The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The Merchant Venturers
of Bristol
A History of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of
Bristol from its origin to the present day
by Patrick McGrath
The Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol
© The Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol
First published in 1975 by
The Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol,
The Merchants’ Hall, Bristol
ISBN 0 9504281 0 8
Set and printed by Western Printing Services Ltd., Bristol
and bound at The Pitman Press Ltd., Bath
: ne To William and Gregory |
Contents
Preface
List of Illustrations
List of abbreviations
Chapter
1. Early Merchant Organisations in Bristol
2. The First Fifty Years
3. The Seventeenth-Century Background
4. Membership, Organisation and Finance in the Seven-
teenth Century
5. The Work of the Society in the Seventeenth Century
6. The Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age
4. Membership, Organisation and Finance in the Eigh-
teenth Century
8. Overseas Trade in the Eighteenth Century
g. The Port, the River and Navigation in the Eighteenth
Century
10. The Society in Wartime in the Eighteenth Century
11. The Society as a Property-Developer in the Eighteenth
Century
12. Charitable and Educational Work in the Eighteenth
Century
13. Miscellaneous Activities in the Eighteenth Century
14. The Society and Other Organisations in the Eighteenth
Century
15. The Changing Background in the Nineteenth Century
16. Membership, Organisation and Finance in the Nine-
teenth Century
17. The Society and the Trade of Bristol in the Nineteenth
Century
18. The Port, the River and the Sea in the Nineteenth
Century
1g. The Society as a Property-Developer in the Nineteenth
Century
20. The Society and Education in the Nineteenth Century
21. The Charitable Work of the Society in the Nineteenth
Century
22. Miscellaneous Activities in the Nineteenth Century
102
124
150
170
182
197
218
237
243
249
284
307
329
357
388
405
Vili Contents
23. Membership, Organisation and Finance in the Twentieth
Century 442
24. The Society and its Property in the Twentieth Century 466
25. The Society and Education in the Twentieth Century 477
26. The Charitable Work of the Society in the Twentieth
Century 513
27. Miscellaneous Activities in the Twentieth Century 529
28. Past, Present and Future 543
Appendix :
A. Register of Members 1800-1974 547
B. Table of Admissions 1800—1899 566
C. Table of Admissions 1900-1974 567
D. Masters and Wardens since 1900 568
E. ‘Treasurers since 1900 573
F. Receipts and Payments 1845-1850 574
Index : 576
Preface
Tue words Merchant Adventurer or Merchant Venturer often
conjure up images of courageous and enterprising men risking their
lives and their fortunes and braving the perils of the sea to open up
new trade routes to distant lands for the benefit of their country. The
use of the word “‘venture”’ in the sense of running a risk goes far back
into the middle ages, but it is not until the second half of the fifteenth
century that we find references to merchant adventurers and
merchant yenturers. From that time onwards the terms came into
common use with special reference to certain groups of merchants
trading overseas. The most important of such groups was the one
trading to the Netherlands, which came to be known as the Company
of Merchant Adventurers of England and which, it has been said,
adopted the title of Merchant Adventurers at a time when. its
members had ceased to be adventurers and were settling down to a
well-ordered trade in an established market.}
In the middle ages and in the sixteenth century, there were
established in various provincial towns a number of groups of Mer-
chant Adventurers some of which had a loose relationship with the
Merchant Adventurers of England. The Bristol Society of Merchant
Venturers, however, was in no sense a branch of a national organis-
ation.? It was formally established in 1552 when it was granted
letters patent by Edward VI. For more than two hundred years, it
used the name Merchant Adventurer as well as the title Merchant
Venturer, and it was not until the second half of the eighteenth
century that it began consistently to call itself the Society of Mer-
chant Venturers of the City of Bristol. It was in origin a group
of merchants which sought to establish for its members the sole
right to handle the foreign trade of Bristol. It eventually failed in its
attempt to create a monopoly, but it nevertheless developed into a
powerful pressure-group which could claim with some justification
to speak on behalf of the merchant community. It also engaged in
1 For a discussion of the use of the terms merchant adventurer and merchant
venturer, see E. M. Carus-Wilson, Medieval Merchant Venturers, 1954, Pp. xi ff.
2 For a discussion of the relationships between the various groups of Merchant
Adventurers, see Patrick McGrath, Records relating to the Society of Merchant
Venturers of the City of Bristol in the Seventeenth Century, Bristol Record Society xvii,
1951, pp. xxx ff.
x Preface
many other activities, the nature of which is examined in this book.
In the course of four centuries, the Society has undergone many
changes, but a measure of continuity has been preserved. The Tudor
predecessors of the present members were familiar with the first
charter which now adorns the new Merchants’ Hall, with the ela-
borate coat of arms still in use, and with the charitable and educa-
tional purposes which have become the main activity of the Society.
They would find the site of their ancient Hall now occupied by a
multi-story building, but adjoining it, they would see a Merchants’
Almshouse on the same ground which it occupied in the sixteenth
century.
The purpose of this book is to examine the history of the Merchant
Venturers of Bristol as a corporate body and not the individual
achievements of its members. From 1618 onwards, we have a com-
plete list of Merchant Venturers showing that over 1,200 men have
belonged to the Society between that date and the present day. It
would not be possible within the limits of this book to examine the
work of so many men, and such a study might in any case be mis-
leading. The actions and the views of individual Merchant Ven-
turers did not necessarily represent those of the Society as a corporate
body, and it is a mistake to imagine that when a member adopted
a particular view on local or national affairs, he did so because he
- was a member of the Society. Obviously, at certain times and on
certain issues, members acted together, but it is wrong to think that
throughout its history the Society had a party line which had to be
followed by all its members. Merchant Venturers often belonged to
other groups, and it is dangerous to look for the Hidden Hand of the
Society when discussing the motives of individual members.
This history of the Society cannot, of course, be studied in com-
plete isolation from the background of local and national affairs. It
is not possible here to deal with this in great detail or to make a
comparative study of Bristol and other towns, but some attention
has been given to the city in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
for in those centuries the Society had a particularly important part
to play in economic life. The background of the later period has
been touched on more lightly, because the Society was changing its
role and was ceasing to be an influential commercial group. Develop-
ments in local and central government compelled it to give up its
older functions, and it concentrated increasingly on philanthropic
and educational work.
It would be easy to select some of the more interesting and
colourful episodes in the Society’s history and to concentrate
primarily on them, but it would be misleading. Television pro-
grammes about Bristol rarely resist the temptation to highlight
Cabot and the New World and to give the impression that the
Preface xi
wealth of Bristol and the Merchant Venturers was based above all
upon the slave trade. The Merchants’ Almshouse and the Suspen-
sion Bridge are thrown in for full measure. In fact, a great deal of
the Society’s history consists in continuous and steady application
by its members to a great variety of business, important and un-
important. The main record of these multifarious activities is to be
found in the 41 Hall Books of Proceedings, the majority of which
contain between 400 and 500 pages. In addition, there is a formidable
collection of other material. In order to show how the Society
worked and what it achieved, it is necessary to include a consider-
able amount of detail. Some of this will be of interest primarily to
present and future members of the Society and to those who have a
special concern with the history of Bristol, and some to those who
wish to know more about particular aspects of the Society’s activities
such as its commercial policy, its regulation of the port and the
pilots, its property development, its philanthropic work or its
contribution to education. Not all the detail will be equally interest-
ing to all readers, but taken as a whole it presents a picture of the
work done by many men over a period of more than four hundred
years. If the work of the Society was not always glamorous, it was
certainly impressive in its amount.
I have tried to present a balanced and critical account of the
Society’s achievements. Some of these really require more detailed
examination than is possible here. It is not easy, for example, to
present a coherent account of the finances, and this is a subject
which would repay further study, as would the interesting story of
how the Society has administered the endowments of the St.
Monica Home of Rest and acquired for the trust very extensive
agricultural and urban estates. Again, it has been possible to sketch
only in outline what has hitherto received little attention — the role
of the Society as a property-developer in Clifton, Hotwells and other
parts of Bristol, and it is to be hoped that some day this subject will
be examined in detail with the help of the great collection of deeds,
plans and other material in the Society’s archives.
The main groups of records relating to the history of the Merchant
Venturers up to the end of the eighteenth century have been des-
cribed elsewhere.? I originally intended to give some account of the
later records, but this is unnecessary now that Miss Elizabeth Ralph
is engaged in the work of rearranging them in archive groups and
preparing lists and calendars which will be of great help to students.
It is to be hoped that she will in due course produce a complete
3 Patrick McGrath, Records relating to the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City
of Bristol in the Seventeenth Century, Bristol Record Society, xvii, 1951, pp. xlv ff.;
Walter Minchinton, Politics and the Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, Bristol
Record Society, xxiii, 1963, pp. xxxvi ff.
xil Preface
Guide. The references I have given in the footnotes will, I trust, be
sufficient to identify the material, even when it has been reorganised
and rearranged.
I should like to express my gratitude to those who have helped me
in this work and made possible the production of this volume.
I deeply regret that Mr. R. H. Brown who first invited me to
write this work and who had a deep interest in the history of the
Society did not live to see the completion of the book, although he
read the greater part of it in manuscript and made a number of very
helpful comments and criticisms.
The Society and its sub-committee, including the present Master
Mr. H. A. Densham, Mr. J. A. Gordon, Mr. C. E. Pitman and the
Treasurer, have shown great patience and understanding as well as
much ingenuity in overcoming the problems of publishing so large
a book at a time when printing costs continue to rise dramatically.
The present Treasurer, Mr. J. E. C. Clarke, has given me the
benefit of his great knowledge of the Society’s affairs and allowed me
to take up a great deal of his time.
One of the most remarkable personalities connected with the
Society in modern times is Miss G. E. Whitaker who for nearly thirty
years was intimately concerned with all aspects of its work. I am
deeply grateful to her for making available her knowledge and
experience and for preserving me from many errors.
When I first undertook this work, Dr. Helen Meller kindly agreed
to examine the archives and to draw up a working list of the
materials. Since then, Miss Elizabeth Ralph, the former Bristol
City Archivist, has become part-time archivist to the Society and
is still engaged in the formidable task of listing and calendaring the
records. I should liké to thank her for helping me on a number of
matters and for reading the whole of the manuscript.
I should also like to express my appreciation of the work of Mr.
D. J. Eames whose very valuable thesis on the educational work of
the Society has been of the greatest help.
Miss Mary Williams, the Bristol City Archivist, has very kindly
assisted in a number of ways.
Professor Kenneth Ingham gave me great help and encourage-
ment, and I very much appreciate all that he has done. Mr. C. E.
Pitman generously contributed his expertise as well as his energy and
his enthusiasm to arranging for the production and distribution of
the book, and to him also I am deeply grateful.
Generous grants to assist publication were received from the
Publications Committee of the University of Bristol, Lord Dulverton
and the Dulverton Trust, and the Twenty Seven Foundation.
Preface xiil
A number of people were involved in the task of typing and re-
typing the manuscript. I should like to thank above all Mrs. Peggy
Roberts who bore the main burden so patiently and who dealt with
‘such understanding and efficiency with the various problems arising
in connection with it. I am also very grateful for the help given during
the last year by Miss Elizabeth Reid. Mrs. Rosalind Edbrook,
Mrs. Margaret Battson and Mrs. Jane Woolrich also helped type
part of the manuscript.
I very much appreciate the kindness and help I have received
from members of the staff of the Merchants’ Hall, particuarly Miss
Mary Morris and Mr. K. H. Trigg. Mr. H. Kilkenny, Mr. and Mrs.
A. C. Moon and Mrs. F. M. Douglas have looked after my comfort
during the many hours I have spent working on the records.
Mrs. P. H. Brewer helped in a number of ways, including the
selection of the illustrations. Mr. H. Kelsey of the University’s Arts
Faculty Photographic Unit took a great deal of trouble over photo-
graphing material in the Merchants’ Hall, and Mr. Reece Winstone
allowed me to use some of the illustrations in his unique collection.
Printers do not always receive the gratitude they deserve, and I
should like to express my thanks to Mr. C. D. Holmes of Western
Printing Services Ltd. for all the trouble he and his staff have taken
over the production of this book. |
I have tried to acknowledge fully in the footnotes the use I have
made of the work of others. Any one who writes about Bristol owes
a great deal to the labours of John Latimer, who knew so much about
the city’s history and who was the first historian of the Society.
Unfortunately, he chose not to give footnote references, and it is
partly because this presents difficulties to those who come after him
that I have been at pains to avoid his mistake. I have made great use
of the work of Professor W. E. Minchinton on eighteenth-century
Bristol and of Mr. D. J. Eames’ thesis on the Society’s educational
achievements, even though I have consulted at first-hand many of
the records which they used. |
I am particularly grateful to my daughters, Mrs. Antonia Parker-
Jones, who assisted with the proof-reading, and Veronica, who made
a major contribution to the task of compiling the index.
Finally, I want to express my appreciation of the help given by
my wife and children who have assisted in so many ways in the
completion of this book.
Patrick McGrath
May 1975
List of Illustrations
facing
page
Prospect of Bristol, 1673 14
The Severn and the Avon, 1673 14
The Charter of 1552 15
The Merchants’ Hall, 1673 46
The Merchants’ Hall, 1789 46
The Great House, St. Augustine’s Back 47
Colston’s School at the present day 47
The Hotwell House in the eighteen-thirties 270
The Hotwell House in the eighteen-sixties 270
The Manor of Clifton c.1837 between pages 270-271
The Waterworks Engine House 271
The Observatory in the eighteen-fifties 271
William Claxton, Treasurer 1841-1873 334
Menu for a Hall dinner, 1888 335
The silver chargers presented by the first Lord Dulverton.
Box in which the Freedom was presented to P. W. S. Miles 335
Portrait of Lord Roberts being removed from the damaged
Hall 366
The St. Monica Home of Rest 367
The Merchants’ Almshouse 367
The Merchant Venturers’ Technical College after the fire of
1906 494
The Merchant Venturers’ Technical College after rebuilding,
1909 494
Evening classes in the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College, 1885 495
Cartoon lampooning the Society’s attitude to the proposed :
University of Bristol 526
The Merchants’ Hall, Clifton, 1966 — 527
Part of the interior of the Merchants’ Hall 527
Abbreviations used in the Footnotes
Book of Charters 1
Book of Charters 2
Book of Petitions
Book of Trade
Claxton’s Fournal
AB.
Latimer, Merchant
Venturers
Latimer, Seventeenth
Century Annals
Latimer, Eighteenth
Century Annals
Latimer, Nineteenth
Century Annals
McGrath, Merchant
Venturers
M.V. University Papers
Book beginning in 1618 containing charters
and miscellaneous material.
Book beginning in 1639 and continuing to
the mid-eighteenth century, contains copies
of charters and miscellaneous material.
Book similar to Book of Charters 2 covering
the years 1765-1850.
Letter and memorandum book in the
Merchants’ Hall archives covering the period
1598-1666. (see McGrath, Merchant Ven-
turers, pp. xlviii ff.)
Private journal kept by the Treasurer,
William Claxton, 2 vols. in the Society’s
archives.
Merchants’ Hall Book of Proceedings containing
the Minutes of Hall meetings and Standing
Committee meetings, 41 vols. 1639 to the
present day.
John Latimer, The History of the Society of
Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol, Bristol,
1903
John Latimer, The Annals of Bristol in the
Seventeenth Century, Bristol, 1900.
John Latimer, The Annals of Bristol in the
Exghteenth Century, Bristol, 1893.
John Latimer, The Annals of Bristol in the
Nineteenth Century, Bristol, 1887, and The
Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century 1887-
1g00, Bristol, 1902.
Patrick McGrath, Recerds relating to the Society
of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol in the
Seventeenth Century, Bristol Record Society,
XVIi, 1Q5I.
Collection of miscellaneous papers relating
to the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
XVlil Abbreviations used in the Footnotes
Minchinton, Trade of
Bristol
Minchinton, Politics
and the Port
Schedule of Deeds No. 2
Trans. B.G.A.S.
Waterworks Box
College and University College, Bristol.
Originally kept in two black boxes.
Walter Minchinton, The Trade of Bristol in
the Eighteenth Century, Bristol Record Society,
XX, 1957-
Walter Minchinton, Politics and the Port of
Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, Bristol Record
Society, xxili, 1963.
A volume of 872 pages entitled ‘Schedule of
Deeds relating to the Society of Merchants
Property’ begun in the eighteen-thirties and
continuing into the twentieth century with
references to the boxes in which the deeds
are kept. I have called it No. 2 to distinguish
it from the earlier eighteenth-century sche-
dule.
Transaction of the Bristol and Gloucestershire
Archaeological Society.
Collection of miscellaneous papers in the
Society’s archives relating to the Waterworks
scheme, originally kept in a black box
marked ‘‘Waterworks’’.
CHAPTER 1
Early Merchant Organisations in Bristol:
a Problem of Evidence
THE Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol was in-
corporated by letters patent of Edward VI on 18 December 1552,
but the merchant organisation then established by royal authority
‘was certainly not the first organisation of merchants to be established
in the city. Not surprisingly, attempts have been made to suggest
that the Society was no mere Tudor parvenu, that it had a respectable
ancestry going far back into the middle ages, and that it was possibly
flourishing in the later fifteenth century when bold adventurers from
Bristol pushed out further and further into the Atlantic and the
famous, if somewhat elusive, John Cabot came to the city to find
moral and financial support for his voyages of discovery to the New
World. In the introductory chapter to his History of the Society of
Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol,1 John Latimer hints rather
vaguely at some sort of connection between the Society and the Gild
Merchant of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, but he was too
good an historian to commit himself in this matter, and his readers
have to draw their own conclusions as they peer through the smoke-
screen which he created in his section on “The Guild Merchant and
its developments”. In this search for ancestors, it is necessary to
remember that the evidence is limited and difficult to interpret.
There are no records of the Society of Merchant Venturers before
the mid-sixteenth century, and even in the Elizabethan period the
material is pitifully limited. The municipal records are more plenti-
ful, but there are many gaps. Time and again, absence of evidence
makes it difficult to say what relationship, if any, existed between
one merchant organisation and another, and it is quite impossible
to show any continuity between the Society established in 1552 and
what Latimer called ‘“‘the Anterior Merchants’ Guilds’’.
The overseas trade of Bristol has, of course, a very long history. ?
Information about it accumulates as the thirteenth century goes on,
but it is not until after the mid-fourteenth century that we have much
1 John Latimer, The History of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol,
with some Account of the Anterior Merchants’ Guilds, Bristol, 1903.
2 There is an excellent summary of the present state of knowledge in J. Sherborne,
The Port of Bristol in the Middle Ages, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association,
1965 (2nd. ed. 1971).
2 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
statistical material.2 There is uncertainty about the size of the
population, and estimates, based on the Poll Tax returns of 1377,
vary from 9,500 to 12,000.* There is no means of saying how many
of these people were engaged in industry, how many in providing
services of various kinds and how many in overseas trade, but clearly
foreign commerce, particularly in cloth, wine and woad was of
major importance in the economy. Between September 1479 and
July 1480, for example, some 250 individuals are recorded as trading
with Gascony, Spain and Portugal alone.® If one takes into account
the other foreign markets with which Bristolians dealt, the total
number involved must have been very impressive. Many of these
people were not, of course, full-time merchants, for there seems to
have been nothing to stop any burgess who wished to do so from
engaging in an occasional venture overseas, but there is plenty of
evidence to show that there was a group of wealthy men whose main
business was import and export. These professional merchants played
a predominant part in governing the city, and they used some of
their wealth for the enrichment of the churches, for the endowment
of chantries and for charitable activities of many kinds.®
It is probably a mistake to think of the merchant community
becoming continually richer and more important throughout the
middle ages, for the evidence shows that for much of the fifteenth
century the volume of trade in cloth and wine was smaller than in the
second half of the fourteenth century,’ but although Bristol’s relative
importance in foreign trade seems to have been declining, the
merchants engaged in foreign trade appear to have been throughout
the middle ages the richest and most powerful group in the com-
munity. |
Since foreign trade was so important and since those engaged in it
were some of the most influential men in the city, one might have
expected them to have had from an early date some organisation of
their own to look after their particular interests. There is a mass of
3 E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, England’s Export Trade 1275-1547,
1963.
4 J. C. Russell, British Medieval Population, 1948, p. 285; E. M. Carus-Wilson,
Expansion of Exeter at the close of the Middle Ages, 1963, p. 5-
5 J. Sherborne, op. cit., p. 27.
6 A great deal of information about the merchant community of medieval Bristol
is to be found in the work of Professor E. M. Carus-Wilson including the following:
The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Later Middle Ages, Bristol Record Society, vii,
(1937; The Merchant Adventurers of Bristol in.the Fifteenth Century, reprinted from
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 1928, Bristol Branch, of the Historical
Association, 1962; and her chapter on “‘The Overseas Trade of Bristol’ printed
in her Medieval Merchant Venturers, 1954 and in E. Power and M. M. Postan,
Studies in English Trade in the 15th Century, 1933. .
7 See J. Sherborne, The Port of Bristol inthe Middle Ages, which modifies very
considerably earlier views about the position of Bristol in the fifteenth century.
Early Merchant Organisations in Bristol 3
evidence about the numerous craft gilds of medieval Bristol,® and
it would seem only natural for the merchants to meet and make
regulations in the same way as did the weavers, the butchers, the
dyers and the rest of the specialised crafts. Most of the craft gilds
placed restrictions on entry to their mystery and insisted on appren-
ticeship, or at least official approval by the gild, before a man could
be enrolled and permitted to practice his trade. The aim of such
regulations was partly to ensure reasonable professional standards,
partly to prevent occupations becoming overcrowded, with the
consequent reduction of the price at which the product or service
could be sold. There would seem to be every reason why the most
important occupation of all — the craft or mystery of a merchant —
should be organised on similar lines and why an attempt should be
made to restrict entry and to maintain professional standards in an
occupation the practice of which would affect the reputation of
Bristol in other English towns and in countries beyond the seas.
Some writers have suggested that an archetypal organisation of —
merchants can be found in the gilda mercatoria or Gild Merchant which
flourished in a great many English towns from the twelfth century
onwards.® In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, there are a
few references to a Gild Merchant in Bristol, but in medieval England
a gild merchant was not necessarily, or even normally, a gild of |
merchants in the sense of being an association concerned only with
those engaged in overseas trade. Generally speaking, it was an
association concerned with controlling the whole of the economic
life of the town and preventing outsiders from enjoying the privileges
which were restricted to burgesses. Retailers and craftsmen probably
constituted the bulk of its members. It was a Gild Merchant but not a
gild of merchants in the modern sense. Very little is known about
the organisation and working of the Gild Merchant in Bristol, and
there is no mention of it in the records after 1372. Continuity with
later organisations of merchants cannot be established.
Another organisation involving merchants was the Staple.?° This
was primarily a royal institution to control the export of wool, hides
and lead. From time to time in the fourteenth century, the govern-
ment directed that such exports should be channelled through
specified towns in England instead of through marts overseas. Thus,
the important Statute of the Staple of 1353 removed the staple from
8 F. Rogers, ‘“The Bristol Craft Gilds during the 16th and 17th centuries”,
unpublished Bristol] M.A. thesis, 1949; The Little Red Book of Bristol, edit. Francis
B. Bickley, 2 vols. 1900.
® For the history of the Gild Merchant, see Charles Gross, The Gild Merchant,
2 vols., 1890.
10 For the complicated history of the Staple, see The Staple Court Books of Bristol,
edit. E. E. Rich, Bristol Record Society, v, 1934, and in particular his section on
‘Bristol as a Staple’, pp. 64 ff.
4 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Bruges to home staples in thirteen towns, of which Bristol was one,
and directed that the merchants, “native and alien”, should meet
annually and elect a Mayor of the Staple and two constables in
each of the staple towns. The Mayor and constables were given
certain jurisdiction over members of the Staple and were to judge
cases by the Law Merchant and not by the common law."! In 1363,
Calais was fixed as the sole staple mart and a small group of impor-
tant wool merchants became the Staple Company of England. This
company was primarily concerned with the export of English wool,
and largely because Bristol lay off the main trade routes to the
Netherlands and Italy, its export of wool was of comparatively small
importance. Thus, it was not very much concerned with the opera-
tion of this powerful company. Nevertheless, the local staple organi-
sation which had been set up in 1353 continued, and a Mayor of the
Bristol Staple was elected and continued to hold a court until the
later seventeenth century. From 1379 onwards the Mayor of the
Staple was always the Mayor of Bristol.12 In 1436 when John Milton,
Mayor of Bristol and Mayor of the Staple, died in office, the con-
stables of the Staple and “the commonalty of the merchants
both native and foreign of the aforesaid staple” elected Nicholas
Devenyshe to be Mayor of the Staple for the rest of the year and
got the election confirmed by the Lord Chancellor.18
Very little is known about the way in which the staple organisation
worked in medieval Bristol and all the evidence points to it being,
not an association concerned with regulating foreign trade, but a
body whose main function was the administration of a particular
kind of justice in mercantile affairs for a privileged community of
members. We have no lists of members and we do not know how
membership was obtained. It was a body which was distinct from
the town government but very closely associated with it, since the
Mayor of Bristol was Mayor of the Staple. It seems likely that the
leading merchants of Bristol were members, but there is no evidence
that it was limited to them. They presumably met together as
members of the staple just as they did as members of the city govern-
ment, but there is nothing to suggest that they used this institution
to regulate foreign trade and there is no link between the Staple and
the Society of Merchant Venturers./4
Whatever may have been the position earlier, control of the over-
seas trade of Bristol was for the greater part of the fifteenth century
11 For reasons which need not be discussed here, merchants and others found it
much more convenient to have their disputes settled by the Law Merchant.
12 E, E. Rich, op. cit., p. 60.
18 The Little Red Book of Bristol, edit. Francis B. Bickley, i, 178 ff.
14 The Staple continued to exist long after the Society of Merchant Venturers
had been established, but there were no links because the two institutions served
entirely different purposes.
Early Merchant Organisations in Bristol 5
in the hands of the city government and not in the hands of a special
association of merchants. The Corporation exercised control directly
through its ordinances,!*° although this did not mean that groups
of merchants with similar interests could not cooperate from time
to time to urge the Common Council to adopt a particular policy.*®
As long as the merchants controlled the municipal government,
which had in any case the last word in deciding economic policy, it
was not essential for them to. have their own organisation, and they
might well have felt that they could better achieve their objectives
through the Common Council.
In 1467 there seems to have been a change of policy by the city
government, and the Corporation took the first very halting step
towards giving the merchants an organisation of their own. An act
“for the goode sadde and profitable rewle off and uppon iiii certeigne
merchaundiszes usyd in Bristowe that is to sey meteoyle, woloyle,
yren and wax’? laid down that the mayor and sheriff should summon
a great council and with their advice choose a worshipful man of the
council who had served as mayor or sheriff to be master of the
fellowship of merchants within the town for a year and also eleven
other merchants to be wardens and two to be beadles. The Master and
fellowship were to occupy a chapel and room in Spicer’s Hall on
the Back of Bristol for a rent of 20s. per annum. All the merchants of
Bristol were to come when summoned to the meeting place under
pain of forefeiting 1 lb. of wax for every default. The fellowship was
to regulate the price at which the four commodities were to be sold
by burgesses to strangers. Those who did not observe the price
regulations were to pay a fine of 20s. for every offence, half to the
Fellowship, half to the Corporation. If a merchant was forced by
necessity to sell any of the four named commodities (and might
presumably be tempted to sell under the fixed price), he was to
explain his difficulty to the wardens or beadles. If they could not
provide a remedy within three days, he was free to sell at his
pleasure.?”
15 See, for example, the ordinances concerning woad, Little Red Book, ii, 16-22;
ordinances concerning drapers, ibid., 51-5; ordinances concerning non-freemen
bringing wool, cloth, iron, woad, wine, salt, madder, grain, oil, wax etc. to Spicer’s
Hall, Great Red Book of Bristol, edit. E. W. W. Veale, Bristol Record Society, 1937,
viii, 57-8.
16 The ordinances concerning drapers, 1370, list a large number of merchants
and drapers by whose consent the ordinances were made (Little Red Book of Bristol,
ii, 51-4); and the ordinances concerning woad, 1477, were made after a petition
had been received from “the merchants adventures with other Byers and sillers”
had complained about abuses (Great Red Book of Bristol, edit. E. W. W. Veale,
Bristol Record Society, xvi, 120).
17 The act is printed in Great Red Book of Bristol, edit. E. W. W. Veale, Bristol
Record Society, xvi, 83-4, and in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 16-18. In the
former the word yren firon) is wrongly transcribed as tren.
6 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The Act of 1467 did not mean that the Corporation of Bristol gave
the merchants of Bristol the right to run their own affairs. It merely
delegated to a small body of officials chosen annually by itself the
right to summon other merchants and control the price at which
certain commodities could be sold to non-burgesses, and it laid down
the penalties for non-cooperation. The large body of people engaged
in foreign trade had no say in electing the officials and were not
given any powers by the act. They were consulted but they were
not given control.
We do not know the background of this Act and why only these
four commodities were controlled. It is possible that in a time of
trade depression the Corporation decided to tighten up the regula-
tions concerning non-burgesses in order to ensure that outsiders did
not benefit at the expense of Bristolians.18 It may have thought that
the best way of doing this was to appoint a special body of merchants
who would have a particular interest in enforcing the Act.
There is no evidence that the arrangements made in 1467 ever
came into operation. Latimer with less than his usual good sense
committed himself to the statement that the Fellowship ‘“un-
doubtedly flourished” and added that “a deed preserved in the
Merchants’ Hall seems to show that the chapel in Spicer’s Hall was
soon deemed inadequate for its requirements”.1® This picture of a
growing body of merchants requiring more room for religious
observances is not supported by the evidence, for the document to
which Latimer referred made provision for a new chapel, not for the
Fellowship of Merchants of 1467, but for a Gild of Mariners estab-
lished in 1445.2° It may be that the Fellowship of Merchants of
1467 was still-born. If Common Council did in fact choose the
Master and other officials between 1467 and 1499, we have no
record of it doing so.
There is one piece of evidence that could possibly be used to
support the view that after 1467 the merchants had some kind of
organisation. In 1477, there was a petition to the Common Council
about the state of the Toulouse woad trade. This came from “your
moost pore Comburgensis the merchaunts adventures [sic] with
18 For the trade depression of these years, see J. W. Sherborne, The Port of Bristol
in the Middle Ages, pp. 21-2.
1° Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 18-21.
20 This is clear from the deed which Latimer reproduced. The Gild of Mariners
was established in 1445 under the patronage of Our Lady, St. Clement, St. George
and all the saints. A priest and 12 poor mariners were to pray for the welfare of the
royal family; the corporation and the merchants and mariners of Bristol. They were
to be placed in the hospital of St. Bartholomew and were to be supported by a levy
on goods and mariners’ wages (Little Red Book of Bristol, edit. Francis B. Bickley,
li, 186 ff). By the deed of 1493, reproduced in Latimer, the Corporation granted to
13 merchants and 12 mariners a piece of land in the Marsh to build a chapel in
honour of St. Clement.
Early Merchant Organisations in Bristol 7
others Byers and sillers of the Towne of Bristowe. . . .’’*! It is of
interest not only because it seems to be the first time that the term
“‘merchaunts adventures” was used in Bristol, but because it appears
to make a distinction between them and ‘“‘others Byers and sillers’’.
It would, however, be dangerous to assert that it shows the existence
of an organised merchant group. The “merchaunts adventures”
may simply have been those who specialised in overseas trade in
woad as distinct from retailers and others who sometimes bought
and sold the commodity.
The balance of probability, then, is that after passing the Act of
1467, the Common Council decided not to implement it and con-
tinued to regulate foreign trade directly and not through a body with
delegated powers.
It is not until 1500 that we find the Corporation establishing an
organisation which can be said in any way to resemble the Society
of Merchant Venturers incorporated in 1552. In that year it decided
that in order to prevent “‘dyvers colourable and crafty dealinge of
certeyn burgeises’” who broke the regulations about dealing with
foreigners and strangers (i.e. non-burgesses), there should be
established ‘‘a company or fellowship of merchauntes separate and
distincte from every other companyes of handecraftymen’’. The
Act nominated the first master (John Penke), the first wardens
(David Leyson and John Stokes) and the first beadles or brokers
(George Meke and William Gifford). In future, the Company was
to meet yearly, within fourteen days after the feast of St. Michael,
to elect its own officers. Sons and apprentices of members were to be
admitted without fine provided they were burgesses, but those who
were burgesses by redemption or marriage were to pay an admission
fine. The Master and wardens were to meet twice a week in the
Council House to discuss the merchants’ business and to settle dis-
putes. The Company could make ordinances for the good rule of
the fellowship, and those who disobeyed them could be fined. No
merchant of Bristol might freight any ship without permission from
the Master and wardens. When any ship arrived with merchandise
of strangers or aliens, the Company was to decide what was to be
done with the cargo. A tax of a penny a ton on all merchandise and
a halfpenny a ton on salt was to be levied for the use of the Company.
By these and other ordinances the Common Council gave the Com-
pany complete control over the foreign trade of the city.??
21 The Great Red Book of Bristol (Text, Part III), edit. E. W. W. Veale, Bristol
Record Society, xvi, 1950, pp. 120-2.
22 A copy of these very lengthy ordinances is preserved in the Merchants’ Hall.
The ordinances were printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 26-35. It is possible
here to mention only a few of the very detailed regulations. The ordinances were
said to be for the good of ‘‘the said marchaunts adventurers”.
8 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Once again, we are ignorant of the motives which led Common
Council to take the unprecedented step of establishing a separate
organisation for the merchants and giving it such wide powers over
foreign trade. The overseas trade of Bristol had been flourishing in
the last twenty years of the fifteenth century, and the merchants
may have decided that they needed an organisation of their own.?8
Possibly they thought that too many amateurs were taking advantage
of a booming trade to dabble in what they regarded as their business,
but this is speculation. We do not know why this decision was made
at this particular time.
The Act of 1500, like that of 1467, is followed by a baffling silence
in the records. There is no evidence that the Fellowship established
in 1500 did in fact go on. If it made any ordinances, they have not
survived, and we have no record of the names of any masters and
wardens elected under the Act. This silence is all the more surprising
because one would have expected that the merchants of Bristol, who
had at long last got an organisation of their own, would have wanted
to keep it in being. The Act gave them very extensive privileges and
one would not have expected them to allow their privileges to lapse
through disuse.
The fact that in its organisation and powers the Company of
Merchants established in 1500 bears such a marked resemblance to
the Society of Merchant Venturers incorporated in 1552 makes one
wonder whether there was not some kind of continuity, but it, is
difficult to believe that such an organisation could have existed for
fifty years and left no trace at all in the records. One of the puzzling
aspects of the problem is that the only known copy of the Act of
Common Council of 1500 is found, not in the city archives, where one
would expect it to be, but in the archives of the Merchant Venturers.
It may be that in the mid-sixteenth century when a number of
Bristol merchants decided to ask the crown for incorporation, they
got hold of the Act of 1500 with a view to modelling their proposed
new organisation upon it. But this is speculation. Those who asked
for a charter in 1552 did not, as far as we know, mention that there
had been an earlier organisation in Bristol and seem to start, as it
were, from scratch. If they knew of the earlier organisation, they
may not have been anxious to mention it in their application to the
crown, since they wanted to get their authority not, as in 1500, from
the Corporation but direct from the King.
From what has been said it should be clear that it is impossible to
show any direct connection between the Society of Merchant
28 See J. Sherborne, The Port of Bristol in the Middle Ages, pp. 22-3. As far as the
cloth trade was concerned, Mr. Sherborne points out that the 1490s was the most
successful decade between 1347 and 1547, and Bristol was shipping 24 per cent
of the national import of non-sweet wines.
Early Merchant Organisations in Bristol 9
Venturers established under Edward VI and earlier merchant
organisations. In the light of the evidence at present available, any
attempt to trace the history of the Society back to the middle ages
can be regarded only as wishful thinking. 4
24 It is, of course, possible that further evidence may one day come to light about
either the organisation of 1500 or the early history of the Society of Merchant
Venturers. Latimer believed that the Society’s early records were seized by the
crown in the 1630s, and the Society has from time to time advertised in the hope
that they may be found, but Latimer was, I think, mistaken about what was taken
by the crown. For a further discussion of this, see Patrick McGrath, Records relating
to the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol in the Seventeenth Century, Bristol
Record Society, 1957, vol. xvii, pp. xlv—xlvii. .
CHAPTER 2
The First Fifty Years
THE history of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of
Bristol! thus begins with the letters patent granted by Edward VI
on 18 December 1552.2 According to the preamble, this charter was
granted in response to “the lamentable petition of Edward Prin,
Thomas Hickes, and Robert Butler . . . and other merchaunts
adventurers of the Citty aforesaid (called marchant Venterers)”’
trading beyond the seas. The King stated that he had been given to
understand that “divers Artificers and men of manuell arte” not
brought up in the merchant’s art and not having any knowledge of
it were commonly using the trade in strange (foreign) ships, so that
goods were illegally exported and the customs defrauded, and these
people were behaving in an evil and irregular manner, so that the
navy, the mariners and the merchants brought up in trade were in
decay. The merchants had petitioned the King for a remedy, and the
King therefore decreed that Prin, Hickes and Butler and the other
merchant venturers should be incorporated in ‘“‘one bodye and one
Comynaltie Corporated for ever by the name of the Maister,
Wardeins and Comynaltie of the merchant venturers of the Citty
of Bristol”. Prin was appointed Master and Hickes and Thomas
wardens. Every year, the members of the newly incorporated body
were to choose a master and two wardens who were to have authority
over all concerned in the trade and they were to have a common seal.
The Master and wardens were to take an oath yearly before the
Mayor and aldermen to execute their office, and the Society was to
have powers to make ordinances concerning the trade. No artificer
1 The Society was incorporated in 1552 as the Society of Merchant Venturers of
the City of Bristol (per nomen Magistri custodum et Communitatis de Marchaunt Venturers
civitatis Bristoll). The grant of arms of 1569 stated that Edward VI incorporated
**the company and fellowship of the marchant adventurars’’. The Society continued
to use the style Merchant Adventurers throughout the seventeenth century. (for one
of the rare occasions when it used the title Merchant Venturers, see H.B.1, p. 164,
7 Aug. 1650. The reversion to the original Merchant Venturers seems to have taken
place in the 1760s. See McGrath, Merchant Venturers, xxx, xxxi.
2 Printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 39-42, with an English translation,
pp. 42-6.
8 This cannot be taken to mean that there already existed a group of merchant
venturers in the sense of an organised body. The terms merchant adventurer or
merchant venturer was commonly used of any individual who ventured beyond
the seas.
First Fifty Years II
of Bristol was to trade beyond the seas unless he had been admitted
to the Society, or should hereafter be apprenticed to a merchant, or
had used the trade of a merchant for seven years. The ordinances
made by the Society must not be to the prejudice of the Crown, the
city or the Merchant Adventurers trading to the Netherlands.
The allegations made by those who petitioned for the Charter need
not necessarily be taken seriously. That Bristolians who had not been
trained as merchants were engaged in overseas trade was certainly
true, but that they were acting in the way alleged rests solely on the
statement of merchants anxious to secure a monopoly for themselves.
What we do not know is why the merchants chose this particular
time to make a bid for a monopoly. It could conceivably have been
a response to a trade depression, an attempt to restrict the limited
business available to as few people as possible. English foreign trade
was in difficulties at the beginning of the fifteen-fifties. London’s
export of cloth, for example, fell from 132,766 cloths in 1549-50 to
112,710 in 1550-1, and to 84,968 in 1551-2, and this was all the
more significant since London controlled between 80 per cent and
go per cent of the total export of cloth.* It does not seem, however,
that Bristol merchants were adversely affected by the export crisis
which hit the Merchant Adventurers of England who marketed
cloths in Antwerp. Bristol’s overseas trade was primarily directed to
Spain, Portugal, Ireland and France, and although relations between
England and Spain were not as happy as they had been earlier in
the century,® Bristol’s cloth exports seem to have nearly doubled
between 1549 and 1551,° and the city must have been experiencing
a boom at a time when London was suffering from a slump. It is
possible that a sudden expansion in cloth exports had encouraged a
number of people not trained as merchants to try their hand at
foreign trade, and that the merchants responded to an unusually
large influx of part-timers into foreign trade by demanding a
monopoly for the professionals.
The difficulties which the Merchant Adventurers of England
trading to Antwerp experienced in the early fifteen-fifties may,
however, have had some relevance to the Merchant Venturers’
Charter. The crisis may have helped to create in official circles a
4 J. D. Gould, The Great Debasement, Oxford, 1970, pp. 175-6. Professor Gould’s
new evidence and his critical examination of earlier work on Tudor foreign trade
is essential to an understanding of Tudor commercial policy and the effect on
exports of the debasement of the coinage.
§ Gordon Connell-Smith, Forerunners of Drake, 1954.
6 In the period 1540-9, Bristol’s average export of cloth was 2,170 cloths per
year. In 1549-50, she exported 4,271 cloths, and in 1550-1, 4,253 cloths. The figures
for 1551-3 are not known. In 1553-4, they were 3,490 and in 1554-5, 2,342. They
were well below 2,000 for the period 1555-61. J. D. Gould, op. cit., Appendix C;
E. M. Carus-Wilson and Olive Coleman, England’s Export Trade 1275-1547.
12 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
feeling that foreign trade was best restricted to particular groups of
experts. Professor Fisher argued that the first half of the sixteenth
century was a period of trade expansion during which the Govern-
ment placed relatively few restrictions on foreign trade, but that in
the second half of the century when foreign trade ran into continual
difficulties, there was a much more restrictive policy.’? From this
point of view, the grant to the Merchant Venturers, which was made
at a time when London’s exports had run into serious difficulties,
can be seen as part of the Government’s policy in the second half of
the century of favouring ‘‘a well-ordered trade” limited to privileged
groups. It was argued that if any one could trade overseas, too many
people would do so, the market would be flooded (as happened in
Antwerp in 1550), and English cloth would be left unsold or else
sold at greatly reduced prices. Uncontrolled activity in the foreign
market would lead to ill-qualified and unscrupulous people snatching
quick profits by unsatisfactory commercial practices, thus damaging
the reputation of English goods and English merchants. From the
Government’s point of view, organised groups of privileged merchants
could be subjected to pressure to make loans and to assist the Govern-
ment in various ways in return for their privileges. The practice of
giving official approval to restricted groups of merchants was not,
of course, new, and the Tudor government had inherited from the
middle ages the Company of the Staple and the Merchant Adven-
turers trading to the Netherlands, but it made much greater use of
incorporated and monopolistic trading companies in the second half
of the century than ever before, both locally and nationally. The
period witnessed the granting of charters to the Muscovy Company,
to the Merchant Adventurers of England, ® to the Eastland Company,
to the Levant Company, to the East India Company, to various
groups trading to Africa and to groups of merchants in Newcastle,
York, Chester, Hull, Exeter and elsewhere.
The right of controlling the overseas trade of Bristol which the
Merchant Venturers obtained in 1552 was one which they could have
obtained from the Corporation of Bristol, which had in fact given
similar powers to the association of merchants which it established
in 1500. There is no evidence on the point, but it can be assumed
that the Common Council of Bristol supported the application which
7 F. J. Fisher, “Commercial Trend and Policy in Sixteenth-Century England”’,
Economic History Review x (1940), 95 ff. His interpretation has, however, been
questioned. See L. Stone, “‘State Control in Sixteenth-Century England”’, Economic
raed Review xvii (1947) 104 ff., and J. D. Gould, The Great Debasement, chapter
6 (“Exports and the Debasement”).
8 I have for convenience used the term Merchant Adventurers of England for
the group trading in white cloth to the Netherlands and North Germany. This
Company was established in the middle ages and acquired further privileges in the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
First Fifty Years 13
the merchants made to the Crown. The point of applying to the King
was that the members of the newly incorporated body would in
future enjoy a monopoly which rested not merely on municipal
authority but on royal authority. |
The letters patent granted by Edward VI were confirmed by
Elizabeth I in 1566,° presumably as a result of an initiative taken by
the Society. The Elizabethan grant mentioned by name the Master,
Thomas Kelke, and the wardens, Dominic Chester and Thomas Alder.
In a period when the authority of Parliament was very much
increasing, it was obviously desirable for the monopolists to make
doubly sure of their privileges by getting parliamentary confirma-
tion of them.!° Moreover, it seems likely from what follows that the
the charters had not proved entirely satisfactory to the Society of
Merchant Venturers. The grant made by Edward VI lay particular
stress on excluding from foreign trade “‘Artificers and men of manuell
arte’’, but the Society probably found in practice that the real threat
to its monopoly came not from artificers but from people like the
grocers, the mercers, the haberdashers and the vintners. The
wealthier members of these crafts traded overseas but also engaged
in the retail trade. They were not “mere merchants”. From the
point of view of the professional merchants it was obviously desirable
that they too should be explicitly excluded, and thus in 1566 the
Merchant Venturers promoted an Act to confirm (and, in fact, to
extend) the privileges granted by charter."
The argument in support of the Act of 1566 is given in the pre-
amble. It was based on the alleged decay of shipping in Bristol and
the consequent threat to the navy in time of war —an argument which
might be expected to carry weight in the perilous early years of
Elizabeth I. It was claimed that in former times the Merchant
Venturers provided employment for various trades in Bristol and
furnished the navy with as many as twenty-five ships in time of war.
Of late years, people who did not possess ships of their own had
traded in vessels belonging to foreigners, and as a result merchants
were unable to maintain their ships and had to sell them or lay them
up, so that there were scarcely five ships available, whereas formerly
there had been twenty-five. In order to provide for the continuance
of the prosperity of Bristol and the increase of the defence of the
realm, and in order to restore the merchant venturers to their former
numbers, Edward VI had incorporated them in a Company and
Fellowship, and Elizabeth I had confirmed his grant. The Act of
Parliament of 1566 approved the incorporation and explicitly stated
® 8 July 1566. Printed with translation in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 46, 47.
10 The Muscovy or Russia Company, which got a charter in 1555, had it con-
firmed by Act of Parliament in 1566.
11 The Act is printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 47-50.
14 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
that ‘“‘noe Artificers or of anie other Science . . . should exercise the
recourse of marchandize into the parts beyond the Seas unless they
were admitted into the Societie ... by the Maister and Wardens...
or shalbe apprentice to the Saide Misterie or Arte of Marchaunts
aforesaid by the space of Seaven yeeres. .. . ’’ Since the letters patent
did not prescribe penalties, it was now enacted that offenders should
be liable to forfeiture of all the goods they attempted to transport
illegally to or from countries beyond the seas. Half the forfeiture was
to go to the Queen, half to be divided between the Society and the
Corporation of Bristol. Finally, if any member of the Society
attempted to use any other trade besides that of a merchant
adventurer, the Master and wardens were authorised to expel him.
The Act of Parliament of 1566 was a remarkable triumph for the
full-time professional merchants over the retailers and over those
merchants who also engaged in retailing. We can assume that it was
achieved with the full support of the Corporation.
It was but fitting that so successful an organisation should apply
for a grant of arms, and in 1569 Robert Cooke, Clarencieux King of
Arms, duly made a grant so that ‘“‘suche as have done comendable
service to their prince or contry eyther in warre or in peace may bothe
receive due honor in their lyves and also deryve the same successively
to their posteritie . . .”.12 The grant incidentally mentioned the
naming of the Master (Dominic Chester) and of the wardens
(Thomas Rowland and John Carr) which would otherwise be un-
known to us.
The triumph in the Parliament of 1566 was short-lived. There was
apparently a struggle between the professional merchants and the
wealthier retailers who did not want to give up retailing but who
were determined not to be excluded from foreign trade. The pro-
fessional merchants may themselves have been divided. The full
story of the conflict is not known,!* but it is significant that the two
members of parliament for Bristol in 1566 were not returned in
157114 and that the Mayor and aldermen wrote to the Lord
‘Treasurer Burghley on 28 March 1571 claiming that the Act of
1566 had done great damage to the trade of the city.1®
12 Printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 50-2, with a coloured reproduction
of the coat of arms. The motto “‘indocilis pauperiem pati’? from Horace Book 1
Ode 1 did not appear in the original grant and was adopted by the Society during
the nineteenth century. It could apply either to individuals who were not prepared
to tolerate personal poverty or to the corporate philanthropic efforts of the Society.
18 See Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 52 ff.; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. xiii
and notes 2 and 3.
14 The M.P.s in 1566 were Thomas Chester and William Carr. They were both
feoffees for the hall and almshouse (see note 22). In 1571 they were John Popham,
Recorder of Bristol, and Philip Langley.
16 Cal. S.P.D. 1547-1580, p. 408.
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Prospect of Bristol, from James Millerd’s Plan of Bristol, 1673.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
‘The Severn and the Avon, from James Millerd’s Plan of Bristol, 1673.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
The Charter of 1552, preserved in the Merchants’ Hall.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
First Fifty Years 15
A bill to repeal the Act of 1566 was introduced, and there was a
heated debate over the second reading, “‘many and sundry long
arguments” being advanced on both sides.1® The question was re-
ferred to a committee. The Merchant Venturers argued in answer to
criticisms by their opponents that any retailer could be admitted as
a merchant provided he agreed to give up retailing; that the prices
had not gone up, as was alleged, and that goods were better and
cheaper in Bristol than anywhere else in England. Shipping was not
in decay, and they had built nine or ten new ships and bought others,
so that, in spite of losses, they had twice as many ships nowas when
their letters patent were granted. They claimed that the revenue
from customs had increased and stated that they could prove this
from a copy of the books in the customs house. It was not true that
poor craftsmen were unemployed and they had, in fact, provided
them with more work than ever before.
After dealing with criticisms, the Merchant Venturers went on to
argue that if rich retailers such as the grocers, mercers, haberdashers,
soapmakers, vintners and others were allowed to trade abroad, they
would ruin the poorer members of their own crafts who would be
unable to compete with them, and they would destroy the “‘mere”’
merchants who had no one else to sell to except retailers. If a large
number of people were allowed to trade overseas, it would lower the
price of English goods abroad and put up the price of imports, “for
the more there are to sell there, the worse market will they make,
and the more buyers of strange commodities, the dearer they must
be’’. At the time when the navy was best maintained in Bristol, there
were not more than 40 merchants. Now, there were nearly 100,
and there were fewer goods available for them to import, since iron
and alum, which were formerly brought from Spain, were now made
better and cheaper in England. It was injurious for a man who had
served seven or eight years’ apprenticeship to a merchant to have his
living prejudiced by those ignorant of trade ‘“‘wherein there is more
skill than every man judges”. A merchant could not be a retailer, for
he had not the necessary knowledge, not having served an apprentice-
- ship. In any case, there was no room for him, since “all the houses
that stand in place of retail are already in the hands of retailers’. No
retailer had built ships, but one poor merchant had sustained more
loss in the service of the Prince than all the retailers. All the benefits
given by Bristolians to the city, such as erection of hospitals, giving
out of money for clothmaking and other provision for the poor, had
been done by merchants and not by retailers. Finally, it was argued
16 Fournal of the House of Commons I, 84, 85, 86. The bill was given a first reading
on 10 April. There were many arguments about it on the second reading on 11
April and on the third reading on 28 April. For a full discussion, see Jean Vanes,
‘The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Sixteenth Century’, London Ph.D. thesis,
1975-
16 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
that the retailers had never been so well off as now, and the mer-
chants were not only more numerous than ever but had been much
impoverished since the last Parliament by the restraint of trade.1”
Whatever the Merchant Venturers lacked, it was certainly not
ability in producing plausible arguments in support of their mono-
poly, but they failed to convince Parliament, and a bill repealing
the Act of 1566 was put on the statute book in May 1571.18 The
preamble put the case against the Merchant Venturers. With refer-
ences to the Act of 1566, it said that ‘“‘no manner of benefit or
commodytie appeareth to growe by the said Acte to the common-
weale”’ or to Bristol, but, on the contrary, since it had been passed,
prices had greatly increased, the customs had decreased, the wealth
of the city had been consumed and the navy had in some degree
decayed, since many wealthy inhabitants of Bristol who had pre-
viously traded on a large scale were now excluded “‘from the trade
of the Seas’’. Poor craftsmen were not given employment, and Bristol
and the surrounding countryside would be greatly damaged if
remedy were not provided ‘and the wonted libertye of the said
citizens thereof to trafficcke for merchaundize beyond the Seas fully
restored’.
The Act of 1571 was a major setback for the Society which could
now base its claims to a monopoly only on the support of the letters
patent of Edward VI and Elizabeth I and not on the authority of
parliament which had explicitly rejected the Society’s claim to
exclude others from sharing in the foreign trade of the city. It was no
longer.in a position to impose on interlopers the penalties laid down
in the Act of 1566. Moreover, it had for the time being lost the
support of the Corporation. It was in a much weaker position than it
had been between 1566 and 1571, but it still had its charters, which
were not explicitly cancelled by the Act. As we shall see, it did not
abandon its claims and it made repeated efforts in the seventeenth
century to recover the ground it lost in 1571. The Act of 1571 seems
to have been forgotten in later years, and there is no evidence that it
was used against the Society’s later attempts to assert a monopoly.?®
Between 1571 and 1605, there seems to be only one reference in
17 See Cal. S.P.D. Addenda, 1566-79, pp. 343-4. This paper giving ‘‘Articles of a
Bill exhibited in Parliament against the incorporation of the Merchant Adventurers
of the city of Bristol, and the answers into the same”’ (12 April 1571) is printed in
Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 53-5.
18 The Act is printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 55-7.
19 Latimer (p. 55) expresses surprise that no reference to the Act is made in the
corporate records or in the numerous Bristol Calendars, but presumably the Society
itself was not anxious to preserve the memory of this major defeat, and when the
Society and Corporation once more became partners, the Corporation, too, was
anxious to forget it. It seems as though the Act was completely forgotten. In the
eighteenth century, when the Standing Committee was looking for precedents, it
First Fifty Years 17
the records to the activities of the Society. It appears in an Ex-
chequer warrant issued on 9 February 1573 which states that the
Government had been ‘“‘advertised by the autentike testymoniall
from the Master and Wardens of the Company of Marchauntes
Adventurers of our citie of Bristoll under their seale and handes,
that our lovinge subjecte Dominike Chester and his parteners of the
said citye have sithence the moneth of May laste buylded a new
shipp of the burden of two hundred tonnes called by the name of the
Domynike . . .”’.2° Apart from this, there is at present nothing to
show that the Society was exercising any of the powers granted in
its charters. We do not know the names of any masters or wardens
between 1573 and 1605, and there is no evidence that any elections
were held or any regulations made.” There is at least the possibility
that as an organisation the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol
had ceased to function.
Even though the full machinery of the Society may have ceased to
function, there still remained what might perhaps be called a shadow
Society which could preserve something from the wreck and keep it
for happier times. Early in its history, the Society had acquired a
hall. This was the chapel of St. Clement, which had originally
belonged to the Gild of Mariners. When the chantries and other
bodies devoted to superstitious purposes had been dissolved under
Edward VI, the Gild of Mariners came to an end since its purpose
was to maintain a priest and 12 poor mariners to pray for the souls
of deceased merchants and sailors. The property of the gild was
granted by the King to Sir Ralph Sadleir and Laurence Winnington
who regranted it on 10 October 1553 to Edward Prin, the first
Master of the Merchant Venturers.** The property was subsequently
found in the chest the charters of Edward VI, Elizabeth I, Charles I and Charles
IT as well as ““The Act of Queen Elizabeth” and it ordered the clerk to make copies
of the Act. (H.B.4, 18 July 1720; H.B.5, 1 Jan. 1725). Clearly this was the Act of
1566. There is no trace of a copy of the Act of 1571 in the Society’s records, but the
Act did not escape the notice of the Municipal Corporation Commissioners in
1833. See Reports from the Commissioners on Municipal Corporation in England and Wales:
Bristol, 1835, p. 54-
20 P.R.O.: E 404/119, Exchequer Warrants for Issue, 9 Feb. 15 Elizabeth. I am
indebted to Mrs. Jean Vanes for this reference. |
21 The fact that there is no evidence of elections being held or regulations being .
made is not, of course, conclusive. But for a lease of 1564, the charter of 1566 and
the grant of arms of 1569, we would not know the names of any masters and wardens
between 1552 and 1569, but the Society nevertheless continued to exist. Absence
of evidence is not necessarily evidence of absence.
22 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 66-7, 96. Grant by Ralph Sadleir and
Lawrence Winnington of the chapel vulgarly called St. Clement’s Chapel and other
property granted then by letters patent 15 December 4 Edward VI, to Edward
Prynne (Merchants’ Hall records: Deeds Box 5 Bdle. Az). On 10 October 1561,
Erasmus Prynne, son and heir of Edward Prynne deceased, assigned the premises
to Thomas Aldworth and Thomas Symondes (Deeds Box 5 Bdle. Aa).
18 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
granted to a number of merchants who held it as feoffees.28 The
continuity of the Society was thus maintained primarily through
the feoffees who held the property. Through one of the leases which
they made, it is possible to establish the identity of two more
wardens whose names have not hitherto been known. In 1564, a
house in Fisher Lane, which was part of the property, was leased to
Thomas Nutte by George Snygge and William Hickes who are
described as “‘of the citie of Bristow merchantes and wardens of the
house comenlye called Saynte Clementes Chapell and of the Almes-
house next thereunto adjoyninge . . .”, and the lease was granted
with the assent of the feoffees of the property, including William
Pepwall, William Carre, John Cutt, Gyles Whyte, Thomas Chester
_ and most of the others to whom the property had been granted in
1561.74
It would also appear that the feoffees continued to maintain the
almshouse for 12 poor mariners. This seems to be the conclusion to
be drawn from a letter signed by various members of the privy
council which was addressed to the mayor and aldermen of Bristol
on 5 October 1595.25 The privy council’s letter stated that the Council
understood that an almshouse for aged and impotent sailors had
been erected in Bristol in times past and that by consent of the
merchants and mariners 14d. was levied on every ton of merchants’
goods and 1d. in the pound deducted from sailors’ wages to maintain
an almshouse and free school for mariners’ children as well as to pay
a minister to say service at a chapel in Shirehampton for the benefit
of sailors who could not go far from their ships. The privy council
understood that this godly order had been withstood by “reprisers’’
and by those going on fishing voyages to Newfoundland. In
order to help the great number of mariners maimed in the Queen’s
service or on reprisal voyages, the Council instructed the Mayor and
aldermen to assist the collectors to get their dues from “reprisers”
and Newfoundland men as well as from other merchants. Thus the
28 On 20 November 4 Elizabeth (1561) Thomas Aldworth and Thomas Symonds
conveyed the property by way of feofment to William Pepwall, William Carr,
John Cutt, Gyles White, Thomas Shipman, George Snygg, Thomas Chester,
Thomas Kelke, John Browne, George Higgons, Dominic Chester, Richard
Hentley, William Yong, John Saunders, John Carr son of William Carr, John
Bysse, William Cutt, son of John, John Kelke, son of Thomas, William Chester,
son of Thomas, Edward Chester, George Snygg, son of George Snygg, John Halton,
son of Robert Halton, Thomas Symondes, son of Thomas Symondes, Benjamin
Boydell, son of John Boydell, John Browne, son of John Browne, Richard Yong,
son of William Yong, Peter Smythe, son of Robert Smith, and John Cutt, son of
John Cutt.
24 Merchants’ Hall Record: Deeds Box 5, Bdle. A2. See also Note 21.
25 Cal. S.P.D. Elizabeth, 1595-1598, pp. 105-6; Book of Trade, p. 39; McGrath,
Merchant Venturers, pp. 97-8.
26 Those going on reprisal or privateering voyages against Spanish shipping.
First Fifty Years 19
almshouse and the school continued, whatever may have happened
to the Society, since they were under the control of legally appointed
trustees.
Presumably by 1600 a number of the original feoffees were dead
or no longer active, for on 12 January of that year George Snygge,
William Chester, Richard Younge, John Browne and Thomas
Symondes granted the premises to 40 new feoffees.2”? Some of these
feoffees also obtained later in the same year a lease for go years at a
rent of £3 6s. 8d. of the duties of anchorage, cannage and plankage
due from all ships arriving at the port, In return, they agreed to
provide sufficient planks and to keep clean the slip at Hungroad.
This was apparently a renewal of a former lease granted about
1570, and it is yet another link with the past and with the future. 28
But although there clearly existed throughout the second half of
the sixteenth century a group of merchants who owned St. Clement’s
Chapel and the almshouse and who collected certain dues, this was
not quite the same thing as a Society exercising the powers granted
by the charters and regulating the foreign trade of Bristol. John
Latimer thought that the Society was “practically moribund”? by
the end of the sixteenth century and seemed to suggest that this was
due to the prostration of commerce and industry.2® It is true that
overseas commerce experienced a number of severe depressions
under Elizabeth I. The French Wars of Religion, the troubles in
Ireland and the various interruptions in trade with Spain and Portu-
gal, culminating in open war in 1585, had serious repercussions on
Bristol’s overseas markets, but trade depression was not characteristic
of the whole of Elizabeth’s reign, and there were a number of quite
long bright intervals.?° The dormant, or even moribund, condition
of the Society of Merchant Venturers cannot be satisfactorily
27 Merchants’ Hall Records: Deeds Box 5 Bdle. Az. The premises was granted
to William Hickes, William Ellies, John Hopkins, Richard Jones (Aldermen of
Bristol), John Whitson, Thomas Barnes, John Barker, Matthew Havellande,
Robert Aldworth, Abell Kitchin, John Boulton, John Rowberowe, George White,
John Fowenns, John Aldworth, John Robertes, Richard Powell, Thomas White,
Edward Morrice, Thomas Whitehead, Robert Johnson, Thomas Aldworth, John
Sandford, John Angell, William Cole of Smal Street, Arthur Hibbyne, George
Wilkins, Peter Goughe, William Graves, John Gyttonns, Robert Havelland, Henry
Adams, William Havelland, William Ellies, John Ellies, John Pytt, Thomas
Davies, Thomas Anthonie, Francis Doubtinge and William Mellyne of Bristol,
merchants. Most of them can be shown to be members of the reorganised Society
of Merchant Venturers in the seventeenth century.
28 Bristol Record Office: 00352(5), 20 Sept. 1601. The grant is to 24 merchants
of Bristol of whom 16 are in the list of feoffees of 1600 (see note 26 above); Merchant
Venturers, p. 63.
29 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 60-2.
80 Tt was not until this book was in the press that I had an opportunity of examin-
ing Dr. Jean Vanes’ Ph.D. thesis ‘The Overseas Trade of Bristol in the Sixteenth
Century’ recently presented for the Ph.D. degree of the University of London.
20 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
explained solely, or even mainly, in terms of commercial depression.
It seems more likely that the Society, after receiving the serious blow
of 1571, became more or less inactive, not because trade was de-
clining, but because there emerged a rival organisation on a national
basis which secured a monopoly of the trade with one of Bristol’s
-most important markets — the Iberian peninsula.
Latimer was aware that John Whitson and other prominent
Bristol merchants were members of the Spanish Company, but he
did not realise the extent to which Bristol was affected by the develop-
ment of that Company in the later sixteenth and early seventeenth
centuries. In 1577, the Crown granted to members of the Spanish
Company the sole right of trading with Spain and Portugal.*!
The foundation members were named in the letters patent. They
included certain courtiers and officials, over 200 London merchants
and 173 merchants from other ports. No less than 76 Bristolians were
named as members, and Bristol supplied 3 of the 40 assistants who
governed the Company.®? The earliest entry in the first surviving
Treasurer’s Book of the Society of Merchant Venturers is an account
by John Barker, Treasurer, of ‘“Reyde monyes disimborsed to the
yowse of the company of marchantes of by [sic] Bristoll Tradinge
Spayne and Portingall. . . .”’?8 This is clearly an account, not of the
Society of Merchant Venturers, but of the Spanish Company’s
Bristol branch. It seems likely that after 1577 the Society had lost a
great deal of its significance as far as the prominent merchants were
concerned since the Spanish and Portuguese markets, which were so
important to Bristolians, were no longer under its control, and the
merchants engaged in these trades may have lost interest in the
Society and concerned themselves instead with the Bristol branch
of the Spanish Company. **
So little is known about either the Bristol branch of the Spanish
Company or about the Bristol Merchant Venturers in the later
sixteenth century that it is impossible to say whether the two did in
fact exist simultaneously, and if they did, what were the relations
between them. Assuming that the Merchant Venturers were still an
active body when the Spanish Company was incorporated in 1577,
81 The letters patent to the Spanish Company are printed in V. M. Shillington
and A. B. Wallis Chapman, The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal, pp.
313-26. For an account of the company, see Pauline Croft, The Spanish Company,
London Record Society, 1973.
82 Printed in McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 2, 3.
33 [bid., pp. 81-4.
34 The retailers of Bristol who had opposed the Society of Merchant Venturers
did not find the Spanish Company any more satisfactory. In 1578, Philip Langley,
who together with others who had opposed the Act of 1566 and who had joined
the Spanish Company, was said to be continuing ‘“‘the trade of a notorious retailer” _
and was in danger of being brought before the Privy Council. Acts of the Privy
Council 1577-1578, pp. 408, 409.
First Fifty Years a!
there could have been for a time two distinct merchant organisations
in Bristol, the one for merchants in general, the other limited to those
trading to Spain and Portugal. Presumably a number of merchants
could have belonged to both. It is possible, on the other hand, that
after 1577 the Bristol Society of Merchant Venturers, while retaining
its rights under the Charter of 1552, also acted under the Charter of
the Spanish Company for those of its members who traded to Spain
and Portugal.®° The fact that one of the Spanish Company’s accounts
has been preserved in the Treasurer’s Book of the Society of Merchant
Venturers might indicate some relationship, but on the other hand
this may be accidental. The accountant in 1583 was John Barker.
The Master of the Society in 1617-18, when the Society’s records
were put in order, was also John Barker. Possibly he had inherited the
book which contained only one account and decided that it would
be a pity to waste it and that it could be used to keep the Society’s
accounts.
There is another piece of evidence which is difficult to interpret.
On 27 March 1583, Thomas Aldworth, Mayor of Bristol, replied to a
letter from Sir Francis Walsingham concerning a proposed voyage
of discovery to America. He said that on receipt of Walsingham’s
letter, he had conferred with those sympathetic to the enterprise
“especially with M. William Salterne deputie of our company of
merchants’’. As Aldworth was ill, Salterne had ‘‘with as convenient
speede as he could . . . caused an assemblie of the merchants to be
gathered. . . .”°6 This suggests that there existed in Bristol in 1583 a
company of merchants of which William Salterne was “‘deputie”’.
Now, the Society of Merchant Venturers did not use the term
“deputy” for any of its officials, but the Spanish Company did, and
so this is possibly another reference to that organisation.
The Spanish Company was thrown into confusion by the war with
Spain in 1585, but after the peace of 1604 it obtained confirmation
of its old privileges. A new patent was subsequently granted to it on
31 May 1605, and the Company retained its monopoly of the trade
with Spain and Portugal. Of the 577 merchants named in the patent,
97 were Bristolians.*’
The agitation for a freer trade and the attack on some of the
London-controlled trading companies in the parliament of 1604 may
well have made the Bristol merchants anxious to assert their inde-
pendence and to throw off the control of the Spanish Company.*®
85 In the eighteenth century, the Society often acted for those of its members who
traded to Africa and was the channel of communication between them and the
African Company in London.
86 Richard Hakluyt, The Principal Voyages Traffiques and Discoveries of the English
Nation, Glasgow, 1904, PP- vill. 133-4.
37 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. xv, Xvi, 2, 3.
88 The Spanish Company was under heavy fire at national level. For the
22 The Merchant Venturers of Brisiol
According to the Society’s Book of Charters, drawn up in 1618, the
Merchant Venturers met in a general court on 7 May 1605 in St.
Clement’s Chapel, and by virtue of the letters patent of 1552 elected
a master, two wardens and a treasurer for the following year.®®
There is something rather unusual about the fact that this meeting
was held in May. It was not the time prescribed by the Charter, and
all the other meetings for election of officers recorded in the Book of
Charters between 1606 and 1639 were in October, November or
December. It is possible that the clerk who recorded in 1618 a
meeting which had been held 13 years earlier made a mistake about
the date, but it is more likely that this was an extraordinary general
meeting and that the merchants had decided to act again under their
grant of 1552 and to revive an organisation which had either died or
been put into cold storage.
If this interpretation is correct, it is the initiative of the Society of
Merchant Venturers which lies behind an ordinance passed by the
Common Council of the city on 31 December 1605.?° By this ordi-
nance it was agreed that the merchant adventurers of Bristol “‘shall
exempt themselves from the Companye and Governement of the
merchanntes adventurers of London tradinge into Spayne and
Portugall” and that “there shalbe a Companye of merchauntes
adventurers of the Cytie of Bristol contynued and established in the
same Cytie of Bristoll to be ordered and governed amongst themselves
by such Orders Constitucions and Pollycyes as shalbe hereafter set
downe and agreed on by the Mayor, Aldermen and Common
Councell of the said Cytie and by the Master Wardens Communytie
and Corporation of merchanntes within the said Cytie of Bristoll’’.
Every burgess who wished to use the trade of merchandise might
join for a fine of 20s. provided he gave over “‘the exercise of all other
trades occupacions and proffessions of getting his . . . Lyvinge’’. All
other merchants who were already free of the said company were to
pay 6s. 8d. Any one who wanted to be admitted after a year from
the date of the ordinance was to pay “‘as ys payd in lyke casein
London’’, except members of the Common Council who were still
to be admitted for 20s. Sons and apprentices of members who had
been brought up in the trade of a merchant were to pay only 6s. 8d.
Alderman William Hicks was appointed Treasurer to receive the
fines, three men were named to deal with admissions and 12 men
were appointed “Committees for the merchauntes Ordynances’’.
arguments for and against the Company, see C. T. Carr, Select Charters.of Trading
Companies, Selden Society, Vol. XXVIII, pp. xxiv, xxv. In 1606, parliament opened
the Spanish and Portuguese trades to all subjects of the English crown (Statutes of
the Realm, iv, Part ii, 1083).
3® McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 54; Book of Charters 1, p. 33.
4° Bristol Record Office: Common Council Proceedings 1598-1608, pp. 112-13;
McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 2-6.
First Fifty Years 23
Alderman John Hopkins was appointed Master and William Vawer
and John Whitson wardens.
There is some ambiguity about two of the phrascs used in the
City’s ordinance. They state that the Society of Merchant Adven-
turers shall be contynued and established and that those merchants
already Free of the same Company shall pay only 6s. 8d. for admission.
It could be argued that this shows that a separate company was in
fact in existence before the ordinance was passed, and that this
provides evidence that the Society of Merchant Venturers had not
died or become moribund in the later sixteenth century. It seems
more likely that the resurrection of the Society had in fact occurred
in May 1605 when a Master and two wardens were elected and that
the ambiguous phrases refer to this and do not necessarily prove the
continuous existence of the Society under Elizabeth I.
The Act of Common Council of 31 December 1605 makes no men-
tion of the charters of 1552 and 1566, and the authority behind this
establishment of a separate company of merchants was the City’s,
not the Crown’s. The divorce between the Society and the Corpora-
tion which had led to the Act of Parliament of 1571 had come to an
end, and the remarriage of 1605 was to lead to a long and fruitful
partnership.
CHAPTER 3
The Seventeenth-Century Background
Tue Society of Merchant Venturers which was reconstituted in
1605, was destined to play a major role in the development of Bristol,
and although we are concerned primarily with the history of the
Merchant Venturers as a corporate body and not with the general
history of Bristol, it is necessary to say something about the city in
the seventeenth century in order to understand the work of the
Society in its local and national setting.
The population of seventeenth-century England rose from about
4 millions at the beginning of the period to about 5} millions at the
end.! Although trade and industry were of increasing importance,
agriculture dominated the economy. The small governing class
consisted mostly of landowners, and land was the main source of
wealth and the means by which most Englishmen got a living. The
majority of people were to be found in small villages, not in towns,
and it has been estimated that 6 out of 7 Englishmen lived in
communities of less than 1,000.
In this essentially rural world, towns in general, and some towns
in particular, played a part the importance of which was all the
greater because it was the exceptional rather than the normal. Over-
whelmingly greater than any other town was what provincials often
regarded as the over-mighty capital of London. Its population was
probably between: 200,000 and 250,000 at the beginning of the
seventeenth century, and it had risen to well over 500,000 by the
end.? The metropolis was the centre of government, the seat of
the law courts, an industrial area of great importance and a money
market. It acted like a magnet, drawing to itself from all parts of
England large numbers of people who came for business or pleasure.
It was a great market for agricultural produce which reached it by
1 There is some uncertainty about the precise size of the population in 1600, but
for the end of the century there are detailed contemporary estimates by Gregory
King which have stood the test of modern research. See D. Glass, ‘*‘Gregory King
and the Population of England and Wales at the end of the 17th Century”’, Eugenics
Review, 1946, and “Gregory King’s Estimate of the Population of- England and
Wales, 1695’, Population Studies, 1950. |
2 Gregory King put the population of London in 1688 at 530,000. For estimates
of London’s population at various times in the seventeenth century, see N. G.
Brett-James, The Growth of Stuart London, 1935.
Seventeenth-Century Background 25
land, river and sea from almost every English county. Its enormous
wealth enabled it to play an important political role, not least in the
Civil War. It was the major port in England, and a vast collecting
and distributing centre for exports and imports. Though it went over
eighty per cent of the exports of England’s major industry, the
manufacture of woollen cloth. Its merchants, or some of them,
controlled the great companies for foreign trade, such as the Mer-
chant Adventurers of England, the East India Company, the Levant
Company, the Russian Company, the Eastland Company and the
Royal African Company. Its mercantile interests were able to get
privileges and’ to influence the policy of the government, and from
time to time there was conflict when the merchants of the outports
fought the privileged London groups at the Council table in White-
hall or in the parliament house at Westminster.
No other town came anywhere near London in size or importance.
In 1688, Gregory King estimated that 530,000 people lived in
London, that is, nearly one-tenth of the total population. He calcu-
lated that there were 870,000 living in ““The other Cities and Market
Towns”. Recent research has suggested that he had in mind some
800 places, so that many of what he called ‘Cities and Market
Towns” can hardly be regarded as urban centres as we understand
the term and were really large villages. At the top, or very near the
top, of these provincial cities came Bristol which, together with
Norwich, York and Southampton, made up towards the end of the
seventeenth century a group of 4 towns each with a population of
between 25,000 and 30,000. Then came 10 cities of about 18,000;
go of about 2,200 and 100 of about 1,300.4
_ Bristol was very small compared with London, but it was one of
the largest of the outports and by the end of the seventeenth century
it was probably the second city in the kingdom. We cannot be certain
about the size of its population, but it is probable that it rose from
somewhere between 12,000 and 14,000 at the beginning of the period
to between 25,000 and 27,000 at the end.5 This was about one-
twentieth of the population of London, but the importance of Bristol
was much greater than these figures might suggest, and Londoners
$F, J. Fisher, ““The Development of the London Food Market 1540-1640”,
Economic History Review, v, 1935; ‘“The Development of London as a Centre of
Conspicuous Consumption in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries”, Trans-
actions of the Royal Historical Society, 4th Series, xxx, 1949; ‘“London’s Export Trade
in the early Seventeenth Century’, Economic History Review, 2nd Series, ili, 1950.
The survey of the companies for foreign trade in E. Lipson, The Economic History of
England, ii, 1947, is still useful.
4 Peter Laslett, The World we have lost, 1965, pp. 55-6; D. Glass, ““Gregory
King’s Estimate of the Population of England and Wales, 1695”’, Population Studies,
1950.
5 Bryan Little, The City and County of Bristol, 1954, Appendix 1, pp. 325 ff.
26 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
certainly took it very seriously. It made a great impression on all
visitors and continually reminded them of the capital. An enthu-
siastic gentleman from Norwich in 1634 called it ‘‘a second
London’’,® and the seasoned traveller, Peter Mundy, remarked in
1639 that “Bristoll is even a little London for Merchants, shipping
and great well-furnished Marketts . . . and I think second to it in
the Kingdom off England For these particulars'‘and others’’.? The
judicious Evelyn in 1654 described it as ‘“‘A Citty emulating London,
not for its large extent, but manner of building, shops, bridge,
Traffique, Exchange, Market place”,® and Samuel Pepys, who
enjoyed. himself immensely during his visit, observed without quali-
fication that “‘(it) is in every respect another London’’.®
The Bristol in which the Merchant Venturers consolidated their
position and grew in importance in the seventeenth century was a
compact city, the main part of which lay enclosed between the
rivers Avon and Frome, on the quays of which ships from England,
Wales and Ireland, as well as from overseas unloaded their mer-
chandise.!® South of the Avon lay the suburbs of Temple and
Redcliffe in a bend of the river and still enclosed by a wall. On the
north of the Frome stood the Cathedral of the Holy and Undivided
Trinity and its precincts; College Green and the hospital of Saint
Mark; St. Michael’s Hill, St. James’s, Lewin’s Mead, the Horse
Fair and Broad Mead. Even in the early seventeenth century there
was a fair amount of building in the suburbs, and in the boom years
after the Restoration, Bristol continued to spread beyond its ancient
limits. In his plan of 1673, Millerd remarked that ‘‘in few years last
past, this Cittie hath been much augmented by the increase of
buildings in most parts thereof, especially on the West and North
West sides, where the rising of the Hill St. Michael being converted
into Comely buildings and pleasant gardens makes a very beautiful
addition to the suburbs thereof’’. The editions of Millerd in 1684
and 1696 show the expansion in the suburbs in the later part of the
century.
Although Bristol was expanding, the growth was not so extensive
as to transform the character of the city, as it did in London. Most
of the population was still concentrated within the medieval walls.
The merchants normally lived in houses in the heart of the town, and
their homes were also their business premises. Samuel Pepys was
8 A Relation of a Short Survey of 26 Counties By a Captain, a Lieutenant, and an Ancient,
all three of the Military Company in Norwich, edit. L. G. Wickham Legg, 1904, p. 90.
7 The Travels of Peter Mundy in Europe and Asia 1605-1667, edit. Lt. Col. Sir Richard
Carnac Temple, Hakluyt Society, 1925, p. 11.
8 The Diary of Fohn Evelyn, edit. E. S. de Beer, Oxford, 1955, iii, 102.
® Diary of Samuel Pepys, edit. H. B. Wheatley, 1896, ‘viii, 46.
10 James Millerd’s splendid plan of Bristol in 1673. has been reprinted by the
Bristol City Museum. The plan has a number of illustrations and comments.
Seventeenth-Century Background 27
very much impressed by Deb’s uncle “a sober merchant, very good
company, and so like one of our sober, wealthy, London merchants,
as pleased me mightily’. He had ‘‘a substantial good house, and
well furnish’d’’, and “‘did give us good entertainment of strawberries,
a whole venison-pasty, cold, and plenty of brave wine, and above all
Bristoll milk”. It was a city in which rich and poor rubbed shoulders
in the narrow streets of the relatively small area in which they all
lived and worked. When his visit came to an end, Pepys commented
“So thence took leave, and he with us through the city, where in
walking I find the city pay him great respect, and he the like to the
meanest, which pleased me mightily’”’.4 The Yorkshireman Marma-
duke Rawdon was more critical. He thought that there were ‘‘many
proper men, but very few handsome woemen, and most of them ill
bred, being generally men and woemen very proud, not affable to
strangers, but rather admiringe themselves, soe that an ordnary
fellow that is but a freeman of Bristoll, he conciets himselfe to be as
grave as a senator of Rome, and very sparinge of his hatt. . . .”” The
drivers of sledges were very rude people ‘‘that will have thir horses
uppon a strangers backe before they be awarr’’, but even Rawdon
could not complain about the hospitality he received for ““Duringe
his stay att Bristoll he was feasted by the sheriffe, the colector of the
coustome howse, and by severall gentlemen and marchants of
quallitie.”’12
The city in which the merchants lived and died had many attrac-
tions for visitors. Although Bristol had fewer churches in proportion
to its size than York or Norwich, there were some nineteen parish
churches whose towers and spires rose high above the tall wooden
buildings of the ancient city and added dignity and beauty to it.
Even without its spire, the magnificent parish church of St. Mary
Redcliffe could challenge comparison with any in the kingdom and
was, said Millerd, “‘highly esteemed by the inhabitants & much
admired by strangers’’. The cathedral was less worthy of note, and
Marmaduke Rawdon with Yorkshire bluntness called it “the mean-
est in England’’.18
The parish churches included St. James’s, which was familiar to
Londoners and others who came to St. James’s Fair; ‘Temple Church
with its leaning tower; All Saints, alongisde of which stood the
Merchants’ Tolzey; the chapel of St. Mark or the Gaunts which was
the only municipally-owned chapel in the country; St. Nicholas,
part of which stood over the gateway which led from Bristol Bridge
to the High Street; and St. John’s and St. Leonard’s, built along the
11 Diary of Samuel Pepys, edit. H. B. Wheatley, 1896, viii, 46, 47.
12 The Life of Marmaduke Rawdon of York, edit. R. Davies, Camden Society, 1863,
pp. 173, 188.
18 Thid., p. 173.
28 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
line of the medieval walls. In these parish churches, the merchants
worshipped and played a prominent part in parochial life as feoffees
of church property and contributors to parish charities. The high
standard of the Bristol churchwardens’ accounts suggests that they
took care to see that the books were properly kept.
Of special concern to merchants was the Merchants’ Tolzey, a
convenient covered walk where they could meet to do business.
Here were placed the “‘nails”, four of which are still preserved in
Corn Street. Peter Mundy refers to them in 1639 when he says “By
the high Crosse is the exchaunge where there are many curious costly
pillars off brasse, set about 3 or 4 Foote high, broad att the Foote
and toppe, sett off purpose For them to leane on, pay and tell
Mony... .”24 |
The Hall of the Society of Merchant Venturers, formerly the
chapel of St. Clement, stood in King Street, near the Broad Quay.
In Millerd’s map of 1673 it appears as a plain, unpretentious
building. It was not until the eighteenth century that the Society
got down to the business of establishing a headquarters which
would show something of the commanding position it held in the
city.
Among the other important buildings in Bristol was Spicer’s Hall
near Bristol Bridge at which strangers (that is, non-burgesses) were
required to offer their goods for sale. There were, too, a number of
halls belonging to various gilds which continued to flourish in the
seventeenth century. A contemporary noted, with some exaggera-
tion, that “to make her still more suitable to the Metropolis of our
Nation, London, She hath for every Company a severall hall’’, and,
he added, ““To grace and add to her beauty, she maintains 3 Foot
Companies besides a voluntary Company of gentile, proper, martiall,
disciplin’d men who have their Armes lodg’d in a handsome Artillery
House, newly built up in the Castle yard, where once in a year, they
invite, and entertaine, both Earles, and Lords, and a great many
Knights, and Gentlemen of ranke, and quality, at their Military
Feast. . . .”15 The merchants as leading citizens were expected to
play their part in the defence of their city in time of need, and a
number of them were officers in the militia. When, however, they
found themselves unexpectedly involved in the Civil War, they did
not show any great determination, and it seems that they, like many
other Englishmen, were anxious to avoid being involved if they
could possibly help it.
In the first half of the seventeenth century, part of Bristol Castle
still remained. It had long since ceased to be useful, and it was
rapidly ceasing to be decorative. It was finally demolished in 1655,
14 Peter Mundy, op. cit., pp. 9, 10.
18 A Relation of A Short Survey of 26 Counties (supra, note 6), pp. 93, 94:
Seventeenth-Gentury Background 29
and Millerd commented in 1673 that “‘since ye late Warrs (it) hath
bin demolished & is now turned into faire streets & pleasant dwel-
lings .. . ’’. Merchants played a considerable part in the building
development of the sixteen-fifties which gave the Corporation an
opportunity of indulging in a measure of town-planning.
But if the medieval castle was in its death agonies, there still
remained as a splendid legacy from the past the thirteenth-century
bridge over the Avon on which there were built houses four or five
stories high. In the centre, with the road passing underneath, was
the building which had once been the Chapel of the Assumption of
the Blessed Virgin. Bristol Bridge challenged comparison with
London Bridge. Celia Fiennes noted the resemblance, but said it was
not so big or so long./® Millerd, the proud Bristolian, said it was very
fair and lofty and added ‘‘though in length it cometh much short of
it, yet in fairness of building it goeth as much beyond the famous
Bridge of London over Thames”.
There were, of course, a considerable number of inns and ale-
houses in seventeenth-century Bristol. The ordinances of the Gild of
Innholders of 1606 lists 18 authorised inns,1? but the number of
licensed and unlicensed houses grew with the need to provide for an
expanding population and a large number of outsiders who came for
business or pleasure. Some of the inns like the White Hart and the
White Lion in Broad Street were highly respectable places at which
people of quality could meet and stay. The three Inns in Corn
Street furnished entertainment for Lady Castlemaine in 1674 and
for a papal nuncio in 1687, but there were many others, less res-
pectable, for the lower orders and the floating population of the
port.
Another notable feature of seventeenth-century Bristol was the
large number of almshouses. There were nine in existence at the
beginning, and the number was doubled in the course of the century.
They included the Merchant Venturers’ own almshouse for poor
and decayed seamen, which had originally belonged to the Gild of
Mariners but which the merchants took over in the mid-sixteenth
century.1§ Among the new foundations was the one established by
Edward Colston on St. Michael’s Hill in 1696. Colston came of a
merchant family in Bristol but was apprenticed in London where he
made a great fortune. His fine new almshouses attracted the attention
of Celia Fiennes who described it at length. The Society of Merchant
Venturers was closely associated with it, since Colston made the
Merchants trustees and administrators of the foundation.!®
16 The Journeys of Celia Fiennes, edit. Christopher Morris, 1949, p. 238.
17 Printed in The Deposition Books of Bristol Vol. 1, 1643-1647, edit. H. E. Nott,
Bristol Record Society, vi, 1935, Appendix IV, pp. 271 ff.
18 See pp. 18, 81. 19 See p. 204.
30 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Bristol was much less well endowed with schools, and those which
it had were not particularly distinguished. At the beginning of the
‘period there was in existence the Free School near the Frome Gate
(that is, Bristol Grammar School, situated in St. Bartholomew’s
Hospital) ; the Cathedral School which had been refounded in 1542,
the Free Grammar and Writing School at Redcliffe established by
royal charter in 1571 and Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital opened in
1590. The Red Maids school for girls was established in 1634 in
accordance with the terms of the will of one of the most distinguished
Merchant Venturers, John Whitson.2° The Society itself maintained
a schoolmaster for teaching poor mariners’ children.*! There were
one or two other charity schools, and a number of bequests had been
made by merchants and others for educational purposes, but in the
main remarkably little was done to extend or improve educational
facilities. It was a subject concerning which visitors to Bristol had no
comment to make.
Most of the houses were built of wood and plaster. At the end of
the century, Celia Fiennes noted as her general impression that ‘“‘the
buildings of the town are pretty high most of timber work, the streetes
are narrow and something darkish, because the roomes on the upper
storys are more jutting out, soe contracts the street and the light”.
She said many of them had signs hanging out even though they were
not public houses, just as they did in London. She added that in the
suburbs were better buildings and more spacious streets.22 But even
within the city itself, there were.a number of “great houses”, some
of them built of stone, including the Great House on St. Augustine’s
Bank and the mansion of the Creswickes, a merchant family, in
Small Street which was frequently used for the entertainment of
distinguished visitors. Fuller remarked that “The houses of the
merchants herein are generally very fair; and their entries, though
little and narrow, lead into high and spacious halls, which form may
mind the inhabitants thereof of their passage to a better place’’.?3
Many of the larger houses had outbuildings and spacious gardens,
and the whole city was honeycombed with cellars which were in
great demand for storage of goods.
Judged by contemporary standards, seventeenth-century Bristol
was well drained and had a good water supply. Philemon Holland’s
edition of Camden’s Britannia, published in 1610, mentions “common
Sewes or Sinks . . . so made to run under the ground for the con-
veniance and washing away of all filth, that for the cleanlinesse and
20 For Whitson, see Patrick McGrath, John Whitson and the Merchant Community
of Bristol, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1970.
21 See pp. 18, 84.
22 Journeys of Celia Fiennes, edit. Christopher Morris, pp. 237, 238.
28 The History of the Worthies of England, edit. P. A. Nuttall, 1840, iii, 113.
Seventeenth-Century Background 31
holesomenesse a man would not desire more’’,?4 and Richard Blome
in his Britannia remarked that “Its streets are so neatly ordered (by
reason of the River Avon, which runneth through it, together with
the common sinks and sewes underground) that no filth or ordure is
to be seen among its inhabitants’’.2®° A number of conduits brought
water from Brandon Hill, Kingsdown and Ashley Hill down into
the city from the north side of the Frome, and others supplied Temple
and Redcliffe. There were various public supply points, including the
pipe on the Quay and another at St. John’s church. Some private
houses had their own water pipes from the conduits, and there were,
of course, a number of wells. —
_ The government of Bristol in this period was in the hands of the
Mayor, aldermen and Common Council consisting of a little over
forty members.2* The Mayor was chosen annually by the Common
Council from three names, one submitted by the retiring -Mayor,
one by the aldermen, and one by the whole body of the Council.
There were 12 aldermen including the Recorder. When a vacancy
occurred, it was filled by the Council from ex-mayors and “older
and graver” councillors. Vacancies in Common Council were filled
by co-option, and the majority of the burgesses had no say in choosing
their governing body. For the most part they do not seem to have
minded, for it was a hierarchical society in which the ordinary
people accepted the established order.
Very considerable powers were concentrated in the hands of the
Mayor and aldermen who were also ex officio justices of the peace.
The Recorder was usually a lawyer of distinction in London whose
advice was helpful in some of the major legal conflicts in which the
corporation was from time to time involved. There were two
sheriffs usually chosen from the younger members of the Council
who thus had a strenuous and quite costly introduction to public life,
and there was a Town Clerk whose services were required in legal
business but who did not act as a Town Clerk in the modern sense
of the term.
The most important executive officer was the Chamberlain who
handled the finances and who was responsible for the annual
accounts. He dealt with admissions to the freedom, apprenticeship,
weights and measures and a host of other matters, and he was fre-
quently required to represent the city’s interests in London. After
1612 when the Chamberlain went bankrupt, the future Chamber-
lains were appointed annually by the Common Council, but it was
24 Britain, or a Chorographical Description. . . . Written first in Latine by William
Camden... Translated . . . by Philemon Holland, 1610, p. 237.
36 Richard Blome, Britannia, 1673, p. 101.
26 For the government of Bristol in this ‘period, see the Introduction to Bristol
Charters 1509-1899, edit. R. C. Latham, Bristol Record Society, xii, 1947.
32 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
usual for the holder to be a merchant who was kept in office for a
number of years.
To represent its interests at Westminster, the city had two M.P.s
elected on what was, for the seventeenth century, a very wide fran-
chise. Bristol, unlike so many other towns, did not choose its members
of parliament from the county gentry of the surrounding areas. In
the seventeenth century, it preferred to have its interests represented
by its own leading men. Of the 31 members who sat for Bristol
between 1601 and 1698, 20 belonged to the Society of Merchant
Venturers. Of the remaining 11, five were City Recorders and one
the Town Clerk. In nearly half the parliaments of the period, Bristol
was represented by two Merchant Venturers.??
An examination of the lists of civic officials and members of the
Common Council in seventeenth-century Bristol shows clearly the
dominant part played by Merchant Venturers in municipal govern-
ment. They constituted approximately half of the Common Coun-
cillors chosen during the period, and they generally held the key
positions in city politics. Of the 105 mayors between 1600 and 1700,
at least 69 were Merchant Venturers, as were 65 of the 118 aldermen,
8 of the 11 city chamberlains and over half the sheriffs. An illus-
tration of what this meant in practice is provided by an examination
of the city government in July 1643. At that time the Common
Council consisted of 40 members. 28 of these, including the Mayor,
the Chamberlain, 9 of the 11 aldermen and both the sheriffs were
Merchant Venturers. Again, in the newly constituted corporation
of 1684, 24 of the 43 members belonged to the Society, including the
Mayor, Chamberlain, six aldermen and one of the sheriffs. At that
time the Recorder and the Town Clerk were also ex gratia members.”®
In a century during which religious, constitutional and political
issues played so big a part, Bristol remained to a considerable degree
outside the mainstream of national life. Puritanism seems to have
been of no significance until the Civil War, and no Bristolian fought:
with Sir John Eliot and the others in the parliamentary battles of the
early Stuarts. Politics for Bristolians in these years meant not the
Petition of Right or the liberties of the subject, but resistance to
London — dominated monopolies or to the government’s attempts
to raise money. It is notable that the two Bristol M.P.s elected to the
Long Parliament, both of them Merchant Venturers, were expelled
by the House in 1642 as participators in the wine monopoly.?® In
their place, Bristol elected another Merchant Venturer, John Taylor,
27 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. xxviii-xxix.
28 For the relationship between the city government and the Merchant Ven-
turers, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. xxvii ff.
29 See p. 67.
Seventeenth-Century Background 33
and the city’s Recorder, Sir John Glanville. Taylor was disabled
from sitting on 5 February 1644 as an adherent of the King and was
killed when Fairfax attacked the city later in the year. Glanville was
disabled from sitting in 1645. The fate of Bristol in the Civil War
depended not so much on the attitude of its leading men, who,
generally speaking, were not deeply committed, but on the military
situation in the surrounding areas.
In the course of the Commonwealth nétiod: nonconformity
became of significance in Bristol, and there also developed fierce
political feuds between those who collaborated with the government —
and those who did not. The fight between the collaborators and their
opponents became very intense at times under the later Stuarts, and
the situation was complicated by the presence of a large noncon-
formist body in the city and by differences in attitude towards royal
authority. Personalities too played their part in the conflicts.®°
Although a numiber of Merchant Venturers were involved in their
personal capacity, the Society itself remained basically non-political.
The battles were fought in the Council Chamber and in the elections,
not in the Merchants’ Hall. Nor was the Society divided on religious
grounds. Nonconformity was to be found in the post-Restoration
years among some Bristol merchants and wealthy retailers, but the
Merchant Venturers accepted the established church. One gets the
impression that with some exceptions they considered political and
religious issues less important than economic issues. The Royal
African Company was in many ways more objectionable than a
Popish King. |
The greatness of Bristol in the seventeenth century obviously
depended on its trade, and the merchants were overwhelmingly the
most important group, but it is necessary to stress that Bristol was a
city with a considerable variety of occupations.*! Apart from a
number of detailed studies of sugar-refining,®? comparatively little
work has so far been done on Bristol’s industries in this period, but
they were clearly of importance, and there was considerable indus-
trial growth as the century went on. It is true that the great cloth
industry, which had played so big a part in the middle ages, seems
30 For the conflicts in Bristol after the Restoration, see the section on ‘““The
Corporation and the Crown, 1660-1710” in Bristol Charters 1509-1809, edit.
R. C. Latham, Bristol Record Society, xii, 1947, pp. 35 ff.
31 There is a useful survey of the various occupations in Bristol in Frank Rogers,
‘‘The Bristol Craft Gilds during the 16th and 17th centuries’’, unpublished Bristol
M.A. thesis, 1949.
32 I. V. Hall, “Whitson Court Sugar House, Bristol 1665-1824’, Transactions
of the Bristol and Gloucestership Archaeological Society, xv, 1946; ‘‘John Knight Junior,
Sugar Refiner at the Great House on St. Augustine’ s Back 1654-1679”, ibid.,
Ixviii, 1957; ““Temple St. Sugar House under the First Partnership of Richard
Lane and John Hine, 1662-78”, ibid., Ixxvi, 1958.
34 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
to have declined drastically. Little is known of the Weaver’s Gild, for
instance, after 1630, although it existed as late as 1673, and the Gild
of Dyers apparently disappeared after the civil war. Nevertheless,
cloth-making still went on and the seventeenth-century Burgess
Books contain a considerable number of entries of cloth-workers of
all kinds. As late as 1696 the Quakers established a workhouse in-
tended to assist unemployed Quaker weavers. *?
The metal industries provided work for a large number of wire-
drawers, pin-makers, card-makers, smiths, cutlers, grinders, spurriers,
farriers, locksmiths, gunsmiths and gun-makers; the leather industry
for numerous cordwainers, cobblers, shoemakers, tanners, whit-
tawers, pursers, glovers, pouch-makers and saddlers; and the
building industry for joiners, cofferers, carvers, turners, carpenters,
tilers, plasterers, masons, bricklayers, paviers, plumbers and glasiers.
In many of these industries, there was still a considerable degree of
gild organisation, as there was in the very important victualling
trades where there existed companies of brewers, butchers, bakers
and inn-holders.
The ship-building and allied trades provided work for many more.
Little is known about the size and organisation of the industry in this
period, but a number of ships were built for the Royal Navy, and
there must have been a great variety of vessels built for the merchant
navy and for coastal and river traffic. The industrial population
included shipwrights, sail-makers, anchor-smiths and rope-makers.
Another very old Bristol industry was soap making. In the early
part of the seventeenth century this was important, and there was
considerable trouble between the Bristol manufacturers and a group
of Londoners who in the sixteen-thirties endeavoured with govern-
ment support to restrict production in Bristol. In the later part of the
century, the industry seems to have been of little importance.**
If some of the older industries were decaying, new ones were
coming up to take their place. Early in the century, Robert Ald-
worth established the first Bristol sugar house, and in 1656 a
merchant, John Knight junior, set up a second refinery in the Great
House on St. Augustine’s Back. Several other sugar houses came
into existence before the century was over.
The spread of the habit of tobacco smoking and the import into
Bristol in the second half of the century of huge quantities of tobacco
provided yet another opportunity for local industry. The Bristol
Gild of tobacco pipe makers with a membership of at least 25 was
33 Russell Mortimer, Early Bristol Quakerism, Bristol Branch of the Historical
Association, 1967, p. 18.
34 For the industry in the first half of the century, see H. E. Matthews, Proceed-
ings, Minutes and Enrolments of the Company of Soap Makers 1562-1642, Bristol Record
Society, x, 1940.
Seventeenth-Century Background $5
incorporated in 1652, and in addition the cutting and rolling of
tobacco provided work for many more.
Another new industry which became of considerable importance
in the later part of the century was glass-making. Millerd’s plan of
1673 does not show any glass-houses, but by 1696 Bristol was one of
the most important glass-making centres in the country with an
important export trade.
It would be easy to add to the list of seventeenth-century Bristol
industries, but enough has been said to show that Bristol was an
industrial town of importance, even though its industry did not
receive from contemporaries the attention it deserved.
The distributive trade also provided employment for a great
many people. The merchant tailors, for example, had a well-
organised gild with a common hall and an almshouse of, their own.
Some of the wealthier members traded overseas, but a number were
simply concerned with making clothes. The mercers, the linen-
drapers, the woollen-drapers, the haberdashers and the grocers were
‘often merely small retailers, although here again it was not always
easy to draw the line between the humble-shopkeepers and the
wealthy member who was a merchant as well as a retailer.
An occupational census of seventeenth-century Bristol would have
to include a great many other occupations: inn keepers, apothe-
caries, attornies, barber-surgeons, clerks, hardwaremen, school-
masters as well as mariners, lightermen, pilots, porters, labourers
and serving maids. How the working population was distributed
among the great number of different occupations, we do not know,
but one thing at least is clear — the most important group in wealth,
if not in numbers, was the merchants who handled the trade on which
so much else in the city depended.
The history of the merchants of England has yet to be written, and
it is not easy to assess the role they played in the seventeenth century
in relation to the economy as a whole. The fact that they were
remarkably vocal and lost no opportunity of making their needs
known to the government and to parliament may give a misleading
picture of their importance in a world in which land was after all
the main source of wealth, but if trade did not dominate economic
activity, it certainly played a very important part, and on its pros-
perity depended the well-being of a considerable section of the com-
munity.
It is not easy to define precisely what was meant by the word
merchant in the seventeenth century. First of all came those whose
main activity consisted in overseas trade and who operated exclu-
sively as wholesalers, but in addition there were a considerable
number of people such as grocers, mercers, vintners and others who
acted as importers and exporters but who nevertheless also engaged
36° The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
in retail trade. In Bristol some of these operated on a large scale, and
the Society of Merchant Venturers endeavoured unsuccessfully to
compel them to make a choice between wholesaling and retailing.®5
Roger North remarked of Bristol in the later seventeenth century
that “all men that are dealers, even in shop trades, launch into
adventures by sea, chiefly to the West India Plantations and
Spain’”’.®° To these must be added masters and mariners who
supplemented their pay by trading on their own account and the
many individuals who had an occasional flutter. The dividing line
between the various groups was not always clearly defined, but
nevertheless it was generally recognised that there was a group of
professionals for whom foreign trade was their main concern.
We can get a rough idea of the relative importance of merchants
to other classes in the community by looking at the attempt made
by Gregory King in the later seventeenth century to classify the
population according to their means of getting a living. He reckoned
that there were nearly 850,000 families in England. Roughly 16,500
of these were of the rank of gentry or above with a total income of
£,5,655,800 per annum. There were 10,000 families of office holders
with an income of £1,800,000, and 10,000 families of persons in law
with £1,400,000 and 10,000 families of merchants and traders by
sea with a total annual income of £2,400,000. Below these groups
came the masses of freeholders, farmers, artisans, cottagers, and
others. Merchant families thus constituted a little over one per cent
of the total number of families in England. King further divided his
merchant families into two groups — a group of 2,000 with a yearly
income per family of £400 and a group of 8,000 lesser merchants
with an income of £200 per year.®” We do not have similar figures for
Bristol, but we do know that the total number of men admitted to
the freedom as merchants between 1619 and 1699 was 521 and that
in these years 317 men were admitted to the Society of Merchant
Venturers.88 Membership of the Society fluctuated considerably but
on average it must have been somewhere between 80 and go.®® The
probability is that there were at any one time about 150 people who
were technically merchants in that they had been admitted as such
to the freedom of Bristol. The figure would be somewhat larger if
we included the wealthier grocers, vintners, mercers and others who
engaged in foreign trade on a large scale. The merchants thus con-
stituted a fairly small group in relation to the total population, but
the group was clearly the most powerful in the city, and it was all
85 See pp. 13-16.
36 Lives of the Norths, edit. A. Jessopp, 1890, i, 156.
87 King’s table is reproduced in Peter Laslett, The World we have iost, pp. 32, 33.
38 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 2.
89 Jbid., p. xxi.
Seventeenth-Ceniury Background 37
the more important because in Bristol it was at the top of the social
pyramid.
The foreign trade on which the wealth of English merchants was
based underwent considerable fluctuations in the course of the seven-
teenth century.4° Ever since the mid-sixteenth century when the
great export trade in heavy English broadcloth through Antwerp
ran into major difficulties, English merchants had been trying to
find new markets to supplement the Netherlands and northern
Europe. They turned their attention to the export of lighter and
thinner cloths, and in the Elizabethan period the development of
what were known as the New Draperies provided them with valuable
export material. In the first Ralf of the seventeenth century, there
were expanding markets in Spain, Portugal, France, Italy, Poland,
Sweden and Turkey. The American and West Indian colonies were
not yet of any great significance, but the East India Company was
developing markets further afield and bringing back goods which
could not only be sold in England but could be re-exported to
Europe. The pattern of English trade was beginning to change, but
export of woollen cloth to Europe was still the basis of English com-
mercial wealth.
In the first half of the seventeenth century English foreign trade
from time to time ran into acute difficulties, and there was a long
drawn out crisis as far as the export of the traditional woollen cloths
was concerned. Wars, including Civil War, added to the problems
of the merchants. England was slowly adjusting her economy, but,
as Charles Wilson puts it, “her economic pains were growing
pains”,“! and in the period after 1660 there were much more
dramatic changes. Indeed, the hundred years or so after 1660 have
been described by one economic historian as a Commercial Revolu-
tion which preceded the Industrial Revolution of the later eighteenth
century.42 Exports increased from about 24-£3 million in 1640 to
about £44 million in 1700. Cloth exports expanded, but the most
remarkable feature was the growth of re-exports which went up from
an insignificant amount to about £2 million. These included not
only goods brought back by the East India Company, but also
imports from the West Indian and American colonies which were
at long last in a position to send large quantities of merchandise to
England — particularly tobacco and sugar. In return, they took
English manufactured goods of all kinds and negro slaves. The
40 B. E. Supple, Commercial Crisis and Change in England 1600-1642, Cambridge,
1959; Charles Wilson, England’s Apprenticeship 1603-1763, fourth impression, 1971;
Ralph Davis, A Commercial Revolution: English Overseas Trade in the Seventeenth and
Eighteenth Centuries, Historical Association, 1962.
41 Charles Wilson, of. cit., p. 64.
42 Ralph Davis, op. cit.
38 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Government developed a complicated economic policy to ensure
that foreigners were excluded from this new commercial empire and
that colonial produce was channelled through England. Some brief
comment must be made on Bristol’s part in these changes.
In 1611-12, 131 ships took on cargoes in Bristol. Of these, 61 went
to Ireland, 31 to France, 27 to Spain and Portugal, and the rest to
a variety of places including Amsterdam, the Azores, the Canaries,
the Channel Islands and Emden.‘ In 1686-7, 240 ships left Bristol.
No less than 56 of these were bound for the West Indies and 14 for
America. Ireland accounted for 60 ships, France for 47 and Spain
for 25.44 Bristol was playing a very important part in the Commercial
Revolution, and she was geographically well-placed to do so because
of her favourable situation in relation to the West Indies and
America. She was a collecting and distributing centre for a great
regional trade. She supplied a large area with goods from Europe
and the New World, and she exported inreturn the products of her
own industries and of the areas with which she dealt, notably the
cloths produced in the west country. She was, it is true, excluded
from the East India trade, and the trade in African slaves was closed —
to her until 1698, but she prospered with what she had and battled
hard to get more.
The economic changes of the seventeenth century presented the
Society of Merchant Venturers with many challenges both at local
and at national level. In the Elizabethan period, they had failed to
exploit the privileges given them by their charters, but after the
reorganisation of 1605 they consolidated their position and directed
their energies to developing the commerce of a city which by the
end of the century became the second port in the kingdom.
48 McGrath, Merchants and Merchandise in Seventeenth-Century Bristol, Bristol
Record Society, xix, 1955, p. 279.
44 Tbid., p. 280.
CHAPTER 4
Membership, Organisation and Finance in the
Seventeenth Century
THE seventeenth century was the great formative period in the
history of the Society during which it built up its organisation,
became involved in a great variety of activities, and probably |
enjoyed more authority in the city than at any other time in its
history.?
In order to achieve its objectives and to make sure that it did not
again suffer the setbacks of the Elizabethan period, the Society had
to put its own house in order. The charters of 1552 and 1566 had
given it a Master and two Wardens and the right to make ordinances,
but when it was reconstituted by the Corporation at the end of 1605,
it was, as far as we know, without any effective administrative
machinery. If it made any rules or ordinances in the period 1552-
1605, they have not survived. It was not, apparently, until 1618 that
it got down to the task of drawing up a comprehensive constitution
and starting a register of members. On 6 July of that year, a small
committee under the able leadership of the Master, John Barker,
was authorised to examine the existing rules and to frame new ones
“for the better government of the commynalty. . . .”? What emerged
was a series of ordinances, preserved in the Society’s first Book of
Charters, which were approved on 16 November 1618. All members
were required to read them and to subscribe their names to show
that they accepted them.®
The Ordinances of 1618 defined the duties of the Master, Wardens
and Treasurer, and established for the first time 12 assistants. These
1 For a more detailed examination of its work than is possible here, see Patrick
McGrath, Records relating to the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol in the
Seventeenth Century, Bristol Record Society, xvii, 1952; John Latimer, The History
of the Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol, Bristol, 1903.
2 Book of Charters 1, 61; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 8. There had been
earlier ordinances. In 1612, a committee of Common Council had been asked to
report on them to the next meeting of the Council, but it did not in fact report
(Bristol Record Office: C.C.P., 1608-1627, fo. 25; McGrath, Merchant Venturers,
p. 7.
_ § Book of Charles I, 61; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 7-8. The ordinances are
transcribed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 68-80.
40 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
officers, who were to be elected annually, constituted the executive
body. They were to meet as often as they pleased in the Hall “and
there Kepe Courte, discourse, treate of, and conclude the matters,
dealinges, and business of the saide Societie, and therein give order
and sett diréctions for the good and benefitt of the saide Societie in
such manner, and to such purpose as in theire wisedomes shall
seeme moste Convenient’’.4 A Court of Assistants or a General
Court of the whole Society could be called at the discretion of the
Master and wardens. There were fines for non-attendance, for
coming late and for leaving early. Nothing was to be concluded
unless there were present the Master, the two wardens and at least
seven of the assistants. Elaborate rules were laid down about
precedence, procedure in debates and preserving confidentiality.
The duties of Treasurer included attending every court, keeping
the money and presenting accounts for audit at the end of his year
of office. He was to keep a confidential register of any offences against
the ordinances which were reported to him, and he was to receive
from the Beadle fines from absentees as well as the wharfage, keyage
and plankage duties collected by the Beadle. A fine of £10 could be
imposed on any member who was chosen Treasurer and who refused
to act.
The Clerk was to be diligent in attending the officers and was to be
honest and courteous in his behaviour to members. He was to keep
a record of all acts passed by the Society “‘incontinent after they bee
concluded’’.® It was perhaps a compliment to his literary ability
that he was allowed to ‘“‘amend the phrase or enditinge, by takeing,
adding or altering any Wordes, soe as the meaninge bee not
altered. .. .”’ He had to read the Minutes twice, once at the end of
the meeting and a second time at the beginning of the next meeting.
He had also to keep a register of apprentices. His yearly salary was
4.
The Beadle was to carry out diligently the orders of the wardens
and Treasurer, summon members to court, keep a note of absentees
and latecomers, collect fines, and report offences against the ordi-
nances. He was to collect keyage, plankage and other duties, and to
account for them to the Treasurer. His salary was £6 13s. 4d. a year,
and he was also allowed 2s. in every pound on fines from absentees
and late-comers.
Since the Society hoped to monopolise the whole of the foreign
trade of Bristol,* it was necessary to regulate membership. No
retailer or artificer was to be admitted without approval by a special
Court called for that purpose. Sons and apprentices of members,
provided they were at least 21 years of age and exercised no other
occupation, could be admitted on payment of 4s. 6d. to the
4 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 72. 5 Ibid., p. 70. 6 See pp. 10-16.
Seventeenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 4!
Treasurer, 6d. to the Clerk and 4d. to the Beadle. Sons of redemp-
tioners, that is those who had been admitted on payment of an
entry fine, could become members on payment of 40s. and the usual
fee to the officers. Apprentices must have served at least seven years,
and the Clerk was to keep a record of all indentures.
In order to make things more difficult for non-members, whom the
Society was trying to exclude completely from foreign trade, the
ordinances laid down that no member or his agents should act in
partnership with a non-member or his agents, or “colour’’’ the
goods of any retailer or artificer.
The rules for admission laid down in 1618 differed considerably
from those which the Common Council had laid down in 1605.
There is nothing to suggest that the Ordinances were submitted for
approval to the Corporation. Evidently, the Society now stood on its
own feet.
Further constitutional developments took place in 1639 when the
Society secured from Charles I its third Charter, and then drew up
elaborate new ordinances. On 7 January of that year, Charles I
confirmed the letters patent of Edward VI and Elizabeth I, and,
presumably at the request of the Society, reduced the number of
assistants from 12 to 10. The election of officers was to take place on
10 November each year.® The Master named in the Charter
(Humphrey Hooke) was to take his oath of office before the Mayor
and Aldermen, but in future officers were to be sworn in by the out-
going Master and wardens.
The Charter of 1639 made much more explicit the powers given
to the Society for the control of the foreign trade of Bristol. The
Society was authorised by the King to make ordinances “‘for the
good rule ordering surveying search and correcion of the Mistery
or Art aforesaid and of all the works wares goods and merchandizes
which the same Master Wardens and Comminalty and their Suc-
cessors or any other merchants or other persons whatsoever of the
City aforesaid adventuring beyond the Seas shall export or import
out of or into the Realm of England or Dominion of Wales As also ©
of all men and Merchants of the City aforesaid and their Servants
Factors Apprentices and Agents. . . trading as well in the said City
as in parts beyond the Seas’”’.!° The Society could levy fines on all
who broke its Ordinances, provided such Ordinances were reason-
able and not repugnant to the laws and customs of the realm, or to
7 Pretend that they were his.
: 8 The Charter, 7 Jan. 1639, is printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 88-97;
the ordinances of 4 April 1639 are printed on pp. 98-105.
® Hitherto the date had not been fixed, and elections between 1605 and 1638
had been held at various dates in October, November or December (McGrath,
Merchant Venturers, p. 54, n. 1.)
10 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 89.
42 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the prejudice of the Mayor of Bristol or the Merchant Adventurers
trading to Holland, Zealand, Brabant, Flanders and other parts.!!
The Ordinances of 4 April 1639, to which members were required
to subscribe, made some further changes in organisation. The choice
of Master in future to be limited to those who had previously served
as Master, Warden or Assistant. A quorum at meetings was to be a
majority of the assistants, the Master and one warden (instead of
two, as in the 1618 Ordinances). Every member, either in person or
by deputy, was to appear at each quarterly court to pay a quateridge
of 4d. The duties of clerk and beadle were to be performed by one
person at a salary of £8 a year.
Regulations designed to hamper non-members engaged in foreign
trade were further elaborated. Merchant Venturers were not to
receive from them any goods to carry beyond the seas, or to buy
goods abroad for the profit of non-members. No Merchant Venturer
was to lade any ship in Bristol with the goods of non-members, or
put his own goods on the ship of an outsider in a foreign port if a
ship laden by a Merchant Venturer was available. The goods of
strangers arriving in Bristol, if worth more than £200, were to be
taken to Spicer’s Hall. The Society was then to meet and appoint
four men to bargain for the goods and to proportion them out among
members.
In addition, the Ordinances of 1639 contained detailed regulations
affecting mariners and shipping, and an effort was made to prevent
ships’ crews trading on their own account without paying freight.
Towards the end of the year in which these new and comprehen-
sive Ordinances were drawn up, there was passed a new regulation
concerning the Master. Henceforward, he was to be chosen from
three names, one presented by the retiring Master, one by the
Wardens and Assistants, and one by the commonalty.!? It is not
known what lay behind this decision, which restricted in some
degree the freedom of choice of members and which suggests a
tendency towards oligarchy on the lines already existing in the
government of the city.
The Society obtained two other charters in the seventeenth
century. The Charter of 1643, granted at a time when Bristol was in
the King’s hands, gave the Merchant Venturers the right to trade
to the areas monopolised by the Eastland Company, the Merchant
Adventurers of England and the Levant Company.!* The Charter
of 1665 was merely an exemplification of the Charter of 1643.14
11 The Merchant Adventurers of England.
12 HB.1, p. 15, 11 Nov. 1639; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 55.
18 Printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 106-7.
14 Tbid., pp. 109-10.
Seventeenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 43
Neither of these was significant as far as the organisation of the
Society was concerned.15
The efficiency of the Society obviously depended a great deal on
the efficiency of the masters, wardens, treasurer and assistants
who formed the executive and policy-making body. A study of their
work leaves one with the general impression that a large number of
able men held these positions and gave effective leadership. They
were committed men in the sense that, although they did not hold
permanent appointments or receive any salary, the interests of the
Society were very much bound up with their own interests as
merchants. At times during its long history, the Society has tended
to be run by a relatively small group, but in the seventeenth century
a considerable proportion of members held high office. Rather more
than half the members between 1620 and 1700 served as assistants,
and from 1605 to 1700 there were 155 different wardens, of whom
only 26 held office more than once.!® The treasurership was held
by one member for ten years and by two others for six years each,
but even in this key position there were repeated changes, with the
result that there were 61 different treasurers between 1605 and. 1700.
In the same period, 67 different individuals occupied the Master’s
chair. Humphrey Hooke created a record by being Master no less
than seven times, and Hugh Browne and Joseph Jackson both held
the office four times, but they were exceptional. Only 15 others were
elected more than once.
The policy-making and executive body of the Society was the
Court of Assistants, consisting after 1639 of the Master, two Wardens
and 10 Assistants. There was an attempt to make it more efficient in
1664 when a motion was carried at a General Hall stating that “there
have bene many meetings appoynted and the Company warned to
meete at the Haule which have bin often tymes refused and neg-
lected, And for want of appearance nothinge hath bin done in order
to the businesse of the Haule upon such a summons .. .’’. It was
ordered that “‘for the better carrying on the businesse of the Haule
for this next yeare’’, tie Master, Wardens, Assistants, Treasurer and
Clerk should meet on 10 February, 10 May and 10 August in addi-
tion to other meetings, and should have a dinner provided at not
above 4s. per head.
Early in 1699 occurred the first definite reference to the Standing
Committee which is still the chief policy-making body in the Society.
On 17 January 1699, it was “‘voted and ordered that the Master
158 These charters will be noted in connection with the Society’s attempt to
break the monopolies of the London-controlled companies (see pp. 50-1).
16 For a list of Masters, Wardens and Treasurers see Latimer, Merchant Venturers,
pp. 326 ff.
17 77,B.3, 10 Nov. 1664.
44 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Wardens and Assistants or the major number of them be a Standing
Committee to transact all matters relateing to the Hall and any
member that pleaseth to be present and act with them. . . .”’® This
was, of course, basically the old Court of Assistants under another
name.
The officers were assisted by a small paid staff consisting princi-
pally of the Clerk and the Beadle whose duties were defined in the
Ordinances.!® The Clerk at this time was not a lawyer but simply a
man who looked after the office work and kept the records. His
salary was originally only £4 a year, later raised to £10. He received
less than the Beadle and was presumably engaged in the work only
part-time.2° The Beadle collected the Society’s rents, made pay-
ments to the alms people, disbursed money for building and repairs,
and looked after the Society’s property. His salary in 1618 was
£6 13s. 4d. a year, but in 1699 it was raised to £20 a year.*! The
Society also had at various times during the century an Assistant
Clerk, a Collector of Hall Duties, and a Collector of Wharfage,??
but the salaried officers do not seem to have been more than three
at any one time. There were only three Clerks between 1618 and
the end of the century, and this suggests that the Society began early
its practice of securing and retaining an efficient administrative
staff.
When the Society first started its Register of Members in 1618,
72 names were recorded. Between 1619 and 1699 the Register shows
317 admissions, but to this must be added 26 admissions between
1639 and 1651 which appear in the Hall Book but not in the Register,
making a total of 343.28 Apprenticeship and patrimony were the
commonest methods of entry, but there was a considerable number
of redemptioners paying an entry fee. Between 1639 and 1699, more
than a quarter of the members came in by this method.*4 There was
no fixed admission fine, and, generally speaking, for the first three-
quarters of the century fines were under £20. For the last quarter,
fines of £25 and £30 were normal. Sir John Duddlestone’s fine of
£40 in 1691 was exceptional and seems to have been the largest paid
by any member in the seventeenth century.*5 In the years 1619-99,
18 H.B.3, 17 Jan. 1699.
19 For the 1618 Ordinances, see Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 70, 71. For the
1639 Ordinances, ibid., p’. 99.
20 For further details about the Clerk, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers where
there are a considerable number of references.
#1 For further references to the Beadle, see McGrath, of. cit.
22 McGrath, op. cit.
28 McGrath, op. cit., p. 27 for a transcription of the Register, p. 261 for the 26
names recorded in the Hall Book.
24 McGrath, op. cit., p. 35.
25 McGrath, of. cit., pp. 35, 51.
Seventeenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 45
the number of people admitted to the freedom of Bristol as merchants
was 52126 as compared with 330 admitted to the Society in the same
period.?” Clearly, a considerable number of merchants did not
become members of the Society,2® but this does not seem to have
been due to any attempt on the part of the Merchant Venturers to
limit entry. The fact that many redemptioners were admitted, that
entry fines were kept low and that petitions for admission were rarely
rejected suggests that the Society was anxious to recruit all
merchants, provided they agreed to exercise only the trade of a
merchant and did not engage in the retail business. ®®
Most of the thirteen honorary members were admitted because
they were influential people who might be of use to the Society or
who were important locally. One of them, however, was the Society’s
Beadle and this was in recognition of good service. *°
In 1618 the Society had a membership of 72, but during the
century the number fluctuated considerably. There was a drop from
83 in January 1645 to 57 in May 1649. The figure rose to 73 in
1652, to 78 in 1659, and to gg in 1671. In the last decade, it stood in
the nineties, but the hundred mark was not reached.*!
The headquarters of the Society was the Merchants’ Hall in
King Street, which had once been the Chapel of St. Clement. It
was a plain, simple building in which meetings were held and the
records kept. Two inventories, one of 1631 and the other of 1697,
show that the contents of the Hall and inner room included a number
of tables and forms, various coats of arms, a list of benefactors, a
chest with three locks “wherein are the Charters and other
writinges’’, candlesticks, chamber pots, stools and cushions. The
walls were wainscotted in 1624 when it was ordered that the Audit
Dinner should be held in the Hall. The inventory of 1697 mentions
six portraits of benefactors, ‘‘a tree of knowledge in a frame”, and a
plan of the manor of Clifton. We are-left with the general impression
of business-like austerity. Although money was spent on the Hall
from time to time, it was not until the beginning of the eighteenth
26 McGrath, op. cit., p. 2.
2? The total number of admissions was 343, but 13 of these were Honorary
Members who were not merchants.
28 If one adds the large-scale retailers who were for all practical purposes alse
merchants engaged in foreign trade, the number is much larger.
29 McGrath, op. cit., p. 35.
30 The Honorary Members admitted in the seventeenth century were: Major-
General Skippon and Major-General Harrison (1651), Mr. Thomas Stevens
(1665), the Marquis of Worcester (1673), Lord George Berkeley (1674), William
Mors the Beadle (1674), Sir John Churchill (1676), John Romsey, Town Clerk
(1676), Edward Cranfield (1681), Charles.Lord Herbert (1681), Lord Arthur
Somerset (1681), James’ Earl of Ossory (1685), Nathaniel Haggat, Steward of the
Sheriff’s Court (1690). See McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 31-3, 261.
31 McGrath, op. cit., p. xxi.
46 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
century that a local chronicler recorded ‘“This year the Merchants
Rebuilt their Hall, and have made it the most convenient and
beautiful of any in the City.’”’??
In order to carry out the many tasks which it set itself in the course
of the century, the Society needed not only efficient organisation but
an adequate income. Throughout the period, its resources were
small in relation to its commitments, but it managed to achieve a
remarkable amount on a shoe-string budget.
In the earliest surviving account, that of 1610-11, receipts
amounted to less than £150, and it is unlikely that they ever exceeded
£200 a year before 1660. In the post-Restoration years, there was
more money available, and in the last decade of the century, the
Society’s income seems to have been between £700 and £800 a year.
Against this, there were considerable recurrent charges, and capital
expenditure on property and port improvement was possible only
because the Society could raise loans without much difficulty.*8
The most important source of income was wharfage. This was
first imposed by the Corporation in 1606 as a charge on goods
imported into Bristol.*4 At first the Society collected it on behalf of
the city, but from 1611, apparently by an informal arrangement, it
kept the money for its own use. The Society tried unsuccessfully to
obtain a formal lease in 1624, but it did not get one until 1661.5 In
1614-15, the duty brought in less than £100, but in the post-
Restoration years it averaged a little over £400 a year. The Society
also collected miscellaneous port dues such as anchorage, keyage
and plankage, but they brought in considerably less than £100 a
year. %6
There was no annual subscription to the Society and although the
Ordinances of 1639 made provision for the payment of quarterage
at the rate of 4d. a quarter,®’ there is no record of it ever being
collected. Apprentices and sons of redemptioners had to pay certain
small fees, and for redemptioners there was an entry fine. In the
seventeenth century, the Society did not exploit this potential source
of income to anything like the same extent it did in the eighteenth
century. In 1690, for example, the total receipts from fines from four
82 For the inventory and other details about the Hall, see McGrath, Merchant
Venturers, pp. 66 ff.
83 For further examination of the Society’s finances and specimens of the
accounts, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. xxv—xxvili, 81-95.
34 For wharfage, see a number of references in McGrath, Merchant Venturers;
Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 64-5; Seventeenth Century Annals, pp. 28, 306, 438.
See also infra, pp. 71-2.
35 Bristol Record Office: C.T.D. 00352(4). There is another copy in the Mer-
chants’ Hall. See McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 136. —
36 For further details, see McGrath, op. cit., p. xxvi.
37 Supra, p. 42.
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Seventeenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 47
redemptioners amounted to only £100. At this stage, the Society
was anxious to encourage merchants to join and kept the entry fine
low.
In the last quarter of the century, the Society acquired a consider-
able part of the manor of Clifton and a certain amount of other
property in Bristol. Rents from these sources amounted to between
£150 and £200 a year, and from time to time there were capital
gains from renewal of leases, such as £200 received from a house on
the quay, £120 from a house in the Castle and over £500 from the
George Inn.?®
From its limited income, the Society had to meet a great many
expenses. Defence of the interests of the merchants was a costly and
recurring charge, involving the payment of agents sent to London,
fees to lawyers and presents to those likely to be useful’ A great deal
was spent on routine maintenance of the port and on conservation
of the river. The Society’s Hall and other property had to be kept in
repair. There were salaries and gifts for the Clerk, the Beadle, the
Collector of Hall Dues, the schoolmaster and the clergymen who
preached in St. Stephen’s Church on Charter Day and who attended
the almspeople or officiated in the chapel at Shirehampton.*° From
1670, the Society paid the salary of the Havenmaster.“! Charitable
gifts and pensions were another item, and the Beadle’s Accounts
show payment of over £100 a year to almsfolk and pensioners in the
last decade of the century.*? The cost of the audit dinner rose from
a modest £6 2s. in 1617 to much larger sums later in the century.
When the Duke of Beaufort was made Lord Lieutenant in 1672, the
Society spent nearly £80 in entertaining him.*®
Capital expenditure was on occasions very high. In 1621 the
Society had to make a contribution of £1,000 towards the cost of a
naval expedition against the pirates of North Africa,*4 and it spent
over £2,500 in extending and improving the quays in the years
1661-3 and 1690-3.4° The purchase of a three-quarter share of the
manor of Clifton cost £1,750 in 1676, and £911 15s. was spent on
buying further property there in 1699.46 Cost of work on the road
38 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. xxvi.
39 Merchants’ Hall Records: Treasurer’s Book 2,68; McGrath, op. cit., p. Xxvi.
40 For details of these and other expenses, see McGrath, op. cit., passim.
Infra, pp. 75-6.
42 McGrath, op. cit., p. xxvii.
43 For Dinners, Hospitality and Presents, see McGrath, of. cit., pp. 74-80.
44 Patrick McGrath, ‘“‘The Merchant Venturers and Bristol Shipping in the
early seventeenth century’’, Mariners’ Mirror, vol. xxxvi, no. 1, 1950.
45 For further details of expenditure on the port, see Patrick McGrath, ““The
Society of Merchant Venturers and the Port of Bristol in the 17th Century’”’, Trans.
_B.G.A.S. xxii, 1953.
46 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 131, 132; Merchants’ Hall Records:
Treasurer’s Book 2, 35, 69.
48 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
to Rownham and the Hotwell amounted to nearly £350 in 1688,47
and in the last decade of the century rebuilding and extending the
Merchants’ Almshouse involved considerable expenditure. 48
As far as organisation and finance were concerned, the Society
could look back with satisfaction on its progress during the seven-
teenth century. It had worked out a constitution for itself and created
an efficient administrative machinery. It had started with little or
no financial resources and, thanks very largely to the Corporation,
it had acquired an income. In the years after 1660, it had bought
quite a lot of property. It had used used its resources to provide a
fighting fund with which to defend the merchants’ interests, it had
done much to develop the port, and it had been engaged in a great
variety of other activities, including charitable and educational
work. If it owed everything in the first place to the financial help
received from the Corporation, it had in return given Bristol good
value for money.
47 Merchants’ Hall Records: Beadle’s Book 1, 10, 11.
48 See p. 82.
CHAPTER 5
The Work of the Society in the Seventeenth
Century
LIke all other professional associations in this period, the Society
of Merchant Venturers was concerned first of all with furthering the
interests of its own members at local and national level. Those
interests were not necessarily identical with the interests of other
groups in the city, and this to some extent explains why the Society
did not achieve one of its main objectives — the establishment of a
closed shop for its members in foreign trade. But apart from this,
there was considerable justification in the seventeenth century for
the view that what was good for the Society was good for Bristol.
The Merchant Venturers formed a powerful pressure group which
defended its own and the city’s interests at the Council table and in
parliament and which battled with success against competing interests
elsewhere, notably in London. Unless there had been some such
organisation, the voice of Bristol would have been drowned in the
clamour raised by other groups in other ports.
THE ATTEMPT TO ESTABLISH A MONOPOLY IN FOREIGN TRADE
In seventeenth-century England, there were many individuals and
many groups seeking to secure commercial or industrial monopolies.
Much ingenuity was shown in producing arguments to prove that
such monopolies were in the public interest, and people did not see
any inconsistency in seeking privileges for themselves while at the
same time attacking the privileges granted to others. Every would-be
monopolist thought that his was a special case. It is not therefore
surprising to find the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol
making continual efforts in the seventeenth century to restrict the
foreign trade of Bristol to its own members, and at the same time
protesting that the monopolistic practices of others were “contrary
to the lawes of the kingdome, the benifitt of the Commonwealth,
the increase of his Maiesties Customes, humane Society, yea against
the Rules of Christianity”’.1
The Society based its claim on the charters of 1552 and 1566,
1 Book of Trade, p. 70; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 220-1.
50 Lhe Merchant Venturers of Bristol
which had been confirmed by an Act of Parliament in 1566. It
forgot, or ignored, the Act of 1571, which had explicitly repealed
the Act of 1566 and implicitly rejected the exclusive rights granted
by the charters. Nor was it discouraged by an Act of Parliament of
1606 directed against the Spanish and French Companies, which
declared that the Spanish, Portuguese and French trades were open
to all the King’s subjects.* Its attempt to get its charters excepted
from this Act failed,‘ but if parliament was unwilling to help, the
Corporation of Bristol was more sympathetic, and in 1612, ignoring
the Act of Parliament, it authorised the Society to make ordinances
by virtue of its charters forbidding its own members from exercising
any other trade, and prohibiting non-members from using the trade
of a merchant adventurer.® It was impossible to enforce such regula-
tions in view of the Act of Parliament opening the Spanish, Portu-
guese and French trades to everyone, and the Society’s Ordinances
of 1618 which forbade members to handle the goods of retailers or
artificers implicitly recognised that such people were engaged in
foreign trade.* In order to exclude them, it was essential to get
parliamentary backing, and determined efforts were made in the
parliaments of 1621 and 1624. Legal advice was taken from the
Recorder, the city gave enthusiastic support, and there was much
correspondence with the M.P.s who were themselves Merchant
Venturers. A variety of ingenious arguments was put forward, but
in neither parliament was a bill actually brought in. At a time when
monopolies were under heavy fire, it would have stood little chance
of success. ’
The Charter which the Society obtained from the King in 16398
gave it wide powers over everyone in Bristol exercising the art of a
merchant, but the revised ordinances which the Society drew up
made no attempt to compel all merchants to become members.
They merely forbade Merchant Venturers from cooperating with
outsiders.® Latimer suggested that the Society did not attempt to
establish a closed shop because the Charter of 1639 did not allow it
to make Ordinances contrary to the law of the land. He argued that
any such regulation would have violated the Act of 1606 which
opened the French, Spanish and Portuguese trades to all subjects of
the crown. This explanation is not satisfactory, for the King himself
2 See pp. 13-14.
3 Statutes of the Realm, iv, part ii, 1083.
4 Journals of the House of Commons, i, 275; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 6.
5 Bristol Record Office: C.C.P. 1608-1627, 24v, 25; McGrath, Merchant Venturers,
xvii, 6-7.
8 Supra, p. 41.
? McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. xviii, 8-14.
8 Supra p. 41.
® Supra p. 41.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 5I
had ignored the Act of 1606 when he established a new French
Company in 1611,!° and the Act had not prevented the Corporation
of Bristol from authorising the Society to make Ordinances limiting
trade to its own members in 1612. It would not in any case have
prevented the Merchant Venturers from trying to exclude non-
members from trades not covered by the Act. The probability is that
in 1639 the Society decided that for the time being it could not en-
force the monopoly granted in its charters unless it had parliamen-
tary authority, and this it had so far failed to obtain.
After the Restoration, it tried again. In 1662, it brought in a bill
to confirm its charters, but this was rejected on its second reading."
In 1665, it set up a committee to petition the King to confirm the
Charters and also to obtain an Act of Parliament confirming them.'?
Charles II did in fact confirm his father’s grant of 1639,1° but little
progress was made in parliament. Further attempts were made
between 1667 and 1670 to get the charters confirmed and the privi-
leges of the Society increased, but these laborious and costly efforts
were unsuccessful, and the Society finally abandoned the hopeless
task.14 :
It was fortunate that the Society of Merchant Venturers failed to
establish a monopoly of the foreign trade of Bristol. If it had suc-
ceeded, it would probably have found itself engaged in fierce
conflict with other Bristolians, and a monopoly would probably have
put the brake on commercial expansion. It was in its own best
interest that it should be compelled to attract members, not by
coercion but by offering them the material advantages and the
considerable prestige of belonging to a powerful and influential
organisation which worked in the closest harmony with the city
government.
THE SOCIETY AS A CHAMPION OF ‘‘FREE TRADE’’
Although the Society wanted to establish a local monopoly, it was
determined to oppose monopolies held by others, and it became
deeply involved in the nation-wide debate on how foreign trade
could best be organized. The points at issue were many and varied.
Was foreign trade to be carried on only by professional, trained
merchants, or was it to be open to all? Should some overseas markets
10 C, T. Carr, Select Charters of Trading Companies, 1530-1707, Selden Society,
XXVili, 1913, pp. 62 ff.
11 Fournals of the House of Commons, viii, 340; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 15.
12 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 16.
13 93 June 1665. Printed in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 109-10.
14 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 15-26; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 107—
109.
52 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
be the monopoly of particular groups? If trade was to be controlled,
should control be vested in regulated or in joint-stock companies?
What contributions, if any, should be levied on merchants in order
to maintain the services necessary for the smooth working of trade?
What was to be done if the interests of merchants conflicted with
those of industrialists or of consumers? Should special consideration
be given to the needs of the provinces in order to prevent them being
ruined by the over-mighty capital? Was the economic growth in
Ireland or in the colonies to be allowed to threaten vested interests
in England? To what extent should political considerations and
national security take precedence over economic advancement?
Such questions were discussed passionately, and by no means dis-
interestedly, by all who traded overseas. Throughout the century, a
number of pressure groups, of which the Society of Merchant
Venturers was one, sought continually to move in one direction or
another the frontiers of economic controls. They strove to catch the
eye of the Council and of Parliament. They fought for their own
interests, but they adapted their position and their arguments to the
need of the moment, and they did not worry unduly about consis-
tency.
The volume of foreign trade going through London was over-
whelmingly greater than that of the provincial ports, and a number
of Companies in which Londoners predominated managed to secure
from the King monopolies in important overseas markets. These
Companies tended either to exclude outsiders or, more usually, to
impose on them conditions of trade which they found irksome. Thus,
disputes about commercial policy were in no small measure disputes
between London and the out-ports. Bristolians were naturally
heavily engaged and fought with distinction on a number of fronts.
They contributed in good measure to the volume of complaint
against the dominant Londoners. Thus, at the end of the sixteenth
century, they protested that whereas they had once enjoyed ‘“‘free
and unrestrained traffique into the streights’’, now ‘‘this our Trade
have the Londoners intercepted and so monopoled into themselves,
as wee are inforced (yf wee trade thither) to compound therefore at
verie neare a quarter parte’’.15 On another occasion, they remarked
that a London merchant who was concerned with patent to export
butter was behaving ‘‘as if God had noe sonnes to whom he gave the
benefitt of the earth but in London”’.!* The battle continued through-
out the century, and one of the most important contributions of the
Society to the city which had given it so privileged a position was to
act as a permanent, and often very effective, watchdog over the
15 Book of Trade, pp. 136 ff. They were referring to the Levant or Turkey
Company.
16 Book of Trade, p. 83 (1621).
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 53
interests of Bristol. It had the knowledge and the resources to prepare
arguments to present to the Council or to Parliament, and it knew
how to win friends and influence people.
The battlefield was continually shifting as a new enemy appeared
or as an old one returned to the struggle, and often the Society had
to fight on several fronts at the same time. It is best to examine the
conflicts separately rather than chronologically, and only a limited
amount of detail can be given here about what was, from the Society’s
point of view, the most important task it had to perform in the seven-
teenth century.
In the first half of the period, the Iberian peninsula was probably
the most important market for Bristolians. Under Elizabeth I, this
had been handed over to a Spanish Company, and Bristolians who
wanted to trade there had been compelled to join it. They had, as
we have seen, decided to separate from it in 1605, and an Act of
Parliament of 1606 had thrown the trade open to all.1” But there
was a danger that the Spanish Company might be revived, and a
number of attempts were made to persuade the King to grant a
new Charter. In 1631, for example, the Privy Council wrote to the
merchants of Bristol informing them that the merchants of London
trading to Spain had petitioned for the incorporation of a company
‘for the preventinge of those great disorders and inconveniences
that have growne heretofore by a loose manner of trade, not subject
to government ...’’. Bristolians were instructed to send two or more
fit persons to London to discuss the proposal. The argument about
disorders arising from a ‘‘loose manner of trade’ was the stock
argument of those who wanted a monopoly for themselves. It had
been used by the Merchant Venturers of Bristol when they applied
for a charter in 1552, but they had already experienced the incon-
venience of being controlled by a London-dominated Spanish
Company, and they had no desire to see it revived. Fortunately for
them the Government decided against the London merchants.}8
Battle was also joined with the Londoners early in the century
when some of them combined with the Drapers’ Company of
Shrewsbury in an attempt to corner the market in Welsh cloth. In
1620, the Society wrote to Mr. Guy, who had gone to London on its
behalf, commending the efforts he had made to resist “‘the uncivill
practizes and projectes which you advertize us are nowe in hande”’
and praising his “‘vertuous Resolucion to oppose and Crushe in the
shell these cacatrices”. The Society was confident that the Privy
17 Pauline Croft, The Spanish Company, London Record Society, 1973, xliv—xlvi.
18 There were a number of attempts in the early seventeenth century to revive the
Spanish Company. For further details, see V. M. Shillington and A. B. Chapman,
The Commercial Relations of England and Portugal, pp. 146—76; E. Lipson, The Economic
History of England, 1947, ii, 264-6; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 212-13.
54 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Council would “never entertaine or admitt such oppression’’.!®
Its confidence on this occasion was justified, and the trade was
eventually thrown open. ?°
France was another market which Bristolians wanted to keep
open. The trade had been made free to all the King’s subjects by
an Act of 1606, but a number of difficulties arose, and the Lord
Treasurer, the Earl of Salisbury, was willing to listen to the argu-
ments of those who urged that the merchants should be organised
for self-protection. In 1609, he invited a number of west-country
ports and towns to express their views. The Mayor of Bristol, John
Butcher, who was a Merchant Venturer, reported that the merchants
had discussed the matter in their Common Hall and were strongly
against regulation of the trade by a Company. The merchants agreed
that any such grant would be a violation of their charters which had
been confirmed by Act of Parliament.2! They made pointed re-
marks about “the pollitique devises of the Merchantes of London,
who for their own singular gaine, doe alwaies seeke to suppresse our
charteres and priviledges for trade of Merchandize. . . .”’2 But in
spite of provincial opposition, the French Company was incorpor-
ated in 1611. Two hundred and one out of its 530 members were
London merchants.?8 No Bristol merchants joined, presumably
because they did not wish to do so, and it is unlikely that the Com-
pany was able to limit the French trade to its own members. Those
who did not join could argue that an Act of Parliament gave them
the right to trade to France.
Nevertheless, the existence of the French Company worried the
Society of Merchant Venturers. The issue was very much alive in
1632 and 1633 when the debate turned on two issues, whether or not
the trade should be controlled by a company, and whether the
merchants of the various towns engaged in it should contribute to
the compensation demanded by the French for damage done to
their merchants. Representatives of the various interested towns
were sent to London where the Government referred the question of
compensation to a committee consisting of four London merchants
and four from the outports. By exercising a certain amount of
pressure, the Bristol merchants managed to get one of their own
18 Book of Trade, p. 70, 20 Feb. 1620; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 220-1.
20 For details of the complicated issues, see T. C. Mendenhall, The Shrewsbury
Drapers and the Welsh Wool Trade in the XVI and XVII Centuries, Oxford, 1953.
21 The Act of 1571 repealing the Act of 1566 confirming the charters was for-
gotten or ignored. See p. 16 and n. 19.
22 P.R.O. S.P. 14/45, no. 106, 7 June 1609. For some useful notes on the French
Company, see E. Lipson, Economic History of England, 1947, ii, 363-4. For opposition
to the French Company from Tiverton, Lyme Regis, Chard and Exeter, see Cal.
S.P.D. 1603-1610, pp. 516, 534, 535» 537:
28 For its Charter, see C. T. Carr, Select Charters of Trading Companies, pp. 62-78.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 55
number and a man from Plymouth added to the committee. The
Bristol representative reported that the Exeter merchants were
prepared to contribute to the payment of compensation and also
agreed that the trade should be regulated. They thought they
themselves would have to give way over the matter of compensation,
since the other western ports were prepared to pay between them
£1,000. The Society sharply told its representatives to keep to their
instructions and not to consent. In the end, the Bristol merchants
agreed to provide £50. The pass had been sold by the Exeter
merchants to whom the French trade was very important. But if
they lost on the issue of compensation, the Bristolians had the satis-
faction of seeing the attempt to regulate the trade end in failure.**
Nor did anything come of a proposal made in 1633 by the Exeter
merchants that the merchants of the north and east should be under
the control of London and those of the west under the control of
Exeter.?5
There was trouble, too, with the Levant or Turkey Company
which claimed a monopoly of trade in the Levant by virtue of
charters from Elizabeth I and James I.2® The Society was anxious
to secure for Bristolians at least some share in this lucrative trade.
When the matter came before the Privy Council in 1618, the Bristol
representatives reported back that they were under great pressure
to agree to make some contribution to the Levant Company in
return for the right to trade in currants. John Whitson and John
Barker, the Society’s representatives in London, were hampered by
their instructions, since the Society had been “peremptory at the
last assemblie to bee Free without lymittacion or wholy exempted”’.
They thought it would be best to make some concession, for “it is
better to incurre inconveniencie then mischiefe’’. They were allowed
to use their discretion, and in the end Bristolians got the right to
import 200 tons of currants a year from Zante and Cephalonia on
condition that they paid 6s. 8d. a ton to the Levant Company.??
The Levant trade came up again in 1632 when the Levant
Company wrote to the Society complaining that the agreed com-
position had not been paid for many years past. Merchants in Bristol
engaged in the trade must be told that they were to pay the duty
and make good the arrears. A copy of the Levant Company’s regula-
tions was also enclosed. The Society replied that it was impossible
24 For the correspondence between the Society and its representatives, see
McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 209-12.
25 Cal. S.P.D. 1633-1634, p. 271, 1 Nov. 1633.
26 There are a considerable number of references in the Society’s records. See
Book of Trade, pp. 51-7, 205-7, 209-11, 219-65; H.B. 1, pp. 370-1, 373-4, 3903
Book of Charters 1, 57. See also Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 137-40; Seventeenth
Century Annals, pp. 65-6, 332-3, 351-2; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 213-20.
27 For the correspondence, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 213-15.
56 ~ The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
now to collect arrears, but that the money would be paid in future.
Bristolians would obey the Company’s regulations “provided wee
may receive noe preiudice thereby . . .’’.28
After the Restoration, the Society was in a stronger position.
Charles I’s Charter of 1643 had explicitly given to its members the
right to trade to all places to which the Levant Company traded. It
is true that this was a wartime measure granted by the King to the
loyal Bristolians when London was in rebellion, but it remained
valid and had been confirmed by Charles II in his Charter of 1665.
Nevertheless, the Levant Company in the same year increased the
duties on non-members and brought a number of Bristolians before
the Privy Council for infringing its rights. The Society reacted
vigorously and had a measure of success, since after hearing both
sides, the Council decided that in future the Levant Company
should not lay any imposition on the merchants of Bristol who
traded to Venice and Zante for the commodities of those places.*®
Three years later the Levant Company again endeavoured to exclude
Bristolians, and the Society again went into action.®® In a case
prepared for the Privy Council, it argued that its own charters were
older than those of the Levant Company and that the Charter of
1643 explicitly allowed Bristolians to trade to the Levant. With a
touch of rhetoric, the Society claimed that there were many rich
merchants in Bristol who would invest in the trade and ‘“‘adventure
theire Estates on the wings of the seas fortune” if they were allowed
to do so. There would be great economic and social benefits, for
‘“‘where there is a full trade, Riches flowes in, and the poore wants
not. ...’ Although they were would-be monopolists themselves,
they pointed out that the Levant Company was a monopoly and
that it was illegal under the Statute of Monopolies of 1624. The
richest trade of the kingdom was in the hands of a small group of
merchants, with disastrous economic consequences. Charles II was
advised that the most prudent policy for the King to adopt was ‘“‘to
keepe Merchants of severall citties in a ballance . . . or otherwise
Commerce will not only bee contracted but Monopolised to its
ruine. ...’’ They concluded with a moving reference to the martyred
King who in 1643 had given them a Charter allowing them to trade
to the Levant: “ . . . who then can thinke without wonder and
Amazement that there should not bee given greatest veneration and
Continuance to the Charters Even of that Mirror of Kings whose
goodnes transcended his Meridian greatnes, seeing hee willingly
yeilded up his life in sacrifice and laid downe his neck to the Block
28 See McGrath, op. cit., pp. 215-17.
29 Book of Trade, p. 257; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 218.
80 The Merchant Adventurers of England were also involved at this time in an
attack on the Bristolians (McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 219 n. 2).
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 57
at the Feete of his Rebellious subiects . . . for the reprivall of his
Prerogative Royall and peoples birth rights from violation and
vassalage.”’®! Those who drew up the petition had little to learn
about special pleading. It had become a question of honouring the
pledges of the Royal Martyr, not of whether the merchants of Bristol
should pay a duty on currants. It was a good campaign, even if it
was expensive, ®? and in the end the Society seems to have succeeded
in vindicating its limited rights to trade to the Levant.%8
Another very powerful Company with which the Society had a
brief encounter in the seventeenth century was the Merchant Adven-
turers of England, who were also known as the Hamburg Company,
since Hamburg was their main depot from the early seventeenth
century. This Company had the exclusive right to trade in unfinished
cloth with the Netherlands and North Germany. It was the most
important of all the companies for foreign trade, and it had
members not only in London but in a number of provincial towns.
There was often conflict between the London and provincial
members, but Bristol was not normally involved, since its trade lay
in other directions. Unlike York, Hull and Newcastle, Bristol had
no members belonging to the Merchant Adventurers of England, and
its charters explicitly excluded it from that Company’s sphere of
influence. 4 In 1643, Charles I’s Charter gave the Bristol Society the
right to trade to the areas controlled by the Merchant Adventurers
of England, and this Charter was confirmed by Charles II in 1665.
It seems unlikely that Bristolians were either able or willing to assert
their rights, but when the Merchant Adventurers joined the Levant
Company in its attack on Bristolians in 1669, the Society counter-
attacked. It appealed to the Merchant Adventurers of Newcastle.
The Newcastle Society, unlike the Bristol Merchant Venturers, was
to some extent a branch of the Merchant Adventurers of England
and shared in their privileges. It had, however, come in conflict
with the main company, and Bristol hoped to get support for a
proposal that all the outports should join in an attack. Although
Newcastle had its grievances, it was not anxious to destroy privileges
in which it shared. It suspected, probably rightly, that the Bristol
Society was merely trying to get others to pay part of the cost of its
case before the Privy Council, and it decided that it was “more
conduceing to the common good of trade, and the mainetayninge
31 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 19-24.
82 Sir Richard Elsworth’s expenses alone came to £182 11s. 2d., oat of which
was disallowed by a committee which thought he should have only £75, together
with £50 for his pains.
83 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 140.
34 For the Bristol Society’s relationship with other Merchant Adventurer
organisations, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. xxx—xxxvi.
58 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
of our generall privileggs to ioyne with the Marchants of London,
rather than with these interlopers. . . .’’5 Bristol’s real quarrel at
this time was with its ancient enemy, the Levant Company, and the
proposed joint attack on the Merchant Adventurers of England was
merely a by-product of the dispute occasioned by the fact that the
Merchant Adventurers were supporting the Levant Company.
Latimer suggests that Bristolians succeeding in breaking the mono-
poly of the Merchant Adventurers,®* but in fact the monopoly
remained intact until just after the Revolution of 1688. Its destruc-
tion then did not greatly interest the merchants of Bristol, since they
did not trade to any extent with the markets in question.®”
Another trade from which Bristolians were excluded was the East
India trade which was the monopoly of the East India Company by
virtue of a Charter of 31 December 1600. The Company conducted
the trade by means of a number of separate joint-stocks. In 1650,
when the Company was in difficulties, it invited Bristol and twelve
other ports to invest in one of its joint-stock ventures. Only Bristol
and Exeter replied, and both rejected the offer. When the letter of
invitation was read in the Hall, the matter was put to the vote, and
it was decided that “the said proffer may prove noe way bene-
ficiall”’.?® This was just after the execution of the King, and investors
were no doubt nervous about the stability of the Government, but
the Society nevertheless missed the chance of infiltrating a very
lucrative market. Later, it tried to regain the lost opportunity. It
voted unanimously in 1681 to join its old enemy the Levant Company
and other London merchants to try to get a share in the East India
trade.?® Nothing came of this, and ten years later it set up a com-
mittee which was to meet twice a week to draw up a petition and
prepare a case for “‘gaining a part of the East India trade to this
Citty’’. In the petition, it argued that Bristol was ‘‘next to London
for trade and commerce and capable to fitt out shipps to and from
the Indies .. .”. The M.P.s were asked to lobby for support and
warned that “the Wealthy Citizens of London who have hetherto
ingrost this profitable trade to themselves will make great head
against us .. .”’.49 But the monopoly was not broken, and it was
perhaps as well that the Society at this time did not become too
35 See F. W. Dendy, Extracts from the Records of the Merchant Adventurers of New-
castle-upon- Tyne, Surtees Society, 1899, ii, 136-8; McGrath, Merchant Venturers,
pp. 225-7.
86 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 140.
87 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. xxxvi.
38 H.B. 1, pp. 151, 21 Feb. 1650: A Calendar of the Court Minutes of the East India
Company 1650-1654, edit. Ethel Bruce Sainsbury, Oxford, 1913, p. 30.
8° H.B. 2, p. 184; W. R. Scott, The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and
Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720, Cambridge, 1910-12, I, 308, II, 139-43.
4° H.B. 2, pp. 482, 487-8, 502; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 228-31.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 59
involved, for the growth of the West Indian and American trades in
the post-Restoration years: probably absorbed most of the spare
capital available and brought Bristolians into conflict with yet
another monopolistic group — the Royal Africa Company.
The development of the English plantations in the New World in
the post-Restoration years depended on an adequate labour force,
and although this was in some degree supplied by indentured
servants, of whom about 10,000 passed through the port of Bristol
in the period 1654-85, the real need could be met only by negro
slaves. These could be obtained by trading with Africans who
supplied the slaves in return for a variety of English goods, but the
monopoly of the Royal Africa Company closed the slave trade to
most Englishmen.‘! The Company defended its privileges on the
ground that the forts which it maintained on the African coast were
essential for the proper conduct of the trade and preserved it against
European competitors. In the last decade of the century, Bristolians,
who were particularly interested in securing an adequate supply of
cheap labour for the West Indian plantations, contributed to the
growing volume of criticism directed against the monopoly of the
Royal Africa Company. In 1690, the Society set up a committee
to petition parliament ‘“‘for letting in the merchants of this Citty to
a share in the African trade’’.42 In 1694, in cooperation with a
number of London merchants, it maintained in a petition to parlia-
ment that “‘a free trade to the Coast of Affrica will carry off much
greater quantities of English manufactories and imploy greater
numbers of the poore of this Kingdome then when the same is con-
fined to a particuler Company... .”’43 The result of a sustained
attack from many quarters was that in 1698 an Act was passed allow-
ing any subject of the Crown to trade to Africa, provided he paid
certain duties on imports and exports. The duties were to be used
by the Royal Africa Company to maintain its forts.44 The Society
- had thus played a part in getting the slave trade officially opened to
Bristolians.
Opposition to privileged London groups was widespread in the
provinces in the seventeenth century, and the contribution of the
Merchant Venturers of Bristol was not unique. Moreover, it would
be an over-simplification of complex issues to see the struggle simply
in terms of the outports against the capital. Neither the Londoners
nor the provincial merchants presented a united front. London
41 For the various African Companies, culminating in the Royal Africa Com-
pany of England which got its Charter in 1672, see K. G. Davies, The Royal
African Company, 1957.
42 HB. 2, p. 461; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 231.
43 HB. 3, pp. 22, 23, 25, McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 231-3.
44 Statutes of the Realm, vii, 393 ff.
60 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
merchants were ready to solicit help from Bristol in an attack on the
Royal Africa Company in the sixteen-nineties, and earlier on the
Society had joined forces with its former enemy the Levant Company
in an attempt to get a share in the monopoly of the East India
Company. In the sixteen-thirties, the Exeter merchants would not
cooperate with Bristol and other west-country ports in opposing
restrictions on the French trade, and they gave enthusiastic support
to some of the London merchants who wanted to bring the trade
under the control of a company. In the post-Restoration period, the
merchants of Newcastle rejected Bristol’s suggestion of a joint attack
on the Merchant Adventurers of England and defended a monopoly
in which they themselves had a share. Each town was concerned
with its own particular interests rather than with general principles.
The Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol, which on so many
occasions opposed restrictions on trade, was extremely anxious to
prevent “unfair” competition from Ireland and the plantations.
The desire of Bristolians to retain their independence of outside
control was one of the most important reasons for their opposition to
London-dominated companies, but there were financial reasons as
well. Some of the companies to which Bristolians objected were
quite willing to admit provincial members, provided they paid the
usual fees for the privilege of membership. At the beginning of the
century, many Bristolians had joined the Spanish Company, and
_ they withdrew from it only because Common Council ordered them
to do so. The constitution of the French Company made provision
for provincial members in what was intended to be a national
organisation. If Bristolians did not join, it was because they did not
choose to do so. The Levant Company was also open to them, and
some did in fact join it. In the post-Restoration years, both the Levant
Company and the Merchant Adventurers of England were willing to
admit Bristolians on favourable terms, but Bristol rejected the offer.
Nor was there anything in the constitution of the East India Com-
pany or of the Royal Africa Company to prevent provincial mer-
chants buying shares when they came on the market. Opposition to
all these companies was to a large extent opposition, not to mono-
polies from which Bristolians were excluded, but to monopolies in
which they could participate only if they paid their share of the
costs. It is significant that in the sixteen-thirties Bristolians were
alone among the west-country merchants in opposing a levy on those
engaged in the French trade which the other considered essential if
the trade was to be re-established on a satisfactory basis. Again, at
the end of the century when the Commons passed a bill opening the
African trade, the merchants of Bristol carried their opposition to
the House of Lords, not because they objected to opening the trade,
but because they strongly objected to paying the tax which Parlia-
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 61
ment imposed to maintain the Royal African Company’s ports.**
They wanted trade to be free, but they took little account of the
argument that certain necessary services could be maintained only if
the merchants as a whole were willing to pay for them.
The arguments used by the Bristol merchants in these debates
might give the impression that they were enlightened champions of
economic freedom, but their policy was in fact only the very natural
one of opposing controls which they themselves found irksome. They
had no objection to controls which worked to their advantage. They
fought long and hard to exclude retailers from a share in the foreign
trade of Bristol; they tried to get their charters excepted from the
Act of Parliament of 1606 which opened the French, Spanish and
Portuguese trade to everyone; they were ready to share in mono-
polies in the export of butter and calf-skins,4* and they were enthus-
iastic supporters of controls such as the prohibition of the growing of
tobacco in England,?’ the Acts of Trade which regulated commerce
with the English colonies, and the laws which restricted Irish
economic development for the benefit of England. If they seemed to
be fore-runners of Adam Smith in their opposition to monopolies,
it was because they had themselves no monopoly to defend. They
would probably not have been so enthusiastic if they had been, for
example, shareholders in the East India Company or in the Royal
African Company, or if they had had formed part of a monopolistic
West India Company. As things were, the policy they followed was
simply the one which their interests demanded.
But although their motives were not disinterested, they neverthe-
less played an important part in a widespread movement in the
seventeenth century to make foreign trade open to a wider circle of
Englishmen. In the course of the century, the “free traders” gained
notable successes. The monopoly of the Eastland Company was
drastically curtailed in 167348 and the entrance fee to the Russia
Company was reduced from £50 to £5 in 1699.4® Even more signi-
ficant, Parliament in 1689 took away the exclusive privileges of the
Merchant Adventurers of England,®® and in 1698 it opened the
African trade, although those engaged in it were required to pay a
tax to maintain the forts.5! Although a number of companies for
foreign trade still survived in 1700, some of them, like the East India
45 MSS. of the House of Lords, 1697-9, iii, 245; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 233.
46 Infra, p. 66.
47 See C. M. MacInnes, The Early English Tobacco Trade, 1926.
48 Statutes of the Realm, v. 793.
49 Statutes of the Realm, vii, 463. At the same time, membership was thrown open
to retailers.
50 Statutes of the Realm, vi, 97.
51 Statutes of the Realm, viii, 393.
62 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Company and the Hudson Bay Company, with complete mono-
polies, foreign trade was much freer at the end of the seventeenth
century than it had been at the beginning. The Society of Merchant
Venturers could justifiably feel that its persistent and quite costly
efforts had been of considerable importance in shaping national
policy and serving the interests of Bristol.
PROTECTION OF THE INTERESTS OF THE MERCHANTS
Opposition to London-dominated companies was the most impor-
tant single aspect of the Society’s work for the merchant community
of Bristol, but it must be seen as part of a wider policy of defending
the interests of Bristol whenever they were threatened. This involved
the Society in a great deal of activity, only part of which can be
examined here.*? Generally speaking, what the Society did benefited
the city as a whole, but it must be remembered that it existed
primarily to further the interests of its own members and that on
occasions the interest of other sections of the community had to take
second place.
The background to many of the conflicts in which Bristol was
involved with the early Stuarts was the Government’s need for
money. The extravagance of James I, the attempt to save the
Protestant cause in the Thirty Years War, the wars with Spain and
France between 1625 and 1630, and the break between king and
parliament in 1629, meant that the Government’s financial resources
were strained to breaking point at a time when the value of money
was falling and the taxation system was hopelessly out-of-date.
Between 1603 and 1640, the Government strove to deal with the
situation by exploiting to the full its traditional rights and by devising
new means of raising money. Inevitably, this led to conflict, for the
men of the seventeenth century did not like being taxed. On num-
erous occasions, the merchants of Bristol were ready with plausible
explanations of why they could not pay. Their tearful complaints
about the deacy of trade and the impoverished condition of the city
must not be taken at face-value. Often, they were part of a bargain-
ing process by which a figure more or less acceptable to both sides
was eventually agreed. Sometimes, the Government used strong-arm
methods, and on occasions the Society had an unpleasant experience
of what government agents could do. But Latimer’s gloomy picture
of grievous oppression suffered by the city and the Society from the
beginning of the century to the Civil War needs to be looked
at critically. On the whole, the merchants prospered, and much
of what a nineteenth-century Liberal like Latimer regarded as
52 For a fuller treatment, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, passim.
Work of the Socrety, Seventeenth Century 63
grievous oppression was probably regarded by its victims as part of
the normal give-and-take of seventeenth-century government.
One of the disputes which took up a great deal of the merchants’
time and money up to 1640 concerned the crown’s right of purvey-
ance of grocery and wine for the royal household. It was an ancient
and undoubted right of the crown under certain conditions to take
quantities of goods for the royal household at prices fixed by the
officers of the Board of Green Cloth. The right was increasingly
resented, and it afforded numerous occasions for dispute until
purveyance was finally abolished by the Long Parliament. As far as
Bristol was concerned, the matter was primarily one for the Corpora-
tion, but the Society was also deeply involved, and there are a large
number of references to it in the records.53
Another matter which gave the Society a great deal of concern
between 1608 and 1640 was the increased duties on wine imposed
by James I and Charles I. The legality of the new impositions was
continually questioned by others in the Commons. The Society’s
concern was not so much to raise general principles, but to find
reasons why Bristolians should not pay. Once again, its efforts were
recorded at length in the Book of Trade.®4
In the 1630s, when the King was ruling without Parliament and
was in great need of money, Bristolians found themselves in trouble
on a number of occasions. In the war at sea between 1625 and 1630,
several merchants and others had fitted out privateers with letters
of marque.®® It is more than likely that not all the prize goods were
declared and that the Lord Admiral did not always receive the one-
tenth share to which he was entitled. An enquiry into concealed
prizes in 1635 was highly embarrassing, and the merchants and
shipowners complained in a petition to the King that they were
being sued in the Court of Exchequer and in the Court of Wards
“contrary to all lawe or president . . . thereby endeavouring to
force them to accompt of thinges long since past and out of mem-
ory....” They begged the King to put a stop to these vexatious
suits. °§
Not surprisingly, there was a great deal of trouble between the
merchants and the officers.of the customs, partly over the question of
fees and partly over the alleged illegal export of prohibited goods.
Few seventeenth-century officials were above reproach, and many
53 Book of Trade, pp. 120-2, 133-6, 138, 140, 176-9, 181-3, 195; Latimer,
Merchant Venturers, pp. 112-16; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 234-5.
54 Book of Trade, Pp- 47; 48, 120, 121, 124-30, 134-8, 149-51, 154-7, 176-7,
233-6. For further details about the disputes, see J. Latimer, Merchant Venturers,
pp. 114-19; Andre Simon, The Wine Trade in England, III, 9 ff.
55 J. W. D. Powell, Bristol Privateers and Ships of War, Bristol, 1930.
56 P.R.O.: S.P. 16/302, no. 109, 8 Dec. 1635; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp.
238-9.
64 The Merchant Veniurers of Bristol
were ready to supplement their meagre salaries by dubious methods,
but many merchants were anxious to avoid paying duties. In any
dispute, both parties were quick to blacken the reputation of their
opponents. Thus, in 1634 the merchants complained tearfully that
they had been subjected to ungrounded, false accusations, that they
had been summoned before Star Chamber, and that sailors had been
tempted to make false accusations against their employers. All this
was alleged to have cost the merchants over £1,000 in the last five
years and to have wounded their reputations.5’ Against this picture
of honest merchants harassed by wicked officials must be set the
account given by the Searcher of the Customs who alleged that the
merchants had illegally exported great quantities of prohibited
goods. He complained to the Council that ‘‘the nowe Maior and
other Cheife Merchants. of Bristoll . . . findinge that the peticoner
would not Combine with them to passe and suffer their said goods
and others prohibited unlawefully to be transported . . . have not
onely splenatiquely certified your Lordshipps of a manifest untruth
against the peticoner . . . but have alsoe upon the bare reporte of
one Christopher Cary, a confederat of theirs, in a very malicious and
disgracefull manner . . . bound the peticoner to good behaviour...
Whereby (as alsoe by some former indirecte practises by sundry of
the said merchantes of Bristoll) the peticoner and his Deputyes have
byn and still are greately discouradged and hindred. . . .’®§ It is
impossible to establish the truth, but it is probable that the Merchants
of Bristol were not the innocent lambs they claimed to be.
There were similar charges and counter-charges when a commis-
sion under Lord Mohun came to Bristol to inquire into the great
sums of money which the magistrates, merchants and others were
alleged to have levied unlawfully on goods imported and exported.
The Society was involved because one of the matters at issue was the
wharfage duties, which the Society had been collecting by informal
permission of the Corporation and which it had recently increased
in order to recoup itself for its contribution to Ship Money. There
was doubt about the legality of the duty, which had not been im-
posed before 1606, and there is a possibility that someone in Bristol
who was no friend to the establishment had tipped off the Govern-
ment and provided it with a chance of exacting fines from the
merchants. The commissioners were very anxious to see the Society’s
books and get statements from its members, and the Society was
determined not to provide information. Its resistance was met with
57 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 121, 122.
58 P.R.O.: S.P. 16/337, no. 24; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 239-40. For a
collection of documents relating to disputes with customs officers, see Merchants’
Hall records: John Tyndale v. The Merchant Venturers (Court of Exchequer,
1692/3).
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 65
force by the commissioners. The Hall was broken into and a
number of papers seized. According to the commissioners, the Society
had obstructed them in every possible way. The Warden, Master
and Treasurer had refused to hand over the keys of a chest in the
Hall which contained the accounts, The commissioners nevertheless
had managed to see several books and had left them in the care of
the Society’s Clerk, Richard Griffith. The Warden, Edmund
Arundel, then took the books from Griffith and sent him to London
so that he would not be available for questioning. When a warrant
was sent to Arundel requiring him to produce the books, he refused
to read it and denied on oath that he had the keys of the Hall or the
books. When Arundel was further examined, he “sought with dila-
tory and unfitting and maskt answeres to spend the tyme”, and then
he refused to sign the record of his examination. When he was asked
if he thought the commissioners would have broken open the doors
or the chests if they had not found “‘purposed opposition to the said
service’, he replied ‘I will give noe answere therunto; but haveing
discovered . . . the secrets of the inquiry . . . and haveing therein
kept the Commissioners from two of the clock till seven at night,
refused to firme (sign) his former examination, with a purpose as wee
conceive to discover the secrets to the rest of the Bristol men. . . .”’5®
Such actions can be represented as a courageous defence of free-
dom by the Society and its officers against the minions of a tyrannical
government, or as a conspiracy on the part of a group of men to
resist a government enquiry into a source of revenue of questionable
legality. The issue was certainly not as plain as Latimer suggested,
and there is doubt about whether Edmund Arundel can be pre-
sented as a Bristol version of John Hampden.
Other troubles in which the city and the Society were involved
under the early Stuarts included the demand on the ports to provide
money for an expedition against the pirates of Algiers in 1621;®° the
levying of Ship Money; distraint of knighthood; restrictions on the
making of soap in Bristol and limitations on its exports; patents for
cutting down trees in the Forest of Dean, which were alleged to have
a bad effect on the bristol shipbuilding industry; and restrictions on
the export of beer.*1 The Society and its members played their part
in defending Bristol’s interests on a number of occasions in these
59 P.R.O.: S.P. 16/379 no. 3, 18 Jan. 1638. For the merchants’ account of the
affair, see P.R.O.: S.P. 16/379 no. 1; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 240-2.
60 For further details, including the long-drawn out resistance to the demands of
the Government, see Patrick McGrath, ‘““The Merchant Venturers and Bristol
Shipping in the Early Seventeenth Century”, Mariner’s Mirror, vol. xxxvi, no. 1,
1950. Infra, p. 79.
61 There is a good deal of information about Bristol’s grievances in these years
in a local chronicle — Adams’ Chronicle of Bristol (Bristol, 1910). The chronicler’s
complaints should not always be taken at face-value.
66 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
disputes. Although the alleged grievances of the merchants must be
treated with caution, there was justification for some of the com-
plaints.
On the other hand, the Society was quite prepared to cooperate
with the Government at the expense of others when it suited its
interests. One illustration of this is its participation in a patent for
the export of Welsh butter. Export was forbidden by various statutes
in the interest of English consumers, but the crown from time to
time granted to patentees licence to export, notwithstanding the
statutes. In 1619, the Society obtained a share in one of the patents.
This was to involve it in a great deal of trouble in the next forty
years. The full story can be found elsewhere, ®* but two points seem
clear in this involved business: one, that the Society was very ready
to defend its special privilege against those who complained that it
put up the price of butter; and two, that under cover of the patent,
members of the Society exported a great deal more butter than they
were entitled to do under the grant. They could hardly complain
when this got them into trouble with informers, who denounced them
to the Government.
There were similar troubles over the share which the Merchant
Venturers acquired in a patent to export calf-skins, notwithstanding
the statutes prohibiting export. In 1641, when the patent was being
called in question by the Long Parliament on the ground that it put
up prices, the merchants referred to one of the agents of the patentee
as ‘‘a Rapatious Moore . . . the woundes of whose Tallentes [szc] in
most of us Remaines to this day incured .. .’’.®8 Nevertheless, they
were not anxious for the trade to be thrown open and they wanted
the patent to be granted to the city or to the Society. ®4
The Society’s role was also less than straightforward with regard
to a tax of 40s. a tun on wine which the King imposed in 1637 and
the collection of which he farmed out to the London Vintners’
Company. When the Long Parliament was investigating the matter
in 1641, the Society hastened to explain the way in which it had been
victimised by the wicked London vintners. It alleged that in 1638
the vintners had sent agents to Bristol who demanded to see all the
stocks of wine in the city and who appointed a collector of the duties
in Bristol. The merchants claimed that they tried by all lawful
means to oppose the payment of the duties, but they found no relief
from the Council and were forced “‘for their peace of mind and to
preserve themselves from Ruine . . . to accept such condicons as the
Company of Vintners of London proposed”. These were that the
62 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 119-25 and other references given there.
83 Book of Trade, p. 250, 9 Dec. 1641.
64 For further details about the calf-skin patent, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers,
pp. 125-8, and other references given there.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 67
Society should collect the duty in and around Bristol, receiving
£500 for “labour, badd wines, losses and the like. . . .” Unfortunately,
they found all men “so backward in paiement” that they had
collected only £1,096 13s. 4d., of which they had so far paid in
£800. The merchants said that they sold their wines to vintners of
whom there were only 12 in Bristol. Six of these had gone bankrupt
after the imposition of the tax. In view of their losses, the Bristol
merchants had asked the London Vintners to release them, but they
refused to do so and prosecuted them in the Court of the Exchequer
as well as arresting a Bristol man in London and bringing him before
the Council. ®
This tale of injured innocence was not apparently accepted by the
House of Commons, and the two Bristol M.P.s, Humphrey Hooke
and Richard Longe, who were members of the Society and who
belonged to the group of twelve which had organised the collection
of the wine duties, were expelled from the House as beneficiaries in
the Wine Project. *
In view of the harrowing picture which Latimer and others have
painted of the sufferings of Bristolians in general and of the
merchants in particular, it is important to remember that neither
the two M.P.s elected in 1640 nor the two who replaced the members
expelled in 1642 showed any enthusiasm for the parliamentary cause.
They were in fact royalists. If Bristolians bitterly resented the Stuart
“tyranny”, it is difficult to understand why the city, which had a
remarkably large electorate, did not show its resentment in the
elections.
One benefit which the Society got from the Civil War was its
Charter of 1643. At a time when London was opposing the King,
Charles I was very willing to give privileges to Bristol, and the
Society was able to press its claims against the London-dominated
companies. In the Charter, the King noted that “our good and
lovinge Subjects the Merchants of the said Citty of Bristoll have
expressed their loyalty and fidelity unto us in these late times of
difficulty when our Citty of London and the Cittizens and Merchants
thereof who have held and enjoyed many more priviledges and
Immunityes for the advancing of a free and ample trade into all
Forraine parts have forgotten their duty . . .’.67 The reward of
virtue was a grant to the Society of the right to trade to the areas
hitherto restricted to the Eastland Company, the Levant Company
and the Merchant Adventurers of England, but as Bristol fell to
85 For the trouble with the London Vintners, see Book of Trade, pp. 242, 245,
249, 252-4; H.B. 1, pp. 2, 29, 41; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 221-5; Andre
Simon, The Wine Trade in England, iii, 42-58.
86 Fournals of the House of Commons, ii, 415, 567 (12 May 1642).
67 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 106.
68 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Fairfax and Cromwell in the next year, the Society was unable to
make use of the privileges.
There is not a great deal of evidence concerning the role of the
Society in protecting the interests of merchants during the Inter-
regnum. Some of its members were in trouble for delinquency and
had to compound, and the Society may have lost some of its prestige
and self-confidence in these difficult years. It was probably not very
active. Nevertheless in 1648, it thanked the Mayor, aldermen and
Sheriff for sending a petition to London asking for ships of war to
protect merchantmen against Irish and other pirates, and it agreed
to send another petition in the name of the Hall if need required. ®®
Four years later, it was busy trying to secure ships of war to protect
the port and the channel,®® and in 1658 it set up a committee to
procure a convoy from the Admiralty.79 In 1654, we find it agreeing
to join with west-country merchants in petitioning against the Dutch
trading with Barbados, the Caribbean islands and Virginia.”
In the trade expansion in the post-Restoration period, the Society
once more took the lead as a champion of mercantile interests. In
1660, it instructed the M.P.s to try to secure for it a revival of the
patents concerning the export of butter and calfskins. If that could
not be achieved, they were to see that these goods were not highly
rated for customs duties. The revival of purveyance was to be
resisted, the merchants of London were to be supported in their
attempts to get the growing of English tobacco suppressed, and the
Navigation Act was to be amended.”? In 1669, the Society, whose
members imported olive oil from Spain and Portugal, tried to insist
that soap should not be made from tallow, since, it alleged, this
ruined English cloth and got it a bad reputation, as well as leading
to the reduction of olive oil imported into Bristol from 2,000 tons to
500 tons.’8 In 1672 when there was trouble with the customs officers,
the Society ordered that if any member felt he had a grievance, he
should ask the Master to call the Hall right away. If he made out a
case, the Hall would defend him at its own cost.?4 About the same
time, the English consul at Venice suggested that the Government
might raise the money to give him a salary commensurate with that
of other consuls by imposing a new duty on ships and a tax on
merchandise. The proposal had some support, but was opposed by
68 A.B. 1, pp. 132, 133, 11 Dec. 1648.
69 H7.B. 1, pp. 206, 3 Feb. 1652.
70 A.B. 1, pp. 287, 15 Oct. 1658.
1 H.B. 1, pp. 23, 7 Dec. 1654.
72 HB. 1, pp. 303-4, 14 July 1660; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 243-6.
78 Book of Charters 2, pp. 66, 67, 68, 70-84; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp.
246-7.
74 HB. 2, p. 34, 11 Nov. 1672. For complaints against the customs officers
about this time, see Book of Charters 2, 100—1, 106.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 69
the Levant Company and by the Venetian government whose agent
in England stirred up resistance among the merchants. At the
request of “‘some eminent merchants of London”, the Society
prepared a petition and sent it to. a London merchant to present to
the King.75 The instruction to a committee of grievances in 1674
were that “‘they are to endeavour the redresse of our grievances as to
the consulage in Marseilles, the small allowance on corrupt wines,
the overgauging of Brandy and strong waters, the abuses by the
prisage masters and the searcher and all other our grievances
whatsoever.’’76
Other problems arose in connection with the duties charged on
plantation tobacco landed in Ireland, the tare on sugar and butter,
the making of casks from green wood, high fees charged by the
Searcher of the Customs, proposed impositions on tobacco and sugar,
the duty on spirits made from molasses, and the failure to enforce
the Acts of Trade forbidding the shipping of colonial produce direct
to Scotland and Ireland.’” These and other grievances often involved
the setting up of a committee, sending petitions to London, alerting
the M.P.s, paying agents to press the case, and persuading influential
people to help. The kind of thing involved may be illustrated from
the instructions given to John Cary in 1695: “*. . . Our desire is that
you will please to sett forwards on your journey with all the speed you
cann and on your arrivall at London to address your selfe to our
members in Parliament. And to lay before them the advantage which
will arise not only to this city but to the whole Kingdome in generall
by passing the plantacion Act which wee desire you to use your
utmost endeavours to get don this sessions. Wee alsoe desire you to
make application to the Admiralty for a good convoy to secure our
Virginia shipps home into this Channell, wherein wee doubt not
our said Members will give all the assistance they can, with whome
wee desire you to consult about all thinges that concerne the interest
of this City. Wee now order the Treasurer to furnish you with fifty
pounds which wee hope you will manage with frugality. And as wee
find you shall have further occasions shall take due care to supply
you. As for other matters you may expect to heare from time to
time as occasion offers. Interim wishing you a good Journey and
desireing to heare frequently from you... .”’78
In much of what it did to protect the merchants and to get
redress of their grievances, the Society was very largely concerned
75 HB. 2, p. 40, 6 Dec. 1672; Book of Charters 2, pp. 112, 113; McGrath, Merchant
Venturers, pp. 248-9. There are also a considerable number of references in the
State Papers Venetian. The consul persevered until 1675 when the Government finally
decided against him.
76 H.B. 2, p. 78, 10 Nov. 1674; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 249-50.
77 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 250-60.
78 H B. 3, p. 64, 21 Jan. 1696; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 259-60.
70 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
with the interests of its own members, but it also served the interests
of other merchants and of the community as a whole. It is difficult
to see that the case for Bristol could have been put so effectively by
any other means.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE PORT
One of the most valuable services which the Society gave to Bristol
in the seventeenth century was the development of the port. The
Merchant Venturers gradually took over from the Corporation most
of the duties of a port authority, and, particularly after 1660, they
brought to the task the energy and enterprise which helped Bristol
to participate in full measure in the Commercial Revolution.7®
Although the ultimate responsibility for maintaining the port,
conserving the river, licensing the pilots and regulating shipping lay
in the hands of the Mayor, Aldermen and Common Council, the
Corporation was very ready to delegate its duties to those most
immediately concerned. When it first began to do so is not certain.
In 1601, it granted to twenty-four merchants the right to collect the
port dues known as anchorage, cannage and plankage for a period
of 80 years at a rent of £3 6s. 8d. a year. The lessees undertook
to provide sufficient planks for the discharge of merchandise and
to see that the slip at Hungroad was kept clear.8° This lease was
probably a renewal of an earlier one, for in 1577 ‘‘the proctors of
St. Clements Chapel’’ held the same duties at the same rent.®! The
income from these duties was not large in the early seventeenth
century. In 1617-18, for example, they amounted to only £25 4s. 6d.
out of which the Society had to provide an adequate supply of
planks and pay £2 a year to the keeper of the slip at Hungroad.®?
Another early link between the Society and the port was found in
the duties of tonnage on each ton of goods and poundage on seamen’s
wages, which were used for the upkeep of an almshouse for poor
mariners, for the wages of a schoolmaster for poor mariners’ children
and for the salary of a curate at Hungroad. The first definite mention
of these duties is in 1595, but they were then referred to as being an
established custom.®* Again, the financial value in the early seven-
79 For a fuller examination of this aspect of its work, see Patrick McGrath, “The
Society of Merchant Venturers and the Port of Bristol in the 17th Century’,
Trans. B.G.A.S., \xxii, 1953; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 135-75.
80 Bristol Record Office: C.T.D. 00352 (2) and (5).
81 Bristol Record Office: Mayor’s Audits, 04026(10), pp. 206, 272.
82 The Collector’s Account for 1617-18 is in the Book of Trade. It is printed in
McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 88-91. Hungroad was the deep water anchorage
in the Avon a little below Bristol.
83 Cal. S.P.D. 1595-1597, PP. 105-5, 5 Oct. 1595. The duties probably date back
to the establishment of a Gild of Mariners in 1445-6 when sailors were required to
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 71
teenth century was small. In 1617-18, for example, tonnage brought
in £21 10s. 6d. and poundage £3 18s. gd.84
The connections between the Society and the port became very
much stronger in the first decade of the century when the Corpora-
tion created a new duty known as wharfage. It was first imposed in
1606 on the goods of non-freemen coming to Bristol but in 1607 it
was extended to include the goods of freemen as well.§5 Wharfage
money was to be used to repair the Back and Quay which were
alleged to be in great decay in spite of £1,500 recently spent on
them.8*® Latimer was probably right when he suggested that the real
purpose of the new duty was to put on a sound financial basis the
Society of Merchant Venturers which the Corporation had re-
organised at the end of 1605.8” It is significant that William Fleet,
the Collector of Wharfage appointed by the Corporation on 8 July
1606, was also Collector for the merchants. In the patent appointing
him, the Society stated that one of the purposes of the duty was to
repay money lent by the Corporation to the Bristol Adventurers. ®®
Some wharfage money was paid into the Chamber of Bristol between
1606 and 1611,8® but after 1611 there were no further payments.
The Society’s account for 1610-11 shows it collecting the money for
its own use. °° Thus, by an informal arrangement the Society acquired
what was to be its main source of income for the rest of the century.
There was considerable doubt about the legality of the new
imposition, and in 1607 the Common Council requested the Bristol
M.P.s to get counsel’s opinion and to apply for royal letters patent
authorising the duty.®! Latimer thought that the royal consent was
probably obtained, but there is no evidence of this, although in
1625 the Privy Council implicitly recognised the legality of wharfage
when it gave the Hall support against a shipowner who refused to
pay the increased rate.®? As we have seen, the royal commissioners
who came to Bristol and seized some of the Society’s account books
and other papers in 1637 were clearly concerned with the legality of
contribute from their wages for the support of a priest and 12 poor mariners. Little
Red Book of Bristol, edit. F. B. Bickley, Bristol, 1g00, II, 186-92.
84 The Collector’s Account 1617-18 in the Book of Trade, printed in McGrath,
Merchant Venturers, pp. 88-91.
85 Bristol Record Office: C.C.P. 1598-1608, pp. 116, 132.
86 Book of Trade, p. 43.
87 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 65.
88 Book of Trade, p. 45. .
89 Bristol Record Office: Mayor’s Audits, 04026(15), pp. 72, 136, and 04026(16),
pp. 12, 76. These show payments of £11 3s. ad. in 1606; £50 in 1607, £50 in 1610,
and £40 in 1611.
90 See McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 88.
*1 Bristol Records Office: C.C.P. 1598-1608, p. 135.
®2 Book of Trade, p. 169; Acts of the Privy Council 1623-1625, p. 485.
72 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
wharfage,®? but the enquiry seems to have petered out, and the
Society’s right to collect the duty was not again challenged until the
eighteenth century.**
Until 1661, the Society’s position was doubly insecure, for it had
no formal lease and it retained the money only by tacit consent of
the Corporation. An attempt to get a definite grant in 1623-4 met
with no success.®> Nevertheless, it continued to collect the money,
and on occasions it made temporary increases in the rates without
apparently bothering to obtain official sanction from the Corpora-
tion.*6
Although the wharfage dues were the main source of income for
the Society, they did not amount to very much before 1660. In
1610-11, for example, they brought in only £6 11s. 1d. and in
1619-20, £107 7s. 10d.°? From the Wharfage Books, which begin in
1654, it appears that the average yearly income from 1654 to 1660
was just over £200.
In the period before the Restoration, the Society did not undertake
any major work in the port, and a proposal that it should construct
a dry dock came to nothing.®® Its limited resources made _large-
sacle capital expenditure impossible, and although there was a
growth in the volume of foreign trade, it was not on such a scale as
to make extension of the quays a high priority. Nevertheless, the
Society performed a number of useful functions in connection with
the port. From time to time, it organised surveys of the river with a
view to removing obstructions to shipping. Thus, in 1610-11, the
Book of Charters recorded that ‘“This yeere, the Channel was surveyed
by Martyn Prin and other marriners, at the appointment and
Direction of the Maister and Wardens. . . .”’®® It set up mooring
posts for ships,!° it exercised control over the graving dock in the
Marsh, appointed the Keeper and laid down a scale of charges.1%
It paid men to look after the slip at Hungroad,! and it recom-
mended suitable persons to be appointed as pilots.1%
Even before 1660, the need to develop the port was becoming
clear. In 1654, when the Corporation decided that a new quay
93 Supra, pp. 64-5. 94 Infra, pp. 163-4.
®5 Book of Charters 1, p. 95.
°6 Book of Trade, p. 80; Book of Charters 1, p. 97; H.B. 1, p. 73.
97 Book of Trade, General Account 1610-11 and the Collector’s Account, 1617-
1618, printed in McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 84-91.
98 Bristol Record Office: C.C.P. 1608-1627, p. 140; Latimer, Seventeenth Century
Annals, p. 88.
®9 Book of Charters 1, p. 43. See also other examples, ibid., pp. 45, 51.
100 See, for example, Treasurer’s Book I, 6, 7; H.B. 1, pp. 252, 271.
101 Book of Trade, pp. 138-9; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 138, 139.
102 This was an obligation under the anchorage lease. There are numerous
references to payments in the Book of Trade and the Treasurer’s Book.
103 Infra, p. 75.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 73
should be built, the Society agreed to contribute and set up a com-
mittee to report on what charges should be levied on imports and
exports to help with the cost.!°¢ However, nothing was done until
after the Restoration when at long last the Society got from the
Corporation a lease of the wharfage duties which it had hitherto
collected by an informal arrangement. In an agreement dated 28
September 1661, the Corporation renewed the lease of anchorage,
cannage and plankage for 80 years at the former rent of £3 6s. 8d.
and also added the wharfage duties to the agreement without any
increase in rent. In return, the Society agreed to make a new quay
from the Lower Slip to Aldworth’s Dock and to make a road for
coach and horses from Rownham Passage to the Hotwell. The
Corporation undertook to contribute £100 towards this work.!%
In 1681, the Corporation also leased to the Society the Great Dock
and a smaller dock!°*, In 1690 it gave the Society a new wharfage
lease for 80 years in return for a payment of £200 and a yearly rent
of £6 6s. 8d. The agreement stated that the Society had already
been at considerable expense and had furthermore undertaken to
make another new quay 462 feet long from Aldworth’s Dock to
Hobb’s Yard in the Marsh. Permission was also given to remove a
market house and other buildings near Aldworth’s Dock in order
to widen the quay.1°?
To meet its new commitments, the Society doubled the wharfage
duties in the years 1661—4.1°8 In 1667, it decided, apparently on its
own authority, to charge wharfage on the outward-bound goods of
non-members. Moreover, it also decreed that all barques coming
from south of Barnstaple and from north of Tenby should be liable
for the duty.!°® This was an innovation, for hitherto coastal shipping
had been completely exempt. The new duty of wharfage outwards
was not in fact enforced until 25 March 1668,!° after which date it
was regularly paid by those who were not members of the Society.
The attempt to impose a duty on coastal shipping was not, however,
successful at this time. There were certain legal difficulties and some
differences of opinion among the lawyers whose advice was asked.14
Additional revenue was also raised by increasing the duty of an-
chorage in 1670,112
104 Bristol Record Office: Book of Acts and Ordinances, 04273 (2), fo. 53 v, 18 Aug.
1654; H.B. 1, pp. 152, 252; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 140-1.
105 Bristol Record Office: C.7.D. 00352(6). There is another copy in the records
of the Society.
106 Bristol Record Office: Bargain Books 1672-81, 04335(6), fo. 135; Book of
Charters 2, 142.
107 Bristol Record Office: C.7.D. 00352(4). Another copy is in the records of
the Society.
‘108 77.B, 1, pp. 328, 359. 109 77.B. 1, p. 403. 110 77.B. 1, p. 417.
111 77,B, 2, pp. 290-4, 298, 300; H.B. 3, p. 146. 112 HB. 1, p. 456.
74 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
By increasing and extending the port dues at a period when the
trade of the port was growing, the Society considerably improved
its revenue. Between 1660 and 1694, wharfage brought in a total of
over £13,500, an average of just over £400 a year, and anchorage
between 1679 and 1694 was worth nearly £60 a year.443 There
might be some question about the legality of the means, but the
Society had certainly put itself in a much better position to improve
the facilities of the port.
In accordance with its agreement, the Society built a new quay
on the Frome. It spent over £700 between 1661 and 1663 on this
work and on building a road from Rownham to the Hotwell.1!*
Further expenses were incurred later, for the Society’s records for
1677-8 state laconically ‘“‘This yeere the new Key fell into the
River, and was ordered to be replaced at the charge of the Hall.”!!°
The Treasurer was instructed to borrow up to £200 for repairs, and
in 1679-80 there is a note ““This yeere the Key was rebuilt.’’41®
The new quay of the sixteen-sixties was not sufficient for the grow-
ing needs of the port, and from 1680 the Society was considering fur-
ther expansion.’ In a petition to the Treasury in 1690, it stated that
there was great need to enlarge the quay. This would lead to a
quicker turn-round of ships and make unnecessary the practice of
ships being loaded over other ships. It would cut down the expenses
of the customs officers, since they would no longer have to wait on
vessels seven or eight days before unloading could begin.48 The
petition was approved, and the Society, which had in March 1690
made a new agreement with the Corporation, was able to go ahead
with its plans.1!® The new quay was expensive, and since much of the
Society’s capital was now tied up in the purchase of the manor of
Clifton, it had to be financed to a considerable extent by loans. £400
was borrowed in June 1690 and another £600 in October 1692.1?°
Between 1690 and 1693, approximately £2,000 was spent on the
actual work, in addition to other expenses relating to the scheme.**"
113 See Patrick McGrath, “‘The Society of Merchant Venturers and the Port of
Bristol in the 17th Century’’, Trans. B.G.A.S., Ixxii, 1953.
114 Treasurer's Book 2, fo. 17. The total may have been greater as it is not always
clear from the accounts whether certain payments for labour and materials should
be credited to the account for the quay.
115 Book of Charters 1, p. 205. 116 Book of Charters 2, pp. 127, 131, 209.
‘117 Patrick McGrath, “‘The Society of Merchant Venturers and the Port of
Bristol in the 17th Century”, Trans. B.G.A.S., xxii, 1953, p. 115.
118 P.R.O.: Treasury Books T 1/8 no. 17; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 149-
151.
119 Bristol Record Office: C.T.D. 00352(4). There is another copy in the Mer-
chants’ Hall.
120 77,.B. 2, pp. 446, 502.
121 Estimate based on an examination of the figures in the Treasurer’s Book and
the Beadle’s Book.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 75
Another £500 was required for a further extension of the quay in
1700.22
The Society also had the responsibility for maintaining and
improving the existing facilities. There were numerous payments for
repairing and cleaning the Back and the Quay. On occasions, the
outlay was substantial. Thus, £125 was spent on pointing and pitch-
ing the Quay in 1674-5,!28 and £54 19s. 8d. was needed for work
on the Back in 1698-9.174 The slips on the river also required con-
stant attention. Work on the Tower Slip cost over £30 in 1667, and
another £20 was spent the next year.!?°
Another service which the Society undertook was the provision
of cranes to supplement the Corporation’s Great Crane. The order
for one such crane was given in October 1664,17° and additional
orders were given when the quays were extended in the 1690s.127
In 1692 it was decided that an artist should be employed to inspect
the cranes in London with a view to making similar ones in
Bristol.128 In 1696, the cranes were let out at a rent of £44 a year.1?°
The rates which might be charged were fixed by the Corporation on
the recommendation of the Society.1®°
The appointment of pilots was, in the last resort, the responsibility
of the Corporation, but in practice it delegated its powers to the
Society. The earliest reference to the Corporation appointing a
pilot on the Society’s recommendation seems to be in 1623, but there
is nothing in the records to suggest that there was anything abnormal
about this procedure, which had no doubt begun earlier.13! The
Society obtained from competent judges a certificate that the appli-
cant was suitable, and then forwarded his name to the Corporation.
From time to time, it recommended the suspension or dismissal of
incompetent pilots. It also sent to the Corporation recommendations
concerning the regulation of pilots and the scale of fees they might
receive.132
In addition, there was the routine business of removing obstruc-
tions in the river, providing buoys to mark dangerous places, drawing
up regulations for the safety of shipping in the river, and setting up
and maintaining mooring posts and mooring chains.133
As business increased, it was necessary to improve the administra-
tion of the port. In 1670, the Society requested the Corporation to
122 Beadle’s Book 1686-1709. 123 Treasurer's Book 2, p. 32.
124 Beadle’s Book 1686-1709. 125 Treasurer's Book 2, pp. 23, 24.
126 HB. 1, p. 357- 127 HB. 2, p. 256.
128 HB. 2, p. 498. 129 f.B. 3, p. 72.
130 Thid., p. 119.
131 Bristol Record Office: C.C.P. 1608-1627, fo. 111 (20 March 1622/3).
132 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 155-64.
188 See McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 135-64, and Trans. B.G.A.S., xxii,
1953, for further references.
76 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
appoint a Havenmaster and agreed to pay him £20 a year. The
elaborate regulations concerning his duties were no doubt primarily
the work of the Society. The first appointment was a bad one, and
in 1676 the Society decided that the office was “‘needless and im-
pertient’’, but in 1679 a new appointment was made at a salary of
£30 a year paid by the Society. A committee of the Hall gave the
Havenmaster instructions from time to time, and in 1680 an elabo-
rate code of regulations was drawn up for ships using the port.154
In 1671, the Society decided to appoint a Warner who was to give
advice concerning the arrival of shipping. He did not receive a
salary, but he was authorised by the Society to collect fees from those
to whom he gave information. He was dismissed ten years later
because he was negligent, demanded excessive fees, and was “a
person of Profligate life and conversation’’. ‘The Havenmaster took
over his duties and presumably collected his fees.135
The merchants were naturally concerned with the porters who
worked on the quays and who carried goods about the city, since
their wages were part of the merchants’ overheads, and a well-
regulated labour force was necessary for the efficiency of the port.
When the porters of Bristol wished to be formed into a Company in
1671, they petitioned the Society as well as the Corporation, and
the Society no doubt had a hand in drawing up the elaborate ordi-
nances and fixing the fees which they might charge.1%* In 1699,
when there was a dispute about their wages, the Common Council
referred it to the Master of the Society, and in due course the Society
submitted a new wage schedule which was approved by the
Council.13?
The Graving Dock in the Marsh where ships were repaired was
also under the Society’s control. In 1621, for example, it gave
authority to John Hughes, mariner, “‘being nowe growne into yeares,
and not able to take paines for his liveing into forraigne partes’, to
keep the graving place and to take the fees authorised in the
schedule.!88 There are not many references to the Society’s control
in the later records, but it evidently remained in charge, for in 1696
it authorised William Hannan to officiate there during the sickness
of William Steel.15°
At the end of the century, the Society crowned its considerable
achievements by asking the Corporation to procure an Act of
Parliament ‘‘for the repairing and preserving the same river by such
methods as shalbe thought fitt’’.14° Its initiative resulted in 1700 in
134 See note 133. 135 HB. 2, pp. 12, 176.
186 Bristol Record Office: C.T.D. 04369 (1), pp. 21-6.
137 Bristol Record Office: C.C.P. 1687-1702, fos. 181, 181(v).
138 Book of Trade, p. 81; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 138-9.
139 77.B. 3, p. 85. 140 HB. 3, p. 159, 10 Nov. 1699.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 77
*‘An Act for the better Preserving the Navigation of the Rivers Avon
and Froome, and for Cleansing Paving and Inlighting the streets of
the City of Bristol”’.144 The Act gave the Corporation a blank
cheque, the details of which were naturally filled in by the experts,
the Merchant Venturers of Bristol. The Society drew up lengthy
regulations which were submitted for approval to the Justices of the
Peace in Quarter Sessions.!42 The Justices who gave their approval
were, with two exceptions, members of the Society.
The first set of orders concerned the officers of the port whose
numbers were increased and whose duties were defined. The Haven-
master’s salary was fixed at £50, an increase of £20 over that pre-
viously paid. A new office of Ballast Master was created at £20 a year.
He was to see that everyone getting stones for ballast from rocks and
quarries made sufficient stanks to stop stones or rubbish rolling into
the river. Ballast was to be unloaded on a Ballast Wharf, and there
were a number of regulations about loading and unloading. Another
new officer, the Quay Warden, with a salary of £20 a year, was to
control the mooring of ships and the times allowed for loading. He
was also responsible for enforcing a number of fire regulations. The
Society recommended that a crane, lighter and boat should be
employed to take up ledges, rocks and stones in the river, at an
estimated cost of £40 per annum.143
The cost of these and other services came to an estimated £127
a year, and this was to be raised by a number of changes in the rates
for anchorage and moorage and by a charge on coastal shipping.
The management and collection of the duties was to be in the hands
of the Merchant Venturers.
The general verdict on the Society’s management of the port in
the seventeenth century must be a favourable one. The Corporation
had in effect handed over the management to the Merchant Ven-
turers and had assisted them financially by allowing them to collect
duties of somewhat doubtful legality, but the Society had in this
period given a good deal more than value for money.
THE PROTECTION OF SHIPPING
Apart from the normal hazards of the sea, merchant ships in the
seventeenth century had to face risks from pirates and Turkish
corsairs as well as dangers from enemy action in the numerous
conflicts in which England was engaged. Since a numberof Merchant
141 yy and 12 William III c. 23.
142 Bristol Record Office: Orders of Quarter Sessions, 05056, fos. 5-10, 26 Aug. and
28 Sept. 1700.
143 For further details about these regulations, see Trans. B.G.A.S. Ixxii, 1953,
pp. 125-7.
