“Business . . . does not require the polite part of human understanding, or call for a liberal education” declared Daniel Defoe (1660?–1731) in the Complete English Tradesman of 1727.1 Many contemporaries shared his opinion, and it certainly applied half a century earlier, in the period that is the focus of this essay. Both court and gentry were snobbish toward the “vulgarity and stigma of a manual apprenticeship,” the normal route for entry into business; for Sir Thomas Baines, “the being made an apprentice according to our custom is a blott at least in every man’s scutchion.”2 Old prejudices are hard to eradicate. Investigations of musical culture in London in the second half of the seventeenth century have typically turned to the nobility, gentry, and university-educated professionals to illustrate domestic music making, musical consumption, and patronage, with the country gent Roger North and the Cambridge man Samuel Pepys as leading exemplars.3 Merchants have been neglected, in part owing to prejudices that have disassociated them from the polite arts. Such a bias has obscured their role in London musical culture of the Restoration. The business community included individuals whose passion for hearing, performing, and purchasing music was every bit as strong as that of Pepys. The musical pursuits of merchants often operated on the boundary of recreation and occupation. Many who made music together also shared commercial interests. Musical sociability fostered personal networks in a community for which the exchange of information was of crucial importance.4 It also crossed social boundaries, offering businessmen connections with members of the gentry and professions who were potential commercial associates. Merchants crossed geographical boundaries, too, and took music with them as they did so. Their role in disseminating music from the continent helped to shape English musical culture of the period, just as that culture helped to enrich their personal and business lives.
In the second half of the seventeenth century, the term merchant had both specific and general meanings. Members of the great trading companies were keen to restrict its usage; according to Levant Company statutes, only those engaged in overseas trade qualified. However, a wider meaning also applied, encompassing other “men of business” engaged in trading and exchange, whether or not it was primarily international.5 It is likewise difficult to define business solely in terms of class. Mercantile work was a favored occupation for younger sons of the gentry, as it was for sons of merchants. When John Verney, a lyra-viol player and second son of Sir Ralph Verney, was apprenticed in 1659 to a Levant merchant, he hoped that his father would find his choice “noe less satisfactory then if I had beene an Inns of Court Gentleman.”6 Fluidity in social position was not uncommon; John, for instance, pursued a successful career as a merchant until 1696 when he succeeded his father as second baronet, John’s elder brother Edmund and his sons having predeceased him. Wealth was also highly variable among the merchant community. The great Levant merchant Sir John Lethieullier amassed a fortune in excess of £100,000, but most earned considerably less, and apprentices usually started work with little or no capital.7 Nevertheless, a business community was recognized in Restoration London, which could be distinguished from the nobility, gentry, and the professions. And while a career as a merchant could be highly remunerative, perhaps much more so than the professions, it did not carry the same level of social prestige. For musical attainment, distinctions in education were important. Whereas university life offered opportunities for amateur musicians, most merchants developed their musical interests either through education at home, or through access to professional musicians as teachers, or both. For members of the business community who came to cultivate an interest in music, it provided not only a personal pleasure, but also a means of social interaction, through which one might profitably encounter persons from other walks of life.
Brief portraits of several merchants whose musical activity can be documented illustrate the passion with which it was sometimes pursued, and the way it overlapped with business and social networks. Robert Bargrave (1628–1661) is in some ways the least representative of those merchants whose musical activities are known.8 He was the son of Isaac Bargrave, dean of Canterbury. The Bargraves were a musical family; Sir Henry Wotton bequeathed his viola da gamba to Isaac, and Robert himself probably started his musical education at home. He entered Gray’s Inn aged twelve, perhaps to take part in the masques for which it was then well known.9 Subsequently, he attended Clare College, Cambridge, then Corpus Christi College, Oxford; but rather than pursuing a career in law or the church, he was apprenticed to the Levant merchant James Modyford. He set out with him to Constantinople in 1647, recording his travels in a diary. Their ship set down in Majorca, where Bargrave commented on music at the cathedral, and Leghorn (Livorno), from where he traveled to Siena to visit his cousin John Bargrave. There, he was invited to play the viol in front of the musicians of Mattias de’ Medici. Once in Constantinople, Bargrave wrote text and music for a masque to celebrate the wedding of Modyford to the daughter of Sir Thomas Bendish, the Levant Company consul to the Sublime Porte.10 When Modyford’s “rotten Love fell fowlely off,” both wedding and masque were canceled.11 In September 1652, Bargrave journeyed home overland, sampling music along the way, including that of the chapel of Vasile Lupu in Jassy, Moldovia; the “musick of the Russes” in Lemberg (Lvov, Ukraine); and “the admirable skill on the base Viol” of Theodore Steffkins in Hamburg. He traveled to Spain in 1654, where he enjoyed the performance of the king’s private chapel at the Escorial. Journeying on to Venice, he admired the music of the convents, and the carnival of 1656. His encounter with Venetian opera was overwhelming:
One Opera I saw represented about 16: several times; and so farr was I from being weary of it, I would ride hundreds of miles to see the same over again: nay I must needs confess that all the pleasant things I have yet heard or seen, are inexpressibly short of the delight I had, in seeing this Venetian Opera.12
The opera was Cavalli’s Erismena, a score of which he copied, putting an English text to it.13 Returning from Venice, Bargrave passed through Innsbruck where he met the English-born violist William Young, who promised him “his Lessons composed for that Viall [i.e., an eight-string viol played “lyra-way”] and his Aires for two Bases and a Treble which he intends to publish.”14 Even though Bargrave was not a London-based merchant—spending periods between his overseas journeys in Canterbury—nor representative in terms of his university education, his musical interests show similarities to other musically minded merchants. Travel provided the opportunity to experience a diversity of musical cultures and styles. He collected music and provided a potential conduit for the dissemination of continental music in England. He performed and composed himself, and he used his musical skills both on behalf of his employer and to entertain his colleagues.
