A HISTORY OF SURREY 



the Council should have set about to remedy 

 the evil and to bring about an entirely new 

 order of things. For the first time they now 

 contracted with certain makers for the supply 

 of all the gunpowder required for the State 

 to be made at home, and we now enter upon 

 that stage in which the history of the whole 

 English gunpowder industry may be said to 

 be peculiarly that of the Surrey industry. 



On 28 January 1588-9 George Evelyn, 

 Richard Hills (or Hill) and John Evelyn, a 

 son of George, were licensed by royal Letters 

 Patent to dig and get saltpetre within the 

 realms of England and Ireland, except in 

 London and within the radius of two miles 

 from its walls, and in the five most northern 

 English counties, and to convert the same 

 into gunpowder for provision of the queen's 

 stores. The licence was to endure for 

 eleven years, and the justices of the peace, 

 the mayors and other local officers were 

 enjoined to assist them in the carrying out of 

 their work.* 



In the letter written by John Evelyn and 

 prefixed to Aubrey's Natural History and 

 Antiquities of Surrey the writer says : ' Not fax 

 from my brother's house (at Wotton) upon 

 the streams and ponds since filled up and 

 drained stood many powder mills, erected by 

 my ancestors, who were the very first who 

 brought that invention into England, before 

 which we had all our powder out of Flanders.' 

 That the second part of this statement is not 

 altogether correct has already been shown. 

 It does not appear moreover that the Evelyns 

 ever worked any of the mills in the neigh- 

 bourhood of Wotton, at any rate in early 

 times. George Evelyn was of Long Ditton 

 and his son John is described in 1589 as of 

 Kingston-upon-Thames.' Manning and Bray 

 are of opinion that the gunpowder mills com- 

 monly called Maiden Mills at Long Ditton, 

 and in their time worked by William Taylor, 

 probably mark the place where the Evelyns 

 carried on their work.* Their first mills 

 were undoubtedly situated on the little stream 

 known as the Hogsmill river, which, rising in 

 Ewell, flows into the Thames under the Clat- 

 tern bridge in Kingston. By this stream the 

 Evelyns, fether and sons, must have carried 

 out their successive contracts with the 

 government until 161 3 or sometime before 

 when John, the son, had transferred his mills 

 to Godstone.* 



» Pat. 31 Eliz. pt. 8, m. 10 (25). 

 5 S. P. Dom. Eliz. ccxxvii. 4. 

 ' Hist, of Surrey, iii. 12. 



• He is described as ' John Evelyn, esq., of 

 Godstone, Surrey' in September 161 3 {Analytical 



The further statement made by Evelyn in 

 his letter that the gunpowder patent remained 

 in the family of the Evelyns of Godstone until 

 the outbreak of the Civil Wars is also incor- 

 rect, that family, as will appear shortly, 

 having ceased to hold the monopoly in 1 636. 

 That there were however early gunpowder 

 mills near Wotton is probably true, for the 

 Evelyns' partner in their first patent of 1589, 

 Richard Hill, is described as a gentleman of 

 Shere in Surrey," The Evelyns and Hill did 

 not work their mills together as a joint stock 

 business, but, apportioning among themselves 

 the total amount of powder to be supplied, 

 worked independently of each other. Hill 

 took into partnership in the first year of his 

 patent George Constable of the Minories, 

 Aldgate, and John Grange of Stapleford Hall 

 Abbey in Essex.' Grange soon afterwards 

 relinquished the partnership, and a new one 

 was entered into by Hill and Constable.' 

 From the fact that the three partners, and 

 afterwards the two, agreed to pay the clerk 

 of the deliveries at the Tower during their 

 co-partnership a yearly pension of j^30 in 

 consideration of his seeing that Hill had his 

 just third of all the saltpetre brought in, it is 

 to be inferred that the co-patentees had 

 divided equally between themselves the total 

 amount of business that fell to them under 

 the conditions of the patent. 



Some idea of the extent of this business in 

 the first year ot the patent may be learnt 

 from a note of the saltpetre brought into the 

 Tower by the saltpetre men between 28 Feb- 

 ruary 1588-9 and 25 September 1589, and 

 delivered to the powder makers. In all 

 45>583 lb. were supplied to Evelyn and 

 19,754 lb. to Hill.* During this period, 

 as we have seen, powder was still being sup- 

 plied from abroad at the rate of i2d. the 

 pound. In 1595 it was stated that the Eng- 

 lish makers were prepared to provide the 

 queen with powder at ia. and 7 Jrf. a pound.* 

 Even then the government were still contract- 

 ing for supplies of foreign powder at I2</." 

 Among Lord Burghlcy's ' notes of things to 

 be performed ' in September of that year are 

 bargains for saltpetre and powder from Stade 

 with the Merchants Adventurers, and ' under- 

 hand ' by Sir Francis Vere with the merchants 

 of Amsterdam.*' The importance however 

 which was attached to the English industry 



Index to the Remembraticia of the City of London, 

 218). 



' S. P. Dom. Eliz. caacix. 33. 



■ Ibid. ' Ibid, ccxli. 48. 



» Ibid, ccxxvii. 3. » Ibid. cdv. 63. 



" Ibid, ccliv. 64. " Ibid, cdiii. 103. 



312 



