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William Roscoe: Commerce and Culture
Writer, poet, historian, anti-slavery campaigner, botanist, book-collector, MP and art patron, William Roscoe has been acclaimed as ‘The Founding Father of Liverpool Culture’. A friend and correspondent of Burns and Shelley, acclaimed by Horace Walpole as ‘by far the best of our historians’, and author of a poem ‘The Butterfly’s Ball’ that delighted King George III so much he had it set to music, Roscoe’s name is synonymous with Liverpool. In this major new study Arline Wilson explores the man behind the myth, examining why Roscoe is claimed to personify, more than any other, the union of commerce and culture in the lawyer, banker and businessman, who is credited with laying the foundations for his city’s artistic, literary and social evolution.
256 pages, Hardcover
First published April 15, 2007
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October 13, 2026
When discussing Liverpool's commercial, cultural or social history in the 18th and early 19th centuries it is impossible not to bring in the slave trade as a major element. Even individuals who were wholly opposed to the trade and to slavery in general, whether on moral or economic grounds, would find it difficult to avoid being tainted in some degree. If, like William Roscoe, you were first a lawyer and then a banker it would have been impossible to step aside from professional associations with slave ship owners and captains. Even tradesmen and employees would struggle to deny themselves the chance to work for wealthy slavers; jobs and wages were not so easily found that principles could always be maintained. The author does what she can to emphasize Roscoe's sincere opposition to slavery and brings forward his cultural life as author, historian and naturalist.
His background was not poor by the standards of his time - by our standards, probably middle class. His parents ran the Old Bowling Green Inn in Mount Pleasant, one of the coaching routes in and out of Liverpool, and had a side trade as market gardeners. There was enough money to keep their son in school until he was twelve and allow him to indulge in his passion for reading. As he went into his teens William still had to experience his share of manual labour until, at sixteen, perhaps recognizing his academic nature, his parents apprenticed him to a local bookseller and when that did not work out, he became an articled clerk to Mr. Eyes, an attorney.
It was during this period that, with a group of friends, he furthered his own education studying Latin and the classics. He stayed with the law, becoming an attorney himself when he was twenty-two. He dabbled in local politics, began writing and shaping his insatiable book collecting. There was a poem he wrote called The Dingle, the area of Toxteth were I was born:
Where the fern in fringed pride
Decks the lonely valley's side
Where the linnet chirps his song,
Flitting as thou treadst along.
It wasn't quite a sylvan glade when I was there, it was bricks, dust and heavy traffic. Though I suppose looking back it had a rough charm, especially walking down Dingle Lane to what used to be an oil terminal on the Mersey.
In 1796 Roscoe wrote the first book that brought him to the attention of the literary world, The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, Called the Magnificent: Volume 1 (that is the best GR link I can give, there is also a volume 2). It is not far removed from hagiography, the Medici reputation was not really along the lines of benign democracy. This was followed by a biography of Lorenzo's son, Giovanni: The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth. Between them was the work that, for many people, became his best known, The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast. Even in 1802 we were suckers for children's fantasy.
Roscoe's later years were a financial struggle. His staunch abolitionist stance won him few friends among the powerful in Liverpool and the affects of the Napoleonic Wars drove his banking business into bankruptcy. Once the fight against the slave trade had been won his reputation and memory were enhanced and he could be used as a figurehead of decency by a Liverpool anxious to replace its business reputation as a town ready to put profit before humanity with that of a city of justifiable enterprise - and profitability. It's just about worked.
A useful biography of a man who deserves to be remembered. There may not be any startling revelations of original research and sometimes the background needs to be expanded. More information about those active in the slave trade who opposed him would have been useful. However, it is a book worth reading.
His background was not poor by the standards of his time - by our standards, probably middle class. His parents ran the Old Bowling Green Inn in Mount Pleasant, one of the coaching routes in and out of Liverpool, and had a side trade as market gardeners. There was enough money to keep their son in school until he was twelve and allow him to indulge in his passion for reading. As he went into his teens William still had to experience his share of manual labour until, at sixteen, perhaps recognizing his academic nature, his parents apprenticed him to a local bookseller and when that did not work out, he became an articled clerk to Mr. Eyes, an attorney.
It was during this period that, with a group of friends, he furthered his own education studying Latin and the classics. He stayed with the law, becoming an attorney himself when he was twenty-two. He dabbled in local politics, began writing and shaping his insatiable book collecting. There was a poem he wrote called The Dingle, the area of Toxteth were I was born:
Where the fern in fringed pride
Decks the lonely valley's side
Where the linnet chirps his song,
Flitting as thou treadst along.
It wasn't quite a sylvan glade when I was there, it was bricks, dust and heavy traffic. Though I suppose looking back it had a rough charm, especially walking down Dingle Lane to what used to be an oil terminal on the Mersey.
