THE LIBRARY
OF
THE UNIVERSITY
OF CALIFORNIA
LOS ANGELES
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FAMOUS
LONDON MERCHANTS.
(;i:ORGE PEADODY.
. FAMOUS
LONDON MERCHANTS.
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15Y
H. R. FOX BOURNE,
AUTHOR OF "ENGLISH MERCHANTS," "ENGLISH SEAMEN UNDER THE TUDORS,'
" A MEMOIR OF SIR PHILIP SIDNEY," ETC.
;r/r// TWENTY-FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS.
LONDON:
JAMES HOGG & SOX, YORK ST., COVENT flARDEN.
1869.
[//// rights rcscrvid.'\
^sos
Ballaniytie ^ Company, Printers, Edinburgh.
^^^^
PREFACE.
[HIS little volume follows the method
pursued in my " English Merchants ;
Memoirs in Illustration of the Pro-
gress of British Commerce," which was pub-
lished two years ago. It is designed to furnish
younger readers with some account of the
growth and influence of trade, and the work
and character of its heroes. Some of the lives
here sketched have been alluded to or detailed
in the larger work. Where the same ground
has been travelled over, free use has been made
of what has already been written, but with
such alterations of style and substance as
.seemed to be called for by the different pur-
pose now in view. The whole series of biogra-
phies, however, has been drawn from London
history ; and, as far as seemed consistent with
the proper handling of tlic theme, the work is
limited to the splicre of London commerce.
Having thus borrowed from my own book,
I have also availed myself of the researches
jLi*!^^ /
r'w>
:i
vi Preface.
of other writers. In a small volume makini^ lU)
pretensions to completeness, and not many to
originalit)', it has appeared to me unwise to
cumber the pages with foot-notes, specifying
each precise obligation, and authenticating
every single statement. It may be enough
here to acknowledge the use made of Mr
Lysons' " Model Merchant of the Middle
Ages," in the chapter on Whittington, and of
Mr Burgon's " Life of Sir Thomas Gresham," in
the chapter on the greatest merchant of Tudor
times ; and to record the help derived from Mr
Charles Knight's " Shadows of the Old Book-
sellers," from Mr J. C. Colquhoun's " VVilber-
force and his Friends," and from Mrs Geldart's
" Memorials of Samuel Gurney," respectively,
in preparing the sketches of Guy, Thornton,
and Gurney. The obligations to older sources
of information, though still greater, hardly need
be specified. Notes made from old folios and
quartos, from manuscript collections and pri-
vate sources, during some years of inquiry
into commercial history, have been used where-
ever they were applicable to the subject of the
volume.
H. R. F. B.
London, Dec. 15, 1868.
CONTENTS.
I. Sir Richard Whittington. [1353-1423.]
The Dick Whittington of the Story Books and the Dick Whittington
of History — Whittington's Parentage — His Training as a London
Apprentice — The Growth of London and its Commerce — Old
Trading Companies andGuilds^Old London Merchants ; Henry
Fitz-Alwyn ; William and Nicholas de Farendon ; William Wal-
worth; John Philpot— Whittington as Sheriff of London under
Richard II. — An old Holiday Show— Whittington as Mayor — His
Trading Occupations — His Services to Henry IV. and Henry V.
— His Charitable and Religious 'W^lk — Whittington College —
Guildhall Chapel and Library' — TKe Library of Gray Friars"
Mona.stcr>'— Whittington's Deatli and Threefold I'urial, ... ij
II. Sir Thomas Gresham. [1519-1579]
The Elder Greshams — Sir Richard and his Work — I'irth and 'i'rain-
ing of Sir Thomas Gresham — The Mercers and the Merchant
Adventurers — English Trade with the Netherlands — Gresham in
Antwerp— His Occupations as Factor to Edward VI., Queen
Mary, and Queen Elizabeth — His duties as Banker, Financial
Agent, and Ambassador — His Residence and Employments in
London — Queen Elizabeth's London — The Building of the Royal
Exchange — Queen Elizabeth's Visit to it — Grcsham's House in
Bishopsgatc Street — His House at Osterley, and Entertainment of
the Queen there— His last Occupations and Death, ...
Contents
III. Sir Edward Osborne, [i 530-1 591.]
Old London Bridge and its Houses — Sir William Hewit and His
Daughter Anne — Ned Osborne's Prowess in Saving her from
Drowning — His Reward — His City Associates : Sir Lionel
Ducket ; Sir John Spencer ; Richard Staper — The Firm of
Osborne and Staper — The Formation of the Turkey or Levant
Company, with Osborne for its Governor — Trade and War — A
Famous Fight between English Merchantmen and Spanish Gal-
leys— Osborne's work as Sheriff and Lord Mayor — The Beginnings
of English Trade with India — Osborne's Death — His Ducal
Descendants, ... ... ... ... ... ... 65
IV. Sir William Herrick. [1557-1653.]
Old John Herrick of Leicester — His Sons Robert and Nichola.s —
William Herrick's Early History — His Letters from Home —
Mary Herrick and Her Father— Sir William Herrick's Occu-
pation as a Goldsmith — His favour with Queen Elizabeth and
with James I. — His great Rival and Friend, George Heriot —
Heriot in Edinburgh and in London — Herrick's Services to James
I. — His Retirement in Leicestershire— His Wife, the Lady Joan, 84
V. Sir Thomas Smythe. [1560-1625.]
Thomas Smythe, the Customer — His Enterprising Son — The Forma-
tion of the East India Company, with Sir Thomas Smythe as its
First Governor — His Troubles as Sheriff — His Share in the Man-
agement of the East India Company — Its Early History — The
First Expedition under Sir James Lancaster — The "Trades' In-
crease," and its Disastrous Voyage under Sir Henry Middleton
— William Adams — Sir Thomas Roe's Visit to the Great Mogul
— Progress of the East India Company — Sir Thomas Smythe's
other Work — The Early History of Virginia — Smythe's Share in
its Government — Smythe's Contemporaries : Sir Thomas and Sir
Hugh Myddelton — The New River, and its Opening — Sir
Thomas Smythe's last Occupations and Death— His Chari-
ties, ... ... ..■ ... ... ... 102
VI. Sir Henry Garway. [i 570-1645.]
Sir Henry Garway's Early Employments — The State of Trade in his
Time — The Levant Company — Sir Richard Gurney — The Con-
duct of Garway and Gumey in Support of Charles I. and their
troubles in the Commonwealth Times, ... ... ... 13(3
Contents. ix
VII. Sir Dudley North. [1641-1691.]
Dudley North's Schooling — His Trading Adventures and Achieve-
ments in the Levant — His Occupations in London — Sir Josiah
Child and the East India Company — Dudley North's Work as
Sheriff of London — His "Discourses upon Trade" — His Marriage
and Married Life — His Employments in Retirement — His
Death,
I4(-
VIII. Thomas Guy. [1644-17 24.]
Old Horsleydown and its Traders — Thomas Guy's Parentage and
Youth — The Great Fire of London — A Young Bookseller and his
Occupations — Gu>''s Trade in Cheap Bibles — His Marriage Pro-
ject and its End — William Paterson and the Bank of England —
Its Effect on Commerce — The Great Stockjobbing Mania — The
South-Sea Bubble— Guy's Prudent Stockjobbing — His Wise Use
of his Wealth— Guy's Hospital, ... .. . ... i68
IX. William Beckford. [1708-1770.]
The Beckfords in Jamaica — William Beckford's Schooling — The Rise
of Trade with America and the West Indies — Its Benefits to
England— Beckford's Share in it — His Parliamentary Life — His
Employments as Alderman, Sheriff, and Lord Mayor — George
III. and the Lord Mayor's Show — David Barclay — Beckford's
Great Feast — Sir John Barnard — Beckford's Radicalism — His
Quarrel with George III. — His Death and Character — Chatter-
ton's Elegy on him, ... ... ... ... 198
X. Henry Thornton. [1762-1815.]
Robert and John Thomlon — John Thornton's Charity and Piety —
Wilberforcc and the Clapham Party — Henry Thornton as a
Banker — The Progress of Banking — The Hoarcs — Thomas
Coutts — Henry Thornton in Parliament — His Share in the Re-
form of the Bank of England — His Philanthropic Labours —
Thornton and Wilbcrforce — Thornton's Connexion with Hannah
More — His Sierra I^onc Colony — His Various Occupations — His
Literary Work — His Death, ... •.• ... ... 221
XI. Nathan Meyer Rothschild. [177O-1836.]
The Rothschilds in Frankfort— Nathan Rothschild in Manchester —
Contents
TAGK
His Settlement in Lontlon — 'I'hc Jew P.ankers of London — The
brothers Goldsniid — The Barings — Rollischild's money-making —
The Battle of Waterloo, and Rothschild's gains by it — His Mer-
cury Trick — His Foreign Loans — His Jokes — Brigand-like
Bankers— Rothschild's Death and Wealth, ... ... ... 245
XII. Samuel Gurney. [i 786-1856.]
The Old Gurneys — Samuel Gurney 's Training — The House of Overcnd,
Gurney, & Company — The Modern Money-Market — Gurncy's
Services to it— His Charitable and Philanthropic Actions — His
Death, ... ... ... ... ... ... ... 265
XIII. George Peabody.
The Peabody Family — George Peabody's Training and Occupations
in America — His Settlement in London — The Crisis of 1837 —
Peabody's Business as Merchant and Banker — His Services as an
Anglo-American — His Benefactions in America — The Peabody
Lodging-Houses in London — The Commerce of Modern London
— Imports and E.xports — The Docks of London — Bullion and
other Money — The Money Market and the Stock Exchange —
Conclusion: The Progress of Commerce, and its Services to
Civilisation, ... ... ... ... ... ... :
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS.
George Peabody, ... ... ... ... •• frontispieck
F.\GE
.Sir Richard Whittington, ... ... ... ... •.■ 15
Guildhall Chapel, London, ... ... ... ... ... 34
Christ's Hospital, London, ... ... ... ... •■• 35
Sir Thomas Gresham, ... ... ... ... ••• 39
Mercer's Hall, Cheapside, ... ... ... ... ... 4'
A Flemish Merchant of the i6th Ccnturj', ... ... ... 46
An English Merchant of the iCth Century, ... ... ... 47
The First Royal Exchange, ... ... ... ... •.• 57
Crosby Hall, London, ... ... ... ... ■•■ '"
The Ancient Chapel of Thomas a liecket, afterwards a Shop and
Warehouse, on London Bridge, ... ... ... ... 66
A Galley of the i6th Century, ... ... ... ... 74
An East Indian Carrack of the iCth Century, ... ... ... 105
The First East India House, ... ... ... ... ... '25
The Last East India House, ... ... ... .• .. 129
Sir Hugh Myddelton, ... ... ... •. ••• i35
Sir Josiah Child, ... ... .. •. ••■ ■■■ '55
William Palcrson, ... ... ... ... ... ••■ '78
The Second Royal Exchange, ... ... ... •■ '84
The South-Sea Bubble, ... ... ... .• — '9'
Thomas Coutts, ... ... ... ... ... ■•■ 229
The Tower of London, ... ... ... ••• 283
Thc.Prcscnl Royal Exchange, ... — ■•• 3°3
London Stone, ... ... ■■• •■■ ••• 3'5
FAMOUS
LONDON MERCHANTS.
SIR RICHARD WHITTINGTON.
[1353-1423.]
niEF of all the great merchants of
London during the Middle Ages is
Richard Whittington, not quite the
same Dick Whittington who lives in the story-
book, but a Whittington whose worth is only-
shown more clearly by divesting the popular
narrative of its fables, and adding to it the
sure facts of history,
Dick was not a beggar-boy who, running
away, when he was seven years old, from a
home in which there was nothing to make him
happy, and, hearing that the streets of London
14 Tlic Story- Book Version.
were paved with gold and silver, worked his
way thither to be saved from starvation by a
good-natured merchant of Leadenhall Street,
named Fitzwarren. He was the youngest son
of Sir William Whittington, who was descended
from an old Warwickshire family, and owned
estates in Gloucestershire and Hereford. The
father died in 1360, and the estates passed to
the eldest son. Dick, who was then only a
child not more than five or six years old,
seems, as soon as he was old enough, to have
been sent up to London, there to become a
merchant. A London merchant, at any rate,
he became, though in what precise way we are
not told.
We may, if we like, accept the version of
the story-book, and believe that he was for a
long time little better than a scullion in his
master's house ; that he was much favoured
by Mistress Alice, his master's daughter, but
much persecuted by a "vile jade of a cook,"
whose bidding he had to follow; that at length
his master, sending a shipful of merchandise
to Barbary, permitted each one of his servants
to add something to the cargo : and that he,
poor fellow, having nothing better, contributed
a cat, which he had bought for a penny, and
set to destroy the rats and mice which infested
his garret ; that, while the ship was on its voyage
the cook's tyranny so troubled him that he ran
Sir Richard Wiiitiingloii, Lord Mayor of London.
Fables and Facts. I j
away, and had gone as far as Bunhill Fields,
when the bells of Bow Church seemed to call
to him,
" Turn again, Whittington,
Lord Mayor of London ;"
and that when, in obedience to the call, he
went back to Leadenhall Street, he found that
his cat had been sold to the King of Barbary
for a large sum of money; and that this money
helped him to become the richest merchant
of his time. The money paid for the cat
must have been vastly less than the ;^ 100,000
of which tradition speaks, and most of the
wealth with which he started in business on
his own account must have been made up of
his patrimony and of the fortune that came
with his wife, who, though a Mistress Alice,
was the daughter, not of a merchant, but of a
Sir Hugh Fitzwarrcn, owner of much property
in Gloucestershire and other counties.
The popular account of his youth, however,
may be partly true. No one, however rich
and high-born, might, in those days, follow
any important trade in London who was not
a member of one of the city companies or
guilds, and for admission to these companies
it was necessary to pass through sonic years of
rough apprenticeship. W'liiLtington, we know,
was so apprenticed to a member of the Mercers'
Guild, which at that time engrossed one of the
1 8 WJiittington's Trail ice- Life.
most prosperous branches of the tradesman's
calHng. In front of one of the shops in Cheap-
side or Cornhill, which then were open stalls or
booths, such as we now see in the markets, he
jnust have had to stand, day after day, offering
coats, caps, and other articles of haberdashery
and the like, to passers-by; and when the day
was over, he must have gone indoors to live in a
garret, or worse, to do, in spite of his gentle
birth, whenever he was bid, such jobs as scullions
now-a-days would think beneath them ; and
to associate with rude and lawless fellow-
'prcntices — lads whose play was generally coarse
and brutal, and to w^hom fierce brawls and
deadly fighting only offered special opportuni-
ties of amusement. His was rare luck if there
was any kind Mistress Alice at hand to heal
the wounds of body and of spirit that must
have befallen him.
They were rough times in which he lived,
times in which the modern history of England
was fairly beginning, after a thousand years
and more of rude preparation. London had
been growing for at least fourteen centuries,
Tacitus, who lived in the days of the Emperor
Nero, spoke of it as being then " famous for
its merchants and the abundance of its mer-
chandise." P"'ive hundred and fifty years after-
wards, the venerable Bede called it " a mart
town of many nations, which repaired thither
Old London and its Trade. 19
by sea and land." The Romans had found it
in some sort of prosperity, and it had prospered
much more under their dominion. The pros-
perity had continued during the centuries of
Anglo-Saxon colonisation and progress ; and
if there was some hindrance to this during
the turmoil of the Norman Conquest, London
began to be a far more influential town than
ever as soon as those turmoils were over.
" London," says one of the old chroniclers, writ-
ing in the twelfth century, " is a noble city, re-
nowned for the opulence of its citizens, who,
on account of the greatness of the city, arc
among the first rank of noblemen. It is filled
with goods brought by the merchants of all
countries, but especially with those of Ger-
many ; and when there is a scarcity of corn
in other parts of England, it is a granary at
which the article may be bought more cheaply
than anywhere else." "To this city," sa}'s an-
other writer of the same century, " merchants
repair from every nation of the world, bringing
their commodities by sea :
" Arabia's gold, Salirca's spice and gums,
Scythia's keen weapons, and the oil of palms
From Babylon's deep soil, Nile's precious gems,
China's bright shining silks, the wines of France,
Norway's warm jieltry, and the Russian sables.
All here abound."
That is a highly-drawn picture of London
20 Old London and its Trade.
commerce under the earl)' Plantagenets. The
"nations of the world" then within reach of
England were few in number, and the mer-
chants were more like modern pedlars and
small shopkeepers than the great millionaires
of recent times. But the London of that
period was as great, in comparison with other
towns both in and out of England, as is the
London of to-day; and then, as now, its great-
ness was chiefly caused by its commerce. This
commerce, however, was mostly in the hands
of foreigners. English merchants worked hard
and fared well at home ; but they were less
enterprising than the merchants of other coun-
tries, who, not content with pursuing their
calling in their own lands, established them-
selves in all other districts where they had a
chance of getting trade and making money.
The foreign merchants who came to London
and settled in it were chiefly Germans and
Italians, the Germans being the first in the
field. From very early times there was a
curious little colony of German traders in the
heart of London. On the banks of the Thames,
near what is now Dowgate Wharf, they had
a home during several centuries. Until the
reign of Richard II. one large building served
both as a residence for the merchants, and as
a warehouse for their goods. Then a second
building was granted to them ; and soon after-
Trading Colonies and Guilds. 2 1
wards a third was added, which having been
previously known as the Steel-house or Steel-
yard, gave its name to the whole establish-
ment : in it a colony of German merchants
continued to reside down to the time of Eliza-
beth. There they carried on their trade, hav-
ing constant supplies of all sorts of goods
brought across the seas and up the Thames,
to be deposited at their own door, and thence
sold to the London traders. A colony some-
what of the same sort was formed of Italians,
chiefly Lombards, a little farther from the
river-side : and the record of their settlement
still exists in the name of Lombard Street.
Near it is Old Jewry, once the special resi-
dence of the Jewish colonists.
These little colonies of foreigners, bound
together by strict rules, and pledged in all
ways to help one another in their various
occupations, set the fashion of guilds or trad-
ing companies of Englishmen. When and
how they first began, we do not know. They
seem to have existed in some shape even
before the Norman Conquest, and soon after
that event they became of great importance.
Edward III., seeing how useful they were to
the progress of commerce and of the nation
which owed so much to commerce, did all he
could to strengthen them. Forty-eight sepa-
rate guilds were recognised by him, between
22 The Old London Guilds.
which all the business of the city was divided.
No one was allowed to take part in trade un-
less he was a member of the guild established
for his special calling, and bound himself to
work in friendship with all the other members,
and to have no dealings with any unlawful
traders who were members of no guilds. One
good feature in these guilds was the care with
which they were pledged to assist their aged
and unfortunate members and the orphans of
all who died young, excellent relics of which
appear in the many city charities now exist-
ing. They were not merely good, however,
but necessary to the times. The times were
too violent, and commerce was too small and
weak for separate traders to be able to hold
their own against tyrannical barons at home,
pirates on the sea, and enemies in foreign
lands. It was only by association that they
became strong ; and certainly strength came
thus to the merchants of the Middle Ages.
Some of the old guilds were devoted to work
which modern merchants would repudiate.
The chandlers, the masons, the bakers, the
hatters, the barbers, the painters, the wood-
sawyers, and the brushmakers, were concerned
in occupations that are now held proper for
small tradesmen and artisans, not for mer-
chants. Fishmongers are now generally ple-
beians : yet the old Fishmongers' Guild was
The Gt'ocers and the Mercers. 23
almost the most aristocratic, as well as the
oldest, of the ancient city companies.
The names of some are misleading. The
most influential of all were the Grocers' and
the ]\Iercers' Guilds. In olden times the
mercers dealt not in silks, but in toys, small
haberdasheries, spices, drugs, and the hke.
They were at first in the position of pedlars,
and afterwards had a miscellaneous trade in
stray commodities, like village shopkeepers of
the present day. Ultimately they came to be
wholesale dealers and great merchants, though
their business was still nominally confined to
trade in all goods intended for retail sale, all
that were weighed by the " little balance."
The grocers, who were also called pepperers,
came to have almost the same trade. Pepper,
cloves, mace, ginger, saffron-wood, and other
spices; drugs and dyes; currants, almonds, rice,
soap, cotton, silver, tin, and lead, were the chief
articles in which it was proper for them to
deal. All their wares, however, were to be
sold by the "gross balance," or the beams,
and in a wholesale way.
Besides these trading societies, which were
limited to London, and had counterparts in
nearly every other English town, there was a
more strictly commercial institution, founded
nearly two hundred years before Whittington's
time. This was the Society of Merchants of
24 Trade in WJiittington's Day.
the Staple. "The merchants of the staple,"
says an old writer, "were the first and an-
cientest commercial society in England, so
named from their exporting the staple wares
of the kingdom. Those staple wares were
then only the rough materials for manufac-
ture : wool and skins, lead and tin, sheep-
skins and leather, being the chief. The grower
of wool contented himself at first with the sale
of it at his own door, or at the next town.
Thence arose a sort of middleman, who bought
it of him, and begot a traffic between them and
the foreign clothmakers, who, from their being
established for the sale of their wools in some
certain city commodious for intercourse, were
first named staplers." These staplers, or mer-
chants of the staple, came to include all the
most enterprising members of the various
guilds in and out of London.
This, then, was the trading world of London
in which Whittington was to make himself
famous. There had been famous merchants
before him. Foremost of all was Henry Fitz-
Alwyn, of the Drapers' Guild, first Mayor of
London, and holder of the office for a quarter
of a century — from its establishment in 1189
to the time of his death in 12 14. He it was
who first encouraged the citizens to build their
houses of enduring stone, instead of the wood
and thatch, which, easily catching fire, caused
Walworth and Wat Tyler. 25
whole quarters to be frequently burnt down.
After him were William de Farendon, of the
Goldsmiths' Guild, who was Sheriff in 1281,
and his son, Nicholas Farendon, who was four
times chosen Mayor between 1308 and 1323,
and who, dying when Whittington was eight
or ten years old, left his name in Faringdon
Street, which, with all the neighbourhood, be-
longed to him.
Two other great merchants were also alive
in Whittington's youth. One of these was
William Walworth, owner of the suburb still
called Walworth, who was a leading member
of the Fishmongers' Guild, and Mayor in
1373, and again in 1381. The latter year was
the year of Wat Tyler's rebellion. It was
Walworth himself, we are told, who rushed
single-handed among the crowd of insurgents,
and slew Wat Tyler. " Good citizens and
pious all !" he exclaimed, when the rebels were
preparing to take vengeance for that deed,
" Give help without delay to your afflicted
King; give help to me, your Mayor, encom-
passed by the self-same dangers. If you do
not choose to succour mc, at any rate beware
how you sacrifice your King!" The answer
came in proni[)t and energetic combination of
the citizens, by which the rebellion was sup-
pressed.
A worthier merchant of tliat lime, " a man
26 John PJiilpot the Grocer.
of jolly wit and vxr)' rich in substance," accord-
ing to the quaint old chronicler, was John Phil-
pot, of the Grocers' Guild, who lived on the
site of riiilpot Lane. He did many famous
things for the relief of his country, chief of all
perhaps being his punishment of John Mercer,
a Scotch merchant and pirate in 1378, the yearin
which Philpot was Mayor of London. Mercer's
father had also boen a pirate. Being caught,
and imprisoned in Scarborough Castle, in 1377,
his son carried on the strife with yet more bold-
ness. Collecting a little fleet of Scotch, French,
and Spanish ships in 1378, he captured several
English merchantmen off Scarborough, slay-
ing their commanders, putting their crews
in chains, and appropriating or destroying
their cargoes. This mischief, thought Lord
Mayor Philpot, must be stopped, and stopped
at once. Therefore, at his own expense, he
promptly collected a number of vessels, put in
them a thousand armed men, and sailed for
the north. Within a i^w weeks he had retaken
the captured vessels, had effectually beaten
their impudent captors, and, as a revenge, had
seized fifteen Spanish vessels, full of wine, that
came in his way. On his return from this not-
able exploit, we are told by the old historian,
** there was great joy made among the people,
all men praising the worthy man's bountiful-
ness and love towards the king." But the peers
His Patriotic Conduct. 27
of England by no means echoed the praises
of the commoners. " First, they lay in wait to
do him some displeasure, and afterwards they
spake against him openly, saying that it was
not lawful for him to do such things without
the orders of the king and his realm." Phil-
pot was accordingly summoned before Richard
II.'s council, and accused of illegal conduct in
going out to fight the enemy without authority
from the Crown. Philpot was angry with good
reason. " Know, sir," he said to the Earl of
Stafford, who was loudest in his reproaches,
" that I did not expose myself, my money, and
my men, to the dangers of the sea, that I might
deprive you and your mates of your knightly
fame, or that I might win any for myself; but
in pity for the misery of the people and the
country, which, from being a noble realm, with
dominion over other nations, has, through your
slothfulness, become exposed to the ravages of
the vilest race. Not one of you would lift a
hand in her defence. Therefore it was that I
gave up myself and my property for the safety
and deliverance of England." Mis rivals at
Court could find no real complaint against
him ; and his friends among the people praised
him as one of their greatest benefactors.
Philpot died in 1384, and Walworth at about
the same time. Whittington, then nearly thirty
years old, was their .successor, and surpassed
28 Whittingion 's McrcJiuiit Life.
them as a type of the merchants of England
durinr^ the Middle Ages at their best.
Of his early occupations as a mercer and a
citizen of London we know nothing in detail ;
but we can guess something of them from the
illustrations that have been given of the state
of the times in which he was schooled. They
were times in which, Richard II. being king,
England was given up to jealousies and quar-
rels, rebellion and tyranny. Richard was not
wise enough or strong enough to keep his
realm in order. In trying to do so, he only
made mischief. Nobles were at feud with
nobles, only leagued together for frequent op-
position to him, and for constant resistance
of the attempts made by the common people
to rise out of the degradation in which they had
long been kept, and violently to seize a share
in the government of the country. The mer-
chants of London did their best to keep out of
the strife ; but they were often forced to be-
come soldiers, as when Walworth led the citi-
zens against Wat Tyler; and sailors, as when
Philpot went out to punish John Mercer and
the Scottish pirates. Whittington, a young
and enterprising man, must have watched the
turmoil with close interest, keeping out of it
as much as possible, and doing his utmost,
with wonderful success, to become a rich and
influential trader.
A Quarrel and its Ending. 29
We first hear of him in 1393, when he must
have been nearly forty years old. He was
then a master-mercer, and a member of the
IMercers' Guild, with five apprentices working
under him ; and before the year was out he
was elected Sheriff" of London, having pre-
viously been made an alderman.
As an alderman he had just before taken
part in a curious ceremony. Richard II. had
called upon the city for a loan of ^looo. The
city had refused, and the mayor and other
chief officers had accordingly been deposed
and sent to prison, the management of affairs
being placed in the hands of a "guardian,"
appointed, in violation of all civic laws and
privileges, by the King himself. The effect of
this severity was, that after a few months the
citizens had consented to buy back their rights
for ;^ 10,000, ten times the sum which they had
formerly declined to pay. Thereupon there
was a great show of peace-making. On the
29th of August, King Richard proceeded from
his palace at Shcne or Mortlakc, into the city,
there to be entertained with a famous pageant.
Rich tapestry, choice silks, and cloths of gold
adorned the streets, garlands and festoons of
sweet-smelling flowers being freely mingled
with them. All the members of the city guilds
and all their apprentices, matrons, maids, and
children, thronged the narrow streets almost
30 An Old Loudon Pageant.
from daybreak, while a thousand and twenty-
young men on horseback marched up and
down, keeping order, and adding to the pomp
of the occasion. In the afternoon a procession
was formed. The "guardian" appointed by
the King led the way. After him came the
four-and-twenty aldermen, Whittington being
one of them, all arrayed in red and white, and
they were followed by the leading representa-
tives of the various trades, each in its own
livery. " None seeing this company," says the
delighted chronicler, "could doubt that he
looked upon a troop of angels." The proces-
sion passed over London Bridge, and met
another procession, consisting of King Richard
and Queen Anne, and a host of attendant
courtiers. Then all turned back, crossed Lon-
don Bridge, and traversed the city, to be
delighted with fresh sights and wonders at
every turn. In Chcapsidc there were fountains
pouring forth wine, and allegorical appearances
of sweet youths with crowns. At the doorway
of Saint Paul's Cathedral there was heavenly
music. From the summit of old Ludgate,
angels strewed flowers and perfumes on the
royal party ; and at Temple-Bar there was a
wonderful representation of a forest, and a
desert full of wild beasts, with John the Baptist
in the midst of them, leading the Lamb of God.
These entertainments having been admired,
Whittingtoji' s Occupations. 3 1
the Avhole procession hurried on to West-
minster, where the King seated himself on his
throne, and formally pardoned the citizens ot
London for their naughtiness in not lending
him money as soon as it was asked for. At
the same time he gave them back the privi-
leges that had been taken from them.
It was in consequence of that restitution of
privileges, and just three weeks after the cere-
mony, that Whittington was chosen Sheriff.
Five years afterwards, in 1 398, he was appointed
Mayor, and he held that office for a second time
in 1406, and for a third time in 1419. In 14.16,
also, he was elected a member of Parliament
for the city of London.
All through these years Whittington was a
busy merchant. Besides all the minor trade
that was proper to the mercer's calling, he
dealt extensively with foreign merchants in tlie
raw wool and hides which were then the chief
articles exported from England, and in the
silks and other costly articles from distant
lands that were exchanged for native wool
and leather. Much of his wealth also was de-
rived from an irregular sort of banking, which
brought him into close connexion with the two
famous monarchs, Henry IV. and Ilcnry V.,
who reigned in England after the overthrow of
Richard II. I5y lending money to them and
others, and arranging all their C(.)mplicated
32 A Costly Piece of Loyally.
business in money matters, he became, in the
course of his long Hfe, very rich.
He was as magnanimous as he was rich,
although some of the stories illustrating his
magnanimity can hardly be believed. One of
these stories tells how, on the occasion of his
being knighted, apparently in 1419, he invited
Henry IV. and his queen to a sumptuous en-
tertainment at Guildhall. Among the rarities
prepared to give splendour to the festival was
a marvellous fire ofswcet-smclling woods, mixed
with cinnamon and other costly spices. While
the King was praising this novelty, we are told
Whittington went to a closet, and took from it
bonds to the value of ^60,000 — worth nearly a
million pounds of modern money — which he
had diligently bought up from the various
merchants and money-lenders to whom they
liad at various times been given by Henry.
This bundle he showed to the King, and then
threw into the fire. " Never had prince such a
subject!" exclaimed Henry: "And never had
subject such a prince !" answered Whittington.
That story may or may not be true ; but of
other and nobler acts of liberality done by
Whittington we have ample proof. " The fer-
vent desire and busy intention of a prudent^
wise, and devout man," he is reported to have
said not long before his death, "shall be to
cast before and make sure the state and the
IVhittington's Charities. 33
end of this short life with deeds of mercy and
pity, and especially to provide for those miser-
able persons whom the penury of this world
insulteth, and to whom the power of seeking
the necessities of life by art or bodily labour
is interdicted." And that was certainly the
rule of his own life.
Four hundred years before John Howard
appeared as the prisoner's friend, Whittington
began to rebuild Newgate prison, hitherto "a
most ugly and loathsome prison, so contagious
of air, that it caused the death of many men ;"
and dying before the work was done, he left
money that it might be duly completed.
Saint Bartholomew's Hospital, in Smithfield,
founded in 1102 for the help of sick and lame
paupers, and long fallen into decay, was re-
paired soon after his death, in obedience to the
instructions of this "worthy and notable mer-
chant, the which," according to the testimony
of his executors, "had right liberal and large
hands to the needy and poor people."
As a small but significant illustration of his
large-hearted charity, we are told that " there
was a water conduit east of the church of Saint
Giles, Cripplcgate, which came from Highbury,
and that Whittington, the mayor, caused a tap
of water to be made in the church wall," — a
forerunner, by nearly five centuries, of the mo-
dern drinking fountains.
C
34
Whittmgtois Chanties.
A long list might be made of all Whitting-
ton's acts of charity. In 1400 he obtained leave
to rebuild the church of Saint Michael Pater-
noster, and found there a college, " consisting
Guildhall Chapel, London.
of four fellows, clerks, conducts, and choristers,
who were governed by a master," an institution
out of which grew not only the reorganised
Whittington College in the City, but also the
Clirisi's Hospital. ly
Whittington almshouses at Highgate. Tn his
will he provided for the paving and glazing of
Guildhall, which was built in his lifetime. These
were luxuries at that time almost confined to
palaces. To the famous building he also added
the beautiful chapel which was pulled down in
1822. The Guildhall Library, too, was built
by his directions in 1419.
During the last years of his life Sir Richard
Whittington was busy about the foundation of
the library of the Grey Friars' monastery, in
Newgate Street. It was a building 129 feet
long, and 31 feet wide, furnished, at starting,
with books worth £^$6, los., (more than £6000
in the present value of money,) of which ;^400
was subscribed by Whittington. In the reign
of Henry VIII., the monastery and its library
were given to the City of London at the request
of Sir Richard Grcsham, a great merchant,
who was father of a greater merchant, Sir
Thomas Gresham ; and in the reign of Ed-
ward VI., through the influence of Sir Richard
Dobbs, another worthy merchant, and Lord
Mayor, they were converted into the excellent
Christ's Hospital, " where poor children, inno-
cent and fatherless, are trained up to the know-
ledge of God and virtuous exercises, to the
overthrow of beggary."
For some years before his death, the good
Sir Richard Whittington appears to have lived
38 Whittiugtoji 's DcatJi and Burial.
in a large house, which he built for himself in
Crutchcd Friars, which was pulled down not
very long ago. He worked hard in all good
ways to the last. In September and October
1422, he was in attendance at Guildhall, helping
to elect the mayor and sheriffs for the following
year ; but in the winter he sickened, never to
recover. He died on the 24th of March 1423,
not far short of seventy years old. " His body,"
says Stow the chronicler, "was three times
buried in his own church of Saint Michael Pa-
ternoster, — first by his executors, under a fair
monument; then, in the reign of Edward VI.,
the parson of the church thinking some great
riches, as he said, to be buried with him, caused
his monument to be broken, his body to be
spoilt of its leaden sheet, and again the second
time to be buried ; and, in the reign of Queen
Mar}', the parishioners were forced to take him
up, clap him in lead as before, to bury him
the third time, and to place his monument, or
the like, over him again."
But both church and tombstone were de-
stroyed by the great fire of 1666 ; and now Sir
Richard Whittington's only monument is to be
found in the records of the city which he so
greatly helped by his noble charities, and by
his perfect showing of the way in which a mer-
chant prince should live.
II.
'•tfe*!^]
SIR THOMAS GRESHAM.
(1519-1579.)
TR RICHARD WHITTINGTON had
been dead ninety-six years when Sir
Thomas Gresham was born. London
had many famous merchants during the four
generations that separated these two men ; but
Whittington had, in all respects, no successor
as notable as himself until Gresham came to
surpass him.
Perhaps the most eminent London merchant
in the interval was Sir Thomas Gresham's
father, Sir Richard Gresham. He was the son
of a wealthy gentleman of Norfolk, who, early
in the reign of Henry VIII., established his four
sons as mercers in London. One of the sons
after\vards became a clergyman ; the other
three carried on an extensive business in part-
nership. Sir Richard, though not the oldest,
was the most prosperous. He not only made
much money as a merchant, but also acted as
a .sort of banker to Henry VHI. and Edward
40 Sir RicJiard GrcsJiain.
VI. He was a great friend of Cardinal Wol-
scy's, continuing his friend even after his dis-
grace. To Wolsey he lent ;{^200, equal to nearly
^2000 according to the present value of money,
shortly before his death. " I borrowed it,"
said Wolsey, " to bury me and bestow among
m}' servants."
Many other proofs of Sir Richard Gresham's
goodness are on record, chief of all being his
zeal in inducing Henry VHI., at the great
division of church property in 1557, to allow
three old monasteries, Saint Mary's, Saint Bar-
tholomew's, and Saint Thomas's, to be handed
over to the City of London and converted into
hospitals " for the aid and comfort of the poor,
sick, blind, aged, and impotent persons, being
not able to help themselves, nor having no
place certain where they may be refreshed or
lodged at, till they be holpen and cured of their
diseases."
Eighteen years before that, in 15 19, his son
Thomas was born. Of Thomas's early life we
are not told much. At the age of thirteen he
went to Cambridge for three years, and in 1535
he was put to learn the intricacies of London
commerce as it was practised by the Mercers'
Company. " To that science," he said in a
letter written some time after, " I was bound
'prentice eight years, to come by the expe-
rience and knowledge that I have. I need not
Tlwmas Gresham 's Training. 43
have been 'prentice, for that I was free by my
father's copy ; albeit, my father, being a wise
man, knew it was to no purpose except I were
bound 'prentice to the same, whereby to come
by the experience and knowledge of all kinds
of merchandize."
The Mercers' Guild, of which young Gresham
was thus wisely qualified to be a working mem-
ber, was still, as it had been in the days of
Whittington, the chief school for London mer-
chants. But it was no longer the great repre-
sentative of London commerce. Already the
old guilds had done their best work, and, as
guilds, were beginning to make feasts and
shows their principal business. Their more
active members used them chiefly as a means
of introduction to the Company of Merchant
Adventurers, which took the lead in Gresham's
time, as the Society of the Merchants of the
Staple had done in Whittington's.
The Merchant Adventurers traced their
origin to a period long before Whittington.
The founder of their company is said to
have been Thomas a Bccket's father, Gilbert
a Becket, who, in the time of the Crusades,
went to the far East for purposes of trade,
while most of his adventurous countrymen
were devoting themselves to chivalrous fighting
against the Saracen enemies of the Cros.s.
Gilbert ei Becket, as the doubtful story runs,
44 -^^ Rouiaiicc of Coinvicrce,
was taken prisoner in Syria by a cruel Paynim.
But, if the ra}'nim was cruel, his pretty daughter
was kind. Falling in love with the English
merchant, she contrived his escape, and, when
he had safely returned to Enidand, managed
to run after him. Knowing on!y two English
words, " London " and " Gilbt rt," the bold
damsel made her way from Syria to England,
and, after much wandering about, found her
lover in front of his shop in Chcapside ; to be
rewarded, let us hope, for all her boldness and
devotion.
That tale can hardly be true ; but it is true
that Gilbert a Becket was an enterprising mer-
chant in the time of Henry II,, and the trading
company, said to have been founded either by
him or by others in furtherance of his com-
mercial projects, was incorporated by Henry
IV., perhaps with assistance from Whittington,
who was then at the height of his greatness,
as the Brotherhood of Saint Thomas k Becket.
Soon after that time it became a powerful and
very prosperous society. By its means English
merchants were then able to do in a body what
the jealousy of kings and statesmen made it
impossible for them to do singly. They estab-
lished a regular colony in Antwerp, which was
then the chief trading town on the Continent,
and which gained much by the fresh trade
that they brought to it. " To England," said
Tlie Merchant Adventurers. 45
an Italian resident in the Netherlands in the
time of Sir Thomas Gresham, " Antwerp sends
jewels and precious stones, silver, quicksilver,
silks, spices, sugar, cotton, linens, serges, drugs,
hops, glass, salt fish, and other merceries of all
sorts, to a great value. From England, Ant-
werp receives vast quantities of fine and coarse
draperies, fringes, and other things of that kind,
the finest wool, sheep and rabbit skins without
number, a great quantity of lead and tin, beer,
cheese, Malmesey wines, and other sorts ot
provisions, in great abundance. This is of im-
mense benefit to both countries, neither of
which could, without the greatest damage,
dispense with this their vast mutual com-
merce."
The English half of this famous trade was
managed by the Company of Mcrcliant Ad-
venturers ; and that he might take his share in
it, as his father was tiien doing, young Thomas
Gresham was sent to Antwcr[) in 1543, when
he was twenty-four years old, and as soon as
his apprenticeship to the Mercers' Guild was
over. Antwerp was his usual home for four-
and-twenty otiicr }'ears.
