Chapter VI: The Founders of the Sloane Museum (1)

... ‘He pry’d through Nature’s store,
Whate’er she in th’ ethereal round contains,
Whate’er she hides beneath her verdant floor,
The vegetable and the mineral reigns.
At times, he scann’d the globe,—those small domains
Where restless mortals such a turmoil keep,—
Its seas, its floods, its mountains, and its plains.’—
THOMSON.

_Flemish Exiles in England._—_The Adventures, Mercantile and Colonial
Enterprises, and Vicissitudes of the_ COURTENS.—_William_ COURTEN
_and his Collections.—The Life and Travels of Sir Hans_
SLOANE—_His acquisition of_ COURTEN’S _Museum_.—_Its growth under
the new Possessor._—_History of the Sloane Museum and Library, and
of their purchase by Parliament._

[Sidenote: BOOK I, Chap. VI. THE FOUNDERS OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM.]

The history of the rise and growth of our English trade is, in a conspicuous degree, a history of the immigration hither of foreign refugees, and of what was achieved by their energy and industry, when put forth to the utmost under the stimulus and the stern discipline of adversity. Other countries, no doubt, have derived much profit from a similar cause, but none, in Europe, to a like extent. By turns almost all the chief countries of the Continent have sent us bands of exiles, who brought with them either special skill in manual arts and manufactures, or special capabilities for expanding our foreign commerce. To Flemish refugees, and more particularly to those of them who were driven hither by Spanish persecution in the sixteenth century, England owes a large debt in both respects. [Sidenote: FLEMISH EXILES IN ENGLAND.] Our historians have given more prominence of late years to this chapter in the national annals than was ever given to it before, but there is no presumption in saying that not a little of what was achieved by exiles towards the industrial greatness of the nation has yet to be told.

Nor is it less evident that, over and above the political and public interest of the things done, or initiated, by the new comers in their adopted country, the personal and family annals of the exiles possess, in not a few instances, a remarkable though subsidiary interest of their own. In certain cases, to trace the fortunes of a refugee family, is at once to throw some gleams of light on obscure portions of our commercial history, and to tell a romantic story of real life.

One such instance presents itself in the varied fortunes of the COURTENS. [Sidenote: THE COURTENS; THEIR ADVENTURES AND ENTERPRISES.] That family attained an unusual degree of commercial prosperity, and attained it with unusual rapidity. In the second generation it seemed—for a while—to have struck a deep root in our English soil. It owned lands in half-a-dozen English counties, and its alliance was sought by some of the greatest families in the kingdom. In the next generation its fortunes sank more rapidly than they had risen. In the fourth, the last of the COURTENS was for almost half his life a wanderer, living under a feigned name, and he continued so to live when at length enabled to return to his country. The true name had been preserved only in the records of interminable litigation—in England, Holland, India, and America—about the scattered wreck of a magnificent property. But the enterprise of the family, in its palmy days, had planted for England a prosperous colony. It had opened new paths to commerce in the East Indies, as well as in the West. And its last survivor found a solace for many ruined hopes in the collection of treasures of science, art and literature, which came to be important enough to form no small contribution towards the eventual foundation of the British Museum.

[Sidenote: THE FOUNDER OF THE FAMILY.]

In 1567 William COURTEN, a thriving dealer in linens and silks, living at Menin in Flanders, was together with his wife, Margaret CASIER, accused of heresy. COURTEN was thrown into the prison of the Inquisition, but contrived both to make his escape into England, and to enable his wife soon to join him. He established himself in London, in the same business which had thriven with him at home. [Sidenote: Family Records of the Courtens; in MS. Sloane, 3515, _passim_. (B. M.)] His wife shared in its toils, and by skilfully adapting her exertions to those tastes for finery in the families of rich citizens which were now striving with some success against the rigour of the old sumptuary laws made the business more prosperous than before. It expanded until the poor haberdasher of 1567 had become a notability on the London Exchange.

In 1571 a son was born to the exiles. This second William COURTEN was bred as a merchant rather than as a tradesman. He had good parts, and seems to have started into life with a passion for bold enterprise. His early training in London was continued at Haerlem, and there he laid a foundation for commercial success by marrying the daughter of Peter CROMMELINCK, a wealthy merchant. First and last, his wife brought him a dowry of £40,000, of which sum it was stipulated by the father’s will that not less than one half should be laid out in the purchase of lands in England, to be settled on the eldest son that should be born of the marriage.

[Sidenote: SIR WILLIAM COURTEN AND HIS MERCANTILE PURSUITS.]

By the time of his attaining the age of five and thirty William COURTEN had already become—for that period—a great capitalist. He then, in 1606, established in London a commercial house which added to the ordinary business of merchants on the largest scale, that of marine insurers, and also that of adventurers in the whale fishery. His partners in the firm were his younger brother, Peter COURTEN, and John MOUNCEY. One half of the joint stock belonged to the founder; the other half was divided between the junior partners.

For nearly a quarter of a century this mercantile partnership prospered marvellously. Its annual returns are said to have averaged £200,000. It built more than twenty large ships, and kept in constant employment more than four hundred seamen and fishermen. The head of the firm gradually acquired a large landed property which included estates in the several counties of Worcester, Gloucester, Leicester, Nottingham, Essex, and Kent.

This great prosperity had, of course, its drawbacks. Amongst the earliest checks which are recorded to have befallen it was a Crown prosecution of COURTEN (in company with several other foreign merchants of note, among whom occur the names of BURLAMACHI, VANLORE, and DE QUESTER) on the frequent charge—so obnoxious to the political economy of that age—of ‘the unlawful exportation of gold.’ [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, James I, vol. cix, § 90; 96; vol. cx, § 86; vol. cxi, § 66. _Signs Manual_, vol. xii, § 26. (R. H.)] COURTEN was brought into the Star Chamber and was fined £20,000; a sum so enormous as to excite a suspicion of the accuracy of the record, but for its repeated entry. The prosecution was instituted in June, 1619; the defendant’s discharge bears date July, 1620. But it may fairly be assumed that only a portion of the nominal fine was really exacted.

