Introduction

February 12, 2019 Nev Ramsden

Introduction

Author: Nev. Ramsden

The Whitehaven to which Sir Christopher Lowther came in 1630 was a village lying mainly on the west bank of the Pow Beck. Its main axis was Quay Street - Swingpump Lane, the latter leading to an area known as Townhead, and later as Old Town. From Townhead a road followed the path now known as Rosemary Lane to Arrowthwaite. Another straggle of houses built along the line of what is now Chapel Street lead to a tiny chapel which was situated where Chapel Street now joins Lowther Street. This layout is quite clear on the print of Whitehaven in 1642 which shows the chapel with its little belfry. At this time the village had a population of about 250 persons. There is no indication of any strong growth during the period of the Commonwealth. The manor was managed by the guardian of Sir John Lowther who had succeeded to the estate when he was only two years of age. As has been remarked Sir John became one of the most outstanding of all the Lowthers associated with Whitehaven. His first action after the Restoration was to secure confirmation of Whitehaven’s right to hold a weekly market and annual fair. The proclamation of the fair is still made each year on 12 August at 10 am by the agent of the Earl of Lonsdale. His father had built a small pier to give shelter to the coal vessels dealing with Ireland. Sir John extended the coal trade and improved the harbour facilities. He was elected as a Member of Parliament in 1664, and quite obviously spent a good deal of time in London, but he was well served by his agents in Whitehaven, first the Gilpins and later the Speddings. The village grew into a small town. By 1693 when the old chapel was pulled down and a larger one built on the site of the present St Nicholas Church, the population had increased to 2,222 and by 1713 was to rise to around 4,000. Sir John Lowther appears to have been reasonably tolerant in his religious outlook. The Gales who became one of the leading local families, were non-conformists, as were the Lutwidges. Owing to the fact that they were excluded from offices of state and of command in the armed forces by the Test Act, non-conformists found an outlet for their talents in business. In 1672 the house of Isabella Dixon was licensed as a Presbyterian meeting house in Whitehaven. Twenty-three years later Elisha Gale, Henry Palmer, William Atkinson, William Feryes and John Shepherd had collected money for a chapel to be used by Protestant dissenters. The town grew because of the increased demand for coal, and as the main market was in Ireland it had to be carried by sea. This meant a demand for more ships which had to be bought at other ports. In 1676 the town had a fleet of thirty-two ships; in 1682, forty; in 1685, forty-six; in 1689, fifty-five; and in 1706 the total had reached seventy-seven. Sir John brought ship carpenters into the town and started a new industry that was to be an important factor in local economy for the next two centuries. In 1685 the town, which till then was under the administration of the head port of Carlisle, became a separate customs port with responsibilities for the coast between the Duddon and Ellenfoot (later known as Maryport). Some ten years before this one of the local sea captains had sailed for Virginia and brought back a cargo of tobacco which became another important factor in local affairs during the following century. The ships that sailed to the new world carried out emigrants and materials required by the settlers, and brought back tobacco. None of these ships sailing from Whitehaven was large. The biggest of them, the Resolution, had a keel length of sixty feet. Local records suggest that the round trip across the Atlantic was taking about a year. It is difficult now to imagine that Whitehaven had a thriving trade in the importation of tobacco. Gone are the vast warehouses where hundreds hogsheads of tobacco were stored. Yet at the beginning of the eighteenth century Whitehaven was one of the dozen or so ports that were allowed to import tobacco. With the Union of 1707 Glasgow was accorded the privilege and then a trade war started which culminated in the House of Commons setting up a select committee to investigate the allegation that the Glasgow merchants were defrauding the Customs. The event which finally killed Whitehaven tobacco trade was the American War of Independence. Whitehaven’s pioneer in the tobacco trade was Richard Kelsick, master of the Resolution. By 1712 the amount of tobacco imported was 1,689,193 lbs and had increased to 4,419,218 lbs in 1740. The import trade was carried on by a few considerable merchants. The Gales followed the Kelsicks and it was tobacco business that brought George Gale to Virginia when he met and married Mildred, the widow of Lawrence Washington and nearly altered the course of American history. In 1712 the principal dealers in tobacco were Thomas Lutwidge, Robert Blacklock, Sheriff of Cumberland, 1710-11, and John Gale, jnr., and in 1740 Lutwidge, Peter How and Richard Kelsick jnr, a son of the Richard Kelsick mentioned above. The export trade was organised on different lines, persons who took no part in the import trade exporting small consignments to Ireland, Holland and elsewhere, or adopting the more popular course of taking shares in large consignments. One of the more important figures in the tobacco trade in the second half of the eighteenth century was Samuel Martin who built Somerset House. Walter Lutwidge, the brother of Thomas Lutwidge, was also a merchant with wide ranging interests. A considerable amount of information about him has recently come to light **. In 1708 he was a ship master trading with Virginia. Thirty years later he owned some half dozen ships besides having shares in several others. When he temporarily handed over the direction of the business to his son Thomas jnr. in 1746, he described himself as ‘A man of opulency’ with a fortune of £30,000; based upon average earnings data that would be equivalent to £50.2M in the year 2010 ** see Prof. E. Hughes - North Country Life in the Eighteenth Century. Vol. 2 Cumberland and Westmorland, 1700-1830

Whitehaven by Daniel Hay [1979]

The merchant community was not a large one. In a year when Whitehaven stood second only to London in the quantity of its tobacco imports, just twenty one men are known no have been directly involved in the trade. The largest firm, Howe and Kelsick, supplied 34 per cent of the 5.4m pounds re-exported to France. William Hicks provided a further 15 per cent. Many of these merchants had capitalized on the trade from small beginnings. Informal co-operation, with several men combining to freight a vessel, was an early hallmark of the trade.

Whitehaven Merchant Companies operating in 1743

Peter How & Richard Kelsick
Joseph Adderton
John Lewthwaite
Edward Tubman
William Gale
Robert Gilpin
William Hicks
Thomas Hartley & Timothy Nicholson
Thomas Lutwidge
James Milham
Timothy Nicholson & Daniel Stephenson
Mathias & William Gale
Henry Littledale
Timothy Nicholson
Thomas Patrickson
James Spedding
James Spedding & John Ponsonby
Edward Tubman & Thomas Hartley

Some of the partners on these occasions were ships’ masters: Walter Lutwidge, Edward Tubman and Richard Kelsick, all began their careers in this way before moving on to higher things. Kelsick's father had skippered the first Whitehaven financed vessel known to have crossed the Atlantic ocean, in 1683. William and Thomas Gilpin were respectively grandson and son of William Gilpin, Sir John Lowther’s steward. William Gale was the younger son of Lowther's former colliery steward, while James Spedding was the son of Sir James’ long-serving steward." Some grew very wealthy, particularly Peter How. In 1742, at the beginning of the French trade, he called upon his London drawer George Fitzgerald for £30,000 in just eight months. John Spedding thought that the trade would raise him a ‘monstrous fortune’, and at his death in 1772 the London Daily Advertizer described him as ‘for forty years one of the most principal merchants in the north of England. William Hicks was described after his death in 1758 as having ‘acquired a very considerable fortune and purchased several freehold estates of about £10,000 value as well as large stock and trade and personal effects in Virginia. His whole fortune was estimated at about £20,000. John Gale, eldest son of Sir John Lowther’s colliery steward, left at his death in 1726 a plantation at Kingston in Maryland, shares in six ships, and a freehold estate at Egremont. Walter Lutwidge was claimed in 1754 to be ‘worth £20,000 or more’.

Note: this sum based on relative ‘earnings data’ equates to £32 M in the year 2010.