“Concealed in a basket of vegetables”: The Courtauld family and Huguenot immigration to London in the 17th and 18th centuries [By David McCulloch]

The Background of Huguenot immigration to London

Religious divisions in France and persecution of Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries led to waves of foreign immigrants entering England, especially London. This community of French Calvinist Protestants, often called the Huguenots, are among the many immigrants who have made London their home and have made a vital contribution to its history. Indeed, the arrival of the Huguenots caused the word ‘refugee’ (from the French réfugié) to enter the English language.

Calvinism (the teachings of Jean Calvin of Geneva) spread rapidly across France in the first quarter of the 16th century. From 1534, the Catholic King Francis I turned against Calvinists, brutally persecuting those who could not flee. By 1550, enough Huguenots had arrived in London for King Edward VI of England to grant a royal charter that established h a church for Dutch and French Calvinists on the site of the old Austin Friars monastery, north of the present Threadneedle Street. However, the chapel at St. Anthony’s Hospital close by soon became the primary place of worship in the City for Huguenots. A subsidiary congregation was also established later in the 16th century on the Strand. The Threadneedle Street congregation eventually moved in the 18th century to Soho Square, where the French Protestant Church remains today. This movement of their church reflected a later wave of Huguenot immigration that we shall examine in more detail later in this article.

The second major trigger for large-scale Huguenot migration was the St. Bartholomew’s Day massacre in Paris in August 1572. News of these events greatly increased sympathy for the Huguenot immigrants from London’s native population. Importantly, Queen Elizabeth I’s Secretary of State, William Cecil, was a great supporter of the Huguenots who arrived in the late 16th century, recognising their reputation for hard work and entrepreneurial activity (significantly, the French word entrepreneur entered the English language at this period to mean “a person able to quickly earn money through business”). Many Huguenot workshops were established by 1600 in Southwark and Westminster, employing several hundred people. The strangers were, however, not welcomed by everyone. Some native Londoners blamed the Huguenots for an outbreak of plague in 1593 and attacked their homes. Not for the first or last time, recent arrivals were commonly blamed for a disruption of the social order.

The Great Wave of Huguenot Immigration in the Late 17th Century

In April 1598 King Henri IV made a series of decrees usually known as the Edict of Nantes, temporarily guaranteeing French Protestants their religious freedom. However, anti-Protestant persecution began again in the reign of Louis XIII and reached its peak in the reign of Louis XIV in the late 17th century. In 1681 King Charles II of England, petitioned by the congregation of the French Protestant church on the Strand, formally offered Huguenots royal protection. Describing them as “distressed strangers”, he decreed that a national relief fund be set up. This third wave of migrants was mostly welcomed, but not entirely: London weavers and metal-workers during the early 1680s struggled to compete in their trades with the highly-skilled newcomers, and threatened violence against the Huguenots. Charles ordered troops to be stationed in nearby locations as a deterrent against rioting.

In October 1685 Louis XIV revoked the Edict of Nantes, and persecution intensified. Charles II wrote to Louis offering asylum to French Protestants, and around fifty thousand soon arrived in England. In April 1686 a public collection was sanctioned to help relieve newly arrived silk-weavers. Annual royal grants were provided to Huguenots until the reign of George III in the late 18th century. The Huguenot church at Threadneedle Street, despite being rebuilt after the Great Fire in 1666, became too small for the increasing congregation and the new king of England James II responded by granting permission for a new Huguenot church at Spitalfields, between Black Eagle Street and Grey Eagle Street. Many of the newest arrivals settled in areas east of the City, outside the trade restrictions of the City and its Livery Companies. The largest concentration of the Huguenot population settled in Spitalfields and Bethnal Green, although others settled in the expanding suburbs west of the City, in what is now the West End.

By the late 17th century, the faith of the Calvinist Huguenots had more in common with English Dissenting traditions such as the Quakers than they had with the established Anglican church. Their industriousness also connected them socially and economically with English Dissenters in general. The London Huguenots included many doctors, schoolmasters, merchants, mariners and shipwrights. A number of highly-skilled gunsmiths, goldsmiths and silversmiths were also significant transformers of the London economy. The production of many goods that had previously been imported from France were by 1690 specifically associated with London because of the Huguenots. The Huguenots’ departures from France led to economic hardship there, whereas in England it is likely that their arrival was one of the biggest driving forces of the industrial revolution of the 18th century.

