl of Derby and lord of Liverpool, 23 ; his charter to

Liverpool, 24
Ferrers, William (I) de. Earl of Derby and lord of Liverpool, 23 ; builds the

Castle, 24 ff.
Ferrers, William (II) de, Earl of Derby and lord of Liverpool, 23
Ferry, the Liverpool, 13, 34, 44; to Runcorn, 68 ; Birkenhead, 44, 70 ;

fares charged, 44
Fields, the open, of Liverpool, 9, 83 ; probably enlarged by John, 17
Fire, the Great, of London, 137
Fisheries at Liverpool, 1 3, 47, 49, 247
Fishguard, French landing at, 233

Fogg, Rev. John, Puritan minister of Liverpool, 133, 148
Fort, the, on the north shore, 220, 221, 233

Fortifications of Liverpool in the Civil War, 118, 120, 121, 130 ; in 1715, 163
Foster, John, 279
France, mediaeval trade with, 45 ; later trade, 104, 136; wars with, their

effects on Liverpool, 137, 184
Freemen, =members of the Gild Merchant (9 v.) 21 ; fines for admission of,

91 ; easily admitted, 149 ; election of for political purposes, 151, 168 ;

limitation of in the eighteenth century, 168, 171, 172 ; powers of, 263 ;

corruption of, 274, 275
French prisoners in Liverpool during American War, 224 ; during Revolu-
tionary War, 231, 232
French privateers, 220, 230

French Revolution, its effects on Liverpool society, 225 ; on trade, 255 fl.
Furness, trade in iron from, 44

Galloway, 244

Gallows Field, the, 164

Galway, Liverpool lands in, 133

Gaol, the Castle used as, 53 ; the Tower as Tovm Gaol, 188 ; the G. in Great
Howard Street, 231

Garrett, Rev. Charles, 331

Garston, 302

Gascoyne, Bamber, 224 ; General Isaac, 238

Gaunt, John of, {see Lancaster)

George III, 215

George's Dock, the, 232, 277, 281

Gild Hall, the, 94 {see also Town Hall)

Gild Merchant, the, founded by the charter of Henry III, 20 ; its powers,
20, 21, 45 ; its right of exclusion withdrawn by Richard II, 38 ; but
restored by Henry V, 57 ; admission of non-burgesses, 67

Gildart, James, 225

Gilds, craft, in the sixteenth century, 89, 90

Gladstone, Sir John, 239, 244, 254, 271

Index 355

Gladstone, William Ewart, 239, 260, 285, 290

Gloucester, Duke of, 234

Gomez, Captain, his plan for the fortification of Liverpool, 130

Gordon riots, the, 218

Goree Piazzas, 202

Gore's Advertiser, 217

Grammar-school, the, its foundation, 69 ; transferred to the burgesses in

1565, 98 J its decay and extinction, 187, 286
Grand Junction Canal, 258
Grand Trunk Canal, 258
Great Howard Street, 231
Greenland Street, 247
Greenland trade, the, 209, 247
Gregson, Matthew, 289
Griffith, David, 63, 67
Guild {see Gild)
Guinea trade, the, 194 {see African Tradi)

Hackin's Hey, 140

Hale, 7

Hallage dues, 85

Halsall, Edward, mayor and recorder and founder of the Town Council, 8 1

Hanover Street, 180, 188, 271

Harbour, rebuilding of in 1561, 100

Harriers, the Liverpool, 282

Harris, Rev. Raymond, his pamphlet on the slave-trade, 203

Hawkins, John, 190

Health Act of 1846, 31;

Health of Liverpool in 1823, 272

Henry II, 1 1

Henry III, charter to Liverpool, 20, 106 ; fee-farm lease, 22 ; grant of L. to

Randle Blundeville, 23
Henry IV, 55

Henry V, charter of, 57 ; his quarrel with the burgesses, 57 £F.
Henry VI, 60
Henry VII, 63, 67
Henry VIII, 67, 68

Henry, son of Warin, lord of Liverpool, 11, 14, 16
Herculaneum pottery, 246
Herring trade, 45, 247
High Street, 17, 40, 62, 70, 88, 159
Historical studies in Liverpool, 289
Holland, Robert de. Lord of Liverpool, 1317-22, 28
Holyhead, 103
'Holy Land,' the, 112
Hoole, near Preston, 14
Hope Street, 10

Horrox, Jeremiah, astronomer, 114
Horse-racing in Liverpool, 92

36o

Index

Housing reform, 314, 315, 327
Howard, John, prison reformer, 277
Ho7lal!e, 303
Hudson, the, 253;]
Hull, 136, 181, 258

Hutchinson, William, 211 ; his privateering adventures, 212; his work on
tides, etc., 288

Improvement Acts, 279, 280 \ neglect of plan in^ building of Liverpool, 280

Incorporation, doubts about, 106

India, opening of trade with, 254

Industrial Revolution, the, its effects on Liverpool, 249 ff.

