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A. YARRANTON, England's Improvement by Sea and Land. London, 1677. M. A. LOWER, Contributions to Literature, Historical, Antiquarian, and Metrical. London, 1854, pp. 88-9.
With that disregard for orthography in proper names which prevailed some three hundred years since, they are indifferently designated as Yarran, Yarranton, and Yarrington. The Yarrantons frequently filled local offices in that parish, and we find several of them officiating at different periods as bailiffs of Bewdley. Journals of the House of Commons, 1st July, 1648.
Yet the name of Andrew Yarranton is scarcely remembered, or is at most known to only a few readers of half-forgotten books. The following brief outline of his history is gathered from his own narrative and from documents in the State Paper Office. Andrew Yarranton was born at the farmstead of Larford, in the parish of Astley, in Worcestershire, in the year 1616.
In 1665, the burgesses of Droitwich agreed to give him 750L. and eight salt vats in Upwich, valued at 80L. per annum, with three-quarters of a vat in Northwich, for twenty-one years, in payment for the work. But the times were still unsettled, and Yarranton and his partner Wall not being rich, the scheme was not then carried into effect.
As no further notice of Yarranton occurs in the State Papers, and as we shortly after find him publicly occupied in carrying out his plans for improving the navigation of the western rivers, it is probable that his innocence of any plot was established after a legal investigation.
A few years later he published in London a 4to. tract entitled 'A Full Discovery of the First Presbyterian Sham Plot, which most probably contained a vindication of his conduct. Yarranton was no sooner at liberty than we find him again occupied with his plans of improved inland navigation.
At all events, his books still live to show how wise and sagacious Andrew Yarranton was beyond his contemporaries as to the true methods of establishing upon solid foundations the industrial prosperity of England. PATRICK EDWARD DOVE, Elements of Political Science. Edinburgh, 1854.
Yarranton, or his friends, replied to the first attack in a folio of two pages, entitled 'The Coffee-house Dialogue Examined and Refuted, by some Neighbours in the Country, well-wishers to the Kingdom's interest. The controversy was followed up by 'A Continuation of the Coffee-house Dialogue, in which the chief interlocutor hits Yarranton rather hard for the miscarriage of his "improvements."
The number of English forges rapidly dwindled, and the amount of the home production became insignificant in comparison with what was imported from abroad. Yarranton, writing in 1676, speaks of "the many iron-works laid down in Kent, Sussex, Surrey, and in the north of England, because the iron of Sweadland, Flanders, and Spain, coming in so cheap, it cannot be made to profit here."
His 'Full Discovery of the First Presbyterian Sham Plot' was published in the same year; and from that time nothing further is known of Andrew Yarranton.
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