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Sir Ambrose Crowley and the South Sea Scheme of 1711

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 February 2011

Michael W. Flinn
Michael W. Flinn
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

Sir Ambrose Crowley is well known as one of the greatest of early English industrialists. His claim to distinction rests on the immense scale of his operations and on his imaginative approach to the problems of industrial organization. The group of factories he established in County Durham, near Gateshead, constituted what was believed to be the largest ironworks in Europe and was probably the largest industrial unit in the England of his day outside the naval dockyards. Sir Ambrose, whose manufacturing career began in 1682, was an iron manufacturer, converting bar iron into the end products of the iron industry—steel, steelware, nails, and a wide range of iron components and implements. He had entered this branch of the industry as a nailmaker, and nailmaking remained the mainstay of his business.

Type
Articles
Information
The Journal of Economic History , Volume 20 , Issue 1 , March 1960 , pp. 51 - 66
Copyright
Copyright © The Economic History Association 1960

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References

1 For biographical details see Flinn, M. W., “Sir Ambrose Crowley, Ironmonger, 1658–1713,” Explorations in Entrepreneurial History, V (1953), 162–80;Google Scholar and for the nature of his industrial and social organization, see Flinn, M. W., ed., The Law Book of the Crowley Ironworks (Publications of the Surtees Society, Vol. CLXVII; Durham, 1957.)Google Scholar

2 Ehrman, J., The Navy in the War of William III, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1953), p. 38.Google Scholar

3 The Papers of Thomas Bowrey (Publications of the Hakluyt Society, 2d ser., Vol. LVIII; London, 1925), p. 180.Google Scholar

4 John, A. H., “War and the English Economy 1700–1763,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., VII (1955), 331–33.Google Scholar

5 Coleman, D. C., “Naval Dockyards under the Later Stuarts,” Economic History Review, 2d ser., VI (1953), 134–55;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTanner, J. R., Samuel Pepys and the Royal Navy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1920), pp. 37–56;Google Scholar and Tanner, J. R., Descriptive Catalogue of the Naval Manuscripts in the Pepysian Library (Publications of the Navy Records Society, Vols. XXVI, XXVII, XXXVI, LVII; London, 1903–1923), particularly I, 98–116.Google Scholar

6 Navy Board Minutes, Vol. LXIV, 11 June 1711. Sergison Manuscripts, National Maritime Museum, Greenwich.Google Scholar

7 Thus Public Record Office, London, Adm. 3/36; and Navy Board Minutes, Vol. LXVII, 25 July 1712, Sergison MSS.Google Scholar

8 P.R.O. Adm. 20/94.

9 John Mason, the Kentish merchant who dominated the supply of timber to Chatham Yard in the 1660's and 1670's, in a fine gesture of contempt, pretended that “as for being paid in course I understand it not.” Coleman, “Naval Dockyards,” 150. Ec. H. R., 2d ser., VI (1953). Forty years later “the course” was inescapable.Google Scholar

10 P.R.O. Adm. 20/60.

11 P.R.O. Adm. 20/74.

12 P.R.O. Adm. 20/54.

13 Palfrey, H. E., “The Foleys of Stourbridge,” Transactions of the Worcestershire Archaeological Society, XXI (1944), 7–8.Google Scholar

14 Sergison MSS., Naval Miscellany, Vol. II. There were almost certainly contracts previous to this one, copies of which have not survived.

15 Sergison MSS., Naval Miscellany, Vol. VI.

16 Sergison MSS. 132, “Estimates of Navy Debts 1689–1718.”

17 P.R.O. Adm. 20/74, 75.

18 The distinction between the respective functions of bills and tallies is obscure. It is clear that tallies were used mainly to pay—or rather to delay payment of—naval debts. “Tallies of loan” were secured on the general credit of the Exchequer, and at this period were therefore at a heavy discount. “Tallies of assignment,” secured on a specific item of future revenue, were obviously less unpopular with creditors. Sergison, the Clerk of the Acts to the navy, noted in 1697 that the discount on tallies was 35 per cent, though Clapham states that the average discount in 1696 and 1697 was “something like 40%.” Merriman, R. D., ed., The Sergison Papers (Publications of the Navy Records Society; London, 1949), p. 59;Google Scholar Sir Clapham, John, The Bank, of England (2 Vols., Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1944), I, 47Google Scholar. Though both kinds of tally could be discounted, neither can properly be considered a negotiable instrument. Yet tallies find very little mention in the accounts of the Treasurer of the Navy in the early eighteenth century. So far as he was concerned, debts were settled by bills. Tallies were probably used to pay bills at maturity, thus stalling off payment indefinitely.

