Huguenots in Britain

and their French

Background, 1550-1800

Contributions to the Historical Conference of the Huguenot Society of London, 24-25 September 1985

Edited by

Irene Scouloudi

Honorary Editor and Vice-President

The Huguenot Society of Great Britain and Ireland

MACMILLAN PRESS

(1987)

8      Huguenots in the English Silk Industry in the Eighteenth Century

Natalie Rothstein

Many years ago Peter Thornton and I attempted to demonstrate the significance of the contribution made by the Huguenot element to the production of the silks for which the original designs existed in the Victoria and Albert Museum.¹ Much further information has come to light since, many records, many silks, much more about particular families in the industry. At the beginning of the present year, therefore, it seemed now urgent to put this information in some context. How many Huguenots were there, who were they, where did they come from and where did they go, what did they do and what, if anything, was their special contribution to the industry? There are several ways in which this could be done but my existing knowledge about individuals suggested that a reasonably accurate assessment could be made by counting the Huguenots in the Weavers’ Company of London at ten-year intervals (see Table 8.1) and then comparing certain specimen periods with the insurance policies taken out by weavers at the time. I have so far looked at two periods, 1703-10, when fire insurance was still a novelty, and 1765-74. A similar comparison will be made later this year with the seven to ten years around 1733 and 1793. It could be argued that rate books would give a more complete picture but there is no way of determining who is a weaver (and this is not a demographic study). Moreover, the ratepayer may be the landlord and not all the rate books for the relevant areas of London have survived.

Several qualifying points must be made: first, while the names have been listed by me it has often been an arbitrary decision whether someone is a Huguenot or not and I can only apologise for any inaccuracies. Second, on the principle that those listed by the Clerk at least started the year alive all those marked ‘dead’ have been included.

Table 8.1 Huguenots in the Weavers’ Company of London

H stands for Huguenot

At the beginning of the century when Canterbury, was still important 17.6 per cent of the Company were Huguenots. The percentage of Huguenots rose until they formed a fifth of the Company in the 1720s. The 1730s were very difficult years for the Company when it was losing its grip upon the trade. It was increasingly short of money and thus unable to pursue the non-freemen and the lapsed freemen. (Some of those eventually caught had managed to escape paying dues for thirty or forty years.)² It will be seen that they had lost 2000 in the ten years 1733-43. Until the 1740s the Huguenot element, despite its size, had had negligible power in the company. Hardly any Officers, Assistants, or even members of the Livery had French names. The Company however, had been very active in affairs of general interest to the industry, co-opting ‘gentlemen from the trade’ for particular committees as it needed them. Three very important exceptions were Colonel and Captain Peter Lekeux (their ranks in the City Trained Bands) and James Leman, designer and manufacturer. Both families came from Canterbury and in Leman’s case also from Amsterdam,³ and both became Assistants on the Court of the Weavers’ Company. Leman, indeed, played an active part in the great anti-calico campaign of 1719-21 (Plate XVIII, figures 1-4, 6).⁴ In 1740, however, the Company swallowed its prejudices and recruited all the prosperous French weavers it could catch for the Livery, forty-five men, an action reflected in the figures for 1743-4. It was a step of immense significance both for the future of the Company and the industry. Although the total size of the Company continued to decline the French element gained a significant voice - 8 per cent of the Court and 20.27 per cent of the Livery in 1743 (a year when the last attempt at sumptuary legislation was defeated)⁵ 1763-73. The decade of greatest crisis in the industry, 1763-1773, opened with 29.1 per cent of the Court and 22.81 per cent of the Livery Frenchmen. Despite the fact that the Company was only a third of its size at the beginning of the century it was the natural, official spokesman for the industry. The journeymen, for the most part non-freemen by this time, came to the Court with £100 for the parliamentary campaign to secure the total prohibition of French silks.⁶ This was achieved in 1766, reaffirmed in 1786, and only repealed in 1824 with effect from 1826. The Upper Bailiff, the highest office in the Company, in 1762 was Peter Campart, from Normandy; in 1763 Thomas Abraham Ogier, born in Poitou; in 1764 Peter Lekeux, weaver of flowered silks and the third of his family in the industry (Plate XX, figure 3). In 1765 the Upper Bailiff was English (John Hinde) but the Renter Bailiff, second in

