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Liverpool's Catholic Mercantile and Maritime Business Community in the Second Half of the Eighteenth Century Part 1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 September 2015

David J Pope
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Extract

During the second half of the eighteenth century the high levels of growth of Liverpool’s trade and shipping, which had commenced in the 1660s, continued to the extent that Liverpool became Britain’s second largest port after London, certainly by the end of the 1780s, by which date local merchants were trading to a lesser or greater extent with all parts of the known world with which they could legitimately trade. It was during the half century after 1750 that Liverpool came to dominate the British slave trade. Catholics participated in the mercantile and maritime activities of the port of Liverpool in the second half of the eighteenth century in a variety of capacities, for example as merchants engaged in overseas trade, brokers, shipbuilders, shipowners, seamen, including ships’ captains, owners of businesses concerned with the ancillary shipping trades such as coopering and ropemaking and practitioners of the processing of imported goods such as tobacco.

Type
Research Article
Information
British Catholic History , Volume 27 , Issue 2 , October 2004 , pp. 244 - 279
Copyright
Copyright © Catholic Record Society 2005

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References

Notes

1 For the development of the port of Liverpool see Hyde, Francis E., Liverpool & the Mersey: the development of a port 1700–1970 (Newton Abbot 1971)Google Scholar, Muir, Ramsay, A History of Liverpool (London 1907 Google Scholar, republished Wakefield 1970) and Parkinson, C. Northcote, The Rise of the Port of Liverpool (Liverpool 1952).Google Scholar

2 Aveling, J.C.H., The Handle and the Axe: the Catholic Recusants in England from Reformation to Emancipation (London 1976), pp. 284—99 Google Scholar.

3 Copies of all these directories are available on microfilm in the City of Liverpool Record Office. Though the date 1773 appears in ink on the first surviving page of the only extant copy of Liverpool’s fourth directory, of which the title page is missing, it has been firmly established that this directory was in fact published in August 1772 ( Wardle, Arthur C., ‘John Gore: publisher’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 97, 1945, p. 224 Google Scholar). For Wosencroft see Blom, F., Blom, J., Korsten, F. and Scott, G., English Catholic hooks 1701–1800: a bibliography (Aldershot and Brookfield, Vermont, 1996), pp. 154 Google Scholar (entry 1458), 162 (entry 1530) and 194 (entry 1812). Wosencroft died on 11 December 1804, aged 46, and was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on the fourteenth; the entry in the burial register describes him as ‘Doctor’ (Liverpool Record Office (hereafter LRO) 283NIC 1/8).

4 The figures do not include the small number of merchants such as the Catholic Philip Christian and Son, who were listed in partnership together.

5 Pope, D.J., ‘The eighteenth century Liverpool newspapers as a source for maritime history’, Part 1, Maritime History, Vol. 5, No. 2, 1977, pp. 116–35 Google Scholar. Throughout the present article the two principal Liverpool newspapers are referred to as Gore’s Gen(eral) Adv(ertiser) and W(illia)mson’s L(iver)p(oo)l Adv(ertiser) to the end of 1793 and Billinge’s L(iver)p(oo)l Adv(ertiser) thereafter. The former continued to be published until 1871 and the latter with several significant changes of title until 1856.

6 Various lists which include details of cargoes imported from Liverpool into places overseas, none of them covering the whole of the second half of the eighteenth century, do exist, notably the Naval Office Shipping Lists which record such shipments into colonial ports, as well as shipments from them, and which are to be found in the Public Record Office in Classes CO and T. However, they have not been utilised to any extent in the preparation of the present article since they add little of relevance to it, its prime purpose being to demonstrate that Catholics participated in Liverpool’s contemporary commercial activities, a purpose which can just as easily be achieved through other sources. The Naval Office Shipping Lists have been microfilmed by Microfilm Limited of East Ardsley, Wakefield.

7 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 21 Sept 1789; Gore’s Gen Adv 24 Sept 1789. Merchant partnerships incorporating the phrase ‘and co.’ in their descriptions, existed in trades other than the slave trade; as much of the shipping employed in these other trades was non-Liverpool owned and as not all the Liverpool-owned vessels employed therein were owned by the ‘firms’ which shipped goods in them, it is frequently impossible to determine who belonged to a partnership; it is possible that Catholics may be ‘hidden’ under this phrase ‘and co.’.

8 Liverpool Shipping Register No. 58, 19 Sept 1786.

9 Cox, Nicholas, ‘Sources for maritime history (II): the records of the Registrar-General of Ships and Seamen’, Maritime History, Vol. 2, No. 2, September 1972, pp. 168–88 Google Scholar, and Pope, D.J., ‘The Liverpool Muster Rolls’, Bulletin of the Liverpool Nautical Research Society, Vol. 42, No. 3, Winter 1998, pp. 97–102 Google Scholar. See also Davis, Ralph, ‘Seamen’s sixpences: an index of commercial activity, 1697–1828’, Economica, New Series, Vol. 23, No. 92, November 1956, pp. 328–43 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The rise of the English shipping industry in the 17th and 18th century (Newton Abbot 1962 Google Scholar, new impression 1972), and Behrendt, Stephen D., ‘The captains in the British slave trade from 1785 to 1807’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 140, 1990, pp. 79–140 Google Scholar. The Muster Rolls of Liverpool and other ports are to be found in the Public Record Office (Class BT98).

10 Jarvis, Rupert C., ‘Ship registry—1786’, Maritime History, Vol. 4, No. 1, March 1974, pp. 15–16 Google Scholar. The Registers of Mediterranean Passes together with indexes of them are housed in the Public Record Office (Adm 7). The volumes of them up to 1784 are also available on microfilm produced by Microform Limited of East Ardsley, Wakefield, including an explanatory introduction by David Richardson.

11 Sanderson, F.E., ‘Liverpool and the slave trade: a guide to sources’, Transactions of the Historic Society of Lancashire and Cheshire, Vol. 124, 1972, especially pp. 170–2.Google Scholar

12 For the history of ship registration see Jarvis, Rupert C., ‘Ship registry—to 1707’, Maritime History, Vol. 1, No. 1, April 1971, pp. 29–45 Google Scholar, ‘Ship registry: 1707–1786’, Ibidem, Vol. 2, No. 2, September 1972, pp. 151–67, and ‘Ship registry—1786’, Ibidem, Vol. 4, No. 1, March 1974, pp. 12–30. The Plantation and Wool Registers are housed in the Merseyside Maritime Museum; copies are also available on microfilm in the City of Liverpool Record Office. Microfilm of the Liverpool Plantation Registers has also been produced by Microform Limited of East Ardsley, Wakefield. The duplicate copies of the certificates of registry granted at Liverpool under the Ship Registry Act of 1786 and the register books are housed in the Merseyside Maritime Museum. They are also available on microfilm in the City of Liverpool Record Office. A transcript of the registers for the period 1786–8 is contained in Craig, Robert and Jarvis, Rupert, Liverpool Registry of Merchant Ships (Manchester: Chetham Society Publications, Third Series, Vol. 15, 1967)Google Scholar. The introduction of this book provides an account of the development of registry law and comments on the problems of interpretation and the value of the registers. For the history of ship registration and the problems of interpretation of the shipping registers see also Pope, D.J., ‘Liverpool Catholic Shipowners in the second half of the eighteenth century’, North West Catholic History, Vol. 29, 2002, pp. 15–49.Google Scholar

13 For a brief account of the founding of the Register of Shipping see Wright, Charles and Fayle, C. Ernest, A History of Lloyd’s from the founding of Lloyd’s Coffee House to the present day (London 1928), pp. 84–7 Google Scholar. Copies of the eighteenth-and early-nineteenth-century volumes of Lloyd’s Register, reprinted by the Gregg Press, are available in both the Liverpool Central Library and the Merseyside Maritime Museum.