78 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Venturers were shipowners as well as merchants, it is not sur-
prising to find the Society spending a great deal of energy on
trying to secure adequate protection for merchant shipping.144
The nature and extent of the danger varied from time to time. In
the first part of the century, pirates and Turkish corsairs were a
considerable threat. In the Civil War, Bristol ships suffered from
both royal and parliamentary activity, and in the wars with the
Dutch and the French in the second half of the century, there was
an urgent need for convoys.
In the years after the peace with Spain in 1604 there were a number
of Englishmen operating in close alliance with some of the Muslim
states of North Africa and taking advantage part of the time of the
comparative. safety afforded by bases in Ireland. They sometimes
worked in large packs. That the losses of Bristol ships were relatively
light was due partly to the efforts of the navy and partly to self-help
by the merchants. Thus, in 1613 the Society fitted out the Concord
and the True Love to suppress pirates in the Severn estuary,!45 and
in 1614 it sent out the Amity, the James, the Matthew and the White
Angel at a cost of £320 1s. 11d.146 Some of the money was advanced
by individual Merchant Venturers who were subsequently repaid .
with interest.14” The merchants claimed in 1620 that some of their
number had in the last five years spent at least £500 out of their
own pockets in suppressing English and Irish pirates.148
It was also necessary to make the Government aware of the needs
of Bristol and to maintain good relations with the officers of the
Royal Navy who were sent to protect commerce. In 1613, the
Dreadnought was ordered to the Severn estuary to help the merchants
suppress pirates, and in subsequent years the Phoenix under. Sir
Thomas Button did very useful work and won praise from the Society.
In 1623, the Society asked that the complement of Button’s crew
might be increased “‘that soe we may contynue quiett and free from
the spoyles and depredacion of Pirates, as by means of the Phenix
her service wee have done theis five yeeres last past . . .””.14°
The corsairs based in North Africa and Barbary nevertheless
remained a threat to all European shipping. In a list of 44 Bristol
ships lost between 1610 and 1620, no less than 23 were alleged to
have been taken by them.15° The virtually independent states of
144 Patrick McGrath, “The Merchant Venturers and Bristol Shipping in the
early Seventeenth Century’’, The Mariner's Mirror, vol. 36, no. 1, Jan. 1950;
McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 176-08.
145 Book of Charters 1, p. 47.
146 Jbid., p. 49. 147 Book of Trade, General Account 1613-14.
148 Patrick McGrath, ‘““The Merchant Venturers and Bristol Shipping in the
early seventeenth century,”’ Mariner’s Mirror, xxxvi, no. 1, 1950, p. 70.
149 Book of Trade, p. 139. See also p. 66.
150 See Appendix to my article in The Mariner’s Mirror, voi. xxxvi, no. 1, 1950.
Work. of the Society, Seventeenth Century 79
Algiers, Tunis, Tripoli and Sallee, often using European captains,
sailors and technicians, were a menace to any port which dealt with
the Iberian peninsula or with the Mediterranean. They also operated
in the Atlantic, and the threat was brought home vividly to Bristol-
ians when they surprised and captured Lundy Island in 1625.
James I endeavoured to take action. An expedition was planned
for 1617, but was dropped for the time and not revived until 1619
when the chief ports and a number of the Companies for foreign
_trade were required to contribute. Bristol’s assessment was £2,500,
to be paid in two instalments. The Bristol merchants showed a
notable lack of enthusiasm, and the Mayor had to report to the
Council that the total amount which the merchants and ship-
owners would contribute was £600. He said he had managed to
get others to increase the amount to £1,000, but that this was all
Bristol could afford. The Merchant Venturers showed much inge-
nuity in producing arguments to prove that they could not pay any
more. They claimed that Bristol’s £1,000 was as good in proportion
to their numbers and trade as London’s £40,000 and suggested that
“‘twoe or three marchants of London are able to buy all the Inhabi-
tants of Bristoll out of all their means in the world, saving their
persons...” -
On this occasion the merchants of Bristol were singularly un-
cooperative. In the end, they provided only £1,000 out of the
£2,500 required, and they paid it as late in the day as they dared.
In April 1621, half of the contribution was still unpaid. It had been
left in London in the hands of Ellis Crispe since the previous June,
and the merchants were considering whether they could let it out
on short loan at 6 per cent. It was not until John Guy pointed out
that no one else was behind-hand a penny that they finally handed
the money over to the Exchequer. The money was recovered by
temporarily doubling the wharfage duties, and when John Brooke, a
cooper and shipowner, refused to pay the increased rates, he was
taught a sharp lesson as “‘a terror to others hereafter, yf there shalbee
any of this turbulent humour’’. It was evidently one thing for the
Society to be uncooperative with the Government but quite another
for a Bristolian to make difficulties for the Society.154
Similar lack of enthusiasm was shown in 1633 when Exeter called
a meeting of the western ports which decided to send representatives
to London to ask the King to take speedy action against the Turkish
pirates. Bristol was not represented at the meeting. Later, when the
Society was asked to send one or two representatives to London to
act with those from Exeter, Plymouth, Barnstaple, Dartmouth,
151 For fuller details of this affair and some of the documents in the case, see
The Mariner’s Mirror, vol. xxxvi, no. 1, 1950; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp.
179-87.
80 The Merchant Veniurers of Bristol
Weymouth, Melcombe Regis, Totnes, Poole and Lyme, it replied
that it had elected a representative, but he found he could not
attend, and there was no time to get another able man to take his
place.152
On the other hand, the Society does not seem to have made any
difficulties about the payment of Ship Money which levied between
1634 and 1639, a matter which raised constitutional and legal
issues of great significance. There was a good deal of argument about
how much Bristol should pay and the familiar complaints were
raised about the decay of trade, but the bargaining was carried on
by the Corporation, not by the Society, and the matter does not
appear in the Society’s records.158
The disturbance of the Civil War years must have raised many
problems for merchants and shipowners, but as far as the Society’s
records are concerned there is not a great deal of information. There
1s some indication of the disturbed state of affairs in a letter which
the Society sent to one of the M.P.s for Bristol in September 1648.
The Master and wardens thanked him for procuring the loan of a
frigate which they had intended to put forth. Unfortunately, several
Bristol vessels had recently been taken by the Irish pirates “‘which
losse (most reflecting on the forwardest of those intended Adven-
turers) disenableth them from prosecuting their purposes . . .”. In
any case, they had received news that in addition to the many ships
of war which it already had at sea, Wexford was preparing to send
out twenty ships “By which you may conceive, that one single
Frigott will little avayle us. . . .”” They enclosed a petition to the
Committee for the Navy. They added that there were four parlia-
mentary frigates in the port “some of which have layne here nere
these two moneths and may yet longer (if money bee not dispatched
downe to pay their much discontented Marriners)”’, and remarked
with emotion “‘Sorry wee are, Sir, to see them lie like standing
pooles here without motion to corrupt and be corrupted, whilest the
enemy dare take our shipps almost out of the very Road”. The
M.P. was reminded that the safeguarding of the port was not only
of advantage to merchants but concerned every tradesman as well
as the people in the adjoining counties. The merchants deemed it
hard “‘to pay soe much Custome, and obteyne no proteccion . . .”’.154
Petitions for convoys in time of war continued to be an important
part of the Society’s work throughout the century. In the various
contlicts with the Dutch and with the French after the Restoration,
concern was all the greater because the expansion of trade with the
West Indies and with the American colonies involved much longer
152 Book of Trade, pp. 213, 216; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 189-90.
153 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 133-5.
184 Book of Trade, pp. 255, 256; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 191-2.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 81
voyages and much more valuable cargoes than ever before.15> It
was worth taking a lot of trouble to secure adequate protection for
‘““Twentie and fower good Shipps richly laden’? which went from
Bristol to Virginia in 1665 and which “‘the Enemy, as your Peticioners _
heare (are) making great preparacions to surprize . . . in their
retorne homewardes . . .’15®, and a strong convoy was urgently
needed in 1692 for “between 30 and 40 saile of shipps of considerable
value and burthen outward bound for Virginia, Barbados, the
Leeward Islands and Jamaica” to keep them safe against ‘‘the
French Privateers that att present infest this channell and coast of
Ireland’’. Not surprisingly, the merchants found good reasons why
the convoy should assemble at Bristol rather than at Milford Haven,
Plymouth or Kinsale.157
CHARITABLE AND EDUCATIONAL WORK
Although the Society of Merchant Venturers in this period was
primarily a professional organisation concerned with furthering the
mercantile interests of its members, it was in a modest way involved
in charitable and educational work and made some contribution to
the remarkable philanthropic achievements of the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries.}5°
When the Society acquired in the mid-sixteenth century the
property of the dissolved Gild of Mariners, it used the chapel of
St. Clement? as its Hall, but it also took over responsibility for the
Mariners’ Almshouse and the 12 poor mariners formerly maintained
by the Gild. It thus took possession of a ready-made almshouse which
now became known as the Merchants’ Almshouse. The income for
the maintenance of the almsfolk had originally come from a levy on
goods and by deductions from seamen’s wages. This was still being
collected in 1595,1® but it does not seem to have continued during
the seventeenth century, and the Society maintained the almshouse
primarily from its own resources.
The number of people in the Merchants’ Almshouse tluctuated.
In 1621, there were eight poor seamen, but in 1650 there were
155 For example of such petitions, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 193-4,
195, 196-8.
156 P.R.O.: S.P. 29/133 no. 66.
157 HB. 2, p. 506, 17 Oct. 1692.
188 For a detailed study of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century philanthropy, see
W. K. Jordan, Philanthropy in England 1480-1660, 1959, and The Forming of the
charitable institutions of the West of England, American Philosophical Society, Phila-
delphia, 1960.
159 The Gild had maintained a priest, but he, of course, ceased to function when
the Gild was dissolved. For the Merchants’ Almshouse, see McGrath, Merchant
Venturers, pp. 96 ff.
160 Supra, p. 18.
82 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
nineteen inmates, six of whom were women.!* Some of the alms-
people received weekly allowances from the Society,!®* and one or
two individual merchants left gifts in their wills. Thus, Richard
Long bequeathed {£10 a year “to be imployed at thend of every
Three halfe years in Tenn Coates, Ten Caps, ten paire of stockinges
and ten paire of shooes” for the poor men in the almshouse, and
Hugh Browne left £5 4s. a year for the relief of the poor almsmen.
In 1650, the Society itself ordered that two more men should receive
coats, caps, stockings, and shoes in addition to those benefiting from
Richard Long’s gift.168 At the end of the century, Edward Colston
undertook to maintain six more almspeople if the Society would
provide room for them, and a similar arrangement was made by the
executors of Richard Jones.164 The Society set up a committee to
see to the new building, and it was completed in 1696.1® Three years
later, a subscription was raised to rebuild the older part of the alms-
house, and the parts were joined together to make three sides of a
quadrangle.1%6
As was customary at the time, the Society showed concern for
the religious and moral behaviour of its almsfolk, and the regulations
drawn up in 1650 throw light on its attitude. Unless hindered by
sickness or urgent necessity, the men and women were to pray
privately every morning and evening and were to frequent their.
parish church or some other church on Sundays “where they may
heare Sermons and be Instructed in the Knowledge of God”. They
were also to hear Lecture Sermons on weekdays. If they failed to do
so, they forfeited 6d. from their pay. Fines for drunkenness were a
week’s pay for the first offence, a month’s pay for the second, and
expulsion for the third “‘if the Society thincke it not meete upon his
Repentance and amendment to pardon it”. The scale of punish-
ments for swearing was slightly less rigorous — presumably because
the merchants knew what sailors were. They lost a week’s pay for
the first offence, two week’s for the second, a month’s for the third,
and expulsion only for the fourth. No one was to lodge guests in his
or her room more than three nights a: year “except in case of sick-
nesse for the necessary helpe during that tyme’’. The almsfolk were
to take turns weekly in cleaning the public parts of the building —
the hall, kitchen and gallery, and monthly turns as Porter when they
had the responsibility for opening and locking the gate at the times
161 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 96; T. J. Manchee, Bristol Charities, Bristol
1831, I, 251.
162 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 99, 100; Book of Charters 1, p. 5.
163 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 100.
164 Tbid., p. 111.
165 Jbhid., p. 113. The Beadle’s Account for 1696 shows £215 18s. 8d. spent on pur-
chasing land and erecting the building.
166 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 113.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 83
laid down. They were to wear their free clothing outside the building
and at church. Disputes were to be taken in the first place to the
Clerk and then to the Master. The Clerk was required to read the
orders every pay day.1®?
The Society made a considerable number of small charitable
gifts, particularly to those concerned with the sea. These included
pensions to decayed merchants and seamen, grants to redeem
sailors captured by the Turks, and donations to the widows and
dependants of mariners. Thus, in 1623 goodwife Trippett got 20s. for
the relief of herself and her children, “her husband being in Capti-
vitie in Algier’’!68; in 1640, Elizabeth Davis, a mariner’s widow, was
granted a pension of 2s. 6d. a week for the relief and maintenance
of herself and six small children;1®® in 1656, John Pearse, a poor
seaman, got £3 to help him buy a boat.!7° In 1667 at the time of the
second Dutch War, Ann Duncan, wife of a mariner who was prisoner —
in Middelburg, received 40s. for the relief of herself and her child-
ren,!71 and in the third Dutch War, Henry Cott was given £6
“towards the Recovery of his eyesight lately lost in an engagement
at sea with a privateer of Holland”.172 In 1673, £10 was voted to
Mrs. Hoskins. towards the redemption of her husband from captivity _
in Fez. She was to give security that if he died unredeemed or if his
redemption could not be secured within twelve months, she would
return the money.178
The Society was regarded as a possible source of help by many
needy people. In 1685, for example, sixty or so asked for relief, and
the auditors of accounts were instructed to distribute £20 at their
discretion. Petitions for help were to be received only “for persons
relateing to the sea”.1’* In 1690, there were about 100 applicants,
and the amount to be distributed was fixed at £30.175
Relief was given on occasions to members of the Society and their
dependants when they were in difficulties. Thus, in 1625 Thomas
Hopkins got a pension of £5 a year to continue for four years “‘if hee
lyve soe long’’!”®; in 1676, Elizabeth Stephens was granted a pension
of 1s. 6d. a week “forasmuch as shee was the daughter of William
Stephens merchant deceased a late member and benefactor of this
society’’.177 In 1693, Martha Cann was given £12 for the education
and support of her brothers Thomas and Robert, sons of a former
member.178
The charity which the Society dispensed in the seventeenth century
was on a very modest scale, but it must be rernembered that it had
167 Thid., pp. 103-4; H.B. 1, pp, 174-6. 168 Treasurer’s Book 1, p. 9.
169 FB. 1, p. 34. 170 AB. 1,-p. 271. 171 FHLB. 1, p. 408.
172 77.B. 2, p. 48. 173 HB. 2, p. 48. 174 HB. 2, p. 278.
175 HB. 2, p. 462. 176 Treasurer’s: Book 1, p. 12. |
177 HB. 2, p. go. 178 HB. 2, P- 542.
84 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
only a very small income and a great many commitments. In the
Civil War in 1644 it was compelled to stop all pensions, except to
residents of the Almshouse, “until God shall enable the Company
better to pay the same’’.17® What it did give provided some assist-
ance to a variety of people, but particularly to seamen whose wages
were pathetically low in relation to the enormous risks they ran.
The Society’s contribution to education was even more modest,
but it foreshadowed in a small way the work which the Society was
due to undertake on a very large scale later in its history. It took the
form mainly of paying a schoolmaster to teach poor mariners’
children. Latimer stated that the first mention of the school was in
1621,18° but this is an error, for in 1595 in a petition to the Privy
Council there is a reference to the work of the merchants in main-
taining ‘‘a free Schoole for mariners’ children’’,1*! and the Society’s
earliest surviving account in 1610-11 records a payment of £1 6s. 8d.
a year to a schoolmaster.1§2 There are not many references to the
school in the seventeenth century, but it certainly continued. A new
schoolmaster was appointed from time to time, and money was spent
on the schoolroom, which was in the Hall. When the schoolmaster
John Bateman died in 1689, his widow was given a weekly pension
of 1s. She gave the Hall thanks “‘and promised to leave (as Fixed to
the house) the benches and other thinges put upp by her late husband
and sonn in the house and schoole’. Rather charmingly, she
presented the Hall with “the draught of the shipp Monck and a
draught of the tree of philosophy’’.18?
In the early accounts, there are a few references to a man who
instructed poor sailors in the art of navigation,1®* but this early link
between the Society and technical education does not seem to have
continued.
Miscellaneous patronage of religion and learning included a
regular payment to the curate who preached to mariners in Shire-
hampton chapel, an annual gift to the preacher on Charter Day in
the Society’s parish church of St. Stephen, and an occasional con-
tribution to lecture sermons.!*5 In 1667, a gratuity of £10 was given
to Samuel Sturmy for “a Booke of the Arte of Navigacion by him
. 179 HB. 1, p. 70.
180 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 82.
181 Book of Trade, p. 39; Cal. S.P.D. 1595-1598, pp. 105-6.
182 Book of Trade, General Account 1610-11, “‘more paide goodman Greene for
teaching poore marriners children his fee 001 06 08”.
183 7B. 2, pp. 144-15.
184 Book of Trade. General Account 1618-19: “‘more is due to have iiij li, paide
to Francis Jones for one yeeres fee allowed him for instructing poore sailers in the
Arte of Navigacion 004 00 00”; Treasurer’s Book 1, p. 6 “‘. . . . more ii li paide to
Francis Jones for teaching Navigation 3? of a yeare 003 00 00”’.
185 Treasurer’s Book 1, pp. 4, 6 (1618-20).
Work of the Soctéty, Seventeenth Century 85
dedicated to the Haule’’;18¢ in 1673, James Millerd was presented
with a piece of plate of the value of £5, engraved with the arms of
the Society, when he presented “his groundplatt of this Citty’’ to
the Society,18” and next year Richard Blome received £10 ‘“‘for his
civility and respects in presenting us with two volumes of his workes
(vizt) A volume of Geography and Traffique, And a volume of
Britannia beautifyed with sculptures and dedicated to our society
with our Coate of Armes in the front of each volume’’.188 There were
occasional gifts to undergraduates at Oxford.18® All this did not
amount to a great deal, but once again it must be remembered that
the Society’s income. was limited, and that patronage of learning
was peripheral to its main purpose.
MISCELLANEOUS ACTIVITIES
The attitude which the Society took as a corporate body towards
exploration and colonisation in the seventeenth century was ex-
tremely cautious in spite of the enthusiasm of a few of its members in
their private capacity.1®° It is true that it had little money to invest
in such enterprises, but it might have done more to live up to its
name and to give moral support. It does not seem to have given any
official backing to two of its members, Thomas Hopkins and Thomas
Aldworth, when they were appointed by the Mayor in 1606 to
confer with the inhabitants of Bristol about the development of
Virginia,!®! nor to the plantation which another member, John
Guy, made in Newfoundland.1®? The Society’s first Book of Charters
records that in 1617-18 “Divers particuler merchantes of this Society
Did sett Forwardes the plantacion of a porcion of land in the
Country of Newfoundland called Bristolles Hope . . .”, but the
Society itself was not involved.19? In the early 1620s, when Sir
Ferdinando Gorges tried to whip up support for a settlement in
Virginia, the Society was cautious, ifnot actually discoyraging. The
Mayor had to inform Sir Ferdinando that the Society had perused
his letters but found it “so difficult that at present they cannot
Conclude . . .”. They wanted more time for consultation with the
other ports.1°4 Further correspondence did not produce any action.
A similar fate befell the proposal from the Earl of Pembroke in
1623-4 concerning a plantation in New England. The merchants
said they were “Determined to hould a parte in the saide Plantacion
186 For further details, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 115 and note 1.
187 Jbid., p. 116 and note 1. 188 Jbid., p. 116 and note 2.
189 Jbid., pp. 89, 115. 190 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 199-206.
191 Bristol Record Office: C.C.P. 1598-1608, p. 115.
192 McGrath, op. cit., p. 200 and note 2.
198 Book of Charters 1, p. 57; McGrath, op. cit., p. 200.
194 Book of Trade, p. 110; McGrath, op. cit., pp. 201-2.
86 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
yf the priviledges and Condicions of theire Patent should bee
agreeable to the expectacion of this Societie’’,1°° but nothing further
was done.
The one occasion on which the Society did take action was with
regard to Captain Thomas James’s voyage to discover a North-West
Passage.°6 It took a lot of trouble to find a suitable ship and peti-
tioned the King on James’s behalf. The Merchant Venturers of
Bristol may well have been spurred on by the fact that Captain Luke
Foxe was engaged in a similar enterprise and that if he was successful,
the Londoners who were backing him would probably ask the King
to grant them yet another monopoly. The Society appointed a com-
mittee to manage and supply James’s ship the Henrietta Maria and
guaranteed that the master and ship’s company would be paid their
wages in accordance with a scale laid down. The Society made two
payments towards the cost, and these amounted irrall to £233 16s. 1d.
Presumably the balance of the charges was met by the backers in
their individual capacity. In the nature of things, neither expedition
could achieve its objective, and the Society’s short-lived interest in
exploration then came to an end.1®’
The caution which characterised the Society in the early seven-
teenth century was displayed over another matter — an offer from
the crown to allow the outports to farm the customs duties. It was
common for groups of Londoners to lease from the King the right to
collect customs duties in return for a fixed yearly rent, and the invest-
ment could be very profitable to the customs farmers. When the
offer was transmitted to the Society through the Mayor in 1621, the
Society replied ‘“‘wee are very fearful to undertake the farming of
his Maiesties Customes . . . in regard that our trade is greatly
ympaired in respect of the restraincte thereof, and the manifould
losses which wee have lately susteyned by the spoyle and Depre-
dacion of Turkishe Pirates whoe prey uppon us and our goodes soe
often and in such manner that many of our Society are decayed
thereby, and others our Cheifest Dealers . . . have withdrawne their
adventures, and doe ymploy the Remainder of their stockes in land
and livinges in the Country . . .”. They argued that the customs were
likely to decrease rather than increase, “the marchantes of this
Porte being few and most of them young men and small Adventurers,
Desireing rather to contynue the poore trade they now enjoy (untill
it shall please god to enlarge the same) then any way to undergoe
195 Book of Charters 1, p. 96.
196 For this expedition, see C. M. MacInnes, Captain Thomas James and the North
West Passage, Bristol Branch of the Historial Association, 1967; The Voyages of
Captain Luke Foxe of Hull and Captain Thomas James of Bristol in search of a North-West
Passage in 1631-32, edit. Miller Christy, 2 vols., Hakluyt Society, 1894.
197 For some of the. documents in the case, see McGrath, Merchant Venturers,
pp. 204-6.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 87
the care and Charge of soe waightie and doubtful a matter’’.19°
The answer was plain, even though the reasons given need not be
taken too seriously.
Another scheme which came to nothing was a proposal in 1672
and 1683 that the Society should pay a rent. not exceeding £600 a
year for the right to issue wine licences in the city and four miles
round. The Society wanted to prevent the vintners getting the right
to issue licences, for if they did, “‘they would confine the trade of
wines to the great prejudice of his maiesties customes and hold the
merchants to their owne humours as to prices etc.”’. In 1683 when
the vintners had apparently procured the right, the Society en-
deavoured to obtain the privilege itself “‘for the benefitt of this Hall’’.
Equally abortive was a suggestion of Sir Robert Yeamans in the
same year that the Society should build lighters.19°
On the other hand, the Society did on occasions engage in the
bulk purchase of strangers’ goods. Non-freemen, or strangers, who
brought goods to Bristol were required by the city ordinances to
deposit them in Spicer’s Hall on the Back of Bristol and to offer
them there for sale to freemen. In 1642, a quantity of wine was
offered for sale to the Society, and a committee was chosen by lot
to deal for the wine and to offer it to members of the Society who
wished to participate in the bargain. More than fifty members put
their names down.?°° A similar arrangement was made in 1643 over
wine, almonds and fruit brought from Hamburg, and this time there
were 63 subscribers.2°! Other bargains were made in 1648, 1664
and 1667, but after that the Society seems to have abandoned the
practice, 202
As its income and importance grew, the Society, like its individual
members, increased its holding of real property. This served both
as a source of income and as a status symbol. In the course of the
period, it acquired a number of premises in Bristol either in its own
right or as a trustee,?°* but by far the most important acquisition in
the long run was the manor of Clifton. Clifton was still primarily a
rural area with a small population and a dozen or so farms, together
with considerable manorial waste. Although Bristol was expanding
in the seventeenth century, it is unlikely that the Society was think-
ing in terms of building development at some future date. It was
probably attracted by the possibility of a safe investment in land.
held mostly on leases of gg years for three lives, producing fines
198 Book of Trade, pp. 99, 100; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 133.
199 McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 134.
200 77,.B. 1, p. 55, 28 June 1642; McGrath, Merchant Venturers, p. 128.
201 HB. 1, p. 61v, 28 Nov. 1643; McGrath, op. cit., pp. 128-9.
202 77.B. 1, pp. 134, 135, 367, 412; McGrath, op. cit., pp. 129-30.
203 For example, a lease of a house in Castle Street from the Dean and Chapter
and the George Inn and some adjacent houses in Castle Street.
88 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
whenever the lease ran out or a life was renewed. It was conveniently
near Bristol from the point of view of management. Perhaps the
growing interest in the medicinal qualities of the Hotwell, and the
wharfage lease of 1661 which required the Society to make a road
for coach and horses from Rownham Passage to the Hotwell,
turned the Society’s attention in the first place to the riverside area
of Clifton. In 1661, the Society proposed to negotiate for the pur-
chase of the Hotwell and the adjacent waste ground, but nothing
came of this.2°¢ Then, in 1676 a committee was set up to treat for
and buy the manor of Clifton and any other lands in fee for a sum
not exceeding £2,000.2°5 A three-quarter share in the manor was
purchased for £1,704 4s. 6d., and loans were raised from members
to help with cost.2°¢ There was, however, a dispute about title,
involving a chancery suit and mediation before it could be recorded
in the Book of Charters in 1676-7 that ‘“‘a good estate in Fee simply
was granted to this Society in trust for the whole as by deedes and
assureances in our public chest will appeare.”*°7 Another small
manor in the parish of Clifton was acquired in 1686,?°° and further
property was bought for £911 15s. in 1699.?°°
~ The Society thus became a landowner of some importance. ‘The
estate was mainly rural and was not ripe for development for a long
time, but there might have been possibilities with the Hotwell. In
1683, two men were allowed to hold the spring “during pleasure”
for 10s. a year, and this was increased to 40s. in 1687. At the same
time, a committee was instructed to put in a new spout and repair
the well. A wall was built round the spring in 1691 to keep out the
tidal waters. Eventually, however, the Society decided that it would
hand over the exploitation of the Hotwell to a group of developers,
including Sir Thomas Day and Robert Yate, who had twice been
Master of the Society. In April 1695, the group was given a 9o year
lease at £5 a year, provided it spent £500 within three years on
building a Pump House and lodging houses and making other
provision for visitors.24° Thus, for much of the eighteenth century,
the Society lost the opportunity of exploiting the Hotwell during a
period when it was to attract large numbers of visitors.
At the end of the seventeenth century, the Society of Merchant
Venturers could look with satisfaction on a number of remarkable
204 Tatimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 203. 205 HB. 2, p. 95.
206 Treasurer’s Book 2, p. 34.
207 Book of Charters 1, pp. 201, 203; Treasurer's Book 2, p. 35-
208 T.atimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 167.
209 Treasurer’s Book 2, p. 69.
210 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 168-9; H.B. 3, p. 4. For further details about
the Hot Well, see V. Waite, The Bristol Hotwell, Bristol Branch of the Historical
Association, 1960.
Work of the Society, Seventeenth Century 89
achievements. It had developed its constitution, it had engaged with
considerable success in a great variety of activities, and it had become
part of Bristol’s way of life. Its interests were probably more closely
identified with that of the community as a whole than in any sub-
sequent period. Its income was growing, it had become an important
property-owner, and it could face with experience and confidence
the new challenges of the eighteenth century.
CHAPTER 6
The Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age
THE compact city which the Society of Merchant Venturers
dominated in the seventeenth century was impressively changed in
the course of the next hundred years. If a medieval merchant had
returned to Bristol in 1700, he would have been more or less at home
in his environment, for the city was still basically contained within
its medieval limits. By 1800, it had spread out in all directions, and
a remarkable amount of Georgian building had transformed not
only the size but the character of ancient Bristol.
A major factor in this transformation was the population explosion
of the eighteenth century. The population of the country as a whole
increased from about 54 million to over 10 million, but in a number
of towns the rate of growth was even greater. Although Bristol did
not grow as rapidly as Manchester, Liverpool and Birmingham, its
population probably increased between 23 and 3 fold and had risen
to about 64,000 at the time of the first census in 1801.1 The rate of
increase was not uniform,? but the overall effect was growth of a
kind not hitherto experienced, and this must have had psychological
as well as physical effects. The wealthier citizen at least must have
felt that they were living in a boom-town, and this may account for
some of the materialism and brashness which many visitors found
objectionable.
A glance at the 1773 and 1800 editions of Benjamin Donn’s map
of Bristol will show how much Bristol had changed since Millerd
made his plan in 1673. Growth had taken place in all directions
around the core of the ancient city, but it was particularly marked
1 See Walter Minchinton, The Trade of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, Bristol
Record Society, xx, 1957, p. ix. Minchinton puts the population at about 20,000 in
1700. Bryan Little thinks it‘was between 25,000 and 27,000 (City and County of
Bristol, 1954, Appendix 1). B. R. Mitchell and Phyllis Deane, Abstract of British
Historical Statistics, Cambridge, 1962, gave the following figures for the major towns
in 1801: Bristol, 61,000; Greater London, 1,117,000; Birmingham, 71,000;
Liverpool, 82,000; Manchester, 75,000; Edinburgh, 83,000; Glasgow, 77,000.
2 There seems to have been a rapid expansion in the first part of the century, a
levelling-off between 1730-70, and then further expansion until the 1790s. (See
Bryan Little, op. cit., Appendix 1 for a discussion of the changes.) Variations for
the 1801 figure arise from differences about precisely which areas should be included
in Bristol.
Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age g!
towards the north and the west. The Society of Merchant Venturers
must have watched with satisfaction the expansion towards Clifton
and Hotwells, in which they had so much land suitable for develop-
ment.
The changing appearance of Bristol was as remarkable as its
physical growth.? Much remained of the old high-gabled houses and
narrow streets, but changing tastes and increasing wealth produced
new Georgian building in the city and suburbs. Fortunately, an era
of prosperity coincided with a time when architectural standards
were high and when Bristolians were able to command the services
of first-rate designers and craftsmen.
The metamorphosis of Bristol was in part a response to new
economic needs and to the growth of population, and in part a
reflection of social changes. Merchants, professional men and others
with money no longer found it so desirable to live in the heart of the
crowded city and began to reside in the more spacious suburbs in
houses which reflected the importance of their owners. The Corpora-
tion granted the first leases for building in the noble Queen Square
in 1699, and this early piece of town-planning was completed by
1727. The Square included a fine new Customs House, erected in
1710-11, but it was primarily residential. Outbuildings were not to
be let as workshops to tradesmen “‘who by noyse, danger of Fire or
ill smells shall disturbe or annoy any of the Inhabitants . . .”.4 Other
squares followed, although their completion was often spread over a
considerable period.’ In addition, there were many new streets,
parades, crescents and groups of houses in which the ground land-
lords, the lessees, and the speculative builders cooperated to produce
excellent examples of planned buildings for the well-to-do. For those
who could afford them, there were opportunities for putting up
gentlemen’s residences, such as the Royal Fort, Clifton Hill House,
Redland Court and Arno’s Court, which were conveniently situated
near the city but away from the built-up areas.
New private building went hand in hand with new public building
and town-improvement. Between 1701 and 1704, the Corporation
rebuilt the Council House.® In 1743, after long delay, its plans for
building an Exchange “for the assembling of the Merchants”
materialised when John Wood’s masterpiece was formally opened
by the Mayor, Sir Abraham Elton, who was a member of the Society
3 For an examination of these developments, see Walter Ison, The Georgian
Buildings of Bristol, 1952.
4 For Queen Square, see Ison, of. cit., pp. 140-8.
§ King Square 1737-72; Dowry Square 1762; Brunswick Square between 1766
and the 1780s; Berkeley Square and Portland Square in the later eighteenth and
early nineteenth century. Details in Ison, op. cit.
6 Ison, op. cit., pp. 135-9.
92 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
of Merchant Venturers.’ In the seventeen-sixties, the Corporation
obtained an Act of Parliament enabling it to carry out extensive
demolition and reconstruction in the heart of the old city and to
build a new bridge over the Avon, thus sweeping away another link
with the medieval past.* The many new eighteenth-century build-
ings included the Barber Surgeons’ Hall, the Merchant Taylors’
Hall, the Coopers’ Hall, the Post Office, the Assembly Rooms, a
new city library and costly reconstruction of many of the medieval
churches. The contribution of the Society of Merchant Venturers
to the modernisation of Bristol included the rebuilding of their Hall
in the second decade of the century, extensive reconstruction by
Thomas Paty in the seventeen-eighties, major works in the harbour
and quays, the development of the Hotwell and its Colonnade, and
the granting of building leases in Clifton and elsewhere.
The city could not have developed in this way unless there had
been considerable economic growth. It is easy to think of the wealth
of Bristol in the eighteenth century as being based almost entirely
on trade and to forget that Bristol was also an important industrial
centre and ‘“‘a western metropolis” which supplied a great variety
of services to the surrounding areas.® In the late eighteenth century,
a contemporary expressed the view that Bristol was “‘not more a
commercial than a manufacturing town”, and numerous glass-
houses, sugar-houses, distilleries, ship-building yards, rope-walks
and other manufactories in and near Bristol gave point to his
remark.!9 In 1729, Walter Churchman took out a patent for making
chocolate by means of an engine — a patent which he later sold to
Joseph Fry. Henry Overton Wills joined an existing Bristol tobacco
business in 1786. The list of eighteenth-century Bristol industries is
a long one. Although the city did not experience an industrial revo-
lution comparable with that of the northern and midland towns,
it certainly did not live by trade alone.
Bristol exploited in full measure its favourable position as the
centre of a great regional trade. As Professor Minchinton has pointed
out, wheat from the midlands, ‘barley and oats from Wales, peas
and beans from Gloucestershire and Somerset, cattle from South
Wales, and cheese from Cheshire found their way by road, river and
sea to the western metropolis. Timber from the Forest of Dean, tin
from Cornwall, coal from Bristol and Somerset coalfields, copper
7 Ison, op. cit., pp. 95-104. 8 Ison, op. cit., pp. 115-23.
® See Walter Minchinton, ‘Bristol — Metropolis of the West in the Eighteenth
Century”, Transactions of the Royal Historical Society, 5th series, vol. 4, 1954, pp.
6 :
Oia eee a number of contemporary comments on the industries of Bristol, see
Peter T. Marcy, Eighteenth Century Views of Bristol and Bristolians, Bristol Branch of the
Historical Association, 1966. See also Walter Minchinton, ‘“‘Bristol — Metropolis of
the West’’, supra.
Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age 93
from Anglesey came into Bristol or passed out from it to the large
region which it served. Nearly a hundred regular carrier services to
and from London, Leeds, Nottingham and other towns indicated
the importance of Bristol in the national economy. The growth of
the canal system, in which Bristol played little part, was before the
end of the century to rob Bristol of some of its advantages, but in
the meantime economic development, even in distant parts of the
country, contributed to its prosperity.
This western metropolis offered numerous services to the neigh-
bouring areas.1! The first Bristol bank was established in 1750, and
six more were added before the end of the century.!2 The first
provincial fire insurance office was established in the city in 1718.
Bristol capital played an important part in the development of
industry in the region, particularly in South Wales. The numerous
inns provided for large numbers of visitors, and the Hotwell, in which
the Society of Merchant Venturers had an interest, added to the
attraction.18
The increasing diversification of economic activity in eighteenth-
century Bristol may have reduced in some degree the dominance of
those who were engaged exclusively in foreign trade. The number of
people who became free of the city as ‘‘merchants” increased a little
compared with the seventeenth century, but there were only about
200 “merchants” at any one time, and a great deal of Bristol
business must have been in the hands of men who were not techni-
cally merchants and who did not specialise in overseas commerce.
Nevertheless, foreign trade remained of paramount importance and
gave Bristol its special significance in national life.
There were considerable fluctuations in the volume of trade, but
the overall expansion in the eighteenth century was impressive.14
In 1700, 240 ships arrived from ports outside Great Britain. In 1791,
the number was 485. Ships were getting larger in the period, and the
total tonnage rose from about 20,000 at the beginning to 76,000 at
the end. It was, however, a diversified trade. Although by the end
of the century some merchants were increasingly specialising in
particular markets, the merchant community as a whole did not put
all its eggs into one basket. Of the 485 ships arriving in the port in
1787, 185 came from Europe, 161 from Ireland, 76 from the West
11 See Peter T. Marcy and Walter Minchinton, of. cit., passim.
2 C. H. Cave, A History of Banking in Bristol, from 1750 to 1899, Bristol, 1899.
18 For the Hotwell, see Vincent Waite, The Bristol Hotwell, Bristol Branch of the
Historical Association, 1960.
14 For a detailed examination of the nature and course of the trade, see Walter
Minchinton, The Trade of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, Bristol Record Society,
XxX, 1957, and The Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, Bristol Branch of the
Historical Association, 1962.
94 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Indies, 44 from America and 15 from Africa.15 Slaves, sugar, rum
and tobacco were only part of the story.
In spite of this great expansion, the commercial importance of
Bristol had by the end of the century suffered a decline in comparison
with the trade of the country considered as a whole. At the beginning
of the period, Bristol was the second largest port in the country. By
1800, she was, in terms of ships, tonnage and men, only eighth
among the outports.!* This did not mean that her merchants were
less wealthy than they had been at the beginning. Indeed, they were
a good deal richer, but they operated in a city which was nationally
less significant and less prestigious than it had been earlier.
Various reasons have been put forward for this relative decline.1”
They include the industrialisation of Lancashire and the advantages
which this gave to Liverpool; improved communications, which
channelled the trade of the midlands through Liverpool rather than
Bristol; the decline in the West Indian and American trades; and
the failure to modernise the port of Bristol quickly enough and to
reduce sufficiently the charges on ships which used it. Professor
Pares thought that in the later eighteenth century the merchants
themselves were less aggressively competitive than their rivals in
other ports and suggested that “it would not have been very genteel
for fellow-members of a small dining-club, connected together by
the marriage of their children, to wage war to the knife by cutting
freight rates or instructing their captains to snatch consignments from
each other’s ships . . .”.18 Professor Pares’ suggestion is not very
convincing, since a great many merchants in Bristol did not in fact
belong to “‘a small dining club”’ and as far as the Merchant Venturers
were concerned, many members did not even attend meetings.}®
No single factor explains the relative decline in trade, and one must
always bear in mind that the total volume was in fact increasing.
It may be that many Bristol merchants found that on the whole they
were doing well and preferred to enjoy their wealth rather than to
take great pains to acquire even more. |
Throughout the century, the government of the city remained in
the hands of a closed Corporation of 42 members which in 1710
obtained a new Charter confirming its privileges and extending its
powers.?° John Latimer characterised the Corporation as ‘‘a narrow
oligarchy of mercantile families’ which, he said, “practically
repudiated its duties while tenaciously asserting its rights’’.?4
15 Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, p. xv.
16 Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, p. ix. 17 Ibid., p. xv.
18 R, Pares, A West India Fortune, p. 212. 19 See pp. 104-5.
20 For the 1710 Charter, see R. C. Latham, Bristol Charters, 1509-1899, Bristol
Record Society, xii, 1946, pp. 59-60, 210-12.
21 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 30.
Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age 95
Latimer looked at the eighteenth-century Corporation through the.
eyes of a nineteenth-century liberal nonconformist, and he had_.no
difficulty in finding numerous examples of ostentation, inefficiency,
lethargy and corruption. The Corporation regarded its funds as its
own, and it was answerable to no one. Certainly, in the last decade
of the century it was extremely unpopular, so that burgesses were
unwilling to accept the ‘mock dignity and real odium of a Bristol
Corporator”’.?? The record of the Corporation is in some respects
not as bad as Latimer suggested, and it is difficult to say whether it
was worse or better than that of other eighteenth-century Corpora-
tions. Nevertheless, the Corporation often lacked the means or the
will to exercise effective control over the fortunes of a great and
growing city. Ineffective leadership may well have been an important
factor in the failure of Bristol to cope with new problems.
It might be argued that this lack of leadership was also found in
some degree in the body to which the Corporation had handed over
the control of the port, the Society of Merchant Venturers. The
Society was well represented on the Corporation and, as Professor
Minchinton points out, it was the largest organised group which had
representation in the city government.2® It cannot, however, be
assumed that those Merchant Venturers who were members of the
Corporation acted as a united pressure group, and the Society’s hold
on the Corporation was weaker than it had been in the seventeenth
century. Between 1599 and 1699 approximately 150 of those who
served as Master, Warden or Treasurer of the Society were members
of the Common Council. The corresponding figure for the eighteenth
century was 67.24 In most matters the Society and the Corporation
cooperated in this period, but Merchant Venturers did not dominate
the city government to the same extent as they did in the seven-
teenth century.
During these years, Bristol enjoyed a vigorous political life.
Political clubs such as the Tory Steadfast Society and the Whig
Union Club flourished in the city, and politics were not the concern
merely of the wealthier citizens. The electorate was large, and bribery
and other electioneering tactics were often essential to secure the
return of a candidate in faction-ridden Bristol. Elections gave the
freemen of Bristol, who numbered several thousands, ample oppor-
tunity for self-expression in demonstrations and counter-demonstra-
tions. Mercantile interests in general, and those of the Society
of Merchant Venturers in particular, were well represented in
22 Quoted by S. and B. Webb, English Local Government, iii, 469, note 4, from
Letters on the Port and Trade of Bristol (J. B. Kington).
23 Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. xvi-xvii.
24 Based on an analysis of the list of Common Councillors in A. B. Beaven,
Bristol Lists, Bristol, 1899.
96 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Parliament by M.P.s who were merchants or closely connected with
merchants. Occasionally, the city looked further afield for its
members and chose men prominent in public life, such as Robert
Nugent, later Lord Clare, or Edmund Burke. One thing above all
was expected of the Members for Bristol, whether they were local
men or distinguished outsiders — unremitting attention to everything
which affected the city’s interests. Bristol worked its M.P.s hard,
and the Corporation and the Society, as well as other pressure
groups, were for ever briefing the members on what they must do.
Edmund Burke was not the only Bristol M.P. who found that the
electorate would turn on him if he took a line of his own on issues
about which Bristolians felt strongly.?°
It is not easy to assess the importance of religion in a city in which
business and politics seemed to be the major preoccupations.
Latimer leaves his readers with the general impression that the
bishopric was a poor one, occupied for the most part by men who
moved on as soon as they could to better things; that the dean and
chapter, who also had limited incomes, were noted for their quarrel-
someness, their absenteeism and their pluralism, and that the parish
livings were too poor to attract men of distinction.?¢ It may indeed
have been the relative poverty of the church in this opulent city
which led to the critical comment that “the very clergy talk of
nothing but trade and how to turn a penny”’.*’ Certainly, the Society
of Merchant Venturers showed a proper appreciation of the helpful-
ness of the clergy when it ordered the printing, at the cost of the
Hall, of a sermon preached on Charter Day 1744 in which the Rev.
A. S. Catcott, rector of St. Stephen’s, took as his text “Tyre, the
‘Crowning City, whose Merchants are Princes, whose Traffickers are
the honourable of the Earth’’. After praising commerce at some
length, Catcott concluded “Thus have I finished my design, and
shewn you both the antiquity and honourableness of the practice of
merchandize; and the result of all is this, the merchant, in exerting
his honest and laudable endeavours, may justly hope for the blessing
of God, is intitled to the favour and protection of his prince, and
deserves the love and esteem of his fellow-subjects.”’?°
25 P. T, Underdown, Bristol and Burke, Bristol Branch of the Historical Associa-
tion, 1961; “Edmund Burke as Member of Parliament for Bristol”, unpublished
London Ph.D. thesis, 1955; “Edmund Burke, the commissary of his Bristol con-
stituents”, English Historical Review, \xxiii, 1958. See also Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, pp. xvii-xviil.
26 Kighteenth Century Annals, passim. For a less critical view, see Rupert E. Davies,
“Religious Movements in Bristol since the Reformation’’, in Bristol and its Adjoin-
ing Counties, edit. C. M. MacInnes and W. F. Whittard, Bristol, 1955.
27 E. H. Meyerstein, Chatterton, p. 20.
28 The sermon was printed in Bristol in 1744. There is a copy in the Merchants’
Hall.
Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age 97
The impression that religious vitality was to be found only in the
nonconformist communities in the city is to some extent off-set by
the fact that a number of parishes spent a great deal of money on
preserving and “‘beautifying”’ their churches. In part, this was forced
upon them by the imminent collapse of the fabric or by the recon-
struction of the street plan of the city, but it was also due to a desire
to adapt the buildings to the needs of a new age. Only too often,
restoration
Has left for contemplation
Not what there used to be
and no doubt some of it was done for the glory of the parishioners, but
it may well be that the glory of God was also taken into account.2®
To this extensive building programme, both the Corporation and
the Society made considerable contributions.®° Then, as later, the
Society was a pillar of the established church. Although for a short
time it excluded Quakers from membership, and on one occasion
showed anti-Jewish tendencies,*! it did not officially impose any
religious tests, but most of its members belonged to the Church of
England. On Charter Day, they attended the parish church of St.
Stephen and heard a sermon, for which the preacher received a
suitable fee. Methodism made great strides in Bristol and influenced
a number of industrialists, but its enthusiasm did not affect Merchant
Venturers. |
The social structure of eighteenth-century Bristol has not as yet
been investigated in any depth. It has been said that, broadly
speaking, there was a two-class and not a three-class society, and
that although there was a middle class and a lower class, the city
could not boast of a noble or aristocratic class. This is basically
true, but it over-simplifies the class structure. There were a number
of people who thought of themselves as “gentry”, and even within
the broad divisions of middle and lower class, there were consider-
able gradations of wealth and status. The merchants themselves
ranged from the very rich to those of extremely modest fortunes. The
same was true of the industrialists and the various professional
groups such as the lawyers, the physicians, the sea-captains and the
office-holders. The middle classes shaded imperceptibly into the
lower classes, which included well-to-do craftsmen as well as
labourers who earned a bare sufficiency.
The problem of poverty became increasingly serious in eighteenth-
century England, and Bristol, like other towns, had to make some
2° For further details of the extensive and costly reconstruction of churches, see
Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol, and Latimer, Eighteenth Century
Annals.
30 See p. 207. 31 See pp. 103 and n. 8, 104 n. 19, 234.
82 Peter Marcy, Eighteenth Century Views of Bristol and Bristolians, p. 15.
98 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
provision for a large urban proletariat which could be brought to
the verge of starvation by bad harvests or fluctuations in trade. The
charitable activities of the Society of Merchant Venturers formed
part of a combined effort of public bodies and private individuals to
deal with an intractable problem. At the end of the seventeenth
century, largely as a result of the efforts of a Merchant Venturer,
John Cary, the Bristol parishes had been brought under a single poor
law authority — the Bristol Corporation of the Poor.** The poor
rates raised by the Corporation of the Poor were often inadequate
to meet the need, and the City had to help by making loans and by
buying corn to sell cheap to the poor when prices were abnormally
high. There were a number of endowed almshouses, and numerous
charitable gifts and legacies from individuals, but the problem of
poverty remained very serious. Even the rich experienced a certain
insecurity in a world in which commercial or industrial depression
could easily lead to bankruptcy.®4 A surprisingly large number of
wealthy men and their dependents were eventually driven to asking
for pensions from the city or from the Society of Merchant Ven-
turers. 5
The fact that there was a large class in Bristol which had no
property and which lived very near the poverty line helps to explain
the frequent civil disturbances, particularly in the first half of the
century. The Bristol mob could be roused by a variety of grievances,
including high prices for provisions, depression in industry and trade,
reduction of wages, hostility to dissenters, and the erection of toll
gates around the city.®* The presence of the turbulent coalmining
community at Kingswood, a short distance from Bristol, made the
threat to public order all the more serious. In the riots of 1753, when
food prices were high, and in the Bridge Riots of 1793, when fierce
resentment was aroused against the Bridge Trustees and the Corpora-
tion by the continuance of tolls after they were due to expire, there
was considerable loss of life and damage to property.
The property-owning classes must have been concerned at the
threat of mob violence and at the lack of adequate policing in the
badly-lit streets. In the daytime, the respectable citizen could at
88 See E. E. Butcher, The Bristol Corporation of the Poor, 1696-1834, Bristol Record
Society, iii, 1931, and The Bristol Corporation of the Poor 1696-1898, Bristol Branch of
the Historical Association, 1972.
84 For the long list of bankruptcies of Bristol merchants between 1711 and 1770,
see Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, pp. 184-6.
85 For pensions granted by the Society to its own members, see p. 206. For the
even more generous way in which the Corporation handed out pensions, see
Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 69, 120, 128, 187, 206, 219, 238, 243, 263,
302, 361, 381, 402, 420, 436.
36 For the riots of 1709, 1714, 1727, 1728-9, 1738, 1749, 1753 and the dramatic
Bridge Riots of 1793, in which at least 11 people were killed, and nearly 50 injured,
see Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals.
Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age 99
least rely to some extent on support from his fellows, but at night the
hazards were much greater. In 1736, the Justices of the Peace for
Bristol ordered that 51 able-bodied men should be employed to
supplement the watchmen, one of whom was responsible for each of
the twelve wards, but the magistrates had no power to levy a rate,
and the Corporation gave no help.®? In 1753, the Corporation itself
decided to apply to Parliament for powers to impose a watch rate.
Not surprisingly, the Society of Merchant Venturers gave the bill
enthusiastic support in a petition which stated that “the regulating
and supporting of a nightly watch . . . is a matter of the greatest
consequence to the inhabitants of the city for the preservation of their
lives and properties, and the want of proper legal authority for
effecting that good purpose hath long been sensibly felt and
lamented”’.28 The bill eventually passed, in spite of considerable
opposition in Bristol. Although it did something to strengthen the
watch system, it was not until well into the nineteenth century,
after Bristol had had the traumatic experience of the Riots of 1831,
that it gradually became convinced of the need for an effective
police force. In the eighteenth-century, many of the propertied
classes were prepared to live dangerously rather than give increased
powers to the municipal oligarchy.®® ©
Numerous visitors came to Bristol in the eighteenth century, and
from their writings we get a general impression of how the city and
its people appeared to outsiders. They were impressed by its industry
and its commerce, but they did not much admire the people who
ran them.*°® Daniel Defoe thought that the minds of “‘the generality
of its People’”’ were narrow, and that the merchants, although rich,
ought to be a “little more polite and generous”. They would be well
advised to travel to London where they would see ‘‘examples worth
their imitation, as well for Princely Spirit, as upright and generous
dealings’’. A visitor from Ireland remarked that ‘‘their Souls are
engrossed by lucre, and (they are) very expert in affairs of merchan-
dize; but as to politeness, it is a thing banished from their republic
as a contagious distemper’. Thomas Cox wrote ‘“‘the People give
themselves to Trade so entirely, that nothing of the Politeness and
Gaiety of Bath is seen here . . . the Trade of many Nations is drawn
hither by the Industry and Opulency of the People. This makes them
remarkably insolent to Strangers, as well as ungrateful to Benefactors,
both naturally arising from being bred and become rich by Trade,
as (to use their own Phrase) to care for no Body, but whom they can
gain by... .”
37 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 197. 38 Infra, p. 232.
39 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p, 527.
4° For a survey of the comments made by visitors, see Peter Marcy, Eighteenth
Century Views of Bristol and Bristolians.
100 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Although there was a critical note in the comments of visitors
throughout the century, the more savage remarks seem to have been
made in the first half, and it is possible that they were referring to
the early stages of an acquisitive community when-men were battling
for wealth in a jungle world. The descendants of those who had
grown rich possibly took things more easily and found time for other
interests besides the pursuit of gain. The rowdy Jacob’s Well play-
house gave place to the much more dignified Theatre Royal, and
the development of the Bristol Hotwell helped to introduce a
civilising element into the life of the community. In 1756, a new
Assembly Room was opened in Prince Street for concerts and danc-
ing, and although a critic referred to it sneeringly as a place
Where in dull solemnity of wigs
The dancing bears of commerce murdered jigs
it was another sign of the times and an indication that in the second
half of the century, the business community was being influenced by
polite society.“
Although Bristol society was possibly becoming more civilised,
commercial and industrial growth was not matched by similar
developments in education.#? A little was done for the poorer section
of the community by the establishment of new Charity Schools in
the parishes, and the two Hospitals, Queen Elizabeth’s and Red
Maids’, continued to provide vocational training and a modicum of
formal education for orphans and other unfortunates. There were
four Grammar Schools but the quality of education depended to a
great extent on the ability of the headmaster and the interest shown
by the Governors. The Cathedral School seems to have suffered
from lack of money and indifference on the part of the Dean and
Chapter. The Bristol Grammer School was highly favoured by the
Corporation at the expense of Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, which in
1766 was compelled, by very dubious means, to exchange with the
Grammar School the new building it had acquired early in the
eighteenth century, and to move to the Grammar School’s very
unsatisfactory premises at the bottom of Christmas Steps.*® In the
first sixty years or so of the eighteenth century, Bristol Grammar
School flourished under a number of able headmasters, and the
41 For an interesting and highly critical account of Bristol life in this period, see
R. I. James, “Bristol Society in the Eighteenth Century”’, in Bristol and Its Adjotn-
ing Counties, edit. C. M. MacInnes and W. F. Whittard, Bristol, 1955.
42 For a short survey of education in Bristol, see Roger Wilson, ‘Bristol Schools”’,
in Bristol and its Adjoining Counties,
43 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 374 ff., and C. P. Hill, A History of Bristol
Grammar Schools, 1951, pp. 53 ff. In 1780, Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital suffered another
severe blow when the Corporation, which was in debt to the Hospital, decided that
the Hospital was in fact heavily in debt to the Corporation.
Eighteenth Century: Bristol’s Golden Age 101
Corporation took considerable interest in it,44 but under Charles
Lee (Headmaster from 1746 to 1811) it suffered a remarkable
decline, and by the early nineteenth century it did not have a single
pupil.45 As far as the wealthier classes were concerned, the defici-
encies of the Grammar Schools appear to have been supplied to some
extent by the large number of private schools for both sexes.*® In
this somewhat limited educational activity, the Society of Merchant
Venturers became heavily involved from the early eighteenth
century when Edward Colston entrusted to it the management of a
large new Hospital for 100 boys who were to be taught reading,
writing, arithmetic and the doctrines of the Church of England. #4’
It was against this background of prejudice and of promise that
the Society of Merchant Venturers carried on its remarkably varied
activities in what has been called, with some justification, Bristol’s
Golden Age. |
44 C. P. Hill, op. cit., pp. 38 ff.
45 C. P. Hill, op. cit., pp. 52 ff.
46 C. P. Hill, of. cit., pp. 53 ff; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals.
47 See p. 209 ff.
CHAPTER 7
Membership, Organisation and Finance in
the Eighteenth Century
THE number of members of the Society was less than 100 in the
later seventeenth century. In the first three decades of the eighteenth
century it rose gradually, and then more rapidly, until it reached
145 in the years 1738-40. There was a decline in the seventeen-
forties and seventeen-fifties when membership was normally a little
over 120. After that, there were some fluctuations, but, generally the
number remained around 120 until the seventeen-nineties. There
was a drop in the last decade, and on 10 November 1799, the number
on the roll. was only 100, of whom 12 were honorary members.'
Excluding honorary members, 366 merchants were admitted to
the Society between 1701 and 1799.2 Of these, 211 came in by
apprenticeship, 21 by patrimony, 49 by redemption on payment of
forty shillings,? and 83 by payment of a substantial entry fine. Out
of the total of 366, 228 were admitted in the first half of the century,
and 198 in the second half. The fall in admissions between 1751 and
1799 was due to a reduction in the number admitted by apprentice-
ship and to a decrease in the number admitted by fine.*
On the other hand, there was a considerable increase in the
number of honorary members. The freedom was given to Ministers
of the Crown, to Members of Parliament and to distinguished soldiers
and sailors who would add dignity to the Society and who might be
able to help-it in various ways. Only 9 honorary members were
admitted between 1700 and 1750, but the total in the second half of
1 These figures are based on an examination of several hundred lists of members
given in the Hall Books. The Clerk wrote out a complete list before each General
Meeting and marked the names of those present when the roll was called, but he
did not always have up-to-date information about who was still alive.
2 See list of admissions printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 209 ff.
8 These were sons of members born after their fathers’ admission to the Society.
See H.B. 3, 8 Oct. 1706.
4 The number of apprentices admitted in each quarter of the century was as
follows: 1701-25, 733 1726-50, 66; 1751-75, 29;'1775-99, 42. The figures for those
admitted by patrimony in these periods were: 6, 7, 9 and nil; by redemption on
payment of 40s.: 10, 12, 13, 14; by payment of an entry fine, 37, 16 (of whom I1
were in 1737), 16, 14.
Exghteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 103
the century was 50.5 On 10 November 1770, out of a total member-
ship of 127, no less than 27 were in this category.®
The decline in the number of admissions to the Society in the
second half of the eighteenth century finds a parallel in the decline
of the number of people taking up the freedom of Bristol as
merchants. The total number so doing in the eighteenth century
was 639, but 378 of these became free in the first half of the century,
and only 261 in the second.’ It might, therefore, appear that the
Society’s numbers went down because there were fewer merchants
in the city as a whole and that there were consequently fewer
potential recruits, but it is doubtful if this is the real explanation.
Foreign trade was expanding, and although in the second half of
the century there were fewer men who were free of the city as
“merchants”, there must have been many more who were in fact
engaged in foreign trade. A Bristolian did not have to be free of the
city as a merchant in order to engage in trade overseas. Why, then,
did the Society’s numbers decline?
The main explanation is that the Society made entry more diffi-
cult. It did not apply any political or religious test, although for a
short time it specifically excluded Quakers,® but it raised the entry
fines. They had been quite small in the seventeenth century, but in
1713 the minimum entry fine was fixed at £50.® This was raised to
£100 in 172519 and to £200 in 1730.1! In 1783, it was reduced to |
£100 for the purpose of admitting 11 members and was then
immediately raised to £250.12 Whereas in the first quarter of the
century, 37 members came in by payment of fines, ranging from
£25 to £50, only 16 entered in this way between 1725 and 1750,
and 11 of these were admitted at the reduced rate of £100. Between
1738 and 1765, no one was willing to pay the required £250. The
fine was reduced to £150 in 1765,18 and 16 men were ready to pay
this amount, but it was raised again to £200 in 1768,!4 and it re-
mained there for the rest of the century. Only 14 men were willing
to pay the necessary £200 in the last quarter of the century.
5 For a list of honorary members, with dates of admission, see Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, pp. 191 ff.
6 H.B. 9, 10 Nov. 1770.
? Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. xiv.
8 In. 1711, Charles Harford was refused admission, “he being a professed
Quaker’’. In future, no professed Quaker was to be, admitted by fine. Whether
Quakers would be excluded if they sought admission by apprenticeship or patri-
mony was not stated. They would presumably have had difficulty with the oath of
admission. (H.B. 3, 20 Dec. 1711.) In 1720, this order was repealed. No reason was
given (H.B. 4, 18 July 1720).
® Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 222. 10 H.B. 5, 9 July 1725.
11 HB. 5, 5 Oct. 1730. 12 HB. 6, 17 Jan. 1738.
18 H.B. 9, 21 Oct. 1765 (only 13 members were present).
14 FB. 9, 3 Sept. 1768.
104 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Admission by apprenticeship was also made more difficult. On
29 October 1765, the Hall decided that no one should be enrolled
as an apprentice unless he had paid an apprenticeship premium of
at least £300 or was related to the person to whom he was bound
apprentice.1®
From this it is clear that the Society was adopting a restrictive
policy. It was no longer eager to bring in all those engaged in foreign
trade, as it had been in the seventeenth century. It was not even
concerned to recruit all the wealthy merchants, unless they would
agree to pay large entry fines. There were certainly merchants of
substance in Bristol who could have afforded to pay the entry fine,
but who chose not to do so.!® The Society did not shrink dramatically
in numbers as a result of this policy, but it tended to become more
of a cosy little club with limited membership restricted to certain
closely-related families than a body representing all the major
mercantile interests in Bristol. As the amount of charitable property
which the Society controlled increased, and as the value of its own
property went up, it may have felt more inclined to restrict entry.
Membership of so dignified a body, of which many distinguished
national figures condescended to become honorary members, was
not to be granted cheaply to outsiders. If they did not choose to
come in on the Society’s terms, the Society could get along without
them.?’
This oligarchic tendency was even more significant since the
majority of members throughout the century did not attend Hall
meetings. Even in the first half of the century when membership
was large, attendances of over 50 were rare, and those of less than
20 not unknown.!8 From the mid-century onwards, it was common
for the number present to be between 10 and 20. Only 26 members
out of a total of 118 were present at the election of officers on 10
November 1753,!®° and only 19 out of 107 at the election on 10
15 H.B. 9, 29 Oct. 1765.
16 Minchinton, Port and Politics, p. xv, gives a few examples of important
merchants who did not join. It would be easy to add to the list. Professor Min-
chinton argues that the Society did, nevertheless, represent Bristol’s major trading
interests (Africa and the West Indies), but that Ireland, Europe and America,
were poorly represented (ibid., pp. xiii—xiv). The point will be examined later when
we consider the Society’s relationships with other organisations and groups in the
city.
17 It might be argued that the size of the Hall, then, as in later periods, deter-
mined the optimum number. There was a problem, for example, in 1708 about the
number who could comfortably dine in the Hall (Minchinton, Port and Politics,
p. xiv, note 3), but in view of the small number of members who turned up to
meetings in the eighteenth century, this cannot normally have been serious.
18 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 223 suggests much higher figures, but they are
not substantiated by the evidence.
19 H.B. 8, 10 Nov. 1753. The meeting empowered the Standing Committee to
Eughteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 105
November 1758.2° There were, of course, fluctuations, and from
time to time an important or controversial issue produced larger
numbers. At a debate on the cost of the Floating Dock on 20 April
1773, when the estimates were ordered to be printed and when the
Treasurer wanted to resign, the exceptionally high number of 44
were present out of a total of 120,74 and on 11 January 1775, when
the state of American affairs was taken into consideration, 37
members were present for a discussion in the course of which a
motion to petition the House of Commons was defeated by the
Master’s casting vote.?? Such figures were abnormally high. At a
General Hall on 20 August 1785, only 12 were present, and of these
11 were members of the Standing Committee.28 On g November
1796, only 10 were present, all of them members of the Standing
Committee. 4
Attempts to encourage attendances by imposing fines did not
meet with much success, In 1747, for example, the Master com-
plained that members “are very backward in their attendance as
well at Publick Halls as on Committees’’, and insisted that they
must send acceptable excuses in writing or be fined,?5 but such
appeals met with little success. On a significant number of accasions,
there were not enough officers or members present to constitute a
quorum.?¢ A similar lack of enthusiasm among members was shown
by the practice of arriving late and leaving early,27 and in 1783 the
Hall ordered that in future no one might vote unless he had been
present at the beginning of the meeting.?® This slackness and absen-
teeism is all the more surprising in view of the fact that it was often
found at meetings where really important issues were under dis-
cussion. Quite often, the exercise of patronage, such as the appoint-
ment of a Havenmaster or a Headmaster of Colston’s Hospital,
produced a bigger attendance than a debate on major issues relating
to trade.
The main weight of business in any year must have fallen on the
apply to the M.P.s to try to obtain the repeal of an Act passed in the last session in
favour of the Jews. ;
20 7.B. 8, 10 Nov. 1758.
21 H.B. 10, 20 April 1773. Membership was then 120, including 22 honorary
members.
33 HB. 10, 11 Jan. 1775. Membership was then 118, including 20 honorary
members.
23 HB. 11, p. 167.
24 HB. 12, p. 445. The same situation recurred on 10 Dec. 1798 (H.B. 13, p. 90).
25 HB. 7, 30 Sept. 1747.
26 See, for example, H.B. 7, 22 Dec. 1747; 12 Sept. 1750; H.B. 8, 27 Feb. 1754;
9 May 1759; H.B. 9, 1 Nov. 1764; H.B. 13, p. 43.
27 See, for example, H.B. 6, 9 May 1735; 11 Jan. 1742; H.B. 7, 10 Dec. 747;
H.B. 8, 7 July 1762.
38 7B. 11, p. 50, 28 Oct. 1783.
106 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Master, the two Wardens, the Treasurer and the ro Assistants, who
together formed the Standing Committee. As the Society’s activities
proliferated, they had much more to do than in the earlier period,
and they made considerable use of sub-committees. The reward for
their work was no doubt the opportunity to influence policy and to
exercise patronage. For those who acted as auditors, there was the
attraction of a splendid Audit Dinner.?® An examination of the
members of the Standing Committee suggests that there was a
reasonably large turn-over of members each year. Apparently the
Society as a whole was content to leave things in their hands, and
many members did not bother to attend General Halls unless they
were in office. °°
On a number of occasions in-the later seventeenth and early
eighteenth century, the Master was re-elected for a second year,
but in 1707 the Hall decided that in future no one should be chosen
two years in succession.*! In order to maintain continuity, it was
desirable that the Treasurer, who was still an unpaid, part-time
officer, should not change too frequently, and although in the first
half of the century three Treasurers held office for only one year,
the normal term was much longer. Two Treasurers, Christopher
Willoughby and Joseph Daltera, span the whole of the period 1751-
1800.52
Continuity was also provided by the Clerk, whose office became
of increasing importance as the Society acquired more and more
property in its own right or as a charity trustee. Inevitably, this
involved it not only in the ordinary business of property management
but in a number of legal disputes. The Clerk’s services were also
required in connection with parliamentary business and numerous
petitions. In 1701 the office was conferred on Henry Fane,** and
when he died in 1726, it went to his son, Thomas Fane, who was a
wealthy lawyer and a customs officer, as well as heir-presumptive
to the earldom of Westmorland.** He resigned in 1757 to go into
Parliament, and the post was then given to His partner, Samuel
Worrall.*5 Worrall acquired an interest in a considerable amount of
29 See p. 113.
80 It must also be remembered that there was no retiring age and that members
once elected did not resign. At any time, a number of people on the roll had prob-
ably given up business or were no longer active in Bristol.
$1 HB. 3, 12 Dec. 1707.
32 For a list of treasurers, see Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 334-5.
88 Henry Fane was married to Anne, daughter of Thomas Scrope, a Bristol
merchant. Her brother, John Scrope, M.P. was Secretary to the Treasury. (Lewis
Namier and John Brooke, The House of Commons 1754-1790, 1964, Vol. II, Members
A-J, pp. 412-13).
34 Jbid., p. 413; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 229. Thomas Fane sat for Lyme
Regis from 1753 to 1762, when he succeeded to the peerage.
35 Fane’s resignation was announced on 16 November 1757, when he was made
Eighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 107
property in Bristol, including some of the Society’s land in Clifton.
In the nineteenth century, his descendants reaped the full benefit
of his investments, and the name Worrall Road commemorates his
achievements. In 1786, he quarrelled with the Society when he
alleged that the lessees of some property adjoining his own would
not have given him trouble “unless they had been supported by
somebody. . . .”” George Daubeny, whom the cap may have fitted,
moved that Mr. Worrall should be asked to state if he meant any
member of the Hall. Under pressure, Worrall named Daubeny as
the man concerned. He was then asked to produce his evidence at
the next Hall. When he failed to do so, he was required to apologise.
He refused to do so, and on 7 November 1786 he was dismissed. ?4
His successor was another lawyer, Jeremiah Osborne, who was
elected on 20 November 1786 and who remained Clerk until his
death in April 1798.3? From 1796, his son John was joint Clerk,®8
and he continued in office after his father’s death.
The Clerk’s official salary remained very small. In 1765, Samuel
Worrall pointed out that he was getting only £10 a year, less than
the Beadle or the Schoolmaster, even though his work had greatly
increased. The Society did not raise the salary, but decided that the
Clerk should have an annual honorarium to be fixed at a meeting
before the annual elections on 10 December.®® Worrall was given
gO guineas in the first instance, and later the amount was raised to
50 guineas. *° The Clerk’s job was, of course, only part-time, and he
had ample opportunities of getting fees for conveyancing and other
legal work which he carried out for the Society. In Worrall’s case,
there was also the opportunity of obtaining valuable leases. His
salary and honorarium were more in the way of a retainer to a
lawyer than payment for services rendered.
There was a great increase in the paper work of both the Treasurer
free of the Society (H.B. 8). He had in 1752 asked if his partner, Samuel Worrall,
could act as his deputy in view of the likelihood that he would be elected an M.P.
(H.B. 7, 2 Nov. 1752). Worrall had opened a Stamp Office in Bristol in 1747, and
in 1766 he was partner with Tyndale, Hale and Newman in the Exchange Bank
(C. H. Cave, A History of Banking in Bristol, pp. 11, 85-7; Latimer, Merchant
Venturers, p. 230).
36 7B. 11, pp. 229, 249, 257 (24 May, 11 Sept., 7 Nov. 1786). Latimer’s state-
ment (Merchant Venturers, p. 230) that he was “summarily dismissed is, to say the
least, misleading. If Worrall could not produce the evidence, he should have apolo-
gised. For Daubeny, see Lewis Namier and J. Brooke, The House of Commons 1754—
1790, vol. 2, p. 302. Daubeny had played a leading part in reviving the Tory
Steadfast Society and was an M.P. for Bristol 1781-4. In the story election of 1784,
in which Daubeny was defeated, Worrall had been one of his opponents (Latimer,
Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 456—7; Merchant Venturers, p. 230). In 1786, Daubeny
had become one of the partners in the banking firm of Ames, Cave & Co., so there
may have been business as well as political rivalry between Worrall and Daubeny.
37 HB. 11, p. 266. 88 HB. 12, p. 437.
39 HB. 9, 21 Oct. 1765. 40 HB. 9, 21 Oct. 1769.
108 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
and the Clerk in the course of the century. Correspondence proli-
ferated, and there was a stream of letters, petitions and memorials
of all kinds. Colston’s Charity, the Floating Dock, the Seamen’s
Hospital Fund, and the issue of bearer bonds by the Society involved
the keeping of many records. Grants of leases and purchase of prop-
erty swelled the Society’s archives. Before the end of the century,
the original rather crude accounting system had to be replaced by
something more sophisticated. The Society became increasingly
conscious of the importance of its archives and of the need to make
them easier for the officials to handle. On 10 September 1736, the
Hall Book records that ““The severall Papers & writings belonging to
the Society being brought down to the Hall & deposited there, It
is ordered that our Clerk doth take a particular Inventory of the
same at the charge of the Hall and place the said papers in proper
order, and that a press or Presses be made for that purpose in the
Roome over the Committee Roome and that the Standing Com-
mittee do take care thereabouts.”*! Later in the century, further
action was taken. On 1 November 1765 the Standing Committee
viewed the new Repository in which all the records had been placed
by the Clerk and ordered that “a table, a branch and labels for
distinguishing the contents of the several divisions with Tin’d Plates
on the shelves” should be provided. *?
The records were not, of course, available for inspection by out-
siders, and there was some hesitation about allowing them to be
seen by ordinary members.*® Nevertheless, it was desirable that all
Merchant Venturers should be familiar with the privileges and
obligations of the Society, and in 1741 it was resolved “That the
Antient Rules and orders for establishing this Society be fairly
entered into a Book to be perused by the Members and for their
better Knowledge of the affaires of the Hall.’’4*
In order to handle the records easily, it was necessary to have an
index to the Books of Proceedings, and in 1754 the Clerk was
instructed to carry out the work. The index for 1733-45 was not
apparently completed until 1760 when the Clerk was paid at the
rate of 2 guineas per year.*® In 1785, the Clerk was ordered to
prepare a schedule of title deeds and evidences. *¢
There was difficulty, about preserving the records intact because
some of the officials were inclined to keep them in their own custody
instead of in the Hall. When Samuel Worrall was dismissed from
41 H.B. 6, 10 Sept. 1736. 42 H.B. 9, 1 Nov. 1768.
43 HB. 6, 20 June 1737. 44 HB. 6, 2 Jan. 1741.
45 HB. 8, 22 Jan. 1760. It was not apparently kept up-to-date. In 1788, the Clerk
laid before the Society the index for 1749-82 (H.B. II, p. 460).
46 77.B. 11, p. 176, 10 Sept. 1785. The earliest surviving schedule of deeds and
leases dates from the beginning of the eighteenth century.
Eighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 109
the office of Clerk, he made difficulties about handing over the
books,*? and when the Treasurer Jospeh Daltera died, it was neces-
sary to apply to his executors to return his records to the Hall.48
The office of Beadle, like that of Clerk, also became of much
greater importance in the course of the eighteenth century. It was
combined with that of Master of Colston’s Hospital, and as the
Master received so much per head for each boy, it seems likely that
for at least part of the century, he had an opportunity to make a
profit for himself. Since the Beadle was Collector of the Society’s
rents in Clifton and Bristol, he was also in a good position to invest
in leasehold property. Samuel Gardiner, senior, served as Beadle
until his death in 1740.4® Then his son Samuel, who had been ad-
mitted to the Society in 1727, took over his father’s post and held it
until his resignation in 1762.5° The sums handled by the Gardiners
were considerable. In 1720, for example, Samuel Gardiner, senior,
accounted for £1,070, and in 1729 for over £1,500.5! Both father and
son held from the Society leasehold property in Clifton and Hot-
wells.°? Samuel Gardiner, junior, was clearly a rich man who in
1761 agreed to lay out £500 to build a substantial messuage on land
in Clifton called the Withy Bed, which he held from the Society.53
As far as Samuel Gardiner, junior, was concerned the combina-
tion of the office of Beadle with that of Master of Colston’s Hospital
did not work satisfactorily. Colston’s Nominees*4 alleged in 1757
that he had “acquired a very good fortune (chiefly as the Nominees
apprehend from the savings he has made out of the allowance for the
maintenance of the Boys)”. They said that he had purchased “a very
handsome Country House about three miles from the School . . .
and the School has been totally left to the care of the two Ushers,
and even when the Master comes to Town, which is but seldom, he
does no part of the duty, sometimes he looks round him and perhaps
asks a few questions, but never offers to trouble himself about
teaching . . .”. The food and clothing in the Hospital were alleged to
be bad, and the boys were normally afraid to complain, since “‘the
Ushers have constantly kept close to their Elbows”. The Nominees
were inclined to remove him, but “‘as they are not his Paymaster
and he being a creature of the above mentioned Society of Merchants
4” H.B. 11, p. 269, 25 Nov. 1786; H.B. 12, p. 53, 8 June 1790. Worrall’s final
account was still in dispute as late as 18 Aug. 1791 (H.B. 12, p. 146).
48 HB. 13, p. 179, 7 July 1801.
*° He had been admitted a member of the Society in 1694 and was elected
Beadle by a majority vote in 1697 (McGrath, Merchant Venturers, Pp. 33, 64).
° Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 212; H.B. 8, 15 March 1762. On 27
September 1762, William Haynes was appointed in his place (ibid., 27 Sept. 1762).
5! HB. 4, 5 May 1720 and H.B. 5, 14 May 1729.
52 Merchants’ Hall: Schedule of Deeds, pp. 265, 267, 272.
53 H.B. 8, 21 Dec. 1761. 54 See p. 213 fff.
110 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
who appointed him, they expect great opposition to it’’.55 There
was from time to time considerable friction between the Society and
Colston’s Nominees, who had a watching brief on the administra-
tion of the Colston Trust, and the allegations may have been
exaggerated. Nevertheless, they were not completely groundless. In
a Report of the Standing Committee in 1761, Gardiner was severely
rebuked for giving the boys the impression that any one who com-
plained would be punished.®® It is not clear whether this explains
Gardiner’s resignation in 1762. It may be that he had made enough
money to retire. The Society apparently still thought well of him.
In 1765, it gave him 50 guineas “for extraordinary services”, and
he was elected Warden in 1765 and again in 1766, when he died in
office.
Gardiner was succeeded as Beadle by William Haynes, and when
he died in 1785, his place was taken by his son William, who con-
tinued to hold the headmastership and the office of Beadle until well
into the nineteenth century.5’
In the course of the century, there were some changes in pro-
cedure at Hall meetings. Possibly the increase in numbers in the first
part of the period led to difficulties, and in December 1722 the Hall
accepted a report from a committee which laid down that certain
rules should be read before every General Court. These related to
_ fines for non-attendance and late arrival, and also to the rules for
“avoiding of confusion and superfluous speech’’, for ““decent speech
in Court” and for “silence in Court’’. No one in future was to “‘pre-
sume to smoke tobacco in the Hall during the time the Hall sits to
do business’’.5* In 1783, it was ordered that no member might vote
unless present when the names were called and marked,®® and in
1798 that no one receiving a pension from the Society might vote
at meetings.®° In 1790, the Master was put in his place when he
announced that the Hall had been called to consider an address to
the King. A motion was carried that this should be postponed as it
had not been specified in the summons.* What lay behind these
56 This is from one of the documents copied out by the nineteenth-century
Treasurer, William Claxton, in a volume relating to charities in the Merchants’
Hall. There is no title on the cover. This document is headed ‘‘Copy of a Case
submitted to Mr. Wilbraham 1757” and is a lengthy statement of the case put toa
lawyer by Colston’s Nominees with comments from Mr. Wilbraham and from the
Attorney-General.
56 HB. 8, 2 April 1761.
57 HB. 8, 27 Sept. 1762; H.B. 11, p. 67, 17 June 1785.
58 H.B. 4, 11 Dec. 1722. The rule about smoking was not repealed until 7 Feb.
- 1788 (A.B. 11, p. 391).
69 HB. 11, p. 50, 28 Oct. 1783.
60 HB. 13, p. 45, 30 Jan. 1798.
$1 H.B. 12, p. gt, 8 Dec. 1790. 11 members were present. The address was how-
ever approved on 11 Dec. 1790 (ibid., p. 94).
Eighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance III
things, we do not know because the Hall Books give only the bald
facts and there is no revealing journal of the kind that William
Claxton compiled in the nineteenth century.
The Merchants’ Hall, which served as an office and a meeting
place for business and social activity, underwent a number of
changes, as befitted the increased activity of the Society and its
growing dignity. In 1701, the Standing Committee was empowered to
alter the Hall on such lines as it thought fit,62 two dozen chairs
were purchased in 1702,®? and in 1704 all the pictures in the Hall
were to be made “‘of an equall length with Alderman Jacksons”’.**
In 1718, the Society decided to make additional rooms, and some
adjoining property was purchsaed for this purpose.*® A new “Great
Room” and a ‘Withdrawing Room” were completed and wains-
cotted with deal in 1719,°* and it was decided to pull down some
houses to make ‘“‘a handsome way” at the entrance.®? Further
extensive alterations involving the expenditure of £1,000 and the
purchase of property worth £1,200 were carried out between 1720
and 1722. The King Street frontage was apparently rebuilt and
ornamental gates and railings were placed at the entrance.®* The
Standing Committee purchased for £8 8s. from Benjamin Snell a
brass ship to hand in the lobby.®
Other alterations and repairs were made from time to time,’”® and
in 1787 the Society carried out extensive work which went on for
several years and involved an outlay of £6,000, including £542 for
chandeliers and lamps. The architect was Thomas Paty who re-
cased the exterior and gave the Hall the appearance which it
retained until its destruction in World War IT.” |
Eighteenth-century Bristol was notably short of buildings in
which business meetings and social functions could be held, and the
Merchants’ Hall must have been much in demand. In 1723 the
Society ordered that the new Hall should not be lent in future
without further order.?2 The order was repeated in 1735.73 The
Corporation, however, was entitled under the wharfage lease to use
62 .B. 3, ‘7 Feb. 1701. 63 77.B. 3, 12 Aug. 1702.
64 77.B. 3, 11 Jan. 1704. 85 HB. 4, 11 Nov. 1718.
66 H.B. 4, 4 Sept. 1719. 67 FB. 4, 29 Oct. 1720.
68 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 221; H.B. 4, 27 April 1721; 11 December 1722.
69 HB. 5, 23 Nov. 1724.
70 See, for example, H.B. 5, 5 Jan. 1728; H.B. 6, 20 July 1738; H.B. 8, 2 Sept.
1754; H.B. 9, 13 March 1765; H.B. 10, 8 Oct. 1777. In 1777, it was decided to
purchase additional property around the Hall, including houses valued at over
£2,000 (H.B. 10, 14 Jan. 1777; 23 June 1777; 25 June 1777; 23 July 1777). In
1791, Mr. Thomas charged 14 guineas for cleaning the pictures (1B. 12, p. 104,
20 Jan. 1791).
71 HB. 11, pp. 302, 310, 464, 547; H.B. 12, pp. 29, 46, 61. For an account of
Paty’s work, see Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol, pp. 127 ff.
72 AB. 4, 27 Sept. 1723. 73 HB. 6, 20 Oct. 1735.
112 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
it on certain occasions, and later in the century it was frequently
lent to the Anchor Society, the Dolphin Society and the Presidents
of Bristol, the Gloucestershire and the Somerset Feast, as well as for
a number of public meetings, including one to organise petitions
against the abolition of the slave trade.74
An issue which seems to have aroused a great deal of controversy
was the Annual Dinner on Charter Day. In 1720, the Master and
his successors were given permission to invite the wives of members,7°
but a motion that unmarried members might invite lady friends was
defeated in 1724, as was a proposal in 1727 that the Master might
invite the daughters and sisters of members to supper on the evening
of 10 November.Ӥ In 1730, it was decided that ladies should not be
invited to the dinner, but this was reversed in 1731 when the Master
was once again authorised to invite wives of members. Members who
were widowers or bachelors might invite a lady to supper in the
evening, provided she was the sister or daughter of a member.”’ This
order was repealed in 1733.78 In 1744, the Society decided not to
hold the annual dinner on 10 November but to have instead a supper
and ball on 12 November for such ladies as had usually been
invited.’° There were no festivities in 1745, for Prince Charles had
landed in Scotland and the Society had voted £5,000 “for our
defence in these times of Publick Danger’.8° In 1746, when the
danger had passed, the Society voted for a Ball on 10 November.
The Master was to have 20 tickets to distribute to “some County
Gentlemen and Ladyes”’.®! Balls were also held in 1747 and 1748,8?
but after that dinners, suppers and balls seem to have been dropped
by the Society, although on a number of occasions the use of the
Hall was granted for balls run by private subscription.®? An attempt
was made to revive the dinner in 1761. Twenty-five members were
present and the motion was defeated by the Master’s casting vote. ®4
There is no evidence to tell us what lay behind these long drawn-out
conflicts. It may have been a struggle between the young and the
74 See p. 137; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 220.
"® H.B. 4, 29 Oct. 1720 (32 members were present out of a total of 109).
76 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 226; H.B. 5, 19 Sept. 1727.
“7 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 226; H.B. 5, 14 Oct. 1731.
8 HB. 5, 4 Oct. 1733. Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 226-7, states that in
1732 the younger members were allowed to be accompanied by the daughters of
their senior colleagues.
79 HB. 6, 8 Oct. 1744.
80 H.B. 6, 10 Oct. and 14 Oct. 1745. Latimer says “Something must have
occurred, however, to cause dissatisfaction.”’ He seems to have overlooked Bonnie
Prince Charlie.
81 HB. 7, 28 Oct. 1746.
82 FB. 7, 30 Sept. 1747; 13 Sept. 1748.
83 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 227.
84 HB. 8, 13 Oct. 1761. A proposal to hold a ball was also defeated.
Eiighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 113
old or between the business men and the fashionable set. In the later
years of the century, it could be argued that the Society’s financial
position did not justify expenditure on frivolous entertainment.
The discontinuance of the Annual Dinner, which was open to all
members, seems to correspond with a great increase in the cost of the
Audit Dinner for the small group which audited the accounts. This
cost about £12 down to 1745, but after that it rose steeply. The bill
was £99 in 1759. In 1767 it was £139. Possibly the auditors had gone
too far or the Treasurer had learnt wisdom, for after that the item
no longer appears in the accounts.®*
A study of the Society’s finances in the eighteenth century raises
a number of problems. The results of the annual audit are recorded
year by year in the Hall Books, but the auditors dealt with a number
of different accounts — those of the Treasurer, those relating to
Colston’s Hospital and Colston’s Almshouse, the account of the
Collector of Wharfage, and the accounts of the Beadle for the Clifton
and Bristol property. The precise relationship between these accounts
is not always clear. Moreover, until the financial year 1772-3 the
Treasurer appears to have included under Receipts the accumulated
capital from earlier years, and there was no separate Stock Account.
In 1772-3, there appeared for the first time what was called the
Hall’s General Account, and in future the profit or loss in the
Treasurer’s annual account was credited or debited to the General
Account. The same procedure was adopted for the Colston Charities,
so that henceforth the accounts for Colston’s Hospital and Colston’s
Almshouse appear separately, with the profit or loss transferred to
Colston’s General Account.
Although the Treasurer’s accounts from 1772-3 show his annual
receipts and payments, it is not clear whether he made provision for
the considerable sums of money which the Society borrowed from
time to time or for the capital owing to some of the Charities which
the Society administered. When the Society borrowed money, this
appears to have been entered under Treasurer’s receipts. When he
paid back loans, this was shown in his payments. Thus, the income
and expenditure figures for any year may give a misleading impres-
sion.
An illustration of the kind of problem that arises in considering
the Society’s finances is found in the General Account for 1795-6
which shows a sudden increase in the stock from £7,939 in the
previous year to over £45,000. The explanation appears to be that
under the new system of accounting, the estimated value of the
85 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 227-8.
86 HB. 10, 7 Nov. 1774. This audit refers to the year 10 Nov. 1772-10 Nov. 1773,
for at this time the auditors were a year behind with the audit.
114 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Society’s property was included for the first time in the General
Account.’ There are a number of other problems which require the
attention of a qualified accountant. All that can be done here is to
give a general picture of the financial position and to draw attention
to some particular aspects of the Society’s financial policy.
In the first quarter of the century, the Treasurer’s expenditure
was on average a little under £2,000 a year. In the next quarter, it
was nearer £2,400 a year, and in the period 1751-73 it was about
£3,600 a year. From 1774 to 1800, it was nearly £6,000 a year, and
in 16 out of the 27 years the Treasurer had a deficit on the year’s
working. Moreover, the position was much worse than it seemed,
since the Treasurer’s receipts included large sums raised on bonds
and by annuities, and these were debts on which interest had to be
paid.88
When the Hall’s General Account begins in 1772-3, the assets
were recorded as £10,557 at the beginning of the year, and owing to
a loss on the year’s working, they had been reduced to £9,482 by
the end. They rose and fell in the course of the next 24 years and
they stood at £7,939 at the end of 1795. The greater part of the
assets recorded in the General Account consisted of a debt due to
the Society from Colston Charities’ General Account.§?®
At this point, a new accounting system was introduced, and for
the first time the Treasurer and his accountants prepared a balance
sheet to show the total assets and liabilities, which had not hitherto
been recorded. The assets of the Society were valued at £64,135.°°
The largest single item was the wharfage lease, which brought in
£1,193 and which was valued, at 16 years purchase, at £19,088.
The Docks produced £527 per annum, and were valued at 18 years
purchase at £9,846. The Hotwell, let at £543 per annum, was
valued at £9,774;%! fines from the manor of Clifton at £8,860;%?
chief and fee farm rents in Clifton at £4,325;93 the cranes at
£3,872;°4 the manor of Monkton in Stogursey at £2,338;°° chief
and fee farm rents in Bristol at £2,050,°* rack rents in Clifton at
£1,200,9? and rack rents in Bristol at £1,792.9§ The Merchants’
Hall was valued at £1,000 and the Merchants’ Almshouse at £300.
87 HB. 13, p. 33, 31 Oct. 1797, referring to the financial year 1795-6. The new
accounting system was introduced in 1795.
88 The figures are based on an examination of the annual audits given in the
Hall Books.
89 H.B. 12, p. 444, 9 Nov. 1796, recording the position at 10 Nov. 1795.
£8,211 15s. 5d. was shown as due to the Hall for the Colston Charity Account.
99 Treasurer’s Fournal 1795-1807, pp. 1 ff.
91 £543 p.a. at 18 years purchase. 92 £443 p.a. at 20 years purchase.
93 £173 p.a. at 25 years purchase. 94 (242 p.a. at 16 years purchase.
95 £167 p.a. at 14 years purchase. 96 £82 p.a. at 25 years purchase.
97 £75 p.a. at 16 years purchase. 98 £112 p.a. at 16 years purchase.
Eighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 115
The debt due to the Society from Colston’s Estate was estimated
at £8,211 15s. 3d.
Against these assets, there were considerable liabilities. The
Society held in trust a legacy left by William Vick for building a
bridge over the Avon, and the capital and interest now amounted
to £1,874 7s. od. The value of the annuities sold by the Society was
£9,810, and payments on these amounted in 1795-6 to £774 12s.
£10,000 was owing on the Society’s bearer bonds nos. 2-66. £4,260
was owing on bond to the Captains’ Society; £2,500 to Edward
Daniel; £2,200 to Timothy Powell; £1,000 to the heirs of Edward
Daniel; and £3,000 on promissory notes to the Treasurer, Joseph
Daltera. In all, liabilities amounted to just over £39,000 as against
the estimated value of the assets of £64,135. It might perhaps be
regarded as a satisfactory position from the long-term point of view,
but on the other hand much of the Society’s wealth was tied up in
assets which it could not easily dispose of. It was liable to repay on
demand or at fairly short notice bonds and promissory notes amount-
ing to nearly £25,000, and it was thus in a very vulnerable position.
Although it is not possible to follow in detail the ramifications of
the Society’s finances, some consideration must be given to certain
items of special interest. For a great part of the century, the Merchant
Venturers had to borrow money, often on a considerable scale, in
order to meet capital expenditure and short-term commitments. A
number of illustrations from the many references in the records will
help to show the kind of people from whom the Society borrowed,
the interest rates which it paid, and the delicately-balanced financial
state in which it often had to live.
Early in 1721, the Master informed the Hall that there was no
money in the Treasurer’s hands, that the Hall was in his debt, and
that a number of bills had to be met, including those for alterations
to the Hall. One of the members, William Freke, offered to lend
£1,000 for six months on behalf of the Bristol Fire Office, and his
offer was accepted. °® In 1724, £400 was borrowed from the Corpora-
tion and £400 from the Fire Office.1°° When the Society bought
houses and land in 1730, it raised the money by borrowing £1,000
at 44 per cent from a Bristol merchant, John Andrews.}% In the
1740s, it seems to have been borrowing normally at 4 per cent, but
Sarah Pope, widow, was willing to accept 34 per cent in 1742,10
and in 1746, when the Society had a large debt at 4 per cent it
99 HB. 4, 4 March 1721. It was decided on 22 July 1722 that the loan should be
repaid.
100 Hf.B. 5, 6 May 1724.
101 H.B. 5, 22 June 1730. For other loans in the 1730s and 1740s see ibid., 11
May 1732, 6 Oct. 1732; H.B. 6, 8 Oct. 1734, 26 Nov. 1740, 29 Nov. 1740, 11 Jan.
1742, 9 Dec. 1742, 14 Oct. 1745.
102 H7.B. 6, 9 Dec. 1742.
116 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
attempted to raise money at 3} per cent in order to pay it off.1°
The rate seems to have dropped to 3 per cent in the seventeen-fifties
and seventeen-sixties.1°4 When one of the creditors asked for 4 per
cent before he would renew a loan of £1,700 in 1761, it was decided
to pay him off. The Clerk, Samuel Worrall, was unsuccessful in an
attempt in 1767 to get 34 per cent for a client who was willing to
lend £3,500, and he agreed to settle for 3 per cent.1°5 When money
was required in 1768, £900 was borrowed from the wealthy Sir
Abraham Elton, and it was made up to the required £1,000 by a
surprisingly small loan at 3 per cent from John Minty of Clevedon,
gardiner.16
The purchase and development of Champion’s Dock and the
building of a new quay at the Grove in the seventeen-seventies had
to be financed by a whole series of loans.
In 1770, the Hall authorised the taking up of £4,000, and another
£2,000 was required in 1771 and in 1772.19? And so it continued.
Authority was given to raise £3,000 in 1773, £3,000 in 1776, and
£3,000 in 1777.1°8 Rich widows and spinsters such as Mary Ann
Peloquin, Mrs. Hort and Elizabeth Stanfast were ready to oblige.
The trouble was that these short-term loans were liable to be called
in by the lenders or by their executors. When the Treasurer knew
that Mrs. Peloquin’s executors wanted payment of a debt of £3,000
in 1778, he had to draw the attention of the Hall to the difficulty of
raising loans at 3 per cent, and he was instructed to see if the Corpora-
tion would help.}° It was embarrassing, too, when Mr. Noble asked
for payment of £3,000 in 1778 and 1779,1!° and when Mrs. Blagden
asked for repayment of £1,000 unless the Society would pay 4 per
cent in May 1780. The Society was compelled to agree to her
demand.!"! The situation was getting very difficult, and this was one
of the reasons which led the Society to consider raising money by
selling annuities.1!2
103 H.B. 7, 25 Aug. 1746. In 1750, two creditors who had lent £1,500 at 4 per
cent were willing to renew at 34 per cent (H.B. 7, 12 Jan. 1750). See also H.B. 7,
13 Jan. 1750.
104 77.B. 7, 10 Aug. 1752; H.B. 8, 7 Jan. 1753; 16 May 1759.
105 77.B. 9, 4 May 1767, 18 May 1767.
106 7B. 9, 28 Sept. 1768.
107 7.B. 9, 6 Nov. 1770, 15 Nov. 1770, 8 Oct. 1771, 7 Nov. 1771, 31 Jan. 1772,
8 Oct. 1772, 30 Oct. 1772; H.B. 10, 10 Nov. 1772.
108 7B. 10, 5 June 1773; 5 Feb. 1776, 28 March 1776, 3 Oct. 1776; 26 March
1777, 13 Aug. 1777.
109 7B. 10, 27 Aug. 1778; 6 May 1779. Mrs. Stanfast’s executors also wanted to
call in a loan of £800 (H.B. 10, 14 March 1778).
110 77,.B. ro, 4 Nov. 1778, 6 May 1779.
111 77.B. 10, 31 May 1780, 16 Oct. 1780.
112 See pp. 120 ff. On 26 Feb. 1780, it was ordered that £5,000 be raised by sell-
ing annuities at not above 8 per cent (H.B. 10, 26 Feb. 1780).
Eiighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 117
By the end of 1780, the Treasurer reported to the Hall that he was
personally ‘in advance for the Society of a sum of eighteen hundred
pounds” and that ‘‘he expects to have an occasion for it soon... .”
It was ordered that he should be paid when he required the money
and that to do this, the Society should borrow at such rate of interest
as it could.148 In 1781 and 1782, the position was very serious. £827
was due to Edward Rosser, mason, for work done at Colston’s
Almshouse and at the Floating Dock, and he had been forced to
borrow money at interest to meet his obligations. Evidently, the
Society was not in a position to pay him and instead it agreed to
open an interest account for him.4* When Mrs. Peloquin’s executors
pressed for 5 per cent on the money owing them from the Society,
the Hall was forced to play for time by saying that proper notice had
not been given, and that this was usually 12 months and, in any
case, not less than 6 months. It offered 3 per cent, rising in stages to
5 per cent, and this was accepted.1® There was an even more
staggering blow in 1782 when John Noble’s executors called in a
loan of £3,000, and Mrs. Hort’s executors asked for repayment of
£8,300. The Society had to instruct the Clerk ‘‘to endeavour to
prevail’? with the executors ‘‘to let it lye on an higher interest’’. If
he was unable to do so, he was to say the Society required twelve
months’ notice.1!6 It was a hand-to-mouth existence for the unfortu-
nate Treasurer, and the Society tried desperately to meet the crisis
by issuing bearer bonds for small amounts at 4 per cent!’ and by
treating with creditors to continue their loans at a higher rate of
interest..8 Fortunately, it was still possible to raise new loans.
George Fisher, sailmaker, and Samuel Munckley lent £2,000 and
£1,500 at 4 per cent to meet debts due to the Treasurer and to a
number of tradesmen and to help repay £3,000 to Mr. Noble’s
executors.!!9 Money began to come in from the sale of bearer bonds,
and loans, including £1,000 at 4 per cent from Mrs. Ann Goldney
in 1786 and £1,700 from the Captains’ Society, helped deal with the
acute financial crisis.12° Further deposits were received from the
Captains’ Society, which seems to have invested its capital with the
Merchant Venturers. By 1795-6, it had over £4,000 invested in this
way.
113 Hf.B. 10, 8 Nov. 1780. On 4 Dec. 1780, the debt to the Treasurer was stated
to be £2,000.
114 FB. 10, 4 Sept. 1781.
115 HB. 10, 30 Aug. 1781. Richard Llewellyn, brewer, got 5 per cent for a loan
of £1,500 in October 1781 (H.B. 10, 10 Oct. 1781).
116 7f.B. 10, 6 May 1782; 18 Sept. 1782.
117 For these bearer bonds, see infra, pp. 119-20. 18 H.B. 10, 18 Sept. 1782.
119 7f.B. 11, p. 16, 12 March 1783; p. 21, 21 March 1783.
120 HB. rr, p. 62, 7 June 1784; pp. 231, 237, 4 May and 25 May 1786; p. 304,
28 March 1787.
118 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The process of borrowing and then borrowing again to repay
lenders continued throughout the century. Mrs. Kingston offered
£10,000 in 1792, provided she could have 33 per cent, and this was
accepted on condition that she agreed to give six months’ notice,
but she then changed her mind.}#4 The Society was offering 34 per
cent up to £9,000 in September 1792, and four individuals agreed to
lend between them £4,700.172 Interest rates rose with the coming of
war early in 1793, and by October 1794 Timothy Powell wanted
4% per cent to continue his loan.!23 The war did not go well, and the
money market became even more difficult. In June 1796, the Master
and wardens had to give their personal notes to the Treasurer for
£1,700 needed to discharge £2,200 due to the representatives of the
late Timothy Powell, and the Treasurer was instructed to raise
money as he thought fit.124 The rate of interest went up, and the
Clerk was authorised to accept any sums offered at 5 per cent to
discharge money due to the Treasurer and the Master and Wardens
on their notes.125 Things were clearly in a bad way with the Society
in 1797 when on 15 March the Clerk had to be instructed to raise
£500 or £1,000 at 5 per cent in order to pay the pensioners and
others to whom the Society had obligations on 25 March.126 The
war was going very badly, and it was necessary to instruct a com-
mittee to wait on Messrs. Ames, Cave and Co. and Tyndall, Elton
and Co. to tell them that the Society would be obliged if they would
permit money due on the Society’s notes to remain unpaid for the
present. They agreed to hold off for three months.!2”7 Dean, Whitehead
and Co. helped the Society out with a loan of £2,000, and the Clerk
was instructed to approach Sir John Hugh Smythe and Dr. Thomas
Smythe for a loan of between £4,000 and £5,000 at 5 per cent for
five or six years.128 There was a masterly understatement in the
Treasurer’s letter to the Master in which he said he had failed to
persuade Tyndall, Elton and Co. to renew for a month or more two
promissory notes of £1,000. He suggested that the Committee should
consider how to meet them “‘for should the Matter get to the Know-
ledge of the Bond Holders, it might be hurtful to the credit of the
Society’’.12® Fortunately for the Society, lenders were always forth-
coming, and loans such as £1,000 from Mr. Goldney for 5 or 6 years
at 5 per cent in 1798, and £2,600 from two clients of the Clerk,
121 77.B. 12, p. 182, 7 Jan. 1792; p. 187, 24 Jan. 1792.
122 HB. 12, p. 218, 12 Sept. 1792; p. 224, 10 Oct. 1792.
123 7B. 12, p. 342, 4 Oct. 1794; p. 377, 30 March 1705; p. 418, 17 Nov. 1795.
124 7B. 12, p. 440, 25 June 1796.
125 7B. 12, p. 443, 4 Oct. 1796.
126 7B. 13, p. 11, 15 March 1797.
127 HB. 13, pp. 25, 27, 10 June and 23 Sept. 1797.
128 7B. 13, p. 28, 26 Sept. 1797.
129 Tyreasurer’s Letter Book 2, 1788-1803, p. 42.
Eighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 119
William Turner of Wraxhall and Rachel Plaister of Flax Bourton,
in 1799, enabled the Treasurer to keep his head above water.13°
Nevertheless, one can understand the feelings of the 17 Merchant
Venturers present at a Hall meeting on 23 February 1798, who re-
solved “that at this present important Crisis, when our Commerce,
prosperity and very Existence as a Nation are at stake, it is the duty
of every one partaking of the blessings of the Constitution and parti-
cularly a Society comprised of Members enjoying the privileges of
English Merchants to stand forward and exert their utmost power to
defeat the destructive designs of our Enemies and to defend the
Kingdom”’, but who nevertheless had to add “That the Society
regrets from the lowness of the Finances, it will not be in their power
to come forward to the Extent of their Wishes.” All that they could
contribute to the Voluntary Subscription for the Defence of the
Kingdom was £600.13!
To meet the desperate need for liquid capital in the last two
decades of the century, the Society was compelled to devise new
methods of raising money. It had long been accustomed to raise
large loans on the security of its bonds, but towards the end of 1782
it had to adopt the expedient of accepting small sums in return for
bonds payable to the bearer on thirty days’ notice on which it paid
4 per cent interest. It hoped to raise a large sum in this way and
advertised in the Bristol newspapers for sums of not less than £100.13?
By March 1783, the Treasurer was able to report that £2,225 had
been raised from 11 individuals.13 A special book was made con-
taining bonds and counterfoils, and as the loans came in, the amount
was filled in on the bond itself and on the counterfoil in the book.!*4
The first bond in the book was issued to George Fisher, sailmaker,
for £2,000 on 2 October 1782, but this was entered here in error,
and there is a note ‘‘not made payable to Bearer being issued before
this form was settled”. The first bearer bond proper, No. 2, was
issued to William Brewer on 6 November 1782 and was for £100.
The cancelled bond has been preserved. It was not redeemed until
1818. On each bond, the Clerk recorded the quarterly payments of
interest and any changes in the interest rate, as well as the date of
redemption. Most of the first 99 bonds were for £100, but there was
one for £600, 8 for £500, one for £350, six for £300, one for £250,
one for £225, six for £200, one for £175 and four for £150. The
130 77.B. 13, p. 69, 17 July 1798; pp. 104, 108, 1 Aug. and 4 Sept. 1799.
131 77.B. 13, p. 52, 23 Feb. 1798.
132 77.B, ro, 18 Sept. 1782.
133 77.B, rr, p. 12, 12 March 1783.
134 The Book of Counterfoils for bonds nos. 1-g9 from 1782 to February 1798
is preserved in the Society’s archives, together with various bundles of bonds which
were cancelled when they were redeemed.
120 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
scheme had the advantage of raising a large sum of money, and in
March 1792, bonds to the value of £15,350 were current at 4 per
cent interest.155 Lenders were then asked to accept 3 per cent, but
the rate had to be raised to 4 per cent at the beginning of the war in
1793.186 Obviously the Society would have been very vulnerable if
there had been a financial panic among small lenders and if the
solvency of the Society had been in question. In fact, the Society’s
credit was very good, and many of the bonds were held for long
periods. Over half of the first hundred, which were issued between
1782 and 1798, were still current in 1838, even after a big redemption
in that year.13”
Another means of raising money in the financial difficulties of the
later eighteenth century was the sale of annuities. The first time the
Society went into the annuity business seems to have been in 1778
when Captain Edward May offered £800 for an annuity of £56 per
annum for himself and his wife. He was 58 and she was 65.138 In
1780, the Society decided to try to raise £5,000 by selling annuities
at a maximum rate of 8 per cent.13® When Samuel Worrall made an
enquiry on behalf of a client who wanted an annuity for a woman of
50 and a child of 8, he was offered 7 per cent for the child and 8 per
cent for the woman. His client was a Mrs. Wilson, who had inherited
£700 under the will of Mrs. Hammond, to whom the Society owed
£2,000. Worrall was instructed to tell the lady about the scheme and
to encourage her to come in by informing her that the executors of
Mrs. Hammond must give regular notice to the Society for repay-
ment of the debt and that they had not yet done so.14° Annuities did
not at first sell very briskly, and it is yet another comment on the
Society’s desperate need for money that it instructed the Clerk to
try for any sums over £100.141 When Lord Templeton offered
£4,000 for an annuity of £300 a year on a gentleman aged 68 who
was in good health and his wife aged 57-8 who was very infirm, the
Society was happy to accept.14?
Annuities, unlike bonds, had the advantage that the money could
not be called in. They provided immediate capital, and since the
rates were based on various tables then current, they ought not to
have involved any loss in the long run, provided business was on a
reasonably large scale. Whether the Society did in fact make a
profit cannot be ascertained without a detailed study of all the
135 77.B, 12, p. 191, 20 March 1792.
136 77.B. 12, p. 263, 19 Feb. 1793. In the crisis of 1797, the Society considered
whether it ought not to increase the rate still more (H.B. 13, p. 21, 6 June 1797).
187 Details in this paragraph are based on an examination of the bundles of
cancelled bonds in the Society’s archives.
138 HB. 10, 17 Aug. 1778. 139 7.B. 10, 26 Feb. 1780.
140 77.B. 10, 13 March 1780. 141 F7.B. 10, 31 May 1780.
142 77.B. 10, 20 July 1780.
Eighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 121
annuities. It made a considerable loss, for example, on an annuity of
£35 per annum bought for £500 on behalf of Mrs. Mariana Irwin
in 1780. She was then aged 28 and she lived until 1831.143 Not only
did she live too long, but she also made life very difficult for a
succession of treasurers by residing in France, by refusing to use the
name of the husband from whom she was separated and by com-
plaining bitterly when the Treasurer deducted income tax at source
for her annuity or ‘“‘miserable pittance’. In a series of letters over the
years, she mingled her complaints with personal comments, inform-
ing the Treasurer that she had married against her brother’s wishes
a man “‘who never merited a woman like me’’, that her husband had
died overwhelmed with debt, and that his mistress Lydia Hackshaw
(or Alexander) was also dead. In 1811, she told the Treasurer that
she was “‘in good health, though some years more than fifty (although
I do not appear forty)’. Eight years later, she wrote “I am now in
years struck into the vale as says Othelo, ‘yet thats not much’, for
thank God, I enjoy as good health as at the age of twenty. .. .”
Sometimes patiently, sometimes with exasperation, the treasurers
explained to her that they must have an annual certificate from a
minister or magistrate to prove that she was still alive, “in which you
think them very singular to require it but it is what, if I am rightly
informed, Public Bodys in France that grant Annuities expect... .”
In 1804, the Treasurer told her sharply “unless you draw on me as
Treasurer to the Society of Merchant Venturers of Bristol, not
Bankers as you describe them in your last Bill... and sign your name
Mariana Irwin, your Bill will positively be returned unpaid’’. She
was told that she must be aware that on her decease her executors
could have no claim to the sum of £500 which was paid for the
annuity, as the late Treasurer had pointed out in letters of November
1797, April 1798 and May 1799. The deductions for property tax, she
was informed again and again, were laid on by the Government of this
Kingdom, not by the Society. On another occasion, the Treasurer
complained that her certificates were “drawn up in such a very
improper manner that it was with the greatest difficulty I prevailed
on the Collector of the Property ‘Tax here to take them... .” She
would not or could not understand all this fuss about legal niceties.
The Treasurer knew her handwriting and style very well — “do you
think I would write you posthumous bills and letters? .. . Mariana
Irwin or Mariana Smith is one and the same person, of which truth
you are well convinced”. As for the property tax, it was “a crying
143 77.B. 10, 26 Aug. 1780; Treasurer’s Letter Book 5, 1819-34, 26 April 1831.
For the correspondence between her and the Treasurers, see Treasurer’s Letter Book 2,
1788-1803, pp. 67-8; Treasurer’s Letter Book 3, pp. 8-9, 26, 32, 43; Treasurer’s
Letter Book 4, 1809-14, pp. 3, 28; Bundles of Letters, nos. 33, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43,
and Bundle marked “‘Sundries’’.
122 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
injustice’, and in 1814 she wrote optimistically “I hope the Gentle-
men Venturers at Bristol will consider the peace is now made and
make no more deductions but for postage. . . .» One hopes that when
the Treasurer wrote to Messrs Stride & Co. of Copthall Court
asking for the death certificate of Mrs. Mariana Irwin of St. Vin-
cent’s, he experienced at least a twinge of regret at the passing of
this spirited, humorous and troublesome annuitant.
Annuities may have involved some risk and they could produce
trouble, but for an organisation which was short of ready money,
they had great advantages. In the financial year 1795-6, the Society
was paying out interest of £744 12s. on annuities of £9,810.144
Further sales in the following decade brought the annual interest
payable by the Society up to £938 18s.145
One other very interesting aspect of the Society’s finances in the
eighteenth century was the considerable deficit arising in connection
with the Colston Charities. Although at the beginning of the
century the Society had accepted as adequate the estates which
Edward Colston gave it in trust for his almshouse on St. Michael’s
Hill and his hospital for 100 boys on St. Augustine’s Back, the
income in fact proved inadequate, quite apart from the difficulties
which the Society had in obtaining part of the legacy from Colston’s
heirs.146 The Charity’s debt to the Society mounted steadily. It was
about £1,450 by 1712, it was over £3,000 by 1718, and it passed the
£4,000 mark by 1728. It was over £8,000 in 1745, over £9,000 by
1754 and over £12,000 by 1762. It remained at that level for most
of the seventeen-sixties and then began to fall. When the first General
Account for the Hospital was put before the Society in 1774, the
Hospital was in debt to the Society for £9,318 14s. 6d. The total
indebtedness of the Hospital and the Almhouse to the Hall remained
about that level until 1780, after which it rose, reaching a peak of
£11,274 10s. 4$d. at the audit of 31 October 1786. Thereafter, it
fell until it was down to £7,289 in 1800 and £6,463 in 1805.14?
It may seem surprising that the Society allowed the Colston
Charity to run into debt to itself on this scale. It kept a record of the
debt from year to year, but it did not charge interest on it, and it
did not try to recover the debt by reducing the number of boys in
the Hospital. Its motives were probably mixed. No doubt it was
genuinely anxious to maintain the educational and charitable
activities which Colston had established. It probably did not want
to become involved in the difficulties which would arise with
144 Treasurer's Journal, 1795-1807, Balance Sheet 1795-6.
145 Jhid,, Balance Sheet, 1805-6.
146 For further details about the Charity, see pp. 2o00ff.
147 Based on an examination of the accounts in the Hall Books and in Treasurer’s
Journal 1795-1807.
Eighteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 123
Colston’s Nominees if it tried to alter the original arrangement.
There would, too, have been a public loss of face and a lot of
questioning if it had tried to alter the original foundation. Moreover,
from 1785 onwards the income from the estates was rising and the
debt was being reduced year by year. Finally, the loss was not quite
as large as appeared, for the Society had entered into an arrange-
ment by which it had disposed of some of the lands left by Colston
and acquired instead an interest in the manor of Monkton Holme
in Stogursey. It came to regard this as its own manor. In the
account for 1794-5 the income from Stogursey was £167 per annum,
and the capital value at 14 years purchase was £2,338. The Society
may well have felt that it was best to leave things as they were and
wait until rising income from the Colston estates wiped out the
debt. It would then not only have recovered its losses on the Hospital
but also be the happy possessor of a valuable manor in Stogursey.
It was to have a very nasty shock in the nineteenth century when its
claim to Stogursey was successfully challenged in the courts.148
Finally, it must be remembered that although the Society in the
eighteenth century was often in difficulties about ready money, it
valued its assets at the end of the period at over £64,000 against
liabilities of £39,000. Its financial problems arose to a considerable
extent from the fact that it was busy acquiring property both in
Bristol and outside. In the long term, its investments were to pay
handsome dividends.
148 See pp. 365-70.
CHAPTER 8
Overseas Trade in the Eighteenth Century
THE main lines on which the Society developed in the eighteenth
century had already been laid down in the seventeenth century.
There were new problems as well as old ones, and the emphasis put
on the different aspects of its work changed from time to time, but
the overriding concern of the Society was still that of furthering the
interests of its own members and of the merchants in general.
Problems such as the relations between England and the restless
American colonies, the demands of Ireland for greater economic
independence or the movement to abolish the slave trade were seen
primarily from the point of view of how they affected the interests of
Bristol. Even matters relating to national security were considered
in terms of local interests. An embargo on shipping, for example,
or the pressing of men for the navy in time of war might have un-
fortunate consequences for the merchants.
Foreign trade was naturally the prime interest of the Society, and
here above all it was concerned first and foremost with the interests
of Bristol. It is easy to condemn such an attitude as narrow and sel-
fish, but it must be remembered that it was common to all such
pressure groups in the eighteenth century. The merchants did not
see themselves as selfish but as public-spirited defenders of an eco-
nomic system which benefited the country as a whole. The philo-
sophy of the Society was summed up in its reactions to a proposal
in 1778 to open the ports of Ireland to colonial produce. It was all
very well for Edmund Burke, M.P. for Bristol, to take a broad view
of the matter and to consider it from the point of view of the Empire
as a whole, for Burke was not himself engaged in commerce. A
society which existed to press the interests of Bristol by every possible
means and which believed that what it wanted was good for England
reacted, as might have been expected, by claiming that the proposal
“will prove destructive to that great system of Commerce, Manu-
factures and Revenue which ever since the establishment of the
colonies has been successfully pursued’’, and it added, for full
measure, that it would also be ‘“‘Injurious to the landed Interests of
this Kingdom, and that it would be most unjust and unequal to
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 125
grant such Priviledges to Ireland, not paying the same Taxes, nor
being subject to the same Dutys as the People of this Country’’.!
The Society, which had long abandoned any hope of being a
monopoly itself, was also determined that the trade of the country
should not be monopolised by others. The battle for freer trade had
met with only partial success in the seventeenth century, and in the
eighteenth century some old enemies still remained and new ones
emerged to engage the Society’s attention.
As in the seventeenth century, the Society was often involved on
more than one front at the same time, but again, it is convenient to
examine separately the different fields of activity. It must be
remembered that the amount of attention which the Society gave to
any particular issue was not necessarily commensurate with the
importance of that issue in the total commercial economy of Bristol.
Even a fairly small threat might call for a great deal of attention.
The trade with Europe engaged a high proportion of Bristol shipping
throughout the eighteenth century, even though it did not impress
contemporaries nearly as much as the more spectacular West India
trade. In 1764, for example, out of 343 ships clearing the port, 85
went to Europe, as compared with 53 to the West Indies, 52 to
North America and 32 to Africa.” But in spite of its importance, the
trade with Europe does not figure at all prominently in the Society’s
records, apart from the problem of protecting shipping when
England was at war.? No great controversial issues arose over the
control of the trade, since the Eastland Company had for all practical
purposes ceased to exist, and in 1699 the entry fee to the Russia
Company had been reduced to £5 and membership was no longer
restricted to wholesale merchants.‘ Bristolians were not, in any case,
very concerned with the activities of the Russia Company. There was
a flicker of interest in 1740 when the Standing Committee was asked
to consider the implications of a petition from the Russia Company
to allow raw silk and other produce of Persia to be imported from
Russia, but no further action was taken.5 The only issues of any
significance in which the Society was involved concerned Mediter-
ranean passes and quarantine regulations.
1 HB. 10, 15 April 1778.
2 In 1790, clearances for Europe were 88 out of a total of 420. 65 ships went to
the West Indies, 48 to North America and 25 to Africa. For details of ships entering
and clearing the port from 1764 to 1796, see Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, p. 181.
3 For convoys and embargoes on trade in wartime, see pp. 170-4. The trouble
with Spain in the first half of the century related primarily to colonial trade. See
PP. 139, 170, 238.
4E. Lipson, The Economic History of England, ii, 325-6, 333.
5 H.B. 6, 29 Nov. 1740. The dispute was between the Russia Company and the
Levant Company and was not really of concern to Bristol. E. Lipson, op. cit., 11,
349-
126 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Mediterranean passes were issued by the Admiralty to British
ships as a result of agreements with some of the Barbary states of
North Africa, and they entitled the holder to pass without being
molested by the ships of those states. They were very necessary for
ships trading to Spain, Italy and the Mediterranean. The complaint
of English merchants concerned excessive fees taken by Admiralty
officials and other abuses. In 1721 the Society ordered the prepara-
tion of a petition to the King against excessive fees, and in 1724 a
committee was set up to enquire into abuses, including frequent
demands to renew the passes. Finally, in 1730, as a result of petitions
from London and the outports, a Committee of the Privy Council
examined complaints and ordered that steps should be taken to
prevent malpractice, to improve procedure, to regulate fees and to
put the outports on an equal footing with London.§®
The quarantine regulations gave even more trouble. On 22
November 1720, an Order of Council was read to the Hall regarding
the opening, airing and repacking of goods after performance of
quarantine.” The Order was considered very inconvenient for the
ships concerned, which were laden with currants, raisins and other
heavy goods which had not come from infected areas. There was no
convenient place for landing goods near the place where quaran-
tine was performed, and no houses in which to store them. It was
decided to petition the King for permission to discharge “‘ponderous
goods”’ without airing and to ask Mr. Nathaniel Wraxall to take the
petition to London. The petition pointed out that the river of Bristol
was “‘attended with a great flux of water”’, that the ground near the
quarantine place was “soft and owsey’’, so that the goods could not
be left there. Some of the goods involved had been laden in ports
far distant from any infected place. The Society asked that the goods
might instead be aired in lighters after quarantine had been per-
formed. In December, Mr. Wraxall was urged to do his best to get
more satisfactory arrangements and a second petition was sent,§
Quarantine was again under discussion in 1763 when the Society
was informed that London and Liverpool were taking steps to get
it taken off ships from Spain and the Mediterranean. The Standing
Committee agreed to pay 30 guineas towards the cost. Three years
later, there was a long discussion about the quarantine at Leghorn
and the damage it was doing to trade. It was urged that there was
6 For Mediterranean passes, see Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, p. 112; Port and
Politics, pp. 11-12, 13, 31-4; A.B. 4, 4 March 1721; 15 May 1721; A.B. 5, 23 Dec.
1724; Book of Charters 2, 269 ff.
? The airing of the goods was considered to be a further precaution against the
spread of infection.
8 H.B. 4, 22 Nov. 1720; 23 Nov. 1720; 2 Dec. 1720; 15 May 1721. Book of
Charters 2, 213, 215, 217; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 10-11.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 127
no longer any danger, and the Master took the matter up with one
of the city’s M.P.s, Robert Nugent. Nugent referred it to the Board
of ‘Trade, and advised the Society to send a Memorial, as Liverpool
had done. A petition was duly sent, and Nugent was able to report
at the end of November that quarantine had been removed.®
The European trades, then, gave very little cause for concern to the
Society in the eighteenth century, and this was also true of the Irish
trade until the later part of the period. The Irish trade was important
and normally employed more ships than any other trade.!° Although
their tonnage and the value of their cargoes were much smaller
than in the West India trade, the dairy produce and raw materials
which they brought to Bristol and the colonial produce which they
took back provided a solid foundation for commerce in more
exotic goods further afield. The industrial and the commercial
development of Ireland was regulated by the British Government in
the interests of England, and the attitude of Bristolians in general,
and of the Society in particular, was quite clear. They were opposed
to any measures which would encourage competition from Irish
commerce or Irish industry. Their attitude was summed up in the
instructions which the Standing Committee gave to Robert Nugent
in 1765 to oppose “totally and with all his might” proposals to
lower the Irish customs duties, since these showed, they alleged, “the
great design of the Irish . . . to cramp the Export Trade of England
as well as of its produce and thereby (to) encourage the Culture and
manufacture of Ireland. . . .’!1 Above all, there must not be direct
trade between Ireland and the colonies, for this would damage the
merchants of Bristol in their role as middlemen.12
The Irish question did not give the Society a great deal of concern
until the later seventeen-seventies, for until then Ireland was not in
@ position to exercise much pressure on the Government. Its occa-
sional attempts to assert itself were promptly resisted. When in 1704
the Irish Parliament asked that Irish linen might be sent direct to
the colonies, the Master was instructed to write to the Bristol
M.P.s asking them to oppose the plan.13 Similar resistance was offered
in 1731 and 1733 to proposals that sugar might be sent to Ireland
° H.B. 9, 20 Oct. 1763; 13 Dec. 1763; 27 May 1766; Book of Petitions, p. 14, 22
June 1766; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 10-11, 107-8.
10 In 1764, 107 ships out of a total of 343 cleared Bristol for Ireland. In 1790, the
figure was 169 out of 420. Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, p. 181.
11 FB. 9, 23 Dec. 1765, concerning a proposed new Irish Book of Rates. These
would have placed restrictive duties on manufactured goods imported into Ireland
and have taken off duties on raw materials. They were “‘a further proof of the design
of the Irish’’ to encourage their own manufactures.
12 Supra, pp. 128-9.
13 7B. 3, 11 Jan. 1704.
128 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
direct from the plantations instead of through England.'* In 1752,
the Society petitioned unsuccessfully against a bill to allow the import
of Irish coarse cloth yarn into the port of Yarmouth.15 On the other
hand, it was in favour of relaxing in time of scarcity leglislation
prohibiting the import of Irish meat and butter. It was in its interest
that food prices in England should not be excessively high.1®
In the later seventeen-seventies a really serious crisis emerged as
far as Bristol was concerned, and it produced a flurry of activity on
the part of the Society. A more liberal attitude towards Ireland was
developing in many quarters in the later eighteenth century. It was
found even in the M.P.s for Bristol, Jarritt Smith, Robert Nugent,
and, above all, Edmund Burke. The warning given by the revolt
of the American colonies and the emergence of the Irish Volunteers
during the war helped to convince the Government that something
must be done for Ireland. The Volunteers had come into existence
for the purpose of national defence, but they might easily turn
against England if economic concessions were not made. When Lord
North’s government proposed in 1778 to make concessions, the
Society went into action with tremendous vigour. As Dr. Underdown
puts it, ““Not since the Stamp Act had it moved with such alacrity
and thoroughness: open meetings, petitions and deputations to
Parliament from the Society and the Common Council, approaches
to other M.P.s, circular letters to every city and borough in the
kingdom, correspondence in the Bristol press — the whole apparatus
of opposition was deployed.” It is not possible to study every detail
of the bitter controversy which ensued, but some features of it may
be noted.1’
On 13 April 1778 the Society wrote to the M.P.s, Burke and
Cruger, informing them that the city intended to oppose the measure
with all its power, and added with regret “we are sorry that we are
14 HB. 5, 11 Dec. 1730; H.B. 6, 5 March 1734. Minchinton, Polttics and the Port;
p. 35; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 192. In 1734, the Hall paid £10 towards the
charges of West India merchants in London in obtaining an Act concerning the
import of sugar.
15 H=.B. 8, 26 Feb. 1752.
16 There was a good deal of correspondence with the M.P.s Jarritt Smith and
Robert Nugent on this subject in the 1760s, and petitions were sent to Parliament
in 1761 and 1765. See H.B. 8, 26 Nov. 1761; 30 Nov. 1761; H.B. 9, 16 Jan. 1764;
20 June 1764; 14 Jan. 1765; Letters, Bdle. 7, from Jarritt Smith, 23 Nov. 1761;
Bdle. 8, from Nugent, 11 April 1763; Bdle. 9, 12 Dec. 1764. The petitions are
printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 94, 99.
17 Pp, T, Underdown, Bristol and Burke, Bristol Branch of the Historical Associa-
tion, 1961, p. 15. There is a good deal of material about this dispute in the Society’s
records, including a bundle marked “Letters relating to the opening of the Ports
of Ireland in 1778”, and there are many letters in the bundles of letters preserved
in the Hall, including a number to and from Edmund Burke. Some of these are
printed in The Correspondence of Edmund Burke, edit. G. H. Guttridge, Cambridge,
1961, vols. III and IV. See also the Society’s Letter Book 1747-1780.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century | 129
likely to be deprived of so able an advocate as Mr. Burke’’.18 In
another letter of the same date to Richard Comb, the Society went
so far as to say “It strikes us at present that it would be better for
this Kingdom that a Union should take place rather than this very
prejudicial Measure. . . .”1° It rejected uncompromisingly the plea
which Burke had made in a letter of 9 April in which he argued “‘Our
late misfortunes have taught us the danger and mischief of a res-
trictive, coercive, and partial policy’. Burke argued that ‘“The
world . . . is large enough for us all, and we are not to conclude that
what is gained to one part is lost, of course, to the others. .. .”” One
suspects that Burke was expressing a pious hope when he added
“These opinions, I am satisfied, will be relished by the clear under-
standings of the merchants of Bristol, who will discern that a great
Empire cannot at this time be supported upon a narrow and res-
trictive scheme either of commerce or government.’’2°
On 15 April 1778, the Hall approved a strong resolution against
opening the Irish ports and decided to write to Liverpool and to
send a petition form to every city and borough in the kingdom.?!
The Merchant Venturers justified their position in a letter to Burke
on 30 April in which they said they did not wish to oppress Ireland,
and they could not believe the advocates of the measure were acting
on principle when they considered what great benefits would
obviously accrue to the great landed proprietors in Ireland. They
added tartly that “it will certainly have a very odd appearance
and perhaps some improper weight against the interests of
this City as well as the Kingdom at large that the Representative
of Bristol should be an advocate for the Bill’. They hoped Burke
would make it plain that he spoke for himself and not for his con-
stituents.” Burke stood his ground and replied ‘‘you may be assured
that nothing could give me a more sincere pleasure than to obey the
commands of the Society when I am not morally certain that I
should do them a serious injury by my compliance with their
wishes”. He denied that the legislation was being put forward by
Irish landed interests, and he said that even if this were so, it would
not necessarily be wrong. He knew that by differing from the
Society he was endangering his political future as M.P. for Bristol,
and, he added, “With regard to my opinions, I may be wrong in
them; but be sure that my errour arises neither from ill will or
18 Letter Book 1747-1780, 13 April 1778.
19 Tbid., 13 April 1778.
20 See Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 195-6 for a transcript.
31 71.B. 10, 15 April 1778. In the bundle marked ‘‘Letters relating to the opening
of the Ports of Ireland in 1778”, there is a copy of a printed invitation, dated 13
April, by a committee of the Society inviting merchants and traders to a meeting
“to pursue such Measures as shall appear best to arrest so great an evil’’.
22 Letter Book 1774-1780, Samuel Span to Burke, 30 April 1778.
130 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
obstinacy, or a want of the highest regard for the sentiments of those
from whom I have the misfortune to differ. . . .”?5
The battle continued into 1779. In January and February Bristol
was in touch with the Committee of Trade in Blackburn and with the
Liverpool merchants.?4 There were clear signs that Ireland might
go the way of the American colonies and take up arms, and in Octo-
ber 1779 the Irish Parliament carried without division a motion
“that it is not by temporary Expedients but by a Free Trade alone
that this Nation is now to be saved from impending Ruin’’. As late
as 26 June 1779 dissatisfaction with the Government among members
of the Society showed itself in a motion in the Hall asking the King
“‘to entrust the direction of National affairs to such persons as are
possessed of Wisdom and Fidelity adequate to so important a
charge”. It was, however, defeated and a Loyal Address was carried
by 16 votes to 10.25 In December the Government agreed to make
major concessions to Ireland. Lord North put forward his proposals
on 13 December 1779, and the Hall was informed by letters from
Burke, Cruger and Comb of what was about to happen.?® The
Society gracefully accepted the inevitable and decided not to object
to the proposals, although in response to a petition from the sugar
refiners of Bristol about proposed duties on sugar, it did agree to
petition the Treasury.?”
On this occasion, the Society had been defeated, but it was more
successful in opposing the even more generous treatment of the Irish
economy which Pitt proposed in 1785. The Hall considered on 11
March 1785 proposals put forward by the Irish House of Commons
to the Government and decided to petition the House of Commons to
be heard against them.?® It also joined the Association at the London
Tavern which was organising resistance and added its own represen-
tative to the one or two representatives from Bristol who were being
sent to London by ‘“‘the Petitioners at large in the City”’. The Mer-
chant Venturers whipped up support among Bristol manufacturers
and West India merchants, and they again petitioned Parliament
in May 1785.29 In the end, Pitt’s enlightened commerical policy on
23 The letter is quoted at length in Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 196-7.
24 Fetters, bdle. 22, 12 Jan. 1779, 22 Feb. 1779.
25 H.B. 10, 26 June 1779. Dissatisfaction did not arise simply from the Irish
proposals but from the disa8trous way in which the war was being conducted.
26 HB. 10, 6 Dec. 1779 and 21 Dec. 1779. On the last occasion, only 9g members
were present, all of them members of the Standing Committee.
27 H.B. 10, 26 and 28 Feb. 1780. The petition is printed in Minchinton, Politics
and the Port, pp. 149-50.
28 H.B. 11, p. 117, 11 March 1785. The petition is printed in Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, pp. 153-5.
29 HB. 11, p. 128, 26 March 1785. Only 12 members were present. The petition
is printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 156-7.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 131
Ireland was destroyed by determined opposition in which the Society
of Merchant Venturers had played its part.
The Irish trade occupied the attention of the Society during only
part of the eighteenth century, but the African trade gave it concern
throughout the period. The volume of trade was not in fact so great
as has sometimes been suggested, and there were considerable
fluctuations, ®° but major issues of principle were involved. The two
main questions were whether the trade should be organised under a
monopolistic company and whether the slave trade should be
controlled, or even abolished. There were numerous side-issues,
such as the amount of money that should be spent by the Govern-
ment on the African forts, the need for adequate protection in
time of war, and illegal trading by captains in the Royal Navy.
With reference to the African trade in general, and the slave trade
in particular, Professor Minchinton expressed the view that “More
petitions were drafted, more letters were exchanged, more deputa-
tions were sent on this subject than on any other issue.’’®! Africa
generated an immense amount of heat, for the interests of Bristolians
were often in conflict with those of other powerful groups in London
and elsewhere. The total amount of paper work which resulted may
easily give a misleading impression of the importance of the African
trade in the economy of Bristol.
The basic issue in the first half of the century was whether the
trade should remain relatively free or whether the Royal Africa
Company should once again be allowed to have a monopoly.?? The
Act of 1698, in the securing of which the Merchant Venturers had
played their part, opened the trade on certain conditions to those
who were not members of the Company, but the Company worked
hard to recover its lost privileges,®* and from time to time the Society
had to go into battle once again. Thus, in January 1709, the Hall
was informed by Robert Yate, one of the Bristol M.P.s, that the
Africa Company intended to monopolise the trade. He urged the
Hall to make any interest it could against the proposed bill. In
September, £40 16s. 5d. was spent on sending a representative to
London for this purpose.24 The matter continued to trouble the
80 See Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, p. 181; The Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth
Century, p. 4.
31 Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. xxvi.
32 For the activities of the Company, see K. G. Davies, The Royal Africa Company,
1957.
93g For the long drawn-out parliamentary struggle, see Davies, op. cit., pp. 135 ff.
34 77.B. 4, 4 Jan. 1709, 13 Sept. 1709. Bristol was not, of course, fighting alone.
It was aligned with individual traders, with Virginia, Maryland and Jamaica, and
with representatives from Liverpool, Birmingham and other towns. K. G. Davies,
op. cit., p. 149.
132 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Society in 1711, 1712 and 1713.35 The issue came alive again in
1719 when two members were voted money to go to London, and
in 1720 the Master expressed his fear that a monopoly was going to
be attempted. At the end of the year, the Society was considering
preparing a petition.®® There was another alarm in 1724, when the
Standing Committee was authorised if necessary to send three
representatives to London.®? The Corporation was also very in-
terested and did in fact appoint the committee which went to
London, but the Society paid part of the cost and also made appro-
priate gifts to the Bristol M.P.s and to Alderman Elton, a Merchant
Venturer who sat for Taunton.*® The struggle continued, and at the
end of 1725 the Master had to inform the Hall of yet another scheme
to regulate the trade. The Society and the Corporation jointly
opposed the plan, and the Society paid half the cost.?® In 1729-30,
the Royal Africa Company was again menacing, and the South
Sea Company also attempted to get involved in the trade. This
produced another flurry of activity on the part of the Society in
conjunction with the Corporation, the London merchants and the
merchants of Liverpool.*°® |
Then there was a lull until 1744 when the Commissioners for
Trade and Plantations asked the Mayor to obtain the views of the
principal traders about the African trade. ‘The Mayor forwarded the
letter to the Society, and the Standing Committee prepared an
answer. It said that about 40 Bristol ships a year were engaged in
the trade, that the forts were badly kept by the Royal Africa Com-
pany and were no use to traders, that the Government grant of
£20,000 a year was misued, and that Royal Navy ships would
protect the trade much more effectively.“
No action was taken by the Government at that time, but in 1748
the Bristol M.P.s warned the Society about another scheme for
regulating the African trade, and the Society invited all its members,
and also other Bristolians trading to Africa, to give their views. A
copy of the letter from the M.P.s was left in the Coffee House.*? In
35 H“.B. 4, 24 April 1711, 11 Dec. 1711, 14 Dec. 1711, 20 Dec. 1711, 12 April
1712, 2 Feb. 1713, 10 Nov. 1713. On 10 Nov. 1713, for example, John Day was
instructed to attend Parliament ‘“‘to take care about the Affrica, Tobaccoe and
other trades relating to this City’. A sum not exceeding £200 was voted for his
expenses.
86 77.B. 4, 8 Dec. 1719; 1 Feb. 1720; 20 Dec. 1720.
87 AB. 5, 23 Dec. 1724. 38 HB. 5, 23 Feb. 1725.
39 H.B. 5, 17 Dec. 1725, 10 March 1726, 12 May 1726, 16 June 1726, 20 July
1726, 25 Nov. 1728. Book of Charters 2, 258 for undated petition which probably
refers to this attempt.
40 H.B. 5, 10 Feb. 1729, 13 March 1729, 29 March 1729, 3 Nov. 1729, 28 Nov.
1729, 24 Jan. 1730. Book of Charters 2, 233 ff., 267 ff.
41 77.B. 6, 11 Sept. and 12 Sept. 1744. Book of Charters 2, 289-92.
42 HB. 7, 6 Feb. 1748.
Overseas Trade, Exghteenth Century 133
the next two years there was considerable activity on the part of the
Society and its African Committee. The Society’s view was that the
trade should be open to all, but that it should be regulated by a
company managed by a committee on which there was an equal
number of representatives from Bristol, London and Liverpool. The
admission fee should be fixed by Act of Parliament at 40s. The M.P.s
were to be informed that a joint-stock company would be highly
prejudicial to Bristol.4%
A fierce struggle ensued in which the Society fought side by side
with merchants from London, Liverpool and other ports.44 There
was a great deal of petitioning and lobbying, and what emerged was
very satisfactory from the point of view of Bristol traders. A new
African Company was established to handle the Government grants
for the maintenance of the African forts. Any one might join on
payment of 40s., and the managers of the Company were to consist
of 9 representatives, of whom 3 were to be elected by members in
London, 3 by Liverpool and 3 by Bristol. 45
The Act of 1750 in some degree decreased the direct responsibility
of the Merchant Venturers for protecting Bristol’s interests in the
African trade, since there were now in Bristol three representatives
elected by the whole body of members of the new African Company,
many of whom were not Merchant Venturers. Nevertheless, the
Society continued to take a great interest in the African trade in
spite of the existence of this separate pressure group.*¢ From the very
beginning, it maintained close contact with it and with the African
Committee of Nine in London. The Society’s Clerks Samuel Worrall
and, later, Jeremiah Osborne collected the fees of the Bristol members
of the African Company, attended the annual meetings for the
election of the Bristol representatives, and returned the names of
those elected to London.*’ In the early days of the new arrangement,
43 HB. 7, 26 Feb. 1748, 17 March 1748. Book of Charters 2, 313, 315.
44 H.B. 7, 25 March 1748, 28 Jan. 1749, 9 May 1749, 29 July 1749, 2 Sept.
1749, 9 Sept. 1749, 21 Oct. 1749, 23 Oct. 1749, 28 Oct. 1749, 30 Oct. 1749,
20 Nov. 1749, 9 Dec. 1749, 14 Dec. 1749, 13 Jan. 1750, 22 Jan. 1750, 27 Jan. 1750,
2 Feb. 1750, 12 March 1750. See also the letters and petitions printed in Min-
chinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 67-9, 71-6.
45 Statutes at Large, vi, 497-8. There are copies of the Act in the Society’s
records.
46 The bundles of papers long stored by the Society in a box marked African
Trade relate primarily to the Society’s dealings with the African Company’s Com-
mittee of Nine in London. The Committee sent its annual accounts to the Clerk
and these throw light on Bristol membership of the Company. 156 Bristolians
joined the Company before 30 June 1750. There were 90 admissions for Bristol in
1754 and 32 in 1755. Thereafter, there was a small number of new members year
by year (Bundle A).
47 Box marked African Trade: Bundle C. Society’s Letters, bdle. 7, letter from
African Office in London to Worrall about the elections, 5 May 1762; bdle. 26,
134 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the Society negotiated with the Committee of Nine for repayment of
the expenses of the Society in connection with procuring the Act of
Parliament, and also helped the local branch over its teething
troubles at a time when “‘the said Company had no stocks in their
Corporate Capacity for the payment of such Expenses’’.*8
On African matters, the Society dealt both with the African
Committee in London and directly with the Bristol M.P.s. At the
request of the three Bristol representatives of the Company, it wrote
to Robert Nugent in support of the view that the Government should
continue its grant for the maintenance of the forts, and in 1762 it
backed the Company’s request to the Government for better pro-
tection for the trade.*® It collected evidence about the trade for the
Bristol M.P.s in 1770, and it was consulted by Lord Clare in 1772
about its views on a proposal that no one should have a vote for the
election of members of the African Committee of Nine unless he had
£500 actually employed in the trade. The Standing Committee
supported this view and suggested that members should be required
to take an oath to this effect on election day. It evidently had no
love for the small trader.5° When the export of gunpowder and arms
was prohibited in 1756 and 1774, the Society protested that this
would harm the African trade, and asked that it might be permitted
on certain conditions.5! When in 1777, the African Committee in
London asked for views about a petition on the bad state of the trade
and enquired whether the Bristol merchants were satisfied with the
protection they received, the Society consulted Liverpool with a view
to joint action.5? In 1786, it decided if necessary to support the
London Committee of Nine in complaints about French encroach-
ments at Amissa, and in 1787 it backed it in its protests about out-
rages committed by the natives.5* In these and in other matters
there was close liaison between the Society and the new organisation.
Although the main issue had in fact been settled by the Act of
1750, there was always danger that the trade, or part of it, might
be again restricted as a result of special pleading by interested
letter from African Office to Osborne, telling him about his duties. He received
I guinea for attending to the annual election, 5s. for cleaning the Hall, and
£2 2s. 6d. for every new freeman admitted, 17 May 1787.
48 HB. 8, 31 July 1754, 30 Nov. 1754, 5 March 1755, 24 July 1755. H.B. 9,
6 Jan. 1763, 24 March 1763; African Trade box, Bdle. F, 24 July 1755.
49 HB. 8, 27 March 1756; 15 March and 24 March 1762; Minchinton, Port
and Politics, p. 95.
50 Hf.B. 9, 11 March 1772; H.B. 10, 1 March 1773. For correspondence on this
subject between John Arbuthnot and Paul Farr, see African Trade Box, Bdle. C.
For two letters from Lord Clare, see Society’s Letters, bdle. 16, 5 March and 12
March 1772. Clare was opposed to the proposal of limiting voting rights.
51 Book of Charters-2, 335, 338, 6 July 1756; H.B. 10, 31 Oct. 1774, 21 Nov. 1774.
52 H.B. 10, 17 Feb. 1777, 19 March, g Feb. 1778, 23 Feb. 1778.
53 HB. 11, p. 255, 7 Nov. 1786; p. 288, 16 Jan. 1787.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 135
parties. The dreaded monopoly might be restored. Thus, in 1773
there was correspondence with Lord Clare about an African bill.
There was a fear that those behind it might really be aiming at a
joint-stock company — “‘they now only nibble at what they mean to
subvert”. The great City of London was espousing the bill “‘and by
espousing it render it ten Times more suspicious’”.54 When the
Society received information from London in 1779 that a committee
of the House of Commons intended to report in favour of a joint-
stock company, it hastened to seek support from Liverpool and
alerted its M.P.s and other interested supporters. ®5
Resistance was also offered to a proposal put forward in the
seventeen-sixties that the trade of Senegal, which had been taken
from the French, should be placed in the hands of a group of
Londoners. Samuel Touchet, who claimed to have been of great
service in its capture, was seeking to obtain special privileges from
the Government. The Society stated that it was opposed to such a
monopoly, which would send up prices. If Touchet had suffered any
loss in the expedition to Senegal, he should be compensated, but the
trade must remain open, preferably under the African Company.
In this matter, the Society cooperated with the African Company’s
representatives in Bristol and with London and Liverpool mer-
chants.°® In 1765, the Society supported a proposal, which became
law, by which the government took over Senegal and Zambia.®’
Another attempt to monopolise the trade of those areas in 1767 was
also resisted,°8 as was a proposal in 1791 to incorporate a company
to trade to Sierra Leone.5?®
The commerce with Africa was, of course, an essential part of the
triangular trade which linked Bristol with Africa and with the West
Indian and American colonies, and both West Indian and African
merchants were concerned about anything which interfered with it.
One hindrance was the practice of a number of colonies of imposing
taxes on the import of slaves. This resulted in action by the Society
on a number of occasions. In 1725, 20 guineas were paid to Mr.
Mereweather in London as part of his charges in helping get a repeal
of an Act of the Assembly of Virginia which imposed duties on
54 Society’s Letters, bdle. 17, Lord Clare, 23 Feb. 1773.
55 H.B. 10, 8 April 1779; Society’s Letters, bdle. 22, Liverpool Chamber of Com-
merce, 12 April 1779; Minchinton, Politics and the Por, p. 14.7.
56 For Touchet and Senegal, see H.B. 9, 6 Jan. 1763, 8 Jan. 1763, 3 Feb. 1763;
Book of Charters 1, 363; H.B. 9, 16 Jan. 1764, 11 Feb. 1764. Society’s Letters, bdle. 8,
Samuel Poirier, Secretary of the African Company, 22 Dec. 1762; 18 March 1763;
bdle. 9, Nugent, 5 March 1766; Poirier, 18 March 1763. Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, pp. 96-8.
57 H.B. 9, 9 March 1765. See African Trade Box for a copy of the Act of 1765.
58 7B. 9, 31 Jan. 1767.
5° HB. 12, p. 125, 7 April 1791; p. 128, 30 April 1791; Book of Petitions, pp. 113 ff.
Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 175.
136 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
negroes and rum.®° Two years later, the Society was active in oppos-
ing a duty on the import of slaves imposed by Jamaica.® Both
Virginia and Jamaica continued to give trouble, and the Society
intervened several times. ®
Of much greater significance were the proposals in the seventeen-
eighties to regulate and to abolish the slave trade. By this time,
Bristol’s share in the trade was small compared with that of Liver-
pool, ®? but many merchants who were not directly involved saw the
threat which abolition of the trade would constitute to the important
West Indian trade, and there was fierce opposition from many
_ quarters.
The first serious danger came in 1788 when Sir William Dolben
introduced a bill to regulate conditions on slave ships and to control
the number of slaves that could be carried. The Society and other
interested parties petitioned against the bill, arguing that “it will
not only very much injure the trade, but will when it shall be known
in our colonies, excite such a spirit of mutiny as to give your peti-
tioners the most serious concern .. .’’.84
Regulation of the trade was bad enough, but there now emerged
a much more menacing proposal to abolish the trade completely.
In 1789, a committee of the Privy Council heard evidence, and a
number of Bristolians gave their views, both favourable and un-
favourable. When the report was published, it was clear that sup-
porters of the slave trade had a formidable case to answer and that
there would be a great deal of support for a bill proposing abolition. ®
Resistance to abolition was not, of course, limited to Bristol. Liver-
pool and London were heavily involved, and the African Company
and the West India Committee in the capital did their best to stir
up opposition among their members in London and in the provincial
ports. In Bristol, West India merchants and those engaged in the
African trade were seriously disturbed, as were industrialists and
60 H.B. 5, 4 March 1725.
61 H7.B. 5, 18 Oct. 1727; 10 Sept. 1728.
62 HB. 5, 4 Oct. 1728, 3 Jan. 1732, 11 May 1732, 17 May 1732; H.B. 6, 26 Nov.
1733, 19 Jan. 1736, H.B. 9, 6 Feb. 1770; H.B. ro, 31 Oct. 1774, 13 March 1775;
Book of Charters 2, 27, 275; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 24-5, 25-6, 37-8.
68 Clearances from Bristol for Africa were 16 in 1785, 20 in 1786, 31 in 1787 and
17 in 1788, of which between a half and one third were slaving voyages. Peter
Marshall, The Anti-Slave Trade Movement in Bristol, Bristol Branch of the Historical
Association, 1968, p. 1.
64 The petition is printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 162-3. When
Liverpool asked for help with its expenses, the Society replied that it had sent its
own representatives and that Liverpool should approach the African Company.
H.B. 11, p. 446, 24 July 1788; p. 449, 22 Aug. 1788. See also the Society’s Letters,
bdle. 28, Stephen Fuller from London, 7 July 1788. He has received the petition
against the bill and delivered it to the Duke of Chandos.
65 Peter Marshall, op. cit., p. 9.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 137
plantation owners in and around the city. London and Liverpool
in large measure supplied the leadership for a national campaign.
The role of the Society of Merchant Venturers was largely that of a
coordinator between Bristol opponents of abolition, many of whom
were not Merchant Venturers, and the leaders of the national
campaign.
The Standing Committee was informed on 3 April 1789 that the
House of Commons would consider total abolition of the trade on
23 April. It decided to put an advertisement in the Bristol and Bath
papers asking all interested in the trade or in the manufactures
connected with it or in the welfare of the West. Indian islands to
meet in the Hall on 13 April.6 At that meeting, ‘‘a very numerous
and respectable Body of Merchants Manufactures and others resid-
ing in this City and its neighbourhood” passed a number of resolu-
tions and set up a committee of 47 members to prepare petitions
against abolition.” The Committee of 47 consisted of African
merchants, West India merchants and planters, and manufacturers.
Rather less than half of the total were Merchant Venturers.®
It was decided on 15 April that the Minutes of the meeting on
13 April should be printed in the Bristol and Bath papers and in two
London papers — the Diary and the Public Ledger. Three separate
petitions were to be prepared — from the African merchants, from
the West India merchants and planters, and from the industrialists,
and three sub-committees were set up for this purpose. On 22 April
there was a meeting at the Hall to settle the petitions, and the drafts
were sent to the Clerk to be copied. Letters were also sent to the
M.P.s for Somerset and Gloucestershire. There was another meeting
in the Clerk’s Office on 25 April when it was ordered that the peti-
tions should be sent by mail coach to London the next day. The final
entry in the Minute Book of this ad hoc committee was on 3 June
1789 when the West India merchants argreed to raise a fund by
paying 6d. on every hogshead and puncheon imported.
Not only did the Society help the Committee of 47 by making the
Hall available for meetings and by providing the services of its
Clerk, but it also campaigned independently. A General Hall of
25 April 1789 approved a petition “praying that a Commerce, which
constitutes so considerable a part of the trade of the Kingdom, and
66 Ff.B. 11, p. 498, 3 April 1789.
8? The proceedings of this Committee are preserved in the Merchants’ Hall in a
paper-covered book marked ‘“‘Slave Trade’’ with a label ‘‘Meetings of the W.I.
Society 1789”. They begin with the meeting in the Hall on 13 April and conclude
with a meeting on 3 June 1789. There is also a good deal of information in the
papers in the box marked African Trade, Bdle. G, including a list of the 47 members
of the Committee.
88 Based on an examination of the names given in African Trade Box, Bdle. G.
In a few cases, there is difficulty about identification.
138 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
on which the existence of the West India Islands depends, may not
be abolished nor put under any further Restraints until the same have
undergone that cool and dispassionate Inquiry which so important
a Question demands’”’. The Standing Committee was instructed to
deal with any other petitions that might be required, to send
representatives to London, to correspond with other bodies and to
incur expenses up to £200.°®
One of the Bristol merchants who was active against abolition,
Lowbridge Bright, was not quite happy about the way in which the
petition was handled. Writing to the Clerk, Jeremiah Osborne, on
25 April 1789 he promised to deliver at his office by eleven o’clock
the next day the petition from the African merchants, shipowners
and wholesalers as well as the petitions of the West India merchants.
He pointed out that “the Gentlemen have signed their names so very
close that the number does not appear so great as it really is’, and
he thought it would not be improper to say in a covering letter that
the signatures were of those materially concerned, and to magnify
the number and importance by pointing out that the petitions were
independent of “‘the seals of two great publick Bodies”. They could
not fail to show “how large a part of the people of Property and
Consequence in this City are Enemies to the propos’d total Aboli-
tion’’.7°
Wilberforce opened the battle in Parliament on behalf of the
abolitionists on 12 May, and on the same day there were presented
to the House six petitions from Bristol against abolition, the three
organised by the Committee of 47, one from the Corporation, one
from the Newfoundland Merchants, and one from the Society.” The
M.P.s for Bristol, Matthew Brickdale and Henry Cruger, kept the
opponents of abolition informed of what was going on through
the Society of Merchant Venturers,’2 and at the same time the Society
took steps to protest against a proposal to reduce further the number
of slaves which could be carried in a ship.”8 In the face of deter-.
mined opposition, the attempt to abolish the slave trade failed. By
the time it was abolished in 1806, Bristol had ceased to be involved
to any extent in the trade.’4
The West India trade, which was much more important and much
more lucrative than the rather risky African trade, received much
69 H.B. 11, pp. 505, 506, 25 April 1789. It may seem surprising that only 14 mem-
bers were present. Possibly some of the others felt that they had already done their
bit in other petitions.
70 African Trade Box, Lowbridge Bright to Jeremiah Osborne, 25 April 1789.
71 Peter Marshall, of. cit., p. 13.
72 Peter Marshall, op. cit., pp. 13-15.
73 ALB. 11, p. 516, 3 July 1789.
74 For the reasons, see Peter Marshall, op. cit., pp. 22 ff.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 139
less attention from the Society, not because it did not matter so
much, but because it presented fewer problems.’* It was not
threatened by a monopolistic Company and it did not raise any
issues as controversial as the proposed abolition of the slave trade.
All colonial trade was, of course, regulated by the Acts of Trade
which channelled colonial produce through the mother country
and prohibited direct trade between the colonies and other countries,
including Ireland. The system suited English merchants very well,
since it placed them in the happy position of middlemen for the
re-export of colonial produce, and it was not seriously challenged in
the eighteenth century. Only occasionally was it necessary for the
Society to take action. In 1726, it petitioned the King about the
Jamaica trade, alleging that the Dutch and the French were trading
illegally with the island and competing with British manufactures.’®
- In 1739, it opposed a bill to allow the colonies to export sugar direct
to foreign markets and protested that this ‘“‘would be of the utmost
ill-consequence to the petitioners . . . and a-great destruction of
trade and navigation ...’’.”” As we have seen, the Society took a very
strong line in the seventeen-seventies when the Government was
forced to modify the regulations about colonial trade for the benefit
of Ireland, and on that occasion the merchants suffered a defeat.7®
In the first part of the century, there was a good deal of interference
with British ships trading to the West Indies by Spanish cruisers and
coastguards which arrested the ships and committed “depredations”’
against vessels which, they alleged, were trading illegally with the
Spanish colonies. The Society intervened on numerous occasions in
an attempt to get redress for ‘Spanish depredations’’. When in 1725
Mr. Lionel Lyde reported that his ship the Anna Maria had been
intercepted by Spanish coastguards when coming from Jamaica, the
Society set up a committee to look into this and other outrages and
drew up a petition. Spanish interference with the Jamaica trade
continued to give trouble, and other petitions were presented on a
number of occasions in the seventeen-twenties and seventeen-
thirties.7® Such complaints formed part of the great volume ot
protest from English merchants which helped lead to war with Spain
in 1739.
A number of other relatively small issues required action by the
75 For the number of ships involved, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 181,
and The Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, p. 3.
78 Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 23, 24.
77 Ibid., pp. xxx, 50-1. See also H.B. 6, 22 March 1739 and H.B. 9, 15 March
1766.
78 See pp. 128-30.
79 For the Lyde case, see H.B. 5, 9 July 1725, 20 July 1725, 19 April 1726. For
petitions against Spanish depredations, see Minchinton, Port and Politics, pp. 22,
23, 26, 39-41, 45-6, 47, 48-50. See also, Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 188-90.
140 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Society. Although it supported the principles behind the Acts of
Trade, it saw the advantage of allowing foreign colonies to bring
their produce to certain ports in the West Indies where it would be
available for export to England, and it therefore backed bills in
1766 and later to make Dominica, Jamaica, Barbados and Antigua
“free ports” for this purpose.8° The Merchant Venturers were also
concerned with anything which affected the economy or political
well-being of the islands with which they had so valuable a trade.
In 1754, they supported an application from merchants in Jamaica
for the removal of the seat of government from Spanish Town to the
more convenient Kingston,®! and in 1767 they endorsed a petition
from Liverpool that Dominica should be independent of Grenada.®?
They backed a proposal in 1773 to encourage foreigners to lend
money to owners of estates in the West Indies,*? and they were
outraged by a suggestion in 1781 that the Government should
confiscate all private property in the captured islands of St. Eustatius
and St. Martin. They thought that “‘the well-grounded and estab-
lished policy of every nation of Europe holds sacred in time of war
the property of individuals . . .”. Moreover, English as well as
foreign capital was involved. 4 in I 789, when they were informed by
an agent in Jamaica that there was great fear that the enemy would
attack the island, the Standing Committee was instructed to con-
sider the matter, and letters were to be sent to the M.P.s.85 When
the war was over, they were so concerned about the economy of the
West Indies that they petitioned for a modification of the Acts of
Trade so that the trade in rum, lumber and provisions between
America and the islands need not be entirely restricted to British-
built ships.8¢ Their opposition to the proposed abolition of the slave
trade arose partly from a fear that it might lead to serious disorders
in the West Indies and have damaging effects on the economy of the
islands.
The trade with the American mainland was of great importance
to Bristol until the outbreak of trouble in the colonies in the seventeen-
seventies resulted in a drastic decline from which it did not fully
80 7.B. 9, 2 April 1766; H.B. ro, 12 Feb. and 26 Feb. 1774; H.B. 11, p. 130,
26 March 1785. Their petitions for 1766, 1774 and 1785 are printed in Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, pp. 124-6, 155. There are a considerable number of references
to this issue in the Hall Books and Letters. |
81 H.B. 9, 12 June 1754, 2 Sept. 1754, 30 Dec. 1754; Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, pp. 81-2.
82 H7.B. 8, 10 Aug. 1767, 17 Aug. 1767, 4 Feb. 1768.
88 Society’s Letters, bdle. 17, Brickdale, 23 Jan. 1773; Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, p. 122.
84 For their petition, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 150.
85 H.B. 10, 6 May 1782.
86 The petition of 14 June 1784 is printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp.
152-3-
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century Iq!
recover, even after the Peace of 1783. In 1764 52 ships out of a total
of 343 cleared the port for North America, as compared with 53 for
the West Indies and 32 for Africa.8’ For Bristol, the plantation trade
with Virginia and South Carolina was far more important than the
trade with the northern colonies, but anything that went on in
America was of concern to Bristolians if it affected their trade, and
from time to time the Society intervened to influence parliamentary
and governmental policy.
In the early seventeen-thirties there was a great deal of controversy
about whether molasses from foreign colonies might be sent direct
to Great Britain and her colonies, and when the Government was
considering action which eventually led to the Molasses Act of 1733,
the Society intervened and sent representatives to London to support
alternative proposals.®* In 1731 and 1732, it complained about the
difficulty in recovering debts due to British merchants in America,®®
and in 1736 it agreed to cooperate with London in opposing a plan
by which Carolina could raise £210,000 in paper credit.®° In the
same year, it supported legislation to encourage the import of
plantation cotton. *!
Industrial development in the American colonies was permissible,
provided it did not compete with English interests, and in 1750, in
response to a request from several merchants and others not free of
the Society, the Hall gave support to a bill permitting the import of
American bar and pig iron into the port of London, duty free. It
argued that England was not producing enough herself.9? At the
request of the Bristol iron merchants, it paid a share of the cost of an
application to Parliament in 1757 that this privilege should be
extended to other ports besides London.®? On the other hand,
industrial development which competed with English manufactures
must be resisted, and in 1773 the Society joined in the successful
opposition to a plan to allow steel to be made in America and
exported to Britain.®4
Other miscellaneous activities by the Society in relation to
America included consideration of proposals to take off the duties on
87 For this and other figures, see Minchinton, The Trade of Bristol, p. 181; The
Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, p. 3.
88 HB. 5, 2 Jan. 1733, 9 Jan. 1733, 14 March 1733; Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, pp. xxx, 41-2.
89 HB. 5, 14 Dec. 1731, 3 Jan. 1732. The petition is printed in Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, pp. 36-7.
90 77.B. 6, 10 Sept. 1736.
*1 The petition is printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 43-4.
2 H.B. 7, 20 March 1750, 22 March 1750; Minchinton, Politics and the Port,
pp. xxv, 76. |
93 Hf.B. 8, 19 Jan. 1757.
°4 HB. 10, 23 Feb. 1773; Society’s Letters, bdle. 17, 26 Feb. 1773 from Clare and
from Brickdale; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 123.
142 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
pearl and potash imported from Carolina, to alter the laws in
Virginia relating to the payment of debts, to permit the import of
foreign sugar when colonial sugar exceeded a certain price, and to
give a bounty on the import of raw silk from America.®® Further,
since the unsatisfactory state of the American currency was a griev-
ance for the merchants as well as for the colonists, the Master was
instructed in 1767 to write to Lord Clare to ask him to promote and
accelerate the granting of liberty to the colonies to issue paper
money under proper regulations. It was argued that if the colonists
had a satisfactory paper currency, they would probably remit to
England the bullion which at present they kept for their own needs. °°
Such issues were in the ordinary run of business, and it was not
until the mid-seventeen-sixties that the American trade presented
the Society with any major problems. Even before the passing of the
Stamp Act in 1765, the Society was concerned about the state of
trade, and in March of that year it petitioned parliament and
suggested various remedies.®?7 When the Stamp Act damaged trade
still further, the Society joined with others in the attempt to secure
its repeal, and this succeeded in 1767.°°
The repeal of the Stamp Act, however, did not end the trouble,
for the issues were extremely complicated, and many questions were
involved, quite apart from that of whether it was reasonable to ask
the prosperous colonies to make some contribution to imperial
defence. It was not a matter of one side being clearly right and the
other clearly wrong, and in any case the issues, and the emphasis
placed on them, changed a great deal in the years between the
passing of the Stamp Act in 1765 and the American Declaration of
Independence in 1776.°®
In these years, the Society was torn between its desire to restore
the trade to its former prosperity and its view that the Government
95 H.B. 7,11 Feb. 1751 (pearl and potash from Carolina);.21 Oct. 1751 (debts
in Virginia); H.B. 8, 19 March 1753 (foreign sugar). For American raw silk, see
H.B. 9, 22 Jan. 1770; Society’s Letters, bdle. 13 from Brickdale, 24 April 1769; bdle.
14, 17 Jan. 1770; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 112-13.
96 HB. 9, 25 Feb. 1767.
97 H.B. 9, 12 March 1765, 13 March 1765. Society’s Letters, bdie. 9, from
Nugent, 7 March and 12 March 1765. The petition is printed in Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, pp. 100-1.
98 For its correspondence with the London Committee, with Birmingham and
Liverpool and with the M.P.s Jarritt Smith and Nugent, see the Society’s Letters,
bdle. 10, 4 Dec. 1765, 6 December 1765, 26 Dec. 1765, 31 Dec. 1765, 17 March
1766, 18 March 1766, 22 March 1766.
®® For a study of Bristol’s attitude to the complex American question, see
Wesley Savage, ‘““The west-country and the American mainland, 1763-1783, with
special reference to the merchants of Bristol”, Oxford B. Litt. thesis, 1952. See also
P. T. Underdown, Bristol and Burke, p. 10 ff., and bibliographical notes in Min-
chinton, Politics and the Port, p. xxxviii and Trade of Bristol, p. xxv.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 143
was trying to behave sensibly when confronted with unreasonable
demands. Its attitude was ambiguous and it was in no position to
give a clear lead to the merchant community of Bristol. There was,
moreover, a division of opinion between the city’s M.P.s, Edmund
Burke and Henry Cruger, on whether a conciliatory policy should
be followed. The Society itself was divided and was unwilling to put
itself at the head of those merchants in Bristol who supported
Burke.1°° On the other hand, unless something was done, the
disastrous commercial situation would become even worse. The
Society’s concern about trade was shown in a letter which the Master
sent to Matthew Brickdale, M.P., on 22 January 1770. He pointed
out that the merchants had orders from America worth £2 million,
but that these were conditional on the Revenue Act being repealed.
Moreover, South Carolina was threatening to stop the importation
of negroes.!° Lord Clare was told that unless the M.P.s could help,
“our Trade to North America must remain in its present melan-
choly situation”’.!°2 Nevertheless, there was hesitation in supporting
demands for conciliation. No action was taken in November 1774
when seven merchants trading to America asked the Master to call a
Hall to consider certain proposals,!°? and there was hesitation about
backing a petition drafted by Burke in January 1775. On 11 January
1775, 37 members were present when a motion to petition the House
of Commons ‘“‘passed in the negative on the Masters casting voice’’.
Nevertheless, it was decided to meet about American affairs next
Monday and “finally to determine the conduct of the Society touch-
ing the same... .”’.!°4 Thirty-four members were present, and the Hall ©
decided that two representatives from “the committee of the Mer-
chants of this City at large”, who were waiting outside, should be
called in. A motion that the petition drafted by Burke should be
approved was carried by 25 votes tog. The petition pointed out the im-
portance of the American trade, deplored the disturbances to which it
had been subjected, and left it to the wisdom of the house to take what
steps seemed best to close “‘the destructive breaches made in their
trade. ..’’.195 The Bristol petition, together with petitions from other
towns, was ordered by the House of Commons to lie on the table.
100 Pp, T, Underdown, Bristol and Burke, pp. 10 ff, for a summary of the position
in Bristol. ;
101 Tetter Book 1747-1780, 22 Jan. 1770.
102 Jbid., 6 Feb. 1770.
108 Society’s Letters, bdle. 19, 24 Nov. 1774.
104 77,.B, ro, 11 Jan. 1775. |
105 The petition is printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 130-2. Dr.
Underdown’s statement about Burke’s petition (Bristol and Burke, p. 12) that “the
delaying tactics of the Master and committee of the Society of Merchant Venturers
bade fair to secure its rejection, for a second Hall (at which non-members were
present to ensure a pro-Burke majority) had to be convened before the petition was
adopted. . . .”? seems to me to go far beyond the evidence.
144 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The Society ignored Burke’s request for further action to assist his
policy of conciliation. On 19 April 1775 the first skirmish took place
at Lexington, and war was more or less inevitable. It is perhaps
symbolic of the ambivalent attitude of the Society towards the
American problem that on 13 March 1775 it conferred the freedom
of the Hail on Edmund Burke, the protagonist of conciliation, and
on 10 November 1775 on Lord North whose government had decided
on a policy of coercion. When, at the end of 1775, the Government
prepared legislation to end all trade with the American colonies,
the Society petitioned, not against the bill itself, but for leave to
export provisions to the West Indies and Newfoundland and for
permission to make suitable arrangements regarding business
actually in hand.°6 On 18 January 1777, 32 members were present
when the Hall voted by 25 votes to 6 to address the King on the
success of his arms in America.197
The Newfoundland trade was not of major importance, and did not
take up a great deal of the Society’s time in this period. Only 14
ships cleared Bristol for Newfoundland in 1764. The figures fluctu-
ated a good deal and were as high as 28 in 1775 and 25 in 1790, but
this was small compared with the total number of ships leaving
Bristol.1°® Some of the ships made returns direct to Bristol, but others
took their fish to Spain, Portugal and the Mediterranean, and
returned to Bristol with oil, fruit and wine. There were no very
controversial issues, and intervention by the Society was necessary
on only a few occasions. In 1711, the Standing Committee was
instructed to consider petitioning the Council of Trade and Planta-
tions about the trade to Newfoundland and Africa. It decided that
there should be a petition, and it was empowered to draw one up
about Newfoundland and other matters and to employ a solicitor in
London.’ It is not clear whether it actually sent it in its own name,
for the petition in the records of the Council of Trade and Planta-
tions is not from the Society as such but from Samuel Shaw and 28
other merchants of Bristol trading to Newfoundland. It suggested
that Great Britain ought to obtain “the sole benefitt of the Fishery
and trade to Newfoundland” and that the peace negotiations which
were in hand presented the best opportunity for.regaining the trade
to this kingdom.
106 FB. 10, 2 Dec. 1775, 14 Dec. 1775, 5 Feb. 1776. For the petitions, see Min-
chinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 136-7, 139. :
107 Hf.B. 10, 18 Jan. 1777.
108 For these and other figures, see Minchinton, Trade of Bristol, p. 181; The
Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, p. 3.
109 HB. 4, 11 Dec. 1711, 14 Dec. 1711, 20 Dec. 1711; Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, p. 9.
1° Cal. S.P. Colonial, America and the West Indies, no. 234, p. 185.
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 145
In the seventeen-sixties, at the request of the Commissioners of
Trade and Plantations, the Society considered a proposal to erect
forts to protect the fisheries, and, after consulting Dartmouth and
Poole, also gave its opinion that the establishment of civil govern-
ment in Newfoundland would not be of any help to the fisheries.1
The Society was also concerned at this time about the prohibition of
the export and import of rum in vessels of less than 100 tons. It
argued that the Newfoundland trade was adversely affected, as
smaller vessels were often employed in it.42
Four other trades received some attention from the Society in the
eighteenth century. They were the areas controlled by chartered
companies — the Levant Company, the East India Company, the
Hudson Bay Company and the South Sea Company. Bristolians
were in fact engaged only in the first of these trades, but the Society
was involved with the other companies because it hoped their
monopolies might be broken.
The privileges of the Society’s ancient enemy, the Levant Com-
pany, had survived intact the onslaught on foreign-trading com-
panies at the end of the seventeenth century. Bristolians had won
limited rights of trading to the Levant in the seventeenth century,
and it was evidently necessary to safeguard the rights of the city in
1741 when a bill concerning the Levant Company came before
Parliament. It was proposed that copies of the Society’s charters
should be sent to London and that a saving clause recognising its
rights should be inserted in the bill..? Ten years later, when the
Society received information from Liverpool that there was a possi-
bility of opening the trade, a committee which was instructed to
examine the charters reported that members of the Hall had a right
to trade to any port to which the Levant or Turkey Company
traded.114 Eventually, the attack on the Company met with some
success. It was not abolished, but the conditions for membership
were considerably relaxed.1!5 In this attack, the Society was only
one of a number of pressure groups. It is probable that it joined in
to assert its dislike of monopolistic companies rather than because
Bristol interests were deeply concerned.
The monopoly of the East India Company was of interest to the ©
Society on occasions, partly because it was a monopoly and partly
111 77.B. 9, 24 Dec. 1762 (given in error as Nov.); 3 Jan. 1763, 13 Dec. 1763,
10 Jan. 1764. |
112 For the petition of 4 April 1766, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 106,
107.
is H.B. 6, 2 April 1741.
114 HB. 7, 11 and 13 Feb. 1751.
115 Statutes at Large, vii, 24.
146 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
because the actions of the Company could have adverse affects on
Bristol. In 1721, the Hall was informed by Joseph Earle, a Merchant
Venturer and M.P. for Bristol, that the Company had made certain
representations to the Commissioners of Trade and Plantations, and
the Standing Committee was instructed to prepare petitions if
necessary."'® Twenty years later, another Merchant Venturer M.P.,
Sir Abraham Elton, wrote to the Hall about the high price of salt-
petre. He argued that the East India Company was the sole importer
and put up the price. This harmed merchants who were fitting out
ships of war or who were engaged in the African trade, and it in-
duced people to get supplies from Holland, where they also laid out
money on foreign manufactures. He wanted the Hall to join Liver-
pool and other ports in petitioning Parliament for liberty to import
saltpetre from any country.1!’ As instructed, the Standing Committee
drew up a petition, but it was not apparently presented.118
There was also difficulty about certain other goods imported by
the East India Company which were required for the African trade.
Robert Nugent reported in 1765 that he had suggested in Parliament
that there was a scarcity in Bristol and Liverpool of some of the
things necessary to make up the assortments sent to the African coast
and that this led to merchants being driven to buy them in the Isle
of Man and in Holland. He blamed the East India Company and
also the high duty on things such as beads, and he suggested that
permission should be given to import them from elsewhere if our
own East India Company did not supply them in sufficient quantities.
Certain goods might be imported duty free and put in bonded
warehouses until they were required for the African market. He
asked for comment and information to be supplied quickly, adding
“The time is short, but I know you are always well prepared’”’.11®
A more fundamental issue was raised in a letter from Liverpool
merchants which the Standing Committe considered on 18 F ebruary
1768. It proposed that there should be an extension of the trade to
Asia by increasing the stock and by allowing Bristol, Hull, Glasgow
and Liverpool to participate. It said that Liverpool had appointed
representatives to go to London, and it asked Bristol to do likewise.12°
Liverpool by this time was said “‘to vie with Bristol in riches’?,121
and this proposal from a dangerous rival was not at first received
with enthusiasm. The Standing Committee returned the lukewarm
116 H.B. 4, 4 March 1721. It is not clear what this was about. There had been
an appeal to the House of Commons to open the trade in 1 719 (Commons’ Fournals,
xix, 79). 117 HB. 6, 12 Feb. 1741.
118 For the petition, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 53-4.
119 HB. 9, 14 Jan. 1765, 6 March and 12 March 1765. Society’s Letters, bdle. 9,
Nugent to the Society, 12 Jan. 1765.
120 77.B. 9, 18 Feb. 1768; Commons’ Journal, xxxii, 102.
121 Historical Manuscripts Commission: Verulam, p- 271.
Overseas Trade, Exghteenth Century 147
and non-committal answer that it had not heard of the proposal, but
that it would be ready to join in any measure to extend commerce.!2?
Three months later, a General Hall at which 29 members were
present considered the plan about Asiatic commerce which was
intended ‘‘to make it as extensive and consequently as national as the
nature of that Commerce will bear . . .”, and the Standing Com-
mittee was instructed to consider it further.128 The matter came up
again in June when Liverpool proposed that the outports should
agree to petition against the renewal of the East India Company’s
Charter and that they should be allowed a share in the trade, or at
least to trade to the newly-conquered parts of India. Liverpool also
suggested that deputies should go to London from Bristol, Liverpool,
Hull, Glasgow and Leith. In July, after obtaining further informa-
tion from Liverpool, the Hall decided that the Master and any
others interested should go to London to meet representatives from
other ports, and it voted £50 to Mr. Harris for his trouble in coming
to Bristol about the matter.124 In Parliament, where the East India
interest was strong, the proposal aroused no enthusiasm, and
Brickdale reported the ill-success of the plan and remarked that the
House thought it very strange to receive petitions to open a trade
established by Charter under an Act of Parliament.125 The Society
probably felt few regrets. It had intervened only because it felt that
if there was to be something for the outports, it ought to be involved.
Bristol’s interest in the South Sea Company arose because of the
competition which that Company offered to those engaged in the
African slave trade. The South Sea Company was a joint-stock
company incorporated in 1710, with a monopoly of the trade to a
large part of South America. In 1713, it acquired the right to supply
4,800 negroes a year to the Spanish colonies for a period of 30 years.
It apparently secured its slaves by trading directly to Africa instead
of by buying them in the West Indies from those already engaged in
the trade. In 1720, the Master reported to the Hall that the African
trade was in danger of being monopolised by the Company or some
other interest, and that the Mayor and Common Council had asked
him and two others to go to London to try to prevent it. The
Standing Committee was instructed to correspond with the Master,
to pay half the charge of the deputation, and to draw up a petition.1?®
The issue was raised again in 1729 when some members complained
122 77.B. 9, 18 Feb. 1768.
(123 FB. 9, 28 April 1768.
124 77.B. 9, 30 June and 5 July 1768.
125 Society’s Letters, bdle. 13, Brickdale to the Society, 13 Dec. and 15 Dec. 1768.
Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 111.
126 HB. 4, 1 Feb. 1720; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 10.
148 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
that the South Sea Company was still carrying on the slave trade to
the detriment of traders in general in Bristol. On 13 March 1729,
three representatives were appointed to go to London, and a petition
was prepared on 22 March. It argued that the South Sea Company
had no right to engage in the African trade and that it had no need
to do so, since it could obtain all the negroes it required in the West
Indies. Moreover, it could buy them there “‘not only much cheaper,
but more certainly”’ and could obtain a “‘properer assortment than
it is possible for them to import themselves’. The Society main-
tained that the Company was aiming at “beating out the private
merchants” and at securing a monopoly.!2? There were no further
complaints, and in 1750 England made a treaty with Spain by which,
in return for compensation, the South Sea Company surrendered its
right to take slaves to Spanish America.
The monopoly held by the Hudson Bay Company also attracted
brief attention from the Society of Merchant Venturers at one point
in the eighteenth century, not because of any burning desire of
members to trade to Hudson’s Bay, but because the Society felt it
only proper for Bristol to join any attack on a trading monopoly.
In the late seventeen-forties there was widespread criticism of the
Company in parliament, and the Society was asked to participate.128
It decided to prepare a petition asking for the trade to be free and
open, and the arguments it put forward were very similar to those
used in petitions from many other places.12® No doubt they had a
common origin. The attack failed and the monopoly was preserved.
Although in 1765, Mr. Christopher Willoughby said he thought the
Merchant Venturers had a right to trade to Hudson’s Bay and the
Standing Committee was asked to look into the matter and take
action if necessary, nothing more was done.12°
It will be clear from this examination of the Society’s work that
the trade of Bristol was a major preoccupation in the eighteenth
century and that the Society was involved in continual activity to
further the commercial interests of the city. It used every available
means to make its influence felt — sending agents to London, main-
taining contact with individuals and groups in the capital and in
other ports, preparing innumerable petitions and corresponding
with the M.P.s and other influential people. who might help it. It
127 H.B. 5, 13 March 1729; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 27-31.
128 17.B. 7, 1 April 1749. 24 members were present.
129 H.B. 7, 5 April 1749, 26 April 1749 (when a man was sent to London to
help prove the petition and to support the representatives already there); 9 May
1749; 20 July 1752 (when £38 18s. 6d. was still outstanding on the bill for expenses).
For the petition, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. xxvii, 69-70.
180 #7.B. 9, 21 Oct. 1765 (13 members present).
Overseas Trade, Eighteenth Century 149
made use when necessary of the newspapers and of public meetings
for propaganda purposes. It was not the only pressure group in
Bristol, but it was certainly the most influential. It had notable
successes as well as major failures, but it certainly spared no pains
to see that the case for Bristol was put forcibly at the centre of power.
CHAPTER 9
The Port, the River and Navigation in
the Eighteenth Century
THE prosperity of Bristol obviously depended on it having adequate
accommodation for the ships using the port and satisfactory
approaches to the docks from the Bristol Channel and the mouth of
the Avon. The natural disadvantages from which Bristol suffered
became all the more serious in this period when the number and the
size of ships increased considerably.!
The ultimate responsibility for dealing with these problems
belonged to the Corporation of Bristol, but a very special obligation
lay on the Society of Merchant Venturers, because the Corporation
had delegated many of its powers to the Society and had granted it
the right to collect wharfage money in return for an undertaking to
construct and maintain the quays. Moreover, the Society had in
practice made itself responsible for the conservancy of the river, for
providing and maintaining the cranes and for appointing and super-
vising the pilots in the river and the Channel. The Society was not,
therefore, merely a private body without public responsibility.
Much depended on the way in which it handled the problems of the
port and on the kind of leadership which it gave.
In 1712, the Society obtained from the Corporation a new lease of
the wharfage duties for 80 years at a rent of £6 6s. 8d. in return for
an agreement by which the Society gave to the city a ropewalk near
Queen Square which had been a cause of complaint and which the
Corporation was anxious to remove. The Society also agreed to
allow the use of its Hall to members of the Council for public feasts
and entertainments at convenient .times.? The Society thus retained
for a long period its major source of income, and the bargain had no
relevance to improving the port.
In the first half of the century, the Society made some modest
extensions of the quays. In 1700, for example, it ordered the quay to
be extended by not more than 70 feet; in 1717, it decided to lengthen
1 For the port in the eighteenth century, see Alan F. Williams, “Bristol Port
Plans and Improvement Schemes”, Trans. B.G.A.S., lxxxi, 1962; W. Minchinton,
The Port of Bristol in the Eighteenth Century, Bristol Branch of the Historical Associa-
tion, 1962; Charles Wells, A Short History of the Port of Bristol, Bristol, 1909.
2 H.B. 4, 25 June 1712; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 98-9.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century I51
the quay still further, and in 1724 it ordered that two quays should
be built. next summer between the Gibb and the graving place.
£150 was paid to John Clements for building a wall to support the
ground leading to Tombs Dock.? It was not, however, involved in
the enterprise of Joshua Franklyn and other Bristol merchants who,
in 1712, formed a company with 32 shareholders, each paying
approximately £300, to build a floating dock at Sea Mills. This was
only the third floating dock to be built in England. It was small and
had the inconvenience of being some distance from Bristol, but it
was used by privateers and whalers, and it apparently went on until
the seventeen-sixties.4 The Society itself showed no enthusiasm for
such schemes, and when Captain Saunders attended the Hall in
1727 on behalf of the proprietors of a dock intended to be made at
Trym Mills, the Standing Committee expressed the view that it
would be very useful, but that it was not proper for the Hall to
undertake it.®
The Society thus did very little to improve the port during these.
years, and although it could be argued that the general services it
rendered to Bristol justified the collection of wharfage money, only
a very small proportion of that income was directly used to modern-
ise the docks. It was not until the second half of the century that
anyone took the lead in proposing improvements on a larger scale.
The steady rise of trade in the seventeen-fifties and seventeen-sixties
made the matter more urgent,® but the lead was initially taken, not.
by the Society of Merchant Venturers, but by the Corporation. In
1755, a committee of the Common Council pointed out that “‘
human prudence could prevent the growing danger to ships, without
provision be made for further room. . .”.” No further action was
taken at that time, but in August 1757 a committee was appointed
to consider what should be done, and in February 1758 the Corpora-
tion ordered that advertisements should be inserted in the London
papers for someone to survey the Avon and the Frome, with a view
to making part of them into a wet dock. Latimer thought that if the
advertisement produced any plans, the estimated cost probably
3 HB. 3, 18 Dec. 1701; H.B. 4, 20 Feb. 1717, 11 May 1720; H.B. 5, 30 Dec.
1726; H.B. 7, 23 Feb. 1751; Book of Charters 2, 245 ff. and 251 7 for commissions
setting out the new quays.
4 G. E. Farr, ‘“‘Sea Mills Docks, Bristol’’, Mariner’s Mirror, xxv, 1939, pp. 349-
350; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 98, 171, 296. In 1792, the proprietors
of the Sea Mills Docks offered to sell to the Society, but the Hall decided not to
buy (H.B. 12, p. 240, 14 Nov. 1792; p. 245, 3 Dec. 1792).
5 H.B. 5, 27 Feb. 1728.
_ 8 For the relationship between commercial expansion and port improvements,
see Alan F. Williams, “Bristol Port Plans and Improvement Schemes”, Trans.
B.G.A.S., Ixxxi, 1962, pp. 151 ff.
? Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 207; Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 316.
152 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
alarmed the Corporation. He added ‘“‘At all events, it abandoned
all thoughts of a dock, and fell back upon a device which cast deep
discredit upon its authors.”’®
The discreditable “‘device” to which Latimer referred involved
the Society of Merchant Venturers, since he meant the granting to
the Society of a new wharfage lease on terms by which, in Latimer’s
view, the Corporation “surrendered its property in the quays and
wharfage dues for nearly a century, receiving merely a nominal
consideration”’.
Negotiations between the Merchant Venturers and the Corpora-
tion had in fact been going on at least as early as 6 September 1757,
when a General Hall instructed the Standing Committee to meet
the Corporation about enlarging the quays and making one or more
docks.® They did not run smoothly. On 1 June 1758, the Standing
Committee reported agreement, but in October the Corporation
refused to ratify the terms agreed by the Mayor and the Surveyors
of City Lands.1° Agreement was reached on 16 January 1759, but
on 7 January 1761, it was reported to the Hall that the new lease
agreed upon two years earlier had not been signed.12 The Society
was still considering the matter three years later, and the new
wharfage lease was not in fact sealed until 7 November 1764.13 If
Latimer’s view is correct and the Corporation was anxious to shelve
the whole question of a floating harbour, it took its time over the
decision.
Since the possibility of a floating harbour was under general dis-
cussion during these long-drawn out negotiations over the wharfage
lease, the question arises whether the Society, while ostensibly show-
ing an interest in the idea of a floating harbour, was not all the time
secretly trying to do a deal with the Corporation and to obtain a
lease which would benefit the Society, but which would, when made
public, be certain to prejudice, if not entirely destroy, the hopes of
those who wanted a floating harbour.
The chances of something being done about a floating harbour
had, to all appearances, greatly increased-in 1764 when at a meeting
on 25 July in the Guildhall it was decided to raise £30,000 by sub-
scription, if, after consultation with experienced judges and after
plans and estimates had been received, the scheme was thought
practicable. The plans and estimates were to be laid before the Mayor
and Corporation as conservators of the river.!4 Although the Society
had long been negotiating with the Corporation for a very different
8 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 317. ® H.B. 8, 6 Sept. 1757.
10 77.B. 8, 26 Oct. 1758. 11 AB. 8, 16 Jan. 1759.
12 7B. 8, 7 Jan. 1761.
18 H.B. 9, 6 Aug. 1764, 7 Nov. 1764.
14 Alan F. Williams, op. cit., p. 145; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 362.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 153
and much more limited plan, it was ostensibly interested in the
scheme for a floating harbour. In September 1764, when the Hall
was informed that the scheme, “having been under consideration
of several merchants, who intended to attempt the same by sub-
scription” was “‘at a stand for doubts as to its being practical’, it
agreed to join with the Corporation and to give £100 towards the
expense of surveys by able engineers in order to ascertain whether
the scheme could be executed.15 The result of this was a plan, pub- —
lished by John Smeaton in January 1765, which proposed turning
the Frome into a floating harbour by maRing a dam at the point
where it joined the Avon. |
In fact, the Society and the Corporation had already jointly
sabotaged Smeaton’s scheme by signing a new wharfage lease in
November 1764. Although the existing lease had 28 years to run,
the new lease, which was for 99 years, was granted at a token annual
rent in return for the Society agreeing to construct a new quay at
the Grove and a little quay, 130 feet long, at St. Augustine’s Back.1’
Clearly, Smeaton’s scheme did not have much chance of command-
ing confidence or of attracting the necessary capital if the Corpora-
tion and the Society did not give it full support and were committed
to an alternative, and much more limited, scheme of their own.
There were, admittedly, many problems in connection with Smeaton’s
plan,!® but in view of the new wharfage agreement, it was in any
case still-born. Only one third of the £30,000 required by the
promoters was subscribed.!® The project had been sold down the
river by the Corporation and the Society. Nor can it be argued that it
was the practical problems that discouraged the Corporation and the
Merchant Venturers, for Smeaton’s scheme had not been published
when they made their deal, and they had in any case been nego-
tiating for a new wharfage lease for some years before it was finally
signed. At this critical stage in the history of the port, the Society
decided to settle for a relatively modest extension of the port on
terms very satisfactory to itself, and it was very far from giving the
imaginative leadership which might have made major improvements
possible some fifty years before they actually took place.
Smeaton’s plan aroused considerable interest. An alternative plan
was put foward early in 1767 by the Bristolian, William Champion.
It proposed to dam, not the Frome, but the Avon by erecting a dam
at Redcliffe. The cost was estimated at between £30,000 and £37,000
as compared with the estimated cost of £25,000 for Smeaton’s
18 77.B. 9, 20 Sept. 1764 (12 members present), 7 Nov. 1764.
16 Alan F. Williams, op. cit., pp. 146 ff.
17 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 208.
18 Alan F. Williams, of. cit., pp. 146 ff.
19 Ibid., p. 149; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 362.
154 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
scheme. There was a good deal of controversy in Bristol about both
plans, but the Society of Merchant Venturers was not interested. ?°
It was busy with its own much less ambitious scheme. Under the new
wharfage lease, it was committed to extending the existing quays on
the Avon by making a new quay at the Grove.” As early as 1759,
five years before the new lease was signed, it had ordered that a
design should be made for a new dock there,?? and in 1760 it paid
£5 58. to James Bridge for a survey and plan, but the Corporation’s
delay in signing the lease meant that nothing was done. Soon after
the signing of the lease at the end of 1764, the Society ordered a
survey to be made for the new quay,?® but there was further delay.
William Paty’s plans were not finally approved until 25 February
1767, and the Hall then ordered that an advertisement for tenders
should be printed.24 Work began on the Grove, but in August it was
reported that part of the new quay had fallen into the river during
the heavy rains.*5 In November 1767, the quay wall was nearly
complete, but the Grove was not finally ready until 6 November
1770.6 The account for the quay wall and dock was £9,747 5s.74d.27
If the Society had in the first place decided to make an all-out
effort to back the scheme for a floating harbour, this would have
made a sizeable contribution towards the cost, although the balance
of the capital would have had to be raised by other means.
The other port improvement scheme in which the Society was
involved concerned Champion’s Dock, and this should be seen as an
attempt by the Hall to make what it hoped would be a profitable
investment rather than a disinterested effort to improve the port
facilities. In 1765, William Champion had built a floating dock on
the Avon near Rownham. It did not do very well, and in 1770 it
was put up for auction. Some members of the Society in their private
capacities made a successful bid of £2,615 for the dock and £1,420
for the houses and ground adjoining. They then offered it to the
Hall, which accepted the offer and borrowed the necessary money.?°
A committee was set up to manage the property and the dock, which
now became known as the Merchants’ Dock. In the years that
followed, the Society put a great deal of time and energy into
developing its new acquisition, letting the property and planning
20 For a discussion of the many different proposals put forward in the second half
of the eighteenth century, with sketches showing what they involved, see Alan F.
Williams, “‘Bristol Port Plans and Improvement Schemes”, Trans. B.G.A.S.,
Ixxxi, 1962. .
21 For an admirable sketch showing the location of the various docks, quays,
and ports facilities, see Alan F. Williams, op. cit., p. 143.
22 HB. 8, 7 Feb. 1759, 15 Oct. 1760. 23 H.B. 9, 7 Nov. 1764.
24 HB. 9, 18 Feb. 1767, 25 Feb. 1767. 25 HB. 9, 7 Aug. 1767.
26 HB. 9, 15 Nov. 1768, 6 Nov. 1770. 27 ALB. 9, 3 Sept. 1771.
28 HB. 9, 14 June 1770.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 155
improvements.2® The dock had certain disadvantages, including the
fact that it was some distance down the river, but the Society hit
upon a clever idea to ensure that it would be used. It had been
thinking for some years about the desirability of having naval stores
and other combustible material off-loaded away from the heart of
the city, and had argued as early as 1767 that there ought to be a
special quay for such material.®° At first, it thought that a suitable
place was south of the river, opposite to Canon’s Marsh, and it
was prepared to offer a rent of £15 per annum for a lease of 1,000
or 2,000 years. In November 1768, it contracted for the ground
for a wharf, and it intended to apply to the Treasury to make it
a lawful quay.*! However, nothing further was done, and when
Champion’s Dock was acquired in 1770, the Hall decided that
this, rather than the Somerset side of the river, was the ideal place.®?
Again, there was delay, but in December 1775 it finally decided to
apply to parliament for an Act to compel all vessels with tar, pitch,
deals and combustibles to off-load on a wharf on the west side of the
Merchants’ Dock. The Standing Committee approved the draft bill
in January 1776, and it was announced in April that it had passed
both houses.®* Plans were then made to extend the dock to meet the
needs of vessels which would be legally required to off-load there.
There was indeed a real danger of fire from material left on the
quayside in Bristol, and the Hall was delighted that the public
interest fitted in so conveniently with the private interest of the
Society, which thus secured by Act of Parliament a guaranteed
business for the Merchants’ Dock.
It is clear from the voluminous records relating to the Merchants’
Dock and the adjoining property that the management of it took
29 The management of the Merchants’ Dock produced a great deal of paper
work. The records in the Hall include a volume marked Floating Dock which contains
the Standing Committee’s Reports for 1770-5, showing expenditure on plans
and work done there, as well as the grant of leases of the adjoining property; a
volume marked Champions Dock 1771-1780, which is a day by day record by William
Haynes of payments for labour and materials; a volume marked Purchase of Cham-
pions Dock which gives details of the Treasurer’s disbursements for 16 July 1770 —
August 1779; a volume marked Champions Dock Receipt Book 1771-1781 which seems
to be William Haynes’ receipt book for money disbursed; a bundle of papers
marked ‘‘1776—Floating Dock Paty’s Plans and Papers’; a volume marked
Floating Dock Ships Register 1775-6 which has only one page recording 16 ships; and
Journal No. 5 Floating Dock 1799-1807 which gives an account of ships using the
dock and charges made. There are, of course, many references in the Hall Books
and Letters, and there are also a large number of copies of the Floating Dock Act
of 1776.
30 HB. 9, 26 Aug. 1767.
31 HB. 9, 7 Sept. 1767, 15 Nov. 1768.
32 77.B. 9, 6 Nov. 1770.
33 H7.B. 10, 6 Dec. 1775, 16 Jan. 1776, 16 April 1776.
156 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
up a great deal of time and energy, and this may help to explain why
in the seventeen-seventies and early seventeen-eighties the Society
showed no interest in the idea of a floating harbour. From 1770
onwards, the committee was hard at work making plans to improve
the dock, getting surveys and estimates prepared, and paying for
workmen and for materials. The Treasurer’s disbursements from July
1770 to August 1779 amounted to £23,547 8s. 64d., and included
£208 10s. on 30 December 1776 “‘for Charges of a Dinner at the
Merchants Hall when the Society attended the Corporation of the
City on the perambulation to that part of the parish of Clifton which
was separated from the County of Gloucester and added to the said
City’.34 William Haynes’ receipt book shows £2 Ios. paid to William
Paty on 4 May 1771 for surveying and planning, £120 paid for “‘a
new Double Purchase Crane” on 30 October 1775; 193s. gd. for ‘a
Book for Registering the ships entering into the Floating Dock”’
purchased on 28 September 1776, and £31 10s. paid to James Paty
for surveying on 3 November 1778.%5 From the very beginning, the
Committee planned to enlarge the dock and recommended spending
nearly £2,500 on digging it out. In November 1770 it considered
two plans, one for 11 ships and one, by Richard Champion, for 16
ships, and it decided to accept Champion’s proposal. Orders for
further enlargement were given in 1772.86 When it obtained the
Act of 1776 making it compulsory to use the Dock for combustible
materials, the Society hoped that the business would be greatly
increased, and it obtained three estimates varying from £3,934 5s.3d.
to £8,073 19s.3”? The enlarged Dock was ready to receive ships by
May 1778, and Rules and Regulations were drawn up.*®
The management of the Floating Dock and adjoining property
involved many problems, and there are innumerable references to
them in the Hall Books. Thus, in 1781 Mr. Noble’s ship was unable to
get out because the water was too low. Solomon Roach reported that
chips thrown into the dock from the ships collected in the mud at
the gates and prevented them from closing satisfactorily.2® From
time to time, it was necessary to let out the water, clear the mud and
84 Purchase of Champions Dock. The Act of 1776 brought the dock and the adjoin-
ing property, which were in Gloucestershire, into the City of Bristol.
85 Champions Dock Receipt Book 1771-1781.
86 Floating Dock, p. 3, 4 July 1770; p. 7, 6 Nov. 1770; p. 14, 26 March 1772.
37 The papers in the bundle marked ‘“1776-Floating Dock Paty’s Plans and
Papers”’ include some very fine plans, estimates for digging work, the draft of the
Rules and Orders of 28 Aug. 1778 and a very neatly kept book showing expenses in
connection with the river year by year from Christmas 1745 to 1776. The total,
given as £58,122 6s., includes many miscellaneous terms not directly connected
with the river.
88 H.B. 10, 16 April 1776, 22 April 1776, 24 June 1776, 25 May 1778.
89 H.B. 10, 2 May 1781.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 157
carry out repairs. *° In addition to the technical problems, the Society
had to deal with those who evaded the terms of the Act and landed
their combustible materials elsewhere. In 1787, for example, the
Standing Committee was busy investigating the matter, and next
year the Hall complained that the Customs Officers allowed such
goods to be landed at private wharfs “‘to the great prejudice of the
revenue of the Society”. A Memorial to the Customs Office stated
that “‘on the Faith and credit of the said Act”, the Hall had spent a
great deal of money and provided the necessary warehouses. It
asked that such practices should cease.*! Warnings were issued to
those who evaded the Act, but it was not always easy to enforce it.*?
There was some resentment at the power which the Society had
acquired to compel people to use its Dock. Thus, on 28 February
1788, four gentlemen attended the Hall to complain about excessive
charges and presented a Memorial on “‘the General Inconveniencies
which the Trade of this Port laboured under from the Restriction of
the Floating Dock Act’”’.48 There was also the question of the Society’s
responsibility for pilfering at the Dock, and early in 1802 it was
necessary to get counsel’s opinion. It was to the effect that the
Society was responsible for pilfering by its own servants but not by
strangers, unless the Society could be shown to be negligent. *
It is not possible to say how much profit the Society made from
the purchase of Champion’s Dock in 1776. On the credit side must
be put not only receipts from ships using the dock but also the
income received from exploitation of the adjoining property, which
included not only land but various workshops, including a smelting
house, a saw pit, a smaller dock let to Mr. Hilhouse, and a brickyard
and kiln let out in 1783 at £12 per annum, the lessee agreeing to
pay the Society for the clay as he used it. It was then estimated that
the clay amounted to 4,872,296 tons. *®
The proposal to turn one or both of the rivers into a floating
harbour, which had come to nothing in the seventeen-sixties,
revived in the late seventeen-eighties.4* The initiative came from a
40 H1.B. 12, p. 8, 26 Nov. 1789 when the dock was leaking; ibid., p. 43, 11 March
1790, contract to clear the mud; idid., p. 69, 24 Sept. 1790, the Standing Com-
mittee viewed the dock after cleaning; ibid., p. 100, 30 Dec. 1790, the dock was
leaking; ibid., p. 101, 20 Jan. 1791, order for repair; H.B. 13, p. 22, 6 June 1797,
repairs to be carried out; ibid., p. 20, 16 May 1797, accepts estimate for clearing
mud; ibid., p. 129, 18 Feb. 1800, inspection of damage.
41 H.B. 11, p. 318, 6 June 1787; pp. 391-5, 7 Feb. 1788.
42 17.B. 12, pp. 241-2, 14. Nov. 1792; p. 250, 17 Jan. 1793.
43 HB. 11, pp. 397-8, 28 Feb. 1788.
44 Society’s Records: Miscellaneous Box ‘1802, Floating Dock. Opinion of
Mr. Gibbs.”
45 HB. 11, p. 20, 18 March 1783.
46 For the long and complicated story of the Floating Harbour, see Alan F.
Williams, “Bristol Port Plans and Improvement Schemes”, Trans. B.G.A.S.,
158 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
member of the Society, William Miles, who proposed at a meeting
of the Hall on 20 November 1786 that it would be a great public
utility if all the quays were converted into floating docks. The
matter was referred to the Standing Committee.47 There was an
abnormally large attendance of 41 members at this meeting.
William Miles was a comparatively new member who had been
admitted for a fine of £200 in 1783. He had been chairman since its
beginning in 1782 of a small but very vigorous group known as the
New West India Association, and he illustrates the way in which the
introduction of new blood could reinvigorate a slow-moving and
conservative organisation.
Initially, the Standing Committee considered the possibility of
reviving Smeaton’s more modest plan to make the Frome into a
floating harbour rather than Champion’s ambitious scheme to put
a dam across the Avon.‘8 On 6 December 1786, the committee was
informed that Mr. Vickerman, a surveyor, and a Mr. Lundberry
also wished to make proposals, and it decided to ask Smeaton to
name an engineer to examine the problem, and if possible to come
to Bristol himself.4® On 16 December 1786, at a General Hall at
which only 17 members were present, the Standing Committee was
authorised to spend up to 200 guineas on investigating the possi-
bilities, and on 16 January 1787 Smeaton recommended Joseph
Nickalls and William Jessop as possible engineers for the project.5
The cat was now well and truly among the pigeons, and in the course
of the next four years there were numerous proposals, counter-
proposals, critical comments by engineers on each other’s plans, and
a number of estimates of the probable cost. The issue was highly
controversial, and the experts were not in agreement about what to
do or about how much it would cost, so there was some excuse for
leisurely proceedings by those who were not technically qualified.