Another and much more serious check to the prosperity of the enterprising merchant came from his embarking in the grand but hazardous work of planting colonies.

[Sidenote: 1626. COLONIAL ENTERPRISES OF SIR WM. COURTEN.]

In 1626, William COURTEN—then Sir William, having received the honour of knighthood at Greenwich, on the 31st of May, 1622—petitioned the King for ‘licence to make discoveries and plant colonies in that southern part of the world called _Terra Australis incognita_, with which the King’s subjects have as yet no trade,’ and his petition was granted. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. xiv, § 33.] What ensued thereupon is thus told in an authoritative manuscript account preserved in the Sloane collection:—

‘Sir William COURTEN being informed, by his correspondents in Zealand, that some Dutch men-of-war sent out upon private commission against the Spaniards had put into the island of Barbados, and found it uninhabited, and very fit for a plantation, did thereupon, at his own charge, set forth two ships provided with men, ammunition, and arms, and all kinds of necessaries for planting and fortifying the country, who landed and entered into possession of the same in the month of February, 1626 [1627, N.S.]... Afterwards, in the same year, he sent Captain POWELL thither, with a further supply of servants and provisions, who, in 1627, fetched several Indians from the mainland, with divers sorts of seeds and roots, and agreed with them to instruct the English in planting cotton, tobacco, indigo, &c. Sir William COURTEN having, by his partners and servants, maintained the actual possession for the space of two years, and peopled the island with English, Indians, and others, to the number of eighteen hundred and fifty men, women, and children, thought fit to make use of the Earl of PEMBROKE’S name in obtaining a patent particularly for Barbadoes, although he had before a general grant from the king to possess any land within a certain latitude, wherein this island was comprehended. His Majesty having thus granted, by his Letters Patent, dated 25 February, 1627 [1628, N.S.] the government of this island unto the Earl of PEMBROKE, in trust for Sir William COURTEN, with power to settle a colony according to the laws of England, Captain POWELL had a commission to continue there as Governor, in their behalf. The Earl of CARLISLE,’ continues the MS. narrative, ‘having, before this Patent to the Earl of PEMBROKE, procured a grant, dated 2nd July 1627, of all those islands lying within 10 and 20 degrees of latitude by the name of Carliola, or Carlisle Province, with all royalties, and jurisdictions, as amply as they were enjoyed by any Bishop of Durham, within his bishopric or county palatine, and having also got another patent, for the greater security of his title, dated 7th April 1628, sent one Henry HAWLEY with two ships, who, arriving there in 1629, invited the Governor on board, kept him prisoner, seized the forts, and carried away the factors and servants of Sir William COURTEN and the Earl of PEMBROKE. [Sidenote: _Ibid._ Comp. Despatches in _Colonial Correspondence_, vol. v, §§ 1, 9, 13, 101, seqq.] The authority of the Earl of CARLISLE being thus established was maintained.’

But it was only maintained after a long contest at the Council Board at home, which contest seems to have been largely influenced by the fluctuations of Court favour from time to time. A despatch in February, written in behalf of CARLISLE, is followed in April by another despatch written in behalf of PEMBROKE and COURTEN. The one fact that becomes consistently evident throughout the proceedings is that grants of this kind were made in the loosest fashion, and often in entire ignorance even of the geographical positions of the countries given by them.[39] Indeed, the common course of procedure under the STUARTS, when a courtier had the happy thought of begging a territory in America, reminds one of those earlier days of the TUDORS, when a favoured suppliant sometimes obtained the grant of a monastery, or the lease of a broad episcopal estate, with hardly more trouble than it cost him to win a royal smile.

To COURTEN and his colonists the issue of this quarrel about Barbadoes was very disastrous. To some of the latter it brought ruin. But to the founder himself a check to enterprise in one direction seems to have brought increased stimulus to new enterprise in another direction. He now embarked largely in adventures to the East Indies and to China. As usual, they were planned on a magnificent scale; excited great jealousy in the breasts of competitors; and were attended, in the long run, with very mixed results of good and ill.

Meanwhile, Sir William’s growing wealth—greatly exaggerated by popular renown—and the conspicuous position into which his varied pursuits had brought him, led to plans of enterprise by others, and of quite another kind, at home. He had lost his first wife, and also his eldest son. He had married a second wife,—Hester TRYON, daughter of Peter TRYON. Only one son survived, but Sir William had three daughters, whose prospective charms attracted many suitors. In September, 1624, King JAMES wrote a characteristic letter in which he assured COURTEN that the son of Sir Robert FLEETWOOD, Lord of the Scottish barony of Newton, would make a fit match for one of the three daughters, and that the conclusion of such a match would be very acceptable to the King himself. [Sidenote: ALLIANCES BETWEEN THE CITY AND THE COURT.] [Sidenote: James I to Sir Willm. Courten; _Dom. Corr._, vol. clxxii, § 71.] The pretendant would gladly, and impartially, wed any one of the three ladies, but the King himself, continues the royal letter, ‘will regard, as a favour, any increase of portion given to the daughter whom FLEETWOOD may marry, over and above the portion given to, or intended for, the other daughters.’

But despite so powerful a recommendation the young Baron of NEWTON failed in his suit. Among the aspirants with whom he stood in competition were men much higher in social position. Eventually, the eldest daughter married Sir Edward LYTTELTON of Staffordshire. The second daughter married Henry GREY, eighth Earl of Kent, of that family. And the third married Sir Richard KNIGHTLEY of Fawsley.