Industries of Liverpool in 1378, 45 ; in the sixteenth century, 89 ; in 1700-60,

180, 181 ; in 1760-1835, 246-8 ; in the nineteenth century, 306
Ingates and outgates, 83, 87
Institute, the Liverpool, 288
Inventions, the Age of, 257
Ireland, John's wars in, i6 ; Edward Ill's wars in, 32 ; reconquest of, under

the Tudors, 68 ; rising prosperity in first half of seventeenth century,

104 ; transport of troops to I. from Liverpool, 33, 68, 76, 103, 138 ;

Ireland in the Civil War, 120, 123 ; Irish soldiery in Liverpool, 131 ;

early L. trade with, 19, 44 ; in sixteenth century, 68, 84 ; in seventeenth

century, 103, 136 ; in eighteenth century, 181 ; grain imported from I.,

86 ; woo], 126.
Irish immigration to Liverpool, 244, 304, 305
Iron, from Furness, 44; Spanish, 84; i. foundries in Liverpool, 180, 247;

growth of i. trade, 84.
Irwell, the, 257; deepened, 178
Isabella^ the, privateer-ship, 222, 223
Isle of Man {see Man)
Islington, 164, 181

Jacobite rising of 171 5, 162

Jacobites tried and hanged in Liverpool, 164

Jail {see Gaol)

Jamaica, 182, 184 ; cotton trade with, 262 ; slave trade in, 198 ; Liverpool

regiment in, 221
James I, 104

James II, Charter to Liverpool, 155 ; other references, 148, 156
James Street, 26, 41, 140, 280
Jannion, Sir Hugh, 97
Jeffreys, Judge, 155
Jericho, farmhouse of, 113
Jeime Richard, Le, French privateer, 230
John, King, in Lancashire, 1 6 ; acquisition of Liverpool, 14 ; founder of

the borough, 16
Johnson, the family of, 141 ; Thomas J., senior, leader of Whigs in Liverpool

Municipality, 152, 149, 157 ; Sir Thomas J., 139, 140, 157, 166, 167, 176
Jones, Paul, American privateer, 220

Index 361

'Jordan,' the, 113
Juggler Street, 40, 129
Jury at Portmooti, 50

Keeper of the Common Warehouse, 85, gi

Kendal, textiles from, 44, 84

Kingsmill, the, 25+

Kingston, Jamaica, 223

Kinsale, 213

Kirkdale, 8, 9, 48, 92, 265, 302

Knowsley, 59

Labour, effects of commercial development on, 300 ; extent of casual 1. in

Liverpool, 306
Ladies' Walks, 281
Lancashire, marshes of, 3 ; unimportance of, before the eighteenth centur)',

3; in Domesday Book, 7 ; strength of royahsm in, 116 ; Jacobitism in,

163 ; beginnings of textile industry, 65 ; later development, 139
Lancaster, borough of, 117, 163, 164; L. stuffs, 44
Lancaster, Chancellor of the Duchy of, nominates to parliamentary seals

for Liverpool, 74
Lancaster, Duchy Courts of, conflicts of jurisdiction with the borough courts,

Lancaster, Edmund Earl of, acquires Liverpool, 23 ; overrides burghal rights,

26
Lancaster, Henry (I), Earl of, 30
Lancaster, Henry (II), first Duke of ; founds chantry in St. Nicholas'

chapel, 37
Lancaster, John of Gaunt, second Duke of, 34, 37 ; his lease to the burgesses,

34 ; founds chantry in St. Nicholas' chapel, 37 ; unpopularity of, 38
Lancaster, Thomas Earl of, 28, grant of peat-moss to the burgesses, 28 ;

enclosure of Salthouse Moor, 29 ; grants Liverpool to Robert de Holland,

ib. ; his fall, ib.
Lancelot's Hey, 140
Lathom, Earls of, 167
Lathom, Richard, 155
Lathom, Thomas de, 56, 59
Lathom House, siege of, 119, 124 ; relieved by Prince Rupert, 125 ; second

siege, 130 ; lead taken from, for repairs in Liverpool, 133
Laud, Archbishop, 113
Leeds, 288

Leeds and Liverpool canal, 258, 281

Leland the topographer, on Manchester, 65 ; on Liverpool, 68
Lester, Canon Major, 331
' Levelookers,' 88

Libraries in Liverpool, 187, 202 ; public 1. founded, 318
Licensing of public houses, 99 ; reform demanded in 1772, 273 ; free-trade

in, 324 ; reform movement, tb.
Lichfield, Bishop of, diocesan for Liverpool, 38

362

Index

Lighrfoot, Bishop, 333

Lime Street, g, 34, 126, 127

Linen trade with Ireland, 84

' Liners,' rise of, and influence on trade and social state of Liverpool, 299 ff.