command, was Zachariah Agace from Normandy and the Upper Warden Peter Arnaud (Upper Bailiff in 1773). Only in 1766 when the battle was won were all the officers English. As their numbers in the table show the Huguenots in the influential ranks of the Company formed a consistently higher percentage than their numbers in the Company as a whole. Once recruited for the Livery they remained. When, in 1793/4, the Company had shrunk to 1157 people of whom only 8.7 per cent were Huguenots they still formed 16.6 per cent of the Livery. Their addresses and occupations were given on this quarterage list. Thus 79 per cent of the Huguenots on the Livery and only 44 per cent of the English were weavers. It is arguable that it was the Huguenot element, therefore, which prolonged the active life of the Company long after many other companies were becoming formal associations of business men; Their loyalty to it was given additional lustre by their ability as witnesses before Parliament. Sixty-three witnesses appeared before the two select committees of 1765 and 1766, including those appearing before both committees. Fifteen of these were Huguenots, several appearing twice.⁸ All the master weavers were members of the Weavers’ Company.

Thanks to the help of Mr Stuart Turner and his assistants, all volunteers, who have been extracting the textile trades from the Sun Insurance Company policy registers, coupled with my own work on the Hand in Hand Insurance Company which covers London, it is evident without any doubt, that, apart from a few individuals the Huguenots gravitated to two textile centres only, initially Canterbury, and then London. They did not make serges in Devon, they did not even go to Coventry which made both silks and ribbons, nor Norwich, long associated with such immigrants. Outside London, they did not make the plain linens, fustians, sacking and sailcloth which some must have made in France. A weaver admitted to the Company on the basis of his service in Caen was certainly not making silks.⁹ Thus, by counting the Huguenots in the London industry we do arrive at totals which are not unrealistic.

There is the problem of non-freemen. There were tax and political advantages for the English to join their company (which they were supposed to do anyway) enough, judging from their insurance policies, to attract two coffee-house keepers and an innkeeper in the earlier period. Others may not have been practising weavers since they lived too far away from the centres of the industry. The Huguenots had to join to practise their profession and, despite some grumbling, probably felt too insecure in the first twenty years of the eighteenth century to flout its rules. 119 weavers - 11.37 per cent of the total - insured their property with the Hand in Hand between 1703 and 1710. Twenty English and five Huguenots were outside the Company. The latter were Christian Dangre of Pelham Street, Peter Hemard of Cox Square who probably were indeed weavers. I have also included John Larchevesque ‘gentlemen’ because most of his family were certainly weavers in Canterbury and London although he may have retired. John Lekeux, listed on one of the Company’s searches and living in Stuart Street in the Old Artillery Ground in the heart of the silk-weaving district, was described as a ‘merchant’ when he subsequently became bankrupt. John Le Scallet may have begun life as a weaver but kept a coffee-house. Thirteen Huguenots with fire insurance belonged to the Company including Peter Leman (James Leman’s father), Peter Lekeux and Peter Marescoe (plates XVIII, XIX, XX) named as one of the founders of the industry in the nineteenth century.¹⁰ The number of weavers insuring their property had risen to 233 in the period from 1765 to 1774; of these people ninety-three, or 39.9 per cent, were members of the Weavers’ Company. Twenty-six Huguenots insuring their property were members of the Company and fifty-four (including at least one who had lapsed) were not.¹¹ Thus just over a third of the policy-holders were Huguenots. The majority of policy-holders were concentrated in Spitalfields, Moorfields, Bishopsgate and Bethnal Green. There were nine in Southwark, all English and all outside the Company. Twenty-six in other parts of London, eight at retirement addresses, three making ribbons in the City and, interestingly, one London gauze-weaver with an address in Paisley. One widow of a Huguenot weaver kept an ale-house and one plush-weaver was established in Westminster. Fire insurance was obviously sensible and it is perhaps surprising that more weavers, both English and Huguenot did not have it. Some of the early immigrants were denizened and only the richest went to the expense of naturalisation in order to pass on property but this was hardly true in the 1770s.

