Councillors and commerce in Liverpool, 1650-1750

Urban History

Volumn 24, Issue 3, 1997, Pages 301-323

  Power, Michael ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF LIVERPOOL   (United Kingdom)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

POLITICAL HISTORY; PORTS; SIXTEENTH CENTURY; URBAN HISTORY; URBAN POLITICS;

UK, ENGLAND, MERSEYSIDE, LIVERPOOL;

EID: 0031401253     PISSN: 09639268     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/S0963926800012372     Document Type: Article

References (86)

1. J. Touzeau, The Rise and Progress of Liverpool From 1551 to 1835 (Liverpool, 1910), 379-80.
2. J. Bird, The Geography of the Port of London (London, 1957), 45-49.
3. G. Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century: A Study in Economic and Social History (London, 1972), 243-61.
4. K. Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade in the Eighteenth Century (London, 1993), 9, 29-32, 220.
5. G. Jackson, 'Glasgow in transition, c1660-c1740', in T.M. Devine and G. Jackson, Glasgow, I, Beginnings to 1830 (Manchester, 1995), 69-70.
6. Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 133;
7. D. Richardson, 'The eighteenth-century British slave trade: estimates of its volume and coastal distribution in Africa', Research in Economic History, 12 (1989), 185-95.
8. The volume of trade in Hull increased over ten times in the period, that of Bristol only three times: Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century, 67.
9. F. Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey: The Development of a Port 1700-1970 (Newton Abbot, 1971), 13-14.
10. A map which superimposes the dock and streets on the Liver Pool is contained in The Archaeological Survey of Merseyside, in The Changing Face of Merseyside 1207-1727 (Liverpool, 1981), 20.
11. A plan of Salthouse dock was obtained by the committee planning the first Hull dock in 1756 which was to be vested in the corporation for the town, the Liverpool model. An Act to build the dock was not obtained until 1773: Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century, 238-43.
12. The project, entitled 'The Liverpool Community 1660-1750', involves Di Ascott, Fiona Lewis and Michael Power. It has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust to which grateful acknowledgement is given. A book is planned: Approaches to the History of the Liverpool Community, 1660-1750.
13. The parish registers of St Nicholas, St Peter, and St George are in Liverpool Record Office (Liv.R.O.) 283 NIC, 283 PET, 283 GEO; that of St Nicholas is printed to 1725: Lancashire Parish Register Society, vol. 35, 101.
14. Probate records of the archdeaconry of Chester which include Liverpool wills are at Lancashire Record Office; they are indexed in The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vols 15, 18, 20, 22 for the period up to 1760. Liverpool town books are in Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3-10. There are no guild records to augment the municipal record, a reflection of Liverpool's underdeveloped character in the medieval period, but freemen admissions are recorded in the town books, and an apprentice book was begun in 1707: Liv.R.O. 352 CLE/REG/4.
15. The council cohorts were reconstructed from Liverpool Town Books from which councillors and officers were input into a Paradox computer file: Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3-10. Hearth taxes of 1663, 1664, 1666 and 1673: P.R.O. E179/250/8; E179/250/11; E179/250/9; E179/132/355. The poor rate of 1708: H. Peet, Liverpool in the Reign of Queen Anne (Liverpool, 1908). The poor rate of 1743: Liv.R.O. 920 PT51. Port books 1664-65 and 1708-09: P.R.O. E190/1337/16; E190/1375/08.
16. The Plantation Registers are in Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives but were consulted on microfilm: The Liverpool Plantation Registers 1744-73 and 1779-84, ed. M. Schofield and D. Pope (EP Microform, Wakefield, 1978).
17. J. Langton and P. Laxton, 'Parish registers and urban structure: late-eighteenth century Liverpool', Urban History Yearbook (1978), 76;
18. F. Lewis, 'The demographic and occupational structure of Liverpool: a study of the parish registers 1660-1750' (unpublished University of Liverpool Ph.D. thesis, 1993), 144-8.
19. An excellent study of how port books can be used is D. Hussey, 'Re-investigating the coastal trade: the ports of the Bristol Channel and the Severn Estuary c1695-1704' (unpublished University of Wolverhampton Ph.D. thesis, 1995), esp. ch. 1.
20. Investment in a ship would be initiated by a principal, sometimes the master, and would usually be divided in shares of an eighth, a sixteenth, a thirty-second or a sixty-fourth. It was a method of both financing shipbuilding and offsetting risk, since each share-owner's liability was limited to his share. Many merchants invested in shares, but other townspeople could also take part. See R. Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1962), 81-90.
