INDUSTRIES 



The will, made about April 1563, of 

 Thomas Peytoe, who was possessed of lands 

 at Combe in Chiddingfold parish, is recited in 

 the course of some litigation with regard to 

 the disposal of his estate in the following year. 

 Amongst other things the testator bequeathed 

 to his son and heir William, then under age, 

 his tools, woodstufFand other things belonging 

 to his glasshouse.* 



The Peytos were probably the last survivors 

 of the old order of Chiddingfold glass-makers. 

 From the registers it is to be gathered that 

 they continued their trade in the parish until 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century. In 

 1 610 and 1612 there are entries of the burials 

 of children of John Peytoe, a glass-maker, and 

 in 16 14 of the burial of William Peyto, 

 another glass-maker. So that the family sur- 

 vived to carry on its well-established manufac- 

 ture until the very last days of the old Wealden 

 industry. 



Camden, referring to the glass-makers or 

 Sussex, describes their glass as wanting in 

 purity and clearness, and therefore used of the 

 common sort only. Fuller in the seventeenth 

 century, speaking of the great antiquity of the 

 industry, says that the glass made was coarse. 

 On the other hand, Charnock's Breviary, 

 published in 1557, has the following doggerel 

 verses : — 



As for glass-makers, they be scant in this land, 



Yet one there is as I doe understand : 



And in Sussex {sic) is now his habitacion, 



At Chiddinsfold he works of his occupacion : 



To go to him it is necessary and meete, 



Or send a servant that is discrete : 



And desire him in most humble wise 



To blow thee a glasse after thy devise : 



It were worth many an Arme or a Legg 



He could shape it like to an egge 



To open and to close as close as a haire. 



If thou hast such a one thou needest not feare : 



Yet if thou hadst a number in to store 



It is the better for store is no sore. 



If Charnock is not presuming too much on 

 the poet's licence to the use of hyperbole, the 

 Chiddingfold glass-maker of his time was 

 evidently no mean artisan, but a true artist 

 who was to be approached in all meekness of 

 spirit. Unhappily the evidence, as will appear 

 later, preponderates all too much on the side 

 of Camden and Fuller's depreciatory state- 

 ments as to the glass produced in this district. 

 Yet if not for its glass manufactures, it is 

 difficult to say how Chiddingfold obtained a 

 celebrity that was not confined within the 

 limits of England. In the map of England 

 dated 1566, and painted on the walls of the 



1 Chan. Proc. ser, ii, bdle. 10, No. loi. 



Guardaroba in the Palazzo Vecchio at Florence 

 besides Guildford the capital no other place is 

 marked in Surrey but Chiddingfold." 



It will have been noted that several of the 

 names which have been mentioned in con- 

 nection with the early Chiddingfold industry 

 have somewhat of an un-English appearance, 

 and it is possible that the manufacture may 

 have largely owed its continuance, if not its 

 original establishment in the neighbourhood, 

 to the influence of foreign workmen. But 

 in the latter half of the sixteenth century an 

 element that was avowedly foreign was intro- 

 duced, and served for a time to give fresh im- 

 petus to the old industry of the Weald, 

 This was the settlement in the glass-making 

 districts of Sussex and Surrey of large num- 

 bers of refugee makers principally from Nor- 

 mandy and Lorraine. 



On 7 August 1565 Armigill Waade, 

 clerk of the Council, wrote to Sir William 

 Cecil on behalf ot one Cornelius de Lannoy, 

 who had apparently undertaken to improve 

 the English manufacture of glass and pottery. 

 'All our glasse makers,' he writes, 'cannot 

 facyon him one glasse tho' he stoode by them 

 to teach them. So as he is now forced to 

 send to Andwarp and into Hassia for new 

 provisyons of glasses, his old being spent. The 

 potters cannot make him one pot to content 

 him. They know not howe to seasson their 

 stuff to make the same to susteyne the force 

 of his great fyers.' And further on he writes, 

 'I would he wear putt in some generall 

 cumfort of some place to be provided for him 

 here in England, he liketh marvelously well 

 the syte of Guldeford.'^ De Lannoy, we learn, 

 had been allowed three years within which to 

 carry out his project, but from the account 

 of his charges enclosed in this letter it is 

 evident that he had then been at work for 

 little over six months. No more is known of 

 him and his undertaking, so that we may 

 conclude that it failed.* 



Waade's letter, it will be observed, carries a 

 bitter complaint against the clumsiness of the 

 native glass-makers. Two years later this 

 want of skill on their part is brought more 

 home to us in the case of the workmen of 

 the very place whose share in the history of 

 the industry we have been considering. On 

 9 August 1569, Pierre Briet and the well- 

 known Jean Carr6 or Quarrd petitioned Cecil 

 that they might be permitted to set up in 

 London glassworks, similar to those of Venice, 



2 Ex inf. Rev. T. S. Cooper. 



3 S. P. Dom. Eliz. xxxvii. 3. 

 * A. Nesbitt, F.S.A., Glass (S. K. Handbooks), 



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