The Kalendars' Guild, a Fraternity of Laymen and Clerics, Had Its Chapel

The Kalendars' Guild, a fraternity of laymen and clerics, had its chapel remained a great regional centre, supplying a region where wealth, and in All Saints Church and a house close by for its prior, who was charged therefore the demand for raw materials and consumer goods, was with the duty of maintaining a public library and giving regular instruc continuing to grow. Nor was there any decline in the enterprise of her tion therein. The main business of the city as a whole was still transacted merchants and mariners, as once again, from about 148o, they sought new in the Guildhall, though the Mayor held his court every weekday at the routes for their commerce, this time westwards across the Atlantic. But Tolzey. 32 it was to be many long years before voyages thither yielded such Practical charity was as much the concern of merchants and craftsmen dividends as to cause an expansion of the city of Bristol comparable to as it had once been that of feudal magnates, and the fifteenth century saw that between 1000 and 1300.34 the building of a number of new hospitals as well as the maintenance and sometimes reconstitution of existing ones. John Gaywode, business THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: associate of Canynges, left money to no less than nine almshouses in his THE ECONOMIC BACKGROUND will (1471). Canynges himself founded a new one on Redcliff Hill, and after his death (in 1474) his executor William Spencer, in accordance with In the two centuries following the accession of Henry VII the citizens of the terms of his will built another, dedicated to the Trinity, in Lewin's Bristol were closely connected with a series of momentous events at Mead opposite the Grey Friars. Richard Foster founded one by Reddiff home and abroad. Outstanding among them were the discovery of the Gate, and John Foster (mayor in 1481-2) built one at the top of Steep New World, the foundation of the Spanish and Portuguese Empires, Street for eight poor men, five poor women and a priest; each had a the Reformation and the Counter Reformation, the price revolution separate room and a garden, and there was a chapel attached, dedicated and the creation ofa new social structure in sixteenth-century England. In to God and the Three Kings of Cologne. Nor was the care of the poor the next century there was the revolt against authority of all kinds, the left to wealthy individuals. Some of the crafts made special provision for colonization of North America and at home the Civil War with the their members over and above the outdoor relief commonly expected of final establishment of the principle that England was to be governed by them. Thus the weavers and tuckers had their own almshouses, and in law. In economic matters there were the far-reaching effects of the the ancient hospital of St Bartholomew a new Fraternity of Mariners was astonishing growth of London, which had been accused as early as the established (1445) which maintained a priest and twelve poor mariners. 33 15 80S of having 'eaten up all the rest of the town and havens of England'. At the end of the fifteenth century Bristol's pre-eminent position To all these upheavals Bristol's citizens adapted themselves with remark among England's provincial towns seemed assured. Indeed a shrewd able success. Although there were years of depression, even of disaster Italian, visiting England in 15°O, declared that, except for York, there for some or all of the city's inhabitants, on the whole the period was a was no other really important town outside of London. Yet at that very prosperous one and triumphantly so after the restoration of Charles II, moment its exports were showing an ominous downward trend. when the enterprise ofearlier generations was rewarded in full measure. Exeter's trade was bounding as the Channel became safe from piracy and Economic changes were accompanied by a growth in population and inland clothing towns like Taunton shipped thence instead of through notable social and religious changes which gradually brought about con Bristol as formerly; increasing quantities of West of England cloth were siderable alterations in the city'S street pattern and the appearance of its going through Southampton, for sale in the Mediterranean; and London, houses. By 1700 its society had long been secularized and its government above all, was drawing away the West of England trade as the great re-organized to meet contemporary needs; its merchant elite, increasingly international marts of the Low Countries more and more became the influenced by dissenting opinions, had provided with exceptional principal outlet for English woollens. Thus while England's exports as a generosity for the education of the young and the care of the old; had whole soared, doubling during the first half of the sixteenth century, established the most advanced system of poor relief in the country; had Bristol's settled at a level barely half that of the late fourteenth century. re-orientated its foreign trade towards the Atlantic and revolutionized Nevertheless, dependent though she was upon international commerce its inland trade, so that the city could be said to be the best port after and upon the export of virtually one commodity only, her economy was London. Even as early as about 1639 Bristol had seemed to Peter Mundy more soundly based than that of many another port, for her many and 'a little London' for merchant shipping and great and well-furnished varied industries from bell-founding to cloth-making - and still more markets, and later Pepys wrote that he found the place 'another London' dyeing and finishing - gave her an enviable measure of stability, and her and that one could 'hardly know it to stand in the country'. And so it is trade was for the most part in the hands of her own citizens. Moreover, not surprising that Bristol merchants appeared to contemporaries to act with her excellent harbour and her superb geographical position, she with all the gravity, pomp, pride, and self-assurance of those of the capital, and that they aspired to obtain for their mayor the title of Lord Mayor, then enjoyed only by London and York.35 One of the immediate effects of the Reformation and the Dissolution 32 For the Tolzey see Ricart, 84; Nand T, ii, 106, and Appendix I; for the Kalendars, ibid. ii, 90; Knowles and Hadcock, 413; Wm Wore., 34, 35. The tailors' guild had a of the religious houses was the creation by a royal charter of 1542 of the hall off Broad St and their fraternity chapel of St John the Baptist was in St Ewen's Bishopric of Bristol and the grant of the title of City to the ancient town. (BAO 4954 (1), Wm Wore., 113), as was that of the goldsmiths (Church Bk ~r St This charter recognized the end of the independent jurisdiction once Ewen's, xxi). For the halls and guilds generally, see Rieart, 77, and GRB 1, 125 -6. enjoyed by St Augustine's monastery over its precincts and tenants in The City Council sometimes met in the vaulted hall beneath the chapel on the Bridge. the town and of the Hospitallers over Temple Fee. Arthur's Fee and the 33 Canynges' almshouse on RedcliffHill (see refs. in his will and in Gaywode's) was Berkeley'S famous ReddiffFee had long been absorbed, so except for the founded, according to Tanner, in 1442; Clay's date of 1422 seems improbably early. Castle Precinct which remained independent until 1630, the municipal The almshouse built after his death (see Wadley, Wills; Wm Wore., 149; cj. GRB iv, 68) in Lewin's l\fead is sometimes called 'Spencer's' or 'Lyon's'. Richard Foster was probably the Ric. Foster who was mayor three times (1436-7,1446-7,1447-8) and 'whose will is dated '450; his almshouse is mentioned in Caywode's will. For 3' Carus-\'(iilson and Coleman for export figures; Carus-Wilson (6), 20 and passim; John Foster's almshouse see GRB iii, 175; St AJark's Cart., 121-2 and App. iii; and (1), nos. 205,209; Ruddock, op. cit. as above in n. 94; D. B. Quinn, Geog. Jnl John was a ship-builder and traded actively to Iceland and elsewhere. For the cxxvii, pt. iii(1961). weavers' and tuckers' almshouses beneath their halls in Temple Street see Tanner 35 The Diary ofSamuel Pepys, ed. Lord Braybrooke (1 890), 519; The Life ofAfarmaduke op. cit. 484; Leland, Itin. v, 89; BGAS xxxii, 86; John Terumber's will 1488 Rawdon ofYork (Camd. Soc. 1863), 173; The Lilies oftbe Norths, ed. A. Jessop (I 890), (PRO, PCC Wills 4 Dogget). For the Fraternity oLMariners LRB ii, 186-92; i, para. 177; Lat. ii, 405-6 citing letter ofBishop Coulston (168 I); J. N. L. Baker in cj. Nand T, ii, 200. Historical Geography ofEngland before ISOO, ed. H. C. Darby (1963 edn), 387.

