The Sir Symonds D’Ewes of that generation was the grandson of the diligent antiquary and politician who has been heretofore mentioned in this volume as the close friend of Sir Robert Cotton, and to whose labours, in a twofold capacity, students of our history owe a far better acquaintance with parliamentary debates, in the times both of Elizabeth and of Cromwell, than, but for him, would have been possible. The grandson of the first Sir Symonds had inherited from his ancestor a valuable library; but its possession had no great charm for him. He was willing to part with it, for due consideration, yet aware that he was under an obligation, moral if not legal, not so to part with his books as to lead to their dispersion.
On that head, the original collector had thus expressed himself in his last Will:—‘I bequeath to Adrian D’Ewes, my young son yet lying in the cradle, or to any other of my sons, hereafter to be born, who shall prove my heir (if God shall vouchsafe unto me a masculine heir by whom my surname and male line may be continued in the ages to come), my precious library, in which I have stored up, for divers years past, with great care, cost, and industry, divers originals and autographs, ... and such [books] as are unprinted; and it is my inviolable injunction and behest that he keep it entire, and not sell, divide, or dissipate it. Neither would I have it locked up from furthering the public good, the advancing of which I have always endeavoured; but that all lovers of learning, of known virtue and integrity, might have access to it at reasonable times, so that they did give sufficient security to restore safely any original or autograph ... borrowed out of the same, ... without blotting, erasing, or defraying it. But if God hath decreed now at last to add an end to my family in the male line, His most holy and just will be done!’ In that case, the testator proceeds to declare, it is his desire that the library should pass to his daughter and her heirs, on like conditions as to its perpetual preservation, so ‘that not only all lovers of learning ... may have access to it at seasonable times, but also that all collections which concern mine own family, or my wife’s, may freely be lent ... to members thereof,’ &c. |D’Ewes, Autobiography, in MS. Harl. (B. M.)| Then the testator adds—in relation to the last-named clause—an averment that he had ‘only sought after the very truth, as well in these things as in all other my elucubrations, whilst I searched amongst the King’s records or public offices.’
It having come to Wanley’s knowledge or belief, in the year 1703, that possibly arrangements might be made to obtain this library, for the Public, from the then possessor, he wrote to Harley in these terms:—‘Sir Symonds D’Ewes being pleased to honour me with a peculiar kindness of esteem, I have taken the liberty of inquiring of him whether he will part with his library, and I find that he is not unwilling to do so. And that at a much easier rate than I could think for. I dare say that it would be a noble addition to the Cotton Library; perhaps the best that could be had anywhere at present.... If your Honour should judge it impracticable to persuade Her Majesty to buy them for the Cotton Library—in whose coffers such a sum as will buy them is scarcely conceivable—then, Sir, if you shall have a mind of them yourself I will take care that you shall have them cheaper than any other person whatsoever. I know that many have their eyes upon this collection.’ |Wanley to Harley; MS. Lansd. 841, fol. 63. (B. M.)| ‘I am desirous,’ he goes on to say, ‘to have this collection in town for the public good, and rather in a public place than in private hands; but, of all private gentlemen’s studies, first in yours. I have not spoken to anybody as yet, nor will not till I have your answer, that you may not be forestalled.’
Harley welcomed the overture thus made to him, and Wanley, on his behalf, entered upon a negotiation which ended in the eventual acquisition of the whole of the D’Ewes Manuscripts for the Harleian Collection. Soon afterwards, Wanley became its librarian.
In the course of this employment he watched diligently for other opportunities of a like sort; established an active correspondence with booksellers, both at home and abroad; and induced Lord Oxford to send agents to the Continent to search for manuscripts. |History of the Harleian Library, continued.| But the Earl had soon to meet an eager rival in the book-market, in the person of Lord Sunderland, who in former years had been, by turns, his colleague and his opponent in the keener strife of politics. In their new rivalry, Lord Sunderland had one considerable advantage. He cared little about money. If he succeeded in obtaining what he sought for, he rarely scrutinised the more or less of its cost. Wanley was by nature a bargainer. He felt uneasy under the least suspicion that any bookseller or vendor was getting the better hand of him in a transaction. And he seems, in time, to have inoculated Lord Oxford with a good deal of the same feeling. Some of the entries in his diary put this love of striking a good bargain in an amusing light.
