Charles Welch

“ Though a rigid economist, Forbes was always ready to introduce improvements when convinced that they were worth their cost. He adopted the block system, automatic brakes, and hydraulic stop blocks. To him were due the trials of the twin-ship system as represented by the Calais-Douvres, and he was largely responsible for the fine boats for the cross-Channel service belonging to the railway companies. Forbes excelled as an administrator on broad lines and in boldly taking an initiative, but had no taste for details. ”

“ HEWETT, Sir WILLIAM (d. 1567) , lord mayor of London, son of Edmund Hewett, was born in Wales, a hamlet of Laughton-en-le-Morthen in South Yorkshire. His family had been settled in the adjoining county of Derby from early times. He followed the trade of a clothworker, and after duly serving his apprenticeship was admitted to the freedom of the Clothworkers' Company of London before 1529, in which year he himself took an apprentice as a freeman (Records of the Company) . ”

“ A man of great tenacity of purpose and opinion, Swaythling was long a pillar of conservative Judaism and warmly deprecated any breach of Jewish custom on the part of his family or of the Jewish community. ”

“ On the attainder and execution of the Duke of Buckingham in the following year, Kytson was for a time deprived of the estates, but they were ultimately restored to him, and were confirmed to him by an act of parliament of 1524, which describes him as a 'citizen and mercer of London, otherwise called Kytson the merchant.'
At Hengrave he obtained a license from Henry VIII to build an embattled manor-house on a magnificent scale. The building was begun in 1525, and finished in 1538. ”

“ HARBEN, Sir HENRY (1823–1911) , pioneer of industrial life assurance, born in Bloomsbury on 24 Aug. 1823, was eldest son of Henry Harben of Bloomsbury by his wife Sarah, daughter of Benjamin Andrade. He was first cousin to Mr. Joseph Chamberlain. The Harben family was originally engaged in banking at Lewes, but Henry's grandfather was a partner in the provision stores of Harben & Larkin of Whitechapel, London, and his father also carried on a wholesale business in the City. ”

“ CLITHEROW, Sir CHRISTOPHER (d. 1641) , merchant, was the only son of Henry Clitherow by his second wife Bridget, daughter of Thomas Hewett. His father was a citizen of London and master of the Ironmongers' Company in 1592, 1603, and 1606, and dying in the following year bequeathed to the company a piece of plate. Lysons considers the family to have been descended from the Cliderows, or Clitherows, of Kent. ”

“ CHANCE, Sir JAMES TIMMINS, first baronet (1814–1902) , manufacturer and lighthouse engineer, born at Birmingham on 22 March 1814, was the eldest of the six sons of William Chance (1788–1856) , merchant and glass manufacturer, of Spring Grove, Birmingham (high bailiff 1829-30) , by his wife Phoebe (d. 1865) , fourth daughter of James Timmins of Birmingham. From a private school at Totteridge James passed to University College, London, where he gained high honours in languages, mathematics, and science. ”

“ The extravagance of the court and the expenses of the Dutch war exhausted the means of the bankers to continue their advances, even to pay the sailors, who threatened if they were not paid to go over to the Dutch. Pepys records the run of the aristocracy and the public upon the bankers, and fears they ‘are broke as to ready money.’ To relieve the king and his ministers from their embarrassment, two members of the Cabal cabinet proposed the shameful expedient of closing the exchequer, which then possessed advances from the bankers amounting to 1,300,000l. ”

“ New principles formulated by Airy were first tried upon an apparatus which the firm was constructing for the Russian government. In the autumn of 1860 Chance joined Professor Faraday, acting for the Trinity House, in experimenting with the firm's apparatus at the Whitby southern lighthouse. Faraday acknowledged deep indebtedness to Chance 'for the earnest and intelligent manner in which he has wrought with me in the experiments, working and thinking every point out,' and he announced that the manufacturer could henceforth be relied upon to adjust the apparatus perfectly. ”

“ He assured Cecil of the popularity of Elizabeth and her people with the Netherlander, although the queen's credit had suffered by delaying the payment of her debts. The English merchants at Antwerp were in constant fear of the seizure of their goods, and Gresham had increasing difficulty in procuring the military stores, which Elizabeth's government ordered on an immense scale. ”

