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Updated 24 August 2018


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This records my latest Tyzack family investigations and findings. Please let me know if you come across any new facts.

Send to don@tyzack.net


This is a piece sent to me by Paulette Green which she found in an old family bible or book relating to her ancestor Joseph Tysick. It is a pass to be excused from being pressganged into the Royal Navy.

By the Commissioners for Executing the Office of Lord High Admiral of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, &c. You are hereby required and directed not to impress into His Majesty's service Joseph Tyzack, Shipwright, of Newcastle upon Tyne provided his name, age, and description, be inserted in the margin hereof, and that he does not belong to any of His Majesty's ships. And in case this Protection shall be found about any other person, producing the same upon his own account, then the Officer who finds it is hereby strictly charged and required to impress the said person, and immediately to send this Protection to us. And we do hereby direct, that this Protection for the securing the aforementioned person, and him only, from the Press, shall continue in force for three months Given under our hands, and the seal of the Office of Admiralty, this ninth Day of January One thousand eight hundred and seven. To all Commanders and Officers of His Majesty's Ships, PressMasters, and all other whom it doth or may concern. By Command of their Lordships, Signed by R Tucker and 3 other signatures one of which may be H Neale, (the other two I cannot decipher)

In the left margin of this document is handwritten "Joseph Tyzack is about 22 years of age, 5 ft 9 in high, brown complexion, brown hair." On the back of this rather fragile document is handwritten "Chatham Yard May 18 - This protection is extended three weeks longer. Signed by Chas Hope or Hople.

I replied to Paulette:-
Hi Paulette
Further to my comments about Joseph being required in the Chatham dockyards: I think that was the most likely reason for his protection. In November 1806 Napolean arranged for a decree to be issued from Berlin. It had the effect of placing the British Isles in a state of blockade. This was followed in January 1807 by a British Order in Council which declared all ports in the coast of France and her allies under blockade. Clearly with all that going on just then absolutely every British ship available would have been needed and any able bodied shipwright would have been essential to work on getting as many ships as possible to be seaworthy.
Don

British Small Change Coinage Proposals for the American Plantations 1700-1701


The British government realized there was a the small change crisis in the colonies. Once the halfpence problems at home had been remedied by recalling the tin halfpence and producing large quantities of copper halfpence under William III, some Englishmen felt it was time to address the colonial situation. However, neither of the two known proposals discussed below were ever implemented.

The Tyzack proposal of 1700

On July 5, 1700 John Tyzack, who identified himself as "a Proprietor who hath lived and travelled in the Plantations" forwarded a proposal to the Council of Trade and Plantations to set up some mints. Crosby limits his remarks to a quote from Rogers Ruding, Annals of the Coinage of Britain and its Dependencies from the Earliest Period of Authentick History to the End of the Fiftieth Year of the reign of His Present Majesty George III, first published in 1817. Ruding closely copied the minutes of the Journal of the Council of Trade and Plantations from the meeting of July 5, 1700 but mistranscribed the name as Fysack (the the report of the meeting the Journal uses Tysack while the memorial, signed by the author, uses Tyzack ).

The Journal states:

A memorial was presented to the Board by Mr. John Tysack, proposing that a Mint may be erected in some of the Plantations on the Continent of America as a means to remedy many of the inconveniencies in the trade of those parts, which was read, and he being further heard in what he had to offer, their Lordships after full consideration of the matter, did not think fit that any Mint should be erected there, but esteeming it generally convenient that all the coins currant in the Plantations should pass in all places at the same rate, they resolved in the first convenient opportunity to consider the difficulties that occur therein, and in what manner it may be best effected.
(Cecil Headlam, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies. 1700. Preserved in the Public Record Office, London: 1910, pp. 392-393, item 614)

Crosby was not able to uncover any further information on this proposal. However, 35 years after Crosby's work was published, a copy of the Tyzack memorial was uncovered in the Public Record Office and was included in the Calendar of the Colonial Papers.
The memorial is listed under the date of July 5, 1700 and is included here in full:

Memorial of John Tysack to the Council of Trade and Plantations. On the state of the coinage in the Plantations. The Inhabitants of the Bahamas, Carolina, and neighbouring islands, also Pennsilvania, East and West Jersey, New York and New England, the soil of which being not capable of raising tobacco and having no other produce to make for the commodities of England except some skins and furs, whalebone and whale-oil, which will soon grow less plentiful, are forced to keep sheep, sow hemp and flax and set up the linen and woollen manufactures, to the prejudice of England. Merchants trading thither pay at least 30 per cent. for Bills of Exchange. There is now in the Plantations a great quantity of Spanish money, plate and bullion, and would be much more if returns were answerable. This money, etc., is of no use to the inhabitants to make returns to England, because of the uncertain value put upon it there. A piece of eight in the Bahamy Islands is about 5s.; in Carolina, Maryland and Virginia 4s. 6d.; in Pennsylvania 7s.; in New York and New England 6s. 6d., but frequently rising and falling in value by the contrivance of some designing men in those countries, who engross it when at the lowest, and so make merchandize of it and export it into foreign parts, where it is of more value than in England. The remedy proposed is to set up a Mint in some of the Plantations, for coining all the said Spanish money, plate and bullion and baser mettle into English coin of the same goodness and value from a crown piece to a farthing; and that by Proclamation the value of Spanish money etc., be adjusted to about 6s. 3d, per ounce in the Plantations; and that no Spanish money, etc., be exported out of the Plantations till first coined into English money to fit it for returns to England only. This making returns more certain and disappointing the designing perverters of trade, encouraging merchants and the oppressed Planters, increasing navigation and commerce, bringing constant supplies to the Mint in returns to the Plantations, and from thence in returns to England, and by such circulation continually landing more of the Spanish riches upon our shoar. Signed, John Tyzack, a Proprietor who hath lived and travelled in the Plantations.

Endorsed, Recorded. Read July 5th, 1700.

1 large page.
(Cecil Headlam, ed., Calendar of State Papers, Colonial Series, America and the West Indies. 1700. Preserved in the Public Record Office, London: 1910, pp. 393-394, item 616)

As stated in the Journal entry quoted above, the Lords did not see fit to endorse this proposal.!!!!



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