The chief English merchant resident in Ant-
werp, a sort of governor or controller of the
whole colony, was known as the King's Factor,
that title being given to him because, besides
his work in presiding over the whole body, his
4.6
GresJiani in Aiitiverp.
special business was to negotiate any loans
with wealthy merchants and money-lender.^
that might be needed by the English sove-
reign, and to keep the sovereign informed as to
all the important foreign matters known to
him. He was not only a sort of governor "iW^X
A Flemish Merchant of the i6th Century.
consul, but a sort of ambassador and foreign
secretary as well. This was, in fact, the most
influential employment, out of England, under
the English crown. When young Gresham
went to Antwerp to look after his father's busi-
ness and to begin business on his own account,
TJie King's Factor hi A ntwcrp. 47
a Stephen Vaughan was in office. In 1 546 he
was succeeded by Sir William Dansell, a good-
natured man, but not much of a merchant,
and no financier at all. In 1549 he was re-
proved for a grievous piece of carelessness, by
which, it was said, ;i^40,ooo was lost to Edward
--:^ W
An English Merchant of the lOth Century.
VI. He answered that he had done his very
best, that he could not have done better if he
had spent forty thousand lives on the business,
and that what he had done was with the assist-
ance of " one Thomas Grcsiiani." But the mem-
bers of Edward VI. 's Council were not satisfied.
4S Gresham as Kings Factor.
When Danscll wrote to say, " It secmeth me
that you suppose me a very blunt beast, with-
out reason and discretion," they did not deny
the charge. They thought, and thought wisely,
that •■ one Thomas Gresham" would act better
as principal than as assistant. Accordingly, in
or near December 1551, he was appointed
King's Factor ; and personally, or by deputy,
he held the office, with a gap of about three
years during Queen Mary's reign, for a quarter
of a century.
The long history of his services in this capa-
city need not here be detailed. Though all
the while he was working zealously and very
profitably as a merchant on his own account,
his official work was not strictly that of a
merchant. A great part of his duty was in
borrowing money for the three sovereigns who
employed him — Edward VI., Mary, and Eliza-
beth — and in paying, or trying to pay, their
debts. This he did very cleverly, and with
great advantage to his sovereigns and his
country. " When I took this service in hand,"
he wrote, shortly after the death of Edward VI.
in 1553, "the King's majesty's credit in Flan-
ders was small ; and yet afore his death he was
in such credit with strangers and his own mer-
chants that he might have had what sum of
money he desired. Whereby his enemies began
to fear him ; for the commodities of his realm
His Serz'ices to Edzvard VT. 49
were not known before. And for the accom-
plishment thereof I not only left the realm,
with my wife and family, my occupying and
whole trade of living, by the space of two
years ; but also posted in that time forty times
at the least, upon the King's sending, from
Antwerp to the Court,"
Gresham conferred small as well as large
favours upon Edward VI. For a New-year's
gift in 1553, he sent him a pair of long Spanish
silk stockings, " a great present," says the old
chronicler, " for you shall understand that King
Henry VIII. did wear only cloth hose, or hose
cut out of ell-broad taffeta, unless by great
chance there came a pair of Spanish stockings
out of Spain."
Edward VI. was not ungrateful for either the
great or the little kindnesses. Three weeks
before his death, having at previous times be-
stowed upon him property worth three times
as much, he gave to Gresham lands worth
i^ioo a year, saying, as he handed the charter,
" You shall know that you have served a
king!"
Besides a king, Gresham served two queens
right nobly. Mis service to Queen Mary was
not so great as it might be, because his dislike
of her Romish ways, and those of her husband,
Philip of Spain, put him out of their favour,
and also made it impossible for him to do
D
50 G res haw's ]Vork under Elizabeth.
heartily much that they required of him. But
better fortune came to him with the accession
of Queen Elizabeth in 1558. Hearing of the
change of sovereigns, he hurried from Antwerp
to England to render homage, and he was very
graciously received. " Her Highness promised
me, by the faith of a queen," he said, in a letter
describing the interview, " that she would not
only ' keep one ear shut to hear me,' but also,
if I did her none other service than I had done
to her late brother and her late sister, she would
give me as much land as ever they both did ;
which two promises made me a young man
again, and caused me to enter on my great
charge again with heart and courage. And
thereupon her Majesty gave me her hand to
kiss, and I accepted this great charge."
He worthily fulfilled it. During the first
three and a half years of Queen Elizabeth's
reign, as appears by a bill which he drew up,
he spent ^1627, 9s. in "riding and posting
charges" on her Majesty's service — which
amount, like all others of this date, we must
multiply by nine or ten to get the approximate
value in the currency of to-day. Once, in 1561,
he rode so fast that he fell from his horse and
broke his leg, whereby he was lamed for the
rest of his life. He had hard work to do in
travelling from place to place, borrowing money
from one merchant, paying the debts due to
His Various Ejiiploynietits. 5 i
another, and conciliating all by feasting them
after the fashion for which Antwerp was famous
during many centuries. And he was not busy
simply with money matters ; he w^as often
employed on political errands, watching the
movements of the Queen's enemies, negortiating
with her friends, and in all sorts of ways pro-
moting her interests.
Thus he was not always resident in Antwerp.
From the commencement of Elizabeth's reign,
indeed, he was never there for long at a time
His own business, and the local duties attached
to his office as Queen's Factor, were performed
by a clever agent named Richard Clough, an
honest Welshman, in whom the prompt and
expeditious merchant found only one fault.
" My servant," he said, " is very long and tedi-
ous in his writing." Other trusty clerks he had
in London, at Seville, at Toledo, at Dunkirk,
and elsewhere. Antwerp, however, after Lon-
don, was his head-quarters up to the year
1567.
In that year his services as Queen Elizabeth's
factor at Antwerp came to an end. For some
time previous, war had been waging between
the Protestant States of the Netherlands, and
I'hilip, the Catholic King of Spain. In 1567
the Spaniards took possession of Antwerp,
driving out not only the English merchants,
with Gresham at their head, but .ilso a great
52 Greshani as a London McrcJiaiit.
number of Flemish traders, many of whom
settled in England, adding much, by their in-
dustry and honesty, to the wealth of their
adopted country.
Henceforth Gresham was much more strictly
a London merchant. For some time to come
he seems to have been settled down in his
banker's and mercer's shop in Lombard Street,
where every kind of merchandise was traded
in, and where, after the fashion of all great
merchants of those times, he also carried on a
thriving business as pawnbroker and money-
lender. It was still the custom, as it had been
in Whittington's days, for princes and nobles —
banks proper, railways, national funds, and other
modern means for investing money not yet be-
ing introduced — to lodge their surplus money
with the great tradesmen, who used it with
such advantage that they were able to pay
good interest to the traders, besides making-
large profits for themselves. Others, who needed
more ready cash than they had at command,
used to bring their jewels and treasures, even
their title-deeds and rent-rolls, to the same
tradesmen, who lent money upon them, just as
pawnbrokers now do.
Of that sort, and of all other sorts, was the
business carried on by Sir Thomas Gresham in
his Lombard Street shop, with its branches and
agencies in various parts of England and the
Loidon in his Tijne. 53
Continent. King of the merchants of his time,
he was also, in his quaint, blunt way, a famous
courtier in the famous court of Queen Elizabeth,
where men like the great Earl of Leicester, and
his worthier nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, contri-
buted to the gaiety and the renown. Could
we look back through three centuries, and see
London and England as they really were, we
should miss many of the refinements of the mo-
dern civilisation which the commerce of men
like Gresham did not a little to promote. But
travellers of that time, having none of the
later refinements to compare them with, were
charmed with the state of things which they
saw. Let us listen to one of them, a Dutch
doctor, who visited London in the days of Sir
Thomas Gresham : —
" Frankly to utter what I think," he says,
" of the incredible courtesy and friendliness in
speech and affability used in this famous realm,
I must confess it doth surmount and carry away
the price of all others. The neat cleanliness,
the exquisite fineness, the pleasant and delight-
ful furniture, wonderfully delighted me. Their
chambers and parlours, strewed over with sweet
herbs, refreshed me. Rich nosegays in their
bed-chambers, with comfortable smell, cheered
me up, and entirely delighted all my senses.
And this do I think to be the cause that
Englishmen, living by such wholesome and
54 London in Gresham's Time,
exquisite meat, and in so wholesome and
healthful air, be so fresh and clear-coloured.
At their tables, although they be very sump-
tuous, and love to have good fare, yet neither
are they to overcharge themselves with excess
of drink, nor do they greatly provoke and urge
others thereto, but suffer every man to drink
in such manner as best pleaseth himself."
Another traveller, a German, writing at about
the same time, was less complimentary to
London and its people. " The inhabitants," he
says, " are magnificently apparelled, and are
extremely proud and overbearing ; and because
the greater part, especially the tradespeople,
seldom go into other countries, but always
remain in their houses in the city, attending to
their business, they care little for foreigners,
but scoff and laugh at them ; and, moreover,
one dare not oppose them, lest the street-boys
and apprentices collect together in immense
crowds, and strike to right and left unmerci-
fully, without regard to person ; and because
they are the strongest, one is obliged to put up
with the insults as Avell as the injury." Yet
even this poor traveller, who had to run away
from the rude 'prentices, but could not run out
of hearing of their chaff, spoke well of London
as a place of trade. " London," he said, " is a
large, excellent, and mighty city of business,
and the most important in the whole kingdom.
Its Traders and their Trades. 5 5
Most of the inhabitants are employed in buying
and selling merchandise, and trading to almost
every corner of the world, since the Thames is
most useful and convenient for the purpose,
considering that ships from France, the Nether-
lands, Sweden, Denmark, Hamburg, and other
parts, come nearly up to the city with their
goods. It is a very populous city, so that one
can scarcely pass along the streets on account
of the throng."
A hundred years before the great fire of
1666, which did good at any rate in leading to
the building of better roads and houses than
previously existed, the streets were far narrower
than now-a-days, and the inhabitants — nearly as
numerous within the city walls as now, though
of course the great suburbs of London were
still only out-of-the-way villages — must have
found it hard to get along, as they went
to market in Cheapside or the neighbourhood
of Leaden Hall, or to change their money and
transact wholesale business in Lombard Street
and the adjoining parts.
Lombard Street at that time was the central
haunt of the merchants. There, especially in
the open space near Grace Church, they used
to meet, at all hours and in all weathers, to
transact their business. " What a place Lon-
don is ! " exclaimed Gresham's agent, Richard
Clough, writing to him in 1561 ; "that in so
$6 TIw Royal Excltange.
many years tliey have not found the means to
make a bourse, but must walk in the rain when
it raineth, more Hke pedlars than merchants."
A bourse or exchange, for merchants to
meet in, and do their business comfortably in
spite of rain or wind, had long before been
built in Antwerp, and as early as 1537 Sir
Thomas Gresham's father had been anxious to
build one in London. Others also had pro-
posed it ; but the enterprise was too great, and
most of the London merchants were too care-
less in the matter, for anything to be done,
until Sir Thomas Gresham took the project in
hand ; and putting his whole heart into it,
toiled on till it was completed.
This was the great work of his life, less
memorable in itself than other services done
by him to his country, but, in its effects,
almost more helpful than anything else to the
progress of English commerce. Contributing
much money himself, he persuaded seven hun-
dred and fifty other citizens of London to sub-
scribe smaller sums, and between March 1565
and October 1566, ^^4000 was collected. The
city of London gave the land, which was sup-
posed to be worth about ;^4000 more, and
before the end of 1566 the building was fairly
begun. The stone was brought from one of
Gresham's estates in Norfolk ; the wood from
another in Suffolk ; the slates, iron-work, wain-
Tho Royal Exchange. 59
scoting and glass were sent from Antwerp by
Richard Clough ; and the quaint Dutch-look-
ing building, with ample walks and rooms for
merchants on the basement, and a hundred
shops or booths, called the Pawn, above stairs,
for retail dealers, was completed by the sum-
mer of 1569.
Queen Elizabeth christened it on the 23d of
January, 1571. "The Queen's Majesty," says
the old historian, " with her nobility, came from
her house at the Strand, called Somerset House,
and entered the city by Temple Bar, through
Fleet Street, and, after dinner at Sir Thomas
Gresham's in Bishopsgate Street, entered the
Bourse on the south side, and, when she had
viewed every part thereof above theground, espe-
cially the Pawn, which was richly furnished with
all sorts of the finest wares in the city, caused
the same Bourse, by a herald and trumpet,
to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so
to be called thenceforth, and not otherwise."
The house in Bishopsgate Street, at which
Sir Thomas Gresham gave a dinner to Queen
Elizabeth and her courtiers, had been built
nearly ten years before. It was one of the
finest houses in the city, inferior perhaps to
none but the noble Crosby Hall, very near to
it, built by a much older merchant of London,
Sir John Crosby. In it Gresham generally
lived after leaving Antwerp, the Lombard
6o A Co}npli»ic)it to Queen Elizabeth.
Street shop being used henceforth only as a
place of business. He was owner of several
other splendid mansions, one of them being
Osterley House, near Brentford. There he
added to his trading occupations by setting up
a paper-mill, (almost the first in England,) oil-
mills and corn-mills. There, too, in 1579, ^^
entertained Queen Elizabeth in courtly fashion.
On this occasion Gresham is reported to
have amused Queen Elizabeth with a triumph
of engineering. " Her Majesty," says old Ful-
ler, "found fault with the court of the house as
too great, affirming that it would appear more
handsome if divided with a wall in the middle.
What doth Sir Thomas, but, in the night-time,
send for workmen to London, who so speedily
and silently apply their business, that the next
morning discovered that court double which
the night had left single before. It is question-
able whether the Queen, next day, was more
contented with the conformity to her fancy, or
more pleased with the surprise and sudden
performance thereof; whilst her courtiers dis-
ported themselves with their several expres-
sions, some avowing it was no wonder he
could so soon change a building who could
build a 'Change ; others, reflecting on some
known differences in this knight's family, af-
firming that any house is easier divided than
united."
Gresham's Death. 6^
Thatlast joke was unkind. In 1544, Gresham
married a widow, Dame Anne Read, aunt, by
marriage, of Sir Francis Bacon ; and his wife
and he do not seem to have agreed very well
together. They had an only son, Richard, who
died in 1564, when he was sixteen years old.
Sir Thomas Gresham, an active merchant to
the last, lived to the age of sixty. " On Satur-
day, the 2 1st of November 1579," it is written
in the " Chronicles of England," " between six
and seven o'clock in the evening, coming from
the Exchange to his house, which he had
sumptuously buildcd in Bishopsgate Street, he
suddenly fell down in his kitchen, and, being
taken up, was found speechless, and presently
died." On the 15th of September he was
buried, solemnly and splendidly, in Saint
Helen's Church, hard by ; a hundred poor men
and a hundred poor women following him to
the grave.
His property, worth ;{r2300 a year, passed
to his wife and a son of hers by another mar-
riage. The Bishopsgate Street house was de-
voted to a charitable project, which seems to
have been very dear to the merchant's heart
during the last years of his life. This was the
establishment of Gresham College. He meant
it to be as helpful a school for London ap-
prentices as the Universities of Oxford and
Cambridge could be for other students. But
64 GresJiam College.
those to whom he entrusted the work used in
selfish ways the large sum which he left for
the purpose, and Gresham College is now
only a monument of the good intentions of
its founder.
III.
SIR EDWARD OSBORNE,
[1530-1591.]
ONDON BRIDGE, in the olden time,
was a street with houses, shops, and
even churches on it. " It seems,"
says a Hvely antiquary, " to have been ac-
counted rather a preferable, almost a genteel
locality. It was the grand entry to the metro-
polis, by which passed, of necessity, all those
pomps and shows, and processions of state
and ceremony which made so important a part
in the life of our forefathers. Nowhere was
there more stir and activity of every kind, and
at all hours ; and for good air and plenty of
it, there could have been no street comparable
to the Bridge anywhere else in London. The
very sound of the river beneath was considered
musical and soothing : it is related that those
who had been used to it could not easily fall
asleep without having it in their ear. In front
of the houses flowed from morning to night
an unceasing current of the busiest and most
E
66
Old London Bridge.
various humanity ; and the back windows had
another kind of cheerfulness of their own, — a
spacious and open prospect over town, coun-
try, and sky, with a full share of the sunshine
and the breeze."
Ancient Chapel of Thomas h Becket, afterwards a Shop and Warehouse,
on London Bridge.
Here lived, throughout the middle ages,
some of the richest merchants of London, and
in Henry VHI.'s and Edward VI. 's and Queen
Mary's reigns there were few richer than Sir
William Hewit, a leading member of the
Ned Osborne and A n?ie Hcxvit. Gj
Clothworkers' Guild, and an enterprising mer-
chant in other ways. He was Lord Mayor of
London in 1559, the year of Queen Elizabeth's
accession, and dying in 1567, he left, besides
much other property, an estate worth x6ooo
a year, to be enjoyed by his only daughter
Anne and her fortunate husband, Edward
Osborne.
Edward Osborne was then between thirty-
five and forty years old. More than twenty
years before, his father, a well-to-do gentle-
man of Kent, had sent him to London to
make his fortune as a merchant. The lad was
apprenticed to Sir William Hcwit, and a lodg-
ing was found for him in the London Bridge
house. There he was looking out of a window
one day, while, at another open window, as it
seems, a nurse was playing with his master's
little daughter, a child of two or three years
old. The play was dangerous, and the little
girl, leaning over or jumping out, slipped from
the nurse's hold and fell into the river. By
good chance young Ned Osborne saw the
accident, and had the wit, without loss of a
moment, to jump into the river after her, and
thus save her from drowning.
That good service, we may be sure, endeared
young Osborne to his master. He found him
a ready scholar in ways of commerce, and he
helped him on to the utmost. He made him,
68 Osborne's Conteviporarics.
when his apprenticeship was over, a partner in
his business ; and when the young lady whose
life he had saved was old enough, he gave her to
him for a wife. Plenty of other lovers gathered
round her; rich men and men of rank, the Earl
of Shrewsbury at the head of them, sought her
hand ; and Sir William Hewit was often advised
to bestow her upon a husband of good station in
the world. But he steadily refused. " Osborne
did save her," he always said ; " Osborne shall
have her."
The marriage occurred in 1565 or 1566.
About that time Osborne began to take an
important place for himself in the world of
London commerce, of which Sir Thomas
Gresham was then the king. There was a crowd
of other famous merchants then alive, none
greater perhaps than Sir Lionel Ducket. The
son of a Nottingham gentleman, he was Lord
Mayor in 1573, and sharer in nearly every
great enterprise of those times. We hear of
him sometimes as employing agents to melt
silver and copper for him in Germany ; some-
times as setting up furnaces for the same
purpose in England. At one time, we see
him busy about the manufacture of cloth ; at
another, he is forming a company to construct
water-works for the draining of mines. He
was a great cncourager of those schemes of
distant voyaging and discovery which sent
Ducket and Spencer. 69
Frobisher and Davis into the polar regions,
which caused Drake and Cavendish to sail
round the world, and which induced a score of
other famous men to try their fortunes in various
seas and climes in search of new fields for con-
quest, commerce, and civilisation. He was
one of the richest men of his time. To each
of his three daughters, we are told, he gave as
dowry upwards of iJ^50oo in Tudor money ; and
when asked why he had not given more, he
answered that that was as much as it was
seemly for him to bestow, since Queen Eliza-
beth herself, on ascending the throne, had
found only ;^ 10,000 in her exchequer.
Another famous merchant, an old man in
Osborne's youth, was Sir John Spencer, gene-
rally known as " Rich Spencer," to distin-
guish him from his poor but more illustrious
kinsman, Edmund Spenser, the poet. He
was chosen Sheriff of London in 1584, and Lord
Mayor in 1594, and he took a leading part in
the preparations made by patriotic Londoners,
never more patriotic than then, to defend the
kingdom from the great attempt made by
Philip n. of Spain to conquer England by
means of the fleet which he vainly termed his
Invincible Armada.
Among a multitude of other great merchants
of London in the days of Queen Elizabeth was
Richard Staper, a native of Plymouth. With
70 Osborne and Stapcr.
him Edward Osborne, on the death of his
father-in-law, seems to have entered into a
sort of partnership. They traded, as Grcsham
and the others did, in all sorts of commodities
brought from the Continent to England, as
well as in the various English goods, which
were found useful to Continental buyers. They
also shared in trade to more distant parts.
A curious letter exists, written in 1578 by
a John Withal, one of the first Englishmen
who visited South America, telling how he
had found his way to Brazil, and desired to
promote English trade with the new Portu-
guese settlements and the rude natives in that
region. He urged Osborne and Staper to
send a cargo of London goods to Brazil, where
they could be sold for thrice their value at
home, and to let the ship return loaded with
some of the excellent sugar produced there.
"If you have any stomach thereto," he said,
" in the name of God do you espy out a fine
bark of 70 or 80 tons, and send her hither."
Of the sort of goods to be put into this " fine
bark " he gave a careful list, including woollen
goods of all sorts, cloths and flannels, hollands
and hose, shirts and doublets, besides •' 4
pounds of silk, 4 dozen scissors, 24 dozen
knives, 6000 fish-hooks, and 400 pounds of
tin, with a little scarlet, parchment, lace, and
crimson velvet."
TJieir Tradi?ig Enterprises. 7 1
Staper and Osborne do not appear to have
sent out the cargo asked for by Withal. They
left other merchants to begin the great English
trade with South America, and made it their
chief business to open up a thriving trade with
a district nearer England, though far enough
off to be reached only by dangerous v'oyaging.
This district included Turkey, and the adjoin-
ing shores of the Mediterranean known as the
Levant. Thither, in former times, before the
passage round the Cape of Good Hope had
been discovered, merchants of various nations
had brought all the costly merchandise of the
East Indies, rich spices and precious stones,
silks, laces, calicoes, and other textile goods.
All through the Middle Ages the great Vene-
tian merchants had bought up these articles,
and sent their ships with them to Antwerp
and London, and the other trading towns of
western Europe. But, as English merchants
grew in wealth and influence, they grudged
the profits which the Venetians secured by this
arrangement. They resolved to go to the Le-
vant and buy the goods for themselves, direct
from the eastern merchants, who brought it
thither in their caravans. This they had done
in irregular ways, yet with great profit, for
more than a century before the time of Edward
Osborne. Osborne and his friends determined
that it should be done in a more systematic
72 The Tiirki'y Covipatiy.
way and with much more profit ; and with
that object, in 1581, they founded the Levant
or Turkey Company. The charter of the com-
pany, granted in that year by Queen Elizabeth,
tells how " Sir Edward Osborne and Richard
Staper had, at their own great costs and
charges, found out and opened a trade to
Turkey, not heretofore, in the memory of any
man now living, known to be commonly used
and frequented by way of merchandise by any
English merchants ; whereby many good offices
may be done for the peace of Christendom,
relief of Christian slaves, and good vent for
the commodities of the realm, to the advance-
ment of the Queen's honour and dignity, the
increase of her revenue, and the general wealth
of the realm."
Therefore the Turkey Company was founded,
with Edward Osborne for its first governor, and
Richard Staper, Thomas Smythe, and eleven
others, for its first directors under him. They
alone, of Englishmen, were to be allowed to
trade with Turkey, and a share of their profits
was to be paid to the Queen in return for the
privileges thus granted to them. They lost no
time in fitting out some large vessels — so large
and so well made that the merchants were
publicly thanked by Queen Elizabeth for their
skilful ship-building. In 1592, one of these
ships — the Stisan — was sent out under compe-
Its First Expeditions. 73
tent agents, instructed to make a treaty with
the Porte, to establish consuls in the differ-
ent towns, and to open up an active trade.
Messengers were specially sent to inquire into
the nature of dyeing-stuifs in Italy, and into the
art of dyeing ; also what species of them might
be produced in England, and how beneficial
such new productions might be to us. The
Susan was provided with thirty-four guns with
which to resist any attacks that might be made
by the pirates of Algiers, Tunis, and Tripoli.
Pirates did give them some trouble, but the
voyage was very successful, as were most of
the other voyages undertaken every year dur-
ing the lifetime of Sir Edward Osborne.
The prosperous trade, however, was not car-
ried on without danger. In 1583, one of the
Turkey Company's ships, named the yesus,
laden with currants and other articles from
Morea, was attacked by two Algerian galleys
and sunk, after being robbed of its valuable
contents. " The greatest number of the men
thereof were slain and drowned in the sea, the
residue being detained as slaves," said Sir Ed-
ward Osborne in the letter which he wrote to
the Dey of Algiers, complaining of his subjects'
conduct, and urging him to punish them for it,
and to force them to make restitution. Osborne
was especially anxious, as he should be, in seek-
ing the Dcy's "aid and favour, that the poor
74
TJie Tiirkiy Company.
men detained in captivity might be set at
liberty, and return into their country." This
was not done for two years, many of the
prisoners having died of the cruel treatment
that they received in the interval.
Moorish pirates were not the only enemies
whom Osborne's merchantmen had to with-
stand. The years in which the Levant Com-
pany began its work were years of fierce
jealousy between England and Spain. It was
in 1588 that Philip II. sent his great Armada
to be utterly overthrown in its attempt to con-
quer England. In the years before and the
years after that great event, there was desper-
ate fighting on the sea between Spaniards and
Englishmen ; and as the ships of the Turkey
Company had to pass all round the coast of
A Galley of the iGth Century.
Spain, and through the Straits of Gibraltar,
they were particularly liable to attacks from
A Fight with Spaniards. 75
their deadly enemy. One such attack was
made in 1586, when eleven Spanish galleys
and frigates made an assault on the fleet of
five vessels which was that year despatched by
the Turkey Company for trade in the Levant.
They were bravely met, and bravely driven off.
A much more memorable fight, however,
occurred in 1590. Ten merchantmen had, in
the autumn of 1589, been sent out by the
Company. Returning in the following spring,
laden with the produce of the East, they met
for mutual protection, according to custom,
near the coast of Barbary. The meeting was
fortunate ; for twelve great Spanish galleys,
" bravely furnished and strongly provided with
men and ammunition," were lying in wait for
them. Let the rest of the story be told in the
quaint words of one of the party : " In the
morning early, being the 24th of April," he
says, "according to our usual customs, we said
service and made our prayers unto Almighty
God, beseeching Him to save us from the
hands of such tyrants as the Spaniards, whom
we knew and had found to be our most mortal
enemies upon the sea. And having finished
our prayers, and set ourselves in readiness, we
perceived them to come towards us, and that
they were indeed the Spanish galleys that lay
under the conduct of Andrew Doria, who is
Viceroy for the King of Spain in tlie Straits of
76 A Fight zvith Spaniards.
Gibraltar, and a notable enemy to all English-
men. So, when they came somewhat nearer
to us, they waved us a main for the King of
Spain, and we waved them a main for the
Queen of England, at which time it pleased
Almighty God greatly to encourage us all in
such sort as that the nearer they came the less
we feared their great multitude and huge
number of men, which were planted in those
galleys to the number of two or three hun-
dred men in each galley. And it was thus
concluded among us, that the four first and
tallest ships should be placed hindmost, and
the weaker and smallest ships foremost ; and
so it was performed, every man being ready to
take part of such success as it should please
God to send. At the first encounter, the gal-
leys came upon us very fiercely ; yet so God
strengthened us that, if they had been ten
times more, we had not feared them at all.
Whereupon the Solomon, being a hot ship, and
having sundry cast pieces in her, gave the first
shot in such sour sort as that it sheared away
so many men as sat on one side of a galley,
and pierced her through in such manner as
that she was ready to sink ; which made them
to assault us the more fiercely. Whereupon
the rest of our ships, especially the Margaret
and John, the Minion, and the Ascension, fol-
lowed, and gave a hot charge upon them, and
Right and Might. yj
they at us, where began a hot and fierce battle
with great valiancy, the one against the other,
and so continued for the space of six hours.
About the beginning of this our fight there
came two Flemings to our fleet, who, seeing
the force of the galle}'s to be so great, the one
of them presently yielded, struck his sails, and
was taken by the galleys ; whereas, if they
would have offered themselves to have fought
in our behalf and their own defence, they
needed not to have been taken so cowardly as
they were to their cost. The other Fleming,
being also ready to perform the like piece of
service, began to vail his sails, and intended to
have yielded immediately. But the trumpeter
in that ship plucked up his falchion, and slipped
to the pilot at the helm, and vowed that, if he
did not speedily put off to the English fleet,
and so take part with them, he would speedily
kill him ; which the pilot, for fear of death, did,
and so by that means they were defended
from present death, and from the tyranny of
those Spaniards, which doubtless they should
have found at their hands. Thus we continued
in fight six hours and somewhat more, wherein
God gave us the upper hand, and wc escaped
the hands of so many enemies, who were con-
strained to flee into harbour and shroud them-
selves from us, and with speed to seek for their
own safety. This was the handiwork of God,
yS The Turkey Company.
who defended us from danger in such sort
as that there was not one man of us slain.
And in all this fierce assault made upon us by
the Spanish power, we sustained no hurt or
damage more than this, that the shrouds and
backstays of the Solomon, who gave the first
and last shot, and galled the enemy shrewdly
all the time of the battle, were clear stricken
off. After the battle was ceased — which was
on Easter Tuesday — we stayed for want of
wind before Gibraltar until the next morning,
when we were becalmed, and therefore looked
every hour when they would have sent forth
some fresh supply against us ; but they were
unable to do it ; for all their galleys were so
sore battered that they durst not come forth
of the harbour, by reason of our hot resistance
which they so lately before had received."
In that brave way the merchantmen of Eng-
land under Elizabeth withstood the force of
the proud Spanish ships of war, even in Spanish
waters. Men who could fight so bravely, so
piously, and so triumphantly, deserved success.
And the Turkey Company, in spite of all the ob-
stacles thrown in its way, succeeded famously.
All the articles of Eastern produce which Vene-
tian merchants had hitherto been almost the
only ones to bring to England, were by it made
available for English use in much greater abund-
ance, and at much less cost. The benefits that
Osborne's other Work. 79
sprang from it were acknowledged by his
grateful contemporaries to be chiefly due to
Sir Edward Osborne.
Osborne was not exclusively devoted, how-
ever, to the Turkey Company. Having been
made Sheriff of London in 1574, he was chosen
Lord Mayor in 1583, and during his year of
office he seems to have been unusually zealous
in seeking the welfare of the city. On the 14th
of December he petitioned Queen Elizabeth's
Council that carriers might be prevented from
travelling on the Sabbath-day, either in Lon-
don or in its suburbs. A fortnight later he
addressed the Council again, complaining of
the great number of Irish beggars and vagrants
who infested the city and had to be committed
to Bridewell, and begging that they might all
be sent back to their own country, and that
care might be taken to prevent any others
from coming in their place. In the following
spring, again, we find him corresponding with
Sir Francis Walsingham, the Secretary of State,
about the ancient rights of the city of London
to control the affairs of Southwark,
Yet, in spite of these and kindred actions.
Sir Edward Osborne was especially a merchant.
As appears by his establishment of the Turkey
Company, his trading projects went far beyond
the limits of the Clothworkers' Guild, of which
he was in his day the cliief ornament. And
So Tlie First Ejiglishtnan in India.
his trading projects even exceeded the pro-
vince, wide though that was, of the Turkey
Company. In 15 S3, shortly before his mayor-
alty, he and his partners in the company
sent four merchants, named Fitch, Newberry,
Leedes, and Storey, to the Levant with in-
structions to proceed thence overland to
India, whither only one Englishman, Thomas
Stevens, a Jesuit priest, is known to have gone
before them for a century or more. Proceeding
on their errand, they conveyed some cloth and
tin, as samples of English commerce, to Aleppo,
and afterwards to Bagdad. Thence they passed
down the Tigris to Ormuz, and so on by sea
to Goa, where they arrived near the end of the
year. There they were roughly used, chiefly
through the jealousy of some Portuguese mer-
chants, who, having learnt the way to carry on
a prosperous trade with India, were unwilling
to let the English share it with them. Father
Stevens, however, and his fellow-Jesuits in-
terested themselves on behalf of the travellers.
" Had it not pleased God," said Newberry, "to
put into their minds to stand our friends, we
might have rotted in prison." By Stevens's
help, they escaped with only a short captivity,
and were able to extend their journey to many
inland parts of India, — to Ceylon, Malacca,
and Pegu. Newberry died on the road, how-
ever; Storey became a Jesuit priest; and Leedes
Osborne's Last Work. 8i
entered the service of the great Akbar. Fitch
travelled about till 1591, when he returned to
England to write a full account of his wonder-
ful experiences and observations, and thus to
encourage his countrymen to enter upon the
famous trade with India, which must have
been in Osborne's mind when he sent him out.
In that trade, however. Sir Edward Osborne
was not able to take part Two years before
Fitch's return, though not before the news of
his adventures had reached England, in 1589,
Osborne, and a number of other London mer-
chants, had petitioned Queen Elizabeth for
leave to send some ships direct to India, instead
of following the more dangerous plan of going
to Turkey by ship, and thence proceeding
overland. While that new project was under
consideration, moreover, Osborne was active in
securing a fresh charter for the Turkey Com-
pany, which had only been licensed for seven
years from 1581. In this he succeeded, and in
the new charter, which was dated the /tli of
January 1591, it was recorded how "our well-
beloved subjects, Edward Osborne, knight, and
Richard Staper, have, by great adventure and
industry, with their great cost and charges, by
the space of sundry late years, travelled, and
caused travel to be taken, as well by secret and
good means, as by dangerous ways and pas-
sages, both by land and sea, to find out and set
F
82 Sir Edivard Osborne's Death.
open a trade of merchandise and traffic into the
lands, islands, dominions, and territories of the
great Turk ; whereby we perceive that many-
good actions have been done and performed,
and hereafter are likely continually to be done
and performed for the peace of Christendom,
and the good and profitable vent and utterance
of the commodities of our realm." In reward
for these services, the old Turkey Company
was allowed to be reconstructed and made yet
more useful, under the name of the Company
of Merchants of the Levant. And as Sir Ed-
ward Osborne had been " the chief setter forth
and actor in the opening and putting into prac-
tice of the said trade," he was appointed its
governor, for the first year at any rate, " if he
so long shall live."
He did not live so long. He died early in
1 591, about sixty years old, too soon to take
his share in establishing the great trade be-
tween England and India which was to be of
such immense advantage to both countries, but
not before he had done more good work for
commerce and civilisation than most men are
able to achieve. He had been able, too, to add
much by his own exertions to the wealth that
came to him through his marriage with the
daughter of Sir William Hewit, whom he had
saved from drowning in the Thames. His son,
Sir Edward Osborne, was made a baronet by
His Titled Descendants. 83
Charles I. ; and his grandson, Sir Thomas Os-
borne, having been an influential statesman
under Charles II. and James II., was created
Duke of Leeds by William III. in 1694, That
is only one out of many instances of famous
peerages and great titled families being made
by the enterprise and honesty of London mer-
chants.
IV.
SIR WILLIAM MERRICK.
[1557-1653-]
''N the quaint town of Leicester, in
Sg] IJN^I 1589, died old John Herrick, at the
^-^ age of seventy-six. He had been a
well-to-do gentleman, who, according to the
record on his tombstone, had " lived at his ease,
with Mary his wife, in one house, full two-and-
fifty years ; and in all that time never buried
man, woman, nor child, though they were some-
times twenty in household." He had twelve
children, and his wife, living till she was ninety-
seven, " did see, before her departure, of her
children, children's children, and their children,
to the number of a hundred and forty-two."
Most of the children of this fine old patri-
arch inherited his prosperity and happiness.
One of his daughters married Lawrence Hawes,
another married Sir Thomas Bennett, both of
them wealthy merchants of London. Robert,
his eldest son, was an ironmonger and iron-
founder in Leicestershire, thrice mayor of his
TJie Her ricks in Leicester. 85
native town, and its representative in Parliament
in 1588. He had extensive ironworks, and
paper-mills as well, in Staffordshire. " You
know," he wrote to his brother, " that such
pleasant youths as I am do delight in the
pleasant woods, to hear the sweet birds sing,
the hammers go, and beetles in the paper-mills
at the same place also. For him that hath got
most of his wealth for this fifty years or near
that way, and now finds as good iron as there
was this forty years, as good weight, as good
workmen, as honest fellows, as good entertain-
ment, what want you more?" This contented
man " had two sons and nine daughters by one
wife, with whom he lived fifty-one years," and
he died, " very godly," at the age of seventy-
eight, in 1618. His portrait was placed by
admiring friends in the town-hall of Leicester,
with this inscription :
" His picture, whom you here see
When he is dead and rotten,
By this shall he remembered be,
When he would be forgotten."
Nicholas, the next son of worthy John Her-
rick, was sent to make his fortune in London.
He was articled, in 1556, to a goldsmith in
Cheapsidc. " We do pray to God daily," wrote
his good father to him, when he had only been
in London a few months, " to bless you, and
to give you grace to be good, diligent, and
S6 The Hcrricks in London.
obedient unto your master, both in word and
deed ; and be profitable unto him, as well be-
hind his back as before his face ; and trust nor
lend none of his goods without his leave and
consent. And if so be that you be faithful and
painful in your master's business, as I hope you
be, doubtless God will provide for you another
day the like as much again. I pray God to
give you grace to live in His fear, and then
you shall not do amiss ; and it shall be a great
comfort for your mother and me, and to all
your friends, and best to yourself another
day."
The good old man's prayers were answered.
Nicholas Herrick prospered in his business,
and, his apprenticeship being over, set up a
goodly shop of his own in Cheapsidc, near
to the memorable old Paul's Cross, a famous
place for open-air preaching upon great occa-
sions during many generations, which was
pulled down by order of the Commonwealth
in 1642.
To this Nicholas Herrick, his younger bro-
ther William, the most illustrious member of
the whole family, who was born in 1557, was
apprenticed in 1573 or 1574. The lad was in
London two or three years before he could be
spared from the shop to go down on a visit to
his parents. That he did in the autumn of
1576: "I give you hearty thanks," wrote old
Young William Herrick. By
John Herrick to Nicholas, " that you would
send him to Leicester to see us, for your
mother and I did long to see him, and so did
his brothers and sisters. We thought that he
had never been so tall as he is, nor never
would have been."
Very pleasant and instructive are the letters
that passed between the members of this happy
family of the Herricks, which time has spared
for us to read. They show us very vividly
what sort of intercourse existed between pa-
rents and children three centuries ago, in the
days of good Queen Bess.
The tall lad was not able to stay long in
Leicester. He soon returned to London, to
be followed by the loving thoughts of his
parents. Here is part of a letter written in
1 578 by the mother to " her loving son William
Herrick, in London, dwelling with Nicholas
Herrick, in Cheap," which is none the worse
for its bad grammar: — "William, with my
hearty commendations, and glad to hear of
your good health, &c. ; and this is to give you
thanks for my pomegranate and red herring
you sent me, wishing you to give my daughter
Hawcs thanks for the pomegranate and box
of marmalade that she sent me. Furthermore
I have sent }'ou a pair of knit hose, arid a pair
of knit kersey gloves. I would have you send
me word how they serve you, for if the gloves
88 Hcrrick and /lis Parcrits.
be too little for you, you should give them to
one of your brother Ilawes's children, and I.
would send you another pair."
Red herrings and pomegranates, and other
delicacies, not easily to be procured in Lei-
cester, seem to have been sent down by Master
William as often as he had an opportunity of
confiding them to the care of some chance
traveller, in days when there were not even
coaches to travel by ; and, in exchange, he
received occasional parcels of warm stockings,
and other household goods. In a letter written
in March 1580, we find John Herrick thanking
William, and his brothers and sisters in Lon-
don, for " all their tokens." " And we be sorry,"
he proceeds, " that you have been at so much
cost as you were at for your oysters and lam-
preys you sent. A quartern of them had been
sufficient to send at one time. I would have
you be a good husband, and save your money.
My cousin, Thomas Herrick, and his wife, hath
sent you a gammon of bacon, with commen-
dation to your sister Mary and you."