“ Meanwhile Blount mainly devoted his energies to the promotion of railway enterprise in France. In 1836 France had only one short line between Strassburg and Bâle. In 1838 the French government's bill for the construction of seven great trunk-lines under the control of the state was defeated, and the way thrown open to private enterprise. Blount offered M. Dufaure, then minister of public works, to construct a line from Paris to Rouen, proposing to raise 600,000l. in England and the same amount in France, on the minister's undertaking to give a guarantee for the third 600,000l. ”

“ In 1693 the ship Redbridge, of which he was part owner, being detained at the instance of the East India Company, which claimed a monopoly of the trade with India, he asserted at the bar of the House of Commons his right to trade wherever he pleased, unless restrained by parliament. ”

“ In 1905 he proposed to place 100,000l. in the hands of the Salvation Army for the purpose of settling poor people on neglected land in the United Kingdom, in establishing them as petty cultivators, and supporting them and their families until the land should become productive; the advance to be paid back by the settlers, and then to be given by the Salvation Army to King Edward's Hospital Fund in twenty-five annual instalments. Herring defended the scheme with eagerness when it was criticised as impracticable (The Times, 13 Feb. 1906) , and it was put into operation. ”

“ But it was Gresham's son, and not Gresham himself, who carried out this design. Gresham opposed rigorously the issue of a proclamation forbidding merchants to make exchanges, by which it was thought the exchequer suffered loss. He showed that the order would lead to the exportation of gold from England, and maintained that ‘merchants can no more be without exchanges and rechanges than the ships in the sea can be without water’ (Ward, Lives of the Gresham Professors, App. i.) It appears that the draft of this proclamation was, by Cromwell's order, submitted to Gresham for his opinion. ”

“ Harben, who remained connected with the undertaking for sixty years, converted it into a colossal concern. In 1854 the company, mainly on Harben's advice, started a scheme of life assurance for the working classes; the new departure was at first hampered chiefly by the rivalry of the Safety Life Assurance Company, of which Cobden and Bright were directors, but which soon collapsed. Harben was appointed secretary of the Prudential on 26 June 1856, and soon proved that industrial life assurance was practicable. ”

“ During his second mayoralty, when William IV and Queen Adelaide had arranged to visit the city in order to open new London Bridge, Key suffered some loss of popularity by advising the king and his ministers not to come to the city on account of the supposed unpopularity of the Duke of Wellington. ”

“ Gibbs, who was a J.P. for Hertfordshire and Middlesex, and high sheriff of Hertfordshire in 1884, was created Baron Aldenham, of Aldenham, on 31 Jan. 1896. A strong churchman, Gibbs was a munificent benefactor to the church. With Lord John Manners, seventh duke of Rutland [q. v. Suppl. II] , he liberally supported the Anglican sisterhood connected with Christ Church, Albany Street, one of the earliest established in London. With other members of his family he gave largely towards building, endowing, and furnishing Keble College, Oxford, and was a member of its council. ”

“ The rents of the Royal Exchange were, with Gresham House, to be vested in the hands of the corporation of London and of the Mercers' Company, who were to appoint seven lecturers. The lecturers' salaries were fixed at 50l. per annum, and they were to lecture successively on the sciences of divinity, astronomy, geometry, music, law, medicine, and rhetoric. The professors were required to be unmarried men, and each was to be provided with a separate suite of apartments. The college did not prove very successful. Lady Gresham sought to divert its endowment after Gresham's death. ”

“ On 23 Jan. 1570-1, says Stow, the queen, attended by her nobility, made her progress through the city from Somerset House to Bishopsgate Street, where she dined with, Gresham. Afterwards returning through Cornhill, Elizabeth entered the burse, and having viewed every part, especially the 'pawn,' which was richly furnished with all the finest wares of the city, 'she caused the same burse by an herralde and a trompet to be proclaimed the Royal Exchange, and so to be called from thenceforth, and not otherwise' (Survey, ed. 1598, p. 194) . ”

