Barclays Bank History Series VI

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART VI--THE RUSSELL FAMILY

 

CONTINUED from Part I, Part II, Part III, Part III-A, Part III-B, Part IV, Part V

 

The Tudor Connection

 

1st Earl of Bedford

Sir John Russell, born in the West Dorset District of England in 1485, was the first of the the Russell family to become attached to the Tudor King Henry VII, in an era of change in the European continent.  

What we now know as Spain was then fragmented into numerous nation-states, two of which had recently been united by a marriage between King Ferdinand II and Isabella I--of Castile and Aragon, respectively. This was the same Queen Isabella Americans recall from childhood geography lessons as the queen who sent Christopher Columbus on a mission of exploration in 1492, seven years after our Sir John Russell was born.

Four years after "Columbus discovered America," two children of Ferdinand and Isabella--a son and a daughter--had a double wedding in which they were married to offspring of Maximilian I, the Habsburg king of the fragmented territory we now call Germany. 

Joanna, the daughter traveled to Flanders--then part of the empire comprised of part of France, Belgium and Luxembourg--where she was wed to Philip of Flanders, son of the future Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I.

Ferdinand and Isabella also arranged for a future marriage for their daughter Catharine of Aragon to Arthur, Prince of Wales, the eldest son of King Henry VII and his wife, Elizabeth of York, in 1501. This marriage many years later becomes an important start of our story.

Catharine traveled to England and lived with Arthur, who unfortunately died six months later. After his death, Catharine became betrothed to Arthur's younger brother Henry, who in 1509 became King Henry VIII. It was the era of Shakespeare, many of the characters involved are familiar because of the plays he wrote about them.

Philip and Joanna 

In 1504 Queen Isabella died, and Joanna, all her older siblings having died, became Queen of Spain. It was necessary for her and her husband, then Archduke Philip of Austria, to return from Flanders to Spain to be crowned as King and Queen. 

 

However, en route to Spain in January 1506, the ship in which Philip and Joanna sailed was caught in a storm and shipwrecked off the Dorset coast near Weymouth. Who should appear on the scene to assist the new King Philip I in traveling by land to London to see Joanna's sister, Catharine, except the subject of this tale, John Russell?

Philip sang the praises of John Russell to the first Tudor King, Henry VII, who immediately placed him in service to the House of Tudor. Sir John was named a Gentleman of the Privy Chamber in 1507 and continued once Henry VIII was king. Sir John Russell was knighted after participating in a number of battles in France in 1513 attempting to save Calais for England. In 1526 he married the twice-widowed Anne Sapcote, who gave birth a year later to Francis Russell. His rise to higher positions among the court was fast and swift, becoming High Sheriff, Baron Russell, Lord High Admiral, Knight of the Garter and High Steward by 1539. Ten years later "Russell was rewarded with the Earldom of Bedford and more lands in the south-west and the east midlands, including a reversionary grant of Woburn abbey."

 

Earls of Bedford

The 1st Earl of Bedford was one of 26 peers who signed the decision to crown Lady Jane Grey as the successor of Edward VI in July 1553, but most of Lady Jane Grey's support came from her husband, Guilford Dudley, the brother of Ambrose Dudley, husband of Anne Russell. 

Jane Grey was queen an entire nine days before her execution brought Henry VIII's next child, Mary, to the throne. Sir John Russell's son, Francis would succeed his father as 2nd Earl of Bedford in 1555. He was named Privy Councillor for Queen Elizabeth and entertained her at Chenies in 1570, and at Woburn Abbey two years later. 

 

In 1563 Ambrose Dudley was made a Knight of the Garter, and Baron de L'Isle and Earl of Warwick 1564. In 1569 he was nominated the queen's lieutenant in the north for the purpose of crushing the rebellion there. In May 1571 he was made chief butler of England and was admitted to the privy council in September 1573. 

 

Significance of 1st Earl of Bedford, 1549

Ambrose married three times, but had only one son who died in infancy. In February 1590 he died at his wife's family home, Bedford House in London. Each of the Earls of Bedford was loyal to the succession of Tudor monarchs who ruled England for 118 years, or so it seemed, even though their in-laws, the Dudleys sometimes were less than loyal.

Anne Russell Dudley (Contess of Warwick) was following the wishes of her brother, Francis Thomas Russell, who requested that she look after his only son, Edward Russell. In 1585 both Francis Thomas and their father, the 2nd Earl of Bedford, died, leaving Edward to be named the 3rd Earl at a young age for his aunt to educate and find a wife for. 

 

Anne found him a wife among the most loyal supporters of Queen Elizabeth--the daughter of John Harington of Rutland--Lucy Harington. 

 

By the time Elizabeth I died, England had enjoyed great stability for almost half a century, but because she left no descendants, squabbles among the most likely replacements for her were common in the final years of her reign. 

