INDUSTRIES 



to doubt whether any of the later foreign 

 makers actually settled there. It may be re- 

 marked that when in 1589 George Longe 

 petitioned for a new patent he estimated the 

 total number of glasshouses in all England 

 at no more than fifteen, a number which he 

 proposed to reduce to two.' 



There was however a settlement of foreign 

 glass-makers at Alfold in Surrey. Aubrey 

 says that in the churchyard of this parish 

 there were to be seen several inscriptions to 

 Frenchmen who in the time of the massacre 

 in France came into England for refuge, and 

 set up in this place a house for making glass.^ 

 The parish registers show that John Carrd, 

 * M' of y' Glashouse,' was buried here on 23 

 May 1572.' Peter Levenion of the parish 

 of St. Peter-le-Poer, London, glass-maker, in 

 his will dated 12 January 1626-7, mentioned 

 his best houses or tenements situated in the 

 parish of Alfold (Offbld), co. Surrey, and ap- 

 pointed his brother, Paul Levinion {sic) his 

 sole executor.* The glasshouse at Alfold is 

 marked on Speed's map of 16 10. A field 

 called Glasshouse Field is mentioned here by 

 Manning and Bray.* 



Of Ewhurst, CO. Surrey, ' glasse fownder,' 

 was Laurence Fryer, whose nuncupative will 

 bears date 30 February 1612-3. He left 

 his goods to be equally divided between his 

 wife Agnes and his daughter Mary Fryer, and 

 desired that his master, Mr. George Gerrat, 

 glassmaker, should keep the said Mary's por- 

 tion until she attained the age of twenty-one.* 

 It is in Sussex that by far the greater num- 

 ber of foreign names occur in connection 

 with glass-making in the parish registers of 

 the beginning of the seventeenth century, and 

 undoubtedly it was in that county that the 

 refugees of Normandy and Lorraine princi- 

 pally established themselves and brought fresh 

 life to what was before to all appearance a 

 moribund industry. Their term of prosperity 

 was destined to be short lived. Throughout 

 the reign of Elizabeth the outcry against the 

 vast consumption of timber in the Weald was 

 making itself more and more heard. No 

 fact is more patent in the State Papers of this 

 and the succeeding reigns than that the in- 



1 Lansdowne MS. lix. 72. 



2 Aubrey, op. cit. iv. 92. 

 » A. Hartshorne, op. cit. 168. 

 ♦ Admon. with will 12 April 1627, granted in 



Archd. Court of S\iTi.{reast, 403), to Joan Levinion, 

 daughter of the deceased, the said Paul renounc- 

 ing. 



B History of Surrey, ii. 69. 



» Admon. granted i April 161 3, in Archd. Court 

 of Surr. (Berry, 301), to Agnes the relict, no executor 

 being named in the will. 



299 



ventive genius of man was hard at work 

 devising new methods for the suppression of 

 charcoal fuel in all manner of industries. In 

 the case of the manufacture of glass the 

 efforts in this direction did not remain long 

 unrewarded. The proclamation of 16 15 

 which totally prohibited the use of any fuel 

 made of wood and timber in glass-making 

 meant the immediate collapse of the Wealden 

 industry. The centres of Surrey glass-mak- 

 ing were at once shifted from the old spots 

 in the Weald to the district of the London 

 suburbs. The new conditions led to import- 

 ant developments in the art, but these develop- 

 ments, together with the events, so far as they 

 particularly concern Surrey, which led up to 

 this famous proclamation, may be more con- 

 veniently considered in the second part of our 

 present inquiry, 



II 



It is to the making of glass and iron within 

 the realm that the principal cause of the 

 scarcity of timber is ascribed in several of 

 James I.'s patents for inventions to enable the 

 use of other kinds of fuel in these manu- 

 factures. This in the case of iron, as will 

 be seen from the account we have given of 

 the history of that industry in our county, 

 was a result not satisfactorily attained for 

 more than a century. With glass however 

 the case was very different. Experiments 

 soon proved that not only was it a compara- 

 tively simple matter to devise means for the 

 supersession of the old charcoal furnaces by 

 those of coal, but that with the new fuel 

 very much better results could be obtained in 

 the quality of the glass. No better proof of 

 this can be adduced than the fact that none 

 of the Wealden manufactories can be shown 

 to have survived the well known proclamation 

 of 1 615 which entirely forbade the use of 

 timber and wood in the making of glass. 



On 28 July 1 610 a special licence for 

 twenty-one years was granted to Sir William 

 SHngsby and others for the erection of fur- 

 naces, ovens and engines for the melting of 

 glass, ordnance, bell metal, latten, copper and 

 other metals with sea-coal or pit-coal for the 

 sparing of wood and charcoal." In February 

 of the following year Slingsby protested 

 against the grant of a patent to Sir Edward 

 Zouch and some others for their newly in- 

 vented furnaces for making glass with sea- 

 coal as being an infringement of his own 

 invention.^ His protest was dismissed by the 

 Council, either, we may presume, because his 



' Pat. 8 Jas. I. pt. 12, No. 20. 

 e S. P.Dom. Jas. I. Ixi. 113. 