“ In 1894 Blount resigned the chairmanship of the Chemin de fer de l'Ouest. A popular agitation condemned as a military peril the control by a foreigner of the railways of the country. The French government handsomely acknowledged Blount's services, and his fellow directors elected him honorary president. He long maintained his position in English and French society in Paris, and was for many years president of the British chamber of commerce there. His financial interests extended beyond France. ”

“ The most literary conversation that I ever enjoyed was at the table of Jack Ellis, a money-scrivener behind the Royal Exchange, with whom I used to dine generally once a week.' Ellis, though not ambitious of publication, did not discontinue writing verses for more than seventy years, and used frequently to recite with energy and vivacity poems of a hundred lines after the age of eighty-eight years. ”

“ Harley became lord mayor on Michaelmas day 1767. Early in the following year a severe frost and the long depression of trade caused great distress in London, and a serious riot occurred among the weavers. Harley established a system of bounties for bringing mackerel and other fish into Billingsgate Market, to be sold to the poor at cheap rates. At the general election in March Wilkes, just returned from France, offered himself as a candidate for the city of London. Wilkes was defeated, and Harley was re-elected (23 March) at the head of the poll. ”

“ Her father, the elder William Wheeler, had died in 1663, and his widow married Robert Blanchard, who succeeded to the business at the Marygold, and took Child into partnership, probably about the time of his marriage in 1671. In the little London Directory of 1677 the names of 'Blanchard and Child at the Marygold' are found among the goldsmiths 'that keep running cashes.' On the death of Blanchard in 1681, Child inherited the bulk of his fortune, and also that of the Wheelers, and in July of the same year the firm became Francis Child and John Rogers. ”

“ Twice during Edward's reign, apparently by his advice, the English merchant fleet was detained when on the point of sailing for Antwerp until the owners of the goods agreed to advance certain sums of money to be repaid within three months in London at a high rate of exchange fixed by the crown. On 3 Oct. 1552 a loan of 40,000l. was thus obtained from the merchant adventurers. On 28 April 1553 Gresham, in a letter to the council, boasts that he has so plagued foreign merchants and intimidated English merchants that they will both beware of meddling with the exchange for London in future. ”

“ MAB or MABBE, JOHN (d. 1582) , chamberlain of London, eldest son of John Mab of Clayton in Sussex, and Joan Goble of Sussex, was born at Clayton, and afterwards became a citizen and goldsmith of London. ”

“ Thomas Harley, Esq., lord mayor . . . By an Alderman of London,' London, 1768; the former is known to have reached four editions. Five days later Wilkes was returned for Middlesex, and in the riots which followed the mob avenged themselves on Harley for his successful opposition to Wilkes at the poll in the city by breaking the windows of the Mansion House and doing other damage (Hughson, Hist. of London, i. 573-5) . Harley displayed much vigilance and ability throughout the Wilkeite riots, and was thanked for his services by the House of Commons at the close of his mayoralty. ”

“ By the management of foreign capitalists the rate of exchange, over which no English merchant had hitherto had any control, was reduced to 16s. Flemish for the pound sterling. An enormous rate of interest was also demanded by the money-lenders on the renewal of a debt, and the king was compelled to purchase jewels and other wares at exorbitant prices from the Fuggers or other foreign traders who furnished the loan. Within two or three years Gresham raised the exchange at Antwerp for the pound sterling from 16s. ”

“ Cosin, bishop of Durham, was descended from an old Kentish family originally named Attegare, whose representatives were connected with the city of London for more than two centuries. Two of his ancestors were lord mayors, Sir William Garrard in 1555, and the first baronet, Sir John Garrard, in 1601; and intermarriages took place between the Garrards and the city families of Roe, Gresham, and Barkham. Garrard, who was born in 1650, was a grandson of the first baronet, and carried on business as a merchant first in Watling Street and afterwards in Warwick Court, Newgate Street. ”

“ Besides being an officer of the Artillery Company, he became captain of the regiment of horse volunteers, a corps of four hundred citizens, established in July 1689 and maintained at their own expense, with the king as their colonel and the Earl of Monmouth as lieutenant-colonel. He was also colonel of a regiment of the trained bands; but in March 1690, on the churchmen becoming a majority in the court of lieutenancy, Edwin and five other aldermen who held nonconformist opinions, were turned out, and five others belonging to the church party chosen in their places. ”