Near the end of 1582 Nicholas Herrick took
to himself a wife. " I trust now that you be a
married man," wrote his father on the 15th of
December, " for I heard that you were ap-
pointed to marry on Monday ; and if you be
married, we pray God to send you both much
joy and comfort together, and to all her friends
Father Her rick's Complaints. 89
and yours. We wish ourselves that we had
been with you at your wedding. But the time
of the year is so that it had been painful to
your mother and me to have ridden such a
journey, the days being so short and the way
so foul ; chiefly, being so old and unwieldy as
we both be ; and specially your mother hath
such pains in one of her knee-bones, that she
cannot go many times about the house without
a staff in her hand : and I myself have had, for
the space of almost this half-year, much pain
6i my right shoulder, that I cannot get on my
gown without help. Age bringeth infirmities
with it ; God hath so ordained."
One of the infirmities of age that afflicted
the good old man was a little sharpness of
temper. Touches of anger are in his later
letters which arc entirely wanting in his earlier
ones. " I pray you," he wrote to William in
March 15S3, " show your brother Nicholas that
I think that paper is scant in London, bcause
I never received any letter from him since he
was n.arricd."
And Nicholas was not the only child of
wliom John Ilcrrick made complaint. His
daughter Mary had gone up to London many
years before, as companion to Nicholas ; and
she found London life so much pleasanter than
Leicester life, that when the special object of
her stay was over, she was not willing to go
90 Mary Her rick's Stubbornness.
home again. So her father sent her a scolding
letter in June 1583 : — "You were obedient at
our desire," he said, " to go to London, to keep
your brother's house when he had need of you ;
but now he, being married, may spare you.
He is very sorry that you should take the
turns you do ; but he tells your mother and
me that you will needs do so. You ought to
be obedient unto us now, as you were at your
going up ; and not only then and now, but at
all times, as you know by the commandment
of God you ought to be ; likewise you be bound
to be obedient to your parents by the law of
nature and by the law of the realm. We would
be both very sorry that you should be found
disobedient to us or stubborn. We do not send
for you for any ill purpose towards you, but
for your comfort and ours. We do not send
for you to work or toil about any business, but
to oversee my house, and do your own work,
and have a chamber to yourself, and one of
your sisters to bear you company. I thank
God all your brethren and sisters do show
themselves obedient to your mother and me ;
and, in doing so, they do but their duty, and
God will bless them the better for it. I pray
you let me not find you contrary to them, for
if you do, it will be a great grief to your mother
and me in these our old days, and be an occa-
sion to shorten our days, which cannot be long;
Death among the Herricks. 91
but grief of heart and mind will shorten life,
as daily experience doth show. Remember
yourself whether you have done well or no.
We might have commanded you, but we have
desired and prayed you, and you refuse to be
obedient."
Mary Herrick still refused ; yet it is likely
that she was forgiven when her father heard
that the reason for her staying in London, was a
forthcoming marriage between her and the rich
merchant. Sir Thomas Bennett, who was Lord
Mayor of London in 1603.
Six years after the short quarrel with his
daughter, John Herrick died, and before long,
in the prime of life, his son Nicholas died also.
" I do advertise you," the father had written
twelve or thirteen years before, " to make your
book of reckoning perfect, as well what you do
owe as what you have owing. For wc be all
uncertain when it shall please God to call us,
whether in young age, middle age, or old age."
The warning was needed by Nicholas Herrick.
Death's summons to him was very sudden.
Looking one day out of an upper window of
his house in Cheapsidc, he fell into the street,
and so was killed.
He left one infant son, Robert Herrick, who,
becoming a parson, was one of the sweetest of
all the sweet singers that fluttered about the
court of Charles I., and another son, who
92 The Lo7idon Goldsmiths.
attained eminence as a merchant. But his
real successor in the goldsmith's business in
Cheapside was his younger brother and former
apprentice, William.
The trade of a goldsmith was then one of
the most lucrative and honourable that an Eng-
lishman could follow. It meant much more
than dealing in jewelry and golden trinkets.
The old Goldsmiths' Guild had the exclusive
power of coining money ; and to its members
belonged especially that irregular sort of bank-
ing, which, before it was assigned to a parti-
cular class of traders, was also often resorted
to by great merchants like Whittington and
Gresham, The goldsmiths, whose shops were
generally in Cheapside, were great money-
lenders and money-changers. Kings and
nobles, country gentlemen and merchants, if
in need of cash, brought them not only their
jewels and trinkets, but often their title-deeds
and written bonds, to be held in security for
the coin which they required to borrow. Thus
they were something between the pawnbrokers
and the bankers of modern times. All who
needed money, and to whom it was safe to lend
it, borrowed from them, and paid good interest
for the loans, often forfeiting their property
when they were unable to pay back the debts
at the proper time, and thus adding yet more
to the wealth of the lenders.
Herrick's Ocaipations. 93
Among the goldsmiths of this sort, in the
time of Queen EHzabeth, WilUam Herrick
came to be the most eminent. The Queen
herself was one of his best customers. Em-
ploying Gresham, Ducket, and others, to con-
duct her foreign monetary business, she went
to Herrick for the small loans and minor bar-
gains to which, her exchequer being often
nearly empty, she very often had to resort.
Could we discover the ledgers which old John
Herrick bade his son keep carefully, we should
see a wonderful array of loans, not only to
Elizabeth, but also to nearly every one of her
famous courtiers, the great Earl of Leicester,
and his noble nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, the
great Earl of Essex, and his worthier rival Sir
Walter Raleigh, and half-a-hundred other men
of excellent wit and excellent grace ; men
whose courtly bearing, noble thought, and
noble action, make the age of Queen Eliza-
beth the most illustrious in our history.
So high was Elizabeth's opinion of Her-
rick, ihat she once .sent him as ambassador to
the Sultan of Turkey. But she generally
found occupation enough for him in his proper
trade. To her and to her subjects he lent
money almost without limit ; and out of the
interest thereon, as well as out of the profits of
his ordinary work as a goldsmith, he was rich
enough, in 1595, to buy Bcaumanor Park, in
94 " Jiiig^ifi^ Gcordiey
Leicestershire. In 1601 he became member of
ParHamcnt for Leicester ; and on that occasion,
we are told, " he gave to the town in kindness
twelve silver spoons."
In 1603 Queen Elizabeth died, and James
VI. of Scotland became King of England as
James I. The new King, in consideration of
his long and faithful service to his late mistress,
continued to employ Herrick in the same sort
of service, and dignified it by conferring on him
the title of Principal Jeweller or Teller to the
Crown.
Under King James, however, Herrick had a
friendly rival in a man in some respects wor-
thier and abler than himself. This man was
the famous George Heriot. Heriot, born in
1563, had carried on the same sort of trade,
regular and irregular, for more than a dozen
years, under King James in Scotland. His
little shop or booth, measuring about seven
feet square, was the richest spot in Edinburgh,
the great resort of King James and his crowd
of spendthrift courtiers. One day, according to
tradition, Heriot visited the King at Holyrood
House, and seeing him sprawling before a fire
of perfumed wood, praised it for its sweetness.
" Ay," answered the King, " and it is costly."
Heriot replied that, if his Majesty would come
to his shop against St Giles's Kirk, he would
show him a yet costlier one. " Indeed and I
His Services to King James. 95
will," exclaimed the monarch. On reaching
the shop, however, nothing was to be seen but
a few poor flames flickering in the goldsmith's
forge. "Is this, then, your fine fire.''" asked
King James. " Wait a little," answered the
merchant, " till I get the fuel ; " and then,
opening his chest, he took thence a bond for
^2000, which he had lent to the King, and
threw it among the embers. " Now," he asked,
"whether is your Majesty's fire or mine the
better .'' " " Yours, most certainly. Master
Heriot," was the answer.
Let all who like believe the tale. But it is
clear that Heriot was rich enough to pay his
Sovereign a compliment of this kind over and
over again. He throve wonderfully as Gold-
smith in Ordinary to King James, and as
money-lender to both theKingand his courtiers,
and when, in 1605, James went southwards
with his wasteful followers, Heriot followed him
to open a larger shop " forancnt the new Ex-
change," which was just being set up in the
Strand, on the site of the present Adclphi, and
to share with William Herrick the lucrative
office of Jeweller to the King of England.
Of Hcriot's busy life in London a clearer
and completer notion is to be derived from the
fictitious but truthfully-drawn portrait of him
in Sir Walter Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel," tlian
from any mere statement of the few authentic
g6 Hcriot and Hn'rick.
facts that have come down to us. The " Jing-
hng Gcordie" of Scott's dch'ghtful novel, who,
by worth of character, goodness of heart, and
rectitude of principle, set a noble example of
manliness in an over-selfish and ungenerous
age, who "walked through life with a steady-
pace and an observant eye, neglecting no oppor-
tunity of assisting those who were not possessed
of the experience necessary for their own guid-
ance," was, as far as we can judge, the veritable
George Heriot of real life. The little that we
actually know of his private history shows him
to have been a man as kind and self-sacrificing
in his dealings with others as he was upright
and persevering in the pursuit of his own
fortunes.
Heriot, in the Strand, and Herrick, in Cheap-
side, ran a race of wealth together. Heriot
was plain George Heriot to the last. But on
Easter Tuesday, in 1605, says an envious
letter-writer of the time, " one Master William
Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside, was knighted
for making a hole in the great diamond the
King did wear. The party little expected the
honour ; but he did his work so well as won the
King to an extraordinary liking of it."
James I. knighted men for smaller services
than making a hole in a great diamond ; and
Sir William Herrick well deserved his honour.
In the same year he again entered Parliament
Her rick's Monc^'-L ending. 97
as member for Leicester. He was also chosen
alderman of Farringdon Without, but from this
office, as well as from emplo}'ment as Sheriff of
London, he was afterwards excused, on pay-
ment of ;^300, " in respect," as it was said,
" that the said Sir William is the King's sworn
servant, and cannot so necessarily afford the
daily service as behoveth."
During the next dozen years and more Sir
William Herrick was in almost daily service at
the Court. Great sums of money were lent by
hifn to the King in formal ways for public and
private uses ; and he also lent much money in
the less regular w'ays of personal friendship.
" Since my being teller," he wrote in a peti-
tion dated 161 6, " I have lent his Majesty divers
great sums of money gratis, which none of my
fellows ever did, to my loss and disadvantage of
at least ;^3O0O." Yet all these good offices, he
complained, were forgotten, and the ungrateful
monarch allowed him even to be defrauded
and tricked out of his due. A blunder had
been made by a clerk in copying a deed, which
unless corrected, would cause him a consider-
able loss every year. " And yet, such is my
misfortune," he said, " that tiii.s little and just
favour is not yet allowed me."
That pctili(;n and others of the same .sort
were answered with gracious words and large
])romiscs, and Herrick continued to fuid means
G
98 Her rick in Retirement.
for the extravagant indulgences of the King
and liis son, Prince Charles, afterwards Charles
I. He was a rich man, however, and found
good use for his riches in charitable works and
schemes for local improvement in Leicester and
its neighbourhood.
In that neighbourhood, at his fine estate of
Beau manor Park, he seems to have settled
down, as a retired merchant of great wealth, in
or near the year 1624. There he lived splen-
didly and happily, dealing kindly with his
tenants, and winning their hearty love and es-
teem. At every Christmas-time these tenants
crowded up with presents, betokening their
gratitude. Apples and cakes, puddings and
sausages, chickens, capons, turkeys, geese, and
pigs, here and there " one pound of currants "
or " a bottle of claret wine," are among the
articles which the good and careful old man
noted down as received from his various de-
pendants.
Sometimes, too, these dependants, according
to the fashion of those days, entertained him
with quaint dramatic shows, of the sort still
feebly represented by Jack-in-the-Green and
Punch-and-Judy. One of them was prefaced by
this speech, spoken by the play-master of the
day : " The rare report of your worship's favour,
gentle acceptance, extraordinary kindness, and
most liberal eutertainmcnt, that you have
Country Courtesies. 99
always showed to your neighbours, hath not
only won the hearts of your domesticated
friends, but hath now drawn poor Amintas,
even in the waning of his age, from the downs,
to come to present himself and all the fruits of
his forepassed youth, the lively offspring of
this aged shepherd, a few silly boys, to make
such sport this night in square-play, as shall in
no sort be offensive to you, nor much hurtful
to them, if fortune favour them not ; for they
bring not mountains of money, but mole-hills
gathered on mountains. I thought good, as
my duty is, to acquaint your worship with my
intended purpose, and desire to know how you
will accept of me and my poor boys, whose
rudeness I hope you will impute to my mean
estate, for shepherds be no courtiers."
Sir William Hcrrick's pleasant life was shared
by his good wife, the Lady Joan, famous in her
day for her piety and her bounty. She had
some beauty, too, if there is truth in an old
portrait of her which bears this motto : —
" Art may her outside thus present to view,
How fair within no art or tongue can show."
Something of her inner character, however,
may be gathered from a letter written by her
to her husband when she was absent from him
in 1616 : " Sweetheart," she there says, " I hope
you remember Mr Votier's ' Godly Use of
Prayer' every morning and evening, with all
100 TJic Lady Joa)i Ilcrrick.
your company. As you love God, leave it not
undone ; it shall bring a blessing on you and
5'ours. God knows how short our time shall
be on earth, as we see daily fearful examples to
put us in mind of our last end. One of our neigh-
bours at Richmond went out to milk her kine,
as well as ever she was in her life, and milked
two kine, and suddenly fell down dead, and
never spoke more." Then she talks of the bring-
ing up of her daughters, whom she does not like
to send to a boarding-school. " If you should
board them forth, they would cost you £\d^ z.-
year at the least, and save nothing at home ;
besides, they will never be bred in religion as at
home, and wear out twice as many clothes as
at home. All things considered, this is the
best course." So Lady Joan tells her husband
that she has hired a governess. " My sister
Hicks sent me word of her, how fit a woman
she was for me to breed up my girls, and I,
knowing it of my own knowledge to be so, I
hope you will not be angry with me for it.
God, that knows my heart, knows I was never
more loth to offend you in all my life than I
have been within this half-year ; and so I hope
ever I shall be."
In 1624, at about the same time as Sir Wil-
liam Herrick's retirement from business, his
associate George Heriot died. Heriot's good-
hearted ness was even greater than Herrick's.
Heriot 's Hospital. I O i
Having lived an honest life in times when dis-
honesty was too much the fashion, he was much
occupied near its close in settling how best to
spend his large fortune. He bequeathed it to
his native city of Edinburgh, where Heriot's
Hospital, " for education, nursing, and upbring-
ing of poor orphans," is a standing proof of his
wise munificence.
Sir William Hcrrick lived in well-employed
retirement for nearly thirty years. He died in
1653, at the age of ninety-six.
V.
SIR THOMAS SMYTIIE.
[1560-1625.]
jHE richest and most influential London
merchant in the reign of James I. —
richer, and by reason of the nature of
his trade, more influential than Sir William Her-
rick — was Sir Thomas Smythe. His father, also
a Thomas Smythe, u as an enterprising and pros-
perous trader, contemporary with Sir Thomas
Gresham, in the days of Queen Elizabeth. To
a trade very similar to Gresham's he added
the lucrative business of Customer to the Queen ;
that is, he undertook to collect all the duties
upon goods brought into London, or exported
thence to foreign parts. Queen Elizabeth's
" customers," however, were very different from
modern custom-house officers. They chose
their own way of levying the duties, and made
their profit out of so much as they could collect
over and above a fixed sum which they paid
every year to the Crown. Old Thomas
Au Elizabethan " Customer!' 103
Smythe's annual payment was 7^14,000; and
we may be sure that the surplus wiiich fell to
his share was considerable, probably more than
another sum of ^14,000.
His son succeeded him in the office of Cus-
tomer, apparently in 1590. But the foreign
trade of England had by that time so increased,
that instead of paying ^14,000 a year, as his
father had done, he was able to pay just thrice
as much, or ;^42,ooo ; and that amount was
raised, a few years afterwards, to ;^5o,ooo a
year. Yet he made a handsome profit, which
helped him to share in other profitable under-
takings.
Of the private life of Thomas Smythe, the
son, we know very little. He was born about
1560, and was a member of the Skinners'
Guild. He must have been nearly forty when,
in 1600, he began to take a leading share in
the management of the great East India Com-
pany.
Nearly twenty years before there had been
talk of sending English ships to India, there
to compete with the Portuguese and Sjjaniards
in the prosperous trade which they had been
carrying on for some time past. Great ves-
sels, known as carracks, had gone out, two
or three or more together, every year, for the
purpose of buying the spices and other costly
commodities, or of seizing tliciii by force of
104 Trade with the East Indies.
arms, and thus great wealth had come to
Portugal and Spain. The English merchants
coveted a share of this wealth, and, during the
war between England and Spain, they had
occasionally possessed some of it by way-
laying the carracks as they proceeded home-
wards and capturing their contents. But, until
the defeat of the Great Armada and other
deeds of prowess proved to all the world that
England was more than a match for Spain,
they did not dare to enter upon a regular
course of trade with India. Sir Edward Os-
borne and the Turkey Company had pro-
cured some East Indian merchandise through
the Levant, and had sent Fitch and others to
pave the way for an overland commerce. It
was reserved for Sir Thomas Smythe and the
East India Company to begin the commerce
by help of ships, rivalling the Spanish carracks
in size and strength, which sailed to India
round the Cape of Good Hope.
This was begun in 1591, when three large
vessels were despatched to the East. One of
them was wrecked on the way ; and another
was sent home with invalids ; but the third,
commanded by Captain James Lancaster,
reached its destination, and there laid the
foundations of future trade. Terrible troubles
befell Lancaster and his crew on their home-
ward voyage. Their ship and most of its
An Last Indian Carrack of the lOlh Century.
The East India Company. 107
people were lost, and the few survivors, rescued
by a French vessel, did not reach England till
1594. The report which they brought home
concerning the wealth of the East Indies and
the prospects of a wonderful trade with them,
however, encouraged the London merchants
to make preparations for further enterprise in
the same direction. In this, as was well, they
proceeded cautiously. Six years were spent
in deliberations and arrangements. On the
31st of December 1600, a charter was con-
ferred by Queen Elizabeth upon the East
India Company, consisting of two hundred
and fifteen members, who included some noble-
men and courtiers, as well as all the leading
merchants of London.
Of this company Thomas Smythe, having
been one of the most active in its formation,
was appointed governor. Through a curious
adventure, however, he was removed from the
office in the following April. In the autumn
of 1600 he had been made Sheriff of London,
and as Sheriff he had had to take account ot
a strange episode in London history. The
famous Earl of Essex, having for many years
been the principal favourite of Queen Elizabeth,
had in 1599 been made by her Lord- Lieutenant
of Ireland. He had misused the powers com-
mitted to him, had been recalled and thrown
into prison as a traitor, and, though soon
I08 Smythe in TroHblc.
released, had not succeeded in winning back
the favour of the Queen. In despair thereat,
he conceived a foolish plan of insurrection in
February i6or, one inducement being a pre-
tended message from Sheriff Smythe to the
effect, that, if he would come into the city, a
thousand trained-band men would be ready
to meet him and enable him to seize the
Tower, whence he could dictate terms to the
Queen.
Accordingly, on the morning of Sunday the
8th of January, the earl, attended by a few
crazy friends, and a silly crowd, proceeded from
his house in the Strand into the city, and made
his way to Smythe's house at the corner of
Fenchurch Street. There he found none of the
trained-band whose support he counted on, and
learned that Smythe himself, on hearing of his
approach, had given information to the Lord
Mayor. He therefore went home disconsolate,
to be speedily taken prisoner, brought to trial,
and executed for high treason on the 25th of
February.
There is nothing to show that Sheriff Smythe
was in any way an accomplice in this foolish
plot. His name appears to have been used for
a wicked hoax, intended to tempt the Earl of
Essex to his own ruin. But a certain amount
of suspicion fell upon him. He was committed
to the Tower, and there detained for about five
SmytJie in Favour. 109
months before the case could be fully investi-
gated and he be honourably acquitted.
In the meanwhile, the young East India
Company could not get on without a governor.
On the nth of April it was decided "that the
election of another governor be proceeded with,
because the company cannot endure the delay
and expectation of Thomas Smythe's being
discharged from his imprisonment," and Alder-
man Watts was chosen in his place. As some
compensation, it would seem, for the hard usage
to which he had been exposed, Queen Elizabeth
sent the sheriff on a diplomatic mission to
Russia. But his connexion with the East
India Company docs not seem to have been
resumed for more than two years.
In 1603, immediately after the accession of
James I., he was summoned to Court, and
knighted by the new King. In 1G04 he was
again appointed Governor of the East India
Company, and the appointment was renewed
.in 1605, and, with a gap of a year, in 1607,
when he consented to take office "with the
promise that the company expect no further
of him at courts or otherwise than his other
affairs will permit." He was again chosen in
1608, and in 1609, when he was chiefly instru-
mental in procuring from King James a new
and improved charter for the company. I'^or
that service, and for all the .services that pre-
no TJie East India Company.
ceded it, he was "gratified with ;^S00" ^s a
token of his friends' esteem. But in princely-
way, he objected to take this gift, and at length
only consented to receive half the amount.
"The residue," it is said, "his worship kindly
yielded to take." Except during two or three
years, when "his other affairs" forced him to
decline the honour, he seems to have held the
office steadily until his final retirement from
commercial life.
During his lifetime, indeed, and whether in
actual office or not. Sir Thomas Smythe was
the real master of the East India Company.
All its members regarded him as their head
and champion ; all its enemies considered him
their great opponent ; and all its successes
were mainly attributed to his wisdom and
energy.
These successes were great. The first ex-
pedition was composed of four stout ships,
containing nearly five hundred men, which
sailed out of Torbay on the 20th of April,
under the leadership of Captain Lancaster.
He took with him several copies of a letter
from Queen Elizabeth, one of which was to be
delivered to each of the various kings and
potentates whom he might visit in the East.
Therein the Queen represented that, God hav-
ing ordained that no place should enjoy all
the things appertaining to man's use, but that
Its First Expedition. ill
one country should have need of another, and
that thus there should be commerce and inter-
change of friendship between the people of
remote districts, she had sent out these her
subjects, to visit the territories of the East, and
to offer trade according to the usage of mer-
chants. She promised that they should behave
honourably, and therefore asked that they
might be kindly entertained, and be allowed,
both to buy and sell in the various countries
and to learn the languages and follow the
fashions of each.
The incidents of this first expedition of the
great East India Company are curious. Lan-
caster sailed easily, though very slowly as com-
pared with modern rates of travelling, down to
the Equator. There he was becalmed for some
weeks, and the crew would have been short of
provisions had they not, on the 2ist of June,
fallen in with a Portuguese carrack, which was
soon captured and despoiled of a goodly store
of wine, oil, and meal. IMuch sickness befell
them as they slowly sailed towards the Cape,
and they were obliged to put in at Saldanha
Bay early in August. There Lancaster built
huts for the sick, and conversed with the people
in "the cattle's tongue, which," he says, "was
never changed at the confusion of Babel ; "
that is, he shouted " moo " and " baa," to show
that he wanted to buy cows and sheep. Keep-
1 1 2 Peri Is and Marvels.
ing on good terms with the Caft'res, he pro-
cured more than a thousand sheep and about
fifty oxen, a piece of iron six inches long being
the price paid for each of the former, and one
eight inches long for each of the latter. The
Cafifres were anxious to sell him land as well,
and to induce him to settle among them ; but
two months' careful management served to re-
store the sick men to health, and, on the 29th
of October, he put to sea again. The Cape of
Good Hope was doubled on the ist of Novem-
ber, and the stormy seas to the east of it were
traversed without damage. Fresh sickness
among the crews made necessary another and
longer delay, apparently on the coast of Mada-
gascar. Thence they sailed across the Indian
Ocean, leaving India considerably to the north.
Halting at an island near Sumatra, they saw
what they supposed to be a religious service of
the natives, in which the priests, wearing horns
and tails like devils, appeared to be worshipping
the prince of the devils. They also reported
that they saw a wonderful tree, 'growing from
a worm which gradually dies as the tree grows,
the branches of the tree itself, when cut off and
dried, being turned into white coral !
Sumatra was reached on the 2d of June
1602, more than thirteen months after the de-
parture from England. Lancaster was gener-
ously received by the king of the island, who
Trading and Treaties. 1 1 3
sent a guard of honour, including six elephants,
to conduct him to court. He presented Queen
Elizabeth's letter and presents of looking-
glasses and other articles, and was entertained
at a feast, in which all the dishes used were of
gold and other costly metal. After that he
bought a good deal of pepper, cinnamon, and
cloves, the chief produce of the island. Then
he passed on to Bantam, and formed an alli-
ance with its king, and exchanged English
goods for the pepper and spices of the natives.
Some of these natives proved thievish, but
Lancaster was authorised to kill any one he
might find about his house at night-time, and,
it is said, " after thus killing four or five, they
lived in peace."
At Bantam the ships were loaded with the
commodities they were sent out to buy, and
Lancaster, having made treaties with the
people of two large islands of the East Lidies,
started on his homeward voyage on the 20th
of February. This was attended with con-
siderable trouble, though hardly greater than
was usual to the unwieldy vessels of those
times. A furious storm did damage, near to
Sumatra, which could never be repaired ; and
two months afterwards, when they were near
the Cape of Good Hope, Lancaster's own ship
was nearly wrecked by another storm that
caused much delay, as they had to push slowly
H
1 1 4 TJic East India Co)npa)iy.
on to St Helena before the injuries could be
repaired. They entered the English Channel,
having been absent nearly two years and a
half, on the nth of September 1603, bringing
home a rich store of wealth for their em-
ployers, including a riiby ring and two dresses
embroidered with gold, and placed in a box of
purple china, as a present from the king of
Sumatra to Queen Elizabeth, who had died in
the interval.
That first voyage may be taken as an illus-
tration of the character of all the early expe-
ditions of the East India Company. TheSe ex-
peditions followed one another in quick succes-
sion ; in each some fresh part of the East Indies
was visited and brought into commercial rela-
tions with England ; and, in spite of occasional
shipwrecks and other misfortunes, nearly all
the expeditions were very profitable. Brave
sailors laid the small foundations of the vast
trade that has subsequently been established ;
and Sir Thomas Smythe and his fellow-mer-
chants put their wits to good use in devising
ways and means for promoting the great work.
At first the East India Company, hardly a
company at all, according to the modern accep-
tation of the word, was little more than a
gathering of independent traders, who specu-
lated as much or as little as they chose on
each separate voyage, and only clubbed to-
Smythe 's Fm-therance of it. 1 1 5
gcther, under the direction of managers chosen
from themselves, in order that the expeditions
might be large enough, and sufficiently pro-
tected, to be conducted safely and with profit.
A step in advance of this was made in May 1609,
when, chiefly through Sir Thomas Smythe's
influence, in lieu of the privileges conferred by
Queen Elizabeth, a new charter was obtained
from James I., conferring upon the company
" the whole entire and only trade and traffic to
the East Indies" for ever and a day, no one
being allowed to have any share in that branch
of commerce without licence from the com-
pany, and all the members being bound by
oath " to be good and true to the King, and
faithful and assistant to the company, having
no singular regard to themselves in hurt or
prejudice of the said fellowship."
Encouraged by this, the company resolved
on a larger enterprise than had yet been under-
taken. At its first public dinner, suggested by
a present of a brace of bucks from the Earl of
Southampton, " to make merry withal," as he
said, " in regard of their kindness in accepting
him of their company," and given at Sir Thomas
Smythe's great house in Philpot Lane, it was
resolved that two new ships should be built of
a sort specially adapted for the business, and
they were ready in less than six months.
The larger of the two was the largest Eng-
1 1 C The Trade 's Increase.
lish merchant ship yet built, its burthen being,
according to different accounts, either ten,
eleven, or twelve hundred pounds. It was
launched at Deptford on the 39th of Decem-
ber, in the presence of James I., Queen Anne,
and the young Prince Henry, the amiable heir
to the throne who died before his father.
After inspecting the fine vessel, the royal
family were royally banqueted in the chief
cabin, while the courtiers were entertained at
a long table on the half-deck, " plentifully
served with delicacies served in fine china
dishes " — among the rarest and most prized of
the company's importations — " all Vv'hich were
freely permitted to be carried away by all per-
sons." The feast being over, the great ship
was launched. King James christened her
by the name of TJie Trade s Increase, and,
while the salutes were being fired, says an eye-
witness, " graced Sir Thomas Smythe with a
chain, in manner of a collar, worth better than
;^200, with his picture hanging at it, and put
it about his neck with his own hands."
That done, and ^^82,000 having been ex-
pended in cargoes and shipping expenses, the
big ship, attended by two smaller ones, set out
in March 1610, under the commandof Sir Henry
Middleton, who, after Sir James Lancaster, was
the first great naval commander of the East
India Company's fleets. Hitherto the expedi-
Its Unfortunate "Voyage. 1 1 7
tions had been to Sumatra and the other great
islands lying north-east of the Indian conti-
nent. INIiddleton was now instructed to find
his chief business in trading with the people
on the coasts of the Red Sea, in Arabia, along
the Persian Gulf, and on the north-western
part of India itself
A prosperous voyage was made round the
Cape, and up the eastern coast of Africa, as
far as Mocha, which Middleton reached early
in November. Great show of friendship came
from the governor of the Arabian town, and
the only difficulty which the English felt was
in the want of a table on which to exhibit the
cloths and other commodities that they had
brought for sale, until Middleton had been en-
ticed to take up his residence in Mocha, and
bring with him a quantity of his most valuable
goods. No sooner was he on shore, however,
than his deputies on shipboard began to mis-
conduct themselves, and give some excuse for
the rough conduct that the natives had been
treacherously contriving. " One grief on the
neck of another," wrote Middleton, "makes a
burden of my life, and therefore makes me
write I scarce know what." lie and fifty-one
companions who were with him had plenty of
time for writing during the six months, from
November 1610 to May 161 1, of their cap-
tivity among the Moslems. One of the nuni-
1 1 8 S/r Henry ]\Iiddleton 's Troubles.
bcr, William Pcmbcrton, managed to run away,
"having taken a surfeit of captivity under
these heathen tyrants," as he said. Wander-
ing about on the shore, he found an old canoe,
tied his shirt to a pole by help of his garters,
and so, between paddling and sailing, made
his way to the ship, half dead from toil and
wet and want of food. Several times he wrote
to his master, urging him to procure some
native clothing, cut off his hair, besmear his
face, and steal out of the town with a burden
on his back. If he would do that, said Pem-
berton, they would bring a boat and rescue
him. But Middleton did not like the trick,
especially as it would have left his comrades
in the lurch. He would neither listen to Pem-
berton's assurance that " in this heathenish
and barbarous place they were void of all
gentle kind of humanity," and therefore must
be met by subterfuge, nor consent to the pro-
posal of his chief deputy, Captain Downton, that
the English should make a forcible entry into
Mocha, and so set him free. At last, however,
he adopted both expedients. He made his
escape, and, partly by threatening to attack
the town, partly by promising that neither he
nor any other Englishman should in future
visit those parts, he then succeeded in procur-
ing the release of his companions.
These troubles caused to the English, be-
A Tide of Good Fortune. 1 19
sides the deaths, by actual murder or cruel
captivity, of several good men, a loss of
;!r 26,000, and a waste of eleven months' time.
Then came a tide of better fortune. Quitting
the Red Sea, INIiddleton made for Surat, and,
reaching it in October, found a Portuguese
squadron of twenty armed vessels stationed at
the mouth of the river, on purpose to prevent
the landing of any rival traders. The Portu-
guese admiral sent to say that, if the English
had authority from their sovereign, they might
enter ; otherwise, the sooner they went away
the better would be their chance of life. Sir
Henry answered that he bore credentials from
the King of England to the great Mogul,
whose territory was free to all people, and who
owed no vassalage to the Portuguese ; that
he meant no harm to the merchants of other
nations, but that he certainly intended to
maintain the rights of his own. For a time he
did his best to carry on a peaceful traffic with
the natives ; but finding himself thwarted
therein, he boldly set his three vessels to
attack the enemy's twenty. He had such
success that one of the Portuguese ships
was sunk, another fell into his hands with
a rich store of Indian goods, and the others
were put to flight. The coast being thus
clear, he proceeded to malvc a treat}' with
the natives, and to buy from tiicm all the
I20 The End of the Trade's Increase.
useful commodities that he could find in tlie
place.
Good fortune, however, was not to remain
with the ill-named Trades Increase or her com-
mander. Meeting some other ships sent out
from England by the East India Company,
Middleton returned to Mocha, and in excus-
able violation of his promise to its treacherous
governor and people, set himself to punish them
for the cruelties to which he and his men
had been subjected a year before. Then he
re-crossed the Indian Ocean, with a view
of finishing his trading exploits at Bantam.
That he did, though far otherwise than he in-
tended. The Trades Increase struck on a
rock during the voyage, and was hardly able
to reach its destination, and the two smaller
vessels were considerably the worse for two
years' tossing about. One of them was sent
to England in the spring of 1613, while Mid-
dleton and the rest took up their residence in
what is called "his little new-built village of
Pullopenjaun," not far from Bantam. " He
that escapes disease," Downton had written,
" from that stinking stew of the Chinese part
of Bantam must be of a strong constitution oi
body." Middleton's men died, one by one,
and he himself sank under a sickness that had
been oppressing him for months, somewhere
near the end of 1613. Shortly before that,
Will Adams iji Japan. 121
the Trades Increase, which he had beeji
waiting to repair with material from England,
had been beaten to pieces by the waves, — ■
" which is a great pity," said a gossiping letter-
writer of the time, " being the goodliest ship
of England, and never made voyage before."
Far better would it have been, however, for a
score of such goodly ships to have been wasted,
than that England and the East India Com-
pany should lose, in the prime of life, a man
so valiant and skilful as Sir Henry Middle-
ton, " the thrice-worthy general," as he was
termed by a contemporary statesman, " who
laid the foundation of our long-desired Cam-
baya trade."
Yet the Cambaya, or Indian, trade con-
tinued to thrive famously. A good beginning
had been made in several parts of the East
Indies. Sir Thomas Smythe tried hard to ex-
tend it to a quarter which is only now com-
mencing to be open to English commerce.
His coadjutor in this was William Adams, ^
famous as tiie first Englishman who went to
Japan. Adams accompanied a Dutch expedi-
tion as pilot-major in 1598. After two years
of wonderful adventure on the sea, he reached
Japan in 1600. He was favoured by its em-
peror, for whom he built ships, and to whom
he gave instruction in mathematics and other
branches of European knowledge. In 1611
/;
122 The East India Cojupany.
he wrote a letter to his " unknown friends
and countrymen," which found its way to
Sir Thomas Smythe, as Governor of the East
India Company, who, in 1612, wrote to Adams,
offering to send ships to trade with Japan.
Adams answered, that in Japan EngHshmen
would be " as welcome and free as in the river
of London," and that they would find immense
profit from trading thither. In the same letter
he thanked Sir Thomas Smythe " for lending
his wife ;^20.'' Dealings with Japan were ac-
cordingly attempted ; but the arrogance of the
English gave offence to the haughty Japanese,
and they were banished from the island.
In the East Indies proper, however, there
was no such mischance. Great success at-
tended the company's enterprises, the merit of
which must be partly assigned to Sir Thomas
Smythe. Nothing seems to have been done
without his advice, and that advice appears to
have been wonderfully sensible and compre-
hensive. He was consulted as to the things to
be bought, and the things to be sold, the men
to be admitted into the company as traders, and
the men to be employed as agents ; and in the
character and conduct of these agents, he took
a fatherly interest. In February 1614, for in-
stance, we find him assembling all the com-
pany's factors, then in London, and about to
proceed to the East, and exhorting them con-
The Zeal of its Governor. 123
scientiously to discharge their duties. He be-
sought them to avoid the example of some
tyrannical and self-seeking persons who had
lately been in India, and urged them "to be
the more respective, and shun all sin and evil
behaviour, that the heathen might take no
advantage to blaspheme our religion by the
abuses and ungodly behaviour of our men."
He begged them to abstain from all frauds
upon the natives, or anything that could damage
the company, " by making the people hate and
detest us before we be settled amongst them,"
and assured them of the company's desire to
furnish them with everything needful to their
spiritual comfort and the health of their bodies,
" also books of divinity for the soul, and history
to instruct the mind."
Not content with establishing trading rela-
tions with the people of the East Indian islands
and the coast towns or the mainland of India,
Sir Thomas Smythe determined to make a for-
mal treaty with the great Mogul. With that
view he sent one William Edwardes on a dip-
lomatic mission to Persia in 16 14. Edwardes
took with him a curious token of the great
merchant's favour. " I presented the Mogul
with your worship's picture," he wrote, "which
he esteemed so well for the workmanship, that
the day after, he sent for all his painters in
public to sec the same, who did admire it, and
1 24 TJie East India Company.
confessed that none of them could anything
near imitate it, which makes him prize it above
all the rest, and esteem it for a jewel."
Edwardes so far succeeded with the great
Mogul, that Sir Thomas Smythe induced King
James to send a famous ambassador to the
great Mogul, in the person of Sir Thomas Roe,
"he being a gentleman of pregnant under-
standing, well-spoken, learned, industrious, of
comely personage, and one of whom there were
great hopes that he might work much good
for the company." Sir Thomas Roe did work
much good. He formed an alliance with the
great Mohammedan emperor of the East, one
of the race of mighty potentates who ruled all
the north of India, and the vast districts on the
other side of the Himalayas, and thus surely
laid the foundations of that intercourse be-
tween England and India which was to end
after two centuries of trading and fighting, in
India becoming the property of England.
For all this, not a little of the praise belongs
to Sir Thomas Smythe. To the end of his life
he was the great champion and promoter of
the East India Company's interests, his house
in Philpot Lane being the chief office of the
association, until it was powerful enough, after
his death, to set up the quaint East India
House in Leadenhall Street, which was its
place of business until 1726, when a new build-
The First East India House.
The East Indian Trade. 127
ing was erected, to be itself replaced in 1799 by
the more imposing structure which was pulled
down in 1862, when the government of India
passed from the East India Company to the
English Crown.
The success of the company had a wonder-
ful effect on English trade, causing all sorts of
new commodities to be brought into English
use, and provoking much jealousy in other
trades and trading companies, which fancied
that thus their own callings were being injured.
The jealousy was uttered in sober treatises, as
well as in such street ballads as this : —
"Our ladies all were set a-gadding;
After these toys they ran a-madding ;
And nothing then \sould please their fancies,
Nor dolls, nor Joans, nor lovely Nancies,
Unless it was of India's making ;
And if 'twas so, 'twas wondrous taking.
" Tell 'em the following of such fashion
Would beggar and undo the nation,
And ruin all our neighbouring poor.
That must, or starve, or beg at door,
They 'd not all regard your story,
But in their painted garments glbry."
Among all the rest of his work Sir Thomas
Smythe had at Court, in Parliament, among
merchants, and among gentlefolk, to defend
the Ea.st India Company from such charges,
and to prove that, instead of ruining the
nation, and reducing tlie poor to beggary and
128 Smyth: s other Occupations.
starvation, it was contributing mightily to the
wealth of England, and the well-being of all
classes of its people. To the last he worked
zealously for the company, and interested him-
self in little things as well as great. In 1618
occurred a curious illustration of the way in
which he made good use of his position. Two
boys having stolen a hat worth six shillings,
were, according to the barbarous law of that
time, sentenced to be hanged for their offence.
The chief culprit was accordingly executed.
His accomplice was pardoned at Sir Thomas
Smythe's intercession, and on his promise to
put him in the way of reformation by sending
him to India ; and this he did.
In taking the lead in the wonderful trading
movement from which our vast Indian empire
has been developed, however, Sir Thomas
Smythe only did part of the work for which
posterity must honour him as almost the
greatest of all the great merchant princes who
have done so much for the prosperity of Eng-
land. He also took the lead, under James I.,
in another wonderful trading movement, out of
which the establishment of our North American
and West Indian colonies, and of the stupen-
dous empire of the United States has resulted.
This movement had been begun in Queen
Elizabeth's reign. Before India was thought
of as a resort of English commerce, efforts
TJie Virginia Company. 131
had been made by Englishmen to plant trade
and government in America. Sir Humphrey
Gilbert had died in nobly trying, though with-
out success, to found a colony in Newfound-
land ; and Sir Walter Raleigh had spent many
years in attempting to build up his colony of
Virginia, in the district now known as North
Carolina.