At last, on 11 October 1791, the Standing Committee requested the
Master to write to the Mayor asking for a meeting to discuss the
proposals with Jessop present, and on 13 October the Standing
Committee settled the State of Facts to be read to the Hall.®1
Only 23 members of the Society were present in the Hall on 13
October 1791 when the various plans of Smeaton and Jessop were
Ixxxi, 1962; R. A. Buchanan, “The Construction of the Floating Harbour in
Bristol: 1804-1809”, ibid., Ixxxviii, 1969; W. G. Neale, At the Port of Bristol, vol. 1,
Bristol, 1968; Charles Wells, A Short History of the Port of Bristol, Bristol, 1909.
4” HB. 11, p. 268, 20 Nov. 1786. For Miles’ admission, see Minchinton, Politics
and the Port, p. 215. For the New West India Association, see pp. 237-8.
48 HB. 11, p. 270, 25 Nov. 1786.
4° H.B. 11, pp. 273-4, 6 Dec. 1786. The Society’s Letter Book 1781-1816 has a
great deal of correspondence about the Floating Harbour, and the bundles of
letters contain many from Smeaton, Joseph Nickalls and William Jessop.
50 HB. 11, p. 287, 16 Jan. 1787. — 51 FB. 12, p. 160, 13 Oct. 1791.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 159
discussed. Nine resolutions were approved. In these, the Society
agreed that the harbour of Bristol was by nature “‘so inferior to the
natural or improved state of many others of the Ports” that the
shipowners were not on an equal footing with other ports with
regard to the security of their ships or the cost of loading, discharging
or going to sea again, and that this led to a large annual loss. On the
prosperity of the port depended in great measure “the welfare and
affluence of the City of Bristol”. The remedy was to erect a dam
across the Avon at Redcliffe and to cut a canal in Rownham Mead,
as in the plans of Smeaton and Jessop, but incorporating some of
Nickall’s modifications. There was every reason to think that the
cost would not be greater than the advantages. There was to be a
toll on the proposed bridge over the dam and a tax on shipping not
exceeding the dock rates paid at Liverpool. The income from these
sources would pay the interest on the capital and make it possible
to create a sinking fund. The work was to be carried out for the sole
advantage of the public by commissioners or trustees. The Society
of Merchant Venturers had been to great expense in getting plans
and estimates, with the sole view of benefiting the public. The
members resolved that “‘they have completed all that is incumbent
upon them as a separate body”, but that they nevertheless consi-
dered it their duty to cooperate with the Corporation and the citizens
at large in perfecting the Plan and carrying it into effect.5?
It was, of course, quite out of question at this stage for the Society
to think of making any substantial contribution to the capital cost
from its own resources, for it was in fact in considerable financial
difficulties. 5* It had in the last five years taken a great deal of trouble
and spent about £1,000 on the work. It was, therefore, reasonable
for it at this point to ask the Corporation to take over, but it was
perhaps misleading of it to represent itself as “‘a separate body”,
since it enjoyed the profits of the wharfage lease which the Corpora-
tion had long since handed over to it at a nominal rent. It might
well be argued that the receipts from wharfage ought to go towards
the cost of any new scheme, but the wharfage lease was a piece of
property which the Society had no intention of surrendering to the
Corporation. It was in fact absolutely dependent on it for financial
solvency.
At the end of 1791, the Corporation endorsed the Society’s State-
ment of Facts and set up a Joint Committee of the Corporation and
the Society.54 On this the Corporation had 6 members and the
52 HB. 12, pp. 161 ff., 13 Oct. 1791. 53 Supra, pp. 117 ff.
54 See R. A. Buchanan, “The Construction of the Floating Harbour in Bristol:
1804-1809”, Trans. B.G.A.S., lxxxvi, 186-7. In the Society’s archives is a volume of
Minutes of Proceedings of the Joint Committee of the Corporation and Society of Merchant
Venturers 1792-1803.
160 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Society 9. It was to meet fortnightly, and two sets of minutes were
to be kept.55 The Joint Committee proceeded with slow and solemn
pace for two years, but it was quick to warn intruders to keep off.
When Ames, Hellicar and Sons advertised a meeting at the White
Lion to open a subscription to make Canon’s Marsh into a Floating
Dock, the Joint Committee promptly passed a resolution that the
citizens should be told that considerable progress had been made
with much better plans, which would shortly be made public. With
lofty disregard for the deal which they had made over wharfage, the
Corporation and the Society affirmed that any schemes ought to be
for the sole benefit of the public “‘and that no Individual or bodies
of them should derive any private Emolument from them”. The
Corporation and the Society would strongly oppose the proposal
concerning Canon’s Marsh.®®
On 12 August 1793, the Joint Committee of 5 members of the
Corporation and g Merchant Venturers instructed the Clerk to
give notice of a bill in Parliament next session. Engravings and a
general plan were to be prepared, and a general explanation was to
be printed.” In September, the cost of the scheme was estimated to
be £100,000.58
The outbreak of war with France early in 1793 did not improve
the prospects for the Floating Harbour, although it is as well to
remember that the Government and the people, as is the way of the
English, were confident that it would be a short war. No one dreamed
that it would last, with a brief interval, until 1815. Only 14 members
were present in the Hall on 21 September 1793 when the Society
resolved that the improvement of the harbour was of the utmost
concern and that the Society should contribute to the utmost of its
ability, should the Corporation be inclined to cooperate. The
Treasurer must have listened with some cynicism to the instruction
given to the Standing Committee to investigate the state of the
Society’s finances, so that it could be judged how much could be
contributed.5® He must have felt relief when after some further dis-
cussion with Jessop in October and November,® nothing of any
significance was done either by the Corporation or by the Society.
For all practical purposes, the plan was abandoned. *
Latimer put the blame for the failure to improve the port on the
lethargic Corporation, and stated that “‘the energy of the civic rulers
55 Minutes of the Joint Committee, pp. 1-2.
56 Jbid., p. 16, 18 Dec. 1792.
57 Ibid., pp. 19, 20, 21, 12 Aug., 26 Aug. 1793.
58 Jbid., p. 23, 16 Sept. 1793.
59 HB. 12, p. 297, 21 Sept. 1793.
60 Jbid., p. 304, 23 Oct. 1793; p. 309, 8 Nov. 1793 when only 12 members were
present.
61 For resumption of the plan in the early nineteenth century, see pp. 307ff.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 161
had already evaporated . . .”.6? The Society of Merchant Venturers
must certainly share the blame. In 1793, seven years had passed
since one of its own members had raised the question, and although
plans and estimates had been made, nothing practical had been
achieved. The Society had a majority on the Joint Committee and
was in a position to push matters on much more rapidly. It did not
do so, and nothing at all is recorded in the Minutes of the Joint
Committee between September 1793 and July 1801. The war which
began in 1793 helps to explain the immediate hold-up. It brought
to a halt dock proposals in London as well as in Bristol. Interest in
Bristol also seems to have turned for a time to improvement of in-
land navigation behind Bristol with a view to forming links with the
industrial areas. But war is not the complete explanation. London’s
plans were pushed forward from 1796 onwards and resulted in 1799
in the West India Dock Act.** Moreover, in the end the plan for a
Floating Harbour was in fact carried out in years in which England
was locked in mortal combat with Napoleon. Mr. Williams is under-
stating the case against the Society and the Corporation when he
comments ‘“‘With less resolution than was displayed in London, the
Bristol merchants allowed further time to pass.’’*4 In this matter,
the Merchant Venturers were not living up to their name.
The Society’s responsibilities for the port were not, of course,
limited to the provision and maintenance of quays and docks. It
continued to exercise general control over the harbour and river
though the Havenmaster, whom it appointed, subject to approval
by the Corporation, and it paid his salary. It gave the office to John
Homer in 1700, but in 1727 it suspended him as a result of com-
plaints. It soon restored him, but it deducted a quarter’s salary on
account of his frequent neglect of duty, and a committee was
instructed to draw up rules and regulations for the office.6® Homer
died two years later, and was replaced by Abraham Lewis.®* In
17555 the Hall appointed Captain Hollister to the post.6? In 1781,
it was decided that the Havenmaster should be subject to annual
re-election, and this proposal was evidently highly contentious, for
it was carried by only 24 votes to 23.88
Another port official appointed by the Society, subject to approval
62 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 214.
68 See Alan F. Williams, ‘‘Bristol Port Plans and Improvement Schemes”, Trans.
B.G.A.S., Ixxxi, 1962, pp. 171-3.
64 Tbid., p. 173.
65 FB. 5, 14 July 1727, 19 Sept. 1727.
66 77.B. 5, 19 May 1729.
8? H.B. 7, 10 Aug. 1752. For the list of Havenmasters during the rest of the cen-
tury, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 201.
88 H.B. 10, 13 Dec. 1781. John Shaw was then appointed.
162 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
by the Corporation, was the Ballast Master. By 1759, this office had
been combined with that of the Havenmaster.®®
There are some indications that the system was not working satis-
factorily in the last decade of the century. In 1794, the Town Clerk
sent to the Society the orders of Quarter Sessions concerning the
duties of the Havenmaster and Ballast Master, and these were copied
into the Hall Book.?° Three years later, the Standing Committee
itself reported at length on the duties of the offices and recommended
that the Havenmaster’s post should be full-time, that he should have
a house near Hungroad, and that he should employ an assistant. It
said that this would require an increase in salary.”! The Hall
approved an addition of £30 a year, and out of three applicants,
William Tomlinson was appointed by a majority vote.”
In addition to appointing these officers, the Society also controlled
the cranes, and its monopoly was of increasing value as trade
expanded in the course of the century. The cranes involved capital
expenditure and maintenance,’® but there were very satisfactory
returns. For the greater part of the century, the cranes were leased
for a term of years, often by public auction, and the Society did not
have the bother of running them itself.”4 Thus, in 1740 Mr. Corsley
Rogers took, for a period of 7 years at £162 per annum, the crane
and dock formerly let to Mr. Hilhouse.?> In 1748, the Great Crane
and Dock, the little crane on the other side of the dock, the crane at
the lower end of the quay and another next to it were let for £176
per annum, and two others were let at £41 and £31.’° In 1758,
seven cranes were leased at a total rent of £652,’’ and three years
later a new crane was let at £80.78 Nine cranes put up for auction in
1765 produced £988 per annum.’?®
Eventually, the Society decided that it would be more profitable
if it managed the cranes itself. It took them into its own hands as
69 H7.B. 8, 13 Sept. 1759.
70 HB. 12, p. 318, 8 Jan. 1794, p. 321 ff., pp. 325 FF.
11 HB. 13, pp. 1-3, 30 Jan. 1797.
72 Ibid., p. 6, 30 Jan. 1797; p. 12, 18 April 1797.
78 There are many references in the Hall Books of which the following are ex-
amples: H.B. 3, 18 Dec. 1701, 2 new-built cranes let at £48 p.a.; H.B. 4, 3 July
1718, order to erect 1 or more cranes; H.B. 5, 18 June 1733, cranes and docks to
be leased at £110; H.B. 6, 18 Oct. 1740, 80 guineas paid for a ready-made crane;
H.B. 6, 2 April 1741, two new cranes erected, and another planned; H.B. 7, 12
March 1750, crane to be erected at the lower end of the quay, opposite to the
Three Tuns; H.B. 8, 7 Jan. 1761, crane to be erected on the west point of the Gibb
slip; H.B. 10, 16 April 1773, crane no. 9 to be taken down and a new one erected};
H.B. 12, p. 75, 4 Oct. 1790, the Standing Committee to consider new cranes.
74 See the Society’s deeds, Box 6, bdle. B. for the various leases.
75 HB. 6, 23 Oct. 1740. _ 1% ALB. 7, 23 March 1748.
77 HB. 8, 25 March 1758. 78 HB. 8, 20 July 1761.
79 HB. 9, 4 Feb. 1765, 11 March 1765.
Port, River and Navigation, Exghteenth Century 163
an experiment in 1772 and appointed a Crane Master at £50 per
annum.*° It maintained this arrangement for the rest of the century,
although it is not clear that it was as satisfactory financially as the
practice of leasing.*! There was a certain amount of trouble with
the staff of the Crane Office and difficulty in collecting the money, as
well as disputes about the rates charged by the Society.®?
- Those using the port also came in contact with another of the
Society’s officers, the Collector of Wharfage. As we have seen, the
right of collecting these duties had been leased to the Society, and
since this was a major source of income, the Society made sure that
it was paid by those who did not belong to the Society. The collec-
tors or receivers were men of some substance who worked on a
percentage basis and presumably appointed underlings to do the
actual work. In general, the Society’s right seems to have been
accepted, but there were on occasions signs of resistance. Thus in
1774, Cruger and Mallard objected to particular charges, and the
Society feared that resistance might spread.83 In 1779, when David
Lewis refused to pay in two instances, the Clerk was asked to state
a case on the Society’s title.°* There was more trouble in 1788 and
1789 when the Society considered trying to enforce by legal action
or otherwise its right to collect the duty on goods landed at private
docks. ®5 ;
There is an interesting letter on the subject of wharfage written
by the Society’s former Clerk, Samuel Worrall, to the Master, Mr.
Hobhouse, on 12 December 1788.8* Worrall stated that in 1781 a_
trader had refused to pay wharfage duty. On examining the case,
Worrall had some doubts about the wisdom of bringing an action
and did not do so. He had obtained counsel’s opinion and this made
him think it would be in the interests of the Society “‘to let the whole
business drop into oblivion”. He consulted the Town Clerk. Sir
Abraham Elton also joined him in thinking it prudent to let the -
matter drop. Worrall claimed that in order that the business “might
not raise an alarm”, he had not sent in a bill to the Society. Now he
was Closing his account, and he was reluctant to raise the matter in
80 Ff.B. 9, 25 Jan. 1772, 11 March 1772.
81 In the Treasurer’s Journal 1795-1807, the income from the cranes is put at
£242 and the capital value at 16 years’ purchase at £3,872. This may, of course,
be an under-valuation.
82 Ff.B. 11, p. 174, 5 Sept. 1785, the clerk and collector of the crane office were
dismissed; p. 176, 10 Sept. 1785, James Whitchurch appointed Chief Clerk of the
Crane office at £100 a year. For difficulties over collecting the money, H.B. 10,
15 Nov. 1773; H.B. 11, pp. 103-4, 3 Nov. 1785; for disputes about the rates charged,
HB. 10, 31 Oct. 1775, 3 Nov. 1777, 26 July 1780.
83 HB. 10, 12 Feb. 1774, 24 Oct. 1775.
84 F.B. 10, 11 Feb. 1779. | :
89 HB. 11, p. 440, 5 July 1788; p. 524, 26 Aug. 1789.
88 Society’s Letters, bdle. 29, 12 Dec. 1788, Worrall to Hobhouse.
164 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
case it opened a wound injurious to the interests of the Society, but
he could not serve the Society at a loss. He said he had no doubt
about the right to the duty, but that embarrassment had been caused
by the conduct of the Receivers of Wharfage, who had been very
culpable. It rather looks as though Worrall was trying to induce the
Society to pay the bill by hinting that it would be embarrassed if the
question of its right was raised publicly. The city had undoubtedly
granted the right to collect wharfage to the Society, but probably
neither the Society nor the Corporation wanted the matter raised
in a court. The Corporation’s own right to port dues had been
challenged in the past and was in fact to be challenged again in the
future.
It was fortunate for the Society that there was no really serious
questioning of the wharfage duties in this period. If there had been,
the Society would no doubt have defended its position by pointing
out that it performed a number of services for the port for which it
received no payment, in particular the conservation of the river and
the supervision of pilotage.
Conservation of the river was ultimately the responsibility of the
Corporation, but, as we have seen, the Society took on the work in
the seventeenth century, and it continued it in the eighteenth.®? It
was continually concerned with such matters as removing rocks,®®
dealing with sandbanks,®® providing mooring posts and mooring
chains,®® repairing the banks and keeping the towing paths clear, *!
looking after the deep-water anchorages at Hungroad and Kingroad,
and taking steps to deal with vessels sunk in the river. *”
The Havenmaster kept the Society informed about what was
going on and was himself kept informed by the pilots, and the
Standing Committee on occasions went down the river to Hungroad
on a tour of inspection.®? Among the Society’s records is a very
87 There are very many references to this work in the Hall Books and other
records. Only a few illustrations need be given here.
88 For example, H.B. 4, 24 June 1708: Committee to inspect the Frome and Avon
and to empty boats and men to take up stones; ibid., g Dec. 1715. River to be cleared
of stones and other annoyance. Rocks at St. Augustine’s to be dug and made low,
H.B. 12, p. 358, 1 Jan. 1795: 300 tons of stones to be removed from the ledger rock.
89 For example, H.B. 7, 25 Aug. 1746: sandbank near Clevedon to be marked
with buoys; H.B. 8, 10 March 1760, the havenmaster and pilots to report on a
large and dangerous sandbank 14 miles from Kingroad.
®0 For example, H.B. 12, p. 120, 28 March 1791.
*1 For example, H.B. 10, 9 Feb. 1778: the Havenmaster reports the breaches in
the banks endangering cattle used to haul ships from Hungroad to Kingroar
(which must be done when the wind blows from the north-east).
®2 For example, H.B. 7, 14 Aug. 1750: two men sent to look at the Falcon, Sisk
in the mouth of the river; H.B. 13, p. 8, 17 Feb. 1797, to remove a lighter sunk in
the river.
®3 For example, H.B. 10, 18 Nov. 1772; H.B. 11, p. 43, 1 July 1783.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 165
neatly-kept book showing expenses in connection with the river
from 1745 to 1776.94 The items include labour for throwing mud
into the river and cleaning the quays, which in 1745-6 amounted to
£145 19s. 10d; expenses in 1746-7 of £105 for endeavouring to
remove the Somerset Privateer, sunk in the channel; and £26 5s. for a
survey of the Avon in 1764-5.
The number of nuisances in the river was apparently increasing
in the second half of the century. Stones from the quarries and indus-
trial spoil from the glasshouses and other works gave a good deal of
trouble. The Society endeavoured to insist that proper stanks were
made to prevent rocks from the quarries falling into the river, and
at one time employed a nightwatchman to prevent rubble being
thrown in near the Hotwell.®®
The Society was beginning to find the burden very heavy in the
last part of the century when it was in financial difficulty and when
the volume of complaints was growing. In June 1791, the Corpora-
tion established its own committee to enquire into nuisances, obstruc-
tions and impediments on the Avon, Frome and Severn, and the
Society stated that it was happy to learn that the Corporation was
taking action to remove nuisances.*® It was the first step on a road
which was in due course to lead to the end of the control of the port
by the Merchant Venturers.
Responsibility for the pilots continued to be delegated by the
Corporation to the Hall, which arranged for the examination of
suitable candidates and then issued certificates which successful
applicants took to the Mayor and the Aldermen.®’ Licenses had to
be renewed annually, and the Society took bonds from the pilots for
the proper discharge of their duties.®* The Society drew up regula-
tions from time to time and also exercised its influence over wage
rates.*® It was on the watch for any combination among pilots, and
in 1786, for example, it drew the attention of the Corporation to the
articles entered into by the pilots, which seemed very mischievous.!©°
94 See note 37, supra.
®5 For example, H.B. 9, 18 April 1770, complaint about the waste from the glass-
houses near Canon’s Marsh; ibid., 5 April 1769, complaint about mud and rubble
from Champion’s Dock; H.B. 12, p. 100, 30 Dec. 1790, stanks to be made for the
quarries; p. 101, nightwatchman to be employed at Hotwells. |
96 For the Corporation’s Committee, see Bristol Record Office: River Committee —
Book 1791-1826 (04 289 (1-9)).
®7 For the eighteenth-century pilots, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp.
193-9. He gives a list of all pilots approved by the Society in this period.
- 98 Among the Society’s records is a bundle of 94 bonds marked 1684 to 1783.
Only one of them is before 1719.
89 See, for example, H.B. 4, 26 March 1719; H.B. 9, 4 Feb. 1765; H.B. 10,
4 Aug. 1779; H.B. 11, p. 49, 28 Oct. 1783; ibid., p. 82, 20 Sept. 1784; H.B. 12, p.30,
20 Jan. 1790.
100 HB. 11, p. 278, 20 Dec. 1786.
166 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The pilots themselves were naturally anxious to restrict their num-
bers, but the merchants, as employers, were not always sympathetic
to such demands,1®
The Society carefully examined complaints about damage or loss
resulting from inefficiency or carelessness, and those found guilty
were suspended or recommended for dismissal. Thus in 1775, a
drunken pilot who brought up a ship at night and refused to put it
where the quay warden told him and who “declared he would be
key warden for that Night’? was suspended from duty,!°? and in
1791 a pilot who broke a ship on the Ness Sands through obstinacy
and ignorance was recommended to be broken as an example to
others.1°3 There are many other examples of disciplinary action, and,
as far as one can judge, investigations were carried out with effi-
ciency and understanding of the problems involved. A careful eye
_ was also kept on pilots’ charges, and on numerous occasions com-
plaints were examined and the bills confirmed or amended.1°
An attempt was made to see that pilots were properly equipped
for their work. Thus, in 1746 the Hall insisted that they must provide
themselves with tow boats,!° and in 1773 the Standing Committee
required that all tow boats, yawls and skiffs should be numbered
and should have their names in white Roman letters 3” long on a
black background on the most conspicuous part of the ship. The
Havenmaster was to keep a record.!°6 From time to time, the Stand-
ing Committee went down to Lamplighters’ Hall at Shirehampton
to examine the pilots and to make its authority felt. On one occasion,
the pilots had to be rebuked for being drunk and fighting in front of
the Committee.1°7
Although the Corporation was normally willing to leave pilotage
in the Society’s care, it occasionally asserted its authority. Thus,
when the Clerk went to the Council House with a certificate about
the unsatisfactory conduct of the pilot James Thayer in 1785, the
Mayor and Aldermen took exception to the decision and ordered
that the case should be brought before them. They then found it not
101 77.B. 6, 5 March 1734 when the application by the Pill pilots to restrict the
number to 24 was rejected. See also H.B. 11, p. 433, 5 June 1788 when 42 pilots
petitioned that there should be no new admissions.
102 F7.B. 10, 20 Sept. 1775. 103 77.B. 12, pp. 166—7, 27 Oct. 1791.
104 See, for example, H.B. 11, p. 85, 6 Oct. 1784; ibid., p. 92, 3 Nov. 1784,
HB. 12, pp. 102-4, 30 Jan. 1791.
108 H7.B. 7, 25 Aug. 1746. The order was repeated from time to time and was not
always obeyed. In 1788, for example, the Havenmaster was ordered to return a
list of those without tow boats and yawls. Licences of offenders were not to be
renewed (H.B. 11, p. 462, 16 Oct. 1788).
106 HB. ro, 18 May 1773. The order was repeated in 1793 (H.B. 12, p. 290,
12 July 1793) and in 1800 (H.B. 13, p. 162, 19 Nov. 1800). For pilots without tow
boats, see H.B. 8, 17 Oct. 1758.
107 HB. 12, p. 311, 8 Nov. 1793.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 167
proved, and ordered that Thayer should be reinstated.1°® There
was also a suggestion at one time that the Society was not carrying
out its duties efficiently. In a letter which the Mayor wrote to the
Hall in 1797, he gave a list of pilots who were aged or infirm or who
were without proper equipment. He suggested that the Society
should consider cooperating with the Corporation in providing
pensions for the good old men and that young men should be
appointed in their place.1® Possibly the Society was too easy-going.
When the Standing Committee examined the branch pilots at
Lamplighters’ Hall in 1800, it found that some were deaf, one had
rheumatism, one had gout, one was intoxicated and another was
suffering from nervous disorder. On that occasion, it took steps to
appoint suitable men in their place.1!°
The Society’s interest in the safety of merchant ships also involved it
at times with lighthouses and with harbour improvements in other
places. In these matters, its concern for navigation was sometimes
reinforced by its desire to see that Bristol ships did not have to pay
excessive fees to those who made improvements.
The need for a lighthouse on Flat Holm near the mouth of the
Avon was of special interest to the Hall. In 1728, it passed a resolu-
tion in favour of it and set up a committee to enquire into the cost
and to provide buoys there.!1! The matter was still under considera-
tion in 1733. In March 1735, the Standing Committee approved a _
proposal of Mr. Crispe to build a lighthouse on Flat Holm at his
own expense and to charge 14d. a ton on foreign ships and 1d. a ton
on coasters passing the light, but a General Hall on g May dis-
approved, of the charges. Agreement was eventually reached with
Crispe on 19 March 1737, and on 25 March the Standing Committee
fixed the Hall seal to the agreement and arranged to petition Trinity
House. On 20 June, the Standing Committee was instructed to fix
the precise spot for the lighthouse.2
In 1760, Robert Nugent asked for the Society’s opinion about a
proposed lighthouse on Grasholm Island and was told that the Hall
had no objection, provided the toll was charged only on ships going
108 HB. 11, p. 140, 6 May 1785; p. 142, 14 May 1785; p. 153, 11 June 1785;
p. 186, 7 Nov. 1785. Perhaps James Thayer had friends in high places. See also
H.B. 11, p. 449, 22 Aug. 1788.
109 H.B. 13, p. 41, 21 Dec. 1797. There had been an earlier proposal by the
Society that it should confer with the Corporation about a superannuation fund
and a sickness fund for pilots. (H.B. 12, p. 360, 1 Jan. 1795.)
110 FB. 13, p. 143, 8 July 1800; p. 146, 22 July 1800; p. 147, 29 July 1800.
111 H.B. 5, 15 March 1728. The matter had been discussed in 1702. See Latimer,
Merchant Venturers, p. 206; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 42, 47; W. R.
Chaplin, “The History of Flatholm Lighthouse”, The American Neptune, xx, 1960.
113 HB. 6, 11 March 1735, 9 May 1735, 19 March 1737, 25 March 1737, 20
168 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
to and from Ireland on the northward passage.!!8 When the Society
was asked to support a petition for an Irish lighthouse in 1767, the
Standing Committee agreed to do so, provided the toll was charged
only on ships that actually passed the lighthouse.1!*
It was not so sympathetic to a proposal by John Philips of Liver-
pool in 1775 to build a lighthouse on the rocks known as the Smalls
in St. George’s Channel. In its petition, it questioned whether the
lighthouse was practicable, asked for exemption from tolls for ships
not in fact making use of the light, and requested that tolls should
be reasonable.1!5 Liverpool asked Bristol to support its opposition,
and the Society sent two representatives to London. Lancaster and
Glasgow also joined in, and after a sharp fight in the Commons, the
bill was defeated.146 When the scheme was revived in 1778, the
Society again went to considerable lengths in opposing it. It sent a
petition to the Commons and prepared one for the Lords, and it
carried on a considerable correspondence with the M.P.s and others
who were interested. The bill, however, had the backing of Trinity
House and the Government, and it went through Parliament. The
bundle of letters relating to the Smalls Lighthouse in the Society’s
records is an interesting illustration of the immense amount of
trouble it could take, even over relatively minor matters:1!’
The Society also showed interest in a proposal to place lights on
long ships at Land’s End and the Wolf Rocks, and it decided that a
meeting of all interested parties should be held in the Hall. The
meeting reported that the lights would be beneficial to coastal trade
and to trade from Bristol to the Mediterranean, but that ships using
certain routes ought to be exempt from tolls.18 In 1791, the Stand-
ing Committee received a report about proposed lights on the Good-
win Sands and decided it needed further information.“ Four years
later, it discussed a bill proposing to.extend the range of places liable
for a charge for the use of the Mumbles Light. It said it would be
ready to listen to arguments from the proposers, but after hearing
June 1737. In 1748 when the Light was up for auction, the Society considered
making a bid (H.B. 7, 20 Oct. 1748).
113 HB. 8, 27 Feb. 1760.
114 HB. 9, 19 Oct. and 26 Oct. 1767.
115 The petition of g March 1775 is printed in Minchinton, Politics and the Port,
pp. 132-5.
116 77.B. 10, 24, April 1775; Minchinton Politics and the Port, . 133.
117 77.B, 10, 23 Feb. 1778. The bundle dealing with the Smalls Lighthouse
contains a number of letters on the subject from Burke and Cruger. In a letter of
31 March 1775, Burke explained that on the previous occasion, it had been a
private matter but that it now had the backing of Trinity House and a powerful
Admiralty interest. For the petitions, see Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp.
146-7.
118 77.B. 12, p. 54, 28 June 1790; p. 55, 29 July 1790.
119 F7,.B. 12, p. 147, 9 Sept. 1791.
Port, River and Navigation, Eighteenth Century 169
Mr. Morgan for the bill, it decided to oppose it.12° The next year, it
considered the Swansea Light Bill and made a number of criticisms
which it sent to the Corporation to use in amending or opposing the
bill.222
Harbours in other ports were of concern on a number of occasions.
In 1765, the Hall agreed to help, to the extent of 100 guineas, a plan
to make Barry Island a safe harbour by removing certain rocks, but
the grant was conditional on Bristol ships being free from any duty
for anchorage.122 It was less enthusiastic about plans to improve
Ramsgate harbour, for which an Act had been secured in 1749, and
in 1754 it forwarded its criticisms to the Trustees. On this issue, the
Society seems to have been in disagreement with some other
Bristolians who forwarded a petition in support of the scheme to the
House of Lords in 1756.128 Later, in 1777, the Society received com-
plaints from several merchants about the demands made by the
Trustees of Ramsgate Harbour and Dover and Rye Piers. The
complaints were referred to the Standing Committee, but no
further action seems to have been taken.124 Earlier on, objection had
been taken to a bill to impose duties on ships passing between Dover
and Calais, and the M.P.s had been asked to oppose it.125 In the
last decade of the century, a request for support was received from
some gentlemen of St. Agnes, Cornwall, who wanted to make a pier.
It was agreed to ask the Bristol M.P.s to back the proposal. When
Hull wanted support for its harbour bill in 1794, the Society decided
to ask for more details.12°
Considered in themselves, the Society’s achievements were of
great value. It is difficult to believe that the eighteenth-century
Corporation would have done so well if it had chosen to undertake
the work itself. The Society did not give its services for nothing, and
the wharfage lease and the control of the cranes brought in a con-
siderable income, but, judged at least by eighteenth-century stan-
dards, it gave value for money, although it must be remembered
that in developing the port, it was furthering the immediate interests
of its own members as well as those of the citizens at large. The main
criticism must be that it did not supply the initiative and the drive
necessary to put Bristol into a position to compete effectively with
more favourably-placed rivals, and that in the seventeen-sixties in
effect it helped to obstruct schemes for turning the river into a
floating harbour.
120 HB. 12, p. 368, 23 March 1795; p. 370, 26 March 1795; pp. 376-7, 30 March
1795; Pp. 392, 6 July 1795. 9 4#1: A.B. 12, p. 432, 14 March 1796; 12 April 1796.
122 77.B. 9, 14 Jan. 1765. 128 Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 80, 81.
134 F.B. 10, 4 Nov. 1777. For later complaints see H.B. 12, p. 129, 30 April 1791,
and p. 137, 16 June 1791.
125 H7.B. 9, 6 March 1769. For later complaints, see ibid., 2 April 1772.
126 F7.B. 12, p. 282, 25 May 1793; ibid., p. 328, 18 Feb. 1794.
CHAPTER 10
The Society in Wartime in the
Eighteenth Century
In the frequent wars of the eighteenth and early nineteenth century,
British ships were at risk, and the Society was concerned to see that
they received adequate protection. The Hall Books and correspon-
dence are full of references to this major activity, the importance of
which has not always been fully appreciated.1
In 1702, even before the War of the Spanish Succession had
broken out, the Society wrote to “our parliament men’”’ urging them
to apply for two convoys in event of hostilities, and also enquiring
whether “easier and cheaper ways” could be found to procure
letters of marque.? In 1707, the Hall expressed its thanks to Sir
John Duddlestone, one of its members and an M.P. for Bristol, for
procuring a convoy, and it sent a gross of wine to Captain Steward
of H.M.S. Garland when he came to take care of the Virginia fleet.®
When peace was signed in 1713, the protection of shipping still
remained a matter of concern, and on a number of occasions the
Hall had to take steps to protect merchants and ship-owners against
depredations by the Spanish and by the semi-piratical states of North
Africa.
During the War of the Austrian Succession (1740-8), the Society
had a particularly important role to play. When H.M.S. Sapphire
arrived in Bristol in March 1742 with orders to protect the trade of
the port, the Standing Committee was informed that the captain
was to be “under the directions of the Merchants of this City with
respect to his cruising. . . .”” and that the Committee, “being the
representative body of the Society of Merchants in this City . . .”
1 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 203 ff. has some reference to it in the middle
years of the century, but he did not stress its importance in all the wars of the period.
See also Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. xxvili-xxix, 60-5.
2 H.B. 3, 15 Jan. and 22 Jan. 1702. Privateering was an important activity in
Bristol in the eighteenth century (see J. W. Damer Powell, Bristol Privateers and
Ships of War, Bristol, 1930). The Society was not involved in it as a corporate body,
but some of its members engaged in it. Hence the enquiry about cheaper letters of
marque.
3 H.B. 3, 24 Oct. 1707.
4 See pp. 139, 221, 238, and Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. xxviii—xxix.
The Society in Wartime, Eighteenth Century 171
was to issue the instructions.® For the rest of the war, the Hall con-
tinually issued orders about convoys to captains of His Majesty’s
ships stationed at Bristol.* In addition, the Society also maintained
contact with the Bristol M.P.s and with the Admiralty about pro-
tection for merchant ships in other parts of the world. Thus, in 1744
it petitioned for men-of-war to be stationed off the coast of Africa,’
and from time to time, either on its own or in conjunction with other
ports such as London and Liverpool, it asked for convoys for the
Jamaican and African trades.§
The importance of this part of the Society’s work probably reached
its maximum in the Seven Years’ War from 1756 to 1763, when
numerous references in the Hall Books and letters bear witness to the
extent of its operations and the very close liaison it maintained with
the Admiralty, either directly or through the Bristol M.P.s. Even
before the commencement of hostilities, it was in touch with Robert
Nugent, asking that two ships of 40 to 50 guns should be provided, ®
and throughout the war it issued a stream of directives about convoys
to His Majesty’s ships in Bristol.?°
The Admiralty was hard-pressed, for there were many demands
to provide ships and men, but it seems to have regarded sympatheti-
cally the requests from Bristol and to have treated the views of the
Society with respect. The Hall was torn between the need to provide
men for the merchant service and the demands of the Royal Navy
for men in time of war. It did its best to help the Admiralty, and on
one occasion at least it made an arrangement by which the Admiralty
provided two ships of 32 guns and 22 guns, and the Hall undertook
to provide the crews of 190 and 135 men for them. It stipulated that
the men should be employed only in the service of Bristol trade
“unless in cases of the greatest emergency . . .”.11 The Society made
5 H.B. 6, 29 March 1742. Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 203, seems to have
thought that what he called “this remarkable devolution of power on the part of
the Government”’ first occurred in the Seven Years’ War (1756-63).
6 The following are a few illustrations from the many references in the Hall
Books: H.B. 6, 30 Dec. 1742 (to H.M.S. Port Mahon); 20 April 1745 (to the Mary
Galley); H.B. 7, 26 Nov. 1747 (to the Prince Edward); ibid., 1 April 1748 (to the
Hardwicke). |
* H.B. 6, 2 April 1744; Book of Charters 2, p. 289, 2 April 1744; ibid., p. 292.
8 For example, H.B. 6, 18 Feb. 1745, 25 Feb. 1745; H.B. 7, 16 Oct. 1746, 11
Dec. 1747, 10 Feb. 1748; Book of Charters 2, p. 296, 23 Nov. 1745.
® H.B. 8, 6 Sept. 1755.
10 See, for example, H.B. 8, 26 May 1756; 12 Aug. 1756; 12 Sept. 1757; 23 Nov.
1757; 21 Jan. 1758; 13 Dec. 1758; 6 Jan. 1759; 16 Feb. 1761; 7 April 1762; 6 Nov.
1762. The bundles of letters relating to this period include many from the Admiralty
and from Robert Nugent, M.P. as well as from the commanders of the ships.
11 Society’s Letters, bdle. 4, 23 Feb. 1759, from the Admiralty. See also bdle. 4,
6 Feb. 1759 (Nugent to Casamajor); 29 Jan. 1759 (same to same); 1 March 1749
(Capt. Nash to Henry Cruger stating that he is ready to receive the men).
172 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
arrangements to hire a vessel on which to keep the pressed men
until the men-of-war arrived.!2
The merchants in general realised that their best hope of getting
help from the Admiralty was through the Society. Thus, in 1757,
_ Mr. James Macartney, who was not a Merchant Venturer, wrote to
the Master stating that many ships were bound from Cork to Bar-
bados, the Leeward Islands and Jamaica and asked him to get the
Admiralty to provide a convoy.!3 Naval captains were also aware
that the Society was influential in high places. When Captain Penny
of the Love found that it was taking a very long time to get his ship
repaired in the naval dockyard, he asked the Society to write to the
Admiralty to hasten matters, and this was done.'4 On another
occasion, the Hall, through the good offices of Robert Nugent, was
able to persuade the Admiralty to change its original orders and to
allow the naval escort to go much further out to sea than had origi-
nally been intended.1®
Not all convoy work was carried out efficiently by the navy, and
when Captain Scott of the Humber was accused by the merchant
navy captains of failing to do his duty by the Virginia fleet, the
Society joined with the Londoners in complaining to the Admiralty
and instructed its Clerk to collect evidence from the captains. On
the other hand, the Hall was ready to reward virtue. In 1758, for
example, 100 guineas was voted to Captain Saumarez of the Antelope,
who attacked and captured a French man-of-war of 64 guns in the
Bristol Channel,!® and when Captain Man of the Milford was killed
in action, the Hall took it on itself to recommend to the Admiralty
the promotion of Captain William Hamilton, the Regulating
Captain in Bristol.”
The outbreak of the struggle with the American colonies in 1776
constituted yet another threat to English merchant shipping, and
there were heavy losses. The situation became even more desperate
when the formidable French navy gave support to the rebels from
1778 onwards. Once again, a heavy responsibility rested on the
Hall, and the Society’s records bear witness to the considerable
effort it made to protect merchant shipping. The Navy Board was
authorised by the Admiralty to hire an armed vessel of at least 20
guns to protect coastal convoys, provided the towns in question
raised the men, and it asked the Society whether it knew of any
12 HB. 8, 23 Jan. 1759; 12 Feb. 1759; 26 Feb. 1759; 3 March 1759; 11 April
1759; 13 Nov. 1759, and other references.
13 Society’s Letters, bdle. 3, 22 Dec. 1757.
14 Society’s Letters, bdle. 6, 27 Feb. 1761, Capt. Penny to the Hall; H.B. 8,
16 Feb. 1761, 27 April 1761.
18 F7.B. 8, 8 Nov. 1756.
16 HB. 8, 7 Nov. 1758.
17 HB. 8, 5 April 1762. It also recommended a man to be his second lieutenant.
The Society in Wartime, Eighteenth Century 173
merchants willing to lend their vessels. George Cranfield Berkeley
offered to take command of the vessel and to procure the men at his
own expense.'® The Society assisted recruitment by promising to give
an additional bounty to the men, on condition that the Corporation
shared the cost and that the men so raised were not pressed for the
Royal Navy.1®
In September 1777, the Master reported that the Liverpool
coasters had permission to carry guns, and the Hall decided to write
to Edmund Burke to get the same permission for Bristol.2° As in the
earlier war, there was a great deal of correspondence with the M.P.s
and the Admiralty about convoys, and merchants and captains
channelled their requests through the Society. Thus, when the
Admiralty gave instructions in 1779 that Bristol ships bound for
Canada should join the convoy assembling at Spithead, the Hall
received a request from four merchants that the convoy should
arrange to pick up their ships at Scilly. This was passed on by the
Hall to Burke, who reported that the Admiralty thought the
suggestion impracticable.*4 There was also cooperation between
Bristol and other ports. Thus, in 1781 the Committee of Trade of the
port of Lancaster asked the Society to support a petition for ships to
cruise in St. George’s Channel to protect the homeward-bound
West Indian fleet. 22 |
The Admiralty and the captains of the Royal Navy stationed
at Bristol seem to have done their best to meet the requests of the
Society, and on a number of occasions the Hall issued instructions
direct to the navy. In 1779, for example, the Admiralty acknow-
ledged a letter from the Society which stated that the captain of the
Three Brothers had not yet received his orders to convoy Bristol ships.
Another copy was enclosed, and the Society was told it could deliver
it direct to Captain Barker.?%
The merchant captains did not always cooperate satisfactorily
with the convoy masters. On one occasion, the captain of the convoy
reported sharply to the Society that on the date fixed by the Society,
only one ship came for instructions, and so he had refused to sail.
18 Society’s Letters, bdle. 20, 11 Aug. 1777, from Henry Hamilton; 21 Aug. 1777,
from Richard Champion concerning Berkeley’s offer. It is not clear whether the
Society accepted the offer.
19 HB. ro, 13 Aug. 1777. 20 HB. 10, 8 Sept. 1777.
*1 Society’s Letters, bdle. 22, 5 April 1779, from the Admiralty; 9 April 1779,
from the four merchants; 16 April 1779, from Burke. For other requests see bdle.
22, 22 April 1779, from the owners of ships bound for Quebec; also letters of 9
April and 22 May 1779.
22 Society’s Letters, bdle. 23, 1 June 1781; see also H.B. 11, p. 9, 7 Jan. 1783.
3 HB. 10, 13 Sept. 1779. For other examples of orders to naval captains, see
HB, 10, 28 Feb. 1780; 14 April 1781; 19 June 1781; 21 July 1781; 11 Aug. 1781;
H.B. 11, 23 Nov. 1782; Society’s Letters, bdle. 23, 19 June 1781 (the Three Brothers) ;
bdle. 25, 5 Dec. 1782, from the captain of the Royal Charlotte.
174 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
In future, he would not go anywhere unless positively informed of
the number of ships ready to sail, as the Admiralty did not mean
men-of-war to run from port to port without a proper number of
vessels. 24
The role of the Society in organising Bristol-based convoys seems
to have been rather less important in the War of American Indepen-
dence than it had been in the War of the Austrian Succession and in
the Seven Years’ War, and towards the end of the American War,
the work of pressing the Admiralty to provide convoys seems to have
been taken over, at least in some measure, by the New West India
Association, which was very active in the matter and which dealt
direct with the Admiralty.?®
In the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic Wars, which lasted
from 1793 to 1815 and which involved naval activity on a vast scale,
the Society was still concerned with convoys from time to time,®
but its interest was not nearly so marked as in earlier conflicts.
Although on at least one occasion a Bristol-based royal navy ship
was placed at the disposal of the Society,?” this was not normal
practice, as it had been earlier. Much more concern about convoys
seems to have been shown by the West India Association, whose
Book of Proceedings shows it regularly in touch with the Admiralty
and the M.P.s during the war years. In this, as in other respects, the
Society in the later eighteenth and earlier nineteenth century seems
to have lost some of its vitality and to have been content to leave to
others work which it had formerly carried out with great energy
itself. |
In wartime, the merchants wanted large numbers of ships of the
royal navy to protect their commerce, but service in the navy was
not.popular with merchant seamen, and the activities of the press
gangs not only deprived the merchant navy of many of its own men
but frightened seamen into going to ground in order to avoid being
pressed. The Society had to try to keep a balance between conflicting
demands.
In every war, the activities of the press gangs disturbed the supply
24 Society’s Letters, bdle. 23, 25 June 1781, the Master of the Three Brothers to the
Society. See also bdle. 23, 23 Dec. 1782, «vhen the captain of the Royal Charlotte
complained that only two ships had reported to him.
25 Book of Proceedings of the West India Association 1782-1834 (in the Merchants’
Hall), 4 June 1782, 9 Oct. 1782, 26 Oct. 1782. For the New West India Association,
see p. 238.
26 See, for example, H.B. 12, p. 262, 19 Feb. 1793; ibid., pp. 374-5, 30 March
1795; p- 403, 26 Oct. 1795; p. 409, 6 Nov. 1795; p. 417, 17 Nov. 17953 Pp. 422, 26
Dec. 1795; p. 426, 6 Jan. 1796; p. 428, 25 Feb. 1796; H.B. 13, p. 175, 11 May
1801; p. 328, 12 March 1805.
27 HB. 13, p. 174, 11 May 1801; p. 176, 16 May 1801.
The Society in Wartime, Eighteenth Century 175
of seamen, and the Hall did what it could to mitigate the hardships
and to protest against the abuses of a system without which the
royal navy could not be maintained at full strength. Thus, in 1706,
when H.M.S. Lizard pressed men out of the Resolution and did not
replace them, a committee of the Hall was instructed to inquire into
“this hard usage”’.2® In 1758, there were complaints about the pres-
sing of men 70 to 80 leagues west of Scilly. This was alleged to have
prevented ships from Jamaica from getting back to Kingroad
before the wind changed and to have resulted in the loss of the
Queen Elizabeth. The Master was instructed to cémplain to the
Admiralty.2® In 1778, when Bristol shipowners and merchants asked
for protection against the press gangs for their men who were employed
on privateers, the Standing Committee took the matter up with
Edmund Burke.®° Among the complaints which the Society received
about the pressing of men was a lengthy one received in 1790 from
the captain of the Hope. He alleged that 11 of his men had been
pressed by H.M.S. Hyaena as his ship was waiting to go up the river
to Bristol, that the captain of the Hyaena had refused to let her pro-
ceed until the pressed men’s wages had been paid, and that musket
shots had been fired at his ship. The Society complained to the
Admiralty, and Captain Aylmer of the Hyaena was reprimanded.**
But while the Society was ready to protest against abuses, it also
made positive contributions to the manning of the fleet. In 1705 for
example it offered to lend up to £200 to help raise seamen for a
man-of-war then building for the security of the Channel. When the
owners of the Susannah offered to lend her for six weeks to hold the
men raised for the man-of-war, but wanted a guarantee against
damage, the Hall agreed to get insurance of up to £600 at a rate not
exceeding 2 per cent.?2 When the Admiralty undertook to provide a
ship to be used in the Bristol Channel in 1740, the Hall offered to
help man it and to provide some of the money. The Master and Mr.
Sheriff Becher were requested to wait on the Mayor and to ask him
to give direction to impress seamen.*8 In 1759, when the Admiralty
sent Captain Gordon to Bristol to raise men, the Society made an
agreement with the Admiralty to man two ships itself, and it hired
the Invincible to hold the men until they were handed over. It would
seem, however, that the men so raised were not satisfactory, for
Captain Penny of the Alborough complained that very few of them
were fit for service. *4
28 HB. 3, 6 Nov. 1706. 29 HB. 8, 13 Dec. 1758.
80 HB. 10, 22 Aug. 1778.
81 HB. 12, pp. 65-8, 26 Aug. 1790; p. 69, 24 Sept. 1790. Other complaints about
pressing men include H.B. 8, 11 Dec. 1759; H.B. 9, 31 Jan. 1771.
32 H.B. 3, 28 June 1705, 9 July 1705. 33 H.B. 6, 3 June 1740.
84 HB. 8, 12 Feb. 1759; 26 Feb. 1759, 28 Feb. 1759, 3 March 1759, 11 April,
1759, 13 Nov. 1759.
176 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
To encourage recruitment, the Hall on a number of occasions
supplemented the bounties offered to those who enlisted. Thus, in
1770 it agreed to join the Corporation in giving an additional bounty
of 20s. for every able-bodied seaman and 15s. for every ordinary
seaman who joined the navy.*5 Eight years later, it offered 40s. for
able-bodied seamen and15s. for every ordinary seaman and landsmen
who volunteered.*®® It was also prepared to give a grant of {21 a year
to a fund for clothing and fitting out for sea-service poor boys in
the city.®”
When the war was going badly in 1779, the Society offered the
Government £1,000 for the better provision of the navy or for the
increase of the armed forces.*® At the beginning of the war with
France in 1793, it was again prepared to supplement the bounties
offered for seamen. *®
A watchful eye had to be kept on legislation relating to the
manning of the navy. In 1758, for example, when it received a copy
of a bill on this subject, the Committee expressed the view that it
was “an absurd, incoherent and impracticable scheme”, which
would tend to make seamen enter foreign service rather than return
home and which would be very injurious to trade. The Hall peti-
tioned the bill.4° In January and March 1759, it again petitioned
against two bills concerning the manning of the navy, but its efforts
were unsuccessful.*! The Committee had to take action once more
on this subject in 1781, and again in 1795, when a bill was brought
in requiring owners of ships to furnish a certain number of men
according to the tonnage of the ship. The Hall said that it realised
the need for vigorous measures, but that this proposal would not
work and would be injurious to trade. Representatives of the Society
were sent to see the M.P.s and to confer with the merchants of
London. If the bill could not be stopped, it was at least to be
amended. The Mayor was informed and was asked to send a man to
London to help. #2
Another matter which caused concern from time to time was the
embargoes placed by the Government on the sailing of ships in time
of war. The object was normally to hold up the sailing of merchant
ships until the navy had raised the men it needed for the service, or
to prevent the export of provisions and other goods which were in
short supply in England. Such directives might have unfortunate
35 HB. 9, 4 Oct. 1770.
86 HB. 10, 23 Feb. 1778. See also H.B. 10, 4 Aug. 1779.
37 H.B. 10, 27 Aug. 1778. 38 HB. 10, 26 June 1779.
39 HB. 12, p. 262, 17 Feb. 1793; p. 266, 27 Feb. 1793.
40 FB. 8, 30 Jan. 1758, 15 April 1758, 18 May 1758; Minchinton, Politics and the
Port, pp. 92-3, prints the petition.
a1 H.B. 8, 15 Jan., 16 Jan., 26 April 1759; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp.
93-4. 42 HB. 12, pp. 364-5, 11 Feb. 1795.
The Society in Wartime, Erghteenth Century 177
effects which were not intended by the Government. Thus, in 1740,
the Hall petitioned the House of Commons against a bill enabling
the Government to prohibit the export of corn from Great Britain
and her colonies. It thought that rice would be included and that
this would have very bad effects on Carolina. Its request that rice
should be excluded from the prohibited commodities was eventually
granted.43 In February 1762, when there was a six weeks’ embargo
on all ships carrying provisions, except those going to America in
convoy, the Society protested that Bristol was affected very adver-
sely because the Customs Officers applied this to peas and beans
and to ships carrying liquor. It claimed that trade was stagnating,
and it asked the M.P.s to help. In March, a representative was sent
to London, and in April it was decided to ask the King in Council
to give general leave to all ships to sail from Bristol to Ireland and
Newfoundland, provided they gave security to deliver their cargoes
there. *4
At the beginning of the French War in 1793, the Hall decided to
petition for a partial lifting of the embargo.*® Two years later, the |
Hall wrote to the wardens, who were in London, asking them to
contact the M.P.s and to beg “‘their immediate Interference’ with
the Government to secure the removal of the recent embargo, in so
far as it affected market boats and Severn trows. They were to point
out that the River Severn, the River Parret and all the rivers in
Wales brought great supplies to Bristol and also helped distribute the
groceries and manufactures of Bristol in Wales, Somerset,Gloucester-
shire and the North. In addition, M.P.s were to be asked to try to
get the lifting of the embargo from the Irish trade and from coasters
in the Bristol Channel.4® On the other hand, the Hall was prepared
to support a bill for continuing the embargo until a certain number
of men had been raised from each port, and the wardens were
instructed to convey this to a meeting in London of shipowners and
delegates from the outports.*? Later in the year, when the Hall
received information about another embargo, it decided to draw
up a list of West India ships which were about to sail and to request
that they might be allowed to go without additional expense. *®
The role which the Society played in wartime was principally
concerned with convoys, the raising of men for the navy and the
protection of trade, but it was also involved on occasions with other
aspects of the war effort and with national defence. Moreover, it felt
43 Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 51.
44 HB. 8, 13 Feb. 1762, 27 March 1762, 26 April 1762.
45 HB. 12, p. 260, 19 Feb. 1793; p. 262, 19 Feb. 1793.
46 HB. 12, p. 367, 21 Feb. 1795. 47 HB. 12, p. 367, 24 Feb. 1795.
48 H7.B. 12, p. 401, 26 Oct. 1795.
178 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
a responsibility as a public body to do what it could to maintain
morale.
In the War of the Austrian Succession, the Society petitioned in
1743 that Lundy Island might be garrisoned and fortified to protect
it against the French.*® In 1744, the large number of 48 members
were present when the Hall drew up a Loyal Address “‘to protest our
abhorrence to the intended invasion from France’ and to express
its loyalty at a time “when the Disturbers of Europe are directing
their Pernicious Schemes against your Majesty’s Dominions in
favour of an adjured [sic] Popish Pretender . . .”. The Hall assured
George IT that it would defend his undoubted title and the Protes-
tant succession. 5°
In 1745, when the Young Pretender had landed and had defeated
General Cope at Preston Pans, there was very considerable alarm in
England. The merchants waited upon the Earl of Berkeley, Lord
Lieutenant of Bristol, to consider what should be done. At a meeting
presided over by the Mayor in the Guildhall, a letter was read from
the Duke of Newcastle authorising the Mayor to raise volunteers.
An Association was formed and subscriptions were raised. The
Corporation offered to subscribe £10,000.5! On 10 October, the
Master informed the Standing Committee that several hundred
Bristolians had joined the Association and that it was intended to
raise a body of men “sufficient for our defense in these times of
Publick Danger’’. As there was no time to call a General Hall, the
Standing Committee decided to subscribe £5,000 on behalf of the
Society.°? This was confirmed by the Hall on 14 October, and the
Master was authorised to raise all or part of the money at 4 per cent.
Subsequently he had doubts about the wording of the resolution
authorising him to pay over £5,000 and he was given fuller author-
ity.5% The Society then entered into a bond with William Jefferies
and Jeremiah Burroughs, Treasurers to the General Subscription,
to pay over 10 per cent of the amount promised.°4 However, the
crisis passed, and it seems that only 2 per cent of the promised
subscription had actually been called for.55
On the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War in 1756, the Society
thanked the King for the vigorous measures he had taken to defend
the American colonies and referred to the treachery of our most
pernicious enemy and to his insulting threats of invasion.5® Sur-
prisingly, a Loyal Address to George III on his accession in 1760
49 Book of Charters 2, 288, 26 March 1743. Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 56
and note 1. Other ports also petitioned.
50 Hf.B. 6, 14 March and 15 March 1744.
51 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 255 ff. 52 HB. 6, 10 Oct. 1745.
53 HB. 6, 14 Oct. 1745; H.B. 7, 21 Nov. 1745. 54 LB. 7, 21 Nov. 1745.
55 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 258. 56 Book of Charters 2, 334.
The Society in Wartime, Eighteenth Century 179
attracted only 13 members to the Hall.5”7 When peace terms were
being negotiated in 1762 and 1763, the Society was anxious to
exercise some influence, but it was told by William Hart in London
that its Memorial would be regarded as trifling and that it would
be impossible to get any alteration. Hart added “where there is no
remedy, let not our Society attempt an impossibility’’.* Jarritt
Smith added a warning “that the Crown will look upon any attempt
of that sort (as) an infringement of its prerogative’”’.5® It seems that
the Merchant Venturers were in danger of getting ideas above their
station.
When peace came in 1763, 24 members turned up at the Hall to
prepare an address to the King. They thanked him for protecting
commerce in time of war and praised “‘that Heroic Moderation and
Consummate Policy, with which your Majesty, as the Friend of
Mankind, in the midst of Victory, seized the happy Minute of res-
toring Peace . . .”. They added, perhaps superfluously, “. . . we
shall use our utmost endeavours to improve this happy Period . . . in
extending our Trade over the vast Tract of Country, which is added
to your Majesty’s Dominions. . .’’.°°
The ambivalent attitude of the Society towards the troubles in
America has already been noted, but when war came, the Society’s
attitude hardened, and on 18 January 1777 it approved by 25 votes
to 6 an address congratulating the King on the success of his armies
in America.®! In 1779, it assurred the King that the ambitious
‘Insolence of the French and the insidious treachery of the Spaniard
shall not dismay us. . . .”> An amendment asking for a change of
government was rejected by 16 votes to 10.8?
War came with France in 1793, and this was to become total war
on a scale not hitherto experienced. The first stage from 1793 to
1802 produced a number of Loyal Addresses from the Society. In
November 1795, 20 members were present to approve an address to
the King about the recent attempt on his person, and an amendment
to the loyal address expressing the hope that a solid and durable peace
would before long be secured was rejected.®* The Hall was support-
ing the policy of Pitt and not that of Fox. It is surprising, however,
that in a Society which was much concerned with protecting
commerce against enemy action, only 11 members turned up on
27 October 1797 to vote an address on the victory of Admiral
Duncan over the Dutch.®
57 HB. 8, 6 Nov. 1760.
58 Society’s Letters, bdle. 11, 27 Nov. 1762, William Hart to the Society.
59 Tbid., 27 Nov. 1762, Jarrit Smith to the Society.
60 H.B. 9, 19 April 1763. ® See pp. 142-4. 62 See H.B.10, 18 Jan. 1777.
83 77.B. 12, p. 414, 14 Nov. 1795; Book of Petitions, p. 125.
64 77.B. 13, p. 31, 27 Oct. 1797.
180 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
In the early months of 1798, the international situation seemed
very gloomy, and England was in a serious position. The 17 members
of the Hall who turned up for a meeting on 23 February were aware
that “at this present Important Crisis when our Commerce pros-
perity Independance [sic] and Very Existance as a Nation are at
stake’”’ something ought to be done to help, but, as we have seen,
they decided that they could only manage to offer £600 as a gift to
the “Voluntary Subscription for the Defence of the Kingdom’’.*5
Evidently, they were not as concerned about the crisis as they
suggested.
The war situation improved in the course of the year, but the
merchants do not seem to have been unduly appreciative of what
the navy was doing for them. Only 13 members were present on
18 October 1798 to vote an address to the King on Nelson’s victory
at the battle of the Nile.* 19 turned up on 22 May 1800 to con-
gratulate the King on his escape from yet another attempt on his
person, ®’ but attendance was down to 9, all members of the Stand-
ing Committee, when a Hall was called on 10 May 1802 to con-
gratulate the King on the end of the War.®8 In 1802 at a General
Hall, it was agreed to allow the use of the Hall to a Committee to
honour William Pitt, but the efforts of the great war minister were
apparently not much appreciated if one can judge from the fact
that only 7 members were present on that occasion.*® Peace was
short-lived, and in July 1803, a Hall was called to assure the King
of support in the war against Napoleon.7°
In one or two other modest ways the Society made a contribution
to the war effort in the years 1793-1802. When the war came, the
Government floated a large loan, and for administrative convenience
an Act of Parliament laid down that if the principal merchants in
any place wanted to apply for exchequer bills in large quantities of
£100,000 or £200,000 and then apportion them among themselves,
they might make block applications. The Standing Committee
thought that if the merchants and other citizens of Bristol wished to
do this, they could borrow the Hall for the purpose.7!
The Hall did not show any great interest in the military effort, no
doubt thinking that its particular concern was with the sea. When
there was a request for help for a subscription to relieve the widows
and families of warrant officers and others, it informed the Mayor
that it did not intend to take it up as a public body,?? but in 1797
85 See p. 119.
66 7.B. 13, p. 75, 18 Oct. 1798; Book of Petitions, p. 128.
67 H.B. 13, p. 136, 22 May 1800. 68 H.B. 13, p. 208, 10 May 1802.
6° HB. 13, p. 211, 26 July 1802.
70 HB. 13, p. 252, 1 July 1803 (9 members present); Book of Petitions, pp. 132-3.
71 HB. 12, p. 276, 16 May 1793. 72 HB. 12, p. 403, 26 Oct. 1795.
The Society in Wartime, Eighteenth Century 181
it voted 50 guineas to the widows and orphans of those who died in
Duncan’s victory over the Dutch.’
In years in which invasion seemed imminent and in which the
French actually made a small landing at Fishguard, the Government
was very concerned with the defence of the rivers, creeks and bays.
In 1798, Lord Dundas wrote to the Mayor of Bristol about the
possibility of converting launches and longboats from merchant
ships into gunboats. The Society, with an eye on the interests of
merchantmen, consulted Captain Nicholas, R.N., about whether
pilots’ towboats could be used instead. He gave the wrong answer
and reported that they would not be so effective, but added that if
there was a shortage of launches from large merchantmen, towboats
might be of use in protecting the harbour. The Committee of the
Hall adjourned to the Council House to consult the Committee of
the Corporation. The quay wardens were then instructed to find
out the number of boats in the port of 17 feet or more which were
capable of carrying cannon and cannonades. The water bailiff was
told to find the number and calibre of cannons and cannonades and
the amount of shot available in the city and neighbourhood. Mr.
Hilhouse was instructed to fit up a long boat on the model suggested
by the Government.’4 In May, the pilots put to the Hall proposals
about using their boats for the defence of the immediate neighbour-
hood of Bristol, and these were forwarded by the Hall to the Mayor. ”®
In June of the same year, the Society agreed to lend the pile engine
at the Hotwell to the engineer employed in erecting batteries for the
defence of Bristol.’6
The crisis passed, and in 1801 and 1802 the Society was engaged in
settling the account with the Corporation for the cost of fitting up
the gunboats.’? If it was not exactly a lovely war, the Society had
not after ail found it too exhausting in time or money.
13 HB. 13, p. 32, 27 Oct. 1797.
74 H.B. 13, pp. 58-9, 21 April 1798.
75 HB. 13, p. 61, 15 May 1798.
76 HB. 13, p. 62, 26 June 1798.
HB. 13, p. 125, 13 Feb. 1800; p. 173, 4 March 1801.
CHAPTER 11
The Society as a Property-Developer in
the Eighteenth Century
THE management and development of property had not been a
major concern of the Society in the seventeenth century, but in the
eighteenth century the Hall found itself increasingly involved and
had to devote a great deal of time and energy to such matters. To a
considerable degree, its financial difficulties in the later eighteenth
century can be explained by the amount of capital which it had
invested in the purchase of Champion’s Dock and the adjoining
property, in the development of the Hotwell and in buying property
elsewhere.
The Society’s manor of Clifton included not only the low-lying
area down by the river but also ‘‘Clifton on the hill”, which developed
in the second half of the century as a desirable residential district
and which also provided lodgings for the fashionable society which
visited the very popular Hotwell. The population of Clifton grew
from about 250 in 1710, most of whom probably lived on the low
ground near the Avon, to about 1,400 in the later seventeen-eighties.1
A number of different developers were involved, and a detailed
study of the growth of Clifton and Hotwells is beyond the scope of
this book, but it is necessary to give some indication of the part
played by the Society.
The full development of Clifton had to wait until the great expan-
sion of Bristol in the nineteenth century, but the possibilities were
already being exploited in the eighteenth, and the Society became
increasingly aware of the importance of what had hitherto been
primarily agricultural land. It was in a position to make building
land available by granting building leases, and as lord of the manor
it had valuable rights over the waste which could be used to provide
stone for building.
Clifton does not loom very large in the Society’s records in the
first half of the eighteenth century, although the Hall was of course
concerned from time to time to renew agricultural leases and to
obtain fines for such renewals, as well as to collect rents from the
property which it owned in the manor. Occasionally, there was a
1 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 87, 472.
The Society as Property-Developer, Eighteenth Century 183
request for permission to build. Thus, in 1719 the Standing Com-
mittee viewed the ground in Clifton which Mr. Goldney wanted to
purchase and agreed to grant him a lease.? In 1723, Mr. Hollidge
asked permission to build on land held from the Society,? and in
1746 Charles Gregory renewed his lease on a house and garden in
Clifton, promising to lay out £30 in building and repairs.* In the
seventeen-forties, the Society was showing considerable interest in
the repair of roads in Clifton,® and in 1746 it ordered a survey of the
manor by John Jacob de Wilstar, a surveyor who was frequently
employed by the Corporation.* The next year, Samuel Gardiner,
the Society’s Beadle who collected the rents, was ordered in future
to account direct to the Treasurer for Clifton and Bristol rents and
disbursements.’ It seems probable that it was in the seventeen-forties
that the Society began to give serious consideration to the possibility
of building developments in Clifton and was prepared to give en-
couragement to it.
At the end of 1749, instructions were given that Mrs. Hibbs, Mr.
Combe and Mr. Gardiner were to be informed that if they could let
any land in Clifton which they held for the Society for building,
they could have new leases.* Most of the land leased by the Society at
this time was for 99 years or 3 lives. In event of one or more of the
lives coming to an end, they could normally be renewed on payment
of a fine, but presumably any one who intended to lay out a large
sum in building wanted greater security than would be given by a
lease for lives, and no doubt this is what lay behind the agreement
which the Society made with Andrew Hooke in 1751 by which his
gg-year lease determinable on three lives was changed to a 42 year
lease, renewable every 14 years, on condition that he laid out £1,000
in building in the next three years.® Two years later, Mrs. Hibbs,
who also wanted to build, applied to the Society for permission to
change her gg-year lease to one for 40 years, renewable every 14
years. She made a further agreement with regard to another part of
her land in 1757.1°
The planning permission granted by the Society to Mrs. Hibbs
provoked a reaction from another of the Society’s lessees, John
Deverell, who said that he had intended to apply for a renewal of
the lease of his house and land, but that Mrs. Hibbs was about to
erect buildings on her ground below his garden “‘whereby his view
2 H.B. 4, 9 July 1719, 7 Oct. 1719. 3 HB. 4, 29 April 1723.
4 H.B. 7, 10 Nov. 1746. 5 See pp. 187-9.
8 H.B. 7, 3 May 1746. His splendid survey is preserved in the Society’s archives.
For a reproduction in reduced form, see ‘Clifton in 1746’ by John Latimer,
Trans. B.G.A.S., xxiii, 1900.
7 H.B. 7, 4 Feb. 1747. 8 HB. 7, 17 Nov. 1749.
9 H.B. 7, 18 July 1751.
10 HB. 8, 15 Feb. 1753, 3 April 1753, 6 June 1757.
184 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
of the country would be taken off and his House greatly lessened in
value .. .”. The Hall appointed three representatives to act as
conciliators.1! Evidently, Deverell then decided that Mrs. Hibbs was
on to a good thing, for in 1758 he too applied to the Society to replace
his 99-year lease by a 40-year building lease, with the right to renew
every 14 years for a fine of one year’s rack rent of the premises. He
paid a fine of £164 for one grant and £40 for another.'?
Other agreements followed, including one with Samuel Gardiner
who in 1761 surrendered a lease for 3 lives on the Withy Bed,
Clifton, and obtained a 4-year lease in return for an undertaking to
lay out £500 on a good and substantial messuage within three years.13
Gardiner sublet to Joseph Thomas and partners, who erected build-
ings and obtained leave from the Society to dig for stone on Clifton
Down."4 In 1763-4, Benjamin Probert, Robert Comfort and other
speculating builders were developing Dowry Parade, an extension
of the east side of Dowry Square, on land granted by the Hall for
39 years 6 months, renewable every 14 years and beginning on 25
March 1762.15
Among other leases granted in the seventeen-sixties was one to
Richard Combe who in 1764 exchanged a 99 year lease for a 40 year
lease, renewable every 14 years, for £63 and one year’s rack rent
of the buildings erected. In return, he agreed to lay out £500 in good
and substantial building within the next five years. Three years later
he obtained another building lease on the same lines.1* The agree-
ment with Combe led to complaints from Mrs. Hibbs, whose build-
ing had earlier on annoyed Mr. Deverell, and representatives from
the Hall viewed from her ground the garden on which Combe
proposed to build and decided that the proposed building would not
destroy her amenities.17 Combe also ran into trouble over a set of
stables he wanted to build and to which Mr. Hobhouse and Mr.
Deverell raised objections.18 Deverell himself got a new lease of
Litfields and Cecills Litfields in 1766 and agreed to give up a lime-
kiln which was creating a nuisance and to take instead a lease of a
lime kiln on Clifton Down for a fine of £6.1® In 1767, Mr. Combe
11 HB. 8, 15 Nov. 1757.
12 AB. 8, 24 Oct. 1758, 31 Oct. 1758.
13 H.B. 8, 21 Dec. 1761. For Gardiner, see pp. 109-10, 183-4, 212-13.
14 7.B. 8, 28 Oct. 1762.
15 Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol, pp. 201-2. The Society’s nine-
teenth-century Inventory of Deeds shows under the heading “‘Land and premisses
whereon Love Street, Charles Street, Charles Place and the first six houses in
Dowry Parade are built” a number of relevant leases, including grants to Samuel
Gardiner on 11 Jan. 1736, 3 Nov. 1752, 25 March 1757 and 16 March 1762.
16 H.B. 9, 19 Jan. 1764. See also another agreement, ibid., 11 Feb. 1767.
17 H.B. 9, 30 Oct. 1764. 18 H.B. 9, 4 Feb. 1767.
19 77.B. 9, 9 Dec. 1766.
The Society as Property-Developer, Eighteenth Century 185
was given permission to dig for stone on the east side of Honeypen
Hill.2°
That the Society and its officials were well aware of the poten-
tialities of the Clifton property in the seventeen-sixties is shown in
a report to the Hall by the Clerk, Samuel Worrall, in 1763. He in-
formed the members that he had inspected the title of the Society to
the manor of Clifton and that he thought that the Society might
have a right to 12 acres, formerly called Short Grove, which for a
number of years had lain open to common on Durdham Down. The
Standing Committee thought that the land might be let for building,
and Worrall was instructed to continue his investigation. There is,
however, no further information in the Hall Books, and it would seem
that Worrall had been over-enthusiastic. 24 |
It is not possible to follow in detail all the building leases granted
by the Society during the rest of the century or to fit them into an
overall picture of the development of Clifton, but a few of the more
important developments may be briefly noted. Prince’s Buildings,
originally granted by the Society to Samuel Powell on a 40-year
building lease beginning 1 May 1789. Powell, who was for some years
the Society’s lessee of the Hotwell,?? had built the Colonnade,
Hotwells, and also promoted the erection of St. Vincent’s Parade on
land which he held from the Society. He sublet his holding to various
people from June 1789 onwards and eventually conveyed his prop-
erty to William Paty.2* In 1791, the Society granted to Harry
Elderton, a Bristol lawyer, on a 40-year lease, the land on which the
Lower Crescent (or Cornwallis Crescent) was being built.24 Land
for the nineteen houses which were known as Belle Vue, Clifton,
was also let to Harry Elderton by the Society on a forty year lease
on 21 May 1792.25 These and other grants made a considerable
contribution to the development of Clifton, although, of course,
they were only part of the total building development in that area.”®
20 HB. 9, 30 Sept. 1767. The present Richmond Hill, more commonly known in
the eighteenth century as Honeypen Hill.
21 HB. 9, 24 March 1763.
22 See p. 193.
23 Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol, pp. 224-5. For a list of leases in
connection with this property, see the Society’s nineteenth-century Schedule of Deeds,
p. 413, under the heading Princes Buildings and St. Vincents Parade.
24 See Ison, op. cit., pp. 231 ff. The principal firm engaged in building went
bankrupt in 1793 and a number of partially-built houses remained derelict until
well into the next century.
25 Ibid., p. 234. The partially-finished houses were also left derelict by the
builders after the crisis of 1793.
26 Other grants can be found in H.B. 9, 6 Nov. 1772; H.B. 12, p. 129, 30 April
1791; pp. 151, 152, 27 Sept. 1792; pp. 183-4, 7 Jan. 1792; pp. 202-3, 22 May
1792; pp. 219-20, 12 Sept. 1792; p. 24.7, 10 Dec. 1792; H.B. 13, p. 100, 1 July 1799.
From the leases, it would be possible to work out in detail the Society’s contribution.
186 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The Society was certainly anxious to further such schemes by
granting satisfactory leases. When it agreed to one proposal in 1791,
it specifically said that the merchants agreed to a new lease “‘As they
have usually done to incourage improvements there.’’2”
The Hall was well aware that what it wanted on its land was high-
class property. It acted as a planning authority. In one case, the
developer’s plans were turned down because ‘“‘they consider the
ground as a very eligible spot and that it should be laid out for
larger and better houses and not so much crowded with Buildings”’.28
In another case, they laid down that the developer must erect three
houses of the value of at least £1,500 each “‘in a uniform continuation
of the Crescent from Mr. Goodwin’s, late Hobhouse’s, along the
upper part of the ground”’. He or his executors were to agree when
the lease was renewed to continue the crescent.?® In 1792, they
approved a change of plan for Mr. Isaac Cooke’s crescent.®° In
general, the Society was quite willing to give planning approval
when it seemed reasonable to do so. Thus, in 1775 it informed Lady
Huntingdon that she need not remove a flight of steps on the north
side of the Old Assembly Room, which she had converted into a
chapel, but required her to acknowledge that the steps were there by
permission of the Society and that she must remove them if required
to do so.?4 On the other hand, on 5 November 1799 Jeremiah
Osborne, the Clerk, took a very firm line with an offender: “‘Sir,
At a Committee of Merchants held yesterday, it was stated you were
building at Princes Place Clifton in a very irregular manner and
contrary to your Covenants. I believe you know that the Society are
not to be trifled with, and will by no means permit any such con-
duct. Let me see you on the subject as soon as you conveniently
CaN yisca.a 8?
Not all the Clifton property, of course, was ripe for building
development, and not all the 99 year leases were turned into 40 year
building leases, but as property values in Clifton were going up in
the later eighteenth century, there were opportunities for obtaining
some very Satisfactory fines for renewal of leases. Thus, in 1792,
£284 18s. 6d. was charged for renewing a lease in Dowry Square,?
and the price for adding one life to a lease of some ground in Clifton
near Whiteladies Turnpike, which was used as a nursery, was
27 H.B. 12, p. 129, 30 April 1791.
28 H.B. 12, p. 219, 12 Sept. 1792, with reference to Mr. Lockier’s plans for
building on Honeypen Hill.
29 HB. 12, pp. 151-2, 27 Sept. 1791. The Society subsequently agreed to let him
build 4 houses of £1,000 each instead of three at £1,500; zbid., p. 166, 27 Oct. 1791.
30 H.B. 12, p. 220, 12 Sept. 1792; ibid., p. 247, 10 Dec. 1792.
$1 H7.B. 10, 6 Nov. 1775«
32 Letter Book 1781-1816, p. 305, 5 Nov. 1799.
33 HB. 12, p. 202, 22 May 1792.
The Society as Property-Developer, Eighteenth Century — 187
£120.84 Mr. Goldney paid £140 to renew a lease on a piece of ground
in 1798,%5 and a renewal at Jacob’s Well in 1802 brought in £250.%¢
If the manor of Clifton was to be developed as a residential district,
it needed adequate roads, and from at least as early as the seventeen-
thirties the Hall was busy making its own improvements and
cooperating with others. Thus, in 1732, it gave order that the way
to Clifton whould be made wide enough for two coaches or carriages
to pass each other; in 1734, it ordered that the road from Clifton
Down to Durdham Down should be amended at the cost of the
Society, and in 1735 it gave £20 towards amending the road from
Redhill through Redland to Durdham Down.’ The Standing
Committee was instructed in 1746 to report on the roads in and about
Clifton. It found that the old road from Jacob’s Well to Clifton was
very much out of repair and was impassable for carriages, as the
‘banks on both sides had fallen in. It thought the road should be
repaired and that the Hall should contribute to the cost.®% In 1761,
Thomas Knox was given £20 to make a road from the Turnpike
Road leading through Clifton to Durdham Down to the Turnpike
leading from the Hotwell to Durdham Down, and £10 was given to
James Hilhouse as a free gift to mend the road from Clifton Turnpike
to the new buildings in Mrs. Hibbs’ field.®®
The Hall was very ready to cooperate with the Turnpike Com-
missioners. In the second half of the century they were active in
improving and developing the roads in and around Bristol and their
work helped to make more attractive the areas in which the Society
held land. When in 1758 an Act was passed to extend the existing
turnpike roads, including provision for what was to become Park
Street, and for the extension of this road to Whiteladies Gate, the
Society agreed to help by giving up some of its land.*° When the
Clerk to the Commissioners of the Turnpikes informed the Hall of a
petition from the inhabitants of Clifton for a bill which would, among
other things, make roads from Whiteladies Road and Gallows Acre
Lane to Bristol, the Hall was agreeable to allowing the roads to pass
34 H.B. 12, p. 304, 23 Oct. 1793; Pp. 443, 4 Oct. 1796.
35 HB. 13, p. 69, 17 July 1798.
36 HB. 13, p. 207, 10 May 1802.
37 HB. 5, 11 May 1732; H.B. 6, 5 March 1734; 9 May 1735.
38 H.B. 7, 6 Feb. 1746; 30 April 1746.
89 H.B. 8, 2 March 1761. The numerous other references to roads in the Society’s
records include: H.B. 9, 19 March 1764, £10 10s. towards the road from Stoke in
Westbury to Sea Mills; 19 Dec. 1765, £20 for the road from Jacob’s Well by the
Black Horse to Clifton parish church; 11 May 1767, £21 for the road leading to
Durdham Down through Gallows Acre Lane; 8 Sept. 1767, agreement to share
with the Corporation the cost of widening and amending the road from College
Green to the Boar’s Head at an estimated cost of £115 9s.; H.B. 12, p. 6, 23 Nov.
1789, £80 towards the repair of the road from Limekiln Lane to the Hotwells.
40 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 331, 333; H.B. 9, 18 May 1767.
188 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
through part of its ground in Honeypen Hill field.“! In 1783, it
agreed to give up part of its land when the Commissioners of Turn-
pikes wanted to make a new road from Gallows Acre Lane to the
Whiteladies Road.*? Earlier, it had leased part of the Clifton Waste
near the tollgate on Clifton Down and Gallows Acre Lane for use
as a tollkeeper’s house at the rent of 1d. a year.48
Under the wharfage lease, the Society had responsibility for
maintaining part of the road between Bristol and Rownham Ferry,
and it gave this a good deal of attention because it was important
commercially and gave access to the Hotwell.44 In 1760, the Surveyor
of Highways of Clifton parish asked the Hall to repair the road from
Limekiln Dock to the Hotwells, and the Society gave 100 guineas
towards widening Limekiln Lane and £30 towards putting College
Green in order.*® Such efforts were always liable to be sabotaged
by those who misused the roads. Early in 1761 Henry Smith wrote
to the Master, Joseph Daltera, complaining that Richard Rogers
was hauling large quantities of stone from the quarry behind the
King David in carts with narrow wheels and that “consequently the
road which you Gentlemen Merchants have been at so great an
expense to make so fine will be Cutt and Torne up as bad as ever it
was, if you Don’t put a Stop to it. . . .’°46
Other occasions on which the Hall gave attention to this road
included an order in 1763 for improvements on the part of the road
from the King David to the Hotwell House. The Committee also
drew attention to the need for improvement on the stretch between
Limekiln Dock and Dowry Square running through a street lately
made called Love Street,*” £80 was provided for repair of the road
from Limekiln Dock to Hotwells in 1789, and next year 10 guineas
were given for street lights. 48
There was, however, some doubt about what was the responsibility
of the Surveyor of Highways of Clifton and what were the respon-
sibilities of the Society under the wharfage lease.4® The matter came
to a head in 1792 when the Corporation received complaints about
the road to Hotwells and asked the Society to carry out repairs. The
Society maintained that it was responsible for only part of the road
41 H.B. 10, 13 Feb. 1779.
42H. B. 11, p. 28, 12 May 1783. For other examples, see H.B. 12, p. 386, 30
June 1795; H.B. 13, p. 25, 10 June 1797.
43 HB. 9, 5 June 1767.
‘4 H.B. 12, p. 189, 20 March 1792; p. 291, 7 Sept. 1793.
4° HB. 8, 10 March 1760; 25 March 1760.
46 Society’s Letters, bdle. 6, 20 Jan. 1761, Henry Smith to Joseph Daltera.
47 HB. 9, 24 March 1763. Love Street was built on the Society’s property. See
also H.B. 9, 8 Sept. 1767.
48 H.B. 12, p. 6, 23 Nov. 1789; p. 70, 27 Sept. 1790.
4° HB. 9, 31 March 1768; 8 April 1768.
The Society as Property-Developer, Eighteenth Century 189
and that repair of the remainder should be done by the parish
of Clifton. The dispute was eventually taken to Gloucestershire
Quarter Sessions, which decided that the parish was responsible for
the part of the road in question.®° On this occasion, the Society was
not willing to help, because it denied legal responsibility, but in
general it had over the years done a great deal to assist in the
improvement of roads in Clifton and Hotwells. This, of course,
increased the value of its own property, but the area as a whole
benefited from what it did.
The development of building made the Society increasingly aware
of the importance of its quarries. It was very fortunate to possess, as
lord of the manor of Clifton, these valuable assets on the manorial
waste. They were let out to developers and to lime burners,*! and
efforts were made to check illegal encroachments. Thus, in 1759 the
Clerk sent a sharp letter to Ralph Seddon, saying “if you dig any
more stones on Clifton Down, you will be prosecuted forthwith’, and
in 1764 order was given to prosecute a man who had been working
a quarry for two years.52 Sometimes, the Hall seems to have been
too enthusiastic in granting quarrying rights. In 1770, for example,
George Tyndall complained on behalf of Mrs. Adams that as a
result of quarrying on Honeypen Hill, part of her ground had fallen
in, and it was decided to build a wall round the quarry.®* There was
more subsidence in 1772, and one of the quarries had to be closed.**
Quarrying near the river also raised problems since the quarriers
did not always build stanks to prevent large stones rolling into the
river. The Society drew up regulations, but it was often difficult to
enforce them effectively.*® 7
The Hall was also concerned with the Downs and the manorial
waste, partly because it needed to protect its property against illegal.
encroachment, partly because it realised their value as an amenity,
particularly in relation to the high-class property in Clifton. It was
not always easy to say where boundary lines lay, and in a time of
rapid building development, there was a certain amount of nibbling
away of the waste by developers and house-owners. The Hall
ordered a report to be made on encroachments in 1759 and instructed
the Clerk to take action against those responsible.5* Thus, one of
50 HB. 12, pp. 189-92, 20 March 1792; p. 291, 7 Sept. 1793.
51 See, for example, H.B. 9, 30 May 1764, 4 Feb. 1765, 1 April 1769. Rental of
Land &c Belonging to the Society of Merchants taken in 1766, pp. 37-9, gives details of
quarries held from the Society, and it also includes quarries on the Somerset side
held jointly by the Corporation and the Society to prevent nuisances on the banks
of the Avon. For the actual grants, see Society’s deeds, Box 138, bdle. 62.
52 Letter Book 1747-1780, 12 Dec. 1759; H.B. 9, 7 Nov. 1764.
53 H.B. 9, 9 April 1770; 18 April 1770.
54 HB. 10, 16 Nov. 1772, 18 Nov. 1772.
55 See, for example, H.B. 9, 4 Feb. 1765. 56 H.B. 8, 4 Dec. 1759.
190 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
those concerned received a letter to this effect: “Madam, The Society
being informed that a strip of ground, part of Clifton Down, has
been for some years taken from the Downs and laid into a Field
belonging to you and your sisters, I am ordered to call on you to
show title. Otherwise, an ejectment will be delivered’’.®’ A little
earlier, the Hall had informed Mrs. Parsons that it thought she had
built her coach house on the waste, and she agreed to pay a rent in
acknowledgement that the land belonged to the Society.** In 1773,
it was noted that a large amount of turf and mould had been
illegally removed from Durdham Down, and order was given to
insert a notice in the newspapers that those responsible would be
prosecuted. *?®
In an attempt to preserve the Downs and to prevent nuisances, the
Hall gladly accepted an offer of Sir William Draper in 1766 to act
as Conservator of Clifton Down,®® and in 1783 it appointed one of
its members, Robert Smith, to be gamekeeper for the manor of
Clifton.* Nevertheless, it was difficult to keep the Downs under
control, and nuisances continued. Thus, in 1790 the Hall had to
consider a complaint against a man who drove asses and trespassed
on Clifton Down and who when his beasts were impounded forcibly
rescued them, ®* and in 1801 the Clerk had to write to Mrs. Godfrey,
saying “I hereby give you notice that you are not to hang Cloaths
to dry on the Wastes or Commons of Clifton and that if you do so,
I shall proceed against you. .. .’’8
Although the Hall was prepared to allow the parish of Clifton to
have part of Honeypen Hill for a burial ground® and to grant a
lease to the Brass Wire Company of Bristol to cut and carry away
fern, gorse and heath from all the commons in the manor of Clifton, ®
its concern for the preservation of amenities was shown in its refusal
in 1791 to permit a powder magazine to be set up near Oakham on
the boundary of Clifton,®® and in its turning down of a request to
grant a mining lease on Clifton waste in 1792.®’ Its general attitude
57 Letter Book 1747-1780, 12 Dec. 1759.
58 HB. 8, 27 June 1759, 12 July 1759.
59 77.B. 10, 15 Dec. 1773.
60 Hf.B. 9, 9 Dec. 1766.
61 Deeds, Box 138, bdle. 62, 9 Jan. 1783. Deputation from the Society to Robert
Smith to be their gamekeeper for the Manor of Clifton; Society’s Letters, bdle. 25,
6 Jan. 1782. In 1795, Philip John Miles was appointed gamekeeper of Clifton
(H.B. 12, p. 389, 2 July 1795).
62 77.B. 12, p. 78, 9 Nov. 1790.
68 Letter Book 1781-1816, p. 315, c. Feb. 1801.
64 H.B. 11, p. 71, 9 Aug. 1784.
65 H7.B. 11, p. 150, 12 May 1789; Society’s Deeds, Box 138, bdle. 62, 3 Sept.
1789.
66 77.B. 12, p. 148, 16 Sept. 1791.
8? HB. 12, p. 182, 7 Jan. 1792.
The Society as Property-Developer, Eighteenth Century 1g!
at the end of the century was stated in a letter which a somewhat
embarrassed Clerk was instructed to write to Mr. Henry Seymour of
Redland Court in 1799. The Clerk regretted having to trouble
Mr. Seymour, but he had been told to point out that the Society was
Lord of the Manor of Clifton and as such was entitled to the soil of
Durdham Down. He went on to say that “in order to keep the
surface in good condition for the accommodation of persons walking
and riding there (they) have uniformly refused every person apply-
ing permission to cut Turf or dig mould”’, and they had offered a
reward of 5 guineas for information. The man who worked the
quarries by the side of the wood at Durdham Down had informed
the Hall that a few weeks ago, Mr. Seymour’s carts had removed
turf and mould. The Clerk was sure that this was done without
Mr. Seymour’s knowledge, but he had to add apologetically “I fear
the Society will expect you to pay the sum promised to the In-
former.’’®8
Another piece of property which the Society tried to exploit in the
later eighteenth century was the Hotwell. As has been seen, the
Hotwell had been leased in the late seventeenth century for 99 years
at rent of £5 a year.®® Thus, for the greater part of the period, the
Society was not in a position to make any profit out of the spa, which
enjoyed tremendous popularity.’° Its interest had to be limited to
trying to ensure that the lessees did not infringe their covenants,
particularly the one by which they agreed to let all the inhabitants
of Bristol have access to the water.’
It must have been very irritating to the Hall to realise that by
granting a long lease of the Hotwell, it had missed an opportunity
of exploiting this source of profit.
Although the Society could not do anything about the Hotwell
until the lease ran out, it toyed from time to time with the possibility
of making use of another hot spring at Oakham Slade, which was
discovered in 1702. The Master and several members visited it and
approved the water. £10 was voted to make a good way to it, but
no further action was taken.72 In 1729, the Committee again viewed
the spring, which was now known as the New Hotwell, and thought
68 Fetter Book 1781-1816, p. 306.
69 Society’s Deeds, Box 12, bdle. 19, 4 April 1695. The lease was granted by the
Society to Charles Jones and Thomas Callowhill for 99 years from 25 March next.
The lessees agreed to spend £500 on the erection of a Pump Room, lodging houses
and other conveniences. See also Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 169.
70 Vincent Waite, The Bristol Hotwell, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association,
1960.
71 HB. 5, 29 March 1727; 23 July 1728; H.B. 9, 14 Feb. 1764; H.B. ro, 20 June
1781.
72 ALB. 3, 12 Jan. 1703.
192 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
that the ground should be cleared so that some experiment might be
made with the water.78 In 1729, a proposal to let the well was
rejected, and instead the idea was put forward of fitting it up at the
expense of the Hall to provide water for ships.”?4 There was a change
of plan in 1730, when it was decided to let the spring after all.
Samuel Cornett and John Barratt agreed to take it at £110 per
annum. They were to dig in order to find the springhead.?5
The new Hotwell was not a success, and in 1746 the Standing
Committee had to compound with the lessees for arrears and accept
a surrender of the lease.’® An attempt to auction it was unsuccessful, ?”
and it remained unoccupied until 1750, when William Newcombe
and John Dolman took a 21 year lease at £24 per annum.’8 In 1778,
it was again up for auction, but there were no bidders.’® It was
eventually decided in 1784 to include the lease of this unsuccessful
spring in a new lease of the old Hotwell.8°
The gg-year lease of the old Hotwell would not in the normal
course have run out until 1794, but in fact it seems to have been
terminated in 1785. In the year before, the Society was already
making plans to exploit it, including a proposal that a Piazza and
a number of shops should be built there.*? The Hall was prepared to
invest a good deal of capital, and it hoped to get a rent of £600 a
year.®? It received a number of offers, but they were not acceptable. ®?
Eventually, it decided to appoint as manager for 5 years Mr. Thomas
Perkins, a Merchant Venturer who had been Master in 1780. He
was to have one third of the profits and was to try to establish ware-
houses in London and in Rotterdam for the sale of Hotwell water.®4
In the period that followed, the Society’s Hotwells Committee
was extremely active and arranged to carry out a considerable
number of improvements. On 25 March 1786, for example, it
approved plans for the colonnade and shops,®* and in July Mr.
73 ALB. 5, 29 March 1727. 74 H.B. 5, 13 Feb. 1729.
78 HB. 5, 13 July 1730. The lease is dated 25 March 1731 (Society’s Deeds:
Box 12, bdle. 19).
76 HB. 6, 21 Nov. 1743; H.B. 7, 6 Feb. 1746; Society’s Deeds: Surrender of the
lease, 12 April 1746, Box 12, bdle. 19.
7 HB. 7, 17 June 1746, 15 July 1746.
78 H.B. 7, 23 Oct. 1750; Society’s Deeds, Box 12, bdle. 19, 4 Jan. 1750, lease to
Newcombe and Dolman. For Dolman, see Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 216.
79 HB. 10, 23 Sept. 1778. 80 HB. 11, pp. 86, 87, 27 Oct. 1784.
81 7.B. 11, p. 98, 16 Nov. 1784.
82 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 217, estimates the amount eventually spent as
nearly £3,000.
83 H.B, 11, p. 115, 5 March 1785. For later offers, see ibid., p. 125, 26 March
1785; p. 134, 23 April 1785; p. 143, 18 May 1785; p. 144, 21 May 1785; p. 145,
1 June 1785.
84 HB. 11, p. 148, 1 June 1785; p. 153, 4 June 1785.
85 HB. 11, p. 214, 25 March 1786.
The Society as Property-Developer, Eighteenth Century 193
Bright consulted Mr. Smeaton in London about machinery. Smeaton
said that the machinery had been constructed by Mr. Padmore, a
very able engineer, and he thought it improper to alter it. However,
he was willing to look at it if asked to do so, although he was no
longer in business. ®¢
The net profits to the Society, after deducting expenses, taxes and
the one-third share which went to Mr. Perkins, amounted in the
three years 5 April 1785 to 4 April 1788 to £1,271 os. 8d.8”? Evidently
the Society wanted a bigger return on its capital, and from 1788
onwards it was negotiating with Samuel Powell to take a lease of the
Hotwell and other property.8& In 1790, it was put up for auction.
Sir James Laroche offered £840 per annum, but Powell made a
successful bid of £900. He was given a 14-year lease.®® It is probable
that he had taken over before 1790, for when there were complaints
from the West Indies in May 1789 about the foulness of some of
the bottles exported there, Powell described to the Committee the
method of bottling and corking, and the Committee made a number
of suggestions about improvements. °°
Powell was committed to pay a large rent, and in order to meet it,
he had to make drastic increases in charges. He ran into financial
difficulties, and in December 1792 his rent was three-quarters of a
year in arrears.*! In May 1793, he informed the Hall that his goods
had been seized for debt, and although he seems to have staggered
on for some time, he finally surrendered his lease in 1795 and was
taken on as manager by the Society at £3 3s. per week.®?
The first year of the new arrangement produced a net profit of
£917, but in the last four years of the eighteenth century the profit
was only £636 per annum.®8 It seems that the increased charges,
both at the Hotwell itself and for water bottled there, had done
something to decrease the popularity of the Hotwell as compared
86 H7.B. 11, p. 233, 1 July 1786. Other references to the Committee’s work in
these years include H.B. 11, p. 200, 31 Jan. 1786; p. 202, 2 Feb. 1786; p. 203, 11
Feb. 1786; p. 204, 13 Feb. 1786; p. 207, 21 Feb. 1786; p. 209, 7 March 1786; p.
213, 23 March 1786; p. 214, 25 March 1786; p. 216, 19 April 1786; p. 217, 11 May
1786; p. 225, 22 May 1786; p. 233, 1 July 1786; p. 240, 5 Aug. 1786; p. 242, 8 Aug.
1786; p. 289, 29 Jan. 1787; p. 298, 28 Feb. 1787; p. 313, 23 May 1787; p. 334,
4 Aug. 1787; p. 379, 17 Dec. 1787; p. 396, 18 Feb. 1788; p. 415, 30 April 1788.
87 HB. 11, p. 415, 30 April 1788.
88 HB. 11, p. 443, 9 July 1788; p. 489, 9 March 1789. A draft lease was drawn
up but not signed in 1789 (A.B. 11, p. 508, 29 April 1789).
89 H7.B. 12, p. 42, 6 March 1790; Society’s Deeds: Box 12, bdle. 19, 17 March
1790 from 25 March 1709.
90 HB. 11, p. 515, 27 May 1789.
1 HB. 12, p. 249, 24 Dec. 1792; see also p. 274, 6 May 1793.
** HB. 12, p. 277, 25 May 17933 p. 336, 1 July 1794; p. 339, 12 Sept. 1794;
p. 401, 26 Sept. 1795. On 25 February 1796, it was estimated that his debts would
be met at the rate of 10s. in the pound (4.B. 12, p. 428, 25 Feb. 1796).
88 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 218.
194 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
with the period before the Society took over, but the natural dis-
advantages of the place and the effect of the French Wars from 1793
onwards must also be taken into account. Latimer’s comment that
““Short-sighted rapacity . . . had been emphatically punished’
seems unduly severe, but the Society had certainly not done as well
as it hoped to do, and in the years, 1801-10, the net profits fell to
just over £400 a year.
Another major investment in property by the Society has already
been examined,®® but some further comment may be made to
illustrate the way in which ownership of an increasing amount of
property involved the Hall in a considerable amount of litigation.
When the Society purchased Champion’s Dock in 1770, it believed
that it had secured a sound title both to the Dock and to the land
and buildings attached to it. In fact, Champion’s title to some 10}
acres of the property was not sound. According to an account in the
Society’s records, Champion had in 1765 offered £870 to Mr. Shute
Adams for this land. The Hall later took the view that this was a
high price — “it must be noted that Mr. Champion was a Man who
thought nothing of expence when he had a scheme to execute, as -
many very respectable Persons have too severely felt”. George
Tyndall, the Adams’ family attorney, prepared a conveyance dated
27 December 1765, but it had not been executed when Mr. Adams
died on 10 January 1766. His widow was tenant for life of his estate,
and she granted a lease to Champion of the 10} acres. Then, in
February 1769, Champion became bankrupt, and in order to make
the Dock saleable, he asked her to confirm the unsigned agreement
with her late husband. She agreed to do so as far as she was con-
cerned, and she said she would try to prevail on her children when
they came of age to sell the land for £780. The Society purchased
the Dock and surrounding property from Champion, although
there was clearly a difficulty about title. It is not clear whether it
knew what it was doing or whether it received bad legal advice.
In 1774, Mary Shute Adams, the eldest child, came of age and
was ready to join her mother in making the conveyance, but, says
the account, ‘‘it very unluckily happened that the Sollicitor of the
Society of Merchants was deeply engaged in a Law Suit, which
engrossed his whole attention, and made it necessary for him after-
wards to take a journey for his health. On his return he was again
deeply engaged in Business and thought there was no danger of
Mrs. Adams’ death.” Unfortunately for the Society, on 20 January
1775 “‘she died very unexpectedly; so very unexpectedly that the
young Ladys were then at a Ball or Concert’’. The Society tried to
*4 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 489-90; Merchant Venturers, pp. 217-18.
95 See p. 154 ff.
The Society as Property-Developer, Eighteenth Century 195
get the agreement confirmed, but the Adams brothers said their
mother had no power to bind them. The Society argued that the
agreement was binding and that “‘all this trouble and expence might
(if Prudence had governed, and if an honorable regard for the Act
of a Parent had prevailed would) have been saved”. To make
matters worse, the agreement had apparently been lost. The Hall
tried to get its title confirmed by Act of Parliament and offered £780
for the property, but the offer was rejected owing to “‘the unreason-
ableness of the Adams Family’’.*®
The affair dragged on for many years. Francis Adams and his
sisters were prepared to sell for £1,500. The Society then asked for a
jury to be empanelled to assess the value, and to its great disgust,
the jury in 1776 valued the property at £1,080.°7 The Adams
family was not prepared to settle for that amount, and in addition
in 1777 it sent in a bill of costs amounting to £287 8s.°° The dispute
dragged on until 1791 when the parties finally agreed to settle for
the sum of £1,080 fixed by a jury in 1776.®° In this matter, as in the
matter of the Colston Trust, the Hall found that property rights
could be costly and time-consuming, but no doubt the lawyers were
happy.
Development also took place in Rownham Meads, in which the
Society held a considerable amount of land. From 1755, the Rever-
end Alexander Daniel held over 31 acres from the Hall on a 99 year
lease, determinable on 3 lives, at a fine of £360 for two lives.1°° He
surrendered one acre in 1763 and was regranted it on a 40 year
building lease, on condition that he laid out £500 in building
within 3 years.!° In 1791, the Society was prepared to pay £2,500
to Mr. Daniel for premises in Rownham Mead, including the
Salutation Inn. The arrangement required a private Act of Parlia-
ment, which was secured the next year.1°
It would be tedious to record details of all the property in which
the Society was interested in the eighteenth century. It included
shops and warehouses on the quay, held under the wharfage lease;
a tenement in Corn Street held from the Dean and Chapter; the
George Inn, Castle Street, and two other tenements there which
96 This account of the affair, written very much from the point of view of the
Society, is to be found in the Society’s records in a volume without any title on the
cover which contain a printed copy of the Act of Parliament of 1776 concerning
the Dock and then some 30 pages relating to the case with the Adams family.
97 HB. 10, 23 Aug. 1776.
98 H.B. 10, 15 Jan. 1777.
99 HB. 12, pp. 128-9, 30 April 1791.
100 See Rental of lands &c. belonging to the Society . . . taken in 1766, p. 13.
101 Ibid., p. 13; H.B. 9, 24 March 1763.
102 77. B. 12, p. 166, 27 Oct. 1791; p. 186, 24 Jan. 1792; p. 249, 24 Dec. 1792.
196 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
were charged with the maintenance of six poor sailors in the
Merchants’ Almshouse by legacy from Richard Jones; a considerable
number of tenements in Limekiln Lane, a building used as a play-
house in Jacob’s Well, and a Cold Bath in the same area; a brickyard
at Hotwells and a windmill on Clifton Down.1°8 Its numerous
acquisitions included the King David public house, Hotwells, in
1754, and the Dock Gates public house in 1771,1°4 as well as all the
property connected with Champion’s Dock, quite apart from the
Colston Charity lands and the manor of Storgursey which it came
to regard as its own.
Throughout the eighteenth century, the Society of Merchant
Venturers remained primarily an organisation concerned with the
economic interests of Bristol, but ownership of property and concern
for its development, as well as increasing responsibility for charitable
and educational trusts, took up a great deal of its time and were
likely to make a considerable impact on the outlook of the fairly
small number of members who participated actively in its work.
This made it less single-minded and less able to provide the com-
mercial leadership required in a new age.
108 For Jacob’s Well Playhouse, see Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 63 ff.,
439. The theatre was built on the Society’s land and was opened in 1729. It went
on, with some interruptions, until 1782. References in the Society’s records include
the following: H.B. 11, p. 62, 7 June 1784, the building formerly used as a play-
house in great want of repair; ibid., p. 166, 20 Aug. 1785, reference to a messuage
formerly called the Horse and Groom, a piece of ground called the Margaretts and
the building thereon erected and lately used as a playhouse; ibid., p. 212, 14 March
1786, to advertise the old playhouse for sale; ibid., p. 282, 20 Dec. 1786, materials
of the old playhouse to be sold.
On 23 Oct. 1793, the Cold Baths near Jacobs Wells and premises adjoining were
to be let to Soloman Roach for £500 (H.B. 12, p. 303).
For the windmill, see H.B. 9, 9 Dec. 1766, permission to build a windmill on
part of Clifton Down called Montpelier to grind corn. Cost will be £300. The
Society will lend £200 at 4 per cent. Jbid., 8 April 1768, the Committee to recover
possession and give a lease to the person who built it. H.B. 11, p. 521, 26 Aug.
1789, Mr. Pigott wanted to fit the mill up as an observatory.
For the brickyard, H.B. 10, 26 April 1774; H.B. 12, p. 222, 12 Sept. 1792.
104 HB, 8, 24 Aug. 1754; H.B. 9, 36 May 1771.
CHAPTER 12
Charitable and Educational Work in
the Eighteenth Century
CHARITABLE and educational work, which had been a modest
part of the Society’s activity in the seventeenth century, was on a
very much larger scale in the eighteenth century, mainly because
the Society became responsible for the administration of considerable
funds provided by others through the Colston Trust and the Sea-
men’s Hospital Fund. In addition, there was some increase in the
charitable and educational work financed from the Society’s own
resources.
The most important new charitable activity related to the
Seamen’s Hospital Fund. This was totally ignored by John Latimer,
apart: from a brief mention of a proposal in 1747 for the establish-
ment of a hospital for the relief of merchant seamen and their
families. After stating that in December 1747 the Corporation voted
£500 towards a fund and granted a site on Brandon Hill and that
the Hall also subscribed £200, Latimer remarked “Afterwards, for
reasons now unknown, the scheme was abandoned”’.! It is true that
the Hospital was never built and that Bristol did not get its equiva-
lent of Greenwich Hospital, but the Seamen’s Hospital Fund was
nevertheless established and was administered by the Society until
Parliament brought it to an end in the mid-nineteenth century.*
Details concerning the origin of the scheme are given in one of
the Society’s volumes Seamens Hospital Orders &c 1747-1769. ‘This
begins with a transcript of an Act of Parliament of 1747 “for the
Relief and support of Mariners and Disabled Seamen, and the
Widows and Children of such as shall be killed, slain or drowned in
the Merchants Service’. The Act refers to earlier Acts, including
one of 7 & 8 William III setting up the Royal Hospital at Green-
wich, which imposed a levy of 6d. a month on the wages of every
seaman, whether in the Royal Navy or the merchant service, and it
also refers to a number of later Acts concerning the Hospital. Since
Greenwich Hospital was inadequate to cope with the needs of the
navy, let alone of the merchant service, and since seamen in the
merchant service were willing to pay 6d. a month for disabled or
worn-out seamen, a new corporate body was to be set up by the name
1Qatimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 269. 2 See pp. 394-8.
ry 9
198 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
of “the President and Governors for the Relief and Support of Sick,
maimed and disabled seamen, and of the widows and children of
such as shall be killed, slain or drowned in the Merchant Service”’.
This Corporation might establish hospitals and provide pensions.
Detailed regulations were laid down about the production of
certificates in support of claims and about the collection of the
money, which masters of ships were required to retain out of the
seamen’s wages. The master of the ship was to keep a Muster Book
showing the names and usual place of abode of his seamen before
the ship sailed and was to deliver a duplicate copy to the Collector
of the Duties at the port of departure. During the voyage, the master
had to record all discharges and desertions, all new members taken
on, and details of any injuries or deaths. He was to deliver this to the
Collector on his return, and the Collector was to make a copy and
send the original to the President and Governors of the Company.
In Bristol, there were to be special arrangements by which the
Society of Merchant Venturers undertook the collection and appli-
cation of the money. The Society acted as trustees and appointed
the Collector or Receiver.
After the transcription of the Act, there follows in this volume a
number of extracts from the Society’s Hall Books relating to the
setting up of the charity.4 We know from the Hall Books that when
the bill was being considered in Parliament in April 1747, the Hall
asked the Standing Committee to write to the M.P.s to get a clause
inserted about special arrangements for Bristol,5 and that on 13
April the Standing Committee approved a draft clause for insertion
in the bill making the Master, Wardens, Assistants and Treasurer
trustees for the Seamen’s Fund in Bristol. When the bill went
through, the Hall voted £500 for the Hospital.? On 5 December
1747, the Standing Committee was instructed to meet at Martin’s
Coffee House on the Green to view a piece of ground on Brandon
Hill intended for a hospital.8 The Hall approved the site and asked
the Corporation, which had already given £500, to let it have the
land at a moderate rent.®
We can follow in the Seamen’s Hospital Order Book the history of
this ultimately unsuccessful attempt to erect a hospital. 14 trustees
were appointed on 15 October 1747, and Thomas Rothley was
appointed Receiver, with an allowance of 6 per cent.1° Possible sites
in Limekiln Lane were considered before the final choice was made
8 In Hull, a similar task was undertaken by the Brotherhood of the Trinity House
of Kingston-upon-Hull.
4 Seamens Hospital Orders &c. 1747-1769, pp. 40 ff.
5 H.B. 7, 6 April 1747 (25 members present).
6 Jbid., 13 April 1747. ? Ibid., 10 Sept. 1747, 30 Sept. 1747.
8 Ibid., 5 Dec. 1747. - ® Ibid., 8 Dec. 1747, 10 Dec. 1747.
10 Seamens Hospital Orders &c. 1747-1769, p. 51, 15 Oct. 1747.
Charitable and Educational Work, Exghteenth Century 199
of Brandon Hill. In February 1748, orders were given to prepare
plans for a hospital for 60 men and to buy and season oak." In May,
Mr. Jacob de Wilstar was asked to prepare plans, and these were
approved in June. The building was to be 170 feet x 1096 feet.?? It.
was then decided to change the site to a more convenient place on
Brandon Hill, and Mr. de Wilstar was asked to prepare estimates.18
The plan did not go well. The Collector, Mr. Rothley, paid in
£145 1s. 11d. in October 1748, and complained that his 6 per cent
commission was not enough, as the business involved more trouble
than he had. expected. His commission was accordingly raised to
g per cent.14 The Committee decided that the available money
would not support the original ambitious proposal for a hospital for
60 men, and de Wilstar was asked. to prepare plans for a smaller
building to hold 24 men.}°
The matter dragged on. A subscription was opened, and a sub-
committee considered the new plans.!® In January 1752, the com-
mittee in charge of the proposed hospital was asked to proceed with
all convenient speed, and in August 1753 new plans by George
Tulley were laid before the Trustees. Estimates were to be pre-
pared.17 New members were added to the Committee in July 1754,
and again it was requested to proceed with all possible expedition.'®
There was a ray of hope when Isaac Edwards, by a will dated 15
June 1757, left £500 to the Hospital provided it was begun within
20 years of his death,!® but by 1760 the Trustees had decided that
there was no hope in the forseeable future. Their Minutes for 15
October 1760 have the following entry: ““The Society of Merchants
having paid the sum of five hundred Pounds as their Subscription
towards the building a Hospital, which sum has been put out at
Interest. And it being at present the resolution of the Trustees not
to proceed with the building of such Hospital’, the sum of £500
should be returned with thanks to the Society, with a request that
if the Trustees decided to proceed later, the Society should again be
asked to contribute. The oak planks bought for the building were
to be sold.?°
11 Tbid., p. 55, 10 Feb. 1748.
12 [bhid., p. 60, 12 May 1748; p. 61, 20 May 1748.
13 Ibid., p. 64, 14 July 1748; p. 68, 7 Sept. 1748.
14 Ibid., p. 69, 3 Oct. 1748. 15 Tbid., p. 70, 20 Oct. 1748.
16 Ibid., p. 71, 12 Jan. 1749; p. 75, 9 Aug. 1750.
17 Ibid., p. 84, 24 Jan. 1752; p. 88, 6 Aug. 1753.
18 Tbhid., p. 99, 16 July 1754.
19 H.B. 11, p. 400, 28 Feb. 1788, when the Hall was advised to relinquish any
claim to the legacy. |
20 Seamens Hospital Orders &c. 1747-1769, Pp. 157, 15 Oct. 1760. See also entries for
6 July 1761, 20 July 1761. See also H.B. 12, pp. 183-4, 7 Jan. 1792; p. 187, 24 Jan.
1792 when the Society agreed to sell back to the Corporation land in Limekiln
Lane which the Corporation had originally sold to it for £200 for the Hospital.
200 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
But although the Hospital never came into existence, the Seamen’s
Hospital Fund nevertheless continued, and from 1751 the Society
paid pensions to various applicants. The accounts are to be found in
a number of ledgers and journals in the Society’s records. The first
Hospital Treasurer’s Account for the year 1747-8 shows the
Collector, Thomas Rothley, paying in £145 1s. 11d. De Wilstar was
paid £8 8s. for his survey, and £1 7s. was expended on 500 forms
for the Muster Rolls. After various other payments, the account was
in credit for £126.71 £550 6s. 3d. was paid in for 1748-9.
An idea of the way in which the Fund operated can be gathered
from a few examples. In 1770, £734 11s. was paid out to 121 people,
most of it by way of pensions, but some in the form of gifts.2? In
1787-8, £433 was spent on pensions and gifts. In that year, Rothley
collected £403 17s. and received £36 7s. in commission. Interest on
£4,500 invested in Old South Sea Stock amounted to £135.28 When
the new accounting system began in 1795-6, the stock in the Fund
was shown as £6,050 in Old South Sea Stock purchased between
1751 and 1794. Pensions were paid between September 1795 and
September 1796 to 5 captains, 2 mates, 2 boatswains, 1 surgeon and
37 seamen (of whom 21 were blind). Twenty-seven widows received
payments on behalf of 48 children. In all, about 95 people were
relieved, with a total payment of nearly £400.74
The records relating to the working of the system in the eighteenth
century are of considerable interest. They include a bundle of over
100 applications for relief, some with supporting evidence, which
throw light on the perils of seamen in this period.?® The first 204 cases
are recorded in the Seamen’s Hospital Order Book 1747-1769.2° The
first case recorded was on 6 February 1751 and related to “William
Cuzzins who sailed out of this Port in the Alexander, David Dun-
comb Master, having been deprived of his Sight in the Voyage’.
He had applied to the Trustees for relief, and ‘“‘the Certificate of the
Fact having been lost or Mislaid, but the same being well known to
the Trustees.?¢ It is ordered that the said William Cuzzins be allowed
three shillings and six pence per week. . . .”?7 Case no. 22 on 20
December 1753 concerned John Fling, late a seaman on the Black
21 Merchants’ Hall Records. Hospital for Decayed Seamen, No. 1, 1748-1787, pp. 1 ff.
22 Tbid., pp. 64, 65.
23 Hospital Book 1787-1835.
24 Seamens Hospital Journal 1796-1830, p. 2. The figures for 1800 were 96 pensioners
receiving £430 4s. 6d.
25 The original applications are in a bundle marked ‘‘1766—1774 Petitions of
Seamens Widows’’. The applications are numbered..I hope at a later date to print
some of the documents relating to the Hospital.
26 The Act of Parliament had laid down rules about the evidence which had to
be produced by applicants, usually from the master of their ship.
27 Seamens Hospital Order Book 1747-1769, p. 79, 6 Feb. 1751.
Charitable and Educational Work, Erghteenth Century 201
Prince, who lost his sight on a passage from Africa to Virginia. He
was to be paid £8 a year in quarterly payments ‘‘and he is allowed
to reside with his Family at Cork in Ireland. . . .”28 When applica-
tion was made on behalf of Ann Hancock, aged 2, an orphan whose
father was killed on board the Juba in a rising of the slaves, the nurse
was given 10s. for her present relief. She was to find out the child’s
legal place of settlement and was to apply again. ?®
The original applications often have an interesting and moving
story to tell. Thus, on 30 January 1769, the ministers and church-
wardens of St. Michael’s certified that James Harding in the Speed-
well ‘“was poisoned by Blacks whilst the said ship was on the Coast
of Africa’? and had left a widow and 2 young children, and the
owner of the sloop William testified that in about June 1765 in the
course of a voyage from Africa to St. Christopher’s ‘“Thomas Flood
the mate and also the Commander John Westcott were Murdered
and thrown Overboard by the Sailors. . . .”’3°
The pension list was reviewed from time to time and pensioners
were required to appear before the Trustees. On 2 December 1755,
for example, it was reported that “(James MacDaniel (was) married
since (his) pension (was) granted him to one Catherine Rea, a
Roman Catholick, by Scudamore, a Romish Priest; he gets 1s. a
week, his wife gets something”’.*4 When Joshua Holland did not
appear as requested, his pension was stopped, but it was restored
when he made a proper submission. Four shillings, however, was
deducted as a punishment.®* There was normally a check on the
Muster Rolls to make sure that the applicant had contributed for
at least 5 years.*3
The Trustees seem to have made a genuine effort to provide the
help needed according to the circumstances and to have shown
sympathy and understanding. Thus, Thomas Dilliston, a lad of 15,
who lost his sight while his ship was in the Bonny River, “‘by a
distemper which raged among the Slaves” was given 40s. to take
him to Ipswich, where his uncle resided, and a pension of 2s. 6d.
a week.?4 Martha Mounslow, whose husband ‘‘contracted a sickness ‘
in a French Prison during the late War of which he afterwards
died”’, had exerted herself to get a maintenance ever since his death
about eight years previously. She was in the utmost distress and had
one child “who is rendered unable to do anything by means of the
28 Ibid., p. 92, 20 Dec. 1753.
29 Ibid., p. 96, 15 Feb. 1754. The nurse found out that it was Almondsbury and
was given 2 guineas for her pains. Jbid., 18 Sept. 1754.
80 Petition of Seamen’s Widows, cases nos. 157, 183.
31 Seamens Hospital Order Book 1747-1769, p. 111, 2 Dec. 1755.
32 Tbid., 21 Jan. 1766, case no. 5.
33 Tbid., p. 133, 6 Sept. 1758.
34 Tbid., p. 163, 7 Jan. 1761.
202 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Rheumatism”’. She got 8 guineas “‘to put her in the way of getting
her livelyhood”’ and was promised 1s. a week as soon as the certifi-
cates were delivered to Mr. Worrall’s office.2® Ann Smart, widow of
Samuel Smart, late carpenter of the Marquis of Granby who was
drowned attempting to swim ashore after his ship foundered, was
granted 3s. for her two children, aged 5 and 5 months, on 8 May
1764. Three years later, Jane Harding, the grandmother, said that
Ann was dead, and that Mr. Rothley had stopped the pay. The
Trustees ordered it to be continued and payment backdated to the
death of Ann.*¢ |
Another illustration of the sympathetic treatment of applicants is
provided by the case of John Herbert, who received a hurt from a
fall from a yard, which rendered his leg useless. When he came out
of the Bristol Infirmary, he contracted a debt for his maintenance.
He stated that he was a native of Portsmouth and that he could get
a living there if he had a wherry. He was given £1 11s. 6d. to pay
his debt, 2 guineas to carry him home to Portsmouth, and it was
ordered “‘that Mr Laroche be desired to write to his Correspondent
in Portsmouth to lay out a sum not exceeding ten guineas in the
purchase of a wherry to be delivered to him at Portsmouth”’.
Eighteenth-century gentlemen did not always believe in doing
good by stealth, and the order continued “that on the Wherry there
be wrote as follows vizt. The Gift of the Trustees of the seamens
Hospital at Bristol to John Herbert to enable him to get his lively-
hood in lieu of a Pension. . . .”?? Cornelius Calahan, who lost his
eyesight in a voyage from Calabar to Jamaica as a result of a dis-
temper then raging among the slaves, got a yearly pension of £6 10s.,
15s. to pay his landlord, and tos. to carry him home to Tralee,
where he was allowed to reside. Seven months later, “being now in
Bristol and destitute of apparel”, he received 20s. to be laid out in
clothes, and it was agreed that his pension should be paid weekly.?®
We do not know what the seamen and their dependents thought
about the way the Trustees administered the money which came
from their monthly contributions or whether they approved of the
capital accumulation of over £6,000 which the Society had built
up by the end of the century, but the general impression left by the
records is that the Trustees took their duties seriously, investigated
applications with care, and showed commonsense and under-
standing. Their achievéments certainly compared very favourably
indeed with those of many other charitable trustees. A great deal of
work must have been involved, particularly for the Treasurer of the
Fund, Sir James Laroche.
85 Tbid., 8 Nov. 1766, case no. 167.
36 Thid., 8 May 1764, p. 138. 3? Tbid., 23 April 1767.
38 [bid., 7 Sept. 1767, case no. 184.
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century 203
The Seamen’s Hospital Fund was the largest charitable, as distinct
from educational, trust administered by the Society in the eighteenth
century, but the Hall was also concerned with two almhouses — the
Merchants’ Almshouse and Colston’s Almshouse on St. Michael’s
Hill.
As has already been noted, in the last decade of the seventeenth
century, a donation of £1,000 by the executors of Richard Jones and
a gift of land by Edward Colston enabled the Hall to make provision
for another 12 people in the Merchants’ Almshouse. The almshouse
had been rebuilt and extended with the help of subscriptions from
some of the members, and on 5 July 1700 it was decided to make up
from the Hall stock the sum of about £80 which was still required
to complete the rebuilding.
There were no very dramatic developments in the course of the
eighteenth century as far as the Merchants’ Almshouse was concerned,
but at one point there was a proposal to remove it from the site in
the centre of Bristol, which it had occupied since it was first estab-
lished by the Gild of Mariners in the mid-fifteenth century. The
Clerk, Samuel Worrall, who always had an eye for property develop-
ment, produced to the Standing Committee in 1778 a plan of the
almshouse and the ground behind it, together with a plan of land
recently purchased by the Society in Marsh Street, and suggested
that if the almshouse were, removed elsewhere ‘‘three very capital
Lots of Ground scituate exceedingly convenient for Trade may be
obtained. . . .” He added, in the manner of a practised developer,
that there were several buildings in the manor of Clifton “nearly
dropping into hand (of which the Old Play House is one) which are
of very little value now, and which may at a moderate expence be
converted into an Almshouse, in a very healthy scituation”. The
Committee thought the plan highly deserving of consideration.
Fortunately, nothing further was done about this proposal to destroy
a link with the medieval past.®®
Throughout the century, the Society continued to concern itself
with the administration of its almshouse, with selecting candidates
for admission, and with handling the problems which inevitably
arose when a number of old people were congregated in one place
and subjected to a certain amount of discipline. In March 1700, the
Standing Committee was instructed to make proper orders for the
government of the almshouse.*® A new set of rules was apparently
drawn up in 1744 and again in 1800.*! In 1742, it had been decided
389 17.B. 10, 15 June 1778. The value of the Almshouse site did not grow less with
the passing of time, and after the second World War the threat reappeared. See
Pp. 522-4.
40 77,.B. 3, 7 March 1700; H.B. 6, 14 March 1744; H.B. 13, p. 133, 15 May 1800.
41 HB. 6, 14 March 1744; H.B. 13, p. 133, 15 May 1800.
204 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
that no married person should be admitted, except the Elder Brother,
and that inmates who married should be expelled, but this harsh
regulation was repealed in 1749.4?
Disciplinary action was taken from time to time. When it visited
the almshouse in 1756, the Committee found that one of the inmates
who had been admitted some years earlier had never slept in the
place. He was required to attend the Committee to explain. A Mrs.
Williams, “having behaved very abusive to some others of the
House’’, was to lose her weekly pay and to come before the Com-
mittee.*3 The Elder Brother had to be dismissed in 1785, as did an
inmate who in 1787 got with child a poor girl who attended one of
the women.*4 In 1790, action had to be taken about almsfolk who
had lodgers in their rooms. *5
It is not easy to judge from the records how diligent the Com-
mittee was in inspecting the almshouse or how regular were its
visits, but, generally, speaking, one is left with the impression that
the Merchant Venturers took an interest in their almsfolk and did
not subject them to very harsh discipline. The old people, men and
women, were probably a privileged group among the poor of Bristol
and had a number of perquisites, including small pensions. The
perquisites were increased in 1771 by an anonymous gift of £400
to provide an income of £16 a year to clothe 12 women inmates. 4¢
The second almshouse for which the Society was responsible was
Colston’s Almshouse on St. Michael’s Hill which had been founded
by Edward Colston in the last decade of the seventeenth century. It
had been conveyed in 1696 to Sir Richard Hart and 27 other
citizens, chiefly Merchant Venturers, and after Colston’s death,
nomination of almsfolk was in the hands of the Society.
The finances of Colston’s Almshouse did not give the Society
nearly as much worry as did those of Colston’s Hospital. Annual
expenditure seems to have been on average a little under £500 a
year in the second and third decades of the century; it dropped to
under £350 a year in the seventeen-thirties, but rose again to nearly
£500 in the seventeen-forties and to nearly £700 in the seventeen-
fifties. In the seventeen-sixties, when expenditure was running at
above £550 a year, income was not always sufficient to meet the
charges, and there were deficits between 1767 and 1770 amounting
in all to about £425. The greater part of this was wiped out by a
favourable balance in 1770-1, and there was again a surplus in the
seventeen-seventies until the very end of the decade. From then
42 H7.B. 6, 23 Sept. 1742; H.B. 7, 26 June 1749.
43 HB. 8, 18 Aug. 1756.
44 HB. 11, p. 188, 7 Nov. 1785; p. 361, 31 Oct. 1797.
45 H.B. 12, p. 79, 9 Nov. 1790. 46 HB. 9, 18 Feb. 1771.
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century 205
onwards, fairly small annual deficits were normal on this account,
although there was a surplus of over £400 at the audit of 1796 which
reduced the debt to the Hall very considerably. The amount due to
the Hall from the Colston Almshouse Account at the end of the
period seems to have been small, and the true deficit was even smaller,
since the Hall does not appear to have paid interest to the Almshouse
account during the considerable period when the account was in
credit. 4?’
As with its own almshouse, the Hall had to deal with problems of
administration and discipline, and a few illustrations can be given
of how it carried out the task. In 1760, the Standing Committee
considered a complaint against an almsman “‘for keeping a disorderly
woman in the said House and for staying out till twelve o’Clock at
Night on Saturday the seventh Instant and not being at Church on
the Sunday following’”’. He was admonished.*® In 1761 when the
men were said to be getting over the wall after the gates had been
locked, the Standing Committee ordered ‘“‘Iron Pallisadoes to be
fixed upon the Inner Court Wall. . . .”4® When it was reported that
Mary Lovell’s apartments “‘are much infested with Buggs and that
there is great Danger that they will spread Farther”, the Elder
Brother was told to remove all her goods. She was not to bring any
of them in again “unless it be of such sort as Buggs cannot harbour
in’’.59 When the Committee visited the almshouse in 1777, it found
that the monuments from St. Michael’s Church, which was being
renovated, had been stored in the kitchen for the last three years
and had “greatly incommoded the Inhabitants’. The church-
wardens were to be told to remove them. The cistern had no water
in it, and this was to be attended to. The Elder Brother complained
that the seat in St. Michael’s Church was one from which they
could not hear the service. The Committee went to the church with
the churchwardens and were offered an alternative. The final
choice was left to the almsfolk themselves.5! On the Committee’s
visit in 1783, the people referred to in “Several Minutes of Drunken-
ness and Irregularity appearing in the Elder Brother’s Book’’ were
admonished.®? Next year, a man was expelled and another admon-
ished for not attending prayers.5* Once again, one would like to
have the comments of the almsfolk themselves on the Society’s
administration, but the general impression is that it was humane and
sensible.
47 The figures given here give a general indication of the position. They are
based on the Annual Audit figures given in the Hall Books. It would be possible to
work out in more detail the precise figures.
48 HB. 8, 10 June 1760. 49 Tbid., 13 April 1761.
50 HB. 9, 15 Oct. 1765. 51 H.B. 10, 6 Oct. 1777.
52 HB. 11, p. 40, 12 Sept. 1783. 63 H.B. 11, p. 82, 20 Sept. 1784.
206 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
In two of the three charitable enterprises which have been examined,
the Society was primarily involved as a trustee and administrator of
money which came from others, but it devoted some of its own re-
sources to charitable activity in addition to what it spent on the
Merchants’ Almshouse. Some of this effort was directed to helping
Merchant Venturers and their dependents who fell upon hard
times. Between 1725 and 1802, at least nine members were given
pensions, including three people who had served as Master and one
who had been an Assistant. The pensions normally ranged from £20
a year to £40 a year, but in 1764 two former Masters each got
£50.°4
At least 15 widows of members were granted pensions in the same
period. The usual amount was £20 a year, but in 1756 Mrs. Bene-
dicta Henville, widow of Richard Henville who had become a
member in 1718 and later served as Master, got the “extraordinary”’
allowance of £30 per annum.®*® Occasionally, help was given to
children of deceased members. Thus, in 1733 £10 a year was granted
to Sarah Swymmer, daughter of the late William Clarke, a former
_ member, and in 1737 Eliza Smith, daughter of Evan Jones, a former
member, got 3s. a week.5® Rather surprisingly, Job Charlton, the
son of a member, who had been entitled to the freedom but who had
not taken it up, was given £30 a year in 1791, as was William Swym-
-mer, the son and grandson of former members who was not himself
a Merchant Venturer.” The claim of daughters seem to have been
treated more rigorously. Thus, in 1761 Elizabeth, wife of Thomas
Day formerly of Bristol and now a factor abroad, was given a dona-
tion of 20 guineas to be paid at the rate of a guinea a week, on the
ground that she was the daughter of a former member, Robert
Addison, but when her husband died and she was in great distress,
her petition for help was referred to the next Hall and no further
action seems to have been taken.5§ When the three daughters of
James Rogers asked for help in 1802, it was decided, wrongly, that
there was no precedent and that it would be highly improper to
create one.®®
54 Hf.B. 5, 9 July, 7 Oct. 1725: Edward Atwood, £20 p.a.; Charles Pope, £30
p.a.; H.B. 6, 12 Oct. 1739, James Holledge, £40 p.a.; H.B. 8, 14 May 1753,
Marmaduke Bowdler, £30 p.a.; H.B. 9, 28 June 1763, John Crosse, £40 p.a.;
ibid., 20 Sept. 1764, Joseph Daltera, 50 guineas p.a., ibid., 20 Sept. 1764 and 7
Nov. 1764; H.B. 11, p. 452, 21 Aug. 1788, Samuel Davies, £40 p.a.; H.B. 13,
p. 102, 1 July 1799, John Champion, £40 p.a.
55 F.B. 8, 24 Aug. 1756. Elizabeth Casamajor, widow of a former Master,
received the same amount in 1776 (H.B. 10, 5 Feb. 1776).
56 77.B. 5, 18 June 1733; H.B. 6, 1 Dec. 1737.
57 HB. 12, pp. 115, 126, 11 March and 7 April 1791.
58 H.B. 8, 1 June 1761 and 14 Dec. 1761.
59 HB. 13, p. 206, 1 April 1802.
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century 207
As befitted a body which championed the Church and the Protestant
Succession, the Society was prepared from time to time to make
contributions for ecclesiastical purposes. In 1707, it gave £30 to-
wards the cost of completing the episcopal church at Rotterdam. ®°
The next year, £20 was voted to help a scheme for erecting lending
libraries for the poorer ministers and for dispensing some devotional
and practical books in English and Welsh.® In 1727, a grant of £50
was made to the minister and churchwardens of the French Church
in Bristol for finishing their chapel, provided that one good pew was
fitted up for the use of any member of the Society who went there. ®?
Other gifts to churches included £20 in 1705 to repair the tower
of St. Stephen’s Church, which had been damaged in “‘the late great
storm”; £40 for a new aisle for Clifton Church in 1708; £50 for
finishing All Saints’ tower in 1716; £30 for rebuilding Stapleton
Church in 1726; and £100 for St. Stephen’s tower in 1732. This
last gift was conditional on the parish allowing the dirt from the
quay to be put in the parish dungyard.®* A grant of 100 guineas was
made for a new church at Kingswood in 1752, and 50 guineas for
the repair of St. Werburgh’s in 1764.°* Grants which were intended
to help urban reconstruction as well as church modernisation in-
cluded £200 towards the laying open of St. Stephen’s in 1772 and
£500 for the rebuilding of Christchurch in 1785.65 A donation of
go guineas was made towards furnishing the vicarage house in St.
George’s, Gloucestershire, when a new parish was carved out of
St. Philip and St. Jacob, and two years later another 30 guineas was
granted, provided that a pew, approved by the Master and Wardens,
was set aside for the use of the Society.** An annual subscription
of £20 a year was voted in 1775 for a chaplain at the Bristol Infirm-
ary,®’ and help was given from time to time to the church in the
manor of Stogursey.®°
To these activities must be added a very great variety of casual charit-
able donations. Apart from a number of gifts to individuals, there
were grants of £200 to the victims of fires in Blandford and Twerton
in 1731; of £100 to the victims of fire at Credition in 1743; £50
60 F7.B. 3, 24 Oct. 1707. $1 77.B. 4, 10 June 1708.
62 HB. 5, 11 Jan. 1728. The Huguenots had been required to vacate the
Gaunts’ Hospital Chapel when it became the Mayor’s Chapel.
63 A.B. 3, 3 Oct. 1705; ibid., 29 April 1708; H.B. 4, 19 July 1716; H.B. 5, 10
March 1726; ibid., 11 May 1732.
64 .B. 7, 20 Jan. 1752; H.B. 9, 19 March 1764.
65 7B. 9, 8 Oct. 1772; H.B. 11, p. 130, 26 March ee
66 7f.B. 8, 10 March 1760, 7 July 1762.
87 H.B. 10, 13 March 1775.
68 See, for example, H.B. 13, p. 152, 27 Aug. 1800, £127 6s. to repair the chancel
of Stogursey.
208 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
to a disaster at Honiton in 1747; 100 guineas for a fire in Barbados
in 1766, and £250 to the victims of a fire at Jacob’s Wells in 1802. ®?
Relief of distress in hard times also received attention. Thus, in
1767 £21 was given to the poor in Hanham, Bitton and St. George’s,
and £10 tos. to the poor in the parishes of St. Philip and St. Jacob
and Bedminster. At the end of 1775, when the conflict with the
American colonies was turning into a shooting war, 100 guineas
were donated to a fund for the relief of disabled soldiers, but a
proposal to give another 100 guineas to help workmen put out of
employment as a result of the struggle was rejected. In 1784, 10
guineas were given to the poor in St. Philip and St. Jacob, and 5
guineas to St. James’s and to St. Stephen’s. Another 80 guineas was
contributed to poor relief later in the year. When the Corporation
voted 100 guineas for this purpose in 1789, the Society provided
another 50 guineas, in addition to 20 guineas for pilots and tow-
boatmen. 7°
‘The War of 1793 added to the perennial problem of poverty. One
hundred guineas was donated to poor relief in Bristol, Clifton and Bed-
minster, as well as £10 each to St. James’s and St. Philip and Jacob’s,
and £20 to the poor of Pill.?1 In 1800 donations included 5 guineas to
St. Stephen’s; £20 to the poor of Pill; and £16 to the poor of
Locking in Somerset, where the Society held land.?? Help in kind
was also provided in 1800 when 2 half-barrels of rice were sent to
the Merchants’ Almshouse and to Colston’s Almshouse, and it was
decided to buy £1,000 worth of grain and flour. Two barrels of rice
were sent to the poor of Monkton and Beere,’® and in November
1800 it was agreed to let Clifton parish fit up the old windmill on
the common to grind corn free for the poor.?4 The next year £20
was donated to the City’s Soup Committee.75
There were also occasional grants to hospitals. In September 1742,
the Hall made an annual subscription to the Bristol Infirmary of
£15, and it raised this to £20 later in the year.’¢ Fifty guineas was
given to the County Infirmary, Gloucestershire, in 1755; 50 guineas to
the Bristol Infirmary in 1768, and 100 guineas for the erecting a
County Hospital in Taunton in 1771,77
*° H.B. 5, 23 June 1731; H.B. 6, 16 Sept. 1743; H.B. 7, 10 Sept. 1747; H.B. 13,
p. 207, 10 May 1802.
*° HB. 9, 2 March 1767; H.B. 10, 14 Dec. 1775; H.B. 11, p. 59, 6 Feb. 1784,
p. 62, 7 June 1784; ibid., p. 483, 20 Jan. 1789.
1 ALB. 12, p. 363, 20 Jan. 1795.
72 HB. 13, p. 132, 15 May 1800.
"8 H.B. 13, pp. 140, 142, 29 May 1800, 23 June 1800. For further gifts of rice,
see ibid., p. 167, 22 Jan. 1801.
4 HB. 13, p. 155, 7 Nov. 1800.
75 H.B. 13, p. 169, 22 Jan. 1801.
76 HB. 6, 23 Sept. 1742, 9 Dec. 1742.
7 HB. 8, 24 Feb. 1755; H.B. 9, 10 Nov. 1768; H.B. 9, 8 Oct. 1771.
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century 2009.
It would be difficult to work out precisely how much the Society
provided out of its own funds for casual charitable gifts of the kind
we have been examining. It probably averaged over the century
between £100 and £200 a year, excluding pensions to members of
the Society. As far as its own resources were concerned, the Society
was a modest philanthropist compared with a man like Edward
Colston, but it is essential to remember that its main purpose was not
philanthropy, that its own resources were not vast, and that in any
assessment of its charitable activity we must take into account
something that cannot be measured in terms of money — the time
and energy which it gave to administering both its own and other
people’s charities.
In the field of charitable activity, the major new development of the
eighteenth century was the responsibility of the Society for the
administration of the Seamen’s Hospital Fund. The corresponding
new development in educational activity took place at the beginning
of the century when the Society accepted, under charitable and
educational trusts of Edward Colston, the main responsibility for
the Colston foundation of a hospital for 100 boys. This was on an
altogether different scale from the Society’s modest connection with
education in the earlier period, and in the long run was to lead to
the Society playing a major role in education in Bristol.78
It was in some ways surprising that a Society which was primarily
_ concerned with trade should want to undertake such an activity,
which was bound to involve much work, including the management
of large and scattered estates. It may have been tempted by the fact
that it already had a very modest connection with education, and
it may have felt that the management of the charity would give it
increased prestige, as well as a certain amount of patronage. It
could not forsee that during the next two centuries it was going to
find itself involved not only in a lot of work but also in some very
unpleasant litigation.
Edward Colston is remembered in Bristol as an almost legendary
figure who gave away large sums of money. In addition, he was an
extremely difficult man to deal with.”® When he was considering a
large-scale educational foundation, he first of all turned to the
78 For a detailed exmination of the Society’s educational work, see the very
valuable study of Mr. D. J. Eames, ““The Contribution made by the Society of
Merchant Venturers to the development of education in Bristol’’, unpublished
Bristol M.A. thesis, September 1966.
79 For some account of Colston, see H. J. Wilkins, Edward Colston, Bristol, 1920.
The contrast between Colston the philanthropist and Colston the member of the
Royal Africa Company engaged, among other things, in the slave trade, is irre-
sistible to script-writers in search of a story. If historical evidence is missing, one
can always draw on one’s historical imagination.
210 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Corporation, but the Corporation apparently declined the offer.*®°
The arrangement he eventually made with the Society was to prove
very unsatisfactory from a legal point of view and was to provide a
number of lawyers with very satisfactory fees. He first of all under-
took to put up the capital to purchase estates to the value of £18,000,
estimated to produce an annual income of £850 per annum, to
provide for 50 boys. He subsequently decided to provide an addi-
tional income of £600 per annum and to increase the number of
boys to 100.8! The negotiations began in 1706 and were long-drawn
out and difficult, but eventually the Hospital was opened in 1710.
Colston’s Settlement was complicated, both in relation to the finan-
cial provisions and with reference to the management of the Hospital.
Although the Society had control of the estates and of the manage-
ment, its powers were shared to some extent by Nominees, appointed
in the first place by Colston and subsequently by cooption. In
addition, in certain circumstances the Governors of Christ’s
Hospital, London, could act as Visitors. ®?
Problems arose even in Colston’s lifetime. When the first school-
master, Mr. Silvester, was dismissed in 1717, Colston suggested as
his successor a man called Tocker. The Hall alleged that Tocker was
a Jacobite, and without consulting Colston, it appointed as master
its own Beadle, Samuel Gardiner. Colston was very angry indeed.
He admitted that the Society had the right of appointment, but he
complained of the Hall’s lack of ‘‘common civility’, and he resented
“‘your too hasty proceedings in your election of a chief, before you
had intimated to me your disapproval of the person recommended
by me for that employment’. It is difficult to believe that the
Society’s unreasonable haste was not related to its desire to give the
job quickly to its own Beadle before Colston could intervene. It thus
began the very unsatisfactory practice of combining the Mastership
of the Hospital with the work of Collector of its own Bristol and
Clifton rents, and it obviously did not do this for any reason con-
nected with the advancement of education.*®®
Nor was Colston satisfied with the way in which the Society
managed the Hospital. In 1716, at his request, the Hall set up a
committee to inquire into grievances. It reported on 20 December
1716, and, among other things, it required the schoolmaster to keep
80 Fames, op. cit., p. 25; Wilkins, op. cit., pp. 44, 50-2; Latimer, Eighteenth Century
Annals, pp. 46-7.
81 Wilkins, op. cit., pp. 57-8; Eames, op. cit., pp. 31-6.
82 Some of the correspondence relating to the foundation is printed in Wilkins
and there are many references in the Hall Books. A number of printed copies of the
Settlement are in the Society’s archives.
83 7H.B. 4, 20 Dec. 1717, 3 July 1718; Wilkins, op. cit., pp. 77-8, Eames, op. cit.,
p. 41.
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century QI
a register of all the boys and a record of their indentures.®4 In his
will, dated May 1720, Colston stated that although the Society was
committed to visit the Hospital at least four times a year to check
the standards of food and education, it had not done so. He went on
to say “it hath been too apparent that for want of such inspection
and care the said Boys have been so neglected by their School
Master that when they were examined it was found they had made
so little improvement in their Writing and Cyphering by the often
absence of their Master from his School that they were not fitly
qualified to be put out Apprentices . . .”’. In future, if the Nominees
found any defects in religious education, or if the boys were bound
to dissenters, they were to give notice of this, and, if necessary, to
report it to the Governors of Christ’s Hospital, or else seek legal
remedy at the cost of his estate.®5
Colston died in 1721, but the difficulties over the Settlement did
not die with him. There was trouble with his heirs, and a long drawn
out legal dispute. In the seventeen-fifties the Society was still arguing
its case against Lord Middleton, one of the heirs, over arrears of
taxes, and the heirs were maintaining that as they had not been
asked to pay the arrears for forty years, they were not obliged to
pay now. The Society in fact admitted that it had not given proper
attention to the matter and explained its neglect by saying “‘this
heavy Debt not falling on or being out of the pocket of any particular
Man was the occasion that the Accounts were not so closely looked
into and settled before. If it had been in the hands of Trustees who
would have been obliged to pay the debt themselves, certainly they
would have taken more Care. . . .” The Hall also complained that
the fee farms rents never produced the amount stated in Colston’s
will, but their counsel had to advise them that they had agreed with
Colston that the lands were of the value stated and that they must
now accept the position. He added sadly ‘“‘and therefore as the
Merchants have acquiesced so long without complaint,.I fear it is
now too late to expect Redress in this point’’. On its own admission,
the Society had been careless in dealing with the matter, and even-
tually, after an action had been brought in Chancery, the heirs
settled for £3,094 7s. 3d. in 1768. It had taken nearly 50 years to get
a settlement. ®®
There was also difficulty in collecting the fee farm rents settled on
the Colston Charity from the Duke of Bolton’s estate at Kidwelly.
84 HB. 4, 12 Dec. 1716; 20 Dec. 1716.
85 Colston’s will is printed in Wilkins, op. cit., pp. 146-7.
86 In one of the boxes in the Hall containing the Clerk’s Papers there is an enve-
lope with a number of documents referring to the case against Lord Middleton in
the seventeen-fifties. The quotations in the text are from counsel’s opinion on a
case stated by the Hall. This is signed John Browning, 20 March 1748/9. For the
settlement, see H.B. 9, 5 July 1768.
212 | The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
By 1748, the Duke was £1,200 in arrears and he was forced to pay
up only with the greatest difficulty. ®’
As has been noted earlier,8* the Colston Charity Account was in
debt to the Society for a considerable amount throughout the period,
_ and it was probably this fact, combined with a certain slackness in
managing the estates given by Colston in his Settlement, that led
to the somewhat complicated transaction by which the Society
acquired in its own right the manor of Monkton in Stogursey.
There was certainly no intention of defrauding the Charity, but the
arrangement was questionable from a legal point of view, and in the
nineteenth century, the Society’s alleged ownership of the manor of
Stogursey was successfully challenged in the courts.®®
Relations between the Society and Colston’s Nominees also
presented problems. The Society’s management came under con-
siderable criticism from the Nominees when Samuel Gardiner,
junior, was master of the Hospital.9° There was also friction about
the arrangements by which the Hall and the Nominees both nomin-
ated 50 boys for places in the Hospital. The matter came up in 1786,
and in 1787 it was reported to the Hall that the Nominees had more
than the 50 boys to whom they were entitled.®*! The issue was not
finally settled until the nineteenth century, and then only after it
_had given a good deal of trouble to the Society’s Treasurer, William
Claxton. *?
It is not easy to make an assessment of the Society’s management
of the Hospital in the eighteenth century. The practice of appointing
its Beadle, who collected the rents in Clifton and Bristol, as Master
of the school does not inspire confidence, and certainly as far as
Samuel Gardiner junior was concerned, it left much to be desired.
Latimer argued that the allowance of £10 per boy out of which the
Master had to provide food, clothing and salaries for two assistant
masters, meant that his profits must have been inconsiderable, and
that the Society recognised this by making him beadle.®? The argu-
ment is not valid, for in the first instance the Society had given the
headmastership to a man who was already its beadle. If it did not
consider that the allowance of £10 per boy was enough for the
Master, it should have increased it or have argued with Colston,
before it accepted the Trust, that more money was needed for the
Hospital. Certainly, the Gardiners were not poor men. In the later
87 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 289.
88 See p. 115.
89 Tt seems more convenient to give the details of this dispute when we consider
_ the law suit in the nineteenth century. See pp. 465-70.
90 See pp. 109-10, 213.
1 HB. 1, p. 252, 26 Sept. 1786; p. 287, 16 Jan. 1787.
92 See pp. 363-4 and n. 40.
93 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 287-8.
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century 213
part of the century, rising prices did indeed make things more
difficult for the Master, and the Society recognised this by increasing
the allowance per boy and by making a number of ad hoc grants to
help meet the enormous expense of provisions. %4
Reports on the Hospital from the Standing Committee and the
Visiting Committee are not so frequent or so full as one would wish.
Action was certainly taken from time to time, but one gets an
impression that the Committee, like some school managers in more
recent times, was inclined to leave things to the master as long as
there was no serious trouble, and that its interest was intermittent.
From time to time, an incident or a complaint produced a burst of
activity. When various mothers and grandmothers of the boys
complained about the diet in the Hospital in 1736, the Hall decided
that the complaints were frivolous and unfounded.®® In 1757 a case
of leprosy was reported and a boy had to be discharged. ®* In January
1761, the Standing Committee examined a number of complaints,
including one that the boys were given “stinking meat”. It solemnly
reported that the meat had not stunk more than three times in the
last year and that “‘five cheeses were decayed but that they were not
unfit to eat unless by some particular Boys that had a dislike to
strong Cheese. . .”. It was decided that “the Boy who had the care
of the Cheese was to blame in not bringing down the Cheese in
proper time ...”’. At this time, Gardiner’s management of the school
was being criticised and it was alleged by the Nominees that boys
were afraid to complain and were given no opportunity to do so by
the ushers. That the Hall was anxious to get to the bottom of the
complaints is shown by its order that the following notice be put up
in the Public School Room: “It is ordered that all Boys who have
any Cause of Complaint do make the same forthwith Known to the
Master for the time being of the Merchants Hall in order that the
same may be immediately enquired into and redressed. . . .°°97
A few months later, the Standing Committee made a very fair
report on a complaint about excessive punishment, and it rebuked
Samuel Gardiner, the headmaster, for giving the impression that any
boy who complained would be punished.*8
*4 Thus, in 1788, when Mr. Haynes, the Master, pointed out that the cost of
provisions had risen and that the allowance was still only £10 a boy, the Hall
raised it to £11 on the grounds that it could afford to do so since the income from
the estate was up by £700 a year (H.B. 11, p. 468, 23 Oct. 1788). See also H.B. 12,
p. 76, 4 Nov. 1790, ibid., p. 409, 6 Nov. 1795; H.B. 13, p. 138, 29 May 1800; p- 174,
11 May 1801. In 1796, the Master was given a salary of £50 p.a. in addition to
the allowance. See Eames, of. cit., p. 44.
*5 8 Dec. 1736. See Eames, op. cit., p. 43.
96 HB. 8, 16 Nov. 1757.
7 HB. 8, 17 Jan. 1761; 20 Jan. 1761.
98 7.B. 8, 2 April 1761.
214 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
When the Standing Committee visited the Hospital in 1767, it
reported that all was well but went on in effect to criticise the way
in which the Hospital had been managed by noting that the dormi-
tory had not been painted for nearly forty years and the school room
for about sixteen years. The outer gates were now beyond repair,
and the floor of the masters’ sitting-room was much decayed. These
were to be put in order, but the implication must be that someone
had been negligent for a long time.*®
Since the rules established by Edward Colston laid down that all
boys must be in good health, it was occasionally necessary to remove
pupils. The case of leprosy has already been noted. On 6 May 1782,
order was given to remove a boy who had had a leg amputated, and
on 8 September 1786 it was necessary to expel a boy who was
defective in body and mind.}°° On another occasion, the Standing
Committee reported that a boy with a squint had been put in by
the Nominees and the Hall decided that he must be withdrawn.!°
In 1791, at a General Hall, there was a long enquiry into the pedigree
of John Parsons who claimed admission as Founder’s kin. It was
decided that the claim had not been established.1°
There were naturally problems of discipline among 100 boys in
a boarding school, and the more serious ones eventually received
attention from the Society. In 1783, “‘it appearing to the Committee
that the Crime of running away from the School is become very
prevalent’’, it was decided that there should be a Standing Order
that anyone who ran away should not be re-admitted, as was the
rule in Christ’s Hospital.1°? Stern action was taken against Daniel
Morgan in 1780 when Mr. Haynes reported that he had been
detected in stealing a plate and that when he was called to account
by the usher and was about to be punished, he “‘stabbed him in two
places with too several Knives’’. It was further alleged that there was
a conspiracy between Morgan and two other boys. Morgan’s
punishment was to be whipped by the City Beadle in the school and
delivered over to serve in His Majesty’s fleet. If his parents did not
consent, he was to be prosecuted.
There were further complaints about runaways in 1785, and there
was obviously not much sympathy for George Gibbs who “ran away
from the Hospital a third time and had cut his School Cloaths and
made them into Trousers and was a very great Lyar’’. He tried to
escape a fourth time and was “one of five who made an attempt to
8° HB. 9, 7 May 1767.
100 Eames, op. cit., p. 46.
101 Hf.B. 11, p. 464, 16 Oct. 1788.
102 77.B. 12, p. 118, 11 March 1791.
103 77.B. 11, p. 40, 12 Sept. 1783. It would have been rather too much to expect
the Committee to enquire further into why they ran away.
104 77.B. 10, 4. Dec. 1780; 7 Apri] 178r.
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century 215
cut off the Ushers hair in the Night”. The boys did not deny the
charge. The Committee ordered them to be whipped by the master
in its‘presence, to attend the Hall on Saturday and meanwhile to
be kept separate and fed chiefly on bread and water. In due course,
the boys were flogged and expelled in the presence of the rest “all
which was done with much seriousness and cautionary advice to the
rest of the boys’’.1°° A schoolboy’s life was not a happy one in the
eighteenth century, and this did not apply only in schools for poorer
boys. Running away continued, and problems of discipline went on
giving concern to the Society.1°* The Minutes ef the Standing Com-
mittee for 10 December 1799 recorded that they ‘‘adjourned to Mr.
Colstons School where they heard prayers and repremanded [sic]
the Boys who have lately behaved ill’’.1°7
One cannot reasonably expect too much understanding of the
problems of the young from eighteenth-century merchants who had
found themselves so unexpectedly in charge of a Hospital for one
hundred boys of the poorer classes. If their handling of the school
left much to be desired by later standards, they had at least shown a
reasonable amount of interest and they were prepared to give a fair
hearing to complaints. The relationship which they established with
the Hospital was to prove a basis for much more satisfactory develop-
ments in the nineteenth century.
In addition to managing Colston’s Hospital, the Society continued
to make provision for its own school for teaching poor mariners’
children, which had begun much earlier.1°8 There is, however, only
a small amount of evidence about it. A list of pupils has survived for
the year 1703. It gives their names, the date of entry and the name
of the person recommending them. It shows 24 writers and cypherers,
I1 readers and 6 navigators, making a total of 62 in all.1°° The
schoolmaster, Christopher Wall, was dismissed in 1708 “‘by reason
he hath neglected the Schoole and Keepes a publik house’, and
Thomas Haywood was admitted in his place at the usual salary and
was allowed the benefit of the school house.!° It is possible that for a
time the school was run in the Master’s house, for in 1722 there is a
reference to the school “formerly Kept under the Hall.”!2! In 1735,
105 77,B. 11, pp. 163, 170, 13 Aug. and 24 Aug. 1785.
106 7B. 12, p. 224, 10 Oct. 1792.
107 f.B. 13, p. 123, 10 Dec. 1799.
108 See pp. 18, 30, 84.
aoe Society’s Letters, bdle. 25, 28 Oct. 1703. This is a surprisingly large number
and it is a pity we do not know more about the school.
110 HB. 4, 10 June 1708.
111 7B. 4, 18 Dec. 1722. Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 230 states that in 1723
an old kitchen under the Hall was fitted up and was long used for a school as well
as for a dwelling house.
216 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Herbert Legg was admitted Master of the writing and reading school
under the Hall in place of Thomas Haywood, who was dead.¥42 On
26 November 1740 Joseph Rosser was appointed at a salary of 40s.
which was raised to £5 in 1752.18
Meanwhile, the Society became involved in another educational
activity.114 Dame Susanna Holworthy had left to trustees the sum of
£200 for the education of youths, and when this accumulated to
£260, the trustees arranged with William Whipp, mathematician,
to teach ten young men the art of a mariner. In 1733, they suggested
that the Society should take over the capital of £260 and use the
interest at 5 per cent to pay Whipp for instructing the boys. At the
same time, the Corporation came to an arrangement with the Hall to
hand over in trust the sum of £200, the accumulated capital from a
legacy left by Captain John Price, R.N., in his will of 1703 for a
similar purpose. In return for taking over the two legacies, the
Society agreed to pay a master £20 a year to instruct boys in the art
of navigation.145 Negotiations took some time to complete, and it was
not until 20 June 1737 that the Hall appointed William Ramsey
master of its new Mathematical or Navigation School. Rules for the
school were drawn up, and the master’s salary was to begin as soon
as the deeds were completed.* On 10 August 1738, by an indenture
between the Corporation, the Society and the surviving trustees of
Lady Holworthy, the Society undertook to pay £20 a year for the’
instruction of 20 boys to be nominated by the Hall.’ Thus, the
Society became responsible for two separate schools — its own ancient
Writing School and the new Navigation or Mathematical School,
each of them in the charge of separate masters. Whether both were
situated under the Hall is not clear.
William Ramsey, the Master of the new school, agreed to teach
20 boys, aged 14-21. The boys were not to stay more than 18 months.
A register was to be kept and the parents were to provide pen, ink,
paper, compasses and Gunter’s scales. Ramsey died in 1745 and was
succeeded by Joseph Reynolds. He was to teach 20 boys, natives of
Bristol, and if there was any deficiency in numbers it was to be made
up by boys from Colston’s Hospital or the City Schools. When
Reynolds died, the Hall decided to bring the two schools under one
master. Joseph Rosser, who was Master of the Writing School, was
appointed to teach mathematics in place of Reynolds, and his total
salary was thus £25 a year. In 1764, he petitioned to have his salary
112 77,.B. 6, 20 Oct. 1735.
118 HB. 7, 10 Aug. 1752.
114 See T. J. Manchee, The Bristol Charities, Bristol, 1831, i, 266. Latimer’s
account in Merchant Venturers, pp. 230-1, is not enone satisfactory.
US HB. 5, 18 June, 1733.
"6 H.B. 6, 20 June 1737; 5 Sept. 1737.
11” T, J. Manchee, op. cit., i, 265-6,
Charitable and Educational Work, Eighteenth Century 217
as master of the Writing School increased from £5 to £20, as he
now had 50 boys. His salary for running the two schools thus became
£40 a year.118
Wiliam Williams was appointed master of the combined schools
under the Hall in 1783.19 He soon complained that as he had 62
boys in the school, he had no opportunity of taking paying pupils,
as previous masters had done. No action was taken, and he again
asked for more pay in 1785. From the point of view of the Hall’s
finances, it was.a bad time to ask for a rise. It was pointed out to him
that the master’s salary had been raised on 20 September 1764 when
the number in the school was 50, and that the number of boys was
still the same. However, it was decided that no new boys should be
admitted until the total had fallen to 40, and the figure should be
kept at that number.
The school was inspected from time to time. In 1792, the master
was required to make a list of boys, to report vacancies, to state which
boys were learning mathematics and which were learning naviga-
tion, and to report on the progress of any boys in the school who had
been to sea. Since it then appeared that no boys in the school had in
fact been instructed in either mathematics or navigation, it was
ordered that the objects of the school should be investigated. It
seems that the Society was not in fact complying with the terms of
the Holworthy-Price legacies, and it was presumably a belated
recognition of this that led it to advertise the Navigation School in
the Bristol papers in 1793. It looks as though the Hall, through
slackness and neglect, had been using the legacies, not for the
purposes for which they were intended, but to pay part of the
salary of a schoolmaster who was giving an education different from
that which Lady Holworthy and Captain Price had in mind.
The great development of the Society’s charitable and educational
work in the eighteenth century was of considerable significance in
itself, but it was all the more important because it pointed the way
to a future in which such activity became the main characteristic of
the Merchant Venturers as they gradually lost most of their other
functions.
118 This account of the school is based on information contained in two envelopes
among the Clerk’s papers dealing with the Merchants’ Hall Marine School. The
envelopes contain a report of a sub-committee of 30 April 1844 and various
supplementary papers, one of which is entitled ‘“‘“Some Account of the Merchants
Hall School.” It is probably the result of the researches of the indefatigable nine-
teenth-century Treasurer, William Claxton,
119 H.B. 1, p. 29, 2 May 1783,
CHAPTER 13
Miscellaneous Activities in
the Eighteenth Century
To the great range of activities which has already been noted, there
must be added a considerable number of miscellaneous interests.
Some of these were directly connected with the economic life of
Bristol, some with questions of public concern in the city and others
with matters which did not immediately affect the Society but
which for one reason or another attracted the attention of its
members.
As we have seen, the Society gave a good deal of time to the very
complicated laws regulating foreign trade and tried to influence
policy at the highest level, but it was also very much concerned with
the way in which the laws were administered locally. On numerous
occasions, there were complaints that the customs officers were
extracting extortionate fees or were interpreting the law with exces-
sive severity. Thus, in 1703 a committee was instructed to investigate
complaints that the customs officials were imposing oaths and
declarations on merchants and shopkeepers contrary to the law and
were taking exorbitant fees.1 Eight years later, the committee was
instructed to enquire into the abuses of the Prizage Master and of the
customs officers and was empowered to draw up a petition.” In
1719, the Hall was told about hardship resulting from debentures
being required on goods exported to Ireland. Two members were
sent to London and expenses were authorised up to £50%. In 1727,
£10 10s. was granted for the defence of a suit brought by the Duke
of Cleveland against William Hart and Walter Hawksworth over
prizage.* When William Hart complained in 1729 that the customs
officers refused to make the usual allowance of £16 per hundred for
the tare on currants, the Hall decided that this was an innovation
and must be resisted.5 In 1760, there was a complaint that the
Commissioners of Customs required all ships laden with tobacco to
unload within 30 days, and all other ships to unload within 20 days,
after being entered in the Customs House. The Clerk was instructed
to state a case and get legal opinion.® Four years later, at the request
* HB. 3, 1 June 1703. 2 HB. 4, 11 Dec. 1711, 20 Dec. 1711.
H.B. 4, 8 Dec. 1719. 4 H.B. 5, 16 Feb. 1727.
* AB. 5, 22 May 1729. 6 HB. 8, 9 Oct. 1760.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 219
of a committee of London traders, the Hall petitioned against a
bill which would allow no drawback on white calicoes or foreign
linen exported to the colonies.’ In 1765, when Mr. Weare com-
plained that the importers of sugars from the French islands were
unable to get their goods home in time and would now be subject
to the duties imposed on French goods, Lord Clare was asked to
help. Many other instances could be given to show the way in
which the Society was continually concerned to see that the trade
regulations did not harm the interests of Bristolians. The M.P.s
were kept very busy dealing with such issues.
Since the Society represented the interests of the merchants, it had
little sympathy with the excise laws, which placed an obstacle on the
sale of the goods they imported. In 1733, for example, at the time
of Walpole’s famous Excise Bill, the Hall resolved to oppose any
excise on goods subject to customs duties, and, in answer to a request
from London, it sent two representatives to oppose a plan to lay an
excise on tobacco and rice.® A proposal in 1736 to put a duty of 20s.
a gallon on all spiritous liquors sold by retail and a tax of £50 on
retailers produced a petition claiming that it would destroy the
petitioners and many thousands of His Majesty’s subjects in the
sugar colonies. It would end the drinking of rum punch in public
houses and prevent the distilling of many thousands of hogsheads of
molasses. The planters would be incapable of paying their debts;
the merchants would be unable to obtain return cargoes for their
ships, which were built only for that trade, and, in addition, ‘“‘a
great number of useful hands must loose their bread who are now
employed in the refining of sugar and in distilling molasses . . .”.1°
The Hall was never at a loss for an argument and was not unduly
concerned about consistency. Its anxiety in 1736 to prevent the
taxation of rum-drinkers contrasts with its attitude in 1750 towards
the sale of low-priced spiritous liquors, mainly gin. The Hall peti-
tioned the Commons and reflected ‘‘with the utmost concern on the
Excessive drinking of spiritous Liquors by the frequent instances of
the Sudden death of his Majesty’s subjects of both Sexes’’. It argued
that “‘as trade in general depends on the labour, skill and industry of
the people, so it is to be hoped that some effectual method will be
found out to prevent the use of these pernicious liquors, the fatal
effect of which amongst the lower class of his majesty’s subjects tend
greatly to the destruction of the commerce of the Kingdom’’. It
added ‘“‘that this intoxicating liquor is a bane to the constitution is
very apparent, for drunkenness, the confessed leader to all other
7 H.B. 9, 13 March 1764.
8 H.B. 9, 8 Feb. 1769.
® H.B. 5, 9 Jan. 1733; 14 March 1733; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 42.
10 Book of Charters 2, 277, 3 April 1736; Minchinton, op. cit., pp. 44,.45.
220 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
vices, was never so daringly known in this nation as at present”’.!!
In this case, public duty went hand in hand with private profit. Gin,
unlike rum, did not come from the British Plantations.
The attitude of the Merchant Venturers towards excise duties
was admirably summed up in a petition of 1790 relating to the
Tobacco Act of 1789. They stated “‘that they are fully convinced the
laws of excise are not only hostile to our free and happy constitution,
but that they depress the spirit of trade and manufacture, on which
the national opulence depends, and although the revenue may
derive a temporary increase from their exertion, yet it will most
certainly, in the event, wholly defeat the purpose it was intended to
promote... ”.12
The Corn Laws, which regulated the price at which foreign corn
could be imported and English corn exported, also attracted the
Hall’s attention in the second half of the century. In the conflict
between producers and consumers of grain, the Society was on the
side of the consumers, partly because merchants were importers, but
mainly because it feared the possible effects of the high price of
bread.18 Thus, in 1757 it followed the example of the Corporation
and petitioned the House of Commons for an extension of the time
during which corn might come in duty free. Because of high prices,
it was argued, “‘the distresses of the poor are become more and more
grievous”. The distilling of grain should be forbidden while the
price of corn was so high.14
Ten years later, the members of the Society again petitioned about
the high price of grain. They argued that “without some speedy and
effectual relief they apprehend our commerce must inevitably
decline, and our manufacturers seek an asylum in countrys that
afford the necessary of life at an easier rate’’. The bounty on export
should be reduced, distilling should be limited, and prices fixed ‘“‘at
a fair medium price between grower and consumer”. This would
check “the avaritious views and practices of ingrossers and monop-
olizers, ever prejudicial to the fair trader and industrious poor’’.15
The Hall made a more direct effort to meet the needs of the indus-
11 Book of Charters 1, 320, March 1750;, Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp.
77-8. Minchinton suggests that the Society was at this time much under the
influence of Josiah Tucker, whose An Impartial Inquiry into . .. Low Priced Spiritous
Liquors was published in 1751.
12 7B. 12, p. 48, 12 April 1790 (11 members present); Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, pp. 168, 169. The tobacco manufacturers of Bristol had asked the Hall to
help. A number of other towns also petitioned.
18 See Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. xxxili, xxxiv.
14 Book of Charters 2, 340, 16 April 1757; H.B. 8, 16 April 1757; Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, p. 89.
15 Book of Petitions, p. 22, 28 Nov. 1767; H.B. 9, 28 Nov. 1767; Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, p. 110.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 221
trious poor in 1767 when it arranged to import on its own account
6,000 bushels from Danzic which it put up for auction at the Ex-
change Coffee House in lots of 25 bushels.16 It did so again in 1768
but failed to sell the grain at an auction and eventually disposed of
it elsewhere.1?
Regulation of the corn trade was again under discussion in 178 5
when the Hall successfully opposed a bill to amend the corn laws
of 1773.18 In 1789, however, there was another bill which lumped
Bristol with Gloucester, Somerset and Monmouth for the purpose of
calculating the average price of corn, which governed import and
export. This time, the Society did not succeed, and the bill became
law.}®
There was another great flurry of activity in 1790 and 1791 when
a bill was introduced which imposed the penalty of confiscation on
vessels caught infringing the Corn Laws. The Hall arranged to call
the Bristol corn importers together and lobbied the M.P.s but its
efforts were unsuccessful. 2°
The concern of the Society with shipping and mariners in time
of war has already been noted, but its interest in these matters was
not confined to wartime, and a miscellaneous collection of other
issues had to be dealt with. On occasions, piracy caused it consider-
able trouble. In the early part of the century, the Turkish pirates and
the West Indian pirates were a nuisance. In 1715, for example, a
petition was ordered to be sent to the King in Council about “‘The
Sally Rovers”, and in 1717 another one was prepared about “the
pirotts in the West Indyes (who) doe very much obstruct our Navi-
gacion”’.** In 1754, the Hall had to send a petition to the Admiralty
asking for a cruising ship to be sent to the Barbary coast to protect
Bristol merchants who were unaware that “war has been declared
by a Prince of Morocco against this nation’’.22
A threat much nearer home occurred in the later seventeen-fifties.
In 1758, the Society received a letter from Mr. Browne, Secretary
of a Committee of Merchants and Insurers in London, who were
16 HB. 9, 11 Feb. 1767, 4 May 1767.
1” HB. 9, 28 May 1768, 28 Sept. 1768. It apparently made a loss of £122 6s. 6d.
in 1767 and a profit of £166 os. 6d. in 1768 (H.B. 10, 29 June 1773).
18 Book of Petitions, p. 103, 25 April 1785; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp.
XXXili, 155, 156. The Hall argued that the bill would tend to deprive the port of
Bristol of foreign supply, even in times of the greatest need, and establish a
monopoly of the corn trade in the port of London.
19 Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. xxxiii, 166, 167.
20 Book of Petitions, p. 111; H.B. 12, p. 94, 11 Dec. 1790; p. 104, 20 Jan. 1791;
p. 106, 7 Feb. 1791; p. 108, 19 Feb. 1791; p. 110, 25 Feb. 1791; Society’s Letters,
bdle. 29 A, Brickdale to the Hall; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 170-1,
172-3.
*) H.B. 4, 19 Aug. 1715, 20 Feb. 1717; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 9.
22 H.B. 8, 14 Sept. 1754; Book of Charters 1, 331.
222 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
engaged in the discovery and prosecution of piratical practices. He
asked for information and help from merchants and insurers in
Bristol.23 It appears from a letter sent to the Hall by Robert Nugent
that the depredations were being carried out by small vessels from
Dover and Deal, which pretended to be English privateers. Nugent
thought these disgraceful activities might unite the maritime powers
of Europe against us, and he urged the Hall to petition in favour of
a bill for manning the navy which also made provision against such
acts of piracy and robbery.”
Merchants and shipowners in the eighteenth century had good
reason to fear not only for their men but also for their goods if a ship
was wrecked off the English coast. In 1775, the Hall attempted to
obtain legislation tightening the law concerning wrecks and making
the county or hundred in which plundering took place responsible
for compensation. Burke tried unsuccessfully to introduce a bill in
1775 and did in fact introduce it in 1776, when the Society petitioned
in support of it.25 There was opposition, and it failed to become law.
Another practice which the Society found objectionable was that
of people taking out insurance on ships in which they had no interest,
a practice known as “daggering’’. In 1741, it tried to get a bill
passed forbidding the practice. This received a second reading, but
was then counted out.2 The Hall raised the matter again in 1746.
Southwell and Hoblyn, the Bristol M.P.s thought it was unlikely to
succeed unless it was introduced as a private bill for Bristol, but the
necessary clause was in the end inserted in a general bill relating to
insurance of ships which passed the Commons in June 1746.77
In the crowded eighteenth-century port, there was obviously a
considerable fire risk to shipping. As we have seen, the Hall secured
in 1776 an Act of Parliament requiring all combustible materials to
be brought to the Merchants’ Dock.? Its motives were mixed, but
the fear was genuine. In 1777 it offered a reward of £100 for the
apprehension of some incendiaries who had tried to set fire to ships
and warehouses on the quay, and it ordered that watchmen should
be provided by the Society to patrol the quays.?® Two years later,
23 Society’s Letters, bdle. 4, 9 Dec. 1758, Browne to the Hall; H.B. 8, 23 Jan.
1759-
24 Society’s Letters, bdle. 4, 26 March 1759, Nugent to the Hall; Book of Charters 2,
349, 352; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 94. .
25 HB. 10, 1 April 1776; Book of Petitions, p. 79, 1 April 1776; Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, pp. 133, 139-40.
26 HB. 6, 2 Jan. 1741; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 53, note I.
27 HB. 7, 6 Feb. 1746; 10 Feb. 1746; 25 Aug. 1746, when it was ordered that
copies of the Act to prevent daggering should be purchased; Minchinton, Politics
and the Port, p. 63, note 3. In 1748, the Standing Committee considered another
bill concerning insurance (H.B. 7, 18 Feb. 1748).
28 Supra, p. 155.
29 17.B. 10, 18 Jan. 1777. For the panic caused in Bristol at this time by the
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 223
the Hall was considering trying to secure a law making it a capital
offence to set fire to ships in the port or to goods on the wharves.®°
Concern about seamen was not limited simply to wartime and the
pressing of men for the navy. When the merchants of London peti-
tioned for a bill to regulate seamen in the merchant service in 1729,
the Hall set up a committee to take care of the interests of Bristol.
When the Master read out a bill for registering seamen in 1740, the
Society decided that it ought to be opposed.32 Again in 1745, when
a bill was proposed to regulate seamen’s wages, the Standing Com-
mittee commented “As to the Plan for an Act to regulate the price
of wages to seamen in the Merchants Service, we disapprove of the
whole, as we believe it to be impracticable and prejudicial to our
Liberty as well as Trade in general”’.33 The Committee thought that
the existing laws were quite sufficient and that the bill would put
excessive power into the hands of Trinity House. *4
Some of the members of the Society had close contact with the
grievances of seamen in 1783. The Hall Book relates how “‘A great
number of Seamen having assembled yesterday and paraded about
the City, and threatening to unrigg several ships that now lye ready,
or are getting ready, the Master ordered the Committee to be sum-
moned, and being met, and the Sailors being assembled in Queen
Square, they were informed that the Committee were ready to
receive a Deputation of them, and hear their grievances”. A
deputation of 8 sailors attended and delivered a paper addressed to
the Mayor. It stated that the wages given in the port were lower
than at any other port; that foreigners were employed in preference
to themselves, and that persons called lumpers were used to load
and unload ships. They demanded that no foreigners should be
employed; that lumpers should not be used but that instead seamen
should load and unload ships at the same wages as if they were at
sea; that the wages for able-bodied seamen going to Africa should be
£2 5s. a month, and for all other foreign ports, £2 a month. The
Committee considered the matter and then called in the deputation.
The sailors were told that the Society had no power to fix wages
which would bind the merchants, but that the Committee was of
opinion that able-bodied seamen should have what had already been
accepted by many able-bodied seamen since the peace, that is, 30s.
a month. On the other hand, the Committee agreed that no
foreigners should be employed while Englishmen were available
and that seamen should be employed in loading and unloading in
activity of the incendiary James Aitken, alias Jack the Painter, see Latimer,
Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 426-8.
80 HB. 10, 11 Feb. 1779. 81 HB. 5, 27 Feb. 1729.
82 77.B. 6, 20 Feb. 1740. 83 HB. 6, 11 March 1745.
84 HB. 6, 18 March 1745.
224 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
preference to lumpers. The Society would recommend that these
rules should be observed by all persons concerned with ships. The
deputation was not satisfied, and one of its members declared that
no work would be done on the quay. The Committee therefore
thought that a copy of its proceedings should be forthwith delivered
to the Mayor.®® Perhaps it was because it recognised that unemploy-
ment might produce dangerous consequences that the Committee
a short time afterwards decided that as a great number of seamen
and others were out of work and in great want, they should be
employed to clear mud from the new dock at the Grove.*®
In 1795, the Society used its influence to protect the rights of
seamen when a bill for regulating their wages came before Parlia-
ment. Liverpool wrote to the Mayor of Bristol, and the Hall adver-
tised a meeting of all merchants and shipowners. Only 13 members
and 4 outsiders attended. The meeting decided that it was not
expedient to support the clauses in the bill limiting the rights of
seamen to bring actions for the recovery of their wages. It agreed
that it was desirable to prevent seamen bringing vexatious suits but
did not want to do anything to hinder genuine actions in such cases.37
As has already been noted, the Society did a great deal to help
seamen through its almshouses and through its administration of the
Seamen’s Hospital Fund. On a number of occasions it assisted seamen
who had suffered misfortune or injustice. In 1767, for example, it
took up the case of Francis Newton who had gone ransom for the
brigantine Hope and who had then been deserted by the owner and
left a prisoner in St. Malo for 7 years. The Hall ordered that a suit
should be started against the owner in order to make ‘“‘a publick
example of such villainy”. It advanced £12 2s. to Newton and
granted him 7s. a week to be repaid with the other money, when he
recovered damages. In 1770, it ordered that the case should be ©
pressed ‘‘for the honour of the Nation, for the sake of justice, and for
the preventing such villanous conduct in future which might in
case of a Warr prove very detrimental to Trade by deterring Persons
from going as Hostage’’. It seems that the case did not succeed, and
in 1772 it was ordered that Newton should have another month’s
money, after which his grant was to stop. By that time, he would
have received £44 16s.88
Another aspect of the economic life of Bristol in which the Society
was interested was the services available to business men, including
banking, broking and the provision of a satisfactory Exchange. As
early as 1713, John Holland made “‘some proposalls for erecting a
Bank within this Citty . . .”’. The Committee was ordered to confer
35 H.B. 11, p. 24, 7 May 1783. 86 77.B. 11, p. 33, 30 June 1783.
37 HB. 12, pp. 375-6, 30 March 1795.
38 H.B. 9, 26 Oct. 1767, g April 1770, 8 Oct. 1772.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 225,
with him, but no further action was taken.?® Professional banking
developed in Bristol from 1750 onwards and was well established by
1774 when Thomas Tyndall and other Bristol bankers drew the
Society’s attention to a bill which was being backed by the Bank of
England and some of the London bankers. This would, it was alleged,
tend “‘to put a stop to Merchantile Bankers and Country Banks, by
preventing all Persons concerned in any other Trade from being
concerned in the Banking Business . . .”. The Committee thought
that a letter should be sent to M.P.s “representing to them that the
Banks of this City are of great Utility to the Trade, being incorpor-
ated into the Plan of Trade carried on here . . . We consider the
Plan as an attempt to establish a Monopoly which is destructive of
all Trade. . . .” In his letter to Clare and Brickdale, the Master
pointed out that the bill put no restraint on the great evil of “jobbing
in the Stocks”. He stated that Bristol had four banks which were of
great utility to the traders, and he added “Every lawful Trade (and
such we consider the business of Bankers) ought to be free and open;
we consider Monopoly and Despotism as of the same family”. A
petition against the bill was approved on 4 May 1774.°
A fleeting attempt was made to regulate the activities of brokers
in Bristol in 1729. Alderman Day pointed out that there were several
laws in force in London controlling brokerage, and the Standing
Committee was instructed to examine whether there should be
similar regulations in Bristol. The next year, the Master produced an
Act of Parliament relating to the London brokers and it was decided
to apply for a similar act for Bristol at the Hall’s expense. However,
nothing seems to have come of this. *!
Bristol had long remained without a satisfactory Exchange or
meeting place for merchants and other business men, as the Tolzey
was inadequate and exposed to the weather. Although this matter
might have been considered as a special concern of the Hall, it did
not take the initiative. It was first raised in the Council House in
1717, when a committee was set up by the Corporation, but nothing
was done.*? The Society was informed in November 1718 that it
would be convenient for the merchants if an Exchange were built,
and a committee was to report on the proposal. Again, no action
followed.*® In October 1721, a petition of merchants and shop-
keepers asked the Corporation to proceed with the matter, and the
Corporation decided to obtain a private Act and to pay half the
89 HB. 4, 28 April 1713. |
40 Ff.B. 10, 23 Feb. 1774; Letter Book 1747-1780, 23 Feb. 1774, the Master to
Clare and Brickdale; Book of Petitions, p. 59; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp.
127, 128.
a H.B. 5, 13 Feb. 1729, 24 Feb. 1730.
42 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 118.
43 Ff.B. 4, 17 Nov. 1718.
226 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
costs. A new committee of the Corporation was established, and in
October the Hall set up its own committee. An Act was in fact
obtained in 1722, but there was opposition in Bristol, and again the
matter lapsed.44 With a sudden burst of energy in 1732, the Corpora-
tion bought various buildings for the site with borrowed capital,
but then little more was done until 1739, when more property was
purchased. At this point, the Society decided to give £2,000 as a
free gift towards the cost, which already amounted to nearly £20,000.
The foundation stone was laid in March 1741, and on 21 September
1743 the Society and the boys from Colston’s Hospital took part in
the grand opening ceremony.*®
The new Exchange was not in fact very popular with the business
community, which was far more concerned with another matter —
the postal service. There are a great many references in the Society’s
records to this question throughout the century. A few examples
will serve to show the Hall’s activity. In 1721, for example, it
petitioned the King to take steps to prevent the frequent robbery of
the mails, and in 1731 the Standing Committee was instructed to
enquire into the irregularity of the London posts.*® In 1748, it sent
to the Postmaster General a request that packets of Bristol letters
should be made up in Dublin and on arrival at Chester should go
by the west country post direct to Bristol and not via London.
Foreign letters arriving at Falmouth should also go direct and not
through London. Mr. Fane, M.P. for Bristol, reported to the Hall
that he had seen Mr. Allen near Bath and that he had no objection
to the Irish mails going direct to Bristol, but that the Postmaster
General would not agree to allow this to be done with foreign letters,
because the government might need to open them, particularly in
time of war.*?
In 1767, the wardens wrote to Lord Clare expressing concern
about a proposed alteration in the postage laws which would free
postmasters from the duty of delivering letters at the houses of
persons to whom they were addressed and asked him to use his influ-
ence against the bill. It nevertheless became law.*® At the same time,
the Society was petitioning to get a branch added to the Bristol post
to provide a regular connection with Glastonbury, Somerton,
Langport, Ilminster and Chard, with which there was a considerable
44 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 118, 119; H.B. 4, 23 Oct. 1721.
45 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 180, 218, 226, 247; H.B. 6, 12 Oct.
1739, 16 Feb. 1743. The total cost was nearly £50,000.
46 HB. 4, 23 Oct. 1721; H.B. 5, 14 Dec. 1731; Minchinton, Politics and the Port,
p. 13.
4? HB. 7, 10 Nov. 1748, 16 Nov. 1748.
48 Letter Book 1747-1780, 6 June 1767, the Warden to Lord Clare. The Act was 7
George III c. 50. See Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 108.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 227
trade.*° Two years later, as a result of a letter from Lord Clare, the
Hall was trying to get an improvement in the post between Bristol
and Bath and between Bristol and Chester.5° It complained that
packets for America and the West Indies were frequently detained
in London longer than the day advertised in the Gazette. Londoners
were informed about the delay, but other ports were not, and it
wanted the Postmaster General to advise Bristol from time to time
about the latest date for despatch. *!
Bad postal service to London and to Bath were again the subject
of complaint in 1773, when the Society also requested that there
should be a daily penny post to Bath. The Secretary to the General
Post Office wrote to the Master, Joseph Daltera, regretting that it
was impossible to establish a penny post to Bath. He apologised for
the bad service and assured him that negligent postmasters “‘will be
constantly wrote to’’.52 The next year, the Mayor and several
merchants asked the Hall to join in an application to the Postmaster
General that all mails for Bristol should be made up abroad and sent
direct from Falmouth, paying the same rates as if they went through
London. This was referred to a committee.5* There was yet another
complaint about bad posts to Bath in 1782.54
In the seventeen-eighties John Palmer developed, in the face of
very considerable opposition from within the Post Office, a system
of fast, well-guarded mail coaches. Costs were higher, but the
customer who used the service got increased speed and security.
Both the Corporation and the Society appreciated Palmer’s work
and petitioned in support of him.*®
The Society also showed some concern for improved communica-
tions in and around Bristol, but its interest tended to be sporadic,
and it did not show quite as much awareness of the importance of the
problem as might have been expected from an organisation so
deeply involved with the prosperity of the port. It does not seem to
have played any part as a corporate body in furthering the Act of
1727 which set up Turnpike Trustees consisting of the M.P.s for
Bristol, Gloucestershire and Somerset, the J.P.s of the two shires,
49 The initiative came from Mr. Combe who informed the Hall on 11 Feb. 1767
that a petition was ready and asked the Society to support it with a Memorial.
H.B. 9, 11 Feb. 1767, 5 June 1767; Book of Petitions p. 16, February 1767; Min-
chinton, Politics and the Port, p. 108.
50 HB. 9, 8 Feb. 1769.
51 HB. 9, 21 Oct. 1769.
52 H7.B. 10, 16 Jan. 1773; Society’s Letters, bdle. 17, two letters from Anthony
Toad, Secretary to the General Post Office, to Daltera.
58 HB. 10, 12 Feb. 1774.
§4 HB. 10, 13 May 1782.
55 For the posts in Bristol at this time and Palmer’s contribution, see Latimer,
Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 457-9; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 153, note 2;
H.B. 11, p. 113, 12 Feb. 1785.
228 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the members of the Corporation and a number of local gentry who
were given powers to levy tolls, nor was it concerned with the Act
of 1749 which extended the powers of the Trustees.°® In 1749, when
the Corporation agreed to lend two-thirds of the sum of £500
required for turnpike roads, the Hall was willing to lend the other
third, but when the Corporation later changed its mind about the
loan, so did the Hall.5? On the other hand, the Society showed
considerable interest in the development of roads affecting its
property at Clifton and Hotwells, and it made a number of grants
to help the making of roads elsewhere. Thus, in 1763 it cooperated
with the Turnpike Commissioner when they widened and lowered
the road from Bristol over Totterdown to Bath and it gave up some
of its land for this purpose, provided the Commissioners agreed to
erect a substantial wall.5* In the same year, it donated 20 guineas to
repair the road from Rownham to Pill and 10 guineas to repair the
road from Portishead Point to Portishead Passage.®® In 1764, the
Hall contributed 10 guineas towards making a road from Stoke in
Westbury to Sea Mills, 20 guineas to Thomas Goldney for work on
a road from the Three Tuns in Clifton up Clifton Hill, and 100
guineas to the parish of St. Nicholas to help with the cost of opening
a way from St. Nicholas Street to the Back.® In 1766, it gave £30
for work on a retaining wall at Totterdown, which was very
dangerous, and three years later it donated 20 guineas to rebuild the
wall, which had fallen down the previous year.®! It approved the
Turnpike Commissioners’ request in 1773 to take down three or
four large trees in front of Mr. Goldney’s house in Clifton to widen
the road,®? and it repaired the road from Rownham to the Lime-
kilns in 1792, making it clear that it did not accept any obligation
to do so.68 When the Treasurer of the Brislington Road was unable
to get any quarries to sell him stone in 1798, the Society offered him
the use of one of its own quarries. 64 On the other hand, when a bill
was introduced for the repair of Over’s Causeway leading from
Gloucester towards Maismore, for altering the bridge over the
Severn near the Westgate and for paving and cleansing the streets
of Gloucester, the Hall opposed it because these improvements were
to be paid for by levying a toll on vessels passing under Westgate
Bridge. ®®
The improvement of Bristol’s own bridge did not rouse much
interest in the Hall, and the Society did not participate in the fierce
56 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 155 ff., 274 ff.
es 7, 16 via 1749: 26 June 1749. . es 9, 28 ps 763.
.B. 9, 20 Oct. 1763. .B. 9, 19 March 1764.
1 HB. 9, 21 Oct. 1760. 62 H.B. 10, 15 Dec. 1773.
63 H7.B. 12, p. 235, 7 Nov. 1792, see also pp. 187-9.
64 HB, 13, p. 44, 30 Jan. 1798.
65 77,B, ro, 10 April 1777; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 142, 143.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 229
controversy in the later seventeen-fifties over the proposal to replace
the medieval structure by a modern bridge.** When the Town Clerk
hopefully informed the Hall about the difficulty in raising funds and
appealed for help, the Society suggested that possibly the money
might be raised by an increase in the wharfage rates, but it did not
offer to help from its own resources.*? The Corporation nevertheless
secured an Act in 1760, and after protracted disputes the new bridge
was opened for general traffic in November 1768. In 1768, the Bridge
Trustees applied for another Act giving them further powers to im-
prove the approach from Temple Street. There was opposition in
Bristol, and, somewhat ill-advisedly, the Society intervened in a
petition tothe Commons, maintaining “That they from the general
and Known characters of the trustees have not the least suspicion that
they have been guilty of mismanagement, and from the enquiry that
they have made they cannot find that they have been guilty of any.” *®
In 1793, largely as a result of the way in which the Bridge Trustees
handled the bridge tolls, there were serious riots in which 11 people
were killed and nearly 50 injured.®® The tolls were brought to an end
by the efforts of a number of citizens who raised a subscription to buy
out the lessees. The question then arose as to what the Bridge
Trustees should do with the funds they had in hand for lighting,
cleaning and repairing the bridge. They wished to hand them over
to the Corporation and the Society, and there was a discussion about
whether the Society had an obligation to accept the trust under the
Bridge Act of 1786. Eventually the Corporation and the Merchant
Venturers agreed to accept the sum as joint trustees.7°
The Society’s concern about improving river navigation and
developing canals was also fairly limited, apart from proposals
concerning the river Avon. In 1763, the Hall cooperated in a scheme
to make an accurate plan of the Avon from Bath to Chippenham
and Tytherington with a view to obtaining an estimate of the cost of
making it navigable. It provided 50 guineas to enable Ferdinando
Stratford to make a plan and section.” It put up another £100 in
November 1764 and also gave Stratford 25 guineas. He undertook
to provide a fair copy of his plan and an estimate to put before
parliament by Christmas 1764. In January 1765, the Hall ordered
66 For the bridge, see Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol, pp. 114 ff.;
Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 334 ff.
67 HB. 8, 16 Jan. 1759, 23 Jan. 1759. |
68 HB. 11, p. 218, 11 May 1786, p. 231, 24 May 1786; Book of Petitions, pp. 106, |
107, 11 May 1786; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 157.
69 For Latimer’s strictures on the Bridge Trustees, see Eighteenth Century Annals,
pp. 501 ff. |
70 HB. 12, p. 359, 1 Jan. 1795, p. 388, 2 July 1795; p. 409, 6 Nov. 1795, Pp. 427;
23 Jan. 1796, p. 452, 26 Dec. 1797. |
71 AB. 9, 3 May 1763.
230 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
that his plan should be framed and hung up in the Exchange Coffee
House. His estimate was to be printed and distributed free. The
Corporation resolved to apply for an Act to make the river navigable
to Chippenham, but there was fierce opposition in Wiltshire, and
the scheme was abandoned early in 1766.7?
Quite early in the Canal Age, the Society showed an interest in a
scheme backed by Mr. Archer, M.P. for Warwick, who attended
the Hall and gave details of a plan to make a canal from Coventry
to Warwick and thence to Stratford on Avon, which was already
linked with Bristol. He argued that the proposal would “‘counter-act
those advantages which the Town of Liverpool (the Rival in Trade
of this City) would otherwise have over this City by the new inland
Navigations opened in the Northward parts of the Kingdom’. He
promised to let the Society know when the plans were ready, but
there were no further developments.
Two canal schemes came under consideration in 1775. In March,
the Hall agreed to support a bill in the House of Commons for a
canal from Stourbridge to Stourton to link with the Staffordshire
and Worcestershire Canal. This proposal ran into opposition and
was postponed. The Hall had asked Henry Cruger to support it, and
this placed him in some difficulty as he was backing a rival scheme.
He hastened to explain that if the bill had gone on, he would have
supported it, because his friends in Bristol expected to benefit from
it. He assured the Hall that ‘‘notwithstanding it always gives me
Pain as a Man to impair or injure the private interests of Individuals,
yet as a Member of the Community (who prefers the greater to the
inferior good), I must have promoted the public Interests, tho’ it
might unfortunately have interfered with that of a few private
Persons . . .”’.74 The bill was, however, reintroduced at the end of
1775, when the Society again petitioned in favour of it, and it became
law in 1776.75 The other proposal put forward in 1775 was to make
the river Stroudwater navigable from Framiload on the Severn to
Walbridge near Stroud. By 25 votes to 8, the Hall decided to give
its support.ӎ
On the other hand, little interest was shown in the proposed
Kennet and Avon Canal. When a public meeting in Marlborough
Castle was called in 1788 to discuss a navigation which would make a
better link between Bristol and London, the Standing Committee
73 FB, 9, 7 Nov. 1764, 14 Jan. 1765; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 369,
370.
73 HB. 9, 23 Sept. 1767.
74 H.B. 10, 30 March 1775; Book of Petitions, p. 69, 30 March 1775; Society’s
Letters, bdle. 19, 7 April 1775, Cruger to the Hall.
75 Book of Charters 2, 71, 14. Dec. 1775; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 134,
135.
76 HB. 10, 2 Dec. 1775, 14 Dec. 1775; Book of Petitions, p. 70, 12 Dec. 1775.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 231
expressed the view that there would not be enough traffic to make
the canal pay.’? The scheme was postponed for a time, and when the
matter came up in 1789, a meeting at which only 14 members were
present decided not to contribute towards the cost of a survey.78
There must, however, have been some uneasiness about the
extent to which Bristol was losing ground to its rivals, and in 1791
support was given to a petition for a canal from Birmingham to
Worcester which, it was argued, would be “‘the means of opening a
certain and immediate communication between the port of Bristol
and the North and several intermediate points . . .”.7® The bill
became law, and the Hall kept an eye.on the scheme. In 1794, when
it was informed about a meeting of the proprietors, it decided it
could not attend itself but that every opportunity should be taken
of opposing any proposed diminution in the size of the canal.®°®
In 1793, there was only lukewarm support for the proposed
Berkeley—Gloucester Canal. The Society did not back it, but decided
that “‘the Citizens at large’? should be informed by advertisement
nd that petition forms should be left at the Council House.*®! It
subsequently asked for postponement of the scheme on the grounds
that other plans were under consideration for making ‘‘an inland
communication” for Bristol to the Severn “above the dangerous
parts of it” and that there was also a proposal to link Bristol with
Taunton. It was particularly anxious to prevent the proprietors of
the Berkeley-Gloucester Canal from obstructing these much more
sweeping proposals.8? The bill, nevertheless, obtained the royal
assent.
The proposed Bristol-Taunton or Western Canal referred to
above was formally brought to the attention of the Standing Com-
mittee at the end of 1795. Early in 1796, the Hall decided to petition
in favour of it, and a petition was actually drawn up. It does not
seem to have been presented, presumably because the scheme never
got off the ground.*4
It seems clear that the Society’s interest in canals was limited,
and that its failure to give a really effective lead in the development
of the port cannot be explained in terms of a great concern for
7 ALB. 11, p. 441, 5 July 1788.
78 HB. 11, p. 467, 23 Oct. 1788; p. 549, 9 Nov. 1789.
79 HB. 12, pp. 118-19, 11 March 1791; Book of Petitions, pp. 116-18; Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, p. 177. 80 HB. 12, p. 318, 8 Jan. 1794.
81 HB. 12, p. 264, 25 Feb. 1793.
82 Book of Petitions, p. 122, 25 Feb. 1793, pp. 123-4; H.B. 12 p. 273, March
1793; Minchinton, Politics and the Port, pp. 181, 182.
83 33 George III c, 97.
84 F.B. 12, p. 421, 19 Nov. 1795; p- 424, 26 Dec. 1795 when the 12 members
present decided to leave it to the Standing Committee to make a decision; p. 428,
25 Feb. 1796; Book of Petitions, p. 125, 25 Feb. 1796; Minchinton, Politics and the
Port, pp. 183, 184. |
232 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
developing inland communications. In neither case did it show
much initiative, and its cautious and conservative attitude was one of
the many factors which explain the relative decline of the port of
Bristol.
The Society was mainly concerned with the economic life of the
city, but it also used its influence from time to time in other direc-
tions. It gave its support to the Corporation in 1754 and 1755 over
a bill to establish a more satisfactory body of watchmen. The bill
was highly controversial, not because there was opposition to law
and order among the propertied classes, but because there was
great reluctance to placing this enlarged police force under the
control of the unpopular Corporation. A number of people claiming
to speak for the principal merchants and traders argued that the
Corporation did not represent the inhabitants of Bristol. On this
occasion, the Society came to the aid of the establishment and argued
in its petition that the Mayor and Aldermen were “the most proper
persons to be invested with power to regulate and support a nightly
watch .. .””.85
On occasions, the Hall made gifts to improve the amenities of
Bristol. When the Corporation decided in 1731 to give £500 towards
the cost of a statue of William III, the Hall agreed to give £300,
and the project was managed by a committee of 3 members of the
Corporation, 3 Merchant Venturers and 3 of the general subscribers.
The result was Rysbrack’s fine equestrian statue in Queen Square. *®¢
There had been an earlier proposal to give £100 for an equestrian
statue of George II. Latimer states that this was “‘insidiously made”’
by the Tories, and it was turned down by the Hall.§? In 1775, when
the Corporation voted {£800 towards purchasing houses and
land between the void ground opposite Denmark Street and the
drawbridge to lay out as an open space, the Society also voted
£,800.8§ The next year, it donated £100 for the expense of taking
down the gate and buildings at the bottom of Small Street.®® Thirty
guineas was donated to repair the walks on College Green in 1780,
and £200 to help with improvements in St. Stephen’s parish in
1795.°°
The Society was not a great patron of learning or of the arts, but
it made occasional donations. It showed some interest in the Bristol
85 7.B. 8, 24 Feb. 1755; Book of Charters 2, 332, 1 Feb. 1755; Letter Book 1747-1780,
1 Feb. 1755, the Society to Nugent and Beckford; Minchinton, Politics and the Port,
pp. 83, 84; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 311 ff.
86 77.B. 5, 14 Dec. 1731; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 178.
87 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 179.
88 H.B. 10, 1 April 1776. .
8° 71.B. 10, 25 May 1776. For the extensive clearances under an Act of 1776
see Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 368, 369, 408.
°° HB. 10, 8 Nov. 1780; H.B. 12, p. 422, 26 Dec. 1795.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 233
Library which had originally been established as a free library
for the citizens of Bristol in 1613. This underwent a number of
vicissitudes. In 1740, it was rebuilt by the Corporation, and
Benjamin Donn acted as librarian and also ran a mathematics
school in the premises. In 1772, a number of citizens formed a
Bristol Library Society and obtained from the Corporation the
use of the premises for their own subscription library. Donn was dis-
missed, a new librarian was appointed, and the Library Society in
effect took over what had been intended to be a free library.®! The
Hall gave £20 to the library in 1773 and again in, 1775.92 The
next year, the Society contributed £100 towards the cost of taking
down a stable and coach house in front of the building which the
Corporation had allowed Ezekiel Longman to erect in 1728.9
From 1777, it paid an annual subscription of £10, provided the
Master, Wardens and Treasurer might enjoy the privileges of mem-
bership. ®4
Some patronage was also given to makers of maps and plans. Thus,
the Hall agreed in 1744 to subscribe 20 guineas to Murdoch
McKenzie’s survey of the Orkneys and in 1771 Captain Nicholas
Pocock received the same amount for a chart of the coast of North
and South Carolina.®5 Benjamin Donn was given 20 guineas in
1767 for his survey of the country around Bristol, and in 1773 the
Hall subscribed for 8 copies of Darch and Day’s proposed map of
Somerset.®* On the other hand, when the Master laid before the
Committee a letter from Benjamin Donn enclosing a Plan of the
City of Bristol lately published by him which he wanted to present
to the Society, it was decided not to accept it. The Clerk, Samuel
Worrall, sent Donn a very curt letter saying “Sir, the Master having
laid before the Committee your letter of November 11th with a
plan lately published by you of the City of Bristol, the Committee
have ordered me to return it to you.”” Donn had been dismissed as
Librarian of the free library and was about to leave Bristol to open
an academy near Taunton, and there may well have been some
bad feeling between him and the Library Society which the Hall
patronised.®’ Later, there must have been a reconciliation, for Donn
received 10 guineas from the Hall in 1784 for his map of the Western
Circuit. °8
*1 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 210, 403.
92 HB. 10, 13 Sept. 1775; 30 Sept. 1773.
®3 H.B. ro, 1 April 1776; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 403.
*4 HB. 10, 13 Aug. 1777.
95 H.B. 6, 11 Sept. 1744; H.B. 9, 18 Feb. 1771.
96 Hf.B. 9, 11 May 1767.
97 H.B. 10, 15 Dec. 1773; Society’s Letters, bdle. 18, Donn to the Hall, 11 Nov.
1773; Letter Book 1747-1780, 15 Dec. 1773, Worrall to Donn.
98 HB. 11, p. 74, 26 Aug. 1784.
234 The Merchant Veniurers of Bristol
Patronage of art and architecture was small. The contribution to
Rysbrack’s statue of William III had a political and not an aesthetic
purpose, and the decision to make all the portraits in the Hall of
uniform length suggests a certain philistinism.®® Good luck as well as
good judgement probably played a part in the selection of Paty for
work on the reconstruction of the Hall, and the contribution of £20
to Nicholas Pocock for his print of the battle of 12 April 1782
between Rodney and de Grasse was not made simply on the grounds
of artistic merit.1°° The fine Georgian buildings which went up on
the Society’s property in Clifton owed much to the generally high
architectural ability of the age and to the fact that the Hall was
anxious to maintain property values.
In an age when there was considerable technical development,
one might perhaps have expected the Society to show interest in
inventions, particularly in relation to the sea, but little seems to
have been done. When the Earl of Halifax sent down Mr. Isaac
Stillingfleet with a model of Dr. Hales’ ventilation for ships, the
Hall gave him 20 guineas for his pains during his month’s, stay in
Bristol, and Benjamin Donn received some help with an invention
to record more accurately the height of the tide at Bristol Bridge,
but in general the merchants do not seem to have been technically
minded.!® As merchants, they had obvious reasons for the support
they gave in 1783 to petitions that Richard Arkwright’s patent for
the manufacture of cotton should not be renewed.1°
Other matters of more than local interest in which the Society
was involved in the eighteenth century included a petition in 1748
to colonise a large tract of land near Nova Scotia, which the Society
supported,!°% and a bill in 1751 to naturalise foreign Protestants.
