A HISTORY OF SURREY 



pound.* None of these were accepted, and 

 eventually John Evelyn agreed to supply for 

 a half year from i May 1635, 16 lasts 

 monthly at his previous rate of 8(/.* On the 

 expiry of this term a further agreement was 

 made with him, this time for a whole year 

 from I November 1635.' He was now to 

 serve 20 lasts per month, but it is to be re- 

 marked that a reduction seems to have been 

 made in the capacity of this measure, for, 

 while it was still to consist of twenty-four 

 barrels, each barrel was to contain 60 lb. 

 only, instead of 1 00 as before. 



The determination of this contract brings 

 to an end the Evelyns' connection with the 

 gunpowder industry, at least in an official 

 capacity. For not immediately did John 

 Evelyn cease to work his mills. He probably 

 had some store of the government's saltpetre 

 remaining in hand, for in the second month 

 of their contract his successors complained 

 that he was converting the saltpetre which 

 should be theirs to the prejudice of their 

 works.* In Evelyn's final petition to be dis- 

 charged of his contracts, he claims allowance 

 for 1,135 barrels of gunpowder made with 

 his own saltpetre as well for all his losses 

 sustained by the erection of his mills and 

 workhouses for the public service.* His 

 successors were also Surrey men, the owners 

 of the Chilworth mills. But before consider- 

 ing the history of these latter works, it may 

 be convenient to note here a few makers 

 who, notwithstanding the alleged monopoly 

 of John Evelyn, seem to have carried on some 

 trade in the supply of the commodity. 



The most formidable of these competitors 

 was the East India Company. We first 

 hear of the proposed erection of mills in 

 England by this Company on 2 March 

 1624-5, when Lord Carew, one of the com- 

 missioners for saltpetre and gunpowder, 

 wrote to Sir John Coke that it would open a 

 floodgate and diminish the king's profits from 

 the poundage he received on all the powder 

 made by Evelyn." Shortly after this, on 13 

 April following, Charles I.'s proclamation for 

 the maintenance and increase of the mines of 

 saltpetre and the true making of gunpowder 

 was issued. The provisions of this chiefly 

 relate to the production of saltpetre and have 

 been already noticed. One of them however 

 prohibited any one from making ' gunpowder 

 of any saltpetre for service against any enemy 

 or for sale but by his majesty's warrant.' 



' S. P. Dom. Chas. I. cclzzxiii. 13. 



' Ibid, cclnxix. 61. ' Ibid, ccxcii. 191. 



• Ibid, cccxxxviii. 49. » Ibid, ccodi. 79. 



« Ibid. Jas. I. clxxxv. 6. 



318 



Such warrant must have been obtained by the 

 company, for on 26 August of the same year 

 we hear that it had set up mills in the skirts 

 of Windsor Forest, which owing to the pre- 

 judice received by the deer it had been neces- 

 sary to stop.' However a few days later the 

 secretary, Conway, wrote that he saw no 

 reason why the company should not proceed 

 in their powder works. Windsor Forest was 

 held to extend into Surrey at this time, but 

 its exact limits and those of its purlieus or 

 skirts were matter of considerable uncertainty, 

 and it does not appear from the State Papers 

 where these first powder mills of the East 

 India Company actually were. But pro- 

 bably about or soon after this time its mills at 

 Chilworth were set agoing, Vincent Randyll 

 (or Randall) in 1654* states that his father, 

 Sir Edward Randyll, leased several powder 

 mills near his dwelling in Chilworth to the 

 East India Company for twenty-one years. 

 Since that time they had been rented by 

 yearly tenants. But the date of Sir Edward 

 Randyll's lease to the company is not given. 

 The Company may perhaps have first set up 

 its powder mills only with a view to supply- 

 ing the requirements of its own service. But 

 for the manufacture of gunpowder on an ex- 

 tensive scale it had exceptional facilities in 

 the large supplies of naturally produced salt- 

 petre which it could bring over from the 

 Indies in its own ships. Certainly Evelyn's 

 complaint, made about the year 1627,' that 

 the competition both of the Company and of 

 one Michael Waring prevented the sale of 

 his own powder conveys the impression that 

 the Company did not then limit the output 

 of its mills only to what sufficed for its own 

 needs. By 1631 the Company's works must 

 have been prohibited, for in that year Evelyn 

 complains that notwithstanding the prohibition, 

 Collins, the company's workman, still con- 

 tinued them and had repaired two of the 

 mills, where he was making thirty barrels of 

 gunpowder weekly.'" The mills were still at 

 work in the next year, for there is a memo- 

 randum for an order to be given to the Attor- 

 ney-General to prohibit the Company from 

 making powder." But in November 1635 

 Edward Collins of Chilworth contracted with 

 the Commissioners for Saltpetre and Gun- 

 powder to convert for one year into gun- 

 powder to the quantity of lOO lasts the salt- 

 petre which the king had arranged for the 



' Ibid. Chas. I. v. 85. 

 ' Ibid. Interr. Ixvii. 7. 

 » Ibid. Chas. I. Ixxxix. 9. 

 " Ibid, clmiv. 4. 

 " Ibid. caci. 79. 



