Before There Were Banks (Credit Provision 1585-1730)

Provision of credit in the community

The importance of scriveners as community bankers in London during the second half of the 17th century has been noted, as has their role as providers of funds elsewhere. Nor has the function of the goldsmith escaped attention. Lowestoft, being a town of modest size, had few named scriveners among its inhabitants (no more than six or seven have been identified between 1560 and 1730) and most of them had other occupations. George Rugge (writer of six surviving wills written between 1590 and 1603), kept a shop of some kind at the top of Lion Score (now Crown Score), on its southern side – the plot now numbered as Nos. 51 & 51A High Street. Matthew Fulwood wrote eleven surviving wills during the second and third decades of the 17th century, but also owned a warehouse of some kind to the rear of an earlier house which once stood on the plot of present-day No. 45.

Thomas Fulwood (merchant?), his son, lived next door for a lengthy period of time at what is now Nos. 43 & 44 High Street during the mid-17th century and drew up five surviving wills between 1651 and 1659. His parish register burial entry of 10 April 1683 describes him as an “antient man”. Thomas Tye, who wrote thirty-one surviving wills between 1661 and 1680, functioned as a schoolmaster and seems to have been resident during his later years on the north side of Blue Anchor Lane (now Duke’s Head Street),close to where it met the High Street. And John Evans, an incomer of the late 17th and early 18th centuries ran a writing-school (location not known) and acted as a part-time town clerk. He also wrote a total of thirty-one surviving wills altogether, twenty between 1685 and 1699 and eleven between 1700 and 1705 – his burial entry in the parish registers being dated 3 January 1706 (1705, by old calendar reckoning).

None of them, as far as can be ascertained, was involved in money-lending. Neither was the town’s only goldsmith ever recorded. Wyllyam Rogers is referred to as having this occupation in his burial registration of 17 April 1595, but his inventory shows no evidence of such activity. He was mainly involved in fishing and fish-curing and he may have had a taste for alcohol, his cellar containing quantities of muscady, sack (sherry), white wine and London beer. The volume of liquor does not appear sufficient to suggest a commercial enterprise, nor do the contents of the rooms in the house suggest a drinking-establishment of some kind.

The main lenders of money in town in terms of numbers, on the evidence of both wills and inventories, were tradesmen and craftsmen of one kind or another (25.8% of documents), mariners and fishermen (21.8%), merchants (18.8%) and widows (15.8%). The function of widows as providers of funds for other people has been variously expounded upon. However, their importance in Lowestoft was perhaps not as important as has been noted in rural communities, the urban and maritime nature of the town creating a different social and economic structure and making it possible for a greater range of people to provide credit. Nesta Evans’s work on the South Elmham area of Suffolk (1978) shows widows constituting 23.8% of the people who loaned money. Yeomen made up 38%, whereas in Lowestoft they formed only 6% – a striking contrast between a rural economy and an urban/maritime one.Having said that, they did increase their money-lending capacity in the town across the whole of the period, having 19.7% of their number involved in the activity between 1700 and 1730.

Analysis of the documents shows periodic fluctuations in the importance of main lending groups. Mariners and fishermen, for instance, became influential during the second half of the 17th century and thereafter, reflecting the increase in maritime prosperity after the town became a port in 1679. An apparent lull in merchant activity between 1600 and 1650 was probably as much to do with inconsistencies in the documents as to the town’s economic decline at the time. And the decrease in the contribution of tradesmen and craftsmen during the second half of the 17th century was the resultof not being particularly well represented in the surviving documents, especially inventories. 