Although both the Corporation and the Society petitioned in support
of foreign Protestants, there was a counter-petition from the Tory
Steadfast Society which claimed that “not more than 40 individual
persons’ in Bristol had consented to the petitions. There was strong
opposition in London and the bill was withdrawn before its third
reading.1°4 The Society took a much less liberal attitude with regard
to the Jews. An Act of 1753 permitted the naturalisation of indivi-
dual Jews by private Act of Parliament without their having to
99 See p. III. 100 77.B. 11, p. 48, 28 Oct. 1783.
101 77.B. 9, 24 April 1769, 15 May 1771; H.B. 7, 31 Jan. 1750.
102 77,B. 11, p. 15, 6 March 1783; Book of Petitions, p. 99, 6 March 1783; Society’s
Letters, bdle. 25, contain copies of a petition for the merchants of Lancaster with
48 signatures; from Liverpool (68 signatures) and from Manchester (no signa-
tures). The patent was not in fact renewed. See Minchinton, Politics and the Pori,
p. 152.
103 77.B. 7, 20 Oct. 1748.
104 LB. 7, 23 Feb. 1751; Book of Charters 2, 321, March 1751; Minchinton,
Politics and the Port, p. 78.
Miscellaneous Activities, Eighteenth Century 235
receive the sacrament.1°5 It was intended to encourage the immigra-
tion of rich foreign Jews. There was an outburst of anti-Jewish
feeling in the country. In Bristol, the Corporation did not join in,
but most of the Bristol press was hostile to the Act, the Steadfast
Society helped whip up popular feeling, and the Society petitioned
for the repeal of the Act. It informed the M.P.s of its unanimous
resolution and asked them to use their utmost endeavours to get the
Act repealed.1°* In the face of widespread opposition, the Govern-
ment gave way, and the repeal bill received the royal assent on 20
December 1753.19?
Among these miscellaneous interests must ‘also be included a
petition in 1731 and 1732 for the more effective recovery of debts in
the American colonies;1°° assistance in the cost of transporting dis-
banded soldiers and sailors to Ireland after the end of the war in
1763;*°° a request to Burke in 1777 that in any proposal to place a
tax on goods sold by auction, he should try to get exempted the
goods of bankrupts and goods taken from wrecks or from vessels
damaged by the sea;11° and a protest in 1797 that a bill regulating
the place of trial of certain actions would result in cases being heard
by Somerset juries who did not understand intricate mercantile
questions and who were wholly unacquainted with shipping and
navigation.11
Other matters which attracted the attention of the Hall included
an investigation of the charges made at Rownham Ferry;}22 bills
for regulating salmon fishing in the river Severn;"18 the enclosure of
Locking Moor in Somerset;1!4 presentation to the vicarage of Lock-
ing; 14 the attempt of the Reverend Richard Wilkins to interfere
with Sunday work by the pilots at Pill;46 and “An anonymous
Hand Bill from the working Shipwrights . . . by which there is
reason to apprehend an illegal Combination for the increase of
wages... "117 |
105 26 George II c. 26. See P. T. Underdown, “The Parliamentary History of
the City of Bristol, 1750-1790”, unpublished London M.A. thesis, 1948, pp. 20-1;
Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 80; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 299.
106 7B. 8, 10 Nov. 1753, 12 Nov. 1753; Letter Book 1747-1780; 12 Nov. 1753,
Nathaniel Foy to Edward Southwell and Robert Hoblyn.
107 9” George II c. 1.
108 FB. 5, 14 Dec. 1731; Book of Charters 2, 269, 270; Minchinton, Politics and
the Port, pp. 35, 36.
109 77.B. 9, 20 June 1764. 110 FB. 10, 24. May 1777.
111 Book of Petitions, p. 126, 27 April 1797; Minchinton, Politics and the Port,
pp. 184-6. 112 HB. 13, p. 104, 1 Aug. 1799.
118 7f.B. 10, 3 March 1778; Book of Petitions, p. 87, 3 March 1778.
114 HB. 13, p. 124, 17 Jan. 1800; p. 131, 15 May 1800.
115 See, for example, H.B. 10, 30 Oct. 1781; H.B. 13, p. 47, 30 Jan. 1798.
116 HB. 12, p. 99, 30 Dec. 1790; p. 106, 7 Feb. 1791.
117 HEB. 12, p. 345, 23 Oct. 1794.
236 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
From what has been said about the great range of activities in which
the Society was engaged in the eighteenth century, it is clear that the
agenda at its meetings did not lack variety and interest, but it is
probable that the Society weakened its effectiveness by operating
simultaneously on so many different fronts. The economic problems
which it dealt with were growing in number and complexity, and
at the same time it had to handle a mass of business relating to its
charitable and educational work and to its property. Moreover, the
great variety of business had to be conducted by the relatively small
number of members who played an active part in its organisation.
Concern for detail must have weakened its efficiency as a policy-
making body. It was conservative in its outlook and inclined to
cooperate whenever possible with the small lethargic oligarchy which
governed Bristol. It included within its ranks only part of the mer-
cantile and business interests and it was content to allow other
groups to do some of the things which it was unable or unwilling to
do itself.
CHAPTER 14
The Society and Other Organisations in
Eighteenth-Century Bristol
THE task of looking after the economic interests of Bristol in the
eighteenth century was not solely the responsibility of the Society
of Merchant Venturers. The expansion of the economy nationally
and locally meant there was a great deal more to be done than in the
earlier period, and since the Society had so much on hand, it was
not surprising that other specialised groups emerged to deal with
particular issues. These groups were not trying to compete with the
work of the Hall but to complement it, and the Society was often
willing to help them. Nevertheless, their emergence suggests that
the Merchant Venturers were leaving to others some of the respon-
sibilities which previously they would have been anxious to keep in
their own hands. It also indicates that some of the merchants
thought they could better achieve their objectives outside the
Society, and this meant that the Hall could not claim to speak for
the whole merchant community.
The two most important fields in which the Society relinquished
some of its control were in the African trade and the West Indian
trade. As has already been noted, from 1750 onwards there existed
in Bristol a local branch of the African Company which elected
annually three representatives of the national executive of nine
which sat in London. Although the Society gave a considerable
amount of help to the African Company at local and national level,
the Act of 1750 had in effect deprived it of effective conttol of a very
important branch of Bristol’s commerce. The Bristol branch of the
African Company had many more members than the Society of
Merchant Venturers and was controlled by a national executive in
London.1
The Bristol branch of the African Company had been brought
into existence by national legislation, but a separate organisation
for merchants interested in the very important West Indian trade
seems to have developed spontaneously. In 1777 the merchants
formed their own local West India Club in the same way as West
Indian merchants had done in London, Glasgow and Liverpool. It
would seem that this was primarily for social purposes but that it
1 See p. 133.
238 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
had some economic functions and that it was in contact with West
India Societies in other towns. The first Bristol Club was short-
lived, but early in 1782 a number of gentlemen interested in the
trade met at the Bush Tavern and decided to form a new society on
the same lines as the old one.? Of the 16 original members, only
half were Merchant Venturers. The Proceedings of the Society
show that it was concerned with a number of economic issues, in-
cluding averages charged on cargoes; arrangements for convoys in
the Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars; duties on sugar; freight
charges; opposition to demands for increased wages by seamen and
shipwrights; regulation of the Irish trade; brokerage charges;
import duties on rum; duties on French brandy, and the tax on
sugar. The impression given by its Proceedings is that it was a vigorous
organisation which fought hard for the interests of those concerned
with this very valuable trade. During the French Wars, it seems to
have done very much more than the Merchant Venturers in demand-
ing convoys for the West India fleet. It was open to merchants who
were not Merchant Venturers and it operated separately from that
Society. Its Proceedings show that its members dined with each other
and engaged in a certain amount of betting. Possibly its meetings
were more attractive than those held in the Merchants’ Hall.
In addition to these two formally-constituted societies, there were
in eighteenth-century Bristol other informal groups concerned with
economic issues and acting from time to time on their own initiative,
although sometimes asking the Hall for help. In 1731, for example,
the Society was informed that the merchants and others in the city
had petitioned the House of Commons about the depredations of
the Spaniards who had behaved “‘in a barbarous and cruell manner”’
towards Bristol ships. The Hall was asked to give support and to
make a contribution towards the cost of raising the matter in London,
and it agreed to pay £156 2s. 68d.3 In 1749, the Society received a
request for assistance from “divers merchants dealing from iron” who
were supporting a bill for the import of pig and bar iron in America,
and again it agreed to support the petitioners. Two years later, a
Mr. King attended the Hall on behalf of several persons concerned
in the export of spiritous liquor and was promised help in connection
2 See Lilian M. Penson, “‘The Bristol West India Club”, The West India Com-
mittee Circular, 13 May 1920, pp. 132-5. The Proceedings of the second Bristol
West India Society and a number of papers relating to its business are in the
Merchants’ Hall not because the association was part of the Society of Merchant
Venturers but because William Claxion, Treasurer of the Merchant Venturers
from 1841 to 1873, was also Treasurer of the West India Society which went
on until it was wound up in the mid-nineteenth century. Presumably this is how
the records came to be in the Hall.
3 HB. 5, 23 Feb. 1731.
4 H.B. 7, 20 March 1750, 22 March 1750. See also H.B. 8, 19 Jan. 1757.
The Society and Other Organisations, Eighteenth Century 239
with the attempt to get a drawback from the customs.® In 1774, the
Mayor and several merchants requested the Hall to join in an
application to the Postmaster General that all foreign mail for
Bristol should be made up abroad and sent to Bristol direct from
Falmouth,® and in the same year support was given to the Bristol
bankers in their opposition to a bill to prevent persons in trade from
being concerned with banking business.’
Other groups which were in contact with the Society included g
merchants trading to America who asked the Master to call a Hall
in 1774 to take into account their proposals concerning the state of
the American trade;® the sugar refiners;® the Marine Society;!° the
tobacco manufacturers;!! the Captains’ Society;1? and the corn
importers who were asked in 1791 to appoint a committee to confer
with the Hall about the Corn Laws.18
The Society of Merchant Venturers was aware that it did not
include within its ranks all the merchants of Bristol and that on
occasions it was desirable to consult by one means or another what
it referred to on a number of occasions as ‘“‘the Merchants at large’.
Thus, when the Society received a letter in 1748 from one of the
M.P.s about the proposed scheme for regulating the African trade,
it sent copies not only to all its members but also to traders to Africa
who were not free of the Hall. A copy was left in the Coffee House and
all merchants and traders were invited to give their views.1* Such
attempts to consult non-members became more common in the
later part of the century, possibly because the Society realised its own
limitations as spokesman for the whole mercantile body of Bristol.
As has -been noted earlier, when the abolition of the slave trade
became a burning issue in 1789, the Society advertised a public
meeting in the Hall on 13 April 1789. This was attened by “a very
numerous and respectable Body of Merchants, Manufacturers and
others residing in the City and its neighbourhood”’, and this meeting
established a large Committee, of which rather less than half were
5 H.B. 7, 26 Aug. 1751. 6 H.B. 10, 12 Feb. 1774. 7 See pp. 225, 409.
8 Society’s Letters, bdle. 19, 24 Nov. 1774, letter to the Society signed by 9
merchants. See also H.B. 11, p. 547, 9 Nov. 1789, for another occasion on which the
merchants trading to America asked for help.
® H.B. 10, 26 Feb. 1780.
10 77.B. 8, 24 March 1757 and 24 May 1757 when the Merchant Venturers
opposed the formation of such a society in Bristol; H.B. rz, p. 169, 20 Aug. 1785
when the Marine Society was allowed to hold its ‘general and other meetings in
the Hall.
11 HB, 12, p. 48, 12 April 1790. Several tobacco manufacturers attended with
grievances about a late Act of Parliament. The Hall decided to petition.
12 There are many references to the Captain’s Society which invested its funds
with the Society. See, for example, H.B. 11, p. 304, 28 May 1787, when the Hall
borrowed £1,700 at 4 per cent.
18 HB, 12, p. 104, 20 Jan. 1791. 14 HB. 7, 6 Feb. 1748.
240 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Merchant Venturers, to organise the opposition of the six petitions
against abolition presented to the House on 12 May 1789, three came
from this Committee, one from the Corporation, one from the
Newfoundland Merchants and one from the Society.15
Another example of the Society’s efforts to attract wider support
occurred in the same year when the Hall inserted an advertisement
in the newspapers inviting the attendance of those interested in
American customs duties. This was attended by “Several of the
Merchants at large”.16 Many “merchants at large” attended
another meeting in the Hall on 4 January 1790 concerning customs
duties on ships carrying spirits.17 Another public meeting was called
in the Hall in 1792 to discuss a proposed alteration in the hours of
opening of the Customs House. Eight people turned up, but they
cannot have received a very good impression of the vitality of the
Society, since only seven Merchant Venturers were present and
there were insufficient members to constitute a quorum.18 Again, in
1795 when a bill to regulate seamen’s wages was before Parliament,
the Society called by advertisement a general meeting of merchants
and shipowners. Only 13 Merchant Venturers attended, of whom all
except one were members of the Standing Committee, and only
four outsiders thought it worthwhile to attend.1® On 6 June 1797
when the fleet had mutinied, only 8 Merchant Venturers, all of them
belonging to the Standing Committee, were present at a General
Hall which decided to call on 10 June a meeting of merchants, ship-
owners and underwriters and all concerned with commerce and
navigation “to consider of the measures proper to be adopted in the
present alarming state of the Navy”’. It looks as though the attempt
failed, for the Hall Book for 10 June records the transaction of
business but makes no mention of attendance by non-members. ?°
In assessing the role of the Society in the economic life of
eighteenth-century Bristol, it must also be borne in mind that the
Corporation from time to time played a rather more active part than
it had in the seventeenth century when, generally speaking, it left
economic policy in the hands of the Merchant Venturers. It is true
that Merchant Venturers were still very prominent in municipal
government, but they no longer dominated it in the way in which
they had done earlier.?! In relation to the foundation of a new African
Company in the middle of the century and on the question of
abolition of the slave trade, the Corporation acted independently
and spent a good deal of its own money, although it is true that it
15 See pp. 136—7. 16 77.B. 12, p. 1, 16 Nov. 1789; p. 7, 23 Nov. 1789.
17 H.B. 12, p. 19, 4 Jan. 1790.
18 HB. 12, p. 215, 27 June 1792.
19 HB. 12, p. 375, 30 March 1795.
20 HB. 13, p. 24, 6 June 1797; p. 25, 10 June 1797. 21 See p. 95.
The Society and Other Organisations, Erghteenth Century 241
took the same line as the Society.22 In 1757, the Corporation, not the
Hall, took the initiative in petitioning Parliament to extend the
time for importing foreign corn duty free and took measures to keep
down the price of corn in Bristol. The Hall followed suit only when
this was reported to it by the Master.** The initiative in building a
new Exchange for the merchants and in constructing a new Bristol
Bridge to cope with the growing traffic problem of an expanding city
also came from the Corporation and not from the Society, which
might have been expected to press much harder for these improve-
ments than in fact it did.?4
Moreover, there was on occasions some friction between the
Society and the Corporation. When the Hall sought in 1758 to get
a new wharfage lease for 99 years, agreement was reached with the
Mayor and Surveyors of the City Lands, but the Corporation
refused to confirm the agreement and required some modifications.
Agreement was reached in 1759, but in 1761 the new lease had still
not been made, and the Master and some of the Committee were
asked to wait upon the Mayor. A new lease was not finally sealed
until 7 November 1764. We do not know what lay behind all this,
but it is possible that some members of the Corporation were un-
willing to hand over to the Society the very valuable concession
which it was seeking. ?5
Other issues about which there were some difficulties between
the Society and the Corporation included the disciplining of pilots,
the conservancy of the river and the availability to Bristolians of the
water at the Hotwell. The Corporation asserted its right to have the
last word in deciding whether pilots should be dismissed, and on at
least one occasion it overrode the decision made by the Hall.?6
Responsibility for conserving the river belonged in the last resort
to the Corporation, and although the Society normally carried out
the work, the Corporation occasionally intervened. In 1745 it
appointed its own Committee and asked the Society to contribute
to the cost of cleaning the river.*” In 1786, a deputation from the
Corporation waited on the Society with reference to nuisances in the
river, and the Hall agreed to examine its responsibilities under
the wharfage lease. The Standing Committee met representatives of
the Corporation in January 1787 and reported to the Hall that the
Corporation ought to be asked to deal with the nuisances. In 1790
the Common Council ordered that the wharfage lease should be
inspected, and in the next year it set up its own River Committee. *8
22 See p. 138; Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, pp. 89-90, 249.
23 H.B. 8, 16 April 1757. 24 See pp. 225-6.
25 See pp. 152-3. There had also been difficulties about the new wharfage
lease in 1712 (Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 99).
26 See pp. 166-7. 27 Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, p. 254. °° See p. 165.
242 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
There had clearly been difficulties in this matter, as there had over
the Hotwell water. All freemen of Bristol were entitled to the use of
Hotwell water, but when the Hall granted a new lease in 1790, its
tenant made things difficult, and Common Council set up a Com-
mittee of the Whole to enquire into the rights of citizens and to
confer with the Society.2® Complaints continued to be made, and
in 1793 the Corporation again asserted the privileges of Bristolians,
but the question was not settled until 1795.39
Finally, it must be remembered that at the end of the century
and in the early nineteenth century, the Society acknowledged its
own inability to undertake the construction of the Floating Harbour.
It played a large part in the planning, but the cost was far beyond
its limited resources, and the work had eventually to be financed by
a Docks Company. A number of individual Merchant Venturers
were prominent in the new Company and the Society was officially
represented on its Board, but the establishment of the Docks
Company meant that the Society had surrendered to another body
the predominant role which it had hitherto played in providing
facilities for the Port of Bristol.
2° HB. 12, p. 92, 11 Dec. 1790.
9° HB. 12, p. 358, 1 Jan. 1795, Latimer, Eighteenth Century Annals, Pp. 490.
CHAPTER 15
The Changing Background in the
Nineteenth Century
THE role of the Society of Merchant Venturers in the nineteenth
and twentieth centuries was inevitably affected profoundly by local
and national developments which transformed the character of the
city in which the Society had for so long played a major part. Since
the Society lost many of the functions which had made it so important
in the economic life of Bristol in the seventeenth and eighteenth
centuries, it is not necessary to give as much attention to the general
background as it was when the earlier history of the Society was
under consideration. Nevertheless, some brief comments must be
made in order to explain why the character of the Society underwent
radical change.
One major change which in itself tended to reduce the significance
of the Society was the remarkable growth in the population and
size of Bristol. The boundaries were extended on a number of
occasions, and the population rose from about 68,000 in 1801 to
159,000 in 1851 and to 337,000 in 1901.1 During the period when
Bristol’s population was undergoing unprecedented expansion, the
number of Merchant Venturers tended to shrink, and in the last
quarter of the century it was only about 70.?
The relative and absolute decline of the number of Merchant
Venturers in relation to the size of the total population was signifi-
cant in itself, but what was much more important was the major
change in the structure of local government. Until 1835, the city
had been governed by a small self-electing oligarchy many of whose
members also belonged to the Society, and the two closed corpora-
tions often saw eye to eye on public matters and spoke the same
language. The Municipal Corporations Act of 1835 changed the
nature of the governing body and substituted for the old Corporation
a Town Council which was answerable to an electorate and which
had to some extent to take into account public opinion. The
Merchant Venturers, although claiming to be a “public body’’,
remained a closed corporation, and the old relatively cosy relation-
ship between the Society and the Corporation was no longer possible.
In due course, the Docks Company, in the management of which the
1 See table in B. Little, City and County of Bristol, 1954, p- 330. 2 See p. 255.
244 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Society had so large a share, came to an end, and the docks were
taken over by the Town Council (1848); the wharfage lease was
terminated in 1861,‘ and in the same year Merchant Venturers were
deprived by the Council of their control over the Bristol Channel
Pilots.
The fact that the Town Councii after 1835 was an elected body
did not, of course, mean that individual members of the Society no
longer had any influence in shaping the policy of the city. The Town
Council remained overwhelmingly Tory throughout the period, and
this tended to favour Merchant Venturers. Although the office of
mayor was held on only eleven occasions between 1835 and 1898
by a man who had or who was to hold high office in the Society,
some 22 out of the 90 men chosen as Aldermen were Merchant
Venturers; and of the 404 men who were Mayors, Aldermen or
Councillors in the same period, approximately one in seven belonged
to the Society. It must be remembered, however, that the proportion
of Merchant Venturers in the Town Council was smaller than it had
been in earlier centuries, and the fact that a man was elected to the
Council did not mean that he was there as a representative of the
Society. The Town Council on a number of occasions pursued
policies detrimental to the Society’s interests, and members of the
Society do not seem to have acted as an organised pressure group
within the Council.®
The growth of the powers of the central government and the in-
creasing interest of Parliament in local affairs also presented a threat
to the privileged position of the Society, which was continually
forced to fight against what it regarded as unwarranted interference
from outside. The reform of Parliament in 1832 and the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835 ushered in what must have seemed to the
Society to be an Age of Interference, but even before then, the
central government was showing concern for matters which the
Society considered to be its own business. The widespread misuse of
charitable funds in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries
increasingly attracted the attention of reformers and led to govern-
ment intervention. Thus, in 1821 the Clerk was required to make a
list of the charities for which the Society was responsible for the
information of the Commissioners enquiring into Charities.? He
informed the Commissioners that he did not think Colston’s Hospital
came under their terms of reference, and with some hesitation they
3 See p. 308. 4 See p. 313. 5 See pp. 317-8.
° The figures given in this paragraph are based on a comparison between the
lists of Town Councillors given in A. B. Beaven, Bristol Lists, and the list of members
of the Society (see appendix A, pp. 547-65). It is interesting to note that of the 151
J.P.s appointed between 1836 and 1898, only 24 were Merchant Venturers.
? HB. 15, p. 134, 6 Feb. 1821.
Changing Background, Nineteenth Century 245
accepted this view and limited themselves to enquiring into the
Merchants’ Hall School, the Merchants’ Almhouse, Colston’s
Almshouse, the Vick Charity for building a bridge over the Avon and
Mrs. Eleanor Hammond’s charity.® For the most part, the Commis-
sioners had only minor criticisms to make, but with regard to the
Vick Charity they argued that the Society ought to have raised the
interest rate from 3 per cent to 4 per cent in 1782 when it started
to pay that rate on its own bonds. The Society maintained that 3
per cent was satisfactory, but when the Commissioners threatened
to refer the matter to the Attorney-General, the Society, “having
attentively considered the Circumstance”, decided to give way.®
In 1833, the Society received a government form requiring it to
make a return of all duties on shipping collected in the port, other
than by Act of Parliament, for the years 1830, 1831 and 1832. It
replied that all the duties which it collected were by authority of
Act of Parliament, and with dignified disapproval it informed the
Collector and Comptroller of Customs that ‘‘the Society could not
consent to furnish the Accounts required inasmuch as it would be
an Admission of an Authority to which, without meaning the
slightest disrespect, or having any wish whatever for concealment,
they felt themselves upon Principle bound to demur’’.?°
It was not quite so easy to sidestep the enquiries of the Com-
missioners who were examining municipal corporations. In 1833,
they expressed a desire to learn something of the nature and consti-
tution of the Merchant Venturers. The Clerk argued that although
in origin the Society might be considered of a municipal character,
such a character was now lost and had not been exercised for over
a century. The Master, Wardens, Treasurer and Clerk were to wait
on the Commissioners with the charters, but if any more information
was required, a formal request must be made to the Hall.! The
Commissioners pressed for detailed information about the wharfage
receipts and other matters, and the Society’s officers replied that
they must refer this to the Hall.1* The eleven members present at a
General Hall on 4 December 1833 took the line that although they
did not think the Society came within the terms of reference of the
Commissioners, they could not refuse information about the nature
and constitution of the Society with propriety or, indeed, without
some imputation on their loyalty ,‘‘a quality for which this Society
has at all time been distinguished”. Enquiries, however, about the
affairs and property of the Society were altogether different, and
8 Mrs. Eleanor Hammond had left £600 for charitable purposes in St. James’s
parish. The Society was bound to pay the parish 3 per cent on the money.
® H.B. 15, pp. 223 ff., 3 April 1822; p. 248, 7 Aug. 1822.
10 H.B. 17, pp. 150 ff., 6 March 1833. 11 HB. 17, pp. 177, 5 Nov. 1833.
12 H.B. 17, pp. 190, 4 Dec. 1833.
246 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
they decided that “any disclosure of their Affairs... and any Act
which might be construed into an admission of the Right to make
such Investigation would in the Opinion of this Society be a dere-
liction of their Corporate Duty, if not an infringement of their Oath
of Office. Upon Principle, therefore, and in support of the Society’s
Rights which they are bound to uphold they are of opinion that the
application of the Commissioners cannot be complied with.’8
It was not surprising that in their Report in 1835 the Commis-
sioners had a number of implicit and explicit criticisms to make about
the Society.14 They took the view that according to the Charters,
every freeman of Bristol apprenticed to a merchant or exercising that
profession for seven years had a right to claim admission to the
Society, which was merely one of those gilds to which all citizens
probably belonged at one time, and they considered that the
Merchant Venturers ought to be no more than “a limb” of the civic
corporation. The Commissioners were obviously very much con-
cerned with the high port charges in Bristol and with the fact that the
Society held from the Corporation the very profitable wharfage
lease and other concessions. They were irritated by the fact that “‘an
account of the income and expenditure of the Society was refused
to us’, but fortunately for the Merchant Venturers, the Commis-
sioners were unable to press home their attack in view of “the
doubt which may exist how far, in the present form of the Society,
it is to be considered a municipal corporation’’.15
Although it emerged more or less unscathed from this threat by a
reforming Whig government, the Society had in effect been given
notice that there was a new spirit abroad and that privileged private
corporations could no longer expect to be left undisturbed. If the
Society managed to survive the attentions of the Commissioners, the
self-electing Corporation of Bristol did not, and the Municipal
Corporations Act of 1835 replaced it by a new Town Council
responsible to the electors.
More serious trouble lay ahead as a result of the activities of the
central government. In 1836, the Commissioners for enquiring into
Charities requested the Master to attend them concerning Colston’s
Hospital, and as a result of their probing, the Society found itself
in 1839 indicted by the Attorney-General on the ground that it was
wrongfully claiming to hold in its own right certain lands which
belonged to Colston’s Charity. In the eighteen-forties, judgement
18 H.B. 17, pp. 192-4, 4 Dec. 1833. The Society informed the Bristol M.P.s
about the proceedings and asked them to look after the Society’s interests if there
was legislation (H.B. 17, p. 197, 10 Jan. 1834).
14 Report of the Commissioners on Municipal Corporations: Bristol, 1835, pp. 54 ff. for
section on the Society. See also the sections on the Bristol Dock Company, pp.
58 ff.
15 Tbid., p. 57.
Changing Background, Nineteenth Century 247
was given against the Merchant Venturers, and the decision was
upheld when the Society appealed.1®
Another big blow to the Society as a result of action by the central
government and by Parliament was the taking from it of the Sea-
men’s Hospital Fund. The Society had administered the Bristol fund
by virtue of a special clause in an Act of 1747, but the matter of
providing for disabled seamen was a national question, and the
peculiar position existing in Bristol was bound to come under exami-
nation when reforming governments began to look into it after 1830.
The Society fought a long drawn-out battle to preserve its rights,
but eventually in 1851 it lost control of the fund as a result of legisla-
tion.??
The Society’s control over pilotage in the Bristol Channel was
also called into question by the government which was not content
to leave it in the hands of a private corporation, and in 1861 the
Town Council took pilotage away from the Merchant Venturers
and handed it over to its own Docks Committee.'®
Even when it had surrendered most of its former rights concerning
the port of Bristol, the Society did not remain immune from govern-
ment interference. The educational and charitable work with which
it was increasingly concerned in the second half of the century meant
that it was very much under the supervision of the Commissioners
for Endowed Charities and that it was affected by the educational
policies of the government. It had a long and fierce battle with the
Endowed Schools Commissioners set up under the Endowed Schools
Act of 1869, and the result was a radical change in the Society’s
relations with Colston’s Hospital.*®
Developments in the organisation and scope of national and local
government in the nineteenth century thus produced great changes
in the work of the Society of Merchant Venturers, but they are not
the only reason why the Society came to play a less important part
in the economic life of Bristol than it had in the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries. The economy of Bristol was itself undergoing
considerable transformation. There has as yet been no detailed
study of Bristol’s foreign trade in the nineteenth century. In general,
it continued to grow, although its expansion was much less rapid
than that of its rivals, particularly in the first half of the century. ‘The
relative importance of overseas trade in the economy of Bristol
appears to have declined and that of manufacturing and service
industries to have increased, so that merchants engaged in foreign
trade no longer played such a predominant role as in earlier times.
The purely economic significance of an organisation concerned with
foreign trade was bound to decrease as the balance of wealth shifted
within the community.
16 See pp. 365-70. 17 See pp. 394-8. 18 See pp. 317-18. 1° See pp. 372-4.
248 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
If the Society of Merchant Venturers had been really determined
to remain a powerful economic pressure group, it would have taken
steps to recruit as many as possible among the merchant community.
In fact, only a small minority even of its own members played a very
active part in its affairs, and on numerous occasions the decisions
made by the Society represented the views of the handful of members
who attended the meeting. Occasionally, attempts were made to
admit men of substance from outside,?° but on the whole the Society
preferred to remain a small, exclusive group which declined in
numbers and did not include all the leading merchants of the city.
It could not speak with authority for the whole merchant community.
Even in the first half of the century, it seems to have been more con-
cerned with defending its privileges and developing its property
than with making much effort to give a lead in the business life of
the city, and it was left to the Chamber of Commerce and other
organisations to try to fill the vacuum left by the Society.”4
The abandonment by the Society of its role as champion of the
mercantile interests of Bristol was a gradual process spread over the
first half of the nineteenth century, but it was already very noticeable
in the first quarter of the period. The loss by the Society of some of
its special rights and privileges can be more precisely dated. It
surrendered the lease of cranage in 1837; it ceased to be directly
involved in the docks when the Dock Company came to an end in
1848; the Seamen’s Hospital Fund was taken from it in 1851; and in
1861 it surrendered the wharfage lease and also lost control of
pilotage.
As a result of all this, the Society in the second half of the century
was a very different institution from what it had been earlier,
Henceforth, its prime concerns were development of its property, the
use of a considerable part of its income for the furtherance of charit-
able and educational purposes, and the management of miscella-
neous charitable trusts for which it had assumed responsibility. It
adapted itself to a new age and ceased to be much concerned with
the economic purposes for which it had originally been established.
20 See pp. 251-2. 21 See pp. 294-306.
CHAPTER 16
Membership, Organisation and Finance in
the Nineteenth Century
In the course of the nineteenth century, 222 men were admitted to
the Society by patrimony, apprenticeship or on payment of a fine,
as compared with 366 admitted between 1701 and 1799.1 64 of these
came in by patrimony as the sons of members, 50 by apprenticeship
and 109 on payment of a fine. Entry by apprenticeship did not mean
that the Society recruited a considerable number of outsiders by
this means, since 27 of the apprentices had served under their fathers
who were already members, 8 with uncles and 3 with brothers. New
blood was introduced mainly by admitting redemptioners who
agreed to pay an entry fine. Of the 109 new members recruited in
this way, nearly half were admitted in the years 1803, 1838 and
1852 when the Society decided to strengthen its ranks by large-scale
admissions. Thus, the Society maintained a more or less even
balance between existing Merchant Venturer families and outsiders.
Honorary membership was granted much more sparingly than in
the eighteenth century, and only 20 members were admitted in this
way, as compared with 58 in the earlier period. No honorary
members were added to the list between 1864 and 1g00. Now that
the Society was less involved in economic affairs, it may not have
thought it so necessary to win friends in high places.
In the middle of the nineteenth century, the Hall decided to
investigate the practice concerning the admission of apprentices.®
This investigation may have been related to what the Treasurer,
William Claxton, called ‘‘a peculiar scene”? at a Hall meeting on
5 November 1849. This took the form of an attack by a member on
the Treasurer based on what the member had heard “‘out of doors”’
about the Treasurer taking an apprentice from Colston’s Hospital
and exacting a premium of £300 so that the young man might
qualify for membership. Claxton said that his attacker alleged that
the Treasurer took the boy to the Council House to register his
1 See p. 102.
2 In 1803, 19 members were admitted at a reduced fine of £150; in 1838, an-
other 19 members were admitted at £50; and in 1852, 13 were admitted at the same
rate but not all at the same time.
3 H.B.21, p. 72, 2 Aug. 1850.
250 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
indentures “‘in your livery’’, that is, the dress of the boys of Colston’s
Hospital. He did not deny the facts, but he noted that he was very
angry and not a bit ashamed and that he forgave his attacker.
The result of the investigation into apprenticeship was that Mr.
Brice and the Clerk reported that the regulations of 1618 had
remained unchanged until 1765 when an additional regulation laid
down that no one should be enrolled as an apprentice or admitted to
the Society unless he had paid an apprenticeship premium of £300
or was a relation of the member to whom he was bound. The report
noted that the rule had not been universally observed.®
The whole question of admissions was then examined and new
regulations were finally agreed in 1851.6 As far as apprentices were
concerned, the new rules laid down that they were to serve at least
7 years and that they were to be under 21 when apprenticed. No
one was to be admitted by apprenticeship unless he was a relative
of the member to whom he was apprenticed in a degree not more
distant than first cousin or unless he paid £25 to the Treasurer.
Trouble arose in 1860 over the case of Sholto Vere Hare who was
admitted on 28 February as apprentice of Thomas Poole King, a
member to whom he had been bound on 26 November 1852. He
had paid £25 to the Treasurer, but as he was about 40 years of age
and had been head of a firm of manufacturers during the time he
was supposed to be apprenticed to a merchant, there was no doubt
some criticism. Latimer states that there was nothing in the ordi-
nances to invalidate his claim, but the fact that he was over 21 at
the time when he was apprenticed would appear to make him
ineligible.’ The Hall decided that the regulations were open to
abuse and eventually ordered that no one should be admitted unless
he had been bound before the age of 18 and produced a written
certificate that he had not been occupied in any vocation or business
other than on his master’s behalf during the time of his apprentice-
ship.® A strict line seems to have been followed thereafter. In 1861,
the Clerk refused to certify that the apprenticeship regulations had
been observed in the case of the son of a member, Samuel Vowles
4 Claxton’s Fournal 1, p. 141, 5 Nov. 1849.
5 H.B.21, pp. 84, 92 ff., 31 Oct. 1850. The rule certainly was enforced on occa-
sions. In 1836, for example, Mr. Harman Visger’s indentures were examined and
it was decided that he was not eligible for membership as he had not paid a pre-
mium of at least £300 (H.B.17, p. 311, 26 May 1836). There are references from
time to time in the Hall Books to the premium being paid, including one on 2
November 1850 when Edwin Green Chamberlain, son of a close friend of Claxton,
was apprenticed to him, “‘it appearing that a fee of £300 was paid in such appren-
ticeship”’ (H.B.27, p. 88, 2 Nov. 1850).
6 H.B.21, p. 138, 25 April 1851.
” H.B.22, p. 429, 24 Feb. 1860; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 270.
8 H.B.23, p. 17, 11 May 1860; p. 19, 8 June 1860; p. 41, 31 July 1860.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 251
Gwyer, and the Standing Committee refused to allow Gwyer to give
notice of a motion for the repeal of the laws in this particular case.
When John Hopton Wyld moved in 1866 that the rules be waived
in favour of his son, this was not accepted. ®
In the first half of the century, the Society was concerned about
the shrinkage in numbers and endeavoured on occasions to recruit
new members by tempting them with the offer of an entry fine
lower than the £200 fixed on 3 September 1768.1° Thus, in 1803, at
a meeting at which only 9 members were present, it was resolved
to admit not less than 15 and not more than 20 redemptioners at a
fine of £150. They were to be “‘mercantile men”, and the 1768
ordinance was to be restored as soon as they had been elected."
Further recruitment was discussed in 1836 when a committee was
appointed “‘to consider the best means to be adopted in order to
propose admission as members of this society to some of the principal
Merchants and Manufacturers in this City . . .”.12 Nothing was done
until 1838 when the Standing Committee recommended that the
order of 3 September 1768 should again be temporarily suspended
to permit the admission of not more than 20 redemptioners at a fine
of £50.18 The earlier suggestion that the new men should include
manufacturers was not taken up. Anyone so elected must be free of
the city and must be “‘a Mercantile Man”.14 At a meeting of the
Hall on 2 August 1838, at which 20 members were present, 31 names
were put forward. They were voted on in the order of names drawn
from a hat, and the 20 with the most votes were declared elected.
The fine of £200 was then restored.1®
In the late eighteen-forties there was a conflict among the members
about policy concerning admissions. Some of the Merchant Ven-
turers wanted to increase membership, and this led to an unpleasant
scene at the elections on 10 November 1849. William Claxton’s
Journal records how when the Master, Henry Bush, was about to
proceed to the election of a new committee, 6 gentlemen left the
® H.B.23, p. 101, 16 Feb. 1861; p. 116, 13 March 1861; H.B.24, pp. 79, 80, 21
April 1866.
10 See p. 103.
11 7].B.13, p. 261, 12 Sept. 1803. Nineteen new members were elected on 17
Sept. 1803 at a meeting at which only eight members were present, all of them
members of the Standing Committee (H.B.13, p. 264, 17 Sept. 1803).
12 HB.17, p. 437, 12 Oct. 1836. On 26 October 1836, the committee’s powers
were revoked, and the matter was referred to the Standing Committee, as this was
thought to be more in accord with the Charter of Charles I vesting powers in the
Master, Wardens and Assistants. They might, however, obtain assistance from the
members of the original committee (H.B.17, p. 442, 26 Oct. 1836).
13 H.B.18, p. 169, 27 March 1838.
14 77,B.18, p. 213, 28 July 1838; p. 218, 3 Aug. 1838.
18 H.B.18, p. 227, 24 Aug. 1838. One of those so elected, John Vining, was not in
fact eligible, since he was not free of the City (H.B.18, p. 248, 12 Oct. 1738).
252 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Hall and the Master-elect refused to take the chair. Claxton com-
mented with obvious irritation that “the Treasurer was obliged to
run in every direction for members to come and make a Committee’”’.
Five came at great personal inconvenience. He said that the reason
for the trouble was not disrespect to the Master but ‘“‘a Motion that
the Society ought to increase its Members”. When those who wanted
an increase in membership were unable to carry it in the manner
they wished, they created a difficulty. Claxton lamented that an
excellent Master was deserted at the last, and added “‘I fear there
must be some political feeling about it.”’ This is possible for Henry
Bush was a leader of the Tories.14
The battle continued. In the new regulations for admission
approved on 25 April 1851, the fine for admission was permanently
reduced to £50 and nothing was specifically said about candidates
having to be “mercantile men’’.1? This certainly made more business
men eligible for admission, but on the other hand the 22 members
present carried a motion that it was inexpedient to adopt the
Standing Committee’s proposal of 21 December 1850 that up to 18
new members should be admitted. The conservative Treasurer,
William Claxton, recorded with pleasure that the motion was passed
unanimously “and the Free Traders floored who wished to swamp
the place’”.1® In 1852, however, 13 members were admitted on
payment of a £50 fine.
The more liberal rules for admission adopted in 1851 were a tacit
admission by the Hall that the Society was much less concerned with
matters of trade than it had once been and that it might be desirable
to admit men who were not primarily concerned with overseas
commerce. George Rogers, admitted in 1854, was stated to be an
alkali manufacturer,!® and Thomas Terrett Taylor, although shown
in the Hall Book as a merchant, appears on the printed notice of the
meeting as a goldsmith.?° Nevertheless, it was not common for non-
merchants to be admitted as redemptioners. In 1873, the Standing
Committee examined the practice since 1851. Of the existing
members, 24. had come in by birth, 24 by apprenticeship and 30 by
redemption. The Committee reported that it had no reason to
believe that those admitted by fine had been professional men or
other than “men of purely mercantile business’’. It stated that it had
always been the practice to choose as redemptioners ‘“‘only persons
belonging to the mercantile community’’, and it thought there was
no need to alter the practice. ?!
16 Claxton’s Journal 1, pp. 144 ff., 10 Nov. 1849.
17 H.B.21, p. 138, 25 April 1851.
18 H.B.21, 25 April 1851; Claxton’s Journal 1, p. 158, 25 April 1851.
19 77.B.21, p. 379, 12 April 1854. 20 H/.B.23, p. 368, 6 June 1864.
41 Hf.B.25, pp. 171, 172, 27 July 1872; pp. 199 ff., 17 Jan. 1873.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 253
Later regulations laid down that no redemptioner should be
admitted unless notice had been given at a previous Hall of his
proposed election,?? and that he must have the support of three-
quarters of those present at the time of his election.**
In 1885, there was some talk about petitioning the Queen for an
alteration in the Charter, and in July the Clerk reported that when
he was in London, he had called at the Privy Council Office and was
given to understand that a petition would receive the royal assent.
It was decided that the Master should call a special meeting of the
Committee to consider the matter, but no further action was taken.
Possibly, the intention was to remove the clause in the Charter which
requires Merchant Venturers to be freemen of the city.*4
Although for a considerable time after the new admission regula-
tions of 1851 the Hall limited its choice of redemptioners to men
directly concerned with ‘“‘purely mercantile business’, the new bye-
laws had in fact left it free to choose otherwise if it wished to do so,
and it came in time to give a wide interpretation to the word
‘““merchant’’. In the later nineteenth century some of the redemp-
tioners were recorded as being “gentlemen” and one of them was
a soldier.?®
The fact that those claiming membership by patrimony did not
have to be practising merchants themselves meant that at any time
during the period men of other occupations might become Merchant
Venturers. William Claxton’s son Donald, who entered by patri-
mony in 1863, had been intended by his father to become a clerk in
the Society’s office, but in 1865 he took Holy Orders and delighted
his parents’ heart on Charter Day on 10 November 1869 by deliver-
ing to the Society what many gentlemen assured his father was “‘one
of the best discourses for the occasion they ever heard’’.2® On the
other hand, the Society was not prepared to admit by patrimony
those who were already in Holy Orders. In 1822, when the Reverend
Robert Henry Fowler applied for admission as the son of a member, —
the Clerk was instructed to examine the precedents. He reported,
rather inconveniently, that although admission by purchase seemed
22 H.B.25, p. 228, 5 April 1873.
23 H.B.25, p. 269, 22 Aug. 1873; p. 272, 30 Aug. 1873.
24 H.B.27, p. 127, 17 July 1885; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 269. The matter
came up again in 1895, but no action was taken.
25 See, for example, H.B.27, p. 153, 30 Jan. 1886, Gilbert Leigh Abbot; ibid., p.
264, 27 Oct. 1888, George Oswald Spafford; ibid., p. 299, 27 July 1889, Edward
Burnet James; ibid., p. 348, 26 July 1890, William Welsford Ward, all described as
““Gentlemen’”’; H.B.28, p. 306, 28 Jan. 1899, Colonel Frederic Cusac Ord.
26 Claxton’s Journal II, p. 32. On 10 November 1866 when the Rector of St.
Stephen’s was unwell, Donald Claxton, then curate of St. Mary Redcliffe, took his
place and intoned the prayers. His father commented in his journal: ‘‘Oh my poor
heart and his Mother’s. It was a proud day for us to see our son doing the duty in
the presence of his Diocesan . . .”’. Ibid., p. 41.
254 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
to have been confined to ‘“‘mere merchants’’, there was no restriction
on those who claimed admission by birth and that it had long been
the practice to admit sons of members even though they were not
themselves merchants. The Committee got round the difficulty by
pointing out that the original constitution of the Society was purely
mercantile, and, “having considered also that Clergymen are pro-
hibited from trading under Penalties”, it decided that it would not
be consistent with the constitution and design of the original incor-
poration to admit clergymen.?7
After 1851, it would have been much more difficult to exclude
sons of members who were entitled to the freedom by patrimony
from demanding the right to take up the freedom, but there does
not seem to have been any case of a non-merchant insisting on his
right. If he had done so, the Hall might have found it difficult to
refuse his request. Presumably, a convention developed by which
Merchant Venturers did not put forward all of their sons who were
technically eligible and no one tried to insist on his right to join if it
was obvious that the Hall did not want him.
The general impression one gets about membership of the Society
in the nineteenth century is that even when the Society ceased to
be a body concerned with economic issues, it remained overwhelm-
ingly an association of men who could be described in some sense
as “merchants”. Industrialists and professional men did not form
any significant part of the membership. Entry by patrimony and by
apprenticeship ensured that there was a strong “family”? element in
the Society, and entry by redemption was available only to those of
whom the Society approved. They were normally men of substance
who held Tory principles and who were attached to the Constitution
and to the Church of England. They were not in sympathy with the
strong Liberal movement in nineteenth-century Bristol which
returned many Liberal M.P.s to Westminster, even though it was
unable to make much impact on the Conservative majority on the
Corporation.
The political views of the Conservative Merchant Venturers are
reflected in the Journal of the Treasurer William Claxton. He com-
mented on the election in April 1868 that it was an attempt “‘to
save our old City from the disgrace of going on for ever with two
Liberals”. The Conservative candidate, John William Miles, and
the two men who proposed him, Councillor R. J. Poole King and
Alderman Sholto Vere Hare, were all Merchant Venturers. John
William Miles scraped home by 5,173 votes against the Liberal,
Samuel Morley, who received 4,977. Claxton noted with delight
that at the Society’s Audit Dinner on 28 May, the election of a
Conservative gave occasion to the Master to have it “Blue and all
27 H.B.15, p. 214, 5 Feb. 1822; p. 228, 17 April 1822.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 255
Blue’’ with not a single Radical present and all the toasts being of a
Conservative political tendency. The triumph was short-lived. Mr.
Morley alleged that his defeat was the result of ‘‘an undue use of
money, beer, and intimidation” and at the House of Commons’
investigation, evidence was produced of the Conservative committee
hiring strong-arm men, using bribery and paying non-voters to
impersonate voters. The election was declared void. Poor Claxton
commented sadly on “this shameful and unprecedently vile trans-
action of the Liberal Party’’. No doubt he found some consolation on
10 October 1868 when the Master asked all the Standing Committee
to dine at Roger’s Hotel, Weston-super-Mare, where the guests were
all the Conservative candidates for East Somerset. His hopes rose
again at the General Election in November 1868 when Philip
William Skynner Miles, another Merchant Venturer and brother of
the unseated member, stood in the Conservative interest. Claxton
was the first to vote in Clifton. The result of the election was a dis-
aster from his point of view, and he wrote “alas, it was not to be.
The Conservatives are beaten by more than 2000 votes by the most
violent intimidation from Roman Catholics and Seamen, mobs of
organised gangs of ruffians — mostly Irish.’? He added “It is almost
and indeed altogether a religious question and especially as to the
Continuance of Church and State.’’28
The number of members on the Society’s register fluctuated in
the course of the century, but the overall picture was a decrease.
The Society became smaller and more select during a century in
which the population of Bristol underwent unprecedented expansion.
On 10 November 1799, there were 88 members (excluding 12 honor-
ary freemen).?® Largely as a result of the admission of 19 redemp-
tioners in 1803, the number had risen to 99 by November 1810.*°
Ten years later, there were 100 members, ?! but the total had fallen to
89 by 10 November 1830°? and to 68 by 3 August 1838.33 The admis-
sion of 19 redemptioners in 1838 helped restore the position,?4 but
there was a decline during the eighteen-forties when the total number
of admissions for the whole decade was only 11. There was extensive
recruitment in the eighteen-fifties, including the admission of 13 mem-
bers by fine in 1852. On 3.April 1860 the number stood at 81 ordinary
and 5 honorary members.*5 In the last quarter of the century, it
fluctuated between 70 and 75.
28 Claxton’s Fournal II, pp. 71-3, 79, 84; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals,
439-40, 442. There was considerable violence at the election in November, and
both parties alleged that the other was responsible.
29 H.B.13, p. 116 30 H7.B.14, p. 136 (excluding 11 honorary members).
31 Hf.B.15, p. 118 (excluding 11 honorary members).
32 Hf.B.16, p. 437 (excluding 9 honorary members).
33 77.B.18, p. 218 (excluding honorary members).
34 77.B.18, p. 227, 24 Aug. 1838. 35 H,.B.23, p. 1.
256 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The number of members who took an active part was very much
smaller than the total on the register. Once a man had been
admitted, he remained a Merchant Venturer for the rest of his life,
even though he lost interest or ceased to live near Bristol. One
member resigned in 1830, presumably because of old age and
poverty, and he was then given a place in Colston’s Almshouse and
£10 to furnish his room, ** but when Mr. Warden Hellicar announced
in 1852 that he intended to go permanently to Australia to spend
the rest of his days there, the Hall did not ask him to resign and
proposed giving him a piece of plate.?” In 1861, John E. Lunell sent
in a letter of resignation on the grounds that the decision to remove
Colston’s Hospital to Gloucestershire made his membership not
only painful but unbearable. The matter was referred to the Clerk
who solemnly reported that “‘A life Membership in your Corporation
being in the nature of a freehold interest to which mutual privileges
and responsibilities are attached cannot be abrogated by the mere
voluntary resignation of the Member himself as distinguished from
any Act of the Society.”” He maintained that resignation required
a deed under hand and seal accepted by a duly convened meeting. *®
The Society did not always receive information about the death
of members, so that the nominal roll at times was inaccurate. In
1837, for example, the Clerk noted that Christopher Thornton and
Thomas Rowse must have been dead for some years past, “the former
it appears was elected in the year 1752 and the latter in the year
1764”. In future, their names were to be omitted.®® In 1839, it was
noted that Edward Perkins should be omitted, “it having been
ascertained that he died in Batavia about two years ago’’.*°
Attendance at meetings, even on Charter Day when the Master
and other officers were elected, was often remarkably low. On 10
November 1810, for example, only 15 members out of 99 were
present,*1 and on 10 November 1820, only 23 out of a possible total
of 100.42 At General Halls on 16 April and 1 October 1830, the
attendance figures were 9 and 7, and with one exception they all
belonged to the Standing Committee.4® Only 20 members were
present on 24 August 1838 to elect 20 redemptioners,4* and on 10
November 1838, the recently elected members outnumbered the
established Merchant Venturers by 14 to 11.45 For many meetings in
the eighteen-forties, attendance was between 10 and 20, and on a
36 H.B.16, p. 393, 11 June 1830.
37 H.B.21, p. 228, 14 May 1853; p. 230, 11 May 1852; p. 231, 15 May 1852. He
had been a member for 25 years.
38 H.B.23, pp. 128-9, 25 April 1861; pp. 142 ff., 9 Aug. 1861.
39 H.B.18, p. 126, 3 Nov. 1837. 40 H.B.18, p. 388, 8 Nov. 1839.
41 77.B.14, p. 136. 42 H.B.15, p. 118.
43 H.B.16, pp. 384, 413. 44 H.B.18, p. 227
45 H.B.18, p. 270.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 257
number of occasions it was impossible to transact business because
there was not a quorum. ‘® In the second half of the century, there was
some improvement, and meetings between 20 and 30 seem to have
been normal, although on occasions attendance fell below 20.
It seems clear that for a considerable number of members the
Society’s business did not offer any great attraction. In his Fournal,
William Claxton made acid comments on such people. He recorded
on 1 May 1868 that Mr. Robert Rainey, ‘“‘a useless member’’, had
died,*? and he remarked in 1869 that Mr. Peter Maze had died at
his residence in London where he had been living ever since his
Mastership in 1837. Claxton said he “chad never taken any interest
in the Society’s affairs — so to speak he is not missed’’.48 Of Henry
Bright who died in the same year near Malvern, Claxton noted that
although he had been a member for 57 years, “che never took any
interest in the affairs of the Society and was not on any committee”’.4®
There was, however, an excuse for Henry George Fowler who died
in 1869 and who had been a member since 1813. Claxton recorded
that “It is some years since he took any part in the Society’s affairs
and was in fact pronounced Lunatic in 1844 and was in a Lunatic
asylum when he died, R.I.P.”5®° The Hall had earlier asked the
Charity Commissioners to remove Mr. Fowler’s name from the list
of Colston Trustees as well as that of Valentine Hellicar who was in
Australia, 51
Old age, illness and residence away from Bristol depleted the
numbers of active members. In addition, there were probably some
people who joined only for reasons of prestige and who were not
particularly anxious to become deeply involved in what must often
have seemed time-consuming and unprofitable business. The result
was that a great deal of work fell on the shoulders of a relatively
small committed group which was prepared to do a fairly long stint
as officers and as members of the Standing Committee. The employ-
ment of a paid Treasurer from 1841 and the gradual increase in the
office staff may also have inclined some members to think that a
great deal of work could be left in the hands of salaried officials.
William Claxton was at times very bitter about what was expected
of him. When his salary was increased by £150 a year in 1850, he
remarked that four times the work had been done by him than by
any previous Treasurer and that quite four times would now be put
upon him. He was required in future to collect the Charity Rents,
and more than half his additional salary would have to go in
46 For example, H.B.18, p. 312, 15 March 1839; H.B.20, p. 32, 3 Oct. 1844; p.
34, 3 Oct. 1844; p. 306, 10 May 1847; p. 307, 14 May 1847; H.B.21, p. 142, 10
May 1851.
47 Claxton’s Fournal II, p. 72. 48 Jbid., p. 87. 49 Jbid., p. 87.
50 Ibid., p. 103. 51 Ibid., p. 9.
258 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
employing a clerk. He added that he had a wife and 5 children
absolutely dependent on him, ‘‘else would I throw the paltry gifts
in their faces”. He commented savagely ‘“‘One Man of Wealth which
is, so to speak, untold, endeavoured to shew that this additional
work ought to be done without addition to my previous Salary! ! !”
He piously added that he regretted that he had been told about this
and asked the Lord to put it out of his mind.5* He remarked of the
Master, George Pope, in 1854 that he had grossly insulted him and
had put into his hands after the death of Mr. Osborne double the
work at no increased salary. Indeed, he had endeavoured to lower it.
Again, Claxton remarked characteristically ‘I forgive it all. May I
also be forgiven.’’5%
During the nineteenth century, the Society brought up-to-date
its Standing Orders‘ and also re-examined the method of electing
officers. This led to some fierce controversy in the 1850s. A Com-
mittee was set up on 27 February 1852°° which reported in Novem-
ber 1854.5® There was to be no change in the method of electing
the Master and Wardens, but a new procedure was to be adopted
with regard to the Assistants. It seems that the practice had grown
up by which the outgoing Master was automatically chosen First
Assistant and that 4 Assistants nominated by him were also elected.
The remaining 5 were elected by ballot out of 10 members nomin-
ated by the outgoing Master. The Committee reported that this had
been done for a great many years, but that it was unable to find
when the practice first originated. It was not in accordance with the
Charter of 1639 which stated that the Assistants should be elected
‘according to the same order” as the Master and Wardens. The
Committee thought it desirable that the outgoing Master should
continue to be the First Assistant and that he should name 4 Assis-
tants for election, but that the remaining 5 should be chosen by the
whole body of those present. This proposal was not confirmed by
the Hall. What eventually emerged on 28 August 1855 was a number
of bye-laws which made the constitution less oligarchical than it had
been hitherto. As far as the election of Master was concerned, the
returning Master was to nominate one person who had already
served as Master, Warden or Assistant; the Wardens and Assistants
were to name another, and the Commonalty a third. One of these
was to be elected Master by a majority vote. The Senior and Junior
Wardens were to be elected in the same manner. With regard to the
Assistants, the name of the outgoing Master, if present, was to be
52 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 152, 2 Nov. 1850.
53 Tbid., p. 186, 10 Nov. 1854.
54 H.B.18, p. 295, 18 Jan. 1839; pp. 296-7, 6 Feb. 1839.
55 H.B.21, p. 217, 27 Feb. 1852.
56 H7.B.21, pp. 423 ff., 6 Nov. 1854.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 259
put to the vote. If elected, he became First Assistant. Every member
present was then to deliver to the Clerk a list with 4 names (or 5 if
the outgoing Master had not been elected Assistant) from the
Wardens and Assistants then present. Then there was to be a vote
to choose 4 (or 5) Assistants. Next, every member was to hand in a
list of 5 persons to make up the remaining Assistants, and there was
again to be a vote. All persons in the election were to be present.
There was at this time a great deal of controversy in the Society.
At the time of the elections on 10 November 1854, the Committee
concerned with new election procedure had reported a few days
earlier, but no action had yet been taken. According to Claxton, the
Master, George Pope, tried to change the procedure, but, as Claxton
put it, “he and his clique were beaten’’.5” Claxton thought that he
had been grossly insulted by Pope, whom he considered petulant,
overbearing, disrespectful and fatiguing in all his ways and as not
possessing the mind or heart of a Gentleman.5§ When the new
bye-laws were carried by one vote after a long contest in August 1855,
Claxton commented “I fear it will be the opening of Discords Where
all has been before as one family.’’>®
His fears were justified. There was a stormy election in November
1855 when “‘much that was extremely unpleasant occurred.”’ The
factions retired to separate rooms and there was a contested election.
James Hassell, who was the nominee of the establishment, was
opposed by Thomas Porter Jose, the nominee of the Commonalty.
Hassell was elected by 15 to 11, and was, as Claxton put it, in the
undignified position of being elected by a majority instead of, as
heretofore, unanimously. Hassell asked to have Robert Gay Barrow
as Senior Warden, but the Commonalty opposed this, and Mr. Jose
was elected by a majority of 4. Claxton says that there was a rumour
that he himself had used his exertions on 10 November to prevent
the return of some gentlemen and to promote others. He remarks
laconically “I got up, emphatically denied it — requested to know
my accusers — all silent — ends in smoke.’’®°®
At the elections in 1856, “‘much personal feeling was evinced’’,
but by the next year Claxton was able to say that the election was
rather more peaceful than in the past two years.*! Evidently things
settled down after this mid-nineteenth century upheaval, and
although there may have been other examples of in-fighting in the
Society, there was no Claxton to record them in a confidential
Journal.
57 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 184, 10 Nov. 1854.
58 Jbid., pp. 185, 186.
59 Tbid., p. 190, 28 Aug. 1855.
80 Tbid., pp. 191-4, 10 Nov. 1855, 14 Dec. 1855.
$1 [bid., pp. 200, 207.
260 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Two procedural points may be briefly noted. In 1807 the Master
received a letter from Mr. Bright, Mr. Protheroe and 15 other
members asking him to call a special Hall to consider the legality of
the proceedings of a meeting held on 1 April last. The Master
reported that as he was about to go to London on urgent business,
he was unable to do so. They had also asked that their protest
against the proceedings should be entered in the Journal. The
Master asked the Clerk to look for precedents, and as none could
be found, he refused to enter the protest in the record.®
The other case concerned the Master’s casting vote. On g March
1836, there was an election for the Receiver of Wharfage. There were
3 applicants, and the voting was 7, 7 and 4. There was a discussion
on whether the Master had a casting vote, some members left during
the discussion and the matter was adjourned. The Clerk was in-
structed to search the records. He reported that he could not find
any reference to the Master having a second vote and that he did
not think a casting vote consistent with the Charter, since the
powers given there were to be exercised by a majority of the
members. ®8
The administrative organisation of the Society developed in a
number of ways in the course of the century to meet new needs but
by far the most important change concerned the office of Treasurer.
Until 1841, the office was unpaid, although there were occasional
presents to those who held it. In May 1801, Samuel Whitchurch was
appointed after the death of James Daltera, who had been Treasurer
for 27 years.6* When he died on 23 February 1816, Joseph Hellicar
was appointed in his place.*> Hellicar apparently ran into business
difficulties in 1819 when he considered himself to be “in a very
delicate situation” and offered to resign, but the Hall unanimously
expressed its confidence in him and asked him to continue.** After
26 years service, when his sight was failing, he sent in a letter of
resignation.*’ The Standing Committee then recommended that in
future the Treasurer should be a salaried officer, ‘“‘he providing and
paying all Clerks whom he may require.”” He was to be between the
age of 30 and 50, was to find two sureties of £3,000 each, and if he
was a member of the Society, he was not to have a vote.®8 This
proposal was accepted in principle on 23 November, and William
$2 77.B.13, p. 459, 13 June 1807. On 1 April 1807, the Hall had refused to con-
firm a resolution of the Standing Committee concerning harbour charges in con-
nection with a new bill for the Floating Harbour (H.B.73, p. 451, 1 April 1807).
$3 77.B.17, p. 375, 9 March 1836; p. 382, 20 April 1836.
64 H.B.13, p. 174, 11 May 1801. 85 H7.B.14, p. 385, 3 May 1816.
66 77.B.14, p. 549, 6 May 1819. 8? H.B.19, p. 161, 4 Nov. 1841.
8 77.B.19, p. 181, 16 Nov. 1841.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 261
Claxton was unanimously elected on 27 November 1841.°® He was
given a salary of 300 guineas a year out of which he was to pay his
clerk, who must be approved by the Society; he was to keep the
accounts of the Floating Dock and the Graving Dock in his office,
and he was to receive reports from the Floating Dock and from the
Bailiff of Clifton. He was required to provide two sureties of £1,500
each and he was not to vote except on admissions to the almshouse.
The Treasurer’s Office was to be made more convenient and was to
be open from 12 to 3 daily.”° Provision was made for his predecessor.
At first, it was proposed to give him £500, but this was not pursued,
and he was offered rent free for life the use of the house where he
resided or a pension of £60 a year. The pension was later increased
to £100 a year.”
Although the Treasurer was now paid, he was not required to
treat it as a full-time job and was not precluded from carrying on
other business. He was not even required to be in the office during
opening hours, but later in 1842 it was decided to allow him the use
of the room under the Treasurer’s Office rent free in consideration
of the advantages accruing from his attendance during the usual
hours of business. ?* |
William Claxton, the first salaried Treasurer, was annually
re-elected until his death in 1873.78 During his period of office, he
recorded in a two-volume Journal a great deal of information about
the business of the Society and about his personal affairs. His Journal
is of particular interest because it often gives the inside story of
events which appear less colourfully in the Hall Books. He had no
hesitation about recording his own reactions to events and his views
about some of the members of the Hall of whom he disapproved.’4
William Claxton’s father had been a Merchant Venturer and a
West India merchant engaged in the sugar business.?5 He died in
1812, and in the same year his son William was apprenticed to his
brother Butler Thompson Claxton. He went out to the West Indies
in 1820 and on his return he set up in the West India trade on his
own account. He became a Merchant Venturer in 1822 and was
69 H.B.19, p. 184, 23 Nov. 1841; p. 189, 27 Nov. 1841.
70 H.B.19, pp. 204 ff., 22 Jan. 1842; p. 219, 4 March 1842, Alterations to the
office were made at a cost of £230 (Claxton’s Journal I, pp. 61, 62, 11 April 1842).
71 H.B.19, p. 189, 27 Nov. 1841; p. 206, 22 Jan. 1842; p. 209, 28 Jan. 1842.
Claxton records that he died aged 73 on 3 Nov. 1844, ‘“‘a true Christian” (Claxton’s
Journal I, p. 100).
72 H.B.19, p. 292, 21 Oct. 1842.
OP ata p. 253 26 June 1873. Latimer mistakenly terminates his Treasurership
in 1072.
is The two volumes are preserved in the Hall and I hope to edit them in due
course.
78 The biographical details given here are taken from Claxton’s Journal I, pp.
54 ff.
262 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Warden in 1825. In 1831, there were difficulties in the West India
trade and a number of business firms in London failed. William had
to ask his creditors for time to pay his debts, and they agreed to this
without calling a meeting. He then went to the West Indies again,
and by making great sacrifices he was able to pay his creditors
fifteen shillings in the pound. He proudly records how quite unknown
to him the creditors, 44 in number, drew up the following statement:
‘Whereas Mr. William Claxton having gone to the West Indies and
being still absent for the Benefit of the Undermentioned Partners
and they being assured of the High Principle which influenced him
and satisfied with his exertions on their behalf, do, as a testimony of
their good will, esteem, and satisfaction, request him to accept the
Balance of 5/— in the Pound remaining due on their debts as a
testimony of the respect they have of his character and for his
exertions of their behalf.”” He was evidently held in high respect by
his fellow Merchant Venturers. He was again Warden in 1834 and
in 1838, and in 1836 he had been chosen Master.
The consequences of the emancipation of the slaves affected his
fortunes adversely and he remarked “I have suffered the loss of all
I ever made and my business diminished from the same Cause.’ It
was because of business difficulties that when the Treasureship was
made a salaried office, he applied for the post and was elected
unanimously. He expressed his immense gratitude to God for giving
him the opportunity of serving the Society, and his strong religious
convictions continually appear in the prayers which he inserted in
his Journal and in his determination to be charitable to those who
irritated him. His early gratitude at getting the job gradually
changed, partly as a result of conflict with particular Masters and
Wardens, partly because he believed that he was overworked and
underpaid. It was not a sense of humour that made him record in
1850 “I, William Claxton, was re-elected Treasurer, concluding my
Ninth and commencing my Tenth Year of official servitude! ! !??76
A year later, he remarked “The Master was peculiarly coarse and
uncourteous to me.” He added “To say I am happy would be
untrue”, but characteristically he prayed for patience and humi-
lity.77 In 1856, he wrote “This situation is necessary for the support
of my family as all private business has failed me and left me deeply
in debt .. . Thus I pass on from one Committee to another and from
one Master to another, striving to please each and then when I have
assumed to have succeeded, another comes on to be pleased and to
begin again with.”?8 In 1857, he spoke of a year of “very hard and
continuous servitude to one than whom I have never met his equal
78 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 155, 11 Nov. 1850.
%7 Ibid., p. 163, 10 Nov. 1851.
78 Ibid., pp. 201 ff., 10 Nov. 1856.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 263
for unnecessary trouble and senseless egotism’’.”® Personal conflicts
continued to trouble him, and his own comparative poverty was
evidently galling. In 1867, he remarked of the Master, Sholto Vere
- Hare, “Wealth has a peculiar power of hardening the heart. He
who has everything around him which his most idle wish can desire,
who has never known what it is to want for anything, is in great
danger of becoming selfish, capricious and tyrannical — of being
dead to feelings for his fellow creatures.’’®°
But in spite of these troubles, Claxton was re-elected year after
year and was obviously regarded as a very able and experienced
Treasurer who greatly improved the Society’s finances. He was
extremely interested in the history of the Society and he exercised
great influence on its policy. His salary was increased by 100
guineas a year in 1859 and again by £100 a year in 1866." By this
time he was already very deaf, and he commented on his increase of
salary “It was proposed in a most kind manner and most gentle-
manly feeling and with my unhappy infirmity I did not hear a single
word that was passing. I first saw it written in in Mr. Ward’s memo-
randum for the Minutes! ! !’’8? In 1866, when he hurt his leg badly,
the Society gave him £50 to help with expenses, and he recorded in
his Journal “Oh Billy, are you grateful? Yes, I am and thankful.’’®?
By 1872, he was clearly the Grand Old Man of the Society. The
Standing Committee “considering the many years their excellent
Treasurer has so zealously and so actively attended to the interests
of the Society” was anxious ‘“‘that he should for the future be at
liberty to devote as much time and attention to the duties of
Treasurer as he may find consistent with his own personal comfort
and convenience .. .”’. It recommended that during his continuance
in office his salary should be fixed at £500 per annum free of all
deductions. While Claxton remained in office Mr. Barge was to be
accountant at £200 per annum.*
It would seem that Claxton was in fact being gracefully retired
from the actual work while still retaining the office. He had recorded
a few months earlier that at a Standing Committee to which he had
made a written report on ground rents that “All the enquiries were
made to and answered by Mr. Barge and now for the first time I was
not really Treasurer for I could not hear a sound and the Committee
79 Ibid., p. 207, 10 Nov. 1857. The Master in question was Thomas Porter Jose.
Claxton conceded that he had a kind heart and did what he thought was right.
Claxton at this time was deeply troubled by the conduct of his eldest son, but he
does not reveal the nature of the trouble.
80 Claxton’s Journal IT, p. 55, 13 April 1867.
81 H.B.22, p. 408, 8 Dec. 1859; H.B.24, p. 66, 16 Feb. 1866.
82 Claxton’s Journal IT, p. 33, 16 Feb. 1866.
83 Ibid., p. 40, 3 Nov. 1866; H.B.24, p. 130, 2 Nov. 1866.
84 H.B.25, pp. 176-7, 25 Oct. 1872.
264 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
received all the replies from Mr. Barge. Oh — it cut me down so
sadly because the whole business was one appertaining to me as
Treasurer.” ®5 He was troubled by gout, and although he had three
week’s holiday at Weston-super-Mare which, he believed, did him
a great deal of good, he did not like his new office in the Hall,
remarking “Oh, so damp all was and such awful draughts tis a
wonder and a great mercy that Mr. Barge and myself are able to
push along... .”’86
One thing which gave him great delight at the end of 1871 was
when the new Master, Henry Cruger William Miles, “told me he
was determined to present the Society with a Portrait of the
Treasurer (Me W.C.) to hang up in the new Committee Room.”
He added “I was astounded indeed and I believe I only laughed.’’8”
He began to sit for Mr. West in the Hall in June 1872, and the
portrait was on view at the Annual Dinner in November 1872. In
February 1873, the Master presented to the Hall the portrait “‘of
one who has been endeared to us and to the past Members of our
Hall . . . perpetuating in the scene of his daily labours, when he is
no longer with us, the familiar features with which we have been
so long and so intimately acquainted. . . .”- The Committee recorded
its satisfaction “‘in having thus secured to their possession for future
generations so pleasing and faithful a Portrait of one who still
present among them is loved and respected by all and whose
memory will be cherished when his familiar features are only pre-
served to them upon their Walls. . .”’.88
The last entry in Claxton’s Journal was on 5 April 1873 when he
records that Cruger Miles’s letter was read out and when he noted
that all the kind things which had been said about himself applied
equally to his friend Charles Ward, Clerk to the Society, who had
recently died.®®
When Claxton died in June 1873, there was a special meeting of
the Hall to consider the arrangement for the funeral at which all
members of the Society, the almspeople and the boys from Colston’s
Hospital were to be present. The bill for doctors, chemists, and for
the funeral amounted to £99 4s. and was paid by the Society.
Claxton had not been able to save much from his salary, and on 4
July 1873 the Master reported that he had learnt with regret that
Claxton’s widow and family were totally unprovided for. The Hall
decided to give Mrs. Claxton £200 a year and to provide £25 for
85 Claxton’s Journal IT, p. 125, 5 July 1872.
86 Jbid., p. 123, 13 May 1872; p. 127, 1 Sept. 1872, 2 Oct. 1872.
87 Ibid., p. 119, 17 Nov. 1871.
88 Jbid., p. 129; H.B.25, pp. 214, 215, 21 Feb. 1873.
8® Claxton’s Fournal IT, p. 135, 5 April 1872.
90 F7.B.25, p. 253, 26 June 1873; p. 266, 18 July 1873.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 265
the next two years to enable her son William to complete his Univer-
sity education. *!
The Treasurers who succeeded this remarkable man did not leave
behind Journals in which they freely expressed their views, and it is
consequently more difficult to say what manner of men they were. A
new Treasurer was not appointed immediately because the Society
was in process of reorganising the Colston Hospital Trust. A secre-
tary would be needed to deal with this fund, and the Master
suggested that in order to maintain close liaison between the Society
and the Governing Body of Colston’s Hospital, it might be desirable
to unite the post of Treasurer with that of Secretary to the Hospital.
In the meantime, John Hellicar agreed to act as Treasurer at a
salary of £350 a year.*
When John Hellicar resigned in November 1876, it was decided
that the office of Treasurer and Clerk to the Colston Trust should in
future be united and if possible given to a Merchant Venturer who
was to devote his full time to the work at a salary of £400 a year,
rising to £500. He was to keep the office open from 10 to 5 from
Monday to Friday and from 10 to 2 on Saturdays.®* George Henry
Pope was appointed on 18 November 1876.94 He continued as
Treasurer until 1901 and played a major role in the development of
the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College and in fighting its
battles with great determination in the demarcation disputes which
arose between it and University College, Bristol.°5
Pope announced his impending resignation in 1901.°® His succes-
sor was already being groomed for office, for in 1897 Percy Liston
King had been appointed a clerk in the Treasurer’s office at a salary
of £200 a year, which exceeded that normally paid to clerks.®’
There was a considerable amount of discussion about whether the
Treasurer should continue to be responsible for the various educa-
tional foundations controlled by the Colston Trust. The amazing
development of the Technical College had created a great deal of
work. Consequently, it was decided that there should be a Secretary
who should serve the Technical College, the Governing Body of
1 H.B.25, p. 258, 4 July 1873. On 30 April 1875, another £25 was granted to
William Claxton to help him continue his studies at Oxford (H.B.25, p. 416, 30
April 1875). He was admitted a member of the Society on 27 January 1877 (H.B.
26, pp. 114, 115, 27 Jan. 1877).
82 H.B.25, p. 258, 4 Aug. 1873; p. 353, 28 Aug. 1874.
93 77.B.26, p. 89, 7 Nov. 1876.
94 H.B.26, p. 99, 18 Nov. 1876.
95 See pp. 381-4, 491-508. His salary was increased by £100 a year in 1890 after
a report which showed that the work of the office had increased greatly since 1876
(H.B.27, p. 367, 19 Dec. 1890).
96 77.B.28, p. 416, 11 Oct. 1gor.
®? H.B.28, p. 204, 29 Jan. 1897. It was raised to £300 in 1901 (H.B.28, p. 394,
29 March 1901).
266 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Colston’s Trusts, the Managers of Colston’s Boys School and the
Governors of Colston’s Girls School. George Henry Pope, who had
played so large a part in these developments, was obviously the man
for the job and was appointed at a salary of £450 a year. The fees
of the Technical College were to be continued to be collected by the
Treasurer, and Percy Liston King was appointed to that office with
a salary of £450 a year.%8
The nineteenth-century Treasurers operated most of the time with
a remarkably small amount of clerical assistance and were able to
retain the services of their assistants for very long periods. When
William Ady tendered his resignation in 1836, he had been clerk to
three successive Treasurers for a period of nearly 63 years. When the
Society presented him with a piece of plate to the value of £50 in
recognition of “his great regularity, correctness and integrity’’, he
said that he had been ‘“‘Accomptant or Clerk” since 10 November
1773. In a touching speech recorded in the Minutes he expressed
his appreciation of the gift from “‘such a respectable Body as this
Society . . .”. He told the members how he had attended the School
under the Merchants’ Hall for only three years from 1769 to 1772.
Then his father’s death made it necessary for him to find a job. He
was very pleased with the career he had made for himself in the
Society’s service and he concluded “It may be truly said of me Is
not this the Carpenter’s son?’’®®
William Claxton’s assistants included William Taylor Chamber-
lain who was taken on in 1843 but who worked only part-time,
“the present Duties of the Treasurer not affording sufficient employ-
ment for the occupation of the whole time of himself and a Clerk’’.1°°
Chamberlayne was still in Claxton’s service when he died in 1859.
The Hall made a grant of £25 to his widow who was with wholly
insufficient means and who had 14 children, of whom 10 were com-
pletely dependent on her. He was succeeded by William Barge who
had already been in Claxton’s service more than two years when he
was Officially appointed clerk in the Treasurer’s office.1°! When
Claxton was given lighter duties in 1872, William Barge was officially
appointed accountant to the Society at £200 a year.1°? He had
8 77.B.28, p. 416, 11 Oct. 1901; p. 417, 18 Oct. 1901; p. 423, 26 Oct. 1901.
99 H.B.17, p. 358, 13 Jan. 1836; p. 364, 25 Jan. 1836; p. 368, 26 Jan. 1836; pp.
390 ff., 20 April 1836. Ady fad been responsible for the reorganisation of the ac-
counting system in 1795 (see p. 114). Ady’s resignation was followed by further
improvements, and in 1836 the Society thanked the Treasurer for the valuable
changes he had introduced. The 100 guineas usually given to Mr. Ady was to be
used by the Treasurer for defraying the expenses of the accounts (H.B.17, p. 448,
8 Nov. 1836).
100 F.B.19, p. 375, 15 Sept. 1843. 101 77.B.22, p. 370, 11 Aug. 1859.
102 77.B.25, p. 177, 25 Oct. 1872. He was later given a present of £150 for his.
extra work during the illness of the Treasurer. (H.B.26, p. 102, 24 Nov. 1876.)
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 267
served the Society for more than fifty years when he died early in
1895.108
Another clerk in the Treasurer’s office who served for a very long
period was T. E. Rea, who joined the staff in 1859. By 1890, his
salary was £120 a year. It was then increased to £135, but he was
required to begin at 9.30 instead of 10 and to collect the fees at the
Merchant Venturers’ School. An additional clerk was taken on at
£50 a year, and the charges to the two Colston Schools for clerical
services were raised from £150 to £200.194 Rea’s salary was in-
creased to £160, rising to £200, in January 1895.195 By 1901, he was
getting £220 a year, and in 1910, after he had completed 50 years
service, he was given an honorarium of £50 and an annual increase
of £10 until he reached £250. He retired in 1914 after 55 years
service and was given a pension of £150 a year.
The clerks must have been kept busy producing the great mass of
paper work, much of which still remains, and the typewriter does
not seem to be much in evidence, but the conduct of business was
made easier in 1887 when the Treasurer reported that “‘he had
arranged with the Telephone Company to put his Office in connec-
tion with the telephone wires. . .”.1°” In 1899, it was decided that
in future the accounts should be audited by a Chartered Accoun-
tant.198
For the greater part of the nineteenth century, the office of Clerk
was held by members of the Osborne family. Jeremiah Osborne had
been appointed in 1786, and from 1796, he shared the post with his
son John. When Jeremiah died in 1798, John continued on his own
until 1801 when he was assisted by his brother Jeremiah. After
John’s death in 1810, Jeremiah was sole Clerk until 1838 when his
eldest son Robert joined him. Jeremiah died in 1842 at the age of 65
after serving the Hall for 41 years. Claxton commented that he was
‘‘A man much beloved admired respected and a Gentleman.”
Robert acted on his own until 1854. For some time before his death,
his partner Charles Edward Ward, had been doing the work, and
when Robert died, he applied for the appointment which he held
until his own death in 1873.199 Jere Osborne, nephew of Robert
103 77,B.28, p. 94, 25 Jan. 1895.
104 77.B.27, p. 370, 19 Dec. 1890.
105 77,.B.28, p. 94, 25 Jan. 1895. At the same time, the salary of the other clerk,
George Erith, was increased to £60 p.a., rising by £10 a year, to £120.
106 77,B.29, p. 391, 28 Jan. 1910; H.B.30, p. 189, 30 Oct. 1914. He died in 1920
(H.B.31, p. 43, 30 Jan. 1920).
107 H.B.27, p. 197, 29 April 1887.
108 77,.B.28, p. 340, 28 Dec. 1899.
108 For a eulogy on Charles Edward Ward, see H.B.25, pp. 220-1, 28 March
1873.
268 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
and partner of Ward, then took over and held the post for the rest
of the century.!°
The Society’s Clerks were not, of course, full-time officers. They
were solicitors who found their connection with the Society very
useful, not because of the small salary of £60 a year which they
received for calling meetings, recording proceedings and attending
committees, but because their involvement with the Society put
into their hands a great deal of legal business, particularly in con-
- nection with property, for which they charged professional fees.11!
They were able to guide the Society and its committees on points of
law and they were very influential advisers. Occasionally a Clerk
was a little too enthusiastic. In 1843 the Finance Committee com-
plained that the Law Accounts for 1841 and 1842 showed large
arrears due to the Clerk and alleged that the Society had been led
into large and useless expenditure for the purposes of procuring
Parliamentary evidence and other public business for the benefit of
the Port of Bristol. The Clerk was to be asked if the charges for
general business could not be put on a more satisfactory basis and
the Law Account presented as soon as possible after 31 October
each year.1!2
In managing its estates and collecting the rents and various other
payments due to it, the Society employed a number of officials,
sometimes on a commission basis and sometimes for a salary. In
1818, for example, Mr. Haynes petitioned the Hall stating that he
had acted as Beadle and Bailiff of Clifton and Receiver of the
Society’s rents there since 1784 at a salary of £40 a year. He asked
for a rise, and his salary was raised to £150.13 At the end of 1838,
Mr. Marmont was appointed Superintendent and Receiver for the
Clifton estates. He was to report regularly and to keep a map show-
ing any alterations. He received 5 per cent on the rents collected and
professional fees in connection with the numerous building develop-
ments in Clifton.1/4
The Somerset and Bristol rents at this time were being collected
by Mr. H. Townsend. In 1841, the Hall decided that both the
Somerset and the Clifton rents should be collected by the Treasurer,
110 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 91; H.B.18, p. 219, 3 Aug. 1838; H.B.21, p. 189, 8 Nov.
1851; p. 248, 10 Sept. 1852; p. 328, 9 Sept. 1853; pp. 396, 397, 16 June 1854; p.
401, 4 July 1854; H.B.25, p. 220, 28 March 1873; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p.
276.
111 For a statement of the duties and fees of the Clerk, see H.B.18, p. 320, 12
April 1839; H.B.21, p. 281, 18 Dec. 1852; p. 398, 26 June 1854. For parliamentary
business, the Clerk made use of a parliamentary agent in London. H.B.19, p. 432,
30 March 1844.
112 Hf.B.19, p. 377, 13 Oct. 1843. 113 77.B.14, p. 518, 19 Nov. 1818.
14 H.B.18, p. 113, 13 Oct. 1837; p. 293, 11 Jan. 1839; H.B.19, p. 197, 31 Dec.
1841; p. 202, 19 Jan. 1842.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 269
but after negotiations with Marmont and Townsend, it was agreed
that Marmont should continue to collect the Clifton rents on a 5
per cent commission basis and that Townsend should receive a fixed
salary of £130 a year.45
In 1867, William Claxton, who had worked with Townsend for
many years, recorded with some bitterness that Townsend, who had
been Surveyor to the Society for more than 40 years, especially for
the Somerset estates, had died on 4 April and left £170,000, but,
wrote Claxton, “‘he did not leave poor me a brass farthing nor was
I asked to his funeral”’.146 Claxton went on to say that Townsend’s
nephew and partner, William Henry Davis, was on the Treasurer’s
recommendation appointed his successor, but not at a salary. When
Davis died in 1878, Walter Stuckey Paul was appointed at a salary
of £100 a year to deal with property in Bristol and the neighbour-
hood. He could make professional charges for all plans, but the
plans were to be the property of the Society.1”
The Society’s Hall in which it conducted its business and its social
activities underwent a number of changes in the course of the
century. In 1838, new steps and a balustrade were ordered at an
estimated cost of £65, and three years later £300 was made available
for fitting up and furnishing the Hall.148 At the end of 1842, when the
Committee was considering providing new places in the Banqueting
Hall, it went into the question of obtaining more effective lighting
and heating. Estimates for a ‘““warm Air Apparatus” varied from
£54 to £95, and the cost of installation was estimated at £100. A
Mr. H. C. Price gratuitously provided plans and drawings for this
Warm Air Apparatus ‘‘which has been so successfully applied at
Buckingham Palace, Windsor Castle and many Noblemen’s Houses
and Public Institutions.” His estimate was £260. Resisting the
temptation, the Committee decided that ‘‘the adoption of two
additional Fire Places”? would be “‘the most simple as well as economi-
cal” and it hoped that they would be sufficiently efficacious. There
were already a main gas supply, and further extensions were ordered
at a cost of £37 25.119
In 1851, the Treasurer reported that the Hall needed decoration
and repair and that little had been done since 1825. The Master was
instructed “‘to take the opinion of a decorative Architect’, and
he called in Mr. Owen Jones, who had been responsible for the
115 77.B.19, p. 197, 31 Dec. 1841.
116 Claxton’s Journal II, p. 57, 19 July 1867. .
117 F.B.26, p. 205, 25 Oct. 1878; p. 222, 19 Dec. 1878. The Society has a fine
collection of plans. |
118 77,B.18, p. 183, 9 May 1838; p. 239, 12 Oct. 1838; H.B.19, p. 81, 13 Jan. 1841.
119 77.B.19, p. 313, 10 Nov. 18423 p. 332, 10 Feb. 1843.
270 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
decorations of the Crystal Palace. Estimates of about £550 were
accepted, and Owen Jones was paid 50 guineas for his services.12°
Very extensive changes in the Hall were carried out in 1871. The -
Society had received a gift of property in Marsh Street from Mr.
Thomas Daniel, and it decided to pull down the existing offices and
Mr. Daniel’s house and rebuild the whole on a new plan, bringing
the first floor on a level with the Reception Room and Banqueting
Hall. A good Committee Room was also provided. The cost of the
work was about £1,800; and another £500 was spent on decora-
tions.121 In 1882, improvement was authorised for the lavatories and
other offices at a cost of £240.12? Two years later the insurance on the
' Hall was increased from £6,000 to £10,000!2
Throughout the period, the Society employed a housekeeper to
look after the Hall. In 1810, her salary was raised to £25 a year.124
When Mrs. Elinor Tucket resigned in 1845, Mrs. Caroline Chamber-
lain was appointed, and by 1866, her salary had been raised to £100
a year.!25 She had been appointed in William Claxton’s time and
she must have found the new regime under his successor less con-
genial, for in 1875, after she had served the Hall for 30 years, the
Treasurer reported on the unsatisfactory character of her trans-
actions and her constant insubordination. She was asked to resign
forthwith. She asked for the matter to be reconsidered, and when
this was refused, she resigned.12® A Mrs. Burn was then appointed at
£,75 a year, and when she died after 19 years’ service, she was suc-
ceeded by Miss Eliza Warr at the same salary. In 1898, her wages
were increased to £100 a year.!2? The Hall also employed a porter,
but he does not appear very often in the records. In 1893, the porter
had to be dismissed for persistent drunkenness, but in view of his
long service, he was given a pension of 1os. a week.128
The Hall was used by the Society for its annual audit dinner and
for other social functions. It was situated in the heart of the city, and
it was one of the means by which the Merchant Venturers could
impress Bristolians with their importance. For the proclamation of
George IV in 1820, members were ordered to assemble there at 11
o’clock to go in procession to the Council House “‘preceded by their
120 H.B.21, p. 144, 20 June 1851; p. 155, 8 Aug. 1851; p. 162, 15 Aug. 1851.
Claxton’s Journal I, p. 159; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 274.
121 7T,B.25, p. 30, 21 Jan. 1871; pp. 67 ff., 7 July 1871.
122 77.B.26, p. 424, 22 June 1882.
123 77.B.27, p. 49, 17 March 1884.
124 77.B.14, p. 102, 7 March 1810. |
125 H.B.20, p. 143, 19 Sept. 1845; H.B.24, p. 143, 21 Dec. 1866.
126 77.B.25, p. 395, 26 Feb. 1875.
127 H.B.25, p. 422, 30 April 1875; H.B.28, p. 72, 25 May 1894; p. 274, 30 Sept.
1808.
128 77.B.28, p. 50, 24 Nov. 1893.
Above: Engraving showing the Hotwell House in the eighteen-thirties and
the towers of the Suspension Bridge in the course of erection.
Photograph supplied by Reece Winston
Below: The Hotwell House in the eighteen-sixties, with the Colonnade on
the right of the picture.
Photograph supplied by Reece Winston
Plan of the Manor of Clifton c.1837 showing the Society’s property. From
a plan in the Society’s Schedule of Deeds 2. The areas owned by the Society
are outlined in black (green in the original), and are numbered from 1 to 80.
Whiteladies Road and Gallows Acre Lane (Pembroke Road) are shown at
the top of the plan. The development of the various plots can be traced
through the Schedule of Deeds 2. Plot no. 19 (Ferney Close) became Victoria
Square. Plot no.17 was Honeypen Hill field.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
ee ies
a See
si
Bs
Above: ‘The Engine House erected in 1845 to pump water up to Clifton in
connection with the Society’s Waterworks scheme. Demolished 1864.
See p. 426. Photograbh supplied by Reece Winston
Below: The Observatory on Clifton Down in the eighteen-fifties.
See pp. 427-8. Photograph supplied by Reece Winston
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 271
Band and also the Boys of Colston’s school”.12® There was another
procession for the coronation and 40 guineas was provided to light
the Hall, ““The same to be done in a most brilliant and splendid
manner according to the directions now given.” Illuminations were
to be continued at 15 guineas a time on subsequent nights if neces-
sary.180 For William IV’s coronation in 1831, £25 was spent on
illuminating the Hall and £10 on the band.14"
A little earlier in 1831 the Society had been concerned about
placards under the signature of Christopher Gage, Chairman of a
committee calling itself the Reform Committee, announcing that
a General Illumination had been determined on after the Chairing
of the two successful Whig candidates in the election. The Society
decided that the placards had been issued by “‘an irresponsible Body”
and that the Hall had never been illuminated on like occasions. This
was the first time that Bristol had returned two Whig candidates
since 1774, and there was in fact a General Illumination and large-
scale demonstrations, but the Tory Merchant Venturers were not
willing to be associated with them and the Hall was not illumi-
nated,132
On the other hand, the Society displayed its enthusiasm for the
peace celebrations after the Crimean War. Claxton stated that
although there were celebrations throughout the country and an
immense display of fireworks in London, the Corporation of Bristol
determined to do nothing. However, he learnt that a V.R. and a
Crown were to be illuminated on the Council House. As the Master
was in London, he took it on himself to act for the Society. He wrote
“I had jets of gas in front along the parapets and round the arches of
the Urns and Bust of King William in imitation of the Arc de
Triomphe at Paris. It was a beautiful effect — along the facade at
the side of the Hall in King Street I hung the old and sacred motto
of Church and Queen lighted with oil and an excellent effect. It was
the only building in the City which had any effect. I was commended
by all.”? The cost was £23 10s od.138
The annual audit dinner was also held in the Hall. In 1831, after
the Bristol Riots at the end of October, the Society decided that “In
consequence of the riotous tumultuous and seditious Proceedings . . .
which occasioned such extensive and lamentable destruction of
Property by Fire and otherwise”, the audit dinner should be can-
celled. It was also thought wise ‘“‘under the present unfortunate
Circumstances” to dispense with the usual festivities of music and
129 77. B.15, p. 63, 3 Feb. 1820 (only 18 members were present).
180 H.B.15, p. 166, 13 July 1821.
131 17,B.17, p. 48, 3 Sept. 1831. |
132 H.B.17, p. 20, 3 May 1831; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 142, 143.
188 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 197, 29 May 1856. :
2792 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
bell ringing on Charter Day.18¢ These things would not have. been
wise or appropriate in a Bristol which had just had the traumatic
experience of the Riots.
From 1840, the audit dinner, which had hitherto been limited to
a few, was thrown open to all members.185 William Claxton the
Treasurer took a great interest in the Hall Dinners and recorded
many details about them in his Fournal. In 1842, the dinner cost
£64 8s. for 40 gentlemen, excluding the cost of 21 bottles of claret.1*¢
In 1845, the Treasurer organised the dinner himself and 72 people
were present, including 14 clergymen of the established church.18?
In 1846, Claxton noted that the Mayor (J. K. Haberfield) having
shown great slight to the Master and having insulted the Society
over the Waterworks business was not invited.18° Seventy-four
gentlemen attended in 1852. and drank 139 bottles of wine.18® Two
years later there was difficulty with the dinner as a result of the Hall
having been lent to the Corporation to enable it to entertain Lord
John Russell. Claxton remarked ‘The dinner was beastly and the
Hall was disgraced! ! ! The least said the best’, but he could not
stop himself adding later “The Annual dinner of the Society took
place this day. It was with extreme difficulty we got the Hall and
offices clean again and sweet after the Filthy entertainment held
therein by the Corporation of filthy Bristol.’?!4°
In 1855, poor Claxton was in trouble with the Master who asked
him to account for his friend Mr. Chamberlain attending the Hall
Dinner without an invitation. Claxton explained that “there was a
vacant chair at the ninth hour and I took him in, for which I
offered apology. He wrote most offensively and I find my whole
position here much changed in comfort and feeling . . . God forgive
him for the distress of mind he has caused me. I do most freely believe
I served him more than any of his predecessors, in fact I slaved for
him.”’!41 The following year when Claxton did not organise the
dinner himself, he recorded ‘“The dinner was done by a man nominee,
Palmer. It was a failure and many were good enough to tell me
so.”’142 There was a different kind of trouble in 1858. At this time,
the Society was deeply divided over the question of whether Colston’s
Hospital should be moved outside the city. Claxton reported that
“It was universally admitted that up to the removal of the Clerk
everything went as perfectly as it could do and after that the apple
184 77,.B.17, p. 55, 3 Nov. 1831; p. 63, 9 Nov. 1831.
185 F.B.19, p. 33, 30 Sept. 1840 (13 members present).
186 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 73, 8 Nov. 1842.
187 Ibid., p. 112, 6 Nov. 1845.
188 Thid., p. 119, 9 Nov. 1846.
189 Jbid., p. 170, 4 Nov. 1852.
140 Ibid., pp. 182, 183, 27 Oct. and 8 Nov. 1854.
141 Jhid., p. 194, 13 Nov. 1855. 142 Ibid., p. 199, 6 Nov. 1856.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 273
of discord fell upon the removal of Colston’s Hospital, and I would
rather not record anything.’’!43
Of the dinner of 1859, Claxton said that the Master surprised all
his friends by his aptitude in filling the chair, but he added a little
maliciously ‘“‘No one of distinction dined.”’!44 In 1862, all went well,
“only the Mayor Mr. John Hare kept the dinner waiting so long
that the Soup was cold! ... A great many refusals were received from
Big Wigs. 70 gentlemen dined — not a single M.P.! !145 In 1863,
“the Great Don of the Day was Captain Speke, the discoverer of the
source of the Nile . . . the Mayor was punctual”’.146 In 1866, there
was trouble. ‘‘A scene with the cooks and waiters afterwards. . . .
The Head cook was very very drunk! A woman too. Some of the
waiters were also drunk, not the usual waiters but some whom I was
obliged to call in owing to increased numbers.’’!4? In 1871, when 84
guests were present, Claxton noted that “‘the servants really behaved
most disagreeably. Several were tipsy.’’4® The next year, however,
the Treasurer must have felt some compensation for all the trouble
he had taken over the dinners during a period of nearly 30 years, for
his portrait was on view in the new Committee Room.14?®
One very splendid entertainment in the Hall was a Fancy Dress
Ball given on 24 January 1867 by the Master, Mr. S. V. Hare and
his wife. Claxton was tremendously impressed and remarked that “It
was as I think one of the most brilliant and beautiful and successful
events I have ever witnessed.”” There were about 320 guests, in-
cluding the Duke and Duchess of Beaufort. In a large leather-bound
volume preserved in the Hall there are coloured illustrations of
those who were present.15°
The Hall was used by the Society and, on occasions, by the
Corporation for the entertaining of distinguished visitors,154 and it
148 Tbid., p. 212, 4 Nov. 1858. 144 Thid., p. 215, 8 Nov. 1859.
145 Ibid., p. 234, 6 Nov. 1862. 146 Thid., p. 242, 5 Nov. 1863.
147 Claxton’s Journal II, p. 40, 8 Nov. 1866.
148 Ibid., p. 117, 2 Nov. 1871. 149 Thid., p. 129, 7 Nov. 1872.
150 Volume marked Fancy Ball which contains, in addition to the illustrations of
the costumes, an account from the Illustrated London News, 2 February 1867, with
a sketch of the scene in the Hall. Ironically, the front page of this number of the
Illustrated London News carries on its front page a picture of “‘Distribution of Relief
at the Mansion House to Distressed Persons of the East End’’ and an account of
deep and long-continuing distress resulting from the commercial panic of 1866 and
‘the cessation or slackening of many branches of trade and enterprise’.
151 The most distinguished visitors were the Prince of Wales (George IV), the
Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Sussex, H.R.H. the Duchess of Teck, the Duke
of Wellington, the last Duke of Buckingham, Earl Russell, Earl Roberts, and the
Presidents and leading members of the British Association and other scientific
societies during the meetings in Bristol (Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 275).
Claxton, who had a weakness for the upper classes, commented on “‘the many
Nobles Dukes and Gentlemen”’ who attended a Banquet for the Duke of Cambridge
in 1842 (Claxton’s Journal I, p. 66, 9 July 1842).
274 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
was sometimes made available to other organisations. In 1802, for
example, the Society allowed it to be used by the Committee to
honour William Pitt,!5? and in 1803 it was lent for a meeting of
subscribers to the Floating Harbour.153 It was one of the places for
the distribution of the new silver coinage in 1817,154 and the Mayor
gave a Coronation Ball in it in 1821.155 The sheriff was allowed to use
it in connection with the General Election of 1831, provided he made
good any damage,1*¢ but there was some hesitation about lending
it to Major-General Charles Dalbiac to hold a Court Martial after
the Riots of 1831. The Society was “very apprehensive that the use
of their Hall for the purpose of holding a general open Court of
Justice on an occasion so peculiarly calculated to create public
excitement and curiosity’’ would lead to considerable damage. The
City Chamberlain and the military were required to inspect the Hall
and to undertake to return it in the same state as they found it.157
In 1832 the Bristol and Clifton Horticultural Society optimistically
asked to be allowed to hold monthly meetings in it but without
success.*°8 Next year, tables from the Hall were lent to ‘‘a large and
respectable Body of the Citizens of Bristol’? to enable them to hold a
dinner in honour of Sir Richard Rawlinson Vyvyan who sat for
Bristol in the Tory interest.15® In 1835, the Society went out of its
way to cooperate in plans to invite the British Association to Bristol
“for the good of the city and the advancement of science’’. William
Claxton, then one of the Wardens, Mr. Robert Bruce and the Clerk,
together with representatives of the Bristol Literary and Philosophi-
cal Institution made a special trip to Dublin, where the Association
was meeting, to invite it to Bristol in 1836.18 The use of the Hall
was also granted in connection with the establishment of some rail-
way companies, including the Great Western Railway.1®
An occasion which caused a good deal of ill-feeling was the loan
to the Anchor Society, one of the Colston Charitable societies, in
1841 for their annual dinner on Colston’s Day. Claxton stated that
the Hall was left in an extremely disgusting and filthy state, as was
witnessed the two following days by various members. The Anchor
Society professed ignorance and asked for a full investigation, but
the Merchant Venturers refused to give details or to make any
further comment.16?
152 Ff.B.13, p. 211, 26 July 1802. See also H.B.14, p. 293, 20 April 1814; p. 439,
20 May 1817.
153 77,B.13, p. 249, 28 March 1803. 154 77.B.14, p. 433, 12 Feb. 1817.
155 77.B.15, p. 162, 29 June 1821. 186 77.B.17, p. 18, 29 April 1831.
187 77.B.17, p. 75, 22 Dec. 1831. 158 17.B.17, p. 92, 23 March 1832.
159 77.B.17, p. 164, 19 June 1833.
160 77,.B.17, p. 326, 5 Aug. 1835; p. 329, 16 Sept. 1835. 161 See pp. 439-40.
162 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 58; H.B.19, p. 183, 23 Nov. 1841; p. 188, 27 Nov. 1841;
p. 192, 10 Dec. 1841; p. 199, 14 Jan. 1842.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 275
Although the Society was not a patron of the arts, it acquired by
gift or purchase a number of portraits of distinguished Bristolians
and of members of the royal family. In 1867, William Claxton, who
had a passionate concern for everything to do with the Society’s
history, presented to the Master an illuminated book prepared by
his daughter Helen in which he gave an account of the portraits.1¢%
They included six portraits of seventeenth-century Merchant Ven-
turers who had made gifts to the Merchants’ Almshouse — John
Whitson, Robert Kitchen, Richard Long, Joseph Jackson, Hugh
Browne and Richard Vickris. Claxton said that he had been unable
to find any record of the artists and remarked that his old friend,
Thomas Garrard, the City Chamberlain, ‘“‘used jocosely to declare
that some adventurous Dutchman brought the Pictures ready
painted and added the heads and faces afterwards”. He stated that
for many years the portraits were kept in a cellar in Colston’s
Hospital and that once a year, the Master, Mr. Haynes, made the
boys bring them up to the Pump to wash them. He had rescued
them from this barbarity and had them cleaned and varnished. The
Society also had in the vestibule a portrait of George II when Prince
of Wales, and in the entrance hall a portrait of Edward Colston
which was either a copy of one in the Council House or another
portrait by the same artist. In the outer Hall was a nameless picture
which some thought was that of William Colston, father of Edward,
but Claxton had his doubts about this. Over the fireplace was a
portrait of Robert Bright who had played the leading role in the
movement to make Bristol a free port. It was by Crush and had
originally been intended for the Council House, but for some reason
the Council refused to place it in their rooms and it was offered to
the Society. There was a problem of how to fit it in with the panels
of the Hall, and as quick action was necessary in case the Council
changed its mind, Claxton had the moulding cut away from the
panelling ‘“‘and there he sits in all his beauty”’. |
In the Drawing Room were five portraits which Claxton saw at an
auction in 1856 and snapped up for £60. He spent another £40 on
cleaning them. The Master at the time, Mr. Jose, was abroad and
did not approve of the Treasurer’s initiative. Claxton’s comment in
1871 was that “although Mr. Jose seemed to feel I had exceeded my
duty (which I admitted) I believe he has since quite pardoned it”
The portraits were Queen Anne by Sir Godfrey Kneller, George I
and George II, Queen Caroline and Princess Amelia, mother of
168 Merchants’ Hall: Book presented to Thomas Barnes Master 1865-1866, by William
Claxton illuminated by his daughter Helen A. Claxton, 1867. When the freedom of the
Society was presented to the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos in 1867, Claxton
noted “‘my dear child Alice, I well know to be equal to the illuminating the copy of
the Freedom”’. (Claxton’s Journal II, 3 Jan. 1867.)
276 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
George III. These were thought to be the work of Hudson who was
the Master of Sir Joshua Reynolds.
Claxton also took the initiative in having made for the Society
copies of the very large portraits of Queen Victoria and Prince
Albert which are hung over the staircase in the present Hall. After
the death of Prince Albert, the Society had subscribed £100 to a
public testimonial from Bristol, but as this never came to anything,
he asked the Master, William Green, to let him get a portrait for the
Hall. Eventually the Queen intimated that she would have no objec-
tion to copies being made of the Winterhalter portrait of herself and
Albert, and Claxton “taking this as a Command”, put the work in
hand.
At the end of the book made by Claxton and his daughter, another
Treasurer, W. W. Ward, added notes on subsequent acquisitions.
They included portraits of Arthur Hart, Master and Mayor in 1688,
as a boy in fancy dress at a ball at Whitehall; of William Claxton;
of George Henry Pope, Treasurer from 1876 to 1900; of Percy Lis-
ton King, Treasurer from 1901 to 1914; of Jere Osborne, Clerk
from 1873 to 1919; of Mervyn Kersteman King, Master in 1874 and
Chairman of Colston Hospital Trust; of Alderman Thomas Daniel,
Mayor in 1797 and Master in 1805-6; and of Henry Herbert Wills,
founder of the St. Monica’s Home of Rest, who died in 1922. There
was also a bust of William Proctor Baker, Master in 1869 and Mayor
in 1871, one of the most influential citizens of Bristol who played a
leading role in the development of the Merchant Venturers’ Tech-
nical College.1®
The finances of the Society in the nineteenth century become much
more fully documented as the period goes on than they were in
earlier periods, but it is not possible here to examine all their com-
plexities. It is necessary, however, to give some general impression of
the financial position, which changed considerably during these
years.
In the first thirty years of the century, income averaged about
£4,300 a year, but expenditure was running at about £4,700.1® As
a result of these deficits, the estimated value of the Hall’s assets or
“‘stock”’ fell from about £40,000 in 1800 to a little over £25,000 at
the end of 1829.16* The position improved in the eighteen-thirties
when income normally exceeded expenditure and when there were
164 In this book, both Claxton and W. W. Ward give further details about the
portraits which were later destroyed when the Hall was blitzed in 1941. See also
H.B.22, p. 170, 24 June 1857; pp. 197, 198, 3 Nov. 1857; H.B.23, p. 216, 13 June
1862; p. 244, 10 Nov. 1862; H.B.24, p. 217, 4 Nov. 1867.
165 Based on an examination of the summaries given each year in the Hall Books.
166 #7,.B.16, p. 428, 8 Nov. 1830.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 277
some capital gains from the sale of land. In view of the eventual
termination of the wharfage lease and of the cranage dues and other
assets, the Society wrote off over £14,000 from the estimated value
of its ‘‘stock”’, but in spite of this, the value of the assets at the end of
1839 was over £34,000.1°? The Society’s assets were in fact consider-
ably under-valued, and this no doubt gave members the impression
that the financial position was less satisfactory than was actually the
case. It is interesting to note that when the Waterworks Committee
was examining the Society’s resources in 1844 with reference to the
capital required for the proposed scheme, the Treasurer put the
value of the Society’s property, excluding the Hall and the funds
held in trust, at £60,000.188
But whatever may have been the correct figure for the Society’s
assets, there was certainly difficulty from time to time in finding
money to meet immediate obligations. Claxton’s predecessors had
to some extent to live from hand to mouth and must have been in
continual fear in case some of the larger loans made to the Hall were
called in. Thus, in 1801 when £3,000 was due to the bankers Ames,
Cave & Co. and Miles, Vaughan & Co., it was necessary to take
up money on the Society’s bond in order to discharge the debt.1®®
In 1804, when a debt of £1,600 was called in, the Hall had to con-
sider whether to accept an offer of £1,000 for an annuity at 10 per
cent, which was a higher rate than that laid down in the annuity
tables, or whether to raise the money by borrowing.!7° In 1812,
William Ady wanted to call in a loan of £1,000, and the Treasurer
had to borrow £1,500 to meet this and other obligations.!71 Five
years later, the Treasurer reported that he had no money in hand to
meet a bill for a new crane, and £1,000 had to be taken up on bond
at a rate not exceeding 4} per cent.!72 Early next year, in an effort
to reduce its commitments, the Hall gave notice to all bondholders
that it intended to reduce the rate of interest from 4} per cent to
4 per cent. Debts to bondholders at that time amounted to £24,000.
The holders of bonds worth £10,500 refused to accept the new rate
and asked for repayment. The Treasurer managed to raise £5,000
from James Clark at 4 per cent and £5,150 from the bankers Ames,
Cave & Co., but in March 1819 Ames, Cave & Co. called in the
loan and the Treasurer had to raise the money by bonds. He was
also compelled to approach Mr. Deverell, from whom the Society
had bought land, and ask him to delay the settlement until 24 June.
167 77.B.19, p. 46, 6 Nov. 1840. Capital written off included £5,000 on the Hot-
well and £3,000 on the Dock. |
168 H7.B.20, p. 27, 13 Sept. 1844.
169 H7.B.13, p. 193, 15 Dec. 1801; p. 194, 11 March 1802.
170 H7.B.13, p. 292, 6 June 1804.
171 H.B.14, p. 224, 30 Dec. 1812.
172 Hf.B.14, p. 452, 16 Sept. 1817; 7 Nov. 1817.
278 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Deverell agreed to do so provided he was paid interest, but the
Treasurer must have found the situation somewhat humiliating.178
In 1827, £1,000 had to be taken up on bond to meet temporary
exigencies.174 In 1828, when a loan of £2,000 by Samuel Peach
and the Rev. Dr. Charlton was called in, the Hall was fortunate to
find a widow willing to lend the money at 4 per cent.175 Its credit
was certainly good, but the need to find money to repay bondholders
must have made life difficult for Treasurers in the first thirty years
of the nineteenth century. The basic problem was a large unfunded
debt, combined with the fact that expenditure exceeded income.
The Standing Committee was well aware of the inconvenience
caused by having large sums on loan at short notice, and on two
occasions it recommended setting up a sinking fun to redeem the
debts. In 1813, it suggested making a modest beginning by investing
£1,000 at 5 per cent. In addition, when payments on any life
annuity ceased, the amount which would have been paid was also
to be added to the fund.!7 There was another proposal in 1826 when
the Finance Committee reported on the increase in the debt since
1813. The Committee thought that the Society must try to avoid
considerable expense for some time to come and must also endea-
vour to “equalize” the amounts received from renewal fines, “to the
disproportionate Amount of which in different years they attribute
much of the Inconveniences which have arisen’’.177 It thought that
provision must be made for the liquidation of the debt with a view
to the time when “‘a great portion of their Revenue may be lost by
the expiration of the Wharfage Lease”’.1”8 It proposed that renewal
fines should in future be paid into the hands of Trustees and that a
Sinking Fund should be established by appropriating for the purpose
£400 a year rent from the Bonding Yard and the whole of the rents
from Camp Place building lots when they started to come in.”®
It does not seem, however, that a Sinking Fund was set up, and
since expenditure normally exceeded income in the first thirty years
of the century, it was not really practicable to do so.
In the eighteen-thirties, the financial situation improved. Expen-
diture was kept down, and it was symptomatic of the economy drive
that in 1836 the Committee, ‘“‘impressed with the great expediency
of diminishing the expenditure’’, recommended to the Hall that it
should ‘‘discontinue the annual vote of wine to the Representatives
173 17,B.14, p. 470, 20 Jan. 1818; p. 507, 6 Nov. 1818; p. 536, 4 March 1819.
174 H.B.16, p. 205, 25 May 1827. |
175 H.B.16, p. 297, 7 Nov. 1828.
176 7 B.r4, p. 258, 29 Oct. 1813; p. 277, 18 Nov. 1813; p. 294, 3 May 1814.
177 For Claxton’s comments on renewal fines, see p. 281.
178 The wharfage lease was due to end in 1863.
179 H.B.16, pp. 168-70, 8 Nov. 1826.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 279
of the City’’.18° The Treasurer was on a number of occasions in the
happy position of having a surplus which he used to pay off some of
the bonds. Thus, in 1833 he had £5,430 in the bank, and he was
instructed to discharge 51 bonds of £100 each, beginning at No. 83
and going on to No. 167.18! Next year, he had £2,500 in hand and
was able to discharge 25 more bonds.18? In January 1838, he recom-
mended paying off bonds to the value of £3,175, some of them
dating back to 1783, and he asked for discretion to pay off £2,175
outstanding bonds when possible.1** Later in the year, receipts from
the sale of land enabled him to reduce the debt by another £3,000.184
In April 1839, he reported that he had repaid £5,000 to James
Clark on a bond dated 25 September 1818 plus £90 8s. 2d. in-
terest,18° and in October he was in a position to reduce the debt
by a further £3,00018
There was thus considerable improvement in the financial situa-
tion even before the appointment of a salaried Treasurer in 1841.
Nevertheless, there was great anxiety about what would happen
when the Society lost a major source of income when the wharfage
lease expired in 1863, and the Society was faced by the possibility
of having to pay a large sum to the Colston Trust when a suit was
commenced against it in connection with the Stogursey estate.187
The Waterworks Committee reported in 1844 that it knew of no
other source except the Waterworks project from which to get an
income to meet the loss which would arise when the wharfage
lease came to an end, and this was probably a major factor in
encouraging the Hall to go ahead with the Waterworks proposal,
which would almost certainly have led to financial disaster.188
In 1851, the Treasurer was asked to prepare a scheme for meeting
the Society’s expenditure when the wharfage lease expired in twelve
years’ time.'®® The results of William Claxton’s labours are preserved
in a large volume in the Merchants’ Hall. It shows receipts and
payments, ordinary and extraordinary, year by year over the five
years 1845-50; the net income for 1851; the estimated income for
1863 when the wharfage lease was due to expire; and Claxton’s
recommendations on future policy.1°°
180 H.B.17, p. 448, 8 Nov. 1836; p. 451, where the usual entry of a pipe of wine
to the M.P.s was inserted and then crossed out.
181 H.B.17, p. 181, 8 Nov. 1833. On 4 Dec., he reported that he had given
notice to the bondholders and meanwhile had put £5,125 15s. 10d. into 5 per cent
Exchequer Bills. 182 F7.B.17, p. 282, 17 Dec. 1834.
188 H.B.18, p. 142, 10 Jan. 1838; p. 179, 25 April 1838, when he reported that
bonds worth £2,975 had been paid off.
184 77.B.18, p. 215, 28 July 1838. 185 77,B.18, p. 318, 12 April 1839.
186 77.B.18, p. 366, 11 Oct. 1839. 187 See pp. 365-70.
188 See pp. 413-26. 189 F7.B.21, p. 192, 8 Nov. 1851.
190 It is not possible to use here all the material contained in this very detailed
analysis.
280 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Income and expenditure over the five-year period were classified
under 30 headings.!*! The total income received in the five years
was £39,240 os. 9d., making an average yearly income of £7,848.
Expenditure came to £36,650 ros. 8d., an average of £7,330 a year.
The figure for expenditure, however, included nearly £9,000 laid
out on the development of Victoria Square, and this, of course, was
an investment.
Of the 30 sources of income shown in Claxton’s analysis, the largest
single item was receipts from wharfage which amounted over the
5 years to £16,117 5s. 7d., as against an expenditure of only
£5,401.192 Fines from the manor of Clifton brought in £6,721; the
Dock Estate produced £5,304; interest on bonds, £1,543 12s. 5d.;
premises let on lease for 40 years, renewable every 14 years, £1,049;
premises let on rack rents, £1,407 9s. 9d.; and chief and fee farm
rents in Clifton, £1,067.
The largest items of expenditure in this five-year period were
£8,752 paid in interest on bonds; £8,848 18s. tod. on developing
Victoria Square; £5,401 spent in connection with the Society’s
obligations under the wharfage lease; £1,760 2s. 3d. spent on the
Merchants’ Almshouse; £1,575 on salaries; £1,507 13s. 9d. laid out
on the manor of Clifton; £1,253 14s. tod. spent on the Hall;
£1,072 15s. 5d. on legal charges; and £1,007 18s. 3d. on gifts.
Claxton then made an estimate of the probable net income and
probable expenditure when the wharfage lease ran out in 1863. On
the basis of the figures for 1845-51, he thought that the annual
income would then be £4,861 11s. 1d., that is to say there would be
a drop of about £3,000 a year. Expenditure, however, would be
down to £2,730 a year, giving what he called a “‘plus” income or
annual surplus of £2,130 per annum. He calculated that in the years
up to 1863, he would be able to find £1,800 a year to reduce the
bond debts, and that when all the debts had been paid, including
£13,000 owing to Mr. Reed, he would, with the help of fines
received up to the end of 1862, have a surplus in hand of £8,350.
When fines were paid up to 1865, he thought he would have a total
of £17,000 in hand. The position, in fact, was not nearly as gloomy
as had been feared. By 1863, the Society would be clear of debt,
would have a credit balance and would have a disposable income
of between £1,800 and £2,000 a year.
Claxton pointed out that his estimated surplus of £17,000 by 1865
could be achieved “‘without frittering away our Property at Clifton
191 See Appendix E. In addition to the main analysis, Claxton examined in
detail how the particular items were made up.
192 This included £100 a year to the Havenmaster, and between £174 and £280
a year for the borough rate of St. Stephen’s parish.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 281
in driblets by a sale of which it would be easy to show you that you
are permanently damaged to a much greater extent than you are
immediately benefitted’’. He underlined his warning by reminding
them that “your Society is the only body in this City which has
retained its position, whilst others at one time coeval with it, have
ceased to be and exist only by repute. Such are the Merchant
Tailors’ and the Coopers’ Companies. In a great measure this fact
may be traced to the Prudence and Wisdom of your predecessors in
investing your Funds in real Property which in the other instances
I have named were invested in the Funds, and so the money became
available at any moment.” He urged the Society to avoid tempta-
tion: “viewing the future then from the past, I cannot think it would
be an advisable state of things for you to find yourselves with a large
surplus amount of Money at any one time, and I state my opinion
with deference, that instead of sacrificing your Property by a sale,
for the purpose of paying off debts for the imaginary purpose of
relieving yourselves of difficulties which really do not exist, it would
be far better to invest any surplus Capital that you can in the pur-
chase of Ground Rents, or other advantageous Property that may
offer”. Property which carried renewal fines should be converted
wherever practicable into annual ground rents, for it was better to
have a certain annual income than an uncertain one for some years
with a large surplus in others. Finally, he assured the Hall that his
estimated income for future years was in all probability an under-
statement.
As Claxton had predicted, the termination of the wharfage lease,
which was made by arrangement in 1861 instead of waiting for its
expiration in 1863,18 did not involve financial disaster. The drop»
in income resulting from the cessation of wharfage money was more
than compensated for by the increasing returns on developments in
Clifton and elsewhere, and there were occasional windfalls such as
£8,100 received from Mr. Proctor for the sale of land in Clifton in
1863, £10,540 from the sale to the Corporation of land required for
the docks in 1866, and £11,855 10s. from the sale of land in Canon’s
Marsh to the Great Western Railway Company in 1900.1°* The
Society thus had an annual surplus as well as money for investment
in building and agricultural land and, to a small extent, in stock.
This did not mean that the Society was never in debt in the second
half of the nineteenth century. From time to time it found it neces-
sary to raise capital for particular projects by taking up loans on the
security of its bonds,!®5 and at one time when it was overdrawn at
193 See p. 313.
194 HT B.23, p. 272, 20 March 1863; H.B.24, p. 88, 1 June 1866; H.B.28, p. 381,
21 Dec. 1900.
195 For example, £4,000 at 5 per cent taken up on bond from Mr. Hicks
282 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the bank it was required to pay 12 per cént on the overdraft and
hastily found a lender who would provide £5,000 for 6 months at
7 per cent.1°* In 1887, it was in debt for more than £18,000.197
Nevertheless, all the time its assets were increasing in value and it
had much larger sums available for educational and charitable
activity than had been the case in the first half of the century.
A brief examination of the income and expenditure account and
of the balance sheet for the year ending 10 November 1914 will help
to show how the position had changed since the mid-nineteenth
century.** Income for that year was £10,078 12s. 3d., as compared
with an average income of £7,848 in the period 1845—50.19 At first
sight, this seems a very modest increase and a small return for all the
effort that had gone in to the development of Clifton and other
property, but it must be remembered that the figure of £7,848 for
1845-50 included over £3,200 a year received from wharfage dues,
which had ceased in 1861. Expenditure in 1913-14 amounted to
£8,912 16s. 10d., of which £3,699 16s. 1d. was debited to the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College.
The greater part of the income in 1913-14 was derived from rents
and leases in Clifton and to a much smaller extent in Bristol,
Somerset and Gloucestershire.2° Interest on the loan made to the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College brought in £1,759 8s. od. The
largest item of expenditure was on the Technical College.?° Sundry
gifts amounted to £1,424 2s. 8d., salaries to £1,078 13s. 8d., and
£559 11s. 1d. was spent on the Merchants’ Hall.
The balance sheet for 1913-14 showed total assets valued at
£208,004 10s. 4d. as against liabilities to various charity accounts
of £6,770 13s. 10d. The assets consisted primarily of freehold and
leasehold property valued at £113,427 2s. 11d., the property and
equipment of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College valued
Townsend in 1866 (H.B.24, p. 115, 17 Aug. 1866); £5,000 from W. E. George and
£6,000 from J. Lead at 4 per cent in 1884 (H.B.27, p. 40, 25 Jan. 1884).
196 77,B.24, p. 87, 18 May 1866. |
197 77,B.27, p. 228, 23 Dec. 1887.
198 The accounts and balance sheet are given in Ledger No. 8, pp. 327 ff.
199 See p. 280. |
200 In 1913-14, fee farm and ground rents in Clifton brought in the net sum of
£4,855 1s. 5d.; premises let at rack rent brought in £2,265 9s. 7d., and there were
some relatively small amounts from Farm and Cathanger and from marsh land in
Canington in Somerset, as well as £156 from the Stapleton estate in Gloucester-
shire. Clifton fee farm and ground rents in 1900 had amounted to £4,467 ras. 11d.,
net, and in 1911 to £4,948 12s. 5d. net (Ledger No. 8, pp. 7, 10).
201 ‘The actual grant in money was smaller than this, because at this stage the
Society included in the figure a notional element of rent which it could have asked
for the use of the premises but which it did not in fact collect. The rent which it
might have demanded was regarded as part of its grant to the College. The Society
also charged interest on the loan made to the College.
Nineteenth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 283
at £55,969 14s. od., investments in various stocks valued at cost at
£25,203 os. 8d.;29? the Hall, valued at £6,000, and cash in the bank
of £5,254 12s. gd.
The resources of the Society in the later nineteenth and early
twentieth century did not constitute “immense wealth’, as was
popularly believed, but the Society had a comfortable income which
enabled it to make a significant contribution to educational and
charitable activity and most of its capital was in urban property
which was likely to increase very considerably in value.
202 Including nearly £12,000 in Bristol Corporation debenture stock; £4,568 in
Consols; £2,535 18. od. in 3 per cent Transvaal Loan; £2,000 in Canadian 4 per
cent stock; £647 ros. od. in the Leigh Woods Land Company; £500 in Bristol
Industrial Dwellings; £440 in Clifton Suspension Bridge Company.
CHAPTER 17
The Society and the Trade of Bristol in
the Nineteenth Century
THE SOCIETY’S OWN ACTIVITIES
In the nineteenth century, the Society gradually withdrew from the
numerous activities relating to commerce in which it had hitherto
been engaged, but the smile remained long after the Cheshire cat
had vanished, and the Society continued to think itself as consisting
of “commercial men”’ and as having an important part to play in
trade, even when the reality was very different. In 1835, the Com-
missioners on Municipal Corporations remarked that the Merchant
Venturers “‘do not exercise any authority whatever over the other
_ merchants of Bristol, but they adhere so far to the spirit of their
original institution, that they consider themselves incorporated for
the purpose of watching any public proceedings relative to the port
and trade of the city, and of interposing with their collective influ-
ence accordingly as they judge these to be advantageous or other-
wise’. As late as 1861, the Society when opposing a bill to regulate
pilotage in the Bristol Channel decided to petition against it in its
own right “‘as the recognised Guardian of the Mercantile interests
of the port of Bristol’’.?
Direct intervention in relation to the commercial policy of the
government or of the municipal corporation seems in effect to have.
petered out within the first quarter of the century, although there
were occasional flickers of activity in later years. Even within the
early part of the period there was a much smaller concern for trade
than there had been in the eighteenth century. The Society seems
to have been much more involved with its own interests than with
the general commercial difficulties of Bristol, and it was left to the
West India Society and the Chamber of Commerce to act as pressure
groups at a time when the trade of Bristol was suffering from relative
stagnation.®
During the renewal of the war with France between 1803 and
1815, the Society intervened on a few occasions to try to influence
1 Report from the Commissioners on Municipal Corporations in England and Wales;
Bristol, 1835, p. 56.
2 H.B.23, p. 97, 15 Feb. 1861.
8 For the West India Society and the Chamber of Commerce, see pp. 291-4, 294—
306.
The Society and Trade of Bristol, Nineteenth Century 285
government policy. In 1803, for example, the Standing Committee
approved a Memorial to the Treasury against a proposal to charge
the same duty on wine in the outports as was charged in London.
It claimed that the wine merchants of Bristol often had to send out
vessels in ballast, unlike the Londoners who could always be sure of
a plentiful supply of cargoes for export. The Londoners, moreover,
could bring back their wine in many bottoms, they were always sure
of their supplies and they did not have to keep big stocks. London
had the Court, the Parliament, the Courts of Justice and an immense
population and could in addition count on “‘the partiality the King-
dom in general have to wine imported into the Capital . . .”’.4 The
plea for special treatment for the outports was reminiscent of those
which the Society had made on so many occasions in the past against
the unfair advantages enjoyed by Londoners.
Three years later, Lord Sheffield, who had often put the case for
the merchants of Bristol in the House of Commons, alerted the Hall
to the threat from a bill for permitting the import and export into
the West Indies and South America of certain goods carried by
neutral ships in time of war, and the Hall decided to petition against
the bill.§
In 1812, the Society’s ancient enemy, the East India Company,
was under attack at national level from opponents of its monopoly.
It is significant that in Bristol the initiative was taken not by the
Society but by an ad hoc Committee on the East India trade which
met at the Commercial Rooms on 28 March 1812. It asked the
Society to support it by petitioning both Houses against the renewal
of the Company’s Charter and by contributing to the cost of the
campaign.® The unusually large number of 35 members were present
at the Hall which agreed to petition and to give £100 to the Com-
. mittee of Merchants, Traders and others who were endeavouring in
and out of Parliament to obtain a share in the trade.’ The attempt
was not immediately successful, and in 1813, the Society again
agreed to petition both Houses on the same lines as in the previous
year.® Interest seems to have declined by that time, since only 11
members were present at the meeting. The attack on the East India
Company met with partial success, and the trade to India (except in
tea) was thrown open in 1814.
Another issue on which the Society intervened in the war years
concerned the Orders in Council of 7 January 1807 and 26 April
4 H.B.13, p. 247, 28 March 1803; Book of Petitions, pp. 131, 132, 28 March 1803.
5 H.B.13, p. 383, 2 May 1806; p. 386, 5 May 1806.
®° H.B.14, p. 187, 4 April 1812.
? H.B.14, p. 194, 14 April 1812; Letter Book II 1781-1816, pp. 415, 417, for letters
to the M.P.s and others.
8 H.B.14, p. 230, 4 Feb. 1813; Letter Book II 1781-1816, p. 437.
286 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
1809, which were England’s reply to Napoleon’s Continental System,
They placed the areas controlled by Napoleon under a blockade and
made trading by neutrals extremely difficult. It became much
harder to export English manufactured goods to Europe through
neutral powers, and certain branches of English industry were
adversely affected. When England experienced serious economic
difficulties in 1812, there was considerable criticism of the Orders in
Council, particularly in industrial areas. The merchants of Bristol
were evidently gaining advantages from the blockade of French
ports and the restrictions placed on neutrals, and in May 1812 the
Society petitioned the House of Lords expressing concern at “‘the
industrious attempts of evil-disposed and of ignorant Men to excite
the lower orders of the Community to Acts of Tumult and Disorder
and destruction of their own happiness, and disgraceful to the
National Character, by various misrepresentations of the causes
which have produced a check to our Commerce, and a consequent
want of full employment in some of the manufacturing Districts of
the Country”’. The Society lamented that misguided men had been
taught to believe that the repeal of the Orders in Council would
benefit the commerce of the country. It regretted the distress, but
thought it was due to the unprecedented decrees of the ruler of the
French Empire, issued “without regard to the Distress of the People
over whom he has extended his Iron Sceptre . . .”. The Orders in
Council were a retaliatory measure and had been most effective in
destroying the trade of the enemy. The Society claimed that the
commerce of this country was finding new channels of intercourse
with Europe for the sale of British goods and West Indian produce
and that these had nearly superseded the American carrying trade.
America had foregone her neutral advantages,® and trade with
South America was now carried on almost exclusively by British
subjects. The trade of our own American colonies had been greatly
encouraged. If the Orders in Council were repealed, England and
her colonies would be deprived of these advantages, the ports of the
enemy would be open to neutrals and the carrying trade would be
thrown into their hands.® |
When the war came to an end in 1815, the Society presented the
freedom to Viscount Melville, First Lord of the Admiralty, in recog-
nition of his judicious disposal of the naval forces in the late war and
the powerful protection given to the trade of Bristol.™
In the post-war years, the Society intervened from time to time
on a number of comparatively minor matters affecting trade. In
1817 and 1818, for example, it sent Memorials to the House of
® England and the United States had gone to war in 1812.
10 Book of Petitions, pp. 140 ff. Petition presented May 1812.
11 H.B.14, p. 372, 8 Nov. 1815.
The Society and Trade of Bristol, Nineteenth Century 287
Lords asking for the repeal of an Act of 51 George III for the better
securing of excisable goods on ships.!? In 1819, as a result of a letter
from Liverpool, it sent a Memorial to the Commissioners of the
Treasury complaining about the many oaths required in the Customs
House and made the interesting comment on commercial morality
that “the Practice of transacting Business on Oath has proved most
seriously injurious to the Morals of the Parties concerned in it. The
general and indiscriminate resort to so sacred an appeal has gradu-
ally weakened its effect until it has become utterly inadequate to
the end for which it was originally instituted . . .”. The Society
argued that the practice did not achieve its purpose of preserving
the revenue and was “‘destructive of the National Morals by weaken-
ing that Veneration for the Supreme Being on which alone the
obligation of an Oath as well as all moral virtue must depend . . .”’.18
It did not add that swearing to a false statement made the merchant
liable to prosecution for perjury.
In 1821 the Society gave its support to the ship owners who were
opposing a bill then before parliament for assessing ships for the
poor rate. As there was no time to call a Hall in the absence of the
Master, it decided to write to the M.P.s for Bristol and Gloucester-
shire.14 Two years later, it was much concerned to obtain the repeal
of an Act of 1820 concerning insolvent debtors. It claimed that as a
result of this and other acts “Insolvencies which were usually the
effect of Misfortune or Imprudence are now continually the work
of contrivance.” There was now little fear of imprisonment, and
consequently “‘that sense of Shame and Pride of Character, which
distinguished the British Trader, and forms one of the best securities
of Commercial Credit, is now so far undermined, that it is become
no uncommon practice for Debtors to threaten having recourse to
the benefit of the Acts, if pressed for payment of their Debts . . .”.15
Although there was a special pressure group in Bristol concerned
with West Indian interests, the Society itself was sufficiently concerned
in 1823 to petition the House of Commons against a proposal to
adjust the duties on sugar imported from the East and the West
Indies in favour of the East Indies. It claimed that Bristol’s trade
with the West Indian colonies was by far the most considerable part
of its foreign commerce and that the proposal would damage a
large portion of the western part of the Kingdom ‘“‘of which Bristol
12 H.B.14, p. 426, 19 March 1817; p. 489, 19 May 1818; p. 492, 26 May 1818;
Letter Book III 1816-1826, pp. 42, 43. See also an earlier effort to repeal the Act,
H.B.14, p. 333, 30 March 1815.
18 H.B.15, p. 9, 1 July 1819 (g members present); Book of Petitions, pp. 152, 153.
Presented July 1819.
14 H.B.15, p. 135, 20 Feb. 1821.
15 Book of Petitions, pp. 166-8, 11 Feb. 1823. See also Letter Book III 1816-1826,
PP- 235, 239, 240, 241 for letters to the M.P.s and the press.
288 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
may, in a Commercial view, be considered as the Centre and
Capital”. The trade was already depressed and the planters had
been seriously affected, and it was “with the utmost surprise and
alarm’? that the Society had learnt of proposals which would in-
crease the distress which had already nearly overwhelmed the
planters.1®
In the same year the Society was concerned with a more local
issue when it received a letter from the traders in Ilfracombe asking
for support against a bill which proposed to increase the duties
payable in the port for the benefit of the lord of the manor. As the
port was useful to Bristolians, the Society decided to ask the M.P.s
to oppose the bill.’
In the mid-eighteen twenties, the Hall became involved, rather
unwillingly, in the fierce attack launched by the newly-established
Chamber of Commerce on the Mayor’s Dues and the Town Dues,
which were alleged to be crippling the trade of Bristol. The relations
between the Society and the Chamber of Commerce are discussed
elsewhere,!® but a report from the Society’s committee on Town
Dues is worth noting here because it shows that at least some
members were keenly interested in the commercial future of Bristol,
even though the Society as a whole had long ceased to give a lead.
The Committee affirmed that the ad valorem duties imposed by the
corporation deprived Bristol of ““The Advantages which to an in-
calculable extent are now enjoyed by the Town of Liverpool, and
may soon perhaps be possessed by other places rising into impor-
tance. .. .”’ It pointed out that as long as the manufactures exported
by Bristol were situated at their present distance from the city,
Bristol would be at a disadvantage, and the Committee thought it
highly impolitic to add to the evil by imposing heavy duties, especi-
ally at a time when “by the energy of the Traders and the bringing
into operation of improved modes of Inland Communication’ the
difficulties arising from distance might in part be overcome. It
pointed out “that in this Age of Commercial Adventure valuable
manufactures are continually finding for themselves new situations’’,
and it thought that it was of the greatest importance that the City of
Bristol should offer to such manufactures every encouragement to
establish themselves in the neighbourhood ‘‘by such modification
of the Dues of the Port as may promise a cheap and advantageous
means of sending the surplus of their Productions through Bristol to’
Foreign Markets’’. It stressed with enthusiasm the potentialities of
the new Empire of the Brazils and the independent governments of
South America, ‘‘at present known only by name in the city”. An
16 Book of Petitions, pp. 169-70, March 1823; H.B.15, p. 305, 14 March 1823.
17 H.B.15, p. 308, 1 April 1823; Letter Book III 1816-1826, pp. 253» 254.
18 See pp. 294-306.
The Society and Trade in Bristol, Nineteenth Century 289
immense trade employing shipping to an unbounded extent could
only be attracted to Bristol by encouraging the export of such goods,
and any duties which operated to their prejudice could be fatal.!®
In all this the Committee seemed to be making an effort to break
down the complacency and conservatism which was typical of many
Bristolians in the first half of the nineteenth century, but in the end
the Society found itself in alliance with the conservative Corporation
against the new Chamber of Commerce which had started the
agitation. ?°
It seems clear from this report that in 1825 at least some members
of the Society were deeply concerned about the whole question of
Bristol’s future in the changing economy, but in the second quarter
of the century, the Society did not attempt to work out a commercial
policy for the city, and its intervention in commercial affairs was
sporadic and limited to particular issues which were drawn to its
attention. In 1826, for example, it received a letter from one of its
members, Henry George Fowler, stating that the government was
thinking of confining the admission of foreign silk exclusively to
London and that Liverpool had already petitioned against the
proposal. The Clerk contacted the Bristol Chamber of Commerce
which told him that it had alerted Richard Hart Davis, M.P. and
the Society instructed the Clerk, who was then in London, to see the
M.P.s on behalf of the Society.24 In 1830, the limited monopoly of
the East India Company was being questioned in Parliament and
the House of Commons appointed a Select Committee to report on
the trade with the East Indies and China. Only 9 members of the
Society, 8 of whom were members of the Standing Committee, were
sufficiently concerned to attend the Hall in April 1830, when it was
decided to petition both Houses asking for the abolition of all
restrictions on trade with India and China. The petition alleged that
commercial monopolies limited commerce and gave an unfair
advantage to other nations, and such a monopoly in the hands of
persons who exercised sovereignty was peculiarly prejudicial.?? In
this, the Society was merely giving its support to an agitation which
had begun elsewhere, and its interest seems to have been limited.
In 1833, Parliament removed the remaining restrictions on the trade.
Other occasions on which the Society intervened in relation to
foreign trade included an attempt in 1831 to get the Treasury to
amend the regulations concerning the duties payable on foreign
19 Hf.B.16, pp. 41-5, 11 March 1825 (10 members present).
20 See pp. 295-300 for details of the dispute and the role of the Society in relation
to the Corporation and the Chamber of Commerce.
21 H.B.16, p. 127, 18 April 1826.
22 H.B.16, p. 385, 16 April 1830; Letter Book IV sene 1033; p. 243 for letters to
the Duke of Beaufort and the M. P. s.
290 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
corn;23 a request in 1834 that Bristolians should have the same
privileges as Londoners with regard to the export of rum;** and a
complaint to the Treasury in 1834 about the inconvenience of not
having a proper Customs House in Bristol.5 In 1839 the Society,
which had established its own bonded warehouse, protested against
a bill which proposed to extend to inland towns the privilege of
having such warehouses for foreign goods, ?® and in 1844 it protested
to the Council for Trade and Plantations that a proposal by the
South Wales Railway to put a bridge across the Severn at Frampton
would do serious damage to Bristol’s river trade in corn, which was
said to amount to about 90,000 tons a year. at
On a number of occasions, the Society was concerned wih com-
munications, port dues, lighthouses and pilotage which were
indirectly related to trade, but these can be better considered
elsewhere. After 1850, there seems to have been only two occasions
when it intervened on matters concerning foreign trade. The first
was in 1853 when it sent a Memorial to William Gladstone, Chan-
cellor of the Exchequer, concerning the duties on soap. It claimed
that many of the memorialists were engaged in the African trade and
that many British manufactured goods were exchanged for palm
oil. The trade was “‘of the greatest assistance in putting an effective
stop to the odious Slave Trade”’. Imports would be greatly increased
and the manufacture of soap would cease to be “at an almost
stationary point” if the excise on soap was removed. For full
measure, the Society added that the excise was very oppressive to
the poor and “in direct opposition to all measures which have
references to sanitary improvement’’.?® The second and final inter-
vention on a major issue of trade was in 1855 when, during the
Crimean War, James Bush raised the question of trade with Russia.
The Society decided to petition both Houses to ask the government
to compel Prussia to close the overland trade with Russia?®.
It seems clear that in the first half of the nineteenth century the
Society of Merchant Venturers gradually ceased to play an impor-
tant role in representing the commercial interests of Bristol and failed
to give any lead during the period when the city was undergoing
relative stagnation and being outciassed by more vigorous rivals.
The Merchant Venturers claimed in 1861 to be “the recognised
23 Letter Book IV 1826-1833, pp. 322, 323, 5 July 1831.
24 Letter Book IV 1826-1833, p. 363, 4 April 1832.
25 H.B.17, p. 208, 5 Feb. 1834. The Customs House had been burnt down in the
Bristol Riots of 1831.
26 Book of Petitions, p. 194, 13 July 1839.
27 Book of Petitions, p. 213, 29 Nov. 1844.
28 For the Memorial, see a large volume entitled Reports of Committees 1844-1856,
n.p. 15 March 1853
29 H B.21, p. 469, 12 April 1855; p. 477, 20 April 1855.
The Society and Trade in Bristol, Nineteenth Century 2g!
Guardians of the Mercantile interests of the port of Bristol’’,®® but
they made this claim primarily in order to bolster up their case for
continuing to control pilotage in the Bristol Channel rather than
because they really believed that it corresponded to reality.
THE MERCHANT VENTURERS AND THE WEST INDIA SOCIETY
Many of the economic issues which in earlier periods had been
dealt with by the Society of Merchant Venturers were handled in
the first half of the nineteenth century by the West India Society.*!
The records of that Association have been preserved among those
of the Society of Merchant Venturers, not because the two bodies
were closely associated but because of the accidental circum-
stance that William Claxton, who became Treasurer of the Society
in 1841, also took over the secretaryship of the West India Society
on 11 May 1843 when Charles Payne resigned through ill-health.*?
Although it is not possible here to give a full account of the West
India Society, it is necessary to comment briefly on it, since it
appears in part to have filled a gap left vacant by the Merchant
Venturers. It may well have seemed a more effective pressure group
to West India merchants than the older organisation.
The Society consisted of a group of between 20 and 30 members
paying an annual subscription of £5 5s. For much of the period it
was under the chairmanship of Thomas Daniel, who was a Mer-
chant Venturer, but its secretary from 1814 to 1843 was Charles
Payne who did not belong to the Society. Although the Treasurer-
ship of the Merchant Venturers and the Secretaryship of the Society
were in the hands of the same man from 1843 onwards, this was a
personal link and not an indication that the two organisations now
intended to work in close association. There was, it is true, some
overlap in membership. In 1806, for example, at least 12 out of the
22 members of the West India Society also belonged to the Merchant
Venturers, but only 7 of the 27 members listed in 1833 were Merchant
Venturers.23 Some Merchant Venturers like Thomas Daniel,
William Claxton, Philip Prothero and Philip Miles played a promi-
nent part in the affairs of the Society, but there are few references
30 77.B.23, p. 97, 15 Feb. 1861.
31 For its work in the last two decades of the eighteenth century, see pp. 237-8.
82 Claxton had been involved in the West India Trade and was a member of the
Society from 1825. The records preserved in the Merchants’ Hall include Book
of Proceedings 1782-1834 (which in fact goes up only to 1805); Book of Proceedings
1805-1821, Book of Proceedings 1822-1838; Treasurer’s Accounts 1816-1855; Book of
Proceedings 1839-1857 and a box of papers marked West India Colonies which contains
miscellaneous bundles of papers and letters up to 1854. The papers have now been
catalogued by Miss Elizabeth Ralph.
38 Based on the accounts and lists given at the end of the Society’s Proceedings
1805-1819 and Proceedings 1822-1838.
292 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
in the Minutes of either organisation to cooperation with the other.
The Society seems to have shown little interest in West Indian prob-
lems, even though the trade was one of the most important parts of
Bristol’s commerce and faced a critical situation when it was proposed
to abolish slavery.
During the war years up to 1815, the West India Society was
extremely busy asking for convoys for the West India fleet and
keeping in contact with the Admiralty and the M.P.s.*4 It was also
a good deal more active in commercial matters than was the Merchant
Venturers. Anything affecting the trade in rum and sugar was of
special concern to it, and it frequently petitioned the Treasury and the
House of Commons and lobbied the M.P.s.35 It endeavoured to stop
the use of grain in distilling.®¢ It called a meeting of shipowners to
oppose a proposed tax on shipping in 1812,°” it offered resistance in
1813 to a suggestion that American cotton might be imported in
neutral ships,®® and it tried to stop the pressing of mates from mer-
chant ships of over 50 tons.®®
After the war, the West India Society was very much concerned
with the threat presented by those who wished to control or abolish
slavery.*° In 1816, for example, it was informed by the Chair-
man of the West India Committee in London of a proposed bill
to establish a registry of slaves, and it organised a meeting in Bristol
of planters, merchants and others interested in the West India
trade to petition against the bill. In 1822, the Society petitioned
the House of Commons about the distressed state of the West Indies,
they were suffering from competition from Cuba and Brazil, which
were continuing the slave trade “‘in direct violation of those principles
of humanity which have been so powerfully advocated by your
Honourable House’’. 4?
The Bristol West India merchants knew that the tide was running
84 See, for example, West India Society Proceedings, 31 Oct. 1800; 28 Nov.
1800; 22 Sept. 1803; 2 Nov. 1803; 4 Nov. 1803; 7 Nov. 1803; 8 Feb. 1804; 19 Sept.
1804; 28 Oct. 1804; 15 Nov. 1804; 21 Dec. 1804; 22 June 1805; 27 May 1808; 8
Jan. 1810, and a large number of other references.
85 There are very many examples in the Books of Proceedings.
86 Book of Proceedings, 13 Dec. 1810; 16 Mar. 1811.
87 Tbid., 23 July 1812.
88 Ibid., 29 April 1813.
89 Ibid., 23 Dec. 1813.
40 There is a great deal of information in the Books of Proceedings about the long
drawn-out resistance to abolition. The subject can be touched on only briefly here,
but it is being examined in detail by Professor Peter Marshall.
41 Book of Proceedings, 1 Feb. 1816; 12 Feb. 1816; 13 Feb. 1816; 15 July 1816. The
meeting was held under the chairmanship of the mayor. The bill was regarded as
“of most dangerous tendency” and likely to cause “‘suspicion and alienation from
that respect and deference, which are now paid to local Governments”.
42 Book of Proceedings, March 1822.
The Society and Trade of Bristol, Nineteenth Century 203
against them and that they needed all the help they could muster.
When they heard in 1824 of a suggestion that a national West India
Company should be formed, they did not react with horror against
the proposal and they thought that if it did not interfere with the
private traders, it might be a powerful counterpoise to “that un-
relenting hostility which is now in such full activity against the
Colonial Interest’’.*8
In the later eighteen-twenties, the threat from the abolitionists
grew, and the Bristol West India Society gave vigorous support
to the West Indian interests in London as well as engaging in a
propaganda and fund-raising campaign in Bristol.
The battle was lost in 1833 and slavery was abolished in the
British Empire. The Bristol West India Society then tried to do
what it could to save something from the disaster. It fought to ensure
that the expenses of the Commission which allocated compensation
to slave-owners should not be paid out of the £20 million voted by
Parliament for compensation,‘® and it endeavoured from time to
time to highlight the labour problems resulting from emancipation.
Thus, in 1839 its Chairman, Thomas Daniel, called the attention of
the Secretary of State for the Colonies to the difficulties “arising
from an indisposition of the negroes to work for wages and in many
cases to work at all’’.46 In cooperation with London, Liverpool,
Glasgow and Dublin, the West India Association supported schemes
to facilitate immigration into the West Indies from America, India
and elsewhere!’ and tried to bolster up the economy by resisting
changes in the duties on East India produce and foreign sugar,
coffee and cocoa. *®
For a Society which claimed to speak for the mercantile interests
of Bristol, the Merchant Venturers were strangely silent about the
West India trade at a time when it was facing very serious problems
both before and after emancipation. It is perhaps understandable
that they did not want to become involved in the issue of slavery,
for slavery was becoming a dirty word, and even the West India
Association thought in 1829 that it could not easily dispose of its
literature, since it would be difficult “to procure the consent of any
48 Ibid., 26 April 1824; 3 May 1824.
44 Tbid., 19 April 1826; 25 July 1829; 12 Dec. 1829; 9 Jan. 1830; 16 June 1830;
6 Dec. 1830; 21 April 1831; 26 July 1832; 11 Feb. 1838; April 1833; 12 May 1833.
See also “West India Association Petitions, resolutions etc.” 1813-30, Reports, Petitions
and Miscellaneous Papers 1813-1826 and 1827-1830, and West India Association Letters
1830-1835.
45 Ibid., 30 Dec. 1833.
46 Ibid., 4 April 1839; 4 May 1841.
47 Ibid., 24 March 1849; 1 Feb. 1853. The Association’s letters 1845, 1846 and
1847 relate to attempts to get government support for immigration from India and
later letters relate to a proposal to bring coolies from Hong Kong.
48 Book of Proceedings, 11 March 1840; 5 Feb. 1841; 25 May 1844; 18 July 1846. .
204. The Merchant Veniurers of Bristol
respectable bookseller in Bristol to mix himself up with the con-
troversy over the West India Question”’.4® Nevertheless, slavery was
not the only issue of concern to West India merchants, and the failure
of the West India Society to seek or to receive support from the Mer-
chant Venturers on matters relating to the West Indies is difficult to
explain, except on the assumption that the Merchant Venturers were
not interested and did not consider intervention either desirable or
necessary.
THE SOCIETY AND THE BRISTOL CHAMBER OF COMMERCE
The failure of the Society to give effective leadership to the commer-
cial interests of Bristol in the early nineteenth century was an impor-
tant factor in the establishment in 1822 of a new organisation, the
Chamber of Commerce, which was founded in order to fight
vigorously for the business community against what was considered
to be a self-interested corporation and a lethargic and complacent
Society of Merchant Venturers. The man primarily responsible was
John Matthew Gutch, owner and editor of a local newspaper Felix
Farley’s Fournal. Under the pseudonym of Cosmo, Gutch printed in
his paper between October 1822 and April 1823 a series of open
letters, including a number addressed to the mayor, the Corporation,
the Docks Company and the Society of Merchant Venturers, in
which he emphasised the decline of Bristol relative to rival ports and
denounced, among other evils, the variety of duties imposed on those
who used the port.5° Although he probably exaggerated the signi-
ficance of the port dues in the relative decline of Bristol, he undoubt-
edly created a considerable stir in that complacent city and pointed
to the need for vigorous leadership if the decline was to be arrested.
Four of Cosmo’s letters were addressed directly to the Society and
made criticism ranging over a wide field. Like the Corporation, the
Merchant Venturers were “‘a self-elected and uncontrolled body”
and the method of entry into the Society made it inefficient for
effecting any great public good, apart from the administration of
charities. They had done nothing to lighten the heavy local taxes
and had indeed added to them.®! He asked them “Have you latterly
come forward . . . as the liberal projectors, the disinterested patrons
and promoters of any modern improvements for the benefit of our
city and port. . . ?52 Does your Society watch over the imposition
of whatever public burdens the Legislature may see fit to impose
upon trade. . . ? Do you collect and concentrate commercial infor-
4° Book of Proceedings, 12 Dec. 1829.
5° Letters on the Impediments which obstruct the Trade and Commerce of the City and Port
of Bristol by Cosmo, Bristol, 1823.
51 Cosmo’s Letters, p. 57. 52 Tbid., p. 58.
The Society and Trade of Bristol, Nineteenth Century 295
mation, and disseminate it for the benefit of your fellow-citizens? Do
you assist them with your advice on difficult cases? Do you now
Arbitrate for them in Disputes? — the principal object for which
your Society was first instituted! ! Or do you interpose the weight
and influence of the members which compose your Body to obtain
redress, where individual exertions have failed. . . ?5%
At least one Merchant Venturer attempted to defend the Society
in the press, but Cosmo swept aside his apologia.54 To the argument
that the Society had no funds available, Cosmo replied by asking
what was happening to the profits from wharfage and cranage which
the Society leased from the Corporation. The Society did not
publicly account for the profits, so that Bristolians had no informa-
tion about the amount of the profits or the extent to which they were
spent on improving the harbour and quays. He questioned the
legality of the duties and pointed out that Merchant Venturers were
themselves exempt from the burdens imposed on others.55 He
remarked pointedly “your title would import, that you could and
ought to effect all, that I trust the newly projected Chamber of
Commerce will accomplish,’’5* and he concluded one of his letters
with the words “To your Society, therefore, Gentlemen, I would
say, PONDER THESE HINTS, AND BE WISE. ...To my
Fellow-citizens, I would add, AWAKE, ARISE, OR BE FOR
EVER FALLEN.’5?
Largely as a result of Cosmo’s biting criticisms of the establish-
ment, there was formed at the end of 1822 the Bristol Chamber of
Commerce to do the kind of work which Cosmo thought the Society
ought to have been doing. Advertisements were inserted in the
Bristol papers in December 1822 and a meeting to elect a provisional
committee was held in the Commercial Rooms on 27 December. The
appeal for membership on 1 January 1823 carried the signature of
nearly 200 firms and individuals. The purpose was to protect the trade
and commerce of Bristol by the same means as were used by similar
institutions in other large cities and ports and to provide redress of
grievances in case of public and private difficulties or hardships.
Merchants, bankers, tradesmen and others were invited to join.58
The Chamber of Commerce in its early days cooperated with the
53 Tbid., p. 64.
54 In the Bristol Record Office, there is a collection of the Letters of J. M. Gutch
relating to the foundation of the Chamber of Commerce (Bristol Record Office:
13748(5)). The collection contains two letters from Mercator in defence of the
Society. They are endorsed “James Whitchurch to Cosmo’’.
55 Cosmo’s Letters, pp. 65 ff. 56 Tbid., p. 57.
57 Ibid., p. 70. |
58 The first Minute Book of the Chamber of Commerce subsequently pied out
of the hands of the Chamber but was eventually purchased by Mr. H. Meade-King
and restored to the Chamber on 8 September 1966.
296 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Society on a number of issues.5® In view of the interest aroused by
Cosmo’s criticisms, the Chamber gave a great deal of attention to
various local duties imposed in the port which were alleged to be
damaging the trade of the city. On this question, the Society had a
certain sympathy with it, but it had to be very careful. The Society
held from the Corporation the wharfage dues and the cranage rights,
and those who questioned the Corporation’s title to the Mayor’s
Dues and the Town Dues might easily proceed to question the right
to wharfage, which was a major item in the Society’s income.
The Chamber of Commerce in September 1823 submitted to the
Corporation and to the public a comparative study of the port
charges at Bristol, London, Liverpool and Hull, which showed very
clearly the high duties charged at Bristol. The Corporation took no
action. The Chamber of Commerce pressed the issue, and in Janu-
ary 1824, the Corporation condemned it as “hasty, premature and
animated by hostile feeling’’. The critics of the establishment then
petitioned the House of Commons for an enquiry into the decay of
the port.®® The Corporation was evidently disturbed by the attack,
and it referred the Memorial of the Chamber of Commerce to the
Society. The Society set up a Committee on Local Taxation which
obtained information from other ports and employed an accountant
to prepare figures. The Committee’s lengthy report was approved
by a General Hall on 8 March 1824 at a meeting at which only 16
members were present and was then sent to the Corporation. ®
The Report stated that the Committee was satisfied from the
evidence it had collected that the Port of Bristol had suffered a
comparative decline and that this decline was to be mainly attri-
buted “‘to the Municipal Taxes on Goods and Shipping, denomi-
nated Town and Mayor’s Dues’. The situation was likely to get
worse as internal communications improved. Exports from the
adjacent counties, which should naturally go through Bristol, were
going elsewhere. Even the staple commodities of the city were being
sent coastwise to London and Liverpool. The Mayor’s Dues and the
Town Dues were objectionable in principle as no equivalent was
received in return for payment. They were levied on ‘“‘foreigners’’,
that is non-freemen, even though they were resident in Bristol. The
duties were charged on an ad valorem basis, whereas they ought to be
levied per package and not according to the value of the goods. They
must be materially reduced, and the Corporation should also examine
58 H.B.15, p. 303, 14 March 1823; p. 311, 17 April 1823; p. 313, 6 May 1829; p.
321, 14 June 1823; p. 323, 17 June 1823. Letter Book III 1816-1826, pp. 2'79, 28}; ff.
60 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 103, 104; Charles Wells, A Short History
of the Port of Bristol, Bristol, 1909, pp. 58 ff.
$1 77.B.15, p. 356, 2 Jan. 1824; p. 359, 6 Feb. 1824; p. 363, 5 March 1824; p. 367,
8 March 1824. For the Report, see H.B.15, pp. 394 ff.
The Society and Trade of Bristol, Nineteenth Century 297
other port charges, such as the fees and perquisites of the bailiff and
quay wardens. It was essential that action should be taken in view of
the progress of Newport, Chepstow and Cardiff. The Committee
added, presumably with its tongue in its cheek, that although a re-
duction would affect the Corporation’s income, it was sure that the
councillors would have “too deep an interest in the general welfare of
their native City, to allow any consideration ofthat nature to interfere
with the adoption of any measure which may be found essentially
necessary to the promotion of its Commercial Prosperity. ®
At this point the Corporation was under fire both from the
Chamber of Commerce and from the Society. It met the attack by
introducing into the House of Commons a bill which would in effect
confirm its questionable right to levy Town and Mayor’s Dues and
at the same time it undertook to reduce substantially the actual
charges.*® The Chamber of Commerce was uncompromisingly
opposed to the bill and asked the Society for its views. The Society
also found the bill objectionable, since it sanctioned by law dues
which at present rested solely on prescription and it merely em-
powered, instead of requiring, the Corporation to make reductions.
It suggested that there should be inserted in the bill a schedule of
alterations and reductions, with rates which were not to be exceeded
in future. It sent a copy of this proposal to the Chamber of Com-
merce with a request that it should not be made public.
The Corporation resented the attitude of the Society, and on 17
March 1824 the Society assured the Corporation that it had never
entertained the notion that it intended by the bill to get parlia-
mentary confirmation of a dubious title, adding, one hopes sarcas-
tically, ““They are quite sure that the Common Council are incapable
of being influenced by any such Motive.” They thought, however,
that the bill had this tendency. ®
The Chamber of Commerce had no illusions about the motives
of the Corporation and requested a conference with the Society.
The Standing Committee declined a conference on the grounds
“that the Interests of the Public would be best consulted by pre-
serving the Proceedings of this Society upon all Questions arising
out of the Bill distinct from those both of the Corporation and the
Chamber of Commerce’’.** Although critical of the Corporation,
the Society was not willing to join in an all-out attack and was in
fact prepared to come to terms. On g April, the Hall decided to rely
on the intentions of the Corporation to make considerable reductions
and agreed to relinquish opposition, provided Common Council
62 H7.B.15, p. 398, 8 March 1824.
$3 17.B.15, p. 370, 12 March 1824; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 104.
$4 77.B.15, p. 371, 16 March 1824. 65 77,B.15, p. 373, 17 March 1824.
66 77.B.15, p. 375, 2 April 1824. |
298 ‘The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
would agree to a package rate in all cases instead of ad valorem duties.
It also recommended the Chamber of Commerce to abandon opposi-
tion, and it sent to Richard Hart Davis, M.P. a petition in favour of
the bill.®?
The Chamber of Commerce still objected, and it again asked for
a conference with the Society.®* It was extremely critical of the
Merchant Venturers and accused them of abandoning their prin-
ciples. With lofty dignity, the Standing Committee assured the Hall
that “‘this is an assumption which . . . the Committee presume to
think has been made without due reflection”’. It argued that in view
of the concessions made by the Corporation, continued opposition
would be very ungracious. It went on: “‘Persuaded that the Society
will think a Document of this description, charging them with in-
consistency, dereliction of Principles, hasty decisions, negligence
and oversight ought, in justice to their own Character, to receive
some Answer, the Committee direct that the foregoing Reply be
entered upon their Journals in order that it may be read in the Hall
this day, and if approved transmitted to the Chamber of Com-
merce.”’®® The Report was duly adopted in a Hall at which 13
members were present, and a resolution was passed that the bill and
the assurances given by the Corporation would be highly beneficial
to the trade and commerce of Bristol.?°
The Chamber of Commerce fought on without support from the
Society. A subscription of £3,000 was raised to oppose the bill,”
and in the face of such formidable opposition, the Corporation
withdrew it.72 In October, the Society assured the Corporation that
“they place the firmest reliance on the favourable disposition which
has been evinced by the Common Council to promote the Trade of
the Port.”’78
The Corporation realised that it would have to make some con-
cessions to its critics in Bristol. In November 1824, it informed the
Hall that it still wished, under authority from Parliament, to reduce
and modify the duties, ‘“‘which relief they again state would have
been voluntarily conceded to the Port if the interference of the
Chamber of Commerce had not prevented it.”’* The Corporation
clearly spoke with its tongue in its cheek. It is most unlikely that it
would have taken any action at all but for the agitation of the
Chamber of Commerce, and if its object was merely to modify the
duties, it could have done so without parliamentary sanction. In
67 7.B.15, p. 379, 9 April 1824 (19 present), Letter Book III 1816-1826, p. 377;
19 April 1825.
68 H/.B.15, p. 384, 10 April 1824. 69 7.B.15, p. 393, 1 May 1824.
70 H.B.15, pp. 389, 390, 1 May 1824.
71 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 104.
72 H.B.15, p. 404, 4 June 1824. 73 H.B.15, p. 421, 1 Oct. 1824.
74 H.B.16, p. 3, 17 Nov. 1824.
The Society and Trade in Bristol, Nineteenth Century 299
February 1825 it informed the Society that it would relinquish the
Town Dues on the Irish and the coasting trade and modify the rest.
It submitted to the Society a new schedule replacing the ad valorem
dues by duties on packages according to weight.?5 The Society
suggested a long list of amendments,’® most of which were accepted,
expressed the hope that there would be further modifications, and
then decided to support the Corporation’s bill.”7 It petitioned the
House of Commons saying that the bill would be of great benefit to
_the trade of the port.78
The Society was thus prepared to accept half a loaf from the
Corporation, but there was great opposition to the bill from a large
section of the community, Tories as well as Whigs, and a fierce
conflict ensued in the House of Commons, in which the Chamber
of Commerce played a major part. The Corporation was attacked
as an irresponsible and self-elected body which gave no services in
return for the duties it imposed and which published no accounts of
the money it collected.’® The Corporation retorted that the port dues
were the personal property of the Corporation and that it was not
accountable for them. The bill as finally passed did not give parlia-
mentary sanction to the Corporation’s claim to the duties. It
reduced the charges, but they still remained much higher than in
other ports.8° The struggle continued under the leadership of the
Chamber of Commerce, but the Society took no part. *®!
The conflict left a bitter taste in the mouths of many Bristolians,
and when the Parliamentary Commissioners on the Excise visited
the city in 1825, one of the Commissioners, Mr. Wallace, tried to
settle the dispute between the Corporation and the Chamber of
Commerce, which he thought was very injurious to trade. He
suggested establishing ‘‘a Channel of free intercourse” between the
Corporation, the Society and the Chamber by setting up a joint
committee to restore harmony. The Society was willing to act
jointly where necessary, but the Corporation could not forgive the
Chamber and informed the Hall that “it cannot but anticipate
insuperable difficulties in applying the Principle of negotiation and
arrangement to the settlement of differences which wholly consist of
75 H.B.16, pp. 20, 21, 4 Feb. 1825.
"6 71.B.16, p. 35, 22 Feb. 1825 (16 present).
7 H.B.16, p. 38, 11 March 1825.
78 Book of Petitions, p. 175, 22 April 1825.
79 To the collected edition of Cosmo’s letters. J. M. Gutch added a long appen-
dix giving ‘““The Evidence, Speeches of Counsel and Proceedings in Parliament
upon the Bristol Town and Mayor’s Dues Bill’. See also Latimer, Nineteenth Century
Annals, pp. 104 ff.
80 The bill received the royal assent 6 July 1825. It is printed as an appendix to
Cosmo’s Letters.
81 See Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 193 ff.
300 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
hostile aggressions on the one hand upon the Revenue and constitu-
tional government of the Corporation, and on the other of the
necessary defence and maintenance of Rights established by the
enjoyment and usage of Centuries”’.®2
In this dispute the Society must have been uncomfortably aware
that its own position was vulnerable if ‘“‘Rights established by the
enjoyment and usage of Centuries” were to be called in question. ®®
It was inevitable that sooner or later the Chamber, of Commerce
should ask awkward questions about the wharfage dues, which were
the Society’s main source of income. In July 1826, it wrote to the
Society arguing that the trade to Ireland ought not to be subject to
these duties.°4 The Standing Committee disagreed with this view,
and the Chamber of Commerce then suggested that the issue ought
to be decided in a court. Meanwhile, their members would pay the
dues conditionally in order to avoid “‘that feature of hostility’, and
the Hall agreed to this arrangement.®® At the end of the year, the
Champer of Commerce informed the Society that it was ceasing to
press its claim for discontinuance of wharfage and other duties on
the Irish trade as a legal right, but suggested a reduction of the
wharfage rates “as a measure of liberality and good policy’ to
promote the commercial interest of the city. The Society had no
desire to reduce its own income, and the Standing Committee
replied that it held the wharfage lease for a valuable consideration
expended in erecting quays and wharfs and other public improve-
ments from which the trade of the port greatly benefitted. It was not
reasonable to ask it to reduce the duties without an equivalent
return, and it thought the rates were on the whole reasonable. ®®
The situation became even more embarrassing in April 1827 when
the Chamber of Commerce asked the Society to let it have details of
gross receipts yearly since 1807 for wharfage, cranage, plankage,
anchorage and moorage, with a particular account for each year of
how the money had been used, “‘it being important that the Chamber
should know of the extent of the expenditure by the Society during
the period of twenty years in erecting and maintaining Quays and
Wharfs within the Port as compared with the Monies received’. A
82 77.B.16, pp. 86, 87, 90, 9 Nov. 1825; pp. 110, 111, 4 Jan. 1826. For a detailed
study of the Corporation in this period, see Graham Bush, ‘The Old and the New:
The Corporation of Bristol 1820-1851’, unpublished Bristol Ph.D. thesis, 1965.
83 See Cosmo’s Letters, pp. 65 ff., for his comments on the way in which the
Society had by an act of 47 George III secured parliamentary confirmation of
rights to wharfage, cranage, plankage, anchorage and moorage which hitherto
had rested solely on prescription.
84 77.B.16, pp. 136-7, 5 July 1826.
85 77.B.16, p. 142, 19 July 1826; p. 145, 2 Aug. 1826; p. 150, 18 Aug. 1826; p.
155, 6 Sept. 1826.
86 17.B.16, p. 180, 8 Dec. 1826.
The Society and Trade of Bristol, Nineteenth Century 301
similar request was received by the Society from one of its own
members, Samuel Harford, who stated that he believed he had the
right to have the information and to impart it to the Chamber of
Commerce of which he was a member. The Standing Committee
replied by asking the Chamber of Commerce why it wanted the
information and whether it intended to bring into discussion the
title of che Society to the wharfage duties.®” The Chamber answered
that its object was to effect a revision and reduction of the wharfage
rates and that it thought the dues should be used only for construc-
ting and maintaining the wharfs and quays. Ominously, it said that
it made the request “with the assurance that they would be under-
stood as desirous of obtaining the Statement from the Society in
Courtesy in preference to any other means that might be resorted to”.
Since the Society was annually making a considerable profit out of
wharfage, it reacted strongly. Its generalised assertion that the pro-
ceeds of wharfage were used for the benefit of the port could not
in fact stand up to detailed examination, and its best policy was a
point blank refusal to give the required information. The Committee
was “‘decidedly of the Opinion that the Society have no alternative
but to resist in limine a Demand made upon them for a purpose so
hostile to their Rights and Interests”. Loftily it concluded that
“without therefore entering into any formal refutation of the Prin-
ciples advanced by the Chamber of Commerce in qualification of
so extraordinary a Requisition, which however the Committee wholly
deny, they deem it quite sufficient on the present occasion to recom-
mend to the Society that a compliance with the application be
refused’’.88 It was hardly surprising that the Corporation showed its
gratitude for the support it had earlier received by passing a resolu-
tion expressing “their approbation of the decisive conduct adopted
by the Society.®® |
The correspondence continued. The Chamber of Commerce
denied that it was acting in a hostile manner. It had appealed to the
Society to use its influence with the Corporation to get the rates
reduced. It reminded the Hall that the Society had previously
affirmed with reference to the Town Dues that “All taxes on Trade |
where Trade derives no remuneration’? were in their nature
injurious, and it assumed the Society had not gone back on its
principles. The Society replied that the parallel was not correct. The
wharfage dues were not charges for which no equivalent was
rendered. They had been granted in return for the maintenance and
repair of the quays as well as for their original construction. It was
no answer to say that in the course of time “‘they had become more
than an equivalent (supposing this to be the case) unless the
87 H.B.16, p. 196, 6 April 1827. 88 H.B.16, pp. 200, 202, 4 May 1827.
88 77.B.16, p. 208, 27 June 1827.
302 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
opposite were conceded, that if they had fallen short, the Society
would have been entitled to an augmentation”. The Committee
sharply reminded the Chamber that this was not the first time that it
had used communications from the Merchant Venturers to make
unwarranted assumptions, and it regretted that such behaviour
tended to discourage unreserved freedom of intercourse. The
demand was most extraordinary and there was no justification for
it. 9°
The Chamber of Commerce was not easily discouraged. In
September 1827 it repeated its arguments but waived for the present
its request to see the wharfage accounts. It asked the Society to
review the duties and reduce them so that the revenue was equal to
the annual average expenditure on the port. The Committee again
claimed that the duties had been leased to it in return for a valuable
consideration and that the Chamber could not claim that they should
be reduced when trade increased unless it would concede that they
should be increased when trade declined. It endeavoured to conclude
the correspondence by saying ‘‘As it must be evident that any
longer protraction of a discussion, so conducted, can answer no
useful purpose, the Committee have determined that their present
Reply shall be as concise, as the occasion will admit, and they mean
it to be final.’ The Corporation again expressed its approval of the
Society’s action. °?
The Chamber of Commerce made one last effort in December,
but its resolutions were treated with contempt. The Hall Minutes
record that when the document was read “The futility of its reason-
ing appeared to be so obvious on the face of it that the Committee
were satisfied no Answer could have been necessary even if they had
not been precluded by their last Resolution from any further
Correspondence with the Chamber on the Subject.”’®3
On the question of wharfage, the Society was extremely sensitive,
and it was hardly surprising that it came in conflict with a Chamber
of Commerce desperately anxious to reduce port dues. There were,
however, other less controversial issues over which cooperation was
possible. The Chamber was very much concerned to develop towing
by steam in the river and harbour, and it pressed the Society to take
action. In December 1824, when the Chamber asked for support,
the Society sent it its resolution of 5 December 1823 asking the
Havenmaster to look into the matter and to allow the owner of any
small vessel to experiment if he did not think it would endanger
navigation.®** In 1826, the Chamber again raised the matter and
90 H.B.16, p. 218, 6 July 1827. 91 H7.B.16, pp. 213 ff., 14 Sept. 1827.
92 H.B.16, pp. 237, 238, 21 Sept. 1827.
®3 H7.B.16, p. 255, 7 Dec. 1827.
94 H.B.16, p. 6, 10 Dec. 1824; H.B.15, p. 355, 5 Dec. 1823.
The Society and Trade of Bristol, Nineteenth Century 303
was told that the Society’s committee was favourably disposed, had
obtained a number of opinions and had appointed a pilot experi-
enced in steam packets.®> In spite of these efforts, Bristol remained
far behind other ports, and the first steam tug did not operate until
1836.96
In 1828, the Chamber of Commerce wrote to the Society about
the possibility of getting the government to make Bristol into a steam
packet station for Ireland and also enquired about the state of the
fund, of which the Society was trustee, for making a bridge over the
Avon. The Society did not show interest at this time in the first
_ proposal, and with regard to the second, it referred the Chamber to
the Report of the Charity Commissioners on William Vick’s dona-
tion.*’ The Chamber pressed both issues again in 1829 and gave the
Hall information about its correspondence with the Treasury and
the Postmaster General concerning the proposed Mail Steam
Packets. It suggested that a joint committee of the Corporation, the
Merchant Venturers and the Chamber of Commerce should be set
up to consider the practicability of the improvements the govern-
ment could require if a Packet Station was to be established. The
Society’s reply was not encouraging. It pointed out that, like the
Chamber of Commerce, it had also taken up the matter with the
Treasury and the Postmaster General, that the government would
require a pier at Portishead or some other spot to ensure that the
arrival and departure of the mails did not depend upon the state of
the tides, that this would be costly and was not likely to yield returns
which would make it possible to do it by subscription. However, if
other bodies were interested in setting up a joint committee, the
Society would cooperate.®® There the matter rested.
The Chamber of Commerce was more successful in its attempt to
get action about a bridge over the Avon. As early as 1823, Cosmo
had been very critical about the lack of publicity concerning Vick’s
fund and suggested that if the money in the fund was still insufficient
the Society ought to ask for additional subscriptions, which would
be forthcoming, and there could then begin ‘‘one of those bold and
animating schemes of improvement which would have given a spur
and activity to the present paralized and torpid energies of the
Citizens of Bristol’’.®® In 1829, under pressure from the Chamber,
the Society took some action. It pointed out that the Fund would not
amount to £10,000 until 1834 and that this would not be enough for
%5 H.B.16, pp. 120, 121, 22 March 1826; p. 123, 7 April 1826; p. 129, 3 May 1826.
96 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 76 ff.
°7 H.B.16, pp. 286, 287, 15 Aug. 1828; Letter Book IV 1826-1833, p. 127, 19 June
1828. For Vick’s charity, see pp. 115, 245, 434, 542.
*8 77.B.16, p. 334, 14 Aug. 1829; p. 337, 28 Aug. 1829.
99 Cosmo’s Letters, p. 59.
304 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the project, but it undertook to get estimates and prepare schemes.!°°
A committee was set up to prepare a bill, and the Mayor, the Gover-
nor of St. Peter’s Hospital and the President of the Chamber of
Commerce were asked to join it. The Society thought that the scheme
should be carried through by Commissioners rather than by a joint
stock company. Early in 1830, the Society petitioned parliament
and obtained an Act, but for various reasons the scheme came to
nothing at this time.1°
There seems to have been only occasional contact between the
Society and the Chamber of Commerce in the eighteen-thirties.
In 1833 the Chamber asked the Society to support its Memorial to
the Docks Company requesting a reduction of the rates charged.
The Society referred the request to a committee, but took no further
action.!°2 In 1836, the Chamber drew the Society’s attention to the
dangers of “contention amongst the Captains and Owners of steamers
employed in towing” arising from lack of regulation. The Society
thought this was a matter for the Corporation.1°* In the same year,
the Society, the Chamber of Commerce and the Great Western
Steamship Company were all represented on a committee set up by
the Town Council to consider the needs of the port and the recon-
struction of the Docks Company. The Report it produced has been
described by one historian of the port as “more like a financial
fantasy than the recommendation of a body of men with any sense of
realism”? ,194
In the eighteen-forties there was a growing demand that the
Corporation should take over the Docks Company, and in 1846
there was formed a Free Port Association into which the Chamber
of Commerce appears to have been absorbed.!°° The Free Port
Association achieved its objectives in 1848. In 1851 Robert Bright,
who had been Chairman of the Free Port Association, sent to the
Society a Memorandum from a large’ body of merchants, bankers
and traders asking it to cooperate in re-establishing a Chamber of
Commerce.!°* The Memorial proposed a very close relationship.
between the two bodies. The Society was not willing to surrender
any of its independence or to resume the role which it had played in
100 77,B.16, p. 334, 14 Aug. 1829; p. 337, 28 Aug. 1829.
eae -B.16, p. 342, 11 Sept. 1829; pp. 347, 348, 11 Sept. 1829; p. 372; 1 Feb.
1030
ion H.B.17, p. 180, 8 Nov. 1833. In 1834, the Chamber did in fact succeed in |
getting the Docks Company to reduce the charges. (Charles Wells, A Short peed
of the Port of Bristol, Bristol, 1909, p. 65.)
108 Hf.B.17, p. 379, 9 March 1836.
104 W. G. Neale, A? the Port of Bristol, vol. 1, Bristol, 1968, p. 6. Charles Wells, A
Short History of the Port of Bristol, pp. 69 ff.
105 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 300. The Bristol Chamber of Com-
merce still awaits its historian.
106 77.B.21, p. 105, 10 Jan. 1851.
The Society and Trade in Bristol, Nineteenth Century 305
earlier periods as a major champion of the commercial interests of
Bristol. It welcomed the establishment of a new Chamber as being
highly beneficial to the mercantile interests of the city, but was of the
opinion that ‘“‘the permanence and utility of such a body would be
better insured by its entire independence of the Society. .. .” If
there were enough subscribers, the Society would contribute up to
| £100 a year.!°? This was perhaps a formal recognition of what had
long been the reality, that the Society was no longer greatly interested
in the objects for which it had originally been constituted and that it
was finding its raison d’étre in other activities. |
Robert Bright regretted that the Society was unwilling to take a
prominent part in the constitution of the new Chamber of Com-
merce, but managed to get it to agree to the Master being ex officio
President and the Wardens being two of the Vice-Presidents.1%
Even this tenuous link was broken in 1857 when the Hall voted
against renewing its annual subscription on the grounds that the
Chamber in communicating with one of the M.P.s had made use of
‘language offensive to the Society of Merchant Venturers”’. I. W.
Rankin, Chairman of the Committee of the Chamber, assured the
Hall that the Chamber would not have intentionally spoken dis-
respectfully of the Society, and the Hall responded by renewing its
annual subscription but decided that the Master and Wardens
should not in future be ex officio President and Vice-Presidents of the
Chamber.!°® Although the Chamber pressed the Society to think
again and at least to have some Merchant Venturers on its Com-
mittee, the Hall decided that it was undesirable to be connected in
any more intimate manner.}!° |
In the later eighteen-fifties and early eighteen-sixties the two
organisations occasionally cooperated on matters of mutual interest.
In 1858, for example, the Chamber of Commerce sent a deputation
_ to ask the Merchant Venturers to appoint a committee to confer
. with the Mayor, the Docks Committee and the Chamber of Com-
merce concerning provision for larger steamships at the mouth of the
Avon. A committee was appointed, and the parties met at the Docks
Office. The Hall Minutes record laconically ““No-one had a plan.”
A resolution was passed to the effect that the mouth of the Avon
ought to be made suitable for this purpose and that a sub-committee
should consider the best method, but the, Master and all except one
of the Docks Committee declined to vote.™1
In 1859, the Chamber of Commerce enquired whether the Society
107 H.B.21, p. 117, 1 March 1851.
108 Hf,.B.21, p. 146, 20 June 1851.
109 H,B.22, p. 124, 28 Jan. 1857; p. 133, 21 Feb. 1857.
110 77,B.22, p. 164, 24 June 1857; p. 177, 14 Aug. 1857; p. 187, 11 Sept. 1857.
111 H,B.22, p. 227, 12 Feb. 1855; p. 235, 12 March 1858.
306 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
would cooperate with it and the Docks Committee in an attempt to
get Lundy made a Harbour of Refuge. The Master said that no
doubt the Society would do so as it had first put forward the proposal
itself, and a resolution was passed stating that although the Society
regretted that the Chamber had acted in opposition to it by advoca-
ting Clovelly rather than Lundy, it was glad the Chamber now shared
its views and that it would cooperate.!!2
Next year, the Chairman of the Chamber of Commerce offered to
support the Society in opposing a bill to alter the pilotage system,
and the offer was accepted.1!8 Three years later, the Master,
Wardens and others went on a joint depuation with the Chamber of
Commerce to the Postmaster General to press for favourable con-
sideration for Bristol as a port of departure for the’ West India
Mails.""4 After that, there was little contact between the two bodies
since the Society had for the most part withdrawn completely from
involvement in matters which were of concern to the Chamber of
Commerce.
1? H.B.22, p. 343, 8 April 1859.
118 H7.B.23, p. 82, 13 Dec. 1860.
114 77, B.23, p. 356, 8 April 1864.
CHAPTER 18
The Port, the River and the Sea in the
Nineteenth Century
THE DOCKS
THE proposal to make a Floating Harbour which had been under
consideration by a joint committee of the Corporation and the
Society! came alive again in the early nineteenth century. In July
1800, while the war with France was still going on, the Hall looked
again at its resolution of 1791 and asked the Standing Committee
to confer with the Corporation with a view to expediting the
business. The Corporation continued to drag its feet, and a year
later the Society asked the Mayor why no action had been taken.?
The joint committee eventually prepared a report which was con-
sidered by the Society on 11 March 1802.4 Considerable modifica-
tions were made in the months that followed, and what eventually
emerged in the face of strong opposition was an Act for improving
and rendering more commodious the Port and Harbour of Bristol.®
Although the bulk of the capital came from subscriptions, part of it
was raised by a mortgage. The proposal that the Corporation and
the Society should guarantee the interest on the mortgage was
dropped during the passage of the bill through the Lords and,
instead, a rate was laid on houses and land in the city.* The rights
of the Corporation and the Society to collect their various dues in
the port were left untouched, and the scheme thus involved the two
corporations in no risk whatever. Nevertheless, the Board of Directors
established by the Act consisted of 9 members of the Corporation,
including the Mayor, 9 members of the Society of Merchant
Venturers, including the Master, and 9 members elected by the
shareholders. Of the 242 original subscribers, nearly 50 were
1 See p. 159.
2 H.B.13, p. 149, 29 July 1800 (11 members present).
3 H.B.13, p. 180, 7 July 1801.
4 H.B.13, pp. 196 ff., 11 March 1802.
5 43 George III c. 140. For details concerning the Floating Harbour, see R. A.
Buchanan, ‘‘The Construction of the Floating Harbour in Bristol: 1804-1809”,
Trans. B. G. Arch. Soc., \xxxviii, 1969; W. G. Neale, At the Port of Bristol, vol. 1.
1968; Charles Wells, A Short History of the Port of Bristol, 1909. See also H.B.13, p.
220, 25 Aug. 1802 (12 present); pp. 241 ff., 8 Feb. 1803 (12 present).
6 W. G. Neale, op. cit., pp. 7, 8.
308 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Merchant Venturers, as were 5 of the g directors elected by the main
body of the shareholders.’
The subsequent history of the new Docks Company up to 1848
when it was taken over by the Corporation need not concern us here,
but it must be noted that the Society had in some degree a vested
interest in it through its ex officio members and was therefore not
inclined to play a leading part in the movement led by the Chamber
of Commerce and the Free Port Association for the taking over of
the Docks by the Corporation.® Moreover, it was extremely anxious
to retain its wharfage lease, even though the establishment of a
Docks Company naturally raised the question of why the Society
should continue to collect port dues.? When the Free Port movement
was successful in 1848 and the Corporation took over the docks, the
Society still retained its wharfage lease.
During the period when the Society was so well represented on
the board of the Bristol Dock Company, it did not show any
enthusiasm for schemes which might interfere with the prosperity of
the city docks. In 1841 it joined the Corporation in opposing the
Pill Dock bill,1° and in 1846, together with the Corporation, it
offered ‘strenuous opposition” to a bill to make a pier at Portbury
and a railway from there to Bristol, on the grounds that it would
obstruct navigation, put tolls on vessels in Portishead roadstead and
injure the trade of Bristol.
After the city docks had been taken over by the Corporation, the
Society showed much greater interest in schemes for developing new
docks down the river which might overcome some of the disadvan-
tages of the city docks. As has already been noted, the Society had
cooperated with the Chamber of Commerce and the Corporation in
1858 to consider the possibility of providing for larger steamers at
the mouth of the Avon.}? Nothing came of this, but in 1861 the Bristol
Port Railway and Pier Company was formed with a view to develop-
ing Avonmouth. Three Merchant Venturers were members of the
provisional committee.!* In February 1862, the promoters explained
? The list of subscribers named in the Act of 1803 is printed in Wells, op. cit., pp.
42 ff. The g directors elected by the shareholders are listed in Wells, p. 46.
8 See p. 304.
® For the wharfage lease, see pp. 310-13.
10 H.B.19, pp. 105, 107-8, 10 May 1841. The Society claimed that proposal to
convert Pill into a public creek was put forward by “‘a private Company .. . for
their own individual benefit”. As a result of opposition, the bill was withdrawn
(H.B.19, p. 109, 22 May 1841).
11 77.B.20, p. 217, 16 April 1846; p. 218, 21 April 1846; p. 219, 23 April 1846;
pp. 220-1, 25 April 1846; p. 222, 1 May 1846; p. 228, 13 May 1846.
12 See p. 305; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 249.
18 P, W. S. Miles, who was also President of the Chamber of Commerce, F. W.
Green, Master of the Society, and Robert Bright. See also Latimer, Merchant
Venturers, pp. 251 ff.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 309
their plans to the Standing Committee and informed it that the
railway would not interfere with the Society’s quarries, and in
August the Society agreed to subscribe £1,000 provided it could be
recovered in cash from the compensation due from the Company in
respect of the Society’s property.!4 The Act went through in 1862,
and with compensation received for 5 acres of land the Society sub-
scribed £1,000 to the Company.!® The line to Avonmouth was
opened in March 1864 and the pier was completed about three
months later.16 The development of a line from Avonmouth to
Bristol was obviously related to the possibility of constructing a dock
there, and even before the railway began, a number of people
associated with it, including two Merchant Venturers, P. W. S.
Miles and Robert Bright, formed in 1862 the Bristol Port and
Channel Dock Company for that purpose. There was fierce con-
troversy about this threat to the city docks, but eventually the bill
went through in 1864 with the support of the Corporation and the
Society.??
The Avonmouth scheme, however, had a rival in the Portishead
Pier and Railway Company which had obtained an Act in 1863.
One of its promoters was Alderman Richard Robinson, who had
been Master of the Merchant Venturers in 1846-7 and who was
strongly opposed to the Avonmouth dock. There was thus some divi-
sion within the Society. When in 1868 Mr. Averay Jones and Mr.
Thomas Terrett Taylor successfully carried a proposal that the
Society should invest £2,500 in the Avonmouth scheme on the
grounds that it was of vital importance to the future of Bristol,'®
Mr. Robinson proposed that a similar amount should be invested in
the Portishead scheme, and this was eventually agreed.!® The Society
thus made relatively modest investments in both schemes, the merits
of which were dividing Bristolians. Avonmouth Dock was opened in
1877 and Portishead in 1879.
Although the Society as a corporate body ceased to be directly
involved in control of the docks when the Corporation took over
from the Docks Company in 1848, individual members continued to
play a very important part in running the docks and shaping policy
as members of the City Council and of the City Docks Committee.
The first chairman of the Docks Committee was Richard Jenkins
Poole King who held office from 1848 to 1859 and who was Master
14 H.B.23, p. 196, 20 Feb. 1862; p. 228, Aug. 1862.
15 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 251.
16 Charles Wells, A Short History of the Port of Bristol, p. 165.
17 H,.B.23, pp. 366 ff.; Wells, op. cit., p. 183; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp.
251 ff.
18 17.B.24, p. 259, 13 June 1868; p. 261, 17 July 1868; p. 264, 18 July 1868; pp.
269-70, 31 July 1868.
19 H].B.24, p. 271, 31 July 1868; p. 285, 16 Oct. 1868; p. 288, 31 Oct. 1868.
310 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
in 1851-2. One of the most forceful and controversial members of
the Committee was William Proctor Baker, Master 1869~70, and
Chairman of the Docks Committee from 1880 to 1882 and again
from 1893 to 1899. Edward Burrow Hill, Master 1894-5, was Deputy
Chairman from 1893 to 1897. Of the 108 members of the Docks
Committee between 1848 and 1899, 18 were elected Master of the
Merchant Venturers, 3 had been Master before 1848 and 1 had been
a Warden.?° Thus a number of Merchant Venturers were deeply
involved in the controversial issues about the docks which led to
such fierce conflict in Bristol in the second half of the nineteenth
century, but the Society as a corporate body was, perhaps fortu-
nately, not directly concerned.
THE WHARFAGE LEASE
The wharfage lease which had been granted by the Corporation to
the Society in 1764 for g9 years provided a major source of income.#4
The legality of the dues was not without question, and in 1807 the
Society, with the support of the Corporation, obtained an Act of
Parliament confirming its claim. The Act made the duties chargeable
on any wharf or quay within the port and extended considerably
the Corporation’s control over pilotage. It has been described as an
example of the extraordinary effrontery with which select and closed
corporations sought legal sanction for an extension of their very
doubtful powers and as “‘an elaborate piece of legal chicanery’’.??
It was later alleged that the bill had been pushed through in a hurry
while the attention of many people in Bristol was still focussed on
the Dock Act and that clauses favourable to the Society and the
Corporation had been inserted during its passage through Parlia-
ment.?8 The Society had successfully achieved what the Corporation
later attempted to do unsuccessfully with the Town and Mayor’s
Dues, that is, obtain parliamentary sanction for duties which had
hitherto rested only on prescription. 24
20 See the biographies in W. G. Neale, At the Port of Bristol vol. 1 Bristol, 1968.
21 See p. 152.
22 47 George III Sess. 2, cap. 33, ‘“‘An Act for ascertaining and establishing the
rates of wharfage, cranage, plankage, anchorage and moorage to be received at the
lawful quays in the Port of Bristol; for the better regulation of pilots and pilotage
of vessels navigating the Bristol Channel.”’ H.B.73, p. 427, Jan. 1807; p. 433, 21
Feb. 1807; p. 454, 13 June 1807. A. J. Pugsley, ‘““Some contributions towards a
study of the economic development of Bristol in the 18th and 19th Centuries”,
unpublished Bristol M.A. thesis, 1921.
28 See Letters on the Impediments which obstruct the Trade and Commerce of the City and
Port of Bristol by Cosmo, Bristol, 1823, pp. 65 ff. for some hard-hitting criticisms;
Report from the Commissioners on Municipal Corporation in England and Wales 1835:
Bristol, pp. 62 ff.
24 See p. 297.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 311
The Society continued to appoint a Collector or Receiver of
wharfage*5 and to press its right to the dues in the face of opposition.
In 1811 and 1812, for example, it complained that Customs Officers
were not insisting on seeing receipts for the payment of wharfage
before they cleared goods,?¢ and it tried to prevent evasion by small
craft discharging goods on private quays.?7 It even claimed that
wharfage was due when goods were shipped from one vessel to
another, but after getting counsel’s opinion, it decided not to press
the issue. 28 It resisted the claim of the Chamber of Commerce that
ships in the Irish trade were not liable, and it refused a request that
the accounts should be produced. ?®
The criticisms made by the Commissioners on Municipal Corpora-
tions in 1835 and the reform of the Corporation in the same year
made it inevitable that the wharfage lease would come under
increasingly critical examination in the years that followed, parti-
cularly when there was a movement led by the Chamber of Com-
merce to reduce the charges in the port. In 1836 the Town Council
set up a committee to confer with the Society with a view to relieving
the burdens on trade and instructed its Finance Committee to
examine the circumstances in which the grant had been made.®° It
also began to look at the state of repair of the premises granted under
the lease.2! The Society professed its willingness to cooperate,
provided the validity of the lease was not questioned.*? As a gesture,
it reduced the wharfage duty on tea.?% Discussions dragged on. In
1839 a deputation from the Hall conferred with the Town Council,
the Chamber of Commerce and the Great Western Steamship
Company about the port charges. The joint committee reported in
favour of the purchase of the docks by the Corporation and enquired
whether in that case the Society would surrender its wharfage lease.
The Society expressed its willingness to cooperate in any plan to
reduce taxation in so far as funds were available.*4
Nothing further was done, but the Society was aware that its
wharfage lease was not likely to be renewed and was reluctant to
spend money on port facilities. In 1841, it claimed that it had spent
many thousands of pounds in improving the port in recent years by
25 H.B.14, pp. 51 ff., 28 March 1809, Joseph Smith appointed. He was also
Collector of the Town Dues. When he died, Charles Anderson was appointed
(H.B.14, Pp. 335, 30 March 1815). On his death, Stephen Henley Stedder was
appointed (H.B.17, p. 362, 25 Jan. 1836; p. 382, 20 April 1836).
26 H.B.14, p. 180, 24 Dec. 1811; p. 184, 4 Feb. 1812.
27 H.B.15, p. 202, 5 Dec. 1821.
28 .B.15, p. 303, 14 March 1823. 29 See pp. 300-1.
30 H.B.17, p. 392, 11 May 1836; p. 396, 8 June 1836.
31 H.B.17, p. 483, 12 Oct. 1836.
82 H.B.18, p. 5, 9 Dec. 1836; p. 19, 10 Feb. 1837.
33 H.B.18, p. 7, 9 Dec. 1836. 34 H.B.18, p. 389, 8 Nov. 1839.
312 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
removing the Round Point and by other improvements and that it
was unable to provide more sheds on the quays since the wharfage
lease was drawing to a close. In fact, the lease was not due to end
until 1863, but the Society evidently wished to keep down its expen-
diture.*> The Society was also reluctant to provide planks, arguing
that their provision was attached to the cranage lease, which had
been surrendered in 1837, and not to the wharfage lease, but on this
issue it came to an agreement to pay a certain sum annually to the
Corporation. 36
When the Free Port Movement achieved its objective in 1848 and
the Corporation took over the docks from the Docks Company, the
newly established City Docks Committee pressed for a reduction in
the wharfage rates, and the Society agreed to give up the duty on
the Irish trade and to reduce duties on other goods by 10 per cent.3?
After the Corporation had acquired the docks, the wharfage lease
became even more anomalous, but the Society was extremely
reluctant to give it up. When a bill on Local Dues on shipping was
introduced in parliament in 1856, the Hall observed that the result
would be to confiscate the Society’s interest under the wharfage
lease and that it was “imperatively incumbent’? to protect itself
from “such an unjust and oppressive proceeding’. The Chamber of
Commerce was informed that if the bill went through, the Society
would be under the painful necessity of discontinuing its subscrip-
tion. 38
At the end of 1858, the Docks Committee pressed for negotiations
to end the lease, and a deputation led by the Mayor suggested that
in view of the lack of proper shed accommodation in the port and
the recent defalcation by one of the clerks of the Collector of Whar-
fage, it would be best for the trade of the port if the Society surren-
dered the unexpired portion of the lease.8® The Standing Committee
recommended that the Hall should not negotiate but should instead
offer to consider any plans put forward by the Corporation for pro-
viding more sheds.4° The Docks Committee then got estimates
amounting to £4,650 for the 14 sheds required. The Hall agreed to
pay £500 a year while its lease lasted, provided that this did not
amount to more than half the cost and provided that there was no
question of terminating the lease. *'
85 77.B.19, p. 144, 10 Sept. 1841.
86 7.B.19, p. 243, 13 May 1842; pp. 275-7, 9 Sept. 1842.
87 H.B.20, p. 395, 21 July 1848; p. 397, 28 July 1848.
38 71.B.22, p. 32, 15 Feb. 1856; p. 35, 16 Feb. 1856.
3° H.B.22, p. 293, 3 Dec. 1858. For the defalcation by one of the clerks of the
Collector, S. H. Stedder, see H.B.22, p. 274, 10 Sept. 1858 and H.B.23, p. 87, 11
Jan. 1861. The defalcation over a ten year period amounted to £217 15s. 1d.
40 H.B.22, p. 295, 10 Dec. 1858; p. 303, 21 Jan. 1859; p. 304, 26 Jan. 1859.
41 77.B.22, pp. 434, 436, 9 March 1860.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 313
At the beginning of 1861 when there was only two years to run on
the lease, the Hall resolved that it would surrender it on fair terms,
provided the Town Council did not press for dilapidations urider
the lease. It agreed to surrender the lease from 1 July 1861 on con-
dition that it was paid annually for three years an amount equal to
one third of the total receipts for the three years ending 31 March
1861. Out of this sum it agreed to make a free gift of £2,000 for the
construction of sheds.42 Thus in 1861 there was finally terminated
a grant which the Society had first received from the Corporation in
the early seventeenth century and which had been a major factor
in linking the Society with the port. During the period of over 250
years during which it received the duties, the Society had rendered
considerable services, but, particularly in the later stages, the
arrangement had to a large extent ceased to serve its original pur-
pose. The Society was making a considerable profit and was subject
to a good deal of criticism. It is surprising that it was allowed to
retain the lease for so long.
THE PILOTS
Although the Society was undoubtedly making a considerable
profit out of the wharfage lease, it must in fairness be remembered
that it was rendering other services to the mercantile community for
which it did not receive a return. One of these was control of the
pilots. In 1806 the Corporation assured the Society that the work of
recommending and regulating the pilots could not be placed in
fitter hands,*® and the Merchant Venturers continued to exercise
this delegated authority until 1861. From time to time the Hall drew
up regulations and submitted them for approval to the Corpora-
tion,44 and it also made recommendations about rates of pay.*® Its
work was considerably increased by an Act of 1807 which placed
the whole of the pilotage in the Bristol Channel from Barnstable
to Gloucester under the control of the Corporation and, in effect,
under the Merchant Venturers.4¢ The number of pilots increased
42 1 B.09, p. 106, 25 Feb. 1861; p. 109, 26 Feb. 1861; p. 113, 13 March 1861;
pp. 118, 121, 3 April 1861.
43 17.B.13, pp. 366, 367, 7 Jan. 1806.
44 71.B.14, p. 25, 21 June 1805; pp. 66 ff., 28 June 1809; p. 91, 15 Nov. 1809; p.
315, 8 Nov. 1814; H.B.20, p. 70, 22 Nov. 1844.
45 H.B.14, p. 55, 8 June 1809; pp. 66 ff., 28 June 1809; p. 238, 15 March 1813;
H.B.18, p. 178, 25 April 1838; H.B.20, p. 70, 22 Nov. 1844. In 1824, the Society
received a printed copy concerning “‘A Friendly Society of Licensed Pilots’’. It
found it in some respects objectionable and referred it to the Corporation (H.B.15,
p. 360, 6 Feb. 1824.
48 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 254. In 1812, the Society appointed a pilot at
Appledore and received a counter-petition from a man already operating there
(H.B.14, p. 225, 30 Dec. 1812). In 1813, it appointed a pilot for Barnstable and
314 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
considerably in the next fifty years. In 1826, for example, there were
only 20, but when the Society made its inspection in 1858, the total
was 76 and they had 40 apprentices. 47
The Standing Committee, with the help of the Havenmaster,
acted as an examining body and made recommendations for appoint-
ment to the Corporation.48 Some effort was made to raise standards.
In 1808, for example, the Society urged on the Corporation the
need for higher rates in order to attract good men,‘® and in 1821 the
Corporation itself suggested that no one should be a pilot unless he
had been apprenticed to a branch pilot and sailed to a foreign port.5°
The pilots were reluctant to retire, and in 1820 in a Memorial to
the Corporation the Hall pointed out that no new men had been
appointed since 1800 and that five of the pilots seemed to be wholly
incapable owing to age and infirmity. They should be superannuated
and some financial provision made for them. The trade would
attract able men if there was provision for pensions. ®!
The pilots were not easy men to control, and disciplinary action
was frequently necessary, as well as the holding of courts of inquiry
when ships were endangered or lost while a pilot was in charge.
There are many cases of such action recorded in the Hall Books. ®2
Abusive language was common, and there were numerous cases of
drunkenness and inefficiency.®? Pilots found guilty of misconduct or
inefficiency were normally suspended, and occasionally their licences
were withdrawn altogether. When the new S.S. Demerara, 3,000 tons,
was wrecked in the Avon in 1851, the Pilotage Committee held an
enquiry lasting two days and found the pilot, John Percival, had
committed an error of judgement in taking her down the river at
too rapid arate. He was suspended for six months.®4 In 1856 a
pilot who was charged with leaving the Eliza in a dangerous position
near Portishead was suspended for a month after which he was to be
subjected to a rigorous examination for competence.®® When the
American ship Garrick was lost at Port Kerry Bay in December 18 575
Bideford and then decided the trade would take two men (H.B.14, p. 230, 4 Feb.
1813; p. 235, 11 Feb. 1813).
4" H.B.16, p. 160, 22 Sept. 1826; H.B.22, p. 264, 18 June 1858.
“8 See, for example, H.B.14, p. 309, 23 Aug. 1814; H.B.15, p. 178, 25 Sept. 1821;
H.B.21, p. 7, 8 June 1849, and many other references in the Hall Books.
