VI. Sir Henry Garway
(1570-1645)

Early in the reign of Henry VIII., one John Garway sold his estate in Sussex and settled as a merchant in London. He married the daughter of Sir John Brydges, who was Lord Mayor in 1521; and his son, Sir William Garway, inheriting much wealth, became a prosperous merchant. He succeeded Sir Thomas Smythe as Chief Treasurer of the Customs, and like him, was an enterprising member of the East India Company. The two friends died in the same year, Garway being eighty-eight years old, and the father of seventeen children.

The eldest of his children, Henry Garway, was born about 1570. His father wisely sent him about the world to study the commerce of various nations. He thus became a great merchant. He was also a good Protestant. "I have been in all parts of Christendom," he said, "and have conversed with Christians in Turkey; and in all the reformed churches there is not anything more reverend than the English Liturgy—not our Royal Exchange, nor the name of Queen Elizabeth."

Henry Garway passed many years in Turkey as a factor of the Levant Company, lately founded by Sir Edward Osborne; and in or near the year 1609, his age being then forty, he settled in London as a Turkey merchant. He was Governor of the Turkey Company through a great part of the stormy reign of Charles I.

The political storms, though disastrous to many merchants of London, were hardly injurious to London commerce. It prospered in spite of them,

"When I consider," said Lewis Roberts, author of a "Merchants' Map of Commerce," which he dedicated to Sir Henry Garway in 1638, "the true dimensions of our English traffic, as at this day to me it appears to be, together with the inbred commodities that this island affords to preserve and maintain the same, with the industry of the natives and the ability of our navigators, I justly admire both the height and eminence thereof; but when, again, I survey every kingdom and great city of the world, and every petty port and creek of the same, and find in each of these some English prying after the trade and commerce thereof, then again, I am easily brought to imagine either that this great traffic of England is at its full perfection, or that it aims higher than can hitherto by any weak sight be either seen or discerned, I must confess England breeds in its own womb the principal supporters of its present splendour, and nourisheth with its own milk the commodities that give both lustre and life to the continuance of this trade, which I pray may neither ever decay nor yet have the least diminution. But," he added, in a spirit of timidity that is amusing when we compare the commerce of to-day with that of two hundred years ago, "England being naturally seated in a northern corner of the world, and herein bending under the weight of too ponderous a burthen, cannot possibly always and for ever find a vent for all those commodities that are seen to be daily exported and brought within the compass of so narrow a circuit, unless there can be, by the policy and government of the State, a mean found out to make this island the common emporium and staple of all Europe."

And of Sir Henry Garway's own Turkey Company, Lewis Roberts said:

"Not yearly but monthly, nay, almost weekly, their ships are observed to go to and fro, exporting hence the cloths of Suffolk, Gloucester, Worcester, and Coventry, dyed and dressed, kerseys of Hampshire and Yorkshire, lead, tin, and a great quantity of Indian spices, indigo, and calicoes; and in return thereof they import from Turkey the raw silks of Persia, Damascus, and Tripoli, cottons, and cotton-yarn of Cyprus and Smyrna, and sometimes the gems of India, the drugs of Egypt and Arabia, the muscatels of Candia, and the currants and oils of Zante, Cephalonia, and Morea."

By that commerce Sir Henry Garway profited very much until he was seventy years of age, and old enough and rich enough to keep aloof from the turmoils then arising in England through the evil conduct of Charles I., and the growing love of freedom among Englishmen. Garway had prospered under Charles and his father, and had no liking to the new views of the Roundheads. Therefore he used his position as a great London merchant and grandee in attempting to suppress them, and in surrounding his old age with misfortunes.

This fate was shared by another famous merchant of that time. Sir Richard Gurney. Gurney, born at Croyden in 1577, had been apprenticed to a silk mercer in Cheapside, who liked him so well that, at his death, he bequeathed to him his shop, and a sum of £6000. Part of that money he spent in travelling through France and Italy, "where," says his old biographer, "he improved himself; and, by observing the trade of the respective marts as he passed, laid the foundation of his future traffic." Soon after his return, being himself "of no great family," he discreetly married into "a family at that time commanding most of the money, and, by that, most of the nobility, gentry, and great tradesmen of England." Thereby he became a great merchant and a very wealthy man, closely allied in fortune and misfortune to Sir Henry Garway.

Garway was elected Lord Mayor of London in 1639. As Lord Mayor, in 1640, he raised a company of troops, at the cost of the city, and sent them to York for the assistance of King Charles, in spite of the opposition of most of the corporation. He joined the citizens, however, in protesting against the illegal modes adopted for raising money by the king and his advisers. At Lambeth he was active in suppressing a rising of the people, though no such feat of valour is recorded of him as of Sir Richard Gurney. In this same tumultuous year, it is said, when Gurney was sixty-three years old, "one night, with thirty or forty lights, and a few attendants, he rushed suddenly out of the house on thousands, with the city sword drawn, who immediately retired to their own houses and gave over their design."

In the autumn of 1641, Gurney was made Lord Mayor, and, in November, he prepared a splendid entertainment for the king, who came into the city to stir up the loyalty of the merchants and 'prentices. There was great show of loyalty on Lord Mayor's day; but the citizens of London, as a body, were staunch in their opposition to Charles. To Pym, Hampden, and three others, the famous "five members," they gave a hearty welcome in the following January, greatly to the indignation of the Lord Mayor and his royalist friends.

On the 13th of January 1642, Pym made a memorable speech to the citizens in front of Guildhall. On the 17th, Sir Henry Garway made a speech hardly less memorable, in opposition to it. He besought the citizens to defend the king, and to grant no supplies to the wicked men who were seeking his overthrow. "These are strange courses, my masters," he exclaimed; "they secure our bodies to preserve our liberty; they take away our goods to maintain property; and what can we expect in the end but that they should hang us up to save our lives?" The worth of the speaker, and the eloquence of his speech, so told upon the audience, that the friends of liberty were full of fear as to its effect. "As soon as it was done, and the great shout and hum ended," said one who heard it, "the Lord Mayor, trembling and scarce able to speak, asked what their resolution was concerning assisting the Parliament with money; but the cry was so great, 'No money! no money!' 'Peace! peace!' that he could not be heard."

But the speech was soon forgotten, and the cause of freedom prevailed, to the necessary injury of all who, however honestly, stood in its way. Sir Richard Gurney, a few months afterwards, was deprived of his mayoralty, thrown into the Tower, and, for refusing to pay a fine of £SOOO appointed by Parliament, there kept a prisoner until his death in 1647; and Sir Henry Garway, according to one of his friends, "was tossed, as long as he lived, from prison to prison, and his estate conveyed from one rebel to another."