Thus, for example, in telling of the acquisition of a valuable monastic chartulary which had belonged to the ‘Bedford Library’ at Cranfield, he writes thus:—‘The said Chartulary is to be my Lord’s, and he is to present to that library St. Chrysostom’s Works, in Greek and Latin, printed at Paris, for which my Lord shall be registered a benefactor to the said library. Moreover, Mr. Frank will send up a list of his out-of-course books, out of which my Lord may pick and choose any twenty of them gratis.... I am also to advise that he is heartily willing and ready to serve his Lordship in any library matters; ... particularly with [Sir John] Osborne of Chicksand Abbey, where most part of the old monastical library is said yet to remain.’ |Wanley’s Diary, vol. i, pp. 13, 21. 1720, February.| And again, on another occasion:—‘My Lord was pleased to tell me that Mr. Gibson’s last parcel of printed books were all his own as being gained into [the bargain with] the two last parcels of manuscripts bought of him.’ |Ib., vol. ii, f. 24.| Gibson’s protest that he was entitled to an additional thirty pounds was quite in vain.
Of the innumerable skirmishes between librarian and bookseller which Wanley’s pages record with loving detail, two passages may serve as sufficient samples:—‘Van Hoeck, a Dutchman’ he writes in 1722, ‘brought to my Lord a small parcel of modern manuscripts, and their lowest prices,—which proved so abominably wicked that he was sent away with them immediately.’ And, in February, 1723:—‘Bowyer, the bookseller, came intreating me to instruct him touching the prices of old editions, and of other rare and valuable books, pretending that thereby he should be the better able to bid for them; but, as I rather suppose, to be better able to exact of gentlemen. I pleaded utter inexperience in the matter, and, without a quarrel, in my mind rejected this ridiculous attempt with the scorn it deserved. |Wanley’s Diary, vol. i, f. 73, verso. MS. Lansd., 771. (B. M.)| This may be a fresh instance of the truth of Tullie’s paradox, “that all fools are mad.”’
In the year 1720, large additions were made, more especially to the historical treasures of the Harleian Library, by the purchase of manuscripts from the several collections of John Warburton (Somerset Herald), of Archdeacon Battely, and of Peter Séguier (Chancellor of France). Another important accession came, in the same year, by the bequest of Hugh Thomas. |Ibid., pp. 35, 42, 48.| In 1721 purchases were made from the several libraries of Thomas Grey, second Earl of Stamford; of Robert Paynell, of Belaugh, in Norfolk; and of John Robartes, first Earl of Radnor.
Lord Oxford died on the 21st May, 1724, at the age of sixty-three. |Death of Lord Oxford.| Wanley records the event in these words: ‘It pleased God to call to His mercy Robert, Earl of Oxford, the founder of this Library, who long had been to me a munificent patron.’
When condoling with the new Earl upon his father’s death, Swift wrote to him:—‘You no longer wanted his care and tenderness, ... but his friendship and conversation you will ever want, because they are qualities so rare in the world, and in which he so much excelled all others. It has pleased me, in the midst of my grief, to hear that he preserved the greatness, the calmness, and intrepidity, of his mind to his last minutes; for it was fit that such a life should terminate with equal lustre to the whole progress of it.’ It is honourable alike to the man who was thus generously spoken of, and to the friend who mourned his loss, that the testimony so borne was a consistent testimony. The failings of Harley were well known to Swift. In the days of prosperity they had been freely blamed; and face to face. When those days were gone, the good qualities only came to be dwelt upon. To the unforgiving enemy, as to the bereaved son, Swift wrote about the merits of the friend he had lost. ‘I pass over that paragraph of your letter,’ said Bolingbroke, in reply, ‘which is a kind of an elegy on a departed minister.’