14 Copies of the registers are available in the City of Liverpool Record Office—282HIG (St Mary’s and Chorley Street), 282PET (St Peter’s) and 282SWI (St Swithin’s); the Sefton Hall Chapel registers are available on microfiche produced by the Liverpool and SW Lancashire Family History Society. A copy of the earliest registers of St Mary’s, marriages 1741–54 and baptisms 1741–73, contributed by Mrs Seymour Spencer and edited by Harrison, Joseph S. with historic notes by Gillow, Joseph, is to be found in Miscellanea, VII (London: Publications of the Catholic Record Society, Vol. 9, 1911), pp. 179–333 Google Scholar; hereafter CRS, 9. The 1767 returns are contained in Worrall, E.S., Return of Papists 1767 Diocese of Chester (Catholic Record Society Occasional Publications No. 1 1980)Google Scholar. Wills of Lancashire Catholics registered with the Quarter Sessions are available in the Lancashire Record Office (Class QDP). For examples of the enrolment of such wills see the list of wills of Catholics appearing in Part 2 of this article (May, 2005).

15 Doran senior, in his will dated 12 January 1775, left to his sister Margaret Doran of the City of Dublin £200 and a further £500 in the event of his only son Felix’s dying before the age of 21 or before marriage (Lancashire Record Office (hereafter Lanes RO) WCW 1776 and QDP).

16 In 1767 Doran junior, born on 11 March 1758, was an eleven-year old schoolboy at a school in Much Woolton near Liverpool (LRO St Nicholas’s Church Mis (352CEM 1/14/4 No. 883); Return of Papists, p. 3). He married Mary Foxcroft at Thornton in Lonsdale on 27 February 1781; the daughter of Edward Foxcroft Esquire of Hallstead near Kirkby Lonsdale, she was baptised at Thornton in Lonsdale on 6 February 1760 (Gore’s Gen Adv 8 March 1781; Chippindall, W.H. (transcribed), The parish registers of the church of Thornton-in-Lonsdale 1576–1812 (Lancashire Parish Register Society, Vol. 67, 1930), pp. 64 and 258)Google Scholar.

17 “LRO 283NIC 1/5.

18 The total number of vessels in which local Catholics are known to have owned shares in the second half of the eighteenth century, 248, is higher than that given in my earlier article on Catholic shipowners (p. 26), as another Catholic shipowner, Adam Mandeville, has been identified, since the article was written. This discovery does not invalidate the conclusions reached there. For another vessel probably owned and later partly owned by a Catholic see below note 22. Further research of Catholic ships’ captains may reveal other vessels of which Catholics were partowners, though their number is likely to be so small as not to invalidate the conclusions of this or my earlier article.

19 For two other voyages in the slave trade, in 1768–9 and 1770–1, by vessels probably partly owned by a Catholic see below note 22.

20 The Liverpool Plantation Registers include copies of a substantial number of certificates of registry of vessels granted at ports other than Liverpool. Why such copies were entered in the registers is not clear, though in many cases the copying coincided with the transfer of vessels to Liverpool ownership and was perhaps done to provide evidence of the legal entitlement of the previous owners prior to the sales and re-registrations. Capt. Felix Doran was resident in Liverpool in 1748; he appears among the 139 Liverpool subscribers to Lewis Morris’s Plans of Harbours, etc. published in this year ( Stewart-Brown, R., The Inhabitants of Liverpool from the 14th to the 18th Century (Liverpool 1930), p. 25).Google Scholar

21 The five vessels from Tortola were the Alice, Joseph Wallsworth master (Gore’s Gen Adv 14 July), the Jonathan, John Ion, and the James, Daniel Jackson (8 Sept), the Freeholder, Isaac Morville (15 Sept) and the Prince George, William Haselden (27 Oct). For the Molly see 28 July and for the Firm see 3 March.

22 Liverpool Corporation Lease Registers 20 August 1767 (LRO 352CLE/CON 3/3); Gore’s Liverpool Directories 1767, 1769 and 1772. The 1767 and 1769 Directories give the address as the North East Side of the South Dock but this was clearly an error (see John Eyes, Plan of Liverpool 1765). In 1767 Peter Morris was a 63-year old glassmaker who was living at South Shore, Liverpool, and who had been resident in the town for about 35 years; his son Ralph, baptised at St Mary’s on 21 November 1742, was also a glassmaker (Return of Papists 1767, p. 10; CRS, 9, p. 208). Another son Peter, baptised at St Mary’s on 16 April 1749, was the ship’s captain who commanded the Bacchus, for which a certificate of plantation registry was granted at Liverpool on 5 May 1772 and which made a voyage from Liverpool to Africa and Jamaica in 1772–3 (CRS, 9, p. 219; PRO Adm 7/98, No. 21; Gore’s Gen Adv and Wmson’s Lpl Adv 25 June 1773); administration of the estate of Peter Morris, mariner, was granted to his father on 14 November 1776 (Lanes RO WCW). Another of Peter Morris’s sons William was also a mariner; he was probably the ship’s captain of this name who owned the Sisters, for which a certificate of plantation registry was granted at Liverpool on 12 July 1766; under his command the Sisters made a round-trip from Liverpool to St Kitts in 1766–7 and under the command of Henry Kirkby a second voyage from Liverpool to the same West Indian island and Anguilla in 1767–8, her return cargo of cotton, lignumvitae, rum and sugar on this latter voyage being consigned to Morris; for her next two voyages—in the slave trade—Morris was partnered by four other people for her first voyage in 1768–9 and by five others in 1770–1; after this last voyage the Sisters was sold (Liverpool Plantation Registers 12 July 1766, 23 Aug 1768, 21 March 1770 and 27 July 1771; PRO Adm 7/92, No. 1752, 7/94, Nos. 318 & 1446, and 7/96, No. 513; Gore’s Gen Adv 5 June and 14 Aug 1767, 3 June 1768, 22 Sept 1769 and 5 July 1771; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 5 June 1767 and 3 June 1768; Lloyd’s Register 1768). On the last leg of her final voyage under Morris’s partownership, from Dominica to Liverpool, the Sisters was commanded by Peter Morris (Gore ‘s Gen Adv 28 June 1771). Michael Walton was prob ably the 49-year-old Catholic merchant who, a native of the town, was resident in Manchester in 1767 and who five years later was a partner in the firm of Michael Walton and Son, Fustian and Check-manufacturers, Market-street-lane, Manchester; the will of Michael Walton of Manchester, merchant, was proved in 1773; the William Walton of Manchester, merchant, who married on 16 January 1770 at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, Ann, daughter of Richard Kaye and sister of John Kaye, linen drapers and merchants, was doubtless his son (Return of Papists 1767, p. 88; Elizabeth Raffald, The Manchester Directory for the Year 1772; Gore’s Gen Adv 19 Jan 1770; LRO 283NIC 3/3); unless otherwise stated, Walton’s will and other wills to which reference is made in this article, were proved in the Diocese of Chester and are housed in the Lancashire Record Office Class WCW (Archdeaconry of Chester) and WRW (Archdeaconry of Richmond; WRWA for those proved in the Deanery of Amoundemess); a list of the wills and administrations of Catholic merchants, shipowners, and owners of businesses related to the mercantile and maritime activities of Liverpool is to be found in the second part of this article. Michael Walton of Manchester was probably the individual of this name who was partowner of two vessels for which certificates of plantation registry were granted at Liverpool, the Hothersall on 18 January 1752 and the Walton on 18 March 1761. For James Brown see below.

