This little book might easily, by
a competent pen, be made the
text to a volume, as large, if
not as useful, as the huge “Post
Office Directory,” of which it was the modest
precursor. No such ambitious object as the
production of a volume of that class is to be
here indulged in. On the contrary, the purpose
of the present short introduction is to
offer a few suggestions upon topics obviously
belonging to the contents of this commercial
record of the merchants and goldsmiths of
London in the second half of the seventeenth
century. It will be found to demonstrate the
value of not a few family names as significant
elements of the history of social progress.
It has, indeed, been so in all time. From
Homer’s catalogues down to the knightly nomenclature
of the “Roman de la Rose,” and
other long-breathed poems of the middle ages;
from the Battle-abbey Roll of the conqueror’s
chiefs at Hastings, and from that of King
Henry’s army at Agincourt to our modern
musters, such documents elucidate acceptably
the course of military heroism. The conjecture
is as ingenious, as it is just, lately made
about Shakespeare’s early life, that the Admiralty
books, with their myriad of seamens’
names, may give his in some royal ship, and
so account for his perfect sea phrases.
The most interesting manuscript lists are
those of the notabilities present at the Preston
Guild for more than 500 years; and that of
the founders of a Library in Hereford 200
years ago. The Guild is in existence still.
The books given to the library by Viscount
Scudamore, and some hundreds of the county
people, were rotting on a damp floor not long
since. It may be hoped they are now better
cared for.
Equally attractive are the lists still preserved
of the zealous contributors to public loans to
meet a national crisis. John Locke and Somers
were among the first proprietors of the Bank of
England. Those of the East India Company,
or the like Stocks were the leading Tories.
The founders of our early colonies—holders
of even five-shilling shares—have thus their
enduring record; and a diligent collector may
enrich his library of tracts with the printed
names of all the graduates of old Harvard
College in New England in the seventeenth
century—so zealously did the Puritans ground
their sons in learning.
The present production, although of more
moderate pretensions, contains individual names
of some historical weight. Its most striking
feature is the severance of “Goldsmiths that
keep Running cashes”—precursors of the modern
bankers—from the mass of merchants of
London, in 1677.
Before that year the goldsmiths had really
been bankers, and proper laws had long been
advocated for their better establishment in the
craft. This list fixes their residence chiefly
in our ancient Lombard Street. Of fifty-eight,
the whole number of them, thirty-eight lived
there. Of the rest, we have Blanchard and
Child, partners, in Fleet Street, at the Mary-gold;
and James Hore in Cheapside, at the
Golden Bottle, for then every house of business
had its sign.
Other banking names are striking, viz. the
Cornish Bolitho, the Lancashire Hornby, the
Yorkshire Duncomb. These men may be
presumed to have enriched their descendants
who are still conspicuous among us. The rest
of the Goldsmiths of 1677 seem to have been
little remarkable in the next generation, when,
after the revolution of 1688, joint-stock
banking, and safe facilities in paper currency
took the start which constitutes an era in
finance. The capitalists of London in the
reign of Charles II. were sorely damaged by
his iniquitous shutting of the Exchequer against
their legitimate claims. They were content
at last to be simply the first holders of stock
in the national debt, into which their claims
were turned. But Michael Godfrey, the first
deputy-governor of the bank, and Sir N.
Herne, afterwards zealous supporters of the
new system of banking after 1694, are here
only simple merchants. Two other names
of the Goldsmiths, James Fowles and James
Heriot, deserve special mention. They were
Scots; and the Fowles appear to have been
long settled in London in connection with
their countrymen. In 1695, the Lord Provost
of Edinburgh was to address his letters on
the subject of Darien to William Paterson at
the house of one of the name; and it is no
idle speculation to suppose that this goldsmith
(a rising banker) of 1677 afforded Paterson,
then a pedlar, or incipient merchant, the
benefit of his financial experience.
James Heriot has a stronger association
with a Scottish worthy of finance, George
Heriot, the goldsmith, and the munificent
benefactor of Edinburgh, who came south with
his patron, King James; and, as his biographer
tells us, he prospered here as he had prospered
in the north. Besides his bequests to his native
town, he left ample legacies to his brothers-german,
of whom one was James; and
their wealth and name were assuredly represented
by the James Heriot the goldsmith of
this list.
