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Meet the author behind our new blog series, which explores the Rede family and its influence on Walton and Weybridge from the early Tudor period.
My name is Chris Dawson and I have lived in Elmbridge with my family for over thirty years, and have always been interested in history. Unsurprisingly, given the proximity of Hampton Court, my preferred periods are the Tudors and Stuarts, and in my spare time I enjoy looking for interesting stories involving local people in Early Modern Elmbridge, ideally finding connections where they came into contact with famous faces or key events, and whenever possible using eye-witness accounts from letters, diaries, pamphlets, and other primary sources. For these blog posts, I spent time in various archives, including the Goldsmiths’ Company, researched wills, land deeds, court records and state papers, and did a great deal of background reading. Hopefully, this makes the finished articles more engaging and relevant to the local community.
In 1492 — the year that Christopher Columbus set out on his first transatlantic voyage — Bartholomew Rede (also referred to in historic documents as Reed, Read, Reade etc), the newly appointed Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company in the City of London, travelled upriver by barge and disembarked at the wharf at Weybridge Hawe. He was looking for a country residence within easy reach of the capital where he could find respite from the hustle and bustle of his day-to-day responsibilities, and was immediately taken by this particularly attractive section of the Thames, where it meandered through meadows and around two small islands, and was joined by the river Wey. It might have been a stretch of the imagination to call the nearby crumbling farmhouse a ‘manor house’, but he could picture in his mind’s eye a moated mansion, set in acres of fields and forests. As he was shown around the surrounding villages by John Hall, a local landowner but also tailor to wealthy Londoners including himself, Bartholomew Rede saw an opportunity to develop an estate worthy of his status where his family might put down roots.
In the following decade, along with his younger brother John (who was, conveniently, a notary) and a small group of colleagues and friends as investors, he bought up tract after tract of land in Walton, Weybridge, Byfleet, Shepperton and Chertsey as they became available, offering prices that no widow or heir could refuse, amassing almost 2,000 acres, including 124 acres of ‘a messuage called Otlands’ (a messuage being a ‘dwelling place’) and another larger one, almost 500 acres, called ‘Wodehammes.’
Record of receipt for Jewels Sold to King Henry VII in 1488
He was one of the new breed of men who had made their fortunes through their own abilities, not inherited wealth, in his case as a craftsman with a head for business. His origins in the middle of the fifteenth century were in the coastal town of Cromer in Norfolk, the middle son of five boys and one daughter of Roger and Catherine Rede. By 1480, having completed a seven year apprenticeship and presented his ‘masterpiece’, Bartholomew was accepted as a liveryman of The Mystery of Goldsmiths of the City of London (more commonly known as the Goldsmiths’ Company) and opened his own premises in ‘Goldsmiths Row’, one of the side streets off Cheapside not far from the Goldsmiths’ Hall, where he himself would take on apprentices (eighteen over time plus two ‘aliens’ or foreign workers ). A trade in precious metals and stones was always at risk of attracting less legitimate citizens and practices, and the Goldsmiths’ Company’s royal charter sought to counter this by ensuring that all products of gold and silver received a mark of authentication from the Assay Office in the Goldsmiths’ Hall — the ‘hallmark’ — as well as the maker’s mark, and that the sale of silver plate and jewellery was limited to members of the company, and could only take place in regulated premises. This required a body to enforce the rules, and the role of wardens evolved who were permitted to enter any place selling gold and jewellery, in any part of the country, to search for and even destroy items without the hallmark, or with a faked hallmark or of a sub-standard quality, and to issues fines and threaten imprisonment for which they could ask for support from the Mayor or Sheriffs if needed. These wardens were appointed annually by the livery members at a General Assembly in April, with the most senior member of the Goldsmiths’ Company being the Prime Warden, who took office on the 19th of May, which was the feast day of St. Dunstan, the company’s patron saint.
Tudor Goldsmiths
Bartholomew Rede’s skills as a jeweller were sufficient to attract royal interest. In June 1488, he attended King Henry VII at his Manor in Sheen who purchased ‘diverse jewels’ to the value of £106, 13 shillings and four pence (approximately £100,000 today), a receipt for which found its way into the state papers, to be paid by the Treasurer of the Exchequer. These six objects were a mixture of religious and household items, including, in order of value: A tabernacle with an image of our Lady, garnished with a great red gemstone and a large sapphire; a holy water font of gold, garnished with rubies, pearls and a sapphire; a tablet of gold garnished with a red gemstone and pearls; a salt cellar garnished with rubies and pearls; another salt cellar of gold shaped like a columbine flower; and a flower of gold with a lion, garnished with diamonds and two rubies.
