A HISTORY OF MIDDLESEX 



mercial genius of Sir Thomas Gresham would 

 have made out of this beginning a flourishing 

 industry for our country. 



Richard Tottel, or Tottyll, a printer in the 

 City of London, appears next as a paper 

 manufacturer. In a petition addressed in 

 1 585 (?) to Lord Burghley he says that twelve 

 years before he, with some partners, agreed 

 to set up a paper mill, but his companions left 

 the undertaking, on the ground that the 

 project had twice or thrice been attempted 

 Viefore, but without success. He was re- 

 solved to persevere and complained of the 

 hindrance of Frenchmen, ' who buy up all 

 our rags.' He prays that the exportation 

 of rags from this country may be prohibited, 

 and that a site for a paper mill may be granted 

 him with sole privilege for thirty years of 

 making paper in England. 4 Tottel seems to 

 have had no better success than his predeces- 

 sors. A German named Spilman, or Spiel- 

 man, who erected a paper mill at Dartford in 

 1588, was more successful, and is said to 

 have been knighted by Queen Elizabeth in 

 recognition of this national service. 6 A re- 

 currence of the plague in 1636-7 led to a 

 correspondence between Peter Hey wood, a 

 Westminster justice of the peace, and Lord 

 Keeper Coventry. Heywood urged the 

 necessity of seizing the rags sold at rag shops 

 in Clerkenwell, St. Giles's Cripplegate, 

 Shoreditch, Whitechapel, Stepney, and St. 

 Katharine's, to prevent their being sold to 

 make paper. 6 One of the offending paper 

 makers was William Bushee, who had set up 

 a mill in Middlesex midway between Houns- 

 low and East Bedfont. On 8 December 

 1636 he was summoned to the Middlesex 

 Sessions ' for grindinge ragges in his paper- 

 mill that came from London, whereby one of 

 his servantes became infected with the 

 plague.' 1 The popular alarm seems to have 

 stopped the mills from working, and the privy 

 council ordered the local authorities to give 

 help to the workpeople thrown out of their 

 employment. This produced an indignant 

 petition from the inhabitants of Middlesex 

 and Bucks who lived in the neighbourhood of 

 the mills. The correspondence provides us 

 with some useful facts. There were at least 

 four paper mills in this district : that of 

 William Bushee, one of Edmond Phipps at 

 Horton, one probably belonging to Richard 

 West at Poyle, and the mill at Colnbrook, 



4 S.P. Dom. Eliz. clxxxv, 69. 

 4 Lewis Evans, Anct. Papcrmaking (1896), 6. 

 S.P. Dom. Chas. I, cccxnci, 31. 

 J MM. Sen. Rott (Midd. Co. Rec. Soc.), iii, 

 167. 



which may have been held by Henry Harris. 

 The petitioners complained that the landlords 

 by converting their corn mills into paper mills 

 advanced their rents from 10 and 15 to 

 100 and ^150 per annum, that the paper- 

 makers brought many indigent persons into 

 their parishes whom they ought to maintain, 

 and their workmen had double wages in com- 

 parison with other labourers and might well 

 save, that the paper made was so ' unuseful ' 

 that it would bear no ink on one side, and 

 was sold at dearer rates than formerly. For 

 these and other reasons the petitioners, so far 

 from consenting to the paper-makers, desire if 

 possible that their mills may be suppressed or 

 removed further off. 8 



In spite of these and other attempts in 

 various parts of the country to manufacture 

 paper, the greater part of the paper used 

 in England, and certainly that of finer quality, 

 was imported from abroad. In 1675 a 

 patent 9 was granted to Eustace Burneby 

 for ' making all sorts of white paper for the 

 use of writing and printing, being a new 

 manufacture never practised in any our 

 kingdomes or dominions.' Burneby must 

 have had some success, for three years later a 

 book was presented to the king, 10 'being 

 printed upon English paper and made within 

 five miles of Windsor by Eustace Burneby, 

 esq. who was the first Englishman that 

 brought it into England, attested by Henry 

 Million, who was overseer in the making of 

 this royal manufacture.' Burneby's mill is 

 said to have been at Stanwell, Middlesex, but 

 its success was short-lived. 



The Craftsman (No. 910) records that 

 William III granted certain Huguenot refu- 

 gees, Biscoe and others, a patent for establish- 

 ing paper manufactories, but that the under- 

 taking was not successful. In 1713 Thomas 

 Watkin, a stationer in London, brought the 

 art of manufacturing paper to great perfection, 

 in consequence of which numerous paper 

 mills were established in England. 11 



On 17 September 1787 Samuel Hooper, a 

 bookseller and stationer of St. Giles-in-the- 

 Fields, patented ls ' a new method of making 

 or manufacturing printing paper particularly 

 for copper-plate printing.' Hooper is said 

 also to have produced, in 1790, paper of 

 various qualities from leather cuttings and 



* Rhys Jenkins, ' Paper-making in England, 

 1588-1680' in Lib. Asioc. Rec. Nov. 1900, p. 584. 

 ' 21 Jan. 1675, no. 178. 



10 Paper and Paper-making Chronology (1875), 2 1. 



11 Matthias Koops, Historical Account of Sub- 

 itances used to describe Events and to convey Ideas 

 (1801), 225-6. 



"No. 1622. 



196 