49 17.B.14, p. 66, 28 June 1808. |
50 H.B.15, p. 130, 2 Jan. 1821.
51 Book of Petitions, p. 158, 2 Dec. 1820.
5? See also Sub-Committee Book 1842-1846, and Pilotage Committee Book 1846-1858.
58 See, for example, H.B.14, p. 278, 18 Nov. 1813; p. 326, 15 Nov. 1815; p. 394,
2 July 1816; H.B.15, p. 14, 17 Aug. 1819; p. 105, 13 Oct. 1820, H.B.16, p. 55, 13
May 1825; H.B.21, p. 43, 7 Feb. 1850.
54 Hf.B.21, p. 204, 12 Dec. 1851. For an account of this disaster, see Charles
Wells, A Short History of the Port of Bristol, p. 103.
55 H1.B.22, p. 95, 4 Nov. 1856.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 315
the Committee reported that the pilot had shown lamentable lack
of judgement, had failed to take reasonable precautions and had not
told the truth. It recommended that his licence be withdrawn.** At
the other end of the scale were minor offences like stealing eggs from
Lundy Island. When the indignant owner complained and gave the
numbers of two of the pilots’ skiffs, the Master warned the pilots
that if the charges were pressed, they would be suspended.°’
The Society’s general responsibility for the pilots involved it in a
number of other problems. In wartime, efforts had to be made to
protect pilots against impressment.5* In 1812, the towboatmen at
Pill went on strike and interfered with the branch pilots, and the
Society had to intervene.®® In 1819, when the pilots complained that
their yawls were being seized because they were not licensed in
accordance with an Act 28 George II c. 28, the Clerk was instructed
to look into the matter and to make special arrangements with the
Commissioners of Customs.®° The Hall also made charitable gifts
to pilots and their dependents when they met with disaster. Thus,
15 guineas was given in 1810 to the widow of a pilot lost in a gale,
£10 to a pilot who lost his skiff in 1836, and in 1843 the pension of
an 81 year old pilot was increased from £10 to £20.® In 1859, after
receiving a Memorial from the pilots, the Society decided to urge
the Corporation to put £100 into a distress fund and to provide the
same amount itself, but in future no relief was to be given to any
one who lost a skiff which was not insured. ®?
Pilotage was compulsory, and some masters and owners were
reluctant to accept it, Thus, in 1828 the pilots complained against
the captains of two American vessels at Newport who refused to take
on pilots. The local magistrates said it was none of their business,
and the Society decided that actions would have to be brought
against the captains in the name of Bristol Corporation.** In 1838,
two pilots were forcibly turned off two French vessels, Jean Baptiste
and Marie Celeste, after they had taken charge, the masters deciding
not to pay pilotage. The Standing Committee was of opinion that
new bye-laws were necessary to stop evasion, and that those who
refused to pay should be informed that the matter would be referred
to the Corporation. *4 In 1844, the Havenmaster reported evasion of
56 H.B.22, p. 126, 28 Jan. 1857.
57 H.B.22, p. 171, 8 July 1857.
58 H/.B.14, p. 223, 14 Nov. 1812.
59 See pp. 319-20.
60 77,.B.15, p. 3, 3 June 1819; p. 5, 4 June 1819.
61 Hf.B.14, p. 118, 11 July 1810; H.B.17, p. 387, 20 April 1836; H.B.19, p. 345;
26 May 1843. There are a number of other examples in the Hall Books.
62 H.B.22, p. 411, 8 Dec. 1859. |
63 1.B.16, p. 292, 3 Oct. 1828; p. 309, 5 Dec. 1828; p. 310, 2 Jan. 1829.
64 77,.B.18, p. 192, 13 June 1838; p. 252, 26 Oct. 1838.
316 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
pilotage by vessels going to Newport and Cardiff which pretended
to be coasters, and the Clerk was instructed to get counsel’s opinion. ®5
The Society’s management of the pilots was the subject of
criticism in one of Cosmo’s Letters. He asked “Where is the monu-
ment, the inscription, or record of your fame? It is in the nest of
Pirates, I had almost called them, instead of Pilots, which navigates
our rivers? Where is the reformation to be seen, which you have
effected in the behaviour of this lawless, profligate race of our fellow
subjects? Have you evinced any public spirit in proposing, or have
you yet even designed to think of establishing steam vessels for tow-
ing our ships up and down the Avon and the Channel, instead of
perpetuating the original sin of licensing more Pill Pilots? Look at
the Clyde and the Mersey! Are the Merchants of Glasgow and
Liverpool left at the mercy of such a set of extortioners. . . .??6¢ It
is difficult to say how far this outburst was justifiable, but there is
certainly no doubt that Bristol lagged far behind other ports in
introducing steam pilotage. ®7
The Society did in fact contemplate giving up control of pilotage
in June 1839 when it pointed out that many expenses in connection
with the river and the pilots were borne gratuitously by the Society.
It instructed a committee to consider whether they should be con-
tinued.*8 However, it was not until September 1840 that the
Standing Committee recommended that the Society should give up
pilotage and cease to pay all gratuitous expenses in connection with
the river from 10 November. The arrangements concerning pilots
were to end as soon as it suited the convenience of the Corporation. ®®
This was confirmed by a General Hall, at which 13 members were
present, on 30 September 1840.7° It seems likely that the Hall was
not so much anxious to get rid of pilotage as to reduce its expenses
now that it was faced with a costly lawsuit over the Manor of
Stogursey.”! In the negotiations that followed, the Town Council
argued that a number of the services which the Society claimed
were given gratuitously were in fact obligatory under the wharfage
lease, and it asked the Society to continue to manage the pilots in
view of “the experience and mercantile knowledge which the lead-
ing Members are well known to possess”.?2 It seems likely that when
the Society realised that it would not get rid of its obligations con-
cerning the river, even if it gave up pilotage, it decided to continue
as before.
85 H.B.19, p. 425, 8 March 1844; p. 431, 30 March 1844.
88 Letters of Cosmo, Bristol, 1823, p. 62. 87 See pp. 302-3.
8 H.B.18, p. 332, 5 June 1839. 69 H.B.19, p. 28, 11 Sept. 1840.
70 H.B.19, p. 31, 30 Sept. 1840. 71 See pp. 365-70.
"8 H.B.19, p. 58, 27 Nov. 1840; p. 67, 11 Dec. 1840; p. 83 and PP. 93-5, 19 Feb.
1841.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 317
The extensive jurisdiction exercised by the Society over pilots in
the Bristol Channel was bound to be threatened as other ports grew
in importance, and the Society had to take steps to defend its rights.
In 1830, a clause in a bill to make a ship canal at Cardiff gave the
Marquis of Bute, with the sanction of Cardiff, the right to licence
Cardiff pilots. The Society found this highly objectionable and the
clauses concerning pilots were dropped as a result of its protest.”°
There were similar protests in 1834 about bills concerning Newport
and Aberavon.74 The government itself was beginning to enquire
into pilotage in this year and the Society had to arlswer a number of
questions put by the Privy Council. The possibility of detaching the
pilots of other ports from the authority of Bristol was being increas-
ingly canvassed in the following years.’> Newport in 1836 tried to
get the right to appoint its own pilots, and the Corporation of Bristol
sought to ward off the threat by agreeing to appoint two or more
Bristol pilots to reside at or near Newport.’® Pressure for more pilots
continued to build up from other Bristol Channel ports.’’
The possibility of government interferences increased in the
eighteen-fifties. In 1854, at the request of the Bristol Docks Com-
mittee, the Society joined a deputation to the Board of Trade, and
later in the year it gave evidence before the Marine Department of
the Board. The Privy Council expressed the opinion that there should
be only one authority for the Bristol Channel and that this should
be either the Board of Trade, Trinity House or delegates from all
the ports concerned. The Society and the Corporation thought the
third proposal was the most desirable, but no action ensued,”* and
the next year the Society resisted an attempt to take control of
pilotage at Penarth away from Bristol.”°
In 1861 the Town Council decided to bring to an end the Society’s
control over pilotage. The decision apparently came as a surprise to
the Treasurer, William Claxton, who wrote indignantly in his
Journal for 25 June 1861 ‘““The Town Council at their meeting this
day repaid the Society for all their good deeds by a Kick in the Bum.
They appointed their Docks Committee as Managers of the Pilots,
the Society having by delegation from the Corporation conducted
the same since the year 1612 — 249 years, and they never said
73 H.B.16, p. 386, 7 May 1830.
74 H.B.17, p. 218, 2 April 1834.
78 H.B.17, p. 237, 20 June 1834; p. 303, 13 May 1835; p. 320, 8 July 1835; p.
385, 20 April 1836.
78 17.B.17, p. 385, 20 April 1836; p. 393, 11 May 1836; p. 397, 8 June 1836.
27 H.B.20, p. 9, 27 July 1844; H.B.21, p. 7, 8 June 1849; p. 9, 26 June 1849; p.
102, 13 Dec. 1850; p. 110, 14 Feb. 1851.
78 FH B.or, p. 359, 13, Jan. 18545 p. 362, 11 Feb. 1854; pp. 382-3, 19 April 1854;
p. 384,.12 May 1854; p. 387, 12 May 1854.
79 HB.22, p. 23, 25 Jan. 1856; pp. 39, 40, 14 March 1856.
318 | The Merchant Venuurers of Bristol
Thankee even! Oh!” Claxton went on to record the last annual visit
of inspection of the pilots on 5 July 1861. “The Society having annu-
ally for 249 years inspected the Pilots and not dreaming for a moment
the Management was to be taken from them issued their Summons
for this day and went accordingly. It was a very wet and sad day. ...
This is probably the last time of asking.’’®° Nothing of this indig-
nation appears in the official minutes which decorously record the
visit to Lamplighters’ Hall on 5 July 1861 when the pilots were
addressed by the Master and by Mr. James Poole, Chairman of the
Docks Committee, which was now in charge of the pilots. The
minutes also note two letters of thanks, one from the Town Council
and one from the Havenmaster, John Drew, whom the Society had
recommended to the Corporation twenty years earlier.®!
THE HAVENMASTER AND THE RIVER
Supervision of the pilots and the river was in the hands of the
Havenmaster who was appointed by the Corporation on the recom-
mendation of the Society. In 1808, the Standing Committee reported
that the man holding the position was aged and infirm. It proposed
that he should be pensioned off and a new man appointed at a
salary of £200 a year, half of which should be paid by the Corpora-
tion.8? The Corporation eventually agreed to provide £40 a year
for the pension and to make a free gift of £60 a year towards the
increased salary during pleasure,®? and James Jolly was then recom-
mended by the Society as Havenmaster and Ballast Master.®¢4
At the end of 1819 there were complaints that the duties of the
office were not being satisfactorily performed, particularly with
regard to preventing nuisances in the river. The Master and
Wardens investigated and found the complaints justified. They
recommended that as the task was a very big one, Captain Thomas
Davies should be appointed to supervise the river from Rownham
to Sea Mills at £50 a year, which was to be deducted from the —
Havenmaster’s salary.®® By the end of 1824, the Hall decided that
Captain Jolly’s age and infirmity prevented him carrying out his
duties and that he should be replaced and recommended to the
liberality of the Corporation. The Society thought that his successor
should have £200 a year and that half of this should be paid by the
8° Claxton’s Fournal I, pp. 226, 227, 25 June and 5 July 1861.
81 H7.B.23, p. 137, 5 July 1861; p. 139, 9 Aug. 1861.
82 H.B.14, pp. 64-6, 28 June 1808. The Havenmaster William Tomlinson had
been appointed in 1798.
83 H7.B.14, p. 93, 3 Jan. 1810.
84 H.B.14, p. 101, 24 Jan. 1810.
8° H.B.15, p. 51, 3 Dec. 1819; pp. 56, 57, 7 Jan. 1820. In 1822, Martin Hilhouse
replaced Captain Davies (H.B.15, p. 273, 8 Nov. 1822).
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 319
Corporation, since the Society was not under any obligation to pay
anything.’ This was agreed, provided the Society paid half of
Captain Jolly’s pension. Captain Edward Robe was then selected
from 14 applicants.8? When he died in 1841, John Drew was
appointed by a majority vote.88 He was the last Havenmaster
appointed by the Society and in 1861, when the Society ceased to
control pilotage, he came under the authority of the City Docks
Committee.
There are occasional references to the Warners who gave mer-
chants information about the arrival and departure of ships. In
1825, the Westwardmen of Pill complained to the Society that the
Warners did not pay them properly for their services, and the Hall
replied that it could not interfere as the Warners were appointed
by “the Merchants at large’’.8® In 1837, the President of the Com-
mercial Rooms informed the Society that he had arranged for
Edward Jones of Pill to report arrivals and departures and asked the
Society to pass on the information to all pilots. °°
Rates for towing by horses also concerned the Society. In 1824,
the Havenmaster reported that excessive charges were being made,
and the men concerned were asked to come to the Hall. John and
William Jones, who hired out horses for towing from Chapel Pill
and Sea Mills, said they could not reduce their charges, and the man
who let out horses for towing from the Powder House to Broad Pill
said that the present rate of 3s. 6d. a horse was in fact too little. The
Standing Committee thought it was adequate but that he should
have payment if the horses were ordered but not used.*! When
another man offered horses at a cheaper rate, the Committee passed
on the information to masters and shipowners. ®? |
On occasions, the Society became involved in disputes concerning
the watermen or tow-boatmen of Pill. In 1812, they went on strike
and hauled pilots’ boats ashore in order to disrupt the port. The
Havenmaster was instructed to report the matter to the Mayor and
to produce the evidence. The watermen petitioned the Hall con-
cerning their wages but it was decided not to consider the petition
at present because of “the violent and illegal proceedings”. Trouble
continued and in 1813 the Society asked the Corporation to meet it
in order to consider methods of protecting the Branch Pilots against
undue interference. Eventually regulations were drawn up dealing
86 71.B.15, p. 425, 10 Oct. 1824; H.B.16, p. 1, 17 Nov. 1824.
8” H.B.16, p. 5, 10 Dec. 1824; pp. 21, 25, 11 Feb. 1825; A. B. Beaven, Bristol Lists,
Bristol, 1899, p. 247.
88 H.B.19, p. 117, 11 June 1841; p. 127, 6 July 1841; A. B. Beaven, op. cit., p. 247.
89 77.B.15, p. 355, 5 Dec. 1823.
90 H/.B.18, p. 19, 10 Feb. 1837.
1 H.B.15, pp. 425, 426, 1 Oct. 1824; H.B.16, p. 8, 7 Jan. 1825.
82 H.B.16, pp. 20, 21, 4 Feb. 1825.
320 The Merchant Venturers ef Bristol
with the relations between pilots and watermen.®? The watermen
gave trouble again in 1825 when they took violent possession of a
yawl as a protest against a reduction in wages. The Society investi-
gated the matter and called in a number of pilots who said that the
watermen claimed that their wages had been reduced on the recom-
mendation of the Havenmaster who falsely alleged that they had
suggested it themselves in the hope of being able to compete with
steam packets. The watermen came to the Hall with a petition. They
were rebuked for unlawfully combining, but their complaints were
investigated, and it appeared that Captain Jolly, the Havenmaster,
had been wrong, that the men had not been consulted and that the
circumstances did not warrant a reduction in wages. The Corpora-
tion was informed of this and repealed its bye-law which had reduced
the watermen’s wages.**
The Society also took action from time to time to ensure safe
navigation in the river. At the beginning of 1806, for example, the
Master and a committee viewed the Hanover Planter which had sunk
in the river and considered the possibility of removing it with the
help of the Sea Fencibles. The Society was prepared to prosecute
the owners if they did not take action.®> Contracts were made on
occasions for removing rocks in the river.°* As early as 1827, the
Standing Committee pointed out that the removal of the Round
Point, a very serious obstruction to navigation, would be a public
benefit and suggested that the Governors of St. Peter’s Hospital
might consider the matter,®? but it was not until 1840 that the
Society itself undertook the work, making it clear that it did so in
the hope that other bodies and interests would take steps to improve
the harbour and would also consider making a convenient pier at
Portishead or some other place which would not depend on the
state of the tides.®® Tenders were asked for on the basis of specifica-
tions supplied by Brunel. The only one received was for £2,994,
which was more than Brunel anticipated, and he eventually got
Mr. Eglestaff to agree to do the work for £2,368.%°
93 77.B.14, p. 212, 6 Nov. 1812; p.. 216, 6 Nov. 1812; p. 239, 15 March 1813;
p. 247, 26 May 1813; p. 311, 28 Oct. 1814; p. 315, 8 Nov. 1814.
94 71,B.16, p. 23, 11 Feb. 1825; p. 29, 16 Feb. 1825; pp. 31, 32, 22 Feb. 1825;
p. 38, 11 March 1825.
95 H.B.13, p. 370, 15 Jan. 1866; p. 372, 4 Feb. 1806; p. 373, 25 Feb. 1806.
96 7.B.14, p. 158, 19 June 1811; H.B.15, pp. 16, 17, 17 Aug. 1819; H.B.16, p. —
379, 5 March 1830.
®7 H.B.16, p. 194, 3 March 1827.
98 H.B.18, p. 444, 29 May 1840; p. 450, 1 June 1840.
9 77,.B.19, p. 1, 29 June 1840; p. 14, 14 Aug. 1840; p. 18, 15 Aug. 1840. Round
Point was a little below St. Vincent’s Rocks. In 1852, the Society made a gift of
£1,000 to take off a further section and also to remove the rocks on the opposite
bank. Even so, the removal was only partial and Round Point continued to give
trouble for the rest of the century (Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 250-1).
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 321
Something was done to keep the towing paths in reasonable
condition and to provide mooring posts for ships.1°° Miscellaneous
activities included contributing 20 guineas to Richard Thomas of
Falmouth for surveying the Severn and Bristol Channel,!° payment
of half the cost of £60 for erecting a watchtower or observatory for
the Havenmaster at Shirehampton, and £20 to provide him with
a convenient pew in the new chapel.!°? A donation of £20 was made
towards the expenses of Mr. Bunt who had been allowed to erect his
tide gauge on the Society’s property at Hotwells.1°3
From the late eighteen-thirties, the Society showed some concern
about river pollution. In 1838, it complained to the Corporation
about the state of the river from Rownham Ferry to St. Vincent’s
Parade caused by filth from the neighbouring houses. In 1844, it
complained that nothing had been ‘done and that the river was
highly dangerous to health. In 1849, the Council said that it had
postponed taking action pending a government report on sewage,
and in 1849 and 1850, the Society was still making the same
complaint.19 |
The close connection between the Society and the river came to
an end in 1861 when the Hall surrendered the wharfage lease and
ceased to control pilotage, but the memory lingered on, and in 1867,
Mr. Robert Bruce, as Claxton put it, worried the Society into the
desire for a Water Excursion on pretext of visiting the pilots in the
Bristol Channel. The proposal was carried by 35 votes to 3, and the
Society chartered the steamer Ely which set out on 20 August on
two trips to Tenby, Lundy and Ilfracombe. Claxton thoroughly
disapproved of the venture and commented in his private Journal
** , . . before noon such was the state of the weather, and the sea
that very few of the company were upright. I will paste a newspaper
report at the end of this for three gentlemen of the Press accompanied
us. Oh! the vomiting and the reeching were indescribable and what
good has been done I humbly and respectfully ask.”” He was not
seasick himself and he enjoyed part of the trip, but he concluded
100 For mooring posts etc., see, for example, H.B.14, p. 112, 4 July 1810; H.B.16,
Pp. 241, 5 Oct. 1827; p. 243, 26 Oct. 1827; H.B.18, p. 15, 10 Feb. 1837; p. 26, 17
March 1837; p. 167, 14 March 1838; pp. 237, 238, 12 Sept. 1838; p. 313, 12
April 1839; p. 343, 12 July 1839; p. 353, 9 Aug. 1839.
For towing paths, see, for example, H.B.15, p. 3, 3 June 1819; p. 418, 3 Sept.
1824; H.B.16, p. 273, 2 April 1825; p. 335, 14 Aug. 1829; H.B.18, p. 184, 9 May
1838; H.B.19, p. 364, 11 July 1843; H.B.27, p. 69, 1 Aug. 1850.
101 77.B.14, p. 385, 3 May 1816.
102 77.B.16, p. 258, 4 Jan. 1828; p. 272, 2 April 1828.
108 H.B.18, p. 243, 12 Oct. 1838. See also H.B.17, p. 387, 20 April 1836; p..403,
24 June 1836; H.B.18, p. 346, 12 July 1839.
104 Hf.B.18, p. 183, 9 May 1839; H.B.19, p. 363, 11 July 1843; H.B.20, pp. 3, 4,
28 June 1842; pp. 281-3, 8 Jan. 1847; H.B.21, p. 12, 3 Aug. 1849; p. 67, 9 July
1850.
322 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
“I must say I felt foolish when I heard Mr. Bruce and others declare.
they would propose an annual sea trip! ! ! I will only say ‘so may it
not be’,’’1
THE CRANES
The Society continued to control the cranes of the port until 1837.
In 1807, when it was losing money on them it obtained an Act of
Parliament establishing new rates for cranage as well as for whar-
fage.196 In 1810, it decided they would be more productive if farmed
out, and it asked for tenders. John Cullis took 4 lots at a rent of
£1,100 a year, but in 1813 they were advertised again and let to
Mr. Langhorne at £1,420 a year.1°? They were managed directly
by the Society between 1825 and 1826 and were then let again at
£1,380 a year. The rent was reduced to £1,200 in 1831 as the tenant
had been losing money.19§ Against the incomd had to be offset
capital expenditure in erecting new cranes. The Report of the
Municipal Commissioners in 1835 remarked that in recent years the
number of cranes had been considerably increased and that all
berths capable of receiving large vessels had been provided with
them.1°
There were criticisms from time to time of the cranage system and
some resistance to the demands made by the Society and its lessees.
Thus, in 1821, Mr. Langhorne reported that he was meeting obstruc-
tion, in particular from George Hilhouse, formerly Mayor of
Bristol.11° Attempts were made to extract cranage even at parts of
the quay where there were no cranes and from vessels which pre-
ferred not to use them. The Society conferred with the Corporation
and decided that it was not possible to demand cranage in such
cases.111 The Municipal Commissioners in 1835 noted that the
growth in the number of cranes had made it impossible for owners
to avoid crane berths.!!2 Criticism was also based on the belief that
these duties formed part of a great collection of port dues which
placed Bristol at a serious disadvantage compared with other ports.
It was alleged that the Society was making a profit the extent of
105 Claxton’s Fournal II, pp. 59 ff., 20 Aug. 1867. The journal contains the report
which had fun at the Society’s expense. The trip is solemnly recorded in the
Minutes (H.B.25, p. 195, 30 Aug. 1867) which refers to “‘a rather rough passage’’.
106 See p. 310 and n. 22.
107 H.B.14, p. 127, 27 Sept. 1810; p. 256, 25 Aug. 1813.
108 77.B.16, p. 76, 7 Oct. 1825; p. 264, 17 Jan. 1838; H.B.17, p. 15, 15 April 1831.
109 Report from the Commissioners on Municipal Corporations in England and Wales;
Bristol, p. 64.
110 77.B.15, p. 203, 5 Dec. 1821.
111 77.B.15, p. 303, 14. March 1823.
112 Report from the Commissioners on Municipal Corporations; Bristol, p. 64.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 323
which was not known and which might, for all the public knew, far
outweigh the services rendered. Cosmo publicly asked the Society
whether it thought that the receipts ought to exceed the crane-
keepers’ wages, repairs and expenses of collection. He pointedly
remarked that the Society leased the duties to an individual and
that he supposed all the profit did not accrue to the tenant.43 In
the face of agitation for a decrease in the port dues, the Society
reduced the cranage rates by one quarter in 1825,"4 but no further
action was taken until 1835 when a committee of the Corporation
made a proposal that the city should take over the remainder of the
Society’s lease.145 Negotiations went on in 1836 and 1837, and it was
eventually agreed that the Society should surrender its lease in 1837
and pay £450 in lieu of its obligation to hand over the cranes in good
order.'16 The use of the cranes was to be voluntary and the rates
were to be reduced. The Corporation confirmed the arrangement
on 29 April 1837.
MERCHANT SHIPPING AND MERCHANT SEAMEN
Some of the functions which in earlier times had been performed
by the Society were dealt with by the Society of Shipowners with
which the Hall cooperated from time to time on matters of mutual
concern."!? Thus, in 1827, Robert Bright, chairman of the Ship-
owners’ Committee, wrote to the Merchant Venturers suggesting
the advantage of a bridge across the Pill at Broad Pill. The Hall
agreed to recommend the proposal to the Corporation and stated
that it would be happy at all times to communicate with the Ship-
owners.148 In June, the Shipowners complained about the charges
for towing with horses, and the Hall replied that it would do its best
to get better terms.14® When Robert Bright urged on behalf of his
Society the need for mooring posts on the river for ships coming to
Bathurst Basin, the Hall ordered that steps should be taken to pro-
vide them.12° The Merchant Venturers for their part referred a
118 Letters on the Impediments which obstruct the Trade and Commerce of the City and Port
of Bristol by Cosmo, Bristol, 1823, p. 69.
114 H.B.15, p. 313, 6 May 1823; p. 343, 7 Nov. 1823; p. 354, 5 Dec. 1823;
H.B.16, p. 51, 6 May 1825; p. 59, 3 June 1825; p. 65, 9 July 1825; p. 72, 9 Sept.
1825.
115 Hf.B.17, p. 312, 6 June 1835.
116 H.B.17, p. 432, 5 Oct. 1836; H.B.18, p. 24, 17 March 1837; p. 40, 14 April
1837. See H.B.21, p. 450, 9 Jan. 1855 and p. 483, 20 April 1855 for subsequent
comments on the surrender of the lease.
117 Very little seems to be known about the Society of Shipowners which grew
up in later eighteenth-century Bristol.
118 77,B.16, p. 200, 4 May 1827.
119 77,B.16, pp. 209, 210, 27 June 1827.
120 77.B.16, p. 235, 14 Sept. 1827.
324 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
number of matters to the Shipowners, such as the proposed new
light on Nash Point in 183012! and a bill for new tonnage measure-
ments which came up in 1835. On that occasion, the Hall made a
donation of 10 guineas to the Shipowners’ Society and agreed to pay
an annual subscription of £2 28.12? In the same year, the Ship-
owners asked the Hall for its support for a motion for the repeal of
the Reciprocity Duties Act, and the Hall agreed to ask members to
help.123 In 1836, the Merchant Venturers asked the Shipowners’
Society to give its opinion on a bill vesting lighthouses and seamarks
in the hands of Trinity House and also thanked it for a report of its
successful application to Trinity House for a reduction of pilotage
charges on vessels towed by steam.124 Next year, the Shipowners’
Society asked for help concerning a proposal to modify a bill
relating to tolls imposed at Fishguard, and the Hall decided to
prepare a petition and forward it to the M.P.s.125 In 1842, the Hall
was asked by the Shipowners to give its views on a bill for the exami-
nation of masters and mates, and two members were appointed to
examine it.126 The Shipowners’ Society also received the cooperation
of the Hall in 1858 in an address to the crown on the restrictions
placed on British shipping in foreign ports.1*?
Although the Shipowners’ Society seems to have been active in
matters relating to merchant shipping, the Society still retained its
interest. On a number of occasions, it was concerned with the
adverse effects of quarantine regulations and it intervened at
national and local level to press for modifications.12° In 1814 and
1815, it was involved in the troubles arising from resentment by the
sailors about the employment of foreign seamen. The Mayor in-
formed the Hall that on 27 and 28 July 1814 large numbers of sailors
had assembled and boarded vessels at the quays in search of foreign
seamen. He had warned the sailors that their proceedings were
unlawful, and they dispersed, but they then petitioned the Hall for
help. The Society decided that it had no power to interfere, but
asked the Mayor to consider calling a general meeting of shipowners
and seamen and thanked him for his prompt and judicious action in
suppressing unlawful proceedings. On 1 September 1815, in reply
to a petition from the seamen, the Society recommended merchants
and shipowners to employ British sailors in preference to foreigners,
provided they behaved properly.1?°
121 77,.B.16, p. 388, 7 May 1830. 122 77,B.17, p. 290, 11 Feb. 1835.
123 H.B.17, p. 303, 13 May 1835.
124 77 B.17, p. 406, 6 July 1836; p. 433, 12 Oct. 1836.
125 17,B.18, p. 139, 13 Dec. 1837. 126 77,.B.19, p. 267, 27 July 1842.
127 17.B.22, p. 280, 22 Oct. 1858.
128 77 B.13, p. 318, 21 Nov. 1804; H.B.14, p. 240, 21 May 1813; H.B.16, p. 328,
5 June 1829; H.B.17, p. 171, 18 Oct. 1833.
129 FT B.14, p. 302, 30 July 1814; p. 364, 1 Sept. 1815.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 325
The Society’s distrust of interference by the central government
was shown in the resistance it offered to various bills proposing to
examine and regulate masters and mates of merchant ships. When
the Collector and Comptroller of the Customs in Bristol forwarded
the draft of one such bill to the Hall in 1827, the Society sent copies
to the Shipowners’ Society and others interested in shipping and
informed the Collector that the bill would add to the burdens and
difficulties of owners.1°° Similar opposition was offered in 1834 to a
Seamen’s Registry Bill,18! and in 1842 and 1843 to a bill for the
examination of masters and mates. The Hall thought it highly objec-
tionable “that any Public Body should be elected to examine
Persons for the situation of Masters and Mates of Ships. . . thereby
interfering with the private Rights and Judgment of Shipowners
who from the very nature of their Business, it must be presumed, are
the most competent to form an opinion of the capabilities of the
Persons they would select to take charge of their Property . . .”’.132
In spite of laissez-faire opposition, the Board of Trade persisted in
its determination to establish a satisfactory system of examinations
for masters and mates, and the Society fought a number of rearguard
actions against central control. In 1846, the Standing Committee
reported that it did not like the proposed system of examinations and
that, as the regulations stood, it was not prepared to play a part in
local examinations.133
The Society, in conjunction with Glasgow and Liverpool and the
Shipowners of Bristol, also opposed the Mercantile Marine bill of
1850.184 This lengthy bill placed the superintendence of matters
relating to the mercantile marine in the hands of the Board of Trade
which was empowered to establish local Marine Boards, partly
nominated, partly elected, in the ports. There were to be examina-
tions for masters and mates, which might be carried out by the Local
Boards. Those who had served as masters or mates up to 1 January
1851 could get “certificates of service’’, but in future masters and
mates must pass an examination and get a “‘certificate of compe-
tency”. No foreign-going ship was to sail unless the master and one
of the mates had a certificate. There were very extensive regulations
130 77.B.16, p. 244, 26 Oct. 1827; pp. 256, 257, 7 Dec. 1827; pp. 258, 262-3, 4
Jan. 1828; Letter Book IV 1826-1833, p. 99, 24 Oct. 1827; p. 101, 1 Nov. 1827; p.
112, 26 Dec. 1827.
131 77.B.17, p. 236, 20 June 1834; p. 239, 2 July 1834; p. 246, 6 Aug. 1834.
182 H7,B.19, p. 332, 10 Feb. 1842; Sub-Committee Book 1842-1846, p. 5, 8 Feb. 1843.
The Society argued that it was highly objectionable that patronage and influence
should be vested in the Trinity House “‘self elected and therefore irresponsible as
that Body must be...”’.
183 77,B.20, p. 197, 23 Jan. 1846. Two years later, it changed its mind (H.B.20,
p- 348, 14 Jan. 1848).
134 Hf.B.21, p. 51, 15 March 1850; p. 63, 14 June 1850.
326 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
concerning conditions of service for seamen.1*5 This was state inter-
ference in a big way, and the Society petitioned the Commons
against the bill as being novel in principle and as “‘placing the whole
details of the conduct of a Trade or Business under the practically
despotic control of a government department’’. It argued that there
was no case for placing shipping on a different basis from other trades
or businesses and it maintained that the great body of shipowners in
Bristol took this view.1*® The bill nevertheless became law in August
1850, and a local Marine Board was set up in Bristol. |
There followed a conflict between the local members of the Board
and the Board of Trade because the Bristol Board had not been
given the same powers as boards in some other ports, particularly the
right to grant First Class certificates. A number of Bristol members
of the local board resigned and the Local Board came to an end.
The Society thereupon petitioned the Privy Council, stating that
the whole mercantile community had learnt with regret of the
resignation of the local representatives who were well known for
their experience and knowledge. It claimed that much of Bristol’s
shipping required First Class certificates and that it was unfair that
Bristol should be treated differently from inferior ports such as
Newcastle, Shields and Sunderland.18’ The fact that Bristol had been
treated as a second-class port by the Board of Trade indicates that
it had lost its former importance, but the Society was reluctant to
face reality.
The Hall was also interested in the first half of the century in
lighthouses and in tolls affecting Bristol shipping. Thus in 1809 and
1810 it investigated the charges on Bristol ships made by the owners
of Long Ship and Scilly Lights,13° and in 1815 it alleged that tolls
were being improperly collected by Burnham lighthouse.1® In 1830
it considered a proposed light on Nash Point and after getting the
views of the Shipowners’ Society reported in favour of it.14° Such
matters naturally brought it into frequent contact with Trinity
House, and when the Elder Brethren decided to visit Bristol in 1837
to discuss buoys and a possible floating lightship in the Bristol
135 13 and 14 Vic. c. 93, 14 Aug. 1850: An Act for improving the condition of
masters, mates, and seamen, and maintaining discipline, in the merchant service.
186 Book of Petitions, p. 223, June 1850.
187 Book of Petitions, pp. 225 ff., n.d. See Claxton’s Fournal I, p. 156, 4 Feb. 1851
for the deputation sent to London.
188 77.B.14, p. 85, 8 Nov. 1809; p. 97, 3 Jan. 1810.
189 77.B.14, p. 352, 4 July 1815; p. 354, 18 July 1815 when it withdrew its oppo-
sition; p. 382, 23 Jan. 1816. See also H.B.16, pp. 420-2, 29 Oct. 1830, when it
pointed out to Trinity House the “‘utter unutility” to Bristol of Burnham Light.
140 77.B.16, p. 388, 7 May 18930; p. 392, 11 June 1830; p. 416, 29 Oct. 1830. For
subsequent trouble with Trinity House over this light, see H.B.17, p. 12, 11 March
1831.
Port, River and Sea, Nineteenth Century 327
Channel, the Society agreed to meet them and to place at their
disposal a room in the Hall. The Committee was favourably disposed
to the proposals of Trinity House and it also recommended petition-
ing for a reduction of the charges made by the Holmes Light.1*
Next year, when the Shipowners’ Society prepared a bill to amend
an Act for the improvement of Fishguard Harbour which imposed
certain tolls, the Society agreed to send a petition to the House of
Commons and subsequently to the House of Lords.142
In 1838, the Society asked Trinity House to reduce the toll at
Flatholm and to exempt Bristol ships from the charges in connection
with Burnham Light.148 A bill concerning Tenby harbour also came
up this year and the Society maintained that it gave an unfair
advantage to Tenby men and put duties on shipping for street
improvement as well as for improvement to the pier and dock. A
deputation was sent to London and some amendments were made in
the bill.144 There was resistance also in 1839 to Redcar Harbour bill
which imposed tolls on shipping, and it was decided to petition both
houses.145
Some concern was shown for the safety of ships and seamen. In
1842 there was sympathy for Mr. H. W. Heaven’s proposal for a
harbour at Lundy which would charge tolls and the Society decided
that if a definite scheme was presented, it would consider it favour-
ably.146 In 1858 the Standing Committee decided to collect evidence
and to press the Commons Committee on Harbours of Refuge to
establish such a harbour at Lundy for the Bristol Channel area.14?
Occasional interest was shown in lifeboats). When Mr. William
Lassall attended the Standing Committee in 1812 with a model of
his lifeboat, he was asked to leave it in some place where it could be
inspected by nautical persons.148 Gifts were made from time to time
to help particular lifeboats such as £10 to Barnstaple in 1831 and
10 guineas to Bude in 1837.149 When the National Lifeboat Associa-
tion asked in 1863 for help with a new boat in the Bristol Channel,
the committee turned down the request on the ground that juris-
diction in the Bristol Channel was no longer in the hands of the
Society, but it recommended that the subscription to the Association
141 77.B.18, pp. 99, 100, 12 Sept. 1837; p. 103, 22 Sept. 1837.
142 H.B.18, p. 139, 13 Dec. 1837; H.B.18, p. 142, 10 Jan. 1838; p. 182, 9 May
1838. For the two petitions, see Book of Petitions, p. 190, Jan. 1838; p. 193, May 1838.
143 77,B.18, p. 142, 10 Jan. 1838.
144 77B.18, pp. 164, 165, 14 March 1838; p. 172, 25 April 1838; Book of Petitions,
pp. 191-2, March 1838.
145 77.B.18, p. 330, 5 June 1839.
146 77.B.19, p. 212, 11 Feb. 1842.
147 FT.B.22, p. 243, 30 March 1858.
148 77.B.14, p. 189, 13 April 1812.
149 7B.17, p. 47, 5 Aug. 1831; H.B.18, p. 13, 13 Jan. 1837.
328 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
should be increased from £2 2s. to £5 5s. a year,!5° and three years
later a grant of £50 was made to the Association.!51
The Society also made a valuable contribution to the welfare of
seamen by its administration of the Seamen’s Hospital Fund and
played some small part in training seamen through its Marine
School, but these activities can be more conveniently treated else-
where.15?
From what has been said, it will be evident that during the first
half of the nineteenth century the Society of Merchant Venturers
still retained a considerable interest in the docks, the river and the
sea, but that it gradually relinquished its interests. It gave up control
of the cranes in 1837; in 1848 the Corporation took over the docks
from the Docks Company on which the Merchant Venturers had
been strongly represented; the Seamen’s Hospital Fund was wound
up in 1852. In 1861 the wharfage lease was surrendered and the
Society was also deprived of its control over the pilots. Inevitably,
the Society changed its character and concentrated its energy on
other kinds of activity. :
160 77. B.23, p. 283, 16 May 1863.
151 77,.B.24, p. 82, 3 May 1866.
152 See pp. 394-8.
CHAPTER 19
The Society as a Property-Developer in
the Nineteenth Century
As has been seen already, the Society became in the second half of
the eighteenth century an important property-developer, increas-
ingly conscious of the potentialities of the land it had acquired. It
had already begun to exercise planning control over buildings
erected on its land, and it had become in some measure involved with
questions of roads, drainage and water supply. In the course of the
nineteenth century, the population of Bristol expanded at an un-
precedented rate, and the value of the Society’s lands, particularly
in the highly desirable area of Clifton, increased rapidly. The
development of railways in and around Bristol and the needs of
public authorities for particular pieces of land for dock and road
development enabled the Society to make some valuable capital
gains, and the loss of its major source of income — the wharfage lease
— provided an added incentive for property development. Property
management became a major concern of the Society as it was com-
pelled to abandon some of its earlier activities, and it was only
because its capital was limited that it was prevented from making
even greater use of the potentialities of its lands in Bristol.
The major developments were in Clifton and in Hotwells. Here
the Society was only one of a number of owners such as the Worrall
family and the Adams family who were in a position to make gains
from the increasing demand for land, but its holding was on a con-
siderable scale and it was able to make a significant contribution to
the way in which the area was developed. To examine in detail the
whole of the Society’s contribution would require more space than
is available here, but some indication can be given by considering
its general policy and by looking at some of the areas in which it
was particularly active.
THE SOCIETY AS A PLANNING AUTHORITY
At a time when the local authority exercised only very limited
1 In 1837 the Hall asked Mr. Marmont to make a survey of its Clifton estates,
and in 1839 it appointed him Superintendant and Receiver of the Clifton Estates
(H.B.18, p. 113, 13 Oct. 1837; p. 125, 3 Nov. 1837; p. 293, 11 Jan. 1839; p. 305, 22
Feb. 1839).
330 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
control over planning, the Society was able to use its influence in
various ways to ensure that certain standards were observed in the
general lay-out of particular areas and in the construction and use of
the houses erected. It was, of course, in its own interest to do so, since
it was concerned with property values, but there was also gain to the
community.
The general policy which the Society adopted towards would-be
developers is illustrated in a letter sent to Mr. Ormerod in 1810 when
he offered to lay out £3,000 in erecting good, substantial houses on
Honeypen Hill, provided the Hall would give him a 40 year building
lease renewable every 14 years. The Clerk wrote to Mr. Ormerod
saying “They direct me to inform you that they must have a plan
and elevation of the proposed Buildings laid before them before they
can give any answer. They were of the opinion from the situation of
the ground and its vicinity to Bristol that no buildings ought to be
erected but such as would be an ornament to the place.”? When
Baker and Studley offered to develop land off Pembroke Road in
1879, they were informed that “in the opinion of the Society the
class of House which they proposed to erect was not good enough for
the situation.”® At the end of the century, when Lennards Ltd.,
wanted to buy 16 houses in Park Place for redevelopment, they were
told that there would be restrictive covenants to prevent the carrying
on of any offensive business, that the plans would have to be approved
by the Society and that the facade facing Queen’s Road must not be
inferior to that of the shops opposite. The original plans were turned
down because the elevation was thought not to be of a sufficiently
ornamental character for the situation.
The Society showed throughout the period great interest in
preserving the amenities of the areas with which it was concerned
and was often sensitive to the feelings of other occupiers. When a man
wanted land for a gunpowder magazine at Hotwells, the Hall
refused to give permission and was prepared if necessary to instruct
counsel to oppose the scheme at the Quarter Sessions.® In 1813 Lady
Miller’s application to build a room behind her house in Prince’s
Buildings was turned down on the ground that it would be a “serious
Evil to other houses by obstructing their view down the river’’.®
When George Powell of Prince’s Buildings engaged in blasting
operations, he was told to stop, “‘a large stone having fallen whilst
2 Letter Book I 1781-1786, p. 379, 7 June 1810.
3 H.B.26, p. 232, 31 Jan. 1879.
* H.B.28, p. 291, 18 Nov. 1898; p. 305, 24 March 1899; p. 307, 28 April 1899.
5 H.B.14, p. 145, 16 Jan. 1811. See also H.B.15, p. 337, 2 Sept. 1823; p. 338, 9
Oct. 1823.
° H.B.14, p. 252, 23 Jan. 1813; p. 253, 4 Aug. 1813. The Society was, however,
willing to let her have a piece of rocky ground at £5 per annum.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 331
the Committee was on the spot”’.” In 1873, Mrs. Clarke, who leased
Cornwallis House and who had opened part of the land in her
garden to raise iron, was required to discontinue the work and
although the Clerk stated that there was nothing in the lease to
prevent the Hall giving permission, it refused to do so since the
residents of Cornwallis Crescent and the Polygon had petitioned
against the proposal.®
Generally speaking, the Society was ready to encourage plans to
maintain and increase the amenities of the residential areas in which
it owned property. Thus, in 1810 when the Surveyors of Highways of
Clifton wished to collect subscriptions to level and plant part of
Clifton waste, the Hall give its approval, provided it was shown the
plans, and it agreed to subscribe generously itself.® In 1820, it gave
permission to the inhabitants of Windsor Terrace to make a footpath
behind the terrace on the Society’s waste.?° It was less happy about
a proposal of Richard Hart Davis to allow his subtenant to make a
nursery and to erect an ornamental cottage on land opposite
Richmond Terrace, since the residents were not pleased with the
idea, but it decided it could not decently refuse planning permission,
subject to certain conditions," and it also gave consent to a proposal
from the ladies of Clifton to put up an iron fence which would allow
sheep through but which would enable them to enjoy a walk “‘With-
out the danger of being rode over.’’!?
Another occasion on which the Society cooperated with local
residents concerned the Richmond Hill property. In 1856 a number
of gentlemen in that area asked for help in removing unsightly
buildings between Richmond Hill and Queen’s Road and in turning
part of the land into an ornamental garden or pleasure ground. The
Society contributed £100 to the subscription. The next year,
Richmond Hill Improvement Committee reported that it had made
a provisional agreement with the proprietor of the land to remove all
buildings except a greenhouse belonging to D. Baskerville. About
£1,200 had been raised, but another £400 was needed. If the Hall
would contribute the required £400, the Improvement Committee
was willing to convey the land to the Society, subject to certain
” H.B.16, p. 290, 5 Sept. 1828.
8 H.B.25, p. 273, 26 Sept. 1873; p. 312, 27 Feb. 1874. In 1875, two workmen
alleged that Messrs. G. and I. Cooke had been secretly working iron in their fields
opposite Royal York Crescent and had deliberately concealed the borings from the
Society. After investigation, the Society decided that this was an attempt of the
workmen to blacken the character of Mr. Cooke’s agent (H.B.25, p. 396, 26 Feb.
1875).
® H.B.14, p. 116, 10 July 1810.
10 77.B.15, p. 87, 5 May 1820.
11 H.B.15, p. 399, 7 May 1824.
12 H.B,15, p. 406, 2 July 1824; p. 409, 9 July 1824.
332 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
conditions, and thus bring to a successful issue ‘an Improvement so
much required’. In September 1857, the Hall accepted the offer
and decided to remove the unsightly buildings and to erect a new
wall,18
It was well known that the Society was interested in maintaining
the amenities of those areas in which it owned property, and in
1864, when Lewis Fry was negotiating to buy Goldney House and
7 acres of land, his solicitors asked the Society to treat for the land of
Hill Close. They were probably hoping to get it at a reasonably low
price when they stressed “‘the importance the Society has attached
to keeping open this land as one of the important features in the view
of Clifton”. The Hall cautiously replied that in order to preserve the
view, it did not wish to build there, but it would not bind itself not
to do so. Fry offered £1,000, but the Society wanted £2,000, and it
eventually granted a 10,000 year lease for £2,000 and a rent of 5s.
a year.14
The desire to maintain the high-class character of the neighbour-
hood may possibly explain the Society’s lack of enthusiasm for a
market in Clifton. A plan to make a market at Honeypen Hill or at
the Triangle had been approved by the City’s Finance Committee in
1844, but it was turned down by the Council.15 In 1851, the Clifton
Improvment Society asked for the Society’s support and claimed to
have a petition with 1,300 signatures. The Hall considered the
proposal, but did not give its support, and the plan was again rejected
by the Council.16 When the application was renewed in 1867, the
Society referred it to a committee but took no.action.1?
Particularly in the second half of the century, the Society’s
records are full of applications for permission to alter or to change
the use of property of which it was ground landlord and on which it
had placed restrictive covenants. In 1871, for example, application
was made to use 1, Beaufort Road as a Boys’ School “‘for a limited
number of high class boys who would not use the garden as a play-
ground”. The Hall gave limited, revocable consent.1* Four years
later, it agreed that 2, Apsley Road might be used as a Ladies’
School and an extra storey added, provided the neighbours did not
object and provided the plans were approved.!® On the other hand,
it would not allow 15, Merchants’ Road to be used as an unlicensed
13 H.B.22, p. 111, 12 Dec. 1856; p. 121, 10 Jan. 1857; pp. 184, 185, 28 Aug.
1857; p. 188, 11 Sept. 1857; p. 230, 12 Feb. 1858.
14 H.B.23, p. 370, 28 June 1864; p. 413, 21 Jan. 1865; H.B.24, p. 12, 5 July 1865.
15 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 322.
16 H.B.21, p. 121, 14 March 1851; Latimer, op. cit., p. 322.
17 H.B.24, p. 170, 17 May 1867. Another scheme was turned down by the
Council in 1875 (Latimer, op. cit., p. 323).
18 7.B.25, p. 43, 22 March 1871.
19 7.B.26, p. 23, 31 Dec. 1875.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 333
refreshment house.2° It would not permit Pembroke Hall to be used
as a “Pharmacy” and it would not agree to Mr. Summerson’s
building land at Jacob’s Wells being let for roundabouts and
swings.2! Permission was given to Mr. Newnes in 1893 to use 14,
Prince’s Buildings as a residential hydropathic establishment on the
lines of Smedley’s Hydropathic Establishment at Matlock and to
connect the Spa Room with a nearby garden by means of an under-
ground passage,2? but an application to make 3, Prince’s Buildings
into a Temperance Hotel was refused.?* In 1900, proposals to estab-
lish schools at 10, Apsley Road and at 70, Pembroke Road were
turned down, and in 1901 the Hall would not agree to Clifton Spa
Company applying for a licence or to 6 Princes’ Buildings being used
as a private Surgical Home.*®
There were numerous applications for minor structural alterations
and for the erection of greenhouses, summer houses, verandas and
bay window, and permission was usually given, provided the
neighbours did not object and provided the Society was satisfied
with the plans.26 Sometimes the Society took a strong line. When
the owner of 8, Victoria Square enlarged his window in 1863, the
Clerk was doubtful if action could be taken, but the Committee
thought it so essential ‘“‘to preserve the uniformity of this Row of
Houses” that he was instructed to get counsels’ opinion.?” When
Mr. Eberle wished to erect a billiard room in his garden at 96,
Pembroke Road, permission was refused because his neighbour.
Miss Taylor, objected.28 The covenants had to be taken seriously,
When two people in Hanbury Road put up greenhouses without
permission, they were told to take them down again. They hastened
to apologise and were then allowed to keep them.?”®
One interesting development in the last part of the century which
depended on obtaining planning permission from the Society was an
hydraulic lift from Hotwells Road up the face of the rock to Clifton.
Proposals were put forward by Messrs. Broad and Pottow and also
20 H.B.26, p. 138, 31 Aug. 1877.
21 H1.B.27, pp. 445, 446, 30 Sept. 1892.
22 77.B.28, p. 49, 24 Nov. 1893; p. 56, 26 Jan. 1894. See also H.B.27, p. 203, 27
May 1887, for planning permission to the Clifton Spa Company.
23 H.B.28, p. 50, 24 Nov. 1893.
24 H7.B.28, p. 360, 29 June 1900; p. 369, 19 Oct. 1900.
25 Hf.B.28, pp. 392, 393, 22 Feb. 1901.
26 See, for example, H.B.26, p. 139, 31 Aug. 1877 (greenhouse, 14, Oakfield
Road); p. 168, 22 Feb. 1878 (summerhouse, 1, Sherborne Villas) ; p. 203, 27 Sept.
1878 (enlarged scullery, 2, Leigh Road); p. 269, 31 Oct. 1879 (trellis on garden
wall, 1, Leigh Road); p. 400, 24 Feb. 1882 (veranda, 1, Leigh Road; new wing,
13, Miles Road; 2 bays in front and 1 behind, 4, Litfield Place).
27 H.B.23, p. 292, 1 Aug. 1863.
28 H.B.28, p. 318, 30 June 1899.
29 H.B.26, p. 270, 31 Oct. 1879; p. 283, 19 Dec. 1879.
334 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
by George Newnes, M.P. Permission was at first refused, but the
Society agreed in 1890 to Newnes’ scheme, which affected 14 and
15, Prince’s Buildings, provided the ground rents of the houses were
increased from £17 tos. and £10 to £60 and £40 and provided
certain other conditions were accepted and the plans approved by
the Society. The hydraulic lift or Rocks Railway was opened in
1893.30
BUILDING DEVELOPMENTS IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE |
CENTURY
In the early nineteenth century, the Society endeavoured to com-
plete the building of Cornwallis Crescent. In 1791, the land had
been granted on a 40 year building lease to Mr. Elderton but he
failed in the crisis of 1796. Part of the property was granted to Mr.
Worrall, who was to complete within 14 years’ the houses already
begun, and the remainder, on which 33 houses were to be built, to
Mr. Brooke, who agreed to complete 15 houses within 14 years and
another 18 by the time of the second renewal of the lease. Brooke
subsequently got the whole of the property by assignment from
Worrall and agreed to complete 16 houses by 1821 and the rest by
1835. In fact, he had completed only g houses by 1821, although
7 others were in the course of construction. In spite of the fact that
he had not fulfilled his contract, the Society decided not to take
action but required him to finish all the building by 1835.3! The
work was completed by that date when his widow was given a
renewal of the lease for a fine of £1,385.32
Another attractive building development on the Society’s land was
the Polygon, built in the eighteen-twenties on ground leased to
Henry Brooke by leases of 1821 and 1823, both renewable every 14
years. Henry Brooke sub-let to the builder, George Jones, and on 8
May 1826 he certified that the 12 messuages forming the range known
as the Polygon had been erected.**
30 71.B.27, p. 303, 27 Sept. 1889; p. 350, 26 Sept. 1890; p. 379, 27 Feb. 1891; p.
383, 24 April 1891; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals 1887-1900, pp. 19 ff. Newnes
undertook to open a hydropathic institution including a Pump Room. This was
opened in 1894. Three houses in Prince’s Buildings were subsequently recon-
structed to make the Clifton Grand Spa Hydro, opened in 1808.
31 H.B.15, pp. 139 ff.; 13 March 1821; pp. 158, 159, 5 June 1821; p. 237, 22
June 1822; p. 243, 9 July 1822; p. 269, 8 Nov. 1822. See also H.B.16, p. 72, 9 Sept.
1825; p. 126, 7 April 1826. See also the Schedule of Deeds No. 2.
32 H.B.17, p. 292, 11 Feb. 1835; p. 297, 8 April 1838; p. 300, 13 May 1835. The
total annual rents of the houses in 1854 were £2,654 (H.B.21, p. 359, 13 Jan. 1854).
33 H.B.16, p. 363, 4 Dec. 1829. See also Societys’ Plans, No. 24, for a very inter-
esting plan of the Polygon and a long statement about the various grants from 12
June 1821. In 1853, ground rents from Cornwallis Crescent, the Polygon and
adjoining property were valued at £223 10s. od. (H.B.21, p. 313, 13 May 1853).
Portrait of William Claxton, Treasurer of the Society, 1841-1873, in the
Merchants’ Hall.
See p. 264. Photograph by G. Kelsey
wa
Du zr Novembre 1888.
eee
HORS DERUVRES Olver Frincsises,
Paté d Anchois sur cronte
POTAGES Torta elaine
Poa Bonne Peame
Master M® Percy L Kine. ig CPOISSONS Fetes mace Homer,
e : ie ee Remgets ance [tplienne.
Me EB Comes: oo a3 _ Wonuilles de Veluille aux Tras
: | - s | Maavteties taroles & le Macedoina. |
Warlens % nae ees a
aoe Dindosndaux 4 ta Poulos.
A Me TP. Kins. og tenbon an Mad?re.
Hanche de Vanaiann.
Treasnrer Me G Ho Pope : ; / : : Se i Pouvhe & Ys ee
1g : co Seakels 3 ls Bechama,
Ce Me dene Ospoene. 1 @ ENTREMETS Pending & la Vénitionne,
Be talde aa Vin de Chnaipagne:
- Mavedaine do Fraite aay Eignears.
Uritstades de Kari de Urevablcg,
Abs Neapoktaice.
Above: Menu for a dinner in the Hall, 1888.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
Below: ‘Two silver chargers of the time of William ITI, presented to the
Society by the first Lord Dulverton in 1937. Silver box in which the freedom
of the Society was presented to Philip William Skynner Miles, M.P. in 1851.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 335
In 1810 the lessees of Honeypen Hill Fields (Richmond Hill) asked
permission to change their 99 year lease for 3 lives to a 40 year
building lease, renewable every 14 years, and undertook to lay out
£3,000 in building. They were asked to submit plans,** but no.
action was taken, and another request to the same effect was made
in 1822, when a building lease was granted to Mr. Benjamin
Tucker.®5 In 1825, he reported that 12 of the 32 tenements he had
covenanted to build were nearly completed and asked for a renewal
of his lease.®* By 1829, Tucker had built the 32 houses he had agreed
to erect, except for 5 in Park Place.” When the lease was renewed in
1837, there were 17 houses in Park Place and 15 dwellings on
Richmond Hill with an annual value of £2,073. The renewal fine
was fixed at that sum.*®
Other building developments included York Place and Clifton
Place. In 1805, when the lease of the ground on which York Build-
ings stood came up for renewal, Messrs. Langton and Company
offered to lay out £2,500 in building in addition to the 8 houses
already there.®® By 1832, the yearly value of the premises due for
renewal in York Place, York Buildings and Clifton Place was esti-
mated at £1,539, and the renewal fine was fixed at that amount. *°
In another part of Clifton, plans were made in the eighteen-
twenties to develop three closes of land known as Cecils Litfields.
These had been leased to Mr. Deverell, but in 1818 the Society
decided to buy his interest. He was offered £2,550 but he asked for
£2,800, and this price was agreed.*! The Society had difficulty in
raising the money and Deverell had to be asked to wait two years for
completion, which he agreed to do provided he got interest.4? An
attempt was made unsuccessfully to dispose of some of the land for
£1,000 an acre.*3 An offer of £500 an acre was turned down in 1821,
and it was decided, as a temporary measure, to let the 16 acres at
£90 a year at one month’s notice.** Two years later the Master and
two others were asked to consider laying out the land for building, *®
but next year the plans submitted for houses were considered un-
satisfactory as the principal rooms were too small, and it was decided
to advertise the land for disposal in lots.4* Eight building lots were
34 H.B.14, p. 94, 3 Jan. 1810.
85 H.B.15, p. 228, 17 April 1822; p. 238, 4 July 1822.
36 H.B.16, p. 92, 9 Nov. 1825.
87 H.B.16, p. 332, 5 June 1829. See also H.B.16, p. 375, 5 March 1830.
38 17.B.18, p. 55, 17 May 1837. In 1879, the renewal fine on Richmond Hill was
£862 and on Park Place £666 (40 year leases renewable every 14 years). See
H.B.26, pp. 253, 254, 27 June 1879.
39 H.B.13, p. 336, 3 June 1805. 40 H7.B.17, p. 118, 4 Sept. 1832.
41 H.B.14, p. 521, 3 Dec. 1818; p. 528, 21 Jan. 1819.
42 H.B.14, p. 536, 4 March 1819. 48 H.B.14, pp. 5475 549, 15 April 1819.
44 7.B.15, p. 144, 3 April 1821. 45 H.B.15, p. 326, 1 July 1823.
46 77.B.15, p. 411, 6 Aug. 1824; H.B.16, p. 7, 10 Dec. 1824.
336 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
laid out for what was to be called Camp Place and Camp Buildings.
Approval was given to the plans for one of the plots in 1825,47 but
in 1827 the purchasers of lots 6 and 7 asked for a reduction of ground
rents since the property had deteriorated and some of those who had
engaged to take lots had been frightened away. The Society agreed
to postpone collecting ground rents for a year and reduced the selling
price. It wanted £800 to £900 a lot or, alternatively, a fee farm rent
of £36 to £40 a year. A new road was eventually built to serve the
property, but disposal of the lots dragged on until 1836.48
The difficulties of disposing of Camp Place lots may have discouraged
the Society from further development of Cecil Litfields for some time.
In 1851, it asked Mr. Marmont to lay out the field for further build-
ing, but ten years later it was negotiating with Mr. Thomas Proctor
who wanted to buy two acres of Cecil Litfields at £1,000 an acre.
Mr. Proctor preferred to buy the whole area of 6 acres, 2 rods and
10 pérches and offered £6,100. The Society considered that it would
be a long time before it would be able to dispose of it all in separate
building lots and accepted the offer. Next year, Mr. Proctor asked
to be allowed to buy 2 acres behind Litfield Place, and the Hall
agreed to sell at £1,700.4® It might have done better to wait.
VICTORIA SQUARE
The most ambitious and the most troublesome scheme with which
the Society became involved in mid-nineteenth century was the
building of Victoria Square, Clifton. This was built on a plot of land
known as Ferney Close which was let by the Saciety on a lease for
lives. In 1837, a prospective purchaser estimated its value at £1,000.
In 1838, he offered £2,000, but this was turned down as was his
second offer in 1840.59 John Evans Lunell, who held the lease, then
offered to develop the land and to build a market and road, but this
was not acceptable.*! When he proposed in 1844 to divide the land.
into building lots and to put them up to auction, the Hall instructed
its Clerk to attend the auction and to inform bidders that the
47 .B.16, p. 104, 10 Nov. 1825. Camp Place was later called Litfield Place
(H.B.18, p. 401, 26 Nov. 1839).
48 H.B.16, pp. 237, 238, 21 Sept. 1827; p. 260, 4 Jan. 1828; p. 369, 1 Feb. 1830;
p. 389, 7 May 1830; p. 391, 11 June 1830; H.B.17, p. 40, 1 July 1831; p. 141, 16
Jan. 1833: p. 380, 20 April 1836; H.B.18, p. 319, 12 April 1839.
49 H.B.21, p. 314, 13 May 1843; H.B.23, pp. 152, 156, 11 Oct. 1861; p. 159, 2
Nov. 1861; p. 171, 13 Dec. 1861; p. 189, 14 Feb. 1862; p. 213, 3 May 1862; p. 230,
31 Oct. 1862.
50 7.B.18, p. 97, 8 Sept. 1837; p. 239, 12 Oct. 1838; p. 441, 8 May 1840.
51 H.B.19, p. 214, 11 Feb. 1842; p. 224, 11 March 1842; p. 240, 13 May 1842.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 337
Society would not give its consent.5* The Society then bought out
Lunell’s interest for £1,000, raising the money on bond,®* and was
free to go ahead with its own development plans.
Ferney Close was roughly square in shape, and one possibility was
to treat the row of houses known as Lansdowne Place as one side of
a new square, and to complete the other three sides, making appro-
priate arrangements with the owner and occupiers of Lansdowne
Place. Another was to make not a square but two crescents more or
less forming an oblong and not incorporating Lansdowne Place. In
either case, there was to be an open space or garden in the middle.
A third possibility, if the owner of Lansdowne Place would not come
to terms, was for the Society to build a complete square, in which
case the occupants of Lansdowne Place would find themselves
looking out not on an open space but on one side of the Society’s
new square.54
The first set of plans incorporating Lansdowne Place as one side
of the square were considered by the Standing Committee on 14
February 1845, and the Society made an offer to preserve the part
in front of Lansdowne Place houses as an open space, provided it
received a ground rent of £3 a year from each house.®5 When no
reply had been received in March, Mr. Marmont was instructed to
mark out the land for building on the basis of making a completely
new square.®* The Society then received an offer of £750 to keep
open the space in front of Lansdowne Place, but it required £1,000.°?
Mr. Hemming, the owner of Lansdowne Place, became extremely
indignant and stated that “he cannot submit to the Terms on which
the Society of Merchants propose not to injure his Houses . . . by
building immediately opposite them”’, and there were protracted
and acrimonious negotiations between the Society and Mr. Hem-
ming’s agents who accused the Society’s Clerk, Mr. Osborne, of not
stating clearly the Society’s terms. The Society exonerated its Clerk
and said there was no point in further discussion.®®
In January 1846, the Ferney Close Committee reported that it
had heard from Mr. Hemming in Londonderry who said he had
been out of England for two years and had been compelled to leave
matters to his agents. He referred to Lansdowne Place as ‘‘the finest
Row of Buildings erected . . . in your neighbourhood and built in
the best and most substantial manner.” He would like to take
52 7.B.19, p. 420, 9 Feb. 1844.
53 H.B.20, p. 40, 18 Oct. 1844; p. 71, 22 Nov. 1844.
54 For the first two plans, see Merchants’ Hall Plans, no. 45; for the third, see
the Clerk’s Papers, bundle marked ‘“‘Victoria Square, 1849” (now in archive
group — Estates, Clifton). 55 77.B.20, p. 96, 14 Feb. 1845.
56 H7.B.20, p. 106, 14 March 1845. 57 77.B.20, p. 116, 5 June 1845.
58 H.B.20, pp. 157 ff., 16 Oct. 1845 for further details. See also the Clerk's
Papers, bundle marked ‘“‘Victoria Square, 1849’ (Estates, Clifton).
338 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
advantage of the Society’s generous offer and he appealed, he said,
“to your best feelings . . .”. The Ferney Close Committee thought
that in view of the expense incurred in drawing up alternative plans,
the Society should not renew its earlier offer, but should ask Mr.
Hemming to pay £1,500, which was to include £350 spent on the
alternative plans. In addition, the water supply for Lansdowne
Place was to come from the Society’s Waterworks at a rate not
exceeding 3 per cent of the annual value of each house, and Mr.
Hemming was to fill in his cesspool and link his houses to the Society’s
sewer at a rate of £1 per annum for each house. There were also
certain other conditions. The General Hall reduced the amount
required to £1,000 plus £350 expenses for the useless plans.5® Mr.
Hemming accepted the terms, but he did not pay the money and
when action was taken against him in 1850, he alleged that he had
“no option but to submit to almost any terms however unreasonable
that the said Complainants might choose to impose’’, even though
his agents, Savery and Clarke, considered them “extortionate and
wholly unreasonable”. He argued that he had been led to believe
that the Merchant Venturers would proceed quickly with building
the other three sides of the square and that this would considerably
increase the value of his houses and so provide some compensation.
In fact they had so far (December 1850) erected only one side, and
he would perform his part of the agreement when they had com-
pleted theirs.*° Thus, the Society found that the path of the property
developer was far from smooth. It was clearly unreasonable of Mr.
Hemming to expect that his houses should continue to enjoy, with-
out some payment, “‘a view for a considerable distance over Ferney
Close’’, but on the other hand the Society had attempted to drive a
hard bargain, no doubt because of its concern for its own finances
and the heavy expenses in connection with the ill-fated Waterworks
Company. ®
Meanwhile, the development of one side of Ferney Close went
ahead. The Society rejected a proposal of the Improvement Com-
mittee of the Town Council to make a road through the centre of
the square and stood by its plan, of preserving an open space in the
middle,*? and it made a contract with William Bateman Reed to
erect houses on one side in accordance with its plans. It was to
receive ground rents and it regulated the use of the houses by res-
trictive covenants in the leases.®* In August 1847, Reed asked for a
59 77.B.20, p. 193, 28 Jan. 1846.
60° Clerk’s Papers, bundle marked “‘Victoria Square, 1849’’ (Estates, Clifton).
$1 See pp. 413-26,
$2 77.B.20, p. 296, 26 March 1847; p. 303, 23 April 1847.
63 The various deeds, building leases and other agreements are listed in the
Society’s Schedule of Deeds No. 2, pp. 275 ff.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 339
loan of £5,000 on the security of six houses already completed and
five others which were well advanced, and he was given this at 5 per
cent.64 In May 1848, he asked for a further loan to complete the
houses. He said he was unable to dispose of any of them while
building was still going on but that the row would be worth £30,000
when completed. It was agreed to lend him £6,000 at 5 per cent.®
In December 1849, he asked for another £2,000 to complete the
work, and this, together with earlier loans and interest, brought his
total indebtedness to the Society up to £15,000. He had by that date
contracted to sell only one house for £2,000, and the purchase money
was to go to the Society.®* Sales proceeded slowly, and it was not
until 1853 that Reed was able to report the sale of No. 7 at £1,750, of
Albert Lodge at £1,800 and his own purchase of No. 8 on mortgage
at £1,500. He was evidently short of capital, and the Society agreed
to his request that it should take on account only £1,000 of the pur-
chase price in each case.” Prices dropped in 1854 when Nos. 3, 11
and 4 fetched only £1,450 each,®® and the Society turned down
Reed’s suggestion that it should itself take four houses for £6,950. °°
In March 1853 there were still six houses unsold, and Reed asked to
be allowed to keep half the purchase price on the sale of four of the
houses, leaving a debt of about £3,000 to the Society to be secured
on Nos. 9 and 10, which he valued at £3,500. The Society agreed
to take from sales only so much money as would leave a debt of
£2,500.7°
It was not until August 1853 that the sale of the block of fourteen
houses was completed, bringing in ground rents of just over £200
a year.”! The cost of laying out the land, making roads and providing
iron railings round the central enclosure had been approximately
£2,200, and it seems likely that the slow sale of the houses and the
need to make continual loans to the builder discouraged the Society
from rushing ahead with the development of the other two sides of
the square. The Society had, moreover, undertaken to lay out and
maintain the ornamental plantation and gardens in the centre of
the square, and maintenance was by no means cheap. In 1855,
Messrs. Garraways signed a contract to look after the plantation for
64 H7.B.20, p. 315, 13 Aug. 1847.
65 H.B.20, pp. 378, 379, 26 May 1848.
66 17.B.21, p. 37, 14 Dec. 1849. The first house to be sold was No. 2 which went
to Miss Christian Smith on a lease of 10,000 years dated from 29 Sept. 1846 at a
ground rent of £15.
87 H.B.21, p. 331, 14 Oct. 1853.
68 H.B.21, p. 382, 19 April 1854; p. 395, 16 June 1854; p. 408, 11 Aug. 1854.
69 H.B.21, p. 438, 8 Dec. 1854.
70 H.B.21, p. 460, 9 March 1855.
71 H.B.21, p. 475, 16 April 1855; p. 491, 8 June 1855; p. 509, 3 Aug. 1855.
Ground rents were £15 per house except for Albert Lodge at £7 10s. od.
340 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
one year for £40,72 and the Society turned down a request from the
occupants to pay half the cost of running the ornamental fountain
and painting the railings.7%
In 1858, the Society purchased Carter’s Brewery, near Victoria
Square, through which it later built Merchants’ Road, Clifton,74
and next year it considered further building in Victoria Square,7®
but took no further action. In 1861 it showed interest in a proposal
to build a large hotel in the square, but the residents objected that
they had bought their houses on the understanding that the ground
would eventually be covered with other houses of similar class and
character.’® Then, in 1863 Mr. Marmont was instructed to tell
respectable parties who wanted to build that they could have reason-
able loans from the Society on the security of the buildings.?” An
offer was forthcoming from John Yalland who was willing to erect
12 houses on the west side of the square, provided he was given finan-
cial help, and the Society entered into an agreement with him to
build in accordance with Marmont’s plans and on the basis of
ground rents producing £144 a year.78
By 1866, Yalland had erected six houses, but was unable to sell
them or to fulfil the rest of his contract.7® The Building Land Com-
mittee thought Yalland was asking too much for the houses, and
various negotiations followed concerning a further loan. By Novem-
ber, the six houses had been disposed of, and in January 1867
Yalland was released from the rest of his contract.8° Thus, twenty
years after the scheme had been inaugurated, the Society had
managed to build only one of its three sides of the square and half of
another side.
Plans for laying out the south side of the square for double or
single villas had been made in 1865 when one of the plots had been
assigned for a parsonage house for Clifton as a gift from the Society, *!
but development was held up, and it was not until February 1869
that the Building Lands Committee made an agreement with John
Davies, a builder from Redland, to erect four substantial houses
which were to be finished by March 1870. The Society was to lend
72 H.B.21, p. 461, 9 March 1855.
78 H.B.21, pp. 501, 502, 13 July 1855. Garraways reduced the charge to £35 per
annum in 1857 (H.B.22, p. 138, 13 March 1857).
74 H.B.22, pp. 231, 234, 12 March 1858; p. 251, 14 May 1858; p. 333, 16 Feb.
1859; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 266. The Society had refused to purchase in
1855 (H.B.22, p. 10, 14 Dec. 1855).
18 H.B.22, p. 319, 3 March 1859.
76 H.B.23, p. 171, 13 Dec. 1861; p. 177, 10 Jan. 1862.
77 H.B.23, p. 269, 20 March 1863.
78 H.B.23, p. 284, 5 June 1863.
79 H.B.24, p. 92, 15 June 1866.
80 H.B.24, p. 92, 15 June 1866; p. 102, 22 June 1866.
_ §1 HB.293, p. 420, 1 Feb. 1865; H.B.24, pp. 49, 50, 22 Dec. 1865.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 341
£1,000 on each house, and, when the roofs were on, was to lend up
to two-thirds of the cost. The ground rents were to be £15 a year.®?
In May 1870 Davies asked for his advance of two-thirds on the cost
as the roofs would be on within a week.®%
There still remained the part of the west side of Victoria Square
which Yalland had failed to complete. In March 1870 the Building
Lands Committee recommended an advance of three-quarters of the
estimated expense to any builder who would complete the work.**
In October, the Society accepted Davies’s offer to build on the five
remaining plots. The centre houses were to cost £1,600 and the end
houses £2,000 each, and the Society would lend three-quarters of
the amount of work certified to have been done at any one time at
5 per cent.®5 It was not until March 1874 that the Society put its
seal to the leases of the last five houses (nos. 21—5).°°
Thus, the building of Victoria Square had taken over twenty-five
years and had involved the Society in a good deal of trouble, in-
cluding financing three different builders. In return, the Society now
received ground rents of £424 10s. a year,®” but it had saddled itself
with the upkeep of an ornamental garden and plantation which was
over the years to give it considerable trouble. In 1874, for example,
it received a report stating that the trees were overcrowded and that
there were no keys to the gates, so that the public used the garden
“often, we fear, when dark . . . for immoral purposes... .”’. It was
ordered that new gates should be fixed, new locks should be provided
and the railings were to be mended.®8 In 1879, it was decided to
spend £60 instead of £45 a year on upkeep.®®
The occupants of the houses were apt to make demands on their
ground landlord. In 1879, they wanted to construct a tennis court,
and permission was given provided they submitted the rules for its
use to the Society. These were approved in due course, and the Hall
made a donation of £30.°° In 1886, the paths required remaking and
the Society agreed to pay half the cost.*! There were a number of
other difficulties, and in the next century the Society made deter-
mined and ultimately successful efforts to get rid of a burden which
had proved much heavier than it expected. ®?
82 17,.B.24, p. 323, 24 Feb. 1869; p. 395, 21 Jan. 1870; p. 410, 4 March 1870.
83 H.B.24, p. 431, 6 May 1870; p. 436, 1 July 1870. 7
84 H.B.24, p. 417, 18 March 1870.
85 7.B.25, p. 7, 21 Oct. 1870; p. 44, 22 March 1871. An earlier offer by Davies
had been turned down (H.B.24, p. 440, 5 Aug. 1870).
86 H.B.25, pp. 317, 318, 27 March 1874.
87 H.B.25, p. 318, 27 March 1874.
88 Hf.B.25, p. 318, 27 March 1874.
89 H.B.26, p. 241, 28 March 1879.
90 77.B.26, p. 241, 28 March 1879; p. 256, 4 July 1879.
®1 71.B.27, p. 155, 26 Feb. 1886.
92 See pp. 472-4.
342 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
LATER DEVELOPMENTS IN CLIFTON
In 1872, a sub-committee reported on the Society’s ground rents
which amounted by then to over £2,000 a year. Of this, £1,250
came from modern houses in Clifton. The sub-committee suggested
that the Hall should dispose of less attractive ground rents, amount-
ing to £730 17s. 6d. a year, and thus raise a capital sum of between
£14,000 and £16,000 to be invested in such a way that it could be
easily available.®* There were, however, difficulties in disposing of
the ground rents. *4
In the eighteen-sixties and in the seventies and eighties, the Society
was busy developing its property in and adjoining Pembroke Road
(formerly Gallows Acre Lane). It owned over 7 acres, and from the
mid-sixties it was granting building leases to a number of builders,
including James Rowe Shorland, William Hain Junior and Richard
Coslett who constructed houses which paid ground rents to the
Society and which were subject to restrictive covenants.®® It is not
possible here to follow in detail this building development which was
spread over a period of nearly twenty years, but some indication can
be given of the roads in the development of which the Society was
wholly or partially concerned.
Beaufort Road was given its name in 1868 at the suggestion of
Miss Eliza Cooke, one of the purchasers of the new houses and the
Society also decided to give another of the new developments the
name of All Saints Road.®* Miles Road, leading from Beaufort
Road to All Saints Road, was given its name by the Society in the
same year,®’ and building lots, subject to ground rents of £10 as. 6d.,
were being sold from 1870 onwards.®° Leigh Road, which ran across
°3 H.B.25, pp. 164 ff., 26 July 1872. The ground rents which it proposed to sell
were: Belle Vue, 19 houses plus 7 in Lower Belle Vue and a house behind the
Infants’ School, total value £78 p.a.; Merchants’ Parade, Hotwells, 19 houses,
value £82 p.a.; Brunswick Place, Hotwells, 12 houses, 9 cottages, value £40 p.a.;
Charles Place, Woburn Place, Merchants’ Parade and Love Street, £94 3s. od. p.a.;
Dowry Parade, Hotwells, 3 houses, £9 19s. 6d.; St. Vincent’s Parade, 2 houses,
£10 p.a.; the Polygon, 12 houses, £60; Belle Vue Terrace and Clifton Hill, 7
houses, £15; Berkeley Vale, Clifton, 8 houses, £22 p.a.; St. Vincent’s Terrace,
Hotwells, £31 10s. od. p.a.; Merchants’ Place, Hotwells, shop and bakehouse, £7
p.a.; Cornwallis Crescent, 40 houses and pleasure ground, £206 p.a.; Richmond
Court, Clifton, dwelling house, £8 p.a.; Love Street, Hotwells, £8 p.a.; Upper
Park Street, 2 houses, £20 p.a.; Harley Place, strip of land, £8 8s. 6d. p.a.;
Infants’ School, Merchants’ Parade, £15 p.a.
94 H“.B.25, p. 227, 5 April 1873; p. 248, 30 May 1873.
85 Numerous deeds relating to the property are in the Society’s archives and are
listed in the Society’s Schedule of Deeds No. 2, pp. 267 ff.
°6 H.B.24, p. 256, 15 May 1868. 97 Thid. :
*8 7.B.24, pp. 434, 435, 3 June 1870; H.B.25, 7 Dec. 1870; p. 25, 13 Jan. 1871;
p. 65, 7 July 1871; p. 118, 29 Dec. 1871; p. 119, 26 Jan. 1872; p. 141, 26 April
1872; p. 157, 28 June 1872.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 343
Oakfield Road to Oakfield Place, was also developed from the early
eighteen-seventies by Richard Coslett. The ground rents were
£8 gs. for Leigh Road East and £12 1os. for Leigh Road West.*°
From the eighteen-seventies onwards, Richard Coslett also developed
Hanbury Road, running from Alma Road across Oakfield Road to
Pembroke Road.!9° The Hanbury Road scheme included what was
really a separate piece of development known as Hanbury Road
South (later Eaton Crescent).1°! From the eighteen-seventies, the
Society also granted building loans to Richard Coslett and others
for houses in Oakfield Road at ground rents varying between £11
and £18 a year.192 In the same decade, there was further building
in Alma Road, part of which had been constructed in the early
eighteen-sixties when Roydon Villas had been erected as a result of
a building lease granted by the Society and Messrs. Worrall to their
lessee William Merrick.1°* Other grants in the eighteen-seventies
concerned houses in Apsley Road,!% and in the later part of the
decade and in the early eighteen-eighties a number of first-class
villas were built in the part of Pembroke Road between Oakfield
Road and Hanbury Road at ground rents of £35 or £40 a year.15
Another important development in Clifton which cannot be
followed in detail here was the making of Merchants’ Road, which
linked Victoria Square with the rest of Clifton. This was made
possible by the Society’s purchase of Carter’s Brewery.1°* In
February 1869 the Local Board of Health thanked the Society for
handing the road over and agreed to ask the Council to widen the
entrance. The Society requested that it should be known as Mer-
chants’ Road and in the early eighteen-seventies was busily en-
gaged in making agreements and fixing ground rents.!°”
99 For the deeds relating to Leigh Road East, see Schedule of Deeds No. 2, pp.
812 ff., and for Leigh Road West, see pp. 821 ff. There are also numerous references
in the Hall Books.
100 Schedule of Deeds No. 2, pp. 815 ff. and numerous references in the Hall
Books.
101 H.B.26, p. 168, 22 Feb. 1875; p. 195, 26 July 1878.
102 For Oakfield Road grants, see Schedule of Deeds No. 2, pp. 824 ff., and numer-
ous references in the Hall Books.
103 Schedule of Deeds No. 2, pp. 271, 731 ff. The joint building lease for Roydon
Villas had been granted 23 Feb. 1854.
104 17, B.24, p. 432, 6 May 1870; H.B.25, p. 59, 9 June 1871; p. 83, 16 Aug. 1871;
p. 119, 26 Jan. 1872; p. 127, 16 Feb. 1872; p. 399, 26 Feb. 1875; p. 427, 25 June
1875; H.B.26, p. 3, 27 Oct. 1875.
105 17,B.26, p. 180, 31 May 1878; p. 193, 26 July 1878; p. 239, 28 Feb. 1879;
p. 340, 21 Jan. 1881 (Oaklands); H.B.27, p. 66, 25 July 1884 (Lyndhurst).
106 See p. 340.
107 H.B.24, pp. 322, 323, 24 Feb. 1869; p. 363, 27 Oct. 1869; H.B.25, p. 164, 26
July 1872; p. 175, 27 Sept. 1872; p. 247, 30 May 1873; p. 282, 25 Oct. 1873, etc.
344 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
OTHER DEVELOPMENTS
There were many other developments in Clifton in which the Society
was involved, but it is not possible to cite them all here. A few illus-
trations can be given of its efforts to raise property values in other
parts of its estates such as Hotwells and Jacob’s Wells. Thus, in 1816,
it decided to advertise a piece of land near Cumberland Basin on a
40 year lease, renewable every 14 years, for constructing small
houses according to the plans it laid down,!°8 and in 1825 it gave a
lease to John and William Jones to build 15 houses on ground behind
Jenning’s Stable, Hotwells.1°® William Jones also had a building
lease from the Society to erect houses in Merchants’ Parade and
Merchants’ Avenue, Hotwells.!1° In 1839 the Crown and Anchor,
Hotwells Road, was reported to be in a dilapidated state, and it was
eventually decided to rebuild it at a cost of £1,000 and to purchase
adjoining property in order to continue the widening and improving
of Hotwell Road. which the Society had already commenced at
Merchants’ Parade. In 1844, when property at Jacob’s Wells fell
into the Society’s hand on expiration of a lease of 1802, it refused to
renew the lease and decided to let it only on a yearly basis until it
had sufficient property in hand to effect a general improvement in
the class of building,!? and in 1863, a committee reported on
property in the area bounded by Gorse Lane, Clifton Hill and
Jacob’s Wells Road and recommended taking down the houses,
which were of a most miserable description, and letting the land on
ground rents for building according to its own plans. It thought that
Jacob’s Wells should be treated in the same way later on.113 Yet
another example of this policy was found in 1874 when some of the
property at Jacob’s Wells was reported to be in a bad condition. It
was decided to give notice to quit to the tenants and to sell the land
for redevelopment.1!4
THE MERCHANTS’ DOCK ESTATE
As has been noted earlier, the Society had acquired in the later
eighteenth century Champion’s Floating Dock and two other docks,
108 #7,.B.14, p. 391, 30 May 1816.
10° H.B.18, p. 327, 10 May 1839, referring to the failure to build more than 4 of
the 15 houses specified. oo
110 Schedule of Deeds No. 2, p. 409, for lease relating to this property.
111 H.B.18, p. 337, 14 June 1839; p. 343, 12 July 1839; p. 368, 11 Oct. 1839;
PP. 399-400, 29 Nov. 1839; p. 374, 29 Oct. 1839.
112 H.B.19, p. 418, 9 Feb. 1844.
118 77,B.23, p. 310, 29 Oct. 1863. For various building leases in Gorse Lane, see
H.B.24, p. 173, 17 May 1867; p. 176, 19 July 1867; p. 410, 4 March 1870.
114 H.B.25, p. 305, 23 Jan. 1874.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 345
as well as a considerable amount of the adjoining property, and it
had secured an Act of Parliament requiring timber and other com-
bustibles to be brought to the Merchants’ Dock.1> The Floating
Dock presented many problems in connection with the clearing of
mud, the repair of the gates and the collection of dock dues.116
Income dropped from £648 5s. in 1827 to £137 os. 3d. in 1840.12?
The obligations of the Society under the original Act were increas-
ingly burdensome and the building of the Floating Harbour early
in the nineteenth century and the growth of private quays, wharfs
and warehouses meant a decline in revenue. In 1842, the Society
successfully petitioned Parliament for repeal of the Act.48
It is not possible here to examine in detail the way in which the
Society developed in the nineteenth century the considerable dock
property which it had acquired. The Merchants’ Dock itself was let
out from time to time.1!° In 1836 over £1,000 was spent on enlarging
and improving the Graving Dock.12° which was held on lease by
various tenants including George Hilhouse, the Great Western
Steam Packet Company and George Lunell.!#4 In 1855, it was let
to George Kelson Stothert and Ernest Theophilus Fripp on a 27
year lease at £465 a year on condition that they laid out £5,000 on
improvements.122 Another dock was leased first of all to George
Hilhouse and then to Charles Hill and Sons, shipbuilders.***
Towards the end of the century, the Society entered into negotia-
tions with the Great Western Railway Company to sell half an acre
of the Floating Dock Estate at £2 per square yeard and the whole of
Limekiln Dock for £5,000. There were legal difficulties because
115 See pp. 154-5.
116 See, for example, H.B.14, p. 237, 4 March 1813; H.B.15, p. 55, 7 Jan. 1820;
H.B.17, p. 94, 4 April 1832; H.B.19, p. 334, 3 March 1843; p. 338, 16 March 1843;
p. 369, 14 July 1843; H.B.22, p. 260, 18 June 1858; H.B.24, pp. 98, 101, 22 June
1866; pp. 315 ff., 2 Feb. 1869.
117 Floating Dock Rent Account 1818-1844.
roel H.B.19, p. 153, 20 Sept. 1841; p. 160, 4 Nov. 1841; Book of Charters 2, p. 203,
1042.
iio H.B.25, p. 235, 9 May 1873, agreed to lease the Merchants’ Dock to the
Corporation at £250 per annum for 14 years. See also H.B.25, p. 314, 27 March
1874; H.B.27, 8 Jan. 1887. |
120 77.B.17, p. 380, 20 April 1836; p. 448, 8 Nov. 1836.
121 717 B.14, p. 478, 3 March 1818; p. 486, 19 May 1818; p. 500, 4 Aug. 1818; p.
547, 15 April 1819; H.B.15, p. 18, 2 Sept. 1819; p. 23, 23 Sept. 1819; p. 24, 7 Oct.
1819; p. 74, 3 March 1820; p. 78, 15 March 1820; H.B.17, p. 136, 8 Dec. 1832; p.
169, 4 Sept. 1833; p. 306, 13 May 1835; p. 358, 13 Jan. 1836; H.B.20, p. 112, 9
May 1845.
122 FT Bor, p. 453, 2 July 18553 p. 474, 16 April 1855; H.B.22, 14 Dec. 1855. For
late arrangements with Stothert, see H.B.25, p. 234, 9 May 1873; H.B.26, p. 422,
22 June 1882; H.B.27, p. 2, 23 Feb. 1883; p. 172, 27 Aug. 1886; p. 188, 17 Dec.
1886; p. 321, 31 Jan. 1890; p. 353, 31 Oct. 1890.
128 HT B.21, p. 50, 15 March 1850; H.B.26, p. 219, 29 Nov. 1878; H.B.27, p. 197;
2g April 1887; p. 252, 20 July 1888.
346 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Stotherts were not willing to surrender their rights, and the Society
had to bring an action against them. It was successful, and at the
beginning of the new century the Society was free to proceed with
arrangements with the Great Western Railway Company to develop
the Canon’s Marsh area.124
Some of the land adjoining the Floating Dock was also used during
part of the nineteenth century as a Bonding Yard for timber, wood,
pitch, tar and naval stores. As early as 1803 the Society had been
interested in establishing a bonded warehouse, but there were various
difficulties to be overcome, and it was not until 1819 that the consent
of the Treasury was obtained and the work completed. The Society
then issued its Rules and Regulations for the Bonding Yard and
Warehouses.*° In the later nineteenth century some of this land was
leased to the Corporation as a place for the landing of foreign
cattle,*° and in 1893 another part was let on a building lease to
Mr. Galbraith who undertook to build 36 houses producing for the
Society ground rents of £465 a year.127
THE HOTWELL
The Hotwell was one of the Society’s less fortunate investments. As
has already been seen, it was leased at a very low rent for most of the
eighteenth century, and the short burst of prosperity at the end of the
period and in the early nineteenth century did not last.128 In 1816,
the Society’s profit was only £73, and by 1820 receipts were not
covering expenditure. Nevertheless, the Society was still convinced
of the potentialities of the Hotwell, and shortly after Dr. Andrew
Carrick of Clifton had addressed a paper to the Hall suggesting how
the well might be restored to its former importance,129 plans were
made for improvement. The building near the river was to be re-
placed by a new Pump Room further back, and access to the well
124 Hf.B.28, p. 209, 26 Feb. 1897; p. 216, 30 April 1897; p. 220, 1 May 1897; p.
342, 26 Jan. 1900.
128 77.B.13, p. 257, 2 Sept. 1803; pp. 261 ff., 12 Sept. 1803; p. 269, 1 Oct. 1803;
p. 306, 23 Oct. 1804; p. 329, 12 March 1805; H.B.r4, p. 30, 8 Nov. 1808; P- 434,
12 Feb. 1817; p. 426, 19 March 1817; p. 437, 20 May 1817; p. 452, 16 Sept. 1817;
p. 476, 20 Feb. 1818; p. 480, 3 March 1818; p. 486, 19 May 1818; p. 550, 6 May
1819; H.B.15, p. 39, 6 Nov. 1819.
126 H.B.26, p. 132, 27 July 1877; p. 156, 21 Dec. 1877; p. 205, 25 Oct. 1878. In
1900 the Society asked the corporation for a rent of £450 for a renewal of the lease
for 7 years (H.B.28, p. 361, 29 June 1900).
187 H.B.28, p. 8, 24 Feb. 1893; p. 12, 24 March 1893; p. 117, 28 June 1895; p.
169, 4 June 1896; pp. 173, 175, 3 July 1896; p. 175, 4 July 1896; p. 199, 18 Dec.
1896. Under this agreement were built Oldfield Road and Sandford Place.
188 See p. 193. Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 217 ff., Nineteenth Century Annals, -
pp. 71 ff., Vincent Waite, The Bristol Hotwell, pp. 10 ff.
729 Latimer, op. cit., pp. 71 ff., H.B.14, p. 484, 14 April 1818.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 347
was to be made easier by a road at least twenty feet wide.!9° There
were possibly hopes of developing the export market, and when
Messrs. Kidd and Fisher, who were about to send the Albion to
India, asked permission to take some of the water, they were re-
quested to take three old casks and three new puncheons as well as
a minimum of three dozen bottles, and to report on their condition
on arrival.131
It took a long time to get plans and estimates, and it was not until
1 April 1819 that the Standing Committee decided to adopt Mr.
Robert Dyer’s Plan No. 1. for the new Pump Room.}*? The pro-
cedure then followed was less than straightforward. The Standing
Committee asked Henry Hake Seward of London, one of the other
architects who had submitted plans, to report on Dyer’s work, and
he offered to produce another plan or, alternatively, to act as pro-
fessional consultant. It was decided to tell Dyer that his plan had
many merits but that there were some objections, and he was to be
told not to make an amended plan at the Society’s expense. The
Standing Committee wished the matter to be handled with dis-
cretion, and it seems that it was not being frank with Dyer.1** Dyer
did in fact submit alternative plans,!84 but on 16 July 1819 the
Committee approved Seward’s design No. 3 and asked him to pre-
pare specifications and to advertise for tenders.1®5 In January 1820
the Committee decided not to ask for tenders until the finance of the
scheme had been considered.13¢ In March, it was reported that the
money could be raised if the Society offered 5 per cent for a fixed
period of years subject to 12 months’ notice of withdrawal,1*’ and in
April the Committee accepted a tender from a builder, John Foster,
for £3,269 for erecting the new Pump Room, baths and other works.
Seward was appointed architect and surveyor at the usual 5 per
cent on contract price. He was to appoint a clerk of the works on
the same terms as he had done in building the new Gaol.18 In July,
the Committee received Seward’s report on the extra work required
and attended the laying of the foundation stone underneath which
were placed a glass bottle and several new silver coins.'*°
Work went on for two years and various additional expenses were
180 H.B.14, p. 424, 28 Jan. 1817; p. 444, 3 June 1817.
181 77.B.14, p. 450, 11 July 1817.
182 77, B.14, p. 476, 20 Feb. 1818; p. 478, 3 March 1818; p. 493, 29 May 1818; p.
523, 17 Dec. 1818; p. 539, 15 March 1819; p. 540, 1 April 1819.
183 77B.14, p. 544, 8 April 1819; pp. 547, 548, 15 April 1819. For Seward, see
Walter Ison, The Georgian Buildings of Bristol, p. 44.
184 77.B.14, p. 549, 6 May 1819.
185 17.B.15, p. 10, 16 July 1819; p. 25, 7 Oct. 1819; p. 36, 18 Oct. 1819.
186 7 B.15, p. 58, 21 Jan. 1820.
137 H.B.15, p. 74, 3 March 1820.
188 77,B.15, p. 82, 14 April 1820; p. 84, 17 April 1820.
139 Hf.B.15, p. 95, 6 July 1820.
348 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
incurred, bringing the cost up to more than £4,000. In 1821, for
example, Seward was instructed to enlarge the entrance and to get
estimates for heating the baths with warm air. A wall had to be
constructed to exclude the tide water from the existing Hotwell
House, and two patent pneumatic stoves were ordered at a cost of
£120. Four veined marble baths, a marble fountain, a marble
chimney piece and other furnishings cost £121. A tender for
plumber’s work came to £166, a bookcase cost £19 and a new wall
£153 108.140
There was some alarm about the use of iron pipes to carry the
water, as a report from Dr. Carrick and Mr. Clayfield stated that the
existing pipe had been considerably affected by corrosion. Humphrey
Davy was asked for an opinion, and an analysis of the water showed
that there was no iron in it and that iron pipes could be used.241
The lease held by Powell ran out early in 1822, and in April the
Society advertised the new premises. In July a lease for 5 years was
granted to Francis Moreton.142 The new building was not entirely
satisfactory, a smoky chimney gave a good deal of trouble, and
£45 tos. had to be spent on alterations, part of which was deducted
from Seward’s account for £323 7s.148 Moreton’s lease expired in
September 1827 and the Hall advertised for a new tenant. Philip
Weeks of Lamplighters’ Hall agreed to take the premises for a year
for a rent of £150, with the option of taking on a new lease after a
year at £200 p.a. He was recommended to establish a new scale of
charges approved by the Hall.144 By August 1828, Weeks was dead,
and his brother-in-law Daniel Pugh agreed to take a 7 year lease
from 29 September.145 By October 1830, Pugh was £200 in arrears,
and the Hall agreed that in recent times receipts had not been equal
to expenses. Pugh was allowed to continue for a year at £100 rent,
and half of his debt was remitted. Mr. Dyer, who had recently made
a survey, was asked to submit proposals for alterations.146
The unhappy business dragged on. By January 1834, Pugh was
£300 in arrears and the Society decided to arrange a surrender of
the lease. Pugh was to give a promissory note, and his offer to con-
140 77.B.15, p. 135, 20 Feb. 1821; p. 137, 6 March 1821, pp. 145, 146, 3 April
1821; p. 151, 24 April 1821; p. 156, 18 May 1821; p. 189, 8 Nov. 1821; p. 200, 5
Dec. 1821; p. 217, 20 Feb. 1822. The old Hotwell House was taken down in 1822
when the new Bridge Valley Road to Clifton was constructed (Latimer, Nine-
teenth Century Annals, p. 100).
141 77.B.15, p. 171, 8 Aug. 1821; p. 172, 16 Aug. 1821; p. 176, 25 Sept. 1821.
142 Society’s Deeds, box 12, bdle. 19, 6 July 1822; H.B.15, p. 239, 4 July 1822.
143 7.B.15, p. 293, 7 Jan. 1823.
144 7.B.16, p. 205, 25 May 1827; p. 227, 20 Aug. 1827; p. 239, 21 Sept. 1827.
145 Society’s Deeds, box 12, bdle. 19, 29 Sept. 1828; H.B.16, p. 288, 15 Aug.
1828,
146 77, B.16, p. 411, 1 Oct. 1830.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 349
tinue as manager was turned down.!4’ A new lease for three years
was granted on 25 March 1834 to Charles Frederick Herbert. He
was to pay £75 per annum for the first two years and £100 for the
third. He was to decorate the premises, and £25 was to be remitted
from his first year’s rent if he spent that amount in advertising.**®
It seems that at this time the inhabitants of Bristol had been
deprived of their right to get Hotwell water free for their own use.
In 1834, Joseph Russell asked for the return of the money he had
paid during the last seven years, on the ground that citizens were
entitled to water if they sent jars marked with their own names. The
Society replied firmly that it did not recognise any such right, but
three years later when legal action was threatened, it agreed that
there was such a right and that a pump should be erected near the
river if this could be done at reasonable cost.14®
Meanwhile, there was more trouble over the lease. In January
1836, Herbert was 13 years in arrears. He complained about lack of
patronage and wanted to terminate the lease. The Society refused
to agree. If he paid his arrears, he could have a new agreement. In
April, it was learnt that he had decamped, taking his furniture
except for goods which had been distrained for £18. The rest had
been sold to Mr. Moses Almain who was not willing to hand over the
money. Moreover, Herbert had left a man in possession of the
premises who would not surrender the premises unless the Society
abandoned its demand for arrears. The Clerk was instructed to
recover possession by ejectment and to try to come to terms with
Mr. Almain!®° In June, the Master reported that he and Claxton
had met Mr. Almain who had acted in good faith and who could not
be asked to make good any loss. The Clerk stated that Herbert had
sailed in the Nile for New York with his wife, his mother and sister-
in-law and two children. The passages had been booked in fictitious
names. Steps were taken to recover possession of the Hotwell. Two
years later, the Clerk reported that Herbert had returned and had
been arrested for arrears of £164 14s. 3d., but that he would prob-
ably take advantage of the Insolvent Debtors Act. He contracted jail
fever, and although the Society agreed to his temporary release, he
died in prison.154
147 77.B.17, p. 198, 10 Jan. 1834.
148 17.B.17, p. 218, 2 April 1834; Society’s Deeds, box 12, bdle. 19, 25 March
1834.
149 77.B.17, p. 228, 7 May 1834; Vincent Waite, The Bristol Hotwell, p. 12;
H.B.18, p. 50, 19 April 1837. A few months later there were complaints about the
muddy state of the water at the public pump lately erected and an investigation was
ordered (H.B.18, p. 89, 30 Aug. 1837).
150 77.B.17, p. 386, 20 April 1836.
181 H7.B.17, p. 395, 11 May 1836; p. 397, 8 June 1836; pp. 414, 415, Aug. 10
1836; H.B.18, p. 217, 3 Aug. 1838; p. 247, 12 Oct. 1838.
350 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
There were unsuccessful negotiations for a new lease at £75 a year,
and in April 1836 the Standing Committee recommended that the
premises should be sold by auction on a gg year lease for three lives.
The reserve price was fixed at £950, but the auction did not result
in a sale.152
In March 1838, a new lease was granted to Mrs. Jane Tutton at
£45 a year.153 In 1843, she asked that a new pump and other
machinery should be installed, and the Hall agreed ‘to do this if her
rent was increased to £55 a year.154 She apparently accepted, but
made further complaints in 1845 and 1846. The engine was not
providing enough water and the tide water was getting in. Conse-
quently, she was in arrears with her rent.155 The Society got a report
on the state of the Hotwell which showed that her complaints were
justified, that the vapour baths needed alteration and that the water
closets were out of order, but it was reluctant to spend more money
and considered the possibility of another tenancy at a reduced
rent.156 Marmont reported that if the Hotwell were to be converted
to private use, the cost would be high, and Mrs. Tutton was willing
to carry on if her rent were reduced to £45 and if the Society spent
£40 on the pump.1457
In 1851, a 21 year lease was granted to Mr. James Bolton. The
Society agreed to him making a shop on each side of the Pump Room
and lent him £150 for the purpose at 6 per cent. It refused to lend
him another £150 to make a swimming bath, but he nevertheless
installed one, and in November in view of the improvements,
particularly the “tepid swimming bath”’, it lent him £200 at 5 per
cent.158 Bolton was successful for a time and sold a variety of goods
at the Hotwell.15® In 1855, he offered to buy the premises on a long
lease for £900, but the Society rejected his offer.!®° Possibly he was
not sound financially, because a few months later he asked for a loan
of £450, which was refused. However, the Society did agree to
postpone for six months the rent then due and for another six months
the rent due on 29 September 1855.11
Bolton eventually got into heavy arrears and the Society forgave
him his debt. There was clearly no profit to be made out of the
152 Hf.B.17, p. 445, 26 Oct. 1836; H.B.18, p. 50, 19 April 1837; p. 102, 12 Sept.
1837; p. 106, 6 Oct. 1837.
188 17.B.18, p. 163, 14 March 1838; Society’s Deeds, box 12, bdle. 19.
154 H.B.19, p. 341, 28 April 1843; p. 346, 26 May 1843; p. 358, 9 June 1843.
155 H.B.20, p. 133, 18 July 1845; p. 237, 8 July 1846; p. 246, 14 Aug. 1846.
156 H.B.20, pp. 249, 253-4, 11 Sept. 1846.
157 77.B.20, p. 302, 23 April 1847.
158 HB.21, p. 145, 20 June 1851; Society’s Deeds, box 12, bdle. 19. 27 Sept.
1851; H.B.21, p. 209, 9 Jan. 1852.
159 Vincent Waite, The Bristol Hotwell, p. 12.
160 77.B.21, p. 467, 30 March 1855.
161 77.B.21, p. 507, 3 Aug. 1855.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 351
‘Hotwell, and the Society was glad of the opportunity of disposing of
it to the Corporation when it decided to improve navigation on the
Avon by removing Hotwell Point. The Pump Room and other
buildings were demolished in 1867.162
THE SOCIETY’S QUARRIES
The Society owned a number of quarries on its Clifton estate, and
these were in considerable demand owing to building development
and the need for stone to make roads. The arrangements for leasing
these quarries and the problems arising from their working are
mentioned continually in the Society’s records, but only a few
illustrations can be given here.1® In 1817, for example, a number of
quarries were let by auction at annual rents amounting to £275 a
year,1®* and next year the Commissioners for Pitching and Paving
were offered Honeypen Hill Quarry at £105 a year.1®5 In 1831,
John Loudon McAdam on behalf of the Turnpike Commissioners
rented a quarry for £50 a year.166 Nine years later, quarries 5, 6, 7,
and 8 near the river brought in a combined annual rent of £180.16?
In 1871, part of the quarry near the gully on Durdham Down was
let for £150 a year.168 In 1884, a contractor offered £350 a year and
a royalty of 4d. a ton on quantities over 24,000 tons a year for the
lease of a quarry near Proctor’s Fountain on Clifton Down, and the
Society was prepared to agree if the reserved rent was £400 a year.169
As late as 1894, the quarries under Clifton Down were being offered
at a rent of £175 a year and a royalty on anything taken in excess of
10,000 tons.17°
Although the quarries were a valuable source of income and
important for building development in Clifton, they presented a
number of problems. In 1813, for example, it was reported that those
near Hotwells were a serious threat to the river owing to rocks
rolling into the mud and also damaging the tow-paths. It was
necessary to stop using four of the quarries.171 There was also the
risk of damaging neighbouring property. In 1830, for example, there
162 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 262. On 25 Sept. 1866, the Society granted the
Corporation several pieces of land, messuages, counting house, workshops, gardens,
rocks, baths, and pumps (Society’s Deeds, box 12, bdle. 19).
168 For quarry leases, see the Society’s Register of Deeds No. 2, pp. 431 ff. For the
quarries on Clifton and Durdham Downs, see List of Plans, no. 29.
164 77.B.14, p. 458, 7 Nov. 1817.
165 #7,B.14, p. 473, 9 Feb. 1818; p. 478, 3 March 1818.
166 77,.B.17, p. 73, 14 Dec. 1831. 167 H.B.19, p. 41, 23 Oct. 1840.
168 7.B.25, p. 42, 10 March 1871. The rent was raised to £175 in 1876, but the
Society declined to renew the lease in 1878 as it did not want any more quarrying
on that part of the Down (H.B.26, p. 75, 29 Sept. 1876; p. 174, 26 April 1878).
169 77.B.27, p. 65, 25 July 1884. 170 H.B.28, p. 92, 21 Dec. 1894.
171 7{.B.14, p. 250, 23 June 1813.
352 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
was a dispute about whether subsidence at Honeypen Hill was due to
quarrying or to a sudden thaw, and later there was some trouble with
the Rev. Mr. Edgworth who had purchased the land on which the
Roman Catholic pro-Cathedral was subsequently built.17? In July
1847, McAdam gave notice to quit No. 1. quarry at Hotwells because
the magistrate would not let him blast there owing to the danger to
the public,1”° and in 1884 it was reported that large pieces of rock
continued to fall on the Port and Pier Railway from a disused quarry
near the new Zig-Zag. This problem was overcome by agreeing to
let a man work the quarry at a rent of £150 on a two year lease.’
LAND OUTSIDE BRISTOL
Throughout the nineteenth century the Society was very much
concerned with the management of property outside Bristol which
it owned in its own right or which it administered as a charity
trustee. A detailed history of its estate management would be out of
place here, but some comment and illustration is necessary, since it
involved a great deal of work for the officers and for Standing Com-
mittee.
The main estates were in Somerset, and they included Locking
and Beere, which belonged to the Colston Charity, and Monkton
at Stogursey, which the Society believed it held in its own right.*”®
In addition, the Charity estate included ground rents in Lincoln-
shire, Leicestershire, Dorset and elsewhere, and after the reorganisa-
tion of the Colston Charity in the eighteen-sixties, the Society pur-
chased an estate at Stapleton, part of it for Colston’s Hospital and
part for the Society’s own use.!”6 In the eighteen-sixties, it also
invested some of its own money in estates in Somerset known as
Farm, Cathanger and Coultings.!??
References to the management of the estates appear continually
in the Hall Books, and a few examples will show the kind of problems
that arose. In 1811, for example, a man rebuilt part of the sea-wall
at Combwich in a way which left a section of the Society’s wall in
danger. The Clerk was instructed to take the matter up with the
Commissioners of Sewers at Bridgwater, and in the end the man was
ordered to rebuild on the old line.178 In 1813, the presentation of
Locking was auctioned for £665.17° Three years later, there was
trouble when Mr. Reeves, who was employed by the Society as
172 H.B.16, p. 378, 5 March 1830; p. 382, 16 April 1830; H.B.17, pp. 389, 390,
20 April 1836; p. 394, 11 May 1836; p. 418, 17 Aug. 1836.
173 FT.B.20, p. 314, 9 July 1847.
174 H.B.27, p. 40, 25 Jan. 1884; p. 46, 29 Feb. 1884.
175 See p. 365-70. 176 See p. 371. 177 See p. 355-6.
178 HfB.r4, p. 161, 25 Sept. 1811; p. 164, 8 Nov. 1811; p. 259, 29 Oct. 1813.
179 H.B.14, p. 259, 29 Oct. 1813.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 353
receiver of rents in Lincolnshire, Léicestershire and Dorset, was in
default on money owing to the crown and was also about £200 in
debt to the Society.18°
At the annual inspection of the estates in 1822, everything was
found to be in excellent order, and it was decided to give a piece of
plate to the value of £100 to Mr. Haynes who managed the estates
for the Society. There were, however, complaints from the tenant
about the low price of provisions and requests for a reduction of
rents. Stogursey Church, which had received liberal help from the
Society, was reported to be very neat, and the tower had been
repaired at a cost of £744.18!
In 1831, the lease of Stogursey, which was held from Eton College,
came up for renewal, and the College wanted a renewal fine of
£1,000. There was more hard bargaining when the College wanted
£1,054 for renewal in 1838, and the Society offered £800. The fine
was eventually settled at £950.18?
During Claxton’s energetic treasurership, the visit of the Standing
Committee to the estates were recorded in great detail in his Journal
as well as in the Hall Books. Thus, in July 1842, the Master and
Standing Committee went to view the estate at Locking and after-
ward dined at the Royal Hotel, the total cost being £20 6s. 8d.
Next month, they travelled by rail to Bridgwater to visit Beere and
Stogursey. They stayed the night at Bridgwater, and the total cost
was £39 7s. 6d.18% After a visit to the Stogursey farms in 1844, the
Treasurer’s detailed report included the respectful suggestion that
the pigsties at one of the farms should be removed and placed in a
convenient position at the back of the house.!54
These annual inspections no doubt helped to maintain standards,
and they also served as pleasant outings for members of the Com-
mittee. Thus, Claxton noted of a visit in 1867 that after passing
through Farm, they had another “liquor up’’, as the weather was
very hot and thirsty. At Beere Farm, they had expected to find
luncheon, but were disappointed as “‘the old girls, Mr. Fisher’s aged
sisters were too stingy’. However, they had another “‘liquor up”’ and
walked to the station.!§5 The Somerest lands also provided shooting
facilities in the patronage of the Master. On one occasion, the
tenant of Beere Farm was accused of “‘very gross language and
insulting conduct”’ to the Master’s nominee and was required to
make an ample apology.1*®
180 77.B.14, p. 381, 13 June. 1816. 181 77,.B.15, p. 270, 8 Nov. 1822.
182 77.B.17, pp. 52, 53, 9 Sept. and 7 Oct. 1831; H.B.18, p. 238, 12 Sept. 1838;
p- 244, 12 Oct. 1838; p. 249, 18 Oct. 1838.
183 Claxton’s Fournal 1, p. 69, 20 July 1842; p. 70, 2 Aug. 1842.
184 77.B.19, p. 453, 30 May 1844.
185 Claxton’s Journal 11, pp. 89 ff., 13 July 1867.
186 #7.B.23, p. 297, 18 Sept. 1863.
354 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
In 1850, Claxton’s salary was increased by £150 but at the same
time he was required in future to collect the rents from the Society’s
estates instead of this being done by a land agent. The Finance
Committee thought that one of the advantages would be that it
could be done “‘without any increased cost’’,18” but in the privacy
of his Journal, Claxton remarked bitterly that he would in future
have four times as much work and that over half his increased salary
would have to go to pay a clerk.188
Changes in farming methods and fluctuations in farm prices are
reflected from time to time in the records. Thus, Claxton noted in
1847 that one of the tenants was an intelligent man who had intro-
duced “implemental Husbandry” to a greater extent than had
hitherto been known in that part of Somerset.1®® In 1871, Mr.
Stoate of Farm wrote to the Society stating that “As Agriculture is
so much aided by Machinery of which Farm is deficient . . . I shall
be glad as this is such a large tillage Farm if you will kindly help me
to move on with the modern style of farming by putting up Mach-
inery for thrashing, cutting chaff, pulping roots and grinding corn
for stock, as I do not know one Farm in Somerset as large as this
without such Machinery.” He wanted about £250 for building and
about the same amount for machinery. Eventually, he got £300 for
new building and up to £200 for any further outlay, provided he
would pay 5 per cent on the amount over £300.*°°
Whenever agriculture was in difficulties, there were demands for
reductions in rent. In 1844, for example, after visiting the estates,
the Treasurer reported that the tenants could not pay because of
low prices, and the Hall agreed to abate rents at Stogursey, Beere
and Locking by 10 per cent.1*! In 1880, Stogursey tenants com-
plained that the 15 per cent reduction which they had received was
not enough, and the Hall increased it to 20 per cent.19? There were
similar problems on a number of other occasions in the last twenty
years of the century.1**
As far as one can judge on limited evidence, the Society treated
its tenants reasonably. Thus, when the tenant of Cathanger was
asked for an increased rent in 1862, he replied that he was unable to
pay it and was given notice to quit at Michaelmas. He complained
that this was very short notice and that it was “quite contrary to the
187 77,B.21r, p. 81, 11 Oct. 1850.
188 Claxton’s Journal 1, p. 152, 2 Nov. 1850.
189 Claxton’s Journal 1, p. 124, 14 July 1847. Mr. Mason at Wrenmore.
190 7 B.25, pp. 70 ff., 7 July 1871; p. 79, 14 Aug. 1871.
191 77,.B.20, p. 21, 13 Sept. 1844.
192 FT B.26, p. 305, 21 May 1880; p. 367, 23 Sept. 1881.
198.77 B.27, p. 35, 31 Dec. 1883; p. 38, 25 Jan. 1884; p. 47, 11 March 1884; p.
460, 30 Dec. 1892; H.B.28, p. 35, 27 Oct. 1893; pp. 179, 180, 25 July 1896; p.
193, 27 Nov. 1896; p. 197, 18 Dec. 1896.
The Society as Property-Developer, Nineteenth Century 355
Societys practice to deal fairly with their Tenants”. His tenancy was
extended for another 12 months.!*4
As has already been noted, the Society purchased an estate at
Stapleton in the eighteen-sixties.195 In addition, it made other
acquisitions which were the special concern of William Claxton. In
1861, he urged the Society to buy an estate of about 400 acres known
as Farm between Beere and Monkton, and the Society took posses-
sion in June of that year.1°° A year later, Claxton and John Hellicar
visited another estate of 126 acres known as Cathanger which was
rented for £195 and which could be bought for £5,000.19’ The Hall
confirmed the purchase on 26 April 1862.19§ Another farm of 72
acres known as Coultings was bought in 1865 for £4,308 6s. 10d.199
and 12 acres at Fiddington were added to the Farm-Cathanger
estate in 1870.29 Claxton was clearly getting great enjoyment out of
land purchases, and in a letter recommending the acquisitions, he
remarked “‘referring you to the last Cartoon in Punch I guess I am
like the American President in ‘Compound Addition’ not of debt
however but of Property, and like the Emperor of the French also
in ‘Reduction of debt’.”’2%
When Claxton urged these investments in agricultural land in the
eighteen-sixties, he could not foresee the difficulties to be encoun-
tered by agriculture in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. By
1882, the Society was seriously considering selling land. The
Treasurer reported in that year that the Farm-Cathanger lands had
cost the Society £17,356, that £3,729 4s. had been spent on new
buildings and £1,734 on drainage. Average annual net receipts had
been £522 after deductions for management, so that return on capital
had been 23 per cent. On Coultings, the return on capital of
£4,308 6s. 10d. had been 2} per cent. On a capital expenditure of
£26,763 on the three estates, the average annual return was only
£633. Moreover, the tenant of Coultings had given notice to quit
unless his rent was reduced, and other tenants were likely to follow
suit.2°? The Society decided that it was not expedient to sell,?°* but
in view of the agricultural depression, it was no doubt glad that
much of its capital was in urban property in Bristol.
194 FT, B.23, pp. 228, 229, 8 Aug. 1892. 195 See p. 282 n. 10.
196 Claxton’s Fournal 1, pp. 224, 225, 15 Feb. 1861, 6 June 1861.
197 Ibid., p. 231, 10 Feb. 1862; H.B.23, pp. 191 ff., 14 Feb. 1861.
198 Claxton’s Journal 1, p. 232, 26 April 1862. The Society was in funds owing to
the sale of land in Clifton, and the Treasurer reported that he could pay off £2,000
raised on bond connection with Farm and also another £2,000 bonds.
199 17.B.24, p. 42, 17 Nov. 1865.
200 See H.B.26, p. 416, 28 April 1882.
201 77.B.23, p. 195, 14 Feb. 1861
202 77.B.26, p. 416, 28 April 1882.
203 17.B.26, p. 420, 6 May 1882. By 1896, the rent of Farm and Cathanger was
down to £380 p.a. (H.B.28, p. 197, 18 Dec. 1896).
356 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
It would be possible to add a great deal to this survey of the Society’s
management of its property in the nineteenth century, and in parti-
cular to work out in greater detail the major contribution which it
made to the development of its urban property in Clifton, Hotwells
and other parts of Bristol. This aspect of its work was of growing
concern to it as the city expanded rapidly in the nineteenth century,
and although the Society occasionally made unfortunate invest-
ments such as the Hotwell and nearly became involved in what
would have been a major disaster with its Waterworks Scheme, ?° it
nevertheless benefited very considerably from the efforts which it
made to develop its urban land. It was, as a result, in a position to
devote a considerable amount of money to the charitable and
educational activities which became of increasing importance to it
in the second half of the nineteenth century.
204 This important attempt to develop the Society’s property is more conveni-
ently considered elsewhere. See pp. 413-26.
CHAPTER 20
The Society and Education in the
Nineteenth Century
AT the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Society was respon-
sible for Colston’s Hospital and for its own School under the Hall,
both of which gave elementary education to poor children. In the
course of the next hundred years, the educational work of the Society
underwent radical transformation. Colston’s Hospital ceased to be
restricted to teaching a few basic subjects to boys in humble circum-
stances as a preparation for apprenticeship, and the Merchant
Venturers’ Technical College at its highest levels was rivalling
University College, Bristol. The development of education had come
to be one of the main concerns of a Society which was no longer
involved with commerce and the port.!
THE MERCHANTS’ HALL SCHOOL
There are not many references to the school under the Hall in the
early nineteenth century, but it still went on.? On 8 November
1811, Edmund Sheriff was appointed master and his salary was
increased by £10 to make it £50 per annum. In 1814, the Hall
bought for the school certain mathematical instruments and charts,
and next year the master’s salary was raised to £65. When Edmund
Sheriff died in 1816, his son was appointed in his place, and his
salary was raised to £80 in 1819. Two years later, a sextant and
azimuth compass were purchased. George Mitchell became master
in 1836, but by 1839 the school was in a bad way. A committee
reported that it was inefficient, and the Hall decided to amalgamate
its school with another school for teaching navigation which was
being run by the Bristol Marine Society. The Hall appointed
Lieutenant Kemball, master of the Marine Society’s school, to be
1 For a very detailed treatment of the subject, see D. J. Eames, “The Contribu-
tion of the Society of Merchant Venturers to the Development of Education in
Bristol’’, unpublished Bristol M.A. thesis, 1966.
2 Merchants’ Hall: two envelopes containing papers relating to the Merchants’
Hall Marine School including ‘“‘“Some Account of the Merchants’ Hall School’’ and
‘Constitution and Regulation of the Merchants’ Hall Marine School’’. See also
H.B.14, p. 165, 8 Nov. 1811; p. 166, 8 Nov. 1811; p. 321, 8 Nov. 1814; p. 339, 18
April 1815; H.B.15, p. 12, 5 Aug. 1819; p. 131, 2 Jan. 1821; H.B.17, p. 292, 11 Feb.
1835; p. 406, 6 July 1836; H.B.78, p. 304, 8 Feb. 1839.
358 | The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
master of its school in King Street at £80 a year, and agreed to
provide him with room, coal and candles. The Marine Society
undertook to continue its subscriptions, and as long as they amounted
to £40 a year, it could nominate one third of the pupils. There were
to be classes for adults as well as for youths, and adults were to pay
3 guineas each, one third of which went to the master. The number
of students to be admitted was 50, and there was a joint manage-
ment committee. There were five classes — reading, writing, arith-
metic, grammar and geography, and, if required, an elementary
class in navigation. Books and instruments were to be provided in the
senior classes.
The union was not successful and did not last long. In 1844, a
committee found that only three boys were being instructed in
navigation and that two of these were determined not to go to sea.
It recommended the end of the association with the Bristol Marine
Society and the establishment of a new system for the Hall’s school.
In future it was to teach nothing but mathematics, navigation and
related subjects, and no one should be admitted unless he could
read and write. Thus there came to an end, in theory at least, the
elementary school, and it was replaced by a navigation school. A
master was to be appointed to teach in the room under the Hall, and
the Society was to provide coal, stationery, books, charts and instru-
ments. The master was to have £50 a year, which included £25 for
teaching not more than 20 boys at Colston’s Hospital mathematics
and navigation. The Society was to supplement his salary by addi- ©
tional payments based on the number of pupils and the period of
their attendance.* The Marine Society, through its Chairman
W. D. Wills, did not agree with the proposals, but the Society saw
no reason to change its decision.* ‘The first master was appointed in
October 1844 and the rules were finally approved in December.®
There was difficulty in getting pupils, and in 1853 a new set of
rules was drawn up and efforts were made to give the school more
publicity. In 1859, the master, David Mackie, suggested various
alterations in teaching methods, and some changes were made in
hours of attendance.’
When the master died in 1863, the Society scene a sub-
3 H.B.19, p. 409, 12 Jan. 1844; papers relating to the Marine School, Report of
Sub-Committee, 22 Feb. 1844; H.B.20, pp. 13 f., 20 Aug. 1844; p. 23, 13 Sept. 1844.
4 H.B.19, p. 439, 12 April 1844.
5 H.B.20, p. 36, 18 Oct. 1844; pp. 81 ff., 13 Dec. 1844. D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp.
156—7. There were 10 applicants. Hugh Babb, a retired Master in the Royal Navy,
‘was appointed and held the post for 9 years. The school was open on Mondays,
Wednesdays and Fridays only, presumably in order to give the master time to
teach at Colston’s Hospital.
6 H.B.21, pp. 286, 287, 14 Jan. 1853; p. 352, 9 Dec. 1853.
7 H.B.22, p. 348, 13 May 1859; p. 350, 10 June 1859.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Ceniury 359
committee which reported that the Merchants’ Hall School was not
achieving its objectives. It pointed out that schools for navigation
in London and other ports were attached to Trade Schools under the
Department of Science and Art. When a Trade and Mining School
had been established in Bristol in 1856, Professor Playfair had
wanted to include in it a Marine Department, but had found the
ground already occupied by the Society’s School. The sub-committee
had contacted the Department of Science and Art which had sent
a representative to Bristol to discuss the matter. The report expressed
the view that it was worth trying the experiment of combining the
Society’s Marine School with the Trade and Mining School. That
school was to recommend to the Society a master in navigation at a
salary of £50 a year, half of which was to be paid by the Society, and
the Society was to have the right to nominate 10 boys to the Marine
Department of the Trade and Mining School. They were to be
known as Merchants’ Hall Boys. The navigation master was to be on
the staff of the Trade School, which was to provide a room to be
called The Society of Merchant Venturers’ Marine School. The
Society was to equip it with charts and instruments and to provide
£10 a year for its upkeep. The Master, Wardens and Treasurer
together with the committee of the Trade School were to be the
managers of the Marine Department. Classes were to be arranged
for adults as well as for boys.* By this arrangement the Society
brought to an end the school under the Hall and transferred it to the
Trade and Mining School, but continued to carry out its obligations
under the trusts by providing for the teaching of navigation.
The new Navigation School was not successful. In 1865 a com-
mittee reported that it had not fulfilled its expectations. Arthur
James Gayne had been appointed master in 1863 at £100 a year,
half of it paid by the Trade and Mining School, but there had
seldom been any applications for places, and it had been decided
that the master should be allowed to act on his own, provided he
continued to instruct at least 10 boys nominated by the Hall. There
had never been half that number at any one time, and Gayne had
resigned to take a post at Gosport. The connection with the Trade
and Mining School had thus proved “fatuous”. However, the Local
Marine Board was now willing to re-establish and encourage the
school, and cooperation with the Board seemed the most hopeful
prospect.® In July 1865, William Charles Seeton was appointed
master at £80 a year, undertaking to teach at least 10 boys the art
of navigation.?°
Four years later, the Society’s Visiting Committee reported that
the objects of the school as originally constituted had entirely failed
8 H.B.23, p. 301, 18 Sept. 1863. ® H.B.24, pp. 5 ff., 3 May 1865.
10 H.B.24, p. 14, 5 July 1865.
360 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
owing to the abolition of compulsory apprenticeship on merchant
vessels, It proposed that the Local Marine Board and the committee
of the Sailors’ Home should be invited to join the Society in super-
vising the school, which should continue to be free for boys, but
which should also prepare adults for the examinations held by the
Local Marine Board. The fees were to be 7s. a week, and it was
hoped that the school would become self-supporting and useful."
Captain John Furzier was appointed master in 1871.1
In 1878, there was yet another report on the Merchants’ Hall
Marine School. It had no boys as pupils and the conduct of the few
remaining adults was “most objectionable and offensive”. It was
decided that the school should be closed, and Mr. John Furzier
was given notice that his appointment terminated on Lady Day
1879. The £20 which the Society was under obligation to pay to
some person skilled in navigation to teach boys in Bristol was to be
paid in future to the Governors of the Colston Trust.18
COLSTON’S HOSPITAL IN THE FIRST HALF OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
The history of Colston’s Hospital has been examined in great detail
by Mr. D. J. Eames,!4 and there is no need to include here all the
material contained in his invaluable study, but it is necessary to give
some indication of what the Society did in relation to the Hospital
and to make a number of comments, particularly with regard to the
legal dispute in which the Society was involved in in the eighteen-
forties.
Until 1836, the Hospital seems to have continued very much on its
eighteenth-century lines under the headmastership of Mr. Haynes,
who also acted as the Society’s Receiver of Rents in Bristol and
Clifton. His salary was raised from £50 to £100 in 1814 and to
£150 in 1818.15 In addition, owing to the high cost of food during
and after the Napoleonic Wars, it was necessary from time to time
to increase the amount allowed him for each boy and to make ad
hoc grants to meet immediate necessities.1® A Visiting Committee
examined the Hospital from time to time and dealt with disciplinary
and other problems. In 1816, for example, there was a complaint
11 H.B.24, pp. 366 ff., 27 Oct. 1869.
12 H.B.25, p. 58, 9 June 1871.
13 H.B.26, p. 225, 19 Dec. 1878. These Trustees had in 1875 taken over Colston’s
Hospital and also the Trade and Mining School (see pp. 374, 375-6).
14 See Note 1 supra.
15 H.B.14, p. 315, 8 Nov. 1814; p. 518, 19 Nov. 1818.
16 77,.B.13, p« 138, 29 May 1800; H.B.14, p. 143, 5 Dec. 1810; p. 315, 8 Nov.
1814. The allowance per boy was reduced to £15 in 1822, but restored to £18 in
1825 (H.B.15, p. 275, 8 Nov. 1822; H.B.16, p. 60, 3 June 1825).
The Society and Education. Nineteenth Century 361
from a missionary in Newfoundland, forwarded through the Bishop
of Bristol and the Mayor, that boys from the Hospital had been
apprenticed to Roman Catholic masters in Newfoundland and had
become bigoted Roman Catholics.” In 1820, it was decided that no
boys should be accepted unless he had been vaccinated against
smallpox.1§ Five years later, there was typhus in the school and
steps were taken to deal with it.1® In 1836, there was trouble with
Colston’s Nominees who complained that the Society had allowed
the British Association to use part of the Hospital during its visit to
Bristol and thus deprived the boys of the use of it for a considerable
time. The Hall replied with dignity that it thought it in the interests
of the city and of Science that so eminent a body should not be
prejudiced by want of accommodation and that the deviation from
the terms of the Trust was ‘“‘a deviation which the peculiar urgency
of the occasion and the importance of the public Interests concerned
appeared to justify.’’?°
Until 1836 there were no changes of any importance in the educa-
tion provided, which consisted of reading, writing, arithmetic and
instruction in the catechism of the Church of England. In this, the
Society was simply carrying out the wishes of the Founder, Edward
Colston. The headmaster, Mr. Haynes, must have been increasingly
busy with his work as Receiver of Rents in Clifton and Bristol, and
was unlikely to be an innovator on any scale.
In 1836, there were great changes. In the first place, Mr. Haynes,
who had been headmaster for over 50 years, decided to retire owing
to heart trouble,#! and Mr. John Lewis was appointed in his place.??
In the same year a new and much stronger management committee,
including the Master and the Treasurer, replaced the former
Visiting Committee. ?%
The appointment of a headmaster who could give all his time to
the Hospital and the establishment of a stronger management
committee may in some measure have been a response to challenges
17 H.B.14, p. 405, 19 Oct. 1816. The headmaster said he knew of only one case,
a boy apprenticed to a respectable merchant of Bristol who had sent him to be
apprenticed in Newfoundland in 1813. The headmaster said he did not know the
Newfoundland merchant was a Roman Catholic. In another case, he had refused
to allow a boy to be sent to Newfoundland to a Roman Catholic.
18 H.B.15, p. 109, 2 Nov. 1820.
19 H.B.16, p. 12, 7 Jan. 1825.
20 H.B.17, p. 418, 17 Aug. 1836; p. 429, 5 Oct. 1836.
21 H.B.17, pp. 413 ff., 10 Aug. 1836.
22 H.B.17, pp. 426, 427, 12 Sept. 1836 (21 applications); H.B.17, p. 443, 26
Oct. 1836.
23 H.B.17, p. 448, 8 Nov. 1836. It was a sub-committee of the Standing Com-
mittee. It kept its own minutes. See Colston’s Hospital Visiting Committee, 4. volumes,
covering the years 1836 to 1875. For other records, see D. J. Eames, op. cit. (note
I supra).
362 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
from outside. The role of central government was becoming of in-
creasing importance and Parliament was showing an inconvenient
interest in the administration of charities and educational trusts.
In 1818, for example, Henry Brougham’s committee began to enquire
into the education of the lower orders and asked for information
about Colston’s Hospital.24 The Whig reformers in the eighteen-
thirties not only reformed the Corporation and the Bristol charities
but even attempted to pry into the affairs of the Society itself. In
November 1836, a special meeting of the Hall was called to consider
a request from the Charity Commissioners that the Society should
produce all the Minute Books and financial records relating to
Colston’s Hospital and hand them over for examination.*® It was
not surprising, therefore, that from 1836 the Hall was increasingly
concerned with the management and with the educational system
of Colston’s Hospital, and that there were major changes, some of
which can be noted.?®
One of the most important reforms was recommended by the
Standing Committee in 1836 when it proposed that the system by
which the headmaster received a grant for every boy out of which he
provided food and clothing should be replaced experimentally for
one year by the Society itself taking over responsibility for food and
clothing.2”? The new system apparently worked well,?® and it re-
moved from the headmaster any temptation to make a profit at the
expense of the boys. It was possibly to compensate him for any loss
that his salary was increased from 150 guineas to 200 guineas in
1839.79
John Lewis was headmaster from 1836 until his dismissal in 1848,
and during his headmastership steps were taken to improve the
comfort and education of the boys.®® Lewis investigated what was
being done at Christ’s Hospital and other charity schools, and the
committee recommended a new and more varied diet. It found the
education in the Hospital had been more varied but in some ways
inferior to that given in parochial schools, and a new, more general
system was recommended with useful and amusing books. There was
to be more recreation and more holidays, and it was hoped that
eventually corporal punishment could be abolished. Some boys
24 H.B.14, p. 486, 19 May 1818.
26 H.B.18, p. 1, 23 Nov. 1836. For the sequel, see p. 365 ff.
26 For further details, see D. J. Eames, of. cit., chapter 3, ‘““Colston’s Hospital in
the First Half of the Nineteenth century’’.
27 H“.B.17, p. 432, 5 Oct. 1836.
28 H.B.18, pp. 387, 389, 8 Nov. 1839.
29 H.B.18, p. 375, 29 Oct. 1839.
30 It is only fair to add that something had already been done to improve the
education as a result of a report from Mr. Haynes in 1830 (see D. J. Eames, op. cit.,
pp. 65 ff.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 363
were found to be sleeping three to a bed, and 14 new beds were
purchased. *!
In 1839, the Visiting Committee drew up a list of books for a
school library and the Hall made an initial grant of £25,3? and in
1843 a “plunging bath” was installed to take 15 boys at a time.®?
Mr. Eames notes that from 1836 onwards there is little mention of
crime in the records and many references to extension of the curri-
culum, welfare, medical attention, rewards and outings.®4 In 1841,
for example, the Visiting Committee recommended a “System of
Rewards’, and boys who left with a good testimonial were to receive
a bible and a Book of Common Prayer.®5 In the same year, the
Visiting Committee and the catechist, the Rev. George Barrow,
reported in lyrical terms on the examination of the boys, and in
1844 the Treasurer, William Claxton, noted that the boys did very
well when the Standing Committee examined them in catechism,
scripture and history. He added “and didn’t they all tuck into a good
lunch provided by the Treasurer’’.36 Next year, the Bishop of
Bristol expressed “his marked appreciation of the devout behaviour
of the Candidates at confirmation at Marshfield’’.?? Another
exercise in public relations took place in June 1845 when the boys
were examined for the first time in the Hall in the presence of the
Mayor and Sheriff, the Duke of Beaufort, E. F. Colston and some of
the Nominees. According to the report on the school, every one was
very pleased and the occasion had the desired effect of producing
“emulation amongst the Boys’ and, it was hoped, “of inducing
higher tones of religious and moral feeling’’.38
There were, of course, a number of problems, quite apart from the
litigation of the eighteen-forties.*® The right to nominate boys to
the Hospital was clearly regarded as an important piece of patronage.
Half the boys were supposed to be nominated by the Hall and half
by Colston’s Nominees. The practice had grown up of each body
nominating when a boy whom it had previously nominated left the
school, and in the course of time there came to be more Nominees’
boys than Merchant Venturers’ boys. A further complication was
that Philip Jones, who had been admitted in 1765, had in 1814
$1 Hf.B.18, pp. 114-23, 26 Oct. 1837; D. J. Eames, op. ctt., pp. 67-71.
82 f.B.18, p. 375, 29 Oct. 1839; Colston’s Hospital Visiting Committee, 8 Nov.
1839; D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 73 ff.
33 D. J. Eames, op. cit., p. 76.
34 Jbid., p. 80.
35 77.B.19, pp. 159, 160, 4 Nov. 1841.
88 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 100, 6 Nov. 1844. See also D. J. Eames, of. cit., pp. 83-5.
37 77.B.20, p. 171, 4 Nov. 1845.
88 H.B.20, p. 172, 4 Nov. 1845. The new Navigation Class was also reported to
be very satisfactory.
89 See pp. 365-70.
364 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
bequeathed £500, the interest from which was to be used to help
boys who were subsequently given the number 76. It so happened
that all the boys who were given this number were Nominees’ boys.
The Society took the matter up in 1842, and it was eventually agreed
after much argument that in future nominations for No. 76 should
be made alternately by the two bodies. *°
There were difficulties, too, with the headmaster, John Lewis. In
1842, he asked the Standing Committee to pay a bill of £4 10s. for
some books which, it appeared, he had bought expressly against the
wishes of the school committee, and he was reprimanded.*! Later in
the year, Canon Lord William Somerset reported that on 5 Novem-
ber the boys had not attended divine service at the Cathedral as was
customary and that the headmaster did not always come to divine
service on Saints’ Days.*? At this time, when the Colston Trust was
very much in the public eye owing to the action brought by the
Attorney-General, the Society was very sensitive to any suggestion
that the wishes of the Founder were not being observed and that
there was any deviation from his explicit instructions that the boys
should be brought up as sound members of the Church of England.
Lewis was warned that he would be liable to dismissal if it occurred
again.‘ A year later, he was in trouble when there was a complaint
that he had attended places of worship other than those of the
Church of England. He agreed that he had done so, and as the Hall
considered that it was ‘‘totally contrary to the spirit of the Founder’s
settlements that anything approaching Dissent should be connected
with the Establishment’’, he was warned that if he continued to
behave in that way, he might be dismissed.*4* In 1845, there was a
suggestion that boys had been apprenticed to members of the
Church of England who subsequently transferred them to dissenters.
Legal opinion was obtained, but no further action was taken.‘
Then, in 1848 the Visiting Committee reported that about fifteen
months earlier Lewis had switched the posts of Senior Usher and
Junior Usher without telling the committee. The ushers were
examined. Lewis admitted the charge but said he had done it for
the good of the school and in order not to hurt the feelings of one of
the ushers. The Committee was not satisfied with his explanation,
40 For the original gift, see H.B.r4, p. 326, 15 Nov. 1815. Part of the interest was
used for other purposes. For a long report on the matter, signed by Claxton and
Osborne, see H.B.20, pp. 44-53, 25 Oct. 1844. Claxton evidently took the matter
very seriously. See also Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 290, 291.
41 H7.B.19, p. 269, 12 Aug. 1842.
42 H.B.19, p. 313, 10 Nov. 1842.
48 7.B.19, p. 314, 8 Dec. 1822.
44 H.B.19, pp. 386-8, 3 Nov. 1843.
45 7/.B.20, p. 187, 12 Dec. 1845. It is not clear whether Lewis was directly in-
volved, although he, of course, would have arranged the original apprenticeships.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 365
and as he had already been twice reprimanded, it recommended his
dismissal. He asked the Hall to keep him on or to give him a pension,
but both requests were refused.*® There were 34 applications for
his post, and Richard Rowlatt was chosen from a short list of five.
He was appointed on 23 June 1848.4’
At this point it is necessary to leave the history of the Colston
Hospital itself in order to examine one of the two traumatic experi-
ences undergone by the Society in the eighteen-forties, the action
brought by the Attorney-General concerning the property of the
Colston Trust.48
THE CASE OF THE COLSTON TRUST
We have already seen that in 1836 a special meeting of the Hall was
called to consider a request from the Charity Commissioners that
the Society should make available all the records relating to the
Colston Charity.*® The Clerk was ordered to produce the documents
but not to let them out of his possession.5° The Charity Commission-
ers continued with their investigation, and in 1838 asked the Society
to hand over the Duplicate Book with copies of the accounts for
1708-18 which had been missing at the time of their previous visit.
The Hall agreed that they should be allowed to have a copy, which
was to be made at their expense.*! As a result of the investigation, in
July 1839 the Attorney-General filed a suit against the Society with
reference to some of the land of the Charity. The information alleged
that the manor of Monkton in Stogursey, Somerset, which the
Society held on lease from Eton College, was not in fact held by the
Society in its own right but in trust for Colston’s Hospital and that
46 H.B.20, p. 354, 17 Jan. 1848; p. 355, 18 Jan. 1848; p. 356, 21 Jan. 1848; p.
358, 25 Jan. 1848; p. 380, 26 May 1848. Claxton (Journal I, p. 132, 27 Jan. 1848)
reported that 15 voted for his dismissal and only, J. E. Lunell, Master at the time
of his appointment, voted for him. He was to go on 1 Aug. 1848. Lewis asked for
authentic copies of all annual reports on his conduct and efficiency and for authen-
tic copies of his testimonials at the time of appointment. He also asked for his salary
to be continued till 29 August. The requests were refused, but his testimonials, if
still in existence, were to be returned (H.B.20, p. 402, 22 Sept. 1848). In 1937, the
Society gave a pension to Miss L. C. Lewis, daughter of a former headmaster of
Colston’s Hospital (H.B.33, p. 59, 27 Oct. 1937).
4” H.B.20, p. 383, 31 May 1848; p. 384, 3 June 1848; p. 389, 23 June 1848 (19
resent).
7 48 For the second traumatic experience, the Waterworks scheme, see pp. 413-26.
49 See p. 362. |
50 H.B.18, p. 1, 23 Nov. 1836. The difficulty was that much of the material was
in books which contained information about other matters, and the Society was
extremely secretive about what it regarded as its own business.
51 H.B.18, p. 155, 14 Feb. 1838. In December the Society decided that 200
copies of Colston’s Settlement should. be printed for distribution to members
(H.B.18, p. 284, 14 Dec. 1838). :
366 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the Society must account to the Hospital for all rents and profits
received from it.5?
The information came as a great shock to the Society. For William
Claxton, it was a wicked radical plot. As he put it, “the nation having
become radically hot for Reform, Amongst other Reforms was that
of the Municipal Corporations in 1835, and all the charities hereto-
fore under the control of the Corporation of the City of Bristol
became vested in a Newly Created Body entitled ‘Charity Trustees’.
The Liberals who controlled the newly-elected ‘Town Council had
offered one half of the seats in the Charity Trustees to the Tories,
but they rejected the offer and the Liberals then elected the whole
body of the members from among themselves.’’ Claxton went on:
‘“Give a man an Inch and he will take an Ell. These Charity
Trustees having all the City Charities wanted more, and determined
to set their rapacious claws on Colston’s Hospital for being mostly
Dissenters from the Church of England themselves, they couldn’t
abide that so complete a Church going School should not be filled
with Radical Boys. Accordingly, having great influence with a
Radical Administration they procured a Commission of Enquiry —
and then came down a precious Scum of the Earth Mr. Commissioner
Eagle, a man whose conduct afterwards became so infamous that he
was kicked out of this situation of employment under government
by the government itself. However, he did his work here, nearly
killing the then excellent Treasurer of the Society, Mr. Joseph
Hellicar, by his determined radical worry. Being unable to find
fault with the accounts as it respected their keeping for 130 years and
as it respected the appropriation of the Charity Funds, he at length
discovered the transaction with Col. Bowyer, mentioned above;
laid his claws upon Stogursey Manor, declared it was obtained
through the’Charity Funds and that the Society should at once give
it up to the Charity and the £500 received from Bowyer and its
interest simple and compound.”’®8
Claxton’s naive and angry account reflects the deep hostility of
52 H.B.18, p. 356, 9 Aug. 1839. Latimer printed an account of the affair given
him by the Treasurer, W. W. Ward, based on the pleadings and legal documents
in the possession of the Hall (Merchant Venturers, pp. 292-8). The papers in the
Society’s archives include the Clerk’s papers relating to the Chancery case in 1842;
a bundle of pleadings in 1842; the judgement of the Master of the Rolls, 1 Aug.
1842; the subsequent discussion in Court about the best means of settling the
charity; the Master of the Roll’s decree of 1 Aug. 1842; and a volume, ap-
parently made by William Claxton, containing among other items “‘An Account
of the Manor of Monckton as extracted by William Claxton from the Books of
Proceedings and its fatal consequences to the Society of Merchant Venturers.”’
This lengthy account includes material up to the time when the Master of the Rolls
approved a new scheme for the-charity on 18 Dec. 1857. Henceforth, it is referred
to as Claxton. Manor of Monckton.
53 See Claxton, Manor of Monckton.
Portrait of Lord Roberts being removed from the damaged Hall after an
enemy air attack in 1940. From a collection of photographs in the present
Hall.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
Above: The central forecourt of the St. Monica Home of Rest from Durdham
Down.
Photograph by courtesy of Major J. R. H. Parlby
Below: ‘The Merchants’ Almshouse, King Street, January 1937
From a photograph in the Merchants’ Hall
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 367
some of the early Victorian Merchant Venturers to any questioning
of their transactions as well as their complete assurance that they
were right. The situation was in fact a good deal more complex than
Claxton suggested, and it is by no means clear that the Society was
as much in the right as Claxton, and, for that matter his successor
in the later nineteenth century, W. W: Ward, suggested.5* To under-
stand the position, it is necessary to examine the way in which the
manor of Monkton in Stogursey had come into the Society’s hands.
When Edward Colston established his Hospital, he purchased
certain estates and ground rents and vested them in the Society as
trustees, and the Society made an agreement with him to maintain
a Hospital first of all for 50 and later for 100 boys. ‘The property
made over to the Society by a deed of 25 November 1708 included
the mansion house in Bristol where the Hospital was located, the
manor of Beere and the manor of Locking. The Attorney-General
in 1842 maintained that the Society took these lands and rents on
trust for the benefit of the Charity and committed itself to maintain
100 boys, even if the revenues of the Charity should be insufficient.
The Society maintained that the lands were conveyed to it absolutely
for their own use, subject only to their maintaining 100 boys. It was
admitted by both sides that the Society must perform its trust, even
if the income was insufficient. The Society argued from this that it
was entitled to any profits if the income in fact exceeded what was
required to maintain the boys.®®
A further complication arose from the fact that the manor of
Beere purchased by the Society on behalf of Edward Colston for the
purpose of providing income for the Hospital was in the occupation
of Colonel Bowyer at a yearly rent of £315. By an indenture of 26
54 The account which W. W. Ward gave to Latimer (Merchant Venturers, pp.
293-8) seems to me to contain a strong element of special pleading. I do not under-
stand how W. W. Ward reached the conclusion that surplus rents from Stogursey
had been used “in reduction of the advances made to the Charity”. Ward said
“this was practically admitted”, but it was not admitted in the judgement of the
Master of the Rolls in 1842. Ward also said (p. 296) ‘It seemed hard to admit that
the Society would engage in 1708 to maintain the charity at a possible, if not
certain loss, and without the possibility of reimbursement.” It seems to have done
precisely that, partly at least because neither Colston nor the Society thought there
would be a loss. As was pointed out in the course of the trial, the Society obtained
considerable benefits, including the right to nominate the schoolmaster and 50 of
the boys, the patronage of the living at Locking, and a good deal of prestige. In
practice (although this was not mentioned in the trial), for over 50 years it employed
the headmaster as its Collector and Receiver of Rents in Clifton and Bristol. It was
also pointed out that if the Society had wished to cover itself against possible loss,
it could have done so in the original contract. There is no evidence that it made
any attempt to do so.
55 The decree of the Master of the Rolls in 1842 summed up neatly the Society’s
case: “Having to bear the risk of loss, it is argued they ought to have the benefit of
the profit.”
368 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
March 1709, Bowyer argeed to pay the Society £2,500 for a lease
for lives for himself and his wife of the land he occupied at a yearly
rent of £5. The balance of his rent (£310 a year) was to be paid to
the Hospital by the Society during the lifetime of Bowyer and his
wife. In fact, Bowyer paid the Society only £500 of the £2,500 he
owed for his lease. Instead of the balance of £2,000, the Society
accepted from Bowyer the assignment of a mortgage debt of £2,000
due from John Hobbs. The security for the mortgage was a lease of the -
manor of Monkton in Stogursey which Hobbs held from Eton College.
When it became necessary for Hobbs to pay a renewal fine on his lease
to Eton College in 1713, he was unable to do so and in fact died insol-
vent. The Society then paid the renewal fine and took the lease in
trust to secure to themselves the sum of £2,610 due to it from Hobbs
as a result of its original transaction with Bowyer. This was in 1713.
Thenceforth, the Society regarded the manor of Monkton in Sto-
gursey as its own and not as land held on behalf of the Charity. It
did not account to the Hospital for the profits of Stogursey.
In fact, the income from the Colston estates was not sufficient to
cover the cost of maintaining 100 boys, and for the greater part of
the eighteenth century, the Hospital was in debt to the Society, at
times for as much as £10,000. The fact that the Hospital was in debt
to the Society was, of course, used by the Society in defence of its
claim to the manor of Stogursey, although it was not strictly relevant
to the question of who owned Stogursey or to the wider question of
whether the Society held the whole of the charity lands absolutely
or in trust for the Charity. If the Society had absolute ownership
(subject always to its maintaining 100 boys in the Hospital), then it
had no case to answer. If it held them only in trust, then it must
account to the Hospital for all the profits of Stogursey from the time
when it first made the arrangement about it with Colonel Bowyer.
Even if Stogursey was found to belong to the Society, the Society
would still have to account to the charity for £500 received from
Bowyer and for £2,000 owing to the Charity from. Bowyer and in
lieu of which the Society had taken over the mortgage on Stogursey.
The Attorney-General calculated that the Society’s debt to the
Charity would amount to about £17,000.
The case came before the Master of the Rolls, Lord Langdale, on
28 and 29 May 1842. He gave judgement on 1 August 1842. It was to
the effect that the manor of Monkton had been obtained through a
transaction with a Charity Property, and must also be deemed to be
Charity Property. He did not accept the argument that since the
Society had in the original agreement run a risk of loss if the income
from the estates was insufficient, that it was therefore entitled to any
profits. He pointed out that it had in fact got considerable benefits
from the arrangement and that this might well have induced the
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 369
Society to undertake the trust without covering itself in any way
against possible loss. He stated “I am of opinion that the Society
was not entitled to deal in the way they did with the trust property
for their own benefit and that they are charged with any profit
which shall appear to have arisen from the transaction, and that in
making the enquiry as to the profit which they made, they ought to
be charged on account with the sum of £2,500 and to have credit for
the rent of £310 which they paid or accounted for during the lives
of Bowyer and his wife; and I think the Defendants should be charged
with the amount of such profits as the Master shall find to have been
made by the transaction together with the interest thereon.”
There then followed a discussion between the Master of the Rolls
and counsel on both sides about whether the whole of the profits on
Stogursey from the very beginning should be taken into account. The
Attorney-General did not press for this and was willing to agree that
the profits should be accounted for only from the time the bill was
filed in 1839. The Master of the Rolls accepted this and decreed that
costs of both sides should be paid out of these profits. He also asked
whether there ought to be a Scheme for the future administration of
the Charity, but the Attorney-General did not ask for a Scheme and
said “I believe it is very well managed.”’
Colston’s Hospital had in the course of the eighteenth century
run into considerable debt to the Society, although it had not been
in debt at the time when the Society acquired Stogursey. The Society
should legally have made sure that Stogursey, which it acquired
through a transaction involving charity lands, was vested in the
Charity and the profits from it should have been used to maintain the
Hospital and reduce the debt. Although the Society had not aimed
at making a profit for itself, it had acted illegally.
The decision of the Master of the Rolls concerning Stogursey in
1842 was extremely important and had wider implications. If the
Society’s view had been accepted, then it would in effect have
acquired absolute ownership not only of Stogursey but of the other
Colston lands, provided it continued to fulfil the obligation of main-
taining 100 boys in Colston’s Hospital, and it would have been free
to use any surplus income from the charity lands for whatever
purpose it chose.
The Society was extremely reluctant to accept that it could be in
the wrong. Claxton wrote in February 1843, ‘against anything so
monstrously unjust the Society have determined on an Appeal’’. He
argued that the Hall had never wanted to increase its own funds by
appropriating revenue originally settled on the Hospital, even
though there was a balance of £2,800 owing to the Society. Sto-
gursey, however, had always been regarded by the Society as its
own absolute property and the Hall had engaged in public works
370 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
and contracted debts in the belief that it was part of its General
Funds. He argued that any diminution of the Society’s revenue
would to a very important extent prejudice the Public Interest of
the City and Port, to the improvement of which they had dedicated
their surplus revenues. | |
A number of arguments were prepared by the Hall in December
1842 and submitted by John Savage (the Master), William Claxton
(the Treasurer), Jeremiah Osborne (the Clerk) and Richard
Brickdale Ward (one of Osborne’s partners) to Mr. Kindersley,
Mr. Turner and Mr. John Osborne, the Society’s counsel in the
case. Learned counsel thought that although the case was by no
means clear of doubt, yet there was very good reason for an appeal.
The Master and Treasurer reported to the Hall and said they
thought there was a reasonable chance of success, and the Hall
decided to appeal.5é
_ The appeal was a long-drawn-out affair. It was not until 7
December 1844 that the Hall finally decided to take it to the Lord
Chancellor and not the House of Lords,®” and it was not until 28
January 1848 that the Lord Chancellor gave judgement. After
dealing with Colston’s two gifts and his deed of settlement, he
pointed out that the deed made provision for a reduction in the
number of boys if at any time the income was insufficient to main-
tain one hundred. Colston’s intention had been to devote all the
properties to charitable purposes and not to bestow them on the
Society on condition they carried out the objects of the charity. The
judgement of 1842 was therefore correct. With regard to Stogursey,
he thought the fact that the Society had been required to account
for the money only from 1839 and not from the very beginning of the
transaction was probably very much to the benefit of the Society.
He was not prepared to charge the Charity with the cost of an appeal
for which he thought there was no sufficient ground and he dismissed
the appeal with costs.58
COLSTON’S HOSPITAL IN THE SECOND HALF OF THE
NINETEENTH CENTURY
The transference to the Colston Charity of the disputed estates
meant that a larger income was now available for the Hospital,®®
and the Society began to think in terms of reorganisation and
58 H7.B.19, p. 281, 28 Sept. 1842; p. 323, 4 Jan. 1843.
57 77.B.20, p. 76, 7 Dec. 1844.
58 For all this, see the Clerk’s papers relating to the case (note 51).
59 In 1856, there was estimated to be an excess of income over expenditure of
£770 a year, and a prospective surplus of £1,095.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 37 1
expansion.®° There was a great deal of discussion in the eighteen-
fifties about what should be done.®! What eventually emerged was a
Scheme, which the Master of the Rolls approved on 3 August 1857,
authorising the trustees to add new classrooms and dormitories and,
if necessary, to borrow up to £4,000. ® |
The Society now began to think about the desirability of removing
the Hospital from its restricted quarters in the Great House on St.
Augustine’s Back to Stapleton, a few miles from Bristol, where a
large estate formerly belonging to the bishop was on the market for
£12,000. On 22 October 1858, the committee signed a contract to
buy the house and estate for that sum, subject to approval by the
Charity Commissioners.*® The house and g} acres were bought on
behalf of the Hospital for £6,000, and the Society put up another
£6,000 to acquire the rest of the estate for itself.®4
There was fierce opposition to the proposal to move the school
from John Salmon and twelve other members of the Society, from
some of the Colston Nominees, from the Reverend John Hensman
and a number of the clergy, and from other Bristolians, but in the
end the Master of the Rolls in opén court decided to confirm the
purchase.®> The school was moved to Stapleton in October 1861.°°
Further trouble was in store for the Society as a result of the
Schools Inquiry Commission set up in 1864.67 In his Report, pub-
lished in 1868, one of the Assistant Commissioners, C. H. Stanton,
praised the move to Stapleton and also stated that there appeared
to be no political bias in the selection of boys, even though all the
trustees were Conservatives. But he though the standard of education
was not as high as in Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, Bristol, even
though the boys stayed much longer. He suggested that the trustees
were reluctant to introduce higher studies and feared to raise the ©
education above that which they considered suitable for the class of
boy they wanted to attend the school.6* As Mr. Eames points out,
60 In February 1849, the Committee reported that the funds would allow for
another 20 boys and for improvement in the accommodation and facilities of the
Hospital (Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 298).
61 In 1852, the Hall began a new series of Volumes — Books of Charity Proceedings,
of which No. 1 (1852-67) has a great deal of information about reorganisation.
82 Book of Charity Proceedings 1, 1852-1867, pp. 146 ff., 3 Aug. 1857.
63 Jbid., p. 176, 22 Oct. 1858.
64 77.B.22, pp. 319 ff., 3 March 1859; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 299.
85 Book of Charity Proceedings 1, 1852-1867, pp. 106 ff.; H.B.22, pp. 319 ff., 3 March
1859; D. J. Eames, ““The Contribution of the Society of Merchant Venturers to
the Development of Education in Bristol’’, unpublished Bristol M.A. thesis, 1966,
’ pp. 98 ff. — | |
66 |. J. Eames, op. cit., p. 99.
67 For full details, see D. J. Eames, op. cit., chapter 4, pp. 100 ff. (““The Endowed
Schools Commission and the Colston Trust’’).
68 See D. J. Eames, of. cit., pp. 101 ff.
372 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Stanton’s criticisms were in many ways unfair and a number of new
subjects had in fact been introduced since 1830. °°
In view of these criticisms, the Hospital Committee was asked to
consider extending the educational system to include Natural
Sciences. After taking expert advice, particularly from Henry
Moseley,’° canon of Bristol Cathedral, it reported in favour of
introducing scientific subjects into the curriculum. There was to be
an entrance examination and the boys were to leave at 14, except
those who were taking science. Half-yearly examinations in practical
science were to be conducted by independent examiners. 7!
In spite of opposition from some of the Nominees, the Society
pressed on with the scheme. The question arose as to whether the
headmaster was a suitable person to run a school in which science
was to play a major part. The Committee had consulted Mr.
Coomber, headmaster of the Bristol Trade and Mining School, who
had recommended that there should be an Upper Division in Col-
ston’s Hospital in which should be taught mathematics, mechanical
physics, experimental physics, chemistry, machine drawing, build-
ing construction, magnetics, electricity and heat and light. Mr.
Coomber thought that the headmaster should be a scientist and that
if the Hospital wanted to attract grants for these subjects, he would
have to be a science graduate or at least have passed the govern-
ment’s Science Examination. The committee suggested that the
Headmaster should take the examination.?2 Rowlatt was clearly
upset by the proposal to alter the nature of the school, and although
he professed his ability to teach science, he was not prepared to take
the examination.” The Society decided that he must resign and so
“obviate the necessity for any formal exercise by the Society of the
powers it possesses”. He had no option but to do so, and his resignation
was accepted on 4 March 1870.74
Meanwhile, more trouble had arisen. The Endowed Schools
Commissioners set up under the Endowed Schools Act of 1869 had
sent to Bristol an Assistant Commissioner, I. G. Fitch. As a result of
his enquiries in 1869 and 1870, he proposed sweeping changes. He
seems to have been obsessed by his discovery that the three Hospital
°° D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 107, 108. History and Geography in 1830, Music in
1842, Mathematics ahd Navigation in 1844, Physical Education in 1847. A library
had been built up since 1838.
70 He had been Professor of Natural and Experimental Philosophy and As-
tronomy at King’s College, London, from 1831 to 1844.
1 D. J. Eames, of. cit., p. 114.
72 Ibid., pp. 120 ff. |
78 Ibid., p. 212; H.B.24, p. 401, 11 Feb. 1870.
74 For some of the correspondence, see H.B.24, pp. 404 ff., 25 Feb. 1870. There
had earlier been some differences of opinion with Rowlatt (Book of Charity Pro-
ceedings 2, p. 45, 6 Jan. 1869).
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 373
Schools in Bristol (Colston’s, Queen Elizabeth’s and Red Maids)
had between them an income of £14,000 a year but were educating
only 436 children.”5 He thought these endowments should not be
used to provide free education for the poorer classes who could get
primary education for two pence or three pence a week in existing
schools. Instead, the endowments should be used to establish a day
school for 300 boys, a day school for 200 girls, both of which were to
be fee-paying, and a Trade School.’®
Fitch’s proposals would have altered radically the nature of
Colston’s Hospital. The Society felt bound to defend the trust and
made counter-proposals.?7?7 Meanwhile, at the suggestion of the
Endowed Schools Commission, Mr. Rowlatt was asked to stay on
for a time at the Hospital. He agreed to do so, but the committee
was not satisfied with his behaviour, and at the end of 1870 he was
given six months’ salary in lieu of notice.”* There were 250 applica-
tions for his post, and John Hancock was appointed at the beginning
of 1871.7°
It is not necessary here to follow in detail the very lengthy negotia-
tions and discussions which ensued.8° The Hall put forward an
Alternative Scheme, and was prepared to endow the Hospital with
£10,000 if it was accepted.*! This generous offer no doubt helped the
Society to get something more to its liking than Fitch's proposals.
The Endowed Schools Commissioners drew up an Amended Scheme
which was received by the Hall in July 1873.8? This proposed a new
body of Trustees including the Bishop of Bristol, three representa-
tives of the Bristol School Board, three Justices of the Peace and three
coopted members as well as 13 representatives of the Society out of
a total membership of 23. Colston’s Hospital was to remain a board-
ing school with 100 exhibitioners who were to receive board,
lodging and, if necessary, clothes, but they were to be chosen on
merit and not nominated by the Society or Colston’s Nominees. 80
of them were to come from Bristol elementary schools and 20 from
Gloucestershire, Wiltshire and Somerset. In addition, the Governors
could admit fee-paying pupils. Education was to be in accordance
with the principles of the Church of England, but the Commissioners
75 For Fitch’s letter of 1 April 1870, see D. J. Eames, of. cit., pp. 122 ff.
76 D, J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 117 ff. For these and other proposals, see Latimer,
Merchant Venturers, pp. 300-1.
77 Book of Charity Proceedings 2, pp. 134 ff.
78 D, J. Eames, op. cit., p. 128. He was voted a pension of 100 guineas a year.
79 Ibid., p. 131.
80 Ibid., pp. 131 ff. Many of the arguments and documents are to be found in
Book of Charity Proceedings 2. |
81 H B.25, p. 133, 24 Feb. 1872. It proposed to cancel £5,000 debt which the
Hospital owed to the Society and give £5,000 as a donation.
82 Printed as an appendix in D. J. Eames, op. cit.
374 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
inserted a conscience clause giving parents the right to withdraw
their children from religious instruction on conscientious grounds, §
The Amended Scheme also required the Colston Trustees to
take over and develop the Bristol Trade and Mining School.84
Further, they were to establish a third-grade day school for 200 girls
with 13 governors, 8 of them drawn from the governors of Colston’s
Boys School, and 5 of them ladies chosen by the governors of the
girls’ school.
The new Scheme after some modification was accepted in its
final form by the Society in April 1874 and came into operation in
March 187585
The long battle between the Society and the Endowed Schools
Commission had resulted in the preservation of at least some of the
essential characteristics of the Hospital entrusted to the Society by
Edward Colston in the early eighteenth century and had ensured that
the money which he had left for the education of poor children was
not diverted to subsidising only the education of fee-paying pupils.
The Society had managed to salvage a great deal because it had
fought hard and because it had contributed £5,000 as well as re-
leasing the Hospital from its debt of £5,000.%¢ ;
Strictly speaking, Latimer was correct when he said that in 1875
Colston’s Hospital was disconnected from the Society and that its
subsequent history was outside the scope of his work,8? but neverthe-
less a very close relationship still remained. The Society continued
to act as trustee and manager of the property and it nominated 1 3
out of the 23 governors. It thus had a majority on the new governing
body, even though that body was not directly answerable to the
Society. Some brief mention must, therefore, be made of later
developments. 88
Colston’s School at Stapleton now admitted fee-paying pupils as
well as non-fee payers from the elementary schools in Bristol and the
surrounding counties who were chosen by competitive examina-
tions. 8° The School aimed at providing “sound, practical and liberal
®8 See D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 140 ff. for comment on the fact that the Society
did not object to this clause which was at variance with the terms of Edward
Colston’s bequest.
84 See p. 376.
85 H.B.25, p. 321, 11 April 1874.
8° The Treasurer reported that the contribution had been made in June 1875.
Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 303.
87 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, PP. 302, 303.
88 See D. J. Eames, of. cit., chapter 6, pp. 167 ff. ‘1869-1944. A Boys’ School, a
Girls’ School and a Technical College”. Mr. Eames shows ‘that between 1869 and
1944 the Society’s interest in education was at its height and that it devoted a
great deal of time, effort and money to helping all three institutions.
8° D. J. Eames, op. cit., p. 172, for the numbers of free scholars. The number of
fee-payers varied between 30 and over 70 in the period 1877-93.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 375
education” for “‘the sons of farmers, tradesmen, clerks and others’’.®°
Under the 1873 Scheme no boy was allowed to stay on after reaching
the age of 15, but from 1883 20 boys were allowed to continue until
the end of the term in which they became 16, and 5 were allowed an
additional year.®1 In 1900, the School was recognised by the
Department of Education for grants on the results of examinations,
and in 1903 it was recognised by the new Board of Education.**
COLSTON’S GIRLS SCHOOL
As has already been seen, the Scheme of 1873 required the new
Colston Trustees to be responsible for the Trade and Mining School
and to establish a day school for girls. Owing to the agricultural
depression beginning in the mid eighteen-seventies, the Colston
Trustees’ funds were insufficient, and the Society came to the rescue
in 1885 by agreeing to take over itself the Trade and Mining
School, ®8 leaving the Colston Trustees free to use their resources for
Colston’s School and for the establishment of Colston’s Girls School.
Eventually, a site was obtained in Cheltenham Road, and a contract
for a school for 300 girls was signed in March 1889. The school
opened in January 1891 with a headmistress, a second mistress and
3 assistants. By April, the number of pupils was approaching 300,
and it was decided to appoint 3 more assistant mistresses. There were
originally 10 free places for girls from elementary schools and the
rest paid £5 a year. The school was recognised by the Board of
Education in 1902.°4
THE MERCHANT VENTURERS’ TECHNICAL COLLEGE
In 1885, the Society took over from the Colston Trustees the manage-
‘ment and finance of the Bristol Trade and Mining School. The
Trade and Mining School had been established in 1856 in premises
in Nelson Street which had been used for a Diocesan School from
1812 to 1852. The growth of parish schools had made the Diocesan
School superfluous; and Canon Moseley,®5 encouraged by the interest
in technical education assocjated with the Great Exhibition of 1851,
had recommended to the trustees that they should establish a School
of Applied Science. There was considerable enthusiasm, and in
1856 there came into existence the Bristol Diocesan Trade and
Mining School which had a primary department; a secondary
department teaching commercial subjects, mathematics and applied
90 —. J. Eames, op. cit., p. 171.
91 [bid., pp. 176 ff. The Charity Commissioners refused to allow this to apply to
boys with free places. 92 Ibid., p. 178. 93 See p. 377.
*4 For further details, see D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 200 ff.
95 See p. 372 and note 70.
376 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
science; day classes for adults in chemistry, mining and engineering;
and a range of evening classes in languages, mathematics, drawing,
_ commercial subjects and Latin.®°* The Trade and Mining School
enjoyed considerable success, and, as has been seen, the Society in
1863 made an arrangement with it by which the Society’s Naviga-
tion School was transferred to this institution. ®”
In 1872, when there were lengthy negotiations between the Society
and the Endowed Schools Commissioners, the Society suggested at
one time that the Trade and Mining School should be amalgamated
with Colston’s Hospital or, alternatively, that the Society should
take it over and develop it.®* This proposal did not come to anything,
and instead in 1875 a newly appointed body of Colston’s Trustees,
_on which the Society had a majority, took over not only Colston’s
Hospital but also the Trade and Mining School as well as the
obligation to establish a Colston’s Girls School.?®
The fact that in 1875 it had lost direct control of Colston’s Hospital
may have predisposed the Society to seek a new outlet for its interest
in education. The opportunity arose because the Colston Trustees
ran into financial difficulties which prevented them developing the
Trade and Mining School. In 1877 the headmaster pointed out that
the premises in Nelson Street were quite inadequate. The Governors
seriously considered purchasing either the premises in Unity Street
vacated by Bristol Grammar School or some other plot of land which
could be used both for the Trade School and the proposed Girls
School, but in 1879 they decided to postpone any further action
because of the agricultural depression and the decrease in income for
the Somerest lands.1°° |
At this time, the Society or some of its members began to show an
interest which was not fully recorded in the Hall records.1®! On 30
April 1880, George William Edward informed the Standing Com-
mittee that his offer of £5,500 for the site of Bristol Grammar
School’s empty premises in Unity Street had been accepted.19? He
did not say why he had made the purchase or what was to be done
with it, but obviously there must have been informal consultation
and he must have had the support of the Standing Committee and
the Society in general before he took such action. A few days later,
°6 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 304 ff., D. J. Eames, op. cit., chapter 6, pp.
242 ff. In 1856, the Society gave £25 to help with the debt of £500 (H.B.22, p. 48,
11 April 1856). 97 See p. 359.
°8 H.B.25, p. 136, 22 March 1872; p. 145, 30 April 1872; Latimer, Merchant
Venturers, pp. 300-1.
99 See p. 374. 100 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 307.
101 Jbid., p. 308. Latimer thought that Alderman Proctor Baker, Chairman of the
Colston Trustees and the oldest member of the Society, probably suggested the
policy which bore fruit in the following years.
102 77.B.26, pp. 301 ff., 4 May 1880; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 308.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 377
a General Hall at which 19 members were present approved the
purchase and the erection of a Merchant Venturers’ Trade School.1%
In July 1880, Mr. Proctor Baker informed the Colston Trustees of
the Society’s intentions and probability that the building would be
offered to them at a nominal rent.1°4
It is possible that at this stage the Society was thinking only in
terms of erecting a building and leasing it to the Colston Trustees
for use by the Trade and Mining School, but in the following years
it developed more ambitious plans.
First of all, it set about erecting the building, about which it took
considerable trouble, at a cost of £29,698, and it also acquired
additional property for use by the school.195 When the building was
nearly complete early in 1885, the Hall adopted a resolution stating
that as the governors of the Colston Trust to whom it had intended
to offer the use of the building had suffered loss of income and were
unlikely to have sufficient money to carry on, still less develop, the
Trade and Mining School, it was desirable to relieve them of their
burden, so that they would be in a position to establish a Girls’
School as proposed in 1875. The Society therefore offered to under-
take the entire control, management and finance of the Trade and
Mining School and would continue to develop it ‘‘for the promotion
of scientific and technological teaching.”’}°6
It was necessary to satisfy the Charity Commissioners that the
proposal was in order. The Society rejected a suggestion that it
should manage the school under the direction of the Commissioners,
but its reputation and its willingness to put the property under a
trust deed made it possible for the difficulties to be overcome, and the
Trade and Mining School was moved from its old premises in Nelson
Street into the new building in Unity Street in September 1885. It
was now known as the Merchant Venturers’ School.!°’ The
Merchant Venturers were thus not the founders of technical educa-
tion in Bristol, and the school which they took over had been
103 7, B.26, pp. 301 ff., 4 May 1880.
104 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 308. The Governors expressed their gratitude
and their willingness to accept the building if it were offered to them.
105 It held a public competition but rejected all the plans and asked Mr. Robson
to prepare new ones. He was unable to do so, as he had been one of the assessors
for the competition. In 1881, it appointed as architect Mr. E. C. Robins. H.B.26.
Pp. 341, 3 Feb. 1881; p. 349, 18 Feb. 1881; p. 351, 18 March 1881; p. 353, 8 April
1881; H.B.27, p. 45, 29 Feb. 1884; p. 59, 30 May 1884; p. 112, 1 May 1885;
Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 308-9.
106 7,.B.27, p. 102, 7 March 1885; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 309, 310.
107 See Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 2'7 July 1885, for an account of the opening
of ‘‘this noble building erected by the princely generosity of the Merchant Ven-
turers” at a cost of £40-£50,000. The Bristol Mercury called it a handsome educa-
tional gift which would be supplemented by what practically amounted to £1,000
a year.
378 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
flourishing for nearly thirty years, but they came to its assistance at
a time when it was in financial difficulties and in the years ahead
made a tremendous and enthusiastic contribution to its development.
The Merchant Venturers’ School was managed by a Committee
of the Master, Wardens and 8 members elected on Charter Day.
The minutes of this Management Committee from July 1885 to
1948 are found in five books of proceedings preserved in the
Merchants’ Hall.1°* The miss of detail recorded shows how seriously
the Committee took its work and how effectively it set about re-
organising the courses, raising the standards for admission and intro-
ducing new subjects into the curriculum. Between 1884 and 1890,
the number of day and evening students rose from 521 to 1,384.29
A good deal of credit for the early expansion must go to the head-
master, Thomas Coomber who had been headmaster of the old
Trade and Mining School since it began in 1856 with only 5 pupils.
It is necessary to stress Coomber’s contribution, partly because his
work was to be overshadowed by that of his dynamic and publicity-
conscious successor and partly because Coomber left the school
under a cloud. In 1889 he was rebuked for not knowing why certain
evening classes had fallen off and for not attending in the evenings,
although he had undertaken to do so. An even more serious offence
was that he had allowed his son to attend the school for several terms
without notifying the committee. After lengthy correspondence, the
Management Committee decided that he had forfeited their con-
fidence and gave him the opportunity to avoid dismissal by resign-
ing.1!? It is not possible to discover what really lay behind this dis-
missal which, on the face of it, seems rather harsh treatment of a
man who had served the cause of education so well both before and
after the Society took over the school. It may be that the Committee
wanted someone with higher qualifications and was not sorry to let
Coomber go. It softened the blow by giving him a pension of £300
a year on condition that he ceased from all educational work within
fifty miles of Bristol, except his lectures at the Bristol Medical
School.118
The new headmaster was Julius Wertheimer, B.A., B.Sc., F.1.C.,
F.C.S., who was appointed on 1 June 1890 with a guaranteed
108 Vol. 1, 1885-91; Vol. 2, 1891-97; Vol. 3, 1897-1903; Vol. 4, 1903-21; Vol.
5» 1922-48.
109 See M.V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 1, passim.
110 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 320, gives the figures in 1890 as 1,430, but
Julius Wertheimer’s Report (M.V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 2 1891-1897, p. 194) gives
the number as 1,384, of whom 368 were in the Boys’ School, 48 in Senior Day
Classes, and 968 in evening classes.
111 Bristol Mercury and Daily Post, 28 Dec. 1889 and its obituary notice, 23 May
1901. 123 M.V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 1, pp. 110, 137-47, 24 Oct. 1889.
13 M.V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 1, p. 153, 29 May 1890; p. 162, 4 July 1890.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 379
minimum salary of £500 a year but no provision for a retirement
pension. It was thought that with various fees he should get in all
about £530 a year.!4 In the manner of new brooms, Wertheimer
reported critically on the state of the school at the time when he took
over. He found the school arrangements in a somewhat chaotic
condition “as each master appeared to be allowed to act indepen-
dently of other masters and of the Head Master’’. There was an
absence of any records by which the present position and past
history of the pupils could be ascertained. Moreover, the school
timetable did not agree with the courses prescribed in the syllabus.
Masters in the primary division were only moderately well suited for
their work, and one of them was inefficient. He was dismissed.
Wertheimer went on to make a number of other adverse comments
and to put forward numerous proposals for reorganisation and for
the introduction of new subjects.1>
The new regime was probably unpopular with some of the staff.
At the end of the year, an assistant master who disobeyed the order
that masters should see that pupils left the school in an orderly
manner was reported to the Management Committee. He main-
tained that he had no responsibility beyond teaching.in the form
room, and as he refused to give way, he was dismissed.'"®
From the detailed annual reports prepared by Wertheimer and
preserved in the Minutes, it is clear that year by year in the eighteen-
nineties the Merchant Venturers’ School increased its numbers and
expanded the range of its activities. In June 1896, it had 2,065
students on its books as compared with 1,384 in July 1890.11” By
1903, the total enrolment was 2,512.78
The growing importance of the Merchant Venturers’ School and
114 Jbid., p. 149, 21 Feb. 1890; p. 150, 4 March 1899; p. 151, 3 April 1890. There
is room for a detailed examination of the career and achievements of Julius Wert-
heimer who was clearly a man of outstanding ability, although he cannot have
been easy to get on with. For some account of his work, see Bristol Evening News, 6
March 1905. He was born in Birmingham in 1859 and went to University College,
Liverpool, and Owen’s College, Manchester, taking a B.A. in 1882 and a B.Sc. in
1885. He was head of Leeds’ College of Science and Technology from 1887 to
1890. He took the first photograph by X-rays made in Bristol, and the first surgical
operation in Bristol in which X-rays were used was performed on the faith of an
X-ray photograph taken by him.
115 Jbid., pp. 165 ff. for his Report in 18go.
116 Jbid., p. 182, 12 Dec. 1890; p. 185, 5 Feb. 1891. He wrote expressing his
regrets and asked that he might be deemed to have resigned. He had apologised
to Wertheimer, who supported his application. The Committee agreed to his
request. ;
117 M.V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 2, pp. 194, 233.
118 f.V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 4 1903-1921, pp. 21 ff. The breakdown was
Preparatory and Boys’ School, 418; Adult Day Classes, 287; Adult Evening Classes,
1,458; Branch classes, 134 (Bristol); 129 (Gloucestershire); Gloucestershire
Teachers (Nature Study), 86.
380 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the desire of those responsible for it to emphasise its special contri-
bution to technical education was symbolised in 1894 by the adoption
of the title Technical College, “‘the word College (already employed
by similar institutions in London and elsewhere) conveying to the
public mind the idea of a larger and more important place of
education than does the word ‘School’, and ‘Technical’ indicating
precisely the kind of education which the College supplies’’.11®
Unfortunately, the rapid growth of the College led to serious
problems. By 1893, the resources were strained to the uttermost,
and efforts were made to acquire additional premises in Unity
Street, Orchard Street and Denmark Street. For various reasons,
these efforts were unsuccessful, and the College had to do the best
it could with a house in Unity Street which already belonged to the
Society.12° Lack of space prevented the College from growing as
much as it might have done.
There was also a somewhat complicated situation concerning
finance. In January 1891, the City had set up a Technical Instruction
Committee which had available a sum of about £5,700 a year.1?!
There was much discussion in the Society about whether it should
ask the City for some of this money to help in the maintenance and
expansion of the School. At this stage, the Society did not realise
how much technical education was going to cost, and it preferred to
go it alone rather than to make a bid for a large grant which would,
presumably, have meant some limitations on its right to run its own
school without interference. Instead, it suggested to the Technical
Instruction Committee the establishment of a number of scholar-
ships, and the City decided to devote £1,350 to this purpose.
Some years later, when the Society was engaged in a demarcation
conflict with University College, Bristol, it complained, a little
bitterly, that the Technical Instruction Committee had voted a
capital sum of £2,000 to University College as well as £500 a year
for 10 free scholarships tenable only at University College, and that
“their bounty (inadvertently no doubt) furnished means for more
serious competition with the Society’s College in Technical Subjects,
especially Engineering, than was previously possible’’.122 It would
seem that the Society’s determination to maintain complete inde-
pendence deprived it in some degree of the opportunity of develop-
19 M.V.T.C. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1900, pp. 36 ff., 13 Oct. 1899, Report
of a sub-committee set up on 4 Nov. 1897 to consider whether it would be to the
Society’s advantage to receive direct aid from the Technical Instruction Committee
of the Town Council (Note that this volume of Reports and Memoranda should not be
confused with another volume of Reports and Memoranda bearing the dates 1891-
1g0!).
120 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 318, 319.
121 Jbid., p. 317.
122 M.V.T.C. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1900, pp. 36 ff.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 381
ing the Technical College on an even more impressive scale and
indirectly encouraged the growth of University College and of other
centres of technical education in Bristol.
Nevertheless, the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College did in
fact benefit very considerably from the increasing resources made
available for technical education by the central government and the
local authorities. In 1885, the Society had been prepared to spend
up to £2,000 a year on the College, but in 1904 it noted that owing
to the large grants received, it had not been called upon to do so.
The printed accounts for 1902-3 show the Society’s contribution for
that year as £3,178 10s. od., but a typescript note in the Book of
Proceedings points out that the actual contribution in cash was only
£988 6s. gd. The balance of the contribution consisted of rent debited
to the College at the rate of 3 per cent on the capital outlay
(£1,540 3s. 3d.) and a proportion of the salaries paid in the Trea-
surers’ Office where much of the College business was transacted
(£650 os. od.). It was no doubt reasonable that these sums should
be debited to the College to indicate the true cost to the Society, but
the printed accounts were somewhat misleading and gave a wrong
impression of what was actually being given in cash.1**
By 1897 the Society was very much concerned with the question
of whether it should apply for direct aid to the Technical Instruction
Committee of the City and with the further problem of how best to
make arrangements with the Bristol School Board to prevent over-
lapping of classes, and on 4 November it set up a sub-committee to
consider both questions.124
The sub-committee set up in 1897 engaged in lengthy negotiations
to try to prevent overlapping between the Merchant Venturers’
Technical College and other institutions. It was concerned with the
activities of the Bristol School Board which was applying to the
Department of Science and Art for recognition of Merrywood
School as a School of Science and which was proposing to open other
Schools of Science which the sub-committee thought would be “in
undue and unnecessary competition with efficient schools already
in existence”. The Society also negotiated with the Bristol School of
Art. As a result, satisfactory arrangements were made with the
School Board and with the School of Art in March 1899.15
The problem of the proper relationship between the Merchant
123 14 V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 4, 1903-1921, pp. 21 ff. and typescript note,
dated 30 April 1904, added to the printed accounts. This meant that the Society
had not in fact made a free gift of the buildings as was popularly believed.
124 M.V.T.C. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1900, p. 36, for a Report of this sub-
committee, dated 13 Oct. 1899, signed G. H. Pope, W. W. Ward, W. Proctor
Baker and Julius Wertheimer.
128 Mf.V.T.C. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1900, pp. 19 ff. and the Report of 13
Oct. 1899 referred to in previous note.
382 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Venturers’ Technical College and University College, Bristol, was
much more difficult. University College had been established in
1876,176 and the Society had contributed £1,000 to its Appeal Fund
of £25,000.12” By 1896, the Society was less sympathetic and when
an appeal for funds was received from the College, the Hall resolved
that the application should be declined.128 As the Merchant
Venturers’ Technical College developed its advanced studies, it was
thought by University College to be duplicating courses held in that
institution, and there was a request for discussions with a view to
preventing overlapping. The most prominent representatives of the
Society in the negotiations were G. H. Pope, W. W. Ward and
Julius Wertheimer.1*® A good deal of heat was produced in the
attempt to solve the problem. The Society’s representatives argued
that the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, far from being an
interloper poaching in somebody else’s field, was in fact a continua-
tion of the Trade and Mining School which went back to 1856,
twenty years before University College came into existence. When
University College was established in 1876, the Trade and Mining
School was already teaching the sciences relating to engineering,
mining, metallurgy, manufacturers and commerce, and when
University College established the rudiments of an Engineering
Department it did so in rivalry with the Trade School. If there was
_ duplication, it was entirely the fault of University College. The
Society’s representatives also made much of the argument that
courses at the ‘Technical College were within the means of the poorer
students who could not possibly afford the high fees demanded by
University College.
The long drawn out discussion between 1897 and 1900 cannot
be followed in detail here. There were numerous proposals and
counter-proposals in the course of which the representatives of the
Merchant Venturers put forward the idea that eventually the two
colleges should form a West of England University and Technical
College. University College, which was much more concerned with
overlapping courses than with federation, argued that by the
proposed division of functions, it was being asked to give up a great
126 For University College, see J. W. Sherborne and B. Cottle, The Life of a
University, 2nd edition, 1959. |
77 H.B.25, p. 333, 26 June 1874; p. 340, 24 July 1874; H.B,26, p. 251, 23 May
1879.
128 77,B.28, p. 152, 28 Feb. 1896.
129 In the Society’s archives, there is a considerable amount of material relating
to the negotiations from February '1897 to August 1900. The main evidence is in
M.V.T.C. Books of Proceedings 2 and 3. Many of the documents were copied
into M.V.T.C.. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1901 which has George H. Pope’s
signature in the front and a summary at the end which he presumably made for
his own use,
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 383
deal, and the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College little or
nothing. It acidly remarked ‘‘Overlap is to be prevented by assign-
ing to one Institution practically the whole of the territory in dis-
pute.’’189 University College then made counter-proposals, and the
Society’s representatives put forward major amendments.1%! After
lengthy discussions, University College commented on 18 July 1900
that the Society’s scheme would require it to give up degree work in
Engineering and Applied Science, and this it was not prepared to
accept.!82 Since the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College also
attached great importance to its work in engineering, this meant an
end to the negotiations, and G. H. Pope wrote to that effect to the
committee of University College on 10 August 1900.138
An attempt to prevent a complete breakdown of negotiations was
then made by a senior member of the Society, W. W. Jose, who wrote
to W. W. Ward and to the Treasurer pointing out that the proposals
of University College, Bristol, were not unreasonable and saying
“Do let me beg you and your colleagues to reconsider . . . and to be
willing to recommend a small sacrifice for the sake ofa greater gain.”’
Jose also urged that there should be a personal conference with
Albert Fry and his two colleagues and offered to act as an inter-
mediary. As a result of this G. H. Pope wrote to Fry suggesting a
conference and the Society prepared a modified statement of its
position on lines which Jose thought would be acceptable to
University College. There was further correspondence and a meeting
took place at the Council House in June rgo1 but it ended in dead-
lock on the main issue, although there was some agreement about
minor points.!84 The conflict of interests which had emerged in the
course of these negotiations was to be a major problem when it was
proposed to establish a University of Bristol in the early twentieth
century.
- Conflict had arisen partly because the two institutions had
developed without much relationship to each other and partly
because the Trade and Mining School which the Society took over
in 1885 had grown so remarkably in the eighteen-nineties that it
became involved in higher education and was a serious challenge to
180 V4.V.T.C. Book of Proceedings 3. Printed proposal of 14 Dec. 1898 signed by
G. H. Pope, W. W. Ward and J. Wertheimer, and reply by University College,
20 Feb. 1899.
181 Jhid., 20 Feb. 1899, and Memorandum replying to this signed by Pope, Ward
and Wertheimer, 12 April 1899.
182 Jbid., 13 July 1899, signed by Albert Fry, J. W. Arrowsmith, C. Lloyd
Morgan. See also the Society’s comment of 19 Sept., 1899, 6 Dec. 1899 and 21 Dec.
1899. For a time, there seemed to be hope of a solution.
133 Jbid., 18 July 1900; 10 Aug. 1900.
134 11.V.T.C. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1901, pp. 201-15. At the meeting in
June 1901, the Society was represented by Pope, Ward and Wertheimer (p. 215).
384 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the struggling University College. It is unlikely that the Society had
this in mind when it first assumed responsibility for the School, but
in the eighteen-nineties it became immensely proud of what had
been achieved and it was determined to give full support to its
representatives who in the course of the negotiations made a bid to
make the Technical College part of a federated West Country
University. George Henry Pope, who was Treasurer from 1876 to
1901 and who then became Secretary of the Technical College,15
W. W. Ward who was Master when the negotiations first began in
1897, and Julius Wertheimer, the Principal of the College, were
determined negotiators anxious to increase the prestige and impor-
tance of their institution.
The conflict of interests was probably exacerbated by political
differences. The supporters of University College had tended on
the whole to be Liberals in politics, while the Merchant Venturers
was basically Conservative. The Wills and the Frys who had done
so much for University College were not members of the Society.
In addition, there may well have been temperamental differences
between the leading men on both sides and somewhat different ideas
about what a university should be. The outlook, for instance, of
the Principal of University College seems to have been very different
from the more authoritarian approach of Julius Wertheimer and
the Society which backed him. The conflicts were to continue into
the twentieth century.
One other comment needs to be made on the developments of the
eighteen-nineties. The Society of Merchant Venturers was instinc-
tively against interference and control by other bodies. Its preference
for going it alone whenever possible had put it in a somewhat
isolated position. It had not asked for a grant from the Technical
Instruction Committee of the City when it was set up in 1891, and
by the later nineties, when it began to be aware of the large sums
required for further development, it was in a difficult position as far
as public bodies and public opinion were concerned. It had appeared
in the role of the wealthy benefactor who had endowed the Technical
College on a lavish scale, and it was generally believed to have large
funds available. The sub-committee’s Report in 1899 quoted, with
distaste, a comment which had appeared in print stating that ““The
Guild of Merchant Venturers is enormously rich — the beautiful
Clifton and Durdham Downs belongs to them, and since delightful
buildings have been erected on parts of these, their wealth grows
yearly.’ The Report went on to say “It can easily be understood
how damaging to the Society, when it asks for help, is the possession
of untold, but mythical, riches and how natural it is for the dispen-
sers of public money to feel, even if they do not always say so in
135 See pp. 265-6.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 385
words, that, however beneficent the Society may be, and however
admirable and worthy of support its College may be, money would
be wasted if voted to so wealthy a Guild.” It added that “‘so far from
the Society’s being the wealthy Corporation of the public (imagina-
tion) . . . it is really poor, and management of its finances involves
care, if not anxiety”.
Rather too late in the day, the Report put its finger on another
way in which the Society had been the victim of its own policy of
independence. It pointed out that the Merchant Venturers’ Tech-
nical College was in some degree isolated: ‘‘As the Society had not
at first felt the need for external assistance, it had till recently no
occasion to interest other bodies or to get their cooperation, parti-
cularly the Technical Instruction Committee, whereas certain other
institutions had added members of this Committee to their govern-
ing bodies and got very substantial aid’”’ and also had “‘the advantage
of having well-informed friends upon that Committee, without
losing any control of their own domestic affairs”. The Report of
1899 indicated that the time had come to abandon Splendid
Isolation and to apply for help to the Technical Committee, even
though that Committee would, under the Act of 1890, have to be
represented on the Governing Body in proportion to the aid it
gave.186 In due course, the Society applied for help with a view to
extending the buildings to College Green.
MISCELLANEOUS EDUCATIONAL ACTIVITY
In addition to these major activities, the Society assisted education
in Bristol by a number of small grants and subscriptions throughout
the century. Thus, in 1811 it voted £30 and an annual subscription
of £5 for a school at Pill to instruct poor children in reading and
writing.!3? In 1830, when Clifton Infants School was in financial
difficulty, it agreed to forego the ground rent of £13 payable to the
Society.138 In 1833, it turned down a request by Mr. Hensman and
others for a lease of ground on which to erect a National School in
Clifton because the other lessees objected, but it made a grant of
£25 towards the cost of building the school in the next year.'*®
When the school founded by Edward Colston for teaching and
clothing 40 poor boys in Temple parish was in difficulties in 1836,
the Society assisted it with a grant of £15.14° £25 was given in 1855
186 M4.V.T.C. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1900, No. 36, 13 Oct. 1899.
137 Hf.B.14, p. 158, 19 June 1811.
138 77.B.16, p. 390, 16 April 1830.
139 17.B.17, p. 165, 2 July 1833; p. 271, 8 Nov. 1834. See also H.B.17, p. 144,
6 Feb. 1833; p. 147, 20 Feb. 1833.
140 H.B.17, p. 432, 5 Oct. 1836.
386 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
for the building of a parochial school for St. Nicholas and St.
Leonard’s parish and the same amount for the schools of St. Mary
Redcliffe parish.1*! At the end of 1870 £100 was given for a school
in St. Gabriel’s parish, £200 for St. Silas, £100 for St. Simon and
£25 for Bishopston.!4? Next year, St. Paul’s school, Bedminster,
received £25.43
Other grants to assist elementary education included £50 for a
new schoolroom at St. Paul’s, Bedminster, and £100 to Clifton
parish school in 1877;144 £20 to enlarge Horfield School in 1878;145
£20 to Stapleton National School; £50 to Dowry School and £25 to
enlarge the school at Rudgeway, Fishponds; £25 to enlarge Bishop-
ston’s Infants School in 1883;146 5 guineas for Bristol Ragged Schools
and £25 for the increase of the accommodation in St. Mark’s
School, Easton, in 1884314? and £50 for Bristol Church Day Schools
in 1892.148
The majority of the grants were for Church of England elemen-
tary schools, but a number of donations were made for other kinds of
institutions. Thus, in 1875 £25 was given to the Certified Industrial
School and £100 for additional buildings for the School of Art,
provided it succeeded in raising the whole sum asked for in its
Appeal.14® Next year £100 and a subscription of £10 10s. a year
_was voted for the Training College for teachers at Fishponds.15°
£250 payable in five instalments was voted by the Standing Com-
mittee in 1878 for the Completion Fund of Clifton College, but this
was not confirmed at meeting of the Hall.15! However, when Clifton
College asked the Society in 1882 to give an annual prize of £5 5s.
for Natural Science, it agreed to do so, and made a similar donation
to Bristol Grammar School.15? £25 was voted for Kingswood
Reformatory in 1883,158 and £50 for the building of a new Industrial
Home for girls at Upper Knowle in 1891.154
The Society had from a very early date some interest in education.
That interest had been greatly strengthened in the early eighteenth
141 7].B.21, p. 467, 30 March 1855; p. 489, 8 June 1855.
142 77.B.25, p. 23, 7 Dec. 1870.
143 77.B.25, p. 48, 14 April 1871.
144 77,B.26, p. 142, 28 Sept. 1877; p. 146, 26 Oct. 1877.
145 77_B.26, p. 204, 27 Sept. 1878.
146 H.B.27, p. 2, 23 Feb. 1883; p. 5, 22 March 1883; p. 14, 27 July 1883.
147 77.B.27, p. 72, 24 Oct. 1884.
148 77,.B.27, p. 440, 29 July 1892.
149 77.B.26, p. 2, 27 Oct. 18753 p. 23, 31 Dec. 1875.
150 77,B.26, p. 48, 31 March 1876.
151 H.B.26, p. 163, 25 Jan. 1878.
152 77,B.26, p. 424, 22 June 1882.
153 FT,B.27, p. 14, 27 July 1883.
154 77,B.27, p. 390, 26 June 1891.
The Society and Education, Nineteenth Century 387
century when Edward Colston’s bequest made it responsible for the
running of a Hospital for 100 boys, but it became, in the course of
the nineteenth century, a major activity, partly because the Society
gradually relinquished its concern for its earlier functions, partly
because it was subjected to outside pressures from the Charity
Commissioners and the Endowed Schools Commission, and partly
because it began to see education as one of its main concerns. In
1875, it ceased to have direct control over Colston’s Hospital, but
in 1885 it took over the Bristol Trade and Mining School which grew
under its management into a remarkable institution embracing a
great range of educational work from primary to university level.
CHAPTER 21
The Charitable Work of the Society in
the Nineteenth Century
GENERAL CHARITABLE ACTIVITY
ANY satisfactory assessment of the contribution of the Society to
charitable activity in the nineteenth century would have to take into
account something which cannot be measured in terms of money —
the voluntary work undertaken by a considerable number of its
members in the administration of the various charities with which
it was concerned. There is also the question of motives. Philanthropy
may arise from a sincere love of God and a genuine concern for the
less fortunate, but it could also be the result of a desire on the part of
the rich to placate their consciences, to increase their feeling of self-
importance or to be in the happy position of dispensing favours. No
doubt motives were often mixed, and varied greatly from one indivi-
dual to another. Whatever the reasons, a number of members of
the Society gave generously of their time and energy.
The amount of money which the Society gave from its own funds
to philanthropic, educational and religious purposes was modest
compared with that given by some of the great London Livery
Companies, largely because its own income was relatively small.
Moreover, there were considerable fluctuations in the amounts given
during these hundred years. In the earlier part of the century, the
Society was struggling with its own financial difficulties and the
shortage of liquid assets, and it still had many commitments relating
to the economic life of the city. When it had got rid of these commit-
ments and, in addition, began to reap a considerable harvest as a
property-developer, it increasingly turned its attention to educa-
tional and charitable activities, which became the main justification
for its existence.
It would be a laborious task to show what the Society gave, year
by year, to the miscellaneous charities with which it was concerned.
Among the Clerk’s papers is a statement of Gifts for the 7 year
period 29 September 1815-29 September 1822. This shows that it
was making gifts at the rate of approximately £350 a year, but the
figures include some substantial presents to the M.P.s and others
which can hardly be considered as charitable, and the amount given
for genuinely charitable purposes was probably between £200 and
Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 389
£250 a year.1 In Claxton’s analysis of income and expenditure for
the 5 years 1845-50, the total amount of ordinary and extraordinary
gifts for the whole period was just over £1,000.2 Thus, in the middle
of the century, donations were still only about £200 a year, but in the
second half of the century, they increased considerably. In 1863 for
example, it was noted that the Society had given in charity £650,°
and next year the amount was £1,130, including £600 voted for the
Cotton Fund, which was intended to help meet distress among
cotton workers resulting from the American Civil War.* At the end
of 1871, Claxton noted with irritation that the first Standing Com-
mittee of the year had voted away nearly £1,400 in gifts, although
the Treasurer in his financial statement had allowed for only
£1,000.5 The number of good causes to which the Society made
annual subscriptions gradually increased. In 1890-1 subscriptions
amounted to approximately £450 a year and donations came to
approximately £850. The amount given away was not vast, but the
help was not negligible in nineteenth-century Bristol, and it did not
include contributions made to educational work.
The range of charitable donations was considerable. A Society
known to be interested in philanthropic work inevitably attracted
the attention of institutions and individuals needing help, and the
Society felt an obligation to do something, however limited, to assist
in dealing with distress both at home and abroad.
One group of donations was concerned with helping the victims
of various disasters, some natural, some man-made. In 1847, for
example, £200 were given for the relief of the poor in Ireland and
the Highlands of Scotland who were suffering from famine as a
result of the potato blight,’? and 5 guineas were given to the poor of
Spaxton and Worle, where the Society had land, to help those who
1 Merchants’ Hall Records: The Clerk’s Papers (envelope containing miscel-
laneous papers). The return was probably one prepared for the Charity Commis-
sioners. Presents to the M.P.s and to the Treasurer in 1815-16 amounted to
£270 5s. od.; to £161 18s. od. in 1816-17; and to £133 in 1821-2.
2 The large volume prepared by Claxton, see pp. 278-9 supra. The analysis of
gifts is on p. 31 of his book.
3 H.B.23, p. 273, 20 March 1863.
4 H.B.23, pp. 344 ff., 23 Feb. 1864.
5 Claxton’s Fournal II, p. 119, 29 Dec. 1871.
6 H.B.27, p. 323, 31 Jan. 1890, for a list of 52 annual subscriptions, including £25
to the Formidable training ship; 25 guineas to the Bristol Benevolent Institute; £21
to the Bristol Infirmary; £20 to the Infirmary Chaplaincy; £21 to the Bristol
General Hospital, and {10 to its chaplaincy. Non-recurrent grants in 1890-9!
included 5 guineas to the Bristol Ladies’ Home; £250 to help rebuild Kingswood
Reformatory; £100 to enlarge St. Paul’s, Bedminster; 10 guineas to the Children’s
Help Society; 5 guineas to the Prize Fund of the Bristol Volunteer Rifle Corps;
£100 to the Bristol Medical School; £100 for coal for the poor in the severe
weather.
7 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 121, 15 Jan. 1847.
390 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
were suffering from the same disaster. In 1854, and again in 1855,
£,100 was given to the Patriotic Fund for Soldiers and Sailors in the.