23 There appears to be an error in this entry in the Lease Register; presumably it should read Mason Trustee of Gilbert, since the latter, who was undoubtedly Thomas Gilbert, was still alive in 1790; he had gone bankrupt in 1788, when Mason was appointed Trustee of his affairs ( Messrs William Smith and co., A list of bankrupts, with their dividends, certificates, & c. & c. for the last twenty years and six months, viz. from Jan. 1, 1786, to June 24, 1806, inclusive. . . (London 1806)Google Scholar; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 7 July and 13 Oct 1788).

24 Return of Papists 1767, pp. 20 and 22; Richard Kaye was probably ‘born about Michaelmass (sic)’ 1709 at Garston near Liverpool, the son of John (R. and F. Dickinson (transcribed) and Foster, Irene (ed), The Register of the Parish of Childwall, Part 2, 1681–1753 (Lancashire Parish Register Society, Vol. 122, 1983), p. 191 Google Scholar). Though it is clear from references to him which have been found, that Richard Kaye was a linen draper—his obituary notice, for example, describes him as ‘formerly an eminent Linen-draper, in this town’ (Wmson’s Lpl Adv 31 Jan 1777), he was originally a cooper, apparently on board ship; at what appears to have been his marriage at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 1 October 1731 to Anne Ducker, spinster, he was described as such (LRO 283NIC 1/4); moreover, on 29 January 1761 John Kaye of Liverpool, woollen draper, son of Richard, cooper, was admitted a freeman of the Borough of Liverpool after a servitude of seven years (Freemen’s Committee Book (LRO 352CLE/REG/1)); also the entry of the burial of his son James at St Peter’s Church, Liverpool, on 5 January 1735/6 describes Richard as a sailor of High Street (LRO 283PET 1/1); however, at the time of the burial of his daughter Mary on 13 November 1738 Richard was described as a linen draper of High Street (LRO 283PET 1/2). John Kaye’s older brother Richard, born in Liverpool and aged 35 in 1767, was also a draper (Return of Papists 1767, p. 20).

25 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 18 Jan 1765.

26 Gore’s Gen Adv 1 June 1786. Kaye was buried at St Mary’s Church, Walton-on-the-Hill, on 31 May (LRO 283SMW 1/6). He may have had some experience of the slave trade before his entry into it as an investor in 1769. A John Kaye was master of the Salisbury, for which Mediterranean Passes for voyages to Africa were acquired in February 1756 and November 1757; this vessel was partly owned by Richard Kaye, presumably the linen draper, or possibly his son of the same name, no other individual adult of this name having been discovered in Liverpool at this date (PRO Adm 7/89, No. 1751, and 7/90, No. 200; Liverpool Plantation Registers 17 Feb 1756). Two of John Kaye’s sons Richard and Francis had connections with the slave trade, both of them dying in Africa, the former in 1796 and the latter at Cape Benda, Angola, on 16 January 1794; Francis was the second mate of the slaver Gudgeon, Captain Leatham, ‘to whom the Captain pays the highest tribute of praise as a most able officer and an excellent young man’ (Billinge’s Lpl Adv 5 May 1794 and 3 Oct 1796; Liverpool Muster Rolls 256/ 1794 (PRO BT98/54)). John Kaye’s second son John migrated from Liverpool to Leyland, where he set himself up as a grocer; on 6 January 1799 he married Ann Smith of Leyland Lodge at the New Church [St Philip’s] in Birmingham; he died on 24 December 1821, when he left a personal estate valued by his executors at ‘under E7,000’ (Billinge’s Lpl Adv 17 June 1799; Gore’s Gen Adv 3 Jan 1822; Lanes RO WCW 1822).

27 Joseph Kaye died on 8 January 1835 and was buried at St Mary’s Church, Walton-on-the-Hill, five days later ( Harrison, Joseph S., Obituaries from the “Laity Directory”, 1773–1839 (London: Publications of the Catholic Record Society, Vol. 12, 1913), p. 212 Google Scholar; Liverpool Courier 14 Jan 1835; LRO 283SMW 4/3).

28 For Leigh’s origins and antecedents see Return of Papists 1767, pp. 61–2, and France, R. Sharpe (ed), The Registers of Estates of Lancashire Papists 1717–1788, Vol. 3, 1717, with list of persons registered 1718–1785 (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, Vol. 117, 1977), pp. 86–7 Google Scholar. For his apprenticeship see PRO IR 1/59 Board of Stamps: Apprenticeship Books—Country Registers, April 1774-November 1776, fol. 44; the stamp duty was paid on 12 July 1774 (Stamp duty of sixpence on indentures was introduced by an Act of 1694 (5 Will & Mary c. 21, sect. 3) and continued by later legislation throughout the eighteenth century into the nineteenth century; excluded from the duty were children apprenticed by the parish or apprenticed to their own fathers; two series of registers recording the payment of the duty, one covering London and the other covering the rest of England and Wales, survive almost complete, the 32 volumes of Country Registers for the periods May 1710-January 1725, November 1728-November 1731, April 1741-December 1745 and October 1750-September 1808). For the lease see Liverpool Corporation Lease Registers (LRO 352CLE/CON 3/4); the lease was regranted on 5 July 1833 to a William Barton. Leigh’s brother John was also a soapboiler and tallow chandler with his own manufactory in Liverpool in the early nineteenth century. Roger Leigh died in January 1831, aged 73, and was buried at St. Nicholas’s Catholic Chapel, Liverpool, on the twentieth (LRO 282NIC 3/1).

29 Billinge’s Lpl Adv 24 March 1794.

30 Return of Papists 1767, p. 16; for Henry Pippard of Little Crosby see p. 43; Peter Pippard was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 10 October 1773 (LRO 283NIC 1/5).

31 Gore’s Gen Adv 4 & 18 Jan 1771; see also 17 May 1771.

32 Gore’s Gen Adv 26 July and 6 Aug 1787 and Wmson’s Lpl Adv 30 July 1787.

33 Umdon Gazette 6–10 Sept 1791; Gore’s Gen Adv 15 Sept 1791.

34 Jeremiah Henry Ryan was baptised at St Mary’s Catholic Chapel, Liverpool, on 31 August 1769 (CRS, 9, p. 311); he was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 17 January 1795 (LRO 283 NIC 1/6; 352CEM 1/14/4 No. 104 (MI); Billinge’s Lpl Adv 12 Jan 1795).