In it also stands John Peatterson, a merchant
already, and so giving a body to the tradition
in Dumfriesshire which places William
Paterson of the Bank of England in the counting-house
of a relation of his own name in
London about 1677.
The spelling of the two names Fowles and
Peatterson is correctly phonetic, so as to show
the Scottish nationality of the men; and in
the latter case showing also the tact with which
Eliot Warburton in his “Darien” makes a Scottish
friend criticise his clumsy English pronunciation
of the word Paterson.
Another name in the general list, that of
Alexander Pope of Broad Street, has an even
more famous association, as Mr. Camden Hotten
shows in his Adversaria for July, 1857. The
locality was then a charming suburb of gardens;
and although the poet Pope, when
taken away with his father, the popish merchant,
to be educated in Windsor Forest by a
priest, may have been too young to know how
genial a home he was losing, he need not
have been too vain, as it is feared he was, to
revisit in after life the pleasant abode of his
earliest years.
Gresham’s garden was in Broad Street, with
its lectures on music and all science. King
Richard’s Crosby Hall, and Shoreditch with
its unhappy leman of Edward IV, were hard
by; whilst Milton’s birth-place, his retreat,
and his grave were close at hand.
The picturesque character of old London,
graced by the sparkling Thames of olden
time, is a circumstance not to be forgotten,
when we are calling up the memories of any
class of its inhabitants.
In 1677 the city was full of fine residences
for merchants; and in this list we meet with
names of entertainers of wits of the time.
Here is Fountain, doubtless father to the
wealthy knight with whom Dean Swift was
familiar, as shown in his letters to Stella.
Here, too, is Kiffen, the Baptist Alderman
whom James II. could neither affright nor
seduce, with a less respectable name of the
same class, that of William Lob.
Here is Benjamin Bathurst, the founder of
the family distinguished on the Bench and in
the State, with Bragg their connexion.
Here is a tribe of the Houblons, who furnished
the Bank of England with its first Governor,
Sir John; and whose names, seven in number,
may be read in documents recorded at
the Board of Trade claiming convoys for
their fleets. These seven names are found
in the more interesting record—the sermon
of Bishop Burnet at the funeral of this
Houblon—with his eulogy and city descent
from Henry the VIIIth’s time. The Vansittarts
will find their wealthy forefather here,
and many more Dutch members of the old
church of their nation in Austin Friars. The
Van Milderts of this list were doubtless progenitors
of the learned late Bishop of Durham
of that name; and the predominance of Dutch
over Flemish merchants settled in London is
to be attributed to the ultra-Protestant feeling
of that time. Puckle the wit, and the eager
projector, is here in the persons of his father
and uncle. Nor are the Barnardistons, Ducanes,
the Fredericks, Beckfords, and Papillons,
Burdetts, Batemans, Biddulphs, Bulteels, Carbonnels,
Coventrys, the Dominiques, Crisps,
Furleys, and the Holfords, to be omitted.
The “Richard Steele” in the list must
have been related to Sir Richard, who was
more successful in the advocacy of the rights
of trade with his pen than in his multifarious
commercial schemes.
The special occupations of these merchants
are not stated with much precision. After
the Goldsmiths come the Black-well Hall factors,
representing our ancient staple in woollens,
whose privileges were the occasion of a great
legal controversy shortly before the date of this
little publication; and they were settled with
prodigious learning in the Common Pleas
by Chief Justice Sir Orlando Bridgman, as
may be seen in his logical judgments. One
particular address is very interesting. It is at
“the Insurance Office,” then a new institution
among us, and only extended with great success
in the beginning of the next century, in
the reign of Queen Anne.
The Royal Exchange was a prominent place
of business for our merchants of 1677. The
Dutch walk, the Turkey walk, the Irish walk,
the Spanish walk, and the like, have a significance
far beyond the agreeable cosmopolitan
sentiments expressed in the Spectator upon
Addison’s and Sir Richard Steele’s visit to the
Exchange of their day, crowded with men
from every clime. In these several walks
could be found, in the earlier years of the
reign of Charles II, the collected members of
our various trades beyond sea; and it was
from them that the Lord Mayor was directed
by a royal order in Council, to have elected
the body that was to assist ministers in the
preparation of our laws of trade and the
colonies. That original order in council, signed
by Lords Clarendon and Southampton, is preserved
in the City library in Guildhall. It
contains an article of extreme interest at this
moment, specially providing for the election
of the Italian merchants to that body. This
commercial tie with United Italy cannot fail
to be strengthened so as to revive an alliance
with us too long interrupted by religious prejudice
on both sides. The list has a few
Italian names, but more Portuguese—perhaps
brought over from the connection with “the
Royal House of Lisbon” in the person of Charles
the Second’s Queen, received by us with becoming
good humour, according to the pungent
epigram which bade “the De’il take
Hyde and the Bishop beside, that made her
bone of his bone.”