Royal commendations of suitors were sure, in that age, not to be the only sample of royal letters—direct and indirect—with which a man in Sir William COURTEN’S position became familiar. He was favoured with not a few solicitations for advances of money on privy-seals, and in other forms of ‘loan.’ Sometimes he complies. Sometimes he remonstrates by specifying the large sums he contributes to the revenue in the way of custom’s duties, and the entire incapability thence arising of the desired response to privy-seals and the like documents. His loans, however, to JAMES, and to CHARLES, amounted to no less a sum than £27,000.

[Sidenote: COMMERCIAL COMPLICATIONS IN HOLLAND.]

The death in 1625 of his brother, Sir Peter COURTEN, deprived the firm of its efficient representative in Holland, and laid a foundation for great misfortunes by putting in his place an unworthy successor. The partner resident at Middleburgh had the trust both of a large portion of the capital of the Company, and of the chief share of its account keeping.

Peter BOUDAEN was a nephew of the COURTENS, and had been to some extent admitted as a partner. His uncle Peter made him also his executor. He thus acquired a great control over the continental affairs of the house, just at the time when its transactions were expanding in all directions. [Sidenote: 1631.] He proved unfaithful to his trust, applied his large local influence to his personal advantage and to the prejudice of his partners; and at length failed altogether to render due accounts to the two partners in England. MOUNCEY, the junior of these, went to Holland in order to enforce an adjustment. He had hardly entered on his task when he died, after a very brief illness, in BOUDAEN’S house at Middleburgh. BOUDAEN made a Will for him; asserted that the testator had executed it, in due form of law, immediately before his death; and found means to get the document sanctioned by the Dutch Courts, in the face of strong opposition and of strong presumptive evidence of fraud.

[Sidenote: ESTABLISHMENT BY SIR W. COURTEN OF THE BRITISH FISHERY
ASSOCIATION.]

[Sidenote: _Domest. Corresp._, Charles I, vol. cclxxxvii, § 57; vol.
ccciii, § 75; cccxiii, § 16; cccxvii, § 75.]

Sir William COURTEN, meanwhile, prosecuted with his characteristic vigour his vast enterprises already established; made new and large ventures in the reclaiming of waste lands in England; and established the ‘Fishery Association of Great Britain and Ireland,’ with a view to the rescue from the Dutch of that productive herring fishery on our own coasts, which the growing supineness of English governments during at least two generations had permitted to become almost a monopoly in their hands. Of this Association COURTEN, during the closing years of his life, was the mainspring.

The Dutch, as was natural, strove vigorously to retain the advantage they had acquired, and were little scrupulous about the means of opposition. English herring busses were occasionally captured. And the captors had the great incidental advantage in the strife of dealing with a Government already weak at home, and yearly losing ground.

[Sidenote: THE TRADE WITH INDIA.]

The East Indian adventures were, at length, attended by circumstances still more complex than those pertaining to the fishery business at home, or to the trading in Holland. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. cccxxiii, p. 58; vol. cccxliii, § 19.] For, in the former, English rivalry had to be encountered, as well as Dutch rivalry. And the rivalry took such a shape as to make the carrying on of trade extremely like the carrying on of war. But, as if the care of these varied interests, in addition to all the toils and anxieties of ordinary commerce on an extraordinary scale, were all too little to occupy the mind of a man who had now reached his sixty-sixth year, we find Sir William COURTEN taking, just at the close of life, a new and leading part in the business of redeeming captives who had been taken by the pirates of Morocco and Algiers. [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. cccxv, § 16; vol. ccclxviii, § 82.] Nor was this merely an affair of the provision of money and the conduct of correspondence. It involved an intimate acquaintance with the circumstances and the needs of the Barbary States, being carried on, in part, on the principle of barter.

But all these far-spread activities were now fast approaching their natural close. COURTEN’S career had been, as a whole, wonderfully prosperous, until very near its close. Already it contained, indeed, the germ of a series of reverses, hardly less remarkable; but the growth of that germ was to depend on the as yet unseen course of public events. His ambition to ‘found a family’ had also been gratified by the marriage of his only surviving son[40]—William COURTEN, third of his name—with the Lady Katherine EGERTON, daughter of John EGERTON, Earl of Bridgewater. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane, 3515.] On that son and his heirs, Sir William COURTEN settled landed estates amounting to nearly seven thousand pounds a year.

Sir William COURTEN died in June, 1636. The commercial enterprises of all kinds which were in full activity at the time of his death were continued by his son, who inherited large claims, large responsibilities, and large perils. And it was of the perils that—after his succession—he had earliest experience.

[Sidenote: THE THIRD WILLIAM COURTEN.]

Just before the father’s death, a complaint had been made to the Privy Council that certain ships which he had sent to Surat and other places had committed acts of ‘piracy near the mouth of the Red Sea.’ [Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles I, vol. cccxliii, § 19.] It appeared afterwards that the ships which had given cause, or pretext, of complaint were not COURTEN’S ships, but the accusation entailed trouble, and was, to the heir, the beginning of troubles to come. The opposition of the East India Company to the Indian trading of ‘interlopers’ (as they were called already) was unremitting and bitter. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane, 3515, p. 38.] In June, 1637, William COURTEN, with a view to arm himself for the encounter, obtained from the Crown letters patent which empowered himself and his associates to trade with all parts of the East, ‘wheresoever the East India Company had not settled factories or trade before the twelfth day of December, 1635.’ One of his chief associates under the new grant was Endymion PORTER, and it appears that it was partly by PORTER’S influence at Court that the grant had been procured.

Renewed activity was now shown in prosecuting the Eastern trade; new and large ventures were made in it. On some occasions as many as seven well-appointed ships were sent out by COURTEN and his associates at one time. Instructions are still extant which were given to the chief agents, supercargoes, and factors, for the settlement of English factories at many important places where none had heretofore existed. They are marked by great sagacity and breadth of view, and, in several points, contrast advantageously with contemporary documents of a like kind.