Thomas Hill (ca. 1635–1675) was another merchant for whom travel in Italy opened up new musical horizons. One of six sons of the wealthy merchant Richard Hill, a London alderman, Thomas held a minor post as prize commissioner during the First Dutch War, but also worked in the family business for which he traveled to Italy in 1657. He subsequently became an agent for the Houblon family working for them in Lisbon.15 A letter of Hill’s to his brother Abraham written from Lucca in October 1657 offers a firsthand account of his enthusiasm for music:
Since my arrival in Italy, I have missed few opportunities of hearing what music has been publickly performed, especially in the churches; and I wish I could give you a satisfactory account of it: I would attempt it, could I but say half so well as they can sing. I observe in general, that at home we think [sing?] better than they do. What they excel us so much in is the eunuchs, whose voices are very rare and delightful, and not to be compared but with one another: the other voices not so good as we have in England. The instrumental music is much better than I expected. The organ and violin they are masters of, but the bass viol they have not at all in use; and to supply its place they have the bass violin with four strings, and use it as we do the bass viol. In short, it would be worth any one’s while, who is fond of music, to travel to Italy; he would find such sweet recompence for his trouble in it. Next month we have a concert of music, at the chusing a new prince, of forty voices with several instruments. I fancy I can procure a copy of it, as I have some interest with the master of the prince’s chapel: but I know it cannot be performed in England. I am using my endeavours to collect music for a single, or two or three voices, in which I have had good success. I should be obliged to you, if Mr. Lawes has put forth a third book of airs, that you would send it me, as it will be very acceptable here.16
Hill had returned to London by early 1660, where he acted as executor for his father’s will, which included a bequest to him of £2,000.17 In early 1664, he encountered Samuel Pepys, on whom he made an immediate impression; Pepys described him as “a master in most sorts of Musique” and a person whose acquaintance “I should covet.”18 The two met again on April 12, 1664, the first occasion on which they performed together:
to Mr. Pagets and there heard some musique . . . Here I also met Mr. Hill, the little merchant. And after all was done, we sung. I did well enough a psalm or two of Lawes; he I perceive hath good skill and sings well—and a friend of his sings a good bass.19
Over the next twenty-one months, Pepys records making music with Hill on thirty-five occasions. Most often, they met on Sundays to sing psalms, including those by Ravenscroft and Lawes, in whom both Pepys and Hill were separately interested.20 On a majority of occasions (twenty-two times), they were joined by another merchant, Thomas Andrews (1632–1684), almost certainly the bass mentioned in the diary entry of April 12, 1664. Andrews was a victualler for Tangier, and a draper, serving as warden to the company in 1677–1678.21 Hill also occasionally supplied victuals to Tangier, and the way in which business, particularly that relating to Tangier, and musical sociability interacted is clear in the diary. One of Pepys’s earliest encounters with Hill was at the Royal Exchange, a visit to which was more or less a daily requirement for merchants: “At noon to the Change, where I met with Mr. Hill the little merchant, with whom I perceive I shall contract a musicall acquaintance.”22 A few months later, a session of music making gave way to business: “and so to my office till 5 a-clock; and then came Mr. Hill and Andrews and we sung an hour or two. Then broke up and Mr. Alsop and his company came and consulted about our Tanger [i.e., Tangier]-victualling, and brought it to a good head.”23 On another occasion business, religion, and pleasure are all fitted into a Sunday:
After dinner came Mr. Andrews, and spent that afternoon with me about our Tanger business of the victuals and then parted. And after sermon comes Mr. Hill and a gentleman, a friend of his, one Mr. Scott, that sings well also; and then comes Mr. Andrews, and we all sung and supped; and then to sing again, and passed the Sunday very pleasantly and soberly.24
Pepys, Hill, and Andrews sometimes expanded their musical meetings to include professionals and other amateurs. In July 1664, Hill and Andrews brought “one slovenly and ugly fellow, Seignor Pedro” to their meeting with Pepys. This was the Italian composer Pietro Reggio (ca. 1632–1685), and although Pepys found him to be a good musician, he could not bring himself to enjoy the occasion, perhaps because he could not fully participate:
they spent the whole evening in singing the best piece of musique [. . .] made by Seignor Charissimi [. . .]. Fine it was endeed, and too fine for me to judge of.
