| AdminHistory | George III succeeded 25 October 1760 and died 29 January 1820. On 3 April 1761 he issued a warrant establishing a grant of £8591 a year to be paid in the manner set out in the warrant of George II of 20 February 1729. The Lords Commissioners acting under the warrant authorized the payment of £6872.16.0 for distribution to the laity. Similar warrants were issued in 1771, 1777, 1788, and 1806, though some changes were made. For example, the Lords Commissioners of 1761 nominated fifty-one gentlemen or any seven or more to distribute the grant and to act with the approval of a panel of seventeen gentlemen or any three or more; the Paymaster of Pensions and Bounties to pay the grant. In 1771 and 1777 the [French] Committee was to act with the approval of the Directors of the Bank of England or any three or more of them. The warrant of 1788 records a change in procedure: the office of Paymaster of His Majesty's Pensions and Bounties had been abolished and the payment of the grant transferred to the office of the receipt of His Majesty's Exchequer. For the next fourteen years things went on as usual. Then early in 1802 came a portent of change. The Secretary of the French Committee was summoned to the Treasury; and after some discussion was advised that some questions would be sent him and to those a written answer would be required.
In due course the questions were received. Paraphrased, they were to the following effect:
1) The total number of refugees and their descendants.
2) How many of these were French and how many born in England.
3) The number of pensioners in each of the ten previous years.
4) The number of deaths in the ten years, and the disposal of their allowances.
5) Whether allowances to individuals were varied from year to year.
6) The occupations of persons relieved.
7) How many were legally entitled to parish relief.
8) Particulars of officers and salaries paid.
Members of the Committee met to deliberate on these questions, and returned answers which in substance were as follows:
1) Numbers could not easily be ascertained as refugees were dispersed all over the Kingdom.
2) The number relieved, c. 933. The number born in France, c. 120.
3) From 1792 to 1801 the average number relieved was 964. The lowest number in any one year, 928; the highest, 992.
4) There had been 498 deaths in the last ten years. Their allowances had been used to relieve others.
5) Annual allowances were unchanged except on account of age or infirmity.
6) Occupations principally in the silk trade and silk weaving.
7) Answer not easily ascertainable, but it was supposed that most were entitled to parish relief.
8) There were 40 directors living, including the Secretary and two Treasurers, unpaid; one clerk or book-keeper at £60 p.a.; a messenger at £20 p.a. There were also two apothecaries, one for the Soho department and the other for Spitalfields; and two schoolmasters for the orphans of both departments; besides rent for the clerk's apartments, coals, candles, stamps for receipts and incidental expenses, in all £322 p.a.
To these answers the Committee appended a Memorial, to the effect that for many years the royal grant had been received and paid to many poor French Protestant refugees in London and Westminster and throughout the country, as well as in Jersey, Guernsey and a few in Ireland. These consisted of 'different degrees of objects, distinguished either as gentry, of bashfull Poor, respectable reduced families, and inferior objects, and Orphans'. The distributors met regularly and looked into every case, and granted allowances impartially to the best of their judgment and discretion. The recipients were either French Protestant refugees, or descendants of such persons. All were in need of assistance, by reason of age and infirmities, or the burden of large families. Though hundreds of them were employed and were of the greatest use to the manufactories of the country, they could not subsist without the bounty; and the memorialists expressed the hope that the bounty would be continued.
In a reply dated 25 February 1802, the Secretary of the Treasury said that in the view of the Treasury the bounty was not intended for persons who were entitled to parish relief. It was not proposed that any reliefs then being distributed should be discontinued. But it was decided that no person entitled to parish relief should in future be admitted to the bounty lists. In addition, distributors were instructed to return an account of the sum distributed, the names of persons put on the lists during the year, and the names of those receiving relief who had died during the year; in both cases with particulars of the allowances made.
In January 1803 the Committee resolved to make no new admissions or augmentations, and to compile a list of established beneficiaries; and in March of the same year a return of such beneficiaries was made to the Treasury.
The changes made in the years 1802-1803 mark the beginning of the end of the royal bounty. |