 

The Russell family were among the most important peers involved in deciding that Elizabeth's successor would be James I, who was known in Scotland as King James VI. He descended from two royal families--the English Tudor King Henry VII and his Scottish bride, Elizabeth of York, a Stuart. James was married to a member of the House of Orange--Anne of Denmark.

 

The choice of a new king with roots in Scotland had the effect of empowering brutally ambitious Scottish peers to enter the fray of competition for court favors, not to imply the Scots had ever been less than aggressive in their fight for power. Among those peers were members of the Gordon family, who had a history of supporting Stuart kings and queens for centuries. 

 

 

Uniting Behind King James I (VI)  

Elizabeth, age 7

As King James returned from exile in France to make his way to London to be crowned, he stopped off briefly at Rutland (in the East Midlands) to speak to his friend and long supporter, John Harington, whose wife had inherited another property at Coventry, as we will soon see. 

 

From the time of the coronation of James I (VI) in 1604 until his death in 1625, the king foiled one plot after another to get rid of him. Such plots had begun even earlier in 1583 with a coup planned by Catholics to replace Queen Elizabeth I with her half-sister Mary. The plots never seemed to diminish. In 1602, shortly before Elizabeth's death, before it was even decided for certain who would succeed her, conspiracy was rampant. That seems to be the nature of greed. 

James' marriage to Anne of Denmark had produced three children, whom he sought to protect and educate with the help of "loyal protectors" of the royal Stuart family. James chose the Haringtons because of their past loyalties. As we will see, loyalty is not always easy to predict.

 

The eldest child, Henry Frederick, Prince of Wales, grew up alongside John Harington (junior), at Coombe Abbey, a former Catholic monastery about five miles east of Coventry in Warwickshire, northwest of London. Mrs. Harington inherited the abbey from her father, Robert Keilway. Nine years earlier (in 1594) the Haringtons' daughter Louisa (Lucy) Harington had married Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford, the arrangement having been made by Edward's aunt, Anne Russell Dudley, Countess of Warwick, as mentioned earlier. 

 

Coombe Abbey

Lucy Harringon thus became the Countess of Bedford--the subject of a a well-researched book called Out of the Shadows, written by Lesley Lawson (2007), which delves into every detail of Lucy's life in the context of that time. 

 

Dr. John Gordon, a Protestant Bishop, and his French wife, Geneviève Petau, were invited to Coombe Abbey, the home of John Harington as tutors to Princess Elizabeth. Genevieve, his second wife, was, according to A Genealogical History of the Earldom of Sutherland from Its Origin to the Year 1630 by Sir Robert Gordon:

...placed with their majestie's daughter. Lady Elizabeth, afterward Queen of Boheme (who still favored her dearly), to attend her grace in her bed-chamber, together with the Lady Harington, and to instruct her grace in the French toung, which she taught her to write and to speak perfectly.

Four years after Princess Elizabeth was married off to Frederick V in 1613, Genevieve Gordon, her former tutor, gave birth to a daughter, named Elizabeth in her honor. Lucy Harrngton Russell (known as the Countess of Bedford) became the young Elizabeth Gordon's godmother. The Gordons, Russells and Harrngtons were united in their support for the new Stuart king with connections to the vestiges of Tudor royalty. 

 

Plots and Subplots 

 

Ambrose Dudley of Warwick

Anne Russell, born in 1548, was married, as mentioned earlier, to Ambrose Dudley, who in 1553 "alongside three of his other brothers, was thrown into the Tower, accused, tried and convicted of High Treason following the failed coup led by his father, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland, the aim of which had been to place the Protestant Lady Jane Grey[--wife of Guilford Dudley--] on the throne of England following the death of Edward VI," according to the Tudor Travel Guide. Ambrose and two of his brothers were not executed, and Ambrose lived to fight against France with Spanish forces. 

 

Anne Russell Dudley

Mary was queen by then and gratefully rewarded Ambrose, who in 1562 "received a large portion of the lands previously confiscated from his father, the Duke of Northumberland. Warwick Castle became the new Earl’s principal residence." 

 

As it happens, Warwick Castle was a mere 15 miles or so from Coombe Abbey, where James' children were being protected in the early 1600s.

 

While Ambrose had been away fighting the Spanish Armada, his second wife died around 1564, and he returned to grieve briefly, but then he quickly was married again to Anne Russell, daughter of Francis Russell, 2nd Earl of Bedford, with the ceremony taking place on 11 November 1565 in the Chapel Royal at Whitehall. Much older than Anne, he had no children from his previous marriages, and the Earl of Warwick died in 1590 at a Russell-owned property, Bedford House in the Strand, London. 

