A HISTORY OF SURREY 



for the manufacture of every sort of drinking 

 glasses of crystal. They added to this petition 

 a statement that in order not to interfere with 

 the existing native industry they had proceeded 

 to Chiddingfold and there made inquiries of 

 one of the masters of the furnaces. In 

 answer to their question whether the makers 

 of that place knew how to make such glasses 

 as they proposed to turn out, he answered no, 

 that they made only ' orinaux ' bottles ' and 

 such small articles.^ This would lead us to sup- 

 pose that their old art of making window 

 glass had been lost, a fact which it is hard to 

 believe in view of the unbroken succession of 

 Chiddingfold makers. No doubt foreign 

 window glass of very much superior quality 

 had been imported of late years, but with 

 the general rise in the standard of comfort 

 which obtained in Tudor times, it is hardly 

 possible but that there must have been some 

 demand for the home-made article. In con- 

 nection with this subject of the class of 

 articles made about this time at the glass- 

 houses of the Weald, we may notice here 

 the ' one mettle pott made at the glass howse,' 

 which is mentioned in the will dated i6 

 January 1653-4, of Arnold Everington of 

 Wisborough Green.' 



John Carr6 had previous to the date of this 

 petition erected two glasshouses at Farnfold 

 Wood (Fernefol) in the parish of Loxwood 

 in Sussex, for the making of Normandy and 

 Lorraine glass. He had obtained in con- 

 junction with Anthony Becku alias Dolin a 

 licence from the queen to practise the manu- 

 facture of glass for glazing. Disputes how- 

 ever soon arose between the two, and spread- 

 ing to their workmen assumed such magnitude 

 that it was thought that the queen's intention 

 to have the science of the making of this 

 kind of glass remain within the realm was 

 like to be frustrated.* Nor was internal dis- 

 ruption the only danger the new industry had 

 to fear, for we hear in 1574 of the plot of 

 certain people at Petworth in Sussex to rob 

 and murder the French glass-makers in that 

 place and to burn their houses.' But a 

 greater trouble than all these, one which al- 

 ready had been set afoot to cripple the pros- 



1 Water globes perhaps, as Mr. Hartshome 

 suggests, for improving the power of the rush- 

 lights or possibly crucibles for alchemists' use. 



2 S. P. Dom. Eliz. xliii. 43. 



3 Prob. P.CC. 16 March 1653-4 {^Icbln, 

 361). I am indebted to the courtesy of R. Garra- 

 way Rice, Esq., F.S.A., for this and several of the 

 fbllowring references to the Wealden glassmakers. 



« Loseley MSS. {Hist. MSS. Com. Rep. hi. 

 App. 621). 



' S. P.Dom. Eliz. xcv. 82. 



298 



perous iron trade of the Weald, the agitation 

 that is to say against the vast and growing 

 consumption of timber, was lying in wait for 

 these foreign glass-makers, and was destined 

 before any great lapse of time to bring their 

 industry to ruin. 



The industry indeed under its new con- 

 ditions had not long been set agoing before 

 this agitation found expression. In 1586, 

 the inhabitants of Guildford, Godalming and 

 Wonersh complained that an Italian had re- 

 cently erected a glasshouse in those parts 

 whereby the woods were likely to be con- 

 sumed to the prejudice of the whole country. 

 The Council thereupon sent order to Sir 

 William More and others to take the bond 

 of the Italian to appear before it, and in the 

 meantime to stay the working of the glass- 

 house.* Mr. Hartshorne identifies this Italian 

 with Giacomo Verzeline, who had obtained a 

 patent on 15 December 1575 to manufacture 

 drinking vessels such as are made in the town 

 of Murano. Like Cornelius de Lannoy he 

 seems to have liked 'marvelously well the 

 syte of Guldeford,'^ It may be noted how- 

 ever that three or four years before the date 

 of this petition 'Jacob Versalin, keper of the 

 glasshowse,' with his wife and five workmen, 

 appears in two lists of strangers then dwell- 

 ing in the ward of Aldgate within the city of 

 London.' Moreover in an inquisition taken 

 in January 1607-8, shortly after his death, it 

 is stated that for twenty years he had lived 

 within the liberties of Crutched Friars, Lon- 

 don, and there exercised the handicraft of 

 making drinking-glasses. At the time of his 

 death he held lands in Kent.* 



According to Aubrey there were in Queen 

 Elizabeth's time eleven glasshouses at Chid- 

 dingfold which were suppressed as nuisances 

 on the petition of the inhabitants of the ad- 

 joining parts of the county, and that the 

 more readily because there were others at 

 Hindhead which were less offensive.'" Aubrey's 

 statement must be received with caution. No 

 confirmation of it will be found in the State 

 Papers, The Rev. T. S. Cooper, from his 

 knowledge of local owners and industries, is 

 persuaded that there were never at any time 

 as many as eleven kilns in the hands of 

 foreigners at Chiddingfold. Indeed from the 

 evidence of the parish registers he is inclined 



• Loseky MSS. (ed. A. J. Kempe), 493. 

 ' A. Hartshorne, op. cit. 157. 



8 Returns of Ahens Daiclling in the City and 

 Suburbs of London, ed. R. E. G. Kirk and E. F. 

 Kirk (Huguenot Soc. Pub. x.), ii. 304, 320. 



• Exch. K. R. Spec. Com. 3933. 



" Aubrey, Nat. Hist, and Antiquities of Surrey, 

 iv. 36. 