Liscard, 232

Litherland, 8, 302

Liverpool, its name, obscure origin of, 7 ; first documentary mention of, 11;
its geographical position, etc., 1-6 ; early geographical features of, 8 ;
its physical growth, 140, 179, 243, 303 ; maps of, 179, 180 ; develop-
ment of coimnunications, 178, 257 ; absence of plan in its streets,
280
the manor aiti lordship of L., a ' berewick ' of the manor of West Derby,
8; early lords, 11; resumed by the crown, 14; under baronial
rule, 1229-1399, 23 ff. ; part of the Duchy of Lancaster, 26 ; its
fee-farm lease {see Fee-Farm) ; lordship acquired by Sir R, Moly-
neux, 109 ; purchased by the burgesses, 145 ;
the borough of L., L. turned into a borough, 16 ff. ; first charters of,
i8-22; development of its form of government, 35, 50, 81, 107,
150 ff, 170 ff; {see also Assembly, Bailiff, Burgesses, Freemen,
Gild, Mayor, Munic. Govt., Town Council) ;
its groziith, slowness of its growth explained, 2-5 ; disorders in, 31 ;
prosperity in fourteenth century, 31 ff. ; decay during fifteenth
century, 55 ff. ; gradual revival under the Tudors, 65 ff. ; disputes
with the crown, 57, 66, 6y, 145 ; with feudal superiors, 27, 109 ;
with lessees of the fee-farm, 68, 72 ; with Chester, 78, 103 ; growth
in first half of seventeenth century, 102, ff. ; checked by Civil War,
129; new progress after the Restoration, 135 ff. ; beginning of
trade with America, 136; enters upon the slave trade, 190; pre-
dominance therein, 193 ; effect of the period of French wars, 255 ;
activity in privateering, 2125 effect of the Industrial revolution,
257 ff. ; the port of industrial England, 251 ; improvement of com-
munications, 178, 257 ; advance during nineteenth century, 295 ;
population at various dates, 42, 55, 103, 139, 180, 243, 302;
its attitude towards national politics. Small interest during the Middle
Ages, 28 ; and under the Tudors, 74, 75 ; effects of the Reformation,
70; Puritanism growing in, 99, 109, 149; vacillation before Civil
War, III; but Puritan feeling predominant, 112; thrice besieged
during the Civil War, 1 1 6 ff . ; keen interest in national affairs after
the Restoration, 147 ; disputes of Whigs and Tories, 158 ff. ; effects
of the Revolution, 156-7 ; predominance of the Whigs during the
eighteenth century, 162 ff. ; begins to become Tory in early year?
of George III, 215 ; Icyalism during American war, 217 ; strongly
Tory during French Revolution, 226 ; a short interval of Whiggism,
1832-42, 309 ; Conservative supremacy established, 313 ;
its social condition before the creation of the borough, 1 1 ; in the Middle
Ages, 40 ff. ; under the Tudors, 83 ff. ; in the middle of the
eighteenth century, 186 ff. ; between 1760 and 1835, ^^9 ^- i social
activity in the nineteenth century, 309 ff ; social problems in,
299 ff ; cosmopolitan population of, 302

Index 363

Liverpool ' Blues,' the, 165, 221

Liverpool Courantj the, 187

Liverpool, the family of, 46 ; John of L., founds chantry in St. Nicholas'
chapel, 37 ; William son of Adam of, first Mayor, 36 ; his will, 42, 43 ;
other references 47, 49

Liverpool, the, privateer-ship, 212, 213

Liverpool regiments, 166

London, city of, purchases the lordship of Liverpool, 109 ; transference of
trade from, to Liverpool, 1 37 ; tharesinslave trade, 191 ; canal communi-
cation with, 258

London Road, 10, 126, 164

Lord Street, 25, 41, 120, 140, 144, 202, 271

Louisiana purdiase, the 252

Lyceum library, the, 187, 202

Mace, presented by Lord Derby, 1669, 160

Machinery, application of, to textile industries, 250

McNeile, Rev. Hugh, 312

Major Ballivus, 35 ,

Man, Isle of, Stanleys kings of, 59 ; in Civil War, 119 ; other references, 95,
124, 132

Manchester, its textile industries, 65, 84, 136, 183, 194, 261 ; early commercial
relations with Liverpool, 69, 87, 137; improvement of communications
with, 178, 256, 259; in the Civil War, 112, 116, 118, 124, 126; its
Jacobitism, 162, 165 ; other references, 219, 236, 276, 288

