That is to say, that the glass-blower, as we have seen in other cases, worked from the patterns provided by his customers.
Camden says of the Sussex glass that in his time it was only used ‘of the common sort.’ Possibly the Sussex glass-blowers made quarrels and bull’s-eyes for windows also;[[230]] this, however, was an industry that centred rather in London, especially in Southwark. Now it was above all the demand for larger and better made panes for use in the new mansions with spacious windows—the ‘glass houses’ of the proverb about throwing stones—that were now springing up on every side, that gave the most powerful impulse to the introduction of the newer methods of working glass that had already taken root in France and in the Low Countries. It must be remembered that in the preparation of the stained glass for church windows large pieces were not required. Considerable artistic skill in this branch would be quite compatible with a very primitive method of blowing and ‘flashing’ the glass. At this time the new industry—the making of large sheets of broad-glass, that is to say—was centred in Lorraine, in the country stretching from the Vosges to the Ardennes; in a lesser degree in Normandy. It is uncertain in what the superiority of the ‘verre en tables quarrées’ made by the Lorrainers consisted; there is no positive proof that they had as yet adopted the German cylinder process (see pp. [129] and [234 note]), though this is in every way probable.
The French glass-workers who came to England belonged, for the most part, to the old noble families. We find in our English documents some of the very names—Hennezel, for instance—that occur in the famous Charte des verriers granted by John of Calabria, son of King René, in the year 1448 (see p. [230]).[[231]] When these foreigners are mentioned in our English documents they are invariably described as gentlemen or esquires.
We must remember that in the sixteenth century Antwerp held a commercial position something like that taken later by Amsterdam and London: the town was, above all, the centre of the glass trade. It is not surprising then to find that it was through the medium of an Antwerp merchant, one Jean Carré, that the French glass-makers were now introduced into England.[[232]] Carré, in association with a certain Briot, brought over both Normans and Lorrainers, and the quarrels and disputes that soon broke out appear to have had their origin in the fact that the men to whom the first patents were granted were not practical workers themselves, and that they were therefore dependent on others.[[233]] In any case, before the year 1570, gentlemen of Lorraine bearing the well-known names of Hennezel, Du Thisac, and Le Houx, as well, probably, as representatives of the Le Vaillant and other Norman families, were making glass in more than one spot in the Weald as well as in London.
But these proud, hot-headed foreigners do not seem to have been popular in Sussex. There were frequent petitions against the destruction of the woods to supply the fuel for their glass-houses, and we hear of an attempt made to rob the ‘outlandish men’ that made glass near Petworth and to burn their houses. Before 1576, then, the Lorrainers were already in search of forests where they could work without hindrance; they began that long peregrination that took them by way of the Hampshire woods to the Forest of Dean, and finally to Stourbridge and Newcastle.[[234]]
Some remains of a glass-house at Buckholt Wood, on the line of the old Roman road between Salisbury and Winchester, had long attracted the attention of antiquaries before a satisfactory explanation of their origin could be found. Large quantities of broken window-glass, as well as fragments of glass of many other kinds, including some of distinctly Venetian type, had at times been dug up. These remains, doubtless, represent a store of ‘cullet’ or old broken glass destined to be remelted, and therefore not necessarily all of it made on the spot. Fragments, too, of the glass-pots were found, of a greyish-white clay not of local origin. It is only quite recently that with these discoveries have been associated certain entries in the registries of the Walloon Church at Southampton (these were published a few years ago by the Huguenot Society). Among those admitted to the Lord’s Supper, in the years 1576 to 1579, we find the names of members of the Du Thisac, Hennezel, and Le Houx families, all Lorrainers, as well as that of Pierre Vaillant, a Norman. These communicants are described in the registry as ‘Ouvriers de verre a la verriere de boute haut’ (elsewhere spelt Bocquehaut), a fairly good French rendering of the word Buckholt. It is not every day that one comes across so neat and conclusive an instance of documentary research supplementing and completing the work of the ‘men of the spade.’
But here again, in spite of the attraction of the not far distant Walloon Church, the Lorrainers made but a short stay. In 1599 one ‘Abraham Tysack, son of a frenchman at the glasse-house,’ was baptized at Newent, in the Forest of Dean, where, at any rate, there can have been no deficiency of fuel. But the wanderers made apparently no long stay in the district, for we find that some at least of the number after a few years settled at Stourbridge, in Worcestershire. The famous clay of this district, still unsurpassed as a material for the glass-pots, was, it would seem, already worked along with the beds of coal which this clay underlies. Here, at King’s Swinford, in 1612, the name of Tyzack occurs in local records, and a little later, at Old Swinford, those of Henzey and Tittery. In this neighbourhood some members of these families at length settled down, maintaining close relations with certain of their relatives who pushed on as far as Newcastle-on-Tyne. At this last town, in 1617, a Henzey was fain to enter the service of Sir Robert Mansell, who was already bringing the principal glass-workers of England within the net of his monopoly.
I have dwelt on the wanderings of these Lorrainers, who were above all makers of window-glass, as to them rather than to the Venetians is due, I think, the definite establishment of a glass industry in England. For it must be borne in mind that the principal stimulus came from the demand for better and larger panes for the windows of the new renaissance houses,—somewhat later, perhaps, for the windows of ‘glass-coaches’ also.
Already early in the sixteenth century not a few examples of Venetian and, perhaps, even of Oriental glass, may have found their way into the houses of the wealthy. But we must regard as quite exceptional—the result, probably, of some passing whim of the king—the collection of 371 pieces of glass that were in 1542 in the possession of Henry VIII. These are described under the head of ‘Glasses and sundry other things of erthe’ in an inventory of certain valuable effects in the Palace at Westminster (Archæological Journal, vol. xviii., 1861). Among them there is mention of flagons, basins, ewers, standing-cups, cruses, layers, spice-plates, and even forks and spoons of glass. Many of these pieces are described as ‘jasper-colour’—these were probably of a kind of schmelz—and there is frequent reference in the list to ‘blue glass’ and ‘glass of many colours.’ A ‘layer’ with the initials ‘H and A engraven on the cover,’ as well as a cup with ‘Quene Annes sipher engraven on it,’ had doubtless belonged to Anne Boleyn. The following items are of some interest:—
‘One thicke glasse of christall with a case of lether lined with crymson vellat.’