Clement Clerke

• 1. Introduction

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  Sir Clement Clerke died in debt in 1693, owing money to lords, merchants, and moneylenders across England. The source of his troubles was rarely a lack of ambition. He was the third son of George Clerke of Willoughby, Warwickshire, elevated to a baronetcy shortly after the Restoration. His wife Sarah was the daughter and heiress of George Talbot of Rudge in Shropshire. They held an estate at Launde Abbey in Leicestershire, settled on them in 1658, and another at Notgrove in Gloucestershire. His greatest documented achievement was the practical application of the reverberatory furnace to smelting lead and copper, and to remelting pig iron. He did not invent this furnace. He brought it to industrial use at a variety and scale England had not previously seen. The ventures he built, and the ones he watched crumble, changed English industry in ways he never personally profited from. What drove him to take on project after project while losing ground each time? And who inherited the benefit of his restless experimentation?

• 2. Iron, Wood, and Debt

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  In the early 1670s, Sir Clement joined a group of sponsors backing Dud Dudley. They aimed to build a furnace at Dudley to smelt iron with a mixed fuel of wood and coal. Uniquely among furnaces of the era, this one was to be powered not by water but by the strength of men and horses. By 1674, most of the original partners had dropped away. Only Sir Clement and John Finch of Dudley remained.

  Competition between Finch and Philip Foley was damaging to both their ironworks. The two men negotiated a restrictive agreement on where each would buy wood and how broadly they would operate. A few months later, Finch sold all his works to Alderman John Foorth of London and Sir Clement. The new partners looked to the Forest of Dean for wood. They discovered the King's Ironworks there had been sold to Paul Foley for demolition. They had to build their own furnace at Linton in Herefordshire instead.

  Dannett Foorth, John's brother, joined as a partner, and George Skippe of Ledbury came in as well. The new group also bought additional ironworks from Philip Foley. Sir Clement then began borrowing money from moneylenders, using his share of the partnership as security. This violated the terms of the partnership agreement. Dannett Foorth responded by having Sir Clement arrested for debt. George Skippe bailed him out. The ironworks were sold in 1676, and the partnership dissolved.

  While the iron partnership was still active, Andrew Yarranton had persuaded John Foorth and Sir Clement to fund a separate project. They agreed to finance the completion of navigation on the Worcestershire Stour. The river ran near some of their works, which made the project attractive in theory. The ironworks troubles drained the money and attention of everyone involved. After the dissolution, George Skippe took over Foorth's share in the navigation scheme. New contractors came in, among them Robert Yarranton, Andrew's son, paid by instalments as the work progressed. The money ran out. The river was made navigable only between Stourbridge and Kidderminster. By this stage, the manor of Rudge had also been foreclosed by a mortgagee. Sir Clement needed a new backer.

• 3. The Bristol Cupolas

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  Lord Grandison had already tried to develop lead smelting with pitcoal. He had financed Samuel Hutchinson, who held a patent for the process. Hutchinson failed. Grandison then turned to Sir Clement.

  In 1678, Grandison and Robert Thorowgood, a merchant from King's Lynn, provided the capital. Sir Clement and Francis Nicholson, who was financially dependent on Grandison, were to run the works together. Sir Clement went to Bristol and built reverberatory furnaces there, the cupolas designed to smelt lead using pitcoal. When he returned to collect the rest of the promised capital, he found Nicholson had taken it. Nicholson had gone to Derbyshire with the money and lost it there.

  By 1683, a complicated new agreement had handed the running of the business to Sir Clement's son Talbot. Talbot was not quite twenty-one years old, so the business had to be conducted in the name of a trustee. The business itself was profitable. Talbot moved to declare a dividend. Lord Grandison and his fellow financier, Hon. Henry Howard, opposed this. They demanded repayment of money they said Sir Clement owed them. The dispute reached the courts. A man named Gravely Claypoole was appointed by the court to run the works on Grandison's behalf while the litigation continued. In the end, the courts resolved the dispute in Talbot's favour.

  Talbot's trustee and Edward Fitzgerald Villiers, Grandison's son, were named in a parallel venture in white lead. It was not successful. Launde Abbey had to be mortgaged to repay Villiers. Even as that venture failed, Sir Clement and Talbot were already building a copper furnace at Putney.

• 4. Putney, Redbrook, and Vauxhall

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  In 1687, while the lead cupola was still in other hands, Sir Clement and Talbot built a reverberatory furnace at Putney. They smelted copper there. A patent was obtained for this process in 1688. The Putney work led to something more permanent: a copper smelting works on the banks of the River Wye at Redbrook. From this came the chartering of the English Copper Company.

  Sir Clement directed a second construction project at a location the records call 'Fox Hall,' almost certainly the place later known as Vauxhall. It was built to remelt and cast old iron using sea coal. This was the first reverberatory furnace built specifically for iron foundry purposes. In foundry use, this type was known as an 'air furnace.' The works seems to have formed the basis for the Company for Making Iron with Pitcoal. It may also have been intended to exploit a patent granted to Thomas Addison in 1692. The company ran its foundry for several years. Thomas Fox, the brother of Shadrach Fox of Coalbrookdale, served as its founder.

  The lead works near Bristol also received a new corporate structure. The Company for Smelting down Lead with Pitcoal was chartered to run it. The arrangement was not successful. The works reverted to Talbot, by then Sir Talbot, in 1695. The company itself eventually passed to different owners and became known as the London Lead Company.

• 5. The Furnace's Long Shadow

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  Until the late 18th century, the air furnace remained the ordinary method for remelting pig iron for foundry casting. The foundry cupola, a different kind of small blast furnace, eventually displaced it.

  Robert Lyddall extended the reverberatory furnace's reach further, applying it to tin smelting. Copper and lead had relied on the same cupola design for years after Sir Clement's era ended.

  Where Sir Clement obtained his metallurgical knowledge is not on record. It is possible that Dud Dudley, the ironmaster he had backed in the early 1670s, served as his teacher. An enterprise associated with Dud Dudley at a location called Okham Slade in Clifton, Bristol, appears to foreshadow Sir Clement's lead smelting work.

  Sir Clement apparently guided all these developments without personally profiting from most of them. His sons were another matter. The baronetcy passed to Talbot after Sir Clement's death. Launde Abbey passed to Talbot as well. The estate survived the creditors because it was protected by the terms of Sir Clement's marriage settlement. The precise site of Okham Slade in Clifton, Bristol, has never been established. There, Dud Dudley's enterprise appears to have foreshadowed what Sir Clement later achieved with lead.