After he became Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company, with his increased prestige, his known royal payments for jewellery totalled more than £2,200, equivalent to £2.2 million in today’s currency.
A plan showing the Tower of London, Mint Street and the White Tower
For the majority of his career, Bartholomew Rede was, literally, surrounded by money. The skills necessary to maintain the standards of precious metals led inevitably from the earliest times to a close involvement of senior goldsmiths in the manufacture and quality control of the currency of the realm and Bartholomew first appears in written records in 1482, when he was appointed Warden of the Exchange by Edward IV. The Exchange managed the purchasing of gold and silver bullion to be melted down and used to make coins, issued newly minted coins, and allowed foreign merchants to exchange their money for English currency, and provided foreign coins for those travelling overseas. These transactions were according to rates on a table displayed in the Warden’s office. Then, in February 1483, he was promoted to Master of the Mint, which must have come as a surprise because the incumbent, Sir William Hastings, had held the title, as well as that of Lord Chamberlain, for many years, and would in fact be re-instated three months later. Those three months, however, were to be highly eventful.
The factory, workshops and offices that made up the Royal Mint were located, for reasons of security, inside the walls of the Tower of London, in a tightly controlled area of the Outer Ward known as Mint Street. Making coins — the silver penny, silver groat, gold angel and gold ryal — was a noisy and dangerous process, using furnaces to melt down the bullion, which released noxious fumes, then cutting pieces of metal that were placed between engraved dies, hammered by hand, and hardened again by fire. At Easter, just as Bartholomew was becoming used to this chaotic environment, King Edward IV fell fatally ill and died a few days later on the 9th April 1483. His eldest son became Edward V, and since he was a minor, just twelve years old, the role of Protector was given to Richard, Duke of Gloucester, who decided bring his nephews — the new king and his younger brother, the nine-year-old Prince Richard — to the Tower of London to await the coronation. From his office, Bartholomew Rede would have looked out over Tower Green to the White Tower where the two Princes were lodged. Over the course of the summer, as parliament announced under pressure that they were illegitimate and Richard III was crowned instead, they were seen less and less until eventually they disappeared.
Henry VII Gold Sovereign, 1489
These were turbulent times. Richard III executed Sir William Hastings, who had been re-appointed Master of the Mint in May, for treason and installed his own choice, Sir Robert Brackenbury, who was also Constable of the Tower and therefore notionally in charge of the well-being of the two Princes. Brackenbury was also an unfortunate man, as two years later in 1485 he was obliged to join his sovereign on the battlefield at Bosworth where he was killed by the army of Henry Tudor.
Bartholomew Rede had escaped harm and by the end of 1485 was again made Master of the Mint, a position he was to retain for the rest of his life, albeit jointly as the role was considered too open to corruption for one person. In 1489, Henry VII decided to introduce a new coin — a gold sovereign that was worth 20 shillings (in other words, the first pound coin) but was of such a high value that it was mostly used as a show of wealth — and Bartholomew Rede was assigned to head the commission for its introduction.
Bartholomew Rede was a rich man who had access to money and was comfortable with financial matters. Like other goldsmiths, in an era before banks, he was much sought after for a variety of services that included storage of gold, for which he issued a receipt that was in effect a type of paper money, and money-lending for which he made a charge. His clients were not only other rich merchants and nobles, but also the king himself. As a result, his network of illustrious connections across London and beyond grew, and he was sought out by others looking for introductions to court, so he began to consider how to make the most of his position.