The Huguenots traced so far had come from three main areas of France: Picardy, Bas Poitou, and Normandy - the map in the catalogue of The Quiet Conquest shows the communities in France.¹² Some individuals came from elsewhere and the origins of many are unclear since members of the same families in France might be established in different provinces. It has not proved easy to tie up specific individuals, partly because the same Christian names may be used for successive generations and partly because of the complications of intermarriage. The Maze family, for example, married Lamberts in several generations and the Lardants and Lardaus married Deheulles. Some families were established for so long in Canterbury that their French origins are no longer mentioned in the registers of the French Churches in England.¹³ One fact is quite certain: only a very few people came from Lyon - where Protestants were not permitted to enter the silk industry.

Why did they enter the silk industry - and stay in this trade in the case of some families for one hundred years or more? Part of the answer may lie in the establishment of the community in Canterbury in the sixteenth century. There was thus a natural centre in which new refugees could find shelter on their way in and out of England. Somner in his Antiquities of Canterbury, published in 1640, spoke about the ‘Strangers Church. A congregation for the most part of distressed exiles grown so great and daily multiplying that the place in a short time is likely to prove a hive too small to contain such a swarm’.¹⁴ Certainly, many did go on to London and their names are found in the first surviving quarterage list of 1680 as well as in Canterbury. Among the regular contributions to the funds of the Walloon Church in Canterbury in the late seventeenth century are those from London. Opinion had changed by 1719. ‘Those who settled here wove all sorts of plain, fine, flowered and wrought silks ... English silks equal if not exceed for fineness and curious workmanship any that are in the world. All of which improvements are owing to these Walloons’ but Harris rebuked ‘Mr Sumner grumbling at their increase’.¹⁵ By then, however, the Canterbury families were rapidly migrating to London. Some seventy-two Huguenot families associated with the silk industry in Canterbury and in London have been traced so far. By comparing the names with those on the quarterage lists it seems that the majority had moved by 1703 (see Table 8.2).

Many of these had been quite poor in Canterbury in 1699, for example, the elders paid the expenses of an Ouvry child and a dress for a child L'Heureux.¹⁶ Twenty-seven of these families came originally from Normandy. Twelve families described as silk-weavers in Canterbury either died out or failed to make the move. Many of those who did move, like the Duthoits, retained their links with Canterbury until the end of their lives ( late XXIII, figure 1).¹⁷ By 1777 William Gostling could write of the Huguenot community in Canterbury ‘They maintained their own poor and still do ... By the removal of most of their descendants to Spitalfields and the uniting of others with English families they are so reduced that at present there are hardly ten weavers and about eighty communicants’.¹⁸ Mr Turner’s work has revealed several active Huguenot weavers and others in the mid- and later eighteenth century in Canterbury,¹⁹ and taking our work on the two insurance companies together we find that several London weavers insured premises in Canterbury or vice versa.²⁰ The precise business relationship between the two I am still exploring - I suspect that some of the debtors in the inventories of Canterbury weavers in the late seventeenth century may be London weavers for whom the Canterbury people were sub-contracting, or London mercers. Despite the problems earlier in the seventeenth century ,²¹ by the turn of the eighteenth century the relationship seems to have been a friendly one. James Leman employed two of the Manneke family possibly cousins rather than brothers, Philip and Benjamin (Plate XVIII, figure 5), as well as a journeyman called Shoulder.

