Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 21.djvu/234

 8, 104, cccclxxxiii. 10, &c.). He was accused of giving shelter to papist priests; and in September 1642 his house at Bethnal Green was attacked by a mob. He immediately published a pamphlet entitled ‘A Wicked and Inhumane Plot … Against Sir Balthazar Gerbier, Knight,’ &c., in which he declares himself a protestant. After repeated petitions for the money due to him (ib. cccclxxxix. 67, ccccxci. 101, ccccxcvii. 88, &c.) he obtained from the king, at the suit of the elector palatine, permission to retire beyond the seas, together with letters to Louis XIII, who died (14 May 1643) before Gerbier landed at Calais.

In May 1641 Gerbier had made proposals to Charles for the erection of ‘mounts’ or banks, combining pawnbroking with banking business (ib. cccclxxviii. 96). He made similar proposals at Paris in three pamphlets, ‘Remonstrance tres humble … touchant le mont-de-piété, et quelques mauvais bruits que nombre d'usuriers sèment contre ce pieux, utile et nécessaire establissement,’ 1643; ‘Justification particulière des intendants de monts-de-piété,’ &c., 1643. ‘Exposition … sur l'establissement des monts-de-piété,’ 1644. Gerbier states that he was favoured by the Duke of Orleans. The duke and the old Prince of Condé were to be protector-generals of the establishment. He received a patent under the great seal of France. The queen regent was thereupon accused of protecting a protestant. One ‘Will Crafts [Crofts] immediately whipt in,’ alleging that Gerbier was not the father of the children in his family, and had made them protestants by force. Gerbier's project was stopped; three of his daughters were carried to an English nunnery called Sion, and he himself constrained to quit France. His papers and money were seized between Rouen and Dieppe by seven cavaliers. Crofts, with whom Gerbier associates Davenant, spread their calumnies even to England. Gerbier forthwith printed at Paris, in May 1646, a rambling defence of himself in English, entitled ‘Baltazar Gerbier Knight to all men that Love Truth;’ and ‘A Letter from Sr Balthazar Gerbier, Knight. To his Three Daughters inclosed in a Nunnery att Paris.’ Both were distributed in England, and copies, it would seem, were sent to the speaker of the House of Commons. To the Countess of Clare he sent, in manuscript, ‘his last Admonitions to his Daughters,’ dated Paris, 24 Nov. 1646 (Harl. MS. 3384). Eventually his daughters appear to have returned to him.

In 1649, while he was in France, his house at Bethnal Green was broken into by order of the parliamentarians, and his papers relating to his foreign negotiations carried to the paper room at Whitehall (State Papers, Dom. xl. 132), and on 12 Nov. of the same year it was agreed by the council that those of Gerbier's papers ‘taken to be used at the trial of the late king,’ which do not concern the public, be re-delivered to him. He appears to have returned to England shortly after the execution of the king. He now proposed a scheme for an ‘Academy’ on the model of Charles I's ‘Museum Minervæ,’ which had ceased with the civil war. He issued a prospectus in some four or five different forms (1648, 4to). It was to give instruction in all manner of subjects, from philosophy, languages, and mathematics, to riding the ‘great horse,’ dancing and fencing. It was opened on 19 July 1649 at Gerbier's house at Bethnal Green. Many of the lectures were printed: ‘The First Lecture, of an Introduction to Cosmographie …’ 1649; ‘The Second Lecture being an introduction to Cosmographie …’ 1649; ‘The First Lecture, of Geographie …’ 1649; ‘The Interpreter of the Academie for forrain Langvages, and all noble sciences, and exercises …’ 1649; ‘The First Lecture touching Navigation …’ 1649; ‘The Interpreter of the Academie … concerning military architecture …’ 1649; ‘A Publique Lecture on all the Languages, Arts, Sciences, and noble Exercises …’ 1650; ‘The Art of Well Speaking …’ 1650; ‘The Academies Lecture concerning Justice …’ 1650. Walpole says of one of these tracts that ‘it is a most trifling superficial rhapsody,’ which is equally true of all Gerbier's writings. Gerbier was the object of many unfavourable reports, absurd and undeniable. He protested that he was an honest patriot, in a little book entitled ‘A Manifestation by Sr Balthazar Gerbier, Kt,’ 1651, containing some autobiography; but the ‘Academy’ broke down. He now published several political pamphlets: ‘Some Considerations on the Two grand Staple-Commodities of England …’ 1651; ‘A new-year's result in favour of the Poore …’ 1652; ‘A Discovery of Certain Notorious Stumbling-Blocks …’ 1652. There is also attributed to him an attack on the late king, entitled ‘The nonesuch Charles, his Character, extracted out of original Transactions, Dispatches, and the Notes of several public Ministers …’ 1652. In 1652 an order was passed by the committee for trade and foreign affairs to request the council to give Gerbier a pass to go beyond the seas, and to bestow 50l. on him, because he had waited on them for a long time, ‘to acquaint them with some particulars relating to the service.’ The following year he published at the Hague a small book entitled ‘Les Effects pernicieux de Meschants Favoris et Grands Ministres