Letter from Henry Ferguson to Sir Rowland Winn

The letter, addressed to Sir Rowland Winn Bart at Nostell near Pontefract Yorkshire, reads:
London 23 Decr. 1772
Answered this Jany. 2d 1773
Sir,
Another Bill given by you to Thomas Chippendale for £200, being in my hands I take the Liberty of acquainting you that it falls due on 4th January next, in order that you may give timely directions for its being paid on the Day it becomes due – you will be kind enough to acquaint me whether I shall apply for payment for this as I did for the other bill at your bankers in Pall Mall.
I have the honour to be
Sir, Your most humble Servant
For H J Ferguson
Jno Ferguson
No 2 Grey Fryars Newgate Street

It is an application for payment of a promissory note given by Sir Rowland Winn to Thomas Chippendale the Elder and passed to Henry Ferguson and Son of Newgate Street, London. Sir Rowland Winn and his Swiss wife Sabine d’Hervert were important early patrons of the Chippendale firm, buying furniture worth around £2200 for their Yorkshire and London homes between June 1766 and October 1771. Henry Ferguson and his son John were whalebone merchants based in London and members of the wealthy Ferguson family of merchants from Kirkcaldy, Fife. They traded in baleen, the soft bone from a whale’s palate that could be pressed into mouldings, particularly for picture frames. Henry Ferguson was an executor of the will of Thomas Chippendale’s first Scottish financial partner James Rannie. Ferguson became a sleeping partner in the Chippendale firm at some time in 1771, with a view to reclaiming the capital with which Rannie had underwritten the business until his death in 1766.
To put the letter into context, Winn owed money to the Chippendale firm for furniture that had been completed and delivered in 1768. The account was still unsettled in late 1772 and other customers including Lascelles of Harewood and Knatchbull of Mersham le Hatch had not paid for their extensive commissions. Meanwhile, Chippendale was under great pressure to pay Rannie’s executors acting on behalf of family and creditors in Scotland who were demanding swift settlement of legacies and debts due to them. Ferguson stepped in to recover the money but also to keep the firm in business.
An indication of Chippendale’s predicament is shown in a letter to Winn written on 3rd March 1769 in which Chippendale declares he is ‘oblig’d to make up £500 this week to pay the Executors of Mr Rannie my late Partner. His Brother (Thomas) is come to Town from Scotland to settle accounts with me and other people, which must be done this week.’
Winn’s preferred method of payment was by promissory note that could be passed on to a creditor or discounted with a banker. His usual instalment was for £200 with a promise to honour the note after six months, but the Nostell letters reveal that he failed to honour his notes on several occasions. A letter of 5th July 1770, for example, states that one of Winn’s bills had bounced and the banker was holding Chippendale responsible for payment. Chippendale pleaded with Winn, saying ‘I shall Certainly be arrested for it and I beg Sir Rowland that you will not let that happen to me.’
Compared with Thomas Chippendale’s often desperate pleadings, Ferguson’s firm but polite requests for settlement seem to have been effective, and this letter is interesting as a contrasting foil to the Chippendale/Winn correspondence in the Nostell archive. It is an illustration of the use of promissory notes, which appears to have been common in the eighteenth century due to a shortage of circulating currency, but more likely as a method amongst aristocratic clients of delaying payment for goods. The letter tells us, also, a little more about Henry Ferguson, Thomas Chippendale’s third Scottish partner, along with James Rannie and Thomas Haig. It shows that he was in business with his son John, who is, in this letter, the signatory, but it is not known if Chippendale used the firm’s whalebone in his furnishing products. What is more probable is that Ferguson, a known associate of James Rannie, was simply a member of the circle of affluent Scots who kept the Chippendale firm solvent throughout the eighteenth century.