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The English Factory at Lisbon: Some Chapters in its History

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Richard Lodge
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Extract

I take it that to most English readers the history of Portugal is less familiar than that of any other of the western states of Europe. One reason for this is that there are few books in English on the subject, and those which have been written are rather outline sketches than detailed studies. I imagine that the ordinarily well-informed person, if asked what he or she knew about Portugal, would reply: Oh! Vasco da Gama, Catharine of Braganza, the Methuen Treaty and the taste for port, the Lisbon earthquake, the Marquis of Pombal, and the Peninsular War. I doubt whether any Professor of History could offhand give the names and dates of the Portuguese kings.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 16 , December 1933 , pp. 211 - 247
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1933

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References

page 212 note 1 Violet M. Shillington and Annie B. Wallis Chapman in Transactions, New Series, Vol. XX, and Third Series, Vol. I. Their papers were subsequently published in a single volume. Abraham Castres made a manuscript collection of royal edicts, etc., conferring privileges to British traders. This volume (B.M. Add. MSS. 27344) should be useful to students who can read Portuguese.

page 213 note 1 For the terms of the Treaty, see Chalmers, Collection of Treaties II, pp. 258–67.

page 214 note 1 See Prince Rupert at Lisbon, edited by Gardiner, S. R., in Camden Miscellany, Vol. X, 1902.Google Scholar

page 215 note 1 See Chalmers, u.s., II, pp. 267–86.

page 216 note 1 Chalmers, u.s., II, p. 286. In the great controversy about the infringement of English privileges, which began when Edward Hay was British Envoy at Lisbon, and was continued by his successors, W. H. Lyttelton and Robert Walpole, Pombal played for a time with the contention that all the acts of the Commonwealth had been annulled at the Restoration, and that therefore the treaty of 1654, concluded with the Protector, was null and void. See his replies to Lyttelton's demands in 1768 (S.P., Portugal, 65). But in face of the facts that the treaty had been enforced without protest for a whole century, it was impossible to insist upon this contention. The English ministers were so annoyed by the very suggestion of nullity, that Lyttelton was ordered to break off all negotiations unless it was dropped (Shelburne to Lyttelton, secret, 3 May, 1768). Weymouth, Shelburne's successor, took much the same line in a letter of 30 December, 1768 (Ibid., 66).

page 218 note 1 John Methuen to Nottingham, 19 May (o.s.), 1702, in B.M. Add. MSS. 29590, fo. 29. Paul Methuen, after his father's departure, employed the same threat, and had the same confidence in its efficacy. “The people of this country would be strangely concerned, it being impossible for them to subsist without the English and Dutch trade” (Ibid., fo. 62).

page 218 note 2 He was commissioned as Ambassador, but did not consider it politic to assume the character.

page 219 note 1 For this reason he again abstained from presenting his credentials as Ambassador.

page 219 note 2 Dr. D. B. Horn, one of the most accurate of men, has failed to trace fully John Methuen's jack-in-the-box entrances to and departures from Lisbon in 1702–3. In his British Diplomatic Agents, 1689–1789, he says that “there is some evidence that he may have been at Lisbon for a short time from April, 1702,” and he omits altogether his visit from 10 August, 1702, to 11 April, 1703. The exact dates of his previous visit are 8 May-10 June, 1702.

page 220 note 1 Chalmers, u.s., II., p. 302.

page 220 note 2 See below, p. 241.

page 222 note 1 Quoted by Smith, John in his Memoirs of the Marquis of Pombal (London, 1843), I., p. 86.Google Scholar For other denunciations of English domination by Pombal see Ibid., pp. 114–22. Schafer (Gesch. von Portugal, V., 490–4) has copied these denunciations from Smith. Smith's book is for the most part an uncritical eulogy of Pombal, but it is still useful for its numerous quotations from contemporary sources. A second edition of the book, in one volume and with some verbal and other changes, appeared in 1871, by which time the author had dropped the name of John Smith and had become the Conde da Carnota. The first edition is the better of the two, but both want an index.

