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The Londoner John Blackwell (1624–1701), shaped by his parents’ Puritanism and merchant interests of his iconoclast father, became one of Oliver Cromwell’s New Model Army captains. Working with his father in Parliament’s financial administration both supported the regicide and benefitted financially from the subsequent sales of land from those defeated in the civil wars. Surviving the Restoration, Blackwell pursued interests in Ireland and banking schemes in London and Massachusetts, before being governor of Pennsylvania. Blackwell worked with his son, Lambert Blackwell, who established himself as a merchant, financier and representative of the state in Italy during the wars of William III before being embroiled in the South Sea Bubble.
The linked histories of the three Blackwells reinforce the importance of kinship and the development of the early modern state centred in an increasingly global London and illustrate the ownership of the memory of the civil wars, facilitated by their kin links to Cromwell and John Lambert, architect of Cromwell’s Protectorate, by those who fought against Charles I.
Suitable for specialists in the area and students taking courses on early modern English, European and American history as well as those with a more general interest in the period.
David Farr is Deputy Head Academic of Norwich School. He is author of fulllength studies of the Cromwellian military-religious figures, John Lambert, Henry Ireton, Thomas Harrison and Hezekiah Haynes and the failure of Oliver Cromwell’s Godly Revolution, 1594–1704 (2020).
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Brokerage and Networks in London’s Global World Kinship, Commerce and Communities through the experience of John Blackwell
David Farr
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Brokerage and Networks in London’s
Global World Kinship, Commerce and Communities through the experience of John Blackwell
David Farr
First published 2022 by Routledge
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003205999
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For Gemma
11 Lambert Blackwell in Italy: Merchant, Consul and Envoy, 1684–1705
12 Lambert Blackwell in Italy: Representative of the English State at War, 1690–1705
13 Lambert Blackwell, Financier, MP and Landed Elite, 1705–1720
14 Lambert Blackwell and the South Sea Bubble, 1711–1727
Conclusion – the Blackwells: Kinship networks, communities and ownership of the memory of the civil wars
Abbreviations
A&O
Aylmer, State’s Servants
Firth, C.H. and Rait, R.S., (eds.), Acts and Ordinances of the Interregnum, 1642–1660, (1911)
Alymer, G.E., The State’s Servants. The Civil Service of the English Republic 1649–1660, (1973)
BL British Library
CJ Journals of the House of Commons
CHMS Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society
CSPD Calendar of State Papers Domestic
CTB Calendar of Treasury Books, 1660–1718, 32 vols., (1904–62)
CTP Calendar of Treasury Papers, 1596–1728, 6 vols., (1868–89)
Divitiis, English Merchants
Farr, ‘Blackwell and Cox’
Farr, Haynes
Gentles, NMA
Divitiis, G.P.De, English Merchants in SeventeenthCentury Italy, (1990)
Farr, D., ‘John Blackwell and Daniel Cox: Further Notes on their Activities in Restoration England and British North America’, Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, (1999)
Farr, D., Major-General Hezekiah Haynes and the Failure of Oliver Cromwell’s Godly Revolution, 1594–1704, (2020)
Gentles, I., The New Model Army, (1992)
HMC Historical Manuscripts Commission Reports
HMC, Buccleuch Report on the manuscripts of the Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, 2 vols. (1866–1926)
LJ Journals of the House of Lords
LMA London Metropolitan Archives
MPCP
Minutes of the Provincial Council of Pennsylvania, I, (1838)
NA National Archives
NewDNB
Oxford Dictionary of National Biography
x Abbreviations
PWP
Dunn, R.S., Dunn, M.M., Wokeck, M.S., Wiltenburg, J., Hirsch, A.D., and Horle, C.W., (eds.), The Papers of William Penn, 3 vols., (2016)
TSP Birch, T., (ed.), Thurloe State Papers, 7 vols., (1742)
VCH
Villani, ‘consoli’
Victoria County History
Villani, S., ‘I console della nazione inglese a Livorno tr ail 1665 e il 1665 e il 1673: Joseph Kent, Thomas Clutterbuck e Ephraim Skinner’, in Nuovi Studi Livorno, (2004)
Acknowledgements
A number of others have contributed to this text. Arthur undertook an initial review of the Admiralty papers and meetings of the Pennsylvania Council as well as sourcing a number of articles but, more importantly, with Henry, kept the whole project in perspective. As he has since our time together at UCL, Richard Woolvin has been a friend and guide for local history, particularly the parish registers of London, and, as Lambert emerged again as a figure in this work, gardening. David Cressy was particularly generous in sharing a draft of his chapter on island prisons in the reign of Charles II for his England’s Islands in a Sea of Troubles (2020) and his earlier piece on offshore incarceration. This helped me reconsider aspects of Lambert’s imprisonment. The wider impact of his work is clear in the number of references to his numerous articles and books on the early modern world that appear in the endnotes. Any study that touches upon the New Model Army owes a huge debt to the work of Ian Gentles. In writing this text, Ian has again been generous with regard to his expertise on the New Model and the land transactions of the period as he completed his much awaited study of the New Model through the 1650s. I am most grateful to him for sending me his original Blackwell research notes, a welcome Christmas present in December 2020. The discovery by David Como of material on the New Model’s Heads of the Proposals further confirms Ireton’s lead in the attempt by the army at settlement with Charles I, and I would like to thank David for indicating this before the publication of his work on this. Helen Chalmers at the National Army Museum allowed me to access three lectures by Ismini Pells on ‘Generals, Soldiers and Veterans of the Civil War’ during November and December of 2020, the last of which was particularly useful with regard to work on the memories of the civil war in the Restoration period. Ismini also very kindly shared with me material from her book on Skippon in relation to his interest in land in Norfolk. In relation to memory and the past, I am also grateful to Andrew Murray for his various diverting reflections during our ‘teaching’ that have contributed to the consideration of how those in this text viewed and owned their history.
