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Councillors and commerce in Liverpool, 1650–1750

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  09 February 2009

Michael Power
Michael Power
Affiliation:
Dept of Economic and Social History, University of Liverpool, Liverpool, L69 3BX
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Abstract

Liverpool grew remarkably in the century after 1650 outpacing long-established ports like Bristol and Hull. In part this was due to advantages of location, in part to the ambitions of its merchants. The council opened a wet dock in 1715, a pioneering project which gave the port an unusual trading advantage. This paper explains that event by tracing the emergence of merchants on the council in the late seventeenth century and, by analysing port book evidence, argues that they assumed a trading dominance in the town which was especially strong about 1700. Their powerful position on the council was, in part, the result of a new town charter of 1695. Political and economic factors worked together to propel the town towards its spectacular eighteenth-century economic development.

Type
Research Article
Information
Urban History , Volume 24 , Issue 3 , December 1997 , pp. 301 - 323
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1997

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References

1 Touzeau, J., The Rise and Progress of Liverpool From 1551 to 1835 (Liverpool, 1910), 379–80.Google Scholar

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10 A plan of Salthouse dock was obtained by the committee planning the first Hull dock in 1756 which was to be vested in the corporation for the town, the Liverpool model. An Act to build the dock was not obtained until 1773: Jackson, , Hull in the Eighteenth Century, 238–43.Google Scholar

11 The project, entitled ‘The Liverpool Community 1660–1750’, involves Di Ascott, Fiona Lewis and Michael Power. It has been funded by the Leverhulme Trust to which grateful acknowledgement is given. A book is planned: Approaches to the History of the Liverpool Community, 1660–1750.

12 The parish registers of St Nicholas, St Peter, and St George are in Liverpool Record Office (Liv.R.O.) 283 NIC, 283 PET, 283 GEO; that of St Nicholas is printed to 1725: Lancashire Parish Register Society, vol. 35, 101Google Scholar. Probate records of the archdeaconry of Chester which include Liverpool wills are at Lancashire Record Office; they are indexed in The Record Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, vols 15, 18, 20, 22 for the period up to 1760Google Scholar. Liverpool town books are in Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3–10. There are no guild records to augment the municipal record, a reflection of Liverpool's underdeveloped character in the medieval period, but freemen admissions are recorded in the town books, and an apprentice book was begun in 1707: Liv.R.O. 352 CLE/REG/4.

13 The council cohorts were reconstructed from Liverpool Town Books from which councillors and officers were input into a Paradox computer file: Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3–10. Hearth taxes of 1663,1664,1666 and 1673: P.R.O. E179/250/8; E179/250/11; E179/ 250/9; E179/132/355. The poor rate of 1708: Peet, H., Liverpool in the Reign of Queen Anne (Liverpool, 1908)Google Scholar. The poor rate of 1743: Liv.R.O. 920 PT51. Port books 1664–65 and 1708–09: P.R.O. E190/1337/16; E190/1375/08. The Plantation Registers are in Merseyside Maritime Museum Archives but were consulted on microfilm: The Liverpool Plantation Registers 1744–73 and 1779–84, ed. Schofield, M. and Pope, D. (EP Microform, Wakefield, 1978).Google Scholar

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16 Investment in a ship would be initiated by a principal, sometimes the master, and would usually be divided in shares of an eighth, a sixteenth, a thirty-second or a sixty-fourth. It was a method of both financing shipbuilding and offsetting risk, since each share-owner's liability was limited to his share. Many merchants invested in shares, but other townspeople could also take part. See Davis, R., The Rise of the English Shipping Industry in the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries (London, 1962), 81–90.Google Scholar

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18 Town officers were a group of administrative officers, about sixty men and a very few women, chosen from year to year to carry out the collection of local taxes, the enforcement of order, regulation of the market and port, cleansing of streets and maintenance of the common. They were mostly drawn from the ranks of craftsmen and represent a humbler working population than councillors, though by election to their offices were deemed respectable residents of the town. The three main offices, mayor, head bailiff and town bailiff, have been counted as councillors rather than officers since they either were or became members of the council by virtue of their office.