When the Harleian Library was inherited by the second Earl of Oxford (of this family) it included more than six thousand volumes of Manuscripts, in addition to about fourteen thousand five hundred charters and rolls. By him it was largely augmented in every department. |Increase of the Harleian Library by Edward, Earl of Oxford. 1724–1741.| |See MS. Addit., 5338. (B. M.)| He made his library most liberally accessible to scholars; and when, by a purchase made in Holland, he had acquired some leaves of one of the most precious biblical manuscripts in the world—leaves which had long before been stolen from the Royal Library at Paris—he sent them back to their proper repository in a manner so obliging as made it apparent that his sense of the duties of collectorship was as keen as was his sense of its delights. At his death, on the 16th of June, 1741, the volumes of manuscripts had increased to nearly eight thousand. The printed books were estimated at about fifty thousand volumes, exclusive of an unexampled series of pamphlets, amounting to nearly 400,000, and comprising, like the manuscripts, materials for our national history of inestimable value.
The only daughter and heiress of the second Earl, Margaret, by her marriage with William, Duke of Portland, carried her share in a remnant of the fortunes of the several families of Cavendish, Holles, and Harley, into the family of Bentinck. The magnificent printed library which formed part of her inheritance was sold and dispersed. |Johnson, Account of the Harleian Library; Works, vol. v, p. 181.| It was of that collection that Johnson said, ‘It excels any library that was ever yet offered to sale in the value as well as in the number of the volumes which it contains.’
The Manuscripts were eventually purchased by Parliament for the sum of ten thousand pounds. |The purchase of the Harleian MSS. for the Nation.| With reference to this purchase the Duchess of Portland wrote as follows, in April, 1753, to the Speaker of the House of Commons:—‘As soon as I was acquainted with the proposal you had made in the House of Commons, in relation to my Father’s Collection of Manuscripts I informed my Mother [the then Dowager Countess of Oxford] of it, who has given the Duke of Portland and me full power to do therein as we shall think fit.
‘Though I am told the expense of collecting them was immense, and that, if they were to be dispersed, they would probably sell for a great deal of money, yet, as a sum has been named, and as I know it was my Father’s and is my Mother’s intention that they should be kept together, I will not bargain with the Publick. I give you this trouble therefore to acquaint you that I am ready to accept of your proposal upon condition that this great and valuable Collection shall be kept together in a proper repository, as an addition to the Cotton Library, and be called by the name of the Harleian Collection of Manuscripts.
‘I hope you do me the justice to believe that I do not consider this as a sale for an adequate price. |Duchess of Portland to Arthur Onslow; MS. Addit., 17521, f. 30. (B. M.)| But your idea is so right, and so agreeable to what I know was my Father’s intention, that I have a particular satisfaction in contributing all I can to facilitate the success of it.’
If it were possible to give, in few words, any adequate view of the obligations which English literature, and more especially English historical literature, owes to the Collectors of the Harleian Manuscripts, there could be no fitter conclusion to a biographical notice of Robert Harley. Here, however, no such estimate is practicable. Nor, in truth, can it be needed in order to convince the reader that ‘some tribute of veneration’—to use the apposite words which Johnson prefixed to the Harleian Catalogue—is due to the ardour of the two Harleys for literature; and ‘to that generous and exalted curiosity which they gratified with incessant searches and immense expense; and to which they dedicated that time and that superfluity of fortune which many others, of their rank, employ in the pursuit of contemptible amusements or the gratification of guilty passions.’
EXTRACTS FROM THE STUART PAPERS, REFERRING TO INTERCOURSE OF ROBERT HARLEY, EARL OF OXFORD, WITH THE JACOBITES, AFTER THE ACCESSION OF GEORGE I.
