Historic Towns

EDITED BY

EDWARD A. FREEMAN, D.C.L. & Rev. WILLIAM HUNT, M.A.

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BRISTOL

WILLIAM HUNT

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LONDON

LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO.
1887

All rights resi-r redPREFACE.

In the series to which this little book belongs, Bristol
represents the class of ancient English trading-towns;
and accordingly, while, as far as space would permit,
an attempt has been made to give some notice of all
matters that have had a marked effect on the history of
the town and city, that best illustrate the life of its
inhabitants at different periods, and above all that con-
nect it with the general affairs of the kingdom, special
stress has been laid on the story of its trade and
industry. In order to do this it has been needful to
treat some points of interest more slightly than they
may seem to deserve. Yet it is hoped that the reader
will, on the whole, gain a correct idea of the character
of the city’s history, and of the place that it has filled
in the life of the nation. As the plan of this series
does not admit of references except where absolutely
necessary, it is perhaps well to say here that no pains
have been spared in the matter of consulting original
authorities. Bristol manuscripts have an ill name,vi

Preface

and I have been shy of accepting much that only
comes from such sources as manuscript calendars,
other than the ‘Mayor’s Kalendar.’ From the time
of the Rowley forgeries, credulity and slovenliness
have overlaid the history of the city with an ever-
increasing mass of fiction. Two MSS., however, stand
on a wholly different footing from that of these dubious
compilations. It is hard to overrate the importance of
the Great and Little Red Books of the Corporation,
as illustrating the municipal, commercial, and social
history of an English town during the Middle Ages.
Some description of them is given by Miss L. Toulmin
Smith, in ‘ The Maire of Bristowe is Kalendar,’ by
Robert Ricart (Camden Soc. 1872). It is much to
be wished that the contents of these volumes may be
treated in the same manner as the ‘ Munimenta Gild-
hallae Londoniensis,’ and published in the Rolls series
of ‘ Chronicles and Memorials.’ My sincere thanks are
due to Mr. J. T. Lane, the Treasurer of the City, for
his courtesy in "giving me the opportunity of consulting
these MSS. at various times, to Mr. G. H. Pope, the
Treasurer of the Merchant Venturers, for showing me
the early records of the Society, and to Mr. F. B.
Girdlestone, the Manager of the Bristol Docks, for in-
formation on the present state of the trade of the city.

Among the modem works to which I am chiefly
indebted as regards the general history of Bristol
are, besides Miss Toulmin Smith’s excellent edition ofPreface

vii

Ricart’s ‘ Kalendar/ ‘ The History and Antiquities of
the City of Bristol/ by William Barrett. Bristol, 1789
—a book that must be used with caution, as it is largely
based on Chatterton’s forgeries ; ‘ Memoirs, Historical
and Topographical, of Bristol/ by the Rev. Samuel
Seyer, two vols. Bristol, 1823—noticed in my text
(p. 189) ; ‘Bristol Past and Present/ by J. F. Nicholls
and John Taylor, three vols. Bristol, 1881—the second
volume, the work of Mr. Taylor, which deals with the
ecclesiastical history of the city, is trustworthy and
valuable; and lastly, a pleasant little volume entitled
‘ A Book about Bristol/ by John Taylor. London,
1872. An admirable account of the Royalist siege has
lately been given by Mr. D. Hannay, in his ‘ Blake,’
one of the ‘ English Worthies’ series. London, 1886.
For the siege by the rebel army the reader will do well
to consult the ‘Life of the Great Lord Fairfax/ by
Clements Markham C.B. London, 1870. Both sieges
have been well described in two lectures by ‘ A Fellow
of Queen’s College, Oxford ’ (the late Mr. R. Robinson).
Bristol, 1868. Much information about the latter part
of the seventeenth century is to be gathered out of
‘ Edward Colston, his Life and Times/ by T. Garrard,
edited by S. G. Tovey. Bristol, 1852. A collection of
cuttings containing extracts from the City records, con-
tributed to Bristol newspapers chiefly by the late Mr.
Tovey, ‘ The Complete Guide/ by the Rev. G. Heath.
Bristol, 2nd. edit. 1797, and other like sources have beenviii

Preface

used in writing on the eighteenth century. My thanks
are due for help of various kinds to Alderman F. F. Fox,
Professor Lloyd Morgan of Bristol University College,
Mr. J. E. Jefferies, Mr. J. Taylor, Mr. A. S. Ellis, whose
knowledge of Bristol topography is sufficiently proved
by the maps he has kindly contributed to this little
book, and others. It is especially pleasant to me to be
able to refer to the counsel I have received from the
Rev. W. J. Loftie, the author of the c London ’ volume
in this series, and to the friendly criticism and valuable
help in arrangement, and much besides, that have un-
grudgingly been given me by Mr. G-. Saintsbury. I
should speak of the advantage I have gained from the
supervision of another friend, my old instructor, and
in this matter my fellow-worker, did not his name stand
on the cover of this book.CONTENTS.

CHAPTER I.

BEGINNINGS.

PAGH

Introductory—Origin of the Town—Topography—Earliest
Trade—Connexion with Ireland—The Slave Trade—An
Irish Invasion—Early Administration................1

CHAPTER II.

THE CASTLE.

Geoffrey of Coutances—Kobert of Gloucester—‘The Bristol
War ’—Robert FitzHarding—Colonisation of Dublin—John,
Lord of Bristol—The Jewry—The Barons’ War—Parliamen-
tary Representation—Growth of Population outside the
Walls—‘Old Market Street’—Monastic Institutions—In-
crease of the Area of the Town—Temple Fee—Redcliff	15

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT INSURRECTION.

Early Trade—Bristol Ships used in War—Early Charters—
Guilds—Crafts and their Guilds—The Commune—The
Merchant Guild—The Mayor—The Rent of the Town—
Growth of Privileges—Strife with the Lords of Berkeley
—The Great Insurrection—The Fall of Edward II. ,	. 42

aX

Contents

CHAPTER IY.

THE BLACK DEATH.

War with France—Bristol Ships—Wool Trade; the Staple—

The Black Death—A New Class of Journeymen—Disputes
in Crafts—Bristol a County—Government by an Oligarchy of
Capitalists—The Common Council—The Court of Aldermen
—Lollardy—The Fall of Richard II.	... 72

CHAPTER Y.

THE GREAT MERCHANTS.

Civil Tumults and Foreign Wars—William Canynges—The
Fellowship of Merchants—Yorkist Sympathies—The War of
the Roses—A Private War—An Appeal of Treason—The
Pious Deeds of the Merchants—Their Wealth—Their Muni-
cipal Pageants—Desire for Knowledge............91

CHAPTER VI.

A NEW WORLD.

Character of the Period—Religious Discord—Dissolution of
the Monasteries—Bristol an Episcopal See and a City—Sacri-
lege and Knavery—Protestant Martyrs—Visit of Queen
Elizabeth; Pageants and Plays—The Sweating Sickness
and Years of Scarcity—The Cabots—Discovery of North
America—Robert Thorne—Trade with the Canaries and
elsewhere—The Merchant Venturers—Warfare with Spain
—Colonisation of Newfoundland—Colonisation of New
England ....	...............114

CHAPTER VII.

CIVIL WAR AND TARTY STRIFE.

How the City was alienated from the King—Neutrality and
Decision—A Royalist Plot—Fo tifications—The Royalist
Siege—Bristol under Rupert—The Roundhead Siege—
Sectaries — West India Merchants — Petitioners and
Abhorrers—Surrender of the Charters—Revolution	.	.144Contents

xi

CHAPTER VIII.

ODDS AND ENDS.

Edward Colston—Trade in the Eighteenth Century—Privateers
—Extent and Aspect of the City—Manners and the Drama
—Newspapers—The Hotwells and Clifton—Methodism—
Literary awakening, Chatterton, Southey, and Coleridge . 167

CHAPTER IX.

POLITICS AND BIOTS.

War of American Independence—Burke’s Election for Bristol—
Instructions and Mandates to Members of Parliament—
Causes of Discontent at his Conduct—His Independence—

His Partial Secession from Parliament—Party Spirit and
Incendiarism—Irish Trade—Roman Catholic Relief—Burke
rejected by Bristol—Roman Catholic Emancipation and
Parliamentary Reform—Some Eighteenth Century Riots—
Reform Riots.....................................190

CHAPTER X.

DECLINE AND REVIVAL.

Bristol Commerce at the End of the Last Century—Rule of
Self-Elective Oligarchies —Period of High Port Dues—
Municipal Reform Act and the Free Port Association—Ruin
of the West India Trade—Emancipation of the Slaves—
Equalisation of the Sugar Duties—Trans-Atlantic Steamships
—Purchase of the New Docks—Conclusion .... 207

INDEX

223MAPS.

Bristol in 1480	.

Bristol circ. 1066	.

Bristol circ. 1250

Plan showing the Lines for the Defence of
Bristol, 1643-5 .

Frontispiece
To face page 1
„	35

„	149o66.

mm

rmBRISTOL.

CHAPTER I.

BEGINNINGS.

Introductory—Origin of the town—Topography—Earliest trade—
Connexion with Ireland—The slave trade—An Irish invasion—
Early administration.

The place that Bristol holds in our national history is
one of peculiar importance, for it was for centuries the
greatest purely trading town in a country that owes its
greatness to its trade. For centuries it was second only
to London, and London at least from very early times
has been something more than a city of merchants.
Bristol history, indeed, does not begin until a period
that seems almost modern, when one thinks of the
relics that bear witness to the overthrow of Aquae Solis,
the forerunner of Bath, or of York, or Lincoln, or other
cities of Roman times. For Bristol has always been an
English town, and the first fact we know about it does
not take us further back than about the year 1000.
Yet it soon outstripped its elders, and it did so solely
by reason of its trade. Owing to the lateness of its
rise, it was never a shire-town, and so had none of2

Bristol

the pre-eminence attached to an administrative centre.
Although for a long period a castle of unusual strength
held the entrance to the peninsula on which it stood,
it was not like Gloucester or Warwick the head of a
feudal lordship. Few towns had better natural defences,
yet it was not like Pontefract a mere military post.
Nowhere else probably did ecclesiastical buildings stand
so thickly, yet it owed nothing to bishop or abbot. It
became great because the convenience and safety of its
river-harbour made it the chief port of western England,
and while its merchants traded with many countries,
its position as a western port has had a special influence
on its history. It is to its connexion with the Ostmen
of Ireland that its earliest rise should be referred, and
this connexion led to trade with the Scandinavian
countries. When our kings became lords of a vast
dominion south of the Loire, Bristol became a principal
depot for the wines of the South. As the place of
import for Irish wool, a chief seat of the production of
cloth, and the mart and place of export for the manu-
factures of the clothing districts of the West, it extended
its commerce to every country where English woollen
goods were worn. And when the existence of the New
World was revealed to Europe, Bristol seamen were
the earliest discoverers of North America, and Bristol
entered on a new era of prosperity, not, indeed, destined
to continue in all its fulness, though it is now, as there
is reason to believe, rapidly reviving.

The internal history of Bristol displays the rise of a
mere member of a royal manor to the position of a town
possessed of the fullest municipal rights, to the enjoy-
ment of the independence involved in the organisationBeginnings

3

of a county, and, finally, to the rank of a city ; it will
show us how a trading town contended with a formid-
able power stationed in its immediate neighbourhood,
and ready to take advantage of domestic discord, and
how it extended itself at the expense of a great feudal
house; how the universal tendency of our English
towns towards oligarchy was fiercely resisted, and how
at last it finally triumphed. An attempt will be made
to point out the share the town had in the greatest
social revolution of the middle ages, what the effects of
the Black Death were on its municipal government
and its industrial arrangements. And, lastly, the his-
tory of the town should exhibit some of the special
characteristics of its inhabitants, the munificence and
public spirit of its merchant-princes, the eagerness of
its people to receive new things whether in religion or
politics, and their independent and often lawless spirit.

The first recorded fact in the history of Bristol is
told us by two silver pennies, which belong to the reign
of .^Ethelred the Unready (978—1016). These coins
bear the inscription, ^ELFpERD ON BRIO., signifying
that they were struck by a moneyer named ^Elfwerd at
Bristol. This of course implies that Bristol was not
even then a perfectly new settlement. Of its earlier
history we know nothing. While traces of Roman
occupation are found in great abundance in the imme-
diate neighbourhood, there is nothing that tells us
of any town. An ingenious theory attributes to the
Church of St. Ewen, which once stood on the site of
the present council-house, a dedication to a Welsh St.
Howyn, and supposes that this marks that at the end
of the sixth century the conquered Welsh were living4

Bristol

here side by side with their conquerors. While, how-
ever, there is some reason for believing that the
dedication of the church is earlier than the Norman
Conquest, it certainly cannot point to the presence of a
Welsh settlement in the sixth century, and the entire
silence of the chroniclers goes far to prove that there
was no town of any importance here at the time when
our forefathers conquered the land, or, indeed, until
long afterwards. An undoubted fact is illustrated by
the dedication of a church to St. Werburgh. The old
town of Bristol stood wholly on the north of the Avon,
on land that, in common with Gloucestershire generally,
was colonised by the Hwiccan, a people that about 660
fell under the dominion of the Mercian king Wulfhere.
The site of Bristol, then, was in Mercia, and the town
was accordingly included in the Mercian diocese of
Worcester, founded about 680. And as Werburh (St.
Werburgh) was the daughter of Wulfhere, the church
dedicated to her, which in our own day has been re-
moved from its ancient place in Corn Street, points to
the reverence paid to a Mercian saint in this border
town of the Mercian kingdom and diocese. That it
argues that the town was in existence when Mercia
was an independent kingdom is, however, far more
than can safely be asserted, for the date of the dedication
is unknown. Men may, of course, have dwelt here long
before the town first appears in history. A hint of this
is perhaps to be found both in the name and in the
topography of the town. The oldest form of the name
is Bricgstow, and this most probably means the c stow ’
or fenced place of the bridge. Before the Norman
Conquest there could not have been many bridges inBeginnings

5

England, for while place-names ending in ‘ ford ’ are
plentiful, the compounds of ‘ bridge ’ are few. The
particular form in which 1 bridge ’ appears in Bricgstow
is said to be early, and so perhaps points to an early
settlement at the bridge end. Standing, then, upon the
Avon, Bristol, like Bridgnorth on the Severn, and like
Innsbruck on the Inn, was probably first known as the
place where her river was crossed by a bridge; it was
the point of communication between the two kingdoms
of Mercia and Wessex, if indeed either Bristol or its
bridge was in existence when Mercia and Wessex were
separate kingdoms, and afterwards between the two
shires of Gloucester and Somerset.

Now that the pennies of ^Elfwerd have brought us
to a fact and to an approximate date, it will be well to
attempt to picture what Bristol was like in the eleventh
century, when the town was already of sufficient impor-
tance to be the place of a mint. No city probably has
so completely changed its physical features, for of the
two rivers that then almost encircled it one, after having
been turned into anew channel, has disappeared for a
considerable extent of its course through the city, which
now stretches far beyond it, and the other has also been
made to run in an artificial channel, while its natural
course no.w serves the artificial purpose of a floating
harbour. Bristol both before and for a long period
after the Norman Conquest was a Gloucestershire town,
standing on a peninsula formed by the Avon and the
Frome, and, as the point of junction between the two
rivers is only twenty feet above the mean sea level, the
tides rose high and the town had a good natural harbour.

At this time the Frome, which bounded two large6

Bristol

sides of the peninsula, probably flowed as it does now in
a somewhat narrow valley between the Millstone Grit
of St. Michael’s Hill and the New Red Marls on which
the old town was built, until it reached the eastern
spur of the triangular hill of Trias Marls and Sand-
stones now called College Green. This spur turned the
stream abruptly in a south-easterly direction, and so it
flowed across Marsh Street and Back Street into the
Avon, near the old churchyard of St. Nicholas. In
early times, however, the river seems to have been
tapped about the end of Small Street to form a mill-
stream which ran through (old) Baldwin Street, drove
Baldwin’s Cross Mill, a name probably later than the
Conquest, and so flowed into the Avon. After the new
course of the Frome was dug in 1247-8, the old channel
was still marked; for in the fifteenth century Marsh
Street was also called Skadpulle Street, and a hundred
years later great pools apparently stood in the course
here indicated. The peninsula on which the town was
built was mainly occupied by a hill of New Red Marls,
of no great height, though somewhat steep, especially
towards the Avon. On every side Bristol, which was
then no doubt a walled town, was girt by her rivers,
save on the east, where a neck of land joined the
peninsula to the rest of Gloucestershire. Although
the space enclosed by the two rivers was not large, it
was not fully occupied. The extent of the town may
be described as marked by St. John’s Church on the
north, by St. Nicholas on the south, and on the west
by (old) Baldwin Street; while on the east it probably
ended before reaching St. Peter’s Church, covering in
all less than twenty acres. Approaching the town fromBeginnings

7

Somerset on the south-west, the traveller would pass
through the royal estate of Bedminster, then almost
equally divided between woods and arable lauds, he
would walk along a causeway leading to the steep red
cliff that was to give its name to the stately church of
St. Mary, and he would here be in the vill of Redcliff,
destined, under the great house of Berkeley, to rise to
wealth and importance, to be a bone of contention
between its feudal lords and the burgesses of Bristol,
and finally to be absorbed by the older town. Then, as
I venture to believe, he would find the road (now Red-
cliff Street) take him through a waste of marsh and
wood lying between two reaches of the Avon, until it
brought him to the head of a wooden bridge crossing
the river where the present bridge now stands. On
going over the bridge he would be at the foot of the
steep hill on which the ancient town was built.

On the summit of the hill four streets still meet
forming a carfax (quatre voies), and these divide the
four ancient quarters of the town—the parishes of St.
Mary-le-port, Trinity or Christ Church, St. Ewen’s and
All Saints. This division will help us to a theory as to
the growth of the town. Important as Bristol certainly
was in the eleventh century, its importance was of recent
date; for in Domesday Book it still appears as a member
of the royal manor of Barton, which lay to the east of
it. Probably then we should look for the oldest part
of the town in the quarter that ran above the river from
Barton to the bridge. And this is not mere guesswork ;
for in the twelfth century St. Peter’s Church, standing
then inside the town, for the castle was then built and
the eastern wall had disappeared, was said to be the8

Bristol

oldest church in Bristol. This church was probably
outside the first circuit of wall, for it did not give its
name to one of the quarters, and it may have been the
old parish church of Barton. Beyond it stretched the
neck of land soon to be occupied by the castle, and
beyond again lay the site of a later settlement, a village
and market (Old Market Street) that were to grow up
as dependencies of the castle. In the quarter of St.
Mary-le-port was the ancient market of the borough,
answering to the Cheap of London. The name of the
church of this ward seems simply to mark that it stood
within the ancient bounds of the town, for ‘ port ’ is
commonly used to signify a trading town, and is to be
connected with Lat. porta, not portus. Whether then
there was, as is generally asserted, some slip cut in the
steep bank of the river which made the part below the
church in any special way the port of Bristol, or no—
and, considering the steepness of the bank, the tradition
is doubtful—it is certain that the name St. Mary-le-port
has nothing to do with a port for shipping. Just out-
side this quarter, in the carfax, stood Trinity Church,
and here, as we learn from a deed of 1310, was the
common bell whose sound called the burgesses to as-
semble in their ‘ moots ’ for the transaction of business.
Over against it was the Church of St. Ewen, and hard
by All Hallows or All Saints. The earliest inhabited
part of Bristol, then, was perhaps that which lay above
the river stretching eastward from Barton, and here the
townsmen may have met for purposes of trade and
government, when possibly the northern and western
districts of the town, as it was at the time of the Con-
quest, still lay vacant. If this theory is correct, itBeginnings

9

implies a long and gradual growth of Bristol. The four
ways of the town still remain, and below that which
ran eastward, called Wine, or more correctly Wynch,
Street, for it held the wynch or pillory, lay the perhaps
yet older street of St. Mary-le-port.

Along these main streets the houses of the burgesses
stood closely side by side, built with timber frames
filled in with boards or plastered clay, one story in
height, and with sharply pitched roofs covered with tiles
or thatch. Behind each of these would run a garden
reaching back to a lane lined with the cottages of
the labouring class. Outside the walls on the north,
gardens probably sloped down to the Frome. On the
other side of the river lay the meadow land that, as
Lewin’s Mead, still preserves the name of some native
lord Leofwine; and above it rose the steep hill not
yet crowned with the chapel of St. Michael, and to the
east the bare ridge of Kingsdown. To the south-west,
between the old course of the Frome and the Avon,
stretched a wide marsh, bounded on the north by the
triangular hill, now College Green, which was then part
of the vill of Billeswick, and by the higher hill on which
perhaps even then stood a chapel to St. Brendan, the
Irish saint, whose name takes us back to a Christianity
older than the mission of St. Augustine, and whose
legendary voyage to the islands of the Blessed made
him a special object of veneration to seamen, and above
all to the seamen of Ireland, as they sailed beneath his
hill to anchor in Bristol river. Further off lay the royal
estate of Clifton, held in the time of Eadward the Con-
fessor by Sewin, the king’s reeve of Bristol, an office
of which something must be said presently.10

Bristol

Whatever and whenever the beginning of Bristol
may have been, it is evident that its importance in the
eleventh century was of recent growth. And it almost
certainly owed its rise to trade with the Northmen, or
Ostmen as they were called, of the towns on the eastern
and southern coasts of Ireland. Almost as soon as
England had a western trade—as soon, that is, as com-
merce was carried on with Ireland—Bristol appears in
our history as a trading mart, and trade with Ireland
meant trade with the Scandinavian colonists, who were
merchants as well as pirates. Passing by the records of
the wars between the Norwegians and Danes in Ireland,
we need only note that in the early part of the tenth cen-
tury these Ostmen, who had already taken Dublin, esta-
blished themselves in Waterford, and colonised or built
other towns on the coast. During the reign of Eadgar,
when the Danes and English lived at peace together in
England, the Ostmen of Ireland minted coins at Dublin
with the name of the English king, and immediately
after this period we find Bristol of sufficient commercial
importance to be the place of a mint. The connexion
between the two countries was indirectly strengthened
by the victory of Brian Borumha over the Ostmen at
Clontarf in 1014 ; for as it confined the invaders to their
towns on the coast, it probably increased their commer-
cial energy, and it certainly brought them under the
influence of Christianity. Accordingly we find Cnut’s
coins minted at Dublin, while many coins bearing his
name and the names of his sons declare themselves
struck at Bristol.

The first appearance of our town in written history
is also in connexion with Ireland. In the reign ofBeginnings

ii

Eadward the Confessor, Bristol was included in the
earldom of Swegen, the eldest son of Earl Godwine,
and when Godwine and his sons were outlawed by the
assembly held at London on September 29, 1051, it
chanced that Swegen had a ship lying in Bristol harbour.
He and his brother Harold fled thither, and so sailed
across to Ireland to take refuge with the King of Dublin.
In the trade of Bristol with the Ostmen the chief articles
of export were slaves, and it seems to have been on the
worst form of this traffic that the early prosperity of
the town was founded. Slavery was one of the primi-
tive institutions of our race, and men were lawfully
made slaves for many causes. After the introduction
of Christianity, however, manstealing, and the sale of
Christian and innocent persons out of the land, and
especially to heathen men, were strictly forbidden. In
spite of the laws on this subject, Bristol men kidnapped
or bought the best of the youth of both sexes wherever
they could. The slave was the most valuable chattel of
the time, and a man fetched the price of six oxen. In
the Bristol market, strings of young men and maidens
stood tied together waiting to be bought. The girls
were often kept for a while for immoral purposes, and
then when pregnant were sold and shipped off to Ireland
and other parts. Not even William the Conqueror was
able to put a stop to this scandalous traffic. At last
Wulfstan, the bishop of Worcester, took up the matter.
He spent sometimes two, and sometimes three months
at a time in the town, preaching there every Sunday, and
at last succeeded in bringing the merchants to a better
mind. They gave up their wicked trade, and one who
refused to be persuaded was, it is said, blinded and12

Bristol

driven from the town by the rest. This reformation,
however, did not last long.

Before the end of the century Irish ships entered the
Avon for other purposes than trade. Bristol took no
part in the resistance offered to the Norman Conqueror.
As merchants and seamen her inhabitants probably had
little interest in the fate of the land generally. Nor
is it likely that strangers would be looked upon with
the suspicion their presence excited in inland towns;
they must have been often seen in the Bristol streets
and have been welcomed as a source of wealth. At
the same time the townsmen showed that they could
defend themselves when occasion demanded. And this
they were called on to do in 1068, for in that year
three sons of Harold, who, like their father before

them,	had fled to Dublin, entered the Avon with a fleet
of fifty-two ships manned with Irish, and harried the
country. These Irish seamen of course knew Bristol
well, and no doubt longed to sack the town. They
made an attack upon it by land, but the townsmen re-
sisted them stoutly and beat them off. From Bristol

then,	as we are told, ‘ they could win nothing,’ so they
betook themselves to their ships again. They landed
in Somerset, and were met by an English force under a
leader whose descendants for many generations were
destined to be closely connected with Bristol. This
was Eadnoth, once King Harold’s ‘ staffer,’ or master
of horse, who fell in this battle, and whose son Harding
was alive when William of Malmesbury wrote his history
in the days of Henry II.

All, and it is but little, that we know of the ad-
ministration of the town before the Conquest comes toBeginnings

13

us from Domesday Book. The entry concerning Bristol
is under the heading 1 In Bertune at Bristou,’ and it
runs in English: ‘ This manor and Bristou pay the
King c & x marks of silver; the burgesses say'that
Bishop G[eoffrey of Coutances] has xxxiii marks of
silver and one mark of gold, besides the King’s ferm.’
Here, then, is a proof that Bristol was not a place of
ancient importance, for it is assessed along with the
king’s manor of Barton. It belonged to the crown.
Bristol histories have a great deal to say about certain
lords of the town before the Conquest, Aylward Snew
and his descendant Brihtric. Now Aylward Snew
is altogether too shadowy a personage to trouble our-
selves about, and though Brihtric certainly was a real
person, there is nothing that connects his name with
Bristol. The king was the lord of the town, as he was
of the manor of which it had once been a mere
appendage. Those times had now passed, and Bristol
comes before us as a borough; for we find the bur-
gesses acting together in making answer to the en-
quiries of the Domesday commissioners in 1086, and
this they did through a sworn jury chosen from among
themselves. Now a borough, though it often included
several townships or parishes, and sometimes other
divisions, also had a common organisation of somewhat
the same character as that of the hundred. In Bristol,
as elsewhere, the rights of the lord, both as regards
jurisdiction and revenue, were exercised by an officer
called in Latin prcepositus, the provost, and in English
gerefa, the reeve or steward. This reeve was nominally
appointed by the lord, though the office, like offices
generally at that time, had a tendency to become14

Bristol

hereditary. In some cases indeed the king’s reeves
held a position that was practically little different from
that held by feudal lords. The king’s reeve collected
the king’s dues from the tenants of the crown demesne
over which he was set, and paid them over to the
sheriff. The large sum paid to Bishop Geoffrey out of
the king’s dues has led to the idea that he held some
office in Bristol, and though he certainly was not earl
of Gloucestershire, nor the lord, nor the reeve of the
town, he may have had some of an earl’s rights there.
As the sum paid by the reeve to the crown was fixed
in amount, he had considerable opportunities of enrich-
ing himself. The borough court, or hundred court of
the town over which he presided, was composed of the
burgesses, the owners of land, shops, or houses, for
which they paid rent to the lord. They formed the
governing body of the town, acting with and under the
reeve. In the time of the Confessor the office of reeve
of Bristol was, as we have seen, held by Sewin. After
the Conquest, Harding, the son of Eadnoth, is supposed to
have held it. This may, or may not, be true. It is likely
enough, for we know that it was held by his younger
son, the famous Robert FitzHarding. If Harding held
it, he was just the kind of man to make it profitable.
He was rich and powerful, and William of Malmesbury
describes him as shrewd and litigious, ‘ more used to
whet his tongue in suits-at-law than to wield his
weapons in war.’ The burgesses of Bristol, however,
doubtless knew how to maintain their rights.15

CHAPTER II.

THE CASTLE.

Geoffrey of Coutances— Robert of Gloucester—‘ The Bristol war ’ —
Robert FitzHarding—Colonisation of Dublin—John, lord of
Bristol—The Jewry—The Barons’ war—Parliamentary represen-
tation—Growth of population outside the walls—‘ Old Market
Street ’—Monastic institutions—Increase of the area of the town
—Temple fee—Redcliff.

Geoffrey of Coutances, who in 1086 was in receipt of
almost a third of the revenue arising from the town,
was probably the builder of Bristol Castle. It stood
on the rising ground of the isthmus that connected the
town with the rest of Gloucestershire ; it held the only
road by which Bristol could be approached by land; it
commanded the harbour, and, having a river on either
side, was well furnished with water defences. What
the bishop’s castle was like we are not told, though it
is said to have been of exceeding strength in 1088.
To Geoffrey too must probably be attributed the build-
ing of the outer wall of the town, that started from the
Newgate at the north-west corner of the castle,, marked
by some houses in Castle Mill Street, still called ‘ under
Newgate,’ and that followed the course of the Frome to
the bridge at the end of Christmas Street. This wall
took in the district called the Pithay (pit-hedge, or well-
close), and all the land on the north between the oldi6

Bristol

wall and the Frome. It was broken by the Pithay gate
and bridge, tbe remains of which have been discovered
underground in Union Street, and probably later by a
bridge leading to St. James’s Priory. Geoffrey soon
found his fortifications useful, for he and his nephew
Robert of Mowbray joined the rebellion of the Norman
nobles against William Rufus, and his new castle formed
a splendid base for harrying the shires between which
it stood. Somerset was attacked by Robert of Mow-
bray, who, at the head of a force partly composed, no
doubt, of Bristol men, burnt and plundered Bath, and,
after doing more mischief of the same sort, was finally
foiled in an attack on Uchester. Meanwhile his ally
William of Eu marched on Gloucestershire, plundered
the king’s vill of Berkeley, and destroyed a little castle
that had been built there. There was probably a special
reason for this attack. Berkeley was not yet held by
the great house with which its name has so long been
connected; at this time it was farmed of the crown
by Roger of Berkeley, and as Roger was also reeve of
Barton, his jurisdiction must have reached up to the
walls of Bristol Castle, and so no doubt there were
causes of dispute between him and Bishop Geoffrey.
Both Robert of Mowbray and William of Eu brought
the abundant spoil they gathered into Bristol. The
rebellion was quelled, and its failure was to some extent
due to the loyalty of Bishop Wulfstan.

On the death of Geoffrey, in 1093, Bristol Castle was
placed in the keeping of Robert FitzHamon, one of the
few Norman lords who had been faithful to Rufus. He
appears also to have held Bristol of the king; for, besides
endowing the abbey he founded at Tewkesbury withThe Castle

i 7

St. Peter’s Church, he also gave it a tithe of the rents
of the town. The possession of Bristol as a place oi
arms and as a port must have considerably aided him
in the wars he carried on with the Welsh ; he conquered
Glamorgan and established himself at Cardiff. He died
of a wound he received while fighting for King Henry
against Duke Robert at Tinchebrai. In this battle the
Duke was taken prisoner, and was kept in Bristol and
in other castles until his death. At Robert Fitz-
Hamon’s death the king became guardian of his heiress
Mabel, and as Henry wanted her lands for his natural
son Robert of Caen, he brought about a marriage between
Robert and the heiress. Of this marriage the riming
chronicler Robert of Gloucester tells a famous story;
Mabel objected to marry a man who had no second
name; for, though regular surnames were not then used,
all men of good birth were known by a second name,
either marking their parentage or derived from some
lordship, and Mabel held that it would be shameful

Vor to abbe an louerd bote he adde an tuo name.

On this Henry, it is said, declared that his son,
who by the way had been born before he became king,
should be called ‘ Fitz le Roy.’ The lady-liked the name
well enough, but observed that it could not descend to
any son he might have, and the king then said that
he should be Earl of Gloucester. Robert accordingly
married Mabel, inherited her father’s possessions, and
was made earl in 1119. Under Robert the castle
became, on the whole, what it was up to its destruction
in the seventeenth century. Strong as Geoffrey's castle
was held to be, Robert built a fortress of a newer type.

ci8

Bristol

On a vast mound facing the eastern side of the town,
where the wall had probably been removed by Bishop
Geoffrey, at the summit of the ascent of the present
Castle Street, he raised a square keep, the largest in
the kingdom save the keeps of Colchester and the Tower
of London, and added to the east of it a chapel dedi-
cated to St. Martin. In the inner ward was a splendid
banqueting hall, of which the thirteenth-century en-
trance may yet be seen in Tower Street. Besides this,
the substructure of the chapel, and a large room in
Castle Street overhanging the southern ditch, there is
little now to be seen of this famous stronghold.

The weakness and imprudence of Stephen brought
a period of anarchy on England, in which for a time
Bristol played a conspicuous part. Before entering on
an account of what is called in one chronicle the
‘ Bristol war,’ the special chronicler of Stephen’s deeds
gives a description of the town as it was in his day.
He says that it was almost the richest city of the country,
for ships brought home and foreign merchandise into
it, that it stood in a specially fertile district, and had
the strongest site of any city in England. He com-
pares it with Brundisium, and says that it was built
on a tongue-shaped piece of land, which, after stretch-
ing for some length between two rivers, fell away at
their point of junction. This shows us that, though
part of the water of the Frome was diverted to form
the mill-stream that ran under the western wall of the
town, the main body of its water still flowed in its
natural course through the marsh. Twice in the
twenty-four hours the waters of both rivers were
turned back by a quick and strong tide, so that a deepThe Castle

19

harbour was made, such as would receive a thousand
ships, while the whole city seemed ‘ to float on the
waters and to be seated on their banks.’ He speaks
of the castle as standing on a mighty mound, well
fortified with towers, bastions, and machines of war,
and now garrisoned with a crowd ‘ of knights and
foot-soldiers, or rather with robbers and raiders,’ who
flocked from every shire and district ‘ to serve a rich
lord and to have the shelter of a strong fortress, and
who now worked their will in the most fertile part of
England.’

This lawless state of things seems to have begun
in May 1138, when the earl, who was then in Nor-
mandy, determined on maintaining the claim of his
sister, the empress (the Countess of Anjou), to the
throne, and sent his defiance to Stephen. In answer
Stephen seized his possessions. Bristol, however, was
too strong for the king, and the inhabitants of the
town, probably, as well as the garrison of the castle
made war on their neighbours. Hoping to repeat their
exploit of 1088, they suddenly attacked Bath. On this
occasion, however, they were unsuccessful; for the sol-
diers of Bishop Robert were ready for them, and their
leader was taken and thrown into a dungeon. In
another expedition the Bristol men caught the Bishop
of Bath, and by threatening him with the gallows com-
pelled him to release their leader and to ransom himself.
They harried the lands of the king’s party everywhere,
and seized on all the wealthy men they could catch,
blindfolded and gagged them, and so brought them into
Bristol, where they forced them by torture and starvation
to. pay all that they had as ransom. Nor did they take20

Bristol

these prisoners merely in open war; for some of them
took advantage of the state of the country to carry on
their old trade of kidnapping; they went into districts
that were at peace and caught men by craft, and if they
failed to pay the ransom demanded of them probably
shipped them off to Ireland, so that Bristol was called
i the stepmother of all England.’ Bath was threatened
with destruction, and Stephen collected an army to
save it from its dangerous neighbour. He laid siege to
Bristol Castle and called a council of war to decide on
operations. The story makes it plain that the town
was held to be impregnable, that her rivers were
sufficient to protect her on every side save where the
castle shut the only approach by land. Some advised
the king to place a dam across the Avon, for the Bristol
men made their expeditions mainly by water. Others
thought it would be better to blockade the town by
building fortifications to guard the two bridges over the
Avon and the Frome, while the king encamped before
the castle. This mention of these two bridges proves
that, though there may have been others, as that leading
from the Pithay, the two on the northern and southern
sides of the town were alone of any considerable size.
Among the barons of the king’s army, however, there
were many who were at heart on the earl’s side, and
they persuaded Stephen to raise the siege. He led his
army against the castles of Cary and Harptree, which
were held by allies of Earl Robert. These he soon
reduced; for, though the Bristol men were strong
enough to offer a formidable resistance behind their
walls, they did not venture to meet the king in the
open field. Stephen made a fatal mistake in leavingThe Castle

21

Bristol unsubdued, and it is not too much to say
that the troubles that came upon him and upon
England during the next sixteen years arose from it.
That he would have succeeded if he had persevered in
the siege there can be little doubt; for the defences of
Bristol could scarcely have been stronger than those of
Exeter, which he had taken three years before, and
when the stronghold of their great ally had fallen,
petty lords like those of Cary and Harptree would have
given no trouble. As it was, he left Earl Robert the
most important of all his possessions, a secure place of
arms, situated so as to enable him to maintain com-
munications with the districts where his chief strength
lay, with Gloucestershire, Herefordshire, and the military
settlements in Wales.

Earl Robert was not slow to take advantage of
the king’s mistake. In September 1139 he and the
empress landed in England, and soon afterwards
entered Bristol. Thither Stephen was brought as a
captive after the battle of Lincoln, in February 1141,
and was lodged in the castle. At first the king was
treated honourably, being in modem phrase put on his
parole; as, however, he was found beyond bounds one
night—at least so it is said—he was placed in fetters.
His imprisonment ended in the autumn, for he was ex-
changed for the earl, who in his turn had been taken
prisoner. Early in the next year, Geoffrey of Anjou
sent his son Henry to England at the request of his
uncle Robert, who felt that the lad’s presence would
strengthen his cause, for many people looked on him
as their future king. Henry, who was then nine years
old, was received by the earl at Bristol, and stayed22

Bristol

there four years* Earl Robert, who was himself a
scholar as well as a warrior, did not let him waste his
time; he provided a tutor for him, named Matthew,
who instructed him in book learning and in all noble
conduct such as became a boy of his rank. Matthew
was no doubt a good master; at all events his pupil
grew into a man of cultivated tastes, fond of reading
and of the conversation of learned men.

Earl Robert died in 1147, and was succeeded by
his son William. Other great men also died on both
sides, and when Henry, then duke of Normandy, came
to England a second time, in 1152, his final success was
certain. Meanwhile a power was being built up that
was destined for two hundred years to exercise con-
siderable influence on the history of Bristol. Robert
FitzHarding, a younger son of Harding, like his
grandfather, and probably his father before him, was the
reeve of the town. He was on the side of Earl Robert,
and must have been a Useful ally, for he was possessed
of immense wealth. He bought many estates, chiefly
from the earl, and among them were Billeswick, where
he raised the abbey of St. Augustine, now the cathedral,
and the manor of Bedminster, which included the vill
of Redcliff, already probably a town of some size, and
soon to become the rival of Bristol itself. He gave
much help to Henry, probably on his coming to England
for the second time, and was nobly rewarded for it.
Roger of Berkeley, heir of the Roger of whom we have
already heard, upheld the cause of Stephen, and was
accordingly dispossessed by Henry, who granted Berkeley
to Robert FitzHarding as a fief. Two marriages made
peace between the house of the ancient reeves and theThe Castle

23

new lord of Berkeley. Maurice, the son of Robert Fitz-
Harding, married Roger’s daughter, and Roger’s son
married Robert’s daughter. Roger lost Berkeley by the
first year of Henry’s reign, and the after history of his
house does not concern us.

During the reign of Henry II. the long connexion
between Bristol and Ireland assumed a new phase. As
early as 1155, Hadrian IY. granted Ireland to Henry,
and in 1166 an event happened which at last enabled
the king to take advantage of this grant. In that year
there landed at Bristol Dermod MacMurrough, king
of Leinster, who had been driven from his kingdom,
and who came seeking help from the English king.
Henry, who was then in Aquitaine, engaged in other
matters, gave Dermod license to raise a force among
his subjects; and with this Dermod returned to
Bristol. While he was there Earl Richard of Clare
(called Strongbow) came from his castle of Chepstow
to visit him, and promised to bring a force over to
Ireland to help him. An invasion of Ireland was made
by adventurers of Norman descent, who took Wex-
ford, Waterford, and Dublin. The Irish clergy agreed
that the troubles of their land were sent as a punish-
ment for keeping so many Englishmen in slavery—
an illustration of the increase of the Bristol slave-trade
during the anarchy, and ordered that they should all be
set free. Henry now interfered to prevent the establish-
ment of an independent Norman settlement, which
would have endangered the peace of England, and went
over to Ireland to receive the homage of his vassals, and
make their conquests his own. He spent the winter of
1171—1172 in Dublin, and while he was there he granted24

Bristol

a charter to the men of Bristol, giving them the city of
Dublin to inhabit c with all the liberties and free
customs which they have at Bristow and through my
whole land.*

Bristol men had probably helped in the work of
conquest, especially by supplying ships, and now they
received their reward; they were to colonise the chief
city of the conquered land. The colonists dwelt side by
side with the remainder of the Ostmen, who for a time
continued to some extent a separate people, assessed
with the English, but named separately. Dublin became
a city neither wholly Irish nor wholly English; its
citizens paid their taxes to the English exchequer, and
for a long time kept up a close connexion with Bristol.
Of this connexion the dedication of St. Werburgh’s church
in Dublin is an interesting illustration. The charters
granted by John to Dublin in 1192 and 1200 are based
upon, and refer to, a charter which, as we shall see in
the next chapter, he granted to his burgesses of Bristol
in 1188 ; and with reference to this it may be noted that
a special connexion between the two towns existed in the
person of John, at once Earl of Gloucester and Lord of
Ireland. A list of citizens of Dublin, apparently before
the end of the twelfth century, which has lately been
discovered and published, makes it doubtful whether any
large number of Bristol men availed themselves of the
right of colonisation. The £ to-names,’ to use the Lady
Mabel’s phrase, are in many cases descriptive of personal
appearance or circumstances. ‘ White,’ for example,
is common ; and in one case a man is evidently known as
‘ Outlaw.’ Trades too supply many designations, such
as Tailor, Lorimer, and Butcher. Of the large numberThe Castle

25

called from places, most of the colonists are marked
as natives of the West country; they are of Glou-
cester, Cardiff, and so on. Fourteen only are called
‘ de Bristoll.’ This, however, does not prove anything.
Many who have no local designation may have belonged
to Bristol families. Among these it is interesting to
mark 4 John, son of Jordan, son of (films or fitz) Hard-
ing ’; the form is worth notice, as showing how early
the famous name FitzHarding began to be used as
a real surname, something a little different from a 4 to-
name.’ Nor do even local designations such as have been
mentioned prove that the bearer was not a Bristol man ;
his father or his grandfather may have left Gloucester
or Cardiff, and become a burgess of Bristol. Henry’s
grant of Dublin was confirmed by John when he
was at Kildare, in 1185. In thinking of the Dublin
of the Bristol men, we need not trouble ourselves about
the native Irish; they were not dwellers in towns, and
when the adventurers took the city, they took it not
from them, but from the Ostmen. After the conquest,
the Irish dwelt, as they had probably dwelt before, in a
village or quarter of their own outside the city.

Chief among the causes of dispute between the
barons and the king was the right of the Crown to
place garrisons in all the castles in the kingdom. This
right, enforced whenever the royal administration was
vigorous, saved the country from feudal anarchy. It
was not exercised during the reign of Stephen, and
when Henry insisted on it, his action in this, as well as
in other measures for curbing the great feudatories,
offended them deeply. In 1173 the Norman lords,
here and on the other side of the Channel, rebelled26

Bristol

against him, and though William of Gloucester did not
openly join the rebels, he expelled the royal garrison
from Bristol, and held the castle on his own account.
The rapid success of Henry’s arms, however, decided
his course; he took the king’s side, and when the war
was over, again admitted a garrison into his castle.
As the earl had no son, each of his three daughters would
on his death have had a claim to a share in his posses-
sions, and the king would have had the right to dis-
pose of the hand of the one that was unmarried. He
therefore agreed that his daughter, Hawisia or Isabel,
should marry the king’s son, John, and made him
his heir. The earl died in 1183, and on his father’s
death John married Hawisia, and so inherited the
lordship of Bristol and the rest of the earl’s posses-
sions. After he became king, he divorced Hawisia on
the ground of nearness of blood, and made a more
splendid match, the source of many future troubles,
with Isabella of Angouleme. In 1214 the divorced
lady married Geoffrey Mandeville. In giving up her
inheritance to her new husband, John retained Bristol
with the castle and forests pertaining to it. The pos-
session of the castle was evidently a matter of first-
rate importance during the reign of Richard. In the
struggle that was carried on between John and Long-
champ, the chief justiciar, during Richard’s absence
from the kingdom, it is evident that the townsmen were
on John’s side, and, as we shall see in the next chapter,
they had good reason for upholding their lord. When
John heard of Richard’s captivity and openly rebelled,
they showed their sympathy with his cause by treat-
ing the king’s justices with disrespect when they cameThe Castle

2 7

down to Bristol to hold the assize, and were fined 100Z.
for their contempt. Many of John’s castles were re-
duced by the time the king landed, and among these
probably was Bristol; for in 1196 Bichard d’Orescuilz,
who was perhaps castellan for the Count of Mortain,
the title John bore before his accession, was fined 100s»
for the part he had taken in the siege.

Both as earl and as king, John was often at Bristol,
and the town was the scene of one of his most notable
acts of cruelty, the torture of a Jew. The coming of
the Jews into England was a consequence of the Norman
Conquest. It is, of course, impossible to prove that
there were no Jews here in earlier days, but there are
no signs of their presence, and it may safely be asserted
that they were not here in any number before that
time. Their position here was peculiar, for they were
outside the law of the land and of the Church. They
were the king’s chattels, under his protection, and
subject to his will. They had the monopoly of the
trade in money, for usury was forbidden to Christian
men. At any moment the king could demand what
he pleased of them, and as they carried on a risky
business they naturally charged enormous interest.
They lived wholly in towns, and everywhere occupied
a separate quarter. In Bristol the Jewry lay on the
Quay between Broad Street and Small Street ; it seems
probable that, after the second wall of defence was built,
this angle outside the old wall remained void, and that,
after they were settled there, their quarter was defended
by a prolongation of the second wall to meet the earlier
one. They had a synagogue in the substructure of
St. Giles’s Church, at the bottom of Small Street, so at28

Bristol

least men said in the fifteenth century, and as the
church appears to have been disused about the time of
their expulsion, the statement has some corrobora-
tion. The Jews were much hated for their extortion;
but while the king made them give him whatever
he demanded, he took care that no one else should
injure them, for they were the most profitable possession
of the Crown. Accordingly, in 1177, the burgesses of
Bristol were fined 80 marks for 1 Sturmis the usurer,’
a Jew whom they probably had slain. The name borne
by this usurer is noteworthy; for in 1286 a Robert
Sturmy of Bristol was by the king’s order protected
from the extortionate demands of a Jew : he was pro-
bably a relation of Sir John Sturmy, one of the admirals
of the fleet in 1314 and later, who may, therefore, have
belonged to the Bristol family of Sturmy, one of the fore-
most among the merchant houses of the town in the
fifteenth century. It is possible, though scarcely pro-
bable, that these men were of Jewish descent. There
was, however, in Bristol a place where the Jews might
be instructed in the Christian faith; this was a school
founded for that purpose by Robert FitzHarding, and
at first held in Checquer Hall, in Wine Street.