Various new forms of manufacture to London, such as glass-making, were revolutionised by the Huguenot immigrants. Louis XIV had demanded that all gold plate be handed over to the French royal treasury to finance his warlike foreign policy, forcing Huguenot goldsmiths to head to England. Their arrival produced a surge in quality of gold and silversmithing in London. However, the trade most associated with the Huguenots of London was clothmaking, especially the manufacture of silk goods, largely focused on the Spitalfields area. One silk weaver named Mongeorge brought with him the secret of making silk lustring, very fashionable at the end of the 17th century, and the same product became so associated with London that it ironically later became known as English taffeta.

The Huguenots of Soho

The Huguenots of Spitalfields have had a good deal of research done about them in the past (see the website www.huguenotsofspitalfields.org). Therefore this article focusses on a family of Huguenots whose fame is based on the craft of gold and silversmithing and who lived in Soho, to the west of the City. The first French gold and silversmiths to arrive had set up their trade near the Goldsmith’s Company Hall in the City of London itself, but the English members of the Company closed ranks against the newcomers. The Huguenot craftsmen then moved into the rapidly expanding suburb of Soho, which until the 1670s had consisted of open fields. By 1700, it had become a district of many homes and workshops for French artisan families and their employees. So many Huguenots lived around Gerrard Street, Great Windmill Street and Newport Market that in the mid-18th century it was said that one could imagine yourself in France. Ironically, this area of London is now almost exactly the same as modern Chinatown.

The impact of the Huguenots in Soho was illustrated by the greatest English artist of his generation, William Hogarth, in his painting and subsequent print The Four Times of Day: Noon (detail shown below). Hogarth contrasts the prosperous, smartly-dressed and sober Huguenot churchgoers on the right with the more chaotic group of English Londoners outside the tavern on the left. The full version of the print has the steeple of St. Giles-in-the-Fields in the background, confirming that the location is Soho. Hogarth was well-acquainted with the diligence and skill of Huguenot craftsmen in the area, and clearly was an admirer.

The Courtauld Family

The Huguenot family that this article focusses on is the Courtauld family, who made themselves one of the great entrepreneurial families of England from the early 18th century until well into the 20th century. They are descended from Augustine Courtauld, who with later members of the family contributed greatly to English 18th-century silversmithing.

In addition to Augustine Courtauld, there are four other family members whose prestige was recognised by the registration of their maker’s marks at Goldsmiths’ Hall: Peter, half-brother to Augustine; Samuel Sr, son of Augustine; Louisa Perina Ogier-Courtauld, widow of Samuel Sr; and Samuel Jr, son of Samuel Sr and Louisa.

It seems probable that Augustine Courtauld was born at St. Pierre in the Ile d’Oleron, western France, about 1686, and was brought to England when his father fled to England in 1688. Samuel Courtauld Sr later said of Augustine’s arrival that he was concealed in a basket of vegetables. His half-brother, Peter, was born in the parish of St. Anne, Soho, a few years later. Both were later apprenticed to the goldsmith, Simon Pantin (an Anglicised version of a Huguenot surname). Having learned the trade for seven years under Pantin, Augustine started out on his own and entered his first mark at Goldsmiths’ Hall in 1708. His third mark, of 1720, was his initials AC, and proudly displayed his French heritage by a fleur-de-lis above his initials. One of the best examples of his work is the state salt cellar of the City of London Corporation, dated 1730-31. It is a large bowl ornamented with embossed and applied strapwork on four massive supports in the form of dolphins, the heads of which rest on shell-shaped feet. However, Augustine is usually much more notable for simplicity of his designs, for example the large tray (pictured below) which is devoid of any decoration other than the arms of Thomas Malin, who married Mary Carbonell at St. Botolph’s, Bishopsgate, in 1722. At the time of his retirement, Augustine had a shop in Chandos Street, a little north of Oxford Circus, and some distance from the parts of Soho most associated with his fellow Huguenots.