The provision of credit during the late Tudor period has been referred to as “bye-employment”. In the sense that people involved in the activity were, in some cases, putting out surplus funds to work to their advantage, the term may not be inappropriate – but it probably fails to accommodate the reality behind the granting of trade credit. The latter practice was almost certainly much more a case of simple expediency in retaining the custom of clients who could not always pay cash for goods or services received and who might, in some cases, never be able to settle their debts. In a major study of 4,650 probate inventories relating to communities in Norfolk and the East Midlands, for the period 1650-1720, it was found that of the overall total value of the assets listed (£295,000) 13% consisted of trade credit and money on loan. The Lowestoft sample of documents is much smaller and three of the ninety-five complete inventories have to be omitted from the reckoning because two of them have relevant information which cannot be read and the third shows so much money out on loan that it would distort the calculations if it were to be included.

The two imperfect documents are those of Robert Knight, gentleman (? May 1691) and Simon Rivett, mariner (? January 1693). The one relating to Admiral Riches [Richard] Utber (9 December 1669) shows £3,400 out on loan (the total value of the inventory being £4337 3s. 0d.). Utber had retired from naval service and returned to his home town, and it is likely that a substantial proportion of his wealth derived from the prize-money awarded for capturing enemy vessels at sea and bringing them back to a home-port.

The ninety-two documents thus remaining add up to a total value of £15,470 1s 4d, of which £2,948 0s 11d constituted credit of some kind (19.1%). This, of course, covers the period 1560-1730, but a division into two sub-periods can easily be arranged for comparison with other data. The earliest complete surviving Lowestoft inventory dates from 1585, and the thirty-one documents which are extant from that year until 1649 produce a total value of£2,750 15s 2d, of which £595 15s 8d took the form of credit (21.7%). Between 1650 and 1730, a total of sixty-one inventories produces a value of £12,719 6s 2d, of which £2,352 2s 1d was credit of some kind (18.5%). This is more than 5% above the figure cited for Norfolk and the East Midlands during the same period.

The range of the various individual sums of money loaned by Lowestoft people between 1585 and 1730 stretches from 10s to £1,347 15s 9d. The mean amount stands at £68 6s 4½d. and the median at £17 10s 0d – the latter figure showing that overall weighting tended towards smaller sums rather than larger ones. If the period 1585-1649 is considered, individual loans ranged from 10s to £160 16s 6d, with a mean value of £34 9s 4½d and a median one of £7 6s 8d This contrasts with part of rural High Suffolk (South Elmham), where the amount of money on loan for roughly the same period varied between £1 10s 0d and £229 10s 0d, with a mean value of £52 6s. 8d. and a median amount of £32 15s 0d. In Lowestoft, between 1650 and 1730, the individual sums granted ranged from 10s to £1,347 15. 9d, with mean and median amounts of £92 5s 11d and £22 2s 7d respectively.

Apart from the solely statistical matter of the amount(s) of money on loan, the probate 

inventories are also able to reveal what this credit represented as a percentage of the assets belonging to certain social and occupational groups. And, more importantly, the documents can also show what it represented in terms of the proportion of personal wealth committed on the part of those people who actually made the loans.The four main money-lending groups, as identified earlier, were tradesmen and craftsmen, mariners and fishermen, merchants and widows. Table 1 shows the percentage of assets committed to loans both for the occupation groups and also for their members who made funds available. A scrutiny of the second and fourth columns shows that two of the groups, mariners/fishermen and widows, had fewer of their overall group number making credit available than the other two categories, but that those who were involved committed substantial resources. One feature of credit provision by Lowestoft people is the fact that some of the borrowers lived a considerable distance from the town. Among the places named are Norwich, Southwold and Ipswich. Sometimes, family ties are discernible; on other occasions, business interests were probably the link.