They have spoke to Pedro to meet us every week, and I fear it will grow a trouble to me if we once come to bid guests to meet us, especially idle masters—which doth a little displease me to consider.25
A few days later, Reggio joined them again, to no better effect in Pepys’s opinion.26 Thereafter, Reggio disappears from the meetings, though reading between the lines, we may imagine that Hill and Andrews continued to see him without Pepys. Hill, having spent time in Italy was probably comfortable with Italian; Andrews may have been as well. Merchants in foreign trade had to be capable of using several languages; Italian was the lingua franca of the Mediterranean where both Hill and Andrews had business concerns.27 On several occasions in the latter part of 1665, Pepys and Hill had musical evenings with other professional musicians: Edward Coleman (bap. 1622–1669), gentleman of the Chapel Royal and member of the King’s Private Musick; his wife, Catherine (bap. 1623), a singer; Nicholas Lanier (1588–1666), master of the King’s Musick; and the singing actress, Mrs. Knipp [Elizabeth Knepp].28
Pepys and Hill also shared an interest in composition. They discussed the rules of John Birchensha, Pepys’s erstwhile composition teacher, and they played their compositions to one another: “to Woolwich, and there find Mr. Hill, and he and I all the morning at Musique and a song he hath set, of three parts; methinks very good.”29 One gets the impression that Hill was more skilled musically than Pepys. Not only was his own composition in three parts, something Pepys may have found difficult to execute himself, but Hill also offered criticism of Pepys’s own song when the diarist showed it to him: “and then home to Mr. Hill and sang, among other things, my song of Beauty returne [i.e., ‘Beauty retire’], which he likes; only, excepts against two notes in the bass, but likes the whole very well.”30
From the end of 1665, Hill was in expectation of traveling to Portugal on business for James Houblon Jr. (ca. 1629–1700), merchant and close friend of Pepys and of Hill, for whom he served as executor after his death in 1675. Houblon was not particularly musical himself; he joined Pepys, Hill, and Andrews for singing on one occasion—to which Pepys purposely brought a volume of Lawes’s Ayres—but his wife, Sarah, was a fine singer: “After dinner Mr. Hill took me with Mrs. Hubland, who is a fine gentlewoman—into another room, and there made her sing; which she doth very well—to my great content.”31 Pepys and Hill never saw each other again after parting on March 2, 1666, but they corresponded while Hill was in Lisbon. One of Hill’s letters indicates that he played viol and probably violin and describes his frustration at the lack of access to new music:
we have a little consort among us, which gives us entertainment. We have five hands for viols, and violins, three of us, use both, and all, except one, the viol, but the want of music in this country obliges us to play over, and over again, some few things I brought from home accidentally, which wears off the relish, so that we are forced to go a-begging to our friends, as I do to you, that if you have anything new, you would bestow it on us and because Mr Monteage (accountant to Messrs Houblons) intends to present me some things, it may be fit to compare compositions, that they be not duplicates.32
While in Lisbon, Hill encountered the guitarist Cesare Morelli (fl. late 1660s–1686) and recommended him to Pepys, who took him on as a household musician in 1675.
