IV. Sir William Herrick
(1557-1653)

In the quaint town of Leicester, in 1589, died old John Herrick, at the age of seventy-six. He had been a well-to-do gentleman, who, according to the record on his tombstone, had "lived at his ease, with Mary his wife, in one house, full two-and-fifty years; and in all that time never buried man, woman, nor child, though they were sometimes twenty in household." He had twelve children, and his wife, living till she was ninety-seven, "did see, before her departure, of her children, children's children, and their children, to the number of a hundred and forty-two."

Most of the children of this fine old patriarch inherited his prosperity and happiness. One of his daughters married Lawrence Hawes, another married Sir Thomas Bennett, both of them wealthy merchants of London. Robert, his eldest son, was an iron-monger and iron-founder in Leicestershire, thrice mayor of his native town, and its representative in Parliament in 1588. He had extensive ironworks, and paper-mills as well, in Staffordshire.

"You know," he wrote to his brother, "that such pleasant youths as I am do delight in the pleasant woods, to hear the sweet birds sing, the hammers go, and beetles in the paper-mills at the same place also. For him that hath got most of his wealth for this fifty years or near that way, and now finds as good iron as there was this forty years, as good weight, as good workmen, as honest fellows, as good entertainment, what want you more?"

This contented man "had two sons and nine daughters by one wife, with whom he lived fifty-one years," and he died, "very godly," at the age of seventy-eight, in 1618. His portrait was placed by admiring friends in the town-hall of Leicester, with this inscription:

"His picture, whom you here see When he is dead and rotten, By this shall he remembered be, When he would be forgotten."

Nicholas, the next son of worthy John Herrick, was sent to make his fortune in London. He was articled, in 1556, to a goldsmith in Cheapside.

"We do pray to God daily," wrote his good father to him, when he had only been in London a few months, "to bless you, and to give you grace to be good, diligent, and obedient unto your master, both in word and deed; and be profitable unto him, as well behind his back as before his face; and trust nor lend none of his goods without his leave and consent. And if so be that you be faithful and painful in your master's business, as I hope you be, doubtless God will provide for you another day the like as much again. I pray God to give you grace to live in His fear, and then you shall not do amiss; and it shall be a great comfort for your mother and me, and to all your friends, and best to yourself another day."

The good old man's prayers were answered, Nicholas Herrick prospered in his business, and, his apprenticeship being over, set up a goodly shop of his own in Cheapside, near to the memorable old Paul's Cross, a famous place for open-air preaching upon great occasions during many generations, which was pulled down by order of the Commonwealth in 1642.

To this Nicholas Herrick, his younger brother William, the most illustrious member of the whole family, who was born in 1557, was apprenticed in 1573 or 1574. The lad was in London two or three years before he could be spared from the shop to go down on a visit to his parents. That he did in the autumn of 1576:

"I give you hearty thanks," wrote old John Herrick to Nicholas, "that you would send him to Leicester to see us, for your mother and I did long to see him, and so did his brothers and sisters. We thought that he had never been so tall as he is, nor never would have been."

Very pleasant and instructive are the letters that passed between the members of this happy family of the Herricks, which time has spared for us to read. They show us very vividly what sort of intercourse existed between parents and children three centuries ago, in the days of good Queen Bess.

The tall lad was not able to stay long in Leicester. He soon returned to London, to be followed by the loving thoughts of his parents. Here is part of a letter written in 1578 by the mother to her loving son William Herrick, in London, dwelling with Nicholas Herrick, in Cheap, which is none the worse for its bad grammar:—

"William, with my hearty commendations, and glad to hear of your good health, etc.; and this is to give you thanks for my pomegranate and red herring you sent me, wishing you to give my daughter Hawes thanks for the pomegranate and box of marmalade that she sent me. Furthermore I have sent you a pair of knit hose, and a pair of knit kersey gloves. I would have you send me word how they serve you, for if the gloves be too little for you, you should give them to one of your brother Hawes's children, and I would send you another pair."

Red herrings and pomegranates, and other delicacies, not easily to be procured in Leicester, seem to have been sent down by Master William as often as he had an opportunity of confiding them to the care of some chance traveller, in days when there were not even coaches to travel by; and, in exchange, he received occasional parcels of warm stockings, and other household goods. In a letter written in March 1580, we find John Herrick thanking William, and his brothers and sisters in London, for "all their tokens,"

"And we be sorry," he proceeds, "that you have been at so much cost as you were at for your oysters and lampreys you sent A quartern of them had been sufficient to send at one time. I would have you be a good husband, and save your money. My cousin, Thomas Herrick, and his wife, hath sent you a gammon of bacon, with commendation to your sister Mary and you."