page 223 note 1 Pombal subsequently asserted that, on his return from the Portuguese legation in England in 1745, he prevented the conclusion of a commercial treaty arranged by Cardinal Motta and Chavigny. See a very interesting report by Lord Kinnoull of a conversation with Pombal in a letter to Pitt of 11 October, 1760 (S.P., Portugal, 53).

page 224 note 1 A comparison has also been suggested with the organisation of the Staplers at Calais in the fifteenth century, which is described in The Cely Papers (Camden Society, Third Series, 1900), but the differences are obvious. Calais was not a foreign town, but subject to the English King, the Staple was a statutory institution, and the conduct of the merchants was supervised by royal commissioners.

page 225 note 1 Of the forty-nine British women who perished, only two, Mrs. Hake and Mrs. Perochon, belonged to the Factory families.

page 225 note 2 Tyrawly wrote to Newcastle on 16 April, 1752 (S.P., Portugal, 48): “A great body of his Majesty's subjects reside at Lisbon, rich, opulent, and every day increasing their fortunes and enlarging their dealings.”

page 226 note 1 It is frequently stated that the Judge Conservator was instituted by this treaty. But the treaty of 1642 also mentions a Conservator (Art. 9), so that the office must have had an earlier origin. But 1654, or rather the edict of John IV in 1656, may be taken as marking the first complete recognition of the Judge Conservator and his functions. A representation of British merchants to Pitt (dated London, 12 July, 1758, and bound up in S.P., Portugal, 51) states that the Judge Conservator was granted to the English four hundred years ago, and gives an interesting summary of his functions. “The Judge Conservator is chosen from among the Portuguese Judges and paid by the British Factory. He constitutes a peculiar court of his own, and has a right prior to all other Courts to bring before him in the first instance, and to determine in a judicial capacity, all causes, disputes and contracts wherein the English are in any way concerned. No British subjects, nor any thing belonging to them, can be seized or molested without an order from the Judge Consenator. He is the preserver and protector of all their rights and privileges of every kind, and whenever they are aggrieved, is obliged, on application to him, to get them redressed.” In a memorial presented to Luis da Cunha in 1760 Lord Kinnoull quotes a number of royal edicts about the Judge Conservator which go back to the beginning of the fifteenth century (S.P., Portugal, 53).

page 228 note 1 Bedford to Castres, 13 June, 1749, in Foreign Entry Book, 116.

page 228 note 2 The correspondence about Quintilla and Stepney is to be found in S.P., Portugal, 47.

page 229 note 1 See above, p. 220.

page 229 note 2 Newcastle's private letter to Tyrawly of 20 November, 1739 (S.P., Portugal, 40), in which he describes his discussion with Carvalho (Pombal), is well worth reading as a sample of Newcastle's rather ingenuous ingenuity. The gist of his arguments is that the terms of a treaty can only be interpreted in reference to the constitution of the contracting states.

page 229 note 3 When Carvalho left England in 1745, there was some friction about the customary present to a departing Envoy. His predecessor, Azevedo, leaving in 1738, had been offered £300, but had demanded £500 on the ground that the representatives of France and Spain received the latter sum, and in the end had received it. Carvalho seven years later had the same offer and made the same demand. But Henry Pelham would not grant it, and would not take the hint that the present might be given in another form than money. So Carvalho departed without any present, and this was supposed to rankle in his mind and to account for his anti-English bias. But diplomatists are apt to exaggerate grievances of this nature, and they probably did so in this case. Of course, Pombal's policy, though influenced by his attitude towards England, was not dictated by it. He had a genuine desire to increase Portuguese autonomy by making his country as self-sufficient as possible.

page 230 note 1 Castres to Stone, 19 June, 1750, in S.P., Portugal, 47.