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officers now exercised control in theory at least over the whole County was the deliberate encouragement of voyages of discovery across the of the City. The new charter, with the earlier comprehensive one of 1499 Atlantic, first with the aim of finding new outlets for Bristol trade and and the later charter of I 58 I, completed the formal setting out ofBristol's then with a view to colonization. Since at least 1480 or so there was a oligarchic constitution and so provided the necessary framework ofgood small but active group of far-sighted merchants who risked their capital government for which she was long noted. Since 1499, the mayor and in such ventures, fitting out Bristol ships and engaging Bristol mariners. five aldermen (each being the head of a ward), had formed a small John Cabot himself was largely financed by them, and the Hakluyts with 'cabinet', which could take prompt decisions and guide the council of their mercantilist theories naturally found ardent support. Merchants like forty-three burgesses. This 'cabinet' and council were composed of the the Thornes were followed by such active promoters of colonization as most substantial citizens, men who had proved themselves in the world John Whitson, Robert Aldworth, and John Guy, the first governor of of business and affairs - the merchants, the retailers and manufacturers Newfoundland. Not surprisingly Sir Fernando Gorges, called the father such as grocers, mercers, haberdashers, vintners, soap-boilers and sugar of English colonization in North America, chose the Great House on St makers. By their ability and their philanthropy they kept the goodwill of Augustine's Back as a base for his operations in the 1630S and after. Of the populace. 36 the greatness of the overall achievement of the merchants and adventur Comparatively little is known about the trade of Bristol under the ers Thomas Fuller in his History of the Worthies of England (1662) had Tudors. In 1540 Roger Barlow commented on its 'grete trade and many no doubts: they were, he wrote, 'possessed with a public spirit for the ships belonging to hit'. Judged by its contribution to the subsidies of general good; aiming not so much to return wealthier as wiser; not 1523-7 it was still the second wealthiest town after London, but it is always to enrich themselves, as to inform posterity by their discoveries ... evident that many sections of the community were encountering difficul they have sown experiments, with great pains, cost, and danger that ties. It was because of poverty, for example, that Redcliff parish was ensuing ages may freely reap the benefit thereof'.39 granted a fair in 1529, and troubles over foreign trade led to a plea in It was in fact in the coming decades that the full reward came. Earlier 1552 from certain merchants for a grant of incorporation. Commerce, in the century the city's trade was mainly carried on with her traditional they said, was being disastrously affected by 'the meddling of ignorant European markets, though her ships had also been actively engaged in artificers' and others. Thus was born the Society of Merchant Venturers carrying Puritan emigrants to Virginia, New England, Maine and which was to playa dominant role in the city'S affairs for years to come. Massachusetts in the period 1620 to 1640, as well as in trade on a small In the first fifty years of its life it had to contend with foreign wars, scale. After the disruption of commerce caused by the Civil War this piracy, and severe competition from other ports, especialh' that of traffic was intensified, and Bristol began to playa principal part in the London. In 1596 the Common Council could with justice assert that transatlantic trade. Between 1654 and 1686 more than ten thousand London merchants had not only taken away much of Bristol's south indentured sen"ants - their names are recorded in the city's archives European trade but that they were also monopolizing the inland trade sa:led from the port in response to the demands for labour from Virginia, within ten miles of the city, which it described as 'this now poor place'; Mardand, Newfoundland, Ne\\" York, Pennsylvania, and the West two years later Lord Burghley could speak of Bristol as a decayed town Indies. But this is but one aspect of the extraordinary service rendered by along with Chester, Newcastle, Hull, and others. 37 .t\evertheless, there her to the i\ew World. She had the necessary mercantile organization was clearly a less gloomy side to the picture. Many citizens were still and drive as well as the ships and long-established regional and European making fortunes, as their wills reveal, some very possibly like their con connexions to enable her to become a principal distributing centre for temporaries at King's Lynn by large-scale smuggling; if others went to the increasing volume of colonial exports - mainly tobacco, sugar, seek better opportunities in the capital, such was the strength of local cotton, timber, and rum - and to meet the insatiable demand of the patriotism that they often eventually left their money to the charities for planters for manufactured goods. Above all, as Roger North, the city's the poor of their birth-place. Its reputation in any case remained high: Recorder observed, she had enterprising citizens, not only merchants, Camden's judgement was that the Elizabethan city could 'justly claim but petty shopkeepers who 'would venture a bale of stockings or a piece the chiefe place' after London and York.38 By the 1630S there were clear . of stuff in a cargo bound for Kevis or Virginia'. Trade with the West signs ofa revival. Indies and the American mainland was developed to such an extent in A Tudor development which now began to bear fruit in abundance the second half of the centun' that Bristol's fame was spread throughout the ,\merican continent and more than thirty places there came' to be called after it. This new interest b\' no means diminished her old trade 36 Charters (3), 1-19,93-4,125-34; Cbarters(2), 163 (1499 charter). Latham notes that with Europe; on the contran' it gave it a new impetus. In 1643 the the oligarchy \\-as old established, dating back in part to the charter of 1373. The Societ\' of ~Ierchant Venturers had obtained an important charter which Council was chosen by the mayor and two aldermen (increased to II and likewise the wards by the charter of I 5 8 I). OnIy after 1630 did t he Castle Precinct form a opened to its members the trade of the Eastland, the Russia, and the 12th ward, with the Recorder as its head: Cbarters (3), 5, Ion. 3, 76 n. 7. j\rthur's Levant Companies as well as that of the Merchant Adventurers of Lon Fee or 'Acre' with its separate prison and independent jurisdiction included part don. Armed with this charter and the advantage of established links with of the N. end of Redclitf St and part of Tucker St; it had been absorbed by 1410: C;RB i, 100, 104, 107,252 etc.; LRB i, 78 sqq.: for the Berkeley Fee see above p. 11. the transatlantic markets, Bristol's merchants were able after the Civil The Hospitallers' claims to independence of burghal regulations were causing War to set about expanding her re-export trade as well as the export of trouble as late as 1534: Nand 1', i, 239. her own manufactures. The whole pattern of the city's commerce was 37 \\'. G. Hoskins, Local History il1 England(I972 edn), 239; :,lcGrath (2), xii-xv; for thus altered. To Spain and to other European countries she sent foreign other indications of depression see Charters (3), 121; Lat. i, 62-3, 99-101, 109-110; Lat. ii, I (Latimer's valuable work is based on 'account books of the Corporation, goods such as tobacco, wine, raw sugar, ginger, and a great variety of ancient deeds and other documents, and minutes of the Privy Council'); Crisis and English goods including coal and other minerals, as well as every sort of Order in English Towns, 1}00-1700, ed. B. Clark and P. Slack, 12. textile, now gathered from as far afield as Manchester. Port statistics 38 McGrath (4), 209-10; cj. C;. D. Ramsay, Rnglish Ot'erseas Trade dllril!,~ the celltllries oj Emergence (195 7),141; Camden, Britanllia(Eng. Trans. by P. Holland, 16 37), 237· For smuggling see Ramsay, Trans. RHS 5th ser. 2 (1952), 137 sqq. and especially p. 142; J. Tann and Lobel 'Gloucester', in Historic TOll/l1S, i (1969), cd. "\1. D. Lobel; 39 For a summary of early voyages of exploration made or financed by Bristol cf N. J. Williams, EHR Ixvi (195 I), 387. For London donors to Bristol charities merchants see Ross, BAC, 181 ; C. 1\[, :'IlacInnes, A Gateway ojI'.mpire (1968 edn), see W. K. Jordan, 'The Charitable Institutions ofthe \X'est ofEngland' in Trans. oj chaps. 1-3. For merchant encouragement of exploration and colonization in the the Philosophical Soc., N.S. 50, pt 8, p. 19; Wadley, Wills, passim; Lat. i, 81-4, for early 17th century see :,IcGrath (2), nos. 415-25; MacInnes, Ferdinando Gorges and John Carr, soap-maker ofLondon and Bristol and founder of Queen Elizabeth New England(BBHA, 1965 ),Passil1l, and his Gateway, 89 sqq.; Fuller, op. cit. Hospital. (1840 edn), iii, I 16; for the merchants' great houses see below map 2.

