A HISTORY OF SURREY 



Of the other makers reported upon Thomas 

 Carter is in 1660 described as a powder maker 

 of London,' but the place of manufecture of 

 Freeman and Judd cannot in the light of our 

 present knowledge be determined. With 

 Molins, Judd was declared one of the most 

 guilty. The result of the report probably was 

 that these two makers lost their contracts. 

 Neither of them appears in a certificate made 

 by the Ordnance officers on 10 February 

 1657-8 on the state of the various powder 

 makers' contracts then in being.* This cer- 

 tificate, which shows the dates of the various 

 contracts, the amount of powder contracted 



for, and of that actually received, with pre- 

 sumably the date when the last consignment;* 

 were made, is given here in conclusion of this 

 account of gunpowder making in Surrey dur- 

 ing the Commonwealth. The Chil worth 

 mills, it will be seen, are now again represented 

 by their owner Vincent Randyll, and Samyne 

 still appears as one of the contractors. Thomas 

 Fossan may possibly have been a relative of 

 Lewis Fossan already mentioned, and in that 

 case the quantity of powder supplied by him 

 may represent the output of the Carshalton 

 mills ; but no positive assertion can be made 

 on this point. 



Thus with the industry free to all, through- 

 out the Commonwealth period the Surrey 

 makers of gunpowder must have had a very 

 large share of the government's contracts. 

 So far there has been no lack of material to 

 help us in our endeavours to form some esti- 

 mate of the work done by them, and of its 

 proportion to that of makers in other parts 

 of the kingdom. Shortly after the restoration 

 a change was made in the system, whereby the 

 powder contracts were made and regulated, 

 and the whole business relegated to the 

 officers of the Ordnance. Henceforth a close 

 study of the voluminous records of the 

 Ordnance Office is alone necessary to ascertain 

 the actual amount of powder supplied to the 

 State by each maker. But the very volumin- 

 ousness of these records makes the task an 

 almost impracticable one within the scope of 

 the present inquiry, if not indeed a somewhat 

 unprofitable one from the fact that there is 

 little or nothing in these records, without 

 knowledge gained from outside sources to 

 enable us to associate the different makers 

 with any particular locality. 



The first step in regard to the gimpowder 

 business of Charles IL on his restoration was 

 to recreate the office of sole gunpowder maker 

 to the king very much in the same manner 

 as the office had been held by the Earl of 

 Worcester in 1607. The patent, to be held 

 for twenty-one years, was given to Colonel 



' S. P. Dom. Intern ccxxi. 21. 

 ' Ibid, clxixviii. 63. 



Daniel O'Neale, the third husband of 

 the twice-widowed Countess Chesterfield.* 

 Amongst the actual makers to whom O'Neale 

 delegated his authority we find several of 

 those who have been previously noticed as 

 employed by the Commonwealth government, 

 including Randyll, Samyne and Dewy.* 

 Randyll of course worked at his own mills at 

 Chilworth. In view of what we have learnt 

 of his services as a gunpowder maker to the 

 State in the latter years of the Commonwealth, 

 it seems somewhat disingenuous on his part 

 to find him in his humble petition of Novem- 

 ber (?) 1660 conveniently ignoring this 

 episode in his business career, and only dwell- 

 ing upon the sufferings he had endured in his 

 estate, and the danger of his life he had been 

 in 'in the beginning of the late unhappy 

 distractions.'" The Chilworth mills, it will be 

 remembered, had been re-erected or extended 

 by Cordwell with money imprested for the 

 purpose from the Crown, it being a condition, 

 when the repayment of this money had been 

 forgiven him, that the mills on the expiry of 

 the then lease should be regarded as the pro- 

 perty of the Crown. This no doubt is what 

 Randyll has in mind when he states in his 

 petition that certain powder mills for the 

 supply of the royal magazines and of the 

 whole of the kingdom had been erected upon 

 his inheritance by King Charles I. It was 



* Ibid. Chas. II. ciii. 125. 



* W. O. Ordnance Debentures, vol. Ixxvi. 

 passim. 6 s. P. Dom. Chas. II. xiii. 1 1 2. 



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