The path from Master of the Mint to Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company to Lord Mayor of London was not an uncommon trajectory for a talented individual, and Bartholomew Rede had been fortunate to have been apprenticed to Sir Hugh Bryce who had done just that, and thus provided a blueprint. The first step was to be elected as one of the two Sheriffs of London by representatives of the Livery companies, which was a requirement for any future mayor in order to prove his judgement and character, and this Bartholomew achieved in 1497. The City of London was governed by the Court of Aldermen, who each represented a ward, and the next year he was appointed Alderman for Aldersgate, in which Goldsmith’s Hall was located. In preparation for the promotion to Mayor that would surely follow, he acquired the lease of Crosby Place in Bishopsgate in January 1501, which through the accumulation of adjacent properties had become one of the largest private houses in the City of London. It is likely that he knew the place well, since it had previously been occupied by Richard III during his ‘protection’ of his nephews barely a mile away in the Tower of London, and where he was residing when offered the crown. It was certainly prestigious enough that the fifteen-year-old Catherine of Aragon was lodged there, presumably under Bartholomew’s supervision, in November 1501 when she arrived from Spain in advance of her marriage to Prince Arthur.
Artistic representation of the Lord Mayor’s Show in the Tudor period
At Michaelmas 1502, Bartholomew Rede was triumphantly elected Lord Mayor of London by his fellow Aldermen and as was the convention, he took office in the Guildhall in the second week of November. On that morning, accompanied by the Aldermen, he boarded the ceremonial barge that took him on a symbolic journey from the City of London to the Palace of Westminster where, in front of the Barons of the Exchequer, he swore allegiance to the king. On the return, the river was filled with hundreds of boats of all sizes, from the official barges of the Livery Companies to the wherries rowed by the watermen, all decked out with banners and streamers and accompanied by the sound of drums, trumpets and flutes. The new Mayor alighted at Baynard’s Castle, then rode side-by-side with his predecessor Sir John Shaa, followed by the Aldermen, also on horseback, through St Paul’s Churchyard and along Cheapside, back to the Guildhall, with ushers clearing the way. The procession was cheered on by the crowds; London had a population of 50,000, five times the size of the next largest city of Norwich, and it felt as if most of them were out enjoying the spectacle.
The banquet in the Great Hall was magnificent. The thousand guests — prominent citizens, senior court representatives, members of the aristocracy and visiting foreign dignitaries — were seated at sixty long tables, and served food prepared in the newly-built kitchens: roasted in its eight hearths or boiled in vats or baked in the ovens. In the afternoon, Bartholomew attended mass at St Paul’s Cathedral, and then there was a torchlit parade back once again to the Guildhall. Despite the cost to the Goldsmiths’ Company which had organised and paid for the event, there was an economic benefit to the City as a whole with the influx of visitors requiring transport, accommodation and meals, and hopefully buying jewellery.
Henry VII’s life had been beset by adversity, and during the early part of Bartholomew Rede’s mayorship, in February 1503, there was yet another tragedy when his wife Elizabeth of York, older sister of the Princes in the Tower, died of an infection after giving birth to a daughter who only survived a few days — and this less than a year after their eldest son Arthur had succumbed to sweating sickness. In the wake of such grief, Maximillian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, sent a delegation to London to offer his condolences, which was lodged at Crosby Place, where they were treated to a feast that became legendary.
An account was written down by a monk, Friar Jones, from the Greyfriars which was discovered almost a century later in the monastery library by John Stowe, who included it in his famous ‘Survey of London’ of 1598. The story went as follows (summarised and with spellings modernised):
“More than a hundred guests were entertained in the grand dining hall at Crosby Place. Three courses of the best meat money could buy were served on silver plates stamped with Bartholomew Rede’s coat of arms, and when the meal was finished the leftovers were carried out through the main gate into the street where tables had been set up for the poor.
Amongst the attendees was an Italian jeweller who, after the meal was finished and the guests were talking amongst themselves, was showing those around him a precious stone which he claimed was of great value, and which he boasted that he had offered to the Emperor Maximilian, and to the King of France and also to King Henry VII, but none of them could afford to pay him what it was worth. The conversation was overheard by the mayor, Bartholomew Rede, who asked him ‘So, you have offered it to our Sovereign Lord, the King’s Grace?’ to which the foreigner answered in the affirmative. ‘Do you think the King refused it for want of treasure? Let me see it!’ said Bartholomew, and examining it from all aspects as befits a man who was himself a notable jeweller, he asked the Italian what he valued it at. ‘A thousand marks!’ came the reply. ‘And will that buy it?’ said the mayor, to which the stranger nodded ‘Yes.’