1. [1717?] A document which, could it be recovered, would go far towards clearing up some of the uncertainties which exist as to Lord Oxford’s intercourse with the Pretender and his agents, subsequently to the death of Queen Anne, was seen by Sir James Mackintosh among the Stuart Papers acquired by George the Fourth. It was afterwards vainly searched for by Lord Mahon, when engaged upon his History of England, from the Peace of Utrecht. |Edin. Rev., vol. lxii, pp. 18, 19.| It is still known only from the cursory notes made by Mackintosh, and referred to by a writer in the Edinburgh Review in these words: ‘During Oxford’s confinement in the Tower there is a communication from him to the Pretender, preserved among the Stuart Papers, offering his services and advice; recommending the Bishop of Rochester as the fittest person to manage the Jacobite affairs,—the writer himself being in custody; and adding that he should never have thought it safe ‘to engage again with His Majesty if Bolingbroke himself had been still about him.’
2. 1717. September 29. Bishop Atterbury to Lord Mar:—
‘Your accounts of what has been said here concerning some imaginary differences abroad have not so much foundation as you may suppose. At least, if they have, I am a stranger to it.... The result of any discourse I shall have with [the Earl of Oxford?] will be sure to reach you by his means. |Stuart Papers, 1717.| You will, I suppose, have a full account of affairs here from his and other hands.’
3. [1717?] The same to the same.
‘Distances and other accidents have, for some years, interrupted my correspondence with [the Earl of Oxford?] but I am willing to renew it, and to enter into it upon a better foot than it has ever yet stood, being convinced that my so doing may be of no small consequence to the service. I have already taken the first step towards it that is proper in our situation, and will pursue that by others as fast as I can have opportunity; hoping that the secret will be as inviolably kept on your side as it shall be on this, so far as the nature of such a transaction between two persons who must see one another sometimes can pass unobserved.’
4. 1721. ‘Among the same papers,’ says the Reviewer quoted on the previous page, ‘there is a letter from Mrs. Oglethorpe to the Pretender (Jan. 17, 1721), containing assurances from Lord Oxford of his eternal respect and good wishes, which from accidental circumstances he had been unable to convey in the usual manner.’
5. 1722. April 14. The Pretender [to Lord Oxford?]
‘If you have not heard sooner or oftener from me, it hath not, I can assure you, been my fault. Neither do I attribute to yours the long silence you have kept on your side, but to a chain of disappointments and difficulties which hath been also the only reason of my not finding all this while a method of conveying my thoughts to you, and receiving your advice, which I shall ever value as I ought, because I look upon you not only as an able lawyer but a sincere friend. |Stuart Papers, 1722.| This will, I hope, come soon to your hands, and the worthy friend by whose canal I send it will accompany it, by my directions, with all the lights and information he or I can give, and which it is therefore useless to repeat here.’
6. 1722. April 16. The Pretender to Atterbury.
‘I am sensible of the importance of secrecy in such an affair, yet I do not see how it will be possible to raise a sufficient sum, or to make a reasonable concert in England, without letting some more persons into the project. |Ibid.| You on the place are best judge how these points are to be compassed, but I cannot but think that [the Earl of Oxford?] might be of great use on this occasion. [Lord Lansdowne?] is to write to him on the subject, and I am confident that if you two were to compare notes together you would be able to contrive and settle matters on a more sure and solid foundation than they have hitherto been.’
7. 1722. In a report made to the Earl of Mar by George Kelly, one of his emissaries employed in England, it is stated that on the delivery, by Kelly, of Mar’s letter to Atterbury, the prelate asked the messenger if he had anything to say, in addition to the contents of the letter, and that he replied (in the jargon of his calling): ‘It is a proposal for joining stocks with the Earl of Oxford, and taking the management of the Company’s business into their hands.’ Atterbury, according to this story, required a day’s deliberation, and then told Kelly that he was ‘resolved to join both heart and hand with the Earl; and not only so, but in the management and course of the business he would shew him all the deference and respect that was due to a person who had so justly filled the stations which he had been in.’ The Bishop, says Kelly, also added that he was ‘resolved to dedicate the remainder of his days to the King’s service, and proposed, by this reunion, to repay some part of the personal debt which he owed to the Earl of Oxford, to whom he would immediately write upon this subject.’ |Ibid.| The messenger goes on to assure Lord Mar that Atterbury ‘is entirely of your opinion that there is not much good to be expected from the present managers, and thinks it no great vanity to say that the Earl of Oxford and himself are the fittest persons for this purpose; but the chief success of their partnership will depend upon the secrecy of it.’