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BRISTOL

register the great increase in exports and imports during the century, the general prosperity, proliferated so that even at the end of the six both to and from America and Europe; but they give only a partial pic teenth century there were over one hundred trades engaging apprentices

ture for as in the sixteenth century there was undoubtedly a vast amount and still more in the next century. 44 ofsmuggled goods that never paid any tax. 40 Thus it was that in this period Bristol was able to play an increasingly The oversea commerce of Bristol excites the imagination, but it \J.;as in dominant role as a centre of distribution and consumption in the \'x/est part the dramatic growth of its manufactures which made the great Country, a role that was considerably helped by the seventeenth-century expansion possible. Among the old established industries, the greatest improvements in river navigation and in travel by road.4s The regional the woollen industry - was still important though clearly on the decline, importance of the city had in fact always been a major factor in its and fortunes were being made from white-soap-making in the sixteenth growth, but the increase of manufactures, foreign trade, and population century and later as they were in the time of Richard 1. In 15 14 Sir Robert now gave it additional value. Competition from the 'great Wen' of Thorne was said to have had 'all the rule of it' and to have bestowed the London had seriously alarmed the cit\"'s merchants in Elizabeth's reign, 'greatest alms ever given in Bristol'. But in Charles 1's reign the restric but the threat was triumphantly fought off. As Defoe was later to observe tions imposed by the London patentees and excessive taxation soon the merchants of Bristol traded 'with more independency of London reduced the Bristol soap houses from eleven to four.41 Ship-building, on than any other town'. It was the Bristol market, for instance, and not the the other hand, after a period of decline was prospering, though at the London one that fixed the price of corn in the West Country in the six close of the seventeenth century it was alread\' feeling competition from teenth century. \'Vhen the extent ofher demand for corn is seen this causes ports such as Chester and Liverpool. It benefited from the overall growth no surprise. A petition to the Privy Council of 1630 states that corn was of commerce and particularly from the oceanic trade which led to a then brought in small barques from Denm, Cornwall, Pembroke and demand for ships of large tonnage. As Secretan" for the Navy Pepys was Glamorgan, and when these counties failed to supply sufficient Somerset, an informed observer and he noted with delight the Royal-:\avy frigate of Gloucester, and Wiltshire filled the gap. In return, Bristol despatched eleven hundred tons, then building in the 1Iarsh; and before 1683 the raw materials, foreign and native, as well as manufactured goods. The Dean and Chapter had disposed of the canons' Little Marsh as a ship coastal ships in ever increasing numbers were loaded with cargoes of building yard. Understandably, this was followed by an episcopal com such goods as nails, leather, soap, sugar, candles, salt, grocery, cloth, plaint that the noise and stench from the workshops was 'an intolerable wool and tobacco, as well as iron, lead and other minerals. They sailed

nuisance and damaging to his health and comfort'.42 for the ports of Severn, Wales, and the south-\vest of England, and they Chief among the new industries was sugar refining. Alderman Robert returned with equally miscellaneous cargoes. The distribution ofminerals Aldwortb, using sugar imported from the .\zores, the Madeiras, and had, in fact, been an important part of Bristol's trade since at least the Brazil, set up the first known sugar-house in the grounds of his own close of the fifteenth century. Without this help the industrialization of mansion near the church of St Peter, while Knight's refinery on St South Wales would have been considerably retarded. 46 Augustine's Back, established after the Ciyil 'W'ar, \vas the first of a series The accessibility of Bristol by land and water also ensured the con associated with the English colonies in the \'('est Indies - refineries that tinued repute of its fairs, above all of St J ames's fair. The latter was still Pepys described as one of the glories of Bristol. Another colonial import, held as in the Middle Ages in the churchyard of St James's church, in the that of tobacco, led to the growth of a new major industry, since the Horse Fair and the central streets. It was attended by merchants from smoking habit had become universal both in England and Europe, and Ireland, the Continent and from all O\'er England. It was regarded as the to the subsidiary- one of clay-pipe making. n In addition, there was the greatest business gathering in the kingdom. 4i remarkable early development of heavy industE. Bristol's advantage lay The importance of the merchant class in all these developments in her local coalfIelds ofwhich one, Kings\vood Chase, was but two miles cannot be over-emphasized, for it was only through their organized away, and in her easy access to other sources in G loucestershire and efforts that the necessary capital could be raised. They formed a close but Somerset as well as to the lead, copper, zinc, and silYer mines of Somer far from exclusive socien', bonded together by mutual interest and set, the tin of Devon, and the ores of North Spain. Cannon founding, marriage. They exercised a dominant influence in the government of the gun-shot making and by 1705 the first brass ever made in England were city, occupied all the key positions in the Council, and in the seventeenth consequently among her many products. Minor trades, encouraged by centun' out of thirty-one members of Parliament twenty were members of the Society. Their influence, wealth, outstanding philanthropy, civic pride, and serious attitude to life transformed the city's social and physical structure, as well as its economy.48

40 For cmigrants and indcntured servants see 'IlcGrath (3), nos. 320, 322-3; Lat. ii, 147,405 (Quaker emigrants to Pennsyh"ania in 168 I); )'lacInncs, Cate~'ay, 14 8 7 1. For commerce see McGrath (2) and (3) passim and especially (2), xx, XXXy-xxxvi,

xxxviii, (3), xix-xx, no. 243 (the depression of the I 62OS); (2), 262-4, (3), 279-95

(statistics of imports and exports) and (3) 227-74; cj. R. Davis, /1 Commercial H G. A. Kellaway and F. B. A. Welch, BAC 19 sqq.; other coalfields were Ashton Revolution (BBHA, 1967), 9-10. For smuggling see abO\"e. Yale, Crofts End, \\'interbourne etc. For industrics see W. Rees IndliStry before the

41 For the woollen industry see R. Perry, BGAS lxvi (1945),73 sqq.; for Irish IlIdllslria/ReI'0/lition(1968), i, 134-j; Baker, oJ). cit. (n. 35 above), 387; competition see ).IcGrath (3), nos. 26 I, 263. For medieyal and latcr soapmakers see F. \1. Eden, State ofthe Poor(I 797), 183. For the variety of occupations: McGrath, Scycr, ii, 14; Wadley, Wills, passim; The Company ofSoap1J/akers, 1562-1642 (BRS x, BAC 209 and n.; Deposition Bks, ii, I650-j4 (BRS xiii, 1947), ed. H. E. Nott 1939), ed. H. E. ).Iatthews, 4-9. The starchmakers were also thrcatencd by the and E. Ralph,passim. patcntees and indeed all merchants and shopkcepers were ur in arms against thc .5 Sce abo\"e p. 2, ns. 4, 6 . ceaseless interference by commissioncrs and pursui\"ants: Lat. ii, 130-31, 144· •, Defoe, A TOllr throllgh England and W7ales (Eyeryman edn 1928), ed. G, D, H, Cole, 42 1\IcGrath (3), no. 203; Lat. ii, 98-9, 128-9,390; J. \\'. Po\\"cll, Bristol Pritateers and ii, 36; S. B. Gras, Tbe El!olulion ofthe En!r;lisbCorn Market (I 91 j), 122-4; Privy Ships of War (1930), 3-17; R. Da\"is, The Rise ofthe English Shipping Indl/Stry inlhe COllncil MillS. 1630, no. 341; Rces, op. cit. i, 133; ii, 573. IJth and I Stb centuries (1962), 3 i, 37, 38; D. C. Colcman ('~a\'al Dockyards', Ec. H R "Lat. ii, 61-2, 110,237,381 sqq., 462 (St James's Fair). John Ogilby wrote that vi, 1953, p. 138) states that onI\' at London and Bristol \\"ere there private yards though Bristol \\"as computed equal to I loth part of London it enjoved I hth of 'which could rcadily be put to the ~ avy's assistance' ; cj. pp. 137, 152 for warships the trade: Britannia (1675), 141. For a general account of the return to rrospcrity in built in Stuart period; see also map 3; Pcrys' J)iary, op. cit. 519· the 17th ccntury see Ramsay, Englisb Ourseas Trade, chap. 5. 43 Lat. ii, 44; 1. V. Hall, lxviii (I 949), 110 sqq. For Eyelyn's comments sce The Diary • s r:or merchant families and their predominant influence see McGrath (2), xxi-xxx, ofJohn Evelyn, ed. E. S. de Beer, iii, 102-3. For tobacco imports (partly re-exported) 13 j-6, 149 and passim; ibid. (3), x sqq., 42 sqq. "-Ir ).lcGrath's ,·iew is that the see statement in Commons in 1670 that of the 6000 tons ofshipping possessed by Society of'lfcrchants acted in many ways as a Corporation Committee for trade Bristol half was employed in the tradc. and navigation.