Manchester Grammar School, 98

Manufactures in Liverpool, 180, 246

Maps of Liverpool described, 179, 180

Market, the, probably founded by John, 18 ; where held, 88 ; vegetable
market in James Street, 176 ; other references, 34, 43

Marshes of Lancashire, the, 3

Martindale, Adam, 122

Martinique, 22Z

Mary, the, slave-ship, 206

Mary, Queen, 71

Matter, Richard, 113

Maudit, Jasper, 157

Mayer, Joseph, 319

Mayor, origin of the office, 35 ; the first recorded m., 36, 47 ; mode of
election, 50; his independence, 51 ; control over trade, 85 ; regulates
market, 88 ; and fair, 89 ; decline in power after institution of
Town Council, 82; elected by Town Council, 1677-94, 152;
created Lord Mayor, 337 ; other references, 72, 96, 118, 151, 156, 159

Mayor's Brethren, (see Aldermen)

Mayor's Court, 51

Measures, special Liverpool, 88

Mechanics' Institution, 288

Medical Officer of Health, 315

Medicine, School of (j« Royal Infihmarv)

364

Index

Meldrum, Sir John, besieges Liverpool, 130

Members of Parliament {see Parliamint)

Mercliant Gild {see Gild)

Mercurius Britannicus quoted, 126

Mere-stones, 40

Meredith, Sir William, M.P. for Liverpool, 216

Mersey, the, 3, 13, 79, 178

Mersey and Calder Canal, 258

Mersey and Severn Canal, 258

Mersey Docks and Harbour Board, 300

' Middle Passage,' the, 197-8

Mills, the, of Liverpool, 19, 34, 46, 89, 180

Molyneux, family of, {see also Sefton, Earls of) 60 ; rivalry with the Stanleys,
ib. ; hereditary constables of the Castle, 62 ; lessees of the fee-farm
of Liverpool, 71 ; their RoyaUsm, iii ; Sir Richard M. (d. 1454), 61,
62 ; Sir William M. (d. 1548), 67, 69 ; Sir Richard M. (d. 1569), quarrel
with burgesses of Liverpool, 71 if. ; 80, 94 5 his son Richard, M.P. for
L., 74; Sir Richard M. (first hart., d. 1623), 102, disafforests Toxtcth,
112; Sir Richard, Lord M., (2nd bart. and ist visct. M., d. 1636),
purchases lordship of L., 109 ; Richard, Lord M. (3rd hart., 2nd visct.,
d. 1654), new disputes with burgesses, 109 ; Caryll, Lard M. (3rd visct.,
d. 1700), at siege of Liv., 128, makes Lord Street, 140, quarrel with the
burgesses, 144-5 j ^^^ Jacobitism, 145, 156 ; William, Lord M. (4th visct.,
d. 1718) disputes about the Castle, 175

Molyneux, Mrs. Ann, 188

Moorfields, 287

Moor Green, the, 41, 69

Moor Street (Tithebarn Street), 41, 140

Moore, the family of, of the Old Hall and Bank Hall, 48 ; leaders of the
Puritan Party in Liv., in; their relations with Liv., 141 ; Sir Cleave
M., 143; Edward M., M.P. for Liv., in 1623, in ; Sir Edward M.,
48, 138, makes new streets, 140, his troubles, 142, his Rental, ib., his
death, 143 ; Colonel John M., M.P. for Liv. in the Long Parlt., in,
deputy lieut. of Lanes., 117, governor of Liv. 1643-4, *^°j ^i^ household,
122, his escape from Liv., 128, 129, other references, 118, 124, 125, 142 ;
Thomas M., Mayor of L., 49 ; Thomas M., mayor in 1554, leader agst.
the Molyneuxes, 72, 73 ; William M., 67, 89

Moore Deeds, the, 49

Mosse, Robert, 100

Mosslake, the, 10, 28, 61, 271, 335

Mount Pleasant, 180, 282, 292, 293

Municipal Buildings, 140

Municipal Commission (1833), 266, 314

Municipal Government, its earliest form, 19, 20, 21 ; in the fourteenth
century, 35, 50; establishment of the Town Council, 81 ; under the
charter of Charles I, 107; changes after the Restoration, 152-8; in
the eighteenth century, 170, 260 ; effects of the Municipal Reform
Act, 309; in 1907, 336-8

Municipal Records, 83

Municipal Reform Act (1835), 81, 266, 309

Index 365

Museum, Citjr, founded, 319
Music in Liverpool, 92, 1S6, 283

' Nabbe,' the, 76

Nantwich, 124, 178

Napoleon, effect of his wars on Liverpool, 234, 235, 252, 255

Navy, the, recruits from Liverpool, 208

Negro slave trade, 190 ff.