 

Anne Russell Dudley's Extended Family

Francis Russell, the 2nd Earl of Bedford (1527-1585), had married the former Margaret St. John, who had died in 1562 leaving him with seven children:

1. Anne was the third wife of Ambrose Dudley, the 3rd Earl of Warwick, who was a great favorite of Queen Elizabeth. One of his three brothers married Lady Jane Grey and was beheaded with her in 1554. He died in 1589 without a surviving child.
2. Elizabeth, married William Bourchier and was styled "Countess of Bath."  
3. Edward died at the age of 21 unmarried.
4. Margaret, married George Clifford, 3rd Earl of Cumberland. 

5. 

   Francis Russell, 2nd Earl Bedford

   Francis married Eleanor "Juliana" Forster, who gave birth in 1572 to Edward Russell, named 3rd Earl of Bedford in 1585 when he was 13. Francis, about to leave for battles along the Scottish border in 1585, was concerned about who would succeed him should he be killed. He sought help from his sister, Anne to find a wife for his young son, Edward, in that event. He was killed in battle, and his father also died a few days later. Edward's marriage to Luce (Lucy) Harington  at Saint Dunstan and All Saints Church in Stepney, Middlesex will be discussed below. 
   
6. John married a much older widow, Elizabeth Cooke at Bisham, Berkshire on 23 Dec 1574, who already had several children by Thomas Hoby, who died in Paris in 1566. It is said she and John Russell had several children of their own, even though she would have been 47 years old when they married. According to Findagrave, "John was summoned to Parliament Jan 1581, during his father's lifetime, as Lord Russell. John was buried at Westminster, his wife was buried at Bisham, Berkshire". 
7. William was born in 1553, the same year as John, and he married Elizabeth Long. Named 1st Baron Russell of Thornhaugh, as the fourth son of the 2nd Earl of Bedford. He was raised to become 4th Earl of Bedford in May 1627 upon the death of his nephew Edward at Moor Park in Hertfordshire. 

 

Edward's Fellow Plotters

 

Edward Russell, 3rd Earl of Bedford

Edward Russell (1551-1572) became the 3rd Earl in 1585 and was married on 12 Dec 1594 at Saint Dunstan and All Saints Church in Stepney, Middlesex to 13-year-old Lucy Harington. Stepney in far east London was the ancestral home of both Mrs. Harington as well as her husband's uncle, Sir John Harington of Stepney, who "spent part of James’s reign in prison as surety for the debts of his cousin Sir Griffith Markham, who was attainted for his involvement in the Bye Plot of 1603."

 

Edward was 22 years old at the time of his marriage, and up until 1603 was kept busy with his friend, Robert Devereux, whose stepfather, Robert Dudley, 1st Earl of Leicester, was plotting with Lucy's father (Edward's father-in-law) in a confusing series of circular plots designed to place on the throne the royal member deemed mostly likely to reward them with power. 

 

Robert Dudley had long been Queen Elizabeth's favorite and, as rumors have it, her secret lover. But she refused to marry him years after his first wife died in a suspicious fall down a set of stairs. In 1578, however, he secretly married Lettice, the widow of Sir Walter Devereux. That made Lettice's son Robert Devereux the Earl of Essex, Robert Dudley's stepson. When the Queen learned of the marriage, she was furious both at Dudley and his wife, who was her cousin and former lady-in-waiting.

 

The Dudleys were no strangers to being in powerful roles at court. Robert's father, John Dudley, had been Duke of Northumberland before his death in 1553--"an English politician and soldier who was the virtual ruler of England from 1549 to 1553, during the minority of King Edward VI." Without power, they were willing to commit  treason to gain it. In fact, the most common cause of death for the Dudleys seems to have been execution for treason. John's father, Edmund, met his death that way in 1510. Then John died similarly in 1553, followed shortly by his son Guildford Dudley, who had married the nine-day queen Lady Jane Grey. 

 

Yet, here was Northumberland's son Robert Dudley, the "virgin queen's lover," engaging in acts with his stepson in 1601, which seemed guaranteed to get them all executed. Would they never learn? 

 

Robert Devereux executed

In 1601 Edward Russell joined with Robert Devereux in what was called the "Essex Coup" or the "Bye Coup," which a part of the "Main Coup"  in an attempt to replace Queen Elizabeth with James VI of Scotland. Little did they know all they would have had to do was wait two years for Elizabeth's death. But they took hasty action, unsuccessfully. As a result, Robert Devereux literally "lost his head." 