The protection our kings afforded the Jews was only
to enable them to meet the demands they made upon
them. In 1210 John ordered that all the Jews through-
out England should be seized and forced to ransom
themselves, and so took 66,000 marks from them. It is
evident that the Bristol Jewry was remarkably wealthy ;
for from one old man was demanded a sum of 10,000
marks, probably the amount levied on the community of
which he was the head. He refused to ransom himselfThe Castle

29

at such a price, and was tortured in vain. Then the king
ordered that one of his teeth should be struck out each
day until he paid it. The wretched man yielded on the
eighth day. One cause of the hatred that was felt against
the Jews was that they sold the lands that were mort-
gaged to them without giving the mortgagors time to
pay off their debts, a proceeding that was far more
startling and far more disastrous to the debtor in the
days of feudalism than it would be now. Roger of
Berkeley, the representative of the dispossessed house,
was in some fear lest he should be served in this way,
and paid a sum into the Exchequer in order that John
might make the Jews of Bristol and Gloucestershire,
to whom he had mortgaged his estates, leave him in
possession, and allow him to pay off his debt by yearly
instalments. It is worth notice that the Jews are here
spoken of, as is often the case when large transactions
are referred to, as trading, not as individuals, but as
communities, and that the Jewry of Bristol formed a
separate community from that of the shire. Sales of
land by the Jews are a matter of some importance in
our national history; for they enabled the great nobles
to extend their estates at the expense of the smaller
landowners, or, as we should call them, country gentry;
and as the manors that Roger wished to keep were
in Gloucestershire, it is quite possible that he feared
that they might go to the house that had already
displaced him at Berkeley. The rise of the gentry into
political importance in the thirteenth century caused
this grievance to be brought prominently forward, and
an attempt was made to remedy it in the famous
Parliament held at Oxford in 1258. For many reasons3°

Bristol

the presence of the Jews and the position they held
were felt to be a national grievance, and Edward I.
gratified all classes when he banished them from the
kingdom. The Bristol Jewry, in common with those
all through the kingdom, was cleared of its inhabitants
on July 27, 1290.

During the period of the Great Charter Bristol, with
the West country generally, upheld the royal cause. The
revenues of the town were let to EDgelard of Cigoine,
sheriff of Gloucestershire, and though the burgesses
probably had much to complain of, he doubtless kept
them in entire submission ; for he was. one of the mer-
cenaries who were the ministers of John’s despotism,
and his banishment was expressly stipulated for in the
Great Charter. The rapid success of Lewis of France,
in the summer of 1216, forced John for the mo-
ment to fall back on the West, in order to strengthen
his strongholds there, as a preparation for an attack on
his enemies in the Eastern counties. He spent a few
days at Bristol, put the castle in a state of defence, and
then passed into Dorset. On his death, the faithful-
ness of the West may be said to have secured the
succession of Henry III., by affording the royal party a
basis for its operations. Immediately after the coro-
nation of the young king at Gloucester, Hubert de
Burgh and the other lords who upheld his cause sum-
moned a council to meet at Bristol. At this council
arrangements were made for the government of the
kingdom, and for the first time the Great Charter was
reissued as a pledge of the line the king's ministers
would adopt. Henry paid two other visits to Bristol in
the early part of his reign. When he came for the thirdThe Castle

3i

time in 1224, the castle contained an illustrious prisoner,
his cousin Eleanor, daughter of Geoffrey of Brittany, and
sister of Arthur, who was kept here until her death,
because her descent from Henry II. made it possible
that at some time or other she might be used as a means
of disturbing the government. She was not kept in
close confinement, and minute instructions were given
to the reeves of the town as to the clothes which they
were ordered to provide for her and her attendants.

The general maladministration of the reign of Henry
III. at last led to an open war between the king and
the barons. In this quarrel, many in Bristol, as in most
other towns, took up the cause of the national party,
headed by Simon of Montfort, Earl of Leicester. The
war began in 1263. Edward, the king’s son, lay at
Windsor, with a fine body of troops, composed chiefly
of foreigners whom he had brought over from France.
On his marriage, the king had given him Bristol ‘ with
its appurtenances,’ the castle, the forest of Kingswood
and other lands. The possession of Bristol was now
again a matter of first-rate importance. The lords of
the Welsh Marches were on the side of Edward, who
was himself the strongest Marcher among them, so that
he was called the ‘ lord of Wales.’ On the other hand,
Llewelyn was, of course, at deadly war with them, the
Earl of Gloucester was a leader of the baronial party,
and Earl Simon had already reduced many of the castles
on the border, so that it seemed probable that Edward’s
allies would be hemmed in and crushed. He hoped to
use Bristol as a basis for attacking the Welsh and the
Earl of Gloucester, and for the relief of the Marchers.
Accordingly he led his troops thither, and stayed some32

Bristol

days in the castle, putting it in a state of defence.
While he was there, the townsmen came to blows with
his soldiers, and evidently had the better of the quarrel,
for he and his men shut themselves into the castle.
The townsmen cast off his authority, and were on the
point of besieging him when he retreated in haste, ap-
parently leaving a garrison behind him. After the
victory of the baronial party at Lewes, some of Edward’s
knights, who had taken refuge in Bristol Castle, made
an attempt to deliver him from his captivity at Wal-
lingford, and held the castle some time, until at last
they were authorised to surrender it by Edward himself.
The townsmen obtained a pardon from the king, who
was wholly in the earl’s power, for the part they had
taken in the war.

The battle of Lewes was followed by the Parliament
of 1265, to which every city and borough was called
on to send two men. Unfortunately the names of the
members have not been preserved, so we cannot say who
the first representatives of Bristol were. At the end of
May, Edward escaped and joined Gilbert of Gloucester
and the lords of his party in the Marches. An order
sent by Earl Simon, in the king’s name, bidding the
garrison of Bristol hold the castle against him, seems
to have come too late. Still, though they did not shut
their gates against Edward and his allies, they, like the
townsmen, were heart and soul for the earl. It was not
long before messengers from the earl came to Bristol,
praying his friends to send all the transport ships they
could muster without delay to Newport. He and his
men were caught in a trap. Edward and Earl Gilbert
had broken all the bridges across the Severn and theThe Castle

33

Wye, and lie was hemmed in by the line of the Severn :
all the ships had been removed from the river, and all
the fords deepened, so as to render them impracticable.
Cut off from communication with the main body of his
troops, which was with his son in the east of England,
and with the force he had growing weaker every day
for lack of rest and proper food, the earl was almost in
despair. If he could but get to Bristol, all might yet
be well. He occupied Newport, one of Earl Gilbert’s
towns, and there waited for help. The ships were
promptly sent, and the embarkation began. Suddenly
three galleys belonging to the Earl of Gloucester attacked
the transport fleet. Gilbert had heard of the attempt
that was being made in Bristol to rescue Earl Simon;
he filled three of his ships of war with armed men, and
he and Edward embarked with them. Eleven of the
Bristol ships, which were of course merely cargo vessels,
such as Earl Simon had asked for, were either sunk or
taken, Edward and the Earl of Gloucester landed, and
set their battle in array; Simon was forced across the
Usk, and broke the bridge behind him to prevent the
enemy pressing into Newport. The attempt of the
Bristol men to save him was in vain, and on August 4
he fell at Evesham. It is asserted, and though there
seems no direct evidence for the assertion it may, con-
sidering what happened in other cases, be received as
probable, that the town purchased peace by payment of
a heavy fine.

While the reign of Edward I. was a period of con-
siderable interest as regards the internal life of Bristol,
it affords few points of connexion between the history
of the town and that of the nation at large. The cap-

D34

Bristol

ture of Eleanor, tlie daughter of Earl Simon, when she
was on her voyage to meet her betrothed husband,
Llewelyn of Wales, is no great matter. Some events
bearing on the rise of parliamentary representation are
of more importance. Edward’s work in the formation
of Parliament as an assembly of estates, containing
members representing the principles of a national senate,
of class representation, and of local delegacy, was accom-
plished gradually. Both before and after it was brought
to perfection, Parliaments were held in which one or other
of these principles is not to be found. After the subju-
gation of Wales in 1284, the king spent his Christmas in
Bristol, and during his stay held an assembly described as
a ‘ special and particular, not a general Parliament,’ which
was probably in the nature of the solemn courts that in
older times used to be held at the three great festivals
of each year. Our parliamentary system was fully de-
veloped in the Parliament of 1295, and to this Bristol, in
common with other boroughs, sent two representatives.
The name of one of these burgesses, John Taverner, has
been preserved; he afterwards played a conspicuous part
in the greatest crisis in the history of his town.1 In
spite of this important advance in the growth of our
constitution, the maxim implied in the Confirmation of
the Charters, that all taxation must be by common
assent, was neither definitely laid down nor strictly

1 By comparing tlie returns of members with the list of mayors,
bailiffs, and the like, it is evident that, though the parliamentary
representatives were chosen from the richer burgesses, the class
which supplied the municipal offices, they were not, generally at
least, officers of the borough at the time of their election. John
Taverner, who sat for Bristol in the parliaments of 1296, 1298, and
1806, was a steward in 1293 and mayor in 1308, 1309, and 1313.'srtox, cir. izsoThe Castle

35

observed. In 1303, for example, the king, who made
his own bargains with the foreign merchants as to the
customs, called on Bristol and the other merchant towns
to send two members to an assembly consisting only of
merchants, and to them he proposed that they should
grant him the same customs that the foreigners had
agreed to pay. This, however, they refused. Again,
the next year, on his return from the Scotch war, he
exercised the old feudal right of taking a tallage from
the towns in his demesne, and on this account Bristol
paid 400Z. into the Exchequer.

The growth of the town during the two centuries
and a half that followed the building of the castle may
to some extent be illustrated by the ecclesiastical foun-
dations within and around the walls. Here, as elsewhere,
the Conquest ushered in an age of church-building.
Of the churches within the walls, St. Peter’s was re-
built by Robert FitzHamon, St. Ewen’s by Robert of
Gloucester, and St. Mary-le-port by his son William.
Trinity Church and All Saints were rebuilt in the same
period, and other churches were raised, some in Norman
and some in later days. Norman masonry may be seen
in the tower of St. Peter’s, and massive cylindrical
piers in All Saints.

Although at the close of the thirteenth century
Bristol proper was still confined to a narrow area, new
settlements had been formed on every side of it. Some
of these evidently owed their origin to the monastic
foundations that now encircled the town, others rose
from other causes. Beginning at the east, the first
nucleus of a new suburb is to be found in the castle.
A settlement of considerable size grew up on the further36

Bristol

side of the castle in a kind of quadrilateral formed by
the Frome and a ditch. On the eastern reach of this
ditch was Lawford’s Gate. In spite of the general agree-
ment that Lawford is a corruption of hlaford or lord,
it is impossible to admit the lengthening of the first
syllable. What the name comes from is hard to say, and
it is with some hesitation that I venture to suggest that
it may be connected with law- (boundary) ditch. This
Norman village had its own market, the ‘ Old Market,’
and the spiritual wants of the people were provided for
by the church of SS. Philip and Jacob. The earliest
monastic house after the Conquest, the Benedictine
priory of St. James, was built by Robert of Gloucester
on the lower slope of Kingsdown; the west front, the
arcades, and the clerestory of the original church are
still preserved. A fair which in one form or other was
held until fifty years ago was granted to the monks, and
the memory of the priory farm is still preserved by the
name of the ‘ Barton.’ Round the priory a village grew
up, at first probably inhabited only by the dependents
of the house, who naturally used the monastic church.
In time, however, the population increased, and the
monks wished to forbid the laity the use of their high
altar, as happened at Dunster and other places. An
arrangement was therefore made by which the church
was divided, the parishioners had the western part, and
built a belfry-tower, which was to be used by both
parties in common, and the monks kept the eastern
part of the building for themselves, together with the
Lady chapel that Earl Robert is said to have built by
giving for the work every tenth stone of those he
brought from Caen to build the keep of his castle.The Castle

37

After the Dissolution the monastic part of the building
was removed; the western part, or parish c! urch, still
remains. Only a word can be said of the Dominican
friary founded about 1230 in Marshall Street, the road
leading from the castle up to the jousting field on Prior’s
Hill above St James’s, and thence on to Gloucester, or of
the Franciscans in Lewin’s Mead, or of the nunnery of St.
Mary Magdalene at the foot of St. Michael’s Hill, or of
the Carmelites, the site of whose house is now occupied
by Colston’s Hall, or of the hospital of the Bons Homines
built by Robert FitzHarding in his vill of Billeswick,
the chapel of which is now used as the mayor’s chapel.
Hard by, and just above the marsh to the north of the
Avon, stood Robert’s convent of Augustinian canons, the
present cathedral. And this noble foundation, of which
the Norman gateway and chapter-house still remain, must
have caused a considerable increase in the population
of the township in which it stood. Thus during the
thirteenth century new settlements were rising round
the wall of the town to the north of the Avon.

An enlargement of the walled area of Bristol on the
south was the result of a remarkable enterprise carried
out in the reign of Henry III. Hitherto the only
harbour was in the Avon, and the rapidity with which
the tide of the river ebbed often left vessels stranded
and strained. To remedy this, the townsmen bought
the eastern part of the marsh from St. Augustine’s
Abbey, and cut a new and wide channel for the Frome
straight through it, making the present course of the
river. They filled up the old channel and completed
the work which gave them a good harbour and quay, in
1248, at a cost of 5,0001.—a large sum of money in38

Bristol

those days. By this alteration Billeswick was more
completely cut off from the town than it had been by
the mill-stream and the half-empty and narrow channel
of the river, and the monks of St. Augustine’s being un-
willing to allow their tenants, whose houses were now
probably lying thickly about the precincts, to use their
church, built St. Augustine’s the Less for their accom-
modation. The digging of the harbour was followed by
the building of a new wall along the quay and across
the middle of the marsh, almost on the line of King
Street, which added a considerable district to the area
of the town. This was soon filled with houses, and the
next few years must have been a busy time for the
builders. Nor must their activity be measured only
by the increase of the town. Most of the houses were
still built of wood, and consequently fires were frequent.
Three of these, recorded by the Tewkesbury chronicler,
must have been serious. In 1200 we have the simple
entry ‘ Bristol was burnt’; the year 1237 was probably
more disastrous, for it was marked by two fires, so that
‘ a great part of the town lay in ashes.’ Of course the
loss was more easily repaired than it could have been in
the case of stone buildings; still it must have been
heavy, and these entries increase one’s idea of the
wealth and energy of men who so soon afterwards
carried out vast undertakings.

Another of these undertakings, the building of the
new bridge, yet remains to be spoken of. The increase
of population outside the walls on the northern side of
the Avon is of less importance to the history of the town
than its relations with the district to the south of the
river, with part of the old manor of Bedminster, whichThe Castle

39

formed one of the possessions of Robert of Gloucester.
The part of the manor that concerns us included the
marshy land between the two reaches of the Avon,
together with the red cliff and its immediate neighbour-
hood. The eastern half of this district was given by
Earl Robert to the Knights Templars, and was therefore
called Temple fee; it extended over the whole of the
present parish of Temple. The church of the parish that
was thus formed was dedicated to the Holy Cross of the
Temple, and was originally an oval building. On the
suppression of the Order in the reign of Edward II.
Temple fee was granted to the Hospitallers or Knights
of St. John, who had their sanctuary there, and a market
held every week at Stallage Cross, in the four ways
formed by Temple and Tucker Streets. This district
was soon built over, and was peopled by Bristol men;
some of the wealthiest merchants resided there, and it
became the home of the Weavers’ craft. On the west
of Temple fee lay another member of Bedminster manor,
Redcliff, with the parish of St. Thomas’s, which followed
its fortunes. This district was sold by the earl to
Robert FitzHarding. Probably even at that time there
was a town of considerable size on or about the cliff, and
it seems to have thriven wonderfully under the care of
its new lords. The feudal splendours of Berkeley must
not make us forget the burgher character of Harding
and his more famous son. . The early lords of Berkeley
well knew how to increase their wealth by commerce.
Under them Redcliff received the same privileges as its
neighbour Bristol; until 1247 there was no quay in
Bristol that served so well for trade as their broad quay
on Redcliff Back; they claimed the river as part of their40

Bristol

lordship, and their own commerce and the profits they
derived from the commerce of their tenants must have
brought them great wealth. They were represented by
their own reeves, and had their own courts, market, and
fair. The wealth of these communities south of the Avon
maybe estimated by their contributions to the aid levied
by John in 1210; Redcliff paid 1000 marks, the same
amount as the contribution of Bristol, and Temple 500.

At the same time, by the end of the twelfth century,
Bristol had after a sort spread itself over both Temple
and Redcliff. Both alike were colonised by Bristol men,
who had no desire to forfeit their positions as burgesses of
their ancient borough or come under the jurisdiction of
a mesne lord because they lived on the other side of the
river. Nor did it seem as though they would have to
do so ; for John, in his charter of 1188, of which some-
thing will be said in the next chapter, with the assent
of Maurice of Berkeley, granted the privileges it con-
tained ‘ to his burgesses of Bristol dwelling within the
walls and without, as far as the boundary of the town/
viz. to mention one point, as far as Brightbow, some 600
yards south of Redcliff Church. By this charter, then,
Temple and Redcliff were reckoned in Bristol; the
inhabitants enjoyed all the same privileges and im-
munities from external jurisdiction as their co-burgesses
within the walls, and in 1240 they were commanded
by Henry III. to aid in making the new channel for
the Frome, as it was a work undertaken for the common
profit of the town. The union between what may now
be called Bristol to the north and to the south of the
Avon was furthered by the building of a stone bridge
across the river, which was carried out by all the bur-The Castle

41

gesses in common after the completion of the new
harbour. This union was by no means pleasing to the
lords of the southern district. An effort made by the
Templars to obtain the exemption of their tenants from
the taxes and courts of the town was defeated by royal
writ, and their successors appear on the whole to have
lived on good terms with the municipal authorities.
It was far otherwise with the lords of Berkeley; they
broke the weights of the Bristol burgesses in Redcliff,
as an infringement of their rights; they held their own
courts, kept their own prison, and were prepared to
maintain their jurisdiction to the utmost. Not long
probably after the bridge was finished the burgesses
enclosed the district between the two reaches of the
Avon, the larger part of Redcliff and Temple, with a
wall. One can scarcely help looking at the building of
the bridge as an epoch in Bristol history; it seems a
symbol and an assertion of the determination of the
burgesses to allow no external jurisdiction in what had
now become the southern quarter of their town. It was
followed by a fierce struggle with the lords of Berkeley,
which at one critical period seemed certain to end in
the defeat of the town. When, after more than a hundred
years from the completion of the bridge, the final victory
of the town came, it came in more triumphant guise
than the burgesses of the thirteenth century could have
hoped for.42

Bristol,

CHAPTER III.

THE GREAT INSURRECTION.

Early trade—Bristol ships used in war—Early charters—Guilds—
Crafts and their guilds—The commune—The merchant guild—
The mayor—The rent of the town—Growth of privileges—Strife
with the lords of Berkeley—The Great Insurrection—The fall of
Edward II.

Now that a short sketch has been given of the part
taken by Bristol in the affairs of the nation down to the
end of the thirteenth century, it seems time to turn to
some notices of its early government and trade. When
Bristol first appears, it is as part of the royal demesne,
and in conjunction, as we have seen, with the estate of
Barton; its presiding magistrate was the gerefa, the
reeve of the lord, who was in this case the king. The
town (apart from Redcliff) is described in the reign of
Edward I. as consisting of four wards, which have already
been noticed as marking an early division. If this
was so, each of these parishes would probably have some
separate arrangements for local administration, similar
to those existing in rural townships. By the date of
the Domesday Survey, and no doubt long before that
time, this little group of parishes had a single life, and
a unity of organisation, resting principally on the basis
of the common lordship under which they had grownThe Great Insurrection

43

up. It will moreover be observed that the inhabitants
of these parishes had by this time attained a unity of a
special kind ; they were described as burgesses. Origin-
ally only a part of the hundred of Barton, the town
had, for fiscal purposes, wholly taken the place of the
old rural district, and the burgesses make the return.
These burgesses are the householders, holding their
tenements, shops, houses, and gardens of the lord, and
paying their rents to his representative, the borough-
reeve. By 1086 a settled yearly amount was paid by
the reeve to the lord, as the farm or rent of the borough,
and after paying this sum the reeve was entitled to any
further profits. His administration, however, was not a
despotism ; it was controlled by the right of the towns-
men to take part in all that concerned themselves.
They had their own courts, presided over by the reeve,
but constituted by their attendance as tenants of the
lord, whom the reeve represented both in fiscal and
judicial matters. While they were not exempt from
the jurisdiction of the sheriff of Gloucestershire, they
had their own hustings or hundred court, where they
were the judges, held, at least after the Conquest, once
a week for the hearing of all suits, and a burh-gemot,
or court-leet, held twice or at first three times in a
year, for the view of frankpledge, or generally for police
purposes, where the reeve was the judge, and in this
court he would admit fresh tenants. The constitution
of the town then was manorial rather than municipal;
it was based on the principle of the hundred rather
than on that of the municipality. Nor was this system
changed by the Conquest, though the Normans probably
gave some distinctness to the idea of tenure as the44

Bristol

qualification of the burgesses, the free tenants of the
lord.

. Municipal organisation in Bristol was the conse-
quence of commercial activity. Her early trade with
Ireland in the time of the Ostmen, and the colonisation
of Dublin by Bristol tradesmen, have already been
noticed. In the twelfth century the trade with Ireland
included many exports besides slaves. Bristol had
become a mart for cloth, for much rough frieze was
manufactured in the neighbouring district, and a great
fair held on St. James’s day, at the back of the priory,
for the sale of cloth, leather, corn, and other articles of
merchandise, was attended by merchants both from
different parts of England and from foreign countries.
The Avon afforded the means of collection and distribu-
tion, and a casual notice of the time of Edward I. shows
that the river was largely used for internal navigation.
The Scandinavian trade, which rose probably through
the connexion of the town with Ireland, and was destined
to become a prominent feature in Bristol history, was
already important, and ships from Norway and other
foreign lands are spoken of as crowding the port. One
of the chief Bristol industries was soap-making; and
in a curious story told by Richard of Devizes, a French
Jew, who, according to the often-repeated fable, was
sending a boy to be crucified by the Jews of Winchester,
anxious to prevent his staying at any other town, warns
him that at Bristol every one was a soap-maker, an
occupation the French regarded with peculiar disgust.
Bristol soap is said to have been largely used in London.
In early days tanneries stood upon the banks of the
Avon as they do now. Here too was the great martThe Great Insurrection

45

for the fish of the Channel, and this was no small matter
when fish was largely eaten for religious reasons. The
town was one of the principal exchanges in the king-
dom, and had both a mint and a royal treasury. A new
commercial era began with the accession of Henry II.;
for his marriage with Eleanor of Aquitaine made
England the chief consumer of the wines of Southern
France. Bristol at once became the great depot of this
trade. No stranger was allowed to compete with its
burgesses by selling wine in the borough, except on
board his ship. The king kept cellars in the town, and
when they were empty bought of the merchants. The
importance of this trade has continued through the
whole course of the city’s history, In the middle of the
fourteenth century the Gascon merchants declared that
the harsh dealings they met with at both London
and Bristol would put a stop to the importation of
wine into England. It became the custom of the city
to make presents of wine to those who had deserved
well of her, to her representatives in Parliament and
others. This custom was brought to an end by the
Municipal Reform Act, and the wine of the Corporation
was sold in 1836.

Bristol, as we have seen, was a famous place for
shipping, and her ships were employed on more than one
occasion of general importance. Although as yet no
attempt had been made at naval organisation, Bristol
ships formed part of a fleet that achieved a notable
success in the twelfth century, and then her burgesses
seem to have been as troublesome to their companions
at sea as they were in early days to their neighbours on
land. Of any share that the town may have had in the46

Bristol

crusades of kings and princes nothing is known. Inde-
pendent expeditions against the unbelievers, however,
were continually made. One of these, a purely naval
crusade, was undertaken in 1147 by men of the burgher
class from Flanders, Germany, and, above all, from
England ; and the ships of Bristol, Hastings, and South-
ampton formed the principal part of one of the English
divisions of the fleet. The Crusaders attacked Lisbon,
which was then held by the Moors, and Alfonso of Por-
tugal proposed that they should remain and reduce the
city. Most of the fleet agreed to do so. William Calf and
his brother Ralph, men of great influence in the Bristol
and Southampton contingent, opposed this course:
their minds were set on booty, and they wanted to sail
on, and take any ships they met with along the coasts.
Their opposition nearly ruined the undertaking, and
was only overcome by a moving appeal from Hervey
Glanvill, the leader of the fleet. Now, as Calf was the
name of a family of Bristol merchants in the fourteenth
century, it is probable enough that these men, who are
said to have had a pirate spirit, and who evidently were
seamen of repute, belonged to our town. Lisbon was
invested, and at the moment of its fall fresh trouble
was caused by a mutiny that was stirred up by a Bristol
priest, for each ship carried its own chaplain. However,
the city was taken, and the success of these burgher-
seamen is contrasted by their contemporaries with the
failure of the crusade of the Emperor Conrad and Lewis
VII. For us it has a special interest from its connexion
with the long alliance between England and Portugal.
The first step towards the institution of an organised
naval system was taken at the close of the thirteenthThe Great Insurrection

4 7

century. The year 1294 was a critical period in the
reign of Edward I. Wales was in rebellion, war had
broken out with Scotland, French ships were ravaging
our coasts, and Philip IV. seemed about to accomplish
his great aim, the reduction of Edward’s Gascon domi-
nions. Accordingly the king formed a navy of three
squadrons named after Yarmouth, Portsmouth, and the
West. A rate was levied on maritime districts for the
defence of the coast, and the compulsory purchase of
ships and the impressment of men were enforced.
Bristol was one of the ports that contributed to the
Western squadron, which had the special charge of
guarding the Irish Channel. From this time notices
of the employment of her ships in the king’s service are
of frequent occurrence.

The growth of the commerce of Bristol, and the
relations between the town and Henry of Anjou before
he became king, afford special reasons for the charter it
received from him in the early part of his reign. By
this charter Bristol men and their merchandise were
made free of toll throughout the kingdom. This privilege,
which was also granted at different times to other
boroughs, was a great gain at a period when payments
were demanded whenever a bale of goods was taken
across a bridge or brought into another town. A
charter granted by John while Count of Mortain, pro-
bably in 1188, is of wider interest. It was granted, as
we have seen, to his burgesses within and without the
walls, in Redcliff and Temple fee, as well as in Bristol
proper. It protected the trade in wine, cloth, wool,
leather, and corn from the competition of strangers; it
freed the townsmen from the obligation of having their43

Bristol

corn ground in the lord’s mill, and it provides that no
burgess should be impleaded without the walls—all
Bristol cases were to be tried in Bristol itself, and not
by any external authority. All tenures were to be by
burgage, the counterpart of socage tenure in the
country. This meant that there was to be no more
tenure by villenage ; no man who held land or a house
was to be required to render any other service for it
except the payment of a small sum fixed once for all
for each tenement, which was called land-gable, and
which varied in amount according to the size and posi-
tion of the holding. In the ward of Trinity this rent
varied from 15\d. to 3f d., the ordinary sum; in the ward
of St. Mary-le-port the average was higher. Burgage
tenure, moreover, brought with it the right of devising
tenements so held, though wills of real estate were not
allowed generally. No burgess was to be called on to
accept the wager of battle unless accused of the death
of a stranger slain within the town. Instead of that
foreign custom, a townsman would henceforward main-
tain his right or clear himself by the old English
methods of compurgation and ordeal. One clause o
this charter demands longer comment; it runs—‘they
may have all their reasonable guilds as well or better
than they had them in the time of Robert and his son
William, Earls of Gloucester.’

These associations were a prominent feature in
English town life. They all had more or less of a
religious character; each had its patron saint and pro-
vided for the performance of certain services. In all
ancient guilds a common feast and much drinking to-
gether were important features, while, at the same time,The Great Inst erection	49

there were strict rules to ensure the observance of good
manners. These guilds acted somewhat like benefit
clubs and mutual insurance societies; they were the
means of teaching the people of our towns the lessons
of thrift and self-government, and the secret of living
pleasant. Guilds existed for various special objects.
In some the religious element was uppermost; others,
while retaining their religious character, were closely
connected with different crafts, and others again fulfilled
various functions along with religious and social duties.
While there does not appear to be any reason for be-
lieving that the guild system had any connexion with
the government of Bristol before the end of the twelfth
century, there can be no doubt that these institutions
existed here before the Conquest. The reference in
John’s charter to the days of Earl Robert and his son
seems to show that Robert of Gloucester pursued the
same policy as his father Henry I. in confirming national
usages. Amongst the most ancient of the English
guilds was the Guild of the Kalendars of Bristol. Be-
sides performing the ordinary guild functions of mutual
help, of visiting the sick and providing masses for the
dead, it undertook works of education and learning.
A guild of Kalendars existed in Exeter, and probably
in other English towns, certainly in many on the Con-
tinent. The guild-meetings are said to have been held
on the Kalends of each month. The earliest home of
the Bristol guild was in Trinity Church, and it was
moved thence to All Saints by Robert FitzHarding, who
gave it the charge of his school for Jewish converts.
When Henry III. was in Bristol in 1216, he and the
legate Gualo granted the guild a charter of confirmation

£50

Bristol

'in consideration of the ancient and kindly duties it
fulfilled.’ This fraternity, which, like most other guilds,
consisted of women as well as men, possessed consider-
able property. In the fifteenth century it maintained
a free library, and perhaps kept the records of the town.
It is not unlikely that its priests acted, when required,
as public clerks, or scribes.

Many guilds were connected in a peculiar manner
with the different handicrafts carried on in the town.
These are generally called Craft-guilds. The phrase is
misleading, for the terms craft and guild express two
distinct ideas: a craft or mistery was a particular trade
carried on by men who had knowledge of it; a guild
was a means of association based on certain acts of
religion and mutual help, performed at the common
cost, the money necessary for these and for all other
acts of the society being raised by a rate or gyld levied
on each of the members. Great as the differences are
in all respects between town life in England in the
middle ages and in modern times, the chief difference
lies in the change that has taken place in the condi-
tions of trade. Organisation and union have given way
to competition. In early times the men of the same
craft took common action to protect their common
interests, to prevent the burgher aristocracy from
oppressing them, to shut out external competition, to
ensure good work, and for other like purposes. In
order to enforce their rules and to gain the power of
holding common property, it was necessary that these
crafts should have a corporate existence, that each of
them should form some bond of association. This was
found in the guild system. Accordingly the trades prThe Great Insurrection

5i

crafts in each town either founded each for itself a
special guild, or joined one already in existence; in
some cases, though this was rare, a craft had more than
one guild. Guilds of this sort were not allowed without
special license, for although mere voluntary fraternities
could be formed without external sanction, yet when
craftsmen sought to regulate trade and hold property by
giving their craft the corporate existence attained by
the guild, it became necessary for them to obtain the
leave of the lord or other authorities of the town. This
was obtained by payment, and when a craft received
license to have its guild, as the Bristol crafts had in
the days of Earls Robert and William, it was able to
enforce its rules and claim protection for its property.
Chief among the rules of each craft was that no one
might exercise the trade it regulated unless he belonged
to its guild, and so came under its government. Besides
forming the incorporating bond which enabled their
members to regulate trade and to hold property in
common, the guilds of the craftsmen discharged religious
and social functions. All the crafts that were thus in-
guilded had their patron saints : all performed certain
religious acts expressive of their common life, such as
supplying a taper to burn before the image of their
patron ; many had their own chapels, which were often
built on to parish churches, and their own halls, where
they held their common feasts and carried on the
management of their trade. Intimately as the craft
and its guild were connected, it will be seen that they
were not the same. When in the time of Edward VI.
all guilds were suppressed, the crafts continued to exist
as incorporated societies: the bond which originally52

Bristol

gave them their corporate existence was broken, but
they did not lose that existence, because it had been
sanctioned by authority, and, in many cases, had been
made a matter of record in charters. In Bristol at least
twenty-six! crafts were thus inguilded, and there were,
besides these, other classes of workmen, such as the
Wine-hauliers and Quay-porters, which seem to have
had some kind of organisation, though they do not
appear to have obtained guilds.

The corporate life of the crafts was strengthened by
the custom, which prevailed here as in other towns, of
different trades having each its own district. The
Weavers here, as in London, Winchester, and other
places, the most powerful craft, had their home in
Temple fee. The patron of their guild was St. Katha-
rine, and their guild chapel, dedicated to her in 1299,
still stands against Temple Church ; their guild hall was
destroyed not long ago. The Tuckers or Fullers gave
their name to Tucker Street in the same district. Corn
Street must, one would imagine, have been the quarters
of the Cornesers, or corn-dealers. Christmas Street,
though known by that name as early as the fourteenth
century, was also called Knifesmith Street, after the
Cutlers; and the B ateliers had their shambles in c Boche-
rew ’ in the market, at the back of St. Mary-le-port.
So, too, though the Cooks do not seem to have had a
guild, their shops once gave the name of Cooks Row to
a street by the church of St. Nicholas; and here, and
in another row hard by, behind All Saints, the poorer
people of the town had their food dressed. The Bakers
had their hall adjoining the Dominican priory; the
patron of their guild was St. Clement, and the guildThe Great Insurrection

S3

held its services in its patron’s chapel in the church
of the friars. There the guild brethren offered lights
at the altar, and the cost of them was defrayed by
‘ Saint Clement’s money,’ a special contribution collected
by two officers called Waxmen, who are found in other
guilds also. The Tailors do not seem to have had a
guild until the reign of Richard II. Then two burgesses
founded and endowed a fraternity to meet in a chapel
in St. Ewen’s, to the honour of God and St. John the
Baptist, and this guild, being licensed by the king as a
corporation with power of self-government and of pur-
chasing land to a certain amount, became ‘ The Fraternity
of Tailors of Bristol of the Guild of St. John the Baptist.’
The Tailors’ craft was a rich one, for, as we shall see,
the clothing trade of the town was of no small import-
ance. An ancient Norman hall, of which some remains
are still to be seen in Small Street, was perhaps the hall
of one of the crafts. Besides these halls, the burgesses
had a common place of meeting in the Guildhall in
Broad Street. This implies that the government of the
town was just as closely connected with the guild system
as the various trades were that obtained license ‘ to have
their guilds,’ and this connexion appears to have arisen
from the peculiar position assumed by one, and that
the most powerful, association in the town, the merchant
guild. This guild, which has its counterparts in London,
Winchester, York, and elsewhere, is mentioned inci-
dentally as existing in Bristol in 1242. j

We have seen that the early government of Bristol
was founded on the administrative system of the hun-
dred ; that the ‘ lawful men ’ were the free tenants of the
lord, and that the borough moot had its root in, and was54

Bristol

virtually the same as, the court-leet of a manor. In the
twelfth century, however, our English towns adopted
the idea of the communa, which meant government by
a guild or commune, for Glanvill defines the one term
by the other. This form of government implied, speak-
ing generally, that the ferm or rent of the town was a
fixed sum and was farmed by the townsmen; that they
chose their own officers, who had charge of the judicial
and financial administration of the town, and that every
one who resided a year and a day within the bounds of
the borough became a burgess. The acquisition of these
privileges seems to imply the existence of some body
of burgesses to receive and exercise them. And such
a body was naturally found in the highest guild, the
merchant guild, which consisted of the representatives
of the ‘ burgenses ’ of the Domesday Survey* On the
establishment of the commune this body exercised the
privileges granted to the town, and became the com-
munal or governing guild.

The commune was a French conception, and accord-
ingly the chief magistrate of a town that was inguilded
bore the French title of Mayor. Now, in a copy of a
Bristol deed of which the original is lost, Robert Fitz-
Nichol signs as Mayor of Bristol as early as 1200.1 This
signature, however, does not appear to represent any
change of office; that came later. But at the same
time, if it is genuine, it tells us that the communal idea

J. F. Nicholls, Bristol and Glouc. Archaeol. Proc. 1879. It may
as well be noted here as anywhere else that ‘ fitz ’ does not imply
foreign descent, it is simply an equivalent of filius. It is possible
that Robert, the mayor, was called Nicholsson by his neighbours; it
would be pedantic for us to call him so, and I prefer to follow the
ordinary usage.The Great Insurrection

55

Was strong in Bristol, and it is quite possible that in
this and some other cases the townsmen may have
chosen their own reeve: for while in theory the office
of reeve was one of nomination, it may well be that in
fact the burgesses of a powerful borough elected theii
reeve at the borough moot, such election, of course, being
subject to the approval of the lord. It has been asserted
that when Henry III. held the council at Bristol aftei
his coronation of which a notice has already been given,
he granted a charter, that has since been lost, empower-
ing the town to choose a mayor and two provosts or
reeves. This is most unlikely, for if such a grant had
been made it would certainly have been quoted in suc-
ceeding charters of confirmation. From 1217 onwards,
however, we have uninterrupted lists of mayors, headed
by the name of Adam Page, who held office in that year,
and of, first, two provosts, then from 1267 two stewards,
and from 1311 two bailiffs. The changes in the title of
these officers does not seem to imply any change in the
character of their office; they were the mayor’s assis-
tants, and were chiefly concerned with the collection of
the ferm and other financial business. It seems pro-
bable, then, that during Henry’s visit there was some
recognition of a change that had gradually been growing
up. No single date can be assigned to the advance
from a reeve appointed by the lord to a mayor chosen
by the governing body of the town, to the establishment
of a commune in Bristol. The change was not violent,
though it was not the less important for its silent intro-
duction.

Besides the title of mayor, another sign of the
triumph of the communal idea in Bristol is to be found5$

Bristol

in the fact that in 1225 the ferm of the town was let
to the burgesses at 245/. a year. Although after this
date Bristol was sometimes leased to individuals, it was
usually rented by the burgesses, who from the reign of
Edward III. held it almost uninterruptedly by virtue
of several demises. From the marriage of Eleanor of
Castile to Edward I., Bristol, like Exeter in earlier
days, was generally assigned to the queen as part of her
marriage portion; she received the rent of the town,
and in almost every case leased it to the mayor and
commonalty. From this custom Bristol was called the
Queen’s Chamber, so when the town presented plate to
Anne Boleyn, the present was said to be made by her
‘ chamber,’ and this title was insisted on in a petition
sent to Henrietta Maria. The ferm of the town, which
was in lieu of rents, fines, and other profits of jurisdic-
tion, and of the revenue derived from fairs and markets,
amounted in the reign of Henry VI. to 160/.; it was
reduced by Ilichard III. and was finally redeemed in
the reign of Charles I.

The body, then, which exercised the right of choos-
ing the mayor and his assistants, and which we can
scarcely doubt farmed the rent of the town when it was
let to the townsmen, was the merchant guild. In some
towns, as at Winchester, the municipal privileges were
conferred. on the merchant guild by the terms of a
charter, and in these cases there is direct evidence of
the governing character of this guild. This is not the
case at Bristol, where the body receiving privileges of a
like nature is described as the burgesses. Nevertheless
the position held by the merchant guild of Bristol rests
on equally strong ground j for in an inquisition of theThe Great Insurrection

57

liberties of the town held 46 Ed ward III., and recorded
in the ‘ Great Red Book ’ in the Council-house, it is
declared that Bristol is an ancient borough (that is, part
of the ancient demesne of the Crown), with mayor,
bailiffs and a communa from time immemorial; that
the burgesses have a free merchant guild in the town
and its suburbs and all things pertaining to a merchant
guild, and that, in virtue of this guild, the mayor and
bailiffs, their predecessors and successors, are used to
take a certain fee from all admitted to the said guild
for their own use. Here we have a distinct declaration
of the oneness of the merchant guild with the governing
body of the town ; the mayor and bailiffs, sitting at the
court-leet for the admission of a new burgess, are the
officers of the guild admitting a new member into their
fraternity. While, then, the root of municipal life at
Bristol is to be looked for in the court-leet and the
holders of burgage tenements, its aspect was modified
by the gradual introduction of the communal system.
The change was not simply in idea. Exclusiveness is a
necessary characteristic of a guild, and there was no
machinery to enforce the admission of those who were
entitled to be members of the merchant guild, a defect
in the system which seems here, as well as elsewhere, to
have led to serious trouble.

The hall of the governing, or communal, guild was
the Guildhall of the town, and, like all other guilds, it
must have had its patron saint. As in the case of
London and of some other ancient cities, it is impos-
sible to say what the dedication of the Bristol merchant
guild was. There seems, however, some reason to believe
that it wras dedicated to St. George, or perhaps to St.53

Bristol

Clement and St. George, for adjoining the Guildhall
and forming part of the building was a chapel dedicated
to St. George. Moreover when, as we shall see later,
the government of the trade of Bristol was, in the
fifteenth century, under the control of a fellowship of
merchants, the Merchant Venturers of later days and
of our own time, this fellowship had a guild dedicated
to St. Clement and St. George, which met, according
to William Wyrcestre’s Itinerary, in Richard Spicer’s
chapel of St. George. This has universally been inter-
preted as the chapel adjoining the Guildhall. But the
records of the Merchant Venturers clearly state that the
meeting-place of the fellowship was in Spicer’s chapel
and hall on the Back, where the hall of that great mer-
chant’s house, now called Back Hall, is still to be seen.
The guild of the fellowship paid special honour to St.
Clement, and when in later times the merchants built
a hall for themselves, their chapel was dedicated to that
saint. St. George, then, or St. Clement and St. George,
may fairly be assumed to have been the patron or
patrons of the Bristol merchant guild.

A close connexion existed between the municipal
body and the guild of the Kalendars, 1 gilda seu fraria
communitatis cleri et populi Bristolliae.’ We have
already seen that the visit of Henry III. in 1216,
which certainly had some influence on the establish-
ment of the rights of the communal guild, was the
occasion of a charter to the Kalendars. Moreover the
mayor had the right of presenting the prior of the
guild, and in his oath on taking office pledged himself
to uphold the prior and his brethren, the priests of the
guild, who formed a college, dwelling together in theThe Great Insurrection

59

guild-house, built in 1333 on the north side of All Saints,
and having charge of the library, kept in the next cen-
tury in a room over part of the church. While the
guild of the Kalendars was totally distinct from the
merchant guild, it seems probable that the members of
the highest secular association in Bristol belonged also
to this brotherhood, the most ancient and honourable
religious guild in their town.

During the hundred and fifty years that followed
the mayoralty of Adam Page the privileges of the town
were greatly increased. In 1256 the burgesses were
allowed to choose a coToner to hear pleas of the Crown;
they were to have their liberties as the citizens of
London held theirs; and in 1300 they received a charter
to themselves and their successors, which thus recog-
nised their corporate succession. The grant of the
liberties enjoyed by one town to the burgesses of another
was common, and affords an interesting illustration of
the estimation in which the liberties of various towns
were held. No higher model could be set than London,
and there is evidence that Bristol men noted and
followed, as far as they were able, the customs of the
greater city. Some of the principal Bristol families
seem to have been closely connected with London.
There was a Henry le Walleys provost of Bristol in
1233, and a man of the same names mayor of London
six times between 1273 and 1298, and mayor of Bor-
deaux in 1275. Considering the close connexion be-
tween Bristol and Bordeaux, it is likely enough that
this mayor of London was either our Bristol provost
himself or his son. Frauncis, too, the name of a great
Bristol family, occurs several times in the municipal6o

Bristol

records of London, and John Adryan, mayor of Bristol
in 1249, may well have been the father of the John
Addrien who was mayor of London in 1270. Such
frequent coincidences of names can scarcely have been
accidental, and I am inclined to think that a connecting
link between the merchants of the two chief wine ports
of England is to be found in Bordeaux. Bristol was in
its turn taken as a model. Its connexion with Ireland
made its liberties the standard not only of those granted
to Dublin, but to four other Irish towns ; while the
charters of Lancaster, Chester, Hereford, Shrewsbury,
and ten other English boroughs all quote them in the
same way. The privileges of Bristol, however, were not
always beneficial to its neighbours; nor, though histori-
cally they are the forerunners of freedom, is it in the
nature of privileges that they should be so. As early as
1209 the burgesses of Marlborough paid for the king’s
protection against the Bristol men, who seem to have
used their charter of 1188 as a means of harassing
them ; and in 1346 the prior and convent of Henton
made such grievous complaint of the injuries they did
them at the Fair of Norton, by seizing their fish, victuals,
leather, and other things necessary for their use, and
keeping them until the brethren redeemed them, that
Edward III. threatened that, if the burgesses presumed
further on their freedom, he would take their liberties
into his own hand.

Although ever since the charter granted by John
and attested by Maurice of Berkeley, in 1188, Iledcliff
had been held to be part of the borough of Bristol, and
the burgesses dwelling there to- be burgesses of Bristol,
and therefore exempt from extraneous jurisdiction, theThe Great Insurrection

6i

lords of Berkeley still exercised jurisdiction in the vill,
and required their tenants to attend and plead in their
court. Before the new bridge was built, this does not
appear to have been held a matter of great moment;
for in 1227 the burgesses of Bristol paid money to the
Crown that Redcliff might be assessed as part of Somer-
set, and not with the borough: for this, however, there
may have been some temporary cause. The new bridge
must have knit the inhabitants on the two sides of the
river more closely together. From 1247 the Redcliff
men paid scot and lot with their fellow-burgesses, and
the Berkeley claims were felt to be an indignity. The
state of affairs was anomalous ; a royal borough possessed
of extensive privileges could not allow one part of itself
to be under the jurisdiction of a feudal lord. A struggle
between the borough and the lord was inevitable. It
broke out after Lord Thomas had made over Bedminster
to his son Maurice, for the young man was eager in
asserting his rights. While he and his father were
with the king in Scotland, in 1303, his officers appre-
hended a burgess named Richard Cornwall, on suspicion
of murder, and put him in their lord’s prison. Now some
forty years before a man who had been declared guilty
of theft in the lord of Berkeley’s court had been promptly
hanged, and that without trial by jury. So Cornwall’s
fellow-townsmen knew that his life was in danger, and,
besides, the liberties of their town were at stake. Accord-
ingly the mayor, Thomas Grove, did as the chief magis-
trate of every free city or borough would then have done
in such a case ; he rang the common bell. When the
Bristol men heard the first clang from Trinity Belfry,
we may be sure that they left their shops and ware-62

Bristol

houses, and came in hot haste to the Guildhall. Then,
led by the mayor, they crossed the bridge, broke the
lord’s gaol, delivered their fellow-townsman, and, ac-
cording to Sir Maurice, seized on a booty worth 500
marks.