[Sidenote: SEIZURE BY THE DUTCH OF THE BONA ESPERANZA AND HENRY
BONADVENTURE IN THE INDIAN SEAS.]

The enterprise was pursued, as it seems, with satisfactory results until the year 1643, when, in the Straits of Malacca, two richly-laden vessels of the COURTEN fleet were seized by the Dutch. Subsequent proceedings show that the value of the ships and their cargoes, with the contingent losses, exceeded £150,000. Along with this severe blow came the interruptions and injuries to trade at home, which were the inevitable accompaniment of the Civil War. Soon after it, there came indications that the loss to Sir William COURTEN’S representatives by the misconduct of Peter BOUDAEN at Middleburgh would but too probably prove to be a loss without present remedy. It appears to have been established by the evidence adduced in the course of the almost interminable litigation which ensued that there was due from BOUDAEN to his partners a sum of £122,000; none of which, it may be added, seems ever to have been recovered. And the debt which had been contracted by JAMES THE FIRST and his successor, though less grievous in amount, was at this time even more hopeless.

Under the pressure of such a combination of misfortunes, William COURTEN found himself practically and suddenly insolvent. He met some of the most pressing claims upon him by the sale of available portions of his landed property. He assigned other portions of his estates to trustees, and became himself an exile. He survived the ruin of the brilliant hopes and expectations to which he had been born about ten years; dying at Florence in the year 1655. He left, by his marriage with Lady Katherine EGERTON, one son and one daughter.

[Sidenote: WILLIAM COURTEN, FOUNDER OF THE SLOANE MUSEUM.]

The fourth William COURTEN was born in London on the 28th March, 1642. He was baptized at St. Gabriel Fenchurch, on the 31st of that month. The downfall of his family was therefore very nearly contemporaneous with his own birth, and makes it explicable that no record can now be found of the places of his education, or of the course of his early years. But the first trace which does occur of him is in exact harmony with the one fact which makes his existence memorable to his countrymen. [Sidenote: _Museum Tradescantianum_, (1656).] He appears, at the age of fourteen, in the list of benefactors to the Tradescant Museum, at Lambeth, a collection which afterwards became the basis of the Ashendean Museum at Oxford.

The Tradescants—father and son—hold a conspicuous place in the history of Botanical Science in England, and they are especially notable as the founders of the first ‘Museum’ worthy of the name, which was established in this country. The next collection of note, after theirs, was that formed by Robert HUBERT, in his house near St. Paul’s Cathedral. Other collectors—as for example, John CONYERS and Dr. John WOODWARD—soon followed the example. But in this path all of them were far outstripped by COURTEN, who had marked his early bias, and also his characteristic liberality, by his gift to the TRADESCANTS in 1656.

Part of COURTEN’S youth was passed at Montpelier, where he formed the acquaintance of several men then, or afterwards, famous for their scientific acquirements. Amongst them, and with the local advantages for the study of the natural sciences, in particular, for the possession of which Montpelier was already noted, his tastes for observation and study were developed, and his character took the ply which soon became indelible.

If he ever possessed any share at all of the qualities and predispositions for mercantile adventure, which had marked so many generations of his ancestors on the father’s side, that share was far too weak an element in his composition to resist the discouragements of adverse circumstances. But as he attained manhood, he found himself immersed—unwittingly in part—in a sea of litigation which boded ill to his prospective enjoyment of leisure for scientific studies, whatever might prove to be its ultimate results upon his worldly fortunes.

[Sidenote: THE SUITS AND CLAIMS INSTITUTED BY GEORGE CAREW, ON BEHALF OF
COURTEN AND OF THE CREDITORS.]

Some of the later enterprises of Sir William COURTEN had been carried on in conjunction with another famous merchant, Sir Paul PINDAR, who like himself was a large creditor of the Crown. The administration of PINDAR’S estate had fallen into the hands of a certain George CAREW, who seems to have imagined that the restoration of royal authority in England would bring with it opportunities, to an energetic man, of winning a new fortune out of the remnants of the old fortunes which the fall of royalty had helped to ruin. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MSS. Sloane, 3515; 3961; and 3962.] Just before CHARLES THE SECOND came back, this man busied himself in buying up claims against COURTEN’S estate as well as claims against PINDAR’S. He had a stock of energy. He had also the prospect of acquiring a good standpoint at Court, in addition to his present possession of a good training in the mysteries of English law. He was ready to devote all his energies to the business, and to encounter at once with the Dutch East India Company, the Dutch Republic, the Government of Barbadoes, and a host of adversaries at home.

There had, however, been no Commission of Bankruptcy. It was necessary that the battle should be fought as well in the name of the heir and representative of the family, as in the name of the collective body of creditors. CAREW used COURTEN’S name and used it, as it appears, for some years without authority from the legal guardian. COURTEN himself did not become of age until 1663.

The Restoration was hardly effected before CAREW besieged the King and the Courts with Petitions, Memorials, Claims, and Bills of Plaint. He would lose nothing for lack of asking. And he was undeterred by difficulties or rebuffs.

[Sidenote: THE BARBADOES CLAIM.]

The case of Barbadoes was thus put before the Committee of the Privy Council for America:—

‘COURTEN claims the whole island of Barbadoes; and, more particularly, the Corn Plantation, the Indian Bridge Plantation, the Fort Plantation, the Indian Plantation eastwards, and Powell’s plantation. Sir William COURTEN’S ships discovered the island in the year 1626, and left fifty people there. Captain Henry POWELL landed there in February, 1627, built [houses] for COURTEN’S colony, and left more than forty inhabitants there. John POWELL erected Plantation Fort, and remained until he was surprised in 1628 by a force under Charles WOLVERTON, by which the fort was captured. [Sidenote: _Colonial Correspondence_, vol. xiv, §§ 37, 39, 42.] In 1629, Sir William COURTEN sent eighty men with arms, in the ‘Peter and John,’ and they retook the fort in the name of the Earl of PEMBROKE, Trustee for COURTEN, according to the royal grant.’ And then the Petition recites the recapture, under the conflicting Patent of the Earl of Carlisle, as I have described it already.

