A John Bowring 'Trail' in Exeter - Part 1

A John Bowring 'Trail' in Exeter

by Brian Edgar and James Turner

Part 1

 John Bowring in 1826, John King (Wikipedia)

Today we're going to take a walk along a 'trail' of places in Exeter associated with the Hong Kong Governor, and try to understand how his time in the city helped form the man who ruled Hong Kong for 5 years.

 Our guide will be local man of letters, James Turner:

James became interested in Bowring partly through his study of the philosopher Jeremy Bentham, whom Bowring befriended and whose posthumous works he edited, and partly through working for a time at the Devon and Exeter Institution, which Bowring was involved with when he returned to his home town after retiring.

Larkbeare, the house where Bowring was born, was rented by his father, Charles, from the Baring family, at that time wool traders who'd recently founded what was to become a well-known bank. Bowring's grandfather lived next door. The Bowrings were also in the wool trade and the family woollen workshops were close by. The house isn't there any more, but Bowring's eldest son, John Charles, came to live in his own property about a hundred yards away. John Charles also had a Hong Kong connection: he was a director of Jardine Matheson, at the time the most important Hong Kong company, and the major trader in opium. James started by taking me to the grounds of what had been John Charles's property.

The 'Trail'

Brian: Today St. Leonard's is probably the most sought-after residential area in Exeter and the population's growing more than  twice as fast as the city average. But it was once the smallest parish in Devon and in 1801, when Governor Bowring was a boy, it had only 133 residents, most of them poor. James, my guess is that if we look over the wall that once bounded John Charles's land what we will see tells us why the family were among the small number of prosperous people living in this part of the city.

James: Sir John Bowring came from a family which had been living in Devon since the sixteenth century. His mother, Sarah Anne, was the daughter of the Anglican vicar of St. Ives in Cornwall. The Bowring family were Dissenters, and Charles remained one even after marrying a vicar's daughter. John was brought up in that form of Dissent known as Unitarianism - so named because adherents denied the doctrine of the Trinity. More about that later because it was important in making Bowring who he was.

Brian: Do you think any other aspects of his childhood here in St. Leonard's had a role in shaping the future Governor of Hong Kong?

Bowring and the other delegates listening to the main speaker, Thomas Clarkson (Image: Wikipedia)

James: He also supported the suppression of the opium trade.

Brian: Oh?

James: Actually his position here was tricky: he had a friend called John Abel Smith who was chief partner in the firm that banked for him and had also helped him out of a financial fix. Smith was an MP and he had some connection with Jardine Matheson and used his position to help the firm – it might have been Smith who got Bowring's son John Charles his job with them. Anyway, Bowring opposed the opium trade after he himself became an M.P. in 1835 but he always handled Jardine Matheson carefully.

Brian: You mentioned Unitarianism. Could you take us to the place where the Bowring family worshipped?

James: George's Meeting House, close to the Anglican Cathedral:

Brian: What's the history of this building?

James: George's Meeting House was built in 1760, originally as a Presbyterian chapel - the first Unitarian minister took office in 1784. Bowing was often brought here as a child.

'Then there was a clock - a broad-faced clock - the movements of whose minute-hand it was my comfort and amusement to watch when the sermon was particularly dull, or when my thoughts had nothing else to do....The two hands were the images of knowledge and faith' - John Bowring 

James: Bowring's grandfather - another John - who he was close to, held several positions here. Politically he was a radical, and a strong opponent of the slave trade, so I guess he was another important influence on Bowring.

Brian: Seems like family tradition was very important in making him who he was. James, I know that Unitarians as a whole didn't just maintain a theology that denied the Trinity – they were generally sympathetic to radical and egalitarian causes like the abolition of slavery. As we're thinking forward to his role in Hong Kong, what about attitudes to war?

James: His Unitarianism involved a definite tendency towards a dislike of war, even to pacifism. In fact in 1820, just four years after its foundation, he became foreign secretary of a group called the London Peace Society, which aimed to bring about permanent and universal international peace. He resigned his secretaryship in 1823 but continued to attend meetings and speak on behalf of the society.

Brian: Sounds like the man who sets out from this city as a youth to make his way in the world is probably the last person you'd expect to provoke a war with the Chinese!

James: While he was doing that he was still a member of the Peace Society!

Brian: I understand that Bowring left school at 13 to work in the family wool business - that's when he would have been down at the Quay - and at 18 he left for a job in London. He eventually started his own firm dealing with the Iberian Peninsula in wine and fish. What else was he up to before becoming Hong Kong Governor in 1854?

James: Many things. He got married for one - in 1816 to Maria Lewin, the daughter of a wealthy merchant. Some say he learnt 200 languages but I'm sure he was fluent in only a fraction of those, but he was still a distinguished linguist.

Brian: Quite a CV.

James: There's lots more. In 1825, for example, he found the time to publish a volume of hymns which included the well-known 'Watchman, tell us of the night'. Over 20 of his hymns are still in common use.

Brian: There's something else I'd like to ask you about his activity in these years as it bears strongly on his actions in China and Hong Kong. He seems to have become interested in free trade in the early 1820s and in 1825 he became political editor of a magazine called The Westminster Review, and he used this position to become one of the earliest advocates of international commerce without tariffs or restrictions. For Bowring this liberty of exchange wasn't just a matter of economics - he once said 'Free trade is Jesus Christ and Jesus Christ free trade.' He believed that trade between nations without restrictive laws, tariffs and so on would lead to the greatest prosperity possible and to the international peace he was trying to promote - so it was a moral and religious imperative. What do you make of this?