Given the nature of Blackwell’s wide range of interests, numerous archives were used, locally, nationally and internationally. I am very grateful for the guidance, time and care of those who helped me in Pennsylvania and Massachusetts, particularly Andrew Williams in Philadelphia and similarly for the efficiency and
expertise of Rebecca Maguire at Yale’s Beinecke Library. I have benefitted from the work done in the Italian archives, particularly in the Archivio Di Stato Di Firenze by Stefano Villani and his published work. Daniela Staccioli helped me investigate the archives in Pisa, and Fabio D’Angelo also helped guide me through the records of the Medici in Florence. Daniela Tazzi led me through the Livorno state archive but was particularly generous with her time in isolating relevant records for me. Matteo Giunti generously shared information from his 20-plus years of research in Livorno. His locating of the burial place of Thomas Blackwell and the amount of detail he holds on English merchants in Livorno is illustrative of his expertise. Dr Luisa Onesta Tamassia helped with regard to the Archives in Mantua. May Maclennan’s linguistic skills saved me much time when dealing with the Blackwell material in early modern French. When working with local sources, the expert knowledge of those who care for them or other researchers who work with them is always invaluable. The staff of the archive offices of Norfolk, Surrey, London, Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire, Shropshire, Warwickshire, Derbyshire, Hertfordshire and Essex were, as always, particularly generous with their time and guidance. The assistance of the staff of the British Library, the National Archives, and the Bodleian and Cambridge University Library have been a key part in allowing me to be able to draw out relevant material they hold for this text. Given the restrictions arising from COVID-19, the staff of UEA library were remarkable in how they worked to provide a safe resource for all their researchers, and I would particularly like to thank Jess Daly, Ruth Collins and Carly Sharples for facilitating my access during the later stages of writing this book. Michael Greenwood and the staff at Routledge, including the two readers of an early version of the text, have provided invaluable support and expertise. I would like to particularly thank Louis Nicolson-Pallett, Kim Husband and Raji Ramesh.
John Blackwell emerged from the past for me when I was first working on Lambert 25 years ago and beginning a journey into the early modern world with John Morrill as a guide. That I have remained immersed in that world says much about how inspiring John is for all of those lucky to benefit from his wisdom. Blackwell re-emerged for this project, however, thanks to Gemma and, in particular, a trip she organised to Clontarf Castle, Dublin. Our months together in Bologna, Genoa, Venice, Ferrara, Modena, Cesenatico and Rome have been transformative, but more importantly she has embraced the past and set out the future for us.
Introduction
The three Blackwells that feature most in this text, across three generations from 1594 to 1727, were part of the structured and hierarchical society of early modern England in which it was typical for many of the next generation of sons, particular the elder son, to continue in the same trade, profession or calling as their fathers. There was an embedded limited fluidity across the class structures that came from this. Thomas has written that ‘an individual’s ends in life were predetermined by his or her own position in the overall scheme’, but that ‘in the middling ranks there was more scope for personal choice, but options were normally restricted by parents’ resources and their network of acquaintances’.1 For Wrightson early modern society had a ‘high degree of stratification’ but with opportunities for social mobility.2 There were those that broke away from the place, role or employment assigned to them in a ‘highly stratified society’, a structure still linked to the concept of the great chain of being.3 This mobility could come from younger sons who had to make their own way more, those who refused to accept the role imposed on them by their fathers, or society, as well as women who refused to accept the gender restrictions of a patriarchal society that others wanted to impose on them as yet another level of stratification they faced. For example, Bridget Bendish, daughter of the New Model general and theorist Henry Ireton, managed a saltpan and refinery in East Anglia in the Restoration period and challenged to a duel a man who insulted her grandfather, Oliver Cromwell.4 There are other examples, of either gender, of those who broke out of the roles or places assigned to them, many, of course, especially from the lower end of society, who have left no trace of the families they came from or how they forged their own identity in the early modern world. Others also broke out of their seemingly pre-determined place in society by simply being more economically successful in the roles they took on. Sometimes this could come from these roles developing over time and thereby giving more opportunities for those of later generations. The London merchant world of the Blackwells in particular, with its ‘semi-independent ladders of rank’, increasingly offered most scope across the century for social mobility.5 The Blackwells, the centre of this study, are examples of how each generation, while fundamentally linked to the previous one as kin and in their similar focus on commerce, finance, administration and brokerage, developed their own identity by seeking to take advantage of the social mobility and the new opportunities opened
up by the changing world around them, whether as a result of civil war and the revolution or from London’s developing economy and place in the world after the Glorious Revolution.6
The years 1594 to 1727 that are the canvas for this study witnessed increasing levels of urban development, particularly the continued expansion of London, and with this came the further growth of professions, commerce and the merchant class. Other structural changes to the economy also brought about the greater emergence of the professions.7 As England competed with the Dutch and the French after 1660, there was a necessary development of administration. London merchants also sought to exploit the increasing trade with the rest of the world which was linked to England’s emergence as a global power, accelerated by war after 1688. War and trade demanded more services from doctors and lawyers, but also financiers. The Blackwells, as commercial opportunists, were very much part of this changing world and changing London. Lambert Blackwell, based in Italy in the 1690s, was part of the city of London’s use of merchants in residence to shape the economies of the cities of northern Italy.8 The more rapid accumulation of wealth that Lambert Blackwell was able to achieve, compared to his father and grandfather, was based on the greater economic opportunities opened up after 1688 as a result of the financial revolution. The different ways each of the three Blackwells considered in this text interacted with the state help illustrate these developments across the century.