Sir Maurice complained to the king that the bur-
gesses would not allow him to hold his court or his
market, and two judges were appointed to investigate
the case with a jury of the freeholders of Somerset. On
the other hand, petitions were sent up from Bristol,
showing that Lord Thomas and his son had ridden into
the town with horse and foot to compel the burgesses,
evidently those who lived in Bedcliff, to do suit at their
court, had dragged them from their houses, and thrown
them into a pit. When the Bristol women saw this,
they, it is said, came to the help of the men, and the
lords rode them down, so that many were hurt and
killed. It is probable that, as was often the case in
such documents, the matter is overstated. Certainly
the throwing into the pit, an injury not likely to have
been inflicted on a large number, applied especially to
a certain Adam the cheeseman, who, it may be supposed,
had refused a summons to the lord’s court, and the wives
and maidens of Bristol were perhaps no other than the
women of his household. Some time afterwards certain
Berkeley men quarrelled with one of the bailiffs of the
town about this riot, and wounded him so that he died.
At Tetbury fair, too, Lord Thomas and his son came
riding down with their men, and beat and even impri-
soned the burgesses who were at the fair. Again at
Dundry fair the like happened, and there Adam the
cheeseman had his legs broken, and William Randolf,The Great Insurrection

63

the mayor, and others were ill-treated. Moreover, Lord
Thomas had levied distress on certain ships in St.
Katharine’s pill (or creek), as though he had the lord-
ship of the Avon. A second commission was issued to
try these complaints, and a heavy fine was laid on the
Berkeley lords, which was commuted for service in
the Scottish wars. The dispute about jurisdiction,
however, remained unsettled, and added additional
gravity to the most serious crisis in the history of the
town.

This crisis, generally known as the Great Insur-
rection, was brought about by various causes. The
merchant guild, which was invested with the govern-
ment of the town, had a natural tendency to become
an exclusive body. This was not confined to Bristol,
for while diversity may be said to have been a law
of the growth of our boroughs, the tendency towards
oligarchical government was universal. There was no
means of compelling the ruling body to admit new
members into its fellowship, and it gradually dwindled
down to a narrow oligarchy. Besides, every strain
on the administrative system of a town caused the
management of affairs to fall more and more into the
hands of a select number, some body of councillors
who assisted the mayor and bailiffs. Such a body
naturally tried to usurp the right of electing the
magistrates and to become permanent and self-elective.
In Bristol, besides the difficulties arising from rapid
growth, the dispute with the Berkeley lords must have
encouraged the rise of such a body as this, and in 1312
fourteen of the greater men of the town had all the
government in their own hands. They were headed by64

Bristol

William Randolf, who had already been mayor three
times. On the other hand, they were opposed by the
commonalty, the townsmen at large, who declared that
all the burgesses were on the same footing, and ought
to have an equal share in the privileges of the town.
The commonalty was led by John Taverner, who had
then been mayor twice, and by other men of considera-
tion ; for, strong as the oligarchy was, it was not strong
enough always to carry its own men for the municipal
offices, and the elections here, as in London, were often
gained by the popular party. The Fourteen tried to
strengthen themselves by an alliance with the Court,
and by maintaining the authority of the constable of
the castle, while the commonalty was secretly favoured
by the lords who were in opposition to Edward II.
The crisis that followed afforded an opportunity to the
Berkeley lords for distressing the town, of which they
largely availed themselves.

The Bristol insurrection was closely connected with
the political troubles of the kingdom. In 1312 the
king, in defiance of the ordinances by which the barons
sought to restrain the power he misused, recalled
Gaveston from banishment, and in the following June
the favourite was put to death. War appeared immi-
nent, and the king sent to the constables of his castles,
Bristol being among them, warning them to keep them
safely. Moreover, he sent to the mayor of Bristol and
to other mayors, bidding them guard their towns, for
conspiracies were afoot, and worse was likely to happen.
Lord Badlesmere was made constable of Bristol Castle,
and the ferrn of the town was let to him; he had the
collection of the rents and customs, and the mayor andThe Great Insurrection

65

bailiffs were charged to assist him. The dispute between
the two parties in the town came to a head about
certain customs, and especially about the toll on fish.
This toll was levied on every cargo of fish brought into
the port and was paid to the constable ; it was an old
subject of dispute, and the amount had been fixed by a
writ of Edward I. The commonalty refused to pay this
toll, and would not allow Badlesmere to enter the town
to collect it or any other tax. On the other hand, the
Fourteen, faithful to their alliance with the royal
authority (one of their number had been constable in
1304), tried to enforce the toll, allied themselves with
Badlesmere, and upheld his claims. While the exact
order of the events that followed is somewhat uncertain,
they rest on the most trustworthy evidence.

The king appointed a commission to try the case,
and at its head was Lord Thomas of Berkeley. This
boded ill for the town. The judges met in the Guildhall,
and a jury was formed which, contrary to the privileges of
Bristol, included men who were not burgesses, and were
probably Gloucestershire men more or less under the
Berkeley influence. When the leaders of the commonalty
saw this, they went out, rang the common bell, and
addressed the people. ‘ The judges,’ they said, ‘ are
allied with our enemies; they have brought strangers
in to our prejudice, and so the rights of the town will
be lost for ever.’ On this the townsmen rose and
attacked the Guildhall. The court, which was held in
a large chamber (solarium) above the ground floor or
undercroft, broke up in confusion. In the panic several
tried to escape by the windows, fell into the street and
broke their limbs. A fierce fight took place, and twenty

F66

Bristol

men were killed ; the judges got away in safety. For
this riot eighty burgesses were indicted at the Glouces-
tershire assizes, and failing to appear were outlawed.
The king seized the liberties of the town, appointed
Badlesmere warden, and on May 2, 1313 deprived the
mayor and bailiffs of the return of writs. Meanwhile,
the Fourteen were chased from the town, and though
the king ordered that they should be restored, the
order was disregarded, their merchandise of wine, salt,
and the like was seized, and some royal officers were
imprisoned. The commonalty chose Taverner as mayor
with two bailiffs and a coroner, without presenting them
to take oath before the constable, as they were bound to
do. Further, they built a wall across Wine Street and
Peter Street, on the line of the present Dolphin Street,
long called Defence Lane, so as to shut out the castle,
and from this wall some shots were sent against the
castle garrison.

Early, probably, in 1314, the Earl of Gloucester
marched against Bristol with 20,000 men, the forces of
three shires, and demanded its surrender. Taverner
refused to open the gates: the earl had been warned
not to proceed to extremities, for all the troops that
could be raised were needed for the Scottish war, and
so he withdrew. There can be no doubt that the barons
used the insurrection as one among many means for em-
barrassing the king. The crushing defeat of Bannock-
burn on June 24, followed by a year of famine and
pestilence, prevented any decisive step against the town,
and Bristol remained defiant, an independent state
within the kingdom. Although in the spring of 1316
the government was in the hands of Thomas, Earl ofThe Great Insurrection

67

Lancaster, the chief of the baronial party, it was felt
necessary to bring the town to order. A fresh inquisi-
tion into the whole matter was held at Westminster on
March 30. Nicholas Rowberrow, John Hunt, and four
others of the popular party attended to answer for the
commonalty, and the case was decided against the town
by a jury of twenty-four Gloucestershire knights. Then
Aymer de Valence, Earl of Pembroke, the king’s cousin,
went down to Bristol and held a parley with the chiefs
of the commonalty. He told them that they had been
found guilty, and promised them that, if they would
submit and give up certain of the ringleaders (the
chronicler says ‘ homicidas,’ but the word should scarcely
be pressed), they should find the king merciful. These
terms by no means pleased the Bristol men. 1 We did
not begin the strife,’ they answered, ‘ and have done no
wrong to the king. Certain men tried to deprive us
of our rights, and we defended them, as reason was we
should. If, therefore, the king will take off the burdens
he has laid upon us, and will grant us life and limb,
chattels and tenements, then he shall be our lord and
we will do his will: if not, we will go on as we have
begun and will defend our liberties and privileges even
to the death.’ These haughty words remind one of the
speech made by the Mayor of London to Henry III. in
1260.	‘ Sire,’ said the mayor, ‘ so long as you will be

good king and lord to us, we will be faithful and true to
you.’ The quarrel between the two parties in London,
and its connexion with the dispute then existing be-
tween the king and the barons, present a curious
parallel to the Bristol insurrection. No wonder that the
words of the men of Bristol were held to be a dangerous68

Bristol

precedent; for, had they been largely adopted, and the
disorder of the times rendered this possible, England
would have been split up into a number of virtually
independent states.

The town was now besieged by a regular army led
by John Charlton the chamberlain, Roger Mortimer of
Chirk, Badlesmere, the contriver of the whole business
as he is called, and other lords. Meanwhile Maurice of
Berkeley employed his ships in cutting off the approach
by water. At first the townsmen stood firm, for another
Scottish expedition was talked of, and they hoped that
fhe barons would draw off their forces. They were mis-
taken : large stones thrown from the castle by machines
shook their walls and houses, and they were forced to
open their gates. Several burgesses were imprisoned,
and the town was delivered into the custody of Lord
Maurice as warden. In December peace was purchased
by a fine of 4,000 marks and the arrears of the customs.
Taverner and his son and another were banished, and
the liberties of the town were restored. This insurrec-
tion should be taken into account in estimating the
disorganisation of the reign of Edward II., and the utter
prostration of the royal authority during this portion
of it. Locally one would expect to find the fall of the
town followed by the re-establishment of the oligarchy
of the Fourteen. This hardly seems to have been the
case. Although Randolf re-entered the town as
mayor, the names of the mayors and bailiffs during the
next thirty years suggest a doubt as to the success of
the party. One or two of the bailiffs had certainly
belonged to it, but the mayoralty was generally held by
men who do not seem to have had any connexion with it.The Great Insurrection

69

At the same time, in spite of the apparent break-up of
the party of the Fourteen, the tendency to oligarchy was
as strong as ever, and the municipal offices were held by
the members of a few wealthy houses. Roger Turtle,
bearer of a name still deservedly honoured in Bristol,
though in a different connexion, was mayor ten times,
and Richard Tilly held the office four years in succes-
sion. Neither Turtles nor Tillys appear amongst the
Fourteen. Along with these two houses must be ranked
the Spicers, and Thomas Spicer belonged to the popular
party. Before long, as we shall see, the oligarchical
principle was firmly established. The insurrection,
however, was not without its effect on the future of the
town. Bristol had shown its importance, and the next
period in its history is marked by a measure that settled
the strife with the Berkeley lords and set the constitution
of the town on a new basis. For while the charter
that granted the town the rank and organisation of a
county was largely due to commercial and other causes,
it should certainly be connected with the Great
Insurrection.

As the insurrection had been favoured by the barons
of the opposition, the town was naturally on their
side; indeed Lancaster, the chief of the party, was
everywhere looked on as the champion of popular
liberty. Factions divided the barons, and when in
1321 Edward suddenly attacked his enemies, his victory
was complete. After the fall of Lancaster the other
lords were easily taken and were put to death. Two of
them, Henry Wylington and Henry de Montfort, fled
to Bristol, and were there hanged on April 5, 1322.
Popular gratitude attributed to them, as to Lancaster, a70

Bristol

kind of saintship, and more than a year after their execu**
tion miracles were said to be wrought at the gibbets
where their bodies still hung. The feeling of Bristol
was common to the whole kingdom, and the general dis-
content was aggravated by the folly of Edward and the
violence and avarice of the Despensers. The king made
an extraordinary number of grants to these favourites of
his, and among them gave the younger Despenser the
custody of the castle and the profits of the town of
Bristol. When the queen landed from France in 1326,
Edward fled to Wales, and sent the elder Despenser to
hold Bristol. The queen marched after him, came to
Berkeley, which she delivered to Lord Thomas, for his
father Maurice had died in prison at Wallingford, and
his castle had been given to the younger Despenser,
and then, having been joined by the lords of the marches
and others, she laid siege to Bristol town and castle on
October 26. The townsmen appear to have forced
Despenser to surrender, and the next day, in accord-
ance with their loudly expressed demand, he was drawn
outside the town and there put to death as a traitor.
On the same day the bishops and lords of the queen’s
party at Bristol, with the consent of the whole com-
monalty of the realm, chiefly expressed, we may sup-
pose, by the shouts of their armed followers and by the
commonalty of our town, elected the young Edward as
guardian of the kingdom. It seems, however, that a
party in the town, probably the oligarchical faction,
wished well to the king; for when he was brought to
the castle as a prisoner some of the burgesses and, it
is said, the friars of the Dominican convent plotted to
rescue him and convey him to the Continent. HearingThe Great Insurrection

71

this, his keepers removed him to Berkeley. As he rode
through the farmyards of the castle, Gournay, one of
his jailors, and the soldiers mocked him, and placed a
crown of twisted hay upon his head. So with many
insults they brought him to Berkeley Castle, and there
he was slain on September 21, 1327. Next day his
murderers sent to Bristol and Gloucester, and called
many abbots, knights, and burgesses to come out and
view the body of their victim, in order that they might
see that it bore no marks of violence.72

Bristol,

CHAPTER IV.

THE BLACK DEATH.

War with France—Bristol ships—Wool trade; the Staple—The Black
Death—Anew class of journeymen—Disputes in crafts—Bristol
a county—Government by an oligarchy of capitalists—The
Common Council—The Court of Aldermen—Lollardy—The fall
of Richard II.

Although Edward III. was personally extravagant and
selfish, a vain and ambitious soldier, his reign was a
period of extraordinary progress. The long war with
France, while it taxed the energies of the nation to
the utmost, drew out powers of which it had hitherto
been unconscious; and, though the country was well-
nigh ruined by the efforts demanded of it, these very
efforts gave it strength and the means of recovery. In
somewhat the same way the Black Death, the great
calamity of the Middle Ages, while it swept away an
already decaying social order, introduced new and more
vigorous institutions. Bristol had a full share in the
efforts of the nation, in the advance and in the reorgani-
sation which marked this period. Edward, who claimed
the throne of France in right of his mother, assumed
the arms of that kingdom in 1340, and with this we
may probably connect an order received in Bristol in
1349 that the common seal should be broken, because
it did not present the royal arms aright. The new sealThe Black Death

73

of 1350 has the ‘ Ship and Castle ’—a device not to be
referred to any special event—which first appeared as
the arms of the town in the thirteenth century, and the
ship’s standard displays the lilies of France quartered
with the royal arms of England.1

The French war led to the revival of the naval
arrangements made by Edward I. Bristol was again
called on to furnish the king with ships and men, and
the glorious victory of Sluys showed that Edward well
knew how to use them. To the fleet of 1346, the year
of the battle of Crecy and the siege of Calais, our town
contributed twenty-four ships and 608 men, London
twenty-five ships and 662 men, while Fowey sent forty-
seven ships, many of them evidently small, as they bore
only 770 men, and Yarmouth the extraordinary con-
tingent of forty-three ships, carrying 1905 men. During
the last years of the reign the English arms were
unsuccessful. In 1372 the Earl of Pembroke, who was
sent to Rochelle in order to relieve Gascony and Poitou,
was defeated at sea and taken prisoner by the Spaniards.
Rochelle was in danger of falling, and Edward accord-
ingly sent summonses for men throughout the whole
kingdom, and requisitioned ships in every port. About
the end of August he put to sea with the largest fleet,
so it is said, that any king of England had yet sailed
with.

The ships sent from Bristol were nearly all of less
than two hundred tons burden. Some of them carried
a captain and a constable, an officer who probably dis-
charged the duties of the modern boatswain, though of

1 The shield on the title-page of this volume presents the arms
of Bristol as they were figured in the sixteenth century.74

Bristol

far higher rank, as well as a master. The master and
constable received sixpence a day, and each of the
seamen threepence, besides a considerable extra ‘ reward.’
Many of the ships, as was then the custom, were named
after the churches of the town. Among them were the
‘ George,’ a barque of 90 tons, called after the saint in
whose honour Richard Spicer, who hpd been mayor the
year before, built his chapel; the c Trinity,’ and the
‘ Gracedieu,’ a ship of 200 tons, the property of Walter
Derby, wine merchant of St. Werburgh’s, a man of
wealth and influence, for he was five times mayor, and
after the death of Queen Philippa he and another burgess
farmed the town of the king. The ‘ Gracedieu ’ was
sailed by Walter Cogan as master: in some cases, how-
ever, the owner or part-owner sailed his own ship. The
fleet accomplished nothing; the wind was contrary, and
after beating about some time the king gave up the
expedition. More than two hundred of the ships put in
at Bordeaux for cargoes of wine, and among these, we
may be sure, were the ships of the Bristol merchants.
Although the merchants were thus not wholly losers by
this expedition, a heavy calamity soon befell them. In
June 1375 a year’s truce was signed between England,
France, and Castile, and, accordingly, a whole fleet of
ships from Bristol, Yarmouth, and Southampton sailed
for ; La Baye ’ (Bourgneuf Bay, in Brittany), for salt, in
which the Bristol merchants dealt largely. The ships
were laden and were about to set sail for England
when, on August 10, they were suddenly attacked by
Spanish galleys ; some were captured, others were
burnt. Among the Bristol ships that were thus lost
were Richard Spicer’s ‘ Gabriel,’ of 215 tons, and Derby’sThe Black Death

7 5

* Grracedieu.’ The merchants, whose losses amounted to
17,739Z., petitioned the king in Parliament to gain
them redress; but the period of victory was past, and
no amends were made for this treacherous attack.

In order to meet the expenses incurred by the war
and by his personal extravagance, Edward chiefly had
recourse to the customs on merchandise, which had now
taken the place of the old feudal taxes. The right to
levy customs had been the principal subject of dispute
between Edward I. and the Parliament, and the dispute
was quietly carried on, especially as regards the imposts
on the exportation of wool and cloth, during the greater
part of the reign of Edward III. The king sometimes
held assemblies of merchants, to which Bristol and
other mercantile towns sent representatives, and treated
with them about these imposts as his grandfather had
done. The effects of this policy were that certain towns
enjoyed a virtual monopoly of the trade; prices were
raised, and the trade was protected and encouraged by
special privileges.

A large part of the wealth of Bristol was derived
from its trade in wool and the manufacture of woollen
cloths. A striped woollen cloth, usually worn by the
lower class, and made here and in Somerset, was called
Bristol cotton, though it had no mixture of what we
now call ‘ cotton,’ which was not used in manufacture
until the seventeenth century. During the thirteenth
century large quantities of English wool were exported
to Flanders to be made into cloth. Foreign war, how-
ever, made it advisable to increase the home market for
wool, and in 1337 an effort was made to extend and
improve our woollen manufacture. The export of wool76

Bristol

was forbidden, though probably only for a short time,
people generally were not allowed to wear foreign
cloth, and leave was given for the employment of
foreign workmen. Shortly after this certain Bristol
burgesses, Thomas Blanket and others, set up looms in
their own houses, and employed weavers who were
evidently foreigners. Indignant at this proceeding, for
the stranger workmen, of course, did not belong to any
guild, the mayor and bailiffs fined Blanket and the rest,
and annoyed them in divers ways. Blanket appealed
to the king, and a writ was sent down commanding
that he and others should be allowed to employ such
men as they pleased. Whether, as is usually said, the
woollen stuff made by Blanket’s workmen was the
first appearance in England of the article that has made
his name a household word or no, we may at least believe
that the Bristol weaver and his goods derived their
common name from the same source, blanchette, a white
cloth. Thomas Blanket and his family grew in wealth
and honour, and the fact that he held office as bailiff in
1341 and 1342 shows that his fellow-burgesses learnt
to admire his enterprise. He evidently introduced
improvements that enabled the Bristol weavers to make
a better kind of cloth. Besides wool and woolfells, the
export trade of the kingdom principally consisted of
leather, lead, and tin, and in order to secure the customs
on these ‘ staple ’ commodities, the merchants dealing in
them were formed into a corporation, and certain towns
were fixed on as markets and places of exportation, where
the king’s dues might be more easily levied. This plan,
which was begun in 1313, was elaborated by Edward III.,
and, after some changes, a statute was passed in 1353,The Black Death

17

fixing on eleven places in England, of which Bristol was
one, on one in Wales, and three in Ireland, as staple
towns. In each of these towns the merchants trading
in staple goods were under the rule of their own officers,
the mayor and constable of the staple; in Bristol the
office of mayor of the staple was held by the mayor of
the town. During the whole of this period Bristol trade
grew and flourished. Heavy as the demands of the
king were, both for money and ships, the encouragement
he gave to trade generally, and especially to the trade
in woollen goods, the chief manufacture of the town,
and the energy of the merchants, balanced the sacrifices
they were called upon to make. A vast increase in the
wealth of the merchants, an entire revolution in the con-
ditions of industry, the rise of a distinct class of journey-
men, and a new importance given to capital in trade
were among the results of the extraordinary calamity
known as the Black Death.

The plague broke out in Bristol in the early part of
the summer, probably in the June of 1349. It was
brought to us from abroad, and so appeared first in our
seaport towns, and seems to have come from Southampton
to Bristol. Terrible as this visitation was generally, it
fell with peculiar weight on certain towns and districts.
Bristol suffered severely. The streets of the town were
very narrow; for, as in the busier parts the ground was
honeycombed with cellars for storing wine, salt, and
other merchandise, no vehicle was allowed to be used
in them. All goods were carried by porters or pack-
horses, a custom which continued at least to the end of
the seventeenth century, and which excited the wonder
of Samuel Pepys when he came hither. And the78

Bristol

streets were still further narrowed by the huge bulk-
heads and projecting stalls of shops, and by the entrances
into cellars. The less important streets were little better
than deep dark lanes. In all alike the refuse of the
dwellings on either side must have streamed down the
drain that ran through the middle of them. The one
redeeming feature in the sanitary condition of the
town was that it had an abundant supply of water
conveyed through conduits, for which it was largely
indebted to its monasteries. The three lepers’ hospitals
mentioned in the ‘ Monasticon ’ are perhaps significant
of the prevalence of a disease that was the invariable
attendant of dirt. When the plague came there was
little power of resistance. Few of those who were
seized with it lived as long as three days, many died
after one or even half a day’s sickness. ‘ The whole
strength of the town,’ we are told, ‘ perished,’ and grass
is said to have grown inches high in the principal
streets.

The immediate effect of this calamity was a large
influx of population from the country; agricultural
employments were deserted for the more profitable
labour of the craftsman, the dependent condition of the
villein for the privileges of the burgess. Up to this
time there had been no barrier between the position of
the master and that of the workman. Tradesmen paid
little in wages and often employed only a single journey-
man. When an apprentice’s period of service was out,
he generally worked for a short time for his master,
and then set up a business for himself; for, as trade was
then carried on, it did not require much capital to make
a beginning. While he was in service he felt that hisThe Black Death

79

future prosperity was involved in the prosperity of the
craft to which he and his master alike belonged. Now,
however, the immigration of men from the country to
take up trades gave rise to a distinct wage-earning
class with interests and objects apart from their em-
ployers. The sudden removal of about half the popula-
tion—for it is supposed that this number perished in
the country generally, and Bristol appears to have
suffered at least as much as other towns—threw great
wealth and great possibilities into the hands of the
survivors. Masters and workmen alike tried to take
advantage of the crisis. There is abundant evidence in
the ‘ Great Bed Book ’ of the corporation that the com-
paratively small number of master traders that survived
in Bristol, finding that they had what may almost be
called a monopoly, advanced their prices, and in many
cases gave short measure and produced inferior articles;
while, on their side, the workmen demanded higher
wages, and took every means they could to enforce
their claim. The craft rules were neglected; consider-
able disorganisation prevailed, and the ordinary means
of checking such a state of things, by the operation
of the guild system, proved insufficient to meet the
emergency, for many who now exercised crafts appear
not to have entered any guild.1

1 The effects produced by the Black Death on trade and on the
conditions of industry were not peculiar to Bristol. Similar changes
may be observed in other towns of the same character. As, how-
ever, Bristol has been chosen to represent the class of English
trading towns in this series, this volume seems the proper place to
give prominence to the subject. Nothing is stated here that does
not appear from documentary evidence to have taken place at
Bristol itself. At the same time these statements are made with8o

Bristol

The prosperity of the trade of the town and of the
crafts which directed and carried it on was at stake.
Accordingly, during the ^next fifty years the bond
between the crafts and the municipal authority was
drawn closer. The crafts received fresh trade ordinances
from the mayor and common council (in speaking of this
body it is necessary to anticipate what must shortly be
said about it), they had their ancient ordinances re-con-
firmed, and in some cases also the ordinances that regu-
lated their guilds. They thus obtained a new and distinct
declaration of their rules, and a pledge that those rules
would be enforced. Prices, weights and measures, and
the conditions of labour were regulated, and, above all,
the crafts gained the power of shutting out competition
by the recognition of the rule that every workman should
belong to the guild by which his craft was governed.
The masters of the crafts were sworn before the mayor
on their election, and parts were assigned to the crafts,
in some cases possibly for the first time, in the
festivities and ceremonies of the borough. While,
however, these closer relations between the crafts and
the authorities of the town were generally due to the dis-
organisation caused by the plague, they would certainly
have been formed in one shape or other even without
that determining cause. In this, indeed, as in much
else, the Black Death hastened and decided a change to
which there was a previous tendency. The ‘ Ordinances
for the Weavers,’ as given by William Colford, the re-
corder, in 1344 (Little Red Book), some of them ancient

the consciousness that the subject is full of difficulty, and that,
as in most other matters of history that axe best worth study, much
must remain a matter of opinion.The Blac-ic Death

8i

and others newly made, lay down that no machine was
to be kept in an upper room, or in a cottage, but in a
shop in the street in the sight of all; no one wTas to be
admitted into the craft unless he was a burgess ; and
each year the mayor was to summon all the Weavers
before him, and they were then to elect four aldermen,
who should be sworn to supervise all their craft, and to
present all breaches of the ordinances before the mayor.
Two or three other crafts received ordinances of less
importance about the same time. The Weavers’ordin-
ances seem to point to some disorders in the craft, which
we may safely connect with the importation of alien
workmen by Blanket. The guild system was not strong
enough to remedy them; the authorities of the town
interfered, and closer relations were established between
the craft and the municipal government. This was just
what was made common to all the crafts by the Black
Death. As trade increased and men saw the advantage
of employing a large amount of capital, and had the
money to do so, and as, on the other side, fresh workmen,
whether aliens or such as had escaped from villenage,
settled in a town, the craft rules were sure to be evaded.
The Weavers formed the wealthiest craft in Bristol;
their trade was the largest, and they had much money
at their command; no other craft offered the same in-
ducements to immigration, and theirs was therefore the
first to feel a change in the conditions of industry, which
does not appear to have touched the other crafts until
the revolution caused by the plague.

The separation of interests which arose between the
masters and the workmen appears in craft ordinances
on the subject of labour and wages. The workmen

G82

Bristol

were anxious to defend themselves from competition,
and to increase the demand for their labour. Accordingly
in 1461 an ordinance was made forbidding weavers
to employ their wives, daughters and maidens at the
loom, ‘ by the which many of the king’s liege people
likely syen to do the king service in his wars become
unoccupied.’ An ordinance of the next year contains
a curious notice of the habit of slave-dealing, which
appears from time to time in the history of the town.
It recites a complaint laid before the mayor, by the
journeymen, that certain weavers ‘ brought in, and put in
occupation of the craft, strangers, persons of divers
countries, not born under the king’s obeisance, but
rebellious, whiche been solde to theym as hit were
heathen people.’ The mayor ordered that for the future
no such persons should be brought into the craft. An
illustration of the increased power exercised by the
masters in the crafts seems afforded by the fact that, by
the early part of the fifteenth century, the election of
their aldermen had passed away from the whole body of
the weavers, and had become vested in the Thirteen prin-
cipal men of the craft. Nor are the signs of division
between the masters and the journeymen confined to
'matters relating to trade; they appear also in the
disputes that arose about the performances of the
religious functions of the guilds. In the report of a
case laid before Robert Sturmys, the mayor, in 1454,
it is stated that£ divers debates and murmurs had arisen
between the Masters and Craft of the Cornesers and the
journeymen,’ because the ‘ Masters and Craft-holders ’
sought to deprive the journeymen of their right to provide
the light carried in the municipal processions on certainThe Black Death

83

festivals. The three classes in this entry seem to find
their counterparts in the livery or richer masters of the
London companies, the householders or smaller masters,
and the freemen or yeomen, a term also employed in
Bristol for a journeyman. An attempt was being made
to reduce the journeymen to a state of subjection, and
they knew that, if they were deprived of the right to
perform their part in the guild functions, they would
at once sink to the position of mere dependents. In
this case an arrangement was made which preserved
them their ancient right. The vast increase in the
wealth of the traders which followed the depopulation
caused by the Black Death, and the new importance
attached to capital, ensured the triumph of the masters ;
the crafts fell into the hands of the few, and in the six-
teenth century were mere trade companies, in which the
position of the members was determined by their wealth.

A change of precisely the same character as that
which was wrought in the crafts took place very
gradually in the government of the town; it fell into
the hands of an oligarchy of capitalists. The institution
of the Common Council, the means by which this change
was effected, brings us to an important epoch in the
history of Bristol. Second only to London of all the
cities and towns of the kingdom, Bristol stood in
need of an organised- system of government. The Great
Insurrection had shown how easily a disturbance in the
borough might become a source of national embarrass-
ment. The dispute with the lords of Berkeley still led to
occasional outbreaks of violence, and the peace and
good government of the town required a consolida-
tion of its constitution. Moreover its distance from84

Bristol

Gloucester and Ilchester, where the county courts of
Gloucestershire and Somerset were held, was a serious
hindrance to business. When a man had property on
both sides of the river, he might have to attend both
courts, and as travelling was then, each attendance
involved a ride, which took up a good part of two days
each way, over roads that could not have been much
better than droves, for in winter they became so rotten
as to be positively dangerous. Besides, the king some-
times had business to transact with the town, which
could not well be discussed in these courts, a loan might
be wanted, or the advice and consent of the merchants
required on some matter of finance. Edward III. was
willing to favour Bristol; for he was mindful of the
help he had received from its ships, and he was
moreover gratified by a sum of 600 marks, which the
burgesses paid for the charter they desired. Accordingly
in 1373 he invested the town with ‘ the highest develop-
ment of corporate authority,’ by creating it a county with
an elective sheriff and shire jurisdiction. This grant,
the first of its kind conferred on any town—for the case
of London is a wholly different matter—freed Bristol
men from all attendance on the courts of other shires,
and from the intrusion of the sheriffs. The next grant
of similar privileges was made about twenty years later
to York. The mayor was made escheator, and was for
the future to make oath before his predecessor in the
Guildhall in the presence of the commonalty, instead
of before the constable of the castle, provisions which
further secured the independence of the town. The
new character thus given to Bristol involved a question
concerning its representation in Parliament. The obliga-The Black Death

85

tion to send members to Parliament was at this period
held to be a burden; for the chief business of the mem-
bers was to grant money, and their constituencies were
bound to pay them wages. Was Bristol, now that it
was a county as well as a borough, to be forced to return
two members in each capacity ? The question might well
occur; for the only precedent was the case of London,
which, at once city and county, returned four members,
though, as it happens, not in virtue of its double
character. It was therefore expressly granted that
Bristol should not be called upon to send more than two
members, who were to be at once knights of the shire and
burgesses of the borough. The dispute with the lords
of Berkeley was at last settled; for a district was
assigned to the new county which took in Bedcliff and
Temple, and the waters of the Avon and the Severn
as far as the Steep and Flat Holms.

One other provision of this charter is of considerable
importance. The growth of the town and its trade, and
the weighty matters that were brought before the
mayor, rendered it advisable that he should have some
recognised body of counsellors. The narrow oligarchy
of the Fourteen had failed to establish itself, and in
1344-5 a council of a different kind had been formed by
the mayor, Stephen Spicer, who, ‘ for the better govern-
ance of the town,’ by common consent chose forty-eight
of ‘ the chiefest and discreetest ’ burgesses to be the mayor’s
counsellors and assistants. Although the principal fami-
lies of the town were represented in this body, it had no
defined powers or position. These were gained by the
charter of 1373, which provided that the mayor and
the sheriff, with the assent of the commonalty, should86

Bristol

choose a council of forty, and that all ordinances should
be made and remedies found by their common consent.
Entries in the council-house books imply that for
some time the assent of the commonalty was expressed
or supposed at each election, and the charter of 1499,
which vested the election in the mayor and two aider-
men, still provided for it. In theory, then, the consti-
tution of the town rested on a fairly wide basis. In
practice the natural tendency to exclusiveness triumphed,
the wealthy merchants shut out the commonalty from a
share in the government, and the common council be-
came an oligarchical body, which arrogated to itself the
election of the mayor and other officers. The change
was gradual; it grew up during the fifteenth century,
though it was not recognised by charter until the reign
of Charles II. The parliamentary elections, on the other
hand, did not fall into the hands of the oligarchy; for
after Bristol had received its new rank it followed the
custom of other counties, and while in London and many
other cities and boroughs the right of electing represen-
tatives was vested by local usage in a select body of one
sort or another, the members for Bristol were returned
by the forty-shilling freeholders, after that qualification
had been established in 1430, at first alone and after-
wards conjointly with the freemen. A right to be ad-
mitted to freedom was acquired by birth, by apprentice-
ship, by purchase, or, in virtue of an ordinance of the
fourteenth century, by marriage with the widow or
daughter of a freeman.

As regards other changes in the constitution, the
ordinances of 1344 declare that no one was to be chosen
mayor unless he had been an alderman, and that alder-The Black Death

*7

men were to be householders. These aldermen were
elected by the commons of their respective wards, and
discharged certain police duties. They were five in
number, for the addition of Redcliff made up five wards.1
By the charter of 1499 these officers were given a new
character. There were to be six aldermen, for the
recorder, who was elected by the common council, was
added to their number. The other five were to be elected
and were to be removable by the mayor and their own
body. These aldermen were associated with the mayor
as justices of the peace and gaol delivery. I find no
evidence that the mayoralty was confined to this new
and oligarchical body. By Elizabeth’s charter there were
to be twelve aldermen, and until 1836 Bristol was
divided into twelve wards. The aldermen did not sit
as justices in their respective wards, but fulfilled some
duties in them connected with the preservation of order.
Only those who had held the mayoralty, or were
common council-men, were eligible as aldermen: the
government and the magistracy were alike oligarchical.
The ‘ brethren of the mayor,’ who by the charter of 1373
were the sheriff and two bailiffs, were in 1499 to be two
sheriffs and two bailiffs, and in 1531 two sheriffs only:
and as such they remained until the election of a single
sheriff was ordered by the Municipal Reform Act.

Although the interests of the workmen were now
in opposition to those of the masters of the crafts, the
town was wholly, or almost wholly, exempt from the
rising of the commons in 1381. At the same time the

1 The Municipal Corporations Commissioners’ Report confuses
these aldermen with the aldermen of the Weavers, mentioned on

p. 81.88

Bristol

ecclesiastical revolt of the Lollards found much sympathy
here. John Purvey, a priest of the diocese of Lincoln,
the intimate friend and disciple of Wyclif, preached in
the town with considerable success. He was a man of
learning, and revised and completed Wyclif s translation
of the Bible. Casting aside his priestly garb and
assuming the dress of a layman, he devoted himself with
untiring energy to the evangelization of the people. He
was a man of blameless life. The clergy greatly hated
him, for the very reason that probably made him
especially popular with the Bristol workmen; he was a
hard hitter. Again and again his sermons were filled
with the contrast:—1 True preachers: False preachers,’
the one Wyclif s 1 poor priests,’ the other the whole body
of the clergy, monks and friars. Standing, it may be,
on the steps of one of the many crosses that adorned
the town, the greatest of Wyclifs followers had no
careless congregation, as he taught the weavers and
mariners of Bristol that the blessing of a priest could
not change the substance of bread and wine, that
private confession was a newfangled device of the
clergy which would bring men’s souls to hell, that the
authority of the priest depended on his personal holi-
ness, and that vows such as that taken, he may have
said, by the anchorite they all knew on Brandon Hill
were foolish and presumptuous. Right or wrong, there
was nothing extravagant in what he said, and, like his
master, with whom he often dwelt, and unlike some of
his master’s followers, he was, as far as we know, guilt-
less of pandering to lawlessness and anarchy. He made
many converts. The Bishops’ Registers at Wells con-
tain processes against some Lollards of Temple fee,The Black Death

89

which, though now part of the town, still remained in
the diocese of Bath and Wells; these abjured the
opinions with which they were charged. While the
great mercantile families, and probably the majority of
the people, adhered to the old doctrines, the town
was, next after London, the stronghold of Lollardy, and
from a vague notice by Adam of Usk it appears certain
that some of the Bristol Lollards suffered death. Lollard
opinions lingered on in the town until the eve of the
religious changes of the sixteenth century.

In Bristol and the West generally Lollardy may
have been connected with political sympathies ; it cer-
tainly co-existed with attachment to the cause of
Richard II. and hostility to the house of Lancaster. In
the first year of Richard’s reign Bristol made its first
loan to the Crown—the king was but twelve years old—
amounting to 500 marks, a matter that was probably
arranged more easily from the fact that royal communi-
cations were now addressed directly to the sheriff and
mayor. The long war, broken only by an occasional
truce, and the extravagance of the Court impoverished
the Crown, and another loan was made by the mayor and
common council in 1379. Able as the young king
was, he was idle and fond of pleasure; the government
was inactive ; and when, in 1386, a French invasion
appeared imminent, there was something like a panic.
In great haste the king asked for loans, and Bristol con-
tributed 200Z.—a sum twice as large as that lent by
any other town in the kingdom except London. Mean-
while a party of opposition had been formed amongst
the barons headed by the king’s uncle, the Duke of
Gloucester, the policy of the Lancastrian party in the90

Bristol

reign of Edward II. was repeated, and the government
was put in commission. Forced to submit while the
Parliament was sitting, the king, as soon as it was
closed, set himself to form a party of resistance, coming,
as Froissart tells us, though the particulars he gives
are not trustworthy, with the Duke of Ireland to
Bristol, and there enlisting many of the gentry of the
West in his cause. Richard failed for the time, but at
last, after long waiting, his opportunity came, and he
succeeded in establishing a despotism. In 1399 he
was at Bristol with a large army on his way to Ireland.
Before he left the town he had reason to believe that
some disaffection existed in the kingdom. Neverthe-
less he crossed over to Ireland, leaving his uncle, the
Duke of York, as regent. While he was absent his
cousin, Henry of Lancaster, returned from exile.
Richard’s councillors, the Earl of Wiltshire, Bussy,
Bagot, and Green, fled to Bristol. The governor of the
castle refused to admit them, so they went to the Guild-
hall and took possession of the town. When the van-
guard of Lancaster’s army appeared before the walls, the
gates were opened. The earl, Bussy, and Green were
beheaded at the High Cross; Bagot escaped to Ireland.
Lancaster was shortly afterwards proclaimed king as
Henry IY. The next year Lord Despenser, who had
joined in an unsuccessful plot against the new king, was
taken by some Bristol men, while attempting to escape
by sea, was brought to the town, and beheaded by the
townsmen. He was the grandson of the Despenser exe-
cuted here in 1326, and his death seems to have been
due not so much to political reasons as to the hereditary
hatred of the townsmen.91

CHAPTER V.

THE GREAT MERCHANTS.

Civil tumnlts and foreign wars—William Canynges—The Fellowship
of Merchants—Yorkist sympathies—The War of the Roses—
A private war—An appeal of treason—The pious deeds of the
merchants—Their wealth—Their municipal pageants—Desire
for knowledge.

The accession of Henry TV. was followed by a period of
civil disorder, which may be said to have lasted through-
out the reigns of the three Lancastrian kings, and to
have been in no small degree the cause of the final over-
throw of their dynasty. In these troubles Bristol, in
common with the rest of the clothing districts in the
West, where Richard was popular and where Lollardism
had taken some hold, appears to have had a full share.
Riotous assemblies here and in the neighbouring
counties in 1400 called forth special instructions to the
magistrates to be active and vigilant. Much discontent
was caused by the taxes granted the next year. People
expected that the new king would want less money
than his predecessor, whereas the Crown was never so
poor. The collection of the taxes occasioned a riot in
Bristol in which several women took an active share,
and at Norton St. Philips wool-fair, which was largely
frequented by Bristol dealers, one of the king’s officers92

Bristol

was slain. A plot to set up a false Richard, chiefly
formed by the friars in 1402, also seems to have
found adherents in the town, for some executions con-
nected with it took place here. Inglorious and pro-
longed wars added to the general trouble. Besides
having to send ships to help the king in his fruitless,
though not unsuccessful, expedition to Scotland, Bristol
was called upon to bear a large share in the long war-
fare against Owen Glendower. Matters were com-
plicated by our uneasy relations with France; though
we were not at war, we were certainly not at peace.
Breton pirates filled the Channel, and orders were sent
to the mayors of Bristol and other trading towns to
impress soldiers to sail in the merchant ships. At last,
in 1403, a fleet of ships from Bristol, Plymouth, and
Dartmouth, under an esquire named William Wilford,
made reprisals off Brest, then sailed on, seized thirty
ships laden with wine at Belleisle, and lastly came
back to Brittany, where they harried the country,
and so returned rejoicing and laden with spoil. Mean-
while a French fleet was cruising about the coast of
Wales off Caernarvon, all the country was in the hands
of the rebels, and the English castles on the coast were
blockaded. Lord Thomas of Berkeley, the admiral of
the South and West fleet, with all the ships and men
he could raise here and elsewhere, though he had some
successes, was unable to relieve them, and the garrisons
would have been starved out if two stout Bristol mer-
chants, John Stephens, who was mayor in 1403, and
Thomas Saunders had not again and again run the
French blockade and brought them provisions.1 In
1 Wylie’s History of Henry IV., vol. i. p. 432.The Gee at Merchants

93

return for these and suchlike services, and in considera-
tion of 200£., the king granted the town exemption from
the jurisdiction of the Admiralty Court. This was an im-
portant matter, for this court, which was not ruled by
the common law, appears, like the military court of the
marshal, to have constantly encroached on the rights of
the people, and in the last reign a petition had been sent
from the town, declaring that many had been beggared
and driven from England by its proceedings. It is likely
enough, too, that matters were now aggravated by the
appointment of Lord Berkeley as admiral, and by the
constant levies he had to make. The energy with
which Henry V. renewed the war with France raised the
country from the unhappy position it occupied in his
father’s time, and the effects of his wise government
preserved peace even in his son’s reign, until at last
they were swept away by the selfishness of contending
factions. Eight Bristol ships sailed in the fleet that
in 1415 carried his army to the capture of Harfleur and
the victory of Agincourt. In the long and inglorious
war of the next reign the town took her full share.
Defeats and losses followed each other rapidly, until at
last, in 1451, Gascony was taken from us. Then a fresh
effort was made, and a fleet, to which Bristol contri-
buted as many as thirty-three ships, conveyed an army
under the Earl of Shrewsbury to attempt the recon-
quest of our ancient province. In 1453 the earl fell
at Castillon, Bordeaux was taken, and Gascony was
finally lost.

Meanwhile, in spite of wars, Bristol flourished
greatly. Her foreign trade took three principal direc-
tions. A large business was done with Denmark, the94

Bristol

coasts of the Baltic, and Iceland, for the ships that took
out her cloth and other merchandise came back laden
with stock-fish for the southern markets. France and
Spain supplied cargoes of wine and bought drapery,
and the commerce with the Mediterranean countries
and the importation of spices from the Levant brought
large returns, though the trade was risky, for our ships
were sometimes plundered by the Genoese. Chief
among the Bristol merchants at this period was William
Canynges. The grandfather of this famous man was a
merchant of no small repute, also named William, who
was six times mayor of the town. His father John,
twice mayor, died when Canynges was a child, and his
mother married another Bristol merchant named Thomas
Yonge. By him she had a son, also called Thomas, who
became a lawyer and rose to be a judge of the King’s
Bench, and of whom we shall hear again. There is
reason to believe that the Canynges family, whose old
home was in Tucker Street, owed its rise to the cloth
trade. Canynges, who was perhaps born in 1399, was
five times mayor, and twice represented Bristol in Parlia-
ment. He had probably a far larger trade with the
north of Europe than any other merchant in England.
In 1449 Henry YI. wrote to the Master of the Teutonic
Knights asking protection for two of his factors then
carrying on business on his behalf in Prussia, and the
next year, when all trade with Iceland and Finmark
was forbidden in virtue of a treaty made with Christian I.
of Denmark, a special exception was made in his favour,
on account of the great debts due to him from the Danish
king’s subjects in those parts, so that for two years he
had, as far as England was concerned, the virtualThe Great Merchants

95

monopoly of the trade. Eleven years later he had nine
ships afloat, besides one lately lost off Iceland. The
largest of these were the c Mary and John,’ of 900, the
‘ Mary Radclyf,’ of 500, and the 1 Mary Oanyngys,’ of
400 tons. In all he had 2,853 tons of shipping and
employed 800 seamen. Even allowing for the different
method of computing a ship’s burden to that now in use,
which would make a deduction of about a third from
these figures, the tonnage of Canynges’s ships seems
almost incredible. Besides his seamen, he employed
day by day a hundred carpenters, masons, and other
workmen. Nor did he stand alone, for at the same
time another merchant named Strange owned ‘about’
twelve ships.