 

When the Haringtons had received King James VI of Scotland at their home in Rutland both before and after James' exile in France, the latter visit as James made his way to London to be crowned as James I of England in 1603, it should be noted that daughter Lucy had by then been the Countess of Bedford for ten years and also had an 11-year-old brother at the time named John Harington, born in 1592, about whom Simon Healy in the History of Parliament wrote:

Harington’s father, negotiating for the release of another of Essex’s accomplices, his son-in-law the 3rd earl of Bedford, assured Sir Robert Cecil† that unlike Bedford, he and his son were ‘obsequious of the love of you’. Harington’s parents made a further effort to insinuate their son into Cecil’s favour in October 1602, when they asked that he ‘might wholly remain under your protection’ in the event of his father’s demise, ‘which they will hold a very special happiness to them and their son’.

The younger John Harington, who grew up alongside Prince Henry, was very close to the Prince, who died of typhoid in 1612. He would also have known the children of Dr. John Gordon, whose wife Genevieve was French tutor for Henry's sister, Elizabeth. Lucy Harington Russell (Countess of Bedford) would be named godmother of Genevieve's daughter, Lucy Gordon. All these families also seemed united in their support for King James and, later, for his successor--King Charles I, whose beheading gave rise to Cromwell's Commonwealth, and the subsequent Restoration of Stuart rule under King Charles II.

 

The Bedford loyalties to the royal succession were so assured that in 1694 William Russell, the 5th Earl was created as the 1st Duke of Bedford by Charles I, and the following year the Duke married off his grandson, Wriosthesley Russell, to the daughter of John Howland at Streatham, as we wrote about at length earlier.

 

We will pick up again in Part VIII with the Dukes of Bedford. 

 

But first, however, Part VII will describe what had been happening in Scotland that led to the union of England, Scotland and Wales under a single Crown. At that point also--just as James VI of Scotland was being crowned in England as James I, the ancient Scottish family of Gordon will re-enter our saga as we go back to the Kings of Scotland, in particular James IV, who ruled Scotland from 1488 until his death in 1513. 

 

 

Barclays Bank History Series V

A Genealogical Study of the Families Who Created the Bank 

 

PART V--EAST INDIA COMPANY CONNECTION

Merger by Marriage

 

Sir Josiah Child, chairman of the East India Company (EIC), or perhaps his brother James Child, lived at Streatham House, not far from the Anchor Brewery in Southwark mentioned in previous segments of this history. The brewery was operated by James Child, possibly on behalf of his brother Josiah--employer of  John Howland at the EIC, who married Child's daughter, Elizabeth Child in 1681.

 

Howland had grown up in nearby Tooting Bec, where his ancestors had lived for generations, but after his marriage, he and Elizabeth moved to Streatham and proceeded to have a family. They named their first daughter Elizabeth Howland, and she and her siblings lived at Streatham with their mother, Elizabeth Child Howland, while their father was off with Sir Josiah Child, their grandfather, on important trade business in foreign ports. 

 

Teenage bride and groom

When Elizabeth Howland, was still a child, in May 1695--possibly younger but no older than fourteen--she was married at Streatham to fourteen-year-old Wriothesley Russell. The marriage was contracted by the Russell family who had a long history of political involvement. For example, his grandfather was William Russell, 1st Duke of Bedford (1616 -1700), who had been a Member of the House of Commons for Tavistock in 1640, moving to the House of Lords a year later as 5th Earl of Bedford. 

 

In the wars then raging between King Charles I and Parliament, he tried to take both the royalist and the Parliamentary sides, and as a result was distrusted by both factions. At the same time, he watched his own son, also Sir William Russell, be executed for treason against the Catholic King Charles II in 1683. 

 

The Act of Settlement in 1688 brought William of Orange and Mary to the throne as joint Protestant monarchs, and once King Charles II died, the Russell (Bedford) crimes against the Catholic King were pardoned by King William III, who reversed the attainder (March 1689), appointing a House of Commons committee to find out the advisers and promoters of his "murder".  

 

William's father, who "had been named as a petitioner with Lady Russell in the act of reversal, was created a duke, the preamble to the patent describing him as father to Russell, 'the ornament of his age'." 

 

As Shakespeare said, "All's well that end's well."

 

Coronation of William and Mary

The father of the beheaded and now pardoned "traitor" carried the sceptre at the coronation of William and Mary, and was made a member of the Privy Council and given many important offices in Cambridgeshire, Bedfordshire, and Middlesex counties between 1689 and 1700. By allowing his son to be sacrificed, he was vastly rewarded with landed titles to which his grandson, the teenage bridegroom was named successor.

 

John Howland, father of the pre-pubescent bride,  had been amply rewarded as well. Howland received  a tract of land from his employer and father-in-law, Sir Josiah Child. The land located in lower Rotherhithe, about three miles east of Southwark, where the Barclay & Perkins Brewery made ale, was to be the site for the Howland Great Wet Dock--capable of accommodating around 120 ships for use by the East India Company. 

