The business carried on at No. 43, Fleet Street, was on a very extensive scale, and Joseph Butterworth was not only a well-known member of Parliament, but was an exceedingly wealthy and zealous philanthropist; and at his uncle’s dinner table young Henry Butterworth met many eminent and good men who were associated together to fight in a common cause—among others we may particularize Wilberforce, Teignmouth, Liverpool, Bexley, Zachary Macaulay, and Robert and Charles Grant—and from the time of his first introduction he enrolled his name among these ardent religious and social reformers.
Young Butterworth entered very heartily into the conduct of his uncle’s business, and, owing to his efforts, its relations were very vastly extended.
In 1813 he was in a position to marry a lady of birth and fortune, the daughter of Captain Whitehead, of the Fourth Irish Dragoon Guards, who not only afterwards entered fully into all his philanthropic projects, but possessed a refined and cultivated intellect, which found utterance in a volume of “Songs and Poems,” by E. H. B., published by Pickering in 1848, which are evidently, as the authoress says of another gift—
“An offering from a heart sincere.
Tho’ small and worthless, what I send,
’Tis hallowed by affection’s tear.”
In 1818, Butterworth found that there was little likelihood of his admission, as had been previously agreed upon, to a satisfactory share of his uncle’s business; and having now to consider not only his own interests, but the welfare of a wife and family, he determined, with a sense of disappointment, to seek an independent roof, and there to carry out, on his own account, the art and mystery of law printing.
Before we follow him to his new abode, we will devote a few words to his uncle’s successful career. Joseph Butterworth, who had, in connection with Whieldon, founded a very large law-publishing business, realized, it is said, the largest fortune ever made by law publishing, and was one of the original founders of the British and Foreign Bible Society, its earliest meetings being held at his house in Fleet Street. His son died before him, and his business was sold to Messrs. Saunders and Benning; and after various fortunes, the shop became the Bible warehouse of Messrs. Spottiswoode.
Henry Butterworth, supported by his father’s capital, took a lease of No. 7, Fleet Street, a house which had been, as we have seen previously, occupied by Tothill and other ancient law publishers. And from this shop were issued the vellum-bound volumes whose contents are sacred to all but those assiduously apprenticed to the law. Butterworth’s position was still further improved by his appointment to the profitable post of Queen’s law publisher. To the general student the law-books of the period are as little known as they were to that worthy country justice who, wishing to learn something definite about the law he so zealously administered, told his bookseller to send him forthwith the “Mirror for Magistrates;” and the vastly popular law-books did not, of course, come within the province of the technical publisher. Butterworth, however, saw the decline of two works which had been regarded as time-honoured text-books on the subject—Burn’s “Justice” and Blackstone’s “Commentaries.” Many booksellers had made large fortunes out of Burn since the time when the author, wearied out with carrying his manuscript from shop to shop, had accepted a nominal fee to get it off his hands; and now Butterworth, by publishing Serjeant Stephen’s celebrated “Commentaries on the Laws of England”—the most successful law-work of modern times—erased Blackstone from the category of legal text-books.
Butterworth, however, though energetic as a publisher, found time to take part in the government of the city. In 1823 he was elected as representative of the ward of Farringdon Street Without, but he afterwards declined to be nominated to the office of sheriff. However, his connection with the city was still further strengthened by his appointment as Commissioner of Income and Property Tax, and Land and Assessed Taxes for London, and also as Commissioner of Roads. On his first arrival in town he had served in a light volunteer regiment, recruited to resist the aggression of the great Napoleon; and on his retirement from the corporation, about the year 1841, he received a captain’s commission in the Royal London Militia.
We gather something of Butterworth’s general kindness and consideration to those beneath him in station from the following anecdote:—Shortly after the passing of the new Poor Law Act in 1834, the guardians of the West Surrey Union ordered that the annual Christmas dinner for the workhouse inmates should consist, as wont, of roast beef and plum-pudding. The Poor Law Board—a new broom—was horrified at this munificence, and sent down their inspector, Dr. Kay, to inquire into the proposed extravagance. He offered a compromise by substituting boiled beef for roast, not that it would be in any degree cheaper, but that (a satisfactory object, we suppose, to the Board) it would not be quite so palatable. Butterworth, who was one of the guardians, was inflexible, and finally sent in his resignation; but as he was too useful a local authority to be spared, the Board sent back the resignation, and permitted the paupers to feast upon the disputed beef, roast.
In his later years Butterworth took much interest in church-building, and at Tooting, St. Dunstan’s-in-the-West, and his native city of Coventry, he subscribed large sums for that purpose.