The foreign trade of the town during the latter half
of the fifteenth century, and possibly for a long time
before, like each particular craft everywhere, was under
the direction of an association. What the exact rela-
tionship was between the Fellowship of Merchants of
this period and the old Merchant Guild it is hard to say.
It may be that the diminution of the number of great
merchants consequent on the Black Death, and the
concentration of capital in the hands of a few, led to a
kind of revival of the ancient society; while it is also
possible that the association in one form or other may
have been in existence in earlier times, and that when
the ancient guild gradually exchanged its mercantile
for a municipal character, the greater merchants met
together for the regulation of trade apart from the
meetings of the governing body of the town. Be this
as it may, it is certain that in the time of Canynges the
Fellowship of Merchants was held to be most ancient96

Bristol

and honourable; it had its guild, the Fraternity of the
Merchants and Mariners of Bristol, which was dedicated
to God, our Lady, St. Clement, and St. George, and
maintained a priest and twelve poor sailors. To this
guild all masters and mariners were compelled to pay a
contribution on the completion of a homeward voyage.
In common with the crafts, the Fellowship of Merchants
was subject to, and received the support and confirma-
tion of, the municipal government, and in 1467, the date
at which the records of its present representative, 1 he
Society of Merchant Venturers, begin, it received its
regulations from the then mayor, Canynges, and the
common council, and these regulations accordingly
became part of the law of the town. All merchants
were bound, under penalty of a fine of one pound of wax,
to appear before the master and Fellowship to hear the
decrees they made as to the conditions under which
trade in certain specified merchandises was to be carried
on with strangers, and, as we have seen, the Fellow-
ship was to hold its meetings in Spicer’s chapel and
chamber on the Back. By the beginning of the next
century, the Fellowship, though under the control of the
mayor and council, held, probably on lease, the port dues
of the town, all foreign trade was carried on under its
direction, and all samples of merchandise used in the
trade were, deposited in Spicer’s Hall. A further stage
in the history of the Fellowship, the grant of the char-
ter of Edward VI., which made it a corporate com-
pany and extended its powers, must be reserved for the
next chapter, for the subject is necessarily connected
with a new development of Bristol trade.

\ In common with most of the merchants of Bristol,The Great Merchants

97

Canynges was one of the Yorkist party.1 The history
of the factions that divided the court of Henry "VI.
assumes a new phase in 1450; for in that year the
king’s minister, Suffolk, was slain, the Duke of York
returned from his government of Ireland, and the Duke
of Somerset from his command in France. York en-
deavoured to secure the succession, and Somerset, the
ally of the queen, opposed him, for if the house of
York came into power his destruction was certain. In
the Parliament of 1451 Bristol was represented by
Canynges and his half-brother Yonge, who sat for the
town in six other Parliaments; the feeling of the
Commons was strongly against Somerset, and Yonge
moved that, as the king had no issue, the safety of the
kingdom required that an heir to the throne should be
declared, and named the Duke of York. Somerset’s
power, though shaken, was not destroyed, and Yonge
was imprisoned in the Tower. During the illness of
the king in 1454, York was made protector, and vigor-
ous measures were taken for the defence of the coasts.
Robert Sturmys, the mayor of Bristol built ‘ a stately
vessel only for the war,’ and a loan was raised from
the seaport towns for the protection of trade. To this
Bristol contributed 150Z., the largest sum paid by any
town except London, which lent 300Z. It is evident
that the merchants trusted the Duke of York. The
fate of Sturmys’s ship illustrates the magnitude of
Bristol commerce at this period. In after years he

1 Local historians assert that Canynges was a Lancastrian, and
that he was compelled to change his politics by the success of
Edward IY. All trustworthy evidence seems to me to point the
other way.

H9S

Bristol

used her for the Mediterranean spice trade, and in 1457
she was 1 spoiled ’ by the Genoese. In return all the
Genoese merchants in London were imprisoned, and
their goods seized until they had given Sturmys bonds
for no less than 6,000£., the amount of the loss he had
sustained. When the battle of St. Albans had given
York the protectorate for the second time, Yonge com-
plained to the Commons of the wrong he had suffered,
and the king directed the council to make him amends.

It was probably in 1456-7 that Canynges did a
signal service to the Yorkist cause. Five barrels of
gunpowder, four of saltpetre, and two of brimstone had
been sent by the Master of the Ordnance to one Henry
May, a burgess and merchant of the town, to be sold.
May was an Irishman and a Lancastrian, a follower of
the Earl of Wiltshire (James Butler, Earl of Ormond),
and it was suspected that the consignment was only
intended to enable Somerset’s party to get the town into
their own hands. May and some other Irishmen were
disfranchised and fined, and Canynges, who was then
mayor for the third time, seized the ammunition and
placed it in the treasure chamber of the town, letting
York know that he had done so. York was pleased
at this, and bade the mayor and common council take
the government of the castle and keep Somerset out.
This they accordingly did, and some part of the powder
was thus used. In 1461, York having fallen at Wake-
field, his son Edward collected troops in the Welsh
Marches, and sent to Bristol, bidding the mayor and
council fit out a fleet to act against Jasper, Earl of
Pembroke, which they did at a cost of 500 marks.
Pembroke was defeated at Wigmore, and shortly after-The Great Merchants

99

wards the young duke entered London and was pro-
claimed king as Edward IV. He was at once called
upon to fight for his throne. The struggle seemed
almost one between the lords of the North and th*
burghers of the South, between the two discordant
powers of Feudalism and Commerce. The cause of
the White Rose was upheld at Towton by a force from
Bristol, which fought beneath the ‘ Ship,’ the banner of
the town, and on the same side were unfurled the
‘ Harrow ’ of Canterbury, the c Black Ram ’ of Coventry,
the ‘ Dragon ’ of Gloucester, and the banners of other
boroughs, which sent each its detachment to the army
of the king. Edward’s victory was complete and bloody,
and many of the greatest lords in England were among
the slain.

Late in the summer Canynges, then mayor for the
fourth time, prepared another expedition to the Welsh
coasts to be ready against the king’s coming into the
Marches, and so the gunpowder was again useful, as
we are told in the account given in the £ Great Red
Book ’ of ‘ the dispendinge of the gonnepowdyr that was
hadde from Harry Maye,’ drawn up in answer to a
demand from the exact king as to what had become of
of it. Then Edward came to Bristol, and was enter-
tained there with great magnificence. One sight that he
is said to have watched from a window in St. Ewen’s
Church was such as he loved; for it was the passing
of two Lancastrians, Sir Baldwin Fulford and John
Heysant, to their deaths; they had been tried by a
special commission of which Canynges and Thomas
Yonge were members. Edward was sorely in need of
money, and he left Bristol richer than he came by 3,000IOO

Bristol

marks, at least so William Wyrcestre, a burgess of the
town then living, says. This vast sum, for the value ot
money at the time must be remembered, was paid him
by Canynges fro face sua habenda, words which have
given rise to the vain theory that this staunch Yorkist
had taken part with the king’s enemies, but which
simply mean that he had received this sum for the king,
probably during the year of his mayoralty just ended,
and as the king’s escheator, and paid it over c to obtain
a quittance.’

A special characteristic of the fifteenth century was
the continual private warfare that disturbed the kingdom.
Instances of feuds of this sort occurred in every part of
the kingdom, and one of them, the long and bitter
strife between the Talbots and the Berkeleys, has some
connexion with our subject. The quarrel rose from a
claim made by Richard Beauchamp, Earl of Warwick, to
the Berkeley estates. On Warwick’s death this claim
devolved on his daughter, Margaret, the second wife
of John Talbot, the Earl of Shrewsbury who fell at
Castillon, and her sisters. After some skirmishes,
Shrewsbury’s son, Lord Lisle, surprised Berkeley Castle
in 1451, seized James Lord Berkeley, and his sons,
carried them into Bristol, and imprisoned them in the
Grey Friars house until Berkeley signed certain bonds
in the presence of the mayor. The next year, while
her husband and son were fighting in France, Lady
Shrewsbury caught Lady Berkeley, a daughter of
Thomas Mowbray, Duke of Norfolk, and imprisoned her
at Gloucester, where the poor lady died broken-hearted.
The deaths of Shrewsbury and Lisle in France, and of
Berkeley at home, brought about a kind of truce.The Great Merchants

ioi

Then after awhile the feud was carried on by William
Lord Berkeley and Lord Lisle, the grandson of the Earl
and heir of the Countess of Shrewsbury. The Berkeley
cause was popular in Bristol for several reasons. The
Berkeleys were Yorkists and the Talbots Lancastrians.
Moreover, Lisle had married a daughter of the Earl of
Pembroke, and there was a feud between the town and
the Herberts, for in 1469 one of the earl’s brothers was
slain in Bristol in a fray. A Vaughan was then one of
the bailiffs, and Herbert’s death seems to have been
avenged as late as 1527, when William Herbert, after-
wards Earl of Pembroke, slew one of the family of
Vaughan on Bristol bridge, and got away in a boat.
On the other hand, Berkeley’s cousin, Sir Maurice, had
married the daughter of Philip Mede, a merchant, and
thrice mayor of the town. In March 1470, the month
of the Lancastrian rising in Lincolnshire, Lisle challenged
Berkeley to battle. Then Mede and John Shipward,
the mayor, raised the town and led the Bristol men,
never backward in a fray, to the help of the Berkeleys,
whose party, thus increased to about 1,000 men, out-
numbered Lisle’s forces. Berkeley’s men gathered on
Michel wood Chase, and early on March 20 they saw
Lisle and his men come riding down Nibley Hill. Then
they broke from the wood and received the enemy with
a shower of arrows. Lisle rode with his beaver up,
and Black Will, an archer from the Forest of Dean, shot
him in the mouth, so that the arrow came out at his
neck; he fell and was stabbed to the heart. His men
fled with some loss, and Berkeley’s force sacked his
manor-house at Wotton. Sixteen days after this battle
of Nibley Green, as it is called, Lisle’s wife was brought102

Bristol

to bed of a dead son, and so the male line of the younger
branch of the Talbots ended. Shortly after this the Earl
of Warwick fled to France, and six months later Edward
in his turn was forced to leave the kingdom; so the
battle of Nibley Green excited little attention in the
midst of more momentous events.

Although the merchants of Bristol generally were
warm adherents of the house of York, a party in the
town was, as may have been guessed already from the
incident of the gunpowder, on the Lancastrian side ;
and after Queen Margaret had landed at Weymouth, on
April 14, 1471, the day of Warwick’s defeat at Barnet,
she was received here. She left Bath on Edward’s
coming to Marlborough, and on entering Bristol sent
out scouts to see if she could pass by Gloucester into
Wales. It is evident that if the townsmen of Bristol
had been all of one mind, and had shut their gates
against her, she could not have entered the town; for
when she heard that Gloucester was all for its Duke
Richard, she decided not to waste time by an attempt to
reduce it, and marched to Tewkesbury, where, on May 4,
her army was utterly overthrown. As soon as Edward
regained the throne, he took notice of the lack of zeal
that the town had shown, and wrote to the mayor
signifying his displeasure. Nevertheless, at the request
of the Duke of Clarence, who represented that the
offence was to be laid to the charge of a party only, and
not of the town at large, he said he would deal merci-
fully. Seven of the burgesses were named as principal
offenders. One had been slain, probably at Tewkesbury,
the rest were to be imprisoned and their goods were to be
seized. Among them were John ‘ Shepherd ’ (Shipward ?),The Gee at Merchants

103

Robert Strange, and William Spenser, all merchants ot
note. ‘ Shepherd’s ’ pardon is extant, and all probably
were likewise pardoned on payment of a fine. Spenser’s
offence, as we shall see, brought him into trouble later.

The concluding years of Edward’s reign were marked
by exaction and severity, by suspicion and wrongful
accusations. A visit from the king in 1475 is said to
have cost the town a large sum by way of ‘ benevolence,’
the new device for raising money, and the general state
of uneasiness in the country may be illustrated by an
event which, three years later, deeply moved the
burgesses. The story of this event, which is told at length
in the c Great Red Book ’ by John Twynyho,the recorder,
must be compressed here; but it is worth inserting
even in a small volume on Bristol, because it contains
a vivid picture of a bit of the life of our town. A
certain John Wilkins, a night-walker and a brawler,
who had come to live in Bristol with the character of
being a 1 man-queller in Wales ’—he was a bravo or
cut-throat—caused much trouble to the bailiffs by his
disorderly conduct. At last he was put in prison,
and while he was there it was said that, in his idle talk,
he had accused that ‘ noble, famous, and true merchant,
William Spenser,’ then for the third time mayor, alleging
that he had had 450Z. worth of goods of the late Duke
of Clarence and 3001. of the late Earl of Warwick. One
of the burgesses, Thomas Norton, gentleman, a member
of the king’s household, hearing this, had some dealings
with Wilkins while in prison, and encouraged him to
slander the mayor. This Norton was a troublesome
fellow, who, after an evil fashion that the king put
down sharply, had attached men to himself, ‘ some by104

Bristol

giving of livery and some by oath,’ and he and fonr of
these followers of his had not long before beaten one of the
town officers. His place as one of the royal household had,
however, saved him from punishment. On March 12,
1478, at five in the afternoon, the mayor and sheriff
were sitting in the Guildhall hearing cases, when
Norton entered the court and there appealed the mayor
of high treason : c and that,’ he added,£ will I make upon
thy body good, and if it shall ne pleese the king’s most
excellent grace to suffer thee to try with thy hands the
truth of this appeal for the exiguity of thy wretched
person,’ then he would maintain his word against any
of the mayor’s 1 comburgesses,’ and so he bade the sheriff
take him. Spenser, though he was sixty-eight, was not
to be frightened, and answered him roundly : ‘ Thomas
Norton, thou best falsely.’ Nevertheless Norton de-
livered his appeal to the sheriff.

Next day the mayor called the sheriff, the recorder,
and the common council together, and declared that he
would no longer be ‘ the king’s lieutenant ’ till he had
cleared himself of the charge ; so he gave his sword of
office to the sheriff and bade him take him to prison. In
those days the bond between men of the same town
was closer than it is now, and all present when they
saw the mayor thus deliver himself up wept,c as sons for
their natural father.’ Then at eleven o’clock they went
in sorrowful procession through the open market, all
the people lamenting as they passed, and so led the
mayor to the prison and there left him. It was necessary
to protect Norton from general indignation, and the
relation in which the crafts stood to the government of
the town and the kind of police duty performed by theirThe Great Merchants

105

masters is illustrated by the action of the sheriff and
recorder, who on the same day called all the masters of
crafts before them, and charged them, as they should
answer to the king, that they should keep the peace
towards the appellant. As the next day was Sunday,
nothing was done to help the mayor, though perhaps a
Bristol man’s ox or ass might not have been left in a
pit on that day. On Monday, however, messengers
were sent to the king at Shene to bespeak his favour,
and these were followed by letters setting forth the
mayor’s innocence and all Norton’s ill-doings, even to
the fact that ‘ he lieth in his bed till it be nine or ten
at the bell daily, as well the holidays as the working
days, not attending divine service.’ Norton failed to
make his accusation good before the council, and on
the 21st the king sent his order for the mayor’s release.
Hard as the messengers rode, they did not arrive in
Bristol from Shene till the 24th. Then forthwith 1 the
sheriff, the recorder, and common council, with thousands
of people in the most glad and joyful manner,’ went to
the gaol £ and brought the sword to the mayor, and with
great joy and gladness conveyed him to the Guildhall.’
There the king’s letter was read, and all the people
when they heard it lifted up their hands in thankfulness
to him.

Life in Bristol in the fifteenth century was deeply
tinged with religion. The merchants of the town
engaged largely in church-building and other like good
works. High among the towers for which the neigh-
bouring county of Somerset is famed is that which
John Shipward built for St. Stephen’s, and the tower of
St. Werburgh’s, of about the same date, would in manyio 6

Bristol

other towns have been held a noble ornament of the
street in which it stood. In 1460 the rich upper stage
was added to the tower of Temple Church, and the
weight of it caused the structure to incline. Of the
many churches that were more or less rebuilt during
this period, mention can only be made here of St. Mary
Redcliff, justly declared by Queen Elizabeth to be c the
fairest, the goodliest, and most famous parish church in
England.’ The thirteenth-century church, of which some
remains still exist, was rebuilt by William Canynges the
elder, from the ‘ cross aisles downwards,’ in 1376. His
work was carried on by his more famous grandson, and
the fall of the spire in 1446, and the destruction it
made, probably determined Canynges to rebuild the
whole church, with the exception of the transept, aisle-
wall, and porch on the south side—a work carried out
under the master-mason Norton, and on which no
doubt the 100 workmen he paid daily were largely
employed. Among other good deeds, Canynges was a
bountiful benefactor to the collegiate church of West-
bury-on-Trym, which had been refounded by his friend,
the learned Bishop Carpenter. There he spent his last
years, for in 1467 he retired from the world and received
minor orders ; the next year he became a priest, and a
year later was collated by his friend to the office of
dean of the college. The story that he took orders to
avoid a second marriage commanded by the king may
have arisen from idle gossip. His wife and his two
sons were dead, and his religious feelings and the ad-
vice of Carpenter may well have led him to give up
the things of this world for those of the world to come.
He died in 1474The Great Merchants	107

Numerous chapels built for special services adorned
the town, and many merchants founded chantries in its
different churches. The wills of the burgesses are full
of bequests both to the Church and the poor; great care
was taken to ensure an honourable funeral, and gifts
were left for those who attended. In John Shipward’s
will, dated 1473, to take one example, after legacies to
the mother church of Worcester, and his parish church
of St. Stephen, to which he was so large a benefactor,
come 10Z. for bed clothes for the poor of the parish,
5 marks to be given in bread and ale at his funeral,
and the same at the ‘ months mind,’ when a commemo-
rative service was performed; twenty-four poor men
were to bear torches at the funeral, each to receive a
gown of black frieze with a hood of white and 4cZ., and
throughout the month two men were to be paid to bear
torches in the church; missals, plate, and gorgeous
vestments were left to the church, and money to all
its officers, to every priest and parish clerk in the town,
to the four Orders of Friars, in each case if present,
together with gifts to every prisoner and inmate of an
almshouse; a chantry service was founded in St.
Stephen’s, and lastly money was left to the mayor and
every officer of the town, each according to his degree,
that attended the funeral. Pilgrimages were favourite
acts of devotion with the burgesses. In the popular
shrine of St. Anne at Brislington, twice visited by
Henry VII., were the candles offered by the Weavers
and Shoemakers, and many ‘ ships ’ and 1 boats ’ used
for incense. Large numbers went further from home,
and many ships left the port laden with pilgrims to
Compostella, and even to Jerusalem. One of these, inio8

Bristol

which the owner, a rich merchant named Sturmys, sailed
with 106 pilgrims, was wrecked on her way back from
Palestine, and thirty-seven men were drowned.

The richer merchants lived magnificently enough.
Below their houses were vast cellars for merchandise,
now built with groined stone roofs, on the ground floor
a warehouse, or two or more shops open to the street,
and above a parlour and bedrooms, the whole being
generally three stories high, besides attics in the sharply
pitched gables. Behind stood a lofty hall, fit for a
royal banquet, the walls often rich with hangings, and
the roof of carved timber and plaster adorned with
designs. Some of the grander houses had each its tower ;
in the grandest of all, built by Canynges, some remains
of which are still to be seen in Redcliff Street, there were
four bay-windows and parlours in the tower. In the
smaller houses the hall was above the shop. The plate
cupboard of a rich merchant must have been a fair orna-
ment to his hall; for Thomas Baker, grocer, by his will,
dated 1493, distributed no less than 350 oz. of silver
among his children in bowls, cups, salt-cellars, and spoons.

The municipal ceremonies of Bristol were marked
by the same mixture of religion, stateliness, and good
cheer as the lives of the burgesses. At the election of
the mayor on September 15, the council—for the right
was now vested in that body—met at the Guildhall, and
there th6 outgoing mayor exhorted all, c with a pater
noster and an ave,’ to pray for the guidance of the Holy
Ghost. The new mayor did not take office till Michael-
mas day, to give him time ‘ to make his purveyance
of his worshipful household.’ On that day, ‘ at the
stynting of the commen bell,’ the outgoing mayor tookThe Great Merchants

109

leave of the council in a set form, and the new mayor
took the oath and received the insignia of his office,
the king’s sword, the hat and seals. Then all brought
the new mayor home with trumpets and clarions, for
the city kept its minstrels to play before the mayor
until 1835. After dining, part with the old, and part
with the new mayor, the company went to St. Michael’s
Church to offer; then met again at the new mayor’s
house for cake-bread and wine, and so each man went
home in time for evensong. The high place held by
the Weavers is illustrated by the meeting of the mayor,
sheriff, and council on St. Katharine’s eve to attend
evensong in Temple Church, when, after drinking in the
Katharine (or Weavers’) hall, each went home to receive
the Katharine players and reward them for their plays.
These plays must have been some of the mysteries or
pageants performed by the craftsmen of most English
towns; they were founded chiefly on the Apocryphal
Gospels, and were extremely popular with our forefathers.
It is interesting to find that there was a close connexion
between our town and Coventry, famous not merely as
Bristol was for its cloth, but also for its mysteries.
Many names in the roll of one of the Coventry guilds
have ‘ of Bristol ’ appended to them, and it may well be
that some at least of the Coventry plays, the most famous
of which was performed by the Shearmen and Tailors,
may have been represented at Bristol by the Weavers
and other companies.

The festival of the Boy Bishop, who was elected
on St. Nicholas day, and who held office until Innocents’
day, was kept with much ceremony. On the day of his
election the mayor, sheriff, and council attended at St.no

Bristol

Nicholas’s Church to hear the boy’s sermon and receive
his blessing. After dinner they met and played dice
upon the mayor’s counter, probably a brazen table in
front of the Tolzey, the sheriff’s court-house, like those
that now stand before the Exchange, until the bishop
and his ‘ chapel,’ or boy-choir, came there to sing and the
bishop to give his blessing; then the boys were served
with bread and wine, and all went to the bishop’s even-
song. Attendance at Advent sermons ended with a
joyous observance of Christmas, and a special proclama-
tion for peace was made during the reign of the Lord
of Misrule : none were to go mumming with closed
masks, nor be abroad without lights after curfew had
sounded from St. Nicholas’s Tower, nor to carry arms
during the festive season. Among other seasons of
ceremony, the eves of St. Peter and St. John were
much observed. On these nights the watch was kept by
the different crafts, each man wearing his best clothes and
his harness, and in virtue of an ordinance made by
Canynges each craft (26 are enumerated) received from
the sheriff a certain quantity of wine, differing in
amount according to the position of each, to be drunk
in their several halls. Grander than all the rest were
the ceremonies of Corpus Christi day; for then there
was feasting through all the town, and a long procession
in which the guilds exhibited their pageants. Every
holiday, indeed, was kept with gladness and religious
observance. Busy as the merchants were, they never
grudged these days, on which the mayor and his
brethren would go out duck-hunting on the pond at
Treen-mill (now turned into Bathurst Basin), or look
on at wrestling and other sports.The Great Merchants

hi

A town where feasting ancl solemn shows were kept
up so well found no difficulty in receiving its sovereigns
in a fitting manner; and when Henry VII. came to
Bristol in 1486, he was welcomed with many pageants,
among which that presented by the Shipwrights was
conspicuous. The king spent Corpus Christi day in
the town, and went in procession round College Green,
and there all the crafts and the whole people came
together, and the Bishop of Worcester preached a
sermon to them on the Green. In spite of all this
rejoicing, matters were not altogether well with the town.
There were complaints of the decay of the cloth trade,
and besides this many large ships had lately been lost.
The king, who took deep interest in commercial matters,
encouraged the merchants, advised them to build new
ships, and said that he would help them. Eight years
afterwards he conferred a signal benefit on all English
traders by the commercial treaty with Flanders called
the 1 Great Intercourse.’ Even while the Bristol
merchants talked with the king, a larger sphere for
their energies than they had ever known before was
about to be opened to them ; and, though they could
not foresee what the discoveries of the next few years
would do for their town, the minds of some of them
were already filled with thoughts of commerce with
islands they hoped to reach by westward voyages. This
subject however must be left for another chapter.

Meanwhile a change, soon to be quickened into more
vigorous life, had already come over England. A desire
for learning was beginning to be widely diffused.
While great men patronised scholars, and in many
cases kept them as members of their households, the112

Bristol

merchant class as it grew in wealth recognised in
various ways the excellence of knowledge, hitherto
almost exclusively confined to the clergy. At Bristol rules
were drawn up in 1464 for the Guild of the Kalendars,
providing for the management of their free library, and
for the weekly delivery of a public lecture by the prior,
who was besides to be ready at all times to explain the
Scriptures to any that asked him. To meet the new
desire after knowledge, many small books were written,
compendiums, abstracts and the like; these were ren-
dered cheaper by the introduction of linen-made paper
in place of parchment, and the circulation of them was
soon to be rapidly increased, for Caxton was at work
before the death of Canvnges. Some little books and
treatises were written by a Bristol burgess named
William Wvrcestre [Worcester], or Botoner as he pre-
ferred to be called after his mother’s family, which held
a good position in Coventry. This diligent antiquary,
who was born in Bristol about 1415, was patronised by
the famous knight Sir John Fastolf, of Caistor in Norfolk,
who sent him to Oxford, and then took him into his
household. Towards the end of his life Wyrcestre, who,
it should be noted, was a layman, settled in his native
town in a house near St. Philip’s churchyard. There
he had gardens of herbs, for he was a man of science
and practised medicine. He spent much time in sur-
veying the town, measuring it all by paces, and his book
of notes called his 4 Itinerary,’ which has been preserved
to us, is of the greatest service to all students of Bristol
history. Another of his works is the 4 Annals of
English Affairs,’ from 1324 to 1491, the year probably
of his death. With the new and eager desire afterThe Great Merchants

ii3

knowledge which now prevailed must be connected the
encouragement given at this time to the experiments of
the alchemists. Famous among these searchers into
what they believed to be the secrets of the physical
world was Thomas Norton, a Bristol alchemist, who
claimed to have found out the elixir of life and the art
of transforming metals, and who in 1477 finished a long
poem on his discoveries. Nevertheless death found him
out, and, it is said, found him in poverty.

1Bristol

114

CHAPTEB VI.

A NEW WORLD.

Character of the period—Religious discord—Dissolution of the mon-
asteries—Bristol an episcopal see and a city—Sacrilege and
knavery—Protestant martyrs—Visit of Queen Elizabeth; page-
ants and plays—The sweating sickness and years of scarcity—The
Cabots—Discovery of North America—Robert Thorne—Trade
with the Canaries and elsewhere—The Merchant Venturers
—Warfare with Spain—Colonisation of Newfoundland—Coloni-
sation of New England.	*

The sixteenth century is a remarkable period in the
history of Bristol both as regards religion and trade.
It was a period of change throughout the kingdom.
Men cast aside the thoughts and feelings of the
Mediaeval Church and adopted the spirit of Protes-
tantism ; authority gave place to individuality, the
teaching of the Church to each man’s faith in the Divine
Master. This change in the character of religion found
expression in changes in the form of worship. Little,
perhaps far too little, value was for a time set on ordin-
ances, nothing that was not purely spiritual seemed
worth preserving. This religious revolution implied a
vast quickening of thought; individually men were
strongly alive each to his own spiritual position; they
learned and judged for themselves; collectively the
nation awoke to a certain proud self-consciousness.
National pride was partly gratified and partly arousedA New World

ii5

by the separation from Rome. Further, in the history
of seaport towns such as Bristol, this period is marked
by voyages of discovery and a search after new channels
for trade. Eagerness for the discovery of new lands was
not born of the Protestant movement—indeed it pre-
ceded it, and was an outcome of the passionate desire
after knowledge that marked the second half of the
fifteenth century. Maritime adventure, however, re-
ceived a special character from religion: our seamen
disputed with the Spaniards for the trade of the New
World, and the Reformation gave their quarrel some-
thing of the character of a religious war. It will be
convenient first to give some notices of the progress
of the Reformation as it affected Bristol, and then to
attempt a sketch of the part that Bristol men bore in
maritime adventure and in the rapid increase of trade
consequent on the discovery of new countries.

Lollardy in its religious aspect had probably not
entirely died out in Bristol when, in 1534, all the town
was moved by the preaching of Hugh Latimer, then
parson of West Kington, in Wiltshire. His enemies
said that he declared that there was no sensible fire in
hell—this charge he denied altogether; that saints were
not to be worshipped, that pilgrimages were of no
avail, and the like: as to these matters he explained
that he had really spoken against the abuse of such acts
of devotion. His sermons made a great stir; many
approved of them, and he was bidden to preach before
the mayor at Easter. This his enemies found means
to prevent by persuading the archdeacon to forbid him
preaching in the town without the bishop’s license.
The activity of the Gospellers, as the reforming teachersBristol

i 16

were called, was met by the other party. Popular
preachers were employed to visit the places where any
of them had been preaching, and to contradict their
doctrines. One of the most famous of these priests,
named Hubberdin, was sent for to come to Bristol.
He was a preacher of a type that was common enough ;
his sermons, his enemies said, were full of ‘ tales, fables,
dialogues and dreams ’; he was noisy and full of antics,
so that his preaching seemed like ‘ a sort of interlude.’
He only stirred up strife, and the commissioners ap-
pointed to inquire into these disputes reported to
Secretary Cromwell that ‘ many favoryd Latomer and
hys new maner of prechynge, and other many favoryd
Hyberdyne yn hys olde maner of prechynge,’ adding
that both parties had become so 1 ardente ’ that it would
be well if the king would provide c sume convenyante
remedy.’ A preacher of a different sort, though on
the same side as Hubberdin, was Roger Edgeworth, who
soon after this delivered several sermons at Redcliff
Cross, although, he says, he was 1 interrupted by the
confederacy of Hugh Latimer, then aspiring to a
bishopric.’ About this time, too, George Wishart, who
had fled from Scotland to escape persecution, preached
in St. Nicholas Church, and ‘ brought many of the
Commons of this towne into a greate errour.’ He was
convicted of heresy, and did penance by bearing a faggot
in St. Nicholas and Christ Church, and in the parishes
of the two churches. So discord and debate waxed hot
in Bristol, as in many other parts of the kingdom.

By the time of the dissolution of the monasteries
three of the Bristol friaries had fallen into poverty.
When the royal commissioner, Richard, suffragan bishopA New World

ii 7

of Dover, came to the town, such an outcry was raised
about the debts the friars owed that he agreed that the
mayor should have the goods contained in the houses
valued and sold for the creditors; all that was found
at the White Friars was barely enough to pay the debts
of the house, though they only amounted to 161.
Although the Grey Friars were unwilling to surrender
their house, the commissioner did not expect that they
would put him to trouble, for the prior, he knew, owed
a debt of twenty marks, which he was unable to pay.
As in several of the other smaller houses in England, the
poverty of the Austin Friars had been brought about
by the dishonest dealing of a self-seeking prior. In this
house, which stood just inside Temple Gate, and which
has been confused by some local historians with St.
Augustine’s Abbey, the prior, who was also the head of
the priory at Richmond, and so a near neighbour of the
Court, had obtained from the king a grant of his office
for life, and had within three years sold the goods of the
house to the value of more than 100 marks, so that he
had well nigh stripped it of everything. The unsatis-
factory state of these houses probably made the towns-
men think that their fall was no great evil. With two
of the more important religious foundations the town
had had some disputes. The Grand-prior of the Hos-
pital had not long before this tried to revive the ancient
right of sanctuary in Temple Street, and also claimed
other privileges; his attempt was defeated by the
judges. Nevertheless it was no doubt held to be a
matter of rejoicing when the possibility of such claims
was finally removed and c Temple fee was broken.’

In the surrender of St. Augustine’s Abbey Bristol was118

Bristol

more deeply interested. A dispute had arisen in 1493
between the convent and the town, the prior, Newland,
alleging that the mayor’s officers had infringed the sanc-
tuary of the abbey, which extended over the present
College Green, and that his house had suffered divers
other wrongs. The affair, which cost both parties much
money, ended in the victory of the town. The sur-
render of the house, which took place December 9,
1539, besides putting all troubles of this kind out of
the question for the future, was the means of adding a
new dignity to Bristol. Henry VIII., when he laid
hands on the possessions of the monks, did not intend
to rob the Church of all that thus came into his power.
With his own hands he drew up a grand scheme for the
foundation of a large number of new bishoprics, each
with its cathedral and chapter, to be endowed with the
wealth of the monasteries. This scheme came to very
little, and the larger part of the monastic lands went
to the ‘ new men ’ of the Court, or to wealthy merchants.
Six new bishoprics, however, were founded, and of these
Bristol was one. All the county of Bristol, whether
locally in Gloucestershire or Somerset, together with
the county of Dorset, was included in the new diocese,
and by a writ dated June 4, 1540, the abbey church
was made the cathedral with the name of the Church
of the Holy Trinity. The church had already lost its
nave and aisles, which seem to have been pulled down
by some of the later abbots, in order to build them anew.
The rebuilding has at last been accomplished by the
liberality of men of our own day. Paul Bush, a canon
of Sarum, and formerly a friar, was made the first
Bishop of Bristol \ a dean was appointed and a chapterA New World

119

of six canons formed. By the same writ the town of
Bristol was, as the place of an episcopal see, raised to
the dignity of a city. In 1836 Dorset was taken from
the Diocese of Bristol, Bedminster, which included
Redcliff, was restored to Bath and Wells, and the sees
of Gloucester and Bristol were united. Another change
in 1845 made Bedminster part of the united diocese :
and a further change which will again give Bristol a
bishop of its own, is, there is reason to hope, not far off.

Sweeping as some of the changes were that were
made by Henry VIII., the reformation of the Church
in his reign made little, if any, advance as regards
doctrine, and, oppressive as his rule was, still it was the
rule of a man who in good and evil alike represented the
spirit of the nation. In the reign of his son all this
was different. Changes inspired by divines of foreign
communions were precipitately enforced, and the govern-
ment was in the hands of a few unprincipled courtiers
who allied themselves with the advocates of religious
reformation. Many records exist to prove the quick
progress of ecclesiastical change in Bristol: the orna-
ments of her churches were defaced, the altars pulled
down, the wall paintings smeared over with white lime.
Here, as everywhere else, all chantries and free chapels
were confiscated; all guilds were suppressed, and their
possessions were given to the Crown. The trade com-
panies of course continued to exist, but they lost the
organisation and the means which enabled them to
perform acts of religion and mercy. All that tended
to lighten the lot of the working class was ruthlessly
sacrificed to the greed of the new nobles, who robbed
God and the poor alike.120

Bristol

The suppression of chantries and guilds was followed
by the plunder of the churches of the city, which
were rich in plate, given by the merchants for anni-
versary services, and for the use of various fraternities.
In Trinity Church alone was seized plate amounting to
434 oz. in weight, and other churches were despoiled in
the same fashion. All the silver was sent to the mint
at Bristol. This brings us to another of the abuses of
this evil period of our history—the coinage was shame-
fully debased. Sir William Sharington, the controller
of the Bristol mint, took advantage of this; he received
all the plate brought to him from the churches of Bristol
and Somerset, and issued it in base money, the silver
money for England containing only one-third, and for
Ireland one-fourth of fine metal. Besides this, he with-
held certain sums from his books every month, so that
his gains must have been large. He entered into an
agreement with the king’s uncle, Lord Seymour, the
Lord High Admiral, who was plotting to overthrow his
brother, the Protector Somerset. Sharington promised
to coin silver to enable Seymour to carry out his plans,
and actually advanced him 2,800Z.; the admiral in re-
turn was to stand his friend in case the council inquired
into his doings. This affair of the Bristol mint led to
Seymour’s ruin, for his accomplice made a full confes-
sion. Seymour was beheaded; Sharington was par-
doned. The debasement of the coinage led to a rise in
prices, and this aggravated the distress caused by the
enclosures of common lands and a general revolution in
husbandry. Prices rose enormously, and these causes,
combined with religious grievances, produced the rising
of the lower class in the West country in 1549. InA New World

121

this insurrection Bristol had little part. In one of the
calendars of the city it is said that a number of young
men broke down several enclosures in the neighbour-
hood. This may have been the case, for though the
insurrection in the West was mainly a religious move-
ment, while that in Norfolk arose from social causes,
there was some breaking down of fences in the western
counties. Bristol people, however, had good reason
for keeping quiet: a force of 300 Italians lay in the
city ready to march under Lord Grey against the
Devonshire insurgents ; for the employment of foreign
mercenaries within the kingdom is one of the many
stains on the wretched government of the time. In
Devonshire, as may be seen in the volume of this series
on Exeter, the insurrection was a serious matter, and
the Bristol merchants lent Lord Bussell a large sum for
the purpose of suppressing it.

The reaction that took place on the king’s death
affected Bristol in common with the rest of the king-
dom, and the vestry books of various churches record
how altars and images were set up again, and new
manuals, processioners, and legends were bought by the
churchwardens. Bishop Bush was a married man, and,
knowing that this made his deprivation certain, he wisely
retired. Some at least in the city saw the return to
the old form of worship with heavy hearts. Although
the new Bishop, Holyman, would take no part in perse-
cution, four persons certainly, and according to some
accounts five, were put to death as heretics. They were
burnt on St. Michael’s Hill, on the site of the present
Highbury Independent Chapel. Others, no doubt, were
forced to do violence to their consciences; one poor man122

Bristol

(all the Bristol martyrs belonged to the working class,
and this was generally the case with the martyrs among
the laity) who recanted to save his life was driven mad
by remorse and drowned himself. Queen Mary soon
became unpopular, and though the persecution of the
Protestants was one cause which made men rejoice at her
death, it was not the only one. Her reign was marked
by national humiliation; and the influence of Spain,
consequent on the marriage of the queen with Philip,
must have been peculiarly annoying to the Bristol
merchants; one instance of this influence, the shabby
treatment of Sebastian Cabot, will be noticed later.

Elizabeth, on the other hand, was, like her father, in
full accord with her people. Her constant progresses to
different parts of her kingdom were occasions of re-
joicing that was no mere matter of form, for men felt
that she was jealous for the honour of the country.
In one of these progresses she paid a visit to Bristol,
and her reception here illustrates one side of the life of
our city as well as of the character of the queen. The
visit had been planned some months before, and Eliz-
abeth evidently looked forward to it with much interest.
The city, therefore, had time to prepare the1 gests.’ The
queen came on Aug. 14, 1574, and was met at Lawford’s
Gate by the mayor, aldermen, and the trade companies
marching under their proper ensigns. At the High
Cross, Fame, represented by an ‘ excellent boy,’ made a
speech, in which he expressed the joy of the citizens:—

Asid they set thear townishe trashe and works of gredy
gayen,

And turned their toils to sports and mirth and warlike
pastimes playn.A New World

123

At St. John’s Gate three more boys, Salutation,
Gratulation, and Obedient Good-will, had speeches;
Good-will, however, could not make his speech, because
there was no time for it; and so the queen was con-
ducted to her lodgings in John Young’s ‘ great house ’
on St. Augustine’s Back. As she entered the house 300
soldiers fired their muskets, and the signal was answered
by 130 ‘ cast pieces,’ the cannon of the castle and on
the city walls. The next day, which was Sunday, the
queen heard a sermon in the cathedral, and an {imme,’
composed for the occasion, which was sung c by a very
fine boy.’ The grand show prepared by the city con-
sisted of the siege of two forts, erected for the purpose
in the Avon, near the junction of the Frome. This
siege was allegorical, and divers speeches were made
in the course of it. During its progress a gentleman
swam across the river with a book of these speeches, that
the queen might understand what was going forward.
Although the pageant lasted two, and according to
another account three, days, Elizabeth does not seem to
have been wearied of it, but as it was c verie costlie and
chargeable, especially in gonnepowder, liked verie well
of.’ Some of the speeches could not be spoken £by
means of a schoolmaster who envied that any stranger
should set forth the shows,’ and so evidently refused to
teach the actors. The part that schoolmasters took in
preparing pageants is illustrated in Love’s Labour’s Lost:
it certainly seems hard that our Bristol Holofernes
should have been slighted on such an important occasion.
Shows of this sort the queen beheld in many other
places. Bristol, however, could offer her one sight
not to be matched elsewhere except by London. For124

Bristol

before she left, at the end of a week’s visit, she went
down with three splendid galleys to Kingroad and saw
the shipping. Pageantry, as we have seen, had no small
place in municipal life in Bristol. The ‘ mysteries,’ how-
ever, such as there is reason to believe were acted here
by the Weavers and others, were now dying out. Never-
theless the taste for dramatic representation was gratified
by the visits of several companies of players during this
reign, and among these it has been proved that Shake-
speare and his company were here in 1597. At first
the actors who came to the city used to perform in the
Guildhall; early in the next reign there was a regular
playhouse in Wine Street, which was let at 30s. a year.

In contrast to pageants and plays is a darker side
to this period in our city’s history. Throughout the
whole century the sweating sickness and the plague
broke out constantly in this country. The sweating sick-
ness was bad here in August 1535, and Henry VIII.,
who was at Thornbury that month, did not dare to enter
the city, for he was mortally afraid of infection. The
year after Queen Elizabeth’s visit there was a terrible
visitation of the plague. Again, in 1603-1605, in the
course of about a year and a half, it carried off more than
3,000 persons. The violent outbursts of these distempers
are worthy of special note, because they were largely
due,to the disgustingly unclean habits of the people, and
the bad ventilation of their houses. While the sweat-
ing sickness fell heavily on towns, it generally spared
agricultural districts, where closeness and dirt were not
so mischievous; and as it proved especially fatal to the
rich and well nourished, the havoc that it made in
Bristol suggests, what was no doubt the fact, that theA New Would

125

mass of the inhabitants lived highly compared with the
labourers in the country. At the same time, they suf-
fered from years of special scarcity, and from the con-
tinual rise in prices that marked this period. Besides
the diminution of the amount of corn grown, owing to
a widespread change in agriculture, prices were raised
by the very means taken to keep them down. The ex-
portation of corn was forbidden; no sales were allowed
except in the market, buying to hold and resell was
punished, and prices were fixed by authority. All
this meddling only made fluctuations more violent. In
1588 wheat was sold here at 2s. 2d. a bushel; in 1596
it was at 8s., and rye, the breadstuff of the poor, at 6s. 8d.
The next year prices are said to have risen extra-
ordinarily; wheat was at 16s. and rye at 11s. a bushel.
A general rise in prices naturally followed ; cloth caps,
which were largely made in Bristol, rose from 14d. to
2s. 6d., and a pair of shoes which formerly fetched 6d.
was worth \2d. The merchants of the city did much
for the relief of the distressed both by gifts and prudent
management. In 1596 John Whitson bought 3,000
qrs. of Danzig rye and sold it for the provision of
the city, applying the profits to public purposes; and
the next year the executors of Alderman Kitchin gave
100 marks a week for the support of the poor. At
this, as at all times, the merchants of Bristol are dis-
tinguished for their princely munificence. The new
interest of the laity in education, of which a notice has
been given in the last chapter, is illustrated by the
foundation of the Free Grammar School, completed by
1536, the work of Robert Thorne and his son Nicholas,
who, as we shall see, are to be remembered for other126

Bristol

reasons also. In 1586 John Carr founded Queen Eliza-
beth’s Hospital, on the model of Christ’s Hospital in.
London, and in the next reign the Red Maids School,
so called from the red dresses of the girls, was founded
by John Whitson. It is impossible to attempt to give an
account here of the charities that were established for tha
relief of the bodily wants of the poor during this period.

When the Bristol merchants complained of their
poverty to Henry VII., they could not foresee that their
city was even then about to enter on a glorious era of
maritime adventure and of extended trade. Towards
the close of the fifteenth century there was a wide-
spread belief in the existence of lands beyond the
Atlantic, and men speculated on the possibility of
reaching the eastern shores of Asia and the kingdom
of Cathay by sailing westwards.1 As early as 1480,
Wyrcestre declares that, John Jay, his sister’s son, and
another merchant sent out two ships under £ Llyde, the
most scientific mariner in all England,’ to sail from
Bristol to c the island of Brasylle to the west of Ireland,’
and that after a voyage of about nine months (the dates
show that we should read weeks) they put in to refit at
an Irish port, without having discovered the island.

Other attempts were soon made in the same direc-
tion, for the Spaniard De Ayala, writing from England
to his sovereigns in 1498, says that the people of Bristol
had, for seven years, sent out each year ‘ two, three, or

1 In spite of the repeated assertions of local historians and
others, it must not be imagined that the Cathay to the south of
St. Mary Redcliff has anything to do with the Asiatic Cathay or
China; the existence of a Pithay m the same city ought to have
prevented such a queer notion. Whatever the first syllable of the
Bristol Cathay mamy ean, hay is simply hedge, and so enclosure.A New World

127

four light ships in search of the Island of Brazil and
the Seven Cities’ under the direction of a certain
Genoese. This was Zuan or John Cabot,1 the discoverer
of North America, a native of Genoa, who in 1476
was naturalised at Venice, after having resided there
during the necessary period of fifteen years. Cabot came
to live in Bristol for the purposes of his trade, and while
there applied for, and on March 5, 1496 obtained from
Henry VII. a patent for discovery for himself and his
three sons, Lewis, Sebastian, and Sancius, to sail to all
parts of the east, west, and north, with five ships at their
own cost, under the royal banner, and to take possession
of new islands and countries, paying the king a fifth
of their gain from each voyage on arriving at the port
of Bristol, whither they were bound to return. He set
sail in the early part of the May of the next year in a
ship said to have been named the ‘ Matthew,’ manned
by eighteen sailors, nearly all of Bristol. His son
Sebastian probably sailed with him. Land was dis-
covered on June 24. This seems to have b§en the
northern coast of Cape Breton. Here Cabot landed,
planted the flags of England and of St. Mark, and the
same day saw an island (Prince Edward’s Island) which
he named St. John’s, as it was discovered on the Feast of
St. John the Baptist. He seems to have sailed round
the Gulf of St. Lawrence, and then returned to England
in August, believing that he had been in ‘ the territory

1 Everything that is known or has been written about the Cabots
will be found in Dr. C. Deane’s chapter and critical essay in vol. iii.
of the magnificent History of America, now in course of publication,
under the editorship of Mr. J. Winsor. Although I venture to
differ from Dr. Deane’s opinion as to the birthplace of Sebastian
Cabot, I owe much to his exhaustive treatise.128

Bristol

of the Grand Cham.’ Thus our Bristol sailors dis-
eovered North America a year before Columbus struck
the coast of the southern continent. The king was
delighted at his discoveries, and gave him money, so he
abode at Bristol in great honour, dressing in silk and
being called the ‘ Great Admiral.’ He now had no
doubt of being able to reach Cipango (Japan), the land
of spices, by sailing along the coast he had discovered,
and having received a second patent for himself alone
on February 3, 1498, set out from Bristol in May, with,
it is said, 300 men and with his son Sebastian. He
seems to have been in command of two ships, which
were accompanied by others freighted chiefly by the
merchants of the town (though some London merchants
had shares in the venture), with coarse cloths, caps, and
other articles for traffic with the natives. One of his
ships proved unfit for the voyage and was sent back.
This is the last we hear of him. John Cabot was not
wealthy, and his expeditions, even if the king had a
hand in the second, must have been fitted out by the
merchants of Bristol.