There is, of course, no foundation for the statement that Barbadoes was ‘discovered’ by the ships of COURTEN. In other respects, the details here set forth appear to be sustained by the evidence.

[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles II, vol. xx, § 77; and xlviii, §
48.]

In order to the recovery of the debt from the Crown, CAREW suggested, in another petition, and quite in the fashion of the day, that the Petitioners should have ‘leave to raise the money’ due to the COURTEN Estate from the estates of John LISLE, Thomas SCOTT, Thomas ANDREWS, and others, concerned in the murder of the late King. In a third petition, he prayed that ‘a blank warrant for the dignity of a baronet’ might be granted, in order to sell it to the best bidder, and to apply the proceeds in partial satisfaction of the debt.

[Sidenote: THE CASE OF THE EAST INDIA SHIPS.]

But it was to the prosecution of the claim upon the Dutch Republic for the unwarranted seizure, in 1643, of the rich ships of the East India Fleet that CAREW devoted his best energies. The damages were put at £163,400. The main facts of the case were fully substantiated. And a royal letter was addressed to the States General on the 21st of March, 1662, claiming full satisfaction.

A Memorial was delivered at the Hague in the April following, by the English Ambassador, Sir George DOWNING, in which, after a general statement of the case at issue, he went on to say: ‘Whereas it may seem strange that this matter may be set on foot at this time, whereas in the year 1654 Commissioners were sent to England who did end several matters relating to the East Indies, and whereas in the year 1659 several matters of a fresher date were also ended, and thereby a period put to all other matters of difference which had happened about the same time, and were known in Europe before the 20th of January in the same year, it is to be considered that the persons interested in these ships were such as, for their singular and extraordinary activity to His Majesty, ... father to the King my master, were rendered incapable of obtaining or pursuing their just rights, at home or abroad. [Sidenote: _Memorial delivered to the States General_, at the Hague, 19 April, 1662.] And upon that account it is that the business of the two ships remains yet in dispute, though several matters of a much fresher date have been ended.’

When these proceedings were initiated by Sir George DOWNING at the Hague, COURTEN himself was still in his minority. But it is probable that he had already returned to England.

COURTEN’S first personal appearance upon the scene was also made in the way of presenting a petition to the King. [Sidenote: MS. Sloane 3515.] In July 1663, he thus alleged that the steps which had been taken were without his concurrence or knowledge, ‘and, as is feared, with intention to deprive him of his claims.’ The King referred the petition to Sir Geoffrey PALMER, who pronounced in COURTEN’S favour.

His position was one of great embarrassment. [Sidenote: THE AGREEMENT BETWEEN COURTEN AND CAREW.] Some of his family connexions had already suffered much annoyance from litigation about the COURTEN Estates at home, and were little inclined to incur further risk or trouble on behalf of a relative whose inheritance was certain to yield abundance of immediate vexation and anxiety, and very uncertain in respect to its prospects of any better harvest in the end. [Sidenote: 1663.] He was advised to sell the remnant of his entailed estates, to put the product of the sale out of danger from any adverse issue of pending claims, and to come to terms with CAREW for the prosecution of the latter—or of some of them—on a joint account. In accordance with this advice, an agreement was made, in the course of 1663, by which CAREW was empowered to pursue the claims against the Netherlands, as well on COURTEN’S behalf as on his own and that of other creditors. The remaining landed estates in Worcestershire and other counties—or nearly all that remained of them—were sold, and a life income was secured.

For the next half dozen years COURTEN’S life was almost that of a recluse, save that such activities as it admitted of were devoted almost exclusively to the study of antiquities and of the natural sciences. A great part of those years was passed at Fawsley with his aunt, Lady KNIGHTLEY, one of the few relatives whose affection stood the proof of adversity.

There are several reasons for thinking that the rudimentary foundation of COURTEN’S Museum had been laid as early as in the time of his grandfather, Sir William, whose mercantile and colonial enterprises presented so many opportunities for bringing into England the more curious productions of remote countries, as well as their merchandise. Be that as it may, the collection of a museum which should eclipse everything of its kind theretofore known in England became, from his attainment of manhood, the leading aim and object of William COURTEN’S career. It was to him both an ambition and a solace.

The other of the two men who thus came into brief contact in 1663 lived a life as different from COURTEN’S as can well be conceived. CAREW seems to have been a glutton in his appetite for contention. [Sidenote: _Pretentien tegens d’Oost-Indische Compagnie_, &c. (B. M.)] And the Dutchmen, as far as they were concerned, put no stint upon its indulgence. There was also ample time for it. Treaty followed by war, and war leading to renewed treaty, kept the affair of the _Bona Esperanza_ and the _Henry Bon-Adventure_ both in active historical memory, and in full legal vigour. Towards the close of 1662 it had been covenanted by the English government, as a necessary condition of a good understanding between the two Powers, that there should be a prompt satisfaction of damages. The Treaty of Commerce of that year was tossed to and fro on that one point of the COURTEN ships with more obstinate pertinacity than on any other. To the intrinsic merits of the claim, in the main, there was really no answer. To the legal technicalities by which its settlement, if left to Dutch courts of judicature, could be indefinitely protracted, there was no end. [Sidenote: THE CLAIMS IN HOLLAND.] When letters of dismissal had been already drawn at Whitehall for the Dutch envoys of 1662, because they insisted on a clause extinguishing all outstanding claims on both sides; they skilfully contrived to substitute leave to litigate[41] for a proviso to satisfy. And the event justified their forecast.

