TRADE AND GENTILITY
The popular imagination has always presented the City of London as
paved with gold; the popular tradition has always delighted to present
the rise of the humble village boy from the poor apprentice to the rich
merchant, Alderman, and Mayor. In London itself this tradition did not
exist, because it was known to be absurd. The honours open to the young
craftsman were those obtained by valour on the field of battle. I do
not think, however, that the traditional rise of the humble village
boy is more than two hundred years old. It began at a time when the
ancient connection of the City and the country had been severed, for
reasons which are treated in another place. There has always been a
perennial stream of immigration into the City; this is proved by the
ancient jealousy with which the people regarded the intrusion into
their trades of “foreigners,” meaning not only Flemings, French, and
people generally of other nations, but men from the country, who were
not freemen or members of any company. This stream consisted almost
entirely of sons of the country gentry, because the humbler kind could
only get away from their villages by running away. As regards the
former, their choice of a profession was limited; they might attach
themselves to the service of some great noble—how many younger sons
were thrown upon the world when Warwick fell? how many when Wolsey was
disgraced? They might follow the King on his wars—thus rose Owen Tudor,
whose own father was a simple gentleman, if he was so much, in the
service of the Bishop of Chester. They might obtain some place at Court
or in one of the King’s houses. Thus, in the sixteenth century, on a
feud arising between the Forsters and the Fenwicks of Northumberland,
one of the Forsters found it expedient to change his native air, which
had become dangerous. He fled south; he made the acquaintance of Henry
Carey, who was keeper of Hunsdon House, then a royal Palace, and was
appointed Yeoman—_i.e._ Head or Chief of one of the Departments; his
son became a Judge; his grandson Lord Chief Justice. Again, he might
enter a monastery—one of Owen Tudor’s sons entered the Benedictine
House of Westminster. He might remain in his own country as bailiff or
steward; he might become a lawyer—it would be interesting to learn how
the Inns of Court were recruited; or, lastly, he might go up to London
and be apprenticed to one of the great companies.
I have long been of opinion that the last line was far more common
than is generally understood. Until recently, however, I have not been
able to establish my theory that the connection between the country
and the City was close, continuous, and widespread; that the younger
sons were sent up to the City as they are now sent into the Army, for
a career considered both honourable and profitable. If this theory can
be maintained, it is quite obvious that the importance of London in the
eyes of the country must have been very much greater than is generally
understood: its political weight must have been much more than has
hitherto been allowed, and its dignity and the dignity of its chief
offices must be in a corresponding degree enhanced. It was not by men
who had been humble village boys that great offices in the City were
filled, but by men of gentility and of good connections. This theory,
if it is well founded, will also show why London has never created an
hereditary aristocracy of her own; why, in a word, London never became
a Venice or a Genoa. The leaders among the citizens always, according
to my view, were connected with brothers and cousins over the whole of
the country; and when the great nobles rode up to their town houses
with their following of hundreds, all gentlemen, they entered a City
containing their own people, their own cousins, living in Palaces equal
to their own; apparelled in the robes of authority and with the gold
chains of power and of dignity.
Thus, I find groups of families from this or that county—the
Fitzwarrens of Devon and Somerset with their cousins the Whittingtons
of Somerset and Gloucester; the Chicheles, Northampton; the Brembres,
Philpots, and Sevenokes from Kent; the Greshams, Bacons, Boleyns, and
Banhams from Norfolk; and this indicates not only that many country
families were connected with the City, but that there were groups of
families, cousins near or far, which habitually sent up their boys to
London. But more direct proofs are necessary to establish what, I feel
certain, was the case, that this connection was widespread and even
general; that a younger son of a gentle family, from the fourteenth
to the seventeenth century at least, regarded trade in the City as a
desirable and honourable profession. I do not think that this was the
case after the middle of the seventeenth century. One of the latest
instances, indeed, of the country gentleman’s son being sent up to town
and made an apprentice is that of Gibbon’s grandfather.