The musical interests of two Levant merchants, Rowland Sherman (ca. 1663–1748) and Philip Wheak (1661–1731), and their associate, the Blackwell Hall factor James Pigott (1657–1739), offer several points of correspondence with the merchants examined above.33 Sherman’s family was from Leicester, but he and his older brother William were in London apprenticed to the Levant merchant Gabriel Roberts (1629–1715) by the early 1680s. Much of the information on Rowland’s musical interests is preserved in two letter books, the first of which he began in March 1683.34 By that time, William was working as a factor in Smyrna. He played the recorder, but it was Rowland who was most passionate about music. He sailed for Aleppo in July 1688–taking his harpsichord with him—and his letters describe his musical activities there and shed light on musical culture in London. In Aleppo, he made music with his fellow English factors and with those from other countries, made musical connections with local Catholic missionaries, and spent considerable time in personal practice, especially in learning to play continuo. If on arriving in Aleppo he, like Thomas Hill, lacked sufficient variety of music, he remedied the problem by collecting a library of more than one hundred titles over the next sixty years.35
In London, Rowland had been part of a group of musical enthusiasts he referred to as the “brothers of the string,” which included two friends, Philip Wheak and James Pigott. Sherman’s letters indicate Wheak was a talented amateur keyboard player and that he had traveled to Italy in 1688. In Rome, Wheak heard Bernardo Pasquini play and attended performances at the Chiesa Nuova. He collected music, some of which, including toccatas by Frescobaldi and Pasquini, he sent to Sherman in Aleppo. Other music he brought back to London, where it circulated among the “brothers of the string” and where Sherman anticipated it would “stimulate the generous soul of Mr Purcell.”36 Before his journey overseas, Rowland had known Henry Purcell and sought advice from him on continuo practice. Wheak was also personally acquainted with Purcell—and probably other prominent professional musicians—as was James Pigott. Pigott did not qualify as a merchant in the strictest sense, but he was closely associated with the Levant trade. Blackwell Hall factors, known as “packers,” were middlemen selling cloth from provincial makers to members of the Levant Company who then traded it abroad. Sherman used Pigott as an agent in London, asking him to request music from Purcell and pass a letter to him, and to buy supplies for his harpsichord from the instrument maker Charles Hayward with whom Pigott and Sherman were personally acquainted.
Sherman, Wheak, and Pigott were knowledgeable about the annual London Cecilian feast held by the “Gentlemen of the Musical Society.”37 This organization of professional and amateur musicians hosted a performance of a musical ode in praise of St. Cecilia followed by a dinner at Stationers’ Hall every year between 1683 and 1700 (excepting 1688–1689). Wheak was a member of the society, serving as steward to the feast in 1693; Sherman and Pigott were probably associated with it as well. In fact, Levant merchants figured prominently among stewards. John Lethieullier (1659–1737), son of Sir John, was a steward to the feast in 1686 along with Sir Thomas Bludworth (1660–1694); although it is not clear if the latter was a Levant merchant, his father, also Sir Thomas—former lord mayor of London—was a major figure in the company. The Levant merchants Leonard Wessell (after 1660–1708) and Paris Slaughter (1671–1704) were stewards in 1697. The relationship among Sherman, Wheak, Pigott, and the Lethieullier family illustrates the way in which music formed a part of the dense familial and business networks of the City of London. While traveling on the continent, Wheak arranged for three harpsichords to be exported from Antwerp to Sir John Lethieullier and Bedingfield Heigham Jr., brother of Mary, whom Wheak married in March 1689. Sherman was responsible for delivery once the instruments arrived in London. Wheak’s family probably had long-standing associations with Sir John, who lived in the parish of St. Olave, Hart Street, where Philip was christened. Philip was apprenticed to Sir John’s brother, William (1646–1728). Heigham was also a Levant merchant; by the time of his marriage to Esther White in 1694, the execution of her father’s estate had passed from Sir Christopher Lethieullier (1639–1690), another of Sir John’s brothers, to his widow, Dame Jane. In 1699 when William Lethieullier’s son John went to Aleppo to work in the Levant trade, he became partner to Rowland Sherman. In Aleppo, Rowland handled cloth for Wheak and Heigham (who themselves bought cloth through Pigott) and also recommended Pigott to potential clients.
Music was an important shared interest among Sherman, Wheak, and Pigott, and probably with Heigham and members of the Lethieullier family as well. Apart from the personal pleasure it afforded, music offered a sociable bond strengthening the ties of business, friendship, and family. Musical ability may also have played a role in apprenticeship. It has been suggested that John Verney’s skill as a lyra-viol player may have been a significant factor in the decision of the Levant merchant Gabriel Roberts to take him on as apprentice in 1659.38 This supposition seems all the more likely in light of Roberts’s taking on the two musical Sherman brothers years later. Roberts’s interest in music is known through two manuscripts of instrumental music, D-Hs MS ND VI 3193 and GB-Lbl Add. MS 31431, which he owned. Wheak’s and Sherman’s enthusiasm for Italian music was seemingly shared by Roberts; GB-Lbl Add. MS 31431 includes twenty-two Italian sonatas by Cazzati, Vitali, Colista, and Legrenzi.