35 Billinge’s Lpl Adv 26 April 1802; Ryan was buried on 23 April at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool (LRO 283NIC 1/7; 352CEM 1/14/4 No. 104 (MI).)

36 Liverpool Shipping Register No. 39, 29 Jan 1787, No. 5, 9 Feb 1791 and No. 63, 1 July 1793 (Argus) and No. 41, 29 Jan 1787 (Pilgrim).

37 Liverpool Muster Rolls (for the Argus) 293/1787, 304/1788, 24/1790, 47 & 223/1791, 270/1792, 119/1793 and 363/1794, (for the Pilgrim) 256/1787, 303/1788, 338/1789, 277/1790, 255/1791, 325/1792 and 304/1793 (PRO BT98/47–54); Gore’s Gen Adv 23 Aug 1787, 7 & 28 Aug 1788, 27 Aug and 17 Dec 1789, 5 Aug 1790, 6 Jan, 16 June and 4 Aug 1791 and 19 July and 2 Aug 1792.

38 Liverpool Plantation Registers 16 Aug 1765 (Sam), 13 Sept 1766 (Sally), 31 July 1765 (Ranger); PRO Adm 7/91, No. 1984 (Sam), 7/92, No. 2005 (Sally) and 7/96, No. 28 (Ranger).

39 Tuohy was buried at St James’s Church, Toxteth, on 11 April 1788 (LRO 283JAM 1/2A; 352CEM 1/9/1 No. 1094 (MI)).

40 Gore’s Gen Adv 2 Aug 1776, 8 Aug 1777, 7 Aug 1778, 30 July 1779 and 21 July 1780; PRO T64/ 276A/297–300.

41 Billinge’s Lpl Adv 11 July 1796.

42 Cullen married Elizabeth Power at St Catherine’s Church, Dublin, on 4 June 1805 I(nternational) G(enealogical) I(ndex); though not reported in the Liverpool newspapers, this marriage of Michael Cullen ‘of Great Crosby’ was announced in a newspaper published in a neighbouring town, either Chester (probably) or Manchester, though at the time of writing the present writer has mislaid the reference.

43 Billinge’s Lpl Adv 1 & 22 July 1799; for these and other voyages to the West Indies made by vessels owned or partly owned by Cullen, see Liverpool Muster Rolls 235/1798 (Globe), 8 & 446/1799 (Dick), 265/1799 (Trinity) and 289/1799 (Olive Branch) (PRO 98/58 and 59). Liverpool Shipping Register No. 45, 8 June 1795 (Globe), No. 5, 8 Jan 1799 (Dick), No. 141, 28 Aug 1798 (Trinity) and No. 23, 19 Feb 1799 (Olive Branch).

44 Return of Papists 1767, p. 21.

45 Estcourt, Edgar E. and Payne, John Orlebar, The English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715 . . . (London 1883, republished Westmead, Farnborough, Hampshire, 1969), p. 134 Google Scholar. For the marriage of Butler senior and for his antecedents see Fishwick, Henry, The history of the parish of St. Michaels-on-Wyre in the County of Lancaster (Manchester; Chetham Society Publications, New Series, Vol. 25, 1891), pp. 142–61.Google Scholar

46 Butler was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 16 November 1822 (LRO 283NIC 4/2; 352CEM 1/14/4 No. 766 (MI); Gore’s Gen Adv 21 Nov 1822; Liverpool Mercury 22 Nov 1822); his will was proved on 14 January 1823 (Lanes RO WCW).

47 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 27 Feb 1786.

48 Felix Doran died on 24 February 1776 and was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on the 28th (LRO 283NIC 1/5; 352CEM 1/14/4 No. 883 (MI); Gore’s Gen Adv 1 March 1776).

49 Billinge’s Lpl Adv 4 Dec 1827; Liverpool Courier 5 Dec 1827; Gore’s Gen Adv 6 Dec 1827; Doran was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 6 December 1827 (LRO 283NIC 4/3).

50 Return of Papists 1767, p. 20. The identity and occupation of Martin’s father were discovered from the inscription on the stone on the grave in which both father and son were interred and from the entry of the burial of Charles Martin senior on 11 November 1747 in the registers of St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool (LRO 352CEM 1/14/9 No. 175 (MI); 283NIC 1/4).

51 CRS, 9, p. 280.

52 Gore’s Gen Adv 8 Dec 1775; Martin was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 5 December (LRO 283NIC 1/5 and 352CEM 1/14/9 No. 175 (MI)).

53 Lanes RO WCW 1775. Ann (Nancy) Martin in 1767 was a linen draper in Castle Street, Liverpool (Return of Papists 1767, p. 16); she died, unmarried, on 27 October 1792, aged 69, and was buried in the same grave as her brother three days later (LRO 283NIC 1/6); for another of Martin’s sisters, Martha, see the administration of her estate in 1776 (Lanes RO WCW); she died on 31 January 1776 in her 66th year and was buried in the same grave as her brother on 3 February (Gore’s Gen Adv 2 Feb 1776; LRO 283NIC 1/5).

54 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 4 March 1763; Brown was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 5 March, in the same grave as his brother-in-law Charles Martin (LRO 283NIC 1/5; 352CEM 1/14/9 No. 175 (MI)); CRS, 9, p. 254).

55 Woodville’s place of birth has not been identified, though he may possibly have been born in Cumberland. A pedigree of his family covering the period 1100–1858, traces him back to a John Woodville of Waterend in that county. He was the father of William Woodville who was resident in Cumberland in 1679. The latter’s son William, father of his namesake of Liverpool slave merchant, ‘married Ann O’Dwyer descended from the O’Dwyers of Kilnanaugh of princely lineage, Co. Tipperary’ (LRO Ace. 1634). The father of William Woodville of Liverpool, slave captain and merchant, may have been a ship’s captain of Philadelphia, at least for a time; on 22 February 1752 a Mediterranean Pass for a voyage of the ship Joseph & Jane of Philadelphia, William Woodell (a variation of the name Woodville), from Liverpool to her home port was granted (PRO Adm 7/87, No. 1465).

56 PRO Adm 7/90, No. 2437 (Cloe); Wmson’s Lpl Adv 24 July 1761 and 6 May 1763.

57 Liverpool Plantation Registers 14 July 1763; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 15 June 1764.

58 PRO Adm 7/91, No. 730; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 1 Nov 1765.

59 [Printed and sold by Jarvis, J.], An alphabetical list of Bankrupts from the first of January, 1774, to the thirtieth of June, 1786, inclusive, . . . (London 1786).Google Scholar

60 Williams, Gomer, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an account of the Liverpool Slave Trade (Liverpool and London 1897, reprinted New York 1966), p. 200 Google Scholar; PRO Adm 11 100, No. 602 (Meredith) and No. 2312 (Hero); Gore’s Gen Adv and Wmson’s Lpl Adv 23 May and 27 June 1777; Liverpool Muster Rolls 53/1780 (PRO BT98/40) (for the Hero)); no muster roll survives for the voyage of the Meredith, which vessel, Woodville having left her at St. Augustine ‘to settle some affairs which was not in his power to do before the ship sailed’, sailed for London where she appears to have been sold (Gore’s Gen Adv 17 May 1776, Wmson’s Lpl Adv 4 June 1776 and Lloyd’s Register 1776 and 1778).