John Blackwell the elder (1594–1658) was a London merchant who secured the potentially profitable position of Grocer to Charles I in the late 1620s.9 With the collapse of Charles’ authority Blackwell was left being owed substantial sums by the Crown, yet he still contributed significant sums to the parliamentary cause and invested as an Irish Adventurer with his son. Blackwell’s open and early allegiance to the struggle against Charles I was rooted in his and his wife’s Puritanism. The strength of his belief can be seen in his leading involvement as a ‘parish zealot’ in iconoclasm in 1641.10
John Blackwell the younger (1624–1701), the centre of this study, eldest son of John Blackwell, was also a Londoner who, following the lead given to him by both of his parents, was a Puritan who immediately joined the parliamentarian forces as an 18-year-old in 1642, after probably having already entered the merchant world of the capital with his father. Blackwell, having proved himself on the battlefield and religiously, was appointed by Cromwell as one of his own regimental captains. From his role as a soldier, as with his father, Blackwell also took on work in the administration of the state that developed to fight these wars and then maintain the victorious New Model through the 1650s. The civil war redirected Blackwell from a full return to the London merchant world, but being based predominantly in the capital from 1646, and rooted in finance work meant he and his father remained linked to London’s commercial and financial communities. He became a much more central figure in the Interregnum state than his father, but like his father, he also used his links and knowledge of the London merchant community. He also sought to take advantage of the broader opportunities opened up by the defeat of Charles I. With his father he became heavily involved
3 in the Crown and church land markets, especially exploiting opportunities in Ireland, based on Parliament’s dispossession of the native Catholic population, but he developed his investments much further than his father. Blackwell’s Puritanism and the shared experience of the New Model, combined with his central position in London in the financial administration of the Interregnum states, saw him used as a broker by fellow New Model officers but also led to kinship bonds being formed with comrades such as Hezekiah Haynes, John Okey and John Lambert. After 1660, with the re-imposition of monarchy, Blackwell settled in Dublin but then looked further afield to new opportunities in America, travelling and living there after 1684, first in Massachusetts and then from 1688 as William Penn’s governor of Pennsylvania.
When Blackwell returned to London in 1691 one of his sons, Lambert Blackwell (d.1727), had started to create his own roots in the London merchant community. Lambert Blackwell, like his father, also had connections with those looking for opportunities in New England but also sought to benefit from London’s changing place in the world after 1688. He lived in Italy, from at least 1684 to 1705 as a representative of merchant interests, probably initially for his older stepbrother, another John Blackwell who was already established as a London merchant, and then as a representative of William III and Queen Anne. From his work in Italy Lambert Blackwell secured a seat as a Whig in Parliament in 1708 and became a financier of the state, working with both Whigs and Tories, centred in the rapidly developing financial world of London over the next 12 years. Lambert Blackwell, son of the man who faced possible execution at the Restoration in 1660 for service to the Interregnum states, grandson to John Lambert, the general who made Cromwell Protector in 1653 and in 1660 staged an attempted republican rising to prevent the return of Charles II, was created a baronet by George I in 1718.
The three generations of Blackwells were all rooted in the merchant and financial communities of London, but the developing state from the revolutions of 1649 and 1688 saw them focus as brokers acting on the behalf of others and to the advantage of themselves with regard to the opportunities opened up by political and economic change driven by war. They were linked together as kin but also worked together, Blackwell the elder with his son and then Blackwell in turn with his sons, John and Lambert Blackwell. While they all developed their roles in different ways as London, the world and opportunities changed around them, they can all be seen as brokers in entwined commercial communities of merchants, entrepreneurs and kin. Bremer, when considering the networks of the Mathers of New England, with whom the younger Blackwell was connected, outlined the importance of brokers, and this definition can be seen as applicable to the Blackwells, especially the younger Blackwell in his activities in England, Ireland and New England across the years 1642 to 1701 with kin and New Model comrades.