Neild, Joseph, 277

Nelson Monument, the, 278

Newcastle, Marquis of, 125

New Brighton, 233

Newsham Park, 321

Newspapers, 187

Newton, Rev. John, as slaving captain, 199-201

New York, 252, 253, 260

Nonconformity in Liverpool, 149

Norris, the family of, of Speke, iii ; Edward N., M.P. for Liv., 167;
Richard N., M.P., 167; Sir William N., Mayor of Liv. in 1555,
73 ; Colonel W. 2V., royalist governor of Liv., in 1642, nS j Sir William
N., M.P. for Liv., 149, 167

North John Street, 187

Notes, issued by the Corporation, 1793, 229

Nugent, Monsignor, 331

Officers, borough, how paid, gi {see Mayor, BAiLirr, etc.)

Oil Refineries in Liverpool, 247

Okill, Charles, his historical collections, 289

Old Calabar, 195

' Old-charter men,' 158

Old Dock, the, 177, 180, 245, 246, 279

Old Hall, the, 48, 49, 118, 121, 128, 180

Oldhall Street, 17, 41, 121, 129, 271, 281

Oldham Street, 244, 285

Old Haymarket, 9

Orchard, the Castle, 26

Orders in Council, the, 236, 237, 239

Ore, John, B.A., first borough schoolmaster, 98

Ormond, Marquis of, 123

Ormskirk, 129

Otterspool, 15, 113

' Our Lady's Hall,' 70, 94

Packhorses from Liverpool to Manchester, 256

Pageantry, fondness for, 96

Painting and sculpture in Liverpool, 284

Paradise Street, 9, 177, 187

Parish of Liverpool, cut off from Walton during the Commonwealth, 133 ;

finally separated 1699, 146
Parkgate, 181

366

Index

Parks, lack of in the eighteenth century, 281 ; delay in providing, 320 ;
created in 1868, 321

Parliament, first elections of members, 28 ; right of election resumed in 1547,
74; elections, 74, 147, 157, 224, 22S, 238 ; members of, how chosen in
sixteenth century, 74 ; paid by the borough, 75, 105 ; members in the
eighteenth century, 166, 167, 216, 224., 225, 228 ; petitions to P. 57,

Parliamentarian party in the Civil War, 1 17

Parliament Street, 9, 15

Parsons, {see Priests)

Passage, Court of, 51

Paveage grants, 32

Paving of Liverpool streets, :oo

Peasants' Revolt, the, 38

Pembroke Place, 313

Perry, George, map of Liverpool, 180

Philip and Mary, Charter of, 73

Picton, Sir James A., 319

Piracy, French, in the 14th century, 32 ; in Irish Sea, 104 ; Liv. piracy agst.

Spain, 76
Pitt, William, Earl of Chatham, 184, 207, 215
Pitt, William (the younger) 229

Plague, ravages of, in Liverpool, 41, 66 ; the Great P. of London, 137
Police, duties performed by the burgesses, 52, 78 ; in the sixteenth century,

99, 100; ineffectiveness before 1835, 219, 220, 273 ; reorganised 181 1,

274; reformed, 1836, 310
Police-aided Clothing Society, 331
Pool, the, of Liverpool, 9, 13, 26, 48, 76, loi, 120, 121, 126, 128, 131, 140,

144, 146, 163, 197, 180
Pool Lane (South Castle Street), 88, 149, 232
Poole, William, 61

Poor Law administration and poor relief, loi, 147, 275
Popish Plot, the, 153
Population of Liverpool, the original, 17 ; classes of in the middle ages, 42 ;

in 1795, 244 ; in the nineteenth century, 303 ff. ; p. at various dates,

42, 65, 66, 103, 139, 180, 243, 302 ; density of in 1843, 314
Portmoot, the, 19, 20, 34, 50 ; claimed by Molyneux, 72, 73 ; decrees

passed by, go, 92, 108
Potteries, the Liverpool, 181, 246 ; growth of P. industry, 250
Pratorium, the, 94

Preachers, special, engaged by burgesses, 97, no
Preeson's Row, 140
Presbyterianism In Liverpool, 133
Prescot, 87, 178,

Pressgang, the, in Liverpool, 208, 232-3, 273
Preston, 19, 117, 164
Prices in the 14th century, 43

Priests, the chantry, 37 ; chapel priests elected and controlled by burgesses, 96
Prince's Dock, 221, 233
Prince's Park, 15

Index 367

Princess, the, guardship in the Mersey, 232, 235

Prison Weint, 224

Prisons, French, escapes of Liv. sailors from, 210, 231 ; Liv. p., 277

Privateermg, Liverpool, during Civil War, 123 ; against Spain, i8; ; in
Seven Years' War, 212 ff. ; during American War, 220 ; during Revolu-
tionarj' War, 229 ; turbulence of privateersmen, 273 ; American
privateers, 217, 220, 238 ; French, 137, 202, 211, 220, 230 ; Spanish, 220