Very little is known of Augustine’s half-brother, Peter Courtauld. After finishing his apprenticeship with Simon Pantin in 1712, he apparently became a freeman of the Goldsmiths’ Company but does not seem to have entered a mark until 1721. At this time he opened a shop in Litchfield Street, Soho, but died little known only a few years later in 1729.

Augustine Courtauld’s son, Samuel Courtauld Sr, was apprenticed to his father in 1734, at the age of 14. On completing his apprenticeship he continued to work in the family shop in Chandos Street until his father’s death in 1751, when he moved to Cornhill in the City. Silver made by Samuel Courtauld the elder is usually marked with his initials SC, with a pellet between and a rising sun above. He also issued two trade cards, the first of which describes him as “Goldsmith and Jeweller at the Rising Sun, Chandos Street, St. Martin’s Lane, London” and a more elaborate card after he moved to Cornhill, giving his address as “At the Crown in Cornhill Facing the Royal Exchange, London.” He appears to have established a highly successful business. Much of his work shows his father’s influence from its basic simplicity of design and splendid workmanship. The pyriform kettle and stand of 1755-6 (shown above) shows subdued Rococo forms in the finely chased flowers and scrolls on the shoulder of the kettle, but this was later superseded by a more elaborate style.

In 1749 Samuel Sr married Louisa Perina Ogier, whose portrait may have been painted by Johann Zoffany (a noted portrait painter of the time). She was a notable member of the silversmith trade in her own right. Samuel Jr was only 12 years old when his father died in 1765, and Louisa undertook to carry on the shop in Cornhill alone, entering her own mark at Goldsmiths’ Hall, being the letters LC in a lozenge-shaped punch. After carrying on the business for slightly more than three years, Louisa apparently decided that running a fashionable silver trade alone was too great a responsibility. In 1769 she took as a partner an experienced craftsman named George Cowles, who had been Augustine’s first apprentice. George was originally from Gloucester and returned there after his retirement. It was during the Courtauld-Cowles period of the family’s trade that the Rococo style of her husband gave way to the so-called neo-classical style introduced by Robert Adam around 1770. Later in life Louisa may have lived in a cottage close to Joseph Priestley’s house off Clapton Square, Hackney. She was originally buried in the crypt of Christ Church, Spitalfields, alongside members of her own family of silkweavers.

In 1771, Louisa’s son, Samuel Jr, joined her in the trade. Despite having a common maker’s mark with his mother registered, the indications are that he never truly desired to follow his family’s tradition. Although only a few examples of their work survive, those that do strongly suggest that important silver was produced for their shop and sold to a fashionable clientele. Samuel emigrated to the United States in the mid-1770s where he became a merchant. He died at Wilmington, Delaware, in 1821, aged 69. After Samuel left England, Louisa sold the business in Cornhill to a rival silversmith called John Henderson. Therefore, after nearly a century, the name of the Courtaulds disappeared from the list of active silversmiths in London. However, this was by no means the end of the Courtauld name among prominent business people in England.

The Later History of the Courtaulds

In 1775 George Courtauld, a great-grandson of Augustine, was apprenticed to a Spitalfields silk weaver. By 1810 his son, Samuel Courtauld III, was managing his own silk mill in Braintree, Essex, later installing power looms as his business expanded. In 1849, Samuel III recruited a fellow Unitarian, Peter Alfred Taylor, as his business partner. By 1850, they were employeding over 2000 people across three silk mills. From 1861, a boom in the wearing of black crepe for mourning (following the example of Queen Victoria after the death of Albert, the Prince Consort) allowed Courtauld’s to become the biggest manufacturer of mourning crepe in England, and made the family extremely wealthy. The business continued well into the 20th century. The family also became known as considerable patrons of the arts, and a later Samuel Courtauld helped to set up the Courtauld Institute of Art in 1932 as both a gallery for the founders’ collections, and also as an institute for the study of the history of art. Originally at Portman Square, the Institute continues today at Somerset House. Some notable examples of the 18th century silver of the family are prominently displayed in the Institute’s galleries.

This blog is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. It was made by New Unity and David McCulloch. Find out more: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/.