Raleigh's project, in his own hands, led only
to the loss of many lives and of much money.
But in 1606 it was taken up by others, who
sent out a small party of adventurers under
Captain Newport, Of these adventurers the
most notable was a John Smith, who had proved
his wild valour and endless resource in previous
fighting with the Turks. He showed his coun-
trymen how to build and sow and hunt in Vir-
ginia. On one occasion, having wandered in
a canoe far up the Chichahominy, he was taken
prisoner by the Indians, and ordered to execu-
tion by their chief, Powhatan. But Powhatan's
little daughter, Pocahontas, took a strange
fancy to the white man. She threw her arms
round his neck, and made it impossible to kill
him without first taking her life. Thereby her
father's heart was touched. Smith was spared.
His quick wit and good-nature soon made the
Indians very friendly to him, and in this way
the first .solid settlement of the English in
America was greatly helped.
132 Smythe's Managcviciit of Virginia.
It is not known what share Sir Thomas
Smythe had in sending out the expedition
under Captain Newport ; but it must have
been considerable, as for the next twelve years
he was known as the governor and absolute
master of the Virginian colony. His govern-
ment was by deputy, he himself having more
important and more congenial work in follow-
ing his merchant's calling at home. In 1609,
when a new and more extended Virginia
Company was formed, he was its treasurer
and guiding spirit. A code of stringent rules —
called by his enemies "tyrannical laws" — for
the government of the colony was drawn up
by him. The money required for sending out,
nearly every year, fresh ship-loads of colonists
and goods was furnished by him. The articles
sent out were chosen by him ; and the articles
sent home, of which tobacco was chief, were
disposed of under his directions. Every Thurs-
day — during part of the twelve years at any
rate, and in the few subsequent years in which
he continued to live and work — there was a
meeting at his house in Philpot Lane, to con-
sider the progress of events, and to decide
upon any fresh action that had to be taken.
Concerning his management of Virginia and
its affairs, great complaints were made by some
of the colonists and their friends at home. For
some years an endless series of quarrels were
The Colonisation of America. 133
referred to King James and his Council. A
writer of the time said that both Court and City-
were divided into Guelph and GhibelHne fac-
tions respecting Virginia ; and it is not easy
now to say how far each party was in the
right. But all that we know of Sir Thomas
Smythe's conduct in other relations shows him
to have been wise and generous ; and it is
clear that, either through him or in spite of
him, the first English colony in America throve
famously. In 1616 it was reported to be "in
great prosperity and peace," likely to become
" one of the goodliest and richest kingdoms of
the world."
It did become, though not a kingdom, part
of the goodliest and richest democratic con-
federation, in the world, Virginia being pros-
perous, other colonies, destined to become
members of the United States, were founded
one after another: New England in 1620,
Maryland in 1632, New York in 1667, Penn-
sylvania in 168 r, and the others in quick suc-
cession. Sir Thomas Smythe was one of the
parents of all this prosperity.
His Virginian and East Indian business, how-
ever, did not take up all his time and thoughts.
When he gave up the employment, which he
inherited from his father, as Farmer of the
Customs, docs not appear. lie carried on to
the last the general trade with the Continent,
134 ^ f'*-' Brotlurs Mydddtou.
which had been his father's chief occupation.
In 1617, for instance, wc fnid him joining some
other merchants trading with France, in a peti-
tion to be allowed to import French playing-
cards, which had been prohibited through the
influence of some of James I.'s advisers.
Of Sir Thomas Smythe's many famous con-
temporaries in the world of commerce, none
were more eminent than the brothers Myddel-
ton. Sir Thomas Myddelton, the eldest, was
a member of the Grocers' Company, and his
younger brother Robert belonged to the Skin-
ners' Guild. Both were influential shareholders
in the East India Company. Sir Hugh Myd-
delton, the most illustrious of the family, a
member of the Goldsmiths' Guild, did not
concern himself in East Indian trade, but he
worked zealously with Smythe in the advance-
ment of commerce with the new colony of
Virginia.
Sir Hugh Myddelton w^as more than a gold-
smith and an American merchant. His fame
chiefly rests upon the engineering skill and
indomitable perseverance with which he con-
structed the New River w^hich still supplies
London with most of its water. " If those,"
says quaint old Fuller, " be recounted amongst
David's Avorthies who, breaking through the
army of the Philistines, fetched water from the
well of Bethlehem to satisfy the longing of
Sir Hugh Myddelton. 1 3 5
David — founded more in fancy than necessity —
how meritorious a work did this worthy man
perform who, to quench the thirst of thousands
in the populous city of London, fetched water
Sir Hugh Myddelton.
at his own cost more tlian four-and-twenty
miles, encountering all the way an army of
opposition, grappling with hills, struggling
with rocks, fighting with forests, till, in de-
fiance of difficulties, he had brought his project
to perfection."
That was the nature of the work done by
136 Myddelt07i 's Nezv River.
Myddelton between the spring of 1609, when
the business was fairly entered upon, and the
autumn of 161 3, when it was hajopily com-
pleted. On ]\Iichaclmas-day the New River
was formally opened at Islington by the Lord
Mayor and a goodly company of Londoners.
A curious picture of the ceremony has been
preserved, as well as a precise narrative of its
circumstances. A speech in verse was made
by one of the company: —
" Long have we labour'd, long desired and pray'd,
For this great worh's perfection ; and by th' aid
Of heaven and good men's wishes, 'tis at length
Happily conquer'd by cost, wit, and strength,
After five years of dear expense in days,
Travail and pains, -besides the infinite ways
Of malice, envy, false suggestions.
Able to daunt the spirit of mighty ones
In wealth and courage, this, a work so rare.
Only by one man's industry, cost, and care,
Is brought to blest effect, so much withstood ;
His only aim, the city's general good.
" Then worthy magistrates, to whose content,
Next to the State, all this great care was bent.
And for the public good which grace requires.
Your loves and furtherance chiefly he desires
To cherish these proceedings, which may give
Courage to some that may hereafter live
To practise deeds of goodness and of fame,
And gladly light their actions by his name."
Then followed a description of the laoourers
employed upon the work : —
" First here 's the overseer, this tried man.
An ancient soldier and an artisan ;
Its opening. 137
The clerk ; next him the mathematician ;
The master of the tiraber-work takes place
Next after these ; the measurer in like case ;
Bricklayer ; and engineer ; and after those.
The borer; and the pavier ; then it shows
The labourers next; keeper of Amwell head ;
The walkers last ; so all their names are read,
Yet these but parcels of six hundred more,
That at one time have been employ'd before;
Yet these in sight, and all the rest will saj',
That every week they had their royal pay !
— Now for the fruits then. Flow forth, precious
spring,
So long and dearly sought for, and now bring
Comfort to all that love thee ; loudly sing.
And with thy crystal murmur struck together,
Bid all thy true well-wishers welcome hither!"
"At which words," the narrative concludes,
" the floodgates were opened, the stream was
let into the cistern, drums and trumpets giving
it triumphant welcomes, and, for the close of
this their honourable entertainment, a peal of
chambers."
Sir Hugh Myddelton lived on till 163 1, six
years longer than Sir Thomas Smythe; and
the famous goldsmith and the famous skinner
did much good work in common for London
and English commerce during the ensuing
years. Sir Thomas Smythe continued to the
last a busy man, the richest and shrewdest
merchant in England. Besides all his trade,
he was employed by James I, as a navy com-
missioner, and a sound adviser on all matters
affecting the well-being of the country. He
138 Sir Thomas S»iythe.
was as rich as he was useful. In 1619 a
great house at Dcptford, in which he had re-
sided, was burned down ; but in the same year
his house in Philpot Lane was found hirge
enough to lodge and entertain in sumptuous
style a French ambassador, with a hundred
and twenty persons in his train.
He also had a great house at Tunbridge, in
Kent, and there he died in 1625, about sixty-
five years old. Besides many charities in Lon-
don and elsewhere, he endowed Tunbridge
school. Among his numerous bequests, he
left funds for providing a fourpenny loaf a-piece
every week to thirty-six poor persons, and the
same number of pieces of cloth, worth twenty
shillings each, to be made into winter garments
for the recipients of his charity.
VI.
SIR HENRY GARWAY.
[1570-1645.]
^ARLY in the reign of Henry VI II., one
John Garway sold his estate in Sussex
and settled as a merchant in London.
He married the daughter of Sir John Brydges,
who was Lord Mayor in 1521 ; and his son,
Sir William Garway, inheriting much wealth,
became a prosperous merchant. He succeeded
Sir Thomas Smythe as Chief Treasurer of the
Customs, and like him, was an enterprising
member of the East India Company. The two
friends died in the same year, Garway being
eighty-eight years old, and the father of seven-
teen children.
The eldest of his children, Henry Garway,
was born about 1570. His father wisely sent
him about the world to study the commerce of
various nations. He thus became a great mer-
chant. He was also a good Protestant. " I
have been in all parts of Christendom," he said,
140 Si?- Henry Carivay.
" and have conversed with Christians in Turkey ;
and in all the reformed churches there is not
anything more reverend than the English
Liturgy — not our Royal Exchange, nor the
name of Queen Elizabeth."
Henry Garway passed many years in Turkey
as a factor of the Levant Company, lately
founded by Sir Edward Osborne ; and in or
near the year 1609, his age being then forty, he
settled in London as a Turkey merchant. He
was Governor of the Turkey Company through
a great part of the stormy reign of Charles I.
The political storms, though disastrous to
many merchants of London, were hardly in-
jurious to London commerce. It prospered in
spite of them. " When I consider," said Lewis
Roberts, author of a " Merchants' Map of Com-
merce," which he dedicated to Sir Henry Garway
in 1638, "the true dimensions of our English
traffic, as at this day to me it appears to be,
together with the inbred commodities that this
island affords to preserve and maintain the
same, with the industry of the natives and the
ability of our navigators, I justly admire both
the height and eminence thereof; but when,
again, I survey every kingdom and great city
of the world, and every petty port and creek of
the same, and find in each of these some Eng-
lish prying after the trade and commerce
thereof, then again, I am easily brought to ima-
Trade iindtr the Stuarts. 141
gine either that this great traffic of England is
at its full perfection, or that it aims higher than
can hitherto by any weak sight be either seen
or discerned. I must confess England breeds
in its own womb the principal supporters of its
present splendour, and nourisheth with its own
milk the commodities that give both lustre and
life to the continuance of this trade, which I
pray may neither ever decay nor yet have the
least diminution. But," he added, in a spirit
of timidity that is amusing when we compare
the commerce of to-day with that of two hun-
dred years ago, " England being naturally
seated in a northern corner of the world, and
herein bending under the weight of too ponder-
ous a burthen, cannot possibly always and for
ever find a vent for all those commodities that
are seen to be daily exported and brought
within the compass of so narrow a circuit, unless
there can be, by the policy and government
of the State, a mean found out to make this
island the common emporium and staple of all
Europe."
And of Sir Henry Garway's own Turkey
Company, Lewis Roberts said: "Not yearly
but monthly, nay, almost weekly, their ships
are observed to go to and fro, exporting hence
the cloths of Suffolk, Gloucester, Worcester,
and Coventry, dyed and dressed, kerseys of
Hampshire and Yorkshire, lead, tin, and a great
1 42 Garway and Giirucy.
quantity of Indian spices, indigo, and calicoes ;
and in return thereof they import from Turkey
the raw silks of Persia, Damascus, and Tripoli,
cottons, and cotton-yarn of Cyprus and Smyrna,
and sometimes the gems of India, the drugs of
Egypt and Arabia, the muscatels of Candia,
and the currants and oilsof Zante, Cephalonia,
and Morea."
By that commerce Sir Henry Garway pro-
fited very much until he was seventy years of
age, and old enough and rich enough to keep
aloof from the turmoils then arising in Eng-
land through the evil conduct of Charles I., and
the growing love of freedom among English-
men. Garway had prospered under Charles
and his father, and had no liking to the new
views of the Roundheads. Therefore he used
his position as a great London merchant and
grandee in attempting to suppress them, and
in surrounding his old age with misfortunes.
This fate was shared by another famous
merchant of that time. Sir Richard Gurney.
Gurney, born at Croyden in 1577, had been
apprenticed to a silk mercer in Cheapside, who
liked him so well that, at his death, he be-
queathed to him his shop, and a sum of ;^6ooo.
Part of that money he spent in travelling
through France and Italy, " where," says his
old biographer, " he improved himself; and, by
observing the trade of the respective marts as
Civil War among Merchants. 143
he passed, laid the foundation of his future
traffic." Soon after his return, being himself
"of no great family," he discreetly married
into " a family at that time commanding most
of the money, and, by that, most of the nobility,
gentry, and great tradesmen of England."
Thereby he became a great merchant and a
very wealthy man, closely allied in fortune and
misfortune to Sir Henry Garway.
Garway was elected Lord ]\Iayor of London
in 1639. As Lord Mayor, in 1640, he raised a
company of troops, at the cost of the city, and
sent them to York for the assistance of King
Charles, in spite of the opposition of most of the
corporation. He joined the citizens, however,
in protesting against the illegal modes adopted
for raising money by the king and his advisers.
At Lambeth he was active in suppressing a
rising of the people, though no such feat of
valour is recorded of him as of Sir Richard
Gurncy, In this same tumultuous year, it is
said, when Gurney was sixty-three years old,
"one night, with thirty or forty lights, and a
few attendants, he rushed suddenly out of the
ho'.ise on thousands, with the city sword drawn,
who immediately retired to their own houses
and gave over their design."
In the autumn of 1641, Gurney was made
Lord Mayor, and, in November, he prepared a
.splendid entertainment for the king, who came
144 Garivciy a)id Pyni.
into the city to stir up the loyalty of the mer-
chants and 'prentices. There was great show
of loyalty on Lord Mayor's day ; but the citi-
zens of London, as a body, were staunch in
their opposition to Charles. To Pym, Hamp-
den, and three others, the famous " five mem-
bers," they gave a hearty welcome in the fol-
lowing January, greatly to the indignation of
the Lord Mayor and his royalist friends.
On the 13th of January 1642, Pym made a
memorable speech to the citizens in front of
Guildhall. On the 17th, Sir Henry Garway
made a speech hardly less memorable, in
opposition to it. He besought the citizens to
defend the king, and to grant no supplies to
the wicked men who were seeking his over-
throw. " These are strange courses, my mas-
ters," he exclaimed ; " they secure our bodies to
preserve our liberty ; they take away our goods
to maintain property ; and what can we expect
in the end but that they should hang us up to
save our lives .?" The worth of the speaker, and
the eloquence of his speech, so told upon the
audience, that the friends of liberty were full of
fear as to its effect. " As soon as it was done,
and the great shout and hum ended," said one
who heard it, " the Lord Mayor, trembling and
scarce able to speak, asked what their resolu-
tion was concerning assisting the Parliament
with money ; but the cry was so great, ' No
Mistaken Patriotism. 145
money ! no money ! ' ' Peace ! peace ! ' that he
could not be heard."
But the speech was soon forgotten, and the
cause of freedom prevailed, to the necessary
injury of all who, however honestly, stood in
its way. Sir Richard Gurney, a few months
afterwards, was deprived of his mayoralty,
thrown into the Tower, and, for refusing to
pay a fine of ^^5000 appointed by Parliament,
there kept a prisoner until his death in 1647 ;
and Sir Henry Garway, according to one of his
friends, " was tossed, as long as he lived, from
prison to prison, and his estate conveyed from
one rebel to another."
VI r.
SIR DUDLEY NORTH.
[1641-1691.]
P^^vSWO Rosjcr Norths, father and son, were
TOh^^ merchants of some repute in the time
^>aA=S of Henry VII. The son of the second
was made Lord North, and through five gene-
rations the Norths were well-to-do gentlemen,
soldiers, and statesmen, under the Tudors and
the Stuarts. The most influential of them all
was the famous Francis North, Baron Guild-
ford, and Lord Keeper of the Great Seal under
Charles II. and James II. His younger brother
was Sir Dudley North, a merchant of note, and
especially noteworthy to us because the lengthy
memoir of him written by another brother,
Roger North, gives us very precise information
as to the character, training, and conduct of an
influential London trader of the second half of
the seventeenth century. From this amusing
biography the following pages will chiefly be
extracted.
Dudley North's Schooling: 147
Dudley North was born on the i6th of May
1 64 1. " He was a very forward and beautiful
child," says his brother ; so forward that he
was often in trouble through his fondness for
running out into the street, there to talk and
play with any other children he could find.
On one occasion he was stolen by a beggar-
woman, and only recovered after his clothes
had been taken from him. A second danger
came to him while the plague was raging. He
was seized by the malady, and only kept alive
by the tender nursing of his mother. Soon
after that, being designed for a merchant, he
was sent to Bury grammar-school, in due time
to be placed in a writing-school in London, "to
learn good hands and accounts." That he did
to his parents' satisfaction ; but he learned other
things not quite to their liking. " One of his
capital entertainments was cock-fighting. If
possible, he procured a place in the pit, where
there was splutter and noise, cut out, as it were,
for folks half-mad. I have heard him say,"
reports his brother, " that when he had in the
world but three shillings, he had given half a
crown for an entrance, reserving but sixpence
to bet with." Often tlie sixpence was turned
to good account ; but he was always in debt.
"And this pinching necessity drew him into
practices very unjustifiable, and, except among
inexperienced boys, altogether inexcusable
148 Diidlcy NortJi 's Apprenticeship.
When a fresh youth came to the school, he
and his companions looked out sharp to dis-
cover how well his pockets were lined ; and
some oT them would insinuate into his ac-
quaintance, and, becoming dear friends, one
after another borrow what he had ; and all g^^ot
that way was gain to the common stock ; for,
if he was importunate about having his money
again, they combined and led him a wearisome
life, and, rather than fail, basted him till he
was reduced to a better temper."
That was poor training for one intended to
be an honest merchant. But Dudley North
soon discovered his error. He managed to
pay off all his debts ; and he left school with a
solemn resolution, which he kept, never to incur
obligations for a farthing more tlian he really
possessed. He was apprenticed to a Turkey
merchant in Threadneedle Street, and initiated
in all the mysteries of London commerce be-
fore going abroad as supercargo to a ship
proceeding to Archangel. That was the be-
ginning of many years' absence from Englanc^
passed in busy money-making, and enlivened
by many strange experiences, of which wel-
come record exists, either in his own letters or
in his brother's reminiscences.
He was a " raw youth," only seventeen or
eighteen years old, when he started. He first
went to Archangel, there to sell his goods and
Life at Stnyrjia. 149
stock the ship with others, which he proceeded
to dispose of in Italy, before taking up his
residence at Smyrna. His own capital was
only ;!^iOO ; but he spent it prudently in buy-
ing such articles as were sure to bring him
a large profit w^hen sold in England, and he
found other occupation as agent for several
Turkey merchants in London. " He did not,
as most young factors, set himself up in an
expensive way of living, after the example of
those that he found upon the place, for he
wore plain and cheap clothes, kept no horse,
and put himself to diet as cheap as he could.
He was a gentleman ever brisk and witty, a
great observer of all incidents, and withal very
friendly and communicative, which made him
be generally beloved, and his company desired
by the top merchants of the factory." He did
not at first, however, prosper as well as many
of them. He made more money for his
employers than for himself, and soon grew
dissatisfied with Smyrna. Therefore, after a
brief visit to England, he gladly accepted
the offer of a Mr William Hodges, living at
Constantinople, to become his partner. At
that time " there was no greater emporium
upon the face of the earth than Constan-
tino[)Ie, where a merchant of spirit and judg-
ment, by trade with tlie Court, and with the
dealers that there came toc^ether from most
150 Life at Constantinople.
parts of the world, could not fail of being
rich."
So Dudley North found it. Almost from
the first he was in reality, if not in form, the
head of the Constantinople factory. He soon
reformed the whole method of transacting
business, and put it in a more profitable shape
than had ever been known before. He made
himself thorough master of the Turkish lan-
guage, and, of the five hundred or more law-
suits which he found it necessary to engage in,
conducted most in his own person. " He had
certain schemes by which he governed himself,
and seldom failed of a prosperous success ;"
some of them, however, not being much to his
honour. He brought to perfection the art of
bribing judges. He also, according to his
brother's testimony, " found that, in a direct
fact, a false witness is a surer card than a true
one ; for, if the judge has a mind to baffle a
testimony, an harmless, honest witness, that
doth not knew his play, cannot so well stand
his many captious questions as a false witness,
used to the trade, will do." It must be remem-
bered, however, in Dudley North's excuse, that
these practices were, in his day and long after,
almost as current in England as they were in
Turkey.
North's trade in Constantinople, " by which
he obtained superabundant profit," as his
Turkish Trade. 151
brother avers, was chiefly with the Turkisli
Court, which he supplied with jewels and other
costly furniture, often making four or five thou-
sand dollars by a single transaction ; and with
the officers and agents of the government, who
were glad to borrow of him all the money he
had to lend at twenty or thirty per cent, interest.
" All those who come into posts of authority
and profit in Turkey," we read, " are sure to
pay for them ; and, on that account, the seraglio
is a sort of market. This makes the pashas,
wlio solicit for better preferment, and all the
pretenders to places, prodigiously greedy of
money, which they cannot have without bor-
rowing; and if they can but get the money,
they care not upon what terms, for the place
to be paid for will soon reimburse them. The
lending these men money is a very easy trade
as to the terms, but a very difficult trade as to
the security. For, by the Turkish law, all
interest for the forbearance of money is unlaw-
ful ; and the debtor need not, whatever he
agrees, pay a farthing on that account. There-
fore they are forced to go to tricks ; and, like
our gamesters, take the interest together with
the principal. There is a world of cunning and
caution belongs to this kind of dealing, and
the wisest may suffer greatly by it ; but our
merchant had the good luck to come off scot-
free, and made his advantages accordingly."
152 "A Merchant of Honour"
His advantages were various. With one
Turk, the captain of a galley, named Boba-
Hassan, he had numerous dealings. For each
voyage he lent him large sums of money, which
were returned twice over at the end of the ex-
pedition. " He used him as well for getting
off his rotten cloth and trumpery goods, which
were not otherwise vendible ; for he could be
demure and say he had no money, but he had
some goods left, and if he would please to take
them for part, with some money he could raise,
he might serve him with the sum he desired, and
so forth. Once he was walking in the street
at Constantinople, and saw a fellow bearing a
piece of very rotten, worthless cloth, that he
had put off to the captain. He knew it again,
and could not hold, but asked the fellow v/here
he had that cloth. With that the man throws
down the cloth, and sitting him down at the
door, fell to swearing and cursing that dog
Boba-Hassan, that made him take it for a
debt ; but he more furiously cursed that dog
that sold it to him, wishing him, his father,
mother, and all his kindred, burnt alive. The
merchant found it best to sneak away, for if he
had been found out to have been once the
cloth's owner, he had certainly been beaten."
Dudley North cannot be greatly praised for
honesty ; but, to say the least, he was no worse
than most merchants of his time. " As to all
Dudley Norlh in E)i gland. 153
the mercantile arts or guiles," says his brother,
" and stratagems of trade, which could be used
to get money from those he dealt with, I be-
h'eve he was no niggard ; but, as for falsities,
such as cheating by weights and measures, or
anything that was knavish, treacherous, or per-
fidious, even with Jews or Turks, he was as
clear as any man living. He transacted and
dealt in all respects as a merchant of honour."
The Levant Company, at any rate, found him
a better servant than it had ever had before.
He also served himself so well, that, before
he was forty years old, he was rich enough to
return to England. This he did in the spring
of 1680. He immediately established himself
as a Turkey merchant in London, having a
house in Basinghall Street, ^ith offices and
warehouses close to the Exchange. He also be-
came the principal director of the African Com-
pany, a trading society akin to the East India
and Turkey Companies, but older than either,
formed for dealing in the commodities of the
West Coast of Africa. " Here it was that, in
the opinion of the Exchange, he first did jus-
tice to his character. For he was sagacious to
take the substance of any matter at the first
opening ; and then, having by proper ques-
tions more fully infcjrmed himself, he could
clearly unfold the difficulty, with all its cir-
cumstances of advantage and disadvantage, to
154 '^^^' Josiah Child.
the understanding of otlicrs. He was an ex-
quisite judge of adventures, and the vakic and
ehgibihty of them. He was very quick at
discerning the fraud or sincerity of many per-
sons the Company had trusted, as also the
character of those that proffered, and were ex-
amined, in order to be employed or trusted.
If he once found that any person was false or
had cheated the Company, he was ever after
inflexible, and no solicitation or means what-
soever could prevail with him to cover or
connive."
A yet more skilful and prosperous merchant
of London in that time, however, was Sir
Josiah Child, eleven years older than Dudley
North. Born in 1630, he began to prosper as
a merchant during the period of the Common-
wealth. His first employment was in trade
with New England and the other young and
thriving colonies in America. Then he be-
came the most influential member of the East
India Company, which had been rapidly and
steadily progressing since its establishment
seventy years before under the direction of Sir
Thomas Smythe. Near the end of Charles
II.'s reign, Child began to be the foremost
man in its management. A staunch Whig
before, he now turned into a zealous Tory ;
and, according to his many enemies, made the
Company an immense machinery for Tory
A ]\Icrcliant Courtier.
155
jobbing. " By his great annual presents," ac-
cording to one, " he could command, both at
Court and Westminster Hall, what he pleased."
" A present of ten thousand guineas," says
Macaulay, " was graciously received from him
by Charles. Ten thousand more were accepted
by James, who readily consented to become a
holder of stock. All who could help or hurt
Sir Josiah Child, I'art
at Court, ministers, mistresses, priests, were
kept in good humour by presents of shawls
and silks, bird's-ncsts and atar of roses, purses
of diamonds, and bags of guineas. His bribes,
156 TJic East India Company.
distributed with judicious prodigality, speedily
produced a large return : just when the Court
w^as all-powerful in the State, he became all-
powerful at the Court."
Whether Child was honest or not in his
change of politics, and in his subserviency to
the degenerate Stuarts, it is clear that he used
his position to the great advantage of the East
India Company, no less than to his own ad-
vancement. In some years he held the office
of Governor of the Company ; in others he left
it to be held by other merchants. But in
either case alike he was its chief guide and
ruler. Every proposal was submitted to his
consideration, every edict reflected his wishes.
On one occasion, when the Governor of Bombay
wrote home to say that the laws of England
made it impossible for him to obey the instruc-
tions sent out to him, he is reported to have
angrily replied, " That he expected his orders
to be the rules, and not the laws of England,
which were a heap of nonsense, compiled by a
few ignorant country gentlemen who hardly
knew how to make laws for the good of their
own private families, much less for the regu-
lating of companies and foreign commerce ! "
That report is hardly to be believed ; but it is
clear that Child's great success in accumulating
wealth for himself and in forwarding the in-
terests of the East India Company, made him
Dudley North as Sheriff. 157
somewhat haughty and imperious in his de-
portment. " He was a man of great notions
as to merchandise, which was his education,
and in which he succeeded beyond any man
of his time," says one of his friends. " He
'had a compass of knowledge and apprehension
unusual to men of his profession. He was
vain and covetous, and thought too cunning,
though he seemed to be always sincere." He
was a less amiable man than his contemporary,
Sir Dudley North.
In 1682, at the instigation of his brother, the
Lord Keeper, Dudley North accepted office
under Charles II. as Sheriff of London, and in
that capacity he gave great satisfaction to the
courtly party by his zealous prosecution of the
Whigs. " The Government found in him," says
Lord Macaulay, "at once an enlightened ad-
viser and an unscrupulous slave. His juries
never failed to find verdicts of guilty; and on
a day of judicial butchery, carts, loaded with
the legs and arms of quartered Whigs, were, to
the great discomposure of .his lady, driven to
liis fine house in Basinghall Street for orders."
For services of this sort he was knighted, and,
besides being made Alderman of 15asinghall
Ward, was appointed a Commissioner of Cus-
toms, that office being afterwards exchanged
for a brief period for a Commissionership in the
Treasury, with a salary <j{ £\Gqo a }'ear. On
158 Dudley North on Free-Trade.
the accession of James II., he entered Parlia-
ment as member for Banbury, and at once his
ready wit and great experience, heartily devoted
to the service of the Tories, made him the
financial leader of the House of Commons.
His plan of levying additional imposts on sugar,
tobacco, wine, and vinegar, was regarded as a
triumph of statesmanship, and secured for King
James an income of ^1,900,000 for the year
1685. He lost his seat and his offices, however,
soon after the establishment of William of
Orange, and, it was said, only escaped attainder
through his skill in falsification.
In 1691 Dudley North issued some "Dis-
courses upon Trade," full of sensible opinion?
on commercial matters. " Although to buy
and sell," he said, "be the employment of every
man, more or less, and the common people, for
the most part, depend upon it for their daily
subsistence, yet there are very few who con-
sider trade in the general upon true principles,
but are satisfied to understand their own par-
ticular trades, and which way to let themselves
into immediate gain." He boldly denounced
all such selfish views, showed the folly and
evil of all restrictive measures, and steadfastly
argued for the establishment of entire freedom
in all commercial dealings. He maintained
that "the whole world, as to trade, is but as
one nation or people, and therein nations are
Disastrous Commerce. 159
as persons;" that "no laws can set prices in
trade, the rates of which must and will make
themselves ; but when such laws do happen to
lay any hold, it is so much impediment to
trade, and therefore prejudicial;" that "all
favour to one trade or interest against another
is an abuse, and cuts so much of profit from
the public ;" in fine, that " no people ever yet
grew rich by policies ; it is peace, and industry,
and freedom, that bring trade and wealth, and
nothing else."
His public work for the Stuarts had for some
years taken Dudley North from his old avoca-
tions as a merchant. On his retirement he
returned to them, but not for long. " He had
formerly joined with other merchants in build-
ing three defensible ships ; for piracies in the
straits had made trading in small vessels too
hazardous, and the employment of these ships
had engaged him deeper in adventure than
otherwise he had been. But after the Revolu-
tion things grew worse and worse ; because the
wars with the French gave them an advantage
over our Turkey trade, and both at home and
abroad they met with us. One of his great
ships, with a considerable adventure, homeward
bound, and little insured, was taken by the
French. But yet he traded on, and it appeared
his estate was less by ^^ io,cxx) than it was when
the French war first broke out. I believe he
i6o Trade in Matrimony.
had less persevered in trade at that time if he
had not had a consideration of his house in
Constantinople, where his brother Montague
uas his factor, to whom he thought himself
bound to send out business, especially when
others withdrew, else they must have sunk.
But so many corrections as he received, one
after another, abated his mettle ; and his family
was increasing, and children were coming for-
ward, whom he considered before himself ; and,
what was worst of all, he grew liable to infir-
mities, especially the phthisic, which made him
not so active as he had been and desired to
be."
In 1682, just before his election as Sheriff,
he had fallen in love with Lady Gunning, a
widow lady, very beautiful and rich, the daugh-
ter of Sir Robert Cann, a morose old merchant
of Bristol, as his brother testified. There was
some hindrance to the match, through the old
gentleman's anxiety to secure a large settle-
ment for his daughter. When his consent was
asked, he required that North should purchase
and secure to the lady an estate worth ;^30CO
or ;£'4000 a year. The merchant replied that
he could not spare so much capital from his
business, but that he would make a settlement
of ;^ 20,000. To that he received a brief reply :
" Sir, — My answer to your first letter is an
answer to your second. Your humble servant,
Marriage Festivities. l6l
R. C."' His rejoinder was as brief : "Sir, — I
perceive you like neither me nor my business.
Your humble servant, D. N." But Dudley
North did like his business. He therefore
addressed himself to the daughter, and with
such effect, that she consented to marry him
without her father's leave. " The old knight,
her father,'' it is added, " came at last to be
proud of his son ; for, when the first visit was
paid to Bristol, Mr North, to humour the vanity
of that city and people, put himself in a splen-
did- equipage. And the old man, in his own
house, often said to him, * Come, son, let us go
out and shine,' — that is, walk about the streets,
with six footmen in rich liveries attending."
The wedding festivities kept pace with the
merchant's knighthood, and his induction into
the shricval honours. " Mr North took a great
hall that belonged to one of the companies,
and kept his entertainment there. He had
divers very considerable presents from friends
and relations, besides the compliments of the
several companies inviting themselves and
their wives to dinner, dropping their guineas
and taking apostle-spoons in the room of them ;
which, with what they ate, drank, and such as
came in the shape of wives — for they often
gratified a she-friend or relation with that pre-
ferment — carried away, made but an indifferent
bargain. His lady, contrary to her nature and
L
1 62 Dudley North 'i- Great House.
humour, which was to be retired, kept him
company in pubHc at his feastings, sitting at
the head of the table at those noisy and fasti-
dious dinners. The mirth and rejoicing that
\A^as in the city, as well at these feasts as at
private entertainments, is scarce to be ex-
pressed. It was so great that those who called
themselves the sober party were very much
scandalised at it, and lamented the debauchery
that had such encouragement in the city."
Soon after his marriage, Sir Dudley North
left his house in Basinghall Street for a much
larger one at the back of the Goldsmith's Hall.
This he did chiefly " because his lady, though
affecting retirement, yet, when she did appear,
loved to have a parade about her ; and often
childing brought christenings, which, in the
city, were usually celebrated with mnch com-
pany and feastings." In furnishing the house
he spent at least ;^4000, and its suite of recep-
tion-rooms was one of the wonders of the day.
It was the scene of feasts without number —
christening feasts being frequent and most
sumptuous of all — in which all the civic forms
and ceremonies were scrupulously observed.
But the house had one great disadvantage,
causing Sir Dudley, we are told, much repent-
ance of his vanity. " It was situated among
the goldsmiths, and other smoky trades, that,
for convenience of the Hall, are very thickly
His Occupations in it. 163
planted thereabouts, and their smoke and dust
filled the air, and confounded all his good fur-
niture. He laboured hard in person to caulk
up the windows, and all chimneys, not used,
were kept close stopped. But notwithstanding
all that could be done to prevent it, the dust
gathered thick upon everything within doors ;
for which reason the rooms were often let stand
without any furniture at all."
Sir Dudley North's mode of life in these last
years was minutely described by his brother.
" His domestic methods were always reason-
able, but, towards his lady, superlatively oblig-
ing. He was absent from her as little as he
could, and that was being abroad ; but at
home they were seldom asunder. When he
had his great house, a little room near his
chamber, which they called a dressing-room,
was sequestered for the accommodation of
both of them. She had her implements, and
he his books of account ; and having fixed a
table and a desk, all his counting-house busi-
ness was done there. There also he read such
books as pleased him, and, though he was a
kind of dunce at school, in his manhood he re-
covered so much Latin as to make him take
pleasure in the best classics, especially in
Tully's philosophies, which I recommended to
him. If time lay on his hands, he would assist
his lady in her affairs. I have come there and
164 Dudley Nor/ It's Vinegar- Making.
found him very busy in picking out the stitches
of a dislaccd petticoat. But his tenderness to
his children was very uncommon, for he would
often sit by while they were dressing and un-
dressing, and would be assisting himself if they
were at any time sick or out of order. Once
his eldest son, when about five years old, had
a chilblain, which an ignorant apothecary had
converted into a wound, and it was surgeon's
work for near six months, and the poor child
relapsed into arms again until it was cured.
But, after the methods were instituted, the
father would dress it himself."
In all sorts of pleasant, homely ways, the
retired merchant found occupation and amuse-
ment for himself " In that great house he
had much more room than his family required.
He used his spare rooms for operations and
natural experiments, and one operation was a
very useful one — that was a fabric for vinegar.
He managed that in three vessels. The first
had the fruit, or whatever was the ground ;
this was always foul. From whence he took
into the next vessel, where it refined ; and out
of that he drew into a third ; and, from thence,
took for use. The first was continually sup-
plied with raisin stalks, warm water, &c. In
this manner, after the course was begun, the
house was supplied with little or no charge for
several years."
A Merchant at Play. 165
North travelled niuch each summer. He
went frequently to Bristol and the neighbour-
hood, where lay his wife's property ; and from
the time of his brother, the Lord Keeper Guild-
ford's death, he was often at his house at Wrox-
ton, there fulfilling his trust as guardian of the
young Lord Guildford. " At Wroxton," says
Roger North, "there was an old building which
was formerly Hawk's Mews. There we insti-
tuted a laboratory. One apartment was for
woodworks, and the other for iron. His busi-
ne<;s was hewing and framing, and, being per-
mitted to sit, he would labour very hard ; and
in that manner he hewed the frames for our
necessary tables. He put them together only
with caps and pins, but so as served the occa-
sion very well. We got up a table and a bench ;
but the great difficulty was to get bellows and
a forge. He hewed such stones as lay about,
and built a hearth witli a back, and by means
of water and an old iron which he knocked
right down, he perforated that stone for the
wind to come at the fire. What common tools
we wanted we sent and bought, and also a
leather skin, with which he made a pair of
bellows that wrought overhead, and the wind
was conveyed by elder guns let into one an-
other, and so it got to the fire. Upon finding
a piece of an old anvil we went to work, and
wrought all the iron that was used in our
1 66 Dudley North 's A viuscmcuts.
manufactory. He delighted most in hewing.
He allowed me, being a lawyer, as he said, to
be the best forger. This was morning work
before dressing, he coming out with a red short
waistcoat, red cap, and black face ; so that my
lady, when she came to call us to dinner, was
full of admiration what creatures she had in
her family. In the afternoons we had em-
ployment which was somewhat more refined ;
and that was planing and turning, for which
use we sequestered a low closet. We had our
engines from London, and many round imple-
ments were made. It was not a little strange
to see with what earnestness and pains we
worked, sweating most immoderately, and
scarce allowing ourselves time to eat. At the
lighter works in the afternoon he hath sat,
perhaps, scraping a stick, or turning a piece of
wood, and this for many afternoons together,
all the while singing like a cobbler, incompar-
ably better pleased than he had been in all the
stages of his life before."
From pleasant retirement of that sort, Sir
Dudley North was called away by death when
only fifty years of age. He divided the vaca-
tion of 1691, as usual, between Wroxton and
Bristol. On his coming back to London for
the winter, he was troubled with a cold, but
made light of it, as was his wont. Near the
cud of December he became suddenly, worse.
His Death.
167
" He was thereupon put to bed," says his
brother, "and, as I found him, lay gasping for
breath. He discoursed seriously, that he found
himself very ill, and concluded he should die ;
that he knew of no cause of illness on his part,
but God's will be done. Dr Radcliff was sen^
for ; and he, observing his breathing with a
small hiccup, asked if he was used to breathe
in that way ; and, somebody saying ' No,' he
asked no more questions. Sir Dudley lay not
long in this manner ; but in all good sense,
conscience, and understanding, perfect tran-
quillity of mind, and entire resignation, he en-
dured the pain of hard breathing till he
breathed no more, which happened on the
3 1st of December 1691." " Well ! " exclaimed
the apothecary who attended him, " I never
saw any people so willing to die as these
Norths are ! "
VIII.
THOMAS GUY.
[1644-1724]
m
N Horsleydown, near the eastern end of
Toolcy Street, which was then what
its name implies, a down for horses
to graze in, near to the southern bank of the
Thames, and just opposite to the Tower of
London, Thomas Guy was born in 1644, three
years after Dudley North. His long life, how-
ever, carries us into a generation later than
North's, and into a region of commerce very
different from that in which North made him-
self famous.
His father was a lighterman and coal-dealer,
who carried on a humble but respectable trade
in the district specially appropriated to small
shipping and to traffic in coal, which was just
then beginning to be brought in considerable
quantities from Newcastle and its neighbour-
hood, to take the place of the wood, which had
hitherto been almost the only fuel in use among
Thomas Guy's Youth. 169
Englishmen. So great had been the prejudice
against Newcastle coal in former times, that,
during the reign of Edward I., one man was
hanged for daring to burn it within the walls
of London.
Thomas Guy lost his father when he was
eight years old. But his mother, a native of
Tamworth, was a good and clever woman, de-
termined to help her children on in the world.
She carefully trained them herself, and gave
them the best schooling that could be had.