[Sidenote: _Domestic Corresp._, Charles II, vol. cxiii, § 143.]

During the year 1665, Letters of Marque and Reprisal were granted to CAREW and his associates, and a special clause of continuance until the full recovery of debt and damages,[42] notwithstanding the conclusion of any subsequent Treaty of Peace was inserted. This was done after an elaborate argument before the Lord Chancellor CLARENDON. Several ships were taken by CAREW’S cruisers, but they were nearly all claimed by Hamburghers, Swedes, and others. And at length the cost of the reprisals exceeded their yield.

In this case, and throughout it, as in so many other and graver cases, the policy of CHARLES THE SECOND’S ministers was a policy of the passing exigence. Principle had always to vail to expediency. The Dutch were permitted, after all, to insert their favorite extinction clause in the Treaty of Breda (21 July, 1667). Five years later, the Privy Council advised the King that ‘it is just and reasonable for your Majesty to insist upon reparation for the debt and damages’ sustained by the seizure, in 1643, of the _Bona Esperanza_ and her consort. New Letters of Marque led to the capture of more vessels, duly provided with a diversity of flag; and to the imprisonment, in England, of the captors, before trial or inquiry. Meanwhile, CAREW himself was seized abroad, and put into a Dutch prison. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane, 3515.] And, at length, in 1676, the States of Holland sent express orders to their courts of judicature, directing that ‘no further progress shall be made in the pending suits,’ grounding the order upon the proviso in the treaty of 1667, as extinctive of all claims and pretensions, whatsoever, advanced by Englishmen against Dutch citizens, be the foundation and history of such claims what they might. This decree, therefore, operated in bar, as well of the claims of the representatives of Sir William COURTEN, for the debt of Peter BOUDAEN, as of those arising out of the seizure of the ships of the East India Fleet. It was estimated that the COURTEN claims then pending in the Courts of Holland amounted, in the aggregate, to £380,000 sterling.[43]

In May, 1683, a petition was presented to the English government, in which humble prayer was made that that government would be graciously pleased ‘to perpetuate the memory of Sir William COURTEN and of Sir Paul PINDAR, by setting up their statues in marble under the piazzas of the Royal Exchange—Sir William COURTEN’S at the end of the “Barbadoes walk” at the one side, and Sir Paul PINDAR’S at the end of the “Turkey walk” of the other side—for encouragement to all merchants, in future ages, [Sidenote: _Vox Veritatis_, 1683. (B. M.)] to take examples by them for loyalty and fidelity to their King and country.’

[Sidenote: COURTEN’S SECOND VISIT TO FRANCE, AND HIS TRAVELS.]

COURTEN did his best to avoid any personal share in those unceasing turmoils, and to keep in the quiet paths of a studious retirement. But he presently found that, in order to secure his end, he must needs do as his father had done before him. He must leave England, either for Italy or for France. When his mind was made up to exile, it was also made up to the relinquishment of his name. William COURTEN became, even to his nearest relatives, ‘William CHARLETON.’

The friendships he had already formed at Montpelier, in his youth, and the local charms of that city for a studious man, incited him to revisit his old retreat. But he made no permanent abode there. He took long tours, in France, in Germany, and in Italy; adding everywhere both to the stores of his knowledge and to the presses and cabinets of his library and museum. It was during his second stay at Montpelier that he formed his life-long friendships with a famous Frenchman, Joseph PITTON DE TOURNEFORT, and with a more famous Englishman, John LOCKE. Here also began his acquaintance with Dr. (afterwards Sir) Hans SLOANE.

It was at SLOANE’S instance that he made his solitary appearance as an author, in the shape of a communication to the Royal Society, which was laid before them in 1679, and afterwards printed in the _Philosophical Transactions_, [Sidenote: _Philosoph. Transact._, vol. xxvii, pp. 485, seqq.] under the title: _Experiments and Observations of the Effects of several sorts of Poisons upon Animals, made at Montpelier_.

Thirteen or fourteen years were thus passed. And then, to the natural yearning of an exile, there came the strong reinforcement of the call of large collections for a settled abode. There are few claims to fixity of tenure better grounded than are those of a Museum or a Library.

[Sidenote: RETURN TO ENGLAND.]

The return was not easy, but the difficulties were faced. It is probable that he came back to England in the summer of 1684. He did not then own one acre of that land of which his father had inherited so respectable a breadth in half a dozen counties. He had not long arrived before one of his nearest friends wrote him a letter, which seemed to bode ill for his prospects of a peaceable life. ‘The number of creditors,’ wrote Richard SALWEY to him, on the 18th August, 1684, ‘is incredible, for the debts are standing, and multiplied to children and grandchildren, who, so long as the parchment and the wax can be preserved, will not forego their hopes nor attempts. And I fear your late so public station[44] will daily expose you, and that you will at every backstairs and turning be pulled by the sleeve and provoked. [Sidenote: Salwey to ‘Charlton;’ MS. Sloane, 3962, f. 191.] Nor yet do I know of any danger consequent in any suit that can be commenced, except putting you to great trouble and like expenses;—and I fear you have not a superfluous bank to defray the charge.’

COURTEN, however, was not seriously molested. He established himself in London as the occupant of a large suite of chambers in Essex Court, Middle Temple. Here his collections were conveniently arranged, and they had space to expand. [Sidenote: ESTABLISHMENT OF THE COURTEN MUSEUM.] Ere long we find mention of his Museum as filling ten rooms.

