MRP: Dame Grace Ford

Dame Grace Ford

Editorial history

21/02/12, CSG: Created page

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Abstract & context

Dame Grace Ford made her will on XXXX. She described herself as "of Rowhampton, Surrey."

She was the widow of Sir Richard Ford (b. ?1613, d. 1678).

Richard Ford was knighted following the Restoration. Secondary sources state that his residence in Seething Lane burned down (?1672) and that he moved to new premises in ?Tower Hill. He acquired a country residence near Deptford in 16XX, and is buried in the parish church of Bexley, west of Deptford.

Historians have focused on his naval contracting and political activities post 1660, with little if any comment on his commercial activities pre-1660.

Although he died intestate, a post-mortem inventory survives, which has not been hitherto analysed by historians.

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To do

(1) Check the transcription

(2) Look at the ODNB profile of Sir Richard Ford

(3) Which historians have recently written about Ford, other than Steven Pincus?

(4) What genealogical work has been done on Ford's family, and various Ford families in Devon, especially Exeter?

(5) Do Ford families appear in visitations of Devon, Dorset etc.?

(6) If Sir Richard Ford was from Exeter, was he closely linked to Sir James Modyford, and other Modyfords, who were born in Exeter, and whose father was a former mayor of Exeter?

(7) Look at Thomson (1994: 180) to understand the Ford/Proby part share of a ship, pre-1660

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Notes

Sir Richard Ford, Woodhead, 1966

"FORD, Richard

Co Co Tower, 1660 (1) Ald Farringdon Within, 14 Feb 1660/1-27 Feb 1667/8 removed to Bread Street-29 Aug 1671, removed to Lime Street-31 Aug 1678 (d) (2) Tower Hill, 1677, Bexley, Kent (3) MER, fr, 1654, by R (£50), M, 1661, 1674 (4) b 1613, d 31 Aug 1678, bur Bexley, Kent (5) f ? Thomas Ford of Exeter, Devon (6), mar Grace (7) Merchant, in partnership with s-in-law Peter Proby, and Sir William Ryder Supplier of hemp to Navy Comm EIC, 1658-63, 1664-5 Assis RAC, 1672 (8) EIC stock, RAC stock £500 of original stock, 1671 (9) Kt, 26 May 1660 Sheriff, 1663, LM, 1670 (10) MP Exeter, 1660 (did not sit), Southampton, 1661-78 (10) FRS, 1673 Admitted Grays Inn, 1669/70 (11) Educ Exeter College, Oxon, matric, 1631, MA (12) Sometime Col Auxiliary Regt, Commsr for Lieut, 1660 1677

(1) CRO list gives no ward Tower from position in list in Journ 41, f 235 (2) Beaven, I, pp 149, 153, 176 (3) Directory, 1677, Boyd 15732 (4) Beaven, II, p 92, MER, Fr List, p 182 (5) Boyd 15732 (6) Boyd 15732, Strype, IV, p 148 "of the West Country" Boyd 15732 also suggests f may have been of Hadleigh, Suff (7) Her will PCC 117 Cottle, 1682 (8) Directory, 1677, Cal Min EIC, 1664-7, passim, will of Dame Grace Ford, Cal S P Dom, 1661-2, p 429, Pepys, Diary, passim, Beaven, II, p 92, K G Davies, Index (9) Cal Min EIC, 1660-3, 1664-7, 1668-70, PRO, T 70/100 (10) Beaven, II, p 92 (11) Beaven, II, p 92, Boyd 15732 (12) J Foster, Alumni Oxomensis, 1500-1714, p 515"

- It is unclear from PRO wills online which of the many Ford wills from Devon, 1610-1651, might be related to Sir Richard Ford, whose father, J.R. Woodhead suggests, may have been Thomas Ford of Exeter, Devon

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Sir Richard Ford, Helms/Watson, 1982

"Constituency: Southampton
Dates: 1661 - 31 Aug. 1678

Family and Education

b. c.1614, 2nd s. of Thomas Ford, merchant, of Exeter, Devon by ?Elizabeth, da. of William Frank of Ottery St. Mary, Devon. educ. Exeter, Oxf. 1631. m. Grace, 2s. 3da. Kntd. 16 May 1660.1
Offices Held

Freeman, Exeter 1635, Southampton 1661; capt. blue regt. London militia 1659, col. white auxil. regt. 1661-6, common councilman 1659-61; commr. for assessment, London Aug. 1660-d., Kent 1673-d.; alderman, London 1661-d., sheriff 1663-4, ld. mayor 1670-1, additional coal-meter c.1661-d., dep. lt. 1662-d.; commr. for corporations, Hants 1662-3, loyal and indigent officers, London, Westminster and Hants 1662; jt. farmer of tin coinage, duchy of Cornw. 1664-7; member, Hon. Artillery Co. 1670, commr. for charitable uses 1675, recusants 1675; pres. St. Bartholomew’s hospital 1675-d.2