Within most such groups there are clusters of individuals united by more intense familiarity and feelings. Individuals belonging to more than one such cluster serve the important function of brokers in holding the various clusters together, for they insure a flow of information and support between clusters.11
As kin and investors in land and business another continuing thread through the lives of all three Blackwells were the consequences of some of the transactions they made for the next generation. When marriages were predominantly financial agreements for those with some property this thread can be seen for the Blackwells in the consequences of the elder Blackwell’s second marriage into the Smithsby family in 1642. This led to, and was reinforced by, the younger Blackwell also marrying into the Smithsby family in 1647. These marriages also provided a kinship link to Cromwell which the Blackwells could exploit, especially in the 1650s, but also various financial obligations that they had to deal with into the 1670s. In turn the younger Blackwell’s second marriage, in the early 1670s to Frances Lambert, daughter of John Lambert who had established Cromwell as Protector, brought him into another network and a range of new economic opportunities and problems. The economic management of these links, investment in Ireland, as well as the political actions of his father and grandfather, continued to be something Lambert Blackwell had to manage into the 18th century. The other element that bound the three generations together came from the longevity of the younger Blackwell. By being part of the London merchant world before entering Parliament’s service at 18 he was alongside his father, religiously, politically and financially, working together for two decades until his father’s death in 1658. However, because he had the good fortune to live a long and active life, the younger Blackwell was still involved in a range of financial interests in the l680s and 1690s, before he eventually died in 1701. As a result, one of his sons, Lambert Blackwell, can also be seen linked to some of these concerns with his father, particularly interests in Ireland and New England or his father’s business relationships, while developing his own path from the late 1680s. In the 1690s Lambert Blackwell had to take on issues that his father had been trying to manage with his own father since the 1650s in trying to secure the family’s economic interests. In the 1690s there is also evidence that another of Blackwell’s sons, probably his eldest son from his first marriage, also called John Blackwell, again a London merchant, was working with his father and his stepbrother, Lambert Blackwell, as well as his own sons, John and Thomas Blackwell, when they were merchants based in Livorno at the same time as their uncle, Lambert Blackwell.12
The three Blackwells, the elder, the younger and Lambert Blackwell, were remarkably successful in managing their interests across a tumultuous century of wars and revolutions. While there were serious financial and political issues for all three at various times, in the context of most of the population, they lived comfortable lives due to their strong economic position. The elder Blackwell managed being a creditor of the Crown to move into parliamentary service. The younger Blackwell, having been a central figure in the Interregnum states, managed to survive the re-imposition of monarchy in 1660 to prosper and continue to be a broker in various financial and political enterprises to the 1690s. Despite being barred at the Restoration from ever holding public office again he was possibly offered posts by both Charles II and James II in Ireland and was appointed governor of Pennsylvania by Penn and consulted by the administration of William III on affairs in New England. His son, Lambert Blackwell, amassed a considerable
5 fortune, a political career and the outward trappings of the life of the wealthy elite, a house in London and a country estate in Norfolk. While he lost much of this through his directorship of the South Sea Company it would be too much to say that the South Sea Bubble in 1720 ruined Lambert Blackwell. When he died in 1727 he could still list property and wealth that most of the population could only dream of, and his son was able to inherit from him a title and an estate.
A study of the three Blackwells over the period 1594 to 1727 shows the functioning of kin and networking, with the importance of women in managing this, as well as how such networks were linked and developed by commercial interests and religious and political radicalism. The experience of John Blackwell (1624–1701) also illustrates communities of civil war radicals after the Restoration and their willingness to own their past, especially after the Glorious Revolution. The lives of the three Blackwells show that the limitations for individuals resulting from the structured early modern society could be traversed by those with the skills and determination to make their way in the merchant and political communities of the Atlantic and Mediterranean worlds, taking advantage of the development of a fiscal-military state centred in London amid the transformative impact of the wars and revolutions of these years as London became a global metropolis.13
Part 1 of the text focuses on the years 1594 to 1660, when the elder Blackwell emerges in the records of the London merchant community and his son John Blackwell became a significant figure in Cromwell’s state. Chapter 1 considers the development of the elder Blackwell’s economic, religious and political interests. By the late 1620s the elder Blackwell had secured the potentially profitable position of Grocer to Charles I.14 The elder Blackwell and his wife were part of a network of Puritans in London, his own radicalism appeared to develop in the 1630s as a reaction to Charles I’s imposition of Laudianism.15 In 1641 the elder Blackwell led his fellow parishioners in destroying the symbols of Charles’ religious authority in the London church of St Thomas the Apostle. Chapter 1 therefore sets the younger Blackwell in the context of the wealth and Puritanism of his parents. From this the 18-year-old Blackwell joined the parliamentary war effort with his father in 1642. Chapter 2 outlines the younger Blackwell’s significant active involvement in the first civil war of 1642 to 1646. While his father increasingly contributed to the parliamentary cause through finance and administration, the younger Blackwell was involved in a number of battles and after having fought at Naseby was appointed by Cromwell as a captain in his own regiment. This link to Cromwell was strengthened by a kinship bond that both the elder and younger Blackwell established through their marriages into the Smithsby family. As the New Model became politicised and led the English Revolution the younger Blackwell was involved in this process, outlined in Chapter 3. Both Blackwells, while not commissioners at the trial of Charles I, took action linking them to supporting the trial that associated them publicly with the act of regicide and subsequent republic. This was to be used against the younger Blackwell after
1660. Chapters 1 to 3 therefore establish that this Blackwell was more than an administrator. His role as a servant of the state for 15 years, from 1645 to 1660, was rooted in his merchant background, his Puritanism and his experience of war as part of parliament’s armies. As outlined in Chapter 4 the younger Blackwell and his father became established in the administration of the developing state that allowed both to take financial advantage of their loyalty to the parliamentary cause. Both invested heavily in the land market that parliament developed from defeating Charles I and the dispossessed Irish to help them fund the war and the New Model, and this is considered in Chapter 5. It was in the period 1649 to 1660, outlined across Chapter 4, that the younger Blackwell came in to his own through his central role in the administration of the Interregnum states as a treasurer to the New Model, as the army became a state within the state. In such a state, and through his position in the New Model, Blackwell had a political role. He was linked with the officers that removed the Nominated Assembly and established the Protectorate, and this more overt military regime enhanced Blackwell’s role. In 1656 Blackwell became an MP in Cromwell’s Second Protectorate Parliament before emerging in the leading political grouping of officers based at Wallingford House that sought to maintain the Good Old Cause after Cromwell’s death in 1658. Blackwell’s role in the finances of the state, outlined in Chapter 4, was also the root of why he was sought out after 1660 as a financial expert, whether by kin, ex-comrades or the Massachusetts and Pennsylvania elite, as well as the administration of William III.