There are, however, many other facts which point in the same direction:—
1. The separation of the distributing and wholesale companies from the
crafts of the working Companies; the position of authority and power
held by the former; the jealousy with which apprentices were admitted
into their bodies; the honours bestowed upon their members by the
sovereign; the responsible offices entrusted to them—one, for instance,
was made Mayor of Bordeaux, another the representative of the King
in the Low Countries. These dignities were not open to mechanics and
persons whose fingers were “blue.”
2. The rapid increase in the fee required of the apprentice. It was at
first a few shillings. Then for shillings they read pounds. Next they
required a property qualification, upon which, however, they did not
long insist. In the time of James I. the fee had risen to £20; it was
afterwards raised to £100 and even to £500. What craftsman—what village
boy—what mechanic—could raise, think you, a fee of even £10—which means
in our money perhaps £300?
3. The practice in the craft companies of admitting two kinds of
apprentices—those who would be received into the trade as master, and
those as journeyman. In the latter case the boy was sometimes made
to swear that he would not attempt to set up as a master on his own
account; he could not, as a rule, hope to do so, for the same reason
that keeps a journeyman in his place to this day: the want of capital
and credit. However, the distinction between master and journeyman was
sharply drawn and jealously maintained. Yet the master must know his
trade, otherwise he could not superintend it. It is true that there
were small masters who worked with their own hands.
4. In _Remembrancia_ (1579-1664) there are notes on 119 Mayors,
Aldermen, Sheriffs, and City Officers. Of these the largest number are
sons of country gentlemen. Thus we have:
From the Country
Sons of Gentlemen 59
Born in London
Sons of City Merchants 16
From the Country
Apparently of poor
parents 5
Parentage not stated 39
——-
119
5. Another point is the very significant fact that the admiration
of the people was not bestowed, as we might expect, on the rich and
successful merchant, but upon the fighting man. The hero of the London
apprentice was not the Lord Mayor, nor one of the Aldermen, nor the
poor lad who became the rich trader, nor the merchant who owned ships
and lent money to kings; his hero was the London youth who went forth
to fight, and came home a knight.
I have before me a certain book of the year 1590, called _The Nine
Worthies of London_. You would expect to find Thomas à Becket,
Whittington, Chichele, Caxton, Gresham, among these worthies. You would
expect to find that stout old radical, William Longbeard, among them.
You would be quite wrong. Not one of these worthies was remembered.
Thomas à Becket, the protecting saint of London—their own saint—a
member, almost, of the Mercers’ Company, was completely forgotten. None
of the others did the people care to remember. They remembered, as I
have said, only those who had gone out to fight. One London ’prentice
had the honour of fighting for a whole hour with the Dauphin of France;
another was knighted on the field by Edward the Black Prince, and came
home to marry his master’s daughter—her name was Doll; a third slew a
wild boar in Poland; and so on.
There is additional proof that the greater number—by far the greater
number—of the citizens constituting the principal companies, together
with many of those representing the former kind of apprentice, were
gentlefolk—_armigeri_—belonging to what we should call county families.
[Illustration: THE KNIGHT
From the Ellesmere M.S. of Chaucer’s _Canterbury Tales_.]
In the Edition, or the Continuator, of Stow, published by “A. M.—H. D.,
and others,” in the year 1633, the arms of all the Mayors of London
from Henry Fitz Aylwin to that year are given. With the arms is added a
note of the origin and parentage of the Mayors, one by one.
Let me take the latter first. What do we find when we analyse these
returns? I divide the analysis into three heads. First, that of the
Mayors whose parents lived in the country, where they were born; next,
those who were born in London; thirdly, those who were born in other
towns.
