CHAPTER III

TRADE AND GENTILITY

The popular imagination has always presented the City of London as paved with gold; the popular tradition has always delighted to present the rise of the humble village boy from the poor apprentice to the rich merchant, Alderman, and Mayor. In London itself this tradition did not exist, because it was known to be absurd. The honours open to the young craftsman were those obtained by valour on the field of battle. I do not think, however, that the traditional rise of the humble village boy is more than two hundred years old. It began at a time when the ancient connection of the City and the country had been severed, for reasons which are treated in another place. There has always been a perennial stream of immigration into the City; this is proved by the ancient jealousy with which the people regarded the intrusion into their trades of “foreigners,” meaning not only Flemings, French, and people generally of other nations, but men from the country, who were not freemen or members of any company. This stream consisted almost entirely of sons of the country gentry, because the humbler kind could only get away from their villages by running away. As regards the former, their choice of a profession was limited; they might attach themselves to the service of some great noble—how many younger sons were thrown upon the world when Warwick fell? how many when Wolsey was disgraced? They might follow the King on his wars—thus rose Owen Tudor, whose own father was a simple gentleman, if he was so much, in the service of the Bishop of Chester. They might obtain some place at Court or in one of the King’s houses. Thus, in the sixteenth century, on a feud arising between the Forsters and the Fenwicks of Northumberland, one of the Forsters found it expedient to change his native air, which had become dangerous. He fled south; he made the acquaintance of Henry Carey, who was keeper of Hunsdon House, then a royal Palace, and was appointed Yeoman—_i.e._ Head or Chief of one of the Departments; his son became a Judge; his grandson Lord Chief Justice. Again, he might enter a monastery—one of Owen Tudor’s sons entered the Benedictine House of Westminster. He might remain in his own country as bailiff or steward; he might become a lawyer—it would be interesting to learn how the Inns of Court were recruited; or, lastly, he might go up to London and be apprenticed to one of the great companies.

I have long been of opinion that the last line was far more common than is generally understood. Until recently, however, I have not been able to establish my theory that the connection between the country and the City was close, continuous, and widespread; that the younger sons were sent up to the City as they are now sent into the Army, for a career considered both honourable and profitable. If this theory can be maintained, it is quite obvious that the importance of London in the eyes of the country must have been very much greater than is generally understood: its political weight must have been much more than has hitherto been allowed, and its dignity and the dignity of its chief offices must be in a corresponding degree enhanced. It was not by men who had been humble village boys that great offices in the City were filled, but by men of gentility and of good connections. This theory, if it is well founded, will also show why London has never created an hereditary aristocracy of her own; why, in a word, London never became a Venice or a Genoa. The leaders among the citizens always, according to my view, were connected with brothers and cousins over the whole of the country; and when the great nobles rode up to their town houses with their following of hundreds, all gentlemen, they entered a City containing their own people, their own cousins, living in Palaces equal to their own; apparelled in the robes of authority and with the gold chains of power and of dignity.

Thus, I find groups of families from this or that county—the Fitzwarrens of Devon and Somerset with their cousins the Whittingtons of Somerset and Gloucester; the Chicheles, Northampton; the Brembres, Philpots, and Sevenokes from Kent; the Greshams, Bacons, Boleyns, and Banhams from Norfolk; and this indicates not only that many country families were connected with the City, but that there were groups of families, cousins near or far, which habitually sent up their boys to London. But more direct proofs are necessary to establish what, I feel certain, was the case, that this connection was widespread and even general; that a younger son of a gentle family, from the fourteenth to the seventeenth century at least, regarded trade in the City as a desirable and honourable profession. I do not think that this was the case after the middle of the seventeenth century. One of the latest instances, indeed, of the country gentleman’s son being sent up to town and made an apprentice is that of Gibbon’s grandfather.

There are, however, many other facts which point in the same direction:—

1. The separation of the distributing and wholesale companies from the crafts of the working Companies; the position of authority and power held by the former; the jealousy with which apprentices were admitted into their bodies; the honours bestowed upon their members by the sovereign; the responsible offices entrusted to them—one, for instance, was made Mayor of Bordeaux, another the representative of the King in the Low Countries. These dignities were not open to mechanics and persons whose fingers were “blue.”

2. The rapid increase in the fee required of the apprentice. It was at first a few shillings. Then for shillings they read pounds. Next they required a property qualification, upon which, however, they did not long insist. In the time of James I. the fee had risen to £20; it was afterwards raised to £100 and even to £500. What craftsman—what village boy—what mechanic—could raise, think you, a fee of even £10—which means in our money perhaps £300?