The division of the merchants in their respective
dignities is worth a passing reflection.
Some are knights and baronets; some are aldermen;
the mass are plain John or Thomas,
with a considerable sprinkling of Misters—the
master of olden times being an addition of
worship. The Captains and Majors of the
list were doubtless the officers of the train-bands,
of no little historic fame in London,
from King John and Magna Carta even to
John Gilpin.
The homes of many of the merchants named
in this list were in the suburbs of London,
and there they seem to have transacted their
business, not in the City. We find them at
Highgate, so well known before as the residence
of the philosophic Earl of Arundel,
where Lord Bacon died,—at Newington
Green, Islington, Clerkenwell Green, Hackney,
Hogsden, Bethnall Green, Kingsland,
Moorfields, Spital-fields, and Mile End Green,—places
now so many centres of crowded
population, not the sweet rural retreats,
which we are content to go for farther a-field,
being, like our fathers, fully awake to the
delights of forest life.
The Hogsden of the list (our Hoxton) is
shown to have been pretty full of merchants;
and we know how delightful a group of gardens
that suburb possessed in the olden time.
Not very long after 1677, its worthy horticulturist
Fairchild there practised his art
with eminent success; and not only founded
the annual sermon still preached by distinguished
divines every year upon the bounty
of the Creator in the gifts of nature, but
tried hard with his pen to teach the citizens
to adorn London with gardens. This is a
consideration well worth pursuing at this moment
of London’s revival. Her seventy graveyards,
so long festering charnel-houses, may,
under wise direction, become centres of floral
beauty and instructive recreation to our youthful
London population.
Some resided on “The Bridge,” the London
Bridge for ages covered with dwellings,
from one of which the daughter of a rich
citizen fell into the Thames to be saved by
the bold apprentice Osborne, who married
her, and founded the ducal family of Leeds.
The painted portraits of the more distinguished
of these fathers of our trade would
deserve a special study. Sir John Houblon’s
may be seen at the Bank of England; Benjamin
Bathurst’s is assuredly piously preserved
by his ennobled family; Sir John Tulse, who
has left his name perpetuated on the picturesque
hill near the Crystal Palace, must
have possessed good taste enough to be a portrait-painter’s
patron; and the letter in the
Spectator asserting our superior appreciation of
that branch of art is well justified in the
numerous portraits scattered all over the land.
Our commerce is indeed exceedingly rich in
materials of historical portraiture, and in its
products. Without ostentatiously boasting of
a superiority which is not to be pretended over
the statesmen who grace so many halls, our merchants,
from the pencils of Holbein and Antonio
More down to the latest dates, may challenge
comparison with them. The City and
its halls are full of them; and Sir Thomas
Gresham’s design of an university in London
could not be better revived and realized than
by annexing a fine gallery of merchants’ portraits
to its other branches of instruction. It
is a good suggestion, that the profit got by the
Treasury from the sale of his estate in Broad
Street to a Banking Company, should be pursued
to its legitimate issue,—the establishment
of that university.
The topic of Gresham’s University has some
elucidation from the list of 1677. Comparatively
few merchants then resided in Broad
Street, or in Bishopsgate Street. Rents were
therefore low in that quarter. In 1760, when
the Gresham property was sold, under an Act
of Parliament, for the Excise Office, its income
was less than 450l. a-year; and the government
made it up to 500l. The sale, however,
to the Gresham Chambers’ Company,
a few years since, netted a very large sum to
the Treasury. That surplus is believed to revert
to the trusts of Sir T. Gresham’s will,
since the Acts which have alienated the estate
first from the Charity, and then from the
Crown, are mere parliamentary titles—quite
secure to the occupiers of the land, but not
destructive of the rights of the objects of a
founder. The matter is indeed under serious
scrutiny before the Charity Commission; and
it has special claims to the fair consideration
of Her Majesty’s prime minister.
