Sir William Davidson, tradesman in Amsterdam

Sir William Davidson of Curriehill with Charles, his son, by Abraham van den Tempel (1664)

Sir William Davidson, 1st Baronet of Curriehill (Dundee, 1614/5 – Edinburgh, 1689?) was a Scottish tradesman on the Baltic region (wine, ships, guns, rye), an agent and a spy for the King Charles II of England and a member of his Privy Council.

Life

Nothing is known about his youth and ancestors, but he settled in Holland after 1640. In 1645 he married Geertruid Schuring and stated that he was 29. Davidson lived and worked in Warmoesstraat, close to the Oude Kerk. In 1648 he appointed Anthony van Leeuwenhoek as an assistant,[1] who stayed six years in his service.[2] During the English Civil War he choose the side of the Stuarts. In 1652 his wife died. In those years he was living on Nieuwe Waalseiland, close to the harbour and selling wine.

In 1656 he tried to cooperate with the Admiralty of Amsterdam but did not succeed to compete with Hendrik and Louis Trip, dealers in arms and guns.1 Davidson started to invest heavily in ironworks from 1656, placed Alexander Wishart from Edinburg there as the boss and director of the production in 1658.[9] He was involved in a sawing mill and the production of tar.[10]

He remarried Geertruid van Dueren who died in 1658. In February 1660 he married Elisabeth Klenck,[4] a sister of Johannes Klencke, who would present the Klencke Atlas to King Charles II  to mark the occasion of his Restoration to the throne, before he left the Dutch Republic at the end of May. Davidson and his brother-in-law went to say goodbye to Charles II in the Hague;[3] more than 50,000 came to see his departure. Klencke was made a knight on 19 September 1660 by Charles II.[3][4] 

Meanwhile Davidson invited Charles sister, Mary, Princess Royal and Princes of Orange, to live in the Klencke/Davidson house on Herengracht 96, to settle an agreement with the Amsterdam burgomasters on the education of her son William III, at that time only ten years old. She left for England after four months. In November, Charles and Mary met with an Embassy of the United Provinces, who came to renew an alliance with England and presented the Dutch Gift.[25] The consortium likely hoped to gain favourable trade agreements with Britain for slave trade and their sugar plantations,[7] Klencke may have accompanied them, to discuss ‘unrestricted trade’, and the Act of Navigation.[10]  Mary died before the end of the year, suffering from small pox. Davidson seems to have been rewarded with an appointment as conservator of the Staple in Veere,[13]  and would be knighted as a baronet in the year after.[5]

File:WLM2011 - Amsterdam - Herengracht 96.JPG
Herengracht 96, four windows wide.
In September 1660, England started peace talks with Spain and Portugal, and in  the Act of Navigation was renewed by the English Parliament. The English thus became a serious threat to fishing, but especially in trade on the East and on the West. In December 1660, Charles and his brother James founded the Royal African Company (RAC), challenging the Dutch in West Africa. 

In 1661 after the brothers Trip had to give up their trade in Sweden, Davidson was able to take over for a short period of time, but Jacoba van Erp, the widow of G. Bartolotti won.2 In 1662 he was appointed as the King’s agent in Amsterdam.

In July 1662, Spain re-established the asiento. This asiento was granted to two bankers from Genoa, Grillo & Lomelín, residing in Madrid [6] with a branch in Panama. Grillo & Lomelín, in turn, outsourced the asiento to the West India Company[7] and the Royal Adventurers, Trading into Africa.

The Second Dutch War had been largely an outcome of rivalry on the African coast. At some time Davidson intermediated between Charles II and Johan de Witt?

In 1664 he moved to Hamburg. In 1666 he was involved in a salt company in Denmark, together with Cort Adeler. He mined for iron at Mostadmark (in the present-day Malvik Municipality), east of Trondheim with permission for 20 years from Frederik III of Denmark and Hannibal Sehested (governor) of Norway.

In 1666 he sold his ironworks in Trondheim to his brother-in-law Coenraad van Klenck, as well as his part in the salt company.  In 1667 his wife died. Davidson moved to Edinburgh? 

In 1668 he became Lord of Curriehill. He tried to move the staple from Veere, a Dutch town with a large Scottish population, to Dordrecht.[6][7] On 14 October 1670 he started mining for copper near Klæbu, south of Trondheim, according to a letter from King Christian IV of Denmark. He started the Ulrichsdal Mining Company, and build a melting-cabin at Hyttefossen in Klæbu. Around 1672 Davidson was involved in the tobacco trade on Virginia.

In an unknown year, but after 1678, when he made his will in Amsterdam,[8] he settled in Scotland again? Four children Bernard (1648-), Elisabeth (1651-), Catharina Geertrui (1663-), Agnes (1666-) inherited; Catharina his Indonesian silver, and the portraits of his parents-in-law. Not much is known about his cabinet of curiosities and lacquerware cupboard and boxes.[9]

References

 

  1. L. Westera (2018) ‘Met list en vlijt’, p. 257, 277 ↩
  2. L. Westera (2018) ‘Met list en vlijt’, p. 274- ↩

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