402 Tradesman and Merchant — Commercial Population 



the peerage in the eighteenth century was long. A most notable 

 instance of the espousal of a merchant's daughters to noblemen was 

 that of Sir WiUiam Cockaine who placed his six daughters in mar- 

 riage with peers or their immediate kindred. Sir Josiah Child, 

 merchant, married one of his daughters to the Duke of Beaufort, 

 another to the Duke of Chandos, another to Lord Granville, and his 

 son became Lord Tilney. By such prudent alliances social distinction 

 was bought and later inherited. 



The Crown also acquired immense strength under the Stuarts and 

 Hanoverians by the elevation of merchant princes to the peerage. 

 Men of eminent usefulness and capacities were called to share the 

 highest distinctions of rank. The goldsmith Duncomb, the hosier 

 Furnese, the tradesman Child, the scrivener Lownds, and scores of 

 other men of the lower mercantile sphere were entered into a mer- 

 cantile aristocracy alongside the one of birth and land. Such knighted 

 merchant princes as Smythe, Garway, North, Child and Barnard 

 became not only the ablest champions of the trading interests in the 

 halls of ParHament, but also the chief advisers of the Crown on all 

 commercial matters. 



In a third way was the man of commerce sometimes ele^'ated to a 

 social parity with the peer. By the English law of primogeniture, 

 the younger sons of a noble family were without title or estate.^ It 

 early became the custom for noblemen to put these into apprentice- 

 ship to the eminent merchants of the ports near at hand or of London.- 

 In 1699 Liverpool had "many gentlemen's sons, of the counties of 

 Lancaster, Yorkshire, Derbyshire, Staffordshire, Cheshire and North 

 Wales . . . put to apprenticeship in the town."^ The most of 

 the Levant merchants were men "of fortune and family . . . 

 very considerable, as well in point of birth as riches."^ The French 

 commercial writers cited with admiration this practice of the English 

 noble-born entering commerce and emulated it.'^ Defoe summarized 

 the situation in this way: "The rising Tradesman swells into the 



1 Compare the Dutch law of gavelkind with English primogeniture with respect 

 to getting sons into business; see Child, Brief Observations, 1. 



- Defoe, Com. Eng. Tr., I, 246. This practice became the practice after the 

 Commonwealth; see, Hume, Hist, of Eng., V, 526; Chamberlayne, .\ngliae Not. 

 1673:1,320-2. 



^ "Moore Rental," 77, quoted in Bourne, Eng. Mer., 311. 



* Beawes, Lex Mer. Red., 628. 



^ Savary, Par. Neg., 19-20; Coj^er, Nobl. Com., is an extensive argument in 

 favor of the participation of the French nobility in commerce as the English were 

 doing. Louis XIII admitted some merchants into the nobility in 1627. 