The voyage of 1498 was completed by his son
Sebastian. Neither the date nor the place of Sebastian’s
birth can be fixed with certainty. He is claimed as a
native of Bristol, but the most learned American writers
on the subject decide against the claim. First, as
regards his age, it is argued that he must have been
fully twenty-one when his name was included in the
patent of 1496, and so must have been born during his
father’s residence in Venice. I venture to think that
there is no reason for believing that he must have been
of full age in 1496: there are instances of men com-A New World

129

manding expeditions when very young. Then, as re-
gards authorities, Peter Martyr, writing in 1516, says
that he was 1 genere Venetus,’ and that he was brought
to England when 1 pene infans.’ Ramusio, a Venetian
official, in the first volume of his Navigationi, pub-
lished in 1550, gives a report of what he was told
Cabot had said in a conversation that took place some
years before—namely, that he came to England from
Venice when very young, ‘ yet having some knowledge
of the humanities and of the sphere ’; and, lastly, Cabot
himself, when he was secretly seeking to be employed
by the Venetians, told their ambassador Contarini, in
1522, ‘I was born in Venice, but brought up in Eng-
land.’ In each of these cases something was to be
gained by asserting his Venetian birth, for Peter Martyr,
though not a Venetian, would, especially in writing for
Leo X., be pleased to make him out an Italian. On
the other hand, when he was an old man Cabot told his
friend Richard Eden, that c he was born in Brystowe,
and that at iiii years old he was carried with his father
to Venice, and so returned again to England with his
father after certain years, whereby he was thought to
have been born in Venice.’ This fits in with what
Ramusio says about his attainments: it is confirmed by
Stow using a MS. of Fabian now lost, by Edward Haies
writing in 1582, and by the inscription on the so-called
Holbein portrait. It is evident that Cabot changed his
birthplace to suit his convenience. And though it is
not a matter we can be sure about, there seems no reason
for rejecting the universal belief of English writers of
his time that he was born in Bristol.

In the voyage of 1498 Cabot appears to have sailed

K130

Bristol

north-west, probably along the coast of Labrador,c until,’
according to Eden, c seyng suche heapes of Ise before
hym, he was enforced to tourne his sayles and folowe the
west.’ He came to a land called Baccalaos (cod-fish), a
term which seems to have taken ic Newfoundland and
Nova Scotia, where there were multitudes of big fish
which the bears used to catch in their claws just as
they still catch salmon in Alaska. Thence he appears
to have sailed south as far as 36° N., seeking for a pas-
sage to the west, and then returned to England. He
brought home three savages to present to the king.
Everyone was full of curiosity about these men, who
‘ were clothed in beasts’ skins and ate raw flesh, and
were in their demeanour like brute beasts.’ Among
other curiosities the Bristol mariners also sent hawks,
wild cats, and popinjays to the king at Richmond.
Patents for discovery were granted to certain Bristol
merchants and others in 1501 and 1502. Among them
was Robert Thorne, and an expedition fitted out by him
and his partner seems to have had some success, for his
son, also called Robert, in a letter to Henry VIII., says,
‘ My father, which, with another merchant of Bristowe
named Hugh Eliot, were the discoverers of newe found
lands, of the whiche there is no doubt as now plainly
appeareth, if the mariners would then have been ruled,
and followed their pilot’s mind, the lands of the West
Indies, from whence all the gold commeth, had beene
ours.’ About three years after Henry VIII. came to
the throne, Cabot entered the service of the king of
Spain. An expedition of discovery from England which
he is said to have undertaken in 1516, and which, we
are told, failed through the ‘ faint heart ’ of his fellow-A New World

131

captain Pert, presents, therefore, some difficulties, and
if it was ever planned, probably never set sail. He was
employed in Spain as a cartographer, was made a mem-
ber of the Council of the Indies, and received a large
pension. Charles V. appointed him pilot-major, and he
assisted in the famous division of the undiscovered
world between Spain and Portugal. In 1526 he com-
manded a Spanish expedition to the La Plata river.
This expedition, famous for other reasons, concerns us,
for Robert Thorne the younger, who was then residing
at Seville for the purposes of his trade, invested 1,400
ducats in the adventure, chiefly that two of his English
friends might go with it, and bring him back informa-
tion. Meanwhile the eagerness for discovery languished
in England, for the voyages of the Cabots had not been
profitable to the merchants who promoted them.
Thorne, however, who saw the activity of the Spaniards,
was anxious that his own country should not be behind-
hand, and wrote two remarkable letters, one to the
English ambassador, and another, from which a quota-
tion has already been made, to Henry VIII., urging that
England should be forward in the work. He wished
that an attempt should be made to find a north-west
passage by which lands might be reached no less rich
in gold and spicery than the islands of the emperor
and the king of Portugal. £ If I had facultie to my
will,’ he wrote, ‘ it shoulde bee the first thing that I
woulde understande even to attempt if our Seas North-
war de be navigable to the pole.’ Thorne’s trade at
Seville does not concern us, for it belonged rather to
London than to Bristol.

Between Bristol and Spain, however, trade was now132

Bristol

vigorous. For, besides what may be called the ordinary
commerce, the export of Bristol goods, such as cloth,
packthread, and soap, and the import from Andalusia of
sweet Spanish wines, such as muscadel and bastard, our
merchants carried on a large trade with the Canaries
by ships of St. Lucar, where they kept agents, who sent
out our usual exports, and received in return dyeing
drugs, sugar, and kidskins. Nicholas Thorne, one of
the merchants who thus used Spanish ships, also had
some trade with the West Indies, at least as early as
1526 ; for he sent out thither armour and other goods
to one Tison, who seems to have acted as agent for him,
and probably for other Bristol merchants, although
this trade must, of course, have been carried on secretly.
During the reign of Henry VIII., too, Bristol, in common
with London and Southampton, carried on a brisk trade
with Sicily, Candia, and the Levant, exporting fine and
coarse kersies of various kinds, and receiving silks,
rhubarb, sweet wines, sweet oils, Turkey carpets, and
spices; and in this trade our merchants largely em-
ployed ships of Ragusa, Venice, Genoa, and other states.
Commerce with the Levant, however, was carried on at
the risk of capture by the Turks, and especially by the
Algerine pirates.. In 1621 John Rawlins, a Plymouth
skipper, who was taken and sold as a slave in Algiers,
found there the ‘ Exchange ’ of Bristol which had been
surprised by the pirates. He and some other English
slaves were put on board her as part of her crew; they
rose against the Turks, overcame them after a desperate
fight, and brought the ship back to England. Some
years passed before the new trade of Bristol brought
her ships into collision with any Christian state, for ourA New World

133

Newfoundland discovery lay too far north to rouse
Spanish interference, and such trade as there was with
the West Indies was carried on in Spanish bottoms
and was kept secret. In 1552, however, three ships
fitted out and freighted at Bristol, sailed from Kingroad,
on the second voyage made from England for purposes
of traffic with Morocco, carrying linen and woollen
cloth, amber, and jet. The general importance of this
voyage lies in the fact that it was an open defiance of
the papal decision, as yet the law of Christendom, which
reserved Africa for its discoverers, the Portuguese.
The ships returned safely in spite of the anger of the
Portuguese, and of an attack made on them by some
Spaniards. As regards our city, this voyage marks the
beginning of her African trade. From the Barbary
coast her ships slowly worked their way to the Guinea
coast, and there, in later times, took in slaves for the
Western plantations.

On the accession of Edward VI. Cabot returned to
England, and, it is said, took up his residence in Bristol.
He received a pension, and had the direction of the
maritime affairs of the kingdom. In addition to this,
he worked with all his heart on the method of deter-
mining longitude and on problems of a like nature, so
that he should be remembered rather as an adminis-
trator and a man of science than simply as a seaman.
The emperor commanded him to return to Spain : he
refused,' and this refusal was remembered against him.
When Philip, the husband of our Queen Mary, came over
here in 1557, after his accession to the throne of Spain,
Cabot was deprived of half his pension. He probably
died the same year. The wonderful impetus given to134

Bristol

trade by tbe new discoveries took the commerce of the
city out of the control of the merchants’ fellowship.
Every one who could scrape a little money together in-
vested it in some adventure—advanced it, that is to say,
to those who were fitting out a trading expedition, or
bought some articles to form part of a cargo of mer-
chandise. A ‘ lamentable representation ’ was accord-
ingly sent to Edward VI., by the master and wardens
of the Fellowship of Merchants, setting forth that
‘ artificers and handicraftsmen, having other occupa-
tions,’ and without having served an apprenticeship as
merchants, exported goods in foreign bottoms, ‘ to the
defraud of the customs, the scandal of the merchants,
and the decay of ships and mariners.’ No stress need
be laid on the public evils these merchants deprecated,
any more than on the fear of the journeymen weavers
lest the king should lose good soldiers, of which we have
already read. In answer the king granted a charter,
incorporating the old fellowship with the title of the
Merchant Venturers of Bristol, giving the company self-
gov eminent, and providing that no artificer or any other
person should engage in commerce beyond seas, unless
he was admitted into the company, and that right to ad-
mission should only be obtained by apprenticeship to the
mistery of the merchants. One effect of this grant was,
to shut out men of small means from making little
ventures on their own account. From henceforth the
foreign trade of the city was to be under the control of
a society , which naturally opened its doors to few save
the rich and the sons of its members. Yet there were
special reasons that made this and other like monopolist
companies appropriate to the time. In many branchesA New World

135

of foreign commerce every undertaking was in another
than a merely technical sense an ‘ adventure.’ And in
order to bring these adventures to a successful issue,
good counsel, wealth, courage, and public spirit were
needed in no ordinary degree. Only a few men pos-
sessed either the skill to plan or the means to carry
them out, and it was well that the trade of the city
should be committed to a society in which the opinions
of those who understood such matters would receive
due weight, and that the men who were called upon to
venture large sums in these undertakings should be
relieved from petty competition, in order to give them
both the power and the will to act boldly.

The risks which the merchants of those days had
to meet were greatly increased by the political and
religious enmity of Spain. Even while the two coun-
tries were at peace, acts of plunder and revenge were
common enough. In 1576, for example, Andrew Barker,
a Bristol merchant, who traded with the Canaries,
taking out cloth and bringing back wine, heard that
all his goods in Teneriffe, to the value of 1,700Z., had
been seized, and his factor imprisoned by the Inquisition.
Accordingly, with the help of his friends, he fitted out
two barques, the ‘ Ragged Staff’ and the ‘ Bear,’ and
set sail on a voyage of reprisal. He and his men
sailed to Trinidad, and thence proceeded along the
northern coast of South America, doing what damage
they could to Spanish ships. They had good success,
for they captured a frigate with gold and silver of 500t.
value, and took other spoil. Then the crews became
mutinous. Barker fought two duels, and after the
second, which took place on an island in the Bay of136

Bristol

Honduras, Cox, the captain who sailed with him, refused
to allow him and his party to go aboard again until
they were ready to sail. While they were ashore, the
Spaniards set on them and slew them. Cox then took
the command, and sailed for England with the Spanish
frigate, carrying a treasure of 2,000Z. value. The frigate
was capsized, and when the company landed, some of
them were called to account for Barker’s death. While
expeditions of this kind are of small account beside the
achievements of men like Drake, they all helped to em-
bitter the relations between the two countries. Our
city also had a share in a nobler warfare with Spain,
and when the Armada attempted the conquest of Eng-
land, three ships and a pinnace from Bristol, the (Great
Unicorn,’ the ‘ Minion,’ the 1 Handmaid,’ and the c Aid,’
formed part of the Lord Admiral’s fleet.

Religious feelings, patriotism, the love of adventure,
and the hope of gain, all combined to make war with
Spain popular in Bristol. Private men were eager to
take their chance in the great game, and many deeds
of daring, now well nigh forgotten, upheld the honour
of our flag and enriched the adventurers. In the ex-
pedition against Cadiz, in 1596, John Hopkins, a fish-
monger of Bristol, twice mayor, and a member for
the city, sailed his own ship with the fleet, and bore his
share in dealing the Spanish king the hardest blow he
ever received. His fellow-citizens were delighted at the
glory he had won; they met him on Durdham Down,
and brought him home in triumph, and they lighted 1 all
their tallow candells, and a greate bonfire at the High
Crosse, very beautifull to beholde.’ Another Bristol
adventurer was famous in song. A ballad entitled ‘ TheA New World

13 7

Honour of Bristol ’ tells how, probably in 1625, when
we were again at war with Spain, the ‘ Angel Gabriel,’
belonging to a Bristol merchant, sailed by her ‘ captain,
famous Netheway,’ with forty fighting men, put to
flight three Spanish ships, with, it is said, the loss of
500 men. The song tells how, after our seamen had
repulsed the first attack, the fight grew fiercer

With that their three ships boarded us
Again with might and main,

But still our noble Englishmen
Cry’d out a Fig for Spain !

Though seven times they boarded us,

At last we shew’d our skill,

And made them feel the force
Of our Angel Gabriel.

The Bristol merchants did not follow up the New-
foundland fishery with vigour, for they preferred the
fishery off Iceland, which they held to be safer. At the
same time they did not wholly neglect the country first
discovered through their enterprise. In 1578 Anthony
Parkhurst, who had then been there four years running,
wrote Hakluyt an account of his doings. Many more
English vessels, he said, had of late come there; for his
neighbours thought that he must have found some
secret source of wealth. Fish were so plentiful that he
could spear flounders ‘ as fast as you can take up fritters
with a sharp stick,’ and in half a day he could catch
enough lobsters to feed a hundred men for a day. In
1610 King James granted a patent for the plantation
of Newfoundland to a society called the ‘ Company of
Adventurers and Planters of the cities of London and
Bristol.’ The scheme was warmly taken up in Bristol,Bristol

138

and John Guy, the first governor, took out a colony
from the city. Before long we find that citizens of
Bristol had planted a large circuit in Newfoundland,
had ‘ many fair houses ’ and had done good services there.
Nor had the hopes entertained by the Cabots and by
Thome of finding a north-west passage died out among
the citizens. Emulous of the expedition sent out by the
Londoners under Fox in 1631, the Bristol merchants at
the same time sent out the ‘ Henrietta Maria,’ a ship of
70 tons, under the command of Thomas James, in the
hope of discovering the north-west passage. James,
though a brave seaman, was unskilled in navigating
among ice, his ship was injured in Hudson’s Bay, and
he determined to winter on Charlton Island. There he
and his men suffered terribly from cold and scurvy, and
were unable to start homewards until the following July.
They reached Bristol in safety, and the name of James’s
Bay commemorates their sufferings and their hardihood.

The part taken by Bristol in the early attempts to
colonise the country which came to be known as New
England is a matter of special interest. Only two or
three Englishmen had reached Norumbega, a name used
somewhat indefinitely for the land to the south of Cape
Breton, when Walsingham and his son-in-law Carlile
took up the idea of colonising the Penobscot district,
in the present State of Maine. A scheme of colonisation
was set on foot, to which it was proposed that London
should contribute 3,000Z. and Bristol 1,000Z., and
although the colony was not planted, the proposal must
be connected with Sir Humphrey Gilbert’s last voyage
and with some efforts made by the Bristol merchants.
In 1582 Walsingham wrote to Thomas Aldworth, theA New World

139

mayor, saying that Gilbert was about to try to discover
the coast to the south-west of Cape Breton. He sug-
gested that Bristol should fit out a ship or two barques
for the expedition, and advised Aldworth to take counsel
with two men who understood what Gilbert’s proposal
meant. One of these was Richard Hakluyt, the author
of the famous collection of ‘ Navigations, Voyages, and
Discoveries,’ an Oxford man and a clergyman, who pub-
lished his first collection in this year, and was soon
after most appropriately preferred to a Bristol prebend.
Aldworth accordingly talked the matter over with
Hakluyt, and then communicated with Salterne, the
deputy of the Merchants’ Company. Salterne called the
merchants together, and when they were assembled,
Hakluyt gave them full information about the proposed
voyage. They liked the scheme well, and, Aldworth
writes, ‘ there was eftsoons set down by mens own hands,
then present, the sum of 1,000 marks and upward, whiche
sum if it should not suffice, we doubt not but otherwise
to furnish out for this westerne discovery a ship of three
score, and a bark of 40 tunneto be left in the countrey.’
Gilbert’s voyage was disastrous. With this, however, we
have nothing to do; the scene in the assembly of the
merchants affords a justification for the existence of
the society, and an illustration of the way in which
the maritime expeditions of the time were set on foot.
The Bristol merchants, anxious to open up trade with
Norumbega, were easily persuaded by Hakluyt to fit out
an expedition of their own. Having obtained 1 leave to
entermeddle in that action ’ from Raleigh, the patentee
of the vast country then known by the common name
of Virginia, they sent out Martin Pring as captain, and140

Bristol

Salteme as their agent, with a small ship and a barque
laden with light goods, caps of divers colours, kerseys,
tools, beads, and bugles for barter. Pring sailed round
Cape Cod into Massachusetts Bay, and anchored in a
harbour which has been identified as Plymouth. He
named the harbour, afterwards to become so famous,
after his fellow-citizen Whitson, and a neighbouring
hill after Aid worth. Once he and his men were in
some danger from the natives, but they had two great
mastiffs, Fool and Gallant, of which the Indians were
terribly afraid, and by their help they came off safely.
Although they did not stay many weeks, the adventure
was successful; for they brought back large quantities
of sassafras, which was then much esteemed as a remedy
for the plague and other diseases.

Hakluyt was convinced that a colony might be
planted in Norumbega, and joined in urging the grant
of a charter. Accordingly, in 1606, James granted two
patents, one for the London Company for the colonisa-
tion of Southern Virginia, the other for the Plymouth
Company of knights, merchants, and others of Bristol,
Exeter, and Plymouth for the colonisation of the part
of the ancient Norumbega, or Northern Virginia, lying
between 38° and 45° N. The Plymouth Company was
chiefly promoted by Chief Justice Popham and by Sir
Ferdinando Gorges of Wraxall, who had a house in
Bristol. They sent out ‘ a tall ship well furnished ’
belonging to Bristol, under Pring, which was captured
by the Spaniards ; other ships quickly followed, and the
Popham colony was planted upon the Sagadahoc river.
Before long this colony was abandoned, though several
English, chiefly one would think Bristol men, settledA New World

141

and carried on trade in the peninsula of Pemaquid. No
effectual colony, however, was planted in New England
until the arrival of the separatist exiles in Plymouth
Bay. After this a scheme of further colonisation
formed by the Massachusetts Company led to an emi-
gration under John Winthrop in 1630. On their
arrival at Charlestown the new colonists had to pass
through a time of severe trouble. Their provisions ran
short, and Winthrop dispatched William Peirce with
his ship, the ‘ Lion ’ of Bristol, to get supplies. During
the autumn and winter the colonists were reduced to
great straits, and were forced to feed on mussels and
acorns. Every one believed that the ‘ Lion ’ was either
lost or taken by pirates. When matters were at the
worst, and ‘ the governor himself had his last batch of
bread in the oven,’ on February 5, 1631, the day before
that appointed for a general fast, the ‘ Lion ’ arrived at
Nantasket laden with provisions. She had left Bristol
on December 1, and had been delayed by storms. She
arrived just in time to save the settlers from starvation.
The next year Peirce brought out a hundred and twenty-
three new settlers, chiefly^ no doubt, from Bristol. He
was a man of some importance in the colony, and in
‘ full communion with the church ’ at Charlestown.
The 1 Lion ’ was afterwards lost off Freak Island, as
she was carrying a cargo of fish, beaver, and other skins
from New Plymouth, and the letter which Peirce wrote
to the settlers on his loss and theirs shows that his reli-
gion was not feigned. Meanwhile, as early as 1625, two
Bristol merchants, Robert Aldworth and Giles Elbridge,
both, probably, men of puritan views, had an agent in the
Pemaquid country, and in 1632 they received a grant142

Bristol

from the Council of New England of 1,200 acres near
the Pemaquid river, with 100 additional acres for every
person they brought over, on condition that they built a
town and maintained a colony. The connexion of our
city with the coast of Maine, which was strengthened
by the grant of New Somersetshire to Sir Ferdinando
Gorges, is commemorated by a Bristol in the Pemaquid
peninsula ; and a county in Massachusetts, and towns in
Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, and other States also bear
its name.

Before the end of the century, Bristol was doing a
large business in the importation of sugar and tobacco
from the American colonies. A trade of the same
character with the West Indies was opened to us by
the colonisation of Barbados, the conquest of Jamaica
by Cromwell, and the decline of the Spanish power.
The western plantations were cultivated by slave labour,
and Bristol ships were largely engaged in the trade in
negro slaves. Not content with this, towards the end
of the seventeenth century, when, according to Roger
North,c all persons, even the common shopkeepers, more
or less traded to the American plantations,’ the aider-
men and justices of the city used to transport criminals,
and even slight offenders, and sell them as slaves, or put
them to work in their plantations in the West Indies.
There is abundant evidence, too, that children were
often kidnapped and sent beyond sea by Bristol men,
and that the offence was treated with disgraceful leni-
ency by the magistrates. When Chief Justice Jeffreys
came here on the Bloody Assizes of 1685, he did one good
action; for, after making a violent charge to the grand
jury on the subject, he caused the mayor, clad as he wasErratum.

Page 142, line 13, for American read Southern.A New World

143

in his scarlet and fur, to leave the bench, and stand as
a criminal at the bar. There he rated him, to the terror
and amazement of the citizens, calling him a kidnapp-
ing knave. He is said to have fined him 1,000£., and
to have bound six aldermen to answer for the like crime
at the King’s Bench.144

Bristol

CHAPTER VH.

CIVIL WAR AND PARTY STRIFE.

How the city was alienated from the king—Neutrality and decision
—A Royalist plot—Fortifications—The Royalist siege—Bristol
under Rupert—The Roundhead siege—Sectaries—West India
merchants—Petitioners and abhorrers—Surrender of the char-
ters—Revolution.

If Charles I. found Bristol on the whole in opposition to
him, he and his father had done much to provoke the city.
Among the various means by which the Crown got the
better of the subject, none was more aggravating than
purveyance—an old feudal claim to take whatever was
wanted for the support of the royal household; it was
shamefully abused, the statutes that regulated it were
disregarded, and besides the king was a bad debtor.
Whitson during his mayoralty, in 1604, did what he could
to check the extortion of the purveyors in Bristol, and
received a sharp letter from the Board of Green Cloth for
his pains. Illegal impositions were placed upon merchan-
dise, and trade was injured by restraints and monopolies,
not without some idea of benefiting it, though chiefly for
the sake of the money they produced. The enormous
increase in the size and wealth of London enabled its
trade companies to obtain exclusive privileges to the
injury of the rest of the kingdom—an injustice that
Whitson vigorously protested against in Parliament.Civil War and Party Strife

145

Matters grew worse in the reign of Charles, who forsook
the pacific policy of his father, and was foolish enough
to hope to play the master in Europe, and especially on
the seas, without the sympathy of his people to back him.
This fatal mistake drove him to raise funds by the levy
of ship-money. Old constitutional usage allowed the
king, as we have seen, in time of war to demand ships
with their crews and equipment from port towns.
When, however, in 1634 Charles demanded 6,500Z. from
Bristol towards the expense of his fleet, the country was
not at war. The reason alleged for this tax was the
necessity, which certainly existed, of protecting our com-
merce against the Turks and other pirates, though the
ships were really wanted to uphold Spain against the
Dutch. The next year, when the king had no particular
foreign policy, another levy was made which was ex-
tended over the whole kingdom. Meanwhile every
branch of trade was interfered with, and made to yield
a profit to the Crown without the consent of Parliament.
No part of this interference appears to have been felt
more grievous in Bristol than the regulations made about
the manufacture of soap, always one of the chief indus-
tries of the city. The grievance rose from an unfair
monopoly granted to a company of London soap-makers,
which was complained of in every soap-making town in
the kingdom. In Bristol the soap-makers were forced
to agree to produce not more than 600 tons of hard soap
a year, to pay the Crown 4Z. a ton, sell their soap at 3\d.
a pound, and, worst of all, to use only olive or rape oil
instead of fish oil—a restriction that favoured foreign pro-
ductions to the prejudice of our Newfoundland and other
fisheries. The soap-makers were harassed by the London146

Bristol

company, they had to give a weekly account of the
soap they produced, and some thirty of them, who made
more than the amount allotted to them, were sum-
moned to London, imprisoned, and heavily fined. Fresh
trouble was caused by a commission appointed to enquire
into the complaints caused by the exactions of the magis-
trates and the royal officers. The enquiry was conducted
by two men of ‘ mean quality,’ who stayed eight weeks
in the city, and behaved in a high-handed manner,
threatening witnesses, committing them to prison, and
keeping them there £ until their leisure served,’ or until
they signed what was laid before them.

Men were harassed on every side; for Charles paid
no heed to the spirit of constitutional independence,
the spirit of Protestantism, that had grown up both
in secular and religious matters. In religion this spirit
manifested itself in Bristol as elsewhere in Puritanism
and separation. The earliest rise of religious separation
in the city has been traced to a Puritan clergyman of
St. Philip’s named Yeamans, who encouraged his people
to meet for worship at the house of a glover near
Lawford’s Gate, and of a carpenter in the castle, where
they used to pray that God would ‘ pluck down the
lordly prelates.’ Chief among them was a grocer’s
widow, who married another Puritan preacher named
Hazard. At their house many Puritan emigrants lodged
before embarking for New England. In 1639 Mrs.
Hazard left her husband’s church, formed a seceding con-
gregation, and the next year adopted Baptist opinions.
At the outbreak of the war the congregation numbered
160 members.

When early in 1642 the king wrote to John Locke,Civil War and Party Strife

14 7

the mayor, complaining of certain c upstarts in religion,’
and exhorting the citizens not to join his enemies, the
majority in the city was against him. Some help was
sent to Marlborough and Gloucester, and a royalist force
under Sir Ferdinando Gorges was refused admittance.
At the same time the city did not declare for the Par-
liament, and an idea seems to have prevailed that it
would be possible to preserve an independent and neu-
tral position. Bristol was not without a garrison ; for
it maintained three companies of trained bands and a
volunteer company of ‘ gentle, proper, and martial men.’
The mayor set about strengthening the defences. The
castle had long been neglected, and in Elizabeth’s
reign the yard was inhabited by thieves and beggars.
In order to remedy this, the city now bought the castle
of the Crown. Old as they were, the walls of the keep
were strong, but the defences were weak and out of
date. In the first days of December some of the Puri-
tans, anxious to urge matters forward, invited Colonel
Essex, the governor of Gloucester, into the city. Richard
Aldworth, the mayor, and the council, though on the
side of the Parliament, were not prepared to take a de-
cided part, and the royalists, a rich and powerful body,
gladly garrisoned Frome Gate, by which it was thought
Essex would attempt to enter. The council met, and
while it was sitting a crowd of ladies rushed into the
room and urged that the gates should be opened.
They had an understanding with Essex; he merely made
a feint at Frome Gate, and proceeded to Newgate, which
was opened to him by their contrivance. He marched
his men rapidly up Wine Street, and so Bristol was
committed to the side of the Parliament. Before long148

Bristol

Essex was removed from the government of the city,
and his place was taken by Nathaniel Fiennes, an able
politician and a good lawyer, who unfortunately for
himself had turned soldier, and as a son of Lord Saye
and Sele, and a man of influence in the Commons, was
now entrusted with this important command. He con-
tinued the work of fortification, and raised money by
taxes, loans, and requisitions, as well as by sequestering
the estates of the royalists. Large sums were needed
for the expenses of the garrison, and stores were also
sent to relieve the Protestants in Ireland.

The Puritans now had everything their own way
in religion; they turned out good churchmen, and gave
their churches to preachers of their own party, to
Hazard and the like. They were soon startled by an
unexpected danger. The removal of Essex had created
considerable disaffection amongst the officers who served
under him. Two of the principal merchants, Robert
Yeomans, who had been sheriff the year before, and who
held the king’s commission to raise a regiment, and George
Boucher, took advantage of this to win over some of
them to the royal cause. Communications were opened
with Prince Rupert, and a plot was made to open the
gates to him on the night of March 7. Rupert brought
a force of 4,000 horse and 2,000 foot to Durdham Down,
and it was arranged by the royalists, who could reckon
on as many as 2,000 men, that on the appointed night
the disaffected officers, who would then be in command
of the main guard at the guard-house in Wine Street,
should seize on the guard at Frome Gate. When this
was done, a signal was to be given by the tolling of a
bell in three churches—St. Nicholas’s bell for thePLAN

JTioxvtrCg	c0

*rtfe Lwes to^ *THe &£Fe?rc&	'

Ancient Jefences so o-v- new -works =A* /fry-
'The Hg/nan. numerals awe the nunTSer of v^r
the Ordinance mounted ttfr the -various points

The cUsposition/ of the Troops in the/
storrrUho of Bristol ~htf §et\.fFeurJiac 3 Apt
/(aiS~ also incU cnte3.

■o <pis tBcatminster^Civil War and Party Strife 149

craftsmen, St. John’s for the seamen, and St. Michael’s
for Rupert’s cavaliers. All was ready, and about sixty
of the party were assembled at Boucher’s house, in
Christmas Street, when the plot was discovered. Some
of the royalists dropped into the Frome and escaped
in boats, the rest were made prisoners. Another party
was seized in Yeomans’ house in Wine Street. The
prisoners were treated with great inhumanity, and
Fiennes violated the law by bringing Boucher and
Yeomans before a court-martial, which condemned them
to death as traitors. In spite of the efforts the king
made to save them, and of the remonstrances of the
mayor and other chief men on the rebel side in the
city, they were hanged opposite Yeomans’ house.
Yeomans left eight little children, and his wife was again
about to become a mother ; Boucher’s wife was left with
seven. They died as became loyal and Christian gentle-
men. Their last moments were troubled by the insults
of the Roundhead officers; they asked in vain for the
ministrations of royalist divines, and their prayers were
interrupted by the revilings of a Separatist preacher.
In after days, when Fiennes himself was tried on a
capital charge, Prynne, the great lawyer of the parlia-
mentary party, charged him with putting these men
to death illegally.

Fiennes drew a line of fortifications outside the city
on the north of the Avon, of about five miles in circuit,
the Redcliff district which was not commanded being
sufficiently defended by its own wall, which ran from
Tower Harratz, near the present railway station, to the
angle formed by the southward and westward reaches of
the river. A curtain ran from the Avon to the WaterBristol

150

fort behind Limekiln Lane, and thence a double ditch
and rampart were drawn to a strong fort on Brandon
Hill. Thence the line passed down across Bullock’s
Park (now Berkeley Square), then a wild common,
across the present road beyond the top of Park Row,
where there was a small fort called Essex fort, to the
Windmill (afterwards the Royal) fort on St. Michael’s
Hill; in this part, however, the defences were weak,
for the ground was rocky. A small redoubt stood behind
the Montague, the famous turtle house on Kingsdown,
and thence the line advanced to Prior’s Hill fort, which
stood at the apex of the quadrilateral, on Nine Tree Hill.
At this point the line turned to the south-east, passed
down Hillgrove Street, across Stokes Croft, where a gate
opened on the road to Gloucester, along the west of
Portland Square, and so to a sallyport on the Frome,
the space thence to the Avon being defended by a wall
and ditch, and a fort at Lawford’s Gate. Bristol was
well worth defending, for its geographical position gave
it a special importance in this war. It commanded the
Severn as far as Gloucester, it controlled the action of
the Royalists of Wales, and, as long as it was held by
the Parliament, hindered the king from obtaining levies
from that country; it was the place of transport for
Ireland, and afforded the means of sending relief to the
Protestants there, and of preventing the landing of Irish
troops for service in the West; and, besides, in the
hands of the king its intercourse with foreign lands
offered an opportunity of procuring arms more cheaply
than Charles could do from the Low Countries, for the
merchants would accept trade privileges as readily as
cash in payment for them. Nevertheless the city wasCivil War and Party Strife 15 i

insecure; it lay in a hole, and if once the outer line of
defences was pierced, it could offer no resistance.

During the early summer of 1643 the king’s affairs
prospered in the West. The Cornish army under the
gallant Sir Ralph Hopton having taken Taunton, Bridg-
water, and Dunster, was reinforced and overthrew Sir
William Waller on Roundaway Down under Lord
Wilmot. This victory made an attempt on Bristol pos-
sible, and Prince Rupert joined the army with a force
from Oxford. On Sunday, July 23, Rupert took up his
position by Clifton Church, while Lord Hertford and
Prince Maurice invested the city on the Somerset side.
During the next two days some ineffectual assaults
were made, and the shipping in Kingroad declared for
the king. On Wednesday, according to a preconcerted
plan, the fortifications were attacked at six places.
Eager to be first, the Cornishmen attempted to storm
Redcliff before 3 a.m., and were beaten back with heavy
loss. Some attacks on the Gloucestershire side also
failed. Lord Grandison, one of the noblest of the
king’s party, and Colonel Lunsford, made a desperate
assault on Prior’s Hill fort, which was held by Blake,
known in later days as the hero of our naval warfare.
The royalists had neither ladders nor faggots in readi-
ness, and they tried in vain to storm the fort without
them. Twice they gave way, and as Grandison led
them to a third attack, some Bristol men came up and
engaged them in the ditch. Grandison fell mortally
wounded, and his men were again repulsed. Mean-
while, the fortune of the day was turned by Colonel
Washington, first cousin of the grandfather of the hero
of American Independence. In command of three152

Bristol

hundred men, he had been set to guard some stores that
were housed where Berkeley Place now stands. He
had marked the weak place in the defences, the hollow
between Brandon Hill and Prior’s Hill fort. Essex fort,
which should have guarded this part of the line, was
perhaps unfinished; Fiennes had left it without guns,
and had given it in charge to Langrish, a man of no
courage or capacity. Here Washington led his men
to the assault, their fire-pikes blazing as they came.
Langrish’s troop was thrown into confusion by the
‘ wild-fire ’ on the royalists’ pikes, and galloped off with-
out offering any resistance. The cavaliers £ made all
plain ’ for their horse to enter, and then occupied the
fort commanding the road now called Park Row. Here
they waited in some danger for reinforcements. At last
their success became known outside the line, and the
cavalry came up and dashed through the breach they
had made. Some of the royalists occupied College
Green, manned the cathedral, St. Augustine’s, and St.
Mark’s chapel; Bellasis and Lunsford made for Frome
Gate, fighting in the narrow streets, and fired on from
the windows of the houses. From one of these Harry
Lunsford was shot at the top of Christmas Steps, long
called ‘ Lunsford Stairs.’ Fiennes evidently considered
his position hopeless, and made no further effort. Not
so the women of Bristol; for Mrs. Hazard and some
two hundred more, with the help of a few men, barri-
caded Frome Gate with earth and woolsacks, and then
went to the governor and entreated him to hold the
city, vowing that they would take their children in
their arms, and stand before the enemy’s guns, ‘to dead
and keep off the shot from the soldiers if they wereCivil War and Party Strife

153

afraid.’ Fiennes would not listen to them; he had
already attempted to treat, and now, finding that the
royalists were about to wade across the Frome, for the
tide was out, he renewed his offers. Rupert gladly ac-
cepted his surrender, and the next morning the Round-
head army evacuated Bristol. There was some plunder-
ing when the Cavaliers entered, for several of Fiennes’
men joined the victorious army, and pointed out the
houses of the most disaffected to their new comrades.
The shops and houses on the bridge suffered most, for
the inhabitants were suspected of special hatred to the
king’s cause.

Fiennes was tried by a council of war, Prynne and
Walker, a gentleman of Somerset, exhibiting articles
against him. He was found not to have defended the
city as he ought, and was sentenced to death. Lord
Essex pardoned him, and though he was not again
employed as a soldier, Cromwell and Fairfax held that
he was not to blame for the surrender. He seems to
have been guilty of a serious error of judgment in not
taking more effectual means to defend what was obvi-
ously the weakest place in the external fortifications,
and Langrish certainly cannot be acquitted of cowardice.
But when once the line was pierced, the city became
untenable, and it was the duty of the governor to offer
terms. Unfortunately for his reputation, he was evi-
dently flurried, and neglected to inform Captain Blake,
who held Prior’s Hill fort, and Captain Husbands, who
held the fort on Brandon Hill, of the surrender. They
accordingly continued their resistance, and Rupert is
said to have threatened to hang Blake for doing so.
Like many other officers of the parliamentary army154

Bristol

at this time, Fiennes was not a soldier. Cromwell saw
the mistake of employing such officers, and introduced
a new system, to the ruin of the royal cause. The
surrender of Bristol, ‘ the magazine of the West,’ was
c a full tide of prosperity to the king.’ At the same
time the victory cost him dear; about five hundred
‘ tried and incomparable foot ’ fell in the various assaults,
besides a large number of the best royalist officers, and
chief among them Viscount Grandison, a loss, Clarendon
says, that could 1 never be enough lamented.’

Shortly after Bristol was won, the king paid a short
visit to the city and appointed Rupert governor, and
Lord (Sir Ralph) Hopton as his lieutenant, for the
prince was generally engaged elsewhere. The surren-
der, which 1 struck the two Houses to the heart,’ had
some noteworthy effects. It led the king to attack
Gloucester, and had he gained that city, he would have
had command of the Severn, he would have been able
to supply his garrisons at Worcester and Shrewsbury
from Bristol, and would have opened inland trade to
the Bristol merchants, and so would have put the city
in a position to supply him with large sums. The siege
failed, and the failure was disastrous to his' cause.
During its course, and later, he was well supplied with
levies from South Wales, which was now freed from the
threatening neighbourhood of a parliamentary force in
our city. And the possession of Bristol, now, as always,
closely connected with Irish affairs, enabled him to
receive recruits from the Irish army, who landed here
in considerable numbers during 1643, for in that year
he made a truce with the rebels in Ireland. After the
second battle of Newbury and the failure of the nego-Civil War and Party Strife

155

tiations at Uxbridge, some thoughts were entertained
of removing the Court hither, and though the plan was
dropped, the Prince of Wales was sent here as a place of
safety and as a centre for operations in the West. Soon
after the Prince’s arrival Waller was found to be traffick-
ing with some of the inhabitants for a surprise of the
city; two or three of his correspondents escaped, and
the rest ‘consented to anything that was proposed.’
The command of the wealth of Bristol was not the least
of the advantages the king gained by the surrender :
the city was heavily taxed, and the two years that the
royalists held it brought it almost to ruin. The triumph
of the king’s arms was followed by the restoration of
the dispossessed clergy : many of the Separatists with-
drew to London, and those who remained seem to have
fared badly. During 1644 the royal cause declined.
In the June of the next year the battle of Naseby
left the king no part of England save the West, and set
Fairfax and Cromwell at liberty to carry on the war
there. In July Somerset was regained for the Parliament,
and it was determined to attempt Bristol. The plan
was not resolved on without much hesitation, for the
plague had broken out in the city for the second time
since 1603, and men were dying at the rate of a hundred
a week.

When Rupert heard that the city was to be besieged,
he returned to his post as governor. The fortifications
had been strengthened, guns were mounted in the forts,
Windmill Hill fort was rebuilt as the Royal fort, and
a large supply of provisions was brought in. On the
approach of the parliamentary army, the prince burnt
Clifton and Bedminster, so that the enemy might not156

Bristol

find shelter, a matter of special importance, as the
weather was extremely wet, and this cost the besiegers
the loss of many men and horses. Further destruction
was stopped by a flying column; the burning of Temple
Street in the city was perhaps an accident, and may
have taken place later. Fairfax appeared before Bristol
on August 21, and after he had invested it, he made
his head-quarters opposite Prior’s Hill fort, which
he saw was the key of the position. Considerable hope
appears to have been entertained that the city would
have been delivered by the inhabitants, but their ‘ good
affection to us,’ Cromwell writes, c did not answer ex-
pectation ; ’ the prince, indeed, took measures to prevent
any such attempt. Up to September 2 Rupert made
constant sallies on the besiegers’ works without any
great loss on either side. Meanwhile, the capture of
the fort on Portishead Point enabled Admiral Moulton
to hold the river for the Parliament and to bring his
sailors to help Fairfax, who was also joined by the force
of 2,000 countrymen who had taken the fort. It was
now determined to storm the city. Before taking this
step Fairfax sent the prince a letter urging him to sur-
render, and reminding him how his family had ever
1 had the prayers, tears, purses, and blood of the Parlia-
ment and people.’ Rupert asked for time to consult
the king. This was refused, and On September 7 he
demanded terms which the general would not grant.
On September 10, at 2 A.M., Fairfax gave the signal for
the storm, and several portions of the line were attacked
at once. Colonel Montague stormed the double work at
Lawford’s Gate, made a way for Desborough’s horse to
follow him, occupied the ground between the rivers, andCivil War and Party Strife

157

took possession of the Castle Gate. At Prior’s Hill fort,
Rainsborough’s brigade, the pick of the army, had a des-
perate struggle to gain the parapet, and then for two
hours more were at push of pike until Hammond, who
had forced an entrance by Stokes Croft, attacked the
inward side of the fort. Then the royalists in the fort
asked quarter, but almost all were put to the sword.
The attack on Redcliff, like the royalists’ attack of two
years before, was unsuccessful, for the walls were too
high for the besiegers’ ladders, and the cannon were
well served. About four hours after Prior’s Hill fort
had been taken Rupert sent to demand a parley. Fair-
fax granted it on condition that the garrison put out
the fires that were now raging in three places in the
city, and the surrender was arranged in the evening.
The conduct of Rupert justifies the surrender of Fiennes;
for the prince, though he had not the good will of the
citizens, had a larger garrison. He found that the place
was untenable, and was anxious to treat before the city
was stormed. It may be that the considerations that
Fairfax had urged in his letter had some weight with
him, and it may be that he was influenced by the belief
that his uncle’s cause was already hopeless. Neither of
these suppositions, however, is wanted to explain his
conduct. That the position was untenable was sufficient
reason for him as a soldier to demand terms, and when
the enemy had gained a decided advantage, to accept
less favourable conditions than he had at first proposed.
Charles was very angry and reproached him bitterly.
When Fairfax and Cromwell entered the city, they
found it in such a wretched state that one cannot won-
der that the plague found many victims: it looked ‘more■158

Bristol

like a prison,’ Sprigg says, 1 than a city, and the people
more like prisoners than citizens; being brought so low
with taxations, so poor in habit, and so dejected in
countenance; the streets so noisome, and the houses so
nasty, as that they were unfit to receive friends or free-
men till they were cleansed.’

The recovery of Bristol by the Puritans was followed
by the dispossession of the royalist clergy. The lead
was torn from the roof of the palace, even while the wife
of Howel, the bishop, lay there in child-bed, and the
building was turned into a malt-house. At Christ Church
a tailor took the place of the learned vicar Standfast, who
was imprisoned for loyalty, and changes of a like kind
took place in other churches. The Separatists returned
from London, but their period of triumph was marred,
so their chronicler, Terrell, the author of the ‘ Broad-
mead Records,’ tells us, by internal feuds ; every meeting
almost was filled with disputes and debates. After
1653 a separation gradually grew up on the subject of
baptism, and the new secession has left its mark in the
name Baptist Mills, where a wholesale immersion took
place in the Frome in January 1667—an occasion
marked, it was believed, by a miracle; for none of the
dipped took cold. Great as the hatred was between
the Presbyterians and the other sectaries, all felt
equal bitterness against the Quakers, who certainly be-
haved in a very unpleasant manner, interrupting the
preachers in their sermons, and breaking into prayer-
meetings with the unflattering declaration, ‘ The prayer
of the wicked is an abomination to the Lord.’ A once
famous controversy was carried on in Bristol between
them and their chief opponents, the Baptists, and theCivil War and Party Strife

159

magistrates did their best to suppress them by the
more cogent arguments of imprisonment and whipping.
Intolerance towards any sect of Protestant noncon-
formists was grievous to Cromwell, and the question
was one of the chief points of difference between him
and his second Parliament. These differences came to a
head about the case of James Naylor, a crazy Quaker,
who, in 1655, entered Bristol amidst the Hosannahs of
a few mud-bespattered worshippers. After much debat-
ing, the Parliament condemned the poor wretch to a
punishment of revolting cruelty, to various whippings,
branding, and such like, which he underwent partly
here and partly in London. Were there then to be no
limits between the spheres of Parliament and the law-
courts? Was Parliament to condemn whom it would,
to any punishment it thought good ? If so, what place
was left for the Protector ? Cromwell answered these
questions by a new settlement of the nation, which
gave him the control of Parliament. After the Restora-
tion the nonconformists of Bristol were violently perse-
cuted, their meetings for worship were broken up, they
were fined, imprisoned, and even transported to Barba-
dos by the magistrates to work in their plantations.

Changes in the governing body of the city followed
each surrender. Certain aldermen had been put out of
office by the royalists, and when Bristol fell into the
hands of the rebels, the republicans in their turn natur-
ally refused to allow their enemies to bear rule in a place
of such importance. Skippon, the governor, deposed
the mayor, made the council elect his nominee, put out
the royalist aldermen, and reinstated those whom the
royalists had deprived. Now, as at other times, we findi6o

Bristol

an illustration of the importance of the city in connexion
with Ireland; for Cromwell came here on July 14,1649,
and stayed about a fortnight making preparations for
his famous Irish expedition. He came in great state,
with the six Flanders mares he loved to drive, and was
received by the citizens with much joy. Two years
later, a traveller of more illustrious descent visited the
city in humbler guise. Charles II., after his defeat at
Worcester, rode through Bristol with Mistress Lane on
a pillion behind him, on his way to Mr. Norton’s house
at Abbot’s Leigh, where he found shelter for some days.
Little chance there seemed then that he would ever sit
upon his father’s throne. Some old things had passed
away for ever, and the change in the national history
was reflected in Bristol by the demolition of the castle,
in its strength, its decay, and its destruction, an emblem
of a system that had now become unsuited to the re-
quirements of the nation. Nobler things than the relics
of this worn-out system seemed also to have perished.
But though our constitutional life was interrupted it
was soon to be restored again. Here as elsewhere men
wearied of Puritan tyranny. The return of the Rump
Parliament threatened to perpetuate the republican form
of government, and the ’prentices of Bristol, like their
fellows in London, and indeed throughout the country,
rose for ‘ a free Parliament,’ and ‘ would let none of the
trained bands mount guard but those that would declare
with them.’ They set at nought the authority of the
mayor, and showed their contempt for him, and their
hatred of Puritan restrictions, by returning to their old
cruel pastimes, squailing a goose before his door, and
tossing dogs and cats on Shrove Tuesday. Order wasCivil War and Party Strife

161

at length enforced by the arrival of a body of troops.
Some royalist merchants appear to have encouraged
these disturbances, and after the Restoration one, at
least, boasted that he had done so.