BRISTOL

THE SIXTEENTH AND SEVENTEENTH CENTURIES: that clothworkers with their racks were still there in force as in the Middle TOPOGRAPHICAL AND SOCIAL CHANGES Ages, but now there was no Canynges or his like. Temple in fact had become a distinctly poor quarter in spite of new industries having been The great development in foreign and inland trade and the general sited there. On the north bank St Werburgh's little parish with its expansion of the economy sketched above could not fail to leave its mark fashionable Small Street was clearly very prosperous, St Augustine's was on every aspect of the city's social and physical structure - on the size both outstandingly rich and populous, while the parish of St Philip and and distribution ofits population, on its houses, on the public buildings, St Jacob was definitely a poor-class quarter.5l secular or religious, on its industrial buildings and on the port itself with The Dissolution of the monasteries played an important part in these its quays, wharves, and cranes. It is not possible to make more than a changes. Their buildings, gardens, orchards or farm lands, ringing the rough estimate of the population in 1500 or to trace with any precision town on the north bank, and those of the Hospitallers, the Hospital of the stages of its growth in the two following centuries, but the national St John the Baptist and the Augustinian Friary on the south bank passed trend was upwards during the sixteenth century and it seems likely that mostly into secular uses. The chief exception were the buildings and this was so at Bristol and that numbers may even have doubled between property of the Abbey of St Augustine. The Abbey church, or part ofit, 1500and 1700.49 for the nave was destroyed, became the Cathedral church of the Holy and Possibly there was some increase in the late Middle Ages for the town Undivided Trinity, and was renamed the Trinity College; part of the escaped the worst effects of plague and trade decline which afflicted most Abbey buildings became the Bishop's residence, and the monastery's others; certainly there was immigration ofapprentices in the early decades property round about it and scattered through the city was transferred of the sixteenth century from neighbouring counties, Wales and Ireland; to the new diocese. The City Corporation early adopted the royal and in 1544 the population was at least twice that of the shire town and anticlerical policy and in 1533 chose Thomas Cromwell as its Recorder; river port ofGloucester. Growth is also implied in the charter of I 58 I by in due course it became, as might be expected, the chief secular bene which the number of aldermen and wards was more than doubled and ficiary of the sales of monastic lands. By 1548 it had obtained from the when the city was described as ampla et populosa. Commercial stagnation, Crown Gaunt's Hospital with its surrounding land and most of its recurring outbreaks of plague and the disaster of Civil War all caused country estates; the buildings and possessions of the Carmelite and temporary checks to growth. Nevertheless the increase by 1700 was Francisan Friars, of Magdalene Nunnery, and of the Hospitallers. In substantial: the population then has been estimated at twenty or twenty addition, it also purchased the valuable estate of Lord Lisle (once owned five thousand. This increase was not on the extraordinary scale of that of by the Berkeleys) and small amounts of property in the city held by London, nor apparently was it as great as that of Norwich, but it must various religious houses from outside. The price of over £2,000 was be remembered that all enumerations, taxation lists, and the estimates raised with great difficulty, but the city was well-rewarded for its fore based on them are likely to be particularly unreliable in a crowded sea sight, for by 1604 when land values had risen steeply its estates had port with a mobile population, many poor, and a strong tradition of trebled in value. resistance to authority. Furthermore, already there were many living The chief private buyers were a former mayor of Bristol who bought just outside the city boundaries in suburbs which were physically and the Dominican Friary, and Londoners. St James's Priory went to a economically a part of Bristol though not yet so officially. 5 0 merchant, St John'S Hospital to Dr Owen, the King's physician, and so An increasing differentiation in the social structure also became on, but much of this property was later re-sold to Bristol merchants. evident in this period: as the numbers of the well-off middle class grew Along with the sites of the religious houses and their lands a great deal of so did those of the small tradesmen and craftsmen, of the poor and very house property in the city and its suburbs also changed hands, for poor (i.e. those listed by Gregory King as cottagers, paupers, vagrants, throughout the centuries there had been a constant flow of bequests of gypsies, thieves, and beggars). This was partly reflected in the distri tenements to religious houses outside the city as well as to local ones. bution of the city's inhabitants in its various parishes. The parish returns With the suppression ofthe chantries in Edward VI's reign yet more land of 1544 and a levy of 1574 clearly demonstrate the predominant position was secularized. This time the Corporation was less successful in its in numbers of communicants and in wealth of those in the ancient city purchases, being able to buy no more than the chapel of the Assumption and its suburbs on the north side of the A von over those on the south on Bristol Bridge. The endowments of the twenty or so other suppressed side. Numbers were nearly three times as great as on the south side and chapels were largely dissipated. Fortunately, the chapels of the Three the four northern wards were nearly seven times wealthier than the south Kings of Cologne and of the Holy Trinity, both attached to almshouses, ward ofTemple and Redcliff. The majority of rich merchants and traders for which the Corporation was trustee, were not included in the sale of naturally favoured the central parishes where they could live in close chantry estates. 52 proximity to the seat of government - the Tolzey, the Guildhall, and to The transfer of religious property to secular ownership had little im the main markets and best shops. But the expansion to the east in the mediate effect on suburban growth: rebuilding was largely confined to parishes of St James and of St Philip and St Jacob, as well as to the west the old town until after the Civil War, for it was national policy that in the parishes of St Stephen and St Nicholas - the area of the quays - is owners ofproperty must rebuild decayed houses in the main streets or on also noticeable. By 1700 very few rich families lived on the south bank. any vacant plot which had once been built on. This duty was specifically Leases of houses indeed in Temple, Tucker, and Redcliff streets reveal imposed on Bristolians by Parliament in 1540; the Corporation was ordered to act, failing action by the owners, for such houses 'might be replennyshed withe muche unclennes and filthe with pittes, sellers, and

49 J. Cornwall in Ec. H R (I 962), 57 and (1970),32; Apprentice Books, pt i, 1532-42 (BRS xiv, 1948), ed. D. Hollis, 197; Lat. i, 25 (The number of'houseling' persons no clergy, religious or children being included - recorded in 17 parishes in 1544 51 Lat. i, 25,60; Ralph and Williams, op. cit., passim and cj. parish assessments for the was 5,876. St Augustine's was omitted); Charters (3), 10, 126 (158 I charter). For proposed rate of 1657 and land tax of 1693: Lat. ii, 273, 467. The Hearth Tax the census of 1607-8 which enumerated 10,547 persons see Nand T, iii, 273. (E 179/161/173) of 1670 records the highest numbers ofpoor in the wards of

50 For plague see Lat. i, 62; ii, 19, 32,40, 196, 333; local chroniclers record c. 3,000 St James, St :Mary Redcliff and Temple. For fullers' leases etc. see BAO AB I I (i), deaths in both 1603 and 1645; Tbe inbabitants ofBristol in I696 (BRS xxv, 1968), ed. 21,34 etc. E. Ralph and 11. E. Williams, passim ; Population in History, ed. D. V. Glass and 52 Charters (3), 20-30, 84-116; Gaunt's chapel was first used by French Protestant D. E. C. Eversley (1965),192; Lat. iii, 6. Forthe very high incidence of plague refugees (Evans, Cbron.) and later it became the mayor's chapel; the chapel of the in large cities see E. A. Wrigley, population and History (1969), esp. p. 96 ('between Assumption was demolished in 1644; R. J. Fletcher, A History ofBristol Catbedral 1/6 and 1/4 of the population of a great city might die'), and p. 114. (1932), passim.

