History, Wonder Tales, Fairy Tales, Myths and Legends The Flemish | Page 207

agricultural and domestic consumption, and 60 persons were brought from Holland
and Zeeland by John de Schiedame to manufacture salt in England; they were settled
at Winchelsea. Later, under Elizabeth, we find Cecil writing in 1563 to Gaspar Seelar,
a German, saying that he had obtained for him the queen's licence to manufacture salt
and inviting him to come over. There were, however, numerous competing proposals
from Francis Bertie of Antwerp, Mount, Back, Backholt, Van Trere and others,
Franchard and Baronally; the names of some of these men are obviously Low Dutch.
Proposals for the manufacture of saltpetre were made during the reign of Elizabeth by
the Low Countrymen, Stephensson, Leonard Engelbright, and Bovyat.
New processes in the refining of sugar were also brought in from abroad. In 1622
Martin Higger, a German, applied for patent and monopoly for the making of double
refined sugar; the art had been introduced twenty-four years earlier by another
German, Gaspar Tielm. In 1667 a master boiler came from Holland, and in 1669
Zachariah Zebs from Germany to the Western Sugar Works at Glasgow. This venture
was successful and a sugar refinery, combined with a distillery, was started in 1701,
and skilled foreign workmen were brought over.
Potash (1648, Hexham), an alkaline substance obtained originally by leaching the
ashes of terrestial vegetables and evaporating the solution, a crude form of potassium
bicarbonate; in the 17th century the form was pot-ashes, plural, apparently ad.
e.mod.Du. pot-asschen (Kilian), Du. potasch.
A term of the refining of alum is Slam (1650-1), refuse matter separated from alum in
the preparation of this; ad. LG. slam, slime, mud (whence Sw. slam).
A term of salt refining is Loot (1669), a name applied in the Cheshire and
Staffordshire salt works to the ladle used to remove the scum from the brine-pan; ad.
Du. loet.
There are two terms of sugar refining.
Skipper (1688), a sugar-ladle; ad. Du. schepper, scoop, ladle. Skip (a. 1818), to
transfer sugar from one vessel to another in the process of manufacture; ad. Du.
scheppen, to ladle, dip, bale, draw.
12. 6.
A number of other industries were started or improved by Low Dutch people.
Their influence is apparent in the making of pottery and earthenware. Jaspar Andreas
and Jacob Janssen of Antwerp petitioned in 1570 for a monopoly of the manufacture
of galley, i.e. glazed tiles and apothecaries' vessels. Two brothers, the Elers, came
from Amsterdam in 1688 to the Staffordshire pottery district and began the method of
salt glazing, making their red ware at Dimsdale and Bradwell, near Burslem, in
imitation of the Saxony ware of the period. About twenty years later they removed to
one of the suburbs of London, where there were potteries already at Chelsea,
Vauxhall, Fulham, Battersea, and Lambeth. All the early stonewares of these potteries
were similar to those of Delft and some of the potters at least were probably Dutch. In
1676 John Ariens van Hamme obtained a patent for the art of making tiles, porcelain,

207