The party struggles of the nation during the reigns
of the last two kings of the house of Stuart are to some
extent reflected in what we know of Bristol at the same
period. It was a time of wonderful prosperity, for the
trade of the city with the West Indies and with Spain
was now fully established. Bristol, in Evelyn’s eyes, vied
with London, ‘ not for its large extent, but manner of
building, shops, bridge, traffic, exchange, market-place,
&c.’ Another visitor, dearer to us than sedate Evelyn,
tells us something about Bristol at this time. Samuel
Pepys, clerk of the Acts of the Navy, came here in 1668,
with his wife, her pretty maid Deb.Willet, and others.
They only spent one day here, but Pepys’s record of it
is surely worth as much as stories of the storming of
forts or harrying of Baptists; for it tells us how, even
in his experienced eyes, the Bristol quay seemed1 a most
large and noble place,’ how a fine new ship was building
there for the king’s service, and mischievous fellows who
pretended to know the secrets of our Bristol households
vowed she ought to be manned by the husbands of wives
who were masters and mistresses both ; how Deb’s uncle,
‘ a sober merchant and very good company,’ was like a
wealthy London merchant, yet, I think, no man of mark
in Bristol; how he took Pepys home to feast on straw-
berries, a whole venison pasty, and 1 plenty of brave
wine, and above all Bristol milk; ’ and afterwards
showed him where the merchants met, and the High
Cross yet standing, ‘ like Cheapside; ’ and how as theyBristol

162

walked the streets, where Pepys marvelled to see no
carts, save such as were drawn by dogs, for fear of shak-
ing the vaults where the city’s wealth was stored, all
paid his companion great respect, ‘ and he the like to
the meanest ’—such were Bristol manners—and so, to
the 1 Horseshoe ’ in Wine Street. Yet Deb’s uncle,
though he was so well respected, was a small man by
the side of the wealthy St. Kitts’ merchants, or Meire
merchants as they were called.

The special sight to be seen in the city was the
refining of sugar and casting it into loaves, and visi-
tors to the refineries used to have a collation of eggs
fried in the furnace, and Spanish wine. A finer sight,
however, it must have been to see the West Indiamen
that filled the docks in those halcyon days, when the
market was not spoilt by cheap foreign sugars, that
have ruined the finest trade Bristol ever had, while they
disappoint the hopes of the ignorant purchaser. The
inhabitants loved to walk among the rows of trees that
stood on the end of the square peninsula, now covered
by Queen Square and the adjoining streets, and see the
ships sail in and out of the harbours on either side, and
mark the bustle of the yards, where men of war and
privateers, ocean-going merchant ships, and vessels for
the Irish and coasting trades were in building, along
with others to be used in that traffic in men which
directly or indirectly brought so much gain to the city.
The merchants were courted by the king. At one time
there were two baronets and twelve knights in the
council, and knighthood then meant more than it does
now. They were probably for the most part an ignorant
set of men, and Pepys’s story of the mayor who was seenCivil War and Party Strife 163

to read a pass upside down is not wholly improbable.
‘ Full of trade and knighthood,’ to quote the words of
a recorder of this period, the council was also full of
jealousies, and its members quarrelled incessantly.

One of these merchants, Sir John Knight, though he
had once been a Presbyterian, was distinguished for the
bitterness with which he persecuted the nonconformists.
He was for many years a member for the city, and took
an active part in investigating the so-called Popish
plot. The affair created special excitement in Bristol, for
Bedloe the informer persuaded the mayor, a pompous
Welshman, to believe his story, and so was sent up to
London. Knight brought an accusation in the House
of Commons against Sir Robert Cann, also a merchant
and a member for the city, declaring that he had said
‘ that there was no popish plot but a Presbyterian plot,’
and the charge was supported by Row, the sword-bearer,
an official whom Roger North declares the Bristol mer-
chants used to call ‘ sorberer’ Although Cann when
mayor had behaved generously to the nonconformists,
and had defeated the spies who gave him information
about conventicles by sending messengers to let the
congregation know that he was coming, he was a high
Tory, and this accusation seems to have been brought
against him in order to ruin the Tory party in the
council. When he was called to account in the House,
the choleric old man, provoked beyond endurance,
roundly abused his accusers, declaring that Row was a
‘ damned rogue,’ and the Commons, unable to discern
the truth of this description, expelled him and com-
mitted him to the Tower until he apologised. While
Cann and several more were staunch ‘ abhorrers,’ as164

Bristol

the Tories were then called, Knight, in spite of his
persecuting zeal, joined the ‘ petitioners,’ or Whigs, and
this party was strong in the council, for Bristol was
vehemently Protestant. In the next reign the mob,
encouraged by some of the merchants, showed their
dislike to the king’s religious innovations by a profane
pageant; a riot followed, the soldiers were called out,
and several were seriously hurt. For years Charles II.
maintained with consummate skill what for a time
appeared to be a hopeless struggle with the Whigs.
At last his day of triumph came, and in desperation
the less scrupulous Whigs engaged in a number of
dark and wild conspiracies. Risings were arranged to
take place in London, Bristol, and elsewhere, and the
king and the Duke of York were to be slain. These
designs were confused by the Government with the
plans of the leaders of the Whig party. Of the Bristol
men who were engaged in these bloodthirsty plots,
Row, the sword-bearer, and a lawyer named Wade were
pardoned. Holloway, a linen manufacturer, fled to the
West Indies, was brought back and hanged, his head
and quarters being sent to Bristol.

The chief strength of the Whigs lay in the towns,
the old abodes of Puritanism, and the king, in order to
complete his victory, took measures to make the cor-
porations dependent on himself. On the ground of
certain actual and alleged irregularities, he compelled
the towns to surrender their charters. A writ of Quo
rvarranto, demanding by what right the city claimed to
be a corporation, was brought to Bristol on February
12, 1683. Some trivial breaches of the charters had
certainly been committed, but the contention of theCivil War and Party Strife 165

Crown that a city or town had no corporate existence
except it could show a charter of incorporation was
utterly illegal. The Bristol burgesses had, as we have
seen, from very early times corporate succession and a
common seal, their town had been created a county
and a city, and they had corporate rights and duties. A
royal charter might acknowledge, it could not create,
the corporation of Bristol, for it was already in exis-
tence. The charters, however, were surrendered, and
the next year a new charter was granted which incorpo-
rated the city, confirmed the constitution of the court of
aldermen and the common council, nominated all the
officers of the new corporation, and declared the right of
the Crown to remove them at pleasure. The Whigs were
crushed, and the government of the city was made-sub-
ject to the arbitrary will of the Crown. James II. took
advantage of his brother’s victory. His Declaration of
Indulgence offended the Tory churchmen, and he looked
to the Dissenters to support his unconstitutional action,
hoping that they would be willing to see the Homan
Catholic religion tolerated for the sake of the relief they
would themselves gain. He therefore turned out the
Tory members of the corporation, and supplied their
places with Whigs and Dissenters. At Bristol the
‘corporation purge’ was effected in February 1688.
Thanks to Halifax, the king found himself mistaken,
and tried, though too late, to retrace his steps. The fol-
lowing October he turned out his new chamber and
allowed the elections to be made on the old charters.

As might be expected from the Whiggish and
Presbyterian leanings of a large part of the citizens, the
Duke of Monmouth had friends in Bristol, and the DukeBristol

i 66

of Beaufort, who occupied the city in 1685, considered
that there was some danger of sedition. Monmouth
marched as far as Pensford, five miles from Bristol, and
his approach caused wild excitement; the streets that
night were filled with people, and shouts of 1A Mon-
mouth ! a Monmouth! The Protestant religion! ’ were
raised in the darkness. Beaufort declared that he would
burn the city rather than let it fall into Monmouth’shands.
Suddenly flames appeared at the quay, where the ‘ William
and Mary ’ had been fired either by accident or by the
friends of the rebels. The prompt measures taken by
Beaufort saved the city, and Monmouth, after advancing
to Keynsham, in the hope of making an attack on the
Gloucestershire side, turned towards Bath. Sixty per-
sons were seized in Bristol. When Jeffreys held the
assize at which he gave the magistrates such a rating
for their kidnapping practices, six were convicted of
high treason and three of them were executed. Wade,
who had again been active in treason, saved his life by
turning informer; he had considerable property in the
city, and the remembrance of his treasons is still pre-
served there in the name Traitor’s Bridge given to the
bridge he built over the Frome near Wade Street. In
common with the people at large, the citizens were
turned against the king by his assaults on their religion,
and their feelings were shown by the delight with
which they received the news of the acquittal of their
bishop, Sir Jonathan Trelawney, and his brethren;
all day the bells rang from the crowd of steeples that
adorned the city and all night huge bonfires blazed in the
streets. When the Prince of Orange was on the march
to Salisbury, Bristol opened her gates to his troops, and
Beaufort left in haste, ‘ not staying to dine.’CHAPTER VIII.

ODDS AND ENDS.

Edward Colston—Trade in the eighteenth century—Privateers—
Extent and aspect of the city—Manners and the drama—News-
papers—The Hotwells and Clifton—Methodism—Literary
awakening, Chatterton, Southey, and Coleridge.

Every year Bristol keeps the ‘ day ’ of one of her
citizens who may almost be said to have a kind of
local saintship, and the honour paid to the memory of
Edward Colston is as worthily bestowed as it is nobly
expressed. Of the events of his life we know little, for
the stories told about him generally rest on doubtful
authority. His benevolence does not need the feeble
illustration they are meant to afford, and other traits
of his character are sufficiently indicated by the few
letters of his that have been preserved. The eldest
son of William Colston, an alderman who was turned
out of his office by Skippon for loyalty to the king, he
was a Tory and a churchman of the highest order.
Perhaps this was the cause why he resided chiefly at
Mortlake, instead of at Bristol, where the Whigs were
strong, though, as he did not take up his freedom as a
burgess and a ‘ Meire merchant ’ until 1683, when he
wras forty-seven, his trade probably was chiefly carried
on in London, where he had received his education asi68

Bristol

a scholar of Christ’s Hospital. About that time, how-
ever, he seems to have lived for some time here; the site of
his house in Small Street is now occupied by the Assize
Courts; he was a Merchant Venturer, and took part in
the business of the hall. Although he gave liberally
in London, his chief pleasure was to do good in his
native city. His earliest benefactions in Bristol were
the building of the almshouse on St. Michael’s Hill,
and the provision he made for sailors in the Merchants’
Almshouse in King Street. He had the warmest sym-
pathy with a work in which the Church largely en-
gaged at this period, the education of the poor, and
was a member of the Society for Promoting Christian
Knowledge. Accordingly, his greatest works were the
foundation of the Charity School in Temple Street, and
of the noble school, called after him, which was' first
established on St. Augustine’s Back, and which has of
late years been removed to Stapleton. His various chari-
ties, mostly given in his lifetime, amounted to 70,695£.;
he lived simply and died very rich. The corporation
refused his offer to enlarge Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital,
which was under their management; some of them
could not even write their names, and they held ‘ gifts
of that nature only a nursery for beggars and sloths,
and rather a burthen than a benefit to the place where
they are bestowed.’ He therefore built‘ Colston’s School,’
and put it under the government of the Merchant
Venturers. He was not without honour in his own city.
The nation, already weary of the long war of the
Spanish Succession, was violently excited by the prose-
cution of Dr. Sacheverell by the Whig government.
The Tories raised the cry of the ‘Church in dangertheOdds and Ends

169

ministers were dismissed, and the general election which
followed, gave the Tories a majority in the Commons.
At this election of 1710 Colston was returned for
Bristol, and ‘a mitre and streamers’ were carried in
triumph at the declaration of the poll.

In party spirit Colston was a man of his own time.
When he broke with the vicar of Temple, whom he had
deeply obliged, because he sided with the enemies of
the Church, he did exactly as every man of either side
would have done. In tenderness of heart there were
few like him. Just and exact in all things, and de-
manding that all should render him his due, he was
thoughtful fcr others, not giving his alms carelessly,
but anxiously seeking to relieve the sick and those who,
through no fault of their own, had been reduced to want.
For his boys he must have good air, and a 1 court as-
signed for them to play in; ’ he wished to make them
useful citizens, and so would have them c educated in
the fear of God and the profession of His true religion,’
and, not living when men fancy it possible to separate
religion from dogma, added, ‘ as it is set forth by the
Established Church of England.’ No books were to
be used in his school with ‘ any tincture of Whiggism.’
Among the Merchant Venturers he found men of a like
spirit. In a letter, honourable alike to the writer and
receiver, Sir John Duddlestone gives him a report of a
visit paid to Temple School; ‘ it did his heart good to
see and hear those fatherless and friendless children to
spell, read, write, cypher, respond to the catechism, say
graces, prayers, and several verses in Scripture ’—they
sang four psalms, and £ go on very cheerful with their
arithmetic,’ some even ‘ into the square and cube root.’170

Bristol

‘ God Almighty prosper you,’ prays the worthy tobacco
merchant, and the spirit of his letter is still alive in
Bristol. Colston died in 1721, and every year his
birthday is kept in his native city by large collections
for the poor, and in some cases by attendance at the
worship he loved so well, along, too, with much feast-
ing and political speech-making, not always of a sort
he would have sat still to hear. No other city in the
kingdom has an institution of exactly the same character
as ‘ Colston’s Bay,’ and until quite lately some of the
speeches delivered at the political dinners held on this
-anniversary were second only in importance to those
made at the banquet given by the Lord Mayor of London
on November 9.

In order to illustrate the position of the merchants
something has been said of the prosperity of Bristol in
the last chapter. By the beginning of the eighteenth
century the old cloth manufacture of the city had fallen
into some decay. This appears to have been caused
chiefly by external competition, for when Ireland was
settled, the Protestant colonists introduced the manu-
facture of drapery. This stopped the supply of wool
from Ireland, on which the western clothiers depended,
and, owing to the cheapness of food and lowness of
wages, the Irish manufacturers were able in 1692 to
undersell them by as much (if their complaints may be
credited) as 20 per cent. To remedy this, the exporta-
tion of Irish draperies to foreign countries was heavily
taxed, and the new industry was virtually ruined in
Ireland—a measure cruelly unjust to the Protestant
population, though it did not concern the country as a
whole, for it did not apply to the more general manu-Odds and Ends

171

facture of frieze. Nor did this taxation restore the
prosperity of our clothiers; for the Irish manufacturers
carried their industry to foreign countries, and so they
were met by new and even more dangerous rivals.1
Although this decline did not injure Bristol, where
the extraordinarily profitable trade with the West
Indies, America, and Spain rapidly absorbed all available
capital, it nevertheless for a time produced considerable
distress among the labouring class, and the mayor
informed the Privy Council in 1709—a year of great
scarcity—that several hundreds had 1 lately become
chargeable.’ Among those out of work were many
French refugees, who had come over on the revocation of
the Edict of Nantes, and the object of this letter was to
show that it was unadvisable that more of them should
settle here. Some of those who came, however, were of
a higher class, and a list of twenty-seven who took the
oath in that year shows, along with nine weavers, the
names of ten merchants, a physician, and three surgeons.
More Huguenots came in spite of the mayor’s letter,
and St. Mark’s, the old chapel of the Bons Hommes,
now the mayor’s chapel, was assigned to them, until,
in 1727, they built a church for themselves in the
Hospital orchard. Although in less quantities, woollen
goods were still made here, and there were, besides,
manufactories of iron, tin, copper, and brass; the
brass manufactory, started in 1705, was supplied with
calamine from Durdham Down and the Somerset hills.
Markets for all these productions were found in the
western colonies and on the west coast of Africa.

* See an article on the ‘ Repression of the Irish Woollen Manu-
facture,’ in the English Historical Review for April 1886.172

Bristol

Bristol trade was carried on in ships built in the port
and manned from the city. The chief course of trade
was the export of home productions to Africa, where
they were used in the purchase of negroes. The value
of each slave was expressed in bars of iron, the average
price on the Calabar coast in 1727 being no more than
about 17 bars at 3s. 3d. a bar. After it had got rid of
its cargo of goods and taken in a human cargo, the ship
sailed for the West Indies. The horrors of that passage
need not be descanted on here : the hold was crammed
to suffocation, and sickness and cruelty thinned the
numbers during the voyage. Cheaply bought, a few
slaves more or less at the end was no great matter,
and no other consideration than money entered into
the minds of the traders. At the West Indies the
slaves were sold, and the ship returned laden with the
produce of the islands and the American colonies, sugar,
tobacco, indigo, cotton, and ginger, which were dispersed
through the kingdom or exported to Ireland and foreign
parts in Bristol ships. Defoe, in his Tour through the
Whole Island (1725), observes that the merchants of
Bristol ‘ trade with more independency upon London
than any other town,’ and that‘ whatsoever exportations
they make they bring back full return to their own
port, and dispose of it there.’ No cargo, he says, was
too big for them ; the shopkeepers were mostly whole-
sale men, and their inland trade was so large that they
maintained their own carriers just as the London
tradesmen did. They had a large trade with Wales,
and their Irish trade had ‘ prodigiously increased ’ since
the Revolution ; in this, however, he notices that they
had rivals, for they had now to contend with ‘theOdds and Ends	173

great increase and encroachment of the merchants at
Liverpool.’

Bristol ships sailed on a large number of priva-
teering expeditions, and throughout the whole of the
century these voyages form a marked feature in the
life of the city. The most famous among the earlier
expeditions was the voyage of the ‘ Duke ’ and 1 Duchess,’
two ships fitted out by sixteen merchants, and placed
under the command of Captain Woodes Rogers. With
these Rogers left Kingroad on August 1, 1708, the
1 Duke ’ carrying thirty, and the 1 Duchess ’ twenty-six,
guns, and the crews together numbering 333; the
second captain of the 4 Duke ’ was Dr. Dover, who
became famous for his powders. Rogers sailed to
Brazil, passed Cape Horn more to the south than had
ever been done before, and, on January 31, 1709, found
Alexander Selkirk on Juan Fernandez, and took him
off. After capturing some prizes, our Bristol sailors
stormed the Spanish town of Guayaquil, the chief port
of the present Republic of Ecuador, and compelled the
inhabitants to ransom themselves with 30,000 pieces of
eight; then they put in at Tacames Bay, and sold the
negroes they had taken out of a Spanish slaver, cruised
off Cape S. Lucas, took a large Manilla ship and fought
desperately, though unsuccessfully, with another. On
New Year’s day, 1710, the ships set out for the voyage
across the Pacific, and anchored at Guam about two
months later. They rounded the Cape, completed their
voyage round the world, and brought back no less than
17O,000Z. for their owners. On his return Rogers wrote
the story of his voyage, which is well worth reading.
Our Bristol historians will have us believe that Defoe174

Bristol

met Selkirk in their city, and that he wrote ‘ Robinson
Crusoe ’ from Selkirk’s papers. As Defoe was in hiding
from bailiffs when he was here, and so used, we are
told, to be called ‘ the Sunday gentleman,’ his visit
must probably be dated about 1692, the year of his
bankruptcy, and though, of course, he founded his famous
story on Selkirk’s adventures, the assertion that he
owed anything further to him rests on mere hearsay
evidence and may safely be rejected. Rogers’s success
led to a great increase in privateering, which for some
years seems to have occupied no small part of the
energies of the city.1

Bristol took a prominent part in the demand for
war excited in 1738-9 by the conduct of the Spanish
guarda-costas, who searched our ships and ill-treated
our seamen in American waters. Walpole was forced
to yield to the will of the nation, War was declared
against Spain, and was soon merged in the greater
contest of the Austrian Succession, during which Bristol
ships gained some brilliant victories over both the
Spanish and the French. Privateering rose to its
highest pitch here during the Seven Years’ War, when as
many as fifty-one Bristol ships, carrying 1,004 guns,
were engaged in various attempts, for the most part
to the loss of their owners, to take French ships con-
veying supplies to Canada. Several ships also sailed
from Bristol with letters of marque during our war
with the American colonies, some prizes were taken,

1 Once or twice these expeditions ended in mutiny and piracy.
No better picture of a bit of Bristol life during the privateering
times can well be found than that Mr. R. L. Stevenson has given in
Treasure Island.Odds and Ends	175

and some gallant deeds were done in battle with the
French.

A hundred and fifty years ago Bristol was a small,
dirty, and densely populated city. Here is part of
Pope’s description of it in 1735 :—‘ You come first to
old walls and over a bridge, built on both sides, like
London Bridge, and as much crowded with a strange
mixture of seamen, women, children, loaded horses,
asses and sledges, with goods, dragging along together
without posts to separate them. From thence you
come to a quay along the old wall with houses on both
sides, and in the middle of the street, as far as you can
see, hundreds of ships, their masts as thick as they can
stand by one another, which is the oddest and most
surprising sight imaginable. . . . The city is very un-
pleasant, and no civilised company in it.’ The poet, it
should be noted, refused to be made acquainted with
the merchants, of whom he had heard a bad character.
‘ The streets are as crowded as London, but the best
image I can give you of it is, ’tis as if Wapping and
Southwark were ten times as big, or all their people
ran into London.’ The only part he admired was ‘ the
Square: ’ this was Queen Square, which, with the
neighbouring streets, now occupied the end of the
peninsula between the two rivers. It was begun in
Anne’s reign, and was named after her, for she visited
the city in 1702, and eight years afterwards granted
the charter by which it was governed until 1835. The
Bristol that Pope saw contained about 80,000 inhabi-
tants tightly packed together; for, as the corporation
shut out every one from trading except freemen, the
city, Defoe remarks, did not spread and was closely built.176

Bristol

The streets were poor and narrow. When Pepys visited
Bristol no carts, as we have seen, were used, save such
as were drawn by dogs, for fear of crushing the vaults
under the streets; and in Defoe’s time all heavy goods
were drawn on sledges, which the people called ‘ gee-
hoes ’—this, he says, ‘ kills a great multitude of horses,
and the' pavement is worn so smooth by them that in
wet weather the streets are slippery.’ This barbarous
custom of drawing loads without wheels did not entirely
go out until the beginning of the present century.

In 1735 Redcliff Hill was covered with houses, but
Redcliff and Temple Meads still deserved their name.
On the south of Newfoundland Lane meadow land
stretched down to the Frome, while on the other side
gardens and meadows filled all the space as far as
Stokes Croft. Kingsdown Parade marks the northern
boundary of the houses, which did not extend higher
up St. Michael’s Hill than Southwell Street. Beyond
that point the road led to the gallows, which stood at
the meeting of the ways on the top of the hill. West-
wards to Brandon Hill there were but few houses, and
Washington’s Breach, as Park Row was still called,
ran through gardens and open ground. Below the
hill, Bullock’s Park was not covered by Berkeley Square
until the end of the century. Beyond it on the south,
the upper end of College Green abutted on the Bishop’s
Park, and between the park and the river Canons’
Marsh still lay unoccupied. College Green was the
most fashionable part of Bristol until it was supplanted
by Queen Square. Great changes have been made in
the. parts of the city that were inhabited in Pope’s time.
For example, the old bridge, with its narrow street ofOdds and Ends

177

overhanging houses, was pulled down and a new one
built in 1767. From the bridge the entrance to the
city lay under St. Nicholas’ Gate, on which stood the
chancel of the church, and here the lower part of High
Street was steep and dangerous. At the end of Corn
Street there still stood the gate below the Tower of
St. Leonard’s, and as yet there was no Clare Street.
The gates were demolished one by one early in the
reign of George III. When Pope was here, the High
Cross had lately been removed from its place and set up
in College Green, and before many years it was pulled
down and its fragments were taken to Stourhead.

The change in manners has been at least as great
as in the outward aspect of the city. Here as elsewhere
in old days punishments were cruel, and gratified the
brutality of the rabble. Women were frequently ducked
for scolding by order of the mayor: the ducking-stool
was on the weir, and the victim was often immersed
three times—the last case happened, it is said, in 1718.
Thieves, female as well as male, were whipped through
the streets, naked to the waist, and persons of both sexes
were condemned to be exposed on the pillory to the
barbarous usage of the mob. The city was noted for
the sumptuous feasts and excessive drinking of the
rich, and for the fierce character of the lowest class.
Cock-fighting and bull-baiting were of course favourite
amusements, the bull-ring occupying the site of the
modem church of St. Jude. The puritan spirit of the
magistrates showed itself both in the strictness with
which the observance of Sunday was enforced, ‘ a great
face of seriousness and religion’ appearing in the city
on that day, and in the repression of the drama. After

NBristol

178

the Restoration, three or four buildings seem to have
been used as theatres, until in 1704, in accordance with
a presentment of the grand jury, of which Stephen
Peloquin, a leading Huguenot refugee was a member,
all play-acting was forbidden within the city, and the
theatre in Tucker Street was closed and sold for a Pres-
byterian meeting-house. Five years later an order was
made to drive out all players and other roving people.
Happily the limits of the magistrates’ jurisdiction
were narrow, and Bristol people were soon taught that
there were better sights to be seen than the ducking
of women, and better amusements than fuddling; for
before 1726 that admirable comedian Hippisley, the
original ‘ Peachem ’ in the ‘ Beggar’s Opera,’ opened a
theatre at Jacob’s Wells at the foot of Brandon Hill,
just outside the bounds, and a company performed there
during the summer season. Dark nights were the great
drawback; for the only lights in the streets were candles
in lanterns, which, in accordance with an order of 1660,
the wealthier citizens were obliged to hang on their
houses from six to nine P.M., when decent people were
supposed to go to bed. Hippisley accordingly used to
state on his playbills that servants would be placed with
lights on the road from the theatre to College Green.
In 1764-6 Powell, an excellent actor, built the theatre
in King Street, then the fashionable quarter—a step
which excited so much indignation among the Quakers
and Methodists that the performances of the opening
night, two comedies, were announced as a c Concert of
Music and a specimen of Rhetoric.’ Powell was popular
here, and his bills used to contain a request that
servants might be sent down at four, to keep placesOdds and Ends

179

for their masters and mistresses till the play began at
seven. He was deservedly respected, and was buried
with some state by the Dean in the cathedral church.
The prices at the Jacob’s Wells theatre varied from 3s.
in the boxes to Is. for the gallery, and in the King
Street house from 4s. to Is. 6d.

As Bristol was deeply interested in all that con-
cerned trade, it was naturally one of the places in
which the earliest country newspapers were published.
Although we must not reckon as newspapers the mi-
gratory Mercuries of the Civil War time, it is interest-
ing to- find that one of them, entitled ‘ Mercurius
Hibernicus,’ was printed here in 1644. The first
Bristol newspaper was the ‘ Post-boy,’ a tiny paper
filled with news of the war, which appeared in 1702.
It lived until 1712, and the next year was succeeded
by Samuel Farley’s ‘Postman,’ afterwards published by
Samuel and Felix Farley as the ‘ Bristol Journal.’ Some
years later Felix started a ‘ Journal ’ of his own, and
in 1774 a secession from the office of Sarah Farley,
Samuel’s successor, led to the publication of a third
‘ Journal,’ afterwards the ‘ Mirror.’ These were Tory
papers. ‘ Felix Farley’s Journal,’ which was published
every Saturday at 6d.y has been combined with the
‘ Mirror,’ and the two, together with a third paper of
like politics, are incorporated in the ‘ Daily Bristol
Times and Mirror,’ which claims to represent Samuel
Farley’s old ‘ Journal,’ and vigorously upholds the Tory
cause. The ‘ Gazette,’ a Whig paper, was started in
1767. By the end of the century there were five weekly
newspapers published in Bristol.

A few dingy buildings are all that now remain to
remind us of the time when the Hotwells was a fairlyi8o

Bristol

fashionable health resort. The water, which William
Wyrcestre says is ‘as warm as milk, or as the Bath
water,’ was first largely used towards the end of the
seventeenth century, about eighty years before Smollett
immortalised it by bringing Matthew Bramble and his
family to the ‘ Hotwell ’ on their famous tour. The
Welsh squire, kindliest of all cynics, laughed at the
boasted virtues of the water, and declared the place
intolerable (as he declared all other places were, until
he reached the author’s native land) for ‘ the dirt, the
stench, the chilling blasts, and the perpetual rains.’
His sensitive niece Lyddy thought differently : to her
the company seemed ‘ so good-natured, so free, so easy,’
the water ‘ so clear, so pure, so mild, so charmingly
mawkish.’ In spite of its now forgotten look, the place
had its season, pump-room, and band, its ‘rooms’ with
balls and assemblies, and a Master of the Ceremonies,
a colonnade, and a long parade shaded with trees, and
gay parties used to go down the river in boats with
music, or across the ferry to eat strawberries and cream
at Ashton. Clifton, the parish to which the ‘ Hotwell ’
belongs, was then held to be ‘a most elegant village,’
and to bid fair ‘ to become a fine town ’; for the Mall,
Rodney Place, and the Boyal York Crescent were built
by 1797, and the building of the Lower Crescent was
only stopped because the war made money scarce. One
of the ‘ sights, at the entrance of the Down, was the
house (Manilla Hall) of Sir William Draper (d. 1787),
who conquered Manilla during the Seven Years’ War,
and returned home to wage an unequal strife with
‘ Junius.’ Clifton too had its hot well, its saline spa,
and its ballroom in Gloucester Place. It is evident,Odds and Ends

i 8 i

however, that it was chiefly looked on as the place where
the visitors to the more fashionable Hotwell could obtain
airy lodgings. In 1793 the price of lodgings at Clifton
or the Hotwell was 10s. a week for each room during
the season, which lasted from Lady Day to Michaelmas,
and half that sum out of season.

Bristol may be said to have been the cradle of
Methodism, for there the most important events in the
early history of the society took place, and nowhere
else was the preaching of its apostles received with
such instant enthusiasm as among its largely Celtic
population. When Whitefield visited Bristol in 1739,
he remembered the words of a friend who, seeking to
dissuade him from his expedition to Savannah the
year before, had said,1 If you have a mind to convert
Indians, there are colliers enough at Kingswood,’ and
one Saturday afternoon preached from ‘ his first field-
pulpit’ at Rose Green. The Kingswood collieries, from
which Bristol drew its chief supply of coal, were worked
by a lawless race, which more than once endangered
the peace of the city. Dwelling in a district of the
out-parish of St. Philip and St. Jacob, and at a dis-
tance of three or four miles from the parish church, the
colliers lived and died in a state of utter ignorance and
brutality, and Whitefield showed no common courage in
venturing among them, especially as field-preaching was
then wholly unknown. His eloquence soon drew crowds
round him, and before long at least ten thousand
listened with rapt attention to his sermons. As he
spoke, tears rolled down blackened cheeks, and hearts
long grown hard were melted. Crowds of persons of all
classes came out from Bristol to hear him; even the182

Bristol

trees and hedges were filled with listeners. Forbidden
to preach in the churches of the city, he addressed large
congregations at the Glass-house Yard and other places.
He left his work to be carried on by Wesley. During
the early years of Wesley’s preaching the extraordinary
excitement of his hearers broke out in various hysterical
symptoms, which appear to have been more prevalent
in Bristol than elsewhere. Here the first Methodist meet-
ing-house was built in the Horsefair, the system of class
meetings was first organised, and most of the events
connected with the split between Wesley and the
Calvinistic Methodists took place, and, lastly, it was by
the Bristol Conference that Franci-s Asbury was sent
out on the work which entitles him to be called the
{Father of American Methodism.’ In his later days
Wesley often preached in the Bristol churches; some of
the clergy adopted his views, and those who did so
drew the largest congregations. While a strong party,
especially among the younger men, ridiculed Methodism,
it spread rapidly in the city, and by the end of the
century the followers of Whitefield and Wesley had
nine meeting-houses there, some of them large and all
well attended.

Although one of her own poets has described
Bristol as c By trade and dullness consecrate to fame,’
the city has a notable place in literary history. This is
largely due to Thomas Chatterton (1753-1770), whose
father, a schoolmaster and singing-man at the cathedral,
died shortly before his son’s birth. Chatterton was
unfortunate in the persons amongst whom he lived.
Burgum, the pewterer, with his craving for noble
ancestry, Catcott, another pewterer, extraordinarily vainOdds and Ends

?83

and foolish, and Barrett, the surgeon, and an historian
of the city, a small-hearted and credulous pedant, who
all made use of the young poet, neither appreciated
his powers nor dealt liberally with him. Chatterton’s
literary forgeries, a number of poems which he alleged
were written by ‘ Rowley,’ an imaginary chaplain of
Canynges, and some of his contemporaries, together
with other pseudo-antique matter manufactured for
Barrett and Burgum, were committed under great
temptation. The Rowley poems, which if published
under his own name would have been disregarded by
his fellow-citizens, gave him something of the fame he
longed for, and a chance of deliverance from the degra-
dation and drudgery which oppressed the sensitive lad
while in the service of the suspicious attorney Lambert.
It is unlikely that he deliberately intended to carry out
his imposture to the extent it at last reached, and
probably at first he was simply guilty of a comparatively
harmless trick to excite attention. Small, however, as
the money was that he received from Burgum and
Barrett for the work with which he satisfied their pride
and deceived their ignorance, that, and the measure of
fame that came to him, tempted him to carry on his
pretended discoveries. As his Bristol admirers gave
him little help, he turned to Horace Walpole, the
arbiter of the taste of the day, and deceived the author
of the ‘ Anecdotes of Painting ’ with a forged ‘ Rise of
Peyncteyne yn Englande,’ as completely as he had
deceived Burgum with a genealogy from £ Simon de
Seyncte Lyze.’ Walpole, who soon learnt his mistake,
has been accused of treating Chatterton badly, though,
considering the imposture that had been practised upon184

Bristol

him, it is difficult to see the justice of the accusation,
and it would have been well if the young poet had
followed the advice contained in his second letter, which
was neither unkindly meant nor roughly expressed:
with Walpole’s later denials of his letters we have no
concern here. Chatterton, who had taken up political
writing, unfortunately went to London in 1770, just at
a time when it was impossible for a satirist on the
popular side to pick up a living; and there, half starved,
poisoned himself in a lodging in Holborn. Six years
after his death, Barrett showed Dr. Johnson ‘the
originals ’ of the Rowley poems, and Catcott, in the vain
hope of convincing him, took him to the muniment
room in St. Mary Redcliff, and pointed out ‘ the very
chest itself’ in which it was pretended that they were
discovered. The poems show little learning; in spell-
ing, and often in metre, in spirit, and in the words
they contain, they are unskilful forgeries; they were
written first in ordinary language, and were then trans-
lated with the help of a glossary. Apart, however,
from their disguise, they show considerable genius and
imagination. Although a few of Chatterton’s undis-
guised pieces speak the work of a true poet, they are
generally inferior to the Rowley poems, for no subject
suited him so well as historical romance, and especially
the romance of Bristol history. His least satisfactory
productions are his satires, which are coarse and abusive.
In these he was imitated by his companion Thistle-
thwaite, who had all his infirmities of temper without
his genius.

It would be hard to overrate the influence that
Chatterton’s career had in awakening an interest inOdds and Ends

iS5

literature in his native city. It is scarcely too much
to say that he was indirectly the means of giving
Bristol a share in the intellectual life of the nation.
This subject cannot be followed out here. The name
of Hannah More must be mentioned because it is a
household word, and that of Southey both for its proper
greatness and because it connects Bristol with an impor-
tant epoch in general literature. Hannah More, a
daughter of the master of a Free School at Fishponds,
near Bristol, began to write her dramas shortly after
Chatterton’s death, and for a while joined her sisters
in keeping a boarding school in Bristol which became
fashionable. Productive as this excellent lady’s pen
was, it would not be easy to find many passages in her
works that bespeak genius or imaginative power; still
she had some literary talents and considerable influence.
Among her pupils was Mary Darby (Mrs. Robinson),
better known as ‘Perdita,’ a native of Bristol, whose
verses, though in some respects poor enough, show
command of metre. The year 1798 saw both Coleridge
and Southey lecturing in Bristol. Robert Southey, the
son of a linendraper in Wine Street, has left us a charm-
ing account of the house in ugly dirty Bedminster, in
which his childish days were spent with his aunt Miss
Tyler, where a paved fore-court led to a porch covered
with jessamine, and inside were a parlour with dark
boarded floor and the best kitchen, where the family
lived : years after he loved to remember the scent of
the barberry bush at the orchard gate. Later, when his
aunt lived in Terrill Street, then almost a rural place,
he went to a school kept by an old Welshman at the
Fort on St. Michael’s Hill, which was attended by theBristol

i 86

sons of many of the rich merchants, and among them
by many Creoles. The number of boys had fallen from
100 to 40 ; for Southey was there in the middle of the
war with America, and money was scarce in the city.
He met Coleridge in Bristol in 1794, and introduced
him to his friend Robert Lovell, the Quaker poet, the
son of a pinmaker in Castle Green. The new friends
were full of the democratic fervour that filled so many
hearts daring the early years of the French Revolution,
and of the three, Coleridge, though he soon came to
think differently, was the most ardent admirer of revo-
lutionary principles. Here the young poets elaborated
their scheme of a pantisocratic settlement on the Susque-
hanna. Turning from the old world with its despot-
ism and selfishness, they and others, with kindred souls,
planned a colony in the new world, where all should
be equal in all things, where each should labour for
the common good, each contribute to the general ele-
vation of mind, and each be blest with the society of a
young, beautiful, and helpful wife. This last arrange-
ment presented little difficulty, for Lovell had married
one, and Southey was engaged to another, of the
daughters of a Bristol tradesman named Fricker, who
at his death had left the girls penniless, and before long
their elder sister Sarah was converted to pantisocracy,
and became Mrs. Coleridge.

To start a golden age, however, money was needful:
Coleridge had none, and Southey was now in the same
plight; for his aunt, who was then living in College
Green, turned him out of doors when she heard of his
schemes of marriage and pantisocratic colonisation.
They therefore gave lectures in Bristol, which wereOdds and Ends

187

attended by large and delighted audiences, Coleridge
delivering1 orations full of vigour and with many glow-
ing invectives against Pitt, on the English Rebellion
and the French Revolution, and on Revealed Religion,
while Southey chose less exciting historical subjects.
Here too they found a publisher, young like themselves,
and, in his own estimation at least, a poet, the worthy
and self-satisfied Joseph Cottle, brother of Amos (Can-
ning confuses the two brothers in his well-known lines
in the ‘Anti-Jacobin’), and the author of ‘Alfred’ and
other works. From Cottle’s shop were issued the earliest
poems of Southey and Lovell, in a thin volume, the
authors being described as ‘ Bion ’ and ‘ Moschus; ’
Southey’s ‘ Joan of Arc,’ Coleridge’s ‘ Poems on various
subjects,’ and the ‘ Lyrical Ballads ’ of Coleridge and
Wordsworth, which contains the ‘ Rime of the Ancient
Mariner.’ It is impossible to read this wonderful pro-
duction side by side with Chatterton’s ballad ‘ The Death
of Sir Charles Bawdin ’ without believing that the work
of the Bristol boy had considerable influence on the
later poet; both pieces are full of everything that marks
the highest form of ballad poetry. Coleridge’s residence
in Bristol may have had something to do with his choice
of a maritime subject. His delight in the romance of
past ages was rather part of the spirit of the time than
the direct result of the influence of the Rowley poems,
though they, it should be remembered, were one of the
earliest manifestations of that spirit. It is usual to trace
a connexion between the value attached to the accent
in these poems and the metre of ‘ Christabel ’; this con-
nexion however depends on a theory as to the metre of
Coleridge’s exquisite fragment that seems to me to be188

Bristol

unsound. The 1 Monody on the Death of Chatterton ’
bears witness to the deep impression that the works and
the fate of the c marvellous boy’ made on the mind of
Coleridge in his early days when he dared

No longer on the sad theme muse,

Lest kindred throes persuade an equal doom.

Both alike were singers, and in both alike there
was the same imaginative power, though exercised in
different fields, and though in the case of Chatterton
death prevented the perfect development that it attained
in Coleridge. In after days both Coleridge and Southey
returned more than once to Bristol, where people seem
to have enjoyed being lectured to. The editor of a
Bristol newspaper nowadays would scarcely offer his
readers instruction in the shape of Coleridge’s ‘ Essays
on Criticism, concerning the Fine Arts,’ which first
appeared in ‘ Felix Farley’s Journal ’ in 1814. In 1797,
Southey, who was then living at Westbury, used to
love to walk across the Downs and talk with Humphry
Davy, the young Cornishman whom Dr. Beddoes had
put in charge of the Pneumatic Institution he had
founded in Dowry Square, and who was then deep in
his experiments on gases. While on another visit he
joined Cottle in a scheme for the publication of Chatter-
ton’s poems for the benefit of the poor lad’s sister and
her daughter; for he was ever ready to help the dis-
tressed, and all through his life Bristol held a high place
in the regard of this learned and simple-hearted master
of English prose writing. Many men of literature,
science, and art have adorned the city in later days,
but their names must be sought in larger books. AtOdds and Ends

189

the same time, no book about Bristol, however small,
should omit to say a word about Samuel Seyer (d. 1831),
a clergyman and a schoolmaster, whose c Memoirs of
Bristol’ is an excellent specimen of the better class of
local histories of its day: indeed from the time of
Chatterton and Barrett there has been no lack of vol-
umes on the history of the city, though in this new
attempt to deal with it I have not always found safety
in the multitude of counsellors.190

Bristol

CHAPTER IX.

POLITICS AND RIOTS.

War of American Independence—Burke’s election for Bristol—
Instructions and mandates to members of Parliament—Causes
of discontent at his conduct—His independence—His partial
secession from Parliament—Party spirit and incendiarism—
Irish trade —Roman Catholic relief—Burke rejected by Bristol
—Roman Catholic emancipation and Parliamentary reform—
Some eighteenth-century riots—Reform riots.

In common with other trading towns, Bristol saw with
dismay the gradual alienation of our American colo-
nies. The merchants petitioned for the repeal of the
Stamp Act, pointing out the injury they sustained
from the interruption of their colonial trade, and they
sent an address of thanks to Lord Rockingham, who
carried the repeal in 1766. In order to secure the
safety of this measure, the right of Parliament to tax
the colonies was declared, and during the next admini-
stration certain imports were made subject to duties.
G reat irritation was felt in America, and matters soon
became threatening. Lord North, though he took off
the duties from all other articles, left that on tea. A
violent affray with the soldiers took place in Boston,
and at last, in 1773, the cargoes of the tea ships were
thrown into the sea. Among those whose opinions on
the state of affairs were of some importance was Dr.Politics and Riots

191

Tucker, dean of Gloucester, and rector of St. Stephen's,
Bristol, a man of great commercial knowledge. He
argued that we should lose nothing by letting the
colonies separate themselves from us, because British
capital would still attract their trade. Neither Lord
Chatham, nor as yet Edmund Burke, would listen to
the idea of separation. Chatham denied the right of
Parliament to tax America. Burke, too large-minded
to care for abstract questions, argued simply as a
statesman. He did not, he said later, pretend to be 6 an
antiquary, a lawyer, or qualified for the chair of profes-
sor in metaphysics.’ Although he held that it was
reasonable that America should contribute, when able
to do so, to the charges of Great Britain, he pointed
out, in a famous speech he made on American taxation,
in April 1774, that in attempting to enforce a tax of
paltry amount the nation was incurring cthe loss,
not only of peace, of union and of commerce, but even
of revenue.’ The Americans were not contending about
money ; indeed, as the import duty of 3d. in the pound
took the place of 12c?. that had before been paid in
England, they had their tea cheaper. {Their feelings
were the feelings of Mr. Hampden ’ when called on to
pay 20s. ship-money ; they objected to the attempt to
raise money from them without their own consent.
England had by partial repeals already acknowledged
that no revenue was to be had from America. 1 If we
lose the profit,’ Burke urged, ‘ let us get rid of the
odium.’ These ideas were not held by the members for
Bristol, Lord Clare, who took office under the Grafton
government, and after whom the new Clare Street had
lately been named, and Mr. Brickdale, who was a Tory.Bristol

192

Although these members were supported by the cor-
poration, they had not the confidence of a large party
in Bristol composed of men who desired to lessen the
influence of the Crown, and who generally favoured the
policy advocated by Burke and the Rockingham Whigs.
In order to bring their members to their own views, the
leaders of this party forwarded them certain ‘ instruc-
tions.’ Clare objected to this dictation, and in the summer
of 1774, the year in which the rupture with the colonies
was hastened by the measures passed for the punishment
of Boston, several of the leading citizens of Bristol
thought of attempting some change in the representation.

Chief among these was Richard Champion, a mer-
chant engaged frrthe American trade, and better known
as the maker of Bristol china. As early as 1766
Champion had tried with little success to make china
from kaolin that he received from South Carolina, and
it was not until the removal to Bristol of the Plymouth
works, which he subsequently purchased, that he was
able to produce from native clay the first hard natural
porcelain made in England. His manufactory was in
Castle Green, and besides his partner, Joseph Harford,
an iron merchant, one or two other Bristol men em-
barked money in the concern,*which was watched with
much interest by the Duke of Portland and other Whig
magnates of the same party. Champion and his friends
sounded Burke as to whether he would be willing to
stand for Bristol with Mr. Cruger, a merchant of the city.
Nothing however'was settled, and when Parliament was
suddenly dissolved in the autumn, Burke accepted a seat
for Malton, while the two old members and Cruger stood
for Bristol. Clare retired in anger, and on the secondPolitics and Riots

193

day of the poll Burke was proposed by Champion and
seconded by Harford. The news was brought him on
Tuesday, October 11, the day of his election at Malton,
as he was sitting down to dinner with his friends there.
He at once set off for Bristol, and, driving day and
night, reached the city on Thursday at 2.30 p.m. A
few minutes later he addressed the electors. He en-
tered into no definite pledges; he would try to recon-
cile the constitutional superiority of Great Britain with
American liberty; he had ever laboured for the advance-
ment of commerce ; was he worthy to represent a great
trading city ? On November 3—for the poll only closed
the day before—Cruger and Burke were declared to have
beaten Brickdale. Burke’s speech of thanks is of more
than ordinary importance. No other statesman has so
often, when speaking on some special occasion, uttered
constitutional maxims that are for all time. His lofty
thoughts were never bounded by the exigencies of the
moment; his political perception was undisturbed by
selfish aims, and his utterances were never wrapped in
the obscurity of evasion. Cruger, his ‘ foolish colleague,’
as he afterwards had occasion to call him, had promised
the electors that he would obey their ‘instructions.’
This was just what they wanted; it was conceding the
very point of dispute with Lord Clare. And, be it
remembered, such a desire was more excusable then
than it is now. Many members sat for boroughs that
were virtually without voters; they had no duties to
constituents, and this, to some extent, led members who
had constituents to neglect them until a dissolution was
imminent. Such neglect was irritating; for in those
days, when the nation at large was beginning to feel the

O194

Bristol

stake it had in public affairs, parliamentary reporting
was difficult, and public meetings were looked on with
suspicion ; so that men at a distance from London had
little opportunity of learning about politics save from
their members, or of making their wishes heard, except
through these ‘ instructions ’ or petitions. Burke, how-
ever, saw that obedience to the mandates of a constitu-
ency degraded a representative to the position of a dele-
gate, that it implied the sacrifice of independence, the
ruin of statesmanship, and the betrayal of duty. He
spoke of all a member owed his constituents, ‘ the sacri-
fice of his repose, his pleasures, his satisfaction.. But,’
he said, ‘his unbiassed opinion, his mature judgment, his
enlightened conscience, he ought not to sacrifice to you,
to any man, or to any set of men living,’ and he declared
that ‘mandates’ and authoritative ‘instructions’ arose
‘ from a fundamental mistake of the whole order and
tenour of the constitution.’