Russian War,® and in 1857 £100 was donated to a relief fund for
sufferers from the Indian Mutiny.!° Two years later, £100 was pro-
vided for the relief of distressed pilots who had suffered in the great
gale of October 1859,11 and in 1866 the Shipwrecked Mariners
Benevolent Society received an additional donation of £25 as a
result of “the late unprecedented number of wrecks’’.12 There was
a donation of £50 for famine relief in India in 1861,18 and in 1864
£300 was given to relieve distress in the Bristol cotton industry
resulting from the American Civil War. Half of this went to the
Lancashire Fund and half to the Bristol operatives.14 In 1864, £50
was subscribed to help sufferers from a calamity caused by the burst-
ing of the reservoir of the Sheffield Waterworks Company,}® and in
1871 £100 went to the Mayor’s Fund for the relief of sufferers from
the calamitous fire in Chicago.16 (250 was given to Indian Famine
Relief in 1877;!” £50 to the victims of a colliery explosion at Aber-
carne,'§ and £100 to help distressed colliers in Wales and the Forest
of Dean in 1878;1° and 2 guineas to flood relief in Hungary in 1879. 2°
In 1882, £50 was donated “for the relief of distressed ladies in
Ireland”; 20 guineas to help persecuted Jews in Russia;22 and
£100 to help the victims of floods.?* There were more floods in 1889
when £5 was given to each of the 12 Bristol parishes affected, and
£,100 to the General Relief Fund.*4 The victims of the Great Fire at
St. John’s, Newfoundland, received £25 in 1892,25 and there were
donations of 100 guineas and 50 guineas to Indian Famine Relief
in 1897 and 1900.26 The Bristol Flood Relief Fund received £10 in
1899.°” | |
Subscriptions and donations were given to a great variety of
organisations and institutions, and only some of these can be noted
here. They include a gift of 5 guineas and an annual subscription
of 2 guineas to the Bristol Humane Society in 1808 “for the Recovery
of persons apparently dead by drowning or any other species of
suffocation” ;?8 10 guineas to the Deaf and Dumb Institute in 18 575°
8 Ibid., p. 121, 12 Feb. 1847. ® Ibid., p. 15. List of donations.
10 Jbid., p. 15. | 11 Tbid., p. 15.
12 7T.B.24, p. 65, 16 Feb. 1866. 18 77.B.23, p. 127, 25 April 1861.
14 H.B.23, p. 252, 19 Dec. 1862; p. 344, 23 Feb. 1864.
1° H.B.23, p. 357, 8 April 1864; p. 337.
16 Hf.B.25, p. 98, 26 Oct. 1871. 1” H.B.26, p. 138, 31 Aug. 1877.
18 H.B.26, p. 204, 27 Sept. 1878. 18 H.B.26, p. 163, 25 March 1878.
20 H.B.26, p. 243, 28 March 1879. 21 17.B.26, p. 400, 24 Feb. 1882.
22 H/.B.26, p. 407, 31 March 1882. 28 77.B.26, p. 439, 27 Oct. 1882 .
24 H.B.27, p. 286, 29 March 1889. 25 H.B.27, p. 440, 29 July 1892.
26 H.B.28, p. 204, 29 Jan. 1897; p. 357, 25 May 1900.
2” H.B.28, p. 303, 24 Feb. 1899. 28 77.B.14, p. 9, 21 Jan. 1808.
2° H.B.22, p. 175, 14 Aug. 1857.
Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 391
£10 to the Park Row Asylum for Hopeful Discharged Female
Prisoners in 1882;39 {£25 to Kingswood Reformatory in 1883;%1
5 guineas to the Association of Helpers of the Poor in 1884;%7 5
guineas to the Ladies’ Home, Clifton, in 1885;%* 10 guineas to the
Children’s Help Society in 1889 and a subscription of 5 guineas to the
Bristol Blind Asylum.*4 In 1891, the Society contributed 5 guineas
to the Mayoress’ Fund “‘being raised by her for Reduced Ladies’’,*5
and in 1901 it gave £25 to help build a new Lost Dogs’ Home.*®
Throughout the nineteenth century, there was, of course, an acute
problem of poverty, and in varying degrees and for various motives
many of the wealthiest members of the community felt the need to
take some action, particularly when economic fluctuations led to
severe distress in a community which had no Social Security. The
Society has a long record of miscellaneous donations of which only a
few illustrations can be given here. In 1801, when prices were high,
it gave £20 to a Soup Kitchen and 20 guineas to help the poor at
Pill.37 In 1829 it contributed £10 to Stogursey Charity Fund to
provide coal, blankets and flannel for sale to the poor at half price, ®*
and next year it gave £5 to Clifton parish to provide blankets,
clothes, coal and potatoes,®® and £10 to help the watermen at
Pill.4° On occasions, the Society tried to help with the problem of
poverty by making available quarries at which the poor could be
set to work.*! In 1847, £21 was given to the poor at Pill and £15 to
the poor of Stogursey to supply food at reduced rates in time of
scarcity.42 In the bad weather of 1855, when there was much un-
employment, £20 was provided for relief for people employed on
the quays and docks,*% and in the bad weather of 1878 £100 was
donated to provide coal for the poor.** Next year £50 was voted for
Distress Relief and the Master was given discretion to contribute
another £50.4° The Mayor’s Relief Fund for the distressed poor
received £50 in 1881;46 £60 was provided for coal for the poor in
1888,4? and four years later £5 was given to each of the ten poorest
parishes for the same purpose. *®
80 H.B.26, p. 415, 28 April 1882. $1 77.B.27, p. 14, 27 July 1883.
82 77.B.27, p. 72, 24 Oct. 1884. 33 H.B.27, p. 97, 27 Feb. 1885.
84 77,.B.27, p. 297, 28 June 1889. 85 77,.B.27, p. 381, 20 March 1891.
36 77.B.28, p. 385, 25 Jan. 1901. 10 guineas had been given to help pay off the
debt in 1896 (H.B.28, p. 152, 28 Feb. 1896).
37 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 17. 88 77.B.16, p. 364, 4 Dec. 1829.
39 7.B.16, p. 368, 8 Jan. 1830. 40 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 19.
41 It made an arrangement with St. Augustine’s parish in 1817 and with the
Governors of St. Peter’s Hospital in the later eighteen-twenties. H.B.14, p. 423, 28
Jan. 1817; Letter Book IV, 1826-1833, p. 50, 12 March 1827.
42 Tbid., p. 123, 26 March 1827. 43 Hf.B.21, pp. 460, 461, 9 March 1855.
44 H.B.26, p. 230, 21 Dec. 1878. 45 77.B.26, p. 233, 31 Jan. 1879.
46 77.B.26, p. 340, 21 Jan. 1881. 47 H.B.27, p. 240, 24 Feb. 1888.
48 H7.B.27, p. 423, 26 Feb. 1892.
392 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The Society also made some contribution to helping the sick.
Thus, in 1805, it donated £100 towards a new wing of the Bristol
Infirmary, to which it gave an annual subscription.*® A modest £5
was contributed to the cost of whitewashing houses at Pill in 1832
“at this period of alarm in respect to the Cholera’’,®® and in 1849
£20 was given to the Committee for the Poor of Pill in time of
cholera.®! In 1844, 5 guineas were donated to the Parochial Medical
Association for supplying medicine to the poor,5? and £100 to the
Infirmary in 1848 to help to provide two new wards to be known as
Victoria and Albert.52 When the Seamen’s Hospital Fund was
wound up in 1852, the Society recovered from the fund the £500
which it had donated in the mid-eighteenth century, and it gave
half of this to the Bristol Infirmary and half to the General Hospital
to help sick and disabled seamen.*4
From time to time, the Society showed some concern about the
finances of the Bristol Infirmary. In 1837 and 1849 it indicated that
it might reduce or cancel its subscription.55 In 1871, it voted £250
to help pay off the deficit, but hinted that it might withdraw its
subscription unless there was a large increase in the number of
annual subscribers.®* Help to the Bristol General Hospital included
a gift of £100 in 1871 and contributions of £200 and £500 to help
pay off its debt in 1875 and 1883, and £1,000 for the extension of
the hospital in 1891.5” Other gifts included £50 to help complete
the West of England Sanatorium at Weston-super-Mare in 188155
£100 to extend the Bristol Eye Hospital in 1886, provided £1,500
was raised;5® £25 for the hot sea baths at Weston-super-Mare
sanatorium in 1889, and £1,000 for the Jubilee Convalescent
Home in 1897, provided £50,000 was raised. *
Assistance to individuals was much more limited, but there were
a number of donations, particularly in the first half of the century,
to those for whom the Society felt a special responsibility. Examples
of such help include 15 guineas to.a pilot’s widow, ® 15 guineas to a
cranesman who lost his arm in 1810, 10 guineas to a widow whose
49 7.B.13, p. 343, 4 Sept. 1805. 50 H7.B.17, p. 83, 7 March 1832.
51 77.B.21, p. 22, 12 Oct. 1849. 52 Hf.B.19, p. 415, 9 Feb. 1844.
53 H.B.20, p. 438, 15 April 1848. 54 H.B.21, pp. 242, 243, 10 Sept. 1852.
55 77.B.18, p. 130, 8 Nov. 1837; H.B.27, p. 1, 11 May 1849.
56 H.B.25, p. 113, 29 Dec. 1871.
57 H.B.25, p. 113, 29 Dec. 1871; p. 385, 30 Jan. 1875; H.B.27, p. 11, 1 June
1883; p. 375, 30 Jan. 1891.
58 77.B.26, pp. 359, 27 May 1881.
59 H.B.27, p. 164, 1 May 1886.
60 77.B.27, p. 284, 22 Feb. 1889.
61 77.B.28, p. 214, 26 Feb. 1897. See Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, 1887—
1900, pp. 57 ff. Subscriptions included £10,000 from Mr. H. O. Wills, £20,000
from Mr. E. D. Wills, and £5,000 from Mr. W. H. Wills.
62 77.B.14, p. 118, 11 July 1810. 63 77.B.14, p. 142, 28 Nov. 1810.
Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 393
husband and eldest son had been drowned in a gale in 1815, and
£5 to help the crew of the wrecked Columbus to get back to London
in 1825.85
The main individual beneficiaries, however, were people very
closely connected with the Society. In 1802, for example, a pension
of £20 a year was voted to the widow of William Reeve, a member
who died in indifferent circumstances.** £30 a year was granted in
1803 to Thomas Ricketts,®” but a proposal in 1804 to give a pension
of £20 a year to Mary Charleton, widow of Job Charleton, was not
seconded, as her husband had unfortunately not taken up the
freedom.®® Proposals in 1818, 1821, and 1823 to give an annuity to
Edward Thurston Davis were turned down on the grounds that he
had never been a Master, Warden or Assistant, but he was eventually
given a donation of £20.®® In 1835 John Barrow, a former Master,
was given a pension of £60 a year,?° but when it was moved in 1844
that an annuity should be given to another former Master, Philip
Protheroe, an amendment was carried that the question be not put.”
William Claxton noted in his Journal that there had been discussion
about Protheroe’s misfortunes and bankruptcy, and that only three
Past Masters had received annuities and “they were persons of
unimpeachable character’”’.?2 When William Taylor Chamberlain,
who had been assistant to the Treasurer William Claxton since
1842, died in 1859, leaving a widow and 14 children with wholly
insufficient means, the Society gave her £25 and agreed to consider
the matter annually.’3 In 1871, a pension of £100 a year was granted
to William Edward Acraman, formerly a merchant of high position
in the city, who was now in advanced old age,’4 and a similar pen-
sion was given to William Bruce, a past Warden, now in distressing
circumstances.’5 When William Claxton’s son Donald died in 1887,
his widow was given £100 a year, and when William Claxton’s
widow died in 1889, and her pension of £100 a year lapsed, Mrs.
64 H7.B.14, p. 278, 18 Nov. 1813.
65 77.B.16, p. 58, 3 June 1825.
$6 77.B.13, p. 194, 11 March 1802.
67 H7.B.13, p. 256, 22 Aug. 1803. He had been admitted in 1760, but had never
served as Master.
68 H.B.13, p. 310, 8 Nov. 1804.
69 H.B.14, p. 505, 30 Oct. 1818; H.B.15, p. 164, 3 July 1821; p. 320, 3 June
1823.
70 H.B.17, p. 350, 9 Nov. 1835. |
71 H.B.20, p. 12, 27 July 1844. He had been a member since 1803 and Master in
1826.
72 Claxton’s Journal I, p. 92, 30 May 1844.
73 H.B.22, p. 370, 11 Aug. 1859. _
74 H.B.25, p. 46, 14 April 1871. He had joined the Society in 1838.
75 H.B.25, p. 56, 12 May 1871. He had joined the Society in 1820, and been
Warden in 1823.
394 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Donald Claxton’s. annuity was increased to £150 a year.7¢ In 1888,
when Edmund Gwyer, son of a former member and himself a Mer-
chant Venturer since 1852, asked for assistance owing to his extreme
poverty and serious illness, he was given £2 a week,’? and in 1896
Robert Grey Barnes who had joined the Society in 1859, was given
£5 a month because of his heavy trading losses. At the same time
all pensioners were informed that they must not attend the Hall
while they were receiving pensions.7®
THE SEAMEN’S HOSPITAL FUND
In addition to giving donations and subscriptions, the Society was
also concerned with the running of almshouses and the management
of various charitable funds. One of the most important of these in
the first half of the nineteenth century was the Seamen’s Hospital
Fund which had been established in 1747.79 The original subscrip-
tions towards the building of a hospital had been invested, and the
fund was built up progressively from money collected from seamen’s,
wages. The money had been put into Old South Sea Stock and by
1796 the value of the stock was £6,050.8° By 1853 when the Society
handed over the fund to the Board of Trade, the value of the fund
was £12,902 18s. gd.,8! most of which had come from seamen’s
wages. i |
The work of collecting the money continued to be done on a
commission basis. In 1814, when the Collector complained that £9
per cent was not enough, the commission was increased to 124 per
cent.®? It was cut to 9 per cent in 1833 when the Fund was in
difficulties,** but when legislation in 1834 had increased the con-
tributions,®4* the commission on collection was restored to the earlier
rate.85
There are a number of Journals and other records relating to this
fund in the first half of the century which show the amount of money
spent and the number of people receiving help. In 1799-1800, for
example, £430 4s. 6d. was paid to 96 claimants, including 10
78 H.B.27, p. 215, 30 Sept. 1887; p. 218, 29 Oct. 1887; p. 318, 20 Dec. 1889.
"7 H.B.27, p. 241, 23 March 1888. |
78 H.B.28, pp. 156, 159, 27 March 1896, 24 April 1896. 79 See p. 197 ff.
80 Merchants’ Hall: Hospital for Decayed Seamen 1787-1835, fo. 1.
81 Merchants’ Hall: Seamen’s Hospital Ledger 1835-1852, fo. 3. The nominal value
of the Old South Sea Stock handed over was £15,286 12s. 3d.
82 77.B.14, p. 315, 8 Nov. 1814. _ |
83 7.B.17, p. 161, 5 June 1833; p. 168, 4 Sept. 1833.
84 4 and 5 William IV c. 52. Merchant seamen were no longer required to con-
tribute to the support of the Royal Naval Hospital at Greenwich and the Seamen’s
Hospital Fund now received 2s. od. per month from masters and 1s. od. from sea-
men.
85 77.B.19, pp. 13 ff., 10 July 1840.
Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 395
captains, 2 mates, 1 blind surgeon, 36 seamen of whom 15 were
blind, and 25 widows claiming on behalf of 47 children.*° In 1818-
1819, 125 claimants received between them £533 7s.°” The number
of pensioners had risen to 181 in 1829-30 and the amount disbursed
was £732 11s. 6d.88 In 1843, 296 people received help amounting
to £1,132 8s. 6d. apart from temporary relief and surgical assistance
costing £27 os. 4d. They included 11 masters receiving £10 a year
each; 5 masters receiving £8 a year; 4 blind seamen receiving 3s. 6d.
a week; 83 worn-out seamen receiving 2s. 6d.; 10 widows getting
£8 5s. 4d. a year; 13 blind, crippled or orphan children receiving
1s. 6d. a week, and 74 widows claiming for 170 children who got 1s.
a week each.®?
The Society administered the fund under authority given it by an
Act of Parliament, but the question of how best to provide for dis-
abled seamen was not merely a local one, and action by the central
government on this matter inevitably brought under examination
the somewhat exceptional situation in Bristol, particularly when
reforming governments got to work after 1830. In 1833, the Society
was required to make returns for the years 1830, 1831 and 1832 of
the amount of money collected from seamen’s wages.°° Next year,
Mr. Lyall brought in a bill for the relief of merchant seamen which
proposed, among other things, to take the Bristol Fund away from
the Society and to hand it over to a national body in London. Some
words he used in the House seemed to suggest that the Society was
receiving more money than it accounted for, but it appeared that he
did not mean this, and the Society succeeded in getting itself restored
as Trustee for the Bristol Fund on the third reading.®! The threat
recurred next year, and Mr. Fowler, who had been Master at the
time of the 1834 bill, went to London and convinced the mover of
the bill that the Society’s work was beneficial and that it ought to
continue. °? | |
The threat reappeared in 1840 when a Commons Committee
prepared to enquire into the Merchant Seamen’s Fund, and the
Society alerted the Bristol M.P.s.°? The Select Committee wanted
details of the Bristol Fund, and the Hall instructed its Collector,
Mr. Stedder, to make the required return,®4 but no further action
86 Seamen’s Hospital Journal 1796-1830, p. 11. 87 Ibid., p. 49.
88 Ibid., p. 70. 89 Seamen’s Hospital Ledger 1835-1852, p. 26.
90 H.B.17, p. 180, 8 Nov. 1833.
°1 1,B.17, p. 200, 10 Jan. 1834; p. 236, 20 June 1834; p. 239, 2 July 1834; pp.
242 ff., 15 July 1834; p. 245, 6 Aug. 1834.
92 17.B.17, p. 313, 6 June 1835; p. 314, 17 June 1835.
98 77.B.18, p. 426, 13 March 1840; p. 430, 10 April 1840.
94 H.B.19, pp. 9 ff., 10 July 1840. It was stated that the book of proceedings on
the Trustees had been burnt or lost when the Customs House was destroyed in the
Riots of 1831.
396 The Merchant Venturer: of Bristol
was taken by the House. Then, there was a lull until 1845 when
another bill was brought in. The Hall sent a petition for Philip Miles,
M.P., to present to the House, and despatched the Clerk to London
to cooperate with others in opposing the bill,®® which proposed to
place the funds of all ports under a Corporation in London and to
equalise pensions throughout the country. The Society’s case was
that this would deprive seamen of Bristol of their past contributions
for the benefit of other ports ‘“‘whose accumulated Funds have from
mismanagement or other causes been exhausted and whose annual
contributions from their Seamen have proved insufficient to main-
tain the Pensions allowed . . .”. The new proposals (unlike the
Bristol scheme) would make no provision for widows and children.
Representatives of Liverpool, Bristol, Hull, Rye, Wexford, Ply-
mouth and Colchester met at the Guildhall Coffee House, set up a
committee and obtained a conference with the Board of Trade, but
without effect. In the end, the bill was withdrawn, but the opponents
of the bill decided to form a joint committee to remain on the alert.®¢
Another bill was introduced in 1848, but the Hall decided that there
was no need to take action, as it was unlikely to go through. 9?
1850 saw the beginning of the end. A Merchant Seamen’s Fund
Bill proposed to divest the Society of the Bristol Fund, to set up a new
general fund, and to make regulations which would not include
provision for widows and orphans. The Hall instructed its Pilotage
Committee to prepare a petition and to go to London to cooperate
with Liverpool and Hull. Together with the Bristol M.P.s they had
a three-hour discussion with Mr. Labouchere, President of the
Board of Trade. He stood by the principle of the bill but admitted
that some details were objectionable.®* In its petition, the Society
used the rather.curious argument that by changing the fund from one
intended to benefit destitute and decayed seamen’s widows and
children to one which would benefit the seamen alone, the bill
established “‘a Precedent upon which other classes of operatives
may found Claims upon the government and Funds of the country
for the establishment of similar societies for their own benefit . . .”.
The Hall argued that the seamen themselves did not want the new
scheme which would increase the compulsory deductions from their
wages and which made no statutory provision for grants to widows
and orphans. It thought that the reference in the bill to a voluntary
fund for widows and orphans was an illusion at a time when com-
pulsory contributions were being increased by half as much again
and when the repeal of the Navigation Acts and increased foreign
5 H.B.20, p. 115, 5 June 1845.
96 H.B.20, pp. 123 ff., 11 July 1845.
®? H.B.20, p. 393, 15 July 1848.
8 Hf.B.21, p. 51, 15 March 1850; p. 55, 12 April 1850; p. 63, 14 June 1850.
Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 397
competition made it unlikely that seamen’s wages would be in-
creased. Further, the new proposal would be much more expensive
to administer, as it involved paid officials instead of local voluntary
trustees, and it would give a lot of patronage to the government.
Although the petitioners would continue as trustees, they would have
no control over the collection, disbursement or management of the
fund which would be managed by government officers “without
check or control’. The Society argued that it had kept the accounts
and managed the fund gratuitously, that it had contributed some of
its own money and that it had built up a stock of £15,000. The
proposal that they should now hand it over “cast an undeserved slur
upon their characters as indicating they are not longer held worthy
of being entrusted with its custody”. The money belonged to the
seamen and it was unfair that others should benefit from it and
widows and orphans should cease to receive help.*?
The bill of 1850 was withdrawn, but the matter came up again
next year. In July 1851, the Treasurer, William Claxton, and the
collector of the Fund, Mr. Stedder, were sent to London to consult
P. W. Miles; M.P. on the best way to stop the Bristol Fund being
appropriated by the government. Miles told them that unless they
could persuade Mr. Labouchere to make an exception for Bristol on
the grounds that the Fund was to a great extent attributable to the
gifts of Bristol benefactors and of the Society, it would not be possible.
He added gloomily that most M.P.s had left town and that of the
few who remained the greatest part were “Members devoted to the
Government Interest and remaining in Town principally for the
purpose of securing the passing of Government measures”. The
deputation waited on Mr. Labouchere, but he refused to modify the
bill. On 8 August 1851, the Society’s Clerk reported the passing of
the Act, and a committee was instructed to examine the Society’s
position.1©°
Early in 1852, the committee reported that the Society held Old
South Sea Stock to the value of £15,800, and it was ordered that this
be transferred to the Board of Trade, less £500 donated by the
Society in 1754.°! The Board of Trade was in no hurry to take over,
and in November the Society was urging it to get on with the
business.!°? The matter was not finally concluded until 11 March
185,3.108
The epitaph on the seamen’s Hospital Fund was written by
89 Book of Petitions, pp. 218 ff., 5 June 1850.
100 #7 B.2r, p. 155, 8 Aug. 1851. The Act (14 and 15 Victoria c. 102) did in fact
make provision for widows and children.
101 Ff Bier, p. 213, 13 Feb. 1852; p. 221, 12 March 1852; p. 225, 2 April 1852,
Seamen’s Hospital Ledger 1835-1852, p. 5-
102 H.B.21, pp. 272, 273, 20 Nov. 1852.
103 Seamen’s Hospital Ledger 1835-1852, p. 5.
398 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
William Claxton who remarked that “During these years the records
of the Society and of the Merchant Seamens Hospital shew that in all
particulars the Fund has been most faithfully administered, every
applicant whether man woman or child receiving due consideration
and the Bounty dispensed in accordance with the several Acts of
Parliament now repealed. The accounts have been kept without
charge of any kind and the Society have expended many Hundreds
of Pounds in defence of the wives and orphans of decayed seamen.
At the conclusion of their Trust they have paid over to the Board of
Trade the sum of £12,873 3s. 1d. sterling Money in South Sea
Annuities £15286 — a fact unprecedented in the Management of all
other Seamens Hospital Trusts in the Kingdom. In fact the Bristol
Trust was the only one which had any funds to transfer.”’!4 Claxton
was not, of course, unprejudiced and he may have been mesmerised
by the amount which had been accumulated from seamen’s wages.
It could be argued that larger pensions might have been paid to the
seamen and their dependants, but generally speaking his comment
did justice to the work which the Society had done in administering
the fund.
THE MERCHANT VENTURERS’ ALMSHOUSE
No very dramatic developments took place in the history of the
Merchants’ Almshouse in King Street during this period, although
as has been noted elsewhere, a substantial donation to the Society
enabled the weekly allowances to the almsfolk to be increased.}°
Up to 1841, the Standing Committee and the Treasurer exercised
general supervision and made annual inspections,}°6 but in that year
the Hall decided to appoint a visiting Committee of 5 members
elected annually.1°’ The Minutes of this committee throw interesting
light on conditions in the almshouse in the years 1841—74.1°8 There
were the usual disciplinary troubles. In January 1842, for example,
the Chief Brother had to be told firmly that inmates might not have
outsiders sleeping in their rooms. The water closet was found to be
improperly used by persons not in the almshouse and a lock was put
on the door with a key in every woman’s room. A Mrs. Scriffen was
thought to be guilty of theft and of bringing outsiders into her room
and was removed to No. 13.19® She continued to give trouble and her
pay was stopped until she moved to her new room. Then the Chief
104 Thid., p. 5.
105 See pp. 403-4.
106 See, for example, H.B.14, p. 205, 28 May 1812; p. 537, 4 March 1819;
H.B.18, p. 401, 26 Nov. 1839.
107 77.B.19, p. 122, 22 May 1841.
108 Two volumes covering 1841-52 and 1852-74. .
108 Minutes of the Visiting Committee 1841-1852, 18 Jan. 1842.
— Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 399
Brother reported that Mr. Earle, surgeon to the Dispensary, had
said that “‘she had taken a violent cold in consequence of the Room
being damp’’, and the committee assigned her to Room 12."1° In
March she was asked not to let her daughter sleep in her room."
In June, the Elder Brother complained of her abusive conduct, and
the Visiting Committee decided that as they had reprimanded her
many times, she must be reported to the Hall.11? After listening to
her statement and to a statement from the Chief Brother, the Hall
decided that the case against her of “disorderly and abusive con-
duct”? was proved, and she was expelled.148 The Society seems to
have acted with great patience in dealing with.a difficult inmate.
Shortly afterwards the Chief Brother reported that “‘the Almshouse
was remarkably quiet’’.114
The Visting Committee set up in 1841 took its job very seriously
under the direction of the Treasurer, William Claxton, who was
keenly interested. In July 1842 it asked the Master to get a contract
for painting the almshouse,” the same not having been done for
thirty years.115 The estimate was £65 and the work was started
immediately.“ In October, the committee reported that it had
visited the almshouse once a month and had at first found it “in a
very uncomfortable state’, but the committee had achieved much
good and the almsfolk were now living “peacefully, orderly and
lovingly together”’. The interior and exterior had been painted, and
this had given great satisfaction. One of the inmates had gone blind
and had been sent to St. Peter’s Hospital, but her weekly pay had
been continued. They proposed an addition of 1s. a week to the pay
of 5s. received by the Chief Brother since it was a full-time job and
he could not earn additions to his pay like other almsfolk.12’
Naturally, problems continued to arise. In January 1843, the
committee noted that inconvenience and disturbance arose because
of the male inmates having female visitors every day for the whole
day. The Elder Brother was to tell them of the committee’s dis-
approval.48 In May two men were fined for not attending church
on Sundays, and in June William Lewis, who was reported to be in
the habit of assembling a congregation on Sundays in his room for
praying and singing hymns, was told to stop because he was “‘dis-
turbing the Harmony of the House’’.4!9
The general impression left by a study of the Minutes is that the
Visiting Committee managed the almshouse with a mixture of
110 [bid., 11 Feb. 1842. 111 Ibid., 7 March 1842.
112 Tbid., 6 June 1842.
118 Ibid., 6 June 1842; 4 July 1842; H.B.19, p. 249, 10 June 1842.
114 Minutes of the Visiting Committee 1841-1852, 1 Aug. 1842.
116 Thid., 4 July 1842. 116 Jbid., 5 Sept. 1842.
117 Ibid., 24 Oct. 1842. 118 Jbid., 2 Jan. 1843.
119 Thid., 12 June 1843.
400 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
firmness and understanding. When the Chief Brother reported that
Prudence Brick kept her room in a very dirty state and used abusive
language, the Visiting Committee inspected it and found it disgrace-
ful. It also appeared that six months earlier the ceiling of the room
below had been damaged by her emptying water and improper
things into the coal hole and that she had persisted in doing so after
the Treasurer had spoken to her. She was merely moved to another
room and told not to do it again.!2° In 1844, the Visiting Committee
reported that it had opened a communication from the almshouse
into the Merchants’ Hall garden and that the almsfolk would be
able to use the garden after the winter.124 When the Chief Brother
was away for a week in 1846, the Treasurer visited the almshouse
daily and found much that needed amendment. As a result of this,
he was subjected to “very improper conduct from the Chief Brother”,
but the committee merely issued a reprimand.122 Next year, there
was a report on the “indifference to cleanliness manifested by the
Inmates (with some few exceptions)”. More care was to be taken in
future in selecting applicants “to raise the Character of the
House’’,128 and this paid dividends, for in 1849 the committee was
able to report “all have been by God’s gracious Providence pre-
served from the Cholera’’.124
Other illustrations of the humane attitude of the committee were
the permission granted to the Chief Brother to let his granddaughter
stay at night since his infirmities were so great that this was “absolute
necessity’’;125 a grant of 5 cwt. of coal to each of the inhabitants in
the inclement weather of 1861;126 the indulgence shown to Captain
Robert Bartlett who had “extremely filthy habits” and who was
allowed to live with his sister and collect his weekly pay from the
office “rather than throw him upon the world in poverty”;2? and
the replacement of stone floors by wooden ones in 1870.128 On the
other hand, Thomas Gwyer was expelled in 1879 on account of his
dirty habits,12® and in 1889 one of the almsmen who had taken a
woman into his room and slept with her all night to the annoyance
of the other inmates was also expelled.1%°
It is not really possible to say how conditions in the Merchants’
Almshouse compared with those in other almshouses. Up to 1864,
120 Tbid., 4 June 1844. 121 Tbid., 10 Nov. 1844.
122 Ibid., 26 Oct. 1846. 123 Thid., 2 Nov. 1847.
124 Ibid. 3 Nov. 1849.
125 Minutes of the Visiting Committee 1852-1874, 4. Jan. 1852.
126 [bid., 1 Jan. 1861.
127 Ibid., 28 Oct. 1864. When the Chief Brother was reported to the Treasurer
for inebriety in 1867, he was reprimanded but not dismissed (ibid., 5 March 1867).
128 Ibid., Report of the Committee, 1870.
129 H7.B.26, p. 265, 23 Sept. 1879.
180 7.B.27, p. 298, 26 July 1889.
Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 401
the inmates of Colston’s Almshouse received more pay than those
in the Merchants’ Almshouse.1*! It may be significant that in
October 1864 the Visiting Committee was considering whether it
ought not to make more places available for women since there were
no applications from men and 25 for the first female vacancy.19?
After the increase of pay under a Scheme of the Commissioners of
Charitable Trusts in 1866,1%* the committee noticed a much greater
demand for places from masters and mates.154
In 1898, a new Scheme for the management of the Merchants’
Almshouse was brought into operation which placed the funds on
an independent footing.135
COLSTON’S ALMSHOUSE
Colston’s Almshouse, like the Merchant Venturers’ Almhouse, does
not figure very much in the Society’s records until the establishment
of the Visiting Committee in 1841.15* The Visiting Committee made
its first report to the Standing Committee in 1842 and stated that it
was meeting monthly and keeping a Book of Proceedings. It solemnly
noted that “‘your Committee have regularly attended Divine Service
at the Chapel of the Alms House with the Alms People and they
believe that a good effect has been produced thereby”. The book
kept to mark attendance at chapel showed that since the committee
was appointed, attendance of the almsfolk had been extremely
regular. The painting of the interior was in a bad state and had not
been done for at least thirty years. Instructions were given to paint
the whole of the exterior as well as the interior. The committee
evidently had some doubt about whether Edward Colston’s inten-
tions of providing only for sound members of the Church of England
were being carried out and thought a searching enquiry should be
made into the Religious Tenets of all future applicants. A mere
certificate that the applicant had once attended the celebration of
Holy Communion should not suffice.18”
In 1870, there were 11 men in the almshouse with an average age
of just over 77 and 16 women with an average age of just over 70.138
181 Merchants’ Hall: Box 21, envelope marked ‘“‘Merchants, Almshouse—Six
Poor Mariners 1864/5’.
132 Minutes of the Visiting Committee 1852-1874, 28 Oct. 1864.
133 Jbid., Report of Visiting Committee 1866.
184 Ibid., Report of Visiting Committee, 1867.
135 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 2'79.
136 H7,.B.19, p. 112, 22 May 1841. Among the Society’s archives are two volumes
of Proceedings of the Sub-Committee of Colston’s Almshouse No. 2 (1852-1870) and No. 3
(1870-1874). Only 26 pages of the last volume have been used and the rest are blank.
137 77.B.19, p. 296, 7 November 1842.
138 Proceedings of the Sub-Committee of Colston’s Almshouse No. 3. list of inmates at
10 Nov. 1870.
402 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The high average age is relevant to a touching letter sent to the
trustees by the inmates in 1869 requesting that the almshouse should
be kept open until 9 o’clock in the winter as well as in the summer.
It stated “we are all far advanced in age and this with our rapid
increasing infirmities render us more and more incapable of keeping
our rooms so nice and tidy as we could wish. Many of us have friends
and relatives engaged all day with their own concerns who would
willingly look in of an evening to see us, and put our rooms a little
to rights at the same time but are prevented from doing so by an
early closing.”’1%®
In this almshouse too, the Society showed humanity in its treat-
ment of the inmates. In 1856, for example, the Treasurer reported
that “in consequence of a severe fright occasioned by an alarming
fit happening to her son who had called to see her, which occasioned
his death in a few hours, Mrs. Frances Pearce has been rendered
imbecile and quite incapable of attending to herself .. .’. Her
daughter-in-law was willing to receive her into her own house and
to nurse and attend her there, but her family duties prevented her
from being with her mother-in-law in the almshouse. Permission
was given for Mrs. Pearce to be removed to her daughter-in-law’s
house and for support to be continued to her there.14° When there
was a request that a Mrs. Taylor’s niece should be allowed to sleep
in her room in the almshouse, the Treasurer conferred with the
surgeon in the Dispensary who said it was dangerous for Mrs.
Taylor to be on her own, and permission was accordingly granted.141
In the severe weather at the end of 1860, the Master, Wardens; and
Treasurer asked the inmates what would be most acceptable to them,
and the reply was “‘some warm stockings’. The Treasurer was then
ordered to supply two pairs to each of the almsfolk at the expense of
the Society, and two letters of thanks were duly received from “the
Female inmates” and “the male Inmates’’.142 When the Prince of
Wales was married in 1863, an illuminated dolphin was fixed at the
entrance gate, 4 lb of tea and 2 lb of sugar were given to each inmate,
as. well as 2s. in money. Everyone had a wedding favour at the cost
of the Trustees.148
In 1868/9 by arrangement with the Charity Commissioners four
new rooms were built at a cost of £600 and some of the surplus funds
of the charity were used for other charitable purposes.1*4
139 Letters of 28 Oct. 1869 with 24 names (some inmates putting their marks)
stuck on to the front inside cover of Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, No. 2 (1852-
1870).
140 Proceedings of the Sub-Committee, No. 2, 22 Dec. 1856.
141 Tbid., 28 June 1858.
142 Jbid., 18 Dec. 1860.
143 Tbid., 24 Feb. 1863.
144 Jbid., 5 Feb. 1869 and Report of the Visiting Committee, 25 Oct. .1869.
Charitable Work of the Society, Nineteenth Century 403
HILL’S ALMSHOUSE
In 1866, the Society became involved in the affairs of a third alms-
house established by Thomas William Hill for 12 poor seamen’s
widows. At Hill’s request, the Society agreed to give a piece of land
near Berkeley Place. Management was in the hands of 12 trustees,
but the Society had visitorial powers and could nominate to six of
the places. The almshouse was opened in 1869 and the first visitation
of the Committee of the Society of Merchant Venturers was on 11
August of that year when the Rules were read, the rooms inspected
and the Chief Sister instructed by the Treasurer in her duties. The
Treasurer stated that although the government was entirely in the
hands of the trustees, he would always be pleased to help with
advice. When Mr. Hill died in 1874, he left a large estate which was
used to provide pensions of 5s. a week to women outside the alms-
house.?45
THE ALMSFOLK CHARITY
Another charity with which the Society was concerned in the nine-
teenth century was one to increase the weekly payments to old
people in the almshouses. In 1810, Richard Reynolds, Philip John
Miles and others had endeavoured to collect about £35,000 in order
to raise the payment to 5s. a week. They managed to collect only
£12,257, and with this they purchased three estates in Monmouth
and Somerset. The post-war drop in land values and rents after 1815
had a disastrous effect on the income, and it was impossible to carry
out the plan. In 1834, the surviving trustees William Fripp and
Thomas Sanders suggested handing over the properties in trust to
the Society. They calculated that it would cost £331 10s. a year to
increase the pay in Colston’s and in six other almshouses to 5s. a
week, and another £156 a year to deal with the Merchants’ Alms-
house. Of the receipts from the estates amounting to more than
£487 los. a year, the surplus was to go towards increasing the
number of places in the Merchants’ Almshouse.14* The Standing
Committee recommended accepting the offer, but it was apparently
not possible to make satisfactory arrangements, and no futher action
was taken at the time.
In 1839, Messrs. Fripp and George made a proposal to hand over
to the Society sufficient stock to increase to 5s. a week the pay of 18
145 For Hill’s Almshouse, see Claxton’s Journal IT, p. 54, 5 Jan. 1867; Hill’s
Almshouse Book beginning 22 April 1869 and continuing up to 29 May 1951;
H.B.24, p. 76, 17 April 1866; p. 91, 15 June 1866; H.B.27, P: 31, 30 Nov. 1883;
Latimer, P Merchant Venturers, p. 277.
146 77,B.17, pp. 200 ff., 10 Jan. 1834.
404 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
men and 12 women in the Merchants’ Almshouse and 11 men and
12 women in Colston’s Almshouse, but they laid down certain con-
ditions.147 There were lengthy negotiations, and eventually the
trustees handed over to the Society’s trustees £3,350 stock for the
Merchants’ Almshouse and £1,700 for Colston’s Almshouse.!48 On
31 March 1840, representatives of the Society went with Alderman
Fripp to the Merchants’ Almshouse and to Colston’s to inform the
inmates of their increased allowances, which were backdated to 9
January.149
In fact, the yield from the investments dropped continually in the
nineteenth century and the Society itself made good the deficiency
in order to maintain and increase the payments to the almsfolk.15°
FUND FOR DISABLED SEAMEN
One other fund with which the Society was involved in the early
nineteenth century can be noted briefly. In 1817, a National Com-
mittee for Managing the Subscription for the relief of British
prisoners of war, which had been raised during the Napoleonic War,
decided to allocate to Bristol the sum of £500 for the relief of sick,
maimed and disabled seamen in the merchant service. The Society
was given the management of the money, and in the years that
followed there are a number of references in its records to the grants
which it made.15!
It is not really possible to assess the importance of the Society’s
philanthropic work because there has as yet been no study of the
total amount of such activity in nineteenth-century Bristol and the
relationship it bore to the needs of the community. The amount of
money which the Society provided from its own resources was
comparatively small, as was its income, but it is clear that it was
interested in a great variety of good works and that some of its
members gave a great deal of time and thought not only to the
Society’s own charities but to the various other charities for which it
acted as trustee.
147 77,.B.18, p. 324, 10 May 1839; p. 344, 12 July 1839.
148 77.B.18, p. 423, 13 March 1840; p. 428, 31 March 1840; H.B.20, pp. 278, 280,
23 Dec. 1846.
149 77,.B.18, p. 428, 31 March 1840. See also H.B.19, p. 31, 30 Sept. 1840; p. 92,
12 March 1841.
150 Latimer, Merchant Venturers, p. 279.
151 77.B.14, p. 442, 23 May 1817. For some of the grants, see H.B.14, p. 449, 11
July 1817; p. 475, 9 Feb. 1818; H.B.15, p. 3, 3 June 1819; p. 53, 7 Jan. 1820.
CHAPTER 22
Miscellaneous Activities in the
Nineteenth Century
In the nineteenth century the Society continued to be concerned
with a variety of other business, local and national, in addition to
those activities which have already been examined.
LOYAL ADDRESSES AND STATEMENTS ON PUBLIC AFFAIRS
The Merchant Venturers as one of the oldest corporations in the
City of Bristol felt they had a duty from time to time to express their
sentiments on matters of public interest, and on many royal occasions
they made their dignified voice heard in Loyal Addresses and other
public declarations.
Thus, on 22 May 1800 the Society congratulated the King on his
escape from the late atrocious attack on his life.1 Two years later it
sent him a Loyal Address on the happy termination of hostilities with
France and conferred the freedom on the Prime Minister, Henry
Addington.? Next year, it congratulated the King on the timely
detection of traitorous designs of deluded men who had dared to
conspire against him,* and the renewal of the war with Napoleon
called for yet another Loyal Address.* On the last occasion, only 9
members were present, and only 11 turned up at the end of the year
when the Hall resolved “at this momentous Crisis in defence of the
King and Constitution” to give 100 guineas to the Bristol Royal
Volunteer Infantry, 50 guineas to the Bristol Royal Light Horse
Volunteers. 50 guineas to the Bristol Sea Fencibles and 50 guineas to
the Clifton Volunteer Infantry.®
Trafalgar in 1805 led to a Congratulatory Address to the King,
and it seemed a suitable occasion to bestow the freedom on Admirals
Barham and Collingwood.* Then there was a period of quiescence
1 Book of Petitions, p. 129, 22 May 1800.
2 Ibid., p. 130, 10 May 1802.
3 Ibid., p. 131, 5 March 1803; H.B.13, p. 244, 5 March 1803 (only 11 present).
4 H.B.13, p. 252, 1 July 1803.
5 H.B.13, p. 285, 27 December 1803. When the Clifton Volunteers asked for
more in 1807, no money was forthcoming (H.B.13, p. 462, 12 Oct. 1807).
6 Book of Petitions, p. 136, 28 Nov. 1805; H.B.13, p. 360, 28 Nov. 1805, (20
present).
406 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
until 1812 when the Hall sent a strong petition to the Lords urging
the continuance of the Orders in Council,’ and a Loyal Address after
the murder of the Prime Minister, Spencer Percival, “‘most cruelly
hurried out of existence by the hand of an assassin’’. Copies were
ordered to be printed in the Courier, the Globe, and all Bristol papers. ®
At the end of 1813, when Wellington and the allied forces in
Europe were pushing Napoleon back, the 11 members who attended
a General Hall on 3 December were moved to send an Address to
the Prince Regent congratulating him on the successes when
“France, defeated and dismayed, is returning in precipitate disorder
within her ancient Boundaries’? and when “‘the illustrious Deliverer
of Spain and Portugal, after a career of the most splendid Victories
has planted his Standard in her Territories . . .”’. Copies were sent
to the M.P.s for Bristol and to the Bristol papers. ®
The end of the war in 1814 moved the Society to the heights of
rhetoric. The 9 members present on 13 June noted with patriotic
fervour that “In the most alarming crisis of the War, when all the
Nations of the Continent, were either at the foot of the Tyrant, or
enlisted under his Banners in an unholy and unnatural league against
their own happiness and independence, this Country alone remained,
amidst the general desolation, erect and undismayed — the last hope
and sole support of a sinking world. . . . But,” it went on, “‘. . . re-
kindled by our breath, the sacred flame of Liberty again burst forth
and spread with resistless force over the whole face of the Con-
tinent....
“After a dark and gloomy night of anarchy and Rebellion, Des-
potism and Military Usurpation, the clouds which so long obscured
our political Horizon are dispersed; the storm that raged with such
destructive fury is passed away, and the Dawn of a brighter and
happier Era beams upon the astonished view and reviving hope of
Europe, as yet scarcely recovering from the miseries of her Thral-
dom.”’ It was only proper to inform the Prince Regent that “‘those
Princely qualities of Wisdom and fortitude, decision and Energy of
mind displayed by your Royal Highness in the most critical and
momentous emergencies will be held up, in all the splendor of
deserved Eulogium, to the applause and admiration of succeeding
Ages’’.1° After that, Napoleon’s escape from Elba must have come
as a shock, and Waterloo did not receive the same treatment, but when
the Duke of Wellington visited Bristol in 1816, it was decided to
7 See p. 286.
8 71.B.14, p. 200, 16 May 1812 (18 present); Book of Petitions, p. 139, 18 May
1812. |
® Book of Petitions, pp. 148, 149 (entered out of chronological order): H.B.14,
p. 286, 3 Dec. 1813.
10 Book of Petitions, pp. 146-7; H.B.16, p. 300, 13 June 1814.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 407
confer the freedom on him and to present it in a gold box costing
approximately £70."
In the post-war years, the royal family continued to receive
attention. In 1818, the Hall sent its condolences to the Prince Regent
on the death of Queen Charlotte,1* and in 1820 15 members turned
up to approve addresses of condolence on the death of George III
and congratulations on the accession of George IV. A problem of
etiquette arose, and the Master wrote to Richard Hart Davis, M.P.
asking what was the proper procedure for “‘a Corporation which
though of the greatest antiquity and respectability is not the senior
Corporation of the City”. He added that the Society had no wish
to send up a Special Deputation unless propriety required it. Davis
consulted Lord Sidmouth who thought it to be “‘a mere question of
Feeling’’. If presented by the M.P.s, it would be quicker; if presented
by a deputation for the Society, it would be ‘“‘a greater manifestation
of respect”’, but either course would be sufficiently respectful. Follow-
ing precedents at the accession of George II and George III, the
Hall decided against a special delegation.1%
Of much greater concern in the post-war years was the problem
of public order. In 1817, a Loyal Address to the Prince Regent
regretted ‘‘the late violent and atrocious attack on his person’”’.14 In
1819, another Address was proposed “expressive of their abhorrence
of the measures which are taking by wicked and designing men to
seduce the common people from their obedience to the Laws ...”’.
Richard Bright moved an amendment, but it was not seconded, and
the original motion was carried with one dissenting voice in a Hall
of 18 members.15
The Address of 1819 is worth quoting as showing the outlook of
the Hall at this time. The Society affirmed its attachment to the
Constitution in Church and State, and it went on: ““We have ob-
served, with the utmost indignation, the continuance of that formid-
able system of operations, by which a set of evil disposed Persons
(few, we hope, in number, but most dangerous in their Principles)
are endeavouring to seduce the lower Orders of the People from their
11 H.B.14, p. 400, 25 July 1816; pp. 402, 410, 25 July 1816 and 8 Nov. 1816. For
the address to the Duke and his reply, see ibid., p. 416.
13 Book of Petitions, pp. 150, 151, Dec. 1818.
13 7f.B.15, p. 68, 14 Feb. 1820 (15 present). For the Addresses, see ibid. > PP. 72;
73-
14 7f.B.14, p. 433, 12 Feb. 1817.
18 77.B.15, p. 33, 13 Oct. 1819. Richard Bright had become a Merchant Ven-
turer in 1775. In 1779, when a motion was introduced offering full support to the
King against the American colonists, Joseph Harford and Richard Bright had
moved an amendment asking the King to change his ministers. The amendment
was defeated by a majority of 3. Bright topped the poll as Whig candidate in 1820.
He had been proposed by another Merchant Venturer, W. P. Lunell.
408 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
obedience to the Laws and to drive them, under pretence of petition-
ing for Reform, into a state of actual Rebellion.”’ It continued:
‘Aware that to the accomplishment of their traitorous designs, the
influence of Religion opposed the strongest obstacle, these shameless
Impostors have not hesitated to attack Christianity itself. In aid of
the seditious effusions of the weekly and daily Press, Publications
fraught with Impiety and Blasphemy have with the utmost indus-
trious activity, and in every variety of form best adapted to the
understanding of the lower class of society, been circulated through-
out the land. The effects produced by this fearful combination of
Atheism and Treason, as exhibited in the seditious assembling of the
People, in their previous military Trainings, in the appointment of
Delegates to represent them in Parliament and in the studied and
systematic insults offered to all civil Authorities, are of too formidable
a nature to be viewed without Alarm.” However, the Hall relied on
the paternal care of his Royal Highness to ensure that every measure
would be adopted in the present crisis for the salvation of the country,
either by enforcing existing laws or enacting new ones.!®
A year later, in November 1820, 39 members turned up to vote
another Loyal Address on the same lines. The resolution stated that
‘‘at this season of public ferment and agitation . .. we deeply deplore
the continuance and progress of that alarming System of operations,
by which a wicked and desperate Faction, Enemies of all Govern-
ment, are labouring to destroy the Constitution and to plunge the
Country into the Abyss of Anarchy and Confusion . . . No Estab-
lishments, however venerable or holy, have escaped their malignant
attacks. The Courts of Justice, the Parliament, the Throne, and the
Altar have been alike the object of their licentious abuse. Religion
has been vilified in the Person of its Ministers, the venerable Judges
calumniated and menaced, the Constitution and Authority of the
Houses of Parliament impeached, and the sacred Majesty of the
Throne reviled, insulted and defiled.”
It went on to say that “To corrupt the Morals of the People, as
the surest road to the accomplishment of their ultimate object, has
been of late a main and prominent feature of their daring Con-
spiracy. For this purpose any public Measure involving the honor of
the Country has been traduced and misrepresented; all respect for
virtue and purity of character has been treated with contempt, until
at length we have seen Immorality not defended merely, but boldly
held up to public Admiration and Applause. Nor is it to be wondered
at, that they who commenced by scoffing at Religion should conclude
the open Advocates of Profligacy and Vice.”’
In such circumstances, the duty of the Society was clear — “when
16 Book of Petitions, p. 154, Oct. 1819.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 409
Sedition and Infidelity are thus actively at work, to look on in silent
indifference were criminal. We are led by every sense of Duty to
our King, our Country and our God, to declare our determination
to rally round the Throne in defence of the Monarchy against the
rude attacks of domestic Enemies and in support of our Laws, our
Liberties and our Lives.”
These were the strong words of High Toryism. They were
apparently too strong for two of the 39 Merchant Venturers present
on this occasion. William Peter Lunell moved, and Richard Bright
seconded, an amendment which would have deleted much of the
Address and substituted a more moderate expression of concern at
the agitation then prevailing, while assuring the King of the Society’s
firm attachment to his person and government. The amendment
was defeated and the original motion was carried.1”
A different kind of crisis arose in 1825 when several gentlemen
attended the Hall and suggested that “at this moment of extra-
ordinary pressure on the Banks occasioned by the unfortunate
alarm which has been so mischievously excited in the public mind”’,
it would be very desirable for the Society to issue a Declaration of
Confidence in the Commercial and Banking Establishments of the
City. A declaration was drawn up and a deputation sent to the
Mayor, John Haythorne. He refused to sign, but the Master,
Abraham Hilhouse, agreed to put his name at the top, and the
declaration was printed and circulated as a handbill.1§
When George III died in 1830, only 10 members attended to vote
the address of condolence and of congratulation to the new King,
William IV. The Mayor and the two sheriffs were presenting an
address on behalf of the City, and as both the sheriffs were Merchant
Venturers, it was decided that the civic deputation should be asked
to present the Society’s address as well.1®
After the traumatic experience of the Bristol Riots in 1831, there
was considerable criticism of the Corporation and fierce controversy
about liability for compensation as well as about the question of
establishing an effective police force.2® On 19 March 1832, 9
members were present at the Hall which considered two bills which
the Corporation proposed to introduce into Parliament for paying
compensation and for establishing a police force. The Hall gave its
approval in principle. The Master then left the chair and the Hall
resolved unanimously to give great praise to the Committee of
17 For the Address in full, see H.B.15, p. 124, 28 Nov. 1820. For the amendment,
see ibid., p. 128, 28 Nov. 1820.
18 H.B.16, p. 108, 20 Dec. 1825. The cost of printing was £14 gs. od. (ibid., p.
112, 4 Jan. 1826). |
19 H.B.16, pp. 401, 403, 22 July 1830; Book of Petitions, pp. 181, 182.
20 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 178 ff.
410 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Gentlemen who were trying to prepare for a friendly understanding
between the citizens and the Corporation.*! The chairman of the
Committee was Daniel Cave, a Merchant Venturer. It seems that
the Society was basically supporting the Corporation but at the
same time trying to do something to lower the temperature in a
situation which had become highly inflammable owing to the die-
hard attitude of the Corporation.??
More royal occasions followed. In 1832, 10 members were present
to vote a Loyal Address to William IV after “‘the late atrocious
attack on his Majesty’s person at Ascot’’.*8 Five years later, only 11
turned up to vote an address of condolence to Queen Adelaide and
of congratulation to Queen Victoria on her accession.?4 Victoria’s
coronation in 1838 occasioned an insult by the City to the Society.
Preparations were made to illuminate the Hall and Colston’s
Hospital,?5 but there was delay in receiving an invitation to walk
in the Coronation Procession. On 23 June, the Master stated that
he had not had any communication from the Mayor addressed to
him personally, and it was decided that the Society could not join
in. The dignity of the Hall had been offended because the Mayor
had sent only a printed letter addressed to the Clerk.*® On 27 June,
however, there was a Special General Meeting attended by only 4
members to consider the invitation, which had now been received.
The Clerk explained that although the letter was dated 21 June, it
had not arrived until 25 June just before the Master left Bristol. ‘The
Master regretted that he could not now join in. The Hall directed
the Clerk to call a special meeting for 28 June and those who turned
up joined the Procession.?’
The marriage of Victoria and Albert in 1840 called for two more
Loyal Addresses, and the Master and Wardens went to London to
present them.?8 The Address to the Queen stated that the marriage
‘Sholds the fairest prospect of domestic comfort and felicity” and “‘has
given to the Country another most exalted, and we rejoice to think,
most powerful Defender of those Protestant Principles which placed
the Sceptre of the Realm in the hands of your Majesty’s most illus-
trious Ancestors; and on the maintenance of which depends the
21 H.B.17, p. 88, 19 March 1832.
22 H.B.17, p. 96, 9 April 1832; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 180; Susan
Thomas, The Bristol Riots, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1974;
G. W. A. Bush, ““The Old and the New: The Corporation of Bristol 1820-1851,
unpublished Bristol Ph.D. thesis, 1965.
23 17.B.17, p. 107, 26 June 1832; Book of Petitions, p. 185.
24 H.B.18, pp. 75, 77, 78, 6 July 1837.
25 H.B.18, p. 197, 16 June 1838; p. 208, 23 June 1838. The Committee was in-
structed not to spend more than £25.
26 H.B.18, p. 209, 23 June 1838.
27 H.B.18, p. 211, 27 June 1838; p. 212, 28 Tune 1838 (number not given).
28 H7.B.18, pp. 419 ff., 15 Feb. 1840.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century Ail
security of the Throne itself, as well as of all our most valued Institu-
tions in Church and State’’. The deputation attended the Queen’s
levée and next day presented an Address to Albert who acknow-
ledged the mark of attention and regard from “so important and
respectable a Body as the Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol”’.?°
Within a few months of this happy occasion, the 14 members who
were present on the Hall on 18 June 1840 were moved to address the
Queen and Prince Consort on the recent alarming attempt on their
lives and to express “‘their horror and indignation at the atrocious
attempt’, adding for full measure “It was felt to be a national
disgrace that any Individual should have been found, in Your
Majesty’s Dominions, capable of forming even the conception of so
atrocious an Act.’’3° |
The birth of a Princess at the end of 1840 produced Loyal
Addresses to Victoria, to Albert and to the Duchess of Kent,®! and
within less than a year there were similar addresses when the queen
gave birth to a son. It was, perhaps, a little unfortunate to refer in
the Address to “the future and we trust distant day’ when the
sceptre would pass to “‘a Prince trained up under your Majesty’s
‘ fostering care in religious attachment to the Principle of our Consti-
tution in Church and State’’.%?
Another princess was born in 1842, and as the Master was too ill
to go to London, an Address was sent through the Duke of Beaufort. **
A little later, there was another attempt on the Queen’s life, and the
7 members present at the Hall on 10 June 1842 produced an expres-
sion of horror which was possibly intended to compensate in strength
for the small attendance. The Queen was assured that ‘“‘It was with
mingled Feelings of shame, grief and indignation that we received
the appalling Intelligence. With difficulty could we believe it possible
that in a Country so noted for its loyalty, and for the generous and
manly spirit of its’ [szc] people, a second instance should have
occurred of so atrocious and dastardly an attempt.’’34
In 1843, Prince Albert came to Bristol for the launching of the
Great Britain, and the Hall decided to present him with the freedom
in a box.?5
The Crimean War led to a petition by the Society to both Houses
to proceed vigorously in the war and to compel Prussia to close the
29 77.B.18, pp. 419, 421, 15 Feb. 1840; pp. 422-3, 13 March 1840; Book of
Petitions, pp. 195, 196.
80 77.B.18, p. 453, 18 June 1840; Book of Petitions, pp. 197-8.
$1 .B.19, p. 63, 2 Dec. 1840 (16 present); Book of Petitions, pp. 199-200.
82 77.B.19, p. 184, 23 Nov. 1841 (30 present); Book of Petitions, pp. 200-3.
°3 H.B.19, p. 239, 4 May 1842.
84 77.B.19, pp. 250-2, 10 June 1842. There were similar addresses to Albert and
to the Duchess of Kent (ibid., pp. .252-3); Book of Petitions, pp. 211-13.
35 77.B.19, pr 361, 1 July 1843 (13 present).
412 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
overland trade with Russia.26 The death of the Commander in
Chief, Lord Raglan, was a matter of some concern, since his body
was brought back by sea to Bristol en route for Badminton. The
Mayor suggested that it might be acceptable to the Beauforts if there
were some public recognition, and the Master wrote to the duke
offering to place the Hall at his disposal if the body was to stay a
day or more in Bristol. However, the duke replied that it was the
intention to proceed straight to Badminton. Claxton made the
necessary arrangements for members to accompany the body as far
as Fishponds, and a black-edged notice informed them that carriages
would be provided and that “It is expected that each Gentleman
will appear in Mourning, with White Ties, and Crape or Cloth
Hat Bands.’’3”
In 1861, Queen Victoria’s mother, the Duchess of Kent, died, and
the Society sent its condolences to the Queen in terms which Victoria
might well have thought overstated the position, for the Address
spoke of ‘‘one to whose Maternal fostering love and wisdom in the
care and culture of your Majesty’s early years this Nation is, under
God, indebted for the Blessings of your Majesty’s illustrious, benefi-
cent and Happy Reign’’.®®
Early in 1862, the Society sent to the Queen an Address of
Condolence on the death of Prince Albert.*® Next year, the Hall was
illuminated for the marriage of the Prince of Wales, and £20 was
given to a fund for a public celebration.*°
Other Addresses of congratulation or sympathy included those
sent to the Queen and the Prince of Wales when his wife gave birth
to a son in 1864; to the Queen and the Prince of Wales when the
latter recovered from an alarming illness in 1872; to the Queen and
the Duke of Edinburgh when he married the Grand Duchess Marie
Alexandrovina in 1874; to the Queen and the Prince of Wales when
he returned safely from India in 1876; to the Queen on the death of
Princess Alice, Grand Duchess of Hesse Darmstadt in 1878, and to
the Queen on the death of the Duke of Clarence in 1892.*!
Victoria’s Golden Jubilee in 1887 called for yet another Loyal
Address, ‘2 and next year £10 was given towards the cost of decorat-
86 H.B.21, p. 469, 12 April 1855; p. 477, 20 April 1855. It may be significant of
the changing role of the Society in public affairs that the last entry in the Book of
Charters and Petitions is just after the middle of the century.
87 H.B.21, p. 497, 12 July 1855; p. 500, 13 July 1855; p. 504, 16 July 1855; p.
512, 16 and 17 July 1855.
38 H7.B.23, p. 121, 3 April 1861. 39 H.B.23, pp. 180, 181, 11 Jan. 1862.
40 H7.B.23, p. 263, 20 Feb. 1863.
41 H7.B.23, p. 335, 14 Jan, 1864; H.B.25, p. 121, 25 Jan. 1872; pp. 304, 307, 23
and 30 Jan. 1874; H.B.26, pp. 57, 61-2, 26 May 1876; pp. 227, 229, 21 Dec. 1875;
H.B.27, p. 419, 29 Jan. 1892.
42 H.B.27, p. 204, 27 May 1887.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 413
ing the city when Prince Albert Victor came to unveil the statue of
the Queen on College Green.4* In 1896, Mary, Duchess of Teck,
visited Bristol and the Master entertained her to luncheon in the
Hall.*4
In 1899 when Victoria was coming to Bristol to open a convales-
cent home, the Society voted 100 guineas towards the celebrations
and was anxious to present an Address. The Lord Mayor regretted
that there would not be time as the visit was very short, but agreed
to arrange for the Master to meet the Queen at the station and ride
in one of the carriages. In due course, the Master reported that he
had been presented to the Queen and had travelled in a carriage
with the Earl of Cork and Orrery (Lord Lieutenant of Somerset)
and the Earl of Cawdor (Chairman of the Great Western Railway
Company),*5
THE SOCIETY'S WATERWORKS
In the first half of the nineteenth century, Bristol had one of the
worst water supplies in the country, and evidence given by Sir Henry
de la Beche, Dr. L. Playfair and others at the Royal Commission of
Enquiry into the Means of Improving the Health of the Population
of Large Towns in 1843 underlined this fact and related it to the low
expectation of life. It was estimated that some 5,000 persons, mostly
in the wealthy districts, had piped water, and that some 73,000
depended on public or private wells. In some parts of the city, water
was supplied by water carriers at a cost of at least 1d. a day from
wells. Dr. Budd remarked that “the filthy habits of the poorer
classes in Bristol are mainly attributable to the deficient supply of
water’’.46
The interest of the Society in water supply must not, however, be
seen as stemming primarily from a desire to meet the appalling
social problems arising from inadequate and contaminated supplies
in the City as a whole, but as an attempt to improve the amenities
and to make a profit from supplying water to the high-class districts
with which it was particularly concerned.
With the growth of Clifton in the first half of the nineteenth
century, there were obviously great possibilities for those who owned
43 H.B.27, p. 252, 20 July 1888.
44 77.B.28, p. 174, 24 July 1896; pp. 195, 196, 27 Nov. 1896.
45 H7,.B.28, p. 326, 29 Sept. 1899; p. 327, 20 Oct. 1899.
46 Among the Society’s records, in a box marked Waterworks, is a copy of a
pamphlet dated 14 Nov. 1845 entitled “‘A Report setting forth a plan proposed for
carrying out the chief recommendation of Her Majesty’s Commission of Enquiry
into the Means of Improving the Health of the Population of Large Towns.” For
the general question of public health, see David: Large and Frances Round, Public
Health in mid-Victorian Bristol, Bristol Branch of the Historical Association, 1974.
414 The. Merchant Venturers of Bristol
a supply of water, but the Society, which had been quick to realise
the value of its quarries in connection with building, 4? was curiously
slow to see the importance of its springs, possibly because their
exploitation would involve considerable expenditure at a time when
the Society had little liquid capital. The main sources of supply in
the Clifton area were the Sion Springs, owned by the Coates family,
which supplied about 400 houses in 1840; the Richmond and
Buckingham Springs, which supplied houses near Richmond
Terrace; and Jacob’s Wells, which supplied a few families by pipes
owned by the Dean and Chapter of Bristol.48 |
The Coates family was very active in developing the water supply
of Clifton and claimed that the origin and rapid development of the
district was very largely due to the character of the Sion Spring
which had never fluctuated over 60 years since it was first discovered
and which had supplied houses with piped water from 1811, before
almost any other town.*® The Society assisted the Coates family in
various ways. In 1814, for example, it gave permission to lay pipes
under the waste to take water to Harley Place, and in 1826 it had no
objection to Mrs. Coates laying more pipes under the waste and
making a reservoir on the Society’s land at Clifton Hill for a rent of
Ios. per annum.®°® Mrs. Coates did not make the reservoir, and in
1836 her son, Joseph Coates, applied for permission. He stated that
many improvements had been made in recent years to the Sion
Spring supply and that a mile of new pipes with fire plugs had
recently been laid. However, the population of the northern part of
Clifton had greatly increased, and if the pumps were out of action,
there would be a serious fire risk. He was willing to make a tank and
arch it over with turf so that its very existence would not be known.
The cost would be about £1,200, and he wanted a lease of the land
at a nominal rent. He attended the Hall and was told the matter
would be considered. 5
By this time, however, the Society itself was becoming interested
in water supply. In March 1836, the Zoological Gardens had applied
to the Hall for lease of a spring in the Old Hotwell House to supply a
reservoir in the Gardens. When the Clerk investigated, he found that
there was in addition to this spring another one on the Society’s
47 See pp. 351-2.
48 Latimer, Mineteenth Century Annals, pp. 280-1. When the new Waterworks
Company was formed in 1846, it bought out the Sion Hill Spring for £13,500;
the Buckingham Spring for £2,196; the Richmond Spring for £4,950, and the
Whiteladies Spring for £400. |
4° Society’s Archives: Waterworks Box, letter from Joseph Coates to Jeremiah
Osborne, 7 June 1836. |
50 H.B.14, p. 311, 28 Oct. 1814; H.B.76, p. 129, 3 May 1826; p. 139, 5 July 1826.
51 Waterworks Box, Joseph Coates to Jeremiah Osborne, 7 June 1836; H.B.17,
pp. 400-1, 8 June 1836. |
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 415
land with the much greater capacity of about 300 gallons an hour.
The Hall set up a sub-committee “‘to consider the practicability and
expediency of establishing works for the supply not only of the
Zoological Gardens but the Parish of Clifton in General’’.5? About
the same time, the Society learnt that Mr. Coates might be willing
to sell Sion Spring and it negotiated with him with a view to
_ developing a supply of water for the whole of Clifton. However,
Coates wanted too much for his property, and nothing came of the
negotiations.°8 When in 1840 Coates asked to be allowed to build a
tank on Windmill Hill, as had been agreed earlier with his mother,
the committee thought it was not now advisable to let him do so.54
The Society’s tentative investigation had been concerned only
with Clifton, but in 1840 there was a proposal put forward by others
which concerned the whole of Bristol. A leaflet put out by the pro-
posed company - the Bristol and Clifton Waterworks — pointed out
that Bristol was sadly behind other towns, although it had a plentiful
supply of water in the neighbourhood. Subscriptions were invited
by the provisional secretary, Samuel Capper.®*® A meeting, presided
over by the Mayor, J. N. Franklyn, was held in March 1840, and it
was proposed to form a company with a capital of £60,000 in £50
shares. The scheme failed for lack of support.*¢
A year later, on 7 April 1841, the Society once again turned its
attention to a Waterworks for Clifton and asked a sub-committee to
investigate.5” It reported at length to the Standing Committee on
11 June. It had obtained the papers relating to Capper’s scheme in
1840, and it had instructed John Armstrong to examine the springs
in Leigh Woods, the New and the Old Hotwell, and another spring
below that, and it was looking into the cost of taking enough water
up to a reservoir on Windmill Hill to supply double the needs of
Clifton.°* The Waterworks Committee reported again in August.
The two springs at Black Rock would produce 94,600 gallons a day.
Mr. Armstrong had: suggested one reservoir at the springs and
another on Clifton Downs. The cost would be £10,445, with
£4,505 added for contingencies, bringing the total to £15,000. The
52 Hf.B.17, p. 377; 9 March 1836.
53 17.B.17, p. 394, 11 May 1836; pp. 400, 401, 8 June 1836.
54 7.B.18, p. 440, 8 May 1840.
55 The provisional secretary, who signed the appeal, was Samuel Capper. A
number of papers relating to the scheme are in the Society’s archives because,
when. the Society had its own scheme in 1841, it obtained the papers from Mr.
Gregory, the solicitor who had been concerned with it. There is a schedule of the
papers sent by Gregory and a number of letters of Samuel Capper between 1839
and 1841.
So F zy Capper’s report to a meeting held at the White Lion, 25 March 1840, see
Waterworks Box; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 280.
57 H.B.19, p. 97, 7 April 1841.
58 17.B.19, p. 116, 11 June 1841.
416 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
estimated net return, after deducting £600 a year for management,
would provide “an ample and remunerative profit for the Outlay”’.
The reservoir in the most elevated spot in Clifton would be of great
public benefit in case of fire. The report suggested that a bill should
be introduced in the present session, and with an eye to the future,
that it should cover the city and county of Bristol and Westbury-on-
Trym. The capital of £15,000 was to be raised on bonds. The Stand-
ing Committee approved the report.®?
In September 1841 the Standing Committee recommended that
Brunel should be employed as engineer and in November set up a
special Waterworks Committee under the Master. What eventually
emerged was a bill for the better supplying with water of the City
and County of Bristol.®° In support of its bill, the Society argued that
the principal part of Clifton was now united by buildings with
Bristol and had a population of 18,000. Most of the water came from
the Sion Spring and the Richmond Spring and was raised by steam
engine and distributed for a charge of 5 per cent to 6 per cent on the
rental. Distribution and supply were in the hands of private indivi-
duals and were very inefficient. The proposed scheme would supply
a long-felt want. ®
Not surprisingly, the bill met with opposition from the proprietors
of other springs and from some whose property would be affected,
including John Combe of the Richmond Spring, the Coates of the
Sion Spring and Sir John Smythe of Ashton Court.*? An attempt
was made to reach agreement with Mr. Coates, but his terms were
regarded as unreasonable. The Society was advised by its parlia-
mentary agent in London that if it omitted from the bill the clauses
empowering it to take the Waterworks belonging to Coates and
others by compulsion, the objectors would have no case for being
heard by Parliament.®* In the end the Hall decided that it could
achieve its objectives in Clifton (with which it was really concerned)
without a bill, and it waited for Brunel’s report on the sources of
supply and the cost of a waterworks. ®4
In June 1842, the Society received a deputation from the church-
wardens and some of the inhabitants of Clifton pointing out the need
for a water supply in case of fire, for watering the streets and for
59 H.B.19, pp. 131 ff., 13 Aug. 1841.
60 H.B.19, pp. 153-4, 20 Sept. 1841.
61 Waterworks Box: Draft on behalf of the Merchant Venturers and others
against the bill brought in by the Bristol Waterworks Company in 1846, pp. 5, 6.
The brief is concerned with 1846 but by way of introduction refers to the earlier
scheme.
$2 Waterworks Box: Petitions against the bill from John Combe, Joseph Baker,
Sir John Smythe, Richard Ash and Joseph Coates, 24 Feb. 1842.
$3 Jbid., letter from Dyson and Parker, 25 Parliament Street, 24 Jan. 1842.
64 77.B.19, p. 228, 18 March 1842.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 417
supplying the houses. The deputation was informed of the Society’s
plans and of its intention to proceed without an Act of Parliament,
and the Hall was assured that it would receive every assistance. *
In September 1842, the Clerk was busy making enquiries from a
parliamentary agent about whether in any Act which the Society
might seek to obtain it could insert a clause giving power to Clifton
or any other parish to levy a rate for watering the streets. Obviously,
if the parish had such powers, the Society would be able to make a
contract with it to supply the water. However, the reply was dis-
couraging. Such powers were usually given to Commissioners for
Improvements, and there was no precedent for giving distinct powers
for different objects to two sets of persons in the same bill.
At the end of September 1842, Brunel submitted his lengthy
report. The estimated cost of engines, reservoir and work for
supplying Clifton and parts of Hotwells and College. Green from
springs at the Black Rock, with a reservoir on Clifton Down, was
£12,000. The annual running cost on the base of supplying 2,500
houses would be £1,364. To supply the new district being built
north of Clifton would cost an additional sum of between £5,000
and £8,000. The report was considered at a General Hall on 5
October 1842. Only 14 members were present. It was proposed that
the Waterworks Committee should be asked to consider whether the
Society had sufficient property available for sale to cover the cost,
but an amendment that it was not expedient at present to enter into
so large an outlay was put to the meeting and was carried.°®?
The matter did not rest there, presumably because some members
were enthusiastic about the scheme. In December 1842, the Water-
works Committee reported to the Standing Committee that the
Society had no property to sell at present except Honeypen Hill
Quarry, and that if the scheme were adopted, the money would have
to be raised on bonds. ®* In January 1843, the Standing Committee
was asked to prepare a Report, and on 2 June it received a lengthy
Report from its Waterworks Committee. This surveyed the whole
business since January 1841. It stated that in 1842 the proprietors of
Richmond Hill and Sion Hill Springs had threatened opposition and
that although it had originally been intended to get an Act of
Parliament, “especially with reference to their ultimate object — the
supply of Bristol’’, it had been decided to proceed merely with the
plans for Clifton. It was impossible to be sure of the revenue, but
85 .B.19, p. 248, 10 June 1842. The deputation consisted of John Fowler and
Robert Gay Barrow (the churchwardens), Mr. Allen, Mr. Charles Vaughan, Mr.
Samuel Worrall, Mr. Hauteville and Mr. Middleton. The churchwardens were
both Merchant Venturers.
66 Waterworks Box: Hall and Parker to Osborne and Ward, 19 Sept. 1842.
8” H.B.19, pp. 285, 288 ff., 5 Oct. 1842.
88 77.B.19, p. 314, 9 Dec. 1842.
418 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
enquiries at London, Leeds, Birmingham, Shrewsbury, Bath, Glou-
cester, Exeter and Reading showing that when waterworks were
established, there was almost universal use of them. Wells were
irregular in supply and expensive to maintain. In most towns, an
extra charge was made and gladly paid for water closets. The present
supply in Clifton depended on the Sion and Richmond Springs and
Jacob’s Wells and on private wells, which were unsatisfactory. Many
people used their neighbours’ wells, and the supply was often
deficient. The wells on the river bank were affected by the tides, and
St. Augustine’s often had to get its water by cart. The best-supplied
parts of Clifton depended on the Sion and Richmond Springs, but
the charge was from 5 per cent to 7 per cent on the rental. It was
impossible to get water higher than the ground floor or to supply
water closets. A reservoir would overcome this difficulty. It was
impossible to find out the profits of Water Companies elsewhere,
because they did not publish accounts and refused to give informa-
tion “for fear of the disclosure leading to competition or claims for
a reduction of charges”. Nevertheless some evidence was produced
to show that the profits in Bristol were considerable. |
The Waterworks Committee was clearly enthusiastic for its
scheme, but the Standing Committee resolved that the present state
of the Society’s funds made it inexpedient to proceed further, and
this decision was confirmed at a General Hall, at which 24 members
were present, on 2 June 1843.°°
The proposal remained in abeyance for nearly a year. Then, on
29 May 1844, the Standing Committee received another Memorial
from the inhabitants of Clifton asking it to take action, and a sub-
committee consisting of the Master, the Wardens, Mr. Bush, Mr.
Pinney, Mr. Hellicar and the Treasurer was set up to consider the
desirability of establishing a Waterworks for Clifton.’°
In September 1844, the new Waterworks Committee produced a
long and enthusiastic Report. It agreed that the existing supply was
inadequate and that there was a strong desire for something more
extensive. The district to be supplied in the first place was a great
part of Clifton containing ‘“‘All the best Houses and much valuable
land now being laid out for building, including many fields belonging
to the Society”. Under Brunel’s direction, Mr. Hammond had
prepared plans for supplying 630 houses, but with an engine capable
of providing three times as much as their needs, at a cost of £7,225,
and an annual expenditure of £882. Running costs would be £1,202
89 See H.B.19, pp. 349 ff., 2 June 1843, for the Report of the Waterworks Com-
mittee and the decision of the Standing Committee; p. 357, for its confirmation by
the Hall.
70 H.B.19, p. 448, 29 May 1844. The Memorial does not seem to have survived,
and we do not know how many inhabitants of Clifton signed it.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 419
a year, including interest charges on the money which would have to
be borrowed. If the water rate were the same as that charged by
existing Waterworks, the income for 650 houses would be twice that
amount, ‘bringing in a profit of £1,200 a year. The proposed scheme
would provide water for dealing with fires and for watering the
roads and would carry the water to upper stories and to.water closets.
Many substantial householders were willing to transfer from the
existing supplies, and profits were likely to be very large. Whether
the Society should operate on its own or in cooperation with others
would depend on the state of its funds. The Treasurer estimated the
present value of the Society’s preperty at £60,000, and £8,000 to
£10,000 could be raised on bonds. Only a small staff would be
required. Since the Society was Lord of the Manor of Clifton, it was
very desirable to carry out a scheme materially affecting property
values and the comfort and convenience of the inhabitants. It could
make sure of customers by inserting suitable clauses when it renewed
leases or disposed of land for building.
Up to this point, the Waterworks Committee had been concerned
with arguing that the scheme would be very profitable, but then,
possibly with an eye to the Society’s public image, it pointed out that
the profits could be applied to many public purposes and that it was
not simply in the position of an individual making money. It was the
only public body in the City with funds for public utility. When it
surrendered the wharfage lease in 19 years’ time, it might be em-
barrassed, and there was no other source from which it could get
an income to meet so serious a loss. It was advisable to act now
owing to the state of the money market and the low price of materials
and labour.”
Further investigations were carried out by Hammond on the
Society’s springs, and favourable reports were received.”* The Hall
approved the Waterworks Committee’s report and Brunel’s plan
on 14 March 1845, and ironfounders were invited to tender for 300
tons of cast iron pipes.?? The Society was thus committed to a water-
works scheme for Clifton.
Unfortunately for the Society, its plan was now threatened by the
formation of a Joint Stock Company which proposed to supply the
whole of Bristol. On 26 April 1845, the Standing Committee received
a letter from Mr. Christopher Shapland and Mr. Hulton asking the
Society to concur with them and their friends to make a Waterworks
for the whole of the city. Mr. Hulton said that a friend of his, ‘“‘a
large capitalist in London”, would put up the capital either with the
71 H.B.20, pp. 24 ff., 13 Sept. 1844.
72 H.B.20, p. 42, 25 ‘Oct. 1844; p. 70, 22 Nov. 1844; p. 80, 13 Dec. 1844.
73 H.B.20, p. 105, 14 March 1845; Waterworks Box, copies of notices in the
Bristol Gazette and Public Advertiser inviting tenders by 3 May.
420 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Society as a partner or in a Joint Stock Company. He pointed out
that the Society’s plan was threatened by another company which
was being formed in opposition to it. The Standing Committee
decided to reject the offer of help from Shapland and Hulton and to
inform the rival company now being formed that it intended “‘to
extend their supply to the City’’.74
The appearance of this rival company stampeded the Society into
going far beyond what it had originally intended. Its main purpose
was to supply the Clifton area, although it had also wanted to keep
open the option to go further if supplies were adequate. It must have
feared that the rival scheme would be more attractive to parliament,
and so it now claimed that it could itself supply the whole of Bristol.
On 29 April 1845, it wrote to Mr. Haberfield, Deputy Chairman of
the rival Waterworks Company, saying that perhaps he had not
realised that the Society intended to do this. He replied on 30 April
saying that the promoters of his scheme were certainly not aware
of such a proposal. They had long been thinking of establishing a
waterworks and: they thought it could best be done by a company
specifically incorporated for that purpose. They intended to apply
for an Act of Parliament.75
The Society pressed on with its plans. In June 1845, the Standing
Committee approved a proposal to raise £3,000 on bonds, and in
July it reported that considerable progress had been made with the
work at Hotwells.’® In January 1846, the Waterworks Committee
reported that it had started the procedure to obtain its own Act of
Parliament. It pointed out that the Commission on the Health of
Large Towns had stated that competition between rival companies
should be avoided as far as possible and that it was desirable that
water supply should be coupled with draining and cleansing. The
~ Joint Stock Company, unlike the Society, was concerned only with
water supply.’”? The committee understood that the principal land-
owners through whose land flowed the streams which the rival com-
pany hoped to use were opposed to the bill and suggested that their
opposition should be organised. As far as the Society’s own scheme
was concerned, most of the pipes had been laid; the reservoir, the
engine house and other work was in hand and should be completed
by early spring. The Standing Committee accepted the report and
74 H.B.20, p. 109, 26 April 1845.
78 Waterworks Box: Draft brief on behalf of the Society and others, 1846, pp. 7, 8.
76 F7.B.20, p. 119, 24 June 1845; p. 134, 18 July 1845.
77 For the Society’s interest in sewers, see for example, H.B.15, p. 94, 7 June
1820; H.B.16, p. 10, 7 Jan. 1825; H.B.17, p. 118, 14 Sept. 1832; p. 140, 16 June
1833; p. 232, 4 June 1834; p. 301, 13 May 1835; p. 308, 26 May 1835; p. 314, 17
June 1835; H.B.18, p. 5, 9 Dec. 1836; H.B.19, p. 16, 14 Aug. 1840; p. 257, 8 July
1842.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 421
ordered that steps should be taken to promote the Society’s bill and
oppose that of its rival.78
In the draft bill prepared for Parliament, the Society did not in
fact seek powers to supply the whole of Bristol. It limited its area to
the parish of Clifton; St. George’s, Brandon Hill; St. Augustine the
Less; St. Michael’s; the in-parish and the out-parish of St. James;
and such part of the parish of St. Paul as formed part of the street
called Stokes Croft and lay on the west side of the street and of the
turnpike road from Stokes Croft to Gloucester. It also included that
part of the parish of Westbury-on-Trym which was in the City of
Bristol. It undertook to supply all houses within 12 yards of any
pipe, and it laid down a scale of charges based on rateable value.
Tacked on to the bill was a section relating to sewers which stated
that there were few sewers in Clifton and Westbury. The inhabitants.
of these parishes were to elect Commissioners of Sewers within three
months who were to treat with the Society and others to make
sewers and who were to have power to levy a rate.’®
Since the Society had thus abandoned the claim that it intended
to supply the whole of Bristol, it had to give some explanation. It
- maintained that when the Joint Stock Company had obtained the
necessary subscription, the Hall had abandoned its original intention
and confined its undertakings to such part of the city as was imme-
diately and naturally the concern of the Society. ®° Since it is improb-
able that the Society had ever seriously intended to supply the
whole of Bristol, this was a little ingenuous. What the Hall was now
hoping to obtain was the right to supply the wealthier parts of the
area.
On 1 April 1846, the Waterworks Committee reported that it had
brought in the bill and was taking joint action with those who
opposed the Bristol Waterworks Company. A petition against the
Society’s bill had been presented by Mr. Coates and others, and this,
it claimed, had been “‘got up” by the Bristol Waterworks Company.
The rival bill had passed its first stages and had been committed
before the Society’s bill had passed Standing Orders, but the Water-
works Committee, with the help of friends in parliament, had
arranged that the Parliamentary Committee would not report until
78 H.B.20, p. 189, 9 Jan. 1846.
79 Waterworks Box: ‘‘A Bill for better supplying with Water and improving the
Sewerage of certain parts of the City and County of Bristol’’, ordered to be brought
in by William Miles and P. W. S. Miles. |
80 Waterworks Box: Draft brief on behalf of the Society and others, 1846; see also |
Sub-committee Book 1842-1846 for folder containing documents relating to the water-
works, This contains a draft letter of 24 March 1846 from Robert Osborne to
Charles Bragge, secretary to the Bristol Waterworks Company, regretting that the
Bristol Waterworks Company considered the proposal to divide the City inad-
missible.
422 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
it had examined both bills. The Parliamentary Committee had tried
to get both parties to agree to a division of the area, but the Bristol
Waterworks Cornpany would not accept this. Instead, it had offered
to repay the Society the money it had spent and it invited it to come
in as a partner. This offer had been refused. The Society’s bill had
received its first and second readings and would come before the
Parliamentary Committee on 23 April. The Waterworks Committee,
optimistic as ever, had little doubt that the Society would get at
least Clifton and part of the neighbouring parishes.
In the discussion of this Report, the Master remarked that counsel
for the Bristol Waterworks Company had intimated that if the City
were to be divided, his Company would probably withdraw. The
Society must therefore consider whether it would undertake the
whole task if asked to do so. The Standing Committee euphoristically
recommended that the Society should agree to do this.*! This
recommendation was not confirmed at the General Hall held on the
same day at which 17 members were present, and the matter was
referred to a Special Hall on 8 April 1846. At the Special Hall, again
attended by only 17 members, the Society stated that it was willing
to undertake the work of supplying the whole of Bristol with water.®?
In view of the immense cost and risk and the limited resources of the
Society, this could easily have meant financial suicide.
At a meeting of the Standing Committee on 1 May 1846, the
Treasurer read out two notices requiring the Society to produce to
the House of Commons all its Charters, proof that it held the manor
of Clifton, and a rental showing that it had a surplus income of
£,2,500 a year, as it had claimed. This was required by the represen-
tatives of Joseph Coates and others who denied that the Society held
the manor or any springs in Clifton. The whole of the Standing
Committee was asked to go to London to assist in the battle.*?
Among the witnesses who gave evidence before the Parliamentary
Committee was the Treasurer, William Claxton, who outlined the
history and achievements of the Society and stated that its income
was about £5,000 a year, less charges, of about £1,000 a year. He
gave his version of the history of the waterworks proposals and
claimed that “the interest of the Society in their property in Clifton
. .. 1S SO great as to make it of far more importance to them to con-
sider that improvement than to regard the amount of profit which
they may be enabled to derive’. The Society could carry out the
81 H,B.20, pp. 207, 208, 211, 1 April 1846.
82 7f.B.20, p. 209, 1 April 1846; p. 214, 8 April 1846.
83 77.B.20, pp. 222 ff., 1 May 1846; Claxton’s Journal I, p. 116, 4 May 1846,
where Claxton comments on the opposition to the Society from the whole of
Bristol, including Clifton. According to Claxton, the Master, Edward Drew, could
not or would not go to London.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 423
work cheaply, and the public would get the benefit of their profits. ®4
There were thus two bills before the Parliamentary Committee,
and extremely bitter feeling was aroused by the determination of the
Society to proceed with its limited scheme. The Bristol Gazette on
2 April 1846 contrasted the two bills. The Bristol Waterworks
Company would provide 4 million gallons a day; the Society’s
springs were insufficient. The Society’s charges would be higher, its
engineer, Brunel, was a man who had never constructed a water-
works in his life, whereas the Bristol Waterworks Company was
employing an experienced engineer. The article went on to say
“Finally, the Society of Merchants is a small, close, irresponsible
Corporation, endued, as its past conduct abundantly testifies, with
the grasping and selfish policy which invariably distinguishes such
bodies: its finances are crippled, its energies, if for some scores of
years it has had any, paralysed — its whole constitution and govern-
ment inimicable to the present state of Society.”” The paper claimed
that Bristolians were witnessing ‘the not very creditable spectacle
of a circumscribed knot of merchants, backed by one of our own
members in Parliament, seeking, for their own aggrandizement and
revenue, to break up one of the most valuable and important
measures ever brought forward in Bristol... . The atrocious Wharf-
age Lease . . . will ere long revert to the city, and they want some-
thing to supply the defalcation. . . .”
The leading article in the Bristol Mercury for 4. April was headed
“The Merchant Venturers v. The Inhabitants of Bristol and
Clifton’. It stated that a public meeting of the inhabitants of
Bristol and Clifton would shortly be held “‘for the purpose of entering
an indignant protest against the proceedings of the Merchant
Venturers (the Merchant Vandals, rather, as we once before, and
may again call them .. .””). Not only were they delaying the Bristol
Waterworks Company but they were desecrating Clifton Downs
by their reservoir. It went on “In addition to their other misdemean-
ours, one of the loveliest spots in England is actually being pulled to
pieces by these lawless vandals, in prosecution of their small scheme
for putting a little money into their own pockets by constituting
themselves Water-merchants to the wealthy part of the community.”
Clifton Down was covered with stones and rubbish; Durdham Down
had been encroached upon, trees were being torn down and roads
blasted on the banks of the river “in the narrowest spirit of mere
money-making”’. It was time to institute some kind of enquiry into
the powers possessed by this anomalous Corporation.
On 8 April 1846, the Bristol Gazette’s leading article referred to
84 Waterworks Box: Proofs of Evidence of Witnesses, 1846. These include other
witnesses besides Claxton.
424 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the efforts of the Bristol Waterworks Company to provide the whole
of the city with good water from the Mendips at fair rates. The
scheme had general support and a firm prospect of success, but now
the selfish obstinacy of about a score of individuals had put the whole
plan in peril. The Society of Merchants was doing its utmost to
prevent the citizens of Bristol receiving an adequate supply, their
chief necessary of life. The Society had neither the power nor even
the inclination to do this good to Bristol, and “for the mere sordid
object of increasing their own revenue they are doing all they can
to frustrate others’. The prospect of Bristol being supplied at all
was put in jeopardy by “‘the dog-in-manger conduct of a little body
of men, respectable no doubt as individuals, but in their public
capacity remarkable only for intense devotion to their own interests
and selfish disregard of all other considerations’.
A letter signed “Investigator” which appeared in the Bristol
Gazette on 16 April commented “I leave to my fellow-citizens to
reflect whether the Society of Merchant Venturers is of the least use
to the city; and, indeed, when I call to mind the old bad job, the
Wharfage Lease, and their mischievous interference with our city
affairs, I believe that the very best thing to be done would be for
the Town Council to apply for an Act of Parliament to abolish
the Society altogether, and transfer their property to the city with the
management of Pilots, and any other duty now performed by the
Merchants. .. .”’
At a large meeting called by the Mayor, John Kerle Haberfield,
at Coopers’ Hall on 20 April 1846, there was a long discussion on
the two schemes and on another put forward by the Town Improve-
ment Company, and it was decided, with only 7 dissentients, to
petition Parliament in support of the Waterworks Company and
against the Merchant Venturers.®®
The Parliamentary Committee decided in favour of the Bristol
Waterworks Company and against the Society’s bill. On 12 June
1846, the Hall received a Report from its Waterworks Committee
which stated that the bill had been rejected but that the Waterworks
Company had been required to repay the Society’s expenses in
laying pipes and carrying out other work. There was a note of
bitterness in the Report. It was claimed that the Society’s opponents
had sought their objectives “by propagation of every description of
abuse against the Society as a Body, by misrepresentation of their
motives and intentions without even the shadow of truth upon which
to found them and by attacks upon the Title to their Property’’. In
spite of the full explanation given to the Town Council about the
Society’s desire to cooperate in obtaining the cheapest possible supply
85 A folder in Sub-Committee Book 1842-1846 containing a number of press
cuttings and other material relating to the case.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 425
and about the application of the profits for the benefit of the City,
“The Town Council with whom such reason ought to have been
conclusive in favour of the Society threw every obstacle in their way
and, whilst proposing to be neuter and to watch the public Interests
alone, in effect supported the other Measure to the manifest dis-
regard of the Interests of the City generally and to the direct and
positive injury of the Inhabitants affected by the Society’s Bill.”
What was even worse, the bill was “almost universally objected to
by the Inhabitants of Clifton the very parties at whose instigation
and for whose convenience and advantage it was undertaken”.
Forgetting, apparently that the matter had been decided in parlia-
ment, the Waterworks Committee thought it would not be expedient
“to persevere in the attempt to benefit those who under any circum-
stances could be so induced to make so ungrateful a return”.
The Waterworks Committee then gave an account of negotiations
concerning compensation with the new Bristol Waterworks Com-
pany. Brunel valued the Society’s works at £15,000, but the Water-
works Company offered £14,000 and refused to buy the Society’s
springs and the ground on which the engine house stood. After much
negotiation, the figure of £18,000 had been agreed, but the Society
retained the Engine House and reservoir on Clifton Down. Mr.
Henry Berkeley, one of the City’s M.P.s, wanted the Society to fill
in the reservoir, but the Waterworks Committee had agreed only to
ensure that it should not be an annoyance or a desight. The Com-
mittee remarked that Mr. Berkeley had throughout shawn the most
determined opposition and hostility to the Society but that Mr.
P. W. S. Miles, the other M.P., and his brother had supported it.8¢
The Treasurer, William Claxton, who had been heavily involved
in the scheme, commented acidly “Thus my hopes are blighted of
the Water Works enabling the Society to be more extensively useful,
but the result is yet to be seen. I expect that the Inhabitants of
Clifton will repent in Sackcloth and ashes of the opposition they made
to our Bill and that they will never get supplied by the Joint Stock
Co. nous verrons.” ““The Society’’, he wrote “shave been thwarted
in a great object which they intended for the City’s good. The City
turned against them, and if I do not mistake, the City will find they
have been wrong in upholding a Joint Stock Concern against so
honourable a public Body.’’8?
There was a certain amount of tidying up to do. In 1848, esti-
mates of £700 and £750 were obtained for filling in the reservoir
of Observatory Hill, Clifton, but Claxton himself undertook the
86 H.B.20, pp. 229, 232 ff., 12 June 1846, Report of Waterworks Committee
which was accepted by the Hall. Miles was a Tory who later became a Merchant
Venturer; Berkeley was a Liberal.
8? Claxton’s Journal I, p. 117, 4 May 1846; p. 121, 10 Nov. 1846.
426 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
work for £250.88 The curious engine house was removed in 1864
when the railway to Avonmouth was constructed.®®
This was the second major shock which the Society had experi-
enced in the eighteen-forties.°® At this time, it had succeeded in
arousing tremendous hostility from the inhabitants of Bristol and
even from Clifton. It professed to be concerned only with the public
good, but its motives were in fact mixed, and it is hardly surprising
that the city did not interpret them in the same way as did the
Society. If there had not been a proposal by the Bristol Waterworks
Company to supply the whole of Bristol, there would have been
much to be said in favour of the Society’s original limited scheme.
What is difficult to understand is how the Society in the course of
the battle could be prepared to commit itself to supplying water to
the whole of Bristol. If it had been allowed to do so, the result would
almost certainly have been bankruptcy.
THE SOCIETY AND THE DOWNS
As lord of the manor of Clifton, the Society continued in the nine-
teenth century to keep a watchful eye on its rights over Clifton
Down and that part of Durdham Down which lay in the manor of
Clifton.®! These rights were of value, particularly in relation to
quarrying,®? and it was fortunate that in the first half of the nine-
teenth century, the Society was fully occupied in building develop-
ment elsewhere and that pressure for building on the Downs
themselves was limited. Moreover, the Society wanted to retain an
open space which offered a considerable amenity to the inhabitants
of Clifton. For these reasons, there was little temptation for it to
consider the possibility of enclosure.
From time to time, the Society took action to preserve the
amenities and to prevent infringements of its rights. Thus, in 1811
it dealt with complaints that dung and ashes were being deposited
on Clifton waste; in 1815 it tried to deal with people who allowed
asses to graze there, and in 1822 it proceeded against a man who had
hauled stones illegally from one of the quarries and against those
who beat carpets on the downs. In the same year, the Clerk was told
to put an immediate stop to the depredation being committed on
88 Ibid., p. 133, May 1848.
89 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 281, note. For other references to the
winding up of the scheme, see H.B.20, p. 276, 11 Dec. 1846; pp. 292 ff., 12 Feb.
1847; p. 390, 14 July 1848; p. 428, 8 Dec. 1848.
*0 For the other, see pp. 365-70.
*1 For a valuable pamphlet on the subject, see Elizabeth Ralph, The Downs,
Bristol Corporation, 1961.
92 See pp. 351-2.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 427
the Roman Camp, “it being the unanimous wish of the Committee
to preserve as far as possible that very interesting Antiquity’’.®?
Encouragement and help were given to the inhabitants of Clifton
who sought to improve the amenities. Thus, in 1812 permission was
granted to a number of gentlemen to replace with beeches some dead
fir trees on Clifton Down; in 1816 20 guineas was sent to Mrs. Ames
-and Miss Morgan towards the cost of improvements; and in 1826
sympathetic consideration was given to the request of the Clifton
Committee for the Preservation of the Downs to use the old mill as a
wheelbarrow and tool shed and to provide shelter for the beadle at
night. °4 |
Unseemly activities were discouraged. When in 1826 Mr.
Courtney proposed to make another descent across the river from
St. Vincent’s Rocks, he was told he would not be allowed to erect
his apparatus on the Society’s property, “Such Exhibitions besides
being attended with great danger to this Individual (who upon
the two former occasions it appears was in a state of Intoxication)
having a powerful tendency to demoralize the lower Orders by
promoting habits of Idleness and Intemperance.”®® In 1845, Mr.
Bellamy’s application for permission to erect a gallery on Clifton
Down to exhibit cork models was turned down. *6
On the other hand, there was no objection to a proposal of
William West in 1828 to build an Observatory, as the plans showed
that it would be “‘an Object of Beauty and that it may be useful for
the purpose of signals to shipping’’. He was given a 7 year lease at
5s. a year.®? In 1834, he wanted to make certain additions to house
astronomical implements, and as this was for the public benefit and
in the interest of science, he was given a 21 year lease at 10s. a
year.®® In the course of excavating for his building, West found that
it would be possible to make a lateral shaft into the Giants’ Cave,
and the Society approved the work as geologically very interesting
and a source of gratification to visitors.°® In 1837, the work was
3 H.B.14, p.-150, 6 March 1811; p. 355, 18 July 1815; H.B.15, p. 244, 9 July
1822; p. 290, 3 Dec. 1822. See also Letter Book III, 1816-1826, p. 27, 21 Oct. 1817;
p. 31, 11 Nov. 1817; p. 210, 12 July 1822. There are numerous other references.
94 H.B.14, p. 223, 14 Nov. 1812; p. 224, 30 Dec. 1812; Society’s Letters, bdle. 41,
Mrs. Jeremiah Ames and Miss Morgan to J. Osborne, 16 April 1816; H.B.16, p.
133, 28 June 1826. See also H.B.15, p. 302, 4 March 1823; p.'303, 14 March 1823.
95 H.B.16, pp. 134, 135, 28 June 1826.
96 H.B.20, p. 113, 9 May 1845.
97 H.B.16, p. 273, 2 April 1828. For an account of West’s activities, see Elizabeth
Ralph, The Downs, 1961.
98 H7.B.17, p. 282, 17 Dec. 1834. When Mr. Goldney and Mr. Henry Bush
expressed the fears of the inhabitants of Clifton that the enlarged building might
be used for other purposes, they were told that this was forbidden by covenants in
the lease (H.B.17, p. 300, 13 May 1835).
99 H.B.17, p. 334, 16 Sept. 1835.
428 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
nearly finished at a cost of over £1,300, and West was given a
donation from the Society.1°° In 1854, he was allowed to make
further alterations,!® but when in 1866 he proposed to establish a
bazaar, he was told that this was contrary to his agreement.1°
Throughout the period, there continued to be many threats to the
Downs. In 1838, it was reported that great destruction had been
caused at the last Festival at the Zoological Gardens by disorderly
persons setting fire to the gorse and furze, and as another Festival
was about to be held, handbills were printed offering a reward of
£5 for information leading to successful prosecution.1°% The officers
of the Zoological Gardens had to be warned from time to time
against depositing refuse,!°4 and there were continual problems
about illegal cutting of turf, destruction of trees, straying donkeys
and mischievous boys.195 In 1845, for example, “‘several boys who
had been detected cutting the shrubs on the Down attended by their
parents were brought before the Committee and admonished’’.!°¢
The Society continued to encourage voluntary efforts to preserve
the Downs. In 1840, it gave £20 to assist the work of a number of
gentlemen who had spent a great deal on improvements in the last
fifteen years,107 ‘put two years later there was a misunderstanding
about the cutting down of a tree, and Henry Bush, who had been
Treasurer of the Committee for public improvements in Clifton for
twenty years, told the Hall that he regretted the Society “‘felt a
distrust in the management” and announced that the committee
had resigned. The Society asked it to reconsider, and it agreed to
carry on.198 Next year, the Hall’s sub-committee for the _Improve-
ment of Clifton Down met some of the inhabitants of Clifton who
had raised a subscription to improve the footpaths leading to the
Observatory and made arrangements with them for the footpaths,
for the planting of trees and for the making of a pound for stray
donkeys.}°® Some years later, the Society cooperated with Mr. Gore
100 77.B.18, p. 102, 12 Sept. 1837. 101 77.B.21, p. 416, 13 Oct. 1854.
102 77.B.24, p. 81, 3 May 1866. In 1877, he received £10 to help repair damage
done by a gale (H.B.26, p. 146, 26 Oct. 1877). The lease was reviewed in 1881 at
£6 a year (H.B.26, 21 Jan. 1881) and in 1882 permission was given to erect an
‘‘anemometer” (H.B.26, p. 428, 28 July 1882).
103 77.B.18, p. 193, 13 June 1838.
104 77, B.18, p. 318, 12 April 1839; pp. 325, 326, 10 May 1839; p. 404, 13 Dec.
1839; H.B.19, p. 215, 15 Feb. 1842; p. 339, 16 March 1843.
105 See, for example, H.B.19, p. 213, 11 Feb. 1842; p. 215, 15 Feb. 1842; p. 343,
28 April 1843; p. 369, 14 July 1843; H.B.20, p. 190, 9 Jan. 1846; p. 194, 28 Jan.
1846; H.B.21, p. 149, 20 June 1857.
106 77,B.20, p. 85, 10 Jan. 1845.
107 77,B.18, p. 432, 10 April 1840.
108 77. B.19, p. 223, 11 March 1842; p. 232, 6 April 1842.
109 77.B.19, p. 377, 13 Oct. 1843; Sub-committee Book 1842-1846, p. 9, 28 Nov.
1843.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 429
Langton and others who wanted to put seats on the Downs,!!° and
in 1854 it gave its support to the Association for the Improvement
of Durdham Down which wished to place seats, plant trees and fill
up “inequalities’’ on the Downs.
As developers began to see the possibilities, the threat to the
Downs increased. In 1844, the Society’s Clifton Down Committee
expressed concern about a road being made by Messrs. Cornish and
Danger to facilitate the letting of land on the Downs for building.
It feared that the buildings would be “a great desight to the
Down”’.112 At a meeting of the City Council on 12 February 1850,
Mr. Visger pointed out the continual encroachments which had
been made and expressed the fear that Clifton Down would eventu-
ally be enclosed.!!8 The Council opposed a suggestion that it should
purchase the Downs, but decided to draw the attention of the Board
of Health to the value of these open spaces.!!4 The threat grew
greater in the fifties. The lords of the manor of Henbury did in fact
sell part of Durdham Down to the parish of St. John for building a
school,t® and William Baker, who was developing Sneyd Park,
made a very objectionable roadway across Durdham Down for
hauling stones. He was told to stop. If he did not, the Treasurer
would put in posts or dig a trench.146 The Local Board of Health
waited on the Society in 1855 to try to get it to cooperate with the
City in preventing encroachments, but the Society recorded that the
meeting with the Council resulted only in “‘desultory conversation”
and that no definite plan was made.” Nevertheless, on 18 December
110 77.B.21, p. 10, 26 June 1849.
111 Hf.B.21, p. 434, 22 Nov. 1854. Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 310,
refers to the Clifton Improvement Association formed in 1849 which, he-alleged,
met with little support and some opposition from owners of quarries and clay pits
and which was dissolved in 1855. There were certainly other committees and
groups besides the one he mentions. For other illustrations of the Society’s co-
operation, see 7.B.21, p. 489, 8 June 1855; p. 526, 28 Sept. 1855; H.B.22, p. 29, 8
Feb. 1856.
112 77,B.20, p. 71, 22 Nov. 1844.
418 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 317. Elizabeth Ralph, The Downs, 1961,
quotes a solicitor who said that commonable rights were being extinguished from
non-use and who thought that only about a dozen such rights survived in Henbury
and three or four in Clifton. This would obviously make enclosure much easier.
Part of Durdham Down had been enclosed by Act of Parliament in 1809, so there
was a precedent.
114 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 317.
115 Jbid., pp. 317, 318. |
16 H.B.21, p. 458, 9 March 1855. In 1856, William Baker tried hard to get the
Society to agree to the making of a road from Sneyd Park to Gallow’s Acre Lane,
arguing “my interest in preserving the Downs is the same as the Society’s’’. If
there were no road, the inhabitants of Sneyd Park would make a great many short
cuts across the Downs. The Society, however, “‘wholly and entirely declined’’
(H.B.22, pp. 39, 42-4, 14. March 1856).
117 7f.B.22, p. 12, 14 Dec. 1855.
430 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
1855, the Standing Committee set up a sub-committee to improve
and preserve the Downs for the purposes of public health and
recreation and to confer with the Local Board of Health.4&
As has already been seen, the Society was criticised for desecrating
the Downs at the time of the Waterworks scheme,1!° and suspicion
that its intentions might not be strictly honourable evidently con-
tinued. Early in 1856, the Society found it necessary to make its
position clear in a resolution which it forwarded to the Town
Council which said “it having been reported that the Society of
Merchant Venturers intended to inclose the Clifton Downs, this
Hall most emphatically declares that such an intention to inclose or
dispose of their interests in this property has never directly or in-
directly existed and this Hall will continue to use their best exertions
to maintain the free and uninterrupted use of these beautiful Downs
for the accommodation of the Public and at the same time prevent
the pasture on the Downs being injured and disfigured by trespassers
with Carts and Waggons’’.12°
A little later in the year, the Society’s Downs Encroachment
Committee conferred with the lords of the manor of Henbury and
suggested setting up an iron railing at the cost of £250 to prevent
“the present disgraceful Trespasses by Carts and Waggons whereby
the beauty of the Downs is so much impaired and the pasturage so
greatly injured”. The Clerk, however, thought that this might raise
legal difficulties and that it would be better to bring actions against
offenders.1*1
In June 1856, the City informed the Hall that it had considered
the Society’s resolution concerning enclosure and had set up its
own Committee on Encroachment on the Downs which would
confer with the Society. Next year, the Corporation took steps to
become more closely involved by purchasing for £450 property on
Durdham Down which gave it rights as a commoner and conse-
quently the right to resist any proposal for enclosure.'??
In the following years, the Society continued to play its part in
preserving the Downs. In 1857, for example, it refused to allow
building materials to be dumped near Christchurch when the church
tower was being built and it was prepared to contribute towards the .
cost of putting up iron hurdles to preserve this part of the Downs.1?8
It kept a watchful eye on the activities of the Turnpike Commis-
sioners and the Local Board of Health, both of which had statutory
118 77,B.22, p. 16, 18 Dec. 1855.
119 See p. 423.
120 77. B.22, p. 36, 16 Feb. 1856.
121 77,.B.22, p. 53, 9 May 1856; pp. 61, 66, 67, 31 May 1856.
122 17,B.22, p. 69, 13 June 1856; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 318;
Elizabeth Ralph, The Downs.
123 7 B.22, p. 192, 20 Oct. 1857; pp. 206, 207, 7 Dec. 1857.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 431
powers to quarry on the Downs and take sand and gravel for making
roads,!24 and in 1859 it instructed the Treasurer to fence the edge of
the Down at Observatory Hill and instructed the Clerk to investigate
enclosure on Durdham Down.1*°
Great public concern was aroused in 1859 when Samuel Worrall
enclosed two pieces of common land at the top of Pembroke Road
which had popularly been considered to be part of Clifton Down.
The City’s Committee on Encroachment drew the Society’s atten-
tion to the matter and emphasised how important it was to stop
enclosure. The Society’s Clerk investigated the agreement made in
1788 with Samuel Worrall, its former Clerk, and came to the con-
clusion that it was not legally possible to stop enclosure.'*®
The Society had no desire to enclose its part of the Downs, and
even if it had wished to do so, it would not have wanted to incur the
immense unpopularity likely to result, but the position with regard
to the manor of Henbury, owned by Sir J. Greville Smythe and the
trustees of Mrs. Colston, was much less certain, and on 9 November
1859 the City Council passed a resolution that the City’s Downs
Encroachment Committee should negotiate with the Merchant
Venturers and the lords of the manor of Henbury to obtain an Act
of Parliament securing for the citizens of Bristol free enjoyment of
Clifton and Durdham Down.12? The Society would not sell its
rights, but it agreed to cooperate in any well-regulated scheme for
preservation.128 As a result of the negotiations, the lords of the manor
of Henbury agreed to sell the city their rights over Durdham Down
for £15,000. The area involved was 212 acres.1° The Society
remained the owner of its 230 acres of Clifton and Durdham Down
but undertook to secure to the public free enjoyment of its property
without charge, subject to certain conditions.!%° It thus gave to the
public the use of property for which it could presumably have asked
about £16,000, and it agreed to pay half the cost of the Act of
Parliament, which amounted to £1,296.1%! The initiative in securing
the Act had come from the City, but the Society had cooperated
124 H! B.22, p. 207, 7 Dec. 1857; pp. 213, 215 ff., 8 Jan. 1858.
125 1 B.22, pp. 300-2, 21 Jan. 1859; p. 308, 11 Feb. 1859.
126 77 B.22, p. 310, 11 Feb. 1859. Among the Clerk’s Papers in an envelope
marked ‘Trespass on Durdham Down” are a number of documents referring to
this matter and a cutting from the Daily Press, 9 Feb. 1859, mentioning ‘“‘the serious
and unsightly alterations which have been made in Durdham Down, just beyond
the Turnpike at the end of Pembroke Road”. The cutting states that it is under-
stood that the responsibility is not the Society’s but the individual who claims the
land as his property.
127 H.B.22, p. 420, 13 Jan. 1860.
128 Claxton’s Fournal I, p. 216, 26 Jan. 1860.
129 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 318.
180 77,B.23, pp. 30, 31, 13 July 1860.
131 77. B.23, p. 51, 20 Aug. 1860; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 318.
432 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
very generously in providing this immense benefit for the people of
Bristol.
The Standing Committe of the Society approved the Downs Bill
on 13 December 1860, and the bill received the royal assent on 17
May 1861.18? At the end of the year, there took place the first
meeting of the Downs Committee which was henceforth responsible
for the preservation of the Downs. The Mayor was in the chair, and
the committee consisted of six members appointed by the Town
Council and six members appointed by the Merchant Venturers.133
The fact that the Hall nominated half the members of the Downs
Committee meant that it continued to be very influential in manag-
ing the Downs. Moreover, as it still retained the ownership of half
the area involved, it could exercise authority which was in some
degree independent of the Downs Committee. Thus, it refused in
1861 to give permission to work iron ore on Clifton Down.184 When
there was a proposal in 1862 to make a road across the Downs, the
Society reminded the Downs Committee that it still retained owner-
ship of the site and that it wished to see the plans.185 When F. W.
and R. M. Lowe quarried on the land leased to them by the Society,
they were told that this was contrary to their covenant to keep it
as ornamental ground, and the Hall ordered that action should be
taken to get a royalty and to restore the land.186 The Society also
kept an eye on proposals to erect monuments on the Downs. When
Alderman Thomas Proctor wished to erect a drinking fountain at
the top of Bridge Valley Road to commemorate the Society’s appro-
priation to the public of Clifton Down, the Building Land Committee
asked that the design should be suitable for the neighbourhood and
afford some shelter from the rain.13”
One particularly valuable service which the Society rendered to
Bristol was in connection with the Cabot centenary. In 1897, the
Cabot Celebration Committee was anxious to erect a column,
tower, obelisk or “‘some other suitable object of imposing character”
on Clifton Down, and it suggested that the Society should let it be
erected in place of the Observatory. Fortunately, several residents
132 77,B.23, p. 80, 13 Dec. 1860; Elizabeth Ralph, The Downs.
188 See Society’s archives: Downs Committee Book 1861-1929 (in fact the first book
goes up only to 1879). Both the Town Council and the Society had copies of the
Minutes of this Joint Committee.
134 7, B.23, p. 170, 13 Dec. 1861.
185 77,.B.23, p. 191, 14 Feb. 1862; p. 197, 20 Feb. 1862.
136 17 B.24, p. 237, 21 Feb. 1868.
_ 137 B.24, p. 304, 30 Dec. 1868; p. 343, 18 June 1869; p. 357, 15 Sept. 1869.
The fountain was erected in 1872. Earlier the Society had considered a proposal
for the Rev. Mourant Brock to put a fountain at the entrance to Bridge Approach
Road. They thought his original plan unsatisfactory and asked for something ‘“‘less
heavy’’. The new plan was approved in 1867 (H.B.24, p. 107, 20 July 1866; p. 154,
15 Jan. 1867).
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 433
in Clifton petitioned the Society to preserve the Observatory, and
the Society turned down the proposal, although it was willing to let
the monument be erected elsewhere on the Downs.1*8 It had the
same objection to a proposal of Mr. Alfred Moseley of London to
erect on Observatory Hill a monument to the memory of the officers
and men of local regiments who fell in the South African War, and
it pointed out that the Society always objected to buildings or
monuments on the hill.13®
In a number of other ways, the Society continued to show its
interest in the Downs. Thus, in 1870 it gave £5 5s. to Charles
Brightman to help erect two drinking fountains on Durdham Down
‘‘for the use of cricketers and others. . .”’.14° In 1871, it provided £40
for planting trees, and in 1872, when William Poole King, secretary
of the Downs Planting Committee, wrote to say that his Committee
had planted 800 trees and wished to carry out further planting, the
Society appreciated his plea that “‘it will redound more to the honor
of the Merchant Venturers Society to add to the magnificent gift to
the Public of Bristol of the use of their Downs, by rendering the
locality more ornamental than by leaving that task to private
exertion’’, and it agreed to contribute £30.14! £50 was given in 1877
towards the cost of a new road from Stoke Park to Parry’s Lane,'*?
and £10 in 1883 to help the Downs Committee erect an obelisk and
cenotaph to William Pitt in front of Manila House.!4* In 1886, the
Society agreed to give 25 new seats at 21s. 6d. each, provided others
gave another 25.144
It was fortunate for Bristol that in the nineteenth century when
the city expanded rapidly and the temptation to build on the Downs
became increasingly great, the ownership of over half the Downs
remained in the hands of a corporation which on the whole appre-
ciated the amenities they offered and which was much less tempted
than private individuals would have been to develop them for
housing.
One other piece of preservation in which the Society had some
interest may also be noted briefly. On the Somerset side of the river,
Leigh Woods constituted another of Bristol’s amenities. In 1864, the
‘Society received a deputation from a number of gentlemen who
proposed to form a Limited Liability Company to buy Sir Greville
Smythe’s portion of the woods. They urged the Hall to support the
project ‘‘not merely as having in view a public benefit by preserving
138 77,B.28, p. 203, 29 Jan. 1897; pp. 209, 212, 26 Feb. 1897.
139 77,B.28, pp. 381, 382, 21 Dec. 1900.
140 77,B.24, p. 443, 5 Aug. 1870.
141 FT,B.25, p. 115, 29 Dec. 1871; p. 195, 21 Dec. 1872.
142 77, B.26, p. 158, 21 Dec. 1877.
143 #7,B.27, p. 10, 1 June 1883.
144 77,B.27, p. 157, 26 March 1886.
434 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the ornamental character of the sloping Woodland but also as being
in all probability fairly remunerative’’. The Society agreed to sub-
scribe £2,500.145
THE SUSPENSION BRIDGE
In 1753, William Vick, a merchant of Bristol, devised to the Society
in trust the sum of £1,000 to build a bridge over the Avon from
Clifton to Leigh Woods. The capital was to accumulate at interest
until it reached £10,000, when the bridge was to be built. The
Society received the money in two instalments in 1772 and 1779,
and paid interest of 3 per cent. When the Charity Commissioners —
investigated the charity in 1822, the capital had accumulated to
£4,139 8s. gd.*#6
In the eighteen-twenties, the Chamber of Commerce pressed for
action over the bridge.14” The Society pointed out that the fund
would not reach £10,000 until 1834, and that it would in any case
be inadequate, but it nevertheless decided to get plans and estimates
and to take steps to get an Act of Parliament in cooperation with the
Corporation, the Chamber of Commerce and the Governor of St.
Peter’s Hospital. Characteristically, it thought the task should be
entrusted to commissioners and not to a Joint Stock Company. It did
a great deal of preparatory work, and eventually an Act was obtained
in 1831.148 The Treasurer then paid over to the Bridge Trustees the
sum of £8,708 13s. tod. and discharged the Society’s obligation
under the Vick bequest.!4®
Although the Society was no longer directly involved, it cooper-
ated by making land available on Clifton Down for the approach
from the Clifton side.15° Unfortunately, the scheme ran into financial
difficulties, and by 1843, when another £30,000 was still required,
it was in effect given up.15! In 1853, the Society decided to treat
with the trustees concerning the land given for the Suspension
Bridge, “‘it being understood that the idea of completing the Bridge
is now wholly abandoned’’.152
In 1860, the matter came alive again when a new company was
145 FH. B.23, p. 383, 28 Sept. 1864.
146 77.B.15, pp. 223 ff., 3 April 1822.
147 77.B.16, pp. 286 ff., 15 Aug. 1828; pp. 338 ff., 28 Aug. 1829. The matter had
been raised earlier in Letters of Cosmo.
148 H.B.16, p. 385, 16 April 1830; p. 412, 1 Oct. 1830; p. 416, 29 Oct. 1830;
H.B.17, p. 1, 10 Dec. 1830; Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp. 258-9; Nineteenth
Century Annals, pp. 131 ff. .
149 77.B.17, p. 1, 10 Dec. 1830; p. 6, 7 Jan. 1831. The Treasurer had to take up
£4,500 on bond in order to do this.
150 77,B.78, p. 248, 12 Oct. 1838.
151 Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 132, 133.
153 17,B.21, p. 291, 18 Feb. 1853.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 435
formed. Its honorary secretary, Captain Claxton, formally requested
that the Master’s name might be included in the preliminary pros-
pectus, and the Hall agreed to take 50 £10 shares and to allow the
first meeting of the shareholders to be held in the Hall on 2 August
1860.153 It turned down an offer of another 50 shares, but cooperated
in making land available on the Clifton side, and members of the
Society formed part of the great procession for the formal opening
of the bridge on 8 December 1864.15
THE SOCIETY AND THE CHURCH
Throughout the nineteenth century, the Society of Merchant
Venturers continued to show interest in the Church of England to
which most of its members belonged, and it made a large number of
donations towards the maintenance of existing buildings and the
provision of new churches for an expanding population.
The problem of maintenance and restoration was a very serious
one for the ecclesiastical authorities, and as the Society’s financial
position improved in the second half of the century, it made a con-
siderable number of grants to help in this work. Thus, St. Mary
Redcliffe received £100 in 1858,15° and seven years later £500 was
voted for the restoration of the tower and spire.156 There were further
donations of £250 in 1870 and £500 in 1874.15? Help was also
given for work on Bristol Cathedral in 1859 and 1861,'*8 and in
1866 when an appeal was launched for £30,000 for the building of
the nave, the Society agreed to give £750 in three instalments over
three years, provided £10,000 a year was raised from other
sources.15® There were further grants of £100 in 1870 and of £500
in 1871.169 When it was proposed to secure an Act of Parliament to
restore a separate see to Bristol in 1884, the Society agreed to provide
£1,000.18 In 1892, £1,000 was voted in three annual instalments
for restoration work in the Cathedral,!®* and in 1899 £250 was
donated towards an appeal, provided the total of £3,000 was
reached.16° A little earlier, in 1897, the Society contributed 100
153 FT B.23, p. 17, 11 May 1860; p. 137, 5 July 1860; Claxton’s Journal I, p. 217,
11 May 1860.
154 F7B.23, pp. 336, 337, 29 Jan. 1864; p. 343, 23 Feb. 1864; Claxton’s Journal II,
p. 17, 8 Dec. 1864; Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 376, 377-
155 #7, B.22, p. 214, 8 Jan. 1858. 156 FT B.24, p. 48, 22 Dec. 1865.
157 H.B.24, p. 433, 3 June 1870; H.B.25, p. 334, 26 June 1874.
158 H,B.22, pp. 411, 412, 8 Dec. 1859; H.B.23, p. 119, 3 April 1861.
159 77 B.24, p. 115, 17 Aug. 1866. See also H.B.24, p. 123, 20 Oct. 1866.
160 17,B.25, p. 24, 7 Dec. 1870; p. 113, 29 Dec. 1871.
161 FT B.27, p. 40, 25 Jan. 1884. See Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, pp. 492,
493, for the re-establishment of the see.
162 7,.B.27, pp. 437; 438, 24 June 1892.
163 7. B.28, p. 317, 26 May 1899.
436 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
guineas to the Duchess of Beaufort’s fund for a reredos in Bristol
Cathedral to mark the retirement of bishop Charles John Ellicott.1®4
Donations to St. Stephen’s, the parish in which the Hall was
situated and where the annual Charter Day service was held,
included £300 for the restoration of the west window in 1864,16 a
grant of £100 in 1866 when the parish was in debt and the church-
wardens were threatened with legal proceedings,1®* and another
gift of £300 in 1875.16? Among the other grants to existing churches
were £250 to help renovate Dowry Chapel in 1872, and 20 guineas
to St. Philip and Jacob’s parish to enable it to remove ‘“‘the whole of
the present pauper benches and the high, narrow and uncomfortable
pews” and to replace them by open seats of the same kind through-
out the church.'®8 In 1877, £25 was donated to the restoration fund
of St. Michael’s and £100 to the restoration of St. Philip and
Jacob’s.1° The Society also gave £200 for restoring the tower of
Temple Church and £100 for restoring the Abbey Gate House in
1884.17° Presumably the motives for some of these gifts were mixed,
as they had been in 1828 when £10 was donated towards the cost of
an illuminated clock to strike the hours and quarters on the tower of
St. Nicholas church, since this would also be “of use to Trade’’.171
In addition to helping in the restoration of existing churches the
Society played a part in the remarkable extension of church building
in and around Bristol. Most of its donations naturally went to the
Church of England, but on at least one occasion it found good
reason for assisting the Wesleyan Methodists. In 1831, Mr. Ward
applied on behalf of that Society for permission to buy a plot of land
facing Limekiln Dock to build a chapel and a school. The Hall
asked for £100 and a ground rent of £21 a year, but when the
Methodists were unable to offer more than £10 a year ground rent,
the Society accepted its offer on certain conditions, including
widening of the road. In 1833, when the Methodists had raised
£1,200 out of the £2,000 required, the Society contributed £20 to
the fund in view of “the material improvement to all the adjacent
property” and “the moral improvement to the numerous poor
tenantry”’.172
Donations to new building by the Church of England included
164 77,B.28, p. 223, 28 May 1897.
165 77.B.23, p. 403, 7 Dec. 1864.
166 H7,.B.24, pp. 133, 134, 3 Nov. 1866.
167 H.B.26, p. 8, 30 Oct. 1875.
168 H7.B.25, p. 149, 24 May 1872.
16° H.B.26, p. 142, 28 Sept. 1877; p. 146, 26 Oct. 1877.
170 7.B.27, p. 72, 24 Oct. 1884.
171 Hf.B.16, pp. 274, 275, 2 April 1828.
172 Hf.B.17, p. 81, 7 March 1832; p. 84, 8 March 1832; pp. 96, 97, 9 April 1832;
p. 171, 18 Oct. 1833.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 437
£50 in 1840 for a chapel of ease near King’s Parade;73 £20 to
Christ Church, Clifton, which was consecrated in 18415174 £50 in
1844 for a new church at Pill, and £100 in 1852 to a new church
which the Reverend John Hensman was erecting in Whiteladies
Road.175 Mr. Hensman subsequently acquired the Methodist Chapel
at Jacob’s Wells in order to make the premises into a new church.
The Society sold him the fee farm rents of £10 and £4 a year for
£300 but made a donation of £150 towards the cost of the new
church.!7® When a number of people in Clifton decided in 1859 to
erect a chapel of ease to commemorate Mr. Hensman’s services for
over fifty years, the Society agreed to sell for £400 a quarter of an
acre in Victoria Square for the Hensman Memorial Church and then
returned £200 as a donation.!7* £50 had been subscribed in the
previous year to an appeal for setting up a new chapel in the pre-
cincts of the Bristol Royal Infirmary,1’° and in 1861 £25 was donated
for a small church or chapel adjoining the Bristol Female Peniten-
tiary.179
The continuing growth of Clifton made it desirable to establish
yet another church, and in May 1864 the Standing Committee
approved a grant of £500 for what was to be All Saints church.18°
One of the building lots in Victoria Square was assigned for a
parsonage as a gift from the Society.1®! In 1866, the Society contri-
buted £50 for a new church in Tyndall’s Park to be erected on the
site of a temporary iron church.1§* Next year, the Standing Com-
mittee recommended a grant of up to £200 to provide a clock with
three bells for the Guthrie Memorial Chapel at Clifton College, but
for some reason this was not approved by the General Hall.18* In
1869, the Society contributed £50 for the building of St. Gabriel’s
Church in one of the poorer out-parishes of St. Philip and Jacob,184
and two years later the same amount was given for a church at
Moorfields.185
In 1877 the Society voted £600 towards the cost of a new and
larger church in Clifton Wood to replace an earlier one which had
173 H.B.18, pp. 432, 433, 10 April 1840. 174 F7.B.19, p. 291, 4 Oct. 1842.
175 H.B.21, pp. 277, 278, 10 Dec. 1852.
176 f.B.21, p. 385, 12 May 1854; p. 434, 22 Nov. 1854; p. 452, 2 July 1855.
177 H=.B.22, p. 378, 26 Aug. 1859; p. 400, 4 Nov. 1859.
178 FT.B.22, pp. 231, 232, 12 March 1858.
179 FT. B.23, p. 149, 13 Sept. 1861.
180 77, B.23, p. 363, 31 May 1864. See also p. 366, 6 June 1864; H.B.24, p. 54,
19 Jan. 1866.
181 77, B.23, pp. 420, 421, 1 Feb. 1865. 182 77.B.24, p. 72, 16 March 1866.
183 H.B.24, p. 153, 15 Jan. 1867; p. 168, 13 April 1867.
184 H,B.24, p. 339, 28 April 1869. St. Gabriel’s, Easton, was consecrated on 14
March 1870.
185 FT B.25, p. 84, 16 Aug. 1871. St. Matthew’s, Moorfields, was consecrated on
28 Jan. 1873. |
438 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
been built by the Methodists in 1833 and which had subsequently
been acquired by the Church of England,18¢ and six years later it
contributed £100 to the extension of the Church of the Holy
Nativity in Knowle.187
In 1882, Bishop Ellicott called a public meeting at the Guildhall
to consider a report on the need for new churches in the rapidly
growing suburbs, and it was decided to build six new churches and
three chapels.1®° A fund of £19,000 was raised, and to this the Society
contributed £2,500 spread over five years.18®
Miscellaneous grants connected with religion included an annual
subscription of £20 to help the chaplain at the Bristol Royal Infirm-
ary,'°° and a donation of 20 guineas in 1839 towards the cost of a
vessel for the Bristol Channel Mission Society so that crews of ships
at Kingroad, Portishead, Penarth Road, Flat Holm and Steep Holm
might have public worship conducted by a clergyman of the Church
of England.1*! On the other hand, when the Secretary of the Sea-
men’s Friendly Society asked in 1824 that the ship Mary, late of
New York, now fitted up as a seamen’s chapel and christened the
Clifton Ark, might be put in the Floating Dock, it was decided to
turn down the request as it would cause great inconvenience.!9? In
1881, however, Mr. Vicary was more fortunate and was given per-
mission to erect his gospel tent in the Bonding Yard, subject to one
day’s notice.198
The list of donations given above is by no means exhaustive but
it is sufficient to show that the Society took seriously its obligations
to the established church to which its members belonged. The reli-
gious as well as the political character of the Society help to explain
why it did not include among its members some of the wealthiest
men in nineteenth-century Bristol who were Nonconformist in
religion and Liberal in politics.
COMMUNICATIONS
Although the Society gradually abandoned its direct interest in
commerce during the nineteenth century, it still retained some
186 71.B.26, p. 128, 29 June 1877. The new church was consecrated in 1882 (see
Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 345).
187 77.B.27, p. 72, 24 Oct. 1884.
188 See Latimer, Nineteenth Century Annals, p. 517.
189 17.B.26, pp. 400, 401, 24 Feb. 1882. The money was given to the Church
Building Fund for special objects designated by the Society. See also H.B.27, p. 122,
26 June 1885 (Holy Nativity, Knowle) and H.B.27, p. 233, 23 Dec. 1887 (St.
Thomas, Eastville).
190 77.B.14, p. 422, 28 Jan. 1817. 191 77.B.18, p. 318, 12 April 1839.
192 77.B.15, p. 401, 7 May 1824. 193 H.B.26, p. 357, 27 May 1881.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 439
interest in communication, particularly during the first half of the
period.
Canals were not of much concern to it, although in 1826 it peti-
tioned in favour of the Berkshire and Hampshire Junction Canal?
and protested between 1832 and 1834 against government action
and proposed legislation concerning the Gloucester—Berkeley Canal,
which was alleged to be to the detriment of the trade of Bristol.195
Railways, on the other hand, attracted more interest from at
least some members of the Society, and at the end of 1832 the
Standing Committee came to the cautious conclusion that “‘the
Subject of a Railroad from Bristol to London which has been of late
the Subject of much public discussion is worthy of consideration”.
A sub-committee of three was set up to confer with other public
bodies for inquiry only.19® The sub-committee reported in February
1833 that the proposed railway “‘would infallibly tend in a very
extensive degree to improve the Trade and Commerce of the City,”
and the Standing Committee approved its report and recommended
contributing 200 guineas towards the cost of obtaining surveys and
estimates.19? In February 1834, a General Hall at which 11 members
were present approved a petition to Parliament in favour of a bill for
making the portions of the Great Western Railway between Bristol
and Bath and between London and Reading,98 and in September
the Hall decided to confer the freedom on Henry Charles Somerset,
Lord Granville, in recognition of the obliging way in which he had
undertaken the case of the Great Western Railway Bill in Parlia-
ment.19® ‘Two months later, the Great Western Railway Company
informed the Society that the Corporation had taken a hundred
shares in the Company, and the Society decided that it too would
take a hundred shares of £100 each.?°° A year later, the Hall decided
to dispose of its investment and the Great Western Railway Com-
pany agreed to repay 200 guineas which the Hall had contributed to
the cost of the survey. The Company expressed its gratitude to the
Society for the “public countenance” it had given to the scheme. ?%
Encouragement was also given to the Bristol and Exeter Railway
194 77.B.16, p. 116, 1 March 1826.
195 77,B.17, p. 83, 7 March 1832; p. 103, 13 June 1832; p. 218, 2 April 1834;
p. 224, 7 May 1834.
196 77,.B.17, p. 137, 8 Dec. 1832. The sub-committee consisted of Mr. Maze, Mr.
Gibbs and Mr. Fowler.
197 H.B.17, p. 146, 20 Feb. 1833.
198 F7.B.17, p. 213, 26 Feb. 1834.
199 77.B.17, p. 259, 3 Sept. 1834 (11 present).
200 H7.B.17, p. 273, 8 Nov. 1834 (22 present).
201 77.B.17, p. 339, 14 Oct. 1835. The ‘‘public countenance’’ which the Society
gave to the G.W.R. Company included placing the Hall at the disposal of the
Directors for a number of meetings, and this is commemorated in a well-known
picture.
440 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Company which was allowed to hold its first General Meeting in the
Hall in 1836,?9? and to the Bristol and Gloucester Railway Company
in 1837 when the Hall agreed to petition both Houses in favour of an
application to extend the line to Gloucester.?°3 In 1844, the Society
opposed the South Wales, Wiltshire, Somerset and Weymouth
Railway on the grounds that it would inflict great injury on the
trade of Bristol,?° but ten years later it agreed to give countenance
and support to the Bristol, South Wales and Southampton Union
Railway, since this was considered beneficial to the city.2°5
In the eighteen-sixties, the Society showed some interest in the
Bristol and Clifton Railway Company which proposed to extend the
railway into the City,?°6 and in 1883 it agreed to contribute £300
towards the cost of the London and South Wales Junction Railway
bill.2°7 |
Communications with Ireland were also of concern to the Society
in the first half of the nineteenth century. In the eighteen-twenties
and early eighteen-thirties there were hopes in Bristol that the
Treasury would agree to establish a Steam Packet Station at Portis-
head or elsewhere for mails to and from Ireland, and the Chamber
of Commerce was active in pressing the matter. The Society
supported the proposal, drew up a number of Memorials and sent
witnesses to a Commons Committee in 1832, but there were obvious
difficulties unless considerable capital was expended, and the pro-
posal came to nothing. ?°* It was revived in the early eighteen-forties
when the Society cooperated with the Corporation and other bodies
in trying to get Bristol chosen instead of Milford Haven as a Mail
Packet Station for Southern Ireland. The Society provided some
money and sent witnesses to London in support of the City’s case,
but again the effort was unsuccessful. 29°
The Society also played a part in efforts made in the late eighteen-
thirties and early eighteen-forties to persuade the government to
designate Bristol as a port for the West Indian and transatlantic
mails, It cooperated with the Royal West Indian Steam Packet Com-
mittee, which was chaired by one of its members, Philip Protheroe;
it collected evidence from a number of witnesses, including Brunel,
202 77.B.17, p. 398, 8 June 1836.
203 77.B.18, p. 16, 10 Feb. 1837 (12 present).
204 77.B.20, p. 71, 22 Nov. 1844; p. 72, 29 Nov. 1844.
205 77.B.21, p. 416, 13 Oct. 1854.
206 71.B.23, p. 156, 11 Oct. 1861; p. 168, 13 Dec. 1861; p. 173, 2 Jan. 1862; p.
186, 22 Jan. 1862. See also H.B.25, p. 43, 22 March 1871.
207 #1.B.26, pp. 455, 456, 26 Jan. 1883; pp. 457, 458, 27 Jan. 1883.
208 H.B.16, p. 191, 2 March 1827; p. 319, 6 March 1829; p. 334, 14 Aug. 1829,
Pp. 337, 28 Aug. 1829; H.B.17, pp. 93, 94, 4 April 1832; p. 98, 2 May 1833; p. 102;
13 June 1832.
20° H.B.19, p. 107, 10 May 1841; p. 109, 22 May 1841; p. 114, 11 June 1841;
p. 138, 17 Aug. 1841; p. 188, 27 Nov. 1841; p. 233, 6 April 1842.
Miscellaneous Activities, Nineteenth Century 441
and it sent the Clerk, Robert Osborne, and Christopher Claxton to
London to confer with the M.P.s and to press Bristol’s case.7*° The
effort was unsuccessful. Another attempt was made in 1864 when the
Society sent the Master, Wardens and other members to London to
join with what Claxton scornfully called “the Chamber of Commerce
people” in pressing Bristol’s case. Nothing was achieved and
Claxton remarked “just serve ’em right — misled by the beasts of the
Chamber of Commerce’’.?!*
Miscellaneous activities in connection with communications
included protesting in 1834 to the Postmaster General against a
proposal to send the Irish Mail coach through Gloucester instead of
through Bristol;242 cooperating with the Great Western Railway
Company, the Town Council, the Chamber of Commerce and the
Docks Company in 1837 to discuss the establishment of “steam
intercourse with India via the Mediterranean through Bristol’’;?**
joint action in protesting to the Post Master General against the
removal of the Welsh Mails from Bristol in 1845;744 encouragement
to the British Electric Telegraph Company to lay a telegraph
between Bristol and Pill in 1850 and between Shirehampton and
the Commercial Rooms in 1852;%45 and despatching a Memorial to
the Postmaster General in 1854 on delays in foreign and colonial
mails and requesting much more frequent and regular communica-
tion with South Wales with which Bristol was carrying on ‘ta most
important and extending trade’’.*16 In the later part of the century,
the Society kept a watchful eye on the effects of tramway develop-
ment. 22? .
210 77.B.18, p. 391, 8 Nov. 1839; H.B.19, pp. 32, 33, 30 Sept. 1840; pp. 35 ff., 7
Oct. 1840; p. 76, 8 Jan. 1841; p. 105, 10 May 1841; p. 420, 9 Feb. 1844; p. 450,
go May 1844.
211 77 B.29, p. 356, 8 April 1864; p. 358, 26 April 1864; Claxton’s Journal IT, p. 9,
11 April 1863.
212 77,B.17, pp. 228, 229, 7 May 1834.
218 H.B.18, p. 15, 10 Feb. 1837.
214 H7.B.20, p. 113, 9 May 1845.
215 Hf Bier, p. 101; 13 Dec. 1850; p. 211, 13 Dec. 1852. The Warner at Pill
petitioned the Society in 1852 saying that the telegraph had put him out of business,
but the petition was laid on the table (H.B.21, pp. 278, 279, 10 Dec. 1852).
216 77.B.21, p. 354, 6 Jan. 1854; p. 362, 11 Feb. 1854.
217 H7B.26, p. 233, 31 Jan. 1879; p. 283, 19 Dec. 1879; p. 295, 19 March 1880.
CHAPTER 23
Membership, Organisation and Finance
in the Twentieth Century
THE total number of admissions to the Society between 1900 and
1974 was 140, just under two a year. Thus, the rate of recruitment
was lower than it had been in the nineteenth century when 221
members had been admitted.1 There was also a significant change
in the method of recruitment. Of the 140 members admitted between
1900 and 1974, 29 took up the freedom by patrimony or by appren-
ticeship; 16 entered as honorary members, and 95 were redemp-
tioners.? There was thus a marked contrast with the position in the
nineteenth century when those admitted by redemption were more
or less equal in number to those who entered by patrimony or by
apprenticeship. In the list of admissions after 1900 redemptioners
outnumbered the others by over three to one. It appears that the
Society was becoming more outward-looking and was drawing more
heavily on those outside the established Merchant Venturer families.
It is also significant in this connection that the freedom was conferred
on 16 distinguished honorary members, whereas between 1864 and
1900, no new names had been added to the list.
The slower rate of recruitment produced a drop in the total
number of members, although there were fluctuations in these
seventy years. In the last quarter of the nineteenth century, the total
varied between 70 and 75, but after that there was a gradual decline
up to 1918. In 1917 for example, the number had fallen to 58.3 In
1919 and 1920, 17 new members were added to the list, and between
1920 and 1939, membership fluctuated between 70 and 80.4 Between
1945 and 1970, it varied between 60 and 65, and on occasions it fell
below 60.5
The number attending the quarterly meetings averaged between
24 and 25 in the years 1900-18, but rose in the inter-war years to
between 28 and 29. It fell to just over 22 during World War II when
1 See p. 249.
2 Some of these redemptioners could have asked for the freedom by patrimony or
by apprenticeship.
3 H.B.30, pp. 322, 377, 28 July 1917, 10 Nov. 1917.
_ £ On 10 Nov. 1924, it was 80 (H.B.31, f. 259). It was down to 70 on 28 Jan. 1938
(H.B.33, p. 76).
a 57 on 28 April 1950 (H.B.34, p. 374) and 59 on 24 Oct. 1969 (H.B.40, p:
155).
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 443
a number of members were on active service, but rose to over 29 in
the period 1946-69. It was not until 1968 that the Society laid down
that members were free to resign,® and there must always have been
on the roll some who were unable to attend through age, ill-health
or because they had moved away from Bristol.” In 1966, when the
Master congratulated the Senior Commoner, Charles Cyril Clarke,
on the completion of sixty years as a member, he noted that only 23
members had been present at the Hall at which he had been
admitted. Since then, there had been a change of spirit over atten-
dance, and few had done more to bring it about than Charles Cyril
Clarke.®
The Society concerned itself from time to time with the question
of how many members should be admitted and what kind of people
they should be. In 1921, it discussed the matter with reference to
redemptioners, because it was thought that the Hall could not con-
veniently accommodate many more members and that it was
important to provide room for others besides redemptioners. The
general opinion was that redemptioners should be “gentlemen who
being otherwise duly qualified had an assured position or had made
their mark either in the Public or Commercial life of the City or had
distinguished themselves elsewhere in the service of the state’’.®
This appears to have extended considerably the guide line laid down
in 1873 when it was thought that redemptioners should be “only
persons belonging to the mercantile community’.
In 1930, a sub-committee was set up to consider whether there
should be any change in the rules and orders. This made a number
of recommendations relating to the Assistants and to the conditions
for admission by apprenticeship. It also examined the alleged right
of sons of members and apprentices of members to be admitted
without a vote of the Hall. It reported that although there was no
definite rule requiring such applicants to be elected by a vote of the
majority of those present at the Hall, this had invariably been the
practice, and that the words “voted and crdered” in the Minutes
recording such admissions supported this interpretation. It thought
that the Hall could in fact veto any such admissions and that the
rule should in future be that “no person seeking admission as a
Member of this Society by virtue of any qualification whatsoever be
admitted as a Member except upon the vote of 3/4th of the Members
6 See p. 445 and note 18.
7 In 1961, the Treasurer was asked to write to all members who, it seemed
probable, would never again attend meetings to say that unless they notified the
Treasurer, notices would not in future be sent to them.
8 H.B.99, p. 137, 29 April 1966 (36 members were present).
® H.B.31, p. 93, 29 Jan. 1921; p. 97, 25 Feb. 1921.
10 See p. 252.
444 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
present at the Hall’’.1! The proposals were confirmed at a General
Hall later in the year.12
The question of membership was discussed again in 1945 when the
Master asked the Hall to consider extending the range of those
suitable for admission to include gentlemen other than those engaged
in purely mercantile business.13 The sub-committee’s report of 26
April 1946 was considered by the Hall on 31 May 1946 and the Hall
saw no reason to add to or to modify the decisions made in 1873 and
1921.14
In 1966, some members felt that it might be desirable to have
powers to admit men who were not freemen of Bristol. The Clerk
pointed out that the freedom of Bristol was obtained by birth, by
marriage to the daughter or the widow of a freeman, or by serving
a seven-year apprenticeship. It was fundamental to the constitution
of the Society that members must be freemen of Bristol, but he had
communicated with the Privy Council Office to see if it would be
possible to obtain a new charter. There was no objection in principle,
and the Clerk thought that there might possibly be two classes of
members — those who were freemen of Bristol and those who were
not, but no action was taken.15
At the end of 1967, the Master again raised the question of admis-
sions, and a memorandum drawn up by himself, the Senior Warden
and the First Assistant was circulated and discussed by the Standing
Committee during the next six months.16 A Memorandum on the
subject was considered by the Hall on 26 July 1968 and a number of
resolutions were adopted. The Memorandum pointed out that the
Society had originally been founded as a community of merchants
to further their trading interests. Traditionally, membership of the
merchant community had been the basis of membership, but for
many years the influence and activities of the Society had been
directed for the benefit of the citizens of Bristol in general rather
than for the support of the trade of its members. In the last fifty
1! H.B.32, pp. 158 ff., 16 July 1931.
12 Hf.B.32, p. 177, 30 Oct. 1931.
18 H.B.933, p. 418, 27 July 1945; H.B.34, p. 7, 26 Oct. 1945; p. 16, 30 Nov. 1945.
14 Hf.B.34, p. 50, 31 May 1946.
18 H.B.39, p. 124, 11 Feb. 1966. It must be remembered that for entry to the
Society by apprenticeship, a man had to be apprenticed to a Merchant Venturer
before the end of his eighteenth year and must be related to the member to whom
he was apprenticed in the degree not more distant than first cousin, or failing that,
pay to the Treasurer £25 for admission. The rules relating to such apprenticeships
were made rather easier in 1931 (H.B.32, pp. 161 ff., 16 July 1931). Redemptioners
also had to have the freedom of Bristol, and this they would normally obtain by
being bound apprentice to a freeman for seven years. Many of them would enter
on this apprenticeship at a time when they were already of mature years.
16 H.B.4o, p. 21, 12 Jan. 1968; p. 28, 23 Feb. 1968; p. 30, 8 March 1968; p. 38,
26 April 1968; p. 39, 17 May 1968. | |
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 445
years, there had been a marked change in the structure of industry
and trade in Bristol. The relatively small merchant firms whose
proprietors formed the nucleus of the Society’s members had been
replaced by modern large units of industry in which heredity in
management played little part. The guiding principles for admission
in future should be to preserve the status and usefulness of the
Society, but at the same time to preserve the traditions of the Hall,
provided they were not incompatible with the first objective. It was
resolved that as a supplement to the existing arrangements the
Master, Wardens and First Assistant should keep under review the
list of apprentices to members and should, if they thought it neces-
sary, ‘“‘seek out suitably qualified men, who, if they agree, should be
apprenticed on the understanding that no guarantee was given that
they would be admitted, but there there was a reasonable likeli-
hood’”’.1? It was pointed out that this was likely to bring in members
at a later age than at present, and so in the choice of officers, there
should be less emphasis on seniority in the Hall and more on the
qualities of leadership and distinction in public and business life. In
considering the list of apprentices and candidates for admission, the
guilding lines should be whether the candidate was likely in person-
ality and conduct to be congenial to other members, whether he
had achieved or was likely to achieve a position of responsibility and
importance in the commercial life of Bristol and its neighbourhood,
and whether he had performed useful voluntary service. As far as
possible, membership should represent “the wide-spread nature of
the City’s industries”. At the same time, it should be recognised
that the succession of sons was a source of strength in maintaining
status and tradition, and preference was to be given to them when
two or more candidates were of equal merit. There was to be no set
limit to numbers, but this was to be kept under review in relation
to the available accommodation. Members were in future free to
resign if they wished and might indicate if they no longer wanted to
receive invitations to functions.1§
The resolutions adopted in 1968 gave formal recognition to a
policy which had in practice been followed much earlier. The signi-
ficant growth in the number of redemptioners in the twentieth
century and the attempt to bring in men who were prominent in
the industrial and public life of Bristol meant that the Society was
increasingly moving away from the policy of restricting membership
17 What the Society had in mind here was not the apprenticeship of young men
under 19, but of older people who were considered suitable candidates for member-
ship in the future.
18 1.B.40, pp. 54 ff., 26 July 1968. Major A. B. Mitchell resigned in 1968 and
the second Lord Dulverton in 1969 (H.B.40, pp. 67, 125, 140), and R. E. Todd in
1971, shortly before he died (H.B.4o, p. 278, 29 Oct. 1971).
446 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
to families which were traditionally associated with commerce in the
narrow sense, and was seeking to include representatives of many
different interests in business and public life. It was adapting itself
to the changing structure of Bristol’s commerce and industry, while
at the same time seeking to maintain its traditions by recognising
the value of an hereditary element among its members.
Between 1900 and 1919 only two people were admitted to the
freedom as honorary members — Field-Marshal Earl Roberts and
the gth Duke of Beaufort.19 In January 1919, a sub-committee
recommended that the freedom should be offered to the Rt.
Honourable Charles Edward Hungerford Atholl Colston, Baron
Roundway; to the Rt. Honourable Lewis F ry; to Sir Herbert Warren;
to Mr. George Alfred Wills, and, if they came to Bristol, to Field-
Marshal Sir Douglas Haig and Admiral Sir David Beatty. Baron
Roundway was offered the freedom as a representative of the Colston
family and in recognition of the interest he had always taken in the
charitable and educational institutions in the care of the Society;
Lewis Fry in recognition of his services to Bristol as an M.P. and of
“the courtesy and ability with which as one of the Founders of the Uni-
versity of Bristol he assisted in the settlement of the agreement between
the Society and the University’’. Sir Herbert Warren was President
of Magdalen College Oxford, Chairman of the Council of Clifton
College, a distinguished educationalist and a Bristolian by birth and
education. George Alfred Wills was made a freeman in recognition
of his services to the University as Pro-Chancellor and Chairman of
Council.° The freedom was conferred on Sir Douglas Haig in April
1920.71
In June 1921 the freedom was conferred on the Prince of Wales
who made appropriate references to Jay, Cabot and Newfoundland,
and who remarked felicitously, if not with complete historical
accuracy, that his travels had enabled him to realise in a very special
manner “‘the part played by this Guild in those early days of explora-
tion . . .”’.2? Later in the same year, honorary membership was given
to Henry Herbert Wills, pro-Chancellor of the Univesity, “in recog-
nition of his munificence in the foundation and endowment of the
St. Monica Home of Rest” and his great gifts to the University of
Bristol and other educational and charitable institutions. 2°
The gth Duke of Beaufort died in 192 5 and the freedom was in due
19 H.B.29, p. 61, 24 Oct. 1903; p. 89, 29 April 1904, the Master reported that he
had entertained Beaufort and Roberts to dinner on 15 April.
2° H.B.30, p. 410, 24 Jan. 1919; p. 418, 1 Feb. 1919; p. 423, 28 Feb. 1919.
31 H.B.31, p. 16, 19 Sept. 1919; p. 56, 15 April 1920.
22 H.B.31, pp. 109-12, 20 May 1931. When the Prince of Wales became King,
he informed the Society that he could no longer be an Honorary Member but
would continue to give his patronage (H.B.33, p. 8, 26 June 1936).
93 .B.31, p. 127, 29 Oct. 1921.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 447
course conferred upon the 10th Duke.*4 Four years later, W. Melville
Wills became an honorary member.?° The 1st Lord Dulverton, who
received the freedom in 1930, was later admitted as a redemptioner
on payment of a fine of £50 in 1938.?°
After World War II, the Society followed its traditional practice
of offering the freedom to outstanding war leaders and invited
Winston Churchill and General Dwight D. Eisenhower to become
honorary members.2” Both of them had Bristol connections, for
Churchill was Chancellor of the University and Eisenhower’s
headquarters before D Day had been in Clifton College. Churchill
was admitted and signed the Hall Book on 21 June 1946,?° but
Eisenhower did not take up the freedom, although he apparently
thought he was a member, for when he became President of the
United States, he wrote regretting that as President he had to resign
from all societies in which he could not participate. The Treasurer
was instructed to send a suitable reply, bearing in mind that he had
not formally been elected as an Honorary Member.?®
On 6 November 1953, the Duke of Edinburgh visited the Hall
and signed the book as an Honorary Member.®° The ceremony was
informal on this occasion, as had been the case when Churchill came
to the Hall, but when the Duke visited the Hall in September 1954
an Address was presented to him, and in his reply he remarked “As
you all know, I am neither a merchant nor a venturer, but perhaps
for that very reason I have a great admiration for merchants and for
venturers and an even greater admiration when the two are combined
in one person.’’3!
The most recent addition to the list of Honorary Members is
Charles Prince of Wales who accepted the freedom of the Society in
October 1973.
There is, of course, no such thing as “the typical Merchant
Venturer’ at the present time, since the Society does in fact rep-
resent a great range of interests and personalities in commercial,
industrial and public life.3? Nevertheless, there are certain character-
istics which stand out. The majority of members attended public
schools, and a considerable proportion are graduates of Oxford or
24 .B.31, p. 274, 31 Jan. 1925; 288, 25 April 1925.
25 H.B.932, p. 51, 29 April 1929.
26 17.B.32, p. 119, 31 Oct. 1930; H.B.33, p. 88, 29 April 1939.
27 H.B.34, pp. 27, 28, 25 Jan. 1946. |
28 H.B.34, Pp. 52, 53-
29 H7.B.35, p. 312, 29 May 1953.
30 17.B.95, p. 342, 25 Sept. 1953; p. 365, 6 Nov. 1953.
31 H.B.36, pp. 17-20, 24 Sept. 1954.
32 What follows is a very general impression based in part on information
supplied by members in answer to a questionnaire sent out by the Treasurer in
1971.
448 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Cambridge.** Many served with distinction in the army or navy in
one or other, and sometimes both, of the two World Wars. Although
there are no political or religious tests, most members appear to be
Conservative in politics and Church of England in religion. Many
have made and are making major contributions to voluntary public
services of all kinds. The varied business interests of members include
shipbuilding, the wine trade, the clothing trade, shoe-manufacturing,
paint manufacturing, the steel industry, marine-engineering,
printing, the tobacco industry and allied companies, the electrical
industry and the aeroplane industry. Since some members obtain the
freedom by patrimony and do not take up a business career, there
are a few members who have had careers in the services or in one of
the professions. A number of members hold the highest executive and
managerial positions in large-scale enterprises in and around Bristol.
The average age of members at present appears to be in the late |
fifties, with a small group in their thirties or forties and another
small group in their seventies or eighties. About half the members
first entered the Society over twenty years ago.
The Master of the Society has, during his year of office, the power
to exercise considerable influence on policy, although he obviously
must carry with him the majority of the Wardens and Standing
Committee if he wishes to get his policies accepted by the general
body of the Hall. Some Masters have used their initiative and powers
of leadership in very important ways, but it would perhaps be
invidious to try to single out from among more than 70 Masters who
have held the office in the twentieth century those who have been
particularly influential. It is, however, worth noting one or two
unusual circumstances relating to the office of Master. There was
a dramatic conclusion to the period of office of J. H. Budgett in
1918. Charter Day that year was 11 November, since 10 November
was a Sunday. While the members of the Society were waiting for
the beginning of the service in St. Stephen’s church, the news arrived
of the signing of the Armistice and the Society was informed from
the pulpit that fighting had ceased. *4
In 1925, the Standing Committee recommended that Mervyn K.
King, should be Master for the next year and prepared an address
to him for his eightieth birthday. He had been admitted in 1866 and
had been Master in 1874-5. The Address referred to his family’s long
association with the Society and called him ‘“‘the last of the Bristol
Merchants who carried on trade by barter in their own vessels’’.?5
33 One member was in the Oxford boat which sank in the Boat Race of 1925 and
again when Oxford lost in 1926.
84 There is in the Society’s archives a bound volume in which the Master, J. H.
Budgett, recorded the principal events during his year of office 1917-18.
35 77,.B.31, p. 303, 25 Sept. 1925. For a supplementary address to him in 1934,
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 449
However, he decided not to accept the Mastership. In 1927, the Hall
congratulated the Master, Sir Lionel Goodenough Taylor, on re-
ceiving the honour of knighthood, an honour which it believed had
never before been conferred on a Master while he was actually in
office.2® In 1933, when Alfred Esmond Robinson was Master, the
Senior Warden informed the Hall that he would be unable to serve as
Master, as urgent business would take him away from Bristol for a
considerable time. The Junior Warden was also unable to serve, and
so it was decided to ask A. E. Robinson to continue in office for
another year.®” In World War II, Ellison Fuller Eberle, who was
chosen Master on 10 November 1939, was re-elected in 1940 and
again in 1941,38 and Foster Gotch Robinson served as Master for
two years from 1943 to 1945.°® An unusual situation also arose in
1962 when Commander Athelstan Paul Bush, who had held the
office of Treasurer from 1944, retired from that office and was
elected Master for the year 1962-3.4°
The practice has grown up by which those going through the
chair make a gift to the Society, often in the form of some work of
modern craftsmanship, to add to the treasures which the Hall has
acquired over the centuries.
The Master, the Wardens and the Assistants naturally exercise a
great deal of control over the policy of the Society, although their
decisions have to be confirmed by the commonalty as a whole. In
the normal course of events, a man who played an active part in the
affairs of the Society can hope to become an Assistant, a Junior
Warden, a Senior Warden and the Master, and, inevitably, those
who had been active members for a long time tend to know most
about the Society’s affairs and to have a large say in decisions.
Every autumn, the Master entertains the Standing Committee,
the Clerk and the Senior Commoner to dinner. After dinner, the
committee decides on the recommendations it wishes to make for
the elections on Charter Day. Before the elections, the Senior
Commoner asks the Standing Committee to retire and then goes
see H.B.32, p. 348, 30 Nov. 1934. It summed up the ideals of the Society in these
words: ‘‘Upon him was laid the burden of following in the tracks of those whose
object it had been to symbolize in this Society all that makes for progress in the life
of our City. ...”
86 77.B.31, p. 371, 28 Jan. 1927.
37 H7.B.32, p. 287, 29 Sept. 1933.
58 H7.B.33, p. 163, 10 Nov. 1939; p. 210, 11 Nov. 1940; p. 255, 10 Nov. 1941.
89 H.B.33, p. 332, 10 Nov. 1943; p. 380, 10 Nov. 1944.
4° H.B.38, p. 38, 30 March 1961; p. 160, 10 Nov. 1962. Commander Bush had
become a member in 1939 and in the normal course of events might have expected
to become Master earlier but for the fact that he was appointed Treasurer in 1944.
The Senior Warden was quite willing to stand down on this occasion, and both the
Senior and Junior Wardens were re-elected in 1962.
450 | The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
through with the commonalty the recommendations made by the
committee.
It is rare for the policy of the Standing Committee to be reversed
by the Hall, although this has happened with reference to one very
controversial issue in recent years.
For the efficient running of its affairs, the Society continued to
draw on the services of a number of very able Treasurers chosen
from its own ranks. When George Henry Pope resigned in 1901
after twenty-five years in office, it was decided that his office should
be separated from that of Correspondent and Manager of the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College and that there should be
a Secretary to deal with the College, the Colston Trust and the two
Colston Schools. Percy Liston King was then appointed Treasurer
at £450 a year, and George Henry Pope, who had acquired an
immense amount of experience in dealing with the educational
problems, became Secretary of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College and of the Colston charities. He was given a salary of £450
a year with an office and secretarial assistance in the Hall.*4
When Percy Liston King died in 1914, he was succeeded by
Col. John Henry Woodward who had considerable business experi-
ence in his father’s firm of vinegar manufacturers and as director
and chairman of the Bristol, West of England and South West
Building Society and as director of the Bristol Waggon and Carriage
Works Company. He had played a very active part in the volunteer
and territorial movement and had become a full colonel in 1905.
He had also been chairman of the Bristol School Board for 1892-8. *?
He had joined the Society in 1876 and became Master ten years
later. He was appointed at a salary of £500 and was allowed to
retain certain directorships.*? Colonel Woodward became seriously
ill in 1917 and died on 18 May 1918.*4 During his illness, H. Vincent
Barnard acted as temporary treasurer.*®
A sub-committee then recommended that the next Treasurer
should be required to devote himself entirely to the work and to
reside in the neighbourhood of Bristol. His office and that of the
Secretary of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College and the
Colston Schools were eventually to be combined. Meanwhile, he
was to have a salary of £800 a year, rising to not more than £1,000
when he took over the Secretaryships. It recommended the appoint-
ment of William Welsford Ward, and this was approved by a General
41 H.B.28, pp. 416-17, 11 Oct. 1901; p. 423, 26 Oct. 1901. The Treasurer’s
salary was increased to £550 a year in 1903 (H.B.29, p. 73, 27 Nov. 1903).
42 Bristol Times and Mirror, 20 May 1918.
43 H.B.30, p. 148, 23 Jan. 1914; p. 150, 30 Jan. 1914; p. 153, 31 Jan. 1914.
44 H.B.30, p. 320, 27 July 1917; p. 324, 14 Aug. 1917; p. 379, 31 May 1918.
$5 77.B.30, p. 383, 26 July 1918.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 451
Hall on 27 July 1918.4® When George Henry Pope decided to resign
his secretaryships in 1920, William Ward took over from 1 December
at a total salary of £1,200 a year.*’”
W. W. Ward’s appointment was in many respects unusual. He
had been born at Stapleton, near Bristol, in 1854, and both at school
at Radley and at Magdalen College, Oxford, he had made his mark
as a Classical scholar. One of his examiners had stressed that he ought
to pursue a career in literature. At Magdalen, he had the nickname
of “Bouncer” and was a close friend of Oscar Wilde.*® Ward decided
not to pursue a career in scholarship, and instead qualified as a
solicitor in 1880. In 1882, he became a partner in the firm of which
his father was a member — Osborne, Ward, Vassall & Co., which had
a close connection with the Society, since Jere Osborne, the Senior
partner, was Clerk to the Merchant Venturers. He became a
Merchant Venturer himself in 1890 and was Master in 1896. He
was very deeply involved in the negotiations between the Merchant
Venturers’ Technical College and University College, Bristol. In
1901, he retired from business and went to live at Mawnan Smith
near Falmouth with his wife and two children. He lived the life of
a country gentleman and was very active in local government and
as a Magistrate for Cornwall. The upheaval of the First World War
had an adverse effect on his financial circumstances, and he was not
unduly unwilling to come out of retirement, provided congenial
work was offered him, and so in 1918 as a result of persistent pressure
from Mr. Mervyn K. King, he agreed to accept the Society’s invita-
tion to become its Treasurer.
W. W. Ward was clearly an outstanding personality with a great
interest in educational and charitable work as well as in literature
and philosophy. Although he did not initiate the arrangements which
led to the Society accepting the trust for the very large funds made
available for establishing the St. Monica Home of Rest, he was
deeply involved in the very difficult negotiations and legal business
which accompanied the setting up of the trust, and played a most
important role both on a personal and a legal level in bringing them
to a successful conclusion.*® He steered the Society through a very
46 77. B.30, p. 381, 28 June 1918; pp. 385, 386, 27 July 1918. In 1919, Ward’s
salary was raised to £1,000 a year with effect from the date of his appointment
(H.B.31, p. 25, 17 Oct. 1919).
47 H.B.31, pp. 85, 86, 26 Nov. 1920. Pope was asked to accept a retaining fee of
£450 a year for life in return for his advice and experience. He died in 1930 (H.B.
32, P. 90, 25 Jan. 1930).
48 For a number of letters from Oscar Wilde to Ward, see The Letters of Oscar
Wilde, edit. Rupert Hart Davis, 1962. Wilde urged Ward to read for a Fellowship
and was certain he could get one. Ward’s ‘‘Oxford Reminiscence” of Wilde was
published as an appendix to Vyvyan Holland, Son of Oscar Wilde, 1954.
49 See p. 514.
452 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
difficult financial period in the early nineteen-twenties and played an
initial role in setting up its Education Trust.5° He was aware that
the Society was wrongly considered by many people in Bristol to be
little more than a wining and dining club, and he did all in his power
to emphasise and develop its charitable and educational work. He
was a very determined negotiator on the Society’s behalf and he was
a very “strong” Treasurer, but he had the capacity to win love and
devotion from those who knew him well.®! He died while still in
office on 10 February 1932.5?
A sub-committee then considered the appointment of a new
Treasurer and defined what his duties were to be.5? There were 6
applicants, who were narrowed down to 2 — Gerald H. Beloe and
Lieut. Col. Daniel Burges, V.C., D.S.O. The Standing Committee
was equally divided, and the decision was eventually made by ballot
at a General Hall.5¢ The new Treasurer, Gerald Harry Beloe, had
first joined the Society in 1906 and was Master in 1922-3. He too
died in office on 10 October 1944. The Master spoke of his sense of
humour, his ability to enjoy a joke against himself, his kindness and
ability to radiate happiness and goodwill. In the last year of his life
he faced with courage hard blows in his family life occasioned by
the war.®5 Someone who knew him very well remarked that he was
‘‘a gentle, warm-hearted man, with a serenity that was almost
infectious. By his very lack of aggressiveness, he was capable of
winning cooperation from his associates.”
Three other people have held the office of Treasurer up to the
present time. Commander Athelstan Paul Bush, D.S.O., R.N. took
office on 1 December 1944 and resigned in 1962; Edmund Poole King
was Treasurer from 1962 to 1969; and the present Treasurer, John
Esmond Cyril Clarke, was elected on 10 November 19609.
The Society continued to attract able staff and to retain them in
its service for long periods. Judged by the standards of many business
firms, the number of employees was.remarkably small in relation to
the amount of work that had to be done both for the Society itself
5° See p. 479.
6! For an appreciation of W. W. Ward written by Miss G. E. Whitaker but not
signed by her, see the Western Daily Press, 17 February 1932. His portrait by
Maurice Greiffenhagen R.A. hangs in the present Hall.
52 H.B.32, p. 194, 26 Feb. 1932. For an appreciation of his services by the Master,
see H.B.32, pp. 210-12, 29 April 1932.
58 7f.B.32, pp. 197 ff., 18 March 1932.
5¢ H.B.32, pp. 214 ff., 4 May 1932; p. 217, 27 May 1932. Col. Burges was at this
time Governor of the Tower of London. He had originally been admitted in 1919.
He became Master in 1936. He died while attending a meeting of the Standing
Committee on 24 Oct. 1946.
5° H.B.33, p. 365, 24 Oct. 1944. His portrait by Mr. Arnold Mason, A.R.A., was
painted from photographs and hangs in the present Hall (H.B.34, p. 59, 25 July
1946; p. 99, 28 March 1947; p. 109, 30 May 1947).
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 453
and for the large numbers of trusts which it administered, and this
was achieved partly because the Society was a generous and con-
siderate employer, and partly because its servants developed an
intense loyalty and devotion to the organisation, very much as Mr.
Lorry in The Tale of Two Cities was prepared to serve Telson’s Bank
in a way that could not be expected from a mere employee. When the
Chief Clerk, T. E. Rea retired in 1914, he had served for 55 years in
the Treasurer’s Office.5* He was succeeded in that position by George
Erith who had first joined the staff in the later nineteenth century.
By the end of 1914, his salary was £325, and it had been increased to
£450 per annum by 1918. When he died in 1926, the Society made
a gift of £300 to his widow.5” Another assistant accountant in the
office was Arthur J. Trump who retired in 1948 with an annuity of
£300 per annum and a donation of 100 guineas after serving the
Society for over 40 years.®® J. T. Bell, who was appointed accountant
in the Treasurer’s Office in 1929, remained in the Society’s service
until his death in 1960. During his illness the previous year the
Society had helped meet his medical expenses and had arranged to
send him on holiday to Madeira during his convalescence.*? His
place was taken by Mr. K. H. Trigg who had first come into the
Treasurer’s Office in 1946 and who is still in its service.®°
The domestic staff of the Hall also provide a number of examples
of long service and of the Society’s concern for those in its employ.
Miss Mary Muller, who was appointed housekeeper in 1902 ata
salary of £80 a year, was receiving £175 a year by the time of her
retirement in 1923 when she was given a pension of £100 a year, eh
and her successor, Mrs. E. A. Lucas, was still in the Society's service
when she died in 1943.8? In 1928 the porter T. Abbott resigned after
18 years’ service and received a gratuity.®* Sgt. Major Thomas Leat,
D.C.M., who was taken on as porter at £2 10s. a week in 1928,
resigned in 1947 and also received a pension.** The present porter
and caretaker, Mr. A. E. Moon, first entered the Society’s service in
56 See p. 267.
87 H.B.30, p. 204, 18 Dec. 1914; p. 363, 22 Feb. 19185 H.B.31, p. 326, 29 Jan.
1926.
58 In 1908, his salary was increased to £110 p.a. (H.B.29, p. 332, 27 Nov. 1908);
H.B.34, p. 157, 27 Feb. 1948; p. 236, 16 Dec. 1948.
59 FH B.92, p. 37, 22 Feb. 1929; H.B.37, p- 76, 24 April 1958; p. 84, 30 May 1958;
p. 230, 28 Jan. 1960.
60 77.B.94, p. 54, 28 June 1946; H.B.37, p. 230, 28 Jan. 1960.
61 17.B.29, p. 13, 26 Sept. 1902; H.B.31, p. 181, 24 Nov. 1922. She was the
daughter of Muller, the artist.
62 77.B.931, p. 224, 21 Dec. 1923; H.B.33, P- 309, 26 March 1943.
63 1 B.92, p. 3, 20 July 1928.
64 77.B.94, p. 103, 24 April 1947. He died in 1958 (H.B.37, p. 130, 25 Jan.
1959).
454 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
1948.°° When Mr. E. Radford died in 1956, he had acted as butler
to the Society for twenty-eight years. ®6
Concern for the welfare of the staff was shown on numerous
occasions. Thus, when Mrs. Bullock, the cook resigned in 1929 at
the age of 78, it was decided to continue paying her wages for the
rest of her life,*”? and when Mrs. Jones, a member of the kitchen staff
retired in the same year she was given a pension.®® In 1944, when
Mrs. J. Luke, who had been cook to the Society for more than 12
years, was reported to have had a complete breakdown and to have
lost her sight, the Treasurer was instructed to take steps to free her
from financial worry,®® and in 1957 when Miss L. Thomas who had
been on the staff as a general maid for 22 years decided to retire she
was given a gratuity and a pension of £3 a week for life.?9 The Hall
Books contain many references to help given to members of staff and
their dependants when they were faced with illness and heavy
medical expenses.
The Society of Merchant Venturers has over the centuries
secured the services and won the devotion of a number of able
“servants”, but among the most remarkable and outstanding of
them all is Miss G. E. Whitaker who was taken on to the staff from
25 March 1918 by the acting Treasurer, H. Vincent Barnard.
Members of the Society were used to women on the domestic staff,
but a woman in the Treasurer’s office was a different matter. It was
no doubt considered by some to be an unhappy necessity occasioned
by the War, for A. J. Trump had been called up for military
service,’! and young male accountants were not readily available.
When W. W. Ward became Treasurer later in the year, he was
somewhat taken aback to find a woman on his staff, all the more
because, to the distress of the family, his own sister had been an
active suffragette, but he was essentially fair-minded and reserved
judgement, and, as Miss Whitaker remarks, “he soon fashioned me
into a loyal and devoted admirer, intent on doing everything in the
world to justify his growing confidence”. The Chief Clerk, Mr. Erith,
very quickly paid her the high compliment of giving her sole res-
ponsibility for keeping the accounts of the Colston charities, and in
the course of thirty-nine years’ service under three Treasurers she
came to occupy a position of special importance in the Society’s
affairs. She was heavily involved in the work in connection with the
65 H.B.34, p. 149, 29 Jan. 1948. He had been at The St. Monica Home of Rest
since 1939.
°° .B.36, p. 206, 28 Sept. 1956. He was succeeded by Mr. J. Eveleigh who had
retired from being Butler to the Lord Mayor. Mr. Kilkenny, the present Butler
came into the service of the Society in 1959.
87 7f.B.32, p. 46, 26 April 1929. 88 17.B.32, p. 54, 31 May 1929.
8° H.B.33, p. 349, 27 April 1944. 70 H.B.36, p. 262, 22 Feb. 1957.
"| H.B.30, p. 363, 22 Feb. 1918.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 455
establishment of the St. Monica Home of Rest,?2 and she became
the friend and confidante of many of the Society’s members. She
could turn her hand to most tasks from accountancy to cooking. In
the war years, she added to her many duties a special responsibility for
air-raid precautions for the old people in the Merchants’ Almshouse
in whom she had a great personal interest.?? She was quickly on the
scene after the devastating air-raids on the Hall and Almshouse and
played a major part in reassuring the almsfolk and in saving what
could be salvaged from the wreckage, for the historic treasures of the
Hall meant a great deal to her. She helped to establish the Society in
temporary headquarters in the St. Monica Home of Rest, and after
the war she was kept immensely busy with the task of making a splen-
did new home for the society in the Merchants’ House.’ The Society’s
records — many of them in her handwriting — and the comments of
numerous senior members bear witness to her ability as an adminis-
trator, and her versatility was shown by the fact that both during and
after the war she took on with great success the catering and general
housekeeping arrangements for the Hall, including most of the public
functions of the Society.7> W. W. Ward once called her “the master-
ful one”, and her ability, combined with the fact that she was a
woman, meant that there were occasional conflicts with some
members.7¢ In 1948, it was the unanimous decision of the Hall that
“the Society ought to recognise in some suitable manner the excep-
tional qualities which Miss Whitaker has shown, and her contribution
— unique in the History of the Society — to its many Branches”. Her
portrait by A. R. Middleton Todd, R.A. was presented to her “in
the expectation that eventually it shall take its place among the
portraits of the Society’s Officers in its Hall’’.”?7 She resigned in
March 1957,78 and her portrait, apart from those of members of the
royal family, is the only portrait of a woman in the Merchants’ Hall.
At the beginning of the twentieth century, the Society’s Clerk was
Jere Osborne, who had first been appointed in 1873 and who
continued to hold the office until his death in 1919.’® His portrait,
which had been painted at the request of the Society in 1916, hangs
in the present Hall.8° He was succeeded by one of his partners,
M. H. G. Vassall, who held the office until his resignation in 1938"
72 H.B.31, p. 252, 24 Oct. 1924. 73 H=.B.33, p. 133, 27 April 1939.
74 H.B.35, p. 358, 30 Oct. 1953.
75 7.B.93, p. 338, 17 Dec. 1943; p. 383, 24 Nov. 1944; H.B.34, p. 14, 30 Nov.
19453 P. 354, 29 Feb. 1950.
76 17.B.32, p. 349, 23 Dec. 1932; p. 258, 24 Feb. 1933.
77 H.B.34, pp. 198, 199, 23 July 1948; p. 210, 28 Oct. 1948; p. 318, 28 Oct. 1949.
78 H.B.96, p. 215, 25 Oct. 1956; p. 222, 26 Oct. 1956; p. 278, 22 March 1957.
79 See pp. 267-8, 451 supra; H.B.g1, p. 16, 19 Sept. 1919; p. 28, 25 Oct. 1919.
80 H/.B.30, p. 277, 29 Sept. 1916.
81 11.B.33, p. 113, 10 Nov. 1938.
456 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
and the Society chose as his successor Mr. E. J. G. Higham who was
next in seniority in Mr. Vassall’s firm.?? Mr. Higham wished to
resign in 1946 but was asked to continue for six months with the
assistance of another member of his firm, Mr. C. H. Kinnersley, who
took over as Clerk at the end of April 1947.88 He was a tower of
strength in connection with the intricate legal problems when the
Ministry of Health tried to take over the St. Monica Home of Rest
after World War II. The extensive purchase of agricultural land in
connection with the St. Monica’s Charity in the post-war years®4
naturally involved the Clerk in a vast amount of legal business, and
in 1948 the Society agreed a special scale of fees to be used in con-
nection with this work and raised the Clerk’s honorarium from £50
a year to £250 guineas.®® Mr. C. H. Kinnersley resigned on 30
September 1968 and was succeeded by the present Clerk, Mr.
S. J. D. Awdry.8¢
For managing its property in and around Bristol, the Society
employs the services of a Surveyor, and it also has a Land Steward
to look after the considerable agricultural estates for which it is
responsible, particularly in connection with the St. Monica Home
of Rest. The first man to undertake this challenging task when the
Society embarked on large-scale purchase of land was Mr. P. E.
Tyhurst. He had served in the trenches while still in his teens in the
First World War and had later been a lecturer at Cirencester
Agricultural College and Land Agent to the Bristol Waterworks
Company. Sir Foster G. Robinson, who was largely responsible for
the policy of investing in land, secured his services for the Society.
For some twenty years up to his death in 1964, he devoted his
remarkable energy and business ability to the service of the Merchant
Venturers, whose traditions he came to love deeply, and his kindness
and understanding won the devotion of the tenants on the great
estates which he managed. 8?
82 H7.B.33, p. 71, 17 Dec. 1937.
83 H.B.34, p. 71, 24 Oct. 1946; p. 106, 25 April 1947.
84 See pp. 517-8.
85 7.B.34, p. 210, 28 Oct. 1948.
86 Hf.B.4o, p. 61, 25 July 1968.
87 In 1919, the Surveyor, W. S. Paul, retired after nearly 40 years service. He
was followed by Mr. R. C. James and in 1947 by Mr. W. S. Goodbody, who died
suddenly in 1962 (H.B.go, p. 308, 21 Dec. 1917; p. 350, 25 Jan. 1918; H.B.34, p.
126, 30 Oct. 1947; H.B.38, p. 133, 25 May 1962). Mr. Goodbody was succeeded
by the present Surveyor, Mr. C. D. Franklin. In 1964, the Master reported the
death of the Land Steward, Mr. P. E. Tyhurst, who had served the Society for
20 years and who had been heavily involved in the purchase of estates after World
War II (H.B.99, p. 1, 11 Sept. 1964). A printed copy of the Address given by the
Master, Mr. J. Britton, at Mr. Tyhurst’s Memorial Service in Bristol Cathedral on
12 Sept. 1964, is preserved in the Society’s archives. Mr. Tyhurst was succeeded by
the present Land Steward, Mr. H. O. C. Carter-Jonas.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 457
In the first forty years of the twentieth century, the Society
continued to conduct its business in the Hall in King Street on the
site it had owned since the mid-sixteenth century. From time to
time, relatively large sums had to be spent on the maintenance and
decoration of what was basically an eighteenth-century building.
In 1907, for example, it was found that the joists of the floors of the
Banqueting Hall and the Reception Room were rotten, and about
£900 was spent on new oak floors with steel girders.** In 1920, an
estimate of £915 was accepted for a new roof,®® and six years later,
work on the balustrade outside the Hall was estimated to cost about
£350.°° In the nineteen-thirties, the last decade of the Hall’s exis-
tence, there was considerable expenditure. In 1931, for example,
£542 was spent on the King Street exterior; £363 on making a
strong room for books at the north-west end of the Marine Room;
£100 on a urinal; £297 on a Lady’s Cloakroom, and £41 on a
women servants’ cloakroom.®! The next year, a tender of £1,260
was accepted for restoring the Marsh Street frontage, £195 for
carving work and £132 for supporters on the piers to the main
entrance gate.®? Decorations to the Banqueting Hall and With-
drawing Room cost over £1,000 in 1934,°* and next year the estimate
for work on the Reception Room and vestibule amounted to
£1,425.°4
It was also necessary to adapt the Hall to the needs of the modern
world. A sub-committee looked into the matter of ventilation and
lighting in 1903 and considered, among other things, whether “the
chandeliers could, without injury or undue risk, be adapted for
electric lighting purposes”. Its recommendations resulted in the
installation of electric light throughout the Hall.®5 In 1932, an inter-
communication telephone system was installed at a cost of £16 5s.°°
and in 1936 a refrigerator was bought for £73.°”
There were continual additions to the treasures which had been
accumulated over the centuries as a result of giftsand of purchases, by
the Society. Only a few of these can be noted. In 1909, for example,
Miss Tyndall presented two drawings of the eighteenth-century
88 H.B.29, p. 232, 25 Jan. 1907; p. 237, 4 Feb. 1907; p. 238, 22 Feb. 1907; p.
249, 22 March 1907. It was fortunate that the Treasurer, Percy Liston King, had
been in the timber trade.
89 H.B.31, p. 66, 25 June 1920.
90 7.B.31, p. 346, 25 June 1926.
91 77,B.92, p. 131, 29 Jan. 1931; p. 145, 30 April 1931; p. 154, 29 May 1931.
92 H.B.92, p. 207, 28 April 1932; p. 222, 17 June 1932.
93 77.B.32, p. 304, 25 Jan. 1934; p. 315, 22 March 1934.
94 H.B.32, p. 365, 2 May 1935.
°5 H.B.29, p. 35, 27 Feb. 1903; p. 40, 27 March 1903; pp. 52, 53, 54, 24 July
19033 p. 59, 25 July 1903.
96 17.B.32, p. 231, 30 Sept. 1932.
97 H.B.33, p. 5, 29 May 1936.
458 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
privateers the Duke and Duchess of Bedford;®* in 1916 William D. Fripp
gave the Society a relic of Edward Colston and a portion of the brass
ornaments taken, from the coffin at All Saints;®® in 1922 George A.
Wills presented a standing cup in honour of the Prince of Wales’
visit,*°° and in 1929 the London Armourers and Brasiers Company
gave a beautiful silver cup.1% In the same year Claude B. Fry
donated a Chippendale grandfather clock reputed to have been in
the possession of Captain Cook when he circumnavigated the
world.1°? In 1926, an Art sub-Committee was set up, and this gave
advice on the decoration of the Hall and had a small annual grant
for making purchases.!°8 In 1929, for example, it spent £80 on 10
prints of Bristol by Nicholas Pocock,!®4 and 100 guineas was spent
next year at the sale of the books of the late Alderman F. F. Fox.15
In the nineteen-thirties, Victoriana was out of fashion, and it was
presumably for this reason that it recommended the disposal of
the copies of Winterhalter’s portraits of Victoria and Albert, which
the Society had been at such pains to acquire in the nineteenth
century.1°6
The Society also showed from time to time interest in its own
history and concern for the preservation of its records. In 1901, it
purchased 100 copies of Latimer’s history of the Society,!°? and in
1918 it set up a sub-committee to look into the books, papers and
records of the Society and to advise how best they could be brought
to the knowledge of the members of the Hall.1°* In 1922, it decided
to print Mr. C. Cyril Clarke’s lecture dealing with the history of the
Society,!°® and in 1931, Professor Mowat of the University of Bristol
was asked to write a continuation of Latimer’s history of the
Merchant Venturers, which had been published in 1903.19 In the
same year a new strong room was made for storage of the Society’s
books and plate.41 |
As the danger of war came nearer in 1939, the Society naturally
took what steps it could to protect the Hall and almshouse against
air-raids. In January Professor J. F. Baker advised it to provide
wooden shutters for the cellars as a protection against gas and to
acquire sand and appliances to deal with incendiary bombs.112 In
88 77.B.29, p. 362, 28 May 1909. ®® Hf.B.30, p. 291, 22 Dec. 1916.
100 #7,.B.31, p. 138, 27 Jan. 1922. 101 77,B.32, p. 37, 22 Feb. 1929.
102 7.B.32, p. 41, 22 March 1929. 103 77,B.31, p. 370, 17 Dec. 1926.
104 77.B.32, Pp. 34, 25 Jan. 1929. 105 77,.B.32, p. 93, 28 Feb. 1930.
106 H.B.32, p. 354, 24 Jan. 1935. The portraits were presented to Colston’s Boys
School but were returned to the Society in 1958 and now hang in the Hall (H.B.
32, p. 369, 31 May 1935; H.B.37, p. 98, 24 July 1958).
107 H.B.28, p. 436, 20 Dec. 1901. 108 77,B.30, p. 365, 22 March 1918.
109 77,.B.31, p. 138, 27 Jan. 1922.
110 #7.B.32, p. 169, 25 Sept. 1931. This is in typescript in the Society’s archives,
but it was not published.
111 77,B.32, p. 131, 29 Jan. 1931. 112 HT.B.33, p. 119, 25 Jan. 1939.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 459
April, the Treasurer reported to the Standing Committee that the
male staff of the Hall had completed a fire-fighting course, that two
sets of the equipment officially recommended had been purchased,
that his secretary, Miss Whitaker, had nearly completed an anti-gas
course, to be followed by a first-aid course. She would be responsible
for the almshouse and immediate neighbourhood. Two kitchens in
the Hall had been made gas-proof for the use of the almsfolk and
hall staff, and 10 tons of sand and 400 sandbags had been bought for
protecting the windows. Easy access would be provided for the alms-
folk.118 War came on 3 September 1939, and the Hall made
emergency regulations relating to its meetings and authorised the
First Assistant, Mr. H. Sommerville Gunn, to act during the absence
of the Master on government service.1!* The task of storing the Hall
valuables and the sandbagging and equipping the Refuge Rooms
had already been completed by the staff in the fortnight before the
outbreak of war, largely out of office hours.1"5 Bristol was at this time
considered to be a relatively safe area, but as a precaution wooden
cases were made in which the chandeliers could be packed and stored
away within 48 hours, and by the end of May the Treasurer
reported that they had been dismantled and stored.!17 Permission
was given to neighbouring firms to erect an air-raid shelter in the
Hall garden.
The first air-raid affecting the Hall and Almshouse was on the
night of Monday 2 December 1940. Extensive damage was done to
the Hall by high explosives, and the Almshouse suffered from blast
and flying debris. The roadways were strewn with broken glass and
fallen masonry, and no one was allowed into the city, but Miss
Whitaker, who had been on duty that night as Warden in her own
home area, managed to persuade a doctor friend to drive her to the
scene, and his car bearing the word “‘Doctor’ was allowed through.
The main entrance, the reception room and the vestibule were a
heap of rubble and twisted wires, but she climed over the blocks of.
masonry and rubble and did what she could to comfort the old
people in the air-raid shelters under the Hall. The bomb had gone
right through the vestibule to the strong room at the end of the
Marine Room. The strong room contained the silver, plate and
archives, including the charters. Next morning, it was necessary to
get an acetelyne welder to burn through the twisted steel door and
grill to the strong room, and for some days after that the work went
on of removing everything that was left from the wreck. On 8
December, the Treasurer reported to a meeting of the Standing
Committee held at Goldney House, Clifton, on the steps taken to
113 17.B.93, p. 133, 27 April 1939. 114 77,B.99, p. 149, 14 Sept. 1939.
115 #7,B.33, p. 168, 24 Nov. 1939. 116 77. B.93, p. 179, 24 Feb. 1940.
117 H.B.93, p. 193, 31 May 1940; p. 196, 28 June 1940.
460 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
deal with the situation. He had retained two rooms in the Nurses’
Home, St. Monica’s, for the conduct of business for the time being.
With cooperation of the Town Clerk and the City Archivist, Miss
E. Ralph, the most important records, the Masters’ Jewel and the
Dulverton salvers had been stored in the tunnel of the old Port and
Pier Railway, Hotwells. The plate had been put in a strong room in
Barclay’s Bank, Corn Street; the deeds of the property and estates
were in the strong room of Barclay’s Bank, Henleaze Road, and by
the kindness of Mr. Charles S. Clarke, some of the antique tables
and chairs of the Society’s had been taken to Tracy Park, Wick.
_ Negotiations were going on for the acquisition of part of Butleigh
Court, near Glastonbury, for storing furniture, secondary archives
and modern records. The Standing Committee decided to make
every effort to preserve the Hall and the Surveyor was asked to take
the necessary steps to have recognised first-aid repairs carried out.118
The Surveyor’s report on the damage resulting from the air-raid
showed that about half the Marsh Street frontage of the Hall was
unsafe and would have to be pulled down, that the ground floor
general office would require demolition, that the Reception Room
and vestibule had practically disappeared, that the Treasurer’s
Room, the Housekeeper’s Room and the Committee Room were so
badly damaged that they would also have to be demolished, but that
it might be possible to save the Withdrawing Room and the
Banqueting Room. The kitchen and sculleries had suffered only
slight damage, and the cellars, which housed the Society’s very
valuable store of wine, had only a few cracks.!9
The Hall was hit again on 16 March 1941, and the Surveyor
reported that it now seemed impossible to save the remaining part
of the structure. He was asked to arrange for the removal and protec-
tion of the carvings, doors, coat of arms, and mantelpieces and
anything which could be saved, and the Treasurer was instructed to
make arrangements for the removal and safe-keeping of the wine.12°
The coat of arms which had been fixed over the fireplace in the
Banqueting Hall had been scattered all over the room and most of
the pieces had been laboriously assembled by Miss Whitaker and
Mr. E. W. F. Barwick, foreman of the contractors John Perkins and
Sons. With the help of the Society’s housemaid, Miss L. E. Thomas
and the butler, Mr. Radford, they also packed away hundreds of
pieces of china and porcelain, glass and other equipment. A lot of
118 H.B.33, p. 217, 8 Dec. 1940. I am indebted to Miss G. E. Whitaker for a first-
hand account of the effects of the raid. The Master, E. F. Eberle, visited the scene
on the Monday morning, and his notes on what he saw are among the Society’s
archives. On 29 Jan. 1941 the Treasurer reported that the furniture and other
effects were now stored in Butleigh Court.
11° 77. B.33, pp. 220 ff., 20 Dec. 1940.
120 F.B.33, p. 232, 28 March 1941.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 461
the cutlery had already disappeared, possibly as a result of looting.”
There was further damage to the Hall on 14 May 1941 and there
was also serious damage to the Almshouse.!22 The war-damage
claim for furniture, pictures and chattels lost as a result of enemy
action was finally settled at £3,552 18s. 11d.!28 The Hall had been
damaged beyond hope of repair, and until a decision could be made
about the future, the Society continued to conduct its business in
the accommodation made available to it by the Council of the St.
Monica Home of Rest.
The question of what was to be done in tlie future was influenced
to some extent by the fact that the City was anxious to acquire part
of the site of the Hall and the Almshouse for road-widening and for
making a roundabout. This matter had in fact been raised by the
City before the war, but no action had been taken.'*4 In July 1941,
the City Engineer informed the Treasurer that part of the site would
probably be required and asked whether the Society intended to
rebuild the Hall on its old site. At that stage, the Society thought it
probably would want to rebuild, but it was willing to negotiate over
the land required by the City.125 As a result of the negotiations, the
Society eventually agreed to sell the Corporation 604 square yards
of its own land for £9,060 and 76 square yards of the almshouse land
for £1,140.126 Although the Society had lost part of its site in this
way, it decided to give itself more room if it wished to rebuild in the
future by buying from Messrs. McArthur & Co. their site and
buildings in Marsh Street adjoining the Hall for £15,000.*”
When the war ended, the Society decided to look for a temporary
home pending a final decision about rebuilding, and it purchased
for £4,250 Fern House, Clifton Down, for use as a temporary Hall
which was to be known as the Merchants’ House. Licences and
planning permission were obtained for repairs costing £875, and
the temporary hall was occupied from 1 November 1945.*?*
121 Again, I am indebted to Miss Whitaker for these details. The wine was
stored partly in St. Monica’s, partly in Mr. C. S. Clarke’s cellars at Tracy Park and
partly in the cellars of Mr. Alfred Robinson at Backwell (H.B.33, f. 233, 23 April
1941). The salvaged coat of arms is now preserved in the new Merchants’ Hall.
122 H.B.93, pp. 237, 238, 30 May 1941.
123 77.B.33, p. 276, 26 June 1942.
124 1 B.32, p. 417, 30 April 1936.
125 HB.93, p. 242, 23 July 1941; p. 246, 26 Sept. 1941.
126 77 B.933, pp. 261 ff., 28 Jan. 1942; p. 269, 27 March 1942; p. 278, 29 July
1942; p. 284, 25 Sept. 1942; p. 286, 28 Oct. 1942; p. 299, 27 Jan. 1943; p. 308, 26
March 1943; p. 311, 28 April 1943; p. 327, 28 Oct. 19433 P- 335, 26 Nov. 1943.
127 H.B.99, p. 363, 29 Sept. 1944; Pp. 370, 27 Oct. 19445 p. 386, 29 Dec. 1944.
McArthurs were to complete the contract five years after the end of the war unless
they acquired other accommodation earlier.
128 #.B.93, p. 408, 25 May 19453 p- 410, 29 June 19453 p- 414, 26 July 1945;
H.B.34; p- 4, 25 Oct. 1945.
462 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
A further complication then arose because the City was anxious
to obtain by compulsory purchase the site of the Hall and the adjoin-
ing property which the Society had contracted to buy from
McArthur & Co. The Society objected to the compulsory purchase
order, and as a result of a public enquiry in June 1946, the Ministry
exempted the Society’s property from the order.12°
Owing to a number of complicating problems, it was some years
before the Society made its final decision as to whether or not to
rebuild the Hall on its old site in the centre of Bristol. Meanwhile,
it let the Hall wall for advertising, with a provision that no advertise-
ment for patent medicines was to be displayed.12° In 1948, it let the
site for a time to the Pullman Road Refreshment Car Company
with permission to station a Pullman refreshment car there, provided
the lay-out was attractive,!8! and two years later the Treasurer was
asked to arrange with the advertising agency to discontinue an
advertisement for Nicholson’s gin and replace it with one for
Wrigley’s chewing gum.132
As late as January 1950, the Society expressed its intention of
retaining the site of the old Hall in the hope of possible rebuilding,134
but it had in some degree at least prejudged the issue by acquiring
in January 1949 for £9,200 Auckland House, Clifton Down, which
adjoined the Merchants’ House.14 Plans were immediately made to
convert the drawing-rooms of the two houses into one room, and the
work was completed by the end of September at a cost of £850.135
In December 1949, plans were approved for making the Committee
Room at the back large enough for the whole Hall at a cost of £300
and in 1951 approval was given to plans for making one big reception
room at the back of the two houses.136
Meanwhile, negotiations were going on with the War Damage
Commissioners over the question of compensation. There was a
possibility of either recovering “‘the cost of work’? if the Hall were
rebuilt, or of accepting a “value payment”? if it were not. There was
129 H.B.34, p. 38, 29 March 1946; p. 49, 31 May 1946; p. 56, 28 June 1946; p.
Qt, 30 Jan. 1947.
180 H.B.34, p. 49, 31 May 1946.
131 77.B.34, p. 205, 23 Sept. 1948.
182 77,.B.34, p. 355, 24 Feb. 1950.
188 77,.B.34, p. 352, 27 Jan. 1950.
134 Auckland House was first offered to the Society by one of its members, Mr.
J. H. Perks, in April 1948 but there were long and embarrassing negotiations over
the price (H.B.34, p. 168, 29 April 1948; p. 174, 30 April 1948; p. 184, 25 June
1948; p. 213, 28 Oct. 1948; pp. 228, 229, 25 Nov. 1948; p. 239, 16 Dec. 1948; p.
248, 27 Jan. 1949).
78° H.B.34, p. 258, 25 Feb. 1949; p. 285, 27 May 1949; pp. 306, 307, 30 Sept.
1949.
" _ H1.B.34, p. 338, 16 Dec. 1949; p. 345, 26 Jan. 1950; H.B.35, pp. 57, 58, 23
eb. 1951.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 463
also a possibility that the site value would be increased if the site of
the Merchants’ Almshouse could be included along with that of the
Hall.137 There was uncertainty about how “the value” would be
calculated by the Commissioners who at one stage worked on the
wrong basis and put “‘the value” at £70,000. After lengthy negotia-
tions and some hard bargaining, the Commissioners agreed to a
payment of £32,600, and by December 1955 the money had been
paid to the Society.188 A Hall at which 25 members were present
had already agreed in October 1955 that the Merchants’ House
should be the permanent home of the Society. Although the former
Hall had been in the ownership of the Society for four hundred years,
the question of disposal of the site was to be decided not on sentiment
but on what was most financially advantageous. The Standing
Committee was to consider what should be done.**°
It was, of course, a matter of great regret to some members that
the Society did not rebuild the Hall on the site in the heart of Bristol
which it had occupied from its foundation, but those who argued that
financial considerations should overrule sentiment undoubtedly had
a case, for there would have been many problems if it had been
decided to rebuild.
Plans for development of the site were now considered and
eventually in February 1957 the Hall agreed to dispose of it to the
Northern Assurance Company for £17,200.14°
Meanwhile, work had continued in order to make Auckland
House and Fern House into the new Merchants’ Hall. Licence was
obtained early in 1953 for removing the dividing wall between the
two buildings and providing a new central staircase and landing at
a cost of over £5,000,24! and later in the year major reconstruction,
heating and decoration, including a new Committee Room, Strong
Room and Ladies’ Cloakroom, cost nearly £15,000.14? In 1959,
there was discussion about enlarging the Banqueting Hall. The old
Hall could seat 84 guests at the annual banquet and up to 120 on
Charter Day, but the present one would take only 60. There were
plans to spend up to £20,000 on alterations, but these were modified
137 For the Almshouse, see pp. 552-4.
188 For these long-drawn-out negotiations, see H.B.34, p. 390, 23 June 1950;
H.B.35, pp. 31 ff., 24 Nov. 1950; p. 52, 26 Jan. 1951; p. 56, 23 Feb. 19515 p. 72,
26 April 1951; pp. 219, 220, 24 July 1952; p. 282, 29 Jan. 1953; Pp. 319, 320, 26
June 1953; p. 327, 23 July 19533 p. 332, 24 July 1953; H.B.36, p. 29, 28 Oct. 1954;
pp. 115 ff., 30 Sept. 1955; p. 123, 27 Oct. 1955; pp. 126 ff., 28 Oct. 1955; p. 144,
16 Dec. 1955.
189 77,B.96, 126 ff., 28 Oct. 1955.
140 77,.B.36, p. 146, 16 Dec. 1955; p. 210, 28 Sept. 1956; p. 234, 30 Nov. 1956;
pp. 243, 244, 14 Dec. 1956; p. 258, 25 Jan. 1957; pp. 271, 272, 22 Feb. 1957.
141 77,B.35, p. 275, 29 Jan. 19533 P- 292, 27 Feb. 1953; Pp. 304, 305, 23 April
1953-
142 17.B.95 p. 344, 29 Oct. 19533 p. 364, 30 Oct. 1953.
464 _ The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
by the Finance Committee and less extensive changes were made
costing about £11,000.148 In 1963, it was necessary to repair the
roof and defective stonework at a cost of over £5,000,!44 and decora-
tions and repairs at the end of 1964 amounted to over £1,500. Dry
rot was discovered on the first floor in 1967, and the estimate for
dealing with this was approximately £1,500.145 In addition to these
large items, it has been necessary to expend a considerable amount
more in decorations and repairs, but the result has been the creation
of a remarkably interesting building to replace the historic Hall
destroyed in World War II. It is important to note that the Hall is
not a club used by members but an office for the administration of
very large charitable funds for which the Society is trustee and a
place for preserving the Society’s records and the priceless treasures
of historic interest which it has acquired over the centuries. The
annual banquet and the Charter Day meetings and celebrations are
the aspects of the Society which tend to attract public attention,
but the day-to-day work of the Treasurer and his staff, the twice
monthly meeting of the Standing Committee and the quarterly
meetings of the whole Hall are of much greater significance.
The Hall has continued to receive gifts from its members. These
include a saddle cloth and trappings used by Queen Elizabeth I
during her visit to Bristol in 1574, presented in 1946 by Mr. F. G.
Robinson,'*6 and a photograph of Winston Churchill in the uniform
of the 4th Hussars autographed with the words ‘‘From the Special
Correspondent of the Morning Post, Nile Expeditionary Force
1898” presented by the late Hon. W. R. S. Bathurst.147
The Society’s splendid collection of records has through’ the
centuries not always received the attention it deserves, and until the
years after World War II there was a certain hesitation about making
it readily available to those engaged in historical research. In 1958,
the charters, ordinances and other records which had been stored in
the City repository in the tunnel under Clifton Down were brought
back to the new Hall,!48 and in the years that followed steps were
taken to provide adequate storage space and to display some of the
documents.!4° In 1969, as a result of a report from the late Mr. R. H.
Brown on the classification of the Society’s books and the preserva-
148 H.B.37, p. 147, 15 April 1959; p. 169, 26 June 1959; p. 175, 16 July 1959;
p. 181, 23 July 1957; p. 203, 29 Oct. 1959.
144 77,.B.38, p. 191, 29 March 1963; p. 193, 5 April 1963; p. 263, 30 Jan. 1964.
145 7.B.40, p. 5, 29 Sept. 1967; p. 15, 24 Nov. 1967; p. 19, 29 Dec. 1967; p. 29,
23 Feb. 1968.
146 77.B.34, p. 87, 20 Dec. 1946.
147 77.B.39, p. 127, 25 Feb. 1966.
148 77.B.37, p. 101, 25 July 1958.
149 77.B.37, pp. 118, 119, 28 Nov. 1958; p. 123, 19 Dec. 1958; p. 133, 30 Jan.
1959; P- 139, 27 Feb. 1959; p. 230, 28 Jan. 1960.