Table 1.Credit as a percentage of personal assets

Apart from the practice of lending money by bill or bond, or by extending trade-credit, use of the mortgage secured by real estate was another important method of providing finance. According to the Reverend John Tanner’s court baron extracts – Suffolk Archives (Ipswich), 454/2 – 248 mortgages were arranged on the copyhold properties in town between 1611 and 1725. Taking up a mortgage was technically a surrender of property into the hands of the mortgagee and the transaction had to be recorded in the court baron minute books. Redemption and forfeiture were also duly noted. There was a noticeable increase in such activity after 1650, which may partly reflect the development of the mortgage market which was taking place nationally. However, another factor to be considered (and one which has already been referred to) is the growth of Lowestoft’s maritime prosperity towards the end of the 17th century, with increased business activity creating the need for some people to raise capital. Altogether, sixty-four mortgages were negotiated in the town between 1611 and 1649 – an average of 1.7 a year. From 1650 to 1725, the number was 184 – an average of 2.4 per annum. And these transactions are solely connected with copyhold tenure. There is no way of ascertaining mortgages which were almost certainly arranged on freehold lands and tenements (such transactions not having to be entered in the court baron records), which means that practically all of the farmland and about 15-20% of the housing stock cannot be analysed. 

As far as customary property is concerned, out of the 248 mortgages arranged between 1611 and 1725, 174 relate to dwelling-houses (70.2%), fifty-six to messuages that were both domestic and commercial (22.6%), seventeen to premises that were purely commercial (6.8%) and one to a piece of undeveloped land (0.4%).Those premises which were both domestic and commercial consisted of inns and houses which had some kind of industrial building on the plot (e.g. fish-house, brewery or tannery). Wholly commercial ones consisted almost entirely of fish-houses, with the inclusion of one windmill.

In terms of numbers of individual properties, there were eighty-five dwelling-houses, twenty messuages of a mixed domestic and commercial nature, seven purely industrial buildings and the piece of undeveloped land. If dwelling-houses and mixed plots are added together to produce the number of residential plots which were mortgaged at one time or another, the figure comes to 105 – which represents 32.5% of the 323 houses recorded by John Tanner in his listing. The distribution of these houses was a fairly even one, with sixty being situated on the High Street and forty-five in the side-street area to the west. If each one of these figures is taken as a proportion of the total number of houses present in its own particular area (163 and 160 respectively), it can be seen that 36.8% of houses on the High Street were mortgaged at one time or another and 28% in the side-street area. The difference was probably caused by the heavier concentration of merchants and tradespeople in the High Street, with both groupings using their real estate, as occasion demanded, to raise capital.

The relative value of property in the two areas is shown in the amounts of money raised. As might be expected, the larger messuages in the High Street were mortgaged for greater sums of money than the ones in the side-streets. This not only reflects the difference in size and quality of the holdings; it also probably suggests the differing levels of need for cash on the part of the people who lived in each sector of the town: the merchant with his mixed business interests would have required greater sums of money than the fishermen with a part-share in a boat or a carpenter with his own small yard or workshop. The amount of money raised on a property should not be regarded as a valuation. It probably reflects the borrower’s needs at the time the loan was made. Obviously, any messuage had a market value, beyond which the lender would have been reluctant to make an advance, but the varying sums raised on certain plots suggest that full market value was seldom reached in each transaction. Not all mortgage transactions specify the amounts of cash involved, but the information which is available produces some interesting data.

A total of seventy-seven transactions on thirty-nine High Street properties produced the sum of 6,080 9s 0d, which is an average of about £79 per mortgage deal and £156 per premises. In the side-street area, forty-eight transactions on twenty-nine properties generated a total of £1,780 13s 10d, which is an average of about £37 per mortgage and £61 per premises. These latter figures are inflated by five deals which took place on two extensive messuages of a mixed residential and commercial nature (a brewery complex and a slaughter-house/butchery), which were not typical of the area. If they are removed from the calculations, the sum of £1,109 13s 10d produced by forty-three transactions on twenty-seven properties averages out at about £26 per mortgage and £41 per premises. 