 

Josiah Child, EIC chairman

Sir Josiah Child did not live to see the comple-tion of the docks, which were not fully operational until after 1700. The docks were to be held in the names of the Howlands, their teenage daughter and her husband, Wriothesley Russell, and were financed and built by John Wells and his brother, Richard Wells, from a very successful Rotherhithe shipbuilding family in Surrey, who also owned the Surrey Docks Farm, which had previously built several ships for Sir Josiah Child as head of the East India Company.

The Howland ancestry

 

At the time the entailment deed was drawn, it was not known that Wriothesley Russell would die in 1711 at a young age, having lost his first two infant sons by 1707. Since his eldest child was a girl, named Rachel, for her mother Rachel Wriothesley, all the titles passed in 1711 to the next male heir. 

 

Nevertheless, out of interest, we note the the ancestry of Lady Rachel Russell can be traced back for centuries. The Wriothesleys first received the title as the Earl of Southampton from King Henry VIII--too far back in truth to be relevant to any study of Barclays Bank. But it's still a fascinating fact.

 

What is more interesting, however, is how the East India Company's chairman Child and his successors plotted to gain some political advantage in 1795, simply by what I've labeled a "merger by marriage".

 

 

Click to enlarge.

 

Editors, Finn, Margot C. Finn and Kate Smith, of a book published in 2018, The East India Company at home, 1757-1857, were interested in the interiors of the homes built during this era, and offered an observation of how Chinese designs were prolific at that time.

The Dukes of Bedford used their position as owners of East Indiamen [ships] hired to the Company, and as investors to gain privileged access to these Asian goods. The marriage of the 1st Duke of Bedford’s grandson Wriothsey Russell, Lord Tavistock (1680–1711) to Elizabeth Howland (1682– 1724) in 1695 brought a spectacularly large dowry of near £100,000 (roughly equivalent to £9 million today) into the family whose estates included Thames-side property at Rotherhithe. The marriage also connected the Russells with the Childs of Wanstead House, as Elizabeth was the granddaughter of Sir Josiah Child (1630– 99) whose advocacy of the EIC’s monopoly led directly to his appointment as a Director in 1677, rising to Deputy- Governor and Governor of the Company in 1681.

At Rotherhithe the 1st Duke of Bedford (1613–1700) built the first docks, whose rental brought in a useful income, first from the Greenland, and then the South Sea Companies. At these docks he built the Streatham which was presented by his grandson to the EIC. The Bedford, Tavistock, Russell and Howland followed, all commissioned before 1700, to which were added the Tonqueen, and later the Houghton and Denham.63
The Bedfords invested between one- sixteenth to one- eighth part in the voyages these vessels took, and thereby had considerable holdings in the East India Company.  [Source: The East India Company at Home, 1757– 1857, Edited by Margot Finn and Kate Smith (London: UCL Press, 2018).

 

Clearly, some deal had been made in 1795 by the parents who seemed so desperate to unite two families by marrying off their children. The plot could only have been designed by Sir Josiah Child, who had no sons. He had earlier married off his daughter to John Howland (a lower officer in the East India Company) and had no qualms about using her daughter, Elizabeth Howland in a marriage ritual to connect his family to the powerful Russell family, long close to royalty. 

William Russell, grandfather of bridegroom

The excerpt to the left [Source: Dictionary of National Biography, Volumes 1–22 (London, England: Oxford University Press, 1921–1922)], citing the historian Macaulay, indicates that William Russell, grandfather of the bridegroom, accepted his new title "somewhat reluctantly." 

 

Does that suggest he was embarrassed to have been involved in the plot? 

Wm. Russell, 1st Duke Bedford

William, the 1st Duke of Bedford, seems to me to have been both pompous and ambitious. The best description would be to call him a chameleon. He was wishy washy, taking turns siding first with one king, then against the next. Nobody knew where he really stood, unlike his son, who maintained his backbone as he literally lost his head.

Hatching the Bribe  

Wanstead

The East India Company apparently first began trading with China in 1699, but did not start selling opium to Chinese merchants until the 1770s. Before that time the Company reaped a significant fortune by virtue of the monopoly granted to it by those in power, and Sir Josiah Child wanted to maintain that connection free of competition. He had acquired enough resources through the trade to acquire an estate in Wanstead, according to Hannah Armstrong, who adds:

When Child purchased Wanstead in 1673, he owned only 2 per cent of [EIC] company stocks. Therefore contrary to common consensus, Child’s acquisition was not financed by East India Company wealth, but by other means such as his role as a founding member of the Royal African Company in 1671, as treasurer to the Navy in Portsmouth, and through the ownership of a sugar plantation in Jamaica and a brewery in Southwark, London.

 But things began quickly changing shortly after he bought Wanstead. Armstrong writes:

East Indianman clipper

Child’s shares in the East India Company equated to £12,000, and by 1679 this had increased to £23,000, making Child the largest stock holder in the Company. Further success came about in 1681 when Child was elected as Governor of the East India Company. In 1684 he served as Deputy Governor, until 1686 when he was once again Governor for another two years. He returned to his position as Deputy Governor again in 1688 until 1690. 