Member, Merchant Adventurers’ Co. by 1644, gov. by Nov. 1660-75; member, Mercers’ Co. 1654, master 1661-2, 1674-5; committee, E.I. Co. 1658-63, 1664-5; dep. gov. R. Adventurers into Africa 1663, asst. 1664-71; asst. R. Africa Co. 1672-d.3

Commr. for trade 1656-7, Nov. 1660-8, for Tangier 1662-73, for marine treaty with United Provinces 1674-5.4

FRS 1673-d.
Biography

Ford did not claim kinship with either of the established Devonshire families of that name, nor does his father appear to have belonged to the Exeter patriciate by birth or marriage. His education was presumably intended to fit him for a career in the Church, but he preferred to go into trade. He impressed Samuel Pepys as ‘a very able man of his brains and tongue, and a scholar’, though, like so many merchants, he could not keep a secret. He settled in Rotterdam in 1642, and helped to supply the royalist armies through the western ports. The Earl of Warwick described him as a great ‘malignant’ who sought to embroil Parliament with the United Provinces, and a vote was passed at Westminster to outlaw him. The Royalist Peter Mews, however, later called him ‘a knave in grain ... for when he should have supplied my lord of Ormonde with arms and ammunition, he carried corn to the rebels’. He was allowed to compound on a rather vague particular in 1649 for £129, though the Council of State suspected him of ‘some design of special mischief for Charles Stuart, being a principal man in all their councils’. But he was sufficiently reconciled to the regime to return to England in 1652, to act as supplier to the Protectorate navy and to serve on the committee of trade. As an influential member of the common council and ‘a very loyal, prudent gentleman’, he took a leading part in promoting the Restoration in the City, and on 9 Feb. 1660 the Rump ordered his arrest. At the general election he was involved in a double return at Exeter, which was decided against him. As one of the delegation from the City he was knighted at The Hague, but, despite the Duke of York’s recommendation, he was again unsuccessful at Exeter in 1661, presumably because his association with the great London monopoly companies was distasteful to the provincial trading community. In London, on the other hand, he enjoyed considerable popularity, but was unable to overcome the prejudice against ‘episcopal men’. At Southampton, however, the Duke of York’s letter proved efficacious and he was elected.5

Ford was an active Member of the Cavalier Parliament, being appointed to 195 committees, mostly on trade matters, and acting as teller in seven divisions, but despite Pepys’s commendation he seldom spoke in the House. In the opening session he was appointed to the committees for the security, corporations and uniformity bills. He was the principal representative of the East India Company in their negotiations with the Dutch, and a strong advocate of the war. Early in 1662 he was twice ordered to attend the King with resolutions of the House concerning the packing of wool and the dearth of corn. He was teller against a proposal to suspend until Christmas the Merchant Adventurers’ monopoly of cloth exports to Holland and Germany, and helped to manage a conference on the customs. The King ‘had an inclination to serve Sir Richard’, but it was some time before he received any substantial reward for his services, other than his knighthood and some naval contracts. Pepys, however, caught him out in an attempt to pass off ‘old stuff that had been tarred, covered over with new hemp, which is such a cheat as hath not been heard of’, at any rate by the zealous novice in the Navy Office; but his ‘Holland duck’ was excellent. Ford’s syndicate apparently outbid the customs farmers for the additional duties, and were awarded £8,000 compensation when their tender was rejected. In 1663 he was appointed to the parliamentary committee of inquiry into the effects of the suspension of the Merchant Adventurers’ patent. The King gave him £1,500 to cover his expenses as sheriff of London, without which he could not have undertaken the office. In the spring session of 1664, he was marked as a court dependant, and named to the committees for the conventicles bill and for the bill to relieve the creditors of the Merchant Adventurers, which came to nothing; but when it was revived in the autumn he acted as teller against it on the second reading. Later in the same session he took the chair in committees to consider a petition from naval suppliers and to regulate vintners’ measures. He formed a syndicate which received a grant of the crown’s right of ‘coinage’ on all tin mined in England and Wales; although his proposal to issue tin farthings was disallowed, the Treasury would not accept his contention that he had been a loser by the contract. As the leading merchant in the Africa company he was chiefly responsible for the second Dutch war. At Oxford he was teller against the second reading of the bill to prohibit the import of Irish cattle, and in the next session he was among those ordered to prepare reasons for a conference on the subject.6