A striking example of a network of professional musicians and amateur merchant musicians within the same family is the Pigotts of which James was a member.39 His father, Francis (ca. 1630–1697), a clothworker and packer, was a member of the Old-Jewry “Musick-Society.”40 The group is known from John Playford’s dedication to The Musical Companion of 1667, which names the following members: “Charles Pigon Esq; Mr. Tho. Tempest Gent.[;] Mr. Herbert Pelham Gent.[;] Mr. John Pelling Citizen.[;] Mr Benjamin Wallington Citizen[;] Mr. George Piggot Gent.[;] Mr. Francis Piggot Citizen [;] Mr. John Rogers Gent.” A set of manuscript partbooks of the collection (GB-Ge R.d.58–61) includes a basso continuo book that also names Mr. Jeremy Savile Gent and describes Pigeon as “of Grais Inn,” Wallington as a goldsmith, and Pelling (1632–1689) as an apothecary. The club mixed merchants, artisans, and gentlemen; judging from the contents of The Musical Companion, they sang catches, rounds, and simple part-songs for two to four voices. Pepys knew and sang with most of the members of this club. He described Tempest as “a gentleman . . . who sings very well endeed and understands anything in the world at first sight.”41 Pelham was a “sober citizen merchant” who sings “with great skill.”42 Pelling, who “sings well endeed,” talked with Pepys “of Musique and the musicians of the town,” and brought Wallington, Pigott (whether Francis or George is not specified), Rogers, and Tempest to sing with the diarist on several occasions, including one during which the group drank Pepys’s “good store of wine.”43 Wallington, “did sing a most excellent bass” but was “a poor fellow, a working goldsmith, that goes without gloves to his hands.”44 On the recommendation of Roger North, George Pigott was admitted clerk to the Corporation of Musick in Westminster in 1672; his relationship to Francis cannot be demonstrated.45 John Rogers may be the lutenist brother of Benjamin Rogers, and was also a member of the Corporation of Musick.46
While James Pigott followed his father’s career, becoming a packer and amateur musician, his brother Charles (1662–1740) became a church musician, though only after a mysteriously aborted career as a businessman. He attended Merchant Taylor’s School, was apprenticed to Walter Kilner, Mercer in 1677, and gained his freedom in 1685.47 He next reenters the historical record in 1719 as “Subdiaconi” in a list of prebendaries of St. David’s Cathedral, Pembroke.48 In the same year, “Charles Piggot Junr,” presumably his son, was appointed chorister there; another son, Thomas, appears with his brother as a chorister in a list dated July 27, 1720.49 Charles Sr. is listed as vicar choral as late at 1736; he died in December of 1740 and was buried in the cathedral.50 While it seems improbable this should be the same Charles Pigott, Mercer, his four sons to his wife Margaret—Henry Delany (ca. 1702–1746), Charles Newsham (ca. 1707–1796), Thomas (ca. 1709), and George (1710–1737)—gained the freedom of the Mercers Company in London by patrimony, basing their claim on their father’s freedom, granted July 10, 1685.51 Whatever the circumstances that led Charles from a career in business to that of a vicar choral in St. David’s, it seems likely that he grew up with music as an integral part of family life.
The most important musician to emerge from the Pigott family was the composer and organist Francis (1666–1704), who was probably cousin to James and Charles.52 He was the son of Bartholomew Pigott, an ironmonger and member of the Company of Pattenmakers, and his wife, Rachel Kinsman. The rather unusual forename Dulsibella, the name of the wife of Francis Pigott, clothworker and of Bartholomew’s daughter (by his second wife, Sarah Willis), suggests a close family relationship; Francis and Bartholomew were probably brothers.53 Francis the composer’s connection with the family of Francis the clothworker is also implied in his marriage to Ann, the only daughter of John Pelling, member of the Old Jewry music club. Francis enjoyed a successful career, serving as organist at St. John’s College and Magdalen College, Oxford; at Temple Church, London; and finally at the Chapel Royal. His son John (ca. 1690–1762) succeeded him as organist at Temple Church. Through the influence of his uncle Dr. John Pelling (1669–1750), rector of St. Anne’s, Westminster, and a canon of Windsor, he was made organist of St. George’s Chapel, Windsor.54
Merchants and other businessmen were important patrons of music in this period. Their largesse was sometimes expressed in an impressive gift. Goldsmith and financier Charles Duncombe (1648–1711) commissioned an organ for St. Magnus Church in 1711. Completed after his death, the instrument, made by Abraham Jordan father and son, was the first English organ with a swell; it had “four Setts of Keys, one of which is adapted to the Art of emitting Sounds by swelling the Notes, which never was in any organ before.”55 Other acts of patronage were on a smaller scale. Roger North reports that the Italian violinist Nicola Matteis (fl. ca. 1670–ca. 1698) found an anonymous London merchant as his first patron: “he lay obscurely in the citty, by the favour of a merchant whom he had converted to his profit.”56