Of the cost at which it had been gathered, there are now no adequate and authenticated materials for forming an estimate. But in those days the man who himself travelled on such a quest had a vast advantage over the man—howsoever better provided with what in the sixteenth century was called purse-ability—who sent other men to travel in his stead. In COURTEN’S days no dealers explored the Continent as an ordinary incident of their calling. The wreck, too, of such a fortune as that of the COURTENS was not contemptible. [Sidenote: _Courten Papers_, in MS. Sloane, 3962; 303.] When living in France (1677–79) our collector appears to have had an income of about fifteen hundred pounds a year, accruing from money invested in mortgages and in annuities.

Although his chief collections were of his own gathering, he had many helpers. Among them was the future inheritor of his Museum, Hans SLOANE. In the year 1687, when about to set out on his voyage to the West Indies, SLOANE wrote to him: ‘I design to send you what is curious from the several islands we land at,—which will be most of our plantations.’ [Sidenote: Sloane to ‘Charlton;’ _Ib._, 308.] The writer was then a young man. Probably his acquaintance with COURTEN was at that time of not greater standing than eight or nine years, but he writes of the obligations COURTEN had then already conferred upon him: ‘I am extremely obliged to you, beyond any in the world.’[Sidenote: _Ibid._]

The use this Collector made of his treasures was as liberal as the zeal with which he had amassed them was indefatigable. The friend whose correspondence has just been quoted said, after COURTEN’S death, that he was wont to show his Museum very freely, and to make his stores contribute, in various ways, ‘to the advancement of the glory of God, the honour and renown of the country, and the no small promotion of knowledge and the useful arts.’

Many notices are extant—scattered here and there in the _Diaries_ and among the correspondence of the day—of visits made to COURTEN’S Museum by men who were able to judge of what they saw. Those notices confirm the general statement made by SLOANE, and show the comprehensiveness of the collector’s tastes as well as the geniality of his character. Two such notices have an especial interest, which is not lessened by the fact that both of them are to be found in diaries that are well known. They record the visits to Essex Court of John EVELYN, and of John THORESBY.

[Sidenote: EVELYN’S VISIT TO COURTEN’S MUSEUM.]

EVELYN paid his first visit in charming company. It was made in December, 1686. He thus tells of it in his journal: ‘I carried the Countess of SUNDERLAND to see the rarities of one Mr. CHARLTON, in the Middle Temple, who showed us such a collection as I had never seen in all my travels abroad—either of private gentlemen, or of princes. It consisted of miniatures, drawings, shells, insects, medals, ... minerals; all being very perfect and rare of their kind; especially his books of birds, fishes, flowers, and shells, drawn and miniatured to the life. He told us that one book stood him in three hundred pounds. [Sidenote: _Diary_, &c., vol. ii, p. 260. (Edit. of 1854.)] It was painted by that excellent workman whom the late GASTON, Duke of Orleans, employed.[45] This gentleman’s whole collection, gathered by himself [while] travelling over most parts of Europe, is estimated at eight thousand pounds. He appeared to be a modest and obliging person.’

EVELYN records two other visits, which he made at subsequent times. It is obvious that during almost the whole period which elapsed between COURTEN’S return to England and his death, his museum was a place of frequent and fashionable resort; notwithstanding the warning which its owner had received as to the perils of a ‘public station,’ under his peculiar circumstances. To the celebrated diarist himself, his visits seem to have suggested a very natural thought of the public value of such an institution, to be maintained by and for the country at large. And he was very far from keeping the idea to himself. EVELYN lived to a more than ordinary term of years, but not long enough to see his idea carried into act. He had, however, helped to prepare the way.

His incidental statement about the estimated money value of the COURTEN Museum does not invalidate a foregoing remark in this chapter. The estimate can hardly have been founded upon better ground than mere conjecture. But it is curious to note the near approach of the guess of 1686 to another guess, on the same small point, made nine years later.

THORESBY’S visit occurred in May, 1695. He records it thus: ‘Walked to Mr. CHARLTON’S chambers at the Temple, who very courteously showed me his Museum, which is perhaps the most noble collection of natural and artificial curiosities, of ancient and modern coins and medals, that any private person in the world enjoys. It is said to have cost him seven or eight thousand pounds sterling.... [Sidenote: Thoresby, _Diary_, 1695, May 24, vol. i, p. 299.] I spent the greatest part of my time amongst the coins; for though the British and Saxon be not very extraordinary, yet his [collection of] the silver coins of the Emperors and Consuls is very noble. He has also a costly collection of medals of eminent persons in Church and State, and of domestic and foreign Reformers. But, before I was half satisfied, an unfortunate visit from the Countess of PEMBROKE and other ladies from Court prevented further queries.’

The visits of the ‘ladies from Court’ may not have seemed quite so unfortunate to the host who had to entertain them, as to the zealous antiquary whose recondite questions they broke off. At all events, such visits must have been to COURTEN like renewed glimpses of the gayer life of which he had known something in his early days.

In learned leisure, and in quiet pleasures such as these, his life passed gently to its end. He kept up his correspondence as well with some of the surviving friends of his youth, as with two or three of the eminent scholars and naturalists with whom he had made acquaintance during the travel-years of middle life. Failing to raise his fortunes to the height of his early hopes, he yet won contentment by bringing down his desires to the level of his means. He ceased to trouble himself with claims on the Dutch Republic, or with pretensions to a proprietorship in the Island of Barbadoes, or even about his interest in debts contracted by the Crown of England. He had been able, in spite of all losses, to open to his contemporaries means of culture and of mental recreation which, on any like scale, had been before unknown to them. Only in the most famous cities of Italy had the like then been seen. And he had the final satisfaction of making the secured continuance of his Museum the means of further securing, at the same time, the comfort and prosperity of some humble friends and dependants whose faithful attention had helped to solace his own closing years. Nor had he neglected those consolations which are supreme.