3. The practice in the craft companies of admitting two kinds of apprentices—those who would be received into the trade as master, and those as journeyman. In the latter case the boy was sometimes made to swear that he would not attempt to set up as a master on his own account; he could not, as a rule, hope to do so, for the same reason that keeps a journeyman in his place to this day: the want of capital and credit. However, the distinction between master and journeyman was sharply drawn and jealously maintained. Yet the master must know his trade, otherwise he could not superintend it. It is true that there were small masters who worked with their own hands.

4. In _Remembrancia_ (1579-1664) there are notes on 119 Mayors, Aldermen, Sheriffs, and City Officers. Of these the largest number are sons of country gentlemen. Thus we have:

From the Country Sons of Gentlemen 59 Born in London Sons of City Merchants 16 From the Country Apparently of poor parents 5 Parentage not stated 39 ——- 119

5. Another point is the very significant fact that the admiration of the people was not bestowed, as we might expect, on the rich and successful merchant, but upon the fighting man. The hero of the London apprentice was not the Lord Mayor, nor one of the Aldermen, nor the poor lad who became the rich trader, nor the merchant who owned ships and lent money to kings; his hero was the London youth who went forth to fight, and came home a knight.

I have before me a certain book of the year 1590, called _The Nine Worthies of London_. You would expect to find Thomas à Becket, Whittington, Chichele, Caxton, Gresham, among these worthies. You would expect to find that stout old radical, William Longbeard, among them. You would be quite wrong. Not one of these worthies was remembered. Thomas à Becket, the protecting saint of London—their own saint—a member, almost, of the Mercers’ Company, was completely forgotten. None of the others did the people care to remember. They remembered, as I have said, only those who had gone out to fight. One London ’prentice had the honour of fighting for a whole hour with the Dauphin of France; another was knighted on the field by Edward the Black Prince, and came home to marry his master’s daughter—her name was Doll; a third slew a wild boar in Poland; and so on.

There is additional proof that the greater number—by far the greater number—of the citizens constituting the principal companies, together with many of those representing the former kind of apprentice, were gentlefolk—_armigeri_—belonging to what we should call county families.

In the Edition, or the Continuator, of Stow, published by “A. M.—H. D., and others,” in the year 1633, the arms of all the Mayors of London from Henry Fitz Aylwin to that year are given. With the arms is added a note of the origin and parentage of the Mayors, one by one.

Let me take the latter first. What do we find when we analyse these returns? I divide the analysis into three heads. First, that of the Mayors whose parents lived in the country, where they were born; next, those who were born in London; thirdly, those who were born in other towns.

There are 203 Mayors thus accounted for in 210 years. Re-elections and obscurity of birth account for the missing seven years:—

1. Of those who were born in the country there are 156 2. Of those who were born in London there are 34 3. Of those who came from other towns there are 13.

Out of 203 citizens who achieved the position of Mayor, 156 came from the country. These figures are very remarkable. Actually 77 per cent of the citizens who rose to the highest honours were born in the country. If the same proportion was observed among all the masters, there were 77 per cent of those who were the merchant adventurers, wholesale dealers, importers, exporters, and what we should now call the heads of firms, capitalists, and employers of labour, in the City, who were immigrants born in the country. I would not, however, insist on the latter proportion, for the simple reason that the country lad has generally shown more ability than the son of the wealthy townsman, and this, not because he was born and bred in the country, but because the son of the Alderman is prone to believe that wealth comes of its own accord, not understanding his father’s early struggles, while the country lad understands that Fortune helps those who help themselves. If we make a large deduction on this ground, we may fairly admit that fully 50 per cent of the merchants came from the country.

Look a little more closely into the accompaniments of this fact. What is meant by coming from the country? A village of the fourteenth century contained the Lord of the Manor, the Priest, and the tenantry, hinds, or cultivators of the soil, with such craftsmen as were necessary for agriculture. Now it was absolutely impossible for one of the latter class to find the apprentice fee for a great company or even the journeyman apprentice fees for a craft company. If he could, none of the great companies would admit the son of a hind. And in the craft companies there was always the greatest unwillingness among the craftsmen of London to admit outsiders at all. The Priest, after the fourteenth century, was presumably childless, the old custom of marriage or concubinage being gradually repressed. The Lord of the Manor remained. He knew that the City offered the chance of fortune and rank; he knew that his neighbours, his cousins, his friends, had sent their boys up to the City; he could learn from them how to find a master for his boy, what fees he would pay, how to get him introductions, a company, and a career.

But since a very small number of those yearly apprenticed could rise to the City offices, we may assume that for every Mayor there were hundreds of apprentices, and we may conclude with absolute certainty that it was not an uncommon thing, but a well-recognised and widely-spread practice, for country lads to be sent to London, and that these country lads were sons of country gentlemen. And this properly understood, we understand also why London never for a moment thought of separating herself from the country, and why London, in the truest sense of the word, was always the very heart of England.