The John Temple of this list was probably
of Lord Palmerston’s lineage. The Palmers
of the list, too, doubtless belonged to the
family which almost monopolises the Mercers’
Company—Gresham’s trustees; and so Sir
Roundell Palmer, the Solicitor-General, must
not desert his duty. Nor will he have forgotten
his own labour of love in Gresham’s
lecture-room, when he helped his relative,
Professor Palmer, to do justice to his charge.
Earl Russell will not, on this occasion, refuse
his powerful aid to the improvement of
the citizens of London, so often the defenders
of liberty, and the advocates of science. The
City has indefeasible claims upon Earl Russell’s
sympathies—if for nothing more—for the sad
sacrifice of his great relative Lord William,
led, from his prison in the Tower, through the
heart of the city to his scaffold in Lincoln’s-Inn-Fields,
in order to crush the spirit of a
people deeply attached to the house of Bedford.
Finally, the Chancellor of the Exchequer,
Mr. Gladstone, will readily part with the
large proceeds of the Gresham Charity-estate,
which, by all the calls of conscience, and the
kindred rules of equity, belong to an object
which he, of all men, the most approves—the
liberal instruction of our youth.
The Harveys of the list are of a honoured
stock. They are near kinsmen to Dr. William
Harvey, famous in medical history as the discoverer
of the circulation of the blood. He
passed many of the last years of his eventful
life with his brother Eliab, the merchant of
London, who possessed “noble feats, and at
least 3000l. a year,” says Aubrey. In those
days the physicians, with their College in
Warwick Lane, may be held to have been
citizens. It was at the Royal Exchange that
Drs. Mead and Ratcliffe fought their well-known
duel.
Three original copies of the list of 1677 are
known. One is in the Bodleian library; one
in the Manchester Free Library, bought for
5l., (from this, owing to the kindness of R.
W. Smiles, Esq., the Librarian, the present
reprint has been made); one was sold at the
sale of the Rev. Mr. Hunter’s library for 9l.,
although imperfect.
The volume—here reproduced as almost a
fac-simile—is a curious little precursor of the
London Directory, grown from its first edition
of 1732 in 300 pages, to the huge volume,
the Post Office Directory of the present day.
In the Lambeth Library there is such a list
in manuscript of thirty years earlier date. It
is a list of all the inhabitants of London liable
to pay tithes, with the amounts due from each.
During the progress of this little volume
through the press a most interesting fact relative
to the history of trade has come to light.
It appears from an old pamphlet that an
“Office of Addresses” was started as early as
1650, by Henry Robinson, a well known
writer on matters of commerce and finance
during the commonwealth period. The ideas
of this worthy are so advanced and sound that
it is more than probable that Sir William
Petty, who soon after began to write upon
these subjects, was indebted to him for some
of his liberal views with regard to the extension
of trade. Henry Robinson’s “Office in
Threadneedle Street, over against the Castle
Tavern, close to the Old Exchange in London,”
comes out with a business-like precision
in the very advertisement, that promises well
for his work—the keeping particular registers
of all manner of addresses. Then follows a
catalogue of subjects of inquiry, so copious and
so curious as to be a new proof that there is
almost nothing new under the sun! Sixpence
was the fee, and for this small sum answers to
all sorts of questions connected with business
could be obtained. The whereabouts of merchants,
the arrivals or departures of ships, the
current price of certain commodities, were all
to be ascertained by visiting this ancient Inquiry
Office—the crude off-shoot of a commerce
struggling to develope itself, and answering
for a time the purposes of a broker’s
office, the Stock-Exchange, and the modern
newspaper teeming with trade advertisements.
Licensed Octob. 11. 1677.
Roger L’estrange.
A
COLLECTION
OF THE
NAMES
OF THE
MERCHANTS
Living in and about
The City of London;
Very Usefull and Necessary.
Carefully Collected for the Benefit
of all Dealers that shall have occasion
with any of them; Directing
them at the first sight of their
name, to the place of their abode.
LONDON, Printed for Sam. Lee, and are
to be sold at his Shop in Lumbard-street,
near Popes-head-Alley: And
Dan. Major at the Flying Horse
in Fleetstret. 1677.