Bartholomew gestured to one of his men, and asked him to fetch a spice mortar and pestle, and placing the stone inside ordered him to crush it into a powder, which he did. Then Bartholomew requested a cup of wine, which he poured into the bowl and, to the astonishment of all of the observers, drank it down in one go. Turning to his guest once more, he said ‘Speak honourably of the King of England, for you have now seen one of his poor subjects drink a thousand marks at a draught.’ And then he commanded that the full cost of the jewel be paid to him.”
An interior view of Goldsmiths Hall today. Positioned at the junction of Foster Lane and Gresham Street in the City of London, the current building is the third Goldsmiths’ Hall, completed in 1835. The site has been home to the Goldsmiths’ Company since 1339. Image taken from The Goldsmiths Company website.
The extravagance of Bartholomew Rede’s gesture makes a good anecdote, but what exactly does it signify? He seems to be making the point that in England even ‘poor subjects’ (though he was anything but poor) can afford to buy expensive jewellery that the king cannot, and what is more, that they can even wastefully dispose of it. However, if the tale is to be taken at face value — when evidently a genuine precious stone could not possibly be ground down by hand — an alternative interpretation could be that, as an ex-Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company, he was in a position to recognise a fake. But rather than humiliate the merchant, he chose to pay him what he asked. What an honourable citizen the mayor was!
Sir Bartholomew Rede's Coat of Arms from the pew end in Old Weybridge Church. This object was collected by the museum's first curator, Dr Eric Gardner, in 1948.
At the end of his mayorship in late in 1503 he was knighted. Sir Bartholomew Rede was an extremely rich man; he had status, he had friends and acquaintances in high places and was looked upon favourably by the king, and he had acquired property and vast landholdings in the City of London and Surrey, as well as in Middlesex, Berkshire, Oxfordshire, Wiltshire and Hampshire. It was only at his Manor of Oatlands, though, that he could leave behind the fetid streets of the city and breath in the country air. There, he had removed the existing timber-framed buildings and constructed a spectacular moated mansion in brick, with a gatehouse and inner courtyard, towers at each corner, a great hall and a family chapel.
In 1505, he became unwell and made his will. He and his wife, Elizabeth, had not been blessed with children, but he had a nephew William, son of his brother John, whom he had taken under his wing in the goldsmith’s trade, and who would be his heir. He died in October, aged around 48, and in accordance with his wishes was buried in a tomb in the cloister at the Charterhouse, the Carthusian monastery a few streets north of Goldsmiths’ Hall. For a man so prominent in his own lifetime, he left few physical traces — there are no portraits of him, or an effigy, no surviving personal papers or letters, and his spoken words are recorded only in the brief, and probably apocryphal, recounting of his exploits at his great feast. His main legacy was meant to be the Manor of Oatlands, but whether there was one manor on his estate, or two, and who owned them, later became a matter of some debate and led to a court case. In time, his beloved country house would be unscrupulously removed from his descendants’ ownership, then later raised to the ground, until all that remained was his coat of arms carved on a wooden shield that had once adorned the end of a pew in his family chapel.
Born in Cromer Norfolk.
His birth year is based on the assumption that he was 14 when he began his apprenticeship in 1471 according to the Goldsmiths’ Company records.
Apprenticeship to Sir Hugh Bryce, Goldsmith of London
First recorded as a liveryman of the Goldsmiths’ Company. The Goldsmiths’ Company was one of the twelve great livery companies of the City of London, together with (in order of precedence): Mercers; Grocers; Drapers; Fishmongers; Skinners; Merchant Taylors; Haberdashers; Salters; Ironmongers; Vinters; and Cloth Workers.
Warden of the Exchange (Edward IV)
Master of the Mint (Edward IV) for 3 months
Joint Master of the Mint (Henry VII)
Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company, for the first time
Active in buying property and land in Walton, Weybridge, Byfleet, Chertsey and Shepperton and the creation of the Manor of Oatlands
Sheriff of London
Alderman of Aldersgate Ward
Prime Warden of the Goldsmiths’ Company for the second and third times.
Purchased lease to Crosby Place, one of the largest private houses in the City of London
Elected and served as Lord Mayor of London
Alderman of Cheapside Ward
Knighted by Henry VII
Died and was buried at the Charterhouse
The titles used in the research for this blog