Acting on this principle, Burke shunned making
visits to Bristol. He served the city in the best way
by his attempts at conciliation with America. They
were in vain, and the war began in April 1775. Nor
did he neglect the personal interests of his constituents,
whose commerce was hampered by the war: he was
‘ the agent, the solicitor of individuals, and in acting
for them appeared rather as a ship-broker than a
member of Parliament,’ but to him ‘ the meanness of
the business was raised by the dignity of the object.’
Still he did not satisfy the Bristol people, and the
causes of their discontent may be stated briefly as the
infrequency of his visits, his short secession from
Parliament, and the support he gave to the bills for thePolitics and Riots

195

relaxation of the restrictions on Irish commerce, for the
relief of the Roman Catholics, and for the amendment
of the law of imprisonment for debt. Burke’s friends,
who formed a kind of club at the ‘ Bell ’ in Broad Street,
gave him to understand that a yearly visit at least was
necessary; for his opponents took advantage of his
absence to insist that their member, who had defeated
the electors on the subject of 1 instructions,’ cared little
for their wishes. On visiting the city at the request of
his friends in September 1775, he found the corporation
divided; half were Tories, and of the rest, half were of
his party and half were ‘ languid; ’ the Dissenters were
well disposed, and so were nine-tenths of the Quakers,
who were not spoilt, as in London, by contact with the
Court. The citizens generally believed that ‘ things
would come right of themselves,’ and accordingly the
merchants bought freely, and exhausted their capital,
a mistake for which they suffered heavily. Burke him-
self knew that the war would be long and bitter. Early
in 1777, finding their efforts for peace wholly unavail-
ing, he and most of the Rockingham Whigs withdrew,
to some extent, from attendance in Parliament, and
offered no opposition to a bill for a partial suspension
of the Habeas Corpus Act. Secession of this kind, a
mistake on every ground, is especially injurious to the
interests of the seceders, and Burke’s friends thought
that he neglected his duty, and slighted the authority
of Parliament. His enemies accused him of being an
1 American.’ Party feeling was embittered by the
accusations which arose out of the attempts that were
made to burn the city. In January, a few weeks after
a fire at the dockyard at Portsmouth, three ships were196

Bristol

fired at the Bristol quay, and various other fires brohe
out in different buildings. The incendiaries were sup-
posed to be Americans; Burke’s party was held to some
extent to be guilty, and as usual the great statesman
himself did not escape the foulest calumny. Although
the fires were found to have been the work of James
Aitken, or 1 Jack the Painter ’ as he was called, who
was hanged at Portsmouth on March 10, this did not
mend matters, for Aitken was a republican, and intended
to forward the interests of America. The Bristol Tories
were furious against Burke, and his own friends thought
that he neglected the cause of liberty by seceding from
Parliament. He defended his conduct with regard to
the suspension of the Habeas Corpus Act in a £ Letter
to the Sheriffs of Bristol,’ declaring his detestation of
the measure, and defining the proper sphere for the exer-
cise of the powers both of Parliament and of the Crown.
This masterly performance called forth several replies:
for one of the most foolish of them, by c the Electors of
Bristol,’ the city is of course not answerable.

The chief grievance against Burke was based on
the support he gave in 1778 to certain bills for re-
laxing the restrictions placed on Irish trade. Ire-
land, while bearing her share of the heavy taxation im-
posed by the war, was deprived of the means of wealth
by the selfish policy that restricted her commerce.
Matters had grown worse with her of late, for the war
had ruined her linen trade, and she was forbidden to
export provisions, lest (so at least it was pretended) they
should come into the hands of the enemy. The Irish
were starving, and the only hope for the country lay in
some relaxation of the commercial code. Bills for thisPolitics and Riots

197

purpose were brought in by Lord Nugent, and were
upheld by Burke. A violent outcry was raised against
the proposals by the merchants of London, Bristol,
Manchester, and other large towns, who thought that
the gain of Ireland must necessarily mean their loss,
and a letter of remonstrance was sent to Burke by
the Merchant Venturers. They preferred, they said, a
measure for legislative union; probably in the hope of
increasing Ireland’s share of taxation. Union, Burke
replied, was not then the question; when it was, he
would give it ‘ an honest and unprejudiced considera-
rion.’ For the present he pointed out that, as Bristol
was so well situated for the commerce of Ireland, it must
profit by anything that brought prosperity to that
country. In another letter to two merchants he defended
himself against the charge of acting against his consti-
tuents. ‘ Trade,’ he said, ‘ is not a limited thing,’ in
which one man’s gain must be another’s loss, and he
claimed the relaxation as the right of Ireland. The
opposition of the towns was so strong that Lord North
reduced the concessions to a minimum. Two years
later, when, in the day of England’s humiliation, an
armed Ireland demanded her rights, no town ‘ dared to
mutter a petition.’ Burke, while taunting the minister,
upheld the measure, and for this Bristol would not for-
give him.

Religious prejudice helped to swell the discontent
of Burke’s constituents; for he voted for, and warmly
approved of, Sir George Savile’s bill for the relief of the
Roman Catholics from those penal laws which not only
were now and again used for purposes of the grossest
tyranny, but also constantly kept many loyal subjects198

Bristol

in a state of insecurity and terror. Although not more
than four or five persons in the city had signed ‘ that
libel on the national religion and English character,’ the
Protestant Association of Lord George Gordon, the Low
Church party and the Dissenters were strong in Bristol,
and Burke was made to suffer for his conscientious con-
duct. Lastly, with his invariable anxiety to succour
the distressed and soften the social hardness of the age,
he supported a bill to amend the cruel laws of imprison-
ment for debt, and this displeased the merchants, who
fancied that any such relaxation would be subversive of
the foundation of commercial credit. At the election
of 1780, Burke defended his conduct on each of these
points in a speech delivered at the Guildhall. In the
course of this speech he spoke with feeling of the losses
his friends had sustained during the war. 11 had seen
blown down,’ he said, ‘ and prostrate on the ground,
several of those houses to whom I was chiefly indebted
for the honour this city has done me.’ The poll opened
three days later, and before it began, finding that he
had no chance of success, he appeared in person on the
hustings, and in a few manly words declined the
election. 1 Indeed, my dear Burke,’ wrote Charles
James Fox, ‘ it requires all your candour and reverse of
selfishness to be in patience with that rascally city.’
Who is there that does not share the feelings of the
warm-hearted statesman ?

During the fifty years that followed the rejection of
Burke, the history of Bristol has comparatively little
general political importance. While the Tories had the
majority in the electorate, the representation from 1784
to 1831 was divided between both parties. Although thePolitics and Riots

199

French Revolution found some admirers in the city,
and the party in favour of the reform of Parliament for
a while gathered strength, it was checked by the pressure
of the revolutionary war, and the cause of reform fell
into discredit. The party was kept together by a club
in which, in 1307, Henry Hunt, the Radical, took a
leading part. At a by-election in 1812, and again at
the general election in the same year, Hunt contested
the city unsuccessfully. Apart from other causes, the
violent anti-Catholic feeling, which we have seen arrayed
against Burke, still helped the Tory cause. In 1830
an enthusiastic reception was given to Sir Charles
Wetherell, the recorder, a man as honest and fearless
as he was rough and eccentric, who, though attorney-
general, had the year before made a violent speech
against the government bill for Catholic emancipation,
and had consequently been dismissed from office. The
mayor, who was in favour of the bill, was insulted by the
mob, and the windows of a Roman Catholic chapel were
smashed. When the recorder came the next year to hold
the gaol delivery, he was met with a different greeting.

After the peace of 1815 the cause of reform revived
rapidly. The Reform Bill of 1831 excited much interest
in the city: large meetings were held by both parties,
and petitions—one in favour of reform with, it is said,
12,000 signatures—were sent up to Parliament. At
the general election, which followed the defeat of the
government in committee, Davis, who had sat as the
Tory member since 1812, found he had no chance of
re-election, and for the first time since the election of
Cruger and Burke, the city was represented by two
Whigs. The Bill was re-introduced, and the second200

Bristol

reading was carried. A desperate and unavailing
resistance was offered by the Tories in committee, and
in this Wetherell was conspicuous. The reformers bore
the rejection of the bill by the Lords with impatience,
and riotous proceedings ensued in London, Derby,
Nottingham, and other places. Destructive as some of
these were, they were outdone by the riots at Bristol.

The violence of the Bristol mob had long been
notorious. A few instances only of riots that took place
during the last century need be given here. At the
accession of George I. the rabble of Bristol was on the
Tory and High-church side, and on coronation-day about
500 persons, called by their fellow-citizens ‘ Cheverellites,:
after Dr. Sacheverell, the High-church hero, raised a
greaf disturbance, crying ‘ Down with the Whigs ; God
bless Dr. Sacheverell; damn all foreigners! ’ cruelly
maltreated several Whigs and Dissenters, and would have
done more harm had not some of the aldermen routed
them sword in hand. A special commission was sent
to try the rioters, and while the judges were in the city,
fresh disturbances broke out, and the old cavalier song
was sung in the streets, £ Round-headed cuckolds, come
dig, come dig.’ Scenes of a like character took place
in other towns, and these disturbances occasioned the
passing of the law known as the Riot Act. The
neighoourliood of the Kingswood collieries often proved
dangerous to the peace of Bristol. In the spring of
1708, when wheat had risen from 4s. to more than 8s. a
bushel, over 200 colliers entered the city, raised a riot,
and were joined by several of the poor. The militia
was called out and fortified with drink, and ‘ some
bustle ’ took place. The mob was finally appeased by aPolitics and Riots

201

promise that wheat should be reduced to 5s. 6d. a
bushel. A more serious bread-riot was raised in 1753.
The colliers were joined by a large number of mechanics,
weavers, hatters, and the like, and came to Lawford’s
Gate ‘ by beat of drum.’ The gates were shut, and a
body of dragoons was summoned from Gloucester. The
next day the mob entered by Milk Street, and the
soldiers and some of the citizens, with the mayor at their
head, engaged them in the streets; four of the rioters
were slain and 'many were wounded. The Bristol
Bridge riots have a more important bearing on the
history of the city. The new bridge of 1767 was
built, according to the evil custom of the time, of which
something will be said in the next chapter, not by the
city itself, but by a body of commissioners, who had
leave to raise money for the work and for its repair by
tolls from passengers, and rates on houses and shipping.
The tolls were underlet, no accounts were published,
and in twenty-six years’ time the commissioners had
2,100Z. in hand. Still fresh leases of the tolls were
granted, until, to satisfy the demands of the inhabitants,
a promise was made that no tolls should be taken after
September 29, 1793. In spite of this promise, a few
days before that date the tolls were again advertised.
On the 28th a mob gathered, burned the toll-gates, and
greeted the magistrates and a body of militia, summoned
to enforce order, with a shower of stones. The next
day, which was Sunday, the soldiers were again called
out. On Monday the riot became more serious, and
the Riot Act having been read three times, the soldiers
were ordered to clear the bridge. They were savagely
pelted, and, furious at this treatment, faced about and202

Bristol

fired up High Street. Eleven persons were killed and
at least fifty wounded, for the firing was kept up for
some time. Although great indignation was felt at the
conduct of the soldiers, an attempt at an enquiry was
stifled by the corporation, and the promoters were sneered
at as revolutionists. The remembrance of this riot is
preserved in the cry ‘ Give ’em Bristol bridge! ’ which
is still raised by the roughs of the city when they mean
mischief.

All former riots, however, sink into insignificance
compared with the Reform riots of 1831. The promi-
nent part the recorder had taken in opposition to the
bill made him the most unpopular man in the country,
and nowhere was he more unpopular than in Bristol.
It was expected that an attack would be made upon him
when he came down to hold the gaol delivery, which was
fixed for Saturday, October 29. An ill-judged attempt
to entrap the sailors into acting as a guard failed; they
refused to be ‘ made a cat’s-paw ’ by the corporation.
Special constables were enrolled, and two troops of the
14th Dragoons and one of the 3rd Dragoon Guards,
under the command of Lieutenant-colonel Brereton, a
resident officer, were quartered near the city, not to be
used but in the greatest emergency. Stones were thrown
at the recorder’s carriage as he entered the city, the women
of Temple parish being especially violent; the court was
interrupted, and after its adjournment Sir Charles was
taken to the Mansion House, in Queen Square, amid the
howls of a dense crowd. Sharp skirmishes took place
between the mob and the ‘ specials,’ who were left with-
out any leadership. In the evening the Mansion House
was attacked, and Sir Charles, whose life was loudlyPolitics and Riots

203

threatened, made his escape by the roof. Matters were
becoming serious when the military arrived, and the
Riot Act having been read three times, a magistrate
ordered Brereton to clear the streets. Brereton unfor-
tunately was afraid to act with vigour, and seems also
to have shared the prevailing folly of deferring to the
passions of the mob. He ordered the troops to ‘ ride
through ’ the rioters and ‘ walk them away,’ he shook
hands with them, and led cheers for the king. This
only encouraged them, and was the cause of the vio-
lence that followed.’ At the same time it must be said in
his excuse, that the mayor, Charles Pinney, and the
magistrates generally do not seem to have given him
the full and definite authority he thought necessary
to relieve him from responsibility. A shirking of re-
sponsibility on both sides had indeed much to do with
the growth of the riot. That decisive measures would
at this period have quickly restored order is evident;
for a captain of the 14th, who charged down several
streets, completely scattered the mob that was threat-
ening the council-house. His men were pelted with
brickbats, and in return shot a ringleader of the rioters.
Seeing that these soldiers would not be trifled with, the
mob dispersed.

On Sunday morning, Brereton withdrew the picquet
from the Mansion House, which was immediately sacked,
the mayor and one of the sheriffs escaping by crawling
over the roofs of the houses. As the rioters were
enraged with the 14th, Brereton, hoping to pacify them,
applied to the magistrates for leave to send the two
troops out of the city. In spite of their remonstrances,
he ordered the unwilling troopers to leave ‘ at a trot,’2C4

Bristol

and Bristol lay at the mercy of the rioters. The gaols—
the Bridewell, the gaol on the New Cut, and the
G loucestershire county prison—were forced, the prisoners
liberated, and the buildings fired. An attack was made on
the bishop’s palace, and the magistrates ordered Brereton
to defend it: he came up with sixteen men, and finding
that the constables were handling the rioters pretty
roughly, said before the mob that, if ‘ the striking ’ was
repeated, he would ‘ ride the constables down.’ He
withdrew his men, and the palace was burnt. Mean-
while the Mansion House was also set on fire. A troop
of yeomanry rode into the city; but, as the mayor had
gone to rest himself in Berkeley Square, and Brereton
would do nothing without him, the captain, having
‘ paraded the city for two hours without finding a magis-
trate,’ marched his men home again. During the night
the north and west sides of Queen Square were sacked
and burnt. While a number of rioters were engaged
in plundering the upper rooms of the Custom House,
their fellows set it on fire. Some fifty men perished in
the flames, and two or three who jumped from the
windows on to the portico were slowly boiled to death
in the molten lead. The fire spread to King Street
and Prince’s Street: vast quantities of burning spirits
flowed from the warehouses along the gutters, and
drunken wretches died as they tried to lap the flaming
liquid. While all this was going on the mayor was
still in Berkeley Square and Brereton was actually in
bed. At 3 A.M. the mayor, alarmed at the furious
conflagration, sent a note to the officer in command
authorising him c to take the most vigorous, effective,
and decisive measures to quell the riot.’ In Brereton’sPolitics and Riots

205

absence the note was given to Captain Warrington, who
declined to act without the presence of a magistrate.

No vigorous steps were taken until Major Mackworth,
who was staying in Bristol, insisted that the handful
of dragoons who were idling in Queen Square should
charge the mob. He then fetched back the troops of
the 14th which had been sent out of the city; rein-
forcements arrived from Gloucester, and the soldiers
charged along various streets in separate parties, using
their sabres freely. Troops of all kinds soon began
to pour into the city, and the riot was at an end. As
many as 500 are said to have perished by fire, drunken-
ness, and the sword, but no satisfactory calculation is
possible. Brereton was brought before a court-martial,
and shot himself after the fourth day of his trial.
Warrington was sentenced to be cashiered, but was
allowed to sell his commission. The mayor was tried
for neglect of duty, and was acquitted. He was de-
formed and deli cate, and, though a man of high character,
was physically and mentally unfit to meet an emergency.
A special commission was sent down to try the prisoners;
four were hanged, and eighty-eight were sentenced
either to transportation or lesser punishments. Feebly
as both Brereton and Pinney behaved, the citizens at
large can scarcely be acquitted of extraordinary apathy;
the magistrates found that they could not reckon on
support, and a meeting they called on Sunday to take
measures for the restoration of order was thinly at-
tended. Two changes were evidently necessary. One
was pointed out in the speech with which the king
opened the next session of Parliament. ‘ The scenes of
violence and outrage which have occurred in the city20 6

Bristol

of Bristol and in some other places have caused me the
deepest affliction. . . I think it right to direct your
attention to the best means of improving the municipal
police of the kingdom.’ The other reform which these
events prove to have been urgently needed was, that
the old system of the self-election and irresponsibility
of the corporation should be replaced by one that
would give the citizens generally a voice in, and a con-
trol over, the government of the city, These changes
have happily been effected.207

CHAPTER X.

DECLINE AND REVIVAL.

Bristol commerce at the end of the last century—Rule of self-
elective oligarchies;—Period of high port dues—Municipal
Reform Act and the Free Port Association—Ruin of the West
India trade—Emancipation of the slaves—Equalisation of the
sugar duties—Trans-Atlantic steamships—Purchase of the new
docks—Conclusion.

In this chapter I propose to consider the causes of the
decline of Bristol trade, and to state briefly the principal
efforts that have been made to restore the prosperity of
the city. Before entering on this subject, it will be
well to give a summary of the commercial condition of
Bristol in the last years of the eighteenth century. The
West India trade was flourishing, though the trade in
slaves had to a great extent been transferred to Liverpool.
Bristol sugars commanded the highest price abroad,
and were shipped chiefly to Hamburg and Holland.
On this trade depended the vast cooperage business,
carried on partly as a separate employment, and partly
as an adjunct to the import and export of sugar, rum,
and molasses, and in a great degree also the making of
brass and copper vessels, that were used in the planta-
tions in the manufacture of sugar. Hemp was im-
ported from Russia, deals from Norway and the Baltic208

Bristol

lands, wine from Spain, and fruit and oils from the
Mediterranean. A considerable trade was done in
Spanish wool, and though Bristol, in common with the
rest of the kingdom, suffered some loss during the
French revolutionary war, the commerce with Spain and
Portugal was much quickened. The wool was sold to
the Western clothiers, for the manufacture of cloth had
now virtually left the city. This wool trade was trans-
ferred to London after the peace of 1815, partly in
consequence of a dispute between the Bristol and
Spanish firms. During the last twenty years of the
century, a flourishing trade was established in the im-
port of ivory, palm oil, and gold dust from the Guinea
coast, in exchange for rum and a vast quantity of miscel-
laneous articles, and the produce of the Bristol dis-
tilleries also found ready markets in Quebec and North
America. In addition to the requirements of the West
India planters, the Birmingham workmen largely de-
pended on Bristol for brass and zinc. As many as
fourteen glass-works were employed chiefly in the pro-
duction of bottles; iron in every shape was exported
and sold for home use, tanneries were in abundance, and
the manufacture of soap still flourished.

At the same time Bristol no longer held the position
of the second city in the kingdom, and before long it
entered on a period of decline, now happily arrested by
the public spirit of the citizens. This decline was due
to the general determination of commerce to the north
of England, to the rapid rise of Liverpool, to the natural
drawbacks of the port, to the ruin of the West India
trade, and to a large extent also to the short-sighted
policy which drove trade away from the city by theDecline and Revival

209

imposition of heavy local rates. While other causes
would have been sufficient to rob her of the proud posi-
tion she had so long held in comparison with all the cities
of England save London, it was this selfish and suicidal
mistake that destroyed for a time her actual prosperity.
The corporation of Bristol was, as we have seen, self-
elective, and admission was denied to all who did not
belong to the same political party. The common council,
consisting of the mayor, twelve aldermen, and thirty
common councilmen, had the entire government of the
city; it elected the mayor, recorder, sheriffs, and other
officers of the corporation, and filled up vacancies in its
own body. Other aldermen beside the recorder were
elected by the mayor and aldermen from the council:
some of them were non-resident, and places were occa-
sionally filled up by arrangements made at the dinner-
table. Many abuses prevailed here, as in most other
towns in the days of the close corporations, and the
community of interest between the citizens at large and
the governing body was scarcely recognised. Money
was lavished on show and on magnificent banquets, and
was grudged for works of public utility. From 1601, the
Merchant Venturers, who then fairly represented the
whole mercantile interest of the city, had constantly, if
not uninterruptedly, farmed the port dues, wharfage,
cranage, and the like. This society, though a faithful
and munificent steward of the large charitable funds
with which it was entrusted, was also a close corpora-
tion, and as the Merchants could at this period always
command a majority in the council, the two bodies
worked in complete harmony.

Such, then, were the powers that ruled the fate of

p210

Bristol

Bristol trade at the opening of the present century, an
unusually critical epoch in the history of the city. The
introduction of the use of steam coal for purposes of
manufacture had already transferred the preponderance
of commercial importance from the south to the north of
England, and though Bristol is fairly supplied with fuel,
the thin and broken seams of the neighbouring coal-
fields cannot compare with the rich seams of the northern
mines. Situated seven miles up a river, then ten times
more difficult of navigation than it has since been made
by modern improvements, its port was not likely to
attract ships, especially as the quick and violent ebb of
the tide delayed their progress and often endangered
their safety. Liverpool, on the other hand, was not
subject to these disadvantages, and quickly drew to it-
self much of the commerce with America and the West
Indies that would otherwise have come to Bristol. As
early as 1764, the ships entering the port of Liverpool
were 766, against 332 entering that of Bristol, while
outwards 832 ships sailed from Liverpool against 343
from Bristol; and in 1784, when Bristol contributed
334,909Z. to the customs, the remittances from Liver-
pool amounted to 648,684Z. In order to remedy the
evils occasioned by the rapid ebb of the tide, and to
give the city a better dock than a mere tidal river, a
Dock Company was formed in 1803. This company
dug a new channel for the Avon, called the New Cut,
from Rownham to Totterdown, turned the Frome and
the Avon into a floating harbour of two miles and a
half in extent by a system of dams and locks and, in
addition, made Bathurst Basin.

The advantages which would have naturally accruedDecline and Revival

21 I

to the city from this undertaking were lost by mis-
management. The expense of the work was enormous,
and the corporation and the Merchants consequently
gained the right of appointing two-thirds of the directors
of the dock company from their own bodies, and the
affairs of the company, itself a private society, were
managed simply with the view of obtaining large
returns. These were sought in the imposition of high
rates rather than in the increase of the business of the
port. Instead of trying to offer special advantages, the
company only sought to make all it could, and the mean
rate on shipping levied in the port exceeded that
paid at Liverpool by more than 48 per cent, and the
London rate by 115 per cent. Wine that paid on
importation at Hull 11., and at Liverpool 11. 14s., in
local dues, was subject in Bristol to charges amounting
to SI. The proportionate charges on a cargo of silk
and indigo would be represented by 11. at London,
11. 18s. at Liverpool, and 81. 7s. 9%d. at Bristol.
Master coopers bought their timber at Gloucester, where
it was subject to sixty per cent, less charge than at their
own port. A tonnage rate of three shillings was paid
by ships from America, and of sixpence by coasters;
and when a vessel from America that had discharged
her cargo at another port proceeded with ballast to
Bristol to take in a cargo for the return voyage, the dock
company charged her as if she had come freighted from
America, and not from a home port. In short, every-
thing was done to bring profit to the dock company at
the cost of the trade of the city. Nor was the ‘ club-
spirit ’ confined to the corporation, the merchants, and
the company, for the West India merchants conducted212

Bristol

business on similar principles. As large mortgagees of
land in Demerara and the islands, the 1 sugar lords ’
were the absolute masters of the planters : they forced
up prices until sugar was actually bought in Liverpool
for retail in Bristol, arid kept up such extravagant
charges for freightage to the West Indies, that goods
were sent round to Liverpool to be reshipped there, in
order to avoid them. It was not long before the evil
effects of the inordinate local rates became apparent,
and some efforts, in which the council joined, were made
to procure their abatement. The interests of the dock
company, however, stood in the way, and no sweeping
measure of reduction was possible.

The beginning of better and wiser measures must
be traced to the Municipal Reform Act, passed Septem-
ber 9, 1835. By this Act the city of Bristol was ex-
tended so as to include Clifton, the out-parishes and
other districts, and was divided into ten (now thir-
teen) wards returning forty-eight councillors, who with
sixteen aldermen made up the town council. The
right of electing councillors was vested in the burgesses
of each ward, and the mayor, recorder, and aldermen
were chosen by the council. At the first election of
aldermen the Tory list was carried, and as the aldermen
formed a third of the council, this election decided the
political character of their body, and has enabled the
Tories to preserve a preponderance in the council ever
since. The Municipal Reform Act brought the govern-
ment of the city into harmony with the wishes of the
citizens, and ensured the final success of a more liberal
trade policy. It now became impossible that any con-
cern which affected public interests should be allowed toDecline and Revival

213

remain for any length of time under private control.
For a while the dock company effectually prevented any
material change for the better. The injury done to the
trade of the city by high rates, and indeed the evils of
the whole system of government by close corporations and
societies, had been exposed in a series of masterly ‘Letters
by a Burgess5 (John B. Kington) in 1833, and at last,
in 1848, owing chiefly to the exertions of the Free Port
Association and the Chamber of Commerce, the council
bought the docks of the company, and at once reduced
the port dues to a moderate scale. The effect of this
liberal measure was quickly apparent, for the tonnage
from foreign ports increased so largely that, in spite of
the reduction, the money receipts of the docks soon
grew far greater than during the period of high rates.
Still, the natural drawbacks of the port, lessened though
they were by the floating of the harbour, continued to
press heavily on Bristol commerce. Before noticing
how these have, within the last few years, at length
been overcome, we must take a glance at other matters
that affected the trade of the city.

The ruin of the sugar trade again brings us to
affairs of national interest. An agitation against the
slave trade, begun by the Quakers in America, was
taken up in England by Clarkson and others in 1783.
The trade was suspended and restricted, and finally,
in 1807, during the Grenville Ministry, a bill was brought
in by Lord Howick (Earl Grey) to render it illegal
from January 1 of the following year. Although opposed
by Eldon and Sidmouth, it was carried in the Lords by
a majority of sixty-three, and was passed almost unani-
mously by the Commons. The measure was constantly214

Bristol

evaded until, chiefly owing to the efforts of Brougham,
trading in slaves was made a felony in 1811. By these
Acts the traffic in men, which in one form or other had
been carried on by the Bristol merchants for so many
centuries, was brought to an end. In its worst form it
had been denounced alike by the saintly Wulfstan and
the infamous Jeffreys, but it was long before men came
to see anything inconsistent with religion or morality
in the kidnapping and sale of negroes, and now and
then pious prayers were offered for the success of a
slaver’s voyage. The trade, declared by the mayor in
1713 to be one of ‘the great supports of our people,’
had greatly diminished, and its suppression did no in-
jury to the city. It led, however, to the Emancipation
Bill of 1833. By this Act a gradual plan of emancipation
was devised, which provided that adult negroes should
serve an apprenticeship of seven years, and a sum of
20,000,000Z. was voted as compensation to the slave-
owners. Disturbances and illegal severities in Jamaica
enabled the Melbourne ministry to force the legislatureof
the island to accept a premature termination of the period
of apprenticeship, and the emancipation of the slaves
was completed in 1838. Great as the satisfaction is
with which one looks back at the high price the country
paid so readily in order to perform an act of humanity,
it must be acknowledged that the planters and merchants
suffered severely. Although slavery had hitherto been
sanctioned by law, and was not repugnant to their ideas
of morality, they were heavily fined for practising it,
for they were forced to part with their property at a
wholly inadequate price—ten of the largest slave-owning
houses in Bristol received about 158,000Z.—and theDecline and Revival

215

production of the commodities in which they dealt was
rendered costly and difficult. From this time the West
India trade of the city rapidly declined. This decline,
however, was due not so much to emancipation as to
the agitation against protection.

In spite of emancipation, the West India merchants
and planters might still have carried on a profitable
business ; for, though they could no longer deal in slave-
grown sugar, they were at least not subject to competi-
tion, for a protective duty of 63s. per cwt. was paid
on foreign sugar, against 24s. on sugar produced in
our colonies. This duty was first attacked in Parlia-
ment by Baring, the chancellor of the exchequer, who,
in his budget of 1841, proposed to reduce the tax on
foreign sugar to 36s. A debate of eight days followed,
nominally on this proposal, though really also on the
question of the fixed duty on corn, which depended on
the verdict of the Commons on the sugar duties^ The
government was defeated, and as the general election
that followed gave the Tories the majority, a new
ministry was formed by Sir Robert Peel. With Peel
the West India merchants believed themselves safe.
Nevertheless in 1844, on the expiration of a treaty with
Brazil, the government proposed to admit foreign sugar
if free-grown, preserving only a differential duty of 10s.
in order to help the colonies during the period of
transition from slave labour to free labour. This pro-
posal was attacked by two parties, by Lord John
Russell and the Opposition, as a foolish attempt to
protect free-grown sugar, and by the protectionists as
certain to injure our colonies without finally settling the
question of the duties. The protectionists were led by216

Bristol

Philip Miles, the senior member for Bristol and a large
West India merchant, who set forth the difficulties and
the distress already pressing on the colonies, urged the
close connexion of the question with the protection of
home-grown wheat, and moved an adverse resolution.
His motion was supported by Lord John Russell and
several members of the Opposition, and was carried
against the government by a majority of twenty-two.
On this Peel threatened to resign, and Miles withdrew
from further opposition. In the following February,
Milner Gibson, in a speech containing much exaggeration,
proposed the abolition of the differential duty. This
was opposed by Mr. W. E. Gladstone, who argued that
the West India proprietors had a right to claim protec-
tion, and Gibson’s amendment was rejected by a large
majority.

In 1846 Peel made his recantation, deserted the
protectionists, and the next year supported the new
prime minister, Lord John Russell, in laying a uniform
duty on sugar. This measure was vainly opposed by
the protectionists under Lord George Bentinclc, and by
some members of the House of Lords, who believed that
it would encourage slavery. In this they were not mis-
taken, for it was immediately followed by a considerable
increase in the Cuban slave trade. While the equalisa-
tion of the duties ruined the trade of Bristol with the
West Indies, destroyed the prosperity of the islands, and
of all who depended on them, it gave the nation cheap
sugar. At least half the plantations in Jamaica fell
out of cultivation, for it was now impossible to produce
sugar with a fair profit to the grower, except in Barbados,
where the land is so fully occupied that the negro must
work or starve, and where cultivation is therefore carriedDecline and Revival

217

on under exceptionally favourable circumstances. Long
after the removal of protection, the excellence of the
Bristol refineries attracted many cargoes of raw sugar to
the port, and it is not long since the most famous of
these refineries was closed in consequence of the impor-
tation of foreign manufactured sugar, 1 a comparatively
worthless article, containing little saccharine matter,
which is sold cheaply because its production is fostered
by bounties,’ a result of free-trade little expected by its
early apostles. Although the ruin of its West India
trade lessened the prosperity of Bristol in many ways,
the industries of the city were happily various, and her
commerce was carried on in many waters.

All through her existence Bristol has naturally
sought wealth in western commerce. The principal
port for trade with the Ostmen of Ireland, the home of
the earliest voyagers to North America, she became in
the present century the originator of trans-Atlantic
steam traffic, and has succeeded in establishing a large
and increasing trade with America. The Great Western
steamship company, formed in 1835, built the first
steamer, the ‘ Great Western,’ that was expressly in-
tended for trans-Atlantic voyages. She was a wooden
ship of 1,340 tons register, with engines of 440 horse-
power, and was well designed and splendidly built.
She started on her first voyage on April 8, 1838, and
reached New York in fifteen days and ten hours, and
though one or two steamers had crossed the Atlantic
before her, the quickness of her passage, and the small
amount of coal she consumed, afforded the first proof
that steam traffic with America could be carried on
with the assurance of profit. The importance of the218

Bristol

event was fully recognised in New York, and 100,000
people gathered to see her start on her homeward
voyage, which she accomplished in fourteen days. Great
rejoicings were made in Bristol on her return, and the
company hoped to secure the permanence of the American
trade. Unfortunately they made the fatal mistake of
attempting to begin a line of navigation with a single
ship. The Cunard company, at once following in the
wake of Bristol enterprise and outstripping it, built
four large ships for the trans-Atlantic service, obtained
the mail contract, and made Liverpool the principal
port for communication with America. The Bristol
company did not yield without a struggle. Unfortu-
nately, its next ship, the ‘ Great Britain,’ instead of
being built as a companion vessel to the ‘ Great Western,’
was made as unlike her as possible; she was an iron
ship, was propelled by a screw, and was 1 a museum of
inventions.’ She was launched with great ceremony
in the presence of Prince Albert on July 19, 1843, but
was unable to pass the lock of the docks, and so was
detained for some months. After one successful voyage
she ran aground, and was converted into a sailing vessel.
A new attempt was made to establish regular trade with
America in 1871, and this has happily proved successful.

The increase of the trade of the city consequent on
the reduction of rates made the improvement of the dock
accommodation a matter of urgent necessity. Various
plans were proposed, and at last, 1877-80, two docks
were made at the mouth of the river, one at Avonmouth,
on the Gloucestershire side, and the other at Portishead,
on the Somerset side, of the Avon. Each dock was
built by a separate company, though as the corporationDecline and Revival

219

owned much property in Portishead, the council sub-
scribed 100,000Z. to the capital of the company for
promoting the works at that place. Both docks, and
especially that at Avonmouth, are well fitted for the
accommodation of ships of any size. A considerable
sum was also spent by the city in the improvement of
the old harbour. As long, however, as the new docks
remained under independent government, the city was
only one, and the most heavily weighted, of three com-
petitors for the profits of the shipping engaged in
its commerce. This unsatisfactory state of things was
brought to an end in 1884 when the corporation
bought both the new docks, and was thus enabled to
control the destination of all ships that entered
the port. No better example can be given of the
wholesome effects of the Municipal Reform Act
than is afforded by the contrast between the position
held by the corporation during the period of high rates,
when the Floating Harbour was the only dock Bristol
could offer to shipping, and the council was forced to
look on helplessly while year after year trade was driven
from its port, and the control it at present exercises
over the magnificent docks at the mouth of the river.
The liberal and public-spirited policy of the city has
found, and is ever finding in larger measure, a due
reward. The progress of its commerce during the
years that this policy has, somewhat slowly it must be
allowed, been gaining ground may be estimated by
comparing the tonnage of vessels entering the port,
given in the returns of 1847 as 546,753 tons, with the
returns of the present year (1886), which show 1,343,962
tons. The principal exports are coal, salt, tin plates,220

Bristol

manufactured oils and spirits, and chemical products,
besides a multitude of miscellaneous articles. The
largest import trade is that carried on in grain and
other provisions from Canada and the United States.
Although small in comparison with what it once was,
the trade with the West Indies is still noteworthy.
Grain is imported from India and the Black Sea as well
as from America; wine, oil, and fruit from France,
Spain, and the Mediterranean; timber from Norway,
British America, and the United States, and petroleum
from America and Russia.

From the Bristol of to-day to the member of the
royal manor of Barton is a long step backward, and in
such a little book as this we have only been able to
mark some of the principal stages in the growth of our
town, such as, to speak first of its extension, the rise of
the village at the back of the castle, and of the settle-
ments round the religious houses ; and to go on another
step, the union, so long delayed and so fiercely debated,
between the old town and Redcliff and Temple, and at a
later date still, the changes of the eighteenth century;
and lastly, the extension of the city’s boundaries by the
Municipal Reform Act. We have noted the principal
epochs in the history of Bristol trade, and seen the im-
portance of the town as a port for communication with
Ireland, for the import of the wines of the South, and
for the export of woollen goods. We have seen her
stretch forth her hands to the New World, grow rich
with the commerce of lands beyond the Western Ocean,
and help to people them with men of our own race.
An attempt has been made to show the close connexionDecline and Revival

221

Lot ween the trade and the municipal government of the
town, to exhibit a royal vill growing by reason of its
commercial importance into a commune, and gaining
strength to contend with, and at least to get the better
of, a mighty feudal house, receiving first the organisation
of the shire, and then the rank and dignity of a city.
With the commercial greatness of Bristol are closely con-
nected the oligarchical character of its government and
the special social phenomena that followed the Black
Death, a crisis increasing the importance of wealth in
commercial transactions, and throwing power into the
hands of an oligarchy of capitalists. And lastly, to advance
again to the new era ushered in by Western discovery,
we have seen the affairs of the city directed by close
corporations, until the wiser policy of later days gave
every burgess a voice in the management of everything
which concerns the common welfare.

Looking back on the history of Bristol as a whole,
we can see that, while the career of a trading town during
the middle ages was marked by attempts at isolation,
and was fostered by exclusive privileges, the national
life of England has happily been strong enough to make
the prosperity of such a town part of the general
welfare of the country, and that in tracing its fortunes
we have been reading an important chapter in the
history of the English people. In every political
crisis, and in every social revolution, the trading town
has always taken a deeper, and for that reason often a
less easily discerned, part in the progress of the greatest
commercial country of the world than has fallen to the
lot of places whose chief interest lies either in mili-
tary events or in the comparatively narrow field of222

Bristol

ecclesiastical antiquities. Although in studying a
single example of municipal history we have had to do
with much that seems at first sight of purely local
interest, we shall have read to little profit if we have not
perceived that there is little real isolation in the position
held by such a town as Bristol at any period of its
existence, and that few, if any, of its privileges have
been without benefit to the country at large. The days
when a city sought prosperity by efforts after isolation
and grants of exclusive privileges are long gone by, and
the wealth of one portion of the nation is now in a
fuller degree than ever the wealth of all. From the
attempts made to gain this community of interest,
Bristol has to some extent suffered, though at the same
time she now has a considerable share in the prosperity,
or at least in the varying fortunes, of the nation’s trade;
and while the wiser of her citizens do not look forward
to a future in which she will outstrip cities and towns
which, though some of them in comparison with her are
but of yesterday’s growth, have now left her far behind,
they have reason for their confident expectation that
the commerce of their ancient city will continue to
grow and flourish, and that she has a career before
her not wholly unworthy of her glorious past.INDEX.

ABBOTS

Abbots Leigh, 160
Abhorrers, 163

Adam Cheeseman, or the
cheese-man, 62, 63
Adam of Usk, 89
Admiralty Court, 93
Adryan, John, mayor, 60
ASlfwerd, the moneyer, 3
Agincourt, 93

Aitken, James, alias ‘Jack the
Painter,’ 196
Alchemist, a Bristol, 113
Aldermen, of Weavers, 81; of
wards, elected by commons,
86, 87; self-elective court of,
87; election of, 209, 212
Aldworth, Thomas, 138, 140;

Robert, 141 ; Richard, 147
America, North, discovery of,
2, 127

American Independence, War
of, 190-192

‘ Angel Gabriel ’ the, ballad of,
137

Anne Boleyn, 56
Anne, Queen, 175
Anne, St., shrine of, 107
Armada, the, 136
Arms of Bristol, 73, 99
Austin Friars, 117
Avonmouth, Docks at, 218
Ay 1 ward Snew, 13

BEBKELHY

Bacoalaob, 130
Badlesmere, Bartholomew,
Lord, 64, 65, 68
Bailiffs, 55, 87

Bakers, the craft of the, 52,
53

Banner of Bristol, 99
Bannockburn, battle of, 67
Baptists, 146, 158
Barbados, 142, 216
Barker, Andrew, 135
Barrett, William, historian of
Bristol, 183, 184
Barton, the hundred of, 7, 8,
13, 16, 42, 43, 220
Barton, St. James’s, 36
Bastard, a wine called, 132
Bath, 1, 16, 19
Baye, La, 74

Beaufort, Henry, Duke of, 166
Bedloe, the informer, 163
BedmiDster, 7, 22, 38, 155,
185

Bell, the Common, 8, 61, 65,
108

Berkeley, 7, 16, 71 ; first house
of, Roger, 16 ; Roger, 22,23,
29 ; present house of, 11, 14,
22 ; see Harding and Robert
Fitz Harding; Maurice,
Lord, 40, 60; Thomas, Lord,
61, 63, 65; Maurice, Sir224

• Bristol

BILLESWICK

CHRISTMAS

(Lord), 61-63,	68,	70;

Thomas, Lord, 70 ; Thomas,
Lord, Admiral, 92; James,
Lord, 100; Berkeley, Lady,
100; Maurice, Sir, 101 ;
William, Lord, 101
Billeswick, 9, 22, 38
Bishopric of Bristol, 118, 119
Black Death, the, 3, 77-83, 95
Blake, Captain Robert, 151,
153

Blanket, Thomas, 76, 81
Bordeaux, 59, 60, 74, 93
Borough, nature of a, 42-44
Boucher, George, 148, 149
Boy Bishop, festival of the,
109, 110

Brandon Hill, 9, 88, 150, 178
Brazil, 215 ; island of, 126,127
Brereton, Lieutenant-Colonel,
202-205

Bridge, Bristol, 4, 7, 20 ; stone,
38, 40, 41 ; new, 177; riots,
201

Brihtric, 13

Bristol, character of history
of, 1-3,220-222 : name, 4; a
county, 84, 85 ; an episcopal
see and a city, 118, 119 ;
Liberties taken as amodel, 60;
topography, 5-9; description
of, in twelfth century, . 18 ;
extension of, by end of thir-
teenth century, 35-41; de-
scription of, in seventeenth
century, 161; in eighteenth
century, 175-177; see Bridge,
Churches, Sieges, &c.

‘ Bristol cotton,’ 75
‘ Bristol milk,’ 161
Bristols in U. S. A., 142
Broadmead Records, the, 158
Burgage tenure, 48
Burgess, Letters of a, 213
Burgesses, 43, 44, 48, 53, 54
Burke, Edmund, 191-198;
elected for Bristol, 193; visits

city, 195; Letter to the
Sheriffs of, 196 ; rejected at,
198

Bush, Paul, Bishop, 118, 121
Bussy, Sir John, 90

Cabot, John, 127,128 ; Sebas-
tian, 122, 127-131, 133
Cadiz, taking of, 136
Calf, William, 46
Canaries, trade with the, 132,
135

Cann, Sir Robert, 163
Canynges, William, the elder,
mayor, 94, 106

Canynges, William, mayor, 94-
100, 106

Carmelite Priory, 37, 117
Carpenter, John, Bishop of
Worcester, 106
Carr, John, 126

Castle, 7, 15-18, 26, 27, 31, 32,
64, 71, 90, 98, 146, 147, 160
Cathay, 126, and note
Champion, Richard, 192, 193
Chapels, St. Brendan’s, 9; St.
Clement’s, 58; St. George’s
two, 58 ; St. Kaiharine’s, 52 ;
St. Mark’s (the Mayor’s), 37,
1,52, 171; many, 107 ; confis-
cation of free, 119
Charles I., 144, 157
Charles II., 155, 160-164
Charter, the Great, reissued at
Bristol, 30

Charters, of 1164 (?), 47 ; of
1172, 24; of 1188,24, 40,47,
48, 60; of 1256,59 ; of 1300,
59; of 1373,84-86; of 1499,
87; of 1581, 87; of 1684,
165; of 1710,175; surrender
of, 164

Chatterton, Thomas, 182-184
China, Bristol, 192
Christmas Street, 15,	52;

Steps, 152Index

225

CHURCHES

ELEANOR

Churches, Bristol, All Saints,
7, 35, 49, 59; St. Augustine’s
Abbey (Cathedral), 22, 38,
117,118,152; St. Augustine’s
the Less, 38,152; St. Ewen’s,
3, 7, 35, 99 ; St. Giles’s, 27 ;
St. James’s (Priory), 35 ; St.
John’s, 6; St. Leonards, 177 ;
St. Mary-le-port, 7, 8, 35 ; St.
Mary Redcliff, 7, 106; St.
Nicholas, 6, 110, 116, 177;
St. Peter’s, 6, 7, 35; Sts.
Philip and Jacob, 36; St.
Stephen’s, 105; Temple, 39,
52, 106, 109; Trinity, or
Christ Church, 7, 8, 35, 49,
116, 120; St. Werburgh’s, 4,
24, 105

Cipango (Japan), 128
Clare, Lord, 191, 192
Clement, Sr., 53, 58, 96
Clifton, 9, 151, 155, 180, 212
Clontarf, battle of, 10
Cloth trade ; see Weavers and
Woollen trade
Coleridge, S. T., 185-188
Colford, William, recorder, 80
College Green, 6, 9, 111, 118,

152, 176, 177

Colston, Edward, 167-170
Commune, nature of a, 54, 57
Contarini, Venetian ambassa-
dor, 129

Coroner, office of, 69
Corporation, 59, 164 ; ‘ purged,’
165; unreformed, 209 ; re-
formed, 212

Cottle, Amos and Joseph, 187
Council, a Great, held at
Bristol, 30

Council, Common, 84, 86, 163,
209 ; new Town - council,

212

Courts, of borough, 14, 53, 54,
57; of Lords of Berkeley,
40, 61

Coventry, 99, 109, 112

Crafts, 50-53, 79, 80-83, 105,
see Weavers
Crecy, battle of, 73
Cromwell, Oliver, 142,153,157,
159, 160

Cross, High, 90, 161, 177;
Stallage, 39

Cruger, Henry, 192, 193
Crusade, a naval, 46
Cut, the New, dug for Avon,
210

Davy, Humphry, 188
Defence Lane, 6(5
Defoe, Daniel, 174; his de-
scription of Bristol, 172,175
Derby, Walter, Mayor, 74
Dermod MacMurrough, King
of Dublin, 23

Despenser, Hugh, the elder
and younger Lords, 70, 71;
Thomas, Lord, 90
Dock Company, 210, 211
Docks, the New, 218, 219
Domesday Book, 13
Dominican Priory, 37, 70, 93
Dover, Dr. Thomas, 173
Draper, Sir William, 180
Dublin, 10-12, 23-25, 60
Ducking-stool, 177
Duddlestone, Sir John, 169

Eadgar, King, 10
Eadnoth, the staller, 12, 14
Eadward the Confessor, 11
Eden, Richard, 129, 130
Edgeworth, Roger, canon, 116
Edward I., 31, 33, 34, 65
Edward II., 64-71
Edward III., 72, 73, 75-77
Edward IV., 99, 102-105
Edward VI., 119, 133, 134
Eleanor of Aquitaine, Queen,
45

Eleanor of Brittany, 31

Q226

Bristol

ELEANOR

INDIES

Eleanor of Castile, Queen, 66
Eleanor of Montfort, 34
Elbridge, Giles, merchant, 141
Eliot, Hugh, discoverer, 130
Elizabeth, Queen, 106, 122-124
Engelard of Cigoine, 30
Essex, Colonel, 147, 148
Evelyn, John, visits Bristol,
161

‘ Exchange,’ the ship, 132
Exeter, 21, 66, 121,140

Fairfax, Sir Thomas, 153,156
Ferm, or rent of Bristol, 13-15,
64, 56, 64

Fiennes, Nathaniel, 148-154,
157

Fires, frequency of, 38
Fishery, Bristol, 45, 65, 137,
145

Fitz Harding, name, 25; see
Robert Fitz Harding
Frauncis, family of, 59
Free Port Association, 213
Frome, river, new channel dug
for, 6, 37, 40
Fulford, Sir Baldwin, 99

Gascont, 47, 93
Genoese, 94, 98, 132
Geoffrey, Bishop of Coutances,
13-16

George, St., 67, 74
Gesta Stephani, description of
Bristol in, 18

Gilbert, Sir Humphrey, 138,139
Gladstone, W. E., 216
Gloucester, 2,25, 60,71,99,102,
147, 154, 211

Gloucester, Earls of, Robert,
17-22, 35, 36, 39, 48, 49;
William, 22, 26, 48 ; Gilbert
of Clare, 31-33; Gilbert
(son), 66; Dukes of, Thomas,
89; Richard, 102

Gorges, Sir Ferdinando, 140,147
Grammar School, 125
Grandison, Lord, 151, 154
‘ Great Western,’ the steam-
ship, 217

Grove, Thomas, mayor, 61
Guildhall, 53, 57, 68, 62, 65
Guilds, 48-53, 79, 80, 96, 119 ;
see Kalendars, Merchant
guild, &c.