Of the genuineness of the several letters,—of the credit due to the emissaries and their reports,—even of the accurate identification, in some instances, of the ‘Mr. Hackets,’ ‘Houghtons,’ and numerous other pseudonyms, under which ‘Lord Oxford’ is assumed to be veiled, there are, as yet, no adequate means of judging.
Flemish Exiles in England.—The Adventures, Mercantile and Colonial Enterprises, and Vicissitudes of the Courtens.—William Courten and his Collections.—The Life and Travels of Sir Hans Sloane—His acquisition of Courten’s Museum.—Its growth under the new Possessor.—History of the Sloane Museum and Library, and of their purchase by Parliament.
The history of the rise and growth of our English trade is, in a conspicuous degree, a history of the immigration hither of foreign refugees, and of what was achieved by their energy and industry, when put forth to the utmost under the stimulus and the stern discipline of adversity. Other countries, no doubt, have derived much profit from a similar cause, but none, in Europe, to a like extent. By turns almost all the chief countries of the Continent have sent us bands of exiles, who brought with them either special skill in manual arts and manufactures, or special capabilities for expanding our foreign commerce. To Flemish refugees, and more particularly to those of them who were driven hither by Spanish persecution in the sixteenth century, England owes a large debt in both respects. |Flemish Exiles in England.| Our historians have given more prominence of late years to this chapter in the national annals than was ever given to it before, but there is no presumption in saying that not a little of what was achieved by exiles towards the industrial greatness of the nation has yet to be told.
Nor is it less evident that, over and above the political and public interest of the things done, or initiated, by the new comers in their adopted country, the personal and family annals of the exiles possess, in not a few instances, a remarkable though subsidiary interest of their own. In certain cases, to trace the fortunes of a refugee family, is at once to throw some gleams of light on obscure portions of our commercial history, and to tell a romantic story of real life.
One such instance presents itself in the varied fortunes of the Courtens. |The Courtens; their Adventures and Enterprises.| That family attained an unusual degree of commercial prosperity, and attained it with unusual rapidity. In the second generation it seemed—for a while—to have struck a deep root in our English soil. It owned lands in half-a-dozen English counties, and its alliance was sought by some of the greatest families in the kingdom. In the next generation its fortunes sank more rapidly than they had risen. In the fourth, the last of the Courtens was for almost half his life a wanderer, living under a feigned name, and he continued so to live when at length enabled to return to his country. The true name had been preserved only in the records of interminable litigation—in England, Holland, India, and America—about the scattered wreck of a magnificent property. But the enterprise of the family, in its palmy days, had planted for England a prosperous colony. It had opened new paths to commerce in the East Indies, as well as in the West. And its last survivor found a solace for many ruined hopes in the collection of treasures of science, art and literature, which came to be important enough to form no small contribution towards the eventual foundation of the British Museum.
In 1567 William Courten, a thriving dealer in linens and silks, living at Menin in Flanders, was together with his wife, Margaret Casier, accused of heresy. Courten was thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, but contrived both to make his escape into England, and to enable his wife soon to join him. He established himself in London, in the same business which had thriven with him at home. |Family Records of the Courtens; in MS. Sloane, 3515, passim. (B. M.)| His wife shared in its toils, and by skilfully adapting her exertions to those tastes for finery in the families of rich citizens which were now striving with some success against the rigour of the old sumptuary laws made the business more prosperous than before. It expanded until the poor haberdasher of 1567 had become a notability on the London Exchange.
In 1571 a son was born to the exiles. This second William Courten was bred as a merchant rather than as a tradesman. He had good parts, and seems to have started into life with a passion for bold enterprise. His early training in London was continued at Haerlem, and there he laid a foundation for commercial success by marrying the daughter of Peter Crommelinck, a wealthy merchant. First and last, his wife brought him a dowry of £40,000, of which sum it was stipulated by the father’s will that not less than one half should be laid out in the purchase of lands in England, to be settled on the eldest son that should be born of the marriage.
