Short answers, pulled from the story.
Sir Clement Clerke was an English entrepreneur and 1st Baronet who died in 1693. He is credited with the practical application of the reverberatory furnace, also called the cupola, to smelting lead and copper and to remelting pig iron for foundry purposes.
The reverberatory furnace, also known as a cupola, was the furnace type Sir Clement Clerke applied to lead and copper smelting and to iron foundry work. In iron foundry settings it was called an air furnace, and it remained the ordinary method for remelting pig iron until the foundry cupola, a different kind of small blast furnace, arrived in the late 18th century.
Sir Clement's iron smelting partnership, begun in the early 1670s with a furnace at Dudley, collapsed by 1676. He borrowed money against his share of the partnership in breach of its terms, was arrested for debt by Dannett Foorth, and was bailed out by George Skippe before the ironworks were sold and the partnership dissolved.
Sir Clement Clerke built his lead smelting cupolas at Bristol. The capital was provided in 1678 by Lord Grandison and Robert Thorowgood, a merchant from King's Lynn, and the works used reverberatory furnaces to smelt lead with pitcoal.
Sir Clement Clerke and his son Talbot built a reverberatory furnace at Putney in 1687 and obtained a patent for copper smelting in 1688. This led to a copper smelting works on the banks of the River Wye at Redbrook, from which the English Copper Company was formally chartered.
Sir Clement Clerke died in debt in 1693. His baronetcy and Launde Abbey, the Leicestershire estate, both passed to his son Talbot. Launde Abbey survived the creditors because it was protected by the terms of Sir Clement's marriage settlement.