Foreclosures and forfeitures were not uncommon, and of the 248 transactions recorded no less than fifty-one (20.6%) resulted in the mortgagor losing his or her property – which is over twice the rate recorded in the South Elmham district of Suffolk, albeit for a different time-span (of the seventy-eight mortgages recorded in the court rolls here, for the period 1550-1640, seven ended in foreclosure: 9%).The defaulters’ holdings in Lowestoft were fairly evenly distributed over the built-up area, with three commercial premises below the cliff at the northern end of town (six transactions), with twenty-three messuages on the High Street (twenty-six transactions) and with sixteen properties in the side-street area (nineteen transactions). The three premises at the northern end of town consisted of two lots of fish-houses and a tannery with adjacent dwelling-house. The High Street properties comprised eighteen houses, two inns and three fish-house complexes at the bottom of the cliff. Those in the side-street area consisted of fifteen houses (five of which were subdivided) and one inn. There was also an equitable spread across the occupation groups in the twenty-seven cases where forfeiters are able to be classified: three merchants and a merchant’s widow, six tradesmen, eight craftsmen, seven mariners and a mariner’s widow, and one gentleman.

There are two cases of men who forfeited twice, on different properties. The first was John Aldred (grocer), in 1689 and 1690, on houses located on the east and west sides of the High Street – the former being located on the plot of what is now the later dwelling No. 2. Aldred took over an existing mortgage on the premises in June 1688 (sum of money unknown), but was unable to meet repayment the following May and therefore forfeited it. The west-side dwelling was his own, located on the corner of High Street with Tyler’s Lane (later, CompassStreet) and standing next to the Town Chamber. He mortgaged this for £262 with John Spinke of Linstead (near Halesworth) in July 1783 and defaulted seven years later in November 1690. He remained in occupancy of the property, however, with Thomas Mighell (merchant) repaying what was owed and Aldred then finding sufficient funds to reimburse him. He disposed of the messuage nine years later in November 1699. What is described as a “candle house” accompanied the dwelling and Aldred (as a grocer) would have traded in a variety of different domestic goods and not solely foodstuffs. On 9 January 1688, Elizabeth Clarke (mariner’s wife) was convicted at the Beccles Quarter Sessions of stealing one pound’s weight of candle from Aldred – her punishment being to undergo a public whipping in Lowestoft’s market place.

John Aldred was one of Lowestoft’s leading nonconformist religious Dissenters (later to become known as Congregationalists). Before they erected their own chapel in town in 1695 (once adjoining what is now No. 127 High Street), they had conducted their acts of worship at premises licensed for these occupying the site of No. 67 High Street – home of the Rising family (merchants). As well as these local denominational affiliations, Aldred was also connected with the Walpole Chapel, near Halesworth, acting as one of its trustees. Which probably explains why, and how, John Spinke became mortgagee of the first property referred to in the paragraph above – he almost certainly being a fellow member of the Walpole congregation.

The second double-defaulter was John Daynes (brewer), in 1687 and 1701, on a pair of houses at the western extremity of the Blue Anchor Lane (Duke’s Head Street), where it met Back Lane – later, Chapel Street, and now Jubilee Way. Both dwellings were on the south side of the roadway and had once been part of the neighbouring plot to the east. The two of them were probably acquired by Daynes to rent out, rather than live in himself, with the more westerly of them being bought from John Soans (yeoman) in September 1683 and then mortgaged for an undisclosed sum to Nathaniel Symonds (gentleman) in October 1687. He defaulted on repayment in February 1701 and the property passed from Symonds to Jonathan Belgrave(shoemaker) in February 1705. Daynes’s second acquisition (the more easterly of the two units) came from a family member – his uncle Edward Daynes (brewer) in late February 1699. Three months later, at the end of May, he mortgaged the property to Robert Hullock (yeoman) for a sum of £21 – an arrangement which must have been of comparatively short duration, since forfeiture occurred during February 1701. Hullock’s executors disposed of the house in January 1714 to Thomas Norton (fisherman) and his wife Mary.

