William Rea (ironmaster)

William Rea of Monmouth is probably best known to history as the compiler of a list of British ironworks.

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Ironmaster

His importance to the charcoal iron industry of the early 18th century was as the managing partner of the Foley family's ironworks in and about the Forest of Dean from 1705 to 1725.

In this role, he succeeded John Wheeler. The date of his birth is not known, but he may have been the son of Richard Rea, another Foley manager. He appears as a manager of Wilden Forge about 1692 and was managing some forges near the Forest of Dean for John Wheeler and Obadiah Lane from about 1701. It is not unlikely that he was John Wheeler's chief clerk, but that is not known. After Wheeler's death, he married one of his daughters.

Rea seems to have managed the business of the Forest Partnership successfully, with some oversight from Richard Avenant and then Richard Knight (ironmaster) of Bringewood (near Ludlow, Shropshire). After the death of Philip Foley in 1716, his children sold out, as did Richard Knight who had become a partner in about 1709, leaving just John Wheeler II and Thomas Foley, the eldest son of Paul Foley and Auditor of the Imprests - an Exchequer sincecure.

In 1717, an embargo was placed on British trade with Sweden. As a substantial part of the iron manufactured in Great Britain was imported from Sweden, there was a shortage of it and the price rose. This meant there were large potential profits for English ironmasters, such as Rea, but to make more iron, they needed more charcoal. The price of the cordwood from which charcoal was made is also likely to have risen. Rea bought a large quantity of wood - both cordwood and timber (i.e. large stuff suitable for house and shipbuilding) at Holme Lacy near Hereford. He realised that the deal was too big for him and asked Thomas Foley to become his partner. The best timber was sold to the Navy for shipbuilding. The charcoal made from the cordwood no doubt went to their ironworks.

Financial Losses

Timber was probably a commodity in which he did not usually deal, and he may have got the price wrong; alternatively, he may just have paid an inflated price that was appropriate at the time, but not later. Whatever the reason, this business made a very substantial loss. The underlying problem was probably that the embargo was lifted in 1719, and Swedish iron came in again direct. The imports had anyway only been temporarily interrupted, as Swedish iron soon began to find its way into England, re-exported from Prussian and Dutch ports. The price of iron is likely to have returned to its pre-crisis level, leaving Rea bound to a contract for wood at what had become an uneconomically high price. The result for him was financially disastrous.

Sacked

It is likely that his failure left him depressed; certainly in 1725,he was severely in arrears with providing accounts to his partners. Accordingly, the partners met at Wolverhampton and sacked him. Warine Falkner was the next manager, but his wife wanted to move back to Staffordshire to be near her family, and he left. In the time of his successor Thomas Pendrill, the business (now owned entirely by the Foley family) gradually contracted, and ends in obscurity as an unimportant concern, some time after 1751.

Financial Ruin

Rea's sacking was followed by litigation, mainly (but not entirely) in the Court of Exchequer. This was ultimately partly resolved by an arbitration by Warine Falkner and Edward Kendall with William Knight as umpire. The result was to leave Rea financially ruined, with his property mortgaged to the Duke of Beaufort, to whom he ultimately surrendered it.

Later Career

He is last heard of in 1748, when he forced the sale of an estate at Wolverley. Samuel Jewkes had apparently given him a partnership in Wolverley Old Forge during the embargo and had died without paying. William Rea brought proceedings in Chancery for payment, but had to await the majority of the grandson before the estate could be sold and he could be paid. The estate was bought by Edward Knight (ironmaster), William Knight's son, who was by then an important and wealthy ironmaster in the area.

Little is known of Rea's career after he was sacked by the Forest Partnership. He had had shares in ironworks in Cheshire and Staffordshire, at Cunsey in Furness, and in Sussex and was evidently an important figure in the iron industry, but withdrew from (or lost) these shares during the 1720s.

Further reading

P. W. King, 'Early Statistics for the iron industry: a vindication' Historical Metallurgy 30(1) (1996), 23-46.