Part 2 focuses on the years from the Restoration to the early years of the reign of William and Mary after the Glorious Revolution of 1688. Chapter 6 outlines how the younger Blackwell survived the re-imposition of monarchy and retreated out of London to live in North Wales and settle in Dublin, partly to remove himself from Restoration persecution but also in an attempt to protect the Irish estate that he and his father had spent so much time, money and effort to secure since 1642. Chapter 7 centres on how the younger Blackwell acted as broker in the development of various kinship networks from the 1640s to the 1680s. These show him bound with prominent figures in the Interregnum world, the Major-Generals John Lambert and Hezekiah Haynes and the republican regicide Colonel John Okey, connections that continued after 1660 despite the various forms of Restoration persecution that they all suffered. The record of Blackwell’s interaction with these figures shows him as an active broker trusted by comrades from the civil wars with the management of their personal affairs but denounced by others for what they regarded as his manipulation for his own advantage. The establishment of a kin link and his work with Lambert since the 1650s seems to have given Blackwell a fresh impetus to explore new opportunities after 1670. Blackwell’s brokerage also reinforces the examples of the importance of women, from his mother to his second wife and second mother-in-law, in facilitating the functioning and development of kin networks, whether in the context of religion, finance or politics. Blackwell, after his second marriage, while continuing to be based in Dublin, also re-entered the London financial world, developing banking schemes and working with one of his sons, another John, who was a London merchant. Chapters 8 and 9
focus on Blackwell’s time in America, in Massachusetts and Pennsylvania. It was from some of his kin management outlined in Chapter 7, but also his record as a broker and financial administrator in the 1650s, that Blackwell left Dublin and London and became heavily involved in land transactions in New England, again much of which was linked to his kin, and accepted by the Puritan elite of Massachusetts as a financial expert. It was also partly from his kin links that Blackwell was appointed by William Penn, the leading Quaker of the day, as his governor of Pennsylvania in 1688. Blackwell, in both Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, used his background in finance and in banking schemes of the 1680s to be a central figure in attempts by some of the Massachusetts elite to establish a bank but also explore opportunities in an open land market. Though he was a political success in his short time in Massachusetts, the problems Penn presented Blackwell with in Pennsylvania proved beyond his skills as a broker.
Part 3 of the text covers the period from Blackwell’s return to London in 1691 to the death of his son, Lambert Blackwell, in 1727. Chapter 10 initially considers Blackwell, consulted by the administration of William III, offering ideas in print on how to finance the Nine Years War, still pursuing his interests in Ireland before handing this task formally over to his son Lambert Blackwell in 1696. Chapter 11 focuses on the emergence of Lambert Blackwell as a merchant, financier and representative in Italy of the English state. Like his father Lambert Blackwell looked beyond London and became focused on the trading world of the Mediterranean. While his older stepbrother John developed his merchant interests in London, Lambert Blackwell developed his in the Italian free port of Livorno, initially linked to his stepbrother’s interest there. From this he secured a political role as consul. The commercial links Lambert Blackwell made saw him contract a profitable marriage with the daughter of a London business associate, and through such connections Chapter 11 considers his role as the representative of William III and Queen Anne with the Italian states of Genoa, Florence and Venice, still the key trading and financial cities of Italy. As part of this role Chapter 12 illustrates elements of naval war in the period, merchant shipping, piracy and how consuls tried to represent England abroad in the context of the Nine Years War, the War of the Spanish Succession and relations with the states of North Africa as well as the ongoing conflict between the Ottoman Empire and Venice. Chapter 13 considers Lambert Blackwell’s return to London and, like his father, his selection as an MP. With his links to the London and Italian merchant communities Lambert Blackwell acted as a financier for the state through contacts in Genoa and from that became one of the directors of the South Sea Company, designed as part of the state’s finances as well as a financial scheme to enrich its leading figures. While this may have mirrored his grandfather’s willingness to fund the parliamentary war effort the scale and the nature of Lambert Blackwell’s role reflected the changed nature of the state by the end of the 17th century and London’s emergence as a global capital. Lambert Blackwell’s success was reflected in the grandeur of his London townhouse and his development of a landed estate in Norfolk. Chapter 14 outlines the impact on Lambert Blackwell of the bursting of the South Sea Bubble, arguably part of the first global economic crash. Brought before Parliament, Lambert
Blackwell was subjected to confiscation of significant elements of his Norfolk estate, his role as a financier and recent extensive purchases a factor in the willingness of some to pursue his punishment more than against other directors more rooted in the elite. Despite this, such had been the wealth Lambert Blackwell had been able to rapidly accumulate, he was able to leave his oldest son not only his title but what was still a significant Norfolk estate.
The Blackwells had links across the worlds of religion, politics, merchants, diplomacy and war during periods of constitutional crisis and commercial expansion. They illustrate the facilitation and functioning of brokerage and networks that embraced London as it developed into a global metropolis, the old world of the Mediterranean and the new world of colonial America across a century of wars and revolutions. The experience of the New Model officer John Blackwell (1624–1701) in particular illustrates the maintenance and utility of revolutionaryera networks of kinship and comradeship from the 1650s in the decades after the Restoration and from him a continuing collective memory of the civil wars by his kin into the 18th century. Thus, over a period of 130 years, the financial and political fortunes of the three Blackwells and others in their family underwent significant fluctuations, buffeted by wars and revolutions, but throughout all of this the drive of the three allowed them to flourish as they adapted to a developing state and a changing London.
Notes
1 K. Thomas, The Ends of Life: Roads to Fulfilment in Early Modern England, (2009), p. 16.
2 K. Wrightson, English Society 1580–1680, (1998), pp. 17, 20, 22, 29, 140, 224.
3 Wrightson, English Society, p. 140.
4 D. Farr, Britain 1625–1701: Conflict, Revolution and Settlement, (2017), p. 50; NewDNB Bridget Bendish by Stuart Handley.
