Charles Crawley at Antony Gibbs and Sons

Excerpts which pertain to Charles Crawley of Littlemore and his association with Antony Gibbs and Sons from the book entitled:

The history of Antony and Dorothea Gibbs and of their contemporary relatives, including the history of the origin and early years of the house of Antony Gibbs and Sons
John Arthur Gibbs
London: St. Catherine P., 1922. xvi, 509 p., illus.

Charles Crawley, after leaving Oxford, had at first studied for the Law, but finding it uncongenial to him had hesitated between taking Holy Orders or accepting an offer made him by Antony Gibbs to join Antony Gibbs and Sons. He consulted Sir Vicary Gibbs, who in his reply (7 July 1814) made it clear to him that he could be of no help to him in Church preferment and could give him no advice either way. He (aged 26) entered Antony Gibbs & Sons as a clerk in September 1814.

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William Gibbs started again for Cadiz on 5 January 1818. He took with him Charles Crawley, who was to learn something of the business in Spain and to perfect himself in the language. They travelled overland, for William at all times suffered terribly in journeys by sea. Up until at least January 1817 Charles Crawley was doubtful whether he would continue with Antony Gibbs and Sons or take Holy Orders, as appears in a letter of Dorothea Gibbs suggesting that in the latter case the living of Clifton Hampden might do for him. It is to be supposed that he had quite settled to remain in business before he went to Spain.

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Charles Crawley came home from Spain in March of April 1819. While he was in Spain Henry and William Gibbs had been consulting together by letter about taking him into their partnership. It was believed that he would prove to be of value to the business and that his assistance would give them that greater measure of leisure which after 20 years’s work they thought it right that they should have. William was inclined to view with a jealous eye any encroachment on those means to which he and Henry looked for fulfilment of their late father’s obligations, and he thought should preclude that generosity in the matter of terms which they would otherwise have had pleasure in showing to Charles. Charles was in Gibraltar when he received the offer of the partnership in the form in which it was finally agreed and wrote to William: “As to the terms it is enough for me that they have been proposed by Henry and sanctioned by George and yourself but… they appear to me to be on a very just and liberal basis.” His partnership began 1 January 1820 with an interest of one-ninth in Antony Gibbs and Sons and in share of their foreign branches.

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Charles Crawley married in May 1825 Eliza Katherine, daughter of Abraham Grimes of Coton House, Warwickshire. Charles, taking his wife with him, went to South America in 1828 for Antony Gibbs and Sons, returning in 1833. Though always loyal he was not very efficient and by a private arrangement* which George Henry and William Gibbs made with him, his partnership in Antony Gibbs and Sons ceased at the end of 1838, but he was still in receipt of a salary and continued nominally to occupy the position of a partner until the end of 1846. At that date, Antony Gibbs and Sons changed the style of their South American firm from Gibbs Crawley & Co. to William Gibbs and Co. He succeeded George Henry Gibbs in 1842 as a director of the London Assurance Corporation, retiring from that post in 1865. He had built himself a house at Littlemore,** a village on the road between Clifton Hampden and Oxford. He was an intimate friend there of the Rev. John Henry Newman (afterwards Cardinal), indeed it was his desire to be in close touch with the Oxford Tractarian movement which led him to settle at Littlemore. His house was eventually bought by William Gibbs, to whose grandson, George Abraham Gibbs of Tyntesfield, M.P. it now belongs (1921). He died in 1871 aged 82 or 83 and his wife in 1881. His only surviving child, Charles Edward (1827-93) married twice and had children by each wife three of whom are alive (1921).

[Note: his retirement in 1838 coincided with the death of his two youngest sons, George Walter and Francis Baden, probably from the smallpox epidemic which raged through London in the spring of 1838. John Henry Gibbs does not mention this as a mitigating factor in either his retirement or his competence, and in fact seems possibly unaware of it as no mention is made of the boys on any of the published pedigrees.]

*He was given £10,000 to enable him to retire when he wished to do so. George Henry Gibbs wrote in his diary (1 Feb, 1839) “I do not believe he would ever submit to the fag of a junior partner in a way to be entirely satisfactory to us and I do not think his powers and knowledge and quickness of parts are equal, if he were much alone, to the many questions which daily arise in a large business.”

**Charles Crawley lived at first in the house at Littlemore called Littlemore Cottage which is still occupied by John Lloyd Crawley (born 1845) and one of his sisters, grandchildren of Anne, sister of Charles Crawley and wife of the Rev. John Lloyd Crawley of Heyford. The house which Charles Crawley built was at one time called “The Lawn” but now “Lawn Upton”. Newman’s incumbancy of St. Mary’s, Oxford (1828-43) which is in the gift of Oriel College, carried with it the duty of serving Littlemore. He built the church there in 1835. Charles Crawley added the chancel and arranged with Oriel College that he and his heirs should have the right of presentation to Littlemore alternately with the College. His eldest grandson Charles William Scott Crawley now holds this alternate right.

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The dark time of 1830-31 proved tobe a turning point in Antony Gibbs and Sons history and the beginning of their real prosperity. In the ten years 1832-41 the London partners divided among themselves an average of £20,000 a year as profits. The capital of the three London partners, George Henry Gibbs, William Gibbs and Charles Crawley at the end of 1822 was only £14,000, but, though Crawley retired from the partnership in 1838, Henry and William’s capital in the firm was together over £80,000 at the end of 1841, which was the year before Henry’s death. (Crawley’s interest in the partnership was raised from one-ninth to one-seventh in 1834)

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