If there is any consideration of a “hero” to the controversial story of Somersett it would have to be David Barclay. No one is without guile, but Barclay’s public persona was most assuredly forthright and honest. And in Somersett he constantly provides the Greek chorus speaking truth amid the intrigue and keeping focus on the “high road” solutions whenever feasible.
Uncovering specific information on the life of David Barclay has proven at least problematic from the distance of one continent and 250 years. The Quakers were by nature very private people, and self-effacement was considered one of the highest virtues to which they could aspire. As a result, we are wanting in information on this entire family, which gaping chasm in the story of the British banking industry is yearning to be filled. Likely by design, this leaves us with Quaker friends of Franklin and of Somersett who appear larger than life, and untarnished by human imperfections right up into the 20th century.
David Barclay was born in Cheapside, London, in 1729, to a wealthy and hard-working linen draper also named David. [Delineation of the two is by residence: the elder is known as “David Barclay of Cheapside” and our protagonist is “David Barclay of Youngsbury”, which even sounds nicer to our 21st century ear.] Linen-draping sounds like an unusual trade to us, but in its day referred to procurement of all textiles for resale to manufacturers of garments and housewares, including homemakers. His father would ultimately be described as “a successful and wealthy merchant and banker,” a designation which is also timely and of interest. In the early 18th century in London, the banking industry was still in its infancy and prone to failure nearly 90% of the time. The Quakers were the exception: they realized in that time that banking was an adjunct to a successful primary career rather than a career of itself, and that a successful mercantile career would provide prodigious volumes of ready cash to allow the purchase of debt. The Quakers, as noted in Somersett, were a very close-knit and closed mouth extended family (indeed, marrying outside the sect was grounds for immediate expulsion, which occurred often in the Barclay family tree) who communicated throughout the capitals of Europe, who knew good financial risks and stable businesses, who had unlimited ready cash to lend to those businesses, who would not brook bankruptcy or indebtedness, and who would never betray a trust. Successful merchants outside the Quakers who needed ready cash to finance the expansion of their businesses were naturally drawn to the “Quaker banks,” and less successful and less scrupulous debtors were naturally repelled.
So, David’s father married into the Freame family of bankers and he was naturally taken into their trust. David was apprenticed to his father in the textile industry which would of necessity require his travel and outreach to markets outside London. Apparently, it also required expansion outside the realm of textiles, as by age 19, David had branched out into arms dealing. To our vantage of 250 years later, this would appear an odd avocation for a Quaker, but sale of arms to the American colonies was as often as not a natural extension of the dealing in housewares as arms were considered essential on the American frontier for the procurement of ready protein for their diet. So it was that we have the first contact between Benjamin Franklin and David Barclay in procurement of rifles for the Pennsylvania militia in 1748. It would launch an acquaintance and growing warm friendship that would last for the remainder of Franklin’s life 42 years later.
According to family notes, David of Youngsbury would remain in London, and by 1774 had abandoned efforts at mercantile trade in the British colonies. The transport of goods between Great Britain and her primary overseas market had by that time become problematic at best, and Quaker merchants would not accept the risk when there were far more secure marketplaces in the relatively stable and financially secure ports of Europe. At the same time, young David, an inheritor with his brother John of his mother’s banking stock in the Freame family, was already establishing a name in London banking as Barclay, Bevan, and Company, the two Barclays adding a nephew. And yes, this is the origin of the internationally famous Barclays Bank, currently ranked 34th in the world with a market cap of over $40 Billion U.S. With Franklin’s contacts in the colonies, the Barclays were able to establish a solid banking interest with reliable clients in America, while Franklin, with Barclay’s contacts in the Quaker world of London was able to establish relationships with key members of the House of Lords and other politicians to further his goals for a free Pennsylvania. The match was most providential for both parties.
David’s personal life however was fraught with tragedy. Married in 1749, he and his wife would have two girls, but one died in infancy. His wife died in 1763, and he remarried in 1767. His surviving daughter from his first marriage would herself marry in 1773 at age 22. That marriage would provide him 2 grandchildren, but then his daughter died in 1776. He purchased Youngsbury in Hertfordshire for his second wife in 1769, with grounds installed by the world-famous Capability Brown in 1770. Upon the death of his second wife, he sold Youngsbury in 1793. At that point in his life, his personal space demands were modest at best and he retired to a townhome in Walthamstow outside London.
Barclay was important to the Quaker Meeting of London: a grandson of Robert Barclay, preeminent in the founding of the Sect in the 17th century, he was an active legacy in the years leading up to the American Revolution. A critical key aspect of the social ministry of the Quakers was abolition of African slavery. While non-Quakers in London and the American colonies addressed abolition of the slave trade from Africa, the Quakers had taken a massive step farther in pressing for the abolition of the entire institution of slavery. Personally, Barclay found the concept appalling and went to great lengths to rid himself of accidentally-acquired slaves in Jamaica in the 1790’s (they had come into his control as part of a plantation which had been put up as security for a defaulted loan). This incident is related in the Epilogue to Somersett and need not be repeated here.
His personal care for his friends both within the Quaker Meeting and outside is demonstrated in his kind, caring relationship with Dr. John Fothergill. Fothergill late in life had no family, and as his frailty became more severe during the time of the American Revolution when his social sphere was disrupted, Barclay took him in as a surrogate father, and helped him travel to High Ackworth in Yorkshire in 1779, where together they founded a school for children aged 2 ½ to 18. The school continues to this day.
The goings-on of Barclay between 1776 and 1783 are a cipher, and he clearly wished them to remain that way in perpetuity. By 1800, he was one of the most comfortable and well-to-do residents in the London area; “I have over 300 members of my Quaker family who call me ‘Uncle David’”, he could say with a smile. He died quietly in Walthamstow in 1809 at age 80.
Throughout his long life, David Barclay was a highly professional businessman, honest in his interactions with clients and extended family, color-blind in his social engagements at a time when this was quite exceptional, and ever outspoken regarding the pervasive sin of slavery. His passing was associated with the rare occurrence of having no one in a position to level any criticism regarding his long life. He had simply lived well.