Little Thomas played upon the open fields,
which then stretched along the banks of the
river up to London Bridge, and took heartily
to his lessons, showing an especial fondness for
books. That fondness may have led his mother
to apprentice him for eight years, in 1660, to a
bookseller named John Clarke, whose shop was
in the porch of Mercer's Chapel, in Cheapside.
Guy was then sixteen years old. He served
his time, and became a member of the Sta-
tioners' Company. But before the time was
up, on the morning of the 2d of Septem-
ber 1666, he was called out to see the most
wonderful sight and the most terrible calamity
that ever happened in London. At a ]);ikcr's
shop in Pudding Lane, on Fish Street 11 ill, at
the spot now marked by the Monument, a fire
broke out. Most of the houses being of wood,
and there being no fire engines or other cfh-
170 TJic Great Fire of London.
cient means of staying it, the fire was driven
by a sharp wind, north, south, and west, as far
as Pye Corner, in Smithfield. People after-
wards made fun of the fire which began at a
baker's shop in Pudding Lane and spread to
Pye Corner. But the Great Fire was no matter
for a joke. Through four long days and nights
it grew and raged, darkening the sun, and,
with its lurid glare, making night as bright
as day. " The sky," says John Evelyn, who
watched it, " was like the top of a burning
oven, visible for forty miles round, to which
distance the smoke extended. The crackling
of the flames, the shrieking of the women and
children, the fall of towers, houses, and churches,
was like a hideous storm, and the air about so
hot and inflamed, that at last no one could
approach it. The stones flew like grenadoes,
and the melting lead ran down the street in
a stream, and the very pavement glowed with
fiery redness." Sir Thomas Grcsham's Ex-
change, the old Guildhall, the venerable cathe-
dral of St Paul's, considered the noblest in
Christendom, were destroyed, along with eighty-
nine churches, and more than thirteen thousand
houses in four hundred streets. Of the whole
district within the city walls, four hundred and
thirty-six acres were in ruins, and only seventy-
five acres were left covered. Property worth
j^ 10,000,000 — avast sum, indeed, for the smaller
Goodont of Evil. 171
and poorer London of those days — ^\vas wasted,
and thousands of starving Londoners had to
run for their hves, and crouch for days and
weeks on the bare fields of IsHngton and
Hampstead, Southwark and Lambeth. " Oh,
the miserable and calamitous spectacle ! " ex-
claimed Evelyn ; " such as haply the world had
not seen the like since the foundation of it, nor
to be outdone till the universal conflagration
of it ! "
Some good sprang, however, from the evil.
The Great Plague of 1665, which began the
year before, and continued during the following
year, and which killed nearly seventy thousand
people in London and its neighbourhood, was
burnt out by the Great Fire of 1666. And
the narrow streets and clumsy houses of old
London were soon replaced by broader tho-
roughfares and better buildings.
Thomas Guy and his master were, of course,
burnt out of their little shop in the porch of
Mercer's Chapel. The master seems to have
been ruined ; but Guy, being only a shopman,
suffered no serious injury. Li 1668, having
served his apprenticeship, and being twenty-
four years old, he started in business for him-
self, with a capital of ;^2oo, in a new shop
built on the sharp corner formed by Cornhill
and Lombard Street, looking out upon the
whole length of the Poultry and Chcapsidc, on
172 Thomas Guy's BooTc-SJiop.
both sides of which more commodious, though
less picturesque, houses were being set up,
with the second Royal Exchange, now in pro-
gress of building, on his right, and a little to
his left a pretty fruit and flower market, with
trees growing up among its sheds, which had
formerly been a meat-market, on the site now
occupied by the Mansion-house.
There he prospered in his work, a clear
notion of which we may derive from Mr Charles
Knight's words. " Placed thus," he says, " in
the very heart of the great commercial opera-
tions of London, I can see the shadow of the
young bookseller as he sits in his shop amidst
his small stock, restless at the want of occupa-
tion, and envying the great merchant-adven-
turers congregating in the Exchange. He
spreads his new books and his old upon a
board in front of his window, now and then
soliciting the busy trader who glances at them
to buy Mr Wingate's * Arithmetic made Easy,'
or Mr Record's ' Grounds of Art,' or Mr
Hawse's ' Short Arithmetic,' or, ' The Old and
Tedious Way of Numbering reduced to a New
and Brief Method.' He had divinity books,
too, chiefly by the famous controversialists
who wrote against any approach to the errors
of the Church of Rome ; and some by their
opponents, who were equally hostile to the
doctrines of the Nonconforming clergy. The-
Protestant Bibles. 173
ology was by far the most exciting topic of
those days. Mr Guy was a good Protestant ;
and, as he sat in his shop, too often unvisited
by customers, he meditated frequently upon
the large trade that he could command if it
were in his power to offer godly people Bibles
well printed and cheap. There was no such
commodity to be had in England. All the
arts associated with the production of books
were hampered with privileges and restrictions,
and were consequently in a state very inferior
to those practised in some countries abroad
under conditions of freedom." This was the
case with all books, but most of all with Bibles.
The privilege of printing Bibles was allowed
only to the King's Printer and Oxford Univer-
sity. But the University Press was idle ; and
the office of King's Printer being continued in
one careless family for more than a century,
the printing of the volumes had come to be
so " very bad, both in letter and paper," that
they were hardly legible, and full of gross
blunders. One important text was, in the
Bible of 1653, printed, " Know ye not that the
unrighteous" (instead of " righteous,") "shall in-
herit the kingdom of God." "Fie! for shame!"
exclaimed old P'ullcr, with good reason. " Con-
sidering with myself the causes of the growth
and increase of impiety and profancncss in our
land, amongst others this seemcth to me not
174 Guy's Trade in Bibles.
the least, — the late many false and erroneous
impressions of the Bible. Now know, what is
but carelessness in other books, is impiety in
setting forth of the Bible."
As a good Christian and a shrewd trades-
man, Thomas Guy resolved to provide better
and cheaper Bibles for his countrymen ; and,
in so doing, he set an example which several
other enterprising booksellers of his day were
quick in following. He employed an agent in
Holland, who bought for him good paper and
fine types, and entrusted them to competent
Dutch printers, who had not yet lost the fame
of superiority in the art which Caxton had
learned from their forefathers and introduced
into England two hundred years before. In
this way capital Bibles were produced and sent
over to Guy, who was able to sell great num-
bers of them at a low price, and yet with good
profit to himself. But he had to smuggle
them into England, and to be punished for so
doing. "This trade," says the old historian,
" proving not only very detrimental to the
public revenue, but likewise to the King's
Printer, all ways and means were devised to
quash the same, which being vigorously put
in execution, the booksellers, by frequent
seizures and prosecutions, became so great
sufferers, that they judged a further pursuit
thereof inconsistent with their interest."
Its Difficulties and Profits. 175
Thomas Guy, shrewder and more prosper-
ous than the rest, did not so judge. But he
bethought him of a better way of carrying on
his well-meant enterprise. The University of
Oxford, being privileged to print Bibles, though
it did not make much use of its privilege, was,
after much persuasion from Guy, induced to
farm its monopoly to him. He thereupon
bought a good supply of types in Holland,
brought them and a number of printers to
London, and started a busy little printing-office
Jn his shop at the corner of Lombard Street.
There he began to make his fortune, and to
do good service to religion and literature, by
issuing great numbers of cheap Bibles in the
name of the Oxford University.
He was a frugal man ; and his enemies,
jealous of the prosperity which he was honour-
ably attaining, called him a miser. They
remembered the time when, in the first year of
his shopkeeping, he lived a bachelor, himself
doing the whole household work, which he
could not afford to keep a servant to do for
him, and when he ordered his dinner from a
neighbouring cookshop and ate it at his counter,
with a sheet of paper for his only tablecloth.
There was nothing dishonourable in that. The
dishonour would have been in following the gay
fashion of the City gallants of his day, who
rivalled the Court gallants of Charles H.'s time
1/6 Guy^s Economical Ways.
in extravagance, and incurring expenses be-
yond his means. Yet the foolish contempt
which he won thereby has stuck to him ever
since, and he is still often known as " Thomas
Guy, the miser."
That he was always a very strict and pru-
dent man, however — perhaps with rather a hard
covering to the deep charity that was in his
heart — is clear. In illustration of this, let us
again turn to Mr Charles Knight for a picture
of him when he was beginning to be rich.
" He is lonely. He has indulged himself with
the cost of a female servant, who cooks his
frugal meal and keeps his Holland shirt tidy.
But he wants the solace of a household friend.
He goes little into society. He dines rarely in
his Company's Hall. The city dames, according
to his observation, are too ambitious of finery.
He has once or twice conversed during the
banquet at Guildhall with the daughter of a
rich stationer, and has found her deplorably
ignorant of the commodities in which her father
deals. Gradually he begins to think that his
own maid-servant is quite as attractive as a
citizen's daughter, born of honest parents,
religiously disposed, and skilled in cookery
and other useful arts. What if this neat-
handed Phillis should become his wife ! He is
sure that he can compel her to regulate his
affairs with due economy. She has never
W/iy lie never Married. i 'j'j
wasted money nor victuals while in his service.
She has professed that implicit obedience to
his will which he requires. He at last makes
his proposal, and is accepted graciously. But
there is one danger which the handmaiden has
not foreseen. She has not apprehended the
possibility of giving dire offence by the slightest
manifestation of her own opinion in opposition
to that of her master. He has been very cross
for several days. He has been fined once for
neglecting to pave the footway in front of his
shop. He delays to incur an expense which
he thinks ought to fall upon the pavement
commissioners ; but he must yield. The pa-
viors go to work. He watches them narrowly.
He has a ground-plan of his own premises,
the boundary of which is not very well defined
in the frontage. He gives the most minute
directions as to the exact point where his por-
tion of the stoneway within the posts should
begin and end. The workmen find that a very
awkward space is left un paved. They carry
their remonstrances to the incautious maiden
within doors during the absence of her master.
She little knows what she is doing when she
says, ' Do as you wish. Tell him I bade you,
and I am sure he will not be angry.' The poor
girl must accept her destiny, to remain unmar-
ried to the thriving bookseller. The romance
of Thomas Guy's life is over."
M
178 Wi/lidtn Paicrson.
Yet he was to take a prominent part in the
most romantic episode in the whole history of
English commerce. The chief cause of this,
though indirectly, while he was the direct cause
"in a great measure of the future prosperity of
England, was another self-made, but a very
different man, contemporary with Thomas Guy.
The man was William Paterson, the founder
of the Bank of England.
William Paterson, a native of Dumfries, was
born in April 1658. He came to London, and
became a member of the Merchant Tailors' Com-
pany in 16S1, but the icw years following that
date were passed by him in America and the
West Indies. He was in London again in
1686, and from that time he took up his posi-
tion as an influential, though not as a very
prosperous, merchant. He is chiefly famous for
his ill-fated effort to establish a Scottish colony
in the Isthmus of Darien. In two other favourite
projects he was more successful. He was
through a great many years a zealous advocate
of the Union of England and Scotland, which
had come to be under one sovereign since the
time of James I., under a single form of govern-
ment ; and the adoption of that excellent benefit
was mainly the result of his labours. His
other project was strictly commercial. Soon
after the accession of William and Mary, if not
before, he began to urge the establishment of a
WILLIAM l'ATKkS(JN,
TUB POl'NLIBK OF TIIR BANK OF UNGLANU.
The Bank of England. 179
National Bank of England, akin to the public
banks already set up in Venice and elsewhere.
Through three years he steadily recommended
this enterprise against the fierce opposition of
private and public enemies to it. At length, in
the summer of 1694, the Bank of England way
started, meeting first in the new Mercers"
Hall, built in place of the old building in the
outskirts of which Guy had passed his 'prentice
days as a bookseller. Afterwards, until the
growth of the business made it necessary for a
separate building to be set up, the Bank had a
larger and more permanent dwelling-place in
the Grocers' Hall, where Addison once saw
fifty-four clerks at work in one long room. " I
looked," he says, " into the great hall, where
the bank is kept ; and was not a little pleased
to see the directors, secretaries, and clerks,
with all the other members of that wealthy
corporation, ranged in their several station.s,
acciording to the parts which they hold in that
just and regular economy."
The establishment of the Bank of F.ngkind
was of immense benefit to commerce and
society. The first bankers, from the times of
Whittington to those of Herrick and his suc-
cessors, were, in their capacity of bankers,
little more than pawnbrokers. When king.s,
nobles, and others wanted monej', they brought
their jewels, title-deeds, and the like, to those
i8o Prhnitive Banking.
who had gold to lend, and left them as security
for whatever they borrowed. Whether the
pledge was given in paper or in solid money's
Avorth, bills, and every other sort of paper
currency, as we now understand the terms,
were for a long time unknown or unused.
Until the money was repaid, the security was
locked up, and not allowed to come into the
market. By this plan of tying up great quan-
tities of capital, the mercantile community was
seriously damaged, although one class — espe-
cially since the days of George Heriot and Sir
William Herrick — the class of goldsmiths, was
greatly enriched and advanced in influence.
In attempting to remedy this evil, the London
merchants fell into another as great. The ex-
travagances of life under the gay rule of the
Stuarts, and the risk which private individuals
felt in keeping money in their own hands
during the troublesome times both of the
Rebellion and of the Restoration, brought
immense quantities of coin and bullion into
the keeping of the goldsmiths and other rich
men of Lombard Street and its neighbourhood.
Having begun as mere money-lenders, they
came to be money-keepers as well. They not
only lent great sums of money in return for
paper bonds, but they also took charge of
vast quantities of wealth, for which, in like
manner, they issued paper bonds. Thus it
Irregular Bankers. i8i
became natural and necessary for the paper to
be used as money ; and no sooner was the
custom begun than its convenience, both to the
honest and to the dishonest, led to its adoption
to an unreasonable and dangerous extent.
Half the gold in the kingdom came to be
stowed away in the goldsmiths' vaults, and the
buying and selling of ordinary merchants and
tradesmen was carried on almost exclusively
by means of paper. Both for giving and for
receiving bullion the bankers or money-agents
charged high rates of interest, and so enriched
themselves to the disparagement of their neigh-
bours ; and the public, while paying dearly for
these privileges, ran the risk of losing their
wealth through the failure or defalcation of the
men to whom they entrusted it. When Sir
Dudley North came home from Constantinople,
we are told, he was greatly astonished at the
new and irregular banking customs which had
been introduced during his absence. For a
long time he refused to lodge his money in the
goldsmiths' hands, preferring to have " his own
cash-kccpcr" in his own counting-house, "as
merchants used to do." "His friends," it is
added, "wondered at tin's, as if he did not
know his own interest." At last he, too, found
it necessary to follow the fashion. " In the
latter end of his time, when he dealt more in
trusts and mortgages than in ni( rcliaiidisc, lie
1 82 William Patcyson's Bank.
saw a better custom, and used the shop of Sir
Francis Child, at Temple Bar, for paying and
receiving all his great sums."
Sir Francis Child, the first regular private
banker, " the father of his profession," was a
safe guardian of the money entrusted to him ;
and so were many of his rivals and contempo-
raries. But many of the new sort of bankers
were by no means safe, and much risk was in-
curred by those who entrusted their wealth to
them. It was to remedy or improve upon this
state of things that the Bank of England was
started, at William Paterson's suggestion, in
1694, and it was wonderfully successful. It
became, not only the bank of the State, serv-
ing as the depositary of the public revenues,
but also the centre of all the vast financial
machinery which has since been developed for
the convenience and profit of merchants, and
all who share in their prosperity. At its foun-
dation it received power to deal in bills of ex-
change, bullion, and public and private bonds,
and, in lieu of the old irregular and cumbrous
securities which were given by the private
bankers, to issue bank-notes, which could be
passed from hand to hand as easily as gold
and silver, and converted at any time into
actual coin.
Being established just at the dawn of those
fortunate times which were come for England
Its Services to Covimerce. 183
by the great Rebellion, and the setting up of
William III. in place of James II., it greatly-
helped the extension of that regenerated com-
merce which Addison described so vividly in
171 1. " If we consider our own country in its
natural prospect/' he wrote, " without any of
the benefits and advantages of commerce, what
an uncomfortable spot of earth falls to our
share ! Natural historians tell us that no fruit
grows originally among us, besides hips and
haws, acorns and pignuts, with other delicacies
of the like nature ; that our climate of itself,
and without the assistance of art, can make no
further advances towards a plum than a sloe,
and carries an apple to no greater perfection
than a crab ; that our melons, our peaches,
our figs, our apricots, and cherries are strangers
among us, imported in different ages, and
naturalised in our English gardens ; and that
they would all degenerate and fall away into
the taste of our country, if they were wholly
neglected by the planter and left to the mercy
of our sun and soil. Nor has traffic more
enriched our vegetable world than it has im-
proved the whole face of nature among us.
Our ships arc laden with the harvest of every
climate ; our tables are stored with spices and
oils and wines ; our rooms are filled with
pyramids of china and adorned with workman-
ship of Japan; our morning's draught comes
184 The Benefits of Commerce.
from the remotest corners of the earth ; we
repair our bodies by the drugs of America,
and repose ourselves under Indian canopies.
The vineyards of France are our gardens, the
Spice Islands our hotbeds ; the Persians are
our weavers, and the Chinese our potters.
Nature indeed furnishes us with the bare
necessities of life ; but traffic gives us a great
variety of what is useful, and at the same
time supplies us with everything that is con-
venient and ornamental. For these reasons
there are not more useful members in a com-
monwealth than merchants. They knit man-
Second Royal Exchange.
kind together in a mutual intercourse of good
offices, distribute the gifts of nature, find work
for the poor, add wealth to the rich, and mag-
nificence to the great. Our Engli.sh m.erchant
converts the tin of his own country into gold,
and exchanges his wool for rubies. The Ma-
in the Eighteenth Centufy. 185
hometans are clothed in our British manufac-
ture, and the inhabitants of the frozen zone
are warmed with the fleeces of our sheep.
When I have been upon ^Change, I have often
fancied one of our old kings standing in per-
son where he is represented in effigy, and
looking down upon the wealthy concourse of
people with which that place is every day
filled. In this case how would he be surprised
to hear all the languages of Europe spoken in
this little spot of his former dominions, and to
see so many private men, who, in his time,
would have been the vassals of some powerful
baron, negotiating like princes for greater sums
of money than were formerly to be met with
in the royal treasury ! Trade, Avithout en-
larging the British territories, has given us a
kind of additional empire. It has multiplied
the number of the rich, made our landed
estates infinitely more valuable than they were
formerly, and added to them an accession of
other estates as valuable as the lands them-
selves."
In helping to establish that noble empire of
trade, which is now twenty times as extensive
and powerful as it was in Addison's day, the
Bank of England also gave accidental en-
couragement to a new branch of trade which
for the most part was very mischievous. The
new impetus in lawful money-making gave
1 86 The Stock-Jobbing Mania.
birth to all sorts of more or less unlawful
money-making. " Some of them," according
to a contemporary authority, " were very useful
and successful whilst they continued in a few
hands, till they fell into stock-jobbing, now
much introduced, when they dwindled into
nothing. Others of them, and these the greater
number, were mere whims, of little or no
service to the world. Moreover, projects, as
usual, begat projects; lottery upon lottery,
engine upon engine, etc., multiplied wonder-
fully. If it happened that any one person got
considerably by a happy and useful invention,
the consequence generally was that others
followed the track, in spite of the patent ; thus
going on to jostle out one another, and to abuse
the credulity of the people." " London at this
time," says another historian, of the year 1698,
" abounded with many new projects and
schemes promising mountains of gold ; the
Royal Exchange was crowded with projects,
wagers, airy companies of new manufactures
and inventions, and stock-jobbers and the like."
In that year, indeed, stock-jobbing became
so extensive a business that it had to find a
separate home in 'Change Alley. The business
advanced each year, in spite of the angry
but well-merited denunciation of it in Parlia-
ment and the pulpit, in learned treatises and
vigorous pamphlets without number. " It is a
Knaves and Fools. 1 87
complete system of knavery," we read in one
work, " founded in fraud, born of deceit, and
nourished by trickeries, forgeries, falsehoods,
and all sorts of delusions, coining false news,
whispering imaginary terrors, and preying
upon those they have elevated and depressed."
" The stock-jobbers," says another, " can ruin
men silently ; they undermine and impoverish
them, and fiddle them out of their money by
the strange, unheard-of engines of interest,
discount, transfers, tallies, debentures, shares,
projects, and the devil-and-all of figures and
hard names." " The poor English," writes a
third, " run a-madding after new inventions,
whims, and projects ; and this ingredient my
dear countrymen have — they are violent, and
prosecute their projects eagerly."
When all business was regarded as a game
of chance, in which the professed money-
makers played with loaded dice, it is not
strange that senseless speculations of all sorts
should be wildly entered upon. " Several evil-
disposed persons," it was averred in an Act of
Parliament passed in 1698, " for divers years
last past have set up many mischievous and
unlawful games, called lotteries, not only in
the cities of London and Westminster, and in
the suburbs thereof and places adjoining, but
in most of the eminent towns and places in
England and Wales, and have thereby most
1 88 TJic SontJi Sea Company.
unjustly and fraudulently got to themselves
great sums of money from the children and
servants of several gentlemen, traders, and
merchants, and from other unwary persons, to
the utter ruin and impoverishment of many
families, and to the reproach of the English
laws and government."
But before long the English Government
itself proceeded to organise the most gigantic
lottery ever known. In 171 1, the Earl of
Oxford, who was Lord Treasurer, finding the
State burdened with ;^io,coo,ooo worth of
debts and deficiencies, hit upon a wonderful
expedient for tiding over the difficulty. He
saw that people's heads were turned by the
exaggerated talk of buccaneers and other
roving adventurers respecting the boundless
wealth to be obtained by search and settle-
ment in the seas and coast-land of South
America. Therefore he procured an Act of
Parliament appointing that, " to the intent
that the trade to the South Seas be carried
on for the honour and increase of the wealth
and riches of this realm," a company should
be formed, having for its members all those to
whom the State was indebted, with the exclu-
sive privilege of trading, colonising, and fight-
ing in the southern seas from Tierra del Fuego
to the northernmost part of South America.
The Company was to be aided by State in-
The Climax of Stock-Jobbing. 1 89
fluence, and, if necessary, by the protection of
the British army, besides having various pro-
fitable imposts assigned to it. In this way, it
was represented, the pubHc creditors would
obtain interest for their loans without any ex-
pense to the nation, and some money, it was
even hoped, would be saved, to go towards a
fund for sinking the national debt.
The company was straightway formed, and
had a quiet and tolerably harmless existence
till 1720, "a year," says the contemporary his-
torian, " remarkable beyond any other which
can be pitched upon for extraordinary and
romantic projects, proposals, and undertakings,
both private and national, and which therefore
ought to be had in perpetual remembrance, as
it may serve for a perpetual memento to legis-
lators never to leave it in the power of any
hereafter to hoodwink mankind into so shame-
ful and baneful an imposition on the credulity
of the people, thereby diverted from their
lawful industry." In 17 19, Law's Mississippi
scheme had been at its height in France, and
that example gave unheard-of success to a
like project of the South Sea Company's.
The company proposed to buy up the whole
national debt, and liquidate it by means of
paper money, and the proposal, after some
competition on the part of the Bank of England,
was accepted.
1 90 The South Sea Bubble.
Thereupon ensued a scene of turmoil and
disaster unparalleled in commercial history.
The South Sea stock rose to a fabulous value,
and the success of this wicked speculation
encouraged a crowd of others as wicked.
" Any impudent impostor," says the historian,
speaking from his own observation, "whilst
the delusion was at its greatest height, needed
only to hire a room at some coffee-house or
other house near Exchange Alley for a few
hours, and open a subscription-book for some-
what relative to commerce, manufacture, plan-
tation, or some supposed invention, either
newly hatched out of his own brain, or else
stolen from some of the many abortive pro-
jects of former times, having first advertised
it in the newspapers of the preceding day ; and
he might, in a few hours, find subscribers for
one or two millions, in some cases more, of
imaginary stock. Yet many of those very
subscribers were far from believing those pro-
jects feasible. It was enough for their pur-
pose that there would very soon be a premium
on the receipts for those subscriptions, when
they generally got rid of them in the crowded
alleys to others more credulous than them-
selves." It was nothing uncommon for shares to
be sold at ten per cent, more on one side of
'Change Alley than on the other, or to rise a
liundred per cent, in value in the course of a few
A Year of Bubbles. 193
hours. At one time the South Sea £ 100 shares
were to be sold for ^looo, while East India
stock rose from ;6^ico to £44.$, and African
stock from £22, to ^200. The ;£"io shares of a
York Buildings Company attained the fictitious
value of £zoS, and the shares of a Welsh
Copper Company, without having a penny of
real capital, originally valued at £4. 2s. 6d.,
could hardly be bought for £()$. There is
extant a list of nearly two hundred principal
bubble companies started in this year of
bubbles, " none of which were under a million,
and some went as far as ten millions." One
was designed to make salt water fresh ; another,
to furnish merchants with watches ; a third, to
discover perpetual motion ; a fourth, to plant
mulberry trees and breed silkworms in Chelsea
Park ; and a fifth, " to import a number of
large jackasses from Spain, in order to pro-
pagate a larger kind of mules in England."
So preposterous were many of the bond fide
schemes, that one knows not whether it was in
jest or in earnest that an advertisement was
issued announcing that " at a certain place, on
Tuesday next, books will be opened for a
subscription of two millions for the invention
of melting saw-dust and chips, and casting
them into clean deal boards, without cracks or
knots."
Weil might Newton say, when asked what
N
194 Thomas Guy's Stock-Jobbing.
all this would end in, that " he could calculate
the motions of erratic bodies, but not the
madness of a multitude." Men had not long
to wait, however, before the issues were clear
to every one ; grievous ruin to thousands upon
thousands of innocent and foolish speculators,
great stagnation to the general commerce of
England, and an ugly blot upon the national
honour.
Some men, however, shared without dis-
honour in the speculations, which reached
their climax in the South Sea Bubble, and
thereby became very rich; and of these the
most memorable was Thomas Guy. Having
begun to make money by selling Bibles, as we
saw, before the establishment of the Bank of
England, he used it to make more money
through upwards of thirty years. He em-
ployed his wealth in trading in Government
securities, great and small. His first enter-
prise of this sort, according to tradition, was
in a tolerably humble sort of trade. The needy
agents of James H., following an example of
long standing, were in the habit of paying the
seamen of the Royal Navy, not in cash, but in
pay-tickets or promissory-notes, for which cash
was to be given at a distant day. As the
seamen required their money at once, it was
usual for them to sell their pay-tickets as soon
as they were received, for whatever they could
His Ways of Money-making. 195
get for them ; and Guy is said to have found
it a very lucrative business to buy their tickets
at about two-thirds of their nominal value,
holding them till they became due, and he
could recover the whole amount from the Gov-
ernment.
If he did so, that was only one of the
many ways of money-making which he fol-
lowed. " Formerly," says IMacaulay, " when
the Treasury was empty, when the taxes came
in slowly, and when the pay of soldiers and
sailors was in arrear, it was necessary for the
Chancellor of the Exchequer to go, hat in
hand, up and down Cheapside and Cornhill,
attended by the Lord ]\Iayor and by the Alder-
men, to make up a sum by borrowing ;^I00
from this hosier, and ;^200 from that iron-
monger." Throughout James II.'s reign, until
the Bank of England was founded, Guy the
bookseller lent much money to the Govern-
ment in that way, and received good interest
for it. When a better state of things was in-
troduced with the Bank, Guy continued to
lend his money with great advantage upon the
more orderly system that was established. He
was one of the first contributors to the National
Debt, which was formally begun in 1692. He
also .shared, to some extent, in the new busi-
ness of stock-jobbing that came into fashion
at about the same time. In all tlic financial
196 TJiomas Guy's Later Work.
speculations of tlie day, which seemed to him
safe and honourable, he freely took part. In
1710, just when the South Sea Company was
coming into favour, and when its ;{^I00 shares
were to be bought for ;!^I20 a-piece, he was
possessed of ;£'45,5oo worth of its stock. Part
of this he sold when the shares were worth
£ydO a-piece. The rest he kept for a few years
more, and disposed of when he could get ;^6oo
for each of them. In ways of this sort he
amassed great wealth.
And he used it well. Having become a man
of mark, he entered Parliament in 1695, and
retained his seat till 1707, if not longer. "As
he was a man of unbounded charity and uni-
versal benevolence," says his first biographer,
" so he was likewise a great patron of liberty
and the rights of his fellow- subjects ; which,
to his great honour, he strenuously asserted in
divers Parliaments, whereof he was a member."
He sat in the House of Commons as Mem-
ber for Tamworth, his mother's birth-place, in
which he seems to have held property, and in
which he always took a great interest. In
1705 he built and endowed some alms-houses
there for fourteen poor men and women, with
pensions for each occupier; and to that com-
mon form of charity he added the then unusual
and excellent one of establishing a good free
library for the poor. In 1707 he added three
Guy's Hospital. ig/
new wards to the old Hospital of St Thomas,
in Southwark, the relic of an ancient monas-
tery, which has lately been reconstructed near
to Westminster Bridge. Other minor charities
were done by him all through the time of his
prosperity.
But his greatest act of charity was reserved
to the last. In 1720, when he was seventy-six,
he made about ;!^300,ooo by profitable specu-
lations in the course of three months. That
money he resolved to spend in building and
endowing a new hospital, and his project was
nobly carried through. When he died in 1724,
the roof was being put to Guy's Hospital, the
construction of which cost him about ;;6^ig,ooo;
and the ;^220,ooo with which he endowed it
has enabled it to continue to this day as a
splendid monument of his wealth, and of his
wise application of it.
IX.
WILLIAM BECKFORD.
[1708-1770.]
^plN Jamaica, once the most prosperous
^[;^jj[f3"j of the West Indian Islands, one of the
first and most influential colonists was
Colonel Peter Beckford, a soldier, who made
much wealth as a planter, and spent it as a
local statesman and grandee. By Charles II.
he was made President of the Island Council,
and under William III. he was Lieutenant-
Governor and Commander-in-Chief. He died,
very old and very rich, in 17 10. Further
wealth was accumulated 'by his son, also named
Peter, who died in 1735. Besides other pro-
perty, he owned twenty-four large estates, and
twelve hundred slaves.
The famous Alderman Beckford of London
M'as one of thirteen children of this second
Peter Beckford of Jamaica. He was born in
1708. At the age of twelve or thirteen he was
sent to England, and the next few years were
The Neiv World. 199
spent by him at Westminster School. There
he took rank with the cleverest boys, two of
his friends and rivals being Lord Mansfield
and Lord Kinnoul. Then he settled down as
a London merchant, at first finding his chief
employment in selling the sugar, rum, and
other products of his father's Jamaica estates,
and soon extending that business so as to
become the most influential West Indian and
American merchant of his day.
That was a branch of commerce that had
grown mightily since its beginning, in the days
of Sir Thomas Smythe. The troubles to which
Englishmen — and especially Puritan English-
men — were subjected under Charles \. had
helped it greatly. " The land is weary of her
inhabitants," said the old Puritans, in justifi-
cation of their retirement from England; "so
that man, which is the most precious of all
creatures, is here more vile and base than the
earth we tread upon ; so as children, neigh-
bours, and friends, especially the poor, arc
accounted tiie greatest burdens; which, if things
were right, would be the highest earthly bless-
ings. Hence it comes to pass that all arts and
trades are carried on in that deceitful manner
and unrighteous course, as it is almost impos-
sible for a good, upright man to maintain his
charge in any of them." That was the lan-
guage of the first colonists of New England.
200 EuglisJi, Colonics in America.
Therefore they carried their arts and trades to
America ; and there, thougli failing to practise
tliein with entire freedom from the "deceitful
manner and unrighteous course" of their op-
ponents in rehgion and poUtics, succeeded in
establishing a very influential centre of civil-
isation and commerce. With ample stores of
timber, copper, and iron, and with facilities for
gathering in great quantities of fish, corn, and
wool, they began a profitable trade with the
mother- country soon after the restoration of
Charles II., and have continued famous traders
ever since. In Charles II. 's reign, too, Penn-
sylvania and New York were founded, mainly
by people whose religious grievances led them
to follow the example of the Puritans of New
England. The Carolinas, and the other mem-
bers of what are now the United States, were
founded afterwards in quick succession ; some
of them by successors of the Cavaliers, who,
having driven the Puritans and Quakers across
the Atlantic, were encouraged, by their great
success in their new homes, to go and carry
on a more friendly rivalry with them in the
same neighbourhood. All these states, how-
ever widely they differed from one another in
religion, in politics, and in ways of life, vied
with one another in commercial activity, and
in the prosperity that was easily secured by
it. Almost more important at first were the
Their Groivth and Wealth. 201
English settlements which grew up during the
same period in the West Indian islands, — Bar-
badoes, the great sugar colony, and Jamaica, the
great producer of rum, being the chief of them.
In 173 1, just at the time when William
Beckford came to London to be schooled as
an English merchant and statesman, the Ame-
rican and West Indian colonies were in a state
of prosperity which dazzled the eyes of all on-
lookers. Massachusetts alone dispatched in a
single year more than three hundred ship-
loads of rum, molasses, salt, and fish to Eu-
rope. Virginia and Maryland sent home vast
quantities of tobacco, grain, skins, and timber.
Timber, too, was supplied in countless ships
by New England ; and grain, with a score of
other useful articles, by Pennsylvania and New
York. One year's stock of sugar from Bar-
badoes, amounting to 10,000 tons, gave em-
ployment to a thousand English seamen ; and
besides an equal quantity of sugar, Jamaica
furnished large cargoes of rum, logwood, and
spices. Both Jamaica and Barbadoes were
famous " for having given to many men of
low degree exceeding vast fortunes, equal to
noblemen, by carrying goods and passengers
thither, and bringing thence other commodi-
ties, whereby seamen arc bred, and custom
increased, and commodities vended, and many
thousands employed therein."
202 The GroivtJi of CoDinicrce.
It was not only seamen and seafarers who
profited by this wonderful growth of commerce.
The mother-country was enriched quite as
much as her children in the colonies by the
interchange of new and old commodities. In
every branch of English trade employment was
found for a great many more labourers of all
grades. " As the trading, middling sort of
people in England are rich," said Daniel De-
foe, the author of " Robinson Crusoe," in 1728,
" so the labouring, manufacturing people under
them are infinitely richer than the same class
of people in any other nation in the world.
As they are richer, so they live better, fare
better, wear better, and spend more money
than they do in any other countries. They
eat well, and they drink well. For their eating
of flesh meat, 'tis a fault even to profusion ; as
to their drink, 'tis generally stout, strong beer ;
not to take notice of the quantity, which is
sometimes a little too much. For the rest, we
see their houses and lodgings tolerably fur-
nished ; at least, stuffed well with useful and
necessary household goods. Even those we
call poor people, journeymen, working and
painstaking people, do this : they lie warm,
live in plenty, work hard, and know no want.
'Tis by these that the wheels of trade are set
on foot. 'Tis by the largeness of their get-
tings '-hat they are supported. Are we a rich.
Its Various Benefits. 203
a populous, a powerful nation, and in some
respects the greatest in all those particulars in
the world, and do we not boast of being so ?
'Tis evident it was all derived from trade. Our
merchants are princes, greater and richer and
more powerful than some sovereign princes ;
and, in a word, as is said of Tyre, we have
' made the kings of the earth rich with our
merchandise ;' that is, with our trade." " If
usefulness gives an addition to the character,
either of men or of things, as without doubt it
does, trading men will have the preference in
almost all the disputes you can bring. There
is not a nation in the known world but have
tasted the benefit, and owe their prosperity to
the useful improvement, of commerce. Even
the self-vain gentry, that would decry trade as
a universal mechanism, arc they not every-
where depending upon it for their most neces-
sary supplies } If tiiey do not all sell, they are
all forced to buy, and so are a kind of traders
themselves ; at least they recognise the use-
fulness of commerce, as what they are not
able to live comfortably without. Trade en-
courages manufacture, prompts invention, cm-
ploys people, increases labour, and pays wages.
As the people arc employed they are paid, and
by that pay are fed, clothed, kept in heart,
and kept together. As the consumption of
provisions increase, more lands arc cultivated,
204 William Beckford.
waste grounds are enclosed, woods are grubbed,
forests and common lands are tilled and im-
proved. By this, more farmers are brought
together, more farm-houses and cottages are
built, and more trades are called upon to
supply the necessary demands of husbandry.
In a word, as land is employed, the people
increase of course, and thus trade sets all the
wheels of improvement in motion ; for, from
the original of business to this day, it appears
that the prosperity of a nation rises and falls
just as trade is supported or decayed."
That panegyric of trade, spoken a hundred
and forty years ago, is no less true of the com-
merce of the present ; and now, as then, a
famous part of the benefits of English com-
merce must be traced to the wise colonisation
of. America and the West Indies, and the
increased employments that it made necessary.
The earlier Beckfords did much to help it on
as far as Jamaica was concerned ; and William
Beckford came to London in time to enjoy
some of its first fruits.
He was enabled to do this most successfully
through the death of his elder brother Peter in
1737, whereby the great wealth accumulated
by his father and grandfather, amounting to
;;6^io,ooo a year, passed into his hands. Till he
was about forty, he seems to have applied him-
self closely to business. Then, having made
His WealtJi and Work. 205
sure his standing in the world of commerce, he
followed the example of Sir John Barnard and
other London worthies, in accepting civic
honours, and entering upon a Parliamentary
career. In 1747 he was elected Member of
Parliament for both London and Petersfield.
He chose to sit for the metropolis ; but, in re-
cognition of the honour shown to him by
Petersfield, he gave £^^0)0 towards re-paving
its streets.
He sat for London during three and twenty
years, and throughout that time he was a
zealous champion of free-trade, as far as free-
trade was then understood, and of commercial
interests. That was especially the case with
the first speech delivered by him in the House
of Commons, in February 1748, on the occa-
sion of a scheme for raising money to pay the
expenses of the European war in which Eng-
land was then engaged, by levying fresh taxes
upon imported goods. Bcckford ably exposed
the mischievous effect of the scheme in cripp-
ling trade and, consequently, the comfort of the
people at home ; and in yet more seriously in-
juring the American and West Indian colonies ;
and with characteristic impetuosity proposed
tliat the funds should be raised by forcing all
the officers and pensioners of the Crown, in-
cluding judges and clerg}'mcn, to give up half
of all their stipends. Another memorable
2o6 Bcckford in Parliament.
speech of his was in 175 1, in opposition to the
standing army which was at that time being
formed in England, to replace the old plan of
military service, which our modern militia and
volunteer corps are partly reviving. With like
boldness, and, in spite of occasional extrava-
gance, with much sound sense, Bcckford spoke
in other years on all sorts of subjects connected
with trade and the welfare of the nation.
Sympathising with the most advanced Whigs
of his time, he was a staunch friend and ad-
viser of the elder William Pitt before he be-
came a Tory, and the private friendship lasted
after the change of politics. This epigram,
circulated during the election time of 1761,
illustrates the estimation in which he was held
by most of his contemporaries.
" Augusta, see! Behold Pitt's generous friend,
Whom all the patriot virtues recommend ;
Hear every tongue proclaim him good and great,
Rendering the hero and the man complete."
" The different characters he affected to pos-
sess, to reconcile with each other, and some-
times to blend in one motley mass," it was
said by a less hearty admirer of Bcckford,
"would furnish a most curious subject for the
biographer. He was an eminent West India
planter and merchant, a member of Parlia-
ment, a militia officer, a provincial magistrate,
an alderman of London, a man of taste and
His Rough Bearing. 207
dissipation. Mr Beckford wanted the external
graces of manners and expression ; adorned
with these accomplishments, he would have
made a first-rate figure. He possessed a sound
understanding, and very extensive knowledge
of British politics, especially that important
part of it which relates to trade and commerce;
nor did he ever disgrace himself by a variable-
ness or inconsistency of conduct. His manners
were not pleasant ; but this circumstance did
not arise so much from a crabbed disposition,
as from an ardent, impetuous turn of mind,
whose favour he always indulged. This im-
petuous animation, accompanied with an in-
harmonious voice and vehemence of action,
prevented his public speaking, as well as his
private conversation, from receiving that atten-
tion and affording that pleasure which, from
his knowledge and abilities, they might be
supposed to have deserved and produced. In
the House of Commons he oftentimes called
forth the laughter, and frequently promoted
the languor, of his audience, from no other
cause than the neglect of digesting and arrang-
ing the matter he delivered."