21. Peet, Liverpool in the Reign of Queen Anne; Liv.R.O.920 PT51.
22. Town officers were a group of administrative officers, about sixty men and a very few women, chosen from year to year to carry out the collection of local taxes, the enforcement of order, regulation of the market and port, cleansing of streets and maintenance of the common. They were mostly drawn from the ranks of craftsmen and represent a humbler working population than councillors, though by election to their offices were deemed respectable residents of the town. The three main offices, mayor, head bailiff and town bailiff, have been counted as councillors rather than officers since they either were or became members of the council by virtue of their office.
23. P.R.O. E190/1337/16; E179/250/8.
24. E.M. Platt, 'Sir Thomas Johnson', Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, XVI (1900), 148.
25. E.M. Platt, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Ibid., 156-8;
26. for a biography see R. Sedgwick (ed.), The History of Parliament (London, 1970), II, 180-1.
27. P.R.O. E190/1375/08.
28. A.C. Wardle, 'Sir Thomas Johnson: his impecuniosity and death', Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, XC (1938), 181-4. The tobacco debt is the first indication of financial difficulty faced by Johnson.
29. Peet, Liverpool in the Reign of Queen Anne.
30. Platt, 'Sir Thomas Johnson', 161-2.
31. Information about his career before his marriage is tantalizingly short. The son of James Gildart of Middleham, Yorkshire, the first reference we have to him is of his freedom in 1698, gained by paying the standard 6s 8d of an apprentice, but there is no record of his master: Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3. He might have worked for Sir Thomas Johnson as agent before his marriage but, again, there is no record of it. See biography in Sedgwick, History of Parliament, 63.
32. Sedgwick, History of Parliament, 63. Ibid.
33. Sedgwick, History of Parliament, 63. Ibid.; Liv.R.O. 352/CLE/REG/4.
34. Shipowners held shares in an average of 2.4 ships: Liverpool Plantation Registers microfilm.
35. Liv.R.O. 920 PT51.
36. R. Muir and E.M. Platt, A History of Municipal Government in Liverpool From the Earliest Times to 1835 (Liverpool, 1906), 81-113. There is no obvious explanation why the number of councillors was so large for such a small town. It is interesting that there seems to have been no difficulty in finding candidates to fill council places.
37. D.H. Sacks, The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy 1450-1700 (London, 1991), 172;
38. G.C.F. Forster, 'Hull in the 16th and 17th centuries', VCH York East Riding: Kingston upon Hull (London, 1969), 121-5;
39. R. Newton, Eighteenth-Century Exeter (Exeter, 1984), 34-8.
40. Population figures from Lewis, 'Demographic and occupational structure of Liverpool', 1.
41. Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3-10.
42. Insufficient ages of councillors are available to be sure of the argument. An analysis of the number of offices served before joining the council showed an average of 1.6 in the late seventeenth century, only 0.6 in the early eighteenth century. Liverpool councillors certainly advanced more rapidly on the council than aspiring councillors in Exeter where the cursus honorem from entering the council to mayor could take 17 years: Newton, Eighteenth-Century Exeter, 39-41. Few advanced as rapidly in Liverpool as Bryan Blundell who became mayor a year after he joined the council, but many advanced to mayor in much less than ten years.
43. Sacks, Widening Gate, 165-6;
44. Forster, VCH York East Riding, 122;
45. Newton, Eighteenth-Century Exeter, 37-8;
46. I. Maver, 'The guardianship of the community', in Devine and Jackson, Glasgow 1, 256-7.
47. The argument and data for this mercantile domination of the council are contained in 'Liverpool town governors 1650-1750', a chapter of the proposed book, Approaches to the History of the Liverpool Community, 1660-1750.
48. Religious dissent was certainly a factor in Liverpool. Some fourteen councillors and officers were ejected from their positions in 1662 under the Corporation Act: Muir and Platt, Municipal Government in Liverpool, 101-6. There were also nonconformist families, like the Pemberton-Danvers, which were important in trade and did not serve on the council: information from D. Ascott. But a detailed assessment of the significance of nonconformity in the town at this time has yet to be attempted.
49. On the matter of unwillingness to serve, see the case of John Cleivland, a major transatlantic shipper in the early eighteenth century, who had to be forced to serve as mayor in 1703: Touzeau, Rise and Progress of Liverpool, 370.
