INTRODUCTION.

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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.


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Licensed Octob. 11. 1677.

Roger L’estrange.

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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.


                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                           

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