Beckford was more popular in the City of
London than in Westminster. His unpruned
eloquence was more to the taste of the mer-
cantile classes, which, whether high or low,
were then rough alike, than to the House of
2o8 Beck'ford 's Political Honesty.
Commons or the gentle-folk of the West End.
His genuine honesty and stout love of English
liberty, too, were of a sort to be better liked
by citizens than by courtiers under the House
of Hanover. They chose him for their repre-
sentative, without coercion, and because of his
honesty. " It has been told me," he said at
one of his election speeches, " that I have given
offence to many of you, by not canvassing for
your votes. I am sorry for it, because I respect
you too much, and love the constitution of my
country too well, to infringe on the freedom of
election, of which, in these corrupt times, this
city still continues to give a most glorious
example. If you recollect, gentlemen, I did
not canvass you at the last general election.
I have not canvassed you for the approaching
one, and I tell you honestly I never will canvass
you. You shall elect me without a canvass, or
not at all." And on those honourable terms
he was elected four times running.
He was made Alderman of Billingsgate ward
in 1752. In 1758 he was Sheriff of London,
and in 1762 Lord Mayor. His civic functions
were well performed, and he is famous for the
especial splendour with which he performed
one important part of them. As Sheriff, he
gave four great banquets, surpassed in richness
only by those which he gave when he was
Mayor. Though very simple in his tastes and
His Great Banquets. 209
habits, he seems to have considered sumptuous
public entertainments to be matters of vital
importance. On the occasion of George III.'s
coronation, after taking part in the show, he
went, with the other city magnates, to dine at
Westminster Hall, and great was his indigna-
tion at the sorry fare provided for them. " We
have invited the King," he exclaimed, " to a
banquet which will cost us ;^ 10,000, and yet,
when we come to Court, we are given nothing
to eat."
' The banquet to which Beckford referred, in
the sumptuous preparation of which he seems
to have taken a leading part, was on the occa-
sion of the young King's going into the city to
see the Lord Mayor's Show. He watched it
from the house of David J^arclay the Quaker,
founder of Barclay's Bank and Barclay's Brew-
ery, and Bcckford's chief rival in the successful
carrying on of the American trade. It had
long been the practice for each new sovereign
to witness the Lord Mayor's Show that first
occurred after his accession, before going to
dine at the Guildhall ; and it was the custom for
this to be done at a fine old house in Cheap-
side, opposite to Bow Church, and almost the
fittest in the city. Wc have a curious account
of this episode in a letter written by John
Frcamc, Barclay's brother-in-law and partner.
He says that, "in the first place, brother Bar-
210 George III. among Quakers.
clay spared no cost in repairing and decorating-
his house. When that was perfected, Lord
Bruce came several times to give directions
about the apartments and furniture, (which
was very grand,) and also in what manner the
family were to receive their royal guests. But
previous to this, brother Barclay insisted that
all his children that came there should be
dressed like plain Friends. This injunction
was an exercising time indeed to several of
them. The sons were dressed in plain cloth,
the daughters in plain silks, with dressed black
hoods, and, my sister says, on the whole, made
a genteel appearance, and acted their part in
the masquerade very well. So that (as to the
outward) the testimony of the Apology ap-
peared to be maintained. And now, all things
being in order, brother and sister Barclay, with
David and Jack, were appointed to receive the
royal family below stairs, and to wait on them
to the apartment prepared for them above.
Soon after which, the King asked for Mr Bar-
clay and his family, who were introduced to him
by the lords-in-waiting, and kindly received ;
and brother, with all his sons, permitted to have
the honour to kiss his hand without kneeling,
an instance of such condescension as never was
known before. The King after this saluted my
sister and the girls, and the same favour was
conferred on them by the Queen and others of
A Quaker's " OpportiinityV 2 1 1
the royal family. The Queen, with others of
the family, and several of the nobility, re-
freshed themselves with the repast provided
for them in the back parlour and kitchen,
which was elegantly set off for the occasion,
and it being, I suppose, a great novelty to
them, were highly delighted with the enter-
tainment. On the King's going away, he
thanked brother Barclay for his entertainment,
and politely excused, as he was pleased to say,
the trouble they had given. This great con-
.descension, I am told, so affected the old gen-
tleman, that he not only made a suitable
return to the compliment, but, like the good
patriarchs of old, prayed that God would
please to bless him and all his family, which
was received by him with great goodness."
After that friendly interview with David
Barclay, which added much to the good mer-
chant's influence and prosperity, by bringing
him into immediate connection with the highest
persons in the realm, the King and Queen
went to partake of the great feast which cost
£\0,Q)QO.
Next year William Bcckford was made Lord
Mayor, and famous opportunity was afforded
for showing his love of splendid entcrtainmcnt.s.
Besides the ordinary feasts, he entertained, at
his own expense, the members of the Mouses
of Lords and Commons, at a dinner which
2 1 2 Sir yo/in Barnard.
cost another sum of £,\o,OOQ>. Six dukes, two
marquises, twenty-three earls, four viscounts,
and fourteen barons, then joined with a host of
commoners in partaking of six hundred costly
dishes.
That love of display was part of Beckford's
character, but only its weaker part, and perhaps
it was only indulged in by him as a means of
gaining influence with the merchants, states-
men, and courtiers of his day. And that in-
fluence he put to good use. He was the direct
successor of another great and good, perhaps a
better, man, Sir John Barnard.
Barnard was born in 1685, three and twenty
years before Beckford. A Quaker by birth,
though he afterwards became a member of the
Church of England, he exhibited a Quaker's
simplicity of manners, and a Quaker's honest
perseverance in money-making, to the end of
his long life. In his youth, says the friend
who wrote his biography, " he sought out com-
panions amongst men distinguished by their
knowledge, learning, and religion," of whom
there were not too many in the dissolute age
of Georgian rule. Men who did not care to
imitate him, however, respected his worth and
wisdom. In 1721 he was sent to Parliament
as member for the City of London, and he
was re-elected to the post six times in succes-
sion. " From his first taking his seat in the
His Worth and Wisdom. 213
House of Commons," says his friend, " he
entered with acumen into the merits of each
point under debate, defended with intrepidity
our constitutional rights, withstood every
attempt to burden his country with needless
subsidies, argued with remarkable strength
and perspicuity, and crowned all with close
attention to the business of Parliament, never
being absent by choice, from the time the mem-
bers met till they were adjourned. It is hard
to say whether out of the House he was more
popular, or within it more respectable, during
the space of nearly forty years."
Barnard took a more or less prominent part
in nearly every measure of importance that
was brought before Parliament during the long
reign of George H. He sided always with the
advocates of peace and retrenchment, showing
himself a zealous reformer on all matters affect-
ing the national honour and the development
of trade, but being somewhat a Conservative
whenever the welfare of the country did not
seem to him to call for a change. But in all
commercial matters he held very advanced
views. At a time when merchants and politi-
cians believed that private and public interests
would be best served by all sorts of restrictions
upon the importation of foreign goods, and
arbitrary schemes for forcing English wares
at high prices upon foreigners, he appeared as
214 " ^/^^" Father of the Cityr
the champion of free-trade. " We ought never,"
he said, " to make laws for encouraging or
enabling our subjects to sell the produce or
manufacture of their country at a high price,
but we ought to contrive all ways and means
for enabling them to sell cheaply. It is cer-
tain that at all foreign markets those who sell
cheapest will carry off the sale, and turn all
others out of trade." Sir John Barnard, how-
ever, did not approve of all trades. In 1734
he introduced a bill increasing the tax upon
tea, then something of a novelty in England.
" I wish the duty were higher than it is,'' he
oddly said, " because I look upon it as an
article of luxury."
In 1747, a statue of Sir John Barnard was
set up in the Royal Exchange, there to mark
him as Gresham's great successor in benefac-
tion to the city. He was henceforth known
as "The Father of the City." But at that
time, or soon after, he went to end his days
quietly at his house in Clapham. There, we
are told, he spent an hour each day in prayer
and study of the Scriptures, and every Sunday
he went twice to church, "where he behaved
with exemplary seriousness through every part
of divine service, hearing the preacher, though
his inferior in knowledge of divinity, no less
than in strength of intellect, with evident sig-
natures of meekness in his aspect." " All his
Two Views of Beckford. 2 1 5
long train of honours," it is added, " seemed as
much unknown to himself as if they had never
thrown their lustre round his name. No men-
tion was heard from his own mouth of the
transactions in which he bore a principal part
and acquired great glory. If questions regard-
ing them were asked for information's sake, his
answers were always brief, and the subject
never by himself pursued." He died in 1764,
in the eightieth year of his age.
William Beckford was then at the height of
his renown, praised by friends, abused by
enemies, and made a trade of by many who
cared only to advance their own selfish in-
terests. " I was astonished," said an old writer,
in 1769, of a person of this sort, " at the effron-
tery as well as impudence with which he dared
to avow a want of all principle and honour.
He showed me two contrasted characters of
Alderman Beckford, the idol of the mob, which
he was to insert in antagonist newspapers :
one a panegyric and the other a libel, for each
of which he expected to receive the reward
of a guinea."
The prevalence of contradictory and unprin-
cipled writing of that sort makes it very difficult
to understand the real character of Beckford.
Sometimes he is painted as an ideal patriot ;
sometimes as a vulgar democrat. Tliat he was,
however, "the idol of the mob," liking their
2i6 Bcckford's Last Boldness.
idolatry, and doing something to deserve it, is
clear. He was the friend of Wilkes and the
most extreme Radicals of his day, and the
Tory inclinations of George III. and his
favourite ministers were denounced by him, in
no measured terms, in the House of Commons
and in the city.
His denunciations were loudest, and passed
far beyond the limits of courtly decency, in the
spring of 1770. On two occasions, as Lord
Mayor for the year, he took the lead in prepar-
ing angry petitions from the citizens of London,
complaining of the King's conduct and of its
support by Parliament. On the 23d of May,
attended by the Common Council and a crowd
of followers, he went to St James's Palace to
offer a third and still bolder remonstrance to
George HI. After listening to it, the King
answered that the conduct of the citizens was
displeasing to him, that he had their best in-
terests at heart, and that he expected them to
rely upon his honesty and his reverence for the
English constitution. Thereupon, says the
historian, " to the dismay of the courtiers, and
contrary to all precedent and etiquette. Beck-
ford had not only the bad taste to endeavour
to draw his sovereign into a personal contro-
versy, but had also the impudence to address to
him the language of reproof" The harangue
which he is reported to have uttered on the
Its Fatal Issue. 2 1 7
occasion was certainly very bold and threaten-
ing. " Permit me, sire, to observe," he said,
in concluding it, " that whoever has already
dared, or shall hereafter endeavour, by false
insinuations and suggestions, to alienate your
Majesty's affections from your loyal subjects
in general, and from the City of London in
particular, and to withdraw your confidence
in regard for your people, is an enemy to
your Majesty's person and family, a violator
of the public peace, and a betrayer of our
happy constitution, as it was established at the
glorious and necessary Revolution."
That violent behaviour added much to
Beckford's popularity with the extreme mem-
bers of his party, but gave great and not un-
reasonable offence to George III. When,
on the 30th of I\Iay, he applied for another
audience of the King, he was refused admit-
tance.
Bcckford was now sixty-two years old, and
the political turmoil in which he was engaged
proved too much for him. Early in June,
being ill, he went down to the splendid scat
which he had bought for himself at Fonthill,
in Hampshire. Thence, after a week or two,
being suddenly required in London for some
new political action, he travelled up to London,
a coach ride of a hundred miles, in one day.
A violent attack of rheumatic fever was the
2i8 CJiatterton oti Bcckford.
result, causing his death at his town house, in
Soho Square, on the 2ist of June 1770.
The conflicting opinions held about him in
life continued after his death. By many he
was described as a man altogether vile and
vulgar. Others could not find words, in prose
or verse, strong enough for his praises. One
vigorous but fulsome elegy, from which the
following verses are extracted, was penned by
the unfortunate poet, Thomas Chatterton : —
" Weep on, ye Britons, give your general tear !
But hence ye venal — hence each titled slave !
An honest pang should wait on Beckford's bier,
And patriot anguish mark the patriot's grave.
" Thou breathing sculpture, celebrate his fame,
And give his laurel everlasting bloom ;
Record his worth while gratitude has name,
And teach succeeding ages from his tomb I
" The sword of justice cautiously he sway'd ;
His hand for ever held the balance right ;
Each venial fault with pity he survey'd ;
But murder found no mercy in his sight.
" He knew, when flatterers besiege a throne,
Truth seldom reaches to a monarch's ear ;
Knew if, oppress'd, a loyal people groan,
'Tis not the courtiers' interest he should hear.
*' Hence, honest to his prince, his manly tongue,
The public wrong and loyalty convey'd,
While titled tremblers, every nerve unstrung,
Look'd all around, confounded and dismay'd,—
"An Artless^ Fearless Citizen." 219
" Looked all around, astonish'd to behold
(Train'd up to flattery from their early youth)
An artless, fearless citizen unfold
To royal ears a mortifying truth.
*' Titles to him no pleasure could impart,
No bribes his rigid virtue could control ;
The star could never gain upon his heart.
Nor turn the tide of honour in his soul.
" He, as a planet, with unceasing ray,
Is seen in one unvaried course to move.
Through life pursued but one illustrious way,
And all his orbit was his country's love.
" But he is gone ! and now, alas ! no more
His generous hand neglected worth redeems ;
No more around his mansion shall the poor
Bask in his warm, his charitable beams.
" No more his grateful countrymen shall hear
His manly voice in martyr'd freedom's cause ;
No more the courtly sycophant shall fear
His poignant lash for violated laws.
" Yet say, stem virtue, who 'd not wish to die,
Thus greatly struggling, a whole land to save?
Who would not wish, with ardour wish, to lie
With Beckford's honour in a Beckford's grave ? "
Though not quite a hero of the most heroic
sort, William Bcckford was a man for the City
of London to be proud of. His statue, with
his famous speech to George III. written under
it, was put up in the Guildhall, and by most of
his fellow-citizens he was honoured as a great
and worthy patriot.
220
JViliiam Beckford.
He was certainly a shrewd and prosperous
merchant. His estate at Fonthill, and other
property, yielding ;^iio,ooo a year, besides
;^i,ooo,ooo in ready money, descended to his
only son, the Earl of Chatham's godchild,
William Beckford, who is chiefly famous as the
author of "Vathek."
X.
HENRY THORNTON.
[1762-1S15.]
S^HROUGH most of the first half of
^^mi the eighteenth century, while William
i^A=si Beckford was making a name for him-
self as a great London merchant and grandee,
a humbler man was honourably pursuing his
calling. His name was Robert Thornton.
He imported goods from Russia, and sent
thither English goods in exchange, a branch
of trade for which Hull, which seems to have
been his native place, was famous, and which he
carried on in connection with some influential
traders of Hull. He lived in the out-of-the-
way village of Clapham, and must have been
acquainted with Sir John Barnard, Beckford's
rival as a great city merchant, and certainly at
that time the wealthiest and worthiest of the
pious merchants who even then had begun
to make Clapham their favourite abode.
Robert Thornton had a son, John, born in
222 JcJui TJiornioii.
1720, who succeeded him in the Russian busi-
ness, and made it very much more extensive.
" He was in business," says Mr Colquhoun,
" an active mercliant, keen in watching oppor-
tunities, and skilful in using them. Eminent
for other qualities, he never lost the practised
eye of the merchant and his watchful observa-
tion. In one of his tours in Ireland, under-
taken late in life to recruit, as was his habit,
his strength, he showed the habits which pecu-
liarly characterised him. Walking out in the
early morning at Cork, he turned down to the
harbour, where a number of vessels, laden
with tallow, had just come in. A few ques-
tions, addressed by him to the persons con-
nected with them, put him in possession of the
facts, and by a stroke of his pen he made the
cargoes his own. By this adventure he cleared
a handsome profit. From the harbour he
strolled into a nursery garden, where he fell
in with its humble proprietor. The poor man
was in great perplexity, being hampered for
want of capital. Mr Thornton talked to him,
ascertained his circumstances, inquired into
his character, and being satisfied, by another
stroke of his pen helped him out of his
troubles, and set him fairly on his feet."
Of that sort was his conduct through life.
Always ready to see where a good bargain
was to be made, and how to make it, he
His Generosities. 223
acquired great wealth, and was always ready
to spend it in wise and charitable ways. His
generous disposition has rarely been equalled.
Meeting one day on the Exchange a young
merchant, whom he knew to be honest and
intelligent, but cramped in business by the
small amount of money at his command, he
said to him, " John, I have been thinking much
of you and your circumstances ; I think if you
had a larger capital, you would now do a
better business." His friend said this was
certainly the case. " Well," said John Thorn-
ton, "iJ" 1 0,000 arc at your service. If you
prosper, you will repay me ; if you don 't, you
shall never hear of the debt." The younger
merchant, amazed at such an offer, asked for a
few days to think over it. When the few days
were past, Thornton sought him out and re-
minded him of their conversation. " I have
been thinking over your kind offer," was the
reply, " but I feel I must decline it. If I lost
your money, I should be very unhappy ; and,
through the blessing of God, I am now doing
a fair business ; so I had better remain as I
am."
Julm Thornton spent most of his wealth in
the interests of the religion that was dear to
him. Earnest men of all creeds were his
friends — Wesley, and Whitfield, and William
Bull, the Independent, as well as John Newton,
224 Wilberforce and the Thorntons.
and a host of clerfrymen of the Established
Church. His favourite plan was to buy livings,
and give them, with additional endowments,
to clergymen of his own generous and earnest
way of thinking ; and in the same way, to
make large allowances, for their own use, and
for philanthropic employment, to Methodists
and Dissenting ministers. " I am glad you are
beginning a Sunday-school," he wrote to one
Dissenter; "when you want assistance, you
know where to come for it ; when you want
money, remember I am your banker, and draw
freely."
A sister of John Thornton's married an uncle
of William Wilberforce. Wilberforce, as a lad,
spent many years in the house of his uncle
and aunt, and went often to that of the
Thorntons. The associations there brought
in his way, however, were distasteful to his
kinsfolk, in whose opinions Christianity could
not exist out of the Church of England. "If
Billy turns Methodist," said his grandfather,
" he shall not have a sixpence of mine."
Therefore, at the age of twelve, young Wilber-
force was forbidden to go to either Wimbledon
or Clapham. But when he was his own master,
he went back to both places with a hearty love
for the religious habits which he there found
enforced. " It was by living with great sim-
plicity of intention and conduct in the practice
Henry Thornton. 225
of a Christian life," he said afterwards of his
old friend, " more than by any superiority of
understanding or of knowledge, that John
Thornton rendered his name illustrious. He
anticipated the disposition and pursuits of the
succeeding generation. He devoted large sums
annually to charitaVjle purposes, especially to
the promotion of the cause of religion, both in
his own and other countries."
John Thornton died in 1790. He left not
only the old Russian business greatly enlarged,
but also a share in the extensive banking estab-
lishment of Down, Thornton, & Free, in Bar-
tholomew Lane. Both descended to his three
sons — Samuel, Robert, and Henry — although
the mercantile concern was managed princi-
pally by the two elder sons, the bank being
directed chiefly by the youngest and ablest.
Henry Thornton, born in 1762, seems indeed
to have been the leading spirit in the bank
from the first. His large powers and wise use
of them helped greatly to advance the whole
business while it was in his father's hands, and
these appear to have been the main cause of
its extension in the most lucrative of all ways
of honest money-making. " lie inherited,"
says Mr Colquhoun, " the business talents of
his father, and his untiring perseverance ; but
the ability, which in his father was limited to
mercantile enterprise, rose in him to a higher
226 Henry TJionttoh Talents.
elevation. His mind was essentially philo-
sophic. To investigate every moral occurrence
and physical problem, to trace these through
their relations and connections, to analyse their
elements, to extract that which was essential
from the incidental, this furnished a constant
exercise to his intellectual powers. To exa-
mine carefully, to deliberate long, to balance
each quality and circumstance in the scales of
an equal judgment, to accept no standard but
that of truth, and to bring everything to be tried
by that standard — wherever law was applicable,
to apply it, and, where law was silent, to test
the subject by rules of equity, — this was his
favourite occupation, and the delight of his
leisure hours."
Like many other busy men, he found leisure
for philosophical thought and philanthropic
labour, without any hindrance to the due per-
formance of his complicated pursuits in the
counting-house. He was much more than a
banker, but, as a banker, he had no rivals in
his day.
Yet that was almost the most eventful period
in the progress of banking. Henry Thornton
had for competitors many men who have made
especial mark in the history of their profession.
The profession was then passing out of the
quiet ways to which it had long been limited,
and taking its place as the most important
Early Bankers : the Iloarcs. 227
branch of modern commerce. The first bankers
were men like the mediaeval Jews of Old Jewry,
and the mediaeval Lombards of Lombard Street,
Whittington and Gresham, Herrick and Heriot,
merchants and miscellaneous traders, who in-
creased their wealth and influence as mone}^-
makers and money-changers, but had none of
the elaborate machinery of modern banking.
It was not till the seventeenth century that it
began to be a separate and highly-developed
institution. Sir Francis Child, originally a gold-
smith, the founder of Child's Bank, who lived
in the days of William IIL, was the first pro-
per banker. Other men soon followed in his
steps, and became rich by their new calling.
Among the chief of these was the family ot
the Hoares. Henry Hoare, the son of a hum-
ble Buckingham.shire farmer, was a merchant
in London about the middle of the seventeenth
century. His son Richard, born in 1648, was
famous in his day for his good business quali-
ties and his public services, for his wealth, and
the good use to which he put it. " He not
only governed his private life by the strictest
rules of virtue," it was said of him, " but also
in many public stations did ever di.scharge his
duty with the utmost integrity and fidelity."
He was a great benefactor of Christ's Hospital.
He was Member of Parliament from 17 10 to
1713; and, in the latter year, having bcca
228 Sir Henry Hoare.
knighted, he served as Lord Mayor. He was
related, both by family ties and in business, to
James Hoare, an irregular banker, who lived
at the sign of the Golden Bottle, in Cheapside.
James Hoare died in 1694; but a few years
before that the business was removed to Sir
Richard Hoare's shop in Fleet Street, also
indicated by a golden bottle ; and on Sir
Richard's death, in 17 18, it descended to his
three sons, Richard, John, and Henry. The
youngest son seems to have been the ablest
and the worthiest. " His behaviour," said one
of his friends, " was such, under the various
circumstances, capacities, and relations which
he passed through, that a general esteem, love,
and honour, were all along most justly paid
to his character." He left ^2000 to be given to
various charity-schools and workhouses, ;!{^200O
to be spent in distributing Bibles, prayer-books,
and religious works, and other large sums to
be applied in various benevolent ways. Dying
in 1725, he left a prosperous banking-house, to
be chiefly managed by his eldest son, Henry,
who spent a long life of eighty years in en-
larging his influence, increasing his wealth, and
putting it to good uses. His life was con-
temporary with that of John Thornton, and,
as he too lived on Clapham Common, he must
have been well acquainted with the pious mer-
chant and his famous son.
THOMAS COUTTS.
Thomas Contts. 229
Another great banker and good man, though
he showed his goodness in different ways, was
Thomas Coutts. His grandfather, John Coutts,
was a prosperous corn-merchant in Edinburgh,
who added banking to his trade in corn. The
Edinburgh business was carried on by his son
and grandsons ; but the most enterprising of
these grandsons, Thomas, came to London in
1754, when he was about twenty-three years old.
In 1760 he estabhshed himself as a banker in
the Strand, succeeding to the business of a
George Campbell, who had originally been a
goldsmith. In 1768 he rebuilt his premises,
which form the present banking-house of Coutts
& Company. Coutts was charitable in his
way, often very generous in his dealings with
others; but the one great occupation of his
life was money-making. He is described by
one who often saw him shambling along the
Strand, as "a pallid, sickly, thin, old gentle-
man, who wore a shabby coat and a brown
scratch wig." One day a good-natured person,
fresh from the country, stopped him in the
street, and, pitying his forlorn appearance,
offered him a guinea. Coutts thanked him,
but declined the gift, saying that he was not
in "immediate want." When he died in 1822,
at the age of ninety-one, he left an immense
property, and a very lucrative business, to
his granddaughter, Miss Angela Burdctt Coutls,
230 Thoniton in Parliament,
whose wealth, it was reckoned a few years ago,
if told in sovereigns, would weigh thirteen tons,
and fill a hundred and seven flour sacks.
Henry Thornton never grew so rich as
Thomas Coutts or the Iloares. But he was
an abler man than any of them. He put
his talents to good use. Working hard in his
counting-house, he was also a zealous worker
outside of it. He entered the Hou.se of Com-
mons as Member for Southwark, and he held
his seat for one-and-thirty years, during six
successive Parliaments. Those were days in
which bribery was much more the fashion
than now it is, when very few candidates were
elected for their merits alone, the corruption
of poor electors or the influence of rich land-
lords being the accepted means for sending
even honest men to Parliament. Henry Thorn-
ton was too honest to adopt either of these
means.
He held his ground even when the opposi-
tion at some of the elections was most violent.
" In the election of 1802," says Mr Colquhoun,
"his success was doubtful. His colleague had
secured his seat by assiduous attention to the
voters. Henry Thornton had given his time
to important duties and public busines.s. At
the nomination the show of hands was against
him. But when the voting began, and he was
found to stand lowest on the poll, there was a
Election without Bribery. 231
prompt rally in his favour. He had, indeed,
no crowds of canvassers, nor could he win the
crowd to his side by witty eloquence. But his
character spoke for him ; and his good deeds,
experienced by many, spread a savour which
influenced a wide circle. To many families he
had been a liberal benefactor ; every one in
distress knew where he could find a friend."
And he was returned with an overwhelming
majority. The mob, that had been disposed
to oust him, became furious in his favour. He
was then as calm in his success as he had been
at the prospect of defeat. " I had rather," he
said to his children, " have a shake of the hand
from good old John Newton, than the cheers
of all that foolish m.ob, who praise mc, they
don't know why."
In 1807, again, there was a hard contest, and
Thornton looked upon his defeat as certain.
Against all the entreaties of his friends, he
refused to do as others did — to treat and flatter,
if not openly to bribe ; and again he was
placed at the head of the poll by men whose
respect he had nobly earned by his disinterested
conduct. Even those who would readily have
taken pay for their votes gave them for nothing
to a man so straightforu'ard and disinterested.
One of the doggrcl verses circulated at the
contest expressed the thoughts of all about
their honest representative : —
2;^2 TJiorntons Parliamentary Work.
" Nor place nor pension e'er got he
For self or for connection ;
We shall not tax the Treasury
By Thornton's re-cleclion.'*
Henry Thornton entered Parliament, and
retained his scat there, in order to promote two
sorts of work which were very dear to him, and
to which he devoted the chief energies of his
life. One of these was the furtherance of the
philanthropic efforts which he shared with Wil-
berforce and the other members of that famous
group of religious men known as the Clapham
party. The other was the propounding of
enlightened views on banking and commerce
which have done much to make England as
rich and great as now it is.
The Bank of England was in his day, and
largely through his help, entirely reorganised.
It had been founded, as we have seen, by Wil-
liam Paterson about a hundred years before.
It had grown steadily, and was already not only
a great private establishment, of immense ser-
vice to merchants and their callings, and very
profitable to its shareholders, but also the
powerful agent of the State in its financial
dealings. It was allowed to be a bank for
private persons, on condition of its being also
a bank for the nation, competent to hold the
taxes levied throughout the country, and to
dispense them in the ways appointed by the
The Bank of England. 233
ministers of the State for the country's good.
But when Thornton began hfe, the Bank was
not only being used as a depositary for the
national income. The costly war in which
England was engaged with France involved
far more expense than the taxes could meet.
Much of this was provided for by a great in-
crease of the National Debt, in which the Bank
was an important agent ; much was supplied
by the issuing of additional bank-notes, under
Government authority. For as long a time as
possible the Bank, though authorised, and even
compelled, to issue notes, for which it had no
equivalent of gold in its coffers, was held to the
terms of its charter, by which it was obliged,
as now, to give gold in exchange for notes to
any one who asked for it. This, of course, it
would have been unable to do, had any great
demand been made for gold in lieu of notes ;
and the danger increased with the increased
excess of paper-money over coin in circulation.
At length things came to such a pass, that, in
October 1795, the Directors of the Bank in-
formed William Pitt, then Chancellor of the
Exchequer, that they were on the verge of
bankruptcy, and could not hold out much
longer. Other and more and more urgent
messages followed during nearly a year and a
half. The result was, that, in February 1797,
the Bank was authorised by the Privy Council
234 The Bank R est rk lion Act.
to refuse cash payment for its notes, or the
issue of any greater amount of coin than a
pound or a pound's worth of silver at a time.
In May a law, known as the Bank Restriction
Act, was passed, enforcing that resolution, and
sanctioning an almost unlimited issue of notes.
Sheridan declared it " a farce to call that a
bank whose promise to pay on demand was
paid by another promise to pay at some un-
defined period ;" and Sir William Pultcney
introduced a bill " for the erection of a new
bank, in case the Bank of England did not pay
in specie on or before the 24th of June 1798."
But this opposition was ineffectual, and the
Bank Restriction Act remained in force for
two-and-twcnty years. It did some good, in
setting bankers and financiers to devise some
better system of paper-currency ; but bank-
notes were so lowered in value, that at one
time poor people who had received five-pound
notes as if they were worth ^5, found they
could not exchange them for more than £'^, los.
or £\ a-picce.
Among all the financial reformers induced
by this state of things, none was more earnest
or outspoken than Henry Thornton, who, in
1803, published " An Inquiry into the Effects
of Paper Credit." In it he showed that it was
a great wrong to commerce and society to
issue more paper-money than, in the open
Thoruto7i on Bankbig. 235
market, could be exchanged for its full value
in actual coin ; and that to force upon the
people notes which were not really worth as
much as they professed to be, was a short-
sighted and ruinous policy. He persevered in
offering the same sound arguments, and was a
leading member of the famous Bullion Com-
mittee, appointed in 1810, which fully discussed
the whole question, and ultimately obtained
the adoption of those wiser principles of bank-
ing and monetary exchange which were partly
and beneficially adopted in 18 19, when the
Bank of England was reconstructed by a law
known as Sir Robert Peel's Act.
Before that time, however, Henry Thornton
died, having done much other very useful work
for his country. If merchants and statesmen
honoured him most as a great financier, he was
no less worthy of honour as a great philan-
thropist. He was one of the leaders, in some
respects the chief leader, of the religious com-
munity known as the Clapham party. Wil-
liam Wilberforce, its acknowledged head, had
learnt to be a good man in the house of old
John Thornton, with Henry Thornton for his
fellow-pupil. The two men became fast friends,
and were fellow-helpers for life. " When I
entered life," said Thornton, " I saw a great
deal of dishonourable conduct among people
who made great professions of religion. In
236 TJiornton and Wilhcrfone.
my father's house I met with a person of this
sort. This so disgusted me, that, had it not
been for the admirable pattern of consistency
and disinterestedness which I saw in Mr Wil-
berforce, I should have been in danger of a sort
of infidelity." " I owed much to Wilberforce,
in every sense," he said at another time ; " for
his enlightened mind, his affectionate and con-
descending manners, and his very superior
piety, were exactly calculated to supply what
was wanting to my improvement and my
establishment in a right course. It is chiefly
through him that I have been introduced to a
variety of other most valuable associates."
Wilberforce spoke of Thornton in terms of no
less loving praise.
The two friends and their valuable associates
did noble work amongst them. "In 1789,"
writes Mr Colquhoun, "when both the friends,
then in delicate health, resorted to the Bath
waters, a visit made by Wilberforce to Cowslip
Green, where Hannah More, as he said, ' had
shut herself up in the country, to devote her
talents to the instruction of a set of wretched
people sunk in heathen darkness,' led to an
enterprise of benevolence which long engaged
both the friends. Wilberforce's compassionate
heart was touched by the savage condition of
the neglected people. He engaged, if Hannah
More would undertake the trouble of reclaim-
Thornton and Hannah More. 237
ing them, that he would bear the cost ; any
calls for money he would readily meet ; * for,'
he writes, ' I have a rich banker in London,
Mr H. Thornton, whom I cannot oblige so
much as by drawing on him for purposes like
these.' In 1791, when the two friends were
again at Bath, Henry Thornton accompanied
Wilberforce to Cowslip Green, and thus began
that intimate friendship between Hannah More
and Henry Thornton, which lasted through
their lives. Hannah More soon learnt what
sort of a man Henry Thornton was. She found
his purse open to her in all her difficulties ;
and, better than his purse, his counsels. Trials
had fallen on her and her sister in their bene-
volent labours; threats of prosecution, calum-
nious charges raised by obstinate prejudice,
and envenomed by jealousy, the rancorous
bitterness of the rich proving more odious than
the boorish apathy of the poor. So, when
these things came upon her, she poured forth
her story to her thoughtful friend ; and no
matter how busy the story found him — busy
at his bank, on committees, helping Wilber-
force in the cause of abolition, or assisting him
to make up his mind on the question oi peace
with France — he was never too busy to send
advice to her. No matter what the subject, he
is ready. She is publishing a scries of tracts,
half political, half religious; he reviews, re-
238 Tlior]ito)is rJdlaniJiropies.
touches, and prints them. He writes some
himself. ' While we are taking down a dull
evidence,' he writes from the Finance Com-
mittee, ' I seize a few minutes to write to you
on the subject of tracts. I have to tell you
that I thought it right to prepare a' tract, to
be included in the printed volume.' Again :
' I have some thoughts of writing the second
part of the communion tract, another of
prayers for families, and one for Christmas-
day.' "
Those sentences will help us to understand
the nature of Thornton's religious and philan-
thropic labours through five-and-twenty years
and more. To follow it all we must study
the biographies of Wilberforce, of Clarkson, of
Hannah More, and a score of other worthies ;
yet even then we can follow it but dimly.
Henry Thornton was a modest worker. He
was the mainspring of a hundred movements ;
but he was generally in the back-ground, will-
ing that others should have the praise ; in the
simplicity of his heart believing that all the
praise was really due to them, and satisfied for
himself in thinking that he was able to have
such excellent agents and supporters in his
employment, and use of the money and the
talents given to him.
In one movement, however, which we may
look upon as an illustration of his whole cha-
The Sierra Leone Company. 239
racter and conduct, he was outwardly, as well
as really, the leader. In 1791, he organised a
Sierra Leone Company, and obtained a charter
for it. He was its chairman, and it started
with a capital of ;^i 50,000. But money-making
was not here his object. The company was
intended to organise a settlement of escaped
and liberated slaves from Jamaica, Nova Scotia,
and elsewhere, who would thus, it was hoped,
not only have a comfortable home for them-
selves, but also be able to spread the bless-
ings of civilisation among the native blacks of
Western Africa. " The colony works me from
morning till night," he wrote in November
1791 ; " the importance of the thing strikes me,
and fills my mind so much, that at present busi-
ness, politics, friendship, seem all suspended for
the sake of it." He saw that the first ship was
properly freighted, and properly sent out. He
prepared a complete code of laws for the colony,
and chose for its first governor, Zachary Mac-
aulay, to whose son, the great historian, was
given the name of another influential worker
in the Sierra Leone scheme, and in all
kindred philanthropies — Thomas Babington.
Thornton, Babington, Wilberfurcc, and others,
toiled at home through weary years on behalf
of the colony, and Macaulay worked no less
zealously for it on the spot. Its purposes
failed, partly through evils of climate, partly
240 Thornton's Various Occupations.
through the incompetence of the black colo-
nists ; and in 1808 it had to be transferred to
the Crown, and subjected to dififcrent and
rougher treatment. But the honour due to
Thornton and his associates is as great as
if their philanthropic undertaking had been
crowned with the utmost possible success.
This, too, was the beginning of the noble
enterprise in which Wilberforce was the chief
advocate, by which the slave-trade was abo-
lished, and a death-blow, acting slowly but
surely, was given to slavery itself. Henry
Thornton lived long enough to see and help
on only the commencement of this proud cru-
sade against the most grievous obstacle to
civilisation and progress in modern times. But
his share in it was hardly less on that account.
A marvellous career was that of this good
banker and merchant, who was so much more
than a mere banker and merchant. The toils
of half a dozen lives seemed merged in his
single life. " In his parliamentary work," says
Mr Colquhoun, " his activity became every
year greater as he was better known, till, in
the later years of his life, there were few com-
mittees on finance, or taxes, or public economy,
on which we do not find his name. When we
add to these parliamentary labours the claims
of his constituency, their local requirements,
letters, memorials, private exigencies, and
No Waste of Time. 241
public deputations — when wc reckon up the
weeks of work which his infant colony of Sierra
Leone cost him, — we can see how he toiled.
To these labours are to be added his occu-
pation as a banker, for of the bank he was an
active partner, and his life was cast in a period
of our commercial history the most critical
which British trade has ever undergone. This
business occupied his time, and interrupted
his few intervals of leisure. It brought him
almost daily to the city, broke his holidays,
and forced him to London from Bath, Brighton,
or the Isle of Wight. It left him few and
uncertain seasons either for research or for
reflection. No doubt, as his Parliamentary
work grew, this encroached somewhat on his
banking efforts ; and the business of a banker,
which demands constant supervision, suffered
from this division of his time. But this was
not leisure, but only a change of work ; the
substitution of one class of employment for
another mcjre absorbing." He was an able
and prolific author, too. " He wrote as much
as most men do who have health and abundant
leisure. He seized every fragment of time ;
wrote after his days of canvassing in South-
wark, or after his work at the bank, or while
engaged in the construction of his colony. I le
jotted down his thoughts in his carriage as he
travelled, even on horseback as he rode." Bo
242 Thornton 's A uihorship.
sides his work on " Paper Credit," he wrote a
vokimc of " Commentaries on the Old and New
Testaments," a volume of " Family Prayers,"
and eighty-two essays, enough to fill a dozen
volumes, in the " Christian Observer," which
he was instrumental in founding. "And all
this work," to quote again from Mr Colquhoun,
" was done by a busy politician and banker,
through the orderly application of time and
thought, never hurried, but never idle; never
harassed, but never resting ; moments caught
up as well as hours ; the workman ever work-
ing cheerily under a Father's gracious eye. His
rest was to turn from one labour to a different
one — to go from the bank to a council of bene-
volence — from a political discussion to a strug-
gling colony or a school in difficulties. He
lays down the pen of the financier to take up
the pen of the philanthropist — to write long
letters to a harassed governor — to settle differ-
ences among contending missionaries — to com-
pose tracts for Hannah More."
" If you should sink in the midst of your
work," he said in one of his letters to Hannah
More, " it will be better than sinking, like
Buonaparte, in the midst of the Egyptian
sands, or in that Holy Land which he may have
to traverse. My wife and I have lately ob-
served, and agreed much in the observation,
how much happier and better entitled to com-
His Last Work. 243
fort are they who, towards the close of h'fe,
have to look back on scenes of activity, than
they who have only been talking and feeling
religiously all their days."
