Robert Kitchen

At the offices of Bristol Charities there hangs a fine portrait of Robert Kitchin, and a very unusual wall decoration, a 7 foot wooden beam, with the carved inscription: “This building is at the charge of Robart Kitchin, late Alderman of Bristoll, for the reliefe of the poor.”

Robert Kitchin was born in Kendal, Westmoreland, around 1531. He became one of Bristol’s leading Elizabethan merchants and a great benefactor. The Trustees of Bristol Charities still administer, over four hundred years later, the funds he left to charity.

Despite the fact that we do not have much detail about his life, there are some interesting reminders of him around the city today.

At the age of 21 Kitchin was apprenticed to John Roberts, a draper, and he later became a “merchant of great wealth and unbounded liberality.” He traded mainly with Spain and Portugal and he owned several ships. Like many other Bristol merchants he suffered from the deteriorating relations with Spain and around 1577 he petitioned the Privy Council for compensation for goods that had been seized. By 1572 he had been elected Sheriff and in 1588 he became mayor.

Kitchin had a fine mansion in Small Street, and it must have been grand house because, on at least two occasions, he provided lodgings for important visiting dignitaries. At Easter 1587 he provided accommodation for the Lord High Steward of Bristol, being Robert Dudley, the Earl of Leicester, Queen Elizabeth’s favourite. The Common Council (the city’s governing body) had been keen to ingratiate itself with the Queen when they appointed him. They must have come to regret the decision, as he appears to have had little interest in pursuing the interests of Bristol, and he proved to have very expensive tastes. There were elaborate preparations for his visit and it is recorded that the total cost of entertainment for the two-day visit was £100, an extraordinary sum at that time.

The Earl of Leicester moved on to Bath, loaded with gifts of marmalade, sugar, figs and raisins, but he must have been unimpressed with his sleeping arrangements there, as he asked Kitchin to give him the bed on which he had slept at Kitchin’s mansion. The Corporation, ever keen to keep Leicester content, bought him a new bed but allowed Kitchin to provide the bedding.

In 1573 Robert Kitchin decided to give the Corporation a silver jug and tray, and they formed the earliest pieces of silver in the Civic collection. During the 1831 Riots the tray was stolen and the thief, a man called James Ives, cut it into 167 pieces in order to try and sell it. He aroused the suspicions of the authorities, he was arrested and all but two pieces of the tray were recovered. The pieces were skillfully riveted to a silver plate and the tray remains one of the treasures in the City Council’s possession. Mr. Ives was less fortunate, as he was transported to Australia for 14 years.

When war broke out with Spain in 1585 we have record that Kitchin fitted out one of his ships, the Gift of God, with 24 guns, provisions and a crew of 80. Kitchin became mayor in 1588, and in that year the city supplied four ships to join the Queen’s fleet at Plymouth, to fight off the Spanish Armada. The ships, the Unicorn, the Minion, the Handmaid and the Ayde, were all described as “ship-shape, Bristow fashion.”

Robert Kitchen donated one of the four brass pillars that now stands in front of the old Exchange building in Corn Street. Originally these pillars stood in the Merchants’ Tolzey, a covered walk that stood against the side of All Saints’ Church. These pillars were used by merchants in lieu of tables, for making payments and writing letters. They are the famous “Bristol nails” that generated the expression, “to pay on the nail.” The inscription on one of these “nails” reads:

“This post is the gift of Master Robert Kitchin. Merchant. Sometime Mayor and Alderman of this City. Who died 5 September 1594”

Kitchin gave the executors of his will wide discretionary powers in how to help the poor. In 1598 they used part of his estate to buy property in Broad Street and they erected a covered market (the new shambles), which became known as the “New Market”. The rent from the New Market was then distributed to the poor. Prior to that time, the city’s meat market consisted of temporary stalls that were set up in the open streets, and this must have caused chaos in the late medieval narrow streets. Unfortunately the city’s butchers were unhappy with the move from their usual pitches and, to appease them, various restrictions were imposed on the “foreigners”, the country tradesmen who traveled to Bristol to sell their produce.

The 7 foot wooden beam, at the offices of Bristol charities, was formerly situated over the entrance to the New Market. The market is long gone but the name is commemorated by Newmarket Avenue, just off Broad Street.

In 1630 £1,000 was handed over to the Corporation, to be administered for a variety of people in need, including poor householders, those wanting to buy stock in order to set up in business and poor descendents of Robert and his first wife, Joan.

Kitchin was twice married, his first wife dying in 1591. In his will he asked for his body to be buried in St. Stephen’s Church, as near as possible to the resting place of Joan. On the church’s wall there is a memorial to Robert and Joan Kitchin, kneeling with their three sons and three daughters.

The memorial describes the fact that in addition to benefiting Bristol gifts were made to Robert’s home town of Kendall, and his first wife’s home town of Bath.