The Daynes family had its breweries and inns located on the area of freehold land to the west side of the High Street, north of Swan Lane (Mariners Street). Edward Daynes owned the King’s Arms (later called the Black Boy) on the site of what is now No. 166 High Street, while nephew John had The Dolphin on land now occupied by No. 174. Their origins in Lowestoft can be traced back to 13 March 1614 (1613, by the Julian Calendar) with the baptism of Edward Daynes, son of John and Alice, recorded in the parish registers on that day. Twenty-four years later, on 12 November 1638, John Daynes (his surname spelled as Daines) was buried, his occupation as brewer also featuring in the register entry.

As Table 2 shows, the men and women (bracketed) who mortgaged property to raise cash and those who acted as lenders of money were drawn from the same social and occupation groups, with a predictable concentration in those levels which had the largest numbers of people both requiring funds and able to provide them. Only twenty-four examples can be found of men and women who were both borrowers and lenders, which is about 7% of the total number of people recorded as being involved in such negotiations. In the 248 mortgage deals referred to in these pages, there were 170 people involved as borrowers and 190 as lenders. In the former case (using evidence deriving from both the family reconstitution exercise and from manorial records), 81% were inhabitants of the town, the other 19% outsiders who owned property there. In the latter case, 56% were townspeople, 44% outsiders

Table 2.Mortgagors and mortgagees in Lowestoft, 1611-1725

The places of origin of outsiders who raised money by mortgaging property held in Lowestoft, or who advanced funds to people requiring credit, are often referred to in the court baron records. The available evidence shows that the majority of places mentioned (70% relating to mortgagors and 87% to mortgagees) lay within a ten-mile radius of the town. Thus, most of the financial transactions which took place may be regarded as confirmation of the fact that borrowing by mortgage tended to be localised. Out of the sixty-four people who lent money and whose place of residence is known, twenty-one lived in Great Yarmouth and nine in Beccles. Thus, the two nearest market towns to Lowestoft (especially the former) obviously had some degree of importance as sources of credit – and it is likely that Lowestoft acted in a similar capacity to both those places. The inference to be drawn from a scrutiny of the various mortgage arrangements which took place is that trading and business contacts were probably an important factor in forging the relationship between both parties. In a lesser number of instances (sixteen in all), family ties are also detectable. In all cases, with credit-worthiness having a moral and social significance, as well as an obvious financial one, the factor of trust was of key importance in establishing and maintaining networks of loan-provision.

There is no evidence available to reveal the amount of interest charged, so it is not possible to state exactly what this was. However, known national rates can probably be taken as giving some indication. Late Medieval rates, towards the end of the 15th century, were often as high as 12-15% (and even more in certain cases), but a 1545 parliamentary Act Against Usurie [sic] fixed the upper limit at 10% – a figure ratified by a further act of limitation in 1571. In 1624, the rate was brought down to 8% – dropping back to about 4-5% by c. 1680 as a result of increasing borrowing nationally, rather than something fixed by Act of Parliament. In 1694, on the formation of the Bank of England, it rose briefly to 6% – before dropping back to about 4-5%. At which level it remained throughout the whole of the 18th century. 

Although the rate of interest charged on Lowestoft mortgages cannot be stated, using the transactions themselves, it is possible to gain some idea of the various periods of loan. Over half of the 248 mortgage transactions recorded have a termination date. Eighty-two of these are the result of repayment of the debt, fifty-one the result of forfeiture. Repayment of money borrowed may well have been made before settlement was due, but forfeiture almost certainly indicates the end of the agreed period of borrowing. The shortest time-span discernible is one year and nine months, the longest twenty-eight years and two months, with a median period of six years and nine months. Termination by repayment was of lesser duration, with four months as the shortest identifiable period, twenty-one years as the longest, and three years and one month as the median. This may suggest that, wherever possible, people tried to repay what they had borrowed before settlement was due and that their need of funds was relatively short-term. In 129 cases, the amount borrowed is known. The smallest sum was only £2, the largest £385, and the median amount £44 16s 0d. Most of the loans negotiated (one hundred in all) were £100 and below, and half of those were £30 and under.