In that spirit he lived and worked to the
last. " The close of life," if it means old age,
never came to him. He worked too hard for
that. He began to die while he was yet a
young man, and death came upon him when-
had it been possible for him to be idle, he
might have been in the prime of life. He was
fifty-two when, in 1814, the anti-slavery crusade
was beginning. " We have some dark plots
in our head," he said, " for influencing the
Allied Powers in favour of the abolition of the
slave-trade through this earth of ours." The
plots were to continue, but he was not to share
in their fulfilment. In the autumn of the same
year his health, which had long been breaking,
began to break rapidly. By the end of Octo-
ber he was very ill. Through the next two
months his friends gathered round him, to
take their farewell of a man whom the best of
them, even Wilberforce, had to reverence for
his greater worth. He himself, whenever lie
was strong enough, dictated the last of his
" Family Ptajers." " When the shadows of
the evening fall around us,'' he murmured in the
last of all — a true utterance of Ills own deep
thoughts — " and when age and sickness shall
244 Henry Titorntoit ^s Death.
arrive, and luiman help shall fail, be then
Thou, O Lord, the strength of our hearts, and
our deep portion for evermore ! "
In that temper he died, early in January
1815. " His influence was great," said one of
his many pious friends, Thomas Bowdler, " his
understanding of uncommon power ; and what
one fancied was a careless opinion was often
the result of such deep thought and patient
investigation as would have taken other people
hours to express. I have often thought it was
almost an evidence of the Christian religion,
that so commanding a mind as his, prejudiced
as it was in early life against enthusiasm of all
kinds, should quietly and soberly examine the
subject for himself, with all the force of his
intellect, and end in becoming not only con-
vinced of the truth of religion, but one of the
most warm and devout of her followers. How
we are all to go on without him, I cannot
understand. As a standard for us all to look
up to, he was invaluable. Even this day, the
first that has risen on his lifeless remains, I
have wanted his counsel ; and how many are
there to whom his example gave confidence
and guidance in their humble exertions, who
leant on him, and looked to him in every
season of doubt and temptation ! "
XL
NATHAN MEYER ROTHSCHILD.
[1776-1S36.]
^ " \ Frankfort, as in most other busy
h . , towns, the dirtiest quarter is that occu-
&iSi-=.i£^ pied by Jew money-lenders, pawn-
brokers, and hucksters. A hundred years ago,
when it was dirtier than it is now, one of its
inmates was Meyer Anselm, whose Httle shop
was known by its sign of a Red Shield, or
Roth-Schild, whence he came to be called, and
to call himself, Meyer Anselm Rothschild.
1 le sold all sorts of second-hand goods ; but
he had a special reputation as a collector of
old coins, jewels, cameos, and pictures, and
on that account his shop came to be frequented
by great people as well as little, who came to
look at and to buy his curiosities, and often to
borrow money of him. One of his customers
was William, Landgrave of Hesse, who, after
several years' dealing with him, liked him so
well, that, when the French bombarded Frank-
fort in 1796, he gave him and his treasures
246 The First of the Rof/ischilds.
safe housing in his fortified dwelHng-placc at
Casscl. Tlie French ransacked the Jews' quar-
ter, and, on their retirement, its old inmates
were allowed to disperse themselves over
Frankfort, and to live on an equality with
their Christian neighbours. Meyer Anselm,
therefore, as soon as he went back to the town,
built himself a handsome house in one of its
most fashionable parts.
He was appointed foreign banker and financial
agent to the Landgrave William, and at once
entered on a more extensive and more profit-
able Sort of business than had previously been
within his reach. He was a rich man in 1806,
when the Landgrave, being in his turn forced
to flee from a new French invasion under
Napoleon, placed in his keeping all his trea-
sure, amounting to 3,000,000 florins, or about
^^250,000. This money Rothschild invested
very skilfully ; lending at exorbitant rates,
pawning for trifling sums the property of
owners who in those unsettled times were
never able to redeem it, and turning pence
and pounds in every possible way. When he
died, in 1812, he left 12,000,000 florins to be
shared by his five sons, Anselm, Solomon,
Nathan Meyer, Charles, and James. From
these five sons, on his deathbed, he exacted
an oath that they would keep the business
together, extending it as much as they could.
Nathan Rothschild' s Training, 247
bi't always acting in partnership, so that the
world might know only one house of Roth-
schild. The oath was strictly kept, with this
exception, that Nathan IMcyer, tlie third son,
proving the cleverest of them all, came to be
practically the head of the house, in place of
his eldest brother, Anselm.
This third son, Nathan Meyer, was born at
Frankfort on the i6th of September 1776.
When he was about two-and-twenty, some
fourteen or fifteen years before his father's
death, he left Frankfort to settle in Manchester.
" There was not room enough for all of us in
Frankfort," he said long afterwards. " I dealt
in English goods. One great trader came there
who had the market all to himself He was
quite the great man, and did us a favour if he
sold us goods. Somehow I offended him, and
he refused to show me his patterns. This was
on a Tuesday. I said to my father, ' I will go
to England.' I could speak nothing but Ger-
man. On Thursday I started. The nearer I
got to England the cheaper goods were. As
soon as I got to Manchester I laid out all my
money — things were so cheap ; and I made
good profit."
Manchester, which had been but a village,
and afterwards a small town, for more than a
thousand years, was just then bcginnirg to be
made a great place of business by the new trade
248 RotJiscJdld in Manchester.
in cotton, and the new manufacture of cotton
goods. In it were plenty of young men glad
to borrow money at high rates of interest, for
the sake of establishing themselves as mer-
chants and manufacturers, and young Rotii-
schild was ready to lend money to every oie
whom he could trust to return it. Besides
being a money-lender, however, he was also a
merchant. " I soon found," he said, " that there
were three profits — the raw material, the dye-
ing, and the manufacturing. I said to the
manufacturer, ' I will supply you with material
and dye, and you shall supply me with the
manufactured goods.' So I got three profits
instead of one, and I could sell goods cheaper
than anybody. In a short time I turned my
£^20,000 into ;^6o,ooo. My success all turned
on one maxim. I said, ' I can do what another
man can, and so I am a match for the man
with the patterns, and all the rest of them ! '
Another advantage I had. I was an off-hand
man — I made my bargains at once." It was
a favourite maxim with Rothschild also "to
have nothing to do with an unlucky place
or an unlucky man." " I have seen many
clever men, very clever men," he said,
" who had not shoes to their feet. I never
act with them. Their advice sounds very
well. But fate is against them. They can-
not get on themselves ; and if they cannot do
Rothschild in London. 249
good to themselves, can they do good to
me ? "
Resolving to govern his life by such rules,
not over-exalted, but certainly good models of
selfishness, Nathan Meyer Rothschild put him-
self in a sure way to wealth. In or near the
year 1803, after five or six years passed in
Manchester, he proceeded to settle in London.
He considered that money-lending, the most
profitable of all his businesses, could be carried
on quite as well in one place as in another, and
that other work, quite as remunerative, would
be more within his reach in London than in any
smaller town. This change, indeed, was part
of a plan by which eventually the five brothers
took possession of all the chief centres of
European commerce — Anselm remaining in
Frankfort, Solomon being sometimes in Berlin,
sometimes in Vienna, Charles being in Naples,
James in Paris, and Nathan in London.
London had been a favourite resort of
money-making Jews ever since the Norman
Conquest. In the middle ages, having the
neighbourhood of the Old Jewry for their
special residence, they steadily enriched ihcni-
selves by trade with the Christians, who
thought it a virtue to persecute them. It is
not strange, seeing how hardly tlicy were
treated, that their natural love of wealth should
have resulted in miserly ways, and that their
25D Old J CIV Traders.
natural hatred of Christians slioiild have grown
into a fierce antipathy. Shakespeare's " Mer-
chant of Venice," showing their position in the
trading towns *of Italy, showed also, without
much exaggeration, their position in London
and other English cities. When Antonio, in
the play, comes to ask for a loan of money,
Shylock answers —
" Signior Antonio, many a time and oft
In the Rialto you have rated me
About my monies and my usances :
Still have I borne it with a patient shnig ;
For sufferance is the badge of all our tribe :
You call me misbclievei-, cut-throat dog,
And spit upon my Jewish gaberdine,
And all for use of that which is mine own.
Well, then, it now appears you need my help,
You that did void your rheum upon my beard,
And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur
Over your threshold : monies is your suit.
What should I say to you ? Should I not say,
* Hath a dog money? ij it possible
A cur can lend three thousand ducats? ' Or
Shall I bend low, and in a bondman's key,
With bated breath and whispering humbleness.
Say this :
' Fair sir, you spit on me on Wednesday last;
You spum'd me such a day; another time
You call'd me dog ; and for these courtesies
I '11 lend you thus much monies ?' "
Through four or five centuries the Jews in
England were spurned and spit upon, yet
made great use of, by the Christians, who gave
them a grudging residence among them. But
The Brothers Golds mid. 251
some two hundred years ago they began to
take a better place and fill it better. Their
prudent ways of money-making came to be
closely followed by their rivals and persecu-
tors. They were allowed to trade with Chris-
tians on equal terms, and they showed a dis-
position at any rate not less Christian than
that of many who bore the title.
The most famous, and the most deserving
of fame, among the wealthy Jews who were
in London when Rothschild settled in it,
were the Brothers Goldsmid. Their father,
Aaron Goldsmid, had come from Hamburg
about the middle of the eighteenth century,
and established himself as a small merchant
in Leman Strc-el. His small business was
made a great one by his four sons, the two
younger of whom, Benjamin and Abraham,
were the most prosperous. In 1792 they re-
moved from Leman Street to a house in Capel
Street, opposite the ]5ank of England, and
began using the wealth they had already accu-
mulated as .stock-brokers and mone\'-lcndei-s.
That was the time of I"2nglish fighting with
France, and the Government, being in urgent
need of money with which to pay for the ex-
penses of the war, were beginning the great
system of national loans which are now so
frequent and stupendous. The Cioldsmids were
intrusted with much of this busines.s, and they
252 Two Rich Suicides.
managed it, as well as everything else that
they took in hand, with remarkable honour
and ability. Chance, as well as their own good
sense, was in their favour. In 1794, when
several of their neighbours were ruined, their
entire losses from bad debts amounted to only
;^5o. Both brothers were as generous as they
were rich. Accumulating wealth with unheard
of rapidity, they distributed in charity much
more than the tithes prescribed by their Mosaic
law. Numberless instances of their sharing in
every sort of philanthropic work are on record,
and the memory of their princely benevolence
has not yet ceased among old City men. They
were also famous for the splendid hospitality
with which they entertained all the leaders of
society in their day. They died young, how-
ever, and dismally. In a fit of melancholy
Benjamin Goldsmid hanged himself from his
own bedstead in 1808 ; and in 18 10 Abraham
Goldsmid shot himself in his own garden.
In the latter year, also, at a riper age, died
a yet greater City worthy. Sir Francis Baring.
Baring, the grandson of a Lutheran minister,
who came to England soon after the accession
of William of Orange, and the son of a cloth
merchant, who started a small business in
Devonshire, and made it a large one in London,
was born in 1736. He carried on his father's
trade, and greatly augmented it. He estab-
The Barings. 253
lished an immense traffic with the East Indies
and America, and promptly following the lead
of the younger Goldsmids, dealt largely in na-
tional loans and public securities. Even his
enemies declared him to be " a man of con-
summate knowledge and inflexible honour."
" Few men," it was said, " understood better
the real interests of trade, and few men arrived
at the highest rank of commercial life with
more unsullied integrity," Dying at the age
of seventy-four, he left a fortune worth
;^i, 100,000, and a great house of business,
to be made yet greater through the enter-
prise of his .sons, chief of whom was Alexander
Baring, afterwards Baron Ashburton. " There
are six great powers in Europe — England,
France, Russia, Austria, Prussia, and Baring
Brothers," said a great statesman in 18 18, when
Alexander Baring, courted and dreaded by
sovereigns because of his vast wealth and the
vast influence that it gave him, was decid-
ing whether there should be peace or war in
Europe.
The Goldsmids and the Barings were the
men with whom young Nathan Meyer Roth-
schild, coming to London in 1803, with a
determination to become the greatest mm of
all in the commercial world, had to compete.
lie lacked tiic higher graces, tlie goodness of
heart and the spotless honesty, of his first
^54 Rothschild's Marriage.
livals. But he surpassed them, eminent as
they were, in the taet and shrewdness which
tro so far to the niakinij of commercial success.
When he seemed to be most reckless in his
speculations, he was acting with a cautious-
ness which insured success.
In 1806 he married the daughter of Levi
Burnet Cohen, one of the wealthiest Jew mer-
chants then in London. Prudent Cohen, it is
said, after accepting him as his daughter's
suitor, became nervous about the wisdom of
the match. A man who traded so boldly, he
thought, was very likely to squander his own
and other people's money. He, therefore,
asked for proof of young Rothschild's wealth,
and of its safe investment. Young Rothschild
refused to give it, answering that, as far as
wealth and good character went, Mr Cohen
could not do better than give him all his
daughters in marriage.
If "good character" meant steadiness and
skill in money-making, he was certainly right.
Nathan Rothschild was without a peer in that
art. Having steadily advanced his fortune in
private ways through some years, he began in
1 8 10, the year in which both Sir Francis Baring
and Benjamin Gok'jsmid died, to trade in na-
tional securities. He bought up for a trifling
sum a great number of the Duke of Welling-
ton's drafts for the expenses of the Peninsular
His Mo)icy-viaking Ways. 255
War, which the Government was too poor to
pay when they fell due. These he sold to the
Government at their full price, on the under-
standing that they were not to be paid for for
some time to come. By this means he helped
the Government out of a pressing difficulty,
and at the same time insured a large profit
to himself "It was tJie best business I ever
did," he said.
It was this business that started him on a
new stage in his wonderful course of money-
making. It made friends for him at the Trea-
sury, and led to his employment in other
services of the same sort, and also enabled
him to procure early information as to the
progress of the war then waging, and as to
the policy of the English and foreign Govern-
ments, which gave him a notable advantage
over his fellow -stockjobbers. The ramifica-
tions of the Rothschild establishment and con-
nexions on the Continent, moreover, made him
the best agent of the State in conveying money
to the armies in Spain and elsewhere, and this
agency proved very lucrative to him in various
ways. Seeing the great benefit that he derived
from his appliances for securing early and secret
information as to the progress of foreign affairs,
he made it his business to extend and increase
them to the very utnujst. He turned pigeon-
fancier, and, buying all the best birds lie could
256 R othscJi ild 's Pigeons.
find, he employed some of his leisure in train-
ing them, and so organised a machinery for
rapid transmission of messages unrivalled in
the days when railways and telegraphs were
unknown. A note tied to a pigeon, taught to
fly direct from Paris to London, reached him
in a quarter of the time that was required for
sending it by any other way. He also made
careful study of routes, distances, and various
facilities for rapid travelling, and mapped out
new roads for his messengers. The South-
Eastcrn Railway Company, it is said, estab-
lished their line of steamers between Folke-
stone and Boulogne, because it was found
that Rothschild had already proved that route
to be the best for the despatch of his swift-
rowing boats.
Rothschild's greatest achievement in over-
reaching distance and his fellow-speculators
was in 18 15. While the battle of Waterloo
was being fought on the i8th of June, he
stood on a neighbouring height, watching its
progress almost as eagerly as did Buonaparte
and Wellington themselves. All day long he
followed the fighting with strained eyes, know-
ing that on its issue, to a great extent, depended
his fortune, as well as the welfare of Europe.
At sunset he saw that the victory was with
Wellington and the Allies. Then, without a
moment's delay, he mounted a horse that had
At the Battle of Waterloo. 257
been kept in readiness for him, and hurried
homewards. Everywhere on his road fresh
horses or carriages were in waiting to help him
over the ground. Riding or driving all night, he
reached Ostend at daybreak. There, however,
he found the sea so stormy that the boatmen
refused to trust themselves to it. At last he
prevailed upon one of them to risk his life for
;^8o, to be paid to him if he would cross over
to Dover; and in this way Rothschild suc-
ceeded in crossing the Channel with very little
loss of time. At Dover, and at the other stop-
ping places on the road to London, fresh horses
were in waiting, and he was in London before
midnight. Next morning — the morning of the
20th of June — he was one of the first to enter
the Stock Exchange. In gloomy whispers he
told those who, as usual, crowded round him
for news, that Blucher and his Prussians had
been routed by Napoleon before Wellington
had been able to reach the field. He did not
add, that afterwards Wellington had turned
the fortunes of the day, and sccinxd peace for
Europe. The effect of his report was, as he
intended, a sort of panic among the capitalists
and speculators. Fearing that the funds would
sink very low, they tried to bell out as quickly
as possible, and in doing so sold out at very
great loss. The men who bought from them
were in secret league with Rotlischiid, and a
258 More Money-maki)ig.
great quantity of scrip was transferred to his
coffers during that and the following day. On
the afternoon of the second day, the real issue
of the battle of Waterloo was made known.
Very soon the funds were higher than they
had been during many previous weeks — far
higher than they had been during the two
days of panic ; and Rothschild, quickly selling
the scrip that he had bought, found, it was
reported, that he had made something like a
million pounds by his rapid travelling and
clever deception.
Other millions were collected, rather more
slowly, in ways of which some, at any rate,
can hardly be called honest. One of his smart
speculations was in mercury. Nearly all the
mercury procurable in Europe comes either
from Idria in Illyria, or from Almaden in
Spain. The Almaden mines, famous and pro-
fitable through five-and-twenty centuries, had
fallen for some years into disuse before 1831,
when Rothschild, becoming contractor for a
Spanish loan, proposed, as part payment for
his trouble, to hold them during a certain time
at a nominal rent. That was cheerfully agreed
to, and the mines soon began to give token of
unusual activity. In the meanwhile the great
merchant also got possession of the mines at
Idria. Thus he obtained a monopoly of mer-
cury, and was able to charge for it whatever
RotJischild' s Trade in Loans. 259
he thought fit. Its price was nearly doubled,
and Rothschild was able to make an immense
profit by the arrangement. It was nothing to
him that the exorbitant prices drove some
smaller tricksters to scrape all the quicksilver
from old looking-glasses and the like, and
work it up into poisonous calomel, as well as
bad material for new mirrors, thermometers,
and so forth.
Most of Rothschild's wealth, however, was
made in less disreputable ways. After he had
firmly established himself in London, his great
business was in negotiating foreign loans.
These he was the first to make popular in the
English market. He became the principal
agent of all the great and needy governments
— French and German, Russian and Turkish,
North American and South American — in dis-
posing of their scrip to English stock-jobbers.
London never had in it a man more thoroughly
competent for the carrying on of all sorts of
money-making projects. He was master of
little things as well as great, "His memory
was so retentive," we arc told, " that, notwith-
standing the immense transactions on which
he entered on every foreign post-day, and that
he never took a note of them, he could, on his
return home, with perfect exactness, dictate
the whole to his clerks."
Rothschild had few tastes or \ leasurcs out
26o Rothschild 's View of Money.
of the Stock Exchange and his counting-house
in St Swithin's Lane. When Louis Spohr, the
great German musician, called on him in June
1820, with a letter of introduction from his
brother in Frankfort, he said to him, " I under-
stand nothing of music. This" — patting his
pocket, and rattling the loose coins therein —
"is my music; we understand that on 'Change."
Money -making was the one pursuit and
enjoyment of Rothschild's life. He cared less
than many do for the money when it was
made. " He had no taste or inclination," says
one of his friends, "for what every English-
man seeks as soon as he has money to buy
it — comfort in every respect. His ambition
was to arrive at his aim more quickly and
more effectually than others, and to steer to-
wards it with more energy. When his end was
reached, it had lost all its charm for him, and
he turned his never-wearying mind to some-
thing else." It was in the scramblings and
fightings, the plots and tricks, of making money,
not at all in the spending, not much in the
hoarding of it, that he delighted.
" I hope," said a dinner-companion to him
on one occasion, "I hope that your children
are not too fond of money and business, to the
exclusion of more important things. I am
sure you would not wish that."
" I am sure I should wish, that," he answered;
Rothschild' s Charities. 261
" I wish them to give mind, and soul, and heart,
and body — everything to business. That is the
way to be happy. It requires a great deal of
boldness, and a great deal of caution, to make
a great fortune: and when you ha\'e got it, it
requires ten times as much wit to keep it,"
To all who were willing to work in this
fashion, he was, after his fashion, a good
friend. Some of the wealthiest commercial
houses now in London owe their prosperity to
the readiness with which Rothschild, seeing
good business qualities in the }-oung men
around him, helped them on with his great
influence. There were cases in which he went
out of his way to put exceptional oppor-
tunities of money-making in the way of his
favourites. Even his charities, according to
his own confession, were eccentric, and chiefly
indulged in for his own entertainment. " Some-
times, to amuse myself," he said, " I give a
beggar a guinea. He thinks it is a mistake,
and, for fear I should find it out, off he runs as
hard as he can. I advise you to give a beggar
a guinea sometimes ; it is very amusing."
The great man's jokes were not very witty.
One of the best of them owes its point to his
Jewish pronunciation. At a Lord Mayor's
dinner he sat next to a guest noted for his
stinginess, who chanced to say that, for his part,
he preferred mutton to venison. "Ah, I see,"
262 Rothschild 's Jukes.
Rothschild answered; "you like mutton be-
cause it is sheep (cheap); and other people
like venison because it is deer (dear),"
Another saying attributed to him gives evi-
dence, if true, of some humour. Once, it is
said, a Gerrnan prince, visiting London, brought
letters of credit to the banker. He was shown
into the inner room of the famous counting-
house in St Swithin's Lane, where Rothschild
sat, busy with a heap of papers. The name
being announced, Rothschild nodded, offered
his visitor a chair, and then went on with the
work before him. For this treatment the
prince, who expected that everything should
give way to one of his rank and dignity, was
not prepared. Standing a minute or two, he
exclaimed, " Did you not hear, sir, who I am }
I am" repeating his titles. "Oh, very well,"
said Rothschild ; " take two chairs then."
At another time, two strangers were ad-
mitted into this same private room. They
were tall foreigners, wath mustachios and
beards, such as were not often seen in the city
thirty or forty years ago, and Rothschild,
always timid, was frightened from the moment
of their entrance. He put his own interpre-
tation upon the excited movements with which
they fum.bled about in their pockets ; and
before the expected pistols could be produced,
he had thrown a great ledger in the direction
A Millionaire's Perils. 263
of their heads, and brought in a bevy of clerks
by his cries of " Murder." The strangers
were pinioned, and then, after long question-
ings and explanations, it appeared that they
were wealthy bankers from the Continent,
who, nervous in the presence of a banker so
much more wealthy, had had some difficulty in
finding the letters of introduction which they
were to present.
During the latter years of his life, Rothschild
was said to be always in fear of assassination.
" You must be a very happy man, Mr Roth-
schild," said a guest, at one of the splendid
banquets for which his Piccadilly house was
famous. " Happy ! me happy ! " he exclaimed.
" What, happy ! when just as you are going to
dine you have a letter placed in your hands,
saying, ' If you do not send me ;^50O I will
blow your brains out ! ' Me happy ! "
Perhaps, however, Nathan Rothschild was as
happy as any one as full of the cares of business
as he was could be. He was a zealous money-
maker to the last. His father had directed
that the house of Rothschild should continue
united from generation to generation, l-iach
of the brothers had a share in all the others'
concerns. It was in furtherance of the general
scheme of keeping the family as compact as
possible, that, some time before, Nathan's
youngest brother, James, had married one
264 "IlestMort:'
of his nieces. In 1836 it was resolved that
Nathan's eldest son, Lionel, should marry
one of his cousins, a daughter of Ansclm
Rothschild, of Frankfort. With that object
the father and son went to Frankfort in June.
But on the wedding-day Nathan fell ill. He
died on the 28th of July, not quite sixty years
of age. On the morning following his death,
one of his own carrier-pigeons was shot near
Brighton. When it was picked up there was
found under one of its wings a scrap of paper
with these words written on it, " II est mort."
None but his own kindred ever knew what
was Rothschild's real wealth. The guesses
ranged between ;^3, 000,000 and ;!^ 10,000,000.
He was buried in London, in a coffin " so
handsomely carved and decorated, with large
silver handles at both sides and ends, that it
appeared more like a cabinet or splendid
piece of furniture than a receptacle for the
dead." The chief rabbi, who preached the
funeral sermon, applauded in it the charity of
Nathan Meyer Rothschild, who, during his
lifetime, had intrusted him with some thousands
of pounds for secret almsgiving. But that was
all that the world ever heard of the rich man's
use of his riches in any sort of disinterested
charity, or in any way which, whether it did
good to others or not, was not chosen chiefly
for his own amusement or his own advantage.
XII.
SAMUEL GURXEY.
[1786-1856.]
XE of the Norman barons who came to
England with WiUiam the Conqueror
in 1066 was Hugh de Gournay; and
when William divided the best portions of the
land among his leading followers, large grants
in Norfolk, Suffolk, and elsewhere were made
to the Lord of Gournay. His descendants
were men of mark during the ensuing centu-
ries. In the time of Queen Elizabeth, if not
before, they began to be merchants, the younger
sons generally taking to commerce, while the
elder ones settled down as country gentlemen.
One of these trading members of the family, a
John Gournay or Gurncy, who was born in
1655, and who became a Quaker soon after
the Quaker doctrines had been first preached
by George Fox, became especially eminent in
business. He was a manufacturer, a merchant,
and a banker in Norwich, and his offspring
266 Sa))iuel Giirney 's Training.
carried on his callings, especially that of bank-
ing, with notable success. It is with his great-
great-grandson that we have here to concerrl
ourselves.
Samuel Gurney, the brother of Elizabeth
Fry and Joseph John Gurney, two eminent
philanthropists, was born at Earlham, near
Norwich, on the i8th of October 1786. He
was John Gurney's second son and ninth child.
At the age of seven he was put to school with
the Rev. John Henry Brown, a pupil of the
celebrated Dr Parr, and at fourteen he was
apprenticed to the Clothworkers' Company in
London, and placed in the counting-house, in
St Mildred's Court, Poultry, in which his
brother-in-law, Joseph Fry, who was also a
partner in the bank of Frys & Chapman, car-
ried on an extensive trade as a tea-merchant.
" He took to business and liked it," according
to the report of his niece, whose first remem-
brances of him were as an inmate in the St
Mildred's Court household. " In the counting-
house, as well as in domestic life, he was ex-
tremely amiable and cheerful, and was beloved
by the whole establishment. Although not
brought up in conformity to the costume or
speech of the Society of Friends, he showed
no propensity to follow fashions or gaiety of ap-
pearance beyond a suitable neatness of attire."
From the very first, indeed, he seems to have
His Marriage, 267
been so thoroughly a man, or rather a boy, of
business, as to have cared for no Hghter occu-
pations. In 1807, -when his sister Hannah
married Thomas Fowell Buxton, he went down
to the wedding, but, it is recorded, tired of the
festivities long before they were over, and was
glad to get back to his book-keeping and
money-changi ng.
In the following year, however, Samuel
Gurney was married himself, his wife being
Elizabeth, the daughter of James Sheppard of
Ham House, in Essex, a handsome residence
that soon descended to the )'oung couple, and
was their place of abode during nearly the
whole of their married life. The wealth that
came to Samuel Gurney from his father-in-law,
as well as that bequeathed to him by his father,
who died in 1809, helped him to make rapid
progress in the new business in which he had
embarked a little while before, on his reaching
the age of twenty-one.
The business had begun a few years earlier
than that, growing out of a yet earlier con-
nexion between Joseph Smith, a wool factor
in London, of the firm of Smith & Holt, and
the Norwich Bank. Joseph Smith had found
the advantage of applying part of his savings as
a merchant to the then very slightly-developed
trade of bill-discounting, and John Gurney of
Norwich, with whom he had been acquainted
268 Ric/iardso?i, Overend, & Company.
long before, when both were simply dealers in
raw wool and manufactured cloths, also found
the advantage of sending up to him some of
the surplus money of the Norwich Bank, for
investment in the same way, paying to Smith,
as his commission, a quarter per cent, on the
money laid out in each transaction. This
arrangement having continued for some time, it
occurred to Smith's confidential clerk, Thomas
Richardson, by whom most of the bill business
had been done, that there was room in London
for a separate establishment devoted to trade
in bills. He asked his employer to open an
establishment of that sort, taking him as
managing partner therein. This Joseph Smith
refused to do, and Richardson resigned his
clerkship in consequence. He found the Nor-
wich Gurneys, however, more favourable to his
project, and about the year 1800 the house of
Richardson, Overend, & Company was founded,
the management being divided between him
and John Overend, formerly chief clerk in the
bank of Smith, Payne, & Company. Simon
Martin, an old clerk in the Norwich Bank, went
to London to help to build up the business, and
to watch its movements on behalf of the bank,
whence most of the money was obtained for
investment. The enterprise throve wonderfully
from the first, one great source of its popularity
being the change introduced by the new firm,
Overend, Gzirney, & Covipany. 269
which charged the quarter per cent, commission
against the borrowers of the money, instead of
the lenders as heretofore; and in 1807 John
Gurney added vastly to its strength by intro-
ducing his son Samuel as a partner. About
that time Thomas Richardson retired from the
business. It was carried on under the name of
Overend & Company, even after John Over-
end's death, until the secret of its connexion
with the Norwich house could no longer be
kept, and it assumed its world-famous title of
Overend, Gurney, & Company.
It won its influence and fame through the
skilful way in which its founders contrived to
profit by the altered circumstances of modern
commerce. I a simpler times money meant
only gold, silver, and other precise sorts of
current coin. But the increase of trade and
population, carrying with it a yet greater in-
crease in the demand for money and the uses
to which it may be put, has necessitated an
entire revolution in the finance of commerce.
Money is now not gold and silver alone, but
gold, silver, paper, and anything else that can
be regarded as a trust worthy agent in the
interchange of commodities and the bartering
of capital, labour, and the like. Were we
forced now to carry on all our commercial
dealings by means of gold and silver, it would
only be possible, in spite of the increase of our
2/0 Paper Money.
stores of these metals, to continue a very small
portion of our present trade. This, however,
no one now attempts to do. The legal cur-
rency, whether gold, silver, or bank-notes, is
only a sort of pocket-money in comparison
with the real currency of trade. It serves
for the smaller sort of retail purchases, for
payments across the counter, and the like ; but
the great merchant lias not in his possession
all through his lifetime actual money equal in
amount to the paper equivalent of money that
passes through his hands every day in the
week. All his important business is carried
on exclusively by means of bills, bonds, cheques,
and the other materials included in the terms
"commercial debt" and "credit." His ready
money is lodged with a banker, as has been the
practice since the beginning of the eighteenth
century, except that now he draws cheques for
so much as he needs for use from time to time,
instead of receiving from his banker a number
of promissory-notes, to be passed to and fro,
while the actual deposit was in the banker's
hands, to be used in whatever safe and profit-
able way he chose. Now, however, the cheques
are, in comparatively few cases, exchanged for
real money, they being piled up by the bank-
ers, into whose hands they come, and paired
off one with another, or in heaps together,
while the deposits that they represent are
Modem Credit. 271
left untouched. In this way the money does
double work, being itself available for use by
the banker or his agents, while the equivalent
cheques are quite as serviceable for all the
purposes of trade.
And this is only the simplest instance of
the modern principle of credit. In all sorts
of ways, every bit of money and everything
else that can be taken as a representative
of wealth, whether actual or prospective, is
turned over and over, each turning being a
creation, to all intents and purposes, of so
much fresh money. A merchant, for ex-
ample, buys ;^iooo worth of goods for ex-
port, say to India, China, or Australia. He
pays for the same by means of a bill of ex-
change, accepted as soon as possible, but not
payable till two or three months after date.
The manufacturer or agent of whom he buys
the goods, however, does not wait all that time
for his money. In all probability he imme-
diately gets the bill discounted, thereby losing
some £\^ or ;^2o, but having the sum of ^980
or ;^985 available for appropriation in other
ways, and thus for the acquisition of fresh
profits. Before the original bill falls due, he
has built perhaps twenty fresh transactions on
the basis of the first one, and so, in effect, has
turned his ;C 1000 into ;{;2C,ooo, less the /; 300
or £a,oo that have been deducted by the bill-
272 Sajiincl Gnrney's Business.
broker as discount And the same original
transaction has been made the groundwork of
a number of other transactions on the part of
the merchant who bought the goods. He
bought them for ^Tiooo, to sell again for, say,
;^I200, part of the difference being his profit,
part being absorbed in freight, insurance, and
so forth. He is not likely to be paid for the
goods in less than six months' time, and he
has to pay for them in two or three months.
But long before either of those terms expires,
he has raised part of the money on the security
of his bill of lading, and so is enabled to enter
on other transactions, just as the manufacturer
had done. In such ways as these, and they
are numberless, a very small amount of actual
money goes to the building up, on the one side,
of a vast structure of credit, and on the other
of a vast structure of commerce.
There was a hazy comprehension of this
system long centuries ago. " If you were
ignorant of this, that credit is the greatest
capital of all towards the acquisition of
wealth," said Demosthenes, " you would be
utterly ignorant." But the modern theory of
credit is very modern indeed, having almost
its first exemplification, on a large scale, in
the establishment of Overend, Gurney, &
Company. This house, as we saw, was estab-
lished to make a separate business of bill-dis-
Its Extefision. 273
counting, much more complete and extensive
than the chance trade in bills that had for-
merly been, and that continued to be, carried
on by bankers, merchants, and all sorts of
irregular money-lenders. Very soon after the
time of Samuel Gurney's supremacy in it, it
began to assume gigantic proportions, and it
was for some thirty or forty years the greatest
discounting house in the world, the parent of
all the later and rival establishments that have
started up in London and elsewhere. At first
only discounting bills, its founders soon saw
the advantage of lending money on all sorts of
other securities, and their cellars came to be
loaded with a constantly varying heap of dock-
warrants, bills of lading, shares in railways and
public companies, and the like. To do this, of
course, vast funds were necessary, very much
in excess of the immense wealth accumulated
by the Gurneys in Norwich and elsewhere.
Therefore, having proved the value and stabi-
lity of his business, Samuel Gurney easily per-
suaded those who had money to invest to place
it in his hands, they receiving for the same a
fixed and fair return of interest, and he obtain-
ing with it as much extra profit as the fluctua-
tions of the money-market and the increasing
needs of trade made possible. He became, in
fact, a new sort of merchant, buying credit-
that is, borrowing money— on the one hand,
274 ^ PcDiic Year.
and selling credit — that is, lending money — on
the other, and deriving from the trade his full
share of profits.
Great help came to his money-making and
to his commercial influence from the panic of
1825. That panic arose partly from the exces-
sive speculation which then existed in joint-
stock companies at home, as well as in con-
tinental mines, American cotton, and other
branches of foreign commerce. Several Lon-
don banks failed, and at least eighty country
banks fell to the ground, the Bank of Eng-
land itself being only saved by the accidental
finding of two million one-pound notes that
had been packed away and lost sight of
some time before. Even Joseph John Gurney,
much more of a philanthropist than a banker,
suffered from the pressure. " Business has
been productive of trial to me," he wrote in
characteristic way in his journal, " and has
led me to reflect on the equity of God, who
measures out His salutary chastisement, even
in this world, to the rich as well as the poor.
I can certainly testify that some of the great-
est pains and most burdensome cares which I
have had to endure have arisen out of being
what is usually called a ' monied man.'"
His brother, however, was much more mixed
up in the turmoil. " Knowing intimately, as
he did, the sufferings which awaited those who
Gnnuy 's Prosperity. 2j^
could no longer command credit or obtain sup-
plies from other quarters," said one of Samuel
Gurney's old friends, "his anxiety was felt
more on others' account than his own," — the
fact being, that his own financial dealings were
so sound that he had no fear for himself, and
only had to settle how to make most money
with most secondary advantage to those he
dealt with. " His desire," it is added, "was to
act fairly and justly to his fellow-creatures, as
well as to himself; and thus did he move
onwards, cautiously and step by step through
those troublous times, lest he should lead any
into error by his judgment. It was a remark-
able sight to witness him plunge day b}' day
into the vortex of City business, and return
thence to his own domestic hearth without
any trace of a mammon-loving spirit."
We can well believe that the honest Quaker
was reasonably free from the "mammon-loving
spirit ;" but he knew well how to seek and
secure his own advancement, and this he did
very notably, by lending to many houses
money enough to enable them to tide through
their difficulties, and so bringing to himself
much favour and much new custom during
the following years. From this time forth he
came to be known as a bankers' banker, taking
the place, for many, of the Bank of England.
Hundreds of private banks fell into the way of
276 A Bankers Banker.
sending him, from time to time, their surplus
cash, finding that they were as sure of getting
it back whenever they wanted it as if they
had lodged it in the bank of England, and
that in the meanwhile they were getting
higher interest for it than the Bank would
have granted. " We do not feel the slightest
dependence upon the Bank of England," said
one of the number, ]\Ir Robert Carr Glynn, in
1832, "nor do we feel the slightest obligation
to it in any way."
Of that sort was the business by which
Samuel Gurney grew rich himself, and helped
others to become rich. While he was young
and vigorous, he made money-getting his one
grand pursuit. It is said of him that when
once an elder friend warned him against too
close attention to the things of this world, he
replied that he could not help himself — he
could not live without his business. During
the last ten or twelve years of his life, however,
he left nearly all the management in the hands
of others, and found his occupation in enjoy-
ment of his princely fortune and application to
various charitable and philanthropic undertak-
ings. Charitable he had been all through his
life. " Many are the solid remembrances of
the more prominent features of Mr Gurney's
charities," says his very friendly biographer ;
" but besides those deeds more generally known
Gunny s Charities. 277
to the public, there were many lesser streams
of silent benevolence still flowing from the
fountain of love to God and man, which spread
refreshment around. To many members of his
large family his kindly aid was given, and it
might be said that not only there, but else-
where, he was wonderfully gifted both with the
will and with the power to help. Besides his
efficiency in action, his very presence seemed
to impart strength, courage, and calm in any
emergency, whilst his practical wisdom, his
clear and decisive mind, and noble spirit of
charity, led many to bring cases of difficulty
before him, knowing from experience how sure
and effective was his aid. It may be truly
said of Samuel Gurncy that he loved to do
good service, whether by advice or money — by
his sound judgment or well-apportioned aid.
He really took trouble to serve his fellow-
creatures, and a narration of his mere alms-
giving, extensive as it was, would give a very
limited idea of the good he effected during the
journey of life," Through the time of his
greatest wealth, he is reported to have spent
;^ 10,000 a-year in charities, and one year, it is
said, the amount exceeded £\^,ooo.
Many are the records of his kindly disposi-
tion, shown in little ways and great. " One
afternoon," says one of his clerks, "as Mr
Gurncy was leaving Lombard Street, I saw
278 /// tlic Felon 's Dock.
him take up a large hamper of game to carry
to his carriage. I immediately came forward
and took it from him. He looked pleased, and
in his powerful and hearty voice exclaimed,
' Dost thou know H 's in Leadcnhall
Market .'' ' I replied in the affirmative. ' Then
go there and order thyself a right down good
turkey, and put it down to my account' "
A more important instance of his generosity
is in the circumstance that when, on one occa-
sion, a forgery had been committed to the in-
jury of his Lombard Street house, and the cul-
prit lay in prison with clear proof of guilt,
Gurney refused to prosecute him, and so ob-
tained his release. At another time, we are
told, " one of the silversmiths in the City, and
a man of high esteem for his uprightness, was
accused of forgery. The excitement as to the
probable result of this inquiry was intense, and
the opinions of men differed widely. On the
morning of the decisive day," says the merchant
who tells the story, " I chanced to hear that my
friend Gurney was prepared to stand by the
prisoner in the dock. I immediately proceeded
to Lombard Street, where I found him occu-
pied with the vast interests of his business, and
asked him hastily whether common report were
true. Upon which he said, ' After a most
anxious investigation of the matter, I am
firmly convinced of that man's innocence. I
G unity 's PhilantJiropy. 279
deem it my duty to express this conviction
publicly, and will join him in the felon's dock.'
And most assuredly he went ; nor could any
one easily forget the intense sensation produced
in the crowd of spectators when, on the prisoner
being conducted to his place, the statel)' figure
of Samuel Gurney presented itself to the pub-
lic gaze by the side of the innocent silversmith."
In mitigation of the laws regarding forgery,
in company with his brother-in-law, Thomas
Fowell Buxton, Samuel Gurney first showed
himself to the world as a philanthropist. He
also took a lively interest in all plans for im-
proving and increasing refuges and reforma-
tories. He was for many years, after the death
of William Allen, treasurer to the British and
Foreign School Society, and to other like in-
stitutions he was always a good friend. Visit-
ing Ireland in 1849, he astonished the inhabit-
ants by the liberality with which he drained
his purse to relieve them, as far as he could,
amid their sufferings from the potato famine.