Apart from serving on the committee for the bill to establish a public accounts commission, Ford took no part in the measures against Clarendon. He probably introduced the bill for reducing the parishes of Southampton from five to two in March 1668, since his name stands first in the list of the committee. He was also appointed to the committee for the conventicles bill, and acted as teller for the bill to reduce rates of interest. Sir Thomas Osborne originally included him among the dependants of the Duke of York in 1669, but transferred him, with (Sir) William Coventry, to the list of those Members who might be ‘engaged’ for the Court. In 1670 Ford served on the committees to enable a deanery to be built for St. Paul’s and to prevent illegal imprisonment, and was among those ordered to attend a conference on the shipping bill. At the same time he was engaged, on commission, to manage negotiations with Hamburg regarding compensation for six English ships destroyed in the Elbe by the Dutch during the war. But his tender for the customs farm was rejected. On 6 Feb. 1671 he seconded the motion of William Garway for an inquiry into the conduct of the London Jews. It was alleged that in London in 1670-1 ‘the laws against conventicles have been laid asleep, and a moderate lord mayor has let the people do what they list’. On laying down office, Ford was compelled to petition the King ‘for such largesse as may enable him to end the life spent in his service without contempt in the City’. His claim to have kept London ‘tranquil’ is substantiated by a report on the corporation in 1672, which stated that while in office he had

   suspended the execution of the laws against nonconformists, by which he gained the applause of all that party, though they had used all the villainous arts imaginable to keep him out of the government. He is a man of excellent parts, and may do his Majesty excellent service in the City.

His financial troubles cannot have been too severe, for he was able to take a lease from Eton of a country house in Kent, and when his London house was destroyed in the Navy Office fire in January 1673, he transferred his business to premises on Tower Hill.7

In the debate on the Declaration of Indulgence, Ford moved for a committee of inquiry ‘to offer you such an expedient as may be for the good of the nation’. He was among those ordered to bring in a bill for the general naturalization of foreign Protestants, which he opposed as entailing the ‘prostitution’ of corporations. He was on the committee for rebuilding the Navy Office, and his was the first name among those appointed in 1674 to bring in a bill for paving the streets of the City and completing the rebuilding of churches and other public works. He was named on the Paston list. During the summer the Merchant Adventurers voted to replace him as governor by Sir Edward Dering, who described his predecessor as ‘a man of ill reputation’. In the autumn session of 1675 he was roused from his usual silence in the House by John Ernle, who impugned the solvency of the City chamber. He was appointed to inquire into the assault by a Jesuit on a Protestant convert and to hear a petition against the East India Company. His name appears on the working lists as one of those ‘to be remembered’ and was added by Osborne (now Lord Treasurer Danby), though with some hesitation, to the list drawn up by Sir Richard Wiseman at the end of the session. In 1677 he was among the Members ordered to bring in a bill to regulate the collection of hearth-tax, to consider another petition from the creditors of the Merchant Adventurers, and to abolish the penalty of burning for heresy. Lord Shaftesbury ( Sir Anthony Ashley Cooper), who had been his friend over the tin farm, marked him ‘worthy’, but in A Seasonable Argument he was described as ‘the joint contriver of the two Dutch wars, for which he had £10,000, and yet is scarce able to live’, and he was posthumously included in the ‘unanimous club’ of court voters. His last committee in June 1678 was once again on the affairs of the Merchant Adventurers. He died in his sixty-fifth year on 31 Aug. and was buried at Bexley, under a memorial that speaks of his

great talents and even greater integrity (for he knew everything except deceit). [He was] most skilled in several languages and almost every art ... an exile with his prince (as was seemly) and a leader in his return. How many offices he enjoyed cannot be determined, but they were far fewer than he deserved. ... Heaven remained the only reward which he could earn

But his intestacy, and the obscurity into which his family lapsed, suggest that his career, largely devoted to one of the declining sectors of English trade, had brought him less profit than was merited by his ability.8
Ref Volumes: 1660-1690
Authors: M. W. Helms / Paula Watson