5 P. Gauci, Emporium of the World: The Merchants of London 1660–1800, (2007), p. 130.
6 J. Hoppit, Land of Liberty ? England 1689–1727, (2000), pp. 425–8; Gauci, Emporium of the World, p. 14; N. Zahedieh, The Capital and the Colonies: London and the Atlantic Economy, 1660–1700, (2010), pp. 20–1.
7 Hoppit, Land of Liberty, pp. 4, 8, 55.
8 G.P. De Divitiis, English Merchants in Seventeenth-Century Italy, (1990), p. 185.
9 NA, E115/14/91; E115/443/134; E115/62/144.
10 K. Lindley, Popular Politics and Religion in Civil War London, (1997), pp. 39, 224.
11 F.J. Bremer, ‘Increase Mather’s Friends: The Trans-Atlantic Congregational Network of the Seventeenth Century’, Proceedings of the American Antiquarian Society, 94, (1984), p. 61.
12 NA, C7/154/48; ADM 106/444/152, 184; PWP, p. 280; J. Ingamells, (ed.), A Dictionary of British and Irish Travellers in Italy, 1701–1800, (1997), p. 96; A True and Exact Particular Inventory of All an Singular the Lands, Tenements, and Hereditaments, Goods, Chattels, Debts, and Personal Estate Whatsoever, Which Sir Lambert Blackwell, Bart. Late One of the Directors of the South Sea Company, Was (According to the Best of His Knowledge, Remembrance, or Belief) Seiz’d, (1721), pp. 4, 5, 10, 12–13, 25, 28, 34; NA, Prob.11/758/375; Prob.11/653/195; Prob.11/752/227; Prob.11/702/382; C11/2573/23.
13 T. Harris, ‘Restoration Ireland – Themes and Problems’, in C.A. Dennehy, (ed.), Restoration Ireland, (2020), p. 3; T. Sasson, J. Vernon, M. Ogborn, P. Satia and C. Hall, ‘Britain and the World: A New Field ?’, Journal of British Studies, 57, (2018), p. 678.
14 NA, E115/14/91; E115/443/134; E115/62/144.
15 R.L. Greaves and R. Zaller, Biographical Dictionary of British Radicals, (1982–4); W.W. Grantham, (ed.), List of the Wardens of the Grocers Company, (1931), p. 27; A.B. Beaven, The Aldermen of the City of London, (1908), I, p. 95, II, pp. 78–9.
Part
1 Puritan Activists, 1594–1642
The younger John Blackwell entered Parliament’s armies aged 18 as a Puritan activist and spent the next four years in arms against a king, Charles I, who regarded himself as divinely appointed. When the First Civil War was over Blackwell continued his commitment to the parliamentary cause by becoming one of its most able administrators, serving the state in its various guises from 1645 to the Restoration of 1660. This commitment to Parliament’s cause and then, more specifically, to the New Model, was based on Blackwell’s upbringing in London with his Puritan parents. Blackwell’s skills as an administrator and a broker were also rooted in his upbringing in the capital and relationship with his father, a financier and merchant in the competitive London markets of the 1620s and 1630s, who sided decisively with Parliament in 1641 as a Puritan zealot and worked with his son in supporting the parliamentary cause until his death in 1658.
I
John Blackwell, the centre of this study, born in 1624, was the eldest son of John Blackwell senior, a London Puritan and merchant. The Blackwells were relatively prosperous with Blackwell’s grandfather, also John, listed as of Clement’s Inn in the parish of St Clements Dane, Middlesex, just outside the City of London.1 Given the listing of Clement’s Inn it is possible that Blackwell the grandfather was a lawyer, located in the north of this densely populated parish where the Inns of Court were situated.2 By 1617 Blackwell’s grandfather had purchased Hawridge Manor, Buckinghamshire.3 Hawridge was a small parish of 696 acres, 40 miles from London. In 1622 Blackwell’s grandfather and father sold Hawridge and in doing so were listed as of Watford.4 This sale only five years later, by Blackwell’s grandfather and father, may suggest that the purchase had been a business transaction, or perhaps there was a need to divest themselves of it as a result of the Chancery proceedings linked to the manor which were initiated against the elder Blackwell.5 In these proceedings there was a claim that in relation to land purchases the elder Blackwell owed £1,850 to his creditors.6 Some initiated debt proceedings simply as a means to resolve the dispute over payment.7 John Blackwell, Blackwell’s father, was born on 25 August 1594 in Watford. In 1617 Blackwell the grandfather had sold a parcel of his land in Oxhey, in the
parish of Watford.8 Blackwell’s father was also listed in the 1640s in connection with Bushey, Watford, just a mile from Oxhey.9 There were a number of Blackwells linked with Bushey and it is therefore possible that they were kin.10
The right of presentation to the parish church descended with the manor of Hawridge. It is not clear whether the Blackwells were able to use this right with their 1617 purchase.11 In 1616 John Priestley was rector and was followed by Edward Field in 1618.12 After Blackwell’s sale in 1622 an Elidad Blackwell is listed as becoming rector of Hawridge in 1625, his first appointment, holding the post until 1650.13 Elidad Blackwell had been at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, regarded as the Puritan college that sent numerous Puritans out to minister across East Anglia, many linked to the patronage and network of the Earl of Warwick.14 Another possible link between Elidad and the Blackwells is suggested by the 13 January 1631 licence granted to Elidad to serve the chapel in Mortlake, where Blackwell junior grew up in the 1630s after his father had relocated there by at least 1626.15 In 1642 Elidad was lecturing in London at St Botolph, appointed as ‘an orthodox and learned Divine’ by Parliament.16 That he remained in post through the civil war suggests, alongside his attendance at Emmanuel, that he was regarded as in line with moderate Puritan thinking, as was Elidad’s wife, Jane, given the published sermon for her 1656 funeral.17 In this Jane was noted as having been ‘Educated and trained up from her childhood, till married, under Dr Chaderton, Master of Emanuel Coledge in Cambridge, that famous godly man, and her neer Kinsman’.18 This sermon may also suggest that Elidad and Jane had developed a Presbyterian position from the fluidity and interrelation of political and religious