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The London Merchant Networks

The unincorporated and overlapping trading communities of the City of London engaged in the plantation, African and Eastern commerce between 1690 and 1725, holding no charter, seal, membership roll or jurisdiction, and comprising the separate traders to Africa, the West India and Chesapeake merchants, the private interests behind the chartered companies and the financiers of privateering ventures.

Also writtenthe London merchants; the City merchant interest; the separate traders; the ten per cent men; the West India and Chesapeake merchants of London; the Virginia merchants of London

This heading holds a composite the archive assembles, not a body that bore the name. Between 1690 and 1725 no charter constituted the London merchant networks, no seal authenticated their acts and no court recognised them as able to sue or be sued. Gathered here are the separate traders to Africa, the West India and Chesapeake merchants, the private interests behind the chartered companies, and the financiers of armed voyages. It could not legislate, tax, arrest, try or condemn. Its authority was access.1

The lawful separate trader

The separate traders had a statute behind them. The Trade with Africa Act 1697, cited as 9 Will. 3 c. 26, is titled "An Act to settle the Trade to Africa"; its commencement is given as 24 June 1698. It opened the African trade to merchants outside the Royal African Company on payment of ten per cent ad valorem on goods exported from England or the plantations to Africa, that duty going to the upkeep of the forts on the coast, with a further ten per cent on goods imported from Africa, the enslaved excepted. Before it, a private trader to Africa was an interloper the Company could seize; after it, he had standing to be heard.2

Four merchants at the Board of Trade

On 23 February 1726 the Duke of Newcastle referred the Royal African Company's memorial to the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations. The next day four men attended the Board unbidden, entered in its journal as "Mr. Morrice, Mr. Harris, Mr. Elton and Mr. Brereton", asked for copies of the Company's petition and to be heard before the Board reported, and were granted both. The Virginia merchants of London answered its queries through one man, Micajah Perry, on 5 March.3

What was argued there

Six afternoons of hearings followed, between 14 April and 19 May 1726, the separate traders retaining Mr Serjeant Darnell and Mr Fazackerly as counsel against the Attorney General and Mr Wills for the Company. On 29 April Humphry Morice put his case on volumes, setting the Company's export to the plantations at no more than 5,400 a year at the time it did trade against a disposition the separate traders had made that year for furnishing fifty thousand, a one year undertaking and not an annual supply. The traders claimed "an equal and natural right to trade to those parts", and on 19 May the Company offered to keep three hundred leagues of the African coast and leave about seventeen hundred to them.4

The object rather than the agent

Samuel Bellamy took the ship afterwards known as the Whydah from a Captain Prince of Bristol, as Prince was turning through the Bahama Islands homeward bound from Jamaica, and she was lost on the Massachusetts shore on 27 April 1717. Lieutenant Governor Bennett sent that news to the Council of Trade and Plantations from Bermuda on 30 July 1717.5

City money went the other way too: Bellomont raised six thousand pounds to fit out Kidd's voyage. Which London merchant subscribed is contested, one account naming Sir Edmund Harrison and another having Kidd and Robert Livingston approach Sir Richard Blackham. No source reached shows any City subscriber penalised after Kidd was hanged at Execution Dock in 1701.

Convoy and reprisal

The oldest demand was convoy, aimed at the Admiralty rather than the pirates. In May 1726 merchants petitioned the King for letters of reprisal against the Spanish guarda-costas, putting damages to British subjects since the Treaty of Utrecht at above three hundred thousand pounds. The documented petition that moved a Secretary of State against West Indian piracy in 1717 came from Bristol merchants.6

What the sources cannot yet give is the London petitioning record itself. No London merchant petition specifically about pirates appears in the Board of Trade journals or the calendared state papers, and the Board's journal for January 1720 carries no piracy business. The Commons Journals after 1699 have not been consulted, so the parliamentary side of this interest is untested, and what the Board reported at the end of the 1726 inquiry is not established. The Whydah Gally is said to have been commissioned in London in 1715 for Humphry Morice and to have been of three hundred tuns burthen, and Morice to have held office at the Bank of England; none of that is established from the Bank's own minutes or the ship's papers.

What the evidence does not settle

London merchant petitioning on piracy

  • Whether any London merchant petition on piracy survives for this inquiry

Outcome of the 1726 African trade inquiry

  • Outcome of the 1726 African trade inquiry is unknownUnverified

Richard Harris's identity

  • Richard Harris's dates, firm, ships and offices unestablished

Each line is one question with its own grade, taken from the register where a claim carries it. Nothing here is graded as a whole.

Sources for this record

Every statement above that rests on a checked claim carries a small number; the numbers lead here. Each entry gives what is claimed, how far the record supports it, and where it comes from.