Notes

   1. Le Neve’s Knights (Harl. Soc. viii), 49; Exeter Mar. Lic. 16; C6/32/27.
   2. Exeter Freemen (Devon and Cornw. Rec. Soc. extra ser. i), 131; J. S. Davies, Hist. Southampton, 205; Mordaunt Letter Bk. (Cam. Soc. ser. 3, lxix), 150-1; J. R. Woodhead, Rulers of London, 71; Stowe 186, f. 15; CJ, x. 236; Ancient Vellum Bk. ed. Raikes, 98.
   3. CSP Dom. 1644, p. 320; 1660-1, p. 372; 1663-4, p. 310; Woodhead, 71; HMC 11th Rep. III, 55.
   4. CSP Dom. 1655-6, p. 188; 1663-4, p. 660; 1673-5, p. 287; Pepys Diary, 27 Oct. 1662; Cal. Treas. Bks. ii. 280.
   5. Plymouth City Lib. mss, J. Prince, Devon Worthies; Pepys Diary, 17 Mar. 1663, 18 Oct. 1664; CSP Dom. 1644, pp. 190, 312; 1649-50, p. 370; 1657-8, p. 328; 1660-1, p. 538; Cal. Cl. SP, iv. 538; v. 209; HMC Hodgkin, 107, 111; Nicholas Pprs. (Cam. Soc. n.s. xl), 267; SP23/216, ff. 410, 414; HMC Popham, 217, 229; CJ, vii. 837; viii. 55; Adm. 2/1745, ff. 31, 33.
   6. Cal. Ct. Mins. E.I. Co. ed. Sainsbury, vi. 85, 111; Cal. Cl. SP, v. 398, 457; CJ, viii. 340, 358, 399, 418, 577, 591, 611, 617, 660; CSP Dom. 1660-1, p. 331; 1661-2, p. 433; 1663-4, pp. 358, 467; 1668-9, p. 642; 1676-7, p. 258; Cal. Treas. Bks. ii. 280; Camb. Hist. Jnl. xii. 113.
   7. Milward, 209; CJ, ix. 64, 79, 157; CSP Dom. 1670, pp. 446, 457; 1671, pp. 368, 546; 1671-2, p. 541; Cal. Treas. Bks. iii. 690, 691; Dering, 71; Gent. Mag. xxxix. 516; J. Donkin, Hist. Dartford, 334; Bulstrode Pprs. 259.
   8. Grey, ii. 12, 154; iii. 357; Kent AO, U1713/A37; CJ, ix. 250; CSP Dom. 1664-5, p. 495; Le Neve, Mon. Angl. 1650-79, pp. 187-8."

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Bexley, Kent, Hasted (1797)

"A grave stone, before the altar rails, for Sir Richard Ford, lord mayor of London in 1671, whose mural monument is on the south side; he died in 1678, æt, 65; these arms above, two bends vaire, on a canton, an anchor impaling three saltiers."

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Sir Richard Ford, Notes and Queries, XXXX

"Sir Richaed Ford. — In Strvpe's edition of Stow's Survey, vol. ii. p. 148 (edit. 1720), I find an engraving of the arms of Sir Richard Ford, Mercer, Mayor of London. What are the tinctures of this coat, and what crest and motto did Sir Richard bear I should also be glad of any further information respecting the mayor or his family. Cabilfosd.

Cape Town.

[Sir Richard Ford (of the Fords of Hadleigh in Suffolk) was knighted by Charles IL at the Hague in May,1660 ; Sheriff of London, 1668 ; Lord Mayor, 1671, and M.P. for Southampton in the first session of the third parliament of Charles IL ad. 1678. Sir Richard Ford's town residence was in Hart Street, Crutched Friars, where he had our amusing Diarist, Samuel Pepys, for' a neighbour and an acquaintance. "I do find," says Pepys, "Sir Richard Ford a very able man of his brains and tongue, and a scholar." When Pepys started a carriage of his own, he tells us that " This evening (Nov. 25, 1668), to my great content, I got Sir Richard Ford to give me leave to set my coach in his yard." Again, two days after, he says, " All the morning at the [Nary] Office, where, while I was sitting, one comes and tells me that my coach is come. So I was forced to go out, so to Sir Richard Ford's, where I spoke to him, and be very willing to have it brought in, and stand there; and so I ordered it, to my great content, it being mighty pretty, only the horses do not please me, and therefore resolve to have better."

Sir Richard Ford's country residence was at Baodiwins [Baldwins], a manor situated at the south-west corner of Dartford Heath, in Kent He died on August II, 1678, and was buried in Bexley Church, in Kent, when there is a long Latin inscription on his gravestone, and printed in Le Neve's Monumenta AnoUeana, Part IT. p. 187. His arms, as given in Burke's Armory, are, Go. two bends vaire\ on a canton or, an anchor sa. Crest, out of the naval coronet ... a bear's head, sa. muzzled gn.]"

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Richard Ford & Peter Proby trading, pre-1660

Sheila D. Thomson, The book of examinations and depositions before the mayor and justices of Southampton, 1648-1663 (XXXX, 1994)
- p. 180 mentions shipment of wines for proper account of M:r Richard Ford and Peter Proby of London "Marchants & Company adventurers in the said ship"

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Suggested primary sources

TNA

PROB 4/17997 Inventory of Sir Richard Ford, 1678

PROB 11/371 Cottle 111-163 Will of Dame Grace Ford, Widow of London 24 October 1682
PROB 11/371 Cottle 111-163 Sentence of Grace Ford, Widow of Rowhampton London 16 February 1682

PROB 18/13/52 Probate lawsuit Ford and Oveatt v Proby otherwise Ford and others, concerning the deceased Dame Grace Ford, widow of Roehampton, Surrey, relict of Sir Richard Ford kt. Allegation and interrogatory 1681