We are told that Sir Josiah Child was not above making bribes to get what he wanted. Armstrong in the same essay just cited tells us:

New East India Co. charter 1698

The London Society Magazine stated that ‘by his great annual presents Child could command both at Court and at Westminster Hall, what he pleased’. In order to secure a royal charter for the East India Company, Child reportedly bribed King Charles II on the 12 October 1681 with 10,000 guineas, an annual bribe until the revolution in 1688. James II also bowed to Child’s domineering nature and renewed the 1682 Royal Charter for the East India Company when given East India shares worth £10,000 in 1687. The 1867 study Citizens of London from 1060-1867, estimated that in 1693, £100,000 were spent in bribery to obtain the new charter for the East India Company.

[Sources: (1) The Merchant Princes of England, London Society, an illustrated Magazine of light and amusing literature for the hours of relaxation (March 1865), Vol 39, p. 264.  (2) Richard Grassby, ‘Child, Sir Josiah, first baronet’, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography Online, www.oxforddnb.com, Accessed: 08/03/2013. and (3) Benjamin Brogden-Orridge, Some Account of the Citizens of London and their Rulers, from 1060-1867 (London:William Tegg,1867), p.174.]

That brings us up to the coronation of William and Mary, when the new king was looking for a way to finance his next war and plot among Howland, Russell, Child and perhaps the King that led to the wedding of the teenage grandchildren and the titles William Russell "somewhat reluctantly" agreed to accept. 

Russell fretted only a short time, then died in 1699. The titles quickly passed down the lineal chain to his grandson, who enjoyed them only until his untimely death at Streatham in 1711, followed within a few years by his wife Elizabeth Howland Russell in 1724. 

East India Co. trade routes in 1800

By this time the Howland Wet Docks at Rotherhithe were busy building numerous East Indiamen owned by the Russell family, who in turn leased them to the EIC, and shared in the rich treasures the ships brought from China and other parts of the world. As for the Child family, they did not last long. The sons dissipated the fortune and never gained any admiration from the peerage. His son Richard Child, "completed the family’s journey from its mercantile origins by purchasing his ennoblement via George I’s mistress the Duchess of Munster (afterwards Kendal). However, he had to wait until 1718 before he was formally gazetted as 'Viscount of Castlemaine in the County of Kerry and Baron of Newtown in the County of Donegal'," thus acquiring a rise in station that caused grumbling on the ground that it “was making a man that’s no gentleman a lord.”

The other descendants of Wriothesley Russell felt themselves, after their parents' deaths, too wealthy to live at Streatham and were happy to rid themselves of it, using Dr. Samuel Johnson as their agent in selling the house and brewery to Hester Thrale. According to Audrey Nona Gamble's History of the Bevan Family, :

Although Silvanus was a Banker by profession, he was also a sleeping partner in Barclay, Perkins’ Brewery at Southwark. This business, formerly Thrale’s Brewery, was sold in 1781, on the death of Henry Thrale, by his executors. The purchasers were nominally Robert Barclay (cousin of Silvanus) and John Perkins, Thrale’s former manager, who had married Amelia, Timothy Paul Bevan’s young widow. 

For the sake of clarity, we set out here the names and statistical information--births, marriages and deaths--of the Russell children who survived. They will also become important subsequently.  

Children of Wriothesley Russell and Elizabeth Howland: 

 
• Rachel Russell, born 1700, married Scroop Thomas Egerton, 1st Duke of Bridgewater, in 1722. A widower, Egerton's first wife had been Elizabeth Churchill, born in 1687 to Queen Anne's best friend, Sarah Jennings Churchill as her third child. Her first child born in 1681 had been Henrietta, who married at age 17 the son of Lord Sidney Godolphin (2nd Earl of Godolphin) on 23 April 1698.
• There followed two sons given the name of their grandfather William, but both died as infants.

• 

  Dictionary of National Biography

  The fourth child, a son named Wriothesley Russell II, born in 1708, lived to become the 3rd Duke of Bedford after his father died in 1711. In April 1725 WRII married his older sister Rachel's stepdaughter--Lady Anne Egerton, daughter of Scroop Egerton and Elizabeth Churchill. A year and one month into this marriage--October 1732--the 3rd Duke died His widow remarried a few months later in June 1733 to become the Countess of Jersey, her new husband being William Villiers, the 3rd Earl of Jersey.
•  John Russell, born in 1710 (who had married Diana Spencer in the fall of 1731) upon the death of his brother in October 1732. His wife Diana gave birth to child who quickly died, and then Diana too died in 1735. In the meantime, the Bedford, Tavistock and Howland titles passed to him, and two years later he remarried. His second wife was  Gertrude Harriet Mary Leveson-Gower, whom we will explore possibly in the next segment of this series.

