INDUSTRIES 



other earthenware after the manner of Hol- 

 land, and that this earthenware might not be 

 imported into the kingdom, was heard at the 

 Court of Whitehall. The king was disposed 

 to give him all fitting encouragement, and 

 was pleased to refer the petition to the 

 Attorney-General.' On 1 1 October he re- 

 ceived his patent of denization, wherein he is 

 called John Argens van Hamm.^ On 27 

 October this was followed, as stated, by his 

 patent of invention. The terms of this do 

 not vary much from those usual in such 

 licences. The patent was to continue in 

 force for fourteen years, during which he and 

 his executors, administrators and assigns with 

 his and their servants and workmen were 

 solely to enjoy the exercise of the art. In 

 the event of suspicion falling upon any imi- 

 tators they could obtain a warrant from the 

 Lord Chief Justice of the King's Bench, and 

 with the assistance of a constable or lawful 

 officer search at a convenient time of the day 

 the premises where the offenders might be 

 expected to conceal their imitations. 



As in the case of Dwight so with van 

 Hamme, the patent was followed by a royal 

 proclamation. The proclamation, which 

 bears date 15 December 1676, called atten- 

 tion to the statute of the third year of Edward 

 IV. prohibiting the importation and selling of 

 painted wares, and strictly forbad the impor- 

 tation for the purposes of sale of any painted 

 earthenware * be the same painted with white, 

 blue or any other colours.' ^ 



On 4 August 1677 the name of John 

 Ariens van Hamme occurs with those of 

 James Barston, Harper, John Campion, 

 Richard Newnham and ' divers others using 

 the trade of potters in and about London 

 and the suburbs ' as a petitioner to the king 

 for the moiety of the appraisement of several 

 parcels of foreign painted tiles imported con- 

 trary to the proclamation and seized at the 

 Custom House. The king was pleased to 

 refer the petition to the Lord Treasurer.* 



More than this of John Ariens van Hamme 

 We do not know. But the only solid piece of 

 evidence which seems indirectly to bear out 

 his traditional connection with Lambeth is to 

 be found in the archives ot the London 

 Dutch Church. From these it appears that a 

 certain Claertjen Jans Van Hammen was 

 attested on 31 May 1679 by the pastor of 

 the Consistory at Delft as a member of the 

 Community and sound in doctrine, and that 



1 S. P. Dom. Entry Bk. xlvi. 137. 



s Pat. 28 Chas. IL pt. 2, No. 6. 



a S. P. Dom. Proclam. iii. No. 354. 



* Ibid. Entry Bk. xlvi. 195. 



the Brethren Overseers of the Community of 

 Jesus Christ 'at London, Foxhal,' were re- 

 quested to acknowledge and accept him as 

 such. Van Hamme's patent expressly in- 

 cluded his family in the permission to settle in 

 London to practise the art, and the above 

 attestation being dated within three years of 

 this patent, and Claertjen Jans' evident con- 

 nection with Delft make the presumption a 

 strong one that he was a relative of the 

 patentee desirous of joining him in his busi- 

 ness.° 



Some time before 1695 one of John 

 Ariens van Hamme's fellow-petitioners, James 

 Barston, Thomas Harper (possibly another) 

 and a certain William Knight, who is doubt- 

 less to be identified with the William Knight 

 of the parish of St. Botolph without Aldgate, 

 London, 'pottmaker,' one of the parties to 

 a deed of the year" 1690, petitioned the 

 Lords of the Treasury against a letter ob- 

 tained by Samuel Eyre and John Bowles to 

 import Delft red ware or counterfeit china 

 ware and gaily tiles. They refer to a com- 

 plaint of the potters in 1676, to a proclama- 

 tion thereon, and to an order of Council of 

 12 February 1685, for the seizure of im- 

 ported wares." Of any action taken in conse- 

 quence of this petition we are entirely ignor- 

 ant. 



During the course of the works in con- 

 nection with the making of the Albert 

 Embankment the discovery of fragments of 

 white enamelled ware and wasters furnished 

 proof of the existence of the delft potteries 

 of Lambeth.* 



Incidental evidence as to the potteries here 

 is also to be found in the fact that in the year 

 1699 Savory tried his new engine in some 

 pot-works at Lambeth.' At the beginning of 

 the eighteenth century according to Nichols' 

 History of Lambeth there were no less than 

 twenty factories occupied in this parish by 

 the ' white potters,' as they were called. The 

 tradition that Lambeth was the place in which 

 John Philip Elers the elder of the two famous 

 brothers established himself in or about the 

 year 1710, when the secret of the Bradwell 

 works became too well known in Staffordshire, 

 seems now to have been definitely abandoned 

 in favour of Chelsea." Toward the middle 

 of the eighteenth century several potworks 



5 Archives of the London Dutch Church, Certificates 

 of Membership, etc. (ed. J. H. Hessels, 1892), 

 No. 1594. 



8 Jewett, op. cit. i. 157. 



' Treas. Papers, xxxi. 58. 



s Church, op. cit. 36. " Ibid. 



10 See art. ' Elers ' in Diet. Nat. Biog. 



285 