Table 8.2 Huguenot families on Canterbury quarterage lists, 1703-64

To explain the growth of the silk industry - in all its branches - a wider view needs to be taken. The Huguenots entered every Branch:²² Plain, Fancy (gauze, etc), Black, Foot-Figured and Flowered, narrow and handkerchiefs as well as becoming dyers, throwsters, and, in due course, silkmen, brokers, satin dressers, waterers of tabby, and designers. No branch was exclusively staffed by Frenchmen. While the process of lustering silks to make alamode and lustering was a French invention there are few other patents in the period. The rise in the demand for silks must be explained by more general economic factors: the difficulties faced by Lyon at the end of the seventeenth century owing to the economic strain of Louis XIV’s wars. There is a desperate letter from the Chambre de Commerce in Lyon in 1707 to their intendant in Paris owing to the cessation of all trade. English trade, on the other hand, was increasing with rapid growth in demand, especially from the American Colonies. Not only did this bring a new market but the riches to be gained in such a trade and all that went with it created a demand for consumer goods which benefited such an industry. It is clear that the move to London was very much in the interests of the Canterbury families (their goods in the inventories examined so far are much more modest than those of the later Spitalfields master weavers) and that the expansion of the industry prompted members of Protestant families who had remained in France to come over. The Ogiers from Poitou, a most important family, came over in several groups.²³ Work on the Normandy contingent in 1985 has revealed several interesting facts. The immigrants from the Pays de Caux in Normandy provided a disproportionate number of people whose families became of great importance later. The Pasteur Denis Vatinel reports that for several years there was no Protestant marriage in the district so young people had to come to England to marry - and obviously many stayed.²⁴ The small town of Luneray which is set in rich agricultural land and which, subsequently, wove fustians (linen and cotton mixtures, as did a number of the neighbouring towns and villages) sent an extraordinary number of such families to England.²⁵ There are still Protestant Lardants, Ouvrys, L'Heureux in the town who, presumably, preserved the family property by various means.

Although every branch of the silk industry - including the weavers of mixed fabrics - had a proportion of Huguenots, their greatest impact both on contemporaries and since was in the Flowered branch. It must even be argued that there were plenty of Englishmen before, during the height of their involvement, and afterwards in this branch. We have to cite as proof Joseph Dandridge, naturalist and silk designer, who lived from 1664 to 1747 and was a member of the Merchant Taylors’ Company. In his teens he worked for James Leman and we have some of his designs.²⁶ Anna Maria Garthwaite was most emphatically English but of her customers thirty-three were Huguenots and twenty-two including the mercers, English.²⁷ The nursery for some of this talent may well have been Canterbury. Stephen Duthoit’s inventory (he died in 1698) included fifteen montures (the figure harnesses of drawlooms) at 20s each and seven looms at 10s. Apart from raw silk his stock included lutestring, damask, and a material called sultan. These are valued at 3s to 4s 6d for the lutestring, 4s 6d for the damask, and 7s for the sultan, of which he had 1201 yards. His production was thus quite large but these are not the most expensive silks.²⁸ Peter Le Hook who died in 1690 had four looms and five montures but the total value of his goods was £223 10s 1d, not a very impressive sum.²⁹ More investigation is needed but if my first impression is correct then at least the new immigrants would have been able to learn their basic techniques in Canterbury. It cannot be over-emphasised that both to design for and to weave on the drawloom, the ‘monture’ of the inventories, it is necessary to understand it. Silk was expensive, and when James Leman gave ‘Ben Manckey’ his ‘first draught work’ he was presumably satisfied with his weaving of plain silks and his progress in understanding the drawloom. Of the designers the origins of Christopher Baudouin (Plate XIX, figures 3 and 4; Plate XX, figures 1 and 2) remain, so far, obscure (though there were Baudouins in Canterbury) and he was the most celebrated.³⁰ John Vansommer’s work for over forty years is now represented by a firescreen and a series of beds at Petworth. Vansommer was a second-generation immigrant and a correspondent of Voltaire.³¹ Peter Cheveney said in his evidence to the Select Committee of 1765 that he came from Lyon and he became, briefly, a partner in Vansommer’s firm of Ogier, Vansommer and Triquet. (Peter Ogier came from Chassais l’Eglise in Poitou.) Peter Mazell is known only by name,³² and Peter Abraham de Brissac was a hack designer who provided patterns for both silks and printed cottons, being paid more for the latter. His connections seem also to have been with the Poitevin contingent. We do not know who designed the waistcoat patterns sold by Maze and Steer (Plate XXIII, figure 2), nor, indeed, which Maze was the senior partner. The designers of the silks woven by Batchelor, Ham and Perigal are unknown.