Near the end of 1582 Nicholas Herrick took to himself a wife.

"I trust now that you be a married man," wrote his father on the 18th of December, "for I heard that you were appointed to marry on Monday; and if you be married, we pray God to send you both much joy and comfort together, and to all her friends and yours. We wish ourselves that we had been with you at your wedding. But the time of the year is so that it had been painful to your mother and me to have ridden such a journey, the days being so short and the way so foul; chiefly, being so old and unwieldy as we both be; and specially your mother hath such pains in one of her knee-bones, that she cannot go many times about the house without a staff in her hand; and I myself have had, for the space of almost this half-year, much pain of my right shoulder, that I cannot get on my gown without help. Age bringeth infirmities with it; God hath so ordained."

One of the infirmities of age that afflicted the good old man was a little sharpness of temper. Touches of anger are in his later letters which are entirely wanting in his earlier ones. "I pray you," he wrote to William in March 1583, "show your brother Nicholas that I think that paper is scant in London, beause I never received any letter from him since he was nr.arried."

And Nicholas was not the only child of whom John Herrick made complaint. His daughter Mary had gone up to London many years before, as companion to Nicholas; and she found London life so much pleasanter than Leicester life, that when the special object of her stay was over, she was not willing to go home again. So her father sent her a scolding letter in June 1583:—

"You were obedient at our desire," he said, "to go to London, to keep your brother's house when he had need of you; but now he, being married, may spare you. He is very sorry that you should take the turns you do; but he tells your mother and me that you will needs do so. You ought to be obedient unto us now, as you were at your going up; and not only then and now, but at all times, as you know by the commandment of God you ought to be; likewise you be bound to be obedient to your parents by the law of nature and by the law of the realm. We would be both very sorry that you should be found disobedient to' us or stubborn. We do not send for you for any ill purpose towards you, but for your comfort and ours. We do not send for you to work or toil about any business, but to oversee my house, and do your own work, and have a chamber to yourself, and one of your sisters to bear you company. I thank God all your brethren and sisters do show themselves obedient to your mother and me; and, in doing so, they do but their duty, and God will bless them the better for it. I pray you let me not find you contrary to them, for if you do, it will be a great grief to your mother and me in these our old days, and be an occasion to shorten our days, which cannot be long; but grief of heart and mind will shorten life, as daily experience doth show. Remember yourself whether you have done well or no. We might have commanded you, but we have desired and prayed you, and you refuse to be obedient."

Mary Herrick still refused; yet it is likely that she was forgiven when her father heard that the reason for her staying in London, was a forthcoming marriage between her and the rich merchant Sir Thomas Bennett, who was Lord Mayor of London in 1603.

Six years after the short quarrel with his daughter, John Herrick died, and before long, in the prime of life, his son Nicholas died also. "I do advertise you," the father had written twelve or thirteen years before, "to make your book of reckoning perfect, as well what you do owe as what you have owing. For we be all uncertain when it shall please God to call us, whether in young age, middle age, or old age."

The warning was needed by Nicholas Herrick, Death's summons to him was very sudden. Looking one day out of an upper window of his house in Cheapside, he fell into the street, and so was killed.

He left one infant son, Robert Herrick, who, becoming a parson, was one of the sweetest of all the sweet singers that fluttered about the court of Charles I., and another son, who attained eminence as a merchant. But his real successor in the goldsmith's business in Cheapside was his younger brother and former apprentice, William.

The trade of a goldsmith was then one of the most lucrative and honourable that an Englishman could follow. It meant much more than dealing in jewelry and golden trinkets. The old Goldsmiths' Guild had the exclusive power of coining money; and to its members belonged especially that irregular sort of banking, which, before it was assigned to a particular class of traders, was also often resorted to by great merchants like Whittington and Gresham. The goldsmiths, whose shops were generally in Cheapside, were great moneylenders and money-changers. Kings and nobles, country gentlemen and merchants, if in need of cash, brought them not only their jewels and trinkets, but often their title-deeds and written bonds, to be held in security for the coin which they required to borrow. Thus they were something between the pawnbrokers and the bankers of modern times. All who needed money, and to whom it was safe to lend it, borrowed from them, and paid good interest for the loans, often forfeiting their property when they were unable to pay back the debts at the proper time, and thus adding yet more to the wealth of the lenders.

