Three generations of 18th century London brewers Charles Gordon Clark My great grandfather, Gordon W Clark, through the internet, I have been able to was interested in the history of his family, build up details of the brewing history in and his son, my grandfather Harry this family of wine and spirit importers. Gordon Clark, built on his father's notes to create a family history which he had The first brewer, René Cottiby, was the privately published in 1925. Harry was elder son of another René Cottiby, prob- also interested in his mother's and his ably of Spitalfields, a Huguenot who had grandmother's families, and so added been a citizen and banker of Poitiers and pedigrees for Welches, Thorntons, and came to England with one of his sisters, Squibbs, but without revealing any occu- his widowed mother, and both a maternal pations for these London families. and a paternal uncle a few years be- fore the Revocation of the Edict of His father had been the son of Matthew Nantes in 1685. The maternal uncle, Clark, founder of the firm of City of Balthazar Gardemau, who had studied London wine and spirit importers which at the liberal Protestant academy at eventually gave employment to six gen- Saumur, was ordained as a deacon and erations of the family, and Gordon and priest of the Church of England by the then Harry followed him as senior part- Bishop of London in 1682. He went to ner. It is the odder that Harry omitted work as a pastor in Ipswich, where there details of his maternal forebears' occupa- had been an influx of Huguenot refugees, tions, because although Gordon did not mostly poor artisans. Soon he was vicar marry into the wine trade, his wife was of Coddenham in Suffolk and married the granddaughter of the third generation the daughter of the Earl of Sandwich, of an allied trade, brewing, in and on the Lady Catherine Montagu. He became a edge of Harry's beloved City. It fell to a ‘squarson’ - squire as well as parson - nephew of Harry's, John Gordon Clark, and collected a renowned library. sometime Master of the Merchant Balthazar and Catherine had no children, Taylors' Company and an excellent and so he left considerable sums to his genealogist, to find out the brewing con- sister's family. nection and to discover the forgotten Huguenot strain in the family. With the René had his son the younger René resources available nowadays, especially baptised in St. Katherine by the Tower in 2 Journal of the Brewery History Society 1701, although old Anne Cottiby, who How soon Wray contacted René's reason- lived in Westminster, worshipped at the ably prosperous family it's not possible to French church at Leicester fields - now say. Eventually he brought a case against Leicester Square. René Cottiby the René's grandmother in the Court of younger was apprenticed in 1719 to Cecil Common Pleas for the recovery of large Wray, a linen draper of the West End sums of money. René's father was by parish of St. Martin in the Fields. He was then dead, and his grandmother had any- 18, older than usual, and a large premi- way paid the apprenticeship premium. um was paid: £136 10/-. But something She riposted with a suit to the Court of went badly wrong. In November 1720 Chancery in which she made various René disappeared and a month later claims: that the apprenticeship document Wray put a notice in the Evening Post, had been wrongly drawn up, that Wray saying had retired without properly passing over her grandson as apprentice to his broth- If he will return in a Week's time, he shall er, thereby causing the young man to be kindly received, otherwise he will be become ‘Idle and extravagant’, and that described at large, and a reward offered for any acknowledgements he had made whoever shall apprehend him; And whoever about misdemeanours had been forced entertains him shall be prosecuted with the out of him by improper means. She want- utmost Severity. ed money back from Wray. René, she acknowledged, had left the country, and He didn't return, and in February Wray was in ‘ffrance or some other fforeigne inserted another notice in the Evening parte.’ Her plea was dated January Post, which is rather precious to his 1724/5, four years after Wray's second descendants as it contains one of the advertisement, and clearly followed earliest descriptions of an ancestor: considerable negotiation between the pair. In fact by August 1723 the young Rene Cottiby, ag'd about 19 years or man was ‘Rene Thompson, alias thereabouts, born of French parents, he is Cottebee’, living ‘beyond the seas’ in about 5 foot 10 inches high, fair Complexion, Flanders with his wife. What he was and generally wears a dark cloth Coat lin'd doing there we don't know, but it's impos- with Red, having imbezzled goods and sible not to speculate that the marriage, several Sums of Money of his Master Mr the change of name, and the living Cecil Wray, and now absconds. This is to abroad may all have been connected give notice, that whoever apprehends the with the break away from Wray. How the said Rene Cottiby, shall have 5 guineas dispute over the moneys and alleged reward paid them by the said Mr. Wray, ‘imbezzlements’ ended we don't know. It at the 3 nuns at Charing-cross, and seems reasonable to assume that Wray whoever entertains or conceals him be was an unsatisfactory master, and that it at their peril. linen drapery was not to René's taste. Brewery History Number 144 3 By 1729 he was ‘Rene Thompson, alias apprenticeship in the trade body, the Cottiby of All Hallows the Great, London, Brewers' Company, but was admitted to brewer,’ in two business documents. All the freedom of the company (as Rene Hallows, demolished in 1894, was in Upper Cottiby, not Thompson) by ‘Redemption’ Thames Street. So René experimented on 11 July 1729, that is on payment of for a time with an English surname; per- five guineas, £5 5s. He took his respon- haps because by then he was married to sibilities in the company seriously, paying a woman of native London stock. But ‘quarterage,’ quarterly dues, and on 29 after she died and he remarried into October 1734 he was sworn as Steward another Huguenot family, all references of the Company, a somewhat onerous to him are just to René Cottiby. duty which required the payment for a feast on Lord Mayor's day. 12 years later, His first wife, Elizabeth Huckwell, was the in 1746, he was elected to the Court of youngest of the three granddaughters of the Company. ‘Dinah Barry, widow.’ Her eldest sister Dinah married first a ‘silkman,’ John He was back in the East End, in Stevens, and after his early death she Shoreditch, but (by 1739 if not earlier) he then remarried (in Leyton, just over the did not live there, rather in the more Essex border) David Coombes. He was fashionable City. René had a ‘Brew- a sieve maker of Holy Trinity, Minories. house in Hog-Lane, Norton Folgate’ in Her sister Mary married Richard Pridgeon, 1745 and this may have passed to his a distiller of St Mary, Whitechapel (‘but son-in-law, John Thornton. In that year now, if living, in Jamaica’). Dinah Barry the second Jacobite rebellion tried and was the widow of Thomas Barry, a mer- failed to put Bonnie Prince Charlie back chant of St. Thomas, Southwark, but had on the throne of the Stuarts with French only married him in 1713. Her first hus- help, and the merchants of the City of band's surname was Huckwell, and her London raised money for blankets, boots, son Benjamin, the father of the three sis- and breeches for the British troops in ters, probably her only child to reach Scotland. They also presented a ‘humble maturity, died between 1713 and 1723. Address’ to ‘the King's most Excellent When she died in 1729 she owned, Majesty.’ René was among the hundreds besides the annuity, which was a charge who signed this document assuring on rents from the manor of Oxted in George II ‘That we heartily join in the Surrey, first established in 1577, various general Joy which has been expressed properties in the Spitalfields area. on your Majesty's safe Arrival in your British Dominions’ (George, king of René became a brewer, in London at Hanover as well of Britain, had been least, after the period of living in there when the invasion began). They Flanders. Maybe he began to practise were grateful for the king's ‘unwearied that trade there. He did not serve an endeavours to support the Liberties of 4 Journal of the Brewery History Society Europe, as well as the true Interests of all round brown Spot on her Forehead, between your Subjects,’ and ‘as your Majesty's her Eyes, and such another Spot on her Kingdoms are again disturbed in favour Cheek. of a Popish Pretender to your Crown’ they renewed their ‘Loyalty and Zeal’ and Whether anyone came forward to answer would ‘at all Times be ready to hazard our his newspaper advertisement and Lives and Fortunes in Defence of your ‘receive Half a Guinea Reward, and no Majesty's person, your Royal Family and Questions ask'd’ we shall never know. Government.’ Fortunately René did not The only other personal details we know have to make good these extravagant is are that in 1743 he bought a volume of promises! newly published ‘Sermons upon several practical subjects’, and that in 1750 he When he remarried in March 1735 after subscribed to a sermon on the death of his first wife's death, he was described in the Duke of Richmond.