In 1796 Roscoe wrote the first book that brought him to the attention of the literary world, The Life of Lorenzo de' Medici, Called the Magnificent: Volume 1 (that is the best GR link I can give, there is also a volume 2). It is not far removed from hagiography, the Medici reputation was not really along the lines of benign democracy. This was followed by a biography of Lorenzo's son, Giovanni: The Life and Pontificate of Leo the Tenth. Between them was the work that, for many people, became his best known, The Butterfly's Ball and the Grasshopper's Feast. Even in 1802 we were suckers for children's fantasy.
Roscoe's later years were a financial struggle. His staunch abolitionist stance won him few friends among the powerful in Liverpool and the affects of the Napoleonic Wars drove his banking business into bankruptcy. Once the fight against the slave trade had been won his reputation and memory were enhanced and he could be used as a figurehead of decency by a Liverpool anxious to replace its business reputation as a town ready to put profit before humanity with that of a city of justifiable enterprise - and profitability. It's just about worked.
A useful biography of a man who deserves to be remembered. There may not be any startling revelations of original research and sometimes the background needs to be expanded. More information about those active in the slave trade who opposed him would have been useful. However, it is a book worth reading.
August 4, 2015
Some of the detail can be a bit dry here, but being descended from the subject (I had a Roscoe Grandmother) this failed to damp my interest. I share Roscoe's fascination for the Florence of the Medici's (perhaps it is genetic), so it was a little disappointing - though hardly surprising - to hear that Roscoe's "Life of Lorenzo de Medici", lauded at the time of its publication, is now generally reckoned overly sympathetic.
Roscoe's amateurishness is well brought out, and is something of an embarrassment, such as when his attempt to catalogue the library at Holkham Hall for Coke of Norfolk reveals that he is simply not up to the job. But there are many colourful episodes - and it is pleasing to read about his electoral defeat of General Sir Banastre Tarleton - the mad and obnoxious war criminal and rapist who is so memorably depicted as the evil "Colonel Tavington" in the film "The Patriot". Roscoe opposed the slave trade, but Tarleton marched under the banner (literally) of "The Church and the Slave Trade for ever!" (Tarleton was getting a dig at Roscoe's lack of support for the Established Church as well as his abolitionism, but the juddering juxtaposition is of course so bizarre as to be funny. Almost).
Of course Roscoe must have been on the side of the angels when seen in opposition to Tarleton....and yet, things are always more nuanced than they first appear. On his election as a Member of Parliament, Roscoe's Victory Dinner - on a magnificent scale of gluttonous and bibulous excess - featured a bust of Roscoe as the centrepiece, inscribed "An honest man is the noblest work of God." There was nothing honest about Tarleton...but Roscoe out-bribed him, spending some £12,000 (getting on for half a million today) on what would certainly today be seen as corrupt practices. Autre temps, autre moeurs I suppose...but what credibility can Roscoe still retain when he was supposed to be the anti-corruption candidate? (None of that would have stopped me enjoying the Victory Dinner's "50 woodcock, 100 snipe, 48 lobsters, 13 pots of turtle soup, 12 roast pigs.." etc etc....)
Roscoe's amateurishness is well brought out, and is something of an embarrassment, such as when his attempt to catalogue the library at Holkham Hall for Coke of Norfolk reveals that he is simply not up to the job. But there are many colourful episodes - and it is pleasing to read about his electoral defeat of General Sir Banastre Tarleton - the mad and obnoxious war criminal and rapist who is so memorably depicted as the evil "Colonel Tavington" in the film "The Patriot". Roscoe opposed the slave trade, but Tarleton marched under the banner (literally) of "The Church and the Slave Trade for ever!" (Tarleton was getting a dig at Roscoe's lack of support for the Established Church as well as his abolitionism, but the juddering juxtaposition is of course so bizarre as to be funny. Almost).
Of course Roscoe must have been on the side of the angels when seen in opposition to Tarleton....and yet, things are always more nuanced than they first appear. On his election as a Member of Parliament, Roscoe's Victory Dinner - on a magnificent scale of gluttonous and bibulous excess - featured a bust of Roscoe as the centrepiece, inscribed "An honest man is the noblest work of God." There was nothing honest about Tarleton...but Roscoe out-bribed him, spending some £12,000 (getting on for half a million today) on what would certainly today be seen as corrupt practices. Autre temps, autre moeurs I suppose...but what credibility can Roscoe still retain when he was supposed to be the anti-corruption candidate? (None of that would have stopped me enjoying the Victory Dinner's "50 woodcock, 100 snipe, 48 lobsters, 13 pots of turtle soup, 12 roast pigs.." etc etc....)
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