There are 203 Mayors thus accounted for in 210 years. Re-elections and
obscurity of birth account for the missing seven years:—
1. Of those who were born in the country there are 156
2. Of those who were born in London there are 34
3. Of those who came from other towns there are 13.
Out of 203 citizens who achieved the position of Mayor, 156 came from
the country. These figures are very remarkable. Actually 77 per cent
of the citizens who rose to the highest honours were born in the
country. If the same proportion was observed among all the masters,
there were 77 per cent of those who were the merchant adventurers,
wholesale dealers, importers, exporters, and what we should now call
the heads of firms, capitalists, and employers of labour, in the City,
who were immigrants born in the country. I would not, however, insist
on the latter proportion, for the simple reason that the country lad
has generally shown more ability than the son of the wealthy townsman,
and this, not because he was born and bred in the country, but because
the son of the Alderman is prone to believe that wealth comes of its
own accord, not understanding his father’s early struggles, while the
country lad understands that Fortune helps those who help themselves.
If we make a large deduction on this ground, we may fairly admit that
fully 50 per cent of the merchants came from the country.
Look a little more closely into the accompaniments of this fact. What
is meant by coming from the country? A village of the fourteenth
century contained the Lord of the Manor, the Priest, and the tenantry,
hinds, or cultivators of the soil, with such craftsmen as were
necessary for agriculture. Now it was absolutely impossible for one
of the latter class to find the apprentice fee for a great company or
even the journeyman apprentice fees for a craft company. If he could,
none of the great companies would admit the son of a hind. And in the
craft companies there was always the greatest unwillingness among
the craftsmen of London to admit outsiders at all. The Priest, after
the fourteenth century, was presumably childless, the old custom of
marriage or concubinage being gradually repressed. The Lord of the
Manor remained. He knew that the City offered the chance of fortune
and rank; he knew that his neighbours, his cousins, his friends,
had sent their boys up to the City; he could learn from them how to
find a master for his boy, what fees he would pay, how to get him
introductions, a company, and a career.
But since a very small number of those yearly apprenticed could
rise to the City offices, we may assume that for every Mayor there
were hundreds of apprentices, and we may conclude with absolute
certainty that it was not an uncommon thing, but a well-recognised and
widely-spread practice, for country lads to be sent to London, and that
these country lads were sons of country gentlemen. And this properly
understood, we understand also why London never for a moment thought
of separating herself from the country, and why London, in the truest
sense of the word, was always the very heart of England.
If it be asked why these young fellows were always welcomed in
London, the answer is ready. First, they came to their relations as
the two sons of John Chichele came to their cousins, as Whittington
came to his. Next, the great City had then, as it has now, the custom
of devouring her children; it must always be recruited with fresh
blood; in his energy and strength, stimulated by his poverty and his
resolution and his ambition, the country lad easily rises above the
Londoner of the second generation, and in his turn produces boys who
lack their father’s stimulus, even when they inherit their father’s
strength; they cannot compete with the boy from the country.
[Illustration: COURT OF KING’S BENCH. TEMP. HENRY VI.
From an illumination of the fifteenth century.]
In London at this day, in every great town, in every little town,
even, the same rapid rise, the same decline and fall, of the middle
class goes on perpetually. The successful man has died; the sons throw
away or lose what their fathers gained. Look for them in the third
generation; they are gone; they are lost in the huge flood of the
unknown, the unfortunate, the incapable, the obscure. Perhaps after
many generations one may again emerge; he will be ignorant of the past,
he will begin a family anew—I please myself when I look down the City
lists with thinking that Robert Besaunt, Sheriff in 1195, was perhaps
my own ancestor: a theory for which there is no proof at all; the very
tradition of that descent, if it is a descent, has long been lost.
What has become of the three-and-twenty generations between him and
me? I know not; for six hundred years they have been unknown outside
the village, outside the town, where they were born, and the nameless
mounds that covered their bones have long since been levelled with the
grass around, like those of the descendants of Orgar the Proud, Henry
of London Stone, the Bukerels, the Hardels, the Haverels, and the
Buccointes.
There is, however, another point. With the parentage and origin of the
Mayors, there are presented, in this edition (see p. 219) of Stow, the
arms of every Mayor. The earlier shields, such as that of Fitz Aylwin,
we need not regard as authentic. After the thirteenth century, however,
there could be no tampering with things heraldic. All the Mayors bore
arms. Of course we know that in many cases there could be no doubt
about the family arms. Such names suggest themselves as Whittington,
Bullen, Chalton, Fielding, Cooke, Jocelyn, Hampton, Colet, Clopton,
Percival, Capel, Bradbury, and Gresham. Some of them have on their
shields the distinctive signs which mark the younger son. I am indebted
to my friend Mr. Loftie for information on this point.