Among the goldsmiths of this sort, in the time of Queen Elizabeth, William Herrick came to be the most eminent. The Queen herself was one of his best customers. Employing Gresham, Ducket, and others, to conduct her foreign monetary business, she went to Herrick for the small loans and minor bargains to which, her exchequer being often nearly empty, she very often had to resort. Could we discover the ledgers which old John Herrick bade his son keep carefully, we should see a wonderful array of loans, not only to Elizabeth, but also to nearly every one of her famous courtiers, the great Earl of Leicester, and his noble nephew, Sir Philip Sidney, the great Earl of Essex, and his worthier rival Sir Walter Raleigh, and half-a-hundred other men of excellent wit and excellent grace; men whose courtly bearing, noble thought, and noble action, make the age of Queen Elizabeth the most illustrious in our history.

So high was Elizabeth's opinion of Herrick, that she once sent him as ambassador to the Sultan of Turkey. But she generally found occupation enough for him in his proper trade. To her and to her subjects he lent money almost without limit; and out of the interest thereon, as well as out of the profits of his ordinary work as a goldsmith, he was rich enough, in 1595, to buy Beaumanor Park, in Leicestershire. In 1601 he became member of Parliament for Leicester; and on that occasion, we are told, "he gave to the town in kindness twelve silver spoons,"

In 1603 Queen Elizabeth died, and James VI. of Scotland became King of England as James I. The new King, in consideration of his long and faithful service to his late mistress, continued to eniploy Herrick in the same sort of service, and dignified it by conferring on him the title of Principal Jeweller or Teller to the Crown.

Under King James, however, Herrick had a friendly rival in a man in some respects worthier and abler than himself. This man was the famous George Heriot Heriot, born in 1563, had carried on the same sort of trade, regular and irregular, for more than a dozen years, under King James in Scotland. His little shop or booth, measuring about seven feet square, was the richest spot in Edinburgh, the great resort of King James and his crowd of spendthrift courtiers. One day, according to tradition, Heriot visited the King at Holyrood House, and seeing him sprawling before a fire of perfumed wood, praised it for its sweetness. "Ay," answered the King, "and it is costly." Heriot replied that, if his Majesty would come to his shop against St Giles's Kirk, he would show him a yet costlier one. "Indeed and I will," exclaimed the monarch. On reaching the shop, however, nothing was to be seen but a few poor flames flickering in the goldsmith's forge. "Is this, then, your fine fire?" asked King James. "Wait a little," answered the merchant, "till I get the fuel;" and then, opening his chest, he took thence a bond for £2000, which he had lent to the King, and threw it among the embers. "Now," he asked, "whether is your Majesty's fire or mine the better?" "Yours, most certainly, Master Heriot," was the answer.

Let all who like believe the tale. But it is clear that Heriot was rich enough to pay his Sovereign a compliment of this kind over and over again. He throve wonderfully as Goldsmith in Ordinary to King James, and as money-lender to both the King and his courtiers, and when, in 1605, James went southwards with his wasteful followers, Heriot followed him to open a larger shop "foranent the new Exchange," which was just being set up in the Strand, on the site of the present Adelphi, and to share with William Herrick the lucrative office of Jeweller to the King of England.

Of Heriot's busy life in London a clearer and completer notion is to be derived from the fictitious but truthfully-drawn portrait of him in Sir Walter Scott's "Fortunes of Nigel," than from any mere statement of the few authentic facts that have come down to us. The "Jingling Geordie" of Scott's delightful novel, who, by worth of character, goodness of heart, and rectitude of principle, set a noble example of manliness in an over-selfish and ungenerous age, who "walked through life with a steady pace and an observant eye, neglecting no opportunity of assisting those who were not possessed of the experience necessary for their own guidance," was, as far as we can judge, the veritable George Heriot of real life. The little that we actually know of his private history shows him to have been a man as kind and self-sacrificing in his dealings with others as he was upright and persevering in the pursuit of his own fortunes.

Heriot, in the Strand, and Herrick, in Cheapside, ran a race of wealth together. Heriot was plain George Heriot to the last But on Easter Tuesday, in 1605, says an envious letter-writer of the time, "one Master William Herrick, a goldsmith in Cheapside, was knighted for making a hole in the great diamond the King did wear. The party little expected the honour; but he did his work so well as won the King to an extraordinaiy liking of it."

James I. knighted men for smaller services than making a hole in a great diamond; and Sir William Herrick well deserved his honour. In the same year he again entered Parliament as member for Leicester. He was also chosen alderman of Farringdon Without, but from this office, as well as from employment as Sheriff of London, he was afterwards excused, on payment of £300, "in respect," as it was said, "that the said Sir William is the King's sworn servant, and cannot so necessarily afford the daily service as behoveth."