 

The Bank of England Chartered in July 1794 

We have not forgotten that the title of our series is about the History of Barclays Bank. We promise there's a method to all this apparent madness about kings, queens and empire. We also have not overlooked the historical timeline. 

 

Goldsmith banks on Lombard Street

Possibly the most important date in British history occurred at this same time, only a few months before the young teenagers' grandparents had a big wedding celebration in Streatham. Less than a year earlier, in late July, the King granted a charter to William Paterson, founder of the Bank of England (joint-stock corporation) as the Government's bank. 

 

According to James Edwin Thorold Rogers' book (First Nine Years of the Bank of England), first published in 1887 but still in print today, the bank followed the principles previously established by goldsmith bankers, who stored gold and silver to bank notes they issued as currency. The book is unusual for the fact that the author admits he did not have all the answers to some of the questions that arose during his research into what occurred during that time that would explain the bank's ultimate success. He simply did not understand where all the money came from.

 

He does conclude, however, the following: 

For in point of fact, the history of the Bank of England during its first years is in no slight degree the history of the settlement of 1689, and of the new departure which that great event makes in the politics of the civilised world.

Wanstead location near Hackney

In 1887 Daniel Defoe published his first work called “Essay on Projects,”based on events that occurred around 1694, when he lived at Tooting Bec (located near Streatham), when "the Government received with favour a project of his, which is not included in the Essay, 'for raising money to supply the occasions of the war then newly begun.'”  The timing and location lead me to believe he was part of the plot to explain where the gold for establishing the Bank of England came from. 

One hint contained in that essay indicating the plot is as follows:

These are the men this commission would discover; and here they should find men taxed at £500 stock who are worth £20,000.  Here they should find a certain rich man near Hackney rated to-day in the tax-book at £1,000 stock, and to-morrow offering £27,000 for an estate. Here they should find Sir J— C— perhaps taxed to the king at £5,000 stock, perhaps not so much, whose cash no man can guess at; and multitudes of instances I could give by name without wrong to the gentlemen.

Project to salvage gold

Defoe also made a reference to Sir William Phips, who "brought home a Cargo of Silver of near 200000 [pound sterling], in Pieces of Eight, fish'd up our of the open Sea remote from any shore, from an old Spanish Ship which had been sunk above Forty Years ," and about William Paterson who had invested in the expedition to salvage the ship. Other investors in the salvage enterprise included Christopher Monck, husband of Lady Elizabeth Cavendish, daughter of Henry Cavendish. 

Martin Parker, in a simplified modern-day story  titled "How stolen treasure kick-started the Bank of England," about William Phips' diving expedition," explained:

"The money was to be lent at 8% interest and the subscribers would be incorporated in order to manage 'the perpetual fund of interest' which would be produced. The interest would be paid out of levies on ships’ tonnage and wine and beer....The sunken galleon enabled the creation, in 1694, of the Bank of England as a private corporation to act as the government’s banker and owner of the state’s debt. It wasn’t until 1946 that the bank was finally nationalised and the heirs of the original investors were then paid off – though many were difficult to track down."

Could it all have been a ruse to launder opium proceeds from the East India Company? 

GLOBAL FAMILY NETWORKS

In 2006 the author was asked to deliver a presentation for a Sanders Research Associates conference, that was later cancelled. The ideas that arose from that endeavor have been expanded. What appears below is the first segment, which will be continued later.

Micro Versus Macro View of the World

During my brief talk, I want give an overview of my own concept of the historical development of transnational globalism by use of a metaphor that effectively depicts the growth and evolution over the last five centuries of similar patterns that have occurred among various nations and the economic models they use to sustain that nation's economy.

Then I want to go into a little more detail into one family I have studied which has had a very significant role in behind-the-scenes transnational finance. The family we’ll be looking at, like most merchant bankers, started out as just merchants. Whether we use other terms, like “private” bankers, “investment” bankers, or simply “venture capitalists,” they are essentially small groups of very discreet people—often family members—who have access to vast pools of wealth, which they promise to invest at great rates of return. Their costumes may change from one generation to the next, but they are always at the scene, pulling strings (often hidden behind the curtain) to make history unfold as it does.

Patterns Beginning in Early 16th Century

The earliest examples we find of global trade, such as the exploits of Marco Polo, were family enterprises. Even Christopher Columbus, after his initial discovery of the “new world,” made four or five subsequent voyages with his brothers and son. Shipbuilding was a family business, and therefore the seamen who became traders operated in family units as they set out in search of the unknown.  Over time they established trading networks in various ports throughout the world, attempting to make a profit each time they unloaded their ships in a different location. The danger was great, but the promise of large returns on a successful voyage made the risk worthwhile.