At Ballina he found the town so full of paupers
that there were none able to pay poor-rates,
and the workhouse was consequently bankrupt,
" I found an execution put into it," he said in
one of his letters, " and all the stock furniture
is to be sold off this week, when the poor will
have to lie on straw, and the guardians must
feed them as well as they can."' I le bought up
28o The Friend cf All.
the whole of the furniture for ;;^200, in order
that, being his property, it might be saved from
the creditors.
In 1848 Gurney gave ;i^iooo to the Govern-
ment of Liberia, and he alwaj's took great in-
terest in the prosperity of the little colony of
freed slaves. Nor was he, like some anti-slavery
worthies, careful only for the freedom of the
blacks. In 1852 he sent a petition to the King
of Prussia, on behalf of his dissenting subjects,
praying that full religious liberty might be
accorded them. The King answered that he
did not mean to do anything that could dis-
tress "his good friend Gurney."
Gurney was not a bigot. Some one having
written to him, in 1855, complaining of the way
in which Fox and Penn had been spoken of
by Lord Macaulay, in his History of England,
he answered thus : — " It is a little mortifying
that Macaulay should so have held up our
honourable predecessors ; not that they were
perfect, or were ever held up as such, as far as
I know ; but they were extraordinary men,
wonderfully elucidating and maintaining the
truth. I am not prepared, however, to say that
Fox was clear of eccentricities, and that, at
times, he was not, to a certain extent, under
such influence on his conduct ; but, taking him
for all in all, he was wonderfully gifted and
Saimiel Giirney 's Death. 28 1
enlightened. It will probably' be considered
by Friends whether there should be an answer
somewhat official to those attacks on our two
worthies. I rather lean to it, although it would
be impossible to reach wherever Macaulay's
book may go ; yet, if well done, it might have
a beneficial efiect upon the public mind, and
upon our young people. There is, however,
one consolation. ' The truth as it is in Jesus,'
— the truth as maintained by Friends — is un-
changeable, and remains the same, however
feeble, or even faulty, its supporters may have
been and are."
That letter was written from Nice, whither
Samuel Gurney had gone after the death of his
wife, hoping to improve the health that had
been greatly shattered by his loss, and the
anxiety that preceded it. But in that he was
mistaken. Growing worse in the spring of
1856, he hurried homewards, hoping to end his
days in his own country, and among his own
kindred. He reached Paris, but could go no
further. There he died, on the 5th of June,
1856, seventy years old, and one of the richest
and most envied men in Europe.
The house of Ovcrcnd, Gurney, & Company,
which he made so famous, lasted only ten years
longer. On Samuel Gurncy's retirement, Mr
David Barclay Chapman became the chief
282 Over cud, Giirmy, & Couipariy.
manager of the business. He retired in turn,
late in 1857, and then the direction fell into
less skilful hands. The establishment became
a Limited Liability Company in August 1865,
and failed in May 1866.
XIII.
GEORGE PEABODY.
|E have already seen how enterprising
men have come from various parts of
England and from foreign lands to
settle in our great metropolis, and to win fame
and fortune for themselves and to augment
the wealth and enterprise of their adopted
house, as famous London merchants. Our last
hero shall be one, surpassed in worth and
wisdom by none of his forerunners, who was
neither an Englishman nor a foreigner, one
of the famous race of colonists, who, having
England for their mother-country, have estab-
lished a greater England on the other side of
the Atlantic. George Pcabody is only the
most notable of a crowd of great Americans,
who, enriching themselves and the land of their
hirlh, have done no less service to the nation
from which their own nation is descended.
The Pcabody family seems to be of Leicester-
shire origin, but it was from Saint Albans, in
286 George Peabodj's ScJioolmg.
Hertfordshire, that Francis Peabody went, in
1635, to be one of the first settlers in New
England. He was then twenty-one, and he
lived sixty- three years in his new home. Six
sons and eight daughters were born to him,
and the family multiplied greatly in succeeding
generations ; Danvers, in Massachusetts, being
its head-quarters. There George Peabody, the
great-great-great-grandson of old Francis, the
patriarch, was born on the i8th of February,
1795. His parents were not rich, and all the
education possible to him was obtained in the
district school of his native town, still little
more than a village. Even that came to an
end when he was eleven years old. In 1806
he became a grocer's boy in Danvers, and he
was so employed for four or five years. At
sixteen he went to be clerk to his elder brother,
who had started a dry-goods store at New-
bur}-port, in the north-eastern corner of Mas-
sachusetts ; but only a ic\^ months afterwards
a great fire broke out in the town, half de-
stroying it, and ruining the enterprise of the
brothers. Young Peabody then went to
Georgetown, in Columbia, where an uncle
offered him a post in a dry-goods business,
which he also had just started.
That was in the spring of 1812. The war of
18 12 was then breaking out, and the lad be-
came a volunteer in a company of artillery.
His Progress hi America. 287
He was stationed for a few months at Fort
Warburton, but no active work could be found
for him or his comrades, and he soon went
back to his uncle's store. The uncle being a
poor man, and perhaps not a very clever one,
the store was not successful, and after two
years' occupation in it, George Peabody left to
become manager of another dry-goods business,
established by a rich Columbian, named Elisha
Riggs. Elisha Riggs's friends blamed him for
confiding so much to a youth of only nineteen;
but his wisdom was soon proved. The busi-
ness was very successful. In 18 15 it was
transferred to Baltimore, to be carried on in a
larger way by the new firm of Riggs & Pea-
body, which afterwards, on the retirement of
the senior partner in 1829, was changed to
Peabody, Riggs, & Company.
For more than twenty years George Peabody
lived in Baltimore, working hard at his trade,
which consisted chiefly in the importation of
manufactured goods from Europe and their
sale in America, but to which, almost from the
first, an irregular sort of banking business was
added. In 1822 branch businesses were opened
in Pennsylvania and New York, all being
under the close superintendence of Peabody.
He was also occasionally employed in finan-
cial negotiations for the State of Marjland,
and these duties, as well as his own trade,
2 88 Ptabody in London.
brought him often on short visits to England
during the ten }'ears following upon 1827. On
both sides of the Atlantic he won the respect
of all with whom he came in contact, by " a
judgment quick and cautious, clear and sound;
a decided purpose ; a firm will ; energetic and
persevering industry ; punctuality and fidelity
in every engagement ; justice and honour con-
trolling every transaction ; and courtesy, that
true courtesy which springs from genuine kind-
ness, presiding over all the intercourse of life."
In 1836 Peabody resolved to leave the busi-
ness which he had already made famous in
other lands, and to extend it mightily by
opening an establishment, under his own man-
agement, in London. Since February 1837,
London has been his adopted home, and
fortune, favouring him amid the misfortunes of
others, came with him. The summer of 1837
was a time of great commercial crisis in
America and among English merchants whose
chief trade was with the American continent.
Three-quarters of all the banks in the United
States fell one after another with a tremendous
crash, and thousands of traders, hitherto pros-
perous, were ruined by the catastrophe. "That
great sympathetic nerve of the commercial
world, credit," said George Peabody's friend,
Edward Everett, the great author, orator, and
diplomatist, twenty years afterwards, " as far
TJie Ca2isc of his Success. 289
as the United States were concerned, was for
the time paralysed. At that moment, Mr
Peabody not only stood firm himself, but was
the cause of firmness in others. There were
not at that time, probably, half-a-dozen other
men in Europe who, upon the subject of
American securities, would have been listened
to for a moment in the parlour of the Bank of
England. But his judgment commanded re-
spect ; his integrity won back the reliance
which men had been accustomed to place in
American securities. The reproach in which
they were all involved was gradually wiped
away from those of a substantial character ;
and if, on this solid basis of unsuspected good
faith, he reared his own prosperity, let it be
remembered that at the same time he retrieved
the credit of the State of Maryland, of which
he was agent — performing the miracle by
which the word of an honest man turns paper
into gold."
That excellent beginning of his career in
London placed Peabody in the foremost rank of
merchant princes. In London and in all parts
of England he bought British manufactures for
shipment to the United States, and the ships
came back freighted with every kind of Ameri-
can produce for sale in England. To that
lucrative occupation, however, was added one
far more lucrative. The merchants and manu-
T
290 Pea body as a Danker.
facturcrs on both sides of the Atlantic, who
transmitted their goods tlirough him, some-
times procured from him advances on account
of the goods in his possession long before they
were sold. At other times they found it con-
venient to leave large sums in his hands long
after the goods were disposed of, knowing that
they could draw whenever they needed, and
that in the meanwhile their money was being
so profitably invested that they were certain
of a proper interest for their loans. Thus, he
became a great banker as well as a great mer-
chant, and, ultimately, much more of a banker
than a merchant.
From the year 1843 especially, when he
retired from the house of Peabody, Riggs, &
Company, and founded the much greater house
of George Peabody & Company, he ran a race
with other great monetary trackers like Samuel
Gurney, the Rothschilds, and the Barings.
The Barings having most to do with American
commerce, were his chief rivals ; and here the
friendly rivalry was carried on with a native of
his own country. The working head of the
house of Baring at this time was Joshua Bates,
who was born at Weymouth, near Boston, in
1788. In 1825, having previously had many
dealings with the family, he came to London
to become a member of the famous establish-
ment, and from 1828 till the time of his death
An Atiglo-Ajncrican. 291
in 1864 he was its principal manager. For
many years he was in intimate friendship with
Coleridge, and during that period Bates's
drawing-room was a favourite haunt of the
admirers of the great thinker and great talker.
Another of Joshua Bates's friends was Prince
Louis Napoleon. The intimacy which existed
before 1848 between the wealthy merchant and
the eccentric refugee continued without hind-
rance, it is said, after the refugee had become
Emperor of the French. Bates was of generous
disposition, and, among other benefactions,
gave more than ^^ 20,000 to found and main-
tain the free library of Boston.
Much greater and wider have been the
philanthropies of George Peabody. From the
commencement of his wealth-winning, he put
his riches and the influence that came with
them to good use. Of his trading establish-
ment, he said : " I have endeavoured, in the
constitution of its members and the character
of its business, to make it an American house,
and to give it an American atmosphere, to
furnish it with American journals, to make it
a centre of American news, and an agreeable
place for my American friends visiting Lon-
don." An American himself, who had become
a citizen of London, he did his utmost to
strengthen the bonds of friendship between
the United States and Great Britain. During
292 Pcabody's Good Work.
many years, until it was deemed more suitable
that the whole body of American residents in
London should unite in the work, he celebrated
the famous Fourth of July with a sumptuous
dinner, at which the leading men of both
countries were invited to join in the fostering
of international friendship. To him were due
the principal arrangements for organising and
making conspicuous the wonderful display of
American manufactures at the great Exhibi-
tion of 185 1, and an entertainment given by
him, at the London Coffee-House, on the 27th
of October in that year, was everywhere re-
cognised at the time as an unparalleled occasion
for the interchange of national courtesies and
the strengthening of national good-will.
These were matters which, by reason of their
practical results, were not to be thought lightly
of. But the daily influences of his honest life
and stupendous work were yet more moment-
ous. So, too, the private charities which pre-
ceeded and attended his great acts of public
benevolence have been of no mean importance.
Acquiring great wealth, he has always used it
generously.
From the first he showed himself a good
friend to his native village, since grown into a
prosperous town. Once, when it was grievously
injured by fire, he helped to rebuild it, and,
over and over again, he furnished fresh tokens
His Charities in America. 293
of his generous remembrance of it. In 1S52,
on the occasion of a public celebration, he sent
from London a letter, asking that he might not
be forgotten in the rejoicings of his friends,
and enclosing a sentiment, which was not to
be opened until the proper time for toast-
giving at the dinner. The sentiment was :
'* Education, a debt due from present to future
generations," and as his share in payment ol
the debt, he placed in the envelope a draft for
;iC4,000, to be applied to " the promotion of
knowledge and morality in Danvers." Out of
that gift grew the Peabody Institute, to which
he afterwards subscribed upwards of £^,qqo
more.
In 1856 he went to Danvers, to revisit the
scenes of his childhood, and to receive the
honours which his fellow-townsmen were eager
to offer. " Though Providence," he then said,
"has granted me an unvaried and unusual
success in the pursuit of fortune in other lands,
I am still in heart the humble boy who left
yonder unpretending dwelling. Tiiere is not
a youth within the sound of my voice whose
early opportunities and advantages arc not
very much greater than were my own, and I
have since achieved nothing that is impo.ssiblc
to the HK^st humble boy among you."
Another famous instance of George Pea-
body's generosity was in a gift of ;^ 100,000 to
294 '^^'^ Pcabody A bnshouscs.
Baltimore, for the establishment of an Edu-
cational Institute, which should also contain a
free library, an academy of music, and a gal-
lery of art. In 1866 he gave ;{^30,000 to the
Harvard University. A yet greater instance
sifrnaliscd his retirement from the commercial
world of London in 1862. He then placed in
the hands of trustees ;^i 50,000, to be so ex-
pended as "to ameliorate the condition of the
poor and needy of this great metropolis, and
to promote their comfort and happiness ; " and
suggested that the best way of carr}'ing out
his intentions would be " to apply the fund, or
a portion of it, in the construction of such im-
proved dwellings for the poor as may combine,
in the utmost possible degree, the essentials of
healthfulncss, comfort, social enjoyment, and
economy." That suggestion being adopted,
commodious buildings have been set up, or
are still being erected, at Spitalfields and at
Chelsea, with accommodation for about two
hundred persons in each ; at Bermondsey,
large enough for about four hundred ; at
Islington, adapted for six hundred and fifty ;
and at Shadwell, for a yet larger number of
inmates. In continuance of this good work, the
benefactor applied a further sum of ^^ 100,000
in 1866, and a second sum of like amount on
the 5th of December 1868.
The modest, manly letter to the trustees
A Fresh Act of Gmerosity. 295
announcing this fresh act of munificence, is
worth quoting entire : —
'•My Lord and Gentlemen, — I beg to
acquaint you, who have so kindly undertaken
the management of the fund set apart under
my second deed of gift of the 19th of April
1866, for the benefit of the poor of London
and its vicinit}', that, in pursuance of an inten-
tion which 1 have entertained since the crea-
tion of that fund, I am desirous now of adding
to it a further sum of ;^ioo,ooo.
" In contemplation of this, I purchased,
about three years ago, a tract of freehold build-
ing land, of about fifteen acres in extent, at
Brixton, near the City of London School,
easily accessible, and within a few minutes'
walk of frequent trains to and from London.
This land has increased in value, and can now
be let, on building leases of eighty years, at
rents producing about 8 per cent, per annum
on the cost, which is ^{^ 16,285 ^7'^- 3<J- This
land I propose to convey to you with the
same powers as are conferred by the deed
over the other property of this trust, and with
discretion to you cither to deal with it as a
source of income by letting it, or any portion
of it, on lease ; or, should you deem it expe-
dient, to retain it in your own hands as sites
for dwellings to be erected by the trust.
296 Princely Benevolence.
" Pursuant to my letter of the 29th January
1866, I transferred to you, subject to a contin-
gency therein explained, 5000 shares in the
Hudson's Bay Company, which accordingly
stand in your names, together with 642 addi-
tional shares purchased by the reinvestment
of the accruing income of the previous 5000.
These 5642 shares I have since redeemed,
conformably to the deed of the 19th April
1866, by the payment of ;iCioo,ooo on the ist
February last. I have now to acquaint you
that it is my intention, so soon as the neces-
sary deeds can be prepared, to hand the shares
over to you to be retained or dealt with, ac-
cording to your best judgment and discretion.
The price of these shares shall be fixed on the
17th inst. by the Stock Exchange sales on
that day, when I will hand to you a cheque for
the balance to make the gift a cash value of
ii^iOO,000. This amount will increase my for-
mer donation of the second trust to ^^ 200,000,
and, including my gift under the first trust in
March 1862, of ;^i 50,000, a total of ;^35o,ooo.
" I trust you will see manifested in this
further donation an expression of my entire
satisfaction with the manner in which you have
conducted the affairs of the trusts. — I am, with
great respect, your humble servant,
" George Peabody."
A Modern Hero. 297
It is not strange that a man so generous as
this should be publicly thanked for his bene-
factions by the United States Congress and
the Queen of England ; or that spontaneous
praises of him should rise from the hearts of
millions on both sides of the Atlantic, to find
utterance sometimes in verses like the follow-
ing :—
" We mourned the old chivalric times,
Their virtues, with their glories, dead —
Life stricken wholly from romance —
' And what is left to us 1 ' we said.
Up through the land the murmur rose :
' Oh for the days that are no more,
\Vhen love of God wrought love of man,
And all were human to the core !
" ' The great Arthurian days we mourn,
And all the lapsing years that wrouglit
Change after change, yet evermore
Some varying phase of splendour caught ;
Still noble deeds, still gentle lives,
Till every knightly heart grew cold,
And Valour's sunset-radiance lit
The tournay of the Cloth of Gold
" ' The poetry of earth is dead :*
What lesser griefs should we bemoan,
• " The poetry of earth is never dead."— Keak.
298 /;/ Praise of Pcahody.
With Science in the place of Faith,
With quicken'd brains and hearts of stone 1
Our noblest triumphs mock our skill,
We link the Continents in vain —
It onl)' tends to sordid ends,
And whets the appetite for gain.'
" So from our lips remonstrance fell,
When through the land a rumour went, —
' The old heroic fire revives —
Its pulsing fervour is not spent !
The record of the glowing past
Shows in its dim and doubtful page
No deed like that which greets the eyes
Of this debased, prosaic age.
" ' For lo ! a Queen of sovereign sway,
Of zoneless empire, quits her throne,
Stooping to v/elcome one who comes
A stranger, nameless and unknown :
No comely youth in knightly guise
Shining at ruffled beauty's knees —
A silver'd head, a homely form —
No more the queenly woman sees.
" ' No more ; but in her heart there glows
The memory of a nol)le deed,
Of succour to her people lent,
Of princely aid in sorest need.
And gracious is her tearful smile
As forth she thrusts a trembling hand,
In Praise of Pcabody. 299
And bids him in her name receive
The homage of her grateful land.'
" Homage to Goodness ! Queenly meed
Of generous thanks to simple Worth !
Thus does the old chivalric soul
Survive in us of later birth ;
Nor doubt its promptings in the heart
Of him, — his nation's noblest son, —
The largesse of whose liberal hand
A sovereign's thanks has rightly won.
" Never did truer beauty clotlie
The radiant limbs of courtly knight,
Than clothes that brow serenely smooth,
And fills those eyes with gentle light.
To latest times that homely form,
And that familiar, kindly face,
The holier memories of men
Will with a tender beauty grace.
"' ^\'Tlere'er that honoured name is heard
The tears will gleam in woman's eyes ;
The hearts of men will stir and creep,
And blessings to their lips will rise.
Though Science join'd the sundcr'd worlds,
It needed yet what he has done, —
A noble action, meekly wrougiu.
Has knit the hearts of both in one.
"Yes, and as, far above the glow,
AMicn all the West is fierce with flame,
300 Modern London Commerce.
A faint star brightens to the night,
Decp'ning about it — so his fame,
Surviving all the transient bloom
That makes the passing present bright,
Will shine, and still resplendent shine,
An orb of ever-gathering light."
[From London Society, October 1866.]
George Peabody has earned all that honour
by reason of his princely benefactions ; but
there has been no less benefaction in his
honest pursuit of commerce, during more
than twenty years in Baltimore and five-
and-twenty years in London. Every honest
merchant is a benefactor, as thereby he aids
the progress of all classes of society in wealth
and civilisation.
The sum of the benefactions of the merchants
of London is to be seen in its present pros-
perity. The prophecy of Pope has been more
than fulfilled :—
" The time shall come, when, free as sea or wind,
Unbounded Thames shall flow for all mankind;
Whole nations enter at each swelling tide,
And seas but join the regions they divide."
London is now the great emporium of the
world. In it are assembled traders of every
race, who deal in the produce of every quarter
of the globe. About 30,000 ships enter it each
The Eviporiuvi of tJic World. 301
year, bearing more than 6,000,000 tons of
cargo, valued at considerably more than
£lo,ooo,QQO : and the same ships take back
to the lands from which they came an equal
quantity of goods of almost greater value.
Chief among its annual imports are about
400,000 oxen, sheep, and cows ; more than
3,000,000 quarters of corn ; 300,000 tons of
sugar ; more than 80,000,000 pounds of tea,
and more than 70,000,000 pounds of coffee ;
about 16,000,000 gallons of wines and spirits,
md more than 35,000,000 pounds of tobacco;
an immeasurable store of all sorts of miscel-
laneous articles of food, including 10,000,000
pounds of pepper alone ; a supply, no less
various and extensive, of dyes, drugs, and
the like ; more than 80,000,000 pounds of
wool ; and more than 30,000 tons of metal.
In return for these imports, it exports each
year about ;^9,ooo,ooo worth of textile
fabric, cotton, woollen, linen, and silk, besides
about ;^ 1, 500,000 worth of made-up clothing,
and leather of nearly the same value ; nearly
il'6,000,000 worth of rough metals, and finished
machinery to be sold for about _^9,000,000.
In other words, though robbed of the Fast
India monopoly, it still has more than three-
quarters of the stupendous trade that lias
grown up with India, receiving nearly all its
produce, with the exception of cotton, which
303 The Trade of London.
goes direct to Liverpool or Glasgow. It re-
ceives nearly seven-eighths of the coffee sent
from Ceylon, and from China it imports nearly
all the tea sent to this country, with about a
third of its silk. Australia sends to London
more than half of the wool grown for English
use ; and to it come about a fifth of the corn,
and a sixth of the wool, nearly half of the
tobacco, and quite half of the sugar despatched
to Great Britain from the West Indies and the
continent of America. Moreover, it absorbs
more than half of the English trade with
Europe, receiving about a quarter of the grain,
about half of the provisions, about two-thirds
of the wines and spirits, and nearly all the live
cattle, with a goodly share of all the other
commodities that arc brought thence for sale
among us. In return for these imports, it ex-
ports a sixth of the textile fabrics, cotton,
woollen, linen, and silk that are manufactured
in England for foreign or colonial use, a quar-
ter of the wrought and unwrought metals, and
a third of the finished machinery, about half
of the leather, and more than half of the pro-
visions and miscellaneous articles which are
sent abroad each year.
Some notion of the extent of London com-
merce may be gathered from the nature of the
docks which it employs. In former times, the
old-fashioned quays and wharves of the Thames
The Docks of London. 305
served for all the loading and unloading that
had to be done. But near the middle of the
eighteenth century these whar\'cs and quays
began to be quite insufficient for the growing
wants of commerce. At last, in 1796, a plan
was started by the West India merchants for
the construction of a dock and adjacent ware-
houses adapted to the trade in which they were
engaged. The projected capital of ;^8oo,ooo
was subscribed in a couple of days ; and after
five years spent in obtaining the sanction of
Parliament, the West India Docks were begun
in iSoo, and opened for business in 1802. In
1 801 the London Docks were commenced, to
be finished in 1805, at a cost of ;C2,ooo,ooo.
They were 100 acres in extent, with room for
500 ships at a time, and with warehouses large
enough to hold 230,000 tons of the wine,
brandy, tobacco, rice, and miscellaneous arti-
cles for which they were specially designed.
The East India Docks were sanctioned in
1803, "for the accommodation of the East
India shipping of the Port of London." In 1838
they were united with the West India Docks,
the two having a surface of 87 acres, with room
«for 624 vessels, and warehouses able to contain
about 200,000 tons of goods. On one occasion
there was lodged in them ;{^20,000,000 worth of
colonial produce, comprising 148,563 casks of
sugar, 70,895 barrels and 33,648 bags of coffee,
3o6 TJicir Vast Extent.
35,158 pipes of rum and Madeira, 14,000 logs
of mahogany, and 21,000 tons of logwood.
These three establishments had, for some
twenty years, a monopoly in the dock-business
of London. In 1823 the Saint Katherine's
Docks were instituted " on the principle of free
competition in trade, and without any exclu-
sive privileges and immunities," as it was
declared in the Act of Parliament permitting
them. They were constructed by Telford in
more imposing shape than any of the others,
on as much space as could be obtained between
the London Docks and the Tower. That
space measured 23 acres, and was obtained by
the demolition of 1250 houses, and the turning
out of 11,300 residents in them, at a cost of
about ;^2,ooo,ooo ; but it was soon found to be
wholly inadequate to the wants of the city.
Therefore, in 1850, the Victoria Docks were set
up, with all the later appliances of engineering
and mechanical progress. In i860 the Victoria
Docks gave shelter to 2682 ships, with a burthen
of 850,327 tons ; the East and West India
Docks to 1200 ships carrying 498,366 tons;
the London Docks to 1032 ships with 424,338
tonnage ; and the Saint Katherine's Docks toi
905 ships with 223,397 tonnage. Very exten-
sive also are the Commercial Docks on the
south side of the Thames.
In general commerce London engrosses
Trade in Bullion. ^oy
nearly a fourth of the whole business of Great
Britain. It has almost a monopoly in another
branch of trade. Nearly all the gold and
silver bullion and specie, either imported or
exported, enters, quits, or passes through the
town in which the Bank of England and the
Mint are lodged. In 1865, London received
gold valued at ^5,045,000 from Australia,
;{^4,298,ooo from the United States, and
i^5, 1 26,000 from other places ; in all,
;^i4,469,ooo ; of which rather more than half
was sent abroad again, ;{^6,o72,ooo to the Con-
tinent of Europe, ;^575,ooo to India and Egypt,
;^r, 581,000 to Brazil and South America, and
;{r245,ooo to other places. In the same year
^^^4,923,000 came to London in silver from
Mexico, ^72,000 from Brazil, ;6"i, 654,000 from
the Continent, and ;^3o6,ooo from other parts,
in all, ;{;"6,95 5,000 ; and of this nearly all was
sent abroad again, ^^3,801,000 to India and
Egypt, £S'702,ooo to the Continent, and
;^ 193,000 to other parts.
These figures show an excess of imports
over exports, in gold and silver bullion and
specie, of ;^6,254,ooo. The increased wealth
pf the country, however, is by no means indi-
cated by the increase of gold and silver in its
possession. Wealth is now understood to be
neither money by itself, according to the shal-
low systems of economical science that pre-
3o8 Money and Wealth.
ceded the times of Adam Smith, nor, as Adam
Smith defined it, " the annual produce of the
land and labour of society ;" but " all useful or
agreeable things which possess exchangeable
value." This, indeed, is the oldest view of all.
" We call wealth," said Aristotle, " everything
whose value is measured by money " — money
being the most convenient standard of mea-
surement, or the most portable representative of
the wealth, which is composed alike of land and
its material products, such as the houses that
are built on it, the corn that is grown from it,
the minerals that are dug out of it, and the
thousand and one manufactured articles that
result from its cultivation ; of the labour that
is expended upon those operations, and in all
other exercises of muscle and brain ; and of
incorporeal, transferable property, like shares
in trading companies, mortgages on material
possessions, or property in the public funds.
" A simple invention it was," says Mr Carlyle,
"in the old-world grazier, sick of lugging his
slow ox about the country till he got it bar-
tered for corn or oil, to take a piece of leather,
and thereon scratch or stamp the mere figure
of an ox, or pccus : put it in his pocket, and
call itpccimiay money. Yet hereby did barter
grow sale ; the leather money is now golden
and paper, and all miracles have been out-
miracled ; for there are Rothschilds and Eng-
Trade in Money. 309
Hsh National Debts ; and whoso has sixpence
is sovereign — to the length of sixpence — over
all men ; commands cooks to feed him, phi-
losophers to teach him, kings to mount guard
over him to the length of sixpence." Money
now really consists, not only of the coin issued
from the Mint, and of the notes issued from
the Bank of England on the security of the
coin or bullion retained in its cofifers, and of
the debts for which Government is answerable,
but also of all other marketable symbols of
property. Bills of exchange, promissor}'- notes,
and all the various paper equivalents of wealth,
real or assumed, arc now of vastly more exten-
sive currency than that which has the Mint
mark, or the Bank of England stamp.
And the trade in these materials is, now-a-
days, the most gigantic of all. The farmer
and the miner bring to light the buried trea-
sures of the earth ; tho manufacturer makes
those treasures available for use ; and the mer-
chant cither brings them together for manu-
facture, or, when they are manufactured, sends
them far and near to every district that is in
need of them ; but it is the banker who pro-
vides the circulating medium, without which
none of those businesses could conveniently or
cfTiciently be carried on. The richest and most
influential men in all the world are now the
bankers and bill-discounters, the negotiators
3IO TJic Stock ExcJiaugc.
of foreign wants, and other dealers in public
credit. Hence the vast importance of the
Stock Exchange, in which millions pass each
day from hand to hand, partly in answer to
the healthy requirements of trade, and partly,
perhaps chiefly, in furtherance of wanton and
often ruinous speculation. The great financial
question of the day is, how to regulate this in-
stitution so as best to meet the needs of honest
trading, and to leave least room for the gam-
bling and fraud which are the chief causes of
money panics and commercial disasters. But
there can be no question as to the magnitude
of its operations, and the extent of its influ-
ence. In 1865, besides all its traffic in the
English funds, in foreign shares, and in the
shares of the innumerable public companies
already in existence, the Stock Exchange was
the scene of negotiation for six new foreign
loans, amounting in all to ^^"46,236,363, and
for two hundred and eighty-seven companies,
with a professed capital of i^ 106,99 5, 000, all
available for speculative purposes, and with an
actual deposit of iJ 12, 174,790.
But the commercial importance of London
is greater even than any statistics would
imply. The chief centre of trading life, vast
transactions, are carried on in it, which are in
no way represented by its own imports and ex-
ports. Its merchants buy in other markets goods
TJie Empire of Commerce. 3 1 1
for other markets, without their being required
to pass through London at all. Men like
George Peabody, the Barings, and the Roths-
childs sit like kings upon commercial thrones,
and issue mandates that are obeyed, in every
quarter of the world, with a promptitude and
thoroughness that despots might envy. And
the wealth that they win by their enterprise
makes them richer than many sovereigns. To
understand the profits of London merchants,
we must measure their landed possessions, and
see the places they have attained in the ranks
of the aristocracy. From the time when com-
merce began to be important in Enj^lish his-
tory, the wealth and worth of its leading men
have won for them high rank and honour;
and more great families owe their origin to
trade than to any other calling. Some have
attained nobility, like the Dukes of Leeds,
who trace their pedigree to Ned Osborne, the
London 'prentice of Queen Elizabeth's days,
and the family of Barings, now possessed of
two titles, Ashburton and Northbrookc. Others
are no less eminent as commoners, whether
their eminence is in their wealth, like that of
the Rothschilds, or their worth, like that of
Cobden, a merchant himself, or Gladstone, the
son of a merchant.
Here, then, our brief sketches of famous
312 TJie Development of Trade.
London merchants come to an end. We have
seen how the general influences of civilisation
have been wisely strengthened by a few
notable men in the direction of trading enter-
prise. The few whose lives wc have glanced
at are only conspicuous specimens of the many
who have made London and its commerce
what they now are. They are only some of
the captains of a vast army, which has been
fighting zealously for English advancement
and the civilisation of the whole world during
half-a-dozen centuries.
There was fighting in long previous cen-
turies, but, as far as England and London were
concerned, only by an untrained rabble. There
were merchants of a humbler sort in very an-
cient times. Their fundamental principles of
action were the same as those of the most
enlightened and prosperous men of modern
times. To utilise the treasures of the earth, to
subject them to skilful handiwork, directed by
skilful headwork, and then to exchange the
commodities they had produced for the com-
modities produced by others, — this was their
attempt. But at first the attempt was neces-
sarily feeble. The best workers were very
ignorant, and they were opposed by people
more ignorant than themselves. English com-
merce made but poor strides until its worthies
learnt to band themselves together, as we have
Ttu Progress of Trade. 3 1 3
seen them doing in the trading companies and
the guilds of the Middle Ages. That was the
first effort at organising the great army of
commerce, and by this means famous triumphs
were attained. In course of time, however, the
discipline of these guilds and companies proved
oppressive to their most enterprising members,
who broke from the ranks to achieve special
triumphs, either as independent toilers or as
founders of new trading associations, which, in
turn, did excellent work, and were superseded
when that work was done. So it was with
men like Whittington and Grcsham ; so with
such institutions as the Turkey and F.ast India
Companies.
In the meanwhile commerce progressed. Un-
like the armies of contending nations, in which
disaffection is dangerous and mutiny fatal,
the great army of peaceful traders prcjfitcd by
every disaffection, and every mutiny which had
any principle of wisdom and justice in it has
been wholly beneficial. The only evils that
have arisen have been those based on false
views of trade and its transactions, exhibited
in crises like those of the South-Sea Bubble
and its bursting, and the many smaller panics
of recent times. These evils, however, were
short-lived, and very .slight in comparison of
the good that has prevailed in spite of tlicm,
Commerce has advanced with giant strides.
314 l^he Progress of Trade.
and no part of the world has gained more by
the advance than London.
On the ruins of an old Roman camp has
arisen the richest and busiest city in the world.
Its ships bring the produce of every clime to
add to the comfort and welfare of its citizens,
and all connected with them ; but more, its
ships bear civilisation and all its blessings to
every clime. Surely then, in spite of the sel-
fishness of some and the folly of others, a high
place in the catalogue of heroes and philan-
thropists is due to Famous London Mer-
chants.
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Ally and ner acnooiiellow. A Tale for ihe Young. By Miss M.
Hktmam-Edwarijs, Auth.r of "Holidays among the Mountains," "Little
r.inl Kcd .'.n.; ! itilc liird U ue," &c.
A hool experiences, incu'cating the importance of habit*
of % crance, patience in the hour of trial and suffering, and
gi,.. iicr.
Prince Arthur; .r, Ihc Four Trials. By Catherine Mary Stir-
ling. And Tales by the Flowers. Ry Caroline B. Temiler.
The Four Tri..ls of I'rncc .\rthiir teach ()l>cdience, Ch irity, Moral Coiirage, and
Humility. In the " Ta es bv the Fiowcr^" each sweet bud and blossom is made t
illustrate the moral quality usu.i ly a-s caled with it: Blue Bells, Hoft : Daisy,
Looking upji-ardt ; Ccl.imiiiie, /lumuitv, Sic.
Tfae Story of Henrietta and the Ayah ; or. Do not Trust to Ap
pcarances. And .My Little Schnclfclluw ; or, One Good Turn deserve*
Another. I'.v M vi. s'.:r. pk (.h.m 1 1 v:-.. .
The titles of t rntion. In the one is shown
tVe dcceptiveiic may be acconipani. d by a
warmheait; in t i a good deed done at the
proper lime. ■• vr • •»
Loyal Charlie Bentham. By Mrs WEnn, Author of "Naomi.
"Ido!ine,"&c And The Children's Island. ATnic Story. PUlitcd by L.
NUI.PST . t^ T- ,• L L J
"Loyal Cli..rlic Bentham" cannot fail to be a favountc with F.nglish boys and
girls, who emulate him in admiration of the virtues of "Good Queen Viciona.
"•The Chidrcn'k Island" narrates the adventures of a would-be Polish " Kubinoon
Crusoe."
Simple Stories for Children. By M.ary E. Mills.
Th-: Story of "The Cousins" is one of true and genuine friendship »prin»;ine up
in clii dhood and ripening with the years. In "Charlie .Morris" the aiilhor illus-
trates the mi«<:ries pr<xliiced by prile and a foolish fear of ridicule, the d..ing of evil
from drcid of the taunts of unworthy companions.
Stories from Enplish History. For Young Children. FAlitcd by
the Rev. r MA , , , , ., , ,
In simiilr Uii comprehcniion of the youngest chil<I. are «e'
fo.ih some ihtei Karly Kngli^h Misf ry : A.th-gal ..ml Elidure :
St Alb..n's M.iri>r) ni . I ;..ni, mr ILdlclujah Victory ; Alphese, the Martyr Arch-
bishop; ihe Sons of the Coiicnicror, &c.
Twelve Links of the Golden Chain. By Anna J. BiirKi.ANn.
The "Twrjve Links of the G.,!.len Chain" arc the twelve months of the year.
Under each month i« arran^r,! ., siiiiablc story or |>arable, conveying an »pproprial«
lesson in clear and allr.ctivc lanKuaue. ... , ts t.
The Life of Robinson Crusoe. Tn Short Wonls. By Saraii
CKdSirroN, Author of " Life of tjoliiml.us." «:c. , . •
The immortal .fry of Kobms on ( riioe ami hi. man Friday i« here set forth in
fhort words and easy sentence*,— the .ccneswith the Cannibal., .tiid all ilicir h..rioi«
bring omitted, as unsuitable for very young readcn-
Choice Illustrated Books.
The Rose-bud Stories — One Shilling Each.
A Winter's Wreath of Illustrative Tales. Edited by Ladv
CitARi.oTTR Law. And, Symtatiiy : a Tale. By E. A. M.
The "Winter's Wreath" includes the stirring story of tlie life of sturdy George
Stephenson; tlie Christmas Rose, a tale of love and constancy; the Adventures of
"Old Bob," an African Negro ; and the Narrative of Alice St Maur, the Lost Child.
Susan and the Doll; or, Do not be Covetou.s. And, The Little
Orphan's History; or, Everything for the Best. By Caroline LiiiCESTER.
The evil of covetousness and the blessing of a cheerful and contented spirit are the
points chiefly illustrated in this little volume.
A Child's First Book about Birds. By a Country Clerfryman.
In a scries of conversations about birds, their habits and peculiarities are amus-
ingly brought forward, while an excellent moral is always inculcated. Thus, " The
Starling and the Linnet" shows the bitterness of strife; "The Magpie and Wood-
Pigeon " the excellence of honesty. Much useful knowledge is conveyed by these
entertaining stories.
Little Paul and his Moss- Wreaths; or, The King and the Boy
who kept his Word. By Angehka von Lagerstrom. Together with the
Story of Little George Bell.
"We are poor, but we shall be happy if we shun sin and do that which is right,"
is the moral of the story of " Little Paul." " Little George Bell " i; a narrative of
the misfortunes of a child stolen by beggars, but after some time accidentally dis-
covered by his mother through the agency of the good dog Dash.
Easy Talks for Little Folks. By the Author of " Little Crumbs,"
&c. And, May-Day; or. Anecdotes of Miss Lydia Lively. Edited by L.
Nugent.
A volume for very young children, replete with such counsel and encouragement
as young children need, and containing some brief and simple tales in which the
advantages of a good temper, a generous disposition, and industrious habits are in-
sisted upon.
Juvenile Tales for Juvenile Readers. By Charlotte Eliza-
beth.
The "Juvenile Tales" by this popular authoress embodied in the present selection
are — Charlie's Wish ; or. Do Buy me a Ponv ' — Thomas and his Marbles ; or. Don't
play for Money; — The Fragments; or, the Value of Scraps; — and The Nestlings.
The goodness of God unto His creatures is the theme of the last-mentioned nar-
rative.
Six Short Stories for Short People. By the Rev. F. W. Bouverie,
Author of " Life and its Lessons," &c.
These short Stories are devoted to the enforcement of simple but important truths.
Their titles indicate their object : "As if I cared for a Prize," or, the folly of indif-
ference in a good cause; "Never Mind; ' "If you don't, I'll tell;" "Please,
Mamma, it wasn't my fault;" "Nobody loves me;" and "I'm sure I'm quite as
good .IS anybody."
The Captive Skylark ; or. Do as You would be Done By. A Tale.
By Madame de Chatelain.
" Do as you would be done by," — the second great commandment of the New
Testament — is the secret of present happiness and future bliss. Madame de Chate-
lain has shown in this graceful little volume tlie good that flows from the observance
of the Scriptural injunction.
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA LIBRARY
Los Angeles
Tliis book is DUE on the last date stamped below.
ID
^Ri:"-- AUG 1J71
I V >
1ir-|.
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REC'D in-lfRf,
LD/yt?r:'
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H0>J Uiftkii
'JAN 1 e 19^
;iUm-7,'68(J1895s4) — C-l'^U
1995
5eTi«*2i2U^*Sa
3 1158 01052 9617
iSiSJi,f?.^.^JS,'i;,vBRA^^
AA 000 656 336
Open Library