Twentieth-Century Membership, Organisation, Finance 465
tion of its records, it was decided to give special attention to the
collection of Bristoliana and to microfilm the Hall Books.15° The
records are now in process of being classified and catalogued by a
professional archivist, Miss Elizabeth Ralph.15!
For a number of reasons, it is not possible here to make a detailed
examination of the finances of the Society and of the various trust
funds which it administers in the twentieth century, and that task
must be left to a future historian. Nevertheless, one or two general
comments can be made.
Obviously, the most dramatic development in the twentieth
century was the acceptance by the Society in 1922 of the trusteeship
for the St. Monica Home of Rest established by Henry Herbert
Wills.15? In addition to the property on which the Home was to be
built, the Society became responsible for the management of the
endowments which were in the form of shares with a nominal value
of over £1,250,000. This was a trust on a scale which vastly exceeded
anything which the Society had handled before, and in the next fifty
years the management of the trust and the investment of its resources
has been a major concern. After World War II, a considerable
proportion of the resources were invested in agricultural estates, but
large sums were invested in shares, and this involved continual
review of the stock market to obtain the best return for the charity.
-In 1967, the total amount invested by the Society in shares for its
various charitable trusts and for its own corporate funds was esti-
mated to be worth over £2,750,000,/5* and the capital value of the
trust funds was probably somewhere between £7,000,000 and
£9,000,000.
The Society’s own corporate funds are kept quite separate from
the very large charitable trusts which it manages. The Society has
in the course of the century made a number of considerable capital
gains by disposing of some of its property in Bristol and elsewhere.
It has invested on occasions in agricultural land near Bristol and in
building development in Redland and Stapleton, and it holds a
considerable sum in various kinds of shares.154 Both its capital and
its income have increased considerably since 1900, but so also have
its expenses, and a high proportion of its income is devoted to educa-
tional and charitable activities of all kinds. It is not a wealthy
corporation, and the belief that it is very rich arises very lagely from
the fact that it holds great sums in trust for various charities.
150 77.B.40, pp. 126 ff., 9 May 1969.
151 T should like to express my gratitude to Dr. Helen Mellor who made a classi-
fied list of the records when I first undertook this work.
152 See pp. 513-9.
153 Report of Investment Sub-Committee, 20 Nov. 1967.
154 See pp. 469-71.
CHAPTER 24
The Society and its Property in the
Twentieth Century
THE Society continued to be concerned with property both in its
own right and as a trustee for numerous charities, and, as has been
noted elsewhere, in the course of the twentieth century it became
responsible for purchasing and managing extensive landed estates on
a very much larger scale than ever before in its history.’ Its own
property was mainly, although not exclusively, in the City of Bristol.
It is not possible here to examine in detail all that this involved, but
some aspects can be considered.
The Society was able to exercise a measure of control over plan-
ning and development in relation to land and buildings for which it
was ground landlord and on which it had placed restrictive coven-
ants. Structural alterations such as putting in dormer windows or
making additions to existing buildings had to receive its approval, as
did changes of use, such as converting private houses into flats, hotels
or business premises. When considering applications, the Society
normally took into account the views of the owners of adjoining
property and the effect on the district as a whole. Permission to
carry out improvements was often subject to an increase in ground
rent. A few illustrations can be given from the many to be found in
the Hall Books. When in 1903 Dr. Elliott of 3, Beaufort Road built
a pantry at the back of his house, his neighbour, the Rev. A. C.
Macpherson, objected. The Society dealt with the difficulty by
telling Dr. Elliott to put up a trellis with climbing creeper.” ‘The
following year, the residents of Richmond Hill complained that
Messrs. Newbery and Spindler were carrying on their upholstery
business at No. 5 to the annoyance of others. The Society took
counsel’s opinion, which was that this was a breach of covenant,
and Newbery and Spindler agreed to stop the business and vacate
the premises.? Four years later, the Docks Committee was consider-
ing making the Foreign Cattle Lairs, which it leased from the Society,
into a public abattoir, but the Society refused to allow it to do so.*
When the owner of 2, Oakfield Road wanted to convert the house into
1 See pp. 517-8.
2 H.B.29, p. 48, 26 June 1903.
3 H.B.29, p. 101, 15 July 1904; p. 121, 23 Sept. 1904.
4 H.B.29, p. 314, 24 July 1908.
The Society and its Property, Twentieth Century 467
flats, he was required to pay a ground rent of £40 instead of £35
and to meet the legal costs.5 In 1920, it was reported to the Society
that there was a proposal to instal a cinema in the Spa Hotel. The
Treasurer was instructed to make enquiries and, if necessary, to tell
the owners that they needed the Society’s consent. When a request
was received in 1953 that 26, Victoria Square might be turned into
a private hotel, permission was granted on condition that no unsuit-
able signs were put up and that the lessee would agree to waive the
Society’s obligation under the lease to upkeep Victoria Square
Garden.’
The coming of the motor car and wireless created some problems.
As early as 1909, a tenant of 8 York Buildings complained about
being disturbed late at night by drivers of motor cars employed by
the Tramway Company, which occupied some stables owned by the
Society. The Tramway Company was asked to deal with the
complaint.§ In 1920, Dr. Lansdown of 39, Oakfield Road asked
permission to erect “‘a Motor House” in his back garden. He was
allowed to do so, provided the owners of the adjoining houses did
not object.® There were many similar applications in the following
years, and permission was usually given provided the neighbours
did not object and provided the garage was for the use of the
occupant. On the other hand, when the Mother Superior of the
Convent in 5, Litfield Place asked to be allowed to erect a garage at
the back “‘for Trade purposes”, consent was refused.!® Nor was there
much sympathy initially for those who wanted to put up elaborate
wireless aerials. In 1925, the Hall Book records ‘‘An application
from Mr. Teasdale of 32, Richmond Terrace for permission to attach
a wire in connection with his wireless installation to a tree in the
Pleasure Ground.” He was not allowed to do so." Generally speak-
ing, the Society wanted to keep up the tone of the neighbourhood.
Thus, when the lessee of 28, Victoria Square put up “‘an objection-
able advertisement Board’’, he was told to remove it.}?
Fluctuations in the economy in the twentieth century and changes
in the relative values of urban and agricultural land have naturally
had their effect on the Society’s policy. After World War I, for
example, the Hall disposed of the estates in Somerset which it held
either as trustee for the Colston Charity or in its own right,!? and it
5 H.B.30, p. 404, 29 Nov. 1918. ® H.B.31, p. 44, 30 Jan. 1920.
7 H.B.35, P. 339, 25 Sept. 1953. See p. 341.
8 H.B.29, p. 364, 18 June 1909. ® H.B.31, p. 54, 26 March 1920.
10 H.B.31, p. 211, 28 Sept. 1923.
11 7f.B.31, p. 282, 3 March 1925; see also H.B.31, p. 305, 25 Sept. 1925.
12 H.B.31, p. 339, 30 April 1926. There are other examples in the Hall Books.
13 H.B.30, p. 431, 25 April 1919; H.B.31, p. 7, 27 June 1919; p. 9, 25 July 1919;
p. 18, 19 Sept. 1919; p. 22, 17 Oct. 1919; p. 37, 28 Nov. 1919.
468 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
also sold some of its property in Hotwells.14 A considerable part of
the proceeds of the Somerset sales was put into government stock.15
Agricultural land was not an attractive investment between the
wars, but just before World War II the Society decided to make a
modest investment by buying a farm of 89 acres known as Bromley
Farm at Stanton Drew in North Somerset.!* After World War II,
it put a very considerable proportion of the capital of the St.
Monica Home into agricultural estates,1” but in recent years it sold
some of the estates and invested the proceeds in urban property.1§
On a number of occasions, it disposed of property in order to
meet the needs of the city planners. Thus, in 1948 it agreed to sell to
the Corporation over an acre of land known as Mead Close, Clifton
Vale, which the City wanted to preserve as an open space;!® in 1951,
when the Corporation was engaged in slum clearance and redevelop-
ment in Jacob’s Wells Road, the Society sold its ground rents of
£107 a year arising from Bristol Industrial Dwellings;?° in 1953, it
agreed to sell the Corporation 1, 2 and 3 Somerset Cottages for
£2,290;"1 and ten years later, in connection with the Cumberland
Basin development, the Corporation bought for £3,000 land which
it had leased from the Society since 1853? There were, too, other
sales to private developers. In 1961, for example, the block of flats
known as Clifton Heights was built on Park Place from which the
Society was receiving £300 per annum fee farm rent,*® and next
year Maple’s furniture shop was built on land from which the
Society received ground rents of £300.74
The Society had in the nineteenth century created a very large
number of ground rents, and these had seemed at the time a very
satisfactory investment, but a fixed return of this kind was not
nearly so attractive in periods of rising prices, and in the early nine-
teen-sixties, the Society was very willing to dispose of ground rents
at eighteen to twenty years’ purchase. Ground rents worth £1,465
in Hotwells were sold in 1962.25 By 1966, the Society was prepared
14 H.B.31, pp. 7 ff., 27 June 1919. The sale of some of its property in St. Vincent’s
Place, the Colonnade, Brunswick Place, Charles Place and Elliott’s Buildings
realised c. £2,500.
158 H.B.31, p. 12, 25 July 1919 reports the investment of £50,000 on behalf of
the Charity and £28,000 on behalf of the Society.
16 H.B.33, p. 144, 19 July 1939. 17 See pp. 517-8.
18 See p. 518.
19 H.B.34, p. 185, 25 June 1948. It was agreed that 60 per cent of the purchase
price of £1,350 should go to the Society and 40 per cent to the lessee.
20 H.B.35, p. 111, 28 Sept. 1951; p. 146, 21 Dec. 1951.
21 Hf.B.35, p. 205, 27 June 1953.
22 1f.B.38, p. 189, 29 March 1963.
23 H.B.38, p. 8, 25 Nov. 1960.
24 H7.B.38, p. 35, 30 March 1961.
25 H.B.38, p. 80, 20 Oct. 1961; p. 153, 25 Oct. 1962.
The Society and its Property, Twentieth Century 469
to sell all its ground rents by auction and was willing to accept 104
to 12 years’ purchase. The next year, it disposed of ground rents
worth £4,200 per annum for £39,500 to Bristol Corporation
Superannuation Fund.?6
Like other property-owners, the Society was faced with the
problem of rising costs of maintenance and the difficulty of increasing
rents to meet them, particularly when it was responsible for upkeep
and repairs. To take but one example, in 1951 the Surveyor reported
that Prince’s Buildings, Clifton, were in a bad state and that to do
even the essential work would absorb the whole of the rents. On the
other hand, the Hall felt that “the existence of these buildings in a
bad state of repair did not enhance the Society’s reputation as
landlord”. It was eventually decided to re-render the whole of the
outside at a cost of £2,186 18s., but there were difficulties about
increasing rents, particularly as some of the lessees were old people.
Distressing letters were received from some of them, and the Society
did what it could to give sympathetic treatment to those who were
the victims of economic change.?? A problem of a rather different
kind arose in connection with the landlord’s obligation for the upkeep
of Victoria Square Garden, but this will be considered later.28
On a number of occasions, the Society continued the policy of
developing its land by granting building leases and creating ground
rents. Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, it dealt in
this way with the old Bonding Yard at Hotwells, and Oldfield
Terrace, Christina Terrace, Sandford Road and Britannia Buildings
were built on the land.?®
Another development was in Stapleton on land which the Society
had purchased in its own right in the nineteenth century at the same
time as the Colston Trust had acquired land for the new school.?°
As early as 1906, Mr. Paul, the Surveyor, had been instructed to
prepare a scheme for development, but nothing came of this, and
the land continued.to be let for agricultural purposes or for the use
of the school.*! In 1917, Bristol Corporation tried unsuccessfully to
acquire some of the land for artisans’ dwellings,®? and- next year it
took part of it, which was intended for the future use of the school,
26 #1.B.39, p. 142, 27 May 1966; p. 146, 24 June 1966; p. 158, 30 Sept. 1966; p.
188, 24 Feb. 1967; p. 202, 26 May 1967; H.B.40, p. 2, 25 August 1967; p. 5, 29
Sept. 1967.
37 HB. 35, p. 118, 25 Oct. 1951; pp. 139 ff., pp. 174, 181, 28 March 1952; p. 192,
24 April 1952.
38 See pp. 572-4.
2° H.B.29, p. 47, 22 May 1903; p. 129, 31 March 1905; p. 1 52, 29 Sept. 1905; p.
172, 22 Dec. 1905; p. 184, 30 March 1906; and numerous other entries in the Hall
Books
30 See p. 371.
31 H.B.29, p. 201, 27 July 1906; p. 238, 22 Feb. 1907.
33 77.B.30, p. 331, 26 Oct. 1917.
470 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
for allotments.®? In 1934, the Society decided to develop the land
still used as allotments, and in the following years building leases
were granted and ground rents created on a considerable part of the
property. Welsford Road and Welsford Avenue, Stapleton, were
named after William Welsford Ward; Averay Road after Averay
N. Jones, a Senior Commoner; Croft Road after Richard Croft
Jones, the Society’s Surveyor, and Rowland Avenue after Charles
Rowland, managing director of Stone’s the builders.24 The
Merchants’ Arms was formally opened on 30 May 1938.35 The
Stapleton site had not been fully developed when war came, and at
the end of the war part of it was leased to the Corporation for tem-
porary houses. Development was resumed by the Society and by
Stone’s in 1947 and it went on until 1953.°”
Another development was in Redland Green. This was carried
out not for the Society itself but for the Colston Trust. In 1919, the
Board of Education had approved the purchase for £6,500 of 33
acres bounded by Cranbrook Road, Cairns Road, Redland Court
Road and Redland Green, including farm buildings on part of the
estate.38 In 1927, the Surveyor was instructed to prepare a layout
for building.?* The plans included houses in Redland Court Road,
Cranbrook Road and in a new road to be known as Kersteman Road
in honour of Mervyn Kersteman King who had first joined the
Society in 1866 and who had been offered the Mastership for the
second time in 1925 when he celebrated his eightieth birthday. It
was not, however, until 1931 that development began. In that year
the Real Property Committee reported that the land had been
divided into building plots and that arrangements had been made
to build houses in Redland Court Road worth £900, in Cranbrook
Road £800 and in Kersteman Road £750 each. The houses were
subject to ground rent and the Society was to approve the plans and
control the design.4° The Hall Books for the next three years show
33 1.B.30, p. 364, 22 March 1918; p. 371, 26 April 1918. The land was taken
under the Cultivation of Lands Order of 1917. The Society protested against “such
an arbitrary proceeding”, but the matter was settled by compromise.
34 H.B.32, p. 304, 25 Jan. 1934; p. 373, 28 June 19353 p. 355, 2 Aug. 1935, and
numerous other references to the sealing of individual leases. See H.B.32, p. 355,
24 Jan. 1935 for the naming of the roads.
35 H.B.33, p. 90, 27 May 1938.
86 17.B.33, p. 389, 25 Jan. 1945; p. 393, 24 Feb. 1945. In 1955, the Society
accepted the Corporation offer of £3,350 for the two pieces of land in Averay Road
on which prefabricated houses stood (H.B. 36, p. 114, 30 Sept. 1935).
87 77.B.34, p. 116, 24 July 1947; H.B.35, p. 314, 29 May 1953, and numerous
other references.
88 Society’s archives: Clerk’s Papers ‘‘Abstract of the Title of the Merchant
Venturers . .. to land at Redland Green. . . .”’ 13 acres had been let to Colston’s
Girls’ School in 1920 (H.B.31, p. 45, 30 Jan. 1920).
39 H.B.31, p. 388, 27 May 1927. 40 H.B.32, p. 151, 29 May 1931.
The Society and its Property, Twentieth Century 471
the gradual disposal of the various plots. By February 1935 they were
producing ground rents of £227 1s. a year.*!
Another valuable piece of property which the Society at one time
thought of developing itself was an area of 9 acres down by the river
in Hotwells. This included the Merchants’ Dock, which had been
acquired in the eighteenth century.** Part of this area, known as the
Cattle Lairs or Foreign Animals Wharf, was leased to the Corpora-
tion at a rent of £275 per annum at the beginning of the century
and at £1,200a year in the years 1961-5. The Merchants’ Dock itself
was leased for the whole of the period up to 3965 to Heber Denty &
Co., and it presented considerable problems because of the difficulty
of keeping out the mud. Another large tenant of the Hotwells dock
property was Osborn and Wallis Ltd. In 1951 they agreed to renew
their lease for seven years at £1,000 a year and for the next seven years
at £1,250.43 The Society arranged for all the leases of the dock
property to expire in 1965, and in 1962 it consulted the City Planning
Office about its proposals for this area of g acres. The Planning
Office thought the area best suited for light industry or warehouses,
and the Society considered the possibility of itself developing the
site.44 However, in 1963 Osborn and Wallis offered £75,000 for the
land which they rented and for the Merchants’ Dock. There was a
good deal of discussion, for some members were reluctant for the
Society to give up ownership of property which it had held since the
eighteenth century, but in the end the Hall decided to sell.4® The
rest of the property, subject to leases to Heber Denty and the Cor-
poration expiring in 1965, was sold by auction to Osborn and
Wallis for £61,000 in 1964.48
Another area which the Society has at times considered develop-
ing is the garden ground at Richmond Hill, in which an interest had
first been acquired in 1858.4” This had been let as a nursery, and the
Society had on occasions intervened to see that the tenant kept it in
a satisfactory state.48 In 1934, the Clerk looked into the restrictive
covenants and reported that the Society was under no legal obliga-
tion to maintain it as an open space, although he thought that the
al H-B.32, p. 151, 29 May 1931; p. 172, 29 Oct. 1931; p. 360, 22 Feb. 1935,
and numerous other references.
42 See p. 154.
43 It would take too much space to include here the very large number of
references to the dock property in the years 1900-65 and I have thought it best to
omit them.
44 77.B.38, p. 153, 25 Oct. 1962; p. 172, 28 Dec. 1962.
45 H7.B.38, p. 218, 8 July 1963.
46 77.B.38, p. 283, 15 May 1964.
47 See pp. 331-2. |
48 E.g. H.B.31, p. 298, 24 July 1925. The Treasurer had seen the tenant who
undertook to improve the cultivation and to keep the land in better order by
planting flowers etc.
472 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
question of whether there was a moral obligation was another
matter. The possibility that the land might be built upon led to
critical comments in the local newspapers, and the Treasurer wrote
to the Western Daily Press pointing out that the press had stated the
legal position incorrectly and that the Society had no obligation,
moral or otherwise, to maintain it as an open space.*® However,
later in the year the Hall decided that it was not willing to let the
land for building.®° In 1945, an application was received to buy the
land and build a first-class ballroom with other entertainment and
refreshment facilities, but this was turned down.*! Then, in 1954
the Surveyor approached a development company which submitted
tentative plans for development, involving shops, showrooms and
offices.5* Early next year he suggested that the University of Bristol
might be interested in the site for a Hall of Residence or for an exten-
sion to the Union. The Society decided to apply for planning per-
mission for development.®? Again, there was critical comment in
the local press.54 In April, planning permission was refused, and the
Society put in a claim for compensation, which was eventually
settled at £28,000.55 The matter did not rest there, for in 1964 the
Surveyor was instructed to make an application for development of
part of the site, possibly as an office block and conference hall.
Again, it was thought the University might be interested.*® In the
end, the Society decided to retain ownership of the land and to
continue to let it as a nursery.5’
Problems of a different kind were presented by Victoria Square
garden. As has been seen already, when the Society granted building
leases and created ground rents in the middle of the nineteenth
century, it had bound itself to maintain the private ornamental
garden in the centre of the square for the use of residents. It was
presumably relying on the cost of labour remaining low and on the
full cooperation of the lessees in maintaining their amenity, but it
was an unwise commitment. Even in the nineteenth century, the
cost of maintaining the garden was a source of concern. It became
increasingly serious as the twentieth century went on, for not only
the garden but the walls and railings had to be maintained, and the
49 77.B.92, pp. 304 ff., 25 Jan. 1934; p. 311, 23 Feb. 1934; H.B.38, p. 81, 25
March 1955 referring to decision in 1934.
50 H.B.32, p. 334, 28 Sept. 1934. 51 77.B.33, p. 409, 25 May 1945.
62 H.B.35, p. 410, 29 April 1954; H.B.36, p. 45, 19 Nov. 1959.
53 77.B.36, p. 63, 27 Jan. 1955. Two other firms were also interested.
54 H,B.36, p. 81, 25 March 1955.
55 77.B.36, p. 114, 30 Sept. 1955; p. 162, 24 Feb. 1956; p. 168, 23 March 1956;
p. 182, 25 May 1956.
56 77.B.38, p. 270, 28 Feb. 1964; p. 273, 20 March 1964; p. 286, 29 May 1964;
Pp. 295, 30 July 1964; H.B.99, p. 4, 25 Sept. 1964; p. 292, 26 June 1964.
57 H.B.99, p. 20, 27 Nov. 1964; H.B.41, p. 36, 27 July 1972; p. 61, 23 Feb. 1973;
P- 74, 26 April 1973; p. 81, 25 May 1973; 13 Sept. 1974.
The Society and its Property, Twentieth Century 473
cost of labour and materials rose continually. Theincome from ground
rents remained stationary. As a number of the houses ceased to be
occupied by families with servants and were converted into flats,
there was no longer so much help from the residents in maintaining
the garden, and there was also a good deal of vandalism. Respon-
sibility for the garden was unquestionably fixed on the Society, and
there were many complaints of neglect from the lessees.5®
When the residents’ Garden Committee resigned in 1952, the
Clerk suggested approaching the Corporation to see if it would take
the garden over as a public open space.5® This would require the
consent of all the lessees, and some of them were not cooperative. ®°
The Society struggled on trying to keep the garden in some sort of
order at reasonable expense, but it was a losing battle. In 1961, the
Surveyor called a meeting of the lessees at which the Society made
an offer to renew the boundary fences, provide £100 for working
expenses and thereafter give {100 a year for upkeep. The meeting
was attended by about 20 lessees, and a supervisory committee was
set up. Reporting on the meeting, the Surveyor said that one of the
complainants had sent a postcard asking him to refer to Proverbs,
chapter 24, verses 30 and 31. It read “I went by the field of the sloth-
ful, and by the vineyard of the man void of understanding. And, lo,
it was all grown over with thorns, and the stone wall thereof was
broken down”. The Surveyor thought that v. 30 might be slightly
libellous, but that v. 31 was justified by the fact. He suggested that
the Society’s further action might be in accordance with v. 32 which
read ““Then I saw, and considered it well; I looked upon it and
received instruction.” ®
Estimates for putting the garden, railings and walls into some kind
of order ranged from £2,000 to £2,387,°* and by 1964 the Surveyor
reported that he was having increasing difficulty in satisfying some
of the lessees that the Society was fulfilling its obligation.** In 1965,
the Chief Public Health Inspector complained that the fencing had
collapsed and that litter and food refuse were a danger to health. *
The sad story continued, and the problem took up a great deal of
the Society’s time. A special committee appointed to look into the
matter reported in February 1967 that the architectural value of
Victoria Square was being increasingly appreciated and that there
was no prospect of getting planning permission for redevelopment
of the garden. The liability for its upkeep was not being met, and a
58 There are many references to Victoria Square Gardens in the Hall Books, but
it seems best not to include them all here.
59 H.B.36, pp. 214 ff., 24 July 1952; p. 230, 26 Sept. 1952.
60 77.B.96, p. 241, 30 ‘Oct. 1952; p. 257, 28 Nov. 1952; p. 270, 19 Dec. 1952.
61 77.B.98, p. 80, 20 Oct. 1961; p. 93, 24 Nov. 1961; p. 99, 29 Dec. 1961.
62 77.B.98, p. 112, 23 Feb. 1962; p. 120, 30 March 1962.
63 H.B.398, p. 279, 23 April 1964. 64 77.B.39, p. 90, 10 Sept. 1965.
474 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
great deal of money would have to be spent in putting it in order.
The committee contemplated offering financial and other induce-
ments to the lessees to release the Society from its obligation, but in
July 1967 it was reported that the cost of the proposals would be
about £7,000 and that another £5,000 would be needed to put the
garden in a reasonable state.*5 Agreement was eventually reached
with the Corporation and the lessees by which the Society spent
£2,000 on the garden and then let it at a nominal rent to the
Corporation to which it transferred the ground rents. The garden
thus became a public open space.®® It is an interesting example of
the way in which an obligation undertaken at one period of time
can in the long run involve expenses out of all proportion to the
original intention.
The Society’s springs at Hotwells continued in the twentieth
century to display the ability they had shown earlier of raising hopes
which were not to be fulfilled. In 1912, the Treasurer received a
report that the Hotwells springs had twice as much radium as the
waters at Bath, and as radium was then a magic word, the springs
were investigated. An analysis of the water from the pump at the
bottom of the Zigzag path showed that the water was polluted and
not fit to drink. The well in the Colonnade property had a radio
activity of 0-1418 grammes in a million litres and was polluted by
sewage. The water in the gully formerly known as Oakham Slade
Spring had no radium of commercial value, and St. Vincent’s
Spring, Avon Gorge, was practically sterile. There would not be
another boom at Hotwells.®’
Another piece of property of great historic interest was the
Observatory and Giant’s Cave on Clifton Down. For the whole of
the century up to 1943 it was in the tenancy of Miss Edith West whose
father had first taken it over in the later nineteenth century.®® She
was not an altogether satisfactory tenant. There were arrears of the
rent and complaints about the state of the Giant’s Cave and the
difficulty of access to the Observatory. In 1929, the Kyrle Society
protested about the objectionable Automatic Machines, and the
Treasurer was instructed to see that they were removed.®® The
Society resisted the application of Fred Cripps of the Palais de
65 77.B.99, p. 187, 24 Feb. 1967; p. 210, 27 July 1967.
66 17.B.40, p. 46, 28 June 1968; p. 58, 13 Sept. 1968; p. 243, 26 March 1971.
8? Hf.B.30, p. 76, 25 Oct. 1912; p. 86, 29 Nov. 1912; pp. 89, 91, 20 Dec. 1912.
68 For its earlier history, see pp. 427-8. The Society agreed to spend £550 on
putting it in repair in 1905 (H.B.29, p. 128, 17 Feb. 1905) and another £85 in 1918
(H.B.30, p. 391, 27 Sept. 1918).
69 H.B.29, p. 400, 29 April 1910; H.B.31, p. 164, 28 July 1922; p. 186, 26 Jan.
1923; H.B.32, p. 48, 26 April 1929. The Hall Book does not say what was objec-
tionable about the machines. Possibly they were of the type which showed what
the Butler saw.
The Society and its Property, Twentieth Century 475
Danse, Barton Hill, to rent the Camera Obscura for the purpose of
his business?° and seems to have been a patient landlord to its deter-
mined tenant. In 1933, there were hopes that she would vacate the
premises, but they were not fulfilled.”! In 1939, after a letter had
been forwarded by the Town Clerk complaining about an alleged
assault on a visitor, Miss West was given notice to quit,’* but the
coming of War altered the situation, and she stayed on. At first, it
was thought that the Royal Air Force would require the Observatory,
but when it did not, part of the premises was requisitioned by the
Local Defence Volunteers, later known as the Home Guard.’* The
indomitable Miss West continued to occupy the remaining part,
and court proceedings were necessary before she could at last be
persuaded to leave on 1 January 1943.74
The part of the premises which had been occupied by the Home
Guard was de-requisitioned in February 1945. Bristol Corporation
then asked if the Society would lease or give the Observatory for use
as a public refreshment place. It offered a rent of £10 a year for
25 years, with an option to renew up to gg years. It would not be
used as a Dance Hall and nothing would be allowed which would
create a nuisance “such as blatant music or the use of loud
speakers’’.75 Nothing came of this, and instead the Observatory was
leased to Mr. Caple for £10 a year. He was allowed to use the
Camera Obscura and make it available to the public, and he was to
keep the place wind and water-tight.” Mr. Caple was given notice
in 1959, and the Society then considered elaborate plans to fit out
the Observatory as a restaurant. However, the estimated cost was
£9,000, and the Society decided as an immediate step to put the
Observatory and Cave into repair and to get someone to run it on a
weekly wage until the matter could be considered further.””? Mr.
and Mrs. Hagan were engaged, and a Bristol Observatory Company
was registered with Mr. K. H. Trigg as Secretary.’8 In 1970-1,
70 7.B.31, p. 231, 29 Feb. 1924.
71 H.B.32, p. 278, 26 July 1933; p. 285, 29 Sept. 1933; p. 288, 25 Oct. 1933; p.
303, 25 Jan. 1934.
72 H“.B.933, p. 141, 30 June 1939.
73 H.B.33, p. 179, 23 Feb. 1940; p. 196, 28 June 1940; p. 203, 27 Sept. 1940.
74 H.B.33, p. 275, 29 May 1942; p. 286, 28 Oct. 1942; p. 295, 27 Nov. 1942; p.
297, 18 Dec. 1942; p. 299, 27 Jan. 1943.
"5 H.B.33, p. 414, 26 July 1945; p. 421, 28 Sept. 1945; H.B.34, pp. 24 ff, 24
Jan. 1946.
76 17.B.34, p. 66, 27 Sept. 1946. The Observatory was listed as an Ancient
Monument (H.B.34, p. 337, 16 Dec. 1949).
77 H.B.37, p. 142, 25 March 1959; p. 151, 23 April 1959; p. 174, 16 July 1959;
PP. 191, 192, 25 Sept. 1959; p. 219, 18 Dec. 1959; p. 229, 28 Jan. 1960; p. 252, 28
April 1960.
78 #1.B.397, p. 274, 16 Sept. 1960; H.B.38, p. 25, 24 Feb. 1961; p. 42, 27 April
1961; p. 49, 26 May 1961.
476 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
43,000 people visited the Camera Obscura and 35,600 visited the
Giant’s Cave, and the Company made a modest profit of £448. In
the next year, £618 was spent on repairs, and the profit was £276.7°
Although it is not possible here to examine all the developments
and changes relating to the Society’s property, it will be clear from
what has been said that the management of it has required a great
deal of time and thought of the Treasurer, the Clerks, the Surveyors
and many of the members, and that although the ownership of
property has its advantages, it is not without its problems.
°° H.B.4o, p. 261, 29 July 1971; H.B.41, p. 43, 26 Oct. 1972.
CHAPTER 25
The Society and Education in the
Twentieth Century
THE MERCHANT VENTURERS’ TECHNICAL COLLEGE
WE have seen how at the end of the nineteenth century the remark-
able success of the College and the expansion in numbers raised
serious problems over accommodation and finance and how the
Society was compelled reluctantly to consider obtaining help from
the local authority.1 The Governors of the College felt that University
College was attracting much more than its fair share of the money
available for technical education.? At the end of 1go1, the City’s
Technical Instruction Committee agreed to make an annual grant
to the College of £3,000 a year provided that the Society would
contribute up to £2,000 a year. It must also provide more accom-
modation and must try to reach agreement with University College
and the Bristol School Board about overlapping classes. The Society
thereupon rented a large warehouse in Rosemary Street for the use
of the College? and came to an agreement with the Bristol School
Board. The local authority grant was paid to the College from 1902
and at the same time the local authority obtained the right to put
two representatives on the governing body.‘
There was a major set-back in the history of the College in 1906
when early in the morning of 9 October the main building in Unity
Street was completely destroyed by fire.® It was yet one more tribute
to the brilliant administrative ability of the Principal, Julius
Wertheimer, that by 15 October both day and evening students
were back at work.® The blow to the Society was all the greater
1 See pp. 384-5. For a fuller discussion of the problems, see D. J. Eames, ““The
Contribution of the Society of Merchant Venturers to the Development of Educa-
tion in Bristol’, unpublished, Bristol M.A. thesis, 1966, pp. 268 ff.
2 Ibid., p. 284. See also p. 281 for a table showing the comparative numbers in the
two institutions in 1897-8. The figures for the M.V.T.C. were much more impres-
sive than those for University College both in range and numbers.
8 Ibid., p. 285. In 1924 the Society bought the premises for £4,500 (H.B.31, p.
222, 30 Nov. 1923; p. 230, 29 Feb. 1924; p. 243, 30 May 1924).
4D. J. Eames, op. cit., p. 285.
5 H.B.29, p. 209, 9 Oct. 1906; Western Daily Press, g Oct. 1906.
6 77,.B.29, p. 211, 15 Oct. 1906. Castle Green School was placed at his disposal
by the City’s Education Committee and use was made of the laboratories in
478 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
because it was at this time that it received a letter from Lewis Fry’s
committee asking for cooperation in establishing a University of
Bristol, and the Society’s bargaining position was much weaker
since its College buildings had now been destroyed.’ In January
1907, the insurance claim was settled at £38,500, and in February,
taking into account that there was no immediate prospect of a
University being established and that Julius Wertheimer was very
concerned that the College had already lost about 300 pupils, the
Society decided to proceed immediately with rebuilding.®
Shortly afterwards, the primary department of the Technical
College was transferred to Wyndham House, Kingsdown, which
was leased from the Bristol Charity Trustees.1° In 1908 the lease and
responsibility for the primary department was transferred to Bristol
Grammar School, and the Governors were free to concentrate only
on secondary, technical and higher education."
The long and acrimonious negotiations over the role which the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College should play in the new
University of Bristol have been examined elsewhere.!? The upshot
was that in 1909 the Society provided a home for the Faculty of
Engineering, and Julius Wertheimer was nominated by the Society
as first Dean of the Faculty. The engineering staff and the equip-
ment of the University’s Department of Engineering were moved to
the new building in Unity Street, and the Society was directly
involved in the University. At the same time, the Technical College
continued its work of secondary and technical education, cluding
evening classes.
Just before the outbreak of the First World War, the total number
of students, including evening students, was over 2,000, and the new
Engineering Faculty in the first year of its existence had 92 day
students and 482 evening students.
After the War, the pressure of student numbers compelled the
Governors to make a choice between giving up the Secondary School
or the Faculty of Engineering. It was decided that the Faculty had
the stronger claim, and after long negotiations, the Bristol Education
Committee agreed to take over the secondary school from the end of
the summer term in 1919, provided temporary accommodation
Colston’s Girls’ School. Wertheimer certainly deserved the gift of £50 which the
Society gave him at Christmas for a holiday abroad (H.B.29, p. 216, 27 Oct. 1906).
7 See p. 495.
8 H.B.29, pi 231, 25 Jan. 1907.
® H.B.29, pp. 242 ff., 4 Feb. 1907; p. 246, 22 Feb. 1907.
10 H.B.29, p. 262, 31 May 1907.
11 —, J. Eames, op. cit., p. 293.
12 See pp. 491-508.
13 D, J. Eames, of. cit., pp. 288, 289, with breakdown of the different kinds of
students between 1912 and 1916.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 479
could be found for it and provided it could use the College work-
shops. The new school was established in huts at Cotham and was
carried on there by the local authority under the name of the
Merchant Venturers’ Secondary School until a new building was
opened in 1931 under the name of Cotham Secondary School.14
When the Society had first taken over the Trade School in the
later nineteenth century, it had been prepared to spend £2,000 a
year on its upkeep, but between 1900 and 1920 it had, at least on
paper, rarely spent less than £3,000 a year, and by 1919-20, the
college was in debt to the Society for about £5,000.15 The cost of
running the College was likely to rise considerably in the future, and
in order to limit its liability after the War, the Society under the
guidance of its Treasurer, W. W. Ward, decided in 1920 to set up
an Education Trust, in the first instance for ten years. The con-
tribution the Society was prepared to make to the College was
limited by the income of the Trust.1® When the local authority grant
was reduced in 1923, the Society informed the Management Com-
mittee that it was unable to increase its contribution beyond the
income of the Trust and that the Management Committee and the
local authority must arrange to continue on this basis.?’
In 1920, G. H. Pope, who had played for so many years a leading
role in framing the Society’s education policy, decided to resign as
Secretary of the College and of Colston’s Boys’ School. His attitude
towards University College during the difficult negotiations over the
founding of the University was at times open to justifiable criticism,1®
but there can be no doubt that he had contributed in full measure to
the amazing success of the Technical College. The Society decided
to pay him a retaining fee of £450 a year for life in return for his
advice and experience. The Treasurer, W. W. Ward, then took over
his duties.1® Four years later, the death took place of Julius Wert-
heimer, who had been Principal of the College for 35 years and who
had been first Dean of the Faculty of Engineering.2° He too had
14 Thid., pp. 295 ff.
18 Ibid., p. 299. The financial situation was somewhat complicated because the
Society charged the College rent for the premises, regarding this an interest pay-
ment on the sum which the Society had originally spent on them.
16 Jbid., p. 300; H.B.37, p. 75, 24 Sept. 1920, when the seal was ordered to be put
on the Trust Deed. The Trust consisted of £ 10,000 in 5 per cent War Stock;
£2,000 in 6 per cent Bristol Housing Bonds; £8,000 in National War Fond
17 H.B.31, p. 194, 23 March 1923. 18 See pp. 491-508.
19 H7.B.31, pp. 85 ff., 26 Nov. 1920.
20 H.B.31, p. 250, 26 Sept. 1924; p. 255, 25 Oct. 1924. In 1938 Professor Andrew
Robertson reported that Mrs. Wertheimer was seriously ill after a stroke and was in
financial difficulties. The Society made a gift to her and was willing to provide a
pension if necessary. She died in 1941 and three-quarters of her late husband’s
estate, in which she had a life interest, then passed to the Society for providing
scholarships at the College (H.B.33, p. 79, 25 Feb. 1938; p. 228, 21 Feb. 1941).
480 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
been a difficult man in many ways, but his tremendous drive and his
great organising ability had given the Society one of the most
remarkable Technical Colleges in the country.2! He was succeeded
as Principal and Dean of the Faculty of Engineering by Professor
Andrew Robertson.
The continuing expansion of the College made it necessary to
acquire additional space. The premises in Rosemary Street, which
had been rented from early in the century, were bought in 1924, for
£4,500, and 9 Unity Street was purchased for £2,140. Both were
rented by the Society to the College.?? Two years later, the Rosemary
Street propery was sold for £6,000, and, on the recommendation of
the College’s Management Committee, the Society bought premises
in Leek Lane for £8,000 and the site of an old public house, The
Prince of Wales, for £500.7%
There was further expansion as a result of the decision in 1928 to
take over the Bath and West of England College of Pharmacy and
Chemistry. The Technical College’s new department was opened in
October 1929 and was financed jointly by the Society, the Board of
Education and the Local Education Authority, the Society’s contri-
bution being £1,300.
In 1930, the Society accepted a tender for £14,898 for extension
of the College on the corner of College Green and Unity Street. It
had already been agreed in 1928 that the Local Education Authority
should increase its grant and have four instead of two representatives
on the Management Committee.” In all this the Principal, Professor
Andrew Robertson, had played a major role, and in 1931 the Man-
agement Committee asked the Society to make a present of some
plate to him in recognition of the completion of agreements with the
University of Bristol and the local authority and of his negotiations
with the Board of Education, as a result of which the grants made by
all these bodies were sufficient to enable the College to balance its
accounts. ?5
The College continued to expand throughout the nineteen-
thirties, and in 1935 it asked the Society to purchase an island site
bounded by Leek Lane, Callowhill Street, Hanover Street and Water
21 In 1919-20, there were 226 Students in the Faculty of Engineering as com-
pared with 191 in the University of Birmingham, 125 in Armstrong College,
Newcastle, and 117,in the University of Sheffield. Evening students in 1921 num-
bered 2,156 (D. J. Eames, op. cit., p. 298).
22 H.B.31, p. 243, 30 May 1924; p. 253, 24 Oct. 1924; p. 284, 24 April 1924.
38 H.B.31, pp. 335, 336, 26 March 1926. £2,428 was expended on equipment at
Leek Lane on which an interest of 5 per cent was charged to the College (H.B.31,
p. 396, 30 Sept. 1927).
24 77.B.32, p. 26, 30 March 1928; H.B.33, p. 81, 29 Nov. 1929; p. 85, 20 Dec.
1929; pp. 97, 98, 1 May 1930; p. 113, 26 Sept. 1930; D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 299,
301.
26 H.B.32, p. 170, 29 Oct. 1931; p. 186, 18 Dec. 1931.
The Soctety and Education, Twentieth Century 481
Street for extensions which would be necessary in the near future.
Part of the property which was not required was resold.?¢
The ever-growing demand for technical education obviously
raised problems for the Society whose Technical College also
included a Faculty of Engineering. Sooner or later the question was
bound to arise as to how far the Society ‘with its limited resources
could continue to contribute to the cost of both the Faculty and the
non-Faculty work. In the mid-thirties, the Society’s contribution
to non-Faculty work was in fact greatly exceeded by the amounts
received in grants from the Board of Education and the Local
Authority and the amount which the Society could make available
was in any case limited by the income of the Education Trust of
1920.27
As early as 1931, the Society considered a report of the Principal
on the possible future of the College in relation to technical educa-
tion,® but it was not until 1936 that the matter became urgent when
the Board of Education issued a circular stating that it was consider-
ing a great expansion of technical education and was prepared to
make available a large amount of money.2® The Board asked the
Governors of the Technical College to explore the future jointly with
the Local Education Authority and expressed the view that some of
the work in the Technical College was being done under unsatis-
factory conditions. A joint committee of the Society and the Local
Education Authority met on 7 February 1936 and decided that the
time had come for the whole of the non-Faculty work of the College
to come under the control of the Local Education Authority. The
Faculty of Engineering was to be separated from the College and
put in another building. The Senior Warden and the First Assistant
then consulted with the Board of Education which did not wish to
be directly involved at that stage, and on 28 February 1936 the
Standing Committee set up a sub-committee to negotiate with
the Local Education Authority and the University. The brief to the
sub-committee informed it that there was reason to think that the
26 1.B.33, p. 376, 25 July 1935; p. 381, 27 Sept. 1935; p. 398, 20 Dec. 1935.
27 See Sub-Committee Minute Book M.V.T.C. 3 March 1936-June 1950 under 11
February 1936 and 12 March 1936 and a paper of G. H. Beloe (the Treasurer)
dated 18 March 1936. The L.E.A. and The Board of Education grants were both
£9,000. The Society’s contribution from its Education Trust was £1,200. Mr.
Beloe pointed out that the book value of the building and equipment, written up
in 1920 when the Trust was formed, was £100,000 and that “‘the rent of £4,000
received from the College, being 4 per cent on this valuation, forms the greater
part of the Income of the Trust and it must therefore be realised that the £5,000
represented as the contribution of the Society to the College is actually an in-
flated figure’.
28 H7.B.32, p. 155, 26 June 1931.
29 D. J. Eames, op. cit., p. 302.
482 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Local Education Authority would prefer the Society to withdraw
freely from the field and that there appeared to be “‘a considerable
amount of feeling in the City Council that the City should control a
work which they and the Board of Education together subsidised to
the extent of 75% of the total cost.’’3° |
In the light of this, the Society was willing to surrender the
Technical College to the Local Education Authority, but it wished
to maintain a link both with the Faculty and non-Faculty work, and
it negotiated on the basis of continuing to give three-quarters of the
income from its Educational Trust to the Faculty and one-quarter
to the Local Education Authority. This was to be used for technical
education, and it was hoped that it would be allocated to some
specific purpose “‘which would be identified with the Society and
over which the Society should, if possible, have some measure of
control”. It was prepared to negotiate with the Local Education
Authority for the sale to it of the College buildings.*! These negotia-
tions ran into difficulties because there was a difference of opinion
about the value of the property and about whether the main build-
ing, which the Board of Education considered unsatisfactory for its
purpose, should be valued as ‘‘an empty shell”’. The Society’s valuer
put the price at £96,350, but the District Valuer put it at only
£61,800. The Society then decided to tell the Corporation to formu-
late its own plans irrespective of the Society, but added that if it
required the Unity Street premises, the Society would help.*? In
March 1937, the Treasurer reported that in a letter of 29 January
the Local Education Authority had decided that the Unity Street
property was not suitable for its purpose, but that it would negotiate
to buy the Leek Lane property. The Society decided to offer this at
a figure which would cover its cost without any profit. There was a
meeting with the Local Education Authority on 5 July 1937 when
the Treasurer estimated the Society’s expenditure on the Leek Lane
site at £5,100 and it was stated that the valuation by the City Valuer
would be submitted to the Board of Education. After that, there is
no further entry in the Minute Book until 9 June 1944.°
The Merchant Venturers Technical College thus remained inde-
pendent. It continued its work under growing difficulties owing to
30 The Minutes of this sub-committee were kept by Miss G. E. Whitaker. They
cover the period 3 March 1936 to June 1950 and contain in addition to the Minutes
some very helpful notes on the origin and history of the Technical College. They
are subsequently referred to as Sub-Committee Minute Book 1936-1950. A statement
of the background is attached to the Minutes of the first meeting on 3 March 1936.
31 Sub-Committee Minute Book 1936-1950, 3 April 1936; 28 April 1936. See also
H.B.32, p. 409, 12 March 1936; p. 415, 20 March 1936.
32 Sub-Committee Minute Book 1936-1950, 13 May 1936; 9 Oct. 1936; 13 Oct.
1936; 26 Oct. 1936; 11 Nov. 1936.
$3 Ibid., 22 March 1937; 5 July 1937.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 483
the expansion of numbers and the problems arising from the War.
From 1939 to 1943 it accommodated, in addition to its own students,
evacuees from the Engineering Department of King’s College,
London, and from the Royal Naval College, Dartmouth, and it also
ran a large number of war-time short courses.*4
Owing to the pressure on the existing accommodation, the Society
decided in 1944 to rent J. S. Fry & Sons’ buildings on Brandon Steep
at the rear of the present Council House, and the Commerce Depart-
ment of the Technical College was transferred there in 1946. How-
ever, it was soon after transformed into a separate College of Com-
merce and control of it was surrendered to the Local Education
Authority.85 Thus, the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College shed
one more of its activities, just as it had earlier disposed of its Primary
Department to Bristol Grammar School and its Secondary Depart-
ment to the Local Education Authority.* The Faculty of Engineer-
ing and the non-Faculty technological work still remained, but the
end was already in sight.
In 1944, after receiving a letter from the University saying that
at the request of the University Grants Committee it was preparing
estimates for the post-war period and that it would like the Society’s
views on what was to happen when the time came in 1950 for separa-
ting the Faculty of Engineering from the other work of the Technical
College, the Standing Committee set up a sub-committee to look
into the question. Although there would obviously have to be a
major change when the agreement with the University and the
Education Trust both came to an end in 1950, the Society and the
University were very anxious to continue the close relationship which
had been built up since 1909.3” As far as the non-Faculty work was
concerned, the Education Act of 1944 indicated that the Government
wanted to bring technical education under the control of the Local
Education Authorities, and this meant that sooner or later the
Society would have to give up its non-Faculty work in the Technical
College. 7
The beginning of the end came in 1947 when the Society’s sub-
committee recommended that the Educational Trust should end on
31 December 1950, that the University and the Local Education
Authority should be formally notified and also told that the Society
34 —D, J. Eames, op. cit., p. 307.
35 Ibid., pp. 354, 355:
36 See pp. 478-9.
87 H.B.33, p. 347, 31 March 1944; Sub-Committee Minute Book 1936-1950, 9 June
1944; D. J. Eames, of. cit., p. 356, note, points out that in 1928 both the Trust and
the Agreement with the University had been renewed for ten years from 1930 and
that it must be assumed that they had been renewed again for ten years some time
before 1940, although there does not seem to be any record of this in the Society's
archives,
484 | The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
would be considering the future of the buildings in which the Tech-
nical College was situated.?® Lengthy negotiations. followed with
the University and with the Local Education Authority. On 31 July
1949, the City took over the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College
and purchased the property from the Society.?® The Faculty of
Engineering, however, continued to occupy part of the building
until its new home in the Queen’s Building was ready and, as has
been noted elsewhere,*® the Society’s link with the University was
maintained. The surplus of approximately £6,000 in the Education
Trust was used partly to pay the first two instalments of £1,000 a year
given to the University of Bristol from 1949, partly to finance the
grant of £100 a year for seven years to Clifton College for scholar-
ships, and partly to help Colston’s Boys’ School. *
The Society of Merchant Venturers’ Technical College was a
remarkable institution. In the later nineteenth century the Society
had taken over and transformed an existing institution — The Bristol
Trade and Mining School — and in the course of time it had become
a unique Technical College combining a Primary Department, a
Secondary Department, a Department of Commerce, and full time
and evening classes for a great variety of technical work, much of it
at a very high level. After 1909 the college also embodied the
Engineering Faculty of the new University. It gave birth to the
preparatory school of Bristol Grammar School, Cotham Secondary
School, the College of Commerce and a University Faculty. When
the Society gave up the Technical College in 1949, the City took
over, and from the higher technical work which was carried on in
the City’s College at Ashley Down there was to emerge in due course
the new University of Bath. As Miss Whitaker comments in her
Notes on the History of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College,
the Society had been pioneers in the task of providing technical
education in Bristol and the City was able to build on their founda-
tions. 4?
38 Sub-Committee Minute Book 1936-1950, 25 April 1947. D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp.
357—-8, suggests that the final decision to bring the College to an end was not taken
until 1948 and that in 1947 the Society was still prepared to carry on if the
Government and the Local Education Authority wished it to do so, but I am not
convinced that this was so.
39 H.B.34, p. 343, 26 Jan. 1950. On 20 January here was completed the sale of
the main building in Unity Street for £121,000 and of the Leek Lane site for
£27,750. The sale of the island site for £5,164 4s. 5d. was to be completed on 17
Febuary.
40 See pp. 508-10.
41 See typescript entry in Sub-Committee Minute Book 1936-1950 on ‘“The Educa-
tion Trust of the Society’.
42 See her Notes in Sub-Committee Minute Book 1936-1950.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 485
COLSTON’S BOYS’ SCHOOL
It has been noted earlier that under the Scheme drawn up in 1873,
Colston’s Boys’ School was reorganised and came under the direction
of a new Governing Body which was not answerable to the Society.
Nevertheless, a very close connection was maintained between the
School and the Society, since the Society continued to act as trustee
for the Colston Trust funds and nominated 13 out of the 23 Governors
of the School.* The close connection has continued to the present
day and the problems of the School have been of the greatest concern
to the Society.
The history of the School cannot be examined in detail here,**
but it is necessary to note certain aspects which were of particular
concern to the Society. In 1910, a new Scheme of government was
approved by the Board of Education and the number of free places
was fixed at 75, but the Society still retained its controlling interest
on the managing body.*® In 1918 the Society was asked by the
Governors to sell the Manors of Beere and Locking and invest the
proceeds on behalf of the Colston Trust.*® The school spent £3,950
on new classrooms in 1926, but the Chairman was able to announce
that he had collected the money from various sources, and the Society
itself contributed £2,000 to liquidate the School’s debts.*’ In
various other ways, the Society was able to help the School and those
connected with it. When the Treasurer discovered in 1906 that the
school sanatorium had been built on the Society’s own lands which
might be required for development, the Hall decided to let the
school keep the land for a nominal rent of £1 a year.4® £30 was
given for a rifle range in 1906, and 50 guineas towards the cost of
a new Library in 1910.4® Next year, when the School needed addi-
tional playing fields, the Society agreed to lease it 4 acres at £15
per annum.°° In 1934, £250 was given for a new Pavilion, and just
before World War II the Society agreed to pay for a cricket coach.
Help was sometimes given to former Colston pupils who had gone
to the University, and a pension was paid for some years to the widow
43 See p. 374.
44 For a detailed examination of its history, see D. J. Eames, ‘“The Contribution
of the Society of Merchant Venturers to the Development of Education in Bristol’’,
unpublished Bristol M.A. thesis, 1966, pp. 178 ff., 309 ff.
45 PD, J. Eames, op. cit., p. 179.
46 Tbid., p. 180.
47 Ibid., p. 183; H.B.31, p. 334, 26 March 1926.
48 H.B.29, p. 182, 30 March 1906; p. 199, 22 June 1906; H.B.30, p. 116, 30 May
1913.
49 H.B.29, p. 184, 30 March 1906; p. 394, 25 Feb. 1g1o.
50 H.B.29, p. 438, 27 Jan. 1911; p. 443, 24 Feb. 1911; p. 445, 24 March 1911.
51 H.B.32, p. 317, 20 April 1934; H.B.33, p. 130, 31 March 1939.
486 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
of a headmaster who died suddenly.®? In 1940, the Society built some
houses for the married staff at a cost of over £3,000 and presented
then: to the School,5* and a number of individual Merchant
Venturers such as C. B. Fry, who was Chairman of the Governors
from 1929-42, E. A. Allen and T. R. Davey made gifts amounting
to £8,000 for University Scholarships. ®4
The 1944 Education Act presented the Governors with a serious
problem about the school’s future. Its income was drawn partly from
the resources of the Colston Trust, partly from fees and partly from
grants received from public authorities. In 1926, it had opted to
become a Direct Grant School receiving money from the Board of
Education in return for providing a number of free places. After very
lengthy discussion and much negotiation, the Governors came to the
conclusion that it should become an Independent School. This
meant that it would cease to receive grants, that it would phase out
the free places and become, apart from a handful of free places, an
entirely fee-paying school.5> Possibly because it did not attract
enough boarders, the Governors decided to admit 20 day boys whose
numbers were to be increased to 30 and even to 60 as soon as possible.
Owing to post-war restrictions, it was impossible to obtain a licence
for a new building, but accommodation was found for the Head-
master in Stapleton Rectory, and the house formerly occupied by
him was used for day boys. All this cost money, and the Society lent
£4,000 interest free. Shortly afterwards, it changed the loan to a
free gift.56
From 1953, discussions went on with the Department of Education
and Science for a new Scheme, and eventually agreement was
reached that there should be 32 Special Places in the School. The
completely free places, of which there were only 6 in 1954, were to
come to an end, and the Special Places provided free tuition and
partial or total remission of boarding fees according to parental
circumstances. 5”
In 1955, the Governors decided to build a second Day Boys’
House and to improve the facilities for Science teaching. The money
for the science laboratories came from an industrial trust, but the
Society was asked to help with the Day Boys’ house. It eventually
52 77.B.31, p. 168, 29 Sept. 1922; p. 173, 28 Oct. 19223 p. 244, 27 June 1924; p.
297, 24 July 1925.
53 D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 190, 191.
54 Tbid., p. 191.
55 For a discussion of the reasons behind all this and the way in which it was
implemented, see D. J. Eames, of. cit., pp. 309 ff.
58 Tbid., p. 314; H.B.35, p. 80, 25 May 1951. The £4,000 was available after the
winding-up of the Society’s Education Trust.
57 D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 316 ff.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 487
decided to provide an interest-free loan of £12,000 and the new
block was opened in 1957.5
From 1958 onwards, the Governors were very anxious for the
school to become a public school. This meant adjusting the entry
so that boys could come in at thirteen, as well as at eleven, and
improving facilities. It would be necessary to build a second Board-
ing House and make other alterations costing about £72,000. The
Governors then launched the 250th Anniversary Appeal, and the
Chairman of the Governors, Mr. V. Fuller Eberle, addressed the
Society and asked it to give generous support to the attempt to
increase the status of the school. After examining the position with
great care, the Society decided to make a gift of £10,000 over 7
years and to make a loan of £25,000, of which it hoped at least some
would be repaid, over a period of 20 years. The Governors were
planning for a school of 200 boarders, 100 day boys and a Prepara-
tory School of 120.5®
Efforts to raise the status of the school to that of other Independent
Schools continued, and in 1963 educational consultants were called
in. They suggested that there should be a new Boarding House, a
new Library, boys’ studies, tennis and squash courts and other im-
provements estimated to cost £100,000. On 11 October 1963 Mr.
J. E. C. Clarke, Chairman of the Governors, reported the proposals
to the Society and asked for generous help. About £25,000 could be
raised by the school itself, but the rest would have to be raised by
mortgage and by loans. Some members of the Society were con-
cerned because there was by this time a possibility that the school
would be “‘nationalised’’, that is to say, taken over by the Local
Education Authority which had plans for a completely compre-
hensive system of education in Bristol.
For various reasons, the Society was not anxious to dispose of
stocks and shares. Thus, there followed lengthy discussions, but in
the end the Society decided to make a loan of £80,000 on very
favourable terms indeed. In 1965, the Chairman of the Governors
reported that the total cost of the work, including building a new
house for the Headmaster, had risen from £100,000 to £133,000,
but that the extra money required had been raised from other
sources. °°
In subsequent years, further efforts were made to improve the
school. Like many Independent Schools, it has to face considerable
58 H.B.36, p. 138, 25 Nov. 1955; p- 143, 16 Dec. 1955; D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp.
319, 320.
59 H.B.37, p. 199, 29 Oct. 1959; p. 204, 30 Oct. 1959; p. 219, 18 Dec. 1959; p.
229, 28 Jan. 1960; p. 260, 27 May 1960; D. J. Eames, of. cit., pp. 320 ff.
60 77,B.98, p. 235, 11 Oct. 1963; p. 255, 13 Dec. 1963; p. 258, 17 Jan. 1964;
H.B.39, p. 28, 15 Jan. 1965; p. 88, 10 Sept. 1965; p. 96, 8 Oct. 1965. See also D. J.
Eames, op. cit., pp. 322 ff.
488 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
difficulties, and although the Society is not directly responsible, it
feels that it has a moral obligation to help in every way it can.®
Thus, in the course of time, the Hospital for 100 poor boys which
Edward Colston founded in the early eighteenth century has been
transformed into an independent fee-paying school with high
academic standards. The major change in its character in 1873 was
the result primarily of pressure from the Government and was not
a deliberate choice of the Society, but after the change took place
and the Society ceased to be directly responsible, it has made a
major contribution to the very successful history of Colston’s Boys’
School.
COLSTON’S GIRLS’ SCHOOL
In the twentieth century, the Society maintained its close connection
with Colston’s Girls’ School which the Colston Trustees had opened
in 1891.°? The Society appointed a majority of the Governing Body
of the School and its endowments were managed by the Colston
Trustees. Although the Governors were not answerable directly to
the Society, they naturally looked to it for help and advice-in times
of difficulty. The Society felt that it had a moral, if not a legal,
responsibility to help. Although the growth of the School made it
impossible after 1904 to provide office room and clerical assistance
in the Merchants’ Hall,** the Society did what it could to help the
school develop its facilities. Thus, in 1916 when money was required
to provide more apparatus for the teaching of the physical sciences
and biology and to increase the amount of equipment in the
Secretarial Training Department, the Society made a donation of
£300,** and in 1920 it agreed to provide a Sports Pavilion at an
estimated cost of £850.°° In 1924, it was ready to contribute gen-
erously to the cost of a new gymnasium, and it bought 13 acres of
land which it rented to the School at a nominal rent for sports’
facilities.*° It administered various funds left to provide University
Scholarships for the girls,*? and some girls were given assistance
*! H.B.40, p. 180, 16 March 1970. For later developments, see H.B.40, p. 269,
28 Sept. 1971; H.B.41, p. 67, g April 1973; p. 84, 23 June 1973.
$2 See p. 575. For the history of the school in the twentieth century, see D. J.
Eames “‘The Contribution of the Society of Merchant Venturers to the Develop-
ment of Education in Bristol”, unpublished Bristol M.A. thesis 1966, pp. 211 ff.,
327 ff.
$3 7f.B.29, p. 84, 19 Feb. 1904.
64 77.B.30, p. 271, 28 July 1916.
65 H7.B.31, p. 65, 25 June 1920.
°¢ H.B.31, p. 264, 28 Nov. 1924; D. J. Eames, of. cit., p. 229.
*? E.g. Gatcliff scholarships, Gamble scholarships, Proctor Baker scholarships.
See also H.B.31, p. 21, 17 Oct. 1919 for gift by Mervyn King to provide silver cups
for sports.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 489
from the Society’s own funds to enable them to go to Universities. ®*
There was a new Scheme of Management for the School in 1936
under which the Society nominated 9 of the Governors, Bristol
Local Education Authority 5, the University of Bristol 1, and the
Gloucestershire and Somerset Local Education Authority 1 each.
Four more, all of them women, were to be co-opted. ®?®
The 1944 Education Act and its implementation raised serious
problems for the Governors. They hoped that the Ministry would
agree to it being a Direct Grant School, but the Ministry of Educa-
tion refused the application and informed the Governors that the
School would be removed from the list from 1 January 1946. This
came as a great shock, and the reasons why the Minister made this
decision are not clear. The Governors endeavoured without success
to get the decision reversed, and then gave a great deal of thought
to what could now be done. The School could become independent;
it could apply to be a Voluntary Aided School if the managers would
agree to pay half the cost of the improvements needed to bring it up
to Ministry standards; or it could apply to be a Voluntary Controlled
School, in which case the Local Education Authority would be
responsible for its maintenance and would have the right to appoint
two-thirds of the Governors. After much discussion, it was decided
to apply for Voluntary Aided status. This entitled the Local Educa-
tion Authority to appoint one-third of the Governors, but the
Governors could allow denominational religious instruction, whereas
if it had been Voluntary Controlled, the religious instruction would
have had to be in accordance with the ‘Agreed Syllabus”. Under
the new arrangement, the School ceased to be a fee-paying school,
and the first intake of free-place girls entered in September 1946.
Under a new Instrument of Government which was eventually
agreed, there were 14 Foundation Governors, of whom 9g were
nominated by the Society, 1 by the University, 4 by resolution of the
Foundation Governors, and another 7, known as Representative
Governors, were appointed by the Local Education Authority.
The Governors also decided in 1946 that the change in status
would make it necessary to get rid of the Froebel Foundation Train-
ing Department and the Junior School. The Local Education
Authority agreed to take over the Junior School, and from August
1946 this became Colston’s Primary School.?°
A number of problems still remained. For a time, both the
8 e.g. H.B.31, p. 367, 26 Nov. 1926; p. 397, 30 Sept. 1927.
69 D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 236 ff.
70 See D. J. Eames, of. cit., pp. 327 ff. for an examination and discussion of the
changes. See also H.B.33, p. 408, 25 May 1945; H.B.34, p. 3, 25 Oct. 1945; p. 65,
27 Sept. 1946; p. 70, 24 Oct. 1946; p. 86, 20 Dec. 1946; p. 417, 29 Sept. 1950;
H.B.35, p. 290, 27 Feb. 1953.
490 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Ministry and the Local Education Authority suggested that the
existing premises in Cheltenham Road could not be brought up to
standard and that the School should consider buying the site of the
former Bishop’s Palace at Redland and building a new school.
However, the Local Education Authority had no money available
for the purpose, and the proposal came to nothing.”!
There was also a question of the 14 acres of playing fields which
the Society had bought for the use of the School in 1910 and on which
it had built a pavilion and which it had continued to rent to the
School at a nominal rent of £70 per year. Now that the Local
Authority had taken over the finances, the Society felt that the rent
should be increased. The matter was eventually settled by the
Society selling the land and building to the Corporation for £6,500
in 1952.72
During the war, Colston’s Girls’ School had suffered severe
damage from enemy action, including the destruction of the Library
Wing. It was not until 1957 that the School was able to consider
rebuilding, and as the financial situation was difficult, the Society
responded to a request from C. Cyril Clarke, Chairman of the
Governors, and agreed to make a loan of £3,000.78
From 1963 onwards, the School Governors were faced with a very
serious problem because the City was planning to reorganise educa-
tion throughout Bristol on comprehensive lines. This meant that
it would cease to take up free places in Colston’s Girls’ School and
would have no use for it in its existing form. It wanted it to become
a non-selective school and to draw pupils only from a limited
area and not from the whole of the city. Very lengthy discussions
and negotiations ensued. On 26 June 1964, the position was put
to the Standing Committee by the Chairman of the Governors, the
Hon. W. R. S. Bathurst, and in the course of the next year members
of the Society gave a great deal of time and energy to considering
what should be done. Basically, the issue was whether the School
should accept the City’s plan and change its character completely
by agreeing to draw its pupils from a small catchment area, whether
it should become an independent, fee-paying school, or whether
it should cease to exist, in which case the income it drew from the
Colston Trust might be applied to other educational purposes. The
problem was far from simple. If the School was to become indepen-
dent, it would require very considerable financial resources, and if
the Society agreed to back it, then it might find itself financially
involved for an unknown amount. If the Society decided not
71 77.B.34, p. 100, 28 March 1947 when the Chairman of the Governors reported
this to the Society. See also D. J. Eames, op. cit., pp. 334 ff.
72 H.B.35, p. 110, 28 Sept. 1951; p. 260, 28 Nov. 19532.
73 H.B.936, p. 260, 22 Feb. 1957.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 4g!
to help and the School had to close, the Merchant Venturers
might be accused of betraying the School. On the other hand,
if they did support it and it became clear after a few years
that it was not financially viable, the Society would be even more
unpopular. Some members felt that it would be unwise to give
support to a new independent school at such a time. Others thought
that if the Society ceased to be concerned with Colston’s Girls’
School, it would be withdrawing from yet another educational
enterprise and that only Colston’s Boys’ School would be left of the
many educational activities in which the Society had formerly been
involved. It is not possible to follow in detail here the long-drawn-
out negotiations, discussions and memoranda. The case for estab-
lishing an Independent School was pressed with great energy and,
occasionally, with excessive enthusiasm by the Chairman of the
Governors, the late Hon. W. R. S. Bathurst. On 23 June 1965, a
General Hall decided by 31 votes to 8 that the School should not be
closed and that the Society should make a grant of £6,000 a year
for 7 years to help establish a new independent school. Mr. Bathurst
promised a gift of £3,500 for establishing scholarships, and in July
he was able to announce that he had already received gifts of over
£3,600 from Old Girls and others. The Colston Trust continued to
manage the lands and endowments of the school, but the manage-
ment of the School was in the hands of the Governors, of whom
there were 18. Ten of these were nominated by the Society, 2 by the
Local Education Authority, 1 by the University and 5 were co-
opted. The Society’s responsibility for the future of the School is
thus limited as far as its finances are concerned, but its initial gift
had given Colston’s Girls’ School a chance to find its own feet.’*
THE SOCIETY AND THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL
As has been seen earlier, the attempt to prevent overlapping between
the work of University College, Bristol, and the Merchant Venturers’
Technical College had finally broken down in 1901.7° Early in the
twentieth century a related but much more important question arose
when the movement to establish a University in Bristol gathered
momentum. In 1899 there had been established a University
College Colston Society to raise funds to help the College, and at its
first annual dinner James Bryce had spoken of the possibility of a
74 There are many’ lengthy references to all this in the Society’s minutes, see
H.B.38, p. 292, 26 June 1964; H.B.39, pp- 13 ff., 13 Nov. 1964; p. 21, 27 Nov.
1964; pp. 36 ff., 26 Feb. 1965; p. 40, 5 March 1965; pp. 44 ff., 25 March 1965; pp.
50 ff., 9 April 1965; p. 54, 23 April 1965; p. 69, 11 June 1965; p. 76, 25 June 1965;
Pp. 79, 29 July 1965; p. 89, 10 Sept. 1965. For later developments, see H.B.40, p.
269, 28 Sept. 1971; H.B.41, p. 68, g April 1973; p. 93, 24 Sept. 1973.
78 See pp. 381-4.
492 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Western University. In 1901, Bishop Percival had also supported
this suggestion, and in 1902 R. B. (later Viscount) Haldane had
spoken of the possibility of a federal West of England University
which might include University College, Bristol, the Merchant
Venturers’ Technical College, and the colleges at Reading, South-
ampton and Exeter.’?6 Haldane’s speech was published as a
pamphlet, and although the idea of a federal university was not in
the long run acceptable to University College, it had an obvious
attraction for those responsible for the Merchant Venturers’ Tech-
nical College, including Pope, Ward and Wertheimer.??
On 6 March 1906, Lewis Fry called a meeting to consider the
establishment of a University Committee and announced that
£30,000 had been contributed to a University endowment fund by
Lord Winterstoke (£10,000), J. S. Fry (£10,000) and Sir Frederick
Wills (£5,000), and on 2 July 1906 a committee to establish a
University was formally set up under the chairmanship of Lewis
Fry.’® It was necessary for this committee to try to increase the
endowment fund to something like £200,000 and to get the coopera-
tion and support of the Society which had for so long been playing
an important role in higher education through the Technical
College.”®
The growing strength of the movement to establish a University
placed the Society in a difficult position.®° It was extremely anxious
to play an important part if a University was established, but on the
other hand it took immense pride in its Technical College which
was preparing students for degrees of London University and which
had contributed more to higher education in some of its branches
than University College, Bristol.*! The position was further com-
76 For the origins of the University, see Basil Cottle and J. W. Sherborne, The
Life of a University, 2nd edition, 1960, on which this paragraph is based.
77 For Wertheimer’s Memorandum on the position which the Merchant
Venturers’ Technical College should occupy in the proposed University, see
M.V.T.C. Reports and Memoranda 1891-1901, p. 221, 7 Dec. 1906. This was printed
for circulation among members.
78 It is convenient henceforth to refer to this as the University Committee.
79 Cottle and Sherborne, of. cit., pp. 31-2.
80 The Society’s attitude was very largely determined by a small group in which
G. H. Pope, W. W. Ward, Percy Liston King (the Treasurer) and Julius Wert-
heimer, Principal of the Technical College, played a decisive role. Their recom-
mendations had, of course, to receive official approval by a General Hall. A number
of papers were printed and circulated by members, but very little discussion is
recorded in the Hall Book.
81 T found in two black boxes in the Society’s archives a large number of papers
relating to the foundation of the University. They include M.V.T.C. Reports and
Memoranda 1891-1901 (which in fact goes on to 1906); five cardboard-covered files
covering the years 1908-1909, and a large number of papers, drafts, printed docu-
ments. The papers have not yet been put in chronological order or given reference
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 493
plicated by the fact that the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College
not only carried on a great deal of non-University teaching for full-
time and part-time students, but also included a primary and secon-
dary school. Moreover, relations with University College. had
recently been very difficult because of disputes about overlapping.
Some of the bitterness of earlier conflicts was carried over into the
discussions about founding a University.
The Society’s representatives were determined men anxious to
get the best terms they could for their Technical College if they were
to cooperate. They wished to retain as much financial and administra-
tive control as possible if part of the Technical College was to be
included in the proposed University. Julius Wertheimer had obvious
reasons for trying to secure for his College as important a part as
possible, and he had the ear of Pope and W. W. Ward.® G. H. Pope
seems to have been the strong man in the group, and on occasions
he took an uncompromising line. As late as 11 August 1908, he wrote
to Alderman W. H. Elkins, Chairman of the City’s Education Com-
mittee, ‘‘Speaking for myself alone, I am sorry that . . . the question
of a local University was ever mooted. It is doubtful whether the
population of Bristol and its neighbourhood can supply enough
undergraduates (even though half of them be women) for a Univer-
sity of more than duodecimo size, and there seems little reason why
undergraduates should come from a distance.”” He went on to say
that the pick of the students in the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College already took London University degrees, ‘which are far
more valuable than any local degree is likely to become . . .”. He
thought it would be better for the working classes if the College
remained completely independent, but this could happen only if
the Corporation continued, and perhaps increased, its financial
support, which, he supposed, was not to be expected “‘during the
present University mania, unless we join the movement”. If the
Society did so, it must do what it could “‘to render as innocuous as
possible any Charter that may be granted’”’.8® W. W. Ward could
also take a firm line, but the impression given by the correspondence
is that he was much more sympathetic to the proposed University
and more inclined to be conciliatory and to exercise some restraint
on the fiery Pope. He was very anxious that the Society should
remain closely involved with educational matters as this justified its
existence and prevented it from being an anachronism. He thought
numbers. For convenience, they are referred to henceforth as M.V. Untversity
Papers.
82 See M.V. University Papers, passim for the part which he played in collecting
information and suggesting the policy which should be followed.
83 M.V. University Papers copy of letter from G. H. Pope to Alderman W. H.
Elkins, 11 Aug. 1908.
494 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
that the creation of the University would make the Merchants’
Committees more important and interesting, and he wanted younger
members and new blood to be brought in to the work much more
than they had been in the past. On at least one occasion, he advised
giving way at a time when “George Pope would have preferred to
have broken with the University people altogether and declared
open war’’.84
The University Committee and the Society’s Committee differed
on major issues of principle, since the former wanted a unitary
university with most of it on one site, whereas the latter hoped until
a late stage that the University would be a federation of the two
Colleges which might also include in due course other institutions in
the West Country. Moreover, the Society’s attitude was very patern-
alistic towards its own College and it was anxious to retain very
considerable financial and administrative control. There was, too,
a marked difference in attitudes to the teaching staff between
Lloyd Morgan, the Principal of University College, and Julius
Wertheimer, Principal of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College.®> The University Committee was at times prepared to make
quite unreasonable demands such as the suggestion that there should
be a complete merger and that the Society should hand over to the
University the property in Unity Street where the Merchant Ven-
turers’ Technical College was carrying on its work. The secondary
school would not be included, but, the University Committee added
optimistically, “‘we are led to believe that the discontinuance of the
School has been under the consideration of the Society’’.8* George
Pope may have been unreasonable when he wrote “‘I am sorry that
U.C.B. either cannot understand plain ‘English’ or will not believe
that we mean what we say,’’®” but the more conciliatory Ward no
doubt had some justification for his remark “It is a pity the Univer-
sity Committee did not originally approach the Society in a less
aggressive manner’’, adding “‘However, we let byegones be byegones
and said nothing to humiliate them.’’88
Negotiations were the more difficult because menibets of the two
conflicting groups did not move in the same circles socially or
politically. The money for the University came overwhelmingly
from the Wills and the Fry families, who were Liberal in politics,
nonconformist in religion and not members of the Society of
84 M.V. University Papers, W. W. Ward to P. L. King, 15 May 1908; 9 April
1908; 10 March 1909.
85 See, for example, M.V. University Papers, Memorandum of Wertheimer of his
conversation with Lloyd Morgan, 5 April 1909, and Wertheimer to Ward, 23
March 1909.
88 Jbid., Lewis Fry to P. L. King, 24 Feb. 1908.
87 Ibid., Pope to P. L. King, 14 Feb. 1909.
88 Jbid., Ward to P. L. King, 5 June 1908.
Above: The main building of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College
after the fire of g October 1906. From a photograph in the Hall.
See p. 477. Photograph by G. Kelsey
Below: The Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, rebuilt after the fire
and opened on 24 June 1909. From a photograph in the Hall.
See p. 497. Photograph by G. Kelsey
The courses for evening classes in the Merchant Venturers’ School in the
first session, 1885
Photograph by G. Kelsey
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 495
Merchant Venturers.®® It is difficult to assess how important the
political factor was, but George Pope certainly took it seriously and
was inclined to see the wicked hand of the Liberals behind the
opposition which he encountered. With reference to the semi-
independent role he was demanding for the Technical College
as against the totally subordinate position which University College
hoped it would occupy, he remarked “‘Clearly they are afraid of free
trade, though they are Radicals,” and he thought the Merchant
Venturers were at a disadvantage in negotiating with the Privy
Council because they were well-known Conservatives while the
main supporters of University College were Liberals, doubtless
having the support of three out of the four Bristol M.P.s.®°
In view of the major differences of principles and personalities, it
is not surprising that the attempt to reconcile the interests of
University College and the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College
led to sharp conflicts and that it was not until 1909 just before the
Charter was granted that agreement was finally reached. In order
to understand what was involved it is necessary to consider the matter
in some detail.
On 26 October 1906, the Hall was informed that a letter had been
received from the Rt. Honourable Lewis Fry, Chairman of the
Executive Committee for promoting a University of Bristol, asking
the Society to appoint some members to meet his Committee. The
letter was referred to the same committee which had been appointed
to consider what was to be done as a result of the fire which had
destroyed the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College.*! Lengthy
negotiations and correspondence followed between the two com-
mittees, and proposals and counter-proposals were made. Julius
Wertheimer seems to have played a prominent, if not the leading,
role in proposing the lines on which the Society should negotiate. ®?
89 Cottle and Sherborne point out that W. Proctor Baker, the prominent
Merchant Venturer who had played a major role in the development of the
Technical College, had contributed generously to University Coilege in its early
days and that it is unlikely that he anticipated that the two institutions would
come to compete against each other (The Life of a University, pp. 31, 33). He might
perhaps have been able to reconcile the conflicting claims or at least have worked
for conciliation, but by this time he was no longer alive.
90 M.V. University Papers, G. H. Pope to P. L. King, 11 June 1908; typescript
document headed ‘‘The Merchant Venturers’ Technical College and the Univer- |
sity College, Bristol’? with handwritten sub-title “Short history of negociation”,
which is almost certainly Pope’s work. See also Pope’s letter to P. L. King, 10
Feb. 1909, when he reports that the Privy Council is sympathetic to the Society’s
views and adds “‘Lewis Fry will be able to shelter himself from his fire-eating
friends behind the P.C.”
91 77.B.29, p. 214, 26 Oct. 1906. For the fire, see pp. 477-8.
®2 See printed Memorandum from Wertheimer, 7 Dec. 1906, on the position
which the Technical College should occupy in the proposed University and
496 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The correspondence between 23 October 1906 and 4 F ebruary 1907
was printed for circulation to members.®? The first shot was fired on
11 December 1906 when the~Society’s committee informed Lewis
Fry that it would recommend to the Society approval of the forma-
tion of a University with the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College forming part of it, on condition that the Society provided
in its college, which was to be re-erected on the Unity Street site,
such Faculties of the University as might be mutually agreed. The
Society was to be adequately represented on the various governing
bodies of the University, and the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College was to be financially independent and autonomous with
regard to internal arrangements, although subject to the University
with regard to curriculum and other academic matters.
In his reply of 17 December 1906, Fry regretted that the Society
did not share the view that all Faculties should be on one central site
and asked for information about what Faculties the Society proposed
to provide in the Unity Street premises. The reply of the Society’s
sub-committee on 22 December 1906 must have staggered him, for
it was proposed that the Society should provide a Faculty of Applied
Science including (a) Applied Chemistry, including Metallurgy,
Brewing, Dyeing, etc. provided the Society considered there was
sufficient demand in the West of England (b) Engineering, civil,
electrical, mechanical, mining and sanitary (c) all technological
subjects in so far as they came in the purview of the University (d)
such other subjects as the University might allot to the Faculty and
for which the Society was willing to make provision. Moreover, in
order that the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College might teach
Applied Science, it would be necessary to teach so much Pure
Science as was required to illustrate it. For full measure, when the
University thought that there was sufficient demand for a Faculty
of Commerce and Economics, the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College was to have the right to provide it, if it were willing to do so.
This was very much on the lines which Julius Wertheimer had
proposed in a Memorandum of 18 December 1906,%4 and it seems
that he was anxious to build up for the Society, and for himself as
Principal, a large semi-private empire inside the new University.
In his reply on 26 January 1907, Fry regretted that these condi-
tions “appear to be altogether divergent from the fundamental
principles we then submitted’”’. These were that there should be a
another Memorandum bearing his initials of 18 Dec. 1906, both in M.V. University
Papers.
®3 A copy was inserted after p. 245 in H.B.29, and there are other copies in the
Society’s archives.
94 M.V. University Papers, 11 Feb. 1907. Not signed but clearly the work of Julius
Wertheimer.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 497
complete fusion of the two Colleges, although the name of the
Society was to be specially associated with certain departments of
Applied Science, such as Engineering. The appointment of the first
Dean of the Faculty of Applied Science might be reserved to the
Society, and it would no doubt be possible to incorporate in the
Faculty members of the staff of the Technical College who were
giving instruction of University character. There was to be no dupli-
cation of classes, and there was to be only one administration under
the Court and Governors of the University.
There was thus fundamental disagreement. Not surprisingly,
Julius Wertheimer reacted strongly against the proposal that his
college should thus be swallowed up, and pointed out ina Memoran-
dum to the Master on 11 February 1907 that neither London
University nor Manchester or Sheffield required associated tech-
nological colleges to give up their autonomy. He respectfully sub-
mitted “that care should be taken that the welfare of a substantial
and successful Technical College is not sacrificed in order to secure
imaginary benefits for a shadowy University, the date of whose
foundation is still doubtful”.®5 There was a conference between the
Principals of the two Colleges at Merchant’s Hall on 11 February
1907 to try to sort out problems of overlapping, but it came to
nothing, and at a Hall on 22 February 1907 the Master recom-
mended to the 29 Members present that, as it was improbable that
the proposed University could be formed for some years, the
Society should forthwith rebuild its College on its present site, not
only to prevent a further loss of students but because it was essential
to the negotiations for coordinating the work of University College
and the Technical College. Although Mervyn King objected that
any business man would want to see a scheme and a financial
statement first, the Hall decided to proceed forthwith. It would
clearly be in a much stronger position in relation to the proposed
University once it had rebuilt its College. There was no immediate
danger of the University being established and in view of the small
amount so far raised, there was no likelihood of it being set up
without the full cooperation of the Society.°* In March 1907, the
Treasurer wrote expressing his committee’s disappointment at the
failure of negotiations, and they were not resumed until February
1908. Meanwhile, the Society went ahead rapidly with rebuilding
its Technical College.®’
Until early in 1908, the Society had been negotiating from
strength, since its College was essential to the foundation of a
University. The balance of power changed dramatically when at
95 Ibid., P. L. King to Professor Cowl, University College.
96 H.B.29, pp. 242 ff., 246, 22 Feb. 1907.
97 See p. 478.
498 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the University Colston Society’s Dinner on 14 February 1908 a
letter was read from Henry Overton Wills promising £100,000
towards the endowment fund, provided a charter was granted
within two years. In the course of the dinner, there were five other
donations amounting to £16,000 in all, and the total endowment
fund was then about £150,000.9* The University Committee was
now seriously in business, and the cooperation of the Society,
although still very desirable, was no longer absolutely essential.
The University Committee now took the initiative in resuming
negotiations, and on 6 February 1908 it wrote to the Treasurer ask-
ing, “now that circumstances are perhaps somewhat altered”’, whether
the Society would resume negotiations.°® The Treasurer replied
that the Society was “in full sympathy . . . as regards the founda-
tion of a University’? and would like to know the proposed constitu-
tion and the position of the Technical College in it.1°° W. W. Ward
wrote at this time that he had been studying the constitution of the
University of London, which had 23 institutions, all financially
independent, and which could remain so as long as the University
considered them efficient. He thought that there had been a good
deal of misconception between the two committees in the past for
want of accurate information on either side. He felt that the Society
ought in every way to show its goodwill towards the University
scheme but gave a warning “‘. . . I hope a body like the S.M.V. will
not be carried off its legs by the glamour of the £100,000 gift, and
rashly consent to throw into the melting pot such a proved success
as its school, for the sake of a scheme which for many years must be
experimental, however magnificent it may be.” He remarked ‘‘We
can always throw in our lot with the University afterwards, as I see
University College, London, has now done with the University of
London.”’1%
Fry replied on 24 February 1908 that what was intended was no
novelty but a University on the lines of Birmingham, Liverpool and
Sheffield. Curricula and discipline would be under the Senate. There
would be a Council and a Court, and probably four Faculties —
Arts, Medicine, Science and Applied Science. With reference to the
Technical College, it was suggested that the Society should merge its
contribution in the University, but what was to happen would
depend on the extent to which the Society was prepared to cooperate
with the University. The overriding principle was ‘“‘the complete
unification of the work of the University under one administration
and control”. If the two Colleges merged, all adult education and
*8 Cottle and Sherborne, of. cit., p. 36.
°® M.V. University Papers, Richard Cowl to Percy King, 6 Feb. 1908.
100 Jbid., King to Cowl, 12 Feb. 1908.
101 Jbid., Ward to Mervyn (King), 13 Feb. 1908.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century | 499
instruction would come under the University scheme. The Merchant
Venturers’ Secondary School in the Technical College would
necessarily be excluded. The higher work in Science and Applied
Science in the two institutions would be completely merged in the
University. Some of it would go into the Faculty of Science in
University College; the greater part would come under the Faculty
of Applied Science and Engineering with which the name of the
Society should be associated. It was suggested that the work of this
Faculty should be carried on, so far as space permitted, in the
Society’s building in Unity Street which, it was proposed, should
be transferred to the University, whose property it would become.
With regard to the technological instruction of artisans, it was
suggested that a Merchant Venturers’ School of Technology should
be formed in closest connection with the University, which would
extend the work of the Society in this field. This should come under
the management of a committee of the University, the Merchant
Venturers, the City Council and coopted members from the
employers and of the Trades Council. It would be subject to Univer-
sity statutes.1°2
It seems clear that Fry’s Committee, with £150,000 behind it,
was now negotiating from strength and not making much effort to
take into consideration the concern of the Society for its Technical
College, which was to be swallowed up ruthlessly. W. W. Ward
very reasonably asked if there was any reason to think that the
Technical College’s training of artisans and future captains of indus-
try would gain under the University scheme. Fry was quoting the
examples of Birmingham, Liverpool and Sheffield, but made no
mention of the very different constitution of London and Manchester.
His proposals would reduce the educational role of the Society to
*“‘a mere financial contribution’’, with no real control. So long as the
Society was responsible for the management of its Technical College,
it had something concrete and tangible to which it could point as its
work and justification. He added characteristically “‘I do not for a
moment think that the framers of these proposals were actuated by
any hostile feelings towards the Society but I cannot imagine any
more insidious attack against the Society than the attempt to per-
suade it to give up its education work and reputation.”’1°3
In April 1908 the Society finally informed the University Com-
mittee that the proposals were unacceptable. Fry’s committee
regretted that the Society could not adopt the Scheme, recognised
the friendly attitude towards the foundation of a University, and
said ‘‘we shall hope when the Charter has been obtained that some
way may be found of determining the relation of your College to
108 Tbid., Fry to King, 24. Feb. 1908 (printed).
103 Jbid., Ward to the Master, March 1908.
500 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
the University in a satisfactory manner’’. There was a sting in the
tail, for Fry added that he was sending the correspondence to the
Corporation and felt sure the Society would not object.!°* The
University Committee had in effect broken off negotiations and was
prepared to act alone. Moreover, it was making the dispute public
by informing the Corporation.
At this point the Society’s committee drew up a statement of its
case for public consumption. G. H. Pope thought that this was
necessary because Fry’s committee had sent copies of the corre-
spondence to the Corporation, adding “‘even if this had not been
done this Committee and the U.C.B. have been expounding their
views to the world at large for a considerable time’”’.1°> A printed
copy of this document entitled The Society of Merchant Venturers and
the proposed University of Bristol and the West of England is to be found in
the Society’s archives.1°® The statement pointed out that Univer-
sities established in recent years had been constituted either by two
colleges creating a new institution in the government of which they
both took part and which supervised their work without controlling
their internal affairs, or by two or more colleges merging and ending
their independent existence. The first method, a federal scheme, had
been first suggested by the Bishop of Bristol when he expressed the
hope that some day University College and the Merchant Venturers’
Technical College would ‘“‘as sister Colleges form the first constitu-
ents of a University of Bristol’. The idea had been developed by
R. B. Haldane who suggested the models of London and Man-
chester for a “Bristol and West of England University” which might
justify its name by including suitable institutions in Gloucestershire,
Somerest, Wiltshire, Devon and Cornwall “instead of relying solely
on the comparatively small population of Bristol and the neighbour-
hood”. The document then outlined the arrangements in the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, which included a Secon-
dary School, adult day classes for higher branches of applied science
and technology, and evening classes for the technical instruction of
artisans and for commercial education. It then referred to Fry’s
proposals which would exclude the Secondary School and require
the Society to hand over Unity Street and the higher-level work in
applied sciences and engineering to the University, with the pro-
vision that a School of Technology should be formed under a
104 Ibid., Fry to King, 10 April 1908. 195 Jbid., Pope to King, 16 May 1908.
106 For Wertheimer’s amendments to the original draft, see ibid., Pope to King, —
18 May 1908. See also Ward’s letter of 18 May 1908 in which he advised waiting
but said he would like to secure the goodwill of the papers most read by the
working classes. He also suggested that the quotation marks in the words ‘‘Uni-
versity Committee” might be dropped, as there seemed to be something a little
depreciatory in using them. For the Society’s manifesto, see Western Daily Press, 20
May 1908, and the paper’s comments on 12 Aug. 1908.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 501
composite committee for the technological instruction for artisans
hitherto given in the Technical College’s evening classes. The Society
was to be asked to make financial contributions to both the Faculty
of Applied Science and to the School of Technology. To this the
Society replied that its secondary school was needed, and that to
transfer it to a new site would cost £28,000, apart from £500 a year
to maintain it; that the present technical classes were very satis-
factory, and what was proposed instead was an untried plan. The
suggestion that the Society should finance both the Faculty and the
School of Technology was based on a misconception of its finances.
The Society argued that if there were no Merchant Venturers’
Technical College in existence but only a technical college with a
different origin and a different connection, and if a Scheme of
University Education were being formulated on a blank sheet, then
the apparent simplicity of administration proposed might have an
irresistible attraction. As things were, “an Institution like the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College has a record and traditions
among the working classes which form an educational asset of no
ordinary value. . . . The substance of a proved success should not be
lightly dropped.” The Society had asked itself which method was
best for the artisans and future Captains of Industry in Bristol and
how it could combine the maximum assistance to the new University
with the minimum disturbance of its educational work among the
industrial and commercial classes. It was willing to submit to
University control over University teaching and to continue its
other work. It would help the University by undertaking the Faculty
of Applied Science and Engineering. It denied that this led to over-
lapping and claimed that a full enquiry some ten years ago had
shown such charges were unfounded.
At this point, the City, which had received copies of the corre-
spondence and which had set up a committee to consider financial
help to the proposed University, intervened in the dispute, and the
Lord Mayor wrote to the Master suggesting that the two bodies
should meet t6 try to overcome the difficulties. ‘It appears evident
to me’, he said, “that the welding together of your two institutions
into one, to be known as the Bristol University, would tend to the
development of education and the furtherance of our City’s interest
in the future.”!°7 His committee would want to be satisfied that
everything had been done to get agreement or, if that was impossible,
that the Council would not have to make unnecessary duplicate
grants./°8 The Society’s committee was at first unwilling to agree to
a joint meeting,!®® but then it changed its mind and a meeting took
107 Jbid., The Lord Mayor to the Master, 18 May 1908.
108 Jbid., The Lord Mayor to P. L. King, 22 May 1908.
109 Jhid., The Town Clerk to P. L. King, 28 May 1908.
502 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
place on 4 June.4° On 4 June, W. W. Ward reported that the
meeting had gone well. The Bishop of Bristol had been spokesman
for the University Committee and had been most conciliatory in
spirit and in language, as had been Lewis Fry. It had been decided
that the property of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College
should remain in the Society. The Bishop’s written statement, how-
ever, was unsatisfactory, and W. W. Ward wrote to him, saying that
there was no prospect of agreement unless the Society’s main points
were met. George Pope commented that if it were not “speaking
evil of dignities,” he would say that the Bishop’s proposals were
impudent and that he wanted the Society to spend largely in helping
the University while getting absolutely nothing in return. It was
essential in order to protect the Society’s pocket that there should
be coordination between the Faculty of Technology and the
Technical College.1
Thus agreement had not been reached, and as the University
Committee got near the point when it could petition for a Charter,
the Society took steps to ensure that it would be treated by the
Privy Council as a separate institution with the right to take part
in negotiations over the proposed Charter. When Edward VII
visited Bristol on g July 1908, the University Committee presented
a Loyal Address expressing the hope that Bristol would shortly be in
a position to ask for a Royal Charter for a University, but the
Society also staked its claim in a Loyal Address, saying that it
“‘aspires to cooperate, and by undertaking the Faculty of Engineering
of the University to lighten the labours of those who seek to diffuse
the love of letters and the spirit of scientific research’’.118 When the
University Committee presented its petition for a Charter a little
later, the Society likewise presented a petition on 6 August 1908,114
the purpose of which was not to primarily support the request for a
Charter but to ensure that the Society had a standing with the Privy
Council and the right to express its own point of view.
The petition which the Society presented to the Privy Council
is a long document and only some of its points can be noted here. It
outlined the achievements of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College and said that ifa University were incorporated in such a way
as to contract the resources or diminish the sphere of the Technical
College, it would be detrimental to the educational facilities of
Bristol and would in particular “prejudice the poorer classes” and
so it was on these grounds that the petitioners were opposed to the
110 Ibid., W. W. Ward to P. L. King, 5 June 1908.
111 Ibid., George Pope to P. L. King, 11 June 1908.
112 B. Cottle and J. W. Sherborne, The Life of a University, and edition, p. 37.
113 7,B.29, p. 312, 24 July 1908.
114 7.B.29, p. 315, 24 July 1908; p. 319, 25 Sept. 1908.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 503
scheme propounded by University College, Bristol. They feared that
it would have the effect of ‘‘overshadowing and to a large extent of
destroying the prestige of the Technical College’’. Not only would
this be a poor reward for the services they had rendered to education
at a time when the importance of technical education in Bristol was"
little recognised and ill-provided for, but it would be a fatal blow
to technical education, since a University would not supply at such
low fees the courses available to the artisans and poorer classes at the
Technical College. Instead of the proposed scheme, they suggested
the incorporation in one University of the Technical College and
University College. The University would control the teaching at
large, but each institution would manage its own affairs. They
claimed that “If a University were founded on these lines with some
such title as the Bristol and. West of England University, it would
have the advantage of elasticity and would be able from time to
time to open its arms and embrace any institution in the West of
England which might desire to obtain the advantage of becoming a
member of a great University.”” They said they had made every
effort to come to terms with University College, but all negotiations
had failed because University College would not agree to the terms
which they deemed essential. They explained at length what they
considered necessary, but the basic point is that they wanted a federal
university formed by the union of two Colleges, over one of which
they were to retain complete financial and administrative control,
apart from academic matters, which were to come under the
University.145
Further discussion followed with the University Committee which
met the Society on a number of points and expressed the hope that
it would now obtain its hearty goodwill and support. If it did not
obtain it, then it reserved the right to withdraw absolutely and to
be free to proceed as it liked.14*® On 24 October, the University
Committee pressed the Society to communicate its amendments
early in November, as it was imperative that the proposed Charter
be tabled in the House of Commons early in the month.” The
Society’s proposed amendments were presented on 10 November,
and on 13 November the University Committee expressed dis-
appointment that they were not acceptable.118
115 See M.V. University Papers for the Petition. Pope informed the Clerk of the
Privy Council on 1 August 1908 that not only had no agreement been reached but
many points had not been discussed at all and that all matters at issue ought to be
settled before a Charter was granted.
116 Jbid., Benson, Carpenter, Cross and Williams, solicitors to the University, to
the Society, 19 Oct. 1908.
117 Jbid., same to same, 24 Oct. 1908.
118 Jbid., printed answer of the Society, 10 Nov. 1908 and University Commit-
tee’s letter of 13 November 1908.
504 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
The battle now shifted to London. The draft charter was tabled
in both Houses on 17 November, and it did not incorporate the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College. The Society’s parliamen-
tary agent called at the Privy Council Office to find out why the
Charter had been tabled without the Merchant Venturers’ petition
being first considered. An official there expressed surprise that the
Society did not know what was going on, since he had had numerous
interviews and communications with representatives of the Univer-
sity Committee and had on 5 November received a statement in
two columns from the Committee’s solicitor setting out the require-
ments of the Society and what the University Committee had agreed
to. He thought that in effect practically all the suggestions of the
Society had been accepted.149
Fear that the Society’s case was going by default led to a reaction
on the part of one of the Society’s negotiators which is in many ways
typical of the atmosphere of distrust and lack of communication
between those concerned. A memorandum in the Society’s archives
noted “‘From this it appeared that, while the University Committee
were Carrying on negotiations with the Merchant Venturers by
means of documents marked ‘Private’, they, or their agents, had
been in frequent communication with the Privy Council Office,
behind the Society’s back and had led the official to believe that the
promoters of the University had practically come to terms with the
Society, which is very far from being the case. It must be assumed
that the advancement of the petition of the University College . . .
had been obtained by this underhand dealing and by the mis-
representations made.”1!2° The Society’s negotiators considered
having questions asked in the House about the failure of the Privy
Council Office to examine its petition, and they also sought support
from the Board of Education.!24 Pope and W. W. Ward then
obtained an interview with A. F. Fitzroy ‘“‘the chief man at the
P.C.”. They handed their draft agreement to him and went through
the disputed points. Fitzroy drafted clauses which Pope and Ward
thought would be acceptable to the Society. He also informed them
that he had been very frank with the other side and had told one of
its representatives that some of his letters were unnecessarily rude
and that the promoters of the University were suspicious both of the
Society and of the citizens of Bristol. He had pointed out that the
University Committee’s position was very different from that of the
118 Jbid., Meredith & Co. to Osborne, Ward and Vassall & Co., 23 Nov. 1908.
120 [bid., unsigned typescript headed “‘The Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College and The University College, Bristol”, 8 Dec. 1908, probably the work of
George Pope.
121 Ibid., typescript “‘Questions intended at one time to be put in the House”,
8 Dec. 1908; letters from the Board of Education to George Pope, 7 Dec., 8 Dec.,
10 Dec., 21 Dec. 1908.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 505
Society, since the committee had to do as the Privy Council told it,
whereas the Society was independent. The clerk in the Privy Council
Office who was responisble for the details was very amusing about
the clauses (in the draft charter) which he had altered as being
ungrammatical. Pope and Ward then went on to the Education
Office and were told in confidence that “the proceedings had been
conducted in a most mysterious and unusual manner’’ and that the
‘Society would probably never know what had been going on to make
the Privy Council act contrary to precedent. Ward thought that the
University Committee had attempted to rush the Charter through
and that the attempt had nearly succeeded.122 Pope was very pleased
with the interview at the Privy Council Office and the assurance
that any agreement they came to with the University Committee
would be scheduled to the Charter, but he thought that the Board
of Education’s Secondary School Branch was “either unable or
unwilling to get into its stupid and obstinate head the fact that our
Secondary School is not an independent institution’’.123 On 22
December he wrote to the Treasurer saying that he had sent to
Fitzroy the draft agreement as amended by him and that Fitzroy
thought the document afforded a reasonable basis for agreement. He
thought that unless the University Committee accepted it at once
and unreservedly, it might be as well to send it to the newspapers.
He understood that people were accusing the Society of delaying the
Charter and that they ought to know that “‘it is we, and not U.C.B.,
who have made a strong point of low fees for artisans’’.124
In the course of January and February 1909 various draft agree-
ments circulated between the University Committee, the Society and
the Privy Council Office.125 On g February, the Society was insisting
as one of the conditions that it should have predominance on the
Board of the Faculty of Engineering, for the provision and main-
tenance of which it offered to make itself responsible, and that the
interests of the artisans, who were the primary object of the Society’s
care, should not be prejudiced by the proposed arrangements.126
On 16 February, the Society received from Fitzroy a schedule of
agreement which was a compromise between the two views. Pope
sent it to Wertheimer to be copied and then discussed it with him.
There were several points which needed attention and which could
be settled without much difficulty, ‘‘and there is one which will
cause more difficulty, but which we ought, I think, to insist on even
to the point of breaking off negotiations. I mean the securing for
122 Ibid., Ward to King, 11 Dec. 1908.
123 Tbid., Pope to King, 12 Dec. 1908.
124 Ibid., Pope to King, 22 Dec. 1908.
126 Ibid., January 1909.
126 Ibid., the Society to the University’s solicitors, 9 Feb. 1909.
506 | The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
ourselves of virtual independence in our own Faculty.” He said that
he had put this to Fitzroy as plainly as he thought prudent to do in
writing and if necessary he would seek another interview and put it
still more plainly by word of mouth. He added “Quite apart from
the fact that we shall pay the piper and have a right to be secure from
interference so long as we teach, and teach well, everything that
the University authorities demand, there are reasons which cannot
be put on paper but which you and I know, why practical indepen-
dence will be essential to smooth working — such things as the long-
standing jealousy of our College on the part of U.C.B. and the dis-
like and jealousy of W(ertheimer) which is felt in that quarter.’’ The
alterations made by the Privy Council Office had taken away this
independence. The Society’s original wording must be restored, and
he thought that if the Society stood firm, the Privy Council would
give in. He went on to say “I shall point out to Fitzroy, as Sir Edward
Grey lately pointed out to Austria-Hungary, that a treaty cannot
be modified without the consent of all parties.’’127
Pope was sure that all that was necessary was to stand firm, and
he requested another interview with Fitzroy. The reply on 1 March
was devastating. Fitzroy would be happy to see him but, he went on,
**. .. I do not anticipate any very fruitful result unless you are
prepared to modify materially the attitude indicated in your official
letter’’. He was provoked into adding in terms not characteristic of
the civil service the comment “After a very considerable experience
of negotiations in connection with University Charters, I am free to
confess that I have never had to deal with a body of gentlemen whose
disposition was so fluctuating and mistrustful. You have been met
in a way which amounts to a very handsome recognition of your
special claims and all you do is to raise fresh points and extend your
pretensions to matters lying outside the purpose of the agreement.’’128
In a long letter to the Treasurer, Pope remained convinced of the
righteousness of his cause. He thought the letter “astounding and
preposterous’, adding “‘I suppose he is writing under political
direction, but even so he need not have wandered so widely from the
truth”. He thought that probably Fitzroy had never before had a
case in which a body of independent gentlemen had offered very
large help to a University without asking for anything in return,
beyond the privilege of making their help really efficient. The real
point at issue now was “whether we should be allowed to make our
Faculty a success. We have promised to teach everything the Univer-
sity requires but we shall not be permitted to teach the amount of
chemistry which is taught elsewhere, which is undoubtedly necessary
and for which we have made special provision.’’ He was of the
127 Tbid., Pope to King, 18 Feb. 1909.
128 Tbid., A. W. Fitzroy, Privy Council Office, 1 March 1909.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 507
opinion that “they fear we shall encroach on the Faculty of Science”’
and that ‘They wish to strangle our one Faculty in order to avoid
an imaginary danger to one of their several Faculties’. He hoped
the Society would stand firm. If the University refused the Society’s
offer, its loss would be a gain to Technical Education and to “our
special clients the industrial classes, some of whose most influential
leaders are of the opinion that the University will be of little or no
use to them, but fully appreciate the benefits of our College and are
prepared to support it. Without the conditions we have imposed, it
would be madness to enter into partnership with people who do not
want us, who have long been jealous of us, who positively hate
Wertheimer, who ask us to take over as his subordinates teachers
from University College imbued, of course, with the same sentiments
and whom we cannot trust in view of the way in which secretly they
lied, or allowed lies to be told, to the Privy Council and so managed
to steal a march upon us.” He asked what line he and Ward should
take, and he suggested sounding the negotiators and other influential
members of the Society.1?°
A major issue at this point was whether the Engineering Faculty
should be allowed to teach Chemical Engineering, 4s this might
infringe on the work of the Faculty of Pure Science. Unlike Pope,
neither Ward nor Wertheimer was willing to break off negotiations
on this issue.13° |
There still remained a number of questions relating to the
financing of the Engineering Department and to the conditions of
employment of the staff of University College who were to be trans-
ferred to the new Faculty of Engineering in Unity Street, and dis-
cussions continued on these points in March, April and May.
Wertheimer had a low opinion of some of the engineers in University
College. He pointed out that Professor Ferrier did only 12 hours
teaching a week. He agreed that professors should have some time
for research, provided the official time thus assigned was used for the
purpose in question but, he remarked acidly, ‘“‘I do not remember
hearing that Ferrier has done any research work in recent years, but
it is possible that this is the case.’"43! He was anxious to exercise
control over Ferrier and resisted the view that he should hold a
position independent of the Society in administration and finance,
arguing that teachers in the Faculty of Engineering would be
provided and paid by the Society and should be responsible to the
Society through the Principal of their College in the first instance.
When the staff of University College came to the Technical College,
there must not be an enormous difference between their load and the
129 Jbid., Pope to King, 2 March 1909.
130 Tbid., Ward to King, 10 March 1909; Wertheimer to Ward, 11 March 1909.
131 Jbid., Wertheimer to Ward, 23 March 1909.
508 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
load of the lecturers in the College, and their vacations must be the
same.132 |
At the end of March, Ward reported on a long interview he had
had with the Deputy Clerk of the Privy Council concerning these
issues. He remarked that ‘““They are naturally getting sick of the
whole thing and rather take the line that this is a small matter which
the University will deal with . . .”. Ward said it was serious and that
he took his full share of the blame for not having raised it before. He
thought that throughout the negotiations, the other side had the
disposition to bang the door. Hitherto the Society had been pretty
successful in forcing it open, but now, he thought, it was quite
possible that there would be impatience at delay and a disinclination
to discuss the question.143
The Society’s negotiators continued to bargain to the very last,
and a compromise solution was worked out by which the supervision
of the Principal over the Departments in the Faculty was not to
imply any direct interference with the manner and method of
conducting academic work.1%4 The Privy Council Office was getting
impatient and wrote to Pope on 21 March saying that it had sent
six copies of the Charter and the amended schedule concerning the
Technical College to Ward on 8 March but had heard nothing
definite about whether the Society had any further observations to
make. It asked him to answer in writing, as time was going on.1%5 |
The Society’s negotiators made one more effort to get some altera-
tions, but the University Committee stated that it could not accept
them at this stage.18® On 6 May 1909, a General Hall approved the
terms of the agreement,!8’? and on 17 May the Privy Council Office
informed the Society that the King had approved the Charter.138
On 24 September, the Society put its seal on the formal agreement
with the University to provide a Faculty of Engineering.1®®
Towards the end of the long-drawn-out negotiations which had
delayed for so long the foundation of the University, W. W. Ward
wrote to the Treasurer ‘“‘As regards the future, it seems to me to be
in a nutshell! If the Council of the University are reasonable, no
difficulty will arise — if they are unreasonable and try and bleed us
132 Jbid.. Memorandum of Wertheimer’s conversations with Lloyd Morgan, 5
April 1909; “‘J.W’s Suggestions”, undated but after 15 March 1909; correspon-
dence of Ward and Fry, 12 March-1 April 1909; Wertheimer to Ward, 29 March
1909.
"188 Ibid., Ward to King, 31 March 1909.
184 Tbid., 24 April 1909.
185 Jbid., Fitzroy to Pope, 21 April 1909.
186 Ibid., King to Ward, 3 May 1909; Benson, Carpenter, Cross & Co. (Uni-
versity’s solicitors) to the Society, 4 May 1909.
137 Hf,.B.29, p. 358, 6 May 1909.
138 M.V. University Papers, Fitzroy to the Society, 6 May 1909.
189 77.B.29, p. 372, 24 Sept. 1909.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 509
we shall part company. We must give them a little time to show
their disposition.”’!4° As it turned out, relations became remarkably
harmonious in the years that followed. The fact that the Society
provided a home and financial aid to the Faculty of Engineering
and that under the agreement it had three representatives on the
Council and ten on the Court of the University meant a very close
relationship. There were now the personal contacts which had been
so notably absent before, and this, no doubt, helped to ensure
friendly cooperation. It was significant that in 1919 the Society
conferred honorary membership on the Rt. Hon. Lewis Fry for his
services to Bristol as an M.P. and for “‘the courtesy and ability with
which as one of the Founders of the University of Bristol he assisted
in the settlement of the agreement between the Society and the
University’’,1“! and it was symbolic of the friendly relations that had
been established that for the royal visit of 1925 the Society lent the
University a table, tablecloth and chairs for the royal table at the
luncheon in the Victoria Rooms.!4?
The arrangements between the Society and the University were
reviewed from time to time,!4* and in 1928 a joint committee recom-
mended that the liability of the Society for contributing to the
maintenance of the Faculty of Engineering should be three-quarters
of the income of the Society’s Education Trust and that the Educa-
tion Trust should continue until 1940, during which time the
Society agreed to give the Faculty fixity of tenure. The Vice-
Chancellor and two members of the Finance Committee were to be
on the Management Committee of the Technical College. The
Society put its seal to the agreement in June 1929.44
During the years in which the Faculty of Engineering was situated
in the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, the Society was able
to help the University in a number of ways. In 1919, for example,
it agreed to sell to it Manor House, Richmond House, Clifton Place
and Rivers Cottage for use as students’ hostels;!45 it contributed to
the fund raised for establishing a Faculty of Law;1** in 1946 it
agreed to provide £2,500 over seven years for University Halls of
Residence;14’ and in 1947 gave two shields for athletics.14®
Discussions were going on from 1944 about what was to happen
140 MV. University Papers, Ward to King, 17 April 1909.
141 77.B.30, p. 418, 1 Feb. 1919. 142 77.B.91, p. 285, 24 April 1925.
143 17.B.31, p. 5, 30 May 1919 agreement with the University concerning the
tenure of office of the Professor in the Faculty of Engineering; p. 150; 28 April
1922; Committee to meet the University Committee to consider what alterations
if any should be made in the agreement concerning the Faculty of Engineering;
H.B.31, p. 432, 23 March 1928, another committee for the same purpose.
144 77.B.32, p. 27, 30 Nov. 1928; p. 60, 28 June 1929.
145 H.B.91, p. 11, 25 July 1919. 146 F7.B.32, p. 248, 23 Dec. 1932.
147 77.B.34, p. 54, 28 June 1946. 148 77.B.34, p. 116, 24 July 1947.
510 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
when the agreement between the Society and the University ended
in 1950, and both the Society and the University were anxious to
maintain a close relationship.!#® The Society was in any case required
to hand over its responsibility for technical education to the City,
and the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College was due to be
taken over by the Corporation in 1949.15° Arrangements were made
by which the Faculty of Engineering could continue to occupy the
Unity Street premises until its new home in the Queen’s Building
was ready for occupation, and the Society agreed to give the
University £1,000 for seven years from 1949 to be used for under-
graduate scholarships and other purposes. The University agreed to
continue to allot 10 seats on Court and 3 on Council to members of
the Society.
After a stormy beginning, relations between the Society and the
University had been remarkably harmonious and fruitful, and at the
Vice-Chancellors’ suggestion a tablet was placed in the foyer of the
Queen’s Building commemorating the pioneer work of the Society
in providing a Faculty of Engineering. It was appropriately un-
veiled in 1954 by the Chancellor of the University, Sir Winston
Churchill, who was an honorary member of the Society of Merchant
Venturers.151
OTHER EDUCATIONAL INTERESTS
In addition to its work in connection with educational institutions
with which it had a direct connection, the Society has throughout
the period made a steady stream of donations to other schools and
to individuals who needed help. Some of these may be noted.
In 1902, for example, it gave £500 towards the cost of a new
Nautical School at Portishead which was to replace the old Formidable
training ship!52 and next year £10 was donated towards the repair
of St. Andrew’s Church School.153 In 1906, £50 was donated to
help build a Sunday School in a new part of Bedminster and £20
to help pay off the debt on the parish school of St. Augustine’s.1>4
Ten guineas was given for the repair of St. Jude’s school in 1910
and 50 guineas to assist in alterations in the Royal West of England
149 17,B.33, p. 347, 31 March 1944; p. 356, 30 June 1944; H.B.34, p. 282, 27
May 1949; pp. 288 ff., 24 June 1949.
150 77,B.34, p. 283, 27 May 1949; pp. 288 ff., 24 June 1949; p. 390, 23 June
1950; pp. 400 ff., 20 July 1950; H.B.35, p. 44, 20 Jan. 19515; p. 54, 23 Feb. 1951;
p. 80, 25 May 1951.
151 17,.B.95, p. 310, 29 May 1953; B. Cottle and J. W. Sherborne, The Life of a
University, p. 84. The arrangement by which the Society gives the University
£1,000 a year was renewed for 7 years in 1972 (H.B.41, p. 17, 27 April 1972).
152 F].B.29, p. 13, 26 July 1go2. 183 77, B.29, p. 72, 27 Nov. 1903.
154 H],.B.29, p. 180, 23 Feb. 1906; p. 200, 22 June 1906.
The Society and Education, Twentieth Century 511
Academy in 1913.455 St. Augustine’s Hotwells Mothers’ School
received £5 in 1914.156 Gifts between the Wars included £50 to
Bristol Cathedral School in 1921 and again in 1922; £21 for extra-
ordinary repairs at Clifton Parish National School in 1924; 50
guineas for buildings for Clifton High School in 1925 and £100 to
the fund for Redcliffe Day School in 1927; 100 guineas for a building
fund for St. Brandon’s Clergy Daughters School in 1934, and 25
guineas to Temple Colston Schoolin 1937.15? In 1938, in response to
the appeal of Mr. Foster G. Robinson, it was agreed to contribute
£1,000 over two years to help provide a fund of £18,000 in order to
adapt Redcliffe Endowed School to the requirements of the Board
of Education.158
In 1940, another member, Mr. Victor Fuller Eberle, appealed to
the Society for help in connection with Clifton College. He pointed
out that many parents who would normally have sent their children
to Public Schools were in difficulties owing to higher taxation and
that some City Companies and Livery Companies had already
established association with various schools. The Society agreed to
give £150 a year for seven years to establish Merchant Venturers
Bursaries.15?
Donations after World War II included 25 guineas each to
Badminton School Appeal and Clifton High School Appeal in 1955;
a seven-year covenant to give £100 a year to Clifton College in
1957; 200 guineas to the Bristol Grammar School Appeal in 1958;
and a covenant to give £1,000 a year over seven years in response
to the Clifton College Centenary Appeal in the same year. In 1961
Bristol Cathedral School was given 250 guineas to help provide a
new gymnasium, and next year the Society contributed 100 guineas
to Redland High School Appeal. In 1963 £100 was donated to the
Bath and Wells Diocesan Girls’ School Appeal, and in 1964 £250
to Clifton High School Appeal. In 1964, the Society covenanted to
give £100 a year for seven years to St. Mary Redcliffe Church
School, and in 1969 it agreed to contribute {£1,000 to Bristol
Grammar School Appeal.!6° In 1971, it gave {100 a year for 5
years to Clifton College Development Fund and also presented
dolphin candlesticks to the University of Bath 1!
155 H,.B.29, p. 394, 25 Feb. 1910; H.B.30, p. 120, 20 June 1913.
156 77,B.30, p. 190, 30 Oct. 1914.
187 H.B.31, p. 114, 17 June 1921; p. 157, 26 May 1922; p. 246, 25 July 1924; p.
307, 30 Oct. 1925; p. 417, 23 Dec. 1927; #.B.32, p. 323, 25 May 1934; p. 48, 25
June 1937; p. 50, 22 July 1937.
158 77,.B.33, p. 73, 26 Jan. 1938. 159 77.B.38, p. 174, 24 Jan. 1940.
160 77,.B.36, p. 99, 24 June 1955; H.B.37, p. 64, 28 Feb. 1958; H.B.37, p. 99, 24
July 1958; H.B.38, p. 50, 26 May 1961; p. 137, 29 June 1962; p. 248, 29 Nov. 1963;
p. 298, 30 July 1964; H.B.99, p. 24, 18 Dec. 1914; H.B.4g0, p. 134, 21 March 1969.
161 77.B.40, p. 235, 12 Feb. 1971; p. 273, 15 Oct. 1971.
512 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Other institutions apart from Schools also received help. In 1962,
the Society agreed to give £100 to the English Speaking Union to
enable sixth form boys and girls to be sent to Louisville, Kentucky,
in 1963, and in the same year 50 guineas was given to the Bristol
Folkhouse and to the Lord Mayor’s Appeal to help provide hostels
in Bristol for overseas students.1®?
Because of its great interest in the University of Bristol, the Society
was ready to respond to a University Appeal in 1962 by agreeing to
contribute £500 a year for seven years!®* and it had earlier agreed
that the income from the Wertheimer Trust of about £450 a year
could be used by agreement with the University to provide entrance
scholarships.1%4
From all this it will be clear that the Society, which had first
become involved in education in a very small way in the early
seventeenth century, reached a peak as far as educational interest
was concerned in the twentieth century when it was involved not
only with Colston’s Boys’ School and Colston’s Girls’ School but
with that unique institution, The Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College. It was inevitable with the ever-increasing cost of education
and the growing control exercised over it by the government and
the local authorities that a private Society with limited funds should
gradually cease to play quite so important a role as the century went
on, but the pioneer work of the Society was of immense value, nor
must it be forgotten that the contribution was not merely financial.
The Society and its numerous committees gave a great deal of time
to considering educational issues and many of its individual members
devoted their energy and powers of leadership to the Governing
Bodies on which they served. |
163 17.B.38, p. 127, 25 April 1962; p. 137, 29 June 1962; p. 141, 26 July 1962.
163 77, B.38, p. 149, 28 Sept. 1962.
164 77,B.97, p. 111, 30 Oct. 1958.
CHAPTER 26
The Charitable Work of the Society
in the Twentieth Century
IF in the course of the twentieth century the Society’s direct involve-
ment in education underwent some diminution when the Merchant
Venturers’ Technical College came to an end, its charitable work was
greatly increased. It continued to manage various trusts, to be
responsible for almshouses and to make a great number of donations
from its corporate funds, but in addition it also agreed to take over
the management of the very large sums given by H. H. Wills for the
establishment of The St. Monica Home of Rest. This trust resembled
in some ways the Colston trust for which the Society had first
assumed responsibility in the early eighteenth century, but it was on
a scale vastly exceeding anything which the Society had handled
before, and it will be examined first before considering the other very
miscellaneous charitable activities in which the Society is engaged.
THE ST. MONICA HOME OF REST
Towards the end of World War I, Henry Herbert Wills decided to
devote part of his wealth to the establishment of a trust to build a
home for the chronically sick to be known in honour of his wife,
Mary Monica Cunliffe Wills, as The St. Monica Home of Rest.
Part of the income of the trust was to be used to provide annuities
and gifts for people who, for one reason or another, could not be
admitted to the Home. For this purpose, he bought the Cote House
Estate, Westbury-on-Trym, for £17,000 and made over temporarily
to the Official Trustee of Charity Lands and Charity Funds a large
number of shares, of which Imperial Tobacco Company shares were
by far the most important.!
The suggestion that the Society of Merchant Venturers should
assume responsibility for the trust seems to have come primarily
from Mr. Mervyn King and from Mr. Charles Samuel Clarke, who
was a director of the Imperial Tobacco Company.? The Wills family
1 For details of the transactions, see the printed copy of the Deed Poll of 3 April
1922 and the Deed of 10 August 1928, executed by Mrs. Monica Wills, in the
Society’s archives.
2 See letter, 30 July 1921, from C. S. Clarke, Senior Warden, to C. Cyril Clarke,
Master of the Society.
514 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
up to this time had not had much connection with the Society, but
there were obvious advantages in handing over the trust to a perma-
nent corporation which had long experience in managing trust
funds, although not on so large a scale, and Mr. Charles Samuel
Clarke’s personal contact seems to have been of major importance
in the decision. From the Society’s point of view, there was great
interest in the proposal, since it fitted in so well with its long tradi-
tion of involvement in charitable activity, and the responsibility
offered a challenge, as well as helping to make the Society’s work
more meaningful at a time when it was already possible to foresee an
end to some of its educational work.®
The negotiations between the Society and Mr. Wills’ solicitor,
Mr. Napier Abbot, were long and difficult, and a major role was
played by the Treasurer, W. W. Ward, both before the signing of the
Trust Deed and on a number of occasions afterwards while Dame
Monica Wills was still alive and could, had she chosen to do so, have
exercised her right to transfer the trust elsewhere.‘
The Deed Poll was dated 3 April 1922, and as H. H. Wills was then
seriously ill, a deputation from the Society waited on him at his
home on 2g April and formally accepted the trust.5 The deed was
not entirely satisfactory from the point of view of the trustees, but
in view of the illness of H. H. Wills, it was thought best not to ask
for further amendments.
The object of the Charity was to build and maintain a Home for
*‘certain Chronic or Incurable Sufferers” who were to be elected by
the Council “‘entirely or as nearly as possible from gentlefolk of good
moral character . . . who had led honourable lives .. .”. If insuffi-
cient numbers of gentlefolk were available, the Council had dis-
cretion to admit ‘‘persons of somewhat lower social position”’.
Certain categories of sufferers, including those of unsound mind,
epileptics and those suffering from infectious or contagious diseases
or cancer, were excluded from admission to the Home. Those
admitted were to be baptised members of the Church of England,
‘although, with the consent of the Council, Protestant Noncon-
formists . . . shall be eligible’’. They were to be at least 16 years of
age on admission, and as far as possible 4 out of 5 at any one time
were to be at least 30 years of age. Preference was to be given firstly
to those who had been resident in Bristol, Somerset, Gloucestershire
or Wiltshire for at least ten years, and in the second place to those
3 I understand from Miss G. E. Whitaker that the Treasurer, W. W. Ward, was
aware of this possibility.
4 There were, apparently, one or two occasions when she might easily have done
so. After the death of her husband, Dame Monica Wills became a very formidable
person, and there were difficulties in her relations with some members of the
Society.
5 H.B.31, p. 149, 28 April 1922.
Twentieth-Century Charitable Work of the Society 515
from other parts or England, Wales of Scotland, “and also, if the
Council think it desirable, from Ireland”. The regulations concern-
ing the granting of pensions, annuities and gifts to non-residents
were much less strict, and the religious test did not apply to them.
The Home was to be managed by a Council, which consisted in
the first place of three life members or Founders (H. H. Wills, Mary
Monica Wills and William St. John Fenton Miles); 10 members
appointed by the Merchant Venturers; 6 appointed in the first place
by the Founders or their nominees, and, after the deaths of the
Founders, by other means.* Four more were to be coopted by the
Council. Thus, initially the Council consisted of 23 members who
would be reduced to 20 when the three Founders died. The Founders
were empowered in their lifetime to alter these directions, and the
Council could, if it wished, appoint new trustees in place of the
Society.
The building of The St. Monica Home according to the plans of
George Oatley went on from 1922 to 1925, and there gradually arose
in Westbury-on-Trym a large building resembling a college or
monastery with a bell tower, hall, dormitories and chapel. The
building cost over £500,000, and ventilation, heating, electricity,
gardens and equipment brought the total cost to over £626,000.
H. H. Wills had anticipated that a great deal of the capital would be
used up in building, but in fact much of it was paid for by income
from the endowments, and considerably more money was available
for annuities and gifts than he had anticipated. The year before the
Home opened, the Charity Commissioners had authorised the
payment of up to £5,000 a year in pensions and gifts.’
The Society of Merchant Venturers is responsible for the manage-
ment of the endowments of The St. Monica Home and hands over
the income to the Council, half of which is appointed by the Society,
but the history of the Home is really a separate story from that of
the history of the Merchant Venturers and cannot be examined in
detail here.® Nevertheless, something can be said about two matters
which have given a great deal of concern to the Society in the last
fifty years.
The first of these was the serious threat to the independence of the
6 One each by the Bishops of Bristol, Bath and Wells, and Gloucester; one each
by the Lord Lieutenants of Somerset and Gloucester, and one by the Lord High
Steward of Bristol.
? H.B.31, p. 234, 28 March 1924.
8 The Council of St. Monica’s appointed W. W. Ward as its first Treasurer.
Miss G. E. Whitaker acted as an “unofficial” secretary until the appointment of
Mr. F. G. Lazenby as Secretary and House Governor. Her sister, Miss Doris
Whitaker, was personal assistant to the Secretary from 1925 to 1957. When the
silver jubilee of the Home arrived in 1950, presents were made to 12 people who
had been on the staff since its opening (H.B.34, p. 384, 23 June 1950). The House
Governor is now Major J. R. H. Parlby, M.B.E.
516 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Home, resulting from the passing of the National Health Act in
1946. The question arose as to whether The St. Monica Home was a
hospital within the meaning of the Act.® The Clerk took counsel’s
opinion, which was that it did not come within the terms of the
Act,'° but in January 1948 the Minister informed the Society that
his legal advisers thought it was a hospital under section 79(i) of the
Act and that it should be transferred to him “‘on the appointed day”.
He proposed to proceed on that assumption unless the case was
referred to arbitration.1! There were further discussions, and on
29 April the Master reported that the Minister would not change his
position, but might perhaps accept a compromise by which he took
over the Home but not the endowments. The Master pointed out
that the Society could not agree to a compromise, since it believed
that The St. Monica Home was not a hospital, and he stated that
“it was, therefore, clearly its duty to fight the Minister’s contention
to the end”’. The Clerk was quite confident about the legal position,
but suggested that a second counsel’s opinion should be obtained.12
As a result of this, the Society considered for a time going to the
High Court to obtain a declaration that the Home was not a hospital
within the meaning of the Act,}3 but in the end its legal advisers
decided that it was best to go to arbitration, since whoever decided
the case ought to visit the Home personally and it was unlikely that
a High Court Judge would come to Bristol for that purpose.!4
Three similar institutions were also threatened — the Home and
Hospital for Jewish Incurables, the British Home and Hospital for
Incurables and the Putney Home for Incurables, and there was
consultation with them about tactics.15 A panel of arbitrators was
appointed in January 1949, but the first of the four cases was not
heard until March 1950 when the Hall was informed that the Clerk
and the Treasurer had been to London to attend the hearing relating
to the Home and Hospital for Jewish Incurables. There were
lengthy arguments about what constituted a hospital and about
whether the treatment and nursing given in the Home made it a
hospital within the meaning of the Act. The arbitrators decided that
the Jewish Home was not a hospital. This decision was very en-
couraging, but it was not decisive. The Minister then asked
permission for his inspectors to visit St. Monica’s and examine the
records, and this was agreed.1’ It was not until the end of June 1950
® H.B.34, p. 99, 28 March 1947. 10 H.B.34, p. 137, 28 Nov. 1947.
11 H.B.34, p. 147, 28 Jan. 1948, referring to the Minister’s letter of 21 Jan. 1948.
12 H.B.34, p. 166, 29 April 1948; p. 178, 28 May 1948.
13 H.B.34, pp. 181, 182, 25 June 1948.
14 77,.B.34, p. 214, 28 Oct. 1948. 15 H.B.34, pp. 215, 216, 28 Oct. 1948.
16 For the summary of the arguments put to the arbitrators, see H.B.34, pp. 362
ff., 31 March 1950.
17 H.B.34, p. 369, 27 April 1950.
Twentieth-Century Charitable Work of the Society 517
that the Hall was informed that the Minister had decided not to
pursue his contention that St. Monica’s was a hospital.'®
It would undoubtedly have been a great blow to the Society if it
had been compelled to hand over the Home to the Ministry, not
because it was making any profit from its trusteeship,1® but because
it had become deeply interested in it and because many of its
members had over the years given a great deal of their time and
knowledge to the management of its affairs, to the great advantage
of the Home.”°
The nominal value of the stock handed over by H. H. Wills in
1922 was approximately £1} million, but this was augmented very
considerably in subsequent years by additional amounts coming in
from his estate and from the estate of Dame Monica Wills after her
death in 1931. Moreover, as a result of lengthy negotiations with the
Commissioner of Inland Revenue, W. W. Ward succeeded in saving
for the charity £48,837 out of the duties they claimed on the en-
dowment.?4
The management of the very large funds in its care has over the
last fifty years presented the Society with many problems, and these
are referred to continually in the Hall Books. Again, it is not possible
to examine here the interesting story of the Society’s investment
policy, but a few points may be noted.
A great part of the original endowment was in Imperial Tobacco
shares, and the sub-committee which managed them was originally
known as the Tobacco Shares Sub-Committee. It was not until 1925
that its name was changed to the St. Monica’s Investment Sub-
Committee.22 Long before that, the Society had, with the approval
of the Charity Commissioners, been engaged in disposing of tobacco
shares,2° since it was aiming primarily at obtaining a stable income
rather than capital appreciation. It invested the proceeds in a
variety of funds, including central government and local government
stocks and in railways. By 1934, the capital value of the endowment
was estimated to be worth over £3 million and the annual income
was nearly £120,000.
Towards the end of World War II, the Master, Sir Foster Gotch
18 H7.B.34, p. 386, 23 June 1950.
19 The Society makes a management charge to cover some of the cost of office
work involved, but this is relatively very small in relation to the size of the endow-
ment and does not, of course, include any payment for the immense amount of
voluntary work done by its members.
20 In view of the present conditions for many geriatric cases, the residents and
annuitants of St. Monica’s over the years gave good reason to be grateful to the
Founders and those who have carried out their intentions.
21 H7.B.91, pp. 252 ff., 24 Oct. 1924. The issue raised was the amount of duty
consequent on a gift inter vivos.
22 H.B.31, p. 319, 27 Nov. 1925.
23 77.B.31, pp. 183, 184, 22 Dec. 1922, and numerous subsequent entries.
518 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Robinson, took the lead in urging that some of the money of the
charity should be invested in agricultural land ‘“‘as a measure of
prudence to guard against possible inflation”’,24 and in that year the
Society purchased on behalf of the Home the Mentmore estate in
Buckinghamshire from Lord Rosebery. This consisted of just under
4,500 acres and cost £127,000.25 The Society joined the Central
Landowners’ Association, and in the years that followed it purchased
a large number of agricultural estates, mainly in Buckinghamshire,
Northamptonshire and Rutland.?6 By 1951, the book value of the
estates was £15 million,?” and in 1973 over 80 per cent of the capital
was invested in agricultural land.?8 The policy of large-scale invest-
ment in land has, on occasions, met with some criticism during the
last thirty years, and at times the income from the charity was less
than could have been obtained from other kinds of investment.2®
In recent years, some of the estates have been sold and part of the
proceeds has been invested in commercial and industrial property.®°
The Home now has places for 120 residents, and the number of
annuitants is just under 300. In recent years, the Society has been
concerned with the question of future policy with regard to the
trust.*4 The effect of the development of the National Health
Service meant that, whereas before World War II many of the
residents in the Home were comparatively young, now most of them
were old, and the Home was tending to become not so much a place
for the care of the chronically sick as an Old Ladies’ Home. In
common with other places for care of the aged, the Home found
difficulty in recruiting suitable nursing staff. There was a good deal
of discussion with other groups concerned with the care of:terminal
cases, and the possibility of establishing a home for terminal and
24 H.B.33, p. 343, 25 Feb. 1944.
°° H.B.33, Pp. 343, 25 Feb. 1944; p. 348, 31 March 1944; p. 349, 27 April 1944;
P- 353, 26 May 1944; p. 355, 30 June 1944.
26 It is not possible here to give all the details of the purchase and sale of land
between 1944 and the present day. The main group of estates in the Buckingham-
shire, Northamptonshire and Rutland included the Wicken Estate; Milton
Keynes Estate; Lilford Estate; Wootton and Dorton Estate; the Ravenstone
Estate; Wade Estate; the Ringstead and Addington Estate. Other purchases in-
cluded Lullington Estate in Derbyshire and Kirklinton Estate in Cumberland.
27 #35, p. 59, 23 Feb. 1951. 28 71.B.41, p. 77, 7 May 1973.
2° See, for example, H.B.35, p. 70, 26 April 1951; H.B.39, pp. 171 ff., 2 Dec.
1966; H.B.41, p. 77, 7 May 1973.
30 H.B.41, p. 42, 26 Oct. 1972; p. 77, 7 May 1973.
51 In 1969, a Special Committee was set up to consider the future objects of the
Society, and this naturally gave a good deal of attention to St. Monica’s (see
H.B.40, p. 110, 31 March 1969; pp. 131-3, 23 June 1969; p. 143, 12 Sept. 1969;
P. 149, 20 Oct. 1969; p. 158, 21 Nov. 1969; p. 169, 29 Jan. 1970; p. 180, 16 March
1970; p. 227, 18 Dec. 1970; p. 268, 28 Sept. 1971; p. 273, 15 Oct. 1971; H.B.41, p.
20, 8 May 1972; p. 61, 23 Feb. 1973; p. 77, 7 May 1973; p. 85, 13 July 1973; pp.
116 ff., 21 Dec. 1973).
Twentieth-Century Charitable Work of the Society 519
geriatric cases was considered. It was estimated that the initial cost
of such a home would be about £500,000, and there was the problem
of rising prices. It was not possible to make provision of that kind
from the surplus income of the trust. What was done, however, in
the following years was to convert part of the building into accom-
modation for married couples, and other plans are under considera-
tion to try to ensure that The St. Monica Home of Rest houses a
mixed community and is not just another Old People’s Home.
OTHER CHARITABLE TRUSTS
Since 1900 the Society has added considerably to the list of trusts
and legacies, large and small, for which it is responsible. A number
of these were for scholarships and prizes for pupils in Colston’s
School, Colston’s Girls’ School and the Merchant Venturers’
Technical College. They included the Proctor Baker legacy for
scholarships at the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College and the
Colston Schools;*? the Claude B. Fry Trust of £2,000 for exhibitions
for Colston boys to be held at Bristol University;33 the E. W. Allen
Trust of £4,000 for University scholarships or other purposes;#4 the
H. Messenger Trust to help fee-payers at Colston’s who could no
longer afford the fees and also for the benefit of scholars who held
place No. 152;%5 the W. C. R. Parrish Fund for University scholar-
ships for Colston boys;** £1,000 left in trust for Colston School by
Stanley H. Ford;8? £10,000 given by Sir Charles Colston for the
benefit of the school;#* and £1,000 left for entrance scholarships by
Miss Becket, sister of the late Second Master.®® Trusts and donations
relating to Colston’s Girls’ School included the Edith M. Openshaw
Memorial Fund and the Helen Drew Loan Fund given by past and
present pupils to commemorate former teachers at the school;4° £500
left by Mrs. Gatcliff, a former headmistress; 4! the Canon T. Gamble
Trust to provide scholarships for Colston girls at Women’s Colleges,
and the G. M. Morgan Memorial Fund.‘? There were also a large
number of gifts and legacies to provide prizes, such as the Brooks
Memorial Fund for a divinity prize at Colston’s Boys’ School;4? a
legacy left by the widow of the Rev. H. J. Wilkins for a prize for the
82 77.B.29, p. 288, 20 Dec. 1907.
83 H.B.933, p. 56, 24 Sept. 1937; H.B.95, p. 216, 24 July 1952.
34 7.B.33, p. 100, 30 Sept. 1938; p. 259, 28 Jan. 1942.
35 71.B.33, p. 169, 24 Nov. 1939; H.B.34, Pp. 35, 29 March 1946; p. 70, 24 Oct.
1946. 86 17.B.33, pp. 259, 260, 28 Jan. 1942.
37 Hf.B.35, pp. 43 ff., 20 Jan. 1951. 38 7.B.37, p. 163, 29 May 1959.
89 77.B.38, p. 20, 26 Jan. 1951. 40 17.B.32, p. 14, 26 Oct. 1928.
41 H.B.30, p. 332, 26 Oct. 1917.
© 77.B.32, p. 88, 24 Jan. 1930; H.B.37, p. 82, 15 May 1938 (Finance Sub-
Committee). 43 —.B.32, p. 9, 28 Sept. 1928.
520 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
best sportsman of the year, to be chosen by the boys in the upper
forms;4* the Stanley Samborne Curtis Memorial Fund for the best
part-time student in the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College;*5
and a donation from the Colston Old Girls to give a prize in memory
of Miss Beatrice M. Sparks. *6
Among the miscellaneous responsibilities undertaken by the
Society was one originally known as the Stanstead College Trust.
In 1956, the Charity Commissioners asked the Merchant Venturers
to take this over under a new scheme. It was for the benefit of poor
men of good character of at least fifty years of age who had been
merchants and who had lost their money by accident or misfortune
in trading. In default of such applicants, the income was to be
applied for the benefit of men of similar type in wholesale or retail
business who had had a substantial personal stake in the business or
who had been in the mercantile marine. The trust was at the time
worth about £27,000, and from its income pensions of £250 were to
be paid. The Charity Commissioners later changed the name to the
Charles Dixon Pension Fund, and the Society has from time to time
made a number of grants under the scheme.*’ |
Other trusts included the management of the Stoke Bishop War
Memorial Fund;** a gift of land made in 1934 by Henry Wills Gunn
for recreational purposes, primarily for the benefit of Westbury-on-
Trym Cricket Club;*® and a gift of 84 acres of land in Lawrence Wes-
ton made by W. H. Blandy for the benefit of the Grateful Society and
the Vicar of Henbury.®° In 1954, the Society agreed to act as custo-
dian trustee for the investments of the Bristol Sailors’ Home,®! and
it acts in a similar capacity for various groups of the Bristol Boy
Scouts’ Association,5? the Cote Charity®® and the Jackson-Roeckel
Teachers’ Provident Association.
In 1969, by agreement with the Charity Commissioners, it
arranged for the funds of charities too small to be invested separately
to be put in a Merchant Venturers’ Charity Investment Pool.55
In 1972, the Society decided to set up a new General Charitable
Trust which would enable it to back projects which were for the
benefit of the city.®®
44 H.B.93, p. 283, 25 Sept. 1942.
45 77.B.34, p. 20, 21 Dec. 1945. 46 77.B.36, p. 144, 16 Dec. 1955.
47 H.B.36, p. 154, 26 Jan. 1956; pp. 188 ff., 29 June 1956; H.B.37, p. 76, 24
April 1958; p. 97, 24 July 1958; H.B.38, p. 187, 15 March 1963; p. 252, 13 Dec.
1963; H.B.39, p. 112, 26 Nov. 1965. 48 H.B.31, p. 285, 24 April 1925.
49 H.B.32, p. 328, 26 July 1934. 50 77.B.33, p. 27, 27 Nov. 1936.
51 77.B.95, p. 394, 26 Feb. 1954.
52 H.B.37, p. 180, 23 July 1959; H.B.38, p. 103, 11 Jan. 1962. |
53 H.B.40, p. 33, 29 March 1968. 54 77.B.40, p. 182, 26 Sept. 1969.
55 H7.B.4o, p. 61, 5 Dec. 1969.
56 77.B.41, p. 19, 28 April 1972. See p. 546.
Twentieth-Century Charitable Work of the Society 521
THE ALMSHOUSES
In the twentieth century, the Society has continued to be responsible
for its own Merchants’ Almshouse and for Colston’s Almshouse and
to exercise supervision over Hill’s Almshouse. In addition, it has in
recent years taken over the running of a fourth almshouse. Manage-
ment and supervision have been exercised through small visiting
committees which report to the Standing Committee, and final
decisions about admissions are made at General Meetings of the
Hall.
There were no major changes relating to the almshouses before
World War II and only a few details can be noted here. In 1909,
at the request of the Rector and Churchwardens of St. Stephen’s,
the Society took over the management of an endowment made in the
will of Lavers Alleyn in the early nineteenth century for providing
women in the Merchants’ Almshouse with drapery and grocery at
Christmas and Easter.®’ In 1914, the visiting committee found that
the drains at Hill’s Almshouse, which was not directly managed by
the Society, were in a deplorable condition, and took action to get
them reconstructed.5* In the same year, some garden seats were
provided for the almsfolk in the Merchants’ Almshouse, and the
committee recommended that in future the walls of the rooms should
be painted in a lighter colour.5® Towards the end of World War I,
steps were taken to supplement the pay of the almsfolk.®® In 1923,
the Treasurer was authorised to prepare a room in which inmates
might be read to by visitors, and the Society undertook to pay £25
a year to a chaplain and Ios. a week to a nurse to attend to the needs
of the almsfolk. ® 7
When World War II broke out, the Society took the necessary
air-raid precautions for the almsfolk, but the Merchants’ Almshouse
suffered severe damage in the raids of 1940 and 1941, although there
were no casualties.®? The almshouse became uninhabitable, and the
Society moved some of the almsfolk to Colston’s Almshouse and paid
a billeting allowance to others who went to live with friends. It
57 Hf.B.29, p. 347, 26 March 1909. The endowment was then held in the form
of £475 stock in the West Cornwall Railway and £500 in 3} per cent Bristol
Corporation debentures.
58 77.B.30, p. 168, 29 April 1914. The Society had visitorial powers (see p. 403).
59 Jbid., pp. 165, 168.
6° 77.B.30, p. 306, 27 April 1917. See also H.B.31, p. 9, 25 July 1919, for Hill’s
Almshouse.
$1 77.B.31, pp. 136, 137, 23 Dec. 1923; p. 142, 24 Feb. 1922; p. 191, 23 Feb.
1923. In 1929, however, the Visiting Committee reported that in view of the
satisfactory financial state of the trust, it was not necessary for the Society to
continue making a donation for these purposes.
82 See pp. 459-61.
522 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
contributed to the cost of evacuation and maintenance for those who
went to the country.®
In 1942, the Corporation informed the Society that it wished to
acquire part of the site of the Hall and the Almshouse for road-
widening and for making a roundabout, and eventually the Alms-
house Trust received £1,140 for 76 square yards bought by the
Corporation. ®4
After the war, the question arose as to whether the damaged
Merchants’ Almshouse should be repaired and reconstructed on the
existing site. The question was closely related to that of whether the
Hall should be rebuilt in its old position. If it was decided not to
rebuild the Hall but to sell the site for re-development, it seemed
likely that its value would be increased if the almshouse site could also
be included in the sale. Both the Almshouse Trust and the Society
would then benefit from the increased value of the combined sites.®*
The case for such an arrangement seemed all the stronger because
the Society was advised that it would not be possible to reconstruct
the Almshouse at a reasonable cost.
It was some time before the Society reached agreement with the
War Damage Commissioners on a ‘‘value’’ payment for the Hall
site and decided to proceed with selling it for re-development, ®* and
it was not until 1955 that the question of whether the Almshouse site
should be included in the sale came to a head. At a meeting of the
Standing Committee on 27 October, the Surveyor pointed out that
if both sites could be sold together, the value of both would be
increased. The Clerk pointed out that the Almshouse was a
scheduled building and that the consent of the Corporation would be
required before it could be pulled down. The question was raised
as to whether the building could again be used as an almshouse and
and whether there was in any case a need for this particular kind of
almshouse. The general opinion was that both sites should be sold
together, but the matter was referred to a sub-committee. §’
In December 1955, the Standing Committee was informed that
the Treasurer had taken the matter up with the Charity Commis-
sioners, pointing out that part of the building had been destroyed
in 1941, that there was little demand for this kind of almshouse,®®
and that the war damage payments would merely make good the
damage and not cover the cost of a new building. He suggested that
there might be a case for a new scheme combining the Merchants’
Almshouse and Colston’s. The Charity Commissioners had been
sympathetic, and the Standing Committee thought that the
$3 77.B.33, p. 238, 30 May 1941; p. 239, 27 June 1941.
64 See p. 461. 65 77,B.35, p. 56, 23 Feb. 1951.
66 See pp. 462 ff. °7 H.B.36, p. 123, 27 Oct. 1955.
68 T.e., one which catered primarily for former mariners and their dependants.
Twentieth-Century Charitable Work of the Society 523
Merchant Venturers’ Almshouse Charity could not undertake to
preserve the almshouse simply as a building of historic interest. If it
was to be preserved, it must in the interest of the Charity be sold to
some one willing to preserve it, and the price must be one which,
added to the price to be obtained from the rest of the site, would be
equal to the price which the trustees might have obtained if the
Almshouse had been demolished and the whole site sold in conjunc-
tion with the Hall site. The matter was referred to a sub-committee,
and the surveyor was instructed to approach the Corporation about
the possibility of removing the Almshouse from the list of scheduled
buildings. ®®
At this point, then, there was serious danger that the Merchants’
Almshouse would not be preserved. It must be noted that the Stand-
ing Commitee believed that it was not possible to reconstruct the
the building at an economic price and that it felt that under its
trust it had an obligation to obtain the best possible price for the site
with a view to using the money in a new scheme to be approved by
the Charity Commissioners. It could also be argued that a site in the
centre of Bristol and on the edge of a traffic roundabout was not the
ideal spot for a home for old people and that from their point of view
a modern building had advantages over a reconstructed eighteenth-
century almhouse. On the other hand, it might be suggested that
some, but not all, of those concerned were rather too ready to accept
the view that the question should be decided not on sentiment but
on what was most financially advantageous. 7°
The Merchant Venturers’ Almshouse was saved primarily by the
action of the Corporation to which the question of de-scheduling a
listed building had to be referred. In November 1956, the Hall was
informed that the City’s Housing Committee wished to buy the
building and reconstruct the interior to form 5 small dwellings at an
estimated cost of about £5,000. It asked if the Society would agree
to sell the Almshouse for this purpose at a price substantially below
the market value. The Clerk pointed out that, as trustees, the Society
could not do this, and he doubted if the Charity Commissioners
would give approval. He also stated that he had been assuming that
the building was not fit for restoration and that the intention was to
put up a new building elsewhere. Now, it seemed that the Almshouse
might be capable of reconstruction, and he thought the Society
should reconsider the possibility of doing the work itself.71 Some
members of the Society, including the Hon. W. R. S. Bathurst and
Mr. J. E. C. Clarke, were determined that if the Almshouse could be
saved, the task should be undertaken by the Merchant Venturers.
The Surveyor and Treasurer were asked to confer with the City
69 77.B.96, p. 149, 16 Dec. 1955. 70 H.B.36, pp. 126 ff., 28 Oct. 1955.
1 .B.36, pp. 236, 237, 30 Nov. 1956.
524 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Architect and to consider his tentative plans. It seemed that it would
be possible after all to reconstruct the interior to provide 4 or 5
dwellings. The Surveyor estimated the cost as between £6,000 and
£7,000, and the City Architect put it at something over £5,000. The
Standing Committee thought that, having regard to the value of
the site, £7,000 would not be strictly economic but that nevertheless
the question should be examined further.?2 The Corporation
expressed its pleasure that the Almshouse might be preserved and
offered every help.?* The Charity Commissioners said that if funds
were available for modernisation and if the Society thought that
residents could be found, they would approve reconstruction and
also agree to the sale of a small part of the site which the Northern
Assurance Company required for access to the building it was
putting on the old Hall site.”*
In June 1957, the Surveyor was asked to prepare plans, and a
tender for £9,881 5s, 9d. was obtained in February 1958.’* A grant
of £3,979 was obtained for the work under an Act of 1957.78 The
total cost of the work was £10,661 6s. 8d., and the net cost, after
deducting grants and donations, was £6,508.’ The restored Alms-
house was opened on 29 October 1959.78 The self-contained units
were to be occupied if possible by retired mariners or their depen-
dants, and priority was to be given to married couples.’® In 1961,
it was agreed to subsidise the gas and electricity.®° Excess income
from the trust is used to help Colston’s Almshouse.
The charming building in the centre of Bristol at present houses
about a dozen almsfolk. It is not an altogether ideal site for an alms-
house, ®! but now that the Hall has been moved elsewhere, it enables
the Society to maintain a presence in the centre of Bristol. It would
have been sad if this link with Gild of Mariners of the mid-fifteenth
century had been allowed to perish.
Colston’s Almshouse continues to be administered by the Society
and has at present accommodation for 4 married couples and 12
single persons, with a cottage at the back for the warden. Hill’s
72 H.B.936, pp. 244 ff., 14 Dec. 1956.
73 H.B.36, p. 250, 24 Jan. 1957.
74 H.B.36, p. 283, 22 March 1957.
75 H.B.37, pp. 13, 15, 28 June 1957; p. 62, 28 Feb. 1958.
76 H“.B.37, p. 118, 28 Nov. 1958.
"7? HLB.37, p. 212, 30 Nov. 1959.
78 H.B.37, p. 185, 18 Sept. 1959 (Finance Sub-Committee).
79 H.B.37, p. 214, 30 Nov. 1959.
80 1H.B.38, p. 100, 29 Dec. 1961. See also H.B.4o, p. 238, 26 Feb. 1971; H.B.41,
p. 43, 26 Oct. 1972; p. 49, 24 Nov. 1972; p. 81, 25 May 1973.
81 In 1961, for example, the almsfolk complained that the public were entering
the forecourt and using the seats in front of the almshouse (H.B.38, p. 93, 24. Nov.
1961) and, more recently, it has been found necessary to put up iron railings to
keep out vandals (see footnote 79).
Twentieth-Century Charitable Work of the Society 525
Almshouse has a separate management, but the Society acts as
Visitor under the trust and nominates to some of the places.®?
The new responsibility which the Society has undertaken in recent
years is the management of the combined almshouse of St. Nicholas
and Burton. St. Nicholas Almshouse in King Street was built by the
parish on land given by the Corporation in the mid-seventeenth
century.®3 Burton’s Almshouse in the parish of St. Thomas was
alleged to have been founded by Symon Burton in 1292, but it is
more likely that it takes its origin from John Burton in the fifteenth
century. §4
In World War II, Burton’s Almshouse was completely destroyed
and St. Nicholas Almshouse was badly damaged. After the war, the
vicar of St. Nicholas worked hard to restore the Almshouse, and the
present Treasurer of the Society was heavily involved as Clerk to the
Trustees. The almshouse was re-opened, but there were insufficient
funds to provide all that was needed. The trustees of Burton’s Alms-
house were willing to make their funds available now that their own
almshouse had been destroyed, and Mr. J. E. C. Clarke proposed
that the Society should be asked to take over the management of the
combined almshouses.®5 In a report in July 1963 he pointed out that
conditions in the almshouse were not as good as in the Merchants’
Almshouse or Colston’s, and that in addition the almsfolk were
asked to pay 10s. a week. The trustees of the two almshouses were
willing to ask the Charity Commissioners to sanction a new scheme.
Pending this, the Society asked a sub-committee to make immediate
arrangements for improvement “‘to ensure that the Residents . . . do
not suffer hardship through cold and draught through the coming
winter’. Approximately £1,000 was spent on double glazing, night-
storage heaters and gasfires, and the Society gave Christmas gifts to
the almsfolk in the same way as it did to those in the Merchants’
Almhouse and Colston’s.8* Extensive repairs and improvements
were carried out in subsequent years.®’”
82 See p. 403.
88 See T. Manchee, Bristol Charities, Bristol, 1831, II. pp. 199 ff.
84 Jbid., II. pp. 333 ff.
85 77.B.398, p. 210, 14 June 1963.
86 77,B.38, p. 222, 25 July 1963; p. 230, 20 Sept. 1963; p. 244, 15 Nov. 1963. In
the course of the work on the almshouse, part of the city bastion was discovered
and a number of interesting glass and pottery finds were made in what had been
the old moat. The Treasurer arranged for the original plans to be altered and the
moat was not filled in, but girders were put across it.
87 H.B.38, p. 263, 30 Jan. 1964; H.B.39, p. 141, 27 May 1966; H.B.4o, p. 247
29 April 1971.
526 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
SUBSCRIPTIONS AND DONATIONS
Part of the Society’s contributions to charitable activity has taken
the form of annual subscriptions and part consists of donations to
particular appeals. Annual subscription voted in 1970 amounted
to £703 9s., and other gifts and donations brought the total to
£1,137 48.°°
The amount given in the form of annual subscription has varied
over the years, but before World War II it averaged about £500
a year. It was spread among a large number of different organisa-
tions. In 1903, for example, there were 49 annual subscriptions
amounting in all to £432 5s. Only 7 subscriptions were over 10
guineas: £50 to the Chamber of Commerce; 26 guineas to the Bristol
Benevolent Society; £25 to the Formidable training ship; £21 each
to the Bristol Royal Infirmary and the Bristol General Hospital; £20
to the Bristol Royal Infirmary chaplaincy; 10 guineas to the Bristol
General Hospital chaplaincy; and 15 guineas to the Bristol Dispen-
sary. About £70 was given to 12 educational and training institutions
such as the Clifton Industrial School, the Bristol Female Peniten-
tiary, Fishponds Training College, the Bristol Certified Girls
Industrial School, Stogursey parochial school and a creche at Hot-
wells. About £50 went to hospitals and institutions for the care of
the sick and the disabled, such as the Bristol Hospital for Sick
Children, the Home for Crippled Children, the West of England
Sanatorium, the Bristol Eye Hospital, Bridgwater Infirmary and
Bristol Blind Asylum. Subscriptions to various volunteer organisa-
tions amounted to £26, and about the same amount was given to
certain religious societies such as the Scripture Readers’ Association
and the Bristol Diocesan Mission. Organisations connected with the
sea, such as the Bristol Seamen’s Institute, the Bristol Sailors’ Home
and the Shipwrecked Mariners’ Association, received £21.8® The
pattern of subscriptions has naturally changed over the years, but
the 1903 list gives a general indication of the kinds of organisation
to which the Society gave continuing support. In 1974, it paid 66
annual subscriptions amounting in all to £850.
It would be tedious to list the many hundreds of donations given
in response to particular appeals, but a few of them may be noted.
In general, the aim seems to have been to contribute generously to
national appeals and to help meet a large variety of local needs,
sometimes with the proviso that the donation was conditional on the
whole sum being raised. Response to national appeals included £25
to the Durham Fire Relief Fund in 1906;° 100 guineas in 1907 to
88 H.B.40, p. 226, 4 Dec. 1970.
89 H.B.29, pp. 41 ff., 24 April 1903.
®0 H.B.29, p. 184, 30 March 1906.
Inn Paludy vicy a hall mach graded and fenestrated, on a
from a mystery gules but mot apparent a hon representint a
gpon the chapsan tuppe on a b
of a ship surgent, and thereon a copbinus futilis charts Ineptis), wherein is a M:
‘slour, in his right Wand a hottle, and in the left hand a cup verse,
Cartoon lampooning
reutine dé Sept ams perichits
‘ gebrsiited ar Hic
ARMA MERCATORUM PERICLITANTIUM,
New Cut a ship mergent inverthemmeres!,
glory passant nebuly between two stonis,
band sable the roof of « scheal combuste, from the same the mast
saleT encatenatedt
Sup 3
oi milkicmaid, the apper part decalleté, her bair and hamds gules
anti, in her left a Ward (the quay lost), tee secund supporte
ant anionmeareoas, inancially independent ar, in progas caluur Gx
a stick, the shaft sable, the handle argent, about to take « (asi.
yohitene SIS
¥
Jett hay
the Society’s attitude to the proposed University of
Bristol. Preserved in the Hall.
Photograph by G. Kelsey
Above: The Merchants’ Hall, Clifton. The standard of H.M. Queen
Elizabeth, the Queen Mother, flying over the Hall when she came to
luncheon on 28 October 1966 during the Mastership of Mr. R. H. Brown.
From a photograph in the Hall
Below: Part of the interior of the Merchants’ Hall at the time of the
Coronation Ball, 11 June 1953. From a photograph in the Hall
Twentieth-Century Charitable Work of the Soctety 527
the Lord Mayor’s Fund for the relief of the victims of an earthquake
in Jamaica; 100 guineas given in 1908 to the Lord Mayor’s Fund
to provide work for the unemployed;®? and numerous donations
during World War I for encouraging recruitment, supplying
comforts to the troops and assisting the work of the Red Cross.**
Donations to national appeals between the wars included 100
guineas to the Lord Mayor’s Relief Fund in 1920;%4 100 guineas to
a fund for the relief of Bethune in France in 192235 25 guineas for
Hurricane Relief in Antigua in 1925;°° a contribution of £525 to the
National Exchequer in the crisis of 1931;°? 100 guineas to the great
Gresford Colliery disaster in 1934;°° and 250 guineas to the Prince
of Wales Jubilee Thanksgiving Fund in 1935.°®
World War II, like its predecessor, resulted in a large number of
donations to help deal with the war effort and the relief of war
victims, but these can be more conveniently noted elsewhere.!°°
Among the post-war donations to national appeals were 100
guineas to the Lord Mayor’s Flood Distress Appeal in 1947;1° 250
guineas to the George VI National Appeal in 1952;!92 50 guineas to
the Hungarian Relief Fund and a covenant to pay the Bristol
University Students’ Union £25 a year for four years to help exiled
Hungarian students;!°3 £100 to the Lord Mayor’s Freedom from
Hunger Appeal in 1964 to help provide a Farm Institute and
Training Centre in Nyasaland,}°4 and 100 guineas to the Winston
Churchill Memorial Appeal in 1965.19
Donations large and small have been made throughout the period
to hospitals and organisations concerned with the care of the sick.
Again, it is not possible to give all the details, but by way of illustra-
tion we can note £1,000 for the rebuilding and extension of the
Bristol Royal Infirmary in 1905;19* £500 towards the building of an
Isolation Ward for the Bristol General Hospital in 1907,!9? and 100
guineas to the Special Appeal of the Children’s Hospital in the same
year;1°8 25 guineas for a proposed Farm Colony for the care of the
feeble-minded in 1914;!°® 100 guineas to the Bristol Royal Infirmary
*1 7.B.29, p. 232, 25 Jan. 1907. 82 H.B.29, p. 332, 27 Nov. 1908.
93 See, for example, H.B.go, p. 191, 30 Oct. 1914; p. 200, 27 Nov. 1914; p. 204,
18 Dec. 1914; p. 225, 23 July 1915; p. 243, 17 Dec. 1915; p. 263, 28 April 1916;
p. 269, 30 June 1916; p. 333, 26 Oct. 1917; p. 344, 30 Nov. 1917; p. 363, 22 Feb.
1918. See also pp. 538-9.
94 H.B.31, p. 87, 31 Dec. 1920. 5 71.B.31, p. 168, 29 Sept. 1922.
96 H.B.31, p. 270, 30 Jan. 1925. ®? H.B.32, p. 168, 25 Sept. 1931.
98 77.B.32, p. 333, 28 Sept. 1934. °° 1.B.32, p. 362, 22 March 1935.
100 See pp. 540-1. 101 77,B.34, p. 98, 28 March 1947.
102 77.B.95, p. 228, 26 Sept. 1952.
103 77, B.36, p. 230, 30 Nov. 1956; p. 246, 24 June 1957.
104 77.B.38, p. 268, 14 Feb. 1964. 106 77.B.39, p. 46, 26 March 1965.
106 77.B.29, p. 172, 22 Dec. 1905. 107 77.B.29, p. 252, 22 March 1907.
108 H,B.29, p. 289, 20 Dec. 1907. 109 77.B.30, p. 166, 24 April 1914.
528 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Appeal in 1921; £50 to the Bristol District Nurses Association in
19253141 and £500 to the Lord Mayor’s Hospital Extension Fund in
1932.122
Among the many other organisations which have received
assistance are the Boy Scouts, the National Association for the
Employment of Reserve Soldiers, the Clifton Improvement Society,
Scott’s British Antarctic Expedition, the Bristol Training School for
Police Women, the Children’s Help Society, the Bristol Play Centre,
the Bristol and West of England Newspaper Press Fund, the Bristol
City Marine Ambulance Corps, St. John’s Ambulance Corps, the
Bristol Crippled Children’s Society, the Bristol Day and Night
Nursery, the Bristol Civic League, the Royal Geographical Society,
the League of Nations Union, the Ashley Hostel for Boys, the Bristol
Federation of Boys’ Clubs, the Bristol Sea Cadet Corps, the Bristol
Sailors’ Home and the Bristol and District Methodists Association
to help fit out Kelston Park as a training centre for young people.
Donations in recent years have included £250 to the Y.M.C.A.
Appeal and £150 to the Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme in
connection with its Industrial Award Project; £100 to Toc H for
its Hospital Broadcasting scheme;!!4 £100 a year for 10 years and a
donation of £250 for the Bristol Old Vic Appeal;45 £300 for the
restoration of John Wesley’s Chapel;!4® and £750 to the Bristol
Social Centre.”
As in earlier times, the Society has continued to assist members
and relatives of members who meet with misfortune and has extended
this help to those who have been in the service of the Hall or in
institutions such as Colston’s School with which the Society is
closely associated. Its contributions to the Church of England, to
education and to the public life of Bristol are examined elsewhere.!"8
110 77,B.31, p. 99, 18 March 1921. 111 #7,B.31, p. 284, 24 April 1925.
112 77.B.32, p. 220, 17 June 1932. 113 77.B.40, p. 273, 15 Oct. 1971.
114 fB.41, p. 1, 14 Jan. 1972. 118 FB.41, p. 3, 27 Jan. 1972.
116 7.B.41, p. 106, 25 Oct. 1973. 117 H.B.4r, p. 79, 11 May 1973.
118 See pp. 529-33, 535-7 and chapter 25.
CHAPTER 27
Miscellaneous Activities in the
Twentieth Century
ENTERTAINMENT, HOSPITALITY AND PUBLIC RELATIONS
In the twentieth century, the Society has continued its long tradition
of involvement in royal occasions. In 1901, for example, it was
officially invited by the Lord Mayor to attend the proclamation of
Edward VII on 26 January. Members were expected to attend in
full mourning for the death of Queen Victoria. The boys from
Colston’s School went in front of the Society in the procession to the
Exchange and then returned to the steps of the Hall. Each boy was
given a black rosette, a cake and a shilling, but it was decided that
“the Boys band of music should not accompany the Society on the
procession to the Exchange’. The next year, the Society gave a
Coronation Ball and contributed 100 guineas to the Coronation
festivities in Bristol.2 On 4 June representatives attended the Cathe-
dral for a Peace Thanksgiving Service after the end of the South
African War, and on 26 June they were present at a Service of
Intercession in connection with the serious illness of Edward VII.
King Edward VII and Queen Alexandra came to Bristol in 1908
to open the new dock at Avonmouth, and the Society took appro-
priate action. The Hall and Observatory were decorated and
illuminated, and 100 guineas was donated to the Lord Mayor’s
Fund to prepare a welcome for the visitors. A Loyal Address was
presented in which the Society took the opportunity of referring to
its interest in the proposed University of Bristol.
When King George V succeeded to the throne in 1910, the Society
again took part in the procession to proclaim the new King,® and
it also contributed 100 guineas to the Lord Mayor’s Memorial Fund
for King Edward VII.®
There was another royal visit in 1912 when George V and Queen
Mary came to open the Edward VII Royal Memorial Infirmary.
The Master was presented to the King at Temple Meads Station,
1 H<.B.28, p. 385, 25 Jan. 1901.
2 H.B.28, p. 443, 28 Feb. 1902; 20 March 1902.
3 H.B.29, 20 June 1902. |
4 H.B.29, pp. 305, 306; 29 May 1908; p. 308, 26 June 1908; p. 310, 24 July 1908.
For the reference to the proposed University, see p. 502.
5 H.B.29, p. 406, 13 May 1910. ° H.B.29, p. 449, 28 April 1911.
530 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
and the Society’s Loyal Address made reference to “one who has
heard the call of the sea” and “whom his Island Subjects love to
greet as their Sailor King’’.”
In 1921, when the Prince of Wales visited Bristol, he was enter-
tained in the Hall and the freedom was conferred upon him.® Five
years later, when his parents came to Bristol, the Society again
presented a Loyal Address. In 1928 at. the request of the Bristol
Crippled Children’s Society, the Society gave a luncheon for the
Duke and Duchess of York when they came to lay the foundation
stone of a Hospital School at Winford.® Two years later, Prince
George was entertained to lunch.?°
During World War II, the Princess Royal took the salute at a
March Past of Women in the services during Bristol’s Salute the
Soldier Week. As the Hall had been destroyed, the Master enter-
tained her at The St. Monica Home." In 1954, Prince Philip was
entertained in the new Hall and the freedom was conferred upon
him.!? Nineteen years later, his son, Prince Charles, followed in his
father’s footsteps by accepting honorary membership of the Society.15
When the Queen Mother lunched at the Hall on 28 October 1966
and saw the copies of Winterhalter’s huge portraits of Queen Victoria
and Prince Albert, she remarked on having so often seen the originals
at Windsor.14
A number of other distinguished visitors to Bristol have been
offered hospitality in the Hall. In 1907, for example, the Master
entertained to luncheon Sir Wilfred Laurier, Prime Minister of
Canada; Sir Robert Bond, Prime Minister of Newfoundland; Sir
I. G. Ward, Prime Minister of New Zealand; and Mr. E. R. Moor,
Prime Minister of Natal.15 In 1922, Lord Grey was asked to luncheon
when he visited Bristol “in support of the League of Nations’’.1¢
The judges usually dined in the Hall when they came for the Assizes,
and in 1947 the Lord Chief Justice was the guest of the Society.1”
Hospitality and help has also been given to numerous organisa-
tions and groups visiting Bristol. In 1914, for example, the Master
reported that he had entertained members of the Historical Associa-
tion, which was holding its annual conference in the city, and had
given a short epitome of the Society’s history.18 When the British
Association met in Bristol in 1930, the Master agreed to be one of the
? H.B.3jo, p. 48, 31 May 1912; pp. 57, 62 ff., 26 July 1912.
8 H.B.31, p. 102, 29 April 1921; pp. 109-12, 20 May 1921.
® H.B.31, p. 292, 22 May 1925; p. 422, 27 Jan. 1928.
10 77.B.32, p. 98, 1 May 1930. 11 71.B.33, p. 354, 26 May 1944.
12 77.B.36, p. 21, 24 Sept. 1954. 18 Hf.B.g1, p. 104, 16 Oct. 1973.
14 77.B.39, p. 160, 3 Nov. 1966. 18 .B.29, p. 261, 31 May 1907.
16 7.B.31, p. 135, 25 Nov. 1921.
1” H.B.34, p. 136, 28 Nov. 1947; H.B.38, p. 273, 20 March 1963; H.B.41, p. 9,
18 Feb. 1972. 18 77.B.30, p. 150, 30 Jan. 1914.
Miscellaneous Activities, Twentieth Century 531
Vice-Presidents, and the Society gave £100 towards the cost of
entertaining the Association, as it had done earlier in 1898.1® On
a number of occasions, hospitality was extended to members of the
University Grants Committee.?° In 1930, a donation was made
towards the cost of entertaining the Institute of Mechanical
Engineers, which was meeting in Bristol,”4 and 20 guineas were given
in the same year towards the cost of a British-French Week.??
Members of the Canadian Historical Association, who visited Bristol
in 1934, were invited to luncheon,?* as were members of the Royal
Sanitary Institute.24 In 1965, the Society agreed to lend some of its
records to an exhibition commemorating Sir Ferdinando Gorges
and also invited the Society of Archivists to visit the Hall.25 On a
number of occasions, officers of Royal Navy ships visiting Bristol
have been entertained in the Hall,?* and in 1973 the Society decided
to adopt H.M.S. Bristol.2” In the same year, it agreed to contribute
£1,000 over ten years towards the restoration of the Great Britain.?®
In various ways the Society has continued to show an interest in
its own past and in places with which it has had historical connec-
tions. In 1909, for example, it received a letter from the Lord Mayor
stating that the Historical Society of Newfoundland was raising a
subscription in order to erect a memorial to John Guy. The Lord
Mayor was proposing to inform “‘the Colonists” that the city would
contribute £50 and he invited the Society to make a donation. It
was agreed to give £100, provided the whole amount required was
collected before the end of 1910.28 The Newfoundland connection
was further strengthened in 1965 when the Society gave to the city
of St. John a gold badge and chain, which were taken to Newfound-
land by Mr. and Mrs. Alan Wills. The first mayor of St. John’s to
wear the insignia was entertained in the Hall the following year.*°
Yet another link with the past was the entertaining of a deputa-
tion from Ontario in connection with the unveiling of a plaque
commemorating Captain Thomas James, the seventeenth-century
explorer of the North-West passage who had been backed by the
Society. 34
19 77.B.32, p. 83, 29 Nov. 1929; p. 92, 28 Feb. 1930; pp. 97, 98, 1 May 1930.
20 H.B.32, p. 54, 31 May 1929; p. 313, 22 March 1934.
21 H.B.32, p. 94, 28 March 1930. 22 77.B.32, p. 97, 1 May 1930.
23 H.B.92, p. 310, 23 Feb. 1934. 24 H.B.32, p. 313, 22 March 1934.
25 H.B.39, p. 34, 12 Feb. 1968.
26 E.g. H.B.32, p. 105, 27 June 1930; p. 222, 17 June 19332.
2” H.B.41, p. 72, 13 April 1973; p. 147, 18 July 1974.
28 H.B.41, p. 79, 11 May 1973.
29 71.B.29, Pp. 373, 29 Oct. 1909; p. 416, 24 June 1910. The appeal was over-
subscribed and in the end the Society was asked to contribute only £50.
80 H7.B.38, p. 229, 13 Sept. 1963; H.B.39, p. 62, 29 April 1965; p. 84, 13 Aug.
1965; p. 133, 21 April 1966.
31 H.B.41, p. 139, 17 May 1974. See p. 86.
532 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
More recent history was commemorated when the Society agreed
to let the makers of a film on the Great Western Railway use
the Banqueting Hall for a reconstruction of the first meeting of
the Company in the Merchants’ Hall.?? Another railway link was the
presentation to the Society in 1963 of the headboard used on the
well-known train The Merchant Venturer which had run between
Paddington and Bristol for ten years from 1951.38
Considering that the Merchant Venturers have played such an
important part in the life of the city, it is surprising that their name
has not been used for an inn or public house until very recently.
There was, it is true, an inn known as The Merchants’ Arms at the
corner of Prince Street, very near the Hall, at least as early as 1689
and possibly much earlier. This was pulled down in 1936.34 Two
years later, the name of The Merchants’ Arms was given to a public
house in the area developed by the Society in Stapleton,®® and more
recently the Society agreed to the name The Merchant Venturer being
used for the public house which replaced The Ship at Redcliffe Hill.%¢
The Society has over the years accumulated a very large
number of treasures and valuable archives, some of which are on
display for the benefit of members and visitors to the Hall. Largely
as a result of the interest of the present Treasurer, plans are under
consideration for making a small museum in the Hall, so that more
of the relics and archives can be displayed than is possible at
present. °?
The Society has also been very much concerned in recent years
with the preservation of its records and with making them more
easily available to those engaged in historical research. Mr. R. H.
Brown, who was appointed Honorary Librarian to the Society in
1968, reported the following year on the need to make microfilm
copies of the priceless and unique Hall Books of Proceedings and
suggested that some of the microfilms might be placed in the Bristol ©
University Library and in the Bristol City Library. He also asked
for the provision in the basement of a professionally-approved strong
room for the archives. In 1971, Miss Elizabeth Ralph, the former
City Archivist, was invited to catalogue the archives on a part-time
basis. 38
32 H.B.32, p. 354, 24 Jan. 1935. There was a private showing of the film in the
Hall at the end of the year (H.B.32, p. 395, 29 Nov. 1935).
33 77.B.98, p. 181, 8 Feb. 1963.
34 C, W. F. Dening, Old Inns of Bristol, Bristol, 1949, pp. 44, 146.
35 See p. 470. 36 H.B.40, p. 19, 29 Dec. 1967.
37 H.B.40, p. 224, 20 Nov. 1970; p. 238, 26 Feb. 1971; H.B.41, p. ry, 27 April
1972; p. 23, 12 May 1972; p. 33, 14 July 1972; p. 122, 24 Jan. 1974.
38 H.B.40, pp. 126 ff., g May 1969; p. 142, 12 Sept. 1969; p. 164, 19 Dec. 1969;
Pp. 215, 29 Oct. 1970; p. 258, 16 July 1971. The work of arranging and cataloguing
the archives is still in progress.
Miscellaneous Activities, Twentieth Century 533
As far as the general public is concerned, the Society has through
much of its history seemed to be a somewhat remote and mysterious
body whose main function was to give banquets for distinguished
visitors and to maintain a splendid Hall for the benefit of its members.
It was, moreover, thought to be immensely wealthy and very influ-.
ential in the affairs of the city. On a number of occasions in the past,
the Society has been fiercely criticised in the press. The realisation
that there was a need to correct misunderstandings about its func-
tions led the Society in 1964 to get professional advice on its relations
with the press, “bearing in mind the need to inform the public of
the real work of the Society and to disabuse the popular impression
that it is merely an exclusive dining and wining club”, and Mr.
Eric Buston was appointed as part-time public relations officer.®®
THE DOWNS
Under the Downs Act of 1861, control of the Downs continued to
be exercised by a joint committee of the Corporation and the
Society of Merchant Venturers, but the Society itself has on occasions
been directly involved, since it has not given up the ownership of
that part of the Downs which it dedicated to the use of the public. *°
When necessary, it made the position clear to the Corporation and
even over-rode decisions made by the Downs Committee. In 1902,
for example, when the Corporation gave permission for the Bath
and West Agricultural Show to be held on the Downs in the following
year, the Society informed the Town Clerk that it still retained
ownership of the soil and that the Committee responsible for the
show must make an agreement with the Society.*! When the Downs
Committee approved plans for a ranger’s cottage and public lavatory
behind Proctor’s Fountain, the Society refused to accept them as they
were considered unsuitable. *? In 1912, the Hall agreed to the Royal
Agricultural Show being held on the Downs, but when five telegraph
poles were erected, it asked the Town Clerk by whose authority this
had been done. He replied that it was due to “‘inadvertence” by a
clerk, and it was agreed that they would be removed and the soil
made good as soon the Show was over.*® When the Bristol Tramway
Company put up a noticeboard opposite the Clifton Down Hotel
in 1919, the Town Clerk was told that any erection on the Downs
required the Society’s consent. The noticeboard was allowed to
remain “as a matter of courtesy but not of right’’.44 In the same year,
permission was given to the Downs Committee to put on a temporary
3° H.B.38, p. 295, 30 July 1964; H.B.39, p. 5, 29 Oct. 1964; H.B.4o, p. go, 10
Jan. 1969. 40 See p. 431.
41 17.B.29, p. 1, 20 June 1902. 42 H.B.29, p. 187, 27 April 1906.
43 71.B.30, p. 66, 26 July 1912; p. 119, 20 June 1913.
44 77.B.30, p. 408, 24 Jan. 1919; p. 423, 28 Feb. 1919.
534 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
site a tank which had been presented to the city by the War Savings
Committee, but in 1922, when war was out of fashion, the Town
Clerk was asked to remove “this unsightly object” as soon as
possible.45
It has not always been easy to maintain a satisfactory balance
between preserving the natural beauty of the Downs and meeting
the needs of the public. As the Clerk pointed out in 1954, the Act of
1861 required that Clifton Down, which belonged to the Society,
and Durdham Down, which belonged to the Corporation, should be
kept unenclosed as places of public resort and recreation. He said that
he had heard it stated that the object of the Act was to preserve them
in their natural state, and that they could not, for example, be con-
verted into a formal city park, but this was not actually mentioned
in the Act. He had doubts about whether the Downs Committee
could authorise the holding of exhibitions and shows which resulted
in even temporary enclosure.*® As far as its part of the Downs was
concerned, the Society was prepared to be as helpful as possible,
provided the spirit of the Act was observed. It was willing to agree
to agricultural and other shows being held on the Downs on con-
dition that any damage to the soil was subsequently made good. It
agreed in 1922 to convey to the Corporation a small piece of land
near the Suspension Bridge which was required for a public lava-
tory,4” and in 1929 it informed the Town Clerk that it would not
object to cars being parked alongside the wall of the Zoological
Gardens. *8
In 1961, there were celebrations to mark the centenary of the
Clifton and Durdham Down (Bristol) Act of 1861. The Suspension
Bridge was illuminated and there was a display of fireworks. The
Society entertained the Downs Committee and others to a Fork
Supper before the celebrations. *®
In the nineteen-sixties, a very controversial issue arose which
placed the Society in a difficult position. Ironically, it was shortly
after the celebration of the centenary of the Downs Act that the
Planning Committee of the Corporation informed the Downs
Committee that it was putting forward a proposal for a very large
roundabout at the top of Black Boy Hill, which would involve
considerable encroachment on the Downs. It must be remembered
that the Corporation not only owned half the Downs but that it
could, if necessary, seek to acquire the land it needed, from the
Society by compulsory purchase. The Society and its representatives
on the Downs Committee were not in favour of the roundabout and
suggested other means of dealing with the traffic problems. There
45 77.B.31, p. 18, 19 Sept. 1919; p. 164, 28 July 1922.
46 77.B.96, pp. 51 ff., 17 Dec. 1954. 47 H.B.31, p. 166, 29 July 1922.
48 77.B.32, p. 54, 31 May 1929. 49 H.B.38, p. 20, 26 Jan. 1961.
Miscellaneous Activities, Twentieth Century 535
was much discussion, and the Corporation did not press its proposal
at this time.°° The matter came up again in 1965 when the City
Engineer and the Planning and Public Works Committee raised it
as a matter of urgency. This time the Downs Committee was con-
vinced that the City Engineer’s forecast about the traffic problem
had proved correct and felt that the need was “‘so urgent that the
Committee can no longer resist”. Moreover, it pointed out that in
the last resort, the Corporation could resort to compulsory pur-
chase.®! The issue aroused considerable feeling in Bristol, and there
was vigorous protest from a number of amenity groups, including the
Bristol Civic Society. The Society of Merchant Venturers tried to
make its own position clear through the press. In November 1966,
the Master reported that the Downs Committee had confirmed its
original decision to accept the proposal in principle, but the Clerk
pointed out that the Society could revoke its decision at any time
and that it should have made it clear that its agreement was condi-
tional on there being a public enquiry.5? Rightly or wrongly, there
was a feeling in Bristol that the Downs Committee, half of whose
members were Merchant Venturers, and the Society, which owned
the soil, ought to have resisted more vigorously. In the end, the
matter went to a public enquiry, and as it was not possible to find
another piece of land to add to the Downs in place of what was to
be taken away by the roundabout, the Corporation did not proceed
with its plans.58
Another problem which has caused considerable concern in
recent years is the use of the Downs for parking cars, particularly
when there is a very large number of visitors on Bank Holidays. The
Downs Committee has authorised temporary car parks on occasions,
but there is concern among members of the Society lest the practice
spreads too much.*4
THE CGHURCH
On Charter Day, members of the Society attend an annual service
at which a special sermon is preached, and throughout the period
the Society has continued to show great interest in the work of the
Church of England. It would be tedious to record the many and
varied donations which it has made, but some of them may be noted
in order to illustrate the range of help which has been given.
50 H.B.38, p. 57, 13 July 1961; p. 102, 11 Jan. 1962; p. 109, 9 Feb. 1962.
51 7.B.39, p. 103, 28 Oct. 1963; p. 105, 29 Oct. 1965.
52 71.B.39, P. 157, 30 Sept. 1966; p. 167, 18 Nov. 1966.
53 77.B.40, p. 58, 13 Sept. 1968; p. 144, 26 Sept. 1969. The issues in this long-
drawn-out controversy were complicated, and it is not possible here to examine
the case for and against the roundabout.
54 77.B.40, p. 43, 14 June 1968; p. 104, 21 March 1969.
536 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
A considerable amount has been donated to assist in building new
churches. Thus, in 1904, when the Bishop of Bristol thanked the
Society for its donation of £2,500 to the Church Extension Commis-
sion and pointed out that the need was still very pressing, the Society
decided to make a further grant spread over a period of years.®° In
1915, the annual donation to the Bristol Diocesan Board of Finance
was increased to 100 guineas, ®¢ and in 1919 £500 was contributed to
the Bishopric of Bristol Endowment Fund.*’ In 1925, the Society
agreed to give £1,000 in four instalments to the Church Extension
Fund. The next year, it accepted the Bishop’s invitation to nominate
two members of his Commission to enquire into the position of the
City Churches and the question of whether any of their funds might
be used for building churches in other more populous districts.®®
Another £1,000 was given for church extension in 1935, and the
same amount was contributed in 1944 to the Bishop of Bristol’s
Appeal for Church Restoration and Expansion.®®
There were numerous donations, large and small, to the work of
repairing and restoring the churches of Bristol, ranging from £10
given to clean St. Jude’s in 1906 to £5,000 to help restore the porch
and tower of St. Stephen’s in 1914.°° 100 guineas was given to the
Cathedral Restoration Fund in 1922 and again in 1923.°! Donations
of the same amount were made to help restore the roof of St.
Stephen’s in 1925.8 Grants of 100 guineas for restoration of the
Cathedral were made in 1930, in 1931 and in 1933,°* and in 1964
the Society agreed to give £5,000 spread over ten years for the same
purpose. *4
Apart from helping in the restoration of old churches and the
building of new ones, the Society made many miscellaneous gifts to
the church. They included such donations as £25 to improve the
Cathedral organ in 1904;®5 10 guineas to re-hang the bells of St.
Stephen’s in 1906;®* £50 to assist in building a mission room at
Redfield, £50 to repair Colston’s monument in All Saints’, 5 guineas
to help heat Dundry church and 10 guineas towards providing a
motorboat for the missionary attached to the Seamen’s Institute at
Avonmouth in 1907;87 £100 to help the Bishop of Bath and Wells
55 77.B.29, p. 86, 19 Feb. 1904. 86 H7.B.30, p. 225, 23 July 1915.
57 Hf.B.31, p. 37, 28 Nov. 1919.
58 H.B.91, p. 322, 18 Dec. 19253 pp. 333, 334, 26 March 1926.
59 H.B.32, p. 362, 22 March 1935; H.B.33, p. 366, 26 Oct. 1944.
60 17.B.29, p. 202, 27 July 1906; H.B.30, p. 179, 24 July 1914.
61 H7.B.31, p. 160, 29 June 1922; p. 270, 30 Jan. 1923.
62 H.B.31, p. 318, 27 Nov. 1925.
68 H7.B.92, p. 116, 30 Oct. 1930; p. 158, 16 July 1931; p. 251, 26 Jan. 1933.
64 77.B.98, p. 273, 20 March 1964. 65 77.B.29, p. 98, 27 May 1904.
66 77.B.29, p. 214, 26 Oct. 1906.
87 H.B.29, p. 239, 4 Feb. 1907; p. 250, 22 March 1907.
Miscellaneous Activities, Twentieth Century 537
buy Glastonbury Abbey in 1908;8* 10 guineas to the Church of
England Defence Fund in Wales when disestablishment was being
proposed in 1912;®® 20 guineas to the Bristol Diocesan Clergy Fund
and £3 Ios. to help alter the choir stall in Locking Church in 1916;7°
5 guineas to the Church of England Men’s Society Annual Con-
ference in Bristol in 1925;7! 5 guineas to help restore church property
damaged in a hurricane in Antigua in 1928,’2 and 20 guineas to
repair Bristol churches damaged in a gale in 1929.78
Grants in recent years have included a seven-year covenant in
1970 to pay £75 per annum to the Social and Industrial Department
of the diocese of Bristol;’* £150 to Parkway Methodist Church to
help with a home in St. Paul’s for the relief of girls in distress;7°
£100 to All Saints’ Appeal in 1972,7° and an increase from 50 guineas
to £75 of the annual contribution to the Clergy Stipend Fund.”?
THE SOCIETY AND THE TWO WORLD WARS
When war broke out in August 1914, the immediate reaction of the
Society was to call a special meeting which authorised a donation
of 500 guineas to the Prince of Wales’ National War Relief Fund and
approved a motion that the Annual Dinner and Luncheon on
Charter Day should be cancelled.78 In the years that followed, some
of its members were killed in action. Thus, in January 1915, the
Hall mourned the early and untimely death of Lt. John Stanley
Davey of the North Somerset Yeomanry, who died at Ypres.’ In
1916, a presentation was made to Major Chester William Todd who
had been awarded the D.S.O. He was killed in action at Ypres the
next year.®° A former Master of the Society, Captain Arthur Beadon
Colthurst, fell in action in France in October 1916.8! Another
victim was Hugh Godfrey de Lisle Bush, M.C. In July 1915, the
Society made a presentation to him on the occasion of his marriage
and in recognition of the honours conferred on him for gallantry,
but he died early in 1917 as a result of wounds received at the battle
88 77.B.29, p. 291, 24 Jan. 1908; p. 296, 28 Feb. 1908.
69 77.B.30, p. 37, 23 Feb. 1912.
70 H.B.30, p. 268, 26 May 1916; p. 277, 29 Sept. 1916.
1 7fB.31, p. 279, 27 March 1925. 72 H.B.32, p. 13, 26 Oct. 1928.
73 H.B.32, p. 33, 25 Jan. 1929. 74 H.B.40, p. 198, 22 May 1970.
75 H.B.40, p. 228, 18 Dec. 1970. 78 H.B.41, p. 9, 18 Feb. 1972.
H.B.41, p. 56, 25 Jan. 1973.
78 H.B.30, pp. 186, 188, 24 Aug. 1914.
79 H.B.30, p. 209, 30 Jan. 1915. He had been admitted to the Society on 29
April rgtt.
80 77.B.30, p. 291, 22 Dec. 1916; p. 325, 14 Aug. 1917. He had been admitted
to the Society on 30 Jan. 1909. |
81 77,.B.30, p. 297, 27 Jan. 1917. He had been admitted in 1893 and had been
Master 1912-13.
538 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
of Loos in October 1915.8? Another member, Captain William
Edgar Paul and his brother Major Courtenay Paul, D.S.O., sons of
the Society’s Surveyor, Walter S. Paul, were killed in action in
1917.88
During these years, the Society contributed to the war effort in a
variety of ways, some of which may be noted. It assisted by grants
and loans the formation of Cadet Corps at Colston’s School and at
the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College;8* it gave 100 guineas
to the Bristol Citizen’s Recruiting Committee in 1914;8 it agreed
to the Triangle Hall, Park Place, being converted into a munitions
factory,®* and it invested some of its funds in War Loan.®? In 1916,
it contributed 200 guineas to the Lord Mayor’s Fund to equip the
Bristol Volunteer Regiment,®® and it cooperated with the City’s
National Service Committee in its efforts to make more manpower
available for the forces.®® In 1917, it asked the Master and Wardens
to attend at the tank in College Green to pay in £8,000 to buy
National War Bonds.®° Land was made available for allotments, ®!
and substantial contributions were made during the war to the work
of the Bristol Enquiry Bureau.®? Luncheons after meetings of the
Quarterly Hall and Standing Committee were to be “‘of the simplest
description possible’’.*8
In October 1914, a special sub-committee was set up to deal with
donations to local battalions formed in consequence of the war, and
in 1915 this was authorised to make grants of up to £50 for any
purpose connected with the war.®* Many gifts were made to provide
comforts for the troops in or near Bristol, such as £20 given to each
of the four organisations set up by the Church of England Men’s
Society to establish recreation and tea and coffee rooms for naval
and military forces stationed in Bristol;®® 50 guineas given to the
Y.M.C.A. for a hut near Horfield Barracks in connection with Lord
Derby’s recruiting scheme in 1916,°* and £100 given in 1917 to
enlarge the Rest Home for Soldiers in Victoria Street.®’ The Bristol
Red Cross Society was given £500 in 1917,°8 and there were a
82 H.B.30, p. 223, 2 July 1915; p. 298, 27 Jan. 1917. He had been admitted to
the Society on 30 Jan. 19009.
83 H.B.30, p. 326, 14 Aug. 1917. William Edgar Paul had been admitted in
1895.
84 H.B.30, p. 204, 18 Dec. 1914; p. 213, 26 March 1915; p. 215, 30 April 1915.
85 H.B.30, p. 204,.18 Dec. 1914. 86 H.B.30, p. 221, 25 June 1915.
87 H.B.30, p. 222, 25 June 1915. 88 H.B.30, p. 270, 30 June 1916.
89 H7.B.30, pp. 299, 300, 23 Feb. 1917. °° H.B.30, p. 349, 21 Dec. 1917.
*1 H.B.30, p. 301, 30 March 1917. ;
*2 H.B.30, p. 244, 17 Dec. 1915 (£250); p. 288, 24 Nov. 1916 (£250); p. 361, 4
Feb. 1918 (£250). 93 H.B.30, p. 361, 4 Feb. 1918.
®4 H.B.30, p. 191, 30 Oct. 1914; p. 242, 26 Nov. 1915.
95 H.B.30, p. 200, 27 Nov. 1914. %6 77,.B.30, p. 255, 26 Feb. 1916.
97 H.B.30, p. 300, 23 Feb. 1917. °8 77.B.30, p. 293, 24 Jan. 1917.
Miscellaneous Activities, Twentieth Century 539
number of donations to the Bristol and Clifton War Hospital Depot
in 1916, 1917 and 1918. Gifts in kind included twenty-five dozen
bottles of champagne sent to three War Hospitals in London and
six dozen bottles of port and six dozen bottles of Burgundy sent to
wounded officers in Southmead and Maudlin Street Hospitals in
1916,100
Contributions to miscellaneous charities connected with the war
included £10 a month to help Bristol naval prisoners of war and
£10 a month to the Bristol Belgian Refugee Fund;!™ 10 guineas to
a fund for “‘alleviating the sufferings of the brave and unfortunate
countries of Serbia and Montenegro”’;!°* £25 to the Russian Red
Cross;!93 5 guineas to the Ladies’ Guild of the Bristol Sailors’ Home
for groceries to be sent to Bristol seamen interned at Ruhleben;!%
and 5 guineas to the Bristol Italian Red Cross Fund.1%
There was little entertaining in the Hall during the war years, but
it may be noted that in March 1917 the Master reported that he had
given a luncheon for Colonel Paulett and other officers of the 128th
Canadian (Moose Jaw) Battalion and that the Colonel had promised
to send the Society a set of badges and buttons of the regiment.1°
After the war, the Society decided to invite Colonel Daniel
Burges, V.C. to become a member as a redemptioner.1®” It contri-
buted £100 towards the City’s Peace Celebrations and gave £100
each to Colston’s School, Colston’s Girls’ School and the Merchant
Venturers’ Technical College for the same purpose.18 In due course,
it conferred the freedom on two of the war leaders, Sir David Beatty
and Earl Haig, but not on Mr. David Lloyd George.
In the First World War, the Society had not been unduly worried
about possible damage to its property from enemy action. In Septem-
ber 1915, it decided that it was not necessary to participate in the
government’s scheme for insurance against damage by enemy
aircraft and bombardment, but in February 1916 it felt that the time
had now come to do so.!9 In the Second World War, the position
was very different, and air-raid precautions were taken before the
war began. In 1940 and 1941, the Merchants’ Hall was destroyed by
enemy action, and the Society was forced to find temporary quarters
in The St. Monica Home of Rest.!° In 1940, in view of the critical
situation, the Charter Day Service was held in the chapel of Colston’s
*9 H.B.30, p. 279, 27 Oct. 1916 (£50); p. 333, 26 Oct. 1917 (£100); p. 381, 28
June 1918 (£100).
100 77,B.30, p. 263, 28 April 1916; p. 272, 28 July 1916.
101 77.B.30, p. 243, 17 Dec. 1915. 102 77.B.30, p. 255, 26 Feb. 1916.
103 7,.B.30, p. 288, 24 Nov. 1916. 104 77.B.30, p. 315, 25 May 1917.
105 #,B.30, p. 371, 26 April 1918. 106 7, B.30, p. 301, 30 March 1917.
107 H7.B.30, p. 425, 28 Feb. 1919.
108 H:B.31, p. 7, 27 June 1919; p. 17, 19 Sept. 1919.
109 H7.B.30, p. 229, 24 Sept. 1915; p. 254, 3 Feb. 1916. 110 See p. 460.
540 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Almshouse instead of in St. Stephen’s, and it was decided not to
invite the children from Colston’s schools or the almsfolk.111 The
next year, the service was held in the chapel of St. Monica’s.1!2
Although a number of members of the Society were on active
service in the Second World War, none of them was killed. However,
the Treasurer, Mr. G. H. Beloe, lost two sons in the war and died
himself in 1944.118
As in World War I, the Society contributed in various ways to the
war effort. Contributions to numerous appeals included 100 guineas
each to the Red Cross and St. John’s Ambulance Corps in 1939;
300 guineas to the Y.M.C.A. in Bristol in connection with its work
for the forces and £250 to the Lord Mayor’s War Services Fund in
1940."*4 In 1940, the Society contributed to the work of the Anglo-
French Ambulance Corps and to the Finland Appeal."5 It gave 50
guineas to Aid to Russia Week in November 1941; 20 guineas to the
Lord Mayor’s Appeal for Aid to China in 1942; 50 guineas to the
Four Nations Appeal in 1943, and 100 guineas to an Appeal for the
Royal and Merchant Navies in 1945.116 Less conventional donations
included £150 to the Rev. P. B. Clayton for Toc H to provide a
shooting brake bearing the Society’s name to transport patients and
stores in the Orkneys in 1940,12’ and a grant of up to £220 in 1942 to
enable the Gloucestershire Territorial Association to provide a
mobile cinema for isolated anti-aircraft units around Bristol.18
In support of the war effort, the Society invested £1,000 in
National War Bonds in Bristol’s War Weapons Week in 1940,11°
and nearly £10,000 during Bristol’s Warship Week in December
1941.12° It made a grant of 100 guineas to the Navy League Sea
Cadet Corps in 1941;1?1 it agreed to the Clifton Rocks Railway
tunnel being used in connection with air-raid precautions,!22 and
it made land available for air-raid shelters and allotments.!23 The
Observatory was used by the Home Guard;!24 temporary accom-
modation in the Hall was made available to the Red Cross Society
111 7.B.933, p. 202, 27 Sept. 1940. 112 H.B.33, p. 246, 26 Sept. 1941.
118 See p. 452. .
114 77.B.33, p. 157, 25 Oct. 1939; p. 178, 23 Feb. 1940; p. 198, 24 July 1940.
Other donations to the Y.M.C.A. included 100 guineas in 1944 and £500 in 1945
(H.B.33, pp. 350, 413, 27 April 1944 and 26 July 1945). Fifty guineas were given
to the Salvation Army Emergency Service in 1942 (H.B.33, p. 283, 25 Sept. 1942).
118 7.B.33, p. 173, 24 Jan. 1940; p. 181, 21 March 1940.
116 H.B.93, p. 256, 28 Nov. 1941; p. 283, 25 Sept. 1942; p. 327, 28 Oct. 19433
Pp. 388, 25 Jan. 1945. 1!” -H.B.93, p. 192, 31 May 1940; p. 195, 28 June 1940.
118 H.B.33, p. 276, 26 June 1942; p. 278, 29 July 1942.
119 77.B.93, p. 202, 27 Sept. 1940. 120 77.B.33, p. 248, 29 Oct. 1941.
121 Tid,
122 H.B.33, p. 155, 29 Sept. 1939; p. 228, 31 Jan. 1941.
128 #1.B.93, p. 170, 24 Nov. 1940; p. 179, 23 Feb. 1940; p. 196, 20 June 1940; p.
198, 24 July 1940. 124 See p. 475.
Miscellaneous Activities, Twentieth Century 541
when its premises were damaged by enemy action,}25 and both
during and after the war, a very considerable number of patients
were treated in temporary accommodation made available in The
St. Monica Home of Rest.1*¢
When the War was over, the Society decided to offer the freedom
to two of the architects of victory, Sir Winston Churchill and General
Dwight D. Eisenhower.!?"
OTHER INTERESTS
As has been noted earlier, the Society in the nineteenth century had
taken shares in the Leigh Woods Land Company whose object was
to preserve the woods for the benefit of the citizens of Bristol.1?°
In 1905, it received a legacy from the late Mr. A. Capper Pass of
135 additional shares in the Company:1?° In 1909, Mr. G. A. Wills
informed the Hall that he had purchased for the benefit of the
Company 73 acres, including Nightingale Valley and the Hanging
Wood. He had paid the purchase price from his own money, but he
wished to set up a Sustentation Fund to preserve the woods and he
asked the Society to help. The Hall was willing to contribute £500
and also to hand over the shares which it had received from Mr.
Capper Pass. In the end, G. A. Wills accepted the shares for the
Sustentation Fund but decided he would make up the fund from his
own resources./3°
After the First World War when there was a serious housing
shortage, the Society decided to help by taking up 500 ordinary £1
shares in Bristol Housing Ltd. When the Company was wound up in
1934, the surplus received by the Society was used to help pay the
cost of an additional ward at Winford Orthopaedic Hospital for
Sick Children.131
In the nineteen-twenties when unemployment was a major
problem, there were many schemes to assist emigration, and the
Society cooperated by making the Hall available to those concerned
and by giving donations towards the work of the Bristol Migration
Committee.13
In 1929 and again in 1931, the Clifton Suspension Bridge
Company asked the Society whether it would sell the shares which
it held in the Company, but the Hall was unwilling to end this link
125 77.B.33, p. 215, 29 Nov. 1940.
126 In 1950, it was reported that 15,487 patients had been treated in the General
Hospital annexe since this had been at St. Monica’s. H.B.35, p. 27, 24 Nov. 1950.
127 See p. 447. 128 See p. 443. 129 H.B.29, p. 153, 27 Oct. 1905.
180 FY, Bs 29, P. 337, 29 Jan. 1909; p. 345, 26 Feb. 1909.
181 77.B.31, p. 221, 30 Nov. 1923; H.B.32, p. 345, 30 Nov. 1934.
132 H7.B.31, p. 432, 23 March 1928; p. 441, 18 May 1928; H.B.32, p. 70, 18 Oct.
1929; p. 94, 28 March 1930.
542 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
with the past, which dated back to the eighteenth century when
William Vick made it trustee of a fund intended to finance the
building of a bridge over the Avon.133
The Society has also continued to subscribe to the Bristol Chamber
of Commerce which in the nineteenth century had taken over much
of the work once carried out by the Merchant Venturers. In 1916, it
agreed to raise its annual subscription from £50 to £100, the amount
it had contributed during the period 1851-86.134 The Hall was,
however, unwilling to become involved in 1969 in the controversial
issue of the future of the Bristol City Docks, and it informed the
Chamber that ‘“‘as the Society was not a commercial undertaking
it should not itself express an opinion to the Chamber of Commerce
on this, although the individual members may do so in their several
capacities’’.135
183 77.B.32, p. 54, 31 May 1929; p. 151, 29 May 1931.
134 H.B.30, p. 259, 31 March 1916.
135 #7,.B.40, p. 160, 21 Nov. 1969. See also H.B.38, p. 109, 9 Feb. 1962, for a
meeting with the Chamber of Commerce over plans to preserve the beauty of
Ashton Court.