If it be asked why these young fellows were always welcomed in London, the answer is ready. First, they came to their relations as the two sons of John Chichele came to their cousins, as Whittington came to his. Next, the great City had then, as it has now, the custom of devouring her children; it must always be recruited with fresh blood; in his energy and strength, stimulated by his poverty and his resolution and his ambition, the country lad easily rises above the Londoner of the second generation, and in his turn produces boys who lack their father’s stimulus, even when they inherit their father’s strength; they cannot compete with the boy from the country.

In London at this day, in every great town, in every little town, even, the same rapid rise, the same decline and fall, of the middle class goes on perpetually. The successful man has died; the sons throw away or lose what their fathers gained. Look for them in the third generation; they are gone; they are lost in the huge flood of the unknown, the unfortunate, the incapable, the obscure. Perhaps after many generations one may again emerge; he will be ignorant of the past, he will begin a family anew—I please myself when I look down the City lists with thinking that Robert Besaunt, Sheriff in 1195, was perhaps my own ancestor: a theory for which there is no proof at all; the very tradition of that descent, if it is a descent, has long been lost. What has become of the three-and-twenty generations between him and me? I know not; for six hundred years they have been unknown outside the village, outside the town, where they were born, and the nameless mounds that covered their bones have long since been levelled with the grass around, like those of the descendants of Orgar the Proud, Henry of London Stone, the Bukerels, the Hardels, the Haverels, and the Buccointes.

There is, however, another point. With the parentage and origin of the Mayors, there are presented, in this edition (see p. 219) of Stow, the arms of every Mayor. The earlier shields, such as that of Fitz Aylwin, we need not regard as authentic. After the thirteenth century, however, there could be no tampering with things heraldic. All the Mayors bore arms. Of course we know that in many cases there could be no doubt about the family arms. Such names suggest themselves as Whittington, Bullen, Chalton, Fielding, Cooke, Jocelyn, Hampton, Colet, Clopton, Percival, Capel, Bradbury, and Gresham. Some of them have on their shields the distinctive signs which mark the younger son. I am indebted to my friend Mr. Loftie for information on this point.

Thus, in 1631, Whitmore carries a mullet and a crescent—he was therefore the second son of a third son. Gore was a third son; Hacket was a second son; Jocelyn was a third son; Gamage was a third son; Mosely, the son of a third son; Anderson, son of a sixth son. All these, therefore, without doubt belonged to country families. In some cases, the arms were late, and were probably granted by the Heralds’ College. Among these are the arms of Cow, Warner, Hardy, Warren, Donne, and Cotes. Others given in the same book are ancient, as those of Calthorpe, Duckett, and Gore. In those days, we must remember, there was the greatest jealousy over the right to bear arms. The Heralds’ Visitations continued into the seventeenth century. A man could no more assume a coat of arms than he could—or can now—assume a peerage.

I claim, therefore, to have proved the social position and consideration of the merchants and wholesale traders and adventurers of London. The aristocracy of the City were brothers and cousins to the gentry—perhaps the lesser landed gentry of the country. Let that fact be borne in mind all through our History until the last century, when, as we have seen, a great change fell upon the City, which ceased for a long time to have any connection with the country, or to receive any lads from the country houses and the country gentry.

Then we naturally ask the question, “Does trade detract from honour?” We have seen that the gentry kept London continually supplied with new blood; this fact is in itself a sufficient answer. Let us consult a few authorities on this point. The first is Camden. He is speaking of the De la Poles:—

“William de la Pole, a merchant and mayor of Hull, was made a Baron of the Exchequer. His son, Michael de la Pole, became Earl of Suffolk, Knight of the Garter, and Lord Chancellor. His being a merchant,” says Camden, “did not detract from his honour, for who knows not that even our noblemen’s sons have been merchants? Nor will I deny that he was nobly descended, though a merchant. Whence it follows that _mercatura non derogat nobilitati_—trade is no abatement of honour.”

The Baron de Pollnitz testifies to the social position of English merchants:—

“In England the nobility intermarry with traders’ daughters as they do in France; however, a great distinction should be made betwixt the one and the other. In England, merchants are sometimes sprung of the greatest houses in the kingdom, and it has often happened that younger branches of noble families, who have been brought up to trade, by the right of succession, have become peers; and frequently it falls out that when a lord espouses a merchant’s daughter, she may be his cousin, or at least a lady of good family. Whereas in France, it is always the daughter of a Roturier.”

Defoe, who always stood up for the honour of trade, says, “Trading is so far from being inconsistent with a gentleman that in England trade makes a gentleman; for, after a generation or two, the tradesman’s children come to be as good gentlemen, statesmen, parliament men, judges, bishops, and noblemen as those of the highest birth and the most ancient families.” Swift says, “The power which used to follow land has gone over to money.” Johnson says, “An English merchant is a new species of gentleman.” Harrison says, “Citizens often change with gentlemen as gentlemen do with them.”