50. Fines for avoidance were, however, not usual. Compare the heavy fines in Hull: Forster, VCH York East Riding, 123-4.
51. Max Weber describes the transition from 'affectual' relationships in a traditional society to 'associative' bonds in a modern society in which rational assessment of common interests and compromise replace traditional custom: The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, trans. A.M. Henderson and T. Parsons (New York, 1947), 136-7.
52. Councillor and officer cohorts have been derived from Liverpool town books: Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3-10. The examples and calculations in this section are taken from the port books: P.R.O. E190/1337/16 and E190/1375/08; and from the Plantation Registers: Liverpool Plantation Registers microfilm.
53. Ninety-one per cent of shipments into Liverpool were from Ireland, 92 per cent of shipments out of Liverpool were to Ireland and only 2 per cent of shipments were to or from the Americas: P.R.O. E190/1337/16.
54. Not least in terms of employment for mariners. For a discussion of the Irish trade see Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry, 202-11: P.R.O. E190/1337/16. More work needs to be done to establish the growth of Liverpool trade earlier in the century.
55. Evidence collected for this paper does not give evidence of the origins of Liverpool transatlantic trade. Occasional voyages for tobacco from Virginia and sugar from Barbados began in the 1660s, the latter much encouraged by the growth of refineries, like that of Daniel Danvers, in the 1680s. See Hyde, Liverpool and the Mersey, 26-7.
56. This was a larger trade in tobacco than Glasgow at this date, though later in the century the Scottish port became pre-eminent in the trade: Jackson, Glasgow I, 76.
57. Animals had been banned by statutes from 1667 to protect English livestock: Davis, The Rise of the English Shipping Industry, 204.
58. Touzeau, Rise and Progress of Liverpool, 370.
59. A limited comparison can be drawn with Hull. There were some 365 merchants recorded shipping in and out of Liverpool in 1709, 40 of them accounting for above 10 shipments. In Hull in 1702 there were 116 merchants shipping outwards only, 22 of whom accounted for 10 or more shipments in the year: Forster, VCH York East Riding, 183.
60. A clear exposition of share-ownership of ships is contained in Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, 81-90.
61. Davis, Rise of the English Shipping Industry, Ibid., 81.
62. It is argued that there was a trend to specialization in shipowning occurring earlier in large ports such as Liverpool, but there is little evidence for this before 1800: S. Ville, 'The growth of specialisation in English shipowning, 1750-1850', Economic History Review, XLVI (1993), 702-8.
63. A useful point made by the reader of this paper.
64. Compare the situation in Bristol in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century when craftsmen took part in trade and disputed the monopoly of the Merchant Adventurers' Company: Sacks, Widening Gate, 201-4.
65. Liv.R.O. 920 PT51.
66. See The Moore Rental, ed. T. Heywood (Chetham Society XII, 1847);
67. R. Muir, History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1907), 71, 109.
68. R. Muir, History of Liverpool ( Ibid., 145.
69. Hearth taxes: P.R.O. E179/250/8; E179/250/11; E179/250/9; E179/132/355; the 1708 rate: Peet, Liverpool in the Reign of Queen Anne; the 1743 rate: Liv.R.O. 920 PT51.
70. Merchants tended to hold property on major streets and craftsmen in alleys and lanes in London in the late seventeenth century: M. Power, 'The social topography of Restoration London', in A.L. Beier and R. Finlay, London 3500-1700: The Making of the Metropolis (London, 1986), 209-12.
71. See Sacks, Widening Gate;
72. Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century;
73. Newton, Eighteenth-Century Exeter, passim.
74. Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century, 2, 96;
75. Morgan, Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 94-8;
76. Sacks, Widening Gate, 353.
77. See Sacks, Widening Gate, ibid., ch. 6;
78. Forster, VCH York East Riding, 130-147.
79. The kind of analysis ably done by Jackson, Hull in the Eighteenth Century, 97-110,
80. and called for in Newton, Eighteenth-Century Exeter, 38.
81. Another example of pioneering infrastructural improvement in the period was the decision by Exeter council to improve the navigation of the river Exe in 1697: Newton, Eighteenth-Century Exeter, ibid., 21-22.
82. A concept of R. Davis: see 'English foreign trade 1660-1700', Economic History Review, 2nd ser., VII (1954), passim.
83. This is much simplified: see Jackson, 'Glasgow in transition', 66-9.
84. Touzeau, Rise and Progress of Liverpool, 337.
85. Muir and Platt, Municipal Government in Liverpool, 249.
86. The Norri's Papers, ed. T. Heywood (Chetham Society IX, 1846), 78, 104-5, 112-13, 121-2, 126-7, 165.