61 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 25 Sept 1778; though some sources do not specify Woodville as a partowner— some, for example, name Warren & Co as owners, others Richard Tate & Co—there is little doubt that Woodville was a shareholder; Lloyd’s Register for each of the years 1778–80 names him as owner, while from a number of entries in the Liverpool Plantation Registers it is known that Richard Tate was a partner with Woodville in a number of vessels in the late 1760s and early 1770s.

62 Williams, Gomer, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an account of the Liverpool Slave Trade, pp. 243–4 and 668Google Scholar; LRO, Holt-Gregson Papers, Vol. 10; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 6 Nov 1778 and Gore’s Gen Adv 19 March 1779.

63 Gore’s Gen Adv 4 Dec 1778.

64 PRO Adm 7/102, No. 4009; Liverpool Plantation Registers 7 June 1782; Liverpool Muster Rolls 2/ 1785 (PRO BT98/45).

65 Gentleman’s Magazine June 1809, p. 586; she was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 21 April (LRO 283NIC 1/8).

66 LRO Ace. 1634.

67 Return of Papists 1767, p. 20; LRO 283PET 3/1; Gore’s Liverpool Directory 1766. A Francis Blake, though whether or not the same man is unknown, was captain of one or more London vessels named Henrietta, for which Mediterranean Passes for voyages to the West Indies were issued in January in each of the years 1751–3 (PRO Adm 7/82, Nos. 316 and 1298, 7/83, No. 1281).

68 Blake was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 14 September 1774; his wife Eleanor predeceased him, dying in July 1773 and being buried at the same church on 15 July (LRO 283NIC 1/ 5; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 16 July 1773).

69 Though baptisms of James and John Fazakerley have not been found, they were clearly the sons of John Fazakerley, silversmith in Liverpool, who died ‘suddenly’ on 18 June 1767 (Gore’s Gen Adv 9 June 1767). On 25 September 1770 letters of administration of the latter’s estate were granted to his widow Alice ‘for the use also of Thomas, John & James Fazakerley, Susannah Phillips, widow, & Allice (sic) Adamson, Sons & Daughters of the said deceased’. John and James Fazakerley of Liverpool, mariners, were also bondsmen for the administration, along with their mother (Lanes RO WCW). For references to members of the family see Return of Papists 1767, pp. 15–16, and the regis ters of St Mary’s Chapel (CRS, 9).

70 Plantation certificates of registry for these vessels were granted at Liverpool as follows: 27 June 1763 (Molly), 11 July 1763 and 12 October 1768 (Alice), 20 November 1767 (James) and 27 October 1769 (Hodge).

71 For the Gilberts see Malet, Hugh, Bridgewater: the Canal Duke (Manchester 1977)Google Scholar and The Canal Duke: a biography of Francis, 3rd Duke of Bridgewater (Dawlish and London 1961).

72 Gore’s Gen Adv and Wmson’s Lpl Adv 3 Nov 1775; Fazakerley was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 30 October (LRO 283N1C 1/5; 352CEM 1/14/1 No. 110).

73 Lanes RO WCW.

74 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 29 Oct 1764, 17 Dec 1766, 9 Dec 1767 and 8 Sept 1769; Liverpool Plantation Registers between 6 Feb and 2 March 1767 (Jenny) and 24 Nov 1769 (Martha).

75 Liverpool Plantation Registers 7 Jan 1763; PRO Adm 7/96, Nos. 1381 and 2427, 7/98, Nos. 728 and 828,•7/100, Nos. 263, 1483 and 2565; Lloyd’s Register of Shipping 1776 and 1778; Gore’s Gen Adv 23 Aug 1771, 28 Aug 1772, 10 Sept 1773, 2 Sept 1774, 22 Sept 1775 and 13 Sept 1776; Liverpool Muster Rolls 253/1775, 285/1777 (PRO BT 98/35–7).

76 Liverpool Plantation Registers 23 Nov 1778 (For this registration see Naval Office Shipping Lists for St Kitts, entries inwards 1 June 1784 and 4 May 1785 and entries outwards 4 June 1784 and 25 April 1785 (PRO CO 243/1) and for Tortola, entries inwards 21 June 1784 and 10 May 1785 and entries outwards 30 July 1784 and 10 July 1785 (PRO CO 317/1); when reporting to a Naval Officer, an official in a colony appointed by the Crown to scrutinise trade with a view to preventing evasion of the Navigation Laws and the non-payment of duties, a vessel’s captain was required to produce her certificate of registry, the details of which were entered on the local Naval Office Shipping List along with details of the vessel’s cargo etc); PRO Adm 7/102, Nos. 1747 and 2472; Gore’s Gen Adv 1 Jan 1779; an earlier advertisement for the sailing of the Prosperity for Cork and Tortola announced that she carried twelve four-pounders and four eighteen-pound howitzers (Gore’s Gen Adv 4 Dec 1778); whichever are the correct figures, possibly the later ones are, the Prosperity was clearly an armed merchantman. For her voyages under Mandeville’s command see Liverpool Muster Rolls 188/1779, 155/1780 and 239/1781 (PRO BT 98/39–41); Lloyd’s List 1 Oct 1779 and Wmson’s Lpl Adv 7 Sept 1780.

77 Gore’s Gen Adv 24 Aug 1786.

78 Thomas Falkner died on 6 March 1785 at Bath and was buried in St Paul’s Churchyard, Liverpool, on 19 March (Gore’s Gen Adv 10 March 1785; LRO 283PAU 1/1).

79 Gore’s Gen Adv and Wmson’s Lpl Adv 3 Oct 1782; Holme was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 1 October (LRO 283NIC 1/6).

80 Return of Papists 1767, p. 16.

81 Liverpool Plantation Registers 24 Oct 1751 and 11 January 1758. The first Austin was captured during the Seven Years’ War 1756–63 on a voyage from Liverpool for Barbados; a local newspaper on 18 February 1757 reported ‘Capt. Holme of the Austin, who came Home Passenger in the Merrimeck, in his Passage from hence for Barbadoes was taken by a Schooner Privateer, Cap. Tournois, of 6 Carriage Guns and 10 Swivels, after a running Fight of 8 Hours, and carried into Martinico, where he stayed 8 Days and was then sent up to Barbadoes in a Cartile Ship, during his Stay at Martinico his Ship was condemned, Cargoe, & c. sold; Guns were in so great Demand that his 2 Carriage Guns 3 Pounders the only Carriage Guns he had on board were sold for £100 . . . ’. Three months later the same paper reported ‘the Austin, late Holme, of this Town, that was carried into Martinico, as mentioned in our former Papers, is taken and brought into Tortola, as she was coming home with Sugars, & c. for Old France’ (Wmson’s Lpl Adv 18 Feb and 20 May 1757; see also Ibidem 25 July 1760, and Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an account of the Liverpool Slave Trade, pp. 170 and 665).