A more sustained sort of patronage can be found in relation to the Musical Society and its annual Cecilian feast. Each year, the feast was overseen by a group of stewards: four in 1684 increasing to eight by 1695 of which professional musicians always numbered two. Some or all of the stewards are known for nine of the sixteen celebrations held between 1683 and 1700. Of the thirty-nine Cecilian stewards who were not professional musicians, around ten or eleven were merchants or businessmen. Shared commercial interests may have been a factor in a businessman’s decision to serve as steward. We have already seen that several were directly or indirectly associated with the Levant Company. In the year before Paris Slaughter and Leonard Wessell served as Cecilian stewards, they became owners with eight other men of the Slaughter Galley, bound for Scanderoon.57 Charles Blunt (steward in 1691), an upholsterer and early stockbroker, numbered among his clients John Lethieullier (1686).58 Another group of stewards appears to have had connections through the West Indies trade and in the army and colonial government. Archibald Hutchinson (1695) was attorney general for the Leeward Islands from 1688–1702 while Nathaniel Blackiston (1696) was lieutenant governor of Montserrat from 1689 to 1695. Both knew Col. Henry Holt (1696) who led a Regiment of Foot in the Leeward Islands from 1695. Blackiston had been a colonel of this regiment before Holt took charge of it, and Hutchinson served as an agent for the regiment, petitioning the lords of the Treasury for payments of arrears to Holt’s soldiers.59 The merchant John Jeffreys (1692) was, along with his brother and partner Jeffrey Jeffreys (1699), heavily involved in trade with the Leeward Islands and in Virginian tobacco. As one of five commissioners who managed the affairs of the Leeward Islands from 1690 to 1697, Jeffrey would have been aware of the activities of Hutchinson, Blackiston, and Holt, if he did not know them personally. The merchant John Cary (1696) was a one-time resident of Virginia and was a major tobacco exporter. He was also involved in West Indies trade and was a distant relative of Richard Cary, a commissioner for the Leeward Islands with Jeffrey Jeffreys. It is unclear to what extent, if any, these businessmen were associated with the group of musical Levant Company merchants, but the Jeffreys brothers were probably acquainted with Sir John Lethieullier, Sir Thomas Bludworth Sr., and Sir Gabriel Roberts, because they all served as directors of the Royal Africa Company.
Several of these merchants were extremely wealthy men. Cary’s estate was worth £29,358 at his death.60 John Jeffreys’s will, drafted in 1692, provided a jointure for his wife of £30,000. His brother Jeffrey’s estate was said to be worth some £300,000. That of his fellow steward in 1699, Charles Duncombe, was even more substantial: approximately £400,000. The pair had been elected sheriffs of London in June 1699, and both were knighted in October. For Duncombe at least, his role as steward is likely to have been part of a larger publicity campaign in London to restore his reputation after his expulsion from the Commons in 1698, which included the donation of a clock to the parish church of St. Magnus (a decade before he commissioned its organ) and hosting around one hundred clergy on New Year’s Day 1700. Social prestige was probably an important aspect of stewarding, particularly for merchants. Leonard Wessell’s decision to act as steward was doubtless a feature of what his parliamentary biographer describes as a “vigorous pursuit of social acceptance and political ambition.”61 Stewarding may be seen as another act of social aspiration similar to the way in which successful businessmen sent their sons to the universities and/or the Inns of Court as did Jeffrey Jeffreys, Blunt, Lethieullier, Wessell, and Wheak, none of whom were themselves university-educated. Stewarding also offered potential contacts outside of the world of business. Meetings of the stewards and the feast itself presented opportunities to forge social ties with professionals and gentry (groups well-represented among Cecilian stewards), contacts that in other circumstances could be exploited to advance commercial interests.
Experience of the Cecilian feast was probably the inspiration for the commissioning of a large-scale musical ode by Jeremiah Clarke for the “Barbadoes Gentleman” in early 1703.62 “No more, great rulers of the sky” is written for pairs of trumpets, oboes, and recorders; kettledrums; strings; soloists; and chorus.63 The performance took place at Stationers’ Hall at an occasion that was probably similar to the Cecilian feasts celebrated there. Even though the “Barbadoes Gentlemen” are not identified, they must have been a group of Atlantic merchants and planters, and the event a rather grand version of a “token” feast, social gatherings to drink to the health of friends on the islands.64 Perhaps some of those Cecilian stewards noted above involved in Caribbean trade were instrumental in celebrating this occasion with elaborate music. Just as in commissioning Purcell’s Yorkshire Feast Song the London Society of Yorkshire Gentleman appropriated the ode (a court-originated form) to at once express loyalty to the sovereign and celebrate their native county, the “Barbadoes Gentleman” used it to offer “kind equinoctial blessing” on merchants and planters of the island.