CHAPTER 28
Past, Present and Future
THE Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol has under-
gone many changes since, as a group of would-be monopolists, it
first obtained a royal charter in 1552 in order to further the trade of
Bristol in general and the interests of its own members in particular.
In the seventeenth century, it was primarily a pressure group
concerned, above all, with economic matters and with the port of
Bristol. ‘The main source of its limited income was the wharfage dues
which had been handed over to it in return for a nominal rent by the
Corporation, with which it was closely associated. In the later part
of the century, it bought the manor of Clifton which in the long run
was to prove extremely profitable. Even in this early period, its
charitable and educational activities were of some significance, and
the Merchants’ Almshouse and the school for the children of poor
mariners were a foundation for much more extensive activities in
the following centuries.
In the eighteenth century, the main concern of the Society was
still trade and economic affairs in general, and in these fields its work
reached a peak and began to decline before the end of the century.
The property became of increasing significance as Bristol expanded
into Clifton. The income from the wharfage lease, which the Hall held
on extremely favourable terms, helped it to undertake the develop-
ment of the port, and it acquired the Merchants’ Dock and adjacent
property in Hotwells. There was a very considerable extension of its
educational work when, early in the century, Edward Colston made
it trustee for Colston’s Hospital and the estates which provided an
income for the school. It also became responsible for a second alms-
house, and the establishment of the Seamen’s Hospital Fund in the
mid-eighteenth century gave it the management of an important
welfare scheme for Bristol seamen.
During the early nineteenth century, the Society’s interest in the
business life of Bristol decreased, and the foundation of a Chamber of
Commerce in the eighteen-twenties was but one indication that the
business community was looking elsewhere for leadership. Both
central and local government began to take over work which had
hitherto been carried out by the Society. The Seamen’s Hospital
Fund was taken away by Act of Parliament. The Society lost control
of the cranes and the pilots, and eventually had to surrender its
544 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
wharfage lease. The end of the old regime was symbolised in the
eighteen-forties by its unsuccessful attempt to find a new source of
income through the Waterworks scheme and by the traumatic
experience of the litigation which resulted in a decision that the
manor of Stogursey belonged, not to the Society, but to the Colston
Trust. The long Treasurership of William Claxton saw the end of the
old order and the beginning of the new, as the Society changed its
image and began to adapt itself to a new age.
_ To make good the loss of income resulting from the surrender of
the wharfage lease, the Society intensified its interest in property-
development and in so doing left its mark on the face of Bristol.
Educational work became of increasing importance. From the
later eighteen-thirties, the Society was busy improving the work of
Colston’s Hospital, and in 1861 the school was moved to Stapleton.
However, the Society was not allowed to develop the school in its
own way, and the new Governmental Scheme of 1873, which was
basically imposed from above, altered the whole character of the
school and ended the direct control which the Society had exercised
from the early eighteenth century.
Once again, the Society tried to adapt itself to change. In 1885,
it took over the Trade and Mining School, which it eventually trans-
formed into the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College, an institu-
tion which rivalled University College, Bristol, and from which
hived off in the twentieth century a preparatory school, a secondary
school, a college of commerce and a Faculty of Engineering.
In the twentieth century the Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College reached the height of its fame, but the cost of providing
technical education was far beyond the resources of a private body
with limited resources, and the College was to a very large extent
financed by grants from public authorities. It was inevitable that
sooner or later those who provided the bulk of the money would
want to take over control, and in 1949 the Society ceased to be
responsible for the Technical College. For some sixty-five years this
remarkable pioneering work, like the Seamen’s Hospital Fund in
an earlier period, had helped to justify the existence of the Society.
Although the College now passed into other hands, the Society still
retained its interest in education through its close association with the
University of Bristol and with the two Colston’s schools.
The end of the Merchant Venturers’ Technical College meant a
contraction of interest in one field, but there had, on the other hand,
been a remarkable expansion in the Society’s charitable role when in
1922 the Merchant Venturers became responsible for the adminis-
tration of the very considerable endowments settled by H. H. Wills
on The St. Monica Home of Rest. Management of these endowments
and participation in the Council of the Home was to be a major
Past, Present and Future 545
preoccupation of the Society and its members in the years that
followed.
Throughout its history, the Society has been forced to adapt itself
to new situations as it lost some of its old functions and had to find
new ones. The point was made very clearly by W. W. Ward, one
of the Society’s greatest Treasurers, when he wrote to the Master in
1908: ““The S.M.V. is an anachronism in this sense, that it is an
institution which has survived its original purpose. Such institutions
are at the present time regarded always with criticism, often, parti-
cularly when they hold property, with jealousy. To justify their
existence, it is advisable that they should undertake new public
services when their original duties have ceased. . . .°! Ward had in
mind the threat which appeared to. be presented to the work of the
Merchant Venturers’ Technical College by the proposed University
of Bristol, but the point he made about the need for the Society to
justify its existence by continually re-assessing its role in a changing
world has been grasped, explicitly or implicitly, during much of the
Society’s long history. At times, the Society has been slow to adapt
itself and has appeared to the public as a complacent group of men
concerned primarily with their own affairs. It has been considered,
wrongly, to be an exclusive wining and dining club with great
wealth. It has not always taken steps to make its work known to the
public and has seemed like some Victorian or Edwardian lady
“terribly sure of her rightful place in a world she saw no need to
please”’. At times, it has been characterised by self-assurance and self-
righteousness, but, taking the record as a whole, there can be little
doubt that it has always shown a capacity to adapt itself to change
and to-seek continually new means of serving the community.
In recent years, the Society has been very conscious of the need to
examine critically its work and its aims. The development of the
National Health Service and the growth of the Welfare State have
inevitably raised the question of whether the traditional forms of
philanthropy with which the Society has been concerned are those
best suited to needs of the present day and whether the St. Monica’s
trust, which was first established over fifty years ago, ought not to be
modified and adapted to a world very different from that of 1922.
Fundamental changes in national and local educational policy have
also raised major problems about the role of the two Colston’s schools
with which the Society has always had such a close relationship.
With these and other problems in mind, the Hall set up in 1969 a
special sub-committee to consider what the objects of the Society
should be in the next ten to twenty years and what changes should be
made in its policy.? This developments sub-committee has examined
* Merchants’ Hall: M.V. University Papers, W. W. Ward to the Master, March
1908. 2 H.B.40, p. 97, 7 Feb. 1969.
546 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
carefully the position concerning The St. Monica Trust and
the two Colston’s schools and has also considered a number of
suggestions about other possible fields of activity, such as the practi-
cability of establishing a new home for terminal cases, of encouraging
the formation of a Housing Association in one of the districts of
Bristol, of helping the young through youth clubs and the Outward
Bound movement, and of improving the amenities of Bristol and
preserving what can be preserved of its past. Some of these proposals
proved on investigation to be impracticable. It was estimated, for
example, that the capital cost of establishing a new home for terminal
cases would be about half a million pounds,‘ and this was far beyond
the Society’s limited resources, particularly as it felt it had a moral
obligation to help the two schools as well as numerous other organ-
isations. There were, too, very great problems about backing a
Housing Association.
The attempt to re-assess the role of the Society in the modern
world still continues. Among its results so far have been the modern-
isation and development of The St. Monica Home of Rest and the
establishment of a new Merchant Venturers’ Charitable Trust which
is intended to build up a fund which will, in due course, enable the
Society to contribute generously to local good causes to which at
present it can make only relatively small donations. In these and
other ways the Society is seeking to justify in the widest sense of the
words its motto Indocilis pauperiem patt.
3 For various reports and discussions concerning future policy, see H.B.40, p.
110, 31 March 1969; pp. 131-3, 23 June 1969; p. 143, 12 Sept. 1969; p. 149, 20
Oct. 1969; p. 169, 29 Oct. 1969; p. 180, 16 March 1970; p. 196, 8 May 1970; p.
198, 22 May 1970; p. 208, 31 July 1970; p. 211, 24 Sept. 1970; H.B.41, pp. 20 ff,
8 May 1972; p. 67, 9 April 1973; p. 72, 13 April 1973; p. 87, 26 July 1973; p. 127,
11 March 1974; p. 132, 29 March 1974; p. 146, 18 July 1974.
4 H.B.4o, p. 180, 16 March 1970.
5 The proposal originated for Mr. Roger Clarke. See H.B.4o0, p. 271, 28 Sept.
1971; p. 284, 26 Nov. 1971; H.B.41, p. 69, 9 April 1973; p. 93, 24 Sept. 1973; p.
114, 7 Dec. 1973; p. 125, 22 Feb. 1974.
APPENDIX A
Register of Members 1800-1974
For lists of members in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries,
see McGrath, Merchant Venturers, pp. 26-33 and Minchinton, Polttzcs
and the Port, pp. 209-16.
The following list of members in the nineteenth and twentieth
centuries has been compiled from the Hall Books.
os us Dv
A.B.13
p- 139 = 29 May
p. 186 6 Nov.
p. 196 11 Mar.
. 209 10 May
218 25 Aug.
237 24 Jan.
. 256 22 Aug.
p. 265 17 Sept.
Pp. 273
1800
1801
1802
1802
1802
1803
1803
1803
George Hilhouse, s. of James Martin
Hilhouse
Samuel Whitchurch, s. of Samuel
Whitchurch
George Gibbs, s. of George Gibbs
Henry Protheroe, app. of Edward
Protheroe
Henry Addington, Chancellor of the
Exchequer (Honorary Member)
Benjamin Bickley. Fine £200
John Vaughan, app. of brother
Richard Vaughan
H. R. H. Ernest Augustus, Duke of
Cumberland and Teviotdale, Earl
of Armagh (Hon. Member)
Presented September 1803
William Gibbons, Anthony Palmer
Collings, William Holder, James
George, Thomas Hellicar, Joseph
Hellicar, Charles Anderson, Robert
Bruce, Richard Hart Davis, Henry
Brooke, John Haythorne, William
Danson, Robert Bush, William
Perry, John Britten Bence, John
Thomson, Robert Vizer, John
Barrow, Charles Harvey (These 19
members were admitted at a reduced
fine of £150)
15 Oct. 1803 Philip Protheroe, s. of late Mr.
Protheroe
548 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
HB.13
8 Nov. 1804 Henry, (1st) Lord Viscount Melville
(Book of Petitions, p. 134)
p. 360 28 Nov. 1805 Admiral Lord Barham (Hon. Member)
Admiral Lord Collingwood (Hon.
Member)
P. 434 21 Feb. 1807 Thomas Durbin Brice, s. and app. of
Edward Brice
Pp. 457 13 June 1807 Robert Hilhouse, Abraham Hilhouse
(sons of James Martin Hilhouse)
Butler Thompson Claxton, app. of
Philip Protheroe (H.B.13, p. 114)
p. 464 12 Oct. 1807 Moved that the Freedom be presented
in a gold box to H. R. H. George,
Prince of Wales
(Letter to Equerry dated 12 Oct. 1807
and entry in Merchants’ Hall Ledger
1795-1808, Paid to Henry Browne for
a gold box to be presented to the
Prince of Wales with the Freedom,
£73 10s. od.)
AB.14
P- 35 10 Nov. 1808 Benjamin Hayward Bright on payment
of the usual fees
p. 101 24 Jan. 1810 James Joseph Whitchurch, s. of
Samuel Whitchurch
p. 111 4 July 1810 John Latty Bickley, app. of his father,
Benjamin Bickley
Pp. 133 7 Nov. 1810 James George, s. of James George
pp. 148/9 16 Jan. 1811 Robert Willis Vizer, app. of his father,
Robert Vizer .
p. 1g! 14 April 1812 Henry Bright, s. of Richard Bright
p- 194 14 April 1812 Thomas Paul Perkins, s. of Thomas
Perkins
Pp. 233 4 Feb. 1813 Edward Perkins, s. of Thomas Perkins
P- 243 21 May 1813 John Evans Lunell, s. of William Peter
Lunell
Pp. 275 10 Nov. 1813 Daniel Cave, s. of Stephen Cave
10 Nov. 1813 Robert Bruce the younger, app. of his
father, Robert Bruce
282 18 Nov. 1813 James Fowler the younger, s. of
James Fowler
p- 292 20 April 1814 Ordered that the Freedom be
presented to Mr. Hart Davis and
his eldest son (it does not seem to
2
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974
p. 306 11 Aug.
p. 319 8 Nov.
pp. 336/7 30 Mar.
p. 364 1 Sept.
Pp. 372 8 Nov.
p. 388 3 May
p. 402 25 July
Pp. 413 8 Nov.
p. 460 7 Nov.
p. 462 7 Nov.
pp. 534/5 4 Feb.
AB.15
p. 27 7 Oct.
Pp. 32 13 Oct.
P- 43 6 Nov.
6 Nov.
6 Nov.
p. 67 14 Feb.
1814
1814
1815
1815
1815
1816
1816
1816
1817
1817
1819
1819
1819
1819
1819
1819
1820
549
have been presented and they did
not attend any meetings)
Edward Hinton, app. of his uncle,
Thomas Hellicar
Henry Wenham Newman, app. of
John Thomson to whom he paid a
premium of £300.
George Lunell, s. of William Peter
Lunell
Robert Claxton, app. of his brother
Butler Thompson Claxton to whom
he paid a premium of £500
Ordered that the Freedom be presented
to (2nd) Viscount Melville, First
Lord of the Admiralty
Samuel Lunell, s. of Peter Lunell
Voted that the Freedom be granted to
Field-Marshal, His Grace The Duke
of Wellington (conferred on him
during his visit to Bristol 27 July
1816)
Voted that the Freedom be presented
to Lord Edward Somerset and
Lord (James Henry) Fitzroy
Somerset (1st Baron Raglan)
Peter Maze. Fine £200
Edmond Danson, app. of his father
William Danson
Francis Bickley, app. of his father
Benjamin Bickley
Richard Walker Fowler, s. of Richard
Sargeant Fowler
Martin Hilhouse, s. of James Martin
Hilhouse
James Maze. Fine £200
Hugh William Danson. Fine £200
Rice Williams Price, app. of Charles
Harvey
Henry George Fowler, s. of Richard
Sargeant Fowler
William Bruce and Robert Rainey,
app. of Robert Bruce
1 The gold box in which the Freedom was presented is now in Apsley House.
550 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
AB.15
p. 107 13 Oct. 1820 Henry Crane Brice, app. of his father
Samuel Brice
John William Fowler, s. of William
Fowler
p. 182 2 Oct. 1821 Richard Dawbney Brice, app. of his
father, Samuel Brice
p- 215 5 Feb. 1822 William Claxton, app. of his brother,
Thompson Claxton
pp. 272/3. 8 Nov. 1822 Thomas Daniel the younger, s. of
Thomas Daniel
P- 323 14 June 1823 Alfred Fowler, s. of William Fowler
P- 332 4 Aug. 1823 Charles Withington Barrow, s. of John
Barrow
Pp. 347 7 Nov. 1823 John Elton Lury, app. of uncle,
Samuel Harford
A.B.16 |
p. 14 11 Jan. 1825 Voted that the Freedom be presented
to the Rt. Hon. Earl of Liverpool
and the Rt. Hon. George
Canning (Presented 12 Jan. 1825,
tbid., p. 16)
Pp. 34 22 Feb. 1825 Richard Summers Harford, app. to his
father, the late James Harford.
22 Feb. 1825 Summers Harford, app. of his uncle,
Samuel Harford.
22 Feb. 1825 Charles Lloyd Harford, app. of his
uncle, Samuel Harford
. 153 22 Feb. 1825 Danvers Hill Ward, app. of Peter Maze
| to whom he paid a premium of £300
164 4 Oct. 1826 Peter Maze, s. of Peter Maze
198 6 April 1827 Valentine Hellicar, app. of his father
Thomas Hellicar
328 5 June 1829 Edward Bevan. Fine of £200. Required
to produce proof of his Freedom of the
City which he did on 3 July 1829
P- 394 11 June 1830 Hall accepted resignation in writing
from Edward Thurston Davis and
voted that he be admitted into
Colston’s Almshouse and given £10
towards furnishing his room.?
P. 433 g Nov. 1830 Robert Gay Barrow and James Syms
vo DD PD
2 Edward Thurston Davis had been admitted a member on 10 Nov. 1786
(Minchinton, Politics and the Port, p. 215).
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974 55!
A.B.17
p. 112 4 July
Pp. 174 18 Oct.
p. 260 3 Sept.
p. 384 20 April
H.B.18
p. 229 24 Aug.
p. 419 15 Feb.
p. 451 I June
A.B.19
p. 157 6 Oct.
p. 174 8 Nov.
p. 264 13 July
1832
1833
1834
1836
1838
1840
1840
1841
1841
1842
Barrow, both sons and apprentices
of John Barrow
John Hellicar, s. of Thomas Hellicar
William Brice s. and app. of William
Diaper Brice
Freedom to be presented to Henry
Charles Somerset, Lord Granville
Francis Savage the younger, app. of
his uncle, William Claxton
John Harding, William Edward
Acraman, William Thomas Poole
King, Daniel Wade Acraman, John
Savage, John Salmon, William
Weaver Davies, William Orchard
Gwyer, Alfred John Acraman,
Charles Pinney, John Hurle,
Frederick Ricketts, Edward Drew,
Richard Jenkins Poole King, James
Norroway Franklyn, Richard
Robinson, Joseph Bell Clarke,
Christopher George, George Wood-
roffe Franklyn. Admitted on pay-
ment of reduced fine of £503
Ordered that the Freedom be presented
to Henry Somerset, (7th) Duke of
Beaufort
Mark Davis Protheroe, s. of Philip
Protheroe
Henry Brice, s. of William Diaper
Brice
George Thorne George, s. of James
George
Freedom to be presented to H.R.H.
Prince Albert on his coming to
Bristol for the launching of the
Great Britain on 19 July
8 See p. 251. Fourteen signed the book on 26 October 1838 (H.B.18, p. 255), 4
on 8 Nov. 1838 (H.B.18, p. 267), and 1 on 10 Nov. 1838 (H.B.18, p. 274). John
Vining who had been elected on 26 October was subsequently found to be ineli-
gible as he was not a freeman of Bristol. D. W. Acraman was unable to attend on
26 October owing to illness and the book was taken to his home for signature.
552 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
H.B.20
p- 39 18 Oct. 1844 Samuel Lunell, s. of George Lunell
p. 121 14 June 1845 George Grant, app. of Peter Maze the
younger, to whom he paid a pre-
mium of £300
p. 260 2 Oct. 1846 George Pope, s. of the late Andrew
Pope, born after his father’s admis-
sion. I'o pay 40/— as a redemptioner
p. 286 15 Jan. 1847 James Thorne George, s. of James
George
A.B.21
p. 114 20 Feb. 1851 Voted that the freedom be presented
to Philip William Skynner Miles,
M.P. for the city (Hon. member) 4
Pp. 133 25 April 1851 Robert Podmore Clark, app. of the
late Robert Bruce to whom he paid
a premium of £300
p. 186 21 Oct. 1851 George Piercy Whittall. Fine £50
pp. 186/7 21 Oct. 1851 Frederick William Green. Fine £50
pp. 219/20 27 Feb. 1852 William Oliver Bigg. Fine £50
| 27 Feb. 1852 William Hopton Wyld. Fine £50
27 Feb. 1852 John Hopton Wyld. Fine £50
27 Feb. 1852 Charles Ringer. Fine £50
pp. 234/5 15 May 1852 James Hassell. Fine £50
15 May 1852 Francis Kentucky Barnes. Fine £50
15 May 1852 John Averay Jones. Fine £50
15 May 1852 ‘Thomas Lucas. Fine £50
15 May 1852 Edmund Gwyer. Fine £50
p. 252 22 Sept. 1852 Charles Bowles Hare. Fine £50
22 Sept. 1852 John Hare. Fine £50
22 Sept. 1852 Thomas Porter Jose. Fine £50
pp. 265/6 6Nov. 1852 John Lucas. Fine £50
p. 310 20 April 1853 James Bush. Fine £50
p. 336 28 Oct. 1853 Washington Fox, s. of Edward Long
Fox, deceased, as app. of Francis
Savage to whom he paid a premium
of £300
p. 378 12 April 1854 Philip George, the younger, porter
brewer, s. of Alfred George, porter
4 On 28 Oct. 1971, the Treasurer reported the purchase at Sotheby’s for £720
of the box in which the freedom had been presented to Mr. Miles. The Treasurer
stated that ‘‘the workmanship was splendid in the revolting fashion of the period’,
and that from his researches it seemed that the freedom had been presented in a
box on only 10 occasions and that this was one of the two boxes presented to
commoners.
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974 553
brewer, app. of Christopher
George, lead merchant, a Merchant
Venturer
p- 379 12 April 1854 George Rogers, alkali manufacturer.
Fine £50
pp. 391/2 13 May 1854 His Grace Henry Charles Fitzroy (8th)
Duke of Beaufort (Hon. member)
Pp. 449 g Jan. 1855 Ordered that the Freedom be presented
to Robert Bright. (It was conveyed
to him on 8 July 1855. H.B.217,
p. 501)
p. 450 g Jan. 1855 William Fripp, junior. Fine £50
.B.22
pp. 2/3 3 Nov. 1855 Edward Thomas Lucas. Fine £50
13 Sept. 1856 William Adlam. Fine £50
p. 98 4 Nov. 1856 Ordered that the Freedom be presented
to the Rt. Hon. The (2nd) Baron
Raglan in respect of his father and
his Somerset connection. It was not
in fact presented to him until 6
August 1857 (H.B.22, p. 176)
pp. 196/7 3 Nov. 1857 Frederick Wake Pinney, s. of Charles
Pinney
pp. 276/7 18 Sept. 1858 Robert Hilhouse Bush, s. of Henry
Bush, deceased, app. of his father
24 March 1851-6 May 1857, then
turned over to James Bush to 24
March 1858
pp. 277/8 18 Sept. 1858 Robert Withington Barrow, s. of
Robert Gay Barrow. To pay 4/6d.
pp. 284/5 8 Nov. 1858 John Acraman, s. and app. of William
Edward Acraman. To pay 4/6d.
P- 339 8 Mar. 1859 Philip Culpepper Claxton, s. of
William Claxton
p. 396 4 Nov. 1859 William Wilberforce Jose, s. and app.
of his father Thomas Porter Jose
pp. 397/8 4 Nov. 1859 ‘Thomas Barnes
George Mountfort Barnes
Robert Grey Barnes
All sons and apprentices of Francis
Kentucky Barnes from 19 Oct. 1852.
Pp. 429 24 Feb. 1860 Sholto Vere Hare, son of Charles Hare
and app. of William Thomas Poole
King from 26 Nov. 1852. To pay
£25 to the Treasurer
554 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
H.B.22
pp..430/1 24 Feb. 1860 Odiarne Coates Lane, merchant.
Fine £50
pp. 430/1 24 Feb. 1860 Charles Paul, merchant. Fine £50
pp. 2/3 3 April 1860 John Frederick Lucas, s. of Thomas
Lucas, deceased, app. of his father
for 26 Feb. 1853-1 Aug. 1856 and
then by turnover until 26 Feb. 1860
of his uncle John Lucas
Pp. 3 3 April 1860 John William Miles, s. of Philip John
Miles, deceased, born after his
father’s admission
p. 103 16 Feb. 1861 George Henry Pope, s. of George
Pope.
pp. 103/4 16 Feb. 1861 William Proctor Baker. Fine £50
p. 146 10 Aug. 1861 Edward Peach William Miles, s. of
Philip John Miles, born after his
father’s admission
p. 146 10 Aug. 1861 Henry Cruger William Miles, s. of
Philip John Miles, born after his
father’s admission
p. 183 11 Jan. 1862 Charles Peter Branstrom Howell,
merchant. Fine £50
A.B.23
pp. 209/10 26 April 1862 Richard Robinson Bevan, s. of John
Scudamore Bevan, nephew and app.
of Richard Robinson
pp. 239/40 3 Nov. 1862 Robert William Bigg, s. of William
Oliver Bigg. Fine £50
pp. 240/1 3 Nov. 1862 William Bigg, s. and app. of William
Bigg
pp. 274/5 4 April 1863 Donald Maclean Claxton, s. of William
Claxton, born after his father’s
admission. To pay 4/6d.
pp. 332/3 14 Jan. 1864 Philip William Skynner Miles, s. of
Philip John Miles, deceased, M.V.
To pay 4/6d. as son of a member
born after his father’s admission to
S.M.V. He is to take precedence
so that he stands where he would
have stood had his present admission
taken place at the time when he
was admitted an honorary member
(See H.B.21, p. 114 20 Feb. 1851)
pp. 353/5 2 April 1864 Robert Henry Salmon, s. of John
Appendix A, Register of Members 1800-1974 555
Salmon, born after his father’s
admission. To pay 40s. because his
father was a redemptioner
p. 368 6 June 1864 Thomas Terrett Taylor, merchant
(the printed notice says goldsmith)
Fine £50
pp. 396/8 7 Nov. 1864 Arthur William King, s. of William
Thomas Poole King, born after his
father’s admission. To pay 40/—
because his father was a redemp-
tioner
pp. 417/18 21 Jan. 1865 George King Morgan. Fine £50
H.B.24
p. 26 28 Oct. 1865 William Augustus Frederick Powell,
glass bottle manufacturer. Fine £50
pp. 62/3 20 Jan. 1866 Francis Frederick Fox, merchant.
Fine £50
pp. 62/3 20 Jan. 1866 William Frayne, merchant. Fine £50
p. 127 20 Oct. 1866 Mervyn Kersteman King, s. of William
Thomas Poole King. To pay 40/—
because his father is a redemptioner
p. 149 5 Jan. 1867 Richard Plantagenet Campbell, the
Duke of Buckingham and Chandos.
Honorary member®
P. 332 14 April 1869 Charles Phipps Lucas, s. and app. of
John Lucas. Payment of 4/6d.
p. 336 23 April 1869 Herbert Poole King, s. of William
| Thomas Poole King. 40/— because
his father was a redemptioner
pp. 371/2 29 Oct. 1869 Arthur Baker, merchant. Fine £50
pp. 372/3 29 Oct. 1869 Robert Hassell, merchant. Fine £50
AB.25
p. 2 6 Aug. 1870 Charles Bowles Hare. Fine £50
Pp. 94 13 Oct. 1871 Edmund Ambrose King, s. and app.
of William Thomas Poole King.
Payment of 4/6d.
pp. 171/2 27 July 1872 Charles Octavius Harvey, merchant.
Fine £50
p. 182 26 Oct. 1872 John Noble Coleman Pope, s. of
George Pope, born after his father’s
admission. Payment of 4/6d.
p. 208 25 Jan. 1873 Henry Grace Hare, merchant. Fine
£50
5 He signed the book on 9 January 1867.
The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
556
.B.25
p. 209 25 Jan.
p. 240 17 May
pp. 261/2 12 July
p.271 30 Aug.
p. 272 go Aug.
Pp. 309 30 Jan.
p. 363 31 Oct.
p. 364 31 Oct.
pp. 365/6 31 Oct.
H.B.26
Pp. 32/3 29 Jan.
pp. 33/4 29 Jan.
p. 87
4 Nov.
pp. 114/15 27 Jan.
p. 136
p. 262
PP. 272/3
pp. 336/7
P- 345
p. 362
28 July
26 July
8 Nov.
8 Jan.
12 Feb.
28 May
1873
1873
1873
1873
1873
1874
1874
1874
1874
1876
1876
1876
1877
1877
1879
1879
1881
1881
1881
John Edmund Jose, s. and app. of
Thomas Porter Jose
Alfred Terrett Taylor, s. and app. of
Thomas Terrett Taylor, now Master
Horace Thomas Barnes, s. of Thomas
Barnes
Henry Frederick Tobin Bush,
merchant. Fine £50
Renn Hampden Wilson, merchant.
Fine £50
Francis Reginald Barnes, s. of Thomas
Barnes. To pay 4/6d.
Alfred George de Lisle Bush,
merchant. Fine £50
George William Edwards. Fine £50
Herbert John Taylor, s. of Thomas
Terrett Taylor. Apprentice of his
father 11 April 1867 to 17 Nov.
1871 and by indenture of turnover
to William Proctor Baker to 11 April
1874
Reginald Wyndham Butterworth,
merchant. Fine £50
John Henry Woodward, merchant.
Fine £50
Lucas Charles Fuidge Abbot, s. of
Henry Abbot and app. of his uncle
John Frederick Lucas
William Claxton, s. of late William
Claxton
Percy Liston King, s. of William
Thomas Poole King, born after his
father’s admission. To pay 40/-
Thomas Porter Hatt Jose, s. of Thomas
Porter Jose, born after his father’s
admission. To pay 40/-
Thomas Poole King, 's. of Richard
Jenkins Poole King, deceased. Born
after his father’s admission. To pay
40/—-
Steuart Fripp. Fine, £50
Charles Hill. Fine, £50
Robert Henry Tilstone Barnes, s. of
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974 857
Robert Grey Barnes. Born after his
father’s admission. 4/6d.
Pp. 413 8 April 1882 Harry Willoughby Beloe, merchant.
Fine £50
pp. 431/2 29 July 1882 Arthur Mansell Edwards. Fine £50
Pp. 432/3 29 July 1882 Herbert George Edwards. Fine £50
P. 442 28 Oct. 1882 Edward Beadon Colthurst. Fine £50
pp. 442/3 28 Oct. 1882 Sydney William Edwards, s. and app.
of George William Edwards
pp. 459/60 27 Jan. 1883 Frank Ambrose King, s. of William
Thomas Poole King. Pays 40/-
A.B.27
pp. 55/6 10 April 1884 Thomas Gadd Matthews. Fine £50
p. 138 31 Oct. 1885 Richard Anstice Fox. Fine £50
Pp. 139 31 Oct. 1885 William Pool Fox, s. and app. of
Francis Frederick Fox.
Pp. 153 go Jan. 1886 Gilbert Leigh Abbot, gentleman. Fine
£50
p. 200 go April 1887 Averay Neville Jones, s. of John
Averay Jones
pp. 255/6 21 July 1888 George Leonard Matthews. Fine £50
pp. 256/7 21 July 1888 Edward Colston Lucas, s. of John
Frederick Lucas
pp. 264/5 27 Oct. 1888 George Oswald Spafford. Fine
£50
pp. 290/1 27 April 1889 Charles Gathorne Hill. Fine £50
pp. 290/1 27 April 1889 Edward Burrow Hill. Fine £50
pp. 300/1 27 July 1889 Edward Burnet James. Fine £50
pp. 327/8 1 Feb. 1890 Charles Henry Paul, son of Charles
Paul, born after his father’s
admission. Pays 40/—
p. 348 26 July 1890 William Welsford Ward, gentleman.
Fine £50
pp. 406/7 31 Oct. 1891 Charles Guy Tilstone Barnes, s. of
Robert Grey Barnes
pp. 442/3 30 July 1892 John Henry Clarke, gentleman. Fine
£50°
H.B.28 )
Pp. 5 28 Jan. 1893 John Edward Colthurst, s. of Edward
Beadon Colthurst. To pay 4/6d.
pp. 39/40 28 Oct. 1893 Thoomas Ruding Davey. Fine £50
* On the printed notice of the meeting to be held on 30 July 1892, William
Edward Parry Burgess was to be proposed as a member. He had been nominated
on go April, but there is no record of his election on 30 July 1892.
The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
558
H.B.28
pp. 40/1 28 Oct.
pp. 41/2 28 Oct.
p. 102 8 Jan
p. 113 27 April
pp. 123/4 27 July
pp. 131/2 26 Oct.
pp. 185/6 24 Oct.
p. 207 go Jan.
pp. 281/2 24 Oct.
pp. 282/3 24 Oct.
pp. 283/4 24 Oct.
p. 306 28 Jan.
p. 312 29 April
pp. 355/6 28 April
p.4i2 27 July
Pp. 452 26 April
H.B.29
p. 31 31 Jan.
p. 64 24 Oct.
p. 89 15 April
p. 89 15 April
1893
1893
1895
1895
1895
1895
1896
1897
1898
1898
1898
1899
1899
1900
19OI
1902
1903
1903
1904
1904
Edgar Arthur Vining Baker, s. and
app. of Arthur Baker
Arthur Beadon Colthurst, s. of Edward
Beadon Colthurst
Philip William Deane Cooper. Fine
£50
William Edgar Paul, s. of Charles
Paul, born after his father’s
admission. Pays 40/—
Allan McArthur, merchant. Fine £50
John George Russell Harvey. Fine £50
William Ansell Todd, merchant.
Fine £50
George Pope Newstead, app. of his
uncle George Henry Pope
Hamilton Wilfrid Killigrew Wait,
merchant. Fine £50
Charles Adams, merchant. Fine £50
George William Davey, tobacco
manufacturer. Fine £50
Colonel Frederick Cusac Ord. Fine
£50
Charles Mervyn King, s. of Mervyn
Kersteman King
Arthur Cecil Powell, nephew and
app. of William Augustus Frederick
Powell
Charles Cornelius Savile. Fine £50
Cecil Willoughby Beloe. Fine £50
Andrew Noble Pope, s. of John Noble
Coleman Pope. Pays 4/6d.
Walter Reginald Paul, s. of Charles
Paul, deceased. Born after his
father’s admission. Pays 40/-—
Field-Marshal the Earl Roberts.
Honorary Member’
Henry Edelbert Wellington Fitzroy
gth Duke of Beaufort. Honorary
Member’
7 It was decided to present the Freedom to Roberts and to the Duke of Beaufort
on 24 Oct. 1903 (H.B.29, 24 Oct. 1903), but in fact it was not until April 1904 that
the Master reported that he had entertained them to dinner and presented the
Freedom on 15 April (H.B.29, p. 89, 24 April 1904).
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974 559
p. 103 16 July 1904 James Colthurst Godwin. Fine £508
p. 192 28 April 1906 Gerald Harry Beloe. Fine £50
Pp. 193 28 April 1906 Charles Cyril Clarke. Fine £50
p. 268 27 July 1907 Hampden Vincent Barnard. Fine £50
P. 325 31 Oct. 1908 Robert Hilton Todd. Fine £50
Pp. 342 30 Jan. 1909 Chester William Todd. Fine £50
P- 355 . 24 April 1909 James Herbert Budgett. Fine £50
Pp. 420 go July 1910 William Danger Fripp. Fine £50
Pp. 452 29 April 1911 John Stanley Davey. Fine £50
H.B.30
p. 16 28 Oct. 1911 Edward Hamilton Everard Woodward
s. of John Henry Woodward, born
after his father’s admission. To pay
40/—
Pp. 32 27 Jan. 1912 Charles Francis Aubone Hare,
merchant. Fine £50
P. 33 27 Jan. 1912 Claude Basil Fry, merchant. Fine £50
p. 68 27 July 1912 Charles Samuel Clarke. Fine £50
Pp. 97 25 Jan. 1913 William Alfred Drew Alexander.
Fine £50
p. 113 26 April 1913. Hugh Godfrey de Lisle Bush, s. of
Alfred George de Lisle Bush. Born
after his father’s admission. To pay
40/—
Pp. 209 go Jan. 1915 Claude D’Arcy Stratton Bush, s. of
Alfred George de Lisle Bush. Born
after his father’s admission. To pay
375 27 April 1918 Arnold Evans, merchant. Fine £50
4.20 1 Feb. 1919 Capt. Cecil Horace Reginald Barnes,
s. of Horace Thomas Barnes. Born
40/—
p. 308 28 April 1917 Major Valentine Albany Hillman.
Fine £50
Pp. 322 28 July 1917 Henley Sommerville Evans. Fine £50
P. 357 26 Jan. 1918 Edward Herbert Stock, merchant.
Fine £50
Pp. 358 26 Jan. 1918 Ellison Fuller Eberle, coachbuilder.
Fine £50
Pp. 358 26 Jan. 1918 Victor Fuller Eberle, oil merchant.
Fine £50
P. 375 27 April 1918 Herbert Midelton Baker, merchant.
Fine £50
p.
p.
8 He is recorded as having been proposed and admitted on this date, but his
admission is also recorded on 29 Oct. 1904 (H.B.29, p. 111).
560 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
H..B.30
Pp. 430 29 Mar. 1919
p. 430 29 Mar. 1919
29 Mar. 1919
29 Mar. 1919
p. 436 26 April 1919
26 April 1919
H.B.31
p. 2 2 May 1919
pp. 2,3 2May = iIgiIg
p. 26 23 Oct. 1919
p. 48 31 Jan. 1920
p. 48 31 Jan. 1920
p. 49 31 Jan. 1920
56 15 April 1920
73 24 July 1920
73 24 July 1920
78 go Oct. 1920
wypD Py
105 go April 1921
10 June 1921
Oy
on |
te |
.S*)
after his father’s admission. To pay
4/6d.
Freedom presented to the Rt. Hon.
Charles Edward Hungerford Atholl
Colston, 1st Baron Roundaway
Freedom presented to the Rt. Hon.
Lewis Fry, P.C.
Freedom presented to Sir Herbert
Warren, K.C.V.O.
Freedom presented to George Alfred
Wills
Basil John Humphries, merchant.
Fine £50
Lionel Goodenough Taylor, journalist.
Fine £50
Lieut.-Col. Dan. Burges, V.C. Admitted
as Redemptioner without payment
of a fine.
Hugh Lionel Evans Hosegood. Fine
£50
Freedom presented to Admiral of the
Fleet Sir David Beatty
Alexander Black Mitchell. Fine £50
George Dall Edwards, s. of Herbert
George Edwards. Born after his
father’s admission. To pay 40/—
Reginald Herbert Edwards, s. of
Herbert George Edwards. Born
after hisfather’s admission. To pay 40/—
Freedom presented to Douglas, Field-
Marshal The Rt. Hon. Earl Haig
Walter Burnet James. Fine £50
George Palliser Martin. Fine £50
Gilbert Sydney James, s. of Sir Edward
Burnet James. Born after his
father’s admission. To pay 40-/.
Foster Gotch Robinson. Fine, £50
Freedom presented to H.R.H. Edward,
Prince of Wales®
® He succeeded to the throne as King Edward VIII 20 Jan. 1936, and the Minute
of the Standing Committee of 26 June 1936 records a communication from Sir
Clive Wigram to the effect that His Majesty could not continue to be an Honorary
Member and could only extend his patronage to the Society.
oD Dp
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974 561
. 127 29 Oct. 1921
. 240 26 April 1924
. 256 25 Oct. 1924
. 256 25 Oct. 1924
. 257 25 Oct. 1924
. 275 31 Jan. 1925
. 288 25 April 1925
351 24 July 1926
359 go Oct. 1926
405 29 Oct. 1927
. 427 28 Jan. 1928
A.B. 32
. 18 27 Oct. 1928
.51 27 April 1929
IOI 2 May 1930
. 119 31 Oct. 1930
. 119 30 Oct. 1930
Freedom presented to Henry Herbert
Wills. |
Hiatt Cowles Baker, Fine £50.
Richard Edmund Davey, app. of his
father, Thomas Ruding Davey.
To pay 4/6d.
John St. Clair Harvey, app. of his
father, John George Russell Harvey.
To pay 4/6d.
Robert Russell Stobart Harvey, app.
of his father John George Russell
Harvey. To pay 4/6d.
Edward Napier Deane Harvey, app.
of his uncle, John George Russell
Harvey. To pay 4/6d.
Freedom presented to Henry Hugh
Arthur Fitzroy, roth Duke of
Beaufort
George Vernon Proctor Wills,
merchant. Fine £50
Alfred Esmond Robinson, M.C.,
merchant. Fine £50
Cyril Tom Culverwell, merchant.
Fine £50
Edmund Poole King, s. of Edmund
Ambrose King. Born after his
father’s admission. To pay 4/6d.
Alan John Dennis McArthur, s. of
Allan McArthur. Born after his
father’s admission. To pay 40/-
Freedom voted to W. Melville Wills
(presented on 31 May 1929.
H.B.32, p. 56)
Roger Simon Woodchurch Clarke,
merchant. Fine £50
Freedom voted to Gilbert Alan
Hamilton Wills 1st Baron Dulverton
(presented 30 Jan. 1931). Lord
Dulverton subsequently became a
member by redemption on payment
of £50 (H.B.33, p. 88).
Douglas Ryan Midelton Baker. Fine
£50
562 The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
H.B.32
Pp. 134 go Jan. 1931 Henry Sommerville Gunn, merchant.
Fine £50
p. 148 1 May 1931 Lt.-Col. Percy Gotch Robinson, D.S.O.
Fine £50 ,
p. 149 1 May 1931 Major Egbert Cadbury, D.S.C., D.F.C.
Fine £50
p. 177 go Oct. 1931 Norris Hampden King, s. of Edmund
Ambrose King. Born after his
father’s admission. To pay 4/6d.
368 3 May 1935 ‘Thomas Hosegood Davies. Fine £50
380 26 July 1935 Christopher Henry Jose, s. of-John
Edmund Jose. Born after his father’s
admission. To pay 4/6d.
403 31 Jan. 1936 Frederick Charles Burgess. Fine £50
. 404 31 Jan. 1936 Robert John Sinclair. Fine £50
. 404 31 Jan. 1936 Charles Theodore Budgett. Fine £50
. 404 31 Jan. 1936 Charles Loraine Hill, s. of Charles
Gathorne Hill. To pay 40/-
p. 190 29 Jan. 1932 ‘Tracy Percival Rogers. Fine £50
Pp. 213 29 April 1932 Hugh Charles Adams, son of Charles
Adams. To pay 4/6d.
p. 269 28 April 1933 Frank Oliver Wills. Fine £50
Pp. 321 27 April 1934 Gerald Percival Vivian Rogers. Fine
£50
Pp. 332 27 July 1934 Lt.-Commander Vivian John Robinson
Fine £50
p.
p.
vod
A.B. 33
Pp. 77 28 Jan. 1938 John Esmond Cyril Clarke, s. and
app. of father, Charles Cyril Clarke.
To pay 4/6d.
p. 88 29 April 1938 The Rt. Hon. Gilbert Alan Hamilton
~ ‘Wills, Baron Dulverton of Batsford.
Fine £50. (He had previously been
given the Freedom. H.B.32, p. 119, 31
Oct. 1930)
Pp. 97 22 July 1938 Geoffrey Goodenough Taylor, s. and
app. of father, Sir Lionel Goodenough
Taylor. To pay 4/6d.
p. 147 21 July 1939 Commander Athelstan Paul Bush.
Fine £50
p. 190 26 April 1939 Major Gilbert Leonard Stratton.
Fine £50
P. 273 24 April 1942 David Neilson Robertson. Fine £50
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974 563
31 July 1942 John Herbert Micklethwait Budgett.
p. 281
p. 302 29 Jan.
P- 313 go April
Pp. 352 28 April
p. 391 29 Jan.
HB. 34
p. 6 26 Oct.
Pp. 44 26 April
Pp. 45 26 April
P. 53 21 June
Pp. 74 25 Oct.
P. 93 31 Jan.
p. 251 28 Jan.
p. 411 21 July
AB. 35
p. 18 27 Oct.
p. 104 27 July
Pp. 195 15 April
p. 196 25 April
p. 286 30 Jan.
p. 356 30 Oct.
p. 365 6 Nov.
Pp. 391 29 Jan.
Pp. 392 ~=—.29 Jan.
AB.36
p. 8 23 July
1943
1943
1944
1945
1945
1946
1946
1946
1946
1946
1949
1950
1950
IQ5I
1952
1952
1953.
1953
1953
1954
1954
1954
Fine £50
Christian Ernest Pitman. Fine £50
Lt.-Commander Alan Oliver Wills.
Fine £50
Stephen Guy Burnet James. Fine £50
Capt. William Gerald Beloe, s. of
Gerald Harry Beloe, born after his
father’s admission. To pay 40/—
The Hon. William Ralph Seymour
Bathurst. Fine £50
John Kenric La Touche Mardon.
Fine £50
| John Hyde Haslewood Perks. Fine
£50
Freedom given to the Rt. Hon.
Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill
The Rt. Hon. Geoffrey Noel, 12th
Earl Waldegrave. Fine £501°
Robert Edward Todd, s. of Robert
Hilton Todd, born after his father’s
admission. To pay 40/—
Harold Maurice Comer Hosegood.
Fine £50.
Hugh Charles Innes Rogers. Fine £ 5°
‘John Foster Robinson. Fine £50
Charles Nigel Clarke, s. of Charles __
Cyril Clarke. To pay 40/- |
Peter Gordon Cardew. Fine £50
John Rodney Rupert Scull. Fine £50
William Reginald Verdon-Smith.
Fine £50
John Charles Gathorne Hill. Fine £50
Freedom given to H.R.H. Philip
Duke of Edinburgh, K.G.
Richard Howard Brown. Fine £50
John Henshaw Britton. Fine £50
John Clive Gascoigne, M.C. Fine £50
10 In 1971, the Hall congratulated Earl Waldegrave on receiving the Order of
the Garter. The Hall Book stated that only 9 Merchant Venturers had received it,
and that this seemed to be the first occasion on which it had been given to a full
member (H.B.4o, 30 April 1971).
564
A.B.36
p. 9 23 July
p. 106 22 July
p. 221 26 Oct.
H..B.37
p- 4 3 May
p. 137 go Jan.
p. 183 24 July
p. 182 24 July
[sec]
Pp. 254 29 April
p. 273 22 July
[szc]
p. 272 22 July
[sec]
H..B.38
p. 85 27 Oct.
p. 129 26 April
p. 129 26 April
p-143 =. 27 July
p. 264 31 Jan.
p. 265 31 Jan.
p. 300 31 July
H.B.39
p. 121 28 Jan
p. 121 28 Jan
p-179 =. 27 Jan
p. 180 27 Jan.
p. 212 28 July '
H..B.40
p. 122
p. 122
p. 123
The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
1954
1955
1956
1957
1959
1959
1959
1960
1960
1960
1961
il 1962
1962
1962
1964
1964
1964
1966
1966
1967
1967
1967
25 April 1969
25 April 1969
25 April 1969
John Alan Corner Hosegood. Fine £50
John Godfrey Midelton Baker. Fine
£50
John Esmond Robinson, s. of Alfred
Esmond Robinson. Born after
father’s admission. To pay 40/—
Richard Hill. Fine £50
George Edward McWatters. Fine £50
Christopher John King. Fine £50
The Rt. Hon. Frederick Anthony
Hamilton Wills, (2nd) Baron
Dulverton of Batsford. Fine £50
John Adam Gordon. Fine £50
Ernest John Partridge. Fine £50
Douglas Arthur Brearley. Fine £50
Mark Whitwill, junior. Fine £50
Humphrey Ashley Densham. Fine £50
Robin Paul Bush, s. of Athelstan Paul
Bush, by apprenticeship. To pay
4/6d.
George Anthony Burnet James. Fine
£50
John Leonard Eberle. Fine £50
Alderman Sir Kenneth Alfred Leader
Brown. Fine £50
Thomas Lloyd Robinson. Fine £50
Sir John Vernon Wills, s. of Sir
George Vernon Proctor Wills Bt.,
a member. To pay 40/—
Malcolm Allinson Anson. Fine £50
John Oliver Stanley Clarke. Fine £50
Antony Stewart Hooper. Fine £50
John Andrew Southerden Burn. Fine
£50
Douglas Andrew Breach. Fine £50
John Douglas Pye Smith Stirling.
Fine £50
Jack Eugene David Wilcox. Fine £50
0 UD DP
Appendix A. Register of Members 1800-1974 565
31 July 1970 David Cuthbert Tudway Quilter.
. 207
. 207 31 July
. 262 30 July
A.B.4r
. 18 28 April
37 28 July
89 27 July
104 16 Oct.
149 = 19 July
1970
1971
1972
1972
1973
1973
1974
Fine £50
Christopher Wilson Thomas. Fine £50
Julian John St. Clair Mardon. Fine
£50
Rear Admiral James Henry Fuller
Eberle, son of Victor Fuller Eberle,
born after his father’s admission, on
payment of {2
Arthur Michael McWatters. Fine £50
Anthony Leonard a Court Robinson.
Fine £50
Freedom conferred on H.R.H.
Charles, Prince of Wales
Mark Christian Pitman. Fine £50
APPENDIX B
Table of admissions 1800-1899
Patrimony Apprentice- Fine Honorary Total
ship
1800-1809 8 2 20 6 36
1810-1819 13 9 g} 3 28
1820-1829 5 I! I 2 19
1830-1839 2 3 19 I 25
1840-1849 6 2 — 3 Il
1850-1859 3 9 20 4 36
1860-1869 g* 5 12 I 27
1870-1879 7 5 9 — 21
1880-1889 4 2 14 — 20
1890-1899 6 2 II — 19
a Se
63 50 109 20 242
# Does not include P. W. S. Miles admitted by patrimony in 1864. He was
already an honorary member.
APPENDIX C
Table of admissions 1900-1974
ee a Ae tice Ot NE On ae
Patrimony Apprentice- Fine Honorary Total
ship
1900-1909 2 I 9 2 14
IQIO—-I1919 4 — 17 5 26
1920-1929 5 4 8 5 22
1930-1939 6 — 15 I 22
1940-1949 2 — 10 I 13
1950-1959 2 15 I 18
1960-1969 I I 15 — 17
1970-1974 I — 6 I 8
23 6 95 16 140
arr rere er a
APPENDIX D
Masters and Wardens since 1900
For the list before 1900, see J. Latimer, Merchant Venturers, pp.
326 ff. In his list Latimer included the names of the Master and
Wardens of the merchant organisation of 1500, although this cannot
be shown to be directly connected with the Society of Merchant
Venturers. Elections were held in November.
Master
1900 George Oswald Spafford
1901 Edgar A. V. Baker
1902 Thomas Ruding Davey
1903 Allan McArthur
1904. George Henry Pope
1905 J. G. Russell Harvey
1906 H. Wilfrid K. Wait
1907 Charles Adams
1908 George W. Davey
1909 Col. Frederick Cusac Ord
1910 Arthur Cecil Powell
1911 Charles Cornelius Savile
1912 Arthur Beadon Colthurst
1913 Cecil Willoughby Beloe
1914 Edmund Ambrose King
Wardens
Edgar A. V. Baker, Thomas
R. Davey
Thomas R. Davey, Allan
McArthur
Allan McArthur, George
Henry Pope
George Henry Pope, J. G.
Russell Harvey
J. G. Russell Harvey, Hamilton
Wilfrid Killigrew Wait
H. Wilfrid K. Wait, Charles
Adams
Charles Adams, George
William Davey
George William Davey,
Colonel Frederick Cusac
Ord
Col. Frederick C. Ord,
Arthur C. Powell
Arthur Cecil Powell, Charles
Cornelius Savile
Charles Cornelius Savile,
Arthur Beadon Colthurst
Arthur Beadon Colthurst,
Cecil Willoughby Beloe
Cecil Willoughby Beloe,
Edmund Ambrose King
Edmund Ambrose King,
Hampden Vincent Barnard
Hampden Vincent Barnard,
Robert Hilton Todd
IQI5
1916
1Q17
1918
IQIg
1920
192!
1922
1923
1924
1925
1926
1927
1928
1929
1930
1931
1932
Masters and Wardens since 1900
Master
569
Wardens
Hampden Vincent Barnard Robert Hilton Todd, James
Robert Hilton Todd
James Herbert Budgett
William Danger Fripp
Claude Basil Fry
Charles Cyril Clarke
Charles Samuel Clarke
Gerald Harry Beloe
Henley Somerville Evans
Herbert Midelton Baker
Victor Fuller Eberle
Lionel Goodenough
Taylor
Hugh Lionel Evans
Hosegood
Arnold Evans
Andrew Noble Pope
Hiatt Cowles Baker
Ellison Fuller Eberle
Alfred Esmond Robinson
Herbert Budgett
James Herbert Budgett,
Charles Cyril Clarke
William Danger Fripp,
Claude Basil Fry
Claude Basil Fry, Charles
Samuel Clarke
Charles Cyril Clarke, William
Danger Fripp
Charles Samuel Clarke,
Gerald Harry Beloe
Gerald Harry Beloe, Henley
Somerville Evans
Henley Somerville Evans,
Herbert Midelton Baker
Herbert Midelton Baker,
Victor Fuller Eberle
Victor Fuller Eberle, Lionel
Goodenough Taylor
Lionel Goodenough Taylor,
Hugh Lionel Evans
Hosegood
Hugh Lionel Evans Hosegood,
Arnold Evans
Arnold Evans, George
Palliser Martin
George Palliser Martin,
Major Andrew Noble Pope’
Hiatt Cowles Baker, Ellison
Fuller Eberle
Ellison Fuller Eberle, Sir
George Vernon Proctor
Wills, Bart.?
Alfred Esmond Robinson,
John St. Clair Harvey
John St. Clair Harvey, Lt.-
Col. Percy Gotch
Robinson
1 George Palliser Martin died in office. Andrew Noble Pope then became
Senior Warden and Hiatt C. Baker was elected Junior Warden (H.B. 32, p. 40, 22
Feb. 1929).
2 He died in office and Alfred Esmond Robinson was elected
32, Pp. 143, 27 March 1931).
in his place (H.B.
57°
1933
1934
1935
1936
1937
1938
1939
1940
1941
1942
1943
1944
1945
1946
1947
1948
1949
The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Master
Alfred Esmond Robinson?
Lt.-Col. Percy Gotch
Robinson
Tracy Percival Rogers
Col. Dan Burgess,
V.C., D.S.O.
Henry Sommerville Gunn
Major Richard Edmund
Davey
Ellison Fuller Eberle
Ellison Fuller Eberle
Ellison Fuller Eberle
Frank Oliver Wills
Foster Gotch Robinson
Foster Gotch Robinson
Gilbert Sydney James
Roger Simon Woodchurch
Clarke
Major Egbert Cadbury
Robert Russell Stobart
Harvey
Douglas R. M. Baker
Wardens
Lt.-Col. Percy Gotch
Robinson, Tracy Percival
Rogers
T. Percival Rogers, Gol. Dan
Burgess
Col. Dan Burgess, Henry
Sommerville Gunn
Henry Sommerville Gunn,
Major Richard Edmund
Davey
Major Richard Edmund
Davey, Gilbert Sydney
James
Gilbert Sydney James, Frank
Oliver Wills
Frank Oliver Wills, Frederick
Charles Burgess
Frank Oliver Wills, Frederick
Charles Burgess
Frank Oliver Wills, Frederick
Charles Burgess
Frederick Charles Burgess, *
Foster Gotch Robinson
Gilbert Sydney James, Major
Egbert Cadbury
Gilbert Sydney James, Major
Egbert Cadbury
Major Egbert Cadbury,
Roger S. W. Clarke
Major Egbert Cadbury,
Robert Russell Stobart
Harvey
Robert Russell Stobart
Harvey, Douglas Ryan
Midelton Baker
Douglas Ryan Midelton Baker,
Alan John Dennis
McArthur
A. Dennis McArthur, Edmund
Poole King
3 For reasons why Alfred Esmond Robinson was elected for a second term, see
H.B.32, p. 287, 29 Sept. 1933.
4 Died in office. Foster Gotch Robinson then became Senior Warden and Gilbert
Sydney James was chosen Junior Warden (H.B.33, p. 330, 29 Oct. 1943).
1950
195!
1952
1953
1954
1955
1956
1957
1958
1959
1960
1961
1962
1963
1964
1965
1966
1967
Masters and Wardens since 1900
Master
A. J. Dennis McArthur
Edmund Poole King
Sir Robert John Sinclair
Charles Loraine Hill
Christian Ernest Pitman
John Herbert Mickle-
thwaite Budgett
John Esmond Cyril Clarke
Alan Oliver Wills
William Ralph Seymour
Bathurst
John Kenric La Touche
Mardon
William Gerald Beloe
Hugh Charles Innes
Rogers
Athelstan Paul Bush
John Henshaw Britton
Stephen Guy Burnet
James
Richard Howard Brown
Peter Gordon Cardew
Charles Nigel Clarke
571
Wardens
E. P. King, Sir Robert
Sinclair
Sir Robert Sinclair, Charles
L. Hill
Charles Loraine Hill, Christian
Ernest Pitman
Christian Ernest Pitman, John
Herbert Micklethwaite
Budgett
John Herbert Micklethwaite
Budgett, John Esmond Cyril
Clarke
John Esmond Cyril Clarke,
Alan Oliver Wills
Alan Oliver Wills, the Hon.
William Ralph Seymour
Bathurst
The Hon. W. R. S. Bathurst,
John Kenric La Touche
Mardon
John Kenric La Touche
Mardon, William Gerald
Beloe
William Gerald Beloe, Hugh
Charles Innes Rogers
Hugh Charles Innes Rogers,
John Henshaw Britton
John Henshaw Britton,
Stephen Guy Burnet James
John Henshaw Britton,
Stephen Guy Burnet James
Stephen Guy Burnet James,
Richard Howard Brown
Richard Howard Brown,
Peter Gordon Cardew
Peter Gordon Cardew,
Charles Nigel Clarke
Charles Nigel Clarke, Sir
William Reginald Verdon-
Smith
Sir William Reginald Verdon-
Smith, John Charles
Gathorne Hill
572
1968
1969 .
1970
1971
1972
1973
1974
The Merchant Venturers of Bristol
Master
Sir William Reginald
Verdon-Smith
John Charles Gathorne
Hill
Alderman Sir Kenneth
Brown
John Godfrey Midelton
Baker
John Adams Gordon
Mark Whitwill
Humphrey Ashley
Densham
Wardens
John Charles Gathorne Hill,
Sir Kenneth Alfred Leader
Brown
Sir Kenneth Alfred Leader
Brown, John Godfrey
Midelton Baker
John Godfrey Midelton Baker,
John Adams Gordon
John Adams Gordon, Mark
Whitwill |
Mark Whitwill, Humphrey
Ashley Densham
Humphrey Ashley Densham,
Richard Hill
Richard Hill, John Leonard
Eberle
APPENDIX E
Treasurers since 1900
For the list of Treasurers before 1900, see Latimer, Merchant
Venturers, pp. 334 ff.
1876-1901
IQOI-I914
1914-1918
1918-1932
1932-1944
1944-1962
1962-1969
1969-
George Henry Pope
Percy Liston King
Col. John Henry Woodward
William Welsford Ward
Gerald Harry Beloe
Commander Athelstan Paul Bush
Edmund Poole King
John Esmond Cyril Clarke
APPENDIX F
Payments and Receipts
Totals for the five years 1845-1850
(From Claxton’s Report on the finances, pp. 31 ff.) See pp. 279 ff supra.
1 Fines for the manor
of Clifton
2 Merchants’ Alms-
house
3 The Dock Estate
4 Wharfage, Anchor-
age and Moorage
5, The Merchants’
Hall
6 Leasehold estates in
Bristol
7 Freehold estates in
the City of Bristol,
formerly chief and
fee farm rents
8 The manor of
Clifton
9 Lands in the Manor
of Clifton sold on fee
10 Interest payable on
Trust Accounts
11 Salaries
12 Incidental expenses
13 The Quarries
14 Interest on bonds
15, Gifts
16 The Merchants’ Hall
School
17 Law charges
18 The late Poor Jouse
at Locking
19 Lands at Locking,
late Laneys
20 Pensions
21 Premises granted on
leases for lives deter-
minable with lives
PAYMENTS
Extraordinary Ordinary = Extraordinary Ordinary
d.
£ s. d. £
— 1,760 2
61 12 6 1,048 4
a 5.401 O
209 3 7 1,044 II
— 67 6
pas 48 I
729 2 5 77811
5I 5 10 —
— 684 15
1,575 0
III § 5. 1,192 19
270 8
— 8,752 6
591 7 O 416 11
= 365 19
238 11! 834 13
— I 2
290 II O 17 0
— 175, 0
5 2 7 7 3
on
Oo Oo
RECEIPTS
4 s. d. LZ s&.
6,721 0 O —
= 796 0
39 12 10) 5,304 0
— 16,117 5
285 0 0 £528 o
— IIO 12
985 0 oO —
— 1,145 0
a 1,543 12
—_— 36 10
— 284 17
d.
0°
Payments and Receipts 1845-1850 575
PAYMENTS RECEIPTS
Extraordinary Ordinary Extraordinary Ordinary
£ s. d. £ sda £§ sd. £ s. d.
22 Premises granted on
leases for 40 years
renewable every 14
years — 84 6 10 — 1,049 0 O
23 Premises granted for
1,000 years — 37 2 6 — 465 3 0
24 Fee farm and ground
rents in the parish of
Clifton — Ir Ir Oo — 144 7 6
25, Premises let on rack
rent — 325 6 4 — 1,407 9 9
26 Payments for en-
croachment on the
waste — 5 1 9 — 66 13 3
27 The Hotwells now
in premises let at
rack rent 40 0 O 29 16 o — 110 0 O
28 Rack rents in the
parish of Chfton
transferred to
premises let at rack
rents (No. 25) 123 18 4 208 19 9 — 939 8 2
29 Chief and fee farm
rents in the parish of
Clifton transferred
to various accounts — 81 12 11 — 1,067 9 3
30 Victoria Square,
formerly Ferney
Close 8,848 18 10 — — | —
TOTALS: 11,310 5 5 25,340 5 3 8,030 13 10 31,209 6 11
——_—__
£36,650 10 8 £39,240 9 9
Index of Persons, Places and Selected Subjects
The Index gives the names of all persons and places (except Bristol) referred
to in the text and footnotes. Organisations, institutions and societies have
also been included as well as a number of references to selected subjects.
A number of references have been grouped under the following sub-
headings within the main Index: Bristol, Clifton, The Society of Merchant
Venturers, Ships’ Names.
The arrangement of the material in the book is chronological and
topical, and it is hoped that the List of Contents and the sub-headings
within the chapters, together with the Index, will make it reasonably easy to
find any aspect of the Society’s work.
The following abbreviations have been used in the Index: SMV for
The Society of Merchant Venturers of the City of Bristol; 16C., 17C., for
sixteenth century, seventeenth century, etc.; n. for footnote.
Abbot, Gilbert Leigh, 253 n. 25,
557; Henry, 556; Lucas Charles
Fuidge, 556; Napier, solicitor, 514
Abbott, T., porter to SMV, 453
Aberavon, 317
Abercarne, colliery explosion at, 390
Acraman, Alfred John, 551; Daniel
Wade, 551; John, 553; William
Edward, 393, 550, 553
Adams, Charles, 558, 562, 568;
Francis, 193; Henry, feoffee of MV
1600, 19 n. 27; Hugh Charles,
562; Mr Shute, 194; Mary Shute,
189, 194
Adams’ Chronicle of Bristol, 65 n.
6
I
Adams family, dispute with SMV,
194-5, 329
Addington, Henry, Chancellor of the
Exchequer and Prime Minister,
547
Addison, Robert, 206
Adelaide, Queen, wife of William
IV, 410
Adlam, William, 553
Ady, William, accountant to SMV,
266, 277
Africa, pirate states of, 47 and n. 45,
170; regulation of trade with,
131-5, 237-9; shipping to and
from, 94, 125 n. 2, 141; other
references: 12, 104.n. 16, 144, 146,
147, 176, 201, 239. See also
African Company, Royal Africa
Company, Slave Trade, Senegal.
African Company (1750), 133-5;
237, 240
Aid to Russia Week, 540
Aitken, James, 223 and n. 29
Albert, Prince, given the freedom;
551; portrait ofin Hall, 276, 458 n.
106, 530
Albert Lodge, Victoria Square, 339
and n. 71 |
Albert Victor, Prince, 413
Alder, Thomas, warden 1566, 13
Aldworth, John, feoffee 1600, 19 n.
27; Robert, feoffee 1600, 19 n. 27,
34; Thomas, 17 nn. 22, 23; 19 n.
27, 21, 85
Aldworth’s Dock, 73
Alexander, Lydia, see Hackshaw;
William Alfred Drew, 559
Alexandra, Queen, 529
Algiers, 65, 79, 83
Alice, Princess, Grand Duchess of
Hesse Darmstadt, 412
Allen, E. A., 486; E. W., 519; Mr.
(of the Post Office), 226; Mr.
(of Clifton), 417 n. 65
Alleyn, Lavers, legacy to Merchants’
Almshouse, 52! |
Index
All Saints Church, Bristol, 27, 207,
458, 536
All Saints Church, Clifton, 347
All Saints Road, Clifton, 342
Alma Road, 343
Almain, Moses, 349
Almonds, bulk purchase by SMV,
87
Almsfolk Charity, 403-4
Almshouses, see under Society of
Merchant Venturers: Almshouse,
and General Index: Colston’s,
Burton’s, Hill’s
America, SMV and problems of
colonies in, 142-4, 178-9; trade
with, 37, 104 n. 16, 140, 142 n.
99, 143 n. 105, 144, 238, 239, 286;
shipping to and from, 38, 94, 125
and n. 2, 141; other references,
80, 124, 135, 148, 177, 227, 293,
389
Ames, banker, 107 n. 35
Ames, Cave and Co., 118, 277
Ames, Hellicar and Sons, 160
Ames, Mrs. Jeremiah, 427 and n. 94
Amissa, 134
Amsterdam, 38
Anchorage, duty of, 19, 70, 73
Anchor Society, 112, 274
Anderson, Charles, 311, 547
Andrew, John, 115
Angell, John, feoffee 1600, 19 n. 27
Anglesey, 93
Anglo-French Ambulance Corps,
540
Anne, Queen, portrait in the Hall,
275
Annuities, sold by SMV, 120-2
Anson, Malcolm Allison, 564
Anthonie, Thomas, feoffee 1600, 19
n. 27
Antigua, 146, 527, 537
Antwerp, II, 12, 37
Appledore, 313 n. 46
Apsley Road, 332, 333, 343
Arbuthnot, John, 134 n. 50
Arc de Triomphe, 271
Archer, M.P. for Warwick, 230
Arkwright, Richard, 234
Armstrong, John, 415
Armstrong College, Newcastle, 480
n. 21
Arno’s Court, 91
Arrowsmith, J. W., 383 n. 132
Arundel, Edmund, 65
577
Ash, Richard, 416 n. 62
Ashley Down, 484
Ashley Hill, 31
Ashton Court, 416
Asia, trade to, 146, 14.7
Assembly Rooms, Bristol, old, 92,
186 (Lady Huntingdon’s Chapel) ;
new, 100
Association of Helpers of the Poor,
391
Atwood, Edward, 206 n. 54
Auckland House, Clifton Down,
part of the new Hall, acquired
1949, 462 and n. 134, 463. See
SMV, Merchants’ Hall
Australia, 256, 257
Averay Road, Stapleton, 470 and n.
36
Avon, river, proposed bridge over,
115, 245, 303, see also Suspension
Bridge, Vick’s Legacy; other
references, 26, 29, 31, 70 n. 82, 77,
150, 151, 153, 154, 158, 159, 182,
229, 305, 308, 314, 316
Avon Gorge, 474
Avonmouth, 305, 308, 309, 426, 529,
536
Awdry, S. J. D., Clerk to SMV,
456
Aylmer, Captain, 175
Azores, 38
Babb, Hugh, schoolmaster in Mar-
ine School, 358 n. 5
Backwell, 461 n. 121
Badminton, 412
Badminton School, 511
Baker, Arthur, 558; Douglas Ryan
Midleton, 561, 570; Edgar Arthur
Vining, 558, 568; Herbert Midle-
ton, 559, 569; Hiatt Cowles, 561,
569 and n. 1; John Godfrey
Midelton, 564, 572; Professor
J- H., 458; Joseph, 416 n. 62;
William, 429 and n. 116; William
Proctor, Master 1869, Chairman
of Docks Committee, 276, 376 n.
101, 377, 381 n. 124, 488 n. 67,
495 n. 89, 554, 556
Baker and Studley, developers, 330
Ballast Master, 77, 162
Ballast wharf, 77
Banking, 225, 409
Barbados, 68, 81, 140, 172, 208
Barbary, 78, 126, 221
578
Barclay’s Bank, Corn Street, 460;
Henleaze Road, 460
Barge, William, 263, 264, 266
Barham, Admiral Lord, 405, 548
Barker, John, 19 n. 27, 20, 21, 39, 55;
Captain, 173
Barnard, Hampden Vincent, 450,
454, 559, 568, 569
Barnes, Capt. Cecil Horace
Reginald, 559-60; Charles Guy
Tilstone, 557; Francis Kentucky,
552, 553; Francis Reginald, 556;
George Mountford, 553: Horace
Thomas, 556, 559-60; Robert
Grey, 394, 553, 559, 557; Robert
Henry Tilstone, 557-8; Thomas,
feoffee 1600, 19 n. 27; Thomas,
553, 550
Barnstaple, 73, 79, 313 and n. 46,
327
Barratt, John, 192
Barrow, Charles Withington, 550;
the Rev. George, 363: James
Syms, 550-1; John, 393, 547,
550: Robert Gay, 259, 417 n. 65,
550; Robert Withington, 553
Barry Island, 169
Bartlett, Captain Robert, 400
Barton Hill, 475
Barwick, E. W. F., 460
Baskerville, D., 331
Batavia, 256
Bateman, John, schoolmaster, 84
Bath, 99, 137, 226, 227, 228, 220,
418, 439, 474
Bath and Wells, bishop of, 515;
Diocesan Girls’ School, 511
Bath and West of England Agri-
cultural Show, 533
Bath and West of England College
of Pharmacy and Chemistry, 480
Bathurst, the Hon. William Ralph
Seymour, 464, 490-1, 523, 563,
a
Bathurst Basin, 323
Beads, 146
Beans, 177
Bearer Bonds, issued by SMV, 115,
117, 118, 119-20, 277
Beatty, Admiral Sir David, 446, 539,
560
Beaufort, duchess of, 273, 436; duke
of, 47, 289 n. 22; 7th duke of,
363, 411, 551; 8th duke of, 273,
5533 gth duke of, 446, 447, 558;
Index
10th duke of, 447, 561; family,
412
Beaufort Road, Clifton, 332, 342,
466
Beche, Sir Henry de la, 413
Becher, Mr., sheriff, 175
Becket, Miss, 519
Beckford, Mr., 232 n. 85
Bedminster, 208, 510
Beer, restrictions on export, 65
Beere, Somerset, 208, 352, 353, 354
355, 367, 485
Beere Farm, 353
Bell, J. T., accountant to SMV, 453
Bellamy, Mr., 427
Belle Vue, 185, 342; Lower, 342;
Terrace, 342 n. 93
Beloe, Cecil Willoughby, 558, 568;
Gerald Harry, Treasurer SMV,
452 and n. 55, 481 n. 27; 540, 559,
563, 569, 573; Harry Willoughby,
557; Capt. William Gerald, 563,
57!
Bence, John Britten, 547
Benson, Carpenter, Cross & Co.
503 n. 115, 508 n. 136
Berkeley, George Cranfield, 173;
Henry, M.P., 425
Berkeley, earl of, 178
Berkeley, see Gloucester—Berkeley
Canal
Berkeley Place, 403
Berkeley Vale, 342 n. 93
Berkshire and Hampshire Junction
Canal, 439
Bethune, relief fund, 527
Bevan, Edward, 550; John Scuda-
more, 554; Richard Robinson,
554
Bickley, Benjamin, 547, 548, 549;
Francis, 549; John Latty, 548
Bideford, 314 n. 46
Bigg, Robert William, 554; William,
junior, 554; William, senior, 554;
William Oliver, 552, 554
Birmingham 90 and n. 1, 131 n. 4,
142 n. 98, 231, 379 n. 114, 418;
University, 480 n. 21, 498, 4.99
Bishopric of Bristol Endowment
Fund, 536 :
Bishopston, infants’ school, 386;
parish school, 386
Bitton, 208
Black Horse, public house, Jacob’s
Wells, 187 n. 39
Index
Black Rock, 415; spring at, 417
Blackboy Hill, roundabout, 534-5
Blackburn, Committee of Trade in,
130
Blagden, Mrs., 116
Blandford, 207
Blandy, W. H., 520
Blome, Richard, author of Britannia,
31, 85
Board of Education, 375, 470, 480,
481, 485, 504. n. 121, 505, 511
Board of Greencloth, 63
Board of Health, 429, 430
in) of Trade, 317, 325, 326, 394,
39
Boar’s Head, 187 n. 39
Bolton, duke of, 211
Bolton, James, 350
Bond, Sir Robert, P.M. of New
Zealand, 530
Bonding Yard, 278, 346, 438, 469
Bonny river, 201
Book of Charters, SMV, xvii
Book of Petitions, SMV, xvii
Book of Trade, SMV, xvii
Boulton, John, 19 n. 27
Bowdler, Marmaduke, 206 n. 54
Bowyer, Colonel, and Stogursey,
366-8
Boy Scouts, 520, 528
Boydell, Benjamin, 18 n. 23; John,
18 n. 23
Brabant, 42
Bragge, Charles, secretary of Bristol
Waterworks Company, 421 n.
80
Brandon Hill, 31, 197, 198, 199
Brandon Steep, 483
Brandy, 69
Brazil, 288, 292
Breach, Douglas Andrew, 564
Brearly, Douglas Arthur, 564
Brewer, William, 119
Brice, Edward, 548; Henry,
551; Henry Crane, 550; Richard
Dawbney, 550; Samuel, 550;
Thomas Durbin, 548; William,
551; William Diaper, 551; Mr.,
250
Brick, Prudence, 400
Brickdale, Matthew, M.P., 138, 142
Nn. 95, 143, 147 and n. 125, 225
Bridge, James, 154
Bridge Approach Road, 432 n.
137
579
Bridge Trustees (Bristol Bridge),
98, 229; (Suspension Bridge), 434
Bridge Valley Road, 348 n. 140, 432
Bridgwater, 352, 353; infirmary, 526
Bright, Benjamin Hayward, 548;
Henry, 257, 548; Lowbridge, 138
and n. 70; Richard, 407 n. 15,
409, 548; Robert, Chairman of
Free Port Association and Ship-
owners’ Association, 275, 304-5,
308, 309, 323, 553; Mr., 193, 260
Brightman, Charles, 433
Brislington Road, 228
BRISTOL
Abbey Gate House, 436
Artillery Company, 28
Artillery House, 28
Ashley Hostel for Boys, 528
Back of, 71, 75, 87, 228
Barber Surgeons’ Hall, 92
Belgian Refugee Fund, 539
Benevolent Institute, 389 n. 6.
Benevolent Society, 526
Bishop of, 502, 515, 536
Bishop’s Appeal for Church Res-
toration and Expansion, 536
Bishop’s Palace, Redland, 490
Blind Asylum, 391, 526
Boy Scouts’ Association, 520
Brass Wire Company, 190
Bridge, 27, 28, 29; new, 92, 228-9,
234’, 241; Chapel of the Assump-
tion on, 29
Bridge Riots, 1793, 98
Bridge Trustees, 229
Bristol’s Hope, see General Index
under Newfoundland
Captains’ Society, 115, 117, 239
and n. 12
Castle, 28-9, 47
Cathedral, 27, 364, 435, 436, 536;
Restoration Fund, 53
Cathedral School, 100, 300, 511
Certified Girls’ Industrial School,
526
Certified Industrial School, 386
Chamber of Commerce, 248, 434,
440, 441, 526, 542, 543
Channel, 150, 172, 175, 177, 247;
284, 291, 313, 317, 326-7
Channel Mission Society, 438
Charity Trustees, 366, 478
Children’s Hospital, 527
Christchurch, rebuilding of, 207
Christmas Steps, 100
580 Index
Bristol—cont.
Church Day Schools, 386
Citizens’ Recruiting Committee,
538
City Docks Committee, 309
City Engineer, 453, 461
City Library, 192
City Marine Ambulance Corps,
528
City Valuer, 482
Civic League, 528
and Clifton Horticultural Society,
274
and Clifton Railway Company,
274
and Clifton Waterworks Com-
pany, 415
Coffee House, 132, 239 ?
College Green, 26, 187 n. 39, 188,
232, 413, 417, 430, 538
Commercial Rooms, 285, 295,
319
Commissioners for Pitching and
Paving, 351
compared with London, 25-6, 28.
See also General Index under
London
Coopers’ Hall, 92, 424
Corporation of the Poor, 98
Corporation Superannuation
Fund, 469
Crippled Children’s Society, 528,
530
Council House, 7, 91, 240
Customs House, 7, 91, 218, 240,
290 and n. 25; fire in, 395 n. 94
Day and Night Nursery, 528
Deaf and Dumb Institute, 390
Dean and Chapter of, 100, 195
Descriptions of, 24-8, 90-101,
243-8.
Diocesan Board of Finance, 536
Diocesan Clergy Fund, 539
Diocesan Mission, 526
Diocesan Trade and Mining
School, see under Society of
Merchant Venturers: Trade
and Mining School
Dispensary, 526
District Nurses’ Association, 528
Docks Committee, 24.7, 305, 306,
309, 310, 312, 317, 319, 466
Docks Company, 242, 243, 246,
248, 294, 304, 307-8, 309, 312,
328; members of SMV on
Board of, 307-8; subscribers to,
397, 437
Drapers, 5 nn. 15, 16; ordinances
concerning, 5 n. 6
Drawbridge, 232
Dyers’ Gild, 34
Education, 30, 100-1, chapters
12, 20, 25. See also under
individual schools and institu-
tions
Education Committee, 477 n. 6,
478, 489
Enquiry Bureau, 538
Exchange, 91, 224, 225 ff., 529
Exchange Bank, 107 n. 35
Exchange Coffee House, 221, 230
and Exeter Railway, 439-40
Eye Hospital, 392, 526
Federation of Boys’ Clubs, 528
Female Penitentiary, 437, 526
Folk House, 512
Foreign trade of, 1-2, 8, 11 and
n. 6, 19, 20, 38, 93-4, 124-5,
247. See also General Index
under particular areas and
companies.
Gazette, 423, 424
Gazette and Public Advertiser, 419 n.
73
General Hospital, 389 n. 6, 392,
526, 527, 541 and n. 126
and Gloucester Railway Com-
pany, 440
Grammar School, 30, 100, 376,
386, 478, 483, 484, 511
Guildhall, 152, 178, 438
Haberdashers, 15, 35
High Cross, 28
Home for Crippled Children, 526
Hospital for Sick Children, 526
Housing Committee, and the
Merchants’ Almshouse, 523
Housing Ltd., 541
Humane Society, 390
Industrial Dwellings, 468
Industries, 33-5, 92. See also
under particular occupations
Infirmary, see Royal Infirmary
Innholders’ Gild, 29 |
Italian Red Cross Fund, 539
Ladies’ Home, 389 n. 6
Leather industry, 34
Library, and SMV, 233
Library Society, 233
Linen-drapers, 35
Index
Literary and Philosophical Insti-
tution, 274
Lord High Steward, 515
(Lord) Mayor’s Relief Fund, 391;
Fund for the unemployed, 527;
Relief Fund, 527; Flood Distress
Appeal, 527; Freedom from
Hunger Appeal, 527; Fund to
welcome Edward VII, 529;
Hospital Extension Fund, 528;
Edward VII Memorial Fund,
529; War Services Fund, 540;
Appeal for China, 540
Lost Dogs’ Home, 391
Marine School, see under Society
of Merchant Venturers and in
General Index
Mariners’ Gild, 6 n. 20, 17, 81,
524
Marsh, Chapel in, 6
Martin’s Coffee House, the Green,
281
Medical School, 389 n. 6
Mercers, 15, 35
Merchant Tailors, 35, 92
Merchants, early organisations,
I-Q; ordinances concerning,
5
Merchants’ Tolzey, 27, 28, 225
Metal industries, 34
Mercury, 377 N. 107, 423
and District Methodist Associa-
tion, 528
Migration Committee, 541
Milk, 27 |
National Services Committee, 538
Observatory Co., 475-6. See also
under Observatory in General
Index
Old Vic Appeal, 528
Planning Office, 4.71
Planning and Public Works Com-
mittee, 535
Play Centre, 528
Population of, medieval, 2; 17C.,
25; 18C., go; 19C., 243
Port and Channel Dock Com-
pany, 309
Port Railway and Pier Company,
308
Porters’ Company, 76
Post Office, 92
Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital, 30,
100, 371, 373
Ragged Schools, 386
581
Red Cross Society, 538
Rest Home for Soldiers, Victoria
Street, 538
Retailers, and foreign trade, 13,
14, 15, 16, 20 n. 34, 35, 36
Riots, in 18C., 98; in 1831, 274,
409-10
Royal Infirmary, 202, 207, 208,
389 n. 6, 392, 437, 438, 526, 527
Royal Light Horse Volunteers,
405
Royal Volunteer Infantry, 405
Sailors’ Home, 520, 526, 528, 539
School Board, 381, 450, 4.77
School of Art, 381, 386
Sea Fencibles, 405
Seamen’s Institute, 526
Soapmakers, 15
Social Centre, 528
South Wales and Southampton
Union Railway, 440
Stamp Office, 107 n. 35
Steadfast Society, 95, 107 n. 37,
234, 235
and Taunton Canal, 321
Tobacco pipe makers, 34
Trades Council, 499
Training School for
Women, 528
Tramway Company, 467, 533
Union Club, 95
Vintners, 15
Volunteer Regiment, 538
Volunteer Rifle Corps, 389 n. 6
Waggon and Carriage Works
Company, 450
War Weapons Week, 540
Warship Week, 540
Waterworks Company, 414 n. 48,
416 n. 61, 421, 423, 424, 425,
426, 456. See also Waterworks
scheme in General Index
Weavers’ Gild, 34
and West of England Newspaper
Press Fund, 528
West of England and South West
Building Society, 450
and West of England University
(proposed) 500, 503
West India Society, see General
Index
Woollen Drapers, 35
Y.M.C.A., 528, 538, 540
Zoological Gardens, 414, 415,
428, 534
Police
582
Britannia (Blome’s) 31; (Camden’s),
3I
Britannia Buildings, 469
British Antarctic Expedition, 528
British Association, 273 n. 151, 274,
361
British Electric Telegraph Company,
441
British Home and Hospital for
Incurables, 516
Britton, John Henshaw, 456 n. 87,
563, 571
Broad Mead, 26
Broad Pill, 319, 323
Broad and Pottow, 333
Broad Quay, 28
Broad Street, 29
Brock, the Rev. Mourant, 432 n. 137
Brokers, 225
Bromley Farm, Stanton Drew, 468
Brooke, Henry, 547; John, 79; Mr.,
334
Brooks Memorial Fund, 519
Brougham, Henry, Lord, 362
Brown, Sir Kenneth Alfred Leader,
572; Richard Howard, 464-5, 532,
563, 571
Browne, Henry, 548; Hugh, 43, 82,
275; John, 18 n. 23, 19; Mr., 221
Browning, John, 211 n. 86
Bruce, Robert, 547, 548, 549;
Robert, 321, 322; the younger,
274, 548, 552; William, 393, 549
Bruges, 4
Brunel, Isambard Kingdon, 320,
416, 417, 418, 419, 423, 425, 440
Brunswick Place, 342 n. 93, 468 n.
14
Brunswick Square, 91 n. 5
Bryce, James, 491
Buckingham, earl of, 273.n. 150
Buckingham and Chandos, duke of,
275 n. 163, 555
Buckingham Palace, 269
Buckingham Springs, 414 and n. 48
Buckinghamshire, 518 and n. 26
Budd, Dr., 413
Bude, 327
Budgett, Charles Theodore, 562;
James Herbert, 448, 559, 569;
John Herbert Micklethwait, 563,
571
Bullock, Mrs., 454
Bunt, Mr., inventor of tide gauge,
321
Index
Burges, Lt. Col. Dan, V.C., D.S.O.,
452 and n. 54, 539, 560, 570
Burgess, Frederick Charles, 570;
Wiliam Edward Parry, 557 n. 6
Burke, Edmund, as M.P. for Bristol,
96 and n. 25; on the Irish trade,
124, 128-30; on America, 143 n.
105, 143-4; freedom of SMV, 144;
Smalls lighthouse, 168 and n. 117;
guns for coasting vesels, convoys
etc., 173; pressing of seamen, 174;
and wrecks, 222; goods of bank-
rupts, 235
Burn, John Andrew Southerden, 564
Burn, Mrs., 270
Burnham lighthouse, 326 and n. 139,
327
Burroughs, Jeremiah, 178
Burton, John, 525; Symon, 525
Burton’s Almshouse (with St.
Nicholas), 525
Bush, Alfred George de Lisle, 556,
559; Athelstan Paul, Treasurer
SMV, 449 and n. 40, 452, 562,
564, 573; Claude D’Arcy Stratton,
559; Henry, 251-2, 427 n. 98,
428; Henry, 553; Henry Frederick
Tobin, 556; Hugh Godfrey de
Lisle, 537-8, 559; James, 290,
552, 553; Robert, 547; Robert
Hilhouse, 553; Robin Paul, 564;
Mr., 418
Bush Tavern, 238
Buston, Eric, PRO to SMV, 533
Butcher, John, 54
Bute, Marquis of, 317
Butleigh Court, nr. Glastonbury,
460 and n. 118
Butler, Robert, 10
Butter, SMV share in patent for
export of, 66; tare on, 69
Butterworth, Reginald Wyndham,
556
Button, Sir Thomas, 78
Bysse, John, 18 n. 23
Cabot, John, x, 446
Cabot Celebration Committee, 432
Cadbury, Major Egbert, 562, 570
Cairns Road, 470
Calabar, 202
Calahan, Cornelius, 202
Calais, 4, 169
Calfskins, patent for export of, 61, 66
Callowhill, Thomas, 191 n. 69
Index
Callowhill Street, 480
Campbell, Richard Plantagenet, see
Buckingham and Chandos, duke
of
Cambridge, H.R.H. Frederick
Adolphus, duke of, 273 n. 151;
University of, 447
Camden, William, 30
Camera Obscura, 4.75, 476
Camp Buildings, 336
Camp Place (alias Litfield Place),
278, 336 and n. 47
Canada, 173, 530; see also Moose
Jaw Battalion
Canadian Historical Association,
53!
Canals, SMV and, 230-2, 49309.
See also Bristol and Taunton
Canal, Berkshire and Hampshire
Junction Canal, Gloucester—Ber-
keley Canal, Kennet and Avon
Canal, Staffordshire and Worces-
tershire Canal
Canary Islands, 38
Canington, Somerset, 282 n. 200
Cann, Martha, 83; Robert, 83;
Thomas, 83
Cannage, duty of, 19, 70, 73
Canning, Rt. Hon. George, given
freedom of SMV, 550
Cannon’s Marsh, 155, 160, 165 n.
95, 281, 346
Caple, Mr., tenant of the Observa-
tory, 475
Capper, Samuel, secretary of Bristol
and Clifton Waterworks, 415 and
Nn. 55
Cardew, Peter Gordon, 563, 571
Cardiff, 297, 316, 317
Caribbean Islands, 68
Carolina, 141, 142 and n. 95, 143,
177, 233
Caroline, Queen, 275
Carr, Carre, John, 14 and n. 14, 18
n. 23; William, 18 n. 23
Carrick, Dr. Andrew, 346, 348
Carter’s Brewery, 340, 343
Carter-Jonas, Land Steward, 456 n.
8
7
Cary, Christopher, 64; John, 69, 98
Casamajor, Elizabeth, 206 n. 55;
Mr., 171 n. II
Castle Green School, 477 n. 6
Castle Street, 87 n. 302, 195
Castlemaine, Lady, 29
583
Catcott, the Rev. A. S., 96
Cathanger, Somerset, 282 n. 200,
352, 354 355
Cattle Lairs Wharf, 471
Cave, Daniel, 410, 548; Stephen,
548; banker, 107 n. 36. See also
Ames, Cave and Company
Cawdor, earl of, 413
Cecil, Robert, earl of Salisbury, 54;
William, Lord Burghley, 14
Cecills Litfields, 184, 335, 336
aa Landowners’ Association,
51
Cephalonia, 55
Chamberlain, Caroline, 270; Ed-
ward Green, 250 n. 5; William
Taylor, assistant to Treasurer,
266, 272, 393
Champion, John, 206 n. 54;
Richard, 156, 173; William, 153,
154, 194
Champion’s Dock (Merchants’
Dock), 116, 154, 155, 165 n. 95,
182, 194, 196, 344
Chandos, duke of, 136
Channel Islands, 38
Chapel Pill, 319
Church of England Defence Fund in
Wales, 537
Church of England Men’s Society,
537, 538
Church Extension Commission, 536
Churchill, Sir Winston, 447, 464,
510, 541, 563
Churchill Memorial Appeal, 527
Churchman, Walter, 92
Cirencester Agricultural College,
456
Civil War, 80, 84
Clare, Lord, see Nugent, Robert
Clarence, duke of, 412
Clark, James, 279; Robert Podmore,
552
Clarke, Charles Cyril, 443, 458, 490,
559, 569; Charles Nigel, 563, 571;
Charles Samuel, 460, 461 n. 121,
513, 514, 559, 569; John Esmond
Cyril, Treasurer SMV, 542, 487,
523, 525 and n. 86, 562, 571, 573;
John Henry, 557; John Oliver
Stanley, 564; Joseph Bell, 551;
Roger Simon Woodchurch, 546
n. 5, 561, 570; William, 206;
Mrs., 331. See also Savery and
Clarke
584
Claxton, Alice, 275 n. 163; Butler
Thompson, 261, 548, 549, 5503
Captain Christopher, 435, 441;
Donald Maclean, 253, 393, 554;
Mrs. Donald, 393; Helen, 275;
Philip Culpepper, 553; Robert,
549; William, ‘Treasurer, see
below; William, son of the
Treasurer, 265, 556; Mrs.
William, 264-5, 393
Claxton, William, Treasurer, volume
on SMV charities, 110 n. 55; on
Marine School, 217 n. 118;
Treasurer of West India Associa-
tion, 238 n. 2; criticism of, 2409,
250 n. 5; on elections in Hall,
251-2; son Donald in Holy
Orders, 253; Tory views of, 254-5;
criticisms of SMV, 257-9; career
in SMV, 260-5; portrait of, 264;
comment on the Surveyor, 269;
illuminates Hall at end of Crimean
War, 271; Hall dinners, 272;
illuminated book on Hall pictures,
275; buys pictures for Hall, 275-6;
prepares accounts of SMV 1845-
1851, 279 and Appendix E; on the
pilots, 317-18; on Water Excur-
sion, 321-2; visits estates, 353-5;
report on Colston’s Hospital, 364
and n. 40; comment on case of
the Colston Charity, 366-7, 369;
on Seamen’s Hospital, 393; on
Chamber of Commerce, 441; on
Waterworks scheme, 422-3, 425.
Other references: xvii, 212, 267,
270, 273 N. 151, 274, 277, 291;
349, 363, 370, 389, 393, 397, 399,
412, 543, 550, 551, 553, 554, 556
Index
Committee for public improve-
ments, 428
Development of, 182-3, 186, 203.
See also General Index under
particular areas and streets
Down, stone from, 184; lime-
kiln on, 184; quarries on, 187,
189, 351 and n. 163, 426;
encroachments on, 189, 190;
conservation of, 190; windmill
on, 196 (see also under Obser-
vatory in General Index);
reservoir on, 415, 417, 4253
desecration of, 423, 427; en-
closure of, 430; iron ore under,
432. See also under Downs in
General Index
Down Committee, 429
Down Hotel, 533
High School, 511
Hill, 228, 342 n. 93, 344, 414
Hill House, 91
Improvement Association, 429 n.
II, 528
Industrial School, 526
Infants’ School, 385
Iron from, 280
Ladies’ Home, 391
Manor of, 17C. plan, 45, 47; 18C.
plan, see Wilstar in General
Index; 19C. plan, see Illustra-
tions; acquired by SMV, 47,
74, 87-8; income from, 47,
114, 280-1, 282, 342, Appen-
dix E; commoners in, 429 n.
13.
Market proposed in, 332
National School, 385, 511
Parish Church, 187 n. 39
Clayfield, Mr., 348
Clayton, the Rev. P. B., 540
Clements, John, 151
Clergy Stipend Fund, 551
Clevedon, 116, 164 n. 89
Cleveland, duke of, 218
CLIFTON 7
Bailiff of, 261, 268
Chapel of ease in, 437
Church, 207
Christchurch, new tower, 430,
Parish School, 386, 511
Parsonage House of, 340
Petition of, to SMV for water
supply, 416-17
Place, 335, 509
Poor in, 208
Observatory, see General Index
Reservoir, 415, 416, 425
Roads in, 187-9, 228
Spa Company, 333 and n. 22
Suspension Bridge Company, 541.
437 See also Suspension Bridge in
College, 386, 437, 446, 447, 484, General Index
511 Vale, 468
Committee for preservation of the Volunteer Infantry, 405 and n. 5
Downs, 427 Water supply of, 413 ff.
Index
Windmill, 208. See also Obser-
vatory in General Index
Wood, new church, 437
Other references: 91, 107, 109,
113, 156, 212, 234, 255, 329;
331, 336, 340, 343, 346, 351,
355 n. 198, 356, 423, 424, 434,
437
Cloth, 2, 5, 8
Clovelly, 306
Clyde, 316
Coal, for the poor, 389 n. 6, 391
Coates, Joseph, 414, 415, 416, 421,
422; Mrs., 414; family, 414, 416
Colchester, 396
Cold Bath, Jacob’s Wells, 196 and n.
103
Cole, William, 19 n. 27
College of Commerce, 483
Collings, Anthony Palmer, 547
Collingwood, Admiral Lord, 405,
548
Colonisation, SMV interest in, 85-6,
234
Colonnade, Hotwells, 92, 185, 192,
468 n. 14, 474
Colston, Sir Charles, 519; Charles
Edward Hungerford Atholl, 1st
Baron Roundway, 560; Edward,
29, 82, 101, 122, 203, 204, 209 and
N. 79, 211, 212, 214, 275, 360, 367,
374, 385, 401, 458, 488, 536, 543;
E. F., 363: William, 275; Mrs.,
431; family, 446
Colston’s Almshouse, 29, 113, 117;
122, 203, 204-5, 208, 245, 256,
401-2, 404, 521, 522, 524, 539
Colston’s Boys’ School (see also
Colston’s Hospital), in 19C. 373-
375; in 20C., 485-8; other refer-
ences, 266, 374, 458 n. 106, 484,
519, 529, 538 °
Colston’s Girls’ School, 266, 375, 376,
470 n. 38, 477 n. 6, 488-91, 519
Colston’s Hospital, in 18C., 109-10,
209-15; in 19C., 360-5, 370-5;
other references, 105, 113, 122,
204, 226, 244, 246, 247, 249, 250,
256, 265, 271, 272-3, 275, 352,
357, 358, 373, 410. See also
Colston’s Boys’ School and Colston
Trust
Colston’s Nominees, 109, 110 and n.
55, 123, 210, 211, 212, 214, 361,
363, 364, 371, 372, 373
585
Colston’s Primary School, 489
Colston Trust, dispute with SMV
concerning ownership of manor of
Monckton in Stogursey, 246-7,
365-70
Colthurst, Arthur Beadon, 537, 558,
568; Edward Beadon, 557, 558;
John Edward, 557 |
Comb, Combe, John, 416 and n. 62;
Richard, 129, 130, 183, 184; Mr.,
227 Nn. 49
Comber, Mr., Headmaster of Bristol
Trade and Mining School and of
MVTC, 372, 378
Combwich, Somerset, 352
Comfort, Robert, 184
Commissioners of Charitable Trust,
401
Commissioners for Endowed Chari-
ties, 247
Commissioners on the Health of
Large Towns, 420
Commissioners to enquire into
Municipal Corporations, 245, 246,
310 N. 23, 311, 322
Commissioners of Sewers, 352, 421
Commissioners of Trade and Plan-
tations, 144, 145, 146, 290
Communications, SMV interest in,
227-31, 303, 306, 440-1
Convent, Litfield Place, 467
Convoys, in 17C., 68, 69, 80, 81; in
War of Spanish Succession, 170;
in War of Austrian Succession,
170-1; in Seven Years’ War,
171-2; in American War of
Independence, 172-4; in French
Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars, 174; West India Society
and, 292
Cook, Captain, 458
Cooke, Eliza, 342; G., 331 n. 8;
Isaac, 186; I., 331 n. 8; Robert,
Clarencieux King of Arms, 14
Cooper, Philip William Deane, 558
Cope, General John, 178
Copthall Court, 122
Cork, 172, 201
Cork and Orrery, earl of, 413
Corn, imported by SMV for the
poor, 221; duties on, 289-90
Corn Laws, 220, 221, 239
Corn Street, 28, 29, 195, 460
Cornett, Samuel, 192
Cornish and Danger, 429
586
Cornwall, 92, 451, 500
Cornwallis Crescent, Clifton (Lower
Crescent), 185, 331, 334 and n. 33,
342 1. 93
Cornwallis House, 331
Coslett, Richard, builder, 342, 343
Cosmo (John Matthew Gutch),
criticism of SMV, 294-5; criticism
concerning Vick’s Trust 303; con-
cerning wharfage lease, 310 n. 23;
on SMV management of pilots,
316; on SMV and cranes, 323;
other references, 299 nn. 79, 80,
goo n. 83
Cote Charity, 520
Cote Home estate, 513
Cotham, 479
Cotham Secondary School (formerly
Merchant Venturers’ Secondary
School), 479, 484
Cott, Henry, 83
Cotton industry, relief to in Ameri-
can Civil War, 390
Coultings, Somerset, 352, 355
County Hospital, Taunton, 208
County Infirmary, Gloucestershire,
208
Courier, newspaper, 406
Courtney, Mr., proposed descent of
Avon Gorge, 427
Coventry, 230
Cowl, Richard, 498 n. 99
Cox, Thomas, 99
Cranbrook Road, 470
Crane Master, 163
Cranes, 75, 162-3, 322-3, 312
Crediton, 207
Creswicke family, 30
Crimean War, 290, 411
Cripps, Fred, of the Palais de
Danse, 474
Crispe, Ellis, 79; Mr., proposed
lighthouse, 167
Croft Road, Stapleton, 470
Cromwell, Oliver, 68
Crosse, John, 206 n. 54
Crown and Anchor, Hotwells, public
house, 344
Cruger, Henry, M.P., 128, 130, 138,
143, 163, 168 n. 17, 171 n. 6, 230
Crush, Mr., artist, 274
Crystal Palace, 269
Cuba, 292
Cullis, John, 322
Culverwell, Cyril Tom, 561
Index
Cumberland, 518 n. 26
Cumberland, H.R.H. Ernest Augus-
tus, duke of, 273 n. 151, 547
Cumberland Basin, 344, 468
Currants, 55
Curtis, Stanley Samborne, Memorial
Fund, 520
Customs duties, proposed farm of by
SMV, 86
Customs House, see under Bristol
Customs Officers, 63, 64, 68, 157,
218-19, 239, 287
Cutt, Cut, John, feofee 1561, 18 n.
23; also another John, 18 n. 23;
William, 18 n. 23
Cuzzins, William, seaman, 200
““Daggering’’, form of insurance, 222
Dalbiac, Major-General Charles,
274
Daltera, James, Treasurer 1801,
260; Joseph, Treasurer, 106, 109,
115, 188, 206 n. 54, 227 and n. 52
Danger, see Cornish and Danger
Daniel, the Rev. Alexander, 195;
Edward, 115; Thomas, Secretary
of West India Society, 269, 276,
291, 293, 550; Thomas, the
younger, 550
Danson, Edmond, 549: Hugh Wil-
liam, 549: William, 549
Danzic, 221
Darch (with Day), map of Somerset,
233
Dartmouth, 79, 145, 483
Daubeny, George, 107 and n. 36
Davey, George William, tobacco
manufacturer, 558, 568; John
Stanley, 537, 559: Richard
Edmund, 561, 570; Thomas
Ruding, 557, 561, 568
Davies, John, builder, 340, 341 and
n. 85; Samuel, 206 n. 54; Thomas,
feoffee 1600, 19 n. 27; Captain
Thomas, Havenmaster, 318 and
n. 85; Thomas Hosegood, 562;
William Weaver, 55!
Davis, Edward Thurston, 393, 550;
Elizabeth, 83: Richard Hart,
M.P., 289, 298, 331, 407, 5473
William Henry, 269
Daw, Humphrey, 348
Day, Elizabeth, 206; John, 132 n.
35; Thomas, 206; Sir Thomas, 88;
Alderman, 225
Index
Day (with Darch), map of Somerset,
233
Deal, 222
Dean, Whitehead and Co., 118
Defoe, Daniel, 99
Denmark Street, 232, 380
Densham, Humphrey Ashley, 564,
572
Department of Education, 375, 486
Department of Science and
359, 381
wei Lord, recruiting scheme,
53
Derbyshire, 518 n. 26
Devenyshe, Nicholas,
Bristol Staple, 4
Deverell, John, 183-4; Mr., 274-8,
335
Devon, 500
Diary, the, newspaper, 137
Dilliston, Thomas, 201
Dock Estate, development by SMV,
280, 281, 344-6
Dock Gates, public house, 196
Dolben, Sir William, 136
Dolman, John, 192
Dolphin Society, 112
Dominica, 140
Donn, Benjamin, 90, 233, 234
Dorset, 352, 353
Doubtinge, Francis, feoffee 1600, 19
Nn. 27
Dover, 169, 222
Downs, see under Society of
Merchant Venturers. Also Clifton
Down and Durdham Down
Dowry Chapel, 436
Dowry Parade, 184, 342 n. 93
Dowry School, 386
Dowry Square, 91 n. 5, 184, 186,
88
Mayor of
I
Draper, Sir William, conservator of
Clifton Down, 190
Drew, Edward, 422 n. 833, 551;
John, Havenmaster, 318-19;
Helen, 519
Dublin, 226, 274, 293
Duddlestone, Sir John, 44, 170
Duke of Edinburgh’s Award Scheme,
528
Dulverton, 1st Baron, freedom pre-
sented to 1931, 561; becomes a
Redemptioner 1938, 562; 2nd
- Baron Dulverton of Batsford,
564
587
Dulverton chargers, presented to
SMV, 460 and illustration
Duncan, Admiral, 179, 181; Ann, 83
Duncomb, David, 200
Dundas, William, Lord, 181
Dundry church, 536
Durdham Down, 185, 187 and n. 39,
190, I9I, 351 and n. 163, 423,
426, 429 and n. 113, 430, 431, 433
Durdham Down, Association for
Improvement of, 429
Durham, fire relief fund, 526
Dyer, Robert, 347, 348
Dyson and Parker, 406 n. 63
Eagle, Mr., Commissioner, Muni-
cipal Corporations, 366
Eames, D. J., thesis on SMV and
Education, see all sections relat-
ing to education |
Earle, Joseph, M.P., 146; Mr.,
surgeon in the Dispensary, 399
East India Company, 12, 37, 58, 61,
145, 147, 285, 289
pie India Trade, 58-9, 145-7, 287,
209
Eastland Company, 12, 25, 42, 60,
61, 67, 125
Easton, 386
Eaton Crescent, see Hanbury Road
South
Eberle, Ellison Fuller, coachbuilder,
449, 460 n. 18, 559, 569, 5703
Rear Admiral James Henry Fuller,
565; John Leonard, 572; Victor
Fuller, 487, 511, 559, 565, 569;
r., 333 |
Edgworth, the Rev. Mr., 352
Edinburgh, go n. 1
Edinburgh, duke of, son of Queen
Victoria, 412
Edinburgh, H.R.H. Prince Philip,
duke of, 447, 530, 563
Edward VI, 13, 16, 17 and n. 19, 41
Edward VII, 411, 412, 502, 529
Edward VIII, see under Prince of
Wales
Edward, George William, 376
Edwards, Arthur Mansell, 557;
George Dale, 560; George Wil-
liam, 556, 557; Herbert George,
557, 560; Isaac, 199; Reginald
Herbert, 560; Sydney William,
557
_ Eglestaff, Mr., 320
588
Eisenhower, General Dwight D.,
447; 541
Elba, 406
Elderton, Harry, 185; Mr., 334
Elkins, W. H., Chairman of Educa-
tion Committee, 493 and n. 83
Elizabeth I, 13, 16, 17 n. 19, 19, 41,
53> 55» 464
Ellicott, Charles John, Bishop of
Bristol, 436, 438
Elliott, Dr., 466
Elliott’s Buildings, 468 n. 14
Ellis, Ellies, John, feoffee 1600, 19 n.
27; William, feoffee and alderman
1600, 19 n. 27; another William
Ellies, 19 n. 27
Elsworth, Sir Richard, 57 n. 32
Elton, Sir Abraham, 91, 116, 146;
Abraham, Town Clerk, 163; Mr.,
alderman, M.P. for Taunton,
132. See also Tyndall, Elton and
Co.
Embargo, 176-7
Emden, 38
Emigration, see Bristol: Migration
Committee
Endowed. Schools Commissioners,
247, 3725 373, 374, 376, 387
Engine House, Hotwells, 426, 427.
See Illustrations
English-Speaking Union, 512
Erith, George, 267, 453, 454
Ernest Augustus, see Cumberland,
duke of
Eton College, 353, 365, 368
Evans, Arnold, 559, 569; Henry
Somerville, 559, 569
ee jJ-, Butler to SMV, 454 n.
Evelyn, John, 26
Exchange, see under Bristol
Exchange Bank, 107 n. 35
Exchequer, SMV contribution to in
1931, 527
Excise Bill, 1733, 229-20
Exeter, 12, 54 Mn. 22, 55, 58, 60, 79,
418, 492
Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 68
Falmouth, 226, 227, 239, 321, 45!
Fane, Henry, Clerk to SMV, 106;
Thomas, Clerk to SMV, M.P.,
106, 226
Farm, Somerset, 282 n. 200, 352,
353> 355
Index
Farm colony for feeble minded, 527
Farr, Paul, 134 n. 50
Felix Farley’s Bristol Journal, 294
Ferney Close (later Victoria Square),
336, 337, 338 |
Fern House, Clifton Down, part of
new Merchants’ Hall, 461, 463
Ferrier, Professor of Engineering,
University College, Bristol, 507
Fez, 83
Fiddington, Somerset, 355
Fiennes, Celia, 29, 30
Finland Appeal, 540
Fire, danger to ships in the port,
222-3
Fisher, George, 117, 119; Mr., 353.
See also Kidd and Fisher
Fisher Lane, 18
Fishguard, 181, 324, 327
Fishponds, 386 |
Fishponds Training College, 386,
52 |
Fitch, I. G., Assistant Commissioner,
Endowed Schools Commission, .
372, 373
Fitzroy, A. W., Privy Council
Office, 504-6, 506 n. 128, 508 nn.
__ 135, 138
Flanders, 42
Flat Holm, 167 and n. 111, 327, 438
Flax Bourton, 119
Fleet, William, 71
Fling, John, 200
Floating Dock, Sea Mills, 151; pro-
posed in Canon’s Marsh, 160.
See also Champion’s Dock, Mer-
chants’ Dock
Floating Harbour, 152, 153-4, 157-
161, 242, 274, 307 ff., 307 n. 5,
345
Flood, Thomas, 201
Ford, Stanley H., 519
Foreign Animals Wharf, 471
Forest of Dean, 65, 92, 390
Foster, John, builder, 347
Four Nations Appeal, 540
Fowenns, John, 19 n. 27
Fowler, Alfred, 550; Henry George,
257, 289, 549; James, 548; James,
the younger, 548; John, 417 n. 65;
John William, 550; Richard Sar-
geant, 549; Richard Walker, 549;
the Rev. Robert Henry, 253-4;
William, 550; Mr., 395
Fox, Charles James, 179; Edward
Index
Long, 552; Francis Frederick,
458, 555, 557; Richard Anstice,
557; Washington, 552; William
Pool, 557
Foxe, Captain Luke, 86
Foy, Nathaniel, 235 n. 106
Framiload on Severn, 230
Frampton, 290
France, trade with, 6, 7, 11, 38, 54,
55; other references, 37, 62, 121,
160, 176, 179, 284, 307, 406. See
also French Company
Franklin, C. D., Surveyor to SMV,
456 n. 87
Franklyn, George Woodroffe, 551;
James Norroway, 415; Joshua, 151
Frayne, William, 555
Frederick Adolphus, see Cambridge,
duke of
Free Port Association, 304, 308, 312
Free School, near Frome Gate, see
under Bristol: Grammar School
Freke, William, 115
French Church, 207
French Company, 50, 51,54 n. 22, 60
Fripp, Ernest Theophilus, 345;
Stewart, 556; William, 403;
William, junior, 553; William
Danger, 458, 559, 569
Froebel Foundation Training De-
partment, Colston’s Girls’ School,
489
Frome, Froom, river, 26, 31, 74, 77,
151, 153, 164. n. 88, 165
Fry, Albert, 383; Claude Basil, 458,
486, 519, 559, 569; Joseph, 92;
S., 483, 492; Lewis, 332, 446,
478, 492, 495 n. 90, 496, 489, 499,
500 and n. 104, 502, 509, 560;
family, 384, 494
Fuller, Stephen, 136 n. 64; Thomas,
30
Furzier, Captain John, Master of
Marine School, 360
Gage, Christopher, Chairman of
Reform Committee, 271
Galbraith, Mr., 346
Gallows Acre Lane (Pembroke
Road), 187 and n. 39, 188, 429 n.
116
Gamble, Canon T., 488 n. 67, 519
Gaol, New, 347
Gardiner, Samuel, senior, beadile,
Master of Colston’s Hospital, 109,
589
210; Samuel, junior, _beadle,
Master of Colston’s Hospital, 109,
110, 183, 184, 212, 213
Garrard, Thomas, City Chamber-
lain, 275
Garraways, 339 and n. 73
Gascoigne, John Clive, 563
Gascony, trade with, 2
Gatcliff, Mrs., 488 n. 67, 519
Gaunts’ Hospital, 207 n. 62
Gayne, Arthur James, Master of
Marine School, 359
George, Alfred, 552-3; Christopher,
551, 553; George Thorne, 551;
James, 547, 548; James, 548, 551,
552; James Thorne, 552; Philip,
552; Mr., 403
George, H.R.H. Prince, duke of
Kent, 530
George I, portrait in Hall, 275
George IT, 178, 232, 275, 407
George ITI, 178, 276, 407, 409
George IV, 270, 273 n. 151, 407
George V, 529
George VI, 527, 530
George Inn, 47, 87 n. 203, 195
Germany, 57
eee Cave, Clifton, 427, 474, 4.75,
47
Gibb, The, 151
Gibbons, William, 547
Gibbs, George, senior, 547; George,
junior, 547; George, runaway
schoolboy, 214
Gifford, William, beadle, 7
Gild Merchant, 1,3
Gin, SMV on dangerous effects of,
219
Gladstcue, William, 290
Glanville, Sir John, Recorder and
©, 33
Glasgow, go n. 1, 146, 147, 168, 237,
293, 316, 325
Glastonbury, 226, 460, 537
Globe, newspaper, 406
Gloucester, 221, 228, 313, 418, 421,
440, 441
Gloucester—Berkeley canal, 231, 439
Gloucester, bishop of, 517
Gloucestershire, Local Education
Authority, 489; Lord Lieutenant
of, 515; M.P.s for, 137, 227, 287;
Territorial Association, 540; other
references, 92, 177, 256, 282, 373,
500, 514
59°
Gloucestershire and Somerset Feasts,
112
Godfrey, Mrs., 190
Godwin, James Colthurst, 559
Goldney, Mrs. Ann, 117; Thomas,
228; Mr., 118, 183, 187, 427 n. 98
Goldney House, 332, 459-60
Goodbody, W.S., Surveyor to SMV,
456 n. 87
Goodwin, Mr., 186
Goodwin Sands, 168
Gordon, John Adams, 564, 572;
Captain, 175
Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 85, 531
Gorse Lane, 344 and n. 113
Gosport, 359
Goughe, Peter, 19 n. 27
Grand Spa Hydro, 334 n. go
Grant, George, 552
Granville, Lord, see Somerset, Henry
‘Charles
Grasholm Island, 167
Grasse, Admiral de, 234
Grateful Society, 520
Graves, William, 19 n. 27
Graving Dock, 76, 261, 345
Great Crane, 75, 162
Great Dock, 73
Great House, St. Augustine’s Back,
30, 33 N. 32, 34, 371. See Illustra-
tions
Great Western Railway, 274, 281,
345, 346, 413, 439, 441, 532
Great Western Steam Packet Com-
pany, 345
Great os Steamship Company,
304, 3
Green, Frederick William, 308 n. 13,
552; William, 276
Greenwich Hospital, 197, 394 n.
8
4
Gregory, Charles, 183; Mr., 415 n.
55
Greiffenhagen, Maurice, R.A., por-
trait of W. W. Ward, 452 n. 51
Grenada, 140
Gresford Colliery disaster, 527
Grey, Sir Edward, 506; Lord, 530
Griffith, Richard, Clerk to SMV, 65
Grove, new quay at, 116, 153, 154,
224
i a Coffee House, London,
39
Gunn, Henry Sommerville, 459,
562, 570; Henry Wills, 520
Index
Gutch, John Matthew, see under
Cosmo
Guthrie Memorial Church, Clifton
College, 437
Guy, John, 53, 79, 85, 531
Gwyer, Edmund, 394, 552; Samuel
Vowles, 250-1; Thomas, 400;
William Orchard, 551
Gyttons, John, 19 n. 27
Haberfield, John Kerle, Mayor of
Bristol, 272, 420, 424
Hackshaw (also Alexander), Lydia,
121
Hagan, Mr. and Mrs., managers of
the Observatory, 475
Haig, Field Marshal Sir Douglas,
446, 539, 560
in, William, builder, 342
Haldane, R. B. (later Viscount), 500
Hale, 107 n. 35
Hales, Dr., 234
Halifax, earl of, 234
Hall and Parker,
agents, 417 n. 65
Halton, John, 18 n. 23; Robert, 18
N. 23
Hamburg, 57, 87; Company, see
Merchant Adventurers of England
Hamilton, Henry, 173 n. 18; Cap-
tain William, 172
Hammond, Mrs. Eleanor, 120, 245;
Mr., 418
Hampden, John, 65
Hanbury Road, 333, 343
Hanbury Road South (Eaton Cres-
cent), 343
Hancock, Ann, 201; John, 373
Hanging "Wood, 541
Hanham, 208
Hannan, William, Havenmaster, 76
Hanover Street, 480
Harbour of Refuge, 306, 327-8
Harding, James, 201; Jane, 202;
John, 55!
Hare, Charles, 553; Charles Bowles,
552; Charles Bowles, junior, 555;
Charles Francis Aubone, 559;
Henry Grace, 555; John, 273, 555;
Sholto Vere, 250, 254, 263, 273,
553
Harford, Charles, 103 n. 8; Charles
Lloyd, 550; James, 550; Joseph,
407 n. 15; Richard Summers, 550;
Samuel, 301, 550; Summers, 550
parliamentary
Index
Harley Place, 342 n. 93, 414
Harris, Mr., 147
Hart, Arthur, 276; Sir Richard, 204;
William, 179, 218
Harvey, Charles, 547, 549: Charles
Octavius, 555; Edward Napier
Deane, 561; John George Russell,
558, 561, 568; John St. Clair,
561, 569; Robert Russell Stobart,
561, 570
Hassell, James, 259, 552; Robert,
Hoo).
Hauteville, Mr., 417 n. 65
Havelland, Havellande, Matthew, .
19 n. 27; Robert, 19 n. 27;
William, 19 n. 27
Havenmaster, SMV’s role in ap-
pointing, 75-7; work in 18C.,
161-2; control of pilots by, 164;
work in 19C., 318-20; under
City Docks Committee, 1861,
319; and the watermen, 320;
watchtower and pew for, 321;
other references, 47, 315, 316
Hawksworth, William, 218
Haynes, William, senior, beadle to
SMV, Master of Colston’s Hospi-
tal (1766-85), 155 n. 29, 156, 214;
Junior, beadle to SMV, Master of
Colston’s Hospital (1785-1836),
110, 268, 275, 360, 361, 362 n. 30,
353
Haythorne, John, 409, 547
Haywood, Thomas, Master of Hall
School, 215, 216
Heaven, W. H., 327
Heber, Denty and Co., 471
Hellicar, John, acting Treasurer
1876, 265, 355, 551; Joseph,
Treasurer 1816, 260, 366, 547;
Thomas, redemptioner 1803, 547,
549; Thomas, 550, 551; Valentine,
257, 550; Mr., 418; Mr. Warden,
256. See also Ames, Hellicar and
Sons
Hemming, Mr. (owner of Lans-
downe Place), 337, 338
Henbury, Lords of manor of, 429,
430; commoners of, 429, 431;
vicar of, 520
Henleaze Road, 460
Hensman, the Rev. John, 371, 385,
437 |
Hensman Memorial Church, 437
Hentley, Richard, 18 n. 23
591
Henville, Mrs. Benedicta, 206;
Richard, 206
Herbert, Charles Frederick, 349;
John, 202
Hesse Darmstadt, Grand Duchess
of, see Alice, Princess
Hibbs, Mrs., 183, 184, 187
Hibbyne, Arthur, 19 n. 27
Hicks, Hickes, Thomas, 10,
William, 19 n. 27, 22
Higgons, George, feofee 1561, 18 n.
2
3
ra E. J. G., Clerk to SMV,
18;
45
High Street, Bristol, 27
Hilhouse, Abraham, 409, 548;
George, 322, 345, 547; James
Martin, 187, 547, 548, 5493
Martin, 318 n. 85, 549; Robert,
548; Mr., 157, 162, 181
Hill, Charles, 556; Charles
Gathorne, 557, 562; Charles
Loraine, 562, 571; Edward
Burrow, 310, 557; John Charles
Gathorne, 563, 572, 573; Richard,
564, 572; Thomas William, 403;
Charles Hill and Sons, ship-
builders, 345
Hill’s Almshouse, 403, 521, 524-5
Hillman, Major Valentine Albany,
559
Hine, John, 33 n. 32
Hinton, Edward, 549
Historical Association, 530-1
Historical Association of Newfound-
land, 531
Hobb’s Yard, Bristol, 73
Hobbs, John, 368
Hobhouse, Mr,, 163, 184, 186
re Robert, M.P., 222, 235 n.
10
Holder, William, 547
Holland, 42, 146
Holland, John, 224; Joshua, 210;
Philemon, 30
Holledge, James, 206 n. 54
Hollidge, Mr., 183
eee Captain, Havenmaster,
161
Holmes Lighthouse, 327
Holworthy, Dame Susannah, 216,
217
Home Guard, 475, 540
Home and Hospital for Jewish
Incurables, 516
592
Homer, John, Havenmaster, 161
Honeypen Hill (Richmond Hill),
184-5, 185 n. 20, 186 n. 28, 188,
189, 190, 330, 332, 335, 351, 3525
417
Hong Kong, 293 n. 47
Honiton, 208
Hooke, Andrew, 183; Humphrey,
41, 43, 67
Hooper, Anthony Stewart, 546
Hopkins, John, 19 n. 27, 235 Thomas,
83, 85
Horfield, barracks, 538; school, 386
Horse Fair, Bristol, 20
Horse and Groom, public house,
Jacob’s Wells, 196 n. 103
Hort, Mrs, 116, 117
Hosegood, Harold Maurice Corner,
563; Hugh Lionel Evans, 560,
569; John Alan Corner, 564
Hoskins, Mrs., 83
Hotwell, the, leased out by SMV,
88; in 18C., 191-4; in 19C.,
346-51; House, Pump Room,
engine etc., 181, 188, 347-8,
348 n. 140, 351; road to, 48, 73,
74, 187; water, disputes over,
241-2, 349; water, sent to India,
347; water, possibility of radium
in, 474; other references, 92, 93;
100, 114, 165, 185, 241, 242. See
Illustrations
Hotwell Point, 351
Hotwells, district, brickyard, 196;
gunpowder magazine, 330; SMV
property in, 342 n. 93, 344, 468,
469, 471; other references, 91,
109, 165 n. 95, 182, 188, 189, 228,
32%, 329, 351, 352, 356, 417,
—
Hotwells Road, 333, 344
Housing iation, possible in-
terest of SMV in, 546
Howell, Charles Peter Branstrom,
554 .
Hudson, artist, 276
Hudson’s Bay, 62,'145, 148
Hughes, John, 76
Huguenot Church, 207 and n. 62
Hull, 12, 57, 146, 147, 169, 198 n. 3,
296, 396
Hulton, Mr., 419, 420
Humphries, Basil John, 560
Hungarian Relief Fund, 527
Hungary, flood relief, 390
Index
Hungroad, 19, 70 and n. 82, 72, 162,
164 and n. 9g!
Huntingdon, Lady, chapel of, 186
Hurle, John, 551
Hydraulic lift, see Rocks Railway
Ilfracombe, 321
Illustrated London News, 273 n. 150
Ilminster, 226
Imperial Tobacco Company, 513,
517
Indentured servants, 59
India, 289, 293 n. 47, 347, 390 441.
See also East India Company,
Indian Mutiny
Indian Mutiny, help for sufferers in,
390
Industrial Home for Girls, Knowle,
386
Insolvent Debtors Act, 287, 349
Institute of Mechanical Engineers,
531
Interregnum, 68
Ipswich, 201
Ireland, trade with, 11, 26; 38, 69,
93, 104 n. 16, 124-5, 127-31, 139,
177, 306; Bristol as possible
packet station for, 303, 440;
relief of distress in, 389, 390;
other references, 19, 60, 81, 99,
148, 168, 218, 235
Irish Volunteers, 128
Iron, American, 141; ordinance
concerning, 5; on Clifton Down,
432
Irwin, Mariana, annuity sold to,
121, 122
Isle of Man, 146
Italy, 4, 37, 126
Jack the Painter, see Aitken, James
Jackson, Joseph, 43, 275; Alderman,
III
Jackson-Roeckel Teachers’ Provi-
dent Association, 520
Jacob’s Wells, Methodist chapel,
437; playhouse in, 100, 196 and n.
103; other references, 187, 208,
333, 344, 414, 418
Jacob’s Wells Road, 344, 468
Jamaica, 81, 131 n. 34, 136, 139,
140, 172, 175, 202, 527
James, Edward Burnet, 253 n. 25,
557, 500; George Anthony Burnet,
564; Gilbert Sydney, 560, 570 and
Index
n. 4; R. C., Surveyor to SMV,
456 n. 87; Stephen Guy Burnet,
563, 571; Captain Thomas, 86,
531; Walter Burnet, 560
James I, 55, 62, 63, 79
Jarvie, Mr., 453
Jay, John, explorer, 446
Jefferies, William, Treasurer of the
General Subscription 1745, 178
Jenning’s Stable, Hotwells, 344
Jessop, William, engineer, 158 n. 49,
159, 160
Jews, hostility to in mid 18C., 97,
104 N. 19, 234; relief of in Russia,
390
Johnson, Robert, 19 n. 27
Jolly, James, Havenmaster, 318, 319,
320
Jones, Averay Neville, 309, 470,
557; Charles, 191 n. 69; Edward,
319; Evan, 206; George, 334;
John, 319, 344; John Averay, 552,
557; Owen, architect of Crystal
Palace, 269-70; Philip, 363;
Richard, 203; Richard, feoffee
1600, 19 n. 27, 82, 196, 203;
William, 319, 344; Mrs., 454
Jose, Christopher Henry, 562; John
Edmund, 556; John Edmund,
562; Thomas Porter, 259, 263 n.
79> 275, 552, 553, 556; Thomas
Porter Hatt, 556; William Wilber-
force, 383, 553
Kelke, John, 18 n. 23; Thomas, 13,
18 n. 23
Kelston Park, 528
Kemball, Lieutenant, Master at
Marine School, 357-8
Kennett and Avon Canal, 230
Kent, duchess of, mother of Queen
Victoria, 411, 412
Kentucky, 512
Kersteman Road, 470
Kidd and Fisher, 347
Kidwelly, 211
Kilkenny, H., butler to SMV, 454
66
nv
Kindersley, Mr., 370
King David, public house, Hotwells,
188, 196
King, Arthur William, 555; Charles
Mervyn, 558; Christopher John,
564; Edmund Ambrose, 555, 561,
562, 568; Edmund Poole, Trea-
593
surer 1962-69, 452, 561, 570, 571,
573; Frank brose, 5573
Gregory, 36; Herbert Poole, 555;
Mervyn Kersteman, 448-9 and
Nn. 35, 451, 470, 488 n. 67, 497,
513 and n. 2, 555, 558; Norris
Hampden, 562; Percy Liston,
Treasurer 1901-14, 265, 266, 276,
450, 457 n. 88, 492 n. 80, 494 nn.
84, 86, 87, 88, 495 n. go, 498 n. 99;
500 nn. 104, 105, 501 nn. 108,
109, 502 nn. II0, III, 505 nn.
122, 123, 124, 556; Richard
Jenkins Poole, 254, 309, 551, 556;
Thomas Poole, 250; Thomas
Poole, 556; William Poole, 551;
William Thomas Poole, 553, 555,
556; Mr., 238
King Square, g n. 5
King Street, 28, 45, 271, 358, 398,
457
King’s College, London, 483
King’s Parade, 437
Kingroad, 164 and nn. 89, 91, 438
Kingsdown, 31, 478
Kingston, Mr., 118, 140
Kingswood, 98; church at, 207;
reformatory at, 386, 389 n. 6, 391 _
eee C. H., Clerk to SMV,
45
Kinsale, 81
Kirklington _ estate,
518 n. 26
Kitchen, Kitchin, Abel, 19 n. 27;
Robert, 275
Kneller, Sir Godfrey, 275
Knight, John, junior, of the sugar
house, 34 :
Knowle, church of Holy Nativity,
438 and n. 186; Industrial Home
for Girls in, 386
Knox, Thomas, 187
Kyrle Society, 474
Labouchere, President of Board of
Trade, 396
Ladies’ Home, Clifton, 391
Lamplighters’ Hall, Shirehampton,
166, 167, 318, 348
Lancashire, 94
Lancaster, 168, 173, 234 n. 103
ree End, proposed long ship at,
I
Lane, Odiarne Coates, 554; Richard,
33
Cumberland,
594
Langdale, Lord, Master of the Rolls,
368
Langhorne, Mr., 321
Langley, Philip, M.P. 1571, 14.n. 14,
20 n. 34
Langton, Gore, 428-9
Langton and Company, 335
Lansdown, Dr., 467
Lansdowne Place, 337, 338
Laroche, Sir James, 193, 202; Mr.,
202
Lassall, William, 327
Latimer, John, xiii and passim
Laurier, Sir Wilfred, Prime Minister
of Canada, 530
Law and order, SMV views on,
286, 407-8
Lawrence Weston, 520
Lazenby, F. G., Secretary of St.
Monica’s, 515 n. 8
League of Nations Union, 528
Leat, Sergeant-Major Thomas, por-
ter to SMV, 453
Lee, Charles, Headmaster Bristol
Grammar School, 101
Leeds, 93, 418
Leeds College of Science and Tech-
nology, 379 n. 114
Leek Lane, 480 and n. 23, 482, 489
n. 39
Leeward Islands, 81, 172
Legg, Herbert, master of SMV
school, 216
Leghorn, 126
Leicestershire, 352-3
Leigh Road, 333 n. 26, 342
Leigh Road East, 343 and n. 99
Leigh Road West, 343 and n. 99
Leigh Woods, 415, 433, 434
_ Leigh Woods Land Company, 433,
- B4I
Leith, 147
Lennards Ltd., 330
Letters of Marque, 63
Levant Company and Levant Trade,
55-7, 42, 58, 60, 67, 145; other
references, 12, 42, 69, 125 n. 5
Lewin’s Mead, 2
Lewis, Abraham, 161; David, 163;
John, Headmaster of Colston’s
Hospital, 361, 362-5; William, 399
Lexington, 144
Leyson, David, 7
Library Society, 233
Lifeboats, 327-8
Index
Lighthouses and lightships, SMV
interest in, 167-9, 324, 326-7
Lilford estate, 518 n. 26
Limekiln Dock, 188, 345, 436
Limekiln Lane, 187 n. 39, 188, 196,
198, 199 n. 20
Limekilns, the, 228
Lincolnshire, 352, 353
Linen, Irish, 127
Litfield Place, 333 n. 26, 336 and
n. 47, 467. See also Camp Place
Litfields, 184. See also Cecills
Litfields
Liverpool, advantages over Bristol,
94, 230, 288, 296, 316; population
compared with Bristol, 90 and
n. 1; consultation and cooperation
with Bristol, 130, 131 n. 4, 132,
133, 134, 135, 136 and n. 64, 140,
145, 146, 147, 168, 171, 224, 234
n. 102, 287, 289, 293, 325, 396;
other references, 126, 127, 137,
159, 237
Liverpool, earl of, 550
Liverpool University, 498, 499
Llewellyn, Richard, 117 n. 115
Local Defence Volunteers, 4.75
Locking, Somerset, 208, 235, 352;
353, 354, 367, 485; Church at,
5375 moor, 235
London, Londoners, conflict with
over soap monopoly, 34, over
trade monopolies, 21, 49, 52-62,
131, 148, over wine duty, 285;
cooperation with, over growing of
English tobacco, 68, over taxation
of Levant trade, 69, over conces-
sion to Ireland, 130, over African
trade, 133, over Molasses Act,
141, over Stamp Act, 142 and n.
98, over slave trade, 136, 137, 138,
over convoys, 171, over the navy,
176, over calicoes, 219, over West
Indies, 292-3; other references,
93, 126, 131, 132, 144, 146, 148,
151, 161, 168, 179, 192, 218, 223,
227, 230, 234, 237, 238, 253, 262,
271, 296, 395, 396, 411, 416, 418,
422, 433, 439, 440, 483, 504. See
also Monopolies, the various
companies for overseas trade, and
chapter 3 for comparisons of
London with Bristol
London and South Wales Junction
Railway, 440
Index
London Armourers and Brasiers
Company, 458
London Bridge, 29
London Tavern, Association at, 130
London University, 492, 497, 498,
499
London Vintners Company, 66, 67
Londonderry, 337
Long, Longe, Richard, M.P., 67, 82,
275
Long Parliament, 66-7
Longman, Ezekiel, 233
Loos, battle of, 538
Louisville, Kentucky, 512
Love Street, Hotwells, 188 and n. 47,
342 N. 93
Lovell, Mary, 205
Lowe, F. W., 432; R. M., 432
Lower Crescent, see Cornwallis
Crescent
Lower Slip, the, 73
Lucas, Charles Phipps, 555; Mrs.
E. A., housekeeper to SMV, 453;
Edward Colston, 557; Edward
Thomas, 553; John, 552, 554, 5553
John Elton, 550; John Frederick,
554, 556, 557; Thomas, 552, 554
uke, Mrs. J., 454
gree a estate, Derbyshire, 518
n. 2
Lumber, 140
““Lumpers”, employed instead of
seamen, 232-4
Lundberry, Mr., 158
Lundy Island, 79, 178, 306, 315,
321, 327
Lunell, George, 345, 549, 5523
John Evans, 256, 336, 337, 365 n.
46, 548; Peter, 549; Samuel,
admitted 1816, 549; Samuel,
admitted 1844, 552; William
Peter, 407 n. 15, 409, 548, 549
Lury, John Elton, 550
Lyall, Mr., 395
Lyde, Lionel, 139
Lyme (Regis), 54 n. 22, 80, 106 n. 34
Lyndhurst (Pembroke Road), 343 n.
105
McAdam, John Loudon, 351, 352
McArthur, Allan, 558, 561, 568;
Alan John Dennis, 561, 570, 571;
and company, 461 and n. 127, 462
Macartney, James, 172
MacDaniel, James, 201
995
McKenzie, Murdoch, 233
Mackie, David, master of Marine
School, 358
Macpherson, the Rev. A. C., 466
McWatters, George Edward, 564; .
Arthur Michael, 565
Madeira, 453
Madder, 5 n. 15
Magdalen College, Oxford, 446, 451
Mail Packet Station, for Ireland,
440. See also Portishead
Maismore, 228
Mallard, Mr., 163
Malvern, 257
Man, Captain, 172
Manchester, go and n. 1, 234 n. 102
Manchester University, 497, 499
Manila House, Clifton, 433
Manor House, Clifton, 509
Mansion House, London, 273 n.
150 |
Maple’s, furniture shop, Bristol, 468
Mardon, John Kenric La Touche,
5P3; 571; Julian John St. Clair,
595
Margaretts, the, Jacob’s Wells, plot
of land on which Playhouse was
built, 196 n. 103
Marie Alexandrovina,
Duchess, 421 |
Marine Board (Board of Trade),
325, 326, 359, 360
Marine School (Mathematical or
Navigation School of SMV),
origin and early history, 216-17,
217 n. 118; combined with SMV
Writing School, 216; united with
the Bristol Marine School 1839-
1844, 357-8; separated from
Bristol Marine School 1844, 358;
subsequent history, 358-60, 376
Marine Society, 239 and n. 10,
357-8 |
Mariners, see under Seamen
Mariners, Gild of, see under Bristol
Market, proposed in Clifton, 332
Marlborough Castle, 230
Marmont, Mr., SMV Superinten-
dent and Receiver for Clifton,
_ 268-9, 329 n. 1, 336, 337, 340, 350
Marseilles, 69
Marsh, Bristol, 72, 76
Marsh Street, Bristol, 203, 269, 457,
460, 461
Marshfield, 363
Grand
596
Martin, George Palliser, 560, 569
and n. 1
Martin’s Coffee House,
Green, 198
Mary, Queen, wife of George V, 529
Maryland, 131 n. 34
Mason, Arnold, A.R.A., portrait of
Gerald Beloe, 452 n. 55; Mr., of
Wrenmore, 354
Mathematical School (Navigation
School), of SMV, see under
Marine School
Matlock, 333
Matthews, George Leonard, 557;
Thomas Gadd, 557
Maudlin Street Hospital, 539
Mawnan Smith, near Falmouth,
on the
451
May, Captain Edward, 120
Mayoress, of Bristol, fund for
Reduced Ladies, 391
Maze, James, 549; Peter, admitted
1817, 549, 550, 552; Peter,
admitted 1826, 257, 550
Mead Close, Clifton, 468
Mediterranean, 79, 126, 144, 168,
I
Mediterranean passes, 126
Meke, George, beadle 1500, 7
Melcombe Regis, 80
Mellyne, William, feoffee 1600, 19 n.
27
Melville, Henry, 1st Viscount, 286,
548; 2nd Viscount, First Lord of
the Admiralty, 549
Mendips, water from, 424
Mentmore Estate, Buckinghamshire,
18
5
Merchant Adventurer, use of term,
ix and n. 1
Merchant Adventurers, of England,
ix, 11, 12 and n. 8, 42, 57-8, 61
Merchants, ‘‘at large’, 143, 238-9,
240, 319
Merchants’ Almshouse, see under
Society of Merchant Venturers
Merchants’ Arms, public house,
Prince Street, 532; Stapleton,
470, 532
Merchants’ Avenue, Hotwells, 344
Merchants’ Dock (Champion’s
Dock), 105, 108, 117, 154,155 and |
n. 29, 156-7, 222, 261, 345 and
n. 119, 346, 438, 471, 543. See also
under Dock Estate
Index
Merchants’ House (later Merchants’
Hall), 461
Merchants’ Parade, Hotwells, 342
n
- 93, 344
Merchants’ Place, Hotwells, 342
Nn. 93
Merchants’ Road, Clifton, 332, 340,
343
Merchants’ Tolzey, see under Bristol
Merchant Venturer, use of term, 1x,
6,7
Merchant Venturer, the, public
house, Redcliffe Hill, 532; train,
532
Merchant Venturers’ Secondary
School, see under Cotham Secon-
dary School
Merchant Venturers, Society of, see
under Society of Merchant Ven-
turers
Merchant Venturers’ Technical Col-
lege (originally the Bristol Trade
and Mining School, then the
Merchant Venturers’ School),
origin and growth in 19C., 375-
385; new building in Unity Street
1885, 377; appointment of Juluis
Wertheimer in 1890, 378; adopts
name in 1894, 380; financing of
and relations with city’s Techni-
cal Instruction Committee, 380-
381; overlapping with other in-
stitutions and conflict with Uni-
versity College Bristol, 381-5; in
20C., 477-84; destroyed by fire,
1906, 477-8; conflict with Univer-
sity College over proposed Univer-
sity of Bristol, 491-510; later
developments, 478-84; taken over
by L.E.A. 1949, 484; other refer-
ences, 450, 451, 543. See Illustra-
ions
Meredith and Company, 504 n. 119
Mereweather, Mr., 135
Merrick, William, 343
Merrywood School, 381
Mersey, river, 316
Messenger, H., 519
Methodists, 436, 528, 537
_ Middleburg, 83
Middleton, Lord, 211 and n. 86; ”
Mr., 417 n. 65
Miles, Edward Peach William, 554;
John William, 254; Henry Cruger
William, 264, 554; John William,
Index | 597
554; Philip, 291; 403; Philip
John, 554; Philip John, game-
keeper of Clifton, 190; Philip
William Skynner, M.P., 254, 255,
308 n. 13, 309, 396, 397, 421 n. 79,
425, 552 and n. 4; William, 158,
421 n. 79, 425; William St. John
Fenton, 515
Miles Road, 333 n. 26, 342
Miles Vaughan and Company,
277
Milford Haven, 81, 440
Miller, Lady, 330
Millerd, James, 26 and n. 10, 28, 29,
35, 85, go
Milton, John, Mayor of Bristol, 4
Milton Keynes estate, 518 n. 26
Minchinton, Professor Walter, xviii
Ministry of Education, 489. See also
Board of Education
Ministry of Health, and St. Monica’s,
515-17. See also Board of Health
Minty, John, 116
Mitchell, Alexander Black, 445 n.
18, 560; George, master of school
under the Hall, 357
Mohun, Lord, 64.
Molasses, 69; Act concerning, 1733,
I4I
Monkton, Monckton, Monckton
Holme, manor of, in Stogursey,
114, 123, 208, 212, 352, 355;
dispute over, 365-70
Monmouth, 221, 403
Monopoly, attempts by SMV to
establish, 10-16, 22, 40-41, 49-
51; opposition of SMV to, 51-62,
125, 131-5, 145-8, 225, 285;
willingness of SMV to share in,
66-7
Montenegro, 539
Montpelier, Clifton Down, windmill
at, 196 n. 103
Moon, A., caretaker of Merchants’
Hall, 453-4, 4540.65
Moor, E. R., Prime Minister of
Natal, 530
Moorfields, 437
Mooring posts, 72, 164, 321, 323
Moose Jaw Battalion (128th Cana-
dian Battalion), 539
Moreton, Francis, 348
Morgan, C. Lloyd, Principal, Uni-
versity College, Bristol, 383 n. 132,
384, 494; Daniel, 214; George
King, 555; G. M., 519; Mr., 169;
Miss, 427 and n. 94
Morley, Samuel, 254
Morning ‘Post, 464
Morocco, 221
Morrice, Edward, feoffee 1600, 19 n.
27
Moseley, Alfred, 433; Canon Henry,
373 and n. 70, 375
Mounslow, Martha, 201
Mowat, Professor, 458 and n. 110
Muller, Mary, housekeeper to SMV,
453
Mumbles Light, 168
Munckley, Samuel, 117
Mundy, Peter, 25, 28
Municipal Corporations, Commis-
sion of Enquiry into, see under
Commissioners
Muscovy Company (Russia Com-
pany) 12, 25, 61, 125 and n. 5
Muster Books, Seamen’s Hospital
Fund, 198
‘Nails’, the, 28
Napoleon, 161, 180, 286, 405, 406
Nash, Captain, 171 n. 6
Nash Point, 324, 326
Natal, 530
National Association for Employ-
ment of Reserve Soldiers, 528
National Lifeboat Association, 327-8
Nautical School, Portishead, 510
Navigation Acts, 68, 69, 139, 396
Navigation School, of SMV, see
Marine School
Navy League Sea Cadet Corps, 540
Nelson, Horatio, 180
Nelson Street, Diocesan School, 375;
Bristol Trade and Mining School,
375-7
Ness Sands, 166
Netherlands, 11, 12, 37, 57
Newbery and Spindler, 466
Newcastle, 12, 57, 60, 326, 480 n. 21
Newcastle, duke of, 178
Newcombe, William, 192
New England, proposed colony in,
8
5
Newfoundland, voyages to, 18;
proposed colony in (Bristol’s
Hope), 85; merchants trading to
petition against abolition of slave
trade, 138, 240; trade with, 144-5,
177; boys from Colston’s Hospital
598
Newfoundland—cont.
apprenticed in, 360-1, 361 n. 17;
fire in St. John’s, 390; insignia
presented to St. John’s, 531; other
references, 446, 530
New Hotwell, 191-2, 415
New West India Society, see West
India Society
New York, 349, 438
New Zealand, 530
Newman, Mr., 107 n. 35
Newnes, George, M.P., 334
Newport, 297, 315, 316, 317
Newstead, George Pope, 558
Newton, Francis, 224
Nicholas, Captain, 181
Nicholson’s gin, advertisement for
on site of Hall, 462
Nickalls, Joseph, engineer, 158 and
n. 49, 159 .
Nightingale Valley, Leigh Woods,
541
Nile, battle of, 180, 273
Nile Expeditionary Force, photo-
graph of Churchill as special
correspondent, 464
Noble, John, 116, 117; Mr., 156
Noel, the Rt. Hon. Geoffrey, see
Waldegrave, 12th Earl of
North, Roger, 36; Lord, 128, 190,
144 |
Northamptonshire, 518 and n. 26
Northern Assurance Company,
acquires site of old Hall, 463,
524
North Somerset Yeomanry, 537
North West Passage, 86, 531
Norwich, 25, 26, 27
Nottingham, 93
Nova Scotia, 234
Nugent, Robert, Lord Clare, M.P.,
and the Irish trade, 127, 128 and
n. 16; on the African trade, 134
and n. 50, 135; on American
affairs, 142 and nn. 97, 98, 147;
on the East India Company, 146;
on convoys, 171 and nn. 10, II,
172; other references, 167, 219,
222, 225, 226 and n. 48, 232 n. 85
Nutte, Thomas, 18
Nyasaland, Farm Institute in, 527
Oakfield Place, 343
Oakfield Road, 333 n. 26, 343 and
n. 99, 446-7
Index
Oakham, Oakham Slade, 190, 191
spring, 474
Oaklands, Pembroke Road, 343 n.
105
Oatley, Sir George, 515
Observatory, Clifton Down, leased to
Mr. West 1828, 427-8; proposal
to replace by Cabot Memorial,
432-3; in 20C., 474-6; listed as
Ancient Monument, 475 n. 76;
illuminated, 540, used by Home
Guard, 540. See also Bristol:
Observatory Company, and
Clifton: windmill. See Illustra-
tions
Observatory Hill, Clifton, reservoir
on, 425, 431, 433, 529, 540
Oil, 5, 68, 144
Old Hotwell, 414
Old Hotwell House, 415
Old Play House, Jacob’s Wells, 203
Oldfield Road, Hotwells, 346
Oldfield Terrace, Hotwells, 469
Ontario, 531
Openshaw, Edith M., Memorial
Fund, 519
Orchard Street, Bristol, 380
Ord, Colonel Frederic Cusac, 253 n.
25, 558, 568
Orders in Council, 1807, 285-6
Orkney Islands, 233, 540
Ormerod, Mr., 330
Osborn and Wallis Ltd., 471
Osborne, Jere, Clerk to SMV 1873-
1919, 267-8, 451, 455; Jeremiah,
Clerk to SMV 1786-1795, 133
and n. 47, 138 and n. 70, 267;
Jeremiah, Clerk to SMV 1801-
1842, 267, 370; John, Clerk to
SMV 1796-1810, 107, 267, 370;
Robert, Clerk to SMV 1838-54,
267, 421 n. 80, 440; Mr., 258,
337, 364
Osborne and Ward, solicitors, 417 n.
65
Osborne, Ward, Vassall and Com-
pany, 451, 504 n. 119
Over’s Causeway, Gloucestershire,
22
Owen’s College, Manchester, 379 n.
114
Oxford University, 85, 447
Paddington, 532
Padmore, Mr., engineer, 193
Index
Palais de Danse, Barton Hill, 142
Palmer, John, 227 and n. 55; Mr.,
272
Pares, Professor Richard, 94
Paris, 271
Park Place, 330, 335, 468, 538
Park Row, Asylum for Hopeful
Discharged Female Prisoners, 391
Park Street, 187
Parkway Methodist Church, 537
Parlby, Major J. R. H., House
Governor of St. Monica’s, 515 n. 8
Parochial Medical Association, 392
Parret, river, 177
Parrish, W. C. R., scholarship, 519
Parry’s Lane, 433
Parsons, John, 214; Mrs., 190
Partridge, Ernest John, 564
Pass, A. Capper, 541
Patriotic Fund for Soldiers and
Sailors in the Russian War, 390
Paty, James, 156; Thomas, 92, 111
and n. 71, 234; William, 154,
155 n. 29, 156, 185; Mr., 156 n.
37
Paul, Charles, 554,
Charles Henry,
558;
Major
5575
5573
Courtenay, 538; Walter Reginald, —
558; Walter Stuckey, Surveyor to
SMV, 269, 456, 469, 538; William
Edgar, 538, 558
Paulett, Colonel, 128th Canadian
Battalion, 539 |
Payne, Charles, Secretary of West
India Society, 291
Peach, Samuel, 278
Pearce, Mrs. Frances, 402
Pearse, John, 83
Peloquin, Mary Ann, 116, 117
Pembroke, ear] of, 85
Pembroke Hall, 333
Pembroke Road (Gallows Acre
Lane), 330, 333, 342, 343, 43!
Penarth, 317
Penarth Road, 438
Penke, John, 7 |
Penny, Captain, 172 and n. 14, 175
Pepwell, Pepwall, William, 18 and
nN, 23
Pepys, Samuel, 26-7
Percival, John, 314; Spencer, Prime
Minister, 406; Bishop of Bristol,
492
Perkins, Edward, 256, 548; Thomas,
548; Thomas, manager of the
599
Hotwell, 192, 193; Thomas Paul,
548
Perkins, John, and Sons, 460
Perks, John Hyde Haslewood, 462
and n. 134, 563
Perry, William, 547
Persia, 125
Philips, John, 168
Piazza, Hotwells, 192
Pigott, Mr., 196 n. 103
Pill, bridge at, 323; cholera, 392;
church at, 437; dock at, 308; poor
of, 208, 391; pilots of, 235, 316;
road to, 228; school at, 385;
telegraph to Bristol, 441 and n.
215; Warner at, 441 nm. 215;
Westwardmen of, 319
Pilots, recommended and controlled
by SMV, 72, 75s 165-7, 241, 313-
318; towboats of, 181; conflict with
watermen, 319-20; relief of dis-
tress, 390, 392; Sunday work by,
235; criticism of, 316; SMV
proposes to give up control of,
1840, 316; SMV loses control of,
317-18
Pinney, Charles, 551, 553; Frederick
Wake, 553; Mr., 418
Pirates, of North Africa, 47, 65 and
n. 60, 79, 221; Irish, and others,
68, 78; English, 221-2
Pitching and Paving, see Commis-
sioners for
Pitman, Christian Ernest, 563, 571;
Mark Christian, 565
Pitt, William, 130, 179, 180, 274,
433. See also Pytt
Plaister, Rachel, 119
Plankage, lease of, 19, 70, 73, 312
Playfair, Professor, 359; Dr. L., 413
Play House, Jacob’s Wells, 197 and
N. 103, 203
Plymouth, 55, 79, 81, 396
Pocock, Nicholas, 233, 234, 458
Poirier, Samuel, Secretary of African
Company, 135 n. 56
Poland, 37
Police, 99, 232, 409
Polygon, Clifton, 331, 334 and n. 33,
342 nN. 93
Poole, Dorset, 80, 145
Poole, James, 318
Pope, Andrew, 552; Andrew Noble,
558, 569 and n. 1; Charles, 206 n.
54; George, 258, 259, 552, 554,
600
Pope, Andrew—cont.
555; George Henry, Treasurer
SMV 1876-1901, Secretary of
Merchant Venturers’ Technical
College 1901-20, 265, 266, 276,
381 n. 123, 382, 383 and nn. 1930,
134, 384, 450, 451, 479, 492 and
n. 80, 493, 494, 495 and n. go,
500 and nn. 105, 106, 503 n. 115,
504 nn. 120, 121, 505-6, 507 n.
129, 508 and n. 135, 554, 568;
John Noble, 555, 558; Sarah, 115
Popham, John, Recorder of Bristol,
Ign. 14
Port Kerry Bay, 314
Port and Pier Railway, 352, 460
Portbury, proposed pier at, 308
orters, Company of, 76
Portishead, 303, 308, 309, 314, 320,
438, 510; proposed Steam Packet
Station at, 440
Portishead Passage, 228
Portishead Pier and Railway Com-
pany, 309
Portishead Point, 228
Portland Square, Bristol, 91 n. 5
Portsmouth, 202
Portugal, trade with, 2, 11, 21 n. 37,
38; other references, 19, 20, 21,
37, 68, 144
Postal service, 226-7, 440-41
Potato blight, 389, 391
Pottow, see Broad and Pottow
Powder House, on the Avon, 319
Powell, Arthur Cecil, 558, 568;
George, 330; Richard, feoffee
1600, 19 n. 27; Samuel, 185, 193,
348; Timothy, 115, 118; William
Augustus, 555, 558
Preston Pans, battle of, 178
Price, Captain John, 216, 217;
H. C., 269;.Rice Williams, 549
Prin, Prynne, Edward, first Master
of SMV, 10, 17 and n. 17;
Erasmus, 17 n. 22; Martin, 72
Prince of Wales, Charles, son of
Elizabeth II, 447, 530, 565;
Edward, later Edward VIII,
530, 560 and n. 9; George, son of
George III, 548
Prince of Wales, public house, 480
Prince of Wales Jubilee Thanks-
giving Fund, 527
Prince of Wales National War
Relief Fund, 537
Index
Prince Philip, see Duke of Edinburgh
Prince Street, Bristol, 100
Prince’s Buildings, 185 and n. 23,
330, 333, 334 and n. 30, 469
rince’s Place, Clifton, 186 —
Princess Royal, Mary, entertained
by SMV, 530
Privy Council, and the University of
Bristol, 502-8
Prizage, dispute over, 63
Probert, Benjamin, 184
Pro-Cathedral, Roman Catholic,
352
Proctor, Alderman Thomas, 281,
336, 432
Proctor’s Fountain, 351, 533
Protheroe, Edward, 547; Henry,
547; Philip, 291, 393, 440, 547;
548, 551; Mark Davis, 551; Mr.,
260, 547
Prussia, 4.11
Public Ledger, newspaper, 137
Pugh, Daniel, 348
Pullman Road Refreshment Car
Co., 462
Purveyance, dispute over, 63, 68
Putney Home for Incurables, 516
Pytt, John, feoffee 1600, 19 n. 27.
See also Pitt
Quakers, 34, 97, 103 and n. 8
Quarantine, 126-7, 324
Quarries, 184-5, 189, 351-2, 391,
432
Quays, 31, 47, 71, 73, 74-5) 151-2,
153-4
Quay Warden, 77, 181
Queen Mother, Elizabeth, visit to
Hall as Duchess of York, 530;
entertained at Hall, 1966, 530
Queen’s Building, University of
Bristol, 484, 510
Queen’s Road, Bristol, 330, 331
Queen’s Square, Bristol, 91, 150,
223, 232
Quilter, David Cuthbert Tudway,
565
Radford, E., butler to SMV, 454,
6
460
Radley School, 451
Raglan, James Henry Fitzroy, 1st
Baron, 549; 2nd Baron, 412, 553
Railways, see under Bristol for
Bristoland Exeter Railway; Bristol,
Index
South Wales and Southampton
Union Railway; Bristol and Glou-
cester Railway; Bristol and Clifton
Railway. See General Index for
Great Western Railway, London
and South Wales Junction Rail-
way, Port and Pier Railway,
Portishead Port and Pier Railway,
South Wales Railway, South
Wales, Wiltshire, Somerset and
Weymouth Railway, West Corn-
wall Railway
Rainey, Robert, 257, 549
Ralph, Elizabeth, and storage of
SMV records in War, 460;
archivist to SMV, 465, 532
Ramsey, William, schoolmaster, 216
Ramsgate, 169
Rankin, I. W., Chairman of
Chamber of Commerce, 305
Ravenstone éstate, 518 n. 26
Rawdon, Marmaduke, 27
Rea, Catherine, 201; T. E., Chief
Clerk to SMV,.267, 453
Reading, 418, 439, 492
Red Cross, 527, 540
Red Maids School, 30, 100, 373
Redcar, harbour, 327
Redcliffe, Redcliff, 26, 31, 153, 1593
Free Grammar School in, 30
Redcliffe Day School, 511
Redcliffe Endowed School, 511
Redcliffe Hill, 532
Redfield, mission room at, 536
Redhill, Clifton, 187
Redland, 187, 340, 465, 490
‘Redland Court, 91, 191
Redland Court Road, 470
Redland Green, 470-1 and n. 38
Redland High School, 511
Reed, William Bateman, builder,
338, 339; Mr., 280
Reeve, William, 393
Reeves, Mr., 352
Reform Committee, Bristol, 1831,
271
Reservoir, Clifton, 414-15, 416,
417, 423, 25-6
Reynolds, Joseph, schoolmaster,
216; Sir Joshua, 276; Richard, 403
Richmond Court, Clifton, 342 n. 93
Richmond Hill (Honeypen Hill),
185 n. 20, 331, 466; nursery
ground at, 471-2. See also Honey-
pen
601
Richmond Hill Improvement Asso-
ciation, 331
Richmond House, 509
Richmond Spring, 414 and n. 48,
415, 416, 417, 418
Richmond Terrace, 331, 414, 467
Ricketts, Frederick, 551; Thomas,
393
Ringer, Charles, 552
Ringstead and Addington estate,
518 n. 26
Rivers,. survey and removal of
obstructions, 72; conservation of,
164-5, 320-1
Rivers Cottages, 509
Roach, Solomon, 156, 196 n. 103
Robe, Captain Edward, Haven-
master, 319
Robertes, John, feoffee 1600, 19 n. 27
Roberts, Field Marshal Earl, 273 n.
151, 446 n. 19, 558. See Illustra-
tions
Robertson, David Neilson, 562
Robins, E. C., architect, 377,n. 105
Robinson, Alfred Esmond, 449, 461
n. 121, 561, 564, 569 and n, 2,
570 n. 3; Professor Andrew,
Principal, Merchant Venturers’
Technical College, Dean of Fac-
ulty of Engineering, 478-9, 4.79 n.
20; Anthony Leonard a Court,
565; Foster Gotch, 449, 456, 464,
511, 517-18, 560, 570 and n. 4;
John Esmond, 564; John Foster,
563; Lt. Col. Percy Gotch, 562,
569, 570; Richard, 309, 551;
Thomas Lloyd, 564; Lt. Com-
mander Vivian John, 562
Robson, Mr., 377
Rocks Railway, Clifton, 333, 334,
540
Rodney Admiral, 234
Rogers, Corsley, 162; Gerald Per-
cival Vivian, 562; George, alkali
manufacturer, 252, 553; Hugh
Charles Innes, 563, 571; James,
206; Richard, 188; Tracy Percival,
562, 570
Roger’s Hotel, Weston-super-Mare,
255
Roman Camp, so-called, Clifton, 427
Rosebery, Lord, 518
Rosemary Street, 477, 479
Rosser, Edward, 117; Joseph, school-
master, 216
602
Rothley, Thomas, Collector for
Seamen’s Hospital, 198, 199, 200,
202
Rotterdam, 192, 207
Round Point, 312, 320 and n. 99
Roundway, Baron, see Colston,
Charles Edward Hungerford
Atholl
Rowberowe, John, feoffee 1600, 19
n. 27
Rowland, Charles, 470; Thomas, 14
Rowland Avenue, Stapleton, 470
Rowlatt, Richard, Headmaster of
Colston’s Hospital, 365, 372, 373
se eat 48, 74, 154, 159, 228,
3I
Rownham Ferry, 188, 235, 321
Rownham Meads, 195
Rownham Passage, 73, 88
Rowse, Thomas, 256
Royal Africa Company, 33, 59-61,
131, 132, 209 n. 79
Royal Agricultural Show, 533
Royal Commission on Health of
Large Towns, 1843, 413
Royal Fort, 91
Royal Geographical Society, 528.
Royal Naval College, Dartmouth,
403
Royal Sanitary Institute, 531
Royal West of England Academy,
510, 511
Royal West Indian Steam Packet
Committee, 440
eee York Crescent, Clifton, 331 n.
Roydon Villas, Clifton, 343 and n.
103
Rudgeway School, Fishponds, 386
Ruhleben, seamen interned at, 539
Rum, 136, 140, 145, 219, 290, 292
Russell, Lord John, 272; Joseph,
349; Earl, 273 n. 151
Russia, 125, 290, 390, 412. See
Patriotic Fund for Soldiers and
Sailors in the Russian War
Russia Company, see Muscovy
Company
Russian Red Cross, 539
Rutland, 518 and n. 26
Rysbrack, statue of William III,
232, 234
Rye, 169, 396 ,
Sadleir, Sir Ralph, 17 and n. 22
Index
Sailors’ Home, Bristol, 360
St. Agnes, Cornwall, 169
St. Andrew’s, church school, 510
St. Augustine’s, 391 n. 41, 418, 421,
510, 511
St. Augustine’s Back, 30, 33 note 32,
34, 122, 153, 164 n. 88, 371
St. Bartholomew’s Hospital, 30
St. Brandon’s Clergy Daughters
School, 511
St. Christopher’s, 201
St. Clement’s Chapel (of the gild of
Mariners, used as the Merchants’
Hall), 6 and n. 20, 17 and n. 22,
18, 19, 22, 45, 70, 81
St. Eustatius, 140
St. yaaa Easton, 386, 437 and
n.I
St. George’s, Brandon Hill, 208, 421
St. George’s Channel, 168, 173
St. George’s church, vicarage house,
207 |
St. James’s church, 26, 27; Fair, 27;
parish, 208, 245 and n. 8, 421
St. John’s, Bristol, 27, 31
St. John’s, Clifton, 429
St. John’s, Newfoundland, 390, 531
St. John’s Ambulance Corps, 528,
540
St. Jude’s, church, 536; school,
510
St. Leonard’s, church, 27; school,
86
3
St. Malo, 224
St. Mark’s Hospital, Bristol, 26, 27
St. Mark’s school, Easton, 386
St. Martin, 140
St. Mary Redcliffe, 27, 253 n. 26,
435; school, 386, 511
St. Matthew’s, Moorfields, 437 and
n. 185
St. Michael’s, 201, 205, 421, 436
St. Michael’s Hill, 26, 29, 122, 203,
204
St. Monica Home of Rest, The,
history and development of, 513-
519; W. W. Ward and, 451; Miss
G. E. Whitaker and, 454-5;
Nurses’ Home of, used as tem-
porary headquarters for SMV,
455; Charter Day service held in
chapel of, 540; modernisation of,
546; other references, xi, 276, 446,
450, 461 n. 21, 468, 530, 544. See
Illustrations
Index
‘Sea Mills, 151 and n. 4, 187 n. go,
St. Nicholas’, Almshouse, 525;
church, 27, 228, 436; school, 386;
street, 228
St. Paul’s, Bedminster, church, 389;
home for girls in distress, 537;
parish, 421; school, 386
St. Peter’s Hospital, 304, 320, 391 n.
41, 389, 434
St. Philip and St. Jacob, 207, 208,
6
43
St. Silas, school, 386
St. Simon, school, 386
St. Stephen’s, church, 47, 84, 94, 97,
207, 536; parish, 208, 232, 253n.
26, 436, 440, 521
St. Vincent’s, 122
St. Vincent’s Parade, 185 and n. 23,
321, 342 n. 93
St. Vincent’s Place, 468 n. 14
St. Vincent’s Rocks, 320 n. 99, 427
St. Vincent’s Spring, 4.74
St. Vincent’s Terrace, 342 n. 93
Salisbury, earl of, see Cecil, Robert
Sallee, corsairs from, 79, 221
Salmon, John, 371, 55!, 5547-53
Robert Henry, 554-5
Salmon fishing, bill concerning, 235
Salt, 5
Salterne, William, 21
Salutation Inn, Rownham Mead,
195
Salvation Army Emergency Service,
540 n. 114
Sanders, Thomas, 403
Sandford, John, 19 n. 27
Sandford Place, 346 n. 127
Sandford Road, 469
Saumarez, Captain, 172
Saunders, John, 18 n. 23; Captain,
151
Savage, Francis, nephew of William
Claxton, 551, 552; John, 370, 55!
Savery and Clarke, 338
Savile, Charles Cornelius, 558, 568
Schools Inquiry Commission, 371
Scilly Isles, 173, 175, 326
Scotland, 69, 389
Scott, Captain Robert, of the Ant-
arctic, 528; Captain, 172
Scriffen, Mrs, 398
Scripture Readers’ Association, 526
Scrope, Thomas, 106 n. 33
Scudamore, ‘a Romish priest’, 201
Scull, Thomas Rodney Rupert, 563
Sea Fencibles, 320, 405
603
228, 318, 319
Seamen, examination and registra-
tion of, 324-6; foreign, 223-4,
324; help for disabled, 181, 404,
392; legislation concerning, 223,
324; pressing of, 172, 174-5; raised.
for Navy by SMV, 175-6; regula-
tions concerning, 42; wages of,
223-4, 240
Seamen’s Friendly Society, 438
Seamen’s Hospital Fund, origin,
197-8; Muster Books, 198; Col-
lector, 198; proposed building of,
198; plans of, 198-9; pensions
paid from, 200-2; in 19C., 394-8;
proposals to take away from SMV,
395 ff.; taken over, 398; Claxton’s
comment on, 398
Seamen’s Institute, Avonmouth, 536
Seddon, Ralph, 189
Seeton, William Charles, Master of
Marine School, 359
Senegal, 135 and n. 56
Serbia, 539
Severn, river, 78, 165, 177, 228, 230,
231, 235, 321
Seward, Henry Hake, architect,
347, 348
Sewerage, provision for in SMV
Waterworks bill, 421 and n. 79
Seymour, Henry, of Redland Court,
IgI
Shapland, Christopher, 419, 420
Shaw, Samuel, 144
Sheffield, Lord, 285
Sheffield University, 480 n. 21, 497,
498, 499
Sheffield Waterworks Company, 390
Sherborne Villas, 333 n. 26
Sheriff, Edmund, master of SMV
school, 357
Shields, 326
Ship, the, public house, Redcliffe
Hill, 532
Ship Money, 64, 65, 80
Ships, insurance of, 175; proposed
assessment of for poor rate, 287;
protection of, 77-81. See also
under Convoys
SHIPS, NAMES OF
Albion, 347; Alborough, 175; Alex-
ander, 200; Amity, 78; Anna Maria,
139; Antelope, 172; Black Prince,
200-1; H.M.S. Bristol, 531; Clifton
604
Ships, Names of—cont.
Ark, formerly the Mary, of New
York, 438; Columbus, 393; Concord,
78; Demerara, 314. and n. 54;
Dominic (Domynike), 17 and n. 20;
Dreadnought, 78; Duchess of Bedford,
458; Duke of Bedford, 458; Eliza,
314; Ely, 321; Falcon, 164 n. 92;
Formidable, 389 n. 6, 510, 526;
Garland, 170; Garrick, 314; Great
Britain, 411, 531, 551; Hanover
Planter, 320; Hardwicke, 171 n. 6;
Henrietta Maria, 86; Hope, 1755
224; Humber, 172; Hyaena, 1753
Invincible, 175; Fames, 78; Fean
Baptiste, 315; Juba, 201; Lizard,
175; Long Ship (lightship), 326;
Looe, 172; Marie Celeste, 315;
Marquis of Granby, 202; Mary, of
New York, later the Clifton Ark,
438; Mary Galley, 171 n. 6;
Matthew, 78; Milford, 172; Monck,
84; Phoenix, 78; Port Mahon, 171
n. 6; Nile, 349; Prince Edward, 171
n. 6; Queen Elizabeth, 1'75; Resolu-
tion, 175; Royal Charlotte, 173 n. 23,
174. n. 24; Sapphire, 1'70; Somerset
Privateer, 165; Speedwell, 201;
Susannah, 175; Three Brothers, 173
and n. 23, 174. n. 24; White Angel,
78; William, 201
Shipman, Thomas, feoffee 1561, 18
Nn. 23
Shipowners, Society of, 323, 324,
325, 326, 327
po aaa Mariners’ Association,
52
Shipwrecked Mariners’ Benevolent
Society, 390
Shipwrights, illegal combination of,
235
Shirehampton, 18, 47, 84, 166, 321,
441
Shorland, James Rowe, builder, 342
Short Grove, Clifton, 185
Shrewsbury, Drapers’ Company of,
53> 54 0. 20; waterworks at, 418
Sidmouth, Lord, 407
Sierra Leone, 135
Silk, 125, 142, 289
Silvester, Mr., first
Colston’s Hospital, 210
Sinclair, Robert John, 562, 571
Sion Springs, 414 and n. 48, 416,
417, 418
master of
Index
Slavery, SMV and abolition of,
293-4; effect on William Claxton
of abolition of, 262
Slaves, taxes on by the colonies, 135-
136, 143; rising of, 201; distemper
among, 201, 202
Slave trade, SMV’s part in opening
of, 59; SMV’s attitude to South
Sea Company over, 147-8; SMV
and proposed abolition of, 136-9,
140, 239-40. Other references, xi,
37, 38
Small Street, 19 n. 27, 30, 232
Smalls, lighthouse, 168
Smart, Ann, 202; Samuel, 202
Smeaton, John, engineer, 153, 158
and n. 49, 159, 193
Smedley’s Hydropathic Establish-
ment, Matlock, 333
Smith, Adam, 61; Christian, Miss,
339 n. 66; Eliza, née Jones, 206;
Henry, 188; Jarritt, M.P., 128
and n. 16, 142 n. 98, 179; Joseph,
31I n. 25; Mariana, see Irwin;
Robert, 1561, 18 n. 23; Robert,
gamekeeper of Clifton, 190 and
n. 61
Smythe, Sir John, of Ashton Court,
416 and n. 62; Sir J. Greville,
lord of the manor of Henbury,
431, 433; Sir John Hugh, 118;
Peter, feoffee 1561, 18 n. 23; Dr.
Thomas, 118
Snell, Benjamin, 111
Sneyd Park, development in, 429
and n. 116
Snygg, Snygge, George, Warden
SMV 1564, 18 and n. 23; George,
junior, 18 n. 23, 19
Soap, duties on, 290; soap making,
34, 65, 68
Social and Industrial Department of
Diocese of Bristol, 537
Society of Archivists, 531
SOCIETY OF MERCHANT
VENTURERS, THE
Admission fines, 40-1, 44-5, 103,
251-2
Almshouse (formerly of the Gild
of Mariners), in 16C., 18-20;
in 17C., 81-3; in 18C., 203-4; in
19C., 398-401; in 20C., 521-5;
during air-raids, 455, 458-60;
uncertainty concerning future
of, after the war, 461-3, 522-3;
Index
decision to rebuild, 522-4; other
references, 29, 48, 84, 114, 115,
196, 203, 208, 245, 280, 522,
543. See Illustrations
Apprenticeship, in 17C., 40, 41,
44;in 18C. 102, 104;in 19C. 104;
premium of £300 required from
1765, 104; investigation of in
19C., 249-50; new regulations
concerning, 250-1; recom-
mendations concerning in 20C.,
443, 444 Dn. 15, 445
Arms, grant of, 1569, 14; damage
in blitz, 460
Arts sub-committee, 458
Assistants, 12 in 1618 ordinances,
39-40; reduced to 10, in 1639,
41; in 17C., 43; Court of, 43;
number of members serving as
in 17C., 43; changes in method
of election in 19C., 258-9;
recommendations concerning,
1930, 443; in 20G., 449. See
also Standing Committee
Attendance at Hall meetings, in
17C., 40, 43; in 18C., 104-6; in
19C., 256—7; in 20C., 442-3
Beadle, in 1467, 5; duties defined
1618, 40; office combined with
that of Clerk 1639, 42; work in
17C., 43, 47; also appointed
Master of Colston’s Hospital
(see under Samuel Gardiner,
senior; Samuel Gardiner,
junior; William Haynes, senior;
William Haynes, junior)
Building Land Committee, 340,
341, 432
Bulk purchases by, 86
Charitable Trust, 546
Charitable work, see in particular,
17-20 for 16C., 81-4 for 17C.,
197-209 for 18C., 388-404 for
19C., 513-28 for 20C. See also
Merchants’ Almshouse, Col-
ston’s Almshouse, Hill’s Alms-
house, Burton’s Almshouse,
Seamens’ Hospital Fund; The
St. Monica Home of Rest
Charity Investment Pool, 520
Charters and Acts of Parliament
relating to constitution of,
Charter of 1552, 10-12; Charter
of 1566, 13; Act of Parliament,
1566, 13-14; Act of 1571, 15-
605
16; Charter of 1639, 41-2;
Charter of 1643, 42; Charter
of 1665, 42. See Illustrations
City Government, relations with
the merchants up to 1552, 5-93
and the Charter of 1552, 12-13;
hostility to Act of 1566, 14-16;
reconstitutes SMV, 1605, 22-3;
dominated by Merchant Ven-
turers in 17C., 32; less domina-
ted by SMV in 18C., 95, 240-1;
receives cooperation from SMV,
232; conflict with SMV, 241-
242; changing relationship with
SMV in 19C., 243-4; the
problem of port dues, 296-9;
cooperation with SMV _ over
Floating Harbour, 307-8; the
Docks Committee and SMV,
309-10; insult to SMV over
Victoria’s Coronation Proces-
sion, 410; conflict over Water-
works bill, 424-5. See also
Cranes, Downs, Pilots, Wharf-
age.
Clerk, duties defined 1618, 40; in
17C., 43; in 18C., 106-7; in
19C., 267-8; in 20C., 455-6
Criticisms of, by Cosmo, 294-5;
in print and at public meetings,
384, 423-4; over Waterworks
scheme, 423-4; concerning
Richmond Hill Nursery, 472;
concerning Victoria Square
Gardens, 473; by Privy Council
Office, 506; concerning Downs
roundabout, 535. Seealso Cosmo
Deeds, schedules of, xviii, 108 and
n. 46
Dinners, suppers, balls etc., 43, 47;
106, 112, 113, 271-4, 529-32,
537
Downs, preservation of in 18C.,
189-91; in 19C., 426-34;
denial by SMV of intention to
enclose, 430; City Council
proposes joint action concern-
ing, 431; Act of Parliament
concerning, 1861, 431-2; Downs
Committee and role of SMV,
432-4. See also Clifton Down,
Durdham Down
Education Trust, 452, 479, 481 n.
7, 483 and n. 37, 484, 486 n. 56,
599
606 Index
Society of Merchant Venturers, The
—cont.
Exploration, 85-6, 531
Feoffees, 17-19
Finances, in 17C., 46-8; in 18C.,
113-23; in 19C., 276-83; in
20C., 282-3, 465; Claxton’s —
Accounts and Estimates, 1845-
1851, 279-83 and Appendix F
Freedom boxes, 548, 549 n. 1,
552 N. 4
Hall, formerly the chapel of St.
Clement, in 17C., 28, 45-6; in-
ventories of contents, 45-6;
seating capacity of, 104 n. 7;
alterations to in 18C., 111, 115;
chandeliers, 111, 459; used by
others, 111-12, 150, 180; al-
teration to in 19C., 269-70;
dinners in, 271-4; Fancy Dress
Ball, 1867, 273 and n. 150;
distinguished visitors to in 19C.,
273 and n. 151; in 20C. up to
World War II, 457-8; air-raid
precautions, 458-9; air-raid
damage, 459-61 and 461 n.
121; temporary substitute for in
Nurses’ Home, St. Monica’s,
461; discussion about rebuild-
ing damaged Hall, 461 ff.; Fern
House acquired 1945 as tem-
porary hall to be known as the
Merchants’ House, 462; deci-
sion not to rebuild and sale of
site, 463; Auckland House
acquired in 1949, 463; decision
to make Fern House and
Auckland House, the Pro-
menade, into new Hall, 463;
work on the new Hall, 463-4,
529; treasures in, 532; pictures
In, 45, I11, 234, 275-6, 455,
458 n. 106; other references, 6,
81, 92, 114, 150, 238. See
Illustrations
Hall Books of Proceedings, xvii;
microfilm of, 532
Hall meetings, 21-2; 1618 or-
dinances concerning, 39-40;
1639 ordinances concerning,
42; 18C. rules on procedure at,
I10-I1I; question of recording
protests at, 260
Honorary Members, in 17C., 45
and n. 30; in 18C., 102-3; in
19C., 249, 286, 405, 4113; in
20C., 442, 446-7, 530
Land Steward, 456
Loyal Addresses and Memorials,
in War of Austrian Succession,
178; in Seven Years’ War, 178—
179; in American War, 179; in
Revolutionary and Napoleonic
Wars, 179-80, 405-8; on law
and order, 1819, 407-9; on
banking crisis of 1825, 409; to
George IV, 409; to William IV,
409; to Queen Victoria and
other members of royal family,
412-13; to Edward VII, 529;
to George V, 530 .
Marine School, see General Index
Master, 1552, 10; 1566, 13; 1569,
14; 1605, 21; duties of, 1618, 39;
method of election, 1639, 42;
in 17C., 43; not to stand
twice in succession, 106; casting
vote, 112; method of election in
19C., 258; contested election
1855, 259; casting vote, 260; in
20C., 448-9; knighted while in
office, 449; gifts to Hall, 449;
election dinner given by, 449-
450; list of, since 1900, Ap-
pendix D
Members, number of, total, x; in
17C., 36, 45; in 18C., 102; in
19C., 249; in 20C., 442
Membership, qualifications for,
1552, 10-11; 1566, 14; 1605
ordinance, 22; 1618 ordinances,
40-1; exclusion of Quakers
from, 103 and n. 8; regulations
concerning in 19C., 249-50;
regulations 1851, 250-2; ex-
clusion of clergymen from,
253-4; right to exclude from,
443-4; discussions and regula-
tions concerning, 1945-6, 444;
memorandum on, 1967, 444-5;
nature of at present day, 447-8.
For Admission to, 1800-1974,
see Appendix A. For analysis
of qualifications of, 1800-1899
and 1900-1974, see Appendices
Band C
Officers, 1552, 10; 1618, 40; 1639,
41; work of in 17C., 43;
changes in 19C., 258; present
practice concerning, 499-50
Index
Patrimony, in 17C., 40, 44; in
18C., 102; in 19C., 249, 253-4;
in 20C., 442
Politics, 32-3, 254-5, 408-9, 448.
See also under individual M.P.s
Property of, in 17C., 87-8; in
18C., 182-96; in 19C., 329-
356; in 20C., 466-76; Claxton
on the importance of, 281. |
Public Relations, 529-33
Records, loss of, 9 and n. 24; con-
cern for in 18C., 108-9; attempt
to interest members in, 458;
storage in war, 460; care for in
20C., 464-5, 532; microfilming
of, 465
Redemptioners, in 17C., 41, 44,
46-7; in 18C., 102; in 19C.,
249, 251, 252; disagreement
concerning admission of, 251-3;
in 20C., 442; qualification of in
20C., 443, 444 Nn. 15, 445, 446
Religion, reconstruction of
churches in 18C., 97, 207;
SMV defends in 1819, 407-9;
help to Church of England in
19C., 435-8; help to Church of
England in 20C., 537-5; other
references, 33, 47, 82, 84, 96,
234, 410, 411, 436, 437, 448
Resignation, attempted in 1861,
256; members free to offer,
443; in 20C., 445 n. 18
School for poor mariners’ children
(also known as the school under
the Hall and the Writing
School), early history, 18, 30,
84; in 18C., 215-16; combined
with SMV Marine School
(Mathematical or Navigation
School), 216; amalgamated
with Bristol Marine School,
1839, 357; end of, 358. See also
General Index, Marine School
Senior Commoner, role in elec-
tions, 449-50
Standing Committee, first refer-
ence to, 43-4; in 18C., 105-6;
role in 20C., 449-50
Surveyors, 456, 469, 470, 473,
522, 524
Technical College, see General
Index
Tobaccosharessub-committee, 517
Treasurer, in,17C., 40, 43; in
607
18C., 107, 117; in 19C., 257-8,
260-8; office united with that
of Secretary to MVTC and
Colston Trust, 265; separated
from it, 265-6; re-united with
it, 450; in 20C., 450-2; com-
mittee on duties of, 1932, 452;
division in Standing Committee
over election of, 452; staff of in
20C., 453-5, list of, since 1900,
Appendix E. See also under
individual Treasurers
Wardens, 1552, 10; 1564, 18;
1566, 13; 1569, 14; 1605, 395
in 17C., 43; method of election,
258, 449; list of, since 1900,
Appendix D |
Waterworks scheme, see General
Index
Wharfage lease, see General Index
World Wars, 537-41
Somerset, 92, 137, 177, 221, 227,
233, 235, 268, 269, 282, 352, 354,
373, 403, 467, 489, 515
Somerset, Lord Edward, 549; Henry
Charles, Lord Granville, 551;
James Henry Fitzroy, 1st Baron
Raglan, 549; Canon’ Lord
William, 364
Somerset Cottages, 468
Somerton, 226
Soup Committee, 208
Soup Kitchen, 391
South America, 285, 286. See also
South Sea Company
South Carolina, 141, 143
scan Sea Company, 132, 145, 147,
14
South Wales Railway, 290
South Wales, Wiltshire, Somerset
and Weymouth Railway, 440
Southampton, 25, 492
Southmead Hospital, 539
Southwell, Edward, 235 n. 106; Mr.,
M.P., 222
Spa Hotel, Clifton, 333, 467
Spafford, George Oswald, 253 n. 25,
557, 568
Spain, trade with, 2, 11, 19, 20, 21,
37, 38, 53, 68; other references,
36, 37, 40, 139
Spanish Company, establishment of,
20; Bristol branch of, 20-1; re-
established 1604, 21; Bristolians
withdraw from, 50, 53 andn. 18,60
608
Spanish depredations, 139, 170, 238
Spanish Town, 140
Sparks, Beatrice M., 520
Spaxton, Somerset, 389
Speke, Captain, 273
Spicer’s Hall, Bristol, 5, 6, 28, 42, 87
Spindler, see Newbery and Spindler
Spirits, SMV objects to tax on, 219;
traders in, 238, 240
Spithead, 173
Springs, in Bristol, 414-17
Staffordshire and Worcestershire
Canal, 230
Stamp Act, 142
Stanfast, Elizabeth, 116 and n. 109
Stanstead College Trust, 520
Stanton, C. H., Schools Enquiry
Commissioner 1864, 371-2
Stanton Drew, 468
Staple, the, 3, 4 and n. 10, 12;
statute of 1353, 3
Stapleton, move of Colston’s
Hospital to, 371; development of
SMV land at, 469-70; other
references, 282 n. 10, 352, 355,
374, 451, 465, 532, 544
Stapleton church, 207
Stapleton National School, 386
Stapleton Rectory, 486
Star Chamber, 64
Steadfast Society, see under Bristol
Stedder, Mr., 395, 397
Stedder, Stephen Henley, Collector
of Wharfage, 311 n. 25; 312 n.
39
Steel, American, 141
Steel, William, 76
Steep Holm, 438
Stephens, Elizabeth, 83; William, 83
Steward, Captain, 170
Stillingfleet, Isaac, 234
Sere: John Douglas Pye Smith,
504
Stoate, Mr., 354
Stock, Edward Herbert, 559
Stogursey, dispute over ownership
of manor of Monkton, 365-70;
charity fund, 391; parish school,
526; other references, 114, 123,
196, 207 and n. 68, 212, 279, 316,
352, 353> 543
Stoke (Bishop), 187 n. 39, 228
Stoke Bishop War Memorial Fund,
520
Stoke Park, 433
Index
Stokes, John, warden of merchants
1500, 7 .
Stokes Croft, 421
Stone’s, builders, 470
Stothert, George Kelson, 345 and
n. 122
Stourbridge, 230
Stourton, 230
Stratford, Ferdinando, 229
Stratford on Avon, 230
eo Major Gilbert Leonard,
562
Stride and Co., 122
Stroudwater, the, 230
Sturmy, Samuel, 84
Sugar, sugar refining, 33, 34,69, 139,
292
Summerson, Mr., 333
Sunderland, 326
Surveyor of Highways, Clifton, 331
Suspension Bridge, Clifton, xi, 303-
394, 434-5, 534
Sussex, Duke of, 273 n. 151
Swansea, 169
Sweden, 37
Swymmer, Sarah, 206; William,
206
Symondes, Thomas, senior, 17 n. 22,
18 n. 23; junior, 18 n. 23, 19
Tallow, opposition to use of in soap-
making, 68
Taunton, 132, 208, 231, 233
Taylor, Alfred Terrett, 556; Geoffrey
Goodenough, 562; John, M.P.,
32, 33; Herbert John, 556; Sir
Lionel Goodenough, 449, 560,
569; Thomas Terrett, 252, 309,
555» 556; Miss, 333; Mrs., 402
Teasdale, Mr., 467
Technical Instruction Committee,
of Bristol, 380 and n. 119, 384,
385, 477
Teck, Mary, Duchess of, 273 n. 151,
413
Telford’s Bank, 453
Temple, district of Bristol, 26, 31;
parish school, 385
Temple church, 27, 436
Temple Colston’s School, 511
Temple Meads Station, 529
Temple Street, 33 n. 32, 229
Templeton, Lord, 120
Tenby, 73, 321, 327
Thayer, James, pilot, 166-7
Index
_ Triangle, the, Bristol, 332
Theatre Royal, Bristol, 100
Thomas, Christopher Wilson, 565;
Joseph, and Partners, builders,
184; Miss L.E., 454, 460; Richard,
g21; Mr., 111 n. 70
Thompson, John, 547
Thornton, Christopher, 256
Three Tuns, Clifton, 228
Tide gauge, 321
Tiverton, 54 n. 22
Toad, Anthony, secretary to G.P.O.,
227 Nn. 52
Tobacco, SMV opposed to growth
of in England, 61, 68; industry,
34, 35
Tobacco Act 1789, objections to, 220
Toc H, 528, 540
Tocker, Mr., Master of Colston’s
Hospital, 210
Todd, A. R. Middleton, R.A., 455;
Major Chester William, 537, 5593
Robert Edward, 445 n. 18, 563;
Robert Hilton, 559, 563, 568, 569;
William Ansell, 558
Tollgate, Clifton Down, 188
Tolzey, see under Bristol:
chants’ Tolzey
Tombs’ Dock, 151
Tomlinson, William, Havenmaster,
162, 318
Totnes, 80
Totterdown, 228
Touchet, Samuel, 135 and n. 56
Toulouse, 6
Towboat men, of Pill, 319
Towing, charges for, 319, 323; by
steam, 302-3, 304, 316
Towing paths, 321
Town Dues, Bristol, SMV’s views
on, 288-9; attack on by Chamber
of Commerce, 294; SMV’s am-
bivalent attitude to, 296
Town Improvement Company, 424
Townsend, H., collector for SMV,
268-9
Tracy Park, Wick, 460, 461 n. 121
Trade and Mining School, Nelson
Street, Bristol (later, Merchant
Venturers’ School), history of,
375-6; taken over by SMV, 376-8;
other references, 359, 360, 372,
374, 382, 383, 387, 479, 484, 544
Tramways, 441
Trees, planting on Downs, 427, 428,
429, 433
Mer-
609
Triangle Hall, Park Place, 538
Trigg, K. H., Chief Clerk to SMV,
453 475
Trinity House, 167, 168 and n. 117,
223, 317, 324, 325 n. 132, 326 and
Nn. 140, 327
Trinity House, Kingston-upon-Hull,
198 n. 3
Tripoli, 79
Trippet, goodwife, 83
Trump, Arthur J., accountant to
SMV, 453, 454
Trym Mills, 151
Tucker, Benjamin,
220 n. II
Tucket, Elinor,
SMV, 270
Tulley, George, 199
Tunis, 79
Turkey, 37
Turkey Company, see Levant Com-
pany
Turkish corsairs, 78-9, 86, 221;
prisoners of, 83
Turner, William, 119; Mr., 370
Turnpikes, 187-8, 227, 228, 351, 430
Tutton, Mrs. Jane, lessee of the
Hotwell, 350
Twerton, 207
Tyhurst, P. E., Land Steward to
SMV, 456 and n. 87
Tyndale, age 64 n. 58; Thomas,
107 n.
Tyndall, Conte: 189, 194; Thomas,
118, 225; Miss, 457-8
Tyndall’s Park, new church in, 437
Tyre, 96
Tytherington, Gloucestershire, 229
335; Josiah,
housekeeper to
Underdown, Dr. P. T., 128 and n. 17
Union Club, see under Bristol
Unity Street, Bristol, 376, 377, 380,
478, 480, 482, 484 n. 39, 494, 496,
500, 507, 510
University of Bath, 484, 511
University of Bristol, SMV and the
foundation of, 491-510; SMV
provides home for Faculty of
Engineering of, 478; relations of
SMV with, 484, 509, 510 and n.
151, 509, 512; other references,
447, 458, 472, 478, 480, 483, 519,
529. See also University College,
Bristol
610
University College, Bristol, dispute
with MVTC concerning over-
lapping, 382-4; other references,
265, 380, 381, 451, 477, 479, 492,
503. See also University of Bristol.
University College Colston Society,
491, 498
University College, Liverpool, 379
n. 114
University College, London, 498
University Grants Committee, 483,
531
Upper Park Street, Bristol, 342 n. 93
Vanes, Dr. Jean, 17 n. 20, 19 n. 30
Vassall, H. G., Clerk to SMV 1919-
1938, 456-7
Vaughan, Charles, 417 n. 65; John,
547; Richard, 547
Vawer, William, 23
Venice, 56, 68
Verdon-Smith, Sir William Regi-
nald, 563, 572
Vicary, Mr., evangelist, 438
Vick, William, legacy to build
bridge over the Avon, 115, 245,
303-4, 434, 542
Vickerman, Mr., surveyor, 158
Vickris, Richard, 275
Victoria, Queen, Addresses to, 4.10—
412; portrait in the Hall, 276, 458
and n. 106, 530; visit to Bristol
of, 413; funeral procession of,
529
Victoria Rooms, 509
Victoria Square, building of, 336—
341; expenditure on, 280; land for
parsonage house in, 437; other
references, 333, 467
Victoria Square gardens, 469, 472-
474, 473 n. 58
Victoria Street, Bristol, 538
Vining, John, 251 n. 15, 551 n. 3
Vintners Company, London, 66, 67
Virginia, 68, 69, 81, 85, 131 n. 34,
135, 136, 141, 142, 201
Visger, Harman, 250
Vizer, Robert, 547, 548; Robert
Willis, 548
Vyvyan, Sir Richard Rawlinson,
M.P., 274
Wade estate, 518 n. 26
Wait, Hamilton Wilfrid Killigrew,
558, 568
Index
Walbridge, near Stroud, 230
Waldegrave, 12th Earl, 563
Wales, 26, 92, 93, 177, 207, 390, 441
Wall, Christopher, Master of SMV
school, 215
Wallace, Mr., Parliamentary Com-
missioner on Excise, 299
Walpole, Sir Robert, 219
Walsingham, Sir Francis, 21
War Bonds, 538
War Damage Commission, 462, 463,
522
War Savings Committee, 534
Ward, Charles, Clerk to SMV, 263,
264; Charles Edward, Clerk to
SMV, 267 n. 109; Danvers Hill,
550; Sir I. G., Prime Minister of
New Zealand, 530; Richard Brick-
dale, 370; William Welsford, see
separate entry; Mr., 436
Ward, William Welsford, Treasurer
to SMV 1918-32, appointment
and biographical details of, 450-2;
role in negotiations over Uni-
versity of Bristol, 493-509; work
for St. Monica’s, 517, 518 n. 8;
and SMV Education Trust, 479;
road and avenue named after,
470; views on role of SMV, 545;
other references, 253 n. 25, 381 n.
124, 382, 383 nn. 130, 134, 384,
454-5, 492 n. 80, 494 nn. 84, 85,
514 and n. 3,557,573
Wardens, of the merchants in 1467,
5
Wards, Court of, 63
Warner, of arrival of ships, 76, 319
Warr, Eliza, housekeeper to SMV,
270
Warren, Sir Herbert, 446, 560
Warwick, 230
Water Bailiff, 181
Water Street, 481
Water supply, in Bristol, 30-1,
413 ff. See Waterworks scheme
Waterloo, 406
Watermen, of Pill, 319, 320
Waterworks scheme, of SMV, 413-
426; plans for 1836, 414-15; plan
and bill concerning, 1841, 415-16;
new proposal 1842, 416-17; Com-
mittee report on, 1843, 417-18;
report and plans 1844, 418-19;
decision to proceed with, 1845,
419; rival scheme put forward by
Index
Bristol Waterworks Company,
419-20; two bills before Parlia-
ment, 421-2; SMV extend its bill
to cover whole of Bristol, 422; criti-
cism of SMV by press, 423-4;
SMV bill rejected, 424-5; com-
pensation for work already carried
out, 425-6
Wax, ordinance of 1467 concerning,
5
Weare, Mr., 219
Weeks, Philip, 348
Wellington, Arthur Wellesley, Duke
of, 273 n. 151, 406, 407, 549
Welsford Avenue, Stapleton, 470
Welsford Road, Stapleton, 470
Welsh butter, patent to export, 66,
Wertheimer, Julius, Principal of
Merchant Venturers Technical
College, career of, 379 and n. 114;
negotiations over overlap with
University College, Bristol, 382-4;
negotiations concerning Uni-
versity of Bristol, 492 and n. 80,
493, 494, 495 and n. 92, 496 and
N. 94, 497, 500 n. 106, 505, 506,
507 and nn. 190, 131, 508; and
the fire in MVTC, 477; first Dean
of Faculty of Engineering, 478;
death, 479-80; other references,
378 n. 10, 381 n. 124, 512; Mrs.,
479 0.20 —
West, Edith, tenant of Observatory,
474-5; William, founder of Ob-
servatory, 427, 428; Mr., portrait
painter, 264
West of England Sanatorium, 392,
526
West of England University, pro-
posed, 492 |
West of England University and
Technical College, proposed, 382,
384
West India Club, 237, 238 n. 2
West India Committee, London,
136 |
West India Company, proposed, 293
West India Dock, London, 161
West India Society, work of and
relations with SMV, 291—4; other
references, 237-8, 238 n. 2, 284
West Indies, packets for, 227;
pirates of, 221; SMV and, 293-4;
trade with, 38, 93, 125, 135-6,
611
138-9, 261-2, 285, 287, 292; other
references, 68, 140
Westbury-on-Trym, 187 n. 39, 228,
416, 421, 513, 515
Westbury-on-Trym Cricket Club,
520
Westcott, Commander John, 201
Western Daily Press, 452 n. 51, 472,
500 n. 106
Westgate, Gloucester, 228
Westgate Bridge, Gloucester, 228
Westmorland, Earl of, 106
Weston-super-Mare, 255, 264, 392
Westwardmen, of Pill, 319
Wexford, 80, 396
Weymouth, 80
Whipp, William, schoolmaster to
SMV, 216
Wharfage duties, wharfage lease,
origin of duty and informal acqui-
sition by SMV, 71-2; government
investigation of in 1637, 64-5;
lease of in 1661 and increase in
duties, 73; lease of in 1712, 150;
negotiations and grant of new
lease in 1764, 152-3, 2413 resist-
ance to and question of legality,
163-4; Act of Parliament legal-
ising, 1807, 310 and n. 29; criti-
cisms of SMV’s part in, 246, 295,
300-2, 311; income from, 72, 74,
114, 280; history of in 19C. and
pressure on SMV to surrender,
310-13, 321; anxiety of SMV
about financial consequences of
surrender, 279; surrender of lease
1861, 313, 321; subsequent criti-
cisms of SMV’s part in, 310, 423,
429
Whitaker, Miss Doris, personal
assistant to Secretary of St.
Monica’s, 515 n. 8
Whitaker, Miss G. E., career with
SMV, 454-5; portrait of in the
Hall, 455; role during air-raids on
Hall and Almshouse, 459, 460
n. 118; and the Merchant Ventur-
ers’ Technical College, 482 n. 30,
484; and St. Monica’s, 514 n. 3,
515 n. 8; appreciation of W. W.
Ward by, 452 n. 51
Whitchurch, James, 163, 295 n. 54;
James Joseph, 548; Samuel, senior,
547; Samuel, Treasurer of SMV,
260, 548
612
White, Whyt, George, feoffee 1600,
19n. 27; Giles, feoffee 1561,18 and
n. 18; Thomas, feoffee 1600, 19 n.
27
White Hart Inn, Bristol, 29
White Lion Inn, 29, 160, 415 n. 56
Whitehead, Thomas, feoffee 1600,
19 n. 27; see also Dean, White-
head and Co.
Whiteladies Gate, Bristol, 187
Whiteladies Road, Bristol, 187, 188,
437
Whiteladies Spring, 414 n. 48
Whiteladies Turnpike, 186
Whitson, John, feoffee 1600, 19 n.
20, 23, 27, 30, 55, 275
itson Court, sugar house, 33 n.
32
Whittal, George Piercy, 552
Whitwill, Mark, junior, 564, 572
Wick, 460
Wicken Estate, 518 n. 26
Wigram, Sir Clive, 560 n. 9
Wilberforce, William, 138
Wilbraham, Mr., lawyer, 110 n. 55
Wilcox, Jack Eugene David, 564
Wilde, Oscar, 451 and n. 48
Wilkins, George, 19 n. 27; the Rev.
H. J., 519-20; the Rev. Richard,
235
William III, 197, 232, 234
William IV, 271, 409, 410
Williams, William, schoolmaster,
217; Mr., 161; Mrs., 204
Willoughby, Christopher, Treasurer
to SMV, 106, 148
Wills, Lt. Commander Alan Oliver,
531, 563, 571; E. D., 392 n. 61;
Frank Oliver, 562, 570; Sir Fred-
erick, 492; Frederick Anthony
Hamilton, see Dulverton, 2nd
baron; George Alfred, 446, 458,
541, 560; George Vernon Proctor,
561, 564, 569 and n. 2; Gilbert
Alan Hamilton, see Dulverton, Ist
Baron; Henry Herbert, 276, 446,
465, 513, 514, 515, 517, 545, 561;
Henry Overton, 1786, 92; Henry
Overton, 392 n. 61, 498; Sir John
Vernon, 564; Dame Mary Monica
Cunliffe, 513 and n. 2, 514 and n.
4, 515, 517; W. D., Chairman of
Marine Society, 358; W. H., 392
n. 61; W. Melville, 447, 561;
family, 384, 494, 513-14
Index
Wilson, Charles, 37; Renn Hamp-
den, 556; Mrs., 120
Wilstar, John Jacob de, survey of
Clifton by, 183 and n. 6; plans of
for Seamen’s Hospital, 199, 200
Wiltshire, 230, 373, 500, 514
Windmill, Clifton Down, building
of, 196 and n. 103; used for grind-
ing corn for poor, 208; used as
toolshed, 427. For its later history,
see Observatory
Windmill Hill, Clifton, 415
Windsor Castle, 269
Windsor Terrace, Clifton, 331
Wine, 2, 5 n. 15, 8 n. 23, 63, 66-7,
69, 87, 144, 285
Winford Orthopaedic Hospital for
Sick Children, 530, 541
Winnington, Laurence, with Sir
Ralph Sadleir, grants property of
gild of Mariners to feoffees of the
merchants, 17 and n. 22
Winterhalter, copies of portraits of
Victoria and Albert by, 276, 458
and n. 106, 530
Winterstoke, Lord, 492
Withy Bed, Clifton, 109, 184
Woad, 5 and nn. 15, 16, 6
Woburn Place, 342 n. 93
Wolf Rocks, 168
Woodward, Edward Hamilton
Everard, 559; Col. John Henry,
Treasurer SMV _ 1914-18, 556,
559; 573
Wool, John, 91
Wool oil, 5 and n. 15
Wootton and Dorton Estate, 518 n.
26
Worcester, 231
Worle, Somerset, 389
Worrall, Samuel, Clerk to SMV,
106-7, 108-9, 116, 120, 133 and
n. 47, 163, 185, 202, 203, 233,
334; Samuel, 417 n. 65, 431;
Worrall family, 329; Messrs.
Worrall, 343
Worrall Road, Clifton, 107
Wraxall, 119
Wraxall, Nathaniel, 126
Wrecks, law concerning, 222
Wrenmore, Somerset, 354 n. 189
Wrigley’s chewing gum, 462
Writing School, of SMV, see under
Society of Merchant Venturers:
School, for poor mariners’ children
Index
Wyld, John Hopton, 251; William
Hopton, 552
Wyndham House, Kingsdown, used
for primary department of Mer-
chant Venturers’ Technical Col-
lege, 478
Yalland, John, builder, 340, 341
Yarmouth, 128
Yarn, 135
Yate, Robert, 88, 131
Yeamans, Sir Robert, 87
613
York, 12, 25, 27, 57
York Buildings, 335, 467
York Place, 335
Younge, Yong, Richard, feoffee 1561
and 1600, 18 n. 23, 19; William,
feoffee 1561, 18 n. 23
Ypres, 537
Zante, 55, 56
Zealand, 42
Zig-zag Path, Clifton, 352, 4.74