Thus, in 1631, Whitmore carries a mullet and a crescent—he was
therefore the second son of a third son. Gore was a third son; Hacket
was a second son; Jocelyn was a third son; Gamage was a third son;
Mosely, the son of a third son; Anderson, son of a sixth son. All
these, therefore, without doubt belonged to country families. In some
cases, the arms were late, and were probably granted by the Heralds’
College. Among these are the arms of Cow, Warner, Hardy, Warren, Donne,
and Cotes. Others given in the same book are ancient, as those of
Calthorpe, Duckett, and Gore. In those days, we must remember, there
was the greatest jealousy over the right to bear arms. The Heralds’
Visitations continued into the seventeenth century. A man could no more
assume a coat of arms than he could—or can now—assume a peerage.
I claim, therefore, to have proved the social position and
consideration of the merchants and wholesale traders and adventurers of
London. The aristocracy of the City were brothers and cousins to the
gentry—perhaps the lesser landed gentry of the country. Let that fact
be borne in mind all through our History until the last century, when,
as we have seen, a great change fell upon the City, which ceased for a
long time to have any connection with the country, or to receive any
lads from the country houses and the country gentry.
Then we naturally ask the question, “Does trade detract from honour?”
We have seen that the gentry kept London continually supplied with new
blood; this fact is in itself a sufficient answer. Let us consult a few
authorities on this point. The first is Camden. He is speaking of the
De la Poles:—
“William de la Pole, a merchant and mayor of Hull, was made a Baron of
the Exchequer. His son, Michael de la Pole, became Earl of Suffolk,
Knight of the Garter, and Lord Chancellor. His being a merchant,” says
Camden, “did not detract from his honour, for who knows not that even
our noblemen’s sons have been merchants? Nor will I deny that he was
nobly descended, though a merchant. Whence it follows that _mercatura
non derogat nobilitati_—trade is no abatement of honour.”
The Baron de Pollnitz testifies to the social position of English
merchants:—
“In England the nobility intermarry with traders’ daughters as they
do in France; however, a great distinction should be made betwixt the
one and the other. In England, merchants are sometimes sprung of the
greatest houses in the kingdom, and it has often happened that younger
branches of noble families, who have been brought up to trade, by the
right of succession, have become peers; and frequently it falls out
that when a lord espouses a merchant’s daughter, she may be his cousin,
or at least a lady of good family. Whereas in France, it is always the
daughter of a Roturier.”
Defoe, who always stood up for the honour of trade, says, “Trading is
so far from being inconsistent with a gentleman that in England trade
makes a gentleman; for, after a generation or two, the tradesman’s
children come to be as good gentlemen, statesmen, parliament men,
judges, bishops, and noblemen as those of the highest birth and the
most ancient families.” Swift says, “The power which used to follow
land has gone over to money.” Johnson says, “An English merchant is a
new species of gentleman.” Harrison says, “Citizens often change with
gentlemen as gentlemen do with them.”
If, however, the country gentry sent their sons up to London, there to
be apprenticed, there to become wholesale merchants and adventurers,
the common proposition is equally true that the successful merchant
or his children retired from London into the country, and carried on
a cadet branch of the old house or founded a line of new gentry. This
practice was in use as far back as the twelfth century, when the family
of Gervase, the London merchant, became country gentry of Essex. The
practice has been continued, estates have changed hands over and over
again, the new purchasers being London merchants, or even, in these
latter days, London tradesmen. In the second generation they are
received into county society; in the third their origin is forgotten,
or no longer talked about.