It is difficult to speculate on the extent to which the musical interests of the merchants discussed above are representative of the larger business community. Peter Earle found that, notwithstanding Pepys’s remark on the presence of a virginal in one of every three boats used to rescue personal effects from the Great Fire, less than ten percent of the 375 inventories he inspected from this period listed a musical instrument.65 Even within the sample presented here, the level of interest in music is difficult to gauge. Bargrave, Hill, Sherman, and Wheak maintained a passion for music and were all performers of some accomplishment. However, among those businessmen whose only known musical interest is steward at the Cecilian feast, it is impossible to determine whether social prestige, networking, or musical enthusiasm drove their support of the Musical Society. These different urges are not, of course, mutually exclusive, and it is clear from this study that musical interests often intertwined with business concerns. Networking and the exchange of information were vital to success in commerce; musical meetings provided occasions at which news could be exchanged informally and business relationships fostered by sociable ties. Another theme concerns the overseas merchant. These traders often traveled widely and maintained links with contacts scattered across Europe, a circumstance that facilitated the dissemination of music. The London merchant and grocer Obadiah Sedgwick, for instance, introduced Corelli’s op. 4 to a music club in Stamford.66 His attendance there, sometime before November 1696, is likely to have come through an association with one of its leading members, Basil Ferrar, Stamford grocer. Sedgwick joined club members in playing the op. 4 sonatas, probably on the bass viol. The music was subsequently copied and used in a Stamford Cecilian entertainment in 1696 in which movements of Corelli’s sonatas were placed between movements of Purcell’s Cecilian ode, “Welcome to All the Pleasures.”67 The op. 4 sonatas were published in Rome in 1694, and it seems likely that trading links played a role in Sedgwick obtaining the music so quickly after publication, just as they probably played a role in his travel to Stamford. It should also be noted that many of the businessmen examined here had direct access to London’s professional musicians. This contact included teaching and performance, which suggests a blurred boundary between those who played for recreation and those who played for a living. Families of wealthier London businessmen must have been important customers for musician-teachers, just as they provided a market for published music and treatises, and an audience for London’s burgeoning concert life. For a significant minority of those in the business community, music was an important consideration, despite Defoe’s comments with which this chapter opened. He, of course, had interests beyond business:
I have been a Lover of the Science [of music] from my Infancy, and in my younger days was accounted no despicable Performer on the Viol and Lute, then much in Vogue. I esteem it the most innocent Amusement in Life.68
Furthermore, he acknowledged:
Our Quality, Gentry and better sort of Traders must have Diversions; and if those that are commendable be denied, they will take to worse; Now what can be more commendable than Musick, one of the seven liberal Sciences, and no mean Branch of the Mathematicks?
If not all of those traders who daily frequented the Royal Exchange went thence to a music meeting, lesson, or concert, some certainly did, and we must, therefore, recognize their place as important participants in musical culture of the Restoration period.
1. The Complete English Tradesman, 62.
2. Grassby, The Business Community, 39–40, 193.
3. Westrup, “Domestic Music under the Stuarts,” 19–53; Spink, “Music and Society,” 1–65.
4. Gauci, Emporium of the World, 60–61.
5. Grassby, The Business Community, 11.
6. Whyman, “Verney, John, First Viscount Fermanagh (1640–1717),” in DNB (accessed July 18, 2013).
7. Roseveare, “Lethieullier, Sir John (1632/3–1719),” in DNB (accessed July 18, 2013).
8. An extended biography appears in Bargrave, Travel Diary, 1–14.
9. Tilmouth, “Music on the Travels of an English Merchant,” 158.
10. Ibid., 148–153.
11. Bargrave, Travel Diary, 99.
12. Ibid., 237.
13. It was purchased by the Bodleian Library in 2009. Beth Glixon identified Bargrave as the copyist: “Cavalli, Robert Bargrave and the English Erismena” (paper presented at the 15th Biennial International Conference on Baroque Music, University of Southampton, July 11–15, 2012); Cavalli, Erismena, forthcoming.
14. Bargrave, Travel Diary, 244. No publication fitting Bargrave’s description is extant.
15. Pepys, Diary, vol. 10, 185.
16. Familiar Letters, 16–17. Three books of Henry Lawes’s Ayres and Dialogues were published (1653, 1655, 1658).
17. Hill, “Thomas Hill,” 128.
18. Pepys, Diary, January 11, 1664, vol. 5, 12.
19. Ibid., 119–120.
20. Ibid., November 27, 1664, 332. Lawes, Choice Psalmes; Ravenscroft, The Whole Booke of Psalmes.
21. Pepys, Diary, vol. 10, 185.
22. Pepys, Diary, April 15, 1664, vol. 5, 124.
23. Ibid., July 8, 1664, 199.
24. Pepys, Diary, May 7, 1665, vol. 9, 97–98.
25. Pepys, Diary, July 22, 1664, vol. 5, 217. It may have been at an occasion such as this that Daniel Henstridge encountered Reggio and transcribed one of his songs as or shortly after he performed it. See Rebecca Herissone’s contribution to this volume, “Daniel Henstridge and the Aural Transmission of Music.”
