John Whitson

John Whitson typifies the best of the Elizabethan / Early Stuart merchants. He lived from 1557 until 1629 and he was the most prominent and influential citizen of his day. He was also one of Bristol’s earliest and most generous philanthropists, being best known as the founder of the Red Maids’ School.

He has been described as “Bristol’s Dick Whittington”, a poor lad who, when thirteen years of age, traveled from his home in Clearwell, in the Forest of Dean, to Bristol; made his fortune and gave most of it to charity.

His story was probably no quite so tragic, because we know that from 1570 he was apprenticed, for 8 years, to Nicholas Cutts, a wine cooper, and his wife Bridget. It is likely that his father would have paid a premium in order to allow him to enter his apprenticeship.

Nicholas Cutts died in 1582, but his widow carried on the business. John Whitson’s prospects were radically challenged when, as the story goes, “his mistress one day called him into the wine cellar, and bade him broach the best Butt in the cellar for her; and truly he broach’t his Mistress, who after married him.”

Whatever the truth of the story, the marriage between John Whitson and Bridget Cutts took place on 12 April 1585, and it must have had the blessing of his mother-in-law, because she gave the newly married couple valuable property in the city. Their first daughter, Bridget, was born in 1585. Their second and third daughters died in infancy.

Whitson’s career, as both a merchant and a man of politics, took off. He was sheriff in 1589/90 and in 1600 he was advanced to Alderman. This made him one of the inner ring of twelve who controlled the City. In 1602 he was one of a committee of six who were actively involved in the affairs of another famous Bristol school, Queen Elizabeth’s Hospital.

In the 1590’s Whitson was one of a syndicate that fitted out two ships, the Maryflower and the Seabrake, which captured two enemy ships. Distressed by the poverty of some of Bristol’s mariners, Whitson donated his share of the prize money to the almshouses of Bristol. He then sold his share in the syndicate to a fellow councilor. This turned out to be a
sound commercial decision, as the Maryflower was later accidentally set on fire, and the Seabrake foundered on a rock in the Avon, as a result of the crew being drunk.

He became mayor in1603. Whitson was often described as a "Spanish merchant", largely because the coat of arms of the Spanish Company appear on the fireplace that was located in his home in St. Nicholas Street (the fireplace was later moved to the Red Maids’ School.)

In 1577 the Crown entrusted the monopoly of Spanish and Portuguese trade to the Spanish Company, whose membership consisted of over 200 London merchants and 173 merchants from other ports, including 76 Bristol merchants. It was clear that Bristol’s Society of Merchant Venturers suffered as a result and it is suggested that, by the end of the sixteenth century, the Society had become almost moribund, due to economic depression and competition from the Spanish Company.

John Whitson was instrumental in resisting the London controlled trading company and re-establishing the Society of Merchant Venturers, which was reconstituted in 1605. Whitson was a leading member of the Society and he served it for 20 years, becoming master in 1607 and 1611.

He served as Member of Parliament on five occasions, in 1605, 1614, 1621,1625 and 1626. He witnessed, at close hand, the tensions between Parliament and the Crown that would eventually lead to the Civil War. Whitson was in the forefront of the opposition to the King’s attempts to impose his will on parliament, in particular the creation of arbitrary customs duties, in order to meet the extravagance of the royal exchequer. His conduct in parliament was recognized by his election as mayor, for a second occasion, in 1614.

His daughter, Bridget, had died in childbirth in 1606, and Whitson left two thirds of his considerable estate to be used by the Corporation, for charitable works.

The chief of which was the founding of Red Maids’ School in 1634, so called because the children were to "go appareled in red cloth." He left £90 per year to provide a dwelling house for "one grave, painful woman and modest woman" and "forty poor women children" who were to be taught to read English, and to sew, and to do some other laudable work towards their maintenance.

Towards the end of his life Whitson expressed a desire to die peacefully in his bed. This request probably resulted from a savage attack upon him in November 1626, when he and another Alderman were settling a long-standing dispute between Christopher Callowhill and William Tresham. They found against Callowhill, who then stabbed Whitson through his nose and cheek, into his mouth. Whitson was then aged 70, but he appears to have recovered well, and he subsequently left a legacy to St Nicholas’s church, so that an annual sermon would be made to commemorate his narrow escape.

John Whitson died at the age of 72, when his horse stumbled as he supervised the trained bands (the militia) of which he was Captain. Graphically we are told “his head pitching on a nail that stood on its head by a smith’s shop.” He was buried at St Nicholas’s church, where his monument is located in the crypt. He was buried with his two wives and his three daughters who had all pre-deceased him. His third wife, Rachel Aubrey outlived him but she was later buried with him.