William COURTEN’S Will was made on his death-bed, in March, 1702. Having bequeathed certain pecuniary legacies—increased two days afterwards by codicil—and having provided for the payment of his debts, he made Dr. Hans SLOANE his residuary legatee and sole executor. He forbade all display at his funeral. He died, at Kensington, on the 26th of March, 1702, wanting two days of the completion of his sixtieth year.[46] He was buried in Kensington churchyard, near the south-east door of the church. By his friend and executor an altar-tomb, carved by Grinling GIBBONS, was placed above his remains, with this inscription:—

Juxtà hic sub marmoreo tumulo
jacet GULIELMUS COURTEN, cui Gulielmus pater, Gulielmus avus,
mater, Catharina, Joannis Comitis de Bridgwater filia,
Paternum vel ad Indos præclarum Nomen;
qui tantis haudquaquam degener parentibus,
Summâ cum laude vitæ decurrit tramitem;
Gazarum per Europam indagator sedulus,
quas hinc illinc sibi partas negavit nemini,
sed cupientibus exposuit humanissimè,
Non avaræ mentis pabulum, sed ingenii
si quid naturæ, si quid artis nobile
Opus, id quovis pretio suum esse voluit
ut musis lucidum conderet sacrarium;
ast mortis hæc non sunt curæ!
Hic Musarum cultor tam eximius,
Hic tam insignis viator,
Obiit, Quievit, 7 Cal. Apr. A.D. 1702.
Vixit annos 62, menses xi, dies 28.
Pompa, quam vivus fugit, ne mortuo fieret, testamento cavit,
sed hoc qualecumque monumentum,
et quam potuit immortalitatem,
bene merenti mœrens dedit
HANS SLOANE, M.D.

Sir Hans SLOANE was the seventh and youngest son of Alexander SLOANE, a Scotchman who had married one of the daughters of Dr. George HICKES, Prebendary of Winchester, and who had settled in Ireland on receiving the appointment of receiver-general of the estates of the Lord CLANEBOY, afterwards Earl of CLANRICARDE. [Sidenote: LIFE OF SIR HANS SLOANE.] He was born at Killileagh, in the county Down, on the 16th of April, 1660.

We learn that almost from earliest youth, Hans SLOANE evinced his possession of quick parts and of keen powers of observation. And he gave early indications of that happy constitution of mind and will which now and then permits the union of intellectual ambition and aspiration, with not a little of prudential shrewdness. A special bias towards the study of the natural sciences was—as it has often been in like cases—one of the things that were soonest taken note of by those about him. Faculties such as these naturally pointed to medicine as a fitting profession for their early possessor. His home studies, however, were checked by a severe illness which threatened his life, and from some of the effects of which he never quite recovered. But that illness helped to qualify him for his future profession. If it took away, for life, the likelihood that the bright promises of the dawn would be altogether realized in his maturity, it seems to have strengthened, in an unusual degree, both the prudential element which already marked his character, and his predisposition to rely mainly, for the success of his plans, upon plodding industry. From youth to old age an unweariable power of taking pains was his leading characteristic.

In his eighteenth year he came to London with the immediate object of studying chemistry and botany, before he entered on other studies more distinctively medical. [Sidenote: EARLY STUDIES IN LONDON;] [Sidenote: 1677–1682.] He learned chemistry under STAPHORST,[47] and of botany he acquired a good deal of knowledge by frequenting, with much assiduity, the recently founded Botanical Garden at Chelsea. In the latter pursuit he met with assistance from the intelligent keeper of the garden, Mr. WATTS. [Sidenote: _MS. Corresp._] And ere long he acquired the friendship of John RAY, and of Robert BOYLE.

After six years of steady educational labours, both scientific and medical, he went to Paris, which possessed in 1683—and long afterwards—facilities for medical education far superior to any that could then be found in London. [Sidenote: AND IN FRANCE.] [Sidenote: 1683–4.] His companions in the journey were Dr. Tancred ROBINSON and Dr. WAKELEY.

SLOANE had scarcely got farther into France than the town of Dieppe, before it was his good fortune to make the acquaintance of Nicholas LEMERY, and to find himself able to communicate to that eminent chemist the results of some novel experiments. [Sidenote: _Eloge_, in _Mém. de l’Acad. des Sciences_ (1753); and _MS. Correspondence_. (B. M.)] They journeyed together from Dieppe to Paris, and the acquaintance thus casually formed was productive of good to both of them. The studies begun in Ireland, and assiduously continued in London, were now matured in Paris under men of European fame. And the young botanist who heretofore could profit only by the infant garden established by the London apothecaries at Chelsea, and by an occasional botanizing ramble into the country, could now expatiate at will in the magnificent _Jardin des Plantes_ of the King of FRANCE. In that botanical university SLOANE, too, had TOURNEFORT—four years his senior—for his frequent companion and fellow-student.

In July, 1683, he took his degree as Doctor of Medicine in the University of Orange. Thence he went to Montpelier, where he resided until nearly the end of May, 1684. After visiting Bordeaux, and some other parts of France, he returned to Paris. There were few towns, in which he made any stay, that had not given him some friend or other, in addition to a valuable accession of knowledge. And the friendships he had once formed were but rarely lost.

Towards the close of 1684 Dr. SLOANE returned to England, whither the reputation of his increased acquirements had preceded him. In January, 1685, he was chosen a Fellow of the Royal Society, and exactly one year afterwards he was proposed for election as Assistant-Secretary. Among the other candidates were Denis PAPIN and Edmund HALLEY. On the first scrutiny, SLOANE had ten votes; HALLEY sixteen. The majority was not enough, but on a second ballot HALLEY was chosen. Early in 1687 he became a Fellow of the College of Physicians. He had thus early laid some foundation for a London practice that would lead him to social eminence, as well as to fortune. And for the good gifts of fortune he had a very keen relish.