If, however, the country gentry sent their sons up to London, there to be apprenticed, there to become wholesale merchants and adventurers, the common proposition is equally true that the successful merchant or his children retired from London into the country, and carried on a cadet branch of the old house or founded a line of new gentry. This practice was in use as far back as the twelfth century, when the family of Gervase, the London merchant, became country gentry of Essex. The practice has been continued, estates have changed hands over and over again, the new purchasers being London merchants, or even, in these latter days, London tradesmen. In the second generation they are received into county society; in the third their origin is forgotten, or no longer talked about.

It would be a work of great interest to follow the family history of those who left London, and became owners of manors, parks, and country houses. But it would carry me too far, nor could I attempt it, even had I the time necessary, because the genealogies of the people are so full of errors, intentional and otherwise, that there would be no certainty as to the result. One would willingly learn, if one could, who are the modern representatives of Gervase of Cornhill, Ansgar the Staller, Leofwin the Portreeve, Orgar the Proud, the Haverels, the Bukerels, the Farringdons, the Whittingtons, the Philpots, the Greshams, and the later merchants. The descendants of some of the City houses can, however, be traced. An imperfect list has been compiled for my use, as follows:—

Sir William de la Pole, already mentioned, Knight of the Garter.

Alderman Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, Mayor 1457, ancestor of Queen Elizabeth, Lord Nelson, and the Earl of Kimberley.

Alderman Loke, ancestor of John Locke, Lord Chancellor King, and the Earl of Lovelace.

Sir Stephen Broun, grocer, twice Mayor, 1438, 1448, ancestor of Lord Montague.

Robert Pakington and Alderman Barnham, ancestors of Earl Stanhope and Sir J. S. Pakington.

Alderman Sir Baptist Hicks, ancestor of the Earl of Gainsborough, the Marquis of Sligo, Admiral Lord Howe, Lord Byron, and Lord Raglan.

Sir William Holles, ancestor of the Earl of Clare.

Sir Edward Osborne, Mayor 1582, ancestor of the Duke of Leeds.

Thomas Legge, citizen and skinner of London, was twice Mayor thereof; he married Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, which shows that even in those times the first nobility thought it no dishonour to intermarry with merchants. This Thomas Legge was direct ancestor of the Earl of Dartmouth.

Sir Richard Rich, ancestor of the Rich family, Earls of Warwick and Holland.

Sir Josiah Child, ancestor of the Duke of Bedford, Earl Russell, and the Duke of Beaufort.

Alderman Sir John Barnard, ancestor of Lord Palmerston.

Sir John Coventry, Mayor 1425, ancestor of the Earl of Coventry.

Sir Thomas Leigh, Mayor 1558, ancestor of Lord Leigh, the Earl of Chatham, William Pitt, and Viscount Millman.

Alderman Bond, ancestor of the Dukes of Marlborough, Leeds, and Berwick.

Sir Michael Dormer, Mayor 1541, ancestor of Lord Dormer.

Alderman Sir Rowland Hill, ancestor of Lord Chancellor Cowper and William Cowper the poet.

Sir Ralph Warren, Mayor 1536, ancestor of Oliver Cromwell and John Hampden.

Sir William Capell, Mayor 1503, ancestor of the Earl of Essex.

Alderman Thompson, ancestor of the Marquis of Bradford.

Alderman Heathcote, ancestor of Lord Abeland.

Alderman Coke, Alderman FitzWilliam, ancestors of the Marquess of Salisbury, Lord Chancellor Bacon, and the Marquess of Worcester.

Lionel Cranfield, created Earl of Middlesex.

Alderman Bathurst, ancestor of Lord Chancellor Bathurst.

Alderman Herne, ancestor of the Earl of Clarendon.

Alderman Rythis, ancestor of General Lord Coke.

Alderman Bardham, ancestor of Sir Robert Walpole and Horace Walpole.

Alderman Beckford, ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton and Newcastle.

Alderman Wall, ancestor of the Duke of Somerset.

Alderman Shorter, ancestor of the Marquis of Hertford.

John Coventry, Mayor 1425, ancestor of the Earl of Coventry.

E. de Bouverie, ancestor of Pleydell Bouverie.

Sir Robert Ducie, Mayor 1631, ancestor of Lord Ducie.

Paul Banning, Sheriff 1593, ancestor of Lord Banning.

Hugh Irwin, ancestor of Viscount Irwin.

Sir William Craven, Mayor 1610, ancestor of Earl Craven.

William Ward, goldsmith, ancestor of Lord Dudley and Ward.