19 P.R.O. E190/1337/16; E179/250/8.

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21 Ibid., 156–8; for a biography see Sedgwick, R. (ed.), The History of Parliament (London, 1970), II, 180–1.Google Scholar

22 P.R.O. E190/1375/08.

23 Wardle, A.C., ‘Sir Thomas Johnson: his impecuniosity and death’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, XC (1938), 181–4Google Scholar. The tobacco debt is the first indication of financial difficulty faced by Johnson.

24 Peet, , Liverpool in the Reign of Queen Anne.Google Scholar

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26 Information about his career before his marriage is tantalizingly short. The son of James Gildart of Middleham, Yorkshire, the first reference we have to him is of his freedom in 1698, gained by paying the standard 6s 8d of an apprentice, but there is no record of his master: Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3. He might have worked for Sir Thomas Johnson as agent before his marriage but, again, there is no record of it. See biography in Sedgwick, , History of Parliament, 63.Google Scholar

27 Ibid.

28 Ibid.; Liv.R.O. 352/CLE/REG/4.

29 Shipowners held shares in an average of 2.4 ships: Liverpool Plantation Registers microfilm.

30 Liv.R.O.920 PT51.

31 Muir, R. and Platt, E.M., A History of Municipal Government in Liverpool From the Earliest Times to 1835 (Liverpool, 1906), 81–113Google Scholar. There is no obvious explanation why the number of councillors was so large for such a small town. It is interesting that there seems to have been no difficulty in finding candidates to fill council places.

32 Sacks, D.H., The Widening Gate: Bristol and the Atlantic Economy 1450–1700 (London, 1991), 172Google Scholar; Forster, G.C.F., ‘Hull in the 16th and 17th centuries’, VCH York East Riding: Kingston upon Hull (London, 1969), 121–5Google Scholar; Newton, R., Eighteenth-Century Exeter (Exeter, 1984), 34–8.Google Scholar

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34 Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3–10.

35 Insufficient ages of councillors are available to be sure of the argument. An analysis of the number of offices served before joining the council showed an average of 1.6 in the late seventeenth century, only 0.6 in the early eighteenth century. Liverpool councillors certainly advanced more rapidly on the council than aspiring councillors in Exeter where the cursus honorem from entering the council to mayor could take 17 years: Newton, , Eighteenth-Century Exeter, 39–41Google Scholar. Few advanced as rapidly in Liverpool as Bryan Blundell who became mayor a year after he joined the council, but many advanced to mayor in much less than ten years.

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37 The argument and data for this mercantile domination of the council are contained in ‘Liverpool town governors 1650–1750’, a chapter of the proposed book, Approaches to the History of the Liverpool Community, 1660–1750.

38 Religious dissent was certainly a factor in Liverpool. Some fourteen councillors and officers were ejected from their positions in 1662 under the Corporation Act: Muir, and Platt, , Municipal Government in Liverpool, 101–6Google Scholar. There were also nonconformist families, like the Pemberton-Danvers, which were important in trade and did not serve on the council: information from D. Ascott. But a detailed assessment of the significance of nonconformity in the town at this time has yet to be attempted. On the matter of unwillingness to serve, see the case of John Cleivland, a major transatlantic shipper in the early eighteenth century, who had to be forced to serve as mayor in 1703: Touzeau, , Rise and Progress of Liverpool, 370Google Scholar. Fines for avoidance were, however, not usual. Compare the heavy fines in Hull: Forster, , VCH York East Riding, 123–4.Google Scholar

39 Max Weber describes the transition from ‘effectual’ relationships in a traditional society to ‘associative’ bonds in a modern society in which rational assessment of common interests and compromise replace traditional custom: The Theory of Social and Economic Organisation, trans. Henderson, A.M. and Parsons, T. (New York, 1947), 136–7.Google Scholar

40 Councillors and officer cohorts have been derived from Liverpool town books: Liv.R.O. 352/COU 3–10. The examples and calculations in this section are taken from the port books: P.R.O. E190/1337/16 and E190/1375/08; and from the Plantation Registers: Liverpool Plantation Registers microfilm.

41 Ninety-one per cent of shipments into Liverpool were from Ireland, 92 per cent of shipments out of Liverpool were to Ireland and only 2 per cent of shipments were to or from the Americas: P.R.O. E190/1337/16.