positions within the shifting politics of London in the years 1646 to 1649.19 In 1645 Elidad signed a petition with other ministers against ‘scandalous and ignorant Persons being admitted to the Sacrament’.20 As well as still being associated with Mortlake in the 1650s, Elidad was noted as being ‘Minister of the Gospel and Pastor of St Andrew Undershaft, London’.21 When John Blackwell the younger married Elizabeth Smithsby, daughter of James Smithsby, on 8 June 1647 he did so at St Andrew, Undershaft, a simple record noted in the parish register.22 While there is nothing in Elidad’s will that confirms a formal link with John Blackwell, one of Elidad’s sons, also John, was to join the same Grocers Company as the elder Blackwell and that both were Puritans and had clear links with Mortlake for over 20 years means that, at the very least, they would have been well aware of each other, possibly from Hawridge, but certainly from Mortlake, as part of the networking of London Puritans.23
In 1621, aged 27, Blackwell’s father married for the first time, and Blackwell was baptised on 8 March 1624 in St Matthew’s Parish, Westminster.24 The baptism at St Matthew’s, as with other links with other parishes and homes later associated with the elder Blackwell, indicate that while he was to purchase properties outside London, like Hawridge and Mortlake, he seems to have kept homes and property in the city like other successful merchants, probably renting some of these out.25 The links of the Blackwells to a number of London parishes also reinforce the impression of how London Puritans, like the Blackwells, frequented a range of churches.
It is also possible that, as well as being linked to the Puritan communities in London, part of the shaping of the elder and younger Blackwell’s Puritanism may also have come from another Puritan minister who was linked to Mortlake. Job Tookie was listed among the ‘Curates, Incumbents, and Vicar’ of Mortlake for the years 1633 to 1637 before he died in 1638.26 The Mortlake churchwarden accounts list a payment to Tookie, and in his own 1638 will Tookie referenced himself as ‘Clarke’ of Mortlake.27 This was the Puritan Job Tookie who, when he was lecturer at St. Ives, may well have played a part in Cromwell’s Puritan conversion experience.28 Tookie’s removal and link to Mortlake may have been necessitated by his suspension from St. Ives in 1635, after already having been dismissed from the living in 1631.29 As another example of the continuing linked communities of pre-war radicals and their kin that survived the Restoration Tookie’s son, also Job, became a leading figure in the influential Yarmouth independent church and kin of Cromwell’s grand-daughter, the daughter of the New Model radical Henry Ireton, Bridget Bendish.30
The younger Blackwell grew up in Mortlake, Surrey, a village on the outskirts of early modern London, after his father moved there not long after Blackwell’s birth in 1624.31 Blackwell’s brother, William, was baptised in Mortlake on 14 July, 1625.32 In 1616 Mortlake manor was owned by John Juxon, and this may have been why the younger Blackwell entered a troop in Colonel Edmund Harvey’s regiment led by Captain John Juxon in 1642, son of the owner of the manor.33 The ‘very prosperous’ Juxons were also London merchants but more established than the Blackwells, having ‘considerable property accumulated in Mortlake and London’.34 John Juxon was listed in the Mortlake Vestry Minute Book as Lord of the Manor.35 Thomas Juxon, another son of John, owner of the manor, who left a journal for the period 1644 to 1647, also served in the trained bands and, like Blackwell’s father, had links with the parish of St Thomas the Apostle.36 There is noted in the Surrey Feet of Fines for Michaelmas 1638 a record for Mortlake of John Blackwell and John Juxon indicating a conveyance of land.37
Mortlake was a place for wealthy Londoners to relocate to out of London, but conveniently placed to conduct business in the capital. Records from 1634 suggest that Blackwell’s father was investing in the Mortlake community, perhaps for his growing family. In 1634 Blackwell ‘promised 20 nobles on the building of a school house’.38 In a memorandum of 7 April 1634 it was noted that ‘John Blackwell is to enclose land in Cleyends and besides the 20 marks paid by him he will pay 20 nobles when a school house is begun’.39 In this Blackwell was fulfilling a role of charity expected of those who had the good fortune to have disposable wealth and Puritans projecting an image of philanthropy, such as the bequests of his more wealthy Mortlake neighbours, the Juxons.40 The reference to him in the Mortlake parish register in July 1625 as ‘Mr ’ Blackwell, could be taken as a mark of his relative good economic standing.41 Thus the younger Blackwell grew up in advantageous surroundings. There was to be need of a substantial property in Mortlake, for Blackwell was one of ten children from his father’s first marriage, and it is probably that this is where the family remained based, alongside property the elder Blackwell maintained in London, given a link to property in St Thomas
the Apostle parish, where his wife was buried in 1640 and a number of children to 1651.42 The parish register of St Mary’s, Mortlake, records the baptisms of two sons to the elder John and his wife Julian, William on 14 July, 1625, and Thomas on 23 August 1629.43 On folios 40–41 of the parish register, headed by the baptism of a daughter to John Juxon on 13 February 1635, there are listed the baptisms of two more children for John and Julian, Mary on 23 May, 1635, and Abraham on 20 October, 1636.44 The elder Blackwell was also linked to property in Bow Lane, close to St Thomas the Apostle.45 In 1638 the elder Blackwell, listed as grocer and citizen of London of St Thomas the Apostle, was given the administration of the will of James Collymore, presumably from business links, as Collymore was a haberdasher whose family were residents of St Thomas the Apostle.46 In his 1658 will the elder Blackwell also referenced a property in Cripplegate, and he was also linked with St Alphage, London Wall church, next to Cripplegate.47 That despite a range of London properties both the elder and younger Blackwell remained linked to Mortlake can be seen by the record in the parish register of the burial of James, son of the elder Blackwell, on 2 July, 1651, and, a few weeks later, on 23 July, 1651, the burial of Elizabeth, daughter of the younger Blackwell.48
