Up: Hayward
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lending her seventeen hundred pounds. Sir Rowland also obliged the
City itself with a loan of a thousand pounds.
His name-- if not his person-- must have been
familiar to William Shakespeare who is said to have based the character
of Sir Rowland de Bois, father of Orlando in As You Like It,
upon that of the wealthy city merchant:
| Orlando: |
I am more proud to be Sir Rowland's son,
His youngest son--and would not change that calling,
To be adopted heir to Frederick. |
| Rosalind: |
My father lov'd Sir Rowland as his soul,
And all the world was of my father's mind: |
He lived to become "The Father of the City"
as well as of sixteen children, many of whom predeceased him, and when he
himself died full of years and honours he was described as one of "the
best merchants" and "the antientest alderman of the city."
It was therefore during Lord Mayor Hayward's
time that the roots of the family dug themselves deep into the City
clay. A century later, when Oliver Cromwell had come and gone, John
Hayward was closely concerned under Sir Christopher Wren with the
rebuilding of St. Paul's and other churches destroyed in the Great
Fire. Although a Samuel Hayward of Cheapside was made a freeman of
the Glaziers' Company as early as 1745, there is no direct connection
with the glass trade until nearly forty years after that date, when
another Samuel Hayward founded the present business.
The great religious rebellion, started by
Martin Luther and carried on by Calvin, Knox, Wesley and others, had
found keen adherents among the Hayward family, one of whom, the
Reverend Samuel Hayward, was to earn renown as a preacher and writer.
A man of private means, he devoted himself from an early age to the
ideals he had set himself. After ministries in various parts of the
country, this gifted divine returned to the City and became Independent
Minister of the famous Silver Street Chapel.
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