INTRODUCTION.
This little book might easily, by a competent pen, be made the text to a volume, as large, if not as useful, as the huge “Post Office Directory,” of which it was the modest precursor. No such ambitious object as the production of a volume of that class is to be here indulged in. On the contrary, the purpose of the present short introduction is to offer a few suggestions upon topics obviously belonging to the contents of this commercial record of the merchants and goldsmiths of London in the second half of the seventeenth century. It will be found to demonstrate the value of not a few family names as significant elements of the history of social progress.
It has, indeed, been so in all time. From Homer’s catalogues down to the knightly nomenclature of the “Roman de la Rose,” and other long-breathed poems of the middle ages; from the Battle-abbey Roll of the conqueror’s chiefs at Hastings, and from that of King Henry’s army at Agincourt to our modern musters, such documents elucidate acceptably the course of military heroism. The conjecture is as ingenious, as it is just, lately made about Shakespeare’s early life, that the Admiralty books, with their myriad of seamens’ names, may give his in some royal ship, and so account for his perfect sea phrases.
The most interesting manuscript lists are those of the notabilities present at the Preston Guild for more than 500 years; and that of the founders of a Library in Hereford 200 years ago. The Guild is in existence still. The books given to the library by Viscount Scudamore, and some hundreds of the county people, were rotting on a damp floor not long since. It may be hoped they are now better cared for.
Equally attractive are the lists still preserved of the zealous contributors to public loans to meet a national crisis. John Locke and Somers were among the first proprietors of the Bank of England. Those of the East India Company, or the like Stocks were the leading Tories.
The founders of our early colonies—holders of even five-shilling shares—have thus their enduring record; and a diligent collector may enrich his library of tracts with the printed names of all the graduates of old Harvard College in New England in the seventeenth century—so zealously did the Puritans ground their sons in learning.
The present production, although of more moderate pretensions, contains individual names of some historical weight. Its most striking feature is the severance of “Goldsmiths that keep Running cashes”—precursors of the modern bankers—from the mass of merchants of London, in 1677.