Although Sir Robert procured workmen from Venice, they were probably of an inferior character, and a space of fifty years elapsed before the English manufactories equalled the Venetian and French in the quality of their articles.
Evelyn, in his "Diary," states: "On the proclamation of James II., in the market-place of Bromley, by the sheriff of Kent, the commander of the Kentish troops, two of the King's trumpeters, and other officers, drank the King's health in a flint wine-glass three feet tall."
In the year 1670, the Duke of Buckingham became the patron of the art in England, and greatly improved the quality and style of the flint-glass, by procuring, at great personal expense, a number of Venetian artists, whom he persuaded to settle in London. From this period, _i.e._, about the commencement of the eighteenth century, the English glass manufactories, aided by the liberal bounties granted them in cash upon all glass exported by them or sold for export, became powerful and successful rivals of the Venetian and the French manufactories in foreign markets. The clear bounty granted on each pound of glass exported from England, which the government paid to the manufacturer, was not derived from any tax by impost or excise previously laid, for all such were returned to the manufacturer, together with the bounty referred to; thereby lessening the actual cost of the manufacture from twenty-five to fifty per cent., and enabling the English exporters to drive off all competition in foreign markets. This bounty provision was annulled during the Premiership of Sir Robert Peel, together with all the excise duty on the home consumption.
In 1673 the first plate-glass was manufactured at Lambeth, under a royal charter; but no great progress was made at that time, and the works for the purpose were doubtless very limited. One hundred years later, _i.e._ 1773, a Company was formed, under a royal charter, called the "Governor and Company of the British Cast Plate-Glass Manufactory," with a capital of eighty shares of five hundred pounds each, their works being at Ravenshead, in Lancashire. These works have been very successfully conducted, and, according to a late writer, are rivalled by none, excepting those at "St. Gobain," in France. Since the excise duty on plate-glass has been repealed, its manufacture has increased to a wonderful extent; the quantity used in the construction of the Crystal Palace, for the World's Fair, being probably many times larger than that manufactured twenty years since in the kingdom of Great Britain in any one year.