No silks woven from the designs of Leman or Baudouin have yet come to light but we can judge the quality of production by those woven by Huguenot master weavers to the designs of Anna Maria Garthwaite. In addition, there are silks woven by Batchelor, Ham and Perigal and by Maze and Steer. Since it is impossible to identify plain silks the patterned silks are doubly important in this context. Not only were they fashionable (they would not otherwise have sold) but the quality is, indeed, uniformly excellent. Designs woven by Roeloff Grotert, Simon Julins, (Plate XXI, Figure 3) Captain Peter and his son Mr Peter Lekeux (Plate XX, Figures 2, 3; (Plate XXI, Figure 3). Mr Pulley, Mr Sabatier and Mr, probably Daniel, Vautier survive (Plate XXII, Figures 1, 2). It is impossible to know who their journeymen were since no account books or similar information exists. Lekeux’s waistcoat of 1747 now in the Metropolitan Museum and shewn in the Rococo exhibition in the Victoria and Albert Museum in 1984 would be outstanding in any context (as were the Lekeux family themselves). Slightly less dramatic are the samples from the Desormaux and Duthoit families (Plate XXIII, figure 1) - but they survive from a period when silk design was not required to be as dramatic.³³ All are technically accomplished, wasting no silk on the back of the textile, for instance, and carrying out their designs faithfully. More of Julins’ damasks have survived than the silks of any other weaver (Plate XXI, figure 3) and three of these are in the USA, preserved in former American colonial families. Two are in Boston, Massachusetts, and date from 1751 and 1752, while the third -for which the design was sold in 1743 - is worn by Mrs Charles Willing in a painting by Robert Feke dating from 1746.

If we can accept their efficiency as silk-weavers what else did they achieve? Their most obvious success was their prosperity, Although the contingent from Bas Poitou had probably been among the gentry of their province the Normans, with the exception of the Maillard family who came from the bonne bourgeoisie rurale, were not, and they did not make much of a mark in the eighteenth century. Three of the Luneray families produced weavers of flowered silks, since they were customers of Garthwaite, including Vautier, her chief customer. The wills of many Huguenots in the silk industry refer to house property, a country house, money in public funds, books, silver, good furnishings, all accumulated by the third quarter of the eighteenth century. Few Huguenots went bankrupt. Their contribution to the Weavers’ Company has already been outlined but they were equally good citizens, serving on Vestry committees to repair the north steps of Christ Church or the cracked tenor bell, while John Sabatier (Plate XXII, figure 2) investigated the possibility of building a workhouse.³⁴ Seventy-seven firms with Huguenot partners, and fifty-five with English partners, offered men to fight the Young Pretender (1751 and 2038 men respectively). To judge from this list some of the English firms were larger. Huguenot loyalty to their adopted country was equally evident in their charities. They supported the London Hospital in their lifetime and usually left money to the ‘five London Hospitals’ or some of them, as well as to Huguenot charities. They were interested in education in the broadest sense, from the mathematical instruments and specimens referred to in his will by James Leman, to the school set up by the throwster Peter Nouailles in the early nineteenth century for his workpeople. (Those who learned to read received a Bible as a prize.) They undertook the boring but important duties in the community, from auditing the accounts of Christ Church, Spitalfields, to giving evidence in 1759 on the paving of Norton Folgate (Thomas Abraham Ogier, Zachariah Agace and one English weaver, James Payton).³⁵ They did not support the more unorthodox charities such as the Foundling Hospital but several joined the Royal Society of Arts.