vaults lying open to the greate perillo .. ofthe habitauntis and others ...' house'. There was also the 'Artillery House' where the city Foot Com

Moreover, any desire on the part of the well-to-do to seek less crowded panies lodged their arms. 55 quarters, have a more spacious and modern dwelling, and avoid civic At about the' same time the ecclesiastical authorities took steps to dues by living on the outskirts was curbed by an ordinance of 1566 remedy abuses in the Cathedral precincts. Among the many discreditable imposing a fine on anyone who went to live in the suburbs or the revelations of capitular neglect made at Archbishop Laud's visitation of country. 53 1634 was the state of College Green. It was now ploughed up by sledges The continued concentration of most dwellings within the medieval carrying washer-women's washing to dry on Brandon Hill; a Corpora walls is in fact graphically demonstrated in William Smith's perspective tion whipping post stood in the middle, and most shocking of all, when map of 1568. Though a crude small-scale work, its very simplicity serves it is remembered that it had once been the Abbey cemetery, a rout of'dis to focus attention on the survival of the original Saxon and Norman orderly persons' played games there all day and every day. Other com street pattern north of the Avon, dictated so largely by its walls, and to plaints were that the School House was used as a tennis court, the point the contrast with the ribbon development in the twelfth-century Cathedral as a common passage to the Bishop's Palace and houses in the burghal foundations south of the Avon in the feudal fees of Redcliff and cloisters, and that the prebends' dwellings were mostly let to laymen. Temple. It emphasises too the continued value to the Elizabethan city of The military visitors from Norwich, however, were not so censorious: its walls. Apart from possible military uses, to be violently put to the test they noted 'a fayre and large college yard, beautified with many shady in the next century, they were with their double-gated narrow gateways a trees and most delightful walkes, about which stand many stately build most necessary protection to the trader from ever present dangers: an ings [i.e. the Bishop'S Palace, the houses of the Dean, the Chancellor and acute Italian observer commented that there is 'no country in the world the prebends] wherein many gentlemen and gentlewomen of note and where there are so many thieves and robbers as in England' - and the rank do live'.56 city's wealth was a tempting target. Walls and gates were also needed to When war broke out, as Bristol held a key strategic position in the keep out the infected in time of plague, and until the commutation of West of England she became a coveted prize for both contenders. Her tolls in r 546, it was at the gates that tolls were collected. Gates and site, in the midst of surrounding hills, was quite untenable in the turrets also served as private dwellings or for such purposes as a school changed military conditions of the seventeenth century; so the Corpora almshouse, while the wall walk was an essential part both of watch and tion's first task, after strengthening the neglected fortifications of the ward and ofthe citizens' good health, for itafforded thema quick escape to Castle and the city walls, was to build a new line of fortified earthworks its airy height from the Summer heat of the fetid narrow streets. Another to join up the hills on the periphery, and to construct several forts. The striking feature of Smith's plan is the amount of open land outside the walls of the great Norman keep were found to be very strong - twelve wall: on the north side of the Avon it shows the Marsh as open land; feet thick and not mineable as they were built on rock. When its battle further west the wide open space of College Green, planted with trees, ments had been repaired and its surrounding walls, it was the military and orchards surrounding St Augustine the Less and Gaunt's; to the east view that the Castle was defensible against any attack. Work on the new and north the suburban churches of St Philip, St James, and St Michael outer line of the city was continued by the Parliamentary forces after all looking rather like village churches on the city's fringe. Outside the they had been admitted at the end of 1642, and again after Julv 1643 by wall south of the Avon there are but a few houses round St Mary Redcliff the royalists under Prince Rupert and his military engineer, the noted and outside Temple Gate.54 However, it must always be remembered Bernard de Gomme. The latter was responsible for the great pentagonal that such a small-scale plan inevitably gives an over-simplified picture. Royal Fort, which probably replaced the earlier small Windmill Fort. By the time of the next actual survey, undertaken by Millerd in r673, The city's buildings sustained great damage during the sieges of 1643 there had been considerable suburban expansion and many important and 1645 and contemporary comment was that 'its people seemed more topographical changes. Before the Civil War halted all development like prisoners than citizens', being brought so low with taxations; that plans, the modernization of old houses and new building was accom the streets were 'noysome' and the houses 'nasty'. The churches too, both panied by various general improvements, which included the re-organi during and after the war, suffered from useby the military and the icono zation of parish and ward boundaries. Among the notable tasks under clastic attentions of the: Puritans; the lead was stripped from the roof of taken was the removal of rubbish dumps from the Marsh and the laying the Bishop's Palace which was converted for use as a malt-mill. The out in 1622 of a bowling green for 'gentlemen and merchants to recreate Bishop and his wife, then with child, were 'barbarously' ejected by order themselves on'; archery butts for the use of the citizenry in general had of Parliament.57 long been in existence there. Visitors afterwards remarked on the With the return of more settled conditions the citizens took energetic 'pleasant' and 'delightful' Marsh and observed how the company of the steps to restore and expand their city. The development of the Castle site town walked there in the evening. Another squalid part of the city was taken in hand after the demolition of the Castle in 1656. The Council which was improved was the Castle precinct, 'covered with little leased building sites within the old precinct on the line of Castle Street, as cottages piled on the head of one another'. It was bought from the it came to be called: this new street with a gate and bridge over the Crown in r630' For long the main medieval buildings had been 'tending to ruin', fragments had been let off as hovels for the 'lewd persons', paupers, and thieves, who took refuge there both from the city and the 55 For Millerd's plan see Pritchard, op. cit. For parishes see below maps 5,8; for the Gloucestershire magistrates. When purchased, the actual tenants of the marsh see Lat. ii, 42; McGrath (3),44; A Relation ofa Short Survey of26Counties observed in . .. 16]4 by three of the Military Company of Norwich, ed. L. G. \'C Legg Crown numbered forty-three besides the yeoman lessee of the 'mansion (19°4), 90; cf. T he Journeys ofCelia F iennes, ed. C. Morris (1947), 238. F or the Castle see Charlers (3), 150; Lat. ii, 43-4, 1 13. 56 Lat. ii, 127-8; Legg, op. cit. 93-4; for Cathedral and Close see below map 2 and 53 S talutes ofthe Realm, iii, 768; Nand T, i, 253 ; C. Wilson, in Trans. RHS 5th ser. 9 Archaeologica lxiii (191 I-I 2),23 I-50. (1959), 81 sqq. (Gregory King's tables included a figure of over 1t million for the 57 BAO Common Council Proceedings IG42-9, II. 4264 (4); Seyer, ii, 295-477; poor out of a total population of 5t million). Lat. ii, 158, 161-2, 177, 190, 194, 197, and]. Rocque's plan (surveyed 1741). The 54 For an account ofold plans of the city see J. E. Pritchard, BGAS xlviii (I 92G), Castle ditch was said to be very broad, part wet and part dry. By 1643 the Lawford 325. A Relation . .. oftheIsland ofEngland (c. I jOo), cd. C. A. Sneyd (Camd. Soc. Gate defences (an earthen rampart intended to be c.G ft high with an outer trench xxxvii, 1847), 34. Wm ofWorcester gives widths of 10 to 12ft for several gateways: some 5 ft deep) were progressing \\"ell. The walls, ditches and gates on the op.cit. 126, 135, 142, 143, IGI etc. All gates were apparently double ones: Lat. ii, Somerset side were found to be 'uncommonly strong' and no new works were 27G. The collection of toll and the letting of towers etc. helped to pay for the necessary. Joshua Sprigge, Anglia Redivia ... (1647), I 18-9; J. \'\'alker, Sufferings of upkeep of the wall as in other towns: cf. Lat. i, 13-14. the Clergy (I7I4), ii, 3; Lat. ii, 212.