By the time of his attaining the age of five and thirty William Courten had already become—for that period—a great capitalist. He then, in 1606, established in London a commercial house which added to the ordinary business of merchants on the largest scale, that of marine insurers, and also that of adventurers in the whale fishery. His partners in the firm were his younger brother, Peter Courten, and John Mouncey. One half of the joint stock belonged to the founder; the other half was divided between the junior partners.
For nearly a quarter of a century this mercantile partnership prospered marvellously. Its annual returns are said to have averaged £200,000. It built more than twenty large ships, and kept in constant employment more than four hundred seamen and fishermen. The head of the firm gradually acquired a large landed property which included estates in the several counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Leicester, Nottingham, Essex, and Kent.
This great prosperity had, of course, its drawbacks. Amongst the earliest checks which are recorded to have befallen it was a Crown prosecution of Courten (in company with several other foreign merchants of note, among whom occur the names of Burlamachi, Vanlore, and De Quester) on the frequent charge—so obnoxious to the political economy of that age—of ‘the unlawful exportation of gold.’ |Domestic Corresp., James I, vol. cix, § 90; 96; vol. cx, § 86; vol. cxi, § 66. Signs Manual, vol. xii, § 26. (R. H.)| Courten was brought into the Star Chamber and was fined £20,000; a sum so enormous as to excite a suspicion of the accuracy of the record, but for its repeated entry. The prosecution was instituted in June, 1619; the defendant’s discharge bears date July, 1620. But it may fairly be assumed that only a portion of the nominal fine was really exacted.
Another and much more serious check to the prosperity of the enterprising merchant came from his embarking in the grand but hazardous work of planting colonies.
In 1626, William Courten—then Sir William, having received the honour of knighthood at Greenwich, on the 31st of May, 1622—petitioned the King for ‘licence to make discoveries and plant colonies in that southern part of the world called Terra Australis incognita, with which the King’s subjects have as yet no trade,’ and his petition was granted. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. xiv, § 33.| What ensued thereupon is thus told in an authoritative manuscript account preserved in the Sloane collection:—
‘Sir William Courten being informed, by his correspondents in Zealand, that some Dutch men-of-war sent out upon private commission against the Spaniards had put into the island of Barbados, and found it uninhabited, and very fit for a plantation, did thereupon, at his own charge, set forth two ships provided with men, ammunition, and arms, and all kinds of necessaries for planting and fortifying the country, who landed and entered into possession of the same in the month of February, 1626 [1627, N.S.]... Afterwards, in the same year, he sent Captain Powell thither, with a further supply of servants and provisions, who, in 1627, fetched several Indians from the mainland, with divers sorts of seeds and roots, and agreed with them to instruct the English in planting cotton, tobacco, indigo, &c. Sir William Courten having, by his partners and servants, maintained the actual possession for the space of two years, and peopled the island with English, Indians, and others, to the number of eighteen hundred and fifty men, women, and children, thought fit to make use of the Earl of Pembroke’s name in obtaining a patent particularly for Barbadoes, although he had before a general grant from the king to possess any land within a certain latitude, wherein this island was comprehended. His Majesty having thus granted, by his Letters Patent, dated 25 February, 1627 [1628, N.S.] the government of this island unto the Earl of Pembroke, in trust for Sir William Courten, with power to settle a colony according to the laws of England, Captain Powell had a commission to continue there as Governor, in their behalf. The Earl of Carlisle,’ continues the MS. narrative, ‘having, before this Patent to the Earl of Pembroke, procured a grant, dated 2nd July 1627, of all those islands lying within 10 and 20 degrees of latitude by the name of Carliola, or Carlisle Province, with all royalties, and jurisdictions, as amply as they were enjoyed by any Bishop of Durham, within his bishopric or county palatine, and having also got another patent, for the greater security of his title, dated 7th April 1628, sent one Henry Hawley with two ships, who, arriving there in 1629, invited the Governor on board, kept him prisoner, seized the forts, and carried away the factors and servants of Sir William Courten and the Earl of Pembroke. |Ibid. Comp. Despatches in Colonial Correspondence, vol. v, §§ 1, 9, 13, 101, seqq.| The authority of the Earl of Carlisle being thus established was maintained.’
