Others were working on the same lines. To Sir William Slingsby and his associates a licence was issued in 1610, but this was a very general document, vaguely worded. More precise was the patent granted the next year to Sir Edward Zouche, Thomas Percivall, and others. It was under this patent that the process was perfected, probably at the glass-house at Lambeth, under the charge of Percivall. Only a few years later, in 1616, English coal was brought into use at the glass-works of St. Sever, near Rouen, very likely through the mediation of one of the Norman glass-workers settled in England.
There were many difficulties to be overcome before this pit-coal could be used with success. Greater care had to be taken in the selection of the materials for the pots—perhaps without the Stourbridge clay success would not have been attained—and it was found to be necessary to ‘close the pots,’ that is to say, to use a covered crucible so as to protect the glass from the smoky, sulphurous gases given off by the coal. The credit of the invention of these closed pots, with the mouth at the side facing the opening of the furnace, is also to be given to Percivall.
I dwell on these practical details for a special reason. In the first place, the use of coal and the consequent change in the form of the crucibles mark the beginning of English glass as a distinct genre. Again, this change is closely connected with a further and still more important step—the use of lead as an essential constituent in a new kind of ‘metal,’ the famous English flint-glass of later days. It is these two novelties that form our contribution to the technique of glass-making. Not that I can find any proof that lead-glass was made in England at so early a date. But on the one hand the use of a covered pot rendered it more difficult, at that time at least, thoroughly to melt the contents, and therefore favoured the use of a more fusible mixture; on the other, in the case of a glass containing lead, it is above all essential to protect the ‘metal’ from the fire.
The history of the progress of glass-making in England from the early days of Elizabeth to the outbreak of the Civil War in the next century, is chiefly concerned with the licences and patents granted to a succession of English and foreign ‘adventurers.’[[240]] No doubt there were many abuses in this system; but it is impossible to overlook the fact that the Cecils and the other advisers of the Queen were enabled by such means to encourage the foundation of many industries, and this chiefly by the help of foreigners. For at the beginning of Elizabeth’s reign we had fallen sadly behind in the matter of the industrial arts. Not only France and Italy, but Germany too and the Netherlands, had much to teach us.
Already, however, before the death of the Queen and still more in the next reign, there arose, as I have said, a great popular outcry against the monopolists, and this feeling of indignation found an echo in more than one of James’s parliaments. It is the more strange, therefore, to find that it was during this reign that the whole glass industry of the country fell for the first and last time into the hands of one man. But this was no other than Sir Robert Mansell, Admiral of the Fleet, a man of exceptional energy and a born fighter, one who had in early life had more than one brush with the Spaniards. King James, when approached on the subject of Mansell’s glass monopoly, marvelled that ‘Robin Mansell being a seaman, whereby he hath got so much honour, should fall from water to tamper with fire.’
The first we hear of Mansell in this connection is in the year 1615, when we find him associated with Sir Edward Zouche, Thelwell, Percivall, and others in a patent for making glass with sea-coal. But before this he had probably for some time been interested in certain London glass-works. And now before two years had elapsed he had bought out all his partners[[241]] and commenced his reign as ‘glass-king.’ This monopoly, in spite of frequently renewed opposition, Mansell succeeded in maintaining up to the time of his death in the days of the Protectorate. He hunted down the local glass-houses where wood, now forbidden by law, was still employed. He granted licences to some of the Lorrainers working at Stourbridge and elsewhere, while—as at Newcastle, where he had glass-works under his direct management—he took others of these foreigners into his employ. In London, on the other hand, at the glass-furnaces of Winchester House, which he now took over, Sir Robert employed Italians.
We here come into contact with another and not less interesting man, James Howell, like his master Mansell, a Welshman.[[242]] Howell was in 1618 ‘steward of the glasse-house’ in Southwark, but he was glad to change this position for that of traveller for Mansell in Spain and Italy; for, so he writes to his father, ‘I should in a short time have melted away to nothing among these hot Venetians.’ His duties were now to obtain workmen from Italy, and the raw materials, especially the ‘barillia,’ from Spain. In the following year he brought over one of the famous Miotti family from Middelburg, and not long afterwards we find him writing from Alicante an interesting account of the ‘Barillia, a strange kind of vegetable that grows nowhere upon the surface of the Earth, in that perfection as here.’ ‘The Venetians have it hence,’ he continues, and he proceeds to give a detailed account of the method of preparation (Book I. section I. xxv.). Howell’s letters from Venice are most interesting, and have provided many ‘elegant extracts’ for later writers. For instance, there is a passage in which he speaks of ‘lasses and glasses,’ and of the brittleness that beauty shares with the mirrors of Venice[[243]]—the rest of the passage is, however, rather too outspoken for our present taste.
The contention between Mansell and the anti-monopolists was above all warm about the year 1623, on the occasion of the renewal of his patent for another fifteen years, and the ‘New Patent,’ the ‘Reasons against the same,’ Mansell’s ‘Defence’ and his ‘Motives and Reasons,’ and finally the ‘Answer’ to this last, followed in quick succession. All these documents and pamphlets are reproduced by Mr. Hartshorne; they form indeed an important source of information for the history of English glass. From them we learn that Mansell, after many failures elsewhere and the expenditure of many thousand pounds, first at Newcastle successfully made window-glass with the native coal; that the clay for the pots was at the commencement brought from Staffordshire, but that as the English clay proved unsatisfactory, he obtained a better material at infinite cost ‘from beyond Roan in France,’ and finally from ‘Spawe in Germany.’ At the time he was writing he indeed protests that he had already sunk £24,000 in his ventures.
The precise position of Mansell after the expiration in 1638 of the second term of his patent is somewhat obscure, but he seems to have steered well among the troubles of the time and to have maintained his monopoly. At the period in question, he tells us he was producing ‘Ordinary Drinking Glasses’ for wine and for beer at four shillings and half a crown a dozen respectively, as well as mortar-glasses[[244]] at one-and-fourpence a dozen. He was at the same time making beer and wine glasses of crystal (these were from two to three times as dear as the last), beside looking-glasses and spectacle-glass plates in rivalry with the Venetians; finally, with English materials, window-glass and ‘green-glasses.’
There is nothing in all this, or indeed in any of these patents and petitions, to point to the existence of lead-glass at this time. The use of barilla, I may add, is incompatible with the preparation of a lead-glass; in such a glass it is essential that the alkali should be potash. On the whole, during the long period of the Mansell monopoly (from 1615 to, say, 1655) little progress appears to have been made in the manufacture of glass, but of course we must make allowance for the times of civil strife that filled the latter part of this period.