In my memoir of the Earl of Galway, I have narrated the establishment of the linen-trade in Ireland by Act of Parliament, under his Excellency’s government. The next step was to appoint a competent national manager and overseer. King William III. invited from Holland Louis Crommelin, and the Royal invitation was accepted; this was in the year 1698. Crommelin’s children were a daughter and a son. His son, also named Louis, was at this date only fifteen years of age, but evidently was well endowed with hereditary ability. The father and son came over to Ireland to select a place of settlement, and he chose as his headquarters the small town in the county of Antrim, then called Lisnagarvey, but afterwards Lisburn. He obtained a Royal Patent, dated 14th February 1699 (i.e., 1700 new style), as to which a Report was presented to the English House of Commons by the Commissioners of Trade, 26th May 1700:—
“His Majesty having referred to our consideration some proposals made by Mr Crommelin, a French refugee, long experienced in the linen manufacture, for the more effectual establishment and improvement of that manufacture in Ireland, we humbly offered our opinion that his Majesty would be pleased to allow £800 per annum for ten years, to pay the interest at eight per cent. of £10,000 advanced by said Crommelin and his friends for the setting on foot of that manufacture; the said £800 to be received and issued out by trustees appointed by his Majesty to inspect the employing of the said £10,000. And his Majesty having been pleased to give directions accordingly, the said Crommelin is lately gone to Ireland in order to put his proposals into execution.”
From the Patent it appears that in addition to the £800 per centage, there was a pension of £200 a-year to Crommelin, £40 annually to each of three assistants, and a salary of £60 for a French minister. A linen-factory was built at Lisburn, at the foot of a bridge which crossed the river Laggan; the water-course remained till the beginning of this century, and the French church is now the court-house of Lisburn.[1] Crommelin “brought from Holland 1000 looms and spinning-wheels of an improved construction, and invited a number of families (in general Huguenot refugees, like himself), who gladly complied, and soon founded quite a colony among themselves.” While Crommelin did his part, King William’s Patent being not formally completed at that Sovereign’s untimely death, was, after two years and a quarter, held to be non-existent. Queen Anne’s government issued a new Patent, which did indeed retain the same grand total of £1180 per annum, but redistributed it so that it might provide the premiums for workmen, enacted in Lord Galway’s Act. By this arrangement, Crommelin’s personal share was reduced to £400 per annum, and the limitation of ten years was extended to the total £1180.
Besides his personal venture, Crommelin also had to devote himself to the National office of Overseer of the Royal Linen Manufacture of Ireland. His formal appointment took place in the end of 1703, after a representation as to his claims by the Irish Parliament. His private affairs he entrusted entirely to his son, that he himself might (to use his own words) “mind the public,” and “continue his care in promoting the good of the kingdom.” That his office under Government gave him a variety of occupation may be gathered from the contents of a book which he published in 1705, “An Essay towards the Improving of the Hempen and Flaxen Manufactures in the Kingdom of Ireland.” This book contained six chapters: I. Preparing ground, sowing, weeding, pulling, watering, and grassing flax. II. Dressing flax. III. Hemp. IV. Spinning and spinning-wheels. V. Preparing yarn and looms. VI. Bleaching utensils and bleaching. In these departments he found prevailing ignorance, and a want of anxiety, patience, perseverance, and zeal among the Irish employés. He had to direct the selection or reclamation of soil for the crop; to instruct them in the choice of seed, and in pulling flax and watering it in season and with judgment; to prevent their drying flax by fire-heat; to watch the reeling of yarn, so that an honest article, both as to quantity and quality, might be supplied to the dealers, &c. He had built a bleachery at Hilden, near Lisburn; so that, after describing to his readers his machinery and processes, he says, “They who are disposed to erect one of these bleacheries, may, with much greater satisfaction, come and view one small bleachery at Lisburn, which may serve as a model.” Crommelin was highly eulogised in the Parliament of Ireland in 1707 and 1709.
In the year 1711 he had to consider that his Patent was about to expire. His thoughts had also a more affecting and disconsolate element in them, arising from
- ↑ Throughout this memoir I am greatly indebted to the article on Lisburn and its Huguenots by Dr Purdon in the Ulster Journal of Archæology.