The elder Blackwell’s relative prosperity was based on his work as a merchant and financier. That there is no evidence that the younger Blackwell had an apprenticeship in his father’s Grocers Company, despite being of an age to undertake one before the outbreak of the civil war, may indicate that he was on a different path.49 It was also far from automatic that sons would enter into apprenticeship in the companies to which their fathers belonged, indeed a study has shown that ‘Few –mainly father–son relationships – are recorded explicitly in company records’.50 The records do not allow us to retrieve whether the younger Blackwell did start an apprenticeship, entry to which could be expensive, from the numerous opportunities his father could have facilitated.51 From the description of Blackwell senior as a ‘scrivener’ and his finance work in the 1640s it would appear that he was involved in lending money and London’s financial world.52 The scope of work a scrivener could undertake indicates why they could be such influential brokers.53
Part of the senior Blackwell’s prosperity would have been based on his securing the position of ‘his Majesty’s Grocer’.54 A 1629 warrant authorised ‘John Blackwell, the King’s Grocer, to collect all money due for the composition of ‘Grocery wares’ for provision of the royal household landing in any port etc. in Great Britain’.55 This was reinforced by a warrant ‘sent to all ports, authorising John Blackwell, his Maties grocer, to receave the composition of grocerie wares for his Maties household’.56 From his position Blackwell would have sought advancement for himself and his family.57 Blackwell could take advantage of the prerogative of purveyance to secure supplies at a cheaper-than-market rate. While securing a position of supplying the court was potentially profitable it could also be problematic to secure payment. For example, in May 1629 Blackwell had to petition for ‘remission of brokes on pepper bought of Sir John North and H. Knowles, in regard it was wholly spent in his Majesty’s household and not sold in town’.58 However, it may well be that Blackwell only held the post of ‘his Majesties Grocer’ for two years as there is no Crown record for him in this position after
1629, although he was still referenced in this position in print in 1640 and in a petition attacking him in 1641.59
As a relatively prominent London merchant Nuttall noted what he argued were the Arms Blackwell held but their provenance is not clear.60 It is possible that Blackwell’s grandfather and father were connected to the Blackwells of Farringdon Within, London, who did have Arms, given their link to ‘Bushie’, Hertfordshire, and a later record linking the elder Blackwell himself to Bushey and that Bushey is only two miles from Watford, where he was noted as having property.61 The later reference linking Blackwell to Bushey may simply be a more precise reference to property he held in the vicinity of Watford.62 It is possible that Nuttall’s reference was actually to those Arms linked to the younger Blackwell as a captain of the Maiden Troop rather than any based on his father having attained gentry status.63 While some deliberately sought to construct Arms to project their wealth, whatever the case of the elder Blackwell’s links to any Arms through the 1630s, he had established himself among the London merchant community. As a citizen he was able to take part in the different levels of London government and politics.64 A 1638 assessment for the inhabitants of St Thomas the Apostle indicates Blackwell senior’s relative prosperity. Of the 112 inhabitants listed liable for assessment the elder Blackwell had assigned to him a sum that placed him sixth on the list in terms of wealth in the parish.65 The elder Blackwell’s relative prosperity is also illustrated by the assessment of him in 1640 for a loan Charles I was looking to impose on the City of London to help him deal with the Scottish Rebellion. In this assessment Blackwell senior was assessed at a high level as one of the leaders of the Vintry ward in which St Thomas the Apostle was situated.66
The elder Blackwell contracted a potentially financially beneficial second marriage to Martha Smithsby, daughter of Thomas Smithsby, a wealthy London merchant, noted for 9 March 1642.67 There is, however, in the parish register of St Saviour, Southwark, a marriage between a John Blackwell and a Martha Smithsby on 12 March, 1642.68 Cressy has shown that ‘March weddings were extremely rare in the Elizabethan period and unusual through most of the Stuart era’ but that the ‘Interregnum saw a softening of the observance of Lent’.69 Smithsby was a saddler and underkeeper to James Hamilton, first Duke of Hamilton, Charles I’s Master of the Horse. Smithsby’s position was linked to Hamilton at the ‘capital mansion, house and new garden and orchard’ of Hampton Court.70 Given that they were to have eight children together Martha Smithsby must have been relatively young when she married Blackwell. The Blackwell–Smithsby marriage may have derived from Blackwell’s father supplying the royal household, to which Smitshby was also connected and the webs of networks across London’s merchant community.71 The potential benefit of supplying the royal household is suggested by Aylmer’s tables of offices within it, but, as he points out, luck played a large part in whether working for the Crown benefitted or bankrupted those who secured contracts and posts.72 In 1640 the scope of Smithsby’s resources are suggested by him extending Charles I £10,000 credit.73 This sum was secured by the customs farmers, merchants who had paid the Crown for the right to collect customs revenue. The link to the customs farmers for this credit was still to be a legal