Protestantism, rise of in Liv., 97

Public Libraries Act, 319

Puritanism in Liv., 97, 99, 109, 112, 149; in Toxteth, 112

Quarter Sessions of the borough, 73

Queen's Dock, 247

Quo Warranto plea of 1292, 27 ; of 1494, 67

Railways, beginning of, 259

Ranelagh Gardens, 282

Ranelagh Street, 180

Rates, rarely levied before 1835, 91

Rathbone, S. G., 322 ' "

Rathbone, William (the second) 205, 225, 290 ; (the third), _5n^; (the fourth),

290, 333
' Redcap, Mother,' 232
' Red Noses,' the, 233
Reform Act of 1832, the, 264, 275
Reformation, its effects on Liverpool, 70, 71
Regiments, Liverpool, 221
Rent of Assize of Liverpool, 19
Restoration, the, its effects on Liverpool, 135, 148
Revenue, the, of the borough, 91, 92, 141, 267
Revolution, the, of 1688, its effects on Liverpool, 145, 156
Richard II, charter of, 38, 57
Richmond, Silvester, alderman in 1686, 188
Richmond, Silvester, vrriter of political squibs, 289
Richmond Row, 282
Rigby, Colonel, 125
Riots in Liverpool, in the middle age, 31 ; troops awaiting transport, 77, 78 ;

slavers' riot in 1775, 218, 219 ; election riots, 225
River-deepening projects, 178
Rivington reservoirs formed, 317

Roads, badness of from Liverpool, 42 ; improvement of, 178
Robes, official, of Town Council, 159
Rodney Street, 239, 271, 283, 285
Roger of Poitou, 13
Roman Catholics, prosecution of, 155 ; chapel burnt by mob, 166 ; activity

of in 19th century, 330
Rope-making, 180, 248
Roscoe, William, his history, character and work, 291-3 ; enthusiasm for the

French Revolution, 225 ; interest in the Fine Arts, 284 ; opposition to

the slave-trade and membership for Liverpool, 205 ; support of

Brougham, 239 ; other references, 187, 227, 289

368

Index

Roses, Wars of the, 63

Royal Infirmary, the, 189, 313

Royal Infirmary School of Medicine, 291, 314, 333

Royal Institution, the, 291, 293 ; school, 288

Runcorn, 130, 259

Rupert, Prince, 124, 125, 130

Rushton, Edward, blind poet, 204

Sailors, their character in the eighteenth century, 199 ; riots by, 218 ; their

troubles in war-time, 232 ; effect of steam on, 307
St. Andrew's Church, 285
St. Anne Street, 271
St. Domingo House, Everton, 234
St. George's Church, 176
St. George's Hall, 126, 1S9, 313
St. Helens, 178
St. James' Mount, 281
St. John's Churchyard, 320
St. Mary of the Quay, chapel of, 37, 70
St. Nicholas' Chapel and Church, 19, 37, 47, 95, 119, 129, 133, 146, 148, 275,

278 ; battery in the churchyard, 21 1
St. Peter's Church, 146
St. Thomas' Church, 176
Salford, Hundred of, 117
Salisbury, Lord, his Liverpool estates, 224
Salthouse Dock, 177, 245

Salthouse Moor, enclosure of, 29 ; its tenants, 3;
Sanitary Amendment Act, 1864, 316
Sanitation, early defect of, 41 ; reform of, 314
Sanlcey Brook deepened, 178, 257
Scarisbrick, John, 188
Schoolmaster, election of, 98
Schools in Liverpool, 187 j increase in, 286 ; Corporation schools, 286, 312 ;

grammar school, the, 69, 98, 187, 2S6 ; Sunday schools, 287 ; School

Board, the, 322
Scolders and chiders, 99
' Scotch Church,' the, 244, 285
Scotland Road, 83

Scottish immigration to Liverpool, 244
Seaforth, 285, 302
Sefton, Earls of, 60 {see also Molyneux), Charles William, ist earl, lays out

Toxteth Park for buildmg, 243 ; sells lordship of Liverpool to the

borough, 145
Sefton Park, i;, 113, 321

Sekerston, Ralph, M.P. for Liverpool (1562-79), 7;, 79, 98, 100
Seven Years' War, the, 211 ff.
Severn, the, 104
Sexton, the, 97
Shaw, the, 231
Shaw's Brow, 181, 188, 313, 319 {see also William Brown Sthiet)

Index 369

Sheffield goods, early trade in, 84

Shepherd, Rev. W., 289

Sheriff of Lancaster, the, zi, 60, 117

Shipbuilding in Liverpool, 180, 247

Ship-money refused in Liverpool, no

Shipping, Liverpool. Used in Edward Ill's wars, 33 ; for transport of
troops to Ireland, 33, 68, 76, 138; average charges, 76; detention of,
78 ; growth of, at different periods, 66, 84, 103, 138, 181, 245, 297;
decline during American war, 218, 238; methods of manning ships,
183 ; effect of slave trade on, 195

Shrewsbury, 125 ; battle of, 59

Sieges of Liverpool, the, 116 ff.