There are certain features of the English silk industry quite unlike those in France: specialisation not only among the master weavers but by the journeymen was one, but this cannot be attributed to the Huguenot element especially. Nevertheless, Simon Julins was the unique weaver of damasks to advertise in Mortimer’s Directory of 1763. The Weavers’ Company did not lay down technical requirements such as there were in Lyon but there is no evidence that the English master weavers were any less competent than the French. The

analysis I made of the inhabitants of the streets of Spitalfields suggests a division by wealth and to an extent by speciality but not by country of origin.³⁶ Nevertheless, the immigrants from Canterbury certainly congregated and remained in the streets in the Old Artillery Ground. Immigrants from particular provinces often remained associated until the late eighteenth century but this must not be pressed too far for there were partnerships across provincial and national lines and intermarriage from the seventeenth century onwards. Some families, however, remained exclusively Huguenot until the nineteenth century. After the first ill-feeling had died away (there were still anti-French protests in the Weavers’ Company in 1715) Huguenots and English worked together amicably. The role of the French Churches in looking after their poor probably had much to do with the admiration which quickly superseded initial suspicion. We know little about the journeymen but few of the names of those relieved by the Threadneedle Street Church between 1681 and 1687 are those which were to become so familiar later.³⁷ The exceptions among the silk weavers are Isaac de l’Epine, Nicholas Lefevre, Pierre Paris, Nicholas Bourdon and Abraham de Heule, serge-weaver from Bolbec. While any generalisation can be contradicted by some flagrant exception I have found no evidence to contradict the opinion I had formed in 1960, when I wrote my thesis on the silk industry, that the weavers formed an intensely orthodox community, intelligent, skilled and enlightened within limits but, on the whole, generally anxious to be accepted as ‘gentlemen’, so often the appellation of those who survived into the later eighteenth century. The silks which have appeared since then show that they were very good at their job. Research upon the Huguenot community suggests that, although always outnumbered by the English, it was they who set the standards remembered with nostalgia in the nineteenth century.

Notes

1.         P. Thornton and N. Rothstein. ‘The Importance of the Huguenots in the London Silk Industry’ Proceedings of the Huguenot Society of London, (1958-64) vol. 20, pp. 69-73.

2.         Court Books of the Weavers’ Company, 12 June 1716, a man became free who had been apprenticed in 1663. Henry Robelon living in Brick Lane, Bethnal Green, bound 1704 to Daniel Oufrey, became free of the Company in January 1753. Ephraim Flamar was summoned 5 September 1748 but refused to be admitted until threatened with prosecution. He had been bound apprentice in November 1731 to Peter Fondimare.

3.         Témoignage of Peter Leman at the French Church in Threadneedle Street, January 1673. He was said to be of Amsterdam ‘natif de Cantorbery’. See Huguenot Society Quarto Series XXI, p. 168 W. and S. Minet (eds). Peter Leman was admitted to the Weavers’ Company, 20 July 1674 on the basis of his service to his father in Amsterdam. James Leman was apprenticed to his father in February 1702 and free 19 November 1711.

4.         There is a list of pamphlets in James Leman’s writing concerning this campaign among the papers of the Weavers’ Company in the Guildhall Library. The Campaign itself was described by me in East London Papers, vol. 7, no 1 (July 1964) pp. 3-21.

5.         27 January 1743. The Upper Bailiff (Captain John Baker, a weaver of flowered silks and a customer of Anna Maria Garthwaite) told the Court of a bill in the House of Commons ‘to prohibit the wearing of gold and silver lace thread or wire in apparel, in the event of which several members of this Company are concerned’. The committee formed to fight the measure included James Leman, Peter Lekeux and James Godin (Plate XXIV). ‘Gentlemen from the Trade’ to be co-opted included Daniel Gobee. There is a draft of their petition among Leman’s papers. The measure was defeated.