Castle ditch superseded the former tortuous one round the Castle and by pa\'e and maintain the surface and they paid a 'raker' to remove rubbish, giving direct access to the all important main roads to C; loucester and but in 1543 the Council appointed an official one. As open markets London made a most \'aluable contribution to Bristol's traffic problems. were still held in such central streets as Wynch Street, Broad Street and Another site to be del-eloped \\'as that outside Lawford's Gate. I lere High Street it can easily be imagined how necessary his services were. many cottages were put up by landowners to the annm'ance of the Coun By the end of the seyenteenth century they had become so inconvenient cil, oppressed b\, the fear that the increased number of poor would greatk that the charter of 1684 laid down \'arious sites on the outskirts for the impoverish the city. This extension of one of Bristol's earliest suburbs holding of markets and fairs..\s for the siting of obnoxious trades, soon became the most populous and disorderh' of all and when plague Bristol like other towns had long exercised some degree of control, but raged, the most afflicted. Other pri\-ate owners built houses in the Horse the multiplication of such trades in the cin-, and a growing awareness of Fair area and the inhabitants obtained licence to gi\-e additional access to the dangers of pollution, made the necessity for control more urgent. them by making a new gate through the city wall and a new bridge oyer There was a natural tendency for tanners, soapmakers and others needing the Frome, provided it allowed the passage of boats. Thel accluired the water to seek the river banks and this, especially on the crowded north name of Needless Bridge and Gate. ~fillerd's map pictures some of this bank, led to trouble and compelled the Corporation in 1700 to take the building, but it gi\-es no answer to the question ()f how the poor were radical step of obtaining an .\ct of Parliament to prohibit rubbish being housed. ,\part from the techpical dithculties of depiction, such informa thrown into the river or deposited on its banks. Among the new tion formed no part of Millerd's purpose - the glorification of his native industries guilty of pollution were lead, copper, and glass-making. The city. The squalid hovels of the poor, still less of the ven' poor, were no Corporation also laid it down when leasing land under .Marsh Wall that matter for civic pride and of no interest to merchant or other visitors. the houses built were not to be used for such trades, and it even took What he does call attention to is the suburban growth. He records that in steps on behalf of the Newgate prisoners to end the stench from the the few years before 1673 Bristol had been 'augmented in most parts', curriers' pits near the Cate. 60 but especially on the west and north-west sides where the slopes of St The whole problem of sanitation was complicated by the growing Michael's Hill had been 'com-erted into comeh buildings and pleasant crmnts of homeless yagrants. In times uf scarcity especially, the number gardens' making a 'beautiful addition to the suburbs'. From this hill-top of beggars attracted by the city's wealth and supplies of food assumed Camden, long ago, had admired the delightful prospect of the Eliza tragic and unmanageable proportions: in 1628-9, for instance, the Cor bethan cit:, with twenty fair churches and the harbuur full of ships. 0:"ow, poration shipped hundreds of starving Irish back to Ireland. Ne\-erthe in 1667, from uutside Frome Gate a vintner's generosity prm'ided steps less, despite all drawbacks and bitter complaints from time to time of up the precipitous incline - a wa\ that was re-named Queen's Street. Un filth in the alleys and on the quays, and of the state of the Frome (said in the western edge of the citl', the Marsh, damaged during the war, had the early seventeenth century only to be cleared by the winter floods of again been improved, while on its north-east side plots had been leased refuse and the contents of sewers) there is no doubt that contemporaries out into what was to become the fine King Street. 5 ' regarded Bristol as a particularly clean place, especially so in comparison The increase in the number of inhabitants and the expanding economy with London. The Elizabethans were of one mind on this point - Smith forced the problems of the maintenance of a pure water supply and of inscribed on his plan of 1568 that there was not 'any sinck that cometh sanitation in general to the fore. Since early medieval times the city had from any howse, but all com'aid under I'e ground'; Michael Dra\'ton in been noted for the purity of its water and Leland in his ItineralJ' of 1534 his Po/)o/bioll and Camden in his /)ritc/llIlia both wrote of her as the healthi much admired its system of conduits. Well-off and public-spirited est of cities. E\-en at the end ()f the seventeenth century, when the use of citizens were accustomed to leave bequests for their repair and the coal had become universal for domestic purposes and heavy and other Corporation, in the post-medieval period, began to pla~- an active part as industries had so increased in number, \lillerd could still praise the its wealth and understanding of the problem increased. It ilnall:- soh-ed, city'S pleasantness, scoured through by the tidal Avon and with its for instance, the nuisance of dead cats in the pipes in the cases both of streets cleared ofall 'noisome filth and uncleanesse' by iis sewers. 61 the Jacobs Wells springs and the Quay Pipe spring near Green's Mill by The street pattern was in general certainly old, but the houses lining the building of conduit houses at the source. Changes in the distribution the main roads were far from being so: in theperiod under review it is ofpopulation led to other changes: there was an extension of St Thomas's probable that the centre of the medieval city was largely rebuilt. Among pipe in 1550, of Temple conduit in 1561, and in 1695 a new cistern was the public buildings added or re-modelled were the Mayor's Tolze\- or built near the one-time Gaunt's Hospital in order to increase the water COlllptoir, the ~Ierchants' Place of Assembly or Tolzey, many halls of supply of the College area. Earlier in the century the visitors from trade companies, charitable institutions, churches and non-conformist Norwich had so much admired the conduit of freestone in the cloisters chapels. The mainspring for the plans for building a grander Council and its many pipes. 59 House was doubtless the re-organization of municipal government In the matter of paving and cleansing the main streets and in the siting after the 1542 charter and a consequent enhanced civic pride. It was ofindustries which were obnoxious for their stench or noise the Corpora erected on the ~ite of the ci\ic Tolze\' and on the south aisle of St Ewen's tion gradualh' began to assume more responsibilitl-, though the role of church in 1551-2. It was here that the mayor held his court and the the Society of Merchants and of indi\-idual citizens still remained im Common Council its meetings and mam' a feast ofspiced cakes and \vine. portant. Owners of frontages on the main streets were legally obliged to Other civic improvements were the erection of the Merchants' Tolzey and of covered markets. The former was built on land belonging to :\11

58 The Great or Military House, believed to have included the medieval royal state apartments, was preserved: Lat. ii, 258. See also ibid. ii, 272-3, 276, 300, 307, 317,

35 2 • 60 For cleansing the streets and the Frome see Lat. ii, 64, 108, 187,213; McGrath (2), 59 See below map 8; Leland, Itin. v, 92; for bequests for the repair of conduits see xxix-xxx and Jordan, op. cit. 34-6. For siting oftrades see BAO Bargain Bk 1594 Wadley, Wills, 176, 186 etc.; ibid. 187-8 (St Thomas's extension), and Adams's 1712, f. 2; Ch. Ch. deeds 1606-7, 1609, 1652, 1694 and below (soapmakers in Chronicle (compiled (?) 1623-48), ed. F. F. Fox (19 IO), slib anno 1561 for Temple Pitha\'); Ralph and \Villiams, op. cit., for ropemakers and distillers in St Thomas in conduit; Lat. ii, 289-90, 396 and Chamberlains' Accollnls BRS xxiv (1965), ed. 1696. Por pollution see Rhys Jenkins, BGAS Ixiii (1942), 165; noisome trades D. ~r. Li\()ck, index (Water supply); Legg, op. cit. 95, Lat. ii, 289-90, 472 (Gaunt's). included those of smiths, salt and soapmakers, tanners, victuallers: ibid. 160; ror the pa v ing of streets see Rot. Pari. vi, 390- ')1 ; Lat. i, 26; ii, 64, 108; \~'adley, Lat. ii, 38 I. Wilis, passim. Baldwin St \\'as paved with a sewage drain beneath it at latest by the 61 ror Irish beggars Lat. ii, 13-14,102. ror the use of coal seeJ. U. Nef, Rise ofthe time of Henry VIII. BritishCoalIndustry(1966 ), ii, 73.