19 P.R.O. Adm. 106/525, May 1, 1699.

20 P.R.O. Adm. 20/75, 94.

21 P.R.O. Adm. 106/542, October 13, 1701.

22 Sergison MSS. 87, Navy Board Order Book 1709–13, 28 September 1709.

23 P.R.O. Adm. 106/651.

24 P.R.O. T. 1/143, No. 33

25 Calendar of Treasury Books, XXIV, Part II (1710).

26 P.R.O. T. 1/143. No. 33.

27 P.R.O. Adm. 106/651, August 28, 1710.

28 Ibid., October 27, 1710.

29 Ibid., September 14, 1710.

30 Ibid., October 27, 1710.

31 P.R.O. T. 1/143, No. 33.

32 Parliamentary Papers, 1898, LII (“History of the earlier years of the Funded Debt”), p. 57Google Scholar; Historical Manuscripts Commission, Portland Manuscripts, V, 464. Scott gives a total of £9,177,967. Scott, W. R., The Constitution and Finance of English, Scottish and Irish Joint-Stock Companies to 1720 (3 Vols.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1910–1912), III, 296Google Scholar; “The History of the Funded Debt” gives a figure (at September 29, 1711) of £9,471,325. For a general survey of the South Sea scheme, see W. A. Shaw's masterly introduction to Vol. XXV of the Calender of Treasury Books, 1711, pp. xxxiv—liii.

33 The total of naval debts authorized by the South Sea Act of 1711 for transfer to South Sea stock was £5,130,539. “Estimates of Navy Debts 1689–1718,” Sergison MSS. 132. The same figure is given in a memorandum dated December 10, 1712 from the South Sea Company to William Lowndes at the Treasury. (Lowndes Papers, P.R.O. T. 48/21.)

34 Scott, Constitution, III, 294.

35 Historical Manuscripts Commission, Portland Manuscripts, V, 650.

36 P.R.O. T. 1/143, No. 33.

37 Sergison MSS. 87, Navy Board Order Book, 1709–13; P.R.O. C. 114/164.

38 British Museum, Harleian MSS. 7497.

39 P.R.O. T. 1/143.

40 P.R.O. Adm. 106/661, 22 September 1711.

41 P.R.O. Adm. 106/672, 24 November 1712.

42 Prerogative Court of Canterbury, 222 Leeds.

43 British Museum, Additional MSS. 25, 494–5. Minutes of the Court of Directors of the South Sea Company.

44 P.R.O. T. 1/143, No. 33

45 Navy Board Minutes, Vol. LXV, August 17 and 20, 1711.

46 Ibid., August 17, 1711.

47 Ibid., September 14, 1711.

48 P.R.O. Adm. 106/661, September 22, 1711.

49 P.R.O. T. 1/137, No. 22. Cf. Pepys's diary for April 7, 1665 (quoted by Tanner, Descriptive Catalogue of Pepysian Manuscripts, I, 100, n.5): “…to the Duke of Albemarle, about money to be got for the navy, or else we must shut up shop.”

50 Navy Board Minutes, Vol. LXV, September 21, 1711.Google Scholar

51 P.R.O. T. 1/143, No. 33.

52 P.R.O. Adm. 106/661, October II, 1711.

53 Navy Board Minutes, Vol. LXV, October 12, 1711.Google Scholar

54 Calendar of Treasury Books, XXVI, Part 11 (1712), p. 21.Google Scholar

55 P.R.O. T. 1 / 143, No. 33.

56 Ibid.

57 Calendar of Treasury Books, XXVI, Part II (1712), pp. 11, 21.Google Scholar

58 See, for example, Navy Board Minutes, Vol. LXVII, July 15, September 26, October 3, November 24, 1712.Google Scholar