6.         Court Books, 28 March 1764. The Court had been prepared to admonish the journeymen’s deputation for being ‘a very disorderly and turbulent set of people’ - presumably they had to say ‘thank you’ instead!

7.         6 Geo 111 cap 28.

8.

9.         Court Books 20 February 1727.

10.       J. S. Burn, The History of the French, Walloon, Dutch and other Foreign Protestant Refugees Settled in England (London, 1846). The statement was repeated in most later nineteenth century accounts. All were associated together with Monceaux on designs now in the Victoria and Albert Museum (Plate XIX, figures 3 and 4; Plate XX, figures 1 and 2).

11.       Ivon le Nain.

12.       The Quiet Conquest: The Huguenots 1685-1985. Catalogue of the exhibition held at the Museum of London (1985) p. 19.

13.       R. Hovenden (ed.) Registers of the Walloon or Strangers’ Church in Canterbury (1891-8) Huguenot Society Quarto Series, vol. 5. Members of the Lekeux family appear in them from the late sixteenth century onwards.

14.       W. Somner, Antiquities of Canterbury (1640) p. 175.

15.       J. Harris, The History of Kent (1719) p. 63.

16.       Canterbury City and Diocesan Record Office U 47 C 1-3 Deacons Accounts. Two miscellaneous entries from November and December 1699. 1 am indebted to Miss Anne Oakley for kindly drawing my attention to these accounts.

17.       Quiet Conquest, p. 300. The family came from Marq-en-Bareul near Lille. Peter Duthoit, died 1777, had property in both Middlesex and Canterbury (PCC Collier f. 458) John Duthoit, died 1787, left money to his brother Henry, a weaver in Canterbury (PCC Major f. 61). Obadiah Agace, died 1755, left £100 to the Walloon Church of Canterbury as well as £100 to the Charity School run by the French Church in Threadneedle Street.

18.       W. Gostling, A Walk in and about the City of Canterbury, pp. 217-8, note.

19.       Josiah Dernocour, silk weaver, Canterbury, Sun Insurance Co., vol. 207, p. 599 (1771)

Peter de Lasaux, silk weaver, Canterbury, Sun Insurance Co., vol. 209, p.609(1771)

Samuel Fremoult, scourer, Canterbury, Sun Insurance Co., vol. 77, p. 97 (1746)

Peter Godiere, silk weaver, Canterbury, Sun Insurance Co., vol. 255, p. 64 (1777)

John Guerrard, silk weaver and hop planter, Canterbury, Sun Insurance Co., vol. 176, p. 519 (1767)

These are examples, for work is continuing. I am indebted to Stuart Turner, I. M. Garner and Ann Paton for these references.

20.       Charles Dalbiac, Stephen Barbut and John Jordan of London insured utensils and stock in a house in Canterbury in the tenure of John Calloway, silk weaver. Sun Insurance Co., vol. 203, p. 331 (1770).

John Landon of London, silk weaver, insured utensils and stock in the dwelling house of James Gant, silk weaver, in Canterbury, Sun Insurance Co., vol. 208, p. 411 (1771)

Abraham Macare, silk weaver, of Canterbury insured a house in St Ann’s, Westminster in 1705 and three more in 1707, Hand in Hand Insurance Co., Guildhall MS 8674/3 f. 451 and 8674/5 f. 239. Although the Pilons had a branch in London by 1703 Nicholas Pilon, silk weaver, insured a house in Canterbury in 1726. Sun Insurance Co., vol. 22, p. 144.

21.       The successful attempt by the Weavers’ Company of London to take over the Canterbury weavers in 1638 is outlined by Anne Oakley in her pamphlet, The French Connection: The Canterbury Walloon Connection (1985).

22.       The branches with capital letters are those recognised by the journeymen in their pay dispute of 1769 when lists of prices (that is, piece-rates) were published.

23.       N. K. A. Rothstein, The Silk Industry in London 1702-1766, London University MA thesis 1961, pp. 54-5, 198-202.