  1. Between 1690 and 1725 the London merchant networks were not a corporation: no charter constituted them, no letters patent named them, no common seal authenticated their acts, no membership roll listed them and no court recognised them as a person capable of suing or being sued, so that the composite of separate traders to Africa, West India and Chesapeake merchants, private interests behind the chartered companies and financiers of armed voyages could not legislate, tax, arrest, try, condemn or commission, and its whole authority was access. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed calendar of a public body's own proceedings: Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations: Volume 5, January 1723 to December 1728, Journal, February 1726 and March 1726, Journal Book C.C., ed. K H Ledward (London, 1928), pages 214 to 221 and 221 to 230, British History Online
  2. The Trade with Africa Act 1697, cited as 9 Will. 3 c. 26, with the long title "An Act to settle the Trade to Africa" and a commencement given as 24 June 1698, opened the African trade to English merchants outside the Royal African Company on payment of ten per cent ad valorem on goods exported from England or the plantations to Africa, that duty being appropriated to the maintenance of the forts and castles on the African coast, with a further ten per cent on goods imported from Africa, the enslaved excepted, and so converted the interloper the Company could seize into the lawful separate trader with standing to be heard. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. Statute text: Trade with Africa Act 1697, the text of the Act in the Statutes of the Realm
  3. On 23 February 1726 the Duke of Newcastle referred the Royal African Company's memorial to the Commissioners for Trade and Plantations, and on 24 February four separate traders, entered in the Board's journal as "Mr. Morrice, Mr. Harris, Mr. Elton and Mr. Brereton", attended unbidden, asked for copies of the Company's petition and to be heard before the Board reported, and were granted both; the Virginia merchants of London answered the Board's queries through one man, Micajah Perry, by a paper dated 5 March 1726. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed calendar of a public body's own proceedings: Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations: Volume 5, January 1723 to December 1728, Journal, February 1726 and March 1726, Journal Book C.C., ed. K H Ledward (London, 1928), pages 214 to 221 and 221 to 230, British History Online
  4. The Board of Trade's hearings on the African trade ran over six afternoons between 14 April and 19 May 1726, the separate traders retaining Mr Serjeant Darnell and Mr Fazackerly as counsel against the Attorney General and Mr Wills for the Royal African Company; on 29 April Humphry Morice set the Company's export to the plantations at no more than 5,400 a year at the time it did trade against a disposition the separate traders had made that year for furnishing fifty thousand, a one year undertaking and not an annual supply; the traders' contention was that "the said separate traders have an equal and natural right to trade to those parts"; and on 19 May the Company offered to keep three hundred leagues of the African coast and leave about seventeen hundred leagues to them. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Printed calendar of a public body's own proceedings: Journals of the Board of Trade and Plantations: Volume 5, January 1723 to December 1728, Journal, April 1726 and May 1726, Journal Book C.C., ed. K H Ledward (London, 1928), pages 230 to 250 and 251 to 270, British History Online
  5. Samuel Bellamy took the ship afterwards known as the Whydah from a Captain Prince and lost her on the Massachusetts shore in April 1717. Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett of Bermuda, writing to the Council of Trade and Plantations on 30 July 1717, reports "The ship that Bellamy had called the Widdaw, which he took from one Capt. Prince belonging to Bristol as he was turning through the Bohama Islands from Jamaica bound home", and that on 27 April a pirate ship of 26 guns commanded by Bellamy took a vessel bound from Madeira to New England near Cape Cod, after which both crews got drunk and "ran their own vessell on shoar att a place called Nossetts Bay to the Southward of the Cape, on board her were 120 men, two whereof were only saved". Peter Heywood at Jamaica had already reported the same news on 3 July 1717 as "Bellamy with his ship and Company's perishing on ye shoals off of Cape Codd". The despatch places the capture in the Bahama Islands rather than the Windward Passage, dates the loss to 27 rather than 26 April, and makes Prince a Bristol man; the commissioning of the ship in London by Humphry Morice in 1715, her burthen of three hundred tuns, and Morice's offices at the Bank of England are not touched by it. Likely More likely than not on the evidence we have. State papers and official correspondence: Lieutenant Governor Benjamin Bennett to the Council of Trade and Plantations, Bermuda, 30 July 1717, calendared as no. 677 in Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies, volume 29, 1716 to 1717 (July 1717, 17 to 31; pp. 344 to 364), C.O. 37, 10. No. 5, read at British History Online; and Peter Heywood, commander in chief of Jamaica, to the same, 3 July 1717, calendared as no. 629 in the same volume (pp. 336 to 344), C.O. 137, 12. No. 97. Bennett prefaces his account "From Boston in New England I am advised", so his report is an official relay of New England news rather than direct testimony.
  6. The merchant interest's oldest demand was convoy, and in May 1726 merchants petitioned the King for letters of reprisal against the Spanish guarda-costas, such as the French Government issued, estimating damages to British subjects since the Treaty of Utrecht at above three hundred thousand pounds; the documented petition that moved a Secretary of State against West Indian piracy in 1717 came from the merchants of Bristol and not of London. Unverified Reported, not yet checked against the record. Editorial prefaces to printed calendars of state papers: Calendar of State Papers Colonial, America and West Indies: Volume 35, 1726 to 1727, Introduction, ed. Cecil Headlam and Arthur Percival Newton (London, 1936), and Volume 29, 1716 to 1717, Preface, ed. Cecil Headlam (London, 1930), British History Online