The writs of summons were then suspended for two centuries and a half. In 1547 Liverpool resumed the privilege of returning members. In 1588 the borough was represented by Francis Bacon, the philosopher and statesman. During the Civil War the town was fortified and garrisoned by the parliament. It sustained three sieges, and in 1644 was escaladed and taken by Prince Rupert with considerable slaughter.
The true rise of the commerce of Liverpool dates from the Restoration. Down to that period its population had been either stationary or retrogressive, probably never exceeding about 1000. Its trade was chiefly with Ireland, France and Spain, exporting fish and wool to the continent, and importing wines, iron and other commodities. The rise of the manufacturing industry of south Lancashire, and the opening of the American and West Indian trade, gave the first impulse to the progress which has since continued. By the end of the century the population had increased to 5000. In 1699 the borough was constituted a parish distinct from Walton, to which it had previously appertained. In 1709, the small existing harbour being found insufficient to accommodate the shipping, several schemes were propounded for its enlargement, which resulted in the construction of a wet dock closed with flood-gates impounding the water, so as to keep the vessels floating during the recess of the tide. This dock was the first of its kind. The name of the engineer was Thomas Steers.
About this date the merchants of Liverpool entered upon the slave trade, into which they were led by their connexion with the West Indies. In 1709 a single vessel of 30 tons burden made a venture from Liverpool and carried fifteen slaves across the Atlantic. In 1730, encouraged by parliament, Liverpool went heartily into the new trade. In 1751, fifty-three ships sailed from Liverpool for Africa, of 5334 tons in the aggregate. The ships sailed first to the west coast of Africa, where they shipped the slaves, and thence to the West India Islands, where the slaves were sold and the proceeds brought home in cargoes of sugar and rum. In 1765 the number of Liverpool slavers had increased to eighty-six, carrying 24,200 slaves. By the end of the century five-sixths of the African trade centred in Liverpool. Just before its abolition in 1807 the number of Liverpool ships engaged in the traffic was 185, carrying 49,213 slaves in the year.
Another branch of maritime enterprise which attracted the attention of the merchants of Liverpool was privateering, which, during the latter half of the 18th century, was a favourite investment. After the outbreak of the Seven Years’ War with France and Spain, in 1756, the commerce of Liverpool suffered severely, the French having overrun the narrow seas with privateers, and the premiums for insurance against sea risks rose to an amount almost prohibitive. The Liverpool merchants took a lesson from the enemy, and armed and sent out their ships as privateers. Some of the early expeditions proving very successful, almost the whole community rushed into privateering, with results of a very chequered character. When the War of Independence broke out in 1775 American privateers swarmed about the West India Islands, and crossing the Atlantic intercepted British commerce in the narrow seas. The Liverpool merchants again turned their attention to retaliation. Between August 1778 and April 1779, 120 privateers were fitted out in Liverpool, carrying 1986 guns and 8745 men.
See W. Enfield, Hist. of Leverpool (1773); J. Aikin, Forty Miles round Manchester (1795); T. Troughton, Hist. of Liverpool (1810); M. Gregson, Portfolio of Fragments relating to Hist. of Lancashire (1817); H. Smithers, Liverpool, its Commerce, &c. (1825); R. Syers, Hist. of Everton (1830); E. Baines, Hist. of County Palatine of Lancaster, vol. iv. (1836); T. Baines, Hist. of Commerce and Town of Liverpool (1852); R. Brooke, Liverpool during the last quarter of 18th Century (1853); J. A. Picton, Memorials of Liverpool (2 vols., 1873); Ramsay Muir and Edith M. Platt, A History of Municipal Government in Liverpool (1906); Ramsay Muir, A History of Liverpool (1907). (W. F. I.)
LIVERSEDGE, an urban district in the Spen Valley parliamentary
division of the West Riding of Yorkshire, England,
7 m. S.S.E. of Bradford, on the Lancashire & Yorkshire,
Great Northern, and London & North Western railways. Pop.
(1901) 13,980. The industries are chiefly the manufacture
of woollen goods, the making of machinery, chemical manufactures
and coal mining.
LIVERY, originally the provision of food, clothing, &c., to
household servants. The word is an adaptation of the Anglo-French
livrée, from livrer, to deliver (Late Lat. liberare, to set
free, to serve, to give freely), in the special sense of distributing.
In the sense of a fixed allowance of provender for horses, it survives
now only in “livery-stable,” i.e. an establishment where
horses and carriages are kept or let out for hire. From the
meaning of provision of food and clothing the word is applied to
a uniform worn by the retainers and servants of a household.
In the 15th century in England a badge, collar or other insignia,
the “livery,” was worn by all those who pledged themselves
to support one of the great barons in return for his promise of
“maintenance,” i.e. of protection against enemies; thus arose
the custom of “livery and maintenance,” suppressed by
Henry VII. The members of the London city companies wore
a distinctive costume or “livery,” whence the term “livery
companies.” In law, the term “livery” means “delivery,”
the legal handing of property into the possession of another;
for “livery of seisin” see Feoffment.
LIVERY COMPANIES, the name given to particular companies
or societies in the city of London. They belong to a class of
institutions which at one time were universal in Europe. In
most other countries they have disappeared; in England,
while their functions have wholly changed, the organization
remains. The origin of the city companies is to be found in the
craftgilds of the middle ages. The absence of a strong central
authority accounts for the tendency of confederation in the
beginning of modern societies. Artificial groups, formed in
imitation of the family, discharged the duties which the family
was no longer able, and the state was not yet able, to undertake.
The inhabitants of towns were forced into the societies known as
gild-merchants, which in course of time monopolized the municipal
government, became exclusive, and so caused the growth
of similar societies among excluded citizens. The craftgilds
were such societies, composed of handicraftsmen, which entered
upon a struggle with the earlier gilds and finally defeated them.
The circumstances and results of the struggle were of much the
same character in England and on the continent. In London the
victory of the crafts is decisively marked by the ordinance of the
time of Edward II., which required every citizen to be a member
of some trade or mystery, and by another ordinance in 1375 which
transferred the right of election of corporate officers (including
members of parliament) from the ward-representatives to the
trading companies. Henceforward, and for many years, the
companies engrossed political and municipal power in the city of
London.
The trading fraternities assumed generally the character of corporations in the reign of Edward III. Many of them had been chartered before, but their privileges, hitherto exercised only on sufferance and by payment of their terms, were now confirmed by letters patent. Edward III. himself became a member of the fraternity of Linen Armourers, or Merchant Taylors, and other distinguished persons followed his example. From this time they are called livery companies, “from now generally assuming a distinctive dress or livery.” The origin of the Grocers’ Company is thus described: “Twenty-two persons, carrying on the business of pepperers in Soper’s Lane, Cheapside, agree to meet together, to a dinner, at the Abbot of Bury’s, St Mary Axe, and commit the particulars of their formation into a trading society to writing. They elect after dinner two persons of the company so assembled—Roger Osekyn and Lawrence de Haliwell—as their first governors or wardens, appointing, at the same time, in conformity with the pious custom of the age, a priest or chaplain to celebrate divine offices for their souls” (Heath’s “Account of the Grocers’ Company,” quoted in Herbert’s Twelve Great Livery Companies, 1836, i. 43). The religious observances and the common feasts were characteristic features of those institutions. They were therefore not merely trade unions in the current meaning of that phrase, but
