INDUSTRIES 



Into this Stock my Lord putt in 



Money 50. 00. 00. 



in Iron Stone wch lay upon hunnicke 



Moore 20. 00. 00. 



& 7 Tunne of BuUetts and grenades 28. 00. 00. 

 & a yeare Rent for ye furnice & 



Ironstone 02. 00. 00. 



Sume 100. 00. 00. 

 And there is more due to my Lord 



this present yeere 1664 for 1000 



cord of wood which he tooke out 



of Badbernne Birtley wood and 



for a yeer Rent of ye furnice by 



a new bargaine made with Joh 



Hodgshon 

 the present yere 1664 10. 00. 00. 



Sume soe due to my Lord 160. 00. 00. 

 of wch pd by Joh Hodgshon to Edw 



Arden and acco in his booke of 



Disbursmts p. 2420 050. 00. 00. 



& due from Jo Hodgshon to be pd 



at Mart next 055. 00. 00. 



And more to be pd by him at Pent 



1665 055. 00. 00. 



which makes ye sume 160. 00. 00. 



The civil wars stopped all industrial develop- 

 ment, and under the Commonwealth the pro- 

 sperity of the county of Durham seems to have 

 focussed itself in Sunderland owing to the 

 pronounced Parliamentary bias of that town. 

 The effects of the general outburst of commercial 

 activity which greeted the Restoration, and the 

 prevalent scientific spirit of that period, were 

 not immediately felt in the northern county ; 

 but in 1682 Ambrose Crowley, a well-known 

 and enterprising ironmonger of Greenwich, 

 possibly struck by the absence of foundries 

 where iron was plentiful, chose the rapidly 

 developing town of Sunderland in which to found 

 a branch establishment.'* The building where 

 the enterprise was started still stands in Low 

 Street ; but the people of Sunderland objected to 

 the foreign element among Crowley's work- 

 people, and Crowley had to appeal to the king 

 for protection : — 



Upon the petition of Ambrose Crowley, Ironmonger 

 of London, praying his Majesty to order that the Cat- 

 hock (sic) and other workmen which he shall employ 

 in the Factory he hath set up in Sunderland in the 

 County of Durham for making Iron ware may as 

 quietly enjoy their Religion and be not molested as 

 Protestant Strangers or as the English do." 



The king referred the petition to the attorney- 

 general ; '* unfortunately the actual petition has 

 eluded a somewhat prolonged search, but the 

 Privy Council Register gives a summary of the 



" J. Cowen, 'Northern Tribune, i, 25. 

 " P.R.O. S.P. Dom. Petitions, Entry Bk. vol. 

 ii, 24. 



'* At the court at Whitehall, 2 July, 1 688. 



2 2! 



facts brought forward by Ambrose Crowley to 

 support his claim for royal interference : — 



Upon Reading the Petition of Ambrose Crowley of 

 London Ironmonger setting forth that he hath erected 

 at Sunderland a Factory for making of Ironware, where 

 he employs at present about one hundred men, 

 several of whom came from Liege, and there he de- 

 signcs to employ three or four hundred men more in 

 the said Factory, That the Persons already imployed 

 by the Pef have taught the English workmen there 

 to work better and swifter than formerly and to make 

 such nailes as are used in Holland for sheathing of 

 Shipps wherefor humbly praying that his workmen 

 may not be molested on account of their Religion or 

 otherwise As in the Petition a Copy whereof is hereto 

 annexed is more at large exprest And upon reading a 

 Report of his Majesty's Attorney Generall to whom 

 the same was Referred And due consider.ition had 

 thereof His Majesty in Councill is graciously pleased 

 to order. And it is hereby Ordered that the Right 

 Reverend Father in God the Lord Bishop of Durham 

 do take speedy and effectual care that the Petitioners 

 workmen be protected and quieted in their carrying 

 on the manufacture in the said Petition named, And 

 that his Lordship do signify this his Majestys pleasure 

 to the Justices of the Peace in the neighbourhood 

 where the Petitioners men Reside to the end the same 

 may be observed by them accordingly. 



At the Court of Whitehall the sixth day of July 

 1688.'" 



But the men of Sunderland gave little heed to 

 royal mandates ; the persecutions continued, and 

 Crowley, actuated partly by this hostile attitude 

 and partly by the fact that a district lying between 

 the rivers Tyne and Derwent, in the immediate 

 neighbourhood of mines of coal and stretches of 

 forest-land, offered him even more facilities for 

 his works than this position at the mouth of the 

 Wear, moved in 1690 to Swalwell andWinlaton. 

 On the banks of the Derwent, in a district of 

 considerable beauty, one of the most inter- 

 esting enterprises of the early eighteenth century 

 centred. A self-made man, probably the original 

 of Addison's Sir John Anvil,^" Crowley's in- 

 domitable energy and appreciation of the im- 

 portance of detail started an industry which 

 gave employment to hundreds, and turned the 

 most deserted part of one (at that time) of the 

 least industrial counties of England into a thriving 

 manufacturing district, the fame of which has 

 left its traces on the local ballads of the time : 



That day a' Hawks's blacks may rue 

 They gat mony a verra fair clanker-o 



Can they do ouse wi' Crowley's crew 

 Frev a needle tiv an anchor-o \ " 



and spread to the Colonies, for William Penn, 

 when he came over to England to consult the 

 best authorities for the development of Penn- 

 sylvania, obtained from Ambrose Crowley 



" P.C. Reg. 1687-8, fol. 702. 



^'' Spertator, 12 Feb. 1712. 



" Swalwell Hopping, North country song. 



I 36 



