A HISTORY OF SURREY 



furnaces had not proved satisfactory, or per- 

 haps more probably because his invention was 

 held to be of too general a character to be 

 infringed by one designed for a single purpose. 

 Sir Edw^ard Zouch, Bevis Thelwall, Thomas 

 Percivall and the king's glazier, Thomas 

 Mefflyn, were granted the royal licence on 

 25 March 161 1, to exercise and practise the 

 art, feat and mistery of melting and making 

 of all manner of glasses with sea-coal, pit- 

 coal, * fucashe ' or any other fuel not being of 

 wood for a term of twenty-one years at the 

 yearly rents of £io to the Exchequer and 

 £^\o to the receiver general of the Prince of 

 Wales. In the preamble it is stated that in 

 order to ascertain whether the grant of this 

 patent was likely to prejudice the king's sub- 

 jects, reference had been made of the matter 

 to the Commissioners for Suits, who had re- 

 ported favourably upon the project to the 

 Council.' 



The special interest of this grant to the 

 industrial history of Surrey appears in a report 

 made to the Crown on 18 July 1613 by 

 Sir George More and Sir Edmond Bowyer. 

 Therein they state that they had visited the 

 glasshouse recently erected at Lambeth by 

 Sir Edward Zouch and Mr. Louis (hV) Thel- 

 wall. The glass made was clear and good, 

 but in some places uneven and full of spots, 

 due it was alleged to the negligence of the 

 workmen. London glaziers informed them 

 that they had bought glass there as good and 

 cheap as any of the ^me size. The fuel 

 used was Scotch coal. The experiments had 

 not failed to arouse jealous opposition, for 

 unlawful practices had been employed to 

 overthrow the work. Speedy course was 

 recommended against such practices.* 



By the terms of the licence the patentees 

 had been authorized to erect as many ' houses, 

 furnaces, engines, structures and devices' as 

 they should think necessary for their purpose. 

 No evidence is forthcoming to show that 

 Zouch himself had set up any other glass- 

 house than that at Lambeth, but from some 

 legal proceedings of about fifty years after 

 this date it appears that Sir Bevis Thelwall, 

 as he subsequently became, was at some time 

 the owner of a glasshouse in the parishes of 

 St. Botulph without Aldgate and St. Mary 

 Matfelon or Whitechapel.^ These proceed- 

 ings incidentally suggest a reason why the 

 Surrey side of the river may have been 

 chosen by Zouch as the scene of his experi- 

 ments. It is put in by way of strengthening 



1 Pat. 9 Jas. I. pt. 29, No. 19. 



' LoseUy MSS. (ed. A. J. Kempe), 493. 



» Chan. Dec. R. 1212, No. 8. 



the arguments of one of the parties to the 

 suit that the then tenants of this glasshouse 

 had been put to considerable expense upon 

 several indictments and actions for nuisance 

 occasioned by the smoke from the works. 

 Glass-making was by no means the only in- 

 dustry that the citizens of London preferred 

 to see pursued on the other side of the 

 Thames. 



Of all those who were watching the pro- 

 gress of the new experiments no one was 

 apparently more keenly interested than the 

 king himself. No doubt the hope of buying 

 timber for his ships at rates sufficiently reason- 

 able to appease his natural love of parsimony 

 mainly prompted him to desire the success of 

 an invention that would secure the complete 

 disuse of wood fuel in the future manufacture 

 of glass within his kingdoms. Here however 

 his own policy of increasing his revenue by 

 grants of monopolies for the practice of almost 

 every conceivable industry within the realm 

 had brought him into a difficulty. Already 

 Sir Jerome Bowes was in possession of the 

 exclusive privilege for a certain term of years 

 of making drinking and other glasses after the 

 fashion of those made in the town of Murano, 

 and the reversion of this licence had been 

 prospectively granted to Sir Percival Harte 

 and Edward Fawsett. Licence moreover 

 had been granted to one Edward Salter to 

 make every other kind of glass that was not 

 prohibited by Bowes's monopoly. 



That the question how these existing 

 monopolies could be overridden in favour of 

 one which would put a complete stop to the 

 consumption of charcoal fuel in the manufac- 

 ture of glass was before the Council, and 

 proved no easy matter to deal with, we know 

 from a letter dated 17 November 161 3 from 

 the Earl of Suffolk, Lord Chamberlain, to Sir 

 Thomas Lake. The business between Sir 

 Jerome Bowes and his company and Sir Ed- 

 ward Zouch and his company had been be- 

 fore the Privy Council. The majority of 

 the Lords did ' strangely stand for Bowes's 

 patent,' although they had been shown the 

 just exception the king took to it ' as a work 

 injurious to the public by the expense of 

 wood.' They had refused to listen to an 

 offer made by Zouch's company to pay 

 Bowes and his associates ^^ 1,000 a year. 

 The Lord Chief Justice had recommended 

 the writer to suggest to his Majesty that he 

 should be pleased to command a new patent 

 to be drawn to Sir Edward Zouch and to 

 take assurance from him and his company for 

 the payment of ;^i,ooo a year to the king, 

 at first to the use of the former patentees and 

 afterwards to his Majesty's own. In condu- 



300 



