But despite so powerful a recommendation the young Baron of Newton failed in his suit. Among the aspirants with whom he stood in competition were men much higher in social position. Eventually, the eldest daughter married Sir Edward Lyttelton of Staffordshire. The second daughter married Henry Grey, eighth Earl of Kent, of that family. And the third married Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley.
Royal commendations of suitors were sure, in that age, not to be the only sample of royal letters—direct and indirect—with which a man in Sir William Courten’s position became familiar. He was favoured with not a few solicitations for advances of money on privy-seals, and in other forms of ‘loan.’ Sometimes he complies. Sometimes he remonstrates by specifying the large sums he contributes to the revenue in the way of custom’s duties, and the entire incapability thence arising of the desired response to privy-seals and the like documents. His loans, however, to James, and to Charles, amounted to no less a sum than £27,000.
Commercial Complications in Holland.
The death in 1625 of his brother, Sir Peter Courten, deprived the firm of its efficient representative in Holland, and laid a foundation for great misfortunes by putting in his place an unworthy successor. The partner resident at Middleburgh had the trust both of a large portion of the capital of the Company, and of the chief share of its account keeping.
Peter Boudaen was a nephew of the Courtens, and had been to some extent admitted as a partner. His uncle Peter made him also his executor. He thus acquired a great control over the continental affairs of the house, just at the time when its transactions were expanding in all directions. |1631.| He proved unfaithful to his trust, applied his large local influence to his personal advantage and to the prejudice of his partners; and at length failed altogether to render due accounts to the two partners in England. Mouncey, the junior of these, went to Holland in order to enforce an adjustment. He had hardly entered on his task when he died, after a very brief illness, in Boudaen’s house at Middleburgh. Boudaen made a Will for him; asserted that the testator had executed it, in due form of law, immediately before his death; and found means to get the document sanctioned by the Dutch Courts, in the face of strong opposition and of strong presumptive evidence of fraud.
Establishment by Sir W. Courten of the British Fishery Association.
Domest. Corresp., Charles I, vol. cclxxxvii, § 57; vol. ccciii, § 75; cccxiii, § 16; cccxvii, § 75.
Sir William Courten, meanwhile, prosecuted with his characteristic vigour his vast enterprises already established; made new and large ventures in the reclaiming of waste lands in England; and established the ‘Fishery Association of Great Britain and Ireland,’ with a view to the rescue from the Dutch of that productive herring fishery on our own coasts, which the growing supineness of English governments during at least two generations had permitted to become almost a monopoly in their hands. Of this Association Courten, during the closing years of his life, was the mainspring.
The Dutch, as was natural, strove vigorously to retain the advantage they had acquired, and were little scrupulous about the means of opposition. English herring busses were occasionally captured. And the captors had the great incidental advantage in the strife of dealing with a Government already weak at home, and yearly losing ground.
The Trade with India.