Unfortunately, it is not possible to deduce what prompted people to mortgage their real estate. But study of the records shows that, while certain properties were mortgaged only once, other messuages show a regular sequence of transactions. A selection of the latter can be cited for the purposes of example. The first concerns Isabella Monument, her husband Christopher (fisherman) and their two teenage children (also named Christopher and Isabella). They all lived in a small cottage at the northern end of the High Street, on the east side. The wife owned the dwelling herself, having been given it by her mother, Ann Stanford, after the decease of the latter’s husband in July 1708. The cottage stood somewhere between the present-day Nos. 4 and 27, High Street – an area which sustained serious bomb damage during World War II and underwent clearance during the post-war period. It was not re-developed and is kept as open green. The Monument dwelling was probably located to the rear of a house occupying the plot which eventually became No. 6 High Street.

A month after acceding to the property, Isabella Monument mortgaged it for £8 8s 0d to Jonathan Belgrave (shoemaker) – a debt that was cleared in December. In October the following year, she re-mortgaged the property to Hannah Smithson (woollen draper’s widow) for £12 12s 0d, and then for a further £16 16s 0d to James Postle (cordwainer) in December 1711. Both of these loans were repaid, but the dates were not recorded, and there is nothing to suggest a reason for the money being borrowed. It may have been to help her husband finance fishing ventures of some kind. Whatever the case, no further money was raised on the house and she lived in it until early in 1724, when she sold it to William Manthorpe (cordwainer) and his wife. By then, she had been a widow for eight years, her husband having been drowned at sea in the autumn herring season of 1716. She herself lived only three months after disposing of the property, dying in May 1724.

Ann Harvey, widow of Thomas Harvey (draper) inherited her husband’s house and shopin April 1663, having been left it by the terms of his will made ten years earlier. The property, located on the eastern side of the High Street (the site of the present-day Nos. 47 & 48), had been bequeathed to her for life and was then to pass to the oldest son, Thomas. Between October 1668 and January 1673, she took out four mortgages on the property, to a total value of £232 11s 6d, the mortgagee being Joshua Smithson (woollen draper). It is possible that she was continuing to run her husband’s business and that Smithson had an interest in it. Whatever the case, all four mortgages were repaid (again, no dates are given) and she held the property until her death in November 1673. At this point, her youngest child, William (cooper), acceded to it – the oldest son, Thomas, having died some time before. Between January 1674 and January 1691, he mortgaged the property four times, to a total value of £201. Two of his mortgagees were Lowestoft men, Samuel Pacy (merchant) and John Stroud (mariner), and the other two were from out of town: Richard Townsend from Beccles (cordwainer) and John Phipps from Great Yarmouth (barber). All the money was repaid and he remained in possession of the property until his death in March 1724. The following year, his heirs disposed of it to John and Susan Slop, a mariner and his wife.

Simon Barnard (shipwright), who had moved from Lowestoft to Southwold during the 1640s, retained ownership of the large messuage on the east side of the High Street at its southern end – what is now known as Old Nelson Street – which had been in his family’s possession for at least four generations (the site, and the plots on either side, are now occupied by a former divisional police headquarters and magistrates court). Between July 1660 and at some point during 1669, he mortgaged the property six times, raising a total of £420. The loans were each repaid within a year or two, but the family’s ownership of the messuage came to an end in April 1670, when Barnard sold it to a cousin, Simon Peterson (mariner). Four of the transactions (totalling £208) were negotiated with Mary Barrett, a spinster from Carlton Colville, the other two (totalling £212) with George England of Great Yarmouth (merchant). Barnard’s connection with Lowestoft seems to have terminated with the sale of the property, and it is possible that he needed the money for new ventures in Southwold or elsewhere (he was sixty years old in 1670). He may have been the forbear of the Barnard family of Ipswich, and later of Harwich and Deptford, largest independent shipbuilders in England during the 18th century, but no positive link has yet been established. 