page 231 note 1 Castres reported to Holderness on 12 February, 1753, that the Burrells had recovered their money, see below, p. 239.

page 232 note 1 Tyrawly's racy letters are in S.P., Portugal, 48. He had none of the caution of the normal diplomatist, and was always quite frank and outspoken.

page 234 note 1 These letters were not official despatches to the Secretary of State, but were written to Claudius Amyand, the Under-Secretary in the southern department. As the letters are kept in the State Papers and are not labelled “private,” it is almost certain that Amyand showed them to his chief.

page 234 note 2 The unfortunate Crowle died on 22 June, 1754, before he could leave Lisbon.

page 234 note 3 The article of the Treaty upon which the English case rested was the 10th, which runs: “The people of this Republic may freely import arms, corn, fish, and all other sorts of merchandise, into the kingdom, ports and territories of the King of Portugal, and sell the same at pleasure, either in parcels, or in bulk, to whatever chapman and for whatever price they can get; and shall not be prohibited, circumscribed, or restrained by his said Royal Majesty, or his ministers, governors, farmers of the customs, or monopolists, or by any chamber or jurisdiction whatsoever, of any court, public or private.”

page 235 note 1 Keene, who was consulted about this, said that it was quite true that the English traders were better off than the Portuguese, and that he had frequently made this assertion when he was at Lisbon.

page 235 note 2 Castres to Richardson, 19 November, 1755 (S.P., Portugal, 50): “Our poor Factory, from a very opulent one, is totally ruined, at least for the major part.”

page 235 note 3 It might be thought that these debts would be counterbalanced by those owed by the natives to British creditors. But it was a peculiarity of Portuguese trade that the native traders, while insisting upon long credit from sellers, gave none to buyers, and demanded ready-money payments. “The Portuguese do not trust, which in a long course of business is a considerable advantage this nation has over us in proportion to their trade with us and ours with them” (Hay to H. Fox, 11 February, 1756, in S.P., Portugal, 50). I have found several references to this curious inequality in Anglo-Portuguese trade.

page 236 note 1 Lyttelton maintained that the fall of British exports in 1758–65 as compared with the previous seven years amounted to two millions sterling. This is in the summary of English grievances which he presented to Pombal at their first interview in April, 1768.

page 237 note 1 Shelburne to Lyttelton (secret), 3 May, 1768, in S.P., Portugal, 65.

page 238 note 1 The frequency with which Consuls were promoted to be Envoys at Lisbon (Compton, Castres, Hay in rapid succession) shows that British ministers regarded commercial as more important than political relations with Portugal.

page 238 note 2 A translation of the terms of the judgment is in S.P., Portugal, 51.

page 239 note 1 The primary purpose of Kinnoull's mission was to express formal regret for Boscawen's trespass in Portuguese waters during the battle off Lagos in 1759. His instructions are in S.P., Portugal, 52.

page 240 note 1 The report of the Board of Trade forms a separate volume (S.P., Portugal, 64) in the Record Office. It is clear that the Board accepted the statements of the Factory without any critical examination. Pombal asserted that both Board and Factory were misled on many points by Jesuit emissaries.

page 240 note 2 Pombal consented in 1768 to modify this edict so far that foreign merchants should not be compelled to accept this scrip as currency.

page 241 note 1 For the terms of Article 15 see above, p. 220.

page 241 note 2 Considering that the obvious purpose of obtruding this article into the defensive treaty was to redress the inequality created by the previous commercial treaties (see above, pp. 213–14) this contention was somewhat strained.

page 241 note 3 The supplementary report of the Board of Trade is in S.P., Portugal, 65. They possessed a copy of the offensive treaty of 16 May, 1703, but had no copy, nor any knowledge, of the second treaty concluded on the same day. This shows how little importance England attached to the second treaty.

page 242 note 1 The French occupation of Lisbon had one disastrous result for the future historian. The Factory archives were sent for security to England, and the ship conveying them went down in the Bay of Biscay.