But it was only maintained after a long contest at the Council Board at home, which contest seems to have been largely influenced by the fluctuations of Court favour from time to time. A despatch in February, written in behalf of Carlisle, is followed in April by another despatch written in behalf of Pembroke and Courten. The one fact that becomes consistently evident throughout the proceedings is that grants of this kind were made in the loosest fashion, and often in entire ignorance even of the geographical positions of the countries given by them.[39] Indeed, the common course of procedure under the Stuarts, when a courtier had the happy thought of begging a territory in America, reminds one of those earlier days of the Tudors, when a favoured suppliant sometimes obtained the grant of a monastery, or the lease of a broad episcopal estate, with hardly more trouble than it cost him to win a royal smile.
To Courten and his colonists the issue of this quarrel about Barbadoes was very disastrous. To some of the latter it brought ruin. But to the founder himself a check to enterprise in one direction seems to have brought increased stimulus to new enterprise in another direction. He now embarked largely in adventures to the East Indies and to China. As usual, they were planned on a magnificent scale; excited great jealousy in the breasts of competitors; and were attended, in the long run, with very mixed results of good and ill.
Meanwhile, Sir William’s growing wealth—greatly exaggerated by popular renown—and the conspicuous position into which his varied pursuits had brought him, led to plans of enterprise by others, and of quite another kind, at home. He had lost his first wife, and also his eldest son. He had married a second wife,—Hester Tryon, daughter of Peter Tryon. Only one son survived, but Sir William had three daughters, whose prospective charms attracted many suitors. In September, 1624, King James wrote a characteristic letter in which he assured Courten that the son of Sir Robert Fleetwood, Lord of the Scottish barony of Newton, would make a fit match for one of the three daughters, and that the conclusion of such a match would be very acceptable to the King himself. |Alliances between the City and the Court.| |James I to Sir Willm. Courten; Dom. Corr., vol. clxxii, § 71.| The pretendant would gladly, and impartially, wed any one of the three ladies, but the King himself, continues the royal letter, ‘will regard, as a favour, any increase of portion given to the daughter whom Fleetwood may marry, over and above the portion given to, or intended for, the other daughters.’
But despite so powerful a recommendation the young Baron of Newton failed in his suit. Among the aspirants with whom he stood in competition were men much higher in social position. Eventually, the eldest daughter married Sir Edward Lyttelton of Staffordshire. The second daughter married Henry Grey, eighth Earl of Kent, of that family. And the third married Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley.
Royal commendations of suitors were sure, in that age, not to be the only sample of royal letters—direct and indirect—with which a man in Sir William Courten’s position became familiar. He was favoured with not a few solicitations for advances of money on privy-seals, and in other forms of ‘loan.’ Sometimes he complies. Sometimes he remonstrates by specifying the large sums he contributes to the revenue in the way of custom’s duties, and the entire incapability thence arising of the desired response to privy-seals and the like documents. His loans, however, to James, and to Charles, amounted to no less a sum than £27,000.
The death in 1625 of his brother, Sir Peter Courten, deprived the firm of its efficient representative in Holland, and laid a foundation for great misfortunes by putting in his place an unworthy successor. The partner resident at Middleburgh had the trust both of a large portion of the capital of the Company, and of the chief share of its account keeping.
Peter Boudaen was a nephew of the Courtens, and had been to some extent admitted as a partner. His uncle Peter made him also his executor. He thus acquired a great control over the continental affairs of the house, just at the time when its transactions were expanding in all directions. |1631.| He proved unfaithful to his trust, applied his large local influence to his personal advantage and to the prejudice of his partners; and at length failed altogether to render due accounts to the two partners in England. Mouncey, the junior of these, went to Holland in order to enforce an adjustment. He had hardly entered on his task when he died, after a very brief illness, in Boudaen’s house at Middleburgh. Boudaen made a Will for him; asserted that the testator had executed it, in due form of law, immediately before his death; and found means to get the document sanctioned by the Dutch Courts, in the face of strong opposition and of strong presumptive evidence of fraud.
