‘Strangely … Metamorphosed from a Student to a Merchant’

In early June 1717, a twenty-four-year-old colonial visitor walked nervously on to the floor of London's Royal Exchange, anxious to make a good impression on the traders assembled there. Hugh Hall Jr felt ‘strangely Metamorphosed from a Student to a Merchant’. Less than a year earlier, the bookish Harvard graduate, with ‘Inclinations … to a Pastoral Function’, had been recalled to Barbados by his father, Hugh Hall Sr. After being admitted into co-partnership, Hall Jr was promptly despatched to London on what he described as ‘a Very Probable Scheme for my Advancement’.

The man young Hugh set out to meet on the Exchange also doubted whether trade was the new arrival's natural vocation. Edward Lascelles, a prominent West India merchant, was vastly experienced in trade; after spending nearly two decades on Barbados, he had returned to England in 1701 and established himself as a leading sugar merchant. While on Barbados, Edward married Hugh's aunt, Mary Hall; his household also included Hugh's twelve-year-old brother Charles, sent to England to better his education. The meeting between the two men was brief. Lascelles scanned the letter of introduction Hall's father had written, issued a cool summons for his young kinsman to wait on him, and then turned abruptly on his heel.

Matters scarcely improved once Hugh accepted his kinsman's offer of hospitality. Away from the Exchange, Lascelles conducted business from Tokenhouse Yard, Lothbury.