Four years after the Armada, Elizabeth granted to one Thomas Bowes a monopoly to make drinking glasses “to be as good cheape or better cheape than those imported from Venice.” As to the success of his venture history is silent. In the reign of her successor—that British Solomon, James I.—glass-making seems, however, to have made considerable progress; for in 1610 a licence was granted for “the invention of coal-heated glass-houses,” and in the following year Sir Edward Zouche expended no less a sum than £5000 in erecting glass-houses in Lambeth and perfecting the production of glass with sea-coal. This change is a momentous one in the history of glass-making, inasmuch as it became necessary to cover the pots, and this brought about various improvements. They are mainly associated with the name of Percival, and it is to be presumed that they included the introduction of oxide of lead into the frit in quantity, with the result of producing a more brilliant crystal than had yet been produced. From this time English glass began to acquire fame, and the industry became a definitely British art.
One outcome of this change in the method of manufacture was that the industry became localised, the glass-houses springing up in those districts where it was easy to obtain fuel as on the coal-fields, where the sand was of exceptional quality as at Reigate, or where there was an abundance of clay suitable for making the pots as at Stourbridge.
One of the most interesting discoveries in connection with the history of the glass industry in England was made some sixty or seventy
FIG. 1.—AN EARLY ELIZABETHAN GLASS, DATED 1586.
FIG. 2.—AN OLD ENGLISH GLASS TANKARD AND COVER.
years ago at the little Hampshire village of Buckholt Wood. Excavations here brought to light fragments of glass, some clear, others with a greenish or bluish tinge, evidently portions of broken vessels of various kinds—drinking glasses, jugs, bottles, and so forth. These were in such quantity that it was evident chance had brought to light one of the old glass-houses, which were founded in well-wooded districts, and kept going as long as sufficient wood remained to burn.