Guy, John, governor, 138
Guyaquil, storming of; by
Bristol sailors, 173

Hakluyt, Richard, 137, 139,
140

Harding, 12, 14, 22, 39
Harfleur, taking of, 93
Harford, Joseph, 190, 193
Harold, Earl and King, 11, 12
Hawisia, the lady, 26
Hazard, Dorothy, 146,152
Henry I., 17, 49
Henry II., 21-25, 27
Henry III., 30, 67
Henry IV., 90-92
Henry V, 93
Henry VI., 94, 97
Henry VII., Ill, 126, 128
Henry VIII., 118, 131, 132
Henton, convent of, 60
Holyman, John, Bishop, 121
Hopton, Sir Ralph (Lord), 151,
154

Hotwells, 179-181
Houses, 9, 38, 108
Howel, Thomas, Bishop, 158
Hubberdin, preacher, 116
Huguenot refugees, 171, 178
Hunt, John, 67 ; Henry, the
Radical, 190
Hwiccan, the, 4

Indies, West, 133, 142, 161,
162, 171, 208, 212, 217, 218Index

227

INSURRECTION

Insurrection, the Great, 63-69
Insurrection of 1549, 120
Ireland, 2, 10-12, 23, 24, 60,
148, 150, 154, 170, 171, 172,
196, 197

Ireland, Robert de Vere, Duke
of, 90

James I., 137, 144
James II., 165, 166
James, Captain Thomas, 138
Jay, John,126

Jeffreys, Chief Justice, 142,166
Jews, 27-30
John, King, 24-27, 30
Johnson, Dr. Samuel, 184
Journeymen, rise of a new class
of, 71, 82

Kalendars, Guild of, 49, 58,
59,112

Katharine, St., 52, 63, 109 ;
players, 109

Kidnapping, 11, 20, 142
Kingswood, 38; collieries of,
181, 200

Kitchin, alderman, 125
Kitts, St., merchants of, 162,
167

Knight, Sir John, 163,164
Knights Templars, 39, 41;
Hospitallers, 39, 41, 117

Lancaster, Thomas, Earl of,
66, 67, 69

Lane, Mistress, 160
Langrish, Lieutenant-Colonel,
152,153

Latimer, Hugh, 115, 116
Lawford’s Gate, name, 36
Learning, desire for, 111-113
115

Leprosy, 78

MUNICIPAL
Lewin’s Mead, 9
‘Lion,’ the ship, 141
Lisbon, taking of, 46
Lisle, John Talbot, Lord, 100 ;

Thomas, Lord, 101
Liverpool, 173, 207, 208, 210
Loans to Crown, 89, 97
Lollards, 88, 89, 91
London, 1,45, 57, 59, 64, 67, 73,
83, 97, 137, 144, 145, 164,
172,196, 200

Lovell, Robert, Quaker poet,
186

Lunsford, Harry, 152

Mabel, Countess, 17
Mackworth, Major, 205
Maine, state of, 138, 142
Margaret of Anjou, Queen, 102
Marlborough, 60, 147
Martyr, Peter, 129
Martyrs, Protestant, 121
Mary, Queen, 122, 133
Massachusetts, State of, 140-
142

Matilda, Empress, 19, 21
‘ Matthew,’ the, ship, 127
Matthew, master, 22
Mayor, office of, 54, 55 ; of
staple, 77 ; escheator, 85 ;
election of, 81, 108, 212
Mede, Philip, mayor, 101
Merchant guild, 53—59, 63
Merchants, Fellowship of, 58,
95, 96, 134

Merchant Venturers, 134, 135,
139, 168, 169, 197, 209
Methodists, 181, 182
Miles, Philip, 216
Monastic houses, 36-38, 116—
118

Monmouth, Duke of, 165
More, Mrs. Hannah, 185
Morocco, trade with, 133
Municipal Reform Act, 45, 212228

Bristol

NAYLOB

Naylob, James, 159
Newfoundland, 130, 133, 137,
138, 145

Newspapers, local, 179
Nibley Green, battle of, 101,
102

North, Roger, on Bristol
matters, 142, 163
Norton, Thomas, ‘ gentleman,’
103-105; a master-mason,
106 ; an alchemist, 113
Norumbega, 138-140

Old Market Street, 8, 36
Ostmen, 10, 11, 24, 25
Owen Glendower, 92

Page, Adam, mayor, 69
Pageants, 108-111, 122-124
Parkhurst, Anthony, 137
Parliament, a, held at Bristol,
34

Parliamentary representation,
32, 34, 75, 85-87
Peel, Sir Robert, 215, 216
Pemaquid, 141, 142
Pembroke, Earls of, Aymer de
Valence, 67; John Hastings,
73; Jasper, 98 ; William
Herbert, 191

Pepys, Samuel, 77, 161, 162
‘ Perdita ’ Robinson, 185
Pert, Sir Thomas, 131
Pilgrimages, 107, 108
Pinney, Charles, mayor, 203-205
Pirates, Algerine and Turkish,
132, 145

Pithay, 15, 126 note
Plagues, 124, 155; see Black
Death

Plays, 109, 124; see Theatres
Plymouth, U.S.A., 140, 141
Plymouth Company, 140
Pope, Alexander, his description
of Bristol, 175

ROBERT

Popham, Chief Justice, 140
Popish Plot, 163
Pring, Captain Martin, 139,140
Privateers, 173-175
Provosts, 13, 55
Puritans, 146-160
Purvey, John, 88
Purveyance, 144

Quakers, 158,195
Quay, Redcliff, 39 ; Bristol,
37, 38

Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital,
126, 168

Queen Square, 162, 176, 202,
204

‘ Queen’s Chamber,’ Bristol, the,
56

Ramusio, Gian-Battista, 129
Randolf, William, mayor, 63,
64, 68

Rates, period of high local, 211
Recorder, 80, 87
Red Book, the Great, 57,79, 99,
103; the Little, 80, 81
Red Maids School, 126
RedclifE, 7, 22; rivals Bristol,
39 ; reckoned with, 40,41, 47;
struggle for, 60-63, 84 ; fully
united to Bristol, 85
Reeve, 9, 13, 14, 43, 55
Reform Bill, 199, 200; riots,
202-206

Reformation, 114-120
Richard I., 26
Richard II., 89, 90
Richard III., 56
Richard d’Orescuilz, 27
Richard of Devizes, 44
Riots (eighteenth century),
200-206

Robert, Duke of Normandy, 17
Robert FitzHamon, 16, 17Index

229

ROBERT

Robert FitzHarding, 14, 22,
28, 37, 39

Robert FitzNichol, mayor, 64
Robert Mowbray, 16
Rogers, Captain Woodes, 173
Roman Catholic Relief, 197 ;

Emancipation, 199
Roundaway Down, battle of,
151

Row, the Sword-bearer, 163,
164

Rupert, Prince, 148, 151, 155-
157

Sacheverell, Dr., 168; riots,
200

Sagadahoc, river, colony on, 140
Salterne, Robert, 139, 140
Scarcity, years of, 125, 200
Seal, common, 72, 165
Selkirk, Alexander, 173, 177
Separatists, 146, 158
Sewin, reeve, 9,14
Seyer, Rev. Samuel, historian
of Bristol, 189

Sharington, Sir William, 120
Sheriffs, 84, 87 209
Ship money, 145
Ships, Bristol, 45, 47, 73, 74,
92, 95, 98, 126-128, 132,
136-138, 141, 161, 173, 217
Ship ward, John, mayor, 101,
108, 105, 107
Shoemakers, 107
Shrewsbury, John Talbot, Earl
of, 93, 100

Sieges of, and attacks on,
Bristol, 12, 20, 27, 70, 151-
154, 155-158

Simon of Montfort, Earl of
Leicester, 31-33
Slave trade, 11,20, 23,82, 142 ;
negro slaves, 133,172; eman-
cipation of, 214
Soap, manufacture of, 44, 132,
145, 146, 208

VIRGINIA

Southey, Robert, 185-188
Spain, 73, 74, 115, 135, 136,
141, 142, 161, 171, 208
Spenser, William, mayor, 103-
105

Spicer, Richard, 58,	74;

Thomas, 69; Stephen, 86 ;
Spicer’s Hall, 58, 96
Sprigg, Thomas, his England's
Recovery quoted, 158
Staple at Bristol, 76, 77
Steam-ships, 217
Stephen, King, 18-21, 25
Stephens, John, mayor, 92
Stewards, 55

Sturmy, Sturmis, 28 : Sturmys,
Robert, 83, 97

Sugar trade, 132,162, 172, 207,
212, 213 ; ruin of, 215-217
Swegen, Earl, 11

Taverner, John, Mayor, 34,
64, 68

Taxation, 34, 35, 40, 75	'

Temple Fee, 39, 40, 117
Tewkesbury, Abbey, 16; battle
of, 102 ; chronicle of, 38
Theatres, 124, 178, 179
Thistlethwaite, James, 184
Thome, Robert, 125,	130;

Nicholas, 125, 132; Robert
(younger), 130, 131
Tilly, Richard, mayor, 69
Towton, battle of, 99
Trade, 10, 44, 45, 47, 75, 93-
96, 98, 132-134, 142, 161,
170-173, 207-212, 215-220
Traitor’s Bridge, 166
Trelawney, Sir Jonathan,
bishop, 166
Tucker, Dean, 191
Tuckers, 52

Turtle, Roger, mayor, 69
Twynyho, John, recorder, 103

Virginia, 139, 140230

Bristol

WADE

Wade, William, 164, 166
Wales, 21, 31, 34, 47, 98, 99,
103, 150, 154, 172
Walleys, Henry le, 59
Walls, 6, 15, 16, 18, 28, 38,
41, 66

Walpole, Horace, 183
Wards, 7, 42, 87, 212
Washington, Colonel Henry,
151, 176

Weavers, 39, 52, 81-83, 107,
109, 124, 171

Werburh, 4 ; see Churches, St.

Werburgh’s
Wesley, John, 182
Wetherell, Sir Charles, recorder,
199,200,202 •

White field, 181
Whitson, John, 125, 140, 144
Wilford, William, his successes
at sea, 92

William the Conqueror, 11, 12
William Kurus, 16

YOBK

Wiltshire, Earls of, William
Scrope, Earl of, 90; James
Butler, Earl of, 98
Wine trade, 2, 45, 74, 94, 132,
162, 208, 220
Winthrop, John, 141
Wishart, George, 116
Woollen and cloth trade, 2, 39,
44, 52, 75-77, 81, 91, 94, 170,
208

Wulfstan, Bishop of Worcester,
11, 16, 214

Wylington, Henry, 69
Wyrcestre, William, 58, 100,
112, 126, 180

Teamans, Puritan, 146
Yeomans, Robert, Royalist,
148, 149

Tonge, Thomas, 94, 97-99 »
York, Richard, Duke of, 97,
98

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Jago’s Inorganic Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical. Fcp. 8vo. 2*.

Kerl’s Metallurgy, adapted by Crookes and Rohrig. 3 vols. 8vo. £4. 19*.

Kolbe’s Short Text-Book of Inorganio Chemistry. Crown 8vo. 7*. 6d.

Lloyd’s Treatise on Magnetism. 8vo. 10*. 6d.

Macalister’s Zoology and Morphology of Vertebrate Animals. 8vo. 10*. 8d.
Macfarren’s Lectures on Harmony. 8vo. 12*.

Miller’s Elements of Chemistry, Theoretical and Practical. 3 vols. 8vo. Part I.
Chemical Physics, 16*. Part II. Inorganic Chemistry, 24*. Part III. Organio
Chemistry, price 31*. M.

London: LONGMANS, GEEEN, & CO.8	General Lists of Works.

I Mitchell’s Manual of Practical Assaying. 8vo. 31j. 6d.

I Northoott’s Lathes and Turning. 870. 18*.

Owen’s Comparative Anatomy and Physiology <sf the Vertebrate Animals.
3 vols. 8vo. 73*. 6d.

'• Piesse’s Art of Perfumery. Square crown 8vo. 21*.

Reynolds’s Experimental Chemistry. Fcp. 8vo. Part 1.1*. Gd. Part II. 2*. fid.
Part III. 3*. 6d.

i Schellen’s Spectrum Analysis. 8vo. 31*. 6d.

I Sennettfs Treatise on the Marine Steam Engine. 8vo. 21*.

I Smith’s Air and Rain. 8vo. 24*.

Stoney’s The Theory of the Stresses on Girders, &c. Royal 8vo. 36*.

I Swtnton’s Electric Lighting: Its Principles and Practice. Crown 8vo. 6*.

I Tilden’s Practical Chemistry. Fcp. 8vo. 1*. 6d.
i Tyndall’s Faraday as a Discoverer. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6d.

—	Floating Matter of the Air. Crown 8,vo. 7*. 6d.'

—	Fragments of Science. 2 vols. post 8vo. 16*.

—	Heat a Mode of Motion. Crown 8vo. 12*.

—	Lectures on Light delivered in America. Crown 8vo. 5*.

—	Lessons on Electricity. Crown 8vo. 2*. 6d.

—	Notes on Electrical Phenomena. Crown 8vo. 1*. sewed, 1*. 6d. cloth.

—	Notes of Lectures on Light. Crown 8vo. 1*. sewed, 1*. 6d. cloth.

—	Sound, with Frontispiece and 203 Woodcuts. Crown 8vo. 10*. 6d.
Watts’s Dictionary of Chemistry. 9 vols. medium 8vo. £15. 2*. 6d.

Wilson’s Manual of Health-Science. Crown 8vo. 2*. 6d.

THEOLOGICAL AND RELIGIOUS WORKS.

Arnold’s (Rev. Dr. Thomas) Sermons. 6 vols. crown 8vo. 5*. each.

Boultbee’s Commentary on the 39 Articles. Crown 8vo. 6*.

Browne’s (Bishop) Exposition of the 39 Articles. 8vo. 16*.

Bullinger’s Critical Lexicon and Concordance to the English and Greek New
Testament. Royal 8vo. 15*.

Colenso on the Pentateuch and Book of Joshua. Crown 8vo. 6*.

Oonder’s Handbook of the Bible. Post 8vo. 7*. 6d.

Conybeare & Howson’s Life and Letters of St. Paul:—

Library Edition, with Maps, Plates, and Woodcuts. 2 vols. square crown
8vo. 21*.

Student’s Edition, revised and condensed, with 46 Illustrations and Maps.
1 vol. crown 8vo. 7*. 6i.

Cox’s (Homersham) The First Century of Christianity. 8vo. 12*.

Davidson’s Introduction to the Study of the New Testament'. 2 vols. 8vo. 30*.
Edersheim’s Life and Times of Jesus the Messiah. 2 vols. 8vo. 24*.
j	— Prophecy and History in relation to the Messiah. 8vo. 12*.

Ellicott’s -(Bishop) Commentary on St. Paul’s Epistles. 8vo. Galatians, 8*. 6d.
! Ephesians, 8*. 6d. Pastoral Epistles, 10*. 6d. Philippians, Colossians and
I Philemon, 10*. 6d. Thessalonians, 7*. 6d.

— Lectures on the Life of our Lord. 8vo. 12*.

Ewald’s Antiquities of Israel, translated by Solly. 8vo. 12*. Gd.

— History of Israel, translated by Carpenter & Smith. Vols. 1-7, 8vo. £5,
Hobart’s Medioal Language of St. Luke. 8vo. 16*.

London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.General Lists of Works.	9

Hopkins’s Christ the Consoler. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d.

Jukes’s New Man and the Eternal Life. Crown 8vo. 6s.

—	Second Death and the Bestitution of all Things. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

—	Types of Genesis. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

—	The MyBtery of the Kingdom. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

Lenormant’s New Translation of the Book of Genesis. Translated into English.
8yo. 10s. tid.

Lyra Germanica : Hymns translated by Miss Winkworth. Pep. 8vo. 6s.
Macdonald’s (G.) Unspoken Sermons. Two Series, Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each.

—	The Miracles of our Lord. Crown 8yo. 3s. 6d.

Manning’s Temporal Mission of the Holy Ghost. Crown 8vo. 8s. 6d.

Martineau’s Endeavours after the Christian Life. Crown 8yo. 7s. 6d.

—	Hymns of Praise and Prayer. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. 32mo. Is. 6d.

—	Sermons, Hours of Thought on Sacred Things. 2 vols. 7s. 6d. eacl).
Monsell’s Spiritual Songs for Sundays and Holidays. Fcp. 8yo. 6s. 18mo. 2s.
Muller’s (Max) Origin and Growth of Beligion. Crown 8vo. 7s, 6d.

—	— Science of Beligion. Crown 8yo. 7s. 6d.

Newman’s Apologia pro Vita Suit. Crown 8yo. 6s.

—	The Idea of a University Defined and Illustrated. Crown 8yo. 7s.

—	Historical Sketches. 3 vols. crown 8vo. 6s. each.

—	Discussions and Arguments on Various Subjects. Crown 8vo. 6s.

—	An Essay on the Development of Christian Doctrine. Crown 8vo. 6s.

—	Certain Difficulties Felt by Anglicans in Catholic Teaching Con-

sidered. Vol. 1, crown 8vo. 7s. 6d. Vol. 2, crown 8vo. 6s. 6d.

—	The Via Media of the Anglican Church, Illustrated in Lectures, <feo.

2 vols. crown 8vo. 6s. each

—	Essays, Critical and Historical 2 vols. crown 8vo. 12s.

—	Essays on Biblical and on Ecclesiastical Miracles. Crown 8vo. 6s.

—	An Essay in Aid of a Grammar of Assent. 7s. 6d.

Overton’s Life in the English Church (1660-1714). 8vo. 14s.

Bogers’s Eclipse of Faith. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.

—	Defence of the Eclipse of Faith. Fcp. 8vo. 3s. 6d.

Sewell’s (Miss) Night Lessons from Scripture. 32mo. 3s. 6<f.

—	— Passing Thoughts on Beligion. Fcp. 8vo. 3s. 6d.

—	— Preparation for the Holy Communion. 32mo. 3s.

Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. PauL Crown 8vo. 7s. 6<f.

Supernatural Beligion. Complete Edition. 3 vols. 8vo. 36s.

Taylor’s (Jeremy) Entire Works. With Life by Bishop Heber. Edited by the
Bev. C. P. Eden. 10 vols. 8vo. £5. 6s.

TRAVELS, ADVENTURES, &c.

Alpine Club (The) Map of Switzerland. In Four Sheets. 42s.

Baker’s Eight Tears in Ceylon. Crown 8vo. 5s.

— Hifle and Hound in Ceylon. Crown 8vo. 5s.

Ball’s Alpine Guide. 3 vols. post 8vo. with Maps and Illustrations :—I. Western
Alps, 6s. 6d. H. Central Alps, 7s. 6d. HI. Eastern Alps, 10s. 6d.

Ball on Alpine Travelling, and on the Geology of the Alps, Is.

Bent’s The Cyclades, or Life among the Insular Greeks. Crown 8vo. 12s. 6d.

London: LONGMANS, GEEEN, & CO.10	General Lists of Works.

Brassey’s Sunshine and Storm in the East. Library Edition, 8vo. 21s. Cabinet
Edition, crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

—	Voyage in the Yacht ‘ Sunbeam.’ Library Edition, 8vo. 21*. Cabinet

Edition, crown 8vq. 7s. 6d. School Edition, fcp. 8vo. 2s. Popular
Edition, 4to. 6d.

—	In the Trades, the TropicB, and the ‘ Roaring Forties.’ Edition de

Luxe, 8vo. £3.13*. 6d. Library Edition, 8vo. 21*.

Crawford’s Across the Pampas and the Andes. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

Dent’s Above the Snow Line. Crown 8vo.' 7s. 6d.

Fronde’s Oceana; or, England and her Colonies. Crown 8vo. 2*. boards; 2s. 6d.
cloth.

Hassall’s San Remo Climatically considered. Crown 8vo. 5*.

Howitt’s Visits to Remarkable Places. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

Three in Norway. By Two of Them. Crown 8vo. Illustrations, 6*.

WORKS OF FICTION.

Beaconsfield’s (The Earl of) Novels and Tales. Hughenden Edition, with 2
Portraits on Steel and 11 Vignettes on Wood. 11 vols. crown 8vo. £2. 2s.
Cheap Edition, 11 vols. crown 8vo. Is. each, boards; 1*. 6d. each, cloth.
Lothair.	. Contarini Fleming.

Sybil.	Alroy, Ddon, &c.

Coningsby.	The Young Duke, &c.

Tancred.	Vivian Grey.

Venetia.	Endymion.

Henrietta Temple.

Black Poodle (The) and other Tales. By the Author of‘Vice VersA’ Cr. 8vo. 6*.
Brabourne’s (Lord) Friends and Foes from Fairyland. Crown 8vo. 6*.

Harte (Bret) On the Frontier. Three Stories. 16mo. 1*.

—	—	By Shore and Sedge. Three Stories. 16mo. 1*.

—	—	In the Carquinez Woods. Crown Svo. 2s. boards ; 2s. 6d. cloth.

Melville’s (Whyte) Novels. 8 vols. fcp. 8vo. 1*. each, boards; 1*. 6d. each, cloth.

Digby Grand.	I	Good for Nothing.

General Bounce.	Holmby House.

Kate Coventry.	|	The Interpreter.

The Gladiators.	!	The Queen’s Maries.

Novels by the Author of ‘ The Atelier du Lys ’:

The Atelier du Lys; or, An Art Student in the Reign of TerroT. Crown
8vo. 2s. 6d.

Mademoiselle Mori: a Tale of Modem Rome. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.

In the Olden Time: a Tale of the Peasant War in Germany. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Hester’s Venture. Crown 8Vo. 6s.

Oliphant’s (Mrs.) Madam. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

—	— In Trust: the Story of a Lady and her Lover. Crown 8vo.

2s. boards ; 2s. 6d. cloth.

Payn’s (James) The Luck of the Darrells. Crown 8vo. 3*. 6d.

—	— Thicker than Water. Crown 8vo. 2s. boards i 2s. 6d. cloth.
Reader’s Fairy Prince Follow-my-Lead. Crown 8vo. 6s.

Sewell’s (Miss) Stories and Tales. Crown 8vo. 1*. each, boards; Is. 6d. cloth ;
2*. Sd. cloth extra, gilt edges.

Amy Herbert. Cleve Hall.

The Earl’s Daughter.

Experience of Life.
Gertrude. Ivors.

A Glimpse of the World.
Katharine Ashton.

Laneton Parsonage.

Margaret Percival. Ursula.

London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.General Lists of Works.

11

Stevenson’s (R. L.) The Dynamiter. Fcp. 8vo. Is. sewed; Is. &d. cloth.

—	— Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Fcp. 8vo. Is.

sewed ; Is. 6d. cloth.

Trollope’s (Anthony) Novels. Fcp. 8vo. Is. each, boards; Is. 6d. cloth.

The Warden	| Barchester Towers.

POETRY AND THE DRAMA.

Armstrong’s (Ed. J.) Poetical Works. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.
—	(G. F.) Poetical Works :—

Poems, Lyrical and Dramatic. Fcp.

8vo. 6s.

Ugone: a Tragedy. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.

A Garland from Greece. Fcp. 8vo.9s.

King Saul. Fcp. 8vo. 5s.

King David. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.

King Solomon. Fcp. 8vo. 6s.
Stories of Wicklow. Fcp. 8vo. 9s.

Bowen’s Harrow Songs and other Verses. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d.; or printed on
hand-made paper, 6s.

Bowdler’s Family Shakespeare. Medium 8vo. 14s. 6 vols. fcp. 8vo. 21s.

Dante's Divine Comedy, translated by James Innes Hinchin. Crown 8vo. 15s.
Goethe’s Faust, translated by Birds. Large crown 8vo. 12s. 6d.

—	— translated by Webb. 8vo. 12s. 6d.

—	— edited by Selss. Crown 8vo. 5s.

Ingelow’s Poems. Vols. 1 and 2, fcp. 8vo. 12s. Vol. 3 fcp. 8vo. 5s.

—	Lyrical and other Poems. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d. cloth, plain ; 3s. cloth,

gilt edges.

Macaulay’s Lays of Ancient Rome, with Ivry and the Armada. Illustrated by
Weguelin. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. gilt edges.

The same, Popular Edition. Illustrated by Scharf. Fcp. 4to. 6i. swd., Is. cloth.
Reader’s Voices from Flowerland, a Birthday Book, 2s. 6d. cloth, 3s. 6d. roan.
Southey’s Poetical Works. Medium 8vo. 14s.

Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses. Fcp. 8vo. 5s.

Virgil’s ASneid, translated by Conington. Crown 8vo. 9s.

—	Poems, translated into English Prose. Crown 8vo. 9s.

AGRICULTURE, HORSES, DOGS, AND CATTLE.

Dunster's How to Make the Land Pay. Crown 8vo. 5s.

Fitzwygram’s Horses and Stables. 8vo. 5 s.

Lloyd’s The Science of Agriculture. 8vo. 12s.

Loudon’s Encyclopaedia of Agriculture. 21s.

Miles’s Horse’s Foot, and How to Keep it Sound, Imperial 8vo. 12s. 6d.

—	Plain Treatise on Horse-Shoeing. Post 8vo. 2s. 6<2.

—	Remarks on Horses’ Teeth. Post 8vo. Is. 6d.

—	Stables and Stable-Fittings. Imperial 8vo. 15s.

Nevile’s Farms and Farming. Crown 8vo. 6s.

—	Horses and Riding. Crown 8vo. 6s.

Steel’s Diseases of the Ox, a Manual of Bovine Pathology. 8vo. 15s.
Stonehenge’s Dog in Health and Disease. Square crown 8vo. 7s. 8<J.

— Greyhound. Square crown 8vo. 15s.

Taylor’s Agricultural Note Book. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d.

Ville on Artificial Manures, by Crookes. 8vo. 21s.

Vouatt’s Work on the Dog. 8vo. 6s.

—	— — — Horse. 8vo. 7s. 6d.

London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.12	General Lists of Works.

SPORTS AND PASTIMES.

The Badminton Library of Sports and Pastimes. Edited by the Duke of Beaufort
and A. E. T. Watson. With numerous Illustrations. Crown 8vo. 10*. 6d.
each.

Hunting, by the Duke of Beaufort, &c.

Pishing, by H. Cholmondeley-Pennell, &c. 2 vols.

Racing, by the Earl of Suffolk, Sic.

Shooting, by Lord Walsingham, Sic, 2 vols.

*** Other Volumes in preparation.

Campbell-WalkePs Correct Card, or How to Play at Whist. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Dead Shot (The) by Marksman. Crown 8vo. 10*. Gd.

Francis’s Treatise on Fishing in all its Branches. Post 8vo. 15*.

Longman’s Chess Openings. Fcp. 8vo. 2*. 6<f.

Pole’s Theory of the Modern Scientific Game of Whist. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. 6d.
Proctor’s How to Play Whist. Crown 8vo. 5*.

Ronalds’s Fly-Fisher’s Entomology. 8vo. 14*.

Vemey’s Chess Eccentricities. Crown 8vo. 10*. 6d.

Wilcocks’s Sea-Fisherman. Post 8vo. 6*.

Year’s Sport (The) for 1885. 8vo. 21*.

ENCYCLOP/EDIAS, DICTIONARIES, AND BOOKS OF
REFERENCE.

Acton’s Modem Cookery for Private Families. Fcp. 8vo. 4*. 6d.

Ayre’s Treasury of Bible Knowledge. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

Brande’s Dictionary of Science, Literature, and Art. 3 vols. medium 8vo. 83*.
Cabinet Lawyer (The), a Popular Digest of the Laws of England. Fcp. 8vo. 9*.
Cates’s Dictionary of General Biography. Medium 8vo. 28*.

Doyle’s The Official Baronage of England. Yols. I.-III. 3 vols. 4to. £5. 6*.;

Large Paper Edition, £15.16*.

Gwilt’s Encyclopaedia of Architecture. 8vo. 62*. 6d.

Keith Johnston’s Dictionary of Geography, or General Gazetteer. 8vo. 42*.
M‘Culloch’8 Dictionary of Commerce and Commercial navigation. 8vo. 63*.
Maunder’s Biographical Treasury. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

—	Historical Treasury. Fcp. 8vo. 8*.

—	Scientific and Literary Treasury. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

—	Treasury of Bible Knowledge,- edited by Ayre. Fop. 8vo. 6*.

—	Treasury of Botany, edited by Lindley & Moore. Two Parts, 12*.

—	Treasury of Geography. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

-j.	Treasury of Knowledge and Library of Reference. Fcp. 8vo. 6*.

—	Treasury of Natural History. Fcp 8vo. 6*.

Quain’s Dictionary of Medicine. Medium 8vo. 31*. 6d., or in 2 vols. 34*.

Reeve’s Cookery and Housekeeping. Crown 8vo. 7*. 6d.

Rich's Dictionary of Roman and Greek Antiquities. Crown 8vo. 7*. Gel.

Roget’s Thesaurus of English Words and Phrases. Crown 8vo. 10*. 6<f.

Ure’s Dictionary of Arts, Manufactures, and Mines. 4 vols. medium 8vo. £7. 7*.
Willich’s Popular Tables, by Marriott Crown 8vo. 10*.

London: LONGMANS, GEEEN, & CO.A SELECTION

OF

EDUCATIONAL WORKS.

TEXT-BOOKS OF SCIENCE.

Abney’s Treatise on Photography. Fcp. 8vo.<ls. Sd.

Anderson’s Strength of Materials. 3s. 6d.

Armstrong’s Organic Chemistry. 3s. 6d.

Ball’s Elements of Astronomy. 6s.

Barry’s Bailway Appliances. 3s. 6d.

Bauerman’s Systematic Mineralogy. 6s.

— Descriptive Mineralogy. 6s.

Bloxam and Huntington’s Metals. 6s.

Glazebrook’s Physical Optics. 6s.

Glazebrook and Shaw’s Practical Physics. 6s.

Gore’s Art of Electro-Metallurgy. 6s.

Griffin’s Algebra and Trigonometry. 3s. 6d. Notes and Solutions, 3s. 6d.
Jenkin’s Electricity and Magnetism. 3s. 6d.

Maxwell’s Theory of Heat. 3s. Sd.

Merrifield’s Technical Arithmetic and Mensuration. 3s. Sd. Key, 3s. 6d.
Miller’s Inorganic Chemistry. 3s. 6d.

Preece and Sivewright’s Telegraphy. 5s.

Butley’s Study of Bocks, a Text-Book of Petrology. 4s. 6d.

Shelley’s Workshop Appliances. 4s. 6d.

ThomAs Structural and Physiological Botany. 6s.

Thorpe’s Quantitative Chemical Analysis. 4s. Sd.

Thorpe and Muir’s Qualitative Analysis. 3s. Sd.

Tilden’s Chemical Philosophy. 3s. 6d. With Answers to Problems. 4s. Sd.
Unwin’s Elements of Machine Design. 6s.

Watson’s Plane and Solid Geometry. 3s. Sd.

THE GREEK LANGUAGE.

Bloomfield’s College and School Greek Testament. Fcp. 6vo. 5s.

Bolland ti Lang’s Politics of Aristotle. Post 8vo. 7s. Sd.

Collis’s Chief Tenses of the Greek Irregular Verbs. 8vo. Is.

—	Pontes Graeci, Stepping-Stone to Greek Grammar. 12mo. 3s. Sd.

—	Praxis Grseca, Etymology. 12mo. 2s. Sd.

—	Greek Verse-Book, Praxis Iambics. 12mo. 4s. Sd.

Farrar’s Brief Greek Syntax and Accidence. 12mo. 4s. Sd.

—	Greek Grammar Buies for Harrow School. 12mo. Is. Sd.

Hewitt’s Greek Examination-Papers. 12mo. Is. Sd.

Isbistar’s Xenophon’s Anabasis, Books I. to III. with Notes. 12mo. 3s. Sd.
Jerram’s Graec6 Beddenda. Crown 8vo. Is. Sd.

London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.14 A Selection of Educational Works.

Kennedy’s Greek Grammar. 12mo. is. 6d.

Liddell & Scott’s English-Greek Lexicon. 4to. 36s.; Square 12mo. 7s. 6d.
Linwood’s Sophocles, Greek Text, Latin Notes. 4th Edition. 8vo. 16s.
Mahaffy’s Classical Greek Literature. Crown 8vo. Poets, 7s. 6d. Prose "Writers,
7s. 6d.

Morris’s Greek Lessons. Square 18mo. Part I. 2s. 6(2. ; Part II. Is.

Parry’s Elementary Greek Grammar. 12mo. 3s. 6(2.

Plato’s Bepublic, Book I. Greek Text, English Notes by Hardy. Crown 8vo. 3s.
Sheppard and Evans’s Notes on Thucydides. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6(2.

Thucydides, Book IY. with Notes by Barton and Chavasse. Crown 8vo. 6s.
Valpy’s Greek Delectus, improved by White. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Key, 2s. 6(2.
White’s Xenophon’s Expedition of Cyrus, with English Notes. 12mo. 7s. 6d.
Wilkins’s Manual of Greek Prose Composition. Crown 8vo. 5s. Key, 6s.

—	Exercises in Greek Prose Composition. Crown 8vo. 4s. 6d. Key, 2s. 6(2.

—	New Greek Delectus. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. Key, 2s. 6d.

—	Progressive Greek Delectus. 12mo. 4s. Key, 2s. 6d.

—	Progressive Greek Anthology. 12mo. 5s.

—	Soriptores Attici, Excerpts with English Notes. Crown 8vo. 7s. 6d.

—	Speeches from Thucydides translated. Post 8vo. 6s.

Yonge’s English-Greek Lexicon. 4to. 21s.; Square 12mo. 8s. 6d.

THE LATIN LANGUAGE.

Bradley’s Latin Prose Exercises. 12mo. 3s. 6(2. Key, 5s.

—	Continuous Lessons in Latin Prose. 12mo. 6s. Key, 5s. 6<2.

—	Cornelius Nepos, improved by White. 12mo. 3s. 6<2.

—	Eutropius, improved by White. 12mo. 2s. 6<2.

—	Ovid’s Metamorphoses, improved by White. 12mo. 4s. 6(2.

—	Select Fables of Phaedrus, improved by White. 12mo. 2s. 6d.

Collis’s Chief Tenses of Latin Irregular Verbs. 8vo. Is.

— Pontes Latini, Stepping-Stone to Latin Grammar. 12mo. 3s. 6d.
Hewitt’s Latin Examination-Papers. 12mo. Is. 6<2.

Isbister’s Caesar, Books I.-YII. 12mo. 4s.; or with Beading Lessons, 4s. 6(2.

—	Caesar’s Commentaries, Books I.-V. 12mo. 3s. 6<2.

—	First Book of Caesar’s Gallic'War. 12mo. Is. 6(2.

Jerram’s Latind Beddenda. Crown 8vo. Is. 6(2.

Kennedy’s Child’s Latin Primer, or First Latin Lessons. 12mo. 2s.

—	Child’s Latin Accidence. 12mo. Is.

—	Elementary Latin Grammar. 12mo. 3s. 6(2.

—	Elementary Latin Beading Book, or Tirocinium Latinum. 12mo. 2s.

—	Latin Prose, Palaestra Stili Latini. 12mo. 6s.

—	Subsidia Primaria, Exercise Books to the Public School Latin Primer.

I. Accidence and Simple Construction, 2s. 6(2. II. Syntax, 3s. 6(2.

—	Key to the Exercises in Subsidia Primaria, Parts I. and'II. price 5s.

—	Subsidia Primaria, IIL the Latin Compound Sentence. 12mo. Is.

—	Curriculum Stili Latini. 12mo. 4s. 6(2. Key, 7s. 6d.

—	Palaestra Latina, or Second Latin Beading Book. 12mo. 6s.

London: LONGMANS, GREEN, Sc CO.A Selection of Educational Works.

Millington’s Latin Prose Composition. Crown 870. 3*. 6d.

— Selections from Latin Prose. Crown 8vo. 2s. 6d.

Moody’s Eton Latin Grammar. 12mo. 2s. 6d. The Accidence separately, Is.
Morris’s Elements Latina. Fcp. 8vo. 1*. 6d. Key, 2s. 6d.

Parry’s Origines Roman®, from Livy, with English Notes. Crown 8vo. 4s.

The Public School Latin Primer. 12mo. 2s. 6d.

—	—	—	— Grammar, by Rev. Dr. Kennedy. Post 8vo. 7s. 6d.

Prendergast’s Mastery Series, Manual of Latin. 12mo. 2s. 8d.

Rapier’s Introduction to Composition of Latin Verse. 12mo. 3*. 6d. Key, 2s. 6d.
Sheppard and Turner’s Aids to Classical Study. 12mo. 5s. Key, 6s.

Valpy’s Latin Delectus, improved by White. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Key, 3s. 6d.

Virgil’s 2Eneid, translated into English Verse by Conington. Crown 8vo. Ss.

—	Works, edited by Kennedy. Crown 8vo. 10*. 6d.

—	— translated into English Prose by Conington. Crown 8vo. 9*.
Walford’s Progressive Exercises in Latin Elegiao Verse. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Key, 6s.
White and Riddle’s Large Latin-English Dictionary. 1 voL 4to. 21*.

White’s Concise Latin-Eng. Dictionary for University Students. Royal 8vo. 12*,

—	Junior Students’ Eng.-Lat. & Lat.-Eng. Dictionary. Square 12mo. 6s.

J Th® Latin-English Dictionary, price 3*.
separately -j Tlle Bnglish-Latin Dictionary, price 3*.

Tonge’s Latin Gradus. Post 8vo. 9*.; or with Appendix, 12*.

WHITE’S GRAMMAR-SCHOOL GREEK TEXTS.

J3scp (Fables) & Palsphatus (Myths).

32mo. 1*.

Euripides, Hecuba. 2*.

Homer, Iliad, Book I. 1*.

— Odyssey, Book I. 1*.

Lucian, Select Dialogues. 1*.

Xenophon, Anabasis, Books I. III. IV.

V. & VI. 1*. 6d. each ; Book II. 1*.;

Book VII. 2s.

The Four Gospels in Greek, with Greek-English Lexicon. Edited by John T.
White, D.D. Oxon. Square 32mo. price 5*.

WHITE’S GRAMMAR-SCHOOL LATIN TEXTS.

Xenophon, Book I. without Vocabu-
lary. 3 d.

St. Matthew’s and St. Luke’s Gospels.
2s. 6d. each.

St. Mark’s and St. John’s Gospels.
1*. 6d. each.

The Acts of the Apostles. 2s. 6d.

St. Paul’s Epistle to the Romans. 1*. 6d.

Cffisar. Gallic War,- Books I. & II. V.
& VI. 1*. each. Book I. without
Vocabulary, 3d.

Caegar, Gallic War, Books HI. & IV.
9d. each.

Cesar, Gallic War, Book VII. 1*. 6d.
Cicero, Cato Major (Old Age). 1*. 6d.
Cicero, Lelius (Friendship). 1*. 6d.
Eutropius, Roman History, Books I.

&l U. 1*. Books III. & IV. 1*.
Horace,Odes, Books I. II. & IV. 1*. each.
Horace, Odes, Book IH. 1*. 6d.
Horace, Epodes and Carmen Seculare.
1*.

Nepos, Miltiades, Simon, Pausaniai,
Aristides. 9 d.

Ovid. Selections from Epistles and
Fasti. 1*.

Ovid, Select Myths from Metamor-
phoses. 9d.

Phaedrus, Select Easy Fables,

Phedrus, Fables, Books I. & H. 1*.
Sallust, Bellum Catilinarium. 1*. 6d.
Virgil, Georgies, Book IV. 1*.

Virgil, dineid, Books I. to VI. 1*. each.

Book I. without Vocabulary, 3d.
Virgil, iEneid, Books VII. VHI. X.
XI. XH. 1*. 6d. each.

London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.A Selection of Educational Works.

THE FRENCH LANGUAGE.

Albites’s How to Speak French. Fcp. 8vo. 5s. 6d.

— Instantaneous French Exercises. Fcp. 2s. Key, 2s.

Cassal’^ French Genders. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.

Oassal & Karcher’s Graduated French Translation Book. Part I. 3s. 6d.

Part II. 5s. Key to Part I. by Professor Cassal, price 5s.

Contanseau’s Practical French and English Dictionary. Post 8vo. 3s. 6d.

—	Pocket French and English Dictionary. Square 18mo. Is. Gd.

—	Premieres Lectures. 12mo. 2s. Gd.

—	First Step in French. 12mo. 2s. Gd. Key, 3s.

—	French Accidence. 12mo. 2s. Gd.

—	— Grammar. 12mo. 4s. Key, 3s.

Contanseau’s Middle-Class French Course.

Accidenoe, 8d.

Syntax, 8d.

French Conversation-Book, 8d.

First French Exercise-Book, Gd.

Second French Exercise-Book, 8d.

Contanseau’s Guide to French Translation.

—	Prosateurs et Pofetes Fran9ais.

Fcp. 8vo..:—

French Translation-Book, 8i.
Easy French Delectus, 8d.

First French Reader, 8d.

Second French Reader, 8d.
French and English Dialogues, 8d.
12mo. 3s. Gd. Key 3s. Gd.

12mo. 5s.

—	Precis de la Literature Fran^aise. 12mo. 3s. Gd.

—	Abrdg6 de l’Hiatoire de France. 12mo. 2s. Gd.

Fdval’s Ohouans et Bleus, with Notes by C. Sankey, M.A. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. Gd.
Jerram’s Sentences for Translation into French. Cr. 8vo. Is. Key, 2s. Gd.
Prendergast’s Mastery Series, French. 12mo. 2s. Gd.

Souvestre’s Philosophe sous les Toits, by StiSvenard. Square 18mo. Is. Gd.
Stepping-Stone to French Pronunciation. 18mo. Is.

Sttevenard’s Lectures Fran^aises from Modern Authors. 12mo. 4s. Gd.

— Rules and Exercises on the French Language. 12mo. 3s. Gd.
Tarver’s Eton French Grammar. 12mo. 6s. Gd.

THE GERMAN LANGUAGE.

Blackley’s Practical German and English Dictionary. Post 8vo. 3s. Gd.
Bnchheim’s German Poetry, for Repetition. 18mo. Is. 6d.

Collis’s Card of German Irregujar Verbs. 8vo. 2s.

Fischer-Fischart’s Elementary German Grammar. Fcp. 8vo. 2s. Gd.

Just’s German Grammar. 12mo. Is. Gd.

— German Reading Book. 12mo. 3s. Gd.

Longman’s Pocket German and English Dictionary. Square 18mo. 2s. Gd.
Naftel's Elementary German Course for Public Schools. Fcp. 8vo.

German Accidence. 9d.

German Syntax. 9d.

Flret German Exercise-Book. 3d.

Second German Exercise-Book. 3d.

Prendergast’s Mastery Series, German. 12mo. 2s. Gd.
Quick’s Essentials of German. Crown 8yo. 3s. Gd.

Selss’s School Edition of Goethe’s Faust. Crown 8vo. 5s.

— Outline of German Literature. Crown 8vo. 4s. Gd.
Wirth’s German Chit-Chat. Crown 8vo. 2s. Gd.

German Prose Composition Book. 3d.
First German Reader. 9rf.

Second German Reader. 9d.

London: LONGMANS, GREEN, & CO.

Spottiswoode & Co. Printers, Newstreet Square, London.