Background
Richard was the son of another Richard Foley, a nailer at Dudley.
Richard was the son of another Richard Foley, a nailer at Dudley.
He is best known from the folktale of "Fiddler Foley", which is either not correct or does not apply to him. Richard himself is likely to have traded in nails rather than making them. In the 1620s, he became a partner in a network of ironworks in south Staffordshire, which were undoubtedly the source of the family"s fortune.
According to the folktale, he went to Sweden where, posing as a simple fiddler, he succeeded in discovering the secret of the slitting mill, which was enabling the price of English nails to be undercut.
He returned home and set up a slitting mill at Hyde Mill in Kinver, thus making his fortune. This may possibly have been George Brindley, Richard"s brother-in-law.
Richard certainly leased Hyde Mill in 1627 and converted it to a slitting mill, though it was not the first in England or even in the Midlands. Richard Foley (1614–1678) of Birmingham, and then an ironmaster at Longton in north Staffordshire.
Thomas Foley (1616-1677), another prominent ironmaster, whose descendant was elevated to the peerage as Baron Foley.
Robert Foley (d 1676), ironmonger
Priscilla, who married first Ezekiel Wallis and then in 1665 Henry Glover (ironmaster)
Samuel Foley, a cleric, of Clonmel and Dublin
John Foley (1631-c1684), a Turkey merchant, id est (that is) a trader with the Levant.
Unfortunately, the earliest version of the legend, while applying to Hyde Mill, referred not to Richard Foley, but to a member of the Brindley family, who owned the mill until the 1730s.