82 Gore ‘s Gen Adv and Wmson‘s Lpl Adv 29 May 1767. The sale by auction of the Austin on 3 July 1767 was advertised in both Gore’s General Advertiser and Williamson’s Liverpool Advertiser on 26 June 1767. One of her owners, John Knight, who retained shares in her, and his new partowners, William Pownall and Robert Grimshaw, the latter also her new captain, re-registered her at Liverpool on 11 December 1767.

83 For vessels partly owned by Holme see Liverpool Plantation Registers 12 April 1771 (Vine), 24 Dec 1772 (Olive) and 26 Feb 1780 (Grape).

84 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 13 Aug 1787.

85 Ibidem 14 Dec 1789.

86 The 1790 Directory also lists the firm of Robert Holme and Co., rum and brandy merchants, at 1 Pitt Street.

87 LRO 283ANN 3/2.

88 Return of Papists 1767, pp. 13 and 31; Estcourt and Payne, English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715, p. 98; Sharpe France, R. (ed), The Registers of Estates of Lancashire Papists 1717–1788, Vol. 1, 1717 (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, Vol. 98, 1945), p. 29 Google Scholar. Alice Unsworth and her brother William were both baptised at St Mary’s Catholic Chapel, Liverpool, the former on 3 April 1762 and the latter on 8 July 1765 (CRS, 9, pp. 270 and 286). The will of William Unsworth senior, then ‘of Liverpool, gentleman’, made on 13 March 1782, was sworn by Daniel Banister, one of the executors, before two J.Ps on 22 July 1782 and enrolled with the Quarter Sessions (Lancs RO QDP) but was not proved in any of the Church of England Courts. Richard Unsworth’s son Richard was in business in Liverpool as a soapboiler in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries (see the notice of his death on 1 Jan 1822, aged 50, in Gore’s Gen Adv 3 Jan 1822).

89 London Gazette 9-13 Sept 1794.

90 Billinge’s Lpl Adv 16 Aug 1802; Holme was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 13 August (LRO 283NIC 1/7). His widow Alice survived him by almost twenty years; she died on 21 July 1822 but was not interred in the same grave as her husband (Billinge’s Lpl Adv 30 July 1822; Gore’s Gen Adv 25 July 1822; see also her will (Lanes RO WCW 1823)).

91 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 14 & 21 July 1785; Gore’s Gen Adv 21 July 1785; Liverpool Plantation Registers 16 Dec 1784 (For this registration see Naval Office Shipping Lists for Barbados entries inwards 13 Sept 1786 and entries outwards 19 Sept 1786 (PRO CO 33/20)); Lloyd’s Register of Shipping 1786.

92 Gore’s Gen Adv 16 Feb and 24 Aug 1786; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 13 Feb 1786.

93 Gore’s Gen Adv 1 June 1786; London Gazette 18–22 July 1786, where the partnership was said to have been dissolved on 1 June. Holme was apparently experiencing financial difficulties at about this time; by mid-August 1786 he was bankrupt (London Gazette 15–19 Aug and 28–31 Oct 1786).

94 Gore’s Gen Adv 12 Jan, 25 May, 8 & 29 June and 27 July 1786.

95 LRO 283JOH 1/4; Dunn was buried on 26 August 1801.

96 Billinge’s Lpl Adv 14 Sept 1801; Lanes RO WCW 1801.

97 The only Morneys listed in the Liverpool section of the 1767 Return (p. 16) and possibly relations of John, are Michael, a weaver, aged 57 and resident for one year, his wife Sarah aged 56, and his five children James (aged sixteen), Elizabeth (fourteen), Mary (ten), Catherine (eight) and Rose (six).

98 CRS, 9, pp. 194 and 211.

99 Benjamin Morney was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 25 August (LRO 283N1C 1/4).

100 Enfield, William, An Essay towards the history of Liverpool . . . (Warrington 1773), p. 88.Google Scholar

101 Morney was buried at St Peter’s Church, Liverpool, on 6 February 1785 (LRO 283PET 1/5).

102 IGI, which lists two entries of this marriage, both on the same date; they were both submitted to the index, independently of each other, by members of the Church of Jesus Christ Latter Day Saints. The couple were not married at Church, St Mary’s Parish, Lancaster (Brierley, Henry (transcribed). The registers of the parish church of Lancaster, Vol. 2, 1691–1748 (Lancashire Parish Register Society, Vol. 57, 1920)Google Scholar, nor is it likely that they were married at Preston Parish Church, since marriages and baptisms there have been extracted from the parish registers and entered on the IGI, generally with the name of Preston Parish Church, St John’s, included in each entry. The preciseness of the date of Thomas Morton’s marriage, submitted to the IGI, evidently by two separate individuals, suggests its accuracy, though the original source in which the marriage was found, has not been identified. The marriage was probably a Catholic ceremony. Morton’s wife’s surname was probably Banton; certainly this appears to be its spelling in the register of St Mary’s Church, Walton-on-the-Hill, recording the burial of James Morton (LRO 283SMW 1/8; see below note 105).

103 Return of Papists 1767, p. 11; Thomas and Jane Moreton (sic) were both buried at St Mary’s Church, Walton-on-the-Hill, on 26 January 1777 and 8 September 1778 respectively (LRO 283SMW 1/ 6).

104 [Printed and sold by J. Jarvis], An alphabetical list of Bankrupts from the first of January, 1774, to the thirtieth of June, 1786, inclusive, . . .

105 Morton was buried at St Mary’s Church, Walton-on-the-Hill, on 31 May 1802 (LRO 283SMW 1/8); the entry in the burial register records the names of Morton’s parents including his mother’s maiden name which appears to have been Banton.

106 The information regarding O’Neill’s nephews was found in his will. Alan Francis O’Neill was a merchant resident in Limerick, when letters of administration of his wife’s estate were granted to him in the Chester Consistory Court on 5 April 1811 (Lanes RO WCW). For his marriage see Liverpool Chronicle 6 Aug 1806.

107 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 8 April 1774. At the time of his first marriage at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, to Ann Penny, spinster, on 1 December 1775 O’Neill was described as a bookkeeper (LRO 283NIC 3/4). O’Neill’s first wife Ann died on 7 March 1787; he married at St Anne’s Church, Richmond near Liverpool, on 11 May 1788 Ann Reed, spinster, who died on 10 November 1800; as his third wife O’Neill married at Christ Church, Liverpool, on 11 April 1803 Margaret Bevington widow; she died on 12 May 1827 (LRO 283ANN 3/2; 283CHR 3/1; 283JOH 1/3 & 4; 352CEM 1/10/1 No. 483 (MI); Chester Chronicle 22 April 1803; Billinge’s Lpl Adv 15 May 1827; Liverpool Courier 16 May 1827).

108 Liverpool Courier 15 April 1812; Liverpool Mercury 17 April 1812; O’Neill was buried at St John’s Church, Liverpool, on 15 April 1812 (LRO 283JOH 1/4; 352CEM 1/10/1 No. 483 (MI)).

