Introduction of Glass Making in France.
Reading edition
(From Parke's Chymical Essays.)
The government of France, in the early part of the fourteenth century, took great pains to improve the manufacture of glass, and ordained that none but gentlemen, or the sons of the nobility, should be allowed to exercise the trade, or even to work as artificers in the manufactories of this most highly esteemed commodity.—In consequence of this injunction, a company of persons, all born gentlemen, was incorporated, and obtained many important privileges and immunities from the state; particularly that of being allowed to work at this curious art without derogating from their nobility. It is indeed asserted by the writer,[16] who is the best authority we have on this subject, that there never was an instance of any one being attainted, to whom these privileges had been granted; for they conducted themselves so irreproachably, that these orders were invariably transmitted inviolate to their posterity. In the year 1453, Anthony de Brossord, Lord of St. Martin, and prince of the blood royal, finding the business of glass making to be so considerable; and knowing that it did not derogate from nobility, obtained a grant from the Prince to establish a glass house in his own county, with prohibition of any other; and in consequence of this, the elder sons of that family continued uninterruptedly to exercise the art till the latter end of the sixteenth century, when the proprietor was killed while commanding a troop at the siege of Chartres.—On the death of this individual the younger sons of the same family undertook to carry on the art, and continued in it for more than a century. Whether the trade continues still in the same line, I have not been able to ascertain.
An ancient family of the name of Vaillant, also obtained the grant of a glass house, as a recompense for their valour and public services, together with a poignard d'or, on azure, for their arms.—Mr. Blancourt, who long resided in France, likewise notices, that at the time he wrote, they had many other great families among them, who were descended from gentleman glass-makers that had declined following the art; and that some of these had been honoured with purple, and with the highest dignities and offices in the state.
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