During the next dozen years and more Sir William Herrick was in almost daily service at the Court Great sums of money were lent by him to the King in formal ways for public and private uses; and he also lent much money in the less regular ways of personal friendship.

"Since my being teller," he wrote in a petition dated 1616, "I have lent his Majesty divers great sums of money gratis which none of my fellows ever did, to my loss and disadvantage of at least; £3000." Yet all these good offices, he complained, were forgotten, and the ungrateful monarch allowed him even to be defrauded and tricked out of his due. A blunder had been made by a clerk in copying a deed, which unless corrected, would cause him a considerable loss every year. "And yet, such is my misfortune," he said, "that this little and just favour is not yet allowed me."

That petition and others of the same sort were answered with gracious words and large promises, and Herrick continued to find mean's for the extravagant indulgences of the King and his son, Prince Charles, afterwards Charles I. He was a rich man, however, and found good use for his riches in charitable works and schemes for local improvement in Leicester and its neighbourhood.

In that neighbourhood, at his fine estate of Beaumanor Park, he seems to have settled down, as a retired merchant of great wealth, in or near the year 1624. There he lived splendidly and happily, dealing kindly with his tenants, and winning their hearty love and esteem. At every Christmas-time these tenants crowded up with presents, betokening their gratitude. Apples and cakes, puddings and sausages, chickens, capons, turkeys, geese, and pigs, here and there "one pound of currants" or "a bottle of claret wine," are among the articles which the good and careful old man noted down as received from his various dependants.

Sometimes, too, these dependants, according to the fashion of those days, entertained him with quaint dramatic shows, of the sort still feebly represented by Jack-in-the-Green and Punch-and-Judy. One of them was prefaced by this speech, spoken by the play-master of the day:

"The rare report of your worship's favour, gentle acceptance, extraordinary kindness, and most liberal eutertainment, that you have always showed to your neighbours, hath not only won the hearts of your domesticated friends, but hath now drawn poor Amintas, even in the waning of his age, from the downs, to come to present himself and all the fruits of his forepassed youth, the lively offspring of this aged shepherd, a few silly boys, to make such sport this night in square-play, as shall in no sort be offensive to you, nor much hurtful to them, if fortune favour them not; for they bring not mountains of money, but mole-hills gathered on mountains. I thought good, as my duty is, to acquaint your worship with my intended purpose, and desire to know how you will accept of me and my poor boys, whose rudeness I hope you will impute to my mean estate, for shepherds be no courtiers."

Sir William Herrick's pleasant life was shared by his good wife, the Lady Joan, famous in her day for her piety and her bounty. She had some beauty, too, if there is truth in an old portrait of her which bears this motto:—

"Art may her outside thus present to view. How fair within no art or tongue can show."

Something of her inner character, however, may be gathered from a letter written by her to her husband when she was absent from him in 1616:

"Sweetheart," she there says, "I hope you remember Mr Votier's 'Godly Use of Prayer' every morning and evening, with all your company. As you love God, leave it not undone; it shall bring a blessing on you and yours. God knows how short our time shall be on earth, as we see daily fearful examples to put us in mind of our last end. One of our neighbours at Richmond went out to milk her kine, as well as ever she was in her life, and milked two kine, and suddenly fell down dead, and never spoke more."

Then she talks of the bringing up of her daughters, whom she does not like to send to a boarding-school.

"If you should iboard them forth, they would cost you £14 a year at the least, and save nothing at home; besides, they will never be bred in religion as at home, and wear out twice as many clothes as at home. All things considered, this is the best course." So Lady Joan tells her husband that she has hired a governess. "My sister Hicks sent me word of her, how fit a woman she was for me to breed up my girls, and I, knowing it of my own knowledge to be so, I hope you will not be angry with me for it God, that knows my heart, knows I was never more loth to offend you in all my life than I have been within this half-year; and so I hope ever I shall be."

In 1624, at about the same time as Sir William Herrick's retirement from business, his associate George Heriot died. Heriot's good-heartedness was even greater than Herrick's. Having lived an honest life in times when dishonesty was too much the fashion, he was much occupied near its close in settling how best to spend his large fortune. He bequeathed it to his native city of Edinburgh, where Heriot's Hospital, "for education, nursing, and upbringing of poor orphans," is a standing proof of his wise munificence.

Sir William Herrick lived in well-employed retirement for nearly thirty years. He died in 1653, at the age of ninety-six.