Early in 1682, William Wells (victualler) bought one of Lowestoft’s premier inns, The Crown (now occupied by a later building, No.150 High Street), from Roger Castle (gentleman) of Raveningham in Norfolk. Wells’s origins are not known, but in November 1676 he had married Deborah Leake, a merchant’s widow and the daughter of James Wilde, one of the town’s wealthiest and most influential men. Wells arranged a mortgage for £280 with his father-in-law upon purchasing the premises and the loan was repaid after six years (Wilde having died in February 1684), the redemption duly being recorded in the court books in February 1688. The following month, Wells borrowed £242 from George Spilman of Great Yarmouth (merchant), and this time the loan was repaid within twelve years – its clearance being recorded in January 1700. At the very same time, he took up another mortgage, for £210, with another Yarmouth merchant, Thomas Cooper. The date of repayment is not recorded, but the debt must have been honoured because the property passed unencumbered, on Wells’s decease, to his daughter Ann, wife of Gregory Clarke, Rector of Blundeston. She was admitted to the property in September 1710 and had it made out in the joint names of her husband and herself. 

It is likely that the £732 raised on The Crown was part of Wells’s means of building up a considerable holding for himself in Lowestoft. He had begun his ventures by purchasing The King’s Head (east side of the High Street, on the plot of what is now No. 53 High Street) in September 1681 – an acquisition that was followed up, as seen, by The Crown itself, just a few months later. In September 1685 he bought a malt-house immediately south of Swan Score (Mariners Score), to the rear of The Swan inn (now occupied by a later building, Nos. 41-42 High Street), thereby ensuring a supply of the raw material needed for brewing beer at both of his inns – and no more than a hundred yards from either of them. Finally, in September 1700, he acquired The Cock, a small hostelry at the southern extremity of the High Street (Old Nelson Street) – occupying a plot now taken up by a pay-and-display car park. None of these other properties was mortgaged at any stage and all four messuages passed to his daughter Ann when he died, his wife having predeceased him.

Henry Butcher (fisherman) and his wife, Mary, lived in a small house on the south side of Swan Lane (Mariners Street), on the western side of the junction with West Lane (later named White Horse Street) – the plot now lying under Jubilee Way, the northern section of Lowestoft’s inner relief road. The couple had inherited it in August 1664 (having then been married for about ten years) from Mary’s mother, Jane Webster. At varying times, between the time of inheritance and their deaths in the 1680s, the property was mortgaged no less than eight times, for a total value of £51 4s 10d. The first five transactions, worth £28 1s 4d, were arranged with John George (bricklayer); the last three, amounting to £23 3s 6d, were negotiated with Joshua Smithson (woollen draper), who was referred to four paragraphs above. All of the loans (except the last one) were repaid, though no dates are given, and there is no suggestion as to why such a regular sequence of small sums of money was required (the smallest was £2 12s 0d and the largest, £8 8s 6d). 

Given their irregularity, which even included pence in the reckoning, it is possible that Henry Butcher was using the house as security for financing fishing ventures and that the separate mortgages represented amounts of money needed to purchase nets and other items of gear. He died in September 1681, but the date of his wife’s decease is not recorded. Their son William (occupation not known) acceded to the property under the terms of his sister Jane’s will (October 1694) – but he was not able to pay off the final mortgage (for £6 16s 0d), thereby conceding the property to Joseph Smithson (merchant), the mortgagee’s son, in March 1719. This last mortgage may have been the longest of all those arranged in Lowestoft during the 17th century, but without a starting-date no proof is available to confirm this. Smithson disposed of the property immediately to Simon Mewse (butcher), with his accession and release both recorded on 5 March 1719.

CREDIT: David Butcher