It would be a work of great interest to follow the family history of
those who left London, and became owners of manors, parks, and country
houses. But it would carry me too far, nor could I attempt it, even had
I the time necessary, because the genealogies of the people are so full
of errors, intentional and otherwise, that there would be no certainty
as to the result. One would willingly learn, if one could, who are the
modern representatives of Gervase of Cornhill, Ansgar the Staller,
Leofwin the Portreeve, Orgar the Proud, the Haverels, the Bukerels,
the Farringdons, the Whittingtons, the Philpots, the Greshams, and
the later merchants. The descendants of some of the City houses can,
however, be traced. An imperfect list has been compiled for my use, as
follows:—
Sir William de la Pole, already mentioned, Knight of the Garter.
Alderman Sir Geoffrey Boleyn, Mayor 1457, ancestor of Queen Elizabeth,
Lord Nelson, and the Earl of Kimberley.
Alderman Loke, ancestor of John Locke, Lord Chancellor King, and the
Earl of Lovelace.
Sir Stephen Broun, grocer, twice Mayor, 1438, 1448, ancestor of Lord
Montague.
Robert Pakington and Alderman Barnham, ancestors of Earl Stanhope and
Sir J. S. Pakington.
Alderman Sir Baptist Hicks, ancestor of the Earl of Gainsborough, the
Marquis of Sligo, Admiral Lord Howe, Lord Byron, and Lord Raglan.
Sir William Holles, ancestor of the Earl of Clare.
Sir Edward Osborne, Mayor 1582, ancestor of the Duke of Leeds.
Thomas Legge, citizen and skinner of London, was twice Mayor thereof;
he married Elizabeth, one of the daughters of Thomas Beauchamp, Earl
of Warwick, which shows that even in those times the first nobility
thought it no dishonour to intermarry with merchants. This Thomas
Legge was direct ancestor of the Earl of Dartmouth.
Sir Richard Rich, ancestor of the Rich family, Earls of Warwick and
Holland.
Sir Josiah Child, ancestor of the Duke of Bedford, Earl Russell, and
the Duke of Beaufort.
Alderman Sir John Barnard, ancestor of Lord Palmerston.
Sir John Coventry, Mayor 1425, ancestor of the Earl of Coventry.
Sir Thomas Leigh, Mayor 1558, ancestor of Lord Leigh, the Earl of
Chatham, William Pitt, and Viscount Millman.
Alderman Bond, ancestor of the Dukes of Marlborough, Leeds, and
Berwick.
Sir Michael Dormer, Mayor 1541, ancestor of Lord Dormer.
Alderman Sir Rowland Hill, ancestor of Lord Chancellor Cowper and
William Cowper the poet.
Sir Ralph Warren, Mayor 1536, ancestor of Oliver Cromwell and John
Hampden.
Sir William Capell, Mayor 1503, ancestor of the Earl of Essex.
Alderman Thompson, ancestor of the Marquis of Bradford.
Alderman Heathcote, ancestor of Lord Abeland.
Alderman Coke, Alderman FitzWilliam, ancestors of the Marquess of
Salisbury, Lord Chancellor Bacon, and the Marquess of Worcester.
Lionel Cranfield, created Earl of Middlesex.
Alderman Bathurst, ancestor of Lord Chancellor Bathurst.
Alderman Herne, ancestor of the Earl of Clarendon.
Alderman Rythis, ancestor of General Lord Coke.
Alderman Bardham, ancestor of Sir Robert Walpole and Horace Walpole.
Alderman Beckford, ancestor of the Dukes of Hamilton and Newcastle.
Alderman Wall, ancestor of the Duke of Somerset.
Alderman Shorter, ancestor of the Marquis of Hertford.
John Coventry, Mayor 1425, ancestor of the Earl of Coventry.
E. de Bouverie, ancestor of Pleydell Bouverie.
Sir Robert Ducie, Mayor 1631, ancestor of Lord Ducie.
Paul Banning, Sheriff 1593, ancestor of Lord Banning.
Hugh Irwin, ancestor of Viscount Irwin.
Sir William Craven, Mayor 1610, ancestor of Earl Craven.
William Ward, goldsmith, ancestor of Lord Dudley and Ward.