Sir William Courten, meanwhile, prosecuted with his characteristic vigour his vast enterprises already established; made new and large ventures in the reclaiming of waste lands in England; and established the ‘Fishery Association of Great Britain and Ireland,’ with a view to the rescue from the Dutch of that productive herring fishery on our own coasts, which the growing supineness of English governments during at least two generations had permitted to become almost a monopoly in their hands. Of this Association Courten, during the closing years of his life, was the mainspring.
The Dutch, as was natural, strove vigorously to retain the advantage they had acquired, and were little scrupulous about the means of opposition. English herring busses were occasionally captured. And the captors had the great incidental advantage in the strife of dealing with a Government already weak at home, and yearly losing ground.
The East Indian adventures were, at length, attended by circumstances still more complex than those pertaining to the fishery business at home, or to the trading in Holland. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxxiii, p. 58; vol. cccxliii, § 19.| For, in the former, English rivalry had to be encountered, as well as Dutch rivalry. And the rivalry took such a shape as to make the carrying on of trade extremely like the carrying on of war. But, as if the care of these varied interests, in addition to all the toils and anxieties of ordinary commerce on an extraordinary scale, were all too little to occupy the mind of a man who had now reached his sixty-sixth year, we find Sir William Courten taking, just at the close of life, a new and leading part in the business of redeeming captives who had been taken by the pirates of Morocco and Algiers. |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxv, § 16; vol. ccclxviii, § 82.| Nor was this merely an affair of the provision of money and the conduct of correspondence. It involved an intimate acquaintance with the circumstances and the needs of the Barbary States, being carried on, in part, on the principle of barter.
But all these far-spread activities were now fast approaching their natural close. Courten’s career had been, as a whole, wonderfully prosperous, until very near its close. Already it contained, indeed, the germ of a series of reverses, hardly less remarkable; but the growth of that germ was to depend on the as yet unseen course of public events. His ambition to ‘found a family’ had also been gratified by the marriage of his only surviving son[40]—William Courten, third of his name—with the Lady Katherine Egerton, daughter of John Egerton, Earl of Bridgewater. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515.| On that son and his heirs, Sir William Courten settled landed estates amounting to nearly seven thousand pounds a year.
Sir William Courten died in June, 1636. The commercial enterprises of all kinds which were in full activity at the time of his death were continued by his son, who inherited large claims, large responsibilities, and large perils. And it was of the perils that—after his succession—he had earliest experience.
Just before the father’s death, a complaint had been made to the Privy Council that certain ships which he had sent to Surat and other places had committed acts of ‘piracy near the mouth of the Red Sea.’ |Domestic Corresp., Charles I, vol. cccxliii, § 19.| It appeared afterwards that the ships which had given cause, or pretext, of complaint were not Courten’s ships, but the accusation entailed trouble, and was, to the heir, the beginning of troubles to come. The opposition of the East India Company to the Indian trading of ‘interlopers’ (as they were called already) was unremitting and bitter. |Courten Papers, in MS. Sloane, 3515, p. 38.| In June, 1637, William Courten, with a view to arm himself for the encounter, obtained from the Crown letters patent which empowered himself and his associates to trade with all parts of the East, ‘wheresoever the East India Company had not settled factories or trade before the twelfth day of December, 1635.’ One of his chief associates under the new grant was Endymion Porter, and it appears that it was partly by Porter’s influence at Court that the grant had been procured.
Renewed activity was now shown in prosecuting the Eastern trade; new and large ventures were made in it. On some occasions as many as seven well-appointed ships were sent out by Courten and his associates at one time. Instructions are still extant which were given to the chief agents, supercargoes, and factors, for the settlement of English factories at many important places where none had heretofore existed. They are marked by great sagacity and breadth of view, and, in several points, contrast advantageously with contemporary documents of a like kind.