But soon there were other things to do. in 1717 the art of spinning silk was introduced to England by John Lombe, who built the first mill here, and set up machinery whose secrets he had learned in Italy, until that time the great silk-spinning country. The romantic story is told of how, determined to discover the closely guarded processes of manufacture, he visited Italy and in disguise worked at a silk-mill; returning to England with the information he had acquired, and with a number of workmen he had succeeded in bribing. His death shortly afterwards was ascribed to his having been poisoned by an Italian woman sent over for the purpose by the manufacturers whose secrets he had surprised.
Calico afterwards became, in addition to silk, an article of Derby manufacture, but in the popular mind the name of the town is usually associated with the production of china, the fame of the beautiful “Crown Derby” porcelain being more widespread than that of silk or calico. The Royal Crown Derby works, established about 1750, lasted very nearly a hundred years, being closed in 1848.
Derby was sufficiently important to be able to support a coach to and from London, so early as 1735, when a conveyance set out every Thursday from the “George.” This was continued in 1790 to Manchester, and then went daily; leaving Derby at 3 p.m. and arriving in London at 10 o’clock the following morning. From the “Bell” went another coach, certainly as early as 1778, when, on March 15th, it was announced that “the Derby Fly, in one day to London for the summer season, will set out from the Bell Inn on Sunday next, and will continue to set out every Sunday, Tuesday and Thursday evenings at six o’clock, each passenger to pay £1 8s. and to be allowed 14 lb. weight of luggage. Performed by Hilliard, Henson, Foster & Co.”
The early importance of the Derby inns as starting and arrival points for the coaches was somewhat obscured at a later date, when coaching had grown enormously, leading to the establishment of special coach-offices in the town, of which Stenson’s General Coach Office, in Sadler Gate, was the chief. An early notice of the “Bell” is found in 1698, when it was kept by one G. Meynell. In 1702 a “Widow Ward” was landlady. In 1761 the house and all its eatables and drinkables were made free to all-comers by Sir Henry Harpur during his Parliamentary candidature. A few years later, the house was rebuilt by a retired West India merchant, John Campion, whose initials, and the date 1774, elaborately done in leadwork, are to be seen to this day on an old pump, still in working order in the courtyard. The house remained in the Campion family until about 1865.
The old claret-coloured brick front of the “Bell” looks down upon Sadler Gate, very much as of old, and its courtyard still echoes with the sound of prosperous business.
HIGH TREASON
The curtain of romantic history was rung down at Derby on a most dramatic situation, so late as 1817, in the executions here for High Treason.
COURTYARD OF THE “BELL” INN.
The “high treason” for which Jeremiah Brandreth and his associates were then executed was a singular incident to have occurred so late as the nineteenth century. It was nothing less than an attempted rising against the Government; an armed effort at subverting the existing order of things that seemed more in keeping with the insurrections of earlier ages. It certainly never became a formidable movement, and was really an affair fomented by one Oliver, an agent of the Sidmouth-Castlereagh administration, which was uneasy at the generally disturbed state of the country, and fearful that the strong language indulged in by the Radical agitators among the working class and the swiftly increasing numbers of factory-workers might, if unchecked, lead to very serious movements. In this frame of mind, the weak and criminal Ministers appear to have considered that their best course was to employ spies who should worm their way into the confidence of the discontented classes, and actually provoke them into acts of armed rebellion that would give the Government an opportunity of repressing them violently.