109 When acting as bondsmen when letters of administration of the estate of John Dawson, ‘late Master of the Brig Shaw belonging to the Port of Liverpool’, were granted on 8 August 1808, Francis O’Neill and his son James each described himself as an upholsterer (Lanes RO WCW). In August 1812 O’Neill’s two sons James and Alan Francis, who had been taken into partnership in the business with their father, announced in the local press their continuation of the business following their father’s death (Liverpool Mercury 28 Aug 1812):

110 CRS, 9, pp. 196 and 199. For some of William Rush’s family connections see the will of Dennis Rush of Liverpool, mariner, proved 1755 (Lanes RO WCW). Dennis Rush married Isabella Sherlock, widow, who was possibly related to the Catholic ship’s captain and merchant Bartholomew Sherlock.

JAMES and ALAN FRANCIS O’NEILL return their most sincere thanks to their Friends and the Public, for past Favours, during their Partnership with their late Father, and beg leave to inform them that they have re-opened their old premises, and most respectfully solicit the continuance of their commands, which, by the strictest attention, it will be their study to merit.

From their long establishment in the Feather Trade, and the superior method in which they prepare that article, they presume to say that no house in the Kingdom have in their power to supply the same on equal terms or quality. They have always a large stock ready for immediate use; as also of Paper Hangings, Carpets of every description, Blankets, Counterpanes, and every article in the Upholstery Business, all of which they are determined to sell on the lowest terms for ready money.

To execute orders with the utmost despatch, they have workmen in the Paper Hanging and Upholstery branches.

N.B. Wholesale and export orders promptly executed.

111 CRS, 9, p. 223; Freemen’s Committee Book (LRO 352CLE/REG/1). Melling was an executor of Dennis Rush’s will and a bondsman when letters of administration of the estate of Isabel(la) Rush, who was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool on 20 November 1755, were granted on 19 December 1755 (Lanes RO WCW Infra Wills etc; LRO 283NIC 1/4). No evidence that Melling was a Catholic has been found, though he appears to have been of Irish birth, his will listing siblings in both Limerick and Newry (Will of Maurice Melling of Liverpool, merchant, proved 1766 (Lanes RO WCW)).

112 Rush was buried at St Peter’s Church, Liverpool, in his grandfather Henry Billinge’s grave, on 16 November 1799 (LRO 283PET 1/6; 352CEM 1/16/3 No. 298 (MI)).

113 Fishwick, Henry, The History of the Parochial Chapelry of Goosnargh in the County of Lancaster (Manchester 1871), pp. 173–5 Google Scholar; Return of Papists 1767, pp. 118, 127 and 147; IGI. Robert Cardwell, when he made his will on 30 November 1778, described himself as a yeoman (Lanes RO QDP); he was probably related to the Robert Cardwell of Barton, tanner, who in 1715 held a freehold estate at Myerscough, and to his brother Richard Cardwell of Broughton in Amounderness, son of Thomas, who in the same year held property in both Broughton and Whittingham (Estcourt and Payne, English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715, pp. 136 and 138; see also France, R. Sharpe (ed), The Registers of Estates of Lancashire Papists 1717–1788, Vol. 3, pp. 38 and 40Google Scholar). For Sidgreaves see also Estcourt, and Payne, , English Catholic Nonjurors of 1715, p. 95 Google Scholar, and France, R. Sharpe (ed), The Registers of Estates of Lancashire Papists 1717–1788, Vol. 1, p. 19.Google Scholar

114 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 9 & 16 April and 4 June 1787; Messrs William Smith and co., A list of bankrupts .... In Williamson’s paper of 4 June William Anderton, auctioneer, announced the sale by auction ‘at a Warehouse in Strand-street, late occupied by Messrs. Sidgreaves and Cardwell, on Friday the 8th day of this instant June, at 10 o’clock in the forenoon’, of their stock-in-trade, ‘Consisting of Butt and Barrel Porter, Spirituous Liquors, Compounds, & c. together with sundry Tuns, Pipes, Casks, Puncheons, Bottles, Stillages, Counting-house Fixtures, & c’.

115 Letters of administration of his estate were granted to his widow Martha on 28 February 1797 (Lanes RO WRWA). James Sidgreaves formerly of Liverpool died on 1 June 1808 aged 42 (Henry Fishwick, The history . . . of Goosnargh .... p. 175; Cookson, Richard, Goosnargh: Past and Present (Preston 1888), p. 60).Google Scholar

116 Return of Papists 1767, p. 22. Bradshaw’s parentage was identified through his father’s will dated 18 March 1760 and enrolled with the Quarter Sessions on 21 July 1760 (Lanes RO QDP). John Bradshaw was buried at All Saints Church, Childwall, on 25 March 1760; his widow Elizabeth died on 2 January 1793 and was buried at the same church on 5 January (Gore’s Gen Adv 10 Jan 1793; LRO 283CHL). In her will dated 12 January 1762, Catherine Chrichlow of Liverpool, spinster, when making a bequest of £10 to Elizabeth Bradshaw, described her as the widow of John Bradshaw, late of Liverpool, joiner and house carpenter (Lanes RO WCW 1762).

117 Checkland, S.G., ‘Corn for South Lancashire and beyond, 1780–1800; the firm of Corrie, Gladstone and Bradshaw’, Business History, Vol. 2, No. 1, December 1959, pp. 4–20 CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and The Gladstones: a family biography 1764–1851 (Cambridge 1971), pp. 16–26 and 35.Google Scholar

118 Gore’s Gen Adv 8 May 1823; Liverpool Mercury 9 May 1823; Chester Courant 20 May 1823; Lanes RO WCW 1823.

119 Return of Papists 1767, pp. 16 and 18; Hughes, T. Cann (ed), The Rolls of the freemen of the Borough of Lancaster, 1688 to 1840, Part 1, A-L (inclusive) (Lancashire and Cheshire Record Society, Vol. 87, 1935), pp. 26 and 29Google Scholar. That Beetham appears to have been a freeman of Lancaster raises a doubt about his Catholicism. Voting in general elections in the Lancaster constituency was confined to the freemen of the borough; however, as a Catholic Beetham under the penal laws would have been prevented from voting. That Beetham may have been a non-Catholic seems highly unlikely, since not only was he married at St Mary’s Catholic Chapel, Liverpool—on 7 January 1749 to Jean Maudesley— but all his children were baptised there and he was godfather to a number of other children also baptised there, including his brother Joseph’s child Mary on 27 April 1762 (CRS, 9, pp. 198 and 270).

120 Though at her marriage named Jean, Beetham’s wife was more generally described as Jane in other references to her; she was buried at St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, on 4 February 1792 (LRO 283NIC 1/6; see also Wmson’s Lpl Adv 6 Feb 1792 and Gore’s Gen Adv 9 Feb 1792). Robert Worswick and Alice Beetham married at St Anne’s Church, Richmond near Liverpool, on 19 November 1787 (LRO 283ANN 3/2; Wmson’s Lpl Adv 19 Nov 1787). Thomas Beetham’s death was recorded in the registers of St Peter’s Catholic Chapel, Lancaster ( Smith, J.P. (ed), Lancashire registers, 3, Northern part (London: Publications of the Catholic Record Society, Vol. 20, 1916), p. 138)Google Scholar. Though he died in 1800 intestate, letters of administation of Beetham’s estate were not granted until 26 July 1828, to his only surviving daughters, Alice Worswick, widow, and Jane Beetham, spinster, both of Lancaster (Lanes RO WCW).