It didn’t take the seasoned travelers long to realize, however, that competition brought profits down, and that it could be eliminated by acquiring a monopoly from their local prince, or a concession from a foreign one—to have the sole right to engage in that particular enterprise in that precise location. However, such a trading right would be worthless unless it could be protected by force. The development of nation states occurred as local fiefdoms expanded, garnering increased power to secure these commercial rights. Political boundaries went as far as the lord of that domain could protect the people within.

Organic Metaphor

I tend to think in organic, rather than mechanical, terms. Visualize if you can a series of oceans surrounding masses of land. Each mass of land with a separate economic system is depicted as if it were a self-sustaining plant growing in an earthen pot. There is a root system, a cluster of leaves and a stem.   

Spider Plant as metaphor

Over the centuries, as the plant increases in size, it becomes root-bound. The roots consist of members of the economic society who cultivate the soil in some fashion--like miners or farmers--who have become unable to provide enough resources from the restrictive boundaries of this pot to furnish nutrients for the plant’s leaves in order to produce a surplus above bare subsistence that would allow the plant to produce flowers or seeds to ensure physical survival. 

It was that lack of resources, as well as the bland existence of life that motivated explorers to escape the walls of the fief during the dark ages. And it was what they brought back from their adventures that resulted in further change.

Thus the Renaissance was like a genetic mutation of the medieval plant. Think of the stem of that plant as being the lord of the manor whose responsibility was to ensure the most efficient production of all units within the plant by properly coordinating distribution of raw resources and finished consumer goods. He served as the clearinghouse or marketplace where all such products were exchanged. He could maintain power only so long as he was able to satisfy the needs of these units. The lord recognized his power was draining away when there was no longer enough soil in the pot to feed all the leaves. He either had to enlarge the pot (something that would require a war), or he had to find another way of getting the necessary nutrients. The solution he found was to change the plant’s structure.  

Since this is my metaphor, I allowed my lord of the pot to create the spider plant; lords of the various pots equate to the crowned heads of seventeenth-century Europe, whose lawyers devised the concept of the chartered company. These crowned heads were, by this time, desperate for new resources, having found that wars to increase the size of their pots had further depleted their resources. As new lands were claimed on behalf of each root-bound pot by explorers  authorized to trade outside the pot, the lord found he or she had magically acquired the means to pay these explorers as bankers suddenly popped up, generously offering to turn that new land into ready cash (specie) for the pot.

 “Give us a portion of that new land as a grant,” they said, “and we will do your work for you, as long as we have a monopoly on the trade.”  

Like stems of a spider plant, each pot on the original map began sending out new shoots, each with its own cluster of roots and leaves ready to plant itself in new soil and recreate itself. When this shoot (like a colony) settles on soil, its roots can develop to feed its leaves while still being connected to the original stem by the stolon, which allows it to send the required percentage of absorbed minerals back to the parent plant, whether assessed against the company or the settlers brought there by the company.  

In return, the lord is able to promise protection to the colony should a threat occur. Thus a reciprocal relationship was developed between trading families who invested in such charter companies and the heads of state. That relationship persists to this day even though the legal framework has evolved from chartered companies into multinational corporations.

Unfortunately, a metaphor is not the truth. It is a visual and an intellectual aid to assist in understanding the truth. It must be tested for accuracy. The plant metaphor acts as the macro illustration of the world. What follows is the micro test. Here we focus on one example--one family network arrived in America only a decade or so after the Constitution was adopted. We will examine that family to learn how its banking business became intertwined with governments in America and abroad, in so doing testing whether the metaphor we have presented gives a true and accurate picture of the world.

With reference to modern financial institutions, what is now called Deutsche Bank Alex. Brown, Inc. is the result of a series of investment bank buyouts culminating in 1999 when the German bank acquired all assets of the old  investment bank established in Baltimore, Maryland, by Alexander Brown who first arrived in America in 1800 to engage in the linen trade. 

White Linen Hall in Belfast, Ireland

Brown’s parents were William and Margaret Davison Brown, who were living in Ballymena, Ireland, when Alexander was born in 1764. Scots like the Browns had begun to settle in this section of Ireland at the height of Parliament's legal dueling with Charles I in 1641.

Fifty years later, upon accession of William and Mary and creation of the Bank of England, the Protestant population began to explode in Catholic Ireland restrictions on the woollen trade, coupled with legislation allowing linen to be shipped duty-free to England and to British colonies in America, increased the importance of the linen industry in Northern Ireland.

Most of the immigrating Scottish families stemmed from Huguenots who had fled France during the latter part of the 16th century rather than convert to Catholicism. For more than a century the flax and linen industry would be Northern Ireland’s main source of wealth as trading networks were established by immigrating families.