Silver-plate of Corporation, 160

Simonswood, 53

Sir Thomas street, 140, 167

Slave trade, the, its causes, 184 ; its origin, 190-1 ; statistics of, 193 ; popu-
larity of, 194 ; methods, 196-9 ; abolition of, 203 ff. ; its close, 206

Slavers, turbulence of, 1 99, 273

Slaves, sales of in Liverpool, 20z

' Slums,' rise of, 272 ; Duncan's description of, 309

Smithdown, township in Domesday, 8 j included in Toxteth Park, 15

Smuggling trade, 182, 236

Somerset, Duke of, 167

Somerset case, the, 202

Souters, 45

South American trade, 182, 254

South Castle Street (Pool Lane) 88, 232

Southport, 7

Spain, Liverpool prisoners in, 75 ; trade with, 80, 84, 104, 136

Spanish America, trade with, 182, 191, 254 ; revolt of, 255

Spanish Armada, first notification of, by a Liverpool trader, 75 ; interest
taken in, 76

Spanish pirates and privateers, 104, 220

Spinning, improvements in, 249, 250

Staffordshire, 139, 181 ; emigration of Liverpool potters to, 246

Stamp Act, the, 2i6

Stanley, the family of, established in Liverpool, 59 ; rivalry with the Moly-
neuxes, 60 ; ' patrons ' of Liverpool, 63, 73, 75, 78, 79 ; Royalism in the
Civil War, 116 {see also Derby, Earls of) ; Sir John S., builds the Tower
of Liv., 59 ; Thomas S., his quarrel with Sir R. Molyneux, 61

Stanley Park, 321

Stanley Street, 88

Steam, its application to machinery, 250

Steamships, first appearance in the Mersey, 240 ; early uses, 259 ; their
triumph and its results, 299, 306

Steers, Thomas, engineer of the first dock, 177

Stockport, 125

Stonehouse, James, 222

Strange, Lord (courtesy title of e.s. of Earls of Derby ; see Derby)

Streets, the, of Liverpool, in the middle ages, 40, 41 ; new streets made,
140 ff. ; in the eighteenth century, 186, 271 ; in nineteenth century, 304

AA

370 Index

Sty the, Rev. Robert, i88

Sugar trade, its beginning, 138 ; refining, 138, 180, 248

Sunday schools, 287

Sweating sickness, the, 66

Tailors, gild of, 90

Tallages paid by Liverpool, 19

Tanneries in Liverpool, 84

Tariffs, foreign, and their effects 297

Tarleton, the family of, 141 ; Colonel Banastre T., 221, 214, 228

Test Act, Liverpool opinion on the, 156

Tcwltesbury, 104

Theatres in Liverpool, 186, 283

Thurot, French privateer, 211

TimeSy tlie, on Liverpool, 324

Tithebarn Street, 17, 41, 69 121

Tobacco trade, the, 105, 139

Tolls and trade dues, 18, 19 ; exemption from, 20 {see aho TovPN Dues)

Tory party, the, its origin, 150; ascendancy after the Restoration, 150;
displaced by the Whigs, 157; protest against Whig policy, 167 fl. j
regains supremacy under George III, 216, 224; displaced by Reform
movement, 309 ; finally established 1842, 313

Tower Buildings, 60

Tower of Liverpool, the, built by Sir John Stanley, 60 ; used as Jacobite
prison, 164 ; purchased by the borough, 175 ; used for French prisoners
of war, 224, 231 ; and as town gaol, 218, 277 ; demolished, 278 ; other
references, S3, ill, 129

Town clerk, 107, 108, 148

Town Council, rise of the, 80, 81; disputes with officers, 107-8 ; with
Assembly of Freemen, i;o; becomes independent of Assembly, 151-3 ;
number fixed and powers defined, 158; its procedure, 159; policy
during l8th century, 171 ff. ; loyalty to George III, 215, 217, 227 ; its
ascendancy attacked, i6g, 226 ; its powers before 1835, ^^3 > narrow
view of responsibilities, 266 ; changed attitude after Munic. Reform Act,
309 ff. ; other references, 107, 258

Town dues, disputes about, 73, log ; action on, 265

Town Hall, the, early, 94; rebuilt, 1673, 159; again rebuilt, 1748, 174;
burnt and restored, 179;, 278 ; besieged by mob, 219 ; other references,
9, 62, 70, 85, 95, 186, 282