BRISTOL

Saints' vestry in Corn Street and adjoined the church; its penthouse was was above all the private dwellings and the chief inns which gave the the same length as the civic one opposite and was also collonaded. Chief city its rich and magnificent appearance. Outstanding among the many among the markets were the Great Meal Market, with its freestone splendid Elizabethan houses was the Great House erected by John gateway, the covered Meat Market (the New Market), and the Corn Young (later Sir John), a wealthy country gentleman who desired a city Market - all built between 1 572 and 1623.62 residence. He purchased the Carmelite Priory, then in a ruinous con As for the charitable institutions their growth was phenomenal. Even dition, from an alderman and built a new house of Pennant stone quar before the Reformation the burghal aristocracy, well in advance of their ried close by at Stoney Hill; it was laid out round three sides of a quad class in most other towns, had endowed almshouses on a generous rangle, had two storeys and attics, and some forty rooms. Its grounds, in scale; after it immense sums were poured out by wealthy men, and which the smaller Red Lodge was built, with their terraced gardens and women too, and also by those of modest fortunes, for schools, prisoners, orchards spread up to the later Park Row. Another fine mansion house and the relief of the poor and sick. 63 First of the schools was the Free was built by a London tailor on the site of St James's Priory. Yet another Grammar School of 1532, housed in the ancient St Bartholomew's Hos became famous as the home until his death in 1634 of Robert Aldworth, pital; the Cathedral Grammar school, a royal foundation on the lines of St one of the richest and most charitable of the Bristol merchants, and it Paul's School in London, followed in 1542; towards the end of the cen later became the local Mint House and afterwards a part of St Peters tury Queen Elizabeth's Hospital for poor boys and orphans was founded Hospital. These great houses with their extensive grounds were all in the in imitation of another London school (Christ's Hospital), and in 1634 suburbs, but most civic leaders and merchants preferred to live at the

came a revolutionary step - the endowment of a school for girls, the centre ofaffairs. 67 Red Maid's school. Already education had been encouraged by the The problem of increased numbers and higher middle-class standards founding of a Public Library, the first in the country after that at in comfort appears to have been largely met in the main central streets by Norwich. The last of the seventeenth-century benefactors to schools was building upwards to a height of four or five storeys and more closely Edward Colston, though his school, housed initially in the Great House together. Many Elizabethan and Stuart houses remained until the nine

on St Augustine's Back was not actually opened until the next century. 64 teenth century as witnesses to the architectural splendour of the time. Care for the old and sick was on the same generous scale: by 1700 at The upper storeys with their elaborately carved barge boards overhung least six new almshouses had been set up and the older ones further to such an extent that they nearly met each other over the narrow streets endowed. The seventeenth century also saw a remarkably liberal experi a characteristic which struck Celia Fiennes. After a visit in 1698 she ment in the treatment of the able-bodied poor. Hitherto they had been observed that this 'jutting outwards' made the streets 'something dark provided for in parish workhouses, but John Carey's central workhouse, ish'. Although many of the better houses still had large private gardens established in the Mint in 1696 and later named St Peter's Hospital, was at the back, in the case of many others the ground was made use of for the first of its kind in the country. It was to set the pattern for future workshops, warehouses, and cottages, while as in medieval times the poor-law administration throughout England. The Hospital adjoined vaulted 'crypts' which lay beneath both houses and streets were used for Aldworth's old sugar-house and the first Board of Guardians held their storage. The dwellings on Bristol Bridge were especially noted for their

meetings in his Great House. 65 grand style: two put up b~- the Corporation at 'an extraordinary cost' are There was lavish expenditure on beautifying the interiors of parish described as 'magnificent' and after the fire of 1646, when all the houses churches in this period, but otherwise comparatively little of the charit north of the chapel of the Assumption (built on an arch across the centre able wealth found its way into the coffers of the ~.r\nglican church. This is of the Bridge) were destroyed, private owners evidently rebuilt in a especially interesting when one considers the relatively few parish similar way. Millerd inscribed on his plan that the length 'cometh much churches built in the Middle Ages. Even Gloucester had more while short of yet in fairness of buildings (houses and shops) goeth as much Norwich had forty-three and York thirty-nine. There was considerable beyond ye famous bridge ofLondon', and in his engraving he shows them expenditure, however, on the building of non-conformist chapels. When as elaborately carved half-timbered buildings of four lofty storeys Bishop Carleton began his crusade in 1674 to extirpate eyen" connnticle crowned bv gable attics. Just off the Bridge but close enough to add to the in the city there were eight chapel buildings - one Presbyterian, two grandeur of the neighbourhood was the 'great house' of Robert Rogers,

Independent, two Quaker, and three Baptist. 60 soap-boiler and some-time mayor. Pepys described his house as lying at Useful and in some cases imposing as these public buildings were, it the north end of Redcliff Street and as 'fit for a king's palace'. 6~

62 For the Council House site see below Appendix 1. The Guildhall chapel of St George was now used to house the city archives: 1\'. D. Harding, BGAS xlviii (1926),231. 60 For church furniture see Legg, op. cit. 92; N. Pevsner, The Buildings ojEngland: For the markets see Lat. i, 58; Charters (3),68-9 C\1eal 1572); Lat. i, 117 ('\[eat or j\-. Somerset and Bristol (1958), passim. One small church, St Lawrence New market in Broad St); Charters (3),68-9 ('\[arket Hall in St Thomas parish, (28 yds X 9 yds), was converted to a warehouse and its tombstones were used for built by 1570 because ofpoverty arising from the decay of the clothing industry). the repair of the Quay. Its parish ,-vas united in 1580 with St John's: Lat. i, 66 and Only the Corn market, 1623 (80 ft X 12 ft) in \\~ine St, and the short-lived .\Iarket see map 8. For dissenting chapels see Lat. ii, 239 (Baptist in Pithay, 1(52),259,346 House for corn on quay near the W. end of Thunderbolt St, 1685-6, can be (Quakers in RedclifI St, 1655; on the site of the Dominican Friary, 1667; in located: Lat. ii, 83, engraving on Millerd's plan; Lat. ii, 43. Temple St c. 1(70); ibid. 370 (Lewins Mead Presbyterian and Castle Green 63 Jordan, op. cit. 1-44 and notes below. For prisons see \X'adley, Wills) passim and Independent). p. 230 for the House of Correction (i.e. Bridewell) and ]\.;ewgate prison; for 67 The Great House: Lat. i, I I9-1 2I; ii, 446; Millerd's plan has an engraving. The improvements in 1677 see Lat. ii, 381. The Bride,-yell was once a tower at property was successively used as residences and sugar houses by John Knight and Monkenbridge,for long a medieval prison (e.g. Wm W7orc., 16,93,147, 152);anew Richard Lane (see below). For St James's Priory, the west half of which became Bridewell was apparently erected in 1551 and repaired c.r683: J. Evans, Chronicle; Whitson Court sugar house in c. I 65 3, and Aldworth's houses see 1. V. Hall, BGAS Lat. ii, 446; Nand T, i, 253,257. A new prison or gaol was decided on in 1688. Ixv (1944), I sqq.; and ibid. lxviii, 117, 119-25; Lat. ii, 44-5. Aldworth had his own 64 For schools see R. Wilson, BAC, 311 sqq; Lat. i, 41-2; ii, 9-10, 37-8, 104, 131, 227; docks on the '>larsh (1637) - Alderskey Lane indicates the site: Lat. ii, 88; ibid. 478 iii, 46,83-4 (Colston's) and subject indexes. A Baptist college for educating for J\[int of 1696, and below map 2. ministers (later the well-known Baptist Academy) was begun 1679, but only 68 For drawings of 16th-17th century houses and streets surviving in c. 1 830 see tbe opened in 1720. For Library see Jordan, op. cit. 39. Braikenridge Collection in the Bristol J\[useum and Art Gallery, the engravings on 65 For almshouses see below Appendix II; for the problem of the poor in general 1'lillerd's plan, and illustrations in Nand T, iii, 5 I etc.; The JOllrneys ojCelia Fiennes, see C. \\'ilson, Trans. RHS 5th ser. 9, 94, 98. He comments 'Bristol was surely the ed. C. Morris, 237. 'Jutter money' was exacted by the Council for the right to build most benevolent place in England'. For St Peter's Hospital see Lat. ii, 479-82. upper parts of houses so as to jut over public property: Chamberlains' Acc!s (BRS The Friends' Workhouse in New St, though planned in 1696 was not opened until xxiv), ed. Livock, xx; McGrath (3), passim; Lat. i, 23-9; ibid. ii, 216,107; Millerd's 1699: BGAS xxxii, 87. plan and below map 2 (Rogers's house).