26. Pepys, Diary, July 26, 1664, 226.
27. Grassby, The Business Community, 181.
28. Pepys, Diary, October 30–31 and December 8, 1665, vol. 6, 283–284, 323–324.
29. Ibid., October 29 and September 6, 1665, 282–283, 219.
30. Ibid., December 9, 1665, 324.
31. Ibid., March 22, 1665, 64.
32. Pepys, Letters of Samuel Pepys, April 4/14, 1673, 96–97.
33. White, “‘Brothers of the String,’” 519–581.
34. GB-TNA SP 110/16 and SP 110/21.
35. White, “‘Brothers of the String,’” 573–581.
36. Ibid., 530.
37. So described in the dedication to Purcell, A Musical Entertainment Perform’d on November XXII.
38. Thompson, “Some Late Sources of Music by John Jenkins,” 296.
39. I am grateful to Chris Pigott for sharing his research on Pigott family circles, and to Ann Taylor, a descendant of Francis Pigott, clothworker.
40. Spink, “The Old Jewry ‘Musick-Society,’” 35–41. Spink is probably wrong in identifying Francis as the Francis Pigott, bapt. 1643, who attended Caius College, Cambridge (admitted 1659) and Lincoln’s Inn (admitted 1661).
41. Pepys, Diary, February 9, 1668, vol. 9, 58.
42. Ibid., May 29, 1668, 217.
43. Ibid., July 16, 1667; September 10, 1667; and February 9, 1668, vol. 8, 340, 432; vol. 9, 58–59.
44. Ibid., September 15, 1667, 437.
45. North, Roger North on Music, 342, n89.
46. BDECM, 970–971.
47. Robinson, A Register of the Scholars Admitted into Merchant Taylor’s School (accessed July 18, 2013). His freedom is incorrectly registered as 1635.
48. Yardley, Menevia Sacra, 413.
49. GB-AB SD/Ch/B28 [Collecteanea Menevensia, vol. 2], 185, 190. In the list of choristers made on July 27, 1720, Thomas is given in error as “Joh.”
50. Collecteanea Menevensia, vol. 2, 209–210; Menevia Sacra, 332. In 1742, Delabere Pritchett, husband to Charles’s daughter Elizabeth (ca. 1713–1781) was appointed a vicar choral “in the place of Charles Pygot deceased”; Collecteanea Menevensia, vol. 2, 215.
51. The brothers received their freedoms in the following years: Henry, 1727; George, 1733; Thomas, 1733; Charles, 1741. Records of London’s Livery Companies Online (accessed July 18, 2013). The admission papers for all but George give their place of origin as St. David’s in Pembroke. Those for Henry, Thomas, and George were signed by “James Pigot,” specifically a “Clothwr. Minceing Lane” in that for Henry. In a letter of December 21, 1699, Rowland Sherman described James Pigott as a “packer,” living in “Dunster Court in Mincing Lane.” GB-TNA SP 110/21.
52. Holman, “Pigott, Francis,” GMO (accessed July 18, 2013); BDECM, vol. 2, 894–895.
53. In his extensive genealogical research into Pigott family circles, Chris Pigott has found the name in 1656 at the marriage of Francis and Dulsibella Yealding, and thereafter only in London and St. David’s, where Elizabeth, daughter of Charles, named her daughter Katharina Dulsibella Pritchard. James Pigott named his first child Dulsibella.
54. BDECM, vol. 2, 894–895.
55. The Spectator, February 8, 1712.
56. North, Roger North on Music, 308, n. 60.
57. GB-TNA HCA 26/3/111; GB-TNA ADM 106/482/302.
58. Murphy, “Trading Options before Black-Scholes,” 8–30, and personal communication.
59. Calendar of Treasury Papers, Volume 1: 1556–1696, 487; Calendar of Treasury Papers, Volume 2: 1697–1702, 166, http://www.british-history.ac.uk/catalogue.aspx?gid=129&type=3 (accessed July 18, 2013).
60. Woodhead, The Rulers of London.
61. Gauci, “Wessell, Leonard.”
62. White and Woolley, “Jeremiah Clarke,” 30–31. Stationers’ Company accounts indicate the event at which the work was performed took place between January 20 and February 9, 1703.
63. There are three extant copies: GB-Lcm MS 1106, GB-Lbl Add. MS 31452, and GB-Ob Tenbury MS 1232. A single-sheet print of the anonymous poem “An Ode Pindarick on Barbadoes” is in the British Library: C.38.1.6(26).
64. Olson, Making Empire Work, 9, and Penson, Colonial Agents, 177.
65. Earle, The Making of the English Middle Class, 296, 387.
66. Woodhead, The Rulers of London; White, “‘A Pretty Knot of Musical Friends,’” 9–44.
67. GB-Cfm Mu MS 685.
68. Augustus Triumphans (1728), quoted in Trowell, “Daniel Defoe’s Plan,” 407.