42 Not least in terms of employment for mariners. For a discussion of the Irish trade see Davis, , The Rise of the English Shipping Industry, 202–11: P.R.O. E190/1337/16Google Scholar. More work needs to be done to establish the growth of Liverpool trade earlier in the century.

43 Evidence collected for this paper does not give evidence of the origins of Liverpool transatlantic trade. Occasional voyages for tobacco from Virginia and sugar from Barbados began in the 1660s, the latter much encouraged by the growth of refineries, like that of Daniel Danvers, in the 1680s. See Hyde, , Liverpool and the Mersey, 26–7.Google Scholar

44 This was a larger trade in tobacco than Glasgow at this date, though later in the century the Scottish port became pre-eminent in the trade: Jackson, , Glasgow I, 76.Google Scholar

45 Animals had been banned by statutes from 1667 to protect English livestock: Davis, , The Rise of the English Shipping Industry, 204.Google Scholar

46 Touzeau, , Rise and Progress of Liverpool, 370.Google Scholar

47 A limited comparison can be drawn with Hull. There were some 365 merchants recorded shipping in and out of Liverpool in 1709, 40 of them accounting for above 10 shipments. In Hull in 1702 there were 116 merchants shipping outwards only, 22 of whom accounted for 10 or more shipments in the year: Forster, , VCH York East Riding, 183.Google Scholar

48 A clear exposition of share-ownership of ships is contained in Davis, , Rise of the English Shipping Industry, 81–90.Google Scholar

49 Ibid., 81. It is argued that there was a trend to specialization in shipowning occurring earlier in large ports such as Liverpool, but there is little evidence for this before 1800: Ville, S., ‘The growth of specialisation in English shipowning, 1750–1850’, Economic History Review, XLVI (1993), 702–8.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

50 A useful point made by the reader of this paper.

51 Compare the situation in Bristol in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth century when craftsmen took part in trade and disputed the monopoly of the Merchant Adventurers' Company: Sacks, , Widening Gate, 201–4.Google Scholar

52 Liv.R.0. 920 PT51.

53 See The Moore Rental, ed. Heywood, T. (Chetham Society XII, 1847)Google Scholar; Muir, R., History of Liverpool (Liverpool, 1907), 71, 109.Google Scholar

54 Ibid., 145.

55 Hearth taxes: P.R.O. E179/250/8; E179/250/11; E179/250/9; E179/132/355; the 1708 rate: Peet, , Liverpool in the Reign of Queen AnneGoogle Scholar; the 1743 rate: Liv.R.O. 920 PT51.

56 Merchants tended to hold property on major streets and craftsmen in alleys and lanes in London in the late seventeenth century: Power, M., ‘The social topography of Restoration London’, in Beier, A.L. and Finlay, R., London 1500–1700: The Making of the Metropolis (London, 1986), 209–12.Google Scholar

57 See Sacks, , Widening GateGoogle Scholar; Jackson, , Hull in the Eighteenth CenturyGoogle Scholar; Newton, , Eighteenth-Century Exeter, passim.Google Scholar

58 Jackson, , Hull in the Eighteenth Century, 2, 96Google Scholar; Morgan, , Bristol and the Atlantic Trade, 94–8Google Scholar; Sacks, , Widening Gate, 353.Google Scholar

59 See ibid., ch. 6; Forster, , VCH York East Riding, 130–147.Google Scholar

60 The kind of analysis ably done by Jackson, , Hull in the Eighteenth Century, 97–110Google Scholar, and called for in Newton, , Eighteenth-Century Exeter, 38.Google Scholar

61 Another example of pioneering infrastructural improvement in the period was the decision by Exeter council to improve the navigation of the river Exe in 1697: ibid., 21–22.

62 A concept of Davis, R.: see ‘English foreign trade 1660–1700’, Economic History Review, 2nd ser., VII (1954), passim.Google Scholar

63 This is much simplified: see Jackson, , ‘Glasgow in transition’, 66–9.Google Scholar

64 Touzeau, , Rise and Progress of Liverpool, 337.Google Scholar

65 Muir, and Platt, , Municipal Government in Liverpool, 249.Google Scholar

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