121 Gore’s Gen Adv 23 June 1769, 24 Feb and 18 Aug 1775.

122 The entry of his burial on 15 June 1770 in the registers of St Nicholas’s Church, Liverpool, described Richard Clarkson as a gentleman; his widow, who died on 30 March 1773, was buried at the same church on 2 April (LRO 283NIC 1/5; 352CEM 1/14/4 No. 552 (MI) which records Richard’s date of death as 12 June 1770 and his widow’s as 30 March 1773).

123 Return of Papists 1767, p. 12; Sefton Hall Chapel Registers.

124 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 5 July 1776.

125 Gore’s Gen Adv 20 Sept 1787; Clarkson was buried at St Paul’s Church, Liverpool, on 19 September 1787; the entry in the burial registers described him as a timber merchant; the entry recording his wife Maria’s (or Mary’s) death and interment at the same church on 6 and 16 May 1786 described Clarkson as a merchant, though her obituary notice in the local press described him as a ‘timber merchant’ (LRO 283PAU 1/1; Gore’s Gen Adv 11 May 1786).

126 Wmson’s Lpl Adv 1 Sept 1788 where it was announced that the partnership of Clarkson and Lowe was actually dissolved on 24 May 1788, some eight months after Clarkson’s death; for the partnership of Lowe and Charnley see below.

127 Gomer Williams, History of the Liverpool Privateers and Letters of Marque with an account of the Liverpool Slave Trade, p. 662. John Kaye supplied ‘Slops’ at a cost of E20 4s for the Enterprize’s first cruise and at a cost of £9 16s, as well as shirts and cloths ‘for Sundrys’ for her French prisoners at a cost of £7 12 3d, for her second; Thomas Ryan supplied wine for the first and third cruises at costs of £7 19s 3d and £6 15s 4d respectively (pp. 663–4). For the voyages of the Enterprize see Ibidem, pp. 18–31, 248–50 and 661–4; Liverpool Muster Rolls 180/1779 (voyage under previous ownership). 76/1780 and 17 & 249/1781 (PRO BT98/39–41).

128 Return of Papists 1767, p. 17.

129 Gore’s Gen Adv 12 May 1785; Harrold was buried at St Peter’s Church, Liverpool, on 13 May 1785, when he was described as a sawyer (LRO 283PET 1/5; 352CEM 1/16/3 No. 969 (MI)).

130 The entry of his burial in the registers of St Peter’s Church, Liverpool, on 3 December 1784 described Thomas Harrold as a sawyer (LRO 283PET 1/5).

131 J.C.H. Aveling, The Handle and the Axe . . ., p. 296. There is some confusion over Sharples’s place of birth and ancestry. Though Aveling describes the family as ‘of Brindle’, no Sharpies are listed in that place in the Return of Papists 1767 (pp. 71–4). In his introduction to the registers of Salwick and Lea, J.P. Smith wrote of one of the priests who served the Chapel—’Rev. James Sharpies, son of William Sharpies, a timber merchant and shipbroker in Liverpool, descended from an ancient family settled at Freckleton-in-the-Fylde, and elder brother of the Rev. Henry Sharpies noticed under Great Eccleston’ ( Smith, J.P. (ed), Lancashire registers, 1, The Fylde 1 (London: Publications of the Catholic Record Society, Vol. 15, 1913), pp. 55 and 157)Google Scholar. These two priests were undoubtedly the grandsons of Henry Sharpies, timber merchant, though Smith was mistaken in describing them as the sons of William Sharpies; they were his nephews. Sharpies by his will dated 3 October 1832, made his nephew the Rev James Sharpies and his son Henry his executors; the latter was not a priest but like his father a timber merchant (Lanes RO WCW 1836; for the death of William Sharpies, a member of Liverpool’s Town Council, see Liverpool Journal 12 March 1836). In 1767 the only Catholic family living in Freckleton was that of James Sharpies, a 48-year old miller, which had been resident there for nine years [Return of Papists, p. 111). The family included James’s son Henry, aged fifteen. However, he is unlikely to have been the Henry who settled in Liverpool as a timber merchant, as the latter at his burial on 27 March 1804 (he died on the 25th) at St James’s Church, Toxteth Park, just outside Liverpool, was said to have been 64 (LRO 283JAM 1/3A & 3B), which, if accurate, would make him 27 or 28 in 1767. In this year there was living in the ‘Lower Part of Goosnargh cum Newsham & the Township of Whittingham’ a Henry Sharpies, a carpenter aged 80, who had resided there for 20 years. Resident with him was an unnamed male ‘child’ aged 26 (Return of Papists, p. 118). Given his age and the occupation of his father it is possible, if not probable, that this young man was the Henry Sharpies who later became a timber merchant in Liverpool. It is of course possible that the Sharpies of Freckleton were in some way related to Henry Sharpies of Whittingham, the latter perhaps being the father of James the miller.

132 LRO 283PET 1/5.

133 Liverpool Shipping Register No. 82, 10 October 1797 (Charlotte) and No. 45, 25 March 1798 (Teatshill); Liverpool Muster Rolls (for the Teatshill) 231 & 412/1798, 284/1799 and 22 & 479/1800 (PRO BT98/58–60). No Muster Roll for the Charlotte survives; presumably it was lost with the vessel. On none of the Teatshilľs voyages in 1798 and 1799 was any of the return cargo, consisting mostly of timber, consigned to Sharpies, as was also the case on her second voyage in 1800 (Billinge’s Lpl Adv 16 July and 19 Nov 1798, 23 Dec 1799 and 1 Sept 1800). The Teatshill's return cargo on her first voyage in 1800 has not yet been identified.

134 Liverpool Chronicle 2 May 1804.

135 CRS, 9, p. 278; Return of Papists 1767, p. 14.

136 Liverpool Corporation Lease Register 25 May 1780 (LRO CLE/CON 3/3); Lanes RO WRWA 1790.

137 Fishwick, Lt-Col., The history of the parish of Lytham in the County of Lancaster (Manchester: Chetham Society Publications, New Series, Vol. 60, 1907), pp. 20, 23 and 35Google Scholar; Smith, J.P. (ed), Lancashire Registers, 2, The Fylde 2 (London: Publications of the Catholic Record Society, Vol. 16, 1914), p. 507 Google Scholar.

138 Liverpool Mercury 12 Nov 1813; Preston Chronicle 13 Nov 1813.

139 LRO 283PET 3/4. Thomas Dempsey, timber merchant, may have been the same man as the merchant and the flour seller of the same name who went bankrupt, the former in November 1784 and the latter in June 1787 (Wmson’s Lpl Adv 6 Jan 1785 and 11 June and 6 Aug 1787).

140 Gore’s Gen Adv 7 Sept 1815; Liverpool Mercury 8 Sept 1815; he was buried at St James’s Church, Toxteth Park, on 7 September (LRO 283JAM 4/1; 352CEM 1/9/1 No. 901 (MI)).