24.       Letter, 19 August 1985 ‘J’ai observé qu’entre 1685 et grosso modo 1698 tous les jeunes gens en âge de se marier traversent la Manche pour ne pas se soumettre au marriage catholique. Il n’y a PAS de mariage de Protestants en pays de Caux entre 1685 et 1688’. Official lists of families of 1698-9 show that the only ones to stay in France were those married before the Revocation or very recently by clandestine pastors. Monsieur Vatinel has studied the Protestant community in Normandy for over twenty-five years.

25.       Silk weavers with origins in Luneray: Battaille, Larchevesque, Lardant(s), Le Sadd, Ouvry, Peigne, Pilon, Vautier. At least eighty-two families in the London silk industry can be identified from the list of Norman Protestant families compiled by the Pasteur Denis Vatinel and deposited in the Archives Departmentales in Rouen. I am very grateful to Monsieur Daniel Lardans for photocopying this list for me, and for detailed information on the Huguenots in Luneray.

26.       An account of his career was given by me in East London Papers, vol. 9, no. 2, Winter 1966 ‘Joseph Dandridge, Naturalist and Silk designer’, pp. 101-18. Mr D. E. Allen and Mr W. S. Bristowe have explored his scientific work.

27.       They are listed on p. 292 cat. no. 439 of The Quiet Conquest.

28.       Maidstone County Record Office PRC 27/35/84, 23 October 1700.

29.       Maidstone County Record Office PRC 27/32/141, 1690.

30.       Thornton and Rothstein, ‘Importance of the Huguenots’, pp. 66-9 and 78-83.

31.       N. Perry ‘John Vansommer of Spitalfields: Huguenot Silk Designer, Correspondent of Voltaire’ in Studies on Voltaire and the Eighteenth Century LX (Geneva 1968) Institut et Musee Voltaire, Les Delices, pp. 289-310.

32.       M. Postlethwayt, A Dictionary of Trade and Commerce (1754) article on engraving. He is listed as one of the three designers who introduced the ‘principles of painting into the loom’, the others were John Vansommer and Anna Maria Garthwaite. His account is the first to mention Lanson, Mariscot and Monceaux and to state that ‘the first designer and pattern drawer was M. Boudoin’. He was very flattering about Joseph Dandridge but ignored James Leman.

33.       The development of English silk design in the eighteenth century is illustrated in D. King (ed.) British Textile Design in the V & A Museum, vols 1 & 2 (Tokyo 1980).

34.       The Vestry Committee to consider removing the steps on the north side of Christ Church, Spitalfields consisted of: Mr Snee, Mr Crush, Mr Jervis, Capt Garrett, Mr Lardant, Daniel Pilon, Capt Gilbert, Mr Peter Campart, Mr Samuel Worrall (a local builder), Mr Marsillat, two Mr Lanes, John Ouvry, Peter Abraham Ogier, John Haddow, Peter Duthoit and John Allen. Of the eight Huguenots only Mr Marsillat was not in the industry. Most of the Englishmen were also connected with the textile industries (Vestry Minutes 20 September 1743).

The cracked tenor bell was discussed on 19 November 1746 and the subsequent committee consisted of the Rector, John Peck, Esq. (dyer), Robert Turner Esq. (worsteds), Capt. Baker (flowered silks), Mr Campart (plain silks), Mr Jervis (in Weavers’ Company), Mr Thomas Turner (possibly the dyer) and Capt. George Garrett (in Weavers’ Company).

15 November 1752, John Sabatier reported on his inspection of workhouses.

35.       House of Commons Journals, vol. 28, p. 385.

36.       Rothstein, thesis, 1961, pp. 13-68.

37.       A. P. Hands and I. Scouloudi (eds) French Protestant Refugees Relieved through the Threadneedle Street Church, London 1681-87, Huguenot Society of London Quarto Series, vol. XLIX (1971).

Editor’s note

Fully detailed captions to Plates XVIII - XXIV inclusive will be found in the List of Plates on pp. xi-xiv.