Town's Bargains, 85

Town's End, the, 121

Townsend Mill, the, 46, 49, 89

Toxteth, Ancient Chapel of, 113

Toxteth, township in Domesday, 8 \ turned into a Park, 15 ; disafforested
and settled by Puritan farmers, 112; other references, 28, 34, 47, 53, 120,
148, 243, 246, 265, 271, 274, 302, 317

Trade, the, of Liverpool, before 1207, 13 ; mediaeval, i8, 33, 43, 44 ; six-
teenth century, 83 ff. ; seventeenth century, 103, 135 ff. ; eighteenth
century, 181-8, 190 ff., 214, 2:7, 224; nineteenth century, 236, 240,
295 ff. ; proportion of English trade controlled by Liv., 298 ; trade
restrictions, 85, 86, 160

Index 371

Traill, Dr. W., 291

Tramways, 328

Transportation of convicts from Liverpool, 164

Trent and Mersey Canal, 258

True-hlooded Tenkee, the, American privateer, 238

Tyldesley, Colonel, Royalist leader, 119

Uniformity, Act of, in Liverpool, 148

United States, the, war of 1812, 237 ; growth at end of i8th century, 215 ff. ;

296
University, the, its foundation and growth, 332-6; other references 10,

291, 314
Uphollaad, 28

Vengeance, H.M.S., 209

Vestry meetings, 276

Vice in Liverpool, 310, 326

Victoria, Queen, Charters to Liverpool, 337

Vigilance Committee, 325

Virginia, trade with, 164, 167

Volunteering, 165, 221, 233, 234, 235

Vymwy, Lake, 318

Waits, the town, 92, 186

Walker, Sir A. B., 319

Wall, the town. 41

Wallasey, 66, 303

Walton, township of, 8, 148, 302 ; parish and church of, 11, 37, 38, 69, 133,

146
Warehouse, the common, 85
Warin, lord of Liverpool, 11
Warrington, 113, ny, 119, 154, 165, 178
Warwick, Earl of, 120
Wash-houses, public, 311
Waste, the, included in burgess-lease of 1393, 34 ; annexed by burgesses, 64 ;

control of, 6g, 91 ; secured by charter of Charles I, 106 ; built on, 141 ;

finally secured, 145 ; its value, 260
Watch Committee, 325

Watching, Lighting and Cleansing Board, instituted, 173 ; suppressed, 310
Watchmaking in Liverpool, 181, 248
Water-bailiffs, the, 79, 85, 87

Water Street, 17, 41, 44, 70, 83, 100, 140, 271, 277, 278, 279
Water-supply, history of the, 316-18
Waterloo, 302

Wavertree, township of, 8, 302
Wavertree Playground, 322
Weaver, the river, deepening of, 178
Weavers in Liverpool, 45 ; their gild, 90
Weaving, improvements in, 249
Weighage dues, 85

372 Index

Wellington Column, 46

Welsh population in Liverpool, 244, 305

Wesley, John, 203, 285

West Derby, Castle of, 8; hundred of, 7, 20, iii, 117, 121; manor and
township of, 8, lo, 12, 17, 48, 67, 243, 265, 302

West Indian Eclogues, by Edward Rushton, 204

West Indies, trade with 104, 136, 138, 164, 182, 214, 217; slave trade,
191 fl. ; cotton trade, 262

West Kirby, 303

Whale-fishing, 2og, 247

Wharfage dues, 85

Whigs, the, their origin, 149 ; majority among freemen after the Restoration,
1 50 ; placed in power by Charter of William III, 157; ascendancy
during the l8th century, 162, 167 ; character of their rule, 171 ; their
dominance overthrown, 215, 224; unpopularity during the French
Revolution, 225 ; triumph during Reform movement, 265 ; their
supremacy, 1835-42 and final loss of power, 309 ff.

Whitacre Street, 41

Whitechapel, 9, 177

Whitehaven, 220

Wigan, 7, 84, 87, 117, 126, 178. 257

Wilkes, John, Liverpool opinion about, 215, 216

William'lII, Charter of, 157

William and Mary, Charter of, 157

William, son of Adam [see Liverpool, Family or), 47

William Brown Street (Shaw's Brow), 10, 181, 313, 319

Williamson Square, 283

Windsor Castle, packet-boat, 230

Wirral, hundred of, 131

Woollen trade, 84, 250

Workhouse, the first, i88 ; the modem, 275

Wrecks, royal claim to, 67

Wright, Fortunatus, privateer, 181;, 212

Wrongs of Africa, the, poem, by William Roscoe, 205

Yeomanry, Liverpool, 234

York, city of, 55, 125

York, Duke of (James II), 153

Yorkshire, growth of woollen trade, 250 ; Y. militia in Liverpool, 220

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