BRISTOL

The most fashionable of all streets perhaps was Small Street. There voyages of the African slave traders as well as in direct trading with the lived Alderman Kitchen whose house was sufficiently grand to serve as West Indies and with North America, especially with the plantation lodging for the Earl of Leicester; later the Creswick family had a very colonies. Because of the severe labour shortage on the plantations, the fine mansion here where official visitors, including royalty, were enter slave trade was generally accepted as indispensable until the last decades tained. The splendour was maintained, even increased after the Restora of the century. In I 725 Bristol ships carried about seventeen thousand tion: Colonel Aldworth, Town Clerk, for one, had a mansion in Broad slaves and for a short period in the mid-century dominated the trade. Her Street which with its grounds spread over two later streets. Nicholas ships carried mixed cargoes of goods - textiles, beads, trinkets, muskets, Street was chosen by Alderman Whitson and Aubrey records that 'he pistols and so on, which were partly of Bristol manufacture - to the kept a noble house and did enteftain the peers and great persons that Guinea coast; there they loaded up with black slaves, crossed the came to the city' in a dining-room which was the 'stateliest of any'. Atlantic and then returned to Bristol with mixed cargoes, principally of

Indeed, the interiors of the houses of the burghal patriciate were often tobacco, timber, cotton, rice, rum and above all of sugar. 74 The addi far more splendid than their outsides and were, as a French visitor and tional wealth derived from this branch of her trade affected every aspect Aubrey thought, like palaces. They were the patrons of Bristol's crafts of the city's life: it stimulated the growth of its manufactures, of its men, of the men for instance who made Alderman Langton's remarkable European and internal trade, of its population, and these in turn entailed drawing-room on the Welsh Back: its pillared doorway was inlaid with the physical expansion and rebuilding of much of the old city, beginning ivory and mother of pearl. 69 Many of the numerous inns must also have even i.n the early decades ofthe century. been fine buildings, for the better-class ones were far more than hostelries, Alongside these new developments, the city's traditional European being used for all kinds of public occasions such as the taking of de trade, though continually interrupted by war, remained prosperous. As positions or the entertainment of distinguished official visitors. Often in earlier periods the Iberian Peninsular and the Mediterranean countries they were owned by wealthy citizens: an Elizabethan city chamberlain were good customers, notably for cargoes of cod and train oil. Bristol built the 'Mermaid Tavern' in Broad Street and Mayor Oliffe was land ships returned loaded with miscellaneous goods for the use of her own lord ofthe 'Three Tuns', where the Papal Nuncio once dined. 70 industries and citizens and for redistribution to the West of England. Intermixed with all the new or re-modelled houses many old-fashioned Northern and Western Europe were other chief centres of trade, but and humble ones of two or one storey certainly remained in the less since it was the least affected by war, the most constant part of her fashionable main streets and, of course, in the back streets where they European trade was that with Ireland, especially with the southern ports must have prevailed. Some were thatched at least as late as 1574 when an and Dublin. 75 ordinance forbad its use, and many could only be described as squalid The city's industry advanced equally successfully. Because of her and out of repair. 71 Yet all in all Bristol was a place of great beauty. On plentiful supplies of coal, her heavy industries expanded rapidly - lead this natives and visitors from Roger Barlow onwards were agreed. He works and gunshot making, zinc and copper smelting, iron founding wrote of the 'sumptuous bridge', Drayton in felicitous verse of the city's for casting cannon and all kinds of iron utensils, while at Baptist Mills 'fair building' and 'admirable grace', Camden found it so fair that it fully the first brass-making foundry in England was set up. Her commerce corresponded 'to the name of Brightstow', and Millerd summed up local and the ready accessibility of timber naturally ensured that ship-building, patriotism with a Latin paeon, translated here as: 'This city sublime, with the related manufactures such as the making of ropes and sail cloth, spacious, faithful, pleasant and glorious ... protects the district, 'hates should continue to be a major undertaking. For the most part the wrong-doing, keeps peace'. vessels built either for commerce or the Royal Navy were small, but before I8 I 5 the shipyards at Canons Marsh and Redcliff had built the THE GOLDEN AGE AND J\FTER: I7oo-I828 St Vincent (four hundred and ninety-three tons), the largest West India man so far launched, and the Nelson - 'a monstrous three-decked vessel The eighteenth century opened gloriously for Bristol was soon to out of six hundred tons'. l\;evertheless, the yards had by then been out distance her old provincial rivals - York and Norwich - and become in distanced by those of other ports and Bristol came eighth in the list of Defoe's words of all cities in the kingdom 'the greatest, the wealthiest, the largest ship-building ports after London. 76 London excepted'. 72 Already wealthy and in point of commerce superior Chief among other industries was sugar-refining: there were sixteen to any town apart from the capital, the freeing in I698 of the African refineries and their products were exported all over the world; an off trade from the control of the Royal African Company and the legalization shoot were the distilleries, some already established at the end of the of the voyages of the interlopers opened immense new fields to her seventeenth century. Each year thousands of pounds were paid in excise enterprising traders. Her geographical position on the West coast gave duty on Bristol spirits. The tobacco industry and soap-makers likewise her an advantage even over London and enabled her to wrest from it the prospered, and glass-making expanded steadily. As early as 17 39 major share in the development of the transatlantic and African com Alexander Pope recorded having seen 'twenty odd pyramids smoking merce. 73 Her ships now began to be engaged in the notorious triangular over the town'. The window-glass produced was considered the best in the country and was exported in great quantities to America as well as to Bath and other English towns; coloured glass and bottles for distilleries 69 Lat. i, 53; ii, 44-5,104,115, z31, 331,409,446. Sir HenryCreswicke's inventory also had a wide market. So did pottery and porcelain, products of a new mentions 13 chambers, Zlong galleries, the hall, dining room and kitchen: enterprise, outstanding among which was Bristol's imitation Delft ware. McGrath (3), no. 196. For John \X,'hitson's inventory see ibid. no. 193. For Langton's house see Nand T, i, Z3 7; iii, 58. 70 Forinns see Lat. ii, 338, 368, 38z, 445. For others see ibid. subject index and McGrath (3), Wadley, Wills, ZI 5 and passim; W. Leighton inBGAS Ixv(1944), 74 For a general account ofthe slave trade see C. M. MacInnes, England and Slavery 157 sqq. (1934), reprinted in McGrath (4). 71 Lat. i, z8. 75 For Atlantic and European Trade see Minchinton (z), ix sqq., 13-71, appendix E 72 Gregory King (I 69 5) estimated Bristol's population at 19,403, but Norwich's by an and passim; R. Davis, A Commercial Revolution (BBHA, 1967), 22. actual enumeration was c.z9,000: Population in History, ed. Glass and Eversley, 19Z. 76 Rees (as above n. 44),300,345 sqq., 502-3; Rhys Jenkins, BGAS lxiii (194Z), 73 For her commercial superiority and position as the leading port see r.Iinchinton (3), 16z sqq.; for coalfields see above n. 44. J. N. Darner Powell, Bristol Privateers and xxvi sqq., Lat. iii, 6. It is not without significance in this connexion that Bristol Ships of War (1930), 317; MacInnes, England and Slavery, 10, and 'The Sea Ports' in seems to have been the first city outside London to have a local newspaper, Trade Winds, ed. C. N. Parkinson (1948),67: 39 slavers were built between 17z7-69; probably launched in 170z: Lat. iii, 43 ; catalogue ofEarly Bristol Newspapers in 3 years (1787-1800) 176 vessels (total tonnage zz,644 tons) were built as well as (Corpn of Bristol 195 6), p. 9. 14 forthe Royal Navy. For rope-making see Matthews, Vir. (I794).